I use three sites based here in the UK to check my credit rating. Experian which only gives you a score for free, you have to pay for full access, which I'm not going to do. CreditWise by Capital One which is powered by Equifax which gives you more information and is also free, and I use Credit Karma [formerly Noddle] most of all which is powered by TransUnion [formerly CallCredit]. There are premium offerings by each, but I only use the free levels in each product because that's all I need.
Credit Karma gives the most information for free, and it was the site I used first [as Noddle] before any of the others. Since I started paying attention to my credit score however I have realised how infuriating it actually is. You would think it would remain somewhat fixed or would improve over time as long as your circumstances didn't change much, but that's not the case, it fluctuates and often with no rhyme nor reason as to why.
Fluctuations aside however, the thing I find most perplexing and causes me the most consternation is the fact that all three return completely different scores, and some things appear on one but not the other. My credit score is 200 points lower on Equifax than it is on CallCredit and the CallCredit score is about 50 points lower than the Experian score. This makes the whole management of credit even more confusing.
"Why should you care?" most people ask, well if you get credit and accept that as the best deal you will ever get then you will waste hundreds, if not thousands of pounds in interest over time. Credit issuers have 0% offers you can take advantage of in order to reduce or even avoid interest entirely. Knowing what impacts your credit score can increase your chances of approval and allow you to save yourself money in the long run.
I was never this conscious of my credit score until a few years ago when I spent a year working for a credit card company in their call centre and realised how these systems actually work. I really had my eyes opened to how much they exploit people for profit, which made me adamant that I would minimize the profit they made from me wherever I could and maximize the amount of credit I could access at the lowest cost in the process.
There are two pieces of advice I would give anyone out there who wants to improve their finances. First, know your score and know what is impacting it. Second, whenever anything goes wrong, complain, even if you are in the wrong, complain anyway. Most credit card companies will refund fees and charges if you ask them to, you have to ask though, they won't offer to do it. To the point on complaining, they are charged a fine by the financial ombudsman for any complaint they cannot resolve within 8 weeks regardless of who is at fault. Most credit card companies will appease you before the 8 week period is up to avoid the fine - unless the amount being discussed is more than the fine - so as a general rule if the amount you want to complain about is less than a few hundred pounds then complain.
As for the staff that work in their call centres, be patient with them. In almost all situations they don't actually work for the bank you're calling, but a third party company that owns the call centre. There's a limit to what they can do, using computer systems that don't show them everything, and often only let them see but not edit details. Just remember at the end of the day it's a person on the other side of the line, who is just doing their job. Most people will be understanding if you just explain yourself. Banks have so many bad practices and the staff of these call centres are under as much pressure as you are as a customer. In an ideal world there would be no need for credit but life is expensive and it's not always possible to wait to buy the things we need to survive. Credit is often seen as an indulgence or a frivolity, but for many people it is the only way they can survive on the finances they have. Most people who work in these call centres understand that, they have to work after all, they aren't wealthy enough not to have the luxury to choose not to. There's a human on the other side - for now at least - appeal to the humanity.
Up is Down, Black is White
If you play 5 notes on a piano each an octave higher than the last, a person who hears this scale would perceive it to be happy. If you play 5 notes on a piano each an octave lower than the last, a person who hears this scale would perceive it to be sad. The progression creates an emotive connection. From this you could posit that in life things that go up are happy and things that go down are sad, except life is like a roller coaster, where quite literally the fall can be the enjoyment. The best part of a roller coaster is the plunge and the speed that creates a rush and releases adrenaline, there is no rush when climbing slowly.
You could posit then that direction alone doesn't determine happiness but rather speed which creates exhilaration determines whether we have a positive or negative experience. Again however, this doesn't hold true in practice, the faster you eat, the less enjoyment you get from the food you eat, the slower you eat the more you get to relax and enjoy the experience.
You soon come to the conclusion that direction, and speed, and all manner of measurements as a means to achieving happiness are not conclusive. Sooner or later you have to conclude that happiness is relative, defined by where you are, where you were, and where you want to be - or whether you are moving towards the place you want to be. "Up" in the physical sense only becomes an up side in the metaphorical sense if it is the direction you want to go, otherwise up can be down. That argument is one that is paradoxical because of the limitation of language in expressing complex ideas that are easier to think about than they are to explain.
With such relativism playing such a pivotal role in our lives you soon begin to question why we deal in absolutes at all. We define rich and poor in absolute terms, we define happy and sad too in absolutes. The reality is happy and sad, rich and poor don't exist, what really exists are the relative comparisons of happier, sadder, richer, poorer, all in respect of the state we were in, or the state we want to be in. This extends far beyond our emotions and our social standing but into the very perceptions of the world we have. Hot and cold, black and white, sharp and soft, none of these absolutes actually exist when you begin to break down the language construct. Something is blacker than something else, or whiter than something else, "black" and "white" in and of themselves don't exist - if you've ever tried to buy a "black" jumper and a "black" pair of trousers and compared them side by side the variation in colour tone is apparent, there is no definitive example that all others need to conform to in order to truly qualify as absolute. Everything is relative.
There is an attempt at least as far as the colour black is concerned to actually find an absolute in practice. The Vantablack project developed by Surrey NanoSystems is a research project that has created a material that is blacker than black, designed to absorb as much light as physically possible. The extremity of this material can be demonstrated when you see 3D objects coated in it which completely lose their form and definition. So little light escapes its surface that our brains don't know how to deal with what we see. The brain interprets what it sees as a "hole" in our vision and is perplexed at it. You can watch videos of this material in action, although there is a limit to how black something can be on your computer screen due to the way the hardware works, nevertheless the complete lack of light is somewhat unsettling and entrancing all at the same time.
