Small Steps

On Writing

2009-09-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-09-05T06:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-20T12:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-08-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-15T05:54:00.000-07:00

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.

Stoicism Lite

2009-08-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

This book attempts to sell the reader on a pop version of Stoicism as a way of life, and as one would expect with such a purpose is easy to read. The author is a professor of philosophy who was interested in obtaining a philosophy of life, and since academic philosophy does not provide this looked into Stoicism. Zen Buddhism was discounted, apparently because it seems too difficult for the modern man, and few other competing strategies are discussed. This is somewhat surprising, as the author is a prof and since he is attempting to sell the reader on pop Stoicism - Stoicism Lite. A few related (at least to causal thought) approaches such as Humanism, philosophical Taoism, and Confucianism jump to mind [1]. This lack of comparison is made even more glaring since the author spends time (our time) rambling about "what if I made the wrong choice? what if Stoicism is not the true path?". Gee, what if? How about you look around instead of arguing/whining in a vacuum?

Never-the-less even without a comparison of other approaches Stoicism as presented looks good. The text could easily be dropped 20-25% in length and retain the good parts. Stripping out empty rhetorical questions, the well intended but weak modern justification of Stoicism based on evolutionary psychology [2], the continuous chatter and mild talking down to the reader [3], and generally taking a more aggressive editing approach would have tightened up the presentation, but since the intent is to soft sell the reader on pop Stoicism this doesn't matter too much - the book remains an easy read. And perhaps the flaws I see are a selling point which make the book "approachable"?

So what makes up Stoicism and makes it a compelling way of life? Here - where it matters - the book excels, giving an easily digestible and simple sketch of Stoic tools.

Goal: Tranquility.
Base Approach: Reason & Observation.
Psychological Techniques: 5 main ones, in order of returns
(1) Negative Visualization (gratitude),
(2) Dichotomy of Control (focus on what you can affect),
(3) Fatalism (of past/present - look for the positive here, focus on changing future not "if onlys" about the past),
(4) Self-Denial (reset your adaptation point, so your base life feels great),
(5) Meditation (reflection).

It seems that modern evidence has confirmed all these approaches are useful. There is a famous gratitude study that showed that people who kept a gratitude journal had surprising improvement in mental health versus a regular (reflective) journal control, people who "fight the tide" drown in life while those who compete against themselves and what they can control tend to do well, cognitive psychology - which includes a positive past/present fatalism view - demonstrates better results in treating depression then medication [4], hedonic adaptation ("keeping up with the Jones' ") is a well known problem that self-denial can help by resetting, and reflection has long been proscribed to improve ones life ("an unexamined life is not worth living") as this allows problems to be caught early ("an once of prevention...") and choices and paths seen and trimmed [5].

The book has a boiler plate intro/background, then (the meat) discussion on these 5 tools in the Stoic tool set, discusses some Stoic advice, and wraps up with the authors reflections on living the Stoic life and an appendix on further reading. The advice part is pretty weak - rewarmed advice is never as good as reading the original - but important for keeping the text self-contained. I'd like a little less hand-holding and interpretation here, but it goes with the chatty style of the book.

All in all - this is a fast and easy read, well worth going through. The core is the section on Stoic Psychology (about 60 pages of the total roughly 300 pages - which includes a bibliography and an index) and I would recommend reading this first [6]. If you get interested, I'd then skip right to the primary texts. If you are not hooked on the Stoic Life Plan, then read the rest of the book through to get the pop version and some take away tid-bits and advice.

Stoicism is a basic framework that you likely partially use and have found on your own. The consistent framework, strong literature, and pedigree makes Stoicism compelling and worth considering. Essentially an exercise plan for life logistics with some good teachers. If I had to put Stoicism in a nutshell, I'd say it is all about the Dichotomy of Control - focus on what you can control (i.e. your character and actions) using reason and honesty as your tools.

Notes:
[1] As Humanism likely has a strong influence on many scientists and artists and other intellectuals the lack of discussion seems strange, are not most University like people at least implicitly affected by this? And as Confucianism is getting some play currently due to China looking for a replacement for Marxist thought it is also strange that an author writing a pop book would overlook the opportunity to discuss this.
[2] The evolutionary psychology section is much too hand wavy - if you want to add this sugar coating put more effort into this, and the "Zeus" claim made by the the original Stoics - which this whole evolutionary psychology spiel attempts to address - can be interpreted in a metaphorical manner as writings suggest that Zeus/logos/nature were used somewhat interchangeably). i.e. this whole section seems un-necessary to begin with, and poorly done.
[3] A danger of repeatably teaching introductory philosophy? From my memories of the handful of second year philosophy classes I took the level of discourse is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
[4] Studies show a roughly equal success rate in treating an "episode", but cognitive psychology appears to prevents relapse better than medication.
[5] Instead of the evolutionary psychology section I would have much preferred to see a results based justification, using examples of studies and other evidence such as briefly sketched here. The author discusses hedonic adaptation, but could sketch out more of "positive psychology", and other, findings that support the Stoic tool set.
[6] If you are looking for discussion regarding the Stoic frame, such as briefly touched in my "filter" post, this book is not were you want to go. You will not find terms such as "kataleptic" or a deep look at the subtle and deep Stoic frame in "Good Life" - this is a pop view after all. The Stoic frame may be where real changes in your views come from. To use a hackneyed analogy - taking on "Stoic Lite" is like "learning" a new and more powerful programming language, without actually learning the key new mode of expression that makes the language different and powerful. You can use Python like you use Basic, or you can dig deep and learn something new and learn Python instead of using Python notation to write Basic code. Sure, you will likely get some gain and pleasure moving to Python and writing you Basic code in it but this approach misses out on the deepest and most significant gains. The Stoicism Lite as promoted by "Good Life" is basically standard pop psychology (i.e. self help genre), that may be pleasant, easy, and give some important gains, but possibly misses out on the most radical and important aspects of Stoicism. I say "possibly" as I have only barely scratched the surface of Stoic thought and thus cannot provide a useful claim either way. It does seem that the Stoics thought deeply about human action and have created a subtle approach that can give us some insights, as I suspect this framework is fairly different than the standard approach we pick up in our society.

Bonferroni's Principle

2009-08-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

In a nutshell: if you look harder than the quantity of data supports, you will find a pattern that "fits".

I have just heard of Bonferroni's Principle, under that label, but this is a key issue and well deserving of a name. The meaningfulness of an answer depends on the evidence that stands behind it. Bonferroni's Principle, that you will "find" something if you look hard enough, underscores conspiracy theories, much of social and economic empirical findings, and data-mining in general. We have all done this ourselves, and have seen others do this. Our brains are pattern matching and story telling machines - we will find a pattern and a story to fit what we see (barring complete lack of imagination). The question is if the pattern and story is legitimate or not: is it overly fragile and "overfit" to the data? Did we use a "training set" to come up with our story, and a "test set" to test it out? Conspiracy theories are notoriously brittle - they strain credulity, even in the case in question, and if you take the theory and look at any other piece of life it falls apart: the theory over fit some specific event, often with liberal doses of biased assumptions included, and makes no sense once you expose it to new, fresh data.

