Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
“I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of . . . wherever.” – Fight Club
The first rule of Fight Club is . . . be older than six. And no swords.
Wealth – what is it?
Is it:
Something that we sacrifice our lives for?
Something we obsess about until it controls us?
Something that is never . . . quite enough?
Something we have to have more of than our neighbor?
Something that defines our feelings about ourselves?
I’ll be honest, but there have been times I’ve viewed wealth in more than one of the categories above and acted as such. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants,” is what Epictetus wrote about 100 A.D. Even more succinctly, Tyler Durden said in Fight Club, “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (gosh darn) khakis.”
What Epictetus may have looked like. If he were in a comic strip.
I may have it in for Johnny Depp, but Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden is my spirit animal (we’ve started a tiny Fight Club in my basement, but I’m not supposed to talk about it – first rule, you know).
I keep coming back to the stoics. What did Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Tyler Durden, and Epictetus think about wealth? The website How To Be A Stoic says (LINK): “. . . they classed everything that lies outside of virtue as either preferred or dispreferred indifferent. To the first group belong things like wealth, health, education, and high social standing; to the second things like poverty, sickness, ignorance, and low social standing. These things were preferred insofar it is normal for a human being to pursue them because it makes her life more comfortable, and dispreferred insofar it makes her life less comfortable. But they are “indifferent” in the sense that they are irrelevant to our ability to exercise the virtues . . . .”
So, the Stoics were indifferent to wealth, but it was better to have it than not. You could be virtuous and poor, or you could be virtuous and rich. If you were rich, perhaps you could share your virtues even further than if you were poor – so it was preferred to have money. And Marcus Aurelius was emperor – it was hard to be richer than that, even for Jeff Bezos. Seneca? He was really wealthy, too. And since they are some of the thinkers that literally define what Stoicism is, well, wealth and power isn’t off limits, but the goal was to live a virtuous life.
So what does wealth signify?
Mostly, wealth is like stored energy – it’s a potential. A child may have a wealth of days before it, and an old miser a wealth of cash, cash that he might trade every dime of for just one more taste of youth. And a six year old would trade the ages of 18-30 for six Cadbury Cream Eggs®, which is another reason that kids can’t vote.
Steve Jobs certainly traded some of his wealth for additional days of life without having to cheat a six year old in a candy deal – he could honestly say he could be at any liver in just a few hours (having a private jet and all) and he could afford to have a staff of people looking for ways to improve Steve’s chance of getting one. Heck, Apple® has a project to clone Steve from a clump of his cells that they found in his comb – they just keep getting Ben Affleck copies instead. Thankfully, Ben Affleck is not considered by the state of California to be a “living human.”
I am willing to bet a large amount of PEZ™ that this is the first time the last sentence has been written in any language.
Anyhow. Wealth buys choices, and wealth creates the conditions for more wealth.
But what creates wealth? Well, in reality – the same virtues the stoics upheld (from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – LINK):
“The Stoics elaborated a detailed taxonomy of virtue, dividing virtue into four main types: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.
“Wisdom is subdivided into good sense, good calculation, quick-wittedness, discretion, and resourcefulness.
“Justice is subdivided into piety, honesty, equity, and fair dealing.
“Courage is subdivided into endurance, confidence, high-mindedness, cheerfulness, and industriousness.
“Moderation is subdivided into good discipline, seemliness, modesty, and self-control.”
If you will look – many (but not all!) of these virtues, if followed well and long enough, will lead to . . . wealth.
But perhaps Epictetus was right: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
And then there was Tyler Durden: “It’s a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet or a comforter is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we then? We are consumers. We’re the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession.”
So, be virtuous. Get wealthy. But don’t make the wealth the focus . . . it’s not the money, after all – it’s all the stuff.
“A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky.” – The Matrix
This is how “The Hobbit” should have started, with dragons and swords, rather than a dwarf dinner party? Then I wouldn’t have fallen asleep during hour one of the 12 hours of movie.
In 1947, an author began to predict it. In the 1950’s a few scientists saw it coming. In the 1960’s, it became a (more and more) common subject. In the 1970’s and 80’s it was nightmare fuel for extremely profitable movies and some great books. And, in 1993, Vernor Vinge (author and mathematician) wrote the paper (LINK) that gave this phenomenon its name: The Technological Singularity, or just Singularity from here on out.
This is the second time I’ve discussed the Singularity, and the first time was over here (LINK). The topic is big enough and important enough that I thought I’d add on to it. This will likely not be the last time. Not that I’m running out of blog topics – no, I’ve got a page and a half of them. No, the Singularity keeps getting uncomfortably closer, like your father-in-law’s farting Great Dane that he normally feeds some sort of petroleum waste covered in sulfur and toxic waste. Otherwise? Anything making that smell is generally dead.
Speaking of dead, Jack Williamson (a horribly overlooked author) wrote about the Singularity first in 1947 in his story With Folded Hands. I read that when I was in sixth or seventh grade at the Middle School for Wayward Wilders. I read every science fiction story or novel in that library, and I even started The Lord of the Rings with book two (The Two Towers) since the library didn’t have book one (The Fellowship of the Rings). To this day I maintain it’s a better two book series than a three book series. The first book is really just walking and singing elves and hobbits. Meh. The second book starts with treachery and fighting. Yeah, that’s the stuff.
Anyway, Jack Williamson’s story With Folded Hands was . . . awesome. And one of the creepiest things I’d ever read. You can read it for free, here at this (LINK). Here’s the spoiler-free-ish Wikipedia description:
. . . disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: ”to serve and obey and guard men from harm”. Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers, and more, and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids’ benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited.
So, you’d think that having all of those things would be good, right? Nah. Read the story. Want to ski? The Humanoids are against it – you might hurt yourself. And anything else that might be dangerous. Like driving. Or drinking. Or smoking. Or not exercising. Or not eating the right foods. Or staying up too late. And the Humanoids are smarter than you. And always watching.
It’s an example of how the Singularity can go wrong – an instruction set that’s interpreted as machines do: literally. For example, if one read the instruction “help humanity” and figured out that humanity was always suffering, and maybe the best way to help humanity to stop suffering was to end humanity . . . or if the instruction set was to create inexpensive cars . . . and it converted the entire mass of the planet into inexpensive yet attractive and stylish cars. (Elon, make sure your programs don’t include this!)
Let’s talk about the Singularity. What, exactly, happens?
In general, a much larger than human intellect appears. And it rapidly reconfigures everything that it sees. Concepts that are beyond the smartest humans are correlated – the data we already have in our experiments, is all brought together.
We know we are wrong, but don’t know how. Could a superhuman intelligence bring it all together in a month? A week? A day? Perhaps. We know we are wrong about the way the Universe works – and that there are some pretty significant gaps in our understanding (LINK).
It’s a fair thing to say that we are living today with a weak AI. My GPS unit tells me the fastest route to where I’m travelling. YouTube® suggests songs I’ve never heard that I kinda like. And algorithms based on my previous web browsing suggest that maybe I’ll need a knee replacement or perhaps a new kidney (now you know why I had children: they are wonderful sources of spare organs).
I may even have interacted with an AI this weekend – I was having trouble getting the “name” of one of my Amazon® devices. The “person” on the other end of the chat kept repeating the same things. I had to figure out how to get to the answer. But I told the “person” how I got there. Bet next time it’ll be quicker . . . .
This is a weak AI. It’s a general helper every day. Only a little creepy, not “fifty years old and still collecting Star Wars® figures” creepy.
But it will/is getting stronger. How long until Google® correlates web searches and times of day to a dozen or more lifestyle-related diseases? I’m willing to bet you it does that already. But this is still an algorithm designed by a human. Probably.
From my observation, the likely requirement for development of a true AI, a general AI is constraint. The AI was able to beat us (us=seven billion humans) because it was constrained and goal driven – it was limited to a single gaming system with observable and finite rules.
And humans aren’t constrained, right?
Well, no. Humans are constrained by a human body. As much as I would like to be able to jump to Mars and party with Elon Musk (you know he already moved there, right?) I can’t. Intellect is about observing and overcoming constraints to achieve a goal. If you don’t have constraints or a goal, intelligence has no meaning and no use. (This might be the most profound thought I ever had, with the exception of the partying with Elon Musk on Mars part.)
What are the constraints and goals of a human? Our constraints are our intellect and physical limitations. Our goals are our desire to live, help others of our kind, procreate, and keep our children safe. Obviously, these are generalized. And, they can be sublimated into secondary goals, like cats for a cat lady, or perverted into goals like more heroin for a heroin addict.
But how useful was intelligence, anyway? Surface animal life has existed for nearly half a billion years. How much evidence do we have for intelligent life on Earth? Yeah. Just us. Probably 200,000 years or so. This is 0.04% of the time that we’ve had surface life. Eyes (not human, but eyes) have been in existence for that entire time. So, 100% of the time we’ve had life on the surface, it’s had eyes. But intelligence? Not so much.
From that we can guess (maybe) that intelligence is rare. I’d guess it’s because that there’s some component of intelligence that’s simply not useful for the simple goals of procreation. It’s better to be stronger or have bigger claws or better teeth rather than a big brain. Yet we, mankind, exist. We replaced claws and teeth with brains and planning. Perhaps the dinosaurs were getting ready to make the same leap when a certain meteorite hit the Yucatan, or perhaps the cold-blooded nature of their biology prevented them from being able to sufficiently grow the brain tissue required for intelligence. To-MA-to, To-MAH-to. And, we win. You suck, dinosaurs!
Certainly, it’s fair to say that whatever biological bottleneck prevented intelligent dinosaurs from ruling the Earth today, humanity passed the test, and we are certainly, unquestionably, the dominant form of life on Earth.
The more we learn about AI, the more we will learn to give it constraints and goals like we humans have. And those constraints and goals will give the “intelligence” part of Artificial Intelligence the reason to grow. At some point, the constraints and goals will be properly set to create a general AI.
And then?
A singularity means that none of the rules from before even make sense. That’s the difficulty. Right now we worry about the prices of real estate in San Francisco or the price of the stock market or the value of our 401k. We’re concerned with how many people like our BookFace® posts or what our current salary is or how much money we have saved in a piggy bank.
After a Singularity, many of the rules that went before matter anymore. At all. Your credit score might be less important than how many freckles you have. And only the freckled will rule the Earth. Why? Because of Justin Timberlake. Duh.
Our world regularly experiences singularities – the revolution in 1776 was one. It was a fundamental change in the way the world was governed – giving more freedom than has ever come before to humanity. The entire concept of kings was overthrown with the concept of divine rights as the basis for free men living together. We also have darker experiences with political singularities, as those from the Soviet gulag or Cambodian camp can attest to. And only a Singularity can explain why Firefly® was cancelled in season one.
But the Technological Singularity will be that. On steroids.
Literally every facet of your life that you depend upon will be in question. Monetary systems? What is money to a superhuman machine intelligence? Property rights? Why do they exist? Eugenics? Perhaps the AI will work to make us better pets through forced breeding.
Nothing you can take for granted now will be certain after a Singularity. And after a technological Singularity? If a machine AI doesn’t like you, it can upload you into a core and torture you forever. In perhaps the best, but most visceral fiction representing this, Harlan Ellison has the following passage. The full story is here, but I warn you, it’s very good, but very stark (LINK). I suggest you buy the full book at Amazon . . . .
We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn’t God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak, soft creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge. And in his paranoia, he had decided to reprieve five of us, for a personal, everlasting punishment that would never serve to diminish his hatred … that would merely keep him reminded, amused, proficient at hating man. Immortal, trapped, subject to any torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command.
Yeah, like I said rough. And this .pdf was posted from a High School? They would have burned a high school teacher alive back when I was in school for mentioning that work even existed (though my English teacher did mention another Ellison work, “A Boy and His Dog” and was not immediately hit by lasers and burnt to a crisp (though I did hear that a time-ray hit him, and he later retired when he hit 65).
Again, you can get the book here (again, I get no profit from this, but recommend you buy it if you’re not squeamish):
Vinge stated in 1993, not before 2005, nor after 2030. Now? 2040 to 2050 seems to be the conclusion that most experts expect. Still, like fusion, 20 to 30 years away. Because a looming event that could consider everything you ever thought right, and immovable incorrect in a matter of months or days . . . that’s nothing to worry about. Right?
“So I knew that down the road I would have to steer you away, that I would have to lie to you. And a lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths.” – X-Files
Neal Stephenson, moving through pages at nearly the speed of light, which is his superhero power (since it is obvious he will never have hair like Wolverine®. Neal was really neat (true story) when The Boy talked to him a few years ago. Future post, probably.
There are several books that I’ve made either The Boy or Pugsley read. They’ve both read Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein. But the list also includes Dune (Herbert), 1984 (Orwell), Brave New World (Huxley), Cryptonomicon (Stephenson), The Stand (King), Lucifer’s Hammer (Niven and Pournelle), well, and a few others. You get the idea.
And the idea is ideas – one of the things that books do is they introduce us to ideas and concepts – in many ways they help teach us how to thinks – at least the good books. I had a boss who was the most Zen boss I ever had. He was deeply philosophical in an entirely unphilosophical organization and industry. He liked me quite a lot – since I loved ideas as well. He had a great saying: “Books are the way that one mind can talk to another across time.”
I’m adding a book that I’m going to make The Boy and Pugsley read:
I came across this book via a quote I saw on the internet (LINK), and I was hooked.
Here’s the quote from The Hidden Truth. It’s long. But it only took me about three seconds after I read it to hit “buy” in Amazon (I’ll note again – I get no money if you buy it here, that’s fine – the author gets sweet, sweet money):
“The women’s rights movement had three goals. First, it got women into the workplace where their labor could be taxed . . . . So, with more women entering the workforce the supply of labor increases and wages are depressed . . . .
“Now couples need to have two careers to support a typical modern lifestyle. We can’t tax the labor in a home-cooked meal. We can tax the labor in takeout food, or the higher cost of a microwave dinner. The economic potential of both halves of the adult population now largely flows into the government where it can serve noble ends instead of petty private interests . . . .
“The second reason is to get children out of the potentially antisocial environment of the home and into educational settings where we can be sure they’ll get the right values and learn the right lessons to be happy and productive members of society. Working mothers need to send their children to daycare and after-school care where we can be sure they get exposed to the right lessons, or at least not to bad ideas . . . .
“They are going to assign homework to their students: enough homework to guarantee that even elementary school students are spending all their spare time doing homework. Their poor parents, eager to see that Junior stays up with the rest of the class, will be spending all their time helping their kids get incrementally more proficient on the tests we have designed. They’ll be too busy doing homework to pick up on any antisocial messages at home . . . .
“Children will be too busy to learn independence at home, too busy to do chores, to learn how to take care of themselves, to be responsible for their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Their parents will have to cater to their little darlings’ every need, and their little darlings will be utterly dependent on their parents. When the kids grow up, they will be used to having someone else take care of them. They will shift that spirit of dependence from their parents to their university professors, and ultimately to their government. The next generation will be psychologically prepared to accept a government that would be intrusive even by today’s relaxed standards – a government that will tell them exactly how to behave and what to think. Not a Big Brother government, but a Mommy-State . . . .
“Eventually, we may even outlaw homeschooling as antisocial, like our more progressive cousins in Germany already do. Everyone must know their place in society and work together for social good, not private profit . . . .
“The Earth can’t accommodate many more people at a reasonable standard of living. We’re running out of resources. We have to manage and control our population. That’s the real motive behind the women’s movement. Once a women’s studies program convinces a gal she’s a victim of patriarchal oppression, how likely is it she’s going to overcome her indoctrination to be able to bond long enough with a guy to have a big family? If she does get careless with a guy, she’ll probably just have an abortion . . . .
“All those Career-Oriented Gals are too busy seeking social approval and status at the office to be out starting families and raising kids. They’re encouraged to have fun, be free spirits, and experiment with any man who catches their fancy . . . . And by the time all those COGs are in their thirties and ready to try to settle down and have kids, they’re past their prime. Their fertility peaks in their twenties. It’s all downhill from there . . . .
“In another generation, we’ll have implemented our own version of China’s One-Child-Per-Couple policy without the nasty forced abortions and other hard repressive policies which people hate. What’s more, there’ll be fewer couples because so many young people will just be hedonistically screwing each other instead of settling down and making families. Makes me wish I were young again, like you, to take full advantage of it. The net effect is we’ll enter the great contraction and begin shrinking our population to more controllable levels . . . .
“It’s profoundly ironic. A strong, independent woman is now one who meekly obeys the media’s and society’s clamor to be a career girl and sleep around with whatever stud catches her fancy or with other girls for that matter. A woman with the courage to defy that social pressure and devote herself from a young age to building a home and raising a family is an aberration, a weirdo, a traitor to her sex. There aren’t many women with the balls to stand up against that kind of social pressure.
It’s not in their nature.”
Wow. Stunning. And possibly banned in California.
To be clear, I don’t think that there is a conspiracy to create the situation described above, but the outcomes of a huge social experiment are often unclear, and wrapping up the negative social outcomes summarized above into a conspiracy? Genius!
Those are some huge ideas, and that’s just in one chapter. There are plenty of ideas, and I’ll admit that I probably know the sources of many of them. In fact, I’m pretty sure we have many of the same regular watering holes on the web, and probably many of the same values.
But this isn’t like Atlas Shrugged with an 87 page speech that would have taken six days to deliver. No. The plot is tight, and the author doesn’t repeat himself. The book is thrilling – especially the last third.
Interestingly, most of the actual action takes place out of view of the first-person protagonist. Yes, he talked to that person. And now that person is dead. While not the choice of most thrillers, I found it especially effective in this book, especially since it was told in first-person. Only Bruce Willis gets in a running gunfight with German terrorists – in real life, buildings burn down when we’re not around, even though the burning building might have huge consequences, we’re (mainly) just not around when the amazing thing happens. This technique makes the book more realistic.
And the plot? Let’s just say that over a hundred years ago, for mysterious reasons, people started censoring textbooks on electromagnetics. And killing scientists – all related to a scientific conclusion that Oliver Heaviside. Heaviside is probably most famous for taking James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations and bringing them into the final form we see today. (If you’re not familiar, Maxwell was a genius whose work was foundational for Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.) Heaviside was also famous for sporting a cool Wolverine (like in the X-Men) hairdo.
If you like this book (as I most certainly did) then you’ll immediately go out and buy the sequel after you finish the first one. It’s that good. And for $0.99, I bought the e-book so I could start reading immediately.
And you should buy this book, too, so we can convince Hans to write some more . . . .
Five Year Old: Sounds like a subdural hematoma to me.
Doctor: Three years of nursery school, and you think you know it all! Well, you’re still wet behind the ears. It’s not a subdural hematoma it’s epidural!
–The Man With Two Brains
Steve Martin does not officially endorse my marriage. Officially. And the restraining order says I can’t show up at his house at 4am to ask him to endorse it anymore. I’m sure his advisors aren’t aware that we are really best friends.
It’s Friday, so technically this should be a health post. It’s about health because married couples try to live longer so they can win that final argument, like two old pythons arguing about who is older and has more wrinkles from squeezing Mongolian herdsmen. So, there.
What follows is a mostly true story, except for the exaggerations for the sake of humor or whimsy, I’ll point out when some of the more incredible facts are Really Odd But Amazingly True with the flag (ROBAT). And ROBAT makes me think of a robot bat superhero who texts in ALL CAPS JUST LIKE THIS. But, it’s still amazing because he’s a bat who texts.
I was in the basement of Casa Wilder 2.0 (I’m on 5.0 now) on a stair climber. This particular stair climber was one of my favorite pieces of exercise equipment I’ve ever owned: it used hydraulic pistons that look like shock absorbers for resistance. After about 20 minutes on the climber if a drop of sweat fell off my intensely furrowed brow and hit on of the hydraulic pistons, it would immediately boil off with a sizzling sound and the smell of boiling sweat. And it had cables and rollers that could easily chop off a toddler’s finger. Sadly, they don’t make them anymore.
It might have something to do with all of those nine fingered toddlers.
I was nearly divorced. I’d been separated for over two years, and the paperwork was finally winding its way through the courts for final approval. Why do divorces take so long?
Because good things happen to patient people.
I’d dated several girls, but none of the relationships had gone particularly well. Nothing horrible, mind you, except for the married Internet girl (honestly, it’s like we’re roommates,) and the other married Internet girl (we never even see each other). I stopped the relationships pretty soon after those facts came out.
I had, in fact, said in a prayer one night (in frustration), “Okay, I give up. You figure it out.” I assumed (and assume) that God has a sense of humor. It was a Monday in March, about this time of year.
Recently I’d gotten very, very tired of the same twenty classic rock songs on a seemingly permanent repeat cycle, especially Bob Segar. I can’t listen to any of his music anymore: it was on a rotation of about 2 Bob Segar songs an hour . . . . the same old cliche, is that a woman or a man . . . . No, Bob, if you have such a problem with people making fun of your long hair, cut it.
Sheesh.
The result was I started listening to the post-Nirvana® 1990;s rock on station B which was entirely Segar-Free. It might not have been metal, but it certainly had the virtue of not being Bob Segar. Seriously, you have no idea the depth of my loathing for Bob Segar.
But yet I owe him something . . . .
So, listening to Station B on a Tuesday the day after my cheeky prayer. Every night there was a game show or giveaway. And on Tuesday, the game show was Hollywood Movie Trivia® – the DJ would play a clip from a movie, and you’d have to have to call in first to name the movie. And this one was (for a super-genius like me) ridiculously easy: it’s the movie quote at the top of the post.
The DJ played the clip and then went to a commercial.
I called in. Note that my phone at this point was still corded. Stuck to the wall.
Busy signal.
I hit redial. Busy signal.
I hit redial once more.
Still busy.
The commercial break was almost over, so I gave up and went back to sweating on superheated pistons.
“We still don’t have a winner . . . ”
Redial.
Phone answered . . . “this is Station X. What’s the name of the movie?”
“The Man With Two Brains.”
“We have a winner.” Queue sound effect of ringing bell and applause.
I’d won a CD. White Town, “ Women in Technology. Yeah, it’s not real memorable.
Not pictured: Me. I’d attribute this if I could, but I have no idea of where it came from.
After reveling in my newfound photographic and CD wealth, I started talking to the DJ. Seemed kinda cool, we talked for 10 minutes or so. We never would have had the chance to talk for those 10 minutes if the DJ would have had to dump me after the commercials. As it was, the only chance to talk to her and not sound creepy was on that one conversation. (ROBAT – Really Odd But Amazingly True)
The next morning I went to work (city of about a million people) and mentioned to two of them that I thought the DJ was neat. Oh, the DJ was a girl. One of the two friends replied: “I know her, she’s not dating anyone. I’ll set you two up for St. Patrick’s Day.” And she did. (ROBAT)
On St. Patrick’s Day we were to meet at 10 or so. I got to the bar about 9:30. The place was packed, and my friend was spinning mad tunes (is that even a phrase?) and she mentioned that the DJ would be there soon, soon being 10:30 or so. I had some friends there as wingmen, and soon enough I was introduced to the DJ, or, The Mrs. To Be.
I immediately called her by the name she used on the radio.
The Mrs. To Be: “No, it’s really REDACTED.”
John Wilder: “Why don’t you use your real name?”
The Mrs. To Be: “You know . . . stalkers.”
John Wilder: “Oh. (long pause) My friends told me not to bring up stalking on the first date.” (Yes, I really said that.)
We danced. We both realized that neither of us were dancers. We picked out a booth in another room where the music wasn’t so loud.
I got beers for us. We sat down, and the interview started. Yes, I did this (LINK) and interviewed her.
But a really good interviewer (and I was in top form back then) can make an interview seem like a pleasant conversation by a person that’s interested in you. And it was pleasant. And I was interested in her. But I needed to weed out the kinds of crazy that would conflict with my kinds of crazy. And also make sure that the person shared the same core values I did. (ROBAT)
I was pleasantly surprised that The Mrs. To Be was much less neurotic (in the ways that mattered to me) than most of the crazy moonbat girls from my previous relationships. And she wasn’t married.
Yet.
We stayed until they kicked us out of the bar. Why did they kick us out of the bar? Because everyone else had already left and we had been talking for three hours, and it seemed like 15 minutes. (ROBAT)
We walked out of the bar. There had been hundreds of cars there when I’d gotten there I’d been lucky to find a good spot. The Mrs. To Be had showed up nearly an hour later. Yet, there were only two cars left in the lot. And they were parked side by side, with matching dents on the driver-side door. (ROBAT)
Apparently, God does have a sense of humor, and thankfully for me He’s not subtle when He kicks a message out. I walked her to the door, and leaned in for the kiss. (ROBAT)
Which she wasn’t expecting, but, you know, when you’ve got the sign from the Big Coach to run like hell for first base, you run like hell for first base. She kissed me right back. (ROBAT)
139 days later, The Mrs. and I were married in a mall in Bally’s® Casino in Vegas on a Sunday morning. (ROBAT)
Bob Segar, who brought together two people who were utterly tired of his music. Thanks, Bob for bringing us together in mutual hatred! (Image by Adam Freese, CC BY 2.0, Attribution)
“My father has warned people about the dangers of experimenting with DNA viruses for years. You processed that information through your addled, paranoid infrastructure.” – 12 Monkeys
I come from the land of the ice and snow . . . but this is Denali. My ice and snow is probably closer to Denmark?
So, my mother-in-law gave me a DNA testing kit for Christmas. I’m pretty sure she wanted to verify that I was human. It turns out I am at least 94% human. There’s 2% “Other” (I’m thinking bear) and 4% “Filler” – whatever that is.
The kit that she got for me was from Ancestry.com. It’s a fairly simple kit – there’s a tube that you spit into. It takes about ¼ teaspoon of saliva to fill it up to the line. Since Ancestry sold over 1.5 million of these kits over the Thanksgiving weekend, that’s 375,000 teaspoons of spit headed to Lehi, Utah in a four day period. That’s 488.281092 gallons (150,000 liters) of spit in just 4 days! I guess they need the water in Utah.
