On Writing

Steven King has written on writing. A decent book, workmanship in nature - like his writing - and a combination of a lite autobiography and a how to and a philosophy of writing and an encouragement book.

The book does not gel together very well, which is likely a result of how it was written - in chucks, well separated in time (which he warns against...), and finished while he mended from being hit by a truck. The autobiography starts the book, to tell the story of one writer. The one thing that stands out is how much is mom encouraged him - encouragement can go a long way.

The how too is short, but as far as it goes decent. He simply points to some simple guidebooks elsewhere, rails against common annoying habits [0], and makes some simple points such that a sentence is simply a verb + noun, and can even be stripped down to just two words: "Fluids flow." [1]

The final part of the book is a "I got hit by a truck and it sucked" discussion on life, why writing matters, what it means to King, and some details of his booze + drug problems [2].

All through the book words of encouragement for would be writers are scattered, and King also includes a program on "how to be a writer" in his section on how too (in a nutshell: read lots, write lots: 3-6 hrs a day of reading/writing, write 5 pp a day, everyday, read at every chance [3]).

The book is a quick and enjoyable read, its major flaw actually underscore one of his warnings (i.e. it not gelling together likely directly links to how the book is written [4], as discussed in the book...), and King encourages all the way through.

On writing is flawed, but cheap and quick. Well worth the effort.

Notes;
[0] Of the type railed against in Orwell's "Politics and the English Language".
[1] The simple aspects King discusses are actually pretty encouraging, as he strips down grammar to the simplest to show the heart of the situation. King once taught basic English, so he has the chops down.
[2] King states that booze does not an artist make, and that while many of his best works came out of a booze and coke fueled fire that... um... booze is bad, and it is a cop out to say an artist is more sensitive and thus needs to blunt life with booze/drugs. Though artists are more sensitive, don't get him wrong.
[3] King gives the would be a day off, but notes he takes no days off. No Christmas. No Halloween. No birthday. And he writes 10 pp a day. Included is a "decent books I've read" list.
[4] The book is somewhat repetitive at times...

Can markets provide disinterested ratings?

Free-market anarchists believe [0] that we can do without government. For example, private rating agencies will spring up to provide a "seal of approval" that currently regulation provides: the Food and Drug Administration will be replaced by some private safety standard company
specializing in rating drugs, car safety will be ensured by a private corporation that tests cars, etc. By having a seal of approval a company can charge a premium, and rating agencies will be kept honest as they make their bread and butter off their reputation as honest and accurate providers of quality. At the same time the costs of regulation are removed, and consumers are given a choice - they can judge for themselves if they want the unrated product, or the more costly product with a seal of quality on it. Win-win.

But is this likely? The accounting firm debacle (remember Arthur Anderson?), followed by the more recent credit rating agency failure, suggests that it is not. One can claim that small number of players is the cause, and that imperfect competition is the problem - we just need more rating agencies to compete, with less restriction of said agencies, but experimental economics suggests you can have a sparsely populated market and still get much of the benefits of "perfect markets" that economists have worked out [1].

A naive public choice model suggests why things will fail: conflict in incentives. Public choice makes the seemingly underwhelming assumption that people are people, and works out consequences of this assumption. Special interests can aggregate enough power to effect rating agencies to meet the special interests needs rather than the institutions involved. Factions within companies, stockholders, and individuals at leveraged positions will have personal incentives to game the system. Further, only the stockholders, or the company itself, will have incentive to pay for ratings: both of which may have reason to have overly rosy ratings [2].

The obvious solution is to have each and every consumer of companies’ products to share in the cost. We currently have this situation - it is called regulation, the costs of which are passed on to consumers and taxpayers [3]. What is the difference between regulation and a rating company? Admittedly, only a matter of degree: special interests groups also have incentive to influence the regulation, but here we will have more competition among interest groups, tending to cancel each other out [4]. This idea underpins James Madison’s theory of republics.

Ratings agencies have incentive to be right, and companies have incentives to have solid (and real) ratings: both survive due to reputation. But there are strong short-term incentives for numerous players within the corporations (both raters and ratees) to game reputation and trust for personal advantage.

Public choice tells us to beware of having overly romantic views of government, as "government failure" can occur due to incentive mismatch. Public choice also suggests that corporations [5] have a similar route to failure: treating an aggregate as an entity with self-interest is a poor way of predicting what will happen, and assuming a romantic view of selfless individuals taking on the persona of that aggregate institution is a limited reflection of reality.

Sure, it may be in a companies “self interest” to maintain “its” reputation, but a company cannot act – only people within that company. And people can be tempted. Yes, most people feel a duty to their country, their corporation, their church, their friends - but they are people, and will have incentives that tend to undercut selfless duty [6]. We see this again and again - sexual abuse scandals in the church and in schools, corporate scandals, and governmental failures. By identifying institutions as selfless entities working for good, and individuals within those institutions as taking up the banner of pure duty to fulfill that good, we set ourselves up for disappointment.

Notes:
[0] Or at least they claim to believe. Often their actions undercut this claim, as in the example of "pure libertarian" professors (Taxing is an evil? evil? And your salary and lifestyle comes from what? Oh, yeah, "evil". You must mean "minor annoyance", excuse me while I discount most of your arguments as you seem to be a bit hyperbolic...).
[1] But make unlikely assumptions such as: infinite number of companies, everyone having perfect information, and people making purely rational decisions. Not that these assumptions are actually seriously thought to be needed, or are even meaningful.
[2] Potential investors do have an incentive to get the truth, but here the free rider problem prevents potential investors from paying for a study - better to have someone else pay for a study and get the results for free. Ditto for consumers, as the next paragraph discusses.
[3] This whole group payment is fundamental to the idea of "insurance" - what we often call insurance is both insurance against risk, as well as a mechanism to level the variation in costs by grouping people together. This pooling payment scheme is a crucial idea that is at the heart of how we run society. There are problems with it - try evenly splitting a bill at a restaurant instead of having each pay for themselves and see the steaks and fancy drinks flow - but there are issues with its absence also - public goods are goods. Consider a society without clean drinking water or roads. The floor of a society dictates how much one can move up; if everyone around you has TB, cannot read, and only the rich can move on a private road you have significant training costs, risks (health, violence, etc. etc.), transaction costs, etc. and one can imagine serious limits on both personal improvement and the rate of social improvement. Being taxed and getting public goods like sanitation is far better than the "freedom" of not having them.
[4] Further, as there is a single "player" transparency, in principle, is easier to maintain. In practice this will only occur to the extent that responsibility is clear and efforts are taken to provide transparency.
[5] Indeed, in general, the similarity between a corporation and our modern society is pretty high.
[6] At the very least, a subset of people will feel this pressure. If they also believe that such behavior is justified they be attracted to such positions and look for such opportunities.

Natural Understanding

Psychologists and cognitive scientists believe that our minds are like Swiss Army Knives - they consist of an array of specialized tools that can be harnessed for various tasks. The base of the tool is called a "substrate" (i.e. the hypothesized location [1] in the brain for the function), and these substrates are used for more than one task - just like you can pound a screw into a board with a hammer if that is all you have the brain uses tools for more than one task [2]. Now take this general understanding of the brain and apply it to how we must understand objects in the physical world in order to manipulate them - it is speculated that we have an "intuitive physics" substrate in our brains [3]. This intuitive physics is one reason physics in school is so difficult - our built in predictions and feelings of how things behave, which work in the real world on the human scale, are actually *wrong*. Our physics teachers do not bother to contrast our built in expectations and how things actually work, and we often cannot move past this. But more importantly than poor teaching is this: if substrates are reused, can we expect our intuitive physics of the physical world to bleed over into our intuitive understanding of the social world?

