Understanding Scope

My profession is software engineering.  One of the characteristics that every good software engineer has is the attitude that anything is possible.  We are routinely required to solve impossible problems on short deadlines with imperfect tools.  You will fail at this job if your first inclination is to think “it can’t be done.”

You won’t always be right.  Some things truly can’t be done.  But the desire to try has to burn within you or you won’t make it very far.

That’s why I like software engineering.  It requires technical skills, ingenuity, and creativity.  It’s like writing for a living, except it actually requires an understanding of logic, mathematics, and science, and more than just a pulse.

But interestingly, I find that when it comes to software I have an attitude that I can leap tall buildings in a single bound.  But when it comes to things on a grander scale, such as “the world”, I am extremely pessimistic.

That is to say, I am realistic when it comes to ideology – chiefly, I am not idealistic at all.  I don’t believe that we have a prayer of stopping global warming even if we were its cause.  I don’t believe we have a prayer of solving poverty even if we collectively cared enough.  I don’t believe we have a prayer of finding a way to provide health care for everyone who needs it at the level of quality we currently offer.  I don’t believe we have a prayer of establishing peace in the Middle East.

So why the dichotomy?

Because the world of software is finite and infinitely simple when compared to systems such as the climate, religion, and politics.  I can do anything, but that anything is contained within a small plastic and steel box and some silicon circuitry.  The world of software is tiny.

I have tools at my disposable and I know how to use them.  Software obeys rules and logic.  Software doesn’t change its mind.  All of these things make software predictable and simple.  Nothing about any big world issues are predictable or simple.  If a world situation is considered a problem, our chances of solving it are slim.  The only real problems we’ve ever solved – for example, Adolf Hitler – we solved by destroying entirely.  In the world of software, we call that “rewrite”.  Those are solutions of last resort.  Tear it down and start again.  Hardly the kind of solution that flies in the software world, although such a scenario happens all over the place.  And it has so far been the most effective tool for world change – and perhaps the only tool.  George Bush knew this.  If you want to make something of Iraq, the only way to do it is to tear it down and start again.  Just as in the software world, this solution is painful, costly, and takes a long time.  And when you start down that path there’s no guarantee it will work.  But when you’ve got something that clearly isn’t working, nothing is preferable.

Understanding the scope (and scale) of a problem is the first step in understanding the problem itself.  Way, way too few people have a solid grasp on this.  My first girlfriend told me once that she wanted “to change the world.”  At first I laughed it off, but when I realized she was actually serious and she seriously believed that, I started breaking up with her.  And I had been with her for something like 3 years by then.  Oh really?  You’re going to change the world?  Right.

Even Smart People Don’t Get It

I watched a video by TJ, a.k.a TheAmazingAtheist, in which he “debunked” a pet peeve of his, chiefly the notion of “personal responsiblity” that has become a poltiical buzzword for conservatives in the era of victimhood.

I couldn’t believe my ears.  I don’t have much in common with TJ philosophically but I respect his intelligence.  He’s a bright guy.

Here’s a paraphrasing of how he debunked “personal responsibility”: you’re friends with a violent person.  You do something to piss him off and he kills you.  Who’s fault is it?

TJ correctly points out that you can play the blame game indefinitely.  It wasn’t the violent guy’s fault, it was you, becuase you provoked him knowing that he might snap, so in essence, you brought it on yourself.  No, it’s not your fault, it’s the violent guy’s mother’s fault for bearing a baby with violent predilections.  TJ doesn’t believe in God, but if he did, he could always look up in the sky and say, no, it was God’s fault for creating a violent person and unleashing him on you.  Perhaps this is why TJ doesn’t believe in God?

Anyway, back to the issue at hand: the entire point of personal responsibility is that it draws the line at you.  That’s the reason the words are uttered in the first place.  That’s why we talk about it.  We are fully aware that we can pass the blame for virtually anything around the same way TJ has done with his example, and because of that, unless you draw a line somewhere then there is no point in even talking about blame.

