People are bad…probably

Recently I have been trying to figure out of people are generally good, generally bad or downright evil.  My original thesis was this:

First, “Good” can be defined as what everybody thinks is acceptable.

Second, Most people define “Good” in a way that fits their own activities.

Therefore, most people are good.

This may be a logical answer, but the argument falls short as an actual argument.  So I am going to try to have a better answer.  I would like to apologise if I seem to be arguing with myself during this post as that is exactly what I am doing.

Why are people good (as they define it)?  Is it because they fear retribution?  Is it a moral imperative?  If the former, then I would say that is an indication that, given the chance, most people would be bad (if not evil).  If the latter, then there may be hope for the human race after all.

How can we determine a single person’s internal reasons for taking actions, much less everyone’s?  The best way is to evaluate those people who think they are above retribution by means of personal wealth or because they think they are too stupid or crazy to know better.  Now in the second case, I am not talking about the people who steal to feed their family (they are being pushed in to violating societal mores).  I am talking about true lunatics here.

The evidence here gets hard to gather.  Many people are financially well-to-do and stick to their morality.  These people never make the news.  Then there are cases such as Bernie Madoff.  So, Are there more “good” guys than “Bernie” guys that fit this “above the law” criteria?  Probably.  Does that prove that most people are good?  Probably not.  I would rather use the term “adequate” for people that only do no harm.  What about actually doing good?  Again, the people who do good rarely make the news.  It can also be argued that the harm that one Bernie can do is not mitigated by the good that a single goodie-two-shoes does.  And what about the good guy?  If he has $20M in money that can be spent on anything, and buys himself a $19.9M car and give $100k to charity…is that good?  The car was built by someone and therefore he is helping the economy.  But that is not a selfless act…and therefore not really good.

Then there are other cases that do not conform to the case study from above.  I was renting a house until I got a job.  My landlord knew that we were strapped for cash.  He and his wife were both employed.  He chose to sell the house we were living in rather than take a financial stalemate (which was the situation with my lease).  This put a lot of pressure on me and my family.  He was a decent guy otherwise, but did something uncomfortable to me so that he and his family could be more comfortable.  Is that a good act?  I will leave it up to the reader to decide since I am too close to this example.

This is a small sample size.  But can we make a tentative conclusion?  I am going to say that people are not good.  People who consistently do good deeds are far outnumbered by the truly evil and just plain unconscientious.  Are people evil?  There is evil in the world, but the mere presence of the Mother Theresas in the world would seem to disapprove the “people are evil” hypothesis.

I think, by and large, people are inconsiderate.  Not really evil, but definitely not good.  So, if I have to put people in to one of the categories I outlined at the beginning, then I am forced to put the human race in the “bad” range.

State Secrets

It has been absolutely nuts the past few weeks.  Not only have I started working on a cool new project at work, I have also been working on a Morgan Family web site, projected release date is somewhere between December/2008 and December 2099.

Anyway, I have been thinking again.  Always a dangerous prospect.  Anyway, I was thinking about the United States.  Not the country, the actual states.  Why do we have states? 

The founding fathers had an idea about a weakened national government that was only really in place to settle arguments between states, and provide a unifying front for external nations.  Prior to Lincoln, that is exactly what the United States of America was.  Not “One Nation…”, but a loose conglomeration.

But for 7 score and 5 years, the United States has been a unified nation, with state governments simply providing a layer of government.

That brings me to my point.  The driving laws are essentially identical nation wide.  Yet we have 50 different state trooper organizations and 50 different DMVs.  The taxes are pretty close to each other in each state, yet there are 50 different state tax organizations.  Each of these has some overhead.  Combining states would eliminate some of this overhead…leading to a more effective use of our tax dollars.

However, I am not advocating eliminating all states.  States do have a purpose.  California and Virginia are good examples of what I mean.  California is a forward-looking state that is almost always the first to implement any wide-sweeping social reform.  In IT, we call this a beta release.  A trial run of new software to see if it works or not.  Virginia is more of a wait-and-see state.  They gauge the results from other states, and adapts the changes that they feel are improvements.  Having a mixture is probably a good idea.