You could posit then that direction alone doesn't determine happiness but rather speed which creates exhilaration determines whether we have a positive or negative experience. Again however, this doesn't hold true in practice, the faster you eat, the less enjoyment you get from the food you eat, the slower you eat the more you get to relax and enjoy the experience.
You soon come to the conclusion that direction, and speed, and all manner of measurements as a means to achieving happiness are not conclusive. Sooner or later you have to conclude that happiness is relative, defined by where you are, where you were, and where you want to be - or whether you are moving towards the place you want to be. "Up" in the physical sense only becomes an up side in the metaphorical sense if it is the direction you want to go, otherwise up can be down. That argument is one that is paradoxical because of the limitation of language in expressing complex ideas that are easier to think about than they are to explain.
With such relativism playing such a pivotal role in our lives you soon begin to question why we deal in absolutes at all. We define rich and poor in absolute terms, we define happy and sad too in absolutes. The reality is happy and sad, rich and poor don't exist, what really exists are the relative comparisons of happier, sadder, richer, poorer, all in respect of the state we were in, or the state we want to be in. This extends far beyond our emotions and our social standing but into the very perceptions of the world we have. Hot and cold, black and white, sharp and soft, none of these absolutes actually exist when you begin to break down the language construct. Something is blacker than something else, or whiter than something else, "black" and "white" in and of themselves don't exist - if you've ever tried to buy a "black" jumper and a "black" pair of trousers and compared them side by side the variation in colour tone is apparent, there is no definitive example that all others need to conform to in order to truly qualify as absolute. Everything is relative.
There is an attempt at least as far as the colour black is concerned to actually find an absolute in practice. The Vantablack project developed by Surrey NanoSystems is a research project that has created a material that is blacker than black, designed to absorb as much light as physically possible. The extremity of this material can be demonstrated when you see 3D objects coated in it which completely lose their form and definition. So little light escapes its surface that our brains don't know how to deal with what we see. The brain interprets what it sees as a "hole" in our vision and is perplexed at it. You can watch videos of this material in action, although there is a limit to how black something can be on your computer screen due to the way the hardware works, nevertheless the complete lack of light is somewhat unsettling and entrancing all at the same time.
Naivety vs Honesty
What's the difference between naivety and honesty? When it comes to honesty, the definition we use most often is to measure the level of truthfulness of someone's responses, or conversely, to measure the level of deception we perceive to have been employed. If you ask a question and someone replies with truth then they are considered honest, and conversely if you ask someone a question and we perceive deception in their response then they are deemed to be dishonest - it's important to note here that the latter deals with perception, not reality, as you need to know the actual answer in order to measure their honesty, whether we deem someone dishonest often has no bearing on the underlying truthfulness of that person, there need only exist doubt. Of course you can immediately see that there is a problem here, that honesty encompasses more than just responses, it also applies to actions and behaviours, it's not just about right and wrong.
As for naivety, this we often define as the act of taking something complex and reducing it to something simple. Some would argue that naivety necessitates childishness but I would argue this isn't the case, I would instead argue that naivety is the acceptance of a simple answer as being complete. If we take political issues that are complex and ask simple questions then we are sometimes perceived as being naive, there is a tendency here to label someone who asks those simple questions as naive as judgement for thinking you could give them a simple answer to a question you regard as broaching a complex issue. I would go further and argue in these situations it's actually the person asking the question that is exhibiting honesty and you are the one displaying naivety in truth for not giving a simple answer as there is no requirement that your answer actually encompass every facet of the issue the question touches upon, it is your own perception that leads you to believe there is a requirement to do so.
I believe the reason naivety is used as the label applied in these situations is not because of what the person asked but quite simply because we can't answer the question and we don't want to admit that. The truth is if someone asks a simple question then you should be able to give a simple answer, without complicating the question or the answer it should serve only as a starting point for further discussion. If you are incapable or uncomfortable giving a simple answer then you might want to take a step back and look at the question and the answer and ask yourself why it makes you uncomfortable. When we think of children trying to learn about complex issues and subjects, we understand that their thought process usually follows a train of questions, i.e. they'll ask something simple and then continually ask questions until their understanding deepens or until their curiosity is satisfied - or perhaps most irritatingly for many adults, they will ask 'why' repeatedly until they reach the point where you can't actually provide them with an answer.
So, taking a step back for a moment, ask yourself, is a child naive for asking a question? The answer to that question should obviously be 'no', with the understanding that any attempt to further their own knowledge and understanding should be encouraged, and that a child's curiosity should never be seen as naive, yet the reality is whether we view it as naive seems to depend entirely on their age and our perception of whether or not we believe they should have figured out the answer by now for themselves, or that they should have learned by now not to ask that question - therein lies my greatest gripe with the concept of naivety, that ultimately it's not about what you ask or how you ask it, at it's core naivety is about authority and whether you are allowed to question it, if you're not allowed to question it then you're labelled as naive when you do.
One of the easiest examples of this that I can give here is that of quantitative easing. If you don't know what that is, it's a policy response used by central banks in extenuating economic circumstances which basically involves deliberately devaluing a currency to make it more appealing to outside investors or to boost exports. The theory goes, if you reduce it to something incredibly simple, that in extreme economic circumstances a central bank will print more money to stimulate the economy, reducing the value of the currency. If that doesn't make sense then imagine that I have 10 tonnes of gold in a vault and print 10 tickets each entitles you to 1/10th of the gold, when quantitative easing is used I can print another 90 tickets so that 100 tickets exist in total, each one ends up being worth 1/100th of the gold. This in theory is what happens when quantitative easing is used, or at least it would be if the value of the currency was linked to something tangible like gold - something that is actually quite rare, this is known as the gold standard and it has a lot of problems, namely that you can't supply enough gold to match the growth of the economy so it's not practical, instead the value of most currencies is determined by foreign exchange markets that float the currency in a similar way to shares of a company.
