Irrational Focus

Meritocracy

2011-11-25T07:51:00.001-08:00

A meritocracy sounds like a great idea. After all, it supposedly lets the best people rise to the top, the ones that have the most merit. Unfortunately, it seems to rarely work that way.

Merit ideally comes from what people have actually done, their contributions in a specific area. But the visibility of merit comes from self-promotion. That is, if you do a lot of work, but nobody notices, then it is unlikely to be recognized.

As such, to get a lot of merit one has to make sure their peers are aware of their contributions. This naturally favors extroverted people, those that like interacting with others. Introverts on the other hand, are more likely to keep their heads down and just quietly contribute in the background.

In time, the personality bias would work itself out. That is, the strength of the contributions would over shadow the self-promotion. Well, except that there are many ways to ‘game the system’. The most obvious and most common is for extroverts to take credit for introvert’s merit. Since the introverts are quiet, and shy away from conflict, this is easily accomplished. Thus you get a lot of things like ‘visionaries’ that aren’t, since that is a very easy way for someone to steal credit from the people else.

Since the scorecard is really based on self-promotion, another way to game the system is to minimize the contributions, while maximizing the promotions. That is, you do something small, trivial and hastily, then just spin it into something big. We also see this all of the time. A deep investigation into many people with significant merit reveals that their claims are wildly disproportionate to what they actually did, and how successful it really was.

Of course, general human decency is believed to be why people don’t routinely game the system. However, if you look again at the personality types, not only are they extroverts but they are also staggeringly over-confident. And it’s this over-confidence that allows them to maximize their self-promotion and claim credit, even when it is detrimental to those around them. They simply justify it to themselves as deserved, so it is no longer such a bad act.

You’d think that underlying metrics can counter-balance this, but few meritocracies are actually based on real facts, and even then without concrete proof, real facts can be fabricated or spun. Thus it comes right back to self-promotion.

So it would seem that meritocracies are not generally based on contributions, but rather on the claims of contributions, and that it makes more sense if you want to get to the top to spend one’s effort on making claims, rather than the actual contributions. In time, more and more people figure this out, so that any meritocracy will eventually degenerate.

Change

2011-11-20T13:03:00.001-08:00

Complexity is an odd beast. As it grows it encompasses more and more stuff, eating it up like a ravenous dinosaur. And it’s all these little tidbits -- things that vary -- that combine to become the real underlying problem. If you don’t understand these ‘variables’ then you can’t truly tame the complexity; bend it towards your goals.

But our species has always had a problem in dealing with too many things at once. We can take only a few select issues into account; we can’t fathom the whole picture. We do not see the beast for what it has become and as such we simply focus on a leg, or a tail, or some other part in seclusion from the whole. We narrow down our vision, while convincing ourselves that we can see the whole thing. But we can’t.

When you seek to change a complex multi-variable system -- particularly one that is massive, ugly and hugely chaotic -- simply fiddling with a small piece of it will always generate unpredictable results. That’s OK if you’re expecting it, but only if you are expecting it. If however, you’re convinced that you ‘get it’ when clearly you can’t, then that delusion blinds you to the results. And that blindness most often makes the problems worse, not better. There are -- not surprisingly -- many more ways to make bad changes in this world then there are good ways. So a change without understanding is likely a change for the worse. If it isn’t obviously bad right away, then it might just be more fuel for the complexity beast to devour. To grow and get worse.

For some rather short-sighted reason, we’ve become collectively convinced that action, any action, is better than the status quo. But action without thought, without a real understanding of the the complexities involves, is action that is most likely to feed the problem, not solve it. But now we have a great many “leaders” bent on acting. And as a consequence we have a rapidly growing beast to deal with. One that gets worse every year. One that gets larger every year. One that includes more and more variables every year. And one that nobody really understands anymore, or can manage.

So it is not action that we need. It is not change that we need. It is simply a way to get the beast back under control and to simplify our circumstances back to a point where we can act again. Where we can make changes that aren’t stupid, careless and risky.

We need to stop taking wild guesses, stop narrowing our gaze and start accepting that we’re in a mess. A huge mess. A mess that nobody knows how to fix, that no one wants to fix, and that is going to be painful to fix.

A mad rush forward of ideas and action is a mad rush over the cliff. It’s what we’ve been doing so far, and I honestly suspect it’s what we’ll be doing right up until the moment we are in flight. Our species after all is a wee bit smarter than some of the others, but collectively were not very bright.

Knowledge Dissemination

2011-07-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

A while back I asked one of my frequent readers -- Mark Miller -- if he had any suggestions for possible posts. His reply was:

The only topic suggestion I can think of right now is how universities at the undergraduate level are focusing more on career training, and are getting away from their core mission to cultivate "good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candor, self-command, and steadiness of view,” and, “[the] force, the steadiness, the comprehensiveness and the versatility of intellect,” which would enable people to enter “with comparative ease into any subject of thought” and take up “with aptitude any science or profession.”

It’s a good issue for me to discuss right now since I’ve been delving into various works of cognitive sciences. My recent set of inquiries has been driven by a reoccurring interest in how our intelligence relates back to mathematics and computer science. The three all share some fundamental properties, but that is probably a topic best handled in my other blog The Programmer’s Paradox. I’ll get around to it someday, but I’ve got much more to learn and digest before I can discuss it reasonably.

In terms of how we learn, I’m probably not a good example. I struggled with boredom all through high-school and it wasn’t until I got past ‘introductory’ level courses in university that I became engaged. For computer related issues I prefer to learn on my own, but for theoretical ones a good lecturer often leaves a more lasting impression.

I definitely agree with Mark that the role of university should be towards teaching people how to think clearly and to inspire a need to continually learn throughout our lives. A higher, more theoretical curriculum helps to give us a stronger set of skills that are transferable as the state of the world changes underneath. A necessity in any field that is still growing and changing.

I remember one friend being disappointed with a more theoretical curriculum in university, and so choose to change to a more applied program at a college. In the short term it helped his job prospects, but as time wore on it worked against him. Much of what he learned in college quickly became obsolete and since he wasn’t taught the skills necessary to absorb the changes quickly, he soon fell behind.

Applied knowledge may be more immediately useful, but we have seen great advances in our knowledge and technologies, particularly with computers. To be able to keep up with these changes one needs to understand the high-level ideas that drive the practical applications. Expertise in a very limited, specific area is great, but we no longer expect that any such domains will remain static for long. We’ve moved into a period of humanity were we have more time and more people available to focus on extending what we know. We have better tools and can disseminate our understandings widely to larger audiences. All of this means that what is applied knowledge today, runs a real danger of being obsolete tomorrow. Things change quickly.

Internally I believe we form models of the world around us. Many of them often contradictory. Sometimes we are able to bring these together, but generally they just litter our brains with disjoint fragments. Getting a good theoretical foundation, however gives us a solid place to hang our applied understandings. It also makes it easier to generalize our experiences, or to creatively link related ideas.

Knowledge is only such if it changes the way we react to the world around us. That is, if you memorize a book of facts, it is only useful if you can do something practical with them. They might help you in a game of trivial pursuit or provide an interesting conversation in quieter moments, but unless they alter your behavior with respect to being able to accomplish something specific, they remain as facts, not knowledge.

