Andrew On Everything

Welcome to USA 2.0

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 02:03:00 -0400

On the one hand:

We now have secret laws, with secret interpretations, by secret courts.
There is massive surveillance of everyday activities of all US citizens.
All Internet activity and phone conversations are monitored.
Some recent revelations approach the farcical: “Who Are We at War With? That’s Classified”.

Taken at face value, the above facts could make one think we are living in a police/totalitarian state.

On the other hand:

You go outside, and everyone is going about their daily lives; no one is cowering at the sight of police and no one is living perpetually in fear of their neighbors ratting on them.
People criticize the government daily, in the media and among friends, and face no repercussions from the state.
The majority of people seem to be mostly OK with the government surveillance detailed in the latest revelations.

So, based on the daily experience of the majority of the population, we are not living in a police state. People who have lived in one know the experience and can attest that this isn’t it.

Nevertheless, it is troubling to have the government (or any entity) monitoring everything we do, day in and day out. Even if I’m not doing anything illegal or immoral, I don’t want someone knowing my every action and communication. I’m in good company in feeling this way: with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the founders also expressed an aversion to unchecked surveillance by the government.

Yes, technically, whatever the NSA and the various secret government agencies are doing is “legal” and “constitutional”, but that is only true if you are willing to perform complex mental and legal gymnastics. For example, in my opinion, a secret court that has secret interpretations of secret laws is not a democratic court by any non-laughable definition of the word. At its core, the surveillance exposed by the latest revelations is at odds with the Fourth Amendment and the constitution.

The proponents of all this surveillance argue that we are at war with terrorists, and we must continue with the collection of all this data in order to defend ourselves from any potential attack. That is, we are not living in a peaceful era, we are at war, and so we must make special allowances with respect to civil liberties to protect ourselves.

This is a good argument and hard to argue against. When at war, some of the luxuries or liberties we enjoy during peacetime must be put on hold for the greater good and preservation of society. If we are to choose between the “luxury” of a life free from constant government surveillance and a life free from devastating terrorist attacks with mass casualties, most people would choose the latter.

However, the problem with the above is: if this is a war, when will it end? The First World War lasted about four years, and the Second World War lasted about six years. This war started, at least in its current incarnation, in 2001 and is still going strong, twelve years later. There is no realistic end in sight. The war on terrorism is likely to last several decades, if not longer.

Therefore, whatever constitutional allowances we are making in the name of fighting terrorism will be around for so long that, as far as most of us are concerned, are essentially permanent.

Maybe this is all necessary for the safety of the populace, but this is not the country the founders had in mind, and this is certainly not the country people thought they were living in, at least until a few years ago.

Without consulting the citizens of the country, people in power one-sidedly decided that this change to some of the fundamental founding principles of the country was necessary. If the recent surveillance revelations hadn’t happened, most of us wouldn’t even know that those in power made this decision in our name.

To paraphrase a well-known saying, it’s as if those in power decided that they had to destroy the USA (as originally conceived) in order to save it (from terrorists). The original USA, founded on, among other principles, freedom from an overbearing government, has changed. Terrorists have, to a degree, won because they have managed, through their attacks and threats of future attacks, to change some of the fundamental aspects and principles of what it meant pre-2001 to be living in the US and be a citizen of the US. As mentioned above, these changes are going to be in place for a very long time, if not permanently.

Welcome to USA 2.0.

P.S. 1

One of the interesting aspects of this whole story is that the NSA was so protective of the secrets Snowden revealed, because of the fear of serious repercussions if people found out about them, and yet the reaction from most people was a “meh”.

One might reason that, if the NSA did not accurately predict the repercussions of divulging this latest information to the wider population, how can we trust that they can accurately predict the repercussions of revealing all the other secret programs they want to keep concealed from us?

P.S. 2: Some select articles related to the latest surveillance revelations

Why do we even bother with metaphysical and philosophical questions?

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:27:11 -0500

One day, when my daughter was seven years old, we were looking at some old pictures and there was a picture with “Santa” visiting some gathering of children. I said “Oh, there’s Santa”. She said “No, that’s just Bob (a family friend) dressed up as Santa”. I said “How do you know?”.

She went on to use some logical arguments, based on how the “real Santa” acts, to show that the person in the picture could not have been the real Santa.

What interested me was the fact that, even though she got the conclusion right (i.e. that person was not Santa, it was the family friend my daughter suspected), and even though her arguments were logical, her arguments were based on an erroneous assumption, namely, that Santa Claus exists and that he behaves in a certain way.

She could not even fathom (at that age), that the central assumption in her arguments was false. Which made me see how futile her efforts at logical reasoning based on this false assumption were.

This in turn made me think how futile our efforts most probably are when we try to reason about the nature of existence/reality. This is because many of our assumptions (about what it means to exist, what it means for something to be “outside” our universe, etc) are most probably wrong.

It seems futile to logically debate about the ultimate nature of reality, when, no matter how logically correct our arguments might be, they are likely based on some erroneous assumptions, and we can never know which assumptions are correct or not.

To put it simply, to make a logical argument, you need some assumptions and then you need to follow the rules of logic to come to some conclusion. Sometimes logic can be used to show that the assumptions are false (e.g if they are logically inconsistent), but most “well constructed” assumptions are not logically inconsistent, and therefore cannot be shown to be false using logic.

In that case, you are arguing correctly, but your conclusions are meaningless.

My experience that day made me think that maybe all of our (as humanity) metaphysical discussions and resulting logical reasonings are meaningless.

Land can't vote

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:22:13 -0500

When I hear people mention that the electoral red/blue state map of the US looks mainly red (which is even more pronounced when you look at the red/blue divide at the county level), and which I’m reminded of when reading Paul Ryan’s statement about Obama winning due high urban turnout, the thing that comes to mind is simply: “Land can’t vote. Get used to it.”

No matter how much land some people occupy, they still get one vote each. It’s really not a mystery.

Originally posted November 13, 2012

The European Union got the most medals at the London 2012 Olympics

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:20:22 -0500

While looking at the medal rankings of the London 2012 Olympics, the US is the clear winner, with 104 total medals over the second country’s 88 medals, and 46 Gold medals of the second country’s 38 Gold medals. China, Great Britain, and Russia also make a strong showing.

Below are the top 10 countries:

However, since the US is around 300 million people, and China is even larger (1.3 billion), to make the comparison a bit more fair to the many smaller countries that make up the European Union, I added their medal count and created a new table, shown below.

We can see that the European Union totally crushes the other entrants. For a more in-depth look, I wanted to see what effect population size and GDP had on the medal counts, so for the top 10 countries in the above table I calculated a bit more info, based on population and GDP data from Wikipedia.

The above table shows that in terms of medals per 100 million people, most of the above countries are similar, hovering between 30 and 60 medals per 100 million people. The two outliers are China and Australia, with 7 and 152 medals per 100 million people, respectively. Note that the EU, Russia, South Korea have about twice the number of medals per 100 million people as the US does.

In terms of medals per 100 million people per USD 1 trillion GDP, there is a large variation, from 1 for China to 382 for Kazakhstan. Among countries with a large GDP (above 4 trillion), Japan does best, with 7 medals, followed by the EU with 4 medals, followed by the US with 2 medals, and finally followed by China by 1 medal, all per 100 million people per USD 1 trillion GDP.

From the above it looks like GDP is not a great predictor of medal count, but population size is a somewhat decent predictor. One big caveat is that the above calculations were done only for the top 10 countries in table 2, so one would need to extend these calculations to all countries in the Olympics to come to more definite conclusions.

Originally posted August 24, 2012

What would you choose to do with your life if everybody who has ever known you dies?

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:14:47 -0500

One day when trying to figure out what I really, truly wanted to do with my life, I realized that it’s hard to isolate what it is you personally want from the extraneous burden of satisfying people’s explicit or implicit expectations of you.

When I tried to imagine how happy/content I would be if I did an MBA, or got a philosophy degree, or opened my own business, stayed on my current career path, etc, my thoughts always seemed to include, at least to some degree, what my family/friends/acquaintances would think or how they would react. Ideally, it shouldn’t matter what others think, but I assume for many if not most of us, the thoughts of people who have known us for years or decades do matter and we do take them into account. It seems hard to distinguish between whether a career path will make me happy because I intrinsically like it, or because I will get satisfaction from people knowing what I will have accomplished.

