"The more I find out, the less I know."
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Weather at the Frozen North
This is my personal blog. My professional blog is The Customer Service Survey I've written a book called Gourmet Customer Service. You can buy it on Amazon. (in)Frequently Asked Questions AIM Screen Name: DFNfrozenNorth
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Last Updated: Aug 07, 2008 03:29 PM
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The Last WordWednesday - May 17, 2006 02:56 PM
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who count in binary and those who don't.
Okay, old joke, start over.... There are two kinds of people: those who always need to have the last word, and those who can peaceably disagree. When I disagree with someone, it can be really hard for me to let the other person have the last word. I always want to rebut, refute, and undermine the other position. But you can't have a civil debate between two people who each have to have the last word. Each round is inevitably more contentious than the last, and after you've stated your position, all that's left is to increase the volume. And you both wind up being jerks. If logic can't persuade someone, I don't think passion will help much. When I find myself in an intractable argument with someone, I've found a few strategies to disengage. I can try to find common ground ("We don't agree on X, but at least we can agree on Y"), plead ignorance ("You might have a point, but I need to study that issue more before I can agree with you"), or just walk away ("Oh, gosh! Look at the time!"). All too often, though, my impulse is to try to have the last word. Even though I know it won't work. Even online, where it is easiest to walk away from an argument, it can be hard not to try to get in the last licks. I'm not saying don't argue. The spark of creativity always requires banging a few rocks together, and I've had very long-running "discussions" with friends, colleagues, and family which may have occasionally been uncomfortable, but which always have led to better decisions and understanding all around. But one of my great personal challenges is to remember to let the other guy have the last word. Posted at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Search for MeaningWednesday - November 02, 2005 01:08 PM
What is it that makes humans different from all other animals?
It isn't the size of our brains. Many marine mammals have brains larger than ours, and some animals have brain-to-body mass ratios comparable to humans.
It isn't the ability to manipulate our environment. Other primates are often observed doing all sorts of sophisticated stuff, and even crows have been observed making and using tools. It isn't our command of language. Chimps can be taught to use human sign language (though at about the level of a 3-year-old), and dolphins and whales appear to have a highly sophisticated communication system which we so far don't understand. One might argue that it is our abstract reasoning and problem solving. But other animals have been observed doing fairly sophisticated problem solving, and who's to say they're not thinking abstractly? But I was struck yesterday (while listening to a documentary about a hindu pilgrimage) that humans seem to have an innate and powerful need to seek meaning in our lives. It is though we are driven to always ask the existential questions: why am I here, what is my purpose in life, what will become of me when my life is over? This has been going on for millennia, and it seems to be unique (though we may discover otherwise when we learn to speak cetacean). What's more, this quest for meaning seems to confer no obvious evolutionary advantage. Quite the opposite, in fact: energy spent pondering philosophy and the meaning of life could have been spent on building more efficient tools and machines, or harvesting more grain. Priests and philosophers are essentially non-productive in a biological sense, since they don't hunt, grow food, or build houses; in fact, they have to live off the efforts of other people to do those things for them. One could argue (correctly) that this penchant for deep thought has led to our modern understanding of science and technology--in fact, until the beginning of the 20th century "science" and "natural philosophy" were synonymous. But that doesn't explain why farmers 10,000 years ago built temples and gave context to their lives by postulating heavens filled with gods and demons. And so I, too, am driven to ask what my purpose in life is. To that question, I'm adding one more: Why do I need to ask? Posted at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Strong AIWednesday - October 05, 2005 02:59 PM
A couple of skeptical articles about Kurzweil's new Singularity book (one here, the other here) reminded me of a point I've been meaning to write about for a long time: the flaw in Strong AI.