Returning to the concept of naivety, when a child asks the question "If they run out of money why don't they just print more?" - most people will immediately recognise the issue isn't that simple, but understanding that the child has a limited understanding of finance and economics, they would likely attempt to explain why you can't just do that. The trouble is, in this situation when asked this question, an honest answer is simple - "Sometimes they do" - that's an appropriate response to give to a child as it reduces the complexity of the concept to something simple in response, it's not all encompassing and doesn't deal with all the facets of quantitative easing but the point is it doesn't have to, it need only answer the question that was asked. How we answer that question however changes with the age of the person who asked it in the first place, the older they become the more we begin to perceive them as naive for asking that question when in reality the child who asked it in our first scenario did so because of genuine curiosity, they had an honest question and we attempted to answer it without judgement, but we don't extend that grace to adults.
We conflate naivety with honesty, when we're asked simple questions about complex issues that we can't give simple answers to, then we perceive the one who asks as being naive. We do this because we don't know the answer, not because the person asking exhibited any behaviour that truly merits being labelled naive.
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer. This alone isn't a difficult concept to grasp, but it is something we afford to children and people we perceive as still learning about the world. Maybe if we weren't so quick to label people as naive when they had honest questions then we might actually evolve into a society that still values learning beyond the halls of academia. Venture into any forum or website that specialises in any given field and start asking questions and you will very quickly be met with indignation. Those who already know, or who have gained an understanding of a topic that is complex will deride those who ask simple questions - because they have forgotten how to approach things without complication and give simple responses. I think one of the reasons why this is the case is because there is an intellectual elitism that emerges, where individuals treat their knowledge the way many people treat money, the more of it they acquire, the more they hold disdain for those without it and attempt to separate themselves and prevent those with aspirations who they deem unworthy.
I believe society as a whole has reached this point, particularly in regards to information. As the Internet has become more ubiquitous in our lives, the access to information we have has also grown. To that end, many more people now have access to information that they may not understand, the trouble is when they ask questions, rather than taking the time to explain and educate those who ask, society as a whole seems to respond first and foremost with the belief that they should go and figure it out for themselves - the real problem here is that there are no elements of verification or validation with self-teaching, if a false conclusion is made without someone with greater understanding present who is able to correct that mistake, the individual will continue to build upon that broken foundation until they have built up a fundamentally flawed understanding of complex issues. The greater the weight of understanding that rests on that broken foundation, the harder it becomes to remove it or fix it after the fact. The result is that we end up with a society where people hold their beliefs so deeply that it becomes impossible to challenge them as doing so would cause the whole thing to fall apart, so much to the point where the builder recognises this and will not only prevent you from ever getting near the foundation but will become actively aggressive in the process.
What is the solution? There are only 2 in so far as I can see, the first is to limit the access of information so that it is only accessible in environments where it will be given the context necessary to process it, or the second is to require individuals to demonstrate an understanding of the information that they request, in order to ensure that the information is only accessed by those who have the understanding necessary to process it. The trouble with both of these solutions is that neither one would prevent those who access it from then disseminating false information afterwards safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of people they pass the information on to will not be able to verify it for themselves - although it is worth noting here that transparency and verification in and of itself does not ensure security or accuracy, if you take open source software for example, disclosing the source code will only provide both of these things if those who wish to use it take the time to read it, are able to understand it, or have a wide enough community of people who are informed who can do this for them. Transparency in and of itself is not a panacea.
As for naivety, this we often define as the act of taking something complex and reducing it to something simple. Some would argue that naivety necessitates childishness but I would argue this isn't the case, I would instead argue that naivety is the acceptance of a simple answer as being complete. If we take political issues that are complex and ask simple questions then we are sometimes perceived as being naive, there is a tendency here to label someone who asks those simple questions as naive as judgement for thinking you could give them a simple answer to a question you regard as broaching a complex issue. I would go further and argue in these situations it's actually the person asking the question that is exhibiting honesty and you are the one displaying naivety in truth for not giving a simple answer as there is no requirement that your answer actually encompass every facet of the issue the question touches upon, it is your own perception that leads you to believe there is a requirement to do so.
I believe the reason naivety is used as the label applied in these situations is not because of what the person asked but quite simply because we can't answer the question and we don't want to admit that. The truth is if someone asks a simple question then you should be able to give a simple answer, without complicating the question or the answer it should serve only as a starting point for further discussion. If you are incapable or uncomfortable giving a simple answer then you might want to take a step back and look at the question and the answer and ask yourself why it makes you uncomfortable. When we think of children trying to learn about complex issues and subjects, we understand that their thought process usually follows a train of questions, i.e. they'll ask something simple and then continually ask questions until their understanding deepens or until their curiosity is satisfied - or perhaps most irritatingly for many adults, they will ask 'why' repeatedly until they reach the point where you can't actually provide them with an answer.
So, taking a step back for a moment, ask yourself, is a child naive for asking a question? The answer to that question should obviously be 'no', with the understanding that any attempt to further their own knowledge and understanding should be encouraged, and that a child's curiosity should never be seen as naive, yet the reality is whether we view it as naive seems to depend entirely on their age and our perception of whether or not we believe they should have figured out the answer by now for themselves, or that they should have learned by now not to ask that question - therein lies my greatest gripe with the concept of naivety, that ultimately it's not about what you ask or how you ask it, at it's core naivety is about authority and whether you are allowed to question it, if you're not allowed to question it then you're labelled as naive when you do.
