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Archive for February, 2008 Page 2 of 2
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I’ve never been much of a critic. Either I keep my opinion to myself or I don’t keep one at all. No, it’s not the “love-everyone-and-hug-everything-and-everyone-is-wonderful” bullshit. Yes the world is filled with a surprisingly large number of asses, idiots, and downright incapable individuals. I just don’t bother forming an opinion about something.
But this is a new kind of experiment. The terms of the experiment is as follows:
I won’t form an opinion of something I have no knowledge or experience with.
This means I don’t have an opinion about hip-hop, pseudo-popular-indian culture(not indian culture, simply the half-american clubs, dancing, and abstinence policy that’s been taking everyone by storm). To form an opinion about it, is only after neutral, and unemotional consideration of the subject matter, and the whole subject matter as is. So if one Hindi song from an era sucks, doesen’t mean they all suck. But if quite a few suck, we have a problem.
I may use existing benchmarks to judge content. For example, if I listen to a metal album, and I can identify parameters which clearly demarcate between the better and worse, I may label the album as undiluted crap, same goes in for movies, articles, websites, or anything that I may consider merits my opinion.
Also, housekeeping of my current opinions will take place in due time. Changing some perspectives may open up new ones. With just two days of this new policy, my hate has been redirected into areas that most deserve it, namely the godaddy domain registration website. No more time spent bitching about things we might not like, but just assuming we don’t like for safety’s sake.
Restricting oneself to an area of one’s expertise:
Anyone with a certain degree of experience can form a credible opinion about something. For example a good friend of mine, spent a good deal of his teenage years around a certain class of people, and could predict the characteristics far better than any of us. Likewise doctors can form a rough opinion about how healthy you are, athletes, how fit you are and so on.
On Criticism
It’s plain wrong, according to the experiment, to criticize something that you are capable of doing and not doing it better. You may say “I can make a better movie”, but it’s no use unless you actually *do*. Try to notice how much you criticism things around you everyday. How much energy is wasted in that process? The core of my experiment is to avoid criticism and comparison, and use criticism as a tool to enhance the product, rather than to enhance my frustration.
On comparison
I believe when someone mocks someone else, or compares themselves and thinks they are better, it’s mostly because of insecurity, and they need the subconscious convincing for a little chemical kick. While you can decide what kind of people you will like, and enjoy their company, there’s no way to tell that the sum of one human being is better than the others, or that’s what I feel.
On Cynicism:
There are people who just feel that nothing meets up with their expectations or they have tremendously high hopes for everything. I’ve heard of people so cynical, that nothing seems to satisfy them and they believe they’ve seen all that there is to be seen, and have an overall negative impression of things. Again, I can’t seem to make up my mind about them.
On Loosening up
Knowing the internet, if a large dose of traffic appears I’ll surely see some “loosen up and get laid! lolloll!!!1!!!”, but the truth is this:
What I suggested were guidelines, not rules. They’re like “be aware of your breathing and you’ll be aware of life itself”. It’s impossible to have even read and accepted the article without forming an opinion about it. Ultimately it’ll just make some difference, and you’ll be spending less time complaining, yakking away, and trying to fix things, and spending more time enjoying your life.
EndNote:
The reason this whole thing came into existence was because I realized I don’t have a good opinion about myself. You can judge everyone in the world, criticism everything, and ultimately the only person, the only life you can actually make a difference is in yours.
So, what do you feel about yourself?
Music:
Wow, what perfect timing for the music:
Does it feel good to you,
to rain on my parade
You never say a word,
unless it’s to complain
It’s driving me insane
If I Were You,
holding the world right in my hands
The first thing I’d do,
is thank the stars above,
for the ones I love
Take a breath and enjoy the view
Live the life that I wanted to
If I were you
I love to get email from people, but not regarding some problem you’re facing with a plugin, you want to hire me to write a plugin, or any kind of support. I’m officially taking down the contact form. You can open up support requests at GoogleCode if you want to file critical bug requests.
Sorry, if you write to me regarding some problem that you’ve had, need some help with wordpress, or something long those lines, don’t expect me to reply. In short:
I got a reply from yahoo, regarding my eight year old account, mentioned in This post, lovely folks reset my password when I confirmed who I was. But turns out all my mail has been deleted. I’m trying to find some other traces like IM histories, or other information. It’s annoying with all the big brother complaining going on about websites storing your data for all eternity, that they delete email archives of users after some years. Anyways, glad I got that out of the way.
Btw, the plugin I was working on for a very long time is finally in beta. Check it out at Brajeshwar’s place.
Now playing: apocalyptica – Hope
Today, I watched the founder of wikipedia, Jimmy wales speak at my college. I couldn’t watch the entire speech for reasons that don’t merit mentioning, but it gave me a chance to reflect on wikipedia and human knowledge in general.
I believe in wikipedia like charity. In charity, only those who have excess give, and here it’s about knowledge. While I may still be learning time dependent pertubation I’m far from being able to write anything for it, and as I found, subjects I already have mastery over, I’m unable to write on primarily because it’s just a lot harder to write about things than to do them. Thus I question wikipedia the same way I question every other author, “how can you transmit knowledge”. How does one know which author to trust when learning a particular subject? I know enough course material to write a book on particular topics but I can’t because I don’t know enough about how people learn and how to write so the best learning takes place.
That’s where, I guess experience kicks in. Most authors on wikipedia are regulars, who have written lot of articles, a kind of passion and hobby that they find strangely and thankfully rewarding. Particular topics are so much easier to learn online rather than from a textbook, (though I’ve learnt, that learning from a teacher has no parallel).
But most of the physics articles are written by a few people, who have great qualifications, and the articles are top notch, and quite accurate. I personally haven’t found a single mistake in wikipedia till date. (I think i found a tiny one and edited it, and a strange warm feeling flooded my heart). I love wikipedia, and while it’s the sum of human knowledge, I’d love to see niches develop and the knowledge gets organized to make the world a better place. Wikipedia’s one step ahead of vandals now. With bots checking for edits, and making edits too, along with that, so many policies, guidelines and a great community to help out newcomers, and the strange, patent-worthy warmth in your heart, whenever you make an edit and click the submit button.
Btw, I met Anirudh Bhati online, and the chap’s an *employee* of wikimedia, which I find super-cool. He’s more of an admin, and thankfully not the ban-happy evil dictator type
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