The End of The End

Today is the twelfth day of the twelfth month. That must mean something. Or not. Anyway it feels like an auspicious day to announce the end of the end. I will leave these notes up for awhile. Then there's the basket.

I started off this venture with a note on The Meaning of Meaning. That note, and every other note since, has used words in at least two ways, to convey some ideas as I intended, and to encourage you, the reader, to discover thoughts of your own beyond the words. 

Sometimes the words are more informative (scientific) and sometimes more suggestive (poetic). Whichever voice I use, I try not to exclude the other. 

You might suppose we would be more inclined to trust ideas that are supported by evidence. You would be wrong. The Nietzsche Thesis is that we are predisposed to accept ideas based on their usefulness in promoting our safety, ease, comfort and social standing, rather than their truthfulness. So we have conspiracy theories, dogma, cultish fantasy, disinformation, cynical rhetoric, confidence fraud, and propaganda. 

The way to get what you want from people is to convince them you are honest and have their best interest at heart, whereas those other people can't be trusted. Now I just need remote access to your computer for a minute. You said Royal Bank, didn't you? OK, we can fix this. Just log in and I will look after the rest. It's complicated, but I can manage the details. No worries. Rest easy.

For most of us, the scientist is dozing most of the time. That is true even of scientists. You may have heard of Ignaz Semmelweiz and his evidence that hand-washing would reduce the incidence of childbed fever (1861). He was ridiculed by doctors who were insulted by his insistence that they wash their hands. If the evidence is inconvenient, we tend to discount it. Pay attention to the evidence. Wash your hands.

Of course, we can try so hard to be scientific that we suppress our inner poet. The germ theory has been incredibly useful. We now understand infectious disease and can protect against it. However, consider the use of indigenous children as experimental subjects in trials to develop a tuberculosis vaccine (1933). There are many such stories. Scientists who seek evidence but have silenced the inner poet may still need to wash their hands.

I have been promoting my thoughts. 
Sorry.
I apologize for all thoughts but one:
that we live
by adding meaning to the words.

Choose life.

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Fun fact. December 12, 1901 was the date of the first transatlantic wireless telegraphy message. The message—simply the Morse-code signal for the letter “s”—traveled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada. I wonder. What did Marconi mean by choosing the letter 's' instead of one of the other 25? 

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The next blog is The Basket Overflow. It appears I haven't run out of words yet.