Ideas

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the old curse, and it looks like we are. Whoever we are, whatever role we’re in, it feels harder than it’s ever been to know what to do for the best. Conventional advice that’s always applied feels as though it probably doesn’t any more, and who’s to know what the new wisdom is? Whatever I write here will probably look laughably outdated before too long, but I was thinking this as I looked at the stock market, for one thing....

One day, I am pretty sure historians will look back at 2007-2008 as a key turning point, when the world changed in a significant way that we still don’t seem to have grasped. It should have taught us something we didn’t learn, and consequently the effects are still playing out. Anyway, a tangent … We are currently looking at secondary schools for our son. There are two obvious choices within walking distance, and the ethos contrast is quite stark....

I don’t think about mountains much at home in the UK. In Taiwan, I think about them a lot. They’re right there, though they aren’t what most people associate with the place, I think. Taiwan is shaped by mountains. It’s a leaf at the edge of the pacific, twisted a little in the water so the spine is off-centre, and the spine is rugged. So the mountains make the land what it is, and in many ways human society what it is, too....

Some time ago, working for a company that was growing fast, I was asked to write an article to appear in a trade magazine. That wasn’t my job, but they liked my writing and my know-how. When the result was passed around the upper levels of the company and the sales team, some people loved it. But overall, it made senior people too nervous, and it was revised beyond recognition, with just the core message still retained for those who could detect it....

We humans think we’re great. We also think that what humans are good at must be most important, and overestimate how good we are. When evolution arrived as a theory, it had a tough job convincing everybody, as is well known. Scepticism runs deep about it even now, partly because it’s deeply unintuitive. Looking at the world, we see that it’s full of amazingly functional things working together. Considering that we, as humans, spend a lot of our time trying to create functional things, it’s very difficult not to imagine that what we see is deliberately designed to do what it does....

Bear with me, we’re going on a little thought experiment journey. You may, at some points, feel disoriented or wish to get out. The exits are there, there and there. Ready? We start inside your head, at this very instant. You are you, you are here, this is now. If you’re like most people, you have a very strong sense that you have a self, and that instant is part of a flow that self is experiencing in time, with a past and a future....

I only really trust someone’s judgement when I know they’ve changed their mind on something important. Sometimes I’ve said this publicly, and people bristle. Changing your mind isn’t seen as positive. Being right is important, and sticking to things is strong. People like being right, and want to be seen as strong. The important fact, though, is that those two things are opposed to each other. Most people arrive at adulthood with a fairly firm set of opinions about the world....

Why are you reading this? For some reason, in recent weeks I keep bumping into Robert Sapolsky’s ideas. He is certain that you had no choice but to read what you’re reading, because there is no such thing as free will. You may think you chose, but there was nothing doing any choosing. Biologically, you can’t argue either – because of the evidence, not because your actions are predetermined. Whatever you do is caused by neurons firing, which are physical, and work by physical causes, combinations of sensory input, connection between them, environment and history....

Sometimes I annoy people by saying that truth is not important. “Truth” is always either provisional, dependent on formal assumptions, or a matter of faith. It can’t be absolute, and therefore we shouldn’t treat it as an end in itself. As sentient beings, we interact not directly with reality, but with representations and models of reality. More and more, in science, through sophisticated equipment, but at any time through our senses and brain processes....