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This past weekend we took a short couples trip to an away game in Cincinnati with some good friends. The Tigers got trucked. Anyway, while wandering the downtown, we ran across a huge public fountain. There was an earnest white girl singing folk music in a corner of the plaza, and we took a few minutes in the shade to let the girls rest. I got looking at the fountain and realized it was a giant middle finger to the city it sat in. The most brilliant troll job I've seen in recent memory.
The fountain can be seen here. It was donated to the city by some robber-baron hardware magnate back in the day, and includes drinking fountains around the edge of the pool. An example of the smaller fountain sculpture can be seen better here. Four of these ring the pool of the fountain. Each depicts a nude young male in the Greek tradition, with an animal head hanging between his legs. In one, the young man rides a dolphin, in another, has a snake coiled around his thighs, etc. The head of the animal is the drinking part of the fountain itself. The water stream issues from the mouth.
Might be a history buff, but I had no idea who Henry Probasco was. Apparently he was a wildly wealthy purveyor of tools and traveled to Europe to find an artist to build the fountain he donated to the City of Cincinnati in honor of his deceased business partner, one Tyler Davidson, whose name graces the monument. I imagine it went something like this:
Probasco blames the city for his partner's untimely demise.
Probasco: “Goddammit Jenson, fuck this city! The whole place can suck my dick. Is there any way to make that happen?”
Jenson the faithful butler: “Perhaps figuratively sir, I could not say. Almost certainly not literally.”
Probasco: “Figuratively eh?”
TWO YEARS LATER
Jenson: “Sir, the city council is refusing to accept the design with actual dicks.”
Probasco: “Will their infernal complaining never end? I'm offering them free clean drinking water for all time in the middle of town, and these whiny cunts don't like my design?”
Jenson: “Perhaps they object to putting their mouths on a bronze penis to get water, sir. I've taken the liberty of speaking to the artist. He suggests something a bit more....metaphorical.”
Probasco:”Like what, man!”
Jenson: “Well sir, he suggests a series of animal motifs with........elongated necks.”
Probasco:”Be direct, Jenson! What are we talking about here? Are you saying I have to make it a real snake rather than a trouser snake?”
Jenson: “Essentially, yes sir. Among others, such as goose and a turtle.”
Probasco: “Well, it's not quite what I had in mind, but making the children of this city drink out of the head of a snake dangling between my statue's legs is probably as close as we're going to get eh?”
Jenson: “I fear so, sir.”
Fin
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Since @ThomasdelVasto has made a couple "main-Motte" religious posts I thought I'd join in the fun.
I'm a Protestant with strong Reformed leanings. My wife, on the other hand, has just converted to Catholicism. This has led me to explore aspects of Catholic teaching, though necessarily at a surface level given the rich history. Aquinas alone would take months if not years to digest. I expected to disagree on Mary (perpetual virginity, immaculate conception, assumption) and the Pope (infallibility); and I still do (though I was surprised how recently these have become "dogma": I would have found it much easier to be a Catholic in 1800 than today). I am pleasantly surprised at how much weight they place on Scripture, Christ, and Assurance: there are far more shared hymns than I had anticipated, as as an example.
What follows is some of the reflections I had to this surface exploration. I would be thrilled to be corrected or critiqued by any of the Motte's Catholics, if nothing else to better understand my wife's flavor of the Christian faith. Many of these are reactions to "Catholicism" by Bishop Robert Barron, which my wife kindly bought to introduce me to the titular topic. While I presume he is orthodox Catholic, his interpretations may not be universally accepted by Catholics. If I challenge particular arguments from Barron, it should not be interpreted as an argument against Catholicism unless Barron is arguing for Church Dogma. His "Catholicism" is also meant as an introduction and for popular consumption, and his actual beliefs may have more nuance.
As part of this journey (which is certainly not over yet!), I also read (the dense and repetitive) "Divine Will and Human Choice" by Richard Muller and "Christus Victor" by Gustaf Aulén. These, too, have varying degrees of rigor. Muller and Aulén were both Protestants.
