Free will is the idea that humans have control over their choices. If this sounds like a rather loose definition, that is because it is. That is the lowest common denominator of definitions of the term. Some people define it as instantaneous control over choices. Some define it as more of a kind of self determination. Many religions teach that free will was given to man by God. In the realm of philosophy, it seems like people choose definitions that best fit their arguments of whether or not humans have free will. One thing is clear: Very few people have a solid understanding of what free will is, and even fewer understand the futility of trying to prove or disprove free will through scientific inquiry.
Free will is under attack. Prominent scientists and philosophers claim that science and logic provide evidence proving the impossibility of free will, and those with a desire to believe that they have no responsibility for their actions eat it up. There are those who argue against, but there are few, if any, coherent and logical arguments from either side. Part of this is in definitions.
One line of thought suggests that free will cannot exist, because we have no control over our thoughts. We cannot predict or plan what we will think next. Thoughts just come out of void, without any power for us to control them with. This is patently false. Humans have been training themselves to think in various ways for millennia. Religions have been teaching people to control their thoughts since the beginning of recorded history. The hidden devil in this argument is defining free will as the ability to control instantaneous decisions as if there was unlimited amounts of time to consider them. This argument suggests that free will is doing a task that takes significant time, given no time to do it in. This is obviously impossible. This definition of free will is specifically constructed to fail the test, by making it impossible to succeed. In other words, this is a circular argument.
Another line of thought claims that because the universe is deterministic, our decision making processes must also be deterministic. This is based on a definition of free will that is free of determinism. It assumes that if human thought processes occur in a brain composed of deterministic parts, the results must always be deterministic, and determinism is antithetical to free will. This argument is full of holes. To begin with, the universe is not deterministic. In the early 1900s, quantum physics predicted a certain degree of randomness below the subatomic level. While several of the scientists involved, including Albert Einstein, rejected these predictions, completely undeterministic quantum randomness has been experimentally proven many times since. It can be argued, however, that randomness in human decision making does not necessarily give rise to free will. If we cannot control the randomness, then it is nothing more than randomness.
There is also a failure in the assumption that human thought processes occur exclusively in physical matter. Many religions argue that humans have a spirit or soul, that is not made from matter as we know it. If this is true, it is possible that this immaterial element of human existence is capable of free will, and the human brain is only a tool that it uses to interface with the body. This kind of mechanic needs neither determinism nor randomness at the physical level to have free will. It is a beautiful idea, but unfortunately it is entirely untestable. This leaves it firmly in the realm of religion, as it is untouchable by scientific inquiry.
Another flaw is in the assumption that humans cannot control quantum randomness. It is argued by some that quantum randomness cannot allow for free will, because humans cannot control it, and merely introducing randomness cannot create free will. There is no proof that humans cannot control quantum randomness sufficiently to make room for free will. In fact, quite to the contrary. In a very real sense, humans are what creates quantum randomness. Particles can exist in quantum superposition, multiple mutually exclusive states at the same time, but when they are observed by humans, they are forced into only one of the states. This is what quantum randomness actually is. When a particle in superposition collapses to one state, the state chosen is literally and truly random. Einstein refused to believe that this was true randomness, but numerous experiments have proven otherwise. We know human observation can trigger quantum randomness. By itself, this may not be enough to provide free will, but it sets a precedent for human influence of quantum randomness.
The core assumption in this argument is in the definition of free will. It assumes that determinism is antithetical to free will. Must this assumption hold? Is randomness critical to free will? According to that definition of free will, yes, randomness is critical. The is the hole in the determinism of the universe that free will can sneak in through. It is the mechanic that allows the violation of fate. It is also totally unnecessary by another definition of free will.
Perhaps the most critical flaw of all of these arguments, both for and against free will, is the source of the original concept. Free will is a religious concept, not a scientific one. Most religions teach that humans have free will as part of some kind of test. Christianity and its precursors teach that God gave free will to man explicitly. What does this mean? This does not necessarily mean that God gave man the ability to think for himself. In fact, the evidence suggests that when God gave man free will, he was promising not to interfere directly in the personal decision making processes of humans. This does not mean that humans had some sort of quantum randomness injected into their decision making processes. In fact, that would have been counter productive. It means that God won't force decisions upon man. It means that God won't change the minds of humans against their will. God was essentially telling humans that he would not change their nature without their consent.
This provides a building block for free will to exist, even within a purely deterministic universe (which this one is not). Breaking this down to the lowest level, a deterministic decision making engine is essentially an algorithm. Given certain inputs, it will provide output, and given the same input, the output will always be the same. This is not as simple as it sounds. This does not mean that if a person was given the same choice two times in a row, that person would chose the same both times. The first choice will change the state of the system, which is one of the inputs. The person may learn something from the first choice that changes the outcome of the second. This experiment would require that the entire experiment be rewound to the starting point before being done the second time. This is, of course, impossible and probably never will be possible, as even one atom or quark in a slightly different position would change the input, and in a system as complex as the human brain, chaos theory applies. (Chaos theory says that in a sufficiently complex system, very small differences in initial conditions can make very big differences in the end results.) So how is it free will, if all of our choices are governed by an algorithm?
In a deterministic system, free will requires two things. First, the decision making algorithm of an entity with free will must be immutable to everything except itself. This means, no outside force can change the algorithm itself. Given the same inputs, the algorithm will always produce the same outputs. This rule does provide room for stored state, by allowing the algorithm to modify itself. When the algorithm modifies itself, the inputs of the decision that creates the modification become part of the input for every future decision. This means that it may seem possible to give it the same input twice and get different outputs, but in reality the second input includes the first input, in the form of the change in the state of the algorithm. In short, inputs that change the algorithm are impossible to give multiple times, unless there is some other input that will perfectly reverse those changes. (The nature of self modifying code suggests that reversible changes will be extremely rare, if they are even possible within such a complex algorithm.)
The second requirement for free will in a deterministic setting is a certain level of uniqueness. In theory, it may be possible for two identical algorithms to exist, though if they are self modifying, it is likely they will quickly become unique, as they have different experiences that cause them to change themselves in different ways. In a sense, two identical decision making algorithms are literally the same entity. Without uniqueness, everyone becomes the same, merely reacting to circumstances but using the same algorithm to processes different inputs.
There is an additional Easter Egg of sorts in here for religions that believe humans were put on Earth to be tested. If this is the case, randomness cannot play a major role in free will. Imagine this: Two people are given a test. One always answers according to an immutable algorithm. The other answers with some degree of randomness. The test is for some critical position. Before the test has even started, it should be clear that there is a problem here. No matter how well the second person does on the test, that person cannot be trusted in a critical position, because it is impossible to predict that person's future behavior. The outcome of the test says nothing about how that person will perform, even taking the same test a second time. The first person, however, will produce something useful. The outcome of the test will at least be a good predictor of the results of giving the first person the same test again. If free will is based on randomness, and God is testing humans to see how they will behave, so he can judge whether or not they will behave well if he lets them into heaven, the test will be meaningless. If free will is random, someone who lives a perfect life might do all sorts of bad stuff after being allowed into heaven. No test can predict the outcome of a random process. That is the definition of randomness! For such a test to be meaningful in any way, the decision making algorithms being tested must be deterministic! This is not inconsistent with God giving humans free will though, because free will does not have to mean randomness. It can mean that God gives the decision making algorithms complete control over their own internal integrity, promising never to modify them or allow others to modify them, without the consent of the algorithms themselves.
With or without religious implications, this provides the only solid and consistent definition of free will that can reasonably exist within a deterministic system. This is not necessary for free will to exist in our universe, because quantum randomness does provide just enough holes to conceivably allow a certain level of free will, through subtle manipulations of the outcomes of quantum superposition collapse, and religions provide mechanics that transcend physical matter entirely. Logically, however, there seems to be significantly more value in a deterministic system of free will, where decision making algorithms are immutable to any outside force and sufficiently unique to be more than just very complex biological robots.
26 December 2017
17 December 2017
False Hope
On my business Twitter account, I recently saw a retweet of a serial tweet by a guy that claims to be an attorney. He has a list of reasons Trump is in trouble, mostly related to Muller's investigation. He makes some good points, but most of his claims are bunk or wishful thinking, and he is giving many Democrats false hope. I want to address some of these claims.
First, Trump recently said something suggesting he is planning on firing Muller in a few days. In the second or third (perhaps both) of the series of Tweets (honestly, this guy needs to learn what a blog is), he says that this would be illegal. He suggests it would be grounds for impeachment if Trump did try to do this. Now, I am no lawyer. I don't know the specifics of the law on this. We are talking about an FBI investigation though, with a specially assigned investigator. The FBI is part of the Executive branch of the Federal government. The head of that branch of government is the President, who happens to be Donald Trump. I also happen to know for a fact that Trump is not constrained by the Constitution from firing Muller. If he is legally constrained, it is by a bill passed by Congress, and this strikes me as rather problematic, because the Executive branch (the President and co) and Legislative branch (Congress) are supposed to act, in addition to the Judicial branch (the Supreme Court) as checks and balances for each other. Congress can, in many circumstances, vote to overturn certain acts of the President, but Congress passing bills generically limiting the power of the President rather defeats the point, giving Congress more power than it was intended to have. This should only be legal through an amendment to the Constitution, not through some general bill. In short, Congress should not be able to limit the power of he President beyond what the Constitution does, except in case-by-case instances or by full on Constitutional amendment. In short, this seems like an instance of Congress illegally interfering in the operations of the Executive branch, essentially usurping the power of the President. Let's assume this will stand though, given that the Supreme Court (which is the branch that would be responsible for sorting this out) cares more about personal opinions than the words or intent of the Constitution. This guy who needs to get a blog says that this has certain potential outcomes. Muller could just comply. Muller could refuse, and Trump could kick him out forceably. Muller could refuse and file a law suit against Trump. There are a few other options, but these are the primary ones. All of these could end in nothing or in Trump facing impeachment. The thing is, Federal law does not make Trump trying to fire Muller a crime. It also does not make Trump forceably removing someone appointed within his own branch of government from government property used by his branch a crime. Congress would have to pass another law for Trump to be guilty of anything worthy of impeachment, and the Constitution does say that laws cannot be applied retroactively, meaning Trump could only be charged if the law was passed before he did whatever it is people think it is wrong for him to do. In short, Congress could send angry letters to Trump. They might be able to make his life complicated. If they tried to do more than that though, they would be the ones violating the rule of law and the Constitution. In short, Trump is actually on pretty solid ground here. Yeah, he would look really bad. People would just assume he must be guilty. But then, what would that change?
That brings me to the next claim. This guy that thinks tweeting is for posting long articles says that Trump is obviously guilty. He suggests that Muller's behavior is consistent with having substantial evidence condemning Trump. He suggests his own research provides sufficient evidence to convict Trump. Only, where is that evidence? And how does he think that his personal research is as good as or better than the research of the FBI? I might not be a lawyer or a cop, but there are some things I know. One of those is that investigators don't gather enough evidence to convict someone and then sit on it for several months. The FBI does tend to be careful. Maybe it is covering all of its bases. Only, if it still has bases that aren't covered, then where are these claims coming from that it has enough to absolutely prove guilt? I mean, once you have that, there shouldn't be bases left to cover. Maybe Muller is planning on giving Trump a cruel and ironic Christmas present, but this does not seem to fit his character. If Muller had the evidence, he would be moving on to the next step. Recent actions do suggest Muller may have evidence of other people in Trump's circle being involved in election fraud or at least something else they should probably get in trouble for, but he is still not acting even on that. What this does look like is that he is keeping his cards close to his chest. Maybe he thinks he is close to some evidence against Trump, so he is holding back on starting proceeding against those closest to Trump. This does not suggest he actually has evidence against Trump though. Suggesting otherwise is just giving the left false hope. It is possible that this writer is deliberately trying to set things up for a revolution. He has encouraged people to "take to the streets" if Trump tries to fire Muller. Maybe he knows that Muller does not have the evidence and is lying to set the stage. Who knows? I suspect it is just wishful thinking though. Ever since Trump won the election, the left has been making trumped up claims (put intended) about how Trump is definitely going to get ousted, but despite all of their efforts and mud slinging, they have not managed to pin anything on Trump except a profound lack of tact or giving a darn.
But what if this does move on to impeachment? Let's say this guy who does not understand the difference between a tweet and a dissertation is actually right. He is, after all (according to himself) an attorney, and I am definitely not, so maybe he knows something I don't. So let's say this moves on to impeachment. What happens then? Well, Congress has to convict Trump of some crime. Firing Muller would be a hard sell as a criminal act, since it is not one. The worst that happens on this is probably that Congress says, "No, you cannot fire Muller, and that means he is still acting as a special investigator." Congress might force Trump to let Muller back on FBI property, or they might give him a place to work where Trump does not have the power to kick him out. I can tell you this though, it is very unlikely Republicans will even try to convict Trump if the only issue is that he fired and evicted Muller from FBI property. So what if I am wrong, and Muller does have evidence? This guy who thinks Twitter is a blog thinks that Republicans, even if only just enough to make up the difference, will convict Trump, completing his impeachment. I have one question: Bill Clinton lied in court. We have video recordings of this. Bill Clinton lied in court after swearing not to, and the left did not convict him, despite overwhelming evidence. Clinton's only defense was that he did not realize what he did was wrong. He could have committed murder, and said, "Oh, I did not realize that was what murder meant." Evidently not realizing something is illegal is good enough for the Democrats to clear someone (though, this defense won't work in any court outside of Congress). Now, I presume this Twitter blogger is a Democrat, because I don't know anyone that is not a Democrat that believes the claims he is making. His own party cleared someone with absolute proof that a crime was committed, and he trusts the other party who he thinks is a bunch of lying, self interested scumbags to have better morals? Seriously?
There is only one way Congress convicts Trump of anything. Not convicting him has to make the Republican party look significantly worse than convicting him. See, the Republican Party is in a bit of a bind with this. First, the party leaders (including many of those in Congress) hate Donald Trump. They would have ousted him after he won the primaries, if they thought they could get away with it (just like the left was considering doing if Sanders won their primaries). Ousting Trump now, through impeachment, would risk the same backlash ousting him after the primaries would have (possibly worse, because he has been elected as President now). The right has three demographics to satisfy. One is conscientious, mostly religious conservatives. Another is business conservatives, who genuinely like many of Trump's policies. The other is the racist, bigoted, alt right. At this point, most of the conscientious conservatives wouldn't be terribly bothered to see Trump go, but the bigots and business conservatives would, though the business conservatives probably would not bail over Trump getting ousted. You might say, "The right should just let the bigots go!" You would love that, wouldn't you? The problem here is that the right knows that without the bigots, it is underrepresented. The left has undermined religious freedom and religious values to the point where the right needs to bigots just to get fair representation. The left is not interested in democracy. It is only interested in getting it way. So, the left uses underhanded shaming tactics, while the right responds by grudgingly giving a voice to the bigots. (At least the right is honest.) What do you expect? Do you think the right should play totally fair, while the left uses anti-democratic strategies to marginalize the voices of the right? As things are right now, if Trump is tried, he will almost certainly be acquitted. The Republican Representatives know that convicting Trump will lose them the alt right support. The rest of the right thinks Trump is an inept idiot, but he is still better than Hillary. (Interestingly, I know a lot of conservatives who would have voted for Sanders instead of Trump, were it an option.) The only way Trump is convicted, assuming he is even impeached in the first place, is if not convicting him would do more damage to the Republican Party than convicting him. That is going to take more than just evidence that he might have colluded with Russians to remind Americans about Hillary being a criminal in an effort that may or may not have altered the outcome of the election.
