Month: July 2016

Taking my first paid corsera course. Machine Learning.

~ Hermann P
After a few failed attempts at taking online classes, I’m going to commit to taking the Machine Learning course offered on Coursera.

You can check it out here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning

I actually PAID for it, not because I’m interested in showing off the certificate, but because I’m interested in actually learning the material. I think that if I pay money I’ll take it more seriously.

To accentuate that, I’ll post updates here on what I’m learning, trying and failing at.

Join me if you want!

How I teach my kids self awareness.

~ Hermann P ~ 4 Comments
I’m not a great parent.

I let my kids use the iPad and phones. I lose my temper and yell at them. I get impatient and frustrated. I burn out and take it out on them. I feed them junk when I can’t create the self discipline not to. And so on…

But. There are things I think are very important.

One of them is self-awareness.

I think without self-awareness it’s incredibly difficult to be successful in life.

To use a modern analogy self-awareness is like the little radar system for my Tesla X.

HUMAN RADAR
Self-awareness is the process by which we can understand ourselves. In order to this we require a few things:

1) Other people.
I personally believe it is impossible to “know who you are” without having other people to communicate with. Our brain is just far to good at fooling itself to get around this. So you need to have people you can rely on for regular, honest feedback.

2) A desire to improve.
“Improve” is a vague term, but I think self-awareness is a big topic. Define improve how you like, but I think if you don’t have an internal mechanism telling you to “get better at x” there’s very little motivation to be self-aware.

3) An ability to forgive yourself and others.
This is the other part of the feedback loop. Sure, you need other people to help give you a sense of your “shape” but you also need to be ok with the fact that your shape and other peoples’ shapes might not be perfect… and that’s ok.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS WITH KIDS
I thought about this a lot and actually my wife was the one who started doing it first.

When kids are having negative emotions parents tend to tell them how they should feel. Actually this happens with adults as well, but it’s more acute with kids.

You know the drill.

Lily is angry because Alex won’t play tag with her. She comes to you crying like her world is ending. What do I normally do. I comfort her. I hold her and say “It’s ok. You don’t have to be mad. People won’t always play with you.”

That second statement is what I want to zero in on.

“You don’t have to be [x]” where [x] is sad, mad, jealous, frustrated, etc. is where we can put our self-awareness training in action!

Let’s reflect on ourselves for a second. When we are really frustrated about something and we tell someone. What do we really want? Mostly we want to vent and be justified. We want to be RIGHT. We want an echo chamber that will reinforce what we already know and feel. When someone tells us:

“You know… you shouldn’t be frustrated…”

How do we feel? MORE frustrated. It’s not like we WANT to be frustrated. It’s not like we woke up and said to ourselves “Self. Today I’m going to get really frustrated… that seems like a lot of fun… Yeah… and then I’m going to tell my friend about it and hope they tell me I shouldn’t be frustrated; cause that will really piss me off. This will be a GREAT day.”

Of course not.

But what we want isn’t all that great either. It’s nice to hear our emotional voices bouncing off a friend echo chamber, but it would be much better if that friend told us? “Wow… seems like you’re really frustrated about the guy at Stabucks burning your bagel again. But you know… maybe you’re over reacting a bit? Is something else bugging you as well? Or maybe you could have just asked for another one? Or maybe he’s having a rough day too? Let’s go for a walk and see if you feel better.”

That seems like a much healthier way of dealing with the sin of a burned bagel.

Well… I think our kids are the same.

When we say “You shouldn’t be frustrated” I think the underlying message is that frustration is bad and should be avoided. So in the child’s head she’s thinking ” if I feel frustrated it’s because (a) there’s something wrong with me or (b) I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing.”

That is the exact OPPOSITE of what we want for our kids, right? I mean we want kids who are challenging themselves, getting frustrated, and then pushing through… feeling confidence and growth on the other side. How will they learn that with us telling them that how they are feeling is wrong? If anything we should be promoting frustration :P.

So instead what we now tell our kids is:

“It’s ok to be frustrated. Mommy and Daddy get frustrated too. It’s totally normal. Now, let’s see what we can do about it.”

We then try to dig a bit deeper as to the cause of the negative feeling. I find it helpful to relate personal stories in a funny way as it keeps things light. Our four-year-old isn’t ready for heavy philosophy or psychology… although daddy keeps trying… but if I tell her about times when daddy got mad and then lost his temper and said or did something he shouldn’t have… she thinks that’s pretty funny.

We try different exercises. Talking about it. Counting to 10. Going away into a separate room for a while, and so on.

They key thing we’re trying to get through here is that it’s GOOD and NECESSARY to have negative emotions. However, it’s also critical to learn how to identify and manage them; and that it’s within her power to do that. We want to be on the list of people our kids can talk to and bounce their feelings off. We don’t want our kids to think that when they feel frustrated there is something wrong with them and bury them, pretending they don’t exist; and we certainly don’t want our kids to run around in life thinking that actions the lead to negative feelings should be avoided altogether.

RESULTS
Well… I don’t really know exactly. It’s a slow process and kids are super unpredictable.

That said, I’ve had MANY occasions where Lily will tell me how she feels and tries to do something about it. We’ve also noticed an improvement in her desire to challenge herself. We’ve been a bit anxious (probably over anxious, because that’s how parents are) about Lily’s tendency to keep doing easy things instead of pushing herself. But we don’t want to FORCE her to do hard stuff because then we risk teaching her arbitrary compliance. We don’t want her to just do hard things “because I said so”.. we want her to want to do hard things because she will find them rewarding.

Even more amazing is that when *I* get mad or frustrated… she will tell me “It’s ok dad, we all get mad sometimes. It’s ok to feel mad” which always makes me feel quite a bit better. I can’t wait for the day when she’s coaching me to be less angry and frustrated.

CONCLUSION
I am not a child raising expert or a psychologist so I have no idea if this makes any sense. That said I think it’s a very important skill to have and I found this to be a really great way to help teach it.

I’d love to hear about what everyone else is doing. What has worked and hasn’t. It’s a messy business this kid raising thing.

Why do you believe what you believe (about Trump and Clinton)

~ Hermann P ~ 3 Comments
I want you to stop reading this and write down two things… Just open up notepad, or get a pen and paper.

I want you to write down what you think about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Don’t overthink it, if you think Trump is a racist write that. If you think Hillary is a liar, write that.

Then I want you to write down WHY you believe that. Try and be as specific as possible. If Trump is a racist, why? What did he say? What did he do? When did he say and do those things? Where did you hear about it?

Now do the same for Clinton. You think she screwed up with her email server? Ok. Why? You think she caters to Wall Street and is in the pocket of big banks… fine. How come? Where did you hear about that?

I did this myself and what I found out was I actually have FAR more confidence in my conclusions than my underlying information justifies.

CLINTON
I didn’t fully trust Clinton because of the private email server stuff as well as her connections to Wall Street, her high income, prior real estate dealings. I thought she sounded a bit overly aggressive on one hand and also kind of “fake woman of the people.”

TRUMP
For Trump it was much stronger. I thought he was a bigot, a cheat, a self serving arrogant promoter preying on people’s fear and ignorance. I know about Trump university (from reading articles somewhere?), I know about him wanting to build a wall (from his website), his desire to deport Muslims (from retweets and articles).

To my shock and surprise I could really not really recall specifics. I hadn’t read any of Clinton’s emails that are available to see WHAT she said. I went to Trump’s site and checked out his policies and read some articles online, but I hadn’t really dug deep into things he had written (now or before), looking at in depth interviews… sure I’ve seen debates and collections of public appearances, but nothing super deep. My conclusions were strong, but my evidence was superficial at best.

IT GETS WORSE
Now consider this.

Try and recall WHERE you got that information from and who wrote it? Was it an online newspaper? Was it a series of retweets? Was it facebook shares in your stream… if so, where did THEY come from? What was the position or agenda (if any) of the person who created this material?

I actually could tell you almost nothing about any of that. I have no idea who wrote what about the people that are running for president so I couldn’t tell you if THEY are “good” or “bad.”

What I DID learn is that I have massive confirmation bias. I THINK that I have deep knowledge about things I care about a lot, but I don’t.

Now… I know that there are people who follow these things closely and know A LOT about the candidates, especially the one they like. But I think they probably know A LOT LESS about the candidate they don’t like; and I suspect that there is even stronger confirmation bias going on.

The vast amount of information available combined with the advanced technology to segment and search makes it possible to paint nearly any picture of reality you care for.

Imagine your own situation.

Let’s say that a large group of well paid, super motivated and highly intelligent people wanted to paint you in a certain light. Within their reach is ALL the information about you that exists. All the things you buy and sell, the places you’ve worked and people you worked with. Maybe your past 10-20 years of emails. All the websites you’ve joined and looked at. Where your kids went to school. All the information about your parents, siblings, friends. Now imagine they want to paint you in either a bad or good light. Do you think that would be possible? Do you think it would accurately reflect who you think you are?

SO WHO DECIDES?
This goes back to a book called “Public Opinion” by Walter Lippmann. In it, he explores this topic deeply. His conclusions are as true today as they were nearly 100 years ago. Our opinions are made up by forces quite beyond our control, out of our sight, and in a largely unconscious way. We don’t have the time, intellect or desire to understand thousands of complex topics in depth and then deliberate to come up with a “real” opinion. So we must use shortcuts. We trust people we regard as legitimate, we parrot our parents and mentors. We listen to our friends. We listen to media. Thus, paraphrasing Lippmann, a functioning democracy MUST have experts who can manipulate and manage the public mind… manufacturing consent as the term goes.