To avoid this extraneous influence and get to the core of the issue, I came up with a thought experiment:

What would you choose to do with your life if everybody who has ever known you dies?

This thought came to me while driving and ruminating, and it rattled me. It’s a shocking thought, but also quite liberating, since, at least for me, it provided the ability to focus on what I intrinsically want and like, without being influenced by others’ expectations or thoughts.

This thought experiment also removes the influence of more pragmatic constraints such as having to provide for a family. However, this is a secondary benefit because it’s not the pragmatic constraints that are the most bothersome, since they are more obvious and more straightforward to circumvent when figuring what you truly want to do, and not necessarily what you will be able to do. It’s the more nebulous “expectations of others” that are more insidious in this exercise, because they are harder to divorce from what you intrinsically want to do.

So, if you are at a point where you are trying to figure out what you want to do, give this thought experiment a try. It should provide you with a useful new perspective.

*Note: If the thought experiment of everyone who has ever known you dying is distressing, and you also feel that your mourning in that situation would mask what you truly want to do, you can make up your own variation. One possibility is that you simply wake up in a world identical to this one in all respects, except for the fact that everyone who has known you in this world is absent from the alternate world.

Originally posted June 26, 2012

The conveyor belt of life

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:13:20 -0500

Originally posted June 26, 2012

The US Supreme Court is useless

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:08:00 -0500

It has been evident since 2000, after the Gore-Bush decision debacle, that the US Supreme Court is less a bastion of Constitutional Truth, and more a motley crew of partisans & ideologues, who were selected based on accidents of history regarding which justice died during whose administration, and who can and will put their ideology/party before any quest for Constitutional Truth.

Since then, with every 5-4 decision along ideological/party lines, the above impression of the Supreme Court only gets stronger.

Essentially, the US Supreme Court is useless. They decide most cases along conservative/liberal lines and justify already-arrived-upon opinions with complex legal terminology. As a result, they add no real value to questions of constitutionality. A Supreme Court decision is less a revelation of what the constitutionally-correct interpretation of an issue is, and more a confirmation of the decision everyone knew they would arrive at before they announced it, based simply on the party/ideology of the justices.

In effect, the laws/decisions that get upheld simply reflect the conservative/liberal mix of the Supreme Court at the time, and have little, if any, to do with any legal “truth” or constitutionality of the issue under consideration.

To be more accurate, for the truly divisive cases, it’s already known what the four judges on the left and the four judges on the right will decide, and there remains only one source of uncertainty: which way the ‘swing vote’ justice (currently Anthony Kennedy) will decide. This situation is making a travesty of democracy, since so many major decisions that affect the lives of 300 million people are de facto decided by only one person, the current swing vote justice.

I wanted to quantify the decision making process of the SC, to see if we can gather some statistics that back or refute our assumptions about the SC. Using data for all the SC decisions in 2011, we build the following table which shows the percent of the times each justice justice agrees with each other justice, on decisions with 6 or fewer concurring justices. In each row we see what percent of the time the various justices agreed with the justice shown at the beginning of that row.

Percent agreement between justices on decisions with 6 or fewer concurring

Some observations:

From row 1, we see that Scalia and Thomas agree with Roberts 94% of the time in such cases, while Ginsburg agrees 12% of the time on such cases

From row 2 we see that Scalia and Thomas agree 100% (!) with each other on such cases. You could replace Scalia on the bench with a cardboard cutout, and just always double Thomas’ vote, and there would be absolutely no difference in judicial outcomes of the Supreme Court in these cases.

From row 4 we see that Alito and Ginsburg are diametrically opposed, since they agree on 0% (zero!) of such cases. You could replace both of them on the bench with cardboard cutouts, and just always add 1 vote for each side of an issue, and there would be absolutely no difference in judicial outcomes of the Supreme Court in these cases.

Comparing rows 1-4 (conservative justices) versus rows 6-9 (liberal justices), we see that the right-leaning justices are quite monolithic, since they agree with each other between 88% and 100%, while the left-leaning justices are less monolithic, since their agreement varies between 56% and 81% of the time. This seems to show that the left-leaning justices don’t as easily fall prey to groupthink as the right-leaning justices do.

As expected, Kennedy is the swing vote, agreeing 50% of the time with Ginsburg and 50% of the time with Alito, the two diametrically opposed justices. His agreement with the other justices ranges from 44% with Breyer to 62% with Roberts. So Kennedy is quite balanced, with a slight bias towards right-leaning justices.

Another way to analyze the 2011 Supreme Court data is to look at the percent of the time that a justice is in the majority of 5-4 decisions, which is what the next table shows

Percent presence in the majority in 5-4 decisions

Observations:

We see that Kennedy is in the majority in most 5-4 decisions (75%), cementing his swing vote status
He is followed by the four right-leaning justices (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito) all with 62% of being in the majority of 5-4 decisions. This is a remarkable consistency and is very illustrative of the monolithic voting and groupthink on the part of the right-leaning justices.
The left-leaning justices are less successful, being in the majority of 5-4 decisions between 38% and 50% of the time.

Overall, the data from 2011 quantifies what we had already suspected, namely that SC justices vote mainly based on their ideology/party, and not based on the legality or constitutionality of the issue at hand. The fact that they are so monolithic in their voting (especially the right-leaning justices) proves this. Their record is there for all to see, and it is quite damning.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who is skeptical of the SC and the way in which they arrive at decisions. According to an article in the New York Times, “many Americans do not seem to expect the court to decide the case solely along constitutional lines. Just one in eight Americans said the justices decided cases based only on legal analysis”. Not surprisingly, the article also states that according to a new poll, just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing, which is a historical low.

It’s not clear what the best solution to this problem might be.

Referendums for the most contentious cases are a no-go for many reasons, but they would at least reflect the conservative/liberal mix of the population at the time of the issue at hand, and not the conservative/liberal mix of a court that was determined years ago, based on accidents of history regarding which party had the White House when past justices died or retired.

Perhaps more realistically, maybe we should have a fixed duration of tenure for Supreme Court justices. This way, they rotate out more frequently, and better reflect the political reality of the day. Having them be life-term judges was supposed to keep them “above the fray” and above politics, but in practice, they have turned out to be as much in the fray as everybody else. So, getting rid of the life term for Supreme Court justices should not have any practical effect on how non-partisan the decisions will be.

An alternate solution is to keep things as they are, but force decisions to be least 6-3. If something is 5-4, the result should be, legally, as if the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, i.e. the decision of the lower court is upheld. This new rule may get the justices to be less partisan and compromise more in order to reach the 6 votes needed. But, even if it doesn’t do that, it will at least remove the travesty that is the one-man-swing-vote.

Originally posted June 22, 2012

Original responses:

HA responded: A couple of comments:
- In your comment about Scalia and Thomas, you had it backwards. There should be a cardboard cutout of Thomas and a doubling of Scalia’s vote. Thomas has never broken with Scalia’s vote. Moreso, Feb. 2011 marked a 5-year anniversary of Thomas’ silence from the bench– the man had not made a comment or asked a question from the bench in 5 years. If he’s uttered anything since I haven’t heard about it.
- Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if Roberts read your post before the SC decision June 28? :-)

Pat Powers responded: Chief Justice Roberts’ decision on the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, while statistically insignificant, might just be an indicator that the conservative monolith is breaking up. Also, I don’t think it’s fair to describe the liberal justices as “monolithic” when their rate of agreement is only 50 to 80 percent, compared to the conservative rate of agreement of 88 to 100 percent. When your rate of agreement is only 50 percent you are WAAAAY away from being “monolithic.” They are not just less monolithic, they are NOT monolithic.

Aliens, subatomic particles, and the limits of physics

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:03:57 -0500

Imagine some aliens for whom our solar system is an atom in their universe. Also, suppose their physicists are studying the Earth like our physicists study subatomic particles in our universe.

One can imagine them discovering some mass flowing/moving on the surface of this Earth, and it turns out that this moving mass corresponds to all the Earth’s animals and humans. Since we are too small for them to individually count us, to their instruments we just appear like a flowing mass moving around the surface of the Earth. As a result, they develop theories that model this movement or flow.

