my current hindrance is righteous fury at cars parking in the bike lanes

A little context: the route I usually use to get to work, Valencia St, has bike lanes. It's also full of cars parking in the bike lanes; reliably 3 or 4 on an average ride down the street.

I am pretty good at navigating traffic on a bike. I haven't been hit by a car because someone parked in the bike lane. It probably raises my relative risk of getting hit. Not by a ton. It probably raises some other people's relative risk by a ton.

Some things I have tried when I see people parked in bike lanes:

1. ignoring it

2. just ringing my bike bell a bunch

3. yelling at them "don't park in the bike lanes!" as I ride past

4. taking a photo and reporting it to SF 311

5. stopping in front of them until they come out of the store and then confronting them. (this I save for particularly egregious offenders and/or luxury cars.)

6. sending notes to my local representatives/etc asking for more protected bike lanes (with like a barrier so cars physically can't park there)

7. waiting in front of the car until a parking cop comes by and waving at them to give them a ticket

(Some of them are a bit harsh, so I balance it based on the situation: if it's a harried uber eats driver making $4/hr, I don't take out my frustration on them. I try to save the angrier ones for the people who are Plain Old Bein' an Entitled Ass.)

Some things I have thought about doing:

8. printing out bumper stickers that say "I parked in a bike lane"

9. calmly lecturing them that, by getting their coffee twelve seconds faster, they are increasing my risk of actually dying

10. same as 9, but instead of lecture, I actually really try to connect with them and understand their needs

Effects on the driver:

1 (ignore) does nothing, of course.

2 (bell) does nothing too, although maybe it lowers the chance of dooring me.

3 (yell) maybe makes them feel bad, maybe makes them feel like "bikers are jerks."

4 (report) does almost nothing. It means it gets included in SF's bike lane stats, but they explicitly say they will not give a ticket for this.

5 (confront) seems the only one that actually does anything - I tell them off, they go "eh ok whatever" and drive off. Maybe their day is a little less pleasant. It also takes the most of my time and raises my blood pressure.

6 (legislate) maaaybe causes change, slowly slowly slowly. also, it's hard to say "we should focus more on this" when there are homeless people dying in the streets and apartments cost $3000/month.

7 (wait for cop) does nothing; I had a cop literally drive past me and a car-parked-in-bike-lane today.

8 (bumper sticker) would piss them off and maybe give them consequences not to park in bike lanes! it feels somewhat disproportionate. I'm fine with that; traffic tickets are also disproportionate to account for the fact that we usually won't catch you. but knowing my luck and current laws though, I'd probably end up getting a ticket for vandalism.

9 (lecture) won't do anything. they'll say "yeah ok" and then park in the bike lane again.

10 (connect) ... also won't do anything. it's hella hard to connect with a rando on the street. Especially for the kind of length of talk that will lead to connection and actually changing their mind.

So, I mean, nothing is effective! Also, some of these raise my blood pressure and/or waste my time. Also also, maybe I occasionally road-rage at the wrong person, which makes the world worse - there's nonzero fallout here.

Which leads to the difficult question: when you are powerless to a small injustice except to ignore it... is ignoring it the best/wisest/Zennest thing to do?

(this doesn't map nicely onto other stories about injustices that we know about, because it's pretty minor. feels like, I dunno, 2 micromorts/year? - which will lead to nonzero deaths in a city of a million people and therefore should be fixed, but for me personally I could just ignore it.)

(ok, I've left out choice 11. walk into the coffeeshop that they're parked outside of, and say "does anyone have a Black Porsche outside? it's being towed right now" and then wait for them to come out for it and then go "April fool, move your car, you goon." this one I haven't tried yet; just waiting for the opportunity :D

"To Mothman"

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, not quite Mothmanning but it's the best visual I can come up with

The new Adventure Zone arc, Amnesty, (minimal spoilers) includes The Mothman, a character most famously from The Mothman Prophecies who can sorta tell the future. Griffin McElroy, the DM, explains his powers like he's watching a bunch of TV screens that are all possible futures. He can't tell which of them will happen, but I think he knows that one or more of them will - so if they all converge on one thing happening soon, he knows it will very likely happen. Mostly, I want to focus on the ability to see many future stories.

This seems useful as a conversational meme when you're designing a thing, making a law, whatever. These stories are all happening, or will all happen, with some probability. For example, if you make US immigration more lax, there will likely be more immigrants committing crimes. There will also be more brilliant geniuses creating amazing things in our country. There will be more people speaking other languages. There will be more people who are willing to work in construction or farming. Some current-Americans will lose jobs, some current-Americans will get jobs, or will be able to create jobs.

This makes it frustrating when people use stories to argue points. "We shouldn't allow more immigration, because look at this immigrant who committed a crime." No, that's just one Mothman screen. How big is it? How likely is it, how important is it?

I guess it's useful when you haven't yet decided on the set of all screens. It's worthwhile to say "we should consider x." But once it's been put on a screen, you're not allowed to use stories to increase (or decrease) the importance of any one screen. You can only do that with data (to show probability or magnitude of an event) or philosophy (to suggest why we should care more/less about an event).

Anyway, I'm not going to change how people argue, forever, in one internet post. The best I can hope for here is that people start using "to Mothman" as "to look holistically at all possible futures." (perhaps also "to reverse-Mothman" to mean "to look holistically at all possible causes.")

oh my god vote

ok yes please do it ok thanks

California! San Francisco! What have we got here! Here's how I'm planning to vote so far, but open to change. Change my mind.

State Ballot Props

Prop 1 - Yes. "Issues $4 billion in bonds for housing programs and veterans' home loans."
Prop 2 - Yes. "Authorizes state to use revenue from millionaire's tax for $2 billion in bonds for homelessness prevention housing."
Prop 3 - Weak yes. "Issues $8.877 billion in bonds for water-related infrastructure and environmental projects."
Prop 4 - Weak yes. "Issues $1.5 billion in bonds for children's hospitals." I guess I like hospitals? And children?
Prop 5 - No. "Revises process for homebuyers who are age 55 or older or severely disabled to transfer their tax assessments." Sounds innocuous enough - but this would expand Prop 13, aka the ballot measure that passed once that ensured that we'd never be able to raise property taxes again.
Prop 6 - Hell no. "Repeals 2017's fuel tax and vehicle fee increases and requires public vote on future increases." Speaking of hamstringing our ability to ever raise taxes. And like... if we're going to tax anything, it should be cars.
Prop 7 - Yes. "Authorizes legislature to provide for permanent daylight saving time if federal government allows." Someday we could get out of this stupid charade!
Prop 8 - Weak yes. "Requires dialysis clinics to issue refunds for revenue above a certain amount." But really, beats me. Something something, this is a union dispute that made it onto the ballot somehow.
Prop 10 - Weak no. "Allows local governments to regulate rent on any type of housing." This is the most reasonable-to-disagree IMO. Rent control is a tricky issue, there's good reason to support it here in SF even if I don't like it in general. But as one of my friends said, "It seems like right now rent control is fairly available to tenants who want it and we have a lot of tenant rights, so the current setup has most of the benefit without the distortion." But, this might be worthwhile.
Prop 11 - No. "Allow ambulance providers to require workers to remain on call during breaks paid." Why are we ballot propping this?
Prop 12 - Weak yes. "Bans sale of meat from animals confined in spaces below specific sizes." Sure. The less gross our food supply system, the better. Some concern that this is deceptive and actually rolls back some protections. I'll keep an eye on this.

State Elected Officials

Governor: Gavin Newsom. Duh.
Senator: Kevin De Leon. Feinstein's still living in the good old days of decorum and decency, while Senate Republicans have abandoned those. I wish we were still in the good old days too, but I'd rather fight in the awful new days than just get eaten by them. Plus, I kiiinda don't think you should be allowed to be one of the 120-ish most powerful people in the country at age 85 to 91. (We'll see how this belief ages.)
Attorney General: Xavier Becerra.
Minor statewide offices: Hernandez, Yee, Ma, Padilla, Lara, Thurmond all seemed fine to me before.

SF Ballot Props

Prop A - Yes. $425M to rebuild the seawall.
Prop B - No. "Puts forward guidelines that any city department or the Board of Supervisors could enact to protect privacy in the collection, storage and sharing of personal information of San Francisco residents and visitors." I'm in favor of privacy as much as the next person. But city-level is not the level at which to get Facebook to quit their nonsense. Plus, nonbinding: more fuss without doing anything.
Prop C - Hell yes. "Imposes an additional tax on individuals and businesses that receive more than $50 million in gross income in San Francisco, to fund homelessness services and housing." Of course!
Prop D - Yes. "Levies an additional tax on the gross receipts of cannabis-related businesses in San Francisco and extends local business taxes to companies based elsewhere but doing business in San Francisco." Sure. If you're gonna tax anything, cannabis seems as good a thing as any.
Prop E - No. "Allocates a portion of the city’s hotel tax for arts and culture programs." Let the supervisors do their job, don't tell them where the money goes, and especially don't tell them where the money should go in order to fund unnecessary-but-nice things.

SF Candidates

District 8 supervisor - Mandelman. He seems decent and is the only actual candidate here.
SF Assessor: Carmen Chu. Happy to delegate my thought here to the Yimby guide.
Bart board: Janice Li. Yimby and SF Bike Coalition employee.
School board: Collins and Moliga seem widely recommended, and Parker for the Yimbys.
College board: Davila and Selby also seem widely recommended, and Oliveri for the Yimbys.

Some endorsements and sources:

Yimby Action
SPUR
Cal Bike (in an email; they just said Newsom, Yes on 1, No on 6 and 10.)
SF Chronicle

SF League of Pissed-off Voters

Planned Parenthood
Bay Curious podcast doin' a week about the ballot props.
Jef Poskanzer
Pete Rates the Propositions

I am frustrated by old businesses, part N

So, a fun thing to do is to try to figure out how old the "Young X" is in whatever hobby/interest you're looking into. I joined SPUR when I moved to SF, and qualified for their "young urbanists" group, because apparently "young urbanists" are up to 40. I heard from someone that "young opera-goers" are up to 50. Hah!

Anyway, I kinda like thinking about money, and I get the impression that "young people who will take time out of their day to talk to a banker about investments" are up to about 50 also. And bank people are like "why don't these irresponsible Youths think about money more???"

Dudes, as a profession, you can totally get The Youths. But you're totally blowing it.

1. Don't start the conversation with "when do you want to retire?" A. as soon as possible, and B. I don't have a damn clue! I could literally see myself retiring at 37 or at 95.
2. Don't ask about my goals. The world is so uncertain that my goal is to make a bunch of money and then see what I can do, when I get there. Imagine setting a goal, in 2005, that you're going to buy a house in 10 years. Good luck!
2. Let us take more risks. We all know that the stock market goes up 6% a year if you can deal with huge swings. Assume we can deal with huge swings.
3. Back up all your numbers. We don't trust you. We need to be able to derive all this junk down to first principles, because we know that you probably don't 100% have our best interests at heart. And that's ok! Let us do math, and we'll decide how much to trust you. All your fancy software you wrote, that runs on like Silverlight ActiveX Java applets and tells me what percent chance we'll have of retiring at our chosen time, we do not trust; we usually know how much sand all those models are built on. (and if we don't, we should.)
4. Don't call me on the phone, please? A phone call is reserved for either A. a scheduled thing; B. a literal emergency; or C. a company we hate. Email is fine. That's how corporations talk with humans.
5. Relatedly: be good at doing the basics. I want to be able to like, deposit, withdraw, buy and sell things, and that is it. If it takes me 5 business days and two phone calls to do that, bug off.
6. Ah forget it, just close up shop and let Wealthfront and Betterment eat your lunch. Whatever.

We now own a house in Pittsburgh

... but are not moving there for about 5 years.

it us

Why buy a house?

1. Why should we buy a house?

We want space for two kids, eventually, in a place where we can walk/bike to work and 90% of other things we need, in a place where we have some roots. The "roots" thing narrows it down quite a lot: it basically means Pittsburgh, Cleveland, SF, or maybe Seattle or Miami. The "walkable" thing rules out Cleveland and Miami. Our Seattle roots are tenuous, and it puts us even farther away from most of our family - plus it's like SF but with worse weather.

Two kids plus us means probably a 3 bedroom apartment. 2br could maybe work, but I kinda believe in kids' right to a place where they can shut the door and be alone, even if it's a small such place.

Renting a 3br gets difficult and expensive - what, (hand waving) $6 or 7k/month in SF? Even if you can find such a place, you often get above the rent vs. buy threshold. (This calculator has been my gold standard.)

Also, if it's close in price, owning means you don't have to deal with landlords, which is nice. So, for example, you can own a garage and put something besides a car in it. (This is a true restriction that has happened to us.)

2. Why should everyone buy a house?

I'm not sure everyone should. Particularly, if you don't want a family, and you're in a pricey place like SF, you might just be better off renting forever. Do the rent vs. buy calculations.

It *might* be a good investment. I'm not as sure of this as past generations. For example, how could housing prices in the Bay continue to go up? At some point, all the interesting excited young rich people just decide, f this, we're out. (Ahem.) Monaco's pretty to visit, but probably actually wouldn't be fun to live there.

That said, we could just wait for 5 years and then buy a house when we want to move. But we are sort of guessing the market will continue to skyrocket like it always does, so better to buy sooner than later.

Sidebar: this sucks.

You shouldn't have to speculate in order to live, with your family, in a decent walkable community! Housing should not be an investment; it should be a place to live. Notice that almost every big city in the US has a housing crisis? This is because people buy an investment, then they have incentives to keep it valuable and therefore scarce. F that. More on this later.

Why Pittsburgh?

1. Why should anyone buy in Pittsburgh?

To own a 3br place in (a walkable area of) SF would be probably $1.5 million. Oakland would work; then we're looking at $1 million. Seattle, maybe $700k? I dunno, hand wavey numbers, it might not be that bad. But still, even after working in lucrative jobs and saving money for a while, we'd be in debt for approximately forever.

In Pittsburgh, $200k. This frees up so much of our life: we are making big bucks at corporate places now, but we don't have to do that forever, if we basically don't pay rent.

And I'm still bullish on Pittsburgh. Growing tech scene and affordability blah blah, but like, I feel a kind of bottom-up grassroots energy there that I don't feel in SF. I know people who:
- went from barista-ing to big-successful-coffeeshop-owning pretty quickly
- started a monthly pierogi dinner to fund the opening of a now-nationally-renowned restaurant
- created, produced, performed in, done tech for top-notch interactive theater shows
- started the Pittsburgh Comedy Festival that has hosted folks like W. Kamau Bell and Aubrey Plaza
- started technology companies, sometimes fabulously successfully
- started a pizza truck that became a pizza restaurant
- run a beloved community bike shop for decades
- campaigned and passed legislation legalizing ADUs/granny flats in Garfield
- run a worker-owned construction guild

In SF, who do I know who've started things? We're all just tryin' to scrape a few (hundred thousand) dollars off The Man. Can't blame us, but it's less exciting.

Now, selection bias, right? These are the people I've known through most of my 20s, so of course they're the people I know who've done amazing grassroots things. I've met some amazing SFers who are living the kind of life I want to lead, but I've also met lots of people shooting for the moon and missing badly.

Also about Pittsburgh:
- it's reasonably well protected from natural disasters. We're not just waiting for "the big one" like SF or Seattle.
- it's not gonna sink into the ocean in 20 years (sorry Miami)
- the hills are beautiful
- you can get a ferret
- it's possible to effect some meaningful political change, as it's not just all Dems
- speaking of which, my local representative is a friend of a friend and a Democratic Socialists of America member
- It's definitely in Appalachia, not the East Coast or the Midwest. Colonized by angry Scots-Irish, not Puritans. This has upsides and downsides: I like the "individual liberty" angle, but I don't like the fact that they may not recognize we've all got to get along (and ideally would be close together). Plus, IMO, the more thinking, the better, which might make me a "lowland aristocrat." So, mixed bag - but it's a unique energy, and different than you'd get even a couple hours north. Plus, as someone who's spent plenty of time there, I might have a bit of cred with which to help make it better. Listen to the current Adventure Zone for the kind of story you might set there.

