PHILosophistry

Should you or should you not take something for that thing you're dealing with

2010-03-04T01:18:36-06:00

The Coping vs. Solving debate is one I personally wrestle with often. Should I cope with something or fix it? If I have a headache, should I take an Advil or just "deal with it." If I hate my job, should I search for another one or learn to "deal with it."

Most people use a combination of social norms and intuition to determine what to do. Which isn't satisfying at all. And this post won't satisfy it, but it may get the topic circulating in your consciousness. The New Yorker brought this up with an article by Gary Greenberg about what to think about anti-depressants. I've highlighted two paragraphs that show the thought entanglement:

The decision to handle mental conditions biologically is as moral a decision as any other. It is a time-honored one, too. Human beings have always tried to cure psychological disorders through the body. In the Hippocratic tradition, melancholics were advised to drink white wine, in order to counteract the black bile. (This remains an option.) Some people feel an instinctive aversion to treating psychological states with pills, but no one would think it inappropriate to advise a depressed or anxious person to try exercise or meditation.
...
What if your sadness was grief, though? And what if there were a pill that relieved you of the physical pain of bereavement--sleeplessness, weeping, loss of appetite--without diluting your love for or memory of the dead? Assuming that bereavement "naturally" remits after six months, would you take a pill today that will allow you to feel the way you will be feeling six months from now anyway? Probably most people would say no.

What is "natural"? I dealt with a micro version of this issue as recently as today. I was handed an unexpectedly high medical expense after a visit today, and I was livid. I didn't get angry at the receptionist or the doctor (although, they should have went out of their way to tell me the costs), but I was angry at myself for not checking the price beforehand. When I left the office and got into my car, I found my mind overflowing with negative thoughts. And so a few options came to mind:

Turn on the radio and distract myself until I forget about it
Get angry about it all day
Or get temporarily angry and try to learn a lesson, and then snap out of it

Which one is more natural? For many neurotypicals, Option 1 is the most natural. For depressive types, Option 2 is unfortunately their response. I chose the last option, which I think was the optimal solution, because I accepted an appropriate level of pain for that kind of event, and stayed within those bounds. Oh, I also didn't include Option 4, Pop a Xanax. Increasingly, people are choosing that.

If I get muscle soreness after playing rugby, and I take an Advil after it, that means I can play more rugby. But maybe I shouldn't be playing rugby in the first place.

If I'm having a bad day, I can turn on the radio and forget about my problems. But maybe I should be working on them.

Is it, or is it not, okay to drink alcohol every now and then to soothe your nerves?

After reading that New Yorker article, I tried to grope at an answer, and I think it depends on what your ultimate value system is. If, for example, you place being a productive worker at the top of your list, you may decide it's okay to take NyQuil if you have a cold, or coffee if you're sleepy. Yes, those have short-term and long-term side effects, but most people seem to be okay with that, and find the sacrifice worth it. Me, personally, I don't think work is important enough to require detrimental chemicals to make it tolerable.

I don't know. I want to know. Someone figure this out. This is what I expect Philosophy department types to be working on.

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When you don't know what causes something, you start to think it was deserved

2010-02-28T14:12:09-06:00

More from Paul Krugman's profile in the New Yorker:

Then came the Depression, and the one question that people wanted economists to answer was "What should we do?" "The institutionalists said, 'Well, it's very deep, it's complex, I mean, you just talk about what happened in 1890,' " Krugman says. "Keynesian economics, which was coming out of the model-based tradition, even if it was pretty loose-jointed by modern standards, basically said, 'Push this button.' " Push this button--print more money, spend more money--and the button-pushing worked. Push-button economics was not only satisfying to someone of Krugman's intellectual temperament; it was also, he realized later, politically important. Thinking about economic situations as infinitely complex, with any number of causes going back into the distant past, tended to induce a kind of fatalism: if the origins of a crisis were deeply entangled in a country's culture, then maybe the crisis was inevitable, perhaps insoluble--even deserved.

Why Paul Krugman switched from history to economics

2010-02-28T14:01:55-06:00

From Paul Krugman's profile in the New Yorker:

Krugman went to Yale, in 1970, intending to study history, but he felt that history was too much about what and not enough about why, so he ended up in economics. Economics, he found, examined the same infinitely complicated social reality that history did but, instead of elucidating its complexity, looked for patterns and rules that made the complexity seem simple. Why did some societies have serfs or slaves and others not? You could talk about culture and national character and climate and changing mores and heroes and revolts and the history of agriculture and the Romans and the Christians and the Middle Ages and all the rest of it; or, like Krugman's economics teacher Evsey Domar, you could argue that if peasants are barely surviving there's no point in enslaving them, because they have nothing to give you, but if good new land becomes available it makes sense to enslave them, because you can skim off the difference between their output and what it takes to keep them alive. Suddenly, a simple story made sense of a huge and baffling swath of reality, and Krugman found that enormously satisfying.

The underpinnings of the New Age "us small" worldview

2010-02-27T19:43:42-06:00

Sometimes, when you get to a certain number of back-and-forths in a debate, you discover that there are core, abstract principles that determine where people plot on the big issues, like the religious-secular spectrum or the conservative-liberal spectrum. For example, I like this TED talk by Jonathan Haidt that reduces the moral roots of liberals and conservatives to one's receptiveness to new experiences (guess which one is more receptive?). Another reduction, I believe, is identifying where you place humans in the grand scheme of things.

For example, read Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" commencement address, and you'll find an "us small" worldview:

Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

In a moment of exasperation, you will often find people (usually smart people), cite our infinitesimal nature as proof why something does or doesn't matter.

But I'd like to challenge the "us small" worldview. I understand the New Age anti-hubristic appeal of believing ourselves one small thread in a larger universal fabric, but there is no reason why an "us big" worldview is false. Words like grand, large, towering, and puny are all human constructs. Nature has a concept of size, yes, but gives it no significance. A tree is just as interesting to it as a human being, and vice-versa. It's just as likely that you are God and everything is just theater for your eyes.

10 Modern Cases of Linguistic Genocide

2010-02-27T19:07:38-06:00

Language is culture and history and the most ready proof of your identification with a particular tribe. This list of 10 Modern Cases of Linguistic Genocide almost paints a picture of languages as predators, consuming other languages and giving birth to new ones.

Of note is how often the linguistic genocide was enacted by making offenders wear something around their neck to shame them into the dominant language.

In politics, when you are explaining, you are losing.

2010-02-27T19:02:01-06:00

Interesting article in the BBC, Why do people vote against their own interests?

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

Here's an exchange during a debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modeled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."
Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth.

(via ryskamp)

Introverts are like rechargeable batteries. Extroverts are like solar panels.

2010-02-27T18:45:45-06:00

Another interesting bit from The Introvert Advantage:

Introverts are like a rechargeable battery. They need to stop expending energy and rest in order to recharge. This is what a less stimulating environment provides for introverts. it restores energy. It is their natural niche.
Extroverts are like solar panels. For extroverts, being alone, or inside, is like living under a heavy cloud cover. Solar panels need the sun to recharge—extroverts need to be out and about to refuel. Like introversion, extroversion is a hard-wired temperament. It cannot be changed. You can learn to work with it, not against it

I think ideas like introversion-extroversion, highly-sensitive people, or Jung's types are best internalized as spectrums that help you see the world in a different light. I think thinking about black-and-white like, "this person's X, that person's Y," can actually do more harm than good in some cases. On the other hand, to know that someone's traits organize around a pole or that some traits come in groups, can be very helpful to understanding people, and very liberating to identify in yourself.

9 in 10 introverts have felt some guilt or shame for being introverted

2010-02-27T16:38:22-06:00

I'm reading Introvert Advantage, which is one of the top recommended self-help books on the Ask MetaFilter Forums, and it talks about how 9 in 10 introverts the author interviewed felt some guilt or shame for being introverted. The one who didn't was a minister who grew up in a large family composed entirely of introverts, as a result he was never made to feel anything was wrong with him.

This is a common theme in the book. In the Prelude there's a quote by Erasmus:

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

But I wonder if that's the right imperative. In High School, my social circle consisted of fellow AP students, and they trended more introverted than the rest of the school population. But now, when I check them out on facebook, I'm astounded by how many of them have blossomed into what, for all outward appearences, seem like well-adjusted hybrid extroverted introverts. They are both pensive and and socially active.

I was telling my friend the other day that at age 14, our brain sheds away a lot of what it doesn't like using, and we eventually specialize. I cited how I read more fiction books before I was 14 than I've ever read since then. But then he mentioned that the same thing happened when he was 22! Which made me think that probably our brains are always changing, adding modules, uninstalling programs, re-inventing itself and re-specializing.

In which case, I'll throw my lot in with the existentialists, and say that our life's purpose is to invent its purpose.

Things for which we have no word for

2010-01-26T00:00:06-06:00

A few days ago, Guru sent met a heads up to writer Adam Jacot de Boinod, who is fascinated with words that exist in other languages but have no equivalent in ours.

Coincidentally, I just bumped into this list of international retitles for the film The Sound of Music. Hong Kong's is my favorite:

The Rebel Novice (Brazil)
The Melody of Happiness (France)
My Songs, My Dreams (Germany)
The Melody of Happiness (Greece)
Angelic Music Flies and Heard Everywhere (Hong Kong)
Tears and Smiles (Iran)
All Together with Passion (Italy)
The Rebel Novice (Latin America)
The Most Beautiful Music (Netherlands)
Music in the Heart (Portugal)
Smiles and Tears (Spain)
Truth, Kindness and Beauty (Taiwan)
Love Spell, Heavenly Songs (Thailand)

Where else am I writing

2010-01-16T14:53:47-06:00

I highly recommend you check out my new blog, Phil Dhingra. It's more focused on business, technology, and design. I've been getting positive feedback from my friends on this one, and I see good things coming out of it.

Some highlights:

Move where the puck is going: Imagine a world with no marketing
Marketing Strat: Do not give me a reason to Google for alternatives
What else can Google do to be less Evil?

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If you are remotely interested in design, you will find this thought inspiring

2009-12-31T03:42:30-06:00

It seems that if you hope to design things that cut to the heart of the human experience, you're better off drawing inspiration from classical stories and literature than contemporary work. Something that remains relevant hundreds or thousands of years after its writing is a better foundation for meaningful work than the latest tech blog post.

(ryskamp.org)

Review of El Norte (1984)

2009-12-29T23:42:28-06:00

I can relate to that young mom whose sole purpose is to get the most number of achievements on XBox. She even plays games she doesn't like just to improve her standing.