In large part science is about Bonferroni's Principle - we want to learn how to pick out legitimate patterns and stories from what we observe, for several reasons (we love stories and patterns, we find our lives improve if we have accurate and interesting ones, we can get social recognition from a group of likeminded searchers in our quest, etc.). The scientific method is all about good story telling - by asking (good) questions and (honestly) listening to the answers we get a good, and more true than not, story.

Our brains are amazing pattern finding and story weaving organs, and our job is to consciously test the stories and patterns that are being spun: we want to help our brains in its "brain storming" ways, by adding even more possibilities, and we need to help with critical analysis of the conclusions we jump to.

Examples:

A related sub-effect is the Barnum effect, which is Bonferroni's Principle applied to personality categories: people will agree with categories they are placed on, and believe that the categories are illuminating, for example astrological signs. Again, until recently, I did not know there was a name for this effect - but have seen it is strong in many people. I had a roommate who was convinced that horoscopes where accurate in describing people, as a test I read two signs and had him pick which one was his (e.g. his sign, and as random as one I could pick as another option, read in random order) and every week for a month I had him select his using a weekly 'scope he thought was good. Surprisingly he picked wrong every time (less than 10% odds, if his selection was random).

Townhall meeting: otherwise known as sample bias. Only those in the tails of the distribution of people effected by some decision will bother to show up. Most political decisions are structured so a small subset gain significant advantage, with a cost borne by everyone else. This small-many ratio ensures a small cost (so most likely not worth showing up) and a huge gain (so if you stand gain you will show up). So the tail of those to gain will be in the house, and perhaps some "anti" wackos. Result: "widespread support" that is underscored by only an embittered small scattering of crazies who oppose. The choice is clear...

Health science. Are supplements good for you? Who knows. We do know that those who take supplements tend to care deeply about health, so if we just compare these people against the average (i.e. unhealthy subjects) are we comparing difference in taking supplements, or differences in: exercise, positive attitude, smoking, drinking, etc. We are testing them all. So unless supplements have huge negative effects we will see a positive effect. Sadly, many studies have poor protocols such as using different sample groups - the study will find a difference between groups, but what causes this? In general, the scientific scam known as "significance" is at play here. Passing a p-test deems a hypothesis "significant", but Bonferroni's Principle tells us if we look hard enough we can always pass a p-test. Further, the use of "significant" hijacks our brains by misusing our filters. This is unfortunate, as the field of health is important and people make choices based on weak "science".

Lowdown:
- Quality must have quantity as support.
- Use simple tests to check your data (representative?) and story (legitimate?).
- Much of "science", particularly in social and health fields where biases and feelings and complexity runs high, falls prey to Bonferroni's Principle and is a scam. Cavet emporor.
- Having a label for something is nice - drop Bonferroni's Principle on people. Like an idiom a label for a developed idea allows rapid, deep, incisive discussion. In learning about science and human thinking Bonferroni's Principle should be one of the key points discussed.

Filters

2009-08-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

"The map is not the territory." - Alfred Korzybski

We perceive the world via our senses: the external makes an impression on us. This impression is not neutral and fresh, but heavily filtered and distorted via our biases. We - or more precisely, processes within our minds - silently attach propositions immediately on the impression, and we typically assent to these propositions. Critical thinking is the routinized mechanism of teasing out this filtered and categorized and assented to framework, a bag of tricks used habitually to improve our filters, to question them, to suspend our assent and an attempt to make informed assent. Rhetoric and propaganda is the attempt to use the filters and implications to get an audience to assent to the entire bundle, both the impression and a parasitic framework which is a Trojan horse.

Our minds make up a map of the world, one that is reduced in content but, hopefully, reflective of the significant features of the world. Filtering suggests it is hard to make a good map.

To see the effect of a filter pay attention the next time you learn something new, X, it becomes a new pattern, a new filter and you will start to see item X in the world around you, whereas previously you had filtered it out. Learning new ideas and patterns enables you to make sense of the impressions of the world using your new filter. Everyone is familiar with this, many call this "coincidences" - to the careful they see this as illuminating how our minds work, and a warning, to the less careful they see conspiracy theories and evidence of the supernatural, profound evidence. We can also consider illusions - these are well known examples where our minds profoundly layer something onto an impression which we know is not true, and yet we still perceive incorrectly; to a great extent everything is an illusion, a combination of a true impression and an additional assumed and added framework. By understanding an illusion we can remove assent - facts we can demonstrate to be true will change our assent - although we cannot stop slathering the added framework as it is automatic and uncontrolled. In fact, the existance of illusions is the most clear means of teaching the neccessity for critical thinking.

We can see people as givers of assent - if you are careful you will critically give, or suspend, assent to the impressions and their associated implied (by our minds) propositions, baggage, and implications. If you are not careful you will not examine what the underlying impression is, and take the whole package as true. You will not take the effort to attempt to discriminate what is true, and what is an assumption that we slathered on top.

The agnostic is one who only provides his assent to implications that at strong - what Stoics would call kataleptic impressions - something where the implications are basically not falsifiable. Your feelings of pain, consciousness, existance of external reality - kataleptic. A Bayesian would assign very little uncertainty to kataleptic impressions. Both a Stoic and a Bayesian treat the world differently than most - they work to give assent only to what is concrete and knowable, and treat most of what we "know" as more ephemeral and work to suspend assent.

Lowdown:
- what we see is: illusion = filter(impression), the illusion suggests implications, critical thinking is trying to determine if we should assent to the implications.
- Work to be an agnostic. Focus on the "hard core" and don't cling to the ephemeral. Belief is an uncritical opinion, a freely given assent to an impression, and is irrational and often false.
- Agnostic ~ Stoic ~ Bayesian ~ Critical thinker != the "natural" man.
- Stoic psychology of mind: input - filter(impression), output - assent, or suspension of assent, to the implications we bundle to impressions. To compare peoples minds, compare their assent to impressions; to compare their character, compare how they assent.
- There is nothing new under the sun: NLP seems to be Stoic personality theory, rediscovered and with some more medical information behind it and focusing on the tactics and tricks versus the overarching strategy

Logistics

2009-08-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

Logistics is often overlooked, can make or break things, and those who take care of logistics get the returns in the long run.

Quite simply logistics is the management of the flow of resources between the start and the finish of some process. Taking care of logistics can reduce stress, increase odds of success, and tends to make things smoother. Ever notice you get nervous before a talk or doing something new? Often the nervousness is over logistics - will I get there in time, what if X happens, etc. Many confident people simple know that the logistics are taken care of, and that they can rely on a general scaffold around what they are doing. Becoming confident often boils down to learning the logistics in place in some environment, or setting up the logistics yourself. A large part of logistics is simply managing your own reactions to events, which is further aided by gathering tools or otherwise manipulating the environment in your favor.

So how to set up logistics? The key is to simulate the environment, in order to become aware of what will be needed to manage the resources (and indeed, to know what resources you need). There are a couple of time tested methods to getting logistics under control, mainly (1) practice, (2) thought experiments, and (3) constraints. By practicing you go through a mini run and "work out the bugs", thought experiments allow you to consider what-if scenarios in order to manage possibilities, and constraints are things you must fulfill giving you targets. The closer the simulation is to reality the better you will catch problems and hone the required logistics, the better thought out the constraints are the more you will get done.

For example, let us say you want to write a book. What are some logistics you can focus on? One is simply making a schedule - picking a temporal environment - and selecting a physical location for writing. You then find tools - dictionary, computer, desk, comfy chair, whatnot - and consider what you can do to improve odds of success: having a neat workspace, having water, being well feed, unplugging the phone, etc. Simply imagining you working and what could go wrong simulates the process. Then simply repeating the actual experience allows you further improvement on logistics - perhaps you though early morning would work for you, but you later find late in the night is better, etc. etc.

One of the key logistical tools you have at your disposal are constraints. Simply by picking a time that you must write for and having a target of how much to do will go a long long way to ensuring success. By finitely bounding the task you ensure you get to it, and also makes you don't do too much of it. Think of scheduling as turning priorities into time - you should set aside time in proportion to priorities. If writing really is a priority you better have time set aside for it, if you family is a priority ditto - and you better make sure your writing time doesn't cut into your family time.

Logistics is the art of managing your environment and yourself. This can sound, and often is, boring. But a little effort in simulating pre- task, adding useful constraints around the task, and considering what may arise can help you succeed. The reducing in stress is worth the sometimes tedious work, and putting a little effort into logistics will improve your odds of success. Also, by focusing on logistics you will find that this simple art of management is pretty transferable between tasks. Once you figure out logistics for one thing you can use the particulars for other things, often with minimal differences.

Logistics is really just preparing a little before jumping into a task - this preparation helps you make the jump, and improves the likelihood that something good will happen. After the splash you then reflect on what went well, and what didn't, and then you jump again. Logistics is about managing your jumps - ensuring you do it, and do it well (or at least slightly better than if you didn't take care of logistics). The key is jumping. Don't over think, just set aside some time for simulation, think up some useful constraints, do some practice if that is possible, and then do it, reflect on the experience and how you can improve the logistics, and do it again.

While logistics itself is often boring, it gets you doing exciting things.

Logistics is about getting comfortable with an environment, and tuning both your reactions and bringing tools to help you in that environment. Simulation is not reality, so your best bet is to actually just do what you want to do, but a little simulation can allow you to extract the most out of an experience and help it go smoothly. If you get stuck in the simulation phase you will never get comfortable. The best approach is iteration - think of what you can, jump in and learn, think about what you learned, jump in again, ... But jump, and jump often.

Get your basic logistics down, and then get down. Successful people manage themselves and their environments - they have logistics under control. Often is it "just" logistics coupled with persistence that leads to good outcomes.

You can get by without logistics - for example you can get an undergrad degree with extremely poor/nonexistent logistics - but if you want to thrive this is a basic tool you need.

Risk

2009-07-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

Risk. How best to understand & take on appropriate amounts?

The first thing to do is to discriminate between risk tolerance and risk capacity. Many people who take on risk do so because they can tolerate risk, e.g. they either enjoy it or at least can stomach it, and as they do not realize that they do not have the capacity to sustain losses. Compulsive gamblers are like this - if you are a billionaire you can have a large poker allowance and not endanger or risk anything really. You have capacity. If you are holding down a normal 9-5 job, and are barely making your bills, and you have a family to support, well, you do not have the capacity. You may have a high tolerance for risk, but you cannot afford this. Do not delude yourself that you will win and buy your family a good life. Do not mistake a need to win with an ability to win.

What you want to do is overcome fear and increase your tolerance for risk if you cannot confront it, or if you have a high tolerance you will actually want to reduce this and realize that feeding the feeling of risk may not be worth the entry cost. Either way, you must calibrate in a way that accounts for your (perhaps small) capacity. The key to managing risk is capacity.

One thing we should realize is we often have more capacity than we assume - we live in the richest time in history, so "risking" things to take on a career path you love but may not pay much is not much of a real risk - as long as you are prudent and can accept the relative "poverty". You may be relatively poor to others, but on an absolute level you will most likely be fine in terms of finances.

Another thing we must learn is that there are two ways we can risk, let us say that we feel we can stomach a 80% chance that things will turn out well. We can either do this:

(A) Bet everything on something that we judge to have 80% odds.

Or we can do this:

(B) Bet 80% of our stuff (money, time, etc) on something we judge to have 100% odds, and 20% of our stuff on super long shots.

There are a couple of advantages to (B). First of all, it is more secure. No matter what we have 80% of our wealth protected. Betting everything on a 80% chance is foolish, as you have bet away your capacity so you are screwed if you lose; option B takes capacity into account and makes sure we keep the capacity. Secondly, the long odds pay much more if they work out - and can really engage us either way, win or lose, by having us really live risk and put ourselves to the line or try things that are difficult yet rewarding. It is doubtful you will become a great author and write a book that will change lives. But you can spend a chunk of your day working on your book, and without risking your livelihood you will become a better writer and have a shot at making the tome that changes the world. Perhaps 20% of your time is worth this to you.

By accurately judging your capacity for risk you can proportion how much you want to risk on long shots - if I'm a billionaire I can risk millions and millions of my finances, and all of my time, on super long shots. If I'm working myself out of debt or struggling to feed my kids I can risk little finances, and need to keep my job, but can spend some of my time on long shots. Maybe all you have is 10 or 5% of your time you can do this in, after all you want to play with your kids, put food on the table, etc. But I can likely demarcate 5% of my time to writing that script - at the very least you are engaging life, growing, and showing your kid a great lesson (hard work, growth, risk, the idea of capacity, engaging life, struggle, blah blah blah). Yes, it will be hard to scrape up the time, to sit down and do the work. Or to scrape up the courage of doing your all and (most likely) not measuring up the first few (many, every?) times and failing. But it is likely worth it - you will gain in proportion to the difficulty. And maybe you will sell your script and make a difference in the world and get some coin also, or at least have a story worth telling about how your script was turned down in {insert cruel manner here}, or have the ability to tell more compelling and interesting stories to your friends.

Finally, there is risk and there is uncertainty. I used the term risk, but risk is boring and using the term here is somewhat misleading. Risk is known - if I flip a regular coin I have about 50% chance of getting heads. Uncertainty is what is really rewarding. If I have two doors, "write a book" and "do a normal job" I don't know what is behind them - but I can guess that I am most likely going to do OK doing a normal job and will have food on the table, at the cost of an exciting life perhaps. For many of us, e.g. those without rich parents, we do not really have the capacity to have any other realistic choice. It is dangerous and stupid to operate otherwise - especially if others rely on you. Uncertainty is the super long odds - we can't accurately measure the risk, we simply know the odds are against us - way against us. But taking the uncertain path is when we engage life, grow as people, and can really find and create wealth. Many people like the feeling of risk - they gamble a lot, even though the odds are slightly against them (and therefor they will eventually get fleeced of their money); or perhaps they just want to live an engaged and fulfilling life. For some they go in knowing they are paying for the feeling, for others they think they actually will win. But the important thing to know is this - you can usually go through both doors, you can hold down a normal & secure (and perhaps somewhat unengaged) job, and you can spend some time going through the second door of "write that damn book". It is not either/or like in option A - oh, my parents are rich so I can risk a life that has 50% odds, or oh my family is poor so I must take a 90% career. You can pick a very stable job and take super long shots that allow you to grow, find adventure, and live a real life.

