I nearly destroyed my cell phone a while ago. Hundreds of irreplaceable pictures, half-written articles, and about an hour of video of my kid were nearly lost because I did not back up the system for a while. One small accident nearly wiped out a lot of precious items and it got me to thinking on how we have all become accustomed to living on a knife edge, merely one seemingly meaningless mishap away from disaster. Where to begin…
Old-school “natural scientists” knew how to do everything – math, science, philosophy, linguistics, art, engineering… you name it. But there are no Renaissance people anymore. It is a rare person indeed that is multi-lingual, plays an instrument, can discuss history and philosophy at length, plays chess, and is an athlete as well as an aesthete. I am not talking about Sir Isaac Newton or Michelangelo, here – those are extreme examples. But today is not unusual to talk with someone who is tops in their field of interest only to discover that they rapidly are out of their depth when the conversation turns even slightly away from their expertise.
It doesn’t matter if it is football or Star Trek or cooking or hunting or opera or whatever. People are more interested in becoming “subject matter experts” in their own field rather than being somewhat knowledgeable over a wide range of topics. There is very little diversity of intellectual portfolios. The subjects people are comfortable with are becoming more and more specialized with very little overlap between them.
As I talked about in my Intelligence is Bliss post, I feel that all people know roughly the same number of facts – all that changes is the type of facts that each person knows. Instead of a broad and smooth curve covering a huge range of topics that lots of people can relate to, people are focusing more and more on less and less. Because the knowledge peak gets higher and higher, the reward (pay, praise, personal satisfaction, etc.) for that knowledge also goes up and this hides a problem.
The area under the “knowledge curve” has not changed so the base becomes narrower and narrower. The overlaps between people’s knowledge begin to disappear. Let use a Jenga analogy. You only have a certain number of blocks. The higher the blocks, the more unstable the structure. Any way you decide to look at it, this is a problem.
But individually, this is behavior to be praised – it is the very definition of success – so people pursue this goal without regard for what is being ignored. This single-dimensionality is rewarded because it is a very, very good short term strategy for success. It allows for no “back-up plan” because that implies that the primary plan could be just a little bit better if those “wasted” resources were used toward the primary goal instead. To further compound the problem, people actually get angry when terms like “cross-training” are brought up because there is friction and disharmony when someone’s personal fiefdom is threatened.
As another example, picture a couple of dozen plate spinners at a circus sideshow, each with their own plate to deal with. If one person gets tired, needs to go to the bathroom, steps out to feed the lions, or whatever it is no big deal because any of the others can pick up the slack. So why have 24 people on the payroll when 23 can do the job just as well? Or 22? Just bump up the pay a little bit for each of the remaining spinners – the saved money can be spent elsewhere, while the remaining people get a few extra bucks and get to become better at what they do. Win-win.
Over time that line of thinking results in the dependence of one or two highly paid specialists that can do nothing but their primary task. They can’t stop without seriously disrupting things, they can’t (or don’t want to) learn a new skill, no one else in the organization is qualified to take their place, and the budget for hiring and training new people has been used for other things. When that person eventually calls in sick, quits, or gets hit by a bus, knowledge is disrupted and the whole system feels the shock as it struggles to recover.
It is not sustainable. As the buttresses that make up the overlap between our skill sets dissolve the structure becomes weaker and weaker. Every single person is now a fragile yet critical load-bearing entity in some form or fashion. It is only a matter of time before the roof collapses from lack of internal support.
This seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon. Actors and actresses from the 1920s needed to excel at a huge range of skills (acting, dancing, singing, playing an instrument, horseback riding, etc.) just to be considered for a job and they got paid a fraction of what someone today who specializes in just one of those things. Your great-grandfather knew how to do everything from hunting to sewing to building a house, but you are hard pressed to figure out why the mower won’t start or why the fridge is making a funny noise – better call “the guy” and have him come out and look at it. Over the decades, “learned helplessness“ has been nurtured and rewarded by the pursuit of specialization and re-Christened "efficiency".
Expanding the view a bit from a personal or group level we see we are becoming more and more interdependent as a functioning society– not in the way a spider-web becomes stronger with the addition of each new thread, but in the way that the fractures on a thawing pond join just before the ice breaks with a resounding “CRACK”.
(To be continued…)
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
New Job Quiz
So, despite the floundering economy and your complete lack of tangible abilities you managed to trick some folks into hiring you for what I am sure is a very important position. Congratulations are in order!
Or are they?
Did you miss some danger signs that are often overlooked by overeager new hires? Take this quiz to find out if you should take the job or if you should go back to Johnny Appleseeding your resume around the country and watching The Price is Right. Enjoy!
1) The people who interviewed you were:
A) mostly dressed in suits and ties
B) mostly undressing you with their eyes
C) forcibly undressing you with their hands and teeth
2) Your new workspace could be described by people 100 years from now as:
A) an efficient if Spartan design
B) the primary reason behind The Collapse of the Long Long Ago
C) a den of sinful depravity the likes of which humanity had never seen
3) When you first saw your potential workspace what struck you as most impressive?
A) How shiny and new everything looked.
B) The fact that a CSI team could probably reconstruct a complete sandwich with all the nasty crud that was jammed in the keyboard and mouse.
C) When the light comes through the window just right, you can just make out the words "KILL ME" smeared onto the desk in what seems to be the previous occupant's tears.
4) Describe the bathrooms.
A) Clean and available.
B) 4 toilets for the 4 women that work there, 2 urinals and 2 toilets for the 96 men that work there. Tough but fair.
C) Number of "Wash your Hands" signs are inversely proportional to soap and paper towel availability.
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5) The interviewers told you that meetings where you work will be:
A) A weekly necessary evil for the efficient running of the company.
B) An daily unnecessary evil - more of a diabolical hobby, really.
C) Ten times longer than they need to be because they are dominated by one or two people that won't shut up with the wacky side comments.
6) The breakroom:
A) is a place to get soda or snacks
B) is a place to get soda or snacks assuming you have exact change in nothing but nickels and enjoy two-year-old Munchos and Tab.
C) has a microwave that it so filthy it is technically more "animal" or "vegetable" than "mineral".
7) How did you find out about the position?
A) Internet.
B) Guys in a black van kidnapped you while you were mowing the lawn.
C) Frothing madman on a streetcorner yelling random things at traffic mentioned it.
8) Why is the position open?
A) Company is growing.
B) Something about the volcano god demanding something...
C) Some guys in a black van came and got the other guy.
9) Your future boss appears:
A) smarter than the average bear.
B) angrier than the average bear.
C) smarter than the average chair.
10) On the brief company tour, what most describes the impression you got from seeing management interact with employees?
A) Aloof professionalism.
B) A definite pre-revolutionary France "let them eat cake" vibe.
C) Close relationship enjoyed by Skeksies and Gelflings.
.
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11) Regardless of how you actually answered the question, how did your gut respond when they asked "Where do you see yourself in 5 years"?
A) "Managing this division."
B) "Drinking wine from the skulls of my vanquished coworkers."
C) "Technology permitting, a little less than 5 light-years away from this awful, awful place."
12) Describe the vacation and sick leave package they offered you.
A) 2 weeks paid vacation 1 week sick leave per year.
B) 2 weeks total per year, but no days can be consecutive or border a weekend or holiday.
C) 2 weeks total per year, but specialized video cameras deduct bathroom breaks, sneezing, blinking, and happy thoughts automatically.
13) When they formally offered you the position, how did they notify you?
A) Letter in the mail.
B) Drunken rant on YouTube.
C) HR rep standing in your yard holding a boombox playing Peter Gabriel.
.
.
If you answered mostly "A", you should be good to go. If you answered mostly "B" or "C" you might want to draw unemployment for a little while longer. Hope this helps.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Intelligence is Bliss
There is no such thing as "smart" or "stupid". All people are equally "smart".
Think about it. The sheer number of things that a human has to learn in the first couple of years of life completely eclipses any learning that is done later. You only have to look at how a baby learns the things that you take for granted every day to get an idea of the millions of little facts that everyone has to know just to be able to get up in the morning and make it through the day without dying. Gravity makes things fall down. If I hold my cup like this, it spills. The red square does not fit in the round hole. When something has steam coming off of it, it is probably too hot to touch. What makes it even more astounding is that we are all largely self-taught.
All our brains are about the same size. We all have about the same number and quality of neurons. It seems like the capacity for storing information doesn't vary from person to person.
If it is not necessarily the number of facts that someone knows, is it the quality of those facts? What does that even mean? Who is to say that is it more important to know how long it takes light to travel from the sun to the Earth versus what the best sunscreen is to use for your baby? Is it somehow "smart" to be able to answer the Final Jeopardy question correctly, but "pedestrian" to be able to recite the recipe to grandma’s famous homemade biscuits? Is it better to know the details of Marco Polo’s travels or the directions to a good Italian restaurant?
Let's assume the answer depends on money - supply and demand, say. If the demand for a certain intellectual ability is large and the number of people that can supply that ability is small then the cost of that type of knowledge is high. Therefore those particular facts or abilities can be identified as those things that are "smart", right?
Well, no, of course not. It would explain why nuclear engineers get paid more than janitors, but so what? Does the knowledge of how thermal neutrons behave in a zirconium matrix somehow prevent the scientist from mixing bleach- and ammonia-based cleaners in his garage when he gets home from work? "Smart" people are killed every day because they lack one piece of information that people that make many times less than them know by heart.
