Being CS

Philosophy, Faculty Night and Randomness

Before I start, I wanted to say that Nora got a blog today. I am pretty excited, though she said I should wait some time till I publicize her URL. Stay tuned for updates.
Today was mostly spent in class, at faculty night, and in front of the computer, listening to the Matrix Reloaded soundtrack and Massive Attack.

Massive Attack is such a great band, Dissolved Girl and Tear Drop are great songs. The former interacts very well with my reading of philosophy, especially stuff about Descarte, the nature of Perception and insights into the Philosophy of the Matrix. I find this to be a fascinating topic, though I have to agree with Kant, that even if the world we experience is not real, it does not make any difference to how we lead our lives. And just to avoid confusion - I do not actually believe in such a proposition, but it is a great thought experiment to question assumptions.
Questioning of beliefs is fascinating, and something that I used to do a lot in high school, due to the harsh discussions in class, where everyone attacked other people's viewpoints. Although I am not really questioning my beliefs, I am currently reading quite a lot of philosophy, and like it a lot. The most wonderful thing about my life, is that there is something that is in some special way constant and that I believe in: love, love towards my love. To finish my discussion of topics relating to the Matrix, I just want to add, that this is one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie so much: Neo's choice of directed love for a person, rather than that of all of humanity, where love of humanity represents itself in this single intense feeling towards one person.

Faculty night with Professor McCarthy was very interesting. It was quite superficial, because many of the things we talked about, I had already know from class, but it was still a good opportunity to get to know Professor MccCarthy better. He has for some time been one of my CS idols, and taking a class from him was a very interesting experience. He believes that large advances in AI can only be made by the younger generation, my generation, because his has tried for a long time without much success. This made me feel like he was asking us to step into the shoes of the older giants of CS and accomplish something great. The future is bound to be interesting.