“There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”

- Dr. Russell to his son, Clifford, in “Have Space Suit, Will Travel” by Robert A. Heinlein

This quotation from one of his novels pretty much sums up Robert Heinlein’s philosophy towards life. Actually, I am quite jealous of Clifford, and why I didn’t have a father like his in my youth to dish out cool admonitions disguised as clever one-liner adages is not something I wish to dwell upon. Well, dad is really okay; he’s just not the wisdom-dispenser type. In any case, I still had the Great Robert Heinlein, and he sure didn’t have a shortage of these little gems of wisdom. Here’s another one:

History does not record anywhere a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help

- From the notebook of Lazarus Long, in “Time Enough For Love“

Great stuff, ain’t it? To be honest, Heinlein wasn’t the only author who had profound influence on me, and he certainly wasn’t the only author with the cool quotes. For some reason, however, my brain finds the frequency in which he operates resonating quite well with itself.

What is this “frequency” I speak of? Well, Let me start with a little online argument I had a while ago with a Chinese parent. Apparently, he bought an expensive yugiou playing-card set (a Japanese version of Magic-The-Gathering-like card game) for his kid, and the kid lost two rare cards as an ante to a neighbor’s older kid in a game. His kid came home crying and told him what happened, and he angrily went over to the neighbor and got the cards back, believing the older kid had cheated and swindled his poor kid.

So I said, “Hey, it’s just a game, dude, and how do you know your son didn’t lose the cards fair and square?”

“Ha, you must have never played the game!” He then proceeded to outline how complicated the game was, how special and expensive the cards in question were, and how his little kid couldn’t possibly know how to play it properly and therefore shouldn’t and couldn’t have entered into an anted game, so in conclusion must have been swindled by the older kid. “Actually, my kid doesn’t even know how to read the words on the cards!” He then started to admonish me on the finer points of child education: “you have to teach your kid not to be swindled and taken advantage of! After you’ve been swindled, you must seek justice and retribution!”

Boy, what a typical Chinese mind set, no wonder they are giving the Japanese a hard time even after 70 years. At this point I became quite incredulous, “Are you kidding me? Perhaps you should think about not spoiling your kid by giving him expensive stuff to play with before he is proficient with it.” I said, “If an idiot with a lot of money goes to a poker game ‘trying out his luck’, he will be immediately eaten alive and picked clean by the skillful players (in a fair game), or by the sharks (in a fixed game). Whose fault is that, do you think? Do you think it’s fair?”

I continued, “What you should be teaching your kid, is not that whenever he screws up he can come crying to his daddy and daddy will fix it, but this: You are 100% responsible for you own actions, so don’t enter into a game if you don’t even know the rules!!” If your kid knew the rules, knew the ins and outs of the game, he wouldn’t be cheated in the first place. If it were my kid, I would have made sure he learnt his lesson, and gotten him to earn enough money (by doing chores) so he could buy back the cards he had lost.”

Of course, this was when he informed me that his kid was only four, and such lessons are not suited for one that young; it would be better to teach the kid not to be taken advantage of and that he can always turn to his father for support because no one should live alone in the world…blah blah blah. How the rest of the argument went is not important, suffice to say that in my mind any parent who bought expensive and complex games for four-year-olds who couldn’t even read not to mention play, did not carry any weight in whatever he was saying about child education, nor did he have any right to complain when things went wrong.

What’s important was that I could easily imagine Heinlein taking the same stand as I did, advocating adequate preparation and total self-responsibility. Parental love and support to a child should be freely given and unconditional on the part of the parent, but should not be expected by the child. This is not to say that you should take up a habit of blaming yourself for just about anything wrong in your life and since you should not expect any support or caring from anyone, you might as well end your miserable life now and jump the subway platform at the earliest available train.

The logic is this. It’s a statistical universe out there in which countless things, people, events, circumstances all stack up against you accomplishing a particular task (well, sometimes they may be stacked for you, but don’t count on it). You can beat the odds by adequate preparation, lots of it, but only on things you have direct control of. You are only responsible for the success and failure of those, and not for things out of your hands. If in the end you didn’t beat the odds, you should immediately and completely forget about it and do something else.

Take lottery for example. Tax for the mathematically challenged. A simple calculation shows that the odds against you winning is extremely high. Oh there will always be someone winning the jackpot eventually (probability is certainty), but chances of the winner being you are extremely small, even if you spent a fortune buying tickets to “improve your odds”. So, it is harmless to get a lottery ticket now and then, but it would be a waste of time and money trying to win. Same goes with gambling that involves little skill: harmless to have some fun now and then, but totally counter-productive to try to make something of it. Unless, of course, you are in the casino business. The odds always favour the house. Why? Because they did the calculations when they made up the rules; an average Joe trying out his luck on the blackjack table didn’t.

I digress. Heinlein’s first profession was in engineering as a naval officer, and many of his philosophical outlooks might seem mechanistic and militaristic. For example, he was quite proud of the fact that humans can do mathematics and engineering, and treated these abilities as one of the major distinguishing characteristics of a civilized human (other characteristics being manner and respecting other’s privacy). Here is a quote in this regard:

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

- from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, in “Time Enough For Love“

While this strikes such a heart-felt chord with me when I first read it, I am now forced to consider the possibility that he was probably talking about applied mathematics. Most of the times, the theoretical mathematicians are more like a bunch of high-IQ morons who are totally out of touch with reality…

I digress again. As for his militaristic tendencies, just read “Starship Troopers” to understand his political/military views. This is where I part with the master, and I shall continue in another post in this regard. I do need to wrap this up before people fall asleep (if it’s not too late already). For now, let me conclude with yet another quote, this one I do not share completely:

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

- Monroe-Alpha in “Beyond This Horizon“