Phantomaths Weekly Challenge #4

Phantomaths Weekly Challenge #3

Phantomaths Weekly Challenge #2

Phantomaths Weekly Challenge #1

Solution:

Being sad in a French Way

Recently I have came across an absolutely great essay by my sister. It is about the motive of French language used in a novel 'Bright lights, big city' and it really captures the nature of the book and ideas behind it.

The author uses French words just for the sake of spicing up the text, due to lack of interest in the English language. Many people claim that that is the reason why Jay McInerney uses these words. My belief is that the words or sentences having something to do with France isn’t there to grab reader’s attention, but rather to point the readers into the right direction of the of the plot and update them with main character’s physical well-being.

The first time the author pointed out France and its national language was on page 2, when you were in a bar with a girl. On “I do not speak English” you immediately asked: “Français?” This being the first language you thought of shows that you has some kind of a personal relationship with this European country. A few lines after that, the author uses a French phrase: “vis-à-vis”, which means “face to face”. That is a key sentence, because it shows, that you even thinks in a different language occasionally, even though you does “not speak French” (p. 10). This first association with France was right before you stated that “You hate Tad Allagash” (p. 2). You obviously feels lonely, due to the fact that Tad left him, that just made him use French words.

You has been given a French piece by Clara. This article made you almost “hang yourself” (p. 8). This paragraph not only speaks about France and the article, you is about to write about it, but it also includes a French sentence: “je ne comprends pas” (p. 8), which means “I do not understand it”. As stated before, you does not speak French, even though he has “the claim of fluency in French on your resume” (p. 8).

Page 21 shows us your clear disappointment, when you find out, that the girl, Elaine, that you have been trying to get together with the whole night, is actually a homosexual a you find “Elaine and Theresa engaged in an unnatural act” (p. 21).  “Bon appetite” (p. 21) is your answer to seeing this, which once again proves that whenever you find out something rather unpleasant or you feel casted down, you find a way to cope with it through French words.

Chapter five begins with you meeting Amanda. The author describes how you have felt about her from the beginning, obviously these are unpleasant memories for you. “LES JEUX SONT FAITS„ (p. 27) is the name of this chapter, which distinctly indicates what the atmosphere of this chapter will be. Not only does the chapter start with the meeting of you and Amanda, but it continues to show us the end of their relationship as well. „I’m staying“ (p. 30) is Amanda’s way of telling you that they may never meet again. After calling her several times, you has only been given „Au contraire, Pierre“ (p. 30) as an aswer, that followed her „ripping the last strained tissues that held your heart intact“ (p. 30).

On the contrary, when you finally meats Vicky, he becomes nearly a freshly new person. He forgets about most of his problems, doesn’t have the need to take cocaine and basically feels fortunate again. Page 38 shows us the longest French sentence ever used in this book. “Style-joie de vivre, je ne sais quoi, savoir-faire, sprezzatura” (p. 38). My translator did detect these words as being French, but did not submit any meaning. The only possible way of interpreting this French input is that you has been shocked with pleasure of how perfect Vicky actually is. All he imagined was nothing like she was. You uses French phrases in any kind of emotional shift – not only in being sorrowful, but also in being cheerful.

Julia Cerna, 31.3.2015

A Small Measure of Peace

A small measure of peace. This is the way. Each of us is constantly looking for this. Trying to find a path to the small measure of peace of our lives. And while listening to the Hans Zimmer’s composition A small measure of peace, I think I do understand this phrase. What does it really mean. A small measure of peace. A moment in life when everything stops, nothing else matters, being united with the past, present and future, looking at your life from outside, not really thinking about it, but feeling that "yes, I have found my small measure of peace". Not everybody finds it. Majority of people don’t. But it exists.

And it’s not something one can aim for, but something one can achieve. Find itself standing in.

"And so the days of the Samurai had ended. Nations, like men, it is sometimes said, have their own destiny. As for the American Captain, no one knows what became of him. Some say that he died of his wounds. Others, that he returned to his own country. But I like to think he may have at last found some small measure of peace, that we all seek, and few of us ever find." -The Last Samurai

Lukas Cerny, 20.3.2015

Porno - tvrdá droga dnešní společnosti

O pornu se moc nemluví. Jakoby to bylo sprosté slovo. Něco zakázaného, čeho se naše konverzace nemůžou dotknout. Přitom to je tak důležité téma, které ovlivňuje svět a životy miliony jedinců. Každý kluk i holka se někdy koukli na porno. Proč ne. Je to vzrušující. Vždyť to má být vzrušující. Ale bohužel porno nese sebou i několik problémů. Samozřejmě, i já jsem se nespočetněkrát kouknul na porno, ale možná právě proto bych vám chtěl říct, co si teď o pornu myslím.