Uncertainty is where life is at. Many of us do not have the capacity to afford exploring uncertainty with all of our time, but almost everyone has the capacity to spend some time exploring life. Figure out how much capacity you have, and start spending what you can on living and exploring.

Finally, whatever you do, do not resent your family for "tying you down". You chose your family with your actions, and you choose your life every day. Blaming them for what you do is a feeble excuse, and one that will limit both your and your families joy. Many people seem to fall into this trap, and waste their lives in an unhappy state with an unfulfilling job. You do not have the binary choice of "fun and fulfilling life" versus "terrible and grueling life", if you are anything like most people you have a small capacity so you must toil but you can also live and explore uncertainty with what capacity you do have. Putting blame on your wife or kids will just undercut your joy and undercut your life, you are simply using your family as an excuse for not confronting life - an easy, yet awful, out. As far as excuses go it is pretty poor - you gain nothing but negative feelings and wasted life from it - and yet it seems surprisingly common. Your family is a gift, don't sabotage yourself and resent one of the most important things you can obtain in life.

The Black Knight (Suicide)

2009-07-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Cause of death: suicide.
Who: 1-2% of modern nations
Why: factors are related to "something is wrong with your head" - depression, manic-depressive, drug/alcohol, schizo, agitation, etc. Walk into an emergency room: most people are there because something is wrong with their heads (low IQ, alcohol induced stupidity, mental illness, etc.), you will see the high risk. Now look at the doctors - they are also at high risk: under stress, lack of sleep, mood swings. Their knowledge does not protect them.

Put the whom into perspective: 1-2 % of everyone is huge. Everyone will die of "old age", baring accident or intent. Live long enough and you will die of cancer, heart failure, or other degenerate proximate cause. The ultimate cause is the same: you are old and worn out. If you treat your body poorly you will wear out faster - smoke, drink, eat garbage, don't exercise. We all know this. The fact that 1/100 to 1/50 will die by their own intent is therefore a huge number - and a number that is likely an underestimate (taking large risks, joining the army in time of war, and generally placing oneself in harms way can be an effective means of killing oneself). Look at it another way - suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students.

Suicide is a systematic and sizable problem with our society. Doctors have a fairly high level of knowledge about suicide, know the factors involved, and know how to access further information. This does not help them very much - as a group they commit suicide fairly frequently. Knowledge alone does not prevent suicide.

How can we address suicide? We must start from knowledge and move to action. Suicide is not "rare". It is prevalent, it will impact your life at some point. We all should know a little bit about suicide, as it is one of the primary causes of death - and one of the largest ones (intent: suicide or murder, accident, and decay are the possible causes). The key factors relate to mental health, a truism if there was ever was one.

We know that medication can help - lithium, anti-depressants, and cognitive therapy are known to reduce the incident of suicide, and thus early treatment is important [note: the availability and efficiency of these drugs has changed the population in universities - at one point in time those most likely to kill themselves would not be in university, as the factors contributing to suicide risk would overwhelm their lives and they would not "make the grade". This population can now better manage their problems, and can now make it into university, yet their risk remains high. Universities have not yet dealt with this "new" issue (for them).] Medication gives crutches, allowing people to hobble forward. This is not a "cure", or sufficient. But can keep people hobbling until things improve.

But in general the issue seems to be environmental - social and emotional environments are important. Stress, depression, sadness, bitterness, pain, exclusion, negativity. These are simply labels for, and symptoms of, sparse, poisoned, and broken social and emotional environments. Once you find yourself in a sparse and ugly environment you are in trouble - your "network" is diminutive, and so is your life. Joy is dead, you do not see beauty, you do not see how to solve things. You are literally unconnected. Choices, possibilities, beauty - not there. You cannot imagine a better life, you cannot image how to change things. The black knight is on the table.

It is a simple truth that the networks that define our lives are nonlinear - having 3 close friends is not 3X better than having 1, but much much more than that. Our lives become rich in more than proportion to what we have, and our lives become painful in extreme ways when we do without social connections and positive emotional experiences. One simply cannot imagine life with no meaningful connections and meaning (e.g. good social and emotional lives). We cannot understand what it will be like (and thus cannot prepare well to get through rough times) and we cannot bare it for long if we find ourselves in such a state.

Due to the requirement for social and emotional life, and the highly nonlinear nature of networks, we are at risk. We cannot plan well for loss and we cannot easily build capacity to sustain ourselves through hard time. What can we do?

The black knight is always in play, and if you lose capacity you will be cornered. We know empirically that the black knight is part of the board of our society, the black knight is ready to engage every and any of us. We have only a handful of tools open to us in pushing the black knight to the perfillary of the board - (1) recognize that suicide is common and a systematic problem in our lives, (2) take care to build up our emotional and social networks and lives, and (3) reach out to our friends and others who find themselves in sparse environments. A series of negative emotional situations can quickly make one perceive things as negative in a systematic manner, a social vacuum quickly leaves one without perspectives and help, a belief that suicide is rare leaves one feeling inadequate and ashamed of such thoughts - I'm so fucking weak and pathetic. No you are human, a human that has found yourself in an ugly situation, one that is overwhelming as we do not teach each other that emotional and social reality make up 2 out of the 3 key aspects of being human and instead we all focus on the more easily (yet not easy) measurable and taught third factor - objective truth. It is somewhat ironic that the depressed are often more capable in the objective plane, with more realistic assessment of their skill level, etc., but this is not helpful to them as they lack the fruits of the other two aspects of human reality (emotional & social). They are 2/3rds dead already, and "logically" they see suicide as the only realistic solution.

If you see your friends or children cut off, you must try to reach them. It will be hard, for they will likely not admit to having suicidal thoughts (shame), and they will not be able to see a way beyond and through the pain. The gap between their emotional and social reality and the emotional and social reality required for a bearable, let along thriving, life is too large for them to transition without help. "You don't understand", and it is true - talk to someone who made it through, and they cannot even put themselves back into the past to fully describe the lack that defined life. Before you kill yourself you are not human, you cannot imagine becoming human, you considering killing yourself as you are already dead in the ways that matter. How to we bring people back to life? We can only try to help them do it themselves, we can only hope that we catch the downward spiral before it is too late. If you do get yourself or another on medication this is just the beginning.

Primitive societies had serious issues with decay, accidents, and violence as causes of death, problems that our society has vastly reduced. If you chose to lead a physically healthy life medicine can help you immensely by getting you though emergencies, allowing you to live much longer. Basic hygiene and vaccinations has dramatically increased life span. The state has monopolized violence, reducing intragroup conflict, and the consequences of state-state warfare among competent states has become so large as to reduce intergroup conflict to an astonishing extent. So to a large extent, we have pushed off decay and accident in order to lead longer and healthier lives, and we have diminished the likelihood of someone intending to kill us. But that leaves self-intent as a large factor contributing to death, one that we have not addressed anywhere near sufficiently. It is somewhat surprising that we have largely ignored suicide - fundamentally there are not that many ways to die, so just on conceptual grounds alone one would think we would confront this more. Empirically suicide is a huge issue, an issue that points to a vastly impoverished emotional and social life.

Suicide suggests that we continue to be poor in our society - by focusing on suicide we can learn more about what it means to be human and we can improve our own and others lives. We can create wealth and beauty.

