Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Three End Of Summer Thoughts

1) As of today there are 800k+ articles currently tagged as "interesting" on del.icio.us, making it one of the site's most popular tags. But of course any link you go through the trouble of tagging you must have found interesting! The only way I can imagine this making sense is if people are using the word "interesting" to distance themselves from the conclusions of the article while admitting that some of the ideas are worth further contemplation. But that is unlikely to be the case for 800k articles, so what gives? (This annoys me more than it probably should.)

2) A co-worker brings in cupcakes early in the morning to share with everyone. I want to wait to have one so I can reward myself for working hard that day. But I'm worried that if I do so there will be none left. Gratification delay and the commons: antagonistic.

3) One question you may need to ask to determine whether you might be living in a simulation: given the ability, would you simulate your own life? Granted, this is frightfully solipsistic, but if I had such a power, I myself can definitely imagine simulating my own life again, tweaking various parameters to test the consequences. But how should I change my behavior based on the non-zero probability that I am living in my own simulation?!