2. Why should we in particular buy in Pittsburgh?

I mean, the above, plus roots. Plus we can live in scenic wonderful Bloomfield! With all its crummy bars, badly named vape shops, and awful Little Italy Days!

Seriously, I love this neighborhood, because you can get a sweet row house without a lawn, be 10 minutes biking to so many cool places, and live with the few weirdos who can still afford the East End. Come visit and I'll take you to Constellation Coffee, Apteka, Kraynick's bike shop, White Whale or the Big Idea (depending on your interests), Lou's Little Corner Bar or Brillobox (same), and Clothes Minded, and then you'll want to live here too.

Wait, are we The Man now?

Maybe. Have we always been? Yeah, that too.
I have mixed feelings about becoming a homeowner and a landlord! Especially having seen the devastation that homeowners and landlords have committed in SF. I mean, like everything, it's not landlords that are bad inherently, it's asshole landlords. Plus, it's not homeowners are bad, it's nimby homeowners. Basically, I pledge to always support new housing (especially affordable housing!) in Pittsburgh, to support tenants' rights, and to be a good landlord. When it comes time to sell, I want to get out of this house exactly the money that we put into it, plus inflation.

(ugh yes this contradicts the above point about investment. Let me walk this narrow-but-I-think-consistent line: I will be happy if we get out what we put in, plus inflation. I will not flagellate myself if we get more. I will not make any decisions that will hurt other people, including those who don't live here yet, because of "property values.")

How?

The "normal" way, really. Just started talking to a realtor. I don't have many tips here, but it went kind of like this:
- Look at houses online. (skip the "blue dots" on zillow, those are like auctions and stuff, for risk takers and experts only.)
- Get pre-approved for mortgage, if you're doing a mortgage. (for Pittsburgh houses, if you're a Rich San Franciscan and have saved for a while, you might be able to pay cash!)
- Ask realtor to line up some house tours. If you are far away and your parents are in town, maybe they can do some house touring for you. (true story: we saw the house in person for the first time on closing day. this is maybe crazy but yolooooo)
- Ideally, get a contractor to go through to figure out what work you need to do and how much it will cost. This is difficult; I think mostly they don't want to go through a house that you "might" buy, it's just a waste of time.
- Make an offer. In Pittsburgh you don't need to worry about 14 people offering on day 1. (In SF you do.) You have to sign scary papers to do this. Now you're technically locked in to buy it, though you can walk after the home inspection if there's anything wrong, and there's always something wrong.
- They accept your offer; this begins the "contingency period." During this time you will need to have an inspector do a formal inspection.
- Also have your contractor give you estimates. If they know you've made an offer, they are more willing to do this.
- Work with bank to figure out mortgage.
- After your inspector and your contractor get back to you, you can offer less money on the house. "We will need to fix X and Y to make the house livable, and we didn't know that before we made the offer, so give us $10k off the price we agreed on." Or you can walk away. There will probably be negotiating.
- hem and haw a lot, and then sign a bunch of papers that you mostly understand at a Closing meeting!

Where?

Not gonna say the address because public blog, but it's in Bloomfield. For more details, let's just say Soulja Boy would be right at home.

Oh yeah btw want to rent it?

Like, if you're a friend, or a friend of a friend, it'd be awesome to rent you a room (... or more?). We're trying to keep it pretty friendly. And we will be v good landlords.

Three cool links and (edit: two) gripe(s)

Andreas Wannerstedt is the instagram 3d Bees and bombs.

I love this diagram of land use in the US.

This, pretty much. Quit doin' dumb stuff to posture "anti-techie."

The gripe: Talking with a friend who is very logical and pretty well off, and open-minded across the political spectrum, and he's like "Paul Ryan, you have to hook me. If you don't, I've gotta think conservatism and the Republican party are dead." He's annoyed by silly lefty posturing out on the west coast, open to free-ish market ideas, thinks the Jane Kims and Kshama Sawants of the world (far-lefty SF/Seattle politicians) are kind of a mess. Like, who can the Republicans get if they can't get him?

Paul Ryan and his party, of course, are dead to me forever for their immeasurable cowardice over the past two years, and their single-minded focus on tax cuts for rich people. However, I want to be open-minded. So here's my similar gauntlet. Modern conservatives: you've got three inroads by which you can hook me, and they are Russ Roberts, Tyler Cowen, and the Economist. I read/listen to all three, and they are as "economically conservative" as you please. They're also actually smart! For the most part!

So here's the rant: Russ and Tyler, every time you (and your guests) go off about "political correctness" ruining the ability of students to express thoughts on college campuses, you get 1% closer to losing me forever too. I... like, ok, my college experience isn't necessarily the same as everyone's, but... look, "political correctness" wasn't a problem! Similarly, shrugging off Women's Studies and half the Humanities is ignorant. Assuming that post-structuralism and deconstructionism and whatever will lead people to just view the world in terms of simplistic narratives... like, can't you offer them the same courtesy that you should afford any debate opponent? You're probably taking a simplistic view of them if you think they just take a simplistic view of you!

More generally: quit playing this "conservatism is under attack" game. It really makes me lose respect for you.

Gripe 2:
Youtubers/podcasters Brady Haran and CGP Grey totally nail the "attention, distraction, something or another" problem in this week's Hello Internet podcast. I mean, not that they have a great answer to this, but just that I really feel Grey a lot here.
- the ipads blasting ads in you at airports are *super gross*, and yes they're a logical continuation of TVs in bars, but they're still bad. (also TVs in bars are bad, unless you're explicitly a TV bar, like a sports bar. The default should be no TVs in bars.)
- reading a book has felt harder over the years, and that scares me.
- inexact quote: "it's not that I'm a better person if I'm walking a dog and not listening to anything, it's that I'm a worse person if I can only walk a dog if I'm listening to something."
- I share Grey's sense that this is vaguely harmful, as well as Brady's questions of "hmm, so wait, where exactly is the problem?"
- inexact quote: "I've changed my mind on many things like this over the years, like 'am I wrong or is it the kids?', so... I don't know, is this actually a problem?" "Yeah, no, I agree, it is a problem!"

Cooking is kind of a low-ceiling art.

How is cooking like other arts?

- people have taste, which differs
- people can enjoy making it
- you can pay someone to do it, or get paid to do it (of course, doing this with food is much more common than other arts)
- for better or worse, there's a celebrity culture around it (for worse, IMO, but w/e)
- it's all around us (music and visual arts are all around us in some form. architecture, at least.)

How is cooking unlike other arts?

- it's very easy to understand, at least at a low level. (most people can get some enjoyment out of a fancy steak or a nice salad, even if they don't love it, while there are lots of paintings and music that people just don't care about.)
- we have to at least consume it ~3x/day, while you might go your whole life without going to an art museum. Similarly, most of us make it at least sometimes, while most people don't paint/draw/play music/act/etc.
- unlike most arts, there's a commodity aspect to it. If someone said "I'm going to make a boring painting for you every day for a year", that would provide very little value, but if they said "I'm going to make a boring food for you every day for a year", I mean, free food! (Soylent sells, right?)
- consumption scales badly to many people. You and friends can all listen to music together, but you can't eat the exact same bite of food. Ok, you can all eat the same dish, but if you want 5 or 500 people to eat it you have to do drastically different things - and there is absolutely no way 5 million people can eat it. Sure, 5 million people can all eat the same recipe, but that's a parallel with all making and admiring a Sol Lewitt instructions-drawing.
- consumption is destructive. It's kind of buddhist in that way - feels like a sand mandala, in that destroying it is part of making it. In this way it is like live music and theater, and unlike paintings or recorded music.
- supplies are very available. Compare the number of grocery stores to the number of art/music stores!
- supplies are very perishable.
- you can't really share it online (or on TV or in a book) at all. (At least not yet.) All you can do is share instructions and photos, which are an exceptionally pale shadow of the real thing, compared to other arts.
- it is so often made for someone. In food and other arts, if you say "I made this art for you", it would probably convey deep emotion. The difference is, you rarely do that with other arts.