But blame is an important concept for a civilization to establish.  It’s a practicality.  When something goes wrong, we need someone – or something – to blame.  When something goes wrong, we need to identify the cause of the problem so we have some hope of fixing it.  When conservatives talk about personal responsiblity, what we’re saying is simply this: before you look anywhere else, look at yourself.  Stop trying to blame other people, or some intangible entity like “society” (or “God”).  When you blame society for your problems without considering what you personally could do to solve them first, you are just choosing not to solve them.  You, alone, are not going to change society.  And even you, as a hive mind collective of protesting malcontents, are not going to change society.  And even if you could, how many of your problems can you solve by changing society?  And what about the problems you’re causing for other people by solving yours?

Let’s take my favorite idiot in bloom, Tim Weaver, who would love to entrust a bunch of incompetent civil servant politicians with this nation’s healthcare system for no other reason than because he’s crying over his medical bills that, through no fault of anyone’s but his and a bit of bad luck, have screwed him over at the tender age of what… 23?  Yes, it must be the system’s fault.  Not yours, Tim.  Definitely the system’s.

Guess what, Tim.  Even if your little fantasy comes true and we end up with single player health care in the United States, you still owe a hopsital $80,000.  Your debt isn’t going to go away.  Single payer is one thing.  Single payer and absolution of all outstanding medical debt is quite another.  But I guess in the world of ideological fantasy in which you seem to live, anything’s possible if we put our minds to it, right?  Yes we can!

Let’s suppose for a minute that single payer healthcare had been in place when Tim had his little episode that cost him an arm and a leg.  Yup, he dodged the bullet.  We all put in $0.00001 to Tim’s bill this year and he’s scott free, right?

But let’s figure what was involved with preventing this problem: a little bit of planning and a little less assumption that he wouldn’t come down with a freak illness at a bad time.  He rolled the dice a little and figured he could sneak by without insurance for a while.  Turns out he was wrong.

If we abstract away the specifics of this case, what we’re left with boils down merely to Tim getting caught with his pants down, unprepared.  I can think of about a million aspects of life where success or failure is determined by planning ahead and betting on things going your way, and being right.

Today it’s snowing.  My commute is somewhat hellish.  I have two choices.  I can go 50 or I can go 30.  If I go 30, it will take me another 20 minutes to get home but the chances of me totalling my car are small.  If I go 50, the chances are still small, but they’re not small enough for me to do it.  I’ll take it easy today and not total my car.  The risk outweighs the reward.

Let’s say I were to risk it instead and total it.  Who should I blame?  I chose how to drive; I was behind the wheel.  Wait, I know!  It’s Montgomery County’s fault for not salting the roads!  Where’s my lawyer?  Let’s get a law suit going!

Fortunately, that particular suit has been tried and laughed out of court every time.  Why?  Because the courts aren’t stupid and they’re not going to assume liability for something as cut and dry as this.

Guess what, kids?  Everything is as cut and dry as that.  We make choices and we live by them, and we don’t start pointing the finger until we’re sure we’re not to blame.  We have what’s called personal responsibility The people who don’t are not adults.

One could argue (and many have) that people who point the finger, especially at nonsense intangibles like “society” actually have looked at themselves first but concluded they must be guilt free.  Who gets to make those distinctions?  After all, acknowledging guilt – especially in this manner, when one acknowledges it on his own, according to his own criteria – could be performed in as many different ways as there are men, right? 

Well, that’s why we have courts.  And as insane as our courts often are, a 12 member slice of the society in which we live is as good of an indication as we could reasonably expect.  Unfortunately, we can’t conjure up a court to satisfy our every inquiry.  If I’m carrying a full cup of coffee and someone bumps into me and I spill some I can’t consult 12 witnesses to tell me whether I should have been less clumsy or whether the other guy should have been, and in a case as trivial as this, the very thought is preposterous.

But let’s head back to the case of Tim and his folly: could he really convince 12 Americans picked at random that someone else should pick up his tab?  Perhaps his costs split among the 12 of them, which is essentially what he’s asking when he promotes a single payer health plan?

I know, he knows, and everybody knows that he wouldn’t stand a chance, which is the reason he hasn’t filed a law suit already.  He’d get laughed out of court, the same way he gets laughed off the internet when he makes stupid claims like universal healthcare is good.

The point here is that personal responsibility is both real and known to even the people who would deny it.  And though they deny it outwardly, and we can’t pry open their skulls and see what’s going on in there, they know when they’re to blame.  But accepting it is just too hard for some people.  There are leaders, and there followers; there are men, and there are boys.  And then there are the people who use the internet like an emotional tampon.  If it’s in writing on the internet and a few people post supportive, according comments, it makes dodging the blame for your own screw ups that much easier.

The Root of Counterterrorism

A lot of squawking is going on right now about Obama shutting down Gitmo and staffing his cabinet with a bunch of due-process girly men (and women) who want to shut down things like wiretapping and “rough” interrogation techniques.

The real question that we have to answer is not whether these specific acts are correct (or legal) but instead the philosophical one which guides the debate.  The question is how to weigh the risks that such tools will be abused against the safety it provides.  Those who believe the risks outweigh the value are prone to accuse those who disagree of fear mongering.

At an even higher level, you must ask this: is it worth letting ten, or a hundred, or a thousand criminals off the hook if it saves just one innocent man from being wrongfully convicted?

This is central to the debate of the death penalty.  Many of its opponents believe that it is better that we execute no one than we accidently execute an innocent man.

Personally, I disagree.  However, I can think of few nightmares worse than becoming an unfortunate victim of circumstance and finding myself wrongfully incarcerated.  Despite such a fear, I believe in two things which serve to ameliorate it and consequently warrant my support for the death penalty, and by extension, “rough” interrogation techniques: first, our justice system is so heavily weighted in favor of innocence that wrongful conviction is unlikey, and second, I accept that a certain level of bad luck in life is inescapable.  If I get dealt a really shitty hand, then so be it.  If you want to make an omelette, you’ve gotta break some eggs.

So ask yourself: is it really so terrible that a few innocent people suffer wrongly in order to protect thousands of others?

America done by 2040?

Pat Buchanan seems to believe America is going to “Balkanize” by 2040 – that is, split into 4, 5, or 6 smaller, more homogenized countries based on culture.

I respect his respect for the power of Culture but I think he’s a little behind the times.

America has virtually always been this way.  The American Civil War was more about culture than slavery or economics or anything else.

It’s only more obvious nowadays because we have instant, widespread total communication with people with whom we otherwise probably wouldn’t have interacted.  100 years ago the average person never moved 50 miles away from the place they were born.  Today, that isn’t true.  Even if we don’t physically move all we have to do is turn on the TV or connect to the internet.

I say that Buchanan is behind the times because he hasn’t been privy to the kind of interaction with people across the country – and across the world – that I have since the time I was small through the power of the internet.  He’s the kind of old timer who turns on BET and can’t help but conclude that the country is going to hell in a handbasket.

I hate 106 and Park as much as the next white suburban male but that doesn’t mean I am ready to cecede from the union so that I dont’ have to share a president with black people.  Come on.

Buchanan has been accused of being a racist before and I think that’s the true root of his phobia.  This kind of “cultural degradation” begotten by pockets of the nation has occurred in every nation.  It is always blown out of proportion.  The chief difference between Buchanan’s time and ours is that in his day, you only heard “kids and their music” routine from grandma at her farm on Christmas, whereas today you can’t help but be exposed to every cultural facet at large in this country.  The exposure, of course, is performed for a fee by companies looking to sell a product.  One product that has and will always continue to sell is showcasing the worst of anything (for example, the physical form, as in freak shows, or the cultural diaspora, as in Wife Swap) and flooding the audience with a comfortable feeling of superiority over these lesser beings whose goings on are the stuff of pity.

Buchanan has made a media career out of fear mongering.  Had any of the predictions he made when he was busy campaigning against Bush 1 actually happened, he might be worth lending an ear in 2009.  Since they haven’t, we have to take him for what he is.  2040?  Easy to forecast.  He’ll be long dead.

When is this guy going to retire?

Power Isn’t Admirable

About 18 months ago I became fascinated with PUA blogs (Roosh & Roissy, mainly).  I’ve judged the lifestyle before on this blog.

I haven’t ready Roissy in a while because – get this – my company’s firewall blocked it as adult/pornography.  I guess they’ve had a change of heart since it is no longer blocked.

After returning to it from hiatus, my vague opposition to the alpha/PUA lifestyle immediately pigeon holed into one of my guiding life principles.  I guess I had just never noticed it before.

These guys live and breathe by their power over women.  They have spent a decade studying ways to manipulate women into giving them what they want with absolutely no care or concern for what they’re giving in return.  Aside from the resulting overt misogyny evident in this, there are a few issues I take to it.

When I first encountered these guys, I too slipped into the pit of finding myself in awe of their ability to score with chicks.  I thought it was admirable.

But the problem is that I was admiring the power.  But power itself  is never admirable.  Especially in this case, where it is being misused.

To be deserving of admiration, it isn’t enough to have power.  You must have that power, and choose not to use it.

Put another way: restraint is harder to obtain than power.

These guys have power over women and they use it to satisfy their most primal of needs without any care or regard to the women they use to acquire it.  The skills they use are not particularly unique, impressive, or hard to obtain.  But the manner in which they employ them is nothing short of sociopathic.

This principle extends to virtually every aspect in life.  It is also the essence of mercy.  When you have the power to manipuluate someone else’s life – their emotions, their posessions, their physical self – you have two choices.  You can weild that power or you can abstain.  If weilding that power would result in personal gain whereas abstaining might in fact harm you in some way, even possibly more than it would harm your victim, it is clear that abstainence is the harder of the two paths.

The easy path never impresses anyone.

You Wouldn’t Believe…

… some of the stuff that goes in MMORPGs.

Over the holidays, a friend of mine told me a story about a guy he played World of Warcraft with (briefly).

This kid was a 21 year old unemployed basement dweller.  He became fixated on a Trade Channel personality named Majestique.

This “Majestique” person simply sold a lot of stuff on the public trade chat channel that all players in all cities automatically join.

Somehow, this kid must have started a conversation with her.  Since girls who play these games are generally less rude than men, she kept the conversation going, but things just got worse and worse.

He became obsessed with her.  He began messaging her constantly.  He started referring to her to other players as “his partner.”  He even stole his parents’ credit card and bought her game time with it.  What a casa nova!  Gentlemen, are you jotting this down?  You may need to woo a woman one day and nothing says I love you like a WoW subscription stolen from your parents, whom you live with.

Like all stories, this one too has a punchline.  The punchline is that Majestique is openly lesbian.  At least, openly lesbian online.  What he/she/it actually is in real life is irrelevant, but apparently “Majestique is a lesbian” was public knowledge on this guy’s server.

And like so many stories, this one too has a tragic ending.

This kid started talking to her about how they were going to one day raise a family.  This conversation cumulated into an eProposal, something like this (/w <name> is the command to send a message):

/w Majestique Will you marry me?

Majestique whispers: I’m a lesbian.  Sorry hun.

/w Majestique We can work through that together.

Majestique whispers:  I don’t think we can.  You’re a nice guy, but I’m sorry, no.

/w Majestique But I love you.  I feel like we have a connection.

/w Majestique So now you’re not talking to me anymore?

Majestique whispers: Sorry I was afk a minute

/w Majestique So you won’t reconsider?

Majestique whispers: No.

/w Majestique Fine then.  I’ll just delete all my toons and go kill myself.

Majestique is ignoring you.

/wrists

 

I wish I were making this stuff up.

Back in the day when I used to be a World of Warcraft player, I was part of a hardcore raiding guild.  We elected a guy to take our leader’s place when he retired.  This new leader went by Ferrien, and Ferrien’s “wife” (not legally, but that’s how he called her) also played with us.  “Ferrien” was a skinny 20 year old white Canadian kid who washed dishes and lived on government assistance.  His “wife”, “Aliane”, was a 25 year old fat black girl from Colorado with a 5 year old illegitimate son who lived in Canada with Ferrien.  Another player in the guild, “Thorslight”, was a skinny 23 year old white kid from California.

Long story short – “Thorslight” and “Aliane” had an eAffair and fell in eLove, and together they eLoped in Las Vegas.  When Aliane mysteriously left Canada with her bastard child, Ferrien got a little suspicious and didn’t log in for a few days.  When he came back and found out what happened, he robbed our guild bank, disbanded our guild, and quit the game.  I thought he would have done the /wrists also, but he came crawling back to WoW a couple of months later.  Broken, but not dead.

Truth is stranger than fiction.