God’s freedom
While Reformed theology would affirm that God predestines both those who are saved and those who are damned, Catholics balk at this concept; arguing that this implies a God who would cause sin. God cannot will that which is against his nature. Catholics would appeal to God’s provision and common grace that allows humans consciences to (partially and weakly) discern good and evil. Yet we cannot perfectly discern this apart from divine revelation (scripture). And scripture states multiple times in the Exodus narrative that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Aquinas (as if often the case) provides the most rigorous Catholic argument I’ve heard for this hardening. God through an act of his will withdrew what grace was granted to Pharaoh. Absent God’s grace Pharaoh drew more into his sin. While Aquinas argued this case for the individual case of Pharaoh, it seems consistent to assume that were God to withdraw his common grace more broadly that all would fall into a state where our consciences are no longer capable of even partial discernment of good and evil. This is also consistent with God giving humans over to their lusts in Romans 1.
So far, this interpretation is consistent with scripture, though I am discomfited by the constraints this threatens to place on God: constraints that come perilously close to being primarily informed by our own interpretation or perspective of scripture and sin. God works and wills, including in sin.
Barron, if I read him correctly, goes a step further. He puts the "problem of sin" as one of the best arguments against God. I’ve never understood this as a problem for Christians. It is a deep problem for atheists, who have to explain or excuse their visceral (though often mis-aligned) desire for justice despite no objective basis for these judgments. Christians have no such need to explain or excuse: of course we are all deeply desirous for justice since we have (again, weakly and with great room for error) a sense of what transcendent goodness could be. A consistent perspective on the problem of evil would be that God defines good, and if we don’t understand his actions to be "good" that is a fault (a mis-calibration) of our fallen nature. The fact that Barron does not take this tack hints that he believes humanity’s desire for a "good" God is compatible with humanity’s definition of "good". This runs the grave risk of putting ourselves as a "judge" or external arbiter of God’s behavior.
Barron continues to put a soft face on hard truths. Later in the book, Barron says "God sends no one to hell, people freely choose to go there". This sharply contradicts scripture. Jesus talks about casting sinners into the outer darkness. Peter says the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. John’s Revelation describes those who receive a mark on their forehead drinking the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of his anger, and tormented with fire and brimstone. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Again, God is not passive: he works and wills.
How does God work and will (1)? Does God have a an array of potential actions, any of which he can actualize? Yet this runs the risk of these potential actions being "outside" God. Does God create the potentials as he actualizes them? Thus no "possibles" exist for God, simply "actuals"? This also could be seen as a constraint on God and limit his radical freedom. Both these potential concepts of God’s will and freedom (of which I’m sure there are hundreds of alternative concepts) seem to be operating at a level above how Barron conceptualizes God’s freedom. Put crassly, Barron seems to be hinting that God could not "make a triangle a square", that is, that God is constrained by logical impossibilities. But this is such a small view of God. God creates our minds and universe. Our minds invent or discover things like logic, or define things like squares or circles. Whether spawned by our intellect or embedded in the structure of the cosmos, these concepts (including logic!) are part of Creation itself. God created the conditions under which we can model physical reality with math, structure, and logic. Logic is a model. Logos is Truth. Logic is created. Logos is the Creator.
God’s atoning work
The freedom God enjoys in his omnipotence has implications for a theological understanding of Atonement. The "big two" theories of Atonement, Satisfaction and Substitution, emphasize the sacrificial nature of the cross. This sacrificial interpretation retains God’s complete sovereignty with Christ’s death being an act of perichoretic propitiation. The incarnation and death was necessary because of God. It was not necessary because of anything external to God.
Catholics consider Substitution theory, which is the most common concept of Atonement in Reformed circles, to be heresy. Belief in the other concepts of Atonement are allowed. In the Satisfaction theory, which my understanding is that most if not all Catholics affirm, Jesus is our great high priest and a perfect offering, but does not receive the judgement of God. Christ died for our sins, but not in our place.
"Christus Victor" makes the historical case for Ransom theory. In principal, this theory could bring Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox together: the church Fathers at least strongly hinted at Ransom theory being the primary lens through which they interpret the cross, and the church universally recognizes the importance of the church Fathers. Aulén makes the case that Luther was also an adherent to Ransom theory. Yet this theory risks making God subservient to morality or law, proposing that Jesus was paid to Satan in exchange for humanity (2). Uncharitably, this theory makes God beholden to the "laws" of commerce, even transaction with a brigand.
However, I do find Ransom theory to have its merits. In heavily Reformed theology Satan is almost considered an afterthought. Satan plays no necessary role in the arc of human redemption and salvation. Ransom theory, on the other hand, puts Satan in a prominent place: he is either the kidnapper of human souls or is the (legitimate, in some sense) owner of human souls. The exchange of Christ for humanity and the subsequent torture and murder of Christ was simultaneously Satan’s crowning achievement and his destruction. This interpretation echos Jesus’ parable of the landowner who sent servants to collect from the tenants only to have them beaten or killed. The frustrated landowner finally sent his own son, but the tenants murdered him hoping to take his inheritance. At the conclusion of the parable, the chief priests react that the landowner will bring the tenants to a “wretched end”. Christ’s death and resurrection was the ultimate victory over Sin, Death, and the Devil, bringing this triumvirate to a “wretched end”. Indeed, this victory can be interpreted as more complete than Satisfaction or Substitution theories: it not only removes the penalty of sin, but defeats the sin itself.
Conclusion?
I plan to read and think more on this topic. Next on my list is "Deification through the Cross" by Khaled Anatolios. Any other book recommendations are welcome. I'm particularly interested in Catholic perspectives Atonement that go deeper than Barron's book.
(1) As I read "The Divine Will and Human Choice" I had to continuously bite my tongue. My mathematical training was screaming "But Kolmogorov!". Yet Kolmogorov is but a model, and Muller was trying to describe reality. Muller, though, had merely words to try to describe reality and I kept mentally begging for a more rigorous algebraic representation to more clearly and concisely communicate. Of course, the algebraic representation is itself a model, but so are words: anyone who uses ChatGPT or Claude is implicitly recognizing that words are not reality but just a map or model of reality.
(2) In CS Lewis' The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan (representing Christ) is beholden to the "deep magic".
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Had some more people asking about my conversion lately, finally got around to writing more about it. Link to substack article here if you want pictures etc., otherwise reposting the text below:
Been thinking about the above post from QC a lot since I’m basically exactly the type of guy he’s is calling out here. I didn’t reply initially because I felt kind of attacked or insecure, and still do a bit, but either way I think this is a great time to go into more detail with my own conversion story.
I’ve already talked about my conversion to Orthodox Christianity a bit in a previous post, which you can check out if you want more backstory / a different focus (more on my chronic pain issues):
Ultimately I convert for a variety of reasons, which I still don’t fully understand myself. A big part of it was that, as QC said, I did a ton of inner work, meditative, and psychedelic stuff for a long time. I went to a woo-woo Christian church as a kid, and was meditating and getting into Buddhism from like 13 years old onward. I was also an avowed atheist for much of that time.
Sadly Buddhism just kind of failed me. At least that’s how I saw it. I consumed soooo many books and podcasts and talks on Buddhism, spent so much time meditating and trying different techniques. I even went to a couple of Buddhist temples, but they were so alien to me culturally I basically left immediately after the service.
Looking back, I’m sure that someone who’s really into Buddhism could point out a ton of ways I didn’t try the path of the Buddha in the ‘right way’. For instance:
- I never went on a ‘serious,’ multi-day meditation retreat (though I did do a few partial day ones, some solo some with others)
- Didn’t have a formal sangha, or group of people I meditated with
- Never went and studied under an actual Buddhist teacher, got the vast majority of my instruction from the internet or books or other Buddhist dabblers who didn’t really know what they were doing
- My lifestyle throughout all of this was still quite hedonistic, was doing drugs, having casual sex, eating whatever I wanted, etc. Not practicing right action or any of the formal Buddhist moral strictures
Oftentimes I look back myself and wonder, what could have happened in my life if I managed to find the right teacher, or the right group, or even stumble into this corner of Twitter I’m in now, that actually has a lot of more grounded & mature buddhists, back before I gave up on Buddhism? I honestly don’t know.
Maybe I’d be a meditation teacher now, gallivanting around the country, no job, sleeping with hot Buddhist women (but in a totally cool, consensual, morally correct way ofc), doing DMT at cool parties in the woods, dipping to chill in a monastery whenever I want, and other things I see Buddhist teachers in the tpot/online dharma scene doing. The lifestyle certainly looks attractive, and a deep part of me still really longs for a life like that.
Regardless, it didn’t work out for me that way. The Buddhism that I encountered and that informed so much of my teenage and early adult life left me hollowed out, addicted, and broken. I had such deep issues with chronic pain, depression, and anxiety that I had to quit multiple jobs, and turned to pretty hardcore substance abuse just to numb the suffering.
I saw Buddhism and spirituality as a lifeboat, a rope thrown down that could save me from my pain and my struggles. That’s what the Buddha promised, after all! An end to suffering! But it never worked for me. I beat my head against the wall of Buddhist meditation and teachings and therapy and emotional work for over a decade, and while I would find temporary relief here and there, overall I felt I was going nowhere with it.
Encountering Christ
Christ Appears to Mary Magdalene on Easter Morning (Noli me tangere), by Peter Paul Rubens & Jan Brueghel the Younger
That’s when Christ came into my life.
It wasn’t something I actively looked for. Just happened to have a couple of friends I had really admired pop back into my life and mention hey, maybe Christianity is cooler than you think. Some of them encountered Christian teachings through AA and recovery, some had always been Christians, I just never knew it before because we hadn’t talked about it.
Either way, I took a hard look at my life, and realized I hadn’t given Christ a fair shake. I had a bachelor’s degree in history at this point, so I knew a bunch about Christ and Christianity from a sort of dry, objective, historical perspective. I had even read the New Testament a couple of times. But I had never taken the ideas seriously. I had never actually gone and looked at Christ, what He said, what He did, with anything close to an open mind.
As part of the therapy and emotional work I was doing, I realized I had a huge chip on my shoulder when it came to Christ, and had for most of my life.
You see, when I was eight years old, my dad had a stroke.
I got sent to the neighbor’s house while he and my mom went to the hospital, some of those evangelical Protestants who talk a big game about being godly and everything, but ultimately were completely uninformed assholes in real life. I stayed up all night pacing around, not knowing if my dad was going to live or die.
My neighbor woke up from me pacing around, grumpily said “if you just pray hard enough, God will save your dad, don’t worry,” and went back to sleep. So of course as an anxious kid with OCD tendencies, I prayed nonstop all night. I pleaded and bargained and begged God with every ounce of my being, telling Him I would do whatever He wanted if he just saved my dad.
As you might have guessed, it didn’t work, and the next day I woke up to find my father gone.
I’m sure for my neighbor, this comment was a relatively minor thing. She was annoyed, tired, this kid just got foisted on her and she needed sleep. She was a single mom, after all, and had her own worries I had no idea about. But still, her throwaway advice that night completely changed the trajectory of my life. From the next morning onward, I decided that I hated God. If He even existed, He must have been so unspeakably evil that the world was completely fucked. It was easier to just think He didn’t exist, and that the universe was a bunch of atoms randomly bumping into one another. It was in vogue at the time, after all.
Anyway, all this to say, when Buddhism failed to fix my problems, I was desperate enough to examine the chip on my shoulder. As I started poking at Christianity, I got more and more interested and surprised. I began to realize just how ridiculously deeply Christianity informed everything in our culture, from morals to random references in songs and movies to the names of cities and towns.
I devoured Jordan Peterson’s early lectures on Genesis, feeling an incredible tsunami of insight while listening to them, that I failed to get even after hours of vipassana meditation. Talking to more seriously intellectual Christians, I found out about Girard, and read a book by one of his students, Violence Unveiled, that blew my mind even harder about the impact of Christ on humanity, on history.