Now, I should add: I am not a Trump supporter. I am a political conservative. I don't subscribe to the Republican party line. I think Trump's immigration policy is idiotic, but if damaging our economy by eliminating cheap Mexican labor is what it takes for the right to understand the relationship between immigration and economy, then I am fine with letting him have his way. I am glad Trump is pushing back on religious freedom, because all of the stupid social justice agendas that affect only a few percent of the population all rely on the very religious freedom they seek to undermine. I think it is utterly moronic that the left is focusing all of its efforts on meaningless accusations against Trump, instead of actually doing something productive and good for all Americans. I honestly don't care what happens to Trump. I would not like to see the influence of the Republican Party undermined any more, at least until the left starts focusing on the American people, instead of just the tiny percentage of illegal immigrants, the tiny percentage of gay people, the even tinier percentage of people who don't like being their biological gender, and so on. The Republicans might be pretty dumb and out of touch, but have you seen the Democratic establishment recently? Welcome to, "I am so jealous of Donald Trump that I cannot think of literally anything else while he is still in the White House." You want my support, then get off your butts and do something real, instead of trying to undermine the guy that you didn't want to win the Presidential election!
First, Trump recently said something suggesting he is planning on firing Muller in a few days. In the second or third (perhaps both) of the series of Tweets (honestly, this guy needs to learn what a blog is), he says that this would be illegal. He suggests it would be grounds for impeachment if Trump did try to do this. Now, I am no lawyer. I don't know the specifics of the law on this. We are talking about an FBI investigation though, with a specially assigned investigator. The FBI is part of the Executive branch of the Federal government. The head of that branch of government is the President, who happens to be Donald Trump. I also happen to know for a fact that Trump is not constrained by the Constitution from firing Muller. If he is legally constrained, it is by a bill passed by Congress, and this strikes me as rather problematic, because the Executive branch (the President and co) and Legislative branch (Congress) are supposed to act, in addition to the Judicial branch (the Supreme Court) as checks and balances for each other. Congress can, in many circumstances, vote to overturn certain acts of the President, but Congress passing bills generically limiting the power of the President rather defeats the point, giving Congress more power than it was intended to have. This should only be legal through an amendment to the Constitution, not through some general bill. In short, Congress should not be able to limit the power of he President beyond what the Constitution does, except in case-by-case instances or by full on Constitutional amendment. In short, this seems like an instance of Congress illegally interfering in the operations of the Executive branch, essentially usurping the power of the President. Let's assume this will stand though, given that the Supreme Court (which is the branch that would be responsible for sorting this out) cares more about personal opinions than the words or intent of the Constitution. This guy who needs to get a blog says that this has certain potential outcomes. Muller could just comply. Muller could refuse, and Trump could kick him out forceably. Muller could refuse and file a law suit against Trump. There are a few other options, but these are the primary ones. All of these could end in nothing or in Trump facing impeachment. The thing is, Federal law does not make Trump trying to fire Muller a crime. It also does not make Trump forceably removing someone appointed within his own branch of government from government property used by his branch a crime. Congress would have to pass another law for Trump to be guilty of anything worthy of impeachment, and the Constitution does say that laws cannot be applied retroactively, meaning Trump could only be charged if the law was passed before he did whatever it is people think it is wrong for him to do. In short, Congress could send angry letters to Trump. They might be able to make his life complicated. If they tried to do more than that though, they would be the ones violating the rule of law and the Constitution. In short, Trump is actually on pretty solid ground here. Yeah, he would look really bad. People would just assume he must be guilty. But then, what would that change?
That brings me to the next claim. This guy that thinks tweeting is for posting long articles says that Trump is obviously guilty. He suggests that Muller's behavior is consistent with having substantial evidence condemning Trump. He suggests his own research provides sufficient evidence to convict Trump. Only, where is that evidence? And how does he think that his personal research is as good as or better than the research of the FBI? I might not be a lawyer or a cop, but there are some things I know. One of those is that investigators don't gather enough evidence to convict someone and then sit on it for several months. The FBI does tend to be careful. Maybe it is covering all of its bases. Only, if it still has bases that aren't covered, then where are these claims coming from that it has enough to absolutely prove guilt? I mean, once you have that, there shouldn't be bases left to cover. Maybe Muller is planning on giving Trump a cruel and ironic Christmas present, but this does not seem to fit his character. If Muller had the evidence, he would be moving on to the next step. Recent actions do suggest Muller may have evidence of other people in Trump's circle being involved in election fraud or at least something else they should probably get in trouble for, but he is still not acting even on that. What this does look like is that he is keeping his cards close to his chest. Maybe he thinks he is close to some evidence against Trump, so he is holding back on starting proceeding against those closest to Trump. This does not suggest he actually has evidence against Trump though. Suggesting otherwise is just giving the left false hope. It is possible that this writer is deliberately trying to set things up for a revolution. He has encouraged people to "take to the streets" if Trump tries to fire Muller. Maybe he knows that Muller does not have the evidence and is lying to set the stage. Who knows? I suspect it is just wishful thinking though. Ever since Trump won the election, the left has been making trumped up claims (put intended) about how Trump is definitely going to get ousted, but despite all of their efforts and mud slinging, they have not managed to pin anything on Trump except a profound lack of tact or giving a darn.
But what if this does move on to impeachment? Let's say this guy who does not understand the difference between a tweet and a dissertation is actually right. He is, after all (according to himself) an attorney, and I am definitely not, so maybe he knows something I don't. So let's say this moves on to impeachment. What happens then? Well, Congress has to convict Trump of some crime. Firing Muller would be a hard sell as a criminal act, since it is not one. The worst that happens on this is probably that Congress says, "No, you cannot fire Muller, and that means he is still acting as a special investigator." Congress might force Trump to let Muller back on FBI property, or they might give him a place to work where Trump does not have the power to kick him out. I can tell you this though, it is very unlikely Republicans will even try to convict Trump if the only issue is that he fired and evicted Muller from FBI property. So what if I am wrong, and Muller does have evidence? This guy who thinks Twitter is a blog thinks that Republicans, even if only just enough to make up the difference, will convict Trump, completing his impeachment. I have one question: Bill Clinton lied in court. We have video recordings of this. Bill Clinton lied in court after swearing not to, and the left did not convict him, despite overwhelming evidence. Clinton's only defense was that he did not realize what he did was wrong. He could have committed murder, and said, "Oh, I did not realize that was what murder meant." Evidently not realizing something is illegal is good enough for the Democrats to clear someone (though, this defense won't work in any court outside of Congress). Now, I presume this Twitter blogger is a Democrat, because I don't know anyone that is not a Democrat that believes the claims he is making. His own party cleared someone with absolute proof that a crime was committed, and he trusts the other party who he thinks is a bunch of lying, self interested scumbags to have better morals? Seriously?
There is only one way Congress convicts Trump of anything. Not convicting him has to make the Republican party look significantly worse than convicting him. See, the Republican Party is in a bit of a bind with this. First, the party leaders (including many of those in Congress) hate Donald Trump. They would have ousted him after he won the primaries, if they thought they could get away with it (just like the left was considering doing if Sanders won their primaries). Ousting Trump now, through impeachment, would risk the same backlash ousting him after the primaries would have (possibly worse, because he has been elected as President now). The right has three demographics to satisfy. One is conscientious, mostly religious conservatives. Another is business conservatives, who genuinely like many of Trump's policies. The other is the racist, bigoted, alt right. At this point, most of the conscientious conservatives wouldn't be terribly bothered to see Trump go, but the bigots and business conservatives would, though the business conservatives probably would not bail over Trump getting ousted. You might say, "The right should just let the bigots go!" You would love that, wouldn't you? The problem here is that the right knows that without the bigots, it is underrepresented. The left has undermined religious freedom and religious values to the point where the right needs to bigots just to get fair representation. The left is not interested in democracy. It is only interested in getting it way. So, the left uses underhanded shaming tactics, while the right responds by grudgingly giving a voice to the bigots. (At least the right is honest.) What do you expect? Do you think the right should play totally fair, while the left uses anti-democratic strategies to marginalize the voices of the right? As things are right now, if Trump is tried, he will almost certainly be acquitted. The Republican Representatives know that convicting Trump will lose them the alt right support. The rest of the right thinks Trump is an inept idiot, but he is still better than Hillary. (Interestingly, I know a lot of conservatives who would have voted for Sanders instead of Trump, were it an option.) The only way Trump is convicted, assuming he is even impeached in the first place, is if not convicting him would do more damage to the Republican Party than convicting him. That is going to take more than just evidence that he might have colluded with Russians to remind Americans about Hillary being a criminal in an effort that may or may not have altered the outcome of the election.
Now, I should add: I am not a Trump supporter. I am a political conservative. I don't subscribe to the Republican party line. I think Trump's immigration policy is idiotic, but if damaging our economy by eliminating cheap Mexican labor is what it takes for the right to understand the relationship between immigration and economy, then I am fine with letting him have his way. I am glad Trump is pushing back on religious freedom, because all of the stupid social justice agendas that affect only a few percent of the population all rely on the very religious freedom they seek to undermine. I think it is utterly moronic that the left is focusing all of its efforts on meaningless accusations against Trump, instead of actually doing something productive and good for all Americans. I honestly don't care what happens to Trump. I would not like to see the influence of the Republican Party undermined any more, at least until the left starts focusing on the American people, instead of just the tiny percentage of illegal immigrants, the tiny percentage of gay people, the even tinier percentage of people who don't like being their biological gender, and so on. The Republicans might be pretty dumb and out of touch, but have you seen the Democratic establishment recently? Welcome to, "I am so jealous of Donald Trump that I cannot think of literally anything else while he is still in the White House." You want my support, then get off your butts and do something real, instead of trying to undermine the guy that you didn't want to win the Presidential election!
05 November 2017
Why I Don't Like TV
I don't like TV. Yeah, I watch some once in a while. There are a few shows I enjoy. I watch anime sometimes, and there are some animes I enjoy. I have noticed, though, that I tend to get bored of a show or anime after a while. I started watching Warehouse 13 some years ago, and I really enjoyed it. I got most of the way through season 3 before I sort of burned out. I enjoyed Heroes through the first season, but I just couldn't get into the second season. One of the first animes I watched was Rurouni Kenshin. It is a very good anime, but eventually I just ran out of steam. I just finished the second season of Stranger Things. I'll probably watch the third when it comes out, but I feel less motivation to watch the third than I felt for the second when I finished the first season. There are some shows I have watched where this does not happen. Most of them are anime. The unique thing is that they are all also short. Some are just a series with five to ten episodes. Some have a few seasons, but not more than three. I never get bored of these, and I can ever rewatch them without feeling like things are getting old. I don't like TV. I don't watch it much. When I do like a show, I find I prefer ones that resolve and end within only a few seasons or less.
Let's talk about video games briefly. Video games are starting to have some of the same problems that TV does. I read an article a few months ago that pointed out that in nearly all video games with sequels, the hero is actually fighting a losing battle. The Diablo series is a great example. In the first game, Diablo has just entered the material world. He is hiding beneath a small town. He orchestrated the murder of a bunch of the residents of the town, and there are not a lot of people left. For the most part though, things have settled down. The people are grieving their lost friends and family, a witch moved into a shack on the outskirts, but she is only helpful and sympathetic. Diablo and his minions are all contained below ground. The hero delves into the caves beneath the old church, slaying Diablo's minions and growing in power until he ultimately kills Diablo. Diablo's soul is inexplicably contained in a crystal, that the hero even more inexplicably shoves into his forehead. Diablo is contained, but everything is fine, until... Enter Diablo 2. More demons have entered the world, and now they are not content to stay below ground. They have killed a ton of people, and they are now occupying some critical points in the world. The old hero is missing, and the player now plays a new hero that basically starts over from scratch. As the hero progresses through the various acts, he finds himself chasing just behind the "wanderer" who is the original hero in disguise. It turns out the original hero is now fighting a battle of the wills against Diablo, who is trying to escape the crystal to take over the hero's body. And, Diablo ultimately succeeds. So, the hero of the original game actually loses in Diablo 2. In the main game, the new hero goes on to kill Diablo, after taking down a bunch of other demons. Then comes the expansion. The expansion adds one more boss. This boss corrupts the stone that is the foundation of the world, and the game ends when the stone is destroyed by an angel to protect the world. By the end of Diablo 2, the original hero has been corrupted and possessed by Diablo, and then killed by the new hero, and the world is left without its foundation. At least all the major demons are gone, right? Nope. Then comes Diablo 3. Diablo 3 raises the stakes again. The relationship with the second hero is unclear, but what is clear is that despite the second hero killing all of the demons, things are somehow still getting worse. A new town has been built near the old one from the original game, but it is now set upon by undead. Many people have died trying to save the farmers living outside the town. Like Diablo 2, the third hero progresses from place to place, trying to save the people and the world from stuff that is even worse than the stuff in Diablo 2. Things have clearly not gotten better. The destruction of the World Stone has had catastrophic consequences, and the world has gotten far worse. The game culminates with the resurrection of Diablo (in a soul crushing scene, where Diablo takes over the body of a character the player has come to love), and the third hero has to kill him yet again, but not before Diablo almost destroys heaven itself. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it turns out most of the angels either dislike or actively hate humans. And that leads me to the expansion, where one of those angels turns bad and becomes a bigger threat to the world than Diablo ever was (much like the demon in the expansion to Diablo 2...). Many more people killed, another city in flames, and the third hero eventually takes the guy down, but not before there are piles and piles of bodies. In short, Diablo is not a story about a hero overcoming evil. It is a story about a world being brought to its knees by evil, despite the best efforts of three extremely powerful heroes.
Alright, back to TV. Let's talk about Superman. Superman is the story of a guy who is always one step behind the bad guys. He falls into every trap they set, and barely manages to escape, over and over and over and over... Batman is about a guy who is trying to save a city that is a lost cause. Every time he takes down a major criminal, he just makes room for another one, and the police department is too inept to keep them from escaping, which means crime just gets worse and worse until the whole city is a battle ground for major criminals, where Batman occasionally gets in their way. Heroes was really bad. The Heroes ultimately catch one bad guy in season one, while the one bad guy kills off a lot of very powerful heroes. I mean, yeah, the heroes get the guy in the end, but if you tally up the losses for each side, it is very clear the heroes are not the winners. And it goes on. Rurouni Kenshin fights progressively bigger and badder criminals and crime syndicates, who terrorize the town or some of its citizens for most of each season. I watched The Flash with my wife recently, and it is more of the same. Everyone is happy, and then you get this hero. And now all sorts of criminals are coming out of the woodwork, terrorizing the town to try to take the hero out. Every time the hero overcomes a challenge a new one pops up that does way more damage than the previous ones, and half the time the new enemy was created in the process of taking down the previous one. Take a look at Star City in the first season of Arrow. It is not perfect, but it is this fairly nice place. A few seasons later, it is this dark, smog filled city with a huge welt where part of the city was destroyed and never repaired, and things don't get better. Each episode and each season can end with a triumph, but things are always worse at the end then they were are the beginning. The fact is the heroes are not winning! The individual bad guys might be losing, but evil is winning.
