Often times I stumble through life like a confused missile and as I analyze my path I am surprised to see the lack of destruction my trajectory has caused. It's interesting how my incongruous and inconsistent steps have led me from one state to another, one job to another, and have ultimately worked. If one were to analyze my path it would look to the casual observer that I was a drunk nomad wondering though life, even though this is not the case. While this is not the case it does lead to an interesting conversation, which also includes an interesting book, The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.
While in all honesty my life makes sense in that I can explain my path there is a recognizable element of luck and randomness. Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist at Cal Tech, teaches Randomness. His book discusses the history of statistics, norms, and randomness. It is an investigation and story into what makes life work and how work, both good and bad, can often be contributed to randomness.
It may seem that this thought process would preclude one from having to work for what they have. After all if it is all luck then why work? This is not the case for as the author points out, randomness may ultimately have some say but just as flipping a coin the more times you flip you will always have a fifty-fifty chance at the desired outcome. For even if you have a streak of twenty heads eventually, even in a completely random scenario, you will have one that falls on tails. So in essence the more times you try the greater chances you have of succeeding. Dr. Mlodinow's work does not conclude that all life is random so do not prepare, but simply points out that there are random elements of life and it is good to recognize those elements.
Benjamin Franklin once pointed out that, "Diligence is the mother of good luck.". I believe that the Drunkard's Walk would agree. While I attribute many things to a higher power, and the author does not seek to disprove or dissuade the reader away from that higher power, but points out that it is important to see how randomness impacts everything from the stock markets to how we meet others. It is then up to us to make the most of those chance encounters and opportunities.
As Dr. Mlodinow walks through the story of how the theory of randomness came to be, he walks the reader through the dark ages of the inquisition and through the enlightenment, into modern thought. His ability to tell stories explains the importance of the discoveries in a way that keeps the mathematician's antithesis interested. In his journey through history he shows common fallacies in how we recognize patterns and how we attribute success, and failures for that matter, to the wrong people as we attempt to use logical fallacies to explain data; data which we often misinterpret due to the way the numbers are presented to the public.
In the end Dr. Mlodinow seeks to help the common person learn to understand randomness and statistics in order to help each think through and see the facts associated with the everyday information presented. No matter who or what one attributes the chance occurances of life, the author points out, that it is good to recognize the good fortune we have had and how little control we have had over those occurances. It does help me be thankful that where I started did not dictate where I currently am. After all as Dr. Mlodinow points out, often our ability to succeed is not in what happens to us, but in how we react to those occurrences.
Regardless of if you believe life is ruled completely by chance or believe that life is ruled by a Creator, the book gives plenty of interesting food for thought. After all we can all recognize that we have very little control over what happens and when it happens and more control over how we react to those situations.
While in all honesty my life makes sense in that I can explain my path there is a recognizable element of luck and randomness. Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist at Cal Tech, teaches Randomness. His book discusses the history of statistics, norms, and randomness. It is an investigation and story into what makes life work and how work, both good and bad, can often be contributed to randomness.
It may seem that this thought process would preclude one from having to work for what they have. After all if it is all luck then why work? This is not the case for as the author points out, randomness may ultimately have some say but just as flipping a coin the more times you flip you will always have a fifty-fifty chance at the desired outcome. For even if you have a streak of twenty heads eventually, even in a completely random scenario, you will have one that falls on tails. So in essence the more times you try the greater chances you have of succeeding. Dr. Mlodinow's work does not conclude that all life is random so do not prepare, but simply points out that there are random elements of life and it is good to recognize those elements.
Benjamin Franklin once pointed out that, "Diligence is the mother of good luck.". I believe that the Drunkard's Walk would agree. While I attribute many things to a higher power, and the author does not seek to disprove or dissuade the reader away from that higher power, but points out that it is important to see how randomness impacts everything from the stock markets to how we meet others. It is then up to us to make the most of those chance encounters and opportunities.
As Dr. Mlodinow walks through the story of how the theory of randomness came to be, he walks the reader through the dark ages of the inquisition and through the enlightenment, into modern thought. His ability to tell stories explains the importance of the discoveries in a way that keeps the mathematician's antithesis interested. In his journey through history he shows common fallacies in how we recognize patterns and how we attribute success, and failures for that matter, to the wrong people as we attempt to use logical fallacies to explain data; data which we often misinterpret due to the way the numbers are presented to the public.
In the end Dr. Mlodinow seeks to help the common person learn to understand randomness and statistics in order to help each think through and see the facts associated with the everyday information presented. No matter who or what one attributes the chance occurances of life, the author points out, that it is good to recognize the good fortune we have had and how little control we have had over those occurances. It does help me be thankful that where I started did not dictate where I currently am. After all as Dr. Mlodinow points out, often our ability to succeed is not in what happens to us, but in how we react to those occurrences.
Regardless of if you believe life is ruled completely by chance or believe that life is ruled by a Creator, the book gives plenty of interesting food for thought. After all we can all recognize that we have very little control over what happens and when it happens and more control over how we react to those situations.
I'm definitely in the camp that thinks (I would even say "knows") that there are many things in life that appear to be random, but, in fact, are not random at all ;) And I would agree that we could all benefit from recognizing that we are, in fact, not able to control much at all :)
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you are blogging again!