The Black Swan Giveth, and the Black Swan Taketh Away

On the 1000th day of its life, Bertrand Russell's turkey felt fat and happy. The next day, Thanksgiving, he was stuffed with bread and eaten to the great satisfaction of the Russell family. Russell's turkey met a black swan.[1]

A black swan was an idea put forward by the Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume, to represent the unexpected, the stuff you know you don't know or don’t know that you don't know. It was a play on the popular idea in the 17th century that the only color of swan found in nature was white. Hume argued that although no one had ever seen a black swan, their existence was not logically ruled out by their lack of being observed, at least by Europeans, as Europeans would soon find out. In fact, black swans do exist, but they weren't recorded in natural histories until Europeans (also) discovered Australia. As native Australians already knew, black swans are quite numerous indeed.[2]

Russell’s turkey met a black swan. We’ve all met black swans. Two good friends of mine met a familiar black swan this past Christmas, the one few of us ever anticipate. Both friends had enjoyed decades long careers at a single employer. Suddenly, they were let go, seemingly out of the blue. Sometimes black swans bear teeth.

But black swans sometimes bear gifts, too. Another friend of mine experienced a virtuous swan just after the new year. He was waiting for his privately held company to go through it’s quarterly valuation and release its updated stock price. If one followed the price history of the company’s stock and believed that past performance indicated future performance, one would reasonable expect an increase of $1 to $5. Imagine his surprise when he opened his email to learn that the company’s stock had jumped $17 per share, an increase of 107%! The value of the ownership he held in the company doubled in one day.

This beautiful bird is about to wreak havoc on those who fail to comprehend its predatory ambitions, or it may deliver a golden egg.

Now both sets of friends face more potential black swans. Will my former example set of friends continue to believe that employment always means stability, or will they take more proactive steps to manage their careers? Will my latter friend be honest enough to understand that his company’s stock price can go back down just as dramatically as it went up?

These surprises are the most general grist for consideration in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s most recent book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,

a more thorough and extensive consideration than his previous book, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

Taleb, literary essayist, Dean’s Professor of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts, and mathematical options trader, lays out the foundation for his ideas from his experiences in the financial markets. These experiences lead him to discuss three interrelated themes that he ultimately broadens to an understanding of uncertainty in general.

1. The Ludic Fallacy: The word "ludic" comes from the Latin ludus, for “games.” Most of us were taught to think about systems that involve uncertainty and chance using structured, discrete symmetries like those found in games of chance, such as craps, card games, etc. Unfortunately, these analogies don’t frequently hold up into real world situations; but because it’s comfortable and expected to do so, we persist in their use. Use of binomial distributions are often a result of ludic framing, as is its continuous cousin, the bell curve (or Normal Gaussian for those more trained in quantitative analysis). These distributions have appropriate applications, but they do not apply to all cases of uncertainty.
   
2. Mediocristan/Extremistan: Most of us live in Mediocristan, a land not governed so much by mediocrity, but by a persistent belief in the applicability of a characteristic median to all types of uncertainty. When most of us think of uncertainty in some domain, we have been taught to think about that in terms of the bell curve. Taleb demonstrates that many types of uncertainty can be thought of in this way (Class I uncertainty), but not all of them. One characteristic of uncertainties described by a bell curve is that they do not scale, that is, the probability of occurrence of outcomes far from the mean (and median) fall exponentially fast. In this world, no one event outweighs the significance of all the other events. Many physical processes with natural physical constraints are accurately described by such distributions. Black swans can show up here, but they are extremely rare. Unfortunately, most black swans live in Extremistan, the land where uncertainty scales according to a power law (Class II uncertainty), where it is possible for a single event in a domain to outweigh the significance of all the others. Extremistan exists beyond the Platonic fold, where our typical representations of reality fail to apply. The processes that govern such distributions tend to be social, emergent, financial, maybe not entirely physical. This will have an important bearing on seeing the applicability to maneuver conflict.
   
3. Confirmation Bias: Oftentimes we become inebriated with hope, that outcomes will go the way we wish and hope. To convince ourselves that such is the case, we develop narratives from cherry-picked data and information that confirm our bias. Using these narratives as a guide to decision making, we are disabused of our fallacious reasoning in sometimes spectacular ways. Yet we still fail to learn if we are still alive to face the next black swan. “Beware the scalable,” Taleb enjoins.
   

The scandalous malpractice, as Taleb shouts, is that the rules that apply to Mediocristan are too often misappropriated to understand and manage systems that don’t obey such laws, often at the expense of lives and immense fortunes. The most pointed cases involve applications of options and modern portfolio theory in which billions of dollars of investors’ fortunes are lost by the malpractice of Nobel “intellectuals” who should know better (anyone remember the tragedy of the Amaranth fund or the trading company Long-Term Capital Management?); the poignant disaster of the unsinkable Titanic; the current woes of Bear Stearns and the sub-prime lending industry; and, in Taleb’s case, the decade and a half long civil war in his centuries-long peaceful Lebanon, a war that he and all too many others sadly believed would end soon after it started.

How does understanding the black swan inform our understanding of maneuver conflict? Consider the martial arts version of the Ludic Fallacy offered by Mark Spitznagel.

Organized competitive fighting trains the athlete to focus on the game and, in order not to dissipate his concentration, to ignore the possibility of what is not specifically allowed by the rules, such as kicks to the groin, a surprise knife, et cetera. So those who win the gold medal might be precisely those who will be most vulnerable in real life. (Black Swan, pg. 127)

John Boyd leads us to understand that conflict is often a non-cooperative contest for limited resources by novelty generating agents. Novelty is the black swan of conflict. When we become convinced that our side will win on the basis of strength or numbers, when we believe that the other side will follow our rules of engagement, we will be exposed to cruel novelty. This is precisely what Chet Richards describes as a disease of orientation called fixation: “...attachments to appearances, conclusions, institutional positions, dogmas, ideologies — pretty much anything that keeps the people inside the organization from recognizing that the world is changing or being changed by competitors.”

How do we escape the tyranny of the black swan? We have to learn to do at least two things. First, we have to learn how to really learn, always looking for disconfirming evidence to the self-justifying narratives we generate from the first cousins of confirmation & my-side bias, availability bias, and anchoring that keep us from considering a wide range of possible outcomes, their appropriate degrees of likelihood, and their consequences. We have to learn that images in the mirror tell us scant little about the road ahead. To do this, next, we have to learn how to properly discern systems governed by the laws of Mediocristan from those governed by the laws of Extremistan, and act accordingly.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb delivers what may be the only book on epistemology that I would describe as both a blustery and a rollicking good read. If only all the other text books in philosophy of knowledge I read in school had been so fun. If only all the others had been so honest. In that sense, Taleb's book is its own black swan.

[1] The reader should almost immediately recognize that Bertrand Russell was English and did not observe Thanksgiving. In fact, as Russell himself tells this story, he uses a chicken as the example of the doomed bird. Taleb acknowledges this, but adapts the story to an American audience. [back]

[2] I am reminded of an event in my 9th grade year in which my algebra teacher convinced a sizable portion of our class that the state of Nevada did not exist, that it was a ruse invented by the US Air Force to deter investigation into super secret military programs. His “proof” was a simple question: “Have you ever seen a car tag from Nevada?” For kids in rural mid-Georgia, his scam was based on a rather safe bet that Nevadans rarely drove to our sleepy little town. [back]

Spring is here, and we're a little Boyd crazy

George P. Burdell recently called my attention to this article, about how John Boyd's theories of maneuver conflict could be employed in the management of a library. "Wow! Who knew the Dewey Decimal System could be so fun," I exclaimed.

George P. Burdell (a man known by many for his agility and maneuverability) and I have been reading about and participating in discussions about the ideas of the late Col John Boyd since the publication of Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram in 2004. We're relative newbies to this stuff, so we're still learning.

"You know, George, as I was reading this article, I recalled that you said that the author didn't quite get the OODA Loop, even though he discusses its use quite well."

George closed his eyes and nodded. "Yes, you should check out his resources. he actually points back to an article by Fred Thompson on our friend's, Chet Richards, website as the source for his understanding. The discussion is good, but the depiction of the OODA loop is what bothers me.

As I read the article by Fred Thompson, I had to admit, with George P. Burdell's guidance, that he didn't seem quite to capture graphically the essence of the Boyd Cycle either.

"Maybe Chet needs to provide some gentle counseling to them."

I continued. "So, as I've been thinking about the OODA loop and reading Chet's Neither Shall the Sword, it occurs to me that possibly the best way to describe the OODA loop is not a process loop but as a feedback loop, a type of cybernetic control function."

"In a very simplistic way, I can think of my thermostat-heating system as a kind of OODA loop. The slowest possible configuration I can imagine might involve my running up and down the stairs from my bedroom to my basement to turn my heater off and on in response to temperature measurements I take. In this case, exhaustion and the elements are likely to win since they are always on and relentless. However, if I create an electric feedback loop (as opposed to my running kind) from a thermometer in my bedroom to the switch on my heater in the basement, my heater will respond to the variance in measured temperature to desired temperature faster than before and respond accordingly. In other words, there isn't really a process cycle taking place in the thermostat-heater system in which some agent steps through various commands, that is

1. Measure temp
   
2. Compare to desired temp
   
3. Turn on heater for x minutes
   
4. Return to 1
   

The electric thermostat-heater system is actually always on (This is certainly true for analog systems in which measurement is continuous. Digital systems do step through a measure-test process, but so fast that it is essentially continuous. Regardless, the benefit is derived from how fast information is transferred.) The benefit of this configuration is not really related to how fast it goes through process steps, but how fast information (measurements, observations) can be reconciled with the environment and acted upon. Since the transfer of electric signals are faster than heat diffusion, my system 'wins' in that it effectively manages the variance from a desired set point of temperature."

George seemed to go into a trance at this point, and he began to channel the disembodied spirit of Chet Richards, which is odd not so much because Chet is still very much active right here in Atlanta, but because George totally disavows such voodoo-like stuff. "This is a very important observation - it's a dynamic process (for lack of a better word) - like a whirlpool.  It's always 'on.'  Boyd was strongly influenced by the ideas of the late Ilya Prigogine, who used the phrase 'dissipative structures,' of which a whirlpool is a classic example. Absent the continual flow of energy provided by moving water, it can't exist at all. It's either 'on' or it isn't there. Similar thing in biology.  As I understand it, even at rest, nerve cells are firing at a basal rate of around 60 Hz.  To send a signal, that rate shoots up.  So orientation is continuously sending 'signals' to / controlling action via the implicit guidance and control link."

"Your feedback loop analogy is interesting.  To work, the system must not only transmit signals faster than the room heats or cools (decide / act), but the thermostat must register changes much faster than the temperature in the room is actually changing (observe / orient).  This is, of course, the classic control problem:  Make it too sensitive and the pilot will skitter around all over the sky.  If it isn't sensitive enough, or if there are significant lags between input and effect, the pilot can induce uncontrollable oscillations."

I continued with my own thoughts, staring curiously at George, who was now levitating in a rigid prone position above the floor. "In more complex and dramatic human contests, the winner is the one who can process measured information (which metrology tells us is always less than absolutely certain) about the environment, interpret the observation, and reconcile the interpretation with reality in such a way that allows transition from one state to another faster than the opponent who is also doing the same thing. Again, it's not that the winner went through process steps faster, but that the winner was able to measure and interpret information faster to allow for faster, more unpredictable transitions from one state space to another such that its measured state space by an opponent is increasingly variant from reality. In other words, it's not speed along a given dimension that makes me a more effective contender, but the ability to accelerate between dimensions unpredictably."

"Hold on a minute! I think we can describe this mathematically. If we think of a state space as a vector of dimensions of concern of an agent X, representing it as {X}, we can represent the measure (observation) of X's state space by another agent as {X*}. The absolute variance could be given by Vx= |{X-X*}| . X's opponent Y has a state space {Y}, and X's measure of Y's state space is {Y*}. Then X is most likely to win over Y if Vx'' > Vy''. In words, X is most likely to win over Y if the second order time rate of change of the variance between the actual state of X and its measured state space (as observed by Y) is greater than the second order time rate of change of the variance between the actual state of Y and its measured state space (as observed by X). In conflict, you're more likely to win over me if you are able to switch position faster than I can accurately measure and respond to."

Suddenly, the phone rang. George floated over to the phone and answered it. "It's for you. It's Col Chet Richards." Now I really felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. George rotated around his waist-line axis into a head-down position now, arms outstretched, feet pointing to the sky, suspended, unattached to any of his acrobatic wires, four feet above the floor.

"That's a very perceptive observation, Rob, and I think you've penetrated to the heart of the concept - 'broken the code,' as Boyd would say.  Using airplanes, which was the original inspiration, define the state vector to be its altitude, airspeed, and direction.  'Maneuverability' is the ability to change the state vector relative to time, that is to climb/descend, accelerate/decelerate, or turn in any combination.  'Agility' is the ability to change maneuver state, which is the second derivative of the state vector function.  Boyd said that the most agile aircraft wins." Chet's voice was nonchalant.

"And that's true, IF (big 'if') the pilot of the more agile aircraft knows how to use this agility advantage to end the engagement on favorable terms (i.e., shoot the other guy down).  That's really the problem Boyd addresses in his Discourse on Winning and Losing."

"So it's as you said, change your position - or 'state' however defined - more rapidly than the other side can comprehend.  And keep doing this until you create some type of advantage that you can exploit to end the situation on favorable terms.  And you can be sure that you will reach such a position because by operating inside the opponent's OODA loop, you're degrading the ability of your opponent to function as an organic whole. Very shortly, he's going to start fracturing into 'many non-cooperative centers of gravity' that begin to pull and push in different directions (e.g., split into cliques that bicker among themselves).  You'll sense that he's having ever more problems responding effectively - in the business world, products are late and seem outdated when they do arrive (Vista, anyone?), proposals don't correspond to what the client wants, huge amounts of time and money are written off time and again (GM / Fiat) and so on."

"It's knowing what to do...which sounds so simple, doesn't it? AND being able to do it, more rapidly than your opponent can understand.  So that by the time he does kind of understand, you're already doing something else.  It won't take too long before he starts coming physically, mentally, and morally unglued."

"One point - it's not 'more likely to win.'  If one can keep this flow going, one will win.  Hence the title of my book -- Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business."

At that point, Chet unceremoniously hung up the phone. George maneuvered his way to the floor, rotating as he did into a supine position.

"Whoa. What just happened?" George mumbled, still groggy from the trans-corporeal channeling.

"I think it's spring, and you've gone a little Boyd crazy."

Global Alarming

The theory of evolution has an interesting relationship to the concept of “global warming.” There is very little public policy debate about evolution these days that has the potential to affect all of us the way the debate about global warming does. In fact, regardless of whether the theory of evolution is true or not (I tend to believe it's mostly true, but that's another discussion for another time), we mitigate against the mechanism. The most strident form of public policy debate regarding evolution is whether it ought to be taught in public schools. I’m sure it does creep into other discussions. But the point is, no one is running around saying that if we don’t do something about evolution soon, we as a species are going to be wiped out. If evolution is true, we ARE going to be wiped out. Our species will evolve into something different over time. We don’t know whether it will be something better or worse. Interestingly enough, attempts to control disease and predation may slow the rate at which our evolution occurs. But the reason that occurs is secondary to the belief in the reality of evolution itself. We just simply don’t like to be eaten and we like to live with as few privations as possible. We attempt to control those things to our immediate preferences.

The theory of global warming is different. The people who are pushing for its acceptance are also saying without much equivocation that it is all bad, that we are doomed because of it. Global warming is not just viewed as a part of the phenomenon of nature, like evolution. It’s all man-made, and worse, it’s all made by evil, greedy capitalist European-descendent men of the West. This is not something that nurturing women like Oprah Winfrey contribute to. The driving political agenda behind this almost deters us from actual serious inquiry because it focuses more on the assignment of blame as opposed to the assignment of cause. We might be able to learn something of importance and respond responsibly if it weren’t for the Chicken Little and Boy Who Cried Wolf nature of the rhetoric employed by the current driving forces of the political agenda.

