We are the world

One thing I've been thinking about in the past few days, is how I love the international setting here. Before starting my master, I was wondering about how many foreign students there would be. I really had no clue about how it could be. After a couple of months here I can really say how I am thoroughly enjoying the company of my classemates.
For a study session I was with a Czech guy and a Turkish girl. I was having a talk with a Mexican and an Indian. For a dinner I was together with people from India, the Netherlands, Finland, Mexico, Czech Repulic and the USA. And I'm from Italy.

One of them actually said a thing that really struck: "We are all similar even though we come from different cultures, because we grew up with internet" (words from my memory, but the general sense is there). Internet or not, I feel incredibly connected with all of them, sharing different goals that are directed nonetheless in same general direction and pursued with the same excitement and enthusiasm. When I think about it, our different geographical and life backgrounds, and our feeling a group, it's just incredible. I can just think of one word: gezellig.
So guys, to everyone of you, let me thank you for sharing this tiny bit our lives together! This will be a time I will definitely remember with a warm feeling in my heart.

Philosofonts and some general commentary

Heyo, internet folks!
I am writing before the last lesson of a course, so ain't got much time. Anyway I wanted to share a couple of things.

Philosofonts
Some days ago, in an afternoon of STS boredom, I came up with a spicy new game perfect for your Philophische Stammtische, your discussions at the pub and so on. Basically it consists of changing fonts' names to suit to philosophical themes.
Some examples:

• Stoic Sans
• Wittgenstype Corsiva
• Plotino Lynotipe
• Turing New Romans

Blogs

It seems that more than a few fellow PSTSers started their own blog, mainly because being far away from home, sometimes even with an ocean in between, it seems a nice idea to have a blog to keep friends and relatives updated with our adventures, and it will be funny to read those stories in the far future. What about me? Well, kind of the same reason, but mostly a place where to let my overthinking mind flow, as the blog title suggests.

Time's up, gotta hurry. As usual. And on the first days I've even been told I'm a person on which you can rely. Yeah, sure, I keep being late.

Fly, you fools! 

Life and flow

Today I want to talk about life perspectives and choices, a topic with which I started struggling once out of the golden magic period of childhood.
Every time I had to make a life-changing choice, like deciding what I wanted to study, in which university studying it, whether to get engaged or interrupt a relationship, I felt an immense pressure upon myself. I considered my decision to be of the utmost importance, and thus I demanded from me the absolute perfection. But since I often lacked the motivation towards any particular option, I always feared about my destiny. I had a picture pretty much like the first half of the photo up there. That was exactly my thought: "What if I pick the wrong the direction?"
But then you look at the other drawing. You cannot go in the past (not yet at least, though I personally doubt about the possibility of time travel, and yes I had to interrupt the nice flow with this now too lenghty remark). Once something is done, is done. BUT, you can change it, if you want. Not by torturing yourself about which choice you did badly, but by thinking about how you can improve your present situation. Life is just one, and it keeps flowing. You just have to move in it, and look for the precious moments, working to create them. Just go with the flow.
I've thought about this thoroughly only yesterday. And sincerely, it's been liberating. It relieved a huge weight from my soul, an incredible burden of responsibility I had unconsciously put upon myself.
Let life go on.

Another day, another train

The view from the uni library is pretty zen

Today was (kind of) a productive day!
Lesson in the morning, before which I managed to wake up on time and even have time to meditate. Meditating in the morning is actually something I never tried but turned out an awesome moment of inner peace. The lesson proceeded kind of sluggishly as usual, the professor is very nice but it's quite the scatterbrain, even though the class was on pragmatism, of which I'm a self-proclaimed fan boy.
In the afternoon I continued with a paper project and was quite happy to notice how my productivity increased compared to home. Also, talking with classmates helps you a lot with the subjects, so it's really a win-win. Should start studying there more often (aand zen reasons, look at the picture).

For dinner my flatmates prepared

Shadows in between, unexpectedly cool effect

rice with the usual bunch of ingredients: bell peppers, salami (pepperoni in English also isn't it? funny since in Italian peperoni are bell peppers), tomatoes and so on. Basically when they cook (mind it's 15 people counting me too) it's always that bunch of ingredients in different forms, shapes and physical state: lasagne, pasta, rice, tacos, burgers etc. I took the habit of doing my part (i.e. washing the pans) while the others are still eating, so I can optimize the schedule. They're basically talking in Dutch all the time, and though I am happy I am starting to get an ear for the accent (I recognize it also when they speak English) and can get a general idea of what is going on, I am still stuck to "eet smakelijk" and a few more line-phrases (admittendly, I care more about keeping on studying Japanese rather than studying Dutch, also since apparently knowing both German and English is an almost sufficient condition to understand the written language).
Now I'm supposed to be reading a couple of chapters for tomorrow's class of analytic philosphy of technology. Yes it exists. Yes, it's boring. Why? It's basically engineer's talk and philosophy for mechanics. They purposefully skip those interesting philosophical question of which they know they are aware of. And no, I would not define myself as continental either. It is just in the field of technology that analytic philosophy looks pretty dull to me (and some other too, perhaps, as is continental for some other).

Ok, enough chittering, it was a good day!
Regards

Life and its problems

Problems. My mind has the annoying tendency to come up with more problems than I can handle sometimes. Are they there in the world or just in my mind? Hard to say at first, it all seems pretty concrete. Then what's most annoying is that after a couple of days or so, those that seemed like huge insurmountable problems are now just distant trifles.
I have so many interests, so many projects I would like to start or to continue, and yet for some reason I either seem to lack the willpower or the organizational capacity to carry them out.
I certainly wanted to write something inspiring today, but my mind is probably busy doing it own.
Anyway, writing is relaxing, perfect before going to sleep.
Yes, my mind lets me sleep. Pretty hard also.
Incredible.
Good night

Hello world, new life

An awesome tree in Rotterdam

I haven't used this blog for so long. Four years. And it was planned to become what later became another blog of mine thanks to the collaboration of a friend. So, what I am doing here is basically repurposing Logic Diary to be what it is supposed to be. A diary. With a sprinkle of logic, just not as much as I intended before my 20s.

After such proemio (read preamble), I might as well start with some more personal introduction.
Hello cyberspace, my name is not important, I come from where I was born, be 23yo and I currently feel like wasting some of the time I don't have writing a blog in the unclear hope of claryinfing me to myself and having some conversation starters with random people.

I am currently studying for my master in the Netherlands. Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society. Deep stuff, eh? I've always been into deep stuff, it seems. I will tell more about this later for sure.

What I'm gonna write about in this firsty entry is my new accomodation here. I live in a two-storey house on campus with fifteen bedrooms, a kitchen/living room/common area, two WCs and a big bathroom with two showers. Basically I am subrenting the room from a very nice girl that left for 6 months for an Erasmus, so I will have to move somewhere else starting from January.
The first thing I thought when I saw the interior of the house was something along the line of "picturesque". The walls are painted with colorful pop images, the common area and wcs filled with charming nude ladies, and bottle caps everywhere on the floor.

Being the nerdy guy that I am, I kind of felt out of my "natural place", as Aristotle may have put it. Still, after almost a couple of months since I'm here, I don't really notice them anymore. I sound annoyingly boring, do I? I most likely appear to be, can't deny that. I feel like what can be called an "awkward guy". I am quite sure that my flatmates are persuaded of this. They also snucked a little piece of newspaper that said "Het is een bijzondere jongen, en dat is het" (He is a peculiar guy, and that's it). I think I was supposed to hang it on my cupboard, but for some reason I didn't do it. Let's try to delve more into this awkwardness however.

According to the MBTI I should be an INTP. And I feel very much like that. MBTI is a psychological framework that analyzes cognitive functions based on the theory of psychological types developed by Carl Jung. With some funky abstract theorizing, it comes up with 16 different personality types. Of course these are abstract types to which a person may tend more or less. I happen to identify as an INTP, which is basically a type obsessed with theories and abstraction (no wonder I am talking about MBTI then). That's what I am busy doing when you see me distracted, probably. The reason why I am bringing this up is just to allow you to get even more insights about my traits if you are crazy enough to go and read about what an INTP is. If you do, tell me, I'd like to talk about it.

Back to the people. Basically as long as I don't get hooked up in an engaging conversation, I may sound and look pretty dull and stereotyped. It may not look so but I like it when people come up and speak to me. If this works great with my classmates, all wonderfully cute brainies, it's hard to get involved here at home. I am busy doing my great stuff, why should I bother with football and drinking? I don't know, on the one side it feels good, on the other I feel like I should be more sociable.

What is funny is actually that in class many are probably of the idea of me being a full extrovert person, always engaged in deep discussion and very elitist about his acquaintance and friends. It is incredible how different the outward look may be from what is actually going on inside, and how many struggles we are actually fighting. The little introvert mushy thing I have inside just shines so bright when we manage to connect with people (this sounds kind of schizophrenic I guess). I have had in the past this negative feedback that my attitude may actually feel judgemental. And sometimes I feel I am. I hate that part of mine, the part that always cares about its value, and how it is perceived by the others. Poor little unconfident me, just calm down. You just need to find your inner peace and joyfully talk to others. Why I struggle so much with this?

Anyway, I simply want to relax and enjoy some interesting conversation with nice people. Which is what I am grateful that I am getting here, and I truly, deeply hope that it can be the same for them.

Rereading all of this, it is just puzzling how I move from a confident, almost annoyingly arrogant style of writing, to a feeble weeping. Or maybe it's just me, overthinking as usual. Ok, enough for the first post. See you next time!

And my beloved poffertjes

Verità ed etica

• Induzione - Descrizione 
• Deduzione - Prescrizione

Tramite l'induzione descrivo passivamente quello che percepisco e cerco di formulare (pur in maniera inesatta e mai totalmente veritiera) delle ipotesi sulla realtà. Analogamente, per mezzo della descrizione definisco la realtà in base a ciò che percepisco oggettivamente e ugualmente non potrò mai raggiungere la verità, nel senso che non potrò mai affermare con certezza assoluta di averla raggiunta.

Con la deduzione invece sono già in possesso delle regole secondo cui la realtà dialettica che considero si attua, e le utilizzo perciò per dedurre i singoli casi. Tramite la prescrizione, similmente, preciso ciò che è corretto e ciò che è scorretto che ci sia nella realtà. In entrambi i casi, quindi, determino completamente la verità, e ciò l'ontologia del sistema. Tuttavia, se li applichiamo alla realtà entrambi sono completamente arbitrari, in quanto ci troviamo nella condizione di non poter sapere la verità a priori.

La prescrizione deve quindi essere usata per un'etica razionale, ovvero logica e non ontologica. Diversamente erano fondate le dottrine morali del passato, in primis quelle religiose (e quelle ancora oggi). Il tentativo della formulazione di tali dottrine è stato essenzialmente quello di provare a dare una maggior fondatezza ai principi etici tentando di farli derivare da una realtà concreta. Come ci dimostra Hume però ciò non è possibile. Il tentativo encomiabile delle religioni e delle etiche trascendenti non è quindi convincente per le persone più logiche.