Archives of “Life” category

rss

Good Luck Bad Luck!

  
Education, Life
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

horses-gallopThere is a Chinese story of a farmer who used an old horse to till his fields. One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer’s neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses from the hills and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg, they let him off. Now was that good luck or bad luck?

Who knows?

The 150 Things the World's Smartest People Are Afraid Of

  
Education, Life
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Every year, the online magazine Edge–the so-called smartest website in the world–asks the top scientists, technologists, writers, and academics to weigh in on a single question. This year, that question was “What Should We Be Worried About?” and the idea was to identify new problems arising in science, tech, and culture that haven’t yet been widely recognized. 

This year’s respondents include former presidents of the Royal Society, Nobel prize-winners, famous sci-fi authors, Nassem Nicholas Taleb, Brian Eno, and a bunch of top theoretical phsycists, psychologists and biologists. And the list is long. Like, book-length long. Tthere are some 130 different things that worry 151 of the planet’s biggest brains. And I read it, so you don’t have to: here’s the Buzzfeedized version, with the money quote, title, or summary of the fear pulled out of each essay. Obviously, go read the rest if any of the below get you fretting. 

What keeps the smartest folks in the world awake at night? Here goes:

1. The proliferation of Chinese eugenics. – Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist.

2. Black swan events, and the fact that we continue to rely on models that have been proven fraudulent. – Nassem Nicholas Taleb

3. That we will be unable to defeat viruses by learning to push them beyond the error catastrophe threshold. – William McEwan, molecular biology researcher

4. That pseudoscience will gain ground. – Helena Cronin, author, philospher

5. That the age of accelerating technology will overwhelm us with opportunities to be worried. – Dan Sperber, social and cognitive scientist (more…)

Go to top