Personally, I’ve never had to deal with the emotionally traumatic idea that global warming might be true like some people who come to the conclusion that evolution might be true in contrast to specific Biblical interpretations or in contrast to right-leaning platforms. It just seems evident to me that the earth goes through cycles of warming and cooling. It happened before. It will reverse itself again. It will happen yet again. I believe that global warming is occurring. The questions that remain to be answered are:

• What (or in the current up-cycle, who) is causing global warming? 
  
• Is global warming bad for everyone? 
  
• Do we understand why it is occurring?
  
• Is CO2 the actual physical substance that drives the mechanism?
  
• If CO2 does, does that make CO2 a pollutant, even though a significant portion of life breathes it and relies on it for life?
  
• If CO2 is not the culprit at the chemical layer, and water vapor is, will we declare water vapor to be a pollutant? Should we outlaw clouds?
  
• How long will global warming last (...again. This isn’t the first time it’s happened.)? 
  
• If we observe the phenomena but can’t accurately explain the mechanism, will attempts to control it produce even worse unforeseen effects? 
  
• How long will it take us to observe the effects of our efforts? 
  
• Who specifically should pay for the mitigation? 
  
• How much should they pay?
  

Here’s an interesting op-ed written by a guy who claims he was an atmospheric scientist. I think he might have been. So he might be qualified to make some publicly distributed informed opinion about the issue. In other words, he’s not a second rate politician using this as a platform to advance a comeback in his career. He has some actual training in interpreting the data. Admittedly, I don’t think he is currently conducting primary research.

It’s long, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, just scroll down to the bottom third entitled “Summary - ...” and read from there. Down near the bottom is another addendum entitled “You’re going to love this.” It’s a picture of skin-layer (top 1 mm) thermal activity surrounding the Antarctic ice shelf. In today’s news at National Geographic there is an ominous story about the ice shelf breaking off with this opening statement: “New satellite images reveal what scientists call the ‘runaway’ collapse of an enormous ice shelf in Antarctica as the result of global warming.” I guess National Geographic forgot to compare their hypotheses against this data set from NASA. If you look at the NASA photographs, you can see that the warming occurs most intensely around the peninsula only and that the interior cooling occurs all the way out to the edges of the continent. There may also be some contributing effects caused by increased local geothermal activity. National Geographic didn’t inform you of that information, though. It’s “...the result of global warming.”

Of course we can all go to our cherished links of editorials and data that prove our position without regard to the disconfirming rationale and data of other sites, much like second rate Bible students do to support some special theological position supported by isolated verses. Of course I want to avoid that. But National Geographic's conclusions compared against the NASA data seems specious. Consider this:

• The most intense warming trend is around the peninsula, where the ice shelf broke off this morning.
  
• The right side of the continent experiences gentle warming.
  
• The majority of the continent is cooling or unchanged.
  
• The middle is cooling as rapidly as the left peninsula is warming.
  
• The left side of the peninsula doesn’t even warm up gradually to the intense area. It’s unchanged! The heat is not accumulating from remote locations.
  
• In other words, the intense warming is almost entirely due to something local, not global.
  

So I’m all for serious debate and inquiry about the cause of global warming as a climatic phenomenon. I think it’s a good thing to know how and why our earth behaves the way it does. But I am totally put out with hysterical rants and false assignment of every significant phenomenon to global warming, especially when those who make the loudest rants and obvious non-sequiturs are the people who have been revealed over and over to have a political/economic agenda that potentially will hurt you and me much sooner than we know with any certainty that the effects of global warming ever will.

That’s the deal, man.

Arthur C. Clarke goes on a new adventure

Arthur C. Clarke inspired me to dream.

Genius

I just started reading Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman By James Gleick.

This is just a fun book. It reminds me so much of when I was kid and didn't yet know that there were "limits" to what I could learn and discover.

I think I'm going to have new little wrist bands made that say, "WWFD?" Yep, that's right: "What Would Feynman Do?"

Five Models of Business

Some time ago, a friend of mine suggested that all businesses could be boiled down to 5 types associated with certain illicit activities:

1. drugs - processing raw material into a refined, usable form


2. pornography - content created once and distributed through low margin media


3. prostitution - hourly labor


4. pimping - providing access to aggregated valued services or products


5. religion - selling promises about something the purveyor cannot actually deliver

It puts a new spin on business, doesn't it?

I wonder, though, if this "catalog" is complete. Are there other categories that could be added? What about moving things from one place to another? Waste disposal?

Definitions of words to be employed for the study of stupidity

There are a lot of books out there that help one attempt to be successful in a number of endeavors. But I think understanding how not to succeed may be as important as understanding how to succeed. Because stupidity sometimes seems to be a contributing factor to failure (although success sometimes seems to occur in spite of it), I propose that we invent a science of stupidity. To that end, I begin here a lexicon of useful terms. I will update this list from time to time as I learn more.

constigration: (constipation + confligration) failure to allow to pass through one's mind (recognize or admit) the contribution of one's own stupidity to the disastrous consequences that are unfolding around one in a consuming inferno.

epistemiology: (epistemology + epidemiology) the study of the population mechanisms by which stupidity propagates.

Godwin's inversion: The probability that once an analogous reference to Hitler or Nazis is made in an argument, the remaining comments by all contributors will be stupid.

jedi mind trick: the mistakenly optimistic belief that one's stupidity won't be observed in public.

ridiculocity: (ridiculous + velocity) the rate and direction at which stupidity propagates.

spidey sense: the mistakenly optimisitic belief that one's own level of good sense and special insight are always good enough.

If you blink, you just might get it

I entered the office today feeling rather blue, after all, rainy days and Mondays always get me down. But today was a little different. I was maybe feeling a tad bit more deflated than is typical for a rainy Monday morning.

"You look depressed," observed George P. Burdell, a man known for his instinctive awareness. "What's got you down?"

"Well, I just read a book review of by Malcolm Gladwell, and I think we may be out of business. I mean, who's going to call us experts when all people have to do is simply trust their immediate intuition, you know, blink and not think?"

"Hmmm. You may have misunderstood Gladwell's book. My observation is that a number of reviewers are doing this, and the one you read this morning may be among that group that has grasped incorrectly on the message of Blink."

Intrigued now that all may not be lost for us, I lifted my left eyebrow and cocked my head to Burdell. "Please continue," I implored with an unblinking stare.

"Well, let me begin with a comment that might be more like a footnote. If you really want to dig into the science of decision making as dealt with by Gladwell, I recommend the precursor work that Gladwell mentioned in the early pages (2007 paperback version, pp 8-11) of Blink, that is, the work by Gerd Gigerenzer published in his book, . Don't be deceived by the concept of 'simple.' It means neither 'simplistic' nor 'uneducated.' That is a key to understanding Blink."

George continued on for a while, and I studiously took notes. The following is what I took away.

Blink addresses two large themes: the power of making snap decisions, and the capability to achieve this power through "thin slicing." Gladwell weaves compelling anecdotes from such diverse sources as family counseling, art history, trauma care, food tasting, police work, and war to demonstrate how people often make accurate judgments and consequential decisions within a very short time frame through a mental process that appears to slice information from the environment into sparse, manageable chunks. If you have not yet read the book and have only read reviews, you are probably most familiar with this high level synopsis. Furthermore, you may have also received the implication from these reviews, as I seem to, that this snap decision making process is more powerful than thinking through problems systematically and critically. If this is the case, I think it is a mistake on the reviewers' part and fails to bring the reader to an appropriate understanding of Gladwell's message in Blink.

It is George P. Burdell's opinion that Blink DOES NOT actually promote the idea that snap decisions are always the best decisions. To this point, Gladwell spends a great amount of time discussing how snap decisions can go terribly awry. There exists, in fact, a large body of evidence that suggests that gut-level decision making (the unfortunately popular way of thinking about snap decisions) alone is fraught with failure and difficulties. A large part of this is due to the internal biases we develop over time, both cognitive and motivational. The representative work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Khaneman (Memorial Nobel Prize winning work) demonstrate this quite effectively. Other recent books, and (each by Nassim Taleb), eloquently discuss the effects of biases on investors who often make snap decisions as well as well thought out decisions. It is very difficult to overcome the effects of our biases, especially those related to the species of expert overconfidence. The worst part is that they are most pernicious when we think they are not present at all, that we have overcome them with sheer reason and special gifted insight. Gladwell actually reveals this point on pg 233: ” ‘When we make split-second decisions,’ Payne says, ‘We are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necessarily endorse or believe.’ ” And on pg 252: “…we are often careless with our powers of rapid cognition. We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility. Taking our powers of rapid cognitions seriously means we have to acknowledge the subtle influences that can alter or undermine or bias the products of our unconscious.” Overcoming these influencing biases, though, requires a certain degree of informed effort.

“Thin slicing,” the idea that sparse information helps experts focus on what is important rather than become distracted by informational spam, is another idea promoted within Blink that I have heard mangled by readers. I recently heard one person insist that as little information as possible was always preferable. O course, one can see that if that idea is taken to the limit of zero information or what we might call “negative” information (i.e., lies), decision making becomes an act of random behavior. While this might work for the species, for individuals it can be disastrous. It is true (i.e., confirmed by repeated experiments and mathematics) that a little information is oftentimes much better than more information. For example, there is an idea in decision science called value of information (VOI) that deals, in part, with just this issue. VOI is the rational upper bound one should be willing to pay for additional information on an uncertainty that could cause one to experience regret on making a given decision. Unfortunately, most people do not know how to evaluate VOI, and so they spend increasing levels of resources trying to get more and more information on issues that would not have a great likelihood of causing them to change their decision anyway. The effect is to get mired into analysis paralysis such that no decisions get made in a timely and economically efficient manner. VOI tells a decision maker how to limit the search for information. The point is that more and more information is not the answer to achieve better outcomes, but neither is less and less information. Each extreme leads to diminishing returns. Rather, the point behind thin slicing is that there is an optimal amount of information required by the neural structures of an expert decision maker that regresses data from the environment into inferences on which the decision maker acts (Gerd Gigerenzer describes these simple efficient heuristics as fast and frugal). This thin slicing is not related to novices facing novel situations, but ones in which an “expert” has numerous of hours of experience.

And this gets us to the point of Blink. Blink is not about gut decision making by lay practitioners or novices. Rather it is about how properly unbiased experts have developed the ability to make judgments at a near instinctual level. Experts in this case are people who have spent countless hours studying, thinking, and practicing in their particular area of concern. A normal Joe off the street CANNOT use snap judgment to determine the longevity of a marriage after spending only a few minutes with a couple, nor can he determine the veracity of the claims of authenticity of ancient artifacts unless, perchance, he has been given the clues that experts have learned through intense experience. “Blink”-thinking doesn’t work for just anyone on a moment's notice. It does, however, apply to people who spend obsessive amounts of time immersing themselves in a field of concern, who, in crucial moments when they are called upon to use their expertise, respond instinctively without wasting time using their executive cognitive processes.

Unfortunately, many people who have reviewed Blink seem to miss this point. They focus instead on the idea that expertise doesn’t matter. Maybe realizing this, Gladwell wrote an Afterword to Blink (2007) this shortcoming. He sums it all up on pg 260: “...when it comes to fast-moving, high-stakes situations like battlefields (or emergency rooms, or auditions, or late-night shoot outs in the Bronx), …formal conventional analysis doesn’t help that much. Chancellorsville came down to some ineffable, magical decision-making ability that Lee possessed and Hooker did not. What was that magical thing?…It’s the kind of wisdom that someone acquires after a lifetime of learning and watching and doing.”

But he doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water, either: “I think the task of figuring out how to combine the best of CONSCIOUS DELIBERATION (emphasis added) and instinctive judgment is one of the greatest challenges of our time.” (pg 269)

It seems, then, that Gladwell is pointing to the route for decision makers that all good artists know they must follow to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. ...And be humble enough to know that bias is a terrible and frequently uninvited companion on that route.

Riki Tiki Tavi Returns

The next door neighbor boy just came over and asked if he could play with the rubber snake on my front walk way. When I looked out the door, I realized that he was referring to a baby copper head. Since I appreciated the boy’s courtesy, I said, “Sure, go ahead. But let me know when you’re done.”

If you ever want to catch a copper head, just gently stroke it behind its head. This places the snake in a near trance-like state. Then, when it gently attaches itself to your finger with its mouth hooks, you can, with reciprocal gentility, transfer it to a bottle like the one pictured here. Under no circumstances should you try to sprinkle salt on its tail. This only makes it angry, and it might slither away. No fun with that.

Here are some pictures of me having fun with the snake.




If you can’t make out the details of the snake in my pictures, here is a link to a picture of a juvenile copper head with its tell-tale yellow tail.

PS. If anyone has a home remedy for the spontaneous swelling of one’s hand, please let me know. Mine is bigger than a softball and turning blue. Hmmm.

When Green Means "What does that mean?"

My friend George P. Burdell, a man of profound insight, recently pointed me to Dr. Bissantz's article, "Can we steer banks like cars?", at Bissantz's blog: Me, myself, and BI.

After reading the article, I called my friend, George, and exclaimed, "Wow! I didn't even know banks had to obey traffic signals."

There was a long pause, and then a sigh.

George said, "Here's what I thought was the key take away: 'People who deliver green lights instead of the underlying numbers have made a decision instead of supporting the decision-making process.' You ought to think about that. That's worth generalizing into a decision support visualization principle, something like: 'Your data visualization should inform and support the decision process; it should not make the decision.'"

So I thought about it for a awhile. I called George back the next day.

"It seems to me that the problem decision support systems are trying to solve is this: How do you support a decision without forcing the decision maker to understand too deeply the model used to support the decision making? 'Green light' is obviously too high level… at the same time, we can’t expect someone to be an expert in quantitative analysis to use the models we develop for them, or our services won’t be useful in the first place. So, I’m curious, how do we decide where to draw the line between providing raw data and digesting it for the user?"

George responded, "Actually, green light/red light dash boards simply communicate a state of affairs against a predetermined preferential threshold. They are not just data digestions but interpretations as well. Unfortunately, the way most of them work, a system could run just under the line of a threshold and indicate 'good' when it is actually very close to a 'bad' situation. This is why Dr. Bissantz says the machine is doing the deciding. You might could argue that another light could be added (i.e., yellow) that suggested that one was approaching the threshold. However, I would say that the machine is still being given the role of human interpreter against a predetermined bias."

"So what should we do?" I asked George. "Don't managers want simple, quick answers so they can run their business on autopilot and go play golf?"

"Oh heavens! I hope not. The way around this is to provide analyses that do digest the raw data without imposing judgments through such icons such as green light or red light, go or no go, good or bad. We should simply report the digested form in such a way that quick, yet deep, insight can be gained and lead one to more questions. An example of such data digestion might be a risk profile or a tornado plot. They don’t make judgments about the state of things, they merely inform with data digested from the models."

And that seems smart to me.

The next time your dashboards indicate "green," you might want to ask what that really means.

I can vouch for that

When I mentioned my failing approbation for a school voucher system, my friendly free market pedagogue, George P. Burdell, said, "Have you gone all commie on me? I thought the voucher system was free market?" Unfortunately, I think it still lets Uncle Karl in the back door.

Now, lest anyone doubt it, I am all for free market education and an end to the government monopoly of our educational system. So, in general, I agree with the author's contention for less government intrusion in the lives of parents and their children. But before you get all supercilious on me, too, read this article: Are you smarter than a homeschooler?

Then read the linked article again: School voucher system has its benefits

I found this comment in the second article a little troubling: "Home-schoolers may not receive full funding, but instead a tax credit. Still, with more choice, there may be less need for home-schooling."

The assumption seems to be that parents chose home-schooling simply because of lack of quality and choice in government schools. But the mounting evidence is that home-schooling actually provides a superior education, not to mention the many other familial benefits. Why would anyone want to curtail the obvious successes of that? A voucher system may actually contribute more to the disintegration of the family by promoting less time with one's children.

Furthermore, if a voucher system went into place, and home-schoolers received a tax credit within that system, who's to say that the credit wouldn't be dependent on the home-schooling family conforming to the imposed government standards of education? The standards still represent the imposition of government regulation and the attendant propaganda, which will be present in any voucher supported school system. The voucher system simply makes the transmission of government propaganda more efficient.

Finally, until the financing of a voucher system is based entirely on the level of consumption of educational resources used by each family (i.e., each family pays for each of it's children and only its children) instead of the current method of taxing wealth, the voucher system will still represent a wealth redistribution program. Free education for all regulated by the government is still the 10th Plank of Communism [II -- PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS].

Let's just get government out of education all together. Now I can vouch for that.

Machismo when the party gets loud

Now this was fascinating: "Subjects who made incorrect decisions under "noisy" conditions tended to have extremely high confidence that their decisions were right. They were far more confident than the subjects dealing with a noncluttered image."

Hmmm...so, the "louder" and more confusing it gets, visually speaking, the more machismo shows up at the party.

The original article, "Visual Clutter Causes High-Magnitude Errors," can be found here.

Why I am a Libertarian

Admittedly, I am borrowing someone else's words here, but this idea captured so succinctly why I am a libertarian: I am just naïve enough to believe that the Constitution of the United States was supposed to guarantee and secure the rights of the individual endowed by the Creator, rather than beat into submission any individual who disagrees with the democratic will of the majority.

George P. Burdell's Recommended Reading List

Here’s a short excerpt of my recommended reading list that I frequently suggest to clients and other professionals. Some of the texts don’t necessarily speak directly to day-to-day business, but the applications of them to business are profound in many ways. This list represents some of the most helpful books to my own professional growth as well as the most enjoyable to read. An asterisk marks those I regard most remarkable. I will update this list from time to time.

Biographies
By far, some of the best business books are biographies about the successes and failures of people in diverse arenas.

Theodore Rex
by Edmund Morris

John Adams *
by David McCullough

The Education of Henry Adams *
By Henry Addams

MY BRAIN IS OPEN: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos
by Bruce Schechter

A Beautiful Mind
By Sylvia Nasar

Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel*
by Rebecca Goldstein

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin *
by Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
by Walter Isaacson

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War *
by Robert Coram

Decisionmaking
Few people understand that there is a well understood science behind effective decision making. If you learn this methodology, you will always make a good decision. Over time you will increase the likelihood of experiencing desirable outcomes, too.

Decision Traps *
by Dr. J. Edward Russo and Dr. Paul J. H. Schoemaker
Few people have the training they need to make good decisions consistently. Becoming a good decision-maker is like training to be a top athlete: Just as the best coaches use training methods to help athletes develop proper techniques and avoid mistakes, Dr. J. Edward Russo and Dr. Paul J. H. Schoemaker have developed a program that can help you avoid "decision traps" -- the ten common decision-making errors that most people make over and over again. It is extremely well written and simple, yet it is very powerful. The basic concept of the book is: if you want to mess things up, then think this way.

Smart Choices : A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions*
by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, Howard Raiffa
Combining solid research with common sense and practical experience, this user-friendly guide shows readers how to assess deep-seated objectives, create a comprehensive set of alternatives, determine likely consequences, make tradeoffs, and grapple with uncertainty. Not only will readers learn how to make decisions, they will learn how to make the smartest decisions. For anyone caught at a confusing crossroad–whether you’re choosing between mutual funds or deciding where to retire–the Smart Choices program will improve your decision-making abilities immediately, and make your life more rewarding and fulfilling. Look for other works by the authors. They are some of the thought leaders in DA. This book is DA 101, but I use it as a reference all the time. I also use it as a primer with people making personal decisions. Introduces a little math, but nothing complex.

Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking*
by Ralph L. Keeney
This book is a little more in-depth than Smart Choices. It’s basic idea is that every decision should be framed in part by goals and values of the stakeholders involved. Everything by this guy is worth reading. The material is important and profound, but his writing is clear, lucid, and free of jargon. Keeney gets into some mathematics that may scare some people off, but it is no more than algebra. For the most part, you can even skip the chapters that deal with math.

Making Hard Decisions: An Introduction to Decision Analysis (2nd Ed.)
by Robert T. Clemen
This best-selling and up-to-date survey of decision analysis concepts and techniques is accessible to a wide range of backgrounds. This is the Pentateuch of decision analysis. You must read this before you can enter the Temple.

Introduction to Decision Analysis (2nd Edition)
by David C. Skinner
David Skinner shares the wealth of his experience and expertise about decision making in a clear, practical way. This book is an excellent resource for managers, technical professionals, and decision analysts, regardless of your experience level with decision analysis. It tells you how you make the theory practical in collaborative decision-making environments.

Why Can't You Just Give Me The Number? An Executive's Guide to Using Probabilistic Thinking to Manage Risk and to Make Better Decisions
by Patrick Leach
An excellent book to give to your boss to explain why probabilistic reasoning is so important and powerful for generating deep insights and creative solutions.

Organizational Learning and Management
How to learn and lead within any organization is one of the keys to personal and professional success.

Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning
by Chris Argyris

Flawed Advice and the Management Trap: How Managers Can Know When They're Getting Good Advice and When They're Not
by Chris Argyris

Reasons and Rationalizations: The Limits to Organizational Knowledge
by Chris Argyris

The Trusted Advisor
By David Maister

Economics & Economic History
We live in an economic universe: unlimited demands on limited supply. It’s good to think about how best to allocate resources to achieve one’s goals. It’s also good to know how people can destroy good economic practice, especially through good intentions.

The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
by Joseph A. Schumpeter

The Road to Serfdom (Fiftieth Anniversary Edition) *
by F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman

Free to Choose *
by Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, New Edition
by Jared Diamond

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
by Peter L. Bernstein

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets *
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Armchair Economist: Economics And Everyday Experience
by Steven E. Landsburg

Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life
by David D. Friedman

Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded *
by Thomas Sowell

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One *
by Thomas Sowell

The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism *
By Michael Novak

The Long Tail
by Chris Anderson

Analysis for Financial Management
by Robert C. Higgins

Strategy Theory
If you don’t know where you want to go, how, and why, you probably won’t get there.

Competitive Strategy
by Michael E. Porter
THE Bible on strategy. No other substitute.

Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business
by Chet Richards

Ender’s Game *
By Orson Scott Card
This is a science fiction novel, but Card accurately demonstrates in a compelling narrative how maneuver theory works.

Psychology
Understanding how people think and perceive their environment and how this differs among individuals (even in abnormal and pathological ways) is critical to understanding how to work with people in organizations.

An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
by Oliver Sacks

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks

Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism
by Temple Grandin

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior
by Temple Grandin, Catherine Johnson

The Boids and the Bees

I really thought this was an interesting article.

One thing that struck me about swarm theory is the lack of management hierarchy as an element of the system. That's probably the point. But why have humans derived management by command-and-control and management hierarchy rather than swarm approaches? Conversely, why doesn't a swarm include such a method? What are the benefits of either? The risks and costs? Could it be that dumb humans aren't as smart as ants, bees, and wildebeasts? Are there good reasons that we have developed command hierarchies in our organizations? Or does such a practice represent foolish consistency and social inertia? Might there be some conditions where one approach is more beneficial than the other, but we've failed to be flexible enough to recognize the differences in conditions that would prescribe one approach to prevail over another?

