La Poste...

 I love this stuff.  It's so silly and well thought out.

Someday I may return to more lengthy topics.  But until then, enjoy the last of summer.

 

 A view from insidele chateau de Fontainebleau

Something interesting about wealth and talent...

Many people in America believe that being near the top of the heap in a meritocracy equates to being wealthy.  It's how we justify the 80-20 Rule, where 80 percent of the people have only 20 percent of the wealth, and vice versa.  

 We tend to tell ourselves and firmly believe the bottom 80 percent aren't as talented as the top 20 percent.

Is this really the case?  Or is this just another thing we like to tell ourselves that helps us explain why we're at the various levels of wealth where we find ourselves?

"... When the team rank individuals by wealth, the distribution is exactly like that seen in real-world societies. “The ‘80-20’ rule is respected, since 80 percent of the population owns only 20 percent of the total capital, while the remaining 20 percent owns 80 percent of the same capital,” report Pluchino and co.

That may not be surprising or unfair if the wealthiest 20 percent turn out to be the most talented. But that isn’t what happens. The wealthiest individuals are typically not the most talented or anywhere near it. “The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa,” say the researchers..." 

This is from an article on wealth and luck.  I added the bold to the sentences I found most interesting.

It gives a radically different perspective, doesn't it?

 

Le Vol de la Tour Eiffel

I find these videos extraordinarily fun - https://youtu.be/i5XjvNBcQV4

 

In a world filled with lies and wishful thinking...

How do we know what is true and what is not?

I ask this in the relation to the lies and half truths that too many people believe and tell each other.

Carl Sagan had a few thoughts on the matter and I think they can be helpful.  Hence his Baloney Detection Kit.

I particularly like the following quote of his.

"...In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions..."

 

Delete Facebook...

Without going into details, I've not been on Facebook for years, now.  So it was only with passing interest that I came across the following comment.

"... Facebook makes election interference easy, and that unless such activity hurts the company’s business interests, it can’t be bothered to fix the problem..." - from Technology Review

I'm very happy I'm no longer letting Zuckerberg & Co. sell my private information.

If the company can't be bothered to do the "right things", why participate in the active demise of democracy?  

 

Rome...

From: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/lessons-in-the-decline-of-democracy-from-the-ruined-roman-republic

"...While life in Rome, with gladiator battles, crucifixions and endless war was violent, for centuries Romans took pride in their republican system and political violence was taboo...

...Despite periods where the U.S. political system and established political norms have been tested and stretched—the McCarthy hearings, Vietnam, Watergate, the Iraq War—partisan violence or attempts to subvert the system have been rare. But recent events, like changes to filibuster rules and other procedures in Congress as well as increasingly heated political rhetoric give Watts pause...

...“No republic is eternal,” Watts writes. “It lives only as long as its citizens want it. And, in both the 21stcentury A.D. and the first century B.C., when a republic fails to work as intended, its citizens are capable of choosing the stability of autocratic rule over the chaos of a broken republic." 

And there it is. Enough Americans, however they have come to it, believe that the Republic not longer works.  Jobs to China.  Lack of employment.  "Socialism" is destroying the country.  Mexicans are taking jobs and importing violence.  Putin is really a friend.  "They" are coming to take your guns away. Vaccines against CV19 make you magnetic.  "They" are putting micro-chips in CV19 vaccines to control you.

Choose one insane lie or choose all of them.  

It seems to boil down to the same thing.  Just enough people want the apparent stability of autocratic rule to actively vote it into power.  

In the USA last election cycle just three million people tipped the balance away from continued autocratic rule.  Yet the model for this kind of rule is now in place.  Who will exploit that to their advantage?

 

Meanwhile, in the civilized world...

Carl Sagan said...

Back to politics.  The following quote is verified (see Snopes).

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American[s] is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites... lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark