This post is the result of my thinking being triggered by a very specific piece of “news” (its not really news since the actual event happened many years ago – but has only recently become public knowledge). I was very unsure of how to react to this particular story – so this blog is me thinking it through.
Philosophical
Everyone Knows
I’ve said it before – and I will probably say it again – it is really good when you get unexpected confirmation of things that you have written. In my recent post Tell Me About It I tackled the ever more prevalent problem of what is known as the “illusion of explanatory depth” with regard to our knowledge.
Tell Me About It
One thing that has informed my worldview over recent years was the discovery that there exist a whole host of cognitive biases that cause us to mis-perceive everything we see, hear and think. In a previous post I linked to an article that listed no less than 58 of these – and I have a poster on my desk which lists 20. (note that these both originate from the same website)
Jumping To Conclusions
In the last few days I have seen two really good examples in social media of people bringing their own biases to discussions and replying to what they thought was written rather than what was actually written. In both cases it made them look just a bit foolish.
Does Reality Matter?
One recurrent theme of my blog entries is the difficulty we each experience separating reality from fiction. I don’t mean that we are consciously deluding ourselves – although I expect that we all do that from time to time – rather that we simply lose track of what is real as against what is “made up”.
Faking It
There is a bit of a furore about the perceived influence of so called fake news on the result of the US election. On the one hand this strikes me as extremely funny – on the other it is rather worrying (on a number of levels).
inSignificant
Not my usual sort of book, I guess – however it was fascinating how the author broke through his own ‘failings’ and found a way to be a great and loved teacher.
Grey Areas Everywhere
In two posts last month around the time of the Olympic Games I wrote about the difficulties that are presented when it is necessary to impose some set of rules and regulations to prevent ‘cheating’ – specifically with regard to so-called “performance enhancement”.
A Bit Of Speculation
My eye was caught by an article on the BBC website – as much as by the fact that it seemed to be reporting “old news” as by the headline itself. However, having navigated to the page I discovered that it was, indeed, a good piece – if slightly spoiled by being rather one-sided.
A Lesson Learned (On Being Stuck)
I’ve started on my newest online creation – partially inspired by the making memories series of posts here – to create a bit of a “life history” – a treasure trove of memories (probably real and imagined if you have read some of my previous writing on the subject) – a pot-pourri of little highlights (and possibly some lowlights) of my life.