Rant #1: Use Your Own Fucking Brain, Mine's Got Better Things To Do

[mbarrick]

I'm tired of answering incredibly stupid questions and pointing out the obvious for the brainless. I get what seems like 300 phone calls a day at work from our first-level support person who, it seems, can't spend five seconds thinking about something before calling me for an answer. And what's worse is that she is just passing on stupid questions from even stupider users. Now it is one thing to get a question about something I am already expert in (for example software I have written myself), but to be asked repeated questions about a new package that I've gotten the first glimpse of at the same time as everyone else involved because I'm the only one who can wrap my head around something new just serves to piss me off and detract from the time I should be spending building things.

This doesn't just happen at work. I'm ranting about work at the moment because I just fielded yet another barrage of stupid questions, but it comes up outside of work and I just don't understand it. The concepts behind figuring *anything* out are simple enough. Nothing happens without a cause (ex nihil nihilo fit). If something breaks or suddenly "mysteriously" doesn't work like it used to, back-pedal until you can identify what's changed. Eliminate things one at a time. If you change 14 things all at once to "fix" something you'll never know what *really* fixed it. If you take you time and figure out what the problem really was and what really fixed it you'll be in good stead for the next time something similar happens. And that way the more things you understand how you actually fixed them, the more you'll get a handle on how things work in general. That's all there is to fixing something that is broken: It worked. Then X changed and it broke. X is the difference. Find X. It's that easy. You learn this processes in junior high science class. Or at least you would have if you (or your teacher) didn't have your (his) head up your (his) ass.

It's not rocket science. In fact rocket science isn't "rocket science".

"Lets put a bunch of volitle chemicals in a tube and make it fly."
"Oh, it blew up. How come and how can we keep that from happening?"
"OK. It's not blowing up now, but it won't fly straight. How can we fix that?"
"Fins?"
"They help, but not enough"
"Fins and a gyroscope?"
"That works."
"OK, lets try making a bigger one."
"Oh, it blew up. How come and how can we keep that from happening?"

The basic procedure here is this:

1. What do you want to know?
2. What do you already know?
3. What's missing between 1 and 2?

Now spend your time on the difference between 1 and 2. If there are a bunch of things missing, fill them in one at a time. Start with the easier ones. It's like doing a crossword. Don't know 1 down? Fill in 1,2, 3, 4 and 5 across. Look! 1 down is done. Pretty soon the whole fucking crossword is done. Welcome to science. Once again you should have picked this up in junior high. Or, if your parents weren't mollycoddling you, when you were four.

I've seen four-year olds hook up component stereos. As a matter of fact, it's *easy* to teach a four year old to hook up a component stereo because they generally haven't been turned into "magical thinking" morons. You know what magic is? A cause and effect chain where you can't see the links in the middle. Kids ask questions like, "how does that work?" and "why did that happen?" Adults give stupid answers like "magic" "God's Will / the will of the gods" and similar bullshit rather than "I don't know, let's see if we can figure it out" or "I don't know, maybe you can figure it out one day and explain it to me" because they are afraid of admitting ignorance or just plain want the kid to shut the fuck up and then go ahead and rationalize it with statements like "kids should believe in magic" "the world would be boring without magic" or "some things shouldn't be explained" O.K. Next time your kid gets sick take him to a witch doctor. When the kid dies and the witch doctor blames it on "God's Will" and explains why with "some things shouldn't be explained" see what you think of magic. Thanks to magical thinking most people are out there running around unable to even approach wrapping their heads around the "magic boxes" that are their computers, telephones, televisions, microwave ovens, the car engines, or even a lighter. Start picking people off the street at random and see how long it takes to find a person who can figure out how to make fire without "magic", let alone have the foggiest how to make a telephone or fix a nail-gun ;-).

And just in case you are thinking, what a sad world I live in that I don't believe in magic, don't. Because just because I don't believe there is anything unexplainable doesn't mean I don't believe in the unexplained. I can't prove that ghosts exist, but I can't prove tachyons exist either. Knowledge and belief are different things. Knowledge is reasonably well defined as justified true belief, and that leads to another rant.