How long does it take to test all that spit? In my case, not very long. I put the spit in the mail the first week of January, and it arrived there in five days. They started processing it two weeks later, and about 10 days after that my DNA test results were in. They sure do know how to handle spit in Lehi.
The results are:
Europe West 40%
Great Britain 24%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales 17%
Scandinavia 17%
Low Confidence Regions
Finland/Northwest Russia 1%
Iberian Peninsula < 1%
None of these were a surprise to me. Based on family history and stories, I’d expected just a bit more Danish than 17%, but if you look at the “Europe West” it overlaps Denmark quite a bit. Additionally, the stories that I’ve been told about the McWilder side seem about right. I wasn’t surprised about the Finland or Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese), but those numbers are pretty small.
What is 1%? It’s roughly one direct ancestor back in ~1790 (for me – if you were younger, it would be later, if you were older, it would be sooner, and if your great great great great grandparents had kids young or late, that would skew it as well). But 1790 seems about right.
The DNA data is put into a computer simulator that pulls genetic information into a model and computes how yours matches up against various populations. Are there margins for error? Sure. And are there different models? Absolutely. Once you’ve taken the test, you can upload your data to GEDMATCH.com for free and run it against a huge batch of models. An overwhelming number of models. Really, an overwhelming number of models without guidance. So, I went to look on the Internet, and they suggested I use the Eurogenes K12 model – it models against twelve European populations and produced an output (for me) that looks like:
Population
South Asian
–
Caucasus
4.89
Southwest Asian
1.56
North Amerindian + Arctic
0.57
Siberian
–
Mediterranean
9.72
East Asian
–
West African
–
Volga-Ural
7.66
South Baltic
13.09
Western European
26.41
North Sea
36.10
Looking at this in a pie chart, it looks like this:
For Southwest Asian, think the area around the Caucuses and the Middle East. A different version of the test suggested that this might be Ashkenazi Jewish, to the tune of 1.9%. Mazel Tov!
This would indicate that around 1765 that the Cherokee great-great-great-grandmother Grandpa McWilder talked about is real. And I saw another chart from a Norwegian dude (online) that look nearly identical to mine as far as proportions go. So, yeah, pretty Scandinavian.
But that takes it back to about 256 ancestors. Seems like as you go back in time, the number of ancestors that you have is manageable. So, let’s go back to, say, 400AD, about the time the Roman Empire fell. What, would we need a school auditorium? An NFL® stadium to hold them all?
No. There are 4.6 quintillion ancestors needed. By comparison, there are only 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on Earth (an estimate I saw online).
Huh?
Well, we certainly know that that many people weren’t around, so what happened? Well, have you ever been to a village in upstate New York where all of the residents looked . . . similar? All around the world, there are little isolated villages that have villagers that look the same. Or similar enough that you can see they’re all related.
If you haven’t watched Game of Thrones . . . his parents are brother and sister. Spoiler!
Because they are. There weren’t 4.6 quintillion ancestors, because many of them were duplicated. While there have been a lot of marriages between second cousins, (Professor Robin Fox of Rutgers thinks that 80% or more of marriages in history were between second cousins or closer) after about 1860 you saw the practice come under (in the United States) a rather wide degree of disapproval. In Europe it had been discouraged since the days of Rome, but the 24 of the 50 United States have laws against first cousins marrying. To my surprise. I would have expected the number to be 100% since it is so very icky.
Around the world, first cousin marriage is tolerated in lots of places, but actively encouraged in the Middle East (especially Pakistan).
But that gets us out of needing 4.6 quintillion people (each) to produce you and I.
And those villages produce populations where genes are sampled from. The best I can figure is that it gives a good idea of where people came from in the last 500 years – it won’t tell you in great detail that you were related to Julius Caesar (because you aren’t).
Ancestry.com indicated that I have Mormon pioneer ancestors.
Five years ago, this would have surprised me. But at a family funeral, a relative I’d never met filled me in on the family story.
“Sit down, John.”
Turns out that one of my ancestors had been sent down to Mexico by Brigham Young (an early Mormon leader) to set up a polygamist Mormon colony.
Yeah. Back only five or so generations my great-great-great-great grandfather was zooming across international borders so that he could have multiple wives.
I had no idea, as I’m not Mormon, and NO one in my family had ever talked to me about that. But it’s certainly written in the DNA and confirmed through my Mormon Aunt.
Now I have to go see this.
But it makes sense that Ancestry.com has that data, because Ancestry.com is largely a Mormon venture, just like familysearch.org, which is a free genealogical website. The familysearch.org database might just be a bit suspect as you go thousands of years into the past, as you can go back to find Adam and Eve on it. And Julius Caesar (who had no kids). But it did show I was related to Charles Martel (Martel means “The Hammer”) who was so tough that he thought the title of “King” wasn’t enough for him. And I believe that, because men of status had lots and lots and lots of babies.
Genghis Kahn, who died in 1227, is the ancestor of 0.5% of the men alive on Earth today. Which was probably due to this (disputed) quote:
“The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.”
And, as the grandfather of 0.5% of all the men on Earth . . . he apparently held a lot of wives. Maybe he was a Mormon, too?
“One of the most widely used chemical compounds is zinc oxide. This policeman, this farmer, and this housewife don’t realize it, but they all depend on zinc oxide in their daily lives.” – Kentucky Fried Movie
The Alaska range at dawn. Not pictured: sexy farmers.
Thomas Malthus was a very, very gloomy guy – so much so that the term after his name, “Malthusian” has come to describe dismal, teeming masses of poor hungry people. He did the math and saw that food production produced arithmetically, and there were limits of how much food a single acre could produce, and a limit to how much food could be produced overall. People reproduced geometrically, and could reproduce much faster than the food supply. Probably because farming was and is much less fun than sex.
Looks like Pastor Malthus would be more of a party guy, and less of a “we’re all doomed” guy. Via Wikimedia
Pierre François Verhulst was modelling populations based on his reading of that gloomy Thomas Malthus, and (after a bit of tinkering in the math world by some other folks) they ended up with:
N(t)=K/1(+CKe^-rt)
Math sometimes solves multiple problems with the same solution. And one of those solutions is the S-Curve (or “Logistics Function”). Originally, Verhulst found it. What irritates me about Verhulst is that his middle name has that French curly-cue thingy hanging off the bottom of a perfectly useful “c”. So, we’ll just call him Pierre for the next sentence until we’re entirely done talking about him.
Here is Pierre – and he approved this picture, which kinda makes him look like offspring of a parrot and a serial killer. – Via Wikimedia
If you think back to an earlier (relatively popular) post (LINK) r is the rate of population growth, and K is the carrying capacity. If you maximum mating as your evolutionary strategy, you’re an r critter, like a rabbit. If you have a few offspring, and guard them like the crown jewels, you’re a K critter. If you go back to the post linked above, you’ll see how this equation determines the fate of nations . . . but this post is about more than that.
The equation above is (kinda sorta) what I graphed to make the following curve:
It’s called an S-curve (or sigmoid curve) because it looks like an “s” that’s been stretched out.
So, you can imagine that as a population of bunnies gets dropped on an unsuspecting continent with no natural bunny predators, the population will skyrocket, as happened when rabbits were introduced to Australia. In 1859, a dozen or so escaped from a hunting compound, and instead of forming the rabbit version of the A-Team they started reproducing, because rabbits like sex more than farming, too. That’s the beginning of the curve. Small growth, numbers wise, at first. A dozen rabbits, two dozen, a hundred, two hundred . . . .
As the numbers of rabbits increase, they reach a peak of maximum growth – they’re moving outward and taking over more and more territory. At the end? Growth slows as numbers peak.
In 1920, there were estimated to be 10,000,000,000 rabbits in Australia. Ten billion. In sixty years. Right now, it’s estimated that “only” 200,000,000 rabbits survive in Australia. The rabbit population growth followed the S-Curve until people figured out ways to, well, kill billions of rabbits. If they stopped killing rabbits, you’d see 10,000,000,000 in just a few years – the rabbits would shoot back up the curve.
Rabbit – it’s Australian for girlfriend, and these rabbits are drinking from the beer ponds of South Australia.
But it’s not just the population of Foster’s® drinking rabbits that this equation is used to predict.
Innovation
In many ways, the curve itself is a mathematical model of innovation or novelty. If you look at the adoption of a technology, for instance, it’s very well described by the curve. The adoption of the automobile, the Internet, (by population) television, radio, and even language elements are all explained by the S-curve.
My parents were, in many ways, really late stage adopters of stuff. Ma Wilder never had a microwave during when I lived at home – even though every one of my friends did. Video tape players? They got one when I was in college. They may have been the last “new” VCR purchasers.
Why? Don’t know. Pop Wilder had (generally) a really awesome income. It’s not like he was out of money – and he bought all the fancy stuff like VCRs and televisions with remote controls after he retired.
S-curves are tools used by construction companies to measure progress on construction jobs. When you think about it, construction starts slow. There isn’t a lot of work that can be done on a house until the foundation is in. And then framing can start, and then, once framing is complete and the building is sheathed? Lots of people can come and do their work at the same time – plumbers and electricians can do work with the drywall crew following closely behind. There is a great amount of work that takes place in a short time, provided there’s enough Copenhagen® and Bud Light™.
But finishing is hard – the last 5% often takes 20% of the project’s schedule. That’s because the available places for work drop off. And the last bits of work have to be done sequentially – you can’t put the carpet in until you’ve textured the ceiling, unless you like crunchy carpet. The S-curve is awesome at predicting the average construction time of a project.
Software Projects
Software projects are similar to building a house, except half of the houses completed would immediately burst in to explosive flame as soon as you tried to lock the front door. Oh, and you’d be locked inside. Inexplicably, every month your bedroom would mysteriously appear on the outside of the house, but in a different place each time. Sometimes you would flush the toilet and the light would turn off. Unless the switch for the fan was on, and then it would flush, but be refilled with goat’s blood.
We should be glad that contractors don’t hire software engineers. But the S-curve still defines the progress to the exploding houses that software engineers create.
Crop Response
If you don’t water a plant, it won’t grow. If a plant doesn’t have a vital nutrient, it won’t grow. If the farmer is having sex for reproductive purposes, well, the plant might grow if he remembered to water it and fertilize it.
But the responses to water and these vital nutrients is . . . an S-curve. Too little of that stuff? Low growth rates. Just right? High growth rates – but maybe you want to avoid maximum growth rates if the incremental fertilizer is expensive. Sometimes maximum isn’t optimum. Just ask Gary Busey.
But crops respond with that same S-curve response to the addition of a vital nutrient, or, if you gradually add in an inhibiting factor like salt, it forms an inverse S-curve – a little salt won’t hurt the wheat, but eventually it kills it and no production is possible.
There are other physical things that S-curves apply to – such as learning a foreign language (interesting), machine learning (complex) and tumor growth rates (ugh).
S-Curves also show up in seemingly unrelated things . . . like names and Chicken Pox. Source – XKCD.com
But Malthus has (at least for the last 225 years) been wrong. Food production increases have been amazing – we’ve gone from famines caused by crop failures to the only famines that currently exist are entirely political in nature. Food production has been increased through farming mechanization, nitrogen fertilizer production, food genetics, pesticide application, and better irrigation.
The continued S-curve of food innovation has saved billions of lives. And birthrates in most of the world are falling – leading to a real possibility that Malthus will be forever wrong, except about the “farmers like sex” thing.
“No. Not yet. One thing remains. Vader. You must confront Vader. Then, only then, a Jedi will you be. And confront him you will.” – Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
The Boy in full Vader get up. He looked at me and said, “You are my Father, John Wilder. Can I have more cake?” and then force-choked me when I said no, three pieces was enough. So I cut off his hand. That’s good parenting where I come from . . .
As promised, this is the final part of my book review for Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new bestseller, “12 Rules for Life.” You can find the first part here (LINK) and the second part here (LINK). Quotes, if not otherwise noted, are Peterson from the book. Sorry for the delay – the flu was busy attempting to eat my lungs. I’m better now.
I strongly recommend this book – and get no money if you buy it at this time – in the future, who knows?
Rule 9: Assume That The Person You’re Listening To Knows Something You Don’t
If you listen, most people are really not boring. Okay, some are. But they are mainly parents of children who haven’t graduated from high school and anyone from Iowa. Everybody else is interesting. Dr. Peterson talks about how he sat down with a woman, and within minutes she was telling him she was a witch. And not only that, a witch whose coven regularly got together and prayed for global peace – a world peace witch. By day? She was a minor bureaucrat; I imagined a driver’s license lady. Not who you’d size up to be a witch. Oh, wait. EXACTLY who you’d size up to be a witch.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve interviewed lots and lots of people for my job. I was never bored once. But I had people blurt out amazing things in the interview. “I got fired for stealing.” I was hiring for a position that had lots of financial responsibility, and maybe kinda lax oversight. No job there. “I hated my co-workers.” Yup. Big points for working well with others. Again, people will tell you amazing things if you just shut up and listen. Dates were interesting, too. Had one date where the girl’s plan was to go off and find herself in the Peace Corps after she’d just gotten out of a relationship with her husband who had buried a bus so he could grow illegal weed. Yeah, that night was an early exit.
But few enough actually listen (I’ve been guilty of that myself, lots of times) without responding – i.e., defining the problem for the speaker. Even worse is defining the situation for the speaker – Peterson discussed a woman who was unsure if she had been raped after continually getting drunk and going home with guys. He could have defined it as “yes” or “no” for her but that would have prevented her from sorting it out herself, which was crucial to helping her. He used this example to point out that being too intrusive in a conversation often warps it in a manner that changes the framework for the other person . . . and prevents them from getting better.
Peterson listens, because his theory is that people talk to simulate their reality. Humans are the only critters that do that – simulate entire worlds with our words and model the results of present actions into the future. When we run these simulations, we often simulate the words and behavior of others – I know I have a pretty accurate simulation of The Mrs. running. It’s over 98% accurate. The Mrs. likewise has one of me, too. We have tons of conversations with each other without even speaking to each other, because the other just our simulation.
Honest listening – turning off the simulator – is required for real conversation. Our filters and feedback contaminate the discussion. Once we get to that honest listening stage, we can have Real Conversations – Conversations where we truly hear each other and can create new knowledge, and sometimes solve our own problem.
But we don’t inhabit that forest. We inhabit a simplification of that world. In our world where we give objects purpose and meaning – we don’t let them simply exist – we give a car purpose – it must take us from one place to another. A light switch ceases to just exist – it gives us light, and in a blackout part of us is shocked (pun intended) when the switch doesn’t bring us light. Peterson feels that precision is required so we down drown in the vast amount of detail that surrounds us.
Our model gums up when violated. I used a light switch – Peterson uses a cheating spouse – inviting Chaos in. Peterson then pops some Yeats in the CD player for good measure:
The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Speech is required to sort this chaos out, to make sense of it, to dispel it. A night light might also be nice to scare the rough beast away?
“Say what you mean so you can find out what you mean. Act out what you say so you can find out what happens.”
Rule 11: Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding
Skateboarders are pretty talented, and Peterson spends some time discussing their skill, and the methods by which they optimize risks, which is crucial, Peterson felt, to growing as a man. Unfortunately (in Peterson’s opinion) there are adults who what to spoil all the fun by putting in features that make skateboarding impossible while also looking ugly at the same time.
Those adults are then (at least by proximity in the chapter) compared to a friend that Peterson had. Peterson’s friend (also discussed in earlier chapters) had a problem: he hated mankind. He came to no good, making himself a victim at every turn, and learning to hate beautiful, successful people. They seemed to make him even madder. Dr. Peterson then followed up with a description of a TEDx talk by a professor . . . who also hated the human race. These self-appointed judges spoil the fun . . . and the risk.
And the result? Boys are being pushed out. 25% of college degrees granted are in the fields of healthcare, psychology, education, and public administration. 80% of these degrees go to women. Peterson feels that this is Not Good. If projections hold, there will be very few men in non-STEM fields in the next few years. And this is bad for women.
Huh?
How many college-educated women consider, say, a plumber a great catch? Some, to be sure, but not many. When it comes to marriage, women tend to marry someone either at the same social/economic status or of a higher status. As those guys disappear?
Marriage becomes something for the rich. The rest of the girls get hookups in their twenties, and a basket of cats when they hit 33. If they have kids, the results are similarly grim – because single parent families are statistically inferior in every way to dual parent families. So those rich kids? Yeah, life will be better for them. Because they have two parents.
Maybe patriarchy isn’t so bad? Feminism is a creation of Marxism (per Jordan), and between that and post-modernist thought – we’re trying to fundamentally remake civilization in ways that may not be as stable as civilization created over the last 11,000 years or so. And Marxism led to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. And that idea became the most deadly idea of the entire 20th century – killing more people, primarily their own citizens than any other idea.
Peterson REALLY doesn’t like Post Modernism, either, since it’s a philosophy that says there’s no truth and makes the claim “that logic itself is a merely a part of the oppressive patriarchal system.”
Then we get back to Peterson, talking about when he worked on a railway crew. Peterson uses these (amusing) stories about men and how they want particular behavior from other men: Do your job. Don’t whine. Don’t be a suck up. What to men want and value from other men? “Be tough, entertaining, competent and reliable.”
