How to improve my eyesight

I have been prooud of my vision for quite some time. All my parents have good visions. My brother has a good vision. And all my grandma and grandpa's have good visions. And as I count them, all my close relatives have good vision too. I have believed I have good genes that renders good vision for me, even though I have been reading more than my peers when I was young.

But I can't help noticing my vision is getting worse last a few months, since I start working at home mostly infront of a computer. I am ready to accept that I have developed a myopia. I even tried to imagine I wearing glasses whole day and watched some friends wearing lenses. It kind of looking cool :). Yet, I am not ready to visit my doctor and get a pair of glasses yet.

So when I see this "Natural Vision Improvement Kit" by Meir Schneider, I bought it. As usual, I am not beliving it when I read its claims on the cover. I am not believing its true and not believing it is false either. However, by reading a few pages, it does make a lot of sense to me.

Let me cite one most impressive priciple from this book: Never, under any circumstances, strain to see anything.

Hopefully, I will have a blog entry demonstrate its effectiveness in the near future. But I will happily blog the the day I wear glasses as well if that doesn't work out.

Should we care about next generation?

If nothing matters after death, then should we care about others' lives after our death? Should we care about the golbal warming 100 years later?

Well, the point is not wheter we care about it after our life, it is about the current life we are in at this instance.

Would you enjoy your life now if I can show you enough evidence that your children will suffer? Would you enjoy your life if the images of diasters upon our next generation keeps coming to your mind now?

If you don't know what will happen to next generations 100 years later, you have nothing to care. If you believe what diaster will happen to our next generations and you still enjoy your current life to the fullest, then by all means, do not care about it.

But chances are, you will find joy NOW by caring about our next generations. It is the nature just as we like to taste sweets. Even if you know you will die the next second, caring for the dearest fills that last second of life with "life".

Follow your instincts.

Life is Long

Cathy writes a blog titled Life is Short. I suddenly find it fun to write this blog and name it "Life is Long" :).

How long is an individual's life? As long as we can imagin.

"I think, so I am". As long as we are thinking, seeking, and imaginning, our life is here, and extends to an infinity. How do you measure the length of life? Isn't it measured by the amount of thoughts you are having? If I put you in hibernate for a million years, you don't have a million years of life. But if I told you have one more day to live, you will have infinity of things and thoughts to fill that day. Life is not measured by hours, it is measured by the length of your conscious. Is it rare to you that you can fill a second with infinity thoughts?

Death is so dreadful only because we think about it. And the fact we are thinking about death is the very sign of life. For sure, once you are dead, you wouldn't care about how you died or at which point of time you died. You will just have peace, absolute peace. Does it really matter you died yesterday or you died 2000 years ago?

Every one has infinity life. But you have to enjoy it to realize it.

(yeah, you are right, I don't know what I am talking about :)

What do you see?

Colorblindness is one very interesting subject to think about as this article indicates. The article itself is just so so, but from its popularity we can see how fascinating the subject is.

Are the colorblind people living in a different (black and white) world than we (non-colorblind people) are? Do we all just living in a subjective world?

From the comments, we can see that most colorblind people are just living in the same world as we are. They see red and green as we see them, but they just wasn't able to tell much difference from them (I guess that depends on the types of colorblindness). But for one thing, they certainly are not living in a colorless world. Just as we cannot hear certain hi-frequency sound as certain animal or young kid can, doesn't mean we live in a quiet world. I am guessing that, for a colorful picture, as long as the picture doesn't have two colors that the majority colorblind person can't tell placed in contrast on the picture, the color blind person sees exactly the same picture as we see. Whether they can enjoy it as much as we do, on the other hand, is a seprate issue (taste).

It is very similar to the question that is there any of our scientific theory describes the real world. To test a scientific theory, we run tests which are officially called experiments. As long as our tests have enough sensitivity to detect the difference the world has, we sees the world as it is. Since we can detect different atoms, can detect neutrons from protons and from electrons, we see the micro world as it is. Whether the neutrons should be called "neutrons" are a matter of convention, just as whether we should call this color "blue". As long as we can tell blue from other color, we see the same blue.