So, here is my plan:

Staying the same:

• Alaska – 663,661
• Hawaii – 1,275,194
• California – 36,132,147
• Texas – 22,859,968

These constitute the largest states, and the states that are not a contiguous.

Now, we start combining some stuff:

• Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa (Illiminnowiscowa – ILL) - 26,398,705
• Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska (Wyodaknebidawashorigomon – WASH) – 15,974,272
• Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah (Colariznevutnewmex – COL) – 17,417,245
• Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana (Kanoklarkmisslou – KAN) – 19,395,663
• Indiana, Ohio, Michigan (Indohmich – IND) – 27,856,875
• New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut (Newmassrhoconvermhampyor – NEW) – 33,494,354
• New Jersey, DC, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania (Jerdelmapenn – JER) – 28,141,974
• Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina (Carolikenvergitenn – CAR) – 32,459,010
• Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi (Georgalaflorimiss – GEO) – 34,341,336

By the constitution, the Senate takes 2 representatives from each state.  That would reduce the size of the senate from 100 to 26.  A much more manageable size.  The House has 435 members right now.  That is much more than was originally intended.  The house was supposed to be based on population.  The original total was for 65, divided by the original 13 colonies.  Although I didn’t plan on it, the Combined states happen to add to 13.  So, we can reduce the number of representatives to 65.  Hawaii and Alaska would each have one representatives.  The others would also be based on population, per the Constitution.

State	Population	# Reps	# Senators
California	36,132,147	8	2
Georgalaflorimiss	34,341,336	7	2
Newmassrhoconvermhampyor	33,494,354	7	2
Carolikenvergitenn	32,459,010	7	2
Jerdelmapenn	28,141,974	6	2
Indohmich	27,856,875	6	2
Illiminnowiscowa	26,398,705	6	2
Texas	22,859,968	5	2
Kanoklarkmisslou	19,395,663	4	2
Colariznevutnewmex	17,417,245	4	2
Wyodaknebidawashhorigomon	15,974,272	3	2
Hawaii	1,275,194	1	2
Alaska	663,661	1	2
Total	296,410,404	65	26

That would reduce the number of people in the government.  The founding fathers wanted deadlock in the house and senate.  They wanted that to make it difficult to pass legislation unless it was important.  But I think we have gone too far in that direction.  A little smaller would allow for some bold decisions to be made.  It would also have the unfortunate result of making Reps and Senators more important, but maybe that will get more people to the polls on non-presidential election days.

As usual with my wild theories, there are some major problems.  California has a lot of power in the current setup.  They would continue to be powerful in the new system, but not quite as powerful.  Getting California to agree to give up power to reduce government might be difficult.  And it would be difficult to make these changes without the approval of California.

Also there are states that are way outside the “norm”.  New Hampshire is proud to be odd, having no state taxes to speak of.  How would they do merging with the high-tax states like New York and Massachusetts?

I also like the idea of a recombining of Virginia and West Virginia, but I’m not sure if West Virginia would like it (nor, for that matter would Virginia like it).  But even when states are philosophically similar, there can still only be one state government and state capitol.  So, which one?

I doubt that this could ever happen in my lifetime, but it makes sense to me.

Peace in the Middle East

Yes, I think Peace in the Middle East is possible…in fact, it is inevitable.  The question is “When?”

Theoretically after the human race is extinct and the Solar Star has gone cold the Middle East will be peaceful (there won’t be anything left alive, but there shouldn’t be any war either).

I’m thinking of a shorter term plan though.  Granted, I think we would still be looking at a couple of generations before we would see real improvement.
What is my plan?

Religion is a poor excuse for war.  It is a common excuse, but a poor one nonetheless. In the absence of other factors, religion is not enough to sustain a war.  I am not privy to the economics during the Crusades, but I am sure more than one soldier signed up because they needed a paycheck.

Ultimately prosperity is the best piece keeper.  I am not sure where I heard the following, but it sounds reasonable:

“There has never been a war between two countries that had a McDonalds”.
The idea being that in order to support a fast food industry a certain level of economic stability would need to be reached.  Rather than risk that prosperity the populace will be more willing to leave a war alone.

I am not familiar with the economics of the Middle East, but I seem to remember that the rich are filthy rich while the poor are just plain filthy.  So, how can we raise the quality of life in the area?

Well, despite our high-tech endeavors, the United States economy is still dominated by agriculture.  The fact that Americans have plenty to eat (domestically) is a big part of our own prosperity.  The problem with the Middle Eastern area is that it is primarily an arid environment.

There are people a lot smarter than me trying to figure out how to reclaim farm land from the desert.  The science seems easy enough.  With enough Sun and water at least some kind of vegetation can grow…even if it is algae.  The desert has plenty of sun…the water is where it gets tricky.

The Mediterranean sea…as well as the Persian gulf…are full of water.  It shouldn’t take a genius to pump water from these sources inland to a centralized area (to start).  The energy for these pumps can be run off fossil fuels to begin with (plenty of that around) then can be switched over to wind and/or solar sources (the principal component in solar cells is silicone.  Most of the sand in the desert is also silicone).

So, now we have water and sun…time to start growing crops, right?  Not exactly.  Agriculture has become a science in and of itself.  It is also a science that I only slightly understand.  But one thing I do know, you need some nitrogen to grow meaningful crops.  Where is that going to come from?  Well, it is best to pull it from the air.  There are crops that are not consumed that do this pretty well. (that is called rotating crops…I think).

So even if the area starts as an algae farm that produces no usable food, it will help to enrich the soil to make meaningful crops later.  But wait…one more thing.  The water that is pumped in from the Med and the Gulf are salted.  Crops don’t grow well with salt water.  That means a desalination plant…which requires yet more energy…which requires more solar panels/wind mills.

But people are stupid.  You see, where would you build this new community?  I would suggest a new city so that sanitation plants and plumbing can be built in.  That is the one thing I can say.  I would personally like to see it on the border of Jordan, Iraq and Syria.  But the Saudi’s wouldn’t like that and may actually attack the city while it was under construction.

Putting it at the border between Jordan, Saudi Arabia Israel and Egypt would also make sense (that has the benefit of being pretty close to the Med), but if the Americans took point on this project (which we are likely to do), we would be showing favoritism toward our allies in the area.

I don’t have an answer…but let’s move on.

Above all else, I think that what the middle east needs is to be less important to the world.  The best way to do that is to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.  Once this new city was finished, the technology for creating a renewable energy economy would be developed.  America could take the lessons from “Capital City” to eliminate our own dependence on the fossil fuels.

I call it “Capital City” because I think it should be the new home of the United Nations.
The big problems with this plan?

1) Make war, not gifts – America is more likely to attack an area that is unstable than try to help it.  Remember Vietnam?  For that matter, Iraq really need aid, but we brought guns.

2) Protecting the project – Although the project would be intended to help the area, it would inevitably be a source of attack by short sited people and royalty that would see it as a way of subjugating their wealth and power.

3) Price – This would cost a lot.  To protect and to build the city would be a huge project.  I wouldn’t mind helping to foot the bill if it would bring stability to my future grandchildren.  But I don’t know how many other people would feel as I do.  And I can’t afford it on my own (any Billionaires out there want to give it a try?)

All in all these are fewer problems than other wild theories I have had (remember the terraforming of Venus?).  But it is a long term plan that isn’t even guaranteed to work…but I think it is better than what we are doing today.

That “Meaning of Life” stuff

For those who actually get the reference…Kumtria!!!

You know, I think the Canines have figured out the meaning of life.  Think about it.  At least in my house they run the house.  They have no responsibilities and yet get all the food and treats they need (including a few they don’t.)  So here is what my dogs would think the meaning of life is:

1) Sparky – (85 lbs Lab/Border Collie) The meaning of life is being tall enough to reach anything on the kitchen counter and a nose that can open any door…including the pantry.

2) Peanut – (70 lbs Pure Lab) The meaning of life is a good tummy rub.

3) Honeybear (55 lbs Golden/Chow/Lion?) The meaning of life is goofin’.  Especially when Sparky starts to grump.

4) Sasha (45 lbs Gremlin/Lab/Jack Russell/Rott/????) The meaning of life is a house that accepts Gremlins and a human to lick obsessively.

But in all seriousness, I think the dogs do know the meaning of life.  To have someone to love and to be loved unconditionally.  What more can you expect out of life.  And the dogs have mastered it.

NAsERs

I coined a new term today.  The term is “NAsERs” 

I work in the IT field.  Specifically I am a Quality Assurance Analyst.  That basically means that it is my job to break software.  When I do it is called a “Not as Expected Result”.  So I am calling them NAsERs. 

Not As Expected Results

I hope it catches on.  That would be cool.

I both Love and Hate the English Language

As a kid I truly despised the English Language.  Not so much for the difficulty in understanding euphemisms or slang, but because I couldn’t spell.  I have mentioned before that I have Dyslexia.  This causes my brain to confuse letters when attempting to spell words.  I have a logical brain and wanted a language that made sense.

I want to implement the following rules:

1) Lets get rid of “C” – there is no reason.  “K” and “S” do an adequate job of communicating pretty much all there is that “C” does. 

2) “Q” is also unnecessary.  “KW” works just as well.

3) Silent letters should be eliminated from all words.

4) New letters should be invented for “SH”, “TH” and “CH”. (“C” and “Q” aren’t doing anything)

5) Accents should be used to indicate “long” or “short” vowel sounds.

I am blessed to live in the age of Spell Check.  In High School I got only average grades (ok, slightly above average), but in College I got high marks.  I tell people that the reason for this is that in High School the teachers couldn’t read my handwriting and assumed I was wrong.  In College the Professors couldn’t read my handwriting and assumed I was right.  But the truth is that in College I started handing everything in typed up and spell-checked.  It is amazing the difference that made.

Those people I know who have learned English as a second language tell me that spelling isn’t the hardest part of the language.  Slang is.  Words have meanings that go beyond skin deep.

This was accentuated one day when I was at the local Chick-Fil-A.  The little girl behind the counter said “My Pleasure” after I said “Thank You”.  It reminded me of a rant by Tuesday Morning Quarterback about how the recent common use of the phrase is diluting the meaning.  But I think that is one of the strengths of the language.  When a word or phrase becomes overused it will eventually be replaced.  Sometimes with another existing synonym (e.g. Wonderful) and sometimes with a related, but not obvious, slang term (remember the whole “Bad”/”Good” thing of the 80’s)

In real life, when someone asks my how I am doing I try not to answer “Fine”.  Instead I answer “Wonderful” or “Wonderbar” or “Great”.  If someone says “Hi” I try to use words like “Greetings” or “Howdy” or “Good Morning” (no matter the time of day).  The English language is rich in words and a strong and/or unusual vocabulary can bring a smile to people’s faces.

But language does have a weight associated with it.  I know the Chinese written language has a different symbol for every word in their language.  The result is a  population that can’t write…or at least can’t read.

So, here is what I have been trying to do.  I want to create a logical universal language.  I think I will start by realizing that language is, by definition, not logical and taking a break…forever.

Population: Infinity

You may have noticed that in my “Wild Theories” category I like to take the opposite approach than the conventional wisdom.  After all, I encourage the terraforming and populating of Venus, not Mars.  And I consider Autism an evolutionary step in the right direction instead of a learning disability.  This primarily comes from my family dinner table.  My father and I would debate over our meat and potatoes everything from quantum physics to football.  We were both contrarians, so no matter how difficult it would be to justify a position, I would take it as long as it was the exact opposite of my father’s position (he would do the same).  This may sound like typical teenager stuff, but I don’t know how many teenagers will argue with their fathers about Schrodinger’s Cat and Pavlov’s dog rather than Friday Night Curfew.

Wow, that was off subject. Now on to my latest wild theory.

Conventional Wisdom is that the human population of Planet Earth is growing at a rate that is not sustainable.  My favorite Author, Isaac Asimov, wrote many texts, both fiction and non-fiction, on the subject and every one of them took a negative view on the subject.  And to be fair, we are already encountering a lack of food and resources for all of those hungry mouths.  But necessity is the mother of invention. 

I don’t consider it to be that big of a problem.  Granted that may be because I have plenty to eat.  My thinking is as follows:

Premise: The human race is generally “good”

Premise: The rate of “Genius” is constant

Conclusion: The more people there are, the more benevolent geniouses there are in the world. 

You can argue with both of my premises.  But I will ask that you accept them for now.  The problems we currently face are numerous.  Everything from Global Warming to Global Dimming to food shortages to cancer and yes, overpopulation.  Who is going to solve these problems?  For the most part, solutions to global problems require two things:

1) Smart People

2) Lots of Data

So, the more “Normal” people we have, the more data collectors we have.  The more Geniuses we have, the more problem solvers we have.  I don’t pretend to know what the solutions will be (my IQ falls just short of “Genius”), but I think the more geniuses there are out there the more likely we are to find the solution.

That all holds true if my premises are right, but if either premise is wrong then we are probably screwed either way.

I Think The Borg have it right

For those of you who either don’t know or don’t remember, the Borg were a cybernetic species introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation and brought out again every time ratings slipped on the subsequent Star Trek series.  They were supposed to be the embodiment of evil, but I didn’t see that.  I thought they were the embodiment of fanaticism.  If you were not a member of their “Clique” then you were forcefully converted.  If you read my post “A Rant About Religion” you will see how I feel about fanaticism.

But I am not currently interested in the fanaticism, or the use of cybernetics for enhancement (which I think may be a natural evolution of the human species in centuries to come).  What I am talking about are their ships.  They had two “classes” of star ships.  They had the spheres and the cubes.  Simple geometric shapes that were intended to show that the Borg had no real imagination.

I’m not sure that is true.  Why make a space ship anything other than a simple geometric shape?  A cube is a highly efficient use of space (why do you think houses are generally cubic).  The sphere is one of the strongest structures.  The only reason to make a star ship a different shape is for artistic reason and to eliminate usable space.

So, I think when the human race does eventually travel to the stars, the ships will not look like the Enterprise, but instead will resemble a Borg cube (although I would allow for a 3D rectangle as well)

The Un-Theory

This is an unusual situation for me.  Usually when I come up with these wild theories I try to discount them before I commit them to writing.  This is one that I was actually able to discount.

The Theory:

I thought it would be possible to create an artificial intelligence with all of human knowledge.  Not in some unknown future, but right now.  If you think about it, human thoughts can be broken down in to words.  Dictionary.com has every word in the dictionary (redundant?).  So, first you can teach the AI to look up words in the dictionary.  So, for a word like “Button” the AI would know that it was either an interface between a piece of hardware and a human operator (keyboard buttons or a power button) or a piece of solid material, usually in the shape of a circle, that is used to hold two pieces of a garment together.

The next part of my AI was to link the words to a category.  So it would need to know if a particular word is a verb, noun, pronoun etc.  That is also in the dictionary.  So it would know that a “Button” is a Noun.

My next step was to give “meaning” to the words. 

With nouns it seemed pretty easy.  Have the AI search on Google for images related to the noun and link the two. So now the AI would know that not only know what a button does through the dictionary, but what a button actually looks like.

For Verbs it would be a tad difficult.  But Google has a video search and since a verb is simply an action a video search should accomplish the same for verbs that an image search would for nouns.

Pronouns and other such “shortcuts” could be handled with sentence structure analysis that any grade schooler can do (though many adults can  not).

