Many people subscribe to the notion that something must be possible. It must, with enough effort, time, or money.
But that is a fallacy. Just because you believe it can be possible does not make it so. The less you understand, the more likely you don't know some important detail, fact or concept that underpins why it isn't possible. The less you understand, then the less chance you can make it so.
Beware of belief ahead of facts.
Some people spend their entire working life trying to achieve what might be possible. The Wright Brothers started a bike company in 1892 and struggled towards the first powered flight in 1903. Many mistakes and false starts lie between believing you can and doing it. Eleven years towards final accomplishment.
If I didn't expend synaptic activity, I would end up like the RMC Clock Tower in 1991.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Friday, July 25, 2014
89% of Billionaires maintain a To Do List: Do They Know Somethhing You Don't?
Yes;
Because they have some way of remembering that good idea,...five hours later...when they have time to act on it.
Ok, admit that was funny and please show me some likes and love. This is my 40th post and if you want to read more show me you're interested. Thanks for stopping by!
Because they have some way of remembering that good idea,...five hours later...when they have time to act on it.
Ok, admit that was funny and please show me some likes and love. This is my 40th post and if you want to read more show me you're interested. Thanks for stopping by!
The Power of Habit and Religious Beliefs : Habit-reactionary people need understanding.
I just finished the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and you can find it here. It is a very readable book for those who don't like science stuff because it is too technical, too wordy, or whatever. Frankly, you will find as much interesting storylines in a story about science as with a fiction about teens in Paris and mystery novels.
So I finished the book while I was on vacation in Phoenix, Arizona. Lots of reading in the pool when I couldn't take the sun anymore. When you have been in the Arizona in the summer you learn to take a modest dose of sunshine when your skin is unused to the persistent consistent sunshine. Then you accept the burn and hide in that shade.
Anyways, I was thinking of a way, as I stared at the rippling waves, of how to apply what he talked about when it comes to habits. And it occurred to me that one way was to try and use it to explain why people react the way they do when someone questions their faith. I believe, in the sense of educated guess about how it might impact the discussion, that if more investigation was done into the process of the reaction then people that do react that way can understand why they act the way they do. When those people want to self explore those feelings it would be in the greater good to give them the facts about a very natural emotional response.
Back to the book. I don't want to steal his thunder but to explain my point I will summarize. Read his book. What is interesting about how habits work, as discovered by real lab experiments with rats all the way up to humans, is that the habits are not a bug of brain operation, they are a feature. According to the computational theory of mind, your brain is a computer programmed by your DNA and evolved through adaptation. What that gooble dee gook means is to save power - like when your laptop or desktop goes into standby mode - it made a hardware module that specializes in running your body through repetitive actions that you have learned so your brain doesn't have to do all the work.
Habits are formed by doing some action, triggered by a cue, and then at the end getting a reward. A scientist found that all habits have three components: a trigger, a routine (the memorized action), and then at the end when the action/routine completes successfully - a reward. It's the reward that causes the brain to remember that routine that worked when that specific trigger appeared. Think Pavlov's dog and salivating when food and a bell wringing were put together.
So when you see someone react to a discussion questioning their faith, it's because they are following a habit with some of the brain copying a set of actions that got a reward.
Where do religious people get the trigger to defend their faith? Church.
What routine is memorized by people about defending their faith? Church sermons.
What is the reward at the end of the routine? The acceptance and approval of the congregation. The praise of the priest/pastor.
This phenomenon was lamented by atheist luminaries like Richard Dawkins who commented strongly that it seemed every time a religious person was faced with unflattering information about their church or their faith that it seemed their brains turned off. I have seen many TV shows, debates, and book promotion interviews by Richard where some religious person would completely ignore the truth he spoke. It must be very frustrating and why he doesn't like confronting people like that. Too true Richard! Here's a great video example of his response! I love South Park because the creators are very honest about what they talk about and here they just let it happen.
People programmed to respond by habit are not thinking. That's the problem. What needs to happen in the case of convincing people to review their own beliefs is to substitute a new routine so they can rationally question why they believe what they do. Or to change the reward at the end. Those are the methods recommended in the book. Please read the book if you want to help people
The problem, the real struggle for those people is that they have been programmed for years, since infancy in most cases, to believe what they believe. Instead of scorn or ridicule, perhaps we need to be understanding of the dilemma they face - the cognitive dissonance and inner turmoil - that makes it hard for them to change their minds. I think that the method of Bill Nye was the right one to make.
