Humble Confidence

Yesterday we took a taxi to vote early for the provincial election. When we arrived at the poll, the taxi driver said he didn't know who to vote for and asked us who we liked. That's a big ask, not easy.  Do you vote for the incumbent who put beer in the corner store,  and finished up with a $200 cheque to convince you he knows what he's doing? Or do you vote for values, thoughtfulness, respectful compassion and conscience, all of which will be proven as a person grows into the job, though not before, because nobody knows what they're doing with the problematic and conflicted collection of issues that arise in running a government.

Even with good will and experience, nobody is going to get things done right because what's right for you is wrong for me. Never mind the beer. I want cheaper chocolate. Yet politicians pretend to know what they are doing even before they understand the impossible complexity of the task. Don't trust certainty.

So Dennis, why are you so certain that certainty can't be trusted?

Ah! You caught me. Good for you. It's true that the politicians are giving certainty a bad name while scrambling for votes. For sure, being certain is why the braggarts are in charge. On the other side of this issue, uncertainty could leave a person weak, indecisive, unable to commit to action, pusillanimous. (The word of the day.) 

We won't vote for pusillanimous. 

Somewhere between certainty and uncertainty, there must be a happy compromise, maybe humble confidence. As it happens, I am not the first person to put those words together. Check out the link in the footnotes. 

You won't hear much about humble confidence in the election campaign. If it's there, it's silent while trash talk and insults vie for attention. You can't trust that stuff. 

Let's think more deeply about trust. Trust in what: science, statistics, ideas, beliefs, creed, justice, luck, fate, fantasy, fairness, loyalty, retribution, conscience, compassion, the experts, God, whatever?

From the pulpit we hear about faith, which is something like trust in God or values and principles. However, according to Mark Twain, "faith is believing [trusting] what you know ain't so"; in other words, faith is unreasonable trust in intuition, myth, fantasy, or a collective lie. He was poking fun at the faithful, trying to start an argument by scoring the first point.

For good reason. Faith as certainty leans into ugly excess, humanity as planetary cancer, growth at all cost, dominance, privilege, exclusion, inquisition, sectarian war, religious imperialism, partisan politics, extinguishing the unbelievers (heretics, savages, drug addicts, nonbinary), all because we know better and our God is bigger. 

Let's not vote for that.

On the other hand,
we can trust humble confidence.
If confidence fosters arrogance
while humility leads to pusillanimity,
then when combined, each improves the other.
Confidence with humility
transforms arrogant certainty
into assurance that there is
something more we can learn.
Humility with confidence
pushes past pusillanimity
stirring us to ask questions,
risk answers,
try harder, evaluate,
think deeper,
understand better,
because we can.

I vote for humble confidence. 

******************

How to Be Humble and Confident (According to 9 Experts): Human Window

Arctic Climate Collapse: Just Have a Think,

Feb 23, 2025

Ford More Years? The Narwhal, Jan 2025

Climate Change Colloquy Archive: past zoom sessions from the Greater Pacific Northwest USA Mission Center of Community of Christ

Understanding Misunderstanding

I guess you have noticed me obsessing about ignorance. I've been telling you that to be wise you should recognize the incompleteness and fallibility of available information and understand the nature and limits of your understanding. 

Unfortunately, the assertion I don't know does not inspire confidence, so we tend to believe and give power to those who claim certainty when they are precisely the people we should not trust. Look around; there are obvious examples. One hopes that this is a low point in history, and someday the grandchildren will view the folly of this age as an aberration. May they be more thoughtful and trustworthy than we have been.

Here are some thoughts about understanding.

1. Consider the qualifications, evidence, and motives of the source.

2. Test ideas from multiple perspectives, even after you think you understand.

3. It's easy to fool yourself. Don't. 

4a. You are human. Therefore you are going to look stupid from time to time. No worries. Keep trying. 

4b. Other people are human. If they act stupid and admit it, encourage them to keep trying.

5. You can increase your intelligence with good thinking habits.

6. Thinking is hard. Do the work.

7. Test ideas and opinions with first-hand experience when you can. When you can't try things out, consult thorough, reliable sources .

8. Use physical intuition, maps and models, analogy and narrative to make ideas memorable. But don't don't fall in love with the metaphor.

