What I Reckon.com

I reckon two things today (I’m in a reckoning kinda mood): I reckon Louis C.K. is the finest stand-up comedian alive. And I reckon that we (Western society) have got to be the most sublimely fortunate people in history, and yet at the same time we’re also spoilt, blasé and inexplicably miserable (or, as Louis C.K. would put it, everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy).

I’ve got a wonderful video of Louis C.K. being interviewed on the TV show Conan to show you to illustrate both of my reckonings above, but first I want to ask you a question: How many plastic bottles did you throw away (or put in the recycling) today? You know, those P.E.T. bottles that soft-drinks and bottled water come in. How many? I threw away one today (after I finished my lunch), and there are another three in my recycling box in my kitchen right now.

What have plastic bottles got to go with our collective unhappiness?

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I reckon the world has changed a lot since I was born.
I’ve been compiling a list of all the things that didn’t exist when I was born – things that have come into existence since the late Sixties (well, in Australia anyway).
I think there’s actually an endless number of them, so I’d like to invite all readers to add a few of your own… Read on »

I reckon Alanis Morissette hasn’t got a clue about the meaning of the word “Ironic”.  Which is ironic, seeing as she wrote a song about it.
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I reckon time-travel – the sort we see in science-fiction stories and movies – is simply not possible. It is not possible – no matter how advanced your technology – to invent a machine that can transport a human being back in time. The article below is the transcript of a presentation on Time-Travel I gave on Wednesday, June 1st 2005 at the Philorum Philosophy forum.

Synopsis Is time-travel possible?  In both directions?  Is it just a matter of “time” before we fulfil the sci-fi writers’ predictions and invent some kind of time-machine?  Or is it some sort of philosophical or scientific impossibility, no matter how advanced our technology? What’s the difference between a paradox and a causal loop?  Does time-travel violate free-will? Read on »

I reckon everyone should have at least one quote attributed to them before they die. Here’s two of mine…

1. Reliability is to the future what honesty is to the past

A “reliable” person is someone who talks about the future and what they say turns out to be true (e.g. “I will be there at 7:00pm”). An “honest” person is someone who talks about the past and what they say turns out to be true (e.g. “I’ve never cheated on you”). The two terms represent both sides of the issue of “trust”: i.e. You can trust a person only if they are both honest and reliable. Most people think trust is only about honesty. I disagree. In fact I’d go so far as to say that trust has very little to do with honesty, and that it’s mostly about reliability (chiefly because when you say you “trust” someone, you’re thinking about how they’re going to act in the future).

2. Worry is to the future what regret is to the past

“Worry” is a feeling of unease about something unpleasant that might happen in the future, and what you might be able to do about it. “Regret” is a feeling of unease about something unpleasant that has happened in the past, and what you might have done about it. Both are equally futile and equally useless wastes of energy.

I reckon the world as we know it will be ending shortly. I’ve felt this for some time now. I think it started back when I was a kid, but I first got a solid sense of it in 1988, when I was 23. What am I talking about here? The World War III notion that’s been kicking around since the 1950s? Not really, no. The biblical Apocalypse/Armageddon idea that was supposed to happen in the year 2000? Perhaps, but not exactly. How about the ecological meltdown that the environmentalists have been warning us is due any day? Entirely possible, but I’m not sure. In fact, I really have no solid sense of the actual nature of this event. I just know it’s coming. Furthermore, I think I know when it’s coming. Sometime around 2012. I know I’m not the only person in the world to believe that – there’s an entire sub-culture of people out there that have a thing about 2012. I’m not really one of them. As I said, I’ve felt like this since at least the 80s, probably the 70s. There was no such sub-culture around back then, nor do I exchange ideas with such people. This is just me. Read on »

I reckon this one’s almost too simple to be true:  Expectations are the root of all unhappiness.  I’ve been thinking about this for a few years now, and I’ve yet to come up with a counter-example.  The only time we’re ever unhappy is when we had an expectation that our lives would go a certain way, and that expectation wasn’t met.
Conversely, of course, whenever we’re happy it’s because one of our expectations was exceeded.
Another way of saying this is that every unhappiness you’re feeling today can be traced back to an expectation you had some time in the past – an expectation that wasn’t met – and that if something’s making you happy today, it’s because you didn’t expect that thing (event, person, object, relationship, etc) to turn out as well as it did.
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This particular ramblings episode was supposed to be a vast and broad-reaching dissertation on the future of mankind. Just some light reading before tea-time. I had (still have) this vision of how unrecognisable the human race will become over the next thousand years or so. Technological, sociological and spiritual advances were to be melded together to eventually outline the ultimate human destiny, aiming for the time when we truly mature as a species. I planned to write some sort of future history of mankind.
But I never finished it. It was too huge, too vast, too much work. Maybe I’ll write it one day and turn it into a book, or something. It’s still a topic that fascinates me.
I still wanted to put something up on the net, so I decided to post just one small excerpt – the immediate future of computers. Certainly not the most exciting area to focus on, nor have I looked very far ahead – maybe fifty years or so, but the predictions I’ve made herein are fairly specific, they’re the most likely of all the predictions in my opus to actually come true, and if they do, they’ll impact everyone alive today rather than distant generations. And they’re still mildly confronting. So have a read, and, once again, let me know what you think.
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I reckon I think about love a lot. I don’t suppose I’m unusual in that regard – it’s probably one of the most thought-about topics in the history of – well – history. One thing I’ve noticed about myself and my musings on love is that no matter what age I am, I always seem to think that I’ve finally got some sort of true understanding of this love thing. You know, what love is, how to recognise it, what it means to be in love, etc, etc. The problem is, every couple of years my ideas change again, and I wonder how my previous conclusions could have been so simplistic and naïve.
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I reckon there’s a question of decorum that has never been satisfactorily answered. Any reader who finds the word fart offensive should stop reading about seven words ago, for my question indeed deals with the breath of the nether regions. And the question is this: What length of time should a reasonably decent fellow wait before openly farting in the presence of a new girlfriend? In other words, at what point in the relationship could he consider himself, statistically speaking, safe from retribution, and break out a good old bottie-burp? Fair question, right?
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