I’ve been a Linux fanboy since the age of 12. I installed Slackware on my top of the line Pentium 75 mhz computer and my life was forever changed. I became a coder and a geek and fell in love with the idea of an open source operating system. I learned 4 different programming languages and really got to know the insides of the computer.

Linux, was a great learning tool for me, but it’s never been a very effective working tool.

You see, I used to do a whole lot of programming work in Linux. The LAMP architecture is the quickest, cheapest way to learn programming on the web. Being able to run your own webserver with built in MySQL and PHP on a home machine makes testing so much easier. But now that’s all been ported to Windows, and it works with a whole lot less headaches from broken libraries and esoteric drivers.

But I started doing more graphics work than programming, and graphic programs in Linux pretty much suck. The GIMP has one of the worst user interfaces ever. Just so counterintuitive, and such a hassle to get things done. I used to think that if Photoshop and Illustrator were ever ported to Linux, it would be the perfect desktop environment. But now, even if Photoshop and Illustrator are ever ported over, they still wouldn’t be the killer apps for me to make the switch back to Linux.

In Windows, all my hardware works, and I don’t have to worry about broken packages. I can even still view (and write to) my Linux drive (ext3) in Windows using this driver. There isn’t the time draining process of installing 8 libraries so I can install my one program. Everything in Windows just works.

And that’s what’s most important to me, as a business owner and entrepreneur. I don’t care about the purity of my tools, I only care about the end result. I don’t spend hours wondering why this package won’t compile. Working within a Windows environment is the quickest way for me to achieve the end result I need, at the lowest cost.

And after spending a while doing graphics in the simplicity of Windows, I started looking around for replacements to the awesome development environment that is LAMP. And I’ve found I can get rid of my Linux partition completely.

With WAMP I really have no reason to go back to Linux ever again. I can develop and code and then switch back to graphics work without a reboot. Sure, there’s no bash in Windows, but I can do just about everything bash does with Perl. Voila, a stable, aesthetically pleasing development environment without the headache of packages.

Wait a minute, am I saying I like Windows now? Yes, unfortunately. Getting things done and producing top notch work comes before any software ideals right now. In a perfect world, I would have the time to fix all of Linux’s problems. But I can’t spend a few hours every day implementing fixes, especially if there isn’t even a real place for them to all go. So for now, Windows it is.

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I admit it, I’m a geek, and I’m always looking for ways to explain the world around me better using my brain and whatever tools are around me. When I stumbled onto the Tree of Life (or Sefirot)from the Kabalah, a spark went off in my head - we can simulate the human spiritual experience using computers.

You see, the Tree of Life bears very close relation (in structure) to neural networks, the stuff that helps computer scientists create software capable of solving unforseen problems and even creating new solutions. Because of its similarity, we can pretty much turn the Tree of Life into a neural network.

Why is this important? First we need to understand what the Sefirot really is:

The Tree of Life can be used as a guide to understanding human ethics. Its structure is supposed to represent the human experience. We take in our immediate reality through our “crown”, and process it using our own spiritual and moral structure. Then we put back into reality what we have processed. The other people present in our immediate reality do the same. Thus we all are continually experiencing and creating reality. By adjusting our spiritual system (or reality filtering system) we can change our immediate reality for the better or worse, depending or whether our system is in line with the fundamental structure of the universe.

But how can we prove that there is a fundamental moral structure of the universe? By proving (mathematically, with computers) the infallability of certain moral decisions (and spiritual posturing) to create a better reality.

Consider the idea of pacifism. Every major religion advocates pacifism in its writings, but followers from each have resorted to war. Using the concept of the Sefirot, we can see to what extent we should advocate pacifism. Can a refusal to participate in violence and negative interactions champion over violence and the need to inflict harm on others for personal gain? That’s the million dollar question.

Because it is only through the process of education, of understanding, that the laws of reality become apparent. To the unitiated, it seems possible to get ahead by deceit and violence. But to those who understand the structure of reality, the only way to get ahead is to get ahead together. We have to live in the reality we create. So can rightousness and “offering the other cheek” work in practice? There is only one way to find out. Start testing.

Meanwhile, I’m off to try to prove this with neural nets…

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