Whispered Words - Part 4 - Truth and Fears Overlap

Instalment the D-th. Read the previous posts first if you haven't already. In this post we look at something that may seem to contradict what has come before. Yesterday we looked at Fear not being Truth - Today, I'd like to tell you that Truth can be Fear.

This again is one of my assumptions; in this case number 2.5 which states that "[Truth and Fear] will also sometimes come into line with each other. Truth is neutral, that's accepted almost universally. So we can assume that at times Truth and Fear will say the same thing." and again as part of corollary b "Truth will at times agree with Fear"

In practicality, this means that some if not all of the first generation of your fears are real. However the rest of corollary b says that "[when] there is agreement, Fear will always be able to go further, something that Truth will never do; this is called the worst case scenario. Because Fear is Irrational, he will always take the opportunity." It is only the first generation that is trustworthy after that we get back to Fear and Truth being different.

Remember how Fear is irrational and therefore lacks certain filters. What Fear doesn't lack is the ability to sometimes speak the truth. This will do three things. First of all, at some times fear will seem to be speaking even louder. When this happens, it means that Truth is saying the same thing - so Very loud fears can't be ignored. However don't mistake very loud for very irrational - they are very different.

The second thing it will do is add plausibility to everything else that Fear says. The justification for this is that if you can trust something of what someone says, the rest is more likely to be true. The Third thing that it does is take plausibility from Truth. The reason for this is that if a truth is echoed by an implausible witness, then the veracity of the statement is put into jeopardy.

In the short term, these will make very little difference, but over time it will either become a lot easier to trust Fear, or it will be a lot easier to doubt Truth. So the trouble that comes up is that either you can grow complacent or gullible, or you can grow to be untrusting of anything you hear.

Stay tuned for the season finale tomorrow.

Whispered Words - Part 3 - Your Fears Aren't Truth

This is the Third part in my discussion of the consequences of the some song lyrics that I found interesting. Click here to recap on the introduction and Click here for Yesterday's discussion. Today we move on to a second seemingly obvious consequence of these words - Your Fears Are Not A Definite Truth.

Like Yesterday, this comes fairly easily from the song. In fact, it was so clearly, I mentioned it in the first part. Assumption 2 states "[Truth and Fear] will sometimes conflict. Otherwise only one would be required." Fair enough, but what is the consequence of this assumption. There are a couple.

Firstly, DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR FEARS. They may well not be truth. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are in this case lies, merely misdirections, possibly unrealised.
The side assumption that we made for corollary b was that Fear is irrational (yes this will still be discussed later, maybe in about a week). Do you trust everything that is told to you be anyone in hysterics? Do you trust anything that is told to you by a lunatic? Before you answer, remember that a person in hysterics will do two things; 1, they will lower their inhibitions - that's almost what the definition of hysterics is - and so they are more likely to be saying everything that they think, truth or not. Secondly, because of this, they are more likely to tell the truth, or what they perceive the truth to be. Now how do you answer. Perceptions can be right, but they can also be wrong and so you have to take it with a grain of salt.
What about loonies? Before you answer this one, remember that lunatics (even though I dislike the word I'm going to keep using it) have less filters on the way that they see. This gives them a less polarised view on what they see compared to you. Yes that's right, walnuts are saner than you and even almonds, the nuttiest of nuts, can make a fairly good play. And remember that the filters that they lack may be the ones that cancel paranoia so they may be extra paranoid, or it may be the complete opposite.
With this side assumption we can say that Fear will just say what ever pops into his head, whether he is right or wrong and he will either lack the intelligence to decide which is which or the willpower to shut up when he knows he is wrong.

Secondly, if Fear has the loudest voice (corollary a) then he will be the one who is easier to listen to. Again obvious (he is 3dB louder) but this means that what I just said is harder. It isn't impossible, it's just more difficult. We know this, in a loud room it's harder to hear a quiet voice, even if it's right in front of you and it's easier to just sit and catch snatches of all of the conversation that's happening.

Thirdly, we have a problem. We can't use a polygraph test to test Fear, because he thinks he is telling the truth.
Yes this is a real problem, because even though your fears aren't truth they are at some level plausible. Which makes your job harder again (in case it wasn't hard enough yet)

Once again I don't have any hard and fast rules for this, and in this case I don't even have any real guide lines that you can apply. Really all I can say is to feel out the situation before you believe what's happening.

