1,000 knives of thought - answers

I won't. A family is a very personal group of people, and what it means depends very much upon each individual. It's meaningless to define something which can never be generalised. Even biologically speaking, a family is created in a rather approximate manner depending on the given situations. Which I think is also evident in a kibbutz, for example. Anyway, it seems as though people begin to see one another as their family when they live together for some time.

Kenji Saito

Make it obligatory for a man to get suspended from his work when he has a baby.

It may sound non-sense, but thinking why should help you to understand this problem better. For any problem, understanding it well is already a solution.

Kenji Saito

True. Because a robot is an abstraction of a human being, which is a human being perceived by a human mind. Just like I am, just the way you are.

Kenji Saito

First thing of all, we have to investigate if beverage is actually frequently poisoned. There is a possibility that it is mass media that is giving us such an impression, while the actual frequency of such incidents remains the same. In fact, cases of poisoned beverage found for example inside vending machines had been reported albeit infrequently. However, it is a source of fear to which everyone can relate, which means it has a high news value, and perhaps the media has been reporting every instance of such incidents.

If this kind of crime is actually frequently happening, we cannot ignore the part the media took in it. Reporting the crimes may be influencing the possible criminal minds towards the next occurrences of such incidents. The problem is the high news value of this kind of crime.

There are other kinds of crime with equally high news values: terrorism or murders. One of the differences between these crimes and beverage poisoning is that the latter appeals more strongly to the reality of the receivers of the news. Considering the current situations in Japan, the latter is easier for lots of people to imagine themselves as the next victims. In other words, the latter more strongly appeals to the "anxiety" of the public.

For a potential criminal, it would appear that it is easier to poison a can of beverage than to make a bomb, and unlike murdering by hand which would mean to face an individual victim even when it is an undiscriminating kind, one doesn't have to face the victims, and can appeal to the anxiety of the general public. Which makes me think there are two reasons: that "capitalism of news" in which news of such a crime sells better has been developed well in Japan, and that there are lots of people in Japan with a certain mental characteristic (largely situational, I would imagine) to get influenced by such a type of capitalism. Sounds like a tautology, I know.

Kenji Saito

The sound I will be pleased to listen to then. Right now, it would mean the version of "SOUS LE SOLEIL EXACTEMENT" in the soundtrack of "ANNA" which Anna Karina sings. I like the intervals.

Or the sound I will discover pleasing then which I will have never listened to. This sounds better. I would call for a good DJ and have him or her spin beside me ;-).

Kenji Saito

True because an artist makes something without commercial values. Commercial value here means something worth mass-producing though. This particular type of capitalism is heading towards its ending. Good for you, artists.

Kenji Saito

Housing developments. I could think of nothing else.

Kenji Saito

False. People tend to make mistakes pronouncing something incompatible with the verbal training they have received through speaking their languages. For example, pronouncing "John Carpenter" in Japanese language is not easy for those who speak Japanese daily.

Kenji Saito

It is questionable if one can feel happiness while being in an unpleasant situation subjectively. An example of happiness in a situation which would look unpleasant to others is a masochist being oppressed.

Kenji Saito

When a person converse with others, he or she would read their faces and gestures as well as listen to their words. It is quite natural for a human being to communicate using multiple mediums. If it becomes more common to see computers and robots in human societies, they should also be communicating through multiple mediums, and multimedia as we know today will no longer be special. Media is a plural form of the word medium anyway, so I'd say the word "media" should suffice.

Kenji Saito

False in general, because this is like saying software problems can be solved by hardware. However, if an abnormality is observed at the interface between a system and its surroundings resulting from a hardware fault, the problem should be able to be solved by fixing the hardware. For instance, abnormal behaviour of a person resulting from lack of certain chemical substance in his or her brain can be treated by giving the substance.

Kenji Saito

It always ends up that way whether it was your intention or not.

Kenji Saito

False, and it can be proven (for example, one can show that the proposition is contradictory by pointing out that 7 becomes an even number if there is an integer between 6 and 7), but I wonder if the usage of the word "discover" is correct. Is an integer something to be discovered, or is it something to be invented?

Kenji Saito

True. We tend to make a causal connection between two events one preceding another, whether they are really causally related or not. This is a very approximate sense, and is a cause of incantations.

