The hilarity of it all

Life is really, really funny.  I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. 

Eight years ago, Barrack Obama was elected president of the United States, and the right decried the death of the free world and the end of everything they saw as important.

One month ago, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, the left decried the death of the free world and everything they saw as important.

8 years ago, Texas started talking about secession.

1 month ago, California started talking about secession.

It's ridiculously humorous the parallels between what happened eight years ago and what happened a month ago.

Everything the right was saying eight years ago, the left is saying now.

History is doing a bit of repeating, and it is hilarious.

Brain Drain

I have stated before that I think schools teach the wrong thing.  I think I should elaborate on that point.

Point 1.  It’s an infographic about college degrees going from rare to super common in 40 years. 

Point 2.  An infographic about America’s most and least educated cities.

See, for years the mentality has always been that you should get a college degree to better yourself.  By that line of thinking, then the most and least educated cities should be a good indicator or where economic growth is occurring.   

I’m stopping that train of thought right now.  I know where I was going with it, but it was an A/B conversation.  Too simplistic and wrong.  Also, my conclusions were wrong. Or at least my assumed thoughts were wrong.  In general, there’s the idea that the most/least educated cities should also show the most/least growth.   More education equals more growth.  That’s what we’ve been told for years.  More specifically, more college education leads to more growth.  I think there might be a direct correlation up to a point, but it’s not a permanent equation. 

I don’t think the answer is as simple as the question sounds.  The question sounds like “what one single thing can we do to cause every single person to succeed?”

I don’t think there is such a thing.  First, the question is exceptionally vague.  How you define success is up to the individual.  As such, a broad level of success is invalid.  It’s much like the war on poverty.  Poverty is defined as the bottom percentage of the population.  I can’t remember what the number is specifically, but you can never win if the bottom percentage of the population is AUTOMATICALLY declared to be in poverty.  It doesn’t matter if the average person on the bottom drives a Ferrari and has $10,000 a day income.  It’s still the bottom. 

Education level is supposed to be a major factor in growth, but if that’s the case then economic output should have gone up astronomically in the last 40 years.  I’m not sure if it has or hasn’t.  What I do know is that some degrees aren’t worth a darn.  Certain classes of degrees aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, and as such a degree in such a program is relatively useless. 

How can a useless degree increase economic output?  Entrepreneurship is the answer, but that is something else that isn’t taught in school. 

Before I go into a deeper and even more unfathomable hole of half-thought out proofs and random thoughts, I think I’ll end.  Just realize not all thought experiments end well.  Sometimes, the answer isn’t that clean and you end up with more questions than answers.  

In a parking lot

Still contemplating the this/that complex that usually encompasses most people. That choice provides a false duality that bleeds over into the rest of life.  All choices become a/b choices when often a and b aren't good choices in the first place.  That simplicity removes the possibility that all choices can have more than one answer.  Yet it's that specific trait that is desired by business.  Perhaps it's an educational failing.  I remember having an argument with an English teacher in 7th or 8th grade about being dropped off at school.  High school moved band to first period, and the school was small enough to have 7th/8th graders in high school band.  My parents gave my brother the option of taking me to school in the morning or not. He was in high shool.  The teacher wouldn't even entertain the possibility that my brother had been given a choice.  She was a firm believer in a/b choices.   

Such separations become obvious in politics.  It gets to the point where neither side will talk to the other.  They both blame each other, but both sides are still having an a/b conversation.   

I'm not mad at current society.  Our failings are simply amplifications of being taught the wrong thing.  We failed the OODA loop, and we're solving problems that simply don't exist anymore.  

The biggest problem with the A/B option is best described by Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  It says that any logical model of reality is incomplete (and very likely inconsistent) and must be continuously refined and adapted in the face of new observations.  A and B are never complete theorems, and neither side even decently describes humanity.  They never do.  But it ends up being a squirmy little box, so people shove and shove trying to get their idea into the box.  All the while, parts flow out in all directions.  