I'm not going to take the time to develop my thesis in great depth today (no time), but I'll sketch it. Someday I'll come back to it in more detail. For those not familiar with the concept, "Strong AI" refers to the idea--common in science fiction and some more speculative researchers--that a sufficiently advanced computer can achieve self-awaress to the same extent as a person. This notion has its passionate adherents, and a sizable contingent of people who think it is utter bunk. I'm in the Utter Bunk category for lots of reasons. To begin with, we don't understand what makes something or someone sentient (self-aware). Is sentience an emergent property of hypercomplicated networks? Is it inherent (to a greater or lesser degree) to everything in the universe? Does it require some sort of quantum mechanical entanglement? Is it just an illusion? If sentience is just an illusion, it's a damn convincing one. [Sadly, while that particular counterargument is pithy, it leads to the kinds of discussions you have in a freshman dorm after about four beers. A better argument is that the presence of an illusion presupposes sentience, so claiming that sentience is an illusion is paradoxical.] Without any sort of understanding why we experience the world in this glorious 3-D cinematic surroundsound we call "life," it seems weird to claim (without evidence or proof) that the same property can be achieved merely through complicated algorithms. But the deep flaw in the Strong AI hypothesis is the unstated assumption that a simulation in a Turing Machine is the same as the reality being simulated. For those not familiar with the concept, a Turing Machine is a mathematical abstraction of a digital computer, and all digital computers (as built under current technology) are essentially Turing Machines. Turing Machines have some neat mathematical properties, but they are inherently more limited than an arbitrary system in the real world. Computers can do a very good job of simulating the real world (Stephen Wolfram has an unproven but plausible conjecture that a sufficiently powerful computer can simulate the real world to an arbitrary degree of precision), but a simulation is not reality. Or, quoting Lee Gomes in the above-referenced Wall Street Journal column, "We have increasingly powerful computer models of the weather. But you can run one of them in your backyard until the cows come home and you're not going to make any rain." We may build computers capable of simulating certain aspects of human intelligence, but that does not make the computers sentient any more than simulating a thunderstorm will relieve drought in Oklahoma. To think otherwise smacks of mysticism and magical thinking, the same sort of thinking that leads to cargo cults. Strong AI proponents are guilty of confusing the abstract representation of a thing with the thing itself. Posted at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Who am I to make that choice?Tuesday - July 20, 2004 12:53 PM
This article, "When One Is Enough," about a woman's decision to abort two of her triplets, was one of the most heart-wrenching things I've read in a long time.
As the dad of twins, I just can't get over how miraculous it is, having two identical yet amazingly unique toddlers wreaking havoc on my life. Knowing what I know today, were I to be put in Amy Richards' position, I would never even consider not doing everything I could to carry all three babies. On the other hand, She Who Puts Up With Me might not agree (though I think she would ultimately decide to have the babies). After all, She was the one who had to be put on bed rest. She was the one who had to deal with the postpartum depression. She was the one who (somehow) managed to nurse two infants. In fact, I'm still not sure how we made it through that first year with our sanity and our marriage intact. In our case, I don't think there was ever really any serious discussion about whether or not to have both babies. But what was the right decision for us might not be the right decision for a 34-year-old unmarried woman who works freelance. Babies are hard. Twin babies are really hard, and I don't even want to contemplate how hard it would have been to raise three babies to the point where they can dump bubble-stuff on the carpet. So as much as this story tore at my guts, I can't say she made the wrong decision. Such wisdom is not mine. Posted at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Wealth, Success, Youth, Beauty, Maturity, and Paris HiltonTuesday - February 10, 2004 03:37 AMWhat is it about Paris Hilton that holds such fascination? Is it that she's young, rich, and beautiful? Almost: It's because she's young, rich, beautiful, and seemingly determined to make the least of it. I've never met Paris Hilton, and I'm sure in person she's charming, funny, and not nearly as screwed-up as her public persona. She is also emblematic of a phenomenon I've observed a lot: the person who is dealt a great hand in life, and can't handle it maturely. Some other examples:
The common thread is that these are all people who, for whatever reason, seem to think that the rules do not apply to them, that whatever they want to do is OK, and that the effect their actions have on other people is not important. They have become, in a word, jerks. What's going on here? Not everyone who is rich, successful, famous and/or beautiful is like this. I personally know a lot of counterexamples, so it is only certain people who succumb to jerkdom. I believe that it takes a certain level of emotional maturity to be able to handle wealth and success. Being extremely successful creates some strange emotional messages:
The only way to counter these messages is through wisdom and perspective, which can come through age and adversity, through good upbringing, through friends and family who treat you like an ordinary person, or through a natural emotional grounding. Lacking the proper emotional maturity, wealth and success risks making you believe your own PR. When that starts to happen, you may think that everyone likes you and wants to be you...but the truth is that you are rapidly burning through your goodwill. If things ever go wrong, well, schadenfreude here we come! Unfortunately, in our success- and glamour-driven society, too few people recognize the risks of being too successful without the emotional readiness to handle it. Posted at 03:37 AM | Permalink | The end of America?Thursday - January 08, 2004 03:37 AM
Oooh, that sure is a provocative title. But this isn't about the 2004 election, terrorism, the rise of the right or left, or whatever. I'm thinking millennia. America is a young country, relatively speaking, being a bit under 230 years old. Even if you date America to the voyage of Columbus, we're just over 500 years old. Realistically, we've been a world power for a little under a century.