One of the easiest examples of this that I can give here is that of quantitative easing. If you don't know what that is, it's a policy response used by central banks in extenuating economic circumstances which basically involves deliberately devaluing a currency to make it more appealing to outside investors or to boost exports. The theory goes, if you reduce it to something incredibly simple, that in extreme economic circumstances a central bank will print more money to stimulate the economy, reducing the value of the currency. If that doesn't make sense then imagine that I have 10 tonnes of gold in a vault and print 10 tickets each entitles you to 1/10th of the gold, when quantitative easing is used I can print another 90 tickets so that 100 tickets exist in total, each one ends up being worth 1/100th of the gold. This in theory is what happens when quantitative easing is used, or at least it would be if the value of the currency was linked to something tangible like gold - something that is actually quite rare, this is known as the gold standard and it has a lot of problems, namely that you can't supply enough gold to match the growth of the economy so it's not practical, instead the value of most currencies is determined by foreign exchange markets that float the currency in a similar way to shares of a company.
Returning to the concept of naivety, when a child asks the question "If they run out of money why don't they just print more?" - most people will immediately recognise the issue isn't that simple, but understanding that the child has a limited understanding of finance and economics, they would likely attempt to explain why you can't just do that. The trouble is, in this situation when asked this question, an honest answer is simple - "Sometimes they do" - that's an appropriate response to give to a child as it reduces the complexity of the concept to something simple in response, it's not all encompassing and doesn't deal with all the facets of quantitative easing but the point is it doesn't have to, it need only answer the question that was asked. How we answer that question however changes with the age of the person who asked it in the first place, the older they become the more we begin to perceive them as naive for asking that question when in reality the child who asked it in our first scenario did so because of genuine curiosity, they had an honest question and we attempted to answer it without judgement, but we don't extend that grace to adults.
We conflate naivety with honesty, when we're asked simple questions about complex issues that we can't give simple answers to, then we perceive the one who asks as being naive. We do this because we don't know the answer, not because the person asking exhibited any behaviour that truly merits being labelled naive.
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer. This alone isn't a difficult concept to grasp, but it is something we afford to children and people we perceive as still learning about the world. Maybe if we weren't so quick to label people as naive when they had honest questions then we might actually evolve into a society that still values learning beyond the halls of academia. Venture into any forum or website that specialises in any given field and start asking questions and you will very quickly be met with indignation. Those who already know, or who have gained an understanding of a topic that is complex will deride those who ask simple questions - because they have forgotten how to approach things without complication and give simple responses. I think one of the reasons why this is the case is because there is an intellectual elitism that emerges, where individuals treat their knowledge the way many people treat money, the more of it they acquire, the more they hold disdain for those without it and attempt to separate themselves and prevent those with aspirations who they deem unworthy.
I believe society as a whole has reached this point, particularly in regards to information. As the Internet has become more ubiquitous in our lives, the access to information we have has also grown. To that end, many more people now have access to information that they may not understand, the trouble is when they ask questions, rather than taking the time to explain and educate those who ask, society as a whole seems to respond first and foremost with the belief that they should go and figure it out for themselves - the real problem here is that there are no elements of verification or validation with self-teaching, if a false conclusion is made without someone with greater understanding present who is able to correct that mistake, the individual will continue to build upon that broken foundation until they have built up a fundamentally flawed understanding of complex issues. The greater the weight of understanding that rests on that broken foundation, the harder it becomes to remove it or fix it after the fact. The result is that we end up with a society where people hold their beliefs so deeply that it becomes impossible to challenge them as doing so would cause the whole thing to fall apart, so much to the point where the builder recognises this and will not only prevent you from ever getting near the foundation but will become actively aggressive in the process.
What is the solution? There are only 2 in so far as I can see, the first is to limit the access of information so that it is only accessible in environments where it will be given the context necessary to process it, or the second is to require individuals to demonstrate an understanding of the information that they request, in order to ensure that the information is only accessed by those who have the understanding necessary to process it. The trouble with both of these solutions is that neither one would prevent those who access it from then disseminating false information afterwards safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of people they pass the information on to will not be able to verify it for themselves - although it is worth noting here that transparency and verification in and of itself does not ensure security or accuracy, if you take open source software for example, disclosing the source code will only provide both of these things if those who wish to use it take the time to read it, are able to understand it, or have a wide enough community of people who are informed who can do this for them. Transparency in and of itself is not a panacea.
Theory and Practice
"At least, that's how it works in theory, in practice however, things can be very different"
A theory is a structured belief. Sometimes that belief is empowered by blind faith, where it is held as true with no evidence to back it up, with the intent being to discern evidence through experience. Sometimes that belief is backed up by evidence in which case it becomes open faith, where the faith is not placed in the theory or the evidence themselves but in the body that supplied the evidence. You can minimize the amount of faith required by going as deep as you can and verifying evidence along the way, but unless you can follow that pursuit to its very end, it is unlikely that you will be able to check the work of everyone who came before you upon whom you have built.
A theory is a structured belief that represents an expected outcome or represents a logical or reasonable argument that has been made - whether that is flawed or not is irrelevant, the validity of a theory does not determine whether it is a theory, even theories which can be proven to be false are still theories even when disproved.
Theories often explain things in the context of ideal situations, or ideal scenarios. The reason they often fail in practice even when regarded as accurate and valid, is because a theory by its very nature is static and constant, whilst practice is dynamic and changing in the moment.
A theory once posited is fixed and does not change. Whenever you attempt to change all or part of it, you create a new theory in the process. You can force the new theory to replace the old one, and your changes can be as major or minor as you wish, but with each change and variation a new theory is being created and the old one supplanted - even when you refer to it by the same name and use it in the same context.
The implementation of a theory depends on which version is taken and tested. As we have said when put into practice it is often the case that a theory fails, even when it is regarded as accurate or correct. Practice by its very nature is dynamic, and creates new situations and new scenarios with each iteration. The most proficient algorithms designed to tackle things such as playing a game of Chess, do not attempt to create a rule for every possible scenario, instead they deal with probabilities, and work with three guiding factors. These are beliefs, desires, and intentions. These three factors define in the first instance the rules of the game, in the second instance the objective of the game, and in the third instance how the algorithm will attempt to achieve the first two.
