{"id":67201,"date":"2019-12-29T01:45:21","date_gmt":"2019-12-29T01:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=67201"},"modified":"2019-12-29T02:39:54","modified_gmt":"2019-12-29T02:39:54","slug":"secular-and-saecula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=67201","title":{"rendered":"Secular and Saecula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron <\/strong>&#8212; avoiding a tough piece of necessary writing by dealing with something simpler that conveniently fell into my hand ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>Why do I bother?<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Recall that the more information you get, the more disproportionately higher the ratio of noise to signal. Say, a little bit of information, 50% noise; a lot, 99.9% noise.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, in any field, the higher the number of academic publications the higher the ratio of garbage.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nntaleb\/status\/1210960607563984897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, you know <strong>Nassim Nicholas Taleb<\/strong>, he gave us <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Fragility\/dp\/081297381X\/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=Cj0KCQiAl5zwBRCTARIsAIrukdOZPL4ZmT9RXSjU7id35OFxgUXHTR20nxrtJcyzaJJZ8hmY3HbJ3gkaAiaoEALw_wcB&#038;hvadid=322116487624&#038;hvdev=c&#038;hvlocphy=9032466&#038;hvnetw=g&#038;hvpos=1t1&#038;hvqmt=b&#038;hvrand=9143813389145371112&#038;hvtargid=kwd-314686402780&#038;hydadcr=20615_10166859&#038;keywords=the+black+swan%27+by+nassim+taleb\">the concept of black swans<\/a>, very bright guy because he questions, questions, and the answers he gets from reality don&#8217;t always match with the expectations routinely offered in answer to the same questions.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Well, <strong>Taleb<\/strong>&#8216;s tweet cropped up in my feed within about a minute of <strong>Greg McMurry<\/strong> quoting the Oratorian priest<strong> Fr David Abernathy<\/strong>&#8216;s tweeting a quotation from <strong>St Charbel<\/strong>, which seemed to convey a very similar notion, only expressed in terms of spiritual rather than secular ratios between loss and gain:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Their buildings rise, their morality sinks. Their worldly goods increase, their values diminish. Their speeches multiply, their prayers grow scarce&#8230;. An edifice based on man may well rise, but it ends up crushing him.   St. Charbel <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5iZChni2ia\">pic.twitter.com\/5iZChni2ia<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; FrDavid AbernethyCO (@pghoratory) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pghoratory\/status\/1211008754122207235?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>I bother because seeing parallelisms and oppositions and taking note of them is one of the prime &#8220;moves&#8221; in creativity, and I want to be as primed to recognize such parallelisms, particularly when they cross disciplinary boundaries, as readily as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Bonus point because both <strong>St Charbel<\/strong> and <strong>Nassim Nicholas Taleb<\/strong> are of Lebanese origin. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; avoiding a tough piece of necessary writing by dealing with something simpler that conveniently fell into my hand ] . Why do I bother? Recall that the more information you get, the more disproportionately higher the ratio of noise to signal. Say, a little bit of information, 50% noise; a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[323,497,627,1151,670,758,533,1733,867,1665,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-swans","category-christianity","category-doublequotes","category-doubletweets","category-lebanon","category-quant-qualit","category-religion","category-saint","category-secular","category-taleb","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67201"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67208,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67201\/revisions\/67208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}