That’s why it’s so important to hit all these areas when you are running for office. In fact saying that you DON’T care about these things is one of the most important messages to get out there.

Think about that.

It takes A LOT of message volume to communicate and convince large groups of people that you are not focused on telling them what they want to hear :). Is it believable that someone who doesn’t care about that could possibly get their voice heard in such a loud, busy and crowded arena. I don’t think so.

The campaign managers who are focused 100% of the time on getting people to believe what they want are going to be much better at this than you or I can be in our short, busy, crowded days.

SO WHAT DO WE DO?
I don’t really know. I tried to read through all the emails that were released, but there are 1925 of them. The ones I DID read were mostly one or two line responses she gave saying “Interesting.” “Pls Print,” and “Have a happy holiday.” I’m sure there’s some meat in there somewhere, but man… do I want to spend 4 hours digging it up? NO!

So how do I know what she said. Well, I’ll go to my trusted news source. But did THEY read the 1925 emails or did they do what I did and rely on someone else who went through them. But who is THAT person, and what is their motivation? Is it possible that actually almost NO ONE has read all those emails and thus the contents and message are just layers of bias with scant evidence? Or maybe 10-15 people have actually read them all and those people have businesses that shape the buyers ability to manage public opinion?

I mean who has the motivation to read all those emails, put them together and summarize conclusions? That is unlikely to be a free and unbiased exercise.

The truth is, to just get an understanding of this one topic in this one election I would have no choice but to read them myself, then familiarize myself with the context, look at other sources, and so on.

It’s simply not possible.

So…what I think has to be done is to treat with skepticism what we read and we ourselves believe. Try to deliberately read things we find grating to our own existing assumptions. We should be deliberate about our ignorance and our biases. We will always have them, but at least we can try to identify them.

Most importantly, I think we need to always keep in mind the possibility that we are totally wrong and when we find something important that we care about we really need to understand opposing sides as well as our own… not to change our minds or to be wishy washy, but to make sure we can clearly understand and articulate what our biases and assumptions are. I think that will at least give us a chance at arriving at a reasonable conclusion in any topic.

How to get a job.

~ Hermann P
Recently, my nieces and nephews have started entering the “job market.” Some are in college, some are in high school, some are starting high school. As a result I get to overhear conversations about finding and getting jobs… something I haven’t had to do in many, many years.

When I say “find” and “get” I’m talking about the situation where a young person who has ZERO work experience is trying to get some kind of job. Usually their primary motivation is money; but there’s also some amount of building a sense of freedom and responsibility as they transition from being “kids at home” to “responsible adults.”

THE NORMAL PROCESS
The normal process starts something like this.

1) Recognize money is a thing that’s needed.
I think the first step is waking up one day and realizing money is a “thing.” My kids are 2 and 4. For them money is coins they can spin and throw around with no connection to the house, the toys or the food. When kids get older they make this connection and start negotiating for allowances/ad hoc money/pay for chores or any other mechanism so that they can have money providing them with greater choice and freedom from mom and dad. The next phase pushes them to not want to ask mom and dad at all. After all, even though allowance is “your money,” parents are still in the background judging your decisions… if there was someway to get money without asking parents at all, they can’t do this anymore. (Of course, us adults know that our parents STILL do this, but let’s not ruin it for the kids 🙂 ).

2) Figure out where to get it.
This is where things get interesting for me. What I see happening is that my nieces and nephews almost immediately see a single possible transaction mechanism. Specifically that they have to “do” something for someone else (a company) and they “get” paid to do it. This is a simple labor for money transaction. Thus the goal is to figure out how to get as much money for as little labor… that is a high $/hour wage. From what I can see there is not a ton of focus on passion, resonance with employer, long term prospects, etc. and it makes sense because mostly these are young adults looking for spending money over the summer. Real jobs don’t come until after college, as per script.

3) Figure out HOW to get it.
The next phase is to figure out how to get the job in the first place. So you learn about job applications, cruise around town looking for places that have “hiring” signs, go in, get an app, fill it out, give it back and get ready for rejection. After enough rejections, you’ll somehow get hired. Maybe the manager thought you were cute or took pity on you. Maybe there were few other candidates and you were the only one that spelled things correctly. Maybe the timing worked out well. Who knows. In any case, it’s kinda like dating… you see what’s available, make a move and hopefully get to the next stage.

4) Figure out what work REALLY is.
Here I’m totally speculating, but what I learned when I had 2 “medial” jobs (Pizza Place, Software Store) is that most people don’t care at all, and this annoyed me. I think it annoys most people… even the ones who don’t care… and partly why they don’t care is because no one else cares. Since no one in school teaches you how to care about something everyone else doesn’t care about, it’s a new thing and you probably don’t know how to deal with it.

Another thing you learn about is power structures in a financial compensated setting. In school, the power structure is simple. The teachers have it all, the students have none…or very little. In the SOCIAL part of school it’s much more complex. Work is more like the social part of school with money thrown into the mix. So we learn about the person who is sucking up to the manager to get a raise. You learn about the abusive manager, the empowering manager, the manipulative manager, and so on.

You also learn the most important things. What you DON’T want to do. I think most people DON’T want to work an entry level retail/food job for the rest of their lives. Even if you stay in retail or food (nothing wrong with that) you presumably want to move “up.”

THE CRAZY HERMANN PROCESS
I have to say, I approached this whole thing quite differently.

My first job was at Little Ceaser’s Pizza back in 1993. I was close friends with the manager and I talked to him about it for a while before applying. The store was right across from the bus I took to college (which I later dropped out of) every evening. So strategically it was perfect. It paid minimum wage, but I got to take some pizzas home AND there was basically a supply of food while working. The combination of flexible hours, free food and convenient location made it perfect.

1) Engage and Innovate… anytime, anywhere.
I tried to innovate things when I started.

I found out scrubbing the giant sinks sucked balls, so I started a process where you fill the sink with water, add a bunch of cleaning materials and then stir vigorously to generate a huge vortex taking most of the crusty pizza dough off the sides of the sink.  I also learned that customers HATE waiting, even when they show up early and even more especially if they had kids. So if it was late at night and there was a rush and I was working alone or with one other person, we’d hand out free crazy bread and this had a huge positive effect.

Essentially I tried to look around and see what problems there were and just assumed that I was totally empowered to try and fix them. I didn’t ask for permission or wait for approval. I highly recommend this, even if it gets you fired. Work is MUCH more fun when your attitude is “how can I make things better” rather than “how long am I stuck in this dump.”

I call this the “Lazy/Persistent” approach. I basically think “hmm… how can I do little or no actual work but still get the job done.” Without the persistence I’d just be lazy and that’s no good… but together it’s like the necessity/mother thing.

2) Follow your passion.

I almost immediately realized that I didn’t want to work in pizza.
So what did I want? Well… I loved playing games, so I went to the local GameStop (at that time Electronic’s Boutique).  But I didn’t just ask for a job right away. I hung out there, talked to the manager, talked to the employees, watched the customers, tried to get a sense of everything. THEN when I knew the time was good (getting close to holiday season when these stores get crushed) I applied for a job. I knew what they needed, I knew how the store worked, and I knew the people that worked there. I also knew that the company allowed employees to take games home to try them which took a big chunk of costs from my entertainment expenses. Also, the store was close to campus so it was convenient.
I can tell you right now if you know when a store needs headcount and you know how their systems work, they WILL hire you. So when you see everyone applying for a job at the beginning of summer break and no one applying right after school starts… do the opposite; you might even get a higher starting wage. If you want to work at Subway or Cold Stone… hang out there for an hour or two a couple times a week and get a sense of how the work is done. Talk to people. Show an interest.
On the side I was trying to make money writing game reviews. If you want to learn how to take rejection better… become a freelance writer. I figured if I can combine two things I like, even better, and being a reviewer for a game magazine seemed like the best thing ever. I guess today I’d start a game blog, YouTube channel or something similar.
The combination of these things lead me to meet a guy who was a journalist for a huge German game magazine, which leads to the next step.
3) Look for and Seize Opportunity, Always.
I noticed there was a guy who about once a month would buy pretty much every new game that was out. I was thinking “holy shit, this guy has the life! He buys and plays all the new games all the time.” I later found out his name was Markus and he was the US correspondent for PC Games (the biggest games magazine in Germany at the time). It just so happens that I speak German and lived in Germany for a number of years so when he came in the next time I was able to talk to him and meet him more.
After a couple of visits I found out that he was actually doing video documentaries on game companies like Origin, Sierra, etc. I was thinking “holy shit… could your life get any better? Free games AND hang out with game developers.” At one point he needed to go to Dynamix up in Eugene, OR and for some reason couldn’t go himself. He asked me if  I could go, interview people, take some video and pictures… and come back. I said yes immediately. Note that I had school and work… but that didn’t matter. I figured I could swing a work change (because my work colleagues were great) and if I missed a day or two of school, who cares… this was more interesting anyway.
Important to note. I had NEVER interviewed anyone before. I had NEVER recorded anything professionally. I had NEVER taken pictures for a magazine. I had NO IDEA what the fuck I was doing… but here was this guy who was willing to let me fly solo to Eugene, OR and represent this huge German game magazine. It would have been easy to get scared and not do it, but that would have been a giant mistake.
So how did it go. Well, it was kind of a disaster. I got there fine, I took pictures, recorded interviews, etc. But I screwed up basic shit. For example, I didn’t write down what people looked like so when the pictures were developed I didn’t know who was who :). Kind of a problem when you’re writing an article, right? I also didn’t know how to mic people properly or test for sound, so some amount of the footage was bad… and on and on.
That said, I took the criticism from Markus and doubled down to try to get better. Over the years we made many video/documentaries and it’s among the more educational experiences I had. Deadlines were not negotiable, getting content was super competitive, work hours could be long and frustrating (burning CDs in the mid-late 90s had about a 50% success rate and took 4 hours 🙂 ).
If you’re really interested, you can see some of them here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE808BA0D93C4813C. For some reason the Blizzard one isn’t on there… it used to be… maybe Blizzard asked to have it taken down. It had some Warcraft Adventures images on it as well as a commitment to a release date for a project that was later cancelled :). They don’t do that anymore. But it was a great trip because I got to see Blizzard before StarCraft was released. I think they were about 60 people back then. This visit made me thing “Holy shit. I HAVE to work in the games business somehow.” I distinctly remember Susan Wooly who picked me up from the airport, made sure I got to all my interviews, made sure I had lunch, followed up afterwards, etc. From top to bottom Blizzard was high quality… is the impression I had. It was one of the best experiences ever.
4) Never stop learning
Over time the whole internet thing got bigger and bigger and it put a squeeze on print magazines. Markus had some good ideas here, but I think he had a hard time convincing the publishers. Anyway, I’m not sure exactly what happened, but like all things, the videos came to an end and I needed to find something else.
Fortunately, Markus had a friend named Scott whos fledgling e-Learning  company (remember when that was a thing) needed work and had a CD Burner (those were rare and expensive back then). So Markus used them for this purpose, but also realize Scott was a really smart guy and a programmer. So when he was doing interface work for the magazine CDs he had Scott do some of this work. I got to know Scott pretty well and after the work with the game company fizzled I talked with Scott about it.
It turns out that the whole internet thing was exploding in the late 90s, so I got a job programming HTML ($15/hr, $22.50 overtime). I didn’t really know how to write HTML but it wasn’t that hard either since I had been doing programming for many years as a hobby. (Disclosure: despite making a living programming for many year, I never actually studied it in college. I studied English Lit, dropped out and eventually finished up a Sociology degree. Go figure.).
5) Rinse and Repeat
From that point it was just doing the same thing over and over. At Digital Creators (Scott’s company) I tried to find things that were inefficient, annoying, tedious and improve them. Most of my job was converting paper documents into HTML which is almost as exciting as making pizza. But it turns out there were things like OCD, scripting, regular expressions and so on that could make the job MUCH faster and less boring. So when you go from doing about 3-5 pages/hour to 15-20 pages an hour, customers like that when they pay per page/per hour.
During that job I got to do all kinds of neat stuff.
I worked on the 2000 census. I got to program a Davox phone dialer (directly in a live production environment with ZERO knowledge of how they work… yeah… that was stressful). I got to work with a big oil company. I got to work with financial institutions.
Eventually I started my own company with some co-workers… watched it grow fast and crash; eventually got into the game business (finally) and that’s pretty much where I am today. In 10 years… who knows.
I was just always trying to see where problems were, see what help people needed, see what I found interesting and just take risks and keep trying. All my jobs have been interesting and educational in one way or another.
CONCLUSION
I realize this isn’t a normal how-to, but more of a mini biography.
But that’s the whole point.
If you approach getting a job as a how to, a series of predictable steps… a known path to a known destination, you miss the ENTIRE point and run the risk of dying with tons of regret after having a job you hate for a long period of time.
It should really be an ongoing process of curiosity, passion, learning, and risk taking.
It should be an outward looking process as well as an inward looking one.
It should be about seeing yourself as an agent of change and meaning.
No matter how “crappy” the job is, it exists for some reason and there is opportunity buried inside of it. If you think and act this way, you will feel better and people around you will notice.
Don’t look for a predictable road. It’s not there.
Try to make the best of whatever opportunity has in front of you and when something unusually pops up, don’t be afraid to jump on it.

If you lost your good job in 2008, sorry, you might never get it back.

~ Hermann P
I’ll show two quick graphs.

The first is the % of the working age population (over 16) that is employed going back to 1948:

The second is real output per hour

As you can see the labor force size grew, albeit lumpy, over the decades. Recessions would cause drops in labor force and productivity. Then recoveries happen and employment returns and productivity continues it’s relentless march upwards.

2008 showed a different trend.
First, the drop was much steeper, which makes sense because the crisis was much larger.
Second, unlike in other recessions, the rise in productivity as the recession ends did not contribute to the workforce returning, and eventually exceeding, pre-recession levels.

Let’s compare 1965-1980 with the 2000 -2016

1965-1980

In this scenario we see a dip in labor force during recessions, followed by an increase “U” shaped productivity change and then a return to previous employment levels.

2000-2016


In the 2000 scenario both recessions see a dip in workforce, but notice there is no “U” shaped drop and there is also no return to prior levels of employment. We’re very focused on the 2008 recession because it’s more severe and more recent, but the 2000 recession had the same characteristics.

POSSIBLE REAONS
Why this is happening is hard to explain. My own opinion is that it’s related to shifts in technology and automation and NOT outsourcing labor and manufacturing.

It’s difficult to prove that of course and definition like “employment” and “productivity” are always subject to criticism. For example, the base of potential employees has shifted with an aging population on the high end and a large crop of “millennials” who have not entered the work force. That may put pressure on the 2010-2016 side especially.

There is no question that manufacturing has had a long term shift out of the US as companies try to reduce labor costs. That has also happened in many areas of Information Technology, service and other industries as well. Maybe companies figured after the recession they need to keep their costs lower so they moved jobs away or hired elsewhere.

CONCLUSIONS
In any case, I believe that the combined reality of a decreasing work force and an increasing productivity trend exacerbates the wealth distribution and polarizes politics. I think that’s why you see people like Trump and Sanders in the US, Brexit in Briton, LePen in France and so on.

I also think that despite the claims of many of these politicians, a nationally focused labor policy will not bend the curve. It’s hard for me to believe the politicians in the 1960s and 1970s were just better at managing the labor/productivity relationship or the corporate CEOs just weren’t that greedy.

It’s not all bad news though… in the salad days of the 50s and 60s, employment population rates were considerably lower than they are today. My own thought here is that this was because women were largely locked out of the labor market in most areas. An unfortunate side effect of women gaining equality is that inflation adjusted salaries can decrease as households move from one to two incomes. Still… even if the number is the same the path down is more painful to the path up. When you go from zero to a million dollars it feels very different than when you go from two million to one million.

So, I believe if you lost your job in the 2008 recession and it hasn’t come back… you might be in for a very long wait.

Why healthcare cost distributions require a edge case focsed healtcare market.

~ Hermann P
Healthcare is a very hot topic these days. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, I feel it’s important to understand which are the critical statistics and how they can be visualized.

There are things about healthcare that make it very different than other markets such as food or cars or houses.

COST DISTRIBUTION
I think the most remarkable and critical element of the healthcare “market” is that the costs are INCREDIBLY concentrated.

Essentially 1% of people generate 30% of all medical costs and the bottom half of the population is responsible for only 4% of health spending.
While this is from 2002, the data is fairly consistent going back many decades. It’s also hardly surprising. From our own experience we can probably recall incidents of ourselves or others having extreme situations that become very expensive with large time periods and most people never having any major problems.
Because of this any healthcare market must  draw from a large number of healthy people to pay for a small number of very sick people at any given time. Bear in mind that 1% of people costing 30% is a unit in time. As you can imagine, when you get older your chances of entering that 1% become much greater. So possibly a 401k type health cost insurance system might make sense. That is, you may MORE when you are younger and “save up” for disaster in the future. 
Of course we could also let the top 1% and 5% die, reducing the costs massively, but this is not the kind of society we choose to live in.
So, we must design a market system that is built for the EDGE cases and not the MEDIAN cases because it’s the edge cases that are responsible for the large costs.
COMPLEXITY OF MARKET
When you buy a car there are things like truecar, cars.com, Car and Driver and so on to provide consumers with objective and comparable information when making a decision. There is no such tool for the healthcare market. Indeed, medical costs at hospitals are incredibly difficult to decipher.
First, things like “Asprin” can be called by many different names.
Brand names: Ecotrin, Bayer Aspirin, Acetylsalicylic Acid, Aspir 81
Second, the charges are separated from the underlying costs.

That is, on the hospital bill will appear “Ecotrin: 25$.” How can the average consumer possibly know they just spent 25$ on asprin? If you itemize 10 or 100 such things, it’s not reasonable to assume that any patient can possibly be educated enough to negotiate their bill.
LACK OF EMPOWERED DECISION MAKING AND BARGAINING POWER
The customer has no options at the point of use.
Both before and during hospitalization, you have very little time to make any kind of consumer based decision. If you’re in a car accident and unconscious, how can you possibly make sure the ambulance takes you to an “in network” hospital? When you are undergoing surgery, how can you possibly insure that your doctor takes your insurance, or what her rates are? Or if other hospitals and other doctors might offer the same services for less cost?
Also, let’s say you’re lying in bed and you are given a 25$ aspirin. Are you really in the position to ask how much the pill costs and then pop down to Walgreen’s and buy it yourself? Not really.
So when people suggest a more “open market” for healthcare, these factors are critical.
1% of the sickest people are unlikely to have sufficient bargaining power to influence the cost of their care. The other 99% are unlikely to be proactive and force providers to maintain reasonable prices.
Also, the providers themselves have to prepare for that 1% since that is where the costs are and if that is not somehow subsidized by the other 99%, it’s hard to imagine how they can bear those costs. Because of that their incentive is to gouge the hell out of the unlucky 1%, especially if they are uninsured as insurance companies have at least SOME amount of leverage to negotiate prices.
Medicare has one of the lowest reimbursement rates because it’s huge membership can help it exercise pricing power on health providers. A fragmented insurance marketplace doesn’t allow for that.
Part of the reason is because Medicare is not allowed to negotiate drug prices, whereas all other public health programs around the world can and do negotiate. Pharmaceutical companies resist allowing Medicare to negotiate claiming they need this in order to fund R&D, which is possibly true.
The question in my mind is why Americans are ok with subsidizing global pharmaceutical costs while not being ok with foreign imports; considering we spend much more on medication in our lifetime and can’t really do without drugs the same way we can do without TVs and smartphones. There must be SOME better way to fund R&D expenses than to have American citizens subsidize the costs of medications around the world.
SUMMARY
The nature of the healthcare market require us to design a system that is focused on outliers… not the average. It must also distribute those concentrated costs broadly. Finally, it must be regulated in some way to address the information gap and bargaining power gap between providers and users generated by the nature of the system (that is, when you need care is exactly when you are in the worst position to negotiate).


An Atheist thoughts on reading the Gospel of St Matthew

~ Hermann P
I’ve actually read most of the bible and the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in particular.

But I decided to re-read Matthew just as a refresher.

3 Parts to the Gospel
It really breaks into 3 different part.
1) Historical information
2) Magic/Miracle work
3) Christian Philosophy

The 1st part is only moderately interesting. I suspect the Bible is more historically accurate than most non-religious people believe. I think many of the places and people existed and many of the events happened in some form or another.

The 2nd part is interesting, but only in the same way that other fables and legends are interesting. Unfortunately I think they mostly work as a mechanism for people to justify why they can’t possibly be as good as Jesus or to solidify the status of the special character. “Hey, Jesus turned water into wine… if I can’t do that how can I possibly love my enemies.”

The 3rd part is the one I find the most important as it is fundamentally actionable.

General Summary
Reading through it again I’m left with 2 overwhelming conclusions:
1) In 2,000 years I really wish we would have made more moral progress than we have.
2) There are incredibly few Christians in the world… by that I mean people who actually try to follow Jesus in their actions. If you put the bar at the execution level there’s probably like 100 Christians in the last 2000 years, but I think that bar is just way too high… so we’ll settle for people who TRY.

What does Jesus expect from us?

I am consistently amazed by the simplicity of Jesus’ message. While it is iterated and stated many different ways it really comes down to the “golden rule” which is of course “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

I think MOST of Christian teaching is right there in the sermon on the mount. Jesus is very clear about fulfilling rather than abolishing the existing law. That is, Jesus is iterating on the past moral directives which were lacking. This is why I believe that Jesus’ teachings sort of replace things like the 10 commandments. They are morally superior versions in that they move away from vengeance, retribution, and punishment and move to compassion, empathy and self-sacrifice.

Who is blessed?
1) those poor in spirit
2) the mourners
3) the meek
4) those who hunger for righteousness
5) the Merciful
6) the clean of heart
7) the peacemakers
8) those persecuted for the sake of righteousness

This pretty much locks out people who are angry, vengeful and judgmental. It takes out people who support war and violence. It takes out people who are arrogant and selfish and proud.

What do we do about Anger?
Ok, we all get pissed off at things, people, events. What does Jesus say?
“But what I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgement, whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says “You fool!” shall be liable to the hell of fire.So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”


That’s right, even THINKING angry thoughts risks damnation… and if you have them you need to go to the person they are about, reconcile and then move forward with your life. Makes a lot of sense… and if people did that I think they’d be much more at peace with themselves and each other.

So think about someone you are angry at right now, go tell them; try and rectify it and see how you feel. Personally I think this is super simple and super hard.

What about making oaths and promises?
Turns out all that “swearing to God” or “swearing on the Bible” is totally wrong. At first I thought this was a bit silly, but the reasoning is so good.
“But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. and do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Basically this is a commentary on how powerless we are to make fundamental changes and when we reinforce our yesses and noes with backup that we can’t control we’re just over reaching. Instead just say yes and no and mean it. This is about understanding the limits of our power… that is it’s pretty small. We can control our own decisions in a limited scope and should do so decisively and honestly without the backing of cosmic forces we can’t control.

