Table of contents for August 2016 in New Philosopher

“The important problems in life usually require a comparison of the odds.”Warren Weaver You make your own luck. You’ve got to be in it to win it. She has all the luck. Don’t jinx yourself ! Odds are that… The language of luck pervades all aspects of our lives: our draw in the genetic lottery; our friends, family, and lovers; the time, place, and socio-economic situation in which we live. Though some may quibble over a definition, it’s clear that Fortuna rules with a iron hand in a velvet glove – holding the power to cast one person into despair, another into raptures of joy. But can we exert control over the quality and degree of fortune we experience? Be it good luck or bad, the short answer is: not…

Wiseman discovered that extroverts – those who chat to many people, smile a lot, and use open body language – massively expanded their ‘network of luck’. Can you train in luck? In other words, are there exercises or rituals you can perform that can boost your luck in life? Psychologists who have delved into the ‘science of luck’ think so. They argue that some people can make themselves lucky, just like some people can become fit, muscular, or erudite. It’s just a matter of applying the right strategies. But some things, like family wealth and status, aren’t under our control. Some people are just born into lucky circumstances – such as the partners and offspring of the rich and famous. Take influential artist Pablo Picasso, for instance, one of the…

What kind of world do you wish the next generation of human beings to be born into: black and white, male and female? If you were about to die and had the chance to come back in another life as one of four possible identities – a white male, a white female, a black female, or a black male – which would you choose? This is a question the American author and activist Gloria Jean Watkins, writing under the pen-name ‘bell hooks’, reports posing to schoolchildren in her book Teaching Community. “I have often listened to groups of schoolchildren tell me that racism really no longer shapes the contours of our lives,”Watkins writes.Yet,she continues, “each time I do this exercise, most individuals, irrespective of gender or race, invariably choose whiteness,…

VANESSA PLOURDE TOP FIVE BOOKS 1. The Sirens of Titan Kurt Vonnegut 2. A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 3. Frankenstein Mary Shelley 4. The Diary of Anne Frank Anne Frank 5. Alligator Pie Dennis Lee FAVOURITE PHILOSOPHER: Lately I’ve been into Bertrand Russell. FAVOURITE QUOTE: The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche DOCUMENTARY TO RECOMMEND: Carl Sagan’s Cosmos FAVOURITE ARTWORK: Judith and the Head of Holofernes ( Judith I) Gustav Klimt FAVOURITE PIECE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC: Though I’m more into the indie rock scene, Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 holds great memories for me. What is philosophy for you? Philosophy is not being certain of anything. It’s about wondering, questioning,…

“One should not appraise human action based on its results.” Jakob Bernoulli “The probable is what usually happens.” Aristotle “It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should have become the most important object of human knowledge.” Pierre-Simon Laplace “Never leave serendipity to chance.” Robert C. Wolcott “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em Know when to fold ‘em Know when to walk away And know when to run.” Kenny Rogers “Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change – to thee all things are subject. Percy Bysshe Shelley “Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.” Voltaire “Probability is the very guide of life.” Cicero “Chance favours the prepared mind.” Louis Pasteur “The luckiest men die worthwhile deaths.”…

The Biologist Jacques Monod 1910-1976 Drawn at random “When one ponders on the tremendous journey of evolution over the past three billion years or so, the prodigious wealth of structures it has engendered, and the extraordinarily effective teleonomic performances of living beings from bacteria to man, one may well find oneself beginning to doubt again whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at random.” The Stoic Seneca 4BCE-65 Maintain prosperity “All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and on behalf of the prayers that have turned…

We’re told that we ‘make our own luck’, but despite my efforts over the years – working hard, saving, being good to others, giving to charities – I find that I haven’t had much luck at all. Although I’m educated, well-mannered, and hard working, at 50 years old I find myself in the position of being single, poor, disabled, without property, I’ve lost several family members, I’m unemployed, and I have few close friends. Meanwhile I see others around me who – in my eyes, at least – are behaving badly, immorally, and without regard for others or even at times the law, but have had a lot of luck: they have wealth, property, friends, family, work, opportunities, and fun. I don’t hold anything against them, but it seems that…

