Opposites or Two Possibilities: Planning versus Trial-and-Error
I recently saw two films that made me think about philosophy of life, right and wrong, and other important matters. The first is - "Mean Creek." Mean Creek falls into the category of films where the characters are forced into a moral dilemma. I love films like this.
Basically, life is all about thought. There are two kinds of thinking - proactive planning and reactive trial and error. In the first case, we go about precisely planning and plotting based on our goals, life views, and basic desires. We're constantly using our basic philosophy of life, whether or not we have precisely articulated one or not, it's there, and it guides our higher order thinking and planning. By basic philosophy I'm including our spiritual and religious beliefs, our view of people and nature, the world, our purpose in life, etc. Of course, many people don't really ever think too much about these things, but it doesn't matter, 'cause there still there. Don't believe in God? That's still a belief. Don't have a meta-model of the way humans interact with one another or an understanding of basic psychology? Well, to some extent we all do, but those of us at the one extreme end may be anti-social or socio-paths, or serial killers, or just crazy bloggers.
In the case of reactive trial and error, people either go out consciously to do something, "I think I'll go ride my bike," - which is still based on various desires and philosophies of life - I want to stay in shape, I want to stay in shape so I look attractive, strong, etc. - I want to look strong so that ... etc.
Sometimes these activities become routine, habitual, but, of course, the environment always throws us a curve ball from time to time. When stuff happens, the outside environment throws us a challenge, either from nature or people (as a special case of nature), we have to react rather quickly. It's when stuff comes at us very quickly that we must react. Reaction is fast. In the case of nature, animals, we pretty much know the reactions. In the case of people, whoa. In the case of ourselves, sometimes we're surprised too. Sometimes our basic philosophies and beliefs, even the ones we haven't thought about, come out and are right there. "How would you react to this situation - you are alone in a lifeboat, there's only enough food and water for .... etc"
Mean Creek takes us out of the comfortable, well-planned world into the something comes at you, now react fast world. Like a "Simple Plan" gone wrong, sometimes the siutation reveals character. Sometimes it's even a surprise to ourselves.
If you can recommend any other films that are like this ... let me know. I like em.
My Experiment with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
My Experiment with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) I recently signed-up for Vonage phone service. This is the company that only charges $24.99 per month for basic phone service including all long distance calls (domestic US and Canada). What a deal!
But, after signing up and getting the starter kit – start-up CD, Phone adapter (Router that plugs into your cable modem), and setting up the system, - I recently declared that my experiment is over.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work. The Adelphia Powerlink cable comes in from your wall, and you plug the cable in your cable modem. You plug an Ethernet cable from your cable modem to your phone adapter/router. You can then plug in your phone line directly into your Phone1, router phone jack. Basically, phone calls come in over the Internet through your cable modem and your phone adapter grabs the VoIP data packets and sends them to your phone.
Here’s how it worked. Well, the phone calls were just fine, well at least 90% of the calls. I was able to talk with almost everyone and long distance to my Mom and sister was very clear – and free. But, amazingly my phone calls to other Vonage friends did not work at all. My voice would never reach the destination. After much experimentation and failed attempts, we, the Vonage technicians and me, figured that my upload speed and quality of service was too low. So, when I connected with another Vonage customer, his phone adapter didn’t get the data packets fast enough to establish a nice connection. Basically, my voice never went through, and although I could hear his voice, I wouldn’t call that a successful phone conversation.
Next, I called Adelphia and increased my cable modem speed by purchasing their “premium service.” After monitoring the line, I didn’t notice a significant increase in upload time, quality of service, and most importantly, my calls still didn’t go through to other Vonage phone users. You can go to: http://speedtest.vonage.com/ and check your upload, download speeds and quality of service. I would recommend that you have above 80% quality of service levels and above 275 kbps upload, minimum, before you think about going with Vonage. My apologies go out to all those friends who I have recommended the phone service. Actually, many of you may have a good experience with VoIP and cable modem phone service. But, I would check those figures before disconnecting your current phone service.
Summary:1. I’m back with Verizon for local, regional and long distance. I have $0.05 a minute long distance.
2. I didn’t like Vonage’s customer service. It was slow. They never responded to my emails and the wait times were fairly long for technical support. I believe they’re growing, they’re small, and there’s bound to be many technical questions as the company grows.
3. I didn’t like the idea of having to deal with 2 separate companies for what I perceive to be 1 service. If there’s a problem, you’re on the phone with both Vonage and Adelphia.
4. If there’s a power outage, there’s a phone outage.
5. The emergency 911 service is still questionable.
But, hey, it may work for some people, those are just my experiences.
- Ed
Data Mining, Terrorism, Systems Thinking, bureaucracy
A recent article in the August 17th, Chicago Tribune, (see
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0508170159aug17,1,4763588,print.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true) entitled -
"Officer says Unit Tried to Warn FBI pre-9/11" - describes how a special government data mining unit successfully identified Mohamed Atta and "as well as three of the other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the FBI's Washington field office to share its information.
But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute.
Shaffer said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Defense Department's Special Operations Command had canceled the meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States."
My comments:
From an academic and systems thinking perspective, an important lesson I take from this is the importance of organizational design and the perspective of systems theory when designing intelligence gathering organizations.
Specifically, "Able Danger," the data mining and intelligence gathering unit, successfully (presumably) gathered information about Atta and the other potential terrorists. However, they cannot take action on their own, their organizational mission is to gather the intelligence, using data mining and whatever means. The FBI is the organization, and set of organizational units (systems), that has as its mission to also act on the intelligence. However, problems are often encountered during "hand-offs" or when two or more organizational units (systems or sub-systems) must coordinate or pass information between or among sub-systems. Several questions arise: How is this information treated as it is passed between organizations? In other words, is the information treated as 100% accurate (not likely), does Able Danger assign probabilistic attributes to the data? If not, does the FBI do their own filtering of information that is passed in to their organization? What are the reward systems and performance feedback systems in the relevant FBI organizational units and in Able Danger? In other words, is it Able Danger's mission to simply identify and thus they are reprimanded if something, some information, is missed, or are there negative incentives, reprimands for supplying incorrect or wrong information?
Depending on the nature of the reward/incentive, feedback systems for Able Danger and for the FBI, information sharing and filtering can be problematic so that each sub-system can be doing their job, but, without looking at the design of the entire system - i.e., "draw one big circle around both the relevant FBI unit and Able Danger units," then both subsystems may be functioning correctly, according to their design, but the entire system, the big circle, may be functioning improperly. What is important is the outcomes assessments at the big circle - reward and incentive systems and feedback must be designed with the larger picture in mind.
What actually happened? We may never know all of it but, to repeat from above:
"Shaffer said in an interview that the highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, as well as three of the other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the FBI's Washington field office to share its information.
But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute.
Shaffer said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Defense Department's Special Operations Command had canceled the meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States."
System Explanation: the military lawyers were acting according to their job descriptions, reward systems, etc, in other words, their primary concern was to keep the organizational unit out of legal trouble. In that sense, they did their job. Rather than say "the people were stupid," it is more accurate to realize the design of the systems was not properly thought out. When designing organizational and information gathering systems, one must have a clear picture of the overall goals, how the subsystems' subgoals contribute to the attainment of the overall goals, and how one can achieve clear, consistent, correct, and accurate transfer of information between and among the subsystems to achieve these overall goals. In essence, one must develop a good design.
The racist.
The Big Picture: The Collage ... Parts and Wholes.
Yesterday I saw "Crash." The film/movie reminded me of one of my film favorites - "Traffic." Crash attempts to give the viewer a glimpse of racism ... but a view of racism requires, essentially - many, many viewpoints, because racism is essentially an artificial concept. We, as humans, try to make sense of our world, so we can reason and problem solve. We categorize everything. Imagine any discipline or scientific area without strict definitions ... no one could communicate or reason in such a world. Everything must be categorized. So with humans ... we go back and forth between our uniqueness as individuals, our own unique slant on things, our own distinct personalities ... versus ... stereotypes. The Hollywood movie deals strictly in stereotypes. Spinning stories of people - well, not people, but stories of 1-dimensional sterotypes. Films on the other hand give us a glimpse of n-dimensional people, shot in abstract reality, at angles, in many situations, dealing with everything from the mundane to the perverse, ... and the film-maker lets us make sense (allows us the flexibility to interpret, to form our own categories), and to make our own, n-dimensional interpretations.
Crash was cool because the film-maker tries to give us a glimpse of the racism concept. Characters are not so simple, black and white. We sometimes use sterotypes ... because, well, when we have limited information, we need to fill-in-the-blanks to reason through a situation. If you're at a restaurant and a female with an apron walks up to your table, you might just say - "Can you get me a glass of water?" Of course, it could just be a female in an apron, right? "Get your own damn water!" (A number of times I've been approached in stores and asked questions simply because I had my tie on from work and I stopped by to pick up something myself. Recall the Seinfeld episode when Jerry is mistaken as a pharmacist!)
Beyond stereotyping is ... racism. Making the categories, fitting people into the categories, making generalizations, judgments, being emotional, ... being weak in our own unique ways.
Crash had to tell the story in parts ... because that's what the concept is all about. We start with the details, we generalize, we fit, we re-categorize, but we de-humanize. It's all about the way humans are, loving, caring, emotional, thinking, thinking, thinking, and hating.
- On a related note, check out:
art imitates life, imitates art.
Hot, sunny days.
Practice, practice, practice
I've taken a little hiatus from blogging because I've been goofing off, or you could say "working" on my game or practicing. Our club championship is this weekend and since golf is a difficult, complex sport/game, one really, really needs to practice and get ready to play your best.
Golf is such an involved game, when you play there is a tendency to get totally absorbed, which is good, because the game becomes a great distraction or break from reality. You get so involved in your 4.5 hour round of golf that all of your other concerns are put on the back burner. So, it's a great escape.
On the other hand, golf can be time-consuming as you attempt to improve or play better. I think there's a tendency by some people to put too much emphasis on golf while the rest of their life suffers from lack of attention. Many guys at the club plan their retirements around golf: buying condos in Florida, etc. Many of the guys who are retired enjoy playing the game 4 or 5 times a week (or 6 or 7). Keep in mind that some people drive a 1/2 hour to the course, warm-up and practice for a 1/2 hour, play for 4.5 to 5 hour round, go to the locker room and record your scores, go to the bar, relax, have lunch, etc. It's an all-day affair.
I try to keep a balance, but, as a professor, I don't have to be at work like many people do. I set my own schedule.
But, this week (and the week before), I've played a lot. I'm anxious for the tournament weekend to conclude so I can resume a more "normal" lifestyle. Has all of this warm-up and practice helped? Well, I played decent this summer but, my last 2 rounds actually were really bad. Hey, with golf, who knows? With many activities there's a definite linear relationship ... weightlift more - you get bigger, run more at the track - you get more endurance, etc. With golf - play more - and hope.
Golf Competition: golf is an addictive game. You get some random rewards, and you play more to get those little pieces thrown at you - the perfect shot, the great low round, ... perhaps the biggest thrill - winning a tournament. That's why there's quite a buzz around the club as everyone scrambles to practice. Now, since it's a tournament - your scores go up on a big, big leaderboard for everyone to look at. Therefore, you have a big desire to play your best this weekend - on the other hand, golf is very fickle and unpredictable. You may play just terrible despite the practice. Like an old car, some things that are held together might come un-glued at the last second. This leads to one type of pressure for the players - the potential for embarrassment. A second pressure is the fear of actually winning - when you come down the final hole a grandstand is set up and there's a crowd of beer drinking, rowdy people waiting for you to make a great putt or flub it up. Unless you've played golf, you never know the potential fear this places in the back of one's mind.
There's so much more I could write about the psychological aspects of the game. In a sense, it's a microcosm of life - you have good shots and bad shots, good holes and bad holes, and your emotions ride up and down like a rollercoaster during a competition. Total absorption.
But, there's more to life, I know. But for a while you just get absorbed. I'd write more, but I have a tee-time. Gotta go.
