The Southern part of China is having heavy rains and is almost always cloudy, which heavily impacts someone like me, who bases a large part of my motivation on the weather. It’s not anything emotional, it’s just a bright sun will always bring me tons and tons of motivation and productivity, and it’s how summers have been for me. In winter, I like heavy snow and cloudy days, especially on Christmas. Unfortunately, Shanghai barely has this type of “typical” weather that people from most parts of the world experience at least one. NYC has heavy snow and cold winters while LA has hot, sunny summers. Shanghai’s in the horrible middle part where you don’t get proper snow OR sunlight.

Besides from that, my sleep schedules have been heavily influenced by the abuse of electronic products. I usually fell asleep at 10-11PM for vacations and strictly 10PM for school days, but this summer has been different. I almost always sleep after 12AM and sometimes even stay up until 2AM. While I can wake up at 9 or 10 AM, I feel like it starts my day horribly with a lack of energy. I am almost ALWAYS sleep deprived. Last night I tried to sleep at 10PM and it didn’t work out. Maybe I should force myself to stop using e-devices after 8PM from now on. THIS CAN’T CONTINUE. I am wreaking havoc on my body, my attention, and my productivity.

The last thing that is stealing my attention is WeChat. I check them frequently to see if anyone’s texting me, but sadly, no. Barely anyone texts me but I still keep opening and closing WeChat to check for any updates. I kind of made it into a habit and I can’t stop. I think that’s what they make you do all the time? The app designs your friend to expect an “instant reply” from you instead of like E-Mails, where you can reply a few days late. After you get into the algorithm of instant-replying your friends and expecting your friends to reply instantly, you gradually make it a habit to check for the newest updates, which requires you to be online all the time when you have any break time. During school days or classes, you don’t have that time, which means you barely even get to check it. But during vacation, you get a lot of free time and you check messages all the time. My phone time went from 1 hour average to 6 hours average, a six-fold increase.

Solutions? For the weather, I don’t really know…Seriously, just give me some sunny days. God, if I had the choice, I would move to LA or San Francisco in no time. For sleep? I read before bed and restrict caffeine intake after 4 PM (which is tea for me, I hate coffee). I ban e-devices from 10PM to 10AM, so I start my mornings refreshed and productive, instead of self-loathing and addicted to electronic drugs–Social Media. I already implemented my screen time to my phone and I am following them really strictly. I hope it helps.

Bye.

What are consciousness? Why are we conscious? Is it a simple evolutionary byproduct, as my friend @sophieandie argues? Well, it all relates to the “AI” and “Machine Learning” talk we had.

Our technology has been evolving so fast that we have many Science Fiction works about robots feeling emotions, and such. But how? Humans can be perfectly functional without cognitive abilities. We could just progress everything in our brain and only send data to the brain, never “displaying” it. We don’t have to think everything through, or feel anything. When we are damaged, we could just send it to the brain without feeling pain, just like how some robots repair themselves without feeling any “pain”. When Sophie came up with the rebuttal of the ability to learn and improve, I argued back with machine learning. Technology is perfectly capable of doing all of this without consciousness. They do it better, and faster.

The second question is, how? Even if we do put some “pain” rods in robots, how can we be sure that they feel the “pain” as we do? Isn’t it just another data sent back to the CPU with a programmed response, which makes it unlike what we feel? I mean, we “feel” the pain and process it at the same time. How do we make them do that? We can’t “force” consciousness inside them, can we?

Once again, none of these questions have any solvencies yet, and I don’t expect there to be in the recent years. Just throwing some ideas out there, these may be why we have them, and as modern science knows, all animals have them, just as the famous philosopher Descartes once said: “I think, therefore I am.” The mere fact that you are wondering about this question makes you conscious.

1. Efficiency

When we feel pain, or sadness, we react QUICK. We never “lag” to jump up when we step on a nail on the ground; that’s because we feel the pain being given away by the brain to the body. That’s what “prevented” us from so many harms.

(that’s all we came up with)

please share your thought on the comment below! we would LOVE more discussions on this topic.

Big shoutout to @sophieandie who contributed so much to this article. 🙂

A=XYZ.

Albert Einstein

I always wanted to differentiate myself from the others. Blending in is not an honor. Instead, it should be a humiliation. It is a representation of ordinary and irrationalism. I prefer evidence, data and logic when solving problems. Rationalism is my top priority. I like mathematics, computer programming, and theoretical physics. I think that the world is like an elegant equation, the whole rule of the universe could be summarized in one equation. A=XYZ is representing my motto. A = Success, X = Hard work, Y = Plenty of rest, and Z = No bragging. I wish that life could be concluded as myself, S = CER. S is success, C is critical thinking, E is effort, and R is staying rational. I am myself, Ronald.