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doctorskeleton · 4 years ago

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Gordon Freeman’s thesis is titled Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array in this essay i will pick it apart piece by piece to better understand what the fuck it means

Einsten-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement This bit is one of the staples of Quantum Mechanics, called the EPR paradox/entanglement. We should already know that entanglement, as a basic part of quantum physics, is when two separate particles rely on each other on their positions. It's the idea that if you measure/observe one particle, you could accurately predict the other particle because the two are ~entangled~ The EPR paradox is a a thought experiment, like a lot of quantum physics is.

The thought experiment involves a pair of particles prepared in an entangled state (note that this terminology was invented only later). Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen pointed out that, in this state, if the position of the first particle were measured, the result of measuring the position of the second particle could be predicted. If, instead, the momentum of the first particle were measured, then the result of measuring the momentum of the second particle could be predicted. They argued that no action taken on the first particle could instantaneously affect the other, since this would involve information being transmitted faster than light, which is forbidden by the theory of relativity. They invoked a principle, later known as the "EPR criterion of reality", positing that, "If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity". From this, they inferred that the second particle must have a definite value of position and of momentum prior to either being measured. This contradicted the view associated with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, according to which a quantum particle does not have a definite value of a property like momentum until the measurement takes place.

Supraquantum Structures I can't find any definitions nor anything in scientific papers that tell me what this is without me having to go down a rabbithole of terminology. So instead I'm going to look at the terminology itself to see what it means. Supra is a prefix meaning "above" or "beyond". The definition of quantum is "a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents." That's a little obtuse for a definition so let's just go witth this instead. "Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that describes the physical properties of nature at small scales, of the order of atoms and subatomic particles." If we take "quantum" to mean "atoms/subatomic particles" then Supraquatum would just mean something bigger than a particle, right? A supraquantum structure could be a single cell organism.

Now, lets put the first bit together, EPR Entanglement on supraquantum structures. These are observations on the entanglement of objects bigger than particles, which is hard to prove in it of itself, so the next bit must be important to the entire puzzle Induction through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength Induction is a way of charging objects. In the induction process, a charged object is brought near but not touched to a neutral conducting object. The presence of a charged object near a neutral conductor will force (or induce) electrons within the conductor to move.Nonlinear dynamics is the branch of physics that studies systems governed by equations more complex than the linear, aX+b form. Nonlinear systems, such as the weather or neurons, often appear chaotic, unpredictable or counter-intuitive, and yet their behavior is not random. Transuranic just means any element with a higher atomic number than uranium (92) So i seemed to have glanced over the "pulse" bit in the thesis title because of the acronym throwing me off. so the ELW pulse from a mode-locked source array is the electric pulses coming from the test chamber's laser "source array", and its Mode-Locked.

Mode-locking is a technique in optics by which a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration

I can't find any definition of souce array so im going to assume that's what the laser machine is. This bit was easy, but to go on about it; the electric pulses/lasers theyre using to induct the crystal is on the long part of the wavelength scale, which doesnt make much sense considering that it looks like electricity. It makes more sense once you consider what the scientists say before you enter the test chamber "I'm afraid we'll be deviating a bit from standard analysis procedures today, Gordon" "This is the purest sample we've seen yet, and potentially the most unstable" Now, the actual machine is called the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, and it only really exists in half-life. but if i pick apart the name i can figure out what it really does. A spectrometer is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure spectral components of a physical phenomenon. Spectrometer is a broad term often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomenon where the spectral components are somehow mixed. Anti-mass is just another term for Negative Mass, something that also only really exists in theoretical physics, or at least is only referred to in a theoretical sense.

In theoretical physics, negative mass is a type of exotic matter whose mass is of opposite sign to the mass of normal matter, e.g. −1 kg. Such matter would violate one or more energy conditions and show some strange properties, stemming from the ambiguity as to whether attraction should refer to force or the oppositely oriented acceleration for negative mass. It is used in certain speculative hypotheses, such as on the construction of traversable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive. Currently, the closest known real representative of such exotic matter is a region of negative pressure density produced by the Casimir effect.

So this spectrometer would analyze negative mass. This is already getting into science fiction but you can also call theoretical physics "science fiction" itself, just with more math.

To go on, we must assume that the anti-mass spectrometer should be mode-locking an ELW to induct a transuranic crystal, but in reality it's not an ELW at all. Long wavelengths are invisible, most wavelengths are. an extremely long wavelength would probably? be longer than radio waves, and this is going into the electromagnetic spectrum

"Extremely Long Wavelength" isn't even a real term, so we'll have to turn it into one. "Extremely Low Frequency" is the closest real term in name

Extremely low frequency (ELF) is the ITU designation for electromagnetic radiation (radio waves) with frequencies from 3 to 30 Hz, and corresponding wavelengths of 100,000 to 10,000 kilometers, respectively. In atmospheric science, an alternative definition is usually given, from 3 Hz to 3 kHz. In the related magnetosphere science, the lower frequency electromagnetic oscillations (pulsations occurring below ~3 Hz) are considered to lie in the ULF range, which is thus also defined differently from the ITU radio bands.

ELF's also have multiple definitions depending on who you ask.

ELF is a subradio frequency. Some medical peer reviewed journal articles refer to ELF in the context of "extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic fields (MF)" with frequencies of 50 Hz and 50–80 Hz. United States Government agencies, such as NASA, describe ELF as non-ionizing radiation with frequencies between 0 and 300 Hz. The World Health Organization (WHO) have used ELF to refer to the concept of "extremely low frequency (ELF) electric and magnetic fields (EMF)" The WHO also stated that at frequencies between 0 and 300 Hz, "the wavelengths in air are very long (6000 km at 50 Hz and 5000 km at 60 Hz), and, in practical situations, the electric and magnetic fields act independently of one another and are measured separately."

A real life example of the usage of these electromagnetic frequencies is the US government using ELFs to communicate with deeply submerged submarines. If this is the type of wavelength Gordon plans on using to induct a transuranic crystal, then he wouldn't need to have a spectrometer do it, nor any mode-locked source array. So it couldn't be ELFs, right? let's forget this tangent and move on IF it is an electromagnetic wave he's using to induct a transuranic crystal, then it would more likely be above the visible light spectrum. The thing is, the electricity in the scene with the anti-mass spectrometer lands within the visible light spectrum. It's green, and green has a wavelength of 500–565 nm (frequency of 530–600 THz). thats 500 nanometers, not a long wavelength at all.

I'm sure whatever writer at valve decided to write out this thesis title didn't research these terms as much as i have just now, either that or they purposefully made it sound obtuse enough to fit into science fiction without it needing to make sense. But the fun of science fiction is that it's based on real science IMO. so lets forget that it says ELW and go the other direction. Extremely Short Wavelength.

Inducting anything with ionizing radiation of a gamma ray would definitely get you results, under any spectrometer. now, i want to go back to the tangent of the transuranic crystal. It's completely possible that there is no such thing and it was made up for the game with the in-game lore that it's from Xen or whatever, but i want to look into the possibility of using elements that exist.

The game implies that they found the crystal but it doesn't outright say it, which covers their ass on the fact that transuranic elements are synthetically made. Neptunium and Plutonium are made through decay chains in Uranium and can also be found in atmospheric tests after a nuclear explosion. So Neptunium and Plutonium can technically be "found".

So let's go through all the transuranic elements and see if any of them can become crystals! Since they all are unstable i'm also gonna list their half-lives for fun. For reference, STP means standard temperature and pressure

Neptunium (93) - solid at stp, appears silvery and metallic. the most stable isotopes are Np-237 with a half-life of 2.14 million years; Np-236 with a half-life of 154,000 years; and Np-235 with a half-life of 396 days. it's also pyrophoric so not a contender. Plutonium (94) - solid at stp, appears silvery white but oxidizes into grey. it can turn into a pyrophoric powder. Pu-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years and Pu-241's half-life is 14.4 years. Amercium (95) - solid at stp, also a silvery white look, oxidizes. it's used in smoke detectors! half life of 432.2 years Curium (96) - solid stp, its a hard, dense silvery metal that glows purple in the dark. oxidizes very easily, half life ~162 days Berkelium (97) - solid stp. described as a soft silvery-white metal with a half-life of 330 days, but the previous elements would decay into elements with a lower atomic number, where as Berkelium decays into Californium Californium (98) - This one crystalizes under normal pressure, slowly tarnishes under air. silvery appearance. can be used to start up nuclear reactors. Has 20 known isotopes and all their half-lives vary, but its about 2.6 years. Einstienium (99) Silvery and glows blue in the dark, has a paramagnetic field and it's most common isotope has a half-life of 20.47 days Fermium (100) - the last of the elements that can be created by bombarding lighter elements with neutrons. Longest lived half-life is 100 days, not much is known about it. Mendelevium (101) - can only be produced in particle accelerators, half life between 51 days and 1.17 hours Nobelium (102) - also only avalible through particle accelerators, half life between 58 minutes and 3.1 minutes. the shorter half-lifed isotope is easier to create and therefore used more often for research Lawrencium (103) - from here on out theres less and less information for each transuranic element, including this one. half-life of 11 hours. Rutherfordium (104) - half life of 1.3 hours Dubnium (105) - half life of 28 hours Seaborgium (106) - half life of 14 minutes Bohrium (107) - half life unconfirmed but its between 61 seconds and 690 seconds

I'm gonna go ahead and stop right there since they tend to follow a pattern. The lower the half-life, the less research there is on the element, and it only gets shorter and shorter. So it seems like Californium is the only possible element that could've been used in the experiment because it forms a crystallized structure under normal pressure, as well has having usage in modern nuclear science to start up nuclear reactors, as well as having pretty stable/long-lasting isotopes. the most stable isotope has a half-life of 898 years but the most commonly used isotope is 2.6 years. now, it should be noted that the lower the half-life the more radioactive an element is. all of the transuranic elements decay radioactively and Californium is no exception. Californium's radioactivity has a tendency to disrupt the formation of red blood cells by bio-accumulating in skeletal tissue.

Here's some more information on it's physical properties:

Californium is a silvery white actinide metal with a melting point of 900 ± 30 °C (1,650 ± 50 °F) and an estimated boiling point of 1,745 K (1,470 °C; 2,680 °F). The pure metal is malleable and is easily cut with a razor blade. Californium metal starts to vaporize above 300 °C (570 °F) when exposed to a vacuum. Below 51 K (−222 °C; −368 °F) californium metal is either ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic (it acts like a magnet), between 48 and 66 K it is antiferromagnetic (an intermediate state), and above 160 K (−113 °C; −172 °F) it is paramagnetic (external magnetic fields can make it magnetic).

The element has two crystalline forms under 1 standard atmosphere of pressure: a double-hexagonal close-packed form dubbed alpha (α) and a face-centered cubic form designated beta (β).

This is a Californium-252 crystal, the one I predict would’ve been used in the test. It has a 2.6 year half-life.

That’s all the research i’ve got for you.

TL;DR I predict that they’re using Gamma rays through the anti-mass spectrometer to induct Californium into making teleportation real with quantum entanglement.

#gordon freeman #half-life #half life #HLVRAI #gordon #freeman #dr freeman #doctor freeman #txt #quantum entanglement #quantum physics #quantum mechanics #inorganic chemistry #electromagnetic spectrum

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sun-stormz · 4 years ago

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Genshin Impact Visions & Gods

This has been bugging me since i started playing in mid november, but what makes a certain Archon give a Character their Vision. Considering i couldnt find any official info, I decided to do some research on each Archon and then on the player Characters we have of each element as of beginning of December 2020.

This will contain spoilers on characters & story!

Note: The travelers will not be included due to them not having Visions and having more then one Element.

I am basing this on overlaping themes and not on anything related to the actual Archon. I did add some info on the archons tho, due to this being about Visions and archons

“It is unclear whether Visions are directly granted by its element's corresponding Archon or by the nation's Archon. There is also the possibility that granting a Vision requires approval from both Archons. Yet another possibility is that they are granted by neither, and are instead given by the gods on Celestia.”

-Genshin Wiki on reciving Visions

Starting with my Favourite Element, Electro.

Electro wise, We have five Characters as of right now: Kequin, Razor, Beidou, Fishl and Lisa. The Electro Archon, God of Eternity, Baal, is the ruling Archon of the Area, Inazuma, whitch is the area we are getting in the 1.4 update in 2021.

To start off i read into any info i could find on Baal and i gotta say, she is a interesting Fellow. As of right now we know that Baal has locked Inazuma down and has initiated a Vision Hunt Decree, due to her thinking Visions should be under the sole domain of divinity. She also hasnt handed out any Visions since this decree which means all Electro characters we know have gotten theirs before this drastic change.

Now, why did these 5 characters get their Visions? Well each character has a different reason, from Razor wanting to protect those he calls friends to Lisa simpley saying it would be of use to her and just getting it. From what I've found there isnt really a big overlap in the reciving of the characters, but what is overlaping is their fixation on something.

Razor recived his vision due to him being fixated on getting stronger to protect his friends after he failed to while being dragged away by an abyss mage

Kequin was fixated on sharing her beliefs, that the people of Lyiue shouldnt rely on Rex Lapis and have their Pride and that their views are of Equal importance

Fishl was so fixated on a book series she changed herself to be like the main character, fishl and her Vision manifested in the form of Oz, one of the characters from said book

Beidou was fixated on killing Haishan, a sea monster, from a young age and recived her vision when she did so

Lisa is pretty much fixated on understanding magecraft and the cost of reciveing a Vision.

Now onto a easier Element, Geo

The Archon of Geo and Contracts, Morax, Archon of Lyiue.

Morax or Rex Lapis, was one of the oldest gods, defended Lyiue in the Archon war, the Currency in Teyvat, Mora, is named after him and as of Chp.1 Act 3 we know that he has taken the form of Zhongli and has retired as the Geo Archon.

Morax, Along with Barbatos, are the only two Archons of the Original Seven that havent been replaced.

Now, who are our Geo Characters? Noelle and Ningguang, two dedicated powerhouses! This one is fairly simple, thanks to voicelines we have of Zhongli since he came out as a player character (Bless the pity pull for giving me this man)

In his “About Ningguang” Voiceline he says: ”Despite the multitude of affairs she deals with in a day, Ningguang always continues to press on. A rare gem indeed. I'm reminded of the time that she used to walk barefoot from Yaoguang Shoal to the south wharf, trying to sell her wares as she went. Time is cruel to humans.”

Noelle recived her vision when Jean Acknowledged her hard work when she tried to get into the knights of favonius. in her “Vision” story it states: This was a lucky day that she would always remember, for she would receive recognition from two all-important sources this day: once from Jean, and the other from the gods. Her hard work has been remembered after all.

So for short: Hard working and dedicated = Geo Vision

Next up we have Anemo

Our wonderful Tone deaf bard, Venti or otherwise known as the Archon of Anemo and freedom, Barbatos, the not really ruling Archon of Mondstadt.

Barbatos is a freedom loving guy and refuses to rule over Mondstadt, the city of freedom and is by far the weakest of the Archons, despite this the people of Modstadt still love and adore their windy God.

I went into this one thinking “Oh this is easy, itll be love for freedom or something!” Nope, it surprisingly wasnt. Jean and sucerose recived their visions through their Determination it seems. Sucerose from doing her 159th Dandilion seed Simmering experiment and Jean seemed to be determened to be a good grandmaster and to protect Mondstadt.

That aside, i couldnt find many overlaps with the two, they are both free spirited and love what they do.

Now on to Pyro

Pyro, the Element of the Archon Murata who is also the god of War, is wielded by the fan fav Diluc, as well as Klee, Xiangling, Amber, Bennett and Xinyan.

Not much is known about Murata, Venti describes her as a “ wayward, warmongering wretch” and thats about all we know. She presides over Natlan.

Now to the characters, this was acually the easiest of them all: Passion.

Every Pyro user has a huge amount of passion that a rolemodel or Loved one ignited within them.

This one definitly surprised me the least and i am really excited for when we meet Murata and Natlan.

Diluc has the same passion his father had

Klee has a passion for Explosives that her mother ignited

Xiangling has a passion for food and cooking she got from her father

Amber got her Passion for Mondstadt and the outriders from her grandfather

Bennett got the Passion for adventure from all the old adventurers he calls dads, yes Dads as in plural, that raised him

Xinyan has a passion for Rock, tho i havent found out more of her story due to her being so new.

Now heading onto Hydro

Hydro, along with Dendro, is the only element where we do not know the name of the Archon. All we do know is that they are the Archon of Hydro and Justice and rule over Fontaine.

So straight to the Hydro characters: Barbara, Mona and Xingqiu.

I dont really count Childe due to the only thing talked about is his dilusion and i am rather confused on if he even has a real vision but i still love him lots

Im going to be honest this one really had me running the brain gears for a while.

All three recived their Vision as an extension of the self.

Barbara got hers after helping a sick boy by singing to him to help him sleep through a fever, Mona rekindeled a learning aid to her vision, to aid her with her search for the truth of the rules of the world and Xingqiu got his after he explained the principles of his clans martial arts anew, litterally saying that martial artists should see Visions as a extension of the self.

Last but definitly not least, Cryo

Cryo, the Element of the Archon know as the Tsaritsa. We acually dont know her corrisponding ideal nor her acual name and this one was just as geargrinding as Hydro.

The Tsaritsa, Ruler of the fatui and the one that gives them their Dilusions, is one interresting lady. We get a description of her from Childe: “Her Royal Highness the Tsaritsa is actually a gentle soul. Too gentle, in fact, and that's why she had to harden herself. Likewise, she declared war against the whole world only because she dreams of peace. Her gaze was cold but pure, arrogant yet sharp. She was not only the sacrosanct Cryo Archon but a true warrior also.”

Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona and Qiqi, our current four Cyro userer, all have rather interesting storys when it comes to how they got their Vision.

All dont accept something

Kaeya felt guilty about hiding who he was from the family that adopted him after his father abandoned him to be a spy in Mondstadt, and told Diluc, someone he used to be very close with, the truth, since then he sees his vision as a stern reminder that he must live his life under a heavy burden of Lies. He pretty much doesnt accept the truth of his situatin and would rather live with that heavy burden

Chonyun is surpressing a part of himself, the condition he has, and as Xiangling says in Chongyuns stories, is denying a part of him. He trys to work around his condition and wont accept it as the way to go about how he practices exocrism.

Diona wont accept the truth about her father being a Alcoholic, and places the blame on the Alcohol industy instead of accepting that he isnt as high and mighty as she thought. She wont accept that her fathers bad control over his drinking habits is the reason he acts as he does and instead blames the alcohol industry.

Qiqi didnt want to accept her death nor does she really accept her Zombie like traits and only uses them when she needs to defend herself.

My theory is the Cyro Visions are recevied when you wont accept the grim reality as it is, if this is positive or negative variates

When it comes to the last element, Dendro, we sadly know nothing nor have we seen any dendro character in action. So that might be a addition later on.

I’m really interrested if we find out the actual criteria for reciving each Vision one day

#genshin impact #genshin diluc #genshin theory #kaeya #diluc ragnvindr #zhongli #childe #genshin venti #genshin chongyun #this game is taking over my life

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luque-moreau · 4 years ago

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y'know i think its about time ive refurbished my psychonauts headcanons/theories

what??? me??? rewriting my psychonauts headcanons in a more comprehensible and informed way???

alright, i think everyone knows what im talking about, by headcanons i mean headcanon as in singular, and as singular, i mean my "raz is somewhere on the spectrum of adhd".

so lets just get into it:

what is adhd actually?

adhd by definition stands for attention deficit hyperactive/hyperfocus disorder (yes, let me get into the details in just a sec). it is a nerodevelopmental disorder that is almost completely reliant on genetic factors, however conditions during pregnancy can sometimes contribute to certain aspects of how adhd manifests itself.

long story short, people with adhd have a smaller frontal lobe, and therefore less dopamine in general (even though yes, it is more complicated than that).

theres also a little bit of "chicken or the egg first" goin on here, certain behaviors or personality tendencies can also affect how adhd is presented in one individual to the next, however its still not clear if that is because it is an accommodating for a certain thought process or if someones experiences and personality shape their symptoms of adhd entirely. its a very blurry line, and the answer is different for everybody.

hyperactive type

hyperactive type is probably the closest to most stereotypical depictions of adhd, think the 5 year old whos parents brush off their child’s hyperactivity as something that will “go with age”. however, this isn’t only present in children, adults with adhd have to deal with a constant need for stimuli to make up for the lack of dopamine their current activity is providing them. this results in someone fidgeting frequently in repetitive or predictable motions, unable to hold attention to a specific task for long periods of time, or many other of the symptoms associated with adhd.(i sadly cannot provide more information in this area, i am not knowledgeable enough to...)

hyperfocus type

hyperfocus type is a tricky one, it can look like the complete opposite of adhd in theory. hyperfocus can look similar to special interests or hyperfixation, a great deal of time and knowledge dedicated to a very particular thing (although it is important to note that even though hyperfixations and special interests are incredibly similar, special interests is a term more typically used within autistic-circles, and isnt really the best word to use if you happen to be neurotypical). Think of maybe that kid who knows all the cool animal facts and won’t shut up about them. Its because certain trains of thought or activities might release more dopamine then others, so to get more of that dopamine, someone of hyperfocus type will be mentally unable to stop thinking or doing a very specific task or topic. this results in someone seemingly always spacing out, unable to change subjects or changing subjects too fast or with little to no correlation, or being completely unable to have enough motivation to do simple things.

personally i tend to fall under the category of hyperfocus myself rather than hyperactive, however the two are not mutually exclusive, its more common to find people with both types rather than just one. even myself, i might exhibit more tendencies to place me under the label of hyperfocus, but that doesn’t mean i don’t have any symptoms of the hyperactive type. its my personality that affects my mannerisms, which then makes certain aspects of my symptoms more or less apparent. Thats because im an INTP-T, i just tend to be more to myself and constantly in a state of thinking abstractly. I have trouble communicating and even sometimes recognizing my needs, and get to a point where im unable to do the simplest of things without feeling emotionally drained. Thats just my experience though, everybodys different.

so what the fuck does this have to do with raz then?

well lets think about it, rather than have it just be me projecting myself onto a comfort character:

raz finds issue with connecting to kids his age

lets be honest. none of the campers really like raz that much. or at least some do the bare minimum to be try and be polite. it doesn’t seem like any of the other campers besides dogen, whos also socially outcasted, are really fond of raz. lili might like him, but that can definitely be interpreted as curiosity in someone new and different from the norm. It might not be that the kids despise him, but nobodys opinionated enough to care whether he is around or not.

social isolation is one of the most damning things i had to experience from an early age and still feel even today. there is a sense of feeling that you are different among your peers, whether that is a good thing or bad thing. it feels difficult to interact with other people you are not familiar with, and can really stunt you emotionally and socially. from a really early age, theres somethin in you that knows something is very different between the experiences of your peers compared to your own, and it can feel incredibly isolating.

raz and his borderline stupidity

time to get real again. raz is a fucking idiot. at least in the sense that sometimes his decisions seem incredibly spontaneous and not really thought through. he runs from home to attend a summer camp, not really thinking about the logistics of how he will get there, how the staff will react, how long its gonna take for his parent to find him, and so on. it doesn’t seem like he over or underestimates his abilities, he just goes for it without considering. that doesnt seem like the smartest thing to do, even though we know hes incredibly intelligent when it comes to larger, abstract situations. its the little details that he misses, small minuet things that seem unimportant that he overlooks, which can sometimes make things harder for him in the end.

i think its obvious that impulsivity is one symptom of adhd. however i cannot stress how difficult it is to think at supersonic speed and still feel incredibly stupid. i mean, thinking faster doesn’t inherently mean you will have better ideas, you can always be stupider faster, but being able to realize stupid mistakes or inconsistencies in your own thought process is annoying as hell. it feels like every time you try to recognize the issue, fix it, and move forward, you only end up not paying attention to another issue that gets bigger and more annoying than the first. Its always two steps forward, one step back, constantly making the same mistakes even though you try everything in your power to avoid them or grow as a person. The simplest of facts, ideas, or just things to remember end up being forgotten, and once youre reminded of them you remember them and feel like an idiot. however, arbitrary things and complex issues are much easier to digest and remember for me, things like history and the whole blame game charade of it all, biology and how every minuet thing has a greater impact on others and intertwines with every single factor of its environment, philosophy and theorizing why we think the way we do and what can be changed. but oh shit, im a dumbass i forgot to do my laundry. shit. god fuckin dammit.

empathy over sympathy

one of the basic themes of psychonauts is empathy. simple as that. raz goes around into other peoples brains, and tries to help them as much as he can, even if his efforts are not always successful in the way he intended. he never demonizes anyone to the point of unredeemability, and can empathize and understand other peoples perspectives. hes open to new ideas and

although some studies out there theorize that empathy is impaired due to adhd, from my perspective i feel like that is simply not true. if anything, i would say the sensitivity that comes with adhd (hypersensitivity) only enhances that empathy. i could definitely see social disconnection being one of the reasons it might appear that someone with adhd is less empathetic, however i would doubt that adhd would impair a persons empathy. adhd tends to also entail heightened emotions, this doesn’t necessarily mean a more outwardly emotional person, however it definitely shifts a persons perspective of their own emotions as well as others. the concept of hypersensitivity also completely contradicts the idea of people with adhd be less empathetic.

miscommunication and disconnect

sigh, the dad thing. yup. raz has that very iffy relationship with his dad at the beginning of the game which is eventually resolved. very abruptly, might i add. but thats not what this is about, thats a topic for another day. miscommunication seemed to be the root of the issue, however we only get razs side of the story. not to mention the severity of his claims and willingness to seemingly drop everything afterwards. kinda sus, ngl.

alright this ones a doosey. this, i feel, cements my theory pretty well. like i mentioned before, social disconnect and hypersensitivity are side effects of the symptoms of adhd. this means people with adhd are highly more likely to either misinterpret someones words or actions if those in question are not completely transparent, its because they tend to overthink and interpenetrate responses with too much thinkin n such. the social disconnect makes a whole lot of it worse, it can just pile on top of already established feelings of inadequacy and isolation. and oversharing as a poor coping mechanism isnt an exclusively adhd related thing, it tends to be shared within similar neruodevelopmental disorders such as autism or even ptsd. i find it incredibly easy to disconnect myself from my own emotions at times and think critically at what i feel and how it affects me. which is a bad thing. if i dont acknowledge my emotions like they are my own for too long, everything falls apart. its not fun. but, that disconnect can make talking about certain more traumatic experiences or instances that had deep personal effects on my life and development as a person much easier to just share. and not always in an appropriate manner, comedic opportunity can be v e r y enticing. this also explains why raz might have been able to drop everything about his dad after he apologized. he didn’t really, he probably still suffers just as much afterwards as he did before. but he probably wont realize that for awhile, since logically, the issue has been resolved. long story short, he has not had the time to cope, and to put that off he detaches himself from those feelings. w a c k

of course i have other reasons why i feel like raz could potentially have adhd, or at least be accurately represented in headcanon with adhd, some minor mentions being:

he uses his camp map as a journal to track his in-game progress, list of goals, and notes/snip-its of information. writing down information on some form of notepad or book is a common tool used by kids and even adults with adhd to help them keep track of minuet, individual tasks. its just using a planner, but with a bit more information.

just from my personal perspective, the lengths raz goes to pursue his dream of being a psychonaut feel more like a special interest/hyper fixation sort of thing. he can jump between having genuine conversations with his fellow campers and just exploring the campground, to investing himself entirely in obtaining his goal, even when it seems almost impossible. thats some serious dedication to one very specific thing, y’know?

this one isnt as solid as the other but: m̶̖̰̯̫̍͝o̵̦͖̟͈̹̤̥̝͐̿̄̀̀̎̓ņ̶̛̭̠̐̊̆̍͝ķ̸̝͈̺̙̰̊e̶͉͚̼̅̔͗̂͐̍̕͝͝y̶̦̖̼͖̪͎̝̖̠̐̑͋̾̔̑́͐͘ ̵̢̲̘͎͉̔̀͒̄͌͊̀͌̀m̴̲̫̮̪̖̍̐͆̕͜͝ͅả̶͙͚͗n̶̗̳̩̙̘̼̦̦͇͝ ̷̡̨̡͔̗͕̘͍̥̑͒̎̐̃g̴͔̔̈̅̐̏́̌̔̈́́o̶̥̱̽̆̂͌̀͗ ̶̝̩͙͕͛́s̴̛͓̥̲̜͓͚̣̠̆̓̌͌p̶̜̹̯̦̫̯̣̎͐̽̉̾ḙ̴͇̬͑̈́̐̈́͘͠ͅȅ̶̡̗̞̩͔̫̪͈͑̓͗d̵̠͇͎̜͔͇͒̈́́̀̅̈́̒͘y̸̡̦̠̻̖̥̿ͅ. yeah, its the most generalizing reason but look, hes moving nonstop the entire game, climbing and running around the entire goddamn place wrecking havoc. a bit of imp can be found in most people with adhd if you look hard enough.

so thanks for reading this far i guess? im oversharing even right now with this, like an i d i o t but yknow what i dont want to read the great gatsby rn, so ive got nothin better to do. who knows, maybe the second game will give us more info to either support/discredit this theory? gotta wait for pn2 i guess

:^)

#psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #theory #headcanon #razputin aquato #this is real biased #isnt it

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the1312daysofchristmas · 3 years ago

Note

Hi… I wanted to ask this on anon so I didn’t ask on your personal, idk if this is too personal or anything to ask but

Do you have a problem with people saying they have a mental disorder if they don’t have a diagnosis? Like for me so… I have been diagnosed with anxiety but I am like 99% sure I have bipolar disorder. And like I know you can’t diagnose me so I’m not going to go into depth with my symptoms but ever since I was like, 11, I used to get very depressed to the point where I contemplated ending it but then i would snap out of it and I think for me my manic phase are hypomanic bc ive never experienced like the full range of those symptoms but my depressive phases get very rough esp if I have external stressors but it will go through what I assume to be these phases like sometimes within the day esp if I have a stressor.

I am in nursing school and I work at a psych hospital so like this isn’t coming out of nowhere, I am very familiar with all mental disorders and it was actually during my psych nursing class and learning about bipolar disorder that I was like… hm… why does this feel like a mirror right now. I am aware I should get to a therapist and get an actual diagnosis (if I had money I would lol) but like idk. Idk if it’s worth going to my doctor at my physical and being like “hey I think I have this” I am lucky enough now that I am in a good place and can manage my symptoms but I am terrified I will go through a stressor again and lose it so idk. I mean I feel like I already know the answer but I wanted to ask anyway to see your take :/

Anyway idk as a future medical professional I think self diagnosis got a bad rep and it’s like idk I think for mental disorders esp you can tell if you have anxiety and it’s a persistent problem. You can tell if you have depression. I know bipolar disorder is harder to diagnose but idk I think since I’m in the field it’s easier? Idk I felt like a sense of relief with learning about it and finding similarities and being like “well maybe that’s why I’m like that”. But idk now I’m feeling uneasy bc I don’t have a diagnosis and I don’t want to be like, stepping over people who were diagnosed. Thank you in advance if you read all this and yeah I’m sorry I know it’s a lot and this is controversial

ok this is a long post so im putting it under a cut but tldr, no i dont have a problem with it. it doesnt matter if you actually have an illness, it matters if you find a solution to your problem. if treating yourself like you have a certain condition makes it easier to go through life, then keep doing what works for you, you are doing nothing wrong. this all goes for physical and mental illnesses.

im a firm proponent of self diagnosis. i wouldnt be here if i didnt have the confidence to research mental illnesses and advocate for myself. as someone who is extremely familiar with the medical profession on account of being the daughter of a doctor and a nurse and spending my childhood running around a hospital, im extremely privileged to even have the knowledge and ability to do so, and i try to bear in mind the understandable hesitancy of people without this advantage. i know that you are well within your right to refuse medication that makes you sick, i know that you can complain about a doctor that isnt listening to you, i know that you are allowed and encouraged to be adamant about things you are told dont matter, and in addition to that, i have a VERY well known doctor and a nurse in my corner, and i am STILL treated as though i do not understand my own experiences enough to have any authority more often than i am not.

the reason self diagnosis gets a bad rep imo is because people have constructed this boogeyman of the worst case scenario, people collecting mental illnesses they dont have for attention as opposed to what it is, people doing research into their experiences and making theories on what they have so they can manage it. youll often see the take of "i dont hate self dxd i just hate people who do it for attention" and i think thats very irresponsible considering a symptom of many mental illnesses is thinking youre faking it and doing it for attention, nevermind the fact that attention seeking behaviour is literally a symptom of many mental illnesses people often dont want to empathize with. gatekeeping whos illness is real just keeps people who need help out. i could go into an anarchist screed about democratizing health, but basically, as someone whos life has been saved by my insistence on self diagnosis, and whos life has been made significantly easier by treating myself as though i have the conditions that i theorize i have, self diagnosis saves lives, and i, as an advocate for disabled people of all kinds on my island, will never put any conditionals on self diagnosis. it doesnt matter if you find the right name for your problem, it matters if you find a solution that works. i have yet to meet any of these fabled people who never try to receive a professional opinion, only people who literally cant.

as for feeling guilty, ill repeat how i opened this answer: it does not matter what exactly your problem is, it matters that you find a solution that works. in medicine generally, there will be a wide spectrum of problems with overlapping treatments, things which are similar but distinct, things which look identical but are completely different and at different levels of concern. it doesnt really matter which grab bag of bullshit your brain is reaching from, it matters that you know how to deal with what it throws at you, whatever that may be. dont worry about getting it right, worry about getting it working. okay?

for advice on how to deal with doctors, its helpful to pose it as a hypothetical as opposed to an absolute. when i bring up things im dealing with that i have a theory about i say "i think i have x" or "i think i might have x" or "i have a lot of symptoms of x". doctors are often egotistical and are easily challenged so it helps to pose it at a problem they can solve as opposed to one youve solved for them otherwise they get spooked. in my experience posing it this way leads them to actually interrogate this line of symptoms, and theyll ask you why you think that, and you can bring up symptoms that led you to that conclusion, and ones that give you trouble especially. for example, ive said "i think i may have autism or adhd? or both" to several doctors, and they either agree with me (i believe its been put in my file as a possibility now although i cant get an official test done due to financial and resource restrictions) or they ask why i think so, and i detail what i believe is due to my autism. its small, but this reframing helps a lot.

i think this covers all you said but my head is empty as hell.

#dils declares #mental health //#hospitals //#i hope i hit everything!!

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mythiica · 5 years ago

Text

IkeSenNet OC Event (1)

IM LATE but its still today so im good

i made moodboards and i have more info for my children

for those of you who don’t know, i have 2 ocs in the ikesen universe: Asa and Jiwoo!

