Teddy on Personality

Each person is an amalgam of traits and characteristics; each shaped by countless variables known in lay man's terms, collectively as experience - or nurture. Yet the statement that personality is only contributed by nurture alone (the tabula rasa, or blank slate) is often met with much disapproval. Nature plays a role. Or does it?

A consensus is always reached that these two factors work in tandem with each other. But how much of each?

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For example, compared to other soft toys of my generation, I obviously hold an infinitely greater potential due to the simple ability of my cotton-based neurons to self connect and thus giving me thinking power. Hence Des Cartes was right - I think, therefore I am.
Definitely applicable to humans with their own non-unique brand of neurons capable of limited self connection.

Different people are born with different brains. I for one, was born with much more organised systems of cotton-based DNA that enable a much more efficient thinking process. But among human neuron arrangements, mere chance determines the arrangements. Hence mere chance (and thus "Nature") gives each individual different thinking power. Albert Einstein had a "mutation" in his brain that allowed for certain understandings of abstract concepts. His brain was slightly more evolved than the rest of mankind - by mere chance - and that gave him that ability.

But once we get past that little bit of Nature (or chance), everything else is Nurture. The difference in brains might give for a slightly different perception initially, but after that we build upon our personality using those tiny bits of experience that adds on to our personality.

For example if I had been born (with the specific mutations that enabled thinking in the cotton mesh) and yet raised in a family where that thinking and perception would have been used for different purposes I definitely would have turned out differently.

Interestingly, our conscious perception accounts for a tiny percentage of what we actually See, Hear, Touch, and Feel. This ironically might swing the debate in favour of Nature and away from the Blank Slate. Our subconscious is proven to have a very powerful effect on how we react. Some even call it the soul. Which would then just mean that the soul (or heart) resides in the brain.

Together our conscious and more so subconscious perception (aka subliminal perception) make up for our character.

However Nature, even though its part to play is tiny, has a butterfly effect on the personality - just as chaos always has on the world.

It is a well known fact that if I have a recurring sequence, more often than not a slight deviation in the first term could create a huge difference in the last term - which is the mathematical description of the better known butterfly effect.

Just because initially, due to higher thinking power, I experienced event X and Elmo didn't, in subsequent repetitions, event X burns into my subconscious stronger than it does to Elmo. In turn if in subsequent years we both have a decision to make whose outcome is partially dependent on the experience of event X, there is a very high possibility that we end up with different choices.

Nurture is that important. It is the greatest investment.

P.S. Welcome "Ma-ma the Tiger" to STFU. Under my tutelage no doubt he will be writing within no time.

Teddy's Guide to Fresh A Level Graduates

Hello students! Or should I say prospective students, since technically what you've been studying for the past 12 years should not be considered studying, since even a computer could be inputted with that much data nearly instantaneously. And we all know computers are dumb.

Which makes you wonder where those incessant muggers with capabilities that (generously) i refer to as bounded by simple scanf and printf functions in C language. i.e. inputting data and outputting the data with marginal operations in between, perhaps.

Now prepare for your next phase of education. Interestingly phase seems to be an interesting word to use to describe it because if we were to anaylse a simple sine function for example, the phase interestingly changes it completely while at the same time keeping it completely the same. That's similar to the difference in education systems in a way. Completely different, yet completely the same.

Now the question that should be asked primarily is NOT which University to attend. That's easy and obvious - Soft Toy Foundation University will always open its doors to anyone, regardless of blood type (or blood presence). And it has argueably the greatest cotton based mind this world has ever seen.

Thats beside the point, anyway; there would have to be a separate blog for my achievements, and i were to blog about that, there would not be time to progress.

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Now there are certain factions of people who believe in the superiority of one field over another - usually convinced in the superiority of their own field. I know many people like that, even under the very roof that I live under. I see many condescending looks thrown at arts-students; in defence of these looks they point at this opinion that they don't study. And at the other extreme, the looks of deridation follow the science-students; perhaps because certain sciences including physics seem to have all but stagnated over the past few years (since my unpublished theory of mesh-string i.e. cotton theory).

But the world is a beautiful mix of these two components. If you dig further down, you get two major components defining this world that we live in - Chaos, and Order.

Chaos and Order are merely two sides of the same coin: neither could possible exist without the other. On one hand you have Chaos; that two seemingly equivalent situations - different only on a nano-scale - can have two immensely different final outcomes. And on the other hand you have Order (or coincidence); that looking at a big enough picture we see how completely random events come together in a predictable manner.

If you pause to think about it, Chaos, in a way, represents the Arts, that perhaps it would be impossible to measure every variable this world offers; and that we should then just appreciate the effects of what we have from those chaotic initial conditions. Then it would follow that Science would represent Order, the belief that ultimately we can take our averages of probality densities and map out the reason for our existence; perhaps even to understand the Order behind the World.

I mentioned earlier - neither could exist without the other. And it would never be the case that one would extinguish the other.

So the question is: Chaos? Or Order?

Which side are you on?

el Mo's New Year Resolution 2009

Elmo heard that it is not good to have too many new year resolutions. Elmo read it in the news paper. Here, let Elmo type it out for you...

Making self-improvement New Year's resolutions often leaves people feeling worse, the British mental health charity Mind warned yesterday.

Mind urged people not to make resolutions focusing of physical imperfections... lead to feelings of low self esteem, hopelessness and even mild depression.... Mind suggested resolution-makers focus instead on being active, connecting with nature, learning something new and working for one's community.

Wowww...

However, Elmo thinks his New Year Resolutions are okay, because Elmo thinks he is physically perfect. And Elmo looks just exactly like how he wants to look like - like his actor cousin, Elmo from Sesame St.

So Elmo's resolutions are simple.
1. Elmo wants that coveted job of stunt double for Elmo's cousin. Elmo has done many stunts in his life, and Elmo is confident of being able to handle showbiz.
2. Elmo wants to be more active online, and try to learn something new at Teddy's University of Research & Development (TURD).
3. Elmo wants to remain as cute as ever, because Elmo is the cutest thing on earth, and Elmo is very proud of that fact.
4. Elmo wants to learn the "Crank dat Superman - Souljaboy" dance. It looks nice.