Weapons against religion ...

Today, once again, my thoughts are focused on religion. Like everyone who knows me has experienced, I'm very open with my Atheism and I love to discuss the negative impact on people from stupid religions.
What I want to know is: What weapons do we really have against religion? How can we make religious people question more and relly open their minds to the brilliant world of hard facts?

Well, it's worth mentioning that the countries in northern Europe is doing better than most, just look at this diagram. I know it's not strictly religion, it's "people who believe in evolution" which isn't necessarily the same thing, but it pretty much is. So I think it gives a pretty reasonable view of reality.

Some months ago, I made a post on Kolozzeum's träningsforum (a forum for weightlifters which handles alot more than weightlifting...), one of my most provocative statements ever I believe. What I said that no religious person (in modern society) can possibly be intelligent. What I mean is that it's one thing to believe in life after death if you lived at the time of Jesus first coming, but to put your right hand on the bible and swear oath in 2012 is something very different. You can't possibly imagine the inferno that rose from this statement. How this discussion happened is one thing (I might write about it some day), but the question I asked myself was: When you meet someone who's so deep in faith that he dismisses all known facts and rational thinking, how can you talk some sense into him? Is it even possible? What weapons do we have?
My goal in life has never been to make anyone free of religion, you're free to be as religious as you want as long as you follow George Carlin's first commandment: "Thou shall keep thy religion to thyself!". And bare in mind, I will categorize you as an idiot if you are.

What I want from religious people is for them to openly discuss their faith and really tries to explain why I'm so better off believing. I also require them to actually listen to my thoughts in the same way that they expect me to listen to theirs. If their religion is the one true religion, then it should be very easy for them, right? My main problem with religion is that they don't seek the truth, they just want a quick and easy answer. In the words of Richard Dawkins: "I'm against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."

If I question the existence of God in front of a Christian because they can't prove his/her existance, they play the card that I can't prove that he/she doesn't exist. How can we really reach into a mind when the people is covering his/her ears and screaming LALALALALA?

There's so many questions that I want to ask to the religious, but they just don't want to answer, or maybe they simply can't. They say that they will pray for me and that it's never too late to accept Jesus as my saviour. Please help me. I SINCERELY want to understand. I want to understand how a grown up and well educated individual still can have medieval beliefs? How can I reach out to someone who thinks the concept of one man flying around the world and dropping presents down a chimney is absurd while one man who lives in the sky who hears everyones murmurs makes perfect sense? Where's the line to idiocy?

Alright, let's wrap it up. I like some ideas from the bible. I'm buying the argument regarding Jesus just wanting to teach people how to behave etc, sure that's ok. What I don't understand is why we must build this concept around punishment. Do we really need to be indoctrinated to fear of misbehaving in order to behave? Do we need this constant threat? Are we really that primitive?
Maybe we could be a little more creative and modern in our ways of teaching out ethics and morality?

Brainstorming and creativity ...

My guess is that everyone reading this blog has at one time or another faced the concept of "brainstorming". Maybe you sought to increase motivation in your department, maybe you were looking for new ideas to market your products or maybe you were just out of ideas for the next office party. Either way, you want to be creative. The concept behind brainstorming is fairly simple, there's a few key points to it. As usual, Wikipedia is golden:

1. Focus on quantity: This rule is a means of enhancing divergent production, aiming to facilitate problem solving through the maxim quantity breeds quality. The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution.
2. Withhold criticism: In brainstorming, criticism of ideas generated should be put 'on hold'. Instead, participants should focus on extending or adding to ideas, reserving criticism for a later 'critical stage' of the process. By suspending judgment, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas.
3. Welcome unusual ideas: To get a good and long list of ideas, unusual ideas are welcomed. They can be generated by looking from new perspectives and suspending assumptions. These new ways of thinking may provide better solutions.
4. Combine and improve ideas: Good ideas may be combined to form a single better good idea, as suggested by the slogan "1+1=3". It is believed to stimulate the building of ideas by a process of association.^[1]

The theory goes that people are afraid of "feeling stupid" and therefore it's very important not to criticise during the first stages of brainstorming. If you're afraid to say the wrong thing, often you don't say anything at all (as proved by many studies on group psychology). You focus on getting as many ideas a possibly under a limited time, quality is not in focus in this stage.