These qualities make me kinda like it. Feels like the art I should practice more, because it's so ephemeral and embodied. In my normal life, I get too wrapped up in making things cerebral and permanent. Also, there's side benefits: food.

Something like this model of value differences

three posts about how we can deal with being different levels of rational at different times, or how we can (and should!) be ok with having heuristics while not being ruled by them: one two three.
(takes a long time, I totally understand if you want to just tune out now)

Something like the model in the last post makes a lot of sense:
explicitly model system
feel emotion
endorse value based on essence (reified or not)

As we learn more, we move up the ladder, going from "well, there is this magical thing called 'justice' and it is good" to "I don't know, I just feel bad when you wrong me, and somewhat better when you are punished for it" to "here's how we can most effectively prevent crimes."

Or, "fruits and vegetables are healthy" -> "I feel better when I eat them" -> "I need all these 1000 vitamins and minerals in just these proportions, so eating these foods will satisfy them."

(Notice that we're not, in the "healthiness" case, actually fully successfully at the "explicitly model system" phase yet! Soylent tried, but they're idiots.)

I think it's straightforward to say that we should strive to be as far up the ladder as we can be, while being humble about where we are on the ladder.

(Also, most arguments about politics or whatever would be solved if you're just more specific.)

I'll hold off on the question of "do people have real value differences?" because I don't know. I was just sitting on these and wanted to post something about them, but don't have a fully formed thought yet.

Algorithmic fairness is "philosophy: hard mode"

Got thinking about "fairness" today.

Most of the conversation I've heard has been pointing out things that are obviously and grossly unfair. Like sentencing algorithms that give black people longer sentences or the DHS/ICE thing that recommended detention for 100% of people.

That's a good place to start! For these dumb cases, we can probably say "stop that." Sure. But it doesn't give us a lot to go on in terms of figuring out algorithmic fairness as a field.

Algorithmic fairness didn't used to be a problem. For the old-fashioned analogues of a lot of things that are getting algorithmized today, you would just accept a little inaccuracy, and that was fine. If you had a little warehouse and you were trying to hire workers, you'd try to hire the best workers, and then as long as they were working hard, and you shipped as many things as you needed, that was probably fine. You didn't have to think too hard about what basis you're hiring workers on. "Well, honest hard workers, that's all!" But if you're Amazon and you're trying to stock your modern warehouse, every 1% efficiency boost is 1% more profits, so if you can fire Slightly-Less-Efficient Steve and hire Efficient Earl, company-wide, you'll make another $100m or something. And you can monitor them like never before - and tweak your scanner-machine algorithm to squeeze out every last second!

So now, if you're Amazon, you have to think about the weird questions of, what do you actually want from your workers? And how are you going to tweak your algorithms to optimize for this? And if you're regulators or organized labor, how do you tweak your laws to force Amazon not to optimize for the wrong thing?

Turns out, we never even solved this! We never agreed on what is fair/just/Right to ask from workers; we just kinda outlawed the worst abuses, settled on some defaults like "40 hour work week", and hoped "people being decent" would do the rest. (in the case of labor, Reagan and the anti-union last couple decades apparently decided "let the companies optimize for whatever they want, it'll be fine!")

Take the same argument and turn it on pricing models, or prison sentencing, or ad targeting. We never solved the underlying problem; we just kludged it along to a point where nobody with enough power argued too terribly much. Now we're trying to algorithmatize stuff, and we're realizing all these gaps exist.

I guess this is why people are working on this. But I think it's under-resourced if it's being treated as just an HCI problem. (or "just a ____ problem", where ___ is any one field.) We're prying up a couple rotten floorboards, and we're going to discover our whole ethical foundation is not really as strong as we'd hoped.
(or maybe, instead of "we're going to discover", I mean "legal scholars and philosophers already know, but techies are now discovering.")

Kids???

I joke that I spend half my time worrying about where to live, and half my time worrying about having kids. Hah! It's really more like 90% about kids. (I can worry about multiple things at once.)

Blogging tends to help me organize my thoughts, so here we go.

Should one have kids?

Well... from the perspective of the world at large, I don't see many reasons for/against. I guess overpopulation is a thing, but the US is below replacement. Like, it's imperialist and paternalistic and etc, but the way to stop overpopulation is not for you or I to have zero kids instead of two; it's to make sure that, throughout poor countries, people have contraception and personal security and stuff. Yeah, your kids will eat food and cause greenhouse gas emissions, but you've got to think that the world's better for you being in it, and therefore it hopefully will be for your kids too.

From the perspective of the not-yet-existing kids, I don't see many reasons for/against either. I tried to see the point against it! But it doesn't ring very true, if you read that post. Even though I may rather never have existed, I think most people are pretty happy to exist. Therefore, I don't think you're doing a bad thing by having kids.

So it seems like whether you should have kids is all about you.

Points in favor of having kids

1. Maybe you just want to. If this is the case, there you go! That's easy, and you can stop reading here. I'm going to write the rest of this assuming you, like me, don't have this inherent drive that some people seem to be born with.
2. It's new and unique. I'm not being glib; this is a very good reason. Same reason I like traveling. Spending a month wandering around India is not more pleasant than being at home, but it's new, and it's worth it to try new things. Expands your world.
3. Old age insurance. You can't necessarily count on your kids take care of you, but I imagine it's nice to grow old with kids.
4. Potential grandkids! This sounds great.
5. It's a chance to perpetuate your values at least one more generation. I mean, if you think your values are pretty good (and I do), you might want to do that.
6. See the world through kids' eyes. If you're feeling old and jaded (yep!) maybe having a kid around will make you want to finger paint or play with legos or something again.
7. Unknown upsides. Like, people say things like "you can't imagine what it's like to have kids." One friend said of her daughter: "I didn't know what it was like to love someone so much I want to eat her." I would like to know what that's like!
8. I think most people who have kids are pretty happy to have them. Even big nerds like me!
9. Even if the truth is "kids suck, but parents don't admit it"... I'm generally a fan of placebos.

Points against having kids

1. I mean, the usuals: sleepless nights, diapers, angsty teens, etc.
2. But seriously; take a step back and look at #1 harder. Your life satisfaction will go down. Life satisfaction isn't just your day-to-day happiness. It makes life harder in a way that isn't necessarily "beautiful struggle." This cartoon. (warning: creepy, not funny.)
3. Loss of freedom to travel or take whatever job or join the Peace Corps or whatever. Having kids expands your life in one way, but cuts off opportunities for you in other ways. Also constrains where you live a bit.
4. Relatedly, costs a lot of money.
5. You can't really go back and un-have kids.
6. Opens yourself up to more risk: I understand your child dying is basically the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Right now, I can't know that level of grief, but if I have a kid, I could. (This is not a huge point because "better to have loved and lost", but it is a point.)
7. What if your kid has severe autism or something? You have to at least listen to this podcast before you hype up kids to me.

What am I thinking?

The "in favor" point #2 is the most convincing to me. In the same way that I'll travel around the world for no real benefit, or try meditating or whatever to expand my human experience, I might as well expand my experience by trying having kids. Plus point #7 (unknown benefits) - maybe they're the same thing. #8 helps; if I'm an average SSC reader, something like a 96% chance of being at least neutral on the decision (and over 50% chance of 5/5) feels pretty good.

Having kids does cut off certain possibilities in life - but I wasn't doing them anyway! Seriously, the path I'm on is "white collar corporate job and traditional marriage." Not saying this is bad or good; I have very many feelings about this (best served in another post or series of posts)... but it is about the easiest path to have kids on, so might as well.

The rest of the upsides and downsides kind of even out. You make your next five years worse in order to make your future years better. Maybe it's the biggest challenge you have left in life - and in that case, how exciting to get to the top of the hill!

(maybe "over the hill" means not that your life is over, but that you get to bike downhill from here and it's pretty great.)

I don't know what to do about the severe autism or the possibility your kid might die. I guess you just hope it won't happen - and it probably won't. I might get hit by a bus tomorrow and be paralyzed - what happens if I increase my odds of "life-altering terribleness" from 0.00001% to 0.00002%? Meh.

Still, it feels like everything adds up to about a -1 on a scale of -10 to 10, with a standard deviation of about 20. It feels hard to imagine how good or bad it'll be. Or, let's be honest, on the basis of feelings it feels like about a -5, because I viscerally feel all the downsides. But on the basis of thoughts, it's +4. I think it's maybe a tiny bit unwise to have kids, but I'm pretty much completely uncertain about it.

(When I mention this to people, they're like "what??? but... you're still planning to have kids?" 

Anyway

Talk with me about it? It's about the biggest thing left in my life I will ever need advice on, probably, so I would love to talk with as many people as possible. If you're interested, I will find time to phone with you.

I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was

Magic cards!

(background: I loved Magic cards (wiki) when I was a kid. In college, I stopped because I didn't want people to think I was a big nerd. About 10 years later, a lot of my friends who were also big nerds, but less afraid than me to say so, got back into it, so eventually I did too.)

I have a love/hate relationship with it. I really like playing the game - it's like a drug; it's got the deepest strategy of any game I've ever really gotten into. I really like my friends who play the game. I don't like the average person who plays the game, or the average situation in which you play the game - usually it's a large, loud room with a bunch of 30 year old nerdy white guys. So like, on the one hand, ugh.

On the other hand, one thing I've learned growing older is that it's okay, and even Good, to be a huge nerd. (for some definitions of the word "nerd.") Follow your bliss, and all that.

So there's a big tournament coming up (Grand Prix Las Vegas) and I'm going there mostly to hang out with my friends, and I decided, screw it, I'm gonna actually practice this time. So I put in an embarrassing number of hours on uneventful nights and weekends playing 95 matches of Magic Cards on the computer.

(yeah I went 60-35, ending up with a rating of 1791, and didn't even have to buy any cards - though pulling two Karns and a Teferi helped with that. anyway, yes I'm kind of proud, thanks for asking)

What did I learn?

1. I do like it. It's very fun.
2. It gives me something to talk about with these few friends. Unfortunately, most of them live out of town. But the tournament next weekend should be fun.
3. I like winning, and I dislike losing, more than seems healthy. When I quit after a 3-0 draft, I'm just constantly replaying in my head all the great decisions and sweet cards I got. When I quit after a 1-2 (or worse: 0-1 in the comp league), I'm really frazzled and frustrated. It makes me want to get back and get that next hit.
4. Relatedly, I tilt sometimes. Hopefully this immersion has gotten me a little better at seeing that and dealing with it.
5. Magic Online's not a great human-relationship-bang-for-buck, at least not where I am now. There's only so much talking online about the cards you can do. I imagine if you had a lot of friends who all played, near you, and you saw them in person it might be more fun.
6. I do feel like the time's wasted. I want to de-weight this, because 32-year-old Dan knows that your life doesn't have to be one big college resume anymore, and doing something you love doing is kind of one of the things that life's about.

So, would I do it again? Meh. Like a drug, I found it sapped my will to get out and do other things. That seems like a bad direction to go further. And I think if I'd been winning 40% instead of 60% (and blowing through a couple hundred dollars) I'd feel much worse about the whole thing.

EDIT, after the tournament: that was fun! I went 9-6 at the tournament; 6-3 on day 1 (sealed) and 3-3 on day 2 (draft). I was a little bummed especially about my second draft, where I drafted bad wizards and went 1-2. But overall semi-proud of my performance. One win away from a pro point, three wins away from money. More importantly, had a great time with my friends.

Does this change how I'd think about it? Yes, especially because this is exactly how well I've done at a previous GP where I didn't practice at all, and because my friends who are better than me at Magic did about the same. 30 drafts in one season isn't gonna make me better, or give me a richer experience. Given that I'm never gonna do 300 drafts, I'm just "doomed" to be a "decent" Magic player. That's fine; enjoy the game.

Edit again: a couple extra thoughts about the tournament:
- I like the adrenaline and focus you get from doing this one very engaging thing all day - and the mental stretch. It feels like running a marathon for your mind.
- The camaraderie is cool too - you're all fighting for something together.
- The sense that, in a million different places throughout the world, 3000 people are getting together to nerd out about the same thing, and each of these niches is so complex. We have so much shared knowledge about the cards, the rules, even just the etiquette of each game; so many people must be doing the same thing. It's like sonder.

politics sucks

Whenever I try to debate most anything, if I'm being honest, I haven't a dang clue. It requires learning details of how a law works, what its probable effects would be, a lot of history, and/or what a candidate stands for. Best I can usually do is proclaim my group allegiance, state a vague version of what my side usually believes and what the other side usually believes, and why I think my side's better.

It seems to me that a sane thing to do would be to research a few issues, and take a stand, and then be able to debate them confidently. Then shrug on most anything else and just try to learn from anyone stating any opinion, the best I can.

However, that sounds like a lot of work, and after my day job, I have no energy to.

Some things I'm thinking about doing:

- just skip the "research some issues" and only learn from people. Just like, every political conversation is a chance to open my mind. The downside: I think most people's opinions are about as informed as mine, which is to say, not very.

- listen to more podcasts. The ones that I feel like I sometimes learn something about The World from: Econtalk, Conversations with Tyler, the Sam Harris one, On the Media, and sometimes Decrypted. I would like more like this; please recommend me some.

- read more blogs. Slate Star Codex is worthwhile. I would like more of these too. The Weekly Sift is a pretty well-researched news blog, but it does just make me mad about everything that's going on.

- take Twitter app off my phone. Tweetdeck is actually a somewhat sane desktop Twitter UI: just shows you all the posts in chronological order. Twitter Android mostly does that, but also has ads, and also shows you things your friends liked. (That's terrible. If I wanted my friends to see it, I'd retweet.) As a result, I can get sucked into the clickbaitiest culture-warsiest post any of my friends liked.

- move off Twitter too and onto Mastodon? This solves a different problem (that Twitter Inc's interests are not aligned with ours) but it's one that's worth solving.

One worry I have:

- do these proposals just entail retreating? Does this just mean that even less informed people will talk more than me? Is this irresponsible? (maybe it's good though! retreating from useless noise is probably healthy.)

some links

Predictive drawing with neural networks
This is one of these things that I saw once and can't seem to find the exact same gif. It was like, you'd be drawing, and it'd be showing you the most likely continuations of the current line you're drawing.
Anyway, this predictive-drawing is a really useful idea I've had reason to reference; I wish it had a simple name.
One application: sometimes in conversations, when people are not very direct, you have to do this kind of "predictive drawing" in your mind to fill in what they're saying. Like if you're in a work meeting and someone says "I don't know if this is the best thing to do here," it becomes all of the following:
- I don't want to do this
- I would like to do it, but I honestly don't know if it's the best thing to do
- I kinda want to do this, but I'm expressing hesitation because I don't want responsibility for decision making
- I actually can't do this because of some secret political thing that would be impolite to bring up
etc.

The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy - Yes! Remember: inequality is because of the 0.1%, and you, you fellow 9.9%er, you are not them. You are not going to become them. You will not get ahead by sucking up to them. The 90% are your people.
Also this thread. Especially: "(So if you want my take on living up to democracy, it does require acting as if ordinary people are not dumb. They are not. They are constrained. There is a difference. It matters.)"
Again, Fox News is at least one big part of the problem; if there's an industry (created by the 0.1%) telling the 90% how much the 9.9% looks down on them... well, it's not going to help anything.

How to have meetings well, in lots of detail. I mostly agree with this - there's bits I'd quibble on, but it does seem a lot more mature than the strategy I learned at Google, which was "basically you should never have meetings."
(this is hyperbole; google was somewhat smarter than this and continues to get smarter probably, but that's how I compressed this into my mind)

I started using Duckduckgo ("The search engine that doesn't track you") a couple years ago, kinda on a whim. It's totally great; I probably get bad results and then try google, like, 1 in 100 times. (and google fails sometimes then too!) You might as well use Duckduckgo too. An easy way to do so, it seems, is to get their new browser extension.