When it comes to developing a theory we must make a commitment. If however we want to create a theory that can change over time, we need to develop a strategy instead. A strategy can be considered a dynamic theory. Strategies have a theoretical foundation but they factor in experience as they evolve. A strategy uses theory only for direction and guidance, it does not conform so strictly to it, and is able to rewrite that theory when new evidence comes along to contradict it. When this process is done in real-time on the spot it can be referred to as real time strategy.
Returning to the idea of a Chess game, as a game which has been around for centuries, some 1400 years, there are a plethora of sites and sources of information that attempt to explain the game and the theory that underpins it. One thing I see most frequently is the expression by learners that theories they are presented with "don't work in practice" and that they follow those theories to a T and they still lose. The reason for this is because Chess is a strategy game, and as such requires a strategy - something which is dynamic - not simply a theory - something which is static. If you want to get better at playing the game you need to develop your understanding of the game and your understanding of your opponent. Whether you play against a person, or a computer, the same principles or beliefs, desires, and intentions come into play. You need to be aware of their beliefs - the rules of the game, desires - what they want to achieve, and intentions - how they intend to achieve it. If you want to master Chess you need to pay as much attention to your opponent's game as you do your own.
This divergence between theory and practice is not something that is unique to gaming, both digital and physical. It is relevant to almost every part of our lives. Everyone is driven by these three things, in life in general not just when playing games. People have beliefs, desires, and intentions, and if you want to be able to predict what people will do then you need to be able to discern what those three things are for the people you want to observe. You need to think about things in much greater depth than you have before, or like someone who simply plays for fun and does not read of theories or strategies then you should just go with the flow and hope for the best.
A theory is a structured belief. Sometimes that belief is empowered by blind faith, where it is held as true with no evidence to back it up, with the intent being to discern evidence through experience. Sometimes that belief is backed up by evidence in which case it becomes open faith, where the faith is not placed in the theory or the evidence themselves but in the body that supplied the evidence. You can minimize the amount of faith required by going as deep as you can and verifying evidence along the way, but unless you can follow that pursuit to its very end, it is unlikely that you will be able to check the work of everyone who came before you upon whom you have built.
A theory is a structured belief that represents an expected outcome or represents a logical or reasonable argument that has been made - whether that is flawed or not is irrelevant, the validity of a theory does not determine whether it is a theory, even theories which can be proven to be false are still theories even when disproved.
Theories often explain things in the context of ideal situations, or ideal scenarios. The reason they often fail in practice even when regarded as accurate and valid, is because a theory by its very nature is static and constant, whilst practice is dynamic and changing in the moment.
A theory once posited is fixed and does not change. Whenever you attempt to change all or part of it, you create a new theory in the process. You can force the new theory to replace the old one, and your changes can be as major or minor as you wish, but with each change and variation a new theory is being created and the old one supplanted - even when you refer to it by the same name and use it in the same context.
The implementation of a theory depends on which version is taken and tested. As we have said when put into practice it is often the case that a theory fails, even when it is regarded as accurate or correct. Practice by its very nature is dynamic, and creates new situations and new scenarios with each iteration. The most proficient algorithms designed to tackle things such as playing a game of Chess, do not attempt to create a rule for every possible scenario, instead they deal with probabilities, and work with three guiding factors. These are beliefs, desires, and intentions. These three factors define in the first instance the rules of the game, in the second instance the objective of the game, and in the third instance how the algorithm will attempt to achieve the first two.
When it comes to developing a theory we must make a commitment. If however we want to create a theory that can change over time, we need to develop a strategy instead. A strategy can be considered a dynamic theory. Strategies have a theoretical foundation but they factor in experience as they evolve. A strategy uses theory only for direction and guidance, it does not conform so strictly to it, and is able to rewrite that theory when new evidence comes along to contradict it. When this process is done in real-time on the spot it can be referred to as real time strategy.
Returning to the idea of a Chess game, as a game which has been around for centuries, some 1400 years, there are a plethora of sites and sources of information that attempt to explain the game and the theory that underpins it. One thing I see most frequently is the expression by learners that theories they are presented with "don't work in practice" and that they follow those theories to a T and they still lose. The reason for this is because Chess is a strategy game, and as such requires a strategy - something which is dynamic - not simply a theory - something which is static. If you want to get better at playing the game you need to develop your understanding of the game and your understanding of your opponent. Whether you play against a person, or a computer, the same principles or beliefs, desires, and intentions come into play. You need to be aware of their beliefs - the rules of the game, desires - what they want to achieve, and intentions - how they intend to achieve it. If you want to master Chess you need to pay as much attention to your opponent's game as you do your own.
This divergence between theory and practice is not something that is unique to gaming, both digital and physical. It is relevant to almost every part of our lives. Everyone is driven by these three things, in life in general not just when playing games. People have beliefs, desires, and intentions, and if you want to be able to predict what people will do then you need to be able to discern what those three things are for the people you want to observe. You need to think about things in much greater depth than you have before, or like someone who simply plays for fun and does not read of theories or strategies then you should just go with the flow and hope for the best.
Pilots and Prototypes
I love to watch old TV shows, I've said this probably a million times. Whenever I watch them I usually find some structure or an order to watch them in. For example, watching the Treehouse of Horror episodes of The Simpsons back to back at Halloween, or watching every Christmas special of a series around Christmas time. For some series however I like to watch them start to finish. Whenever I've finished the show in its entirety I will leave it for weeks or months or even in some cases for years before I watch them again, to give the memory time to fade just a little and allow the content to remain engaging.
