210327 What I learned in my studies this morning

Today makes today

The longest I've been alive. 

Happy day to me! 

Today's Meditation:

From The Daily Stoic: 

Time and experience are my most precious currencies, yet I spend them on games which give only momentary enjoyment and on food which pleases and then *poof* is gone.

I don't truly remember how good that pizza tasted the second it is gone from my mouth. Worse, way, waaaay too often I don't recognize how good it tastes as I eat it. I let my mind wander and don't think about what I'm doing.

It can be sublime to really enjoy a fine meal and be truly present in good company, but I rarely do. I let myself be distracted and focus on myriad unimportant things.

I spend my time foolishly, not living in the moment. I must do better. My time here is finite.

From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman:

Chapter 1 Atoms in Motion 

Feynman begins his lectures with three hugely important concepts: 

(1) the foundation of (scientific) knowledge,

(2) the idea of "how things can go wrong," and

(3) the notion of lies to children (though he did not know the term). 

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1. The foundation of scientific knowledge 

"The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific 'truth.'" (p. 2, emphasis original)

Theories are essential — without them, we wouldn't know on where to look for knew truths — but without experiment, we cannot be sure our theories reflect the world we inhabit. 

Perhaps we missed something in our math and reasoning from first principles. Something which only shows up when we explore the theory experimentally and see does the result match the prediction. 

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2. How things can go wrong 

Sometimes things go wrong in simple ways. Something is miscalibrated and needs to be corrected. This is easily done. 

On a higher level, if we misunderstand the situation or incorrectly, perhaps unconsciously, add an assumption which isn't true, we find ourselves on the pond without an oar. 

Regardless of the error, any error at this level means we have to start again with a different argument to verify. Maybe only slightly different, and maybe not hard to create, but it is a different line of reasoning. 

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3. Lies to children 

Lies to children is a phrase used to explain why telling the full truth is sometimes the wrong thing to do.

<<A lie-to-children is a statement that is false, but which nevertheless leads the child's mind towards a more accurate explanation, one that the child will only be able to appreciate if it has been primed with the lie.>>

Author Terry Pratchett helped popularize the term. 

<<In a 1999 interview, Pratchett commented upon the phrase: "I like the lies-to-children motif, because it underlies the way we run our society and resonates nicely with Discworld." He was critical of problems inherent in early education: "You arrive with your sparkling A-levels all agleam, and the first job of the tutors is to reveal that what you thought was true is only true for a given value of 'truth'." Pratchett cautioned: "Most of us need just 'enough' knowledge of the sciences, and it's delivered to us in metaphors and analogies that bite us in the bum if we think they're the same as the truth.>>

The idea is that you deliberately tell someone something you know is not the truth, but which you also know is necessary for the person to believe and use as truth*, as they begin their journey toward actual understanding of the complex topic you are teaching. 

Feynman is discussing physics. It works nicely in social knowledge as well.

Think about teaching morality to children. We don't tell them the secret of ethical behavior at the beginning; we tell them "don't lie," "don't kill," and "don't hit others." But the truth is that all of those rules have exceptions. Exceptions which would be too complex to teach someone straightaway.

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Mr. Feynman gathers these three crucial ideas in five consecutive paragraphs. Not even two pages of text. Man was smaaart.