African Science

The following is a letter I wrote to The Economist.

Dear Sir,

You argue in a recent article (Amaizing Grace Feb. 1) that African nations must develop their own science and technology in addition to establishing a free-market economy and a strong government if they wish to become successful states. However, with the rise of globalization and an increase in technological and scientific exchange, this condition of independent national research now seems obsolete if it even existed in the first place. Rather than investing heavily in labs, equipment, and human capital, the last of which requires solid institutions to begin with, African nations can instead focus on more pressing issues—like free markets and good governments—while benefiting from the technological advances of other countries through aid and trade. Independent national science and technology are products of, not preconditions to, strong nations.

Kyle Chan

Probabilities in Infinity

So a devout Christian and a silly atheist are arguing one day about what happens to us after we die. The devout Christian obviously argues that we either go to heaven or hell. The silly atheist argues that this is outrageously improbable. What are the chances that after we die we’ll end up in some man-made fantasy world based on man-made morals? What are the chances that our particular notions of right and wrong will be the deciding factors of our fate and that the options are limited to two, precisely one of a heaven full of our particular notions of happiness and one of a hell full of our particular notions of suffering? The silly atheist argues instead that it is far more likely, nearly to the point of complete certainty, that nothing happens after we die--that our consciousness is extinguished and our bodies simply become inanimate objects.

So why is the atheist silly? The atheist’s arguments are completely inane within the context of reason because nobody has any clue what really happens to us after we die. Nobody has ever crossed over so to speak, observed whatever may be out there, and come back to tell us what they saw. There is no workable science, no way of reasoning or proving anything about what happens to us after we die. We know absolutely nothing and therefore we cannot make any logical claims that any one conception of what happens to us after we die is more plausible than any other. Every possibility is equally likely in the same way all orders of infinity—like the number of all integers versus the number of all real numbers—are really just the same: infinite. Another way of looking at it (again mathematical) is the idea that every possibility has a probability of 1 over 0 where the 1 in the numerator signifies that one possibility and the 0 in the denominator signifies the number of total known possibilities. In this case we get an error, and so in this way the logic of probabilities cannot be applied to what happens to us after we die.

This can easily be extended to absolutely everything. Another example is “debate” over the existence of God. Richard Dawkins argues in his book The God Delusion that such as being as God, as we know it, really exists. He, as any good evolutionary biologist, begins from an evolutionary standpoint, attacking the idea that the vast complexity of life could only be the product of an intelligent designer we tend to call God. He argues that evolution does a much better job of dealing with the development of biological complexity by breaking it down into smaller, less improbable steps. (I won’t go into detail because I’m hoping that you have an intuitive understanding of why this is; otherwise, you can read Dawkins’ book yourself as he explains it quite clearly.) Dawkins argues then that the existence of God is an extremely immense improbability because the chances that something as complex as an omniscient, omnipotent creator could spontaneously come together from nothing are exceedingly slim. But it is this assumption that our notions of probability can be applied to something that we ultimately can have no logical way of analyzing shows that Dawkins, for all his Britishness and wit, is human, all too human. When it comes to contemplating the existence of God, every possibility—that there is no God, that there is a God, that the universe is just the slick computer game being played by a bunch of adolescent alien nerds with correspondingly alien acne (that’s probably what broccoli is)—are all unquantifiably possible in a domain outside of human knowledge and logic. No possibility can be ever be definitely proven to be even the slightest bit more or less probable than any other possibility.

For a simpler analogy, imagine I told you there was an empire of llamas on the moon that drank Cherry Coke through their hooves in order to stay undetectable to human beings. You would say that I was crazy and that it is unlikely to the point of absurdity that this is the case at all. But can you disprove it? No. That means someway, somehow, this may be possible. But then you say something about how llamas can’t survive on moon and how Cherry Coke doesn’t have any properties that resemble stealth bomber technology. So then I ask how much do you really know about llamas or Cherry Coke? How much do you know about the moon or space or life for that matter? We thought the Earth was flat for a long time. What if we’re making the same wrong assumptions about llamas and Cherry Coke? (Note: I am not affiliated in any way with Cherry Coke, any Coca Cola product, or llamas.)

Now to extend this all the way. Hold up your hand and look at it. How do you know you control it? How do you know that your mind isn’t just playing tricks on you, making you believe that that hand is yours? What if your brain is just hooked up to a huge simulation and all of what you think is reality isn’t real? What if conceptions such as reality aren’t real and even the idea of something being real is not real? What if consciousness doesn’t really exist? What if nothing you think exists really exists and existence itself is nonexistent? How do you know anything about anything? Anything is possible and there’s nothing we can do about it. If you just challenge all of your assumptions, even the very deepest ones, then you might find nothing left at the very bottom. Or you might find something. But how will you know that something is anything at all?

Anyways, I should probably just throw out some words that really need no explaining but of course scream out from all of this: relativism, nihilism, existentialism, Vanilla Coke, etc. The end.

Why Are There Suicide Bombers?

Religion. You can’t fight it. No amount of reasoning and logic can beat it. It kills. It destroys. It creates. It saves. It is a point of view, immutable, irrefutable, untouchable. There is no more compelling force than a call from a higher power. Nothing on this world can even compare. Arguing from a worldly standpoint is hopeless. Arguing from a religious standpoint even more so. So here’s my advice to the world: change everything or give up. Stop pretending you don’t understand why people kill each other in the name of God. Either do something big to change it or stop complaining.