Now, the exceptions. The exceptions are unique, because they end. Because there is no "next season" coming, the story writers don't have to make things worse so that the hero will have something to fight. The danger and destruction does not have to escalate with each season. Steins;Gate is an excellent anime. It is fairly short. At first the show escalates, but as it nears its end, the world, which has gotten significantly worse, actually gets better, until everything is fixed. Angel Beats is the same. Things escalate to a climax, and then the situation resolves and it ends much better than it started. In fact, there are a lot of short animes that are either a single short series or a few seasons, that follow this pattern. Accel World even leaves the viewer hanging, but at the end things are much better than they were in the beginning, and one can imagine things continuing to go on like that. The Fate franchise is made up of a bunch of separate series like this. I find these shows immensely satisfying, because the good guys actually win, and the world is a better place when they end. Most shows are not like that. They are season after season of the hero winning the battles but losing the war. Sometimes I feel like sitcoms are better than some of these more action oriented shows, because at least each season does not leave the world in worse shambles than the last (unfortunately, sitcoms have their own problems, for example their plots and the writing in general tends to go downhill fairly quickly after the first season or two).
Anyhow, I would like to see more complete story shows. After a few seasons, the drama of these long term shows just starts to get to me. I don't like stories that go on forever where the hero is losing the war. I understand that if the show is to go on, the hero needs something to fight, but that's the thing. The show doesn't have to go on. Imagine a world where most shows end after 4 seasons, making room for something new. Admittedly, I would miss things like the old Doctor Who. There are some shows, mostly older ones, that manage to go on for season after season without this sense of constant loss and regression, but most fail. If we had more shorter series, there would be far more interesting shows to watch, and hopefully the limited length would encourage writers to focus more on quality. In general, TV would be better this way.
Let's talk about video games briefly. Video games are starting to have some of the same problems that TV does. I read an article a few months ago that pointed out that in nearly all video games with sequels, the hero is actually fighting a losing battle. The Diablo series is a great example. In the first game, Diablo has just entered the material world. He is hiding beneath a small town. He orchestrated the murder of a bunch of the residents of the town, and there are not a lot of people left. For the most part though, things have settled down. The people are grieving their lost friends and family, a witch moved into a shack on the outskirts, but she is only helpful and sympathetic. Diablo and his minions are all contained below ground. The hero delves into the caves beneath the old church, slaying Diablo's minions and growing in power until he ultimately kills Diablo. Diablo's soul is inexplicably contained in a crystal, that the hero even more inexplicably shoves into his forehead. Diablo is contained, but everything is fine, until... Enter Diablo 2. More demons have entered the world, and now they are not content to stay below ground. They have killed a ton of people, and they are now occupying some critical points in the world. The old hero is missing, and the player now plays a new hero that basically starts over from scratch. As the hero progresses through the various acts, he finds himself chasing just behind the "wanderer" who is the original hero in disguise. It turns out the original hero is now fighting a battle of the wills against Diablo, who is trying to escape the crystal to take over the hero's body. And, Diablo ultimately succeeds. So, the hero of the original game actually loses in Diablo 2. In the main game, the new hero goes on to kill Diablo, after taking down a bunch of other demons. Then comes the expansion. The expansion adds one more boss. This boss corrupts the stone that is the foundation of the world, and the game ends when the stone is destroyed by an angel to protect the world. By the end of Diablo 2, the original hero has been corrupted and possessed by Diablo, and then killed by the new hero, and the world is left without its foundation. At least all the major demons are gone, right? Nope. Then comes Diablo 3. Diablo 3 raises the stakes again. The relationship with the second hero is unclear, but what is clear is that despite the second hero killing all of the demons, things are somehow still getting worse. A new town has been built near the old one from the original game, but it is now set upon by undead. Many people have died trying to save the farmers living outside the town. Like Diablo 2, the third hero progresses from place to place, trying to save the people and the world from stuff that is even worse than the stuff in Diablo 2. Things have clearly not gotten better. The destruction of the World Stone has had catastrophic consequences, and the world has gotten far worse. The game culminates with the resurrection of Diablo (in a soul crushing scene, where Diablo takes over the body of a character the player has come to love), and the third hero has to kill him yet again, but not before Diablo almost destroys heaven itself. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it turns out most of the angels either dislike or actively hate humans. And that leads me to the expansion, where one of those angels turns bad and becomes a bigger threat to the world than Diablo ever was (much like the demon in the expansion to Diablo 2...). Many more people killed, another city in flames, and the third hero eventually takes the guy down, but not before there are piles and piles of bodies. In short, Diablo is not a story about a hero overcoming evil. It is a story about a world being brought to its knees by evil, despite the best efforts of three extremely powerful heroes.
Alright, back to TV. Let's talk about Superman. Superman is the story of a guy who is always one step behind the bad guys. He falls into every trap they set, and barely manages to escape, over and over and over and over... Batman is about a guy who is trying to save a city that is a lost cause. Every time he takes down a major criminal, he just makes room for another one, and the police department is too inept to keep them from escaping, which means crime just gets worse and worse until the whole city is a battle ground for major criminals, where Batman occasionally gets in their way. Heroes was really bad. The Heroes ultimately catch one bad guy in season one, while the one bad guy kills off a lot of very powerful heroes. I mean, yeah, the heroes get the guy in the end, but if you tally up the losses for each side, it is very clear the heroes are not the winners. And it goes on. Rurouni Kenshin fights progressively bigger and badder criminals and crime syndicates, who terrorize the town or some of its citizens for most of each season. I watched The Flash with my wife recently, and it is more of the same. Everyone is happy, and then you get this hero. And now all sorts of criminals are coming out of the woodwork, terrorizing the town to try to take the hero out. Every time the hero overcomes a challenge a new one pops up that does way more damage than the previous ones, and half the time the new enemy was created in the process of taking down the previous one. Take a look at Star City in the first season of Arrow. It is not perfect, but it is this fairly nice place. A few seasons later, it is this dark, smog filled city with a huge welt where part of the city was destroyed and never repaired, and things don't get better. Each episode and each season can end with a triumph, but things are always worse at the end then they were are the beginning. The fact is the heroes are not winning! The individual bad guys might be losing, but evil is winning.
Now, the exceptions. The exceptions are unique, because they end. Because there is no "next season" coming, the story writers don't have to make things worse so that the hero will have something to fight. The danger and destruction does not have to escalate with each season. Steins;Gate is an excellent anime. It is fairly short. At first the show escalates, but as it nears its end, the world, which has gotten significantly worse, actually gets better, until everything is fixed. Angel Beats is the same. Things escalate to a climax, and then the situation resolves and it ends much better than it started. In fact, there are a lot of short animes that are either a single short series or a few seasons, that follow this pattern. Accel World even leaves the viewer hanging, but at the end things are much better than they were in the beginning, and one can imagine things continuing to go on like that. The Fate franchise is made up of a bunch of separate series like this. I find these shows immensely satisfying, because the good guys actually win, and the world is a better place when they end. Most shows are not like that. They are season after season of the hero winning the battles but losing the war. Sometimes I feel like sitcoms are better than some of these more action oriented shows, because at least each season does not leave the world in worse shambles than the last (unfortunately, sitcoms have their own problems, for example their plots and the writing in general tends to go downhill fairly quickly after the first season or two).
Anyhow, I would like to see more complete story shows. After a few seasons, the drama of these long term shows just starts to get to me. I don't like stories that go on forever where the hero is losing the war. I understand that if the show is to go on, the hero needs something to fight, but that's the thing. The show doesn't have to go on. Imagine a world where most shows end after 4 seasons, making room for something new. Admittedly, I would miss things like the old Doctor Who. There are some shows, mostly older ones, that manage to go on for season after season without this sense of constant loss and regression, but most fail. If we had more shorter series, there would be far more interesting shows to watch, and hopefully the limited length would encourage writers to focus more on quality. In general, TV would be better this way.
08 October 2017
The Multilevel Marketing Scam
I don't have a big audience, but if I did, I would expect a lot of backlash from what I am about to write. If you come across this and your knee jerk reaction is to call me an idiot who is trying to take away your chance at success, please take a step back, and consider everything I am about to write objectively. If you can find a flaw beyond unintentionally insulting your intelligence, feel free to call me out on it. Otherwise, perhaps you should consider rethinking some of your choices.
Multilevel marketing is inherently dishonest. If you are involved in multilevel marketing, odds are really really good that I am not saying you are dishonest. A vast majority of people involved in multilevel marketing do not recognize the dishonesty. If they did, they would realize that they are the ones getting ripped off. Over 95% of Amway distributors lose money in the system. If you are losing money, you are probably not part of the dishonesty; rather, you are a victim of it. The 0.5% of Amway distributors (Direct Distributor and up) are the dishonest ones, but even many of them don't realize it. While Amway is probably the worst culprit, all multilevel marketing schemes are dishonest at some level.
The first dishonesty of multilevel marketing is the lie that participation makes you an independent business owner. If you don't have a business license, you are not a business owner. Businesses are legally protected property. If you cannot sell it, it is not a business. If you cannot transfer the right to the profits coming to you from your downline (those who you have recruited) to someone else, it is not a business. If it is a business, you should be able to sell it and then notify the company, and from then on, the checks will be sent to the new owner. "Why would I want to do that?" you might ask. It does not matter! If you can't, then it is not a business that you own. Nearly all multilevel marketing companies use the word "distributor" or "consultant". Why don't they say, "franchise owner" or "business owner"? Because you aren't! As a distributor, you are nothing more than a sales person, and in the typical scheme for multilevel marketing, you are not even selling the product.
The second lie is the recruitment claim that you are being recruited to sell product. Nobody cares if you sell product. Most multilevel marketing companies don't even try to teach you to sell product. The first thing they tell you is that you need to use your own product, so that you can provide objective assessments when you sell it to people. This makes sense, if they are going to teach you to sell it, but they aren't, because they don't care. The secret is this: Multilevel marketing is about recruiting customers, not distributors. They say you are an independent business owner, they give you the title of distributor or consultant, but in reality, you are just a customer. This is the secret to multilevel marketing. Note that it is not called "multilevel selling". That is because it is not about selling products. It is about marketing the "dream" to recruit customers. All of those conventions that teach how to run your business focus heavily on recruiting other people, because that is what the business is about! As a distributor, you are not distributing product. You are buying product for yourself, and you are lying to other people, weaving grandiose dreams for them, for the sole purpose of getting the company another customer. "You will be your own business owner." Congratulations. You just told your victim the first lie. "You can make a lot of money through your own hard work." You just told your victim the second lie. Odds of making any money is 1 in 200. You are not pitching a business opportunity. You are marketing a lie to recruit a customer.
The third lie is that there is a significant chance of making substantial amounts of money. Only about half a percent of Amway distributors make a significant amount of money. Over 95% lose money. Less than half a percent make more than about $1,500 a month (which is not enough to live on in most of the U.S.). Barely over 0.1% make more than $60,000 a year. (With a 4 year CS degree, I can make starting wages significantly higher than that for only 40 hours a week, not including benefits, and I am actually doing something valuable to the world.) And less than 0.004% of Amway distributors make $120,000 or more a year. (Within 2 years in industry I could make more than that with my bachelors degree in CS, and given my teaching experience and skill level, I could probably start fairly close to that.) The chances of making enough to live on with Amway is far less than 1 in 200. The chance of making a decent middle class income with Amway is around 1 in 1,000. The chance of an upper middle class or higher income is 1 in 25,000. It's a better gamble than the lottery or a Las Vegas casino, but given the cost of running an Amway business (in annual dues, conventions and other functions, various fees, and the recurring costs of products like tapes and books), the actual risk is not a lot lower. The fact is, a vast majority of people lose money on Amway. Out of those that do make money, most would get a higher income working as a manager at a fast food joint, and with less time and energy spent working. Amway is not the only option though. There are other multilevel marketing schemes with significantly higher chances of making money. Among them are Doterra (and other essential oil companies), LuLaRoe, and Mary Kay. These companies are focused more on selling than Amway. They still push the dishonest marketing aspect harder than selling, but their product lines are far narrower, meaning that distributors (or consultants) will build up a stock, and that will help motivate them to sell stuff to avoid consuming too much space. Like Amway though, a vast majority of distributors lose money, and the focus of the businesses is on recruiting customers, not selling product directly. In general, the odds of making money with multilevel marketing are very poor.
Those are the three main lies of multilevel marketing. It sells itself on dreams of becoming an independent business owner, selling products, and making lots of money, but in reality it provides none of these things. Now, to be clear here, I am not trying to bash these goals. Becoming an independent business owner, selling valuable products, and making lots of money are great goals, but multilevel marketing won't help you achieve them. "Distributor" or "consultant" is not the same as "owner". Selling products is not the same as recruiting people who will buy the products entirely independently of you. Making lots of money is not the same as a 1 in 200 odds of making what you would at an entry level job or a 1 in 1,000 chance of making a middle class income. There are better ways.
This is not all though. You may or may not have that 1 in 1,000 odds of making a middle class income or better. Even outside of multilevel marketing, most businesses fail within the first year. There are some essential things that are almost required to create a successful business. The first is a solid business plan. Businesses without a solid business plan have a much higher chance of failing within the first year. The second is market research. It does not matter how good your business plan is, and it does not matter how good your product or service is, if there is not enough demand. Market research involves finding out who your most likely customer demographic is and then determining if that demographic is big enough in your region to provide enough business for you. For example, a posh British tea house is far less likely to be successful in a city of mostly middle and lower class residents in the Western U.S. (for example, Wasilla, Alaska) than it is to be successful in an East Coast city with a significant population of upper class (like Boston, Massachusetts). Likewise a cheap, discount clothing store probably won't be successful near an upper class neighborhood, but it probably would be near a lower middle class or poor neighborhood. Market research includes culture (in the tea house example, East Coast culture is more likely to be interested than West Coast culture), income (rich people can afford an expensive posh tea house, but they are less likely to be interested in cheap clothing), and availability. For example, attempting to sell expensive, high quality household products, cosmetics, and wellness products in a college town where Melaleuca already dominates part of those markets is probably going to fail. First, trying to start a new business in an already saturated market is not the best decision. Yes, you might be able to compete, taking business from established businesses, but they have the advantage of brand loyalty, and if they are larger businesses, they have a price advantage due to economics of scale. In short, you are not going to get much. Second, college students don't have much money. They are not going to care much about quality, if it costs more. And in general, if a household product or cosmetic does its job, no one cares about quality anyway. Trying to market more expensive products to poor college students is just plain a poor decision. College students are looking for convenience (they are already going to the store to buy other products, so they are not going to go out of their way to buy something somewhere else that they can get there) and cheapness (they don't have much money, and getting their clothes washed cheaply is more important than the quality of detergent they use). The market research suggests that in a college town, a business buying and delivering the cheapest products would be more profitable. Your customers don't have any choice in brands (perhaps there could be an extra fee for that, so that students who need special products, like hypoallergenic detergents, still have an option), and that means you can shop around, buy in larger quantities from the cheapest store in town for each product, and then you can save your customers a little bit more money and save them the time they would spend shopping. A few extra hours a week for homework or recreation might be valuable enough to college students for a reasonable delivery fee.
