Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. And Poll Results.

And no, it's not a post about the America presidential race (although I guess any argument about irrational assessments of subjective values that might lie behind this rant would apply there too).

All things are relative, and so we instinctively compare ourselves to others. Various networking sites (Facebook being my own personal experience, but no doubt many other such sites have similar tools) "facilitate" this process by adding a layer of anonymity and statistics to it all. It's an excellent way of producing graphs and charts and all sorts of other fun things that look significant, but ultimately are not.

Thus, my friends have rated me as a reliable, organized chap (which is blatantly untrue) but rather disappointingly haven't rated my hair as all that good (only 40% success rate there - on the plus side my hair is apparently my best feature) Seems only one person has ever been asked how crazy I am (and readers of this blog will surely know the answer: very).

Bizarrely, I'm apparently #10 for both "more loyal" (with a 1:0 win/loss ratio) and better singer (with a 0:3 win/loss ratio). I'm clearly not a better singer than much more than a cat that's been skinned in most of the many ways it's apparently possible to skin one. I'm ranked #12 for "better sense of humor" but #21 for "funnier", how does that work folks? I can be a cynical misery at times I know but I rather thought my sense of humor was one of my few social strengths. I know it's not shone through so much recently though.

My main weaknesses (both with 0:3 ratios) are apparently singing as mentioned above, and being happy (or rather, not being - too many of my facebook friends also read my blog I think). I also score poorly on all those questions I'm frequently forced to skip such as "more attractive", "rather kiss", "a better body" etc (although I do have a single success on "rather sleep with", so I pity the poor sap I was being compared against on that occasion!).

Of course, all this is plagued quite badly by the issues of a small sample size. Most categories have only a small handful of votes, so the numbers aren't especially robust.

You can do the reverse, and group up your friends based on how well they've scored from just your own rankings. Apparently I don't have enough female friends because they all manage to fit into the "most desirable" box. Presumably because I rated their eyes as better than my chunky chemist friend at some point.

Breaking the Habit

Watching "The Bridge" on More4 about people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge probably wasn't a good idea.

I'm capable of thinking some extraordinary things about myself. Suicide is a good example of this. I've been fascinated, if that's the right word, by suicide for most of my life. It's not really an interest in other people's suicides (which I feel is always tragic, and it troubles me that these people feel such pain, so hopeless that they take their lives) it's more an interest in the concept of killing myself... yet it's not really thinking about actually doing the deed in a planning sorta sense (much as I whinge here often enough about how pathetic and hopeless I am, I have much to live for). I'm really going to struggle to actually explain what I mean. Do other people ever think about it? I really have no idea.

It has occurred to me, on and off, that life would be a whole lot easier if I wasn't living it. Yet I have no reason not to, beyond the fact that life is complex, difficult and I really don't understand so much of it. I find it darkly amusing to suggest that the only reason I'm still here is the embarrassing prospect of having to explain myself in the afterlife: "why'd I kill myself? Dunno really... I just couldn't be bothered with living". It's a pretty poor excuse for bailing out. It's not really true of course... but there is an element of apathy there. And maybe that's more depressing than anything else. I could probably make so much more of my life than I currently am, I just don't put the effort in.

I could probably whinge on for a long time about the state of my life and the way I live it.. and most of it wouldn't even be true. Some of it I'd kinda believe, much of it I'd mostly not believe but say it anyway. I'm not sure I understand why. I'm not quite sure why I talk myself down as much as I do either... I talk myself out of taking any real risks, making any real changes, and I talk myself into thinking things are much worse than they are. I don't imagine I even get close to the short of despair "jumpers" must feel... but I don't what they must feel. I don't know, in all honestly, what the inside of anyone else's head looks like at all. I'm inclined to believe I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the way I do, that everyone else is somehow reading from a different set of rules and life makes perfect sense to them. But maybe everyone else feels that too.

Slaves to Grass

My next post was going to be about games, but as with all other posts that are vaguely about me, it very rapidly descended into an angst-ridden whinge about how pathetic I am. I have no reason to believe anyone is especially interested in me telling myself I'm a failure as a person (and I'm pretty well practiced at dissecting myself and coming up with a diagnosis of "complete loser"), so I'll blog about something else instead.

The more eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that a substantial number of links over on the right hand side of this blog are TED talks. (On reflection, I think the number of people who visit this blog often enough to notice changes in the sidebar despite my complete lack of posting is probably about zero).

Top of the sidebar right now is This one

It's an interesting concept - to view ourselves in evolutionary symbiosis, in the same way we view other species. We understand that flowers and fruit evolved the way they did to attract birds, bees and monkeys. We know (despite our instincts to anthropomorphise everything) that getting eaten is the intended purpose of the fruit. However, as Michael says, we don't see ourselves in similar relationships. Your stance on ecological issues largely just casts you as "omnipotent guardian" or "omnipotent exploiter". We believe ourselves to be separate from "nature", and we certainly feel we know best what's good for "nature" (although again, our tenancy to cast all animals with human emotions and desires is somewhat counter productive here).

I don't think the ideas behind the Polyface Farm model he mentions are anything especially new (indeed, before industrialisation and the introduction of an endless list of chemicals to farming, farmers largely had no option but to do this kind of thing, go check out medieval farming) but it's always good to see someone using and promoting a relationship with nature which is a little more sympathetic to the way it works. I hope the idea catches on, but I doubt it will.

Take a look at a food chain diagram in almost any school text book, and I bet you find grass at the "bottom" of the chain. The lowest of the low, eating nothing but sunshine. The argument here is that this is an oversimplified view of the world, that the relationships are much more complex and thus "bottom" depends entirely on your perspective. Grass is a hugely successful organism, covering (I think) more of the earth's surface than anything else (except the ocean, which doesn't really count). It's a king of species - after all, it's convinced humanity to tend to it - to plant it, to feed it, to water it, to weed out the competition.

Our view of the world puts us at the top, the pinnacle of evolution and the rightful masters of all we survey. Maybe this is just because the idea that we might not be in charge is something that scares us. (a significant number of our collective phobias relate to a loss of control) But it reminds me of another worldview, which in days gone by put the earth at the center of the solar system, and really it's just as wrong. We need to step back a little, and view the entire planet as a single system, one we are part of, not just custodians of.