There is some evidence for this: an interesting study looks at how people expend thought - if they fill out surveys attached to heavier clipboards they will put more thought into their responses. Just like heavy objects require more muscle power, our brains seem to be tricked into thinking that more brain power is required. This is automatic and unconscious. This is suggestive that our intuitive understanding of physics is also used in social and conceptual spaces. And even if the "physics module" of our brain is not specifically resued in a certain situation we may be able to intentionally apply this module to a specific action.

So, what other built in physics understandings do we have? Friction. Inertia. Can we game this natural understanding to guide our actions?

What do we call these terms in social/conceptual spaces? "Transaction costs", and, well, "inertia". We are all familiar with friction - if many steps are required to do something we realize that the friction is simply too great, and we don't bother to start the project or we quickly give up. Even if we know the end is valuable, the effort requried is simply too great [4]. Related to this friction is risk - if 1/20 talks are worth sitting through, then it is most likely not in my interest to go to a talk [5]. Why don't people go to free financial advice talks? They are not free - I will most likely be wasting my time. The "friction" is simply too high - where friction is the wasted energy that depletes ones efforts towards some constructive end. If we really want to improve things for ourselves we act to put friction between us and things we do not want to do, and remove friction from things we want [6]. Don't want to be fat? Don't keep junk food in your house. Block out a time for exercise.

As for inertia, we all know that once we get going we tend to keep going. We can use this intertia principle to trick ourselves into action - working on something for 5 minutes will often turn into an hour, as once we overcome the inertia of inaction continuing motion is easy(er). Or we can do a minimal and small amount of something, and before we realize it we are doing more and have a new habit. The trick here is to use our built in "intuitive" understanding of the mechanical world and apply it to other aspects of our lives, and since the actions will be underpinned with an intuitive feeling of "yeah, this is how stuff works" it will naturally flow.

Want to make better decisions? Apparently just pick up a heavy clipboard and work with it [7]. Build up or remove friction in order to guide actions. Use your knowledge of inertia to get yourself moving. Think about your natural understanding of the physical world, conform your actions to this understanding and you will likely have better results.

Notes:
[1] Sometimes this location is a specific well known area of the brain, well studied by MRI and other imaging studies, and some are not well known or thought to be dispersed over the brain.
[2] Just like we cannot afford all the tools we might like, we cannot have every tool in our brain that we might like. This invariably will lead to using a hammer where a spatula would have been better.
[3] Indeed, it is hard to imagine how we could survive if we did not have an intuitive physics module. We can play catch with ease, just like we can "learn" to count with ease - most of the things that we learn are only learnable as they are largely built in and we simply refine our use of these innate skills.
[4] Consider citations versus hyperlinks. The difference in the effort required to look up an article cited is fairly significant - think about the old fangled days when grandma had to go to the library, look up the book in the index card, hoof over to the shelf, then flip through the bound journal until she got to the article, then read the abstract to see if it is worth reading more. Now we click. An order or two magnitude in transaction costs difference is huge - Hamming's Law: Enough quantitative difference becomes qualitative difference.
[5] Unless I have more information - such as knowing the talk is going to be good via word of mouth, or seeing a well crafted abstract.
[6] An excellent book on this is Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
[7] We all have heard of the "speaking conch" idea, were a speaker must hold a token and gets the floor. The urban legend is that ancient tribes did this, and this ensures that a free for all doesn't derail discussion. But perhaps the conch was used not to control the audience - but instead to control the speaker; by holding the conch they would more carefully speak due to the weight. Maybe meetings would work out better if people had to hold a 5-10 lb object, and we wouldn't have to sit through mindless and inane chatter...

Kiss of Death: Educational

I have recently been thinking about computer programming, and did some looking into Logo.

There are two main flavors of programming language: languages that closely follow "Turing" machine like style and closely resemble the actual (von Neuman) hardware, and languages that closely follow lambda calculus. The Turing style is very mechanical, gear and switches, and flows. The lambda calculus is very, well, much like calculus with everything being a function. C and Scheme are the cardinal languages representing these two types. Most languages are an offshoot to these two (formally equivalent) ways of doing things, with the von Neuman/Turing style being the most popular as it has (1) less of an entry barrier (initially easier), and is (2) faster as it is "close" to the hardware and thus makes effective use of it [0].

Now that hardware is cheap and powerful, and programmers time is more valuable than computer time, the "gold standard" of (fast!) C is less of an issue and various ways of making better use of programmers time is coming to the fore - for example, Java is popular is it is easy for a so-so programmer to crank out code in teams. In general there are many many languages, as there are many many uses for a computer and thus many niches exist for a programming language to fill (plus programmers tend to like playing around and creating languages). Here I want to briefly talk about one - Logo.

Yeah, you know - Logo. The 40+ year old language that is an offshoot to LISP (the original lambda calculus language), the language that has the little turtle that can draw on the screen. Turtle graphics - were one can draw neat little pictures by having a "turtle walk around the screen". Why did Logo never really take off? Why did it die?

It was educational.

"Educational" is the kiss of death. Do you want to look at irrelevant and pointless discussion? Look at X from an "educational" point of view. For example, "physics education". Or computer languages for education. Anything that enters the niche of education is bound to die a painful wallowing death, most likely scarring many children in its death throws.

There are likely many reasons for this - but take it as an axiom [1].

Logo was a victim of moving into the wrong niche. Logo seems like an interesting language - it can be used to teach a fundamentally powerful way of thinking (functions! recursion!) and has cool graphics too boot. But it was a powerful elixir given to people without the proper skills and incentives and want to learn it, and a watered down weak and mostly pointless version was poured out for the students. "Now after me: type {blah blah blah} {blah blah blah} See the turtle move? Neat - huh?!", "Um, no. What's the point to this?" [2]. Oh good, it is now time to socialize/"discuss"/"explore".

Now, what lessons can we draw from this?

Never, ever, ever do anything for educational purposes or spend time on something that is mainly sold as educational or go into education. You want you kids to be smart? Baby Einstein ain't going to do it. In investing your time never decide to do something because it is educational. EVERYTHING IS EDUCATIONAL. Education is a side effect of action and reflection. Pick to do something that is useful, or fun, or challenging, or orthogonal to what you know, or is part of the basis set of society, or that hot chicks/guys do, or is scary, or seems neat. You will learn. "Educational" things are often infantile versions of something real, where the dumbing down process kills it - or something that means well but is killed by the educational system. The lack of respect this process shows to the intended audience is sad, but the undercutting of actual education is what is truly unfortunate. The creators of Logo must have shed tears. If you love kids and want to teach them, don't move into an environment that is structured against this aim. I'm happy I have had the teachers I had, but you see many of them as empty shells by the time they are done. Maybe private school is a viable option, or writing kids books, or teaching summer camps, or having kids, or teaching Sunday school, or volunteering - but seriously, going into public education is not something conducive to education [3].

If we contrast Logo with BASIC, Logo comes up short. BASIC is a language that is vastly inferior to Logo in many respects, but actually was successful. The language still lives and has a vibrant grass roots community of people playing with it and making programs [4]. BASIC was basic - yet not cute and infantile and dumbed down. Programmers used it. Hobby magazines existed. It was real, not some pablum that was spoon fed and curricularized. Logo entered the maw of the educational system, in the hopes of bringing play and possibility and programming to the people, and it was smothered. BASIC was a pathetic tool compared to Logo, yet it was a real tool and one that had life external to schools.

Maybe Logo was too complex to be expected to thrive and no matter what would have died, but I suspect not. I sense that if the makers of Logo had realized what seems apparent now - that educational = kiss of death - and had targeted Logo to real life, not the holding pen of schools, it might have succeeded. The difference between school and life is somewhat like that of "astroturf" and "grassroots" movements, we don't expect much out of astroturf. It is not an ecosystem with evolution and life and wonder and creation and death and mysteries, it is a plastic replica sold by the square foot and colored with cheap dye. Logo expected to thrive and spark a revolution in the worse possible environment [5].

The key lesson to learn from Logo is this - "educational" is an euphemism for something that lacks vitality and value. Do not invest time and life into "educational" pursuits.

Notes:
[0] The magic of calculus is we can train monkeys to use it - engineers learn it all the time - as it's notational power is so great that you can get by with turning some gears and getting correct answers. But to really get calculus is harder - but very powerful once you do. Lambda calculus is like this: there is a barrier to getting it that prevents mass use. But if you get it you can do amazing things.
[1] For one, we don't select our best and brightest to be teachers. Can one really launch a revolution in thinking using third tier thinkers to propagate it? Is it plausible that "new math" or a dialect of LISP is going to be understood deeply and communicated powerfully by teachers, and then have the revolution spread from the school? Maybe for simplistic ideas that push built in buttons, but really: LISP? New Math? Secondly, budgets are huge and change is slow - so once a toehold is found, evolution is going to die - so if the idea is not perfect to begin with you just locked it in to a straight jacket. Thirdly - politics. Politics is about spending other peoples money - and thus you will see decisions that (1) can be sold to the lowest common denominator as a "good idea", (2) fear of responsibility for taking risks, (3) poor decisions as it is not really your money one is spending, (4) community and political and bureaucratic meddling and bickering, and many other factors that lead to bad decisions. Once something is put into the political domain you might as well hand it over to the USSR or GM to handle - because that is the level of quality you will be getting. The environment is poisoned. Do not expect deep thought, novel insights, or new (positive) revolutions to spring out of education.
[2] I actually was exposed to Logo in this manner - I had no clue about any of the ideas underlying Logo, or why we would want to use it, or how it was interesting. Not until years later did I even realize that I used Logo - mindlessly typing in some instructions to get a turtle to move, and then "exploratory learning" which consisted of letting the students do what they wanted (=talking about non-Logo/turtle stuff=fun but not "learning") after a brief "teaching session" (see above "type {blah blah blah}"). And this is in Canada - you know, the country to the north of the US with a semi-functioning school system! You can't teach a whole subtle and difficult theory of teaching - such as constructionalism or Socratic method or anything - in a few teacher development days or courses and expect useful outcomes.
[3] It really is surprising how badly schools actually teach. I doubt we could intentionally make a worse system - and for the most part every single person involved in the sausage factory of public schools has the best of intentions. As for being a teacher - look at the best writers, do you think they got that way by going to school to learn to be a writer? Sure, some did go to school in writing - but the best writers taught themselves through action. They would be good writers if they went into engineering instead (although they would have less time to spend writing, and some less exposure - so that route would slow them down...). They became good writers by living and practicing writing. Why would we expect an university degree in "education" to produce good teachers? The degree acts as a filter & signal: it, in combination with union rules, protects jobs by reducing supply and it signals that the person with the degree is serious enough about the work to sit through 4 years of courses. If we actually cared about having good teachers would we even have "education degrees"? Or would we select teachers out of the general population of people? I would rather have some former mechanic teach me mechanics, a writer teach English, a mathematician math. Sure, teaching requires certain logistical skills - but certainly not 4 years worth of them. Since teachers get the summer off, why not get new hires at the beginning of the summer break, train them up, and then then apprentice them into the system with training and interaction with other teachers? Oh yeah, I know why. The teachers are of the publicani class - and thus a solid voting block (i.e. have political value), and imagine what the system would be without the current setup (e.g. education degree & unions) - mostly retired people, people changing careers, and others that are nothing like the (typical) current teachers. The system is basically politically locked in - a large voting block would not like to see the change.
[4] And after we "learned" Logo in class, the cool kids would type in a little BASIC program that flashed colors on the screen, or play a little song, or made letters fall. The kids would play and explore and have fun with BASIC - and note my use of cool. Cool - not just nerds, but popular kids would learn the little "viral" programs. The makers of Logo would scream in horror at this, as it was exactly opposite to their intent and dreams. It was to be the other way around! Logo was to be fun, to be explored, to be used like art and against the dictates of the man! Logo was top down and withered as a distributed network of people experimenting and exploring did not exist.
[5] Ironically, Logo may still live - for it now is being used for stuff (versus "in education"), namely it is being used in studies of distributed systems (i.e. lots of "turtles" or "agents" that act and interact).

Handbook of Epictetus

The Handbook is short and sweet. 53 short segments, essentially paragraphs, on Stoic philosophy. The Handbook is a classic that is simple to read, bares rereading and random dipping into, and is thought inspiring.

37. If you undertake some role beyond your capacity, you both disgrace yourself by taking it and also thereby neglect the role that you were unable to take.

That's right, in ~100 A.D. Stoics got opportunity cost...

44. These statements are not valid inferences: "I am richer than you; therefore I am superior to you", or "I am more eloquent than you; therefore I am superior to you." But rather these are valid: "I am richer than you; therefore my property is superior to yours", or "I am more eloquent than you; therefore my speaking is superior to yours." But you are identical neither with your property nor with your speaking.

...and logic. People don't change much - the rich and the intelligent still often mistake their good fortune as reflections of their personal character [1].

The Handbook is elegant and compelling. As human character and traits have not changed since the time of the writing the Handbook is also timeless. The Stoics focused on character and on proper human focus, and therefore their work stands up today some 2000 years later.

Lowdown:
- at about $5 this clear, compact, compelling read is a steal

Notes:
[1] Academics are often simply people who can argue well - and not always because they are logical and well informed. As they often then make the invalid inference that they are thus superior they tend to get all moral on thou. Note that the immature argue in order to feel morally superior to their opponents (quite possibly due to evolutionary pressure - we are social animals, so pecking order is key, so building in a feeling of righteousness to help push forward in arguments in order to place the resources in it to win and get the dino-meat and cave-babe would be advantageous), without self reflection many/most do not move past this and likely do not even realize the danger. The deep feeling of not wanting to back down even when presented with arguments that make it clear one is clearly wrong is automatic (how many times have you found yourself continuing to argue well past the point that you should have given up?). Until one really confronts this feeling and persists in wanting to follow truth one cannot overcome this - with practice one can actually enjoy being proven wrong as you have just learned something new (the overcoming does not seem to be simply an artifact of aging, as many older people retain this undeveloped state). And by enjoy I don't mean a grudging post argument coming to accept the truth, but a "wow this is cool!" in the moment of the argument.

Kasparov: Life Lessons

Garry Kasparov's How Life Imitates Chess in a nutshell:

• review
• challenge resources
• confidence, or decisions delayed (then time crunch/stress)
• analysis of decisions & effect
• focus on results
• hard work
• self awareness & consistency: steady effort pays off
• experiment/push boundaries of capacity
• motivate yourself to push though
• small steady increments can lead to large gains (1 hr a day on activity X)
• worse type of mistake from habit - it makes you predictable
• "clock vs. board time" - number of steps to accomplish an objective...
• improve, swap or eliminate "bad pieces"
• spending time only useful if it will improve things
• imbalance: lack of symmetry that can be exploited for advantage
• accurate evaluation key: focus on each choice, prune poor choices, spend time considering good options
• don't over extend, don't ignore imbalances
• power of surprise strong: spend time thinking/learning to find new ideas
• break down your skills/performance - where strong? Weak? Enjoy? Shy away from?
• big branches on decision tree - forks with no way back. Spend careful time on these decisions.
• always valuable to ask - can I reverse course if the decision turns out poorly?
• if no benefit to making the decision now and no penalty in delaying, use time to improve your evaluation, gather information, examine other options
• err on side of intuition and optimism
• be aggressive with self-criticism
• take the initiative - self pressure
• complacency - lack of vigilance -> mistakes & missed opportunities: train yourself to want to improve even when things go right
• essential to have benchmarks to keep yourself alert
• create goals & standards - then keep raising them
• compete like you are an underdog
• find ways to maintain concentration & motivation - key to fighting complacency
• keep track of time - how much time a week doing irrelevant item X? target reducing this.
• lose as much as you can take (push yourself)
• if its been a while since you experienced the nervous thrill of trying something new, perhaps you've been avoiding challenge for too long
• the moment you believe you are entitled to something is the moment you are ripe to lose it to someone who is fighting harder
• pride in achievement mustn't distract from ultimate goals
• results are what matter in the end - concrete objectives and measure
• accept responsibility for results. Every decision made builds character and forms basis of future decisions.
• engaging with your weak points & drilling down so we understand them is best & fastest way to improve.
• good decisions: calculations, creativity, & desire for results.

The book is a pleasant and easy read. Traditional good advice, from a successful person and an interesting perspective. Well worth reading - most of us know this stuff, but it is always worth repeating for the positive reminder and push. The strength of the book is the concise and well presented overview of basic strategies for success, retold with an entertaining metaphor of "life~chess".

Programming - Basic

I earlier said that computers are the defining element of our society. As such, it is a basic requirement to know how to program - if you want to claim to be educated. Without this essential idea you simply are missing out on one of the biggest developments in history and the defining element of "us".

But I did not give any reference for those interested in trying to learn this essential skill.

Here is a basic book (no pun intended), and here is a online basic interpreter to try the examples in the book [-1].

I recommend the book as it really is an introduction [0], and it is written by a famous coder Chris Crawford (so it has contextual interest). As far as I can tell this is the best basic introduction to programming. Your kids can and should read this. You can and should read this. If you cried your way through your science requirements in high school/university, cursing the gods for their cruel ways, you can and should read this. The book is (1) free, (2) short, (3) opinionated [1]. It gets the basic ideas down.

Looking for a general introduction shows there really is not a good option out there for people - could it really be that an old text thrown up on the internet, and used with a free online interpreter, is the best option out there? This seems to be a glaring hole in the literature. Back in the day you could fire up your Apple ][ and run the ubiquitous BASIC before playing a rousing game of Oregon Trail. There is lots of stuff out there, but nothing (modern) that is dirt simple and limited and just there that gets across the basic points [2].

Skimming through this book, You should learn to program by Chris Crawford, was interesting and I sat down and read it more carefully after the initial skim: it is enjoyable (!!), and is surprisingly close to some of my thoughts [3]. The book appears to best fill the niche of actually teaching programming to true beginners [4]. You too should learn to program, and Chris will show you how - and he includes an appendix on how computers work, as well as sociological commentary on the programmer culture.

"Programming is like writing, woodworking, or photography. Anybody can do it. Doing it well, doing it like an expert – that takes a lot of work, a lot of experience, and a lot of talent. But anybody who can write a comprehensible paragraph can write a workable program. All it takes is a computer and some time." - Chris Crawford, Chapter 1

If you have ever taken a picture, wrote something, or made a simple wood project you know the pleasures that underlie these creations - we are built to act and create - and programming is yet one more form that you should explore to get some joy, learn about a key aspect of our society, and maybe find a new hobby or career [5].

Notes:
[-1] The interpreter linked above doesn't use line numbers, so some changes to the ancient "goto" examples in the book would be needed. This aspect of computers - evolution, versions, and changing infrastructure making things difficult is one of the characteristics of computing. Dealing with hacks is also a key skill - remember the "Y2K" problem? Get used to it, this is a painful yet important idea and learning to confront this is one of the "take home skills" you will get from programming - and these problems exist in all aspects of human tools and society. But to prevent complete initial frustration from being a barrier to entry use this one, I have not yet gone through the entire book with the interpreter but a random selection indicates things generally work (with one caveat: you must include line numbers to inform the interpreter).
[0] Computer books are "sold by the pound" and are often huge poorly written books. Learning to program can improve your communication, but it will not automagically do this - as a look at most computer books attest to: you have to want it to and work hard at it, but programming does offer a route to better thinking and communication.
[1] Thus interesting. And the author has informed and earned opinions.
[2] There is "SmallBasic" from MS that looks okay, though only for PC's right now - why not on the web? Google has a powerful system, which has a great book for people ready for the next step of working with code that actually does stuff, but I don't see a dead simple system there either. Back in "the day" the Apple ][ was in every class, now a browser is everywhere. What is needed is someone like MS or Google making SmallBasic online - a big player backing a simple tool in order to make it ubiquitous. If you are a Google employee make it so with your 20% time!
[3] Overlap in opinion and ideas is likely a key factor in us deciding on likely quality of a text, and thus worth investing time on. Of course if the overlap is too large you just wasted your time, as you likely don't learn much! If the overlap is too small you likely will discount the text, or you may not be ready for the text. You want some sweet spot of agreeing with some points, and being mystified by some on a first scanning read. People who just read stuff that reiterates and defends their beliefs are called fundamentalists.
[4] If you think about it the vast amount of material in a first year CS class is huge, and one gets a split of the class into (a) those who have been previously exposed to the basics and find the class easy to a bit challenging, and (b) those who are crushed by the course as they have so many new things to learn all while competing against people well ahead of them. People in group (b) should likely read this book as a pre-course exercise to give them context and the basic ideas.
[5] Career? Likely not, but maybe... I am not a carpenter despite loving the one and only project I ever did. But I still have fond memories of my little creation. Even if your dip into programming is just reading Chris' book and playing with an online interpreter while do you do, well you will gain from it. Life is experiential.

Stuff

People buy a lot of stuff. This stuff is substantiated in reality: it is made out of material. To create the stuff materials have to be obtained and then shaped - this takes energy (read: pollution - noise, visual, air, water, ...).

Most of the stuff we buy is garbage, and goes into the garbage quickly. Like junk food, junk stuff is not fulfilling - yet is amazingly popular and the quick hit of pleasure one seems to gain from junk fuels a cycle of more.

As we have seen with the latest economic downturn we don't know how to deal with creating what is valuable - we are urged to buy, to prop up industries, to get stuff. Our lives are predicated on making and buying and churning stuff. To save the environment we are urged to scape cars and buy new, slightly more fuel efficient ones. In everything we do we get stuff. Stuff, stuff, everywhere stuff. Anti-depressants are prescribed like candy - perhaps because people live their lives making useless stuff and buying junk, all at huge environmental and opportunity costs [1].

Why not less stuff?

There are a few observations on stuff that can help you reduce it:

(1) Quality, not quantity, matters (for most things). 20 pairs of crappy shoes, or a few good pairs?
(2) Verb not noun. You want to buy verbs, not nouns. The closer something is to an inert object (noun) the less you want it. Tools - that you use often (see (1)), and trips - that give you memories, are two examples of things where money is well spent. These things are very "verby". The closer something is to a verb the more useful, and thus worthwhile, it is. If the verbiness of a item is dominated in the buying process you are wasting time, money, life [2].

The gains you will get by focusing on verby stuff are legion: simplified and dejunked life, focus on significance and action, alignment with human nature, self respect, opportunity savings, financial savings.

Notes:
[1] The energy, time, material, and other resources that goes into making junk diverts the resources from other ends. You are in cog industry X. Your efforts could have gone into art, useful industry Y, or hitchhiking to Alaska. The money that you wasted on yet another overpriced latte doesn't sit too well as some process in the back of your brain is saying "bottom billion - dollar a day". You are diverting your life's focus into irrelevant junk, all while others who would love to eat and have 1/80th of your opportunity in order to create are dying. You don't need a pill, you need to change your behavior.
[2] You are also likely not realizing that the verbiness of the buying process is what is pleasant, not the buying itself. Humans gain pleasure from action, yet we don't seem to realize this and are fearful of performing actions - this may be behind many peoples "shopoholic" tendencies, a need to feel action and an unwillingness to take the "risk" of putting your ability on the line. But shopping to gain this pleasure is like crack to gain pleasure - it is empty and emptying in the long run.

Computers

What is our greatest achievement as a society? I don't mean our ancient roots that focus on democracy and individuals and limiting manipulative power while increasing personal (positive) power [0], no I mean us as in lately and what defines the biggest thing going right now.

Computers.

Computers have changed things, dramatically. Our society has fundamentally changed due to this, and will continue for some time [1].

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

- Voltaire

And we have built our greatest masterpiece - the internet - for porn, urban legends, and stupidity. But Voltaire is only partially correct. Sure, battles and fighting and other low brow stuff went on - but art and play and oratory also did. We can find lots of junk on the internet, lots of time wasters, lots of negative material - but like the Roman amphitheaters the structure itself is beautiful, and like all technologies use neutral [2]. I am amazed at the internet. There is so much constructive, and positive, and mind expanding, and interesting, and beautiful on the internet. And that is just one aspect of computers - the aspect that connects us to each other and our works.

Programming computers changes how you think - at its best it clarifies your thinking, changes your thinking, improves your communication, increases your ability (via tools you build), teaches you to check context more. Basically programming puts thinking into notation and makes it a tool, a tool to be used, perfected, analyzed, considered, honed. Writing improves your thinking and communicating, and so does programming [3] - perhaps because these practices are so closely linked to how we think [4] and as are both well suited to deliberate practice [5].

I had once thought that the bulk of the "and then what" of computers was over, we got cheap desktops and wired them up to chat: end of story, sure with some interesting epilogue but story arc climaxed. I no longer believe that. Richard Hamming would spend his Fridays thinking about how to use computers to change things in his work, and how computers are changing things in general [6]. We would all do well to do this. I now believe that computer science has taken the role that physics once held - the king of hard sciences. I say this as computer science is fundamental, growing, and deep. Godel's work and much else fits in to computer science, as does much of physics. People vote with their feet, and just like all [7] the smart people stopped going into philosophy a long, long time ago [8] I believe all the smart people are no longer going into physics. Yeah, there are smart people in physics but the smartest and most interesting go elsewhere. Where? This is an empirical question, but the deepest thinkers seem to fit into the category of computer science writ large [9].

One of the things that make humans so powerful is our ability to simulate in our brains (the future, possibilities, stories, ...). Computers are a tool we built that allows us to simulate outside our brains, and thus both study the simulation process itself in detail as well as extend and modify simulations we perform: we have taken one of the key attributes of humanity and extended it.

Computers are making us as a people. We are growing as individuals and as a society because of them. You are not what you could be if you have not learned the basics of programming [10] and the practical use of computers. We live in the computer era.

Notes:
[0] Though that is what make Western nations so awesome. You want to whine about our society? Go for it - that is your right, and we have also created the wealth that enables you to spend time doing this. Just don't take the little niggles at the corners too seriously: our society has many flaws, but it is amazing. The fact you - that you can - spend time whining about your pet peeve is a wonderful development.
[1] And then what? Is perhaps the greatest and most interesting question - we made computing machines, and then they were used for communications. The internet was not the goal, but it was the destination we discovered.
[2] The side effects and "and then what" are often complained about - take nuclear weapons as an example - but confronting the ideals, potential, and meaning is what drives our evolution as a society. Do you seriously think we are better off without the bomb? The bomb is neutral. Our reaction to the bomb has matured and developed us. The fact is we are smarter and more developed as a society due to the bomb. Now, how much has the bomb endangered us? Do we even know? What is the odds of drastic climate change? Of an asteroid slamming into earth? That someone will use many, many bombs repeatably on "us"? We don't even have a context to compare the world pre- and post- bomb: have we significantly increased the danger to ourselves? Have we lessened it? The fact we simply don't know suggests that perhaps we should not get too worked up.
[3] I find that students pre- and post- programming undergo a transformation in their ability to think. I don't mean pre- and post- programming class, as I have met people who have 1st year programming courses yet do not know about commenting code, debugging, and other aspects (apparently it is "too hard" to mark this stuff, so they skip it and just get you to submit code that is tested for (1) compiling and (2) giving answers), but pre- and post- programming practice. As in you want to learn programming and you try to learn it. But I digress.
[4] Being forms of symbolic manipulation for the purpose of crystallizing meaning.
[5] You have heard of deliberate practice - practice that is systematic, focused, and measurable. The measure is key - if you can't quickly see your results you can simply lock-in bad habits and incorrect assumptions.
[6] Hamming notes that a couple orders of magnitude of change modifies change from "by degree" to "by kind". If something is 100 cheaper this qualitatively changes everything, and all the old assumptions are gone. Computers routinely change things by orders of magnitude.
[7] Okay, not all, but basically all...
[8] At approximately the same time philosophy no longer equaled science and all other things; once we split from generalists to niches of disciplines the philosophers were left with all the boring and irrelevant stuff, and basically comment on the fruits and results of the productive disciplines and arts.
[9] I include cognitive science and linguistics here, as I believe computer science "writ large" is the study of possible processes.
[10] Everyone should learn to program. Everyone should learn to program. It does not matter if you never write a line of code post sitting down to work through a book. To be properly educated you must know the basic concept. I only have the very basics down, and have done very little programming - but I have grown a lot from my few exposures and will be looking to learn more.

MBA: The Modern Finishing School

What is a Masters of Business Administration all about? In a nutshell, the MBA is a finishing school.

Finishing for what you ask?

"Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid." -- Bertrand Russell

To "lead"; to tell others what to do. Why? As Mr. Russell points out - this is pleasant and highly paid, and the other option (to "follow") is unpleasant and lowly paid. This is not fully true of course - this is only true in command-and-control economies, e.g. the former Soviet Union or a large company. If you work in a command-and-control structure, you likely want to get your MBA. The MBA itself is essentially "speak and spell", i.e. how to communicate, combined with learning some knowledge of the levers of power within a standard command/control infrastructure. The degree itself appears fairly simple, fun, and gets you networked up and ready to rake in the big bucks.

However, for your right to boss people around and get compensation packages that are well above what your value is to the corporation (or other infrastructure [0]) you have to give up a few things: self respect, the ability to create, and the ability to speak your mind. Don't get me wrong - you can lose these things on the other end in a command/control situation also - but it seems that the commanders are worse off as they are giving up their character, the one thing we have control of in this short life of ours. Sure, you can have a terrible boss and feel the pressure to give up character as a minion, just to ease life in the moment, but there is still an option of not doing so.

Listen to an MBAer speak - have you ever heard such whitewashed PC drivel in your life? Listen to the MBA elite versus others and you will hear a huge difference - that difference is what we commonly call a "soul". The constraints on the MBA elite is essentially equivalent to the removal of your soul - you represent the corp, and you cannot speak the obvious truth, or, well, say almost anything interesting at all. This is not true of all MBA elites, but look around - it is the rare MBAer who speaks truth, or anything remotely approximating truth.

