Thread: order or chaos ???

as simple as it was to be understood by practice as hard as it is to be accepted by my rational mind ! what is it ?
It is
The unholy fact that we live in a chaotic system where luck seems to be the biggest player and by luck i mean the coalition of multiple events that lead to someone taking advantage from the consequences



It all stared a few days ago
there i was sitting with some friends whose luck was a lot better than mine and so they now belong to the so called millionaires class and a philosophical scientific argument popped up and took a few hours of our time .
in brief i was surprised to see how much persons who had the resources to travel the world and experience everything were poor on knowledge , on true knowledge to the extent that i started wondering if these men were able to strike gold with such low cognitive minds and rational thinking why am i still poor and lost in my life is it because i have an even less rational thinking , am i delusional of my state of conscience or could it be the other way around.

in fact i always though that in order to achieve more knowledge and lush my thirst for knowledge i should move up in my social class and so far i have failed intensively . i ve always though that those who lead countries , belong to secret societies know more than i do .
i ve always had hope than i the mixture of the chaotic everyday s life there is order there is someone watching and planning and that one day if i put enough effort i could be on my way there . Now in this stage in my life where failure seems to take the most of me i come to realize that chaos is all there is . That s been an idea that has been bothering my mind for sometime lately so i decided to know if someone can help me and explain to me how can i have hope again if all i see is luck and chaos what should i do to have myself motivated towards what i really love in life and that is knowledge????

There are times I think that it's a matter of scruples.

A person that cares for knowledge tends to also have scruples. I don't know why. Just an anecdotal piece.

I've noticed that people that lack scruples, like a Kirby salesman, don't give a damn about gathering knowledge. They only care about gathering wealth.


Now, money is a fine thing. Don't get me wrong.
It can get you other stuff and it can even buy comfort.

But I think knowledge is far more valuable. Maybe it won't get me a Dodge Viper. But I can't wrap the knowledge around a tree and I can give it away to every single person I meet. Can't do that with the Viper.

Now in this stage in my life where failure seems to take the most of me i come to realize that chaos is all there is .

That s been an idea that has been bothering my mind for sometime lately so i decided to know if someone can help me and explain to me how can i have hope again if all i see is luck and chaos what should i do to have myself motivated towards what i really love in life and that is knowledge????

All you see is luck and chaos then you must be blind.

Just look at any company that is doing well, it did so by hard work by many people who took many years of their time and energy to make their "luck" come to happen

There are many jobs the same thing, those people who work for someone took classes, went to college perhaps and asked many questions about their job as to gain knowledge to be better at what they did.

Most of the lucky are the ones who, behind the scenes, work the hardest to achieve their goals.

im sorry cosmic traveler but what i m referring to is not money here i mean by knowledge the ultimate truth and experience in life and what i m trying to say is that people do not attain knowledge by succeeding nor succeed due to their knowledge so there is chaos in a society where its president can be less knowledgeable than a hobo

that people do not attain knowledge by succeeding nor succeed due to their knowledge

But that's not true, it's their knowledge that allows them to succeed in ANYTHING they do, be it work, play or arts.

I has to choose??

They say that hard luck work overcomes hard luck. But I basically agree that knowledge has got nothing to do with success and money. Its just the thing that those who want to be successful moneywise know how to go about it.

but it seems like the world we live in today all u need is to be successful moneywise everything else is not important anymore because when you have money you are becoming able to by knowlege happiness even life in the near future\
What i tend to ask is why should us people with knowlege give this away for granted or for some money we are not being clever this way afterall in the near future we will have no power and all we will become is slaves and servants for idiots who have money and new generations of people with knowlege will not be able to compete in a society where they are not needed anymore

Originally Posted by zatara

but it seems like the world we live in today all u need is to be successful moneywise

Really?
Who defined success as "having lots of money"?

everything else is not important anymore

Yeah right.

because when you have money you are becoming able to by knowlege

Um...

idiots who have money

What i tend to ask is why should us people with knowlege give this away for granted or for some money we are not being clever this way afterall in the near future we will have no power and all we will become is slaves and servants

Then what knowledge you (claim you) have isn't that good is it? Or you're not putting it to use.


I dunno, this appears to me to be the classic whine of "I think I'm smart (although unprepared to actually do anything with/ about it) but I'm not rich and I want to be: therefore it's someone else's fault".

Originally Posted by zatara

The unholy fact that we live in a chaotic system where luck seems to be the biggest player and by luck i mean the coalition of multiple events that lead to someone taking advantage from the consequences

The system is certainly chaotic at times in the formal mathematical sense, and at many other times in a colloquial sense. Even so, I cannot agree that luck seems to be the biggest player.