Comments

Re: Nope

[thomasrymour.livejournal.com]

Good. Me too ... (hoping it was not your last post that triggered this too). There are those who believe in magickal theory, and there are those that don't. It's a useless debate between the two teams, just as said above - the unexplained (to which magick belongs) cannot be rationalized or produced by scientific method. Law of Contact, Law of Similarity, Law of Contagion, all age-old beliefs by the most elite of magic-users, druids, sorcerers, witches, and even Neo-Pagans. Poppets and voodoo dolls, curses, charms, blessings, cones of power, talismans, and the power of prayer and belief. Science vs. religion vs. magic = none of those disciplines get along. What works for one, won't for another. Folk lore or Folk Myth or dare say I, folk science? Its a debate that will never be solved. So, I'll bite my tongue and keep the peace. (sorry, mumbojumbo ramblings from this witch-doctor, rootman.) (believe it or not I've taught this stuff at Florida State University (magical theory)) and quite influenced and trained by those with academic degrees (UCLA, FSU, etc.) in the magickal arts buried in the pseudo-sciences of Anthropology, socialogy, physics, and folklore). So all I can suggest, is don't knock it till you've tried it. Magic is, is what magic does.

::cough:: not trying to start a debate. Just a word ::in:: magickal defense. But I hear ya, mbarrick ... there are those that just expect things to magically happen without brain-power or logic to trigger its calculated results. Having to play support-wizard to them is a nightmare, one I've shared as a linux/system admin several years back - not fun, not challenging, and quite a hair remover. Blessings to you that some of your patrons will get a brain.

::cheers::
St. Leaf, the Patron Saint of Faeries and trees in the Church of Atratus ...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

> don't knock it till you've tried it

Ah, but I have. I'm probably better versed in these things than you might think. My paradigm is not without magic and monsters in the conventional sense, I'm simply not satisfied with "it can't be explained", i.e. "magic" as a final explaination for anything. That in-and-of-itself is not incompatable with the practice of magic. Lots of things work without anyone knowing why (yet). Complexity and choas (in the mathematical sense) can makes some things bloody hard to explain. A fine example would be the jet engine. Until the application of chaos theory and computers powerful enough to crunch the approprate numbers no one could explain *exactly* how a jet engine worked (they just did) and design work was done entirely by hunch and trial-and-error. Just because something isn't explained doesn't mean it doesn't work and never means it can't, won't or shouldn't be explained at some future date.

[valerian.livejournal.com]

"Just because I cannot see it doesn't mean I can't believe it...!"

~ Jack Skellington.

Act of Faith

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

>>> Science vs. religion vs. magic = none of those disciplines get along. <<<

I've always like the Albanian method of arguing against superstition - by putting priests and other namby-pamby spiritual social hangers-on up against a firing squad and see their magic or belief in the godhead try and save their skins.

Emperor "Hang All The Cathars And Then Let God Find His Catholic Own" Nimrod

Re: Act of Faith

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

A rabbi, a Catholic priest and a protestant vicar are playing golf for charity. At the end of the game they are deciding how much of the money to spend at the "19^th hole" and how much to give to charity. The vicar says, "I have an idea," and walks over to a sand-trap. He draws a circle in the sand and proposes, "We'll throw the money up over the circle. What lands in the circle we'll give to God, what lands outside, we'll keep."

The priest counter-proposes, "That not a bad idea. But I say we keep what lands in the circle and give what lands outside to God."

The rabbi considers all this for a moment and says, "Forget the circle. Let's just throw the money up in the air and what God wants, he can keep."

Re: Act of Faith

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

LMAO! Such a true observation.

Magic Vs Science

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

Scientific principle -If you extert external stresses on a closed system you create changes in that system.

Cognition cannot be measured , detected , or properly observed
weighted , heard , felt , tasted smelled , and has no mass, no gravity. Cognition exists external to physical reality.

Physical 4th dimensional space (reality) is a closed system

Therefore we must conclude that cognative changes (thought processes) can exert stresses that have physical mainifestations
(Moving your finger , walking on feet , or throwing a ball t hit a target) The problem is that the human is unable (unwilling) to accept that he may have greater capabilitie(magic,esp,precognition) and that the rules of physics are not as set in stone as he wished to believe (ie quantum mechanics vs standard physics)

But likewise changes to physcal space can have cognative effects(Depression, Illness , drugs induced mental states)


I think that "Magical" thinkers can't accept that their 'magic' might just be a further manifestation of advanced unexplained science principals but in the same respect scientific thinkers
cling to their 'rules' and 'principals' like frightened children
(becuse if you proved a scientist wrong .. he may have to accept the fact that his work and his life are meaningless and he's just a big geek)

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

There are so many things wrong with that I'm not even going to bother.