Skip to main content

Thoughts VIII

A. If you try to squeeze too much blood from a turnip, you'll end up with a truly pissed off turnip.

B. If what you crave most in life is politics, you will surely receive it.

C. What is the most resilient substance on earth?  Kids.  It seems that no matter how terrible the parenting, many kids grow up just fine.  There is a counterpart for good parenting.

D. I like the dawn - the dawn of a bright day.  I think because dawn is a state of becoming.  It is fleeting and changing and harbors good things to come.   From Marcus Aurelius (121-186 AD) we have "Each day provides its own gifts."

E. Ok, you have a piece of bread.  You want to make toast.  For my toaster, it takes about three minutes, golden brown and tasty.  The question is at what point does the bread become toast.  Certainly before the three minutes elapse, but certainly now right away.  But when?  

F. We can count - better than ever - but are rapidly forgetting what to count and why, what is worth counting and why.   We are generating exabytes of data and handing it over to data mining programs hoping for a fortuitous discovery - a magic bullet. 

 G. Much of what we have today we owe to science.  We have become dependent upon science, almost as a drug, to fix problems and chart our course.  Enter the pseudo-scientist, armed with models and statistics and promoting personal models of reality with proofs irrefutable to all except experts.  The proofs accepted, diluting the true proofs, there is created an emotional dependency.  It is addictive and is slowly poisoning us all. 

H. Remember this: We can have big bad data,  which is ominous.  We can also have bad big data, which is disastrous - not the stuff dreams are made of but cesspools of garbage from which serious decisions will be derived. 

I. Many people that use PowerPoint presentations have neither power nor a point.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please Comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Behavioral Science and Problem-Solving

I.                                       I.                 Introduction.                Concerning our general behavior, it’s high about time we all had some understanding of how we operate on ourselves, and it is just as important how we are operated on by others. This is the wheelhouse of behavioral sciences. It is a vast subject. It touches our lives constantly. It’s influence is pervasive and can be so subtle we never notice it. Behavioral sciences profoundly affect our ability and success at problem-solving, from the elementary level to highly complex wicked problems. This is discussed in Section IV. We begin with the basics of behavioral sciences, Section II, and then through the lens of multiple categories and examples, Section III. II.     ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Lemming Instinct

  In certain vital domains, a pervasive mediocrity among practitioners can stifle genuine advancement. When the intellectual output of a field is predominantly average, it inevitably produces research of corresponding quality. Nevertheless, some of these ideas, by sheer chance or perhaps through effective dissemination, will inevitably gain traction. A significant number of scholars and researchers will gravitate towards these trends, contributing to and propagating further work along these established lines. Such a trajectory allows an initially flawed concept to ascend to the status of mainstream orthodoxy. However, over an extended period, these prevailing ideas invariably fail to withstand rigorous scrutiny; they are ultimately and conclusively disproven. The disheartening pattern then reveals itself: rather than genuine progress, an equally unvalidated or incorrect idea often supplants the discredited one, swiftly establishing its own dominance. This cycle perpetuates, ensurin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Principles of Insufficiency and Sufficiency

   The principles we use but don't know it.  1.      Introduction . Every field, scientific or otherwise, rests on foundational principles—think buoyancy, behavior, or democracy. Here, we explore a unique subset: principles modified by "insufficiency" and "sufficiency." While you may never have heard of them, you use them often. These terms frame principles that blend theory, practicality, and aspiration, by offering distinct perspectives. Insufficiency often implies inaction unless justified, while sufficiency suggests something exists or must be done. We’ll examine key examples and introduce a new principle with potential significance. As a principle of principles of these is that something or some action is not done enough while others may be done too much. The first six (§2-6) of our principles are in the literature, and you can easily search them online. The others are relatively new, but fit the concepts in the real world. At times, these pri...
Post a Comment
Read more