American Gridlock

The following is an article from the John Maudlin website on the current political and economic deadlock in the US specifically, but, that is gripping most of the western world. It is most likely too much for most people to read since it will take longer than 5 minutes to read and digest.

The comments on Maudlin's website are interesting as well. With a couple exceptions, the comments posted so far about the article display the very gridlock gripping our country that the book attempts to find a way through. Are the entrenched thought patterns most people have so comfortable that trying something new on for just a few minutes becomes painful enough that they must lash out emotionally?

Personally, I found the discussion about inductive and deductive reasoning very interesting. After working 30+ years in manufacturing plants mostly at an engineering and management level, i saw the problems of using data to solve problems. Over and over, in lengthy meetings, people would show the data that supported their predetermined judgements. Alternative ideas and data were attacked in whatever way proved expedient and the truth was rarely the goal. Even 6 sigma principles were twisted to provide the conclusions already made before any study was undertaken.

Yes, the healthcare piece in the article was short on specifics and did not provide any kind of convincing case for how best to solve this dilemma. On the other hand, did I expect a complex issue such as this to be solved in a few hundred words? No.

I thought the discussion about terminating the dialogue of the deaf the best part. Hopefully this index will be brought to fruition and published regularly so we the voters have a tool to evaluate our representatives and encourage those who really want to solve problems to run for office.

American Gridlock (via JohnMauldin.com)

Tai Chi - A Personal Breakthrough

This is my first published article. Check it out...... http://imos-journal.net/?p=4664 It is really aimed at Tai
Chi students and someone who has never studied Tai Chi might not take away much. Maybe the real point is perseverance, which can be important to anyone.

Best of 2011 List

Best of 2011

The items below were not necessarily new in 2011 but were what I discovered this year and came to mind first when doing this list.

Best Movie (theatre) – Deathly Hallows Part II. I thought the movie was well-done and was glad the Harry Potter series came to an end. I was tired of it but also enjoyed the sense of completion.

Best Movie (DVD) – Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere series.

Best Book – Keith Richards autobiography. He really laid it all out there without making himself come across like some elite guy better than the rest of us. Interesting story of human failure and success on personal and work levels.

Best personal breakthrough – my Tai Chi experienced a big breakthrough for a couple days.

Best new recipe – wrote my own recipe for sweet potato risotto

Best Meal – lamb chops stuffed with goat cheese and figs at the Sea Ranch restaurant

Best bike ride – Kings Ridge ride starting in Occidental and ending at Sea Ranch. Spectacular views, great weather, and I felt strong.

Best ski run – big powder day on the back side of Snowbird skiing with my son.

Best cup of coffee – my first cup of Philz coffee from the Palo Alto store. Loved the way they stirred in the warm milk.

Best trip – even though I do not like Florida that much it was wonderful seeing my in-laws, brother, sister, dad, stepmom and old friends Robert and Rachel.

Best memory – Watching the Meme Proposal short vid and remembering I proposed to my wife on Christmas Day so many years ago.

Best community experience – the Land Trust Garden Share celebration

Best work experience – getting the PayPal system completed for the Siskiyou Land Trust so donations can be accepted online and the funds can be transferred to the local bank without delay. I still cannot call my bike tour guide job "work".

Best joyful moment – rowing my cataraft through Blossom Bar on the Rogue River the first time. An indescribable rush and a peak life experience.  

Best mountain bike ride – riding the new trail in Mount Shasta just completed a month or so ago.

Best car ride – driving to Salt Lake City from Mount Shasta to go skiing at Snowbird

Best day – riding my bicycle from Jedidiah Smith Park to Happy Camp. This day had everything - unknown roads, feeling lost, many helpful strangers, hard decisions, camping, motel, incredible views of the Smith River, O'Brien, headwinds, long climb, long descent, bonking, gorging, heat, and a restful sleep.

