consciousness

random observation: i can't just eat candy that comes in different colors and/or flavors (e.g. m&ms, skittles, etc.) like last week i bought myself a thing of starbursts... what's the first thing i do? open it up, dump out the whole bag and put them in little groups where each group has one of each color in it. then i put the complete groups back in the bag, and then the groups that have all but one color in another bag, and etc. all the way down to the color i have the most of... then i eat them in reverse of that until at the end i have the same number of every color. am i on drugs? =P

so as i sit here eating one of each color of my tropical fruit starbursts, ... instead of working so far today i finished the most interesting book i've read in a bit... _things a computer scientist rarely talks about_ by donald knuth. knuth's a lutheran but also one of the most respected computer scientists ever... his idea is, "i definitely am not a theologian and there's not good reason to listen to me... but there are some ways i organize my thoughts that are common to computer scientists in general, and then, maybe, just maybe, my thoughts on the divine and the infinite might have some value to computer scientists trying to wrestle with questions of the meaning of life, etc."

the book was transcripts from a lecture series he gave 5 years ago at MIT. it started off pretty slow (4/6 lectures) about the process of writing a book he did called "3:16" where he studied in depth chapter 3 verse 16 of every book of the Bible, developing his own translations, and compiling what countless theologians had to say coming from countless religious backgrounds etc. after all of that, lecture 5 sums up statistically and personally what he learned and how he was affected by his "random sampling" method of studying scripture. chapter 6 deals with computer science as a whole, completely aside from his 3:16 project, and concepts from that that might help one grapple with concepts of the divine, the infinite, consciousness, and the like. the book ends with a panel of him and 3 other CS gurus discussing computers and consciousness, etc. for a bit. i didn't agree with *everything* but a lot of what he had to say did resonate well with me. it was very thought-provoking, and unique book... i'm glad i checked it out. eric commented after i bought it that he wants to read it when i'm done. it'll be interesting to see what he has to say when he's read it too since we come from relatively different backgrounds on religious issues. mostly i'm fascinated by the ideas put forth.

in the end, the conclusion was... no matter how much technology and science grow, although we can't prove it, there are generally always going to be things we don't know or understand. the goal isn't to answer all the big questions. the goal is to keep on asking them and struggling with them. the end.

anyhow, *now* it's dinner and analysis time... or algebra, depending on how much analysis wants to be my friend today. =P the (real) end.