Chaos still throws up categories of problem. Attention to history can identify these categories. Hard work and foresight can produce strategies for dealing wiht such problems. One may not know where or when the probalem will arise (because of chaos), but one can be prepared for it when it does. Luck is only involved if one does not take the trouble to do the preparation.

Originally Posted by zatara

It all stared a few days ago
there i was sitting with some friends whose luck was a lot better than mine and so they now belong to the so called millionaires class and a philosophical scientific argument popped up and took a few hours of our time .

I have quoted this before, because I think it is an excellent illustration of a general principle. Gary Player, the South African golfer, had hit his ball in a bunker adjacent to the green. It was a difficult lie. He pitched it out of the bunker, onto the green, where it ran neatly into the hole. A spectator remarked "Lucky shot!" Player replied, "Yes, it was. And you know, the more I practice the luckier I get."

Originally Posted by zatara

in brief i was surprised to see how much persons who had the resources to travel the world and experience everything were poor on knowledge , on true knowledge .......

How do you define true knowledge? Scientific knowledge; geographic knowledge; historical knowledge; knowledge of self; knowledge of how to interact within society? Different people would have different definitions of 'true'. What is yours?

Originally Posted by zatara

in fact i always though that in order to achieve more knowledge and lush my thirst for knowledge i should move up in my social class and so far i have failed intensively .

Why do you want to 'move up in your social class'? You seem to want social status, money and knowledge. It's quite a trick to acquire all three. It requires hard work, considerable intellect and superb social skills. I smidegeon of luck won't change the outcome, though it might speed things up.

Originally Posted by zatara

i ve always had hope than i the mixture of the chaotic everyday s life there is order there is someone watching and planning and that one day if i put enough effort i could be on my way there . Now in this stage in my life where failure seems to take the most of me i come to realize that chaos is all there is . That s been an idea that has been bothering my mind for sometime lately so i decided to know if someone can help me and explain to me how can i have hope again if all i see is luck and chaos what should i do to have myself motivated towards what i really love in life and that is knowledge????

What to do? You say you have failed. Can you clarify? In what way have you failed? Specifically, in what way have you failed to acquire knowledge?

Originally Posted by John Galt

I have quoted this before, because I think it is an excellent illustration of a general principle. Gary Player, the South African golfer, had hit his ball in a bunker adjacent to the green. It was a difficult lie. He pitched it out of the bunker, onto the green, where it ran neatly into the hole. A spectator remarked "Lucky shot!" Player replied, "Yes, it was. And you know, the more I practice the luckier I get."

There has been a lot of research that shows luck is not really a matter of random chance.

It is a combination of people creating their own "lucky" (like Player's practice or by networking, looking for opportunities, etc) and their perception of events.

I heard a report on series of experiments where people were told to imagine they were involved in various scenarios and asked to say if they were lucky or unlucky. For example, "you are in a bank when it gets robbed": some people say that it is typical of their bad luck to be caught in such a thing, others think it is really exciting. Even when it was taken to the extreme of the person being told they get shot in the leg some will say, "wow, that was lucky; I could have been killed".

So it is a bit like the placebo effect; start thinking you are lucky and you will be.

chance favors the prepared mind

.

Originally Posted by sculptor

chance favors the prepared mind

Louis Pasteur, apparently: Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.

"A spectator remarked "Lucky shot!" Player replied, "Yes, it was. And you know, the more I practice the luckier I get.""

LOL good quote!

"I has to choose"

This picture of the cat is funny, and it sounds funny, but Im missing the references to understand the joke.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

This picture of the cat is funny, and it sounds funny, but Im missing the references to understand the joke.

It was framed as a question: (as far as I'm concerned) it's a subtle way of asking "who says it has to be exclusively one or the other?"

i think the main problem in this thread is that i and the rest of you come from a very different background most of you guys live in Europe or the us and life for you is different yet i will tell you where i come from and the other perspective or how others live on this planet . i was born the eldest son to a christian family from lebanon during the war in 88 both my parents are hard working religious people and they are uneducated but very skilled workers who couldnt afford to leave the country during the war because they were married too young at 21
now by chance i happened to have very good genes and had an excellent childhood were i proved to be a extremely intelligent student and was going on the right road until i was 15 years old at this age and it people like me begin caring about other things like sex and work and money .... however i managed to make to university but didnt have the excellent grades i used to and so i couldnt get a scholarship to a very important university like aub
being from a poor uneducated background my parents put me in a mediocre university where i worked my ass working in nightclubs and studying for 5 years because i wanted to make money and see the world not only study during that time
when i finished university i had dine some very interesting experience in my life but was doomed to the following facts :
- in my country you dont get a good job if you dont come from a very important university
-in my country the everage house costs 200 000 dollars and me who works for a year now in a bank has a salary of 700 dollars
-in my country people who dont have rich parents can t progress in any company because its all about social classes and how you pose yourself
-in my country a girl will sleep with a rich cazimodo and would not date a poor brad pitt
-in my country we are forbidden to travel abroad ( to your countries ) without having someone with influence there or having 20000 dollars in the bank in some countries that we are allowed to travel to

