Kai Krause

Software Pioneer; Philosopher; Author, A Realtime Literature Explorer

On Average

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Humans have fewer than two legs... 
...on average. 

It takes a moment to realize the logic of that sentence... 

Just a single "one-legged pirate" moves down the average for all of mankind, to just a fraction under two. Simple and true—but also counter-intuitive. 

A variation moving the average upwards instead: 

Billionaire walks into a bar. 
And everyone is a millionaire... 
...on average.

That's all rather basic statistics, but as obvious as it might seem, amongst the abundance of highly complex concepts and terms in this essay collection, many scientific truths are not easily grasped in everyday life and the basic tools of understanding are woefully underutilized by the general public. They are badly taught—if indeed they are part of the curriculum at all.  

Everyone today is totally surrounded by practical math. Leaving high school it should be standard issue knowledge to understand how credit cards work, compounding interest, or mortgage rates. Or percentage discounts, goods on sale and, even more basic, a grasp of numbers in general: millions, billions, trillions.  How far the moon is from earth, the speed of light, the age of the universe. 

Following the news, do people really get what all those zeros mean in the National Debt? Or the difference between "Gross National Product" versus "Gross Domestic Income"? 

Do they know the population of the US, versus, say "Nigeria"? ( Hint: Nigeria is projected to overtake the US as the third largest nation, reaching 400 million by 2050.)  

If you ask around, your family and friends, who could give you a rational description of  "Quantum Computing," the "Higgs Boson" or how and why "Bitcoin mining" works?   

Millions of people are out there playing lotteries. They may have heard that the odds are infinitesimal, but often the inability to deal with such large numbers or tiny fractions turns into an intuitive reaction. I have had someone tell me in all honesty:  

"Yes it is a small chance, but I figure it's like '50-50'. Either 'I win'.... or 'I don't.'" 

Hard to argue with that logic. 

And yet—the cumulative cost of such seemingly small items is tremendous. Smoking a pack a day can add up to more than leasing a small car. Conversely, the historically low interest rates do allow leveraging possibilities. Buying a house, doing your taxes, it all revolves around a certain comfort level with numbers and percentages, which surprisingly large portion of us are shrugging off or acting haphazardly. 

Not quite getting the probabilities throwing dice and drawing cards is what built Vegas, but what about the odds in rare diseases or the chances of accidents or crime?  

The general innumeracy (nod to Hofstadter and Paulos) has far-reaching effects. 

There is a constant and real danger in being manipulated, be it by graphs with truncated Y axes, or pies that go beyond 100%, hearing news of sudden greater chances to die of some disease, or the effectiveness of medication, or so many of the tiny footprint notes in advertising claims.  It requires a minimum level of awareness to sort through these things. Acquiring common sense needs to include math. 

So which scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known? 

I would plead to start with a solid foundation for the very basics of science and math and raise the awareness, improve the schooling, better the lives of our kids.... on average. 

Courtesy: Edge.org

Sam Harris

Neuroscientist; Philosopher; Author, Making Sense

Intellectual Honesty

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Wherever we look, we find otherwise sane men and women making extraordinary efforts to avoid changing their minds.

Of course, many people are reluctant to be seen changing their minds, even though they might be willing to change them in private, seemingly on their own terms—perhaps while reading a book. This fear of losing face is a sign of fundamental confusion. Here it is useful to take the audience’s perspective: Tenaciously clinging to your beliefs past the point where their falsity has been clearly demonstrated does not make you look good. We have all witnessed men and women of great reputation embarrass themselves in this way. I know at least one eminent scholar who wouldn’t admit to any trouble on his side of a debate stage were he to be suddenly engulfed in flames.

If the facts are not on your side, or your argument is flawed, any attempt to save face is to lose it twice over. And yet many of us find this lesson hard to learn. To the extent that we can learn it, we acquire a superpower of sorts. In fact, a person who surrenders immediately when shown to be in error will appear not to have lost the argument at all. Rather, he will merely afford others the pleasure of having educated him on certain points.

