JeffMacArthur.com

mindCandy: Politics and Why Left vs. Right Doesn’t Cut It

Posted on 20. Dec, 2005 in All, Blog, mindCandy | 4 Comments

I’m a bit of a political junkie, and I find it exceedingly frustrating that our culture generally tries to categorize individual politics using a one-dimensional Left vs. Right spectrum. This concept is inherently flawed as it cannot easily reconcile Social vs. Economic beliefs (just the fact that there are two primary elements with two extremes necessitates at least a two dimenstional map of political beliefs). For instance, someone who is right wing economically generally believes in free enterprise and free markets – typically this means limiting of government control of the economy. If we look at this socially, the same “right wing” person would believe in government intervention to enforce traditional social values and norms. But what about someone (like me) who believes in limited government intervention both economically AND socially (sometimes described as Libertarian)? They have no real place in this spectrum! In fact, they are either lumped in with people whose social views they don’t support or people who’s economic views they don’t support.

Thankfully there are other more accurate means to interpret political beliefs graphically. One of my favourites is the Political Triangle (see Figure 31.2 about half way down the page). This (to simplify things a lot – read the website for a much deeper and more accurate discussion), takes the Left vs. Right and Social vs. Economical dimensions and combines them to create the following extremes:

• Libertarian: socially left and economically right (i.e. little government intervention)
• Totalitarian: socially right and economically left (i.e. government intervention on both fronts – think communism)
• Authoritarian: socially right and economically right (i.e. government intervention in social areas but not economic ones)

Again, keep in mind that I’ve defined these extremes of the Political Triangle using the classical Left vs. Right definitions, which is not completely accurate but will do for this discussion (you’ll note that there’s no obvious mapping for socially left and economically left – this would be a strange mix of government control of economy but not social elements, which seems like it would be a rare occurrence – anyone have any examples?).

There are plenty of other ways to map out political beliefs too. The Nolan Chart completes our two-dimensional map from above by using the axes of Personal vs. Economic Freedom (essentially what I’ve been referring to as Social vs. Economic freedom). The Pournelle Chart is also two-dimensional, but maps Statism (belief in the state and centralized government) vs. Rationalism (the belief that all problems in society have rational solutions). Additional methods (and some great links and pics) are available on the Wikipedia Political Spectrum webpage.

A couple of musings: Canada and the US are very close in a great number of ways, however there are some important differences that are interesting in terms of the whole Right vs. Left spectrum (I’m arguing this along that single spectrum because it more easily allows people to identify what I’m talking about, given that it’s the common terminology used in our society). First of all, Canada’s Conservative Party, although on the right of the spectrum, are far to the left of the Republican Party in the States (probably more akin to conservative Democrats). Secondly, in the States the media seems to be controlled mostly by the “Right” (think Fox News), whereas in Canada the media is controlled more by the “Left” (think CBC). Obviously Canada is a more “socialist” country than the US (for better or for worse ), and I think the above two notes are demonstrative of this (BTW, the book “How the Scots Invented the Modern World” has some interesting notions about how many of the differences between our two countries came about because of where Scots from specific regions in Scotland settled when they came to the New World – a great book for the Scottish and non-Scottish alike).

If you want to take a test to see where you stand, give the Political Compass a try. It just takes a few minutes and it gives lots of great information before and after the test (but beware of double negatives in this – bad survey development).

mindCandy: Timeframes and Decision Making

Posted on 30. Nov, 2005 in All, Blog, mindCandy | 4 Comments

It’s incredible to think about how much decision-making changes depending on the timeframe under consideration. What I mean by this is that a good decision in the short term can be a really bad decision in the long term (and vice-versa). Take global warming issues: in the short term (even in the medium term) the benefits that come from use of fossil fuels, etc. that harm the ozone layer far outweigh their harm. Yet in the long term, it’s a very big (potentially civilization-ending) problem. So depending on the timeframe you’re considering (e.g. if you’re a government that is probably only really worried about its 4-year term), the best decision changes dramatically.