i wont continue nagging i just want you people to start seeing the big pic look at people in india and put youselves in their shoes they are intelligent hard working and still they live and die in the worst possible manners it is nearly the same for me maybe even worse because of the frequency of rich show off people in my country .
that been said i d like to take the issue to were it should be what i am asking in this thread is why should we allow lucky people who were born rich to use intellegence hard work and knowlege of others like us for so cheap and then throw us away why are the richest allowed to have more freedom than the poorest why are we living in a world that is filled with slavery and abuse and is presented by the media as the perfect world were humans are free do anything when this is only a privilege for the lucky few

zatara:
You're in Beirut Lebanon?

You said this all started when you talked with old friends who have now joined the so-called millionaires' class. Were these friends once like you? Sounds like they were. Have any opportunities ever come your way that in hindsight would have changed your life if you had chosen wisely? Have you ever been given advice that once again, in hindsight, would have changed your luck? Are there things you wished you'd have done differently? If yes to any of these questions, have you given any thought to the problem being you personally?

yes i am in beirut lebanon and yes like any 3 rd world country we have billionaires and they are all products of the civil war afterall we are a country whos head of deputies is a militia leader during the war and whos most politicians are either mafia or feudal families and no i am not the problem because i do not seek a way to change my social class or life but a sense of reason that seems to be absent for me when i think about how truly unjust the world around me is and terribly wrong those who live outside tend to perceive it .
i posted here for answers instead i found nothing but accusations in your replies and that makes me even more confused about the issue

Ah well, at least you have some of the world's best wines!

order or chaos ???

The unholy fact that we live in a chaotic system

i come to realize that chaos is all there is

Originally Posted by zatara

i posted here for answers instead i found nothing but accusations in your replies and that makes me even more confused about the issue

Obviously you want us to think chaos is the answer, you say so yourself. So you're not asking, you're telling us.

On the other hand I'm suggesting that the answer you seek may have to do with you personally. I don't expect you to agree. Why? Perhaps you can't envision there being something in your psyche that prevents it. Have you looked at Freud's theories, the psychic apparatus, the id, the super ego, the ego? Interesting stuff, maybe even enlightening.

I am reading a book right now that you might like called: "The Slight Edge" by Olson.

The book says that success does not come from luck or big breaks. Olson says that all success comes from a willingness to take small steps toward a goal / improvement on a daily basis.

One example he gives is: "If you read just 10 pages a day of a good non-fiction character / knowledge building book, then in a year you would have read 3650 pages or 10-12 books." That is life changing. Olson estimates that only about 5% of people are willing to do this sort of thing.

He lists a multitude of other books that discuss success in other areas such as health and finance as well. I have not read the book on finance he mentions called: "The Millionaire Next Door"; however, Olson says that many of these wealthy people had ordinary jobs combined with a strong self discipline in savings and investing.

He argues that success comes from these little steps, not from big breaks. The small steps create the big breaks.

Thus, according to Olson, success is not from an unpredictable event in a chaotic system.

Rather success comes from a philosophy of continuous self-improvement and willingness to doggedly move toward a goal.

Well said.

i think that to some extent you are still not able of understanding the fact that certain life circumstances are uncontrollable by men if Freud said something it doesnt mean it is the complete truth have you ever though about how laws of physics might effect our life and the fact that these are somethings we cannot control and by that i mean how time can be decisive in achieving a goal or not i mean being rich at 40 or 50 isnt the same as being so at 20 or since birth right .
i think our discussion is leading us to the ultimate question of whether man has the power to decide his destiny or not and i think you say yes while i tend to say no .
in fact to me the world is filled with people more intelligent than einstein more gifted than messi even more creative than steve jobs and can understand humans better than freud or nichtze only these people who are and have always been go through their life short or long as it is whitout being able to shine sometimes because they dont seek the opportunity but many times because they never reach each or would make compromises because life was not fair to them through things they could not control

Originally Posted by zatara

i think that to some extent you are still not able of understanding the fact that certain life circumstances are uncontrollable by men

I think it is evident from the OP that you are probably a control person. That's where I was heading but you have broken the ice. I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just an observation. I say it only because you're emphatic about how luck, the one thing you can't control, has catapulted your friends into the upper class. To me, you appear totally frustrated or dare I say envious. As for Freud, I did say theory. Regardless there are elements within your psyche driving you but your common sense is telling you that without luck you can't achieve success as you determine it. The randomness of luck being the chaos in your world.

