The World Is Messy - Probabilistic - Relativism

Listened to this Hidden Brain on the commute this morning. 

https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/why-youre-smarter-than-you-think/

The IQ part is of course interesting and how IQ can't measure desire or passion or interest of course leaves the concept wanting. 

I have always found myself going back to Kurzweil's definition of intelligence - the ability to solve problems with limited resources. 

Alas, problems for you might not be problems for me.

But the real kipper of the piece for me was when he used the word "messy."

The world is messy. 

Here is some of the context:

Shankar Vedantam:

You've also said that IQ tests fail to capture the full range of human potential, in that they focus on the explicit, the conscious, the controlled forms of thinking. What does this leave out, Scott?

Scott Barry Kaufman:

Absolutely. Well, one specific thing I did study in my dissertation is this idea called implicit learning, which is our ability to learn the probabilistic rule structure of the world automatically and implicitly without a level of awareness. This is deep implications. I mean, so you talk about the theme of your show, right here, we're getting to... this is very, very congruent. I mean, think about what is required to develop social intelligence. Sometimes when people smile, they mean this, sometimes they don't. Sometimes when people's eyes are like this, sometimes they don't. The world is messy.

Probabilistic rule structure of the world. 

There are no absolutes. From the hard sciences to the social sciences, not one truth.

And yet, we can be happy. We can move through the world with grace and patience and humility and smile and be smiled at. 

Relativism is your friend. 

Old systems, especially in an education system, but you also see it in organizations and hiring practices. It goes deep, this stuff, a lot of these assumptions we have about human potential that are really outdated and just wrong.

 

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Religion is an old system, really outdated and unhealthy. We aren't fallen, we aren't born in sin, we aren't corrupt, we don't need saved, the body isn't bad. 

Time to let it go. Time to embrace the messy world with a new paradigm. A healthier paradigm. 

You'll thank me.

Invoking god

Lotta folks invoke god and god's plan. Or as some call it, divine providence - god's intervention in the universe. 

Ah yes, intervention. To intervene. 

Now, athletes can be especially guilty of this invoking business. Two that come to mind are Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes. I find it interesting (and so did George Carlin) that this invoking is always after success. Mahomes winning the super bowl and Mayfield landing a contract of "life-changing money." 

Here's Mayfield via kpvi: 

God had a plan for me, saw it through, and the group we had made it so special last year, I big reason I wanted to come back here.

 And here is some Mahomes via the christian post:

I give God the glory. He challenged us to make us better. I am proud of my guys. They did awesome. Legendary.

Now, does god's plan also hold for Regina King? Does god's plan also hold for her son Ian, who committed suicide? Is depression part of god's plan? Why didn't god intervene for Ian? Did Regina King not pray as hard or as well or as correctly as Mayfield and Mahomes? 

God only knows. 

But this is not the worst part of adhering to beliefs like this. 

The worst part is the paradigm constructed to answer the cognitive dissonance of suffering, best known and portrayed by Leibniz' answer to the problem: 

 Leibniz's best of all possible worlds philosophy argues that the existence of evil in the world created by God made it possible to achieve a greater good. However, Leibniz posits that humans do not always understand this greater good because they are less perfect creatures than God.

You don't always understand the greater good of suicide, but that is your ignorance. Take any so-called evil: plague, murder, torture, rape, cancer...all part of god's plan for the best of all possible worlds. God is benevolent and omnipotent and can only create the best of all possible worlds. 

I just want Mayfield and Mahomes to explain this to the grieving, the parents in the cancer wards, and the starving, and those suffering.