Clothes of the Future

Central heating changed clothing.  In the days of drafty stone houses/castles, one still had to wear many layers.  Now, only the homeless dress as kings did 1000 years ago.
I am expecting nanotechnology to change clothing once again.  I am waiting for someone to invent a clothing material that functions like improved skin: flexible, impervious to viruses, capable of insulating or cooling the body underneath.
I expect it to react to hazardous objects: blunting the point of an incoming needle, turning to stone in response to a knife's edge, and catching an incoming bullet before it can damage the wearer.
I also expect it to have similar properties to a cuttlefish: changing color, flashing mesmerizing patterns, adjusting shape somewhat.  That's the layer that people will tattoo, not their own skin.
Yes, it'll be expensive, but you'll only need one garment to project a million variations.

Ratio of truth to falsehood

How many facts does a person know?  How many falsehoods?
We assume that as a person matures, the number of falsehoods diminishes and the number of facts increases.  We use the word "foolish" to describe someone who has more falsehoods than facts in their brain, "wise" to describe the opposite.
I am troubled by the thought that many people go through life without ever becoming wise, without ever possessing a great many more facts than falsehoods.  Perhaps the ratio of facts to falsehoods averages out to 1:1 for a large population.
Is the world as a whole becoming wise?  Or is the number of falsehoods that people believe growing just as rapidly as the number of facts that they learn?
The Dark Ages seems to be a time of foolishness, but don't ignore the wealth of practical knowledge than many people possessed.  The Renaissance seems to be a time of growing wisdom, but don't ignore the wealth of superstition that many people possessed.
What about today?  I fear the number of people who believe that children are vulnerable to a "sugar rush" is growing while the number of people who know that sugar has been proven to not increase activity in children is shrinking.  One could write down a host of similar observations.  Maybe humanity is not on a journey to wisdom, but instead is merely muddling through with a nearly constant 1:1 ratio of facts to falsehoods.

WW IV

World War IV has already started.  Wait-- what happened to WW III?  That was the Cold War.  It ended the day the Berlin Wall came down.  Not many shots were fired, but the threat of nuclear exchange haunted everyone.
WW IV is the conflict between religious militants and normal people.  Think of the militants who bombed abortion clinics.  Think of the militants who crashed into the World Trade towers.  It's a Total War in which children and other innocent non-combatants are as much at risk as anyone else, if not actually chosen targets.
I suppose I got into this frame of mind by thinking that WW IV started on 11-9-2001, but before that, militants set off bombs in a great many countries, so when did it all start?  Hmm, the Inquisition counts as a series of attacks by religious militants.  Hmm, there were attacks on Ahkenaten around 1338 B.C.  I guess this is really WW 0, since it goes back so many thousands of years.
Will it ever end?  Since humans are unhappy with explanations of the unknown that do not involve human-like agents, probably not until a successor to homo sapiens has populated the planet.

Ornate, en route

Every time I go to Italy, or any country with a 3000-year heritage, I am blown away by the intricate and exquisite beauty of the frescos, mosaics, carvings, sculptures, etc.,  It does occur to me that a 3D printer can provide such adornments for anyone's home these days.  How long before we are all swimming in baroque?

Icons are not significant

I have recently realized that most religious symbols have little or no significance.  When one travels around the USA, one sees pictures of George Washington everywhere, the Lord of America’s civic religion.  In England, one sees the Queen everywhere.  In Myanmar, Buddha.  In Italy, the Madonna.  As a youngster, you assume these icons are significant.  As you mature, you begin to understand that people merely want a familiar icon.  A familiar icon marks a part of the world as being safe, or at least less disturbing.  A picture of the Queen does not signify that the owner is a monarchist.  A statue of Buddha does not signify that the owner is Buddhist.  An image of the Madonna does not signify that the owner is Catholic.

I used to think that these icons were an obstacle to peace: threatening signs of us versus them conflicts that could escalate to war.  Now I know they are no more significant than a photo of one’s cousins, easily overlooked when a strange neighbor comes offering friendship.

Why you should read Kahneman

Nicholas Epley

Professor of Behavioral Science, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

Essential Ingredients
Kahneman's influence was to provide the essential ingredients for all of my work: a problem, and possible solutions. The problem was that people's beliefs, judgments, and choices are routinely "wrong." They may wrong because they disagree with a statistical principle, a rational principle, reality, or some combination of all three. The solution is that people beliefs, judgments, and choices are not guided simply by statistics, rationality, or reality, but instead are guided by generally intelligent, but imperfect, psychological processes that take hard problems and convert them to easy problems that normal human beings can solve. If you understand these processes that guide intuitive judgment, then you can understand why perception and reality diverge.
By extending Kahneman's problem as well as his ideas about its solution, I have built a career trying to understand how otherwise brilliant human beings can be so routinely "wrong" in their beliefs and judgments about each other. Why do people overestimate how often others agree with them? Why are people sometimes less accurate predicting their own future behavior than predicting others' behavior? Why do people overestimate how harshly they will be judged for an embarrassing blunder? Why do liberals think conservatives have more extreme views than conservatives actually do? The list of such cases where our social thinking goes wrong is long, but it is Kahneman's influence that runs through its entire length.
Asking how Kahneman's work has influenced my own is a bit like asking a doctor how oxygen influences life. My work wouldn't exist without him.

Worth reading: about Kahneman

http://edge.org/conversation/on-kahneman