Aug
12
2010
I respect Grigori Perelman. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006, math’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize, and refused the medal along with its $1 million award. Perelman gave us insight into the shape of the universe and decided he didn’t need any other form of recognition than his work itself.
He is a recluse who works on math problems with his mother in a trailer park in St. Petersberg. His mom stopped her graduate work in mathematics to raise a math prodigy instead.
Perelman recounts the conversation he had with Sir John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union: “He proposed to me three alternatives: accept and come; accept and don’t come, and we will send you the medal later; third, I don’t accept the prize. From the very beginning, I told him I have chosen the third one… [the prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed. I’m not interested in money or fame,’ he is quoted to have said at the time. ‘I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I’m not a hero of mathematics. I’m not even that successful; that is why I don’t want to have everybody looking at me.”
True happiness does not require outside recognition.
Jul
6
2010
Hope is great. I want to be hopeful about my future in this life and the life after. But false hope is not great; false hope is evil.
(Don’t read this post if you have blissful hope in human progress and the inexorable continuation of life).
Consider these three laws of energy:
1. The Law of Conservation, that nothing could be added, and nothing lost, in the sum of energy.
2. The Law of Dissipation, that nothing could be added, but that Intensity must always be lost.
3. The Law of Evolution, that Vital Energy could be added, and raised indefinitely in potential, without the smallest apparent compensation.
If Darwin could believe in this Vital Energy because it gave him meaning, then so be it. But I don’t have enough faith in it to contradict the Law of Dissapation.
Why would Darwin believe in Vital Energy? Doesn’t it seem a bit ad hoc-ish?
Yes, but Darwin was not a physicist or mathematician. He wasn’t as cognizant of the laws of energy as a physicist would be. That’s why Darwin could add this Vital Energy just at the moment his universe needed it. Darwin’s Law of Elevation is a contradiction of the Law of Degradation. But who was behind that?
William Thomson (1824-1907), aka Lord Kelvin, was the guy behind the Law of Dissipation/Degradation (second law). He was, of course, a physicist and a mathematician. His paper on “A universal tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Energy” was published in 1852 (28 yrs old!). But forget his credentials if you are a pudgy modern who cares less for the truth than your smug intellectual arrogance. Just go on believing you have meaning. Go on trusting that the Law of Degradation doesn’t wipe out anything you ever do in your meaningless existence. Go on. Forget Lord Kelvin’s credentials and solid logic. And forget the fact that physicists follow the first two laws of energy. And forget the fact that Darwin’s third law of energy (the law of elevation) is a direct contradiction of the first two. Just go on with your false hope.
Transcendental Realism
But just in case your not a brain-dead Dartopian dinosaur, then listen to the pessimist reaction of the transcendentalist realist Eduard von Hartmann:
” If the social consciousness (read vital energy) of today rebels so strongly against the thought that vital processes will come to an end in the world, the chief reason is because society has indeed absorbed the first principle of thermodynamics,—the conservation of energy,—but not the second, the progressive degradation of energy by dissipation and levelling of intensities; and, in consequence, has erroneously interpreted the first law as though it contained an eternal guaranty of the endlessness of vital processes. . . In reality, the only question is whether, in the actual result, the world-process will work itself out slowly in prodigious lapse of time, according to purely physical laws; or whether it will find its end by means of some metaphysical resource when it has reached its culminating point. Only in the last case would its end coincide with the fulfilment of a purpose or object; in the first case, a long period of purposeless existence would follow after the culmination of life.” (Ausgewahlte Werke, vin, pp. 572-573. Leipzig, 1904.)
Oh, but why don’t you just bury your head in your rear and pretend that the world will go on forever.
Jun
28
2010
Joy. This is the only thing of value you can give. When you are in your most joyful state, that is your gift.
Jun
15
2010
Why do we allow our leaders to bumble around in their mouths with nothing to say and no style in their delivery, no zest. I began watching the Wharton Leadership Lecture about the financial crisis with former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain. He was introduced (for eight minutes!) by the most inarticulate professor of business I’ve seen. He couldn’t go four words without a long “ummmmmm” and I thought, why would we listen to this bafoon. Why send our kids to school. This is the best business school in America, and the leader of the Finance department can’t speak as well as a fifteen year old with a future?
I flipped up to the John Thain segment. There he was, looking articulate and all. Then he opened his worthless mouth. My patience was thin, I’ll admit, but on the count of six or seven “uuuuuuu’s” in two minutes, I turned off the drivel with no remorse. Why should I listen to this guy tell me about the origins of and solutions for the global financial crisis when he can’t even carry a fifth grade sentence in front of an audience without wasting my time.
An open book doesn’t talk like that. An honest speaker lays it out at bullet-train speed. An honest man freestyles and innovates and just plain talks to the audience. These men are supposed to be the best we have. If that is the case, then our species is dying out.
