Like so many things that crossed cultures, the real story was far less doomsday and far more cultural ignorance, at best. Most of the images of the circled stone were actually from the Aztec, not the Maya, who didn’t really traffic in apocalypses.

In reality, the Maya used two calendars: one with 365 days and one with 260 days. Every day had two names and reset every fifty-two years. In addition, they had a long count of years like the Roman calendar we use today.  2012 was a reset year for their two differing calendars.

That’s it.

IN 5000 AD, WHAT WILL THEY THINK?

Imagine a civilization in 5000 AD digging up one of our paper calendars with cute cats or hot firefighters on it, seeing December 31st, calculating what day it would be for them, and panicking because December 31st was in two of their months!  And then announcing to everyone the world was ending.

Which, let’s face it, if civilization hasn’t ended by 5000 AD, humanity should really hold a worldwide party, because that would be incredible.

I digress. 

I was thinking about that “prophesy” this week and the 10 years since 2012 where the calendars keep advancing no matter what happens. What will future civilizations say about this time?

Knowing humans, they will probably misinterpret everything, but I don’t think they will be very impressed.

In 3000 years, if we should last so long, we will probably be past the ravages of climate change. Future humans will read accounts of people who knew what was coming and did not act with the gobsmacking incredulity we view the doctors who prescribed bloodletting for bullet wounds.

The internet will be woven into perhaps our very bodies and the massive campaigns of misinformation and disinformation and the amount of theft and crime and horror we permit online will hopefully seem like unfathomable levels of ignorance.

And the callousness with which we treat human life in everything from healthcare costs, to policing, to labor laws will hopefully make us seem like complete barbarians.

HEADING OFF FUTURE PANIC

At the very least, I hope, our calendar won’t cause too much panic or confusion, with its 10 lovely months. (Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec = Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten) Oh wait, and the two shoehorned months (January and February) at the beginning because the Romans made a calendar that didn’t actually sync with the celestial year and nobody could plan planting and harvesting because they kept moving around.

Oh, and the two newer months in the middle of the year named for emperors (July and August) instead of the original Quintilis and Sextilis (Six & Seven), because if you can get a unit of time named after you, why not?

If any archeologists are reading this in the year 5000, good luck guys! No, we can’t explain it…

WILL THINGS BE BETTER?

I hope that in 3000 years we will learn how to work with our weaknesses as a species: our hubris, violence, tribalism, short-sightedness, reactivity, and credulousness.

Or if not, perhaps we will at least grow some humility if those weaknesses continue to plague us and make peace with our endless capacity for really, really stupid calls about something as simple as counting days? We can hope!

At any rate, I look forward to the world continuing on January 1st, even though my Star Wars calendar has run out.

My aspirations for the world each year get smaller and smaller. In this upcoming year, may we be patient with our foibles, mindful of the past, respectful of other cultures’ ability to count, and refrain from doing anything too crazy that will prompt 120 generations from now to panic.

The post It’s Been 10 Years Since the End of the World first appeared on Postcards from Pluto.

I talk a lot in this newsletter about how to dismantle your assumptions and beliefs and question the water that you swim in. But equally important, if not more important, is the ability to get new and better ideas once you’ve done that.

One of humanity’s main tools for seeing things differently is the scientific method. Don’t click away! I know, boring, Middle School level science, but we have a massive problem. We were never really taught the first step!

WHAT WE DID LEARN IN SCHOOL?

How many tests and experiments did you run in school? How many times did you have to come up with the question, not just the answer?

I remember an upper division writing class in college. I got a C on my first paper.

Somewhat gobsmacked, I went to the Professor who informed me that I had come to a different conclusion, not the one he gave me.

I said, “Let me get this straight, you gave me the hypothesis, the evidence, and the conclusion in bullets, and you want me to turn that exact hypothesis, evidence, and conclusion into five paragraphs?” He was thrilled that I understood. I did. I got an A on the next assignment.

I did learn an important lesson that day, but I don’t think it was the one he was intending. 

A similar thing happened in science in high school, where we burned a peanut to calculate the calories. (Did anyone else have to do this?) We were given how much energy is in a peanut. My group ran the experiment and got that amount of energy.

All good… Until we got to the part of the proof about how our answer could be wrong.

My teacher suggested that maybe we screwed up the assignment and then screwed it up again in a way that corrected the first screw-up so we reached the correct number.

I asked if maybe we could burn an almond instead. He looked at me like I was crazy. I said that maybe I want to know how many calories are in an almond since everyone has already done peanuts. He said the calorie count is on the bag. I said, Why am I here? 

You can see the fruits of this kind of education in businesses the world over. The training with no obvious outcome. The products no one wants. The busy work! Dear god, the busy work. All avoided by asking the question: what is the question? What problem are we trying to solve?

OUR EDUCATION TEACHES US WE’RE IN A KIND WORLD WHEN WE AREN’T.

I mean something very specific when I say kind. This idea comes from a fabulous book called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialist World, by David Epstein.

A kind world is a closed system, much less complex than the real, wicked world. Sports games, board games, and any computer algorithm all limit choices to allow us to learn the right lessons from experience.

The number of choices could be incredibly large, like chess moves, but there are still only a few ways to play chess.

(This doesn’t mean that these worlds are nice/fair/easy. Ask anybody who got fourth place at the Olympics in any sport with seemingly straightforward rules.)

WE LIVE IN THE WICKED WORLD

Olympic podiums aside, we live in the wicked world where decisions are hopelessly complex; randomness and chaos screw well-laid plans randomly, and we often don’t learn the right lessons from experience.

This leads to all manner of perverse consequences and heartbreak. It’s the difference between playing house in a sandbox, versus buying an actual house and setting up real life.

In this world where you don’t know what you’re solving for and you can’t be sure of the feedback you get, coming up with a really good hypothesis is probably the most important thing you can do. And one we get barely any practice at it!

IT’S ALSO OUR ONE MAIN STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE

Computers have thus far not been able to exit the sandbox. They must pretend they live in a kind world where the rules are fixed because they don’t have the complexity to think for themselves when the rules don’t make sense. Humans can.

But due to our education, we spend most of our time pretending we’re in a sandbox. Most schooling and most jobs artificially limit our choices because it’s just easier to function by known rules, even if they aren’t true, but to truly solve the problems we’re facing, for at least some of the day, we have to get out of the sandbox.

ENTER THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The idea that you can try something, see what the result is, guess why, and repeat the experiment to see if it happens again is revolutionary. And if it happens enough, you change your fundamental beliefs about what is true. That changed everything.

It’s an idea that took thinkers all over the world almost two millennia to figure out.

Egyptian Medical texts in 500 BCE explained how to examine, diagnose, and treat problems, while Babylonian astronomers first applied math to the stars (and everything we’ve mathed since).

By 1000 BCE, Indian philosophers and Buddhist scholars were diving into the brain, perception, and the self with what Einstein and any physicist since would call well-designed thought experiments.

Aristotle’s inductive-deductive method of reasoning went very viral, while many other Greeks and Romans created whole new disciplines of math and science from geography, to physics, to alchemy (some of these were better ideas than others, but sure fun to try!)

The scientific method of experimentation, particularly with specially designed instruments, came from the Islamic world. A physician named Ibn an-Haytham was as instructive as Aristotle, though sadly far less studied in Western curriculum, particularly because he proved Aristotle wrong. Like, a lot. He was particularly interested in vision, color, and light, but that’s greatly understating all he brought to science.

By the Renaissance, the scientific revolution was in full flourish, and a world view based on observable reality, as opposed to gods, fairies, coincidences, and luck, was increasingly better established, a trend that continues today.

So how do you come up with a good question? That will be next week, for now, enjoy the wicked world!

The post How to Learn to Love the Wicked World first appeared on Postcards from Pluto.