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".