The great picture of our lives

[ians]

Seems twitter is also turning some people into twits, small tweet big oooops.

[Citizen X]

Define big vs small descision.

A person can decide to become a plumber or an electrician ? big descision
A person decides to have a cup of coffee at a coffee shop on the way home and becomes paralized in an accident ? small decision

You sit at the coffee shop and recognize somebody important and strike up a conversation - no outcome...small descision? ...you become world famous and makes lots of money...big descision?

The only really important criteria is whether the descision had a pivotal effect on your life.

You drink and drive --
no accident - not pivotal
huge accident and you kill 5 people - pivotal

...and as I said before, there is simply no way of knowing which descisions (big, small, on a whim) will have a pivotal effect on your life. aka Jessica de Santos - one childish remark made in the wrong ear and her career is is tatters.

Suppose it's relative then to who you are and what consequence the decision had on your life. Adrian, you've demonstrated right here the very promblem of logical discourse and philosophy in general. Incidentally, this very problem was apparent centuries ago.. What we actually engaging in here is pure philosophizing, a skill! A study of philosophy i.e. when Plaoto was born, which girlfirend he had, what he said etc will never give you this ability, that everyone who contributed to this thread have demonstrated ..an ability to philosophize.

[adrianh]

Interesting, but if that is the case then economists are no more than philosophers who explain the past....and have ZERO ability to predict the future.

If a woman marries 5 times and each ends in divorce does it mean that the 6th will too?
If a company fails to launch a product 5 times will it also fail the 6th time?

The economist would say "Well possibly" and if it is a success then the economist would say that he had correctly predicted the outcome.

So this then begs the question - are those who have successful lives simply lucky due to small desicions counting up to great furtune?
What about those who are absolutely brilliant but never got an oppertunity to utilize their skills - are they simply unlucky?
What about karma? Do you get out what you put in? if so then howcome some horrible people become rich and famous and some wonerful people die in obsure poverty?
What about religion? If you pray for a job and you get it - did your diety help you out? - if you don't get a job is it then your diety's plan for you to go through life poor?

My view is this: Your cards are dealt all the time, good, bad, indifferent. It is up to you to make the best possible decisions at each descision point given the information that you have at hand...better than that you cannot do! If it work out great, if it doesn't, no problem, a good card will come up again soonr or later.

[Citizen X]

Interesting, but if that is the case then economists are no more than philosophers who explain the past....and have ZERO ability to predict the future.

If a woman marries 5 times and each ends in divorce does it mean that the 6th will too?
If a company fails to launch a product 5 times will it also fail the 6th time?

The economist would say "Well possibly" and if it is a success then the economist would say that he had correctly predicted the outcome.

So this then begs the question - are those who have successful lives simply lucky due to small desicions counting up to great furtune?
What about those who are absolutely brilliant but never got an oppertunity to utilize their skills - are they simply unlucky?
What about karma? Do you get out what you put in? if so then howcome some horrible people become rich and famous and some wonerful people die in obsure poverty?
What about religion? If you pray for a job and you get it - did your diety help you out? - if you don't get a job is it then your diety's plan for you to go through life poor?

My view is this: Your cards are dealt all the time, good, bad, indifferent. It is up to you to make the best possible decisions at each descision point given the information that you have at hand...better than that you cannot do! If it work out great, if it doesn't, no problem, a good card will come up again soonr or later.

Adrian, based on what you say, one would not be wrong to classify you under one of the five categories of philosophical ethics names Rules Governed Ethics. Immanuel Kant is one of the most famous exponents of rule governed ethics Kant argues that philosophical ethics is the system of the ends of pure practical reason.All rational knowledge is either material and concerned with the form of understanding and of reason themselves and with the universal rules of thought in general without regard to differences of its objects. Formal philosophy is called logic.[1]
So it’s logical discourse you engaged in! Let me show you, Adrian, how exactly right you actually are in whatever you have just said!
The metaphysician cannot provide an agreed and demonstrably correct answer to questions as to how the universe started. The morals of the ethical philosopher are not of necessity superior of that of the grass roots man. Dr Josef Megele had both a medical degree and a doctorate in philosophy, yet history tells us that when they ran out of gas to kill the Jewish kids on one bitter cold day, he ordered that these kids be thrown live into the open flames of those ovens! He studied philosophy and in particular both ethics and morality extensively at one of the best known universities of its day, yet he was a monster of a man.
All reasoning is not logic and all logical is not reasoning. A professor of anatomy understands all aspects of the limbs, he can break it down for you molecule by molecule, he understands how the limbs function and perhaps more importantly what, both natural and unnatural can be used to increase their performance But this does not mean that he will be able to become the next 100m Olympics athlete YET you may get a man from the informal settlement, he may genuinely believe that his legs only consist of blood and of nothing further, he may have never even entered a school let alone sat in a grade 1 class BUT he runs like lighting and wins the 100m Olympics race. So it was not his understanding of the limbs or what they comprise that made him excel. Go figure..

