Beliefs

The modern sinner, the modern pharisee

The Pharisees Question Jesus
The Pharisees Question Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are a Christian, you may be aware of the gospel reading where Jesus is sharing dinner with various nefarious (and outcast) types. In the words of the Pharisees:

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them”

Luke 15:2

They sat on the sidelines and shunned him because they felt the company he kept was unclean. However, he was only obeying the same law that he lays out quite clearly elsewhere in the new testament: “To love your neighbour as yourself.” While Jesus was open to welcoming all types into his circle – sinners, saints, liberals, conservatives, men, women, jews and gentiles. The Pharisees were busy setting up their own silos to isolate themselves from those they felt were sinners; standing on the sidelines insulting those who were more open than them.

These days, with the Internet and global communication, we are exposed to more ideas, peoples and diverse interests than ever before. This is truly an age where we can get to understand varying viewpoints and try to understand and love our neighbours more than ever. Yet, I feel we have degraded back into the days where we find similar minded people, and isolate ourselves from those “sinners” we disagree with. Those who don’t follow our limited set of rules that we have arbitrarily set for ourselves. We’ve become pharisees.

My theory is that because we are able to connect with so many more people, we are also able to connect with more people who share precisely our view of the world. Thus, it is easier for us to find only those we agree with and not have to put in the effort to try and understand those we don’t understand (or even disagree with.) It’s simply easier. You just parrot the same lines that allow you to dislike people among your small social group and then you all feel a bit better about yourselves. You simply block them on Twitter when they state something you disagree with, argue with them during Thanksgiving, dismiss any reasons behind their beliefs or banish them entirely.

Sadly, I must admit that I’ve fallen into this trap from time to time. Yet, what does that gain me? What does that gain us? It’s easy to see that every group has their own “sins” and their own “sinners.”

Some eco-minded folks demean those who shop at Walmart and not Whole Foods as if they were adulterers. Simply not comprehending that for some families that is the only way they can get by week-to-week.

Some fiscal conservatives insult those who require food stamps and government assistance as if they were lepers, claiming some undefined sin has placed them into this category of life.

Some educated liberals insult those who view the world differently than them and have some ideas that actually are quite well founded when you dig down to find why they believe them as if they were blind beggars in the street.

What does this accomplish for us as a society, other than make it harder for us to work towards common goals and still feel good about ourselves because it’s not our fault?

Further segregation, less cooperation, and eventually more crises without any capacity to solve them. If you dismiss anyone who you disagree with as a sinner, you inherently have less knowledge, less manpower and less capacity to work towards a common goal.

To use the Christian reference, Jesus not only could work with sinners, but sat down at the same table and ate with them congenially. How many could sit down at a table with those we disagree with and share a congenial meal? I know I’ve seen enough vicious arguments over family dinners to know it feels like very little these days.

Perhaps though, we should try to change that.

While I cannot speak for other religions, although I believe many have similar constructs. If you are Christian, we have all been invited to the table of plenty; Invited to sit down with sinners and saints, understanding that even though you are also a sinner, you are forgiven; This is precisely how amazing works are accomplished and communities like the 1 billion strong (and growing) Catholic church came to be; not by excluding sinners, but welcoming all with open arms.

For myself, after much frustration from doing the opposite, I have found that the best thing is to try to extend that forgiveness to those you disagree with and even those who have harmed you, listen patiently to what they have to say, and don’t dismiss them as yet another sinner, even if you believe they are wrong.

Even those you disagree with can have many valuable things to say.

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Late night ponderings (madness?)

Life is a fascinating thing. It could all very well be stochastic and random, but our minds work so hard to make meaning out of it and to tease out what could only be called a story that there are times when you reflect on the good and the bad and you simply find it impossible to believe there isn’t some purpose or meaning to it.

Some of the best parts and moments of my life happened very shortly after I received deep and painful disappointment at the hands of others, or at my own failure to execute what I believes in. Even now, I regularly am in fear that while I work my best on the projects I truly believe will change the world for the better that I will fail. Sometimes the trolls and the nay-sayers and the pessimists do get the best of me and I worry that the effort is for naught.

However, even if I do fail, or stop, or simply change course, I usually find out that the end product is superior than anything I originally dreamed it would be. Almost as if my dreams aren’t capable enough of putting the pieces together as well as they could eventually turn out. Sure, i’m not a billionaire with my own private plane to Mars like I drew pictures of when I was a child, but I’ve had some adventures I’d never have believed I’d have.

Three things are going on in my life that inspire me everyday and keep me moving.

First and foremost… I’m going to be a daddy… Not much more I can say to how awesome that is. Either  you understand it, and I don’t need to say anything, or you don’t understand it and there’s nothing I could say to explain it to you.

For this, I study my French and German. I’m working on my ability to draw. I’m studying the “art of manliness” and practising my ability to read bedtime stories. I can’t even wait to get her out to the baseball field and play a game of catch (or him… we really don’t know yet.) I don’t know if I’ll be a good father, but I know that the idea of it inspires me to work even harder every day.

I am a co-founder of an amazing company (Panda Robotics) with an amazing product that impresses me every day as we improve it and add more and more capacity with the capital we do have. Liav, Felix, and everyone else always amazes me at how they can work with me to squeeze out of every moment, every dime, every item that little bit more to create a product that just… Well, you have to talk to people who’ve seen it in person. It’s just that impressive.

Yes, I dream bigger, and I pray at times that God (or the Universe, or *insert your diety here*) will come through and let Felix, Liav and I take this to the level it really could be brought to, and from that dream and wish I work hard every day to try and make it come true. You see, I really believe that 3d printing is going to change everything, it’s only a matter of building it and getting the next generation learning it young. Just like all of us grew up with Apple IIs and created this revolution. The moment Pandabots (or something similar) are in schools and homes with children learning how to create 3d objects young, that will be the moment that the 15 year clock to the real next industrial revolution will start.

However, I must say that seeing Liav come up with innovative ways to make 3d printing accessible, or seeing Felix’s enthusiasm shine through when he’s working on the business with me. There’s not much more you can ask as a co-founder.

Finally, there’s Panda Rose, my company I started a few years back with some of the most creative programmers I know, and our software immix. Every day I learn about new features that Stefen has implemented, or adjustments to the basic framework that make it so much easier to wire everything together in this beautiful holistic framework. Some of the new stuff coming down the pipeline changes everything. It truly turns immix into a framework for the internet of things.

I’m always proud to see the work that JF does for our clients ensuring that their every need is met, even if they aren’t 100% sure of their needs in the first place. It excites me to know that Steve is making sure that the product won’t just be accessible, but will be fully internationalized so people of every language will be able to use it effectively.

There’s also Becky, who keeps me sane and happy at the office, even while she reminds me that I need to put more pressure on my clients to ensure the A/R doesn’t keep on growing without converting into CoH. She’s the reason I’ve been able to concentrate on what I do best, and hopefully building a few of these dreams into reality.

Yes, it’s stressful, and yes, there are days that I just don’t know what to do, and yes, even sometimes I wish some of my clients understood how much I really do care about what I do for them. Yet, I know that I do my utmost best, my team is amazing, and that Panda Rose is the epitome of the phrase, “We don’t know what impossible even means.” We all dream big, so our clients can dream even bigger. It’s wildly fun.

In the end though, it all seems to be building to something, and this is going to be an exciting ride.

Have a great night everyone, and I hope this week will be the start of something even more amazing.

KJR

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Texas Sharpshooter fallacy made large

Academia has a fascinating issue I’ve been pondering about recently. In essence, the fact that almost all journals have a clear and obvious bias towards positive results, there is almost a guaranteed texas sharpshooter fallacy that will occur over time when many many papers are written.

From wikipedia:

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy often arises when a person has a large amount of data at their disposal, but only focuses on a small subset of that data. Random chance may give all the elements in that subset some kind of common property (or pair of common properties, when arguing for correlation). If the person fails to account for the likelihood of finding some subset in the large data with some common property strictly by chance alone, that person is likely committing a Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Now, I’m not entirely sure if this is the best fallacy to use, but basically it’s based around the idea that given a million monkeys and an infinite amount of time, someone will eventually write Shakespeare. Now, if we ignore all of the negative results, and all of the gibberish and only publish once someone writes Shakespeare, it would seem, at times, as if a monkey left to a certain type of typewriter is more inclined to write Shakespeare.

Don’t get me wrong though, science is explicitly built around the idea that these points would be made public and then eventually proven false by repeated experiments by other individuals. However, with the modern media hyping everything the moment it is published and an overconfidence on anything that is “science” or “published” we have a big problem on our hands.

Yes, evolution is a fact, that’s been around long enough and there is no credible theory that challenges it that I’m willing to say that. In the same sense that I am wiling to say that Maxwell’s Laws are facts and the like.

However, 90% of the new science you keep hearing about… Is probably wrong. Especially psychology and medical science has this flaw (with the sheer number of papers and the need to publish or perish, how could it not.) Yet, we keep going back to that trough. It was published in a peer-reviewed journal, so it must be true, right? The media hypes that red wine is good for you, bad for you, indifferent…

Here’s my theory on this whole matter, not peer-reviewed or published, but at least a functional heuristic. Give it 20 years, or 40 years. Let people challenge the results and see if they actually apply. I wish we could teach people how science (and to be honest any knowledge development) really works. You have an idea, it seems to work for you. You try to figure out why and reproduce it so you can continue to enjoy the benefits. You develop something that seems to work and is reproducable, then you tell people and they try it out.

And 9 times out of 10 they discover that you weren’t quite right.

However, if the idea continues to generate positive results for you, you ignore them and keep using it. If they are right and it starts to fail, you go back and you try again.

To believe that new science is right simply because it’s published is to be as dogmatic as to believe the a religious book is correct simply because someone told you so. Journals (even good journals) are not always right.

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