In some sense it doesn’t matter what the facts are, it only matters in how they’ve changed your thinking patterns. One thing that was clear from my university experiences was that it forced me to put some structure over how I think. If nothing else, being able to decompose problems into their basic elements and then reassemble them into something coherent is a powerful lesson learned from the more abstract, difficult disciplines like pure mathematics. When that structure has been opaquely hidden in the incoming facts, it is harder to realize its importance and to learn deeply from it. Understanding the structure is as important as understanding the facts themselves.

Our long and distinguished history of learning perhaps started when our ancestors began messing with fire. No doubt it went from being a dangerous and mysterious substance to a ‘technology’ that they could utilize. As this understanding evolved and spread, we became increasingly able to shape the world around us. As we added further ancient technologies to our roster -- clothes, housing, farming, etc. -- we built up higher levels of our internal models and increased our abilities to pass them on from generation to generation. This trend towards manipulating the world around us has increased in peaks and valleys over the millennia. And as it has grown, to continue being able to pass it down, we’ve had to abstract it to higher and higher levels. It would be too much to comprehend if we just listed out every conceivable circumstance, fact or special case. Theory, generalization and abstraction are what have allowed us to continue this intellectual growth, accelerating as we go, to each next technology.

So in a long-term perspective, not only is it important that a significant portion of our population learn first at a higher level, but is is also very important that we continually abstract farther up the ladder with each new generation. Specialization is necessary given how much we currently know as a species and how deep it goes, but the more we can bring diverse fields together, the better we can creatively find the patterns that apply to the whole. We must continually go higher towards a more advanced model of the world around us. The details are always important, but fitting them into the overall context is necessary to be able to go beyond them. This construction of vastly superior mental models has been such a long and slow process, often extending over many generations, that few people perceive it or its course. We often assume our knowledge is just a smooth linear process from our ancient perspectives, but it actually ebbs and flows across generations, evolving as it goes. If we are to improve the lives of future generations then we have to increasingly learn how to pass on such a massive volume in bite-sized abstract chunks that are easily digestible. That process, which has been ongoing since our first tinkering with fire, is vital for our species to continue the path it has embarked upon.

So, not only is it better for our higher institutions to focus on teaching more generalized curriculum, it is also a necessity for our species to continue to grow and thrive. We need to teach more people how to learn, and how to abstract what they experience into coherent understandable ideas that can then be disseminated. It’s a continual process.

It is also easy to see that in some of the more hostile parts of our world today, a key ingredient in the turmoil is the lack of education. Civilization clearly depends on insuring that people don’t just blindly follow the strong, mean or confident. To keep things from spiraling out of control there has to be a large enough population that can look beyond what they are told to what really lies beneath. An uneducated population is easy to corral, while an educated one can often see through the propaganda. Education, in this sense, is often see as an obstacle to control. And control is what underlies power. The more control you have over the masses, the more power you have acquired. Thus powerful people often seek to constrain education, since it is in their best interests.

Another factor that is growing in importance is the commercialization of knowledge. With the invention of computer technologies, mediums like the Internet make it easy to quickly access facts, but as already stated, facts are not knowledge. The Internet simply parrots what we’ve typed in, without being able to build on this base. The ready availability of cheap facts drives a lot of people to mistake this for a genuine understanding, but also puts pressure on academic institutions to compete. If you can just skim it quickly on the Internet, why spend any effort really trying to absorb it in an expensive course? This transformation of course, will cause more and more problems where people act on too shallow of an understanding. They may have access to a larger array of facts than ever before, but failing to understand the overall context or the depth will always allow for unexpected side effects. Thus we’ll see more instances where the people in charge will horribly oversimplify the situation and thus make it far worse, not better. A trend that will no doubt last a few generations.

All in all, it is better for both the individuals and society to teach higher-level skills. Education times will be longer of course, but we need knowledge in order to be able to adapt quickly to the world around us. As we create a more complex world, we’ll need to adapt to it at a faster rate. Skills that teach better learning, thinking and communicating capabilities are considerably more important than just limited applied knowledge. We need to learn to learn before we can successfully master learning about our shifting environment.

A Bad Day in the Park

2011-05-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

The park was oddly quiet. Deserted in fact, which was strange given how nice a day it was. Normally there would be people.

We had been there for hours, but we were now on our way out. My wife and I were just getting to the top of the valley. Our dog, as usual, was a few feet ahead scouting out the path. It was a beautiful day -- quiet and relaxing -- but that was all about to change.

As we came around some bushes, to our left there was a group of eight or ten people looking somewhat out of place. We continued along the trail as a young girl broke off from the group and approached us.

“Do you know where you are?” she said in an authoritative, but slightly condescending voice.

I started to answer, but then I noticed that she was wearing a rather elaborate outfit. Although it was warm, she had on a vest over a number of different layers. She had a backpack, and I think water bottles strapped to her side. With her hat, she looked like a cross between a guide in the outback and one from the Rockies; like someone ready to lead a month long trek through the barren wilderness. It was a little out of place for this park. Pinned to her vest was an overly large badge with some official looking writing on it.

We’ve been hiking in the park for years. It’s a serenely peaceful place and like many of the nicer parks and valleys in Toronto it’s not packed with people. You do find hikers and dog-walkers there, but not a lot of them. Most come because they appreciate nature and want to get out of the city to enjoy it. They’re generally happy, friendly and very relaxed.

Ignoring my silence she continued. “You not allowed to have your dog off leash, it’s a Toronto by-law”, she scolded.

The “dog issue” has been going on for some time now. There is a small, yet vocal segment of Toronto that hates dogs. Sure, there have been incidents with a few careless owners, but most people in Toronto love their dogs and are over-protective of them.

Life in the city for an animal is not always the best, so those of us that treasure the health of our pets want them to do what they were born to do. Run, explore, sniff and generally enjoy themselves. Leashing them is a cruel compromise sometimes necessary on city streets or when there are lots of people about, but not in a wide open (and oddly empty) park.

The guide however, clearly didn’t see that perspective. Even through she was dressed as an outdoorsman, she was uncomfortable around our dog. I found that very unusual since the old girl is usually a magnet for animal lovers. She is a strong, happy animal that is very affectionate and most content when getting pet by strangers.

Still it was a beautiful day and I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I called our dog. She returned to us and sat patiently as we leashed her. We had already been out for several hours, so her city angst had melted away into a peaceful calm with nature. She was tired, and it was time to go home.

The guide continued “You’re not allowed to walk there”. She pointed back to the trail we had been following. “You have to stay on the trail!” She pointed to the old service road that her group had been walking along.

I’d always considered that service road to be a blight on the landscape. It was built when the area was still a strip-mined quarry and those industrial scars have yet to heal over. It gently wraps around the old toxic mining pits, which someone flooded and are now homes for the occasional bird family. I had to bite my lip as this guide somehow insinuated that any such remnant of a violent industrial past was somehow a trail. It was wide enough to allow two ATVs side-by-side and covered in old wood-chips. It was the least desirable part of the park, but it is convenient for getting from one side to the other.

A trial is a line of dirt or compressed leafs that is followed by people and/or animals. From the width of the trail, you can see its popularity. Over time, old trails fade and new ones emerge. The best trails are the faintly marked animals trails because they lead to the most interesting places. Well-trod areas are paths and something covered with wood-chips is a road. Neither of these are trails, and I doubt the sincerity of anyone dressed as a guide if they can’t distinguish that not too subtle difference. We had been following a trail.

