The TRAPATT Diode
When the Old Man was young he worked as an engineer.
While preparing lecture notes for a course at the Naval Institute he discovered something fascinating.
The TRAPATT diode.
TRApped Plasma Avalanche Triggered Transit diode.
He confessed he barely remembered the physics.
But he remembered the feeling.
Awe.
Someone had observed a strange behaviour in nature.
Instead of ignoring it, that person studied it carefully.
Understood it.
Harnessed it.
The result was microwave generation.
Communication technology.
A new capability for humanity.
That day he coined a phrase.
Thinking Men.
Civilization, he said, is built by thinking men.
Elegant Thinking
The Old Man distinguished between two kinds of thinking.
Elegant thinking.
And borrowed thinking.
Elegant thinking is careful.
It considers counter-arguments.
It welcomes correction.
Borrowed thinking behaves differently.
Borrowed thinking refuses to change.
Because the person holding it did not arrive there through reasoning.
They arrived there through imitation.
And imitation cannot surrender without humiliation.
Debating Fools
Debating fools can be dangerous.
Not intellectually dangerous.
Physically dangerous.
When someone has tied their pride to an opinion they cannot surrender it.
Even if the argument collapses.
Even if evidence disproves it.
Few people enjoy looking foolish.
So debate often turns into anger.
The Old Man offered simple advice:
“When a discussion stops being about truth and becomes about pride… run.”
The Information Age and the Fool
We live in the Information Age.
Knowledge is everywhere.
Yet foolishness has not disappeared.
If anything, it has multiplied.
Because misinformation spreads faster than truth.
Rumours travel instantly.
Conspiracy theories become belief systems overnight.
The Old Man once said something that startled everyone.
“Running your life on rumours, stereotypes and conspiracy theories is intellectual necromancy.”
Someone asked him what he meant.
“Necromancy is communicating with the dead,” he said.
“And rumours are dead ideas.”
A Final Thought From the Old Man
Civilizations do not collapse because of lack of information.
They collapse because people stop thinking.
When a society begins to prefer rumours over evidence…
noise over reason…
and pride over truth…
Then borrowed thinking becomes the norm.
And when borrowed thinking becomes the norm, civilization begins to decay.
The Old Man looked out of the Molue window and sighed.
Then he said quietly,
“The survival of civilization depends on thinking men.”
And with that, he came down from the Molue.
I rest.
Don Kenobi
#OldManInTheMolue
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