Lemonworld

teachers leaving baulko. so strange thinking about that. people who have taught there longer than i have been alive. i always had a lot of respect for our teachers. because it's a really intense job, and they do it so well. so much preparation. so much organisation. teachers have to wait for students who don't do things on time. but has there ever been a case of students waiting for teachers? yes, but that happens when the teacher is doing more than they have to, because they want the students to succeed.

they work hard, for the students. it's such a similar thing to what i was talking about last time.


I think I would love it. Our Comp1917 tutor is 3rd year, I think. Or maybe 4th year, I don't know. But I want to do the same thing, because that would be cool.


A couple of my brother's friends came along a day ago to help him build a supercomputer, so he can mine bitcoins with it. The concept of bitcoins is hard to understand or explain, but this is a fairly good explanation of it, and wikipedia also helps. It's essentially a completely digital currency not affiliated with any country generated through computer power, and this digital currency does have a market, maybe not completely for good reasons. It's money I guess

Anyway, they did computing as well, and some of the advice they gave me was that at the start of second year you have to apply for internships. "no one told us this when we did it". Isn't it nice when people brave the path before you, so you have an easier time.

Apparently the assignments were pretty tough for them. And I can't remember who but some older student, some weeks ago, said to prepare to stay up late for a lot of nights, trying to get code to work.

I don't find learning and applying difficult, and I feel good about that, because maybe this is something that I can actually do. And when I can't, Davy and Leo can do it. I think the stuff is easier for me, because when they see the activity they would think "i can just solve it with this OH WAIT im not allowed to because we haven't learned that in class yet, sigh, why do i have to do this the long and inefficient way this is stupid i'm not doing it". And I just think, oh, the only way I know how to do that is by doing this, that thing that we learned.

So stuff about overfishing by china, rhinos being killed, other species becoming extinct, ecosystems imbalanced, and other stuff that I could go look for and list but I won't. The thing about these is, they aren't new problems. They are old problems.

All of these problems, and they have actually no real solution.

The solution is complex.

When we solve problems, it's a cause and effect thing. We go backwards and look at the cause.
Why?

People need to do something to live. And I can understand that. You could either be unemployed and doomed, or do something that might have consequences later, but not for you, and not be unemployed or doomed.

Humanity isn't some hivemind, and maybe that's a good thing, but it also means there is no sacrifice for the greater good. And there is no adaptation to threats to avoid them, there is only adaptation after the damage is done.

You would choose to support yourself at the cost of others, or the world, because that is best for you, and you since you don't come back after you die, there is actually no reason you would sacrifice yourself.


So... the complex part. How do you fix this?

Ultimately, as a race, we want to stop over-extracting resources. But individuals and individual groups will over-extract resources because they value their own survival over the long term health of the world.

Somehow, you need to make it so people never get into that situation in the first place.

Reallocate resources more effectively, utilise resources more efficiently in production, reduce luxury and minimise waste. If you do things right, you don't need those extra resources. You can produce enough with what you have, or less.

Maybe if you do that, there will be enough for everyone, so they won't need to extract resources for their income.
//I feel like there are all of these better words that I can't think of right now, but oh well

But still, even if there is enough for everyone, it doesn't spread around to everyone. On one side of the world, people are trying to lose weight. On the other side,

So if this was set in a primary school classroom, maybe those who had packed (for them) more lunch than they needed, they would pass it over to those who forgot theirs. And the problem seems solved.
And it is.

But that doesn't mean school children are better problem solvers than those with the power now. You can solve problems of a classroom size easily, but when you scale it up to the entire world, it's not so easy.

Essentially, the classroom now has multiple 10m wide bodies of water cutting it into portions, you aren't allowed to throw food in the class, and there are actually 3000 students in the classroom who don't know each other, lunch doesn't expire and can be eaten tomorrow or next year, eveyone speaks a different language, and perhaps worst of all, boys and girls alternate in their seating positions.

It's just how the current system works. When you have more income, you buy everything you need. And then you start buying extra things, which you really don't. And if you run out of extra things, you keep your money in the bank so you can make more money for yourself or loved ones later.

But since you take more than normal, some one else misses out, and they don't get to buy what they need.

And if you tried to make things communist, no one would do the hard jobs because they don't have any incentive to do it.

It's based on "self-interest".

I think I said somewhere before about how people save for a rainy day. But if everyone collectively as a whole only bought what they needed + a bit of luxury, and gave away the rest to those that needed it, even if someone who donated all of their savings has a rainy day, it doesn't matter because someone else has an umbrella for them. 

If somehow, you could find a system based on positive human values and morals, and revolutionalise the world, that would be amazing.
Until it stopped working, because assuming that everyone does the right thing and will be "good" doesn't work.

I think there was one more little thing I wanted to say about this, but it's forgotten.

So anyway, what we do right now is spend $X to put protective measures to stop people that kill rhinos. But the people killing rhinos are killing rhinos for the money.
What if we gave that $X to the people killing rhinos, so they wouldn't kill rhinos, and go do something else? Whatever else they do, it's going to be money better spent than protecting rhinos, since they wouldn't need protection anymore.

Well, I guess someone else would go and kill rhinos then. Oh well.

And also, maybe they're killing rhinos because they're rebels and want to fund a war or something like that, and we don't want any of that. I don't know what's going on there.

I guess this leads to another problem that you also have to solve.


And another thing would to downscale the human population, which, if humanity was a hivemind, might just work. But of course no, that's silly.


I sit here and think about these things (feels like a latin sentence, sedeo et res cogito ... wait ... is res meant to be ablative? accusative, because of verb?),

I sit here and think "well, I can't change the world", unless I try and find as many people who think the same, and dedicate my life to trying to make the rest of the world panic.
It's almost impossible to shift the world to some new economic or value system, you need something huge to make it happen.

And then I think, or maybe I can just live my first world life, comfortable, just like everyone else, except maybe a little more grateful for what I am born with.

I was never one to take the hard path.

I had a proper breakfast today. Traditionally I only eat a little bit and hold out until lunch. I still eat breakfast, don't worry, but not much. I'm not sure. I think overall I have a normal appetite/hunger counter, but maybe I just don't get around to eating enough.


The 'r' button on my keyboard is also becoming suboptimal in its functionality, and I hate it! Far out! It's so annoying!! My v key also does that sometimes, as well. I frequently have to go back and correct errors made because of the keyboard, not my typing. Like I had to correct "have" and keyboard" just then. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...






It's thursday and I haven't slept before 3am all week. I don't know. On wednesday I usually catch the 10:40 express train, today I caught the 11:18 slow train (barely making it because I was posting a help-comment for computing, had to go to west ryde instead of eastwood just so I could get those extra 3 minutes to make the train)

and that got to central at like, after 11:50 and I wasn't really late for anything important in my lecture when I got to uni.

Maybe I should start catching later trains, but the only problem with that is if I miss the later trains.

The problem with staying up to 3:30 is that you get hungry and you don't know if you should eat or not.



Writing this, and writing on my openlearning blog, I write too much. So much time. Our next computing project is making an AI to play Knowledge Island. It's like settlers of catan. except uni themed, and funny.

http://i.imgur.com/s7gVrl6.png

Funnier still when it just happens to coincide with uni funding cuts.


When I look at my own blog layout I always feel like the text section is too wide.

Like, the top is what mine looks like. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the bottom one looks way better. Also means there will be much scrolling for my posts.

I don't know.


"I set a fire just to see what it burns"
I hear this and I think, hm, that's a nice line.
I like it when there are nice lines, they're like miniature poems.