CA voting, part 2

(here's part 1)

Hard to find guides for CA-wide races! Here's the Chronicle. Here's one from Planned Parenthood. Here's the SF League of Pissed-off Voters for the "progressive" vote; useful because when even they endorse moderate candidates, like Padilla and Yee, that seems good.

Governor: I think Villaraigosa here, because it's a top-2 primary. Newsom is going to win first (and I'm planning to vote for him in the real election), but Villaraigosa and republican Cox are in a close race for second, and I'd rather have Villaraigosa than Cox.
Lieutenant Governor: doesn't matter much. Ed Hernandez seems fine.
Secretary of State: Padilla
Controller: Yee
Treasurer: Ma
Attorney General: Becerra

Insurance commissioner: (shrug) Lara I guess
Board of Equalization member: Not voting
US Senate: De Leon, as he's farther left than Feinstein. Hate to be ageist, but... Feinstein's policies were built in an age of Reagan and Bush 1. This feels about right.
US Rep, District 12: Shahid Buttar. Again, top-2, so obv Pelosi will win #1 but who do we want to win #2? I've seen ads for Jaffe, but... construction moratorium and no congestion pricing -> nope. Similarly with Khojasteh: "the US is in the midst of a housing crisis driven not by lack of supply but by surplus of greed" - no! that is exactly the opposite of what is true! Buttar is at least not as wrong.
State Assembly Member, District 17: Chiu's been good, let's keep him.
Judge, office 4: Cheng (background for these 4 judge races)
Judge, office 7: Karnow
Judge, office 9: Lee
Judge, office 11: Ross
Superintendent: Thurmond

Mayor: see also part 1; in short: Breed.
District 8: I'm kinda undecided now. (Chronicle editorial.) When a "moderate" organization endorses a "progressive" candidate, that sounds good. And Mandelman's really putting in the effort, while Sheehy's kinda not. But ... Mandelman's "solution" to the housing crisis is "more rent control"? Well, plus "more affordable housing", which we all want of course, but his policies might make harder to build. Ehh. Doesn't really matter; we're going to rehash this one in November anyway.

State ballot propositions: turns out these are easy. (more info)
68: Yes
69: Yes
70: No
71: Yes
72: Yes
Regional prop 3: Yes!
City and county props: see my part 1 (in short: yes on ABDEFG, no on CHI). I changed my mind to vote in favor of E just to spite the tobacco companies who have sent me so many mailers against it.

what are your feelings axioms?

Having feelings is hard. Making decisions is hard because having feelings is hard. Reasoning in ways that will be good to your future feelings seems hard.

But a lot of our feelings are pretty reducible to other feelings. It feels possible (and would be great) if you could reduce all your feelings to a set of axioms or values or something.

Here's my attempt for mine:

1. Universal kindness. I think a good measure of this is: do you act like everyone is exactly as much of a human as you? This is basically the Golden Rule.

2. Logic. I hesitate to include this because it seems like it could be co-opted to just mean "be a weirdo robot Spock who devalues feelings and stuff", but I'm not sure how else to say it. You've got to be committed to seeking truth, avoiding cognitive biases, and being epistemically humble.

3. Curiosity. I think you should keep looking for new things you like, or delving deeper into the things you already do like.

4. Self-motivation. Plus points if you do things that you like! Minus points if you force yourself to do things. Another way to think about this is moving through the world somewhat easily and calmly, not fighting everything all the time.

5. Health. Physical, mental, emotional, social.

If I'm correct, this list encompasses everything I believe pretty well! But I'll be looking for examples of what I believe that is not entailed here.

San Francisco Voting in June

I mostly follow these, from SF Yimby.
I also try to follow these, from SPUR.
The SF Bike Coalition is mildly important to me.
And if I hear anything Scott Wiener endorses, I'm inclined to vote for that as well.

Ultimately, we're in a housing crisis here, and we have to build a million billion units of housing starting 30 years ago. This is the thing that colors my votes more than anything else. I'd say I'm a single-issue voter, but housing affects almost everything else; the housing debate IS the gentrification debate, the homelessness debate, the transportation debate.

As a result, I fall right in line with the YIMBY faction. SB 35 is great and already making housing work; SB 827 would have been awesome, and the only things I hear against "build more" are of the following forms:
1. "Let's not displace people (esp poor and nonwhite ppl) who are here now." I agree with this! That's an important concern. And seems like we can work that out while also building more. SB 827, for example, added a bunch of tenant protections after discussing with people who might get displaced. If you want to talk about displacement a lot, but not build more, then I have to assume you're "bootlegger and baptist"ing - saying you support X for "good" reason Y, but you actually have self-interested reason Z.
2. "I don't want things to change." This has 2 forms:
2a. "I want SF to still be a cool artsy funky hippie whatever alternative place like it used to be." Well, uh, it's not 1967. And in the words of the wise sage Geddy Lee, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." By not building more, we ensure that things will continue changing in the way they are now, and SF will be even richer and whiter and more boring.
2b. "I want SF to be precious Victorian houses, not Manhattan." I mean... I get that, but I just think it's way less valuable than the alternative. When it's "I like Victorian houses" vs. "SF is a homelessness war zone that you can only afford if you make over $100k, and barely then", scrap the Victorians.

How I'm voting, as of now, assuming I hear nothing else. Numbers indicate how much I care about each, on a scale of 1-10, where 1 means "I barely care enough to check a box on this or I'm very unsure about it" and 10 means "this is the most important thing ever"
Mayor: Breed, then Leno, 8
Rep: Sheehy 5
Regional Prop 3: Yes 8 (tax bridges, fund transit)
City propositions:
A. Yes 5 (utilities bonds)
B. Yes 3
C. No 1
D. Yes 5 (C and D are kind of a bummer; I'd take $70m for housing before $140k for childcare, but... it's not an easy choice.)
E. No 1 (Did somebody say, grape blunt?)
F. Yes 8 (legal representation if you're getting evicted)
G. Yes 8 (tax for teachers)
H. No 9 (Tasers)
I. No 1 - even though I support it in principle, saying "we shouldn't court sports teams" doesn't actually do anything.

There's still a lot to do, mostly at the state level, so I'll probably post again about those when I figure them out. Anyway... /r/changemyview.

Emotional classical music

Let's assume, for this conversation, that Mozart > Bieber:
For this post, I'm going to assume a simplified account of musical taste which is not exactly what I think about music (or at least it might lead you to assume certain things about music that I don't believe), but it's a pretty conventional trope so it makes the analogy easier. I'm assuming that there's this "classical music", Mozart and Beethoven and stuff, and then there's "pop music", Justin Bieber or whatever. When you're a kid, you like pop music, because it's sugary and dancey and addictive. As you get older, you maybe start to appreciate classical music more - it's not as immediate, but it's deeper. Arguably, the joy that a music lover gets out of a wonderful classical music concert is better* than the joy a kid gets out of Justin Bieber.

Aspiration vs. Ambition:
Podcast interview between Tyler Cowen and Agnes Callard. (If this link works right, it'll take you right to "on aspiration and proleptic reasons"; if not, do a command-f for that.)

Worth a read or listen, but my short summary: Ambition is just "wanting stuff." (s/stuff/prestige, or status, or money, or a Justin Bieber CD, or whatever.) Aspiration is "wanting to want stuff." Like, I don't really want tickets to the symphony, but I want to be the kind of person who wants tickets to the symphony.

(Callard says that you can only really aspire to want "good" stuff, but I think that's unnecessary - first of all, people don't tend to aspire to like "lower" pleasures", and second of all, "good" is a little arbitrary.)

Another essay by Callard. An excerpt I love: if you have a friend Phil, who just likes donuts and reality TV and other "low" pleasures, but you're trying to open his eyes to "better" things, what you are asking him is "to try to believe them to be more valuable than he has currently has reason to, in order to learn their true value."

Emotions in place of music
Ok, I was just watching Saw (bear with me here; also goriness alert; also mild spoilers) so I was watching Saw** and the guy is like "I have to help my family enough that I'll even saw off my own leg to help them." And it's not even just "give up your foot", it's like "give up your foot and hope that you don't bleed to death and hope that you don't get otherwise killed etc, given that you've been trapped by a sadistic serial killer" - it's like "probably give yourself a painful death, in order to maybe help your family."

