FROM XKCD:

The Invisible Pink Unicorn. The brilliant imaginary beast which cannot be seen is manifest. She truly exists and blesses all ye faithful followers. Ever since the day she shone upon me her lovely, photon-free light, I’ve felt stupendously full of fortune. Faith was all that was needed; learning unnecessary. The path was laid out before me in footprints I needed only to believe in – Pink ones. Invisible pink ones. And now I know the way. Blessed be her.

LEARN MORE: The unseen path can here be discovered. She awaits.

Oh, and don’t trust the propaganda below. Contrary to the information in the video, Her Pinkness is not a hallucination. She is real.

1. Which idea is more toxic?
A. We should inoculate ourselves against the most toxic ideas.
B. It’s all subjective; we cannot objectively classify ideas.

2. Which belief would be most convenient were you to believe in it?
A. Chaos and physical laws rule my life.
B. God and fate rule my life.

3. Which idea is more useful?
A. There are a few brown eggs in the fridge.
B. Suffering is inevitable.

4. Which of these most tickles your fancy?
A. Believers get an afterlife.
B. Only non-believers get an afterlife, just to confuse them.

5. Circle the most viral concept.
A. Zeus is the king of heaven.
B. Allah is the king of heaven.

6. Eliminate the most intolerable concept.
A. Islam is a harmful belief system.
B. Astrology is a harmful belief system.

The inspiration for today’s dilemmas: Dan Dennett on dangerous memes (with great comments).

* Watch out — Icebergs are both sharp and ambitious. *

I once tried to write a short story. It was a three-line dialog about a trip a long time ago that these two dudes went on. It went something like this:

“19 miles to midnight.”
“What?”
“Ok, 18.8.”

The only problem was it was too long. I needed a short story, and fast. Two lines would have been nice, but I couldn’t compact the interaction into such a small dialectal space. Surely I had to reverse my thinking and add a line. So I tried it with four:

“How much further, Jim?”
“19 miles.”
“19 miles to midnight…”
“Well, 18.8 to be exact.”

Unfortunately, it lacked a convincing conclusion. How would the story end? Would the passenger fall silent in satisfaction at the respecified 18.8-mile reply, or would there take place some kind of conflict at that? A discreet critique of Jim’s need to speak accurately perhaps? It certainly needed something — either a resolution or dissolution; at this point it was exceedingly flat. But nothing was coming to me…

At some point about a week later on it struck me to limit myself to three lines, as I had originally intended to do, but to sneak in a whole new character as well. So then I had Jim, the driver, the curious cat (to be known as ‘Frederíco’), and another whom I called ‘the old author’, a retired novelist. It went a little something like this:

“Man, I bet it would take you a month if you were gonna hike it.”, said Frederíco, trying with false appreciation to mask what was really impatience.
Jim gave a flat driver’s-grunt and laid out his ETA: “19 more miles to midnight, folks.”
The old author gazed out at the dim rolling dunes and chimed in to keep everyone aware of the stars that would spin and said: “Look!”

At least now the readers could grin knowing that: even outside of his books can the retired novelist write a new fact. And so, from the muse, it was this story I took.

Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness, certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.

Seemingly filled with anguish, this character actually expresses the dead end that is science and logical empiricism. While they open new pathways to innovation, technology, and more, the net gain for humanity in terms of enabling happiness is minimal, Author A finds. What joy comes to the individual is the short-lived pleasure of fame as a problem-solver and perhaps a kind of moral superiority. What I take from this passage is not that scientific pursuits are insolvent, but that we need to follow our hearts and intuition at times, let ourselves be animals at times, find joy in new and random adventures, spontaneity and silliness. There is a qualitative difference between discovering the truth of life and living it – although, some have argued that the good life is the examined life… I leave it open for debate as I present something entirely different:

The disproportion in my build is that my forelegs are too short. Like the kangaroo, I have very short forelegs, and tremendously long hind legs. Ordinarily I sit quite still; but if I move, the tremendous leap that follows strikes terror in all to whom I am bound by the tender ties of kinship and friendship.

Author A is an aesthetic type. He tends to enjoy chaos, ego-trips, and a dark, witty humor. At other times, however, a slapstick feel emerges, like in imagining a kangaroo jumping forward and simultaneously yanking all the many strings connected to himself, knocking over a whole gang of oblivious kangaroo buddies nearby. Basically, the author is creating chaos and displaying wit through the actions of this kangaroo written into your imagination. In the next quote, we see more of his propensity for existential depth.

One must be very naïve to believe that it will do any good to cry out and shout in the world, as if that would change one’s fate. Better take things as they come, and make no fuss. When I was young and went into a restaurant, I would say to the waiter, “A good cut, a very good cut, from the loin, and not too fat.” Perhaps the waiter did not even hear me, to say nothing of paying any attention to my request, and still less was it likely that my voice should reach the kitchen and influence the cook, and even if it did, there was perhaps not a good cut on the entire roast. Now I never shout any more.

More than futility, this statement seems to address the necessity of shouting, namely, that there is none; the author has no need to shout, nor does he find it helpful. Symbolically, we can take this as advocating a lassie-fare attitude towards life. Certainly not an option for all people in the world, for some find the majority of actions in life set by necessity, the need to survive, to support a family. While I would not intend to maintain the privileged minority at the expense of an impoverished majority (I prefer meritocracy ideally), nor would I push guilt on those with privileges like that of an almost-guaranteed survival. Merely I wish to convey to you, those capable of reading and ingesting this thrivenote, that you are fortunate – so fortunate that you can choose your way of relating to reality. Choose well and enjoy!