Je to jedna z nejtvrdších drog. Kluci i holky, už v mladém věku, se začnou dívat na porno. Proč by ne. Je to jejich jediná sexuální stimulace, ještě před tím než začnou chodit s holkami (budu mluvit z pohledu kluka, protože to je mi trošku bližší). Jenže po chvíli pravidelného koukání na porno jejich sexuální představy začnou být zahlceny těmi nejhoršími sexuálními praktiky. Chlap, který vždy je silnější než žena a ukazuje svou dominanci při sexu. Porno je tak nepřirozené, přesto se to vštěpí do mozků většině lidí a začne to být pro ně normální. A nejen normální, ale slabé a mírné. Lidský mozek si zvykne na danou dávku sexuální stimulace a vyžaduje silnější a tvrdší porno s funkcí silnější sexuální stimulace. Nejenže je těžké se už odpoutat od koukání na porno, ale zároveň mozek vyžaduje ještě silnější. A pro kluka, v jehož fantazii by žádné masochistické, či jiné nepřirozené sexuální praktiky nemohli být nikdy vůbec zrozeny, se stanou tyto představy normální. A nemůže se jich zbavit.

A mnozí to ani nepovažují za problém, natož, aby si to veřejně přiznali. Proč by to byl problém? Vždyť to je jenom porno. Tak ať si zkusí se na to po co nejdelší dobu nedívat. A ještě smutnější je fakt, že to je další síla, udržující chlapce doma, místo toho, aby šel za holkami. S holkou si může facebookovat a při tom mám dostačující sexuální stimulaci porna. Vše je v pořádku. Před sto lety Facebook ani porno nebyly. Oboje dvoje jsou smutné výmysly dnešní doby.

Nechci znít jako někdo, kdo by kohokoliv odsuzoval a povyšoval se nad lidmi, co se koukají na porno. Jen chci předat můj názor, se kterým v hloubi duši mnozí souhlasí, jen si to možná nechtějí přiznat (podle mého názoru). A chci se dotknout tématu, které je pro mnohé tak důležité, ale přesto se ho naše konverzace nikdy nedotknou.

„About 64-68% of young adult men and about 18% of women use porn at least once every week.“ - http://www.covenanteyes.com/2013/02/19/pornography-statistics/

Lukas Cerny, 21. 2. 2015

The Essence of Human Mind

How does brain compute 1 + 1? How does brain store this information and adds another 1 to the result to produce 3. This is what I wonder. Computers mechanically save and calculate operations through electrical current, transistors and capacitors. But brain? I have no knowledge in biology so I cannot tell, but figuring out this basic question could be the answer to artificial intelligence and intelligent machines.

Where does free will come from? How come I can decide to lift my right hand or to write '%' out of nowhere. Did the sum of the overall brain activity tell me to do this, or is the something that creates actions out of nowhere? Sum of overall brain activity has to be predetermined from the sum of brain activity nanosecond before. Therefore that would mean that we do not have free will. But if we do have this 'ability', where does it come from?

Computers do not have this ability of free decision. But can they have it? As previously said, I do not have much knowledge, but something tells me that computer program cannot be programmed to 'think' by itself. Of course the word 'think' is vague, as the great paper 'Imitation game' of Alan Turing shows - terms think, intelligent, machine have to be precisely defined. I do not think that creativity and human like intelligence can be created from silicon chips. The same way chess game of computer against human cannot be won only by brute force of computation thousands of possible steps. There has to be some element of intelligence both in the software and the hardware.

If we look at the power of brain it is many times less than the electrical power of a computer. There is some element that makes the structure of brain intelligent itself. If the intelligent roots and bases of any program or machine are found/created then the result can behave intelligently itself.

If a program is dully programmed then it will behave dully, but when intelligence is created in its structure it will behave intelligently. Question is if it is the same case with hardware. Can we somehow structure hardware so it behaves intelligently? Of course I am here talking contradictory, because software in the end is hardware. Maybe I am talking about the debacle between GOFAI and other approaches to AI.

But I think this is maybe obvious, but to me it is a great reveal I found out - structure itself has to be intelligent in order to produce an intelligent behavior.

But where does intelligence come from indeed? In a great book of Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas R. Hofstadter nicely describes intelligence as the ability to recognize patterns. Of course he goes deeper than that. But I do think that this is the case.

Another question could be what is consciousness? How to know a person is conscious?

Lukas Cerny, 13. 2. 2015

Life is a mathematical equation

Last week my friend, Jakub, told me, while talking about unsolved mathematical problems, that life is like a mathematical equation. I fell in love with this phrase and I have been thinking about it from that point on. We were talking about the Millennium prize Mathematical problems - I think around 10 unsolved mathematical problems, for whose solution a million dollars prize is waiting. One of these problem, The Poincaré conjecture, was solved by Grigori Perelman, but he declined the prize. He said he didn't deserve it more than other mathematicians who contributed to solving this problem. And that is when Jakub said that Grigori solved his life like a mathematical equation. He argued that  Grigori doesn't need much in his life. That he is glad to do mathematics and doesn't need million dollars to be disrupting the life he has. I was fascinated by this. It sounds so calm, peaceful and brave to decline million dollars.