Fundamentalism is not wrong. To be specific, fundamentalism is not wrong to fundamentalists. In fact, to believe that fundamentalism is wrong a fundamentalist notion itself. Christian fundamentalists don’t think they’re doing a disfavor to humanity by trying convert people to their faith. When some of their ranks lynch homosexuals or blacks or repress women or conquer and enslave nations, they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. Quite the opposite is true: they believe that their actions will result in the salvation of souls, often including their own and those of their “victims”. To them, what is death, what is torture, what is suffering in this world compared to the infinite suffering of eternal damnation? The sacrifices we make in this world are infinitely negligible compared to the ultimate reward and punishment. And so to these fundamentalists, the death of a human being, the deaths of millions of human beings, are completely justified.

Extreme Islamic fundamentalists are no different. I’ll get right to the heart of the matter: September 11, 2001. What are the deaths of a few thousand people and the suffering of a nation compared to the salvation of millions of souls? To carry out God’s will is a higher calling than anything on this earth. And so to the executors of 9/11, their actions are more than perfectly justified. Their actions are a divine necessity to accomplish a goal that’s far greater than any mortal goal.

So by now you should obviously know what I’m getting at here. It’s Nietzsche’s relativity of morals, that each religion defines its own set of morals even though they may be exactly counter to the morals of another religion. In his Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche talks about one religion in particular, Judaism, and the concept of slave morality: that the Jews were too physically weak as a subjugated race so they flipped everything and redefined all their weaknesses as virtues. If you don’t get it, here’s an analogy. Let’s say you’re playing some one-on-one basketball with your friend. Unfortunately, your friend is taller, stronger, faster, more accurate, etc. He basically possesses more of all the skills that it normally takes to be good at basketball. But then let’s say you decide to flip all the rules around. You now say that scoring a basket makes you lose points and now instead you get points for being shorter and weaker. The analogy is obviously oversimplified but the idea comes off clearly. You can change the rules to suit your own particular advantages.

What we have now are different religions claiming that their rules and only their rules are right. When the different sides come into conflict and argue, they cite their own rules as justification for their actions. So who’s really right? Who’s rules should be really be playing by? Are the Christian fundamentalists right in conquering and enslaving nearly all of world’s great civilizations or are the Islamic fundamentalists right in flying two 747s into the World Trade Center?

Nietzsche says that none of them are right, that “God is dead”, and that somehow we must strive to rise above the relative morals of religion and move on “beyond good and evil”, which happens to be the title of one of his most famous works and a central theme throughout his philosophy. Then he runs off and starts talking about the übermensch, the overman or superman that all of humanity is leading up to, which is a kind of religion in its own right. So the problem of irreconcilable differences, to use the words of divorce attorneys, among religious is never quite resolved. And it never will be resolved unless we take very, very drastic action. Like brainwashing the entire human race into believing in a single religion. (Any takers for the religion of science?) Otherwise, the same problems will always persist and we’ll always have people squabbling over whose morals are more moral.

And if you don’t want to pursue such an extreme option, then there’s another option available: quit whining and stop acting so surprised when conflicts arise between religions. Stop saying stupid things like “How could people be awful enough to kill thousands of people like on September 11th?” and “I just don’t understand suicide bombers”. Of course, you don’t “understand” them: they follow a set of morals and religious goals that differ from yours just enough that your respective religions can never peacefully coexist unless all fundamentalists from those “opposing” religions are completely eliminated. Even then, new religions will spring up no matter how repressive the dominant religion is and the war will just keep on going. That’s why brainwashing sounds like a better idea. So if you don’t like brainwashing, try at least to realize that everybody isn’t exactly like you.

The wars between religions are inevitable and will always exist as long as the human mind is free to question and create. That’s just human nature, and for now all anyone is willing to do is pretend that their religion preaches the truth and spend every last cent and every last drop of blood to see that their religion reigns supreme and that all other religions exist under their conditions. Looking back we can see that the history of religion has been a vicious one and a cyclical one. But then again, isn’t the history of anything so profoundly human the same way too?

Religion Reductio ad Absurdum

Science can’t beat faith. We’ve heard that again and again, that science simply cannot disprove religion because religion is based on more than just data and hard facts. It’s a whole mindset, a whole way of looking at the world and answering that eternal question: why? And Mormonism is the definitive counterexample to this presumption.

For those of you unfamiliar with the religion, here’s the very, very short version of its history from someone who’s certainly no authority on the subject. If you want something closer to the full version, try Wikipedia or just Google “Mormonism”. So here it goes. One day in 1829 near what is now Salt Lake City, Utah, a guy name Joseph Smith was visited by an angel named Moroni who told him to go to a hill and look for some golden plates. The angel told Joseph that through the power of God he would be able to translate the texts on the golden plates, which were originally written in some ancient, unreadable language. So with the power of God as well as with some pretty neat-looking spectacles called Urim and Thummim, Joseph translated the ancient words on the plates and dictated his translations to people who helped write them down into what would become the Book of Mormon. He got some followers, declared himself a Prophet, decided polygamy was a great idea, and the rest of history. This is a very poor version of the story, but it gives you an idea of what happened.

There are a million problems with this new religion. An entire list of them can be found at the Wikipedia article “Controversies Regarding the Church of Latter-day Saints” (the Church of Latter-day Saints is colloquially known as “Mormonism”). I’ll touch on some of the big problems here.

Firstly, Joseph Smith did not have the ability to translate ancient texts. One day, some Egyptian articles were being toured through town and included Egyptian hieroglyphics. At that time, nobody could decipher these hieroglyphics, except of course Joseph Smith who claimed he had the God-given ability to translate any ancient language. So we went about and proved it by translating the hieroglyphics and people thought he was really something. He declared his translation the Book of Abraham. And then came the Rosetta Stone. This was the stone that allowed historians and archaeologists to finally decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, which was once thought to be a language forever lost to mankind. So some guy sent some of the same hieroglyphics that Joseph supposedly translated to some Egyptologists who could truly translate them. Turns out, Joseph’s translations were completely false, and Egyptologists declared: “Joseph Smith’s interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end.” And when they said “farrago” they really meant it. That’s strike one against Mormonism. You can read more about it in this book that's online called By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus.

