Month: September 2017

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September 20, 2017 – Entropy

The Second Law of Thermodynamics introduces us to a couple of interesting concepts to chew on.  The first is the concept of entropy, which is a way to measure the amount of disorder in a system.  This is necessary because of the second and more interesting thought. Systems break down from complex to simple as more chaos and disorder emerges…or put simply, things fall apart over time.  While this is true for scientific analysis of heat to energy exchange , I have found it to be just as applicable for a wide range of other phenomena.

The natural order of systems breaking down is seen in thousands of examples…the decline of the European monarchies resulting in World War I, the collapse of the Soviet Union under communism, the housing bubble, the dot-com bubble, etc.  At the most basic, our very bodies degrade over time, culminating in our physical death.  This natural transition is, in my opinion, the fundamental reason conspiracies and motives ultimately are discovered.  The concept of a criminal devolving and making mistakes is a core tenet of law enforcement and, yet, we ignore this basic concept as it applies to other complex social systems.

Lee Childs’ protagonist Jack Reacher put it this way, everybody has a plan until they are punched in the face.  In this very statement lies the reason for the underlying truth of entropy.  We have plans, sophisticated, interconnected, well-thought out, etc.  Then the moment comes where something unexpected happens and our plans have to change on the fly.  We no longer have the luxury of time to replan, rather we have to replan based on our experience and understanding of the situation as it unfolds.  We have moved from strategic to tactical approaches and we have begun to introduce our own chaos into the cycle, thereby increasing the entropy, until, at the end, the system or the plan stops functioning.

So, why is this important to know or write about, you ask?  It is because we generally spend a lot of time believing that the systems, situations and individuals arrayed against us are superior.  They have all of the advantages and they play a perfect game.  We convince ourselves that the odds stacked against us are too high and that the house always wins.  While sometimes true, the fact that we respond that way ignores the concept of chaos and entropy.  The simple fact is that humans are agents of entropy and chaos in systems.  For good or bad, we introduce unplanned for chaos into situations and systems thereby contributing to their ultimate breakdown.  So, when facing a situation that seems almost robotic in its execution against you, remember, you represent the “punch in the face” that can break the cycle and ultimately change the situation.

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September 19, 2017 –  Air Force

Because I’m in Europe as I wrote yesterday’s post, I screwed up my dates and didn’t post on the topic I had intended. Yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of our nations beloved Air Force. All the authors served in our Air Force so I think it’s only appropriate to post on this topic even if it’s a day late.

I don’t think any of us joined the Air Force with the intention to serve longer than one tour and then get out and do something with our lives. Ironically, we all found out that the simple act of serving our country achieved that objective without having to wait four, ten or twenty years. We all love our country and that love was made stronger by our service. I know I speak for all three of us when I say that no matter how hard we worked or how much we sacrificed, the military gave us far more than we could ever contribute to this nation.

The Core Values of the Air Force are Excellence, Integrity and Service Before Self. The values were imbued in us from the first day of basic training and hammered home in subtle and not so subtle ways each day of our careers. The Air Force matured me faster than I eve could have on my own. It taught me leadership by example, good and bad, and that followership is a key ingredient of being a great leader. The Air Force brought the great majority of the most important people into my life. It gave me new skills, new challenges and new experiences that I could never have attained without serving.

Our Air Force is the greatest Air Force in the planet. Happy birthday USAF!

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September 18, 2017 – Speed

I’ve always been fascinated at how elite athletes say the game moves slower
to them. I’ve only experienced this twice and only once while playing sports
which, if you know how often I’ve played sports, is concrete proof that I’m
not an elite athlete and never will be. It was interesting though to feel
separated from the rest of the players on the field. Kind of like a Guy
Ritchie movie.

Anyway, I learned today that different species see motion at different
speeds also. The reason it’s so hard to swat a fly is because they see
motion four times faster than we do. Conversely, a turtle sees things much
slower which is one of the reasons they move so cautiously.

But it’s not the vision that makes a difference for the elite athletes. It’s
the way their mind fills in the gaps to allow them to make a decision at
their speed which is nearly always ahead of the defenders decisions making
speed.

This concept only works for activities that take place in real
time…sports, accidents, life threatening situations. The other time I
experienced this concept was during a car accident. I won’t go into the
details other than to say it saved at least one life and if I had taken the
time to think at normal speed it would’ve ended disastrously.

I think we all get in our own way when we try to be smarter than we need to
be. Sometimes we need to stop thinking and just do something.

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September 17, 2017 – Plastic Bowling Balls

One the more interesting books I recently finished was, “You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself” by  David McRaney. Getting past the rather off-putting title, it was actually a pretty good book. One of the chapters in the book I’d like to talk about, is how your memory is not as good as you think. He cites studies that show, interestingly enough, that we tend to fill in gaps in our memory much like all of us have a blind spot in the back of the retina. If you haven’t done the experiment I suggest you Google blind spot  in your retina and follow the instructions, you’ll see that indeed, there is a spot on the back of your eye where you are essentially blind.

McRaney suggests, and research backs this up, that we also do the same thing with our memories. I have one personal example of this phenomena to share. When I was 6, my brother and I were playing in our bedroom when one of us, and I believe this is where the phenomena takes place, threw a plastic bowling ball through the window. I distinctly remember my brother throwing the bowling ball. My brother on the other hand, distinctly remembers me throwing the bowling ball. Without a doubt, a plastic bowling ball was thrown through the window, and my brother and I were punished for it. But all these years later, even though there is no punishment, or threat of punishment, we both insist the other one threw the bowling ball. I am convinced that if both of us took a polygraph, we would both pass. How is this so?

According to McRaney, one of us has filled in that memory with a false one of the other brother throwing the ball through the window. It is as vivid and real as the actual memory one of us holds. It must be noted that after reading McRaney’s book, I’m not so sure that my memory is the true one, even though I can close my eyes and see my nine-year-old brother throwing the plastic bowling ball as clear as day.

But is that a true memory? It’s a fascinating concept and I would highly encourage anyone with an interest in how memories are made to read the book. There are also many interesting anecdotes about how you really can’t trust eyewitness testimony because of the same phenomena. McRaney also has a website worth a visit https://youarenotsosmart.com/.

On second thought – he threw the darn bowling ball, I’m sure of it.

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September 16, 2017 – Some Ideas for the Day

My apologies for the delay in posting, like my fellow authors, the last few days have been very busy. That’s not a good excuse for not posting.  We (the authors) all believe how important it is to share our thoughts with our children and the other readers of Our Digital Dust. That said, I like to talk a little bit about five crucial skills that every successful human should have.

The first skill is associating. The ability to connect seemingly random events, problems, ideas, thoughts, and questions into one coherent supposition. One example of this is the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, who is able to take his girlfriend’s passion for collecting Pez dispensers along with the difficulty in finding Pez dispensers for her, and the idea of emerging Internet markets. The result was eBay.

The next skill is questioning. Not so much the question why, but the question why not? When Elon Musk was told that it was not competitive to reuse rocket engines for launching satellites, he asked why not? Subsequently, Musk’s company, SpaceX, does just that and has driven the price of satellite launches down by more than 75%.

The next crucial skill is observing. The ability to set back and closely observe the behaviors of others and what motivates those around you. The idea for the iPhone came to Steve Jobs from watching people fumble with their iPad and phone and wonder, “why can’t we put that together?”

Another crucial skill is experimentation or experimenting. A willingness to try new ideas and keep an open mind. No one took Jeff Bezos seriously when he said he wanted to start an online bookstore when there were already big box stores such as, Books A Million, Barnes & Noble’s, and the now defunct Borders bookstore.

The last skill that you should be working on is networking. Interacting with others from a diverse array of thought, occupations, ideas, and political persuasions. You do not grow or develop by solely interacting with those people of the same political and ideological background.

Hopefully this is given you some food for thought and encouraged you to try something new tomorrow.

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September 15, 2017 – On Being A Toddler

I have screwed up our posting schedule this week due to a number of work, personal, and academic-related comedies of errors.  However, I wanted to post about this topic due to some things I have observed with my Grandson and then we’ll get back to the regular schedule and rotation starting tomorrow.

I have had the great opportunity of spending time over the weekend and the first part of this week with my 2 1/2 year old grandson.  He is bright, inquisitive, energetic, and…a toddler.  For all of you who have experienced the joys of child-rearing, you can appreciate what that means.  It means his mind and body are running 100 mph, and he is intrigued by and willing to get into almost anything.  This does not make him bad or mischievous, rather it makes him a toddler.  He is learning about his boundaries, his environment and trying to understand the complexities of this multidimensional world around him, and he has the unending energy and persistence to do so.

What fascinates me is the “I know” answer I get from him when I answer the question “what are you doing?”  At that moment, he is staking the ground that he understands, while at the same time not being able to grasp all of the ramifications and interconnected events that are occurring to make what I am doing happen.  As a result, many times, he will attempt to do something similar and fail to obtain the same result because he doesn’t fully understand the underpinnings of what makes the whole process work.  He does, however, try over and over and over, until either getting too frustrated or asking for help.

In many ways, I am beginning to realize that we as adult humans, are still in many ways toddlers.  I am a firm believer in science and discovery.  The concept of using the scientific method to gain a better understanding of events, processes, foundational principles, etc. is something I utilize in my day to day work environment.  Having said that, there are many “facts” that we proclaim and accept as truth without having the true scientific proof to support us.  We impart causality to correlated events on a regular basis because we have a desire to say “I know” when looking at something we don’t fully understand, as if the fact that we don’t fully understand somehow makes us less of a person or, heaven forbid, ignorant…

There are many examples of this in the past that we laugh about today…thunder being gods bowling, an imbalance in body humours being responsible for disease, flies being created by rotting meat, etc.  Yet, still today we fall prey to the misconception that our current understanding is absolute and true because we know more than we did before.  Granted, science has brought us a long way towards better understanding our environment, but it still has a long way to go.  For example, while we understand how white blood cells help fight off infection, we still have no real understanding of what causes over 1/3 of all neurological issues.  While we understand that gravity causes all mass to accelerate at the same rate, we don’t truly understand how light can function both as a particle and a wave simultaneously.

The point is we are currently living in a culture where science has become both a means of discovery and understanding AND a theology all of its own.  Rather than continuing to question and require the type of rigor the scientific process demands, we accept false premises, faulty hypotheses, unrepeatable experiments, and overly expansive interpretations of scope-limited results to become canon in our day-to-day beliefs and demonize the nonbelieving “heretics” because they are “ignorant”.  This is a scary proposition.  It implies that all discovery is true until proven different, regardless of repeatability, and belittles the types of revolutionary discovery that actually improves our understanding. If you don’t believe me, go back and look at the causes of death for President Garfield after his assassination or any number of “serendipitous” events that led to major changes in scientific thought (e.g., penicillin, travel faster than Mach 1, etc.)  All of these impossibilities became truths, not because of active attempts to better ourselves but in spite of scientific truth of the day.

So, much like a toddler “understanding” that clothes get clean by pushing a button, we “understand” a lot of things that we may discover we better understand in the future…so long as we don’t burn all the heretics.

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September 13, 2017 – Anonymity

I didn’t get a post in yesterday as I had wanted, but it is for good reason.  The past few days have been packed wall to wall with activities both at work and at home and yesterday just completely eluded me.  One of the activities has been attending a conference on risk and privacy, two concepts that I spend a great deal of time thinking about.  One of the presenters spoke about de-anonymizing small data sets.  I know it doesn’t sound really interesting yet, but stay with me and I think you’ll be intrigued.

As a data scientist, this presenter spends a great deal of time looking at how machine learning algorithms can be used to identify patterns we haven’t seen previously.  As part of his research, he became intrigued with the idea of hospitals and doctors offices redacting patient records and providing research data that includes age, gender, diagnosis, location, and date of birth.  What he discovered is that, with very minimal effort it is possible to de-anonymize those records and determine which individuals were seen for what medical issue and when.  He then walked us through an example of where, through the analysis of just 6-8 movies a person watches on Netflix, you could determine identity data, when correlated with other social media information.

To me this type of activity is both intriguing and, frankly, frightening.  As he described different data analytic projects at his university, I began to become convinced all over again that there is no true anonymity anymore, because we all leave unique digital trails across our environment every day.  In fact, we leave so many unique trails that just the smallest number of data points are really necessary to identify us.  Whether it be the style of your writing, the routes you take to different locations, the food you purchase, the binge-watching you do, or the search you did on a specific item, your digital fingerprint becomes more and more defined making you less and less anonymous and potentially more susceptible to abuses of your right to privacy.

This was demonstrated pretty clearly in the CNN threat to “dox” the reddit user who posted a video of the President body-slamming a wrestler with the CNN logo over his face.  Through the correlation of a number of small pieces of information, CNN was able to identify the user in question, at which point, they threatened to release his information online until his subsequent apology.  From their own report, they issued this statement.

“CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”
This gives me more than a little reason for concern, because of that last sentence.  This is the same sort of cyber bullying we see across the web where people are blackmailed into doing things for fear of having their personal or private lives publicly revealed.  The idea that a major media outlet would engage in this type of activity just underscores to me the fact that this is now considered a “mainstream” reaction, and with the ability to identify people uniquely becoming easier and easier, it is just a matter of time before we are all at risk of having our private lives become candidates for public release.  Granted that has worked for the Kardashians, but for the rest of us it is more than a little disconcerting.
As with all technology “improvements” there is the potential for abuse and, as usual, nobody is asking the question “should we do this”.  Instead, we keep saying “look what I can do” and we keep opening Pandora’s box a little bit wider.   So, as you make your way around the web, search for locations on your phone, and watch movies on your tablets, just remember, you are making your fingerprint a little more defined and trading off just a little more of your privacy.
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September 11, 2017 Remembering

It’s hard not to write about the events of this day sixteen years ago. Despite some great conversation tonight with my coauthors that provided fodder for myriad topics to use in tonight’s post, I just think anything else would fall short. However, as usual, I’m not going to take the standard approach to even this topic.