So here we are back to our quandary, right back to where we started but still we exceed brilliantly as far as philosophizing is concerned, now even a university student with a degree in philosophy may be able to rattle like a parrot as to when Plato was born, what he ate, who his girlfriend was and what he said, but to do just what we have so easily done in this thread, I won’t place any bets on that college kid!

---

[1] James. W Ellington. Immanuel Kant. Ethical Philosophy.Hacket Publishing Company Inc. 1994. Page 1 para 387

[tec0]

Choice... No matter it size and or impact, regardless of the alternative there is no such thing as choice. The illusion is real enough but the outcome will always be the same. Take a roulette wheel for example.

If you take a number and move your eye across to the other number on the opposite side you will find that it doesn’t line up. For example the zero will line up to the five and the ten. So basically to cover both the five and the ten you need to place two bets insuring that you will lose one bet if not both.

Then you need to look at the spinning of the ball its momentum is it clockwise or anticlockwise and is there any consistency “numbers that repeat” Now in most cases seven have a tendency to repeat alongside thirty-six (depending on the dealer) with a twenty-seven percent interval within thirty minutes. That means you have possibility to see a seven within eight point one minutes of play alongside thirty-six.

But then something happens an inconsistency in the wrist and or finger pressure will give a random red black or green this messes with the math and is the only reason why this part of the game is still human. This brings your chances down to an average of one point one, one percent (despite the official documentation) towards each spin and you will lose and or win simply by accident. But it is not an accident now is it...

No... Mechanical theory doesn’t allow for accidents only poor observations and you need to be fast because you will find that they change the dealers systematically along with the mass of the ball and so on... This introduces a constant variable.

Now to point of all of this is the outcome.... “Despite documentation” stays the same. The house always wins. Therein my case and point, it doesn’t matter what you do in life you will lose when you lose and win when you win. Everything else is just a variable of “if and when” you win and or lose but the result will remain the same.

Let’s pretend that a member goes “ok I will disproof your theory and give me R50k large right then and there. This will go towards my winning probability. Second action is no action and the situation remains unchanged and or someone bad mouths me and I lose a customer and that goes towards my losing probability... My outcome be it ill health a accident or violent departure will remain unchanged it is written in stone because the rule of mechanical theory remains regardless.

We are just gears running in a machine called life.

[Dave A]

Blurock (post 7), you and I are very much on the same page. That's exactly what I was thinking when I made the statement.

I was comparing two lives over the last ten years.
Same starting point. Same goals. Very different outcomes.
And the main difference I could see was in the minutae of the daily diciplines.

What I was struggling to wrap my mind around was how could this be possible when so much importance (and thought) is attached to the "big" decisions, so little is said about the overall cumulative significance of all the little decisions along the way that we don't give much thought to - that we often leave to habit to decide for us.

I think Adrian (post 10 in particular) is onto something as to why - the size of the decision (as perceived in advance) does not necessarily correlate with the significance of the outcome.

Jim Collins in Great By Choice concludes that luck (both good and bad) comes to everyone. What differs is what we make of it - our return on luck. If you're doing the right things, when good luck comes along, you get a great return. When you're not doing the right things, you don't get the same return.

At tec0 - With roulette the house has a 2 in 37 point advantage over the gambler when it comes to picking a number. The house has a 1 in 37 advantage over the gambler when you play black or red. Which game should you be playing?

However, I suggest you're focusing on the wrong decision to make (and perhaps that's why you keep losing the game). The line between winning and losing over the long haul is a lot thinner than most people think, but the difference in results between being on the wrong or right side of that line is huge.

