I do not have a lot of background on statistics. Hoping someone here could explain why in Roulette game, although the apparent chances of getting number between 0-18 (inclusive) and 19-36 (inclusive) are the same, we lose money if we keep playing more and more numbers of games.
The 0 does not count as a lower number. There at 18 numbers in both the groups 1-18 and 19-36. Each of these give a 18/37 chance of winning, which is lower than 50% and therefore loses in the long run when the money is being doubled on a win.
Ah...I see. I am not much of a gambler either, so this is a very useful piece to know why Roulette gambling, in the long run, turns negative for the gambler. Thank you.
Your suggested approach was exactly what I did when I had gone through a similar system in Myanmar as the OP described above, where lazy teachers leave managing the class to students among themselves.
Stay as neutral as possible so that it doesn't bite back at you when the name-taker is someone else. It worked for the most part because my classmates would start recommending me to be the name taker and in return, I told them to not make too much noise when talking during teacher's absence.
As an immigrant, that was one of the cultural adjustment that I had to do in the US. In my home country in SE Asia, people usually ask "Have you eaten (have you had a meal)?" as a greeting. It's easier to answer with "No, I haven't." or "Yes, I just had lunch" for example.
But when I moved to the states for college, I was perplexed as to how to answer "How're ya?" or "What's up?". :D I learned to answer that question with a standard, "I'm good. Thank you". But even nowadays, I sometimes venture to answer it honestly like, "I'm okay. [insert some really honest reason why I'm just okay]" or "I'm busy, but it's all good".
This is just a small example of adjustment that I made as I try to settle in my new home.
I am in Russia now. I can say that people do smile normally if they feel like the conversation warrants it. But there’s not so much “fake” tinseltown hollywood pleasantry.
Americans in the US have a saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.” It is a culture very much fine tuned for business, which is why you want to make sure to grease the wheels of an interaction, and there is nothing to be gained by being straightforward with what you actually think. It’s avoidance of conflict and closing of a sale.
I remember when my grandparents immigrated to the USA they would relate stories like:
1) A woman would approach and say “hi, how are you”? And they would start answering but she would just walk on by LOL
2) My grandfather would offer a seat to a woman but she just started yelling at him for doing it.
Later, they adjusted. But even the word “you” — which Russians thought is “rude” because there is no “polite You” for strangers — actually is the polite version of Thou, because (unlike the Amish) the English got so polite that they just stopped using Thou altogether!
There's a lot of variations so even some natives will share your frustrations, though personally I think the option variety is a nice feature. You can have amusing moments when you've queued up an automatic response and get the wrong trigger. "Gorgeous day huh?" "I'm well, you? Err..." Sometimes just ACK-ing works well if you really don't want to think about it... "What's up?" "Sup." "Howdy?" "Howdy." Regional / cultural greeting patterns can be used though to initiate moving from total stranger to closer stranger more quickly when you reply in certain ways... "Wazzup?" "Wazzzzuuuuup." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oL7v7PLac)
Well I'm a native born American and I always answer it honestly. There is always something up, either at work or with my family or friends. It doesn't hurt to spend 10 words mentioning it.
This is a greeting in quite a few SE Asian countries that I'm aware of. I've heard of it for Thailand (gin khao mai), Myanmar, and Singapore. I always answered yes/the default answer. But maybe I'll try no next time I visit for free lunch? :)
As an immigrant with no family to rely on in the US, I always give credit to Reddit for helping me learn so many things from buying old/used car, applying to grad school, to looking for an apartment. Just like you said, its diverse user base means it has almost all the information one needs. I hope it never changes (although with the recent re-design, I'm afraid it might have unintended repercussions...)
As a dead animal carcass whos insides are torn out and spewed out along the side of the road, I wish I could use reddit for similar, yet somewhat more distant categories too ^.^
I often use reddit as a search engine for answers with a "human touch" for lack of a better word. I once did this with del.icio.us back in the "social bookmarking" days. I'm curious if this is a big use case for Reddit users do this too?
Maybe not based on the low quality of their search engine...
