My Digital FootPrint

Exploring why are we so tired using the framework of the unknown:unknown Summary  COVID19 is not a Black Swan event and it was predicted as far back as 2015 if not earlier. This article ponders why we are so mentally exhausted and how we should react next. It argues that we need leadership and structure at this time to ensure that this crisis does not become destructive to ourselves individually or collectively as a society. As leaders we need to hear, listen and accept a wider range of views, as we all search for a new “normal life”. As individuals, we need to take care of ourselves and keep a check on our level of exhaustion, which in this case is processing, learning and thinking exhaustion. It is mental and emotional exhaustion and not a physiological one. There is nothing we can do to process and make sense quicker, it will take time and we have to accept it and find the learnings and value in it. Sensemaking of our response to the fear of systemic risk and wh...

This is Richard Holton (x MIT) discussing the classic philosophical problem of can data predict and free will --- that is, the question of whether we human beings decide things for ourselves, or are forced to go one way or another.  He distinguishes between two different worries. One worry is that the laws of physics, plus facts about the past over which we have no control, determine what we will do, and that means we're not free. Another worry is that because the laws and the past determine what we'll do, someone smart enough could know what we would do ahead of time, so we can't be free. He says the second worry is much worse than the first, but argues that the second doesn't follow from the first. The next problem is that this assume the mind and no body and when we realise that they are one ( the strange order of things) - and chemistry is a bigger controller of outcome than the mind ( the mind is flat ) - does knowing more data help or not?