All of our talk about dreams got me thinking about a subject no one really ever mentioned in class: deja vu. I experience the phenomenon frequently and it is suprisingly accurate. I often have the type of dream that is difficult to separate from reality while I am dreaming. I do all the things I normally do during a day and then wake up. However, after a few days the things that happened in my dream happen in real life, exactly how they happened in my dream. It is crazy. I thought about it and I came to the conclusion that deja vu is one of the ways we can tell we are not living in a "dream world". We can tell that deja vu experiences are real situations about which we have some previous knowledge, but what purpose do they serve. Is it possible to compare them to some sort of amateur prophecies or are they simply a phenomenon we have no way to explain? What do you think, how should we deal with the experiences of deja vu?

Ender's Game

I reread Orson Scott Card's classic s.f. novel this week, in part because my wife's book club read it and there it was in front of me. And it struck me that it raises some interesting questions that connect to what we're talking about.

Much of what matters in the lives of all three of the Wiggins geniuses is virtual. Locke and Demosthenes are the personae Ender's brother and sister use on the nets. But they aren't just names, right? At some point, Valentine remarks that she's written and thought as Demosthenes for so long that she sometimes thinks she is him. What do we make of our question of what's real and what's not when it comes to people and whatever virtual existence they might have? You World of Warcraft folks weigh in on this.

Second, much of what Ender is doing is playing the desktop game (the one with the Giant in it) and then playing the wargames at Battle School. These games are part of an elaborate artificial environment in which the military establishment shapes and trains their candidates. Of course, this all culminates in the grand deception: Ender thinks he's playing a game against Mazer Rackham when he's really fighint the buggers. But even before that lots of deception and manipulation are going on, as evidenced by the italicized conversations that begin most chapters.

Anyway, I should stop writing. What do you think about any of this? Or are there other things to say about Ender's Game? And if you haven't read it, it's a must.

I was watching Smallville the other night and they did an episode in which Clark is taken over by a phantom from the Phantom Zone. The phantom wanted to take control of Clark's body but first needed to imprison his mind. To accomplish this the phantom but Clark's mind in a world in which he has never had superpowers, in fact he has been locked up in a mental institution for being Schizophrenic. I found this whole episode to be parallel with the idea of the "evil demon", the demon being the phantom in the show. The phantom tried to trick Clark into believing in a false reality for its own evil purposes. This whole episode of course reminded me of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which an almost identical experience is had by Buffy. In this show Buffy also awakes in a mental institute and is told that all her experiences in Sunnydale were merely figments of her imagination. In the end of this show Buffy chooses to believe in the world of vampires and demons that she knows and we see doctors consoling her parents telling them that Buffy has slipped back into her dream world. I find this show to be especially compelling because it suggests to me that there could be alternate realities and what matters is what we choose to believe because that is what reality is, what we believe in.

In class we were talking about weapons of mass-destruction and this had me thinking about why we even have them. If we all agree a weapon that can destroy a whole city is wrong than why do we create them? Why don’t we just destroy them instead of creating more effective ways to use them? Wouldn’t the smart thing would be to defuse them? As far as I know we have them all hidden someone where for “just in case” times. Are they truly safe way? What does that tell us about the world? Does anyone have any thoughts?

Topic pages

I've created the first of a series of "topic pages," this one on skepticism in philosophy and science fiction. I've listed films, books, stories, links, etc. there. It is and will continue to be a work in progress, so take a look and let me know if you have any ideas about what to add...

So in Gen Psych class, we have been reading about the effect of the brain and genetics on a person’s character. Some psychological disorders we know are genetic, such as bipolar disorder and Schizophrenia. Movies like GATTACA have raised the question of how much of “who you are” is controlled by your genetics. I really cannot come up with a good answer for that question. My mom works as a psych nurse, so we have had many conversations about how her patients struggle with defining themselves other than as a person with depression or bipolar or whatever. But then again, I want to say that my personality is my own choice and not a result of DNA.

Do you have any thoughts on the subject? What makes us who we are? And to go along with that post about heaven, who will we be in heaven?

Since we're talking about The Matrix, you might want to take a look at these:

The Meatrix (and sequels)

The Muppet Matrix

And as long as I'm posting some humorous stuff, you might also consider the following Star Wars gags:

Troops

Grocery Store Wars

Feel free to post funnier stuff, if you've got it...

Heaven. We talked about it in class briefly on Mon., and, talking about "grey areas," here is a whopper of one that we Christians surely don't know everything about! Prof. mentioned something along the lines of what if we lose our personalities and interests and become totally new beings in that sense in heaven? A thought that popped up in my mind: I had a conversation with an "athiest/agnostic/not-sure-what-to-classify" and he said he was not interested in heaven because a place where everything and everyone was happy did not interest him. Perfect happiness and perfect joy was not appealing. Why would he want to go to heaven for that? What are your thoughts on this? How would you reply to such a statement?

So, I'm still grappling with the difference between Metaphysics (studying the nature of reality) and Epistemology (the study of knowledge). I've come up with something. Maybe. Is epistemology perhaps the study of reality as viewed through human experience?

What is everyone's view on philosophy ?- I have always thought of philosophy trying figure out the "grey area" in life. The things that are not clearly black and white. Now I don't know if this is correct or not but it seems to me philosophy is always addressing the questions and problems with no clear solution. The different types of philosophy comes from a certian "grey area" question.

Two can play Professor Randy's game - What is your favorite sci-fi book? Or series, I'll allow that.
Mine has to be the Shadow quartet from Orson Scott Card. For those who don't know, the Shadow quartet is the story of what happened on earth at the end of the book Ender's Game. The first in the series, Ender's Shadow, retells Ender's Game from the point of view of another character. All of Card's Ender books tend to deal with a grab bag of issues all at once. Most of the Shadow books deal with humanity, that is, what makes us human, what are we here for etc. And for those of us who are already fans of the series, I have heard news that Card wants to write at least two more books in the Ender universe: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue422/interview2.html

What's your favorite s.f. film?