I know I’ve already introduced them both, but they have evolved since I’ve shared information about them! (I’ll leave up the old posts, but will remove them from my masterlist) ((minor tw for mention of self harm in asa’s bio))

Birth name: Ana Minodora Roşu*

Goes by: Asa Vermillion (roşu means red in Romanian)

Star sign: Virgo

Physical

Age (when blipped back): 23

Height: 5ft 5

Body shape: Endomorph (thICc, hour-glass)

Eye color: Hazel green (left), brown (right)

Skin tone: Pale child

Hair: Platinum blonde, wears loose (above her shoulders) or will tie back, has bangs

Scars: under lip from when she fell off of a swing, self harm scars on her chest and right arm

History

Asa (born Ana, changed upon moving to Japan) Vermillion was born in Romania in and emigrated to the States while she was a few months old. It was always hard for her to adjust as Asa was often excluded from groups. She had a lonely childhood and struggled with body image in middle school and high school. Her relationship with her parents is tight, and was verbally/emotionally abused until she left for college.

Despite leaving her self harm habits behind, Asa still had a hard time fitting in and finding her place. When she had the opportunity to travel to Japan, she jumped at the offer to see new things.

In Japan, Asa met Jiwoo and made friends at the laboratory she interned in – she fell in love with the country and her work there, so after college, she accepted an internship with the company.

Education: Completed college at Princeton, now working in Japan to further explore her love for chemical physics

Things that haunt her

~ Death/dying – is prone to overthinking about the world (string theory, subatomic particles, big bang, existence itself, etc) and results in panic attacks

~ Her ex-girlfriend – was in a bad state of mind when they got together and let herself get walked on. Only recently left the relationship and is worried that her ex will stalk her

~ Not being good enough – Asa is a people pleaser and will try to show off a bit to look good/appreciated. Simply a conditioned response to living with her parents, but is easily influenced by what other people think of her.

Things she’d never tell a soul

~ Continues to beat herself up mentally and only lets up after going to Sengoku (has other things to focus on)

~ Stole a toy from a girl in daycare one time and felt so guilty about it that she got the girl a new set

~ Likes to fantasize about being skinny / beautiful like a model

Personality

~ Outwardly shy to new people, easily trusting, opens up to friends and can be very bubbly, likes to make jokes, is easy to talk to, not good at comforting / would rather give advice, hates lying

~ Can be very stubborn, lingers on things more than she should, hates being wrong, puts off things / procrastinates

Likes and dislikes

Favourite colour: anything pastel

Favourite food: donuts, dumplings

Least favourite: brussel sprouts, raw fish, yogurt

Spicy food: No she is weak

Favourite smell: Citrus, cinnamon

Hopes for the future

Pre-Sengoku, Asa wants to accomplish something major – write a book or find a major discovery in the science field – anything that would solidify her name so that she is remembered. It is a silly thing, but she wants to be celebrated or to at least get back at her parents with her accomplishments.

Post-Sengoku, Asa still wants to write and discover more, but she also wants to have a family (husband(s) and children). She loves the idea of having good friends and family, but is shy to suggest it.

Relationships

Parents: Crina Vermillion (mother), Mihai Vermillion (father)

Siblings: None

Children: Etsuko Vermillion*, Ruxandra (Roxie) Tokugawa, Kokuro (Koku) Tokugawa, Luca Vermillion*

Current Partner(s): Kennyo, Ieyasu Tokugawa

Friends: Jiwoo Shin, Sonya Tsvetayeva ( @caitea-ward‘s oc), Kaida Gates ( @mexicancarolina‘s oc), Ieyasu, Shingen, Mitsunari

Pet: cat named Michi

Unrequited love: well it was ieyasu but then i made it a poly :)

Enemies: none (at the moment)

*Asa x Kennyo children take Asa’s last name

Birth name: Jiwoo Shin

Goes by: Jiwoo Shin

Meaning of name: jiwoo has a lot of meanings will/purpose + universe

Star sign: Gemeni

Physical

Age (when blipped back): 24

Height: 5ft 5

Body shape: Ectomorph (hourglass, skinny, doesnt have much assets-wise)

Eye color: Amber

Skin tone: In between pale and tan

Hair: long black hair, usually wears it down

Scars: one on her foot from stepping on coral as a child, (post Sengoku) is sliced across the collarbone

History

Jiwoo is born to a rich Korean family – basically think Crazy Rich Asians. She is thrown into the spotlight at a young age and her parents use her to gain public attention because she is a very cute toddler. Because of the age gap between her brothers and her, they pay little attention to Jiwoo. However, she receives a good education. Jiwoo starts to slip in high school though, and claims that she can do whatever she wants with her parents’ help.

They do not approve of her love for fashion, makeup, and filming, so they send her to Japan to try an internship (where she meets Asa. She also falls in love with the country and culture, drawing inspiration from the sights to influence what she wants to do with her life. Jiwoo decides to do fashion and modeling on the side and to pursue a hotel license.

Education: Completed highschool and is planning on returning to college

Things that haunt her

~ Her brothers’ girlfriends would comment rude things about her, hurting her image and making her question how she looks

~ Post Sengoku: teasing Sonya too much – she realizes that she is just as catty as the rest of her extended family and hates that

Things she’d never tell a soul

~ Isn’t a virgin anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

~ Secretly is jealous of Asa because of how smart she is. Jiwoo will never understand science or math the way Asa does

~ Splurges on clothes and has maxed out her cards before

Personality

~ Quite extroverted, likes to overshare (but has good intentions), will protect her friends fiercely, sexual innuendos queen

~ Is quick to judge people, can be catty, has the tendency to over-tease and upset people, might give unwanted advice

Likes and dislikes

Favourite colour: any shade of pink

Favourite food: alcoholic things

Least favourite: kale

Spicy food: YES

Favourite smell: Blossom

Hopes for the future

Pre-Sengoku, Jiwoo is still a bit unsure what she wants. She wishes to help her cousin in running a upscale hotel chain in Korea, but also wants to pursue fashion and film.

Post-Sengoku, ... well she comes back pregnant so.... She wants to raise her children right and give them the best life possible. Deep down, she’d do anything for them, even if it means sacrificing her own dreams.

Relationships

Parents: Mi-Cha Shin (mother), Jiae Vermillion (father)

Siblings: Jihyun Shin (32), Jinsol Shin (29)

Children: Jihwan Mori, Jihun Mori

Current Partner(s): Motonari Mori

Friends: Asa Vermillsion, Sonya Tsvetayeva ( @caitea-ward‘s oc), Kaida Gates ( @mexicancarolina‘s oc), Kenshin, Shingen, Mitsuhide

Pet: (gifted by Motonari) two drawf Japanese flying squirrels named Bomi and Hae

Unrequited love: Kenshin

Enemies: hopefully not you

*Jiwoo keeps her maiden name after marrying Motonari

#ikesen oc #ikesen #my ocs #event #im tired now okay goodnight

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dariaastrid · 6 years ago

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THE 100 my thoughts of 6.07.

Well, me, finally, calmed down and rewatched the whole episode again.

The first thing is that this episode was splendid! I loved it all from first minute to the last once, basically was glued to the screen all the time.

I enjoyed the idea of space minds, because, firstly, it allows to see character deeper and feel their intention, fears and feelings through simple objects of reality, pictures, things. It also gave us a link to ‘Inception’ movie and pointed to Freudian concept of the unconscious. Besides, it also guides us to the Eric Burn theory that each person contains ‘child’, ‘adult’, ‘parent’ personality.

It was smart to use the rain as a metaphor of Clarke swings moods, chest with the code for her secret memory, also show us her dads video and Jasper glasses inside of it.

Her mind is constructed by series of locations. The reason behind is that Clarke really changed through all of her stages in life. Each one has its own meaning for her, as she grew from a young idealistic teenage girl to a grown woman, complicated and contradictory person. She became not only leader to her people, but also a parent figure. We could equate it to the thing of becoming a real mom to a child, who needs care and protection.

Clarke character this episode, her development was really thought through.

Lets try to analyze main locations.

First, we should compare how Clarkes personalities are connected with each stage of action. Second, we ll try to have a general concept of each mind space.

1.Spaceship

This place is where all Clarke memories lies, her story. I guess its just a hard drive to the whole computer, shortly her brain. There she is represented as ‘the princess on the spaceship’ and also as Wanheda, also as The Clarke ‘Madis mother’ ( Read it that way ‘child’, ‘adult’, ‘parent’) . These three parts of her personality show us the two parts of Clark, the peaceful one, rebelious one, guilty one. It’s her three sides, which are struggling to fight each other to prevail in behavior. She still has her child hopes. She still tries to be rigidity and consistency in her solutions. She now is accepting her responsibility, drowning in a blame for her decisions.

The Clarke on the spaceship is the Clarke, who believes that there is so much more than survival and fighting for life. She appears to be the most vulnerable one. Wanheda has the power of being more dark for the purpose of the survival and life. She is the dark side of Clarke who was formed by conditions of her living. Clarke from season 5 and 6 is Clarke who is trying find a peace for herself as a human, suffering inside from two sides of her world.

The lights and the colors in this mind space are truly melancholic and blue. I feel her depression and longing for sadness through this location. Clarke at the moment does not feel right at all, she is feeling down and she is losing hope.

2. The forest

Its totally the most dark place, therefore dark lights and night forest as the symbol of loss and deprivation. Its kinda blurry here too. The ruined throne of Lexa is her pain, which hides under the layers of self-control. There she loses her hope after fake memories of Bellamy. He is still that person, who has that strength and hope for her which she seeks. He is her last pillar of energy to survive and live, as the leader of her people. Because of him shes still trying.

‘You still have hope?”

‘Were still breathing’

But after the fake memories, she doesnt see any benefit to live as someone who can look for her people. Shes already dead, why bother?

3. The fighting pits and the Mountain weather.

Sharp and bright light. The fighting pits is another symbol of her guilt, though Bellamy forgave her, she coudnt do it herself. She didnt win her war with her demons. The BloodRena represent rage, anger for herself, crawled inside Clark. The Maya is the sigh of her moral system confused, her inner guilt for what she thought she would never have done as a child on Spacekru ship.

4. The home

The place where Clark feels most safe, focused and calm. Warm,

light colors and drawings not from her memories, bur from her feelings. The most significant drawings are Ebby, Madi and Bellamy. Its her family now. There she meets Monthy, there she finds her dad alive.

Its her heart in this home.

Her last hope is to live for Madi, as Monty reminds her. To be a mother to a child she raised. I mean, obviously, Madi is the last reason, why Monty as her mind protection appears. Monty was her friend, who truly figured that sometimes good and evil are twisted, and having burden of blood hands doesnt mean ure a bad person, but still means that its the best way to live and find peace.

There she is a ‘parent’.

Anyway, this Clark destination is to forgive herself and to start create something new through the ashes, to find something beside Madi, her people and Bellamy to live for. To heal and become more balanced.

Whats about Josephine?

Her line is connected to Clarke one, as their minds are tangled.

Let me say one thing, she is really hell of sociopath. I do not hate her as a character, but I do see the motivation of her behavior.

The thing is that in Josephine minds her father is the really important figure, affecting her the most through all stages of life. His voice is everywhere, in the library(her voice from childhood memories, calling him. reading letters). Through the door. He is shouting ‘The Sanctum is mine’. This pair could be compared to Odin and Hela relationship. Same spirit there.

Her brain structure is the library, completely rationalized and sorted. She doesnt feel mercy or regret, pity or happiness, pain or pleasure. She doesnt understand human emotions, as she is not able to comprehend them fully. By all sort, she is freaking genius(knows various language, deep in biology and science, gifted for art) but by the cost of her mental disorder. In her memories she adored herself so much that she could stop drawing her first body. She doesnt know what moral is. Its a blurry concept for her.

Her moral is to provide herself the immortality on all costs. She doesnt find it right or wrong to murder, to betray, to tortue. She doesnt care about anything but about herself. Not life of a newborn baby, her friends lover, her father could prevent her from achieving the goal. Its truly frighting and dreadful. She shouldn't be in the lead at all.

Read this to insure yourself that Jo is in fact sociapath https://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html.

And she knows that. Her hidden thing is the awareness on that. She doesnt accept it at all. She is savoring it, not trying to control or to restrict herself. Its caused by the trauma of guy who kills himself , but still not completely.

I also liked the referral to the predator behavior( dialogue of J and R, when they are haunting Clark), as the main concept of Lightbourne views.Besides, they regard science as the God for them, it means the complete refusal to moral question and ethics.

Josephin: I studied all species, insects are almost fascinated me the most,...ruthless. People theyre so messy, theyre too emotional.

Josephin: You, nulls, are more than worthless, you all don have positive value. You are less the useless. U delude the bloodlines...

So on.

From Clarks side theres a lot of talking whats right or what wrong, even with ALLIE. What defines God.

Its not a coincidence that she tells Monty about the God question, overshadowing Lightbournes things. About connection of moral and real life.

‘I dont want to decide for everyone, Just for myself’

Its a good thrust that through her mind projection of Monty she still thinks:

The end does not justify the means

Murder is still murder, whatever it brings after, peace or war.

She doesnt devalues the human life. Thats why Clarke is the best leader from the start. Her moral compass is always there to remind her that leadership should be based on clean hands, true intentions to help and grow, not in dark night, but in the light of a new day.

Clark also says: ‘Theres no joy without pain’.

For me, it sums up all of her personality. Meaning - to have something good, first sacrifice. To earn happiness you should feel the real anguish. But even after the pain, you are capable of finding hope and peace. Thats why she agrees to go with Monty and fight J.

That what differs Clark from Lightbourne.

She is still in a process of defining what decisions shed like to make, what person she should be. She senses and appreciates.

Lightbournes are in stagnation there.

The last few senconds

Bellamy is just the ‘heart’ all over the place. He is back to his natural statue.

That means head and the heart in work, which, I remind you, always the best.

Thanks for reading.

All the love :)

#the 100 #the hundred #bellarke #bellamy blake #the hundred watch #bellamy x clarke #clarke griffin #spacekru #russel lightbourne #theorythe100 #josephine lightborne #primes lightbourne #series #the hundred season 6

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atheostic · 6 years ago

Text

Sh!t Abrahamic (Jewish, Christian, & Muslim) Theists Say

“Atheists believe the universe came from nothing via the Big Bang.”

1. The question is flawed, because “who created the universe” implies a sentient agent is required for a universe to be created.

It’s not.

2. If the claim that “something can’t come from nothing” is correct then either your deity came from something or your deity is a nothing.

And if your deity came from something, what was it and where did it come from, and so on and so on?

3. We can’t say something can’t come from nothing just because we’ve never seen something coming from nothing.

To do so would be what’s called a Black Swan fallacy.

The fallacy’s name comes from the example that the fallacy being committed would be akin to someone saying “black swans don’t exist because I’ve never seen a black swan”; it could very well be that you’ve never seen a black swan because they don’t exist, but you can’t be sure.

You would be correct to refrain from believing in black swans until such a time as proof of their existence was provided, but you couldn’t claim to know they don’t exist.

4. Since we have never had a nothing to examine we can’t make any claims about the nature of nothing, as we don’t have enough data to make any assumptions.

We can say that it’s highly unlikely that something in our universe as we know it can come from nothing, but NOT that we’re certain it’s not possible.

5. We cannot use the universe as we know it to make assumptions about what reality was like before the Big Bang, because the universe as we know it might very well not have existed until the first moment of the Big Bang.

As such, the rules that control our universe might be utterly irrelevant to cosmology.

We have no reason to believe anything started the Big Bang (nor do we have reason to believe something didn’t either) because we don’t have enough data to make any claims whatsoever about anything beyond the moment where the Big Bang occurred.

It may be that one day science gets advanced enough that we can solve the mystery of “what (if anything) existed before the Big Bang?”, but as it currently stands, anyone claiming to know for certain that they know what conditions were like before the Big Bang is either lying through their teeth or deluded.

6. Even if we were to assume that the universe didn’t always exist, it doesn’t mean the Big Bang had to have a cause to happen.

I know it seems counter-intuitive because in the universe as we know it there is no example of a consequence without a cause. But before the Big Bang our universe as we know it didn’t exist, and we have no way of knowing if reality behaved under the same parameters or some other way entirely.

Hell, some scientists even theorize that before the Big Bang there were way more dimensions than just the four we have now!

In fact, many scientists hypothesize that the universe always existed:

“The existence of gravitational waves is strong evidence that “our” universe may not only exist alongside an infinite number of parallel worlds, but may itself be infinite in extent, containing endless copies of our galaxy – and indeed our world and you and me – located countless trillions of light years apart.”

7. Scientists not knowing what happened before the Big Bang doesn’t mean “God did it” is correct.

Scientists not knowing something doesn’t mean you get to make up whatever you want, treat it as fact, and claim that people should believe you because you said so.

That’s not how reality works.

8. How the universe came to be isn’t a binary either/or option.

It’s not “either the Big Bang is true or 1+ god(s) did it”.

9. We know that the Big Bang happened because there’s evidence to back it up.

If there weren’t the Big Bang would be a hypothesis, not a theory.

Some of the most compelling evidence includes:

The Hubble Expansion - “The vast majority of galaxies are moving away from us, and the velocity of their recession is proportional to their distance from us,”with the ones further away moving faster, and the ones closest moving slower.

The Doppler Effect & Redshift - “The further from us a star is the more its light is red-shifted. This tells us that distant galaxies are moving away from us, and that the further a galaxy is the faster it is moving away.”

^ Spectrum of Helium in our sun

^ Spectrum of Helium of a distant star

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation - “The “blackbody” nature of the CMB is exactly that expected from an initial (Big Bang) “fireball” of radiation.”

Predicted and observed abundances of light elements - Element abundance predictions based on the creation of light atomic nuclei (eg. Deuterium, which stars can only destroy, not create) during the first few minutes of the Big Bang agree extremely well with those observed. Helium, for example, should be about 25% of the total mass of the Universe according to the Big Bang model.

