Skip to main content

Living on the Curve

 Originally written: 3/14/17



Living life on the curve. What does it really mean? The basics comes down to this:

Principle 1 - The earth provides a 7-billion-person sample size which means that every person falls on a bell curve somewhere, right?

Principle 2 - There are variable curves and robust curves in life. For example, personal traits/attributes are more dynamic, as the principal size is oneself. A more robust bell curve is something such as height, income, education, etc. revolving around genetic factors and sociofactors.

Principle 3 - Changes in dynamic curve may have or have not any impact on more robust cell curves.

But how do changes in the curve happen then? Is it a matter of changing the right dynamic variables, or is it changing enough dynamic variables?

2021 additions

I remember vividly how this thought came to be. My first large professional setback happened, and I didn’t take it very well and fell into a large slump where I didn’t write for some time. This was the second thing I wrote after it was done, but this time was filled with working 16 hour shifts every day at work for 5 weeks straight. I remember being very tired and fatigued around this time too, and searching for answers as to why it seemed like I couldn’t’ break ahead. To further elaborate, here’s an excerpt from the day before:

I notice the changes from the last blow to the ego. I see it, the bags under my eyes have turned a slight red, as well, I find them to persist longer even after coffee. I don't know why. Well, I do know why, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. Other than that, the other effects are mostly behavioral. I work longer than usual without complaint, I do feel like I’m just going through the motions right now and I have lost interest in a lot of things, socially mostly.

This idea of being on a universal curve was a sort of cope as well as a grim rationalization of what I thought was going on. It’s a sort of twisted version of predestination where you have no real idea of where your standing in society really is, and that at some point, all your work and progress would be pulled out from under you as you approached where your place on the curve would be for you to be stuck there for the rest of your life as you become the statistic. These two writings, are probably my darkest ones to date. My drawings definitely reflect it. I don’t really draw figures like this anymore actually…I’m not sure why I stopped….

Otherwise, I don’t really hold on to this view anymore. It’s true that we all fall on bell curves, and that we are not that unlikely to fall into big data trends. However, your position in the curve can definitely change, but the overall shape of the bell curve will tend to be the same. It’s likely that large degrees of slanting on either direction of the bell curve is what leads to a lot of our sources of large-scale misery rather than it causing distinct misery among people who try to break out of a fixed condition in the curve.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mandates and the Madness of Middle Managers

  Premise It’s been almost two years since COVID19 pandemic containment and quarantine protocols began in the United States. Since the protocols such as masking and travel restrictions began, I’ve had the luxury of traveling and living between two areas of the country that have had completely different attitudes levels of strictness from the very beginning. The first is a suburb of a large metropolitan area on the east coast (Metroburb), and the second is a medium sized town approximately 60 miles away from the metropolitan suburb (Medtown). As I’ve been about my business in both of these two areas without a mask for a very long time, only in Metroburb have I been actively harassed for not having a mask. To recount my experiences in Metroburb over the past 6 months: 2 x kicked out of a store for not having a mask 2 x followed by employees urging me to put a mask on 2 x cashiers refusing to accept my payments without a mask 1 x employees debate me on mask wearing 1 x people taking p...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Different Framework for Determining Human Rights

 Originally Written: 05/31/2019 Premise I had a conversation with a couple of my co-workers about a week before the time of this writing on the topic of child support. Although it revolved around whether or not child support should even exist in the first place, I found myself to be really uninformed on the topic. What proceeded after that discussion was a quick google search that led me to this quote from the Wikipedia page on child support: “The 1992 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is a binding convention signed by every member nation of the United Nations and formally ratified by all but the United States. It declares that the upbringing and development of children and a standard of living adequate for the children's development is a common responsibility of both parents and a fundamental human right for children, and asserts that the primary responsibility to provide such for the children rests with their parents.” I found this interesting as the de...
Post a Comment
Read more

COVID19: Tales from the Field

  Premise Throughout the pandemic, there have been a small collection of strange cases or phenomenon that I have been taking notes on, but do not really exist in the literature. Some with an academic or questioning personality may approach such a blog post with a lot of skepticism. To try and alleviate this, I’ll provide some details about myself that should help with the legitimacy of my hearsay. I’m a mid-career scientist at a large research organization on the Eastern half of the United States. I previously worked in neuroscience, but I now work on clinical trials related to HIV and COVID19. We currently work on four clinical trials on COVID19, and two of them involve us reaching out to local hospitals in our region for current cases of COVID19. Our other two studies involve people who have recently recovered from COVID19 as we follow them over time. In other words, just trust me, bru. Tale 1: COVID-19 Vaccines and Surgery One of the nurses that I work ...
Post a Comment
Read more