Bill Nye was very polite when he spoke to Ken Hamm. He stuck to the facts. He responded rationally to the arguments made by his debate opponent. His goal was not to convert die-hards but people that aren't so committed to the ideas. I think he did a great job!
Don't be strident, rude, or mock habit-reactionary people. If science is better and based on facts then let the facts speak for themselves. Science can win out not when you attack them, but when they are gardening or fixing a car and the ideas you presented to them are rolling around in their minds they will think about them calmly and without judgement. If science is better then
So I finished the book while I was on vacation in Phoenix, Arizona. Lots of reading in the pool when I couldn't take the sun anymore. When you have been in the Arizona in the summer you learn to take a modest dose of sunshine when your skin is unused to the persistent consistent sunshine. Then you accept the burn and hide in that shade.
Anyways, I was thinking of a way, as I stared at the rippling waves, of how to apply what he talked about when it comes to habits. And it occurred to me that one way was to try and use it to explain why people react the way they do when someone questions their faith. I believe, in the sense of educated guess about how it might impact the discussion, that if more investigation was done into the process of the reaction then people that do react that way can understand why they act the way they do. When those people want to self explore those feelings it would be in the greater good to give them the facts about a very natural emotional response.
Back to the book. I don't want to steal his thunder but to explain my point I will summarize. Read his book. What is interesting about how habits work, as discovered by real lab experiments with rats all the way up to humans, is that the habits are not a bug of brain operation, they are a feature. According to the computational theory of mind, your brain is a computer programmed by your DNA and evolved through adaptation. What that gooble dee gook means is to save power - like when your laptop or desktop goes into standby mode - it made a hardware module that specializes in running your body through repetitive actions that you have learned so your brain doesn't have to do all the work.
Habits are formed by doing some action, triggered by a cue, and then at the end getting a reward. A scientist found that all habits have three components: a trigger, a routine (the memorized action), and then at the end when the action/routine completes successfully - a reward. It's the reward that causes the brain to remember that routine that worked when that specific trigger appeared. Think Pavlov's dog and salivating when food and a bell wringing were put together.
So when you see someone react to a discussion questioning their faith, it's because they are following a habit with some of the brain copying a set of actions that got a reward.
Where do religious people get the trigger to defend their faith? Church.
What routine is memorized by people about defending their faith? Church sermons.
What is the reward at the end of the routine? The acceptance and approval of the congregation. The praise of the priest/pastor.
This phenomenon was lamented by atheist luminaries like Richard Dawkins who commented strongly that it seemed every time a religious person was faced with unflattering information about their church or their faith that it seemed their brains turned off. I have seen many TV shows, debates, and book promotion interviews by Richard where some religious person would completely ignore the truth he spoke. It must be very frustrating and why he doesn't like confronting people like that. Too true Richard! Here's a great video example of his response! I love South Park because the creators are very honest about what they talk about and here they just let it happen.
People programmed to respond by habit are not thinking. That's the problem. What needs to happen in the case of convincing people to review their own beliefs is to substitute a new routine so they can rationally question why they believe what they do. Or to change the reward at the end. Those are the methods recommended in the book. Please read the book if you want to help people
The problem, the real struggle for those people is that they have been programmed for years, since infancy in most cases, to believe what they believe. Instead of scorn or ridicule, perhaps we need to be understanding of the dilemma they face - the cognitive dissonance and inner turmoil - that makes it hard for them to change their minds. I think that the method of Bill Nye was the right one to make.
Bill Nye was very polite when he spoke to Ken Hamm. He stuck to the facts. He responded rationally to the arguments made by his debate opponent. His goal was not to convert die-hards but people that aren't so committed to the ideas. I think he did a great job!
Don't be strident, rude, or mock habit-reactionary people. If science is better and based on facts then let the facts speak for themselves. Science can win out not when you attack them, but when they are gardening or fixing a car and the ideas you presented to them are rolling around in their minds they will think about them calmly and without judgement. If science is better then
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Estate taxes equalize economic starting points
Think of it this way, if you wanted to make sure that rich kids never contribute to society, then allow them to keep all their parents` money.