So you can't speak your mind. So what? Well, you are not creating either. That is what humans need to do to feel and enjoy life. Either this statement resonates with you, or not. If not, you might not yet be human [1]. Sure, some MBAers might actually lead and actively engage in creative efforts. Again, this appears a rarity.

Now for self respect - you can't create, you cannot speak. You are a slave, who voluntarily gives up your character in exchange for money. The respect for your degree depends on people not realizing that it is a glorified finishing school [2], and this respect is eroding in the current economic climate where people are outright angry that MBAers as a class appear to have looted money in a parasitic manner without providing value and good decisions in exchange for it.

For a long time it seemed that getting an MBA has a good deal, but could that be shifting now? If a society follows command-and-control for means of production, organization, and governing, then yes it does (at least financially). Aristocrats are needed in such a world. But in a society where creative work, craftsmanship, small companies, flattened hierarchies - "Whole New Mind" stuff - and other productive work can be done without inefficient and highly segmented and hierarchical structures characteristic of classic command-and-control.... well, what role does a MBA play there? There, in a creative world populated by makers respect and the few leading roles will go to those who have proven themselves were it counts - in creating and communication.

That world is not here just yet - but it may be poised to come. As computers make the boring paper shuffling "operating system" stuff of corporations more and more automatic we will see first a collapse of middle management [3], which will be accelerated by the need to save money paving the way for going through with this change [4], and then as the buffer layer between producers and commanders is thinned the top level will need to be able to actually display a soul and ability to retain respect and ability to lead. Those with MBAs now, or soon, will be able to reap the command-control gravy train for their careers, but we may be living in the end of the command-control economy.

The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of the nature of command-and-control, the means of running corporations under this same approach may now be undergoing a similar fate: competition with more free, distributed, and creative entities (USA! USA! US... er, I mean, "the small and nimble business' guided by cheap and ingenious computing") that can now overcome, even surpass, the economy of scale in many situations is fierce. "Restructuring" is naturally occurring, and the current mess we are in may be in part be aggravated by the command-and-control nature still largely held by many large corporations, and in turn the hard times may accelerate and force the evolution [5].

There will always be a role for leaders, for people with charisma, for those with couth. But the MBA may not be the de facto route to this role any longer. The MBA is predicated on command-and-control, if we are lucky the evolution towards small, free, and creative will continue and move more and more out of computer science and arts into other areas [6]. Currently the public has some bad taste in their mouths regarding MBAers - judging the herd is difficult, but here structural changes seem to be ultimately leading to the conclusion that the MBA is irrelevant and a badge of shame and not one of honor that entitles one to (others) riches [7].

Lowdown:
- If you are thinking about getting an MBA think twice: is it actually what an uncritical glance says it is? Will you get what you want from it? The MBA depends on command-and-control working as it has in the past, there is reason to suspect this style of organization is and is going to continue to be shaken up.
- A stoic would say an MBAer is a sell out. Sure, those guys died out about 2000 years ago but they rocked and had some interesting things to say. Consider if an MBA actually gives you freedom, or not.
- We live in interesting times. It would be interesting to see if the death of the MBA as status symbol could be sped up by pointing out the emperor has no clothes: you went to finishing school?

Notes:
[0] The difference between a typical leader of a corporation and a typical politician is one of degree. No pun intended. As in everything, I'm speaking generalities here - there are a handful of politicians who are of high character and intelligence, as there are business leaders, but the question is one of the general class and environmental pressures.
[1] "Let us say I suggest you may be human. Your awareness may be powerful enough to control your instincts." - quote from Dune. The struggle to become free is a difficult one - we are borne among many who are enslaved to their natural animal instincts, and thus most of our social environment consists of non-humans in the Dune sense. In our society it is easy to grow and obtain the view that consumption is sufficient for a good life.
[2] An MBA means you are signaling that you want to "succeed" in the business world and that you pass a minimum threshold of IQ and work ethic and that you have, post MBA, proper manners. i.e. you will take certain actions, you will respond to certain incentives, you will behave in a certain way. You have been properly vetted and neutered.
[3] Middle management is basically the operating system of a company. You handle the basic processes, shuffle paper around, pass stuff up/down, make reports, distill information, etc. etc. etc. i.e. you can/should be replaced by a script.
[4] Traditionally we see this - every recession pushed out bloated middle management. But as the workers can be replaced by internal databases, Google engines, filters, wikis, etc. and other aspects outsourced to Indians with crisp accents, strong work ethic, and smaller paychecks we should see the re-inflating of the middle management become increasingly less. Has the computer - which can take care of so much of the logistics needed to run a company - replaced the middle manager, with only some time needed to finish the process?
[5] Bail out plans may be simply prolonging the agony - if some corps, say GM, were notorious for command-and-control failures sending them money to prop them up will prevent their evolution to the new standard processes required to survive. As a secondary significant forcing will soon be on us - the retirement of the boomers - it might be wise to let evolution happen quickly to better handle the shifts that will be occurring.
[6] Hey, if Apple can outsource the iPod what is to stop a small design shop from doing the same? Consumer hardware is cheap, as is clothing, software, jewelry - the list of places where design and the small can rule is large - the question is if the domain of the small is significantly increasing and what will remain limited to huge budgets.
[7] It will be interesting to see how MBA programs react to changes, if the public will be back on board with the MBA elite symbol soon, and if devolution from command-and-control happens relatively quickly or if the change drags on for decades.

Bottles and the Homeless

I remember as a kid collecting pop bottles when I needed some money. It was easy to do and was a ready source of cash. For some people this is their main source of income - a subset of the homeless.

One of the key ideas of economics is that incentives matter. This is a simple but deep idea. Incentives dictate outcomes more often than hopes, "what's right", or need.

Understanding homelessness is difficult [1]. There are not very good numbers available and our understanding of homelessness is murky. Homelessness began to rise in the early 1980's. Between the early 1970's and late 1980's the number of beds in U.S. mental hospitals was quartered. This "deinstitutionalisation" has been suspected to cause an increase in the number of homeless [2]. Bottle deposit was introduced roughly in the late 1970's and early 1980's in the United States. The coincidence of bottle deposit introduction and increase in the homeless is interesting. But is it meaningful?

Many factors influence homelessness. In the late 1960's and early 1970's renewal in American cities lead to old and inexpensive housing being replaced by more financially lucrative uses. Containerization and forklifts and other advances greatly reduce the need for casual labor and greater skills are required to find employment. Innovations in drug technology (crack, meth, etc.) reduces price and increases cost. Social welfare programs constantly change. Time frames for various forces are not crisp - for example deinstitutionalisation started as early as the 1940's. Alcohol and the homeless equate in the minds of many. The variety of potential influences, their overlap, the spread out implementation and diffusion of impacts all make understanding homelessness difficult.

The idea that bottle deposits is a key factor in homelessness, is enticing in some ways. Why? There is a correlation there, so the possibility of this being a factor exists. The idea is positive, as it sees the homeless not simply as victims but as economic and hard working people who perform an useful job: would you be up to the task of digging through the trash to earn your paycheck? It is also positive in the sense that it improves the life of the homeless: availability of ready cash is always good, and it is now easier to escape a worse situation such as an abusive home. Viewed in this light deposit programs are a vital social program, one where everyone benefits [3].

Deposit on beverage containers reduces the impact of homelessness by supplying a low skill and ubiquitous job. When costs of something are reduced one should expect to see an increase in its consumption [4].

