In a previous post I discussed the idea that the only thing you can ever really know is that there are thoughts. You might not even exist. Your existance might be an illusion… Deal with it.

In fact your whole life might be a simulation - like the Matrix, except without the Zion part.

I’ve always liked that thought - even though it makes no difference to my daily life. It’s just interesting. I used to think about the possibility that my whole life is a computer game that the ‘real’ me is playing in another reality.

This post from Boing Boing takes the whole idea even further. Basically some ‘reasonable’ assumptions are made, leading to a surprising conclusion.

1. We can never truly know that what we perceive is real (agreed)
2. One day truly realistic simulations will exist which will seem 100% realistic to participants (reasonable)
3. Many such simulations will be run, probably concurrently (given 2 then I agree)

If these assumptions are accepted then it is actually more likely that you are a simulation than ‘real’. The more simulations that are run, the lower the probably that this is the ‘real’ reality!

This of course makes no difference to my daily life - I’m stuck in this simulation and I rather like it. It is strange to think about though.

Maybe I should reject the second assumption to make myself feel better!

A lot of people don’t “get” or won’t accept that evolution is real because of the immense time scales required. National Geographic reports on a case when evolution was witnessed over a few years.

A bacteria had been killing almost all male larvae of a species of butterfly found on two Somoan islands. A 2001 study found that 99% of the butterflies were female. As recently as 2005 when an informal count was done no males were found at all. The bacteria was really hammering the males of the species and was in danger of wiping the butterfly out completely.

However, all of a sudden (OK, it took a few years but on evolutionary time scales that is all of a sudden) scientists noticed the male butterflies making a comeback. It seems that a single male evolved a mutation which allowed it to escape the bacteria’s attacks. Because this was such a huge advantage the genes spread extremely rapidly. It seems that the whole recovery took only a few generations.

Evolution in action baby. Don’t deny it. Don’t come with your micro-evolution rubbish. Love it.

I’m banging away on my computer all day long, so anything that increases my productivity is welcome. Launchy is one of the best programs in that category and I probably use it hundreds of times a day.

Basically, Launchy is a quick program launcher. For instance, if I wanted to open up a new Excel window quickly I would:

1. Hit control-space to open up the Launchy window
2. Start typing what I am after and Launchy would guess what it is. In my case ‘ex’ is enough (Launchy learns your favorites)
3. Hit enter and up comes Excel

That’s 4 keys to open Excel!

Launchy indexes all of the shortcuts in your start menu and on the Desktop. No more scratching through the start menu looking for a shortcut.

You can do all sorts of other clever things with Launchy. Get it to index text files or commonly used Excel files. Index your bookmarks folder for each access to your favorite sites. Make a shortcut to shut down your computer.

It’s one of those programs that just works. It does what you want, it’s quick, it looks good - you will never look back.

Churchill once said:

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

I agree, which is why I get a little upset at the erosion of South Africa’s democracy which is allowed by our floor crossing law. In South Africa we vote for parties rather than people. The ANC has enacted a law which allows politicians to ‘reallocate’ votes cast for a particular party by changing parties and keeping their seats.

We vote for a particular party, but a politician may take our vote to another party by crossing the floor. Absolute rubbish - and here are some of the reasons I think this law sucks:

• It distorts the democracy by allowing politicians to steal people’s votes.
• When the law was initially requested by another party it was rejected by the ANC. However, when the NNP wanted to join the ANC there was a sudden change of heart and the crossing was allowed.
• There is a clause saying that a person can only cross if 10% of his/her party also crosses. That effectively means that no ANC member can ever cross (because 29 other members would also have to cross) while smaller parties can easily lose members. I can’t think of a single reason for this clause other than to protect the ANC.
• The whole thing can easily lead to bribery and corruption as money is used to induce crossings.

I can’t think of any reasons why floor crossing should be allowed? It feels a lot like cheating to me.

Here is the Wikipedia article on the subject.

I recently went on the excellent Olifants Wilderness Trail in Kruger. Ahead of the trip I was looking for information on what to expect and I was surprised to find almost nothing available on the internet.

I thought that I would knock together some information for those of you considering doing the trip - which I definitely recommend.

Read more »

I was running on Table Mountain on Saturday morning when I came across a rescue operation for an American woman who had slipped and tumbled 15m down the mountain. It was a beautiful day, but the rocks were slippery after heavy rains recently and she wasn’t the only person hurt on the day.

Paramedics got to the scene first and were about to go up to get her when the rescue helicopter arrived on the scene. The chopper paramedics were winched down to the injured lady and she was later lifted out and taken to hospital. I believe she is stable with broken bones and head and spine injuries.

While I was watching the whole scene it was interesting to see how many people were involved and how little value a lot of them were adding. There were at least 7 emergency services vehicles on the scene including a huge fire engine. Once the helicopter arrived nobody left, they all just stuck around to watch.

I was sitting next to about 7 paramedics who were sitting around, chatting and taking photos of the helicopter. When a pretty reporter arrived they briefly (and unsuccessfully) concentrated their energy on getting her number. Everyone was still sitting around when I left after the helicopter had flown off.

They were fun guys and girls, but it all seemed like a waste of resources.

In the last two weeks The Economist has had two articles (here and here) on our health minister, Manto. From the articles:

• AIDS is now thought to kill 1,000 South Africans each day
• Some 12% of the population, more than 5m people, are infected with HIV
• She [Manto] has sown deadly confusion in the minds of many HIV sufferers by questioning the efficacy of ARVs and exaggerating their side-effects, instead promoting the curative benefits of beetroots, garlic and African potatoes.

Now she has been accused of receiving a liver transplant because of a serious drink problem, and of continuing to drink since her transplant. The local Sunday Times, in possession of her confidential medical records, also alleges that hospital staff were forced to bring her booze during an earlier hospital stint for a shoulder operation. The newspaper maintains that she was convicted of stealing patients’ jewellery and hospital supplies while working in Botswana in the 1970s, following which she was banned from the country for ten years.

The more general of the articles criticizes Thabo and the ANC in general for firing the effective deputy minister of health instead of Manto:

“Ms Madlala-Routledge was certainly feisty. She was, for instance, fond of visiting hospitals unannounced. Often she witnessed dreadful conditions and poor management—and then talked honestly about these problems in public. To Mr Mbeki and others in the African National Congress-dominated government, this sort of initiative and candour were not evidence of a democratic representative doing her job but of an undisciplined cadre refusing to defer to her bosses, who prefer to discuss such matters behind closed doors.”

I have often thought along similar lines about the ANC. The organization had to survive years of exile and oppression so it had to develop a strong emphasis on providing a united front and absolute loyalty. When your lives are at stake and you’re fighting an oppressive regime you can’t afford to show any dissension.

The problem is that those times are gone and the ANC still emphasizes the same culture - which is bad for a democracy. Absolute loyalty is not only unnecessary, it is having a negative effect on the country.

We live in a very special universe. All sorts of things about our universe (like the strength of gravity) are perfectly tuned for the existence of life. If any of these universal qualities were even slightly changed life could not have arisen. Surely that suggests that the universe was tailored for the purpose of allowing life - presumably by some God?

The short answer is: No.

The Anthropic Principle
The more detailed answer is the Anthropic Principle. The Anthropic Principle is pretty cool and I plan on using it in some future posts so I thought I would explain it.

In short, the anthropic principle says that you shouldn’t read too much into a seemingly rare event if the only reason that you noticed the event is that it is rare.

Huh? - let’s have an example
Yeah, that did sound a little circular so lets have an example. Say you are flipping coins all day long. Eventually you’ll get 10 tails in a row - an event that in isolation has very low probability. The anthropic principle says that you shouldn’t read too much into it because the only reason you noticed was that it is rare. Most of the time nothing special was happening.

The chances of eventually getting 10 in a row are actually very high - don’t get excited when it eventually happens.

I had some friends who used to infer probabilities on the roulette table based on improbable strings of results. If they saw 5 reds in a row they inferred that black had to come up soon and bet black. The anthropic principle shows why this is madness (sorry guys). If you wait long enough you are guaranteed to eventually get a string of 5 reds, and when you do it has no bearing on the next spin.

It seems simple now, but I have had plenty of debates about this and I always find it tricky to get the point across.

So why isn’t our universe special?
The whole idea has it’s roots in cosmology. Cosmologists noticed that the universe appears to be finely tuned to creating an environment in which life can exist. It is easy to infer that God must have created it that way specially for us. However, the anthropic principle says that we shouldn’t read too much into the universe being so finely tuned. If the universe wasn’t “just right” for life then we wouldn’t be around to notice it!

The universe is special for other reasons - but it’s random luck that everything is set up to allow life.

This is a pic from a National Geographic article about the fact that Arctic ice is at a record low this year. The purple line is the average August point for the years 1979 to 2000. The white is where the ice is now.

This is extra scary because:

• The current ice coverage is well below the record low which was set in 2005
• There is still a full month of melting this summer so things are only going to get worse
• The current rate of melting is way faster than what was predicted by computer models

Frightening stuff. The thing is that climate is a complex adaptive system so this kind of thing could easily kick off a massive chain reaction of changes. I’ll blog about it sometime.

Anyway, this is why all sorts of Arctic countries are starting to stake claims to the Arctic. I recently posted about how a Russian expedition recently planted their flag on the seabed of the North Pole.

It seems a little random, but I thought I’d put up quick reviews when I finish interesting books. We’ll see it if lasts.

I just finished reading Peter Godwin’s latest book. His previous book about growing up in Rhodesia, Mukiwa, was really superb - try to get hold of it if you haven’t read it yet.

Mukiwa had a strong focus on what it was like growing up in Rhodesia, so I expected this book to be about what it’s like being in Zim as it falls apart now. There is quite a lot of that, but the book actually has two themes:

1. It’s mostly the story of the aging and eventual death of Peter’s father who was still living in Zimbabwe. I didn’t expect that, but it is written well and actually fairly powerful.
2. The decay and collapse of Zimbabwe from the late 90’s to now. I knew all this was happening but it was still interesting to get a well written personal account. Frightening too, considering I live just next door.

Overall a good book. Not nearly as good as Mukiwa but worth while.