Part of the reason for such a lack of management hierarchy may be that the swarm focuses on relatively few well-defined activities: gathering food, securing and maintaining shelter, protecting the hive, and reproducing. So it’s not that hard to insure that each individual “knows” exactly what its task is. Secondly, the task assignments are probably hardwired in some way (whether determined by genetics or assigned during the development phases of the young. Alligators predetermine the gender of their offspring by controlling the temperature of their eggs, so it wouldn’t surprise me that bees and ants can determine the task assignment of their offspring by controlling temp, food content, etc.), so there is very little ambiguity about the nature and purpose of each task and the vital reason it needs to be done. Since humans largely join companies primarily to earn a living, the goals of their organization are largely secondary to them. Most people aren’t genetically predisposed to work in a given company. They may even switch frequently among employers. In the minds of the individuals, the survival of the firm or human species isn’t dependent on the actions of the individual, and individuals often overlay their agenda with the agenda of their employing organization, confusing the two. Hardwiring the agenda goes a long way to avoid this ambiguity of purpose.

My initial reaction to the truck-to-ant analogy was that such an analogy is a false one. It seemed to me that the trucking company really just identified the right objective function (minimize cost, not minimize distance traveled) and acted accordingly. Maybe there is more to the swarm theory employed by the trucking company than revealed (or even understood) by the writer. In more general terms, an ant is an unsophisticated automaton, following a simple rule. The cases described in this article are frequently cases where the simple heuristic of following local price signals works well. This has nothing to do with pheromones, and it is nothing new. It is free (rational) enterprise, and its philosophical basis and empirical success are well established in the literature. I'm more inclined to see the telecommunications analogy.

It was the bees’ heuristics I more thought about as related to my own work in decision analysis. In fact, I wrote back to the friend of mine who alerted me to the article and noted that the odd thing about the bees was that they weren’t simple automatons, that they formed an “opinion.” What I found analogous to decision analysis in the example given by the bees was that the bees seek a diversity of options, allow the options to compete against some objective function, and then use some mechanism to narrow the choices. I don't think that the history of decision analysis includes consideration of swarm behavior as its inspiration. Rather, I think rational human intelligence discovered a means for solving uncertain, resource constrained problems through rational thought and experimentation, and nature converged on a similar solution through evolutionary means.

Of course, what is missing from the swarm approach is the means by which the diverse options are "considered." Unless bees are more sentient than I think they are (...which very well may be the case, but no bees have disclosed the level of their sentience to me yet. Many have indicated that I should leave their nest alone.), it seems that bees find their candidate solutions via trial and error, stimulus and response. But it seems to me that human creativity is a special kind of intelligence that may obviate swarm intelligence. Human creativity seems to be driven in virtual reality; that is, humans seem to create alternate realities for consideration. We can visualize a desired or undesired future, and then derive the mechanisms that facilitate or mitigate that conceived future state, and we can hybridize our original set of considered alternatives. In other words, human intelligence and creativity seem suited for strategic thinking. Swarm "thinking", on the other hand, seems to be the biological analogue to such mathematical processes as Metropolis and genetic algorithms, a means to solve well-defined yet mathematically intractable and computationally huge problems. If the situation is more ambiguous, such an approach may be quite brittle.

The closest example I know of a company that implements a hybrid of both approaches to solving problems is Oticon, a Danish company that makes hearing aids. The management team takes pride in its minimal interference with the actions of the work force. Teams are self-forming and self-dissolving. If a technical employee has an idea that he thinks is worth pursuing, it’s up to him to convince his co-workers to join the effort. If he can, the team is formed. If he can’t, then the consensus is that the idea isn’t currently a good one. At any given moment, a typical employee will be on several different teams, each at a different stage of the overall development process. The management team also takes pride in maintaining a certain level of chaos in the office. No one has an assigned office, employees keep nearly all of their information electronically on laptops, and most furniture is on wheels – all to encourage dynamic grouping and re-grouping. Getting back to my original questions, this is more than slightly different from the typical command-and-control attitude of many American management teams. The real questions in my mind are:

• does such a "swarm" approach to management actually provide higher returns than the alternatives


• under which conditions does one approach work better than others?


• in what ways might aspects of command-and-control hybridize with "swarm" approaches to produce even better results?
  

It looks like I have more reading to do here

Oticon: unorthodox project-based management and careers in a "spaghetti organization"

and here

Swarm Intelligence: A Whole New Way to Think About Business.

The one last thing that I thought was interesting about the article was that the author tried to attach swarm theory to altruism in the end rather than the obvious: free market capitalism. I wonder why? The Wealth of Nations describes how capitalism benefits everyone in almost the same language as that used to describe swarm theory many years before swarm theory was ever conceived; i.e., individuals acting in their own local self-interests ultimately provide what the global market wants, increasing the value experienced by everyone.

The Necessity of the Electoral College

In preparation for the celebration of Independence Day, in which Americans (should) recall the sacrifices endured to create a homeland free from tyranny, I thought I would share a short meditation by George P. Burdell, visiting Constitutional Law Scholar, on the nature of the Electoral College and how it was designed to guard against political tyranny.

I recently overheard a frustrated and disappointed pundit cry in the wake of post 2004 election blues: "If the guy who got the most votes doesn't win, then IT ISN'T DEMOCRACY!"

How perspicacious of him. America never was, nor should it ever be, a democracy. America is a Federal Republic (US Constitution, ARTICLE IV, Section 4), a hybrid of democracy and monarchy, but not a strict representation of either. A Federal Republic retains the best elements of democracy and monarchy while disposing of their respective worst elements. Since a discussion of monarchy is not in context here, it will be pointed out exclusively that democracy itself is not so desirable. In fact, a strict democracy would never be palliative even for those who feel like their vote was cancelled by an electoral college counter swing for this simple reason: at some point, a popular vote may take place that by a simple majority installs a president with legislative intentions that is "harmful" to the desires of those who would now eradicate the electoral college. The electoral college was put into place to limit the power of simple majorities with minority concerns; i.e. special interest agendas. Special interest agendas, by definition, never accurately reflect the will of the people with such consensus that stability and order is maintained.

The US is a confederation of states, not a homogenous political body. These states are held together by a federal constitution "...to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense (i.e., the general defense), promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity..." However, each state has different resources (or lack of them), different populations, different economic concerns, and different social values. Yes, we are unified, but as a federal integration of differential units. I don't care that the president ever visit my state in a campaign bid. But I do care that the president accurately represents my constitutional rights to the benefit of everyone. Currently, the best expression of the popular intent is at the state level. Here the popular will of the people is appropriately heard, addressed, and reflected by the peculiar concerns of the people in their respective states. In presidential elections, this occurs with the electoral college "all or nothing" format. If it occurs that the will of Californians is commensurate with the will of Georgians, then that will is best known by the electoral college. Otherwise, why would Georgians (or even smaller states) desire to relinquish their concerns to the will of a body politic 2500 miles away with a different economy and differnet values? When each state has equal populations with equivalent economies and social values then an aggregate popular vote will begin to make sense. Otherwise, the only rational place for the national aggregate will of the people to be expressed is in the market place. It is here that all people can act in a self-determined manner to establish the prices for goods and services, respond to supply and demand, and achieve personal wealth.

The President is elected to represent the rights of ALL Americans (not simple majorities of them), to promote legislation to the Congress to further the general welfare of our country, to endorse or veto congressional legislation, and to be the Commander in Chief of our military that provides for the common defense. The electoral college ensures that the president who is elected most likely represents and understands the largest concerns of the country as opposed to the specialized and local concerns of a simple majority contained in only the most populated centers of our country. In other words, the electoral college actually ensures that, more often than not, the elected president fulfills the requirements of our constitution more generally than a president who wins 51% of the popular vote. Consequently, the president is not elected to represent the aggregate will of the people, but the will of the people in their respective differential states. In this line of reasoning, it is Bush who won the largest number of states, and thus represents the broader will of the people. In actuality, neither candidate won a simple majority since by now, the actual popular vote is split approximately 49% to 49%. Hardly an aggregate popular mandate for either candidate. In fact, Bill Clinton won even less popular vote, and he was elected into office by 42% of the popular vote cast. Again, hardly an aggregate popular mandate for him as president, but a decisive mandate from the electoral college.

