First Blog

A.   “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” --- Adam Smith B.   Failure is part of achieving success. C.   It is not a belief when you have generated the evidence. D. The Solitaire Illusion. Many a solitaire player falls for the illusion of having great skill after winning about five straight games. Know what luck is.

Introduction. We have previously discussed numerous aspects of problem-solving, usually from a general attitude of applying logic and its multifaceted venues. Yet some of the most difficult problems come from the everyday category. If you’re a CEO managing the subtleties and irregularities of your company, you have everyday problems that require vast experience carefully tuned to your operations. Many problems are quite undefinable, but imply requiring a vast superstructure of information, much of it tangential, to solve. Similarly, if you are a homemaker, managing your home, partner, and children, you have entirely similar problems, though perhaps different in scope. In this brief essay, we consider everyday problems. Since we have an alien race living among us, we can look at the problems they have.  Of course, we created these aliens. They are us but called AI. Problem-solving is one of the defining features of intelligence. Both humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems e...

A.   Teacher's  Dilemma. Those who need help the most are the last to ask for it. B.     With respect to the law, hate is the secret sauce that converts the best efforts of mankind to the worst. C.     American social safety nets and parental support can delay the onset of serious stress for younger citizens until they near middle age, when they are often ill-equipped to handle it for the first time.

  A.   What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. ---  Pericles, Greek statesman B.   Contradictions fuel progress. Without them, we stagnate. C.   If you’re not learning every day, you’re falling behind. D.   One great talent of geniuses is that they can reject bad ideas quickly. 

  Contradictions, far from being merely obstacles to reason, can be sources of deep intellectual and emotional pleasure. They challenge the mind to hold opposing truths in tension, sparking curiosity and creativity rather than closure. It can reveal that opposing truths are not truths at all. Even more, both can be rejected with pleasure.   In literature, paradoxes invite us to see multiple layers of meaning. We find characters equally justified in their contrary decisions, and finding ourselves in agreement with both. In philosophy, economics, and science, they reveal the limits of logic and the richness of human thought, the cause of why we have so many theories and manage our lives and professions with all floating about. In everyday life, they remind us that reality is rarely simple or one-sided. Parenting is one long journey with multiple contradictions between the protagonists. At times, we long for it to end, but when it ends, we often miss it.   My goodness, wit...

A.     “A truth can be naked, but a lie always needs to be dressed.”  --- Khalil Gabran B.     Many politicians live in fame but die in ignominy? C.     If you want to increase your dollars, pay attention to your pennies. D.     Music directly represents the passion of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, one will become the wrong kind of person. – Aristotle

Introduction. Genius is one of those ephemeral items in the human inventory of gifts together with skills and talents, abilities and intelligence, proficiency and cleverness. Hard to define, genius is both specific and contextual. It is not generally abstract. Genius can reveal itself anywhere, in science, business, politics, war, and literature though often along separate channels. Some of our greatest philosophers, e.g. Immanuel Kant, were challenged by the concept and addressed it with notably interesting, though somewhat obscure interpretations. There exists yet another form of genius, distinct from philosophy, literature, or science. It is an everyday kind of genius, one that lies within us all, though it appears only rarely. From time to time, it surfaces to produce marvels: ingenious inventions, clever procedures, stirring music, memorable poetry, and practical devices. Those who create them are what we might call micro-geniuses . They are essential to the progress ...