A state funeral for that cat, please!

I once encountered a beautiful quote by the Canadian author Arnold Edinborough:

Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.

But wait a second! - does it mean that it's a noble pastime to immerse oneself in gossip to discover in detail whether one's favorite actor's relationship is in crisis? I don't want to think so: rather, I think there are two kinds of curiosity. François de la Rochefoucauld tells us in this way:

There are different kinds of curiosity: one springs from interest, which makes us desire to know everything that may be profitable to us; another from pride, which springs from a desire of knowing what others are ignorant of.

Now, rather, I mean that the two kinds of curiosity can be described as constructive and destructive curiosity - or perhaps rather as craving for knowledge and prying, respectively. For there is no doubt that it is not fair to let the things that people have an interest in being secret about, which any idea of ​​privacy give them the right to keep for themselves, be the topic of one's curiosity. But the constructive curiosity; the craving for knowledge, which makes us all smarter, and which does not hurt anyone, we cannot get too much of.
On a different note, I'm not entirely aware of where that cat lived when curiosity killed it. But it was not the blacksmith's cat - an old Danish saying has that it was killed by thanks. Although it's noble enough to be thankful, you cannot live off thanks alone...
(Translated from Giv den kat en statsbegravelse, originally published November 28th, 2010.

Internet makes stupid - unless you're careful

...what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

This is the American author Nicholas G. Carr's interpretation of, what Google, Facebook and other of the marvels of the internet do to us - we become zappers, constantly chasing new bites of information, without being able to dive into anything. Our power of concentration disappears, and we barely register the title of one article before we are in search of the next, which we do not have time to dive into.
I have thought about it before: that I myself was about to be hit by it, news and general information junkie as I am, but I do think, however, that I will be able to escape.
Or rather, my eternal quest to know everything about everything, not just keywords about everything will save me. For instance, it was not enough for me just to read on the front page of a news paper that "Facebook and Google will change your mind."
First, I had read the article in the paper, then the original piece from The Atlantic, and finally I had to find out who Nicholas G. Carr was. Fortunately I think that is more reminiscent of scuba than jet skis, and that's how I intend to continue to operate. But then again, I know all too well that I am reactionary and old-fashioned.
(Translated from Internet gør dum - hvis man ikke passer på, originally posted December 15, 2008)

On the topic of good reasons

We see quite it often in our daily lives - for example in the public or in our jobs - that we are subject to procedural changes that seem downright foolish; but there must be a good reason, because why change the procedures if there isn't?
The big problem is just that in most cases the modifications are allowed to appear stupid without contradiction because no good explanation is given; and one simply begins to assume that there probably are no good explanations. Much of this could be avoided if only a good explanation was given when it was there - because then we would understand that a good reason actually existed. And the same principle we should use in our own communication: if there is a good reason - tell it!
Of course there is a risk to end up in situations like the one known from the movie "A Few Good Men," where the words come from Jack Nicholson's mouth: "You can't handle the truth!" But well - let's take these situations when they arise. I think the biggest problem will be that in the cases that remain unexplained, one will become even more convinced that the good reason does not exist.
(Translated from Noget om gode grunde, originally posted August 22, 2013)

In the right room

One of the points that Sydney Finkelstein carries in "Superbosses" is not really news - I have not been able to find out where it originally came from, but this does do not necessarily make the point uninteresting:

If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.

Of course, there are exceptions - school teachers are obvious examples - but otherwise it makes good sense: if you aren't in the company of people you can learn from, then you have not chosen the right companions.

But you can argue that then there will of course at any time in any group of people be a person who should not be there? Fortunately, I do not think it's that bad. For it may well be that when it comes to some fields, a person is the smartest in the room - while being a novice in other fields and thereby easily able to learn a great deal from some of the others.

The point can therefore equally correctly be interpreted in the way that at any time, one should surround oneself with a wide range of different people with different skills and areas of interest - so that at any time, there are fields in which one can learn from the people one is surrounded with, and thus, one will always be in the right room.

(Translated from I det rigtige rum)