What's Up Wednesday #14 - 555 in Thai, 7-up documentary, the scientific method and how companies treat your private data
What’s Up Wednesday #14 - 555 in Thai, 7-up documentary, the scientific method and how companies treat your private data
💼 Find something that’s fun to you but looks like work for others.
😂 Ha” is 5 in Thai. And ‘555’ is ‘lol’. They then add a + to make it stronger like 555+++. Here is a link to the google translator reading that out loud.
7-Up - watch people grow up and change
🎥 This week I continued watching 7-Up. A British documentary about people of different origins. They interviewed and filmed a bunch of kids at the age of seven and then repeated it every seven years until they were old! The result is really interesting. You watch people grow up and change. This YouTube playlist has all of the episodes. Check it out, it’s a well-done documentary with a deep view into how other people live.
”The opposite of education is not no education but social science.”
🔬 This might sound harsh, but it is true. Social, by definition, involves a group of people. And such groups most of the time have one opinion that tends to be the average accepted opinion and worldview. The main pillar of Science is the scientific method. To strive for the truth, to build experiments, and to verify theories. And to accept and be ecstatic about someone falsifying your theory. Because you now understand that it does not work this way. On the contrary, is group thinking. It is conformity with the norms. It is not the truth and often very far away from the best possible thing. Politicians should not listen to the average opinion or the solution most people come up with. They should listen to scientists and people eager to be disproven, who always strive for the real truth, not the accepted truth.
But even in science, the scientific method is overshadowed by the egos of the already famous scientists. Max Plank wrote in his Scientific Autobiography:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.
I am not sure if that is true. I guess the main reason for this is that 1. people have an ego and 2. already successful people are seen as correct, and unsuccessful are not. That means truth is harder to accept if it comes from someone not yet successful (i.e. before everyone accepts his theory) and clashes with the previous worldview (e.g. debunking an accepted theory).
Companies do what they want with your data
🤨 Another week, another leak of some company abusing your data. A Norwegian mobile company sold the location data of their customers to anyone willing to pay. The data was so accurate to easily figure out where people lived, worked, and spent time. Every time your phone connected to the cellular network your position got logged. Like a map with markers where you have been. And I guess my and your data is sold by some data collecting company as well. To protect yourself a bit from that you can choose to use fewer apps and things that can track you. Article in Norwegian, use google to translate it