9. Question, question, question.

10. Go slow. Ponder. Spend time.

11. Look closer. Then closer. Then closer. Then step back to get the big picture. Everything connects.

12. The truth is multifaceted and nuanced. Yes-no is too simple. Simple things are not so simple.

13. Biases make misinformation seductive, so bad actors exploit them. Find out about cognitive biases. Question opinions, your own included.

14. Misinformation is profitable and dangerous.

15. Understanding is recursive: imagine, plan, act, evaluate, and repeat until it's over. It's not over until it's over.

16. If you write about what you know, you will discover that you don't know. Good to know.

17. If you think you understand, that's normal; but chances are good that you don't understand.

18. If you think you understand misunderstanding, you have missed the point. See below.

*****************

How to Understand things: Big Think, Feb 2025,

Nabeel S. Quereshi

The Certainty Illusion: RealTalk video, Jan 2025, Timothy Caulfield

Stupidity is an Existential Threat: Alternet. Feb 2023, Bobby Azarian

Debunking the Dunning-Kruger Effect: The Conversation, Eric C. Gaze

It's A Miracle

What's a miracle? No surprise:
the word has several meanings,
as do most words. 

1. Divine intervention in human affairs. 

2. An unexpected or unusual event. 

3. Something inspiring wonder.

4. Whatever I mean when I use the word.

5. Whatever you mean when you use the word.

Today there was a question about miracles answered on the Progressing Spirit website. It got me thinking. I hesitate to explore my thoughts here because whatever we mean when we use the word (#4 & 5) may look like an invitation to an argument. We get invested in ideas that we trust (beliefs) and the collective understanding of our community (culture: creed, ideology, groupthink, zeitgeist). But as we are more thoughtful, however much we would like things to be simple and settled, we find they are more complex than we can imagine, and they look different as circumstances change, and we need to move on. 

Early on, contrary yes-butting person that I am, I became aware that the human mind, though wonderfully capable, is also a sloppy mess of approximations and contradictions, even when we think we have things figured out. 

Figuring things out involves abstraction, paying attention to what is important and disregarding the rest. 

Figuring things out involves rationalization, making information fit with what we know, either by fiddling with the information or by revising what we know,

pointing imagination toward

an understanding

that    fits

better

!
*

Figuring things out dresses up information in metaphors, maps and models, emotions and values. 

As the mind does all this, information becomes knowledge, which then gets stored in memory to be recalled imperfectly when needed so we can make sense of new information. 

Furthermore, passing knowledge to others requires language, using words with fuzzy, fluid meanings. As recipients of second-hand knowledge, we decode language and in the process endow it with our own meanings. 

Knowledge is information (facts) plus affect (what the mind does with the facts). Knowledge remembered and retold is less about information and more about affect. Knowledge frequently retold may hide information under layers of accumulated affect, becoming story, legend, myth.

Here is a story. Jesus resuscitates the decomposing corpse of his dead friend Lazarus ( John 11). Whatever that story meant when it was originally told, it can't mean the same thing to me, with my head full of biochemistry, microbiology, thermodynamics, and cosmology. Resuscitation just doesn't fit. But I can find meaning that does fit because I have experienced loss and grief. For me, the miracle is not a violation of natural law (a prequel to the zombie apocalypse), but rather an adjustment to how I hold death in mind. A loved one is lost and love remains.

miracle

points

here
God changes what happens

by changing  the mind

to make beautiful

loving things
happen

!
*

As for the blissful experience of wonder

when we  encounter  the unusual,

philosophers  have  parsed

that paradox, disclosing

the awesome truth
in  plain  sight.

Either

or

Shall we  join in the  miracle,
and  do  what  we can
to make  beautiful
loving things
happen
!
*

Reimagining Trade for People and the Planet: David Suzuki and Sagaa Khan, Feb 13, 2025

Power to the People: How energy is shaping the Ontario election: the Narwhal, Feb 13, 2025

The Butterflyway Project: David Suzuki Foundation, February 2025

Consequences

Yesterday I scratched an itch on my chest. While I was doing that, there was suddenly a sharp pain in my right elbow. I thought it must be a coincidence so I scratched again. It hurt again. Two lessons there. I have no idea how the nervous system is connected to make that trick work (I'm ignorant). And there are always unintended consequences.

Here is the message behind the story: a president who thinks he knows it all (but doesn't) is likely to be responsible for a storm of unintended consequences. What might be coming in this reign of arrogant ignorance? Here is a fanciful prediction.

1. Making America Great Again will end with The United States of America disintegrating into separate nations with mutually exclusive agendas. 

2. Florida, invaded by many Canadians from October to March, will be annexed by Canada as the eleventh province. Because Canada is generally welcoming of refugees, a million Palestinians from Gaza will arrive in Florida and be employed producing orange juice for Snowbirds and policing the shortest border in the world to keep out unrepentant GOPers who have left because they didn't like foreigners working at Disneyland.

3. Because of the huge influx of refugees from anti-abortion laws, California will secede and be renamed Femlandia. Visitors will have to submit to a blood test, and if their T level is too high, will be allowed only if they undergo estrogen therapy. The military will be all women, trained and skilled in saying NO to naughty boys and sending them to bed without supper. There is a name for this aversion to masculinity. Femlandia is a nation founded on misandry. Who can blame them?

4. Texas will leave the USA and be renamed Ex-US. Fracking and drilling will be outlawed. Desert areas will have new villages built in the shade of extensive solar arrays since the unmitigated heat of direct sun will be intolerable because of the accumulated GHG emissions of wealthy nations like the old USofA. Ex-US will be well on the way to zero emissions. The offshore ocean will be renamed The Gulf of Ex-US and used for TDD (Tide Driven Desalination) and OSW (off-shore wind farms). Ex-US will thrive on the profits from clean energy and fresh water.

5. New York will declare independence and be renamed New Woke. Refugees displaced by the DOGE will gather there to participate in a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion. They will prosper with policies of global free trade, progressive taxation, publicly funded education through to university, universal medical care, subsidized housing and guaranteed minimum income. There will be a long waiting list of those wanting in, including many of the 1% who are willing to pay to join a society free of aggressive self-absorption, guns, threats, and mayhem. The other states will envy the success of New Woke and will queue up to join, happily conforming to the New Woke way: pay attention, think things through and proceed with caution.  That's as opposed to the Don-Elon principle: if it's working, it's obviously a leftist conspiracy and must be shut down as quickly as possible. 

The new red hat logo will be STUD, See Trump Undo Democracy.

The blue hat logo will be WWW, Woke Works - Welcome.

******************

This is so much fun; but I'm going to quit here. Dream up your own version of Don-Elon consequences, and tell us what you think. Scratch that itch and see where it hurts.

*******************

US Energy Catastrophe: Just Have a Think,
Jan 9, 2025

To Survive Being Smart

I'm still reading Silent Spring. I'm on chapter 13 with 4 chapters yet to go. We didn't have enough to worry about racing along on the 'highway to climate hell'. It's the same road on which we are ignoring signs warning of chemical hazards sixty years after Rachel Carson's book. The under-regulated production and use of chemicals continues. WHO reports that there are 40,000 to 60,000 manufactured chemicals in commercial use. They are found in herbicides, pesticides, foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cleaning agents, clothing, fire retardants, packaging, air, water, soil, plants, animals, babies, grownups, and everything else. Please tell me that chocolate isn't on the list.

Commercial chemicals are implicated in many health issues: decreased fertility, gender dysphoria, genetic disease, developmental abnormalities, diabetes, immune disorders, allergies, cancer, and the cranky mood of demented geezers like me. It's scary. Some farmers won't eat the food they sell. It's going to take more than an executive order from Emperor Sanctimonius Caesar to fix this.

By the way, if I didn't name your favourite disease as one that might be involved with chemical exposure, go ahead and add it to the list. More research required. 

As for me, when I was a kid, I suffered from patches of inflammation and scaly skin; that is, eczema. I suspect that the cause was the antibacterial soap Mum used on us because of her bacteriaphobia. Those little beasties had to die. She didn't know that a population of many different skin bacteria keeps the pathogenic ones in check through competition. If you kill off everything, you set up your skin as an ideal home to receive whichever germ arrives first after the bath. The new orthodoxy on washing is "less is better". Who would have thought? I skipped my shower yesterday. Today I showered, so we can hug. While we're at it, my back is itchy. There, ahhh, now a bit to the right.

I feel a little guilty. Dad worked for a chemical company, so our family lived off profits from the products they sold. The same company helped me through university with a summer job. Back then, you could have called me Denny Dimwit for all I knew about careless use of problematic substances. Now, after all these years without a clue, I am finally reading Silent Spring. Just call me ;D. That's a sideways emoji of me winking and grinning, like thank goodness I'm ;Done. I mean, it's your problem now. You should learn some chemistry. I hope you do better at this than I did.