Whenever you go back and watch a series from start to finish however, you often get to see the progression and the evolution of the production value change over time in a condensed period that brings up new levels of scrutiny. In particular for shows which made their pilot episodes public, you get to see how the concept was reworked, and in some cases that is quite drastic. Sex And The City is one of my favourite old TV shows, but every time I go back to the beginning to rewatch it all, the first season always throws me initially. For those that have never watched it, in the first series there are soliloquies made by Carrie played by Sarah Jessica Parker which are played out on screen with the character herself looking directly at the camera and speaking to the viewer, breaking the fourth wall. This was abandoned after the first series, relying from then on upon the disembodied voice of the narrator, still voiced by Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie but not directly to the viewer. These narratives are framed as her writing for her column in a newspaper so even with narration it's incorporated into the plot, not directed at you in a way that breaks the fourth wall.
Pilots are usually one episode in a series, they are a proof of concept, a prototype if you will, and like most prototypes they are only intended to show the concept works, they're not intended to be the final product. Indeed the final product often ends up looking nothing like the prototype and the final production often ends up looking almost nothing like the pilot. Sex And The City is an example of what I would call a pilot series, where the first series, or season if you prefer, is in itself the pilot.
It's always interesting to see the origins of the things we like, but in a way that acknowledges the evolution rather than trying to create prologues and prequels to shoe horn in later to explain away that which was eventually accepted as cannon. As pilots have evolved as a concept over the years however, there is less tolerance for a lack of polish when it comes to the first production. If you want a series to be picked up now, the first episode must be representative of the series as a whole, that puts a lot of pressure on those making it to create a final product without the resources they would have if it were already picked up. It also makes it difficult to continue producing it at the same level as the pilot even after it is picked up, without compromising the integrity and continuity by the greater abundance of resources that become available. In other words you need to be consistent from the jump. There's no understanding or tolerance from the viewer or the studio, or anyone else of the fact it's only a pilot.
The same idea has been gathering traction outside of the entertainment industry. We live in a time where venture capital has never been more accessible both through traditional avenues and through innovative means such as crowd funding. Nevertheless that same expectation of gloss and polish persists, no-one wants to see a prototype, they want a final product from the start. The trouble with this mentality, just as with the entertainment industry is that often the bulk of the budget is spent on the first production, and the existing resources and techniques and research that was compiled for it is reused for the mass production phase. Meaning if there's a 95% / 5% split in first versus mass, then if you can actually produce the first product then arguably you don't need the mass production funds. This is why despite the prevalence of venture capital and its accessibility, approval still remains low. There is still a barrier to entry.
The only solution to this problem which people end up pursuing most often is to use marketing, and specifically sales teams, to try and pitch the idea in a convincing way without having a prototype or pilot at all. As you can imagine, this is incredibly difficult and that is why this isn't as widespread despite the cost being much lower, it relies entirely on psychology, and persuasion. So the question becomes, how capable are you at selling your idea?
Whenever you go back and watch a series from start to finish however, you often get to see the progression and the evolution of the production value change over time in a condensed period that brings up new levels of scrutiny. In particular for shows which made their pilot episodes public, you get to see how the concept was reworked, and in some cases that is quite drastic. Sex And The City is one of my favourite old TV shows, but every time I go back to the beginning to rewatch it all, the first season always throws me initially. For those that have never watched it, in the first series there are soliloquies made by Carrie played by Sarah Jessica Parker which are played out on screen with the character herself looking directly at the camera and speaking to the viewer, breaking the fourth wall. This was abandoned after the first series, relying from then on upon the disembodied voice of the narrator, still voiced by Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie but not directly to the viewer. These narratives are framed as her writing for her column in a newspaper so even with narration it's incorporated into the plot, not directed at you in a way that breaks the fourth wall.
Pilots are usually one episode in a series, they are a proof of concept, a prototype if you will, and like most prototypes they are only intended to show the concept works, they're not intended to be the final product. Indeed the final product often ends up looking nothing like the prototype and the final production often ends up looking almost nothing like the pilot. Sex And The City is an example of what I would call a pilot series, where the first series, or season if you prefer, is in itself the pilot.
It's always interesting to see the origins of the things we like, but in a way that acknowledges the evolution rather than trying to create prologues and prequels to shoe horn in later to explain away that which was eventually accepted as cannon. As pilots have evolved as a concept over the years however, there is less tolerance for a lack of polish when it comes to the first production. If you want a series to be picked up now, the first episode must be representative of the series as a whole, that puts a lot of pressure on those making it to create a final product without the resources they would have if it were already picked up. It also makes it difficult to continue producing it at the same level as the pilot even after it is picked up, without compromising the integrity and continuity by the greater abundance of resources that become available. In other words you need to be consistent from the jump. There's no understanding or tolerance from the viewer or the studio, or anyone else of the fact it's only a pilot.
The same idea has been gathering traction outside of the entertainment industry. We live in a time where venture capital has never been more accessible both through traditional avenues and through innovative means such as crowd funding. Nevertheless that same expectation of gloss and polish persists, no-one wants to see a prototype, they want a final product from the start. The trouble with this mentality, just as with the entertainment industry is that often the bulk of the budget is spent on the first production, and the existing resources and techniques and research that was compiled for it is reused for the mass production phase. Meaning if there's a 95% / 5% split in first versus mass, then if you can actually produce the first product then arguably you don't need the mass production funds. This is why despite the prevalence of venture capital and its accessibility, approval still remains low. There is still a barrier to entry.
The only solution to this problem which people end up pursuing most often is to use marketing, and specifically sales teams, to try and pitch the idea in a convincing way without having a prototype or pilot at all. As you can imagine, this is incredibly difficult and that is why this isn't as widespread despite the cost being much lower, it relies entirely on psychology, and persuasion. So the question becomes, how capable are you at selling your idea?
