How can anyone know so much, and yet be so wrong?

The question above was asked by a friend of mine, who had just read an article by a political opponent. The article was full of facts, details, generalisations and references. And yet, according to my friend, the conclusion was completely insane.

Funnily enough, there is a certain negative correlation between the number of facts presented and good judgement.

If one gets a political idea, one sometimes gets hooked up. One talks about it to friends and strangers and tries to convince them. And the more one has tried to convince others, the more difficult it is to admit defeat and change opinion.

So to back up one's opinion, one looks up facts supporting it. Lots of facts. Anywhere. The more facts you have to back it up, the better you feel about it. Of course, your selection of facts is heavily biased, as you only are looking for things backing up your side.

If your opinion had been sound to start with, it is likely that you could have promoted it without obscure facts, but here an emergency fact collection is necessary.

Then you sit down to write an article promoting your views. Of course you use your knowledge - your facts. List them. Stress them. Repeat them. The reader is fairly likely to be impressed by the amount of information, and he will adopt your opinion himself.

If you want further proof that the sheer number of facts does not correspond to the author's judgement, just read this blog again. Here is not one single fact, and yet I am absolutely right.

Japanese bittersweet

Celastrus orbiculatus is a vine, which comes from East Asia. It is called Oriental Bittersweet, Asiatic Bittersweet, Japanese Bittersweet or Oriental Staff vine in English. It is not closely related with the Solanum dulcamara, which also is known as Bittersweet.

The Japanese name is tsuru ume modoki, which means more or less "creeping plumb fake". The kanji are 蔓梅擬. However, like many plant names it is often written with katakana, ツルウメモドキ, or as a mix of characters, both kanji and kana: 蔓梅もどき.

Why I blog about this? What a question! I think this is an important issue the world should know about.

Géopolitique

One of my favorite podcasts is Géopolitique from France Inter. It is the journalist Bernard Guetta, who comes with interesting, thought provoking and wrong statements about world politics. Everything is presented as serious facts, and I'm sure most of his listeners believe him. He is as far as anyone can be from being an agnostic. Just listen to him informing you what "the Russians" think of Boris Yeltsin (Борис Николаевич Ельцин) or "the Israelis" think of Bush (any bush). There is no trace of any nuance there. All 100 million Russians think exactly the same, if you are to believe m Guetta. This oversimplification of reality is what makes this podcast so easy to listen to. The simplicity of lies is so much smoother to the ears than all the nitty gritty details of reality. I highly recommend it.

Without social conventions

Imagine a world without any social conventions - a world where you could do anything you wanted without caring about what other people thought, without any risk for any haughty looks or punishments, no matter what you did. I know just what I would do in such a world: Have red wine to fish. But don't tell anyone!

Gestures

It seems very clear that the character 水 is an illustration not of what water actually looks like, but of what gestures one makes with one's hands, when one wants to describe it to foreigners.

Evaluation

If you want to know if you are good, it is no use asking your pupils. You have to ask your teachers.

If you are too good to have teachers, you are not very good at judging yourself.

17 years

Scientists could have shown, if they only had bothered, that an object that has lasted for 17 years is likely to last for ever. If you have had a car or a stereo for 17 years without problems, then it is likely that it never ever will break.

That's why you should never through away things you have owned for more than 17 years.

When I realised this some time ago (just after breakfast), I set up a scheme for my apartment. Every year in December, I go through all things I have owned for 15 to 16 years. The ones I have never used, I throw away. The ones I have used I also throw away, otherwise my apartment might fill up to the brink with useful quality articles. They may be good, but I value space more than things.

Searching in life is easier than on the net

One day I sat down to look for something on the world wide web. I opened my favourite search engine and for once went to the "Advanced Search" page.

To my surprise they had added the following parameters:

Sort by:

• Quality
• Intelligence
• Originality
• Truthfulness

Then I woke up of course.

Thicker is better

At the company where my sister works, there is a group of analysts with the task to estimate future trends. The manager of that group had a problem measuring the performance of his employees. How do you measure the quality of predictions?

The solution was simple: he uses the number of written pages. The more pages, the better the analyst.

The best in the group managed to produce 700 pages of estimations in one week. So far no one has managed to read more than the first half of the first page, because it is so boring and incomprehensible, but his manager has very good hope that they one day will be able to use the data for something.

Each has his own skills

The farmer does not blame the cow for not laying enough eggs.