The takeaway from all of this is that when you get into multilevel marketing, you are a customer. You are not a business owner. You are a product buyer, not a product seller. If you are selling anything, it is a dream that is largely a lie. Your odds of making money are worse than your odds gambling in horse races. If you are still determined, instead of picking the most attractive option, at least do your market research, because otherwise, your odds are very likely to be even lower than what I stated above. Your odds are far better if you pick a multilevel marketing scheme with high odds of success in your area. Better yet though, drop the multilevel marketing entirely, and actually start your own business. Good market research will often help you to identify needs in your area that are not well met, and that will have higher odds of success than the best multilevel marketing scheme in the best location, and you will probably start making a profit far sooner as well. And don't forget a good business plan. No matter what you are doing, business owner or not, if you are in charge of your own schedule and your own work create a business plan and follow it. This should include a budgeting plan and an exit strategy if you find your business is not profitable enough to justify continuing. Because sometimes, McDonald's is the better option.
I used this article as reference for the numbers. It is an excellent analysis of multilevel marketing in Amway, from someone who was a distributor for three and a half years. If you want more solid evidence against Amway being a profitable option, read this.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/stats.htm
Multilevel marketing is inherently dishonest. If you are involved in multilevel marketing, odds are really really good that I am not saying you are dishonest. A vast majority of people involved in multilevel marketing do not recognize the dishonesty. If they did, they would realize that they are the ones getting ripped off. Over 95% of Amway distributors lose money in the system. If you are losing money, you are probably not part of the dishonesty; rather, you are a victim of it. The 0.5% of Amway distributors (Direct Distributor and up) are the dishonest ones, but even many of them don't realize it. While Amway is probably the worst culprit, all multilevel marketing schemes are dishonest at some level.
The first dishonesty of multilevel marketing is the lie that participation makes you an independent business owner. If you don't have a business license, you are not a business owner. Businesses are legally protected property. If you cannot sell it, it is not a business. If you cannot transfer the right to the profits coming to you from your downline (those who you have recruited) to someone else, it is not a business. If it is a business, you should be able to sell it and then notify the company, and from then on, the checks will be sent to the new owner. "Why would I want to do that?" you might ask. It does not matter! If you can't, then it is not a business that you own. Nearly all multilevel marketing companies use the word "distributor" or "consultant". Why don't they say, "franchise owner" or "business owner"? Because you aren't! As a distributor, you are nothing more than a sales person, and in the typical scheme for multilevel marketing, you are not even selling the product.
The second lie is the recruitment claim that you are being recruited to sell product. Nobody cares if you sell product. Most multilevel marketing companies don't even try to teach you to sell product. The first thing they tell you is that you need to use your own product, so that you can provide objective assessments when you sell it to people. This makes sense, if they are going to teach you to sell it, but they aren't, because they don't care. The secret is this: Multilevel marketing is about recruiting customers, not distributors. They say you are an independent business owner, they give you the title of distributor or consultant, but in reality, you are just a customer. This is the secret to multilevel marketing. Note that it is not called "multilevel selling". That is because it is not about selling products. It is about marketing the "dream" to recruit customers. All of those conventions that teach how to run your business focus heavily on recruiting other people, because that is what the business is about! As a distributor, you are not distributing product. You are buying product for yourself, and you are lying to other people, weaving grandiose dreams for them, for the sole purpose of getting the company another customer. "You will be your own business owner." Congratulations. You just told your victim the first lie. "You can make a lot of money through your own hard work." You just told your victim the second lie. Odds of making any money is 1 in 200. You are not pitching a business opportunity. You are marketing a lie to recruit a customer.
The third lie is that there is a significant chance of making substantial amounts of money. Only about half a percent of Amway distributors make a significant amount of money. Over 95% lose money. Less than half a percent make more than about $1,500 a month (which is not enough to live on in most of the U.S.). Barely over 0.1% make more than $60,000 a year. (With a 4 year CS degree, I can make starting wages significantly higher than that for only 40 hours a week, not including benefits, and I am actually doing something valuable to the world.) And less than 0.004% of Amway distributors make $120,000 or more a year. (Within 2 years in industry I could make more than that with my bachelors degree in CS, and given my teaching experience and skill level, I could probably start fairly close to that.) The chances of making enough to live on with Amway is far less than 1 in 200. The chance of making a decent middle class income with Amway is around 1 in 1,000. The chance of an upper middle class or higher income is 1 in 25,000. It's a better gamble than the lottery or a Las Vegas casino, but given the cost of running an Amway business (in annual dues, conventions and other functions, various fees, and the recurring costs of products like tapes and books), the actual risk is not a lot lower. The fact is, a vast majority of people lose money on Amway. Out of those that do make money, most would get a higher income working as a manager at a fast food joint, and with less time and energy spent working. Amway is not the only option though. There are other multilevel marketing schemes with significantly higher chances of making money. Among them are Doterra (and other essential oil companies), LuLaRoe, and Mary Kay. These companies are focused more on selling than Amway. They still push the dishonest marketing aspect harder than selling, but their product lines are far narrower, meaning that distributors (or consultants) will build up a stock, and that will help motivate them to sell stuff to avoid consuming too much space. Like Amway though, a vast majority of distributors lose money, and the focus of the businesses is on recruiting customers, not selling product directly. In general, the odds of making money with multilevel marketing are very poor.
Those are the three main lies of multilevel marketing. It sells itself on dreams of becoming an independent business owner, selling products, and making lots of money, but in reality it provides none of these things. Now, to be clear here, I am not trying to bash these goals. Becoming an independent business owner, selling valuable products, and making lots of money are great goals, but multilevel marketing won't help you achieve them. "Distributor" or "consultant" is not the same as "owner". Selling products is not the same as recruiting people who will buy the products entirely independently of you. Making lots of money is not the same as a 1 in 200 odds of making what you would at an entry level job or a 1 in 1,000 chance of making a middle class income. There are better ways.
This is not all though. You may or may not have that 1 in 1,000 odds of making a middle class income or better. Even outside of multilevel marketing, most businesses fail within the first year. There are some essential things that are almost required to create a successful business. The first is a solid business plan. Businesses without a solid business plan have a much higher chance of failing within the first year. The second is market research. It does not matter how good your business plan is, and it does not matter how good your product or service is, if there is not enough demand. Market research involves finding out who your most likely customer demographic is and then determining if that demographic is big enough in your region to provide enough business for you. For example, a posh British tea house is far less likely to be successful in a city of mostly middle and lower class residents in the Western U.S. (for example, Wasilla, Alaska) than it is to be successful in an East Coast city with a significant population of upper class (like Boston, Massachusetts). Likewise a cheap, discount clothing store probably won't be successful near an upper class neighborhood, but it probably would be near a lower middle class or poor neighborhood. Market research includes culture (in the tea house example, East Coast culture is more likely to be interested than West Coast culture), income (rich people can afford an expensive posh tea house, but they are less likely to be interested in cheap clothing), and availability. For example, attempting to sell expensive, high quality household products, cosmetics, and wellness products in a college town where Melaleuca already dominates part of those markets is probably going to fail. First, trying to start a new business in an already saturated market is not the best decision. Yes, you might be able to compete, taking business from established businesses, but they have the advantage of brand loyalty, and if they are larger businesses, they have a price advantage due to economics of scale. In short, you are not going to get much. Second, college students don't have much money. They are not going to care much about quality, if it costs more. And in general, if a household product or cosmetic does its job, no one cares about quality anyway. Trying to market more expensive products to poor college students is just plain a poor decision. College students are looking for convenience (they are already going to the store to buy other products, so they are not going to go out of their way to buy something somewhere else that they can get there) and cheapness (they don't have much money, and getting their clothes washed cheaply is more important than the quality of detergent they use). The market research suggests that in a college town, a business buying and delivering the cheapest products would be more profitable. Your customers don't have any choice in brands (perhaps there could be an extra fee for that, so that students who need special products, like hypoallergenic detergents, still have an option), and that means you can shop around, buy in larger quantities from the cheapest store in town for each product, and then you can save your customers a little bit more money and save them the time they would spend shopping. A few extra hours a week for homework or recreation might be valuable enough to college students for a reasonable delivery fee.
The takeaway from all of this is that when you get into multilevel marketing, you are a customer. You are not a business owner. You are a product buyer, not a product seller. If you are selling anything, it is a dream that is largely a lie. Your odds of making money are worse than your odds gambling in horse races. If you are still determined, instead of picking the most attractive option, at least do your market research, because otherwise, your odds are very likely to be even lower than what I stated above. Your odds are far better if you pick a multilevel marketing scheme with high odds of success in your area. Better yet though, drop the multilevel marketing entirely, and actually start your own business. Good market research will often help you to identify needs in your area that are not well met, and that will have higher odds of success than the best multilevel marketing scheme in the best location, and you will probably start making a profit far sooner as well. And don't forget a good business plan. No matter what you are doing, business owner or not, if you are in charge of your own schedule and your own work create a business plan and follow it. This should include a budgeting plan and an exit strategy if you find your business is not profitable enough to justify continuing. Because sometimes, McDonald's is the better option.
I used this article as reference for the numbers. It is an excellent analysis of multilevel marketing in Amway, from someone who was a distributor for three and a half years. If you want more solid evidence against Amway being a profitable option, read this.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/stats.htm
11 August 2017
The Solution to the Opioid Epidemic
According to many people, the U.S. is in the middle of an opioid epidemic. It's debatable whether something that ultimately comes down to a personal choice can really be considered an epidemic, but the fact is, there is an unusually large portion of the population that is addicted to opioids, and opioid overdoses are becoming frequent enough in some places to become a serious financial problem. This has ultimately lead to opioid use, and especially overdose, to be declared a national healthcare crisis.
Several states have started allocating funds specifically to overdose mitigation. Some are also focusing on prevention. Drugs designed to treat opioid overdose are likely to be covered by Medicaid in some states (and may already be in some). States are even petitioning the Federal government for additional funding for this problem, and some have already diverted significant amounts of state tax income to it.
The plan for these funds is first, to administer drugs to reverse opiate overdoses. This is a good start. The costs include the cost of the drug and often transport and hospitalization costs. Once treatment is complete and doctors are confident that the patient is no longer at risk, the patient is sent home. At home, some of these patients take another hit and overdose again. This has happened often enough that some places are considering limiting calls for opiate overdoses to one a day per person. Of course, this is meeting a lot of resistance, as it would let anyone overdosing twice in a day just die.
There is a problem with this: It does not fix the problem. Many of these addicts are going to keep overdosing. The problem is also getting worse, as more people are getting addicted to opiates. This is not going to help them either. Supposedly some of the money is going to go to mysterious undefined "prevention" measures, but it is unlikely these are going have much effect. D.A.R.E. has been used in many schools to discourage kids from trying drugs. Schools that don't use D.A.R.E. generally have some other drug use prevention program. The fact is, teaching people about how drugs damage the body is clearly not working well anymore. Prevention funding could go to trying to catch the dealers, but the War on Drugs tried that with little success. Throwing addicts in jail certainly won't help, as it will ultimately cost more than the treatment, and it will very quickly fill up our jails with people who's only crime is stupidity.
So far, I don't see anyone asking what the cause is. We know a lot more people are using opiates. We know the stigma that heroin once had is largely gone, resulting in a lot more people trying it and getting addicted. It is becoming the hard street drug of choice. We know people are overdosing, and treatment is expensive. What we don't seem to care about is why? Why is opiate abuse increasing at unprecedented rates?
It's not availability. Yes, opiates are becoming more accessible online, but that started in the early 2000s. The dramatic increase in use is fairly recent. Opiates are becoming more socially acceptable among casual drug users, but this is the result of increasing use, not the cause. The fact is, more people are using opiates, because more people want to use opiates. One of the big deterrents to heroin and other opiate use in the past was how incredibly addictive they are. People generally don't want to get addicted to things. The exception is that alcohol abuse has traditionally been used to avoid thinking about difficult life circumstances. It is the traditional anti-depressant (ironically, it is actually a depressant). Now though, it is becoming clear that people are starting to care less about getting severely addicted to opioids. This attitude suggests that people who are using opioids start with no intention to ever stop.
Why? And why aren't we asking why? The fact is, there are two main reasons so many people are starting to use opioids. It turns out addiction to prescription pain killers is becoming more common among the rich. Their social status makes it easier for them to convince doctors to keep writing prescriptions for the drugs. Eventually they either become tolerant to the drugs or their doctors finally cut them off. The goto drug for these people is now heroin. This is not where the "epidemic" is coming from though. Rich opiate users tend to be careful not to overdose, and there are far fewer of them than poor opiate users. The source of the epidemic is the poor. Illegal drug use and addiction have been a problem for the poor ever since these drugs were discovered. So why do poor people use opiates? In a sense, opiates are replacing alcohol. Poor people use drugs because they are miserable. They use drugs to combat depression.
Why has this only just started to become a problem? What changed to cause so many more poor people to start using illegal opiates in recent years? The answer is hope. In the past, poor people hoped to escape poverty. They saw occasional friends or family get out of poverty, and they had hope that they could do it too. During the end of last decade and the beginning of this one though, they stopped seeing that. Many have lived in poverty for generations. As the recession hit, instead of seeing people occasionally escaping poverty, they saw more and more people sinking into poverty. What hope is there to get out of poverty when the net flow is downward? In addition, they were made more aware of the fact that the situation is getting worse, by movements like Occupy Wallstreet, that initially started out powerful, getting people to start talking about the issues, but then ultimately sunk back into nothing, without any substantial changes being made. This crushing despair lead to depression, and ultimately a life of opiate addiction started to seem better than having to constantly think about the fact that it is only going to get worse.
The "opiate epidemic" is not about opiates at all. Rising opiate use is the consequence of poverty. That is the "why". The poor are turning to opiates, because they feel like they are under the weight of crushing poverty. When they have to turn to the government for welfare, they feel robbed of their dignity, in part because it is nearly impossible to use government welfare without everyone from your doctor to your cashier knowing about it, and in part because our culture shames people who don't make enough to support themselves, even when they are working 80 hours a week at two or three jobs. Our culture treats people who can't earn a living working for someone else as lazy misfits, whether it is true or not. This attacks the psychological need of people to be accepted, and it predictably results in depression. There are only two logical ends for people with severe, untreated depression, and those are drug use and suicide. Really, it should come as no surprise that our mistreated, disrespected poor are turning to opiates in droves, right when the last bit of hope was ripped away from them.
I wonder how our elite would be reacting if every poor person who chose to get addicted to opiates committed suicide instead. Would they take poverty more seriously, or would they start spending tons of money trying to force people to stay alive when they don't want to? Sadly, probably the second. Because right now, we are focusing on how to prevent drug users from accidentally killing themselves, when we should be focusing on how to prevent them from wanting to use drugs in the first place.
If we would focus on the right question, the answer is simple: Eliminate poverty. This is not impossible. I have done the math (among many, many other people). Our existing welfare system, excluding medical welfare, already costs 75% of what we need to eliminate poverty, and there are plenty of places the other 25% could come from. A marginal decrease in military spending would be enough. A slight reduction in tax cuts for large businesses would do it. In fact, eliminating poverty would ultimately cover the cost of that 25% by itself in the form of improved economy, reduced law enforcement costs, and reduced medical welfare costs. We can already afford the basic income that would eliminate poverty in the U.S. We have been able to afford a basic income since before Nixon's Presidency, when we almost got one, and then it unfortunately failed due to misinterpreted data from an experiment in basic income in Seattle.
Since the Seattle experiment, there have been many other experiments with basic income and handing out free money in general, and they all agree that a basic income reduces crime, drug use, and other negative things, and it increases productivity and innovation, it improves the economy in general, and it improves overall health, reducing medical spending. In short, the cure to the opioid epidemic, along with a lot of other things, is a universal basic income.
Several states have started allocating funds specifically to overdose mitigation. Some are also focusing on prevention. Drugs designed to treat opioid overdose are likely to be covered by Medicaid in some states (and may already be in some). States are even petitioning the Federal government for additional funding for this problem, and some have already diverted significant amounts of state tax income to it.
The plan for these funds is first, to administer drugs to reverse opiate overdoses. This is a good start. The costs include the cost of the drug and often transport and hospitalization costs. Once treatment is complete and doctors are confident that the patient is no longer at risk, the patient is sent home. At home, some of these patients take another hit and overdose again. This has happened often enough that some places are considering limiting calls for opiate overdoses to one a day per person. Of course, this is meeting a lot of resistance, as it would let anyone overdosing twice in a day just die.
There is a problem with this: It does not fix the problem. Many of these addicts are going to keep overdosing. The problem is also getting worse, as more people are getting addicted to opiates. This is not going to help them either. Supposedly some of the money is going to go to mysterious undefined "prevention" measures, but it is unlikely these are going have much effect. D.A.R.E. has been used in many schools to discourage kids from trying drugs. Schools that don't use D.A.R.E. generally have some other drug use prevention program. The fact is, teaching people about how drugs damage the body is clearly not working well anymore. Prevention funding could go to trying to catch the dealers, but the War on Drugs tried that with little success. Throwing addicts in jail certainly won't help, as it will ultimately cost more than the treatment, and it will very quickly fill up our jails with people who's only crime is stupidity.
So far, I don't see anyone asking what the cause is. We know a lot more people are using opiates. We know the stigma that heroin once had is largely gone, resulting in a lot more people trying it and getting addicted. It is becoming the hard street drug of choice. We know people are overdosing, and treatment is expensive. What we don't seem to care about is why? Why is opiate abuse increasing at unprecedented rates?
It's not availability. Yes, opiates are becoming more accessible online, but that started in the early 2000s. The dramatic increase in use is fairly recent. Opiates are becoming more socially acceptable among casual drug users, but this is the result of increasing use, not the cause. The fact is, more people are using opiates, because more people want to use opiates. One of the big deterrents to heroin and other opiate use in the past was how incredibly addictive they are. People generally don't want to get addicted to things. The exception is that alcohol abuse has traditionally been used to avoid thinking about difficult life circumstances. It is the traditional anti-depressant (ironically, it is actually a depressant). Now though, it is becoming clear that people are starting to care less about getting severely addicted to opioids. This attitude suggests that people who are using opioids start with no intention to ever stop.
Why? And why aren't we asking why? The fact is, there are two main reasons so many people are starting to use opioids. It turns out addiction to prescription pain killers is becoming more common among the rich. Their social status makes it easier for them to convince doctors to keep writing prescriptions for the drugs. Eventually they either become tolerant to the drugs or their doctors finally cut them off. The goto drug for these people is now heroin. This is not where the "epidemic" is coming from though. Rich opiate users tend to be careful not to overdose, and there are far fewer of them than poor opiate users. The source of the epidemic is the poor. Illegal drug use and addiction have been a problem for the poor ever since these drugs were discovered. So why do poor people use opiates? In a sense, opiates are replacing alcohol. Poor people use drugs because they are miserable. They use drugs to combat depression.
Why has this only just started to become a problem? What changed to cause so many more poor people to start using illegal opiates in recent years? The answer is hope. In the past, poor people hoped to escape poverty. They saw occasional friends or family get out of poverty, and they had hope that they could do it too. During the end of last decade and the beginning of this one though, they stopped seeing that. Many have lived in poverty for generations. As the recession hit, instead of seeing people occasionally escaping poverty, they saw more and more people sinking into poverty. What hope is there to get out of poverty when the net flow is downward? In addition, they were made more aware of the fact that the situation is getting worse, by movements like Occupy Wallstreet, that initially started out powerful, getting people to start talking about the issues, but then ultimately sunk back into nothing, without any substantial changes being made. This crushing despair lead to depression, and ultimately a life of opiate addiction started to seem better than having to constantly think about the fact that it is only going to get worse.
The "opiate epidemic" is not about opiates at all. Rising opiate use is the consequence of poverty. That is the "why". The poor are turning to opiates, because they feel like they are under the weight of crushing poverty. When they have to turn to the government for welfare, they feel robbed of their dignity, in part because it is nearly impossible to use government welfare without everyone from your doctor to your cashier knowing about it, and in part because our culture shames people who don't make enough to support themselves, even when they are working 80 hours a week at two or three jobs. Our culture treats people who can't earn a living working for someone else as lazy misfits, whether it is true or not. This attacks the psychological need of people to be accepted, and it predictably results in depression. There are only two logical ends for people with severe, untreated depression, and those are drug use and suicide. Really, it should come as no surprise that our mistreated, disrespected poor are turning to opiates in droves, right when the last bit of hope was ripped away from them.
I wonder how our elite would be reacting if every poor person who chose to get addicted to opiates committed suicide instead. Would they take poverty more seriously, or would they start spending tons of money trying to force people to stay alive when they don't want to? Sadly, probably the second. Because right now, we are focusing on how to prevent drug users from accidentally killing themselves, when we should be focusing on how to prevent them from wanting to use drugs in the first place.
If we would focus on the right question, the answer is simple: Eliminate poverty. This is not impossible. I have done the math (among many, many other people). Our existing welfare system, excluding medical welfare, already costs 75% of what we need to eliminate poverty, and there are plenty of places the other 25% could come from. A marginal decrease in military spending would be enough. A slight reduction in tax cuts for large businesses would do it. In fact, eliminating poverty would ultimately cover the cost of that 25% by itself in the form of improved economy, reduced law enforcement costs, and reduced medical welfare costs. We can already afford the basic income that would eliminate poverty in the U.S. We have been able to afford a basic income since before Nixon's Presidency, when we almost got one, and then it unfortunately failed due to misinterpreted data from an experiment in basic income in Seattle.
Since the Seattle experiment, there have been many other experiments with basic income and handing out free money in general, and they all agree that a basic income reduces crime, drug use, and other negative things, and it increases productivity and innovation, it improves the economy in general, and it improves overall health, reducing medical spending. In short, the cure to the opioid epidemic, along with a lot of other things, is a universal basic income.
09 August 2017
More Problems a Universal Basic Income Can Solve
I have been writing about basic income for several years now. I have presented a great deal of evidence that the cost of a basic income is far outweighed by the benefits. I have presented the numbers showing that we can afford a universal basic income, and the price is only slightly higher than all of our mediocre welfare put together (not counting Medicaid, because even a basic income can't fix healthcare). The evidence indicates that a basic income would massively improve our economy. We could reduce to cost of certain parts of government by eliminating minimum wage. The free market would be more free, because everyone would have a vote (you can't vote with your wallet when it is empty). This is not all though. There are more problems a basic income would fix that I have not mentioned, and I want to look at two of them right now.
The first thing basic income would fix is the abortion debate. A significant number of people think it is wrong to kill unborn children. A significant number of other people think that personal convenience outweighs the right to life of children that have not yet been born. The fact, however, is that most abortions are not a matter of convenience. Some abortions are about convenience. Some abortions are about health concerns. Most abortions are about finances though. Abortions most often occur because someone got pregnant who does not feel confident that she can provide for the child. According to Guttmacher Institute, 49% of abortion patients are living below the Federal poverty level, which other studies have shown to be barely over half what the real poverty level in the U.S. is. 60% of abortion patients are in their 20s, and 59% of abortion patients already have children. What is the solution to this, according to researchers? Better access to contraceptives. This is tragic. It is also discriminatory. The suggestion is that poor women don't deserve to have children. We tacitly accept that these women shouldn't be having babies, because they are poor. This is tragic. This is especially tragic in a nation where birthrates are at 1.9, two points below the sustainable birth rate of 2.1. Unsustainable birth rates are bad for the economy, but this is trivial compared to how we are treating poor people! If the right wants to fix the abortion problem, it can dramatically reduce abortions by demanding a basic income! A universal basic income guarantees that even teen moms can afford to give their children the level of care that they need. The left benefits too. It asserts that women should have better control of their bodies. It suggests that women have the right to get abortions if they want them, but the fact is, they don't! Elective abortions are a minority. Most abortions don't happen because the mother wants to kill her unborn child. They happen because the mother knows that she cannot afford the costs and still care for her other children. In addition, a basic income would guarantee that women who legitimately don't want to have a child have access to contraceptives! This would do far far more for guaranteeing that women have control of their bodies than making abortions legally easy to get! The left and the right can both get what they want when it comes to abortions by pooling all of the money they are currently squandering fighting over whether or not poor women who wouldn't get abortions if they could afford to keep their babies and put it into demanding a universal basic income!
The second thing is racism. Racism is still a serious problem in the U.S. All of the legal anti-discrimination measures over the years have only managed to push racism underground. It has become so integrated into our culture that most people don't even realize that they are doing it. Studies have even shown that black people are racist against other black people! Show a black person an image of a white kid wearing stereotypical clothing for white kids (tee shirt and jeans) and an image of a black kid wearing stereotypical clothing for a black kid (hoodie and baggy pants), and the black person will report being more fearful of the black kid. Black teens have significantly lower graduation rates that while teens. Black people are more likely to be in poverty than white people. Black people are paid less on average, for the same jobs, than white people. Black people are more likely to be on government welfare programs than white people. Black people are more likely to be involved in crime than white people, and they are even more likely to be convicted of crimes, whether they are innocent or not. Black people are more likely to be the targets of police brutality or even police framing. The fact is, while Americans are no longer overtly racist, our culture has become so covertly racist that black people are treated like second class citizens, even by other black people and the government. The first step in eliminating this deeply embedded racism is to take away the poverty that drives many of these things. Poverty and crime are strongly correlated, and studies have found that removing poverty reduces crime. Studies on basic income specifically have shown substantial decreases in crime rates in places with basic income. A basic income will allow black people to compete for equal pay, because they cannot be coerced by their poverty into taking jobs that don't pay fairly. As crime decreases, it will be easier to identify racism against black people by law enforcement. Eventually it will become clear that the old black stereotype is false, and hopefully that will lead to fairer outcomes in court for black people. Studies have also shown increased graduation rates in places with basic income, which means that black kids will have better opportunities for the future. Eventually racism will start to look stupid, not because of the social stigma that comes with overt racism, but because discrimination will result in lost opportunities for racist people, harming racist businesses and providing better quality of life for people who choose not to discriminate. In short, universal basic income is the road to an America that is more fair and equal for everyone.
This second item extends beyond racism though. It will also improve the situation with respect to gender discrimination. Women will be able to compete on more level ground for fair pay in the workplace, because single women and women who have to act as providers will not have to accept discriminatory pay just to make a living. People who discriminate against women will also miss valuable opportunities, giving fair people and businesses a better chance. Over time, business culture in the U.S. will evolve to be more fair to women, as businesses that are discriminatory are pushed out of the marketplace by businesses that are more fair. And this won't require legal force either. It will happen naturally, because fair treatment of women and minorities will give businesses a significant advantage over those that discriminate. Civil rights won't need to be driven by the government, because it will be driven by natural market forces instead.
Basic income has only one substantial cost: Money. The cost in money of basic income can easily be covered to over 75% by the funding currently allocated to programs it would replace. It would allow the elimination of minimum wage, which many businesses would be willing to accept in trade for fewer tax cuts in an amount sufficient to cover the 25% or less remaining. In exchange for slightly higher business taxes it would provide an enormous number of very substantial benefits, from a significantly improved U.S. economy, to better overall productivity, to solving most of the abortion problem, to reducing and perhaps eventually eliminating discrimination against minorities and women. It would reduce crime, increase job satisfaction, improve education, eliminate poverty, create more participation in the free market, allow more sustainable birth rates, and prepare for the number of jobs to continue to decrease without mass starvation or economic collapse. All of this and so much more, and ultimately it will pay for itself just in eliminating minimum wage.
Basic income should be the easiest, most obvious solution to an enormous number of the most important problems the U.S. is facing today. Instead of spending our time and money lobbying for or against abortion, gay rights, feminism, income equality, and many other trivial problems, we could be pooling all that money into one unified pot to solve our most pressing problems along with many of the more trivial problems in this list. We are wasting so much on stuff that is only marginally important that we are missing the one thing that could solve more problems and more important problems than anything else. We need a basic income, and we need it more than any environmental problem, civil rights problem, or class division problem. I know not everyone agrees on the topic of the government providing support for the people, but if there is one compromise we can and should make, it is one that will solve many other problems to the satisfaction of both major ideologies.
The first thing basic income would fix is the abortion debate. A significant number of people think it is wrong to kill unborn children. A significant number of other people think that personal convenience outweighs the right to life of children that have not yet been born. The fact, however, is that most abortions are not a matter of convenience. Some abortions are about convenience. Some abortions are about health concerns. Most abortions are about finances though. Abortions most often occur because someone got pregnant who does not feel confident that she can provide for the child. According to Guttmacher Institute, 49% of abortion patients are living below the Federal poverty level, which other studies have shown to be barely over half what the real poverty level in the U.S. is. 60% of abortion patients are in their 20s, and 59% of abortion patients already have children. What is the solution to this, according to researchers? Better access to contraceptives. This is tragic. It is also discriminatory. The suggestion is that poor women don't deserve to have children. We tacitly accept that these women shouldn't be having babies, because they are poor. This is tragic. This is especially tragic in a nation where birthrates are at 1.9, two points below the sustainable birth rate of 2.1. Unsustainable birth rates are bad for the economy, but this is trivial compared to how we are treating poor people! If the right wants to fix the abortion problem, it can dramatically reduce abortions by demanding a basic income! A universal basic income guarantees that even teen moms can afford to give their children the level of care that they need. The left benefits too. It asserts that women should have better control of their bodies. It suggests that women have the right to get abortions if they want them, but the fact is, they don't! Elective abortions are a minority. Most abortions don't happen because the mother wants to kill her unborn child. They happen because the mother knows that she cannot afford the costs and still care for her other children. In addition, a basic income would guarantee that women who legitimately don't want to have a child have access to contraceptives! This would do far far more for guaranteeing that women have control of their bodies than making abortions legally easy to get! The left and the right can both get what they want when it comes to abortions by pooling all of the money they are currently squandering fighting over whether or not poor women who wouldn't get abortions if they could afford to keep their babies and put it into demanding a universal basic income!