Kenji Saito

A similarity is that they both break rules. A difference is how they are called.

Kenji Saito

False. Machines are not living entities so therefore have no chi.

chuck

True. I don't think the same CHI as applied to human beings can be applied to machines. However, a machine version of CHI should be conceivable. In my understanding, CHI is an abstraction of a human body not according to western medicine. Likewise, I think that an abstraction of a machine not according to mechanical engineering is a possibility. Thinking otherwise, I'm afraid, is dogmatic and any scientists should avoid it in my opinion.

Kenji Saito

None.

Me, supreme being.

You, sleep (laughter).

club ana

Myself, although it sounds like a cliché.

Kenji Saito

At this moment, I don't have enough time to do everything I want to. I think I can handle up to about 400 years. I am rather worried about more years than that, but I guess something interesting is inevitable to come up then.

Kenji Saito

To me, love reminds me of a wild life rather than looks like one. Whatever love really is, I don't think it is an emotion unique to human beings. I think it has developed through very long period of time since at least the days of the common ancestors of mammals inhabiting the Earth today. As unnecessary emotions are not likely to develop through evolutionary processes, love must have been mandatory for living in a wild environment. Love must really be a wild concept.

Kenji Saito

True. Anyone must have experienced a period in their childhood when they wondered if their mothers and fathers were their actual parents. You must have suspected that you were an abandoned child, and your real parents lived far away, because you were so interested in your origin and yet you felt so insecure. If someone believes that the human race originated in outer space, instead of a common ancestor of primates, I cannot help seeing an analogy there. Perhaps it is a required stage for the human race to go through such period in order for us to grow up.

Kenji Saito

True. I think brainwashing is to destroy someone's current set of beliefs and replace it with another one. It's just a replacement, say, of set A with B. As what is right and what is wrong should depend on each set of beliefs, and conformance to the particular set is what being right is all about, it would look perfectly right for believers of set B to change from A to B, while it would look wrong for believers of set A. If the society in question consists mainly of believers of set B, then this particular brainwashing must be accepted as a good thing. For example, deprogramming someone brainwashed is a way of brainwashing itself, only that it is replacing an evil set of beliefs with the common sense of the society.

Kenji Saito

True. First, we must think what religions in general teach us. I think they teach us not to behave wrongfully, or we will be punished by god(s). Punishing religious cults for their crimes is like enforcing what religions teach us, giving them more credibility. If that is the case, I don't think it is useful in order to prevent other religious cults from rising.

Kenji Saito

The easiest design is for the government to exchange some percentage of the tax with gift cards or something. However, this will mean the power users of capitalism will have the most advantage. Here is a more interesting idea: By today's rate of the consumption tax in Japan, if you spent 2 million yens in a year, you must have payed 100 thousand yen as the tax. Let's say it's a standard amount, and design a lottery with 6 digits. The first digit must always be 1. The participants of the lottery must declare their 6 digits by some combination of the consumption tax printed on their receipts (the amount must be equal to or greater than 100 thousand and less than 200 thousand). Drawing should be made in the end of a year, and winners can share the prize. The prize should be something like 100 million yen. Because the chance is 1 in 100 thousand, about 100 people would win receiving 1 million yen each if 10 million people participated. If no one wins, the prize should be carried over to the next year.

Kenji Saito

Those who want to control others and those who want to be controlled by them. Because by this relationship they can stop their insecurity.

Kenji Saito

True as civilization requires positive feedback and addiction is the pre-installed feature of our brain to support it.

Kenji Saito

Monetary gain is just an increase of a numeric value. Therefore, to answer this question is like to answer if a mathematical entity is real or not, and it should depend upon how deeply one is involved daily with it.

Kenji Saito

True because insecurity made them seek the power in the first place. The acquired power is never enough because tomorrow someone else may be stronger than you.

Kenji Saito

Foreign cultures by definition did not originate in your own society, and therefore have little connection with the standards in the society, which often demand disciplines to master. Foreign cultures do not require any particular protocols to assimilate. They come with less obstacles to begin with.

Kenji Saito

Our brains are designed to recognise meaningful things. The world is not really full of coincidences, but coincidences are easier to get picked up and remembered by our brains.

Kenji Saito

Because there are things you can never know unless you become a stranger.

Kenji Saito

You are so human-centric that you think your body is one object.

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