Conjectures and Refutations

Karl Popper taught David Miller who taught John Collins who taught me. It's like Papal succession. So I'm sure Karl would have been pleased to hear how I recently applied the Principle of Falsification to an area of frustration in my own life.

The Principle of Falsification is a much misunderstood solution to the Problem of Induction. So we're going to need some background here but, please, bear with me, I promise I'll be brief.

The problem of Induction asks, 'how the hell can we know anything for certain?' and everybody since David Hume, who first articulated the problem, has basically come to the conclusion that we can't. Popper, too, is in the 'we can't' camp but he points out that what we can do is rule things out.

Regular readers of this space will know that Charlie, Spike and I recently moved into a new flat. It was not long before we noticed a melancholic melody emanating from the back wall of the kitchen. A sort of high pitched 'brrng whrrrlllrrrng brrrng' Spike didn't seem too bothered by it, but it was seriously annoying the human occupants. What the hell kind of weird music were the neighbours listening to? It was a musical sound but it wasn't music. There was no way that anybody would listen to that noise for pleasure. So, like good Popperians, we abandoned our initial conjecture and decided that it must be the neighbours' kids playing some repetitive computer game. However the noise continued at intervals all through the night. So that seemed unlikely too.

A few days passed and the noise started to invade our every waking moment, it was cyclical and would increase in volume and then suddenly stop. But even when unheard we found ourselves listening for it. Can you hear it, yet? Even Spike, who is usually the most laid back, was starting to feel agitated.

Sometimes you don't know where a hypothesis comes from. Hypothesis creation is the imaginative part of science that doesn't get the credit that is heaped on the logical part. However, suddenly it came to me, the noise wasn't from the neighbours at all. Our new freezer was singing to us. We had a singing freezer. 

When I first mentioned this idea, it was met with some scepticism. But I was taught by a man who was taught by a man who was taught by Karl Popper, so I know how to react when confronted by a sceptical girlfriend and cactus. 'What would Popper do in this instance?' I asked myself. 'He would try his best to refute his conjecture,' I answered myself.

I waited until the sound was in crescendo then reached for the switch and turned the freezer off. If the sound continued then, by the principle of falsification, I would have to abandon my singing freezer hypothesis. If the sound stopped then my theory was corroborated (but crucially not proven.)

The sound stopped. The freezer's 'on' cycle was causing the pipes at the back to vibrate and that in turn seemed to create a feedback loop which caused the sound to increase in intensity until the freezer went into its 'off' cycle (or I pulled the plug).

Now we've filled it up a bit, it doesn't seem so bad, I think the empty box was acting as an amplifier as well.

Work/Life/Balance

I have recently finished my annual fortnight of real work. For two weeks every August, the Boss disappears on an exotic foreign holiday and I get left in charge of the pub. Obviously, the very nature of management is anathema to my anarcho-syndicalist soul and I spend a lot of time worrying about having to ask the staff to do something and have to precede every request with 'Would you mind terribly...' I generally let them finish ten minutes early just so I can wipe down the tables myself rather than ask them to do it. 

The timing of this autocratic interlude was particularly inconvenient as I have just moved into a new flat and I would much rather have been spending my time fussily arranging books into a classification system of my own devising. 

Every time I move, I convince myself that this will be the house in which I fulfill some of my unfulfilled ambitions: reading Being and Nothingness, listening to more classical music and writing a novel. If I had actually started the thousand-words-a-day regime at the time I started this blog I could have written about six novels by now.

Sorry there's no overarching theme to today's entry. Here is a picture of Spike relaxing in the new flat:

Spike and his new friend Lily settling in to their new abode.

On ice (and ice cream)

It's hot in England. By English standards anyway. Has been for weeks. A heat wave. And with a wave of heat comes a tsunami of ignorance about ice. If I have a purpose in life it is to educate people about ice. We have touched previously on reasons why ice preferences should not be linked to the temperature outside.(see Ranting about work (part one)) Now it's time to examine the dual properties of ice.

Ice can serve two purposes: it can cool and it can dilute. The more ice you have the longer your drink stays cool, the less ice you have the faster it dilutes. (Got that? Good. I was worried you were going to ask me to draw a graph or something and I've never learnt to use Excel.) These are the two factors that should be considered when your hot, overworked, underpaid bartender asks if you want ice. How cold do I want my drink and how much do I want my drink diluted? HINT: It's pretty much only neat spirits that need diluting, your cider doesn't. So when your hot, tired, overworked, underpaid bartender, who would rather not be in the darkest pub in Norwich on the hottest day of the year, asks if you would like ice in your cider and you say 'a little bit', he may not be in the mood for giving you a quick lecture on basic physics, he might just give you what you ask for and smirk while you drink your watery cider.

Now, What is the weather like outside? It's hot in England. The sort of weather where you might fancy a White Chocolate Magnum. Well if you do, don't go to my local shop because they have sold out. And if you do go to my local shop and see that they have sold out and think, 'Well, I don't want a Double Caramel Magnum because I don't like caramel ruining my ice-cream and filling up the cavities in my teeth and I don't want a Caramel Magnum because that's the same price as a Double Caramel Magnum and I don't want to feel I'm being ripped off even though I don't like caramel in my ice cream for the aforementioned reasons and I don't want a Magnum Infinity because that's a flavour that's not a flavour (like 'blue' or 'tropical') and I have an aversion to flavours that aren't flavours, I'd better go for mint.' If you do go for mint you'll probably regret it and wish you'd just got a Feast instead.

Apologies to my international readers for the rant about local ice-cream brands. It's hot in England. We're not used to it.

William of Ockham

Following on from yesterday's crowdpleasing rant (a record 7 'likes' on my alter ego's facebook page) I've decided to abuse my new found popularity to shoehorn in some philosophy and hopefully lose some of the late-to-the-game hangers-on that have started lurking around the site and go back to the days when it was just me and ubilol harping on about Bertrand Russell.

Regular readers have heard all about the origins of Finnginn, but few will know that it was this fiction of my pre-school self that first led me to encounter Ockham's Razor.

About 25 years before I was to name a blog about procrastination after him, I was convinced of Fiengins's existence (Fiengins was his real name, I just couldn't pronounce it, so adults thought I was saying Finnginn). At that age I was unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. On a good day, I still can't.

I expect the two of you who have bothered to read this far are wondering, 'But where does William of Ockham fit into all of this?' Whenever I would blame Fiengins for some minor misdemeanour, my Father would say, "Avoid the needless multiplication of entities," and, upon observing the look of puzzlement on my cherubic face, would add, mystifyingly: "Ockham's Razor."  

Nearly three decades and a philosophy degree later I finally understand what this means. Ockham was the first person to point out that when looking for an explanation the simplest is most likely to be the correct one.

For instance, if an Easter Egg that I had been specifically told was to be saved for after dinner got eaten while I was in the house and everyone else was in the garden, there are two possible explanations:

1: I ate it.

2: A friend of mine that nobody else can see ate it.

Ockham sports the tonsured look.

On a good day, I recently found myself speculating whether an Orangutan had broken into my bathroom and deposited lots of two inch long ginger hairs into the plughole filter. But, remembering Ockham, I stopped myself invoking plurality and had a look in the  mirror. Maybe Ockham and I have something other than philosophy in common... 

Ranting about work (part one)

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that I have altered my header so that it no longer reads 'hungover and debt-ridden'. It had been annoying me for some time. Nobody's permanently hungover, you have to be drunk at least as often as you are hungover. Being drunk is great as long as you haven't got anything productive to do tomorrow. Hangovers taste like soda-water. Sobriety, despite tasting like a cup of  lukewarm tea you didn't ask for but are drinking to be polite, isn't too bad for short periods and is great for productivity.