Observation is the key to understanding.  Those items that just don't seem to fit in the box don't fit in the box.  They need to be moved into a new home, where they fit within what they do.  And once you find the right home, that bit won't try to escape the box.  The only problem is your A/B solution suddenly becomes an A through Z solution, and it's hard to describe the entire thing.  

In order to describe life, the theory has to be necessarily complex to fit everything.  Simplicity just doesn't work when you combine free will.  That's the crux of it all.  That's the point that breaks apart every good thought and plan.

I'll stop now, before this falls off into more of a chasm than it already is.

Side note:  this one is called "in a parking lot" because it was partially written in a Wal-Mart parking lot while my wife ran into the store.

disorganized mess

This is going to be a disorganized mess, but I’m okay with that.  It’s hard when you observe situations and know there is connecting tissue there, but you don’t know what that connecting tissue is.  I think I’ve been reading too much about too many different things.  All of it combined makes for a giant mess of a thought process.  Here are several of the incomplete thoughts running through my head in recent days.

The income gap: how do some people find it so easy to make money while others struggle with McJobs?  It probably started with something I read about conversations overheard in the Goldman Sachs elevator.  Though I can’t attribute anything, nor do I believe it actually happened, one conversation went like such:

Some girl asked me what I would do with $10 million dollars.  I told her I’d wonder where the rest of my money went.

I think I read that statement as something to aspire to.  I guess money is so demonized that people don’t understand why someone would want “that much money”.  My thought is simple: I want the money for the opportunity it provides.  My lack of money creates insecurity and unneeded stress.  I spend so much money a money servicing debt and making others rich that there is nothing left to make me rich.  But that’s only the case for another 2-3 years.  The lack of finances also prevents pursing opportunities and learning things I desire to learn.  Without extra money, I don’t have the $100-200 to risk on something to determine whether an idea is feasible.  I don’t have what equates to relatively minor sums of cash to try initial experiments.  Because with those initial experiments, I expect to lose my initial capital.  And I don’t have the spare capital to lose.

Going back to my original thought: how do some people seem to be able to make large incomes easily while others don’t seem to be able to hold 2 cents to their name.  It makes me think there is something there worth studying and understanding.

2^nd: Next time you are driving, think about how much time and effort you have spent paying for your car.  Think of the undue stress of buying that car.  Once you have made it through the buying process, it’s off to the bill payment process.  And then finally, the bill payment process is over and the vehicle is yours after years of blood, sweat, and tears. 

Now drive by a wrecker yard and see what your investment in time in stress is worth a few years down the road.  Or in the next 15 minutes.

There are more, but those are the beginning thoughts.  That, or maybe I should quit reading John Boyd.

More airport fun

I’m at the airport, and for some reason, the Supersuckers Going Back to Tuscon is running through my head right now.   I’m headed back to Clearwater, Florida for training.  I’m sure there are plenty of things I could be doing right now, but all I remember is something I put on Facebook last night and I don’t think anyone got what I was saying. 

I read an article yesterday about the carbon footprint of the Tesla vehicles.  The article was very distinct in that the complaints about the vehicle were related to specific metals used in the production of the vehicle.  The end result is the Tesla has a smaller carbon food print than the guy who posted its’ diesel truck.  And then it struck me as weird.  My brain immediately jumped to a memory I have of burning poo in Iraq back in 2003.  And I kind of laughed, because carbon footprint seemed pretty ridiculous in comparison.  If you need a visual, watch the movie Jarhead.  You’ll see pretty much the same thing, described in detail.

And I think it could be because I’m reading a book about how to think like Sherlock Holmes (Mastermind by Maria Konnikova) and I just finished a section on creating mental distance, and I begin to think of this…

Be sure to establish your own priorities.  If you don’t, someone else is likely to set them for you and you may not like where you end up.