Then I reconnected with another friend, who I hadn’t spoken to in years. He happened to be Orthodox. We chatted a lot and slowly rekindled our friendship, mostly talking about Christianity. He had fallen away from the faith in college and early adulthood, and was coming back to it at the same time I was learning about it really for the first time.
Somewhere in all this, I also did some more psychedelics, and spent some weekends camping solo wilderness in the mountains, far away from civilization and any other campers. I had some experiences with Christ that caused me to question my materialist assumptions, and which I won’t recount more deeply here.
Converting to Orthodoxy
Later on, my Orthodox friend invited me to his church, for a Divine Liturgy. The first time I saw it, I was overwhelmed. He sat next to me and was explaining how the Liturgy was largely the same as the one they practiced in 300 AD, giving me all the little tidbits of symbolism and tradition. Told me about how people would reach out to touch the priest’s robe during the Grand Entrance, calling back to the woman in the Gospel who was healed by touching Christ’s garment.
I was overwhelmed. Half of it was in Greek, and I barely knew what was going on. But I knew there was something special there, something beautiful.
A few weeks went by, maybe a month or two, I don’t remember. I continued learning about Christianity and Orthodoxy, and went to another Divine Liturgy. My buddy either wasn’t there, or showed up late, so I sat by myself in the back, with a view right into the altar, looking at the crucified Christ hanging under the giant icon of the Theotokos.
It’s hard to explain what happened during that service, but something broke open in me. I remember looking at Christ, willing Him to talk to me, to become more real, to help me, to save me. And then the tears came. For some reason, in the midst of hundreds of people I had never met, in a weird church service that was half in a different language, I started crying. Tears poured out of my eyes nonstop for well over an hour. I wasn’t sobbing hysterically, just silently crying, trying not to draw attention to myself.
I had never cried like that before in my life, and never have since. I cried for so long, staying after the service, that one of the parish council members had to come and gently shoo me out of the sanctuary, as they were locking up the church.
I remember being shocked afterwards that I had been able to cry at all. I rarely cried, even when I wanted to. And I had horrible social anxiety, so crying in public like that was extremely out of character. But for some reason, I finally felt safe enough to let out the pain I had carried since I was a youth. To start to thaw the walls around my heart that had kept me from really connecting with other people my entire life.
From there, I was hooked. It still took me years to convert formally to Orthodoxy. A lot of conversations with my priest going over my doubts, and him explaining that faith was an action, not a propositional belief. That the Resurrection, the Trinity, and other core Christian teachings were Holy Mysteries, something to be approached with the heart, not with the intellect.
And here I remain, in the church, and I feel like I belong. Not because I’m an upstanding Christian, or because I deeply believe Christ was the Son of God with an intense zeal, or anything like that. But because I was, and still am, sick.
I think that, whether it’s true of ‘Real Buddhism’ or not, when I was a Buddhist I was hoping to fix myself. I was sitting there acting as if I had the power, the tools, the skill and ability to look at who I was as a person, fiddle around with my mind, and set everything in the right place. Make myself whole, perfect enlightened.
Coming to Christ was a different story. It was more about acknowledging that I am sick, and I need saving. That I can’t do it on my own, I can’t get anywhere on my own. That I need someone else, something else, to pull me out of the hole I had dug myself into.
It’s not easy. I’m not married and settled down (yet) so to go back to the original quoted tweet from QC, it’s really not a ‘relief’ in that sense. I still have tons of doubts and questions, I still look at Buddhism and other ethical systems and wonder, think about what they say, and how it compares to Christianity.
But I have been healed, in a real way. I’m sick, but on the mend, and obviously trending in the right direction. At least from my perspective. And that’s enough for me, for now. I pray it continues to be enough, and that I get to stay with Him for the rest of my days, and for life everlasting.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
(Note: This post was originally written many years ago (1 2 3). As this is largely a lazy copy-and-paste karma farm, I have not checked all the links to see whether they still work.)
The book Conned Again, Watson consists of twelve short stories of “rationalist” Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, published for profit with the blessing of the copyright holder (since, at the time of publication, the franchise still was far from entering the public domain). Each story is accompanied by a paragraph or three of explanation (sometimes including book recommendations) in the book's afterword.
The URL given for the author's site in the book's afterword has been dead for quite a few years, but the Internet Archive has a copy saved.
The Case of the Unfortunate Businessman (Chapter 1)
Framing Story
After inheriting a cab business, Watson's cousin James attempted to emulate “how the Americans have reduced company management to a science”. However, James botched it so badly that his company was nearing bankruptcy. He then was taken in by a con man. Watson encourages him to go to Holmes regarding the con, and Holmes informs James that he was such a perfect mark that the con man probably will approach him again, at which point Holmes will aid in the criminal's capture. Holmes then inquires as to how James actually implemented the “modern American management methods”.
Topics
Author's Book Recommendations
Quotes
[Sherlock:] “I really must congratulate you, Watson. In the course of one morning's ordinary domestic decisions, you have managed to replicate on a small scale every one of the errors that brought your cousin's business to its knees!”
The Case of the Gambling Nobleman (Chapter 2)
Framing Story
A woman affianced to a nobleman seeks Holmes's help. Her husband-to-be is low on cash, but has thought of a “foolproof” system to get a new fortune at the roulette table.
Topics
Author's Book Recommendations
Quotes
[Sherlock:] “Perhaps people unconsciously assume that Fortune has a finite number of outcomes in the sack of black and white pebbles she carries. Then the more black pebbles you are dealt, the higher the proportion of white remain in her sack, and the more likely you are to get white. But in truth her supply is infinite, and she can always continue to give black or white at perfect whim. Failure to understand that is the first great human fallacy in misunderstanding the Laws of Chance.…
“The second great fallacy is to think that you can ignore a very tiny chance of a very large loss or gain. A mathematician would warn you of the meaninglessness of multiplying zero by infinity, but we did not have to venture into such abstractions to see that the Marquis's second system would have come to grief eventually.”
The Case of the Surprise Heir (Chapter 3)
Framing Story
The ageing (and seemingly-benign) leader of a small cult seeks Holmes's help. According to her faith, she must bequeath her “church” to a descendant of her great-grandfather (the cult's founder). The leader must choose which candidate is the best, based on which of them was born on a particular mystically-significant date, which is known only to her. She knows of 61 candidates, 60 in Britain and one in Canada. However, the one in Canada is an infidel who mocks the cult. In response to the leader's inquiries, the Canadian has written back to say that there are 59 more candidates, “living in various parts of the Americas”, of whose identities the leader is ignorant.
The Canadian sends over a list of birthdays, but refuses to give the corresponding names and addresses. Instead, the Canadian insists that the cult leader must tell the mystically-significant date to the Canadian, after which the Canadian will contact whichever candidate matches it. However, it is the cult leader's suspicion that there are no other American relatives, and the Canadian is plotting to take over the church (using a non-relative accomplice with a fake birthday), squander its assets (“large houses in London and New York, and also a fund of several thousand pounds”), and milk its members. The cult leader wants to know whether the Canadian's list of birthdays looks fake. She gives to Holmes two lists of birthdays—one for the 60 British candidates, and one for the 60 alleged American candidates. She has not labeled the two lists, as she expects Holmes to tell her which one “looks suspicious in its very nature”.
Topics
Quotes
[Sherlock:] “Not a bad simile, Watson: real randomness is a sharp and spiky place, which will cut the unwary as surely as sharp rocks rip apart the boots and hands of the ill-equipped cave explorer. We are unaccustomed to such roughness because processes human and artificial so often give nonrandom pattern to the world we encounter, and uniformity is a simple pattern to generate, and therefore commonplace.…”
Holmes raised a long finger. “Never mistake uniformity for the product of randomness. But you are not alone in your error: mistaking a uniform distribution for a random one is a common blunder. Indeed, it is worthy of being tagged as the third great human fallacy in misunderstanding the Laws of Chance! You had better start making a list. It is as ever most instructive to talk to you, Watson.”