Since that fateful day, many countries, organizations, and non-state actors have taken numerous actions, made plenty of policy decisions, and spent mountains of money to prevent another catastrophe caused by callous, charismatic killers. We can’t determine if all those actions, decisions, and expenditures have stopped another catastrophe. Proving a negative is nearly as impossible as predicting an unprecedented approach to terrorism. Maybe it’s working; maybe it’s not.

Here’s one thing that I know works. Treat each other with kindness and respect. I saw a meme the other day that said “Nobody is so important they can’t treat people nice.” I know it’s simple and seems like it isn’t enough, but my experience indicates that this simple act has powerful results…more powerful than the evil that was done sixteen years ago.

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September 10, 2017 Losing Sucks

Pardon the use of the somewhat crass, but completely accurate verb in the title. This post follows a weekend of frustration by a team that I follow with great enthusiasm. It’s early in the season and this weekend’s results were preceded by a superb showing a week ago that earned national recognition for the team. However, those early results were counterbalanced as a new group of players have been thrown into the mix so they and the coach have been figuring out each other, and the team dynamics. The good news is there were clear signs of progress throughout the weekend and I believe the future is very optimistic for this team. That doesn’t negate the fact that a full weekend of losing still sucks.

I’m not sure if most people who know me now realize how much I HATE losing. Over the years, I’ve learned how to appear gracious in defeat or even pretend I don’t care because “ïts just a game”. When I was a kid, I did not have those abilities and my frustration with losing was compounded because the teams I played on when I was in grade school generally won a lot. That didn’t last long after I started middle school and the losing, along with other factors, led me to move away from sports. I wasn’t confident or strong enough then to persevere through the losses to build body and mind to get better. Things change though as we get older and while its too late for me to use my four years of NCAA eligibility, I’ve learned enough from friends, colleagues, rivals and family to approach a loss as an opportunity to get better. That has made me a better friend, colleague, rival and family member. The team I watched this weekend is full of veterans that know this lesson better than I do and they will handle the challenge with aggressiveness and grace leading this team to better performance as players and people so in the end, the losses will not overshadow their leadership or the team.

But losing still sucks!

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September 7, 2017 – Storms on the Horizon

Well, between Harvey and Irma, we have been experiencing some of the most severe hurricane activity than we have seen in a very long time.  Sure, we had Katrina in 2005 and Andrew in 1992, but to have two hurricanes of this ferocity within a couple of weeks of each other is a first in recorded US history.  Several people have immediately jumped on both sides of the man-made climate change argument in an effort to prove their respective points, but the plain fact of the matter is that natural disasters have happened before and will happen again.  Whether it be earthquakes like those in Haiti and Pakistan, volcanic eruptions like Vesuvius, Krakatoa, or Tambora, tsunamis with waves as high as 1700 feet and typhoons half the size of the US, mankind has been subjected to extreme damages to the extent that we have regularly referred to them as “acts of God”.

The key is not the fact that they occur or why they occur, but rather, how we should prepare and react to them.  I have always found it interesting that there are people who, upon hearing of an impending hurricane head towards it in an effort to “experience” the raw power of the storm.  While I can understand the fascination with storms, I cannot understand what would drive someone to knowingly head into them.  Indeed, I have a little bit of trouble understanding why people in the storm’s path choose to stay and ride it out rather than seek safer havens.  Granted, I have opted to stay put in some storms, but they were of dramatically lesser ferocity.  In any case, it is important to follow a few fundamental rules when confronted with a coming natural disaster.  First, choose to put some distance between you and the worst of it.  Second, prepare a “go bag” in advance with sufficient supplies to keep you for a short period of time.  Third, make sure your means of transportation are fueled up and in good working order.  Finally, exercise tactical patience, because you probably won’t be alone.

Interestingly, I believe this applies to the “natural disasters” of life that threaten us.  Storms will arise in life, and some of them will be on par with a natural disaster in terms of severity and ferocity.  In these times, though, if you can put some distance in between you and the storm, you can retain perspective.  If you prepare in advance, you will have resources to help you keep going.  If you maintain your ability to stay mobile, you buy yourself the flexibility to maneuver as the storm winds it way along its track.  Finally, if you can maintain your ability to stay patient, you can outlast the storm as it winds down in its intensity and finally dies out.  I know this isn’t new thought, but in the current environment, I thought it might be a good reminder.  Have a great rest of the week and try to stay dry.