If I were his family, I'd probably be like "dude, don't worry about it, don't saw your leg off; either we'll find another way out of this or else we'll probably die anyway, b/c serial killer and all; you don't have to saw off your own leg in the off chance that it'll help us." But you don't start a family because you want them to be loved; indeed, half of your future family doesn't even exist yet! You start a family because you want to love them. You want to feel that love that's strong enough that you'd saw off your own leg to help them.

Let me try that again, with a less morbid example:
When you were a kid, you learned that getting Christmas presents was great! The older you get, the more you realize you actually prefer giving presents. It's a harder emotion to get into, but it is deeper and more satisfying.

So what do we do?
Is it good to aspire to liking classical music, or to aspire to liking gift-giving over gift-receiving? Well, good for whom? I think it's ultimately good for you if you aspire. But it might just be natural. Like, if you're satisfied by donuts and Bieber, go for it. The only danger comes when you don't know that you'd be happier if you aspired higher. Like, if you just get bored and depressed with Bieber, but you don't realize that there's a better option out there (though it does take some work).

Also, how do we aspire? I like Callard's concept of "proleptic reasons" - you can have your cognitive part know something that your feelings side doesn't know, but the feelings side lets you back into it. Like, you can think "classical music is really rich", but that won't make you actually start doing it. But maybe you start dating someone who likes classical, so you go with them because you're into them. Then over time you start liking classical for its own sake.

A neat corollary:
This may have something to do with the length of life that you've experienced. If your life is 5 years long, the thrill of getting presents might last you through that! If your life is 50 years long, you realize that the constant sugar high gets old, and you want something that's more complex and lasting, so you skip the Bieberesque gift-giving and go for the Mozartian gift-receiving.

What if our lives get longer? Do we get into more complex emotions? I'd have to think so. And that if you're 1000 years old, you could have some really-complex really-wonderful emotions that look super alien to a younger kid, kind of like how enjoying Mozart can feel impossible to a kid.

Footnotes
* one of the best moments of grad school, in retrospect (though not at the time) was when we had to go around the room and describe our research to professor and design researcher John Zimmerman in a class. Everyone else in the class described their stuff, and he was like, "ok." When it got to me, I mumbled something about "studying social media in cities in order to make cities better." And he just started asking me "what do you mean by "better"? Better in what way? Better for whom?" and I was totally taken off guard, because I admittedly had no good answers. Then I got mad because I felt like he was singling me out. But he was definitely right: "better" is a cop out when you don't know what you're talking about. Most things will be better for some people, in some ways, and worse in others.

** ok, two more asides:
1. this movie was way better than I expected. I mean, low expectations, and it's not a masterpiece, but it was a solid low-budget suspense-thriller. (that somehow got Cary Elwes, Donald Glover, and Ken Leung? Maybe not super low-budget. Felt like it though.) Unlike how it was described, it wasn't just a torture-porn-fest (though there was a solid 10 minutes of that).
2. I have to point out how this movie is oddly appropriate to talk about in a conversation about high/low culture :-P

Links Roundup

Name of the Year is going on now, down to the Sweet Sixteen. Current status:
- Bulltron Regional is a powerhouse. Looks like Salami Blessing might edge out Miracle Crimes (fair enough) but Mosthigh Thankgod might take a fall too, which is surprising. Jimbob Ghostkeeper is a pretty good name though. I would send any of these to the final four; pity only one can make it.
- Fruithandler and Dragonwagon regions are less exciting. "Megha" is far enough from "Mega" that Dr. Megha Panda is not quite as great as our other two amazing animal names. I guess I'd go with "Delicious Peters" over "Chardonnay Beaver" but in both cases I am snickering like a 12 year old.
- Chrotchtangle Regional has my two favorites: Dr. Narwhals Mating and Dr. Taekwondo Byrd. Mating is still my pick for the overall winner, and is sailing past Beau Titsworth, but Byrd is in trouble.
Get your votes in!

I should probably gather supplies for when an earthquake hits, and this seems a decent guide.

Peter Norvig's Pytudes - I thought "I should do some of these", because fluency, esp with Pandas and python plotting, would be really nice to build. However, they're not about that. However however, they are pretty cool. I expect I would have spent a lot of time on these if I were in college or something.

Kevin Love, Cleveland Cav, opens up about panic attacks and anxiety. Respect. And "everyone is going through something" should probably be a constant motto in the back of everyone's head.

Janelle Shane is still one of my favorite bloggers. Here she collects a bunch of "neural networks beating the system" examples.

This takedown of Chick-fil-A is mayyybe a culture wars guilty pleasure, but I loved the writing:
"The air smelled fried."
"David Farmer, Chick-fil-A’s vice-president of restaurant experience, told BuzzFeed that he strives for a “pit crew efficiency, but where you feel like you just got hugged in the process.” That contradiction, industrial but claustral, is at the heart of the new restaurant—and of Chick-fil-A’s entire brand."
"Most restaurants take pains to distance themselves from the brutalities of the slaughterhouse; Chick-fil-A invites us to go along with the Cows’ Schadenfreude."
"Homogeneous food is comfort food, and chains know that their primary appeal is palliative."

A mostly... interesting?... take on consciousness, AI, and "being human": it's mostly about being wrong all the time. I don't know if this is factually accurate (or indeed, if it's pinned down enough to even be falsifiable), but it's a kinda cool literary look at our minds. Helpful reminders: 1. we *are* wrong most of the time, 2. we're more like a city than a computer, 3. "The only reason I can think of to build [self-conscious] machines is to employ more shrinks."
Helpful reminder that could have been added: strong AI does not necessarily mean "thinking just like humans do."

Could I do a links post without linking to a Slate Star Codex? Probably, but not this time. Recommendations vs. Guidelines - or, if that title is still as opaque to you as it is to me, consider it "recommendations vs. decision (and action) trees." I want decision/action trees for everything in my life. I want to know not only "what is the best toothpaste," but "what's the decision tree for toothpastes." The Wirecutter/The Sweethome are good at this, and sometimes I find a good guide elsewhere (like this for depression.) I should start keeping a folder of these or something.

(btw my current toothpaste decision tree is: "do you get canker sores? if so, then find a no-SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) toothpaste, like some of the Jason or Sensodyne ones - but make sure it's still got fluoride. SLS is actually bad for canker sores, but fluoride is good for your teeth, and only tinfoil-hat types think fluoride is bad. If you don't get canker sores, any fluoride toothpaste is fine. Colgate Total at one point had an extra active anti-gingivitis ingredient that my dentist said was good, but who knows, they might all have that now." Ideally I would also have links attached to this decision tree! But I don't; and maybe that is why people don't do this, because writing up-to-date well-researched decision trees is hard.)

I listened to Sam Harris and Ezra Klein debate because I'm kind of dumb

You can too, if you're so inclined: https://samharris.org/podcasts/123-identity-honesty/. If you're not, please ignore this whole thing; I kind of wish I had all this time back. However, maybe it helped me crystallize some of my thoughts around the issue.

Why care?
I care about the issue of "this white guy's life got ruined by Political Correctness!" because I feel like I am one of the people who should be most sympathetic to it (white/male/every privileged status you can imagine, and very much into logic and clear thinking), and I'm not very sympathetic to it. As a result, I feel like I have a nonzero obligation to talk about it. (Kinda like how the onus is really on the sane "never-Trump" conservatives to speak up these days. Your fellow GOPs (and members of congress!) who enjoy the Trump garbage fire will never listen to a bike-riding techboi from San Francisco, but they might listen to you if you have historically cared about things like "fiscal responsibility" and "acting like adults." But I digress.)

Anyway, yeah, I got to it through Harris's podcast, which I recently started listening to, because he talks about interesting things. But man, he sounds really bad here.