I assume that they can find some periodic events, like the great migration of the Wildebeest in Africa:

This means that their equations will have some periodic components. However, the equations have to be a bit more complex than that, since the timing of these annual migrations isn’t totally predictable: “The timing of their migration in both the rainy and dry seasons can vary considerably (by months) from year to year.” (Wikipedia)

What’s more interesting though, is what happens when their equations try to predict the flow of humans across the planet. Most of the population is located in cities, but there is a lot of movement on a somewhat periodic basis. For example, some events cause the movement of tens or hundreds of thousands of people:

With a period of 4 years, we have the Olympics and the Soccer World Cup
With a period of 1 year, we have the Super Bowl in the US and Soccer cup finals in Europe
With a period of 1 week, we have football and soccer games in cities around the world

These are somewhat predictable, and could be incorporated quite easily into the model, except for the fact that they are sometimes pre-empted by other events. For example, the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were canceled due to World War II. How would the model account for that? Or how would it account for the fact that on some weekends, games are canceled due to strikes or other phenomena?

And how would it account for the fact that once in a while, wars break out between humans, and thousands and sometimes millions of people move around the surface of the Earth?

I assume that they would take care of these unpredictable-to-them anomalies using something similar to what our physicists use: the wave function.

“Although ψ is a complex number, |ψ|2 is real, and corresponds to the probability density of finding a particle in a given place at a given time, if the particle’s position is measured.”

That is, we can’t tell where a subatomic particle is with certainty, so we have a probability density function for its location. Similarly, the aliens wouldn’t be able to predict the exact location of “human mass” with certainty, so they would have a probability density function for its expected location.

However, remember that if the aliens could hear and understand our newscasts and followed the goings-on in the human world, they might know that a baseball strike means no flow of humans to baseball stadiums this Sunday. Or they might know that the assassination of an ambassador means war between two rival countries resulting in a high flow of humans in the next few days or weeks.

Since they don’t know all the underlying reasons behind the events, they are stuck with the probabilistic model. Could something similar be happening with the probabilistic models we use to describe our subatomic world?

I’m not claiming that subatomic particles in our world contain sentient beings, and if only we could understand these beings, we could accurately predict their behavior without probabilistic models. What I am claiming, and what the analogy in this post is trying to show, is that it’s possible that there may be some information about the subatomic world which is unobtainable to us, and which, if we knew it we could predict certain events without the need for probabilistic models such as the wave function.

This sort of idea has been proposed before, and it’s referred to as the hidden variable theory. It seems to have been mostly debunked: “Bell’s theorem would suggest that local hidden variables are impossible”.

However, whenever I see references to quantum physics, the wave function, and probabilistic models of the locations of subatomic particles, I still get a kick out of imagining aliens trying to tweak their model to account for the latest royal wedding in England or the latest Justin Bieber concert.

Originally posted June 21, 2012

Jobs with memory and their effect on our well-being

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:00:03 -0500

I’ve been thinking for a while about what effect jobs have on the human psyche, in particular jobs that have projects that last for months or years on end.

I call these “jobs with memory” because when you show up for work the next day, there is a memory of not only what you did the previous day, but what you did for the past several months or years. Project decisions you made two years ago, the amount of work you put in five months ago, or the breakthrough you had three weeks ago, these all affect the state your project is in today.

One problem is that with such jobs, it’s hard not to be “at work” all the time. There’s always more work to be done, and now that modern technology allows us to be connected with work 24/7, we can get some work done even during our “off” hours.

But the main issue I think is not whether you actually slip in a few moments of work during your off hours or not. It’s the fact that consciously or unconsciously your project is on your mind as this background mental process for months and years on end, mulling over all that you have done and all that you still need to do. This is evidenced by the fact that you will sometimes have a breakthrough on how to move forward in your project while doing something unrelated, like taking a shower. Your brain does not disengage, even when you are at home doing something else.

I’m not sure this is healthy for our mental well-being, even if the project is going well, but especially if the project is stressful and lasts a long time.

Contrast this type of job with jobs where you start each day with a clean slate. There is no multi-month or multi-year project. You just show up, you are given some tasks, you complete them, and go home. Examples of such jobs are, on the low end, waiters and cashiers, and on the high end, emergency room (ER) doctors.

When people with such jobs go home, there is no overarching project on the back of their mind. As a result, they can totally disengage from work, which I think could be much better for people’s long-term well-being.

Of course, jobs with no memory have their own problems. Most are low-paying, such as waiters, cashiers, and mailmen. But a more serious problem is that there is no overarching goal to the work you do, nothing to give a direction to what you do. It seems to me that if you do the same thing day in and day out, with little or no dependency from day to day, then one day blends into the next, and life becomes boring.

So, the answer to which type of job is overall better for us, jobs with memory or jobs with no memory, is not a simple one, and I’d be interested to see if there have been studies that looked at jobs and human well-being from this angle.

We can gain some guidance on this topic by looking at early humans. They did not have years-long projects. They had day-to-day problems that they solved as they arose. As a result, it’s more likely that we have evolved to have the ability to handle problems and long term issues associated with no-memory jobs than those associated with jobs with memory. On the other hand, there are many things we do today that early humans did not do, and it’s not necessarily the case that all these things make us more stressed than if we chose to avoid them.

Maybe the answer is a compromise: Have a job with memory but change projects often enough so that it gives your brain the chance to periodically “reset” and start from a clean slate. It seems that some people attempt to implement this approach by switching jobs when switching projects within your job is not feasible. Everyone who has moved from one company to another is familiar with the cathartic and rejuvenating feeling you get when you get to start with a clean slate, with all the old cob-webs of past project todo’s simply washed away.

Originally posted June 9, 2012

Original responses:

Guest responded: It sounds like you don’t love your job. Please don’t mistake me.. I’m not saying you dislike it, hell, you might even find it to be ‘sort of a cool gig’. But a man who’s passionate about his work loves thinking about it, loves doing it and is borderline obsessed with it.

Check out the recently released documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” for an example of what I’m talking about.

Andrew responded: @Guest: I’m not sure I agree with you. It’s mostly people who love their jobs that think about them all the time, so it’s those sorts of people this blog post is mostly addressing. People who don’t love what they do usually find ways to disengage from their work when not at work. It’s mostly the people who like what they do whose brain refuses to disengage from the topic and they continually think about it and, as you put it, are “borderline obsessed with it”. The question is, is it a good idea to be in this state for months and months, even if you enjoy it?

When you wake up, your dream problems melt away

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:56:59 -0500

A few nights ago, I awoke from a nightmare. Instantly, I felt that familiar feeling of relief, as I realized that the situation I had been in and the problems I had were all fake and no longer had any bearing on my real life.

I went back to sleep, and a little later started having a second nightmare. When I woke up in the middle of this nightmare, as I instantly realized that the terrifying and stress-inducing problems I was having just a few seconds ago were not real and were totally irrelevant to my real life, I started feeling again the familiar feeling of relief. However, this time, it went beyond simple relief.

As I started to remember the first nightmare that I had awoken from just a little while ago, and as I realized that the problems from two very different imaginary worlds just simply disappeared and melted away the moment I woke up from them, I experienced a very strong feeling of elation.

The elation was due to seeing what just happened as a metaphor for real-life problems and how inconsequential they may turn out to be.

If this world is just an illusion (a simulation as per some arguments, or maya as per Indian religions, or just a transitory world as per Christianity) and there is a “real” world after this one, then maybe our problems in this world as just as meaningful, important, and relevant to the “real” world as dream problems are to us in this world, which is to say not at all. They may simply melt away when you “wake up”.

Not sure if there is an afterlife or reality beyond our own, but at that moment in the middle of the night the above thoughts produced a feeling of pure joy that stayed with me for a while.

P.S. It should of course go without saying that if there is no afterlife, then when we die, our problems truly do disappear, since there is no longer a consciousness to experience the problems. So, it seems that whether there is an afterlife or not, whatever problems may be bothering us in this life become irrelevant when we shuffle off this mortal coil.

Originally posted March 29, 2012

Prosperity contributes to societal isolation

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:04:18 -0500

A few years ago, I was landing in San Diego for a couple days’ visit. As my plane was touching down, I thought that I could have called my friend Mike* to pick me up from the airport. That would have allowed us to catch up, since we hadn’t seen each other for a while. He’s a busy guy, and I would be busy for most of the trip, so the ride from the airport and a possible lunch would have been a great opportunity to spend some time together, catch up, and reminisce about the past.

Instead, I rented a car, as usual. Because Mike was busy, I didn’t want to impose. Also, since I could afford a rental, I didn’t have to impose.

That’s when it occurred to me that our prosperity/affluence, coupled with the modern lifestyle, could be a cause of societal isolation/alienation. If I didn’t have enough money to rent the car, I would have bitten the bullet and called one of my friends to pick me up from the airport. Economic circumstances would have forced my friends and me to override the demands of our busy schedules and spend some time together.

This observation applies to much more than just picking up people from the airport. There are many activities that due to our prosperity, which increases our self-sufficiency, we end up doing by ourselves or paying people to do, instead of getting our friends to help us with. For example, from the big stuff like help with moving, painting our home/apartment, and renovations, to the small stuff like driving us to the store or picking us up from the airport.

When we are young and have less money, the above are the sorts of things that we ask our friends for help with. As we get more affluent, we slowly reduce the number of cases in which we ask for help and at some point just do everything by ourselves or pay someone to do them for us.

Because our society is overall affluent, it’s expected and likely a sign of maturity that we eventually stop bugging our friends for help with these various issues. But I’m not so sure if the end result is that great for social cohesion or personal well-being.

In the book “Bowling Alone” Robert Putnam argues that Americans have become more disconnected from their families, neighbors, and communities. The book lists several reasons for this, but perhaps one of the contributing factors is the simple fact that American society has become more prosperous than it was in the middle of the twentieth century.

If we look at less-prosperous societies, we see more interdependence and usually stronger bonds between friends. Within the US, if we look at the past, there was for example the phenomenon of barn raising which was “an event during which community men come together to assemble a barn for one or more of its households”. Today, you just hire a contractor to do the job for you, thus missing out on the bonding experience. Also, within the US of today, the young are a less-prosperous group within the larger society, and there again we see more interdependence than among older people. This may partially explain the disparity between the size of the social circle of young people versus the much smaller social circle of older people.

Some caveats are in order.

First, the above observations don’t apply to very social people who call up people anyway, no matter their level of prosperity or self-sufficiency. It does however apply to large swaths of society who, in the absence of that extra nudge that comes from interdependence, are not as social.

Second, being interdependent is not all roses. There are lots of conflicts that arise when you are dependent on others. It’s possible though, that we have evolved to emotionally handle the conflicts that arise from social interdependence, which has been around for millennia, and are not as prepared to handle the issues that arise from social insulation/isolation, which is a very recent phenomenon.

Also, it can be argued that it’s better to be able to choose who you spend your free time with based on who you are most compatible with, and not based on who you are dependent on to get things done. Maybe, but (a) empirically, people don’t have as many close friends now (I am of course not counting 400 “friends” on Facebook as close friends), and (b) going through tough experiences has been shown to produce bonds that are much stronger than the bonds with “fair-weather friends”.

Given the above, how should society go about increasing social cohesion and improving friendship bonds? It’s not yet clear. Nobody (except groups like the Amish) would recommend reducing our level of prosperity to achieve this. We need new institutions, social norms, and cultural values to achieve these goals. It will take time for society to solve the problematic side effects of the relatively new phenomenon of wide-spread prosperity.

Originally posted March 18, 2012

Original responses:

TobiasVerhoog (Twitter) responded: It’s an interesting thought. I think it is in essence more efficient to just have more money and be able to rent a car, but you are right that new cultural ways of keeping contact should be made possible where earlier this contact was just necessary for daily survival.

Another example that is nice to study because of the current financial troubles is the fact that there are less divorces right now during the crisis than before. Getting a divorce and moving costs a lot of money, especially if you own a house together that has lost some value. So people will stay together because of lack of prosperity. It’s interesting to see that during previous crises, such as in the nineties this effect didn’t occur and people did divorce more often (because of rising stress and uncertainty probably). The reason for this is probably that there are more two-income households right now and the housing market is a lot worse currently.

We will always have psychics and fortune tellers

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:01:40 -0500

I’ve always been a very scientific-minded person, and I guess I implicitly assumed that once science had advanced enough, perhaps at some time in the distant future, there would no longer be any practitioners of unscientific mumbo jumbo, such as psychics and fortune tellers. Science would so thoroughly describe the world we live in and so thoroughly debunk psychics that no one would ever consult one.

But something happened a couple years ago that changed my expectations.

I was looking for a job and had lined up offers from three companies. One was a big, stable company, the other was a mid-sized startup, and the other was a nascent startup. All three had promising products, but of course the risk/reward dynamic was different for the three cases. On one end there was the big company, with very low risk, but also a non-stellar potential reward, and on the other end was the small startup with very high risk but also the possibility of a very high reward.

No matter how much I analyzed the situation, doing research on the three companies and the markets they were in, trying to estimate the probability of success in each case, and discussing this with as many people as I could, I realized that I will never know for sure which path will lead to the highest eventual well-being (where well-being is a combination of career satisfaction, happiness, and wealth). In addition, whatever choice I made would not be something that I could change on a whim. Most likely I’d have to invest at least a few years in any of these paths to give it the full effort it deserved.

So, I was in a situation where I had to make a choice between competing options and where (a) I would commit at least a few years of my life and (b) I had no sure way of knowing, after those years had passed, in which of those paths I would be better-off.

That’s when it hit me, that when you desperately need an answer on big life decisions, and nobody has the answers, your mind starts to grasp at straws for anything that may resemble an answer. Even though I did not consult any psychics or fortune tellers to get my answer, I could see how others who are not as pro-empiricism as I am would just go to a psychic when no answers are forthcoming from anywhere else.

And since science will never be able to predict the future, there will always be questions that humans need answering (which job to take, which person to marry, which city to move to, what degree to pursue, etc) that cannot be fully answered via the scientific method, which will lead many to consult anyone who claims to know the answer, including psychics, fortune tellers, astrologers, etc.

There is a another domain for unscientific approaches, and that is in the practice of medicine. When modern medicine fails someone (for example they have a terminal disease that doctors can do nothing to stop), some people turn to anyone who claims to have a cure, such as faith healers, homeopathy practitioners, etc. The difference in this case is that there is, at least theoretically, the possibility that in the future, science and medicine will advance to such a degree that there will be no malady that is beyond the capability of medicine to heal. In that possible future, there will be no room for unscientific approaches to medicine. They will have been made extinct.

But, for questions requiring predictions of the future (who to marry, which job to take, etc), science will never be able to advance to such a degree as to make unscientific approaches extinct. This is because the future is not predicable. Even if the universe is deterministic, there are so many chaotic systems within it that we will never be able to know the precise configuration of every particle in the universe, which means that we will never be able to make accurate long-term predictions about the future, especially regarding human affairs.

As a result, many of the big life decisions that humans make and have the most burning questions for, will never be answerable via scientific approaches. This keeps alive the demand for anyone claiming to have an answer to these questions, which means that there will always be psychics and fortune tellers in human society.

Originally posted Marc 12, 2012

Dude, it's a laptop you want, not an iPad

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:59:13 -0500

If you do an image search for ‘iPad case’, what you will find will be very similar to what’s shown in the image below

Basically, people want cases that (a) prop the screen up and (b) have a keyboard. The thing is, we already have a gadget that does these two things. It’s called a laptop.

I originally bought an iPad, and after holding the screen for a long time, I bought a stand to hold it up for me during long sessions. Then, I found that I could connect my bluetooth keyboard to it, and so I set it up so that my iPad was held upright in the stand and I was typing using my wireless keyboard.

From the abundance of iPad cases that do one or both of the above, I can see that many others see the need for this functionality.

And then it dawned on me: why was I using this limited device (in terms of what programs I can run on it, and in terms of what websites I can watch and interact with) which didn’t hold up the screen for me when using it for extended periods of time, and whose built-in keyboard was far sub-par compared to a hardware keyboard, when I already have a MacBook Pro, which is much more powerful, can hold up its own screen, has a real keyboard, can browse all the websites, and allows me to install any program I want (and even, gasp, compile my own programs to run on it)?

So, I returned the iPad.

Granted, the iPad is a beautiful device, its responsiveness when zooming in and out and when scrolling is impressive, and it has many apps that are fun and/or useful. Also, for certain things, like scrolling through a photo album by sliding you finger feels much more pleasant/“real” than doing so by clicking a mouse button.

But, most of the things I do on a daily basis are email, web browsing, and document creation/editing. For those things, laptops excel.

