Philosophy of Everything

I like to give advises...for free! I have an advise, an opinion or a theory about almost any subject. Sometimes I can advise about things that I don't master very well myself. I didn't say it always works... Just challenge me ;) In this page you can ask questions about any problem you might have , including personal matters - that can be discussed in public of course. I will attempt to answer to each one, the best I can. If the subject is very far from my experience or it is not interesting enough for the needed effort to answer, I might decline to answer. For the rest of it, I will give at least a short idea.

There is a certain economical logic in companies going bankrupt or being forced to do layoffs. When a company does not provide enough value anymore to society, it should release some of the resources (namely people and materials) for doing something more useful for society. There are, of course, some pitfalls here. When someone that is fired cannot find another job, the actual value in society is decreasing. Even premature retirement can have a similar loss effect on society if that person was still creating some value and after retirement he doesn't find something useful to do (like volunteering, helping family).

A virtual machine is a common example of simulation. It can take the description of a (virtual) "computer" state and continue the execution from that point on. You can simulate a huge computer given a computer with more memory than the virtual machine, although it might be way slower. However, such virtual machine does not answer the problem because it normally simulates a computer with less memory. The question is, can a computer to simulate a virtual computer that has the same capabilities as itself? Before answering this, let's exclude some trivial (forbidden) cases of "simulations": A calculator will always do exactly what it does, it will be identical with itself, we will not call this a simulation of itself. Copying the exact state of another identical computer in a "twin brother" will not be considered simulation. Starting 2 identical computers with the same input will not be considered like one is simulating the other.

We love "cutting edge" technology. We need to have the latest gadget, we need to use this new trendy framework, we need to use the latest update of our favorite software. Newer should be better, right? Actually, each new technology brings a promise of improvement and an additional hidden small risk. You are trying the new innovative painkiller drug that promises to solve your low intensity, but still disturbing, migraines . You can get a real improvement on your condition, you could get no significant improvement or, with a small probability, you could die, like in the recent drug trial in France . Indeed, that was an experimental drug, and many others that took the drug were not affected. Well, this is exactly the danger: if the really bad effects only happens with low probability, it might not even be caught in the trial period...

If you could take a drug that gives you 100 years of constant pleasures in your bad, with no side effects, while someone would feed you by a tube, would you take it? If you think a bit about this question, the answer has an interesting consequence: there must be more in life than physical pleasures.

"Believe" is often associated with religion. However, even for using the " scientific method ", we are forced to assume certain qualities of the Universe that we cannot prove nor fully verify. The most basic assumption is that there are common laws that are universal and they function the same across the whole Universe. This is a leap of faith that we have to take if we believe that the Universe can be understood at all by humans.

Intelligent people learn to adapt to environment,  unintelligent people adapt environment to them  (popular joke) 1. Change the outside Few people can be happy when basic needs are not met. When you are hungry or in pain it is unlikely that something else would make you happy. Even with the basic needs fulfilled, many people have higher order needs, like being appreciated, achieving their highest potential.