Angst und harte Entscheidungen – Fear and hard choices
Wie Angst uns in die kurzfristige Befriedigung treibt – wo wir doch eigentlich kurzfristig leiden sollten (english version below) Ich habe kürzlich Factfulness von Hans, Ola und Anna Rosling gelesen, ein wahrhaft fantastisches Buch. Ich bin über eine Passage über Angst, und wie diese unsere Informationsfilter verändert, gestolpert. Wir brauchen diese Filter, um die ständig einprasselnde Flut von Informationen zu verarbeiten, ohne diese Filter würden wir mit der schieren Menge nicht klarkommen. Auf der anderen Seite schränken diese Filter die Breite an Informationen stark ein. So sehen wir dann zum Beispiel vermehrt, was wir schon kennen – der sogenannte confirmation bias. Oder wir nehmen an Daten folgen einer linearen Trendlinie, obwohl sie das eigentlich gar nicht tun. Angst verstärkt diese Vorurteile (biases) indem sie die Filter so stark verengt. Das hindert uns daran, die volle „Breite“ der Daten zu sehen, ihre Komplexität zu erkennen. So viel aus Factfulness. Jimmy Carr…
Mastery and Autonomy – Kompetenz und Autonomie
Mastery and Autonomy (German version below) After a rather long article on my experiences at the Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, I wanted to make a shorter comment on something from the AI space that has been bugging me lately. I recently watched an episode of Jon Olivers Last Week Tonight where Mikey Shulman, Co-founder and CEO of AI music maker Suno was quoted saying: “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of the people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.” And of course, it’s easy to just laugh at a statement like this. It just sounds ridiculous, why wouldn’t people enjoy making music? I mean, let’s face it: If…
An astounding lack of vision
My take on the 74th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Chemistry. The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. A name that carries some depth, that elicits the raising of an eyebrow. You? There? Really. Huh. Well, I was lucky enough to be selected by the Klaus-Tschira-Stiftung for this honor. But I don’t want to dwell on the selection process, complicated and convoluted and probably unfair that it is. I want to highlight the expectations I had: Nobel Laureates and some of the most talented and highly achieving young scientists in the world. What a meeting that must be! What inspiring thoughts they all might share, what insightful questions they all might ask. And me in the middle, how can I possibly keep pace? Now, in retrospect, I can say: There was some of that. I met some great people and had some great discussions – for example with Derek from Veritasium, someone…
The start of a Blog
Let’s embark together! (German version below) I would like to tell you why I am writing this blog, what I want to achieve with it. But first of all, a general info: Some of these blog entries will be in German, some in English, most of them hopefully in both languages. I translate everything myself and do not use AI for this, so there will likely be small differences in language to keep the reading flow high. So, why a blog? Here, I will share ideas, thoughts and perspectives on what is going on in the world of chemistry. I will also likely comment on political subjects. But foremost, I will speak about one of my favorite subjects: Experiential Education. I’ll try to define it quickly here: Planning a venture that has the risk of failure and reflecting upon the experience. This takes us out of the comfort zone –…