Killing Time

I had a manager one time that kept suggesting that I visit every Winery in Kansas to sell filters. This was something that I knew was a waste of time, wineries do not buy the kind of filters I sell. Every week, he would call and ask me to update him on the efforts, even though I told him it was fruitless. It got on some upper manager's task list somewhere and they couldn't just let it go, someone somewhere expected it to be done and they had a report with a check box on it that they had to check off every week for some worthless meeting where they'd be asked if they checked off all their boxes. I wasn't getting paid to just visit the wineries, I wouldn't get paid unless I ever sold anything to them, and I deemed the effort fruitless, so I didn't do it. Asked pointedly by the manager why I wasn't doing what he suggested, I told him it was too much effort and not worth it. He started lecturing me about how easy it would be for me to do this, which was supposed to convince me to do it.

I realized that it was easy for him. He just had to talk to me for 3 minutes once a week and check a box on a report. He didn't appreciate how difficult it would be for me to do it because I was expending the effort, not him. So I came up with a new axiom in my life, which I refer to constantly now.

It's easy to spend other people's time.

It takes no effort to tell someone to do something. They have to do the actual work, spend the actual time. When it takes no effort, it's easy to lose sight of the value of the time spent making something happen.

"Why don't they just ..." You've heard it a million times. People pontificating on the problems of the world, or of their coworkers, family, or friends. Blithely prescribing simplistic solutions to complex problems with a dismissive wave of the wrist. Ask them to actually roll up their sleeves and expend some effort and you'll see how popular the idea is even with the main proponent of it.

Once you recognize this annoyance, you'll see it everywhere, but the real trick is to not do it yourself. How many times have you visited someone's house and said, "If this was my house, I'd paint the kitchen blue." or carpet the patio, or build on a deck, or make a fish pond, or add on a room. People don't like to hear that about their homes, or their lives, or even the way they open a peanut butter jar. When you start to scale yourself back from doing this, you realize that there is a subtle difference to the approach - a new axiom:

People will take a suggestion much quicker than "direction".

Would you rather be told to do something or have someone make a casual suggestion that you could follow or reject without any offense? Being told to do something brings out a rebellious streak in me anyway. Even if it's something I was planning to do anyway, I don't like someone reaching into my life and pushing buttons and pulling levers as if I was their robot or slave. I have to quell the immediate swell of resentment that flares in me any time someone "orders" me to do something. If I think about it, I realize that true free will is not sacrificed by occasionally doing something at the direction or suggestion of someone else. I still have the choice to do it or not, it's still my decision. I still have to calculate if the result is worth the effort if I'm the one that will be doing it.

If you turn it around, it gets really interesting. If someone comes to you and says, "I want to do this" you have to recognize when you are simply being informed versus when you are being roped in. If they are simply informing you about something they are going to do in their life, why would you want to mount objections? If it doesn't cost you any effort, the best thing you can do for someone is encourage them. What kind of friends would you want? Supportive people that are telling you positive things and giving you encouragement, of course. It's also really simple to be that person. They may want help looking at it and thinking about it, but if they're not asking you to commit money or effort to the cause, then why bother shooting it down for no reason? Just because it's something you personally wouldn't do for yourself doesn't mean you shouldn't let them do it.

Social Isolation

I listened to a podcast of an old radio program from 2004. It was talking about the phenomena of flashmobs that was briefly popular around the time Dean was the front runner for the Democrats. I remember Dean had figured out how to generate campaign contributions from the Internet and there was supposed to be a whole new era of social interactions based on contacts made on the web.

The program was interesting, because these two reporters decided to participate in this website that arranged group meetings between like minded people. Supposedly, if you liked Belgian beer or Dutch impressionists, you could sign up and you would be invited to meet with several of them to discuss your common interests. While the woman kept going to these bars and seeing no one there from the group, the guy kept going and meeting Irish Ex-pats at rowdy pubs and other fun things.

The program then morphed into a discussion of Social Isolation. This is supposedly something that is increasing either despite or because of the Internet. She talked about how people actually interact with less and less people and that they are feeling more and more alone.

Part of our isolation has to do with the polarization of America. The increase in political polarization has spread to personal rejectionism. On a personal level people aren't just polarized one of two ways, but are ready to completely reject others because of any one thing they don't like. In politics, rather than just disagreeing with someone over an issue, people now tend to listen until something is said that they don't agree with, then label their target and reject everything about them. The problem is that everyone is an individual and we will all have some trait that others don't approve of, so it's possible to reject everyone. It also seems easier nowadays to keep away from others than to interact with them. This leads to Singularization, or the isolation of the individual.

This even happens with friends, because everyone changes over time. What is it that makes friends drift away, and why is it so hard to keep in touch once you start to drift? I've been cleaning out my parents' personal mementos, and it is amazing how rich their early lives were of friends and acquaintances. It made me think about my own life, all the people I've known over the years and how so many of them are no longer in touch. Drifting apart is not always from rejection over some trait or offense at some act, sometimes it's just a lifestyle effect. You find yourself not doing the same things or available the same time anymore.

I listened to an essay from the series This I Believe where this guy talked about the assumption of The Basic Decency of People. It was interesting. This guy talked about how he would get mad at people in traffic for costing him half a second. He talked about his parents, who lived in Germany and had found a way to forgive the Germans for the atrocities of WWII. He operated under the assumption that people were basically decent. All his actions followed from this basic assumption. It was an interesting concept to wrap your head around, and really, when you think about it, probably well justified. Most people, if they are not decent, probably think of themselves as decent. There are few hard core criminals, chronically selfish people, or generally thoughtless people. Most people are just working their way through life and would like to be thought of as one of the good people. One woman remarked that when she ran into people in traffic that did something irritating, that she would make up a story about them. They were a doctor and they were rushing to the hospital, or something to make their actions seem reasonable and forgivable.

When it comes right down to it, wouldn't that be a good way to look at everyone in life?

Religion and Rhetoric

I got into a short exchange of emails with a coworker recently. He sent me a link to a report on National Geographic from a Russian scientist (actually, the head of the Russian space program, and not necessarily an expert on solar cycles or climatology) that said that there was no human induced global warming, it was just the sun putting out more heat. The proof was that the Martian polar ice caps were shrinking as observed by new Martian satellites, like Earth's polar ice caps. I quickly found another report from about 6 months later by a panel of climatologists. This report went in more depth and said that the sun did indeed have cycles, but that the current warming was greater than the sun cycle alone could account for. It specifically cited the other report and said that it was wrong. The Russian was only looking at the last 3 years, in any case. I knew that any good experiment or research about a theory would account for baseline conditions (how much solar energy is coming in to the planet) and adjust their findings, so in my mind, the later study had more weight, seemed to be more professional, and seemed more thorough. I copied the link to my coworker with a short comment about how the first study was discredited. My coworker, who must be a global warming skeptic, replied to me that he read the second article and found it to be full of rhetoric and opinion.

My initial reaction was that I now knew that he was a global warming denier, and that any evidence or study supporting global warming would simply be disbelieved by him. The second reaction that I had was an emotional distaste of the word rhetoric. In the battle between science and religion, I like to believe that scientists dispassionately cite facts while religionists emotionally cite beliefs without any proof or support. And here someone was calling a scientific report "rhetoric". My reaction was one of taking offense to the statement.

When I realized how irritated I was about this minor issue, I had to figure out why. First, I looked up rhetoric. There are many meanings to the word. The first one says "the undue use of exaggeration or display; bombast". I think that the connotation he was after. That the content was empty and the language was deceptive. If you read more, you see that rhetoric is also considered to be a highly studied method of speaking, usually to try to persuade, sometimes to deceive.

This reminds me of the Dover Pennsylvania Intelligent Design trial. The trial details were very interesting. They said it was like attending an evolutionary science class. One of my favorite parts was when they discussed scientific theory. Anti-Evolutionists like to say that evolution is only a theory. They are using the layman's definition of theory, as in "harebrained idea". Akin to something you dream up in the middle of the night after drinking too much tequila. Scientific Theory is when you propose an explanation for something many observers have witnessed and studied, and the results are reviewed by peers, tested, and torn apart if found to be weak. A mature scientific theory is something that is generally accepted and is used to help understand the world better. Gravity, electricity, magnetism, and germ behavior are all theories. People aren't going to start floating away and you aren't going to get sick from failing to forward that email your Aunt Nelly sent you just because gravity and germ theory are just theories and therefore not valid. Scientific Theory is like bedrock. You can count on it enough to build something to last on it.

Biblical literalists don't know what else to do. The first big famous crisis between church and science was when Copernicus used science and careful observation to put the sun in the center of the solar system. The church did not like the thought that man was not at the center of all things. There have been many other conflicts since, and when people started using geology to date the age of the earth, and started realizing how old fossils actually were, religious scholars that had been telling everyone that the world was 6,000 years old were seriously threatened by this. Darwin studied under one of the most famous geologists of the day, and was influenced to come up with his theory of evolution by learning about the extreme age of the world through geology.

Religious fundamentalists probably feel threatened by this because they think that if people start finding that things in the bible and things we've been told by religious authorities are not correct, then the whole bible is in question. They fear the house of cards effect.

I don't think all global warming denialists are also religious fundamentalists, but they follow the same pattern. The conservatives are under the influence and sway of religious fundamentalists in this country, and pick up on their attitudes and talking points, even when they don't mean to. Conservatives - with their heavy influence of capitalism and it's basic tenet that glorifies conspicuous consumption, fear what will happen if society peeks behind the curtain and actually starts to understand what is going on and what is at stake. And our divided political climate plays into that fear. Those at the pinnacle of society, in regards to wealth and influence, fear the restless masses. What if they rise up and take away all that is dear and precious to them? Scratch the surface of most denialists, and I believe you'll find someone that shares these fears.

Intellectual Property

I think a lot about what sounds like such a dry subject.

Who owns information?

Can you own information?

Benjamin Franklin, America's first great inventor, believed that no one should own an idea. He thought that inventions should be introduced, and others should be free to take your idea and make immediate improvements on it. This way, society as a whole would get the maximum benefit from innovations.

The "American" Dream (as well as that of many others around the world) is to come up with some creation and get rich quick. It's an attractive dream, and not one to toss aside lightly. It goes against the grain of many to give up individual rights, freedoms, privileges, or prerogatives in order to provide possible benefits to society at large. Some would say that to take away intellectual property protections would kill initiative and take away America's advantage as a technological innovator.

Let's look at another aspect of intellectual property. The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear that phrase is patented inventions. Copyrighted material is also intellectual property. Literature, movies, and songs are copyrighted in order for their creators to make money off of them. We get upset when someone in China makes a copy of a movie and sells it without giving someone in Hollywood any royalty payments. Many people did not get upset when millions of people copied musical tracks and shared them on the internet without compensating the music industry or the performers.

I was looking on YouTube at some outtakes from The Office, one of my favorite shows. Several people had taken their favorite moments and made little highlight films of the series. When looked it up again later, to show my wife, there was a message that said that the content was protected and had been removed from the site. It actually wasn't, I got around the warning and the videos I had watched earlier were still there. It occurred to me that they should want and appreciate that these little videos were being put together. The YouTube people aren't trying to pass off the work as their own, in fact, they are paying tribute to it. NBC probably couldn't sell little highlight films, so it's not like they are taking away from NBC revenue. You could argue that they are adding to it. The more people talk about the show, the more viewers they might get. You could say the same thing about most literature and music, the creators, in their fondest dreams, envision that their work will be enjoyed by the masses, widespread and popular. They also hope to get rich off of it, or at least that someone else won't get rich while they make nothing (ask Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes if he gets any money off all the window stickers of Calvin peeing on something).

So I have very mixed feelings about this. I don't like paying $20 for a music CD, but I don't think musicians should give away their craft for free. I would love to invent something someday and make a fortune off of it. On the other hand, if someone could invent the 100 mile per gallon engine and someone else could buy the patent and sit on it, depriving me of this useful invention, I would not be pleased. And I find it incredibly stupid that people are applying for patents for genes that the find in some organism, as if they invented it themselves. That's crazy - am I supposed to pay a royalty every time my pancreas secretes an enzyme just because some geneticist found it in the lab? More likely, the geneticist would work for some megacorp with a battalion of lawyers that is quickly applying for patents for everything the poor underpaid geek in the lab sees through his spectrograph.

When the U.S. went to war in WWII, they were hailed as out producing their enemies and supplying their allies to such a degree that we overpowered them and won the war. What a lot of people don't understand is that the government adjusted the rules of intellectual property during the course of the war for the good of the country (and world) as a whole. Aircraft designs, particularly engine designs, were freely copied between the various aircraft manufacturers. They were more than willing to do this at the time because there was more than enough work and profits to go along, as well as the fact that they wanted to win the war. This special circumstance would be worth studying to see if any of the lessons might be applicable to the broader issue of intellectual property.

Sometimes government and universities come up with knowledge that is then made available to the general public. Sometimes this is simply because they do not have an immediate commercial application for the new knowledge, but other times it is because the person making the discovery is not a financial person, but a scientific one. There will always be those that love to figure things out, just as there will always be those obsessed with how to make a buck off of it. Scientists tend to publish their discoveries in journals, such as Science and Nature, where the ideas are peer reviewed for validity, but also widespread to like minded individuals. On the world's stage, this has led to an ever widening sphere of shared knowledge that accelerates technology, innovation, and future discoveries.

I love this pure exchange of ideas, the innovation incubator that our universities have become. We have to somehow find a way to make ideas available widespread without having these commercial and financial concerns stifle development.