Background: Sam Harris had Charles Murray on his podcast like a year ago. Charles Murray wrote a book like 20 years ago in which he talked about how maybe white people and black people just have different IQs. His, uh, career has suffered because of it; he's still (sometimes violently) protested when he comes to give a talk on college campuses. Ezra Klein wrote some articles excoriating Harris for having him on. Feud, etc, and they eventually got around to having a discussion on each of their podcasts. Like, props to them for getting to that point.

Harris's take: yes, racism is still happening and we need to fix it, no arguments there. But Murray's book is just science. Maybe the fact about IQ is true, and just by bringing it up, Murray got his life ruined. This is not good; we need free speech, not "politically correct" mob justice.

Klein's and my takes, and I credit Klein with articulating most of them better than I could have:

1. Science is usually not a "disinterested list of facts." That is almost never the case. Sam, you're a philosopher and a PhD, you should know that. Even choosing what facts to research is not disinterested. (To Harris's credit, he apparently grilled Murray on this - "why even study racial differences in IQ?" He doesn't agree with Murray, he just thinks Murray shouldn't be so vehemently shunned.)

2. Murray is not a disinterested observer who wrote down disinterested lists of facts and got his life ruined. He's a longtime conservative think-tanker. After arguing "black people have lower IQs", he went on to argue "well, black people are poor, nothing we can do about it, oh well; cut all these social programs." Casting him as this unlucky fact purveyor is far too generous.

3. White people through the ages keep studying stuff like this, finding "huh, white people are just better than black people, it's just science." Obviously, every time, they're being idiots, and attributing things to innate genetics that are better attributed to the fact that white people forcefully subjugated black people and installed hundreds of years of laws to ensure that they remained second-class citizens. Therefore, if you're going to argue "huh, white people are just better, because science", it's on you to prove why it's different this time.

4. Harris gets very frustrated whenever anyone resorts to "identity politics", but doesn't realize that he, too, plays identity politics. Why does he care about Murray? Murray's in his tribe: white men who might say "politically incorrect" things. Klein kept bringing this up, Harris kept denying it.

5. "Political Correctness can go too far, but it probably isn't this time." - My Law of Political Correctness I Just Made Up. Corollary: if you're going to argue "PC has gone too far", you have to hold yourself to a very high standard. You have to be incredibly pure of motive and strenuously consider that you might be wrong. Murray doesn't and isn't. Furthermore: every time you argue "PC has gone too far" but you're actually being a goon, you make it harder for the next time someone has to argue "PC has gone too far."

So, similar to that time I got in an argument with other people I listened to on a podcast, my conclusion remains "Yes, I'm sympathetic to the argument that Political Correctness might go too far, and cause real harm. But this guy is not your poster child!"

Did I read Murray's book, listen to Harris's podcast, or read Klein's articles? Nope. Feel free to take this blog post with as many grains of salt as you like. Anyway, whew, got that out of my system; still wish I had my time back, but what can you do.

Writing about suffering to understand what I think about it

Podcast interview with Dan Pink, pop-psych author; mentioned how he finds writing a book proposal really helpful because it helps him think about a thing. It's not that he does all the research and then writes it down; writing the book proposal is part of the research.

(That's kinda a purpose of this blog, which maybe I had never realized until now.)

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I don't know what to do with suffering. Here are two seemingly-opposing points of view:

1. Suffering is just bad; you should try to avoid it.
2. Some suffering can be good.

Ok, obviously not all suffering is good - if it were, I should be flagellating myself in the streets. There is some suffering that is just stupid. So that leaves us with, "can suffering be good?"

Points for "yes suffering can be good":
- Viktor Frankl
- the Catholic Church
- "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"
- some kind of gut feeling that I can't really explain; but my basic morality was very informed by Methodists and Catholics so I don't trust this very much

Points for "no, suffering can't be good":
- well, the obvious: it feels bad! and if it feels good (say, if you're a masochist), it's not really suffering then, is it?
- by what mechanism can suffering be good?
- the idea that suffering can be good can keep you from alleviating your suffering. Or, "of course The Man wants you to think suffering is ok."

What are some examples of suffering that is good?
1. You are working hard on a project, but you finish it and you've done a great job! Your hard work involved suffering.
2. You are caring for a beloved family member dealing with a sickness, and it's hard, but they appreciate it and you are helping them feel better.
3. That family member dies. You feel very sad.

In case 1, would it have been better if you hadn't suffered? I mean, say the outcome is the same. Maybe it wouldn't mean as much to you. Like, if you're a kid on the playground trying to dunk a basketball and it's really hard but you keep practicing jumping and you finally do it, that's the best day of your life! If you're Lebron and you dunk, whatever.

In case 2, what if you didn't suffer? Like, you help them, but it's really no skin off your back. Maybe they're not as close to you then? They appreciate it, but they know that it's easy to you.

In case 3, what if you didn't suffer? I guess if you just shrugged and said "whatever"... well, everyone would think you're a monster, but more importantly maybe you'd have been missing out on a deep relationship.

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Frost and Fire is a short story by Ray Bradbury that I keep coming back to, mostly for one scene. In this world, the sun is very very hot, and so there's only like an hour at dawn and an hour at dusk where the outside is habitable; otherwise it's skin-meltingly hot and people live in these caves. When they have to settle a dispute, instead of physically fighting each other, the two combatants will just stand outside at dawn and suffer as long as they can; first one to go back inside loses the dispute.

Evolutionary biologists (I think) talk about "costly signaling": mates are attracted to animals with very visible negative traits, because "I can survive even with this bad thing" suggests "I am very fit." Something about big antlers or something - doesn't really help, just makes life difficult, but if you can deal even with these antlers, well, you must be a real prize.

Economists would talk about costs too, and I don't know how, but there's some idea of raising costs for things. Like, congestion pricing in cities ("everywhere you might enter central London in a car, you have to pay a $20 toll"). That's just worse for all the drivers - but makes for a better city overall, even if they just burned the collected tolls. Sometimes we can inject suffering into a system that didn't have it before, and it will make the city run better.

None of these are really justifications for suffering, as a human; you're not going to win a fight or find a mate or get less traffic just because you suffered. Actually, none of this may be related to the conversation at all. Makes me feel clever, though, to talk about it.

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Another wrinkle about suffering comes from the Buddhists. AFAIK, they all tend to make an important distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is just pain; suffering is all the stuff our conscious mind layers on top of it.

For example, you stub your toe on a table leg. "Ouch!" is pain. "I'm so stupid, how could I have not seen that table leg?" is suffering.

Getting good at dealing with suffering (and lessening it, by not shooting more arrows at yourself when you do get hit by an arrow) is maybe the entire point of Buddhist teaching.

(obligatory IANABuddhistTeacher)

So instead maybe we should be asking "Can pain be good?" And of course, yes it can; it makes you get your hand away from the hot stove. It might even be good in stuff like case 3 above, with the family member dying. I've had painful experiences that I wouldn't want to undo; somehow the feelings, however painful, seem worthwhile.

Similarly, if you imagine the Buddha, I don't think he'd see a family member die and go "whatever, no problem!" I think he'd be very sad. I guess he'd just avoid any shooting-more-arrows-at-himself.

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I don't have any great answers here, but bringing them all together:
- sometimes physical pain is good
- sometimes emotional pain even is good, like the family member dying
- adding suffering and second arrows to it maybe isn't useful
- did I just talk myself into just accepting the Buddhist position whole hog?

How can I apply it to my immediate problem, which is that my cat Humpty won't shut up and keeps waking me up at 6:30am?

I guess, just deal with it - the pain may help me deepen my relationship with cat; laughing about it may deepen my relationship with Tati; gives me something to make small talk about at work. At least, it's interesting. That is how I think about these things when traveling: even the dumbest and worst experiences lead to great memories. At any rate, avoid second-arrowing, like "will he ever stop meowing?" or "why did we even get this stupid cat?"

You know how, when you exercise a lot, you hurt but it feels virtuous? Maybe that's what I ought to start doing about pain in general. Like, with cat making me sleep-deprived, maybe I just try to say "yep, I am dealing with this pain; it is making me stronger/wiser/better, or at least making a good memory."

(That's kinda nauseatingly cloying. Still the best answer I've got, though.)