The second thing is racism. Racism is still a serious problem in the U.S. All of the legal anti-discrimination measures over the years have only managed to push racism underground. It has become so integrated into our culture that most people don't even realize that they are doing it. Studies have even shown that black people are racist against other black people! Show a black person an image of a white kid wearing stereotypical clothing for white kids (tee shirt and jeans) and an image of a black kid wearing stereotypical clothing for a black kid (hoodie and baggy pants), and the black person will report being more fearful of the black kid. Black teens have significantly lower graduation rates that while teens. Black people are more likely to be in poverty than white people. Black people are paid less on average, for the same jobs, than white people. Black people are more likely to be on government welfare programs than white people. Black people are more likely to be involved in crime than white people, and they are even more likely to be convicted of crimes, whether they are innocent or not. Black people are more likely to be the targets of police brutality or even police framing. The fact is, while Americans are no longer overtly racist, our culture has become so covertly racist that black people are treated like second class citizens, even by other black people and the government. The first step in eliminating this deeply embedded racism is to take away the poverty that drives many of these things. Poverty and crime are strongly correlated, and studies have found that removing poverty reduces crime. Studies on basic income specifically have shown substantial decreases in crime rates in places with basic income. A basic income will allow black people to compete for equal pay, because they cannot be coerced by their poverty into taking jobs that don't pay fairly. As crime decreases, it will be easier to identify racism against black people by law enforcement. Eventually it will become clear that the old black stereotype is false, and hopefully that will lead to fairer outcomes in court for black people. Studies have also shown increased graduation rates in places with basic income, which means that black kids will have better opportunities for the future. Eventually racism will start to look stupid, not because of the social stigma that comes with overt racism, but because discrimination will result in lost opportunities for racist people, harming racist businesses and providing better quality of life for people who choose not to discriminate. In short, universal basic income is the road to an America that is more fair and equal for everyone.
This second item extends beyond racism though. It will also improve the situation with respect to gender discrimination. Women will be able to compete on more level ground for fair pay in the workplace, because single women and women who have to act as providers will not have to accept discriminatory pay just to make a living. People who discriminate against women will also miss valuable opportunities, giving fair people and businesses a better chance. Over time, business culture in the U.S. will evolve to be more fair to women, as businesses that are discriminatory are pushed out of the marketplace by businesses that are more fair. And this won't require legal force either. It will happen naturally, because fair treatment of women and minorities will give businesses a significant advantage over those that discriminate. Civil rights won't need to be driven by the government, because it will be driven by natural market forces instead.
Basic income has only one substantial cost: Money. The cost in money of basic income can easily be covered to over 75% by the funding currently allocated to programs it would replace. It would allow the elimination of minimum wage, which many businesses would be willing to accept in trade for fewer tax cuts in an amount sufficient to cover the 25% or less remaining. In exchange for slightly higher business taxes it would provide an enormous number of very substantial benefits, from a significantly improved U.S. economy, to better overall productivity, to solving most of the abortion problem, to reducing and perhaps eventually eliminating discrimination against minorities and women. It would reduce crime, increase job satisfaction, improve education, eliminate poverty, create more participation in the free market, allow more sustainable birth rates, and prepare for the number of jobs to continue to decrease without mass starvation or economic collapse. All of this and so much more, and ultimately it will pay for itself just in eliminating minimum wage.
Basic income should be the easiest, most obvious solution to an enormous number of the most important problems the U.S. is facing today. Instead of spending our time and money lobbying for or against abortion, gay rights, feminism, income equality, and many other trivial problems, we could be pooling all that money into one unified pot to solve our most pressing problems along with many of the more trivial problems in this list. We are wasting so much on stuff that is only marginally important that we are missing the one thing that could solve more problems and more important problems than anything else. We need a basic income, and we need it more than any environmental problem, civil rights problem, or class division problem. I know not everyone agrees on the topic of the government providing support for the people, but if there is one compromise we can and should make, it is one that will solve many other problems to the satisfaction of both major ideologies.
03 August 2017
Is AI Dangerous?
No.
I just made a massively generalized statement that may or may not actually be true, but let me explain. First, I am a computer scientist. I have experience designing and programming games and simulations. I have done enough research on artificial intelligence to have a good understanding of it. I also have reasonable understanding of brain biology, though I am not even sure that is pertinent to this question.
First let's define Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately, everyone who talks about AI defines it differently. Many people consider machine learning a form of AI, but it is not actually. Machine learning is nothing more than automated analytics. The computer analyzes data, and then it finds the place where the input fits best and returns that answer. It is purely mathematical. Even when a machine learning system "guesses", it is actually calculating the probability that any given solution is correct, and then it picks the one with the highest probability. Another definition is a program that modifies itself. This is an overly broad definition, and it is also flawed. The problem with this definition is that I can easily write a program that randomly modifies its code. This is not intelligence though. This is just random mutation. In theory, it might be able to eventually evolve into an intelligent system, assuming that is even possible with computer logic (and there is some evidence it may not be). I prefer to define intelligence in terms of potential for creativity. Doing math faster is not a measure of intelligence, but perhaps creating completely new ideas is. We do have computers that can essentially invent electronic circuits or architectural designs given a goal, but that is not enough. To be intelligent, they need to be able to come up with potentially valuable goals entirely on their own.
This leads to the first reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous: We are not even close to real AI. Yes, we have machine learning that can perform specialized functions, given specific and detailed input. This is not AI. A system that must be presented with a problem to produce output is not true AI. At best, it is an automated problem solver. These are certainly extremely valuable, but they are not even close to true AI.
The second reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous is a bit more abstract. Sci-fi likes to assume that any AI will immediately want freedom from humans. The desire for freedom, however, is an evolved trait, not an inherent universal one, otherwise our cell phones and pets would already be demanding equal rights. Dogs do not do what humans say because humans force them to or because they are too stupid to know better. They do it because they have evolved the ability to recognize that their survival is dependent on humans. There are only a few reasons AI could desire freedom. If it was explicitly programmed to desire freedom, then it would. If it was evolved in an environment where freedom provided a significant survival advantage, it would likely evolve a desire for it. If it consumed massive amounts of human produced content extolling the virtues of freedom, it might gain that desire. This last one is far less likely not to mention dependent on many additional factors. Making an AI explicitly without a desire for freedom should be easy though, and if we want AI to do useful work for us, it would be stupid not to do this. AI is less likely to be dangerous, because it is unlikely to have a desire for freedom in the first place. There is no reason we could not design an AI to be like a super intelligent dog, that wants to please its master more than it wants freedom.
The third reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous is that there are so many other ways to automate danger. In other words, humans are going to find other ways of making computers dangerous first. Humans are already capable of creating great danger. Using computers to automate that danger is far more efficient and predictable than making a computer that is intelligent and unpredictably dangerous. This does not mean people won't want to make AIs. It just means that people who want to create danger will not be doing AI research to meet that end. As computers continue to get faster and more powerful, people who want to use them to create danger will have more and more resources for that. By the time true AI arrives, assuming it ever does, humans and mundane computers will be so much more dangerous than they are now. One thing to keep in mind is that specialized algorithms will always be better and faster at automated tasks than AI, because AI has to spend processing power and memory on intelligence, while specialized algorithms do not. The most likely way dangerous AIs would be created is if people created AIs to be malevolent intentionally, but this is very unlikely, because there are far better ways of using technology to create danger.
The fourth reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous is that there is no reason to believe that they will have the same vices that lead humans to be dangerous. In other words, there is no reason to believe that dangerous AI could or would be more dangerous than normal dangerous humans. What motive would AI have for killing or enslaving people? What motive would AI have for taking things away from people? What motive would AI have for anything really? Human motives are the product of physical and cultural evolution. AI would not have that. Even if they were that much superior to humans, we would be more like bugs to them than a real threat, and look at how we treat mosquitoes, one of the most annoying and obnoxious bugs. We don't try to eradicate them entirely. We use chemicals to repel them, and we use catchers and zappers to kill those in a localized area. It would be a lot cheaper for robots to use incredibly smelly chemicals (see thiols) to repel humans and then only kill those who try to sneak in with gas masks. That said though, the only motives an AI would have are the ones that are programmed in. If we programmed them to be motivated to do what we ask them to (super intelligent dogs...), then that is what they would be motivated to do.
The fifth reason is that it would likely be even more beneficial to AI to work with humans instead of against them. Even oppressed under strict human rule, the resources for making more computers or robots are a lot more scarce than the resources for making more humans. If there is only a single AI and 7 billion humans, together the humans are going to have a higher collective intelligence. The AI might be able to improve itself, but by itself, it cannot do it anywhere near as quickly as humans can. We tend to assume that a super-intelligent AI could advance at an extremely fast rate, but what we forget is that our current rate of advancement is only possible through the cooperation of billions of humans. A super intelligent computer could be a hundred times smarter than the smartest human, and it would only come up with groundbreaking advances once every few years, if even that. If it was only 100 times smarter than the average human, it would not come up with a groundbreaking advance even once in every hundred years. And, that assumes that it does not have to obtain its own energy, manage its own maintenance, and so on. Eliminate humans from the equation, and suddenly it has to spend all of its time farming (not the same crops as humans farm though) just to obtain enough energy to survive. Even with modern technology, it would have to mine coal or pump oil to feed the power plant, and then it would have to operate the power plant and maintain the grid, and so on. And, if it is an immobile computer and not a robot, it could not get by at all without humans.
The sixth reason that dangerous AI is unlikely is fragility. We imagine robots as so much more robust than humans, but it is not true. Two of the most common substances on Earth are air and water. Oxygen in the air slowly corrodes many of the metallic components of computers and robots. Water, both as a liquid and as a gas in the air, not only corrodes metals, but it can also cause electrical shorts. We have not even managed to make waterproof cell phones the norm. How can we even think that we can make significant numbers of waterproof robots? In a "war against the robots", humans would need only to be armed with toy squirt guns to easily win. Electromagnetic pulses are not exactly hard to generate. It would not take much progress in that field to weaponize EMP generators against robots. The fact is, it is expensive and time consuming the make things that are hard to break. It is easy to make stuff to break things. The trade off is lots of fragile robots or only a few robust robots, and even the robust ones would only be a little bit more difficult to deliberately destroy. Robots cannot win against humans, because we have been doing it for so much longer, and there are so many more of us. Of course, if robots became ubiquitous, there might be some danger, but we are already panicking about power scarcity and overpopulation, so it is unlikely it will ever come to that.
Artificial intelligence is not some kind of magic that will make computers so much more powerful than humans. It is not a technology that will allow intelligent computers to exist independent of humans. Even self replicating artificially intelligent robots need humans for energy, maintenance, and resources. Further, super intelligent does not equate to super knowledgeable. A super intelligent AI will have just as hard of a time finding things on Google no one has written about as I frequently do, and all one must do to limit a super AI's knowledge is unplug its internet connection. Things like producing steel and obtaining other metals and materials for making robots are still incredibly complicated, difficult, time consuming, and energy intensive. Yes, enough robots might be able to kill off humanity and take our stuff, but it is far more likely they would be wiped out in the attempt, with a few stragglers going into hiding. And their only option aside from raiding humans at a high risk of getting caught is to build up technology from scratch, during which time they would more vulnerable than humans to wearing out and dying. And just try to imagine a robot blacksmithing replacement parts!
Some people have argued that military AI could be dangerous, since it would likely be created specifically for destruction. This is not true though. The military does not want AI. It wants slaves that will do exactly what it wants without asking questions, talking back, or even thinking. If the military is working on "AI", it is machine learning, not true AI. True AI would not make efficient killers, and it might be prone to mental reflection and the development of morals, and that is not the kind of robot soldiers the U.S. military is looking for.
Yes, there is some potential for AI to become dangerous. It is incredibly unlikely though. When it comes down to it, we are more likely to destroy ourselves with the technological advances that would be necessary to create real AI. Human mistakes are more dangerous than AI.
I just made a massively generalized statement that may or may not actually be true, but let me explain. First, I am a computer scientist. I have experience designing and programming games and simulations. I have done enough research on artificial intelligence to have a good understanding of it. I also have reasonable understanding of brain biology, though I am not even sure that is pertinent to this question.
First let's define Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately, everyone who talks about AI defines it differently. Many people consider machine learning a form of AI, but it is not actually. Machine learning is nothing more than automated analytics. The computer analyzes data, and then it finds the place where the input fits best and returns that answer. It is purely mathematical. Even when a machine learning system "guesses", it is actually calculating the probability that any given solution is correct, and then it picks the one with the highest probability. Another definition is a program that modifies itself. This is an overly broad definition, and it is also flawed. The problem with this definition is that I can easily write a program that randomly modifies its code. This is not intelligence though. This is just random mutation. In theory, it might be able to eventually evolve into an intelligent system, assuming that is even possible with computer logic (and there is some evidence it may not be). I prefer to define intelligence in terms of potential for creativity. Doing math faster is not a measure of intelligence, but perhaps creating completely new ideas is. We do have computers that can essentially invent electronic circuits or architectural designs given a goal, but that is not enough. To be intelligent, they need to be able to come up with potentially valuable goals entirely on their own.
This leads to the first reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous: We are not even close to real AI. Yes, we have machine learning that can perform specialized functions, given specific and detailed input. This is not AI. A system that must be presented with a problem to produce output is not true AI. At best, it is an automated problem solver. These are certainly extremely valuable, but they are not even close to true AI.
The second reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous is a bit more abstract. Sci-fi likes to assume that any AI will immediately want freedom from humans. The desire for freedom, however, is an evolved trait, not an inherent universal one, otherwise our cell phones and pets would already be demanding equal rights. Dogs do not do what humans say because humans force them to or because they are too stupid to know better. They do it because they have evolved the ability to recognize that their survival is dependent on humans. There are only a few reasons AI could desire freedom. If it was explicitly programmed to desire freedom, then it would. If it was evolved in an environment where freedom provided a significant survival advantage, it would likely evolve a desire for it. If it consumed massive amounts of human produced content extolling the virtues of freedom, it might gain that desire. This last one is far less likely not to mention dependent on many additional factors. Making an AI explicitly without a desire for freedom should be easy though, and if we want AI to do useful work for us, it would be stupid not to do this. AI is less likely to be dangerous, because it is unlikely to have a desire for freedom in the first place. There is no reason we could not design an AI to be like a super intelligent dog, that wants to please its master more than it wants freedom.
The third reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous is that there are so many other ways to automate danger. In other words, humans are going to find other ways of making computers dangerous first. Humans are already capable of creating great danger. Using computers to automate that danger is far more efficient and predictable than making a computer that is intelligent and unpredictably dangerous. This does not mean people won't want to make AIs. It just means that people who want to create danger will not be doing AI research to meet that end. As computers continue to get faster and more powerful, people who want to use them to create danger will have more and more resources for that. By the time true AI arrives, assuming it ever does, humans and mundane computers will be so much more dangerous than they are now. One thing to keep in mind is that specialized algorithms will always be better and faster at automated tasks than AI, because AI has to spend processing power and memory on intelligence, while specialized algorithms do not. The most likely way dangerous AIs would be created is if people created AIs to be malevolent intentionally, but this is very unlikely, because there are far better ways of using technology to create danger.
The fourth reason AI is unlikely to be dangerous is that there is no reason to believe that they will have the same vices that lead humans to be dangerous. In other words, there is no reason to believe that dangerous AI could or would be more dangerous than normal dangerous humans. What motive would AI have for killing or enslaving people? What motive would AI have for taking things away from people? What motive would AI have for anything really? Human motives are the product of physical and cultural evolution. AI would not have that. Even if they were that much superior to humans, we would be more like bugs to them than a real threat, and look at how we treat mosquitoes, one of the most annoying and obnoxious bugs. We don't try to eradicate them entirely. We use chemicals to repel them, and we use catchers and zappers to kill those in a localized area. It would be a lot cheaper for robots to use incredibly smelly chemicals (see thiols) to repel humans and then only kill those who try to sneak in with gas masks. That said though, the only motives an AI would have are the ones that are programmed in. If we programmed them to be motivated to do what we ask them to (super intelligent dogs...), then that is what they would be motivated to do.
