Let’s wrap up my reviews about Bertrand Russell’s Skeptical Essays with a quick… well, maybe not so quick riff off on some of the remaining ideas I liked from his collection.
Although there are some obvious limits, it is a fact of physics that it is not possible to properly order all the events that happen in two different places without light traveling from one place to the other after the event in one location and before the event in another. Otherwise, the observations about time-order are merely points of view from the observers and not representative of any physical fact.
I think our K-12 education would improve if students graduated having learned the basics of many more subjects. This core feature of physics is the sort of learning I think would benefit many students – it’s not so much the fact of time-order that matters but rather the rigor of thinking required to understand the concept. The most important skills a student must develop are knowing how to think, learn, and teach throughout the many decades after graduation. This kind of concept is sure to help in all three domains.
Men have historically pursued the virtues that win respect from others. This has not always meant accumulating wealth or money – in some societies, artistic excellence, a certain level of education, or sainthood has proven to be the most sought after virtue. To put it another way, the modern desire for wealth is not in our nature but rather in our society.
The great delusion of our age is the excessive emphasis on the economic aspects of life.
I think these are helpful observations but I’ll reframe the message in a more direct way – people have been and always will be concerned with how someone contributes to a community. Money is an imperfect way to value contribution but it remains our preferred method of measurement thanks to its simplicity and utility. Societies that value other forms of accomplishment have merely substituted rather than replaced the role of money in this regard.
The same boy who rages when told he cannot climb a tree will admit defeat when he tries to climb the same tree and fails. It is an issue of resentment, and societies that recognize resentment will allow people to do certain harmful things so as to limit the buildup of resentment.
I recognized early on in my career that some people learn only by doing. With these colleagues, my role was to create safe spaces for failure so that their experiments would not harm the performance of the team or cause irreparable damage to the individual. A society must pair education with appropriate safety nets so that those who learn by falling can do so without suffering outsized consequences.
Machines exchange opportunity for spontaneity – therefore, a human must take on an outsized responsibility for initiative whenever a machine replaces what once was a human task.
Machines have adjusted our way of life without our adjusting our instincts.
I read years ago that automated equipment suffers from a lack of flexibility. I notice this lesson these days in too many ways to list. I think for the most part my fellow citizens do a fantastic job of finding the initiative to replace what gets lost in the transition to machine automation. One of many examples is the parking lot of any suburban gym – all those parked cars belong to people who are working hard to regain the fitness lost to the hours spent at the steering wheel.
I worry more about regaining the mental toll than I do the physical. Russell’s thought about instinct rings true anytime I notice my phone light up or a new email enters my inbox – I’m wired to notice and I find ignoring the distraction takes up a great deal of my mental energy. I know these technologies erode my capacity to pay attention in the way someone accustomed to using a power tool never develops the same muscles as the person with a box full of hammers, saws, and wrenches.
A community must always ask itself – how much can we interfere in an individual life for the sake of the community? It should do the same with government – how much should we allow the government to exercise its biggest defect (interfering with our social freedom) in order to maintain its biggest advantage (maintaining our physical freedom)?
The bare minimum for freedom involves meeting certain fundamental needs – food, drink, health, clothing, housing…
My feeling on the matter is that the community must intervene if someone is unable to meet basic needs. I do feel it is callous in some respect to stop there but I think doing more cripples our upward potential and sets a community’s trajectory toward stagnation.
On a side note, Russell includes sex and parenthood on his ‘bare minimum’ list. Those two concepts aren’t so easily resolved by my ‘community intervention’ concept and I’m therefore unsure if I agree on their inclusion among a list of fundamental needs. However, as far as policy goes, we should continue to support whatever builds strong communities for the future. I would include on this list anything that increases access and education for safe sex as well as programs or subsidies that help working parents find high-quality day care for their children.
The law of averages says we’ll stop in the next town, where petrol price is down, what do I know anyhow…
What do I know about global financial systems? The answer, as always, is next to nothing. Maybe I should just do what we all are pressured to do – look at the numbers, ‘analyze’ to find the smaller one, and spend, spend, spend…
…huh?
Well... what?
OK, fine, that’s not from Skeptical Essays, it’s from Courtney Barnett’s ‘Dead Fox’, a repeat offender on my riff offs. But who better to play the last note?
Thanks for reading.
