Intelligent Design

As some of you will no doubt realize by now, I'm a big fan of intelligent design.  No, not the one that tries to compete with evolution, but just, you know, good design.  The MacBook, for instance, or TiVo.  Both are designed intelligently.

I had a conversation about design with the kids yesterday at breakfast.  The brandy barrel had broken off Caroline's toy St. Bernard, and as I tried to piece it back together I made a comment about it being a poor design.  Because of how it was attached, there is absolutely no way that brandy barrel could possibly have remained attached for any length of time under normal usage conditions.  Even Caroline, who is exceptionally careful with her things, managed to snap it off in under 10 minutes. 

My comment led inevitably to the sorts of questions one is generally unprepared to answer before 10am, questions about the meaning of the word 'design', and what things in the room had been designed, and by whom.

Among the many classic Looney Tunes episodes shown on TV here is this one, "Water, Water Every Hare".  Go ahead, watch it.  You know you want to.

via videosift.com

The kids, who spend a lot of time watching classic Looney Tunes episodes, had recently seen this one, and I was well impressed when Michael asserted that the scientist had designed the robot, or at least I was once I'd puzzled out what the hell he was talking about.

This led to a conversation about the various capabilities of the robot, what he would be designed to do, and of the sort of moral and intellectual limitations that a large metal animatron designed by an evil scientist might exhibit.  

Into this discussion, I injected the question of whether it would be better to build a robot that doesn't walk into walls, or one that doesn't fall over when it walks into a wall.  My belief, based on a fair amount of experience with software and infrastructure architecture, is that an intelligent design would be one that assumes that no matter how much effort is put into the wall avoidance mechanism, there are unforeseeable conditions which at some point will cause the robot to walk into a wall.  My view, therefore, is that while a sensible effort should be made to avoid intersecting with walls unnecessarily, considerably more effort should be put into equipping the robot with the necessary mechanisms to gracefully handle those situations which might otherwise cause him to fall over.

Of course, this view is somewhat abstract so I'd assumed that the kids would think that it would be better to build a robot that doesn't walk into walls, thus affording me the opportunity to lecture them on the necessity to plan for and mitigate failure.  I was therefore really surprised that Caroline said it's better to build the robot, "not to fall over, because it might accidentally walk into a wall even if it's not meant to".

Now, you might see this entire post up to this point as me shamelessly constructing for myself a platform from which to brag about how smart my children are, and you'd be right but only partly.  Because it also provides a useful starting point to raise the subject of human intelligence in general.

The human mind is a subject which has long fascinated me.  How do we think?  How does our environment influence the outcome of our thought processes?  How does our own ego, our view of ourselves, alter our thinking?  

To make this discussion somewhat less abstract, let me give you my own, somewhat embarrassing example.  In 1994 or '95, I visited Penn State and attended a technology fair.  One of the products being demonstrated was a graphical interface for the command-line Internet technologies I'd spent so many late nights in college mastering: FTP, Gopher, RXIRC.  Having bested these beastly applications was a source of pride for me.  How dare someone make them easy to use!  How dare the founders of America On Line throw wide the gates of my technological temple to the great unwashed masses!

Of course, you know how this story ends.  Some years later, while elbowing my little Honda through rush hour traffic, I was overtaken by an impossibly large Jaguar.  As it glid lithely past my window, I noticed the number plate: "THX AOL".  'Nuff said.

The point is that I learned from that experience - I changed my thought approach.  My initial view was heavily affected by pride and ego, but my subsequent thinking is influenced by examining that initial thinking and comparing the outcome which arose from it to the actual state of the world.  In other words, I've since realized that I'd have been the guy driving the Jag if I hadn't been so pig-headed and territorial.  But the good news is that I wasn't bound irrevocably to my initial thought pattern.  I'm still not driving a car that's roughly the length of the Lusitania, but at least I know enough now to set aside personal prejudices and think differently when the situation warrants doing so.

I worry about a lot of things: war, global warming, the economy.  But these fears are based on the assumption that everything continues infinitely along its current trajectory, that nothing changes.  Of course, we all know this to be a patently false assumption.  In the late 1800's, the horsepower to move people around in cities was provided almost exclusively by actual horses.  The problem, of course, is that horses, like politicians, produce enormous quantities of shit, and it all has to end up somewhere.  The trouble at the end of the 19th century was that it ended up in the street.  At least one urban planner predicted that by 1950, every street in London would be buried under 9 feet of horse manure.  Most everyone at the time agreed that streets awash in horse crap were at odds with the emerging image of the modern city, yet attempts to solve the problem directly failed.

Of course, the problem was ultimately solved, but not by people attacking it head-on.  Rather, it was solved because innovation responds to incentive, and not necessarily to a specific problem.  Henry Ford didn't develop a mass-produced automobile to solve the horse manure problem, he developed it because he recognized that there would be massive financial rewards accruing to anyone who could provide an affordable, ubiquitous means of transport.  The fact that his work also happened to address a looming future problem was a good, but secondary outcome.

And this, I think, is the real story.  I didn't teach Caroline that it's better to incorporate failure recovery than to try to avoid all possible failure scenarios, she figured that out on her own.  How, I don't know, but she did, so that's good.  Most species that have existed on this planet are now extinct.  We're not.  Why?  Because as a species, we're undeniably intelligent.  Individually we may do unfathomably stupid things, but collectively we can, and have, created a world that couldn't have been dreamt of by our ancestors.  

The other day, I watched our fox teach her pups how to hunt and kill their prey.  As the pups wrestled each other, she crouched, waiting, until one of them disentangled himself from his brother.  Then she sprang on him, wrestling him to the ground, holding his throat in her powerful jaws.  When she released the pup, he rejoined his brothers and attempted the same maneuver on one of them.  It was fascinating, to watch but it also supports my bullishness on humanity's future.  While foxes are born with a certain amount of instinct, they need to be taught through demonstration.  We can solve problems without having had someone show us how first.  I believe (well, I'm starting to convince myself, anyway) that innovation through the exercise of human intelligence will help us either avoid those catastrophic outcomes or recover from them more quickly. 

If we can build a robot that won't fall over, maybe there's hope for us after all.

 

I blame the parents

I'm trying to raise socially responsible, kind children who are well-adjusted and who can respond with calm and confidence when life doesn't go their way.  Really, I am.  But every once in a while, I really do want to encourage the kids to just kick the shit out of some little prick who clearly needs it.  

Again, only harder this time, honey.

Take today, for example.  We were at the park, having a perfectly nice time feeding the ducks and cleaning goose poop from between our toes, when for no apparent reason, some kid started in on Michael.  To Michael's credit, I thought he handled it pretty well.

"You're little.  I'm big.  You're an idiot."

"I'm not little."

"Oh yeah?  How old are you?"

"I'm four."

"Well I'm four and a half."

"Actually I'm four and three quarters."

"Well, you're stupid!"

Now, I knew that this child probably didn't arrive at his particular state of misanthropy on his own; this sort of behaviour manifests itself in either the attention deprived or the brain damaged.  The child had obviously received considerable assistance in this area from his father, who spent the entire time yakking inanely into his mobile whilst scratching his balls, so it's entirely possible that the boy was both.  It was only when someone else's father intervened because the kid nearly pushed a smaller child off a climbing frame that the father grudgingly detached himself from his intense discussion of the sublime joys of football and corrected, briefly, his kid's behaviour.  Hang up and pay some attention to your son, you self-absorbed asshole, so the rest of us won't have to.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of an event that took place on a playground in Long Island.  My family had gone to a party at a relative's house.  I was probably 5 or 6 and terribly bored, so my mother took me to a nearby playground.  There was a rocket-shaped climbing frame, which I and some other bigger boys were playing on.  The bigger boys, who were at the top, began shaking the structure, which frightened me.  I'm not sure why, maybe I thought it would fall over, or take off.  Anyway, I started to cry, and my mother intervened, yelling at the boys until they stopped.  

This was not my proudest moment.  I was not only ashamed because I was crying, but I was mortified that mommy had to come to my rescue.  For this reason, I try to avoid stepping in when my own kids are having a confrontation, unless whatever's going on is obviously likely to cause them serious harm.  Instead, I try to give them some approaches to help them deal constructively with similar situations, though God knows I'm not in the best position to deal rationally with someone else's bratty kid, and this discussion usually doesn't take place until well after the event, so I'm not sure it's really sinking in.

My resolve was starting to wear thin after the first altercation, when I heard Michael crying on another piece of play equipment.  Another boy had apparently stepped on his arm because he wanted to get past Michael.  OK, fair enough, these things happen, and I explained that to him.  But then a pair of five year olds were trying to dislodge him from his position (he was, to be fair, blocking the only passage).  To understand this exchange, you will need to bear in mind that Michael's chin recently lost an argument with the edge of the bathtub, requiring a visit to the A&E and resulting in a fairly ugly and occasionally bleeding scab.

"What happened to your chin?"

"I split it open."

"HAAA! HAAAA! He split his chin open!"

"Waaaaaah!  He laughed at me when I said I split my chin open!"

It may have been wrong to tell Michael that the boy taunted him because he was insufferably ignorant and deeply unhappy.  It may have been wrong to tell Michael that he shouldn't be too upset because that boy will most likely grow up to sell life insurance.  It may have been wrong to counsel Michael to label such a person a miserable git and to toss him in the rubbish bin of total disregard.  But the intent was good, and my Irish was up.  And, to be honest, I have painful memories of being teased as a child which always surface at such times.

Years ago in a life skills seminar I attended, the group was asked what makes parenting difficult.  The best response, the one that sticks with me today, was from a young single mother who had a reputation as something of a nasty piece of work.  It's the things other parents don't do.  Profound yet simple.  

Here's another bit of profound simplicity: if you're not going to bother actually raising your children, don't have them in the first place.

 

An Evening at A&E

We had a small emergency last night.  Michael, at 4, is not terribly coordinated.  (I, at 38, am not either, but that's beside the point).  There was water on the bathroom floor, and little Michael, trying to climb into the bath, slipped and bashed his chin on the side of the tub.  This resulted in an inch-long gash which bled profusely over his tiny naked person.

It is with some trepidation that I bring my beloved bleeding offspring to the emergency room.  Our friend Johnathan is kind enough to drive us. In the car, Michael has calmed down somewhat and only occasionally produces a tortured sound when I dab at his chin with a wet washrag, now bloodstained and cold.  Why I haven't thought to put some more appropriate dressing on his wound is a mystery.

St. George's A&E department is just about everything I'd imagined the NHS to be.  The queue for registration is 10 deep.  Over there is an intoxicated Pakistani who falls out of his wheelchair to crack his skull on the snack machine.  A bystander attempts to lift him back into the chair while a slim, pretty nurse makes a halfhearted attempt to talk him in.  I suspect he speaks no English.  

A teenage mother of two in dilapidated Ugg boots and a dirty track suit curses at everyone and at no one in particular for allowing the drunk man to flop about the room.  "I'm not havin' it!" she shrieks, accompianied by various colloquialisms.  It is difficult to take seriously one so young.  It is a Vicky Pollard moment and Michael stares, wide-eyed; he is in the scene, it swirls around him and over him, but he is somehow separate from it, non-combatant.  An observer.

Michael's chin is bleeding again and as I turn to wipe it, the young mother in the tracksuit finishes registering, and the mainspring of her anger over the drunk spends the last of its energy in a volley of obscenities as she moves off.  It is now our turn, but there is a woman lying on the floor near the registration desk.  "Do you know that there is a woman lying on the floor?" I ask the clerk.  

"Yes," she replies with a knowing smile and a slight shake of her head that suggest the prostrate woman may be a regular.  "She told me she was going to lie down."  The clerk is remarkably friendly, relative to those I've encountered in my limited experience with hospital registration clerks.  I wonder whether it's because although I'm obviously a foreigner, I'm clearly one who is likely to pay taxes and contribute to the NHS.  I wonder if she's as friendly to the Pakistani, or to the floor-hugger.

Forms completed, I am instructed to take Michael into the Pediatric A&E, a separate area from the chaotic main waiting area.  Although it is devoid of the drunks and vagrants which inhabit the main area, it is instead absolutely heaving with children, parents, double and triple buggies, toys, bags.  It is a large room and it overflows with life.  The children cry or laugh or stare vacantly into the middle distance, but the adults appear uniformly unhappy.  There are 17 patients in front of us I am told by a nurse, and the wait is likely to be at least two hours.  She looks briefly at Michael's chin and makes a sympathetic noise.

I find a narrow perch for Michael on a bench and stand guard nearby.  He gives a book he's found to the little girl next to him and she reads it haltingly.  A woman with a small and tired-looking child on her lap moves aside a bit to let me sit.  I read to Michael and to the little girl whose name is Shayla.  She is seven.  Ten minutes pass, then twenty.  We have just started our third book, a book of poorly-rhymed and arrhythmic story-poems about teddy bears when the sympathetic nurse calls Michael's name.  She beckons us into a small examination room, asks a few questions about what happened.  She appears visibly relieved that she won't have to involve social services.