There is an element of luck, but in many cases, it is just plain hard work that gets you to "the next level" so to speak, in my humble opinion.

Originally Posted by zatara

in fact to me the world is filled with people more intelligent than einstein more gifted than messi even more creative than steve jobs and can understand humans better than freud or nichtze only these people who are and have always been go through their life short or long as it is whitout being able to shine sometimes because they dont seek the opportunity but many times because they never reach each or would make compromises because life was not fair to them through things they could not control

I think it is difficult for us to appreciate the challenges you have faced in your life, or the environment you find yourself in. The majority of us, I believe, were not raised in a country recovering from civil war.

I suppose I've had it comparatively easy, by comparison. It's true I can still recall having a ration card in the aftermath of World War II and for the first eleven years of my life I lived in a small flat with an outside toilet and, once a week, would have a bath in a galvanised tub placed in front of a coal fire. But I was lucky in several other respects: my father, although he rarely earned more than what we would now call minimum wage, was hardworking and diligent; at school I was always picked last in choosing sides for football, or any other sport, so I was able to learn how to handle disappointment; I was routinely bullied, so I was able to learn something about judging character, an awareness of group dynamics, and empathy for others. Also, I was lucky enough to be lazy - this taught me to find the most efficient way of learning, of carrying out work, and to be proactive.

I was also lucky at university, in that I did not get a first class honours. That meant I did not get a research opportunity and I wound up in the oil industry, where, through a series of other similar lucky events I arrived in my present position, which I enjoy, and which is rewarding, both professionaly and financially. So, you may be right. Perhaps luck has a lot to do with it.

I want everyone to notice one problem that might lead to chaos. We all know that language is always adapting and changing. People who are old may not understand the lingo of the young generation. These adaptations are also reflected in the books written by authors. It is also true that technical words also change over a period of time. This is where the problems lie. Scientific literature also adapts to language. Now consider a scenario in which a person wants to know technical details about a certain topic and the only books available to him are 50 years old going into reprint only once or twice. He may not be able to understand some part of the book. Now it is interestingto know the difference between interpretation and meaning. I think the world is going to go through dark ages despite scientific progress because of language problem

Er yeah.
Just like all the problems we have today with, for example, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or maybe ancient Egyptian mythology.
People translate things so they can be read by contemporary readers!
And at least science defines its terms.

Originally Posted by parag29081973

Now consider a scenario in which a person wants to know technical details about a certain topic and the only books available to him are 50 years old going into reprint only once or twice. He may not be able to understand some part of the book.

50 years a problem? I guess you must be really, really young.

There are many scientific papers that are well over 100 years old that are still readable. I admit that reading mathematical proofs from, say, the 17th century before there was standard algebraic notation can be a challenge. On the other hand, there are very readable translations of Euclid's or Al Khwarizmi's work available.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Er yeah.
Just like all the problems we have today with, for example, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or maybe ancient Egyptian mythology.
People translate things so they can be read by contemporary readers!
And at least science defines its terms.

Did you know that many young people have no idea how to write in cursive? They print or type....they don't WRITE!

Originally Posted by babe

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Er yeah.
Just like all the problems we have today with, for example, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or maybe ancient Egyptian mythology.
People translate things so they can be read by contemporary readers!
And at least science defines its terms.

Did you know that many young people have no idea how to write in cursive? They print or type....they don't WRITE!

And there are schools where they have simply stopped teaching it.

Originally Posted by AlexG

Originally Posted by babe

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Er yeah.
Just like all the problems we have today with, for example, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or maybe ancient Egyptian mythology.
People translate things so they can be read by contemporary readers!
And at least science defines its terms.

Did you know that many young people have no idea how to write in cursive? They print or type....they don't WRITE!

And there are schools where they have simply stopped teaching it.

You are correct!

I had a young person ask me what kind of writing is that when I wrote my name and address down! I was shocked!

They don't even know how to type YOU anymore.......written language is becoming a new form of shorthand but on a keyboard not a piece of paper.