Her Advocate

Two nights ago I went to EPIC (Energy Policy Institute at Chicago) and saw Congressman Bob Inglis (R, South Carolina) give a talk.  The congressman has a very interesting recent history in the public sphere.  In the elections in 2010, he was the incumbent who was defeated in the primary by Congressman Trey Gowdy for not being “Republican” enough despite his rather conservative background.

What likely tipped the balance was his stance on climate change.  Unlike the less empirical arm of his party, Congress Inglis believes both that global climate change is occurring and that it is being caused by human activity.  Spurred to action he co-authored a bill to institute a carbon tax, which obviously was never passed into law.  The bill had three important features:

1. Stop all federal subsidies for electricity generation,
2. Lower payroll taxes…
3. …and instead institute a carbon tax by the corresponding amount (revenue neutral).

The carbon tax would start at $15 / ton of Carbon and be raised to $100 / ton over the next 100 years.  (Carbon effects are typically priced at $30-50 / ton.)  Of note is that this strategy permanently lowers taxes as we (presumably) move away from carbon-based technologies and the payroll taxes are not replaced.  That Bob Inglis was ousted from the Republicans on behalf of this bill is nothing short of ironic.

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Well, last night was kind of amazing!  Here is my new personal website.  I think it is fun.  What is most amazing is that there is actual information on it…  Like how to find this blog.  Anyway, here is the link: http://scopatz.com/

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I am now really in Chicago and dear me.  If I were to live my life by one saying it is, “Easily distracted by awesomeness.”

HOW IS THIS NOT AWESOME?!

The problem is that there is so much awesomeness going on right now that I can’t keep up.

1. I finally moved into the co-op.  My mind seems to explode with every conversation.  It is exhausting.
2. I get to meet all sorts of cool people at work in the High Energy Density Physics community.  I am not sure I can keep up.
3. I get to talk about scientific computing to everyone I meet.  Bootcamps here I come.  Dammit, more work.
4. I am writing my first grant proposal to DOE.  My brain has fractured.
5. Something secret I can’t talk about that will take a lot of focus.
6. I am reading “The Nibelungenlied.”  As a connoisseur of epic poetry, I am thoroughly impressed by this translation.  I have been writing couplets because of it.

Not to say that everything in life is going perfectly, but all of this has left me in a catatonic state of saturation.

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t’asoiaf’;dr – I am moving to Chicago.

Dear Ser Erick,

Upon forging my chain and becoming a maester in mine own right, I regret to inform you that cannot remain in your leal service.  My time spent in study in these southron lands must come to an end.  I have heard the call; the realms need me.

I have decided to take the black.  The Wall needs as much support as it can muster.  Maesters are in short supply to help fight back the dread things stirring in the uncivilized lands to the north.  I will enter the ranks as a steward to research the coming troubles.  Castle Black has excellent resources and premier library.  However, it is my understanding that I will spend much of my time in the Gift, on the Wall’s southside, on a plain known as Hyde Park.

Please wish me good tidings in this venture.  I know I had planned to stay within this kingdom for many more years, but the shifting sands of fate conspire to place me elsewhere.

Health & Wealth,
Maester Skopes

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Viveck Wadhwa posted an interesting article today over at Tech Crunch that was linked on slashdot entitled “Friends Don’t Let Geek Friends Work in Finance.”  I’d like to take a moment to explain why the article has largely missed the mark.  First off in full disclosure, about 4 months ago I started on a project for a financial client at work.  However, as a consultant, I am not receiving the huge payout that other engineers who delve into finance see.

The article describes the financial industry as ‘poaching’ top scientists and engineers to work for them rather ‘solving the worlds problems.’   This is ridiculous for a couple of reasons.

Smart People Like to Work on Interesting Problems

The above may seem self evident, but it bears repeating.  There are some really interesting problems in finance that most people who are not quants would never know about.  Moreover, they are interesting problems that scientists and engineers are familiar with.  It is eerie how similar Black-Scholes is to the neutron diffusion equation.  It is like an old friend with a lime in it; what a twist!

Additionally, as an academic, if you feel like you can enter a space where you have a competitive advantage than you take that opportunity to make a name for yourself.  Finance has a lot of room for tried and true methods from other fields.  If you can apply one of these methods you learned during the course of your study and become the thing since securitized bread, you might just do so.

Couple the interesting problem and higher fame above with a higher pay grade and it is not surprising that scientist and engineers want to go into these economics.  Far from being poached, I think the mindset makes a lot of sense.  Or at least it is understandable.  If you ignore that scientists are human, then you have missed a critical point in your analysis.

The Moral Hazard is the Same

This may come as a surprise to many people given the current discourse, but science and engineering are no more ethical as disciplines than finance.  Everyday engineers are paid to build and design weapons of mass destruction, or attack drones to kill children in other lands, or missiles to topple governments, or engines to kill the Earth slowly.  (For this discussion we will ignore the “Cars are murder!” argument.)  Richard Feynman was responsible for the deaths of many people.  Alexander Kalashnikov was responsible for far more.  In addition to better toaster ovens, these are also the legacy of science and engineering.

This is not to say that science has not improved our lives in a million ways great and small.  But in spite of the havoc the finance industry has wrought recently, they also improve our lives in many ways.

One is hard pressed to debate the merits of being able to borrow and loan money.  It turns out to be a very useful thing.  For centuries it was illegal (see usury).  The liberation of trade (within limits, can’t have robber-barons now can we?)  has made the past 200-300 years some the most productive ever.  Trading in risk (insurance) turns out to be even more useful.  Scientists have certainly benefited from this structure more so than most people.

Yes, you can and should debate the relative merits of CDOs, or rating agencies.  But keep in mind that time and again, scientists and engineers have shown an extreme amorality towards their work.  Moreover, hating bankers for being bankers perpetuates moral arguments outlined in the Bible which have historically been used to justify racism.  Instead I urge you to please talk about the specific technical issues at hand.

Obvious Conclusion

If more people are going into the finance, and if financial jobs pay better, it is because this work is more valued by our society. If you think that this makes our society morally bankrupt, I’d tend to agree.  If you want change society for the better, I am right behind you.  Let’s really put science and engineering in its rightful place.  Let’s also put banking and corporations in their rightful place as well.  The whole system should be designed to improve the lives of people, not to perpetuate abstract hierarchies.  Such are the principals our nation was founded on.

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I was recently in a position where I adopted a gender role I was rather uncomfortable with.  The reason I went along with it initially was in an attempt to create a better community for future generations.  For various reasons, I do not feel comfortable airing my feelings on that thread.

However, I try to live an open life so I am going to make a post about my actual beliefs here.

I feel like our whole model of gender and the non-biological-imperative parts of sexuality is wrong.  Moreover, I think we should replace it.  Or at least we should take a serious stab at experimenting with replacing it.  This opinion was likely formed somewhere between my strongly second-wave mother, Carl Djerassi, and Ursala K. Le Guin.  ”Kemmer is one honking great idea, let’s do more of that!”

Context: The reason I am ‘male’ is for much the same as the reason I am (ethnically) Jewish.  Other people define me as this way.  I could contest these external labels, but it would not really matter.  In a keenly post-WWII life, my personal sense of self holds little weight to the misconceptions of others.

Yes, there are implications for being born biologically male-bodied.  These are issues which my doctor should worry about.  However, I do not feel particularly ‘man’-ish nor do I like what that implies.

If I had a choice, I would not have been male.  Not that I would have chosen female, either.  I just want to be human damn it!*

Innovations: Technology is becoming available that promises to mitigate some of the confines of sex-of-birth.  In the long term what I would love to see is the ability for one to change one’s physical sex as easily as one might change a shirt, into and out of as many sexes as their are articles of clothing in a wardrobe.

I anecdotally believe that this would necessitate a successful replacement to our current, failed gender and sex model.  In order to accomplish such a heady goal I advocate a many-stage series of experiments to test, and learn from, different scenarios.

In the near term, products will likely become available that allow same-sex couples to bio-techno-logically reproduce.   I think we should actively experiment with homogeneously sexed** communities.  Individuals would be free to enter and leave such communities at will.

This in turn might open the door for asexual, reproductively-capable groups.  Lessons learned here could be applied to groups of switchable sexed communities.  Basically, as technology improves, we will be able to perform a greater variety of experiments.

Paramount here is that we should treat these as hard science experiments rather than social ones.  Yes, there are social goals (as there always are in science), but the methods should be rigorous.

As I and most other multi-celled organisms will freely admit, the biological ability to swap genetic material with a partner has been shown to be the correct way of doing things.  Yet since we have already freed ourselves from the shackles of traditional natural selection, we may as well take this opportunity as a species to truly innovate.

Paradoxes: It is generally considered a good thing to talk about getting more women into science and engineering. However, in order to even have this conversation I have had to abandon all of the scruples I have laid out above.  In the face of reality, I have forcibly applied labels (‘female’, ‘male’) to others that I do not want applied to myself.

Additionally, some people claim that affirmative action is bad because the under-represented individual might wonder “Did I get this position because I was truly qualified or because I am a XXX?”   However, I claim that the status quo or the lack of affirmative action is equally bad because I constantly wonder “Did I get this position because I am truly qualified or because I happen to have a circumcised penis**?”  I struggle with this daily.

The above two paradoxes are the clearest thought experiments that I have which demonstrate that humans are clearly still thinking about issues of gender and sexuality (let alone ethnicity) in the wrong way.  Transformative measures seem to need to be taken to meaningfully resolve these quandaries***.

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* Similarly, the Jewish situation is muddled.  While I am a Jew-by-choice religiously, I have no internal compass that makes me ethnically Jewish.  I am ethnically Jewish because other people have a mental construct which the forcibly apply to me.

** You tell me I am Jewish and male.  Clearly you have put this much together.

*** In the very near term, I am also in favor of escapist romps in the metaverse that allow people a degree of gender self-expression and innovation without the messy biology.

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One of my friends this evening accused me of ragging on a certain religious/social organization more than any other as my go-to example group of damaging social fundamentalism.

I operate under an “Only intolerant to Intolerance”, pluralistic mindset.  Thus decidedly voicing my opinion against fundamentalist everywhere comes up a fair bit.  The question that was posed was, “isn’t it hypocritical for you to always be bringing up your dislike for group X?”

My answer was “No” for the following reason.  I don’t actually dislike people in group X.  What I dislike is doctrine X (codified so we can all agree what the base text actually says), and that the text is largely adhered to by it’s group, and that the text is a fundamentalist doctrine.

Now in every time, in every religion, there are fundamentalist sects. This is what I fight against in all of its expressions.  However when speaking to people, I tend to give my audience context based on their cultural background.

For White people in the US, you can typically say the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses and these connote the respective doctrine that everyone is aware of.  Similarly, amongst Jews I use Hassids or the Ultra-Orthodox.  Pretty much everyone these days knows about al-Qaeda  and the Taliban.  Fewer know about the storied history of the Tamil Tigers or Shiv Sena.  Fewer still know of Buddhist fundamentalist sects in both Japan and Tibet*.

Maybe Mormons get a bad wrap in general for FLDS compounds in Texas.  And maybe Ultra-Orthodox Jews get a bad wrap because of Yigal Amir.  But if of all of the injustices in the world you only know about al-Qaeda, then this is the example I am going to rant to you about.  It is not that I disagree with the others any less.

It is fine, well, and good to condemn fundamentalism in general, but without concrete examples of what such belief systems do to people, it is much harder to make the case for the importance of acceptance and pluralism.