The Romans were dominant for (ballpark) a millennium. The Egyptians maybe around the same. The Chinese dynasties, a few millennia. So it isn't unreasonable to think that America can be the dominant world power for somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 years. We've got a long way to go, but sooner or later, America will no longer be the most important country economically and militarily, and the only question is when and how. This is treading dangerously close to being Science Fiction, but that's OK, I used to write SF as a hobby. There are a number of different scenarios for how America's dominance could end: The sun explodes. This is the extreme case of "America will always be dominant," and I include it just to prove that, no, someday it has to end. Five billion years, give or take a few, but we're all going to be starstuff once more. America dies of obesity. Very gradually, and over time, the government gets more and more bloated, less and less efficient. Corruption becomes more common (say what you like, the United States is one of the least corrupt countries in the world), and it gets harder and harder to get anything done. Wealthy people find more ways to not pay taxes, which just forces rates higher for everyone else, and more of the economy goes underground. At some point, so little business is done through legitimate channels that the central government basically doesn't matter anymore, and people start spontaneously forming their own new governments. The dandelion puff. Future efforts to colonize space are wildly successful, and the economic center of gravity gradually shifts to outer space. America may remain the dominant power on Earth, but the real power lies outside Earth's atmosphere. Living at the bottom of a deep gravity well is a huge military disadvantage, so there's not much question of who wins when push comes to shove. Earth becomes like "Old Europe," and America the equivalent of France or Germany: important, but no longer calling all the shots. All Hail Bob! America's representative democracy becomes more and more dysfunctional, until power is seized by the equivalent of an American Emperor. This will be welcomed by most Americans, since it returns some rationality to the system; but to appease those who remember a golden age of Democracy, Congress will continue on as an increasingly less important body. This is the Roman model, but heaven help us if "Sharpton" ever becomes a title synonymous with "Emperor." America as Precursor. Other regions become more united and more powerful, but adopt government and economic models more and more similar with America's. Gradually, a de-facto world government emerges, as barriers between regions drop and cooperation increases: think the European Union without Brussels. Eventually, a formal, elected President of the World may emerge, who will initially be either Indian or Chinese. America is viewed as the experiment which took over the entire petri dish. Foreclosure. Government debt grows and grows until a fiscal crisis forces the government to either print huge numbers of dollars (thus making them worthless), or go bankrupt. Foreign creditors threaten to seize American assets overseas, which would effectively destroy nearly every large corporation in the country. As a compromise, Florida is given to China in exchange for debt forgiveness, and Disneyworld is allowed to become its own sovereign nation, thus posthumously fulfilling Walt Disney's lifelong dream. Thus weakened, America's economy never recovers enough to become overwhelmingly dominant again, though America remains one of several important countries. Posted at 03:37 AM | Permalink | Love, Lost in TranslationSunday - October 05, 2003 03:37 AM
I finally got to see "Lost in Translation " with She Who Puts Up With Me last night. Not your usual Hollywood romance, but both very funny and insightful. We both came out of the theater seeing ourselves in the story.