There is something in our DNA that attunes us to lists. A to-do list is a game-changer for productivity. For example, if you give programmers a "bug queue" in an issue tracker, they will work twice as efficiently than if you bark out random things that need fixing.

Random lists appear in my life like little tumors. The most dominant one right now is the National Film Registry. Every year the Library of Congress preserves up to 25 American films that it deems "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The list has grown to 500 movies since 1989, and it's similar to the more well-known Criterion Collection. I've created a spreadsheet of all these NFR movies, and my goal is to one day have seen every single one on that list. In the same spreadsheet, I'm keeping track of how many films my friend has watched, so there's a little competition underway. The very act of creating this spreadsheet spurred me to double the number of films I saw over the span of a month.

Unfortunately, my buddy has been lagging behind as he objected, "doesn't it make film-watching like homework?" But I like the homework aspect. The most recent film I saw, El Norte, followed a pattern similar to how I've watched a lot of those films. First the film starts off slow, and I'm questioning myself, "why am I watching this??" But then it picks up, and starts to click. By the end of the film and after the wikinoument, the whole process becomes an exercise in film appreciation.

El Norte is one of the rare films that appears on both the Criterion and the NFR lists. It's about immigrants from Guatemala crossing the United States border. What I love about the film is how organic and natural the plot is. There were at least ten points where I expected the film to take a cliche'd turn ("Oh, this is where she gets forced into prostitution," or "Oh, this is where they get robbed") but the film kept chugging along an indeterministic path, much like life.

The film's lasting impact, though, will be on how it has instructed my understanding of Mexican immigrants. One of the most indelible scenes has the main characters crawling through a narrow drainage tunnel and being attacked by rats.

The next day after watching El Norte, I couldn't look at Mexican workers the same way again.

The Internet is old enough to be a metaphor for itself

2009-12-19T14:39:06-06:00

On the eve of 2010, we should take stock of our notion of the Internet. The Internet is no longer considered "young" or in its "early" phase. It has a storied history now and it has a graveyard. Because of this, we can describe current Internet technologies with metaphors of Internet past.

Which leads to the conversation topic du jour: Twitter futurism. Is Twitter a fad? Will Twitter ever make any money?

On the lower-bound, perhaps Twitter could end up like Instant Messenger or Bulletin Boards, which have been perennial targets for monetization with little to show for it. Or will Twitter become the next Facebook or Google?

Or maybe it is a fad, but a fad in the way that MySpace is a fad. MySpace is more like a fad-wave, built on a cascading excitement that is renewed every time your social network expands a notch. So when you initially join MySpace, you have like an initial six-month excitement cycle. But by the time month three rolls around, a group of your friends join, and they start their own six-month cycles, further extending your cycle by an extra month perhaps. Then by month three of their cycles (your month six), a group of their friends join, which extends your friends' cycles a month (and your cycle by maybe another month). Until you find yourself hanging around for a year-and-a-half until everybody you know has finally gotten the MySpace bug out of their system. And then the technology reaches some stable state, half of what it was at its peak.

I kind of feel that way about Twitter. Many users have their salad days with Twitter, whether its by tweeting many times a day, going ReTweet crazy, or fiddling with apps in some hair-brained attempt to squeeze a buck out of it. And then their excitement fades, but not before the Twitter population grows another order of magnitude, thereby keeping them in the game just a little longer.

For me, I've reached the point where I have hardly any new friends joining Twitter, and it's kind of in a stable state for me. Twitter is about as important to me as Instant Messenger or my RSS feeds.

What happens when you make frank comparisons between humans and robots?

2009-12-19T03:59:54-06:00

Maybe it's because I gave Blade Runner a fresh look recently, but for some reason, I'm really digging these quotes that make frank comparisons between humans and robots.

From Air & Space interview:

We mean that something happened that no one predicted at the beginning of the Space Age. Our technological capabilities in some areas far outstripped our capabilities in other areas--we were able to build robots that are massively more sophisticated than what we dreamt of in the 1950s. Humans have not had a similar increase in capacity.
...
There's a flip side to it: If humans go, they'll need the endurance of machines. They're going to have to be able to resist radiation to the same degree that machines do.
...
Humans have great capability for problem solving and creativity. And when they're faced with something that's out of the ordinary, that they haven't trained for or plotted out in detail, they can often figure out a way to solve the problem.
...
On the other hand, humans are enormously fragile, and the space environment is instant death to us, while robots are quite hardy and becoming more so all the time.

From Macmillan Space Sciences Summary:

Humans have major advantages over machines in many areas, including mobility, manipulation skills, pattern recognition (e.g., geological evaluation of a site), robustness with respect to plan failures and system failures, selfrepair under broad parameters, capability to repair a multitude of other tools, and robustness in communication, to name a few.

From NASA Educational Brief [pdf]:

Humans are far more adaptable than robots and can react better to the unexpected. When things go wrong, humans can make repairs.

The act of comparing humans vs robots automatically makes the conversation a description of humans according to their efficacy as a tool. Even just saying, "describing humans" has a dehumanizing effect. But, this feeling of being "put in my place" so-to-speak is comforting, and at times, sublime.

The "liberal" media is a lie

2009-12-18T03:36:21-06:00

I've been trying to dismantle the notion of the "liberal media" for a while now. I'm going to assume that in serious media studies circles, nobody really considers the media "liberal." To flip the whole notion on its head, I remember a study showing that Drudge Report and FOX News can actually be considered centrist; and that its only really a few magazines, like National Review, that are right-wing.

But is there some truth to the "liberal" label? While the GOP has been deliberately applying the label for some time now, there must be a reason it sticks.

My thesis is that the media's real bias is "populism." I believe this is inherent to mass discourse. In the case of American news, they need to appeal to the broadest audience to stay on the air. In the case of the BBC, they may go for populism as the only way to be relevant to the largest number of people possible. And if you use that frame of thinking, you'll find that FOX News's bias can best be explained by populism; it's just that they've chosen a conservative brand of populism as a way to segment the news market.

The reason the "liberal" label sticks is simply because populism has been married to liberalism since FDR's time.

New Meme: Whole Foods Republicans

2009-12-14T15:49:35-06:00

In the fine tradition of predecessors like "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads" comes the new demographic moniker, "Whole Foods Republicans":

What's needed is a full-fledged effort to cultivate "Whole Foods Republicans"--independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated individuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable urban environments; they believe in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. And yes, many shop at Whole Foods, which has become a symbol of progressive affluence but is also a good example of the free enterprise system at work. (Not to mention that its founder is a well-known libertarian who took to these pages to excoriate ObamaCare as inimical to market principles.)
What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion. There's no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation
(Michael Petrilli in the Wall Street Journal)

The Whole Foods CEO initially got a lot of flak for speaking against ObamaCare, but has the kerfuffle earned him street cred? I can see that. That could play well in Austin, TX (location of the Whole Foods Headquarters and also where I live).

After the Honeymoon: 20 Things I Don't Like About the Droid

2009-12-13T21:31:06-06:00

I've had an iPhone for a year and a half and have developed apps for the App Store. I switched to the Droid a few weeks ago, and during my honeymoon period with the device, I wrote a list of 20 Things I Like About the Droid.

In the interest of fairness, though, here's the opposite list. And by "Droid," I'm referring to the total experience of Google Android, Verizon Wireless, and the Motorola Droid device. Because, most new and prospective Android users right now will be on the Droid with Verizon.

Android-Specific

Removing Apps requires too many steps. Actually, I shouldn't refer to it as "Removing Apps," but rather use the Android terminology, "Uninstalling Apps," which is appropriate because it feels like a more involved process.
No built-in screenshot button combination.
I miss the slingshot feedback from the iPhone when you scroll past the edge of the screen. Otherwise, when I have a list that takes up the whole screen, I can't tell whether my screen is stuck or there are no more entries.
What's up with all the buttons? The iPhone has one button and it's fine. What's especially annoying is the Menu button. When you're in an App, and you're staring blankly, hunting around for a feature, it finally hits you, "Oh, maybe there's something under the Menu button." Lame.
Along the same vein, the back button is ambiguous. When you press it, you wonder, "is this going to take me back a view, or exit me out of the app?" The problem is there's no consistent indicator as to what "back" means. On the iPhone, the back button almost always has a dynamic label indicating what you're backing up to.
This is not really Android's fault per se, but I dislike the lack of excitement and camaraderie that the iPhone has. I bought an iPhone around the same time that a lot of my friends were buying it, and I felt there was a lot of sharing of Apps and tips. I'm pretty much alone with an Android phone, and I have no idea what's good on the Market. I haven't had one of those, "Ooh, did you try this yet?" conversations.

Android Market-Specific

Not all apps are required to have screenshots. As a result, only about a third of the apps I check out have a screenshot. I'm really taking a leap-of-faith getting an app without even seeing how it looks like.
You can't really shop from your desktop. There's an Android Market website, but it's not comprehensive. When I had an iPhone, I bought about two-thirds of my apps from the desktop since I could more easily look at descriptions, reviews, and even videos.
Oh, and when you buy an app, it doesn't ask you for a password. There's probably a setting for this, but man, as a default, this is a major security fail.
When you purchase an app, there's a series of yellow warning signs saying things like, "This application has access to System Tools: modify global system settings, change Wi-Fi state, change network connectivity, change your UI settings." Every time I see these, I have an "Oh Crap" moment, when I just pray that the hive vetted this app thoroughly.
The overall quantity, quality and polish of Android Apps isn't as high as the iPhone. For example, the best Twitter app for Android is nowhere near as good as Tweetie 2 on the iPhone. And some of my major favorites on the iPhone, like the Kindle app, don't exist. When using Android apps, I sometimes get the feeling like I'm back in the Blackberry or Windows Mobile world—i.e. in a world where apps aren't made with passion.

Verizon-Specific

Call quality doesn't seem as good as on the iPhone-AT&T.
After having gotten used to Visual Voicemail for the iPhone, the lack of it with Verizon makes me feel like I'm using old technology. There's a Visual VM app that you can download, but you have to pay $2.99/mo. Fine, so I tried to do that today, and bam, got a message along the lines, "Sorry, but the service you're requesting is currently not available." Fail.
This is an obvious one: not being able to use 3G Internet while you're on a phone call. When I'm on a long phone call, it's like I'm in a digital cone of silence, unable to know if I'm getting any new mail.

