Personal

Scattered thoughts on telling the truth

By Evan — — Culture, Personal

Having hit a new milestone birthday, I’ve been reflecting on the previous decades, and asking, “After all this time, have I really learned anything?”

I think I have, and that thing is: the truth is underrated.

My scattered thoughts follow.

  • Peer reviewed investigation is expensive, slow, with only the most limited safeguards against all our human foibles. And yet this is the best we’ve got.
  • If you think peer review is hard, telling the truth to your friends and loved ones is just as difficult.
  • I particularly struggle with this one. White lies and bullshit are so much easier.
  • And then there are the lies we tell ourselves.
  • As Feynman told us, you are the easiest one to fool, but Nature cannot be fooled.
  • Speaking of: the introduction to the Feynman Lectures on Physics briefly touches on the lies we tell undergraduates. Is it better to teach students the abstractions that we know are false, but that are simple to learn?
  • If we work from the opposite direction, if we start students off with our best and most truthful theories, the result will be: fewer physicists. Less truth.
  • Knowing the truth is, strictly speaking, better than not knowing the truth. However, finding out the truth is often much more expensive than simply borrowing a falsehood that seems to fit the data.
  • This is why people can cling to falsehoods for longer than you can remain intellectually solvent.
  • What happens as the truth becomes rarer and rarer?
  • Does the truth become more valuable, like a rare commodity?
  • Does the truth become less valuable, like a node in a shrinking network?
  • Does the truth shrivel and degenerate, turn into something like a Veblen good?
  • The unhappy answer is, seeking the truth does not always yield profit for you, personally.
  • The happy answer is, seeking the truth is an investment in the future. But not always your future.
  • The truth is the tree we plant today. It is the sacred inheritance that we all build, and tear down, together.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

By Evan — — Personal, Writing

This is the story as we have always told it, for over two thousand years. Not a word has been changed.

There once was a village that decided to task a young boy with guarding his village’s sheep. It was a crushingly boring task. The sheep essentially minded themselves, and as the day wore on, the child became desperate for attention.

Finally, the boy called out, “Wolf! A wolf is coming!” The grownups of the village tore themselves away from their important work and came running to drive the wolf away. But when they got there, there was no wolf.

The grownups grumbled at the boy. One of the village elders said, “This is a very serious responsibility! Don’t ever call out ‘Wolf!’ unless there really is a wolf.” The boy broke down in tears, apologized and promised to do better.

On the second day, the boy was again crushingly bored. The day wore on, and eventually, despite his promise, he called out, “Wolf! A real wolf is here this time!” Once again, the grownups came running. And once again, they were frustrated at the boy’s irresponsibility. The village elder thundered at the boy, “How dare you! You have broken your sacred trust again!” The boy broke down in tears, and made even more promises.

Nevertheless, on the third day, the grownups of the village chose to put the boy in charge of the sheep again. And when the boy cried out for help, they decided not to come.

Causation

By Evan — — Personal

G: Why did Peter lose his jacket?

Me: Because his buttons were caught.

G: Why were his buttons caught?

Me: Because they were stuck in the gooseberry net.

G: Why was he stuck in the gooseberry net?

Me: Because Mr. MacGregor was chasing him.

G: Why was Mr. MacGregor chasing him?

Me: … because roughly 13 billion years ago, the Big Bang happened, and therefore eventually Mr. MacGregor decided to chase Peter.

G: … what is the Big Bang?

Me: It was a giant explosion that created the universe as we know it.

G: <slaps his own knee as hard he can> — That was a Big Bang!

No, Your Son is Probably Not Brain Damaged

By Evan — — Personal

But how is it that two year old boys just know that they need to run around and shriek, “OOGIE SKOOGIE KAN-NOOGIE!”

Is it nurture? It sure as hell isn’t nurture.

Is it some kind of Jungian collective unconscious… thingy?

Is it genetic? Does it provide some kind of increased chance of survival in the wild? (Because from where I’m standing, quite the opposite.)

Fraud Prevention is Hard

By Evan — — Personal

[Wife placed online purchase; card was declined.]

Me: Okay, I called the credit card company. They’ve removed the hold.

Sarah: But why did they put the hold on it instead of letting me shop?

Me: The customer service rep doesn’t know anything about that. It’s some crazy algorithm that some mathematicians developed for them…

Sarah (indignantly): What? You’re blaming math?

Me: No, I —

Sarah: “Math is hard, let’s go shopping” — oh wait, I can’t!

The Blog is 10 Years Old Today

By Evan — — Personal

October 26, 2001 was the first blog post I ever made. It was handcrafted plain HTML. Eventually I discovered there was such a thing as blogging software, and then it was off to the races.

It takes a special kind of thick-headedness these days to keep producing medium-sized articles, with an Atom feed, on your own domain. To celebrate this thick-headedness, here are ten posts of note, one for each year.

I can’t claim that any given post is the best of that year, just that it was the best I could find on short notice. Will try to do better next decade.

Square Peg in Round Hole

By Evan — — Personal

The scene: a FATHER and his thirteen-month-old SON in a living room. The SON is playing with one of those toys where you have to match different shapes to the corresponding hole.

SON: (struggling to push the red square through the blue round hole)

FATHER: Oh, son, son. The square goes in the square hole. Here, Daddy can help —

SON: (twists the square in such a way that it drops through the round hole)

FATHER: … Well, shit.

I’m not sure whether the toy is defective or brilliant.

Baby Style Wushu

By Evan — — Personal

Zheng came to speak with Master Wu one late afternoon. “Master, it is unfair that I keep getting matched up with Li Po during sparring practice,” said Zheng.

“Why is that?” asked Wu.

“It is impossible to defend against him,” replied Zheng, rubbing his bruised jaw. “Li Po is nearly twice my size.”

“Idiot!” snapped Wu. “You should be able to defend against him were he ten times your size! Now go home — you are late for dinner with your wife and son.”

At dinner, Zheng attempted to feed his ten-month-old son spoonfuls of pureed broccoli. It was then that Zheng became enlightened.