Best surprise – being continually amazed by the warmth, friendship and good vibes of the warmshowers.org people that showed up at my house or that I visited on my bike trip

Best concert – Stephen Stills at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz

Best run – chasing after clients on a bike tour in my vibram 5 toes

Best song – Abandoned Garden which is Michael Franks tribute to Jobim. Not new in 2011 but new for me and the most haunting song of the year.

Best music album – Thievery Corporation’s Richest Man in Babylon

Best new toy – have used the chinup bars we bought probably more than anything else but the Coomba Powder skies were/are pretty awesome for backcountry and resort powder skiing.

Best new food – Orach with kohlrabi a sold second place.

Best Wine - while probably not the best I had, the most memorable is the 2009 Alpen Cellar Lemberger Blaufrankisch we bought for $8.99 per bottle. An easy drinking red that goes with any food or all by itself. They sold it out quickly and I wish we had bought a couple cases now instead just 6 bottles.

Best Beer - the Dead Guy Ale at Rogue River Brewery

Best Drink - Corpse Reviver at The Spoonbar in Healdsburg. Introduced me to Saint Germain liqueur which has become a staple of many drinks in the house.

Best Spirits - Zaya Rum which was introduced to me by someone I stayed with in Victoria BC this summer.

Self-Mutilation is Evil

Bruce Charlton posted this over on his blog. The title is Deliberate self-mutilation is an evil. At first the message seemed self-righteous and I was prepared to dismiss it, but, the more I thought about how I really felt, the more I agreed.

All forms of tatoo, piercing, plastic surgery, etc have always seemed inherently wrong to me. I could not articulate the reason and never really had a reason to think deeply about it until now. Here is part of Charlton's article.

If someone was to spray-paint Durham Cathedral with graffiti, or slash all the best paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, or blast a Vuvuzela during the climax of a great operatic performance - we would (or, at least ought to) recognize these as evil acts in their varying degrees; as destructive the Good.

We should not be distracted because deliberately wrecking Great Art, deliberately marring beauty, is somehow 'not as bad' as torturing or killing - wrecking Great Art is bad: that is the point. 

*

The same applies to the human face and body - deliberately to mutilate the human face and body is bad, is destructive of Good, is evil.

It is an act of desecration - a vandalism of sanctity.

And this is an objective fact - not a matter of opinion.

What he writes here makes sense to me. The act does seem wrong and like a desecration yet I know people who see their tatoo as something of beauty. I do not know how to reconcile that in my mind. I just know that unless the activity was to restore the body to its original state, for example, reconstructive surgery after an accident, that it just feels wrong to engage in deliberate self-mutilation. More reasons from Charlton on why it is wrong and evil.

(As we all covertly recognize: our very viscera inform us of the fact.)

* 

Even worse when the mutilation is permanent, scarring, cannot be undone.

Even worse when the mutilation is proudly advertized - so that others may be exposed to the act of evil; challenged to accept it, encouraged to emulate it.

*

Even worse when mutilation is normalized - brought into desirable situations in art, TV, movies, drama, news - into cultural institutions; into situations where the mutilation is accepted - perhaps after a struggle, or in face of ignorant hostility and prejudice - or simply made part of the background, assimilated unconsciously.

This is propaganda for evil - and far worse than oneself sinning (sin is inevitable in fallen Men; but the propagation - by favorable association, advertisement, by normalization - of sin is a voluntary act of  strategic evil).

*

Evil cannot be undone, but it can be repented.

However, only at the cost of Pride.

Advertizing, normalizing, boasting of sin is a highly regarded activity in the modern world - by contrast it is regarded as evil to point-out sin, to reject sin, to say that a sin is bad and should elicit shame rather than admiration - because to do so is hurtful - humiliating, even.

But repenting evil hurts, it ought to hurt - it reduces one's self-esteem and status among others to say 'I made a mistake, I did a bad thing'.

He is right that repenting hurts. Is that the reason people stick with wrong acts because to acknowledge the wrong hurts too much? Is it too hard to admit I was wrong and easier to stay wrong? This could be applied to other actions we take. Do I find it easier to defend a previous wrong or evil act than to admit I was wrong to begin with and repent?

A Modern Christmas Story

This video caught me off guard and completely disarmed me. So, I was suspicious and did a little research and from what information is available apparently it is for real and not done by actors.



The guy is Timothy Tiah Ewe Tiam, the co-founder of an ad-blogging site called Nuffnang. His Malaysian girlfriend who is a blogger and now his fiancee is Audrey Ooi Feng Ling. A nice vid to watch around the holiday season which is also a wonderful time to propose - I know because I did many, many years ago on Christmas Day.

Everything You Think You Know, Just Ain't So

It seems I cannot get enough of playing devil's advocate with myself. Here is one more article from the Al Fin blog that challenges us to look at our beliefs about reality. While living in a System One (fast, intuitive mind) world probably will save my life in the short-term, spending more time in my System Two (slow, logical mind) world will benefit me and humanity the most when looking at the long-term results.

Our System One mind is too unreliable for making good decisions about complex subjects and is correct about those areas of study only by chance and luck. The information about how people believe they understand what someone else thinks better than that person (asymmetric insight) borders on amazing for me. Only recently had I started to become aware of this characteristic and having terminology to describe this behavior is helpful.

On to the Al Fin article.... Al Fin: Everything You Think You Know, Just Ain't So: asymmetric insight

Here are two ways in which we typically go wrong on a regular basis:

1. Cognitive hubris: each of us believes that his map of the world is more accurate than it really is.

2. Radical ignorance: when it comes to complex social phenomena, our maps are highly inaccurate. _American

We have learned from cognitive psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman that our intuition -- no matter how solid it feels -- is often built on a shaky foundation.

What's interesting is that many a time people have intuitions that they're...confident about except they're wrong. That happens through the mechanism that I call "The mechanism of substitution". You've been asked a question, and instead you answer another question, but that answer comes by itself with complete confidence, and you're not aware that you're doing something that you're not an expert on because you have one answer. Subjectively, whether it's right or wrong, it feels exactly the same. Whether it's based on a lot of information, or a little information, this is something that you may step back and have a look at. But the subjective sense of confidence can be the same for intuition that arrives from expertise, and for intuitions that arise from heuristics, that arrives from substitution, and asking a different question. _Edge

This phenomenon of "false expertise" is extremely common -- particularly among college professors, journalists, politicians, and others who are not typically held to a high standard of performance and proof. It is also a common part of everyday existence for virtually everyone.

Suppose you were to ask yourself how well you understand the world around you. How accurate is your map of reality?

If you interrogate System Two [slow, logical mind], it might reply, “There are many phenomena about which I know little. In the grand scheme of things, I am just blindly groping through a world that is far too complex for me to possibly understand.”

However, if you were to interrogate System One [fast, intuitive mind], it might reply, “My map is terrific. Why, I am very nearly omniscient!”

Evidently, in order to perform its function, System One has to have confidence in its map. Indeed, elsewhere Kahneman has told a story of a group of Swiss soldiers who were lost in the Alps because of bad weather. One of them realized he had a map. Only after they had successfully climbed down to safety did anyone discover that it was a map of the Pyrenees. Kahneman tells that story in the context of discussing economic and financial models. Even if those maps are wrong, we still feel better when using them.2

In fact, a number of the cognitive biases that Kahneman and other psychologists have documented would appear to serve as defense mechanisms, enabling the individual to hold onto the view that his map is the correct one. For example, there is confirmation bias, which is the tendency to be less skeptical toward evidence in support of one's views than toward contrary evidence.

System Two is evidently not able to overcome cognitive hubris, even in situations where one would expect System Two to be invoked, such as forecasting the difficulty of a major undertaking. _American

We have to rely upon our fast, intuitive, unconscious mind in order to get through a normal day. So much of our lives are performed on "auto pilot" simply because we cannot reason through every split second of our conscious lives. It would be a tremendous waste of very expensive conscious attention to do so.