Secondly, one of the key beliefs of Mormonism is that Native Americans were originally Israelis who had come across the Atlantic Ocean thousands of years ago. Definitive DNA testing proved that this was absolutely impossible and was corroborated by evidence against such a vast voyage so long ago. Strike two. Here’s a USA Today article for the short version and an article from the Institute for Religious Research for the long version.

Thirdly, there’s tons of linguistic and archaeological inconsistencies with pretty everything imaginable from the Bible (he mistakenly referred to Lucifer when he meant Satan) to outrageous anachronisms like talking about horses and chariots in South American civilizations long before they existed there. That would be strike three. I'll cite another Wikipedia article titled "Archeology and the Book of Mormon" here to support this.

You can go ahead and do some fact-finding for yourself and I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion: Mormonism is wrong. You might argue that the Bible is wrong in many ways, but science has failed to truly disprove it. However, the crazy thing about Mormonism is that it’s so recent. Not even the text, but the very foundation of the entire religion can be disproved. No one can go back in time and say that the Prophets of the Bible just made up everything and could be proven as fakes, but Joseph Smith could definitely be shown to be a phony and he was.

According to the BBC, Mormonism has over 12 million followers. That’s over 12 million people who knowingly refuse the truth even though it’s been handed to them many times by scientists, historians, archaeologists, etc. Basically, everyone but Mormons use common sense and realize that Mormonism is one of the world’s greatest hoaxes. This is really a testament to the power of brainwashing and religion turned, well, religious. How could our species degrade itself to such a level as to reject the greatest gifts we’ve been given -- our brains -- and instead blindly follow something that’s as wrong as the idea of a geocentric universe or the idea that the Earth is flat.

Something as crazy as the acceptance of Mormonism by millions of people gets you wondering: How easy would it be to create another one of these absurd religions? What if you scraped together some bizarre science fiction ideas, said that we’re all aliens brought to Earth on a spaceship sent by the ruler of some Galactic Confederation, and told people they could be healed through E-meters that measure electrical resistance through the human body? Oh wait, that’s already been done. It’s called Scientology.

Web 2.0: Overhyped

“The ‘Great Man’ theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that ‘the history of the world is but the biography of great men.’ He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.”

That was the first paragraph of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year cover story. Who had it named Person of the Year 2006? None other than: you. That’s right. You. The cover of the print edition actually featured a computer screen with reflective foil that was supposed to show the reader himself, that’s “you”, as the Person of the Year.

First off, great job Time, clap clap. What an original idea, making every individual the Person of the Year. We should all be proud of ourselves for having done so much to help the world. I may not have risked life and limb to work in the poorest parts of Africa or Southeast Asia or inspired millions with my selfless acts of charity or maintained composure in the face of extreme hardship to make the right decisions that people generations from now will benefit from, but taking out the trash this morning sure was tough and I’m glad somebody recognized my effort. (Translation: This is Time’s biggest cop-out ever.)

Of course, what Time is really trying to say, and it makes this clear in the article, is that thanks to the development of so-called Web 2.0 and the emergence and explosive growth of its components – YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Blogger, etc. – simple, ordinary, everyday people like you and me have a way of putting up our own material and make it big on our own, without the help of expensive, bulky production teams or reporting staffs. Basically, everybody’s a producer/star/reporter/photographer now.

Time is terribly wrong on two counts.

Firstly, Carlyle’s “Great Man” theory still holds stronger than ever and is in fact reinforced by what’s been happening over the past couple years. Take YouTube for example. All right, sure, now with YouTube anybody with a half decent digital camera and a computer can become America’s next big star with virtually zero production cost (unless, as is often the case, you count shame and loss of dignity). But how did YouTube get there in the first place? It was thanks to three guys in Silicon Valley that this all became possible. Without them, YouTube wouldn’t exist and neither would all these so-called stars of the Internet. So the “Great Man” theory still holds because in this case, the great men are Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, the founders of YouTube and not the users of YouTube in much the same way we all see Julius Caesar as the classical “great man” which is something very different from the Roman citizens, who though obviously still crucial to the success of the Roman Empire were merely actors in a system innovated and pioneered by a leader. Sorry lonelygirl15, you were just a poster girl for the real star that was YouTube. History has and always will be written by the leaders and innovators, not the mindless masses. It is important not to get confused like Time did and mistaken the product for the maker.

Secondly, who says all this Web 2.0 stuff is all that great? I’m going to have to direct the bulk of this attack at YouTube again. So, great, anybody can make a movie and post it online for free. What makes anyone think the quality of these homemade videos is going to be great or even mediocre? For the most part, you get junk and it now comes in by the truckload. Now as if there aren’t enough computer-related things for people to waste their time on – computer games, Facebook, watching cheesy animations, etc. – we’ve got another fantastic time-waster: watching terribly made movies with little to no value in almost every single way except as cheap, mind-numbing entertainment. But then again what do you expect from a citizenry so hopelessly addicted to other forms of useless, mind-numbing entertainment like celebrity gossip, reality TV shows, etc.?

In a way, this goes back to my article titled “The Common Man in an Uncommon World.” The whole world is rushing forward; new technologies are being discovered all the time. Scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs are leading the way for the progress of the entire species. But what happens when you give these innovations to the masses? They’re wasted by the moronic and all we can do is be grateful that they at least don’t/can’t turn these innovations into weapons (the IPR issues though are getting seriously out of hand) and only end up changing themselves from coach potatoes to computer zombies.

But let me clarify what I really mean about this whole supposed Internet revolution. I think that overall, it is a good thing. It’s great that we now have the option to watch something other than junk TV shows and special effects-saturated movies. Of course, we now watch junk YouTube videos instead for the most part, but now there’s also room for those few who are dedicated enough to produce something worthwhile but just couldn’t get it past the silicon-enhanced gatekeepers of Hollywood. My point is that there could be some really good benefits to all of this but we shouldn’t hype it up so much until we really start to see good quality products emerge. In the meantime, we’re still stuck with millions of ways to waste our lives and sink into the philistine filth of mass culture now no longer in the hands of big name producers and marketing gurus but nevertheless still mass culture.

Where are the Political "Geniuses"?

We all know Mozart, the musical genius who established the standard by which nearly all other so-called geniuses are stood against. His brilliance in music is incontestable; even the casual listener can appreciate the brilliance of his compositions.

We all know Einstein, the genius of math and theoretical physics. Again, we have another incontestable genius who can be recognized by nearly everyone. There is not the slightest doubt that Einstein could do math and physics and he could do them very well.

We all know Shakespeare, the literary genius who transformed the written word. A single stanza from any of his sonnets will stand out among the millions of other poems ever written before or since.

Even those experts who have nearly mastered their domains but never quite reached the legendary status of Mozart, Einstein or Shakespeare easily stand out from the crowd. A piano virtuoso, a math prodigy, a bestselling author – their particular skill and talent is easily discernable even by laypeople and there is little question that they are something quite extra-ordinary.

So what about politicians? What happened there? Where are all the political “geniuses”? How can you really tell if they’re good save exceptional? For one thing, you might expect them to sound good in public. Of all the different professions and occupations, it would seem as if politicians would exemplify excellent public speaking, that is precisely, being articulate, sharp, and convincing in front of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.

But that’s exactly what did not happen at the 2004 Presidential Debates between George W. Bush and John Kerry. They both looked clumsy, unsure, and overcautious. The content of their speech was nearly worthless and uninspiring. At that point in history, every American citizen with an IQ over 12 feared for the future of the nation.

Of course, a reason why they sounded so inane was that they didn’t want to talk “over” the intellect of the common American. It’s better to sound unimpressive than flat-out confusing to the majority of Americans (IQs ranging between 12 and 13). But couldn’t they say at least a couple smart things instead of coming off as simple-minded and one-dimensional to those of us who have read the newspaper within the past week? I’d like to think that a public debate is where a politician can really shine through for everyone to see, but I guess that’s really not the case.

So how can you tell if someone’s a political genius? Is there any way to really tell if our current president is exceptional at politics? You’d think so because otherwise he wouldn’t have made it so far. But as of yet, the realm of politics leaves too much lacking, and it’s nearly impossible to tell who’s worth two dimes and who’s worth nothing at all. Could it be possible that the most mediocre people in the world are running the most difficult and intricate tasks of the entire country?

The Dilution of the Nobel Prize

The University of Chicago is a very unique place and stands first and foremost as a world-class research institute, where the best of the best come only to discover there are those who are even better. Of the many things the University prides itself on, at the top of list is its outrageous number of Nobel laureates among its faculty and graduates, past and present. I believe the count is currently at 79.

So what is the effect of being surrounded by so much greatness? Well, quite rapidly, my perception of the Nobel Prize fell, and quite unjustly so. At one time, the Nobel Prize seemed like the pinnacle of scientific achievement, the highest goal of any researcher, what many strive for their entire lives. But at the University of Chicago, it seemed as if having a shiny Nobel attached to your name only began to qualify you to work amidst the ranks of the world’s greatest minds. It was like a prerequisite, a staring point, a tick on the resume (or curriculum vitae) that said, “See? I got mine in 1972. Now let’s go on to my more important achievements.” From there the Nobel laureates differentiated themselves into the scientific greats and intellectual giants, between the normal prize-winners and the ones who would make it into freshman intro textbooks and be immortalized as persons who completely revolutionized their fields.

But then, this isn’t right. The Nobel Prize is certainly not something to be taken lightly. And there’s a simple explanation as to why I’ve come under this oddly conceived notion that will naturally correct its course: I just don’t know enough about what it takes to get a Nobel Prize. This is why initially my view of the Nobel Prize declined once I arrived at the University. However, as I’ve become more exposed to what winning any academic/research prize involves and as I’ve slowly begun to understand how much is invested by recipients of each field’s greatest honors, my respect for the Nobel Prize has increased steadily, as it necessarily should. And so those scientists and researchers who “only” won the Nobel Prize appear much more heroic and likewise those scientists and researchers who not only won the Nobel Prize but also effected great and lasting change in their fields now appear legendary.

Basically, my point is that it’s easy to become used to luster and shine, but to truly understand and appreciate it comes much later.

Facial Expressions Across Cultures

During my time in China in the summer of 2006, one thing that continually fascinated me was the way differences in Chinese and American culture manifested themselves in the way the two peoples looked and acted. Essentially, how can you tell an American-Chinese from a local Chinese?

There are of course the very obvious factors like clothing, hair, and the fact that American-Chinese spoke perfect American and usually pretty crummy Chinese. But one thing that I noticed was the difference in the facial expressions of Americans and Chinese. While sitting in a dining hall on the campus of China’s national pride, Peking University (soon to be changed to Beijing University), I made a comment to one of my classmates that native Chinese tend to have more “blank” expressions when they’re not doing anything. By that I meant the Chinese locals around us, engaging in one of the least brain-intensive tasks humans know of, chewing and swallowing, had seemingly expressionless faces and looked as if they had nothing going through their minds. On the other hand, an American, to me, doing the exact same thing, not talking to anyone, not doing anything particularly brain-intensive, has an expression that is not “blank” but contemplative and thoughtful, sort of. It just seems as if they’re thinking about something whether it’s how much they’re going to lose in taxes that year, what the weather will be like the next day, how amazing it is that so much flavor can be packed into seven layers of meat and cheese whereas native Chinese look as if they aren’t even contemplating such things.