Notes:
[1] It appears that the homeless rate is roughly the same in Europe as in the US/Canada. For all the claimed differences between the US and Canada, or the US and Europe, most seem to fall into what Freud termed the "narcissism of small differences." If homelessness isn't much different, what true deep and significant differences exist? Most of the differences seem to be small differences of some parameter, yet all the institutions and frameworks are largely similar if not exactly equal.
[2] Of course correlation is not causation. It is best to keep ones mind open to many different correlents before making up ones mind regarding possible/plausible causation. I'm making a claim here regarding a correlation I have not heard discussed before.
[3] One possible negative impact of putting this idea out there is that some cities could change bottle return policy in order to discourage "vagrants" - simply by making it a requirement that bottles be returned by car (for some lame/fake "safety" reason). Of course attaching this idea to the bigger idea could help minimize the likelihood. If Rambo taught us anything - and he has taught us a lot - it is that cities will stop at nothing to enforce "not in my backyard". Rambo taught the city but good, however one battle in a war is nothing.
[4] Call to econometric masters out there - look at data and bottle introduction times, I think this could make a very interesting little paper. Data is sparse, but perhaps deaths of homeless are one recorded number (one would expect a dip in deaths as life got easier, and then an increase as number of homeless increased due to homelessness becoming more attractive) that could tease out information. Some cities may have decent numbers (???). A quick look around suggests that our society doesn't track things like this very well so I leave it up to someone who can arbirtage their knowledge here. Or, actually, we don't seem to track much of anything very well - quick: how many homeschoolers are there? Well, the current estimate post huge movement garning attention is something like 3% of children - however, since it is required by law to send your children to school the exact number should be known. Even for things were we should have data - we track birth/deaths, and kids are suppose to be in school so their absence should be investigaged to ensure they are not chained to a radiator somewhere- we don't).

Creativity, originality, and independence

"The ancients stole all of our best ideas." - Mark Twain

It is extremely hard to be original - to be original you have to have an idea that someone else did not. Even if you come up with an idea independently, how do you know if it is original or not? In science publishing gets you some rights to say "original", but often the ideas are "in the air" and someone would soon find the particular discovery, even if you did not. Looking at the history of science we see a lot of things that are squarely stated as being Dr. X's idea arose near simultaneously (as many were scrambling after the same prize), or even before but not developed as much or as clearly or communicated as well, and (I suspect/hope, rarely) sometimes was stolen by Dr. X [0].

So we have a measurement problem - even if you are original, how can you tell? In addition to this a lot of "original" ideas are essentially assured: once the time is ripe for an idea it will be followed, pursued, and found. In that case, does it even matter very much? Sure it is nice to claim "the prize", but it is not earth shattering - if dozens to hundreds of others where hot on the trail and close behind [1].

So what? Do not worry about being original, and do not focus so tightly on "big men" [2] of the past. Often people we think are gods among men are simply those who got there slightly first, presented slightly better, aggressively defended their claim to the idea, or went slightly farther. Do we really think that we would not have discovered the structure of DNA if the Nobel prize winners didn't do their work? [3]

It is more interesting to be independent. This is fairly easy to do - and even if you end up saying something that others think, have discussed, or had thought you bring your own background and perspective to the table. You also hone your thinking and creativity, making it more likely you will - perhaps - be original.

For a good example, see Paul Graham's essays - I don't think I've read anything "original" in his work, but from the writing you can tell that the ideas are independently arrived at and they bring in an interesting twist [4]. You likely had similar thoughts of many of the essays, or know someone who does, or read works that address the same ideas but in a different framework or in a different field: but that doesn't matter, you will learn from the essays anyways. The background and interests of Paul will give you new insight on idea X, and thus you will understand idea X better than before, and you will most likely be presented with different data that support idea X.

The downfall of independent ideas is sometimes you often find your "original" idea is not so hot. But is this so bad? If already thought and demonstrated, this is evidence that your thinking is engaging reality. If it doesn't measure up, that's life, and at least you gained discipline and strength and some insight. If wrong - you learn: and this is how you really learn, by making mistakes. You can spend forever absorbing what others have said, found, demonstrated - or you can go out and do. Maybe you reinvent the wheel. Doesn't matter. A slightly different wheel likely will have a niche.

Original is over rated: much of it is inevitable, trivial, falsely focused on a single person versus a community that was bubbling over with ideas, and it is hard to really tell if you are original anyways [5]. But independent - that is the way to go. And since being "original" can move society forward, even if just a little faster, it is worth working on being an independent thinker - it will increase your odds of being original in an important way (finding something that many others are not about to find anyways, or finding it in a way that adds a different perspective).

Most importantly - being independent is fun. You engage ideas, people, artifacts, work - and it becomes play.

Notes:
[0] Or Dr. X had lower regard for honestly presenting data and its quality.
[1] Indeed, looking at it this way being the first can be a sign of lack of meta-imagination. One needs to look at the context to see if first is truly meaningful, or not. This not to discount the obvious work, imagination in tackling the project, and drive required.
[2] Or women, or groups, or books, or institutions, ... But frankly, most of the big people of the past and present are men.
[3] The interesting part of "original" is when you speed things up by a lot. I haven't looked at the history of DNA structure discovery too much, but it sounded like there was a speed up of - say - a couple of years. That is nothing in the scheme of things. Now Godel's theorems, that seems like a jump ahead. How long before someone else would have figured this out? I suspect a long time. Hell, physicists as a group still don't seem to be aware of his work more than 3/4th of a Century later and they are not exactly cut off from math and logic and his work is relevant for them.
[4] Like most interesting people you can guess that he (1) doesn't watch TV and (2) enjoys thinking and exploring ideas on his own. How do you tell a boring person? Look at the correlation of their opinion to the mass medias. Boring people consume opinion, interesting people fabricate their own opinion from their experience.
[5] Plus, how can you account for sheer luck? Lets say you are a grad student in field X. You pick are given a project Y to do. It has some odds of success. If your PhD project tanks, you will get your degree but goodbye future academic posting. If it does well, move on to postdoc project Z. Repeat. The "winners" obviously are talented and work very hard (in general) but this doesn't mean that the pruned in the race to the academic posting are any worse. I doubt we can improve much on the way things are, hey even Adam Smith discussed this and concluded you likely can't beat the incentives of the system as set up (rewarding success, and hence punishing failure - despite the obvious role of luck), but people should at least clearly understand this aspect. Surprisingly many do not seem to, even many profs do not seem to be aware of their good luck.

Clutter: Less = Good

We have found that our use of monoculture leads to huge insect attack problems. It turns out that in the bad old days people would grow many things together, and have a little perimeter of one monoplant weed around a garden. Why? The visual clutter of the main garden would overwhelm the insects, and they would instead attack the clutter free weeds [1].

We are not that different than insects. Visual clutter causes us stress. Perhaps this is hard coded deep in the truck of our evolutionary DNA tree pre-bug/human branching. Perhaps not [2]. It doesn't matter - visual clutter stresses us out. Some people a lot. Everyone some.

Dijkstra [3] puts the anal into analytics [4], but check out his desk and office - sparse and clean and it looks like one could really think and work in his office. Contrast with your desk - I suspect there is a difference. I know looking at my desk right now makes me embarrassed in comparison.

So what? The key idea is that clutter is stressful. Wait - oh... Our lives are cluttered with clutter. Our homes bursting with junk, our desks piled with papers, our schedules bursting with entries. Emails. Facebook. Chores. Meetings. Hobbies. Books to read, TV to watch, things to do. We better multitask to get things done - so much clutter that we are doing multiple things at once, with the predictable increase in stress and reduction in effectiveness [5]. Just thinking about the clutter can stress you out. Arg.

To improve ones life one must declutter.

How?

Simple, but not easy. You know how. You simply need a pleasant nag to push you.

