Chapter 20 - Good and Bad and Certainty

I have returned to challenge your tiny baby brain and not a moment too soon because you are already twenty chapters old! Yes, I admit, you actually a hypothetical baby and I am using this platform to confess that I did not know these things while I was growing up. I learned all of these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons in one convenient place: Here.

Today's Warning: Please be careful when you hear human animals talking about things that are “good” and “bad.” Most often, when human animals say something is “good,” they are telling you that something  made/makes them happy regardless of whether A) it makes other people unhappy or B) whether it will ultimately make you incredibly sad. We are such a myopic species (Remember WYSIATI).

Except for low-lying fruit on the Maslovian Pyramid, things like having food and shelter and avoiding unwanted physical pain and death, people constantly disagree about what is good and bad. The subjects of these disagreements are everywhere. They include such things as good and bad food, cities, politicians, cars, jobs, art, children, pets, technology, habits, websites, books, moral choices, friends and romantic partners.

Here's another important lesson about “good” and “bad” things, my little pal. You will grow up in a complex adaptive system (your environment) and you yourself are a complex adaptive system. This double-complexity means that crazy-seeming things will often happen to you out of the blue. And to everyone else you know too. Yet we are incredibly arrogant in our ignorance.  Despite all of our ignorance, we continue to put human brains on extremely high and privileged pedestals. In the end, though, "A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms."