The Krishna Transform

Once again my brother and I are enrolled in the Apple iPhone developer program. Perhaps this year we will actually make an application haha.

I still really want to make a music based game. I also know actual musicians so I feel I should make use of that. The biggest problem of course if figuring out an interesting concept for a game. I am a big fan of Elite Beat Agents but I don’t want to just copy an already existing idea.

I think developers can access the iPhone/iTouch music library now so I should take advantage of that. I am a big fan of 8-bit music so perhaps something involving that. The site 8 bit collective has a great selection of homemade 8bit music. Still not sure what I can do with all this though… I should probably learn Objective-C first.

Nelson loaded up the Toronto Star on my computer to show me the weather and I noticed this on the side.

The box says “Don’t Miss”, and following that three of seven articles involve death, and a fourth one involves someone getting really hurt. Now the choice of using “Don’t Miss” I find somewhat strange. The death and injuries of random people aren’t important unless you happen to know the individuals involved. When I think of articles I shouldn’t be missing I think of articles pertaining to stuff the government is doing, something happy, or something that could disrupt my day to day life. Someone dying is a sad thing but I feel by creating a whole article about it and putting it in my face as something I really should read is wrong.

I should probably read over these posts but it is late. If things are incoherent it is probably because I read too much into something that is nothing.

I saw Inception today with Amy and Ian. The movie was quite good. Christopher Nolan is a genius. I feel I should check out some of his other movies.

I am still watching Full House and it is slowly getting better.

It is 4:45 so I am going to make this post very point form-y. I am doing my essay on the immorality of torture.

Torture is bad.
People defend torture by considering the ticking time bomb scenario.

Ticking time bomb scenario (TTBS) says Mr. X has planted a bomb somewhere in the city. You have caught Mr. X. You have tried to get him to tell you where the bomb is. He won’t tell you where the bomb is. Are you morally obligated (or allowed) to torture him?

Suppose it is morally permissible to torture him. Then we can consider two cases. One where he is tortured in a public setting, meaning the public is aware he is being tortured and why. Or two, he is being tortured under the radar so no one knows he is being tortured.

In case one we will have to create some legal framework to define who can be tortured. Dershowitz considers the idea of forcing people to acquire warrants from judges before torturing people. This is flawed because judges can be appointed, so you can simply appoint a judge who will always agree to torture. Any legal framework has the potential to be flawed and corrupted. Having this legal framework gives the state the power to revoke any individuals universal human rights (article 5). This is a lot of power to give to the state. Also need to define a set of torture practices

In case two we have no idea who is being tortured so it is unclear whether or not they are actually guilty of anything. If they are being tortured under the radar it is impossible to know what sort of torture practices they are employing. No one can be held accountable. If people tortured under the radar then technically they will be taken without warning and tortured.

Both cases seem to have flaws. Another flaw lies in the idea of the TTBS. TTBS requires the law enforcement to have a lot of information about the perpetrators. Namely they need to know who is causing the attack and enough intel to be able to kidnap a particular member. The odds of this happening are low. A more practical situation would be the police have caught a man who MAY know something about the bomb. Do we torture him?

If we say yes then technically we are torturing an innocent man since we don’t know if he actually knows anything. Since we are torturing an innocent man what is to stop me from torturing his family or friends? How long do we torture him for? Days? Weeks? Months? Should this be done in the public’s eye or behind closed doors? Another realistic scenario could be we have 10 men, 9 innocent, 1 guilty. Do we torture all 10 in the hopes of finding the bomb? Once we start torturing innocent people it may not be clear whether or not what they say is true or not. If someone is being inflicted with immense amounts of pain they will be put into flight mode. They will say whatever they have to to get out of the situation. This can lead to bad information and thus wasted time.

The sheer act of torture in and of itself is evil. It dehumanizes people. To inflict torture is to inflict intense physical and psychological pain. I need to think of more arguments for this idea. I feel the idea that it is so evil and dehumanizing is important. Maybe something along the lines of, as soon as we embrace the notion of torture we have become less human? If the only way to save a group of people is to become a monster and do horrific things to our fellow man, is that something we should do? Is it justified to take in and become evil to save lives? I feel this is stuff I hear in anime’s.

Any other input or ideas as to why torture is bad would be much appreciated.

5:00 a.m. Time to get some sleep. Going to be running on very little sleep the next few days. Complex assignment and midterm monday, this essay and real analysis assignment wednesday. I may ask for an extension on the real analysis assignment though.

Hopefully this post was coherent.

This post may be quite fragmented since I have been rewriting various parts of it.

