As I get older, I notice more and more that I am slowly forgetting. Things I once learned in high school or college are fading from memory. Hard-fought knowledge has since gone unused and languished into oblivion. This process is not entirely a bad thing, as some of that knowledge has never been useful since the last paper was written and the final exam was finished, and more heavily-used knowledge has taken its place. Learning and then forgetting all of that knowledge was not a total loss, either, because along the way I learned something else even more valuable: how to learn efficiently.
What do I Care if Polar Bears Die?
A friend of mine asked me this recently, and I couldn't be sure if he was genuinely curious or just trolling me. I didn't give him the greatest response, something along the lines of, "That question shows a general lack of systems thinking." Then the conversation moved on to other topics. I was caught off-guard by the question because the premise that someone wouldn't care about the survival of an entire species as iconic as the polar bear is well outside my normal lines of thought. I can't stop thinking about how poorly I answered the question, so it's time to dig in and get to the bottom of the matter.
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| Credit: Arturo de Frias Marques from Wikipedia |
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