New Year's Resolutions Followup 2014

I didn't do the best job of keeping my New Year's Resolutions. 

I did a fairly good job flossing the first half of the year, and fell apart after that. I didn't come close to posting weekly, though I averaged around one every 10 days. When you consider the gaps, however...

And the periodic calendar--I never used it to any degree worth mentioning. Instead, it offers a clear example of why these Resolutions often fail: no true change in behavior or environment to facilitate them. It wouldn't have been difficult to bookmark an adequately large image or save it to my desktop. Then, I could have consulted it easily. As it was, my poster was hung in a very inaccessible corner of my dorm.

My resolutions for 2015 are yet to be determined, but once I've chosen, these are things to keep in mind.

Ignorance and Individualism

Confusion is an important tool in our cognitive inventory. It tells us when to pay more attention. Let me give you an example.

A month or two ago, I chanced upon an unusual synthesis: libertarianism and social justice. I didn't bookmark the article in question, but this one covers the same material. The argument in question states that we fundamentally can't know what it's like to be another person--correct--and therefore white, heterosexual men should check their privilege.

At this point I found myself quite confused. I'd seen Fundamental Ignorance of Others used many times in the past. Usually, it's employed by libertarians, arguing for individualism and against state control over our lives. What was it doing here?

If we can't know other's lives, then how are we supposed to figure out who has it better off? Now, it's undeniable that an individual of European descent, male gender, or heterosexual persuasion is statistically more likely to be better off than someone who isn't. (I spent a semester in Social Problems listening to a self-described Marxist, believe me, I know.) There're a few problems with this approach however.

First, most disadvantages associated with race and gender are caused by the culture one is raised in, and by misguided government policies.  Active discrimination plays a relatively small role in determining life outcomes in most cases. Nevertheless, as a rationalist and a libertarian, I'm trying to combat both bigotry and the structural causes of racial and gender inequality. Why should I be feeling guilty?

(If you don't think "privilege" implies guilt, you probably haven't spend much time on tumblr.)

More importantly, acknowledging that certain traits are statistically correlated with better outcomes doesn't tell us anything definite about the individual in question, nor how to compare two individuals in particular. You can generalize, sure, but that's kinda how this whole racism/sexism/homophobia thing started in the first place.

So why, then, are we expected to check our laundry list of privileges? How do you come so close to true individualism, and then swerve right into biocollectivist territory?

My confusion should have been a giant neon sign saying "PAY ATTENTION TO THIS." Instead of trying to figure it out, I wandered off to other posts. It never stopped bothering me, and finally I realized we were dealing with an Isolated Demand for Rigor.

Fundamental Ignorance of Others applies to everyone. Unless you're a telepath, you can only infer what other's lives are like from exterior evidence. This particular argument, however, makes strong assumptions about broad categories of people, and only then invokes Fundmental Ignorance as a defense.

This is incredibly convenient for social justice types. It allows them to shield off an entire group from criticism, on the grounds that their critics are unaware of their privilege. It may be the case that a particular individual does not appreciate the hardships [oppressed group] endures, but all too often privilege is used as a fully general counterargument.

Fundamental Ignorance of Others should not be a fully general counterargument. There will be times when insufficient data is present to make an accurate deduction, but that shouldn't stop us from evaluating each case to the best of our ability. If we're going to truly understand one another, we need to remember that inessential features are not determining factors, regardless of statistical correlation. Probabilities are just that: probabilities. This is the crux of individualism.

Obligatory December Post

I want to meet my goal of making three more posts before the year ends, but I've got nothing. Which is to say, I've got 15 drafts but not the willpower to finish any of them. Instead, I'm going to ramble a bit and you're free to ignore me.

Part of my problem is that I've got all these grandiose notions and no good way to implement them. Take, for instance, my forthcoming post on the Single Transferable Vote. I'd be just thrilled if every state of the union adopted it tomorrow, but that's not going to happen. No one with the power to do it, has the incentive. Indeed, many of them have a strong incentive against it. Minor parties love the idea, but Republicans and Democrats--not so much. How do we convince them to put it in place? I haven't the foggiest.

It's a great deal like issues of drug legalization. Despite widespread support, it moves along at a snail's pace. Part of that can be blamed on the federal government, which will pull highway funding and continue to conduct drug raids to confiscate legal substances. To end the drug war, we have to challenge the existing laws and regulations made in Washington.

That's basically impossible because a plurality, if not majority, of Congressmen will be voted out of office for seeming "soft on drugs." Even if they know a policy will be good for the country in the long term, their constituents don't know (or worse, don't care).

This is, incidentally, the reason that nobody ever cuts spending without a showdown. "We saved the country from a government shutdown!" goes over better than "We agreed to raise your taxes and cut your benefits," even if the latter is a smarter plan.

Scott Alexander calls this Moloch, the demon of perverse incentives. It basically rules our society, and there's no easy way to combat it.

There's a few things you can do, of course. First of all, extend your time horizon. If I ever run for a legislative office, I'm not going to plan on reelection. Unless the polls are in my favor, I won't even run for a consecutive term. I would rather do a good job, that people remember later, than gain their benefit at the time.

To put it another way: statesman should not be a career.

Another thing is to donate to charity. Yes, an Objectivist is telling you to be altruistic. But I do it a somewhat unconventional way. There's a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome called Tab For a Cause, which displays a few ads every time you open a new tab. Proceeds are directed towards reputable charities like Human Rights Watch, Water.org, and Conservation International.

Individual tabs aren't worth much, but they add up. Since I started in mid-September, my tabbing alone has raised about $7.30--or enough to give a year of clean water to six people in the developing world. This is without any significant time, money, or behavior change on my part.

(Also, if you follow the specific link there, I get more tabber points, called "hearts," which I'll be donating to Educate!)

Probably the most important thing you can do, though, is the recognize your own strengths and weakness (then improve on both). As much as it pains me to admit, one person can't make society rational, peaceful, and prosperous. However, you can increase your own rationality and productivity, and help those around you do the same.

Notes on Spaceflight Economics

[ICYMI: First Flight Test Is Successful for NASA’s Orion Spacecraft]

Since NASA decided to retire the space shuttle, it seems the trend in spacecraft design has been more intimidating rockets, with more intimidating price tags, for single use missions. I'm pretty much alone over in my corner says "smaller, simpler, reusable."

(If you follow space news, they you probably realize I'm not quite alone in advocating reusable launch vehicles, and there's exciting progress on that front. Yet most NASA fans haven't quite gotten the memo.)

After today's Orion test flight, I discussed frustrations about the dominant approach with my friend Ben. Once finals are over I'll follow up this post with a more detailed explanation, but I want to record the main insights--along with my own thoughts--before they're buried in the chat logs.

• Getting materiel out of the gravity well is most important.
• One large rocket is less efficient (with regard to fuel) than many small rockets.
• Launching one large rocket is less efficient (with regard to materials) than launching many small rockets provided the smaller rockets can be easily reused.
• Smaller payloads would be financially viable if they can be easily assembled in orbit.
• My aerospace aesthetic is "design with an emphasis on 'nothing that explodes and flies away'"

That's all for the time being

The Return of Snail Mail?

A few days ago, I did something unusual: I went to the post office and mailed a package. Consequently, I've been thinking about both online and offline communication.

We all know how, in recent years, the United States Postal Service has been suffering, primarily due to email and Skype, among other thing. Recently, they've attempted to fight back, in one case with an ad saying "no one ever hacked a refrigerator door." That's true (unless you have a networked fridge, because those apparently exist), but it's not exactly reassuring.

The simple fact is, the federal government can read your communications, and probably doesn't need a warrant to do it. Which makes me wonder if perhaps there's a market for physical mail, privately delivered.

The Marble Sorter

Outdated logo? Yes.

My shortlist of Things I am Still Not Over reads something like this:

1. All the arguments I've ever lost
2. The 2012 Republican Presidential Primary
3. The Marble Sorter

For those blessedly unaware, the marble sorter is an assignment in the Project Lead The Way pre-engineering program. Small teams of students are tasked with designing, building, and testing a system to sort marbles based on color. The project format has changed a number of times, including the materials (we used fischertechniks, I believe Vex is now standard), plus the many tweaks teachers make to fit their resources. But that's inconsequential.

What matters is how badly my partner and I failed, and why.

In the end, we never did get a decent performance. The criteria specified that all the marbles would be dropped into the machine at once, and then sorted by color into three categories. (Marbles came in blue, black, and clear. Extra credit was available if it could distinguish between dark blue and black marbles.) In the end, ours could distinguish between clear and opaque marbles, under the right conditions, if they were loaded one by one. On a project worth a huge percentage of the semester grade, we got around fifty percent.

And we had to fight for that. We came in early, and stayed late. Principles of Engineering was right before lunch, and I missed a few meals for that project. It inhabited my dreams (I know, I was keeping a journal for Psychology). I fantasized about tearing it apart and starting afresh, and over four years later I'm still thinking about it.

But that wouldn't have made a difference, because Nathan and I weren't using good engineering practice.

There's a programming proverb: "resist the urge to code." In engineering, this applies to both the software and the hardware. It strikes me as odd the Principles of Engineering curriculum didn't mention it. Maybe it did and the lesson just didn't stick. Regardless, we ignored any cautionary impulse, and began building with only an excuse for a plan. We drop the marbles into a hopper, they roll down a chute, a door lets one out, the photosensor tells us its color, put the bins on a track that moves back and forth, and another door opens to drop the marble into the appropriate bin. What could go wrong?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

I could go into many, many details, but (fortunately for you, readers) I've forgotten most of them. I still have my notebooks lying around somewhere, but our slack documentation would have gotten us fired from any worthwhile company. This itself was another bad practice, which hamstrung our ability to replicate more successful approaches and identify what wasn't working.

One of those things was our approach to the materials. I'd experienced fischertechniks in middle school at a PTLW-sponsored summer program, and really should have understood just how stubborn they are. Yet we blundered ahead as if they were modelling clay, and burnt through huge chunks of our limited time trying to make them bend to our will.

A particular instance that sticks out in my memory: the mess we made trying to build and secure one of the doors. What's worse, though, was trying to reconstruct it after taking it apart. In retrospect, the situation was ridiculous. The whole system was elevated for no good reason. We had to build ridiculous struts and cantilevers, when we could have just attached the motor cleanly if we'd had the sense to set the system on a lower platform.

Unnecessary elevation brings us to our next point: ignoring basic scientific principles.

For a system driven largely by gravity, you would think doing some physics would occur to us. Then again, I'd only had the briefest introduction.

In the final days of the project (when we'd already missed the deadline and were fighting for completion points) we had several recurring frustrations. First, our chute, hopper, and bin systems didn't work very well at containing the marbles. They had an annoying tendency to bounce right out of the marble sorter altogether. The reason for this was very simple: elevating the system gave the marbles too much potential energy.

Potential energy was also the root cause of our second problem. No matter how much time we spent tweaking, we never could figure out the precise time the doors needed to open and close. We'd run several tests with an individual marble, then find all our measurements useless when we dumped the whole load in.

We had some clue at the time that it was the marbles' collective weight pushing on the marble, which usually resulted in two or three getting through. With my current knowledge of physics, I realize it's an application of weight and Newton's Third Law.

Weight  = mass * gravitational acceleration

Force = mass * acceleration

In the first equation, mass refers to that of the marbles altogether. In the second, it's the mass of an individual marble. Stated symbolically:

m_load * accel_grav = mass_marble * accel_marble

For the non-STEM people out there, this means the accelerationspeed a marble goes through the gate is related to the number that have already gone through. Later marbles go through slower than earlier ones.

We spent hours trying to find the right gate time, instead of taking a more sophisticated approach--either varying the gate time, or redesigning the hopper and chute to eliminate the gravitational effect.

Our final problem was more technical than scientific, because we knew the principle at play here. How do you measure slight differences in pigment when the ambient light is so variable? The obvious answer is to fully enclose, to the greatest degree possible, the area where pigment measurements are taken. We did this, but only with considerable reluctance and didn't do a very good job of it, because we still had some trouble.

The already flawed design, which we waited too late to modify, had a lot to do with it. We didn't know about sunk costs--yet another reason engineers need to learn economics. We had this problem in the first place, because we didn't consider external factors in developing our design.

At the time, the marble sorter almost drove me to a mental breakdown. Failure after failure had me seriously doubting the validity of reason (the unstated assumption was that I was operating rationally). I think it should now be clear this was not the case. After five years, the lessons are sinking in, and I'm finally get some closure. If only the other two items on the list were so easy.

Thought on Debate

A single well-put question is often more powerful than pages of argument for or against a position.

Today, two friends of mine got into a heated argument (when the hard feelings from our last major fracas had barely begun to fade) over the term "meritocracy." One person expressed a sentiment favoring meritocracy over our current system. The other thought we already had meritocracy, especially in politics, in the form of popularity. They went back and forth on this for some time.

The entire matter could have been avoided if someone had just asked "what do you mean by merit?" Instead of arguing for or against, they could have properly defined their terms, and gone forward with a more civil discussion of whether we should value experience and skill, and how perceived value fits into the equation.

We often don't know what our opponent is thinking, which itself can be frightening to admit. Even when the difference is simply due to imprecisions of language, we can't be sure just what our opponent will throw at us. Primate brains don't like not knowing, especially when those same primate brains evolved in environments where losing arguments usually meant death or status loss.

Try to remember that your friends (probably) won't kill you if they win a minor debate. Instead, see if you can figure out what they're getting at. Both of you just might learn something new.

Learning to Apply Social Protocol

Living at home affords a few advantages one would not immediately think of. My parents have gone without me to the Mensa Halloween party while I was at Purdue. This was the first time I've attended since 2011.

There's a man, whose name I believe is David, who always attends. I don't know his story or what his connection is to Mensa, but he is developmentally or socially challenged. It's difficult to understand and talk with him, but he's quite friendly in his rough way. In the past, my conversations with him have been awkward and unproductive. Consequently, I try to avoid them, and have always felt bad about that, especially because he's very good at remembering names. Tonight, when he notice me, he waved and shouted to me, and I immediately waved and said hi back.

I suppose I should feel a stronger connection to him, because my social skills aren't very good, either. Usually, my reaction is delayed and often inappropriate. Many situations overwhelm me until a flow is established, and that's just what happened when our host first greeted us. It wasn't until afterwards that I realized how automatically and correctly I responded to David.

It's progress. And progress feels good.

Dreaming and Doing

This webcomic has been going around tumblr (and probably other places I don't frequent), and I think it has a pretty good message. One of my friends quite vocally disagreed, so I want to talk about dreaming and doing a bit more extensively.

First of all, we have to define out terms. Dreaming and doing are two different things, and dreamers and doers are two more different things. In this context, at least, dreaming is the act of thinking about what you would like to accomplish, and doing is act of making it happen. A dreamer is someone who spends more time or effort dreaming than doing; a doer, the reverse.

There's nothing wrong with dreaming. No, more than that. You should dream. Before you can lay down any concrete goals, you need abstract notions of what you want to do. In fact, I'd venture that a great deal of our Gen Y angst could be avoided if we were given the option to really look before we leap.

But dreaming is not an end in itself. It's not even a means to an end. If you want to achieve your dreams, you're going to have to invest a lot of doing in them.

(Well, let me qualify that. If you're happy to imagine what you could be doing, instead of actually doing it, then dreaming is an end in itself. I wonder how many people will admit to that being satisfactory?)

Dreaming has a role to play in achieving those dreams. You need a reminder of what you're working towards, and you need to figure out just what that is. But you also need to sit down and work.

Happy Sputnik Day, Everyone!

Humans Need Not Apply

If you're going to follow the post-scarcity series at all, you need to watch this video by CGP Grey

Colonizing Antartica

My obsession with Antarctica has awakened from dormancy, at least for a little while. Here's some thoughts I had.

If I'm going to establish a colony on the southernmost continent, it needs to be mostly autonomous. Currently, every research station is heavily dependent on food, fuel, and building materials from the mainland. This makes sense: their purpose is science, not settlement.

An autonomous, long-term settlement is going to need three things to support its inhabitants. First, it has to provide them with enough food. Second, it needs to keep them warm. Third, it has to be stable.

Antarctica isn't exactly known for being a lush paradise. The predominant natural resource is snow. Near the coast, there's the possibility of fishing, best conducted during the summer months. Considering these fisheries are largely untapped, it shouldn't be too difficult to store up plenty for winter.

There's also the possibility of horticulture. Despite being low in the sky, the sun shines continuously for about half the year, allowing enormous crop growth. They already do this in Alaska, but they have something we won't: fertile soil. We'll have to import our own, and maintain it (through recycling our own wastes). Hopefully food plants like dead fish bits.

We can supplement our food supply by growing things under sun lights in winter time, which brings us to the next problem: energy. Right now, pretty much all power is produced by generators, burning fuel brought down by plane. Importing oil is both unclean and expensive, so we need a better alternative.

The first possibility that I think of is nuclear power, which has actually been done before. However, nuclear reactors are very expensive, not to mention the international community frowns on them, Once a large community has been established it might be viable, but until then we need an alternative.

Even if battery technology improves drastically over the next few years, the months of night make solar still a no-go. I'm not going to rule out geothermal just yet, but I think wind is our best bet.

Consider it. Antarctica has a huge wind potential--after snow, that's probably the easiest resource to exploit. You just have to find a site with relatively constant flow, set up some turbines, and enjoy cheap, regular energy for your base.

That's one constraint on where you build. The other is stability.

One of the big issues for Antarctic explorers has been ice flows. Most of the continent is covered with glaciers, which are moving. If you build on top of them, your base moves with it. Obviously, this isn't something we want for our fledgling colony. We'd like to avoid a Little America situation. There's two ways we can deal with this.

The first is to build our colony where it won't move. This may be as simple as affixing it to one of the rock formations poking through the ice, or could involve building the settlement in one of the Antarctic mountains. Of the two, the former is significantly easier, though offers less security. I anticipate large communities will develop along protected mountains than in the open.

Plains settlements have a possible solution, however. Properly constructed, bases could be moved regularly. Such bases are harder to insulate, which is why permanent Antarctic stations are built on rocky coasts or so far inland a few kilometers drift is nothing to worry about. We'll probably have to do the same thing.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter as of right now. I'll let you know if anything else comes to mind.

Scarcity

Scarcity has been a constant of human existence.

I was initially tempted to say "since [time x]," but scarcity existed long before humans. In fact, every species has experienced scarcity, and every species will. There will always be something lacking--food, water, space, or time. The forms vary, but demand has always exceeded supply.

That might be about to change.

Historically, I've rejected the idea "post-scarcity economy" on principle. The universe is finite--the resources of our planet certainly are--so there can never be unlimited abundance. That said, technological advances mean that supply will soon exceed demand, making pseudo-post-scarcity (hereafter referred to simply as post-scarcity) possible.

Human nature being to reproduce, and the universe still being finite, this condition (probably) won't continue forever. However, it could go on for a very, very long time. We need to be thinking about it, but that's not the purpose of this post. For now, I'd just like to enumerate the forms of scarcity.

Scarcity of Energy

Energy underlies everything we do. Hunger is one of the most ubiquitous human afflictions, because we need constant energy inputs--food--to survive.

Plants get their energy from the sun, and their nutrients from the soil. They traded mobility for security, and as a consequence, became the bottom of the food chain. Other organisms found another way to operate, gaining both nutrients and energy by consuming other organisms. It's less efficient, but allows the consumer the freedom to move. That was the first step in gaining control over nature (but I digress).

The problem of food production has, in fact, been effectively solved. Famines and malnutrition are more a problem of distribution. However, the forms of energy needed proliferated greatly when we became a technological species.

But even the problem of energy production has been solved. Nearly unlimited energy from the nuclei of atoms is at our disposal. We call it nuclear and solar power.

Of course, you say, "but we don't have unlimited energy! That can't be right!" Again, the barriers are not in production, but in distribution. Enough uranium and thorium are present to power the world several times over, but nuclear generating stations are difficult and expensive to construct, thanks to overzealous regulators and so-called 'environmentalists.' Their preferred method, solar panels, is really just another sort of nuclear energy, using a reactor over a hundred million kilometers away. But solar panels are typically inefficient, and that energy is challenging to store or transport.

Developments in lithium batteries and superconductors present the possibility of practical solar power, and a more rational electorate would allow nuclear power to reach its potential. Even without the long-awaited invention of cold fusion, effective energy abundance can be achieved by the century's end.

Scarcity of Resources

Material goods have been the primary source of human competition for the majority of history. There are many causes for this, and it is not my purpose to discuss them here. We accept the fact as it is, and ask what it means for us.

Only so much arable land, potable water, building materials exist for humans to use. The things we use to shelter our bodies, produce our food, and entertain ourselves are fundamentally limited. Generally, the amount people require or desire has far exceeded the amount their environment can provide. Human ingenuity has solved this problem just as it has solved the problem of energy. Tools and materials our savanna ancestors could never have imagined using form the basis of a modern economy. Steel, coal, uranium, granite, petroleum are all but useless to supporting life, but we've made them work for our purposes.

All of these are still limited. Terra's natural resources must be divided, whether equally or unequally, among her human population. Making matters worse, the vast majority are unavailable to us. It is no exaggeration to say that Mars is closer to our own planet's core.

Remember that last sentence. We'll be coming back to it.

Scarcity of Labor

Labor actually hasn't always been scarce, so to speak, throughout history. If it were, we wouldn't have economically-illiterate progressives arguing to raise the minimum wage. In most western nations, actually, there's more people willing to do things than there are things to do.

Frontiers are the general exception to the rule, where work is plentiful but people are few and far between (at least, since we got the whole agriculture thing figured out). There are other reasons why so many people leave comfortable lives in the city to conquer the wilderness, but that itself is a big one.

Nevertheless, employers are always looking for ways to reduce the amount of labor they need (and laborers are always trying to get away with providing as little labor as possible). Neither of these are very productionist approaches to things, but it's the way most people operate. Automation has been the primary means for reducing labor costs--and, very soon, we may have complete automation of nearly everything.

This is quite frightening, both because of the AI implications, and the question of what we're all going to do when no human is needed to run the economy. I'll try tackling with these questions later in the post-scarcity series.

Scarcity of Time

Only one form of scarcity do I not see us overcoming within the next thirty years, and that is scarcity of time. I could be wrong about that, though.

We all have only so many cell divisions available to us. From the instant of conception we're racing against a biological clock. Healthy lifestyles can reduce the frequency of cell divisions, but there's no way (yet) to increase the number.

Other possibilities will be discussed down the road.

Conclusion

The universe is still finite, so some form of scarcity will always exist. However, there may be a time in the near future where supply far exceeds demand, and this is going to have some major social repercussions. To minimize the negative effects of drastic change, I believe it is vitally important to look ahead.

Will you?

Internal Affairs

There's a couple other changes I'd like to address.

First of all, I'm reworking my labels. Instead of listing out every topic that's even been tagged, I'll be choosing a handful to use for series of posts that deal with topics I discuss frequently. For instance, I'm working on a "post-scarity" series that will be going out over the next few weeks.

There's also going to be an "internal affairs" label for posts such as this, to make it easier for readers (primarily me) to keep track of the blog's development.

Progress on finding a new theme has been slow. I'll probably have to give in and tweak each element individually. Or I could just keep using a default and focus on content. Yeah, like that'll happen.

Hope all you hypothetical readers had a good weekend.

New Directions for Autumn

In typical form, I neglected this blog most of the summer. Well, at least I'm consistent.

Autumn is here, which means schoolwork, yard work, normal work, and carrying around more insulation on a daily basis. Moreover, the dead and dying plants all are a constant reminder that my time in the universe is limited. Life goes on, but I won't. Procrastinating joy is not an option.

This has a few implications.

My primary problem, simply put, is that I waste too much time on trivial matters. Recreation is fine, so long as it doesn't get in the way of what you really want to do. Being honest with myself, it does.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be following my friend Amelia in a social media purge (though I don't expect mine to be nearly as drastic). A lot of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and tumblr blogs are going to left by the wayside. It's really quite horrifying when I realize I've spent the last ten minutes scrolling past posts that don't interest me whatsoever.

Removing that distraction set can make way for more productive forms of entertainment. I'd gotten out of reading habit at college. My plan was to fix that this summer; the pile of books lies almost untouched. I'm finally starting to pick them up again, and we'll see how far I get before the end of the year. What I can say already: this is a much better use for mindspace.

Speaking of which, I also need to make academics--particularly my science, mathematics, and engineering coursework--a greater part of my everyday thought process. To put it differently: my career is a System 2 matter, when it should be System 1. (Thinking, Fast and Slow is near the top of the reading list.) Doing my homework is the simplest way to improve on this, but not the only one.

Khan Academy and Codecademy, among others, are wonderful resources that, despite great enthusiasm, I've largely neglected. I'll be making greater use of them in the future, partially as an alternative to social media, and partially for their own sake. Additionally, I'm going to start practicing engineering problems for their own sake. You'll be seeing that appear on this blog.

This space will also feature more insightful political and economic discussion. My friend Chas recently showed me CGP Grey's video Humans Need Not Apply. It has...had an effect on me. I'll be talking about the implications of large scale automation for the next several weeks, at least.

(More mundane changes to this blog: I'm looking for a new theme, and posts will be in Garamond from now onforget that. Several drafts are going to be abandoned, and several others finally finished. Perhaps I'll even make my goal of posting every week!)

Last but not least, I'm devoting slightly more thought and action towards my own health. My diet is a bit subpar, which I've already done a bit to improve. My sleep schedule is a great deal worse, but will improve drastically if I cut out the social media (especially on the nights when I get home late from work or school).

Let's see how well this works out.

Full Moons and the Digital Age

I went out to take a look at the full moon while it was still Friday the 13th, which got me thinking about why the full moon is supposed to make people crazy. I can't pass any judgement on triskaidekaphobia, but the full moon is an interesting phenomena.

Luna certainly affects life on Terra. Everything from the tides to wolf hunting behavior to human menstrual cycles are influenced by its orbital period, primarily through gravity and reflected light. It's not hard to think of good reasons why. Considering how light affects human actions, it makes sense that the greater nighttime illumination offered by a full or gibbous moon could change how people act.

I have my own hypothesis for how full moons and strange behavior became associated. In pre-industrial societies, Luna was the only major source of light after sunset (and candles really didn't do much for interior lighting, either). When we think about how much time agriculture and other forms of manual labor take up, those people would be thankful for the extra hours afforded by a full moon.

The thing is, staying up later makes people tired, and tired people do foolish things. Ergo, people are crazy around a full moon--both before and after.

In our modern age, however, we don't spend much time looking at the moon. In fact, most of the light that keeps us awake comes from television, phone, and computer screens. Perhaps the decrease in that superstition can be traced to the advent of television, or all the way back to widely-available lightbulbs.

Either way, I'm turning the laptop off and going to bed. 

The Choice

There comes a point in every person's life where he must choose whether he will be ruled by the pursuit of pleasure or that or joy. To state it differently, the question is whether his body will be a tool of his mind, or the reverse. Many people never fully make that choice, and remain suspended between animal and human being.

It's not an easy decision to make, but I'd rather make it--and retain the possibility of happiness--than not.

Two Years on Facebook and Misanthropy

I remembered last night that I first signed up for Facebook at the end of April; after a bit of clicking and scrolling, I realized that it was today, the 29th day of the fourth month of 2012 that I signed up. In the grand scheme of the universe, this is pretty dratted insignificant, but it does mark an interesting anniversary in my life.

Specifically, it was at that point that I really began to explore the weird world of the internet. Before that point, I'd wandered around YouTube a few times, and wasted a considerably amount of time on the Cheezburger websites, but really hadn't gotten into it. Now, going to college and having a lot more computer access, in the form of this laptop I'm presently using, were probably equally important factors in this. Joining Facebook stands out nonetheless.

The big thing I've taken away from all my experiences in Facebook, YouTube, Cheezburger, xkcd, definitely Tumblr, and more recently, Twitter, is a confirmed sense of overwhelming misanthropy. Every time I start feeling good about humanity, I can just head over to one of those websites and come away with a renewed hatred (or at least apathy) for human beings.

This probably isn't a good thing, but it's an undisputable fact. Now the question is: how do I react to it? Well, I've had some doubts recently about whether I'm an INTJ or INTP recently, but in either case, my first instinct is analysis. (Why do you think I was being introspective about my Myers-Briggs, anyway?)

Let's begin by looking at an example, which was instrumental in realizing whole internet-makes-me-hate-people thing. It's a Tumblr blog, which, if you hang around that corner of the web, you've probably heard of: the-unpopular-opinions. TUO, as I'll hereafter refer to it, started with what I believe was a good premise: challenge the prevailing (and often irrational) trends of tumblr thought by creating a place for people to state their unpopular opinions anonymously.

The problem is: TUO has gone to shit, if you'll pardon my French. A sizable portion of the opinions relate to fandom in-fighting, quite a few are just people whining about the gamut of social justice issues without contributing anything of value, and the vast majority are badly articulated emotional drivel. I could write an entire essay about how emotional arguments are useless, and the best way to really convince someone is to reason with them like you're both psychopaths, but I want to get this up before midnight EDT, so I won't.

I think TUO is indicative of a great trend in human action: so long as people get hold of something, it begins the decay. This may be an example of tragedy of the commons, but I think the problem is larger than that. People, as a generalized group, aren't very good. Any one individual is bad at almost every conceivable thing. For example, we're all very bad at photosynthesizing, which is why mammals are heterotrophs. More concretely, I don't know anything about bricklaying, which is why I wouldn't base my career around it. I would need to learn the skill, and thus overcome that barrier to entry, before I would begin building walls.

On the internet, those barriers to entry don't exist. Without excluding certain individuals from websites, it's nearly impossible to prevent someone from giving their unwarranted input in discussions. Now, injecting new perspectives into dialogue is usually a good thing, but when someone has no stake and no real interest in a particular matter, they feel no desire to do a good job in their discussion. As such, those who do not refrain from commenting pollute the intellectual waters.

If you're trying to burn time, as many people online are, this leads to the awfulness mentioned above. It takes, let's say, ten minutes to make a post on TUO (probably less, in fact). As such, unless you feel strongly about an issue and have thought on it extensively, you're not likely to make it very good. Most of the submissions clearly fall into neither category. Consequently, a method of discussing serious and controversial topics became another pathetic footnote of Internet history.

Far outside the confines of the web, the problem still exists, though in more limited form. People who don't care still interact and make their collective action known, without thinking. What sort of interaction? Almost every sort. They wipe their feet on public doormats unnecessarily. They throw trash in parks. They hit elevator buttons multiple times. In sum, they cause a great deal of pointless (and that would have great emotion in it) destruction and decay.

It seems strange to write this as an Objectivist, but a great element of wisdom is know when not to act, which is nearly always. Action should be intelligent, purposeful, and deliberate. It should maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes. It should benefit you without harming others, whether that is physically, financially, or psychologically. To really succeed in this enormous game that we call life, it is our duty--to ourselves, to our friends, to our families, and to the other minds that we know only as strangers--to be the most conscious beings we can be.

And realizing the unimportance, and, in fact, stupidity, of so many of our mundane actions is part of that.

Idea for this Summer

I realized that I've got a considerable supply of model rocketry equipment, accumulated over the years, that's been largely unused. I really should have made use of that last summer. Oh well.

Anyway, this summer, I think I'd like to build a stand to fire some of the smaller engines horizontally. Not entirely sure how, but concrete is cheap. Figuring out how much I need would actually be a rare practical application of my high school physics.

I'd need to check the legality of this before beginning, of course.

School Pride as Civic Nationalism

I've never had much use for school pride. Perhaps it's was my non-athletic upbringing, perhaps it was transferring to a different high school for PLTW, or perhaps it was simple disillusionment that prevented me from taking any pride in educational institutions.

An interesting thought that occurred to me in the sleep-deprived hours of the last few days was that school pride is essentially a form of civic nationalism. Schools can't behave in a militarist or imperialist manner, given their nature as public institutions, often with delineated geographic hegemony. Even on a highly competitive market, the vying for students and public-relations machinations would hardly count as real battle--though more on that later.

Yet the attitude promoted by school administrations is decidedly nationalistic. I think this fits the bill of civic nationalism, encouraging students to join together as a community. There's no real way to ensure that they adopt this approach--you cannot force a mind--but most students are perfectly happy to play along.

As an individualist, this attitude bothers me. First of all, it is rarely used to genuinely improve an institution. In education, no changes to the teaching system are ever effected through school pride. All reform is channeled through the conduits laid out by the administration (which, incidentally, never puts the faculty's neck on the line). Moreover, school pride is usually most prevalent in the context of athletic competitions, which in truth have nothing to do with the alleged purpose of imparting knowledge.

This model breeds docility, though, which is what really bothers me. Civic nationalism is easily translated into militarist nationalism--remember those athletic competitions? They desensitize children to physical, even violent, conflicts: the perfect training for imperialist war abroad and the police state at home. As others have commented, it really is amazing that we haven't become a dictatorship by now.

In a more immediate sense, civic nationalism lets us overlook our own problems. It's easy to forget your own failings when harping on the inferiority of others. If we want to see real social progress, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as a society. and embrace the reality that we're individuals, each pursuing perfection in our own way.

Capitalism and Reactionism

I've been planning to do a major post on marketing the free market for awhile now, but there's one point I want to get out right away. Here it is:

Capitalism is, and generally has been, associated with conservatism. In the jargon of the far left, it's a reactionary ideology. I don't agree with this at all, and I think that modern-day libertarians really need to distance themselves from certain aspects of the conservative movement. That most libertarians are former Republicans is no help in this matter. Many of us continue supporting the GOP instinctually (giving the raging statism of the Democratic Party, this isn't necessarily bad). That said, there are still several major areas for improvement.

First off, we need to drive a wedge between traditionalism and cultural conservatism. Promoting the ideals of individualism, reason, and order do not require the European ethnic trappings and Judeo-Christian imagery that is generally associated with the Right. There's nothing inherently wrong about those (waits for the Objectivist handwringing...), but they aren't an essential element of capitalism or libertarianism.

Moreover, we should make clear our dedication to reason and the scientific method, without the statism the left has married to them. It's part of the rationality trap*: those who devote themselves to finding thought-based solutions all too often try to apply that model to fields where it is not applicable (e.g. social organization). If libertarians (including the religious ones) can demonstrate to the public that science can exist without the state, we can deprive the left of a fertile recruiting ground.

The best way to shrug off the 'reactionary' label is to become revolutionary in our ideals. That little word revolutionary should be handled with care. Violent uprising is not warranted and will not be effective--at least not at present. But as we continue to move into the political mainstream we must distance ourselves from that boogeyman of the "Establishment". The corporatist Welfare State is not our friend, and never can be. Throwing in with the cronies on Wall Street and the tenured politicians would be political suicide.

Capitalists must fundamentally reshape the system in our pursuit of a truly free society. We can't quibble over trivialities of the tax code and expect to get anywhere. No, what we need are sweeping reforms in almost all aspects of public life. It will be a costly political battle, but revolutionary capitalism can do what conservative capitalism never dreamed: restructuring society around production and trade.

Will there be room for a government in this free society? Quite possibly. Will it resemble that of today? Not a chance in the world.

_{*An idea I'll explain in a later post. See: The Intellectuals and Socialism by F. A. Hayek}

Improved Vocabulary for Discrimination

Something that's really been bothering me is the lack of descriptive vocabulary for discrimination. Sexism and racism have established good language precedents*, but they've been largely ignored. Instead, we have a jargon juggernaut of homophobia, transphobia, cisphobia, biphobia, and an ever expanding list of other things which aren't actually fears. Interestingly, discrimination based on age and physical ability have followed the precedent, producing the (arguably unnecessary) terms ageism, and ableism.

Above comments aside, I'm not going to argue the accuracy of oppression claims. I'm just going to lay out some new terms that cover the major areas. This list is by no means comprehensive.To help clarify, I'm including some of the terms they replace and/or subsume. Here goes:

• Racism: discrimination based on race and ancestry.
• Sexism: discrimination based on biological sex. Includes: misogyny, misandry
• Sexualism: discrimination based on sexual orientation. Includes: homophobia, homophobia, biphobia.
• Genderism: discrimination based on gender identity. Includes: transphobia, cisphobia.

There, was that really so hard?

Anticipated reaction to this post

*Despite the fact '-ism' is also used for ideologies, which really don't fall under the same categorical umbrella.

Some Thoughts on Higher Education

I'm in an emotional state and will probably disagree with this analysis to some extent at a later, cooler date, but here goes anyway.

College is a waste of time. The majority of my experience thus far has been an abject farce. In a capitalist society, these atavistic juggernauts would have died long ago, but the mixed economy has a special talent for preserving the worthless at the expense of the innovative.

My two freshman semesters were spent in a monstrosity euphemistically named "First Year Engineering." We learned nothing. Project Lead the Way taught the design process much more accurately to students four years younger in an hour. We waddled our way through the usual "diversity" bullshit and all the non-technical garbage of that nature.

First Year Engineering did teach us one thing: MATLAB, the primary calculating tool used here. But I think it's safe to say that only a blubbering moron could have done a worse job. Six weeks of variations on descriptive statistics--really? Then slamming us with graphic user interfaces--which naturally have so much to do with anything we'll be doing.

But what makes me write tonight is the science departments, though FYE fits into the broader theme. The individual engineering departments I've taken course in (to date, Aerospace and Mechanical) have generally been pretty well managed, though of course they had considerable room for improvement. But the pre-requisite classes in the mathematics and sciences divisions are absolutely disastrous. Why is that?

I think it's because students have no where else to go. Engineering students such as myself have to choose what flavor they want to take, and (especially in the first semesters) students will change if they decide that it isn't their cup of tea. The departments are in competition for students, even if they have a large base that will struggle through so long as the money hold out (myself with aerospace, for example).

But the basic math and science courses don't have that problem, do they? Once a course is added to an Engineering Department Plan of Study, they have a steady supply of students. It's very rare for a course to be struck from a P.O.S.

And we see the natural failure of a bureaucracy not subject to competition. Without the need to attract students, the professors have no strong motivation to correct mistakes in their content, improve their teaching methods, and so on. Only when too large a percentage of students start failing--and suddenly their tenure becomes suspect--does anything change.

First Year Engineering fits this mold, interestingly enough. They have a steady supply of students, most of whom will stick it out till they can move on to the greener if more arid pastures of their majors. They have absolutely no incentive to improve, and the bureaucracy there is worst than anywhere else. (From what I've heard described, I couldn't design a less-efficient system if I tried.)

How do we fix this problem? Here are a few suggestions:

• Just abolish set plans of study. Let students pick and choose what courses they want to take.
• Abolish tenure. Professors that can't teach, should either be taken away from teaching or forced onto the labor market.
• Increase the test-out options for students. If you can demonstrate you know the material, you shouldn't have to sit through useless introductory classes, forgetting more than you learn.

What I can say is this: if the problem isn't fixed by the time my children are ready to attend college, I'm not going to send them. Period. If they want to get ripped off, they can do it on their own dime.

In fact, I'd advise everyone to opt-out of college to the maximum extent possible. Our educational system is broken, and no amount of tinkering is going to fix it. We need to throw it out and start over, but that will never happen until we're willing to stop feeding the beast.

The High School Research Paper: A classic exercise in futility

It's one of the classic rites of passage in high school. Choose a topic you know little or nothing about, pull a thesis out of thin air, find a number of sources that somehow seem to support it, and slap the whole thing together into something generously called a paper. Rinse and repeat yearly, without learning anything significant in the process.

It's absolutely worthless, and an incredible waste of time.

Presumably, the high school research paper was invented to prepare students for the papers they would have to write in college. In practice, the value of the research paper, as opposed to other sorts of reports, is nil. Let me explain.

In college, one's studies are very concentrated, and few students write papers outside of their major after the introductory years, if at all. The key difference here: college papers are almost always on a topic the writer knows a great deal about.

High school papers are almost always about a topic the student doesn't know much about, which negates any value that the assignment might have in teaching methods. The high school student doesn't know the relevant academic journals and where to get them, has little or no access to specialized libraries, feels little love for the subject.

The value in high school research papers is to teach the methods, but in nearly every case, the elements are overlooked in the desperate struggle to collect sources and cobble together a reasonable theme. The value in citation, communication, and nuance is lost.

In my personal experience, a variety of smaller assignments were more conducive to teaching the desired skills. Short reports can teach sourcing and research methods without the pressure of collecting a great number. Citation-free themes can teach students to organize their thoughts. More reasonably-sized research papers can teach the integration of these techniques.

As with so many problems in education, it's the one-size-fits-all mentality to blame. All students are going into liberal arts , so naturally they need to know the methods that English majors use to write their analyses of limericks. But many students aren't. Engineers and scientists need to write lab reports. Historians need to instruction in finding materials. Educators need to know lesson planning. No two students have precisely the same needs. But onward we march, Taylorist machines, towards the future the central-planners have designed for us.

Suggestions for creating a libertarian country

If you spend much time around libertarians, you'll inevitably run across the totally genius idea of creating a new, libertarian nation. This has been tried in various ways before, and it usually fails quietly or catastrophically. That said, there's still a lot of unrealized potential for new country projects.

Since first encountering this idea, I've had a few insights about why it usually doesn't work out.

Be realistic

Most new country projects are handicapped by their founders rosy visions of utopia. A perfect anarcho-capitalist Free Territory or minarchist republic isn't going to happen anytime soon, and getting hung up on this accomplishes nothing. Going for a basic liberal capitalist democracy with a good constitution and above-par citizenry is much more practical.

A country is not a business model

Perhaps because new country projects are often cultish in nature, they often appropriate some of the worst ideas of new religious movements. In particular, running the new [thing] as a business.

Neither a nation nor a religion is a business model. A religion is a means for gaining moral guidance; a nation, safety and stability. Nations and religions develop for pragmatic reasons, and are only subverted by others at a later date.

Now, in the case of our libertarian micronation, the pragmatic reason is to develop a state that's capable of defending laissez-faire. Once that system is established, becoming wealthy from it is your own responsibility. Otherwise, the erstwhile libertarian is just another statist moocher.

Political Parties > Constitutions

Practically all of the libertarian new country proposals put their emphasis on the constitutions of these new countries, trying to avoid thinking about political parties. While building the legal framework for maintaining freedom is essential, I think that setting up the philosophical and social institutions necessary for preserving liberalism is an equally important job. A good constitution will not constrain those bent on perverting it (consider our own).

Instead, I think the nation-architects should focus on planning one or more liberty-minded political parties. I say multiple, because a duo or trio of parties might maintain equilibrium better than a single movement. Have these planned and ready to roll out upon independence, and you might be able to sustain freedom for a few generations.

Obviously, none of these solve the basic problem of raising the necessary funds to convince a government to part with some of its territory, or to build some of your own.

Personality Type and Social Organization

A lot of people put too much stock in personality tests like the Myers-Briggs, myself included. I'm still curious whether the results could be applicable to social structure.

For instance, NT types are supposedly skilled at theoretical analysis, and SF types are good at dealing with people. Could an organization use NTs to make many of the detailed decisions with broad implications, and the SFs to help maintain internal cohesion?

The psychologists in Human Resources should look into this. It'll do more to maximize your profits than just refusing to hire introverts because reasons.

Critique of Micronationalism

I first found out about micronationalism about five years ago, and have generally enjoyed my forays into that world. Looking back, though, there are a few criticism that I'd like to lay out.

These fall into two basic categories: important problems and unimportant quibbles. We'll start with the quibbles first.

Quibbles with Micronationalism

Okay, what's with the ridiculous names? It's like some of these people take an eastern European province and mash it together with a Russian transliteration and used it to name a country. Or it sounds like a realm from some fantasy novel. Or is hyperspecific (Principality of Hutt River is downright clean compared to most). I know that's a pretty silly thing to get worked up about, but after awhile I'd just like a nice [Republic/Kingdom] of [Normal-sounding place-name].

Similarly, their online presence leaves something to be desired. A few paid to have nice websites built, but most just took a course in HTML and went to town with it. In both cases, their websites are usually difficult to navigate and full of contradictory or redundant information. This leads me to one of my more serious criticisms.

Serious Problems in Micronationalism

Micronations, generally, aren't very well planned. Usually they start out as creative exercises in imagination that stick for entrepreneurial reasons. Naturally, this leads to some very weird histories, including outright fabrications. Because they aren't very well planned, micronationalists often come off pretty whiny in their attempts to gain independence and recognition, even when run by relatively stable and responsibly individuals (anyone who finds the idea of setting up a new country in your back yard is a little weird, myself included).

I think the reputation of micronations actually hurt serious independence movements and new country projects. When micronationalists declare the People's Republic of Backyardlandia, they draw negative media attention to the idea of setting up a new country. While well-organized micronations could help foster the idea in people's minds, for the most part, they taint the public perception of separatism.

At risk of sounding like an altruist, I'd advise micronationalists to think about others and put their own immediate interest aside for the sake of independence movements everywhere. Focus on developing community and identity before working on sovereignty. If you've got a reasonable large community that wants to secede, then go for it. Until then, keep the games to yourself.

That's some advice I could afford to follow, too.

Shkadov Thrusters

Shkadov Thruster and Dyson Rings (via Wikipedia)

A Shkadov Thruster is a proposed sort of stellar engine, which would be used to move an entire star system by redirecting the primary's radiation pressure. A star being piloted by a Shkadov Thruster wouldn't move very fast (if we built one for Sol, after 1 million years we would have moved less than .1 parsec), but given enough time it could end up moving fast relative to the surrounding stars.

Of course, the Sun is probably bigger than need be. A particularly luminous but much less massive star could accelerate much faster. Alternatively, a somewhat more massive but much more luminous star (F3, for example) might accelerate faster (I haven't done the math on it).

Additionally, energy collected by a Class C engine could supplement the thruster's thrust. Suppose a ring of collectors was set up about the star's equator, and the thruster was located above one the poles. The energy that might have headed out from the equator could instead by directed to electric propulsion drives.

What sort of star to use for this would depend in large part on how fast and far the architects want to go, and how long they want to be able to see returns on their investment.

Sleep

They say admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. I'm not sure precisely how true that is, but I'll put it out there. I sleep too much.

Perhaps it's because even on nights when I don't have insomnia it takes me a long time to go to sleep. Perhaps it's because upon waking I find the world no better than I left it, and dive back down. Perhaps my body is still too weak and feeble to operate on less than ten hours without complaining. Or maybe I'm just perpetually dehydrated.

It doesn't help that I think my cycle is longer than 24 hours. I could sleep twelve hours and then stay awake for sixteen, easily. In fact, that would probably be more efficient than what I do now. Unfortunately, our civilization is still dependent on daylight, and I am too dependent on "civilized" people to break from that cycle.

New Year's Resolutions

I made two resolutions this year: floss five times a week, and start using the Periodic Calendar more. I'm also going to try to post weekly.

Goals for the New Year, on the other hand, I've yet to finalize.