Maybe being smart means being able to survive longer because smart people are better at assimilating information quickly. No. I doubt that car accidents are somehow inversely proportional to IQ. If that were the case, insurance companies would be pushing intelligence tests as a way to determine initial premiums or changing rates based on the number of accredited degrees the insuree has accumulated. Longevity may only indicate someone is lucky or risk-adverse. Lucky is not smart. Neither is boring.
It seems that the only real meaningful measure is that if the facts that someone knows increase quality of life, not quantity. If someone knows how to make themselves happy (in ways that are not disruptive or criminal, obviously) then these things they know must be considered "smart". Different things make different people happy – making money, watching football, religion, cooking, enjoying social interactions, etc. There is no universal set – we are all different.
So we come back to the beginning. There is no such thing as smart or stupid, only happy and unhappy.
Ignorance might be bliss, but being blissful is not ignorant.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Done, Done, Done.
Done. Done. Done. Done. Done.
That's it. No more CNN. I quit.
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About 6 months ago they held a poll at my gym to determine what stations should be displayed on the TVs in front of the treadmills and stationary bikes. I was shocked at the results because Fox News beat out CNN by a margin of 3 to 1. ( Both are currently available for the treadmill runners, by the way. Fox on Monitor 2, CNN on Monitor 6).
Prior to that poll I was absolutely certain only lunatics got their news from Fox - at least that's what Jon Stewart implies. I never watched it but brief glimpses of Glenn Beck's unfocused ranting and crying seemed to confirm that something was seriously wrong in the Quality Control department at Fox News.
Maybe this is the case, maybe not.
I don't consider myself a slow learner and I feel I am pretty tuned in to how the world works. But I am very embarrassed to remember thinking "Well, CNN may not be the best source for news, but at least it's dignified and marginally less overtly biased than that clearly deranged network over on Monitor 2". To word it another way, if President Obama caught Osama bin Laden and personally ground him to powder for a functional, free cancer cure of his own invention, Fox News would complain about the color of the container it comes in. On the other hand if Obama wins, say, the Nobel Peace Prize for doing absolutely nothing noteworthy whatsoever, then CNN would praise the awesome if speculative achievements that he will, of course, have in the future... based on iReports, I guess.
I get my news from multiple sources both offline and on. This way I can compare stories from a bunch of different sources, research facts, determine political leanings of the articles, etc. In addition I can go at my own pace which is about 50 times faster than the way the information dribbles out of the speakers of the TV or radio.
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I always avoid clicking on any links that have sensational sounding headlines that are tied to video links - I won't watch commercials if I don't have to. I have already mentioned that the best way to get me to change the channel is to tell me to wait until after the commercial break for an important update. In the rare cases the "pay attention to me" styled headline is too good to be ignored I still don't click on it - I go to Google News, do a keyword search, and scan the dozens of article headlines that come up until I either a) find a link that goes to a mainstream source that does not require me to watch a commercial or b) get all the info I need from piecing the headlines together without needing to actually read the articles or visit the sites.
I will also no longer be listening to CNN (or CNNHN) on XM Radio in the morning any more for two reasons, both ad related. The first reason is the Nancy Grace commercials where she demands that you watch her by saying "Don't make me issue a warrant". The second is Robin Meade's assertion that you would be somehow abnormal if you would rather listen to an alarm beeping than wake up to the sound of her voice.
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I guarantee you that I would cheerfully endure the most raucous buzzer imaginable than to be forced to listen to her awkwardly metered, lilting, permanently fake incredulous presentations of the "news". For those of you that watch HLN on TV, try listening to it with your eyes shut and focus on the transitions between the news articles. You can almost envision the words "OK, be sad" or "OK, now be wacky" at the top of the teleprompter before each article is read. And the fact that large numbers are expressed in unnecessarily dramatic holy-cow-can-you-believe-it tones is also grating (...the crisis could affect (dramatic pause) uh MILLION people!?!).
On a related note, the poll in the sidebar has been updated. I am extremely interested in your opinion.
The last straw was Lou Dobbs sarcastic, uneducated rant Thursday October 8th about NASA's LCROSS mission impacting the moon the next morning. The specifics of what he said are not important (you can probably find it on YouTube or similar) as the fact he was harshly throwing light on the fact he had no idea what he was talking about, but he was "agin it, dagburn it". I was disgusted. There was simply no place for that level of smarmy, insulting anger on a virtually 100% neutral-interest topic. Sure, spending millions on space missions might not be the nation's highest priority right now, but, Jeez, take it down six or seven notches, would you? And the fact that I know for sure he was out to lunch here puts a lot of other stuff he said in the "questionable" column.