But we don’t need to be talking about years for the effect of timeframe on a decision to become apparent. As an extreme example: the few seconds of rush you’d get by jumping off a building is probably pretty intense – good view, wind in your hair, exhilarating speed – but moments later jumping off that building will reveal itself to be a very bad idea . There’s no end to these: a few puffs of crank is likely a pretty good feeling if you isolate it from the subsequent down (and extraordinary negatives involved with addiction); zooming along at twice the speed limit on the highway is fun until you get pulled over by the cops or crash. Hmmm, it does seem that most examples that come to mind end up being short-term good and long-term bad, which explains a lot about how we live our lives.

So how are we to make decisions? In essence: what’s the right timeframe? Most people, I would expect, have made decisions in their early years that are do not take into account their effect in later life (e.g. smokers, people who have unsafe sex, etc.), and many make the argument that they want to live their life to the fullest while they are able to enjoy life most. These arguments don’t tend to hold a lot of weight with me, as I am a firm believer in the fact that you can stay and feel young well beyond your 20s, 30s, and 40s. And there is no lack of evidence for this – I know my parents and many people their age and older who are far more energetic and fun than people half their age who simply do not seem to want to live their lives to the fullest. As my Dad’s doctor once said: “The human body is the only machine in the world that gets better the more you use it”.

Like most things, these considerations involve balancing a range of factors, which is not always easy. I think the simplest way to address this is to make sure to balance the harm you might do by doing good as well. If you’re really not willing to give up your Hummer then please make sure you are conserving water and energy in other ways; if you’re not willing to give up your drug of choice (from food to booze and beyond) then spend some time outside and get some exercise. We can’t always make the right decisions, but we can try to moderate their negative effects in a variety of ways. So when you inevitably misjudge the proper timeframe for considering a decision, think about what you can do to mitigate its effects in other ways. The only thing you’ll really know is that time will tell whether you’ve made the right decision .

mindCandy: Date formatting and the MacArthur Code :-)

Posted on 18. Nov, 2005 in All, Blog, mindCandy | 4 Comments

When I was doing my taxes this year, I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of a standard formats for dates. Receipts I had gathered from across Canada and the US alternately had dates formatted as…

- month/day/year (this makes most sense to me as it is how we read dates aloud in english, e.g. “June 20th, 2004″. This seems to be most standard in the US);
- day/month/year (I can understand this in french for the same reason as above, e.g. “20 Juin 2004″. However, this also seems to be standard in Britain);
- year/month/day (okay, not so sure about this one – I guess it at least goes from the biggest category, i.e. year, to the smallest, i.e. day, letting you get increasingly specific as you read it. I’ve seen it in Canada, but it’s used in South Africa as a standard).

So what the heck am I supposed to know about a date written as 03/04/02? Is that March 4th, 2002? Or is it April 3rd, 2002? Or maybe April 2nd, 2003? There is something wrong here!

As comfortable as I might feel having dates abbreviated as they are spoken in the language (e.g. 03/04/02 meaning “March 4th, 2002″, as that is how it would be spoken in english – let’s face it, how obnoxious are you to actually say “the 4th of March, 2002″ ), I think the biggest criteria is necessarily that the abbreviation be unambiguous.

To this end, I can live with 20JUN04 (or 20/Jun/04 or whatever) – this allows me to unambiguously decipher what that date is, so that’s good. However (I’ve mentioned I’m neurotic, right?), that makes us use an extra character to describe the date! This not only interferes with my love of conciseness (concision?), it also stops us from being able to categorize all dates, months, years, and more (see below) with two characters. Well, have no fear, I am here to bring you a solution to this great problem of our time – one that will unambiguously allow us to decipher date abbreviations without the horror of that extra character – I bring you – the MacArthur Code (cue the trumpets ):

January = JA
February = FB
March = MR
April = AP
May = MY
June = JE
July = JL
August = AG
September = SP
October = OC
November = NV
December = DC

Now I know that some of you are going: “JE” for June – how’s that make sense? Well, as hooked on phonics as I am (and so “JN” would definitely be lovely for June in this respect), the key here is lack of ambiguity. “JN” could be June, sure, but it could also be January. “MA” could be May, but it could be March too. So, although I’m running with the phonetic abbreviations when I can, I must stay true to being unambiguous. Let me explain…

“JE” couldn’t be anything but June, as there is no “E” in January or July. Similarly with “JA” for January and “JL” for July. Now what other months start with the same letters? “MY” must be May, as there’s no “Y” in March, and “MR” must be March, as there’s no “R” in May. So you see, like all good design, this enables the user to figure out its function without having to resort to other instructions – the instructions are in fact built into the design and reinforced by our widespread cultural conventions (not to get off-track, but this is also one of the reasons why Apple is better than Microsoft).

A couple of paragraphs ago, I mentioned that there would be even more (that’s called “foreshadowing” ) and I did not lie. In addition to 2 character codes for every other aspect of time – for years, for months, for dates, for hours, for minutes, for seconds, we also have – the days of the week! (this time cue the tubas – those guys have a hard time getting work otherwise ):

Monday = MN
Tuesday = TE (no “E” in “Thursday”)
Wednesday = WD
Thursday = TH (no “H” in “Tuesday”)
Friday = FR
Saturday = ST (no “T” in “Sunday” – I’m going for a “T” instead of an “A” b/c most of the other days use their third letter/second consonant – gotta be as consistent as possible )
Sunday = SN (no “N” in “Saturday”)

Now go forth, my neurotic and space-obsessed brothers and sisters, and bring the MacArthur Code to the ambiguous, character-wasting masses – it is our obligation, nay, our destiny!

Posted: FR18NV05 (oh yeah, baby!)

PS: I know someone will bring up the fact that two characters for a year is not unambiguous, and you are right. However, in all practicality, I’m not talking about dates a hundred years ago – I’m talking about dates within our lifetimes. Go on and take your extra two character spaces for that if you really need them (trouble-maker!) – I’ve saved those two in my new month and day abbreviations anyway .

mindCandy: Animal Sleep

Posted on 10. Nov, 2005 in All, Blog, mindCandy | 3 Comments

Having spent some recent nights in downtown Manhattan, I got to thinking about sleep and how important it is for my, and other humans’, sanity (I’m also thinking of starting the Coalition Against Noise Pollution, but I’ll save that for another time – all praise the mighty earplug!).

All mammals and birds sleep, but we’re not sure whether all reptiles, insects, fish, and other creatures do. Generally, carnivores tend to sleep longer than herbivores. The rationale being that, after a large carnivore like a lion eats their freshly killed meal for the day, they have little reason to waste their newfound energy wandering around aimlessly – so they sleep. In the case of a lion, they sleep about 13.5 hours every day (a tiger is 15.8)! A giraffe, however, sleeps only 1.9 hours each day – partly because they must constantly “hunt” down their vegetarian fare and eat large quantities of it (unlike meat) to satiate themselves.

Now, chimpanzees, who have about 95% similar DNA to humans and are our closest “animal” relatives, sleep 9.7 hours a day. So why do we sleep only 8 on average? We should be more adept at getting our food (both vegetative and meaty) and so you’d think we’d sleep MORE than chimps. Well, I guess the concept doesn’t apply without also considering a host of other details about the species in question (I expect that the fact that we have to go to work for 9pm and yet they tend to put the good shows on TV so late has something to do with it nowadays ). BTW, a human infant sleeps about twice as much as a human adult each day, but I suspect they’re doing a lot of cranial and physical development in that time – not sure how the other animals’ progeny works into these number, but it’d be interesting to find out (probably has to do with growth rate, etc.). An elderly human might sleep only 5.5 hours on average.

Man’s best friend, the dog, sleeps 10.6 hours per day, proving conclusively that dogs aren’t as lazy as those slovenly cats, who sleep 12.1 hours per day. A platypus sleeps roughly 14 hours a day, much of it probably spent in deep reflection upon its uniqueness in the world , whereas pythons thankfully sleep for 3/4 of each day and I’d be into finding out how to make that closer to 4/4 for my peace of mind . Sleeping a whopping 83% of their lives, the brown bat comes in at the top of the list for most rested with just short of 20 hours sleep each day (actually, second in the list, because my old roommate Nick was not included in this calculation ). Oh, and generally, large animals tend to sleep LESS than small animals (there’s another dimension for ya) and, just ’cause it’s cool – dolphins can sleep when they’re moving.

I myself insist on a full 8 hours and basically sleep from 8 hours after I go to bed (or, more precisely, since I’m not the best sleeper – after I go to sleep), whenever that is on a given night. This has lead, constructively I think, to my never having pulled an all-nighter during university, believing and experiencing that a rested brain can create better answers than an exhausted brain can remember.

PS: Sorry for not posting yesterday – my exhausted brain forgot .

mindCandy: Humans and Dinosaurs and Wheels, Oh My!

Posted on 28. Oct, 2005 in All, Blog, mindCandy | No Comments

OK, it’s a little late and I’ve found myself somewhat obsessed mentally by a book I’ve just perused – so much so that I’ve decided I need another category for my thoughts on this blog .

A friend recently asked me when dinosaurs roamed the Earth vs. when humans were around (do not ask this question to a creationist ). I spat out “several hundred million years ago” and then noted that I really had no idea and that that seemed like an awfully long time ago. Well it turns out that the age of dinosaurs actually was 248-65 million years ago.

At the same time I was thinking, after watching HBO’s fantastic series “Rome”, how much alike we are to the people that lived in that period, several thousand years ago. Well this just aroused my curiosity even more and, with a bit of research, I discovered that early man existed from 3 million to 3000 BC – which is astonishing. Even 400,000 years ago, we were making tools, using fire, and gathering grains, berries, and nuts. Circa 60,000 BC, Neanderthal man was caring for the aged and including flowers in their burial rites. The last Ice Age was around 50,000 years ago, dogs were domesticated about 14,000 years ago (there’s a reason they are man’s best friend ), and, in 36,000 BC, Homo Sapiens reached the Americas from Asia.

It’s just astounding to think of the scale of time in all this. Here we are, with an average lifespan of roughly 75 years, and 186 generations ago (that’s a lot of “great-great-great”‘s), we were training dogs to be our friends! Incredible. The earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia were about 5000 BC and the first libraries in Egypt were about 2500 BC. Does it ever occur to you when you enter a library that these things have been around for over 4 millennia?

We have so much access to information nowadays, and the digital age has certainly accelerated our technological accomplishments greatly, but I think there are times when we need some perspective on where we are in history. I mean, the wheel was invented around 3480 BC by the Sumerians, who also invented writing around 3500 BC. The Egyptians were playing the harp in 2200 BC and the Gilgamesh epic was written by Sumer in 2000 BC. To put it simply, we’ve been doing a lot of “stuff” for an awfully long time . Funny to think that the concept of “zero” as a number was only “discovered” in India in 600 AD.

We go along in our lives with a lot of thought invested in the moment, and there’s nothing too wrong with that. But I think it might help us put some things in perspective when we realize we are where we are now after having thousands of years of fairly sophisticated civilization to build upon. If you’re thinking about next year as a long time away, you might want to consider that astronomers believe that universe itself is 13-20 billion (that’s 13,000-10,000 million to the Brits ) years old. So, if I were to have lived through all that, I would have lived 173,333,333 human lifetimes. Wow, and people feel old when they turn 40 .

PS: For reasons dating back quite some time, a “billion” in Britain retains its original meaning as a million million (hence the prefix “bi”), whereas in North America it means, of course, a thousand million. As the old joke goes, if you want to be a billionaire, best to live in the US than the UK, as it’s a thousand times easier .