As a form, the novel has always had to confront the constraints of determinism. I was a late reader. Belatedly diagnosed as dyslexic during my first year at university, I was eight before I could read a sentence fluidly, and ten or so before I began to put these sentences together and read books for pleasure. By the time I learned to read properly I was hungry for plot, and indiscriminate in my tastes. I was a fan of Gerald Durrell, and Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books, as well as a series, the name of which I forget, about a pair of all-American brothers who travelled the world collecting exotic animals for their father’s zoo. I read these for tips on how to catch cats and pigeons in the…

I’m not sure where I’ll be in another decade or two. A physician now, I’m not sure whether I’ll be redundant in 2035. Perhaps I’ll be filling some kind of post-physician proceduralist or physician-interpreter role. One thing is for certain though, change is afoot. Proponents of algorithmic medicine would have me believe that big data and machine learning will reduce my practice of medicine to a series of well-defined technical decisions. Once the evidence is gathered – they tell me – and the patterns of human experience, physical and mental ailments, demographics, and genomics are synthesised, then a battery of tests will prove a diagnosis and perfect health will be delivered with remarkable predictive precision. My mind grasps for reasons to think otherwise. Some are my own when I look…

Edinburgh International Book Festival 13 – 29 August 2016 Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh The Edinburgh International Book Festival began in 1983 with 30 ‘Meet the Author’ events. Today, the festival program includes over 700 events and hosts writers from all over the world. The debates and discussion series allows audience and author to meet and exchange thoughts and opinions on pressing issues. www.edbookfest.co.uk/about-us Festival of Dangerous Ideas 3 – 4 September 2016 Sydney Opera House The Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) is an annual event that brings leading thinkers and culture creators from around the world to the Sydney Opera House stages, and online, to discuss and debate the important ideas of our time. Speakers at the festival are asked to present their ideas to create lively and thought-provoking discussions.…

What do you doubt most? The existence of a ‘moral economy’ in which ‘the just’ prosper and ‘the wicked’ suffer. If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be? I would try to loosen the human need for absolute certainty and the resulting persistence of totalitarianism in all of its forms – e.g. in religion, politics, etc. What illusion do you suffer from? That I know what I am doing. What is your demon? The need to be right. What role has luck played in your life? Most of my life has been shaped by good luck rather than good planning. I have recognised and seized some opportunities. However, beyond that I can claim little credit. What would you never do, no matter the price? Lie…

WHY SCHOOL MUST CHANGE What are we passing down to the next generation? Are we passing down our cultural wealth? Or are we passing down our liabilities? newphilosopher.com/articles/why-school-must-change/ NEW PHILOSOPHER ONLINE STORE Visit the online store for previous issues of New Philosopher magazine, subscriptions, and other gift ideas. newphilosopher.com/products-page/magazines/ NP Writing Prize Entries are open for the NP Prize for Philosophical Writing. Enter now to win $1,000 and have your work featured in the mag. OPEN TO NP SUBSCRIBERS, AWARD XIII ENTRIES CLOSE 30 NOVEMBER 2016 Up to 1,500 words of fiction or non-fiction, based around the theme ‘luck’. For more details and to enter online visit: newphilosopher.com/prize THE THREE PILLARS OF MEDIA EDUCATION How important is formal education for a child’s development? A lot, if you consider the amount…

A 2010 Australian hospital study found that 17% of suicidal patients admitted to the Alfred Hospital’s emergency department were problem gamblers. The ‘Law of Large Numbers’ ensures that over the long run good and bad luck will cancel out – averages steer toward their true probabilities. The minimum payout percentage in Las Vegas of slot (poker, fruit) machines is 75%. These machines make up 70% of profit for the average US casino. Survival rate in a plane crash relative to seat position is highest (69%) in an aisle seat within five rows of an emergency exit at the back of the plane. When there are two people in a room there is a 0.3% chance that they share the same birthday. When there are 23 people in a room, there’s…

With Fortuna smiling down on him, my father felt emboldened to navigate life’s unpredictable turns. Back in the 1990s, I played professional blackjack on and off for two rather colourful years that swept me from Las Vegas and Atlantic City to Europe’s swankier casinos, then back again. My pro team prided itself on its rational approach to the game which, by faithfully adhering to mathematical rule of law, ensured that, over time, the odds of winning would swing our way. Led by a former research chemist, who knew the blackjack ‘how-to’ literature inside out, and a computer programmer, who spent endless hours modelling mathematical ‘dry-runs’ at home, we crunched numbers and perfected memory tricks, the better to mine the thin seam of numerical advantage they’d identified. Much of the time…

DEATH AND TAXES “We all know there are few certainties in life except death and taxes, but few of us are comfortable in the presence of chance. It threatens whatever sense we have of being in control of events, suggesting we could all become what Shakespeare called ‘Fortune’s fool’. It has prompted many to believe in fickle gods, and others to deny its primacy.” Chancing It , Robert Matthews, 2016 THE EYES OF A CHILD “Try to look at the world through the eyes of a child – without expectations and prejudice. See what is there rather than what you expect to be there. Relax. Have fun. Do not let your expectations limit your vision... Remember that you are surrounded by opportunities. It is just a case of looking…

The only real influence you have over your luck levels is by maximising serendipity, and no longer clinging to control. If you’re the kind of person who considers yourself serially unlucky, and who looks with envy at those irritating types who seem permanently blessed by Providence, I have excellent news: your chances of experiencing a one-in-a-million stroke of luck in the next few weeks is actually really high. This prediction required no tarot cards or crystal balls. It follows, instead, from Littlewood’s Law, coined by the British mathematician John Edensor Littlewood, who died in 1977. Let’s suppose, he said, that you’re awake and active in the world – as opposed to sleeping or resting – for a mere eight hours a day. Suppose furthermore that a tiny ‘event’ of some…

To say that someone is lucky to have sprinter’s legs, critical thinking skills, or virtues like courage, is to make their achievements into mere gifts. Oedipus had it all. Besting a nobleman in a brawl, defeating a murderous monster with his wits, marrying a queen, and raising virtuous or notable children. He was, as Sophocles wrote in King Oedipus, “the first of men”. But the aristocrat he killed was his father. His wife was his mother, Jocasta – she hanged herself. His sons went to war against one another; a daughter suicided after their needless deaths. By the end of Sophocles’ play, both Oedipus and his noble rule over Thebes were destroyed. This man “was envied by all his fellow-men for his great prosperity,” sing the chorus. “Behold, what a…

The political philosopher John Rawls compared life to a lottery in which there are winners and losers, through good or bad luck. As Boethius sat in his cell on death row back in the year 523, he reflected on the nature of luck. The wheel of Fortune had turned through 180 degrees for him. At one point a political favourite – rich, successful, with two sons promoted to consul – yet now imprisoned for treason, with nothing to look forward to except a painful execution. At this point Philosophy appears to him in a vision – she is a tall woman who tells him he has neglected her. True philosophy and virtue aren’t affected by bad luck – the life of the mind is inoculated against fortune. He takes heed,…

Jonathan Wolff is Professor of Philosophy at University College London. In the late 1990s Wolff was asked to sit on the Gambling Review Body, a government review body chaired by Sir Alan Budd, with the aim of coming up with recommendations to update the regulation of gambling in the UK. The committee recommended some changes to the law to liberalise gambling, as well as recommending that the industry set up a trust to pay for education, treatment, and research into problem gambling. Wolff is now a trustee of the Responsible Gambling Trust, which receives contributions from the gambling industry to pay for treatment, research, and education related to problem gambling. “It’s a political hot potato, of course,” says Wolff, “because we’re taking money from the gambling industry to research problem…

The Lottery Shirley Jackson Official of the lottery At one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. The Prince Niccolò Machiavelli Governed by fortune It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with their…