Here’s my theory about why this seems the way it is. Native Chinese grow up in a very different culture than Americans and throughout their lives, are exposed to facial expressions distinctive to their culture. Even though there are such universal expressions such as a smile or a laugh or a tear, more subtle expressions vary in accordance with each culture. Through all this differing exposure, Americans and native Chinese end up making slightly different facial expressions when they’re mad, happy, scared, worried, etc.

The catch is it’s tough to understand and interpret these more subtle expressions across cultures. Being American-born and American-raised, I’ve grown up seeing millions of American angry expressions and American happy expressions, but I’ve had little exposure to Chinese expressions. As a result, I’m not as sensitive to the tiny differences between Chinese expressions as I am to tiny differences between American expressions. While the difference between an American scowl and an American expression of worry may be more than obvious to me, the difference between a Chinese scowl and a Chinese expression of worry has a slightly different set of differences that I can’t detect having been raised in an American culture.

Going back to the whole “blank” expressions deal, what I like to call the “default” facial expression, that is what we show when we’re not really doing anything brain-intensive, is different for Chinese and Americans. And so for me, I can’t read quite as well the expressions of Chinese in their default expression, so it looks as if it’s not really anything, blank. With Americans, however, even in their default expressions I can detect hints of emotion and thought manifesting themselves very subtly.

And so when I made the “blank” comment, I didn’t mean to mean. I just wanted to point out how differences in the way we’ve been trained to perceive subtleties in facial expressions can cause difficulties in interpreting or even outright misinterpretations of the facial expressions of other cultures.

Traffic and Simple Economics

On the list of things that all countries share -- regardless of whether they’re rich or poor, free or totalitarian, the United States or another country – are corruption, crime, inequality, and traffic. Let’s focus on the last one, traffic, and let’s look at it in the context of two specific countries, the U.S. and China. There’s something a little ironic in the way the nature of traffic in these two countries.

First, let’s look at China, which is probably more interesting to you. China’s traffic can be characterized as exceedingly chaotic and anarchical, replete with every type of vehicle imaginable from buses to rickshaws to taxis to tiny bicycles that whiz in and out of lanes. Cars are constantly fighting to cut into each other, traffic rules are very rarely obeyed, and traffic moves that would make transform the most sedate American driver into a screaming, horn-blowing icon of road rage are carried out every minute of every day from 6am to midnight in China’s major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, etc. Taxis, as in any culture, epitomize the worst of the lot, and will often within the course of several seconds narrowly scrape by several cars, “create” new lanes for itself in the midst of traffic, and somehow squeeze all the other fantastically aggressive drivers just to make a green light.

Because of all this, traffic in China moves excruciatingly slowly. Average speeds on roads in major cities range between 10 and 15mph. Even on freeways, cars tend to top out around 50mph. A benefit of slow traffic is that there are few devastating, violent accidents. Instead, accidents, if any, come in the form of small scrapes or at most little bumps that cost little more than a hundred USD and certainly no human lives. But this comes at the cost of terrible commutes, stressful driving, and decreased productivity due to time spent on the road which I’m sure someone somewhere can make quantifiable.

In the end, China’s traffic is painfully slow because traffic regulations are not strictly enforced and so drivers do anything they can in their own interest, like cutting other people off, even though it’s often to the detriment of the interests of the group and, as a result, is also a detriment to their own self-interests. In other words, drivers in China are allowed to freely follow their own interests even when in actuality, it would be better off for everyone including them, to stick to the regulations. A classic Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Now, let’s look at America. In America, quite the opposite occurs. Traffic is strictly enforced to point of drivers thinking the “California roll” at stop signs as an increasingly serious problem. Simple driving etiquette emerges from the order created by the law to further regulate the situation such as the way cutting in front of other cars is greatly frowned upon despite the fact that it’s not the most illegal move in the world. In short, tickets are expensive and frequent and so traffic in America is relatively well-regulated which results in smoother (again relatively so) driving for everyone at higher speeds with less unnecessary congestion. This is a case where the Prisoner’s Dilemma is solved – by an external force, the law.

The irony emerges when you look at these two traffic systems as analogies for economic systems. The Chinese traffic system, like an extremely deregulated and free economy, has all the problems associated with an extremely free market system: people fulfill their own self-interests to give them an edge in the short run, like making that green light, at the expense of everyone including themselves. For example, quite often trying to weave in and out of traffic to get to that green light causes other cars to make the same mad dash, which then blocks other cars which in turn block your path and prevent from reaching the goal you had set out to reach. Of course, it’s much more complex than that, but that’s the basic idea. So essentially, China’s traffic epitomizes all the detriments and disadvantages of an unregulated market economy, and it goes without saying that this is very different from their actual national economy.

America, on the other hand, has traffic that more closely models a properly regulated free market economy. Individual drivers are free to do whatever they want, go anywhere they want anytime they want, but only if it doesn’t interfere with the interests of the group. Such interferences include the ones I discussed about China: cutting other cars, saddling lanes, weaving in and out of traffic, etc. These negative externalities are greatly mitigated by the law and the result is a faster, smoother, more efficient system. And America’s own national economy is, arguably, something to that effect.

It’s odd but yes, you can learn something about economics through a simple observation of how traffic works in two very different settings. In fact, while I observing traffic in China, I noticed how despite the lack of regulation, traffic in some ways flowed very elegantly. There was a roundabout in Xi’an where cars, buses, and bicycles, nearly seamlessly entered and exited, somehow “missing” other cars by just a foot or two. It was pretty hot day and I hadn’t eaten anything for a while, but I was mesmerized by how everything just barely made it and slipped in just in time and how others reacted to and anticipated each other just right. It was like a very good improv performance. Anyways, this is just a simple observation and analysis of traffic and economics. By the way, I think entire careers can be formed around the study of traffic patterns. It’s a game theorist’s paradise.

The Common Man in an Uncommon World

Look around you and ask yourself how many things around you are completely beyond your ability to comprehend or understand. Take everyday objects -- televisions, mp3 players, cars, computers, etc. -- things that you take for granted, and think for a moment about how much you really know about them. Would even be able to explain some of the simple concepts that drive these things? These things are all made by people and yet they're so far out of the reach of the common person. I'm sure all of this has occurred to many people before, but this is just my take on it.

The bell curve above is the general human population IQ distribution. The average person has an IQ of 100. And yet, it seems as if so much of this world has been designed, researched, engineered, and created by people to the far right of the distribution. On top of that, the kind of enormous specialization that occurs these days in each field of science and technology as well as politics, literature, law, etc. further increases the division between the common man and the pioneers of our species. Only a small sliver of us actually pushes the world forward, actually makes the breakthroughs and innovations and takes the whole species along with it, while the rest, the vast majority are simple the consumers and sustainers: we use what the creative elite give us and we help by doing the things that keeps society functioning at status quo.

I just think it's strange to think that average people get to share in the benefits of the few extraordinary creative pioneers without having a clue about how anything works. Everything just keeps getting more complex and more complicated that it seems hopeless to try to understand all the things that we as a species are doing to change the world around us, to fight against nature and create for ourselves a new world with our own sense of justice and morality. And I guess that's just fine and all, but will we ever get to a point where the average person has essentially no idea how anything works?

Here's one way I think of it. Given the average person's intelligence and education, how much of today's world could he replicate on his own without anybody else's help? Could he make a computer? Doubtful. How about a light bulb or even a pencil? The difference between what he can do and what he cannot is what I think of as the current gap in society between what each of us knows and what we all know in aggregate. Does the increasing size of this gap have any significance? Is it possibly a bad thing or is it just fine as it is?

People prefer pets over people

So I think the picture does all the talking. That looks like a pretty comfy bed. And it comes at the comfy price of $280 plus shipping on eBay. I don't know that many people who spend that much on their own beds although I guess that's about the price of an iPod these days. I just think it's kind of funny that there are a good number of pets out there that are living better than a whole lot of people. According to Jeffery Sach's The End of Poverty about half the world population (human, that is) lives off less than $2 a day. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who spend well over $2 a day on their pets. And they have every right to. So while their human friends on the other side of the world are dying of starvation and disease and malnourishment and thirst, at least their doggy and kitty friends have it good in their $280 plush beds. But then, I'm sure that these pets give something invaluable to their owners and so it's really the least they can do to make their furry friends feel comfortable and loved. But you really do start to wonder: What if some of that money was spent on saving people's lives?

So how about this: luxury taxes. Tax stuff like this that really seems superfluous and dare I say wasteful, but don't restrict it because that would be totalitarianism and we wouldn't want that. People who really, really want this stuff despite the higher prices should still be allowed to buy it. It'd still be a relatively free market economy. The revenue from the taxes can then be sent towards better causes like alleviating world hunger, etc. At the same time, the types of jobs that supply these markets would be less profitable because of the tax and resulting higher prices/lower profits, and so people would be discouraged from entering into this business and might consider instead other forms of employment that have a little more worth to society and humankind.

Quite naturally, this is an impossible proposition for several reasons. How much should the tax be? Do we really want to make a point or is this more of just a deterrence? Where do we draw the line? Should we tax certain kinds of pet foods as well? What's really a luxury item and what's not? And who gets to decide all this? Who gets to choose what is a luxury and what people/their pets might actually need? Because all of these questions can never be adequately answered, rich pet owners have nothing to worry about. This tax will never happen and the capital that's directed into this stuff will never end up saving any starving children or finding a cure for cancer. But that's capitalism. And that's freedom. And that's how the world works -- for now at least.

Webcast College Classes

For all of its scientific breakthroughs and Nobel prizes, it's surprising that the University of Chicago along with pretty much all of its elite peers, some drowning in ivy and others in San Francisco fog, are so behind the times in terms of technology. And by that I mean specifically classroom technology. And by that I mean even more specifically webcasts. Of large lecture-style classes.

Imagine being able to simply watch class from the comfort of your own room and at anytime convenient to you. Imagine being able to pause and rewind lectures in case you couldn't quite write everything down the first time. Imagine being able to refer back to lectures, and not just lecture notes, when you're studying for midterms or finals. Imagine not having to sit next to the large, greasy guy who wreaks of Absolut and Red Bull when you're trying to focus on what your professor's scribbling/scraping on the board. That's what it means to have classroom webcasts. (Podcasts are pretty much the same thing, just more Apple-ified.) If you're feeling a little under the weather, you won't have to drag your wretched, aching, snot-filled body to class only to spend your whole time there desperately trying to stop yourself from passing out. Instead, you could wait until your temperature fell back into the double-digits and then watch the lecture with a clear, mucus-free mind. If there's another class you're dying to take -- maybe it fulfills some core or major requirement so you're more than dying to take it -- then you don't have to worry about working around the rigid schedule of that other lecture class. Instead, you can go ahead and watch the lecture some other time while you spare yourself a fifth year (the horror) by making those core/major classes.

I'd argue these webcasts should really only apply to large lecture-style classes that are at or around the 100 level. You know, the kind of class where unless you arrive an hour early, the only seat you're going to get is the one next to the heating unit that sounds like your lactose-intolerant roommate after five pints of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey. And also the kind of class that you probably won't raise your hand to ask a question in just in case what you have to say is already obvious to the other 499 students around you. You might defer to the more clandestine, face-saving alternative: office hours. (Despite all the rumors, office hours aren't just some cruel experiment done jointly by the econ and psych departments to see how much professorial auras of greatness affect/intimidate little baby undergrads.) I think classes that center around discussion or student interaction can be ruled out for now until all of us, including professors of Egyptology, have Skype accounts.

Some of the arguments against this sound like this (to be read in a whiny tone of voice): "But this takes away from the feel of classroom like having a layer of real chalk dust cover your notebook. And who's going to attend classes any more? Everyone will just stay home and professors will just be teaching empty seats and loud heating units. Whatever happened to what college is supposed to be?" [end whine] Well, whatever "classroom feel" you think you’re supposed to get you can still get in smaller, more advanced classes. As for classroom attendance, I'm sure that there are students who do value this "classroom feel" enough to continue attending classes despite the obvious advantages of webcasts. Besides, everything's changing and colleges aren't what they used to be. Just think back on all those commercials for places like ITT Tech, which seems to have an outstandingly disproportionate number of minority students if I might add, and DeVry, where apparently you'll never seen a white male, but that's beside the point. Places like those heavily utilize the advantages of the Internet and advanced communications technology and are radically changing the world of American higher education as we know it.

In a sense, our classrooms have already made some progress. I’m sure all of us at some time have had a class where Power Point presentations were the media of choice and that more often than not, those Power Point presentations were posted online for students to access. Even other things such as online course notes and such are noteworthy. But the next step up – webcasting -- is a big one and just hasn’t been made by most universities. However, it is important to take note of the universities that have made the leap forward and stand as shining models for the rest to follow.

Berkeley’s a big one. They have a whole section of their website devoted to webcasts of class lectures. Some come as streaming audio, others as downloadable MP3s, and others even as streaming video. Whatever their form, all of them thoroughly represent the 21st century college classroom. You can even subscribe to RSS feeds and access lectures without even being enrolled at the university.

I’ll mention very quickly just so nobody says it first and then points a finger at me and says, "Hah! Got you!" that our foggy San Francisco friend does make good use of iTunes to broadcasts some of its more famous lectures. But this isn’t quite the classroom usage I had in mind.

A little more searching on the Google and you start to realize that it’s really only the undergrads that got the short side of the stick. Most law schools, b-schools, anything-but-undergrad-schools more than provide for this kind of technology. It’s pretty much fully integrated and standard for them. So why are college kids still left all the way back in the 1990s? Why do we have to continue suffering while law school and business school hotshots get to sip on Cabernet Sauvignon while placidly absorbing the teachings of the world’s greatests, at their leisure, undisturbed? (Okay, so college students might opt for something other than Cabernet Sauvignon. By the way, I have no idea how to even pronounce that.)

My message to our university presidents is simple: Put down your Cabernet Sauvignon and start considering smarter, more efficient, more effective means of higher education. For example, webcasts. And please help me find a job.

(By the way, you really should Google "webcasts". From the results it looks like everyone from the UN to NASA to Russia is doing it.)

Quick Poll
What is your opinion on webcasting large lecture-style college classes? Great idea Neutral Not so hot

Genetic Engineering and Intelligence

This is a picture of a tobacco plant genetically engineered through recombinant DNA technology to express the luciferase gene found in fireflies that produces bioluminescence. This picture is very important. And not just for big tobacco companies. In fact, I don't even have to use a complete sentence to explain why: humans, intelligence, accelerated progress.

Forget about all those other implications -- engineered height, strength, health, eyesight, hearing, metabolism, lemons, etc. Intelligence, once increased through genetic engineering, will allow for everything else to be achieved much faster.

For now, let's say I'm only talking about mathematical intelligence. While this is still extremely difficult to define, we all have a sense of what this means. The well-oiled face of the tiny Singaporean who always sits at the front of your analysis class might come to mind. And don't we all believe that some people are simply born better at math, with a greater innate potential for it? Sure environmental factors play a large role, how large exactly is always debatable, but genetics limit how far environmental factors can take you in the end. I'll use myself as an example. I have a feeling that no matter how hard I study and no matter how much I want it, I can never produce the kind of work that the guys who collect Nobels and Fields Medals produce. I am smart, but that's just something else entirely.

Or put another way, let's hold all factors besides genetics constant. Let's say two kids of the same race/gender/socioeconomic status go to the same school, are driven like rabid monkeys, and study for an obscene number of hours a day. If they're given the same problem set, will they both do equally well? No. And this scenario is really not uncommon, especially given the competitiveness of college admissions. We must look to the last variable for our answer: the must've been some difference in genetics that led to this.

So if the potential for math is at some level genetically based, would it be crazy to think there might be some extremely complex and intricate network of genes that controls this? And what if we were to tap into that network and alter it, improve upon it? What if we vastly increased the innate mathematical aptitudes of every person on Earth? What if even the simplest, menial workers had IQs that were off the charts? The answer to all this is progress. Much faster progress. So why don't we consider this more?

Anyways, just a thought.

Why would you ever drive an SUV?

It doesn't make sense at all why people drive SUVs. Why would I choose to drive something that keeps me safe and puts other people at greater risk? Why would I care about myself more than other people? Why would I ever want to do something in my own self-interest?

