Race isn’t real.

There is no consensus among scientists, biologists and anthropologists that race exists. Or how many there are. Or how to differentiate between them. Racial categories that we use are arbitrary. Moulded by social and cultural constructs.

Race, at best, is a spectrum: think analogue (continuous range of values) and not digital (discrete, defined values). Race is forced to map onto human variation. It’s two millimetres of dead skin. There is no gene or variant of any gene, that has been found to exist in every one of one “race” and not of the other. There is no…

“When researchers in one study attempted to prompt participants to see a gender-neutral animal as female by using female pronouns, children, patents and carers still overwhelmingly referred to the animal as ‘he’. The study found that an animal must be ‘super-feminine’ before even close to half of the participants will refer to it as she rather than he.”

Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women

Immaculately researched, lucidly written and passionately argued. Perez’s data-driven expose of the seen and unseen inequalities that plague our 21st-century world is unputdownable. …

From harrowing descriptions of chainsaw mastectomies to advances in laser-gunning cancer, Bill Bryson’s sprawling, acerbic masterpiece is unputdownable. Bryson’s informative treatise takes us on a head-to-toe examination of every nook and cranny of the human body. Fact-filled, slapstick, poetic, heartbreaking.

Jampacked with information, this is a forensic study of the history, and present, of our uniquely human condition. It fired up my synapses, turned me into a medical acolyte and left me with a whirlwind of thoughts that I articulate below.

DNA

We have a metre of DNA packed into every cell. We have trillions of cells. Stretching out all the…

“If you ask them, why are you not using that latrine? They would tell you, ‘Are you sure I should put shit in that structure…that is even better than my house?’” Kar realised that open defecation was not a hardware problem, it was a behavioural problem.

Chip & Dan Heath, The Power Of Moments

The argument put forth in the Heaths’ bestseller is simple: our lives are shaped by a few “defining” moments. A few seconds make (or break) us. Our problems are mostly behavioural. Fleeting moments have profound, long-lasting impacts. Manufacturing such moments propels us to greater intellectual and…

Our brains are wired to admire stories and abhor logic. Because thinking burns calories. It takes effort. And our brains like to, wherever possible, take the path of least resistance. It’s just what we do.

This is why we need scepticism. And that’s why I’ve put together a simple, DIY “bullshit-detector”. It won’t work for all claims but should make you sceptical against a few.

1. Reality Is Not A Pattern

We are pattern reocognition machines. We see them everywhere — even when they don’t exist. Heard of people who find Jesus’ face in a potato? Well, that’s an example of pareidolia. We see what isn’t…

Looking for your dream house? Yep. A fancy car? Yep. Another credit card? Yep. Maybe a personal loan for a wedding? Yes, please.

An excellent credit score means you can borrow money at a cheaper interest rate. It shows the banksters that you are an excellent borrower i.e. you make all your monthly payments as scheduled, don’t miss any and are generally a trustworthy individual (fiscally speaking).

So why be wary of an excellent credit score? Well, let’s look at it from a lender’s perspective.

Deposit At 0%, Lend At 23%

You know what the bank does with your money in it’s coffers? Pays you 0%…

The one thing most people on the planet agree on is that time flows in one direction.

We do something and a short while later (anywhere between nanoseconds to millennia), something else happens.

We cause an effect.

But when analysing effects, are we sure we understand the cause? Do we wrongly attribute something as the effect of a cause when it’s actually the cause of an effect?

Confused? Try these:

• He’s stupid because he believes in fairytales. Or he believes in fairytales because he’s stupid?
• Do fat people eat more or are they fat because they eat more?
• The poor…

Predictions are hard.

Imagine trying to predict the ubiquity of smartphones 20 years ago?

You’d have had to predict the successful manufacturing of touchscreens and chipsets, the leaps in programming and UX/UI, the profligation of the internet, the availibility of GPS, the investment by telecom companies, and an unquenchable public demand. You’d also had to have factored in affordability, mass-market availability and social acceptance.

Prediction then is non-trivial, probably impossible and unfathomably multifaceted.

So with all that in mind, the wisest course of action would be never to attempt any predictions.

But where’s the fun in that?

So here are…