I am slowly reading through papers trying to think of arguments for various essay topics. One possible topic is, “Is the death penalty morally permissible or not?”

I personally feel the death penalty is not permissible.

Two arguments I know of for the death penalty are
1. It is the only way to get justice for a murder
2. It can act as a deterrent for crimes such as murder.

When someone commits a crime our legal system will step in and impose a punishment that will force the perpetrator to pay for any damages he or she causes. So in the case of theft, the perpetrator will have to pay for any damages or stolen property to the victim.

This basic idea gets a bit more muddled in the situation of crimes such as murder. If a person kills someone, what punishment can a system impose that will have the same value as the life they took? You can’t put a monetary value on a persons life (unless you are an actuarial scientist)). So the natural idea would be a life for a life. If a person kills someone they have to make up for it with their own life. People will also contend that this is the only way to offer family and friends of the victim some kind of justice.

Following the previous point, the death penalty does offer closure to family and friends of the victim. People close to the person that died may feel comfort in the fact that the person who killed their friend no longer lives. However this sort of emotion, just and reasonable as it may be, doesn’t seem like a trait humans should have. We shouldn’t take solace in the fact that someone has died.

The other argument for the death penalty is that by imposing it people will think twice before performing acts such as murder. I am pretty sure though studies have shown this isn’t a actually the case. People who are thinking of killing someone would do so regardless of punishment.

I have wrote/rewrote my arguments against the death penalty over and over again and can’t seem to construct a good argument yet. My basic idea is that the death penalty feels more like an act of revenge. The person who has committed the crime isn’t given any chance to make amends for his or her mistake. I believe in idealistic worlds, in particular that all humans have some piece compassion. Following this belief I would argue that a man or woman can make amends for their mistakes.

Of course the problem with this argument is we can find people in history who will most likely never attempt to make amends for their mistakes. An easy example would be Hitler. However I still don’t think it would be right to issue the death sentence on Hitler. There is something evil about the death penalty which I clearly can’t express into words yet, but when I do expect another post.

The top of my hair is slowly turning brown. For the longest time I just thought it was the lightning in my bathroom or something but it is actually getting quite brown. Based on what I have read on the interweb just now it could be due to being in the sun for long periods of time.

I haven’t cut my hair since September, so it has been almost 9 months since I got my hair cut. However women with long hair don’t get their hair cut and their hair is still black…. Not sure what is going on. Someone figure out what is happening to my hair.

The spring terms in Waterloo are always the hardest. The atmosphere as a whole during the summer is very relaxed. It is hard to sit down and really focus. Also being here for 10 months straight doesn’t help either.

Time to take a nap, then go do some math and philosophy.

I hate probability but you can sometimes pose very simple questions with interesting answers.

Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

How would you answer the question? Can you also explain your reasoning without cheating? I wonder if I should post more random/simple math problems

I didn’t graduate but I have friends that did. On Wednesday Amy and I went to Joanna and Nelson’s convocation. It was so boring. I spent most of it just talking to Amy and Joanna’s brother Edward.

After the ceremony it was picture taking time. I really liked how this photo came out. Kudos to Amy for taking the photo.

On thursday the arts people graduated. So I swung by convocation hall, e.g. our school gym, to take some photos of the accountants. I bumped into shawn and talked to him for a while. I forgot that all the accountants are in Arts, for some reason I thought it was an accountants only convocation.

I showed up a little late, so by the time I got there everyone was taking photos with their family. I was just this strange brown man taking photos of friends. I imagine a lot of the parents were like, “Who is this strange brown man taking photos of my kid?”

Today was a pretty chill day. Did a bit of math, made some cookies, nothing too exciting. I also bought all of friends from Amazon.com. AlisoN Sudol from A Fine Frenzy is following me on twitter. I feel so popular now.

I also need to get around to buying Coda and Textmate. I feel I use both programs so much now when building stuff for money that it feels wrong to use it for free. My viewpoint on software piracy is if you are making money with the software you should probably pay for it. If the software totally changes the way you use your computer, you should probably pay for it. If you are just using the software to do school assignments and what not, then I don’t think it is wrong to steal it. Well it is wrong to steal regardless, but just less wrong to steal software when you aren’t actually making any money from it.

The reason I use making money as a criteria for buying software is because if you are making money using a person’s program, then clearly they deserve some portion of that money.

I think I will be giving another talk in July while at the undergraduate math conference. I can talk about anything so I ned to figure out a topic now. The talk has to be either 20 minutes or 50 minutes long.

I wouldn’t mind doing something related to prime numbers but not sure what. Another option would be to just give a talk about the history of math. There are a lot of great mathematicians out there.