The Noble Quest for Profit

I have been following the current presidential primary race with great interest and have noticed a theme I had previously observed and commented on. Whenever Donald Trump has pointed out to him discrepancies between his proposals and actions he falls back to “I’m a businessman”. A couple examples: He talks about China taking manufacturing jobs while at the same time some of the paraphernalia he hawks at his website is in fact made in China. His response is that he is a businessman. When question about his bankruptcies, avoiding repayment of debts, he says that’s what businessmen do. The amazing thing is that the majority of the public accepts and forgives almost any acts in the pursuit of profits by a business, large or small. To use a popular phrase “that’s what they do” Companies leaving a particular local to move to a state with lower wages, leaving thousands of people unemployed, in quest for a greater profit are not criticized because their act is done in the spirit of business. Companies leaving the country are not viewed as unpatriotic but just as doing business. (In fact it is not the company but a politician or party that is blamed.) Unions on the other hand, attempting to improve the lot of workers are viewed as un-American. So a commercial enterprise’s quest to better itself and thus its owners through tax avoidance, endangerment of their workers, pollution of the environment, fraud, acts of disloyalty to its employees or by whatever other means is OK, but a questionable act on the part of a poor person trying to put food on the table, is viewed as horrific. Business is deemed noble, whereas labor is viewed as base. The ultimate success is to rise up from being a mere worker, even if the worker is a rocket scientist, to starting a business, even if it is shoveling manure. The business community must be commended for the effectiveness of the publicity campaigns over the centuries that have instilled this attitude in us.

Right Wing Islamophobia

I live in New England and have recently spent 3 weeks in South Carolina. Being a Yankee, a somewhat progressive liberal, an immigrant and a Muslim, I have my biases. To try to open my mind, I decided to listen to a Fox News talk show with segments by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck while in the car down south. One of the first shows I listened to featured a guest who was an extreme right wing separatist Member of British Parliament. He spoke about the ills of the influx of immigrants from the Middle East. He gave a reasonable and eloquent speech about the desire for uniculturalism and the issues with multiculturalism and how Britain can accept immigrants but needs to insure it maintains its culture. (I will discuss this in the next blog.) In the segment the MP whose name I don’t recall, discussed the problem Muslim immigrants create in Norway, especially rape. He cited a statistic that indicated that 100% of rapes are perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. ( In fairness I don’t recall if he specified Rape with assault or not), referring to statistics released by the Oslo police. However, listening to the eloquent MP, I got the impression that rape is a large problem and all rapists are Muslim immigrants. I decided to see if I could find more information on the Oslo rapes. I started thinking about the reasonableness of that statistic, considering factors like the Nordic countries tendency to be more progressive on sex and thus there is no need to resort to rape whereas Muslims tend to be more puritanical with sex outside of marriage frowned on. But even with that, 100% seemed very unreasonable. I looked up “Oslo Rape Statistics” on the internet and found and article in Loonwatch.com by Farah Khaled about the claim that all rapes in Oslo were perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. Following quote is the first paragraph from Khaled’s article: Earlier this month, Arutz Sheva, an Israeli website popular with Kahanists, an outlawed movement that is gaining prominence with the rise of the extreme right in Israel published ‘Norwegian Minister Links Norwegian Rape Wave To Israel’ by Gil Ronen. The story purported to shed light upon a conspiracy involving a Norwegian minister who ordered the truth about an Oslo police report detailing rape statistics to be hushed up, otherwise Israel may use the report against Norway because the rapists were Muslims. Ronen offered no evidence for his claims except to cite an Israeli blogger who writes a Hebrew blog, one Yehuda Bello whom he claims understands Norwegian and has contacts in Norway. Ronen wrote: Bello reports that from January to late October, 48 rapes were confirmed to have been carried out in Oslo alone, 45 of them by Muslims. 48 rapes were confirmed to have been carried out in Oslo alone, 45 of them by Muslims The article went on explaining Norway’s reluctance, they being anti-Semitic and in the midst of quarrels with Israel, to openly blame the rapes on Muslims. The following is the result of Khaled’s inquiry: Shortly after Arutz Sheva published the Oslo rapes report in early December, I wrote to The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police asking them to verify Gil Ronen’s claims. I received the following reply from Elisabeth Lund a Senior Adviser to the Ministry: Statistics regarding assault rapists: The Oslo Police District has given a report of rapes in Oslo in 2010. The report shows that for all types of rape, except assault rape, European perpetrators are in the majority, and they are mostly Norwegian. Assault rapes covers only five identified unique person. These have all a foreign origin. The number is however, so low that it does not provide a basis for drawing conclusions with regard to country of origin. Two of them were very young (under 18) and two had severe psychiatric diagnoses and cannot be regarded as representative of their ethnic culture. It is highlighted in the report that generalizations like “Oslo’s rapists are foreigners”, which have been seen in media, are wrong. The report gives no statistics regarding religion of rapists.” Yours Sincerely, Grethe Kleivan Deputy Director General Granted, the article I refer to may also be a fabrication but at least it quotes a signed document (maybe false) with a name. On the internet these days who knows, anyone, including myself, can write anything. Sean Hannity did not question the guest and accepted, as I am sure his million like-minded listeners, this as further evidence of the evils of Islam and its practicioners. I continued listening to the radio station whenever in the car. I realized the right was promoting fear and Islamophobia but did not realize the vitriol and volume. It was a good but painful experience.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest: Schrodinger’s Cat

I recently bought a series of lectures from The Teaching Company entitled Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science. The lectures are presented by Professor Steven Gimbel from Gettysburg College who discusses changes in understanding of reality over time mostly in scientific and mathematical terms, though he does touch on philosophy. In one of the lectures he spoke about the Schrodinger Equation and the Schrodinger’s Cat experiment. I think this experiment gives a more elegant explanation than I did in previous posts on the Zen coan which asks: “if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, is there a sound?” Following quotes are from the lecture: “When a quantum system is not observed, it occupies a state of superposition; it is in a combination of every possible state it could occupy. But the instant we observe the system, it collapses into one state, The Schrodinger Equation gives us the odds that we will find it in each of the possibilities, but the best we get is a probability.” The Schrodinger’s Cat is a thought experiment that I will try to condense and hopefully not get wrong in the process. “We can create a pair of electrons that when we do not look at them are in superposed states of clockwise and counterclockwise spin, but as soon as we observe one, both collapse into a single state such that one is always opposite of the other, but we will never know which will be which.” The experiment imagines a box into which is placed this created electron pair, a “spin” detector, a poison capsule and a cat. If the detector senses one direction it does nothing, while the other direction triggers a mechanism which bursts the capsule releasing the poison gas, killing the cat. A button is pushed turning on the detector and the electron collapses from its superposed state. Everything in the box, is a physical thing, all atoms, and while unobserved “all are in a superposed state in a grand entangled system”. As long as we don’t open the box, the cat, also being in a superposed state, existing in every possible position, is both alive and dead. Once the box is opened (there is a listener in the forest), the cat collapses into a single state and is either dead or alive (who hears the sound of the tree falling), depending on which way the detector happened to sense the spin direction. I imagine the same can be said of the forest. Everything there is in a superposed state in an entangled system and until observed, there is not only no tree but no forest.