There are complicated mathematical problems as well as there are easy ones. But there are solution to all of them (ignoring Godel's Incompleteness theorem :)). The same is with our lives. There is solution, sometimes simple, sometimes difficult to find, to happiness in our lives. People tend to always want more and more. But once the solution is found, there is no need for something else. Once it is proved to be correct nothing else is needed.

If I would show a mathematical equation to a kid, it wouldn't have a meaning for him. Mathematical equations indeed are some symbols put together. People have to understand what each symbol means in order to understand what does the equation tell us. But there is a meaning under each theorem. We can find that meaning. Some equations do not tell us a lot, some do. But all of them do not have a meaning and price unless we understand them. It is the same with life.

What is the point of life, when we do not understand its meaning? Then all what we perceive around is, are some random symbols that we do not understand. But if we look deep enough, try to see connections, we discover the meaning. And from that point on we do not have to solve it any other way. We have found, proved, understood its meaning and there is no point in looking for something different, some different way, leading to the same goal. 

And there is always a solution. No matter how far away from solution we are, we will always be able to find it. Take few steps back, look at the equation from different angle. And eventually after a good idea, a new idea, the solution will be as obvious as it can be - standing there in front of us, being there the whole time we were looking for it. All the time. 

"Life is like a mathematical equation. There is always a solution to it, being there all the time, waiting for us to discover it." 

Lukas Cerny
17.1.2015

The Question ‘Why?’

Take any statement you want. As simple as "My name is Lukas." If we keep asking question ‘Why?’ and try to answer them, we will always get stuck at one point. And this point is similar for all the statements. I want to conclude and philosophically debate on three things I observed.

I am sitting in my balcony, drinking a cold beer and fresh wind is blowing into my face.

Why?

Germany had lost the WWII.

Why?

Firstly, I want to look at actions that happen in time; that create the history and the present. Of course there is a reason for me sitting here in the balcony or for Germany loosing the WWII. But there is not just one reason. Certainly, I am not sitting here at this certain moment just because I wanted enjoy my beer. The whole actions in my last hour led to this point where I decided to sit here. I could have watched a film or anything else… but I didn’t. And in fact it is not the last hour that led to the point of me sitting here – it is the whole history of time.

Germany lost the WWII because of all the actions of all the matter before the War. If these things would not have happen then maybe there would not be WWII at all – but we cannot thing like this, it is too vague and without proof. What we can say is that the history of matter, all the actions of molecules led to the point where Germany had lost the war. I don’t know what would have happened if a one man in Africa would waken up one day in 1929 an hour later, because it did not happen. All those speculative questions “What if?” do not make sense. Importantly, there is only one time line, one present, which is the result of all the history before us.

All the actions now are somehow united. There is reason for all of them. But the reason is not the everyday sense “reason” we would think of – like me having a cold beer because I was in the mood for it. But the reason as the system of all the molecules, atom, particles in the world resulting only one scenario that can happen.

Imagine there are two atoms. If we know their velocity vector, masses and all other physical attributes, can be surely say what will happen with them? I think we can (although I am not a physics expert and quantum theory would surely disapprove this) – but I am thinking of this the way as if we were the nature. Then we would know everything about them (because we as nature actually make them behave in a certain way) and we could say what will happen. Now expand this experiment that there are more atoms. A complete universe. Even then we can say: if we know everything about these atoms, we can deterministically say what will happen next. Therefore the future is predetermined. It is already predetermined from the past.

So all actions are predetermined and are united. They depend only upon one point. The point of creation. The inception. From that point on the future only expanded through the laws of nature, with which this world is created.

And this is the same point to which all the question ‘Why?’ are moving towards. The reason for anything is united with reason for all the matter in universe. Molecule next to me had reason to move this certain way partially because of different molecule moving in China, and the system of these molecules – the present moved this way because of the history, the past, which resulted these two molecules moving these two particular way. And by history I mean the point of creation. Everything is united from that point on and the point of creation is the only reason for everything, now, in the past and in the future. It is the answer to all of the ‘Why?’ questions.

This is what I call ‘God’. It is the reason for the world, nature and matter being the way they are. It is the begging, therefore the present and the future. It is the reason and explanation for everything there is and possibly can be. I think humans are not capable of understanding this. The ultimate reason, I think, is something that cannot be explained but still has a reason and explanation. Not understandable for us.