I frequently do the same with "site:reddit.com" searches on Google for "human touch" answers. I do the same thing with Hacker News for technical topics.
b) Just finished a book/tv series and want to
connect with others around it.
c) Looking for recommendations in various genres
Daily news/connecting with people/cat videos are very far away from my use case. Just append "reddit" to qoogle search query and 9 times out of 10, I am golden.
A great story. It's similar in a lot of ways to how people believe that Buddhas (according to Theravada Buddhism, many, many Buddhas live among us and almost all of us will become one) fulfill his path to enlightenment this way--reincarnation after another, absorbing all experiences along the way until he is ready to become the Enlightened one.
Disclaimer: I was born Buddhist, but no longer. But I still admire a few aspects of Theravada Buddhism.
I agree with you about not trusting anything we see on TV/Newspapers (even if it is from 60 Minutes; NYT; whatever-is-reputed-to-be-reliable). I grew up in Myanmar and after reading a lot of one-sided coverage about the refugee issue there (labeled as 'genocide'), I realized it's impossible for news organizations to be almost always impartial and accurate.
They have to obtain information from some source. Almost always, that source of information can mislead the reporter/news writer easily because of the latter's lack of familiarity with the issue, the region or the culture. The reporter, on the other hand, works against time. Plus, s/he is, after all, human (susceptible to persuasion/personal biases and worse, is sometimes too lazy to do a fact-check and more importantly, to hear the voices from the other side).
As most things in life, the truth is always in somewhere the middle.
Especially since now sources are "someone familiar with their thinking". Why the media thinks that is a reputable source is beyond me and is why I've completely stopped watching television news
The challenge is that when you're reporting on companies with legendarily strict NDAs and entire security teams dedicated to finding leaks and snuffing them out, news is going to come predominantly from confidential sources.
For example, in the Theranos segment that followed the Google segment on this week's 60 Minutes, the Theranos employee who first ratted them out stated that he used a fake name when he first contacted the government because he feared reprisal.
Presumably, reporters are supposed to seek adequate proof or confirmation of what they hear from "sources", and we are supposed to be able to trust that they did that job adequately or at least, they are reporting the news as they believe it, until confirmation is available in the form of an official investigation.
I believe that it's not too bad to let negative thoughts pass through our stream of consciousness everyday. I mean, it's part of being human to have different kinds of emotion, right? The intervention is necessary ONLY IF one feels like negative thoughts are occupying too much of his/her mind space and is debilitating his/her day-to-day functions.
Other than that, we may sometimes be happy, be sad, be angry, be disgusted, be afraid and so on. Just don't linger on one for too long (know that time will help us forget) and that's a good enough approach to manage the emotional flux.
I've been working from home once a week in the past couple of months, and noticed that I spend more time working at home than I do in the office. For example, if I work from home, I'd be working from 8am to 6pm (with a few short breaks for lunch and etc.). If I go to work, I clock in at 8:30am (commute) and checks out at 5:30pm sharp.
In a way, my employer is getting an extra 30-60 mins out of me for the days I work from home (assuming that I'm as productive working from home as I am at the office, which I believe is to be the case).
I grew up in Myanmar until 23 and know what you're talking about. Those 'sayalays' follow a less stricter rules/precepts than a fully-ordained monk. That's why they are expected to pay respect to the male monks. Of course, there is no denying that it's a male-dominant religion, but it is no worse than Catholicism. Buddha, according to the Buddhist legends, appointed his step-mom to be in charge of female monks and they have established their own structure, which follows closely to the one established by male monk's structure (but with slightly less strict rules).
As an atheist, I am not going to defend Buddhism (be it Mahayana, Theravada or Tibetan) because they all have major flaws, and aren't very practical--in my opinion--for the modern society. As with most religions, there are good and bad parts in Buddhism and a lot of original teachings by Buddha have been 'tainted' by cultural reasoning (not to mention that even Buddha himself likely got a lot of influence in his philosophy from Hinduism and other mainstream religions in his time). Overall though, I have to say that Buddhism at its core is fairly benign (no eliminate-those-who-don't-believe-in-our-god's-teachings that can be found in old testament or Koran).