Watch the introduction here and ask yourself why your supposed to listen to them. (Esp. the junk finance professor doing the introduction)
May
27
2010
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. ~Douglas MacArthur
Why this association between youth and faith? Because faith is merely the belief that we will continue. You will not cease to exist. You will despair if you come to the conclusion that you are old, and will be no more. Faith allows for a young soul, filled with life even into old age.
This faith must of course be grounded in reality to matter. But the association made by MacArthur is correct artistically, romantically, and psychologically.
May
27
2010
We laugh at things when we can’t articulate them. We laugh because we know something is true, but perhaps we can’t explain why. Comedy is antisocial in that you are having trouble coping with the absurdity of everybody. It only becomes a social activity when we have hope that somebody will understand the stupidity of humanity. It is a hope that you are not alone. If somebody laughs at your observation, then you are not alone. A comedian who is not funny is a danger to society. Ha. But this may be an admirable position.
Humor is an assumption. When we make a humorous proposition we are assuming that we are right and the world is wrong. Now, comedic acts are not all unjustified leaps of faith. Actually, good comedy is based on an axiomatic realizations that should be universal. Not to share these realizations is absurd. You deserve to be laughed at if you don’t believe you exist, for instance. We can legitimately laugh at absurdities, which are common.
We can also laugh at those who are laughing at non-absurdities, these are the metaphysically slimiest. Watch out for those comedians (the majority of popular comedians) who make gross assumptions not based in reality.
Want to find out a man’s assumptions? Listen to his jokes. Watch his humor.
May
21
2010
John Goddard is considered to be the world’s greatest goal achiever. He wrote his bucket list at the age of 15 after noticing how unhappily older men portrayed themselves. He penned 127 goals under the heading “My Life List”, and 32 years later, in 1982, Goddard made it into Life Magazine under the title “One Man’s Life of No Regrets”.
Take a look at Goddard’s Bucket List for inspiration. Don’t just ape his goals, but you might like to take a look at his categories. Don’t waste your life. Write down a bucket list of your own. Even a quick one is fine for now. Just write some adventurous goals on a sheet of paper. He was 15 and it worked. There is no magic formula.
May
20
2010
Which Religion has been adopted by the entire World?
Yeah, you guessed it. Education. Everybody in just about every culture buys into this myth, which pretends that the only thing standing between you and the desires in your heart is education.
In 1900 we had 500,000 people total enrolled in institutions of higher learning (but who wants to enroll in an “institution”); today the figure is 100 million sad people, desperately trying to get ahead. In finances, in knowledge, in skills.
With one out of every four college age kid currently enrolled in post-secondary instruction, the demand is strong and growing. But there is no way enough schools will be built to satisfy this demand. Where will these eager young people turn?
Perhaps knowledge isn’t something that can be handed to you. Maybe you need to find out the important things of life by yourself. Drop the advisors. Forget the appearances. Make something happen. Don’t look to education as some sort of solution. As if you don’t know enough, you know too much. It is time to stop adding and start subtracting. Build everything on a solid basis. You can trust no teachers of any kind to give you a solid base. This is your responsibility alone.
And, if you must distrust your own learning abilities…
On money, only listen to a millionaire.
On sex, only listen to a beautiful person.
On business and economics and human relations of any kind, only listen to a problem solver.
May
17
2010
Smart people want to get everything right. The problem is that time is short and life doesn’t wait for you to become perfect. Life is a learning process. This is why I am constructing my rational philosophy of life idea by idea, using them as building blocks. There is really nothing to worry about as long as you aren’t jumping to conclusions and ignoring inconvenient facts.
Solid building blocks. Build horizontally. One idea at a time. If you are dealing with facts, even small facts, they are leading you inexorably toward a rational picture of Reality. Vertical construction will come naturally, as you build up your basis in reality.
Methinks that whilst we improve our philosophies we must constantly put our ideas into practice. The purpose is to build confidence in those truths you have discovered. The world needs more lions touring the universe with carefully established philosophies, roaring out thier zest for reality.
What we need to have is a productive disposition. Most people have a consumptive disposition– they phrase life’s propostions in terms of what can I get out of this?
The productive disposition asks:
- what can I give in this situation?
- what is the most I can do?
- how can I be more effective with people, ideas, time?
- who can benefit from this?
The productive disposition is not looking to acquire, but to expand.
If your philosophy is entirely irrational, stop motivating yourself to act, by all means necessary. But if you are constructing your philosophy the right way, do not be timid.
The ultimate question is: how can I motivate myself to get more stuff done, even as I learn more and more about what needs to be done?
May
11
2010
You need a moral code because you are a being of volitional consciousness, hence you have no automatic behavioral code. You must direct your behavior according to principles. The burden is on you to choose the right principles; you have no right to demand success if you base your behavior on irrational and evil principles.