Sociology-A Two Edged Sword

I just read an article in New Republic entitled “Pulp Propaganda” by Jeet Heer. He writes about a mid-twentieth century cartoon character created by Roy Crane. Buz Sawyer was a hero who fought against all of our foes during the Cold War from Iran to Vietnam, exalting the virtues of free enterprise, condemning the evils of communism and demonstrating the benevolence of the United States. When Roy Crane passed they found documents in his archives, letters he received from the State Department that outlined the story lines in some detail which he followed. A week ago, Fareed Zakaria had a guest on his Sunday GPS show on CNN who was the minister of a new department in the UK known as “Nudge”. The role of the organization was to encourage citizens to behave properly (pay their taxes, obey laws, help their neighbors, etc.) by including phrases like “your neighbors pay their taxes” in information sent out to the public. They found the turn of phrase had a measurable impact on people’s behavior. I suspect this department along with the department under the Secretary of State that directing Buz Sawyer, are staffed by sociologists, who after all are students of human behavior and understand what makes us tick. I have often thought about the use of sociology in commerce and government, recognizing that in both institutions, it can and does serve both a beneficial and nefarious purpose. In the first example above the government was trying to manipulate us and others who read our newspapers around the world into seeing us as benevolent supporters of freedom and wellbeing of people around the world. At the extremes, entire population segments, like the Jews in Germany, the Palestinians in Israel or more and more Muslims here, are pronounced to be evil doers, destroying an economy, occupying promised lands or threatening a culture. The second example is a positive one, where by proper placement of a few words, instead of brutal enforcement, people can be nudged to socially beneficial behavior. In commerce sociology is also a two edged sword. Sociologists, considering their understanding of human behavior, can use this information, through advertising, packaging and product placement get us to enhance a company’s profit sometimes even at the cost of our health and wellbeing (cigarettes, alcohol and sugared foods) or buy stuff of no value to us (pet rocks, many children’s toys and overly expensive golf balls). On the positive side sociologists can contribute ideas for making a workplace more livable. (I had to think hard to come up with a positive for the commercial.) In fact everyone probably uses their understanding of what we humans react to in presenting our outward appearance and selecting and arranging our words and phrases. We get dressed up and answer questions we think will help us get a job. We act sweet or manly and considerate to make us appealing to a potential mate. We all, to varying degrees try to do in an amateurish way, what professional sociologists do expertly. So what is the issue? The internet has allowed almost anyone to reach almost everyone and facilitated the use of the knowledge of human nature for their advantage. Unfortunately sociology, amateur or professional, is used more for selfish commercial purposes and spreading extreme ideologies than to advance society’s well -being. Even ISIS has developed this skill. They have learned the word, from their misinterpretation of the Koran, to entice disenchanted youths to join their cause and commit heinous acts against humanity. The skills used by “URGE” in the UK which are good can easily, in the hands of a different government, be used for evil.

Children – Parent’s or Society’s Responsibility

There are numerous areas that differentiate Republicans from Democrats. One of them is the point of view on individual’s rights versus society’s needs. An area of particular interest to me in this debate is the role and responsibility of parents and society as a whole in raising and educating our children. Five years ago I posted a piece I wrote on education and the following is a quote from that piece. (Pretty arrogant quoting myself, huh?) “Years ago a neighbor made a comment to the affect that since our kids are grown, why should we have to pay to educate children of others. I would like to think that the question does not reflect a common point of view but following are my thoughts on the topic. The question is aimed at public education and may boil down to why should the general population pay for something that is of benefit to an individual or a family and is of no consequence to the community? Jonas Salk, the inventor of the vaccine that eliminated polio was not a relative of the masses that were spared the pain of the dreaded disease. Charles Manson was not the son of the Tate’s whose daughter Sharon he and the gang he led murdered so brutally in the 60s. The society as a whole benefits or suffers from the actions of other people’s children and thus it is to the benefit of everyone that we produce the “best”. In the industrialized world where we do not rely on our children to care for us in old age, the major benefit derived by the family of a well-educated child comes down to “bragging rights”.” A golfing buddy the other day complained about the government (and by extension him) having to pay for defaulted student loans. Just like the neighbor above, he felt he was being asked to pay for “stuff” given to an individual but of no benefit to him. Children have been thought of as belonging to the parents and at the extreme, in medieval Japan, the head of a household had a right to put any member, including a child, to death without repercussions. They were his and he had the right to do with them as he saw fit. We have come a long way since then but the notion that children are truly the responsibility of the society as a whole (“children are our future”, “It takes a village”, and all that), still has limited acceptance. Poor parent’s kids attend poor schools while the children of the rich attend good schools and a parent or the child has to pay for their college education. This goes to demonstrate the lack of our ability to connect the quality of an upbringing with the wellbeing of society and for that matter, individuals within that society. A scholarship granted to a poor but brilliant child for the most part is viewed as a gift or a reward and not an important investment in our future. I was watching an old TED Talk by Yuval Noah Harari entitled “Why Humans Run the World”. His basic theme is that we humans as individuals have no advantage over most other animals. For example: if a man and a chimp were stranded on an island, the chimp would most likely survive and the man not. The advantage we have, even over other social animals like bees and chimpanzees, is that unlike bees and chimps, who function in colonies of limited numbers, we function as a society of unlimited numbers. They live in the current reality. We are able to operate in very large social groups because we create imagined realities through stories we collectively believe. As an example he mentions that a chimp might trade another chimp a banana for a mango but never as we, trading a banana today for the promise of many bananas in some imagined afterlife. Another example is the story that money has a value. We believe a worthless piece of paper with certain printing has sufficient value to be exchanged for a banana or a different printing for thousands of bananas. So if Harari’s thesis has any merit and we humans, as social animals run the world, then the children today will be adults running this world tomorrow and thus maybe a societal responsibility. If children are indeed a society’s asset and responsibility, what then is the role of the parents? Whether by Devine intervention or more likely evolution, we are built with a need to procreate and sustain or increase the population of our village, tribe, nation or the planet. Several decades ago, China tried to slow its population growth with the “one child” policy but since has came to realize that to grow their economy, not only did they need to replace the deceased, they needed to grow the population. Much of northern Europe has declining populations and Denmark, concerned about this drop, even has adds running on TV encouraging the general population to have more babies. A declining population is a threat to the wellbeing of individuals since there will not be enough people to provide necessary resources for the aging. Obviously one key role of parents is to bring into this world the children necessary to maintain or increase the population. Humans, because of their large heads housing their large brains, come into the world prematurely, before the physiology of the brain has been fully developed. Successful development needs to occur in a quiet, stress-less environment. Fortunately we humans are born, as I believe are most animals, with a tender affection for the very young, particularly though not exclusively, if they are of our seed or egg. So the job of nurturing the infant naturally falls to the parent and the role of society should be to enable the setting where parents can properly support the physiological development of the brain. After this physiological development children need to develop psychologically. This development requires much one on one attention and patience. Though this part could theoretically be provided by others, the natural affection of the parent for the child makes the job much more effectively if they do it. As the child grows the role of the parent diminishes and society’s role expands. It is in preparing children to be contributing members of a society where the crossover begins. Education systems were designed to teach children skills necessary to become productive members of their societies. England developed public education because of their vast and dispersed empire needed a cadre of clerks with good hand writing and the ability to add a column of numbers. Each country and community wants children to learn what is necessary for the future well-being of that community. The Soviet Union wanted good communists and the West, good capitalists. Each curriculum was appropriate to their ends. Malcom Gladwell in one of his books, wrote about professional hockey and gave some interesting statistics. If one looks at the birthdates of professional Canadian hockey players one finds that most are born in January, followed by February and a few in March. I don’t believe there are any born in November or December. The reason for this is that in the Canadian junior hockey system, very small children are grouped by birth year at a very early age. So kids born in 2010, whether in January or December are put into one group. At the age of five or six that one year makes a tremendous difference in their physical development. So the kids born in January, having a year more to develop, outperform the kids born in December. Each team chooses the best players who are then put into elite teams which get six times the ice times as the regular teams. So, having been culled at a very early age and with six times more practice and playing time, they have a tremendous advantage over other hokey players. This system, by its nature, does not produce the best possible players in a community. Statistically there are as many good players born at the end of the year. But not given the ice time, they are essentially deprived the opportunity to play professional hockey. In fact, the best player may very well have been born in December. We will never find out. For the benefit of all of society, we need the best talent in our government and to run our businesses and other institutions. Our current system culls our children much as does Canada its hokey players, though the culling is not by age but by wealth. We proclaim that all in our country have an equal chance to succeed (the even playing field). However, the truth is that though the chance exists, it is far from equal and whereas in one case one may have a high probability, in the case of the very poor, the probability against success becomes astronomical. Many look at it as unfairness to the individuals. I look at it as a shortcoming that has a negative impact on all of us and is a detriment to society worldwide. As would a Canadian hockey fan want to see the best of Canada play on the national stage and not only the best of those born in January and February, so do I want t the best of us running our institutions and not only those born to wealthy parents. So a child’s proper development is in everyone’s best interest. Education should be provided to every child and higher education to every child with the ability to benefit from it. But attention to formal education is not enough, from birth, children are being already culled. To ensure that we have the best talent in all positions we must not only provide high quality education to all independent of wealth but also enact policies allowing all parents to provide an environment for the children in their care to develop both physiologically and psychologically.

Innovation and American Exceptionalism

Watching the special on technology on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria today, where among other things they discussed nuclear fusion (a pet topic of mine, considering it the energy source of the not too distant future), made me think of an important role of government that the Right has been neglecting. The push for reduction in spending and the naïve notion that private enterprise is the answer to everything has put us into a position where within a few years China will be spending more per GDP on research than will the US. Republicans will see no issue with government spending less, the problem is that private enterprise is also spending less. Large corporations like the IBMs and GEs along with their likes in the defense industry that had large research facilities have scaled them back over the last few decades. The current focus on quarterly performance has lead them to reduce spending on research which after all is a very long term investment and for the most part CEOs are not paid to think of the “long term”. Republicans thump their chests about our “exceptionalism” but generally don’t have any ideas as to where we are and where we are not truly exceptional. A number of years ago I saw “Morning Joe”, a political talk show hosted by Joe Scarborough, a former member of congress from Florida and a Republican, where they were discussing the military. A guest on the show mentioned that the military is having to drop its standards to be able to recruit sufficient numbers of soldiers. Joe chimed in that we have the best and brightest in our military and when the guest asked by what standard, Joe went into a chant of USA, USA, USA ending the conversation. In many areas like healthcare (we are 47th in life expectancy), freedom (the Kato Institute, a Libertarian think tank, puts us somewhere in the mid-teens among industrialized nations), and quality of life (The Economist has us at 13th) that the right brags about, we are not “exceptional”. There are other areas where we are leaders, though we might not want to be, are the number of gun deaths and the number of people we have in jails. We are first in the industrialized world. An area where we are truly world leaders is innovation and R&D and our efficient venture capital system facilitates it. Another area where we are leaders also indirectly contributes to our innovation. It is our ability to integrate various cultures into our society (though we have not done a good job of integrating Africans we brought over as slaves). This ability allows us to attract talent from around the globe. It is their creativity and the fact that these immigrants come with a variety of experiences, allowing problems to be viewed from many perspectives, that enhances the ability to innovate. Unfortunately most on the Right do not recognize our true “exceptionalism”. During this election cycle the Republican candidates spout anti-immigrant slogans which I’m sure discourage talent from abroad from coming here and enhancing our ability to innovate. The push for austerity, smaller government and elimination of debt, has resulted in a reduction in spending on research and education which surely will not only reduce our ability to innovate but also our ability to compete globally.

Eloquence

I was watching the Republican primary debate the other night and witnessed varying degrees of eloquence exhibited. (An online dictionary defines eloquence as “the practice of art of using language with fluency and aptness”.) Marco Rubio was quite eloquent while The Donald was not. Ted Cruz, a former debate team champion, was somewhere in the middle. Listening to all the words pouring forth made me reflect back on thoughts I had regarding the ability to communicate and the value of that skill. Granted there is great value in being able to effectively transfer thoughts from one’s mind into someone else’s. In some enterprises there is the added challenge of convincing the listeners that your thoughts have truth attached to them and convert the listener to your way of thinking. There is an old saying that a great salesman can “sell ice to an Eskimo” and debate teams are not judged on the gist of their argument but rather on their ability to argue a point. So here is my dilemma. Let’s say I am an administrator heading an organization where I rely on others for the in depth understanding of key technologies. Within the staff I have engineers and scientists who are great communicators and others who, though they may be brilliant, lack these skills. My contention is that unless the best minds also have the most eloquent tongues, the organization is suboptimal. If I don’t really have an in-depth understanding of the technology (which is often the case in organization headed by marketing or financial people), when presented with options based on two contradictory opinions, the person who argues their point better will most often win their case though the less eloquent person may have a stronger point, it will be pushed to the sideline. The success of the organization is then limited to the technical skills of the most eloquent members of the staff. During a break in the debate I mentioned my argument on eloquence to a niece. She did not agree and added that what I was describing is a shortcoming of a weak organization. I think she is correct but then the question becomes; how do we change the organization to overcome this weakness? A couple of solutions come to mind. 1. If the business is heavily dependent on some technology, ensure that the head of the organization is an expert in the technology. 2. Have a high ranking technical expert on the staff to evaluate all such debates, select the best case and make recommendations to the head. 3. Create teams comprised of both strong technologists and eloquent individuals who will then be counted on to present the team’s case. Surely the solution is not to only hire eloquent experts and not hire experts who cannot adequately argue their case. Getting back to the presidential debates where we observed a range of verbal skills. Unfortunately, for a position as important as President, we have to go with the most undesirable solution above. The person has to have the intellect to understand the complexities of issues they will face and have the skill to not only articulate them, but to convince others of the merits of their interpretation. Yes, we have to listen for the poetry in their words but we must also scrutinize the wisdom of their meaning. In the end it will be our skill in choosing our leaders, judging both style and substance, that will determine the degree to which we as a nation will succeed or fail.