Intellectual honesty allows us to stand outside ourselves and to think in ways that others can (and should) find compelling. It rests on the understanding that wanting something to be true isn’t a reason to believe that it is true—rather, it is further cause to worry that we might be out of touch with reality in the first place. In this sense, intellectual honesty makes real knowledge possible.

Our scientific, cultural, and moral progress is almost entirely the product of successful acts of persuasion. Therefore, an inability (or refusal) to reason honestly is a social problem. Indeed, to defy the logical expectations of others—to disregard the very standards of reasonableness that you demand of them—is a form of hostility. And when the stakes are high, it becomes an invitation to violence.

In fact, we live in a perpetual choice between conversation and violence. Consequently, few things are more important than a willingness to follow evidence and argument wherever they lead. The ability to change our minds, even on important points—especially on important points—is the only basis for hope that the human causes of human misery can be finally overcome. 

Courtesy: Edge.org

Some thoughts of Thoreau

 *To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some  of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

* Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as it were, redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.

* To affect the quality of the day , that is the highest of arts.

* I confess that practically speaking , when I have learned a man’s real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse in this state of existence.

* To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment can come.

* Beauty is where it is perceived.

* The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation.

* All the world reposes in beauty to him who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on his path without secret violence; as he who sails down a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it rounnd the falls.

* You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

* How much of beauty— of colour, as well as form—- on which our eyes daily rest goes unperceived by us!

* The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God?

* Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity?

* I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfaction and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.

* What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice, as a leaf from a tree.

*The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say study to forget all that— take wider views of the universe.

* All good things are cheap— all bad are very dear.

* There is no ill which may not be dissipated like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it. Overcome evil with good.

* Go not so far out of your way for a truer life— keep strictly onward in that path alone which your genius points out. Do the things which lie nearest to you but which are difficult to do.

* There has been no man of pure Genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.

* If I ever did a man any good in their sense , of course it was something exceptional, and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.

* Men invite the devil in at every angle and then prate about the garden of Eden and the fall of man.

* Every one has a devil in him that is capable of any crime in the long run.

* Sickness should not be allowed to extend further than the body. We need only to retreat further within us, to preserve uninterrupted the continuity of serene hours to the end of our lives.

* The world is a cow that is hard to milk— life doesn’t come so easy,— and ah, how thinly it is watered ere we get it! But the young bunting calf, he will get at it. There is no way so direct.

 Letter to Menoeceus 

By Epicurus 

Translated by Robert Drew Hicks

Greeting. 

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it. 

Those things which without ceasing I have declared to you, those do, and exercise yourself in those, holding them to be the elements of right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and happy, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of humankind; and so of him anything that is at agrees not with about him whatever may uphold both his happyness and his immortality. For truly there are gods, and knowledge of them is evident; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that people do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the person who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in people like to themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind. 

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the person who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one time people shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise person does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as people choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are foolishness, for those who hear believe him not. 

We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come. 

We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. For this reason we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a happy life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing. And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatever, but often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is worthy of choice, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, teat all these matters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good. Again, we regard. independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when one the pain of want has been removed, while bread an water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's se therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies al that is needful for health, and enables a person to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune. 

When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul. Of all this the d is prudence. For this reason prudence is a more precious thing even than the other virtues, for ad a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honor, and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honor, and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them. 

Who, then, is superior in your judgment to such a person? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether free from the fear of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either the duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Destiny which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are free, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the gods than to bow beneath destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed. The one holds out some faint hope that we may escape if we honor the gods, while the necessity of the naturalists is deaf to all entreaties. Nor does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the acts of a god there is no disorder; nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that no good or evil is dispensed by chance to people so as to make life happy, though it supplies the starting-point of great good and great evil. He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance. 

Exercise yourself in these and kindred precepts day and night, both by yourself and with him who is like to you; then never, either in waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will live as a god among people. For people lose all appearance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings.