Month: May 2016

Why I think America is a great country

~ Hermann P
It’s eternally popular in the United States to think that we are the verge of ruin.

Newspapers love to talk about it.

Politicians love to whine about it.

People with agendas can point out one problem after another.

Today, like any other day, it looks like we are on the brink of disaster and there is no way that we can possibly get out.

These people are wrong.

And when people look to the past to try and work out what the future should look like they are being short sighted and foolish. We should not seek to make America tomorrow look anything like America yesterday.

Yes. The founding fathers were really smart and great visionaries, but they also made tons of mistakes that have been corrected over the past 200+ years. In fact, their greatest contribution was that they knew they didn’t know everything and so they created a flexible and self-improving system. They could not even imagine the world today and would be mesmerized by what was built on their foundation.

Let’s look at a short list of things that America has overcome:

1) Revolution. We were a series of colonies run by the biggest and most powerful empire in the world. A comparatively rag tag group of “terrorists” were able to defeat that large empire in a brutal and protracted military engagement.

2) Country Construction. Other countries have done this, but very few have then subsequently formed a country that DIDN’T duplicate what they had just fought against. We DIDN’T crown a king. We DIDN’T end up with 13 different countries that blow each other up every couple of decades.

3) Slavery. Remember how slavery used to be legal? Remember how people would say if we got rid of it the entire economy would collapse? Remember how we fought a brutal civil war over it? Well… our nation survived that and it was probably the most difficult test in our history.

4) Child Labor. Like slavery child labor has a rich history in the US. And this isn’t ancient history. The final nail in the coffin of child labor was pounded in 1938. Now I know that there are kids who work and I’m sure there’s child exploitation, but it’s largely stamped out and a federal crime.

5) Women’s Rights. Remember when women were basically the property of men? Remember when women couldn’t vote? Remember when the entire idea of sexual harassment didn’t even exist. Well, it wasn’t until 1920 that the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote… something that would be unthinkable back in 1776.

6) McCarthyism. Remember when our country was locking people up for what they think? Remember when millions of people ran around believing that someone they know could be a spy for the Russians and that if we didn’t lock them up our whole country would be destroyed? Well… we survived that too…. and I know people see parallels with terrorism today, but it’s not even close to the same level… at least not yet. But we’ll survive that too.

7) Civil Rights. Remember the good ol’ 50s when it was totally legal to force black people to go to the back of the bus, drink from separate fountains, go to separate schools and not go into certain stores? Well… that’s gone too. And while racism is still alive and well it’s a completely different picture today. I see parallels here with the transgender issues today and I’m confident that will go down the same path… I just wish it didn’t take so much time and cause so much pain.

8) Cold War. Now we’re getting to something I actually lived through :). Remember when the world was going to be blown up at any moment? Thousands of nukes were going to destroy everything and the US was one of the countries that would be responsible for that. Well… we survived that, at least so far. Unfortunately there are still thousands of nukes out there, but I don’t remember seeing too many headlines that a massive nuclear attack is going to blow us up.

I could go on and on. I missed a lot. 2 world wars, the great depression, presidential assassinations, impeachment, getting off the gold standard, stagflation. Choose your poison.

TODAY’S PROBLEMS ARE NOT THAT BAD

Today we have climate change, shrinking middle class, destruction of manufacturing, rise of China, immigration, growing national debt, crumbling infrastructure, and so on.

I would argue that few of these problems rates as highly as the ones above, but they all seem much worse today. And I would argue that we are well positioned to respond to them, work out solutions and come out a better country because of it. Further, I think in 100 years we will look back and think “what the hell were those idiots thinking?”

And that’s the point.

We MUST look forward and create new solutions, not look backwards and pine for the past. That’s what makes America a great country… optimism and belief in the future despite the current environment of adversity and negativity.

Also, we underestimate the “Platform of America.” By that I mean that if you travel around the world what you notice is things like a reasonably stable rule of law, freedom to say and think what you want, the right to representation, due process, access to clean food and water, low crime rates, low infant mortality, support for education and entrepreneurship are NOT free and broadly available. Any person living in America is inside of a incredibly powerful platform that each of us can build upon.

That’s rare in the world today, and much rarer in history.


WAIT A MINUTE, ARE YOU SOME KIND OF BLIND PATRIOT NATIONALIST

Not at all.

America does and has done many terrible things, especially when we operate abroad. One of my biggest problems with America is that the way we act and behave outside of our borders is often the exact opposite of what we do inside. I wish this wasn’t the case and I hope in the future we can really become an exporter of certain fundamental principals that I think need to be universally available and aren’t.

We need to stop supporting dictators. Period.
We need to stop financing the toppling of democratically elected leaders.
We need to be opponents of the things we wouldn’t tolerate internally both in action and in speech. And I don’t mean fighting stupid wars, I mean supporting international frameworks that will transform the world in a positive way.
We need to provide our citizens health care.
We need to improve our infrastructure.
..and on and on…

America is a deeply flawed country that needs to do lots of work. And we’ve also done many terrible things which we can never pay back.

I’m also not saying “America is the greatest nation on earth.” Those statements are silly because there is no great basis of comparison. There are many great nations in the world and we can all learn from each other… but I DO think that America has one of the best systems for doing exactly that.

I’m also not saying that America will always be the #1 super power or the richest country etc. The future is unknowable and countries tend to grow and shrink all the time. The UK was once the biggest empire in the world, as was Spain. No longer. But I’d argue that the UK is also still a great country and has been around for many centuries longer than the US.

DON’T LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT… FIX IT

I often hear people say or imply that if you don’t love America, you should leave.

That’s cowardly. You should try to fix it and the people that tell you to leave because you don’t like something here miss the entire power of the American platform.

It NEEDS criticism, conflict, constant questioning, strong opinions and, unfortunately, even occasional violence, in order to be shaped, molded and improved.

The last thing we want is a country of people that are content with the way things are and if anyone disagrees with them they are invited to shut up or leave.

That’s anti-American.

We should invite difference of opinion, stand up for our beliefs, argue, debate… anything short of violence and over time I believe we will come out with a better system… at least that has been the trend.

LOOK TO THE FUTURE
When I look at the past and present, makes me look to the future.

The solutions to today’s problems will not be found yesterday.

Slogans like “make America great again” are looking at things the wrong way around. There are things that ARE great today and things that aren’t. So lets figure out how to make the things that aren’t great better instead of trying to rewind to clock to some historical fantasy that didn’t and won’t exist.

Let’s build on this amazing platform and improve the world for ourselves, our children an our fellow humans of the earth.

If you disagree and think th

I don’t know about everyone else but I am optimistic that when I die the world will be a better place than it is today, and it’s up to all of us to make sure that happens.

Family Vacation in Northern Bali

~ Hermann P
Hi Guys.

As some of you may or may not know… my family and I are spending a month in Bali. We chose Bali for a number of reasons I won’t detail here, but we chose North Bali in particular for a few reasons:

1) It was supposedly not as touristy. We aren’t huge fans of large integrated resorts, drunken tourists and being accosted by people selling junk every 5 minutes.

2) Cheaper. As luck would have it (1) means that you will spend less money.

3) More “real.” My personal opinion is that if you are visiting a foreign country and then go out of your way to make sure it resembles your home country as much as possible… you’re doing it wrong :). Again. Personal opinion. You can take your vacation however you like.

GETTING HERE

Getting here was both easy and hard. For one thing, we are combining vacation with moving, which means that we have 10 boxes and suitcase with us. So we have to consider that with travel arrangements.

The flight from Hong Kong to Denpasar, Bali was uneventful and reasonably short (5 hours). Ok… short for people who are used to 14 hour trans-pacific flights.

Once we got here, we got our bags, met our drivers (one for us, one for our bags) and began the 3.5 hour commute to the house we rented. I want to point out that it’s a 3.5 hour drive and it’s 70 km so that gives you a sense of the kind of road quality and traffic you encounter driving around here :).

Both kids threw up a couple of times and there were points in the drive where we were thinking “what the hell did we do here?”

Once we got to the town we are staying in, the roads got better but it turned out the driver didn’t know EXACTLY where the house was. I had it on GPS (coverage here is amazingly good) and so we were able to find it. Here’s a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what the road looks like.




The second image is the narrow dirt road that leads to the parking for the house. When it’s 10PM it’s quite a bit more rickety and gives you that “there’s no way in hell this is the right place” feeling.
Well, it was the right place.
We got in, got settled, cleaned up some puke and went to bed.




EXPERIENCE SO FAR
Ok. So the drive was a bit rough, but other than that things have been great.
Here’s a panoramic shot from the back yard.
It’s pretty breathtaking.
There are a few negative points.
1. Humans think the world is their personal garbage can.
Because of the increase in population/tourism and the challenges of investing in infrastructure, the beaches have tons of garbage on them. Of course fancy houses for tourists have people who clean the beaches for you, but you can look 100 feet down the beach and see what the average Balinese person sees. The contrast is striking, and unsettling. Diapers, plastic bottles, potato chip bags… people are huge trash generators.

2. There is no “quick trip” to … fill in the blank.
Leaving the area is at least a 20 minute drive. Period. Walking is pretty much out of the question because it’s at least a 1 mile walk just to get to the main road, it’s really hot and the you’re walking through slightly tamed jungle. That means any trip requires calling a driver in advance and taking at least an hour. Needless to say, we haven’t done many :). It’s not uncommon to see a family of 4 with groceries on a moped… and usually the kids don’t have helmets. You do what you gotta do.
3. People are poor.
Not really a negative per se… but unlike fancy integrated resorts with giant walls that keep the “riff raff locals” out, we are right next to the locals and so it’s very obvious how different the standard of living is.


BALI FOR THE KIDS

For the kids, of course, none of this matters at all. We have a really nice woman named Ayu who takes care of cooking and cleaning. I enjoy doing dishes and cleaning up so I think her work load is pretty light. I get the feeling that seeing me wash dishes is a bit odd for her… but that’s ok.
She has 3 girls: 2, 5 and 7 and they have now come over almost every day to play with Lily. Despite Lily not speaking Bahasa (or any native language) and her kids not really speaking English… they somehow have no problem playing together for hours and have become close friends very quickly. Lily is very sad when they go and asks every morning when they will come back.
They build sand structures for hours, play with toys, run around the yard, look at the bugs and so on. I think we can learn a lot by watching children interact. Lily just immersed herself immediately and wasn’t troubled by any of the differences…except maybe food, but that’s kind of typical for young kids anyway.
For Alex it’s a bit different because he’s still so young (under 2). Mostly he runs around naked and goes in the pool. He DID jump into the pool on the first night which gave us a fright and him a healthy respect for deeper water. Since then he hasn’t fallen in or tried to jump… so I guess that worked :). From what I can tell he’s having a blast.
LOCAL SHOPPING

We have gone grocery shopping twice. The first time to get basics and to get a sense of things and the second to stock up more deeply. The interesting experience was the local market. Here’s a few pictures:





















































Now I have to say… this was a REAL local market. By that I mean it was a “why on earth is the white guy shopping here” kind of place. Some of the smells were powerful, but there was a huge selection of fruit, veggies, fish, etc. and we were able to load up on stuff for a reasonable price. I have no idea if we were getting “ripped off” but if we were, it was only in relative terms and I have no problem contributing to the local economy.
I was very thankful that Ayu came with us and could show us where to go and what to look for. My wife is also incredibly good at picking out fish, fruits and vegetables and has no problem getting her hands dirty. It was an awesome experience and I think it would have been harder to get if we had stayed in a more touristy area.


UNEXPECTED OBSERVATIONS

On the 3rd point above. EVERYONE we’ve run into is super friendly and doesn’t really seem to care about the obvious wealth disparity… at least not yet. I’m sure there are people who are annoyed that their once pristine and open beaches are now dotted with big houses rented to foreigners, but I haven’t felt any of this. Also, there are almost NO people trying to sell you stuff here… and when they do, it might actually be worth buying. No $5 made in China Buddha statues, etc. We did buy some peanuts and there’s an old woman selling hand made wrist bands every morning.
It’s mostly fisherman and their families trying to scape together a living.
I did talk to a guy who has lived here for many years and he related that while some things are better (health care, roads, utilities) the cost for the average person here has gone up much faster than the wages (sound familiar) and he’s really worried that the increased cost of living will be a big problem for his children.

My gut is that over the next decade or so the area along the coast will become more “rich expat rental homes” and then eventually “large integrated resorts” and the people that live in shacks along the beach making a living as fishermen will be relocated elsewhere. That’s really sad to me. I wish that the local population could benefit more directly from those kinds of developments, but it doesn’t seem to happen this way.
So I’m glad that we were able to see this area before it gets to that point. And even though I feel some guilt in living in such comparative opulence, I prefer being able to spend at least much of my vacation money directly on the local economy rather than giving it to a resort.
It’s also a lot cheaper when you are inconvenienced. Since I can’t just pop down to a fancy restaurant we tend to cook and eat at home… and we tend to eat what we have. We also tend to relax a lot. Since there isn’t 24/7 catered entertainment, we play hide and seek, make friends and talk to locals, lounge in the pool, etc.
It’s been great so far.

How AI will force us to confront our purpose in the Universe.

~ Hermann P
RISE OF THE MACHINES

AI is a hot topic these days.

Everything from self driving cars to robotic surgery seems to be making headlines.

Along with the amazement of an automated future, something troubling has simultaneously arisen.

If AI can do everything humans can do, but better… what do the humans do?

Many articles discuss how humans will potentially become more creatively focused, we will awaken our intrinsic motivations instead of constantly focusing on extrinsic rewards. Switzerland is voting on a referendum to give every citizen $2600/mo tax free. While unlikely to pass, other cities are already experimenting with the idea of “basic income.”

Those experiments and ideas are not directly related to AI per se, but they do reflect a long term trend in machines taking over work from humans.

What started in the industrial revolution in manufacturing has slowly been swallowing up more and more work. This shows up as a general term of “efficiency” but I think what it really represents is replacing human effort with non-human effort.

Whether, and to what extent, this is “good” or “bad” is subject to interpretation. On the one hand having a machine that can harvest corn is far more efficient than having hundreds of people doing it by hand. It also frees those people from the repetitive and uncomfortable job of harvesting corn by hand. However, if your life is dependent on you harvesting corn by hand, this replacement is a mixed blessing at best.

THE SPEED OF REPLACEMENT

Something that makes these transitions even more painful is that they tend to happen quite quickly. In the US, for example, we have seen the manufacturing workforce shrink in size and reduce in costs while increasing output. This happened within a few decades leaving many millions of people without a way to replace the income they had from the previous occupations, regardless of how dangerous, repetitive and unrewarding they may have been. One could argue that there are people who genuinely love this kind of work, but I suspect for most it was a comparatively good income that was the main attraction.

It’s easy to come up with simple and cavalier solutions.

Free from the toil of tedious manufacturing work, they are free to train for new, more exciting positions. But practically how does this work? Without the income from the previous job how does one pay for retraining? And even if one had the means to retrain, how will one find the time while having another position to keep one’s life going? And of course there are the legion practical difficulties of relearning something late in one’s career.

We can also take the position that market forces will work this out. Sure, a few people will be victims of technological progress, but from a broader social point of view, it’s a small price to pay. Well… maybe.