Of course, most of my readers know me as a Finnginn the philosopher/poet. But that is just my dayjob. By night, I am translated into a bartender at one of Norwich's many taverns. It occurs to me that there has been far too much poetry and philosophy on this blog and insufficient ranting about things that annoy me at work. Glancing around the rest of the blogosphere, most people don't spend months carefully constructing a poem then tenderly offer it up for criticism with an amusing anecdote that involves Steven Hawking and a girl they failed to get off with by starting a band despite a complete lack of musical ability (see The Choral Variation (part one)). No, be they postman, police officer or prostitute, most bloggers just seem to rant about work.

Now, there are two issues that bother every bartender. Music and ice.

Next time you are in a pub and a song you don't like comes on, here's a tip: If you wait three minutes, the track will change. If you decide to interrupt the bartender's battle with the Guardian cryptic crossword and ask him to change the track manually, you are entering dangerous ground. You may do this once per evening. He will, begrudgingly, leave his arch-nemesis Araucaria and skip the track. Never ask him to put something 'upbeat' or 'less depressing' on. You may get your one upbeat track, but listen out for an hour of Nick Cave later in your evening.

Don't imagine for a moment that you understand ice. When you are asked if you would like ice in that, don't reply 'a little bit' as if I'm going to listen to your preferences. I'm in charge of the ice. You are permitted only one preference, with or without. I begrudge you even this, but must comply. As for you who link your ice preferences to the temperature outside, I despise you.

When I ask you: 'would you like ice in your gin and tonic?' I am just fulfilling a social custom to which there is only one answer. How are you? I'm fine. Would you like ice in your gin and tonic? Yes. Essentially, I am asking you the opposite of, 'Would you like your gin and tonic to get gradually warmer and flatter over the next twenty minutes?' Only an insane person would answer 'yes' to this question. But that is the same as answering 'no' to ice in your gin and tonic.

There is a lot more to be said on the whole music/ice issue. I have added a 'part one' in parenthesis to the title of this blogpost. Be warned.

Rhyme Time

I got the bulk of this poem written in a single night and then took a month editing and tinkering. I even altered it a bit whilst typing it up here. But I think I'm happy with its basic shape now. It's about my Grandfather and the rowing boat he used to take my brother and I out in when we were children. The title refers to the boat which was called Pickle Pickle for reasons that remain obscure.

In a Pickle

Your strong arms
Steer long oars
Through calm seas.
Your arms seem so strong to me.

On wet sands,
Your deft hands
Unweave knots.
With strong arms,
You heave your boat down the beach.

My sea legs
Are feeling
Uneasy,
I'm queasy,
You teach me
To fix my
Young eyes on
The distant
Horizon where sky greets sea.

My young eyes
Look up to
Your strong arms
And deft hands
And kenning of sea and breeze.

I think you
Would not be
Ill-suited
To tall ship
Or longboat
And I hope
That one day
My arms will
Have strength like
The strength when your arms lift me.

I have noticed, in my recent notebooks, that my attitude to rhyme has been evolving. I'm moving away from formal rhyming structures and employing more internal and half rhymes. I really don't know why, I much prefer to read poems that rhyme. 

This previous is typical of my more recent notes in this trend of not formally rhyming but atypical in that it is complete.

A week of writing

Every Spring without fail I have an idea for a novel. 

On the first day of writing, I will bang out thousands of words in notes and sections of prose and conversations where I will fill in the names and details afterwards. 

On the second day of writing, I will sit in the garden with my notebook, watching the bees sniff lazily at the rosebush I should probably be pruning. Then I scrawl furiously for an hour and a half. 

On the third day of writing, I will transfer notebook notes to laptop and feel smug about wordcount.

On the fourth day, I won't write much but will try and fill in the names and details I omitted during the rush of creativity on day one.

On the fifth day, I worry that I'm not progressing as fast as I was earlier. I re-read the earlier stuff and start to hate it.

On the sixth day, I wonder if there is anything in my archive that I can crowbar in to get the wordcount up.

On the seventh day, I wake up and see that autumn has come and I go back to bed and wait for Spring and a new idea.