The above ad is from comic books, literally all comics books, of the 1950’s and 1960’s. I sent away for as similar set of books. You, too can learn Karate for only $19.95. If you can learn karate by yourself from a book. With a poor work ethic.
Peterson (really) feels that the Charles Atlas ad captures a lot of human sexuality in seven panels. Women want tough men. It’s here that he combines The Simpsons and Fifty Shades of Grey in the same hilarious paragraph. Lisa Simpson doesn’t want Milhouse, dude, she wants a kinky billionaire. Or that bad kid from Springfield Elementary. Or a dude that will keep you safe on the beach.
Because women want men. Tough men. And you get men through risk. Through . . . skateboarding.
Rule 12: Pet A Cat When You Encounter One On The Street
It’s a worthy chapter, and my summary is short because I’m not one to use Peterson’s tough times, and I rarely write about my own. I’ll give you my bullet point summary:
Dogs are Happy
Cats have Terms and Conditions for Love
Enjoy Both Dogs and Cats – They Have Purity of Being
Because Life Sucks
CODA: Not The Led Zeppelin Album
Peterson caps it off – again, buy the book. I’ll just ask you – what do you want for yourself tomorrow? What about next year? Who could you be if you really tried?
So, that’s it. It’s a pretty long review, and I’m glad you stuck it out this far.
Pluses of the book? Amazing philosophical content. Easy read. Original thoughts.
Downside? Chapters could be more evenly edited to tie the content together, and follow the old rule – tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em what you told ‘em. There are several chapters that I read a second time after about a week to write this review, and being prepped with the previous read and knowing what to look for, I enjoyed the chapters much more. Maybe this review will act as a guide you can use when you go through it to look for more content that sparks your interest.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Peterson also dictated this book – many of the passages sound like speech turned into text, though I might be wrong since I’ve heard a LOT of Peterson speaking but very little of his written stuff.
Overall verdict: totally recommend it. Best way ever to confront Vader. And then the Ewoks burned my copy – because they stopped making Star Wars® in 1983. Wonder what would have happened if they had made a sequel or two? I’m glad they never did.
“That’s the human body raising its core temperature to kill the virus. Planet Earth works the same way. Global warming is the fever. Mankind is the virus. We’re making our planet sick. A cull is our only hope.” – Kingsman: The Secret Service
Pugsley and sand. Yup. Hot day. Probably the influence of planet Vulcan!
The calculations proved it. The planet Mercury’s orbit wasn’t quite right. It was really, really close. Really close. But not quite. How close? If my calculations are right, Mercury was 28 miles from where it should have been. Given its orbital velocity, that was one second. One second in 88 days. And this error was found in 1843. According to the accepted physics theories, this was proof of . . . another planet!
Samuel Schwabe: Though not commonly known, all astronomers in the 1840’s were also expected to play linebacker at a moment’s notice, hence, Schawbe appearing in full shoulderpads.
This was just the sort of proof that German astronomer Samuel Schwabe was waiting for. In the previous 17 years, Schwabe had dutifully recorded the sunspots on every clear day. He wanted to be able to pick out a new planet that people believed was inside the orbit of Mercury. Heck, they were so sure it was there they even gave it a name after the god of fire – Vulcan.
Not this kind of Vulcan, silly.
But Schwabe never lived long enough to see the discovery of Vulcan (although it was reliably spotted several times in the late 1800’s) because it doesn’t exist. But Schwabe did notice (for the first time) that the number of sunspots varied over time. After 17 years, he predicted that the Solar Cycle was about 10 years in length. He was close – but it’s closer to 11. This discovery was picked up by Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolff (what a cool name, right?)
Rudolf Wolff: Is it just me, or does he have the beard and hair of an NFL assistant coach?
Wolff began counting sunspots as well, but also gathered information on sunspot activity from all over Europe, as far back as he could – 1610. Wolf also looked at the data and determined that Sunspots impacted Earth’s own magnetic field. Wolff’s work validated Schwabe’s theory, and Schwabe was honored with the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal, the same one that Einstein and Sir Fred Hoyle (LINK) would later win (I’ve got two in my closet somewhere, I think).
CC-SA:3.0 – Robert Rohde
So, a dude named Gustav Spörer discovered a period nearly zero sunspot activity – naturally, they named it the Maunder Minimum after the NEXT people to talk about it, Edward and Annie Maunder.
Edward and Annie aren’t that interesting, but the Maunder Minimum was – especially since we discovered other things . . . like the impact the great thermonuclear reactor in the sky has on temperature. High sunspot activity correlates to higher solar output. I wish it correlated to me having more hair.
CC-SA:3.0 – Robert Rohde
Which makes sense if you look at other data, like this from the IPCC’s first report:
Clearly, it was colder when there were fewer sunspots. Is that enough? No, there are some pretty other significant adders to the climate picture (though none are larger than the input from the Sun). Other things that really matter?
Well, CO2 has been increasing – that’s for certain. And, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That’s for certain, too, otherwise the Earth would be too cold for life.
And as the temperature goes up, (maybe due to, say, solar output?) then the ability of the oceans to store CO2 goes down. Cool us off with, say, a new Maunder Minimum? Yeah, then the CO2 that can be stored in the oceans goes . . . up again.
And the CO2 balance isn’t very far off from balanced.
But climate is determined by a batch of things – such as the current oscillations of the North Atlantic current, the amount of Bavarian-produced PEZ®, and our Sun’s output. The mere fact that no one can explain why we have ice ages should tell you that climate science is exceptionally incomplete – it’s as if physics couldn’t explain why STOP signs are octagons.
In the last 500,000,000 years of the existence of the Earth, the climate has been pretty steady.
CC by SA 3.0, Glen Fergus
And as I looked at the graph, I noticed two data points at the end, showing projections via a mathematical model. Certainly, they’re still in the realm of habitable. But are they real?
Probably not. Climate predictions have systematically overestimated the amount of global warming over time.
Via https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/
But when I hear people on NPR® talking about climate, what I hear is a lot of panic. It’s as if the world sits on a global climate hill, and the people of Earth, dressed in clown suits no doubt, are nudging it downslope, where it will go out of control and fry us all. But 500,000,000 years of climate history says that won’t happen. And the resources that are to be diverted? What could they do to make all of humanity wealthier with all of the money being spent on Global Warming?
Back to Vulcan.
It doesn’t exist. At all. The 28 mile gap? It’s real, but the reason it exists is because of the gravitational well that bends space time – Einstein hadn’t yet explained that mass bends space . . . and time. So given the mathematics and theories of the day, there had to be a planet. The observations that showed a planet? Maybe it was aliens or asteroids? Godzilla?
So, a strong consensus of astronomers had a belief in Vulcan. No other ideas made sense. So, one could say that there was a strong scientific consensus, but it was based on ignorance of physical facts. And, congratulations to the New England Patriots, Super Bowl LII champs by consensus! Point spread was 4.5 in favor of the Pats, so they won, right?
My concern remains that there is a group of people, with almost religious fervor, who feel mankind is the source of all that is wrong in the world, the source of all that is bad. The end point of their philosophy is a hatred of mankind. We are all that is wrong with the world. The irony is many of them are atheist, just replacing one religion and sin with another. And many see climate change as a method to extract political power (and money) from the world as a whole. I do recall that in the 1970’s that the next thing we’d see was . . . another ice age.
But we are not. All light, all love, all beauty has been either made by us or recognized by us. There’s no evidence a badger ever stopped and said, “Hey, beautiful sunset.” Nope. Without a human recognizing it, it doesn’t occur. Badgers have notoriously poor aesthetics.
And large amounts of the CO2 went to feeding humanity. Who decides who will suffer, sacrifice, and die so we can spend money to be carbon neutral, when there is some evidence that solar output is declining and might lead to a climate that’s actually colder, longer term (LINK)? I’m sure somebody will be able to pin that on people.
You can see that solar output is declining. Perhaps it’s a conspiracy?
Besides, our robot overlords after the singularity (LINK) won’t be all that tied to temperature. They’ve got air conditioning . . . maybe solar powered?
“Search your feelings, Lord Vader. You will know it to be true. He could destroy us.” – Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
The Boy and Pugsley engaged in an epic Lightsaber® battle. At the end, The Boy cut off Pugsley’s arm and said “You are my brother, Pugsley, join me and we’ll rule our parent’s house . . . together.”
As promised, there is the second part of my book review for Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new bestseller, “12 Rules for Life.” You can find the first part here (LINK). The third and concluding post is here (LINK).
You can bet I won’t call it “The Peterson Awakens.”
