Eric Tian

Logic – the process of reasoning using facts and inferences – is the common language spoken within rational discussions. Whether one is debating theology, philosophy or science, logic is often the judge on whether one argument is more sound over another. Any logical blunders can singlehandedly destroy an argument.

These breaches of logic are called logical fallacies and come in many forms. Common examples include:

• Strawman: misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it easier to attack e.g. After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenceless by cutting military spending.
• Slippery slope: asserting that one small action will lead to a chain of related events, culminating in a significant effect, and therefore one shouldn’t do the small action e.g. Colin asserts that if we allow same-sex couples to marry, then the next thing we know we’ll be allowing people to marry their parents, their cars and even monkeys.

While there are many different types of fallacies out there, I’ve always felt some to be less definitive than others. These ‘softer’ fallacies, while still breaches of logic, don’t always lead to a dismissal of the argument, for occasionally, there are other issues and biases in conflict.

Perhaps the most interesting of these soft fallacies is the appeal to emotion fallacy, where one aims to manipulate an emotional response in place of a valid argument. In situations like this, one encounters a dilemma: whether to sacrifice one’s deeper feelings in place of logic.

The problem of this argumentum ad passiones is that logic in the present moment can be deeply flawed. In his bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell examines the ‘gut feeling’ that we all encounter, and how these feelings often provide a better means of operating over using pure logic. He writes, addressing the hyperrational state of our society,

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for. Later on, Gladwell concludes:

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.

In the pursuit of truth, logical fallacies provide a strong defence against implausible ideas. Yet, to solely rely on reason as a mode of living doesn’t come without its own dangers. As Yann Martel put it in Life of Pi,

If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.

You’re having a bad day.

You spent all night playing a video game and woke up this morning with two hours of sleep. Grogged, you couldn’t find your schoolbooks and so you missed your usual bus, and the one after that. When you finally get on the bus, you look forward to your first class, math, where you can sleep at the back. Your favourite teacher is there, because she just leaves you alone.

But when you finally make it to math, you find your usual teacher replaced with the teacher you utterly detest. Mr Gibson. Welcome to the fires of hell.

From the start of term, Mr Gibson’s always been up your ass. The first time you met, he scolded you for being two minutes late. Two minutes?! And the second time, he told you off for having messy hair. Like that matters…

And so since today you are 30 minutes late and are still rocking your bed hair, you can feel what’s about to come. When you walk in, Mr Gibson abruptly stops his spiel on fractions and you feel his eyes on you, then the clock, then at your hair. You embrace yourself to face the fury of a demon.

But he simply tells you to sit down.

For a second, you can’t believe it. Did you just escape death? But you don’t hesitate at this chance for freedom, and jolt to the back of your class, rest your head against the desk and sleep on your bag, just as you usually do.

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When you wake, the class is empty. You look up, rub the sleep out of your eyes, and see Mr Gibson looking down on you. You feel a sinking feeling of despair. So this was your plan, you think. To execute me alone, so nobody can witness…

But instead, Mr Gibson looks at you for a while. Then he pulls a chair over and sits opposite you on the desk. With some effort, you look back. And for a split second, you see the eyes of your father in them. Those kind, compassionate eyes. Eyes which you haven’t seen in over a decade.

“I’m sorry I’m late…” you mutter. But Mr Gibson says nothing. To fill the silence, you continue rambling.

“I think my dog ate my schoolbook, and I spent ages looking for it. And my bus left without me, and then so did the next one, so that’s-”

“Tell me…” Mr Gibson interrupts, “do you like school?”

“Well no sir,” you reply honestly. “I just come here because I have to.”

“And who tells you that you have to?”

“Mommy”.

“What do you enjoy doing?”

“Playing games.”

“So why don’t you skip school and play games?”

“Well, because I can’t.”

Mr Gibson stares at you intently, seeming to wait for more. When you give no response, he makes a small sigh.

“Have you ever seen two rosebushes fighting?” The question takes you by surprise. You shake your head.

“It’s quite a remarkable sight. While rosebushes don’t exactly punch and kick like some animals, it’s a complex struggle nonetheless. If there is only one patch of good ground, but not enough space, the roots of the roses twist, turn and battle each other to survive.”

“People,” Mr Gibson continues, “are kind of like these rosebushes. We have roses we want to plant and grow, but sometimes these roses fight one another, and the resulting struggle can be terrible. One rose may destroy the other, or both may never grow to their full potential.”

At this, you feel a growing tension inside your body. One you’ve never felt before. Like there’s knots being dug up from your innermost soul. The feeling makes you very uncomfortable.

And then you begin to see Mr Gibson’s words in action. You see your rose of luxury. The rose that wants to be happy, crush noobs online and have no responsibilities. But then you see your rose of duty. Your duty to please your mum. To get educated. To give back to society. You see these two roses fighting it out. And recently, your luxury rose has been winning.

But you feel like there’s more. That there’s so much more. That somehow, your abusive uncle plays a role, that your dad dying from cancer plays a role and how you living in poverty plays a role. That there are various pieces of the puzzle that make up you, except you don’t know where they belong.

