004 - Dont Ask Me To Be Batman

In this episode I sit down to talk about faking it til you make it, move on to talk about recurring decimals, and end up making my pitch as to why I should NOT be Batman (PLEASE stop asking).

If you have questions, comments, critique or feedback, find me.

Transcript

Russell: 0:00

My name is Russell Stuart brown. I'm probably not the Russell. you're looking for, but I'm the one you've got right now. These are some things that I've learned. One of the things I've learned is that faking it until you make it. Is a very legitimate strategy and a lot of situations. And again, I understand that when I say that, I sound like I'm. Once again. Advocating to lie about things. And that isn't quite what I mean. But. I'm going to go in to a couple of instances. So the first one. Is. In relation to another paradox. So. This is one of those paradoxes, because I've discussed this on previous episodes, that there are a lot of different things that fall under the umbrella of the name paradox. And this is one of them. That is a paradox because it doesn't sound right to us. It doesn't sound intuitive. And that that is the number 0.9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9. Recurring. Is equal. To what. And that's, I think something that. There's a, there's a, there's a sort of. Passage. Through this concept that people go on and. It involves a lot of denial. So I'm going to say that first of all, There's going to be two people who respond or there's going to be two directions. You can respond to that claim. I just made that 0.99999 is equal to one. And. Let's just quickly go through them. The first is that maybe, you know, Maybe you've been through this and you agree it is equal to one. And then there's another one where you say. That can't be true. Maybe he's talking about a certain way of saying is equal to maybe it's a, a language wordplay. Maybe that's how it is. And. Yes, the words are very important. But there are other words I can use as well. 0.9 recurring is equal to what. And what I mean, when I say that is that 0.9 9 9 9 9 9. Recurring just nine, still infinity. Is the same number. As what. And then there was a third party and then that third party was on board until I rephrased it. Just there. And that third party, I think. I think that that. Third party is actually the one I was first in when I first encountered this concept. Because what I wanted to say is that yes, for all intents and purposes, I can agree that 0.999 is equal to one. Because I think the difference between them is so small that it doesn't matter. And if you agreed with that statement right there. I'm really sorry to tell you this, but you're wrong. I think. The way that I was able to. Explain how I meant by that. To someone. In fact, it was Hailey who is not currently staying at the Hilbert hotel. She's trying to catch up with a tortoise at the moment and tortoises are pretty slow. So I think she'll, she'll make it. There. Obviously I'm assuming that that email is coming in from the Galapagos because where else do tortoises live? But Hey, Either way once she catches it, I'm sure she'll update us on our next location. But I was explaining it to Hailey and. At one point I, I said to her, What is 0.999 recurring times 1 million. And this is how I knew she didn't get it because she said it is. Almost 1 million. And that is incorrect. It is 1 million because the number is equal to one. Now the reason I said fake it until you make it is because. Honestly, I had been through the arguments on the page. I had looked at the arguments on the screen. And I, I could agree that the maths was correct. So I had agreed that, yes, I. Even though I didn't understand it. I agreed that it was true. And so that's what I mean, fake it till I make it. Because in this instance, when I was explaining this to Hailey, actually, Explained it. And because I came at it from the point of view that this was true. I came up with. Something that medic click for me. And I think the thing that makes it click. When it comes to learning anything, the thing that makes it click. Is sometimes Universal's sometimes very personal. Like sometimes a lot of people click by using the same analogy and sometimes you just find something. That makes it click for you. So I asked. What. Happens when you take 0.9 9 9 9, 9, recurring away from what. And Hailey was still very much in the stage of Nile. And there's no shame in that. I was in that stage pretty much until explaining it to her because while explaining it to her, I said it this way.'cause she said. What would be remaining is 0.0. Zero zero. An infinite number of zeros and then the number one. And I said that that was impossible. And the next thing that I said is what medic click, because what I said was start writing the zeroes. Okay. When do you write the one? And the only answer to that. Is that since you have to write an infinite numbers of zeroes, Is that you will never write the war. The one isn't there. He will never reach it. Which means that 