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Sunday, November 18, 2012

New RAM

RAM prices dropped pretty low these few weeks, it was $20 for a piece of 4GB SO-DIMM two weeks ago, so I wanted to get some to upgrade my laptop to 8GB RAM. I was actually at Sim Lim that time when the price was $20, but I didn't know it was cheap then.

My printer spoiled again today, seem to be a clot at the yellow color, so I had to go down to the Nine-Ink at Sim Lim to try and get it fixed. The RAM price shot up to $22, but it is still cheap considering that it used to cost $40+. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to get the RAM since my cash flow is pretty tight recently, so I pinned the decision to my printer. The person at Nine-Ink said she could try unclogging the clot with some chemicals, but there was no guarantee that it'd work. If it didn't work, I would have to head down to brother service center for repairs. The chemical needed around an hour to work, so Anthony and I decided to get some coffee at Killiney. While drinking coffee, I decided that I should buy the RAM if my printer is fixed. From the title you would have figured out my printer is working.

So as OCD as I am, I did some comparison with my old RAM and the new one, here are the screenshots:

Micron 2GB PC3-8500F


Kingston 4GB PC3-12800

I got the 1600MHz RAM since they're of the same price for all frequencies, turns out my laptop's motherboard can only support up to 1066MHz.

Here's the pictures of the RAM itself:
Micron 2GB PC3-8500F

Kingston 4GB PC3-12800




Friday, November 16, 2012

Changing Perspective

 It was a small presentation which presented unexpected insights. Looking from the replay of the presentation, I found out that I am failing in the very thing I thought I was proud of. Of course, I know that I am out of touch with presentation since my semester has been extremely slack thus far; my presentation skills are far from top notch. But the epiphany is not on the presentation skills, it represented something bigger: the difference in perspective. My character was wrong. Comparing my performance with Anthony’s performance, I realize that the difference is not in ability, but in perspective. I realize the need to give your best in doing things. I have been slacking too much this semester that I have dismissed every single thing as small and insignificant. While the carefree nature is what I have held in pride for a long time, I have been re-presented with its problems: the ambiguous line between carefree and reckless. From the presentation replay, I believe the word best describe my performance is ‘frivolous’. While I hold my freedom and flexibility in pride, I realize that it conveys the image of being unprofessional and unserious, the lack of respect. I thought that I was portraying the image of a cool and unrestrained, but know what he’s doing person, but I am really just flying all over the charts. Anthony’s well composed posture and charisma stuck me deeply, I realized that it is the image I wanted.

The problem of this boils down to something deeper. It’s not a matter of ability/competency, the stark difference is of perspective. Anthony’s (and Dennis’) attitude has been to give all the best to whatever they do, while I have a more heck care attitude. This difference in perspective leads to the difference in how we see things and how we handle them. This in turn leads to the difference of experience and lessons learned from identical events, and the experience loop back to affect the perspective, often reinforcing it. In other words, if you care about the things you do, you keep caring, and vice versa.

Further thought brought me back to an older theory I had on character (and perspective). It often seem that attributes of a person’s character are only contrasting: carefree versus serious, extrovert versus introvert, emotional versus pragmatic, etc. But that is not true, these attributes are not mutually exclusive, you can lean towards a certain attribute more, but it’s hardly an absolute true or false. Adding on to the fact that there can be infinitely many possible perspective/attributes, all these points together form a sphere, and the character is a certain point in the sphere. Of course, philosophically it may not be a sphere, it may be boundary-less, that is possible as well, but that’s not the scope of what I’m trying to say. I started this post by naming it “changing perspective”, but it is not exactly ‘changing’, it’s more like ‘injecting’. Being carefree and flexible is cool, but I drifted too far to that it’s becoming reckless/heck-care, and benefits are diminishing. I need to inject some seriousness and professionalism to bring some balance.

To end this post off, I have two points on expectations which have been hovering in my mind for some time:
1. You can’t expect to act like A and think that people will view you as B. it’s impossible. You are how you behave.
2. You can’t expect others to fulfill your expectations, while you yourself constantly fall short of others’ expectations.
Just a quick note to record my thoughts, I might write a post on this if I can think of something to write.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Psychological Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, relatively constant condition –Wikipedia

Adapting from the idea of homeostasis, psychological homeostasis is the property that people tends to react to stimuli in a way that will maintain a comfortable state of mental condition.