“My dominant rose,” Mr Gibson says quietly, “is integrity. As a teacher, I believe the greatest good I can do is to make sure you students become morally upright members of society. But to cultivate this rose meant I had to let some others die. Like my rose for being liked. Or for being lazy.”

You begin to understand. When you look into Mr Gibson’s eyes now, you don’t see the devil, but just another human trying their best to make the most wonderful garden. And you begin to realise that everyone is making their own little garden unique to them, and that’s totally fine.

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You go home that day and take a long nap. In your dreams, you see a wide forest of giant trees, with roots as thick as your arm. And in the middle of the forest, you see a wonderful garden. A garden of roses, white orchids, daisies and dandelions planted perfectly next to each other. And to the side, you see a tired, old man. The gardener. He looks up to you with tears in his eyes, and smiles.

The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson is a short fantasy novella that I recently devoured. The story follows a thief who is given 100 days to forge a soul for the Emperor, who has been left brain dead. As the thief struggles with the enormous task and plans an escape, we encounter themes such as faith, politics and greed.

One of my favourite quotes from The Emperor’s Soul occurs halfway through the story, where the thief reflects on the impossibility of forging a soul. The quote is this:

“No person was one single emotion; no person had only one desire. They had many, and usually those desires conflicted with one another like two rosebushes fighting for the same patch of ground.”

I don’t know what it is about roses, but this imagery made my heart flutter for a second. I’ve previously written about the contradictory nature of humans, but this image adds a layer of beauty to the inconsistencies we see in ourselves and others. That while contradictions can be terribly frustrating, perhaps it is good to accept the conflict for what it is: a consequence of our splendid and beautiful complexity.

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Check out The Emperor’s Soul on: Amazon, free online pdf, Goodreads

When I was in high school, I really liked numbers because they felt grand. Unlike subjects such as politics & law, history or economics, where it is largely humans who have created them, the laws of mathematics seemed to defy human capabilities.

Maths can be grand because of its absolute nature. Pythagoras’ theorem will hold for right-angled triangles no matter how hard any human tries otherwise.

On the other hand, maths can be grand because of its absolutely non-absolute nature. The circumference:diameter ratio of a circle is always π (pi), which is an irrational number spanning an infinite number of digits. In my high school, you got a prize if you could recount the first 75 digits of π. However, try all you want, it is straight up impossible to get to all the digits.

While maths in general is pretty amazing, one of the most beautiful formulas in maths is Euler’s identity, which states:

It looks simple, but the more you think about it, the more mind-boggling it is. Here’s an explanation for some of these terms:

• e = Euler’s number. It is the limit of (1+1/n)ⁿ as n approaches infinity. Like π, it is an irrational number and looks something like 2.71828. It is very important in exponentials and logarithms.
• i = the Imaginary unit. It is defined as the square root of -1.
• π = The circumference:diameter ratio of a circle, approximated to be 3.1415. Also used in angles as radians.

Somehow, when you multiply π and i together and raise it to the e, you get -1. These three seemingly unrelated concepts, ranging from logarithms, imaginary numbers and circles/radians, all come together to the unsuspecting -1. And when you add 1 to -1, you get 0. This is Euler’s identity.

While there are many proofs of Euler’s identity, it always astounds me how wonderfully these concepts come together. I imagine a Mexican grandma, a middle-aged Englishman and a Japanese boy coming together and unsuspectingly becoming a perfect entity. It seems too ridiculous to be true. But it is. And that’s why numbers are really great.

For the first time in eight months, I thought that yesterday was Wednesday instead of Thursday, and that’s led me to me writing this post a day late. And as someone who values consistency, realising this calendar blunder was mildly infuriating.

However, I’m using this experience to remind myself of a video from The School of Life called Of Course You’ve Messed Up. Other than it being narrated by the calming Alain de Botton, this five-minute video contains powerful reassurances and has quite literally saved my life through dark times. One quote in particular has stuck with me:

None of us are beyond encounters with total stupidity.

Of course, this problem of mine is laughably insignificant. Nobody will care if this post is written on 1am Friday rather than 11pm Thursday. But sometimes, it’s just good to be reminded that no matter who, nobody is beyond encounters with total stupidity. And that’s just part of being human.

Disclaimer: In this post, I’m exercising my more arrogant voice to practice different writing styles. This topic is definitely far more nuanced than what I can hope to convey in 440 words. Please enjoy.

There is no question that the modern age provides abundant means of learning. Whether it’s traditional schooling, online courses, books or podcasts, the resources available to find information these days is unprecedented. A simple Google search will tell you the most bizarre facts like the latin name of a hedgehog and online courses have enabled great opportunities to learn science, math, or literature. The benefits this can bring to society is obvious.

But there is a problem. This abundance of information can lead people to believe they are experts in whatever they Googled that day. When you get ill, you can suddenly look up your symptoms on WebMD and treat yourself rather than consult a GP. When you come across a pseudo-scientific topic, you can suddenly find intelligent-sounding defences for dubious ideas rather than consult an expert.  

People who do this are called armchair scientists – those who read one or two articles from a questionable source, jump on Reddit for half an hour and use this to inform their opinion about a topic. And so, while technology is creating a utopia of knowledge, it is simultaneously creating a dystopia of ignorance towards experts. As social psychologist Aleks Krotoski wrote in The Guardian:

There is no doubt that the wealth of health information online has contributed to a more informed public, but this is an area in which I believe the expertise of the professional should not be undermined by the leveling power of the web.

This notion can be extended beyond the realms of science and into the spiritual. The recent rise of armchair theologians has raised questions about how Christianity is being practiced in the digital age. It can be easy for new or exploring Christians to find contrasting opinions online about biblical teachings and give them the same weight, despite significant differences in hermeneutical factors and theological context. With such clever-sounding pieces of biblical interpretation, where is the need for reading the Bible?

What to do?

Perhaps the solution to this armchair dilemma requires action on both the experts and the viewers.

To the experts: Honesty and simplicity when conducting research are essential for increasing the literacy of the general public. Dishonest and convoluted pieces of literature do nothing but harm one’s perceptions on a topic.

And to the viewers: Exercising critical thought is essential in an age of fake news and unequal opinions. It is easy to look at the wealth of information out there and believe that you can become an expert in anything. Understanding that there are many things out there that we don’t know – and may never know – is completely fine.

I recently finished listening to The Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer on Audible (free eBook here). Schopenhauer is widely known as the ‘philosopher of pessimism’, as he often presents a worldview that challenges the value of human existence. This book is a collection of his essays, of which one concept stood out to me: that of fame, and how futile it is. Schopenhauer writes:

Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of an audience if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and that, to conceal their infirmity, they set to work to clap vigorously as soon as ever they saw one or two persons applauding? And what would he say if he got to know that those one or two persons had often taken bribes to secure the loudest applause for the poorest player!

What I take this to mean is that fame is overrated. The decision to care about what others think is irrational and if we truly knew how little other people thought of us, we would give them much less power over us. If those who anxiously count the likes on their posts knew how little their audience cared, they would be embarrassed. Did I mention Schopenhauer was pessimistic?

Yet, this isn’t to say one should look the world and yell, “screw it, you don’t care about me so I’m not going to do anything!” It is wonderful that people actively cultivate and share their insights with others, for there is so much to discover in the world. Furthermore, though Schopenhauer might disagree, I’m sure there are some consumers of content who deeply appreciate what’s being shared. Indeed, I have personally had my life turned around by blog posts and books, and have had days brightened up by a simple photo.

But what Schopenhauer begs of people is to avoid the temptation to be get caught up in vanity metrics, since, well, people generally don’t care that much. And while this sounds sad, this notion of discrediting fame is really quite liberating – for the weight of human judgment is great, and to be freed from this is a great achievement.  

Recently during conversation, a friend brought up this concept of the Fermi Paradox. It goes something like this:

Premise	Low estimate
There are a huge amount of sun-like stars in our Milky way.	100 billion
Some of these sun-like stars should be surrounded by Earth-like planets.	20%, or 20 billion
Some of these Earth-like planets should develop life.	0.01%, or 2 million

So, there should be roughly two million life forms in our solar system alone. That’s a lot of life forms, right?

Well… why haven’t we seen any indications of life? With two million life forms around us, shouldn’t we should at least see some indication of life. Where the heck is everybody?

Welcome to the Fermi Paradox.

There are three main hypotheses for The Fermi Paradox, which introduces us to this notion of The Great Filter.

The Great Filter

The Great Filter theory suggests that at some point during life, there’s a wall that life, or attempts at life, have to hit. This wall makes the evolutionary process extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter.

If this is true, the question is, where in our timeline does this great filter occur?

Theory 1: We’re rare (The Great Filter is behind us)

One hope we have is that The Great Filter is behind us—we managed to surpass it, which would mean it’s extremely rare for life to make it to our level of intelligence. One theory as to this filter we’ve managed to overcome includes the transition from a prokaryote cell to an eukaryote cell.

Theory 2: We’re the first

This suggests that for the first time in history, conditions in the universe are reaching a place that would allow intelligent life to develop. In that case, we may be well on our way to super-intelligence, and it’s simply happening for the first time ever. Existence, let alone our existence, is unprecedented.

Theory 3: We’re really screwed (The Great Filter is in front of us)

If we’re neither rare nor early, many would conclude that The Great Filter must be in front of us. This would suggest that life regularly evolves to where we are, but that something prevents life from going much further and reaching high intelligence in almost all cases—and we’re unlikely to be an exception.

This can be unsettling to think about, since it means that if we discover life forms other than us, it suggests that there are few Great Filters behind us. Worse, if we were to find complex life in our Milky way, it very much suggests that the Great Filter is most probably in front of us, thereby dooming our species. As Oxford professor Nick Bostrom puts it, “the silence of the night sky is golden.”

Whatever the case, it’s comforting to know that in a way, life is really special. Whether we’re alone or not, it’s clear that for our immediate surroundings, there aren’t any signs of life that we can see. And regardless if this is due to extreme luck, necessity or the presence of a God, this is a wonderful mystery, and one that makes life quite precious.

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For more on this topic, check out this post by Wait but Why.