Rule 5: Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them
Children, are, perhaps the only legacy many people will leave on this Earth after they die. Some parents are horrible and provide no limits to their children, creating tiny toddler tyrants, rather than children people like to be around. You have seen these children. You despise them. Yet they exist. Why?
Increasing divorce rates since the 1960’s increases the severity of this problem, creating fractured families. Peterson blames a LOT on the 1960’s: “. . . a decade whose excesses led to general denigration of adulthood, an unthinking disbelief in the existence of competent power, and the inability to distinguish between the chaos of immaturity and responsible freedom.”
See, I told you he was Dangerous.
This is the opposite of the nihilistic (at its core) “if it feels good, do it” philosophy that stems from Aleister Crowley’s “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Which was written by this guy:
Wilder Rule #56: Hats make the man!
Here are some takeaways from this chapter.
Order is required – children want limits. But there can be too many rules as well, and parents are the key to sorting that out, as their interactions with their children determines the future of society. Parents seem to have difficulty imposing their will on their children.
Peterson: “Two year olds, statistically speaking, are the most violent of people.” This cracked me up. But it’s true. And you have to tame them, either with rewards or punishment.
Is physical punishment acceptable? But only the minimum amount required. The world is filled with physical punishment – just check out any middle school fight.
You need two parents because being a single parent is a tough, tough job. Single parenting isn’t preferable – Dan Quayle was right, Murphy Brown was wrong.
Understand your weaknesses, your dark side as a parent.
Parents are simulators (for their children) of the real world. Use your efforts to make them “socially desirable.”
Peterson must be an interesting parent. But I assure you, growing up at his house wasn’t boring.
Rule 6: Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World
This is, so far, my favorite chapter (though the next one might be even more impactful). Although I expected this to be based on an outward focus, this is Dr. Peterson adapting and providing a more generalized version of his “clean your room” lecture.
“Clean your room” is Dr. Peterson’s advice to those who have issues. And, it’s literal, not just a silly metaphor or slogan. He wants you to clean your actual room. Why? A variety of reasons – but it’s a way to start you off realizing you can make the chaos in your life go away, if only you try. And cleaning a room, making it better, is something anyone can do. It’s not hard.
But in this chapter, Dr. Peterson starts at the basics of broken people. It’s a dark path. “Everyone is destined for pain and slated for destruction.” He takes us from mass shootings to serial killers to a suicidal Leo Tolstoy (The War and Peace author dude) who wouldn’t be around rope for a period of time, since he was pretty sure he was going to hang himself. Peterson takes us to these places, because it’s important to understand what brought them to this state.
A belief that the world lacked meaning.
Suffering (in some cases) horrific abuse at the hands of others.
A belief that God or the human race was evil.
Tolstoy, looking for all the world like a garden gnome wearing dominatrix boots.
Although Peterson starts with mass shooters, the same beliefs that led them down the road to hurting others causes some people to destroy not outward, but inward. Those beliefs are poison for the soul.
Solzhenitsyn, looking dapper in his Soviet prison outfit, circa 1950. (image from http://www.solzhenitsyn.ru)
I went through a similar situation with my first marriage. It was constructed on mutual mistrust, and was painful for both of us. I used that experience to reflect on who I wanted to be, and used that experience to reflect on who I wanted to be, and used that . . . sorry, stuck. I figured out who I should be as a husband, and as a result? I became better than I was.
I got a better life out of my difficulties. Solzhenitsyn’s work helped end the Soviet system and made nuclear annihilation less likely and won a Nobel®. To-MAY-to, To-MAH-to.
But Dr. Peterson has a sure-fire (seriously) way to fix this: clean up your life. There are a large number of questions in this section that Peterson asks that you really think about. I’ll not repeat them all here, buy the book, cheapskate.
Peterson: “Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong.” Start to . . . because starting is the hardest part.
And how do you know if it’s wrong? Seems like if it feels good, you should do it, right?
Peterson: “Do only those things you can speak of with honor.”
And after you fix one thing? Another thing to fix will become obvious. And another. And another. After a while? You’ve fixed yourself. You’re useful.
Peterson: “You will be then left with the inevitable bare tragedies of life. But they will no longer be compounded with bitterness and deceit.”
Rule 7: Pursue What Is Meaningful, Not What Is Expedient
There is a LOT of philosophy in this book. And there is a LOT of the Bible. Peterson feels that the Bible itself is an “emergent” document – one that has properties that exceed its sum. It’s the distillation of thousands of years of stories culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection, honed and explained and shared until they have literally changed the way the Western world thinks (and paved the way for pesky things like science, freedom, liberty, and the abolition of slavery).
One emergent property is the idea that instead of instant gratification (which would allow you to lie, cheat, steal, and kill in the extreme) is replaced by delayed gratification. This delayed gratification can be Earthly in the Christian world, or it can be Heavenly. This ability to delay gratification is a significant difference between animals and humans and a defining part of Western civilization (though not exclusive to Western civilization).
Dr. Peterson explains that the delay of gratification can be compared to a bargain with reality. I can do something now-like lift weights-to create a future that I want to exist-being strong so I can drive my enemies before me and hear the lamentations of their women. No single weightlifting session makes me strong, it’s the sum of them that create the future state. But my actions, like magic, create a different future.
Honestly, Conan the Destroyer was better than this one. But the music was sublime.
As we begin the religious parallelism – the future is a “judgmental father” that wants you to sacrifice now, for a potential future gain. Sacrifice what, exactly? What limits are there to the sacrifice?
Maybe everything?
Peterson: “If the world you are seeing not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values. It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It’s time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.”
Powerful. And think to the parallel construction of God sacrificing Jesus to transform the human race. Just as Cain and Able had a sacrifice war, as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, God swaps the equation and makes a sacrifice for us, so that we might be saved.
But, Peterson returns to Cain. Cain sacrifices. And sacrifices. And sacrifices. And God says: “meh.” So Cain kills. And that is the tragedy. Cain was not necessarily evil before he became a murder, but Dr. Peterson observes: “. . . convictions must die – must be sacrificed – when the relationship with God has been disrupted.”
In this battle between the now and the future, proper action must be based on honesty, and generosity that is aimed at producing actions that make the world better – actions with meaning.
Rule 8: Tell The Truth, Or At Least Don’t Lie
I’ve mentioned (in some other post) before about The Mrs., and how I promised her (and, more importantly, me) that I would never lie to her. It gave me the power/ability/responsibility to bet truthful. “Do these pants make my butt look big?” is a question that she’s never asked me.
It’s almost as freeing as a superpower – the freedom to always be honest. One time in the B.C. (before cellphones) I was late coming home from work. Really late. It just so happens that the governor of the state of Alaska (not Palin, Murkowski) was next door talking to my boss. And there were at least three television stations broadcasting. I stayed until they left, and then went home:
The Mrs.: “Why are you late?”
John Wilder: “Governor, television stations, all next door talking to my boss – and I didn’t want all the ladies in Fairbanks to come knock down our door chasing me?”
The Mrs.: “Okay.”
No questions, no disbelief. Just . . . “ok.”
And, as I’ve said before, if I told The Mrs. that aliens took me time travelling to go dancing with Marilyn Monroe, Gary Busey and Cleopatra, well, she’d at least believe that I believed that. She might think I was as nuts as Busey, but she wouldn’t think me deceitful or doubt my sincerity.
Dr. Jordan Peterson: “What should you do when you don’t know what to do? Tell the truth.”
Peterson is a Truth absolutist. He believes (in opposition to Post-Modernist thought) that there is Truth. All things are not shades of gray. There is Truth. Additionally, speech that’s spin – meant to manipulate you? It’s a lie, too.
Life sucks. It’s going to be hard. But to make it Hell? You need to add lies.
Why not lie? It contaminates everything. Small lies become big lies. Which infect and overwhelm everything . . . it gets to a situation where “. . . lies have destroyed the relationship between individual or state and reality itself.”
The pain from lying isn’t all outward – if you lie, your character is injured, and when life gets rough (as it will) you won’t have character to support you – only lies. And lies hurt you in a different way – they create a victim mentality in you. You believe that the world should conform to the lies that you have even begun to tell yourself, and when the world doesn’t? You blame the world instead of yourself. You create a victim narrative to explain it all.
What’s the benefit of telling truth?
Peterson: “Truth reduces the terrible complexity of man into the simplicity of his word, so that he may become a partner.”
And that’s a pretty good reason to tell the truth.
And the truth is? Peterson likes Trailer Park Boys, but probably not as much as I do. Here’s a bit of Bubbles doing Bowie. Enjoy. Next Friday we’ll conclude this review, and maybe dismember some Ewoks®?