The idea of psychological homeostasis is in the domain of behavioral psychology, as it looks at people's behavior in response towards stimuli in attempt to maintain a comfortable state of mind. A basic model of human actions goes like this: stimulus → process → actions. For a given stimulus, our actions depend on our thinking, how we process it. How we think depends largely on our character, which is shaped largely by our experiences. The notion of a comfortable state of mental condition is subjective. Thus, unlike an equation for a scientific formula, there are no definite set points for psychological homeostasis, how psychological homeostasis is achieved it varies with the individual.

Let’s consider two extreme examples.

First, the bitch: the one who pushes the blame to everyone else. No matter what happens, it’s always somebody else’s fault, it’s never their fault. The bitch has the best state of mental health: by pushing the blame to everyone else and become clean of any responsibility, not my fault = no stress.

The bitch is usually well equipped with woman logic, they are capable of arguing their way through everything. It is impossible to reason with them due to the nature of defensive reasoning. They have the inert ability to overturn facts to protect themselves. They employ woman logic so splendidly that often leave you speechlessly defeated. Arguably, their defensiveness may stem from an extremely low self esteem leading to the formation of giant ego bubble to mask their tiny inner core, but causes varies widely with the individual.

As a rule of thumb: avoid any confrontation with the bitch and give them what they want. Giving them what they want serves well to their psychological homeostasis and further reinforces their bitch behavior, but you really have no choice. Leave them – if possible – it’s good for your own psychological homeostasis.

On the other hand, we have the guilty. The guilty is the complete opposite of the bitch. No matter what happens, they always think that it’s their fault. They try to fix things, only to end up making things worse. They are often the nice guy trying to please everybody. The bitch loves the guilty, it’s the perfect target to offload the blame to, and the guilty would just accept anything that the bitch blames him for.

The guilty can be considered as a failure on psychological homeostasis. They gather negative energy, it is easy for them to spiral into depression with the thinking that everything is their fault. Similar to the bitch, the guilty usually have low self esteem, but they lack the bubble to hide in and protect themselves. The society today celebrates selfishness, people are more likely to build the egoistic bubble and become a bitch, than to succumb to their low self esteem and become a guilty.

Psychological homeostasis is closely related to my human level theory. To understand human levels better, read my post on the Level 1 Humans. In essence, low level humans are incapable of processing; they have no awareness on themselves or their surroundings. The higher the human level, the better the processing and awareness.

The bitch and the guilty form the two approximate ends of the behaviors which people would take to achieve psychological homeostasis. How psychological homeostasis is achieved depends on the individual’s human level. Statistically it should be a normal distribution between these two ends, but I’m biased to feel that there are more bitches, since the easiest way to achieve psychological homeostasis is to be a bitch. Everybody hates them, but they’re the happiest person in their world. Being a bitch, self fulfillment is all that matters to them.

While life is a lot easier being a bitch, it is morally meaningless to live your entire life without any self improvement. Thus, despite the good state of health from being a bitch, achieving psychological homeostasis by knowing what is right or wrong would be a more morally dignified method.

The proper exercise of psychological homeostasis gets you through the tough times in life, makes you a better person. But it requires a higher human level. You need to be able to judge properly whether you should be held accountable for a given event. This is exceptionally difficult when evidences and people (bitches) point faults to you, a morally strong person will tend to self-blame. You need to be in touch with yourself to know when you should be sorry and when shit just happens. You have lived with yourself since birth, you should very well know you own character to analyze events and judge for yourself. It is not easy; too much of ego – you become a bitch, too much of self-blame – you are depressed. This is precisely why a higher human level is required to do the processing.

Level 1 humans do not process, life is simple for them; they are basically: stimulus → reaction. Higher level humans puts themselves in between the stimulus and their reaction, by doing the proper processing, they have greater control over their reactions, learn from events and store it as part of their experience. And from the experiences stored throughout your life, they can process new event better thus gaining even more/better experience. This forms a general circle of learning. This is also the reason why different people have different wisdom regardless of age.

Being good at managing your psychological homeostasis is important. The bitches maintain a good mental state by hiding inside their ego bubble, shrieking responsibility and pushing blame to others. However, they are extremely vulnerable to drastic events, if a setback is to occur that is so great that it bursts their bubble, they fall sharply and may never recover. While all man are affected by setback to some extent, a high level human who constantly keeps himself in touch is able to respond well to drastic setbacks. They are more likely to recover, and recover faster.