In the movie, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson play Bob and Charlotte, two people lost, literally, spiritually, and emotionally, in Tokyo. Both are in emotionally unsatisfying marriages, and become close to each other as they try to make sense of their lives. Contrary to the usual romance formula, they never sleep together, kiss only at the end, and the movie ends with them going back to each other's respective spouses. (Sorry if that was a spoiler. It is still a great movie, and you should go see it if you haven't already.) Despite that, the emotional intensity between the two characters is no less, and at one point after Bob sleeps with a semi-talented lounge singer, Charlotte is just as hurt, betrayed, and jealous as if they had been married to each other. After the movie, She Who Puts Up With Me had this to say: "Every time you pack your bags and go dashing out the door to another business trip, I feel just like Charlotte watching her husband going off to the photo shoot. But when you call me from your hotel, and I'm busy with the kids and don't have time to talk, I see myself being Bob's wife, too." I had to admit that I saw myself both as Bob and Charlotte's husband, too. The interesting thing is that in the movie, the characters still loved their spouses, they still talked, but they didn't connect emotionally. Despite being married, both were very lonely. My wife and I went through something like this at one point in our marriage, which is why it felt so familiar to both of us. In the year or so after our twins were born, She Who Puts Up With Me went through a period of postpartum depression. This fairly common condition is the same thing which (in its severest form) sometimes leads new mothers to terrible things like trying to kill their babies, or themselves. While my wife's depression wasn't that severe, it was worse than what most women experience. Depression can be an insidious thing, and I didn't recognize it for about ten months. All I knew was that my wife was not only very busy with the babies, but seemed to be very distant from me. During this confusing and lonely time, I became close friends with a young woman I knew, who was also working through her own set of issues (those issues being her story to tell, and not mine). She actually reached out to me first, confiding in me some very painful events, which I believe (though I'm not certain) I'm the first person she told outside her immediate family and her therapist. Before long, we were acting as each other's informal counselors, sharing problems and providing a ready ear. We grew quite close. This bothered me at the time, since even though our friendship was never even remotely physical, there was an emotional closeness which was uncomfortable to me as a married man. There was definite affection, though for me it was more like she was my twin sister than anything romantic. In the end, She Who Put Up With Me overcame her depression, and my friend worked through her problems. Just as in the movie, we went back to our own lives, though my friend and I still see each other often. The lesson is this: As human beings, we are not meant to go through this life alone. We have to reach out to each other and connect to each other, and support each other in times of need. Or, as another friend once put it (perhaps more succinctly): "We're supposed to love our wives, our children, our mothers, our fathers, and our dogs. Who says we can't ever love anyone else?" Posted at 03:37 AM | Permalink | Can the death penalty ever be moral?Wednesday - September 24, 2003 03:37 AM
If you believe as I do, that life is sacred, then can the death penalty ever be morally acceptable? A lot of people would answer "no," but I don't think the answer is that simple. The governor of Massachusetts is trying to find a system which guarantees only the guilty will be executed , but even if you have a perfect system, when is it right to administer the death penalty?
Let me begin by saying that, in general, I oppose the use of the death penalty. My opposition is grounded in the fact that our system of administering capital punishment appears to be deeply flawed, with the ranks of death row populated mostly by people who couldn't successfully find or negotiate a lesser punishment. Actual guilt or innocence seems to have little to do with it, which is bizarre at best, and abhorrent at worst. I also believe that life is sacred, and that intentionally taking another human life is one of the gravest (pun intended) things anyone can do. In that context, defense against an immediate threat is the only clear moral justification for killing another person or engaging in an armed conflict. Even then, killing or war must be the option of last resort, used only when there is no other effective defense. Ordinary homicide clearly doesn't reach this moral threshold for capital punishment. Even if the convicted killer is certain to kill again, imprisonment (perhaps in solitary confinement) with no hope of release will effectively remove the threat from society. This has the additional advantages of bring reversible (in case the system made a mistake and convicted an innocent person), and forcing the murderer to endure a lifetime of punishment. However, there are some rare circumstances where execution is the only way to defend innocent people. One situation when the killer is likely to serve as an inspiration to others. For example, a political or religious figure whose followers may be inspired by his words or example to kill innocents. Bin Laden, Hitler, and their ilk could pose real problems if imprisoned for long periods of time. Another is when adequate security can't be ensured, and the killer is likely to cause more harm if he escapes. This might happen, for example, in a war zone, or in an underdeveloped part of the world where the infrastructure simply doesn't exist to reliably lock someone up for decades. Other than these rare instances, the taking of a life cannot be repaid by the taking of another. By executing a criminal--however heinous his crimes may be--when other effective punishment and isolation options exist, we are simply lowering ourselves to the same moral level as the criminal. Posted at 03:37 AM | Permalink | |