And yet, so much of the time when we should give careful conscious attention to an action, choice, or verbal / written expression, we fail to do so. We are accustomed to trusting our intuitions, and we generally muddle through okay. But not always. And who can teach us when to take the time and make the effort to apply our consciousness, and when we can safely and effortlessly slide by on our unconscious intuition? That is where wisdom comes in.

Arnold Kling applies Kahneman's ideas to the political realm:

When two ideological opponents wind up on different hilltops, neither can believe that the other has sincerely arrived at a different conclusion based on the evidence. As Friedman puts it,

Consider the most reviled pundit on the other side of the political spectrum from yourself. To liberal ears, a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity, while well informed about which policies are advocated by conservatives and liberals, will seem appallingly ignorant of the arguments and evidence for liberal positions. The same goes in reverse for a Frank Rich or a Paul Krugman, whose knowledge of the “basics” of liberalism and conservatism will seem, in the eyes of a conservative, to be matched by grave misunderstandings of the rationales for conservative policies.5

Indeed, our cognitive hubris is so strong that, according to David McRaney, people believe they understand other people better than others understand themselves. He calls this phenomenon “asymmetric insight.”6

The illusion of asymmetric insight makes it seem as though you know everyone else far better than they know you, and not only that, but you know them better than they know themselves. You believe the same thing about groups of which you are a member. As a whole, your group understands outsiders better than outsiders understand your group, and you understand the group better than its members know the group to which they belong.

In our context, this would mean that liberals believe that they understand better than conservatives how conservatives think, and conservatives believe that they understand better than liberals how liberals think. According to McRaney, such beliefs have indeed been found in studies by psychiatrists Emily Pronin and Lee Ross at Stanford along with Justin Kruger at the University of Illinois and Kenneth Savitsky at Williams College. _Arnold Kling

These are very important insights which should be applied to our own everyday thinking. They could save you from a great deal of embarassment and unnecessary interpersonal friction. But just because "conservatives" and "liberals" make the same types of mistakes when judging the other side, does not make them equally right and equally wrong on every issue. Look for people who have changed their minds, and try to understand their reasons for changing.

Some changes may be a quasi-cohort effect. The old saying, "If you are a conservative at age 20, then you have no heart. But if you are not a conservative at age 30, you have no head," is a reflection of a common tendency for the "hard knocks" of life to beat a bit of conservatism into almost anyone, over time. If one is born into wealth, achieves early success, commits irrevocably to a cause in his youth, or acquires a sinecured position at a fairly early age, they are more likely to be able to avoid many of the uncomfortable changes in perspective which others may feel compelled to go through.

Contrary Brin: Gingrich, Asimov, and the "Flash" Computer-Trading...

Check out the new post by David Brin over on his blog. It starts out being about Newt Gingrich but ends up in very interesting territory. He goes into the pros and cons of a trading transaction tax currently being proposed in the EU. I think his argument in favor of the tax is compelling and think it would help on balancing the budget and making trading fairer for the individual investor.


Contrary Brin: Gingrich, Asimov, and the "Flash" Computer-Trading...: Both Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Nobel prize winning Keynsian economist Paul Krugman have a trait in common.  They grew up fervent science fiction fans, especially transfixed by the future-historical speculations of Isaac Asimov.  Gingrich wrote about this influence that helped to shape his life.

“While Toynbee was impressing me with the history of civilizations, Isaac Asimov was shaping my view of the future in equally profound ways….For a high school student who loved history, Asimov’s most exhilarating invention was the ‘psychohistorian’ Hari Seldon.  The term does not refer to Freudian analysis but to a kind of probabilistic forecasting of the future of whole civilizations.  The premise was that, while you cannot predict individual behavior, you can develop a pretty accurate sense of mass behavior.  Pollsters and advertisers now make a good living off the same theory.”

See the rest of this post here >>> http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/12/gingrich-asimov-and-computer-trading.html