Then there is theories that we can't test yet, or may never be able to test. Religion for the most part being one, and for many part, string theory. They may well be "real", but as long as we can't tell the difference, it doesn't really matter to our life. So string theory says there is other dimensions and parallel universes right beside us, so what. If these dimension can never cross and let us run tests to "see", those dimension has no meaning to us, never and forever. It is USELESS. And as far as I can tell, an atheist person lives exactly the same way as an catholic lives, no more, no less. They tend to live in a different social group, but people choose to live in certain social group all the time, not necessarily for the religion aspect.

Color blindness is very common and it is for most part genetically caused. I can't help deducing that omiting certain colors won't affect our life much. At least, the long running evolution filter doesn't have that sensitivity to tell. As I believe out joy is ultimately determined by this evolution filter, I belive from most color blind person (that contributes to 6% of our population from one source I randomly read), they enjoy the world the same way as the rest of us do.

Back to a practical example, say you are color blind and your wife is not. When making the decision to paint the house, you should have as strong an argument on the color choice as your wife. It is a taste problem, nothing to do with colorblindness. But if you can't tell purple from blue, you won't argue about it anyway.

And when designing a webpage, the rule says don't use green and red together to make contrast as color blind person may not be able to tell. Follow the rule. If large percent of your fellows can't tell a difference, it probly means that the composition probably is not a good choice even for people with normal vision.

Of course, all my logic is false if the statistics of colorblindness and its genetic roles are incorrect.

Evolution is a Self Adjusting Filter

Conitinue my thought -- Why the evolution end up today with so many species?

I think once a certain species (it starts with just a group of lifes) selects its enviroment, and adapts into a specific life patterns, the filter of evolution gets adjusted. So the filter of monkeys is just too different than a chimpanzee. It is like many self-condensing vallies.

Evolution Filtering Process

I am having a great time in the discussion with Cathy talking about "natural aptitude" and I need blog some of my arguments down here.

From reading the "expert mind" article and echoing with my old thoughts, I came to the concolusion that our born ability to achieve any paricular society recognized achievement is about the same, thus wether one will become an expert is matter of enviroment and his life path. From an large scale point of view, it is a random effect.

During the discussion with Cathy, I came to reason for above conclusion -- it is the evolution filtering process.

Imagine we start with a gene pool with all variations and thus all different "doomed" ability in achievement. Then we run a filter that throws off those performs really bad. If there is systematic relationship between one's eventual performance and certain genes, those certain genes dooms underperformance will get more filtered off than those good genes. It is similar to pouring a cup of water through a paper filter that large paricles gets left behind. There will be loss of good genes during the process as well, but genes gets spawned after each process so as long as bad genes gets filtered off more than good genes, the ensemble gets more purer in good genes than before.

Now repeat this filtering process millions of times, even give me a very poor filter, I can reach 99.99% purity. Well still have a large gene pool with countless variations, but be asured that all these variations are insensitive to the filter we used.

Evolution is just such process where the suvivalship is the filter.

One species' natural environment usually changes very slowly, and the evolution almost always is at a faster pace. Therefore, for any given species, their born ability is equal, speciwise.

A fun thought experiment: If our look has a role in our survivalship, particulaly let's say one's average possiblity of survival is proportional to the length of one's face, will every one of us born with equal lenghth of face - the lenght of the limit?

Reasons of Quitting

I left a comment on Cathy's blog Works in Progress, a comment that I am not sure is an encouragement or an encouragement of quitting. :(

I myself is a fairly quick quitter.

I like start learning, praciticing, and training on many new fields. The start of one field is the most joyful experience. One learns new tricks, find new abilities, and can talk for hours in front of friends about the experience and find admiring expression over their faces, ..., very joyful.

Well, for most activities, the training will soon goes to a difficult plateau when little progress can be made and all the better experts in front of you. Then it is time for quitting.

I usually keeps a while at that plateau, just for the purpose of filling my imagination that what will be if I ever become the expert. The vividness of that imagination tells me whether I will receiving enough rewards in continuing the training.

