CHOICE: Either/Or... What about choice Both or Depends?

Empiricism is great when you need to demonstrate certain realities to the unthinking mind. You collect facts, you compare items with each other to determine their differences and their commonalities. You measure the weight of gold, you measure the running speed of a tiger, you measure how much oxygen is depleted during a fire, and on and on.... Then we conclude that we can measure humanity the same way. What is the population count, how many people are working, how many are working in a field with immediately measurable results like manufacturing cars vs those who have less measurable results like producing art?

Empiricism is a tool best left in the hands of the thinker and not in the hands of the unthinking mind. What happens is that the unthinking mind believes that reality is only what can be measured or predicted through calculated measurements like statistics. We then see this in bureaucracies that give out questionnaires to a diverse public who often don't fit the categories presented.

Imagine that before Empirical research, people spoke only in terms of black and white. The thinker needed to demonstrate the reality of color and was able to introduce red and green, so empiricism was born. The problem today is that we have replaced a world of black and white with a world of red and green; we are convinced that red and green is better than black and white. Reality is a full basket of colors including black and including white. So imagine the frustration of the bureaucrat who asks the question "red or green" and receives the answer yellow from the citizen.

Some nations will insist "yellow" is just another word for green and will use the empirical tool to measure this and prove that yellow has many elements of green. Another nation or another group of scientists will insist that "yellow" is just a modified version of red. In the end, the unthinking mind will only see red or green and deny the existence of "yellow".... the unthinking classical adherent will not do a better job because he will either say that "yellow" is really white or will see that it isn't quite white so it must therefore be black.

Our statistics and bureaucracies can only measure what they see and try to fit what they don't understand into categories that can be labeled and measured. Politicians make decisions based upon these flawed measurements and statisticians predict trends on the "red" and "green".

From the thinker's perspective, decisions are made in such a way that when the politician is stuck on a rowboat with a hole causing the boat to sink, the statistician informs the politician that the sinking can be slowed down if the boat has less weight (which is true, but is only part of the problem; plugging the hole would stop the sinking altogether but statistics will never deduce that). The politician hears this so he orders that we throw all our buckets overboard to slow down the sinking of the boat (buckets can be heavy, don't you know), he hopes that the sinking will slow down long enough to be re-elected.... and he gets re-elected because the measurements show that the boat was sinking at a slower rate.

30 years later we are in 2011 and the boat is sinking quickly.... water which accumulates creates weight. The politician is left with little choice but to throw out the undesirables of society from the boat..... hence we cut social programs. Did we just throw overboard tomorrow's Einstein by cutting the educational program? Did we just throw the people who row the boat overboard because they complained that they couldn't row anymore ever since we threw away the paddles; and then replaced them with people who are willing to use their hands to row by using back to work legislation?

Wait! There is news about cutting funding for the artists and the sportsman.... we are now throwing those who inspire us to work harder overboard!!! In 30 years the politician will wonder why the boat no longer moves as quickly as it did in the 1980s. The thinker will point out that they got rid of the heavy paddles, they got rid of skilled rowers, they got rid of those who inspire us to work harder. The unthinking empiricist will scoff and prove that the reason the boat moves slower is that it has taken in more water and is sinking more so we need to throw out even more people to slow the sinking until we reach some unknown port. The thinker will be ignored when he points out that the water would not have accumulated so much if we had kept the buckets, that we would have moved further if we would have kept the paddles.... He will be ignored because it doesn't fit the "red/green" reality of the unthinking mind.

If the thinker was given the power and the authority, he could eventually find a way to find the hole in the boat and then find a way to plug this hole. But Plato has said much the same thing so many years ago and we still refuse to allow the thinker to do his contribution and we delegate the thinker to the confines of the weird or non-conformist and occasionally society is lucky to have allowed an Einstein to enter society's ranks in a somewhat limited fashion.

Mismanagement of Funds

Spend to Save

We laugh at governments because they have the tendency of spending a quarter in order to save a penny and we all know enough examples from our own personal lives that I don't need to present any more here. Businesses are almost as bad because they have the tendency of spending a dime in order to save a nickel, just find the comic Dilbert to see examples of that.... again we have witnessed this mismanagement in business either directly or indirectly so I don't need to bring out more examples. What I would like to propose is that we spend a loonie in order to save a twonie (Canadian money: loonie is 1$ and twonie is 2$).

Of course the difference between a business and a government is that the government money is guaranteed to come in while the business has to look really nice to receive someone's money.... but both will waste their money needlessly. Both will refuse to spend necessary money because they fear the consequence of wasteful spending but will continue to waste money because they are trying to save money. Its ironic, but its true, they are afraid to go out and plant the seed in the garden because they will lose the seed and they spend all their time trying to increase the nutritious content of the seed that they refuse to plant, in the end they spend more energy and receive little to no return on the seed compared to having planted the seed and receiving a decent harvest after a period of rest while the plant grows all on its own.

How do we do this? Well I will use a fictitious example which could be applied with almost every conceivable product out there including cleaning products to clean the floors of your business. Lets look at computers, now governments look at reducing the deficit while corporations look at maximizing profits but the logic is the same; if they are offered a choice between a PC computer costing $1000 a unit and a MAC computer costing $2000 a unit, then they will both go for the cheaper $1000 PC. Why? Because the government is trying to save $1000 to pay for the deficit and the corporation is trying to get $1000 more in profit.

So lets look at the hypothetical results of such thinking:

Year 1

Government George and Corporate Charlie are happy because they saved their employer $1000 while Spend-smart Sam has spent $1000 more than his competitors because he bought the MAC. Time goes by and we discover that the PC has to have constant maintenance which costs about $100 per day per unit wile the MAC has to have about $100 per week in maintenance per unit. PC constantly needs to be upgraded because they released the product before it was truly ready to have the jump on its competitors and each upgrade takes about an hour per week. The MAC needs to be upgraded as well because the need to improve an already decent product is part of their philosophy but they require an hour per month to upgrade.

At the end of the year, Government George and Corporate Charlie have spent a total of $37 500 per unit and lost 52 productive hours per unit. Meanwhile Spend-smart Sam has spent a total of $7200 per unit and lost 12 productive hours per unit (but in reality Spend-smart Sam bought double the number of computers needed than his competitors and scheduled the maintenance in such a way that he only lost an average of 6 productive hours per unit).

Government George then had to spend a $10 000 study to understand the cost impact of computers and why it was necessary. The recommendations done to Government George included the acquisition of MAC computers but he had no money in his budget to spend on that recommendation so he ignored the best advice and took the cheapest advice, only use half the computers available to schedule the maintenance around it to reduce the average loss of productive hours by half, but unlike Spend-smart Sam, he had one computer per worker so that while half the computers were off-line, the workload did not decrease and the employees had nothing to do and in the end they lost an average of 104 productive hours per unit. Government George ignored the rest of the recommendations because he thought it was foolishness and the next year another $10 000 study confirmed that workers who did not have computers to use could not be productive.

Corporate Charlie decided to divide the computers into two categories, spare parts and actual computers. So 50% of the computers would be the spare parts of the other 50% and they could try to average out a loss of 50 productive hours instead of 52 hours per unit and since they no longer had computers for each employee, they laid off 50% of their workforce and encouraged the remaining ones to produce the same output. When Government George saw that this worked much better than his solution, he was going to try to imitate it on his own end.

Year 2

On year 2, MAC and PC both had a new and better product available. Well Government George had already spent so much on the computer budget and was going to eventually use less computers, he decided to keep the current computers, after all he had to worry about the deficit and couldn't afford to buy new computers. Corporate Charlie decided to buy a few PCs to replace 10% of its currently used computers and continually upgrade each year so that they could be completely upgraded in 10 years. Spend-smart Sam decided to replace his entire network and he donated his previous year's computers to a local school. The MAC and PC cost the same as last year's model. So again, Spend-smart Sam spent more than his competitors on purchasing new computers.

Government George had to spend more for upkeep because the computers would break down more often and the parts were no longer being made so Government George would spend 3 times more per unit than the previous year but the upgrades became less frequent so that they didn't lose as much in lost hours of productivity.....

Corporate Charlie had to spend $3000 to integrate old technology with new and managed to use older software with new machines so that they also avoided the lost productive hours in upgrades, and their spare parts from unused computers helped in reducing costs. Since they didn't use the latest software, their newer computers could cost less than the usual $1000 because they weren't up to date with the latest software.

Spend-smart Sam increased the speed of his entire production by 20% in direct comparison with his competitors because he had the latest software with the latest hardware, he was getting a reputation so people were ready to buy his product because it was such high quality and done quicker.

After 10 years

Fast-forward 10 years and you can see how much money was truly spent in the long run.... Government George still has his old computers, he keeps buying outdated computers at $100 per unit but he spends 1000 times more on upkeep and can't afford the $30 000 to overhaul his system to the newest technology. Corporate Charlie has managed to offset his complete loss by having 10% of the original workforce and having the technology of 3 years ago, he keeps losing customers to Spend-smart Sam but he is still making a profit because he is buying less computers and reducing more staff and still managing to produce the same amount.... the products fall apart in the customer's hands because they are so cheap but the cost of production has been reduced while the price has been maintained lower than his competitors.

Spend-smart Sam is now successful and has been bought out by Take-over Tom and he wants to make a profit with his new acquisition because he sees the success of this business..... The first thing Take-over Tom does is to buy PCs for the next year so that he gets his quick-fix profit, later he will sell it to Corporate Charlie or file for bankruptcy to get Government George to bail out such a successful company from disintegrating.

So what now?

This fictional story pretends that MAC is so much better than PC, I will let genuine users argue amongst themselves as to the accuracy of this (or the inaccuracy).... the point I wanted to make was that spending more will save you more in the long run as long as you spend smart and that if you spend less today, you will have to spend more tomorrow. Using the deficit as an excuse to avoid spending money is like wanting to build a house around a plant to protect it from strong winds while blocking out the sunlight when the better solution would be to plant hundreds of trees nearby which will eventually grow into a natural barrier and protect the same plant while the trees produce an added benefit.

Also, using profit as a motive is also foolishness because if you avoid spending smart you will make less profit than your competitor who has decided to spend. Starving yourself will mean that you have more food than your neighbor but you will also be unable to produce in comparison to your neighbor? Why is Europe outproducing North America? Well they work less, have more vacation time and worry about happiness instead of money while we work more, reduce our vacation time and worry about money instead of happiness. We are starving ourselves to have more food and we are unable to farm our land because we have no energy while the Europeans don't worry about farming or food and play while they farm and they eat very well without pressure.

So I propose the solution of spending more because we can't afford not to, but I want our spending to be smart-spending not blind-spending. Paying a quarter to save a penny is wasteful (like Government George) and paying a dime to save a nickel is almost as wasteful (like Corporate Charlie), but spending the loonie to save a twonie is brilliant (like Spend-smart Sam).

Census Issues No One Wants To Consider

Canada has had a long version of the census which was distributed to Canadians on the basis of one household out of five. This long form was obligatory and only 3 complaints were ever recorded on the intrusiveness of this long version. Today we are discussing how we will transform this by making the long form completely voluntary and distribute it to Canadians on the basis of one household out of three.

Voluntary versus Obligatory

Anyone with an inkling of how statistics are processed knows that a voluntary basis of acquiring information is the most flawed methodology you can imagine. Those who are predisposed to answer may also be introverted chess players who love to fill out long forms and will express how we don't have a national program to teach chess in kindergarten while the extroverted hockey fan would rather be outside playing street hockey with his friends instead of filling out such boring statistics and then wonder why the national hockey budget has been cut by half to help fund some chess for toddlers competition.

This issue has been discussed in the news but not thoroughly explained. We are told that its "bad" for voluntary census forms and that we should enforce compliance with jail terms for those who refuse to do their civic obligation. I suspect there is a reason why we are not told the "why" its bad.... more on that in a few paragraphs.

Is it intrusive?

Another issue that has been discussed is the intrusiveness of the information gathered. Even though only three recorded complaints on that issue have been revealed to us we are claiming that this is the worry of the government and this is why we make the long form voluntary. If the government was truly worried about intrusive questions and how they are recorded and used by others perhaps they should look into private corporations who probably have better specific information on very specific issues on most of us.

With the right hacker, an astute psychologist and your Airmiles number I can tell you what kind of person you are based upon your purchases in the past 5 years. Do you really believe that the coupon you received in the mail last week addressed to you personally was sent out to everyone else on your street? Do you really believe that 1 airmiles point for the information you provide to marketing statistics causes them a loss or do you realize that they make a profit from your information freely given through manipulation?

The government may be untrustworthy on handling some information but I would trust a corporation even less on most issues. Again, this issue of intrusive questions and what is done with the information was also dealt with in the news but not nearly as thoroughly as they could have gone and with the wrong target. Statistics Canada is probably more worried about security of its data and personal information being linked to any specific individual than lets say (hypothetically) Costco with your purchasing habits. But we don't really want the news to tell us what to really worry about, do we?

Probable Issues

There has been a situation in the last census where a group of like-minded individuals were communicated virally through email and internet chats with instructions to deliberately lie on their long version of the census. Apparently they obeyed because from one census to the next we had an illogical turn of events. People who were bilingual suddenly unlearned their second language, being English, and were only able to speak French. This set of instructions had the purpose to force the Federal Government to place more money in specific programs to insure that the French had services in their mother tongue. They used the census form to manipulate government policy. This part has been ignored by the news.

Now as much as I agree that making the long form a voluntary issue is bad for statistical studies, it is nonetheless great to witness who answers the voluntary form and see if they are also using the census to manipulate government policy. If all the bagpipers of Canada are instructed to mention in their long form how they have nowhere to practice their loud music and no one else bothers to fill in their voluntary census.... then we will see that this group is trying to manipulate the government in granting them parks specifically to play the bagpipes.

I know bagpipes are not really something to worry about, how about a cultural group or a religious group who instructs their members to lie so that their group can receive genuine concessions? It has already happened with one linguistic group.... that we know of. It is not unusual to think that a minority cultural or religious group to try a similar tactic. The voluntary form would spot this quite easily because they would all fill out the form above and beyond the average Canadian. So this would not give us an accurate picture of Canadians but it would give us an accurate picture of which social groupings are attempting to manipulate government policy.

Now before someone accuses me of being unfair against A or B or C..... If any of us were part of a minority no matter what it is.... we would be tempted to use this tool of lying to get an extra advantage.... and if you are part of a truly exceptional minority where you would not lie then you must also realize how rare you are because your very neighbors don't have this same exceptional quality of being truthful as you..... and if you deny that then you are just lying to yourself.

Do we drop the entire census because we are afraid that a few would lie? Not at all, this may be an interesting short term solution as we develop a better methodology to track immoral instructions to lie on census forms. Will this throw back Statistics Canada with inaccurate information? Which is better, knowing the info is flawed because the gathering methods are flawed or believing the info is accurate when we don't know if there was a deliberate intention to misrepresent answers? Too bad we are not discussing this issue openly and rationally amongst an educated electorate.

Oil Rigs, Technology and Accountability

What we have here is a situation perpetrated by a leadership that would immediately fire subordinates who did the same kind of mistake in the function of their jobs. And yet, no one is arrested for negligence, the owners are not stripped of their property, the managers/directors are not fired from their positions.

If you lived in an apartment and caused such a disaster, you would be arrested immediately. If you owned a house and caused such a disaster, your property would be seized immediately. If you were a superintendent of an apartment complex and your decision caused this kind of disaster, you would be fired immediately. I guess if you are rich, you can get away with murder.

Problem 1

Oil rigs in North America do not have to have a specific safety valve unless they are being built in the Arctic. This is nonsensical, if the technology exists for extra safety, why do we make it an optional device? Imagine, cars sold to rich people will have airbags and safety belts while cars sold to poor people will only have a basic plastic frame with no airbags and no safety belts. Houses sold to rich people will have locks on their doors and windows, apartments rented by poor people will have the option of doors and windows if they pay extra..... even more so if you want to have locks on them. The Arctic will have safety valves because the environment is more precious over there than elsewhere.

Pour some salt on the injury and insult the the wounded: Before the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies were trying to convince the government to allow them to build oil rigs without safety valves in the Arctic because no one had ever had an accident in the other oil rigs in the other areas of North America. Why are they even allowed to propose this in a rational setting? Imagine a group of engineers asking permission to build bridges which can fall apart during a windstorm because the wind "rarely" blows above 50 miles per hour and they want to save on material costs.

Problem 2

We build a technological wonder because we can and because it can bring us some material benefits but we don't have any way of correcting any disaster if something dangerous happens. Imagine building a 20 floor building with 3 outstanding elevators but no stairs. Oh dear, a fire has struck the building, how will the people get out with the electricity cut? Or imagine that you buy the most technologically advanced car that no one can repair if it ever breaks down..... and your engine has just spurt its last spurt....

The oil companies that have built this oil rig did not have included in its design plans ways to circumvent problems that could arise. So when the widget, that did not have its safety valve, finally exploded and caused all this oil to come gushing out... no one had a clue how to stop it because nothing was designed into the system for such an accident. And yet somehow, we continued to build oil rigs without A)safety valves and B)without corrective devices to limit accidental damages. These people who allow this have a higher salary than most of us? Why?

Problem 3

Twenty odd days later and accumulating, we still haven't found a way to stop this oil spill. The main oil company who is responsible for this is enthusiastically informing us that they will cover the expenses of the cleanup and pay damages incurred. Are you telling me that they are insinuating that they actually have a choice to refuse to pay the cleanup cost and the damages? Imagine the drunk driver proudly proclaiming that he will submit himself to a criminal trial for having hit a passerby with his vehicle while drunk and that he will pay for any medical expenses that the victim suffered. And the experts who love to criticize politicians for any wrongdoings turn and agree with each other that the oil company should be applauded for taking responsibility.

The engineers still have no idea how to solve this situation..... Before implementing a technology into our world, should we not have spent time in determining how to correct potential problems like this one? Imagine sending humans to the Moon and forgetting that we have to find a way to bring them back to Earth and we try to solve that problem after the humans have landed on the Moon and want to come back.

Problem 4

"We did not fail to stop the leak, we just did not succeed in our attempt to correct the problem." and only John Stewart or Stephen Colbert can mock the individuals who said those statements at the latest attempts to stop the gushing oil leak which is currently destroying our environment? Why are the journalists and the politicians so polite with these individuals who make obviously self-contradictory statements and who admit that they have no immediate solutions to the problems that they created?

Would a boss tolerate an employee that says "I did not arrive late, I just did not arrive in the time scheduled."? Note that this fictional employee is transforming the language of responsibility from himself to the boss. If the employee admits being late, then he is responsible for this action. If the employee can convince the boss that his arrival did not fit the scheduled time then it is the schedule which is at fault and not the employee.... hence it is the boss who invented the schedule who should be responsible in accommodating the employee's arrival. Well if we don't tolerate this from the majority of the population, why are we tolerating it from its supposed leaders?

Conclusion

This entire situation is yet another example of rushing in somewhere without thinking of the consequences. Capitalism wants you to move without thinking so that you can get the profit before the slow guy next to you. Capitalism works if you are a small owner and the extent of your ownership is a family farm. Capitalism can not work with technology that can manipulate our genetic structure, technology that can transform an environment as easily as a volcano and with ownership structures that surpass political nations.

We have allowed money to dictate to us our moral standards. If we can save money to make more profit then we are successful. Explosion in an oil rig? oops, just a temporary "financial" setback..... we will just throw money at some engineer to fix the problem and throw money to clean up the spill and then we will continue to make profit tomorrow.

Our current capitalism will cost us more in the long term for a short term benefit. Consumers can not solve this problem, Citizens can solve this problem. Put Capitalism under the complete control of Democracy before Capitalism buys out our Democracy from under us.

Logic, Evolution and Sexual Harassment

Occasionally we read different things from different areas of study and we wonder how all of it can be combined into an interesting whole? Or do we throw it out into some forgotten hole?

Basic Logic

Ok, so the basics of logic teach you that if every premise is true within an argument form and the argument form is a valid form, then the conclusion must be true. We get a fact like A is equal to B being premise 1. We get a fact like B is equal to C being premise 2. We conclude that A must be equal to C. If premise 1 is true and premise 2 is true, then the conclusion must be true. This very paragraph is an example of a valid argument form, and if you want to know what makes an argument form valid or invalid I would recommend taking a class in logic to get the very best info.

I can give you one example of an invalid argument. We get a fact that A is equal to B as being the first premise. We get a fact that B is equal to C as premise 2. We conclude that A is equal to D. This would be classified as an invalid argument form. Even if premise 1 and 2 are true, the conclusion can not be expected to be true because it is not a valid argument form. Many times we are presented with argument forms through rhetoric and the argument forms are not always valid but we are expected to accept them as valid and make decisions about them. The use of statistics can be abused in such a fashion. The point is to be astute in one's observation.

Evolutionary Psychology

Now I do not claim to be an expert in the field of evolutionary psychology so I am not necessarily familiar with the latest developments in that field and I know that in any theory, you will have those who agree and those who disagree and both sides will have their scientific evidence. Just look at how light was perceived by 19th century physicists. Some believed light was a bunch of rays and others believed that light was a bunch of particles and they both had their evidence. Turns out that they were both correct, light is supposedly rays AND particles. My point is that knowledge is constantly "evolving" pardon the pun.... and evolutionary psychology will have proposed theories which will be modified and refined as the years go by.

One of the premises that has come out recently in evolutionary psychology is that the human male is very dependent upon his visual organ to determine his sexual partner. What he looks for is irrelevant for my argument, the fact that the visual is the main tool is what is important to my premise. Apparently, some research has demonstrated that when the male visually sees what stimulates him, his brain produces pleasure responses similar to that of cocaine. Ok, again I have no idea how true this premise is..... This is something that can be debated amongst the evolutionary psychologists. For the purposes of my argument, we are assuming this is true.

So the human male needs to see something that stimulates him sexually and to propagate the species. This could explain why photographic pornographic material is so successful with a male customer base and the more literary material is more successful for the female customer. But I don't want to deviate my focus away from the male in this blog, suffice it to say the visual keeps the male "stimulated".

Sexual Harassment

Well we all know that sexual harassment is unwanted sexual advances from an unwanted partner. If the male requires visual stimulation to be attracted to his partner, what happens if he does not wish to receive visual stimulation from an unwanted partner? Advertising on television that shows the scantily clad individual to attract the vision of its male audience, huge posters on billboards that show a visually stimulating image for the male audience and the strategically placed inserts inside a magazine that one must turn to continue reading whatever article being read, all of these examples are probably unwanted visual stimulation which tease the male visual sexual drive with no possibility of release.

"Just don't look." becomes synonymous with "She should not have worn such a short skirt." If the woman is allowed to wear what she wants without being harassed sexually, then the man should be able to walk down a street without seeing such billboards in his face, or watch television without having to "fastforward" every circumstance, or even read his magazine without having to worry what comes on the next page.

Besides, before he can determine for himself whether or not he should look or not, he must realize what he is looking at in the first place. If he decides that he does not want to look, well its too late, the damage is done. Just like the woman who is approached by an undesirable advance, once the approach has happened, the damage is done. If she wants to be approached by strangers in such a way, she has the option to go to a singles bar. She does not want to be approached in the same way at her work or walking in the park with her friends.

We believe that a woman should not have to suffer sexual harassment just because she wore a skirt. If the man is stimulated visually, should he not be in control of what he looks at? The billboard, the television commercial and the magazine ad don't give him that choice, they ambush his visual response and create this stimulation which the male may not want to receive.

Conclusion

--So if "the male vision stimulates his sexual desires" is true.
--If "the male is ambushed by advertising campaigns to attract his attention with sexually stimulating images" is true.
--If "the male is not particularly interested in being sexually stimulated by that image at that moment in time" is true.
--If the premise of: [if the argument "women should not suffer sexual harassment based on their clothing choices" is acceptable then the argument "men should not suffer sexual harassment based on their inadvertent glance at some advertising aimed at them" should also be acceptable] is true.
--Then the conclusion "that the human male is victim of sexual harassment by visually stimulating advertisements" must be true.

Now is this morally or ethically wrong? Well logic never really determines morality or ethics so that would be a matter for a different blog. But this is an interesting area for further consideration. Naturally this topic is meant to stimulate a debate, not to impose a specific point of view..... Perhaps the human male enjoys ALL visual stimulation and would never dare avoid the advertising, after all, if the visual stimulation gives a high similar to a cocaine high (legally) what male would rationally want to take away one of his pleasures? Bring on more advertising? But then again, does this become the beginning of slavery through pleasure?

Lose your adult status for more chocolate, which a child enjoys even more than an adult, get even more chocolate if you now avoid your vegetables (which a child will now readily agree)..... and then the body breaks down because no more vitamins. Where is society in that metaphor? Are we the society that just traded in our vegetables for more chocolate? Yay to visual stimulation! I would rather enjoy my chocolate in moderation.... as an adult where I choose when to eat my chocolate, but maybe I am in the minority?

An Apology from a Pope

The Problem

During the past 50 years people have complained about priests sexually abusing them. The current pope has offered an apology. The wronged party is not satisfied with the apology. Neither am I.

First, the apology focuses upon Ireland. What about the abuses done in Canada, the United States, Australia, Brazil, need I go on with all the other countries? Seems like a trend and nothing is being done to address this issue nor to acknowledge that it is a huge problem. If the apology sticks with one country it may distract from the bigger problem. Afraid of showing dirty laundry to the public? Apologizing for the one dirty linen found on the ground by the public and hoping the basket full of dirty clothes goes unnoticed?

Second, I believe there are two crimes that were done here, the abuse itself being crime 1 and the denial of any wrongdoing up until recently being crime 2. What is the most frustrating thing for a victim than to be disbelieved and then attempting to describe the crime in its graphic details to then be ignored and shunned by the leadership of the church because the story is just not believed?

Claimant-->You have dirty clothes in your laundry basket.
Reluctant Apologizer-->We wear clean clothes.
Claimant-->I saw Criminal A put one dirty sock in that closed basket.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Please describe this dirty sock.
Claimant-->It was red, its easy to find, just open the basket and you will see it.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Did anyone else see Criminal A put this red sock in the basket?
Claimant-->I have no idea and I don't care, look in the basket and you will see for yourself.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Well Criminal A denies having put his red sock in the basket. Are you sure that it was our basket? You may be confused. Are you sure it was his sock and not someone else's sock, maybe your own?
Claimant-->Look in the bloody basket, the one with the initials of your organization and find the red sock with the initials of its owner on the sock and you will see.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Well it may take time to go through all of our baskets and all of the clothes found therein, we will get back to you.

months go by and Claimant meets Frustrated who shares his story of having seen Criminal A put his green dirty shirt in the laundry basket and that Reluctant Apologizer took down his statement and never got back. Both decide to ask around and see if anyone else has seen anything and they both discover that several have had similar experiences, it goes public.

Reluctant Apologizer-->Well we have concluded our investigation and we wish to apologize for the red sock and the green shirt, not to worry Criminal A will no longer have access to that particular laundry basket.
Claimant-->What else was in the laundry basket? Why is it still hidden? Why are you only acknowledging the red sock and the green shirt?
Frustrated-->Yes, and also what about the fact that you ignored and disbelieved us until we took matters into our own hands and began to organize? Lastly, why is Criminal A only being blocked on one laundry basket.... shouldn't he be blocked from all of your other ones as well?
Reluctant Apologizer-->Well we will offer Criminal A to an outside justice system so that we do not need to answer your other concerns, would that be acceptable?
Claimant-->That may be nice, but what about Criminal B? One of my friends saw him put dirty pants in some other laundry basket.
Reluctant Apologizer-->If your friend comes in, I will be happy to ignore her details and repeat the same nonsense I did with you two and then we will apologize for Criminal B's behavior once we can no longer stall and hide.

What should be done

The leadership spent a lot of resources to hide the crime and to discourage the victims from receiving any comfort. I can understand being cautiously skeptical and investigating any allegation but when you see a phenomenon that crosses national borders and that unrelated people all seem to be giving identical details about a crime you border on the ridiculous if you stall in your investigation and tell the victim that the aggressor denies the allegations.

Does the Roman Catholic Church really believe that admission of a crime is the first instinct of a criminal? I can understand that dirty laundry is preferable to be kept in one's family but we are talking about burnt clothing not about some priest who doodles on a notepad while hearing someone's confession. We are talking about a priest who takes advantage of his trustworthy position to satisfy himself sexually not about some priest who thinks people on welfare should work in hard labor camps and occasionally writes about his opinions to his peers.

Dirty laundry is normal, burnt laundry is not. The leadership who stalled and ignored the problem should apologize for trying to hide the crime and then resign from their positions of leadership. Forgiving does not imply ignoring the crime, forgiveness is acknowledging the crime and still having a relationship with the criminal. A parent who sees his child stealing from a store owner won't ignore it but will have his child face responsibility of his actions and still be there as a parent. A parent who sees that his child steals and then tries to hide this fact from the victim is not doing his family name any favors nor is he helping his child.

Art, Humanities and Business

Ways of Seeing

No generic criticism in this blog, just a comparison on ways of seeing the world. Neither of the three ways of seeing the world should replace the others although perhaps some are a bit more noble than the others. Looking at an elephant from the front with a telescope at 100 yards may be better than seeing the same elephant while on his back with a magnifying glass. But the telescope won't give you the details that the close-up look will give you and the magnifying glass dude won't realize that he's on the back of an elephant until its too late. Of course these 3 ways of seeing this metaphorical elephant are not the only ways to see either. I will just limit myself to three in this blog.

The problem that I often encounter is that the telescope guy thinks he is superior to the magnifying glass dude and vice versa and they don't bother sharing what they have discovered to each other. Secondly, sometimes they attempt to impose their way of doing things to the rest of us as if their way of seeing is the only true way of seeing. There really is only one way of seeing something, but the magnifying glass alone won't cut it, neither will the telescope alone. It has to be these ways combined and a bit of judgment to determine the true object of one's study.

The telescope guy may be convinced that he is looking at a horse while the magnifying glass dude is convinced that he is on top of a tiger. Combine both pieces of information and a bit of judgment and you see what it truly is: a zebra. Unfortunately we don't really do any of this because our capitalist mindset encourages us to specialize into distinct areas of knowledge. Specialization does have its benefits but as in the above example, having some generalists who see the whole picture can also have its benefits. I just find it sad that we go to the extreme of what capitalism teaches when it is self-evident that capitalism at an extreme is quite flawed at best and just plainly wrong at worst.

I now want to show hypothetical examples of how the disciplines of art, humanities and business present a certain set of information onto a public. It is encouraging when each distinct view has equal access to the public eye even if the generalist view is not presented; but unfortunately, some distinct views get more airtime than others. The topic is how to be more understanding of blind people and to allow better services for them as part of government or charitable expenses. How does the film arts scholar present the info, how does the communications scholar present the info and lastly, how does the marketing scholar present the info.

Fine Arts

"Its all about art baby!", this is the mantra of the arts guy. So we want to have people understand about blind people and what they go through? No problem, we will make a five minute film in blackness with the sounds of walking all over the place, but with no visuals, just a black screen! The audience will be disoriented as they hear all sorts of sounds of traffic and walking and see a completely black screen during the entire 5 minutes! Art!!! yeah!

Communication Studies

"What is the message?", this is the question that the humanities guy asks himself. Ok so we want to have an individual walking with his cane on the street as cars pass by and have someone come up to him speaking about directions of how to get to a place using visual cues. We then switch to a point of view shot where the audience is seeing the person speaking and pointing to different locations but we hear no sounds, then we switch to a black screen and hearing the person explaining about visual cues and saying things like: "just go down there where I am pointing and...." then we switch back to a 3rd person viewpoint and have a written statement explaining that the blind person is missing one of his senses and could not even be reading this text and that we should realize this instead of continuing in our usual ways of doing things. That would convey the message we want to give.

Marketing

"We all know that sex sells.", this is the down-to-earth statement for the business guy. Alright, some guy with a cane is walking down the street and is tripped by some handsome looking guy. A sexy looking lady comes out and yells at the handsome guy for being a child and the sexy looking lady dressed in revealing clothing bends down to help the blind guy up and says that he can see her heart so he is better than the handsome guy. 30 seconds and we saved money because we shot on video instead of expensive film for 5 minutes. Make sure that we use the remaining money in our budget to saturate the television channels with our commercial.

Conclusion

Which of the above three is the best way to transmit the info? Neither is better than the other, we need all three. If one of the above methods replaces any of the other two or both, then we are in danger of seeing life in only one way and that won't help us get to the truth of anything. Once truth is in danger, lies will be easier to manipulate our democratic population.

For democratic society to be preserved, we need to guarantee that market forces won't dictate that the easy message will have precedence over the sophisticated message. We need to make sure that the specialist is not the only one to speak nor is one specialist favored over any other. We need to encourage generalists, those who have an over-arching view of things.

An Alternate Way to Run a Corporation

The Current Situation

Well currently corporations are run by investors, they vote for a Board of Directors and the Board of Directors hires a CEO to run the day to day operations. A metaphorical way to see this would be that the Board of Directors is like a nation's legislature (Senate, Congress, Parliament, etc), while the CEO would be like a nation's head of government (President, Prime Minister, etc). The goal of the investor is to make profit, profit and even more profit. If the corporation makes more profit this year than the last and the belief is held that the next year's profits will be even higher.... then the investor is extremely happy.

The problem with this situation is that there is a disconnect with reality between the investor and the rest of society. The concept that firing employees to make more profit as being self-destructive for all corporations who rely upon consumers is alien to the investor. They see the short term and immediate gain and even when someone speaks long term planning, they see this as meaning 5 years instead of 5 generations. When the medical profession indicates that absenteeism is based upon the extra workload and the extra stress which only began making its appearances when corporations tried to get 1 human being to work more than what a human could tolerate.... well the investor believes this to be a product of laziness (remember they would never tolerate the conditions that they attempt to impose upon honest workers).

Corporations have gone unchecked like a runaway train and the owners are happy because the train has made each of their stations in record time (some experts tell the owners that the train never stopped but kept going and this will lead to disaster but the owners ignore these warnings). Then listeriosis hits the food industry, financial markets go haywire, car manufacturers discover a major flaw in their best product..... Apologies come out but nothing really changes (you don't hear of any company wishing to rehire a laid-off workforce to do things correctly instead of cutting corners). More corners are to be cut and new lay-offs are planned with the remaining workers picking up the slack. "Do more with less" is the mantra of the day, then the investors get surprised when less is produced.

The Alternative

So since the investors and business leaders think its normal to practice self-destruction, like staying awake for 48 hours at a time and sleeping for 4 hours and then repeating the sequence and they don't want to stop and think about the consequences of such obvious foolishness, perhaps an international law should be imposed on all corporations. The details can always be worked out later, but here are the broad strokes. A corporation answers to three entities for its survival, the investor who provides capital, the worker who provides labor and the consumer who provides sales. Yet despite this fact, only the investor is represented in the leadership of the corporation (and we have all seen the foolishness that they can achieve).

So the proposed alternative is that we have the investors vote for one third of the Board of Directors, we have the workers vote for another third and we have the local government appoint the last third. The investors continue with the 1 share equals one vote. The workers go with one person equals one vote. Government appointees can not be major investors or workers in this company and preferably not related with anyone who is. The investors will have to negotiate with presenting their views as to making a profit (which is ok if tempered with reason), the workers will focus on productivity (which may mean reducing work hours while keeping the same salary and providing social benefits to make the employee happy and therefore less sick) and the government appointees will focus on consumer protection to make certain that any legitimate complaints on a product is heard quickly and dealt with and also make certain that advertising does not overwhelm the consumer with nonsense.

A confirmed member of the Board of Directors must not be allowed to be a member of another Board of Directors of ANY company. If someone can be a Board Member of more than one, they have just admitted that the workload is insufficient and perhaps they can occasionally work on the front-lines with the honest and hardworking individuals of their company to see how their decisions truly affect the people in the trenches. Could you imagine during World War 2 an individual being a US General leading tanks in Western Europe and then emailing the Pacific Fleet on how they should deploy their ships because he is also a US Admiral? Well there are many who are members of several Boards of Directors in various corporations. How can they find the time if this job is so important?

Concluding Remarks

What the best thing for each corporation would be to have the people on the top work alongside the lowest level entry position employees on occasion and get their hands dirty and appreciate that these workers are not lazy but sometimes over-worked. Again a show that shows owners and bosses heading in the right direction is the TV show "Undercover Boss". Now it isn't at the perfect destination of where corporations should be but it definitely allows the owners to open their eyes and see first hand the reality at the trenches.

Secondly, Unions were not mentioned because we are looking a corporate governance and not management/employee relations which is an entirely different thing. The Board of Directors position filled by employee votes would be like voting for a Canadian federal election while however the employees decide to organize their union and how they choose a completely different set of people to fill in as Union leaders would be like voting for a Canadian provincial election. Later on, managers could be voted as such by their immediate underlings like a municipal election. But these additional features are more modifying the system from the ground up and this blog was more on focusing modifying the system from the top down.

In each of these modified aspects, it necessitates that the worker be astute and democratically minded which will transfer over to his life outside of work which should be more important than his life at work. Work to live, yes! Live to work, no. A successful democratic society must give its citizens the tools to engage in other important aspects of life, where money is only one of many aspects and not the only aspect. Money is like a toy and if someone in society believes that toys are more important than anything else, then they should remain childlike and not be involved in the decision making aspects of an adult society. Toys are great, we can all enjoy the playtime, but we must stop playing with toys on occasion and get our responsibilities done, something the investor doesn't seem able to comprehend as he accumulates more and more toys at the expense of others.

Taking Pictures of Sleeping Workers

Well here we have it. The non-thinking public notice a goofy incident and immediately jumps to a conclusion without considering the situation. The specific issue I am referring to here is the customer who took a picture of a Toronto Transit worker sleeping on the job. We are told that the individual was fired afterwards and we are also told of other incidents like the situation where a bus driver takes an unscheduled break to get a coffee during the middle of a bus run.

Am I questioning if the worker was sleeping or not? No, I can see very clearly that the employee is sleeping. What I am questioning is the why. No one seems to want to consider that and the fact that management immediately fired this individual makes me ask why with even more emphasis. A responsible management is supposed to hire someone that they trust to do the job, and yet at the first sign of doubt, the management demonstrates faith in itself in its decision to trust this employee by firing the employee.

Let us consider the following, if the management hired this employee in the first place then it is under the assumption that the individual has what it takes to perform the job. Therefore if this is true, we must assume that this employee is a rational human being, a responsible adult, a competent worker.... yet he has fallen asleep at the job.... why? If management immediately fires this competent worker without questioning the reasons, then management has admitted that it does not trust its own methodologies of scrutinizing capable employees or that it has no trust or loyalty for the people they hire.

So if we assume that the employee is incompetent and fire him and we are correct then the story ends there. If we assume that the employee is competent and yet has been caught sleeping, we must investigate further and then we determine if our assumption is correct or not. If I was management, I would not assume and investigate further before making any decision, no matter how obvious things appear.

Let us look at what kind of job this employee has. He is stuck in a booth to sell tickets and to offer tourist information about the transit system. During the morning rush, he is selling tickets and serving the lineup of people wishing to buy a ticket or get some information. Then its 10 am in the morning and there is perhaps 3 people coming to his booth during that hour. The requirements are that he stays at his post to serve the clients as they arrive. The employee can not leave the booth to start cleaning some outside area because A) the area is so large he may not be able to see if there are clients waiting to be served and B) security concerns of being outside of a secured booth and being robbed.

The employee must therefore stay put. The employee is not allowed to read or to do crossword puzzles or to occupy his mind in other pursuits because management is afraid of the public perception of seeing a non-busy worker reading. Part-time students who could potentially be studying in between clients would not be tolerated either. So we have the employee, stuck in a booth twiddling his thumbs trying to find something to occupy himself waiting for the next client. The employee can not even use the phone to speak to another human being. So what happens? Well ANY human being would fall prey to dozing off and being asleep. AND ANY MANAGEMENT WHO THINKS OTHERWISE SHOULD BECOME AN EMPLOYEE FOR SIX MONTHS TO SHATTER THEIR ILLUSIONS.

There is a new reality television show called "Undercover Boss", where the owner or the big boss goes undercover and becomes an employee at his own business for a week. Well these bosses have their eyes opened, much like the Prince in Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper". In Mark Twain's book, the Prince switches place with his look-alike who is a poor beggar and the Prince sees how his kingdom is truly run. Well the undercover boss in the television show also gets a taste of his decisions done from on top without consideration of the consequences that he is leading human beings who have strengths and weaknesses.

I can guarantee you that anyone who thinks that this sleeping employee is lazy or wrong would change their mind if they worked in that environment for six months. They may not fall asleep like this particular employee did, but if they are honest with themselves, they would see how easily this could happen to them with the existing circumstances. Find what society considers to be the best of the best of the human beings of our society and impose upon that person the following restrictions: A) Must serve clients during rushes, B) Must stay alert during quiet periods, C) Must not read, talk on the phone or do anything that may be perceived by the public as being lazy (can not even read corporate material even if written well and would keep you dynamic). Then have this human being do this 40 hours a week for six months with the occasional overtime thrown in while this individual is also dealing with outside pressures at home (like for example fumigating his living area to eliminate some pests).... Then lets see if this individual would do any better than this employee who was caught sleeping.

As for the bus driver who was caught stopping in the middle of a bus run to get a coffee for his coffee break. Question1->Does the employee have access to a coffee place when he is allowed his break? Question2->Does management restrict their own coffee breaks or do they allow themselves access to a coffee place at a time of their own choosing?

Solutions for the sleeping employee and for the bus driver who takes unscheduled breaks: Have employees work with partners who can chat and keep each other company and allow them some leeway during non-rush hours (like reading?) Sometimes tourists ask these employees about cultural events happening in the area and most of the time the employees don't know, so allow them to have access to this kind of information to communicate to those who ask. Salespeople in stores often know nothing about the product that they are selling because they are not given the time to read up on the latest gadget that their own store carries so they focus on techniques of selling instead of product knowledge..... and during non-rush times the salesmen are confined in moving inventory from one wall corner to the other corner just to give the impression that the store is new and dynamic. So give the employee some leeway during the non-rush times of the day.

As for the bus driver, if the end of his route where he is allowed to take a break is void of a coffee place or whatever would be convenient for the employee, then hire a coffee delivery clerk. The job of the coffee delivery clerk would be to get the coffee order from employees during the day of what they want in their coffee and when their break is and when they will take their break. This way, when the bus driver arrives at his break spot in the middle of nowhere, he will have someone there with his coffee and a quick chat for about a minute or so with another flesh and blood human being. After all, if management gives themselves such privileges why deny these privileges to their own employees? And if management denies these privileges that they themselves take for themselves, why be surprised when employees find ways to acquire similar perks for themselves?

So if anything, I blame management for the sleeping employee, doubly so when they fired that employee without investigation and I would suggest that if anyone was to be fired then it should be the entire management team who provided for this situation to happen.

If one employee has a problem, then chances are that its the employee's fault and responsibility. If several employees have the exact same problem (and in the case of the sleeping employee and the bus driver taking his unscheduled break they are not alone in this situation) then the responsibility is on management and not on the employee. This sleeping worker should not have been fired so quickly, he should have been suspended with pay and have an external audit done to investigate all possible causes including mismanagement, and then deal with the situation appropriately (which could include firing the employee).

Cheating on Tests

Well the previous blog spoke about how standardized tests were all but accurate means of determining knowledge or ability. This blog shows the cheating and how easy it would be to do so and how to truly avoid it.

The previous blog showed how some of the questions in a standardized test did nothing but ask for trivia. So imagine that you are in film school and the question on one of your exams is to know the name of a particular widget on a camera that hasn't been produced since the 1980s. The student has never actually touched this camera and probably never will and this widget is called something different by another company on their camera if they even have it as an optional add-on. The class is supposed to be one where you learn how to take proper shots for film-making. Some students study for the test and focus on the nonsensical material and they get A+ on their test, some students have no interest in wasting their time in studying nonsense and pay for a cheat-sheet and also get the A+. We learn that cheaters exist and that they succeed more often than not, and we refuse to think about how it is even possible or how to properly avoid it.

It would be easy to spot by interviewing the student and seeing how neither one can have a genuine conversation about how to do a proper camera shot. The first one wasted their time in knowing unnecessary trivia about widgets and the second one wasted their money on a cheat sheet that informs them about these same widgets. Conclusion? Many of the A+ students out there don't have the basic understanding of the field they are supposed to be learning.

Easy experiment to do with a first year university student. Read the same textbook that the student is supposed to have read and have a conversation about what this textbook is saying. Don't ask specific questions because this will turn into trivia like questions and the student will end up quoting the appropriate passage. If you ask them what this passage means, they will be at a loss for words and probably attempt to repeat the quote.... maybe they will introduce their own words to replace the actual quote but when you ask them to explain to you what it actually means, they will be unable to do so. This is why cheating is so easy, the required answer is but a simple quote without having to explain what the quote means.

This will only work with first year students because part of the university education is to learn the specialized lingo or jargon of their field and know how and when to use it.... What is unfortunate is that since they never really understood what they were learning in the first year they tend to be encyclopedias of trivia without really understanding what the implications are. Then they use jargon to fake a knowledge that they do not truly have. Imagine when this A+ student becomes the next professor for the next generation of students and this type of quick testing does to genuine knowledge and understanding?

Well the world of employment has already noticed it, which is why they are more interested in the real world working experience of the newly graduated professional than his actual academic mark. Its quite easy to see how much this A+ graduate lacks the knowledge needed in the field he has studied because they can't get away with using trivia knowledge to prove their expertise and they definitely can't use jargon to fool the one who truly knows the field.

Consider George Orwell's example of an intellectual paragraph full of jargon:

"On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?-----from an Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)"

Just what is that supposed to mean? Its nonsensical jargon that sounds intellectual but is not really saying anything of substance. Words are coming out just like sound comes out of a trumpet but put the words together they seem to sound sensible just like when you play individual notes you demonstrate that you can play those notes, but you aren't playing any music. Well universities tend to produce this type of graduate. He can quote trivia that is meaningless for actually solving a situation at hand and he speaks jargon about stuff that really doesn't make any sense (even to someone who knows the subject at hand) and is proud of having received his A+ for knowledge he doesn't truly have. Imagine someone who has reached the level of professorship and starts quoting jargon to the unsuspecting students. He is perceived as a brilliant professor by the administration which hired him (because they don't know anything about the subject either) and students who begin to learn the jargon believe this quack to be brilliant as well and they parrot his sayings without comprehension.

Sophistry is about the appearance of wisdom and the current methods of testing promote sophistry and encourage cheating. You don't have to know anything, you just have to fake that you know it long enough to jump whatever hurdle that immediately tests you. There is some statistic out there that claims that students only retain about 20% of what they learned in university, perhaps the truth of the matter is more likely that the student only truly learned 20% of what they should have?

I come back to my example of the widget on this non-existent camera as a test question to determine your knowledge of taking a proper shot or as a question on a standardized test for seeking employment. Is it any wonder that the university graduate or the newly hired employee is seen as not having any real-world experience or knowledge to do the basic camera operator? Now multiply this trend for every single area of employment..... Is it any wonder why economists could not prevent the last economic downturn and that even today, most are scratching their heads in trying to figure out how it happened in the first place?

If you are in a car and you put the car on neutral and the car is coasting down a hill, you congratulate yourself in making a car move without expending any gas (this is capitalism of the 19th and 20th century).... now suddenly, you notice that your car is heading for a shallow lake and that your feet are getting wet..... how do you solve it? You turn the car engine on and move forward faster? Oh the engine is flooded.... not to worry, our brilliant minds have found a way to start the car despite the rising water of the lake that we are still sinking/sliding into. Congratulations to the human ingenuity, but wait a second, the driver decides that he needs to move forward because he sees the shore on the opposite end of the lake. This seems sensible because every so called expert reason that moving forward is good, and seeing the shore proves that it is an attainable goal and they all use jargon to explain and convince the driver that his initial destination is correct. (the driver seems to have been given the authority to throw out of the car anyone he feels is a burden to his driving)...

The true thinker, who is not impressed with jargons, trivial knowledge of nonsense or self-important drivers suggests that perhaps putting the car in reverse may be the better solution because the shore behind is much closer, we don't know how much deeper the car may still sink and perhaps we could temporarily exit the vehicle to push and pull it out of its current predicament. The true thinker is thrown out of the vehicle for being so negative and not helping to solve the problem with the popular but wrong direction that the pseudo-intellectuals with A+ PhD degrees and the drivers all seem to agree upon.

And that is why it is so easy to cheat on tests. The test givers can't recognize the intelligence that the test is supposed to determine and the tests themselves or the required written projects themselves focus on trivialities and jargon, both of which are extremely easy to fake.

The A+ mark does not indicate intelligence or knowledge. Positions or titles do not determine genuine capability. When the lunatics have taken over the asylum, how does one find a true physician?

Standardized Tests

One of the most foolish ways to test one's knowledge or intelligence is through standardized tests. These tests have the underlying assumption that we all view things identically and ignore the fact that the inventor of the questions may himself have flawed or inaccurate information. Just remember how Einstein himself was considered a failure in grade school and his own peers in the realm of physics refused to publish him. Over the years some modifications have been introduced in the tests to make it less ridiculous.

When it comes to simple questions like "what is 2+2", the answers are not ambiguous. I have heard though, that even in advanced math, 1+1 is not always equal to 2 but I have not personally studied advanced math so I will continue with my grade school assumptions that 1+1=2. But I have studied other knowledge areas in university and some of these areas have ideas of thoughts that sometime contradict other ideas of thoughts and each position argue their points well. There is "proof" that one should punish a criminal because he is responsible for his actions; alternatively, there is also "proof" that one should rehabilitate a criminal because society has not educated this individual properly enough and that society must pay the price to re-educate the criminal. So it comes down to a matter of a "belief" system to determine which side of the equation that you will fall on.

The problem comes when someone creates a standardized test which asks how best to solve the criminal problem. Naturally, no one ever asks a question so directly in these tests, the questions are much more subtle, but if your "belief" system is against that of the one who created the questions and proper answers, then you failed those questions and you get a lower score on your permanent record. If you are applying for a prestigious career, these tests guarantee that everyone will think the same and be on the same page. Independent thought will not be allowed and when the ship sinks, no one on board will know what happened or why because everyone was blinded in the same way. Government bureaucracies would also function in a similar blindness because everyone in the corrections department would have been tested with the assumption that the best answer was "rehabilitation is best" while everyone in the law enforcement department would have been tested on the assumption that the best answer was "punish the criminal"..... This makes for an interesting schizophrenic bureaucratic department that the political leader must somehow manage especially if the political leader has a third viewpoint on how criminals should be treated.

In the early 20th century, IQ tests were performed on newly arrived immigrants to the US. It was discovered that the average score of intelligence for the immigrant was always 20 or so points lower than that of the average US citizen. Later they discovered that most of the questions were culture specific and that the newly arrived immigrant would have had no idea what the proper answer was. Imagine that the question is "What is the Big Apple" and the immigrant mentions something about a tree with a boost in special fertilizer..... WRONG says the one who corrects the answers (if the one who corrects these tests has no human judgment in determining what may be valid or not, then perhaps he should be in another field of employment).... Everyone knows that the "Big Apple" is a reference to New York and that is why the US citizen had higher marks in these IQ tests.

Today we have come a long way in avoiding such pitfalls and our tests are a bit more sophisticated and we allow less cultural references to be used as a way to test IQ. But the cultural reference mistakes have been replaced with ambiguous answers based upon what the tester believes to be correct when other answers are also debated in intellectual forums as correct. The one who takes the test must determine what the tester believes and then answer accordingly, this does not demonstrate intelligence or knowledge but rather the willingness to adapt to what the tester wants. And if these tests are only to determine who is willing to be a "yes-man", then the tests should be called as such.... The "Willingness to Submit to the Philosophical Idea of the Day" test. Naturally, the true thinker will be excluded from this exercise and everyone who passes this test will all run in the same direction without understanding why they are running nor where they are going..... and when the cliff approaches, most won't recognize it until they have run off of it while the leaders who led us off the cliff will cry out in glee that we are now flying high!

So when 2 or more answers on a multiple choice are equally valid dependent upon the school of thought you ascribe to, the only way to succeed is to understand the philosophy behind the tester, and while you figure that out and succeed in passing the test, you have not demonstrated superior intellect or superior knowledge, instead you have guessed the intention of the tester and acted like a proper puppet. The tests claim that they are looking for people with superior intellect and superior knowledge but they penalize them if they answer the test truthfully, instead they are really looking for clones who will all think and speak alike in a hive mind.

Questions I have seen in some tests that either test intelligence or knowledge in a specified field of study.... (note, these are metaphorical approximations with exaggerated foolishness to make a point because the questions are more subtle and the reader would have to have specialized knowledge in a very specific field to see the flaw in the question and that the average person would probably not see the problem).....

Q1-Who won the Stanley Cup in 1983? (Nice knowledge of trivia but how is it relevant for determining knowledge of sociology or determining that a prospective student has sufficient IQ to be accepted at university?)

Q2-Finish the series 1, 2, 3.... Choice of answers include A)4 B)5 C)6 D)10.....
you choose A) because each number increases by one integer.
you choose B) because each succeeding number is the sum of the previous 2 numbers.... 1+2=3, 2+3=5.
you choose C) because each succeeding number is the sum of all previous numbers put together.... 1+2=3, 1+2+3=6.
you choose D) because this a number system that only has 4 digits and is not a decimal based system..... 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 30, 31, 32, 33, 100 (and these were numbers from 1 to 16)

Q3-Finish the series 1, 2, 3, 5.... Choice of answers include A)7 B)8 C)14 D)13...
you choose A) because these are prime numbers in sequence.
you choose B) because you add the sum of the previous two numbers....
you choose C) because you multiply the previous 2 numbers and subtract the first digit in the sequence.
you choose D) because you multiply the previous 2 numbers and subtract the digit which is located 2 positions away from the answer.

Q4-What is the widget found underneath an outdated camera that is no longer manufactured and no one will ever use again? (nice piece of trivia, but how does knowing this trivia determine my knowledge of how to take a great camera shot?)

Q5-When was gunpowder first used? (in a European context or Chinese?)

Q6-What year was the new World discovered? (considering the Viking explorers who did not record their time accurately? or the politically recognized official answer?..... not to mention the theory of the Bering Strait crossover from Asia?)

Q7-Who used the first computer? (did the test giver read the latest archaeological journal of the discovery of a mechanical computer found on a sunken Roman ship or is the test giver merely using last year's information?)

For a fictional example of standardized tests and how it won't recognize someone truly brilliant but only find the above average within a pool of average people, I recommend the book: "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. The protagonist does a standardized test which he only answers one question in a period of 2 hours and gets it "wrong".... and yet, had someone with proper judgment on interpreting results of tests been correcting the test, he would have immediately seen the brilliant nature of the protagonist....

So the conclusion and the point of this rant against standardized tests is that you won't find the true thinker with this tool and you will only get identical thinking clones who don't know how to think outside of the box.

A New Position is Needed

Well our sorcerers of a thousand years ago have been replaced by our economists with about the same rate of success when advising our rulers. Our astrologers have been replaced by our statisticians, and again the success in predicting the future are comparable. One can wonder if the Economist is just the more acceptable word for Sorcerer in a supposed age of scientific rationality, and we can wonder about Astrologers vs Statisticians as well.

The Economist and the Sorcerer has an internal logic to its "worldview", both have an unknown reliance on some unnamed outside force with "almost" mystical powers. The invisible hand of the market to regulate things mysteriously back to its proper rational order? Sounds mystical doesn't it? As I mentioned, the internal logic is sensible. As long as the initial premises, the underlying assumption of how things are supposed to work, are completely true, then the logic follows to a proper conclusion. The study of economics are based upon worldview assumptions of "supposed" philosophical thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries. I say "supposed" because they begin the first words of their masterpieces with assumptions as if everyone agreed with them as if they were fact when in reality, 3 seconds of thinking demonstrate this assumption to be mere wishful thinking. Imagine Thrasymachus from Plato's Republic were to write a book about Economy and then our entire society bases its foundation upon those ideas, well you don't have to really imagine very hard because this is pretty much the state we are in today.

The Astrologer and the Statistician both use mathematical calculations to chart out data and as long as the data is solid, the interpretation sound, we can predict events with a fair accuracy. Well for astrology, the planets and orbits show their influence upon our events, while the statistical method uses such things as questions asked of the fickle human mind. Today your answer would be X, while tomorrow you decide to answer Y because you had a bad lunch and you did not sleep well or whatever other excuse. You don't quite understand what the question means, so you answer based upon your understanding of the question, a week later after having done a few extra crossword puzzles, your understanding of grammar improves and you are faced with the same question and you answer differently, not because your opinion has changed but because you understand the question differently. As much as the Statistician tries to prevent such misinterpretations by offering unambiguous questions, they aren't linguists so they have no idea how difficult that particular task may actually be. Nevermind that the ones asking the questions are paid by this current capitalist system where the speed of asking questions is more important than the quality, we have many who are tempted to cut corners to get that extra pay bonus for having filled out more questionnaires. Did the respondent answer "what" or did he answer "one", next question please.

Looking at previous blogs, I also mentioned how sometimes the wrong questions are asked. Assumptions are made to determine what a given problem is and the questionnaire does not allow for a person's personal comments because personal comments can't be quantified and then tabulated mathematically for a given result. "The medium is the message" said a Canadian scholar Marshal McLuhan, he was talking about television specifically but I suggest that the actual questionnaire for the statistician also is its own message and people will respond to that message instead of answering what would have been the true thought. Look at the questionnaire as a sort of prism that you are forced to look through to get your data of the world and exclude all other prisms and only focus on this one prism. What happens if this prism allows you to see like a binocular? Useful for very specific inquiries but useless if you want to navigate inside a house or to work on a car engine.

Why criticize these two disciplines? Am I being too harsh? Well the over-reliance upon these flawed disciplines and the pretense that their flaws are either non-existent or downplaying their severity encourages me to blast at them. Especially since our governing rulers consult the Economist and the Statistician exclusively to make decisions, not that they always listen to their advice good or bad, but the "Thinker's" voice is not heard. The Thinker who would take his time to consult and contemplate a problem. We have had Thinkers in the past, they are usually the ones who contemplate something, ignore the statistics of the day or the scientific beliefs of the day and make an outlandish claim in their area of expertise and then let the non-thinkers work among themselves the "proof" and the statistics to arrive at the same conclusion as the "Thinker". Einstein is one who decided to "think", and in his area of expertise, he was more correct than the scientists of his day.

Now I would not recommend a "Physicist" to give advice to government officials on health or education, even if this "Physicist" is a thinker because this expert would be more suited in the laboratory than in making laws to improve healthcare access or how to determine which classics should be chosen to read for a 12 year old student.... Although this hypothetical "Physicist" would probably still do a better job in coming up with solutions than the "Economists" and the "Statisticians" of our society, it is better to have a "Thinker". The "Physicist" has his knowledge based upon very specific areas and the proper "Thinker" should be more of a generalist who has a bird's eye view of many disciplines of knowledge (which can also include economics, but we are way over-saturated by that tool-set that we can start swinging the pendulum away from them.... not necessarily too far away, the tools can be interesting exercises to see things differently and offer an extra perspective). Don't throw out the binocular just because it has been useless inside a house because you may enter a building like a stadium where the binoculars can still have a usefulness (as long as you then inspect close up with your own eyes as to not over-rely on a tool).

How do we define the "Thinker" and where do we find one? Well the thinker would be a true philosopher, not necessarily someone who has studied philosophy. Those who study philosophy are more like sports commentators than genuine athletes. They know the game, but they have never played, or if they have played, they would be incompetent compared to the real athlete. Some of our 18th century and 19th century "Philosophers" are closer to commentators than genuine athletes. But it is understandable that the layman can't recognize the difference because the commentator speaks a good show and can outplay the layman. Of course a genuine "Thinker" may have studied philosophy, but the criteria of selection should never be based upon the degree acquired. One does not look for a decent steak by looking at the pretty packaging but rather at the steak itself.

The main point of this blog is not how to find the proper "Thinker", this can be the subject of a future blog, no the point is that we should invent the position of the "Thinker" to be consulted by whoever ends up consulting "Economists" and "Statisticians". If a corporation can afford to consult "Sorcerers" and "Astrologers" then they should at the very least include the "Philosopher" on the payroll. Governments have an even higher necessity to include the "Philosopher". Of course, it becomes self-destructive if the rulers never listen to the advice of the "Thinker", but again, that is a subject for another blog.

So far our society reacts to new problems that seem to surprise the current experts who advise our rulers, so lets hire alternative experts who don't spend their time reacting to supposedly surprising problems but rather contemplate and avoid these easily foreseeable problems which seem to surprise many people. For example: if you have 4 people do a 10 person job, of course it will fall apart and disaster will strike. If a person gets promoted for speed rather than quality, of course we will have poor service in our industries. If a person gets a bonus for sales rather than having a relationship with a customer, of course lies will be told to get the sale.

The "Economist" and the "Statistician" can never understand why disaster strikes in the above examples because they assume in the first that the 4 people will work in such a way to achieve what the 10 had previously done through extra efforts and better posturing and 30 second less on a coffee break and other nonsensical calculations instead of accepting that a human being has defined parameters that you don't play with them unless you are ready to face disaster. Why are we surprised that absenteeism is so prevalent? The assumption is also that the increase in speed means that there is no reduction in quality. The next time you go to the grocery store and do at least $100 in purchases, go back with your receipt and do a price check on each of your items on your receipt, you will be surprised at how many items were mis-priced.... not because the grocery store wants to deceive you but because they are more concerned in speed than getting the job done right that corners are cut and eventually they will get to it.... but because of this, you lost out on the service of accurate pricing. You are told at a hardware store that the barbecue you are buying in December at a reduced price has the option you were looking for! Yay, then May comes and you try out your new barbecue and oops, this model doesn't have the feature you were looking for. (Do you really believe that that store's competitor won't have the same type of employee who lies?) Again, the "Economist" and the "Statistician" don't record these discrepancies or how the anger it produces makes you distrust the merchant who has "stolen" from you.

Previous blogs also show actual situations that have happened in the news which would be the direct result of not thinking for 2 seconds and relying upon a "reactionary" solution to when problems appear and always surprised when the easily preventable problems actually happen.

So to conclude, a new position should be available to advise leaders and this new position should have at the very least the same credibility as what "Economists" and "Statisticians" have in our current society.... even though once implemented and actually following the advice, they will show very quickly how they deserve much more credibility. Now the trick is to find genuine "Thinkers".

PASS the Buck

Well the main topic on the news is the flu shots (where are we at now, the Tulip Flu, the Wheat Flu, the Trout Flu, the Swine Flu or the Avian Flu?) Ah, no matter, it all sounds the same to the person on the street. Yesterday, it was SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), a few hours ago it was the Avian Flu and minutes ago it became the Swine Flu or as it is now supposed to be called: A H1N1 Flu..... All of this sounds technical and dangerous and people are unaware of the true impact of what all of this means, including the experts themselves. This has caused apathy in the entire system. So I want to talk about this general apathy and how we can solve it.

Lets follow the example of our experts and find a catchy name to make our exposé sound intellectual: Political Apathy Situation Solution (PASS). Now lets look at the phenomena of the flu shots and how people have reacted to it, and how the experts reacted to this. We hear about this flu being a problem sometime in April 2009. Our political experts urge the public to get vaccinated. Most resist, they are not that concerned about the virus and many health professionals give out conflicting information. Our government officials seem surprised at the public response and are seen on television scratching their collective heads. "Why won't the population believe us that this is a serious problem?"

Well here's a story: in the 1950s, we are told to go get some medical shots to prevent whatever illness of the day. The population rushes out to get the shots because science is never wrong. Twenty or so years later: "Ooops?!? Science had not considered this or that and many people seem to have developed extra complications to their health, sorry about that dear public at large." During the 1970s, the medical experts and the political leaders throw out some other alarm about some other disease and the necessity to get some kind of shot as well, the public dutifully obeys and gets their shots. Twenty or so years later: "Ooops !?! Science seems to not have predicted these negative secondary results, sorry about that."

Today, we have experts who wonder about if this whole mess is just shouting fire when there is only the smoke of an extinguished match, others wonder about the effectiveness of a vaccine in the first place when the flu can potentially evolve into a different strain altogether which then potentially makes the vaccine user that much more at risk compared to others.... and then others wondering about if all of this is only to line the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies by creating a phony danger. Our politicians tell us that they have been preparing for the worse since June or so and that we must all get vaccinated, science is on their side. "Why won't the public believe us?" Well the public doesn't trust you.... Haven't you figured that out yet?

Fictional TV series and fictional movies portray the government bureaucrat as an incompetent fool who is there for his own personal interests and not for the interest of the public at large.... Sure you have the occasional hero who selflessly protects the public at large, but the hero faces 2 enemies, the bad guy who did an awful thing and the foolish bureaucratic system that prevents a decent human from doing the right thing at the right time. We all watch this and identify with the situation.... all of us. Then the news shows us yet one more example of a company or a government bureaucracy that did the wrong thing by following the existing bureaucratic rules. My own previous blogs demonstrate this.

Why is it such a surprise that we have such apathy for the political leader or the bureaucratic process? How do they solve this? Well they pay millions of dollars to statisticians to ask us questions to see what the problem is..... The flaw is that the statistician or the social scientist who will use the statistical process don't know what questions to ask. Everyone assumes that the system, the bureaucracy works and the questions reflect this unproven assumption, so no solution can ever be attained through the bureaucratic methodology of statistics..... and since we are in a capitalist society where we must produce and produce and do this quickly, no one takes the time to think for a mere 3 seconds (contemplation) and see the problem clear as day..... no instead the statistician must produce a questionnaire in half a second and use the remaining half to ask the population and then spend one second to analyze the obviously flawed results.... Well we saved one second in comparison to the thinker who just want to "waste" his time contemplating. Then we have the politicians shrugging their shoulders as to why a population is so unresponsive to the "science" of today.

Then tragedy strikes. A young teen dies from the virus. Was science right this time around? Were the politicians genuine in their warnings? Well, the public now mobilizes to get themselves vaccinated as quickly as possible. Scientists don't really inform us that this death is in the category of extreme rarity in odds because now the population has decided to believe in the severity of the problem that the government has mentioned all along..... But guess what..... this same government who warned us of the dangers, who says that they have been preparing since June of this year, the same government who scratches their heads as to why they are not trusted..... well they don't seem to be very prepared. The news reports how there is a shortage of vaccines, how people who are not on the list of priority get vaccinated before others who have priority (a sports team, inmates from a prison to name but 2). Children who do have priority get vaccinated but their parents do not which means that they will have to come back in a few weeks to get their turn. The lineups are huge and some people wait up to 8 hours before being told that they have run out of vaccines on that day..... And then the governing leaders have the gall to wonder why we don't trust them?

Again the PASS (Political Apathy Situation Solution) is simple: think about things, don't react to them..... the whole vaccine situation for the A H1N1 flu of the year 2009 should have been thought about since 1950. If a situation occurs where an entire population needs to be vaccinated, then these are the steps to take... and every 5 years or so, we re-evaluate the procedures and update them as technology or other factors change. We do this so that we don't have a few experts meet in June in reaction to a danger and then try to implement a solution under threat of time and then discover how the system is not working.... well duh! Most are hired to blindly follow contradictory rules and then the leaders who implement these rules are surprised at the results. If you react to a danger, its already too late and you will have to accept the results of your reflexes versus the incoming danger. If you contemplate how to use your reflexes and you make the practice of implementing this on fictional dangers, then as soon as a legitimate danger appears, you are much better prepared. But capitalism doesn't like to invest in thinking, they would rather make profit and react when the water of the sinking ship has reached their cabin.

This brings me to another point, the opposition reacts strongly and claims that the current leader of whatever department should resign..... Why? Would they do any better under this current system? If you have flawed tools, how can you be expected to perform your task as you could? This then brings me to VACUUM thinking (Voter Apathy Considered Using Uncommon Methodologies ie. thinking). See the voter is not apathetic in the politician itself. Candidate A wants to put 25 cents out $100 in the blue cup while Candidate B wants to attribute that same 25 cents in the red cup. Why the hell should the voter care about the 25 cents in the red or blue cup? The system itself is flawed and neither candidate is willing to do anything about it.... So the voter becomes apathetic and either does not vote altogether or chooses quickly to get the entire exercise over and done with. Find me Candidate C who will tell the voter the truth, to function properly we need $400 and we will ignore this $100 constraint we have fictionalized for ourselves and ignore 25 cents for blue or red cups and get the $400 we need and transform society..... and if any rule should prevent us from doing what is right, then we change the rules. Laws are there to serve Justice, if they don't do their job, we change them accordingly. Why do you think Barack Obama from the US had so many people enamoured with him? The slogan "Yes We Can" indicated that he was someone who was actually willing to do what needed to be done..... unfortunately, it did not pan out. Barack suffers from the same problems that Candidate A and B have: flawed bureaucratic tools.

I am all for using tools when they serve my purpose, but when the tools become the master and that I must comply myself to them to function, then I can not do the job as I originally envisioned it and must submit myself to how the tool evolves my problem into a supposed solution..... and history shows that these solutions are illusions and create many more problems. So replace the worker and the new worker will have the same problem with an inadequate tool. Replace the tool and allow the human back in control of his destiny. This will prevent political apathy and also prevent our current crises from becoming the norm. So if the government gives a health warning, it will be legitimate and people will trust it to be legitimate and it will be implemented professionally.

Is the current health warning legitimate? History will answer that like it showed how legitimate the previous health problems were in the 20th century. Do people trust the current government? Only after the media informed us of the tragedy of a teen's death did people run to the vaccination centres, so figure that one out. Are the current vaccines being distributed professionally? The experts reacted to a problem instead of contemplating how to act if a problem should ever occur with the obvious consequences. Experts put faith on dead bureaucratic principles that stifle imagination or initiative and were surprised at how underlings react when no explicit instructions are available when unusual circumstances arise.

So I humoristically say, PASS the buck and do some VACUUM thinking!