Droid-Specific

One of the first major annoying things I noticed was that it takes much longer than the iPhone to charge up, especially when you try to charge from a computer. I've never had enough patience to wait for it to get fully charged when plugged into my Macbook.
The battery cover slips off intermittently, especially when trying to pull it from your pocket. This is a major fail in my opinion, and Droid probably shouldn't have shipped with this problem.
Proximity detection is not as accurate as on the iPhone. About a third of time when I draw away from a phone call, the screen remains blank. I have to then fiddle with the power button and otherwise fumble around.
Screen refresh rate is lower than the iPhone.
I was disappointed that there were no earphones bundled with the device. I tried my iPhone earbuds (both the 3G and the 3GS ones), and the buttons on them didn't work. I wish I could answer a call or stop a song from them.
I don't care that much for haptic feedback. It doesn't really add much to the usability, and what you get in return are these sensations that are like stings or little shocks. As a result, every time you press the screen, you have this subtle anticipation that you are about to tap something that might buzz you.

Overall, I'm very happy with the Droid. I bought it partly for business reasons, and partly because AT&T was dropping calls at my new place. There's many many things that the Droid can do that the iPhone can't (true to the advertisements). For example, I typed a first draft of this post on the Droid's physical keyboard, something I couldn't have done on the iPhone. So I really feel like I have a device that I can do some serious work on.

Your product should be spectacular

2009-12-13T01:03:59-06:00

If Seth Godin's keyword is "extraordinary," how about I make mine, "spectacular." In particular, somehow make your product both a spectacle and usable.

Take for example Beatles Rock Band. I like how Harmonix spared no expense to re-create the rockstar experience. They could have easily given you a three-dollar mic the size of a toothbrush (like predecessors in the past), but instead they give you a sturdy-looking mic, a solid mic stand, and a shiny beautiful guitar. In other words, they added every little touch necessary to make their product cause a scene every time it's used.

All this equipment requires a big box, and as a result, the case is also an extension of the spectacle of the product. I was carrying this box down three flights of escalators in the mall a few days ago, and realized that that was the most effective advertisement ever. They should just pay people to wander the mall with one of those boxes—much more effective than an ad buy. I made so many parents mad, because as soon as I passed by their kids, they had to fend off cries of, "Ooh, Daddy look at that!"

Same with the iPhone. Same with the Motorola Droid. You want to build products that make other people want to say, "Hey, let me see that."

Noam Chomsky on why we shouldn't be ridiculing the right

2009-12-10T20:30:57-06:00

So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you--they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.
Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren't getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].

I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, "Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now." That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything--a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, "Take over your factories."

(via reddit)

The Wrong Kind vs. Your Kind

2009-12-10T00:41:53-06:00

There's a certain type of racial posture that is very common, though not well-defined, yet was popularized by Chris Rock's "Niggas vs. Black People." And I think it can be generalized to other races.

The people with Chris Rock's attitude tend to divide their race up into downers vs. boosters; to them, there are those in their race who are lifting it up, and there are those who are bringing it down. This isn't just about "Niggas vs. Black People." It's about "The Wrong Kind vs. Your Kind."

I know this because I have the same mentality. I divide my race(s) up that way too. I'm always hard on Indians (even though I'm only half), and I'm very hard on Filipinos as well. "They should know better," is my expression when I see Indian men dressed like thugs. And I feel the same way toward Filipinos who behave unnecessarily subservient and live with low ambitions.

My attitude toward other, more distant races, is decidedly ambivalent. My attitude toward whites and blacks is that they're too far away for me to care. If I see them screw up, I just write it off. If I see a crotchety old white man unnecessarily snarling at me for breaking some nonexistent rule, I shrug it off, "it's a white thing." If I see a rambunctious, black youth with baggy pants down to his ankles, I let it go, "it's a black thing."

So what does this make me? Of course I'm technically racist in that my snap judgments are biased by race, but I'm not really a racist in the pejorative sense. Or am I? Am I really into the self-improvement of my ethnic tribe(s), but not the improvement of other ones? Or does that spare me the racist label because I'm critical of my own?

Adamantium, Gundarium, and other fictional elements and materials

2009-12-07T23:49:10-06:00

I love this list of fictional elements, materials, isotopes and atomic particles. I discovered this when looking up Unobtanium, a fictional material in the upcoming James Cameron flick Avatar.

This is a cache of creative wordsmithing:

Acoustium Adamantite Adamantium Afraidium Agricite Alkahest AM2 Amazonium Antidermis Anti-plastic Arcanite (Warcraft) Arenak (Skylark series) Atmosphereum (also often spelled as "Atmospherium") Axonite Balthazate Balthorium ("Balthorium-G") Basidiumite (also Brumblium) Bassnium Bazoolium Beerium Bendezium Beresium Bernalium Berynium Blingidium Blurite Bolonium or Bolognium (or likely Baloneyium) Bombastium Bydogen Byzanium Calculon Caesium-frankolithic-mixia-lubidium-rixidixidexi-doxidroxide Capsidium Carbonite Cargonite Carmot Cavorite Cheddite Chelonium Chemical X Chromedigizoid Chronoton Claudia Collapsium Colour out of space Corbomite Corrodium Cortexrulestheworldium Crapcrapium Cryazin Chrysadamantium Dalekanium Dark Matter Oil Destronium Deutronium Diamondillium Diamondium Dilithium Dilustel Dragonbane Durallium Dureum Dwarfstar Alloy/Hull Metal Eitr Electromatter Element 115 Element 152 Element X Element Zero Elementium Elephantanium Elephantigen Elerium-115 Endurium Energon Energized Protodermis Eternium Etherium / Aetherium / Volucite / Hikouseki / Levitation Stone Exsidian Faidon Feldon Feminum Finkilium Fulgarator/Deflagrator Froonium Globidium Grimacite Gundanium Alloy Hellion Hydrinium Illithium Imulsion Illudium Phosdex Illyrion Imperium X Impervium Inertron Infernium Isodesium Isogen Japanium Jethrik Jezz Jouronium Jumbonium Kairoseki Kryptonite Laconia Liquid electricity Liquid Protodermis Lux Lunar Titanium/Gundarium Alloy (Alpha, Beta, Gamma) Magicite Mako Maclarium Maracite Marvelium Megacyte Melange, the spice Meowium Metatron Mexallon Minovsky Particle, Mega particle Mithril Mizzium Moonsilver Monopasium 239 Morphite Nanominium Naquadah Narrativium Necrodermis Necrogen Necronium Neoteutonium Nethicite Neutrotope Nitrium Nocxium Nuridium Nvidium Octiron and Octogen Omega Onnesium Oozium 238 Orichalcum Oxyale Oxium Pergium Phazon Philote Phlogiston Phostlite Photofine Steel Photonium Polarite Primium Promethium Protonite Protosteel Psitanium Pyerite PyrE Pyreal Quantonium Quassium B Radical Isotope Randomonium Raritanium Rearden Metal Red matter Red Stone Relux Residuum Runite Sakuradite Schwartz, liquid Scrith Shazamium Silverium Sinisite Sivanium Solarbonite Solarite Solenite Solid Protodermis Solinite Solium Solium Soulsteel Stardust Starmetal Strapontium Strongium 90 Stygium Supermanium Supremium Thaesium Thiotimoline Thorium Thyrium Tibanna Tiberium Timonium Tiny Atoms Tissue-like Protodermis Transparent aluminum Triforceium Trilithium Trilithium Resin Trinium Tritanium Tronium Turbidium Tylium Unionium Unobtainium Upsidaisium Uridium Uru Vespene Gas Veridium Vibranium Vik-ro Vionesium Viridium Vizorium Warpstone or Wyrdstone Wasabinite Wellstone Wishalloy Wonderflonium X Xenothium Xentronium Yor-san Yuanon Zanium Zeagonite Zexonite Ziff Zfylud Crystal Zoridium Zuunium Zydrine

Shouldn't the aesthetics of a word's letterforms affect the connotation of what is denoted?

2009-12-06T18:41:54-06:00

My friend, who's one of the best hackers in the world, is a very logical-minded person. He's an atheist, doesn't believe in anything supernatural, and has a no-fuss, no-nonsense character. Which is why I was surprised when I suggested that people's personalities are shaped by their names. He agreed, "If you hear your name 10,000+ times in your life, the way it sounds and what it means are going to have a big impact on you."

Similarly, I believe the aesthetics of words, when written down, also contribute to how often those words are used and what connotations they have. For fun, I ranked the capital letterforms in Times New Roman in order of their beauty:

Of the good group, A strikes a great pose. Everything about its pinnacle shape says alpha (in an alpha-and-omega sense) and authority. M is also a top letterform, conjuring up magisterial. Its mirrored towers are similar to shapes that symbolize balance and justice in Tarot. G is a grand figure and it reminds me of the jawline and beard of a Lionhearted king. D is like a clean, balanced blade. O screams purity, Earth, and ideal forms. Z is like a laser zipping through space. H holds itself together in a sturdy shape. V is as good of a representation of sharpness as you can get.

The medium group starts with S, a decent, slick form. K is a sharp object striking a flat surface. T stands tall as a proud tower. Q gets points for being the quirkiest letterform. N shares a lot of the same qualities as "Z", but is a tad dull. X is so much an exemplar of expressive letterform that it often feels overplayed. R has a nice regal quality, like a courtier leaning on one leg, with his cape wrapped around his bent arm. C is a good, solid curve. And F, well at least it's not "E".

The last group is a rogues gallery of misshapen letters. Y is just not as cool as "V". P always looks ready to fall flat. What is E? Its two boxes stacked on top of each other are as boring as a factory. U is what, a cup? Cups are worthless. L is simple, but dull, as opposed to "O" which is simple, but ideal. W seems like a wanna-be "V" or like wings that never took off. I is thoughtless. B signifies an obese body or fat buttocks. And poor J is like an "I" with a dongle at the end of it. It looks ready to topple over.

Remember those large illustrated books that you read as a kid that had different animals associated with each letter? Perhaps this post comes from that same spirit.

The Homeless Experiment

2009-12-06T17:19:56-06:00

I met this guy, Neville Medhora, who conducted a Homeless Experiment. He basically lived homeless for 5 days to see what it's like, and I applaud the effort to understand the world by putting "boots on the ground." I especially like his last entry, where he summarizes his thoughts on whether or not to give money to the homeless. Seems a lot more authoritative than what your steel-hearted, conservative friends tell you.

What else did our ancestors have that we don't?

2009-12-05T18:03:48-06:00

A fun conversation topic is to rant about the ways humankind has diverged from its evolutionary basis. In what ways do we violate our DNA engineering? You can often hear this dialog within the context of a pitch for "natural" or "cavemen" diets.