Here's an analogy. Imagine you're in a room full of people. Unfortunately, it's a scary situation because everyone just happens to be armed with a weapon. For the most part, things are peaceful, but sometimes people get into fights. You never want to pick a fight so you're very careful. But sometimes other people pick fights with you and sometimes they don't even mean to. The thing is you can choose your weapon to be either a club or a gun. Let's say everyone has a club. You would never want to choose to have a gun because that would mean when a fight broke out between you and someone else, you'd survive and other person wouldn't. Quite naturally, you would choose a club so that when, despite how careful you were, you somehow ended up in a fight, both you and the other person would be torn to shreds.

You can easily apply this to the road where clubs are cars and guns are SUVs. Why would you ever want to choose the SUV, which makes you safer at the expense of others? We all put others before ourselves, and choosing a car means that when you crash, both of you will suffer equally but less so than someone getting hit by an SUV. But maybe you both get destroyed. If you choose to drive an SUV, you at least increase your chances of survival even though the other person's chances are decreased. By driving an SUV, you're basically saying, "I'm more important to me than some stranger I've never met." So then why would you ever buy an SUV?

Quick Poll
What's your stance on SUVs? If your answer isn't one of the options, post a comment. Select an option... They're dangerous. No sane person would drive one. They're hot. There's a reason why they're so popular. They're impractical. Way to cumbersome and fuel inefficient. They're safe for me and that's all that matters.

The Real End of Poverty

This is an incredible book written by an incredible person. Jeffery Sachs completely altered my view of the world and what is being done to change it as well as stretched my notions of what one man can do far beyond the limitations I had once thought existed.

However, I don't think he has the solution. Sachs main point is that there is no magic bullet, no simple solution to the problem. The only way to end poverty is to do the things we have been doing--sending aid as both private donations as well as ODA, targeting structural issues, putting capital into the hands of those who need it, etc--but better, much better, and more of it, a lot more. This has to be done just enough to get poor nations onto the first rung of the development ladder. Once this is accomplished, market forces as well as good governance will lift allow the country to lift itself up the rest of the way. This is an incredibly down-to-earth strategy that makes sense on face-value.

But here's what I think: it don't think it's enough to push at the margins until something clicks and countries can lift themselves out of poverty. I think what's needed is total system restructure. I think the problem is capitalism itself and the way the free market works in the real world. It's not enough to keep adjusting the system, to somehow tweak it enough so it fits truly just resource allocation. Instead, we've got to find a new way, a new system that works better than capitalism and doesn't result in millions of people starving in some countries while in others obesity and overeating as national health crises.

The case is strong enough against communism and other forms of socialism. Any more about it and I would already be belaboring the point. But perhaps we should explore other socio-economic structures rather than continuing to struggle within our current framework. There must be something out there that, if we set our minds in the right direction, we could discover and solve all our problems. A system with such horrendous inequalities cannot possibly be the best one. Or maybe it is.

Wal-Mart is Evil

Wal-Mart is evil. I hate Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart in so many ways stands for everything America is not: capitalism, entrepreneurship, social mobility, dreaming big, success, employment, the list goes on and on.

Take the last one for example, employment. Isn't it outrageous that some people are forced to work at Wal-Mart and get paid well above the minimum wage instead of being allowed to go on unemployed with no way of providing for their families?

How about sending jobs overseas to China? What an awful idea. Why use cheaper labor in China to produce cheaper goods that the whole world benefits from when you could use overpriced American labor and raise commodity prices out of the reach of poor people? China is really such a horrible place anyways. In fact, dealing with any country besides America is really a terrible idea and completely goes against the concepts of international trade, free markets, and competition.

I also hate the way Wal-Mart forces its suppliers to bid against each other in what is basically a fight to sell to Wal-Mart at lower prices so that Wal-Mart can sell to consumers at lower prices. I think that kind of competition is terrible because then the suppliers don't make as much money and the consumers get cheaper prices.

What's worse though is that Wal-Mart is the only company in the world that does this. Obviously, none of its competitors does anything like this at all to try to steal shares of the market. If only Wal-Mart just disappeared. Then all our problems would be solved and there would never be any corporation that would rise to fill its place and take over its share of the market.

What happened to all the tiny mom-and-pop stores that sold everything at prices ten times higher than they were really worth? What happened to the good old days when a farm boy from the Midwest growing up during the Great Depression with no Ivy League education and no previously amassed family fortune could start his own business, rise up against the odds, run head-to-head with corporate giants, and become the most successful businessman in the world? What happened to America?

Wal-Mart is anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-American. Its efficiency, its productiveness, its competitiveness, its effectiveness is nauseating. Wal-Mart is evil. And I'm glad that a good number of Americans feel exactly the same way.

Quick Poll
What do you think of the whole Wal-Mart thing? If your answer isn't one of the options, post a comment. Select an option... Wal-Mart is evil. It should pay dearly. It's not Wal-Mart. It's Corporate America that's evil. There's no one to blame but Washington. Nothing's wrong here. That's just the way capitalism works.

Red Light Theory

Here's my famous Red Light Theory. People notice red lights more in life. This leads them to believe there are more red lights in life than green lights. But this is only because they actually stop and wait at red lights whereas they just drive straight through green lights.

An argument against this, which I credit to the great Neel Shah, is that red lights really do last longer because they last as long as a green light plus a yellow light. Also, everyone knows how obscenely long those left turn red lights can be. But my theory is still cool.

Anyways, this has a lot of real world applications. A lot of things in life seem like they happen a lot when in fact they aren't any more frequent but simply seem that way because they tend to last longer. During that longer duration of time, you can easily think about things like "Another red light!" or "I just realized I'm really hungry! Another red light!" or "Dang it. Another red light."

I think the picture below fully illustrates my point:

My First Post

This is my first post. Amazing. Stay tuned. It gets even better...