I will be deleting CNN from my quick access buttons on DirecTV and on XM Radio. I will still hit the website as part of my morning routine just in case they start to get their act back together.
I will sort of miss Wolf Blitzer and especially miss Jack Cafferty (I love that guy... So angry!).
In the meantime, you can catch me on the treadmill in front of Monitor Two. At least I know for a fact that stuff is all garbage... They don't pretend to be anything else.
Besides, they might be right after all.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Barack Obama Is Probably Not the Devil
I recently read that 8 percent of all people living in New Jersey think that Barack Obama is the Antichrist as described in the Book of Revelations, and a further 13 percent are “not sure”. Sure the poll was not very scientific, but that's not the point. Start to type in “Book of Revelation” into Google. Look what comes up as the third suggested completion choice - lot of people are looking this stuff up.
Last week Congressman Trent Franks called the President of the United States “an enemy of humanity”. Many people interpreted this out-of-context statement as the honorable gentleman from Arizona calling Mr. Obama the devil (or at least the devil's personal assistant).
I am not a theologian but I have seen a lot of movies and I can honestly say that if the president is the Prince of Darkness, well... they just don't make Princes of Darkness like they used to. Here is my list of reasons why our current President is not Ol' Scratch:
Last week Congressman Trent Franks called the President of the United States “an enemy of humanity”. Many people interpreted this out-of-context statement as the honorable gentleman from Arizona calling Mr. Obama the devil (or at least the devil's personal assistant).
I am not a theologian but I have seen a lot of movies and I can honestly say that if the president is the Prince of Darkness, well... they just don't make Princes of Darkness like they used to. Here is my list of reasons why our current President is not Ol' Scratch:
- Super Dull Beginnings: His birth certificate says he's he was uneventfully born in a Hawaiian hospital. The devil's birth would have been a complicated affair involving a jackal mother and the violent/suspicious deaths of all involved. When everyone on a maternity ward decides to hang themselves simultaneously or just go mad, then you can be more sure of supernatural shenanigans.
- No Cloven Anything: If he was not whelped here on the material plane, he might not have a belly button (silly Antichrists are always forgetting details like that). We have all seen the pictures of the Commander-in-Chief without his shirt on. No anomalies other than he is in way better shape than 99.9% of the people under his charge. Annoying, yes. Evil, no.
- Can't Do Attitude: Say what you will about his methods, the Antichrist, traditionally, is known for his ability to get things done. Barack Obama does not appear to have this trait. Look, if Satan wants to have Death Panels whack grandma when she gets the sniffles, then, by gum, he is going to have Death Panels. He is not going to bother to try to sneak them through via an excruciatingly long and boring legislative process.
- Open Opposition: If someone dared to yell out “You lie!” in the middle of one of Beelzebub's speeches that person would have been instantly immolated in a burst of hellfire, or at least killed in an interesting but extremely unlikely accident within a few days of his outburst. For the same reason people would be much better behaved at town hall meetings. Don't even get me started about the tortures that await Glen Beck.
- Pleasant Odor: Speaking of smoke, the devil should smell like it, shouldn't he? The President of Venezuela himself made a point of saying could not detect that tell-tale hint of brimstone after Obama spoke at the U.N, and that guy is probably an expert.
- No Theme Music: Barack Obama is not followed around by creepy pseudo-Latin choral chanting. Dead giveaway, that.
- Joe Biden: All literature on the subject would seem to strongly indicate that the Antichrist does not, I repeat, not have a wacky, bumbling sidekick.
- No Male Heir: He has two kids, both girls. The Antichrist has one male child to pass the reins to... I guess for when His Immortal Badness gets tired of full time genocide and takes up golf and genocides only on a strictly part-time basis, you know, just until the boy comes up to speed and then he's out of there... Once the boy gets the hang of the earthquakes... Always wanting to do things his own way... And the locusts can be tricky to handle... Maybe in a few more weeks he'll be ready... (Some old guys never retire, I tell ya. Sad, really.)
- He's Unfashionably Early. According to the Book of Revelation, by now we should have seen whole bunches of terrifyingly cool stuff happen like stars falling from the sky and oceans of blood and the certain believers disappearing with a smug little POOF before he finally makes his appearance somewhere toward the middle of the second act.
- No Lame Tattoos: During his reign people should only be able to buy and trade if they have a special sign visible on their hand or forehead (Rev 13:17). I have not had any trouble buying beer at 7-11 and I have not seen ads for “Mark of the Beast Double Coupon Thursdays” at the local Food Lion so I am guessing cash is fine for now.
No... Barack Obama might be a lot of things: a Kenyan, a communist, a terrorist, a socialist, and a lawyer, but I am at least 80% sure he is not the Prince of Darkness.
Unless that's just what he wants us to think...
Oh, he's good...
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