Without a way to reset wealth, not grab taxes, society would spiral into the very few rich people and the very many poor people.
Money, or wealthier people call it equity, is a tool of society. It is not a personal tool. It rewards work, or it used to. It was never meant as a cudgel to keep people down by the few that can buy everything else. More money equals more help, more lawyers, more lobbyists, more means to keep power without personal risk. It makes it harder to compete when the playing field is not close to fair. What is fair, no idea, it`s a four letter word for a reason. Fair isn`t making one side risk everything while the other side risks a margin of their bottom line.
At the same time, like competitiveness with businesses and industry, there is no way to make inroads to novel ideas, novel products, more efficient and less expensive ways if your opponent can simply reach into the family war chest and spend your company into the ground.
Look at all the ideas that we couldn`t get because existing companies neutralized better ideas with anti-competitive practices! Society gets better when we get more efficient, more productive, easier, and safer. Less is wasted when society and our technologies improve. One way to avoid stagnant legacies is to stop family legacies from holding society back.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
War must have a victor and a vanquished - or it must not begin.
War is a messy, nasty, vile, and evil business. War is hell.
If that is true, then it must not be entered lightly.
It's quite simple, if a nation cannot win a war then it should not begin to wage war. If a nation does not have the will to strike with complete determination and stomach for all the evil that will return it's way, then war must be avoided. The cost of a dithering war is staggering with no purpose.
Leaving an undominated vanquished foe behind on the battlefield is the cause of all the social problems today. If one side does not admit defeat and become part of the victor, then this cycle of unrest continues until that happens.
If that is true, then it must not be entered lightly.
It's quite simple, if a nation cannot win a war then it should not begin to wage war. If a nation does not have the will to strike with complete determination and stomach for all the evil that will return it's way, then war must be avoided. The cost of a dithering war is staggering with no purpose.
Leaving an undominated vanquished foe behind on the battlefield is the cause of all the social problems today. If one side does not admit defeat and become part of the victor, then this cycle of unrest continues until that happens.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Manners are the grease of civilization
A few years ago, I was in a Ruby Tuesday in Farmington Hills just outside Detroit, and I was chatting with this nice lady at the bar as loners do.
She was African American, and she was telling me how her Dad used to make her whole family get in the car and drive to California from Michigan, a serious car trip that I wouldn't attempt with my kids, to see her relatives on the West coast. Ugh.
Then she asked me, "Why are all Canadians so polite?".
Well that might be the stereotype and like with all stereotypes it might seem that way. Here's a few Canadians that aren't so polite.
And to be fair, from my experiences in main street Arizona, Utah, Oregon, Washington State, Washington DC, Virginia, Rhode Island, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, Montana, Hawaii, Florida, Maryland, Illinois, Nevada,... ok you get the idea I've been to a few states.
Frankly, most Americans are polite. But some aren't polite in the Denny's on Las Vegas Boulevard when the lineup's out the door. Some aren't polite in the gas line in Phoenix when it's 110F. Some aren't polite when there's a serious social stressor like airport security. Some people push, some people cut in line or drive right in front of you without a care. And some keep talking on their cell phone oblivious to everyone else that doesn't matter then stand right in front of you at the mall map. Some people use their cell phone through a whole movie.
I have to be honest, there are lots of Canadians that would do the same thing.
I said,"Well because as subjects of the British Empire, we didn't forget that manners are the grease of civilization. That's part of the European ethos (I didn't say ethos I said way but that's what I meant I just didn't want to sound too know-it-all). We need to be polite because that's how we survive rough situations. "
Bad manners are a short term win with possible long term consequences. Good manners are a short term loss with possible long term consequences. Either way you will be remembered and may not find out until too late what those consequences are.
My point is this: while people can maintain the air of grace when things are easy it's when things get harder that people should maintain their manners most, because that's when stressors can make good people do bad things. Things they will regret when they are calmer.
When the lineup is the worst, you should prepare to give way to someone else more than when it's empty. Even if they are thoughtless, even if they are rude. That is the key to keeping society functional.
The more people to adopt this philosophy will create a societal habit and hopefully defuse more tense situations and increase happiness. If you are an enlightened civilized atheist, a Buddhist, or even a Christian that should be your goal.