Ideally, what I would like (and I think most people would like) is something of the form factor of a MacBook Air (thin and light), that has a detachable touch-screen that can run apps written for iOS or Android, and when the screen is connected to the main body, acts like a fully-functioning laptop.

I think some devices like this are beginning to appear, but so far none of them are compelling. It might take Apple to show them how it’s done, again.

Originally posted February 26, 2012

Original responses:

Sharon responded: I use an iPad with stand and keyboard when I’m on holiday / not officially working and don’t want to take the laptop - cheaper to replace if it gets stolen or broken (holiday insurance rarely covers true cost of a laptop). I’m not intending on doing much typing but if I do need to, the keyboard and stand is more convenient and light enough to carry. But mostly I use the iPad for what it was intended - reading/responding rather than creating content, usually in places where it is more comfortable or convenient to use than a laptop (sofa, public transport, meals if dining alone).
epsori (Twitter) liked this post.
Joe’s Pferde Spiele responded: That is exactly the reason why I am not buying an iPad.
RafD123 responded: The reason I’m holding out for Windows 8.
fisherman responded: Yeah, this article pretty much sums up my family. Three of my family members got iPads for Christmas. Two have now been returned. They just aren’t practical for sessions that last more than a few minutes. It absolutely destroys my neck when trying to use the iPad on my lap because there is no easy way to prop up the display. My arm gets dead tired having to hold it up as I tap, tap, tap the screen. The screen gets very greasy and has to be cleaned every few minutes. As soon as I realized that I would have to buy a Crux case or some other case just to get back a fraction of the productivity I had with my $250 netbook, I decided to return the iPad and put the money towards an Ultrabook. I’m going to give windows 8 a try at the same time. I don’t like being limited in what apps, browser, browser plugins, web sites or full blown programs I can use.
LCDq8 (Twitter) responded: “Ideally, what I would like (and I think most people would like) is something of the form factor of a MacBook Air (thin and light), that has a detachable touch-screen that can run apps written for iOS or Android, and when the screen is connected to the main body, acts like a fully-functioning laptop.” Have u ever considered Asus transformer series?
RichB responded: So I did an image search for 'ipad case’ on google & bing. And very little looked like a laptop.
akumar (Twitter) responded: It’s the multi-modal capability that’s the most interesting. Sometimes you want to 'play’ - touch, view, read; sometimes you want to 'work’ - type, email, plan. Adding the 'sometimes’ bluetooth keyboard lets you do both, without having to lug two devices. For frequent international coach travelers like me, this combo works exceedingly well in cramped conditions: http://b.akumar.me/2011/09/07/ipad-bluetooth-keyword-best-computing-rig-for-e… Amit | lexity.com
Academia de locucion y oratoria responded: It is almost perfect, only with the detail that kills the neck by the way you have to hold it. And the arm to a liquid to be doing what tokes.
Nesta responded: First, it is a well known fact that the majority of Windows laptops are extremely weak in the multi-touch department. The trackpads are, more often than not, lacking. So, unless you’re buying a Macbook, the iPad offers something that can’t be easily had in a laptop. (There’s a reason why so many graphic designers prefer Macs.) now, if these stand/keyboard combos offered a mouse and/or trackpad (most of them offer neither, then, yes, it would seem a bit odd. Perhaps, with Windows 8, more Windows machines will offer improved trackpads, but, until then, this argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Second, the apps are an undeniable attraction. Of course, not everybody likes apps and thats okay. Nonetheless, it is a rather looming reason why the iPad is so successful. Third, one isn’t forced to carry all that extra weight - they can, and likely do, utilize the iPad as is. To suggest that purchasing a stand and keyboard means one never uses the iPad as a stand-alone is an odd assumption. Finally, a $499 iPad plus, say a $100 stand/keyboard combo is a pretty good deal. A $599 laptop, probably a netbook, is not going to be of as high a quality no matter what anyone argues. I work on all types of computers and OSes - iOS, OS X, Windows, Linux, repairing, tutoring, troubleshooting - and $599 gets you one year of plastic crap. On the other hand, the first gen iPad still works beautifully for the people I know who own one.
labelStudios (Twitter) responded: Missing-user-35 I bought an Asus Transformer in November and it serves very well inexactly the way you describe…with one exception. The screen @ ten inches is to small for me. I find extended periods of interaction with the device propped up a couple feet from my face to be a little to eye strain inducing. I went back to a laptop with a 17" display. I still use the Transformer, but now the keyboard dock is only a battery extender and in most cases is used primarily as a charging dock for the tablet. I use it as an e-reader, as I like portrait mode for reading over what you get on a laptop. And the wife and kids use it a lot for games. If I’m mobile and browsing it’s back to my Phone, and if I’m mobile and working it’s the 10 pound laptop. For now.
Bob Foster responded: Dude, it’s an iPad I want. I hate laptops. I even passed on the AirBook, which is a lovely laptop, because I realized I hate laptops. Sometimes I want to write something longer than a blog comment. Then I want a keyboard. Otherwise, I don’t.
Bob Foster responded: Ok, MacBook Air. When I don’t like something, I can’t remember its name.
Stavros141 (Twitter) responded: Thats because you guys are using it for what it was not intended. it was intended to be something mobile yet fast not like a mobile phone.
dzhiurgis responded: I think you touched fundamental issue with laptops - the ergonomics just sucks. You are allways in this weird positions, having to duck you head down, while in conventional desktop you work much much more comfortably. So do with the iPad + external keyboard.
dotjinks responded: I love showing up to meetings with an iPad, a moleskin and pen. Oh, and my Android phone in my pocket. My Laptop has become my desktop and the last big desktop I built is now used as a home server and entertainment system. I don’t even have an external keyboard for my iPad. The external mobile device keyboard I use is for 'Unbutop’ on my Motorola Photon. The chuckle here is I have always been a PC guy. My wife sold me on the idea that if she had an iPad with keyboard and an iPhone she would never need a desktop again and would get off my back about her dream Macintosh computer. Little did I know I would get sucked into loving my own iPad. A lot of those iPad pictures with keyboards are just a result of iPad accessory and competing tablet manufacturers trying to convince people they need more than just an iPad and a simple case.
Christophe responded: Your are doing it wrong. IPad and tablet PC are not for activities requiring allot of typing. A mac book air much better for this type usage and not that much more expensive for the additionnal keyboard and mouse, storage ans usb plugs. IPads are for surfing, reading blogs, writing a few comments here and there and all this while laying in couch or in bed or while watching tv. It is not convenient when sitting at a table, or then only for a short time. I use my iPad1 every day since I bought it and i use my desktop PC for everything that is not surfing or simple relaxing games like sudoku or cards.
Alex responded: I can prop my fondleslab up on the smart cover that I got with it. That goes up on the shelf in front of me, with Bluetooth keyboard where it is convenient to type. Can’t do that with a laptop or Asus Transformer. I can take my fondleslab in my man-bag, which will not fit a laptop. The fondleslab is lighter than a laptop, too. I can prop my fondleslab up in a book holder when cooking in the kitchen, with any splatter, oily fingers, dough or batter wiping off quite easily. I use a matte/anti-glare screen protector for my fondleslab. The fondleslab fills that niche between laptop and mobile phone. It is best to think of it as a replacement for your clipboard, rather than a replacement for your typewriter. On the flip side, I have few issues composing essays on the fondleslab, mostly because I don’t insist on sitting at a desk while doing do. Hold the slab with both hands, use the split keyboard, and move around a little. Sit in your comfy armchair, prop the slab on the left arm, then the right arm, then out it down and just read what you have written. If you insist on working at a desk, use a desktop computer. You will strain your neck using a laptop without an external keyboard or screen (either one helps). iPad + Bluetooth keyboard allows for more ergonomic placement if you need a more portable work environment. This essay composed on an iPad between my desk, the armchair, and my kitchen.
BPMForReal (Twitter) responded: Missing-user-35 I went through an evolution where I was all about PC and Blackberry. Then I bought an iPad and had the same prop-it-up and add-a-keyboard cycle that you did. Then I bought an iPhone because I liked the iPad’s apps so much better than the Blackberry’s keyboard. That led me to a MacBook Air, which is now my favorite device. The iPad has become just a reader (an expensive one), especially once I realized that Mac’s use apps, too, but can truly multitask. It was an expensive evolution but I came to the same conclusion you did.
Darwin responded: To state the obvious..Most people use these attachments to their iPad for limited purposes not all the time. You can actually get an amazing amount of work done with them.
Dan Woods responded: The main problem for Asus Transformers and Windows 8 Touch-books is the lack of usable Touch-screeen and Hybrid Apps. Android and Windows compatibility with Adobe Flash have hamstrung the platforms Application ecosystems. While iOS developers have been forced to write programs that work well on the platform, Lazy or Opportunistic Android and Windows developers have fallen back on Flash, rather than design something for the Platforms. Hopefully, now that Adobe have admitted that Flash is not suitable for Mobile devices, Developers will create more native Apps for Android and Metro which take advantage of Touch User Interfaces.
AndrewSansone (Twitter) responded: I don’t think the iPad was ever created to replace the laptop. Apple still sells its fair share of laptops. It all depends on what you intend on using the iPad for. If it’s heavy creation rather than just content consumption then stick with a laptop. It’s really not about laptop vs. iPad for me. Your example of a device that would include both functionality is an interesting idea.
MacBoi responded: A version has been around since 2007 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiotron_Modbook My last Windows machine was a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP/Compaq_TC1000 and it was good in concept, but the actual implementation sucked wormsacks. I’d love to see an Apple designed and developed cross-over “MacTablet Pro”, with the simplicity of an iPad, but the strength of full OS X (including the underlying OpenBSD) and MacBook Pro hardware.
Jake Lockley responded: You’re only half right. The reality is Apple makes computers for people who don’t need computers. So what they want is something dumbed down, with a keyboard. Computers and full blown operating systems are too much for them. If Apple made a laptop that had iOS they would serve their market just as well.
oink responded: What you’re looking for is the: Asus EEE Pad Transformer
Scott G. Lewis responded: ??? Are you sure you used Google Image search? Only 1 picture of the first 20 showed a keyboard case. And only two more in the next 20. There are times I travel without my MB Air, but there are never times I travel without my iPad. If I do take a trip without the laptop, I’ll throw a small portable bluetooth keyboard in, in case I need to do long form typing.
Darryl responded: The lack of a physical keyboard is perhaps the biggest factor distinguishing the iPad from a conventional laptop and why it’s difficult for most people to think of the iPad, and most tablets for that matter, as full-fledged computers for doing work.
Aladdin responded: that’s what windows 8 is going to be able to do
Kevin responded: This post makes sense, but it shouldn’t knock the iPad too much. I am not a fanboy..I use Windows and OS X quite interchangeably, but I do have an iPad and and iPhone. I only use my iPad for media consumption (reading news, watching videos) and that’s it. In fact, I don’t even use email much on my iPad (my iPhone is much easier to hold and type). For the big things, my trusty 15" MBP still comes along. iPad’s are for specific people for fairly “specific” set of tasks.
flemingsean (Twitter) responded: This is a great summary of how I feel about the iPad too. I know lots of people who love them, but between my smartphone and my MacBook there really isn’t an iPad-shaped hole in my life. The one person in my family who gets the most use out of my iPad is my youngest son, who likes to play games on it. But as over-sized, under-featured games consoles go I don’t think there’s much of a niche for the iPad there either.
Russell responded: “Ideally, what I would like (and I think most people would like) is something of the form factor of a MacBook Air (thin and light), that has a detachable touch-screen that can run apps written for iOS or Android, and when the screen is connected to the main body, acts like a fully-functioning laptop.” You just described a Transformer Prime. I have one, and it’s awesome. With the dock attached it turns into a super-light touch-screen laptop with a battery that lasts all day.
Jools responded: Dude, it’s finally here. The Windows Surface Tablet.

Life is exactly what you make of it - For most people, this is a bad thing

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:51:06 -0500

The cliche that “life is what you make of it” is actually true. In a free and developed country, whatever job, friends, or relationships you have are all dependent on you. You have the power to change any of them, just by choosing to do so. And whether you become a wildly successful author, artist, inventor, entrepreneur, or marry a wonderful person, or have a fantastic set of friends, that is solely dependent on you.

Unfortunately, for most people, that’s not that great a piece of news.

The fact is that most people’s abilities and characteristics (career-wise, personality-wise) are limited, and the sorts of jobs, friends and relationships they have are directly correlated with those abilities and characteristics.

Yes, some people have been able to leave unsatisfying jobs or relationships and have had great results. And by no means should anyone stick with a situation that is making them unhappy. But, one should not expect miracles.

If you follow the cultural paradigm (at least in the US and many western countries), “you can achieve anything you set your mind to”. This is usually stated by people who have successfully set their minds on something much higher than what they could ever dream of achieving, worked hard, and finally achieved it.

The problem is that hearing this from people who have achieved great things, is a classic case of the problem of “survival bias”. That is, only people who sacrificed a lot and worked a lot and finally succeeded are the ones going around and saying “You can achieve anything you set your mind to, just look at what I did. If I can do it, anyone can”. What we don’t hear are the countless people who tried really hard, and yet failed, because of bad timing, low ability, bad personality characteristics, etc.

We don’t hear from people who quit accounting to become an author, or quit their boring corporate job to pursue their dream of becoming an artist, or went to Hollywood to become a star, and after several years of very hard work failed.

“You can achieve anything you set your mind to” is a nice myth to believe in, but the reality is that what we achieve is limited by our abilities, our personality, timing, and luck. Hard work and monomaniacal perseverance are required, but not sufficient for success.

The idea that you determine your own future, success, and happiness, and that this is not always a great thing was captured by the great poet Konstantinos Kavafis in his poem “The City”. It’s a bit too pessimistic and but captures the point well:

The City
by Konstantinos Kavafis

You said,
“I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city shall be found better than this.
Each one of my endeavors is condemned by fate;
my heart lies buried like a corpse.
How long in this disintegration can the mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I gaze,
I see here only the black ruins of my life
where I have spent so many years,
and ruined and wrecked myself.”
New places you shall never find,
you’ll not find other seas.
The city still shall follow you.
You’ll wander still in the same streets,
you’ll roam in the same neighborhoods,
in these same houses
you’ll turn gray.
You’ll always arrive at this same city.
Don’t hope for somewhere else;
no ship for you exists,
no road exists.
Just as you’ve ruined your life here,
in this small corner of earth,
you’ve wrecked it now the whole world through.

Originally posted February 25, 2012

Original responses:

GodIsEvil responded: free will is a lie and you know it

Information obesity

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:46:56 -0500

It started dawning on me recently that the things I read in any given day (on news sites, in magazines, newspapers, blogs, internet forums, etc) are all mostly useless. That is, after reading them I am in almost no way better than if I had not read them. And yet, I still go through the daily rituals of reading my usual set of information sources.

It seems like many others are reaching similar conclusions. The latest to address this issue is Roshan Choxi, which resulted in a hot discussion on Hacker News.

The way I look at it, this phenomenon is very similar to what happened to humans when food became abundant. In nature, food is scarce, and so we evolved over millions of years to eat as much as we can when we come across food. The problem is that, now that food is abundant and easily accessible, those same impulses have been subverted and are causing us to overeat and become obese.

This is exactly what is happening to information: An age-old desire to learn as much about the world as possible, which was healthy when information was scarce, is causing us to overconsume information now that it is abundant and easily accessible.

In the old days, books were rare and expensive, and only a few could read and learn about the world. And for those who did read, there was no heavy influx of books, likely due to the fact that few people had the luxury of becoming authors. Then, books became cheaper and more people could read them, and more people could afford to become professional authors. The result was a big increase in the amount of information that people had access to. However, with the exception of newspapers, there were not that many sources of daily-updated information, and so the influx of information was manageable.

When the internet came along, connecting us to the sum total of human knowledge and information, the floodgates opened. It meant that not only did people have access to a lot of information, but they now had access to continually-updated information. The number of sites you can go to to satisfy your thirst for news (whether hard news, entertainment news, tech news, sports, etc) is now so large that no one can catch up with all the information. This may have been the first time in history that this happened, since in the past it was at least conceivable to read all the newspapers and magazines you had access to in your city.

I think though that the true deluge started with smartphones. Before smartphones, at least you had to be in certain locations (your house, your office) to access all the information out there. With smartphones you can access all the information 24/7 no matter where you happen to be. In addition, they are able to satisfy not only our desire for information, but also our desire for keeping in touch with friends and loved ones, and a more recent need to stay in touch with work issues.

