When having the dinner today, Jason told to me about a kind of Gongfu that seldem can anyone reach the 10th level, for the final level is obtained only when all the ligaments are broken and then rebuilt. Another friend, Yitao, wrote to me once that it is only when you lost everything that you are free to do anything.
Both sayings are related, in some ways, to the living pattern of phoenix, reborn. I like it.
Philosophers say that in order for one to KNOW a proposition, three conditions have to be met: a) the proposition is true, b) one believes the proposition, and c) you are justified in believing the proposition. This analysis of knowledge is referred to as the JTB account: knowledge as justified true belief. What interests me most is that philosophers disagree in ALL three conditions. The last condition seems to be the philosophers' s favorite topic. I device two example to show the disagreement between philosophers known as internalists and those known as externalists.
First, suppose John has a dog. Every evening when John comes home, he opens the door and finds the little dog already sitting besides him. The dog smells the usual odor of John before the door is open. Intuitively, we will not refuse to admit that the dog knows John is back. In this case, we attribute knowledge to animals.
Next is a scene depicted in the movie, Minority Report. Imagine a girl who is constantly haunted by terrible dreams about murder at night. What she sees in her dream is real murder in near future, although she does not recognize her psychic ability at that time. Later a scientist proves that those murders really happen after the girl dreamed about them. And according to predictions of the girl and two other boys who also have the psychic ability, the police build a system called precrime to prevent possible murder, which the movie is all about. Do you think she kNOWS the murder before the scientist proves her psychic ability?
Here we meet a controversy. The dog does not have the idea that its senses are reliable. Neither does the girl had the idea whether her sense, the psychic ability, is reliable. But we attribute knowledge to the dog, but not to the girl. Why? Is it because the psychic ability is something not as common as ordinary senses like taste, smell, or sight? If so, let us view the case just as a thought experiment. So it suggest that in order to know, one should recognize the reliability of the senses. On the other hand, the example of the dog suggests that such a recognizability is not necessary for knowledge. Senses is one common source of our knowledge; the recognizability of their reliability is one example of the direct recognizability of justification -- what the internal justification is.
So the fundamental question is whether the internal justification is necessary for knowledge?
This Ocean current animation shows that the Ocean currents on the sea surface is opposite in direction to those currents under the surface. It lets me remind the geography class in high school. Geography, one of my favorite courses, and it still is!
When I was about 14, I showed off in front of my classmates what I read from a popular public science book, A Brief History of Time. That book is about the images of space and time. Now, after taking physics courses in college, I can understand a few of the physical concepts in that book, and I can actually "know" some, but not all, physical images described in that book. The physical images I learned from that book at the age of 14 were, in a sense, epistemic luck for me, for I was not able to give reasons or justifications when facing the question--"How do you know?". So, strictly speaking, I knew nothing written in the book at 14.
To show off only brought me a satisfaction coming from the delusion that I seemed to "know" more than others. Though such a desire might be a stimulus for me to read when I was a child, its superficial nature makes it impossible to sustain any extensive involvement in a subject. It might also blind me from the true impulse of learning--curiosity. It can kill an inquisitive mind.
John and Sandy were carrying bags of salt across a desert. One night John threw a small handful of salt into the campfire; the salt makes a cracking sound. John then said that they should not go tomorrow, because it was going to rain. Sandy did not believe it. Next morning, there was no sign of rain in the sky, so Sandy continued the trip alone. Shortly after Sandy left, a rain began; it washes away all the salt Sandy carried.
At the end of the story--as most stories for child under ten always do-- it tells the reader why the sound of the salt predicts a rain: the high humidity in the air, an indication of the coming rain, makes the salt wet, and the wet salt makes a cracking sound in the fire.
If I were
From an epistemic perspective, philosophers would also deny that John knew the rain. They would claim that at that night John only had the belief that the rain would come, and the rainfall next day turns John's belief to be true. But a belief's turning out to be true can be just due to luck, which epistemologists refer as the epistemic luck. In order for a true belief to amount to knowledge, justification is required. Though it is uncontroversial that an epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge, there is a huge disagreement over the nature of justification and consequently over the nature of knowledge. Let us simply conclude that without justification, what one can have is only a belief, and an instance of the belief turning to be true is an epistemic luck.
We therefore exclude a considerable amount of information in our head from the range of what we know. Religious beliefs are not knowledge. Most daily predictions, most sayings about human nature, and understanding of abstract concepts that has no exact definitions, such as love, life, and success, are better to be classified as beliefs.
The fact that one mistakes belief for knowledge alone does not matter too much; what matters is the feeling attached with "one knows", when, in fact, he does not.