Guess what the content of helium we have observed in stars and gas clouds is.

Quasars - “We see a lot of quasars in the distant cosmos, which means these objects were very common billions of years ago. But there are hardly any quasars in our local, up-to-date neighborhood. And they’re common enough in the far-away (that is, young) universe that we should see a lot more in our vicinity. The simple conclusion: The universe was different in its past than it is today.”

Olbers’ paradox - “The sky should be ablaze with the combined light of a multitude of stars. That means either the universe is not infinite in size or it’s not infinite in time. Or maybe it’s neither.”

10. The Big Bang has nothing to do with atheism.

a) People believe in the Big Bang because there is testable evidence to back it up.

Many (if not most) theists believe in the Big Bang because it is able to correctly predict things about how our universe works and the more we learn the more evidence we have to corroborate its accuracy.

If one day we find some evidence that contradicts the Big Bang theory it will cease to be a theory and a new theory will replace it.

Until such a time, however, we have no reason to think the current theory is inaccurate.

b) The Big Bang has nothing to do with why I’m an atheist.

Neither does evolution or any other bit of science you don’t like because it contradicts how you want reality and the universe to work.

I’m an atheist because I am unable to believe a claim about the existence of a deity without testable evidence to back up that claim.

As the saying goes, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

If a claim is not testable, it is not reliable, because it cannot be corroborated via the scientific method, which is the single most reliable method we have to understand our reality (if you can think of a better way, I’d love to hear it; you’d be legit eligible to win a Nobel for innovation).

11. Proving the Big Bang wrong would not be proof of the existence of 1+ deities.

It would be proof that we were wrong about the Big Bang and that we needed to look at the evidence we have and try to come up with a new theory of why the evidence we have is the way it is.

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commentairesnegligeables · 3 years ago

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On the saying “be aware of your mental health”

⚠️Warning: triggering post ahead⚠️not for people with weak mind⚠️

Note that on this post everytime i said “help” it means therapist/people who say they are expert on mental illness. Of course, though, to seek help and company from people around you—friends, family, siblings, close people you know, when youre in doubt or struggling or feeling down or in need of support emotionally or anything, this doesnt have to be questioned—it is something of a must. Why? Cause humans are social beings. They are dependant to others. Therefore everytime i say “help” on this post i really just mean mental help (therapist/people who will diagnose you with mental illnesses).

The thing that i observed, of what causes mental health issue, is the inability to know the identity of oneself.

In order to live, the first thing one should know and make peace with isnt the environment, or family, or ones brain, or anything, but themselves.

Once someone cant do this, they simply become questionnable as an individual.

How can you be born in this world, have the ability to think of cracking down things to even the simplest, and yet you cant even deal with, understand, and know your own self—the thing closest to you? The thing that is actually yourself? The thing that matters the first?

It might seem like a pity, but more than it is a pity, it is an individual choice.

Every individual should deal with themselves. No one should tell them how, no one should tell them they “cant” and that they need help of drugs in order to deal with themselves. I feel that the moment they feel they cant, and that they need help, is the moment it becomes their choice, and that they have lost themselves.

Is losing oneself something good? Is it that when someone is depressed, i should have pity on them and treat them differently, even when its their choice?

People say its not their choice, but it is. It is ones fault that one lost temselves. Everyone is given intelligence, ability to think. What is this world? What is the purpose of this world? What is the purpose of me? What is right and wrong? With the ability, if someone still cant figure out life, once again, it is their choice.

One of the phrase that i found very dislikable is that we should be aware of our mental health.

What does that even mean?

We should be aware of our mental health, and then what? When i am sad, i can be sad, if i want to cry, i can cry, if i want to be upset and angry, let me be upset and angry, if i am happy, then let me be, if i feel deep sadness, no one can stop me, but someone can do all this without having to lose themselves. Someone can do all this while controlling it. What is this saying we should be aware of ourselves?

Should we be, sad and crying on the floor, sad and crying on our pillow, and then we question ourselves: am i in deep sadness? And then we seek the answer to someone else? Is this what “being aware” means?

How can someone else know us better than ourselves? Why should i believe someone who thinks they “studied” human psychology, whilst i myself am human and i am given the ability to control my psychology, telling me i am like this and like that.

No one can control their physical stuff, virus gets inside your throat and makes you sick, your kidney is worn out and you dont take care well so they malfunctioned, but how can mental—something that doesnt even have physical form, something that cant permanently unchange, wear out and leave you be just like that? It is not even something separated from you. It is you.

We should be aware of our mental health, that is right, but it means nothing. Everyone has done this ever since the first time human existed. It is not something new. Theyre always aware. Are they sad? Are they happy? Are they raising their chin high up and being brave?

The only difference is instead of questioning their ownselves, they control their own selves. Is controlling your ownself something forced?

No, it is naturality.

In the past, people seek for immortality, tales were told about this thing and that which can make someone immortal, in the past people lost their parents in young ages, go to war, and in Islam a hadith said one of sign of the end day is that people look at grave and say “if only i was the one that is in that place”.

I am not at all saying what happened in the past was all good, most were even bad, i will say. I am just saying people in the past lived in worse condition but they managed, and whats “glorified” is of cherishing life.

So, what caused everything to change?

1. The idea that people have had mental issues since long time but they “hid” it.

2. Glorification of mental health issues as if its really something urgent, when its not even something new (in the sense that, in most times everyones “mental health” is fine thats why we never thought about it much and only in this mOdERN thInkInG ScHEmE we are told to figure whether we are fine or not).

3. Individualistic, materialistic, atheistic, way of life.

My opinions on those:

1. Once again mental health is not diagnosed and then unchangeable, it is controlled. Someone can be a whiner and if theyre told to go to army they will be strong. It is built, it is trained, not given. In the past, in the future, this concept still hasnt changed that it thrills me whenever someone thinks mental health is not part of them and that they need someone else to “fix” it. If mental ilnness is such a big deal in lives of people of common society we wouldve heard much about it in the past about people who couldnt “function” or live like other people normally. We dont hear about them, much, because they were not told that they mightve had mental issues, instead they just lived usual. In other hand we know well that people in the past had physical illnesses—black plague, or anything, it was physically there and we heard it a lot. Or we mightve heard in some tales about people who were insane, crazy, outcasted. But NOT mass of people who couldnt function normally and deemed abnormal. Its because the truth is mental illness is nothing. Someone might have severe depression, or someone might have depression in lives, but chance to have severe depression is very low, and chance to have depression that makes you need medication is as low. You dont need medication. Just live.

2. The one that made it widespread, as ever, are leftists people. I just recently played tumblr but i have heard a lot about this tumblr movement that happened long time ago, lets call them SJW. SJW are social justice warriors and they went to tumblr, but i heard now theyre dominating twitter. So when they were in tumblr they think they were “quirky” and “unique” and they mostly were weird people. And on basis of political correctness they started bring about the idea that LGBT is fine. But not just that, this “be aware of your mental health” and post-modern feminism and “abortion is a choice” also started. Political correctness is so much of people who are too emotional and they use their brain and logic less. I know i sound biased, you can do research on your own if you want. I also have theory on how these people who played tumblr mostly were women, cause as far as i know around that time men played video games usually. But that will make it long.

Just im saying that this “be aware of your mental health” stuff doesnt just occur naturally as evolution/progress of advancement of thoughts. It was brought about politically, by people who think they are the most right, when they are the ones knowing things less, romanticize everything, they are like toddler who figure out new things and think that is what is most right, you can go to twitter and figure. This all though, is just my conclusion based on my own observation of the world.

3. Say no more, these all are just characteristics of the west, unfitting for outside of west world. Individualism rarely happens outside west (with exception) and people always have someone to tell problems to—friends, family, close people. Individualistic society will be more prone to not having anyone and therefore has to go to therapist to talk about their problem. Someone once said though religion cant stop mental health but that is such a joke. As i have stated, to know and control your own mental is to know yourself and your identity. If you are an ugly person and you dont think youre ugly, if someone says to you that you are ugly, then you will not even feel bad for yourself. If someone tells you we are living in void and that this world is so bad and that theres no point of living, if you understand those sayings are wrong, then you will not drown in the same bitterness as they do right? In this world and life everyone and everything will tell and say many things to you throughout your life, and if you cant even think on your own whether theyre right or should you listen to them, i dont even know how you live. Anyhow, the right religion will tell you purpose of life so if you are given purpose of life and you still feel life is so pointless, you are not taking the religion seriously.

I have quiet grown tired of writing, so i will just state what to do to help yourself so you wont eat all these pointless “be aware of your mental health” slogans:

1. Understand that psychology is not exact science and therefore not completely reliable. Sorry to break it to you. I myself am a hardcore unbeliever of psychological study. Unless someone cant think straight (insane), theres no need to rely on what psychology says about oneself. Its not even science. If biology says youre having cancer, then youre having cancer. But if psychology says youre diagnosed with this and that, its just cringe. How do you know? Is the “depressed cell” there and shows themselves to you through microscope? Psychologists dont even know sometimes that psychology is not exact science.

2. Psychology is not a unique or unreachable field. In the sense of its not worth to “understand thoroughly” about it that you think you need to ask expert if you dont. Rule about psychology is just: humans are divided into two, people who can think straight and cant think straight (sane and insane). As long as youre sane, you have the ability to control what you do and yourself. Thats all.

3. Know yourself and your identity. If you are asked, who are you? What is your identity? You should know. If not, youre a confused person and you will for sure think for nights if someone says to you “you are narcissist”, you will think you really are even when its not true.

4. Dont rely on forced positivity to escape fear of having mental illness. Forced positivity dont help😐just acknowledge out there people live normally without having to have so much positivity to survive. Why? Because too much positivity is not normal.... just be yourself and live

5. Fix yourself. Do you feel youre a narcissist? Do you feel you have one of those traits of being mentally ill? Then make those traits gone. Dont think that you are permanently mentally unstable and therefore need help. No. Help yourself first.

6. To feel is ok. Be sad, be happy, be angry, cry all you want. But just acknowledge that you can control yourself, cause you have ability to be sane. After letting those all go, youre fine again.

7. Everyone makes mistakes. Did you make mistake just yesterday? Did you make mistake that made whole world hates you? Its totally fine. Just promise to yourself, instead of to people, that you will improve and will not make the same mistake again. That is right, it reminds me,

8. Everyone feels what you feel. Do you some times feel deep sadness? Do you some times feel so hopeless that probably die is best thing? Do you feel things that you think people dont feel? Dont worry, everyone feels it in some times of their lives. Just cause someone looks fine the whole time doesnt mean they are in fact fine the whole time and doesnt feel like how you feel about stuff. This world is not really a good place so it will torture everyone. You are not different, so dont feel different. You are normal. Indulging in emotions thinking people dont feel the same emotion will just make you lose yourself. People are not fine in a day, and they will be fine in another day, and they feel happy in another day, its just life.

9. Dont live up to peoples expectation. Of course its not like if your parents want you to be good kid then you shouldnt live as good person. I mean to say, if society expect you to be like this and that, but theres no benefit in acting as they do, then nothings wrong with you if you dont do as they do. Just understand what is right and wrong and that is enough.

10. Be determined about your stance. Dont get easily influenced. Know what you stand for by thinking about it thoroughly.

11. Be comfortable with yourself.

12. You are who you think you are. Fake it til you make it. Be fine until you are really fine.

13. Youre the only one who can save yourself. People will help you, but the choice to be saved and become fine again can only be done by you. No one but your own self is going to come and “save” you.

My point of writing this is that, most people in the world are sane and not mentally ill/sick in severe sense til they need pSyChIAtrIsT help. One of question i heard much is that “so what if people think they have mental illness? Whats in it for you to judge them?” Well first of all it will create generation of weak minded people that think they need help for anything. Second is that i just feel sorry when someone who is fine mentally comes accross this kind of thing and they start thinking whether theyre “mentally normal” or not. One of the funny experience i had is when i was just googling on why cats are so cute and on quora someone says its because humans are masochist so they like cats biting and clawing them (and he got many votes)🤦‍♀️i really feel pity for him probably being sure what he said is true. If people are masochist, they will pet tigers or crocodiles instead. The truth is, hearing about probability of having mental illness without actually understanding it will make you paranoid. So i write this to let everyone know, that probability is the lessest thing. Unless you live in full tragedy, chance is you are fine and will continue to be so.

Indulging in psychology is not worth it if for common people, for people who have mental disturbance (crazy/insane) then ok but for commoners who once again have ability to think sane and are given intelligence, its such a waste of time to question whether one is “normal” or not. If you are able to think logically and know what is right and wrong then that is enough.

People are not so different from each other.

Even therapists who understand the truth will know that psychology and therapists are semi-real and therefore useless for common society unless in the case of people with severe cases

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paperbackwritersblog · 5 years ago

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Random thoughts

My writing seems to come in fits and starts yet the ideas and mind melds of philosophical and psychological intrigue never seem to cease! My thoughts when put on paper, or at least written and expressed in some way shape or form have a soothing effect on the build up. One can only wonder if people of artistic endeavour go through the same process of a build up and then purge?

My thoughts no longer ruminate in unhealthy fashion, instead they sparkle forward into other questions, layered just below the original inquiry. With philosophy the questions are the prime, the awnsers not always so! By this I am meaning the fact that I am asking and thinking about these questions is enough, I dont need absolute awnsers and genuinely feel it is the enquiring mind that is functioning correctly. To pressume to know awnsers to questions asked since questions begun is to assume and presume your point of view is pinultimate! And no one or thing can lay that claim.

The question of conciousness is what I find most fascinating, especially when stretched across time. To try to understand how conciousness came about is beyond our comprehension thus far. A part of me thinks this will never be understood , another part thinks maybe we have stumbled past a natural explanation already yet deem it not possible up till now! The bible has worked its own version of events , involving gardens and beings of innocence until a snake and an apple got involved! The amount of interpretations of this ancient text has formed its own web of confusion, with different sects of the same religious seed sprouting off in so many directions that even its own members are confused about its meaning and rely heavily on interpretations of their chosen spokes person. Ideologies of the east have a much more natural theory of everything, which actually ties more into cosmology than anything else, yet, again, this has been reformed and redirected so many times each has many sects, all with slightly to vastly different interpretations.

All theories, religions , ideologies, philosophies are essentially just peoples opinions! None of them came from anything other than the minds of people. What makes their opinion matter other than the time, place and position of the person saying and the people listening. For example, if someone in this day and age insisted they have had a vision we would probably cart them off to a padded room and dose them heavily, where as 2 thousand years ago they would have amassed followers or been executed, more often than not , both! The general public had nothing as a means of factual information back in those days, so all “facts” and or beliefs came from people of prestige or people with a believable message that appealed to the masses, mostly whatever kept the poor and under privalidged cradled in understanding and collective agreement.

War , also has been a great area of intreague for me over the last few months. And again, my mind goes straight for the conciousness strain of the inquiry. Religion gets a heavy burden and shoulder of blame for most of the wars since we have recorded and for good reason for most. Yet I cant help but dig deeper, beyond what is laid to blame. I feel religion is just an excuse for mankind to engage in something so deeply primal within us! We raged war before religion, we fought before agriculture brought us into larger groups. I understand civilization has grown beyond this behavior yet how can our subconcious , defensive and survival instinct which has served us for a lot longer than society has existed be dropped so quickly. The veneer of civilization is so painfully thin as we have discovered in war, it doesnt make sence to loose this part of our make up!

I have a deep feeling that nothing I think or feel is original in itself! I dont believe im the only being to have existed that has these thoughts and or feelings. I have thoughts of inspiration, however I rocognise the places of origin with every thought grown , developed or touched up from the thought of another. I add a little or take away, but they all have an origin that stemmed from the thoughts of another. My thoughts on thoughts and where and how the first came to be are endless. The first thought of rationale!

What was it? When reading biblical stories, it eases the soul to contemplate for a moment at least the possability of thoughts being given to us! One moment we dont think we just react to sensory and at the click of a holy finger BANG, we can think, contemplate, imagine and so on. Self awareness in these stories was described as a curse. This will be why it is described as the human condition! No other species seems to ruminate over its existence quite like we do. As far as I am aware, no other species suffers mentally quite like we do. Often I ponder on the curse of self awareness, despite it being described as a gift that seperates us from beasts it presents itself as a curse described as a gift and felt as a weight of responsibility.

My own self awareness is expanding slowly, each new book has a stress effect on my psyche as it looks to adjust to new information. Recently understanding the different systems of thought it fascinates me to learn how much we pick up on that we are not aware. How small cues can effect our decision making so subtly fascinates me. Its led me to ponder on all decisions made, both past and present.

And again linking conciousness to the mind and its ability to process information, I wonder where the mind is?! The brains functions are still mostly undiscovered, yet through new technology we are getting a better understanding of how we process information. However despite this we are still lost when it comes to conciousness! There are many theories and the most used at the moment associates conciousness with complicated algarythums!! Which I find hard to digest. I agree that a lot of human behaviour can be easily predicted if we know the history of that persons experience, personality type etc. However I dont feel like our entire subjective experience can be as simple as cause and effect. Free will seems to be a myth if everything is 100% predictable and when mapped out it can kill your sense of self to feel you have no control over the decisions you make daily.

E. Plaistow

#thoughts #being mindful #writing #expresion #philosopher

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rxbelling-hxrald · 7 years ago

Note

ALL OF THE EMOJIS OF THE HORROR MEME (come at me with long posts)

✘ Have they ever committed a murder?

Yes, but not at all since his freedom outside the demon realm, his victims include several practice human targets during his father’s influence over him and the demon’s training methods to inflict great pain, others are several demons themselves.