Make sure and use the principle of exclusion to keep others’ priorities out of your life.  Limit information in order to gain greater insight because it cuts down the signal to noise ratio.  I guess Konnikova put it accurately when she said more information is not always relevant or important information. 

And after a few seconds of thinking, I come to bread and circuses, and I begin to think the Romans were right.  The only thing is that the modern government has advanced the topic with the realization that not every person is going to respond to bread and circuses, but many will.  For those more advanced in life that have moved beyond bread and circuses, you have carbon footprints and global warming.  It’s all just a game to keep people distracted.

knowledge of the law

I keep thinking about how to fix the problems in our country.  One solution presented is that "kids should be taught right and wrong".  Or the coloary, "we don't teach kids right and wrong".  I'm going to start at the beginning and say teaching the right and wrong is a waste of time.

The Bible is my text for this thought experiment.  The Jewish people knew very well throughout the Old Testament the difference between right and wrong.  The law was given to Abraham on stone tablets so he could tell everyone else the law.  So it would be hard pressed to say that the Jewish people didn't know the law.  It would also be hard pressed to say the Jewish people didn't teach the law.  There was an entire tribe whose sole purpose was to act as priests. 

Based on all that knowledge, how many people followed the law?  Zero.  Not a single one.  So knowledge of the law didn't get a single person to follow the law in the entire Old Testament.  Which I would say is pretty telling.  Because if you have a period spanning several thousand years and not a single person can follow the law, then knowledge of the law is not what keeps people from breaking the law.

Another thought experiment.  Traffic law teaches that a driver should always signal before changing lanes.  Not signaling before changing lanes means you have broken the law.  Not signaling long enough causes you to break the law.  Everyone who drives is required to pass a school of traffic law.  Yet next time you drive, observe how many people use turn signals.  I would guess the ratio is three to one against.

So, will teaching "right and wrong" solve the problems we are having today?  No.  The Jewish people knew the law in the Old Testament and not a single one followed it throughout their entire lives.  Traffic law teaches that a driver should signal before changing lanes.  That law is followed infrequently. 

So if knowledge of the law doesn't get people to follow the law, then what does? 

Things I'll only say once.

The entire government debacle is humorous.  I’m not getting in to my side of it all.  Just saying it is humorous.   I know I’ve spent a lot of time working to get myself away from any sort of government assistance.  I know how tough it can be.  But frankly, I don’t give a damn.  You want government assistance?  Jump through their ridiculous hoops.  Let some person half way across the globe that doesn’t understand your situation and doesn’t even try tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. 

I don’t think so.

I don’t advocate violence.  What I advocate is working until you have worked yourself out of the need of government assistance.  Because their kind of assistance is debilitating and doesn’t help.  I’ve worked 80 hours a week, and I did it for more than a year.  I worked countless hours of unpaid overtime.  And in the end, I got raises because I was better at my job than everyone else was.  Because my company got to the point of fearing losing me. 

Government assistance?  I don’t think so. 

Make a plan and sacrifice.  Learn what it’s like to live without a TV and how to read a book for entertainment.  Make a budget and stick to it.  Try things, and if those don’t work, try other things.  Work like an animal.  Be better than the next guy.  Get a lesson in how to be a rhinoceros.  Learn the lost art of self sufficiency and self determination.

If anything, all of this should make a lot of people mad.  And mad people do things to change their lives.

On government

I was thinking about this a little while back. A slight examination into the nature of government, concerning the how's, why's, and what-nots. So I decided to do a little research, and it leads me to believe that United States is not a constitutional democracy. I'm more inclined to believe it is something akin to a plutocratic oligarchy.

A plutocratic government is a government composed of the wealthy class.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government)

An oligarchy is a government ruled by a small group of people who share similar interests or family relations (ibid). Seems this is more accurate than the definition of constitutional democracy. That is, a government composed of representatives who are voted into power by the citizens.

More on this thought later, or after I get off work.