"An author of the I.B.M. paper, Zhihong Chen, said she believed that it would ultimately be possible to build molecular devices that reach switching speeds of trillions of operations a second. Such computing performance is obtained today only by the fastest parallel supercomputers."
The above two paragraph is from Truly Micro Electronics in a Single Molecule - New York Times.
What is worth noting is the number of Chinese names in the author list in the article on science. Here is the abstract of the article: An Integrated Logic Circuit Assembled on a Single Carbon Nanotube -- Chen et al. 311 (5768): 1735 -- Science
When talking with some of my foreign friends, I am surprised with their knowledge about China. Sometime I feel ashamed, as a Chinese, of how little I know of my own country. This article, How to make China even richer, gives me a sense of what might be going on in the countryside of my country. Unlike the articles published by Chinese news agencies, which has to obey certain rules in order not to perish, its viewpoint is straightforward: "Let the peasants own their land". It also briefly discussed the pros and cons of its argument.
Pros: "If peasants could mortgage their land (after having the possesion of the land, of course), they could raise money to boost its productivity. Ownership would give them an incentive to do so. And if peasants could sell their land, they could acquire sufficient capital to start life anew in urban areas. This would boost urban consumption and encourage the migration of unproductive rural labour into the cities. For China to sustain its impressive growth rate and reduce inequalities, getting the many tens of millions of underemployed peasants off the land and into wealth-creating jobs is essential. The exodus would help those left behind to expand their land holdings and use them more efficiently."
Cons: "Communist Party ideologues are all too aware that a failure to handle rural issues properly can be destabilising. They worry that allowing peasants to sell their land could restore a rural landowning class, and that peasants would sell up in huge numbers and descend upon ill-prepared cities, throwing up shanty towns and pushing up crime."I am quite interested in how the author describes the history of China at the end of its article; it lets me remind of what I learn in my Chinese history course in middle school.
"The leadership knows that China's history has been one of recurring bloody upheavals by landless peasants; it is caught between wanting to retain control and wanting to avoid another upheaval."
Since the first semester in college, I have been stuck to the belief that the main purpose of college life is to learn knowledge. It seems ironic, however, that I have spent nearly four years seeking knowledge without a clear understanding of what it is. So I wish to find justification of my purpose of college life.
Also, I often perceive in myself a feeling of excitement and satisfaction whenever I open a book on a new subject. And the link, I think, between books and knowledge is direct, so knowledge is what I desire. Understanding of what is knowledge might shed a light on understanding on my desires.
Besides, understanding the nature of knowledge will provide guidance for my future if I pursue a professional career in science, whose sole purpose is knowledge. I can imagine now that at some point of my scientific career, I will inevitably question myself whether I make original contributions to the mansion of knowledge. Making clear the direction I am heading as early as possible is beneficial for me in the voyage of science.
What, after all, is knowledge?
Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing. -- Randy K. Milholland
Denial is the most predictable of all human responses, but rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it. –Matrix Reloaded
What man desires is not knowledge, but certainty- Churchill
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt –Russell
What is worrying is the failure of China to be at peace with its own history, even though it has come a long way to evolving into a great country. What is worrying is its quickness to pay a huge cost (both in denying the entry of an internationally renowned movie, and in denying alternative interpretation/version of Chinese history in a strong armed manner). The emotional baggage is holding back China from truly "growing up". Like a young adult who, despite how rich and successful he is nowadays, shows his anger openly whenever someone mentions or remotely implicates his less glorious history.
What China needs is the capacity to face history as it is. It is natural to have emotional reactions, but China has yet to learn to show its stance in a legitimate and gracious manner.
--From Emily So.
Though I often heard them in TV, newspaper and daily talk, I do not know what they actually mean until I did a little search in answers.com.
GDP: Gross Domestic Product, the total market value of all the goods and services produced within the borders of a nation during a specified period.
GDP = consumption + investment + exports − imports
It is one of the measures of national income and output. It may be used as one indicator of the standard of living in a country, but there may be limitations with this view.
GNP: Gross National Product, the total value of final goods and services produced in a year by a country's nationals (including profits from capital held abroad).
GNP = GDP + income earned by domestic residents through foreign investments - the income earned by foreign investors in the domestic market.
Since World War II, GNP has been generally regarded as the most important indicator of the status of an economy.
It is important to differentiate Gross Domestic Product from Gross National Product (GNP). GDP includes only goods and services produced within the geographic boundaries of the U.S., regardless of the producer's nationality. GNP doesn't include goods and services produced by foreign producers, but does include goods and services produced by U.S. firms operating in foreign countries.