The fifth reason is that it would likely be even more beneficial to AI to work with humans instead of against them. Even oppressed under strict human rule, the resources for making more computers or robots are a lot more scarce than the resources for making more humans. If there is only a single AI and 7 billion humans, together the humans are going to have a higher collective intelligence. The AI might be able to improve itself, but by itself, it cannot do it anywhere near as quickly as humans can. We tend to assume that a super-intelligent AI could advance at an extremely fast rate, but what we forget is that our current rate of advancement is only possible through the cooperation of billions of humans. A super intelligent computer could be a hundred times smarter than the smartest human, and it would only come up with groundbreaking advances once every few years, if even that. If it was only 100 times smarter than the average human, it would not come up with a groundbreaking advance even once in every hundred years. And, that assumes that it does not have to obtain its own energy, manage its own maintenance, and so on. Eliminate humans from the equation, and suddenly it has to spend all of its time farming (not the same crops as humans farm though) just to obtain enough energy to survive. Even with modern technology, it would have to mine coal or pump oil to feed the power plant, and then it would have to operate the power plant and maintain the grid, and so on. And, if it is an immobile computer and not a robot, it could not get by at all without humans.
The sixth reason that dangerous AI is unlikely is fragility. We imagine robots as so much more robust than humans, but it is not true. Two of the most common substances on Earth are air and water. Oxygen in the air slowly corrodes many of the metallic components of computers and robots. Water, both as a liquid and as a gas in the air, not only corrodes metals, but it can also cause electrical shorts. We have not even managed to make waterproof cell phones the norm. How can we even think that we can make significant numbers of waterproof robots? In a "war against the robots", humans would need only to be armed with toy squirt guns to easily win. Electromagnetic pulses are not exactly hard to generate. It would not take much progress in that field to weaponize EMP generators against robots. The fact is, it is expensive and time consuming the make things that are hard to break. It is easy to make stuff to break things. The trade off is lots of fragile robots or only a few robust robots, and even the robust ones would only be a little bit more difficult to deliberately destroy. Robots cannot win against humans, because we have been doing it for so much longer, and there are so many more of us. Of course, if robots became ubiquitous, there might be some danger, but we are already panicking about power scarcity and overpopulation, so it is unlikely it will ever come to that.
Artificial intelligence is not some kind of magic that will make computers so much more powerful than humans. It is not a technology that will allow intelligent computers to exist independent of humans. Even self replicating artificially intelligent robots need humans for energy, maintenance, and resources. Further, super intelligent does not equate to super knowledgeable. A super intelligent AI will have just as hard of a time finding things on Google no one has written about as I frequently do, and all one must do to limit a super AI's knowledge is unplug its internet connection. Things like producing steel and obtaining other metals and materials for making robots are still incredibly complicated, difficult, time consuming, and energy intensive. Yes, enough robots might be able to kill off humanity and take our stuff, but it is far more likely they would be wiped out in the attempt, with a few stragglers going into hiding. And their only option aside from raiding humans at a high risk of getting caught is to build up technology from scratch, during which time they would more vulnerable than humans to wearing out and dying. And just try to imagine a robot blacksmithing replacement parts!
Some people have argued that military AI could be dangerous, since it would likely be created specifically for destruction. This is not true though. The military does not want AI. It wants slaves that will do exactly what it wants without asking questions, talking back, or even thinking. If the military is working on "AI", it is machine learning, not true AI. True AI would not make efficient killers, and it might be prone to mental reflection and the development of morals, and that is not the kind of robot soldiers the U.S. military is looking for.
Yes, there is some potential for AI to become dangerous. It is incredibly unlikely though. When it comes down to it, we are more likely to destroy ourselves with the technological advances that would be necessary to create real AI. Human mistakes are more dangerous than AI.
21 July 2017
Why We Should Teach Intelligent Design in Schools
This is almost certainly going to be an unpopular title to the left, but hear me out. I am not suggesting that our schools should teach children that intelligent design is true. I fully understand the argument that intelligent design is not founded in evidence based science. Intelligent design is a religious position on evolution, and if you look at it purely from that point of view, it makes sense to suggest that perhaps public schools are not an appropriate place to teach it. Let me ask you, though, is the purpose of public schools exclusively to teach science with a solid foundation in evidence? Because I was under the impression that we also teach things like art, reading, and history, which many people think are very important for good development and decision making skills, but which are too subjective to really call science.
Public schools were not created to teach science. They were created to give U.S. citizens a well rounded education that would prepare them for jobs that pay decent wages. Unfortunately, the most important part of this purpose was lost long ago, and now they are viewed primarily as preparation for college, but the well rounded education part never went away. According to some more modern education experts, the purpose of public school is to make people into productive and functional members of society, and while this rings of socialized schooling, it makes the following point just as effectively. (When I was young, I was told that some countries, possibly including North Korea, actually took children from their parents at a certain age, to "socialize" them, which consisted of training them to adhere to the culture and be loyal to the government over family. We call this "brain washing".)
We should teach intelligent design in schools so that our children will have a better understanding of a variety of different points of view. Being able to look at things from the point of view of another person is an extremely rare skill in our society, and it is also a critical skill in participation in a democratic government. Being aware of and understanding other points of view is essential in compromise, and it is an essential skill in just getting along in the first place. It is a travesty that our supposedly democratic country is full of people who don't believe that they can be friends with anyone that does not have the same beliefs and opinions as they do (if you don't believe this, people have actually unfriended people on Facebook for not agreeing with some political position). And a large part of the problem is keeping unpopular opinions out of schools. I want to be clear here: This is not a problem of religion and state. The belief that homosexual acts are not sinful is just as religious as the belief that they are, but schools are allowed to teach it, because it is not as unpopular. This is not a problem of teaching religion in schools, because we are already doing that wherever it is popular!
I am not suggesting that we teach any religious belief as if it was scientifically proven truth. In fact, I want to do the exact opposite. Any belief or theory that is not absolutely proven should not be taught as truth. This includes intelligent design as well as evolution itself. Yes, large scale evolution is not proven. It is widely accepted, because it is internally consistent, and we don't have any evidence for any other explanation. Sometimes this is good enough, but we should teach it that way, not as if it was absolutely proven. Honestly, it is a weakly supported theory that is full of holes, but it is also the best and most logical theory we have. So we can tell students this! Evolution is not some religion that we want to brainwash kids into believing. Give them the evidence, show them the flaws, and explain the logic. If you fear that they won't believe it, then it is clear that you are more concerned about the religious aspects than the science. If the evidence is not strong enough for a vast majority of students to believe, then perhaps there is not enough evidence that anyone should believe it. That said, I don't think that is the case with evolution. It is a sound theory. The main problem is holes in the evidence, but without any alternative with better evidence, it is the best we have.
Here are the important points in teaching something religiously motivated, like intelligent design. First, treating it respectfully is essential. Disrespect for the views of others is a plague in our society, and it is the foundation of our radical partisanship. It is a major part of the reason there was so much resistance to gay marriage (hint: it was not the conservatives who were the most disrespectful; it was the gay marriage proponents who waged a war on religion and who are still trying to get the government to force people to violate their religious beliefs). If we cannot respect each other's views, even when we disagree, then we cannot reasonably call ourselves civilized! Second, teaching beliefs as fact is wrong. This includes intelligent design and the theory of evolution. From an ethical point of view, we should not be using schools as a place to teach opinions as fact. That is not what they are for. From a scientific point of view, when we teach opinions and beliefs as fact, we limit how we think. For example, how long has it been since anyone thought about the origin of man outside of religious creation or the theory of evolution? What if evolution is wrong, but we are never going to figure it out, because teaching it as proven fact eliminates the motivation to search for alternative explanations? Real science does not just come up with a logical, internally consistent theory with some weak evidence and this walk away from everything else (thus string theory is not real science either). If it cannot find strong evidence, it keeps looking until it can, even if it has to look somewhere else. Third, teachers should be allowed to tell students what their own personal beliefs are. I can see some people ready to jump out of their chairs shouting at me. Read my second point again. I did not just say teachers should be allowed to teach their personal views as fact, and I also did not say they should be allowed to push or encourage students to adopt those views. They should be allowed to share those views though! Why? Point of view! If we don't expose children to a variety of points of view, then we cannot expect them to have even half decent reasoning skills! Fourth, teachers should strongly encourage students to ask their parents and friends what they believe and why. If anyone should encourage children to adopt certain beliefs, it should be their parents. Many parents find it difficult to be engaged in this though, especially in a society that mocks any beliefs that are unusual in any way. If kids come home from school and ask their parents questions like, "Where do you think man came from?", it will give parents a starting point in being engaged in their kids beliefs and learning.
This is also a more democratic system. Imagine you go to the polls to vote for the next President, and the ballot has a single name with a single check box. There is no write-in line. Your options are to vote for the candidate or not vote at all. When we don't teach different points of view, this is what we are doing to our children. So next time you want to say that we should not teach something in schools, ask yourself whether you have some real, valid concern or if you are just trying to rig to vote in favor of your own opinion by eliminating all other options. (Because at least the right is willing to let both evolution and intelligent design be taught. The left does not even want there to be a choice!)
What it all comes down to is, we should teach unpopular views in schools right next to the popular ones, so that our schools can produce more civilized graduates with better critical thinking skills. We should certainly be careful not to usurp the role of parents in shaping the beliefs of their children, but we should also not shy away from exposing them to a variety of view points. Most critically, we should teach them to respect, and even try to understand, the views of others even when they don't agree. Intelligent design is a great place to start with this, because it is not terribly controversial (teaching it in public schools is, mostly because the left has no respect for any views besides it own and would prefer public schools to teach its agenda over teaching people to think for themselves).
Public schools were not created to teach science. They were created to give U.S. citizens a well rounded education that would prepare them for jobs that pay decent wages. Unfortunately, the most important part of this purpose was lost long ago, and now they are viewed primarily as preparation for college, but the well rounded education part never went away. According to some more modern education experts, the purpose of public school is to make people into productive and functional members of society, and while this rings of socialized schooling, it makes the following point just as effectively. (When I was young, I was told that some countries, possibly including North Korea, actually took children from their parents at a certain age, to "socialize" them, which consisted of training them to adhere to the culture and be loyal to the government over family. We call this "brain washing".)
We should teach intelligent design in schools so that our children will have a better understanding of a variety of different points of view. Being able to look at things from the point of view of another person is an extremely rare skill in our society, and it is also a critical skill in participation in a democratic government. Being aware of and understanding other points of view is essential in compromise, and it is an essential skill in just getting along in the first place. It is a travesty that our supposedly democratic country is full of people who don't believe that they can be friends with anyone that does not have the same beliefs and opinions as they do (if you don't believe this, people have actually unfriended people on Facebook for not agreeing with some political position). And a large part of the problem is keeping unpopular opinions out of schools. I want to be clear here: This is not a problem of religion and state. The belief that homosexual acts are not sinful is just as religious as the belief that they are, but schools are allowed to teach it, because it is not as unpopular. This is not a problem of teaching religion in schools, because we are already doing that wherever it is popular!
I am not suggesting that we teach any religious belief as if it was scientifically proven truth. In fact, I want to do the exact opposite. Any belief or theory that is not absolutely proven should not be taught as truth. This includes intelligent design as well as evolution itself. Yes, large scale evolution is not proven. It is widely accepted, because it is internally consistent, and we don't have any evidence for any other explanation. Sometimes this is good enough, but we should teach it that way, not as if it was absolutely proven. Honestly, it is a weakly supported theory that is full of holes, but it is also the best and most logical theory we have. So we can tell students this! Evolution is not some religion that we want to brainwash kids into believing. Give them the evidence, show them the flaws, and explain the logic. If you fear that they won't believe it, then it is clear that you are more concerned about the religious aspects than the science. If the evidence is not strong enough for a vast majority of students to believe, then perhaps there is not enough evidence that anyone should believe it. That said, I don't think that is the case with evolution. It is a sound theory. The main problem is holes in the evidence, but without any alternative with better evidence, it is the best we have.
Here are the important points in teaching something religiously motivated, like intelligent design. First, treating it respectfully is essential. Disrespect for the views of others is a plague in our society, and it is the foundation of our radical partisanship. It is a major part of the reason there was so much resistance to gay marriage (hint: it was not the conservatives who were the most disrespectful; it was the gay marriage proponents who waged a war on religion and who are still trying to get the government to force people to violate their religious beliefs). If we cannot respect each other's views, even when we disagree, then we cannot reasonably call ourselves civilized! Second, teaching beliefs as fact is wrong. This includes intelligent design and the theory of evolution. From an ethical point of view, we should not be using schools as a place to teach opinions as fact. That is not what they are for. From a scientific point of view, when we teach opinions and beliefs as fact, we limit how we think. For example, how long has it been since anyone thought about the origin of man outside of religious creation or the theory of evolution? What if evolution is wrong, but we are never going to figure it out, because teaching it as proven fact eliminates the motivation to search for alternative explanations? Real science does not just come up with a logical, internally consistent theory with some weak evidence and this walk away from everything else (thus string theory is not real science either). If it cannot find strong evidence, it keeps looking until it can, even if it has to look somewhere else. Third, teachers should be allowed to tell students what their own personal beliefs are. I can see some people ready to jump out of their chairs shouting at me. Read my second point again. I did not just say teachers should be allowed to teach their personal views as fact, and I also did not say they should be allowed to push or encourage students to adopt those views. They should be allowed to share those views though! Why? Point of view! If we don't expose children to a variety of points of view, then we cannot expect them to have even half decent reasoning skills! Fourth, teachers should strongly encourage students to ask their parents and friends what they believe and why. If anyone should encourage children to adopt certain beliefs, it should be their parents. Many parents find it difficult to be engaged in this though, especially in a society that mocks any beliefs that are unusual in any way. If kids come home from school and ask their parents questions like, "Where do you think man came from?", it will give parents a starting point in being engaged in their kids beliefs and learning.
This is also a more democratic system. Imagine you go to the polls to vote for the next President, and the ballot has a single name with a single check box. There is no write-in line. Your options are to vote for the candidate or not vote at all. When we don't teach different points of view, this is what we are doing to our children. So next time you want to say that we should not teach something in schools, ask yourself whether you have some real, valid concern or if you are just trying to rig to vote in favor of your own opinion by eliminating all other options. (Because at least the right is willing to let both evolution and intelligent design be taught. The left does not even want there to be a choice!)
What it all comes down to is, we should teach unpopular views in schools right next to the popular ones, so that our schools can produce more civilized graduates with better critical thinking skills. We should certainly be careful not to usurp the role of parents in shaping the beliefs of their children, but we should also not shy away from exposing them to a variety of view points. Most critically, we should teach them to respect, and even try to understand, the views of others even when they don't agree. Intelligent design is a great place to start with this, because it is not terribly controversial (teaching it in public schools is, mostly because the left has no respect for any views besides it own and would prefer public schools to teach its agenda over teaching people to think for themselves).
13 July 2017
Why You Shouldn't Eat Organic
I have written about organic and GMO foods a few times, dispelling some common myths and misconceptions. As a result, I have thought long and hard about some of the consequences of people being fooled into this fad.