Watch this space again tomorrow.

Whispered Words - Part 2 - These Are Just For You

Yesterday, we started looking at a couple of lines from a song in terms of what consequences of the lyrics can be drawn. Today we start looking at one in particular - These voices, Truth and Fear, are just for you.

Now this part comes fairly clearly. The song states "They whisper words into my ears", not 'ears in general', not 'ears not mine', not even just 'they sit next to me and chat about things'. This is a private conversation that does not get overheard by anyone bar you (and presumably Fear and Truth). So why did this get mentioned if it's right there in front of us. It wasn't for the lazy trip into very basic logic, instead it was for the consequences of this. The consequence is fairly simple - It's you that has to follow up on what is told to you. You and no one else can make whatever decision follows.

Assumption 5 (and corollary c) state that Fear and Truth are available for any and every circumstance. If these hold then we can also say that in any and every circumstance there is something that can be told to you from either your fears or the impartial neutrality of Truth. If we then add that the information comes only to you, then It is up to you to make every decision that comes to you based on the foreseeable options and outcomes.

From this comes something else as well. A smart man will tell people what he knows, but an intelligent man will never reveal what he knows. You have a couple of things that have been revealed to you that may not have been revealed to others. It may be that all that you have extra is a fear, but that is something that no one else has and will give you an extra insight. If it happens that you do want assistance in the decision making process, then you have to decide how much of this added insight you may or may not have and how much you are willing to give out. There will be some times when you can gain an advantage from not revealing information. But there are other times when you will be disadvantaged by holding things back. Unfortunately I can't give you any rules that apply in all situations. The best that I can give you is to learn through observation, feel out the situation. Often, unless the person you ask looks at things in a very different way, asking them will provide you with no advantage anyway.

Back to the main point though. No one will get the exact same things given to them. Listening to the same voices in different ways will give you enough of a noticeable difference. I think it's also fair to say that everyone will get these voices in a similar capacity to you and the writer of the song. This means that everyone will be getting their own set of 'instructions' to do with as they will. But it's up to you which of your revelations will be revealed to any other parties.
And remember, if everyone else is getting similar styles of things, how many people are telling you about them.

Back again Tomorrow

Whispered Words - Part 1 - Introduction and Assumptions

They whisper words
into my ears,
One speaks of truth
and one speaks of my fears.
- VAST from the song Three Doors

Which leads to some interesting discussion points which will take a while to fully explore. Thus, I have decided in my less than infinite wisdom to take a week and touch on all of them.

Firstly: There's some assumptions that need to be made.
Secondly: These Are Just For You
Thirdly: Your Fears Aren't Truth
Fourthly: Truth And Fears Overlap
and Finally: Neither Of These Can Be Trusted


So to Begin, Lets make some assumptions. These must all stand on their own or not at all.

1) There are Two Points of View. For Simplicities sake picture the cartoon angel and demon sitting on your shoulder, only make them both voices and don't imbue them with either a sense of divine goodness or infernal evil. Name one Truth and the other one Fear. Now, at this stage, you don't know which is which.

2) These will sometimes conflict. Otherwise only one would be required. This seems logical, but we need to put it down so that it can be disputed or agreed to.

2.5) These will also sometimes come into line with each other. Truth is neutral, that's accepted almost universally. So we can assume that at times Truth and Fear will say the same thing.

3) These can at times be blocked out. They're only whispering, you can ignore that.

3.5) You will still know that they are there and you can't always ignore them. It's happening in your ear - that can get very annoying and you will notice it.

4) Both Truth and Fear are impartial. Logically Truth is impartial, but why does Fear get this status? This is a necessity. If Fear wasn't impartial, he wouldn't be speaking of MY fears, he would be simply speaking of fears. This is a subtle but important distinction.

5) This is the last assumption. They may not always speak, but they will always be ready to speak. At all times there will be at least one foreseeable 'pessim' (a word of my own creation. n, a single pessimistic view) or a potential downside to any action that you do or don't make. And at all times there will be truths that are clear. Therefore there is no occasion when neither of them can vocalise their viewpoint.


