Life's endlessly interesting. This haphazard zone of my web-site might be
accused of philosophy, but that's more grandiose than what I aim to do with
it. I've written less here than in other areas; not because it's less
important, but because I can't articulate my thoughts on it as fluently. The
fragments that exist are:
It seems worth mentioning Arthur Clarke's three laws (far more
relevant to the real world than Asimov's):
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is
impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a
little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
One of humanity's greatest unsung triumphs has been the defeat
of leprosy. Although
around a quarter million
victims remain, the WHO campaign to
eradicate leprosy makes steady progress. Many millions of victims of this
ancient scourge have been cured. A 1991 WHO policy to reduce levels of
leprosy to below one in ten thousand by 2000
was completed on
schedule.
Given
that a human brain contains of order 1e11 (a hundred milliards of)
neurons, say N of them, suppose the length scale of a typical neuron (they're
quite gangly, for cells, so maybe 2 mm isn't too unrealistic) is r times the
length scale of the human head (something like 200 mm), say r ≈ 0.01 or
so, the fraction m of the total brain-cells within reach of each is about
1/r/r/r; so m.N is still pretty big (still 1e5, a hundred thousand). If each
neuron connects to k others, it's got chose(m.N, k) = (m.N)!/k!/(m.N
−k)! choices open to it and there are N such neurons; we count each
connection twice (once for each of the two neurons connecting at it), so this
gives N.(m.N)!/k!/(m.N −k)!/2 possible patterns of interconnection. If
k is reasonably small compared to m.N (as seems likely to my guesses) this is
of order N.(m.N)k, something like ten11 +5.k, which is
going to be pretty huge for even quite modest value of k. That's just the
possible patterns of interconnection: each neuron has potentially quite
complex state and the brain has chemical signaling going on via other paths
than direct neural connections. The number of possible states of a human
brain is pretty big.
Laughter, singing (even without language), dancing, feasting (food &
booze), story-telling (particularly tragedies)
and religious rituals all
trigger the brain's endorphin system, providing a virtual short-cut for the
(intimate and time-consuming) grooming that triggers the same in other primates.
With such virtual boosts, social groups of up to about 150ish become viable,
where it's closer to 30 without.
WonderMark disects begging the question; the
formal term of art in logic would be better phrased claiming the
premise.
On how seeing the
world affects what world we see and how we interact with it. Sustainable
cultures arise from the habit of seeing the world in ways that lead to
interactions with the world that work. Meanwhile, most of what we believe comes
from sharing our ideas
with others.
Brian
Koberlein reminds
us all to be willing to stretch the limits of our ability to make sense of
the universe; and, at the same time, to sanity-check by experiment the answers
we get thereby.
Modern humans in deeloped economies have a probability per year of dying
that, at age 36, is around 1/1000 and doubles every eight years thereafter. The
causes of that double – or, more generally, of that probability increasing
over time – may be
curable, though. The speaker is quite enghusiastic
about the ethics of
curing age-related health problems.
Quotes from Lord
Kelvin, e.g. To live among friends is the primary essential of
happiness.
Mark Solms spoke
to The Royal Institution about the (nature and) source of consciousness. He
argues that consciousness is an emotional phenomenon and the primitive
brain-stem is its home. (At 1:01:54, there are even differential equations that
kinda make sense, I think.) His book The Hidden Spring sounds like it
may be interesting.
Warren Buffet talks
about how he got to where he is; he has the humility to acknowledge that
luck was a significant part of it.
Includes the
lineThe ultimate luxury really is doing something every day that you
love doing with people that you love doing it with.
If you ever feel like everyone else is more successful, bear in mind that
this might just be because they're all unwittingly conspiring
to play a prank on you.
Dr. Deni
Mukwege describes
the horrors inflicted on women (that he meets as patients afterwards) when
society disintegrates.
Colin Walsh
shares a
tale from late in his school-days that has inspired him to keep growing; as
he observes, almost every time I’ve done something wrong in my life, …
it’s been because in that moment I was oblivious to what was beyond my own
narrow powers of sight.
Author Arwa
Mahdawi takes
the mickey out of a chinless trumpist.
Where
did all the kindly ones go ? (a subtle diatribe about how each of us is,
in fact, part of the other; and that, in so far as we are, we are
right).
Contrary to a myth popular in business circles, relentless
criticism isn't actually
good at improving the performance of those criticised.
The untaught history of those in the UK with darker
skins gets
and ecellent voice and, ont the way, shares an essential truth: One of
the responsibilities of being an adult is to be able to hold more than one
reality in your head at the same time.
A
modern stoic
cheat-sheet worthy to be read by all. I can't (for now) speak for the book
the author is trying to sell, but the article is solid.
Bruno The Bandit's side-kick Fiona (the brains of the outfit) on that old
controversy about free will
and pre-destination.
(Raytheon CEO)
Bill Swanson's
unwritten rules, notably the infallible: A person who is nice to you
but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.
Ben Orlin's account
of what
it's like to fail at any subject that you care about; or, how anxiety
cripples us and makes real the fears behind that anxiety.
An elegant tale
about an
artful response to a queue-jumper, culled from the real-life sections of
the Crowning
Moment of Awesome pages over at TV
Tropes (warning: visiting this last site may lead to massive loss of
time).
Auguste Rodin's Fallen Caryatid with Stone (which I long
mis-remembered as Caryatid broken under her load)
is a potent
symbol of fortitude, from which Robert Heinlein
(and later fans) drew
inspiration in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land.
Humanity may need a nasty shock before enough of us care
about living
sustainably for us to have any chance of avoiding (further) nasty shocks.
Joyce begins
to understand that the religious don't have a monopoly on motives for moral
behaviour.
Fleetwood Mac's forgotten (late) founder member Peter Green contributed
the delightfully human song Oh Well which includes
the refreshingly
honest confessionI might not give (you) the answer that you want(ed) me
to.