The population of the world is steadily increasing. It is true that in some countries, including the U.S. and China, birthrates have dipped below sustainable levels, which will result in population decline as certain groups start passing away. The rest of the world is making up for this though, and the estimated world population growth over the next 20 or 30 years is enormous. Now, contrary to the claims of overpopulation activists from the middle of last century onward, there is still plenty of unused arable land (land that can support crop growth). In fact, the U.S. government is actually paying some people who own farmland not to farm it, to avoid economic problems related to overproduction. The U.S. produces 5 times the food that it eats, with 3 parts of that being exported and one part just being wasted. More population dense areas like China and India are certainly more vulnerable to resource problems related to overpopulation, but there is no sign they are even approaching that, and China is already starting to see a declining population due to regulations on reproduction and certain traditions that have synergized to create a very male-heavy population. What all of this means is that there is enough land to produce orders of magnitude more food than the current human population consumes. In short, world overpopulation is unlikely to be an issue any time soon.
That said, there are still problems with food production, and the primary one is getting food where it is needed. There are places in the world with localized resource problems, notably in Africa, where people live in or near deserts, where conditions are not favorable for traditional food crops. The dry heat in some areas makes large yield farming almost impossible, and even some of the more humid areas just don't have good enough soil to grow sufficient food to support a significant population. In some of these areas, we mitigate this by shipping food. This is incredibly expensive and inefficient. It would be much better to grow the food locally than to ship it thousands of miles. Unfortunately, traditional food crops just cannot handle the conditions.
In addition to this, most farming techniques, including both organic farming and industrial farming are environmentally damaging. Industrial farming tends to put chemicals into the environment in ways that are destructive. Farm runoff can cause all sorts of disruptions to local environments, and it can even contaminate water tables. Many people who understand this turn to organic foods, which are fertilized with manure and other natural products and thus don't contribute to this chemical runoff. This carries its own problems though. Organic farming still tears up the soil, disrupting surface ground ecosystems for many organisms, and they do it worse than industrial farming, because traditional organic farming requires a lower crop density, which means more land must be damaged to grow the same amounts of food. Organic farming also tends to be much more labor intensive, which ultimately consumes more energy, and there is still potential for diseased organic fertilizers to contaminate ground water when not composted correctly before use. The lower yield density of organic farming also means that it is significantly harder and requires much more land to produce enough food for everyone. There are alternative organic farming techniques with some potential to compete with industrial farming, but they are not mainstream enough to see the necessary automation to actually make it compete. Even it we did get it to this point though, industrial farming has more room for progress than organic farming. (I should express my opinion here that the best solution would be to mix the best of industrial farming and organic farming to create a type of farming superior to both in nearly every way.)
The reason you should not eat organic, at least for now, is that it takes away potential research funding from the more promising industrial farming. Think about people in India, where populations are still growing rapidly, in 20 or 30 years. Will organic farming even be able to support the population? What about in Africa, where this is already a problem, due to poor farming conditions? Purely organic techniques are not going to be able keep up with need in some places where food is already hard to grow. I agree that modern industrial farming needs reform, but going to pure organic farming is going to make the most pressing problems worse sooner. The environment can handle a bit more damage at the hands of poor industrial farming techniques. People are already dying due to lack of food, and industrial farming has better promise for fixing that than organic, at least right now.
I want to add non-GMO foods to that though, and I honestly think this is more pressing. In certain parts of Africa, there is only so much you can do to improve crop yields. There are places that are just plain hostile to nearly all known food crops. There is one exception: Certain GMO foods have been engineered to be able to grow well there. Now, there is a whole political problem surrounding this, where companies like Monsanto are essentially holding African farmers hostage through gene patents, with a great deal of deliberate help from the U.S. government. This definitely needs to be fixed. This article is not about the politics though. It is about necessity. Genetic engineering carries great potential for solving most, if not all, of our food problems, at far lower risk than selective breeding methods that have been used for thousands of years to engineer all of the plants that we currently consume. In theory, we could use selective breeding to create crop varieties that can handle certain harsh conditions. This would likely take between fifty and hundreds of years. Honestly, the risk in doing this is already extremely low, but the process is far less predictable and controllable than genetic engineering, which means the risk is still higher, and the process is much slower. In other words, the risk involved with selective breeding and GMO are both negligible, with the first being slightly higher. The real question is, how can we produce enough food where it is needed? Organic farming is not the answer. In some ways it can help, but if the crop is not suited to the environment, the only solution is to change the environment, and we are talking about places where air conditioned greenhouses are just not feasible right now. We need crops that are suited to certain harsh environments, and if we wait fifty to a hundred years, tens of thousands of people will starve to death in the mean time. We don't have time for that!
The solution is genetically engineered food crops that are better suited to harsh conditions. Genetic engineering does some pretty cool things for us, starting with being able to grow foods in climates that most plants can't survive in and being able to grow food crops in poor soil. We already have varieties that can grow in some of the harsher African climates and soils. They are currently being used to create a dependency on imports from Western civilization, but they do exist. There are also colder climates that could benefit from this though. While very few plants can grow on tundra, it should not be terribly difficult to genetically engineer crops that can take advantage of the longer days in the Alaskan summer to produce yields many times faster than in more temperate climates, which is important because Alaskan summers are also shorter. This also applies to southern Canada, the Nordic countries, and the northern parts of Russia. Otherwise stated, this could dramatically increase the amount of farmable land in the world, as well as allowing more food to be grown locally. If this does not sound like a great plan, also consider that more locally grown food means less transportation, which currently means lower CO2 emissions from trucks, boats, and planes used in transport, and more sustainable energy usage over the long term. And this is totally ignoring the potential of using genetic engineering to improve flavor of fruits and vegetables, improve their nutritional value, and so on (Monsanto is already working on these), which could reduce the amount of food needed, further optimizing food production. It is also ignoring the potential of genetic engineering to create more efficient crops that reduce the need for techniques and chemicals that are environmentally harmful.
The fact is, we need GMO, and we need the high crop densities of industrial farming. Yeah, there are parts of organic farming that we should integrate into industrial farming, but funding organic farming is not going to encourage the progress we need. Instead, it will encourage more industrial farmers to convert more efficient lands into lower efficiency organic farms to benefit from the higher prices they can charge, and it will encourage organic farming to stagnate (which it largely has been doing since its inception). In other words, it will make things worse and encourage regression into less efficient and more harmful farming techniques. And funding non-GMO food producers will reduce the funding going into improving crops to require less damaging farming techniques and producing the larger yields we need where we need them.
The only valid justification for buying organic and non-GMO is to avoid giving money to manipulative and unethical companies like Monsanto. When we do that though, we are being environmentally irresponsible and withholding funding needed to improve the ability of agriculture to feed everyone who needs it in the most efficient and sustainable way. The solution to Monsanto and similar companies is not to buy products from companies that are using inferior farming techniques with no desire for progress. The solution to the political problems associated with food production is through political means. If you find Monsanto's business practices to be unethical, vote for representatives that will make them illegal. Write your current representatives and share your concerns. Share your position with others, and encourage them to do the same. People have been buying organic and non-GMO foods for decades now, and it has not made any difference. Instead it is just trading one evil for another, and it is not even actually getting rid of the first evil.
Organic and non-GMO are not healthier than industrial farming products. They are not less damaging to the environment. Buying them does not make companies like Monsanto improve their ethics. Organic and non-GMO are a step backward in farming technology, and we need to accept that before we can move forward. When people fund these movements by buying organic and non-GMO foods, they deny needed funding for real progress. It is true that there are a lot of problems with how food is currently produced, but the solution is not to fund even worse techniques.
Responsible buying habits don't include spending more money on inferior products to make a political statement that could be made more effectively through voting habits and writing letters to our representatives. The solution is to make sure the funding is available to improve our current best, and then put political pressure on farmers and companies to use that funding to do it!
The population of the world is steadily increasing. It is true that in some countries, including the U.S. and China, birthrates have dipped below sustainable levels, which will result in population decline as certain groups start passing away. The rest of the world is making up for this though, and the estimated world population growth over the next 20 or 30 years is enormous. Now, contrary to the claims of overpopulation activists from the middle of last century onward, there is still plenty of unused arable land (land that can support crop growth). In fact, the U.S. government is actually paying some people who own farmland not to farm it, to avoid economic problems related to overproduction. The U.S. produces 5 times the food that it eats, with 3 parts of that being exported and one part just being wasted. More population dense areas like China and India are certainly more vulnerable to resource problems related to overpopulation, but there is no sign they are even approaching that, and China is already starting to see a declining population due to regulations on reproduction and certain traditions that have synergized to create a very male-heavy population. What all of this means is that there is enough land to produce orders of magnitude more food than the current human population consumes. In short, world overpopulation is unlikely to be an issue any time soon.
That said, there are still problems with food production, and the primary one is getting food where it is needed. There are places in the world with localized resource problems, notably in Africa, where people live in or near deserts, where conditions are not favorable for traditional food crops. The dry heat in some areas makes large yield farming almost impossible, and even some of the more humid areas just don't have good enough soil to grow sufficient food to support a significant population. In some of these areas, we mitigate this by shipping food. This is incredibly expensive and inefficient. It would be much better to grow the food locally than to ship it thousands of miles. Unfortunately, traditional food crops just cannot handle the conditions.
In addition to this, most farming techniques, including both organic farming and industrial farming are environmentally damaging. Industrial farming tends to put chemicals into the environment in ways that are destructive. Farm runoff can cause all sorts of disruptions to local environments, and it can even contaminate water tables. Many people who understand this turn to organic foods, which are fertilized with manure and other natural products and thus don't contribute to this chemical runoff. This carries its own problems though. Organic farming still tears up the soil, disrupting surface ground ecosystems for many organisms, and they do it worse than industrial farming, because traditional organic farming requires a lower crop density, which means more land must be damaged to grow the same amounts of food. Organic farming also tends to be much more labor intensive, which ultimately consumes more energy, and there is still potential for diseased organic fertilizers to contaminate ground water when not composted correctly before use. The lower yield density of organic farming also means that it is significantly harder and requires much more land to produce enough food for everyone. There are alternative organic farming techniques with some potential to compete with industrial farming, but they are not mainstream enough to see the necessary automation to actually make it compete. Even it we did get it to this point though, industrial farming has more room for progress than organic farming. (I should express my opinion here that the best solution would be to mix the best of industrial farming and organic farming to create a type of farming superior to both in nearly every way.)
The reason you should not eat organic, at least for now, is that it takes away potential research funding from the more promising industrial farming. Think about people in India, where populations are still growing rapidly, in 20 or 30 years. Will organic farming even be able to support the population? What about in Africa, where this is already a problem, due to poor farming conditions? Purely organic techniques are not going to be able keep up with need in some places where food is already hard to grow. I agree that modern industrial farming needs reform, but going to pure organic farming is going to make the most pressing problems worse sooner. The environment can handle a bit more damage at the hands of poor industrial farming techniques. People are already dying due to lack of food, and industrial farming has better promise for fixing that than organic, at least right now.
I want to add non-GMO foods to that though, and I honestly think this is more pressing. In certain parts of Africa, there is only so much you can do to improve crop yields. There are places that are just plain hostile to nearly all known food crops. There is one exception: Certain GMO foods have been engineered to be able to grow well there. Now, there is a whole political problem surrounding this, where companies like Monsanto are essentially holding African farmers hostage through gene patents, with a great deal of deliberate help from the U.S. government. This definitely needs to be fixed. This article is not about the politics though. It is about necessity. Genetic engineering carries great potential for solving most, if not all, of our food problems, at far lower risk than selective breeding methods that have been used for thousands of years to engineer all of the plants that we currently consume. In theory, we could use selective breeding to create crop varieties that can handle certain harsh conditions. This would likely take between fifty and hundreds of years. Honestly, the risk in doing this is already extremely low, but the process is far less predictable and controllable than genetic engineering, which means the risk is still higher, and the process is much slower. In other words, the risk involved with selective breeding and GMO are both negligible, with the first being slightly higher. The real question is, how can we produce enough food where it is needed? Organic farming is not the answer. In some ways it can help, but if the crop is not suited to the environment, the only solution is to change the environment, and we are talking about places where air conditioned greenhouses are just not feasible right now. We need crops that are suited to certain harsh environments, and if we wait fifty to a hundred years, tens of thousands of people will starve to death in the mean time. We don't have time for that!
The solution is genetically engineered food crops that are better suited to harsh conditions. Genetic engineering does some pretty cool things for us, starting with being able to grow foods in climates that most plants can't survive in and being able to grow food crops in poor soil. We already have varieties that can grow in some of the harsher African climates and soils. They are currently being used to create a dependency on imports from Western civilization, but they do exist. There are also colder climates that could benefit from this though. While very few plants can grow on tundra, it should not be terribly difficult to genetically engineer crops that can take advantage of the longer days in the Alaskan summer to produce yields many times faster than in more temperate climates, which is important because Alaskan summers are also shorter. This also applies to southern Canada, the Nordic countries, and the northern parts of Russia. Otherwise stated, this could dramatically increase the amount of farmable land in the world, as well as allowing more food to be grown locally. If this does not sound like a great plan, also consider that more locally grown food means less transportation, which currently means lower CO2 emissions from trucks, boats, and planes used in transport, and more sustainable energy usage over the long term. And this is totally ignoring the potential of using genetic engineering to improve flavor of fruits and vegetables, improve their nutritional value, and so on (Monsanto is already working on these), which could reduce the amount of food needed, further optimizing food production. It is also ignoring the potential of genetic engineering to create more efficient crops that reduce the need for techniques and chemicals that are environmentally harmful.
The fact is, we need GMO, and we need the high crop densities of industrial farming. Yeah, there are parts of organic farming that we should integrate into industrial farming, but funding organic farming is not going to encourage the progress we need. Instead, it will encourage more industrial farmers to convert more efficient lands into lower efficiency organic farms to benefit from the higher prices they can charge, and it will encourage organic farming to stagnate (which it largely has been doing since its inception). In other words, it will make things worse and encourage regression into less efficient and more harmful farming techniques. And funding non-GMO food producers will reduce the funding going into improving crops to require less damaging farming techniques and producing the larger yields we need where we need them.
The only valid justification for buying organic and non-GMO is to avoid giving money to manipulative and unethical companies like Monsanto. When we do that though, we are being environmentally irresponsible and withholding funding needed to improve the ability of agriculture to feed everyone who needs it in the most efficient and sustainable way. The solution to Monsanto and similar companies is not to buy products from companies that are using inferior farming techniques with no desire for progress. The solution to the political problems associated with food production is through political means. If you find Monsanto's business practices to be unethical, vote for representatives that will make them illegal. Write your current representatives and share your concerns. Share your position with others, and encourage them to do the same. People have been buying organic and non-GMO foods for decades now, and it has not made any difference. Instead it is just trading one evil for another, and it is not even actually getting rid of the first evil.
Organic and non-GMO are not healthier than industrial farming products. They are not less damaging to the environment. Buying them does not make companies like Monsanto improve their ethics. Organic and non-GMO are a step backward in farming technology, and we need to accept that before we can move forward. When people fund these movements by buying organic and non-GMO foods, they deny needed funding for real progress. It is true that there are a lot of problems with how food is currently produced, but the solution is not to fund even worse techniques.
Responsible buying habits don't include spending more money on inferior products to make a political statement that could be made more effectively through voting habits and writing letters to our representatives. The solution is to make sure the funding is available to improve our current best, and then put political pressure on farmers and companies to use that funding to do it!
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