As a result, you see people constantly checking their smarphones for news, discussions, texts from friends, twitter updates, emails from work, etc. Our desire for information has been subverted by the 24/7 ubiquitous access to more information than we can ever keep up with, to the point where a lot of people are constantly looking into and pecking at their phones like lab rats pressing a lever for food pellets.

Not all people are affected equally by this, of course. But for some, to the degree that the overconsumption of information is causing them to be unproductive, not-present-in-the-moment with friends, stressed, unfulfilled by the endless search for new news, etc, this is, essentially, information obesity.

Of course, it’s ironic that, by writing this post, I’m contributing to information obesity. Here, have another cheeseburger.

Originally posted February 18, 2012

Original responses:

Will responded: AGREE!
The internet is a wonderful tool, a free library to find any information you can imagine. But it’s easy to waste hours looking at nothing at all.

Whoever can figure out how to catalog and index the BEST information out there will be a genius!

Steven responded: Exactly what I’ve been thinking about. Taking your thoughts further, our body can only process so much food in a healthy way before you start to feel sick and thus you select carefully the food you eat. With information, I believe that with the increases in information, especially information that does not serve to improve yourself in some way but rather simply information consumption for consumptions sake, our minds will have less time to actually process the good information that enriches our thinking and knowledge. More time will be spent consuming and less digesting and even less digesting good information.

It's the music, stupid

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:44:01 -0500

Last night at the 2012 Grammys, Lady Gaga sat there in an expected-by-now loud costume and saw the three awards that she was nominated for pass her by and go to Adele. Moments like these bring to mind the expression “It’s the music, stupid” (to paraphrase Bill Clinton).

When Lady Gaga burst onto the scene with “Just Dance”, it was such a great tune, a refreshing change over the stagnant music that was available at the time. And people responded. According to Wikipedia, that song went on to become multiplatinum in many countries around the globe. And so did the next several of her songs.

Due to the extravagant way she dressed, many assumed that her success was mainly due to that, and not to how good her songs were. With every meat dress and every kermit dress she wore, she drove home the fact that she was weird, eccentric, loud, different, and it became her trademark. But, then, “Born this way” album came out, and the results weren’t pretty. The performance of the singles from that album pale in comparison to her previous singles, both in terms of failing to reach platinum in major countries and in terms of chart performance.

It turns out that, lo and behold, no matter how many meat dresses or kermit dresses you wear, or how much publicity you get, if your songs aren’t good, people won’t buy them. And as last night showed, you also won’t get any Grammys for them. It turns out that the success of Gaga’s early songs was due to the songs themselves and not due to the whole persona that Gaga had created and the related publicity.

I think this is indicative of a general trend that wrongly undervalues the content, and overvalues the marketing, publicity, and execution. This is true in many forms across multiple fields that deal with the creative element, such as music, movies, books, and even technology startups.

The thinking seems to be that, no matter how mediocre the content or idea, if you execute perfectly and have the right marketing strategy and publicity, you will be a success. Execution, marketing, and publicity matter of course. But for something to be great or legendary, instead of just a minor hit, it has to be based on a solid foundation of great content.

For example, there are many big-budget Sci-Fi action movies, and they all get the best computer graphics, marketing, and PR that money can buy. But, they all seem to blend into one another and are soon forgotten. Some however, are based on a story that captures the public’s imagination, and are talked about for years, such as The Matrix or Star Wars. No matter what computer graphics you use or how much PR you do, no movie will reach the success and legendary status of The Matrix or Star Wars if the underlying story is boring.

The doers vs the thinkers/creatives

It’s as if there is a battle between the doers and the thinkers/creatives in society, for who gets the most credit, the most respect, and/or the most money from products that have a creative element.

The doers have their well-oiled machine, ready to be deployed, and are simply waiting for some content to act as grist. For example:

Given a hit single: make the music video, commission the cover art, book talk-show tour, plan national/global music tour, etc.
Given a hit startup: put them in touch with biggest VCs, contact biggest tech blogs and top news organizations, get featured in NYT, partner with big names like Facebook/Google, etc.
Given hit movie script, hit book, etc: there is always a tick-off-the-check-marks set of things that the doers are great at implementing.

Without that killer content though, they simply apply their skills to bland content, and the result is often a dud. Only when combined with great content (e.g. The Matrix, Lady Gaga’s first songs, Google’s algorithms, etc) do the doers’ methods shine. Without the great content, they are a hammer in want of a nail: useless.

Of course, a nail in want of a hammer, i.e. great content without some help from the doers, is also useless.

Essentially, both the content/idea and the marketing/execution are essential, like two links in a chain. You can’t have good results if either link is weak.

Originally posted February 15, 2012

Original responses:

asdf responded: It’s worth pointing out that the two cinematic examples you used, The Matrix and Star Wars, both used technology that was brand new and innovative at the time. In the case of The Matrix it was a very complicated flash-capture process, and the same is probably true for Star Wars.

Likewise, I heard that the first Pixar films were extremely work-intensive. For this reason the producers spent a lot of time developing the story, because they didn’t want to put in so much work for a story that wasn’t going to be worth watching.

So, you could call it the “Pixar effect,” that the work you put into making a product, especially using new technology, helps to ensure that the final product will be worthwhile.
-h

If political parties in the US made sense

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:31:00 -0500

Yesterday I saw a truck with two incongruous elements: a big cross on the left and a huge National Rifle Association sticker on the right. Whether these two specific items are actually incompatible with each other may be debatable, but they did remind me of the strange make-up of beliefs and ideologies of the two political parties in the US.

Specifically, it’s strange that there is a large swath of the population that is so strongly Christian and so pro-gun, pro death penalty, pro war, pro amassing as money as possible, indifferent to poor people and unforgiving of their perceived laziness, etc. It’s strange that Christian conservatives use ‘bleeding heart’ as an insult; it should be they who should be striving to be as 'bleeding heart’ as possible if they were true to their religion. It’s strange that it is the liberals (who have a higher percent of atheists) who are more concerned with the welfare of the poor, about a social safety net, about being more forgiving towards transgressors, about avoiding war, etc.

Putting aside arguments about whether or not Jesus existed or whether or not he was divine, the following statements define what Jesus was all about, and are in stark contrast to beliefs/ideologies of Christian conservatives:

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”
“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you”
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”

If political parties in the US made sense, the allocation of beliefs and ideologies of the two parties would be closer to the following than to what we currently have:

* In the sense of a survival-of-the-fittest approach. “Everyone should take care of themselves”.

Note:

Most of the above follows current patterns, except for the first and last two items.
I understant that not all conservatives are Christians and not all liberals are atheists, but the overall pattern is that there is a higher percentage of Christians in the Republican party.
It’s clear that some people might be pro war and pro death penalty, and other people might be deeply Christian, and these can be different constituencies of the same party. Not all constituencies of a party can agree on all topics. It’s only when the same person is both deeply Christian and pro war, pro death penalty, pro gun, “screw the poor because they’re lazy” when it becomes irrational. I claim that there is a large number of such people.
It’s also clear that being an atheist does not automatically make you pro-war, pro death penalty, indifferent to the plight of poor people, etc. So the above table is not the most sane allocation of beliefs and ideologies, it’s just a more sane allocation than the current one, while trying to keep the number of “item swaps” to a minimum.

Originally posted February 5, 2012

Original responses:

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The US could one day turn into a totalitarian regime with no way back

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:25:00 -0500

I was watching Frontline a while ago about domestic spying by the NSA, CIA, etc, and they were talking about the fact that all of our day-to-day actions leave electronic trails that can be traced, more and more places are getting video cameras (e.g. they are nearly ubiquitous in Las Vegas), and the data mining capabilities of computers keep increasing.

The logical conclusion is that, at some point, our every move will be either monitored, or at least “monitorable” (i.e. will be able to be monitored, if the government so chooses). For example, imagine “Google Earth”, but instead of static images taken months ago, it will be live video of any spot on earth.

All is well and good, if the government is benign and is working under a democratic framework with checks and balances.

However, as soon as someone gets a hold on power and establishes a totalitarian regime (either abruptly through some type of coup, or slowly, each step taken “for our protection against terrorism”), it seems to me that there is no way that people will ever be able to become organized to overthrow this government.

