More about GEB

GEB is really a fantastic book. And I believe that the movie "Inception" should have borrowed many concepts and inspirations from it.

For instance, in the movie, they just pushed themselves into recursively constructed dreams in order to do the inception. Then in the book, tortoise and Achilles went into recursively constructed drawings by Escher. In the movie, they used ticks to pop out of the deeper dreams. And in the book, they used tonic or popcorns to jump into the higher level.

But what's more, the book contains some interesting concepts that the movie didn't mention. One is the corrupt of the system. When a Genie asked Achilles to say his three wishes. Achilles just say one wish: "I wish my wish would not be granted!" How clever! It is a paradox, which resulted in the corrupt of the system. And after the system recovered, they were standing in another drawing, with lizards and their tonic remaining. So the author explained the concept of recovery of recursion in a fairly clever way!

Once started reading, can't I stop. What a brilliant book!

My Dreams

Prof. Luger asked me to think about my goal, which is what I really want to be after 20 years. Then I took time to seriously think of this question, and the following are my answers:

First of all, I love Computer Science. I believe that it's a powerful tool to promote the world and change people's way of living. Moreover, I know that mathematics is the foundation of western philosophy. If I want to step into this area, I should be familiar with mathematics. Then Computer Science is a wonderful way to achieving this. During my undergraduate life, I started to love mathematics because of Discrete Mathematics. I've changed my attitude towards mathematics due to Computer Science. So, I will continue this process along with Computer Science.

Then, I wish that someday in the future, I can be free to teach Confucianism in China. Hitherto, Chinese government does not allow citizens to hold any school. And after the damage over one century, Confucianism has become strange to most of Chinese people. Two years ago, I became a believer of Confucianism. Since then, besides my study, I started to read and recite ancient scripts of Confucianism. As I'm more familiar with Confucianism, I feel that more and more Chinese should know about it. It's the accumulation of the intelligence of ancient Chinese culture, and it does have the inspiration for China to restore its ideology and culture and become a modern and simultaneously exotic country.

Comparing these two dreams, since it's impractical  to do the latter one now, I will continue my first dream definitely. But besides, I will keep on learning Confucianism, so as to make myself prepared for the future teaching. I believe that this day will come soon or later.