But what if there was no point of creation? How do I know the universe has finite history? Our mind is not capable of imagining something infinite. We cannot imagine the space being infinite, the time being infinite, we want to believe there are some boundaries.

As always, I got pretty far from the point I firstly intended to analyze. I finished my beer and I am heading towards sleep. Why won’t I finish the article and write all the things I wanted to write about? All the past actions of any matter and the natural system led to this point of me stopping right here.

Lukas Cerny, 25. 12. 2014

A World in a World

I am sitting in McDonald's and looking at people around me. I wonder, what are they thinking about? They are eating their Big Macs, listening to music, working. All of us think, or have the feeling, that this is the center of the world now. I am the most important thing. And yes it is true. And logical. Why would I, finishing my French Fries, we worrying about a Japanese person finishing his McChicken in McDonald's in Tokyo? I am right here, in Prague. This is what I am. Only few of other seven billion people matter to me.

I have a smile on my face. Not just because I finished McDonald's French fries, which I think are the best out of all fast foods, but because I realize how small my life is. What is a center of the world for me, one small table out of twenty in McDonald's, is not even a sand in the whole city. I try to zoom out and try to imagine what would Prague look like from the sky. I definitely could not find this specific McDonald's. I am nothing in my city. Just one little creature. I am nothing in the world. Just one little creature.

What are we in the universe? Absolutely nothing. What we think is the center any action, our problems that we deal every day with, are absolutely meaningless in the eyes of the whole universe. There are thousands and thousands of galaxies. One bigger than the other one, one smaller than the other one. Everything is so relative, when we think of things in different way. Everything so big is so small. Everything so small is so big.

Different planets are attracted to each other with the Newton's Universal Gravitational Law. Of course this equation does not explain what gravitation is, it only describes it. Describes what is observable.

This mind path took me to completely different topic, and I will come back to Newton. But I wonder, can we explain things? Can we have one hundred precent reason for something happening? I don't think so. Why do the lightbulbs shine? Of course physicist would say that because of current passing through it, creating sufficient resistance that transmits energy into heat and light. But why does it do this? Why does the world function the way it does? Why is there any world? Any matter? In any question we could keep on asking why, why, why and we would ultimately come to the conclusion that nothing is certain. Of course this comes to the question, can science reason everything? As recall somebody telling me - only atheists believe it can.

Now back to Newton. Newton described the effect of the gravitational field by the Gravitational Law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation 

Now let's look at the electric force between two charges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law

This got me thinking. These two equation look almost identical. They are identical, with the only difference in substituting mass for charge and different constants. Equation for potential, potential energy, field strength are identical as well. 

I concluded two things from these amazing facts (I am taking IB Physics HL so I do not have the ability to go into too much depth in physics knowledge).

First, physics is absolutely beautiful. The world we are living in is somehow interconnected. There are some basic principles that function and that apply to big objects as well as small objects (of course I am not talking about Relativity or Quantum Mechanics). But it truly is somehow interconnected. Did somebody create this? Is there a Divine power, the Creator, that created this? Who created this? Is this just a coincidence? There are million questions striking me.

I little kid next to me is enjoying her ice-cream and explaining her mom why she got a bad grade.

Secondly, aren't atoms another worlds? If big objects such as planets, galaxies, indeed any matter at all is driven by the force that has the same properties as electric force between charges in little atoms, couldn't it be that there are worlds in worlds? That where we are living now, our space, is only an atom? Our space is only an atom in other world, which is again an atom in other world? Why not? Give me a proof that it is not this way?

Maybe one Big Mac has intoxicated me so much that my philosophical essay got too much away from where I started. But anyway.  Where I am sitting here right now, this McDonald is an atom in the universe. Even though it is center of the world for me, in our galaxy it is a piece of sand, an atom. Why couldn't the same way apply for an atom. Maybe atoms have do have a center of importance in them, but they are atoms in our world where they are not important at all, exactly the same way I, sitting in McDonalds, am not important for somebody right next door, or on the other side of the world. 

Lukas Cerny, 10.12.2014

Fight for Our Dreams

There is no point in being realistic. There is no point in thinking realistically. Dreams and visions are things that nobody can take away from us. We are confronted with reality every day. Bad grades, waking up at 6:45, studying, working. Why do we care to do this? It is because we have a dream and the opportunity to realize it. Nobody can achieve something they want unless they work hard for it. We have the vision that one day “we will not be living in the world that was given to us, but we will live in the world that we dream of.” And these dreams define us. We spend ten hours a day at school because of this motivation. We work hard. Maybe it will be worth it, maybe it won’t. Maybe we are just completely wasting our time. But the vision is the only thing that we have in our hands right now. It is the only thing we are fighting for. So, once again, answer the question, what is the point of thinking realistically?

Lukas Cerny 3.12.2014