Infinity

Recently I've been so critical, impatient and uncaring, apathetic towards people who have made my existence bearable or comfortable, one or both of them I don't know, knowingly or not,\ in some cases unconditionally. Maybe it's not even recently, maybe it's always been like this, I also don't know. I owe apologies. Sorry everyone, I fucked up. That feels like what is appropriate to say, but I don't think it's appropriate or right. Sorry everyone, I'm just .. bad.

I took my jacket off a minute ago because it was too hot; now it's too cold again. The weather is so random in Australia, I don't know if it's always been like this, but I guess I've learned to expect it. I don't really make a fuss of it because what is rain during my exam and water in my shoes compared to cyclones that take and kill?

I remember what you used to be like. Many things are still the same. Yet some things are completely different. This is only natural, of course. It would be strange to the extent of abnormality if everything was the same, but I still wonder what causes change, is this just the process of growing up?

A while ago I said that I would probably have a mid-life crisis which was a strange thing to say and typing it feels stupid. I often think of explanations as to why I feel a certain way, and often these explanations are negative and make me feel worse. I know it will happen, but I do it anyway as if it gives me some kind of twisted satisfaction. Recently, actually not even recently, an explanation is that I'm just intrinsically sad. Space is vast, mostly empty and cold. Sometimes I wonder, is this normal? everyone gets this, right? The answer is I don't know, and the answer also might be it's normal for me. So maybe that's it. No matter how happy I am or whatever I have, part of me will find anything it can to present to the whole as a reason to be sad. This is all in maybe land.

The day after this one, I have my discrete mathematics test. I don't think I will be able to get everything. In every paper there's always something that I don't get, and I can just look at the solutions to try and understand, but this year's random-questions-that-I-won't-get are going to be different. So I guess I won't be able to get everything. But I'll try my best and do good enough.

After that is the holidays that I haven't really been looking forward to. I haven't really been looking forward to them.

I remember I used to love school holidays. Like, really love. They better than or equal to heaven because I would be able to play games all day, and that might sound silly but you can't even imagine how much I enjoyed that. If you tried to graph the utility and compare it, you wouldn't be able to. Then I stopped looking forward to school holidays.

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The other day, probably before I wrote the above stuff, a few things lead me to try and list as many major failings of society/economy/our-world-in-general as possible. So I just started listing things in my head, and there were a lot of things.

Sometimes I care about these things. And sometimes, no matter how horrible, horrible these things might be, I don't. that's horrible I might think, while feeling completely indifferent.

Maybe because the suffering of these people does not affect my life in any way. Or because there's no way I can actually make any difference at all without giving up part or all of my life.

Some time ago some guy wrote about about using technology less, not reading or watching the news, interacting more with the people around him, and things like that. Living in his own world. And once he got used to it he was happier and healthier and things like that.

I thought it made sense. In some ways it's like blissful ignorance, but then you're ignorant of things that don't actually affect you anyway so is it really ignorance at all?

I thought it could be like our planet practically ignoring everything beyond our atmosphere, ignoring the possibly-a-fact that earth compared to the universe is nothing, like an atom in a planet. I don't really care about what's going on in space because it's not going to have any visible impact on my life.

If you could give $10 to considerably help someone who desperately needed it, say the $10 gives you 10 utility but it gives them 500 utility, would you do that? I think I would.
If there was an infinite amount of these people, and you had perfect information and no barriers to entry, how many of these people would you help?

Well... I don't know. I could help these people but I really wanted to buy a car. I could help these people but I really wanted to go skiing this year. I could help these people but I really wanted to buy a new phone. I could help this person but that means I have to go without chocolate.

This chocolate is nothing to me compared to what the money could be to this person, but am I willing to give up all of these things? At what point do you stop? When you cut out every single luxury? or maybe forget all of these things because it's not your problem.


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/21/my-experience-as-a-nurse-on-christmas-island-changed-the-core-of-my-being
I read this and thought

i would rather have 10 guilty people go free than to have 1 innocent person convicted. i feel the same way towards asylum seekers except in this case the guilty are only guilty of wanting a better life, and an innocent conviction could mean death 

And as I was thinking that, I started to wonder whether it really was worth it to let 10 guilty people go free, because then they would go and be evil right? I started to wonder that because at first I wrote that I would rather 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent convicted. But that seemed too extreme so I wrote 10 instead. But it's the same idea, right?

Kind of...

I mean, would I rather 7 billion guilty go free than to convict 1 innocent? Maybe that one person is an acceptable price to pay. I would tell that one guy, listen, I'm really sorry, but this is just how it is, your sacrifice serves justice to 7billion other people I hope you understand. 

So... by the intermediate value theorem I have to wonder, at what point do you stop? At what number do you say, okay you know what, letting this many guilty people go free is just not worth one person's time?

I don't know this one, either.

There plenty of arguments about these things, and ultimately they're all pointless because you would never have a system so bad that it would let 7 billion go free so you have innocent until proven guilty.


There is a baby cockroach in my room who really sucks at not being upside down so it's spending most of it's time imitating a turtle.

Even though these insects are upside down desperately trying to get back on their feet more often than turtles, we still associate this behaviour with turtles instead.

I haven't got the heart to kill it, or help it, or do anything to it. I haven't got the heart to argue or sometimes even disagree with people who might take offense to it. I haven't got the heart to leave my comfort zone to do or even try to improve myself. I haven't got the heart to do anything, and my life is going to be dictated by the wishes of other people.


I finished my exams a few days ago. They were ok.


This year was good. I liked it.

But this year is pretty much over. I hope I like next year, too.


One of my family's friend's friend works at subway at wynyard so a while ago my mum suggested I could work there and I thought yeah maybe I'll think about it it seems a bit far though, and then I didn't really think about it, and then yesterday night my mum said I could go today (if we pretend today is still saturday but it's 3:20am and I have to wake up before 10 to play computer games) at 12pm for training. I told her I wish there was a little more time to think about it, but that couldn't be helped.

I went anyway. Usually with randomly going to things like this, I get paranoid that maybe I got something wrong and there's nothing there. Like, maybe I will get the time wrong, or go to the wrong place, or the whole thing is just my imagination, I'm stupid and it doesn't exist. So I always double, triple, quadruple-and-beyond check all of the details. It's irrational so I tell myself a lot "don't worry about it, you're just irrational".
When listening to music I get paranoid that sound is leaking through my earphones. I remember this happening the first few times I did it, and then after a while I stopped being paranoid about it, and for some reason it came back again.

Usually I get paranoid, but for some reason I didn't this time. I went to the right place, and the people were really nice to me even though I'm really slow and bad at everything and useless. They were really nice and I appreciated it.


I've been told that I speak too quietly a lot over my life, and it's true.