Let me help with that. Don't forget the second law of thermodynamics. Whenever you do something, you make a mess; and even cleaning up a mess makes a mess. We thought we could fix things and now we are drowning in a mess of unintended consequences. You can do better.

Quoting what Einstein never said but would have if he had lived another few decades:

1. God plays dice.
(The universe is arbitrarily dangerous and beautiful.)

2. People play the odds.
(We do what we can to improve our chances.)

3. Smart people play the violin.
(We want to make things more beautiful.)

4. Wise people practice with earplugs.
(Be ready for unintended consequences.)

Life is 1% what happens to you, 
9% what you do with what you get, and
90% cleaning up your mess.

Almost done the lesson.
Don't fail the final exam.

Let me make it simple.

There's only one question,

and here's the answer:

be wise enough

to survive being smart. 

Genesis 2:9, 2:17

*****************

Yes, but what's the question?
Exactly.
If you are smart, you think you know
the question and the answer.
If you are wise, 
you know that you don't know,
so you keep on asking.
*****************

Some Scary Stuff I Have Read

Cancer Health Effects of Pesticides: National (USA) Center for Biotechnology Information

Environmental Chemicals and Autoimmune Disease: ScienceDirect

Environmental Toxins and Infertility: National Center for Biotechnology Information

Intersex Variation and Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Sage Journals

Association of Pesticides with ADHD and ASD:
National Center for Biotechnology Information

Pesticide Exposure and Risk of Alzheimer's:
National Center for Biotechnology Information

Climate in 2025

2024 Was the Hottest Year.

Where do we stand in the world and in Canada? Here are Greenhouse Gas emissions in tonnes per person for some countries during 2023 (including CO2, CH4 and N2O, and land use change, reported as CO2 equivalent). 2024 data are not yet available.

 Australia     22
   Canada     20.4
    Russia     18.5 
       USA     17.2
  Norway     12.8
       China     9.8
    Sweden     6.7 
           UK     5.7 
      France     5
         India     2.9 
(source Our World in Data*) 

Conclusion, Canadians are not among the good guys. Can we do better? What's the plan?

Liberals, what's the plan?
Conservatives, what's the plan?
NDP, what's the plan?
BQ, what's the plan?
Greens, what's the plan?
Premiers, what's the plan?
Mayors, what's the plan?

Hey Canuck, what's the plan?

********************

Good News or Bad News: Just Have a Think,
Dec 2024

Fossil Fuel Use in Industry: Just Have a Think,
Jan 5, 2025

Berkley Earth Global Temperature Report

Do These Politicians Understand Carbon?:
David Suzuki and Ian Hannington, November 2024

Actions For A Healthy Planet: United Nations 

*GHG Emissions by Country: Our World in Data

Information Chaos

It was five years ago during the pandemic that I quit Facebook. I didn't like the tsunami of nonsense being posted, like "Covid 19 is no worse than a bad cold". WHO describes such memes as an infodemic that put people in hospital and resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths. My response to misinformation was to check the facts and warn my friends with more reliable information. 

I recall that one tender soul was offended and accused me of starting an argument. Science is not an argument. Science, when done right, identifies the source, provides an estimate of uncertainty, and welcomes rational challenges based on evidence, because progress is expected. Opinions, on the other hand, lose track of the source, claim certainty, and answer unbelievers with insults and accusations. Generally, the dialogue on Facebook was unproductive. I didn't change my mind, and they didn't change theirs. It was noise, a waste of time and angst, the reason I am blogging instead.

My next book to read, already purchased and waiting in my Kobo queue, is "The Certainty Illusion: what you don't know and why it matters" by Timothy Caulfield. "It will vaccinate you against misinformation." There was a recent interview with the author on The Agenda: The hidden danger of information chaos. 

I will get to that book soon. Just now, recalling that even good information can be suppressed or misused, I continue reading Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" in which she blew the whistle on applied-science-for-profit at the expense of health-of-the-planet. I suspect we are still at it and should pay attention before there is nothing left to hear and nobody to listen.

**********************

Zombie Facts: CBC News, Jan 11, 2025

Fact Checking Has Become Partisan: CBC News, Jan 11, 2025

Oil and Gas Industry Misinformation: David Suzuki Foundation

Leaving is Hard: Gretta Vosper