“This is Peterson, your new replacement.†– Idiocracy
The Texans had a cannon, the lobsters did not. Therefore? The lobsters lost control of vast swaths of Texas very quickly. Except the Alamo. The lobsters won there.Â
Here is the first of three posts on Dr. Jordan Peterson’s newly released bestseller, “12 Rules for Life.â€Â The second post is here (LINK). The final post is here (LINK). There’s a link to the book on Amazon down below. I don’t (as of this writing) get anything if you buy it there, but that might change over time. Regardless, buy the book. Jordan Peterson is amazing.
Peterson puts more ideas into a five minute YouTube video excerpt from a lecture than most college courses do. Dr. Peterson is unfailingly moral and gutsy. He is willing to share uncomfortable facts and naked truth, which is anathema to those that would prefer the safety of soft and pretty lies. He is unfailingly polite. And blunt. And I’d be fascinated to see him with a glass or two of wine in him.
Dr. Peterson’s work is based on decades of study combined with a keen intellect and countless hours of work as a clinical psychologist helping people with everything from addiction to performance measurement and enhancement. He has earned his wisdom.
Jordan Peterson is Dangerous. He’ll make you think new thoughts, and question your basic assumptions about who you are, and who you can be.
We need a thousand more like him.
I’ve only read a third of the book as of this writing (it was released on Tuesday), but that’s enough to get the first four rules. By observation, the book is already in thirds – the first four rules are about an inward focus. Rules 5-8 are about obtaining and creating control in your own life. Rules 9-12 are about facing outwards, so my strategy of breaking this review/discussion into thirds makes sense to me.
Rule 1:Â Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back
This is also the first lesson in super hero school, except they add “and put your clenched fists on your hips, and stare up at a waving American flag.â€Â See, Dr. Peterson and I just saved you $75 in superhero school tuition.
This is actually awesome advice, even as weird as it sounds, since adopting this pose will immediately make you feel better, more powerful and more in control of your own life.
Huh?
Yeah. And the secret is buried 350,000,000 years back into the past. As Dr. Peterson notes, that far back there weren’t even trees on land.
But there was serotonin.
How do we known this? Crunchy, tasty lobsters whose life diverged from ours 350,000,000 years ago. Turns out that lobsters have social status, and those who have good status produce more serotonin. And a big lobster that wins the big lobster fight? A big boost of serotonin. One of the same, powerful brain chemicals in humans.
The loser? The loser of the big lobster fight, well no serotonin for him. He has to settle for having his brain melt so it can rewire itself because it literally cannot cope with his new, lower status. And you thought you were depressed after losing the annual Christmas Monopoly game to your snot-nosed nephew who still has a lisp.
Serotonin, winning, losing and social hierarchy have been around forever. Prozac® works on lobsters to make them less depressed.
But the winning lobster wins even more and becomes more dominant. If he were a person, he’d be setting himself up for a successful career.
Because loser lose. And they pay for it. They’re sicker, they die earlier, and they have a lower likelihood of producing offspring.
Dr. Peterson then references Price’s law – Price’s law pertains to the relationship between the literature on a subject and the number of authors in the subject area, stating that half of the publications come from the square root of all contributors.
Winners win. He brought up classical music. Half of classical music played is from four composers: Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. And only a small number of the songs from those four are the most beloved songs in classical music. The same principle explains why Jeff Bezos is planning to create an Amazonian Interstellar Empire while you can’t afford to pay your car insurance bill this month. Winning is awesome.
It’s so awesome that if you win? You live longer. You’re healthier. You enjoy life more. You’re confident. And you have all the serotonin and PEZ® that you could want.
And we can’t all be Bezos. But we can stand up straight like a hero. It will make you feel better, stronger, and just adopting that confident pose will help spike your serotonin and stop your lobster-brain from melting into loser configuration.
Back to Peterson: “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open.â€
And back to Wilder: “I want to go out of this world as I came into it – screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.â€Â (This apparently is from Sniper: Reloaded, per the Internet, but I’m going to pretend I wrote it.)
Rule 2:Â Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping
This chapter has a fairly long digression on Order and Chaos. Interesting, philosophical, but Dr. Peterson could have anchored it more firmly to the Rule. I’m not complaining, but I’m not going to talk as much about it since it was rather obliquely tied to the rest of everything going on in the chapter. This chapter probably could have used a bit more ruthless editing. Again, great stuff, just needed to tie it all up in a bow. Dr. Peterson: I volunteer if you need a hand next time!
Back to the Rule:
Think of how you talk to yourself when you look in the mirror or have just screwed up. It’s horrible. And if a friend talked to you EVEN ONE TIME as much as you berate yourself? You’d cut them out of your life pretty quickly. But it’s much messier when it’s you treating you like that, because you can’t tell you that you never want to see you again. Just not practical. Unless you’re an old timey vampire and your reflection can’t be seen in a mirror.
I digress.
Other takeaways:
On “protecting kids†from this chapter . . . you can’t keep them away from the evil of the world so . . . “It is far better to render Beings in your care competent than to protect them.â€Â Why anything less for yourself?
Peterson has several powerful questions at the end of this chapter, an example:  “What might my life be like if I were caring for myself properly?â€Â And no, I won’t list them all. Buy the book.
Rule 3:Â Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You
Thoroughly enjoyable chapter, with all of the backstory that you’d expect in a superhero origin movie. Reading Peterson’s version of his adolescence brought memories of mine back, as we both grew up in rather small, remote, cold places. And, no, that doesn’t refer to our father’s hearts. It ends with a friend that couldn’t be saved – because the friend didn’t want to be saved.
I’ve had a great friend walk down the drug path, where they’d do and say anything to get more money to buy more drugs. Did I want the best for him? Sure! Did I try to help? Absolutely. But the last night he was in my car was the night he snorted coke in it. And the reason why I didn’t lend him anymore money was he never paid me back the $75 that I lent him. Oh, he paid me back, he said. Left it under my front door mat.
I didn’t have a front door mat.
And friendships are reciprocal. I was promoted at work (years ago) and placed in the partially uncomfortable position of managing the people who had been my peers, sometimes for years. One of them was Willie. Willie was a certified genius. When he was a summer college intern, he (and all the other interns) were offered 3% of anything they could save the company.
He saved them three million dollars.
They gave him a cool computer and a check for several thousand dollars. But not $30,000 to an intern.
So, I’m in the position where I’m supposed to lead Willie.
He kept coming in late to work. It made sense because the people that he mainly worked with were several timezones west. He’d get in later in the morning, and stay until 7pm or 8pm. Makes sense, right?
Not to the company president. “He’s late again.â€
Oh, man. First time leading a department and Willie was going to sink me.
“Willie, you’re killing your career. The president of the company is on my back.â€Â The president was six layers of management above me.
“I don’t care.â€
“Willie, you’re killing me. They’re going to fire me if you keep coming in late.â€
“Oh.â€
And Willie was never late again.
A friend? Absolutely. We still talk to this day, even though we haven’t worked together in well over a decade. If I needed to borrow silly amounts of money? Yeah. I could do that with a group of at least seven friends. Find those people.
Surround yourself with people who will not stand for you hurting yourself, and would do anything to avoid hurting you. Avoid those who you are friends with only out of loyalty, and whose motives are suspect. Lies? Deal breaker.
One of the things I love about Dr. Peterson is that he’ll quote Homer Simpson. And Dostoevsky. In the same chapter.   And he does it in this thoroughly enjoyable chapter.
Rule 4:Â Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not Who Someone Else Is Today
The Internet makes it easy to compare any aspect of yourself to the best of seven billion people. And you’re not one of them. Someone is smarter. Someone is richer (unless your name is Bezos) and someone plays better guitar than you. If you get caught up in making these comparisons, you’re always going to lose.
And we’re not wired that way. We’re wired to know about 150 people really well and trust them. We can get to trusting larger numbers (through various means) but the competition for best storyteller was once a village-wide event, not a world-wide event. It’s not really hard to be strongest out of 150 people. It’s not really hard to be one of the best singers.
But today? At the touch of a button I can make myself feel inadequate by comparing myself against tons of different people.
Peterson: “Who cares if you’re the PM of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States?â€
But the only real competition for me is me. Am I getting better? Am I pushing myself to be the best Wilder I can be? And are the people really happier? Was Tom Petty (LINK) happier than me? In a hobby, I sometimes look to see what happened to famous people who I envied in my youth. Almost universally, I turn out ahead of them. And many of them are dead, youthful, untimely deaths. Tom Petty or me – who has it better? Me.
Realize that you can strongly influence your daily progress. Do you want to be CEO? Really? Probably not. 80 hour weeks every week probably aren’t your thing. Understand how your talents can best be used, and then work like hell at being the best you possible, because competing against seven billion? That’s going to kill you.
So will fighting a giant radioactive lobster with a cannon . . . more on Peterson next Friday.
I’ve written more about Peterson’s ideas here (LINK), here (LINK), and here (LINK). Click on them if you love Truth.
CC by SA 3.0, Glen Fergus