He has murdered no one from the other realms he has been in.

▼ What is their greatest fear?

Failure, both in general and in his overall life. this goes closely in hand with the destruction that would shortly follow after.

His failure would mean he’d become a figure just like his father, as in essence he would be his father after Mason’s techniques were completed on his capture, Dan would become nothing in theory, his mind and spirit would be eaten away, Death itself doesnt scare him but the idea of being the one responsible for bringing it upon countless victims from his father’s intentions?

That he does fear with all of his heart.

✿ Would they ever trust dark or wicked magic?

Yes, Dan can be considered the sort to find use with anything that may be deemed as ‘cruel but effective’.

While he does have morals in terms of whom he should deem someone whom deserves pain and agony by his hand, if someone does ‘deserve’ it, he doesnt care what the process is, he’ll use it.

However, this is if Dan was ever capable of outright magic, if it came to someone else wielding such magical prowess, unless he knew them well, he’d trust nothing about it.

So I guess the true answer is, he only trusts himself to use it.

△ Name one thing from their past that they regret.

All of the human ‘targets’ he injured or killed during his younger years in training, these were captured and tortured souls used as ‘examples’ for the demons to train the young Dan in his abilities and violent prowess, While he wasnt directly in control, he recalls and remembers every moment, every feeling, it still gives him nightmares at times.

He truly wishes he could make ammends, but has come to accept that nothing can be done to fix the hell that is the demon realm, outside of destroying it.

✂ If they had to choose one weapon to carry forever, what would it be?

Dan doesnt like the idea of weapons, deeming them to be for cowards and weaklings who cant get things done with their own fists, easy for a demon to say….

But if he HAD to choose a weapon, it would most likely be swords/katanas, whatever the equivalent he could get a hold of, with how he uses his powers as an ‘extension’ of himself, the same could be said in his use of a sword….once he trained with them awhile.

☣ Would they kill someone close to them if they had to?

This depends on the definition of ‘had too’.

If it were to save his own life, No, he wouldnt. If it were to save an entire realm, he’d consider it a lot more.

I’m sorry but I cant give a clear cut answer without a scenario, so I’m gonna leave it as.

Depends.

☢ Would they survive an apocalyptic situation?

Considering he was raised in an equivalent of an apocalypse turned into literal hell nearly, yes, he would, disturbingly well so in fact.

I’d even go as far to say he’d probably become one of the key hoarders/traders people would go to, due to his ability to survive in most conditions, being a demon certainly helps in this case.

❣ If someone had the power to bring them back after death, would they want them to?

Yes, If he had died prior to not fulfilling his ‘duty’ in defeating his father, he’d be more than asking for a second chance.

Even if he had succeeded and lived a full life, he’d still likely ask for it, but this time under the words of. ‘To be able to feel again, death is….pretty boring honestly.’

I’m not even joking in that’s how he’d most likely react should he be capable to speak after-death to his would be reviver.

☠ Do they fear death?

Outright no, but he does fear the idea of it claiming him before he completes his intentions/duties.

♱ What do they think awaits them after death?

He honestly doesnt think about it much, though he assumes its going to be an ever lasting sleep, trapped in the moment you died at and doomed to relive it over and over as if trapped in time in a realistic dream that you can still feel.

So if you died in your sleep, that would actually not be bad in his eyes, but death by a torture session? not a pleasant eternity.

¿ Are they easily frightened?

Yes, Despite being a big bad demon supposedly, Dan’s very susceptible to being scared though not in the means most people would assume.

The idea of ghosts, monsters, horror stories and etc does not even phase him due to him taking his own life as ‘living proof of a nightmare’. You wont scare him with the likes of threats or looks either.

Dan is more scared by the unknown and most social occurrences, similar to how he first arrived outside of the demon realm, he was terrified of everything he saw nearly having no knowledge of anything, He’s curious about a lot of things, but if there is no answer he can come too or someone can give, he will become cautious/scared of it.

Social scares could include large crowds of people all focusing on him/trying to talk, or say he got a job interview even…..he’d been downright terrified of the interviewer most likely and become a mumbling mess.

He’s also susceptible to being jump scared, though his reactions usually turn to the ‘anger’ sense of being scared, striking at what scared him…so I’d advice against it.

╳ How would they react to seeing a loved one become possessed?

Answered already….

☹ Name one person they would kill for.

No one, Dan wouldnt kill anyone person for another as of this moment. He would defend, he would brutalize, but not kill.

☼ If they had the choice to be immortal with one other person, who would they choose?

No one, again, as of this moment, While he’s made several friends, Dan wouldnt jump at that chance with anyone right now.

In fact Dan likely would deny the chance of even being immortal, thinking himself already as one.

☎ How would they react to receiving a phone call from a deceased love one?

Going under the idea if he ever gained a love one and lost them, such a phone call would be given with horrific shock, a small sense of hope then rage once it turned out to be false.

If by some chance it wasnt, he’d either be scared or joyful, depending on whom it was and what the deceased one’s words actually.

★ Do they have a favorite scary movie? Book? Show?

Dan’s an uncultured swine right now, so no…..someone needs to teach/show him some.

♣ Do they believe the world is made up of good and evil?

Yes, from how Dan has come to an understanding of things from morals and actions, he deems everyone to be good or evil in some form or another.

While he has good intentions, he doesnt peg himself as ‘good’ considering his past and dangers. knowing full well he could become evil should he lose himself or something were to happen.

♥ Have they ever acting out of heartlessness?

Yes, Against anyone and everyone who ever goes against him or his friends in a violent way. Dan will make the aggressor’s life hell and not think twice if given the chance, regardless of morals.

Right now though the only victims of this are those that tried to rob him near a bar, they were severely beaten to a brutal extent.

☾ What is their favorite and least favorite thing about the night?

At night, his favorite thing is the sense of confidence it gives him, at night he feels there is nothing he cannot do, no one that can stop him, no one that can see him either if he so wishes….at night, he holds all the cards….that’s what he believes anyway.

His least favorite thing so far is the drunks he can encounter randomly when out and enjoying the night, they usually stink and bother him about something with their incoherent ramblings.

If you want a ‘literal’ favorite thing, its his ability to blend into the dark and shadows, turning him nearly invisible at night in the right spots.

ψ Do they think they deserve punishment for their wrongdoings?

Yes, He does believes he needs to atone in someway, but he believes he’s doing that already by working on his ‘duties’.

ϟ Have they ever gotten pleasure from causing others pain?

Yes, his violent and somewhat sadistic side is very visible when in a fight against someone whom has triggered his rage, he’ll openly mock anyone he’s hurting and laugh about it if he feels they deserve it.

Look up at the heartlessness answer to see what usually triggers this, they go hand in hand.

♚ Do they consider themselves to be evil?

In his mind no, but he does consider his actual body to be so, due to his actual species of being a demon.

♒ If they could choose how to die, how would they want to go?

In what is commonly referred to as ‘In a blaze of glory’

If he knew he were to die, Dan would want it to end in him doing something useful in someway, be it saving someone else’s life in the process via sacrifice, fighting his father’s minions until he was finally done to stem their tides and make life a pain for them until he was done.

In fact if he were ever in a losing position with his life at risk, Dan’s very likely to take the forward steps to go on until the end.

As long as he doesnt die without a fight, he’d be content.

™ Are they possessive?

Yes! This can mean both with belongings and people if he’s close to them.

He couldnt be classified as a stalker, but he would be the sort to be extremely excessive over someone, get them gifts, asking questions, doing anything he could to be useful. but he’d at the very least give space if they wanted it.

Right now, his biggest case of possessive behavior is his coat, he loves that thing more that someone should.

✔ Are they holding a grudge against anyone?

His father Mason, for very obvious reasons if you know the story and relationship.

But right now, he doesnt have any grudges/hatreds towards another.

◯ Do they believe in ghosts?

Yes, He’s seen so much, he’s a demon, there’s clearly aliens and other species and realms, why would he not assume that ghosts are a thing too?

✦ Who is their favorite villain?

He doesnt have one, being generally unaware of both actual villians and ‘show’ ones. Again someone either needs to culture him or he needs to meet a villian that wont actually go against him outright.

Manipulation anyone? :P

☄ While watching a scary movie, are they the one clinging to a friend or being clung to?

90% of the time, probably clung too, but there might be a rare occasion like a jumpscare that will make the tables turn.

Which he’d quickly act like he wasnt scared shortly after.

웃 Do they believe in aliens?

Yes, for the same reasons as mentioned in the ghost answer.

#path_of_the_lost #memes #WARNING #long post #death mentions #gosweetcaramel99

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crystal-cloudy · 8 years ago

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A bunch of shit you never asked for

My mind was going at a mile a minute last night for hours and has been ever since before then and hasn’t stopped except for occasional deep sleep naps. So I feel the need to write down half the things that I was thinking because I don’t have anyone I feel comfortable talking to these days and unless I write down my thoughts I’m never going to sleep again, which makes my depression worse and then I just cut again and again and I ain’t in the mood for that shit.

So here’s a bunch of shit you never asked for*

*Note, I really want to buy a notebook to write all my thoughts in, so I don’t have to deal with computer battery and crap, but I haven’t found The One yet. I don’t know why but notebooks and sketchbooks have personalities to me, which is why I don’t write these things in the sketchbooks I already have. That’s not for them.

My dream location is to go to Prague. God I love the idea of going to Prague. i’ve travelled a lot in my relatively short life thanks to my dad constantly having to travel in order for work and said work expenses being paid so he can actually do shit, but ive never gone where ive wanted to go. I want to see the looming gothic structures of Prague, i want to see what became of bohemia after fascism, i want to see it all. i want to read gormenghast too, i really want to read that.

i think i came up with the reason why no matter what im always lonely. im a secondary friend for just about everyone i know. it’s at a point where they will talk to me for days and hours and ill learn so much about them and feel like they care about me without my having said anything and then they go away to a new favorite for at least a month, and i am secondary. i am there to talk about the primary and nothing more. and every now and then they remember that i exist and i have mental illness and i am in pain and alone and have never had anyone really there, and they try to come back and be my friend but we both dont know how, and in the time that theyve been gone ive tried to teach myself to hate them. i can’t be their friend after ive tried to hate them in order to remember that i never told them anything of importance and we never really were friends.

everyone else in my life is somewhere ahead of me. i dont mean in the stereotypical path of life, i mean in what i want. i want so badly to find love and to not be alone and to experience freedom but i never will and my friends already have it. they’re not exactly able to relate to me without me feeling dead inside. because they have signification others, or are okay without significant others, or know that they are attractive to people so that even if there’s no one good enough there yet, they know they’ll find someone. I’m so far behind and I feel constantly dejected and condescended to. People will talk to each other and they’ll say things like “so i know you’ll understand because you have a boyfriend...” and they’ll talk to me about how in love they are and ask me for romance advice and i just want to die right there because im so alone and unloved and i never will find that kind of relationship.

And it’s impossible to think anyone ever will find me attractive. I work so hard to lose weight and be healthy, and I think i’m getting somewhere and then i find out i’ve gained back half the weight i lost and i just want to hide myself forever and die and never show my face to the light of day. im so ugly, and my body is covered in scars and stretch marks and i’m still too fat for the amount of exercise i do and my age, and there’s nothing i can do without drastic change or eating things that make me throw up (no not laxatives. food that is considered healthy for whatever reason has made me gag and throw up since i was a little girl). and i just hate it so much because i work so hard to be healthy and lose weight and nothing really matters and i’ll never reach my goals. and we had to present a lab to the class in anatomy and i was one of the subjects and ive never felt more disgusted with myself and the teacher asked why we didnt use BMI for our experiment (she meant it innocently though) and it felt like a knife sinking into my chest, i felt so singled out for being so huge. I hate being so tall and so fat. If you’re short and fat, it evens out and you can be cute. if you’re tall and fat, then you’re this awful creature that takes up space and is barely human and is considered some kind of neanderthalic idiot. most of my friends think im proud of being tall because i constantly joke about it, but i really hate it. i wish i was small and compact and didnt stretch off the end of the bed or be too big for some blankets to cover.

and colleges are starting to respond again and i dont want to hear back from them. people keep congratulating me that 5 colleges have accepted me and while i know that’s better than some, my top colleges have an acceptance rate that’s almsot 40% lower than the colleges that accepted me and i need money.

and my mom keeps stressing me out because she talks to me about our financial problems (and refuses my offers of help) and trying to plan out things for next year when my dad has to be in singapore for 6 months, some of which is while my sister and i will be in college, and they cant do anything until they know what im doing, but i cant know what im doing until ive heard back from all my colleges, and shes acting as though it’s my fault that i probably wont get accepted to those schools, while my dad is still denying the fact that it was almost impossible in the first place for me to be accepted in those selective schools and making me feel guilty for the fact that i probably will be rejected.

but rejection is something im used to at this point.

i missed 2 days on my antidepressant meds because i didnt tell my mom how low i was on meds until very late, and i didnt want to admit to her that i had forgotten because she constantly yells at me about it, and i didnt want her to stress about getting the meds, and i felt no difference off the meds and i wonder why.

people always tell me im a really empathetic person and i wonder how true that is. i care about and relate to and want to know them, but im so egotistical and self centered i doubt that’s true.

my sister was home for a week and i love her a lot so it was theoretically wonderful, but i always forget that she sees me as her lesser so i always feel worse about myself whenever shes here. i love her so much, shes always been my savior and closest friend, but im good for nothing to her except as a placeholder until something better shows up or as a pawn in her screaming arguments with my dad.

Speaking of my dad i finally came to my conclusion about him, and actually talked about it with my sister and we agreed on a theory about why he hates us: he adores our mom (which he does), and she always wanted kids so he was happy to oblige, and he wanted kids too, but boys, or at the very least STEM geeks or athletes. We’re both none of those. and he doesnt care about us beyond toting his legacy, and if we dont do a good enough job of that he doesnt care about us at all.

i finally got my license saturday before last, and i was so happy because i always felt excluded by people because i wasnt able to drive myself places and would always have to ask for a usually unavailable ride. but then the minute i got my license, people stopped doing things and only ask me for my availability for times that ive already told them im unavailable for. it’s like when i got my license a mass text went out to everyone i know warning them that i could transport myself now, and they shouldnt plan anything in case i show up.

another big thing was supposed to happen last week that would have at least been something to try and help my weird obsession with being excluded: we were going to go to the phone store and trade in my samsung galaxy for an iphone. i wanted an iphone, no matter the number/age/condition, for no reason other than i wanted to be able to have group texts/chats. every single camp or class i went to, the people who i got on with would make a group chat. and of course, i couldnt be a part of it. part of me thinks of it as a thats life kind of thing. the other part remembers that no one was a particular fan of me anyway, and they probably were more than happy to not be in contact with me.

it didnt happen and i dont know if im grateful or sad.

#a bunch of shit you never asked for #personal

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chwindolf · 6 years ago

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On statistical learning in graphical models, and how to make your own [this is a work in progress...]

I’ve been doing a lot of work on graphical models, and at this point if I don’t write it down I’m gonna blow. I just recently came up with an idea for a model that might work for natural language processing, so I thought that for this post I’ll go through the development of that model, and see if it works. Part of the reason why I’m writing this is that the model isn’t working right now (it just shrieks “@@@@@@@@@@”). That means I have to do some math, and if I’m going to do that why not write about it.

So, the goal will be to develop what the probabilistic people in natural language processing call a “language model” – don’t ask me why. This just means a probability distribution on strings (i.e. lists of letters and punctuation and numbers and so on). It’s what you have in your head that makes you like “hi how are you” more than “1$…aaaXD”. Actually I like the second one, but the point is we’re trying to make a machine that doesn’t. Anyway, once you have a language model, you can do lots of things, which hopefully we’ll get to if this particular model works. (I don’t know if it will.)

The idea here is that if we go through the theory and then apply it to develop a new model, then maybe You Can Too TM. In a move that is pretty typical for me, I misjudged the scope of the article that I was going for, and I ended up laying out a lot of theory around graphical models and Boltzmann machines. It’s a lot, so feel free to skip things. The actual new model is developed at the end of the post using the theory.

Graphical models and Gibbs measures

If we are going to develop a language model, then we are going to have to build a probability distribution over, say, strings of length 200. Say that we only allowed lowercase letters and maybe some punctuation in our strings, so that our whole alphabet has size around 30. Then already our state space has size 20030. In general, this huge state space will be very hard to explore, and ordinary strategies for sampling from or studying our probability distribution (like rejection or importance sampling) will not work at all. But, what if we knew something nice about the structure of the interdependence of our 200 variables? For instance, a reasonable assumption for a language model to make is that letters which are very far away from each other have very little correlation – $n$-gram models use this assumption and let that distance be $n$.

It would be nice to find a way to express that sort of structure in such a way that it could be exploited. Graphical models formalize this in an abstract setting by using a graph to encode the interdependence of the variables, and it does so in such a way that statistical ideas like marginal distributions and independence can be expressed neatly in the language of graphs.

For an example, let $V={1,\dots,n}$ index some random variables $X_V=(X_1,\dots,X_n)$ with joint probability mass function $p(x_V)$. What would it mean for these variables to respect a graph like, say if $n=5$,

In other words, we’d like to say something about the pmf $p$ that would guarantee that observing $X_5$ doesn’t tell us anything interesting about $X_1$ if we already knew $X_4$. Well,

Def 0. (Gibbs random field, pmf/pdf version) Let $\mathcal{C}$ be the set of cliques in a graph $G=(V,E)$. Then we say that a collection of random variables $X_V$ with joint probability mass function or probability density function $p$ is a Gibbs random field with respect to $G$ if $p$ is of the form $$p(x_V) = \frac{1}{Z_\beta} e^{-\beta H(x_V)},$$ given that the energy $H$ factorizes into clique potentials: $$H(x_V)=\sum_{C\in\mathcal{C}} V_C(x_C).$$

Here, if $A\subset V$, we use the notation $x_A$ to indicate the vector $x_A=(x_i;i\in A)$.

For completeness, let’s record the measure-theoretic definition. We won’t be using it here so feel free to skip it, but it can be helpful to have it when your graphical model mixes discrete variables with continuous ones.

Def 1. (Gibbs random field) For the same $G$, we say that a collection of random variables $X_V\thicksim\mu$ is a Gibbs random field with respect to $G$ if $\mu$ can be written $$\mu(dx_V)=\frac{\mu_0(dx_V)}{Z_\beta} e^{-\beta H(x_V)},$$ for some energy $H$ factorizes over the cliques like above.

Here, $\mu_0$ is the “base” or “prior” measure that appears in the constrained maximum-entropy derivation of the Gibbs measure (notice, this is the same as in exponential families -- it’s the measure that $X_V$ would obey if there were no constraint on the energy statistic), but we won’t care about it here, since it’ll just be Lebesgue measure or counting measure on whatever our state space is. Also, $Z$ is just a normalizing constant, and $\beta$ is the “inverse temperature,” which acts like an inverse variance parameter. See footnote:Klenke 538 for more info and a large deviations derivation.

There are two main reasons to care about Gibbs random fields. First, the measures that they obey (Gibbs or Boltzmann distributions) show up in statistical physics: under reasonable assumptions, physical systems that have a notion of potential energy will have the statistics of this distribution. For more details and a plain-language derivation, I like Terry Tao’s post footnote:https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/math-doesnt-suck-and-the-chayes-mckellar-winn-theorem/.

Second, and more to the point here, they have a lot of nice properties from a statistical point of view. For one, they have the following nice conditional independence property:

Def 2a. (Global Markov property) We say that $X_V$ has the global Markov property on $G$ if for any $A,B,S\subset V$ so that $S$ separates $A$ and $B$ (i.e., for any path from $A$ to $B$ in $G$, the path must pass through $S$), $X_A\perp X_B\mid X_S$, or in other words, $X_A$ is conditionally independent of $X_B$ given $X_S$.

Using the graphical example from above, for instance, we see what happens if we can condition on $X_4=x_4$:

This is what happens in Def 2a. when $S=\{4\}$. Since the node 4 separates the graph into partitions $A=\{1,2,3\}$ and $B=\{5\}$, we can say that $X_1,X_2,X_3$ are independent of $X_5$ given $X_4$, or in symbols $X_1,X_2,X_3\perp X_5\mid X_4$.

The global Markov property directly implies a local property:

Def 2b. (Local Markov property) We say that $X_V$ has the local Markov property on $G$ if for any node $i\in V$, $X_i$ is conditionally independent from the rest of the graph given its neighbors.

In a picture,

Here, we are expressing that $X_2\perp X_3,X_5\mid X_1,X_4$, or in words, $X_2$ is conditionally independent from $X_3$ and $X_5$ given its neighbors $X_1$ and $X_4$. I hope that these figures (footnote:tikz-cd) have given a feel for how easy it is to understand the dependence structure of random variables that respect a simple graph.

It’s not so hard to check that a Gibbs measure satisfies these properties on its graph. If $X_V\thicksim p$ where $p$ is a Gibbs density/pmf, then $p$ factorizes as follows: $$p(x_V)=\prod_{C\in\mathcal{C}} p_C(x_C).$$ This factorization means that $X_V$ is a “Markov random field” in addition to being a Gibbs random field, and the Markov properties follow directly from this factorization footnote:mrfwiki. The details of the equivalence between Markov random fields and Gibbs random fields are given in the Hammersley-Clifford theorem footnote:HCThm.

This means that in situations where $V$ is large and $X_V$ is hard to sample directly, there is still a nice way to sample from the distribution, and this method becomes easier when $G$ is sparse.

The Gibbs sampler

The Gibbs sampler is a simpler alternative to methods like Metropolis-Hastings, first named in an amazing paper by Stu Geman footnote:thatpaper. It’s best explained algorithmically. So, say that you had a pair of variables $X,Y$ whose joint distribution $p(x,y)$ is unknown or hard to sample from, but where the conditional distributions $p(x\mid y)$ and $p(y\mid x)$ are easy to sample. (This might sound contrived, but the language model we’re working towards absolutely fits into this category, so we will be using this a lot.) How can we sample faithfully from $p(x,y)$ using these conditional distributions?

Well, consider the following scheme. For the first step, given some initialization $x_0$ for $X$, sample $y_0\thicksim p(\cdot\mid x_0)$. Then at the $i$th step, sample $x_{i}\thicksim p(\cdot\mid y_{i-1})$, and then sample $y_{i}\thicksim p(\cdot \mid x_i)$. The claim is that the Markov chain $(X_i,Y_i)$ will approximate samples from $p(x,y)$ as $i$ grows.

It is easy to see that $p$ is an invariant distribution for this Markov chain: indeed, if it were the case that $x_0,y_0$ were samples from $p(X,Y)$, then if $X_1\thicksim p(X\mid Y=y_0)$, clearly $X_1,Y_0\thicksim p(X\mid Y)p(Y)$, since $Y_0$ on its own must be distributed according to its marginal $p(Y)$. By the same logic, $X_1$ is distributed according to its marginal $p(X)$, so that if $Y_1$ is chosen according to $p(Y\mid X_0)$, then the pair $X_1,Y_1\thicksim p(Y\mid X)p(X)=p(X,Y)$.

The proof that this invariant distribution is the limiting distribution of the Markov chain is more involved and can be found in the Geman paper, but to me this is the main intuition.

This sampler is especially useful in the context of graphical models, and more so when the graph has some nice regularity. The Gemans make great use of this to create a parallel algorithm for sampling from their model, which would otherwise be very hard to study. For a simpler example of the utility, consider a lattice model (you might think of an Ising model), i.e. say that $G$ is a piece of a lattice: take $V=\{1,\dots,n\}\times\{1,\dots,n\}$ and let $E=\{((h,i),(j,k):\lvert h-j + i-k\rvert=1\}$ be the nearest-neighbor edge system on $V$. Say that $X_V$ form a Gibbs random field with respect to that lattice (here we let $n=4$):

Even the relatively simple Gibbs distribution of the free Ising model, $$p(x_V)=\frac{1}{Z_\beta}\exp\left( \beta\, {\textstyle\sum_{u,v\in E} x_u x_v }\right)$$ is hard to sample. But in general, any Gibbs random field on this graph can be easily sampled with the Gibbs sampler: if $N_u$ denotes the neighbors of the node $u=(i,j)$, then to sample from $p$, we can proceed as follows: let $x_V^0$ be a random initialization. Then, looping through each site $u\in V$, sample the variable $X_u\thicksim p(X_u\mid X_{N_u})$, making sure to use the new samples where available and the initialization elsewhere. Then let $x_V^1$ be the result of this first round of sampling, and repeat. This algorithm is “local” in the sense that each node only needs to care about its neighbors, so the loop can be parallelized simply (as long as you take care not to sample two neighboring nodes at the same time).

Later, we will be dealing with bipartite graphs with lots of nice structure that make this sampling even easier from a computational point of view.

The Ising model

One important domain where graphical models have been used is to study what are known as “spin glasses.” Don’t ask me why they are called glasses, I don’t know, maybe it’s a metaphor. The word “spin” shows up because these are models of the emergence of magnetism, and magnetism is what happens when all of the little particles in a chunk of material align their spins. Spin is probably also a metaphor.

In real magnets, these spins can be oriented in any direction in God’s green three-dimensional space. But to simplify things, some physicists study the case in which each particle’s spin can only point “up” or “down” -- this is already hard to deal with. The spins are then represented by Bernoulli random variables, and in the simplest model (the Ising model footnote:ising), a joint pmf is chosen that respects the “lattice” or “grid” graph in arbitrary dimension. The grid is meant to mimic a crystalline structure, and keeps things simple. Since each site depends only on its neighbors in the graph, Gibbs sampling can be done quickly and in parallel to study this system, which turns out to yield some interesting physical results about phase changes in magnets.

Now, this is an article about applications of graphical models to natural language processing, so I would not blame you for feeling like we are whacking around in the weeds. But this is not true. We are not whacking around in the weeds. The Ising model is the opposite of the weeds. It is a natural language processing algorithm, and that’s not a metaphor, or at least it won’t be when we get done with it. Yes indeed. We’re going to go into more detail about the Ising model. That’s right. I am going to give you the particulars.

Let’s take a look at the Ising pmf, working in two dimensions for a nice mix of simplicity and interesting behavior. First, let’s name our spin: Let $z_V$ be a matrix of Bernoulli random variables $z_{i,j}\in\{0,1\}$. Here, we’re letting $z_{i,j}=0$ represent a spin pointing down at position $(i,j)$ in the lattice -- a 1 means spin up, and $V$ indicates the nodes in our grid.

Now, how should spins interact? Well, by the local Markov property, we know that $$p(z_{i,j}\mid z_V)=p(z_{i,j}\mid z_{N_{i,j}}),$$ where $$N_{i,j}=\{(i’,j’)\mid \lvert i’-i\rvert + \lvert j’ - j\rvert =1 \}$$ is the set of neighbors of the node at position $(i,j)$. In other words, this node’s interaction with the material as a whole is mediated through its direct neighbors in the lattice. And, since this is a magnet, the idea is to choose this conditional distribution such that $z_{i,j}$ is likely to align its spin with those of its neighbors. Indeed, following our Gibbs-measure style, let $$p(z_{i,j}\mid z_{N_{i,j}})=\frac{1}{Z_{i,j}}\exp(-\beta H_{i,j}).$$ Here $E_{i,j}$ is the “local” magnetic potential at our site $i,j$, $$H_{i,j}=-z_{i,j}\sum_{\alpha\in N_{i,j}} z_\alpha,$$ and $Z_{i,j}$ is the normalizing constant for this conditional distribution

So, does this conditional distribution have the property that $z_{i,j}$ will try to synchronize with its neighbors? Well, let’s compute the conditional probabilities that $z_{i,j}$ is up or down as a function of its neighbors. \begin{align*} p(z_{i,j}=1\mid z_{N_{i,j}}) &= \frac{1}{Z_{i,j}} \exp\left({\textstyle \sum_{\alpha\in N_{i,j}} z_\alpha}\right)\\\\ p(z_{i,j}=0\mid z_{N_{i,j}}) &= \frac{1}{Z_{i,j}}e^0=1. \end{align*} Then we have $Z_{i,j}=1 + \exp\left({\textstyle \sum_{\alpha\in N_{i,j}} z_\alpha}\right)$. In other words, $$p(z_{i,j}=1\mid z_{N_{i,j}})=\sigma\left({\textstyle \sum_{\alpha\in N_{i,j}} z_\alpha}\right),$$ where $\sigma$ is the sigmoid function $\sigma(x)=e^{x}/(e^{x}+1)$ that often appears in Bernoulli pmfs. This function is increasing, which indicates that local synchrony is encouraged. I should also note that Ising is usually done with $\text{down}=-1$ instead of 0, which is even better for local synchrony.

I thought that giving the local conditional distributions would be a nice place to start for getting some intuition on the model -- in particular, these tell you how Gibbs sampling would evolve. Since this distribution can be sampled by a long Gibbs sampling run, we have sort of developed an intuition that the samples from an Ising model should have some nice synchrony properties with high probability.

But, can we find a joint pmf for $z_V$ that yields these conditional distributions? Indeed, if we define the energy $$H(z_V)=-\sum_{\alpha\in V}\sum_{\beta\in N_\alpha} z_\alpha z_\beta,$$ and from here the pmf $$p(z_V)=\frac{1}{Z}e^{-\beta H(z_V)},$$ then we can quickly check that this is a Gibbs random field on the lattice graph with conditional pmfs as above.

For something with such a simple description, the Ising model has a really amazing complexity. Some of the main results involve qualitative differences in the model’s behavior for different values of the inverse temperature $\beta$. For low $\beta$ (i.e., high temperature, high variance), the model is uniformly random. For large $\beta$, the model concentrates on its modes (i.e., the minima of $H$). It turns out that there is a critical temperature somewhere in the middle, with a phase change from a disordered material to one with magnetic order. There are also theorems about annealing, one of which can be found in a slightly more general setting in footnote:geman.

The complexity of these models indicates that they are good at handling information, especially when some form of synchrony is useful as an inductive bias. So, we’ll now start to tweak the model so that it can learn to model something other than a chunk of magnetic material.

Statistical learning in Gibbs random fields

Inspired by this and some related work in machine learning footnote:history, Ackley, Hinton, and Sejnowski footnote:ackley generalized the Ising model to one that can fit its pmf to match a dataset, which they called a Boltzmann machine. It turns out that their results can be extended to work for general Gibbs measures, so I will present the important results in that context, but we will stick to Ising/Boltzmann machines in the development of the theory, and as an important special case. Then the language model we’d like to develop will appear as a sort of “flavor” of Boltzmann machine, and we’ll already have the theory in place regarding how it should learn and be sampled and all that stuff.

So, here is my sort of imagined derivation of the Boltzmann machine from the Ising model. The units in the Ising model are hooked together like the atoms in a crystal. How can they be hooked together like the neurons in a brain? Well, first, let’s enumerate the sites in the Ising model’s lattice, so that the vertices are now named $V=\{1,\dots,n\}$ for some $n$, instead of being 2-d indices. Then the lattice graph has some $n\times n$ adjacency matrix $W$, where $W_{\alpha\beta}=1$ if and only if $\alpha$ and $\beta$ represent neighbors in the original lattice. So, there should be exactly 4 1s along each row, etc.

Let’s rewrite the Ising model’s distribution in terms of $W$. Indeed, we can see that $$H(z_V)=-z_V W z_V^T,$$ so that the energy is just the quadratic form on $\mathbb{R}^n$ induced by $W$. Then if we fix the notation $$x_\alpha = [W z_V^T]_\alpha,$$ we can rewrite $H_\alpha=z_\alpha x_\alpha$, and simplify our conditional distribution to $$p(z_\alpha=1\mid z_{V})=\sigma(x_\alpha).$$ Not bad.

Now, this is only an Ising model as long as $W$ remains fixed. But what if we consider $W$ as a parameter to our distribution $p(z_V; W)$, and try to fit $W$ to match some data? For example, say that we want to learn the MNIST dataset of handwritten digits, which is a dataset of images with 784 pixels. Then we’d like to learn some $W$ with $V=\{1,\dots,784\}$ such that samples from the distribution look like handwritten digits.

This can be done, but it should be noted that sometimes it helps to add some extra “hidden” nodes $z_H$ to our collection of “visible” nodes $z_V$, for $H=\{785,\dots,785 + n_H\}$, so that the random vector grows to$z=(z_1,\dots,z_{784},z_{785},\dots,z_{785+n_H})$. Let’s also grow $W$ to be a $n\times n$ matrix for $n=n_V+n_H$, where in this example the number of visible units $n_V=784$. Then the Hamiltonian becomes $H(z)=z W z^T$ just like above, and similarly for $x_\alpha$ and so on.

Adding more units gives the pmf more degrees of freedom, and now the idea is to have the marginal pmf for the visible units $p(z_V;W)$ fit the dataset, and let the “hidden” units $z_H$ do whatever they have to do to make that happen.

Ackley, Hinton, and Sejnowski came up with a learning algorithm, with the very Hintony name “contrastive divergence,” which was presented and refined (footnote:cdpapers). I’d like to first present and prove the result in the most general setting, and then we’ll discuss what that means for training a Boltzmann machine.

The most general version of contrastive divergence that I think it’s useful to consider is for $z$ (now not necessarily a binary vector) to be Gibbs distributed according to some parameters $\theta$, with distribution $$p(z;\theta)\,dz=\frac{1}{Z}\exp(-\beta H(z;\theta))\,dz.$$ Here, since we are trying to be general, we’re letting $z$ be absolutely continuous against some base measure $dz$, and $p$ is the density there. But it should help to keep in mind the special case where $p$ is just a pmf, like in the Boltzmann machine, where $z$ is a binary vector $z\in\{0,1\}^{n}$.

First, we need a quick result about the form taken by marginal distributions in Gibbs random fields, since we want to talk about the marginal over the visible units.

Def 3. (Free energy) Let $A$ be a set of vertices in the graph. Then the “free energy” $F_A(z_A)$ of the units $z_A$ is given by$$F_A(z_A)=-\log\int_{z_H} e^{-H(z)}\,dz_H.$$

If it seems weird to you to be taking an integral in the case of binary units, you can just think of that integral $\int\cdot \,dz_H$ as a sum $\sum_{z_H}$ over all possible values for the hidden portion of the vector -- this is because in the Boltzmann case, the base measure $dz$ is just counting measure.

It follows directly from this definition that:

Lemma 4. (Marginals in Gibbs distributions) For $A$ as before, if $Z_A$ is a normalizing constant, we have $$p(z_A)=\frac{1}{Z_A} e^{-F_A(z_A)}.$$

So, the free energy takes the role of the Hamiltonian/energy $H$ when we talk about marginals. We can quickly check Lemma 4 by plugging in: \begin{align*} Z_A p(z_A) &= e^{-F_A(z_A)}\\\\ &= \exp\left( \log\left( \int_{z_{\setminus A}} e^{-\beta H(z_A,z_{\setminus A})} \,dz_{\setminus A} \right) \right)\\\\ &= \int_{z_{\setminus A}} e^{-\beta H(z_A,z_{\setminus A})} \,dz_{\setminus A}, \end{align*} which agrees with the standard definition of the marginal. Maybe it should also be noted that $F_V$ is implicitly a function of $\beta$ -- we are marginalizing the distribution $p_\beta(z)$, and my notation has let $\beta$ get a little lost, since it’s not so important right now.