From James Madison in the Federalist Paper No. 10: "Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." The constitutional framers were astute students of political power. Consequently, they wrote the constitution with the idea that legislative deadlock should be the norm more often than swift legislative action. To accurately represent the real needs, concerns, and trade-offs of a large population of people requires ponderous rationality and discretion. The electoral college is part of this system of graded powers that prevents majority whim to enact changes that affect significant populations with less than majority influence. Our republic has lasted as long as it has, in part, precisely due to the annealing effect of the balance of graded powers. To change this now, particularly as information and MISINFORMATION are transmitted so effortlessly now, would be national suicide. Instability would become the norm rather than the stability that has been our nation's halmark. In other words, we need the electoral college and representative government now more than ever, not the opposite.

But let the exponents of the eradication of the electoral college be consistent in their desire for a pure democracy, if such a will truly exists. If they are going to decry the electoral college as anti-democratic, why don't they go the full measure and denounce the executive and representative legislative branches as being undemocratic also? Afterall, the various bills placed before both houses of Congress are never assessed and approved by the direct will of the people but by representative proxy. And what about Constitutional interpretation? Why have a judicial branch at all? After all, in a pure democracy, the will of the people should directly determine the appropriateness of legislation and the meaning of laws. Maybe the guilt or innocence of alleged criminals should be determined by national will as well. We could eradicate all branches of government and replace them with daily referendums. But we can see where this goes. One day, one law would be passed, and shortly thereafter another law would overturn it. All it would take is a simple majority in a pure democracy to introduce a yearly (if not monthly) switching dominance of one whim over another. This is the tyranny and quagmire of simple majorities that pure democracies introduce and that our founding fathers so rightly avoided by establishing a federal republic that includes the electoral college.

Jonah's whale of an idea

Jonah Goldberg gets it quite right.

And don't forget JFK assassins!

The fact of the matter is, this cartoon applies not only to conspiratorialists, but also to anyone who selectively applies data to suport a pet theory, not just young earth creationists, but atheist secularists, anthropogenic global warming-ists, etc.

We all have pet theories or mental models about the world in which causation is often ambiguous. I wonder, though -- is the goal for a good thinker to be right as much as being open to understanding why one might be wrong? I don't think the two have to be mutually exclusive, but an attitude of humility would seem to dictate that the latter rather than the former takes a higher precedence. It would seem, at least, that the two should exist in some tension.

Rodan the Destroyer and Getting Things Right

The other evening, my friend, George P. Burdell (a man known for his sense of nostalgia), and I were sitting around reminiscing and remiserating our days at Ma Tech. Suddenly, George slapped his knee and whooped.

“Do you remember when you got that B in your aerospace design class for turning in a paper airplane? That took Big Kahunas!”

George just had to bring this up. I turned away, crestfallen, to the setting sun. Nineteen years later, I am still mad about the B.

I began my enginerding career as an Aerospace major (I transferred to Mechanical in my junior year). In the spring quarter or 1987, I took “Introduction to Aerospace” from Rodan the Destroyer.

He was known to fly at supersonic speeds, even at low altitudes.

For the final class project, Prof. Rodan assigned a design project in which we were to use the principles we had learned in his class to develop an airplane that could perform three flight functions:

• fly “straight” across the length of the classroom


• turn a vertical loop in flight


• turn a horizontal loop in flight

The only restriction placed on the design parameters was that to perform the maneuvers, we could only add/remove mass or change the control surfaces of the plane. Those were the only instructions he gave us.

Since this was an introductory class, I didn't know much yet about airplane design. I thought the best way to proceed was to copy the designs of aerobatic planes and scale them to a hand-held size. I used balsa wood and card board. Nothing worked. I considered stealing the Tech Tower “T” just to vent my frustration.



Then I remembered a delta wing paper airplane I was fond of making as a kid. It would do all kinds of aerobatics just by modifying the wing surface with flaps cut into the trailing edge of the wings. If the flaps were both turned up, the plane would do a vertical loop. If the flaps were turned in opposite directions, it would turn in a horizontal loop when thrust with a quick flick to the left. I was just about there. All I needed was to get the plane to fly straight for about 50 feet. But the plane was too unstable. It seemed unwilling to respond to any control surface modifications I made to achieve the final requirement.



George P. Burdell, a man known for his flights of fancy, offered brilliant advice. “Why don't you add mass to it. Maybe the added momentum will overcome the slight pressure changes that force the light plane to turn.” By taping a penny in the forward section of the airplane, the plane flew with stability in a straight path of just about the length I needed. A little practice got this right. Now all design criteria were met. The plane that did exactly what Prof. Rodan had ordered.



The due date of the project finally arrived. Everyone else showed up in class with the kind of things you would expect NASA engineers to design. Balsa wood monstrosities. Gleaming shellac. Rubber band powered motors. I swear, one student's plane had jet engines made from small aerosol cans. I felt like the one Cub Scout at the Pinewood Derby whose dad didn't make his car. Did these kids' parents work for JPL?

But then the test came. No one's plane could perform according to the design criteria. They were just too big and too bulky to fly within the confines of the Guggenheim classroom on Cherry Street. No one's plane, except mine, that is, would perform as specified. I felt victorious. My little paper airplane ruled the roost.

But then a cry went up from the masses. “We have to fly our planes outside!” The class teetered on the verge of mutiny. Rodan gave in. We went outside. Paper airplanes don't fly well in the brisk spring winds of Georgia.

When I received my grade for the project, Prof. Rodan had assigned me a D.

A D! I went to argue my case. “You said our airplanes had to perform the three flight function in the classroom. My airplane was the only one that would do that.”

“Yes, but I wanted something more substantial than a paper airplane.” Prof. Rodan expelled his uranium ignited nuclear breath.

“But you didn't say that. Your only criteria was that the plane fly the three functions in the classroom. My airplane alone did that. Everyone else deserves a D.”

My atomic shield had worked. Rodan again gave in and moved my grade to a B. I was nonplussed, though, because I believed then, as I do now, that I deserved an A.

Now, I don't usually assume to know people's motivations, but the cynical side of me suggests that Prof. Rodan wanted his students to reflect his brilliance as a teacher. When I'm less cynical, I think he just wanted to see something snazzy. But he certainly couldn't state either preference, likely for several reasons.

“It sounds like you learned a valuable lesson about design, especially design for clients,” quipped George.

By now you have probably guessed the problem: Prof. Rodan had a hidden, unstated preference. Simple requirements analysis won't uncover those. Often times, clients haven't even considered what is motivating them to seek a solution or satisfy a desire in the first place. They are simply responding to a burr in their saddle or a bee in their bonnet with a limited set of easily accessible alternatives. Such ambiguity is the bugaboo of planning, design, or problem solving opportunities. Even if one satisfies every client-specified design criteria, the client may still express disappointment and frustration that the real problem hasn't been addressed according to the underlying preferences. And if you have ever been the consultant or engineer trying to help in such a situation, you were likely completely caught off guard. After all, you did exactly what the client asked. The problem is, you brilliantly solved precisely the wrong problem. [Editor's note: In a recent client engagement, I was told that another consultant was released, in part, because he provided what the client asked for, just not what the client wanted. I felt very bad for this fellow.]

And things were likely worse if you went beyond the client's expectations by providing more bells and whistles. Design scope creep simply solves the wrong problem with greater flourish.

What do you do? Shouldn't you solve the problem as the client asks? Shouldn't you always do more than the client expects?

The answer requires two things from you. First, you have to give up any notion that you are the expert. You may be the expert in your design field, but you are not the expert in your clients' preferences. Only the client has such expertise, but it may take some clever facilitation to draw it out. Second, you must help transform your client into a values-based decision making organization. What this entails is digging and prodding to find out what really matters most, to uncover the primary objective and all its supporting means objectives. Once this hierarchy of values has been resolved, you can work with your client to be much more creative about the alternatives that can be exercised to achieve the real goal.

A few other benefits arise as well from this process. Once the primary objective has been clarified, you can know exactly how to measure success with little or no ambiguity. Also, once you understand how the means objectives relate to support the primary objective, you can begin to gain insights into how trade-offs may have to be managed. But most importantly, your client will begin to see you as a trusted advisor who does much more than simply react to requests for proposals. You will be seen as a person who has a vested interest in the client's success. And that makes everyone happy in the end.