What about all these bad people around us? Rapists, murderers, liars.
Retaliation is a big force in people’s lives. Let’s see what Jesus says we should do:
“I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

That’s just brutally hard. Not only to you have to NOT retaliate, but you have to invite MORE suffering from those who would put it on you. What kind of masochistic message is this?
On the surface this may make little sense, but in the history of peaceful resistance it does. Gandhi used this to great effect as he said when people inflict pain on you and you don’t strike back it eventually hurts them as well; and is a mechanism for bringing out their humanity. It requires the person to REALLY believe in causes beyond themselves… that is if you behave this way you may very well get killed but your death will be a strong message that will accumulate with other strong messages.

It sees “evil” as a giant pile outside of the individual and if you respond to evil with evil you simply make the pile larger. All you can do is try to make the pile smaller. Life and death of an individual are far less important than the overall size of the evil pile. This is an extreme version of self sacrifice and it’s really tough because most people who risk self sacrifice do, in fact, die anonymously and don’t go on to win noble peace prizes or have books written about them.

There’s also a universal rule there because of course if EVERYONE acted this way there would be no violence or poverty or cruelty. There is violence and poverty and cruelty because people think OTHER people won’t act this way and they are just defending themselves. It’s a completely rational position, just really hard to execute as an individual.

It’s common to take the position “well, I’ll stop being violent when everyone else does” but it is precisely this attitude that leads to accumulated evil. In fact you have to stop being violent most when others are directing it towards you.

That’s expected behavior and a pretty high bar. I certainly don’t meet it.

What about giving and helping. I heard all these poor people are either secretly well off or on drugs.
The good news is it’s pretty simple. The bad news is, it’s pretty hard:
“Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.”

That pretty much sums it up. If someone needs something and asks you for help, give them help. There’s no special 10% rule. There’s no “but what if they are a drug addict” clause. There’s no modifications or exceptions of any kind. It’s just really simple.

In truth we can not know the individual circumstances of everyone. So when you do not give money to a beggar because he might be on drugs or lying; but you buy a coffee or a pair of shoes without knowing if someone in the chain who is on drugs or lying will benefit you are bending your morality to suit your purpose. Jesus is pretty consistent in his teachings and I suspect if he were alive today to clarify, he’d just say the same thing:

“If you see someone who needs something and you can help them, help them. What’s so damn hard about that to understand? Why are you people trying to make my simple message so damn complicated… just fucking help each other and shit will get better, OK?”

What about people that hate and harm us? Not just the evil rapist or terrorist but the person who is directly targeting US?
There’s bad people out there who we’re not attacking. They strike first, they do bad things to us and say bad things about us, what about them?
“I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing from others? do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Yup. You’re expected to be as good as God. Love everyone exactly the same amount. Pretty simple.

This pretty much is an anti-social media echo chamber message as well. If you surround yourself with people who agree with you and group up to attack people who don’t… you’re doing it wrong.

This is another common thread in the Gospels. Jesus is pretty egalitarian. He references how the Father or God pretty much grants the same environment for people regardless of their behavior (i.e. sun shines on the just and the unjust, etc.). This is a powerful message because it requires complete inner peace. It is exactly when the attack is the most painful and the most personal that you must love that person and pray for them.

It’s scary to think of the implications. Imagine someone who burns down your house or murders your children. Could you love them? Could you meet this bar? Or are you just someone who loves those who love you already? I don’t think I could, but it seems like the right direction.

What about money?
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also… No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

I’m guessing Jesus wouldn’t have been a very rich person in any time period with that attitude. Despite the spin that I hear and read, the pure Christian message on money is pretty simple… and if you believe it along with the other parts of Jesus’ message, you won’t have a lot. So my conclusion is… there aren’t any rich Christians. I’ve seem people justify vast wealth rectified with Christianity by using all kinds of Bible verses, but I think this message is REALLY clear and consistent. Besides if you are giving your money away to people who need it more than you and there’s tons of poor people in the world, that’s pretty much the balance right there. Again, I don’t meet this bar. Not even close.
But isn’t salvation just accepting Jesus into your heart?
No. I hear this all the time, but Jesus is super clear on it:
“Not every one who says to me ‘Lord. Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven…Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.”

That’s right, Jesus expects you to do things as well as say things. So if you just say the words and think the thoughts, it doesn’t do much good. You are primarily evaluated based on your actions.

Implicitly if you do behave in this way but don’t say “Lord, Lord” you are still building your house on that rock. Deeds matter MORE than belief. You can dream about that perfect house but you gotta build it.

CONCLUSION
I didn’t cover everything. It’s amazing that so much is compressed into a fairly small amount of text. Of course the interpretation of that sermon has filled many thousands of pages in many thousands of books.

It’s a bit sad that in 2000 years humanity has advanced technology to incredible degrees but a simple moral message is just as difficult to execute today as it was back then. I think humanity in general is improved but the evolution of morality is quite a bit more difficult than the evolution of technology, it seems.