Here's my train of thought on the subject:

We see more red in our lives than our ancestors have ever before.
We hear more music and art than ever before.
We live with way more entertainment in general.
We have mountains more sugar and spice in our diets.
In general, we have way more food moving through our digestive systems than our ancestors.
And we're exposed to much more cleanliness among humans.
We have way less physical pain and discomfort.

Which reminded me of this article that speculated that our ancestors were stronger and faster than modern Olympians:

Anthropologist Peter McAllister recently published a book titled Manthropology: the Science of Inadequate Modern Man. Based on human "footprints preserved in a fossilized claypan lake bed" in Australia, he concluded that those who made tracks across the then-muddy ground were moving at 23 miles per hour.
Champion sprinter Usain Bolt reached a top speed of 26 miles per hour at the Beijing Olympics last year. But without being slowed down by bare feet and mud to run through, McAllister calculated that ancient Australians would have easily outpaced Bolt, who runs in specialized shoes and on engineered tracks. McAllister also maintained, from his study of fossil bones, that Neandertal women would have rivaled the musculature of today's weight-training men.

(Source)

"Curation is the sibling of aggregation"

2009-12-04T21:49:22-06:00

Curation is the sibling of aggregation, a word that the web has know for a while. Aggregation means gathering; finding all videos with the key words "Easter Supper" in them. But as more devices like cell phones are used to create content (video of a hotel room, a tweet from a rock concert, an audio post from a political protest) gathering no longer adds value. In fact, aggregation can equal aggravation.

I agree with the direction of this article. The media needs to stop worrying about the way things were, and start thinking about creating value going forward. What is valuable to consumers today?

A mountain of user-generated content actually enhances the appeal of a good curator. Whereas before, you had a few sources of good writing accessible to you, now that you have a thousand times more, you really need excellent editors/curators.

I wonder if this is what makes The New Yorker such an enduring brand. You can't, in my opinion, find such a high density of writing worth reading anywhere else.

What Makes a Good "Top 100" List

2009-12-04T11:04:50-06:00

It's coming near the end of the year which means that writers will dust off their "best of" lists that they've been accumulating for the year, and submit it to their editors just before they leave for vacation.

I will use this as an opportunity to analyze the art form by comparing these two lists:

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Decades ago, it was fashionable to take a list of the Top 100 Great Novels and try to read all of them before you die. Some companies even sold the entire set as a single package, much like Encyclopedias were sold. Since the vast majority of those attempting to finish the books don't even come close, the bookset has served more as a monument to our aspirations than to our achievements.

I believe that the modern corollary has become to queue up the entire AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies collection or the Top 100 Movies category on Netflix.

While this may be actually more achievable than the Novels project, I want to take this opportunity to suggest an even better list: The National Film Registry.

Just look at the criteria:

The National Film Registry preserves up to 25 "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films" each year, showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation. To be eligible for inclusion, a film must be at least ten years old.

Compare this with the AFI criteria:

The 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies.

I have a lot of problems with the AFI list. For one, the list changes. Which begs the question, why would a movie that was good last year lose it's "goodness" a year later? To counteract this, the curators of the NFR only pick films at least 10 years old. The AFI list has three movies that were within 10 years of the list's publication:Saving Private Ryan
Titanic
The Sixth Sense
The NFR may include all, some, or none of them. Saving Private Ryan may be included because of its contribution to the war film genre, which gave rise to Band of Brothers, but it will depend on how much of a contribution that was. Titanic may be included because of its peak blockbuster status, but is it as meaningful as the other peak blockbusters, like Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind? And I think The Sixth Sense is likely to not be included just because.

The big picture is that the whole premise of creating a "best of" list is inherently flawed. There is no such thing as "goodness" by which you can measure movies. Instead, listmakers should try to do what the NFR does, which measures meaningfulness, relevance, and notability.

There is so much more that can be done with a Top 100 list to make it extraordinary. For example, see if you can avoid the temptation to rank the items. In the case of a list of the 100 best songs, don't order them from best to worst. Because if I download and listen to the entire list, why would I want my listening experience to start great and then get progressively worse? Instead, organize the list so that it flows well from one song to the other.

If you're going to rank them, make them based on something meaningful or don't rank at all.

Move where the puck is going to be: Bet on lower processing power?

2009-12-04T00:34:30-06:00

Is this part of a larger pattern? More and more, me and my friends are finding that we prefer the mobile versions of a site the best.

For example, I preferred the mobile version of the SXSW schedule hosted on sxsw.sched.org instead of the printed one that I held in my pocket. The mobile version required less space, didn't have to be unfolded, and didn't require that I scan through the schedule to find the right day that I wanted. It also let me favorite certain events, and get a consistent visual of what I circled, as opposed to trying to interpret what my various pen markings meant on the printed schedule.

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At first, I was skeptical when Google said it was betting big on lightweight computing. For example, one of their primary focuses on Chrome is to throw out as much extraneous stuff that's in Firefox and Internet Explorer, and then optimize little details about JavaScript. The result is that Chrome is the browser of choice among cutting-edge geeks.

And then I saw that Facebook made a Lite version which renders faster than their normal site. This is now my default setting on Facebook.

What gives? Don't these two Internet juggernauts know that Moore's Law will make the need for less computationally-intensive websites obsolete? Bandwidth is doubling, processing speed is doubling, why on Earth would you bet on things becoming more constrained? Won't netbooks become so fast for so little money that all the efficiency gains that Chrome has made won't matter? You should "move where the puck is going to be," and build for next year's specs. That's been Microsoft's strategy and it has worked well for... oh wait.

Or, engineers will keep making lighter and lighter devices (think iPhone Nano) that there will always be a demand for more and more efficient consumer software.

Or, despite the inexorable upward trend in computing power, consumers will always thirst for more speed. For example, the Lite version of Facebook renders a few milliseconds faster, but I can notice the difference. By using Lite versions, I've been able to get more reuse out of my existing computer.

Or, computer adoption growth is happening more in places like India and China where the latest processors aren't the norm.

I think this is part of a larger trend, and perhaps actually "where the puck is going to be." Look at the Nintendo Wii and DS, the best-selling modern gaming platforms, both of which are lighter, processor-wise, than the XBOX 360 and the Playstation 3. (Oh, and the Playstation 2 is still selling really well).

The news industry is dying. Fine, but does it matter?

2009-12-03T19:41:34-06:00

Is the quality and distribution of news going down as well? Is there a way we can measure that? Anecdotaly, I feel that the quality and quantity of news has increased. I seem to be overloaded with news actually. News appears in my twitter, facebook, RSS, and bookmarks. I feel much more informed about world events than I did 10 years ago. I'm even up-to-date on local news now, thanks to a zip-code entry field on Google News.

I do have one concern, though, and it's tied to a simple strand of thinking: what happens if you can't pay Seymour Hersch to do investigative journalism? (Seymour Hersch uncovered the My Lai Massacre and Abu Graib).

The question, then, is whether the imploding news industry will preserve what we truly care about, or will that go away too? Clay Shirky suggests that the industry is just going to get more efficient. For example, he looked at the Columbia Daily Tribune, and found that there are only six news reporters out of a staff list of 59! So if the news industry contracts, maybe it will just get rid of the extraneous staff and keep the Seymour Hersches employed.

Coca-Cola has reached a point where their primary competition is water. What is Google's "water"?

2009-12-02T13:32:24-06:00

Google futurism is always interesting. This is the practice of asking, "What should Google do next?"

The New York Times has a interview with some Google futurists, including Ken Auletta: Where Google Goes from Here.

I really like this question:

What Should Google Fear?

But Google is very vulnerable to changes in the currrent Internet search paradigm. You can already see this effect in social media. Earlier this year, Hitwise reported that Facebook drove more traffic to Perez Hilton than Google. In the same report, Hitwise reported that 3.3 percent of all traffic to Web video sites was coming from Facebook. Similarly, my blog, AVC.com, gets more traffic from Twitter than Google.

Here's a case where tweaking the language of the debate would draw more insight. In particular, I don't think Google is very vulnerable to changes in the current Internet search paradigm. Rather, I think Google is very vulnerable to changes in the current Internet traffic paradigm. How do people get to things on the web? Are they from Twitter, are they from Google Reader, are they from Wikipedia?

This reminds me of what eventually happened to Coca-Cola when they realized their market penetration was so vast, that the only way for them to keep growing and delivering value to shareholders was to figure out how to compete with water.

What if Google searches become a very small aspect of how people use the web? Lazyweb tweeting, for example, can be almost as good: "Hey, does anybody know of a good car insurance company?" A trusted answer comes back to you in <15 minutes, vs. an instant, yet shady, AI answer from Google.

Which raises another question, why do these companies need to be on an inexorable growth path? Isn't that one of the pitfalls of capitalism? For example, take the case of the mobile telecom space. The market's contracting, and what will ultimately happen is that a single upstart will rise up with a better business model that swallows up the shards of the top four dinosaurs. This is great for the upstart, and it is a positive example of capitalism-in-action. On the other hand, why can't any of the Big Three telecoms scale back? Why is it a stark choice between growth or implosion?

Maybe this is what the founders of Google feared when they went public. That they couldn't just make a programmer utopia that just created the most heavenly search engine, regardless of the market demand for it. I wonder if programmers at Google search are getting pissed that their work is being treated as secondary and that the newer and shinier products of Google are getting all the attention and founder's awards.

Some comments on 8-bit music

2009-12-02T02:58:12-06:00

I just got back from a live show that my friend put on, where he performed 8-bit music. 8-bit is a style of electronic music that uses the bings, wah-wahs and other distinctive sounds from outdated video gaming platforms, like the NES or Game Boy.

A few thoughts about the medium ran through my head:

1. The linking of a sound to a visual cue. There's a certain sound in 8-bit music that I always associate with a blast graphic when Megaman shoots. Or the blast graphic that engulfs Megaman when he dies. It's usually accompanied by a series of "boing" sounds. When I listen to 8-bit music, I cannot help but see scenes from video games flash through my imagination. I don't really get such a well-defined visual when listening to other kinds of music.

2. Why does 8-bit music always seem sad to me? Why does it always sound like a tragic epic? I had a random thought while listening, that maybe it has something to do with attitudes of the Post-Occupation Japanese in the early 80s? (when NES came out). Or maybe it's a common Japanese (or Eastern) musical theme in general which conveys to me that life is both suffering and joy, yin and yang, tragic and epic at the same time. Or maybe that's the aesthetic theme of video games in general (Bowser is always reborn to challenge Mario when you start a new game—maybe they should make a game where once you kill the boss, you can't ever kill him again).

For your enjoyment, here is an amazing tribute music video to 8-bit: