27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Having Kids Makes One Cognizant of the Brevity of Life
Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter ...25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Buddhini Samarasinghe: Scientists Should Stick to Science
It is a statistical fact that you are more likely to die while horseback riding (1 serious adverse event every ~350 exposures) than from taking Ecstasy (1 serious adverse event every ~10,000 exposures). Yet, in 2009, the scientist who said this was fired from his position as the chairman of the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Professor David Nutt's remit was to make scientific recommendations to government ministers on the classification of illegal drugs based on the harm they c...30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Fortune of Conception
Moralists and theologians place great weight upon the moment of conception, seeing it as the instant at which the soul comes into existence. If, like me, you are unmoved by such talk, you still must regard a particular instant, nine months before your birth, as the most decisive event in your personal fortunes. It is the moment at which your consciousness suddenly became trillions of times more foreseeable than it was a split second before. To be sure, the embryonic you that came into existen...12 JUN 2014 by mxplx
Everything that is possible demands to exist.
Folksonomies: philosophy
Folksonomies: philosophy
no matter what the odds are at one point in spacetime probability materialize
30 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Gompertz Law of human mortality
What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next year? Try to put a number to it — 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? Whatever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now. This startling fact was first noticed by the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and is now called the “Gompertz Law of human mortality.” Your probability of dying during a given year doubles every 8 years. For me, a 25-year-old American, the probability of dying during the next year is a fairly ...Folksonomies: statistics mortality
Folksonomies: statistics mortality
Your chances of dying double every eight years.
08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Monty Hall Problem
Here’s how Monty’s deal works, in the math problem, anyway. (On the real show it was a bit messier.) He shows you three closed doors, with a car behind one and a goat behind each of the others. If you open the one with the car, you win it. You start by picking a door, but before it’s opened Monty will always open another door to reveal a goat. Then he’ll let you open either remaining door. Suppose you start by picking Door 1, and Monty opens Door 3 to reveal a goat. Now what should y...You should always switch doors because you had a 1 in 3 chance of getting the right one the first time, and a 1 in 2 chance if you switch.
20 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Archaeology is the Study of Trash
Tedious as it may appear to some to dwell on the discovery of odds and ends that have, no doubt, been thrown away by the owner as rubbish ... yet it is by the study of such trivial details that Archaeology is mainly dependent for determining the date of earthworks. ... Next to coins fragments of pottery afford the most reliable of all evidence ... In my judgement, a fragment of pottery, if it throws light on the history of our own country and people, is of more interest to the scientific coll...Folksonomies: archaeology
Folksonomies: archaeology
But it is very important historical trash.
28 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
We Are Lucky Because We are Going to Die
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth ...Folksonomies: atheism
Folksonomies: atheism
So many people never even got to exist.
15 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Difficult Choice of Being the First Heart Donor
For a dying man it is not a difficult decision [to agree to become the world's first heart transplant] ... because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept such odds if there were no lion.Folksonomies: metaphor organ transplant
Folksonomies: metaphor organ transplant
Christiaan Barnard quote uses a metaphor of being stuck between a lion and a river filled with crocodiles.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Putting Statistics in Perspective
Now let's get a handle on what it really means to have a 1-in6,500 or a 1-in-13,000 chance of dying. It's as if you lived on an island in the South Pacific with a population of 650. You make your living by swimming around in the azure waters around your idyllic paradise and spearing fish for dinner. Yum, yum. About once every ten years, a stray shark happens by and eats a swimmer. That's a 1-in-6,500 chance of any one person being eaten by a shark, just the same as the odds of dying in an aut...Folksonomies: statistics fear
Folksonomies: statistics fear
A great way to think about cause of death statistics.