0.99999 recurring is equal to one. And I say that like, that was the profound thing, but honestly I think that. For different people, there will be a profound thing about that. And I encourage you. If you, if you still disagree with me, I encourage you to either a find me, get in touch and I'll have the conversation I have with Haley, if you want. And you know, maybe that will help. But honestly, if you go out like Wikipedia, this is, and this is actually why this came up is because. There's almost a culture. It's it's, it's a theme you have to eventually encounter in math. And the Wikipedia page explains. Also not just why it's true, but also why, why it's hard to believe. Would it will generally come down to is an understanding. Of the term, the phrase infinity. And what it actually means to be infinite. That is a whole other can of worms. It's something I can definitely go into. I do have a lot to say about it. Probably not an infinite amount to say about it. That would be. Hyperbole. And when it comes to that, faking it until you make it. This is another thing that. I think helps. Oh, which actually reminds me, I better call something up. That will come up later on in the episode. But I think that when you are learning a language, Especially in school and you're being tested or graded. On. Your oral presentation abilities in that language. Affecting an accent. Is a huge. Change. In how your going to be perceived. For me, this meant French. French was my languages in school. So it's just sweet. Russell Stuart brown. It was just sweet Russell storefront. Okay. I know that that was not a good French accent. And I know that French people listening to this are very upset probably by that accent. But if you listen to those two statements, it's quite clear that one sounds more French than the other. And so. By effecting that accent. It could been. Berliner. It could be nine Belinda. Like it. I want to, I want to say that. I want to say that this isn't lying. I want to say that I come out. That's from. An acting point of view. I think, honestly, I come at it from an autistic point of view. Like. I don't want a lie. I don't want to convince people. I am French or German. I have. Convinced way too many people have things that. Weren't true. But when you're getting graded on something, I think the only logical. Move. In that situation is. To do something like that because you're, you're, you're literally, you're getting a number. Out of 40 or out of 50 or out of a hundred, whatever. Whatever portion of the subject that might be. And. Honestly. I think the real trick. About that. Is that. You start to learn the language a little better. This is probably to do more with how different people learn things. But like for me, If I could picture myself saying something. And like last week, like I said, learn, knowing a little bit of a language. It can be helpful because if you can picture yourself saying something. Or hear yourself saying it, I suppose. It may ring other bells. Words are. Words are great because like the more you learn about words. The more words you'll understand. If you run into them in the wild. There are so many words that for a very long time, it just, you know, didn't have, but. Eventually you learn how to put the words together and you break these things down. Like helicopter. I got a nother email in. In the form of a. Beautiful travel log. From a Mrs. Tweety bird. It's currently on a, around the world, cruise with her husband. And they are currently docked. In a beautiful seaside, Switzerland resort. And I'm very jealous. The pictures are amazing. The beaches, the ocean, that all looks great. But. The question that they had was Russell why'd you bring up ice skating the other day. And then like, never. Follow through. They also had a lovely note as well, where they gave me the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was an editing error. When I repeated the same sentence three times. Before, continuing. There were other people as well, who emailed it to let me know about that editing here. It, I will admit that it is an error that I didn't edit that out. I will also say that. I have a lot of trouble figuring out what to say next after that sentence. And I remember. Thank. If I just say this sentence. The words after it will start coming out. I know, I know they will. That's how talking where it's like, I, I started a sentence with a broad brush stroke. But. For whatever reason they became so focused on burnout. Those words. That. Words didn't follow. I think, I think. The editing error there is, is definitely the accurate way to, to refer to that. And that is something. Actually speaking about editing errors, I have, I have recently just discovered a world of difference in sound quality. Settings and features and I'm not sure how much is baked into the old podcasts. I would like to not edit the old podcasts if possible. But. I think I had resigned myself to the fact that, oh, I think sometimes I just don't say the beginning or ends of words. That's what's happening there. And no, I think it's now a feature of the recording software that I. I have not been properly engaged with So, what I might do is just edit those ones in order to. Remove, whatever sound improvement is actually. Is actually causing confusion, but. I think I will move forward, like moving forward. I think I will I will edit more. Today, won't be a good example of that, but I will. Moving forward. Trying to clean this up a little. And since we're on episode four, and this is a leap episode. I just realized I'm probably not going to explain what a leap episode is until episode eight. But because we're on episode four, it is a leap episode. And I want to get back to things that I did not follow up on. And so that is why. Mrs. Tweety bird. So ice skating. Ice skating was very much a part of my American childhood. That for most of my Irish childhood, wasn't a thing. In America, there were a lot more sports. And by that, I mean, there were a lot more types of sports. There was a lot more variety. In the sports. I think over here. Rugby was not as big in the country when I was growing up. So over here you had. The Gaelic sports of hurling and football. And then you had soccer, which was when everybody played at like actual recess. Break. Some schools would have a basketball team. Rural rural schools would be much less likely to. Because there were also much less likely to have an indoor basketball court. But in America, depending on the season, you might have a different sport. And for me, there was a season where, for me it was ice skating. I am not saying hockey because I was never near hockey. I don't know if that was a conscious decision by my parents, but if it was, I applaud them for it. Because. I don't know how that would have ended for anyone. But someone, a lot of someone's we're going to end up getting hurt. Even, I mean, that's the thing, even if I was successful in hockey. I think that's, it I'll accept that for, for other avenues of my life. But like, it is something that should just be acknowledged is that sometimes injuries are going to happen. It's like people say with motorcycles. With motorcycles. It's not, if you crash. That's when you crash. But ice skating would have been one of the things. And in my head, obviously it's around winter, but I mean, That, that could be the creation of media sense, but for me, ice skating was not, it wasn't figure skating. Although I think that it was more figure skating than hockey. But we were. Brought to ice skating and I think. A good analogy for it. Is swimming classes. Just instead of the swims. And the pool you were doing the skates and the rink. So in that sense you were learning how to do laps or you were rather, you were learning how to start. Stop speed. All that. Through doing laps or through doing crosses. Like whether you go from one side to the other. And. There was a lot, a lot. I remember there was a lot, a lot of energy. Put into us, the kids. Into going as fast as we could into. The wall on the other side of the rink. Nevertheless long way though. And I think it was because of the way that they divided up the rink. You never skated, like from say in a hockey game from one goal to the other. But more so from the sideline to the other sideline. And at the time we were so small in those, those walls that Those walls were built to take. More significant forces. I don't think it's something I could do. Today. I think if I threw myself full force at one of those, that would, it would be a very different story. But. That was what I loved about ice skating. And I loved this about swimming as well.'cause, I don't know how many people were fat kids. I was a fat kid. For some people, I was a fat kid means at some point. They've stopped being fat. For me, it means that at some point I stopped being a kid. I'm at my healthiest weight that I've ever been right now, but I'm still. Equally. Trending downwards. To get to something even healthier. But, but when you were on the, on the Rinker in the pool, I don't know, a hundred percent why. I CA I can a hundred percent, well, sorry. I can understand. With the ice skating. It's a lot easier to understand because. Everything was equalized. But it felt like in the water as well. I felt like I was a faster swimmer than a lot of people. And I am someone who was never a fast runner. Like the re. The the, this. Running from. The home plate to first base like that for me was usually enough for the entire team to get together and have a quick smoke before tagging me out. But. On the ice that disappeared. And on the pool, it certainly seemed to be much lessened. And the reason ice skating came up later. Because. When I was on a school tour. If you went on a Christmas school tour, obviously you couldn't do the adventure center. During Christmas. Whether it be terrible, but you could go to Dublin. And at the time. Dublin was the only place you were going to find. Ice to skate on. Now I think major cities. Have. Most major cities in this country have