1958, there was an empirical study made on the subject of brainstorm as technique. 48 male test subjects were split into 12 groups and were then told to solve a bunch of "creative puzzles". The technique to be used was Brainstorming, as it were described by Alex Osborn in Your creative power. There were also a control group of 48 male students who were each to solve the puzzle individually. The control group came up with twice as many solutions, which were also dubbed superior by "experts" on the subject of creative puzzles (whatever that means..).

What makes me curious is that I can't find more studies on this subject. Does this mean that the first study was considered "complete"? And if so: Howcome that so many companies are still using brainstorming as a method? Somewhere deep inside I want to believe that the human is a rational being, but this doesn't seem very rational at all. Or maybe the reality is that the study didn't really answer the full question, maybe there are other variants of brainstorming that are more efficient and far superior?

Steve Jobs was a strong advocate for group thinking (not necessarily brainstorming) where he claimed that most ideas are born from conversation and discussion. This is an interesting theory. Personally I don't believe in brainstorming as an efficient method for finding creative solutions. Although I would like to make a bigger study where the subjects are to "brainstorm" individually and later discuss this in a group environment. Maybe this study has been made already?

What I question is the possibility to "create" creativity. I don't think that creativity can be made or enhanced, although it can certainly be broken. The best thing we can do is to don't disrupt creativity in action. So, how do we do this? Management by staying out of the way? Management by asking no questions? I don't have a clue, I'm not very creative.

Another time I will write a little something on what Google thinks of creativity, how their project groups are set up and how they encourage their employees to work. Another time.

Teamwork and performance ...

Today I read an interesting anecdote about teamwork, or actually I read it quite some time ago, but that wouldn't really fit into the setting here...

A coach for a rowing-team in the US army, the Military Academy at West Point to be more precise, faced a problem a few years ago: He had twice as many rowers as he had spots in the boat. What he did to identify who the right 8 people would be, was that he let them all undergo thorough, methodic tests and then ranked them accordingly. He then placed the top 8 in one boat, and the remaining 8 in another and then let them train together.
The interesting part is that the second boat beat the first boat two thirds of the time. Howcome?
One could argue that it might have something to do with the personal ego, the 8 rowers in the second boat had nothing to lose and therefore put their ego aside and worked together while the other boat was mostly interested in their ranking and individually contributing as much as possible. I have many questions and I can answer none of them right now.

If someone stumbles accross the full length article, please let me know.

http://hbr.org/product/army-crew-team/an/403131-PDF-ENG

Religious presidents ..

The last couple of days I’ve really had my mind opened to the US elections. Something that really tickles my fancy is the question about religion which is lurking in the shadows of this event. More than one person has stated that the world will end if we get a Mormon as president.

Sure, there’s no excuse for being a Mormon, and the Republican Party never cease to amaze with all their stupid statements about hell and what not, but obviously their speaking for a massive chunk of the people. They DO receive a lot of economic support and believe it or not, not all of it comes from the banks. If the majority of all the voters thought that Mitt Romney was the world’s largest douchebag with an IQ that belongs in kindergarten, then obviously we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The reality is a little bit different, take a look at this pic which represents a outcome of a theoretical election in May 2012.

Another question is: do you really think that Obama’s religion of choice makes him that much better? After all he’s expressed a Christian belief which at least makes me wonder.

Cathedral Age: How does faith play a role in your life?

President Obama: First and foremost, my Christian faith gives me a perspective and security that I don’t think I would have otherwise: That I am loved. That, at the end of the day, God is in control -- and my main responsibility is to love God with all of my heart, soul and mind, and to love my neighbor as myself. Now, I don’t always live up to that standard, but it is a standard I am always pursuing.

Of course I’d vote for Obama either way, but this has nothing to do with religious beliefs. The economy, abortion and the right to gay marriage (even if Obama’s former opinions makes me giggle) are to me very important points where we see enormous differences of opinion. So if you’re a firm believer in human rights and all that bullshit just like I am, maybe you should consider Obama after all.

Supernatural memory ...?

To me, the human memory is a very interesting subject. Every day I’m constantly impressed, but at the same time a bit frightened by my own memory (or maybe lack of memory). My colleagues stare at me like I’m some kind of an alien life form when I remember poker odds, old license plates, the Latin names of muscles and bones or maybe when I try to explain how to solve the Rubik’s cube. I’ve had it handed to me quite roughly that it’s serious indicators of ADHD/ADD or other neuropsychiatric disorders and believe me, it got me rather curious. What makes me doubt my supposed disorder is the other end of the spectra. When I and my girlfriend moved to Norway, we implemented a menu at home, mostly to simplify planning of grocery shopping but also because of economic benefits. I think that this is a brilliant idea even if I interestingly enough never can remember what we’ve decided to eat. I ask her at least twice each day about what we’re having for dinner tonight, although I participated in creating the menu. And when we go shopping I’m screwed if I’m not carrying a shopping list. How come I can remember complex issues with ease while I struggle with the most trivial? Classic ADD or maybe Asperger?

For a moment now, let’s think about chess. Chess players have always impressed me because of their seemingly supernatural memory abilities. It’s not rare to see chess players play full games completely blindfolded. One interesting extreme case is Richard Réti who 1925 broke the record for “blindfolded chess”. He played 29(!) games simultaneously while blindfolded, won 21, drew 6 and lost only 2. This to me is supernatural and borderline alien, even though the record has been broken a few times since.

An interesting study performed on experienced chess masters memory capacity (and non-players as control) that is being discussed in Talent is overrated, really caught my attention. In the study the subjects were being shown a chess board with all the pieces set up as in actual game positions. The subjects studied the board for a brief moment and were then asked to reposition the pieces as they were. The results were expected; the experienced chess masters could with ease place all of the pieces exactly where they were while the non-players could only place 4-5. What really boggled my mind was the second part of the study. Here they repeated the same test, but with the pieces placed randomly on the board, not as in actual game positions. The non-players were still placing only 4-5 pieces, but the really interesting thing is that the chess masters did scarcely better, placing only 6-7 pieces. Does this also imply ADHD/ADD/Random disorder?

Putting it together.
When we’re jealous at someone’s ability to remember something, are we then being jealous at their ability to remember something specific or at their memory capacity in general? I’d say the latter even though it’s hard to find any real evidence that someone with a “supernatural” memory in one field would be better than average in another. If you practice remember something, you will be good at remembering just that. Exactly how to train your memory is not a question that I have definite answers to as of yet, although I’m definitely interested in finding it out.

Question: Is there really something supernatural or special about my memory? Is there something special about yours? Or have they only been trained differently? Regardless of how special you feel when your mother says that you are, or regardless of how many signs of genius you find in your personality, you’re probably just as average as I am. Although my girlfriends ability to remember our menu is to me still supernatural..

What is talent?

Talent, to me, is a very interesting subject. Over the last couple of weeks I've really opened my eyes to the term "talent" and started to think about what it really means. Or maybe rather the word expertise, are they related? Is there really such a thing as talent? Maybe it's already decided for you what you will prosper in so maybe it's time to give up those dreams of becoming a rock star or golf-pro?

I've just started reading the book Talent is overrated by Geoffrey Colvin and I must point out the very interesting topics discussed within this book.

Tiger Woods is a golden example, many people argue and claim that never before has the world seen such talent and it would be pointless for average Joe to try to accomplish what he has. One thing that people don't know about Tiger is that his father was Earl Woods, a former teacher with a successful history in sports who later became almost obsessed with golf. He was introduced to Golf only a few years before Tiger was born but had already polished his handicap down to a single digit which places him in the top 10% of golf players.

So what's Tigers reality? He's born son of an "expert"-golfer with a teacher background, son to someone who is eager to teach golf to his son. Tiger is the only child in the family (Earl had children from earlier relationships but they were all grown up). Earl gave Tiger his first golf club at the age of 7 months. He placed him in a chair in the garage and let him sit and watch while he practiced his swing for hours on end. Already at age 2 they were both regularly on the golf course practicing and playing together.

The first time that Tiger accomplished something spectacular was at the age of 19. At that point he had been playing golf for 17 years and with a professional teacher since the age of 4.

Was it really superhuman and innate talent that made him the world class golfer he is today? Or was it really all the hours of hard training that he went through? Or was it maybe something else that we've yet to identify?
I don't know, but to explain his accomplishments with "talent" doesn't really seem fair.