Lowdown:

Suicide is one of the key characteristics of our society, one that is not discussed and thus one that will remain prevalent. Empirically we know that 1-2% of people will kill themselves, a huge number - suicide will effect your life. A society that largely ignores 2/3rds of what it means to be a human is bound to have problems with allowing people to create fulfilling and beautiful lives. Positive social and emotional state is key in preventing suicide. "Emergency treatment" with drugs enables one to hobble onward, allowing social and emotional networks to be created, but the drugs alone are insufficient and "treatment" begins there. The good news is that the process is actually enjoyable and enriching once underway.

Reference:

Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide : Suicide enlightens the human condition, every educated person should be versed in basics of suicide. This book is the best I have seen on suicide - essentially everything in this posting is directly from the author (e.g. "black knight" metaphor), was an earlier observation of mine that the author also notes (e.g. the emergency room example - which is filtered in terms of suicide here, but in general is a good example of how "brain problems" causes much pain and expense to society, ironically I was in the emergency room with someone who suffered an intense migraine attack when I first became aware of this), or was written in reaction to author (e.g. emotional + social aspects being largely ignored in our society, with the objective element of the human condition being focused on to the exclusion of these other factors). You should read this book, you should have your friends read this book, if you are a teacher you should discuss this book with your students (one tidbit you will learn: in the time it takes for one class, which you could devote to the book, 3 Americans will kill themselves - why are we not talking about this more?), if you are a parent you must read this book. If you are in a book club, read this book.

The scientific method: seeing the forest, not the trees

2009-07-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Philosophers of science and social critics will sometimes talk about the scientific method, and argue about whether there actually is a scientific method or not. The definitions and arguments often lose sight of the big picture and instead focus on details: is the scientific method positive or negative, is it this or that, blah or gha? Often the debate boils down to whether specific tactics used by scientists is a strategy or not - the debate is stylistically like this: "Is a forest a pine tree?" with the yes side pointing out pine trees in a forest - "yes!", and the no side pointing out you can have a forest without a pine tree - "no!". Others chime in with, "No, a forest is - in fact - an oak tree". The debate confuses the basics. Of course a pine tree is not a forest. You can have a forest full of pine trees, or with no pine trees, and even if you have a pine forest you have a lot of other things in it that make up the forest. A forest is a forest. A tree is a tree. Specific trees are often a significant part of a forest. A forest is not a tree. "Proving" that this is so does not prove there is no forest, but simply that you have wasted your time and are confused.

The scientific method is simple: ask questions of reality, and honestly listen to the answer. We often couch this in overly clinical and un-illuminating terms - e.g. "hypothesis" (question) - which makes it sound like the method is limited to scientists, instead of being the fundamental approach to life one should take. How can you argue against asking questions coupled with honestly listening? This is simple, but not easy - it is hard to craft good questions (you have to come in with a lot of background information often and keep a fresh perspective), to realize when you accidentally ask the wrong question (good scientists pick up on this, and thus find new aspects of reality, poor scientists will minimize how the answer does not fit within their current understanding behind what they thought they asked - if you have ever programmed a computer you know that one often mean one thing but say another, if you ever had a real discussion with someone you find the same), and to honestly take in what you learn: it is hard to admit you were wrong, you wasted your time, your precious idea is not interesting or significant, etc.

The scientific method is a strategy, much of the bickering about the scientific method is merely linguistic confusion and confuses the tactical level with strategy. The tactics are important, but are not "the" scientific method, and should not - and are not - used in every situation. But the overriding strategy is both simple and consistent: ask questions. listen. honestly.

The scientific method is a general approach to life, one that is difficult yet is simple. You can learn it, and it will help you. In your particular field of work or hobbies or interests you can learn more specific tactics that are optimized for that aspect of reality, and gain a lot from your efforts in learning the tactics. Like many things that are simple the scientific method is subtle and allows you to hone your skills while confronting life. The scientific method is a lifestyle, a code of life to force you to grow and engage reality. The samurai had their code, scientists have theirs. Our master is reality, Truth - with a capital T. In the short term this code brings a lot of difficulty and pain - in the long run it brings great joy and beauty and improves you vastly.

The particular tactics are often related to objective reality, but the strategy is equally powerful when applied to subjective and social reality, and in fact if you do not apply it there you are short changing yourself and not living the scientific way.

A true scientist is simply someone in awe of the beauty of reality, and is so taken by the beauty that they ask questions and listen to learn more and more subtle, amazing, and mind blowing truths. Anyone can do this, and everyone who does will gain, enormously. You can either simply believe what you believe now, e.g. assume your limited experiences and biases are accurate reflections of the world and stay stuck in your limited current situation, or you can go out and explore and engage the crazy amazing thing we call life and get blown away every single day out just how insanely beautiful things are. Which approach do you think will work out better?

Critical Thought

2009-07-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweet and blood; who strives valiantly ... who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worth cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worse, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have ... known neither victory or defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

To a high degree our educational system is one founded on criticism and critical thought. There are many positive aspects to this - learning to be a critical thinker prevents one from being a fool and wasting ones precious time (read: life) pursuing ideas that are flawed, being critical allows one to quickly break down a situation to get the feel of it, and criticism is easy and fun. But criticism is also dangerous - the ease, fun, and ego boost that occurs can be a trap preventing one from going further. Critical thought should be used to get you in the game and to improve your game, it is not the game itself. Do you want to be the fat guy on the couch who plays no sports that screams at the TV, yelling that the coach is a moron, that player X is weak, etc. or do you want to be a player? Criticism can be a trap - and one that can capture many intelligent people (many academics are the equivalent of the fat man yelling at the TV - creation of value is the game, not the criticism of others. Criticism without action and creation is simply whining.).

Criticism as an end in itself is pseudo-intellectualism - it is only one tool in your journey and is easy. It is not "stupid action man versus smart thinking man" - it is creating versus consuming. Either you are actively living life, creating wealth and value (friends, memories, joy, artifacts, etc.), or not. The more you engage and create, the better off you are.

Learn how to be critical and critical thought - but learn this to guide your actions, not as an excuse for taking no action. When in doubt you should look to see if something is simple or if it is easy - you want to do simple things, not easy things. Criticism is easy, relative to action (which requires risk, courage, sustained efforts, etc.), which suggests that it is not a sufficient mode to confront life with.

Tip Jar

2009-07-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

Donate to Small Steps

Why? If you find the material here valuable making a donation is one way to of demonstrating your appreciation. You tip a server if they provide a pleasant experience as this makes everyone feel a boost, and as it provides good feedback to the server - do more of that. People do what they perceive as adding value, and donations/tipping are one means of demonstrating that value has been provided. Luckily the web is not like a restaurant - there is no social, or other, pressure to donate if you do not have the money, inclination, or feel it is justified. Thus: donate, or not, as you judge fit.

It is interesting to note that the internet now allows distributed benefactors - for the first time in history anyone can steer the long term direction of society by making small contributions along with others which aggregate into a significant impact. If you do not feel like tipping me, please consider tipping someone else out there in the ether - the role of benefactors in improving society is large, and now this isn't limited to Bill Gates and other ultrarich folk. You too can be a benefactor.

Deconstructing the Enneagram

2009-07-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

The enneagram is a diagram which embodies a personality theory. The diagram is a 9-pointed figure, and the origins are wrapped in vague and mysterious beginnings - discussion of Eastern European mystics, the Sufis, number theories, etc., is common.

The basic idea is that there are 9 types of people, who are related to each other by the position on the diagram. The two types beside your type, your "wings", are similar and you can tend towards one of them. There are also two other types which you relate to when under stress, or in security, which are across the figure from you. In other words, your main type + the two wings + plus the two "stress/security" points describe you - or 5/9th of the diagram potentially describes you, and the types that "describe you" cover all aspects of the personality space. As you can see the enneagram is not a sharp tool.

The 9 types can be chunked into 3 groups of three - and your wings and stress/security points ensure that your personality spans then entire space of personality as you are related to each of these groups, e.g. the enneagram does not actually seem to discriminate you into a type that is distinct and informative. These three goups describe how information/emotions are processed by your type - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger. A generous reading is that the enneagram captures your stance towards objective, social, and objective reality - but reading books/webpages about the enneagram does not have this insight leaping out. In terms of labeling and understanding people, the enneagram seems too complex for what it does - 9 types? But you can be close to the wing? Or under stress and thus across the diagram, or perhaps you are secure and thus across in a different direction? Oh yeah - in some of the literature they point out that stress doesn't mean what we normally mean by stress, so maybe you are at your stress point when you are not stressed. Huh? Where are the clear and sharp distinctions that one would look for in order to justify the number of labels?

At best it seems that the 3 groups of three - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger - offers some insight, and a reduced version of the enneagram (e.g. 3 main types of personality) could be useful. But at this point why even attempt to salvage the enneagram? The big 5 is an emprical description of personality that is on solid, if limited, footing. Why not simply find your big 5 properties, and then think about subjective, social, and objective reality as the environment that you are embedded in and which you must learn to live in in order to thrive? For that matter, if the 9 types actually were clear distinct types they should correspond to clusters of big 5 properties - if we looked at the 5-d space with points for each person who took the test we should see clusters of the points: to be precise, we should see 9 distinct clusters, one for each type. To my knowlege this has not been observed, pretty strong evidence that the "enneagram theory" is false.

You can take an enneagram test for fun - after first hearing of this theory I googled and took 3 different ones, from 3 different web pages which sold enneagram related products, and had three different results - not surprising since the theory does not seem to make sharply distinct categories. Even worse, some of the test show the "points" you have on each personality type and my score was fairly evenly spread over a huge subset (~3/4) of the personally types. Basically I could pick any personality type that sounded nice to me and claim it as "capturing me". To me it seems clear: the enneagram is pseudo-science that offers no insight or constructive means to understand yourself and others. Disturbing, as apparently this model is used by some counsellors and therapists, as a google and amazon search reveals, and since it appears to have no sharp and incisive properties that would justify such use it would be better to say the model is misused by some counsellors and therapists.

Pseudo-science is not inert, and can cause a lot of pain and damage. Any placebo value of the enneagram should exist with any other treatment plan, so I cannot see any value brought to the table. Folk psychology and traditions have the potential have capture interesting truths, but as far as I can tell the enneagram contains no such interesting aspects. In fact, it does not even seem to be a legitamate folk theory - with the "mysterious roots", with vague references to Sufis or other groups, likely being made up in order to give the false sense that the method is an ancient tradition (no evidence is given, and inconsistent stories exist, both of which suggest the "ancient system" claim is false). The story seems to be thus: the enneagram theory was made up in the 20th century, with false historical pedigree, and its claims to sort people into meaningful categories which help you understand yourself and others and grow falls apart under even the weakest examination.

Lowdown
- The enneagram lives up to its name (pronounced "any-a-gram": yes, you too can pick any of the grams/personality types you want to pick to describe yourself), but does not appear to live up to any of its claims.

3 key planes - objective, subjective, social

2009-07-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

There are 3 key planes that humans exist on - the objective, the subjective, and the social. Each is a "type of reality", and to have full, rich, and successful lives we must learn how to live in each of these planes.

Objective Reality. External reality appears to exist, seems to be persistent, and seems to be consistent. Few people dispute this - some philosophers, or the immature, may bicker at the edges and claim not to believe this, but their actions suggest otherwise [1]. Learning how to gain information, experiment, judge truth, use logic, and manipulate objective reality is an important set of skills. The scientific method is thus: ask questions of reality, and honestly listen to the answer. This is simple, yet not easy. Asking the right questions, actually paying attention to an answer, realizing when you meant to ask one thing but in fact asked another, and honestly listening (you often do not like the answer) are all not easy. What we typically learn as "the scientific method" in school is more often actually just some tactics used by scientists, and thus does not always make sense or even get used consistently, but the overall stragety is simple and the same - ask questions, honestly listen to the answer. Learning the basic scientific approach is powerful, has created vast material wealth in our society, and will improve your life to the extent you live the scientific method. It is mind boggling what we can do and create when we ask good quesitons, and take the time to listen to the answer. Learning the scientific method and creating the social conditions that allowed for the honest listening is no easy task. We have succeeded in doing so - anyone with the dedication and willingness can learn the scientific method, and learn how to live in alignment with objective reality. Many do not, including many scientists, but you can.

Subjective Reality. You are conscious. Amazing. It would be mind blowing, if it were not mind defining. This is one of the few things you actually truely know. Subjective truth is everything that feels important - emotions, love, meaning, consciousness, the moment. Many limiting beliefs exist, many unskilled ways of experiencing ones subjective reality exist. Learning how to handle your emotions, to build your character, is one of the most powerful and immediate ways of improving your life. Some scientists seem so taken by the power of objective truth that they seem to discount this factor of life [2], but you can "prove" the sheer insanity of doing so by just experiencing right now. Listen. Look. Feel. Amazing. We often forget just how awesome the universe is, right now, if we simple open our minds to the sheer crazy beautiful fact of consciousness and emotions. Learning to meditate and taking an experiential approach to life are good ways to hone your "subjective skills". Much that limits us are self imposed beliefs, not truth, or neglect of what is important on the subjective level - it doesn't matter if you do well on empty efforts, you are still wasting your time and life.

Social Reality. We are social animals, we need others, are limited by our group, and find meaning with others. Power is essentially our ability to conduct ourselves as we wish in a social environment. The misuse of power can seriously limit others, and preventing such misuse remains a key factor in maintaining a good society. It was a long and hard struggle to get to the point were power of the few was restrained to the point where a "commoner" could speak honestly and communicate what they have found about objective reality to others. If we create healthy and strong connections with others we create a vibrant social network that gives meaning, creates wealth, and gives capacity to our lives. Improving your social network brings value to others and to you, and allows you to both create and store value. Reaching out to others, picking and perking them up, open and honest communication - e.g. sharing yourself - are how you start to build these muscles.

As far as I can tell, these 3 aspects of human reality are "all there is". If we learn to handle ourselves in these 3 domains we will have happy and successful lives, if we don't we most likely will not.

Our society has focused mainly on objective reality and the creation of material wealth. The value and beauty the comes out of this focus is astounding. We live longer and better, to such an extent that even our trash is amazing - a powerful measure of just how wealthy we are (go back in time and you could sell much that we throw out for a pretty penny). We have choice and resources. But why do we focus on this aspect? The positive reason is that it makes for a comfortable and long life, one that is largely easy and pleasant, and it allows people to focus on what is important to and for them. The negative reason is that this is easier to do - we can "train" people to be a cog in a big machine, without much effort or consideration, and have reasonably amazing outcomes, we can do the easy (versus simple) and walk through life without engaging it and others. We don't have to think about how we are doing things, since we are guarenteed a "decent" result without effort.

The important implication is this: we both have vast resources - material wealth - and plenty of room for improvement. On an individual level, our society allows us to do almost anything we want to improve ourselves - and even if we are "poor" we are richer than most of the people currently in the world, and most of people who exisited in history. We are materially secure, even if we don't feel this way, it is true. We can take life choice "risks" without risking much - the worse case is that you are materially richer than "99%" of the people who have ever lived. On a collective level we can vastly improve others lives, both in simple (smile at a stranger) and profound (build up meaning in peoples lives) ways. The simple fact is this: we are materially rich, and yet we live in a society that is poor in social and emotional ways due to largely ignoring these factors (and due to the ease of our wealth we are not so hot at objective reality either - we are rich enough to be able to afford to be wrong and hold incorrect ideas without significant, or at least obvious, pain). Our focus on the material has given us security, and the means to engage either of the other two factors with almost no risk. We simply have to confront our fears, wake up, and engage reality. It is not easy, but it is simple, and it is rewarding.

Notes:
[1] If they truely believed otherwise, then offer them a bet: 1 to 1000 odds for money that objective reality does/does not exist. Put up $100 bucks, so they must put up $100, 000, and have the test as this: cut off your hand. If they truely believe there is no objective truth, then it does not matter if they cut their own hand off or not, if they loose the bet or not, etc. In fact, why are they wearing clothes and holding down a job and submitting to gravity and social norms? If one truely believed in no objective reality, would you live a normal and tedious life? One would have to be completely boring, unimaginative, and unintelligence to live a normal life - the only reason most people live normal lives is due to neccessity, they have strong objective constraints. If you are not constrained by objective reality, why are you limiting yourself? There is only one reason - you actually know, or believe, you are in fact so constrained. This footnote is painfully obvious, and should go without saying, but to a large extent our society has elevated criticism as an ideal - children are rewarded for pointing out faults, even if they are not significant, realistic, or important. Yes, sure, maybe objective reality does not exist - or is not as highly constraining as we think - but this is (1) obvious, and (2) not so productive or important. We train children to have a largly empty and impotent frame - stylistic criticism - and get adults who are diminuate, bitter, and immature. Criticism as a system is corrosive, limiting, and sad - and to a large extent is the focus of our educational system.
[2] This amazes me, but it is true. This may simply be a matter of strength - we tend to focus on what we are strong at, and discount other things. The sheer amazing wealth we have generated from focusing on the objective may also convince some, who are somewhat noncritical thinkers, that it is the only important factor - yes, it is amazing, but so are the other factors.

Poverty - a social view

2009-07-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

What is poverty? In western societies we often define poverty as lack of financial resources - if you make < $X a year you are, defacto, poor.

Is this an accurate definition? On the face of things, yes, but dig deeper and things look a bit differently. Consider some poor person who wins the lotto. We all expect them to go back to being poor fairly soon. Or look at many NFL players, they go broke shortly after retiring, despite having an almost sick amount of money. Poverty obviously relates to skills, an ability to manage ones life.

Consider this definition: poverty is a lack of healthy social networks. "The Rich" help each other, give each other advice, train their children. Some ethnic groups help each other, give each other advice, train their children. The groups we see as rich, the ones that persist, that consistently create wealth and value, that are happy and have plenty are ones that are rich in connections, bonds, duty. They have healthy social networks.

Now look to the poor - they do not help each other, they espouse victimhood, they are critical of "The Rich" (including, say, Jews who are one of the ethnic groups with meaningful social networks), they do not give meaningful advice to each other, they do not work hard to create value but instead consume value. If one is from this "group" (defined mainly as a lack of group cohesion) and hones ones skills and creates value and wealth, well, one is in trouble: without finding a cohesive group to join the value and wealth created may soon disappear.

The poor are those who are poor in relationships. A given poor person has parents, friends, siblings, and spouses who have overall negative and unconnected personalities. Whining, victimology, passivity, complaint, justification, selfishness: we reconize this in "the poor". The social environment the poor live in is sparse, unhealthy, negative. How could anyone thrive in such a corrosive environment?

Under this view we can see how better to become rich - not only must we hone particular skills that allow us to create wealth, but we must hone social networks that are positive and productive. We must become gardeners of our social environment - watering, fertilializing, finding "plants" that work together, creating beauty. We must also do something that is difficult: pulling weeds. This can be painful, but if we wish a bountiful garden we must till, pull weeds, and protect against invasion. If you are starting to change your life, you may find that you have to cut ties with your parents and some former friends. Invite them with you, but do not tie yourself to them. Our relationships are a choice, and a most important one.

Learning how to make money at some task is not sufficient (though it is necessary) to become wealthy; learning how to be a valuable friend, someone people want to know and be with, and finding others to join with in the struggle of life is needed. And here lies true wealth - the financial aspect is but one part.

University students may eat noodles, live in run down and sparsly furnished apartments, make very little money (and actually usually have significant negative money (debt)), and have a lack of financial resources - but they are not poor. They are forming deep connections with others, they are learning skills to create wealth, they are engaging ideas and life and people, and they most often come from caring families. Our great grandparents were not poor either (at least not all of them), despite lacking almost everything we take as granted in terms of material wealth.

Poverty is not measured by how much money you make per year. Poverty is measured by a lack of meaningful social networks . A social pauper necessarily finds he is a financial pauper, if not now, then soon. If you want to be "rich" forget the money, and consider people: how to connect, how to bring value to others? Even if you do not find the finances you want, you will find what we wish to buy with the finances - a happier and more meaningful life.

First things first - people. Find others who care about life, themselves, and others. Create value with them. Actually live. That is wealth.

Stack verus Queue: Your Brain & Things

2009-07-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

In planning tasks take note of two different ways of placing items on a waiting list: stacking or queuing them.

We are all familiar with both. We go to the grocery store, and wait in a line (queue) to pay for our items. We have a pile of paper work on our desk, when we get something new we place it on top.

The order of clearing stacks and queues are opposite: in a queue it is first in, first out. In a stack it is first in, last out. In queues things flow through, in stacks they pile up and we have to dig down to the bottom.

So here is the important thing - our brains tend to act as stacks: the latest idea we have goes on top of prior things. This can be quite bad, since our memories are faulty it is similar to having a bunch of "to do" notes in a messy pile with disappearing ink on them. If we stack too much on there, by the time we dig back down the note is useless to us. Opportunity lost. Our brains stack projects and ideas that are written in disappearing ink leading to loss opportunities - we must find tools to help prevent loss of good ideas, losing focus and dropping what should be high priority tasks, and act on what is important now while saving good projects to think about for the future.

The classic approach to confronting this reality is to make a schedule in a calendar, ensuring we queue the important things and get them done. This is helpful. But how about all those "neat" ideas, stuff we want to do, projects to stew on? We need to store those, get them out of our mind so we don't forget them, and so we don't waste resources thinking about them without progressing them forward. You can have an "idea box", a note book, etc. to collect them - but this is far from ideal, now you have two separate processes to help manage your ideas.

I have found a nice tool that seems to take our brains "stack and lose" problem into account in a clean and easy to use manner: "things". The idea is simple: sticky notes, that can be tagged (for searching and ordering), placed in project folders, and have "to do on/by" stamps on them. Basically you take what your brain normally does - a bunch of ideas & thoughts - and you digitally capture them, allowing the computer to sort, slice, dice, put into a time sequence, store once done for documentation, rank by priority, etc. etc. Things is your brain, without the loss of persistence.

I'm currently using the free trial, and I am loving it. I have always had issues with retaining ideas and scheduling actions. Things seems to help, and is much more natural for me than just using a calendar. I get ideas and future projects put down, I get things done that need to be done. I'm still getting into the swing of things, and learning to use things better as I go, but I am highly impressed. My desk is a mess, my mind is worse - Things helps.

There are two problems with things: (1) it is only for the Mac, and (2) it costs $$$. The value for the money is very high though: I will most likely be shelling out the cash, things is a valuable tool for me - I'm going to be spending my coffee/beer money on this. If you are on PC you are currently out of luck; but now that this tool is out I'm sure there will be knock offs, so look around.

Lowdown:
- View your brain's storage of ideas as a stack of notes written in disappearing ink: this is a simple analogy and will help you figure out how to best deal with this.
- Things is a tool that addresses this by digitizing ideas in notes, allowing tagging, sorting, scheduling, binning, etc. Things is natural as it follows our natural brain process, and addressed the problems we have by using the strengths of digital storage. Consider Things, or something similar, for yourself. It just might be just the thing you were looking for...

The big 5

2009-07-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

The benchmark in personality is "the big 5". Nerds everywhere will be happy to know that this framework is from lexical analysis - e.g. data mining. The essential features are thus: empirical ("from the field") and reflective of our current society (allowing a comparative study of you versus others). The weaknesses follow from these essential features: no conceptual underpinnings, based on "averages" (persistent and consistent patterns in self reporting and writing), based on self view (if you ever spoke to a jerk, you know they would rate themselves rosy while everyone else would not - so this weakness can be huge) - so if you have higher or more realistic standards and self view than others, you will rate lower in various measures.

The lowdown of the big 5 is this: data analysis reveals clusters of traits that indicate 5 "basis vectors" which build up personality space. e.g. take all the adjectives we can use to describe ourselves, and we can project them into 5 different dimensions that capture how people tend to describe themselves. Simply by taking a test you can see how your personality is described in this 5-d space, which is bound in size in practice by the simple fact that we are finite creatures sharply bounded by time, capacity, and our social environment.

We float on an OCEAN [openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism] with others, and can quickly see how we "measure up" against others. As a simple rule, it seems like we would do well to "max out" on these measures in order to be a successful and happy person (for neuroticism, you want to max out on the low end...).

In short, the big 5 is a fairly flawed system - but one that is quick to determine for oneself, and will give you an impression of both our society and how you are positioned in the personality space of our times. Using your score you can see how others will tend percieve you, how you stand in relations with other, and thus what you may want to focus on in improvement (as we are social creatures our success often depends on the help, or at least not hinderance, of others). As far as personality tests go, this is a decent one and one that is the benchmark. Each dimension gives you a particular area of focus for self improvement, and an actual way of measuring - yes, far from perfect, but a somewhat objective measuring stick to see your progress, weak points, strengths, etc.

Focus: One hour chunk?

2009-07-22T12:08:00.001-07:00

You may have heard that the optimal time chunk for learning is roughly one hour, after which your attention "exponentially" drops, and you may have heard even more precise figures such as 55 minutes. The lowdown is that you waste your time if you try to do one task, that requires sharp attention, for > 1 hr.

But wait. Doesn't this sound like an urban legend? What are the odds that the human attention span exactly equals the time unit we chunk the day into? One hour? Really? Sounds fake.

The origin of the hour as the unit of the day is in the deep past, but one can speculate it it comes out of the duodecimal (base 12) number system that many ancient cultures used. Why base 12? Who knows, but hold your hand palm up and then fold and touch your fingers to your palm. You now have a counting machine - use your thumb to count on your joints and finger tips. Base 12 baby. Could be useful for commerce, counting your flock, etc. Base 12 also makes division easy - dividing by 2,3,4, and 6, all easy. Look at your counting machine again - easy to "chunk" things together in 2's, 3's, 4's, 8's, etc. But I digress.

So the hour is an unit of time defined by ancient number systems; it should have little correlation to human attention span. As it is a "reasonable" unit of time we teach classes for 1 hour. Some education researchers then find that 1 hr is an optimal attention span time. This "finding" conflicts with every single person who went to public school or attended a lecture - close attention for a full hour? Huh?

Apparently the FAA limits lectures to ~ 20 minutes in U.S. flight schools, as they have found that this is the time students can highly absorb information (HT: Philip Greenspun). This is inline with my personal experience - the first 1/3 of a lecture I can really absorb, then things get harder. This 20 minute claim also makes the 1 hr "attention window" make some more sense - if you take engineering you will learn that ~ 3 time constants are sufficient to have some fast ("exponential") decaying process go down to almost nothing (~ 5%). We can have lectures that last for 1 hr, and still get something out of it (not much, but something) - if this was not true we would have dumped the 1 hr lecture long ago. Essentially we are horribly wasting time and being inefficent, not to mention making people uncomfortable and the environment unpleasant, but not to the point that it becomes so blatantly bad that schools actually have to change.

Take away message:
- It seems that 20 minute chunks are ideal for high attention absorption tasks, and by the time you get to an hour you are at the point where it makes no sense to keep going (if high attention is required).
- Schools are both being ineffective in transferring information, and making children uncomfortable, by using 1 hr chunks - if they do not use additional tactics to take "natural" attention span into account. Essentially schools are training many students that learning is a negative experience. Make sure you don't accidentally do this to yourself by using standard "clock time" units instead of "head time" units in planning learning sessions in your schedule.
- The mismatch between "head time" and "clock time" is large enough to cause us problems, but not large enough to force changes in society. Keep this in mind in planning your schedule.

Questions to think about:
- What about "flow", when does this 20 minute rule no longer apply? (hint: think about the "direction" of flow...). In flow situations, what is a good time chunk? Is this completely idiosyncratic?
- How can you use this 20 minute rule to help you learn/engage in your work and life? Can you see any areas where you are trying to push longer, and thereby both waste time (due to inefficient absorption) and implicitly "train yourself" to dislike the task? There may be low hanging fruit here for increasing your efficiency and effectiveness, as well as increase your pleasure in a task (which goes a long way to being good at it).
- 20 minutes may be "optimal" in terms of being highly receptive, but this rule will be both an average and indicates the most receptive time frame. For yourself, and your given task, you may be able to go a bit longer, or must go a bit less. But 1 hr is likely the cutoff beyond which you are completely wasting time. Experiment - 4o minutes might be good for you/your task, etc. - with times between 20 minutes and 1 hr to see what works.
- Why 20 minutes? What are the mechanisms that make 20 minutes a natural unit of time for paying attention?