Thirty six years of Albatross

Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the albatross
About my neck was hung.

The Brazilians believe that one can imagine his life only as far as the years that he has lived. At this time, looking out to his thirty-sixth year, Pemulis saw little. In fact, he refused to even look. Most young men do, and therefore see, the same. Here and now, and even next, they embrace, but many years later, at the apogee of his younger self's vision of time, Pemulis not only looks, but seeks fervently, though with apprehension and uneasiness, the infinite paths of a life tree before him. Years earlier, the turns, left or right down the infinite tree, held a far lighter weight; the chosen path opened further routes, and those routes could always re-connect with that which might have unfurled but for an earlier decision. The chosen passage now is heavy and rather than expanding the tree below, each choice leads to a pruning of the tree's roots, and unchosen pathways disappear forever. The ultimate fate of the infinite tree leads inexorably towards its beginning; the big crunch is on the horizon. No longer does the infinite tree expand, but it begins to contract.

And so, rather than choosing the optimal path (which alas is intractable), Pemulis seems to seek the untenable: forgo the stability of a tree with a strong base (for the correct path leads to strong roots); forgo the search for the ideal choices at every step; forgo homo economicus (for he is not him). Rather, take actions that lead to the fewest paths being pruned. Is it a harder problem? Why seek comfort only to flee its eventual embrace? The search for the true path is age-old: to only want what you cannot have. This is a Taleb Distribution. We can take it directly from the definition: "there is a high probability of a small gain, and a small probability of a very large loss, which more than outweighs the gains. In these situations the expected value is very much less than zero, but this fact is camouflaged by the appearance of low risk and steady returns". Vorsicht, Pemulis, for you know not what you do.

It's Friday!

There are about five and a half hours left in the Obama presidency and here we are in the coldest few weeks experienced in Bavaria for at least the previous five years. It's an angst-inducing time. Nevertheless, I saw the sun shine at lunchtime today and Nate Silver assures me that statistically, parties steadily lose power in the other branches of government when they have the White House. Also, there is the 25th Amendment.

But enough about U.S. politics! Today is January 20th, 2017, meaning we are 212 days, or exactly 7 months, to IM Copenhagen! Sandi and I haven't started our "training regime" yet but hopefully we will start this weekend. We got a wake-up call when our friend Thony's dad was in Munich this week and stopped by for a dinner of home-made pizza. Thony has been in Thailand for the last 4 weeks and it was reported by his dad that Thony has been running every day very early in the morning before the heat of the day settles in and he can start his biking exercise. Scary stuff.

This weekend we will do 3 runs each (at least that's the plan). We will also try to make it to the swimming pool for some family swimming to make sure that Hannah remembers how. The plan is also to fit in at least one indoor cycling session on the Electronic Trainer in ERG mode (just think back to what happened last January to the tune of "País Tropical") and maybe we will buy some fancy cheese at the Eataly market. Yes, I know! We live such compelling lives!

If you happen to be in Western Europe this weekend, drop by for a coffee. We will be drinking them at most hours of the day on both Saturday and Sunday so your chances of arriving around coffee time are high. And even if we're not there when you arrive because we're out running, at the pool, or buying our Italian products, just wait a few minutes. We'll be back soon because Hannah will have to nap.

See you soon.

Modern work

There are around 76,412,583,910 (close to 77-billion, basically) high-level themes relating to, centered around, and underpinning the modern economic and political system and how labor/work is understood within that system, where the neo-liberal version of Western liberal capitalism that started to emerge as the de facto approach to corporate and government policy some time in the 1990's has failed and has directly led us to the majority of the current problems that we face today which include but are not limited to the growth of right-wing populism and early stages of fascism, nationalism, racism as a government policy, entire demographics being left out of the workforce, emotional disconnection from society, depression, reversal of global collaboration, etc, etc, etc, but today I just want to talk about two of these essentially infinite themes: (1) the idea that if you don't "love" what you do (with respect to work) then you should find a different job (eventually everyone who loves garbage collection and everyone who loves cleaning toilets will find their dream job unless robots take over all that); and (2) the fetishization of work and the idea that if you're not working on something "significant" then why are you working on it at all.

Both have been heavily pushed through the awful medium known as TED talks. If you don't know what a TED talk is then I envy you and your life is actually probably pretty good and maybe you shouldn't be reading this downer of a blog post mostly because it might lead you to become curious about what exactly these "TED talks" are and you might then go actually watch one of them and then you'll have wasted a whole bunch of your time (because [spoiler alert]: they're awful). But if you're all too familiar with TED talks and your over-eager colleagues are sharing them with you every other hour with assurances that this one on how you've been improperly tying your shoelaces your whole life (I have!? DISASTER!) or that this life hack will save you thousands of dollars (hint to the millionaires in the audience: it's a "thrift shop" [but they actually know about it now thanks to Macklemore]) or (maybe the worst of all) the twelve-year-old douche-bag who made an "app" in the "app store" and was home-schooled and therefore obviously the school system has failed us all and if we were all home-schooled we could all be pretentious shits making apps in the app store and wouldn't we be so successful and outside-the-box and progressive and maybe one day Google will buy our company and then we'll be rich too and because we made an app in the app store our opinion will all of a sudden become important.

TED talks are not the topic of this post (but are highly related to it) but just one more thing (well two actually): have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It is "a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is". This is exactly what TED talks help to perpetuate (among other nasty things like spreading the fake news about "power poses" and then that will make you barf [literally]). Because I watched a 3-minute video on quantum physics I now am fully qualified at discussing why isn't it crazy that gravity isn't even explained by quantum physics??? OMG here is what I think the answer to that is! (you have added zero to the conversation). TED talks are hmm... what's the right metaphor?... they are the FitBits of pop-intellectualism. Everyone has a FitBit and they are deluded into thinking that if they hit their special goal that they will turn into a sculpted supermodel. Ok maybe a bad analogy, but having a shallow piece of information on a complex subject is generally more destructive than the other way around (especially when that shallow piece of information is used to try to start a conversation on which said person knows nothing about.. which would be fine except that they believe they have the background to make outrageous ignorant commentary upon said subject). Oh right, the second thing: most of these TED talks take an implicit view on both of the topics I said I would cover today -- namely, loving what you do, and the festishization of work.

The first view is repeated ad nauseam, especially in the technology / Silicon Valley / computer sector, and it's not exactly clear where it started, but a fairly representative and somewhat "famous" example is from Steve Jobs's Stanford commencement address in 2005:

"You’ve got to find what you love [...] Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle…"

Easy if you're a multi-billionaire who is in the 0.000000001% of people who have the skills, tenacity, strange interests (etc) that happen to fit what is currently wanted by the world economy/society/*, but how can anyone honestly argue that everyone will be able to find a job that they "love". For the time being, we still need parking lot attendants, security guards, waste processing engineers (garbagemen), janitors, secretaries, grocery store check-out people, retailers (i.e. the people who sell you your clothes at the Gap or whatever), accountants (OK I admit there are some really weird people out there who might like this), bus drivers, waiters, cake decorators, administrative assistants, Uber drivers (see below), Amazon shipping workers (I mean people that go through the warehouse, find the book, and put it in the package -- the robots can't fully do it by themselves yet), mechanics, dentists (though they are always odd), etc. If you really love something you shouldn't have to get paid to do it, right? I can't imagine any of these people doing any of the above jobs for free (well, maybe the really weird dentists). Deluding people into thinking that everyone is doing something (as a job) that they love and if you're not amongst them there's something wrong with you is a recipe for mass depression in a society. And one of the things that I really hate about this is that I think people convince themselves that they LOVE their job and get all annoying about it and then an expectation perpetuates that you should totally just think about your job all the time and since you love it anyways you should be doing it all the time all weekend long and why would you ever take any vacation because you're taking time away from something you love so much. Which leads to the feishization of work...