at least one temporary ice skating rink that will go up around Christmas. And I think the places where that is not the case it's because they weren't selling. Enough. Like they, they tried it there. I cause I, I know. I saw the one in Limerick. But I don't know if there's still one that goes up in Galway. And I do know as well with the Galway one is that it was slowly moving further and further from the center of town every year that the wherever people wanted to go to ice skate. Every year, it was getting further and further away to the point where eventually it was just probably not cost-effective to set it up. But when we went to Dublin, we did. Escape. It was for me, such a great. Experience to be extremely good at something that. I don't think I was good at it in a flooding. Capacity. But. It was an equalizer for. The simple fact that none of these Irish kids had ever strapped. Skates to their feet before. And I don't know if it's true, but we were told that. I mean when I say, I don't know if it's true. It's definitely started as an exaggeration. When one of the guides said that one of my classmates had fallen over more times than anyone else. Had ever fallen over. But. By the end of the 45 minutes or the hour or whatever time we were allotted. They were saying that with less and less humor in the sense that I started to think that they were going to like, seriously, And this kid just keeps falling. Because that is one of the first things you got to learn in ice skating classes that they didn't get is how to stand up. Anyone who's tried ice skating without knowing how to ice skate. Knows that. The first time you fall. And the barricade isn't right next to you. You're going to have an interesting time trying to get up. A lot of falling happens. During the getting up process by people who don't know how to get up. And I can go through the motions of doing the get-up. Now. And so like if I fell on an ice skating rink, I would be able to get up like that. But It's not something that I've practiced in recent years. But that was another cool thing about ice skating was that. I found when I got the opportunity to ice skate on quality ice, and I'm not a, an ice snob. You know, me and my feelings about. Satellites and other obscure topics like ice. But what I mean, what I mean, when I say quality ISIS, I used that was fresh. I used that was not deeply crisscrossed by skater skaters from earlier in the day. And that was my experience in a lot of Irish. Rinks. Was that. In order to facilitate as many members of the public visiting as possible. They. Just let the ice. Eventually, like eventually it gets to the point where even ice knowing how to ice skate doesn't help you just because you're trying to skate and you keep getting stuck in things. It's like trying to drive over potholes. I was like, yes, you know, the potholes are there. And yes, you can account. In many different ways. But you're still going to hit every one of those potholes. And it's not a good idea. But yeah, on fresh ice. You do. I start to remember how to do it. And I don't know if it's like riding a bike. Because. Honestly. Actually. Yeah, no, it probably is. I was gonna, I was gonna say that I never really went a long time without riding a bike. Okay. Yeah. It is like riding a bike, but not as easy. Yeah. That's the first one in the sense that your muscle memory from years and years ago will start to kick in, but it will take some time and you're not going to kick in all the way back to where you were. As opposed to riding a bike where, I mean, honestly like, yeah, after a long time off of a bike, Honestly in the first minute or two. You've pretty much fully climatized, I think anyway. I have gone years. Like using my life without being on a bike. Like I don't, I don't own a bike now. You know what I mean? So in terms of that, like, It's been a long time since then. And. I mean, I've sporadically used other people's bikes during the years. Which is weird. I guess it's weird. Honestly. I love bikes. I think there, I think that, oh yeah. I think they're a great idea for transport. No problem. Being that bikes get stolen so much. I feel bad for the security at my local university. In a way, I feel bad for them. Because. They must be inundated with people whose bike. Like stolen bike reports and I don't think there's anything they can do. But also, I really wish there was something that someone could do. And. This is probably one of the reasons I be at crappy Batman. I have several reasons why I would not be a great Batman. But. One of them would be like my focus on. The, the crimes I, the crimes I go after would be too petty. And so this is one example. Like I would, I would stake out certain bikes over weekends while banks and credit unions were being robbed and hospitals are being taken hostage and all that, I started thinking I would be just like watching. For whoever's taking bikes from like this little area. And, you know, I dumped them in there. You know, tied them up and leave them for the cops. The