Extraordinary quality in all respects. New Philosopher is one of the best things happening. I love how the writing reminds me that the types of issues we are grappling with today are similar to those grappled with by philosophers for centuries. I love this magazine. I no longer like reading or listening to mainstream news as it is not good for my health. Your magazine is good for me. It has real discussions that relate to life rather than reporting sensational ‘news’. Thank you. Your magazine is so helpful and is churning up the little grey cells, as Hercule Poirot says. Thank you, this world is brighter, more aware, and more meaningful with your publication in it. Great magazine. Finally one worth reading. Will recommend it to all friends. This…

DBC Pierre DBC Pierre won the Booker Prize for his debut novel Vernon God Little, which was also awarded the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2003 – the first time the two awards had been granted to the same book. Pierre is also the author of Ludmilla’s Broken English, Lights out in Wonderland, a book of short stories, and a novella, Breakfast with the Borgias. He was awarded the James Joyce Award from the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin. Patrick Stokes Patrick Stokes is a lecturer in philosophy at Deakin University, Melbourne. He specialises in 19th and 20th century European philosophy, personal identity, narrative selfhood, moral psychology, and death and remembrance. A particular focus is bringing Kierkegaard into dialogue with contemporary analytic philosophy of personal identity and…

Rating 1: Penguin Good Australian Wine Guide 5 STARS Penguin Best Wine of the Year. Rating 2: Australian Wine Annual WORST WINE OF ALL WINES REVIEWED “Worst vintage produced in a decade.” “The cord that tethers ability to success is both loose and elastic. It is easy to see fine qualities in successful books or to see unpublished manuscripts, inexpensive vodkas, or people struggling in any field as somehow lacking. It is easy to believe that ideas that worked were good ideas, that plans that succeeded were well designed, and that ideas and plans that did not were ill conceived. And it is easy to make heroes out of the most successful and to glance with disdain at the least. But ability does not guarantee achievement, nor is achievement proportional…

“At various times writers have spoken of the possible production, by pure chance, of some classic piece of literature by monkeys pecking away at typewriters. There being in Hamlet, for example, something like 27,000 letters and spaces, and there being 35, say, keys on the typewriters (so the chance each time of a monkey’s hitting the right key is 1/35), the overall probability of producing Hamlet by chance is unity divided by 35 raised to the power 27,000, or roughly 10 41,600 .”Warren Weaver, Lady Luck What characteristics make a great writer? The question was put to Ernest Hemingway by an interviewer in the early 1960s. He hesitated, and after considerable pause, Hemingway answered: “In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap…

We’re largely made by other people, and continue to depend on others to lesser or greater extents all our lives. There’s a certain disappointment – maybe there’s a word for it in German – that comes from realising a quote you like is actually made up. All those coffee mug aphorisms turn out to be either distorted, misattributed, or just plain invented. Gandhi never said “First they ignore you…”, Voltaire never offered to defend your right to free speech to the death (that was Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in case you’re wondering), and poor old Einstein never uttered half the bon mots attributed to him. And John Steinbeck never said that in America “the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Not exactly, anyway: he…

I wished on it, made incantations, put my soul up for sale to whichever deity or demon would take it. It seems there’s passive luck and active luck and mathematics. They can work separately or together. Passive luck is the blessing-counter that runs on relativity and interpretation to dupe us out of bed every morning on account of still having two feet to stand on. Active luck is the chain of ironic fortune that plays out over a long time and can only be marvelled at in retrospect. Then there’s maths. By maths I mean the number of lotteries we have deliberate or unwitting tickets in, which is a lifelong game on a scale that includes being hit by a meteor, being born Celebrity X, and winning an actual lottery…

The idea that success in life might be little more than sheer luck invalidates much of what we are told from an early age. The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died and then the queen died of grief is a plot. This formula, derived from the English novelist E.M. Forster, is as well-known to creative writing students as ‘show don’t tell’ and ‘don’t quit your day job’. The thrust of Forster’s argument is that readers are engaged by narrative, and that narrative consists not only by a sequence of events but by causation – the because that links two events, the death of the king and the death of the queen, by a why: in this instance, grief. We’re all suckers for a…

Bailed after what he claimed was the accidental gunshot homicide of his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer (“Come on, Bill, let’s do our William Tell act”), William Burroughs entered the byzantine byways of the Mexican justice system of the early 1950s. At one juncture, the Primordial Hipster finds himself in the office of some high-rolling shyster or other, and tartly remarks – ventriloquising through his scarcely fictive alter-ego, the eponymous ‘Junkie’ – “Criminal law is one of the few professions in which the client pays for someone else’s luck.” It’s one of those emphatic statements that seem to combine – blend, one might even say – the aphoristic with the apodictic: old-folky wisdom with analytic bite. On examination, though, the proposition falls apart – why criminal law in particular? Surely many…

Why is everyone looking at screens all the time? Partly because our world is being built around screens more and more. We use them to speak to loved ones, do business, read ‘books’, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. So the time we used to spend on a bunch of different activities can now all be done using devices. This is one simple reason: the more of human life it’s possible to achieve using screens, the more time people are going to spend looking at them. But there’s also the fact that there are so many screens now, and they’re really easy to access. Plus, our screens aren’t like books or pictures or comics – they’re connected to a whole world of different possibilities. We can read a…

We sweat our oxen thin and the strength of our farmhands We crush; for our fields the plough is not enough. So full of labour and so spare of birth! Now the old ploughman shakes his head and sighs That all of his hard work has come to nothing, Compares the present days to days gone by And over and over touts his father’s luck. Disheartened, the planter of stooped and shrivelled vines Curses this bent of our age, and rattles on With his reproach: our elders, full of reverence, Managed to live with ease in narrow bounds, With much less acreage to a man; he doesn’t Grasp that, slowly, wasting away, all things Go to the tomb, worn out by the long years.…

Prize-linked savings This podcast explores the idea of Prize-Linked Savings (PLS). In a nutshell, PLS is a kind of savings account that pools some of the interest from all depositors and pays out a big lottery prize every month or so. It combines the thrill of the lottery with the safety of a savings account. It’s sometimes called a ‘no-lose lottery’ because a depositor is automatically entered into the lottery but can’t lose the original money she deposits. freakonomics.com/podcast/ www.freakonomics.com/podcast/freakonomicsradio-could-a-lottery-be-the-answer-toamericas-poor-savings-rate/ freakonomicsradio-could-a-lottery-be-the-answer-toamericas-poor-savings-rate/ Are there aliens? Astronomers from the Kepler spacecraft team recently announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets, all orbiting stars outside our solar system. The total number of such ‘exoplanets’ confirmed via Kepler and other methods now stands at more than 3,000. But planets are only the…

Every year, gamblers around the world place losing bets to the tune of half a trillion US dollars. Mathematics offers one clear message: don’t bet when the odds are stacked against you. But the experience of playing tells another story. Even when probability can explain every outcome – and even when we understand those odds – the mind shoehorns another layer of meaning into an already-complete equation. Here’s 8-year-old JP explaining to a researcher why he chose ‘heads’ in a coin flip: JP: I reckon both are as likely to come up... there’s equal possibilities. Investigator: So why did you pick ‘heads’? JP: It’s just my lucky... my lucky side. Investigator: So you think ‘heads’ are more likely to come up? JP: No, I reckon ‘heads’ are... and ‘tails’ are…

How many people do you have to put into a room before you have a more than 50 per cent chance that at least two of them share a birthday? Most people guess 184, as this is a bit more than half of 366. But the correct answer is actually 23. If you throw 23 randomly selected people into a room then it’s more likely than not that two of them share a birthday. I’ve never seen anybody ballpark this number, or anything remotely close to it. It’s a counterintuitive result. Of course, I’m hoping that I can convince you with the following argument (calculators out, please). So, we have a room of 23 people. We will actually calculate the probability that they all have different birthdays and show that…