I have expected that stitches will be the outcome, though I haven't told Michael this, but Gerry the nurse delivers unexpected good news.  Not only will they use glue rather than stitches to put my Humpty back together, but also she can perform the procedure on her own, and can do it for us in short order.  Back to the waiting area, where my suddenly high spirits are only slightly dampened when I discover that our seats have been taken.

Moments later, Gerry comes for us again and takes us to a bed in a curtained-off area.  Michael begins to whimper a little as we walk, but doesn't cry.  I lift him onto the gurney and continue reading bad bear poetry as Gerry pastes him back together and calls him "baby" affectionately.  I am reminded of the time my monther passed out while my thumb was being stitched back together after an incident involving a red pepper and a large chef's knife, and I am glad that Michael will not need any injections.

His chin now back in one piece, Michael scuplts pretzels into letters by nibbling strategically, and thanks to Gerry we are home by 9:00.  There will probably be a scar, but there will be no hospital bill, no insurance forms, no copayments.

I wonder how the Pakistani fared.

Zen Vacuum

There's something incredibly soothing about vacuuming.  Feel the rhythmic back-and-forth motion, hear the unbroken monotone whine of the motor, the broken wheel squealing at regular intervals.  See the alternating triangular patches of light and dark carpet.  

At this point, you men are rolling your eyes and you women are wondering if I have an available brother.  Ladies, sorry, too late, I'm taken.  (And I cook, too.)  Men, it's the same feeling of combined accomplishment and well-being that you get from mowing the lawn.  Now you're getting me, right?

So today, while vacuuming the carpets in the old house, I emptied my mind (not a lengthy operation, admittedly) and meditated.  Push, squeak.  Pull, squeak.  What is this all about, anyway?  What do I want from my life?  What do I want to be when I grow up?  Where did it all go wrong?  And where did it go right?

Much of my adult life has been spent in pursuit of security, but in a roundabout way.  Go to college, get a job.  Work hard.  Get a better job.  Work harder.  Build a career.  Make more money.  Buy more stuff.  Income=stuff=security, so income=security, right?  But it doesn't, does it?  If there's anything to be taken from the experience of losing my job (although technically, I'm just 'at risk' of losing it), it's that there IS no security.  

Push, squeak.  Pull, squeal.

But how do you actually GET security?  I mean, it'd be nice to drop out and go walkabout for a couple of years, maybe sleep on the beach now and then, run a tiki bar somewhere.  There's a cafe for sale on a Greek island for €75,000.  Tempting.  But what's the education system like in Greece?  Could I support my family peddling saganaki and ouzo to pasty British tourists?  Maybe not.

Push, squeak.  Pull, squeal.

Maybe security is really just a function of whether you feel secure.  Do I feel secure?  I guess so.  There's a severance package coming my way once the consultation period is over, that provides a certain level of security.  I have a  few transferrable, marketable skills.  But what if something goes wrong and the severance doesn't come through?  Nothing's guaranteed until the cheque is in the bank.  And then what if the bank where I keep the money fails?  What if my visa isn't approved?  What if I can't find a job before the money runs out?  

Push, squeak.  Pull, squeal.

I've always been a thinker.  Unfortunately, thinking results in conjuring up a wide array of possible outcomes, some of which are inevitably more frightening than others.  For this reason, I worry a lot.  The recession.  The environment.  My health. A terrible image forms in my imagination, faded and cracked like an old picture.  An image composed of photos I've seen of the Depression.  A man in line for bread, clothes dirty and torn; a stub of a cigarette hangs from the corner of his slack mouth.  His children, uneducated and hungry, their growth arrested by malnutrition, their hair straggly, their eyes frightened.

Push, squeak.  Pull, squeal.

But what is the likelihood that any of these dire possibilities actually comes to pass?  Certainly not nil, but also not as likely as a positive outcome.  So maybe that's my security; the knowledge that while there are any number of awful possibilities, the most likely outcome isn't one of them.  In fact, the most likely outcome is that I'll find a job, pay the rent, feed the kids and things will be just fine.  Different from before, maybe, but still fine.  

And it's this realization that makes me feel secure.  The knowledge that in all likelihood, things will be just fine.

So maybe there's really no security.  Or maybe we just have to make our own.

Push.  Squeak.