Brian's World

Information Exchange

I’ve been meaning to explore how we determine what information we share with other people.  Obviously trust is a critical component, you need to determine how much you trust someone before you can release certain information to them but there is definitely more to it than that.  While we trust someone a lot we might not share every piece of information that comes our way with that individual.  My current working theory is that we also evaluate how useful that information exchange will be.  For example, if you ask me about binary addition and I would proceed to share that knowledge with you because it would be of value to you.  You could tell me your birthday in hopes that I would do something nice for you, a situation where you gain value by sharing information with me.  If you ask me what my middle name is I would not share that piece of information with you because it is of no value to you.  This is all well and good for simple facts and academic experiments, but I’m really interested in how it effects social communication.

I’m doubtful (which sometimes means I’m worried) that we simply don’t simply share information with others because of the information’s usefulness and that persons trust, there might be other factors at work here.  I worry about this because it means that either a lot of people don’t think I’m very useful on social matters or they don’t trust me.  I try very hard to be both useful and trustworthy in this realm, but if I’m not perceived that way then I must not be doing something right?

Maybe there are other people out there more useful and/or more trustworthy that are better candidates to receive a information.  Socially speaking I don’t think there is any realistic physical limit to the sources a message can be shared with, but I bet people choose to self–limit this number to better control their flow of information and their image in the world.   By blogging like this I don’t have to pick and choose who I tell my stories to, I can share them for anyone who is interested in reading them.  That was a particularly poor example if I must say so myself.

I had a whole paragraph here where I convinced myself that I was socially useful but I’m not the person that I should be convincing.  I need no additional pressure to take my own advice.  Maybe I just do a really good job of compartmentalizing things so people don’t perceive I have any knowledge in a field.  Alternatively, I guess I could be unapproachable.  I kind of doubt the approachability thing because a) I shower daily b) I’m usually pretty easy to find in person/online.  My contact information is no secret (just look at the right column of my blog).  I guess there could also be this fear of judgement and the potential for repercussions in a workplace, which is a completely justifiable fear.  Everyone is judging everyone else all the time, it’s not like my judgements of you matter much.  I don’t have a silly sign about a “judgement free zone” because that would be a lie, but I’ve become fairly well versed in preventing any personal judgements from effecting my ability to perform objectively.  I might think you are a complete idiot, but you would have no clue.  Alternatively, I could think that you are super cool and want to “be friends” (whatever that means) but you might think I didn’t care to be around you at all.  Anything is possible these days.

Good night moon.

Leaves

I’ve written about leaves before, but they continue to interest me.  This post occured to me two? days ago when I was driving to Price Chopper up Hoosick St in Troy, NY.  We had a really warm week up here in Troy, every day was in the upper 80s or lower 90s, and this was the first day it was a very pleasant 70-something outside.  It was feeling like fall outside (relatively), the leaves were starting to get a little crisp which reminded me that soon they will be falling off.  I’m not sure how I determined that while driving my car, but we’ll continue.

It occurred to me that in the long run the leaves falling off each fall and growing back in the spring seems like a really inefficient process, not just for the trees but for everyone involved.  If I was a tree, I wouldn’t like to kill off all of my leaves when it got cold and then have to go through all the effort to grow them back when it was not longer freezing outside.  As a person who had a yard, I know first hand that raking leaves isn’t the most useful way to spend an October weekend.

If you view the process a tree grows through on a per-year basis it doesn’t seem as crazy because you don’t capture the repeat N years step but the second you start zooming out it starts to seem a lot dumber.  The leaves that grow back in the next spring won’t be any better than the current leaves.  It’s not like they are evolving to better survive the winter or photosynthesize faster (at least to my knowledge).

Let me provide a really confusing analogy, we’ll talk about databases.  I need to backup my database every few months because that is the season that my hard drives typically fail.  Unfortunately, I don’t have enough hard drive space to back everything up, so I delete a bunch of rows in my database.  Who needed them anyways, right?  After successfully backing the database up, I run the program that puts back close copies of the rows that I previously deleted.  They’re not the exact same pieces of data, but they are reasonably close.  Most people would probably tell you to buy a bigger hard drive and save yourself the hassel.

But this keeps happening.  I don’t like to use the term “mother nature” because I don’t think nature is very maternal, but the natural forces must know something about what’s going on here. This process has been repeating itself for a really really long time.  Maybe it is easier to delete all those rows from the database since the newly added ones can perform the job just as good, if not better.

Unfortunately my basement apartment doesn’t have much of a view out of the 5 windows I have, so I won’t be able to watch Fall happen like I normally do.  I miss having a view I think.  Maybe I will recreate Fall on a screensaver or something like that.

Ever Changing

I have been thinking about writing about the significant changes that I’ve observed in my life for the past week or so.  Tonight when I was using the restroom I realized that was a fairly stupid idea.  My life is always changing, your life is always changing, I postulate that life (at least in the human sense) may in fact be defined by some state of constant change.  It would be silly of me to claim notice to change at this point in my life without correctly quantifying it.

Things are always changing, always.  I change clothes every day, which I would classify as a low-profile change.  I change classes every few months,  probably a medium-profile change.  Over the past few weeks I think that I’ve probably encountered a large number of higher profile changes, the ones that come around every few years.  Perspective is something I need to keep focused on, I mustn’t forget that these high profile changes are likely to occur every so often and, regardless of their desirability or undesirability, I can’t always effect them.

It is far to easy to get caught up in all this change and find yourself “depressed,” I think I do sometimes. Things are not the way they were, the way I was usually comfortable with.  Initially different might seem bad but it, like everything, is what you make of it.  If I remind myself that the sun looks like it will come out tomorrow, definitely a good move for it to make.  I have frequently jumped back to the desert when things appear challenging.  At least I am not trekking though the middle of a desert with a limited water supply… that would be a very high profile change with potentially life-threatening consequences.  Everything else should just be a walk in the park, right?  No matter what change I face in my apartment, academic, professional, social, whatever environments I try and remind myself that someone out there statistically has it much worse than I do.

The least pleasant situation I’ve found myself so far occurs kind of like an eclipse, when two events line up at the same time.  One of the situations that occurs is being alone.  Maybe I’m spending the day in my apartment, hanging out in the Union, surfing the internet, etc.  Where ever I am, there is no one else, so I’m left to occupy myself with myself which I’m not very good at without this second factor.  The second factor is a lack of motivation.  Unfortunately, I lack motivation sometimes just like everyone else.  I hate telling that to the DS too.  When I don’t have the drive to do work and there are not others around to occupy myself with, I start to feel… well, very blah.  I don’t know how to describe it; if it was a colour it would be grey.

Solving the alone problem is much harder for me, so I concentrate my efforts on the motivational challenges.  My observation has been that with the correct motivation, nothing else really matters.  Just like Rihanna says: even though she is on fire, she likes the way it hurts.  Domestic violence discussion aside, I admire her motivational control there.  I will assume she cannot control weather she will be on fire or not, so she has decided to find something pleasant in the most unfortunate circumstances. I was about to say that maybe we all could learn something from Ms. Fenty, but Wikipedia just let me know she is 22.  Never mind that then.

Good Night Moon.