She continued on with a rather condescending speech about how tromping around in nature will somehow break it. Apparently her organization has figured out nature and in order to allow it to be ‘natural’ people shouldn’t interact with it in anyway. We should stay on the road and only take pictures from a distance. In this rather narrow philosophy, people and dogs are no longer natural.

She had concerns that our dog might eat the animals, break sticks or otherwise interfere with her organization’s attempts to control the landscape. I came to realize that her backers might have been the people responsible for the recent alterations we had seen. Someone put up signs, poster boards and an oddly misplaced emergency life buoy far from water. Some of the trees had been prematurely cut-down. They apparently have a vision for the landscape, although the landscape has its own vision, which they don’t seem to like.

Then she gave me a pamphlet that had a map on one side and a set of rules on the other. The map showed that a group called the “Rouge Park Alliance” has laid claim to the half of the park that overlaps Toronto’s borders. Dogs have to be leashed, and people are no longer allowed to go beyond the “marked trails”. The pamphlet also points to a website on it with more information: www.rougepark.com

At this point we parted ways. My wife, dog and I headed back to the car, while the guide rejoined what I now understand to be a tour that she was leading. I controlled myself in her presence, but an examination of the group’s website revealed that other similarly accosted people -- the ones who are generally relaxed and friendly -- erupted in anger and frustration. That’s not surprising.

I supposed I could have tried to argue, but her arrogant tone quickly convinced me that any rational argument would fall on deaf ears. Critical thinking is never behind a choice to drive out the people using a park so that they can be replaced by tours. Logic isn’t used in a decision to wall off a common area. An understanding of nature isn’t driving the desire to turn a wild landscape into a manicured garden. This authoritarian agenda may be cloaked behind the cover of the green movement, but it has little to do with improving our world.

I suppose I could try to bring this to someone’s attention. I did try the Toronto Star, but with the major media under assault, they’ve drifted away from investigating the truth and over to more sensationalist coverage. It would be unwise for them to run articles that questioned any green endeavor, no matter how poorly it was conceived. It might not help to sell papers.

The city itself is unlikely to listen or care. Bureaucrats here play a vicious tug of war with each other for control of the wealth. It’s abstracted from whether or not things need to be done, or whether they are right. It’s just a game they play without regard to the consequences. Some days money flows in one senseless direction, only to be abruptly switched the next day. They play, while our city falls apart at the seams.

In the end, I doubt there is anything to do that could change this trajectory. They’ve taken over. We’ll have to find somewhere else, farther from Toronto’s borders. Our park is becoming a walled garden available only for superficial bus tours. However in its isolation there can only be trouble. Abandon spaces tend to get filled in big cities. But the type of foresight to understand that is not something you find commonly in Toronto these days. Although I think Joni Mitchell would understand when she sang in “They Paved Paradise” the lyrics:

“They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot”

IACA

2011-04-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Paul and I have a problem...

I care. I really do. I know it’s inappropriate in this modern age to care, but I can’t stop myself.

I go to work, but I am unable to drink the cool-aide. Unlike other employees, I can not reach that nirvana of a zombie-like state that lets me say things like “it’s not my job”, or “it’s somebody else’s problem” or even “it’s always been that way”.

If I see something wrong, I want to fix it. If I’m wasting my time with useless work, I feel bad.

I watch our society, steeped in unnecessary complexity, decay and shallow deceptions, but I am unable to turn away. I can not say “it doesn’t matter”, or “we shouldn’t help people who can not help themselves”, or generally just funnel money, power or opportunity to my friends, while others are left out in the cold.

I try to be more self-centered. I really do. But my delusions keep getting dispersed by empathy; by thinking; by caring.

Now I realize that I’m in a minority. Most people can find happiness by blindly following the herd; by refusing to question even the most obvious stupidity. They can just put their heads down and go with the flow. And they are happy. Happy redirecting their focus on little gadgets. Happy lounging around on the weekends. Happy doing meaningless work. Happy in the knowledge that is not their job, not their responsibly and they are doing what they are told even if it makes no sense, makes the world a crappy place, or contributes to an inevitable disaster. They are happy because they don’t care.

But I’ve decided to do something about my affliction. I’ve forming the IACA, which stands for “I Actually Care Anonymous”. It is an organization for those few of us afflicted with caring. Each week we can gather, and through group effort, we can learn to shut out the world. To blindly follow, and not question. To act without thinking. To turn off our compulsive need to fix things. We can chant things like “”That’s perfect”, “Yes, I want a Performance Review”, or “Wow, isn’t it great that I can re-do the same work many times over and still get paid”.

We can reiterate the lack of need for common sense; for things to be functional; for work to be have some real value. We can learn to be “pro-active” without thinking, or to apply wafer-thin “team-spirit” in place of results. We can learn to shut out that nasty reality, and narrow our focus down to something trivial.

Through a dedicated effort we can learn the ultimate power of sheep, and to blindly follow where no sheep have gone before. And that should make us happy again. Secure in the knowledge that whatever bad things befall us, they are not our problem, even if they were preventable. We can learn to take marketing literally. We can learn to believe even the lamest of executive ploys to distract us from that fact that things are dysfunctional and that we aren’t being respected. We can learn to be happy.

So, stop caring today. Join us in finding true and mindless happiness. Learn to baaaa like you don’t care. You’re only prolonging your pain if you don’t.

The Keys to Success

2011-03-31T19:22:00.001-07:00

Forget all of those dainty platitudes that you’ve read on the web, if you’re really interested in success there is only one proven way to achieve it.

Stop worrying about everyone else. Stop worrying about the rules, or laws or whatever they’re called. You’ve got to go out there and take what’s yours.

True unapologetic selfishness and absolutely no empathy for others. That’s the only way!

And it starts with the little things. If you’re in a car approaching a stop sign late at night, why bother stopping? There’s no one there to catch you.

If people are getting off the bus, out of the subway or out of a doorway, why not just push your way past. They’re not even worth a grunt. And you could shave a valuable minute or two off your precious time.

If the others in the organization aren’t paying close attention, why not bend the rules a little. Or even better, break them out-right. It’s not like you’re going to get caught. And it’s not like they can charge you, even if you are discovered.

And don’t forget, while you are busy humiliating the staff of a restaurant, to short them on the bill. Tips?! Ha! Those are for the weak. And you want to be successful, don’t you? At any cost.

It’s not like you need friends or family talking to you. Use them for whatever they’re worth and split them out again. You’ll feel better, and you can always buy some new loyalty later if you’re in the mood. After all friendship is cheap when you have money. Lots of money.

You can’t let these “little” people get in your way, they are meaningless to you. Mindless simpletons at your disposal, so crushing them is not only satisfying it also keeps you entertained while you’re counting your riches, over and over, and over again.

Cause we all know: money is the solution to every problem, and only action-oriented, proactive, take-no-prisoners, motivated, determined souls that fear no repercussions and live life to the fullest are the ones willing to do what it takes to grab life by the horns and shake that money lose from whatever losers are currently clinging onto it. After all, you need it more than they do, even if it was for food or shelter or something pathetic like that.

And what you can’t buy with money, you can just take. Your time is more valuable then theirs, you’re more important than them, and they always fail to appreciate how you’ve left them a crumb or two to subside on. After all, you could have taken everything, couldn’t you.

So that’s it. To get successful, all you have to do is crush everyone you meet, treat people like dirt, alienate those close to you, break all the rules and stab your way to the top. And once you get there, you’ll have it all to yourself, so there won’t be any namby pamby sharing, or niceties to worry about. The whole heap will be yours; yours alone.

Contempt of Parliament

2011-03-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

Actions speak louder than words …

The only issue that matters in the upcoming federal election is whether or not we are willing to protect our democracy by ousting governments that show a profound disrespect for our system, our values and our people.

Just saying ...

In Thinking About it

2010-11-24T10:33:00.000-08:00

The rapidly tiring fad of the day is that we’re all going to collectively meet our end from nuclear war, asteroids, global warming, a pandemic, financial collapse, bad diet, a nuclear meltdown, acid rain, cancer, an ice age, violent crime, toxins, an old age home, aliens or any number of other immediate “threats” that are use to continually scare us into passivity. This month it’s, ummm, errr, …., don’t know, I forget.

Ironically, the real threat to humanity seems to come directly from us. Most people, most of the time are walking around doing things, making choices, interacting, but they have their brains completely shut off. They’re over-whelmed by the exponentially increasing complexity of our societies, and in response to this, they’ve decided that trying to get anything done -- anything at all, even if it is stupid -- is far better than having to sort out the underlying problems. It’s full speed ahead, right over the cliff.

Of course, this shallow depth and complete loss of reason or responsibility simply makes the underlying problems worse. In response to the failure of existing rules, politicians simply create more stupid rules. In response to people loosing faith in the major media, the journalists turn to even more outrageous stories. In response to lawsuit lotteries, we just get more and more weasel disclaimers and less people willing to stand up to admit the truth. In response to the “cause of the day” most believers just spout propaganda, without even trying to understand the real issues.

The farther down we dig, the more people just shut off their brains and try not to think about the brewing insanity. Eventually our rampant loss of intelligence will just overwhelm us, and everything will collapse around it. We’ll just be wandering around in a daze saying “I thought you were going to take care of that!”.

And don’t think that we’re going to be saved from this horrific fate by some unknown “smart people”. It seems as if intelligence is inversely proportional to thoughtfulness. That is, the longer someone has spent trying to fill their brains with very deep knowledge about a very deep subject, the more likely they seem to just shutdown their thinking with regard to everything else. We get experts that know everything about a tiny slice of our collective knowledge, but nearly nothing else. A room full of super-bright specialists talking about general issues has a phenomenally low collective intelligence (thus the failure of most committees).

Our biggest impending threat is that even though we are an intelligent species (barely), we aren’t utilizing our one and only advantage. We’re all just cruising through life, with only some minuscule percentage of our population ever thinking hard about stuff, and they’re only thinking about the stuff that is fun to think about. Everything else is getting intentionally ignored (and is only going to get worse).

Thoughts

2010-10-05T15:12:00.001-07:00

Platitudes are just poor advice wrapped in a sugary coating. Easy to generate, easy to digest, yet impossible to utilize.

For every opinion, right or wrong, smart or stupid, sane or crazy, there is at least one person holding on to it.

The only problem we can’t collectively solve is ourselves.

Human intelligence is clearly more advanced than a dog’s, but less than it ought to be, and far less than we believe it is.

We’re only as smart as our average behavior; whatever spikes we get are quickly leveled by our other moments.

Self-centered people often miss the fact that their misery is caused by their obsession.

The shallower we go, the faster things will fall apart.

A good example is far more noble than just giving in to the norm; they are their own reward and they are worth far more than any pile of stuff, even if the world hasn’t noticed yet.

Faith is blindly following people based on their word, science is blindly following people based on their interpretation of limited observations.

We invent technology decades before we know how to use it, and we use it decades before we realize that we shouldn’t have.

It is questionable whether or not our limited intelligence is significant enough for us to out evolve all of the perils of which it has made us aware.

An average person will look at their successes and infer that they are smarter than most people, whereas an intelligent person will look at their failures and infer that they are human.

Wisdom is knowing when to end a blog post. Foolishness is adding another sentence.

Faith

2010-09-16T15:33:00.001-07:00

Religion is, and should always be, a personal issue. What draws us forward through our lives is between us and how we see the world around us. Extremist, from any religion or organization, seek to cap our diversity and replace it with their own limited perspectives. But people must span the full spectrum of possible beliefs, it is central to our nature, to our intelligence. Uniformity allows control, and control allows domination.

Intrinsically we all seek answers. We must. We need answers to explain our lives, and those of the people around us. We need answers to explain the world and why it never matches our expectations. Different people need different answers; no answer, no matter how detailed or how heavily backed by experimental evidence could ever possibly explain everything to everybody.

Without answers we search, and when we search we fail to thrive. Answers quell our inner longings and allow us to concentrate on the world around us. Answers are necessary. They bring inner peace.

There is nothing wrong with people providing answers, so long as they do not abuse their position of power and trust. The answers do not have to be the absolute truth, since we know no absolutes or certainties about anything in this world. We model, we guess, but our knowledge is only ever as strong as the brief instance in which we exist. Truth means nothing; if the answers satisfy then that is all that matters.

So it should never come down to “our beliefs are more likely to be correct than yours”, since it does not matter in one’s life, or in the world around us.

All we need to agree on, is that whatever answers we choose to listen to, to follow, are ours alone. That we don’t need and don’t want to force these upon everyone else. They must find their own way, their own worldview, their own answers. Religion then, is whatever meaning we lack -- that space inside of us -- for which we must find something to fill it. Organized or not, old or new, it is a personal issue. A private struggle. A choice we all have to make. But is should never be confused with the abuse of power or extremism, since they are things that people seek to do to us from the outside, not what we need from the inside. Religion is a personal issue, and should be seen as such.

A Livable City

2010-07-17T14:47:00.001-07:00

When I was young the downtown core of Toronto has few people living there. It was expensive and there were very few houses and condos. That changed when Ontario introduced the Rent Registry. The idea was for the province to regulate how much rent landlords could charge. The effect of this regulation was that the price for condo rentals decreased dramatically. The lower price point brought in more people, which in turn created more demand for condos. The result was a boom, as more and more people moved downtown. It turned the burnt out core into a vibrant and interesting place to live. As more and more middle class people flocked in, they populated the streets and bars. The streets turned from desolation to lively and active neighborhoods.

The lesson here is that increasing the numbers of middle class living in the downtown causes the entire area to be more attractive. It blossoms. If you chase them away, the core will go back to desolation outside of the 9 to 5 business hours. It was unfortunate that the Rent Registry was ultimately disbanded. The role of a good government is insure fair play wherever possible. Over-sight like the registry helps to counter-balance people’s inherent greedy nature to take advantage of over-demand or an economic boom. Everyone wants to make money but some will always to willing to push that too far.

In 1998 Ontario introduced Market Value Assessment. The idea was to peg property taxes to the value of the house, so that as the value increases, the home-owner pays more in tax. It was a reaction to the realization that some of the older households were paying way less in taxes. While one can sympathise with the goal, the legislation was crafted in a way that the property taxes where continually increasing in sync with the real estate market. It is unfortunate because we’ve entered into a period of speculation where house prices are grossly over-valued. Once it became commonly known that property was artificially increasing too fast, more and more people jumped in to continue the bubble. Speculation is over-valuing our properties.

Ultimately this means that while this situation continues, the taxes will sky-rocket. The dangerous side-effect is that it will force more and more low income people to sell their houses, further driving up the costs. It is a cycle. Sadly, left unchecked this situation will reverse the gains made by the introduction of the Rent Registry. House prices downtown are already beyond the reach of most middle-class and it will get worse. If you drive out the middle class from the downtown core, the streets will have less people, the criminals will move back in. When the bubble bursts, the rich will abandon their houses, and the core will once again descend into darkness.

There is a way around this. Market Value Assessment was intended to fairly distribute the property taxes. That worked as expected, but as it continues to grow out of control the side-effect is disastrous. If instead we pegged any taxes for recently sold houses to MVA, but left the growth for existing households at a more reasonable fixed rate, such as the cost of inflation, we could keep the middle-class exodus from occurring. So, if you buy a house, the property tax will increase dramatically, but if you continue to live there is will grow reasonably.

Of course this means that the new people will pay more in taxes than their neighbors. This isn’t really that unfair because they’ve also paid considerably more for their house if the neighborhood is getting better. Eventually the high prices will reduce demand. At this point the price starts to go down, the reduced tax burden will induce more people to move in. Potentially the new people could end up paying less in taxes, if the neighborhood has seriously declined. The demand for the neighborhoods will always ebb and flow, but that instability shouldn’t drive existing residents out.

The goal for a livable city is to attract and keep as many middle-class people as possible living in it’s core to prevent it from becoming desolate. Driving them out is counter-productive. We’ve actually seen this in practice, but it seems as if our over-lords are not really paying attention.

Protestation

2010-06-19T08:31:00.001-07:00

Protesting can be a good thing. It can be an effective means to draw attention to a viable, yet ignored alternative. Once the status quo gets entrenched, sometimes the only real way to change it -- to progress -- is by applying pressure on the leadership.

The suffragette movement did this effectively in the early 20th century when they held mass protests in order to force governments to allow women to vote. That positive change seems so obvious now that I can barely imagine a world were women don't have equal rights (although sadly, there are still backwards strongholds on the planet where this is true). Protesting was necessary, and protesting was effective.

The Vietnam war, the pro-choice movement, Gandhi's Indian independence; there are many great examples where protests were necessary and were effective in promoting change. In all of these cases the outcomes enhanced our civilized nature, we improved our societies with viable, positive alternatives.

Given that, protesting can also be a bad thing. It has become an increasingly popular way to draw attention to an issue. It has become a fad.

When the issue is choosing an alternative, protesting is positive. But if the issue is simply something that people don't like, with no viable alternatives, then the protests are negative. They are just people gathering to vent their own personal frustrations.

There are lots of things that are wrong with our world, some major, many minor. Some of the craziness of our modern life is ultimately the evolutionary state of our systems as they have progressed. They are what they are because we are still on the path of creating something better. Hopefully they will grow and change with time, but they evolved into place for historic reasons. Capitalism is one of those systems. It is ugly, crude and often brings out the worst in people, but still for all of its flaws we have no real viable alternatives. We can't go back and we haven't grown intellectually enough to go forward.

Protesting Capitalism is negative unless there is a proposal for a viable alternative. Sure people can draw attention to the fact that they don't like it, and that there are ugly side effects, but so what? What can you do if there is nothing to change it to? We can't just abandon the last couple of hundred years of progress because parts of the system aren't pretty, aren't fair. A protest against Capitalism is a significant amount of mis-directed energy that could have been better spent on something positive, something productive.

The big changes in the world that so many of today's protesters admire and want to emulate have come because there was something reasonable to change to. If we really want to change the world, fix its problems, then the first thing we need to do is understand the pros and cons of what exists now. It is not until you know the full details, the ins and outs of both the positive and negative aspects that you can propose an alternative.

Just asking for change without providing a viable new direction is whining. It is pointless. It is destructive.

Once the status quo is understood we can move forward with newer, better approaches, being wary of course to really factor in the irrationality of most human behavior. The systems we have, the ones that mostly work and last, aren't pretty black and white simplifications precisely because our own human interactions are very complex and take place on many different levels. Human behavior is messy and spills out like oil into all of the crevices of possibility, which makes any workable system notably flexible and complex. It can never be clean and simple.

With a reasonable alternative, not just wishful thinking, there is a possibility of convincing the masses to change. Once enough people believe, then at that point it is time for protesting. At that point it is time to try to convince the establishment to abandon the status quo and head in a new direction. But you only reach that time when there has been significant momentum in convincing people that there is something to change to. Most people have to want the change, and the change has to be positive.

Protesting can be a good thing. It can lead our societies to grow and to achieve new heights of civilization, but only when it is a force for positive action. A violent, stone throwing fest concocted because people are just angry that the world isn't pretty, or that they aren't personally in charge, is a bad thing. It is one of those things we could do without, hopefully grow beyond. Perhaps someone should protest against pointless negative protests?

Selling your Soul for Fake Friendships

2010-05-18T14:28:00.000-07:00

Social Media. What?

How can a long series of trivially retarded conversations constitute "social"? How can splatting blurbs everywhere about the little and embarrassing things in your life be considered "connecting with people"? How can people pretending to read your drivel so that hopefully you'll read theirs be equated with "media"?

Seriously folks, these systems are fun, but they are merely entertainment. Once the next best things comes in, we will drop them like the brain-dead stupidity that they really are. After all, how much do you really need to know about people's status, particularly if you barely know them?

This week's hula hoop is next week's landfill. Get ready to move on ....

Mission Accomplished

2010-05-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

Why do things, when it is so much easier to say that you've done them? After all, expending effort requires effort, while just talking about effort only requires a creative enough spin. A misappropriation of the truth, by just the smallest fraction.

When they are looking back on the start of the 21st Century the biggest thing they'll note is how we claimed -- so often -- so much more than we did. How we claimed -- so loudly -- so much more than we knew. How we just kept claiming everything, like a pathological liar stuck on 'repeat'.

I guess most people think that if they say it, then somehow that constitutes action, and if they say it often enough, it will somehow become the truth. We can talk about a virtual world, a digital utopia constructed cleanly inside of a machine, but when we come around to trying to re-create that alternative reality over top of our modern one we know that we have diverged too far from our center. Too far from what makes us tick. Too far from what makes us wake up in the morning, put on clothes and then withstand the pounding and scratching of our own pitiful existence.

The world then, has become full of people's resumes proudly proclaiming success after success accomplishing their missions. Great works of fiction, created by our greatest minds. Yet a sad testimony to a world drowning in its own stupid rules and asinine regulations. A world caught in a downward spiral. Proof that somewhere along the road, we dropped our wisdom and have not yet had the good sense to go back and look for it. A forgotten ability, lost in a forgetful world.

Unchanging

2010-05-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

Everybody says they want change. Everybody says that they want to fix the problems. But once it comes down to something they've said, or something they need to change, or even something they can do something about, it is suddenly an issue. Suddenly something to be avoided. Something wrong.

We proud creatures seem to be gifted at talking about stuff, but acting on it is another matter completely. We will talk. We will say. But we won't move.

Intelligence, that odd beast, is not with us often enough. We float mindlessly through life. Wisdom, particularity when defined to be an understanding of when not to get pedantically caught up in nothingness, is a rare commodity. Thinking, then, is not something most people are actively involved in. In fact, they try very hard NOT to think about things. To avoid those things for which they don't like, or don't want or are just too confusing to them in some vague way. We are a society of willingly blind fools. One that just keeps hoping, beyond all reason, that somehow, in some-way, it will all work out.

And thus we don't get change. We don't get fixes. We don't get better. We just get the near-perfectly shallow existence that we traded our lives for. A chance to fill up our rec. rooms with another pile of plastic products. Stuff of unnecessary and unexceptionable quality. Junk, by any other name. It is our stuff. What we own, what we wear, what we use, and ever more increasingly, what we think. We are evaporating. Disappearing slowly, beneath a sea of mindless slaves that must always do what they are told. Hollowed out shells that no longer no why. That no longer care why. They seem -- at the surface at least -- perfectly content with just fiddling around with another stupid gadget, instead of finding real meaning or purpose in their lives. And so it goes.

Everybody says they want change.

Corruption

2010-04-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

I found the following Toronto Star article very depressing:

http://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/article/793087--testing-drivers-on-roads-less-travelled

but, not just because of the usual story about the incompetence that we are constantly greeted with by our Ontario institutions.

Any one whose has spent time in Toronto knows that we are surrounded by a vast array of bumbling bureaucrats. That they somehow manage to take the simplest things and turn them into laughable jokes, with ease. You'd be laughing if you were so busy getting frustrated with it all.

Ontario specializes in having our employees turn off their brains. In that way, we get a large number of perfect automatons, able to quickly and efficiently screw up any task, large or small. More optimally, they do it while somehow managing to blame it all on upper management. It's a gift.

No doubt our artificially intelligent droids are happily entrenched in their own mindless misery. We're good at that, here too.

But this story goes beyond our usual hopelessness.

Way back, when we put in our driving laws, it was for the sole purpose of making sure that the 'weaker' drivers were at least able to work within the road system to a minimum standard. That is, we were already having problems with people who couldn't drive properly, and a testing system that was too lax.

So they made it harder to pass. They made it 'graduated' into two steps.

We might expect from these changes that someone whose was barely capable of driving would now be prevented from getting on the roads. That is after all, why they made things so complicated, why they created all of the annoying rules and process. Why they charged so much money to get tested.

But as the article clearly shows, all you need to do is spend 'more' money, and 'presto blamo', you've got your license. The G test, which should involve a highway, should really test people's ability. Doing it in some small town in northern Ontario tests almost nothing. Solves nothing.

Now, I was always one of those people that grew up believing that our society in Canada was not like those in the third-world. My naive view was that we have, and tolerate little corruption. Mostly we're a clean and organized society who have honor and decency in our interactions. We believe corruption is bad.

OK, after I bit I figured out how naive I was, but at least, mostly we're not out there paying off people left, right and center to get what we want or need. The chaos of the third world is not here. We'll at least that is what I hoped.

If we establish a set of rules to control driving, then we allow them to be subverted, all we are really doing is institutionalizing corruption.

That is, if you don't want to take your test in the 3rd world, you pay off some person in the Ministry to avoid it. In Toronto, instead you have to pay off the Ministry for the tests, the independent testing company, the driving instructors, and their company. It is one heck of a big payoff, but still a payoff.

All these parties are working in conjunction to collect 'funds' that help you avoid playing by the rules. It is corruption, pure and simple, even if we created a system to legitimize it.

Renaming something rotten, doesn't make it less so. If you don't like the rules, all you have to do is pay someone to avoid them.

Congratulations Ontario, into sinking right down to the depths of any good third world country. Real impressive.

If we not going to take our rules seriously, then I suggest we get rid of them. We claim freedom, but we are drowning in a sea of broken and poorly implemented rules. State sponsored, institutionalized corruption is an obvious result of our disorganization. Expect no less.

Learning Disorder

2010-04-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

Most people begrudge learning.

They fight it, all the way from kindergarten right up to high-school. If they're destined for a higher education, they take the fight with them to their new institutions.

Fear, frustration and fatigue: learning to most people is to be tolerated -- barely -- but avoided whenever possible. There are moments with brief openings, possible opportunities, but beyond that is a high wall setup to protect oneself from outside forces. Outside information.

Later in life, long after the learning has ceased and the career has stagnated, what passes for debate is more often people just trying to validate what they know. They aren't open, they aren't interested, they aren't flexible. They aren't discussing. Instead they've locked themselves into their small subset of what they believe is the truth, and they'll just keep digging in farther.

Most people out of school don't want to learn new stuff. Perhaps, they don't mind a few trivialities, little fragments of infotainment, but anything and everything that might possibly cause them to reconsider their foundations is off limits. Hated, despised, feared. To be shouted down.

There are of course, some very few that keep learning their whole lives, but they are rare. Still, they're more aware than the rest of how precarious our knowledge rests on the edge of reason. We're awash in more mis-information than truth, more spin than reality, more lies than facts. In an age where we could know anything, but never really know the quality of that knowledge, getting stuck on the first set of facts through the door just seems like a bad lifetime choice. Flexibility is the only way to see through all of the organizations mis-representing themselves, and their efforts. All of the people out for their own interests. A bit of distance is required.

But, I guess it is embedded so deep into our being that each new shift in paradigm, culture, thinking or understanding still needs twenty to thirty years to really get rooted, precisely because that's how long it takes for one generation to cede the stage to the next. Only a real change in people will cause a real change in knowledge. Ideas are sticky.

Most people live their entire lives without realizing how wrong they are.

All the Good Ones

2010-04-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Selfish, greedy, cheap,
rude, irritable, indifference,
slimy, smarmy, arrogant,
jerk, dirt-bag, creep,
sneak, hostile, nasty,
angry, mean, hateful,
jealous, vengeful, cruel,
heartless, soulless, merciless,
liar, thief, murderer,
brutal, killer, destroyer,
sadistic, tyrannical, and depraved.

Without them, who'd be left?

Into the Flow ...

2010-03-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

We spill out,
like primordial ooze
into the cracks
and crevices of our differences.

In every direction we spread,
but our bulk stays together,
driven from one gorge to another
in time to an unseen beat.

Our brief moments of thought,
get locked into position,
like dogs caught fighting
over some insignificant morsel.

We, who can create,
long before we can understand,
and yet understand
so much less than we can know.

A species lost between
our origins and our destiny,
but hardly ready for
carrying our ultimate grace.

Hopeful and hopeless,
bright and dim,
foolish and foolhardy,
we keep traveling.

Never to forget,
that even in the darkest corners,
we still need to stop, to think
and to appreciate our essence.

Clueless

2010-03-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

If it wasn't for an entire absence of clues, most people would be somewhat aware of their environment, their place in it and the upcoming events that are gradually building up to bowl them over. But instead, they are lost in themselves, stuck on what they don't know, as they blunder onto the highway only to end up as more fresh roadkill, in a society of people competing for unique and novel ways to be flattened.

That, it seems, is the ironic weakness of intelligence. It gives us just enough to think that we know more than we actually do; that we have more than we actually do; that we understand more than we actually do. And in this deception people get hopelessly caught flailing around like rapidly dying fish, flung out of the water while spasmodically trying to change things, convinced of their own rather doubtful superiority.

But the joke is that most of the people, most of the time, in most places, have switched into some held-back mode were what they barely know is not even close enough to what they think they know. And they lack any and all capacity to see themselves in any other way then just from the standard delusions that they've so carefully constructed around their lives in an attempt to hide from reality. Mostly we're not Einstein; we're not Brad Pitt; we're not Wayne Gretzky; we're just a troop of half-dead, half-hearted, half-crazy creatures that stumbled down from our perches way too recently to be coping with the normal types of insanity in which we are now all drowning. Welcome to our modern world. You only get it, if you know you don't.