And then there are activities that is not about being the expert. I still likes playing chess very much, and I like to watch games played by experts, although now it never occurs to me that I ever want to become an expert. By start the training then quit at the plateau, one can ejoy the very special initial joy with little effort, and then can enjoy the regular joy in just playing it, and most of all, watching other experts playing become much more enjoyable than before.

But nevertheless, quitting makes a loser. For me, as long as I keeps one goal and never quit, I feel peace at quitting all other goals. By try and quit, one can find that particular goal that will be most enjoyable. That is the one you have aptitude with. :)

PS: Quiting one training still accumulates experience toward other actitivities. The training in programing C helps my programing in Matlab -- an easy to understand one, how about this -- the training in physics helps my programing.

Change and Growth

I read "Change is inevitable; Growth is optional." Just like Cathy, when you spot a word says so much that you want to say, you have to blog it down.

The world is changing, it always is. If one always change oneself to fit into the change of his world, he will never catch the it, always one step behind.

So how do we live in this changing world?

The trick is to spot its principles behind the changes. The priciples of our world haven't changed much -- it is still about people battlling around respects.

I love history. When I was young, I read all the difference in history; Now I gets older, I read all the similarity in history. And now I watch news, it is all deja vu all over again.

When we talk about change, it just mean different than current. When we talk about growth, it means better than current. But how do we define which is better? Is it defined by fashion, teacher, peers, celebrities, or yourself. If it is utltimately decided by oneself, I guess it is as optional as ones judgement. One doesn't need to make a judgement to live in this changing world, does he?

Respect My Wife

It is often not difficult to respect a person before you know him/her. Then, when you getting closer to that person and know that person better, the mutual respect slides.

Wife is one of the most difficult to respect persons in my world. I know all the stupidity, ridicularity, worst habbits, weekest links, ..., almost as much as I know mine. How can I find my inner source of respecting her?

It is easier to spot one's stupidity than one's splendor due to the fact. As said in the Dilbert Principle, human race is born stupid. Our civilization is just a accumulation of random sparks among our stupidness and this accumulation blinds us in viewing our own stupidity, but it doesn't blind us from viewing other's stupidity. As a result, the more we know a person, the more stupidity we find in that person. (self is the same, but that is way difficult to realize).

I guess I need work on seeing my own stupidity. Then, hopefully, we would see much less stupidity (dog doesn't find eating garbage is stupid), then we would see much greater of our occasional sparks.

Habbits

While I am looking for source of motivation from inside, I need recognize the power of habbits. Habbits are a form of long term memory on action patterns and thought patterns. A habbit forms when we establish some shortcut from one set of information (or situation) to a piece of memory we have before or even without conscious of why that piece of memory exist in the first place.

For example, a habbit of smile at people, when established, we smile before we feel that joy or recall a reason to smile. Well, for this example, memory of smile often associated with joy or kind feeling, so when we smile (out of habbit), we can later find a piece of joy in it. Which comes first is out of the question.

Some habbits are easy to establish, when that action pattern or thought pattern strongly and directly associated with our inner motivation. It is easy to have the habbit of being, say potato couch. Some habbits are more difficult to establish, when that action pattern or thought pattern is connected to our inner motivation only through a long, wind logic reasoning. For example, the habbit of getting up early. There are bunch of reasons, and one of them being "high achievers normally are early birds". Then through many more logical step, we arrive at we need get up early so we can have more happiness in life. Througn that long logic connection, that "get-up-early" habbit is quite diffictult to establish. Unless, we can discover the joy in getting early itself such as the joy of quiet, freshing morning, and the fresh feeling inside, and, maybe the pride that we are awake while others are still wasting time in slumber. Then the early-bird habbit may not be too hard to establish.

The one habbit on top of my traininglist currently is, respect others before my any judgement.

I am not such a strong minded person that can establish any habbit that a mind set too. I am working hard on reducing the difficulty level of establishing that "respecting" habbit.

Things We Appreciate

I am one of the most unappreciative persons, yet there are things and people I appreciate spontaneously.

I appreciate those who help me when I need help. I appreciate those people who achieve what I cannot. I aprreciate those people who are capable of what I am not.

