sábado, 3 de julho de 2010

Prophet of the past (2010 South Africa)

It's quite common to start digging for logical reasons when something happened in a different way of our expectation, prognostic or desire. This is one of the many bequests of scientific thought, even stressed after the Enlightenment.
But there are some boundaries here that if crossed, turn us into a different universe. A fictional universe where we can ALWAYS (?) create models to predict everything and, indeed, have the expected results of whatever we want...ever.
This world does not exist at all, though.

Regardless, that's the magic truth used for self-help writers, fake experts and all kind of people who want to sell their useless theory to whoever believes in all type of bs. How to get rich, how to be saved, how to be healed or whatever. That's the way they keep making a lot of money and fame exploiting naive people.

But turning back to scientifical constraints, all models we can create and study in this world are limited to a pretty small number of variables that we can control. All the rest are uncontrollable and therefore should not be part of any model but as constants. That's the called "ceteris paribus" assumption. Having said that, no way to have a recipe for whatever we want, "bedroked" in the scientific method without considering many variables "ceteris paribus". Which end up in defining as not relevant, variables we know up-front are not measurable or manageable in a theoretic experience. Ultimately, we reduce them to constants with no further consequence in order to simplify our model. That's the way a scientific model works and from where we can take very good predictions (we sent the man to the moon, we have cars, computers, all based one way or another on this).

In opposite, If you started reading books telling you how to get rich, successful, world cup's champion, you were betrayed by a tricky thing. On those books they do not mention all the critical variants they pushed as constants or just did not consider. This could jeopardize their goal of hooking you up as a faithful customer, once you could become more skeptic risking to throw out the book after the 10th page. Of course they don't want you doing that.
Usually they don't mention this and if you're desolate for some reason, begging for help, you got traped on the easy rules to make the impossible turns possible (they can even teach you how to make wind or rain by clapping your hands). This might turn you into a person who normally believes in rules set in a pseudo-scientific stone making you get rid of your good sense, intuition and feeling for a while.

It's a fact there's no way to strictly follow a set of rules about something which has no a scientific model or can not be studied under the science light. For something like how to get rich or how to win the world cup, there's no a "ceteris paribus" model and therefore reliable predictions. Here, everthing is possible, literally.

I know as well that due to past failures there's a normal tendency to change our minds towards different approaches. About world cup again: after the failure of the best team that I've ever seen playing, in 1982, they gave them one more chance. All in all, it was beautiful, although not effective.
Another failure in 1986 and they burned that method.
Then we drown into a new dimension called Lazzaroni 's Dimension. On that one, you could easily bump into Darth Vader when walking in the street. It was also possible, at that time, to party with Jason, Freddy Krueger and all the dark side of the force's empire. Another debacle, actually the most tremendous one.
Came 1994 and a stupid theory was shout as reference after the last match and the championship. Only for sake of luck, in despite of Romario and/or Bebeto, his defender said he was the responsible for that success. He wrote a book believing on that and prescribing his formula. Of course nothing that really worths your time or attention. Again, people trying to say they can control the uncontrollable. Prophets that scream out the way to sort out the chaos. No feeling, no intuition or improvisation. Results as consequence of equations.
Unnoticed problem, nonetheless, was that soccer is not math; but this is nothing for someone who believed that "goal was only a detail".

Indeed, unless you're depending on a math equation (e.g. to send a rocket to Mars - and in this case you'd better rely on science), add in your toolbox your experience and own background and feelings. The molding for things to be done "by the book" are really good for mechanical and math stuff but don' t work in the same way for art, creativity and activities depending on talent and intuition.

So, be careful if you normally kiss you girlfriend as an actor, being only theatrically perfect. She might consider, after a while, to have a real "caliente" kiss from a man who does not exactly follow any guidance for dating, just let it go taking some chances and improvising.
And even worse for you if the name of your opponent is Robben, Sneijder or Diego Maradona. Arrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh... Watch out!

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