What is the math of your life? What percentage of you is just you? What have you added to the base you? What have you compounded? Are you constantly changing the logarithms?
Every once in a while you encounter some test of your personal math: On a scale from 1 to 10, what is your pain level, what is your anger, what is your anxiety, what is your…? Name it, and there’s a quantifying scale. Trouble is that much of what you are, and no one knows "how much," isn't quantifiable. Yet, there are those who would have you do the math.
How frightened have you been? 10? Wow! That’s a bunch of fright. It has to be much more than a 9. Are you dealing with logb(x)=y? What is the log? What is the exponent? How did we arrive at the base number? What if, for example, I was frightened only 2? What does that mean?
Now beliefs. Do you believe in God? In gods? In a material world composed only of matter and energy with no spiritual component? Is that belief, on a scale of 1 to 10, an 8? Is it “off the charts”? As philosophers might ask, what is the nature of belief anyway? You say, “I believe what I believe.”
What’s the point? If you truly examine yourself, you will find that you can qualify, but not quantify. Yet, you constantly attempt to “decide” on the bases of numbers. And you tie the numbers to an economics of living.
At what number do you tip the scale in favor of one action over another? Sorry, I know this is frustrating, but the realities of decision-making warrant some examination of the process. The realities of your behavior also warrant that examination.
Take pot-smoking. Harm scale: 1? 6? 0? Any way to know? Weigh the risks in life, you are told. You can look at scientific studies, of course. Those who write them surely are quantifiers, aren’t they? Well, okay, you see some contradictory studies, some incomplete studies, and some supposedly definitive studies. But how do you quantify the studies themselves? Statistically? So, do you adopt a behavior because “on average” you might…. No, of course not. Does it matter that some people suffer damage to brain fibers, according to a recent study, by smoking high potency pot? If someone tells you the “numbers,” do you consider them in your behavior? In your beliefs? Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, should have died years ago according to the statistics on ALS.
When it comes to you, you are a qualifier.
Every once in a while you encounter some test of your personal math: On a scale from 1 to 10, what is your pain level, what is your anger, what is your anxiety, what is your…? Name it, and there’s a quantifying scale. Trouble is that much of what you are, and no one knows "how much," isn't quantifiable. Yet, there are those who would have you do the math.
How frightened have you been? 10? Wow! That’s a bunch of fright. It has to be much more than a 9. Are you dealing with logb(x)=y? What is the log? What is the exponent? How did we arrive at the base number? What if, for example, I was frightened only 2? What does that mean?
Now beliefs. Do you believe in God? In gods? In a material world composed only of matter and energy with no spiritual component? Is that belief, on a scale of 1 to 10, an 8? Is it “off the charts”? As philosophers might ask, what is the nature of belief anyway? You say, “I believe what I believe.”
What’s the point? If you truly examine yourself, you will find that you can qualify, but not quantify. Yet, you constantly attempt to “decide” on the bases of numbers. And you tie the numbers to an economics of living.
At what number do you tip the scale in favor of one action over another? Sorry, I know this is frustrating, but the realities of decision-making warrant some examination of the process. The realities of your behavior also warrant that examination.
Take pot-smoking. Harm scale: 1? 6? 0? Any way to know? Weigh the risks in life, you are told. You can look at scientific studies, of course. Those who write them surely are quantifiers, aren’t they? Well, okay, you see some contradictory studies, some incomplete studies, and some supposedly definitive studies. But how do you quantify the studies themselves? Statistically? So, do you adopt a behavior because “on average” you might…. No, of course not. Does it matter that some people suffer damage to brain fibers, according to a recent study, by smoking high potency pot? If someone tells you the “numbers,” do you consider them in your behavior? In your beliefs? Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, should have died years ago according to the statistics on ALS.
When it comes to you, you are a qualifier.
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