I was going to write about God

I was going to be clever. I was going to be sarcastic. I was going to be snarky.

Then I was going to turn one hundred eighty degrees and quit with a cold splash of wisdom to leave everyone stumped and introspective.

Right now, I can't bring myself to finish that post. It's not going anywhere in its current, rather sorry state. I began the post by touting the Episcopal Church and the liberty of thought it grants its members. I followed that statement by dissecting the first line of the Nicene Creed. I ruthlessly picked it apart, playing the idiot at every step. "What is God?" "What does Heaven specify?" "Earth?" "Genesis is no help at all here either." The intent was to then go back and say "thanks, Episcopal Church. It's because of you that these answers can be anything I want them to be." Not before some abuse of the privilege, though.

So it went for a while, and eventually, I forgot what I was saying. It was just a big joke where I went around and poked fun at a liberal belief system for which I am truly grateful. Reading that post, I sound like a spoiled brat.

Spirituality is a challenging subject for me. It's not that I don't like to think about it. In fact, I can't help but allow it to consume my thoughts on a fairly regular occasion. The problem comes when I try to express myself to other people. On some days, I find myself angering both religious zealots and reasonable churchgoers that I don't need a willful, or even an existent god to feel as though there is something greater among the beings of the universe. The rest of the time, I'm arguing with anti-spiritual cynics about going to church to celebrate the harmony between people and the irrational sense of altruism that we all call God.

At least, that's the face to which I bestow the name.

I think I actually prefer the arguments where I'm defending the churchgoers. I would rather build than demolish. So many people confuse religion with spirituality, and I'd like to think that most of us are looking for the latter when we go to church. It really doesn't matter which case I argue, though; my adversaries may look at me with pity and disgust. But at least when I'm praising spirituality, I feel overcome with optimism about the good that we can do, rather than bitterness for the abundant wrongdoing that may overshadow the good.

It's a shame that I have to use the word "adversary." These things always start out as conversations, both of us curious to see how the other thinks. Unfortunately, everyone has an agenda.

Concerning deities, I am an atheist. I don't see myself in a universe dominated by a grand essence who cares for my well being or even my existence. I don't believe that my deeds and thoughts will be judged to determine where I go when I die, because I don't believe I'm actually going anywhere in particular when I die. Conscious thought, or even just life itself, is, to me, a physical phenomenon, resulting from strange loops and inconsistency. (Yes, the previous statement is me parroting Douglas Hofstadter, but that's not the point.)

Ugh. I always get into a rant like this one just now, and it's the same rant that gets me in trouble. I get so caught up in what I'm saying that I never get to the two important parts.

The first thing I'm trying to say is that I don't need such a power to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the universe. That we are here is a miracle, and I feel fortunate to be a part of it. When my time is up, I shall go in peace. There is more out there than I can ever hope to understand, and for that I am grateful. Were our daily lives the outcome of an old father's whim, I would feel lost and scared. (Put in a more humorous way, I'm thinking of this comic.)

The second and more important thing is that I don't need religion to feel spiritually fulfilled. Yes, I prefer my church, but not as a means of worshiping. I feel the most in tune with my life and the lives of those around me when I am celebrating the good works of man. We are a species lucky enough to have the choice to behave rationally, and that power is immense, given that we also have the ability to contemplate such behavior. As instincts abound, we are driven to be self-serving, but thanks to a synthetic construct of morality, there is the notion of doing the right thing. Now, I don't believe there is a universal right and wrong, (by virtue of morality's artificiality,) but it really fills me with hope to know that people still go out of their way to do nice things, expecting nothing in return.

Some people feel a call to do good, a duty to their fellow human beings. Such action is seldom means taking the easy path, each step requiring strength and willpower.

That strength, acquired within and without, from the self and those around, is a sacred force. It exists in everyone, but it is up to the individual to seek it out. That power, to me, is God.

I don't know if I've done any better at expressing a point this way than I could with the other post I was writing. I may have skimmed over a lot of important things, and my spirituality could very well be coming off as very flat. I've said very little about my history and maturation into the person I am now. Maybe I'm killing two mockingbirds with one stone and scaring away all who would try and relate to me. I discover myself by reflecting off of others, so I really don't know how much more I have to say. I just know that there is more.

I was going to write about God. I don't know if I've done that, but at least I've given words to part of this fragile equilibrium that I've slowly been able to calibrate over these years. Maybe I'll make sense tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next week. Next year? Who knows? Who cares? You sure don't have to.

Romantic Technology

I'm not talking about dating websites or love-bots. Sorry to disappoint.

As a computer science major, my background is a little unorthodox. My elementary and middle school (and even high school) years were full of music, art, and writing. In tenth grade, I wanted to be a French teacher; in ninth, a writer for The New Yorker; eighth, a comic book artist. I fantasized about the fruits of my imagination changing the lives of all who saw my work. My novel worldview and acute sense of empathy would take the world by storm, speaking to people as more than the generic second person. My voice would be fresh, and I would be heard.