In the old days, even if someone succeeded in establishing totalitarian control of a country, people were still able, to a degree, to move around undetected and organize against the regime. This meant that there was at least some theoretical chance of someday overthrowing it.

But, in some future era, say a couple hundred years from now, where our every move and action is monitored, as soon as a totalitarian regime is established, it will be there indefinitely.

And since, the probability of someone establishing a totalitarian regime in any given year is non-zero, with very high probability someone will do so at some point in the future.

So, if the above argument holds, with very high probability the US (or any other modern country) will turn into a totalitarian regime and stay that way indefinitely.

Of course, the above is not rigorous and is a very hand-wavy argument, but the increasing total-surveilance capabilities that are emerging make the above conclusion a not-too-unreasonable outcome.

To be more pragmatic, even if things don’t pan out as stated above, we can be sure of one thing: if someone succeeds in establishing a totalitarian regime in the future when surveillance technology is at its peak, it will be infinitely harder to overthrow that regime than it was in the past.

Originally posted January 26, 2012

Original responses:

neilalaska responded: The situation described seems unlikely to me. It seems like a totalitarian regime depends a lot on hypocritical policing by your “average joe.” If everyone starts getting in trouble for “bad behavior”, then everyone’s tolerance for bad behavior would go up, and I believe things would end up better than they are now actually. We all have deviant tendencies, and with less privacy II think the world would become more tolerant.

Lee James Georgeson responded: I disagree. A totalitarian system that uses networks to control people is playing with fire. Any technology can be weaponized against people as it can against an establishment.

It could very well be a few centuries of Totalitarian rule. But there are many ways an Empire can fall.
1) It is purposely set up to be a power struggle to control in the absence of a Semi-divine leader. Eg. Nazi Germany. Only Hitler had total control and that would have led to a succession crisis. Indeed, the political rivalries and ideology of the Nazis kept them from Pursuing the Messerschmidt Me 262. Which would have given them unstoppable air superiority. Hitler also dicked around with the development of the Rocket Targeting computer system and the Nuke.
2) An Empire can become so abusive that people don’t need to communicate in an organized way to be aware that the whole country has had enough. Tsarist Russia, Communist Romania and Mussolini all learned that the hard way.
3) Sometimes the Human instinct to reciprocate good will kicks in despite ideology. Mikhale Gorbachev and Nikita Krushchev both tried to make Totalitarian Russia a better place for its citizens and to some degree succeeded.
4) Totalitarian empires are highly bureaucratic, insistent on time tables and they are anti-intellectual. New ideas can ALWAYS topple a Totalitarian regime. The Nazis were the most advanced nation on earth and had the most doctors. And they STILL fell behind the West.
5) Hubris. Ideology again a HUGE weakness. Hitler REFUSED to capitalize on the misery of the Russians and thus, he turned down over 800,000 Collaborators. Pol Pot picked a fight with Vietnam. They had just beaten the US and thus Vietnam had the BEST and the MOST guerillas on EARTH. Against Pol Pots untrained army of teenagers, the Vietnamese sent 500,000 men and Cambodians welcomed them with open arms.
6) Empires are run by people who are so evil, that any one with a Cynical mind can predict how horrible they are going to be. Many Nazis and Soviets had a habit of blaming others, even just on the spot, to find scapegoats. This sort of disunity is a major problem.
7) Insubordination of the military. In Egypt, the Troops refused to shoot their own people. Now they have a chance for Democracy. If Reinhardt had not been shot Germany would have WON WWII. But all it took was one bullet to make sure that Germany lost their best man.
8) Insurgents don’t have to win, they just don’t have to lose. Sabotuers caused more damage to Axis war efforts, especially because the Axis had SLAVES, than any bombing raids. Many factories were secret or even underground, so Slaves were the only ones who could actually sabotage them anyway.
9) Totaltiarian societies rely on gullibility to rule. People are increasingly cynical.
10) Even if they shut down the internet, there will eventually be some way for people to coordinate their attacks. In any case, random unplanned unpreventable terrorist attacks against the Totalitarian Establishment will work just fine until the people are in open revolt. Then they can topple the government.

james responded: The greatest opportunity for establishing a never-ending regime where people didn’t even have the concepts of resistance was medieval Christian Europe. There defying the church was to defy the “universe”.
and well…they blew it.

Net neutrality opponents make little sense

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:21:00 -0500

One of the principal arguments against net neutrality regulations is that there are some websites that simply cause too much traffic to providers’ networks, so therefore, these websites should pay more than other companies to have their data carried over the network.

In addition, if the networks don’t get this extra money from the data-heavy websites, this “would prevent broadband networks from being built, which would limit available bandwidth and thus endanger innovation”.

Pure nonsense. These arguments do not hold up to the slightest scrutiny.

Imagine if a company, let’s call it United Roads, owned all the roads of a country, and charged people to drive on them. This company observes that when people shop at a place like 7-Eleven they usually buy very few items, and thus carry very little cargo in their cars, and when people shop at Costco, they usually buy a large number of large items, and thus carry a very large cargo. The heavier your cargo, the more demanding it is on the road infrastructure, since it leads to more frequent repairs, which are costly.

So, United Roads proposes to charge Costco, and other stores from which people buy many and/or large items, a lot of money in order to allow customers to carry Costco merchandise in their cars while driving on this company’s nationwide network of roads. If Costco doesn’t pay up, United Roads will slow down cars carrying Costco merchandise, or even bar them from travelling on the road network.

Meanwhile people who shop primarily at Costco pay the same monthly service to United Roads as people who shop primarily at 7-Eleven.

The above situation is clearly insane. It makes much more sense to simply charge the drivers who are “cargo hogs”, i.e. shop primarily at Costco, much more than drivers who carry much less cargo per month on United Roads’ network.

The drivers are the ones using the network to carry cargo from the store to their home, so they are the ones who should pay United Roads for the use of the roads. The stores themselves are just sources of cargo. Blackmailing the stores that, unless they pay up, customers carrying their cargo will be slowed down seems like an ill-conceived idea on many levels.

In fact, in real life the sane thing does indeed happen. Different vehicle types pay different levels of vehicle registration fees, depending on how big the vehicle is and how much weight it is expected to carry. The user of the roads (the owner of the vehicle), not the producer of the vehicle, pays the extra fees related to the extra burden the vehicle imposes on the roads.

Imagine how absurd it would be if producers of semis or pickups were required to pay the government extra fees due to the vehicles they produce, compared to the fees producers of family sedans paid.

A similar thing applies to internet usage. If some people are using Youtube or Dropbox so much that they are hogging up the bandwidth, just charge them more per month. Why are the websites even being considered?

Internet users are the ones using the network to carry bits from the website to their home, so they are the ones who should pay their ISP for the use of the network. The websites themselves are just sources of bits. Blackmailing the websites that, unless they pay up, customers downloading their content will be slowed down seems like an ill-conceived idea on many levels.

The extra money to invest in future network improvements to be able to carry more and more bandwidth should come from the consumers who use it the most. Complaining that, unless ISPs get money from Youtube, Google, etc, they will have no money to build next-generation networks is disingenuous.

Of course, if both approaches to raising this money (charge the websites vs charge the consumers) work for the ISPs, from a practical point of view one may ask why favor one approach vs the other? The answer is that if we go the route of having the websites pay, that means that only big companies with deep pockets will be able to pay the added fee that is required to provide consumers a data-rich service. This limits innovation, since it’s much less likely that a small startup can start competing in any field that provides a data-rich service to the consumer.

So, overall, charging websites and not users for high bandwidth usage is not only absurd, it is ultimately bad for consumers.

Originally posted January 8, 2012

Original responses:

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Your body is like a car taking you on the adventures of your life

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:18:43 -0500

When your car is new, you take it for granted, and what dominates discussions with your friends are all the wonderful places you will go with your car, without ever giving much thought to how your car will get you there.

When your car is old, it starts to malfunction, and what dominates discussions with your friends is the state of your car, what’s broken and what’s working, and tips on how to fix or work around the things that aren’t working anymore. The older it gets, the more you discuss the state of your car and the less you discuss all the wonderful places you will go with your car.

Our bodies are just like that. Bottom line: when you are young, take care of your body so that it can continue to take you to great places for as long as possible.

Originally posted January 8, 2012