I eventually left aerospace engineering for the highly lucrative career of secondary education (which I eventually left for med school, then engineering again, and finally the exciting field of hot dog sales). But Prof. Rodan taught me a valuable lesson about serving my clients even if I learned nothing about airplane design. Today, my clients are happier for it, especially when they fly.

Editor's Note: to learn more about values-focused thinking, read Ralph Keeney's book,

Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking.

I highly recommend it.

Why we home-school FAQ

Not long after the birth of our first child, some good friends of ours began home-schooling their oldest school-aged child. Before long, the results were obvious. Their child began to excel at a rate beyond her peers. Some of it was due to here innate abilities, but we just could help but believe how much of it was due to the focused and customized attention her parents were able to focus on their child based on the child's abilities and interests. Based on my own experience as a student in the government school system and as a teacher in a private school, I knew that home-schooling was the most natural solution to the problems I had observed and pondered over the last 20 years of my life.

When we considered the nation-wide failure to deliver quality education represented by the massive social works programs of government school systems in our country, and that government-hampered competition has not yet produced many private systems that are both affordable and provide remarkable quality (although this is now rapidly changing with the emergence of University Model Schools), home-schooling became the apparent practical and economic solution to our desires and needs for our children.

Essentially, we home-school our children because we believe that no one else other than the parents of our children (that's us) comprehensively know what our children need and respond to best.

The following represent a few questions we have received over the years and how we respond to them.

How will your children learn socialization if they aren't around other children?
First of all, you are assuming that we have isolated our children from other children. That is not the case. Our children participate in church activities, local sports, and scouts. In addition, we have next-door neighbors who have children, and they play with them regularly. Childhood is a beautiful time of life, and we believe that children should play often with other children.

However, we do not believe that children should learn their life skills nearly exclusively and largely from other children. Traditionally educated children do learn their life skills by being associated with other children for the largest part of their waking day. Rather we believe that the purpose of childhood is to learn to be a successful and contributing adult. The best place to learn the skills required to be such an adult is in the presence of successful and contributing adults. In other words, we believe that children should learn their socialization skills from adults first and from children second. The best way for them to do this is to spend the largest part of their time with the adults who have a vested interest in their personal well-being and development. Children are not concerned about the development of other children nor do they have the life skills to know what are ultimately in the long term interests of other children. Only adults have such experience and skill.

Why don't you trust the public school system?
If I sent my children to a parochial or other religiously affiliated school, I would expect that the world-view of the body that organized the school to inculcate their values in their students. Education naturally entails a transmission of values. It is not value neutral. We personally do not agree with the values (or lack of them) being transmitted in the schools organized by the government. We simply do not trust that people who do not have a personal, vested interest in our children, and yet would have the largest daily influence on their lives, will attempt to inculcate the values we believe are important for our children to understand.

Secondly, most government bureaucracies do not exhibit a high degree of efficiency or accomplishment in achieving the goals that our Constitution established as the appropriate purposes of government. When you consider the overall state of decay in the current government school systems, the question really is: "Why do YOU TRUST the public schools systems?"

Won't your children feel left out if they don't get to participate in a school setting like their friends?
Actually, our children feel a high degree of pride that their parents have made many sacrifices to home-school them and that they are getting probably the best form of education available from the people that love them most. More often than not, they feel sorry for children that go to traditional schools.

Secondly, as a parent, we have to discern what is best for our children regardless of our children's feelings about our decisions. There are many things we withhold from our children that they often want that we believe are not good for them.

I know a family who home-schools, and their children are behind academically. Aren't you afraid that your children will be behind as well?
Currently, our children are performing at or beyond grade levels beyond their peers, depending on the subject. Unless we quit what we're doing or decline in our commitment, it's not likely that they will slow down or get behind.

Also, it is not rational to extrapolate a singular experience to an entire population. This type of thinking is the basis for prejudice and bigotry. Most measurable outcomes, such as academic achievement, generate a distribution of possible outcomes. The family you know may for many reasons simply be falling out on the lower tail of the distribution. There are many reasons that the family you know may not be excelling, and not all families are characterized by such reasons.

Statistically, home-school children outperform their peers in private and public school, in that order. They score higher on standardized tests, perform at higher grade levels for their age, and excel in national contests such as the National Spelling Bee and National Geography Bee. Statistically speaking, then, the desired outcome is on our side.

How long will you home-school?
As long as we feel it is appropriate.

It is important to understand that home-schooling does not necessarily imply sitting around the kitchen table for all learning. Home-schooling simply means that the family is the controlling moral, legal, and economic authority with the responsibility for educating our children. As such, we may opt for tutors and other collaborative educational groups as the need arises.

In October 2007, I took my son, Forrest, on a sailiing trip with a friend down the Atlantic coast. While on our trip, Forrest learned to navigate, take soundings, establish his bearings, and learn to tie knots from Pop. We saw numerous examples of wildlife rarely seen in the north Georgia mountains such as dolphins, sharks, bald eagles, osprey, and alligators. We had some great meals and some that were quite Spartan. We learned to cope, adapt, and make rapid decisions in a quickly changing enviroment. We learned how to suppress the inclination to complain in the face of sea sickness, cold wind, and peanuts for dinner. We realized just how insignificant we were in the grand scale of the sea and sky, and that regardless of how resourceful we were, we were still at the mercy of forces beyond our control. We relied on God to protect us and secure our faith in His grace. Like Odysseus, we recalled how much we love home and looked forward to getting there, enjoyed the friendship of great comrades (Jeff, the captain, and Pop, the first mate), and learned to embrace adventure. This was not schooling in the home, but a life-time enduring education on the high seas. If my son had been in government school, I could have been fined for what would have been an unexcused absence.

Aren't home-schooling families right wing religious nuts?
Many home-schooling families are probably rightly characterized as being religiously and socially conservative. However, many families are socially liberal, atheist, "left wing religious nuts", etc. In short, there are many reasons parents choose to home-school, and the diversity of the social/political/religious make-up of these families is reflected in the diversity of the reasons they choose to home-school. Many of the early families in the home-schooling movement were probably best described as hippies - hardly right wing religious nuts!

How do home-schooled children compare academically to children who go to private school or public schools?
Statistically, they exceed the performance of private and government schooled children.

Can your children get into college? Will they be able to compete once they get there?
Recognizing the superior character and educational accomplishments of many home-school children, many colleges and universities are now actively recruiting home-schooled children to attend their schools. These include Ivy League schools as well. Also, as the prevalence of home-schooling is increasing, many colleges are being established now that recruit only home-schooled children.

All the evidence indicates that home-schooled children continue to excel both in and beyond their college experience.

You were educated in public school. It didn't seem to hurt you.
While I agree that the government schools I attended were not devastating, I do not agree that the experience did not harm me. In government schools, I was under the tutelage of many lackadaisical teachers and administrators, constantly exposed to the disruptive behavior of children who did not receive appropriate guidance from home, and drilled in an academic environment that is considered by most of the industrialized world standards as substandard. In the government schools I was exposed to drugs, violence and sex at age-inappropriate times. The level of involvement and discipline I received from teachers and administrators was minimal and commensurate not so much with people who don't care as much as people who are overwhelmed with an impossible task and did not have a parental level of vested interest in my development and growth.

Would you please buy wrapping paper, candy, etc. to supplement our child’s school’s educational budget?
In addition to the financial burden we have undertaken to personally educate our children, we still pay federal and state taxes to support your child’s school’s budget. We haven’t asked you for additional support. Please do not ask us.

What do you think is the solution to educational reform?
It’s really quite easy. Education should be opened up to the same forces that efficiently deliver housing, transportation, food, clothing, labor, etc. at affordable prices; that is, the free market. The current government monopoly on education effectively masks price transparency through the use of taxes that are not directly associated with the services purchased. Consequently, most people think of government education as essentially free. It isn’t. In order for free market education to produce the same gains we have experienced in practically all other sectors of the economy, we need to open education up to competition through transparent pricing and the profit motive. Let people choose what their children are taught and the manner in which it is delivered without undue meddling from inefficient bureaucracies.