Academic research is difficult to evaluate. In order to know the significance of an article, a result or an experiment, one must know a lot about the relevant field. It is probably fair to say that few people read research articles in great depth unless they work in exactly the area the article is in. […]
Nietzsche rejects the idea of an objective reality. He appears to give a generative status to the faculty of interpretation, in effect saying that the subject creates the world through her interpretations. Simultaneously, he champions the “intellectual conscience” and the value of scientific method and inquiry. How to make sense of this apparent contradiction? It […]
Six days have passed since the fateful earthquake and tsunami of 11 March. I’m still staying in Tokyo, and unlike a lot of the foreigners here, I don’t feel that there is any immediate danger to my person. Life goes on: Yesterday I had a few drinks with my friend. A lot of places were […]
I thought I would write a quick summary of the situation following the huge earthquake in Touhoku, as I understand it, possibly with more updates to follow. 1. I am fine, and there is no immediate danger to me personally. When the quake occurred, I was in Sapporo, and I came back to Tokyo on […]
Now for something quite different from the philosophical entries I’ve been writing recently. We finally got the time to release the game “JTron” on Sourceforge. It is there under its new name Jtronic. This game is designed for programming competitions; participants program an agent that plays the game by obtaining information about its environment and […]