mental motivation comes in two
by Mike on Oct.01, 2008, under Philosophy
The past two weeks have been mentally tiring. After a two weeks on the new team, I started to get bored with just learning objective-c from a book and I was getting more and more eager to start working on actual code. Despite having a short list of menial tasks to get me familiar with the code base a bit, I wanted something a bit more hands on. Over the last week and a half I’ve not only managed to scrounge up some stuff to do, but I’ve managed to do it without seriously breaking much. WOOHOO!
Though it’s left me quite mentally tired, it’s helped get my brain churning again. About a week ago while hanging out at a coffee shop with friends, we started philosophizing about the prospect of free will. (Granted, this was after an absurd philosophic inquiry into what makes a questions a good vs worthwhile vs valid question.) I haven’t had a good philosophy session in a while, and I think it might have been because I’ve become quite mentally lazy. While I was on the snagit team, I often got stuck with less than mentally stimulating tasks (fix this or that bug, blah blah). Switching to the new platform and having to deal with that learning curve seems to have jolted my brain awake again.
Throughout my day-to-day routine, I’ve been more aware of my surroundings. I’ve also picked back up a philosophy book I started reading about six months ago, but ran out of time to sit and read. It’s nice to get back to reading it, though I now see that had I finished this when I started, it would have given me answers to quite a few questions that were raised during my most recent philosophic discussions. Now I just need to find a way to satisfy my craving to get out and work on my photography. If only I knew of some more interesting spots to take pictures.
With that, I leave you with a picture of the happiest i’ve ever seen my trunk. That’s right, five and a half cases of really tasty beer.

October 4th, 2008 on 5:14 pm
So is free will still not distinguishable from nondeterminism as far as we know?