She was African American, and she was telling me how her Dad used to make her whole family get in the car and drive to California from Michigan, a serious car trip that I wouldn't attempt with my kids, to see her relatives on the West coast. Ugh.
Then she asked me, "Why are all Canadians so polite?".
Well that might be the stereotype and like with all stereotypes it might seem that way. Here's a few Canadians that aren't so polite.
And to be fair, from my experiences in main street Arizona, Utah, Oregon, Washington State, Washington DC, Virginia, Rhode Island, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, Montana, Hawaii, Florida, Maryland, Illinois, Nevada,... ok you get the idea I've been to a few states.
Frankly, most Americans are polite. But some aren't polite in the Denny's on Las Vegas Boulevard when the lineup's out the door. Some aren't polite in the gas line in Phoenix when it's 110F. Some aren't polite when there's a serious social stressor like airport security. Some people push, some people cut in line or drive right in front of you without a care. And some keep talking on their cell phone oblivious to everyone else that doesn't matter then stand right in front of you at the mall map. Some people use their cell phone through a whole movie.
I have to be honest, there are lots of Canadians that would do the same thing.
I said,"Well because as subjects of the British Empire, we didn't forget that manners are the grease of civilization. That's part of the European ethos (I didn't say ethos I said way but that's what I meant I just didn't want to sound too know-it-all). We need to be polite because that's how we survive rough situations. "
Bad manners are a short term win with possible long term consequences. Good manners are a short term loss with possible long term consequences. Either way you will be remembered and may not find out until too late what those consequences are.
My point is this: while people can maintain the air of grace when things are easy it's when things get harder that people should maintain their manners most, because that's when stressors can make good people do bad things. Things they will regret when they are calmer.
When the lineup is the worst, you should prepare to give way to someone else more than when it's empty. Even if they are thoughtless, even if they are rude. That is the key to keeping society functional.
The more people to adopt this philosophy will create a societal habit and hopefully defuse more tense situations and increase happiness. If you are an enlightened civilized atheist, a Buddhist, or even a Christian that should be your goal.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Corporate Punishment: Mandatory 5 Year Jail Term for Managers that ignore Safety Defect warnings
There are few things more dangerous than a loaded gun. A copper jacketed round packed with gunpowder and fired from a weapon can make a large hole in anything. The damage to a human being is irreversible, healable maybe.
But, when you look at society as a whole, the damage caused by careless, apathetic, or neutralized workers (whose job it is to protect the public from products) overwhelms all loss from warfare.
To put things in perspective, the US lost 4,282 killed in all of the Iraq War 2 including during the insurgency for the period March 2003 until December 2009. That's 6 years.
In 2012, 33,561 Americans died in auto accidents. In one year.
So who does more damage to society, a lone soldier with a rifle or a manager at a car company that ignores defect warnings from subordinates?
When I read that, in the case of GM, according to GM's culture of ignoring safety problems
It is obvious that the risks and rewards for good and bad behaviour are not being learned at car companies. Imagine you are an engineer. You know there is a problem. If you complain or cause an issue then the manager looks bad. If the manager looks bad, they take it out on you. If you don't speak up, people die. If you speak up, people will probably still die, but you'll be out of a job and have no way to help the process. See the dilemma from a worker's perspective? If you keep your job maybe there is a way to get it done. If you make waves, there is no way.
Let me give you a personal engineering example. When I first got to DRDC from my old job at General Dynamics, I grew bored with the slow motion and the inability to make a difference. I was offered a job at Wittke (then owned by Federal Signal) as a senior electrical engineer so I took a leave of absence and tried my luck back outside in the corporate world.
Now, I was learning the job, learning the designs, and learning the customers. There was a lot of listening. And reading. One client (Waste Management Inc.) had an unscrupulous business manager that would take ideas from one company and ask others to make him the same product. Or he would work on his ideal garbage truck design. He was not an engineer, but thought he knew better. He wanted his trucks to have strobe light flashers so that it would make them very prominent so it would - to his mind increase safety. This seemed a logical theory.