Perhaps I should be more general when speaking on such a sensitive topic, rather than trying to relate to my audience’s  specific experiences.  If you repeatedly use the same example with the same audience it comes off the wrong way (ie hypocritical), even if you use different examples with different people.

So am I  a flaming bigot or in a subtle conundrum or somewhere in between? Thoughts?

* Obviously, I believe in people’s right to practice the faith of their choice and raise their children in the manner that they see fit.  What I want people to desperately understand is what happens if their children don’t fit the mold they as parents have prescribed for them.  I have seen loving families torn apart by this sad conundrum.  The naive romantic in me never wants to see this happen again.

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It has been five weeks since my last post.  In general, they were not an easy five weeks, but The Hacker Within Software Carpentry Bootcamp just wrapped up.  Thanks to all of the lovely, sexy, intelligent people involved!

Greg Wilson, of Software Carpentry, gave an amazing plenary session where he described the state of scientific computing.  The conclusion was that anecdotally things are very bad, because everyone believes that scientists are anywhere near as effective as they could be with computers.  (Let alone the number of computer scientists who can not develop software.)

Greg points out that things are worse than this because we are not even taking quantitative data about how far behind most people are.  Worse still, we largely don’t know what the right metrics are, because measuring practical education level is hard.

So with out being too cynical, we don’t know what we don’t know and we don’t know how to find out.  (There are some caveats, and things might be improving, but let’s not be too hopeful.)  Greg (and now I, as well) hunger for quantitative data on this subject.  Philosophy plus experimentally determined numbers equals science, and now we are getting somewhere.

At the symphony tonight, this situation struck me as analogous to almost every issue I could dream up.  For instance, this has a fractal effect in science.  Say you measure the temperature, you don’t really know the value unless it has some associated error (fractal depth: 1).  But then how are you sure that the error is correct (fractal depth: 2+).

Still, the most intriguing corollary is sexual identity (or how one expresses one’s self by who one is attracted to).

I cannot classify who I am attracted to.  No matter what I do, there always seems to be an exception to any rule I lay down.  (I’ll spare you the juicy details.)  However, if you show me someone, or if I interact with someone, I can come up with a decision on whether the subject at hand ‘does it’ for me or not.  Moreover, I have no idea how to go about determining a suitable sexy-to-Anthony metric, since all prior attempts have failed.  The concept seems fuzzy.

So similarly, to a software developer, give me a person and their code and I can tell you if I think they are good or not.  Yet, I find the abstract task hard, unsatisfying, and probably a waste of time.

Let’s take the sexual identity analogy one step further.  If we were to sex operating systems, we would probably say that Windows more male, and Mac OS X is more female. Of course, what we are doing here is actually making a woman/man gender assignment.

This makes Linux transgendered!

Unfortunately, the analogy breaks down when you start to talk about solutions in these two spaces.  Gender bias probably won’t be solved (in the short term) simply by decreasing the market share of the major players.  Additionally, unless you are Richard Stallman, you aren’t just born an open-source-sexual.

I think most people are forced to believe simply because it collapses their information entropy to zero.  Sadly, I don’t know how to break them of this habit, or even if I should.

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When I first arrived in Houston a week and a half ago, my boss called it “the City that Oil built.” I have experienced a strong correlation between such liquid markets, the willingness for people to live in underground tunnels, and the general lack of vegan options.

Downtown Houston is a weird place.  It never seems busy though one may saunter through the avenues framed by monolithic buildings.  The architecture is grandiose and diverse.  But you have to wonder who lives in these constructs if you are the only one on the street.

During the day, the city is teeming with life.  Like white blood cells they traverse the internal circulatory infrastructure.  Exiting the anonymous hall’s glassy dermis for any length of time must be death for these oxygen-carrying modula.  Unless, of course, it is their smoke break.

I wish the clockwork city didn’t checkout at 6 pm.  I like the night life, baby.

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