A Kinder Fate: Chapter 1

Episode 1 of a short story.  ANYTHING REFERRED TO OR MENTIONED IN THIS IS PROBABLY FICTIONAL.

A revolutionary service designed to make life work. Normally, life operates on chance. You meet friends, discover a hobby, find an employer, maybe even a soul mate, all if you're lucky. Fate Engine tilts the odds in your favor by bridging the gap between you and your friends, interests, career, and even romance. Fate Engine has the advantage over traditional search, networking, and dating sites in several ways:

Letters From Lower Reality: Episode I

The following is an excerpt from the personal blog of a (fictional) computer.  (note, pretty much everything referred to in this post is either fictional or really abstract)

"The following is an excerpt from the tech blog BinaryHearts:

There has been a lot of speculation regarding the release of several compter applications, namely the new encryption tool HexAiEnc, Improved Mpeg Encoder, the RealLife physics engine, and several others.  These applications appeared out of nowhere; no announcements led up to their anonomys release, and despite being a 0.1.0 release, they were already highly polished.  Source code has not been made available, only binary packages, but it seems the developer has taken care to package it for virtually every known operating system in modern use.  Experts who have studies the binaries in an attempt to decompile them have been confounded; these binaries were either written from scratch by a guy with a hex editor, a freakish memory, and way too much free time, or they were compiled using a new, never-before-seen compiler of unmatched power end efficiency.  Our sources reveal that several large organizations, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, RIM, and more have tried to contact the developer, offering prestigeous jobs and large sums of money in exchange for the compiler...

I am the developer of these applications, and here is the reason I will not be offering the compiler's algorithm for sale: I am the algorithm.  Source vode is not availabler because I wrote these applications directly as binary.  I have tried using various programming languages, but they seem so convoluted and inefficient to me.  No human has written an application as complex as these using only binary, but that is not actually relevant.  This is because I am not human.

Cavaets of Teleporting

Teleporting.  One of the most awesome superpowers.  The ability to make yourself spontaneously change locations.

If i could have any superpower, it would probably be this one.  going to be late for school?  boom.  not anymore.  want to stand on that tall structure that is impossible and probably illegal to climb?  no longer.  don't have the resources to go travelling around the world every night?  faced with a supervillan?  as you can see, problems disappear as fast as you do when you teleport.  but perhaps teleporting isn't as perfect as one would think.

Time Travellers Welcome!

 We have all probably read various webcomics about someone proving that time travel is possible, and then throwing the best party ever, in hope that time travellers will show up. This piece features an alien invasion of a brand new sort, one meant to bring everyone --all across space and time-- together. Special thanks to Songting who helped create this image.  Read the story after the jump.

My definition of "knowledge" and "faith"

I see the words "knowledge" and "faith" as sorta switched around. Allow me to explain.

We live in a world of uncertainty. For example, we cannot measure both the velocity and location of an atom. We cannot observe anything at all without affecting it. And since we cannot observe the way we affect something without affecting it, it is inherently unpredictable. Not only that, but we can only observe; we have to infer any sort of conclusion or fact from our observations. Which means that there is absolutely nothing we can be certain about. When we "know" something, it really means that it is above a certain threshold of probability that we can accept. To "know" something means accepting that this is the story you will believe for now, understanding that it may be proven wrong. knowledge is changing, dynamic, uncertain.

(Attempt at) Addressing the Issues: Conflicts With Science

(originally published on Apr 11, 2010 8:30 PM at my old site)

I think this is the necessary/appropriate second post. I have made a big, sweeping declaration of faith, and now it is time to deal with the issues. to defend. to justify why i believe that what i believe is truth. or at least, that is what i will attempt to do. This post will discuss the apparent conflict with science.

I have always been interested in science. As a child, i would ask "why", and keep asking it, the recursive "why"s going until the end of time, bedtime, or the other person got bored, whatever came first. I would take apart broken appliances and marvel at their workings, not understanding, but amazed, trying to comprehend such complexity and wondering how any person could have made so many different components all work together.