If we stick to your analogy of roulette, I suggest the choice options in life is not just which number or colour to pick; you first should choose whether you're going to be the gambler or the house.

Get the odds stacked on your side.
Good habits.
Good discipline.

It looks like it's a lot more important than most people give credit for.

[adrianh]

The real issue is this: It is believed that one can influence the quality of the cards that you are dealt by your outlook on life. It is said that if one has a negative outlook then you are dealt negative cards and if you have positive outlook then the cards will be good. Is this possible or are we simply colouring our own perceptions. A man may become paralized and be eternally grateful for the event which changed his life or a person may win R10million and be unhappy because it ruined his life.

So where does this leave us. We live our lives on the balance of probabilities, maybe you get hit by a car and maybe you don't, maybe you live till you're 80 or maybe you don't...what is the answer... To me the answer is actually quite simple, you make certain that you value every moment of every day.

...or as Robert Heinlein's "Valentine Michael Smith" in Stranger From a Strange Land would say: "You Grok it"...

[Justloadit]

The real issue is this: It is believed that one can influence the quality of the cards that you are dealt by your outlook on life. It is said that if one has a negative outlook then you are dealt negative cards and if you have positive outlook then the cards will be good. Is this possible or are we simply colouring our own perceptions.

I think your current frame of mind/attitude is what governs the decision you are going to take.
If you are in a negative mode, there is no ways that you will be able to identify an opportunity, you will only look and see any negative cards presented to you an thus you will continue on the negative path, however, as soon as you change and start getting a positive attitude, you then there seems to be a opportunity at every turn, and you appear to make better decisions.

Have you not noticed how negative people seem to attract 'bad luck', and positive people seem to always be 'lucky', it is based on the persons attitude and what opportunities are followed.

[tec0]

Consider life as a game. Then consider that everything you are and do comes down to timing. Both habits and discipline comes down to finishing on time, being on time and to study to be prepared on time. Being able to calculate risk and reward within the right moment to insure success and or avoid failure.

Every situation is a simple variable “I will work hard to impress my boss” and “I will slack off to spite my boss.” But then there is always an uncontrollable factor “my boss don’t like me even if I do 200% than what is expected of me” options; accept it and ignore it till such a time where you no longer can ignore it. Perhaps the time is right to start your own thing?

What changed? Mathematically the odds are against us from the start. It always was as the rule of a monitory system someone must lose for someone to win. The allocation of wealth is directly link to an ability within a time frame. Example; America was large once now the east will soon be a supper power if not already. What changed?

Outsourcing, poor stock performance and general cost... Timing.... You can actually see the gears rotate. Now your habits and discipline will help you identify opportunities better yes there is no denying this. That said timing is everything, when do you invest, start a business when do you sell your investments close your business?

Simple answer when the maximum wealth was accumulated you always cut your losses. If you don't then things starts to resemble a Roulette wheel then it is only a matter of time before you lose.

So be ready and always think it over... But never waste time, for every minute wasted is an opportunity lost.

[Citizen X]

Choice... No matter it size and or impact, regardless of the alternative there is no such thing as choice. The illusion is real enough but the outcome will always be the same. Take a roulette wheel for example.


We are just gears running in a machine called life.

I recently visited a friend. I'm extremely courteous and respectful to all who are in that home. Even the dogs like me1 In fact, this friend’s dog, ‘Rexy,’ actually starts barking and moaning before I even reach the door. Their domestic employee Mariam had the following to say, ‘Vanash, I earn R1200 per month, my first born is in grade 12, she wants to go to university, I don’t have the money, I don’t know what to do, My husband is dead. My second born is in grade 8, my 3^rd born is in grade 6 and my first born is in grade 4. What must I tell my child when she asks me about University?”
I honestly didn’t know how to respond to her! I realized that a great many of our fellow South Africans hold positions such as domestic employee and farm assistant not by choice but rather because they have no choice. I don’t think any kid says, one day I want to be a domestic employee!
Money plays a big role in the choices we make!
But, we all start the race together. We won’t all finish the race together. There was a recent article about a prisoner who obtained his LLB in prison and obtained more than 10 distinctions..