Category Archives: Philosophy

TED talk on being wrong

I should watch Kathryn Schulz’ TED talk every time I’m mad about something political. Here is a paraphrase of my favorite part, about 4 minutes in.

How does it feel to be wrong? Most of us are doing everything we can to avoid thinking that we ourselves are wrong. Maybe we get it in the abstract – we’re fallible – but we can’t think in the present tense of something about which we are actually wrong. When we are wrong about something, but before we realize it, we’re like Wyle E Coyote right after he runs off a cliff but before he looks down.  It does feel like something to be wrong: it feels like being right.

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Anti-fragility

Evolution, capitalism and science are anti-fragile. Nassim Taleb introduced the idea to my consciousness.

Top-down optimized systems are always fragile. These three phenomena are not fragile. In fact, they gain from being shocked.

Evolution, capitalism and science also share this common algorithm: systematic, brutally honest trials of proposed solutions, followed by ruthless rejection of failures and amplification of successes. The human psyche may not be well-adapted to appreciate such systems. We seldom like honesty or rejection.

 

Income Distribution

 

There are five people at the table. One of them owns the table, the turkey, the stuffing, the salad and the pies. The other four people all pooled their resources to buy the cranberry sauce and the casserole. The richest 20% of  Americans own 84% of the wealth in America.

This graph is distribution of the Bottom 80%. This graph tops out at $100K. The people who own the vast majority of America are not even on this graph.

I got on this topic thanks to”The ‘American dream’ is actually Swedish.” Sweden is a social democracy, if I may remind the reader. http://www.thelocal.se/30008/20101103/

Data:

http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/hhinc/new06_000.htm

 

 

Data:

http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/hhinc/new06_000.htm

Men, Goats, Good and Evil

I just saw the Men who Stare at Goats. I was actually impressed. Here is a part of the opening monologue:

Life is just too short to waste any chance of true happiness… [My life] seemed like such a tragedy the time. We couldn’t see past our little lives to the greater events of history unfolding our there in the world. I was like a child or a hobbit safe in the shire or a blond farm boy on a distant desert planet, unaware that he was taking the first steps on a path that would lead him relentlessly towards the heart of a conflict between the forces of good and evil. I did what so many men have done throughout history when a woman has broken their heart: I went to war.

I suspect that it sums up most people living in terrible circumstances. They want their life to be a part of a greater struggle between good and evil. And if, when their hearts are broken, they can not find a war to which they can go, then they create an imaginary one.

-Peter