I had just come from robotics and land mine detection, I knew that I didn't know what I was supposed to know. That is the humility expected of an engineer - not a manager. I was new to the law regarding lighting on trucks. So I read the laws in the US and Canada. The Canadian one was mainly a copy of the US one. All good there. It did not preclude it at that time. Ok, good so far.
I talked to our lights suppliers and it seemed we could get them in. The design was simple enough. Still good.
I didn't know much about strobes, but I knew that perhaps there was a link to epileptic episodes. My high school friend had suffered from seizures so I was aware how instantly a person could become incapacitated. I did a little research online and read some resources and found that the frequency range for epileptic seizures is the SAME as for these designed strobe lights. The strobe could be slowed down, but then it wouldn't be a strobe, would it?
I brought this to the attention of my boss, who at that time was an American engineer. I relayed my concerns about strobes and garbage trucks, that while it might work most times if someone with epileptic seizures - perhaps didn't even know that they had epilepsy - was to view that strobing light from near enough it might cause a violent incapacitating seizure, that person may fall down in front of or worse behind a rolling truck and be killed. This makes using a strobe a defect of design, it is not inherently safe. I made sure to put my concerns in writing, in an email, to WMI.
Bottom line, I refused to design it. My boss backed me up. And then the LED light company got back to me with their concerns - after doing a little research of their own and voiced their issue with this design choice. There are lots of checks and balances in the tech world looking out for society.
The manager at WMI was furious, apparently, as I wasn't party to that conversation. How dare an engineer question him.
Well, thoughtless self-absorbed mangers, that is why you hire engineers and not trained monkeys to keep your designs safe.
And how dare I put it in writing. Now he was trapped. Now what happens when he tries this with another company - that is what he was thinking, not that the issue was serious.
Do you see how managers avoid personal responsibility if they can make it a case of he said, she said? That is why engineers should always put something important in writing.
Do you see why well meaning engineers can be forced to do the work or lose their job? WMI bought a lot of trucks from my company, this could be a factory closing decision. Who wants to deal with that? Remember, the engineers do not have ultimate authority we work for the managers that do. We don't get to make the decision.
It turns out that this manager tried other companies to design it for him and they also had problems. The project was eventually scrapped I'm told because of other issues this guy made with expensive design choices that were largely his making. In the end, a lawsuit would have cost more than the cost of ten trucks.
The issue of safety is really what an engineer "adds value" to a company - by saving a lawsuit that costs more than the incremental improvement of a risky design choice.
I left the company for other reasons, like they were running it into the ground.
I had the balls to stand up to a customer because I was trained in the Army so I'm not shy and I'm not going to kill anyone through apathy or willful blindness. That is what society expects. But it is not fun and not to be done lightly. And let's be honest, I also had an out I could go back to my other job. I could afford to make a stand.
Most people don't have that luxury. And that is why we need to help them to make us safe. If the law is on our side, there is no where a manager can hide, no where they can blame subordinates.
If a manager were to aim a loaded gun and kill an employee, he or she would be prosecuted under criminal law for the harm caused. But if a manager hides a defect that same manager could kill tens if not hundreds or thousands of people with no personal liability. That should change, and soon.
So, based on my own experience, I recommend we encourage lawmakers to write laws that impose mandatory 5 year jail terms on managers that do not heed safety warnings from engineers or other technical people. No legal outs, if you are a manager you should have public safety as a top priority. If managers do not have the public's safety at heart then we must adjust their cost-benefit analysis to the point where it is in THEIR best interest to be as safe as possible.
But, when you look at society as a whole, the damage caused by careless, apathetic, or neutralized workers (whose job it is to protect the public from products) overwhelms all loss from warfare.
To put things in perspective, the US lost 4,282 killed in all of the Iraq War 2 including during the insurgency for the period March 2003 until December 2009. That's 6 years.
In 2012, 33,561 Americans died in auto accidents. In one year.
So who does more damage to society, a lone soldier with a rifle or a manager at a car company that ignores defect warnings from subordinates?
When I read that, in the case of GM, according to GM's culture of ignoring safety problems
GM manager Bill McAleer told host Michael Smerconish that employees who work at GM were "faced with a culture where you get fired if you do talk about quality and safety issues, and you get fired if you don't talk about them."
It is obvious that the risks and rewards for good and bad behaviour are not being learned at car companies. Imagine you are an engineer. You know there is a problem. If you complain or cause an issue then the manager looks bad. If the manager looks bad, they take it out on you. If you don't speak up, people die. If you speak up, people will probably still die, but you'll be out of a job and have no way to help the process. See the dilemma from a worker's perspective? If you keep your job maybe there is a way to get it done. If you make waves, there is no way.
Let me give you a personal engineering example. When I first got to DRDC from my old job at General Dynamics, I grew bored with the slow motion and the inability to make a difference. I was offered a job at Wittke (then owned by Federal Signal) as a senior electrical engineer so I took a leave of absence and tried my luck back outside in the corporate world.
Now, I was learning the job, learning the designs, and learning the customers. There was a lot of listening. And reading. One client (Waste Management Inc.) had an unscrupulous business manager that would take ideas from one company and ask others to make him the same product. Or he would work on his ideal garbage truck design. He was not an engineer, but thought he knew better. He wanted his trucks to have strobe light flashers so that it would make them very prominent so it would - to his mind increase safety. This seemed a logical theory.
I had just come from robotics and land mine detection, I knew that I didn't know what I was supposed to know. That is the humility expected of an engineer - not a manager. I was new to the law regarding lighting on trucks. So I read the laws in the US and Canada. The Canadian one was mainly a copy of the US one. All good there. It did not preclude it at that time. Ok, good so far.
I talked to our lights suppliers and it seemed we could get them in. The design was simple enough. Still good.
I didn't know much about strobes, but I knew that perhaps there was a link to epileptic episodes. My high school friend had suffered from seizures so I was aware how instantly a person could become incapacitated. I did a little research online and read some resources and found that the frequency range for epileptic seizures is the SAME as for these designed strobe lights. The strobe could be slowed down, but then it wouldn't be a strobe, would it?
I brought this to the attention of my boss, who at that time was an American engineer. I relayed my concerns about strobes and garbage trucks, that while it might work most times if someone with epileptic seizures - perhaps didn't even know that they had epilepsy - was to view that strobing light from near enough it might cause a violent incapacitating seizure, that person may fall down in front of or worse behind a rolling truck and be killed. This makes using a strobe a defect of design, it is not inherently safe. I made sure to put my concerns in writing, in an email, to WMI.
Bottom line, I refused to design it. My boss backed me up. And then the LED light company got back to me with their concerns - after doing a little research of their own and voiced their issue with this design choice. There are lots of checks and balances in the tech world looking out for society.
The manager at WMI was furious, apparently, as I wasn't party to that conversation. How dare an engineer question him.
Well, thoughtless self-absorbed mangers, that is why you hire engineers and not trained monkeys to keep your designs safe.
And how dare I put it in writing. Now he was trapped. Now what happens when he tries this with another company - that is what he was thinking, not that the issue was serious.
Do you see how managers avoid personal responsibility if they can make it a case of he said, she said? That is why engineers should always put something important in writing.
Do you see why well meaning engineers can be forced to do the work or lose their job? WMI bought a lot of trucks from my company, this could be a factory closing decision. Who wants to deal with that? Remember, the engineers do not have ultimate authority we work for the managers that do. We don't get to make the decision.
It turns out that this manager tried other companies to design it for him and they also had problems. The project was eventually scrapped I'm told because of other issues this guy made with expensive design choices that were largely his making. In the end, a lawsuit would have cost more than the cost of ten trucks.
The issue of safety is really what an engineer "adds value" to a company - by saving a lawsuit that costs more than the incremental improvement of a risky design choice.
I left the company for other reasons, like they were running it into the ground.
I had the balls to stand up to a customer because I was trained in the Army so I'm not shy and I'm not going to kill anyone through apathy or willful blindness. That is what society expects. But it is not fun and not to be done lightly. And let's be honest, I also had an out I could go back to my other job. I could afford to make a stand.
Most people don't have that luxury. And that is why we need to help them to make us safe. If the law is on our side, there is no where a manager can hide, no where they can blame subordinates.
If a manager were to aim a loaded gun and kill an employee, he or she would be prosecuted under criminal law for the harm caused. But if a manager hides a defect that same manager could kill tens if not hundreds or thousands of people with no personal liability. That should change, and soon.
So, based on my own experience, I recommend we encourage lawmakers to write laws that impose mandatory 5 year jail terms on managers that do not heed safety warnings from engineers or other technical people. No legal outs, if you are a manager you should have public safety as a top priority. If managers do not have the public's safety at heart then we must adjust their cost-benefit analysis to the point where it is in THEIR best interest to be as safe as possible.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Of all the things I possess, I missunderstand my mind the most....
I am reading the book, The Power of Habit, which outlines how people use habits to underthink and allow the basal ganglia to run simple and complex tasks for us. It's why I thought to write a post about thinking.
I have read hundreds of book. Hundreds if not thousands of technical journals, conference papers, and so on as an engineer and scientist. I used to read novels.
With all that knowledge, looking back, I would recommend that you read to understand how your brains works more than anything else, any job, enjoyment, or profession.
Of all the things you would like to improve, your mind is the one with the greatest impact on YOUR life. It controls all aspects of your life, how you cope, how you survive or how you prosper.
There was a Pirelli ad that I loved as an undergrad studying electrical engineering -
"Power is nothing without control"
Of equal importance, your life is nothing without your control. And your brain controls your life.
So a first recommendation, I would urge you to try the Briggs-Myer Type Test. Find out in general what kind of brain you have and how it's conditioned to function. Your brain is a computer programmed by your genes evolved over hundred of thousands years of successful adaptation.
Look at this wiki page Briggs-Myers Type Personality Test
Understanding that I am an INTJ brain personality type has helped me understand my own behaviour. I hope it helps you.
I have read hundreds of book. Hundreds if not thousands of technical journals, conference papers, and so on as an engineer and scientist. I used to read novels.
With all that knowledge, looking back, I would recommend that you read to understand how your brains works more than anything else, any job, enjoyment, or profession.
Of all the things you would like to improve, your mind is the one with the greatest impact on YOUR life. It controls all aspects of your life, how you cope, how you survive or how you prosper.
There was a Pirelli ad that I loved as an undergrad studying electrical engineering -
"Power is nothing without control"
Of equal importance, your life is nothing without your control. And your brain controls your life.
So a first recommendation, I would urge you to try the Briggs-Myer Type Test. Find out in general what kind of brain you have and how it's conditioned to function. Your brain is a computer programmed by your genes evolved over hundred of thousands years of successful adaptation.
Look at this wiki page Briggs-Myers Type Personality Test
Understanding that I am an INTJ brain personality type has helped me understand my own behaviour. I hope it helps you.
Good Books to Read
Today, I will recommend two books for you to read. I read a post on Google Plus https://plus.google.com/u/0/103183570053193175186/posts/fHjnDdNjv2R where someone complained about the hypocrisy of Steve Jobs - at one time stealing ideas and then later on defending against theft.
Read Machiavelli's The Prince
and Friedrich Nietzche's The Will to Power.
Our society needs many things. Food. Shelter. Water. Justice. and Princes.
We need people that won't sit still and accept the rules. We, as a society, need people to upend convention and throw things on their heads. We need people to disrupt the status quo.
Read those books and understand why.
Read Machiavelli's The Prince
and Friedrich Nietzche's The Will to Power.
Our society needs many things. Food. Shelter. Water. Justice. and Princes.
We need people that won't sit still and accept the rules. We, as a society, need people to upend convention and throw things on their heads. We need people to disrupt the status quo.
Read those books and understand why.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
The Universe does not owe us a living
One of the great fallacies of religions is that, with a creator at the design of the universe, there is a reason for our existence, some purpose. That viewpoint of meaning fools people into assuming the universe cares about us and our planet.
It doesn't. The universe only notices us by gravitational attraction and the odd radiation emanation. But it doesn't care if the next stray galaxy passes into us and consumes all of mankind into a black hole.
Assuming there is a higher purpose leads many to conclude we don't have to take care of ourselves, someone else is watching.
There isn't. We are in charge of our fate as best we can in a massive universe filled with unfeeling dangerous phenomena. Cosmic rays, supernova, hypernova, dark matter, and others all could wipe humanity off the Earth.
We must rid ourselves of the delusion the universe owes us a living. It would just as quickly swallow us and leave not a trace behind to mark our path.
We must evolve our philosophy to understand the grave danger we ignore now.
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