Warren Buffett, probably the world’s most successful investor, has said that anything good that happened to him could be traced back to the fact that he was born in the right country, the United States, at the right time (1930)

According to the CIA Factbook the 2013 estimates on infant mortality rates per 1000 births was, in Mali, 106.49 and in Australia 4.49.  From the same source at the time of birth a baby born in Mali has a life expectancy of 54.55 years, Australian’s have a life expectancy of 81.98 years.  On the 21st of November 2012 the Economist published an article “the lottery of life, where to be born in 2013” which appears in the 2013 print edition.  The ‘lottery of life’ refers to a variable which is out of any persons control, the place and time in which you are born.  It is fair to say that these circumstances can greatly impact the quality of life and opportunities a person receives.  When I was born in Melbourne Australia, in 1994, I was given a golden ticket to life.  I have been raised and educated in a way that I believe and the people around me, are capable of great things.  However if all circumstances were the same, except for the country of my birth – I may not believe the same thing, I would not have a world of opportunity at my feet.

https://www.cia.gov/index.html
http://www.economist.com/news/21566430-where-be-born-2013-lottery-life

I found this weeks reading interesting in the way that they depicted writing as a technology.  The pen and paper are technologies in themselves that have been developed over time, from ancient worlds where people drew on cave walls to tell stories and used symbols to record history, the computer and keyboard we use today is a development in writing technology.

The readings used an example which stated that people see pens as an extension of there limbs, writing is something that we are taught to do from an early age and so it just becomes second nature.  I think that this is very true and why we fail to recognise writing as a technology.  However with the development in writing technologies I think it has also changed the way that people read and receive information.  People use to go out and buy a physical news paper, students use to research for essays in the library.  Now information need not even be printed into physical form.  People just type what they are looking for into search engines and news off of the news company websites.

Starting with my favourite quote: what one of the most intelligent men had to say about intelligence…

“Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”    Albert Einstein

In the random way that the brain works I found myself thinking about creativity and how as a society we tend to lump people in to categories of intelligence such as ‘the science guys’ or ‘the creative ones’.  It use to be that intelligence was measured only on a scale of a persons ability to add, multiply, subtract.  That if you took science and maths it was “Oh my god your so smart”.

I want to believe that in todays society we measure intelligence on different scales, I think at some point in our lives – perhaps at the beginning of our education – people make a choice about what intelligence they want to posses – hence I think we all hold the ability, at some point, to be a good mathematician or a good artist or musician.

It is the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate which argues that it is the environment we are exposed to, that we grow up in which will help guide us to which ‘form’ of intelligence we may ‘chose’. True we all have our strengths, but I think that with practice people are capable  of all kinds of intelligence.  So rather than saying ‘I’m just not good at that’ perhaps the real truth is that it is not something that you are interested in or that you are passionate about.

For example somebody who is able to invent something, to foresee what tomorrow might need or people might want, might not think of themselves as creative but rather a scientist – however to invent something is, to me, a very creative thing.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/disproved-theories-about-human-intelligence.htm – 10 disproved theories about intelligence.