11/3 #
Despite focusing on social, partners, family, or career, there are diverse ways to engage with the world. What matters is finding that deep resonance, an experience that truly touches your soul.
I was surprised to find that the official website of some academic journals cannot be found when using the Baidu search engine.
I was taking the underground to take BB home. She was nearly at the station, so I waited inside the paid area to save money. To be clear, the journey from Gangxia to the Children’s Palace costs ¥2.85. By going to Children’s Palace and then back to Gangxia without exiting the station, my entire journey cost ¥1.90 instead.
I was enjoying Travis Scott’s album Days Before Rodeo, which became my recent stay-at-home music. I listened to it for the first time and could not stop. BTW, I am not good at English, so I listen for the rhyme.
Perhaps it will become common to have a Robot server at home in the future. One thing that comes to my mind: where to store it when it doesn’t work? In the wardrobe? So disrespectful! There must be some organisations that would oppose that. Or maybe by the time we have tiny home appliances, robots will share more space.
When working out following a fitness video, you can play it at 1.5 or 2 times the speed to become more efficient (no joke).
11/5 Moving to the New Flat #
We finally decided to move to a new flat in Fuhua Estate before the current rent in Huitai Building ends (Nov 8th). The landlord is friendly. He lived here before, so the interior decoration and furniture are of high quality. This flat is about 80% as nice as the one in Lianhua 2nd Estate, but cheaper. It took me the whole day to move. The mover was so strong, he could carry things like Sam in Death Stranding. When we finished at night, he even gave me a ride to the Children’s Palace so I could take BB to our new home. From the Huitai Building, you could see two of the three tallest skyscrapers in SZ: the Crockroach Building and the Correction Tape Building. From Fuhua Estate, you could see the third and the tallest one: the Hardware Nail Building.
11/13 Phylosophy #
Waiting at a bus stop and consulting Hegel’s philosophy (黑格尔的哲学) with DeepSeek, I surprisingly found that Hegel’s dialectics (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis) are consistent with the writing of a Fugue (i.e., subject, answer, and countersubject). An advantage of AI is that I can fulfil my curiosity anywhere by exploring things I’d like to know, other than fast-food information on social media. This time, I learned that one’s philosophy can be summarised by concepts including:
- First Principle: This is where every other knowledge is inferred and derived from.
- Metaphysics: how interesting. In Chinese, it’s called 形而上学, but I found that you can better understand its meaning through the English name. In brief, metaphysics is the knowledge other than physics.
- Epistemology: it’s about what knowledge is and where it comes from. In reading comprehension research, epistemological knowledge is also a significant predictor of reading success.
- and Ethics: I am less interested in this one.
Training AI models (the integration of human knowledge) nowadays seems similar to unveiling the Absolute Spirit, which is a key concept of the First Principle in Hegel’s philosophy, and also similar to what people did in The Last Question, an Isaac Asimov science fiction short story, and The Nine Billion Names of God, an Arthur Clarke science fiction short story.
Therefore, philosophers always need to begin by establishing a First Principle. A well-known example is “I think, therefore I am”, by Descartes (笛卡尔). It seems reasonable, right? You consider your own thinking as the only thing you really trust, and then infer every other knowledge from this. Could we push the truth further? Yes, there must be something before the existence of your mind! For instance, the existence itself! Here we find Existentialism (存在主义). From this perspective, either Descartes or the existentialists seems to prefer idealism (唯心主义). At the same time, Marx appears to be on the contrary side, that is, materialism (唯物主义), as he believes that material conditions determine society. However, when I wrote this, DeepSeek reminded me that Marx is a firm materialist. Still, Descartes agrees with both idealism and materialism (as he agrees with the existence of the world, unlike Berkeley, who believes that “to be is to be perceived”). Many existentialists think beyond the traditional binary taxonomy. You see, philosophy is fun.
11/15 #
A dream:
- The first scene: Like a zombie movie. First-person perspective. I followed a man who looked like Paul Walker to find a shelter. A man looked like Vin Diesel. His house. Small like a vehicle. No door, only a thin veil. Zombies were coming, he injected something (the vaccine?) and let zombies lick the blood from his fingers. Not a long-term solution: what if he ran out of blood?
- The second scene: Like watching a movie. Skyscrapers in a dark city. Paul, who was on a helicopter, guided both of us to escape. Besides zombies, two humans were following us, a man and a woman. Parkour across rooftops. We arrived at the city’s edge. Circling a building to escape the two enemies. Boarding Paul’s helicopter to leave.
11/16 #
We watched Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle. My comment: a high-quality common manga story (制作精良的样板戏).
11/18 Hyperion #
Hyperion, a science fiction, considers humans’ love as a very great thing, even on the universe level. I don’t believe that. Animals have love, too, though they express it in simpler ways, and love is only one of the mental activities we share. We have a prefrontal cortex that enables us to perform complex forms of love. What if aliens have a more complex brain than humans’? What if they consider us as lab mice? On Earth, we do not consider a lab mouse’s psychological activities as the greatest thing of all. This cannot save the universe. Despite that, I still consider love to be great, but only for individuals. The truth is, love may be insignificant and unimportant within the scope of the universe, so do humans, but love matters to us.