I consider my self an atheist too. I've done some reading on Buddhism (online and offline, and at my local temple) to learn more about it. I found that a secular approach to Buddhism ("Secular Buddhism"?) is what works best for me.
I don't believe in myth or fairy tales. Nor do I believe in sky Gods or the after life. To me Buddhism, when stripped of all of this, becomes The Four Noble Truths, The Eight Fold Path, and meditation. Or put another way: a simple guide to understanding the mind, our attachment to worldly possessions, life, how to do well by others, and so on.
I was all in on Theravada Buddhism for a while. Until I realized I only believed in a small subset of it - cherry-picking, if you will. Anything that my western sensibilities don’t find appealing, like nagas and devas and stuff I just conveniently filtered away.
Cherry picking gets a bad rap in religion as being arbitrary, but in the Kalama Sutta, which to me is an epistemological treatise, Gotama (or some other guru, who really knows?) says:
> "So, as I said, Kalamas: 'Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, "This contemplative is our teacher." When you know for yourselves that, "These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness" — then you should enter & remain in them.' Thus was it said. And in reference to this was it said.
This! The Kalama Sutta was broadcast on national TV every night (around 8-9pm) when the military junta was in power. It is their way of saying, "Don't believe in what you heard about our evil doings from outsiders--such as the western propaganda". So almost everyone in the country is aware of that. Ironically speaking, that Sutta really became my go-to philosophy for life. Never believing everything taught by anyone/any being UNTIL it fits my experience/goals. That Sutta, if it was really said by Buddha, is one of the most powerful and most empowering statement he made of all his teachings (in my humble opinion).
I really like your take on Buddhism and I share a similar sentiment toward it. I don't think a lot of educated Buddhists in Myanmar take Nagas, sky gods, seriously at all. Uneducated (meaning they are not well-read) Buddhists probably don't even know most of these myths let alone The Four Nobel Truths, The Eight Fold Path, and the difference between Vipassana & Tha-ma-hta meditation techniques, etc. I, as an atheist, found those myths and fairy tales amusing/entertaining/awe-inspiring when I was young.
When I became old enough (like 8-9th grade), I realized they are mostly folklores. But I still believed that there is some essence/truth in Buddha's teaching like Four Nobel Truths, and so on. I tried Vipassana meditation (nowadays, it's become quite popular in the western side as mindfulness meditation--an alleged antidote to alleviate stress in life). Unfortunately, I never found myself to be able to consistently practice meditation to keep my mind in calm most of the time. I'm too lazy to put in serious effort at meditation and stick to it.
BUT I found that being aware of the fact that mindfulness is great when we are in tough situations is good enough for me. For example, when I'm having a stressful day/moment, I just try to look at myself from a third person p.o.v and realize quickly that 'this too shall pass' and no negative event in life is big enough to overcome/forget. I just need to do the best that I can for the items that are in my control to minimize the impact and move on. Plus, Buddha's teaching of lessening attachment to worldly possessions (nowadays, it's popular as 'minimalism' in the west) is quite useful. So I try to live life minimally (not to an extreme because Buddha's philosophy is to walk the middle path). That helps me qualm a lot of desires and the consequence of chasing after those desires.
Meditation or becoming a monk to seek Four Noble Truth is too 'costly' for me and I do not plan to give up my worldly possession and family to go seek for the 'Truth'/Nirvana (whatever that means; maybe there's not a set of truth for everyone and Truth could very well be different for different people). I feel okay (that is, I don't feel guilty) about reaching to this conclusion as well. If everyone were to become a monk/nun and seek for Truth via meditation, the society will grind to a halt (because somebody's gotta grow the food), right? All in all, I am happy with the way I have been managing my life's stresses in a kind of Stoic way that I mentioned above.
P.S. Please read the comment below by 'cko' about Kalama Sutta. If you already know about this, that's awesome! If not, I hope you'll find it somewhat interesting/useful. :)
