Learning by science

This little blog post seeks to ask two questions: why is science used as the standard device for acquiring knowledge, and on what information do humans actually base their decisions on?

Science has been around for a couple hundred years. It involves the logical process of induction; we acquire massive amounts of data and observations from the world around us, and we try to observe patterns that can arise from this data. As a natural human aftereffect to the knowledge gathering process, we also try to apply causal relationships to observations we make.

This last step is the most dangerous part though: causal relationships that arise as a result of data and pattern research are not logically valid. Trying to develop causal knowledge really falls to the shoulders of abductive logic, which cannot present its conclusion of 100% validity, it can only find multiple solutions, ranked in order of plausibility. Additionally, while this type of logic makes the most meaningful conclusions, there is little formal theory behind constructing an abductive argument. Deduction and Induction have been pared down to the bone starting since Aristotle, on the other hand.

And this is the danger of "science." In order to seek knowledge, one has to have a very firm grasp on exactly what truths one can uncover with the data and observations one can acquire. I honestly think that almost no portion of "science class" is spent critically evaluating why this method is used, and ultimately, how limited it is. The danger of this post, then, is how poorly it is supported with evidence, and how it tries to generate overarching conclusions, from basically the dark.

And how do humans use our grand knowledge acquired through science in order to make decisions? We don't. If we have to replace the transmission in our Honda, we don't buy them because "they have bad transmissions", even though Hondas are shown to be reliable compared to other vehicle brands (there are more '97 Accords on the road still than any other vehicle from that year and class- yes, I completely made this up, but whether or not it's true it can be used to illustrate my point). Our personal experience cannot be taken as a representative experience upon which to make future decisions. For every 100 skilled tasks I perform, I estimate that I make a mistake on 3 of them. However, since I am interacting with other people in each task, there might be 97% of the total population who think I'm excellent, and 3% of the total population who think I'm a putz.

That's what I'm saying, that humans have evolved to be especially discriminatory over our evolutionary timeline. While it's important to make decisions that allow yourself the best chances for success, you've got to be able to understand when quick decisions based on limited experiences cannot make the best decision for you. This is because things don't happen the same way every time. Sometimes, sex makes a boy, other times, it's a girl.

You know when people are drunk,

all they want to do is yell in your ear about how drunk they. Man, this is the most drunk they've been in awhile. They can barely stand. They are having so much fun and they still have 4 or 5 drinks left till they pass out.

Yea, well I'm that tired. I just want to tell you about how tired I am. I stayed up till 2:30 finishing a paper and had to get up at 5:30. My head is cloudy, my eyes are dry, I'm just kinda stumbling anywhere and can't finish a complete thought.

Being with many a drunk (or tired and whiny friend, as the case may be), I've found that these diatribes are not particularly interesting, in fact, if you've heard them more than twice a year, they get really fuckin' old really fuckin' quick. That being said, here are some unrelated and hopefully more interesting status updates that I should probably add to my bio on facebook or at least cycle through my statuses every once in a little while.

Though I think of myself as being totally intellectual and rational, I have my areas of vanity; I like to dress in nice clothes and style my hair so as to appear normal and attractive for a male.

I am profiting from the fact that video games are considered "retro" and "vintage" recently. I've always liked them, so while they're at least somewhat an "in" thing, I can enjoy a slightly more robust social standing.

I think a woman falling asleep on her man's chest is the most romantic thing in the world, and despite how chaotic relationships can be, those moments should be treasured by the parties involved.

For some reason, I no longer can memorize the lyrics to most songs I listen to. I listen to largely the same bands over and over and over and over and over again but I can't keep the lyrics in my memory, which is a shame, because goddammit if I don't love to sing. By extension, if I found the time and resources to practice, I would learn and cover a bunch of Tom Waits' piano ballads for love of their lyrics and beautiful, simple music.

I really love being so constantly busy all the time. If there's a bunch of social events and gatherings I do miss, there is the other side of the coin which I don't miss, and that is having a low opinion of myself based on poor work ethic and laziness. There are tons of things I'm learning about the world and myself that help me to fit better within my own life that I wouldn't be learning if I took it easy and relaxed all the time (which tends to be the false binary I live by, all or nothing).

I am lucky to have a job which makes just enough money to keep the engine rolling. The people are fun and pleasant and the management has been extremely flexible in meeting my needs so long as I perform well in my task.

I wanna meet this girl real bad, but I don't know when I'll be able to short of some kind of break, which is a long ways away.

Nobody has ever had to do anything.

There's a very distinct difference between coercion and consequences. I don't have to go to work. I don't have to go to school. I don't have to do anything but what I want, even if that's just eating Doritos, playing video games, and masturbating for a month straight. The problem is, I've seen the other side, I lived the other side for the majority of my life so far, and it ain't pretty.

So we set priorities. We come up with goals for ourselves. We do what we "have" to do in order to reach the point where we want to be. I will now substitute want for the "have" that is in quotes, since I've demonstrated that outside of brutal coercion, people tend to overly misuse necessity and imperative.

Now we're back to page one. I want to be in school. I want to be at my job. I've set these priorities for an abstract future that I don't know about what may happen? But why live for tomorrow? What about today? My question has already been answered. I do want to be in school. It's where I can be with like-minded people. It's where I can be constantly learning, and adapting my identity to the knowledge I osmose. I want to go to work every evening. It's where I'm useful, it's where I can challenge myself or sit on the sidelines. It's freedom.

My question that I've asked myself, and subsequently answered, is this: now that I know the hedonistic lifestyle isn't IT, and I work hard because I want to, is there any reason not to want and thus become the hardest working, the smartest, the most accomplished, the absolute best in the world?

Bill Gates didn't "have" to make Microsoft and become a billionaire. My parents didn't "have" to work hard, get married, and raise a family, and have jobs in the healthcare industry where they feel they can best help people. Humanity doesn't have to wake up every morning and slave away in their mundane routines in order to keep the world going round. They want to.

Why not work a little harder so the mundane, the work, the trial can be in the manner in which we want it to be. Learn Spanish. Wake up and run. Write. Start a band. And be the best person in the world. While these specifics might be my callings, you do what you want to do. When you realize that what you "have" to do can very well be transformed into what you want for yourself, the world seems far less cruel.

Real Shit

I am so pissed and sad about everything all the time these days that I sometimes forget what real heartache is. The occasional dose of it keeps me alive and aware. It also makes me sick to my stomach. I have tangible and intellectual reminders of many of the things that compose my past, and I just don't know what to feel about them. The confusion paralyzes me for a day at a time, here and there.

That, and I've come up with an idea about what would be a cool book. I don't think I could write it, but I could try to write certain parts of it, flesh it out a bit, feel how it feels, and see if it's something that would interest me. It's totally inconsequential, and really more of a literary exercise for my own personal exploration than what would appear to readers to be a "book." I'd probably post snippets here if I decided to try and start writing it.

That, and 45% of my grade in English 417 is due between Tuesday the 12th and Tuesday the 19th. Two seven page papers, as well as a group presentation/leading a class discussion, all in the next 10 days. 45%. Fuck that. Fuck that shit straight back to whatever brilliant mind envisioned it would be a good idea to stagger everything that's fucking important this semester into one 8-day period. Fuck you.

That, and my parents don't believe in me. I don't care if they think I'm doing it wrong, I just wish they wouldn't bother me about it everyday. I'm doing it with my money, my time, and my sanity. They can do what they like. I just want to bang my head on the table in peace.

Okay, now that that's out of the way...

I don't really feel like writing today

I've had two long conversations in the last two days: one with an old friend, and one with someone who probably can't quite place my name, but that's okay. And let me tell you, it was refreshing as hell. I'm spending all my time in school and work, and though work can be a social experience, it doesn't offer me the chance to truly let go and be myself.

My circumstance may offer me a unique perspective as to how valuable that opportunity really is. Don't get me wrong, keeping to myself, having only my own wishes and imperatives being seen to, can be really fulfilling and useful for avoiding distraction, annoyance, and drama. But trust me, after about a month of solitude, more or less based on your own personality, riding in the car for an hour with my bud became equally as fun or more fun than what a full day Halo lan or beach trip would have been.

Really, though, am I just a slave to my own genetics? Humanity represents the dominant species on Earth because of our capacity to interact socially, and that brings us great pleasure because of the evolutionary advantages it provides us. The answer to this question is unimportant, I'm just resolved in the fact that I need to get out of my circumstances as quickly as possible, because I want to mingle again. Seriously.

Also, I may have a date-ish-type rendezvous with a cutie some time in the near (or far) future. But considering that I get an opportunity to relax and interact with people about once a month, I'm kinda pessimistic about anything cool really growing there. I'm just completely unavailable based on circumstance, and it is something I hadn't considered when evaluating the costs and benefits of going back to school.

But really, though, I gotta get back to my homework. As in, to prepare for the possibility of a date. This honey won't facebook stalk herself (am I doing it wrong?).

Things that I like to, but probably shouldn't, explain at parties- Also, why I'm single, Also, why I think I'm hilarious

-I compete with my sister on who has a louder burp

-I want to date Lady Gaga, but she doesn't want men to steal her creativity by invading her vagina (many people think hers was purchased after-market)

-No matter what I say or do at work, my coworkers mostly think I'm gay (see bullet 2)

-It doesn't bother me that people think I'm gay, I think it's funny how uncomfortable they become around me because of general homophobia

-If I had unlimited money and drug dealers weren't so fucking sketchy, I'd smoke weed and write everyday.

-I love to write but I fucking suck at it and it's not worth reading

-When you start smelling my farts, I likely have to take a shit, you likely don't stand near me anymore

-When I shit real hard, I sweat through my jeans

-More generally, I sweat copious amounts of fluid, particularly from my butt

-One of my nipples is larger than the other by a visible amount. I had surgery in high school to remove excess tissue from the region, but it's coming back

-I am sexually frustrated

-I would rather play Starcraft 2 than ever go out to a club. EVER. Every time I go, I hate the night and everyone experiencing it with me

-I suck my thumb, and have since I was a kid, but only when I'm rubbing a silky fabric of some sort, mostly shirt tags

-I'll probably be in undergrad for 6.5 - 7 years. That's right. Some people encounter some difficulties and stay an extra year. I'll be staying an extra 3

-I think vegetarians are collectively the stupidest group on the planet

-I follow competitive Pokemon and Starcraft 2

-My attention to emotions is like that of a girl

-I find the notion that everyone is special is retarded, and that people are unimportant in general, or more descriptively, far more self-important than they are actually important

-If I could only experience the work of just one artist for the rest of my life, that artist would be Tom Waits

Hiding Behind Words

When a person thinks they're really smart, they like to use big words (varied vernacular, myriad vocabulary, menagerie of language!). Since I know about myself that I think I'm really intelligent (like, really smart), I, too, like to use unique syntactic structures and the multi-syllabic synonyms to satisfactorily populate them.

Fuck that!

What did I even say that couldn't be said in English? What does it offer me (my penis) that I can dress up my message in a beautiful garland of tongue and teeth Olympics? This blog post (so far) isn't actually about what I wanted to write about (my penis).

Which doesn't bring me to my main point: social problems arise when one lives in constant satire of the rest of the world.

Those who like me are few and far between, because when deciding whether or not to become my friend, people have to listen to me speak. I say outlandish things because I like the attention I get and the raised eyebrows staring my way and the one person in the room who gets that I'm joking and hurts their stomach trying to stop laughing. But everyone else in the room thinks I'm rude, shallow, misogynistic, condescending, angry, weird, stupid, and in many other ways unappealing.

I think the human creature is blessed with a lot of flaws. I say blessed, because they likely arose out of evolutionary advantage over millions of years, and are aspects of our human nature empowering us to become the dominant species on Earth. I say flaws because when someone expresses one of these characteristics in public, you wonder why this person is allowed to vote.

When everything I say is trying to mock those fun little qualities in the people I coexist with, unfortunately, I become indistinguishable from someone having those qualities themselves. To any outsider's perspective, I've acquired any such attributes, and really, who am I to decide that even though everything I say and do would make me appear retarded, that I'm actually not because my consciousness is aware that expressing such a quality is a "joke."

Really though, I think I'm more the asshole for thinking that I can escape the nature of humanity. I get a haircut and it grows into my brain, I suck at school and barely ever do my work on time, I can't shut my fucking mouth sometimes. Everyone is retarded for a slightly different reason, and I think that I shouldn't always be mocking the people around me. It makes people focus fire me about my own flaws and makes me a target and an enemy. This effect, over the long term, has made it such that I've kept only a handful of friends since high school.

Perhaps I can embrace people alongside their flaws, so that they might embrace mine and we can learn and grow together.