Wherein I Take the @nntaleb IYI Test & Fail

Your image of this writer

Herr Doktor Professor: stern master

I’m going to take the Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) test to determine if I am an IYI (“intellectual yet idiot”). Of course, right off the bat you can see I’m trying to play chess with Washington Square hustlers or a pick-up game with NBA studs—I’m out of my league here. I’m not an intellectual, I’m not an academic, and I don’t write for a living outside of legal briefs and memos. I’m just a practicing lawyer. But I do have an abiding interest in ideas. I’ve always been fascinated by how the world works, how it came to this point, and how we might tinker with it. I've enjoyed and believe that I've benefited from reading NNT's books (Bed of Procrustes excepted). But I must emphasize, unlike NNT, I’m an amateur, not a flâneur.

So with my disqualifications in place, let me go through the NNT test, line-by-line, to obtain my ranking. Taleb’s criteria are in plain type followed by my responses in italics.

What's IYI?

 Intellectual Yet Idiot:  [I just said, I’m not an intellectual. Whether I’m an idiot or not is open to further discussion. I imagine—nay, know—there are compelling arguments in the affirmative for this conclusion]

semi-erudite bureaucrat [I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the bureaucratic party. I’ve been either in a partnership or self-employed for about 30 years]

who thinks he is an erudite [I aspire to erudition, I do not claim it];

pathologizes others for doing things he doesn't understand not realizing it is his understanding that may be limited [Maybe, sometimes. Who hasn’t made this error?];

imparts normative ideas to others [Like NNT?]:

thinks people should act according to their best interests [A question of definition here: narrowly or broadly defined? And note “should”, not “do”]

*and* he knows their interests, particularly if they are uneducated "red necks" or English non-crisp-vowel class. [Well, to some extent, yes. I’ve had people pay me for my advice & opinions for over 30 years. On the other hand, I hope I have some sense of humility. Do you know this word, “humility”?]

More socially: 

subscribes to the New Yorker [Yes, I do. Are you suggesting Paris Match instead? In the New Yorker I skip the ads and focus more than I should on the cartoons; indeed, we have a whole book of New Yorker cartoons—quite fun. Is there a penalty for having a New Yorker book--or two?];

never curses on twitter [Although known on occasion to use profane, scatological, or crude language in person, I abjure it in public discourse. There’s already enough vulgarity out there—plus someone would always out do me.  I do, however, admit to excessive snark on Twitter. Perhaps there’s a New Year’s resolution in there]; 

speaks of "equality of races" and "economic equality" but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver [We’ll I’ve lived and hung with people of different races, and I’m in favor of a greater degree of economic equality than what we currently experience. I grew up middle-class in a small Iowa town where rich kids (by local standards) pretty much had to mingle in school with poorer ones because there was only one school and too few of us to avoid some mingling. As to drinking with a cab driver, no; but with my fellow road construction workers? Oh, yeah. It was, you may say, satisfactory]; 

has considered voting for Tony Blair [N/A. I’m not a Brit! But I did vote for Bill Clinton 2x & will for HRC (see below)];

has attended more than 1 TEDx talks and watched more than 2 TED talks [Never been to a TED Talk, but I’ve watched more than two. I rather like them on the whole. I’ve also watched NNT on YouTube at festivals (presumably not literary and not in the UK). How does that score? BTW, some of my favorite peeps have given a TED Talk]; 

will vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable [Deferred to the finale];

has The Black Swan on his shelves [I have two copies: one hardcover in storage & one on my Kindle. Do I get extra credit?]

but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence [It’s a catchy slogan but I have to bone up to determine if the converse is also true: absence of evidence may be evidence of absence. In which case, how do we distinguish the two instances? I will say this from my humble perch as a practicing attorney: try convincing a judge or a jury that X exists when you have no evidence (an absence of evidence) that X exists—a case not to take on a contingent fee. If I find no evidence of tigers in my yard (sightings, paw prints, scats, animal carcasses, etc.), then it's highly likely—although not certain—that there are no tigers in my yard. Despite appropriate and convincing examples in The Black Swan, NNT tries to skate too far with this slogan];

is member of a club to get traveling privileges [no, just credit card miles; no clubs. I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!];

if social scientist uses statistics without knowing how they are derived [Not a social scientist. I’m respectful but wary of statistics, suspicious that they may conceal lies and damned lies];

when in the UK goes to literary festivals [I’ve never been to a literary festival in the UK, but when in India I go to the Jaipur Literature Festival. How did you like your sojourn there, NNT?];

drinks red wine with steak (never white) [Usually red, but then I’m from the Midwest and care more about the steak anyway];

used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed [True--after learning about Art DeVany in NNT’s Fooled By Randomness (read in 2007), and then on to Gary Taubes, Mark Sisson and other others of their ilk];

takes statins because his doctor told him so [No, not necessary. Good cholesterol profile because of good fats; see the previous answer];

fails to understand ergodicity and when explained forgets about it soon later [Got me! I’ll check it on Wikipedia later. Allowed?];

doesn't use Yiddish words [Only a schmuck wouldn’t!];

studies grammar before speaking a language [no, my wife—an ESL teacher—wouldn’t let me be so foolish. Besides I need to eat and use the restroom];

has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen [Really? Come on, are all your readers from the UK? I don’t have a Queen];

has never read Frederic Dard [Who? Okay, you got me. But have you read Hammett, Chandler, McDonald, Elmore, Greenleaf—you know, authors that others read? Okay, the last name was a plug for my cousin],

Michael Oakeshott [no, on my list to read, but you’ve read Collingwood & rate him ahead of Oakeshott, correct?],

 John Gray [short pieces only],

or Joseph De Maistre [read about him in the autumn of 1975 in Shklar’s After Utopia & he didn’t seem worth my time; on review, he still doesn’t. Time better spent on Burke. Yes, I know, but Burke is Anglo-Irish and writes in English]; 

has never gotten drunk with Russians and went breaking glasses [Guilty, but I don’t feel guilty];

doesn't know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba [Not off the top of my head, no]; 

doesn't know that there is no difference between "pseudointellectual" and "intellectual" [I’m not sure, but you’ll tell me]; 

has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past 5 years [No, I don’t understand it, although from what I know, it is intriguing];

knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation [I follow GW (for non-Americans, George Washington) do attempt to maintain a good reputation. I don’t buy the Trumpian notion that any publicity is good publicity.]

But a much easier marker: doesn't deadlift. [I do, but not as often as I should. Do you get credit for kettlebell swings and standing presses? Pavel would give me credit]

The IYI, Taleb adds, look down at the great unwashed Plebes who haven't read Foucault in college [Mme neither, I’m too old, he wasn’t a big deal then]

and treat them like crap - as if they were inferior forms of life incapable of directing their own affairs. [Nope, I don’t truck with that attitude].

But when you make them feel uncultured, lacking in intellect, and unlearned, like all bureaucrao-journalists, being all tawk, they get very queasy: hit them where it hurts.

They are arrogant down, they will be arrogantified from up.

Speaking of arrogance, back to my deferred answer about “will vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable.” A few words:

NNT is using—what is to his mind—guilt by association. Perhaps it’s my attorney-mind or perhaps my wishful thinking that reason can ultimately trump [irony] innuendo, but I have to call “baloney!” on this. (I concede demerits here for not swearing.) Maybe NNT has a good argument about Monsanto and GMOs. As a matter of personality and pragmatics, I give a lot of credence to the precautionary principle. But a lot of those who’ve given these issues serious thought disagree with NNT about the safety of GMOs. I don’t claim to have a definitive answer. Nor does Hillary Clinton, I suspect. (Neither on her campaign website nor in an issues Wikipedia entry could I find anything about GMOs.)  The meme NNT wants to draw upon is that HRC is an insider and therefore in cahoots with multi-national corporations who want to mess with our food while lining their pockets. (Can I get credit for “cahoots” as exotic, albeit not Yiddish?)  Well, okay, the part about the corporations is probably true, but it assumes a naïve understanding of what a person—even a president—knows or can do about any particular issue, especially one not likely to affect the outcome of an election.

The other point is that I support Hillary Clinton for president. I don’t do so because she’s “electable”, I do so because she is the best choice for my vote, and has been since the beginning of the primary season. An unusually large number of people want to kvetch (award Yiddish use points please) about the candidates this year, and if it makes them feel better, go ahead. As Clay Shirky has so persuasively explained, in the end, one of two persons will be elected the next president. One is an experienced prototypical politician with insider experience and credentials—thank goodness! (Non-swearing demerit acknowledged.)  The other is a demagogue. Each election tests a voter’s political intelligence and savvy in deciding whom to vote for or (if politically active), whom to support. But this year it isn’t just a test of political judgment, it’s a test of character and of fundamental issues of political morality. To suggest otherwise is reprehensible.

And if supporting Hillary Clinton means I fail the test, then screw the test! (Can I get half-credit for this last phrase, Herr Doktor Professor?)

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future by Naomi Oreskes & Eric M. Conway

Published 2014, "written" in 2393

This book by two historians of science examines our world through the lens of dystopian fiction. For anyone looking for plot and character, go elsewhere. (I think that they’d recommend the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, whom they acknowledge in the book.) This is a “history” book written by historians looking back from the year 2393 while working in the "Second (Neocommunist) People’s Republic of China". But if you want to learn about what we currently know, what we’re currently doing (or not doing), and how our choices extrapolate into the future, then this is a worthwhile book. Anyone who’s read this blog or followed my Tweets knows that climate change and our collective indifference to it and the future that it holds for us is a major concern of mine. I used to say that this concern would be the problem that my daughters and their generation would have to face. Of course, events have proven this expectation false—it’s here now, staring us in the face, as these two authors make abundantly clear. 

Because the authors are both historians of science, they enjoy street cred with both the science community and the larger community, or at least me. (I won’t give my “all knowledge is a matter of history” talk here, but if you need a quick refresher, see below*.) In a previous book, Merchants of Doubt: Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), these two authors detailed the use of scientists to peddle doubts for the purpose of delaying action on issues of public health from tobacco use to global climate change. They understand not only the science involved in these issues but also the social context in which that science is practiced. Indeed, the whole point of this exercise is the examine how we in the early 21^st century have convinced ourselves that we can ignore these issues and blithely continue down our current path toward disaster. They cite a great deal of relevant science, and they extrapolate from our current knowledge about what may happen to this Earth of ours given our current choices. But their observations about canons of knowledge and ideologies are the more unique and insightful aspects of their project. 

Following are some of the more interesting points taken from the book with my commentary following. 

The physical scientists studying these steadily increasing disasters did not help quell this denial, and instead became entangled in arcane arguments about the “attribution” of singular events [floods, fires, storms, droughts & other weather-related events]. Oreskes, Naomi; Conway, Erik M. (2014-06-24). The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future (p. 7). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

Although they don’t come out and say it (Oreskes is a Harvard professor), the scientific community often lives in an ivory tower. Science is a social enterprise, a human enterprise par excellence, and to ignore this all too human aspect of science is a terrible mistake. To whom much is given (to wit, money for research grants), much is expected. While arguments over standards and protocols are important, they don’t override the greater concerns of society as a whole. 

[M]ost countries still used the archaic concept of a gross domestic product, a measure of consumption, rather than the Bhutanian concept of gross domestic happiness to evaluate well-being in a state. p. 8

It’s good to realize that the word about the utter inadequacy of GNP as a measure of well-being is growing in popularity. But we should move beyond our snapshot in time (as the authors later suggest) and beyond the immediate human world in measuring performance and well-being. 

Though leaders of the scientific community protested, scientists yielded to the demands, thus helping set the stage for further pressure on scientists from both governments and the industrial enterprises that governments subsidized and protected. Then legislation was passed (particularly in the United States) that placed limits on what scientists could study and how they could study it, beginning with the notorious House Bill 819, better known as the “Sea Level Rise Denial Bill,” passed in 2012 by the government of what was then the U.S. state of North Carolina . . . . pp. 11-12

This is a really frightening realization, one that makes Tennessee’s outlawing of the teaching of evolution (as displayed in the Scopes trial) seem trivial. Really, in 21^st century America this could happen? This is Orwellian—or more bluntly, Stalinist. (Orwell, of course, decried such lies; Stalin and his cohort used the airbrush on history and reality with abandon.) 

It is difficult to understand why humans did not respond appropriately in the early Penumbral Period, when preventive measures were still possible. Many have sought an answer in the general phenomenon of human adaptive optimism, which later proved crucial for survivors. p. 13

We humans believe that we can always prevail in the last reel. Maybe, but reality isn't a Hollywood movie, and we test the limits at our peril. One thing that the authors don’t do in this “history” is to explore fully all of the likely social, political, and economic disasters that will likely befall humanity if our environment comes crashing down around us. The Four Horsemen of war, famine, pestilence, and death will ride freely throughout the world. To think that we can “innovate” our way out of such a situation amounts to fantasy, mere wishful thinking. 

Even more elusive to scholars is why scientists, whose job it was to understand the threat and warn their societies—and who thought that they did understand the threat and that they were warning their societies—failed to appreciate the full magnitude of climate change. To shed light on this question, some scholars have pointed to the epistemic structure of Western science, particularly in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which was organized both intellectually and institutionally around “disciplines” in which specialists developed a high level of expertise in a small area of inquiry…. While reductionism proved powerful in many domains, particularly quantum physics and medical diagnostics, it impeded investigations of complex systems. Reductionism also made it difficult for scientists to articulate the threat posed by climatic change, since many experts did not actually know very much about aspects of the problem beyond their expertise. pp. 13-14

Again, an important criticism of what is typical of academia: learning more and more about less and less. We can’t afford this now. Specialization and narrow focus can be a tool in some situations, but like many useful tools, it proves useful only for particular occasions. 

Other scientists promoted the ideas of systems science, complexity science, and, most pertinent to our purposes here, earth systems science, but these so-called holistic approaches still focused almost entirely on natural systems, omitting from consideration the social components. Yet in many cases, the social components were the dominant system drivers. It was often said, for example, that climate change was caused by increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Scientists understood that those greenhouse gases were accumulating because of the activities of human beings—deforestation and fossil fuel combustion—yet they rarely said that the cause was people, and their patterns of conspicuous consumption. pp. 15-16

This is a good point about systems and complexity theories. They are better (i.e., more useful in this context) than reductionist theories, but some do divorce humanity from Nature. We are at once a part of Nature and apart from Nature. We now need to appreciate just how much a part of Nature we are. 

Other scholars have looked to the roots of Western natural science in religious institutions. Just as religious orders of prior centuries had demonstrated moral rigor through extreme practices of asceticism in dress, lodging, behavior, and food—in essence, practices of physical self-denial—so, too, did physical scientists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries attempt to demonstrate their intellectual rigor through practices of intellectual self-denial. These practices led scientists to demand an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind, even those involving imminent threats. In an almost childlike attempt to demarcate their practices from those of older explanatory traditions, scientists felt it necessary to prove to themselves and the world how strict they were in their intellectual standards. Thus, they placed the burden of proof on novel claims—even empirical claims about phenomena that their theories predicted. This included claims about changes in the climate. p. 16

This is a fascinating insight: scientists as the new ascetics. This helps me understand someone like the late Seth Roberts, who was (in essence) a human climate-change denier. I argued (in comments on his blog) that the judgment was a practical one requiring action, not one that should be governed by abstract principles of skepticism. My thinking came from my knowledge and experience with the common law tradition of making judgments about practical matters of liability. He never made clear (to me anyway) the nature of his skepticism in the face of so much contrary proof. 

Much of the argument surrounded the concept of statistical significance. Given what we now know about the dominance of nonlinear systems and the distribution of stochastic processes, the then-dominant notion of a 95 percent confidence limit is hard to fathom. Yet overwhelming evidence suggests that twentieth-century scientists believed that a claim could be accepted only if, by the standards of Fisherian statistics, the possibility that an observed event could have happened by chance was less than 1 in 20.. . . . We have come to understand the 95 percent confidence limit as a social convention rooted in scientists’ desire to demonstrate their disciplinary severity. p. 17

I’m so glad to read this. I’m untrained in statistics (one of my many shortcomings), but it always seemed to me that the whole enterprise could be quite arbitrary. This is what they say: you have to do better than 1/20 to have “statistical significance”. That’s probably an extremely useful heuristic, but as a “law”, it’s junk. And as a guide for action? Maybe, but maybe not. The appropriateness of any standard depends upon what’s at stake, other sources of confirmation or disproof, and the time scale in which we must judge. In other words, a common law type of judgment: the likelihood of harm, the magnitude of possible harm, and the cost of alternatives serve as benchmarks for decision-making.

Western scientists built an intellectual culture based on the premise that it was worse to fool oneself into believing in something that did not exist than not to believe in something that did. p. 17

Again, which is the worst mistake depends on the practical outcome of the actions taken as a result of the belief or unbelief. The likely practical consequence of a mistake, not the cause of the possible mistake, should guide action. 

To the historian studying this tragic period of human history, the most astounding fact is that the victims knew what was happening and why. Indeed, they chronicled it in detail precisely because they knew that fossil fuel combustion was to blame. Historical analysis also shows that Western civilization had the technological know-how and capability to effect an orderly transition to renewable energy, yet the available technologies were not implemented in time. p. 35

Exactly: how can we be so dumb? (And by dumb, I mean in action, not simply as a means of name-calling.) This is a social-political problem, a problem of persuasion and decision-making of the highest importance. 

The thesis of this analysis is that Western civilization became trapped in the grip of two inhibiting ideologies: positivism and market fundamentalism. p. 35

Yes! 

[T]he overall philosophy is more accurately known as Baconianism. This philosophy held that through experience, observation, and experiment, one could gather reliable knowledge about the natural world, and that this knowledge would empower its holder. Experience justified the first part of the philosophy (we have recounted how twentieth-century scientists anticipated the consequences of climate change), but the second part—that this knowledge would translate into power—proved less accurate. p. 36

This suggests an extreme naiveté in the scientific community and those who support them. 

A key attribute of the period was that power did not reside in the hands of those who understood the climate system, but rather in political, economic, and social institutions that had a strong interest in maintaining the use of fossil fuels. Historians have labeled this system the carbon-combustion complex: a network of powerful industries comprising fossil fuel producers, industries that served energy companies (such as drilling and oil field service companies and large construction firms), manufacturers whose products relied on inexpensive energy (especially automobiles and aviation, but also aluminum and other forms of smelting and mineral processing), financial institutions that serviced their capital demands, and advertising, public relations, and marketing firms who promoted their products. pp. 36-37

While I’m skeptical of conspiracy theories in general, I do believe that the mindset of the "carbon-combustion complex"  (in part held as an intentional choice and in part as a matter of false consciousness or akrasia). In any event, this mindset trumps rational judgment because it's based upon tangible special interests, and it's repeated frequently and widely disseminated. If the propaganda of communist governments had proven anywhere nearly as effective as the promotion of the "carbon-combustion complex" and market fundamentalist ideology, those regimes would probably still be around today. 

[A] large part of Western society was rejecting that knowledge in favor of an empirically inadequate yet powerful ideological system. Even at the time, some recognized this system as a quasi-religious faith, hence the label market fundamentalism. Market fundamentalism—and its various strands and interpretations known as free-market fundamentalism, neoliberalism, laissez-faire economics, and laissez-faire capitalism—was a two-pronged ideological system. pp. 37-38). 

The first prong held that societal needs were served most efficiently in a free market economic system. Guided by the “invisible hand” of the marketplace, individuals would freely respond to each other’s needs, establishing a net balance between solutions (“supply”) and needs (“demand”). The second prong of the philosophy maintained that free markets were not merely a good or even the best manner of satisfying material wants: they were the only manner of doing so that did not threaten personal freedom. p. 38

Another example of good ideas gone bad. A market economy is better than other forms, but it isn't perfect, and as we humans tend to do, we overreached and made the market absolute. 

The ultimate paradox was that neoliberalism, meant to ensure individual freedom above all, led eventually to a situation that necessitated large-scale government intervention. p. 48

This forecast is probably correct. How ironic! 

Period of the Penumbra  The shadow of anti-intellectualism that fell over the once-Enlightened techno-scientific nations of the Western world during the second half of the twentieth century, preventing them from acting on the scientific knowledge available at the time and condemning their successors to the inundation and desertification of the late twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. pp. 59-60

This leads me back to an insight that I’ve had since I started thinking about this world: human power—via technology—has outrun human wisdom. We've set loose a genie that we can’t control. We humans are the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and none but Nature (the Master Wizard, if you will) can restore order. And it will be messy. 

[Naomi Oreskes being interviewed] The nation in which our historian is writing is the Second PRC, because we imagine that after a period of liberalization and democratization, autocratic forces become resurgent in China, justified by the imperative of dealing with the climate crisis. EC [author Erik Conway]: Chinese civilization has been around a lot longer than Western civilization has and it’s survived a great many traumas. While I’m not sure the current government of China is likely to hold up well—the internal tensions are pretty glaring—it’s hard to imagine a future in which there’s no longer a place called China. And as Naomi explains, authoritarian states may well find it easier to make the changes necessary to survive rapid climate change. With a few exceptions, the so-called liberal democracies are failing to address climate change. p. 70

The authors suggest that China will “go renewable” sooner than the West and will adapt more effectively than the Western nations. Maybe. Currently, China is hell-bent on further economic development, and we can see the effect every day in the air quality. [N.B. As I write these words I'm living in China.] The central government currently has the power to make drastic changes, but how drastic and under what conditions would create a major stress test. The assumption of anything less than a Hobbesian state of nature (or the rise of a Leviathan led by someone as bloodthirsty as a Stalin or a Hitler) seems overly optimistic to me if things deteriorate with the speed and to the extent that the authors suggest that it might. 

This was a one-sitting read. It goes along with William (Patrick) Ophuls and Thomas Homer-Dixon on my (electronic) shelf about the challenge of global climate change. I hope that we can prove their “history” false. 

P.S. The NYT article interview tipped me off to Oreskes and her work, and her TED talk on the practice of science.  

* In sum, the history of anything amounts to that thing itself. History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That "we live forward but we can only think backward" is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainly. Intelligent research, together with a stab of psychological understanding, may enable us to reconstruct something from the past; still, it cannot help us predict the future.

John Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 53-54. 

rev'd 210812

Joshua Foer on Memory

For those of you who may have ignored my good advice to read Moonwalking with Einstein by Josh Foer, here's you chance to make up for it in about 20' by watching this TED Talk by Foer on the same topic. It's a fascinating & delightful story, and it really does encapsulate the book.


Enjoy!

Better Than TED Talks? RSAnimate & The Divided Brain

Two topics here:

1. Is RSAnimate better than TED talks? Of course, it's not a contest, but this type of presentation I find very lively & engaging. The visual (a skill that I deeply admire, probably because of my lack of talent) really adds to the presentation without dumbing down the presentation.

2. Brain & neuroscience research is a fascinating topic & one that continues to grow and give us insight. The idea--a flawed one I believe--that divides Reason & Passion goes back at least to Plato in the West, with a big boost from Descartes along the way. But while it has some metaphorical value, taken too literally it's false. This view, better than the old Left Brain-Right Brain exact division of function, gives us a new view of ourselves that should prove very useful and practical. Dr. Iain McGilchrist does an excellent job here of providing a succinct talk that outlines his thought while accompanied by a delightfully entertaining and enlightening whiteboard drawing done while he's speaking (or so it appears). 

Found courtesy of a Jonathan Haidt Tweet.

David Christian & Really Big History

This is my year (or two, or three) of reading big history. Iam Morris's Why the West Rules--For Now is probably my biggest, widest angle look so far (and I should mention 1493 and The Better Angels of Our Nature as recent additions), but David Christian dwarfs Morris's tour, which runs from the beginning of humankind to our possible futures. In this TED talk, Christian begins at the Big Bang! Now that's big history! And quite a fascinating tour it is: from the first nanosecond of creation to the present is a story of increasing complexity and "Goldilocks" (just right) circumstances that bring us to our present. Just right--and quite fragile. Anyway, the tour is fascinating. He and some of his colleagues have put together "The Big History Project" at this webpage for use as a high school curriculum. What a great idea and organizing theme to look at our past through both the physical and social sciences, and a great way to learn and teach complexity. Consider the desirability of learning history through this kind of lens, and not as just "one damn thing after another", as it is too often taught. No one remembers disjointed events well, but add a story (narrative) and they'll remember; make it a detective story (as history really is), and you've got them hooked.

P.S. How wonderfully nerdy is this? After initially posting, I found a short talk by Bill Gates on the Big History Project website home page. The ultimate nerd endorsement!

QT: Niall Ferguson TED Talk on the Great Divergence

Niall Ferguson provides a TED talk summary of his forthcoming Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011). In this talk and book (I've read reviews of its publication in the UK this spring), he provides an account of why China, especially, fell back from the West (Europe, U.S./Canada/and Autral-asia) at the beginning of the 19th century, and how China, other Asian nations, and perhaps Latin America, have closed that gap and will likely soon end it. An intriguing and important issue. Ferguson does a fine job of making his points.

Ariana Huffington on Sleep From the TED Talks for Women in DC

I agree with her. I, for one, find nothing makes my day better (including, but not limited to, more "productive"), than a good night of sleep (about 8 hours). Take heed and govern yourselves accordingly! (Too bad Berna couldn't score a ticket for this!)

P.S. "Conditioning Research" is a very good health and fitness website from Scotland.

Work Productivity

Jason Fried tells some plain truths about the workplace. On the whole, I agree with his take on things. When I really have to get something thoughtful done, I will work at home. At the office, my "Do no disturb" light on the my phone is often on, although my staff usually knows when I want to talk to certain persons. In larger workplaces, I can imagine that problems only multiple.

Hans Rosling with Good News

Hans Rosling has given seven TED talks. His talks concern development issues, and he uses superb graphics. He's from Sweden, so his Swedish-tinged English also marks his talks. This talks celebrates the Millennium Development Goals and shows progress on child mortality in Africa and other developing areas. Some good news, indeed!

Nic Marks on The Happiness Index

C & I watched several TED Talks tonight, and I thought I'd share on this one. If you can't watch it, I'll give you the executive summary. Mr. Marks says that five factors govern happiness:
1. Connect with others
2. Keep active
3. Take notice of the world around you
4. Keep learning
5. Give

You can go to this website to learn more.

If you stop and think about these factors, they reflect a great deal of wisdom and they are factors well-represented in religious and wisdom traditions. Too often we forget them, especially in our race for wealth and consumer goods. A very worthwhile talk.