There follow some corollaries that also can be made from these.

a) Fear will seem to have the louder voice. I'm going to move into audio nerd speak here because it's the way I understand things, but it can be applied anywhere. Fear is speaking of my fears and nothing else (point 4) therefore what he is saying will come into line with what I am thinking. This doubles an identical signal which raises the output noticeably (by 3dB, but that's irrelevant).

b) Truth will at times agree with Fear, but Fear will not agree with Truth. (to make this point, we have to make an assumption about the nature of Fear outside of this discussion. Fear is Irrational. I'll discuss this some other time maybe.) Truth is completely impartial and so at times when Fear comes into line with Truth, Truth will echo this (point 2.5). At this point though, because there is agreement, Fear will always be able to go further, something that Truth will never do; this is called the worst case scenario. Because Fear is Irrational, he will always take the opportunity.

c) They are always there. If they are always ready to speak (point 5) then they will have to have been there to gather the available data. This requires their presence at all times.

d) You have some measure of power over them. You can chose not to listen to them (point 3) and if they are impartial (point 4) then they can't provide their views. All they can do is make more noise until you decide to listen.

Come back Tomorrow for the first consequence.

Idealism

Last time, I said that despite most teenagers having little more on their list of 'things I want' than a good looking counterpart who's willing to spend large amounts of time naked, they are also more likely to be idealists than others. Why? Lets start by looking at a timeline of human ages.

Child -> Strong sense of Justice based on equality (as long as I am more equal than others). However, a child seldom sees more than what is in the backyard at home
Teenager -> Strong sense of Justice based on equality. Now however, they can see more, they have been exposed to things beyond their immediate location.
Adult -> Strong sense of Justice based on how much you've done to deserve it. At this stage the person has decided that they have to attempt to get what they can. This may be in order to set a better life for their offspring (so you don't think that I'm saying that all adults are bastards) but it's still a protection of their own self as it were rather than a sense of giving to others. You may give to charities or sponsor a child in order to 'do the right thing'.
Elderly -> You have realised that it's too late to do anything now. You may give to charities in order to leave at least a bit of a legacy.

Yes I have over simplified it. No I don't think it's particularly wrong.

Teenagers are simply at the stage when they want things to be equal but can't make a huge difference on their own. As they develop the ability to do things on their own, they become caught up in thinking that 'I can't do anything big enough'. This means two things. One, that they recognise that the problems are big. Two that they underestimate the power of little people doing little things.

Micah Sifry put it this way, "Nobody feels your pain, Nobody wants to give peace a chance, Nobody will stand up for what is right, Nobody will tell the truth. Nobody, but you, that is Never forget a small group of people an change the world. Nobody else ever has."

Teenagers can see that the world is screwed up, usually by looking first at themselves, and then looking at other people and seeing massive inequalities. However the perception of teenagers is that they are small people incapable of tidying their room, let alone doing anything properly good or major. And this perception is carried on by teenagers. And so they can't do anything.


P.S: over the next week I'll be doing something a bit different. 5 posts on a subject. Stay tuned

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. - George Orwell.

Really? Are you absolutely sure on that one?
If I were to ask almost any young person on the street what their long term goal was, it would probably be something like: "I want to be rich, royalty or a ninja." When you ask the average teenager their goals,you get something decidedly more short term, possibly something like this: "To get me a girl." Admittedly teenagers are also more likely to be idealists than other people and I'll talk about that another time. And when you get older you are even less likely to want to be 'good'. You're more likely to just want to just be nice and quiet in a little place somewhere until you can retire. And once you've retired then you just want to spend the rest of your life either with your family or as far away from them as possible.

I know that we can argue all night about our conception of what we laughingly to as 'good', but in all of these there is not much that isn't self-serving.
Call me a sceptic, but on the whole the best that people will do is to buy something for charity. Why do you think that so many charities have raffles? It's because they know that many people will pay to have a chance to get something, and it's cheaper than buying lots of things and selling them at a profit. Some people may have a weekly or monthly donation thing worked out with some charity, but that's a non event; on the whole that is a small part of a disposable income that goes out on a direct debit system so that you never actually see it.
I was talking to a friend about a similar issue, the issue of beggars. He said that it was so sad that no one ever gave them anything, to which I replied, how much do you give them?

Everyone seems to have an abstract concept of what good is, just like everyone claims to have an abstract concept of what bad is (or more precisely a strongly formed concept that essentially comes out as what I think isn't good), but then everyone settles for second best or neutral. Sure, we can justify it; justifying what we do is one of the easiest things possible - prison is full of innocents who committed a crime. But justification is a cop out. Our justifications always come short. Things like "I'll help later", or "I can't afford it at the moment" don't hold much water because we won't help later, and we can afford it now.

But anyway... Yeah.

In saying that, George Orwell has struck upon something. We don't want to be bad (which points to a natural law sort of thing). Our definition of bad tends to be (to steal a word from Orwell) Un-good. So we can claim that we want to be good in general. It's just that we manage to fail sometimes and we want a bit of leeway so that we can do other things without feeling too bad about it.

Playing a Mark

This is generally a phrase used in terms of a long con act, the mark being the target and playing being the con. Over the last few months I've noticed again that the last half of my life has essentially been one long con played to different marks and for no real prize; kind of adds a new level to the amount of stupidity that one person can do. But that was an aside. [Editors note: Just in case you hadn't noticed yet, Alphonse has problems staying on a point]. But that out of the way, how often do you play a mark? And I'm actually curious; how often to you act as someone that you aren't for whichever purpose? Do you act differently at work than you would like to be acting? Are you an actual confidence trickster who makes his living out of being whoever you need to be?

Psychologically there's a couple of reasons that people do this. It's either out of the desire to gain an advantage, or out of the need to allay a threat, perceived or real. You see this easily in the school yard: Kids lie to get out of trouble, or they lie to gain an advantage over others (ie, cheating).
It's interesting that one of these is often considered to be a positive thing - no one complains when a kid says that his dad will beat you up if you take his lunch [Editor's note: It has obviously been a while since Alphonse was that age] - but everyone will complain if you cheat on an exam. The same action has two completely different responses.

This wasn't the point that I was wanting to get to, but it's where we are now [Editors note: Told you he couldn't stay on a point]. No move made out of weakness is viewed negatively. As a clear and obvious example, a valid defence for homicide is that it was in self defence, and I think there are now precedents that would allow pre-emptive defence in the case of good evidence for a threat. Which would mean that you can take a pre-meditated action and essentially claim that it was an instant response to information that may or may not have been true. I'm not sure if this is the actual case as I don't have to keep track of legal precedents in homicide law any more.

Anyway, the point of that part is that a move made out of weakness is applauded when the same movement made out of strength, even to prevent weakness from occurring, is frowned upon. Even against the normal fairness of the world, that don't seem right.
Just something that struck me as interesting as I started to write about something completely different.

Wise Words from the Train Journey

A couple of days ago on my way home, I happened to listen in on parts of a conversation between two elderly people behind me. I say conversation, it was mostly the older man sharing some of his observations on life. There were three main conclusions that he had come to that I heard. There was his theory on a long marriage, his theory on a reason for life (or not death) and one that is fairly hard to simplify.

His theory on a long marriage is that after about 40 years, you and your wife or husband are the same person; you love her/him the same as you love yourself. This is why he says that after a long marriage, you very rarely see a divorce.
His reason for not being dead is that he still has dreams. Without dreams, he says, you're dead. There has to be something that keeps you wanting to be alive, and that thing is positive hopes for the future, no matter how good or bad it is now.
These are both moderately interesting and to some they may be profound thoughts. The next one is even better.

Following on from his dreams, he says that if he were to experience one moment of perfect joy, one moment of profound happiness (my paraphrase, his words were closer to a moment that he wanted to have extended infinitely), that he would like to be destroyed at that moment. As an interesting aside, this is close to the deal made to Faust by Mephistopheles in the poem by Goethe, the difference is that Faust at that moment gave his soul to the devil. Now as far as I can read it there are two major reasons that you would want this.

Firstly and most simply, you want to go out on a high point. What he wants is to do is die at the highest point of his life; a bit of a downer some might say, but what could be better than having the last thing that you know being perfection (or as close as you can perceive it). This is something that many people don't think about in their interpretation of death. If death is an end, then the moments leading up to it don't really matter. But enough of that semi-morbidity.

The second reason is slightly different, but definitely related. If you have a moment of perfect happiness, then everything after that will be less than second best: the best meals will taste like tofu, the most awesome music will sound like a three year old on the violin, the best literature will read like a Hansard and the greatest joy will feel like a pale imitation of sadness. If nothing can match it, then what is the point of anything else?

Multiply/Fracture

Some recent thought has led me to an interesting point. Decartes theorised that the body and the mind or spirit are separate or different parts. By way of a proof, he offers this
1. The body is tangible, therefore, both finite and divisible.
2. The spirit is intangible, therefore, both infinite and indivisible.
Therefore, they can not be the same part of a person. As a secondary point, if the body is merely the vessel of the spirit then they share the same relationship as a house does to the people living inside it or a bag does to its contents; the inner is what is of interest and the outer, while we may grow to be attached to it, doesn't actually have any use beyond containment.

Now the first part leads to an interesting question. There is a condition known commonly as Multiple Personalities and more scientifically as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Where it could get interesting is when you look at in in terms of Decartes' theory. If the mind and body are separate, then this is definitely possible. However it leads me to one of two conclusions. Either there is more than one mind in the body, or, there is only one mind, but it is fractured. You either have to look at either Multiple or Split (fractured) personalities.

When you look at documented case histories, most diagnosable cases fall under multiple; you have two (or more) different but fully recognised people bumping around in your head. Which is where my thinking took an interesting turning. Everyone acts different around different people or in different situations. How do you talk when your girlfriend is around? Is it the same as when you're with a bunch of mates? How about when you're at work or class or which ever? Is it the same as when you're at the pub? No. You have different personalities for different circumstances. You may only change some things, like your choice of language, but there are recognisable changes that separate different parts of your character.
It follows then that everyone has somewhat fractured personalities. What that means, I don't really know, but it is an interesting point.

Deadness

Now last time, I said that I would discuss the preconception that suffering (and for the purposes of this post also death) are innately bad or evil. I should make it clear from the outset that I do no agree with this. I would put forth that in and of itself, death and suffering are not bad. Death is at most neutral and suffering depends on the outcome. Before I explain this I should say two things. Firstly that this is somewhere where agree to disagree is a very valid answer and if you don't agree, possibly the best answer. Secondly, I came to this conclusion through means that out of context (which is where they are sitting) can be easily ignored; please don't if you want to understand where this comes from.

I'm going to begin with suffering. Yes, suffering can be, and often is, bad. However, this is not because suffering is an end, or rather because it somehow has been imbued somehow with the metaphysical properties of bad. It is often bad because no good comes of it. Yes, suffering caused deliberately is disgusting. However, often medicine is disgusting and that has a good outcome. If suffering has a positive outcome, I believe that it can in hindsight be called a good thing. The problem is that suffering is called bad before people have the chance to get out of it, and that label sticks.
It will always hurt, but hurt isn't always a bad thing. The simplest example is that the body uses hurt to tell you to stop putting your hand on the hotplate. If you don't do it again in the future, then that (very minor) suffering was a good thing.
So in the context of the last post, the Suffering of Christ was a good thing because it had a good end

This second part is going to be harder to put down.

William Drischler proposes this viewpoint that I agree with. "Death is neither good nor evil and that is why people have so much trouble accepting it." I think that this is the way that lots of things work. I will use the example here of money because I can take a very will known quote and make my point. Timothy 6:10 'For the love of money is the root of all evil.' Too often people interpret this as 'For money is Evil' when it never says that. It says that a devotion to money or greed is what causes most if not all evils. Money in and of itself is not bad, neither is it good. What it is, is neutral. But if the end of a neutral thing is bad, then humanity tends to put neutral things in the bad pile.
The song 'Thoughts of a Dying Atheist' by Muse features this line. "[Death] Scares the hell out of me and the end is all I can see". The end that is seen is nothing, so it isn't a positive, so by extension it is bad, and therefore, or so the argument goes, death itself must be bad. This relies on the argument that the end justifies the means - the method of something takes the qualities of the end of it. Not many people actually like this argument any more though, so why is it still the viewpoint in this case. I don't know and so I won't answer.

Death in and of itself is merely a change from one state to another - a change from a state of life to a state of not life. And so I can't see how it in and of itself is a bad thing. Especially when it is one of the three ultimate guarantees (birth and taxes being the other two). State changes are bu definition not bad, they just are.