The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's law: (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until, as the saying goes, all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until, - - Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you, and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven -- thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A".
Comment on its scientific argument: He assumes that the hell has a positive heat capacity, which means the hell will gives off heat when its temperature drops. But his premises, that every soul goes to hell and no soul leaves it, let me think of black hole, a celestial body which engulfs everything near it. And black hole has a negative heat capacity, which means it will gives out heat when it temperature increases. Therefore, if his premises are all valid, and given that the hell also has a negative heat capacity like black hole, the hell is endothermic.
Comment on its propriety in Chinese culture as a joke: It will inevitably be considered improper as an answer on a mid-term test in major universities in China. But if we consider the attitude of sex portrayed in the movie, American Pie, it might be proper in US.
Overview
Some of the following information may seem inaccurate or incomplete. Remember, that this profile is a snapshot of your personality at a specific moment. It is not intended as an in-depth analysis of your complete being, but as a tool to aid in self-discovery:
Communication
The following statements offer a look at the natural behavior you bring to an interpersonal relationship.
Improving communication,
Below is a list of communication styles that will mesh well with your own:
Strength
Following are some of the specific strengths and/or personal characteristics that you bring to a relationship. These may form the foundations of many of your friendships and dealings with other people.
Needs
While answering the Relationship Questionnaire you established a pattern of basic, subconscious wants. This section of the report was produced by analyzing those patterns. Our wants change as we mature and obtain our life goals. You may find it valuable to revisit this section periodically to see how your wants have changed. You may want:
I did this personality test in eharmony, an professional online dating service site. I am surprised by my patience to complete such a long questionnaire.
No hurt, no foul.
Red sky at night, sailors' delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.
Beer before liquor, never be sicker; liquor before beer, and clear.
I did a little research on the last saying. It's intersting to see there are so many versions of it.
Beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer, in the clear.
Beer before liquor, get drunk quicker, liquor before beer, shed a tear.
Liquor before beer, in the clear, beer before liquor, even sicker.
Beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer, have no fear.
Beer before Wine, makes you feel fine, Wine before Beer, makes you feel queer.
Here is a tip from Wikihow: how to prevent hangover.
While you shouldn't mix types of alcohol, if you do, always drink the hardest type at the start of the night, and the weakest at the end. Remember this rhyme to help: "Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Liquor before beer, you're in the clear."
FACES is about China-US relations. It is the underlying center topic in all seminars, speeches and talks. And even though I do not fully understand about the details (sometimes a single word) of any topic, I identify one common assumption in all the events. And this finding not only reshapes my view of China-US relations, but also the human relations in general.
Before FACES, I generally agreed with the statement that every nation cares about their own interest. And because of the limited space and resources, all nations are ultimately competitors. But in Trade Session, almost every speaker talks about the interdependence of China and US in economy; in Diplomacy Session, almost every speaker talks about the cooperation between China-US in solving regional and global crises; in Research Session, almost every speaker talks about the collaborations between China-US in scientific researches on space, life science and materials. All of these bring out the final underlying assumption: nations have common interests. The common interests will not become clear if one only see problems from the perspective of one country. But they might become obvious when one view problems in a GLOBAL perspective. 'Global' is not a big hollow word. It means that one nation consumes products and services of other nations; it means that the bankrupt of one nation's economy will affect other nations'; it means that the pollution of one nation will affect other nations as well; it also means that the unrest of one nation will make many nations unsafe. The interdependence among nations calls for the collaboration. Therefore, though they might be ultimately competitors, they will also be collaborators all along the way.
If we also see a person as an entity of interests, it is easy to extend this argument of nations to personal level through an analogy (though might be a false analogy). Nations have interests and common interests; so do individuals. If one only sees things from his own perspective, he tends to compete against every one and easily become narrow-minded. Seeing things from other's perspective and identify the common interests are the equivalent of the GLOBAL view in personal level.
During the FACES Beijing conference this November, Ronnie Chan, a successful business man (in terms of money), gave a speech on "Americanism vs. Chineseness: Differences and Similarities and How They Affect US-China Relations Today". His speech covers a huge range of topics, such as how Chinese and English language affect people's thinking pattern, medicine, and literature. He talks about why an ABC girl fails in business bidding in China because of her aggressiveness and assertiveness, which are very common in people doing business in US. He talks about why the leadership in China is described as "benevolent dictatorship". He also talks about the corruption in China. In a word, in his speech, I was totally astonished at his amount of knowledge and experience.
The confrontation arises when American delegates question about his classification of Japanese people as amoral people in the Q&A section. In his speech, Ronnie Chen classifies Chinese and American as moral people, and Japanese people as amoral. The base for his argument is that the Japanese deny their outrageous crime in World War 2. Chen questions that what you are going to with a person who just killed 40 people yesterday and ask who they are today. At that moment, I liked his statement very much. But I changed my mind abruptly soon when some delegates argue later that every nation did silly things in the past. Chinese and American both did. So why did Chen use a double standards. And I was ashamed that I did not discover this obvious fallacy in Chen's argument.
Though I do not remember clearly how this argument ends, I learn one thing from it. It's hard for me to keep rational when intense emotion is aroused. Under intense emotion, I am more likely to fail to identify what is opinion and what is fact, what are reasonable and what are irrational. Being completely rational is impossible, but identifying beforehand what my "hot spots" in emotion are will make easy coping with situations like that.
Playing ball is just like life. Winning is not everything. When you face the challenge, you need to have the courage to stand up and shout out: It's my turn! I'll play.
"Winning is not everything, it is the only thing!"Green Bay Packer coach Vincent Limbardi.
Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is.
I took the GRE test last Saturday. I feel that I should write something about it, after all, it's an important test and also a tough one.
Here comes the post about the beautiful sentences with GRE words.
“I just look up at the stars and let the vastness of that black and twinkling canopy fill my soul”(Margaret Mason)
“the smug look of a toad breakfasting on fat marsh flies”(William Pearson)
“Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection” (Matthew Arnold). (culture: denote a personal quality resulting from the development of intellect, manners, and aesthetic appreciation. )
“an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who . . . exemplified . . . the most disagreeable traits of his time”(David Cannadine)
“Obedience,/Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,/Makes slaves of men”(Percy Bysshe Shelley)
“Your true lover of literature is never fastidious” (Robert Southey).
“the weapon which most readily conquers reason: terror and violence” (Adolf Hitler).
“Fear is the parent of cruelty” (J.A. Froude)
“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling” (Carl Jung).
“On a summer night . . . a mantle of dust hangs over the gravel roads”(John Dollard)
“He meandered to and fro . . . observing the manners and customs of Hillport society” (Arnold Bennett).
Their infatuation blinded them to the fundamental differences in their points of view.
“The natural bent of my mind was to science”(Thomas Paine)
“Commonly, though not always, we exhort to good actions, we instigate to ill” (Samuel Johnson). (we are exhorted to good actions. Use passive voice?)
“No one could soar into a more intricate labyrinth of refined phraseology” (Anthony Trollope).
“I know and feel what an irksome task the writing of long letters is” (Edmund Burke).
“Russia's final hour, it seemed, approached with inexorable certainty” (W. Bruce Lincoln).
“Most Ivy League freshman classes are chosen from a motley collection of constituencies . . . and a bare majority of entering students can honestly be called scholars”(New York Times)
He stared down at his dinner plate in a morose and unsociable manner.
made a fetish of punctuality
“Every great hostelry flaunted the flag of some foreign potentate” (John Dos Passos)
“Hide me from Day's garish eye”(John Milton)
“Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop/From low-hung branches . . . /Then off at once, as in a wanton freak” (John Keats).
“For nimble thought can jump both sea and land” (Shakespeare).
At the time, I was too obtuse to grasp the true implications of her behavior.
“Over grass bleached colorless by strong outback sun, the herd oozes forward”(Geraldine Brooks)
“opaque, elusive, minimal meanings”(John Simon)
He stared down at his dinner plate in a morose and unsociable manner.
a morass of detail
“That night he dreamed he was traveling in a foreign country, only it seemed to be a medley of all the countries he'd ever been to and even some he hadn't”(Anne Tyler)
“He is pretty well advanced in years, but hale, robust, and florid” (Tobias Smollett)
“There was nothing feverish or hectic about his vigor”(Erik Erikson)
the young Mozart's prodigious talents
“Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood” (George Santayana).
“Every man had his own quirks and twists” (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
“Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward”(Ambrose Bierce)
"Poignant grief cannot endure forever" (W.H. Hudson).
Practice [Example] is better than precept.
“Werner finds himself suddenly in a most awkward predicament” (Thomas Carlyle)
Even a written apology failed to placate the indignant hostess.
ponderous prehistoric beasts
“It would be preposterous to take so grave a step on the advice of an enemy” (J.A. Froude)
the mire of poverty
“The path was altogether indiscernible in the murky darkness which surrounded them” (Sir Walter Scott).
“the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt” (Charles Dickens).
The freighter moored alongside the wharf.
“No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated” (Ellen Glasgow).
