TB on rhetoric...

The old saying is that "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture," which as a long rhetorical thorn was irresistible to me as a young person.  I recognize it now for its myopia and its cowardice.  That's not to say that any writer can write about music; it is entirely possible, and statistically likely, to fail.  But somebody's gonna fucking dance about architecture one of these days, they will, and my greatest fear that I won't recognize it when it happens.

Winston...

Memory can be true, but always check the records.

This will make you smarter

short smart essays by many people on ideas they think will make you smarter.

The collection does deliver as promised, unfortunately there are so many essays on such a diverse range of topics that it's difficult to remember them all. Most of them are popular cognitive biases, aspects of scientific method. I'll remember some of the ideas…

Correlation is not Causation… Example… People who believe in astrology live longer than people who don't. This has nothing to do with astrology. Women believe more often than men in astrology, and women live longer than men.

So many other ideas-- play- pursue generative ideas. Ideas must be testable.

If I could remember it all, I would be smarter. There are so many ideas on the book though, that the flow right through me.

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The Half-Life of Facts

Why everything we know has an expiration date. By Samuel Arbesman.

As if to confirm (or perhaps to inform) my current writing, along comes "The Half-Life of Facts"

The book goes so far to say that in any field, half of all the facts will be obsolete, outdated or wrong on a very predictable time table. It goes into the causes and consequences of this.

It argues that there re degrees of truth. Or perhaps that some truths are more useful than others.  Both flat-earth believes and Earth-is-round-but-the-center-of-the-universe believers are wrong, but not in the same way. Also, the truth that each person believed was good enough for the time. At the time of the flat-earth, we didn't have to pilot jets around the globe, or much data about the orbits of the earth around the stars.

Going forward, much of what we know, will be outdated, obsolete or wrong in time.

Progress is made by finding which ideas are wrong and replacing these wrongs with better ideas. Ideas then must be testable. Truth must not be clung to.

Memory #3...

But clearly I'm not always a toddler. I do accomplish things. I manage to tie my shoes. I lead a team of people at work. I cook decently. I exercise. I pay bills. This appears to be true of the world at large. This is not some sort of cognitive illusion.
 
So what are my skills then? How can I leverage these skills? How can I manage my weaknesses?
 
I can rely on the things I know now. Not the things I did in the past. I can rely on the choices I can make right now. Not on the choices I made in the past.  

Winston #2

When you have a good thing going, always stick with it. This is true for politics and war.

On the poorly prepared defences leading to the fall of Singapore.

It never occures to me that this could happen. I was never informed, and I never asked. I should have asked.

Memory #2

My first memories are when I was 4, or maybe 3. I don't know. This experience isn't uncommon. Who really remembers being a toddler?

We think that we start remember things after we are 4, but really how true is this? My 30's consisted of over 3650 days. I commuted to work over 2000 times. Ate over 10000 meals. Yet if I remembered 100 of those days, my memory would be considered excellent. That means the vast majority of those days are lost even to someone with an excellent memory.

Is it because I remember a day here and their while I was in my 30's that I think I remember my 30's. It's seems to be true that my 30's are as lost as my toddler years.  It's a mental quirk that makes me think otherwise. I remember a day here and there throughout my 30's, so I conclude that I remember my 30's. What's really happened is that I've forgotton that I've forgot. With no details to make me confront this absence, I conveniently don't realize it exists.  

When I was young, I knew I didn't know much. That was OK since I was learning. Eventually I would learn every thing.

Then, in high school, and university, I knew I could learn the things I studied. I accepted that I Would be ignorant of the things I didn't study. There just wasn't enough time.

But, as time went on, I saw that even on the subjects I study, there were deep mysteries. Hard work and deep research reveals that there is so much more to learn than you can ever be exposed to.

Then I started to realize  that so much of what I knew, so much of what I had put so much effort into learning wasn't aging well. So many facts were outdated. Some of what I learnt was wrong. Much was misremembered, and lots was forgotten.

I could read some books and have a vague feeling that I've read that book before, yet not know how the book ended. Sure enough, if I looked over my reading history, I had read that book before and forgot it completely.

But the more I think about this, the less I feel that I am becoming frail, weak and forgetful with old age. This ignorance maybe the way of life for everyone, and I'm only now realizing it.

When you are young and you forget to do an assignment, or bring chips to the party it's not a big deal and you brush it off. When you are middle aged and you forget, then doubt creeps in and you think you are loosing your mind. This scares many people. I can't go there. Doubt and anxiety do not make things better. I have to face the world as it is, with the strengths that I have. Weather or not my mind is getting weaker, or stronger.

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