I have aprreciated few people. Now think about it, it is a results of my super-inflated ego, believing I was capable of doing most everything.

The tipping point came after I read the "expert mind" article published in Secientific American. I suddenly realize that an expert mind is not much different than an ordinary mind. We are more or less created equal. Indeed, I am capable of most everything. And I now realize the fact is most everybody is capable of most everything. There is too much "everything", thus nobody are really capable of everything. Anything but everything. And suddenly, I realize, most everyone is achieving what I am not capable of.

Looking at all the achievement they made that is beyond my capability, how can I not appreciate them?

Appreciation is Hard

I read Dale Carnegie since I was very young, and I read it again and again. Each time, I can't help thinking that his word is so right, why didn't I follow his word.

One priciple from Dale Carnegie's book is to show appreciation to others. I wouldn't say I haven't spend my effort in his word, but I can't help realizing that I have failed miserably in my life up to now. I am start to realize that we are born with a conscious, and conscious is about self, and it is natural to appreciate self not others. To appreciate others is very hard.

Well, there is occasions that we do appreciate others naturally. So what is the key?

I am not sure about the answers yet, I am working on it, and I appreciate any helps :).

One principle from Dale Carnegie -- appreciation

Dale Carnegie's book is the first book I read about how to live with each other, and the only book I remembers. Actually, I only remember one word from the book -- appreciation. It is so true and it appears every problem of relationship boils down to appreciation -- our desire to get appreciation and the importance of giving appreciation.

A recent example is Dave Cheong's 8 simple things to encourage others. 1. Show genuine interest. If you appreciate the other's effort, won't it be just natural to have interest in their result? And when you do have genuine interest is easier than hiding it. 2.Acknowledge what’s important to them. What's important to them is what they are spending effort on. If you appreciate their effort, it comes as natural to ackowledge it. 3.Say “Well done”. 4.Say “Thank you”. Two top phrases come to your mind when you appreiciate what they do. 5.Reciprocate the favour. That is the conventional meaning of appreciation. 6.Respond with something unexpected. When you have interest, respond to unexpected (within your interest) is almost emotional. 7. Ask for advice or confide in them. A natural action when you appreciate their results of effort. 8. Offer to lend a hand. An effort spend in what you were interested in.

So it boils down to: appreciate other's effort, which will give you the interest in other's work, which will lead to other actions that shows your interest and ultimately your appreciation.

It is not so simple actually, when you are not really appreciating others. Then you need fake your interest. Since the interest is faked, all the simple actions are not natural, thus or difficult to do.

Faked interests do have its positive effect. When you hear thank you, you feel encouraged. But actually, you feel encouraged by the interest and appreciation behind the "thank you". When that appreciation and interest is faked, there will be signs that tells it. After all, it is difficult to fake some actions (that against what one really feel), and it is impossible to fake all actions. In fact, faked interest wears off really quick.

It is very nice that our culture now has a convention of saying "thank you". But frankly, I hear "thank you" countless times a day, yet few of them really give me any feeling of encouragment.

To have genuine appreciation to others is very difficult. So to have that genuine interest in what is important to others is extrememly hard. And all the simple things you can do to encourage others is really difficult to acturally do, unless we contend with the level of saying "thank you" countless times a day, which I suspect it will have its power to encourage others at all.

Appreciation, that is so true. The next question is "How to have that appreciation (to others)?"

Live by one principle

Browsing through the popular links from digg and delicious, I spot a trend -- people really likes subjects like "Top 25...", "10 most important...", "3 steps to ...", "7 mistakes ...", 10 ways to...". It apears that every day I would flip through some of those numbered lists and yet, I hardly can recall any of them.

It appears I only can really remember something if there is only one principle to remember. So, my ONLY direction to solve a problem is to find that ONE principle.

I am not sure whether I have found any of those one list correctly, but here are a few of them:

The ONE purpose of life is be happy.

The ONE trick to be happy is respect others just the way I respect myself.

The ONE principle for everything is keep it simple.

And there is such ONE golden rule -- the 80-20 rule.