other reason that I would be a really bad Batman. And this is the main reason because I would not have time to protect bikes. Because I know for a fact that if I were Batman, the number one crime that I would enforce through street justice, full-on like breaking elbows, ankles, all that sort of thing. You know, usually not killing, but like really like going overboard with hurting people like Batman. Not, not that I want to hurt people, but like, I'm just saying that like, This is, this is why I should not be given. This is why I shouldn't be Batman. I'm making my case for why you should not make me Batman. So please don't make me. Batman. Because I would spend all of my time patrolling the city. Taking out. The evil thugs. And criminals. That push the button. The calls for the green walking man. That lets you cross the road. Who don't. Wait for the green man to show up. Before crossing the road. That is a very specific group of people. And I want to stress that it does not include people who don't wait for the green man. That is fine. If you don't want to wait for the green man. Don't wait for the green man. As soon as you push that button. You better wait for the green man. If you don't, you have disrupted the entire flow of traffic for no reason. Like, I don't know if I don't think people realize it. But. If they do realize it and they just care, then this is why this is why that's when the Batman like situation would be justified. Or God forbid, the people who press the button and have no plans to even cross the road. They're just walking past the Sunday, press the button. Because it. And if, if you, if you do appreciate what you're doing, You've essentially just shut down part of the city. A very, very, very localized part of the city. For a very short amount of time. Sure. But for what reason? And if it's because you needed to cross the road, then that is fine. The social contract is deemed that that's what that button is for. If you want to safely cross the road. You hit the button. That's fine. I mean, it might still be. There are some. Well, I mean, of course there's people like the Punisher who are way more than all. I definitely shouldn't be the Punisher. Cause if I were the Punisher yeah. That who knows like where I draw the line, but like, if I were a Batman, I would. I would draw the line at people who press the button. Maybe if it's, let's say it's not needed to press the button, but you did wait for the green man. That'd be like, yeah. Okay. All right. You're getting through. Because, yeah, for whatever reason, but like, if you literally, like, you gotta think about it. You're you're, you're actually changing traffic lights to red. Like, I don't think. Unless we're being lied to about those buttons. I don't want to say I'm paranoid about being lied to about those buttons. Because that would sound crazy. But also because I don't think. I don't think we're being lied to about every button. I think some of those buttons may be just there for the image. Especially if it's like something that's automated to just happen every so often.'cause that's that's the thing is that those, those green lights at like certain roads, those green lights will come on without you pressing the button. When it's safe. They're there doing exist situations in which the green man comes on without the button being pressed. Because as a natural result of the flow of traffic, it is safe to cross this one section. So that's why you don't need to press the green man amongst many other reasons why you don't need to purchase the green man. But. I mean, it really goes to show you that I've spent so long talking about this to the point where, like I, now can't finish with the plant. I don't know, maybe. Okay. I, I, I might do this in episode five, but with the way leap episodes work, I might also have to wait until episode eight for this. But I was going to read out some of my, my English. Exam that I did, like at the end of high school, secondary school over here. Oh good Lauren. I was just thinking. Should I like put it up online. I feel like that's, that's how I get in trouble for having, having copying it. I feel if I read it out loud, I won't get in trouble, but if I just publish it online somewhere like on a blog, WordPress or something, and I say, What it is. I think people. I mean like, oh, I don't know what they're going to do. I mean, they couldn't take away the results if they want. But yeah, I'll get, I'll get to that either in the next episode. Because, like I said, I wasted all of that time. W like complaining so passionately against that button that calls the green man. And, and. That I think right there, like that is my argument. That is my thesis. And that is the reason. I think I've proven. That I shouldn't be Batman. Alright, so thanks for joining me. I've had a lot of fun. I hope you have to if you want to come up with a question, comment, critique or feedback, just like Haley and Mrs. 3-d bird. Find me. I've had fun. I hope you have too. High fives all around.