THE BREADTH OF REPLACEMENT

Up until now, technology has primarily focused on replacing physical jobs. Almost all technology from the industrialization period on (and before) have focused on replacing physical human effort with machines. The wheel, the lever, the printing press, Railroads, automobiles and trucks, robots on assembly lines, and so on have slowly replaced humans, even as the work moved from country to country as companies chased low cost labor as a way to compete with each other.

The rise of the machines has been relentless, rapid and broad.

With AI though, the replacement could be much broader. It could start to include so-called “knowledge workers.” People like meteorologists, lawyers, real estate agents, doctors, financial advisors, pharmacists, programmers etc. may find themselves increasing replaced with semi-intelligent learning machines. Beyond that more “complex” jobs such as drivers, pilots, and soldiers may find themselves replaced by more comprehensive and cheaper robotic alternatives. Indeed, the idea of replacing drivers was unthinkable even as little as 10 years ago… now it seems almost certain.

These are no longer physically demanding and grueling jobs… these are the so-called “good” jobs that humans are “built for.”

But if we replace all of these jobs with cheaper, more efficient alternatives, what should those people train to do? Is there something beyond “knowledge work” which humans are better at that is even more desirable and rewarding?

GOING EVEN BROADER

Ok. So maybe further down the line we become a species of creative expression and invention. No longer limited by physical needs or even mental needs we can essentially “do what we want.” Putting aside the economic problems that this may spark, let’s imagine what this may look like.

Perhaps people can focus on music or painting or sports or invention. Personally rewarding, creative and entertaining pursuits that still give personal meaning as well as social value.

But what if the machines can do that as well?

What if an AI can compose BETTER music, paint a BETTER painting and play a BETTER game of basketball? What then?

What if we develop an AI that can find the cure for cancer? Or figure out how to colonize Mars? Or how to travel faster than light?

What if in a few hundred or a few thousand years we just watch in awe as our creation grows far beyond our wildest dreams?

And why wouldn’t this happen?

The incentive for making the best is what drives this from it’s origin, isn’t it?

If machines are better at the physical, and then better at the cognitive, why can’t they also be better at the creative?

I think they can, and I think they will.

INVERTING THE PROBLEM

So I think it’s worth turning this around.

Why are we making these machines at all? Is it to make life “better.” Better for whom? And what is better exactly? Less toil? Less suffering? Less pain? Is it about making things easier and safer?

Is it for our continued survival as a species?

Ok. Let’s assume that’s true… once we’ve checked off “survival” as a goal, does it become about maximizing comfort and satisfaction?

But again, we must face the eternal why.

Let’s imagine an absurd world where an army of perfect robots can provide us with every need, solve every problem, advance technology faster than we ever could and, more importantly, improve itself FASTER than we can improve them. And let’s imagine that their sole purpose is to fulfill our human desires.

What does that world look like?

If the end result of our current trajectory is to lead a life of leisure and consumption, why should we exist at all? Beyond the pure personal experience, what is the difference between living a life of pure indulgent consumption and living no life at all?

Don’t get me wrong… people could and would still fulfill their desires. They could still paint and make music. They could still program and tinker with new technology. All that would be completely possible, but it would make as much difference to the AI robots as a group of ants collecting chips on the floor.

SO WHAT *IS* OUR PURPOSE IN THE UNIVERSE?

Well… of course I don’t know, and neither do you.

Perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps “purpose” is the evolutionary requirement in our minds to keep the species going. It’s what causes us to behave in the ways we do, invent the things we invent in order to keep the genes passing from one generation to the next; building up to the next evolutionary leap.  Perhaps that illusion is so deeply implanted into us that we can’t escape it even if we are completely aware of it.

Perhaps we are just one dot in the chain of evolution and once we replace the slow, biological evolutionary advances with the more rapid and exponential technical ones… we will have served our purpose and, like the dinosaurs before us, we should be eliminated to make way for another species to have it’s chance.

And maybe that is purpose enough.