Contrastive divergence will work with the free energy for the visible units $F_V$. And guess what, I think we’re ready to state it. It’s not really a theorem, but more of a bag of practical results that combine to make a learning algorithm, some of which deserve proof and others of which are well-known.

“Theorem”/Algorithm 5. (Contrastive divergence) Say that $\mathcal{D}$ is the distribution of the dataset, and consider the maximum-likelihood problem of finding $$\theta^*={\arg\max}_{\theta} \mathbb{E}_{z_V^+\thicksim \mathcal{D}}[\log p(z_V^+;\theta)].$$In other words, we’d like to find $\theta$ that maximizes the model’s expected log likelihood of the visible units, assuming that the visible units are distributed according to the data. We note that this is the same as finding the minimizer of the Kullback-Liebler divergence:$$D_{KL}(\mathcal{D}\mid p(z_V;\theta))=\mathbb{E}^+[\log\mathcal{D}(z_V^+)] - \mathbb{E}^+[\log p(z_V^+;\theta)]$$since $\mathcal{D}$ does not depend on $\theta$. (In general, we’ll use superscript $+$ to indicate that a quantity is distributed according to the data, and $-$ to indicate samples from the model, and similarly $\mathbb{E}^{\pm}$ to indicate expectations taken against the data distribution or the model’s distribution.)

To find $\theta^*$, we should not hesitate to pull gradient ascent out of our toolbox. And luckily, we can write down a formula for the gradient:

TODO: note, we want gradient ascent on the good thing. put in DKL. also ascent! what is up with this. Should just rewrite the math here by hand and sort it all out for real instead of this tumblr bullpucky.

Main Result 5a. For the gradient ascent, we claim that $$\frac{\partial}{\partial\theta} \mathbb{E}_{z_V^+\thicksim \mathcal{D}}[\log p(z_V^+;\theta)] = -\mathbb{E}_{z_V^+\thicksim \mathcal{D}}\left[\tfrac{d F_V(z_V^+)}{d\theta}\right] + \mathbb{E}_{z_V^-\thicksim p(z_V;\theta)}\left[ \tfrac{d F_V(z_V^-)}{d\theta}\right].$$

All that remains is to estimate these expectations. I say “estimate” since we probably can’t compute expectations against $\mathcal{D}$ (we might not even know what $\mathcal{D}$ is), and since we can’t even sample directly from $p(z_V)$. In practice, one uses a single sample $z_V^+\thicksim\mathcal{D}$ to estimate the first expectation Monte-Carlo style, and then uses a Gibbs sampling Markov chain starting from $z_V^+$ to try to get a sample $z_V^-$ from the model’s distribution, which is then used to estimate the second expectation. So, each step of gradient descent requires a little bit of MCMC.

What requires proof is the main result in the middle there. See footnote:ackley for the proof in the special case of a Boltzmann machine, but in general the proof is not hard. Below, for brevity we fix the notation $\mathbb{E}^+$ for expectations when $z$ comes from the data, and $\mathbb{E}^-$ when $z$ comes from the model.

Proof 5a. We just have to compute the derivative of the expected log likelihood. First, let’s expand the expression that we are differentiating:\begin{align*}\mathbb{E}^+[\log p(z_V^+;\theta)]&=\mathbb{E}^+[\log(\exp(-F_V(z_V^+)) - \log Z_V]\\\\ &=-\mathbb{E}^+[F_V(z_V^+)] - \log Z_V.\end{align*}Here, we have removed the constant $\log Z_V$ from the expectation. Already we can see that differentiating the first term gives the right result. So, it remains to show that $\frac{\partial}{\partial\theta}\log Z_V=-\mathbb{E}^-[\frac{\partial}{\partial\theta} F_V(z_V^-)]$. Indeed,\begin{align*} \frac{\partial}{\partial\theta}\log Z_V &=\frac{1}{Z_V}\frac{\partial}{\partial\theta}Z_V\\\ &=\frac{1}{Z_V}\int_{z_V} \frac{\partial}{\partial\theta} e^{-F_V(z_V;\theta)}\,dz_V\\\\ &=\int_{z_V}\frac{1}{Z_V} e^{-F_V(z_V;\theta)}\,\frac{\partial}{\partial\theta} -F_V(z_V;\theta)\,dz_V\\\\ &=-\int_{z_V} p(z_V;\theta) \frac{\partial}{\partial\theta} F_V(z_V;\theta)\,dz_V\\\\ &=-\mathbb{E}^-\left[ \tfrac{d F(z_V;\theta)}{d\theta} \right], \end{align*} as desired.

The derivative of free energy will have to be computed on a case-by-case basis, and in some cases the integrals involved may not be solvable. Now, let’s take a look at how this works for a typical Boltzmann machine.

Contrastive divergence for restricted Boltzmann machines

Recall that the Boltzmann machine is a Gibbs random field with energy$$H(z)=-\frac{1}{2} z W z^T.$$I haven’t said much about these yet, so let’s clear some things up. First off, we need $W$ to be a symmetric matrix, so that the energy stays positive. Second, it’s typical to fix the diagonal elements $W_{ii}=0$, although this can be dropped if necessary.

This is the most general flavor of Bernoulli Boltzmann machine, with each node connected to all of the others -- we’ll call it a “fully-connected” Boltzmann machine. These tend not to be used in practice. One reason for that is that Gibbs sampling cannot be done in parallel, since the model respects only the fully connected graph, which makes everything really slow.

It would be more practical to use a graph with sparser dependencies. The most popular flavor is to pick a bipartite graph, where the partitions are the visible and hidden nodes. In other words, any edge in the graph connects a visible unit with a hidden one. This is called a “restricted” Boltzmann machine, and in this case $W$ has the special block form $$W=\left[\begin{array}{c|c} 0 & M \\\\ \hline M^T & 0 \end{array} \right].$$Here, we’ve enforced the bipartite and symmetric structure with notation, and we let $M$ be an $n_V\times n_H$ matrix. Then our energy can be written\begin{align*}H(z)&=-\frac{1}{2} z W z^T\\\\&= -\frac{1}{2} z_V M z_H^T - \frac{1}{2} z_H M^T z_V^T\\\\&=-z_V M z_H^T.\end{align*}Also, we can rewrite the “inputs” to units $x_i=[M z_H^T]_i$ for $i\in V$ and $x_i=[M^T z_V]_i$ for $i\in H$ -- this will be useful notation to have later.

OK. Now, we’d like to compute the expression in Main Result 5a so that we can do gradient descent and train our RBM. Let’s begin by calculating the free energy of the visible units. Starting from the definition,\begin{align*} F_V(z_V) &=-\log \sum_{z_H} e^{-H(z)}\\\\ &=-\log \sum_{z_H} \exp\bigg( z_V M z_H^T \bigg)\\\\ &=-\log \sum_{z_H} \exp\bigg( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} \sum_{j=1}^{n_H} z^V_i M_{ij} z^H_j\bigg)\\\\ &=-\log\left[ \sum_{z^H_1=0}^1\dotsm\sum_{z^H_{n_H}=0}^1 \left( \prod_{j=1}^{n_H} \exp\!\bigg( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} z^V_i M_{ij} z^H_j\bigg)\right)\right]. \end{align*}Here, pause to notice that we have $n_H$ sums on the outside, and that each sum only cares about one hidden unit. But then many of the terms in the product in the summand are constants from the perspective of that sum, so by linearity, we can move the product outside all of the sums and then through the logarithm:\begin{align*} F_V(z_V) &=-\log\left[ \prod_{j=1}^{n_H} \sum_{z^H_j=0}^1 \exp\!\bigg( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} z^V_i M_{ij} z^H_j\bigg)\right]\\\\ &=-\sum_{j=1}^{n_H} \log \left( 1 + \exp\!\bigg( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} M_{ij} z^V_i \bigg)\right)\\\\ &=-\sum_{j=1}^{n_H} \log \left( 1 + e^{x_j}\right). \end{align*} Not so bad, after all. In particular, we’ll be comfortable differentiating this with respect to the weights $M_{ij}$. Which, well, that’s what we’re doing next. These calculations might be sort of boring, and you know, the details are not that important, but we’re gonna be doing something similar later to train the new model, so it seems nice to see the way it goes in the classic model first.

Anyway, now to take the derivative. We’ll write $\partial_{M_{ij}}=\frac{\partial}{\partial M_{ij}}$ for short, and we’ll work from the second to last line in the previous display. \begin{align*} \partial_{M_{ij}} F_V(z_V) &= - \partial_{M_{ij}} \sum_{k=1}^{n_H} \log \left( 1 + \exp\!\bigg( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} M_{ik} z^V_i \bigg)\right)\\\\ &= - \partial_{M_{ij}} \log \left( 1 + \exp\!\bigg( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} M_{ij} z^V_i \bigg)\right) \\\\ &= - \frac{1}{1 + \exp\!\left( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} M_{ij} z^V_i \right)} \partial_{M_{ij}} \exp\!\bigg( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} M_{ij} z^V_i \bigg)\\\\ &= - \frac{\exp\!\left( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} M_{ij} z^V_i \right)}{1 + \exp\!\left( \sum_{i=1}^{n_V} M_{ij} z^V_i \right)} z^V_i. \end{align*} Here, we pause to notice that the fraction in the last line is exactly $$\frac{e^{x_j}}{1+e^{x_j}}=\sigma(x_j)=p(z^H_j=1\mid z_V)=\mathbb{E}[Z^H_j\mid z_V].$$This might seem like a coincidence that just happened to pop out of the derivation, but as far as I can tell, this conditional expectation always shows up in this part of the gradient in all sorts of Boltzmann machines with similar connectivity (e.g., in footnote:honglak, footnote:zemel). I don’t know if this has been proven, but I think it’s a safe bet and a good way to check your math if you’re making your own model. Plugging this in, we find $$\partial_{M_{ij}} F_V(z_V) = -z^V_i \mathbb{E}[Z^H_j \mid z_V].$$ Now, let’s plug this result back into our formula for the gradient to finish up. By the averaging property of conditional expectations,\begin{align*} \frac{\partial}{\partial M_{ij}} \mathbb{E}^+[\log p(z_V^+;\theta)] &= -\mathbb{E}^+[\partial_{M_{ij}} F_V(z_V^+)] + \mathbb{E}^-[ \partial_{M_{ij}} F_V(z_V^-)]\\\\ &= \mathbb{E}^+[ z^V_i \mathbb{E}[Z^H_j \mid z_V] ] - \mathbb{E}^-[ z^V_i \mathbb{E}[Z^H_j \mid z_V] ]\\\\ &= \mathbb{E}^+[ z^V_i z^H_j ] - \mathbb{E}^-[ z^V_i z^H_j ]. \end{align*}TODO: Some commentary on Hebbian and +- phases.

That’s nice, but it ought to be mentioned that there are a lot of practical considerations to take into account if you want to train a really good model, since the gradients are noisy and the search space is large and unconstrained. footnote:practical is a good place to start.

To finish, it should be noted that these RBMs can be stacked into what’s called a “deep belief network” -- I think this is another Hinton name. What that means is that more hidden layers are added, so that the graph becomes $n+1$-partite, where $n$ is the number of hidden layers (we add 1 for the visible layer). Then the energy function becomes$$H(z_V,z_{H_1},\dots,z{H_n})=-z_V M_1 z_{H_1}^T - \dots - z_{H_{n-1}} M_n z_{H_n}^T.$$ These networks are tough to train directly using the free-energy differentiating method above (although the math is similar). In practice, each pair of layers is trained as if it were an isolated RBM, this is called greedy layer-wise training, and is described in footnote:greedylayerwise. There’s a good tutorial on DBNs here as well footnote:http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/DBN.html.

One important thing to note about DBNs is that when you are doing Gibbs sampling in the middle of the network, you have to sample from the conditional distribution of your layer given both the layer above and the layer below. So, there is a little more bookkeeping involved. There are other methods for sampling these networks too (footnote:honglak, footnote:wheredoeshintontalkaboutdeepdreamthing).

Developing langmod-dbn

So, we’ll be working on a DBN to model language, since probably a single layer will not be enough to model anything very interesting. But, since we’ll be using greedy layer-wise training, we can just describe how a “langmod-rbm” looks, and that will take us most of the way there.

OK, so. We want to develop a family of probability distributions $p_n(z^{(n)}_V)$, on strings $z_V^{(n)}$ of length $n$, one probability distribution for each possible length $n$. These strings will come from an “alphabet” $\mathcal{A}$. For example, we might have $\mathcal{A}=\{a,b,c,\dots\}$, or we might allow capital letters or punctuation, etc. So, a length-$n$ string is then just some element of $\mathcal{A}^n$. For short, let’s let $N=\lvert\mathcal{A}\rvert$ be the size of the alphabet.

Our starting point is going to be the RBM as above. The first change is that we will focus on the special case where $M$ is not a general linear transform, but rather a convolution (actually cross-correlation) with some kernel. This is just a choice of the form that $M$ takes, so we are in the same arena so far. There is a good deal of work around convolutional Boltzmann machines for image processing tasks (especially footnote:honglak), but I’m not aware of any work using a convolutional Boltzmann machine for natural language.

(The thing is that we’re going to do sort of a strange convolution, so if you’re familiar with them this will be a little weird. If you’re not, well I’m going to do my best not to assume you are, but it might help to understand discrete cross-correlations a bit. If this is confusing, you might take a look at footnote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-correlation, and at Andrej Karpathy’s lecture notes on convolutional neural networks footnote:http://cs231n.github.io/convolutional-networks/ for a machine learning point of view.)

Now, it does not make much sense to encode $z_V$ (we’ll use $z_V$ as shorthand for $z_V^{(n)}$) as just an element of $\mathcal{A}^n$, since $\mathcal{A}$ is not an alphabet of numbers. But we can make letters into numbers by fixing a function $\phi:\mathcal{A}\to \{1,\dots,N\}$, so that we can now associate an integer to each letter.

But the choice of $\phi$ is pretty arbitrary, and it does not make much sense to let $z_V$ just be a vector of integers like this. Rather, let’s convert strings into 2-d arrays using what’s called a one-hot encoding. The one-hot encoding of a letter $a$ is an $N$-d vector $e(a)$, where $e(a)_i=1$ if $i=\phi(a)$, and $e(a)_i=0$ if $i\neq\phi(a)$. So, we take a letter to a binary vector with a single one in the natural position.

Then we can encode a whole string $s=a_1a_2\dotsm a_n$ to its one-hot encoding naturally by letting $$e(s)=(e(a_1)\ e(a_2)\ \dotsm\ e(a_n)).$$ So, we’re imaging strings as “images” of a sort -- the width of the image is $n$, and the height is $N$. So, we’ll define an energy function on $z_V$, where $z_V$ is no longer a binary vector like above, but rather an $n\times N$ binary image with a single one in each column. This way, the hidden units can “tell” what letters are sending them input.

Now, instead of having each hidden unit receive input from all of the visible units, as in an ordinary RBM, we’ll say that each hidden unit receives input from some $k$ consecutive columns of visible units (i.e. $k$ consecutive letters), for some choice of $k$. We’ll also assume that the input is “stationary,” just like Shannon did in his early language modelling work footnote:shannon. This means we are assuming that a priori, the distribution of each letter in the string is not influenced by its position in the string. In other words, the statistics of the string are invariant under translations.

But since the input is translation invariant, each hidden unit should expect statistically similar input. So, it makes sense to let the hidden units be connected to their $k$ input letters by the same exact weights. Here’s a graphic of “sliding” those weights across the visible field to produce the inputs $x_j$ to the hidden layer:

This figure footnote:figurepeople takes a little explaining, but what it shows is exactly how we compute the cross-correlation of the visible field and the weights. Here, the blue grid represents the visible field. The weights (we’ll be calling them the “kernel” or the “filter”, and they’re represented by the shadow on the blue grid) are sliding along the width dimension of the input, and we have chosen a kernel width $k=3$ in the figure. In general, the kernel height is arbitrary, but here we’ve chosen it to be exactly the height of the visible field, which is the alphabet size $N$. This way each row of the kernel is always lined up against the same row of the visible field, so that it is always activated by the same letter, and it can learn the patterns associated with that letter.

At this point, it might help to put down a working definition of cross-correlation, which should be thought of as something like an inner product. (You can think of $u$ as the $n\times N$ visible field, and $v$ as the $k\times N$ filter.)

Def 6. (Cross-correlation) Let $u$ be an $n_1\times n_2$ matrix, and let $v$ be an $m_1\times m_2$ matrix, such that $n_1\geq m_1$ and $n_2\geq m_2$. Then the cross-correlation $u*v$ is the $(n_1-m_1+1)\times(n_2-m_2+1)$ matrix with elements$$[u*v]_{ij}=\sum_{p=0}^{m_1}\sum_{q=0}^{m_2} u_{i+p,j+q}v_{pq}.$$

This differs from a convolution, which is the same but with $v$ reflected on all of its axes first. For some reason machine learning people just call cross-correlations convolutions, so that’s what I’m doing too.

We are extremely close to writing down the energy function for our new network. I keep doing that and then realizing I forgot like 10 things that needed to be said first. I think the last thing that needs saying is this: we’ve shown how to get one row of hidden units, with one filter. In a good network, these units will all be excited by whatever length-$k$ substrings of the input have high correlation with the filter. This will hopefully be some common feature of length-$k$ strings -- for small $k$, this could be something like a phoneme -- I don’t know. Maybe the filter would recognize the short building blocks of words, like “nee” or “bun,” little word-clusters that show up a lot.

But this filter is only going to be sensitive to one feature, and we’d like our model to work with lots of features. So, let’s add more rows of hidden units. Each row will be just like the one we’ve already described, but each row will use its own filter. We’ll stack the rows together, so that the hidden layer now is now image shaped. Let’s let $c$ be the number of filters, and we’ll let $K$ be our filter bank -- this is going to be a 3-d array of shape $c\times k\times N$.

Then, the input to the hidden unit $z^H_{ij}$ is given by the cross correlation of the $j$th filter with the input. If we use $*$ also to mean cross-correlation with a filter bank, we have:$$x^H_{ij}=[z_V*K]_{ij}:=\sum_{p=0}^k \sum_{q=0}^N z^V_{i+p,q} K_{j,p,q}.$$Then the hidden layer $z_H$ will have shape $n-k+1\times c$.

This leads us to a natural definition for the energy function. Since cross-correlation is “like an inner product,” we’ll use it to define a quadratic form just like we did in the RBM:\begin{align*}H(z_V,z_H) &=-\langle z_V * K, z_H\rangle\\\\ &:= - \sum_{i=0}^{n-k-1}\sum_{j=0}^c x^H_{ij} z^H_{ij}\\\\ &= \sum_{i=0}^{n-k-1}\sum_{j=0}^c z^H_{ij} \sum_{p=0}^k \sum_{q=0}^N z^V_{i+p,q} K_{j,p,q}.\end{align*}So, there we have the heart of our new convolutional Boltzmann machine, since the probability is basically determined by the energy.

Categorical input units

There’s only one change left to get us to something that could be called a language model. Right now, the machine has a little problem, which is that it’s possible for a sample from the machine to have two or more units on in some column of the sample. We didn’t use a two-hot encoding for our strings, though, so that sample can’t be understood as a string. We have to find some way to make sure this never happens.

The answer is pretty simple: we just restrict our state space. So far, we had been looking at $z\in\{0,1\}^{V\times H}$, the set of all possible binary configurations of all the units. But let’s restrict our probability distribution to the set$$\Omega=\bigg\{z\in\{0,1\}^{V\times H} : \forall i\,\sum_{j} z^V_{ij}= 1 \bigg\}.$$Then our distribution $p(z)$ is still a Gibbs random field on this state space, but we’re left with a question: how do we decide which of the units in each column should be active? The visible units in a column are no longer conditionally independent, so this manipulation of the state space has changed the graph that our model respects by linking the visible columns into cliques.

So, let’s compute the conditional distribution of the visible units given the hidden units. Since the energy is the same, we still have that $$p(z^V_{ij}=1\mid z_H)=\frac{1}{Z} e^{x^V_{ij}},$$ for some normalizing constant that we’ll just call $Z_{ij}$ for now. The question is, what is the normalizing constant? Well, it satisfies $$Z_{ij}=Z_{ij}p(z^V_{ij}=1\mid z_H) + Z_{ij} p(z^V_{ij}=0\mid z_H),$$and we know that since exactly one unit is on,$$Z_{ij}p(z^V_{ij}=0\mid z_H)=\sum_{k\neq j} Z_{ij} p(z^V_{ik}=1\mid z_H).$$ Plugging back into the previous line, we get$$Z_{ij}=\sum_{k}Z_{ij} p(z^V_{ik}=1\mid z_H).$$ But $Z_{ij}$ obeys this relationship for any choice of $j$, so we see that in fact $$Z_{i0}=Z_{i1}=\dotsm=Z_i$$is constant over the whole column, and that its value is $$Z_i=\sum_{k} Z_i p(z^V_{ik}=1\mid z_H) = \sum_k e^{x^V_{ik}}.$$So, now we have found our conditional distribution $$p(z^V_{ij}=1\mid z_H)=\frac{e^{x^V_{ij}}{\sum_k e^{x^V_{ik}}}.$$ But this is exactly the softmax footnote:softmax function that often appears when sigmoid-Bernoulli random variables are generalized to categorical random variables! That’s nice and encouraging, and it gives us a simple sampling recipe. Just compute the softmax of $x^V$ over columns, and then run a categorical sampler over each column of the result.

It might be worth noting that this trick of changing the distribution of the input units is a common one: often for real-valued data, people will use Gaussian visible units and leave the rest of the network Bernoulli footnote:GaussBerRBM. Also, I should note that I was inspired to do this by the similar state-space restriction that Lee et al. used to construct their probabilistic max pooling layer footnote:honglak -- this is a pretty direct adaptation of that trick.

Lastly, it might be worth noting that you could do the same thing to the hidden layer that we have just done to the visible layer -- this could be helpful, since it would keep the network activity sparse. Also, in the language domain, maybe it’s appropriate to think of hidden features as mutually exclusive in some way (you can’t have two phonemes at once). I would bet that this assumption starts making less sense as you go deeper in the net. The problem with this idea is that unlike what we’ve just done in the visible layer, changing the state space of the hidden units ends up changing the integral that computes the free energy of the visible units, which means we would have to do that again. So for now, let’s not do this.

Training the language model

Now, we’d like to get this thing learning. But for once, we are in for a lucky break. Notice that this categorical input units business hasn’t changed anything about the free energy -- that integral is still the same. So, since the learning rule is basically determined by the free energy, that means that this categorical input convolutional RBM has the same exact learning rule as a regular old convolutional RBM.

And, we’re in for another break too. Cross-correlations are linear maps, so a convolutional RBM is just a special case of the generic RBM whose learning rule we’ve computed above. In particular, there exists a matrix $M_K$ so that if $z_V’$ is $z_V$ flattened from an image to a flat vector, $M_Kz_V=(z_V*K)’$. The thing is that $M_K$ is very sparse, so we need to figure out the update rule for the elements of $M_K$ that are not fixed to 0.

Well, first of all, our free energy hasn’t changed, but we can write it in a more convolutional style: $$F_V(z_V)=-\sum_{i=0}^{n-k+1}\sum_{j=0}^c \log(1 + e^{x^H_{ij}}).$$ So, all we need to do is compute $\partial_{K_{ors}}$ of this expression ($K$ is hidden in $x^H_{ij}$). This is quick, so I’ll write it out:\begin{align*}\partial_{K_{ors}} F_V(z_V) &=\partial_{K_{ors}} - \sum_{i=1}^{n-k+1}\sum_{j=1}^c}\log(1+e^{x^H_{ij}}\\\\ &=-\sum_{i=0}^{n-k+1} \partial_{K_{ors}} \log(1+e^{x^H_{io}})\\\\ &=-\sum_{i=0}^{n-k+1}\frac{1}{1+e^{x^H_{ij}}} \partial_{K_{ors}} e^{x^H_{io}}\\\\ &=-\sum_{i=0}^{n-k+1}\sigma(x^H_{io}) \partial_{K_{ors}} x^H_{io}\\\\ &=-\sum_{i=0}^{n-k+1}\sigma(x^H_{io}) z^V_{i+r,s},\end{align*}where the last line follows directly from the definition of $x^H_{io}$ given above.

But on the other hand, what if we did want to have categorical columns in the hidden layer? It’s plausible to me to think that only one “language feature” might be active at a given time, and this has the added bonus of keeping the hidden layer activities sparse. This amounts to imposing on the hidden layer the same restriction that we earlier imposed on the state space for the visible layer, i.e. we choose the new state space$$\Omega’=\bigg\{z\in\{0,1\}^{V\times H} : \forall i\,\sum_{j} z^V_{ij}= 1 = \sum_j z^H_{ij} \bigg\}.$$Then, of course, we sample the hidden units in the same way that we just discussed sampling categorical visible units.

But now we’ve changed the state space of $z_H$, which in turn changes the behavior of the $\int \, dz_H$ that appears in the definition of free energy. So if we want to train a net like this, we’ll need to re-compute the free energy and see what happens to the learning rule.

This is sort of the convolutional version of the outer product that appeared in the RBM, and it’s a special case of the gradient needed to train a convolutional DBN like footnote:honglak, which allows for a kernel that is not full-height like ours.

Many thanks especially to Matt Ricci for working through all of this material with me, and to Professors Matt Harrison, Nicolas Garcia Trillos, Govind Menon, and Kavita Ramanan for teaching me the math.

we could just use an ordinary dbn and make sure to sample from the conditional distribution on only one per col in vis layer

modify sliding kernel pic to have full-height kernel, show the alphabet on the side, stuff like that. cite that guy’s tool if it works

let’s try that

ok, but just for fun, let’s encode that constraint into the model. maybe it’ll make it more structured and able to automatically deal with sparsity problems.

at this point you have as much intuition for me if this thing should work. let’s try it out. more layers is tough?? idk

mention more Boltzmann “mods” like DUBM, or more standard Gaussian, or Gaussian-Bernoulli. Mention gemangeman model.

search for todo and footnote when done. also resize the figures.w

0 notes

tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Genius by numbers: why Hollywood maths movies don't add up

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/genius-by-numbers-why-hollywood-maths-movies-dont-add-up/

Genius by numbers: why Hollywood maths movies don't add up

From The Beautiful Mind towards the Theory of all things anf the husband Who Understood Infinity, Hollywood loves a math wizzard. Why cant it get past the fevered prodigy scribbling equations on home windows?

In the Tina Fey sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, wealthy Manhattanite Jacqueline Vorhees wails to her assistant that they cant manage to get divorced. Despite the fact that shed get $1m for each year of her marriage.

I spend 100 grand per month. Ill be broke in ten years, she wails. No, thats wrong, counters Kimmy (Ellie Kemper), who scribbles some sums having a marker on Mrs Vorheess window. So $100,000 occasions 12 several weeks. Thats $1.2m annually. Divide that into $12m, you will find, youd be broke in ten years. However if you simply invest a lot of it, presuming a 7% rate of return, while using compound interest formula, your hard earned money would almost double.

Kimmy turns round triumphantly: Mrs Voorhees, I mathed, and you may get divorced! Mrs Vorhees eyes Kimmy narrowly. Individuals aren’t, she complains, erasable markers. What she doesnt mention is the fact that math isnt a verb. Not.

The scene is, amongst other things, Feys satire from the Hollywood cliche of genius squiggling on glass. In A Beautiful Mind (2001), for example, Russell Crowe, playing troubled maths star John Forbes Nash Jr, writes formulae on his dorm window. This scene is echoed in The Social Network (2010), where Andrew Garfield sets the equations for Facebooks business design on the Harvard window while Jesse Eisenbergs Mark Zuckerberg looks on. Within the opening scene of excellent Will Hunting (1997), janitor prodigy Matt Damon writes equations on the bathroom mirror.

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So why do a lot of Hollywood maths whizzes forego paper? Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin explains. Depicting a math wizzard scribbling formulas on the piece of paper is much more accurate, however it certainly doesnt convey the look of the person amorously involved with mathematics, along with seeing someone write individuals formulas in steam on the mirror or perhaps in wax on the window, neither is it as being cinematographically dramatic.

Good point. Whenever we see a Beautiful Mind and appear with the window at our Russ, Hollywoods most built math wizzard (counterexamples on postcards, please show your workings), we pass beyond incomprehensive equations and convince ourselves were seeing Genius at the office. Even when, as some critics have complained uncharitably, Russs pi glyphs, greater-than and fewer-than symbols and the like dont seem sensible.

But theres one other way maths movies can confound the Monotony Equation, namely by departing a black hole in which the maths ought to be. The Man Who Knew Infinity, the brand new film starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons concerning the great Indian math wizzard Srinivasa Ramanujan, is intriguing in this way. Although we have seen Ramanujan doing maths, mostly the show has an interest in other activities how he falls deeply in love with his wife, the discomfort of separation as he travels from Madras to review at Cambridge, the racism he suffers in England and, most stirringly, the narrative arc from lowly clerk to globally recognised math wizzard.

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Hollywoods most built mathematician Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. Photograph: Universal Studios

That said, the film has its charming moments. When Hardy visits Ramanujan in a nursing home, he complains about the boring number of the cab that brought him there. Ramanujan begs to differ: 1,729 is the smallest that is expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Today 1,729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number. How does that work, you may be wondering? Like this: 1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103.

Ramanujans mentor GH Hardy (Irons) is an atheist and rationalist, exasperated that this Indian prodigy cannot produce proofs for his work and, worse, is doubtful that proofs can explain the inexplicable. You wanted to know how I get my ideas, says Ramanujan. God speaks to me. But while the film may sketch two different mathematical philosophies, we leave the cinema with a warm glow that comes from anything but hard thinking.

If you want to learn some more about Ramanujans contribution to mathematics, rent High School Musical. Freeze-frame it at the moment brainy Gabriella Montez challenges her teacher. On the board are two of the equations of the inverse of the constant pi (1/) that Ramanujan offered in his first paper published in England. Shouldnt the second equation read 16 over pi? asks Gabriella. Of course it should.

Cinema often struggles with dramatising difficult ideas, particularly if they are abstract. One way of overcoming that problem is by metaphorical explanation. For instance, in Nicholas Roegs Insignificance (1985), a Marilyn Monroe-like character demonstrates relativity using toy trains and flashing lights. In The Theory of Everything, Jane Hawking uses a pea and a potato to explain the difference between quantum theory and general relativity, while her husbands friends explain Hawking Radiation with beers and crisps.

Movie explanations of difficult stuff, though, may obscure rather than enlighten. Whats more, some directors know this and have fun pointing out the shortcomings of their medium and those of their audiences. In Adam McKays The Big Short (2016), for example, Margot Robbie sits inside a tub sipping champagne and describing how sub-prime loans work. Her explanation is doubtless coherent, however when Im searching in a beautiful lady inside a bubble bath, I am not considering credit default swaps. So sue me. Later within the film, chef Anthony Bourdain chops fish in the kitchen while describing how collateralised debt obligations work. Finally, Selena Gomez plays roulette as one example of the thought of gambling on other bands gambles.

Each scene works as a parody of explanation. They are members of a movie that mocks you, you poor jerk, as well as your intellectual aspirations. You are not ever likely to know how difficult stuff works from watching movies, however much youd prefer to.

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Sometimes, though, cinema can provide a genuine understanding of the intellectual process. In Agora (2009), Rachel Weisz as ancient philosopher Hypatia does a test on the shipped to test relative motion. If, she hypothesises, you drop huge sack in the mast as the ship is continuing to move forward, it’ll fall around the deck several ft behind the mast. The sack is dropped and falls much nearer to the mast than she predicted. Hypatia claps her hands in delight. However, you were wrong! states the ships captain. Yes, but it’s definitive proof! The sack behaves as though the boat were stationary.

What am i saying?

I do not know. However the identical principle could be relevant to our planet. It may be getting around the sun’s rays without us realising.

Hypatia, in other words, infers an innovative heliocentric cosmology from her falsified hypothesis. The show thus generously provides for us what we should are effectively denied in Good Will Hunting or perhaps a Beautiful Mind the news about how someone clever is considering an issue. Furthermore, its an antidote to Hollywoods vision of genius. It shows that getting stuff wrong reaches least as vital within the story of human intellectual progress to be right constantly.

Maths is frequently reduced to simply a MacGuffin. In Rushmore (1998), for example, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is studying the newspaper while his teacher informs his class that around the blackboard may be the hardest geometry equation on the planet. What credits would anybody solving it get, asks one student. Well, thinking about Ive never witnessed anybody understand it properly, including my mentor Dr Leaky at Durch, I suppose if anybody here can solve this problem, Id ensure that none individuals have to spread out another math book again throughout your lives.

Thus enticed, Fischer folds his paper and would go to the blackboard, and squiggles his solution while nonchalantly sipping espresso. The show at this time is not to declare but Fischers genius. Will we really believe Jason Schwartzmann can compute the region of the ellipse? Sure. Whatever.

Genius squiggling can there be once more just to assist Hollywood tell the sentimental story it never tires of: namely the storyline of somebody usually borderline demented by definition insufficiently recognised sticking it towards the establishment.

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Genius squiggling Rushmore

None of this should suggest we cant learn maths from movies. In Tina Feys Mean Girls (2004), for example, Lindsay Lohan plays a finalist in the Illinois high school mathletes state championship. Will her Northern Coast High team place it to individuals prep school toffs opposite? Heres the initial question: Two times the bigger of two figures is three greater than five occasions the smaller sized, and the sum of the four occasions the bigger and three occasions the smaller sized is 71. Do you know the figures? First got it yet? 14 and 5. Within the finish, Lohans team end up being the new condition champs because she wins the sudden dying tie-break. Exactly what does the scene prove? That individuals individuals who thought She no longer can do maths should certainly talk to her.

Possibly probably the most resonant maths scene in Hollywood cinema, though, comes in an exceedingly old comedy. Within the Abbott and Costello movie Within the Navy (1941), Lou is really a ships prepare. Hes baked 28 doughnuts, which he reckons is just enough to give 13 to each of his seven officers. But seven adopts 28 four occasions, objects Lous straight man. Not too, states Lou, who procedes to prove it around the blackboard inside a masterclass of cheating and illusion. The scene demonstrates an over-all truth, namely that whenever Hollywood does maths, it doesnt always accumulate.

The Man Who Knew Infinity is released on 8 April.

Find out more: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/06/mathematics-movies-the-man-who-knew-infinity

#Culture #Film #Mathematics #Rushmore #Russell Crowe #Science #The Big Short #The Man Who Knew Infinity #Tina Fey

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