Why I like functional ideas

To me functional ideas are those you can check. And much better when that is without a lot of effort also, as the web means we get so much information available, and it can take a lot to be sure something actually works. I don't want to do a lot of work checking ideas.

Can't be helped sometimes. But if you can quickly assess functional ideas as functioning? Then that is SO much better in my opinion.

Before people might rely more on institutions which is forced on us. There is too much knowledge which has been proven over time, or is accepted and you have to act with it in mind or else, for it to be any other way. Much of that information has been wrapped up by some institution or other, which should be the basis for its existence.

But for most for the first time as human beings with so much information accessible, it's often not enough for someone to just cite some authority, if you can find reliable sources disputing in minutes.

Confidence in explanation is not necessarily important. Like, lots of people believe all kinds of things, but what can they predict?

Prediction is where functional ideas really show their worth, when you expect one thing to happen and others either don't know, are guessing, or are just wrong.

There is such a powerful feeling if what you knew would happen does. No one can take that away either. As with the best ideas? You get that feeling relentlessly.

As guess what? The future is not interested in your opinion, your status, your confidence, or anything else about you. Long after you're dead and gone the future will still be here.

The future does not care what you believe is possible. The future does not care about you.

The future is forever the ultimate test. Test your ideas against it. When they fail, let them go.

Or if they don't fail, raise expectations. The best functional ideas are never wrong. And their predictions? Always come true. That perfection is what people can not understand, like when they hear the word "science".

It fascinates me often how accurate predictions from science are, even though without that accuracy you couldn't read these words. In our time, your computer is cycling through at millions of operations a second. That speed just keeps increasing as well.

At millions of operations per second, a glitch is catastrophic. Or, more simply, your computer stops working.

So glad it is still working as you read these words.

But even the rate of glitches in your computer is predictable. Our science explains so much. It's important to understand why. Prediction is key. The future doesn't care, but it can make sense.

Science is our way of making sense of the future.

There is no science without prediction.


James Harris