11/19 A Day to Disneyland #
Two dreams: the first one is that my ex came to my house wanting to get back together. I said no and let her peek at BB, who’s sleeping in the bedroom. The second one is having dinner with some elderly, possibly BB’s family.
It turns out that I’m also a music creator. Here are some lyrics for pop music that came into my mind during breakfast: 装作很冷静 装作不在意 但你心跳的反应 欺骗不了你.
(A few minutes after the last reminder) Okay, here are the following four lines：像只小猫咪 深夜也会哭泣 ENFP 你是ENFP.
On the way to the underground, I showed BB the lyrics above.
I ordered a pizza (with beef, ham and chicken sausage) for lunch. Pizza is good. I can always trust Italian food. I have never eaten a pizza that doesn’t taste good. BB ordered 猪扒焗饭, the one that’s very similar to the version from the canteen at EdU, the dish there I dislike the most.
11/21 #
Dreaming about travelling with BB and the other two couples. Like Friends. We first took a man (possibly one girl’s boyfriend) and then moved into a vacation villa.
I just realised that many research topics I am currently researching and existing studies I am impressed by (such as Walter Kintsch’s CI model of reading comprehension) derive from Benjamin Bloom, a man I knew in my undergraduate educational psychology classroom, and who has now come back to my mind. Really feel like I am standing at the top of a skyscraper right now, and it seems like the innovation is not a “from 0 to 1” thing. It’s more like adding one brick at a time to a building.
12/9 #
I was chatting with a student helper about how I never used to eat spicy food when I was a child, but I now really enjoy it. She said, “Yeah, because as people get older, the taste buds die, so they start preferring stronger flavours”. I was shocked and truly realised that I wasn’t young anymore (for the first real time).
12/12 #
I suddenly found myself wanting a Mazda MX-5. Maybe I could get one in five years and trade it in for a Porsche 718 in the future . I could achieve that. I am a pro at playing Balatro.
12/14 #
I was trying to practice the piano three times a day to build up my finger strength and technique. I hoped to improve my performance on the BWV 914 fugue before New Year’s Eve. I was too weak to play it well on a real piano, so I practised it on my electric piano in the meantime. I also experimented with a strategy of alternating between two things to compensate for my inability to concentrate on either one for hours. For example, to read one chapter of a detective novel, then play Diablo IV for half an hour, and then return to reading and so on. By the end of the day, my plan failed, and I ended up playing Diablo IV all the time.
12/15 #
I wanted to eat BHC. I was too excited and couldn’t sleep. (Note: I fell asleep a few minutes after I wrote this reminder down. I found that there is only one BHC restaurant in China, which is located in Hong Kong, and people say that it’s not as good as those in Korea. Well, I have not been to Korea, but I guess I will be satisfied already if I can have Korean fried chicken near the place I live.*)
Unlike STEM research, which involves “testing and discovering”, in educational psychology, I think that the things people are doing are actually “defining and confirming” in a scientific way.
12/16 Dream #
It’s a winter night. A rental flat, a long and dark underground walkway, a horse cellar. I found this horse and robe outside alone and felt good, and so I invited my girlfriend to ride together to a nearby space in the neighbourhood, where there are fitness facilities and many residents strolled. Two people were heavy, and so the horse could not lift its neck when walking. It suddenly went out of control and threw us off. Turned out, it’s because a cat ran onto the horse and scratched it because there was a vaccine syringe stuck in the cat’s body. As the cat moved, the needle of the syringe went deeper. This was done by a thief, who had been caught. He approached the owner of the cat and to us and was sitting quietly being questioned.
I read a lot of Japanese manga. Sometimes I come across masterpieces. Sometimes I find pure, unadulterated crap.
I recently heard that Hunter×Hunter will return for serialisation. The last time I heard this was when I heard that Hunter×Hunter would return for serialisation.
12/17 #
I can only work in a single-threaded manner. Sometimes people misunderstand me as a person who can handle multiple tasks; that’s because I complete things one by one and show them simultaneously.
12/23 #
Two cars collided. A drone is above them, broadcasting something, possibly controlled by a traffic police officer. It’s so cyberpunk.
Could we now train an AGI using all the resources and storage spaces on Earth?
Could it be common to have a robot arm in the Kitchen in the future?
12/24 #
Six dishes for the night I made: 水煮牛肉, 加了鹌鹑蛋的炖肉, 香干炒牛肉, 薯条, 烤鸡翅，一个苹果.
12/25 #
Once I decided to record my dreams I could realise that I dream as often. So, I come to the student hall, eating a small filled bread, meeting some people, then walking to the playground outside. There was a cat on the top of a fountain, like a snake, a caterpillar, as its legs are so short, shorter than the Munchkin.
12/26 #
We watched Tokyo Godfather in Hong Kong. The narrative style is weird. Not really enjoying.