Easter

Someone commented today that saying Happy Easter is a contradiction in terms - since Easter literally means suffering, how can that be happy? This leads me onto my next post, but before I discuss that particular one, I will answer the primary assumption.

The context of this was saying that since Easter was the death of Christ, we shouldn't be celebrating it - It isn't a happy occasion. Now, from my understanding, the death of Christ should be the happiest day of the Christian calendar. If Easter is indeed the day that Christ rose from the dead (I don't intend to make this an argument so just run with it if you don't agree) for the purpose of taking the sins of his chosen on himself, then it is the most unbelievably amazing thing that has ever happened, not a cause for mourning. At the time, I can understand that response. In retrospect however (which is what we've got the advantage of) it should be a cause for dancing in the streets (if you feel liberated enough to take advantage of this possibility).

And if that isn't enough reason for celebration, there's small, almost elliptical balls of chocolate to eat. What more could you ask for?

Recent Developments in the world of the brain

The World Psychiatry Association has recently decided that the list of drug-treatable mental illnesses isn't quite long enough. Not really, they've just decided that there needs to be an increase in the diagnosable illnesses and so they have put forward a list that they think should be added. Below I've got a list of some of my favorites. Some of these haven't made it into medical journals and so are still basically under wraps (I know a few people in the Psychology Business, in fact most of my counsellors are in this industry)

Pre-Adolescent Psychosis - Actually defined as "A teenager who is a bit odd". Brilliant, because we need a few more of them.
Associative Identity Disorder - Similar to Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personalities) except it covers people who act different ways in the presence of different people or in different circumstances.
Atypical Paranoia - This is an interesting one; it covers people that are worried that they aren't worried about things.
Monopolar Disorder - Covers people who don't have major changes in their emotional response.
Pre-Echolalia - Covers people who manage to know what is going to be said before it is said (thought to be related to an overdeveloped Temporal Cerebellum)
Daymare Disorder - Similar to Nightmare Disorder but covers the time spent day dreaming (This one is a bit controversial as it is still unclear whether it is a self-imposed illness or one born out of some trauma)
Anti-Defiance Disorder (Jones' Syndrome) - This one is probably a teachers best friend. It covers kids who show a higher than average propensity for following orders.
Attention Surplus Syndrome - Roughly the opposite of Attention Deficit Disorder where people have an attention span greater than the average. It is unclear whether this is an Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Cognitive Tourette's - Similar to both Standard and Somatic Tourette's Syndromes (where someone is incapable of controlling some of their speech or actions). In this variation, a person is unable to control their thought patterns. Characteristically they consistently change the topic of a conversation or are incapable of following a continual argument.
Boanthropy - A disorder where the sufferer thinks he is a cow (Don't believe me, look it up)

Almost Obligitory Healthcare Discussion Post

In the midst of all of the fallout over Obama's healthcare reform package I've been somewhat confused over the incredible backlash. Admittedly, I do not and have never lived in America and I also don't know all of the details, but as far as it seems to me this is a good move. Something like another 300 million people who were previously unable to will now gain healthcare. While I'm not sure about all of the arguments, from where I stand they appear to boil down to these 300 million people not being worth the same as everyone else. I may be mistaken, but the Declaration of Independence which America is built upon says point blank that all men are created equal. As far as I can figure out, this argument is backing down on that.
Where I have been most confused about this particular development is the backlash in Christian circles. When you look at the Early Christian church, they looked after one another. Example, Acts 4: 34-35 "There were no needy persons among then. From time to time those who owned lands or fields sold then, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need' The early church was built upon the same principle that is being generally hated among America - a country where 79% call themselves Christian and 58% say that religion plays an important role in their lives.

Additionally, there are an estimated 45,000 deaths every year that were linked to not having health insurance. 45,000, some quick maths lets me know that this is a number roughly 1 and a 1/2 times the population of my home town. So every 2 years, my home town is completely replaced 3 times. Now for a country that prides itself on being in the forefront of medical technology that is moderately un-good.

Some more numbers then. The US already spends a higher percentage of GDP and more money per capita on health care and yet, the world health organisation still places the US health system 37th in the world. The infant mortality rate is behind all of western Europe (which all has public or socialised health care). The Life expectancy is also a year shorter than the European figure. Additionally over the last 20 odd years, the US has fallen from 11th to 42nd on the list of life expectancy.
Final number then. The US is the only developed country that doesn't have universal health care.

The only almost legitimate argument that I can think of is the argument that says that this is a foot in the door for a socialist take over of the US. I don't know why, but the US seems to see itself as the last bastion against the evils of 'non-capitalism'. To achieve this end, anything that is remotely publicly funded must be hated, abandoned and destroyed. (A bit of a disclaimer, this is just the way that I read it, I could well be very wrong). The problem with this is two fold. Firstly, this is not the way it works. Australia (which does have universal health care) is as much capitalist as the US. Secondly, there are greater evils than socialism.



Just a note, the next post will be an April Fools thing - enjoy it.

Bemusement

It is an interesting sensation to be trusted or praised. As an example, one of my lecturers recently told me quite genuinely that he would be happy to give me a professional reference now if he thought it would help me get a job, less than a year into study. A long term reader of this will possibly know that I don't often consider myself deserving of this sort of thing and so I was quite bemused - especially since the subject that I had him for was the one that I rushed most at the end. When someone gives you something positive that is undeserved because they think you deserve it, something doesn't quite seem to gel in your mind. Nagging in the back is the thought that somehow this person is deluded "What if they find out? I'm basically just a fraud." comes to the front. Either that, or you get a sense of embarrassment related to modesty.

It's interesting that in a day and age when we are told that not only do we have to put ourselves out there for any kind of exterior improvement, but that we also deserve every positive thing that swings our way, many of us don't feel comfortable with this approach. It's even more interesting that there is a clinical term for this sort of thing - Narcissism - and it is considered a mental problem (albeit an untreatable one and therefore one that goes mostly ignored).
Which isn't to say that a good self esteem is a bad thing or that extroversion is a bad thing, just that people can get carried away in it.

Just something that made me curious last week.

Follow-up

Ok, I said that I would talk about people who want to know only about their chosen field and nothing else, so here it is. I'll get my initial thought out of the way now - this approach is stupid. There, I've said it. It limits and restricts you, it seeks to define you in a way that you shouldn't necessarily be defined, it ruins you and it can in some cases destroy esteem (not the best word, but the only one that I can think of). The best ideas come from people who for some reason have to change their field - they don't know what is possible yet. But people seek to know nothing about anything else. I'll discuss these issues first and then get to the other thing that irritates me later.
Before I begin, you don't have to know everything - just be well rounded in your knowledge.

Seeking to know only a specific area limits you: with the sum of human knowledge doubling every couple of years, it now seems that to be able to learn about everything is a futile effort, and on both hands it is. Let's consider though the three approaches that can be made to learning.
1) It is Futile and therefore I won't bother. I don't think that I need to point out the idiocy of this statement, and so I won't.
2) It is Futile and so I will learn about only one thing. As the sum of knowledge expands, so does the areas in which knowledge is acquired. As an example, 200 years ago, you were called a scientist and you knew about science. Now, you can't be called just a scientist, you must be a Physicist, or a Chemical Biologist or a MetaQuantum NanoTechnologist and all of these fields are continually narrowing. As you seek to know more about your subject, you have to keep narrowing your gaze to be able to keep up. You become blinded to anything else.
3) It is Futile and so I will seek to Specialise. While this may seem the same, there is a difference. A specialist is an expert in one area, but they must also understand the things around their area. It is no point being a Gastrologist if you don't want to know anything about the rest of the anatomy and so you learn about other things. While you might not want your gut surgeon operating on your brain or vice versa, you expect that they will both know something about their counterparts.

It seeks to Define you: This one is fairly simple. An expert is someone who knows everything in a certain field. And so they are defined by their field. I've discussed this before, you shouldn't be defined by what you do. Where their field goes is where they have to go.

It can destroy esteem: This can be a fairly extreme case, but I feel that it's worth mentioning. If expertise defines you, then what happens when you can't quite make expert? You fail. Which means that you aren't good enough any more. Yes, I said it was an extreme case, but still plausible.


The second reason that I don't like it is because despite people not knowing or caring to know about areas outside their ever shrinking interests, they will always have an opinion. And it will be wrong, almost inevitably, but people will never seek to be corrected and will want to correct those who actually know what their doing.
GAH, Idiots.
But anyway, this is just my opinion based on the observations of an occasional lunatic. If I'm wrong, sue me.