Great food for thought, all.
As far as statistics go, Ann is right. Illiteracy always raises peoples ire
but innumeracy can be far more damaging in a subtler way.
Eat a lot of fruit and you won't get cancer. Nice factoid, but untrue.
What IS true is that you give me a sample set of a million people, and I
can draw some useful data on the usefulness of fruit intake in the avoidance
of cancer.
But that doesn't mean squat to a human being, an individual who (by definition)
is working with a sample set of ONE (himself or herself). Eat all the right things, do
all the right things----and nothing bad gets to happen to me?
Not exactly. In fact......not at all. Eat like an Olympic athlete, gets pats on the
back from all your envious friends for your superb physical state----then die of
lung cancer having never smoked a cigarette in your life. Impossible? It happens every
day.
To navigate a human life is no different than navigating any vessel. There are
no certainties.....but there are probabilities. In retrospect everything is obvious---
but we don't live our lives in retrospect......we live them in the heat (and fog) of
battle.
Remember the fat guy in the movie "Titanic" who, remarking on the Captain's
"foolish" decision to maintain speed remarks....."Unbelievable!! He's got the ice warning
in his fu**ing hand".
Fat guy seems to have all the answers. Except the ice warning was generic to the
point of uselessness. "Exercise extreme caution as icebergs are possible". Is there ever a
time when they are NOT possible? As useless as a generic warning to the American
public to exercise extreme caution today--so that we can have no auto accidents on
8 June 2013 in the USA.
I can guarantee there will be auto accidents in the USA today, some fatal.
I can also guarantee that not a single one of them woke up this morning
saying "this is the day". Instead, they fear things like flying (there has not been a
large transport jet crash in the USA since November 2001.....more than 11 years ago!)
.......THAT'S INNUMERACY!
Blind faith in statistics is just like every other kind of blind......kinda useless.
On a personal note:
English Garden, you are right to be afraid of people who operate solely on the
basis of pleasure and reward (so am I).....deathly afraid.
Anvil's electrician analogy about the human brain needing rewiring seems spot on
to me.....some drunk took a leak in the junction box---we heard a bang, saw a flash,
and now everything is dark! The only thing for certain is this is gonna be expensive!
But I forgot about Kaa, that silvery tongued serpent! Above all things, I love
rational thought. I love it because it is a machete----when wielded skillfully it is an
amazingly effective tool at decapitating these snakes whose siren call would rob us
of all the REAL things we hold dear.
>>>>>>>Slowly and surely your senses Will cease to resist<<<<<<<<
Kaa must hate websites like this. Informing people that the machete of sobriety
and rationality is just waiting to be picked up-----and that the last thing his nasty
little eyes might see.....is the glint of sharp metal just before his coils and evil mind
find themselves (cleanly) separated.
"hey snake! Come on over here....I want you to see som'thin! Just a little closer,
just a little closer............"
Vale's rule #9684863046..........never fight fair with snakes!