Feeling Intimidated
A while ago I was sent an article that I found quite interesting entitled "7 Signs Your Personality Is Intimidating Others" the thing I found most interesting about this is the question of whether or not that is a good or bad thing. According to the article, I have 6 of the 7 signs. I read people, I am often blunt, I am often in the minority, I'm generally not jealous, I like new opportunities, and I find it hard to tolerate stupid people. The only sign I didn't conform to is when it comes to excuses, I do actually make excuses and I do accept them from others when I deem them valid so I'm 6 for 7.
I've written before of how things like this are ultimately a matter of perception. In this case I would argue there are legitimate reasons why people would demonstrate these behaviours and personality traits without being intimidating at all, even those who demonstrate all 7 mentioned.
The problem with these types of articles is that they are open to interpretation but there will be people who accept them as fact. In other words you're meant to take it with a pinch of salt and accept it only as something to contemplate, not something to be conclusive. That's not the way many people will take the content however, there will be those who want to know the answer to the question and will use that guide to form a conclusion rather than accepting further study and exploration is needed before you can draw a conclusion.
I accept at times I can be intimidating but not for any of the reasons listed in the article. For me personally one of the most intimidating parts of my personality isn't a trait defined by personality at all - my intelligence. Perhaps this is better phrased in saying that my personality demonstrates the fact there is a higher intelligence behind it than you are probably used to engaging with.
I understand some people will read this and view me as arrogant or condescending for stating this. There's no way to really convey the sentiment at play here without coming off as such but I assure you it's not intended. When I grew up I was top of my class in most subjects or near the top. In my school years I had the highest grades I could get or near the highest. In my University years I got so bored with education that I got lost in the social side of life because I did not feel any challenge. I have been tested by Mensa the High IQ society and my result is in the top 1 percentile.
Do I know everything? No, I don't.
Do I make mistakes? Yes, I do.
Do I make errors that are obvious? Yes, I do.
Do people expect someone with a High IQ to answer the way I have, in general, no they don't. There is an expectation that you know everything, about everything. That was an aspiration as a child, but I quickly realised that wasn't possible, so I settled for knowing as much as I could about the things that interest me. That leads me to possessing answers to incredibly complex questions in fields that I enjoy exploring, and it leads me to a failure to answer even simple questions about fields of which I have no interest whatsoever or have not explored.
I try to adapt myself to my surroundings, and to the people I engage with. It's not possible to please everyone however and you shouldn't try to - if you do you are in for a lifetime of disappointment. The intimidating aspect of my personality shines through, or rather, looms like a dark cloud, over the interactions I have with others when they are perceived by those to whom I haven't catered my language and my presence. To give an example when discussing programming I get very technical about the subject matter with people I perceive to have a sufficient understanding of it to be able to engage on that level. When perceived by people who know nothing about programming, this becomes quite intimidating as they realise there is a deeper level of thought going on in my head than the language I use with them day to day would intimate.
Most people suffer from the same problem to varying extents. There is always something that people have a passion for, or that they know quite a bit about. They just never get the opportunity to let that show and let it shine through. This can be described as hidden talent, but it goes beyond our skills and abilities and penetrates the mind itself to the very foundation of thought and the process that underpins it. In other words, don't rely solely on someone's actions to give you an impression of what is going on inside their head, there is depth you can't imagine within everyone's mind, you just need to find an environment where you can dive in to be able to explore that depth and appreciate it fully.
I've written before of how things like this are ultimately a matter of perception. In this case I would argue there are legitimate reasons why people would demonstrate these behaviours and personality traits without being intimidating at all, even those who demonstrate all 7 mentioned.
The problem with these types of articles is that they are open to interpretation but there will be people who accept them as fact. In other words you're meant to take it with a pinch of salt and accept it only as something to contemplate, not something to be conclusive. That's not the way many people will take the content however, there will be those who want to know the answer to the question and will use that guide to form a conclusion rather than accepting further study and exploration is needed before you can draw a conclusion.
I accept at times I can be intimidating but not for any of the reasons listed in the article. For me personally one of the most intimidating parts of my personality isn't a trait defined by personality at all - my intelligence. Perhaps this is better phrased in saying that my personality demonstrates the fact there is a higher intelligence behind it than you are probably used to engaging with.
I understand some people will read this and view me as arrogant or condescending for stating this. There's no way to really convey the sentiment at play here without coming off as such but I assure you it's not intended. When I grew up I was top of my class in most subjects or near the top. In my school years I had the highest grades I could get or near the highest. In my University years I got so bored with education that I got lost in the social side of life because I did not feel any challenge. I have been tested by Mensa the High IQ society and my result is in the top 1 percentile.
Do I know everything? No, I don't.
Do I make mistakes? Yes, I do.
Do I make errors that are obvious? Yes, I do.
Do people expect someone with a High IQ to answer the way I have, in general, no they don't. There is an expectation that you know everything, about everything. That was an aspiration as a child, but I quickly realised that wasn't possible, so I settled for knowing as much as I could about the things that interest me. That leads me to possessing answers to incredibly complex questions in fields that I enjoy exploring, and it leads me to a failure to answer even simple questions about fields of which I have no interest whatsoever or have not explored.
I try to adapt myself to my surroundings, and to the people I engage with. It's not possible to please everyone however and you shouldn't try to - if you do you are in for a lifetime of disappointment. The intimidating aspect of my personality shines through, or rather, looms like a dark cloud, over the interactions I have with others when they are perceived by those to whom I haven't catered my language and my presence. To give an example when discussing programming I get very technical about the subject matter with people I perceive to have a sufficient understanding of it to be able to engage on that level. When perceived by people who know nothing about programming, this becomes quite intimidating as they realise there is a deeper level of thought going on in my head than the language I use with them day to day would intimate.