Trajectories and Scenes

2010-02-18T19:54:00.001-08:00

Life presents itself as a series of moments grouped together by a collection of underlying similarities. Much like 'scenes' in a movie, our lives go from one set of these circumstances, to another. In each scene, the world passes us by as we fall into routine. In each scene, we fall into our being.

It is not the major scenes that are of interest, but rather the between times, as we move from one to another that hold the most significance. Within a scene we are frozen to our will, unable to recast ourselves, but between them we have those rare moments in life where we can change, where we can exert our free will. It is our choices in between that dictate our successes and failures.

For within a scene, we are more locked into ourselves than not. It is as if we were shot out of a canon and are on a defined trajectory headed deep into somewhere. Going nowhere fast. Initially we are given some options, but once out of the tube, the stage is set. Locked in. We, and our nature have committed ourselves to a specific course through life; a nearly unchangeable course for the length of the scene, however long that may be. We can't change, we can't veer, and all we can do is hold on and hope that a new scene change is headed our way sooner rather than later.

There are some who can change mid-scene, but they are a rare and peculiar breed, often marginalized because of their lack of conformity. For the rest of us, we're born, go to grade school, high school, move out and possibly go to university, get our first real job, our first real love, our first long time work, then later our first bout of restlessness, and so on. Each new shift, forming at least one significant scene, each new trajectory either changing our course or following lockstep from the path of the last one. Quickly we become trapped in our lives, trapped in our habits, often missing the very moments that were set there to allow us to escape. To break the mold, to change our trajectory.

But it is not just individuals that pass through scenes and follow trajectories. Groups of all shapes and sizes are bound by the same cruel mechanics as well. From friends, to companies, to entire countries, collective beings get caught within their routine, only to follow an inevitable course in some fixed direction for as long as the scene refuses to change. The stage gets set, and the players get played.

If you understand how we are tied to our fates, it is easier to see and sense why the world moves in the way it does; why people move in the way they do. Even knowing the worse, most people are helpless to change their course, and are rarely in control of their own scenes. Most groups can't be any better, whether or not they know that their trajectory leads them into something undesirable. Once things are set in motion, once it gets going, it becomes all but impossible to change. And if the consequences are inevitable, the only way to avoid them is to force some type of dramatic scene change into the equation. Little changes, wishful thinking, these cannot alter the trajectory. If the scene remains the same, the path is bound to its course. What should happen, will happen. Where the trajectory leads is where life will take one. Breaking that is what separates the great from the rest of the pack.

The Art of a Believable Lie

2009-12-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

Climategate exposes a far more serious problem than just how our climate is mis-behaving.

In the global temperature graphs presented to the world there were originally two significant periods: the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) and a Little Ice Age (LIA). They are discussed in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

They appear to have been "smoothed" over in some of the climate researchers "graphs". This blog shows the infamous hockey stick graph and tries to defend the practice:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/hockey-stick-is-broken.php

But it can't be done. You can't justify manipulating the numbers.

Science -- some unfortunate souls seem to have forgotten -- is about producing rigid verifiable TRUE results.

If two different independent groups study the same phenomenon, and they both use a properly rigorous processes, then they will come to the same results. The results are reproducible and verifiable.

If one group has used some "complex technical" manipulations on the data to "enhance" the results, it is certain that if the other group wasn't directly involved in the deception, then their results would be different. The manipulative study would be invalid. It would not have followed the scientific method:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Science must be objective and verifiable. That is at the heart of Science, it is an absolute necessity. Otherwise it just ain't Science!

Marketing, on the other hand, is trying to spin various things so that an unsuspecting public will buy into them. It is about manipulating people, in order to achieve concrete results. It's main weapon is spin, it is NOT rigorous, and most people know enough to not believe what they have see.

In marketing, people are free to use whatever sleazy practice they desire, fiddle with the numbers, "enhance the data", etc. just so long as it is believable enough to manipulate some of the targets some of the time.

Because Science is rigorous, something is scientific or it is not. If the results are not real science, then they are marketing. They can only be one or the other, and marketing covers everything that isn't properly scientific.

If you can't reproduce the results, then it is marketing. If you fudge the results, it is marketing. If you're description is too "technical" to be understood, then it is marketing. If you employ "tricks" to make people perceive the results in a different way, then it is marketing. If it isn't really scientific then it is marketing.

Marketing is about manipulation, science is about truth.

We live in a age of bad science. Results have been littering our media for years and we've all suspected many were not worthy of being called "science". Often, they're not even good marketing.

Climategate isn't alone, but it really shows how far down the well we have sunk. It's the desperate state of our failed global society that we can't even trust the label "science" anymore. It has been robbed of its meaning, another victim to a marketing farce.

If you present marketing materials as "scientific" then it is fraud. You are lying, and there is no getting around it. A cause doesn't change it. A PhD doesn't change it. Nothing changes it. Nothing justifies it. Marketing is not science, precisely because it is not objective. It has a purpose.

Whatever Climategate turns out to be, it is clear that the "researchers" removed both the MWP and the LIA from their diagrams. Once they did that, they gave up any and all claims to science and turned towards a more insidious marketing campaign. Truth is truth. If you bend it, even a tiny bit, then it is no longer the truth. It's not really a hard concept to grok.

When its defenders try to call the corruption and fraud "normal scientific process" we should all be offended. If they think we wouldn't have understood, they are correct. If they think they're so intelligent that it is up to them to save us from ourselves, then it is their arrogance that defines them as idiots. They destroyed so much more than they realized.

Do I believe in Global Warming? I certainly did, as the supposedly "scientific community" presented irrefutable evidence that it was happening. But thanks to these clowns, I no longer have that certainty.

I have no idea who or how many from this particularly small academic community have succumbed to their god complexes. I no longer have any reliable truth on which to base my decisions. If one of the key institutions switched over to marketing and the others didn't rat them out right away, then we have no idea how deep this corruption runs.

If you're being scientific -- really scientific not just this fake marketing version -- then you have to suspend your opinion on Global Warming until there are rigid, properly carried out, properly presented, verifiable results. With most of the known results thrown into question, and with some of the studies even appearing to contradict the whole theory, an honest person is force to admit that it just ain't certain anymore.

Which is bad. Hugely bad. If the planet is really in peril, and our accepting a harsher, lesser quality of life now means that it won't be far worse later, then we'd be stupid to not try and fix this right away. On the other hand, if this is just fear mongering to suppress the masses, and keep us occupied while the rich get richer from selling fake carbon resources, then we be stupid to fall into this delusion and donate some of our wealth to their yachts and mansions.

We have a hard choice to make, and no trustworthy information on which to base it. And the people we trusted to help, have let us down.

Impending Doom

2009-12-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

Some may think that humanity's impending doom comes from the recklessness in which we treat our world. We consume and pollute without consequence or remorse.

Some may think that it comes from our out-of-control population growth. Like an evil tide, we flow over the land bringing destruction and mayhem to each and every corner.

Some may think that it comes from technology. That our limited intellect allows us to create things faster than we can understand them.