Enter Leo and Power of Less. The book is short, has ample white space and sparse content (with plenty of bullet lists). Aesthetically the book is nice [6], and it is easy to read. I don't think I confronted a single new idea - but the ideas are nicely discussed and packaged. You don't read books like this for deep insights or new narratives: you read them to get your logistics down and to offer a simple program to follow to get results. The book delivers. The style reflects the message. The message is clear and simple. The road to success is laid out cleanly. I could summarize the key points here - basically kill clutter (from the frame of tighten focus), do 30 day small habit changes to lock them in [7], chew your food [8], etc. but you should simply get the book if you read this far without your eyes glazing over or rolling [9]. The book is simple. Uncluttered and, if followed, uncluttering.

Lowdown:
- Like bugs we get stressed at clutter.
- Our lives are essentially defined by clutter.
- We thus have highly stressed lives.
- Leo will show you how to declutter.

Notes:
[1] One of the more interesting science reads you should consider getting is about insects and crops (American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT): I heard an overview talk on this and it has been on my "to read" list since - very interesting! In writing this entry I am reminded about this, and have ordered the book.
[2] Here is one story: when there is clutter it is hard to determine if there is a predator or not. If in a cluttered environment you better be on the watch - i.e. stress levels will go up. Our deep evolutionary ancestors that stressed in cluttered (i.e. many hiding places) environments lived. Those who didn't got pruned.
[3] "EWD" were little notes on various ideas that Dijkstra would disseminate. That's right - Dijkstra had a blog before there were blogs!
[4] You wouldn't want him in charge of all software projects - almost nothing would ever ship, but you would want him in charge of projects relating to airplane software and nuclear power plants. I shudder each time I trust my life to some hack coder. I also suspect that there is a watch dog timer somewhere in the nuclear warhead response system either in the US or Russia that has some bizarre bug in it. Tic tic tic... On a related note: every software house should have a battle wizened guru like Dijkstra - someone to speak in enigmatic riddles, that codes mathematics, that you can climb the mountain to visit when in need of some good old fashioned advice. His code and style is concise and elegant. It is honed to perfection, the honing process leaving only pure beauty and substance. Sure, the honing process takes forever so everyone can't do this (or has the patience for it) - but the insights that this master gains will lead to great advice and can temper the hacks that are needed to get things done. This wizard likely schemes away, cackling to himself in an ocean of parenthesis...
[5] Does anyone really think that the quality of ones actions can remain the same when focus is diminished?
[6] My copy has a printers error where ink splots are sprayed across some pages. This, fittingly, gives a very Zen like beauty, rather than the expected annoyance of such a problem. I say fittingly as Leo is the author of a popular blog "Zen Habits".
[7] Leo gives many good reasons why. One he omits is this - if you do 2+ new habits you will not be able to tell which action gives gains, or if one action is negative and bogs down the rest. An experimentalist does not want to act in an uncontrolled manner - pick one variable and change it. Observe results. Pick another variable. Observe results. Etc.
[8] Seriously. Leo is all about chewing your food. Er, I mean, Leo is all about engaging with the present. Which includes chewing and enjoying your food and its flavor. Truly connecting with the present and subjective reality improves your life.
[9] Or look at his blog, or scan the table of contents and first few pages on Amazon to get the key point that he then follows up in the rest of the book. If you dig that, you will dig the book. Dirt simple message, nicely done.

Taoism

What is Taosim? The core is 81 little sections (1 pp. or less, most often less) that makes up the Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu. Get the version translated by Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo, as they do not hold your hand and try to explain but instead translate [1]. A very nice feature is that in each section one line is transliterated, and a small dictionary is included in the back - this allows the reader some direct contact with the original text and look over the translators shoulders [2].

Like everything Taoism consists of some high quality core, and then a lot of layers and interpretations and additions on top of varying quality and impact. For me, and most others, the rest is basically garbage - but unlike many things the core of Taoism is pretty easy to identify and go through: get the Tao Te Ching and then read the Wikipedia article to learn about the magic realism style and other cultural artifacts layered on top and you are an instant "expert".

The rest of Taoism is like English and Philosophy departments versus the core texts they study: sure there is some gain, but the ratio of garbage generated (words, papers, books, etc.) that simply critiques and discusses versus original and interesting content is large. Some quality material is generated, and some solid learning can happen. But it seems often that the role and function of these departments is often misconceived - sure, "everything is text", but not all text is of the same quality. English/Philosophy/some other departments are basically academic blog factories which discuss and otherwise point to other material or general thoughts and teach you to "blog" also, if you luck out with a faculty position. Unlike academic blogs real blogs do not have such heavy constrains: high fees, often needing to parrot back a profs position/opinions to get a decent mark, PC and other limiting constraints on thought and expression [3] (tenure does not really work to fill its claimed function), needing to get people in a physical space at the same time, forcing everyone to listen to student X's insipid "thoughts" [4] etc etc etc. Ug, flashbacks to sitting in [5] on African Studies class.

Taoism itself is pretty enigmatic versus, say, Stoicism and much closer to the pure mystical view of the world versus the Stoics pure rational view. But it is interesting to reflect on, especially since where someone sits on the rational/mystical scale seems to be a set point that is built into many people so reflecting on both views will help you understand people. Taoism is the counterpoint to Stoicism, at least in feel and approach, but comes to basically the same conclusions.

44 (snippet). Extreme love exacts a heavy price.
Many possessions entail heavy loss.

Monks used to copy texts by hand, and the Tao is the only book that I personally have done this for. I learned two things doing this (1) I am happy I am not a 1st Century monk, (2) coping a text like the Tao is conducive to deep reflection and makes you a better person [6]. I copied the text for a friend, including the pictograms and dictionary, and this gift gave both to me and to him I think. I probably got much more than him actually (hmm... a crappy hand written book? Gee - "thanks").

Lowdown:
- Tao Te Ching is a short & powerful (but not fast) read.
- The Tao Te Ching embodies the core of a whole philosophy/religion - so it has huge return on investment.
- The view is close to a pure mystical view: since it seems a high portion of people "think" this way it is good to understand this style.

Notes:
[1] This book really demonstrates the power of a good translation - real empirical evidence that you can have widely varying differences in quality and tone that can change a book qualitatively from "ug" to "wow". In the preface they have a small comparison between several translations of the first line, here are 3 of 10 different available translations

The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way (Waley)
The ways that can be walked are not the eternal Way (Mair)
The tao that can be said is not the everlasting tao (Gibbs)

Here how it is done in this book:

Tao called Tao is not Tao.

To my ear this much less verbose style of translation is clear, compact, elegant . The translators aim to retain the "simplicity, rhythm, and power of the Chinese" in order to achieve the impact of the original.
[2] This "interactive" feature is wonderful, very enlightening and fun. In addition to the roman transliteration the pictograms are painted alongside which adds a beauty. Pictograms and stylistic paintings are interspersed in the text which adds some minimalistic visual candy on the journey through the book.
[3] Would a prof say the rest of Taoism is garbage? Or is that "too risky"? What if a student self identifies as a Taoist? Will that offend him/her? Such questions are likely asked around every statement made, trimming down what can be said into the most pablum like residue left. Okay, I admit the rest is not literally garbage - but in terms of diminishing returns for the majority of people it might as well be.
[4] When reading one can simply scan over boring/trite/or otherwise lame material, and one already reads ~ 3X faster than people can speak (maybe ~2X if you read slow like myself, or ~4X if you read very fast), plus people trim out the lamest material when writing (uh, ah, er... this one time... ), and double-takes are easy - simply go back and reread, if someone says something you sorta missed you have to ask them to repeat.
[5] That's right - sitting in: you can crash University classes, since most are huge. I likely should have asked the prof, as I starting doing later, since the class was "small" (~40 people?).
[6] i.e. painful, but constructive pain.