Most people suffer from the same problem to varying extents. There is always something that people have a passion for, or that they know quite a bit about. They just never get the opportunity to let that show and let it shine through. This can be described as hidden talent, but it goes beyond our skills and abilities and penetrates the mind itself to the very foundation of thought and the process that underpins it. In other words, don't rely solely on someone's actions to give you an impression of what is going on inside their head, there is depth you can't imagine within everyone's mind, you just need to find an environment where you can dive in to be able to explore that depth and appreciate it fully.
Not Anymore
I love nostalgia as much as the next person, I indulge in it quite often. Whenever you talk about old TV shows however, there is always one or two that crop up which people inevitably remark "you can't say that anymore" with regard to dialogue from the shows or jokes that were made which would solicit a backlash today. I take issue with the people who say this because they seem to be operating under the illusion that what is offensive today wasn't offensive before - it always was, the only difference is the people who it made light of now have a strong enough voice to be able to levy criticism upon you for it. They were offended by it before, they just didn't have the platform or the presence to be able to challenge you and ultimately that is what you're upset about, suppression, not freedom of expression.
There are a lot of TV shows which were commissioned decades ago that would never get commissioned today. Whilst you may criticize that fact, I am willing to bet if I was to go back several decades prior to those shows I could find other shows which would never have been commissioned even at the time you claim TV was supposedly free, most of which you would not challenge.
To put dates on these figures, I see many people younger than me today who are experiencing some TV shows from the 90s through streaming services and take issue with the humour and the subjects of that humour. There are those that will defend those 90s shows and say it was a different time and will even go so far as to criticize the fact that TV in their view has become too politically correct. Yet in the majority of cases those people who defend the 90s shows will fall silent or will object entirely to the suggestion that you return to the type of content that was commissioned decades previous in the 50s and 60s. They are content with the level of cultural victimization present in 90s shows but not with the level that existed in the 50s and 60s because that is too extreme for them.
What is actually being played out in these discussions is the concept of moral relativism. In other words you morality is relative to what you perceived as normal when you were raised and what you experienced. Subjectively you view what happened in the 90s as acceptable because you deemed it acceptable at the time and don't want to admit you found humour in something unacceptable, this leads you to continue defending it today even though you know it wouldn't be commissioned today. Likewise what came in the 50s and 60s was acceptable to those who watched it at the time, but to you in the 90s it was considered unacceptable which is why you're unwilling to go back to that extreme.
There comes a question you have to answer in order to settle the argument that is being played out and that is whether or not you believe morality is a scale. Is it possible to be a little bit immoral, or is immorality something that is black and white that either is, or is not? If you posit the former then you must accept that different people will perceive different things as immoral and their position on the scale will be determined by their tolerance. If you posit the latter then you must accept that there needs to be a criteria defined as to what is and is not immoral and that will inevitably be applied to the things you liked, and there will sooner or later be something you liked which will be classified as immoral under that definition.
I think a better resolution to this conflict would be to simply accept that the things that you deemed acceptable in the past belong in the past, and if you intend to bring them into the present you should fully expect it to be judged by present day standards. You don't expect archaic hardware to be able to perform at modern levels and be able to withstand everything you throw at it, so why do you expect the level of criticism today to be as accommodative? This doesn't just apply to content it can apply to production value too. There's a lot of content from decades passed which under a modern eye, in HD, looks absolutely abysmal. There's an understanding with these examples at least that things moved on, so why is there no understanding with morality that society has moved on, and that the thought processes of the past are no longer fit for purpose?
There are a lot of TV shows which were commissioned decades ago that would never get commissioned today. Whilst you may criticize that fact, I am willing to bet if I was to go back several decades prior to those shows I could find other shows which would never have been commissioned even at the time you claim TV was supposedly free, most of which you would not challenge.
To put dates on these figures, I see many people younger than me today who are experiencing some TV shows from the 90s through streaming services and take issue with the humour and the subjects of that humour. There are those that will defend those 90s shows and say it was a different time and will even go so far as to criticize the fact that TV in their view has become too politically correct. Yet in the majority of cases those people who defend the 90s shows will fall silent or will object entirely to the suggestion that you return to the type of content that was commissioned decades previous in the 50s and 60s. They are content with the level of cultural victimization present in 90s shows but not with the level that existed in the 50s and 60s because that is too extreme for them.
What is actually being played out in these discussions is the concept of moral relativism. In other words you morality is relative to what you perceived as normal when you were raised and what you experienced. Subjectively you view what happened in the 90s as acceptable because you deemed it acceptable at the time and don't want to admit you found humour in something unacceptable, this leads you to continue defending it today even though you know it wouldn't be commissioned today. Likewise what came in the 50s and 60s was acceptable to those who watched it at the time, but to you in the 90s it was considered unacceptable which is why you're unwilling to go back to that extreme.
There comes a question you have to answer in order to settle the argument that is being played out and that is whether or not you believe morality is a scale. Is it possible to be a little bit immoral, or is immorality something that is black and white that either is, or is not? If you posit the former then you must accept that different people will perceive different things as immoral and their position on the scale will be determined by their tolerance. If you posit the latter then you must accept that there needs to be a criteria defined as to what is and is not immoral and that will inevitably be applied to the things you liked, and there will sooner or later be something you liked which will be classified as immoral under that definition.
I think a better resolution to this conflict would be to simply accept that the things that you deemed acceptable in the past belong in the past, and if you intend to bring them into the present you should fully expect it to be judged by present day standards. You don't expect archaic hardware to be able to perform at modern levels and be able to withstand everything you throw at it, so why do you expect the level of criticism today to be as accommodative? This doesn't just apply to content it can apply to production value too. There's a lot of content from decades passed which under a modern eye, in HD, looks absolutely abysmal. There's an understanding with these examples at least that things moved on, so why is there no understanding with morality that society has moved on, and that the thought processes of the past are no longer fit for purpose?
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