Updates from cvjugo RSS
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02:42:14 am on October 27, 2008 |
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03:10:45 pm on October 18, 2008 |
To a certain extent, those at the front-lines of Society’s welfare services find it necessary to turn off their compassion if only to maintain their competence at delivering such services.
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08:26:35 pm on September 26, 2008 |
It’s only here in the blogosphere where i realized that it is possible to violently agree with someone.
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06:36:42 pm on September 17, 2008 |
Besides, i don’t think hanging out with lawyers is healthy.
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12:12:10 am on September 16, 2008 |
I find the FV Community’s first attempt at being advice columnists hilarious, especially the opening response by Benign0 which is a classic. I do hope DJB’s suspicions about the true identity of the letter writer are correct. Heaven forbid that it was actually someone who was genuinely seeking our help.
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05:06:15 pm on September 14, 2008 |
David Foster Wallace (1962 to 2008)
I just bought his Consider The Lobster a few weeks ago during the Borders Warehouse Book Sale. With the above, i guess now is a good time as any to buy Everything and More.
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06:37:41 pm on September 12, 2008 |
Rom, i thought no politics?
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10:23:32 am on September 12, 2008 |
That’s supposed to be a lighthouse.
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12:28:07 pm on September 10, 2008 |
Today, the Large Hadron Collider which has figured in a number of end of the world scenarios, will finally be started up.
The event is being liveblogged over at Cosmicvariance.
Here is a list of what scientists hope to discover with the LHC.
Here are the reasons why the scientists don’t think fears surrounding the LHC are justified.
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02:53:39 pm on September 9, 2008 |
Hmmm, that’s fundamentally different from my understanding of the nature of Trinity’s (as well as Neo’s, Morpheus’ and the others’) residual selves. I thought that it was still their human selves and not a computer copy that inhabited the Matrix. But then again, your interpretation might be correct since i noticed the big difference in the ‘Matrix’ and ‘real world’ fight scenes between Neo and Agent Smith. The former was kung-fu style while the latter was more of a clumsy brawl.
On the Stanford achievement, i think the challenge is not to pass on expertise to other computers which is relatively straightforward. The challenge is to pass expertise from computer into humans which means translating machine encoding (made up of 1’s and 0’s) into the human brain’s neural patterns.
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09:42:57 pm on September 8, 2008 |
I think what the Stanford scientists have done is to transfer human expertise into a computer. In the Matrix, they did the reverse.
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10:27:18 pm on September 7, 2008 |
Rom, I took the HBDI test as part of some leadership training where i work. It’s very interesting because it will reveal what your thinking preference is, both under normal circumstances and under stress. I was about to say in my previous response that if you get the chance, do take the test. I doubt it would be free but i think it’s worth it if only for self-knowledge.
Hi J!
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09:42:05 pm on September 7, 2008 |
Rom, i happen to have been thinking about it since at the time i watched the movie, i just completed a training course where we discussed the Hermmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) thinking preferences. The HBDI features 4 quadrants representing a person’s prefered thinking style i.e. Analytical (blue), Sequential (green), Interpersonal (red) and Imaginative (yellow).
I figure Batman tended towards the ‘analytical’ and the Joker (as i posted) was more of the ‘interpersonal’ (red) tpe. And as the movie showed, ‘interpersonal’ beats ‘analytical’. As Batman himself kept saying in the movie, ‘The Joker won’. Since then, The Joker has been my new benchmark as far as empathy is concerned.
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05:47:54 am on September 7, 2008 |
With all due respect to the late Heath Ledger, who in my opinion gave the definitive portrayal of The Joker (in the The Dark Knight) , i have to disagree when he said “He [The Joker] has zero empathy”.
Empathy is “the capacity to recognize or understand another’s state of mind or emotion”. It is precisely in this quality that The Joker has exhibited mastery throughout the movie. Without such an ability to understand the other person’s state of mind and emotion, he would not have been able to:
- anticipate the moves of one of the bad guys so he can complete his ‘Pencil Trick’;
- recruit asylum inmates into his plot to assassinate the Mayor ;
- trick Batman into saving Harvey Dent at someone else’s expense;
- persuade Harvey Dent to turn into the villain Two Face;
- set-up the ’social experiment’ on the two ferries.
An insight into the other party’s motivations is a prerequisite to being able to use it to one’s advantage.
So why did Heath Ledger say that his character had ‘zero empathy’? I can only speculate that he meant to say ‘zero sympathy‘. These two qualities, empathy and sympathy, usually go together, but not in the case of The Joker.