But the real truth is that it comes from our own arrogance. From our ability to easily lie and cover up the truth when it turns out not to be convenient to our world view. From our ability to justify our loathsome methods, if we think the cause is even mildly noble. From our belief that we can fool each other and won't ever get caught, even though history is proof to the contrary.

Our impending doom comes not from our possible changes to the climate, but from the scientists supposedly studying it using "scientific methods". When we can no longer tell the difference between aggressive marketing campaigns and real science, we've descended to a dangerous new low. One that will pull the rest of our edifices down on top of us.

Climategate (if true) will easily be the greatest scandal of the 21st century:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/06/american-thinker-understanding-climategates-hidden-decline/

TTC: Why are we even paying for it?

2009-12-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

Free trips on the TTC?

I came across a site that suggested that ALL mass transit systems should be FREE. At first glance, I figured the idea was crazy, but when you think about it:

- it wastes tonnes of money to figure out who paid
- it means way more infrastructure: people, tokens, tickets, transfers, booths,
- it means horrible line-ups
- it means people won't just wait, if the system is too busy

If it is free, people will get on and off a lot more. Which is actually a good thing, particularity in this age of green awareness. It may just be so easy to bus there, then walk home (or partway home).

Dropping the cost to zero liberates the system.

Why do we waste all of this money? So that people who use the system "more often", pay more? Who are these people anyways? The poor?

If we just made it free:

- more people would use it, and for shorter trips,
- line-ups would be easier.
- people choosing to use their cars would pay "extra" (for unused services)
- tourists / visitors would be impressed (we could quietly tax their hotel stays :-)

We'd finally look like we were actually ahead on something, instead of always looking so dysfunctional and backwards.

It would be really simple to fund this at a provincial level. Then we could make all "short" haul systems free, and all long haul systems private (and competitive). To make it fairer, we could base in on regional property tax, i.e., if you live up in the north where there are no systems, you don't have to pay. If you live in a big city like Toronto, or any of its suburbs, or nearby towns, you would pay in taxes. If you chose to use your car instead, that's your choice, but the system is always there is you need it. Fair and simple.

It's just so simple.

Fight Back: Demand a TTC Audit

2009-11-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

I've decided to take this one personally. According to the following two links:

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20091113/ttc_boycott_091113/20091113/?hub=TorontoNewHome

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/729716

the Toronto Transit Commission's (TTC) public transportation system has experienced a relatively minor 20% bump in token sales (according to their own spokesperson); a normal event in any sales process. Token shortages shouldn't occur with such a small increase in sales.

And, they are clearly exaggerating about losing any millions in revenue. Any non-defective organization should easily be able to deal with an extra windfall of cash. Normally people buying ahead of an increase is a good thing. Particularly if you announce the increase nearly two months in advance.

So what's happening here?

I figured the first round of this stupid game -- punishing the riders by limiting tokens -- was just some type of power-play.

A typical TTC vs. the government maneuver, where the riders get shot in the middle. A way for management to try to inflame people in hopes that they would apply pressure to the government for funding. You know, the usual BS that the TTC has been dishing out to us for years.

But this new thing with not allowing us to have any tokens anymore. This is different. This goes too far beyond incompetence, I think it is deliberate.

I suspect that the rider's protest and strike, however minimal the impact, might have angered TTC management, and that they've decided to punish us by depriving us of some of their services. A sort of "crappy" work-to-rule type game. Keep the staffing levels the same, remove the tokens and then create massive lineups. Great punishment tactics, particularly around a busy season like Christmas.

Perhaps someone deep inside the TTC feels that we the masses, need to be humbled.

I know it all sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but truthfully it is either that or the TTC is actually the world's worst run organization. Ever. I mean, every other company, charity, ministry, branch, commission or any other medium to large organization on the planet would be happy to deal with a bunch of customers paying in advance. It's normal. Nobody turns down money. Never has IBM denied selling people laptops, nor Chrysler just stopped selling cars. This is "pre" business 101. They don't even need to teach this in business school, it is just understood.

And if people pay you in advance, thanks to the magic of reinvesting in the areas like the money-market -- the same way all other large enterprises have to -- the unused capital accumulates interest, which is a good thing. Businesses have dealt with this for hundreds of years. Unsteady cash-flows are a normal part of business.

So what is the problem with the TTC?

Our choices are either to believe that: a) they are completely incompetent, or b) they are vindictive, spiteful and punitive.

Now, Ontario sure has certainly had it share of intellectually-challenged management, but certainly as of late, our biggest problems have been the super-villains. Corrupt management that does what it pleases without even trying to deliver anything tangible anymore. E-health, Ontario Hydro, our city contracts. We've had a long and glorious history of indulging these super-villains.

Still, most people in Ontario would rather pretend that we don't have any of this type of third-world corruption here. We quickly turn a blind eye, while executives fill up at the trough without any resistance. You might say we're, ummm, what you call "suckers".

That we live with this is shameful enough, but when they start making our lives more miserable, punitively, particularity at a busy time like Christmas. Well, that is a dangerous line to cross, and this time they have chosen to go way too far to the other side.

They might figure they have us over a barrel. That there is nothing we can do about a government run monopoly right? We are helpless, we have no choice but to just take our lumps and shut up. But they are wrong!

Were there is smoke there is usually fire. Where there is such abuse of power, there are always other infractions.

These managers, malicious or incompetent are no doubt guilty of far more nefarious things than not just bothering to order enough tokens. Or despising their customers. Their vindictive or lazy behavior -- either way -- is probably just the tip of the iceberg for their more serious transgressions.

But it doesn't even matter if the sorry state of our system is due to incompetence or negligence. The truth is, the money is gone either way. We just keep sinking so much money in, and they just keep under-delivering. It's about time that this changed.

We are tax payers, the system is ours, and we've paid for it. We have a right to demand that our money was well spent, that it was all reasonably handled. And if it wasn't, then heads should roll. As many as are responsible. If it takes wiping out the entire upper layer of management, I'm sure we couldn't actually do worse at this point.

So, if we care and we want to fight back, we should all call for an open audit of the TTC. An independent review. The books should be throw open wide to the Auditor General. The Federal one (I'm not sure the Provincial one is all that independent). We should get a full, in-depth and fair accounting of how our money has been spent over the last five years at least, if not longer. They should do a comprehensive audit looking for both mismanagement of funds and for possible inappropriate, or illegal dispersals.

We hate the system, it is too expensive, and we are not getting value for our money. In fact, on a world wide scale, the whole system is just embarrassing. We've got one of the weakest, most expensive, poorly functioning systems out there. It would be nice to know why.

So I am taking this personally. Wanton corruption, or mismanagement, I don't care anymore, they went way too far this time. I just want it cleaned up. I want the money we spend to provide us with value. I want a system that works.

If you're fed up like me and you want to do something about it, then we have a very simple, tangible and achievable goal. We need to demand an audit. It's our right. Spread the news, tell your family, friends and co-workers.

Then we all need to pressure the newspapers, politicians, the Auditor General of Canada and any one else who will listen, into pushing for an immediate audit of the TTC finances. Starting now. Right away, not in five years time.

And, if, as one expects, there are some irregularities contained under the hood, we also need to push to insure that the responsible parties are removed from the organization immediately and forever. Criminal proceeding can be an issue for later, right now we just need to clean up the management levels.

If enough of us demand that this be done, they will have little choice.

It is time we clean up this mess. It is time we actually pushed for a change towards a decent reliable transit system. It is time we stop being suckers.