Lawyer vs Scientist

The default state of our brain is that of a lawyer, constantly feeding data into our belief system. Picking and choosing data to fit our mental image of something.
Whereas, the trained/evolved state of mind would be that of a scientist, where data comes in as is and it helps in either accepting or rejecting our mental hypothesis.
So, ultimately, our inner struggle is to balance these two opposing and contradicting mental states. Some examples from personal experience. When my wife was pregnant, we used take walks in the mall and we will notice a lot of other pregnant women as well. Now that we have our son, when we take a walk now, we notice lot of couples with stroller and baby around the same age as ours. I was contemplating buying a jeep and these days I notice at least 4-5 jeeps on the road. They were all there, hidden in the random chaos of our daily life but what we notice and what leaves an impression in our mind is to a large extent our choice. There is no cosmic intervention but a sampling of events from an infinite number of random collections.

For example, when someone fighting cancer recovers through a series of chemo therapies and other diagnosis carried out by doctors, nurses and scientists what does he do? He thinks it's a blessing from God and donates to local church, temple, mosque,....strange! Should not he be donating to the development of science so that the same set of miracles can be passed on to others. I feel that we don't want to praise and truly be happy for another fellow human being from the bottom of our heart. That's why we always need a divine intervention to justify our actions.

[Inspired by: The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer]

An Advertisement Idea

A stunningly beautiful woman dressed wonderfully walks into a bar filled only with 'ugly' guys, dressed shabbily. Everyone in the bar says 'Hi' to her and all of them shows off their crystal clean and perfect teeth. When the woman responds back with 'Hi', she ends up showing her 'ugly' teeth, reducing the effect of her beauty and feeling unwanted.

Bottomline: Take care of your teeth, an ad for toothpaste, and general dental hygiene(special note to myself)!

Jack of all trades and master of many

America is a country of superlatives. Americans don't miss a chance to label something as the largest, brightest, tallest, biggest etc. etc. I remember seeing the world's tallest thermometer on my way to Las Vegas, in Baker, California. An inch of a place ready to brag about it's size of 'something'. Very nice.
There is a constant worry and fear that America is slipping away from being the most powerful nation in the world. I am sure that there is data to support that hypothesis. It's a good sign to know when you are slipping away. Being born & brought up in India, I know what complacency can do to you. A false belief of everything is okay and no need to worry is diabolical. A healthy worry or optimistic paranoia makes you think multiple times before making a choice. Anyway. Off topic.

In the increasingly knowledge based economy, ideas and innovation play a bigger role and while there is a depth of knowledge, there is also a breadth of knowledge. While it is very important that you have a sound understanding of a domain, but, it is becoming increasingly more important that you understand multiple domains (not the usual jack of all trades and master of none but more like jack of all trades and master of many). Leonardo Da Vinci was one such example. He was probably as much of a scientist or technologist as he was a painter. At some point, specialization kicked off, and we ventured into specialized domains. Now, the time has come to merge them back because, otherwise, just by looking at a part of the problem leads to an incomplete solution. So, I think it's okay to be not being number 1 in something but 2nd , 3rd or 4th is also fine. Because, the time, effort and in general resource required to be number one is way more than being 2nd, 3rd or 4th in something. But, the advantage may not be as much. There is a marginal difference in output gain but you will be in public scrutiny and intense pressure to be number one all the time. It might be a blow to ego but it's a good thing in the long run. Like the investment philosophy of diversification(not keeping all eggs in one basket), knowledge diversification will also works it's magic.