This would need to be a self updating program.  Every time it “learned” a new word it would need to add it to it’s own database and/or add a programing module to call.  So it would need to know how to write the code that it is made of.  This isn’t as difficult as it sounds.  I have written many programs that generate code on the fly.  Object-Oriented programming practices rely on this functionality.

Finally, have the AI respond to a question appropriately using the above information.  Though this is more difficult than it may sound, it has already been done in a limited way with Oliverbot. 

The Discounting of the Wild Theory

The problem with this approach is apparent if you spend some time with Oliverbot.  The system is powerful in it’s simplicity, but it is limited by understanding.  A computer ultimately understands only what it has been told.  Having it search for information over the Internet doesn’t really help because although it may know the definition of a word, and may know what it looks like the concept is completely lost on it.  This would create an artificial intelligence with a massive memory and no understanding.  While writing this I realize that what I have described above is very much what Google actually does.

I still don’t know how my son knows what a “button” is.  How did he make that leap between the specific instances of a button and the general concept?  In many ways the fact that he is Autistic means that he has some trouble with this leap.  But maybe the study of Autism will help to determine how the human brain develops “concepts”.  So maybe this theory isn’t as wild as I think.

Random Theory Alert

OK, so I have a tendency to create wild theories and to post them for whomever will read them.  As an example, there is the Terraforming of Venus.  So, here is the latest installment of what I am calling my “Wild Theory” category:

 As I have mentioned before, my son is autistic.  He is considered “high functioning” which means he has the intelligence to be considered “normal”, he simply learns differently from his peers.

So, here is my wild theory: Autism is an evolutionary step FORWARD.

 Autism is currently handled as a learning disability (Personally, I hate that word).  I am certainly not the first to call it a learning difference.  Here is why I think that Autism is the next step in human evolution:

 1) Autistic children (and adults) are usually good at recognizing patterns.  In an increasingly technological society pattern recognition is a benefit.

2) Autistic children tend to have good memories.  They are able to recall details from memory more easily than “normal” children.

3) Autistic children learn more easily from television than from a human teacher.  This may sound like a disadvantage, but consider the sheer volume of high-quality children’s programming that is currently available and compare that to the dronings of a single teacher trying to pour knowledge in to children’s brains.  I think the future of education is in “learning machines” rather than human teachers (partially due to the difficulty in finding qualified teachers).

4) Autism is considered a learning disability.  At some point in the evolution in man, the two-chambered heart used by primitive animals would need to morph in to a four-chambered heart.  While this was occurring, the additional weight of the heart would be considered a flaw, though not a critical flaw.  When the fully functioning four-chambered heart was finally developed, the carrier of that heart would have a decided advantage over his or her peers.  Why can’t the same be true of the human brain?  An autistic child may be a baby step on the way to a new evolutionary step. Doctor’s can not point to the part of the brain that is “wrong” in an autistic child (at least I havn’t found anything dealing with that).  Scientists still don’t know how the brain actually works, what constitutes consciousness and sentience.  Maybe our brains use quantum-level “switches” to make decisions.  Perhaps autism is a subatomic modification of those quantum-level “switches” that doesn’t show up on medical equipment.

5) Autism isn’t perfect.  This may be my strongest argument for Darwinian Evolution (at least if this theory is correct).  Autistic children are split in to groups.  Those that are mentally diminished and those that are considered “High Functioning”.  I am fortunate enough to have a High-Functioning autistic son.  Going back to the evolution of the four-chambered heart, not every step taken in the evolution of the heart would be a step forward.  More often than not, the heart would fail under the strain.  The heart itself wouldn’t function at all.  It is an evolutionary mis-step.  That sounds needlessly callous to those people that are dealing with the evolutionary mis-steps in the evolution of the brain, but “survival of the fittest”, on which Darwinian evolution is based, allows for the eventual eradication of those evolutionary mis-steps by preventing the genetic code from being passed on to another generation.  In that way evolution is callous.