naturally....................

 

Humor is, by its nature, more truthful than factual.

-P. J. O'Rourke

Facts can be elusive, but......................

 

...........if you are interested in the goings on at the various hot spots around the world, do yourself a favor and visit the Institute for the Study of War.

life its ownself.....................

 

On a long enough timescale, everything is transitory.  As we work our way through the detritus and minutia of life, we should not lose sight of that.

-Barry Ritholtz

 

                     via

Important facts..............................

15.  Two 12-inch pizzas have less pizza than one 18-inch pizza.

-more fun here              math here

missing the point................

      This old story is a myth, but it is not hard to imagine why such a story gets passed on.  It tells a figurative truth within a literal falsehood, a pathway to a kind of knowledge.

     Yes, technically speaking, it's a lie.

     Technically speaking, you can look at any human life as the sum of a complex collection of chemical reactions, in much the same way as you can look at any beautiful painted as a simple collection of pigments, which is to say, you can miss the point of anything.

-Jarod K. Anderson

The trouble with facts................

 There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.

-Norman Cousins

thanks Michael

Reality Check.......................

 

if you are not visiting this blog, well do...........

processes.........................

 Success in education seems to mean only that a child leaves the classroom with more information in his or her head than when he or she walked in.  That crude way of thinking about what teachers do is exemplified in the (comprehensively misleading) documentary Waiting for "Superman," where learning is visualized as a teacher simply opening the brains of students and pouring knowledge in.  This is a ridiculous way to portray the work of schooling, even setting aside the fact that sharing knowledge is in fact a very small part of teaching.  (Facts can be Googled; it's learning processes, skills, that make education valuable.)  No one who has ever taught would agree that teaching children is a straightforward affair, or that all children are equally easy to teach.  

-Fredrik deBoer, The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice

Like it's not 100%....................?

 Cutting calories by 25% can slow the rate of aging in humans and lead to a significant reduction in mortality risk, according to a new study from Columbia University.

-as lifted from here

If the past few years have taught anything.....

 ............it is do not trust the "fact-checkers."

via

A snapshot..............................

 ..............................of wisdom.

Love is wise, hatred is foolish..............

A message to future generations (1959)/Bertrand Russell

 

"facts".....................

      In the crazy early days when the Covid-19 coronavirus went global, Scientific American admonished journalists, 'facts about this epidemic that have lasted a few days are far more reliable than the latest "facts" that have just come out, which may be erroneous or unrepresentative and thus misleading . . . a question that today con be answered only [by] informed belief may perhaps be answered by a fact tomorrow.'  Sound advice, and not just for journalists but for citizens too.  So however much news you choose to read, make sure you spend time looking for longer-term, slower-paced information.  You will notice things - good and bad -  that others ignore.

-Tim Horford, How to Make the World Add Up:  Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers

one should not on that account acquiesce.....

      A readiness to adapt oneself to the facts of the real world is often portrayed as a virtue, and in part it is.  It is a bad thing to close one's eyes to facts or to fail to admit them because they are unwelcome.  But it is also a bad thing to assume that whatever is in the ascendant must be right, that regard for fact demands subservience to evil.  Even worse than conscious subservience to evil is the self-deception which denies that it is evil.  When I find individual liberty being everywhere lessened by regimentation, I will not on that account pretend that regimentation is a good thing.  It may be necessary for a time, but one should not on that account acquiesce to it as part of any society that one can admire.

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay, Hopes: Realized and Disappointed

No questions, no answers............

      To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being and does not rise to personality, he has failed to realize his life's meaning.  Fortunately, in her kindness and patience, Nature never puts the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people.  And where no one asks, no one need answer.

-Carl Gustav Jung, from his essay "The Development of Personality"

That's interesting...............................

      In a classic paper, sociologist Murray Davis argued that when ideas survive, it's not because they're true—it's because they're interesting.  What makes an idea interesting is that it challenges our weakly held opinions. . . .

       When a core belief is questioned, though, we tend to shut down rather than open up.  It's as if there's a miniature dictator living inside our heads, controlling the flow of facts to our minds . . .  The technical term for this in psychology is the totalitarian ego, and its job is to keep out threatening information.

-Adam Grant, Think Again:  The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Where is Thomas H. Huxley when we need him?

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

Science has taught... me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.

-These quotes, and more, from Thomas Henry Huxley are available to all here

In case you were not aware.............

The very long U.S. election season is here.  What to keep on mind? Two things strike me as fundamental.

1. Knowledge is complex and dispersed. This means that innovation (and progress) depend on trial-and-error innovation in a competitive environment – one not encumbered by the heavy hand of you-know-who. This is especially important in a season when the candidates have policies, plans and programs for everything.

2. In fact, there will always be a political class (includes their many private sector cronies) working hard on cronyist plans and policies.

Millions of voters have sat through some version of an economic principles class. How many of them have encountered these two fundamental principles? Too few, I worry.

These two fundamental observations are facts of life and in conflict. That’s what makes it interesting. The economist Peter Boettke has elaborated and even imagined a derby involving “Three S’s”.  Smithian gains from trade, Schumpeterian competition, and, third S for stupid.

All three are always in play. And it’s election season.

-Peter Gordon, as cut-and-pasted from his blog

Checking in with Thurber..............

“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.” 


-James Thurber