The Polythróna with Hadrian Archo

  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....

Originally Written: 8/11/16 Introduction: Whether you’re walking down the street and come across a penny on the ground, counting on your favorite team to succeed in seemingly impossible odds, or hoping that you get that new job that you’re unsure that you’re going to get. Most of us seem to have some sort of intuition about luck. Some of us believe that luck is the determining factor for nearly all decisions and outcomes in our lives; while others use it describe both fortunate and unfortunate events that occur in our daily lives. And still, others believe that there is no role for luck in the world. Whatever the outlook, all of us can agree to have an idea of what it is. However, it seems that not many can seem to answer the question of “what is luck?”  There’s no doubt that many others have tried to answer this question before. Most, if not all religions carry a more deterministic sense of luck due to their tendency to attribute uncommon events in one’s life towards divine interv...

  Originally written: 06/27/16 A thought on science education. A recent observation has told me that it seems like critical thinking and reasoning skills tend to decline as one gets involved in the sciences. It may be that science is taught as a fact in its classes where it leads to more analytical thinking and not critical thinking. It seems as though critical thinking, or the ability to withdraw points of view and debate them as such are found more in disciplines where there is a lack of perceived truth. Many scientific theories are that (perceived truth), supported by evidence, and nearly set in stone. Only science education that explores research and development encourages critical thinking in the sciences as newfound discoveries birth new theories to be debated.  2021 Additions: It’s odd to read this entry that I wrote five years ago now. I wasn’t even done with my bachelor’s yet! But I remember why I had this thought in the first place. In the US, those who ...

Originally written: 6/20/2016 Side note: At the time, I was doing my first reading of “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. To preserve the original text in my notebook. I will include it in this transcription of the original text. Book 11; 18, X, On behavior And one more thing from Apollo, That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant – the act of a tyrant. Why bother making anything on your own if you can just buy it? A question asked of me today, and as a response: I say, why not? Crafting something in this day and age is now uncommon in a society that thrives on consumption. To consume is easy, to build is hard. To walk to the store, pick up your item, and then hand money over to pay for it takes minutes. To think, design, build, fail, build again, and succeed takes time and effort that simply can’t be done by shopping. Even without the spiel ...

  Originally Written: 4/12/2016 Is it possible that a lot of the mental health problems seen today are a result of the increasing complexity of the self? To make it clearer, do people feel or become less in touch with themselves simply because psychology and the culture of self-help has made the self harder to be in touch with by adding a gross amount of unnecessary complexity? Think about it, if simplifying problems make them easier to solve, then simplifying oneself should make it easier to fix oneself. It should support both the point of the blissful idiot who knows nothing and the sage who has devoted his life to a single frame of thought and self-characterization. 2021 Additions: It seems that I was on to something back then when I first started journaling. I think this random thought finds more support as we continue in the American narrative. For example, we can easily understand that at least 2 major points of the self used to be given the moment someone was born. The first...

 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...

  Originally written 04/17/2018 Transcribed and edited 9/2/2018 I always found it interesting how easy it can be to dislike someone, and that for a notable amount of people this seems to be the default setting for the way they interact with others. Now, in this respect, I don’t exactly want to delve into the unfortunate life circumstances of rape victims, abuse victims, mental disorders, or other psychological disorders as they constitute an entirely different set of rules and principles that guide their behavior. I only want to investigate the typical person you would find at the grocery store, work with at a job, or go on a date with. However, I want to get the point across that disliking someone takes a lot more work than people realize. I will take the next few pages to explain why I think so and give a couple of examples of the principles I lay out in action. Basic Definitions to Establish our Premise Imperative to understanding the position I take is to define the terms I w...

  Originally Written: 08/04/2016 This idea is driven by a few influences. First, at the time of this writing, the United States is in all respects a consumerist economy driven by consumer spending. Second, labor and education seem to be at a disconnect. In a labor role, someone either works in an interdisciplinary team or works divided from a part of an overall process. How can education be tweaked to reflect the nature of this reality? First, I propose that we understand that regardless of industry, the labor force can be generalized to extract archetypes of “labor roles” as I have termed them. The labor roles reflect important components necessary for the development of a consumer product and the economy around it. The proposed labor role archetypes are: ·       Theorists ·       Builders-applicators ·       Reviewers Theorist are those typically responsible for developing the ideas or rational...