Creativity has always been rewarded in my family, even at the cost of a higher grade. It was never about the grade itself, but what we learned. Rubrics were a necessary evil, viewed as braces on the brain if followed too closely. It eventually became a game to satisfy all the requirements without addressing them directly. (Read: I did what I wanted and turned it in.) This practice led to some pretty fun essays in elementary school, as I was still perfecting the art of bullshit, garnering mixed reactions from my teachers. Many encouraged what they saw as originality, but there were some who called it "failure to understand the assignment." (Quite frankly, I think how often I talked or read in class influenced such feedback.)

On the other end of the spectrum, there was math. It was clear from early on that no amount of explanation makes a wrong answer right. Thankfully, it made such sense that I never had to fake it. The unfortunate part, however, was that I couldn't play my little game. Precocity was displayed, then, in the form of speed. Fifty multiplication problems and six minutes to do them? How about three minutes and a chance to read? Such arrogance had to be earned, though. Hours of commitment to rote memorization of times tables and mechanization of processes like long division were worth the ability to traverse the room in a game of "Around the World."

For a long time, though, math was just something on the side, to be taken for granted. Sure, I enjoyed it, but the fun part was in figuring out the trick in order to solve my problems quickly enough to have time to draw pictures of anime-style medieval princesses. But I never felt as fulfilled in displaying my mastery of the order of operations as I did in bringing Mary Gold and her compatriots to life in our short story assignments. Certainly there was more to the richness of communication than the uninspired methodology of simplifying expressions.

That all changed when I started studying French. There were the rules of well-formed phrases to follow, very mathematical in nature, and then there was the infinite number of ways to express a thought, once those rules were understood. This new way of thinking intrigued me, and it was very exciting, recognizing that I was learning to think anew, as opposed referencing French keys mapped to English values.

Practicality eventually won out over creative zeal as I tentatively decided to pursue a technical path instead of one in the humanities. It's easier to get by in the world as a techie who can write than a dreamer who can do math. I don't mean to sound like I gave up that which made me happy in favor of security. I would have serious nerd-outs after watching movies like "The Matrix" and "I, Robot," and math actually got fun after geometry. (I remember being in the car with my mom one time and mentally drawing an acceleration graph while watching her speedometer, just for lols.) More importantly, though, I didn't feel that I was forsaking my right brain. Video game companies need programmers who understand the creative process of telling a playable story, and international corporations want translation engines built with acute consciousness of the nuances of the human mind. Right?

Unfortunately, that's not a rhetorical question; I don't have an answer as of yet. Right now, as a computer science major, I'm hoping to focus on computational linguistics as a concentration. I have no experience in the field; I'm going on a hunch I have that it's the kind of thing I'm into. All the interesting philosophical questions of linguistics with the power and profitability of computers? Sure, why not? In the meantime, I've been getting a rather romantic, qualitative understanding of language and thought and computability from Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. One chapter in particular captures a train of thought very eloquently communicates my understanding of the key to developing human language technologies.

The pre-chapter dialogue, titled "English French German Suite," contains Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," written in English, French, and German. Now, I don't know German, but in comparing the first two, it is clear that the translations are not word-to-word mappings. (For instance, the original version is told in past tense, while the French version switches to present.) In the accompanying chapter, "Minds and Thoughts," Hofstadter discusses the nuances of translation. Acknowledging the obvious differences in the poem, he argues that a good translation means not just conveying the words understandably, but ensuring that the reader responds in the same way. That means that the literary constructs and devices used in the poem come through in the same way, independent of the language. Bringing in the concept of semantic networks, complex graphs of words and ideas such that the triggering of one node sets off dozens of neighbors, he claims that we appreciate literature in a predictable way due to a commonality in semantic networks among speakers of a particular language. I'll leave the rest of the chapter for anyone who's interested to read.

At the risk of geeking out all alone, doesn't that sound cool? This chapter has been on my mind since I read it last month, and I want an understanding that goes deeper than the high-level smattering of ideas that Hofstadter throws about for all of twenty pages. More than that, though, I want such understanding to be relevant. As magical as computer science has been to me in my first year at CMU, this approach to thinking appeals to me more than anything I have seen thus far. From what I heard today in discussions with some of the computational linguists at work, it's more about the computer system, the algorithms, and the number crunching. That frightens me a bit. I love math, truly, but it is a sad day when raw data obscures the beauty of giving words to the world around us. On the other hand, maybe I don't have to hope that many computational linguists share and appreciate Hofstadter's ideas. Maybe it's time the rubric-averse elementary schooler in me appreciates a few standards to stabilize a somewhat subjective field. All I can do at this point is to learn as much as I can and keep thinking my thoughts. I'm waiting for it all to come together beautifully. I'm working to make all my wildest dreams come true. I'm trying to realize a fantasy. I just hope I'm making the right choice.