Compare the following sentence, which wouldn't look out of place in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
Harry's brain complained that it never would have encountered a random distribution in the ancestral environment.
The Case of the Ancient Mariner (Chapter 4)
Framing Story
A drunken sailor whom Holmes and Watson saw “walking a perfect mathematical Drunkard's Walk” in chapter 2 apparently fell off a pier and drowned shortly after they observed his stumbling. However, he had recently taken out a large life insurance policy, with his sister as the sole beneficiary. The insurance company suspects fraud, and refuses to pay out. Inspector Lestrade is sympathetic toward the sister, and has asked Holmes to investigate.
Topics
Quotes
“Why, confound it, Holmes, I have once again drawn Napoleon's hat!”
“Quite so, Watson. You have indeed chosen a fitting name for the Normal Distribution. Just as Napoleon sought to conquer all the populations he encountered, so the ‘Napoleon's hat’ curve tends to dominate all random populations encountered in nature. But remember this: Napoleon ultimately failed in his quest—he never ruled all of Europe, despite his ambition. And, similarly, not every imaginable population conforms to the normal distribution, although student mathematicians sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that all must.”
The Case of the Unmarked Graves (Chapter 5)
Framing Story
Watson goes to visit an old college friend who wants to undertake some excavations in order to uncover possible Arthurian artifacts. (The friend, named Prendergast, thinks that he may be a descendant of King Arthur Pendragon.) However, the friend's father (whose line has held the title of “Mage” since before the Norman Conquest) has forbidden any excavation unless Prendergast can prove that the chance of turning up something important is better than one in two. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) also has been invited.
Topics
Author's Book Recommendations
Quotes
The Mage looked at [Dodgson] scornfully. “One-half to two-thirds,” he said savagely. “That seems to be your theme song, Reverend.”
The Case of the Martian Invasion (Chapter 6)
Framing Story
After seeing a horrific face on the surface of the Moon, hearing about crop circles in nearby fields, and finding the message “ARES COMES” in the Bible, an aspiring engineer thinks that a Martian invasion is imminent.
Topics
-
Compound probability
-
Dependency of events
Quotes
[Holmes] ticked off points on his fingers. “First, you showed us how the human eye and brain can detect pattern where there is none. It is understandable design by evolution, for it is better to be frightened by ten shadows than to overlook one actual tiger, but it often trips us up in modern life.
“Second, there is the fallacy of retrodiction—conducting a blanket search of a great number of possibilities, and claiming subsequently how unlikely it is to get just that message in just that position. It is more often done by numerology: measure every possible dimension of the Great Pyramid, say, in every system of units known to you, and then try dozens of possible numerical combinations of the results to see whether any of the numbers that emerge seem significant, such as being a famous year in the Christian calendar. But your Bible messages have that beat all hollow.”
Three Cases of Unfair Preferment (Chapter 7)
Framing Story
First, Watson reads about a parlor game in which three people must pretend to be historical figures (e. g., Newton, Caesar, and Socrates) and argue over which of the three should be thrown out of a sinking hot-air balloon. Second, Lestrade calls Holmes out to investigate the murder of a philanthropist, in which three attractive young women whom he was considering for a scholarship are suspects. Third, the woman from chapter 2 writes to ask for advice, as her husband-to-be, while having vowed to stay away from casinoes forever, has fallen in with a peculiar gentleman's club that supposedly deals solely in games of skill.
Topics
Quotes
I shook my head. “Really, this seems like black magic, Holmes.”
“Not so, Watson. But it does go against a false intuition that Nature has hard-wired firmly into our brains: the fallacy of judgement, that people or objects can always be ranked in order of value, from best to worse, in a sort of beauty contest. Let us be thankful that it is not true.”
The Execution of Andrews (Chapter 8)
Framing Story
The lone survivor of a ten-thousand-man army killed by ambush in the backwoods of British Burma is being slaughtered by the newspapers just as badly as his comrades were by the Burmese, and is expected to be convicted of desertion and hanged.
Topics
- Bayes's theorem, with helpful visualizations that continue to be presented in later chapters
Author's Book Recommendations
Quotes
“Bayes's theorem sets out formally the criteria for calculating probability ratios such as those we have been encountering today.”
“I will be sure to credit him if I write up today's events. If you show me it, perhaps I should reproduce his formula to illustrate the point.”
Holmes turned the book toward me to reveal, I must say, a rather intimidating piece of algebra.
“I would not advise it, Watson. I have heard it said that every equation appearing in a popular book halves its sales: your fear of algebra is not unique. I confidently predict that if this formula appears in all its glory, your sales will be decimated—and in the modern sense of the word! No, you should confine yourself to illustration by example. Those window-frame-shaped diagrams I have been drawing for you summarize Bayes's approach exactly.”
Three Cases of Relative Honor (Chapter 9)
Framing Story
First, Mycroft calls in Holmes to investigate a diplomatically-sensitive burglary at the French Embassy, in which two suspects have been caught but refuse to talk. Second, an officer about to be court-martialed for indirectly causing the deaths of the men under his command asks Holmes whether he made the correct decision under the circumstances in which he found himself. Third, Holmes contemplates the similarity of the officer's situation to Holmes's own decision in The Final Problem—of whether, in attempting to flee to the continent, he should have gone directly to Dover or left the train at Canterbury after he learned that Moriarty was chasing him in a special train.
Topics
Author's Book Recommendations
Quotes
I blinked at the complex array of figures.
[Sherlock:] “Henderson wants to choose a column that maximizes his chance of survival. But the Mauras will pick the row that minimizes it. Hence arises the concept of the minimax, beloved of game theorists. We must look for the column in which the lowest value is as high as possible.”
“Well, it does not matter now, Holmes. As it turned out, you went to Canterbury, and survived; Moriarty is dead, and can never tell us on what basis he chose Dover. All else is moot.”
Holmes looked at me without seeming to see me, his gaze focused somewhere beyond infinity. “Is it, Watson? Do you remember [from The Einstein Paradox, this book's physics-focused prequel] the many-worlds view of reality, endorsed by Challenger and many other clever physicists, that arises out of quantum theory?…
“In that case, the original Sherlock Holmes who tossed a coin on the way to Canterbury gave rise to a huge (but not infinite) number of subsequent versions. Call that number a zillion if all had survived. If I had rolled a die as I should have done, a third of a zillion would be alive now. As it is, there are only a quarter of a zillion. One-twelfth of those other versions of myself were killed by my stupidity.”
I gazed into the fireplace for some time, musing like Holmes on philosophical realities almost impossible to grasp.
The Case of the Poor Observer (Chapter 10) and The Case of the Perfect Accountant (Chapter 11)
The afterword advises that these chapters “should be taken together”.
Framing Story
A businessman (the son of a person who died in The Einstein Paradox) comes to Holmes for advice on how he should manage his business.
Topics
-
Misleading observations and statistics
Author's Book Recommendations
Quotes
From the afterword:
[These chapters] deal with the same problem: How do you construct an accurate picture of the world, given that your subjective impressions may be misleading, and second-hand reports deliberately selective?
Three Cases of Good Intentions (Chapter 12)
Framing Story
First, someone is poisoning people accused of criminal deeds with butterscotch sweets, in a procedure that looks something like Russian roulette. Second, Watson has discovered that nightshade extract seems to be an effective treatment for Baird's disease—but it seems to help only half of the patients to whom he prescribes it. Third, Reverend Dodgson (fron chapter 5) has devised a way to extend “I cut, you choose” to disputes between three or more parties, and offers his services to help in a territorial dispute between three nations in the Balkans who are negotiating under British oversight.
Topics
Author's Book Recommendations
Quotes
From the afterword:
Game theory and related branches of mathematics have made great strides in recent decades. Perhaps where the visionaries of the early twentieth century fell short in their attempts to design new and better societies in which war and want would be unknown, those of the twenty-first, equipped with better knowledge, may yet succeed.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.