The erroneous belief that everyone should LOVE what they do and therefore you're not really "ever working a day in your life" means that companies shouldn't even have to pay us all that much for doing work that benefits the very few corporate executives and shareholders of the company because they are making it possible for you to "do your best work!!!". Then that's tied to the idea that since you love it so much and it's so exciting and these are such exciting times you should just always be working. Let's key-in, actually, on that important point just mentioned that is now pushed heavily by (mainly) tech industry corporations: that these are such exciting times. This is a viewpoint expounded by Silicon Valley elites / tech "apologists" (though no one seems to be forcing them to apologize so that's probably not the right label) and is represented in this widely-shared (almost exclusively shared in a positive light) quote by Tom Goodwin (not the former professional baseball player but the tech/media something-or-other over-confident smarter-than-all "head of innovation" somewhere):

"Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening."

The part that's especially galling is the presumptive conclusion that follows the premises: "something interesting is happening". Indeed, something terrible. Somehow these frighteningly brilliant marketing / Silicon Valley people have convinced us that this is exciting and the "democratization" of the every industry from media to service to retail. Here is an open secret that I will share with you: no one is getting rich driving an Uber (besides Uber). Facebook is perpetuating fake news and learning everything about you that advertising executives 20 years ago would have had fantasies about (and you're doing it for free), and if Airbnb puts the hotels out of business then we're all screwed (for obvious reasons but in case they aren't as obvious as I think they are here are some examples: who regulates for safety? what happens when there's a fire in your apartment? what happens when the tenants have a party and burn the place down? who will you talk to when you arrive at an airbnb and it actually doesn't exist? etc.).

I hear farming can be rewarding...

Even though it all went wrong

Welcome to 2017. Believe it or not (though if you choose the latter please note that there is direct evidence of the following fact and to not believe it would be to be willfully blind to the truth but then again we're living in a post-truth society so choose whichever option suits you) we are approaching the FIVE YEAR anniversary of this blog. The first ever post (where we looked exceptionally young I think) was made on February 11, 2012 (!), which, in one month and one day, will have been exactly five years ago. As we begin 2017, let's take a look back at what brought us here, and how it all went so wrong (don't worry -- just a figure of speech).

1. Trent University's fine Physics Department supplied me with an educational foundation for my future endeavors that they are still highlighting to this very day. In fact, they are clearly looking for people just like me (at both the undergraduate and graduate level) as you can see by visiting the Prospective Students page and the Prospective Graduate Students page (and you thought I looked young in 2012!). In case they make changes for any reason (but why would they after 12+ years?), here are the tops of the above pages reproduced for your viewing pleasure:

2. So it seems that my true calling was a model for attracting students to study physics at Trent University. But wait. It looks like there is another preeminent institution that is aiming at advancing its interests by making use of my name, likeness, or other aspect of my persona for commercial gain. Look out Xerox, as I have already instructed my attorney to start combing the finer points of the federal Lanham Act to determine our optimal legal strategy going forward. But, if you're interested in what research is going on at the Xerox Research Centre Europe, then check out this page (the main "home page" for XRCE) and scroll half-way down. Reproduced again for Internet posterity:

It seems photographers have decided that the "barely visible, from-behind angle shot" is my most profitable pose ($$$$$$$$$$).

3. Going back even further, to exactly nine years before the launch of this blog (well, exactly plus 4 days), we can see that maybe it's just the way I pose for pictures...

Maybe where it really all went wrong was that, though it was not in my name, the US invaded Iraq (despite our protest) relying on clearly false/fabricated intelligence re weapons of mass destruction. This helped lead to the failing of the US economy, ultimately to Trump, and now allows people (even though it was clear political influence from the executive branch that went against the intelligence community's findings it was still touted as coming from the CIA) to argue how can we trust the CIA/FBI/NSA on the Russian hacking thing since they were so convinced about the WMDs (answer: they weren't).

So what can we look forward to in 2017? Only time will well (but at least expect a giant five-year-anniversary celebration for GWMD)...