A Sensible Look at Common Sense

It seems like every year there are more and more stories about people doing increasingly stupid things that land them in increasingly stupid situations.  I don't think that's because there are more people doing more stupid things; it's just the fact that the way our culture works these days, stupid people get lots of attention, and lots of attention means lots of money for the people that make it possible for you to give them the attention.  That's a topic for another post, however.

As we watch these people doing these stupid things, we tend to ask ourselves, "What on earth were they thinking?  Have they no common sense?"  Yet I wonder what the phrase "common sense" could really mean if we looked at it more closely.  I do not think it means what we think it means.

Several years ago, I was pondering this very topic - the nature of common sense.  It occurred to me that while normally I'm a very sensible person, there have been, on occasion, times when people would rightly have reason to look at me and say, "What on earth were you thinking?  Have you no common sense?"  This intrigued me because it seemed to imply that common sense may be a little transitory.  There have also been times when someone that I would definitely consider a little... shall we say, slow?... has suddenly exercised a surprising amount of rationality that seemed to come out of nowhere.  Could this inconsistency simply be a random happenstance, enabled by other factors such as lack of sleep, or eating more Wheaties than normal?  Or is there something else at work here?

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the problem with common sense was not with the "sense" part, it was with the "common" part.  You see, there are a lot of definitions for the word "common."  The one we typically ascribe to the phrase "common sense" means that something is widespread, that it can be found easily, in abundance.  Another definition we might use in this context would be that it's something that two or more people each have (i.e. common interests).

However, "common" can also refer to something that is shared by an entire community.  This use of the word can be found in terms like, "common hall" or "common bathroom".  Think of a common bathroom in a dorm for instance - everyone can use it, and no matter who uses it it's always the same, but they can't use it at the same time.  Hmm, maybe now we're on to something.

So my theory is that there is one global common sense, shared by all human beings, but there's only so much that can go around.  While you concentrate really hard on the proper way to change that light bulb without getting hurt, some poor sap in China just stuck his finger in a power outlet.  Think about it.  It makes sense.

So the next time you find yourself about to yell at someone for being completely absent-minded, just stop and ask yourself, "Was I hogging all the common sense for myself?" and if the answer is yes, go and apologize to them as they ride away in the ambulance.  They'll thank you for it later.

Oh no, a logo

Welp, I spent all evening creating the nice little logo that you see at the top right of my blog.  I've been going as OrionsByte for a long time now, and I've always wanted to make some sort of logo or image that would kind of follow that handle around, so I finally did it.

You can click the image to see a bigger version.  Hopefully you've noticed that the constellation represented is, in fact, Orion.  Orion has 81 "official" stars in it, which is represented in binary on the computer screen.  Classical images of Orion typically show him with a shield on his right and a club on the left, but since I was giving him a laptop instead of a shield, the idea of him swinging a mouse around as a weapon tickled me.

Ah, the things we do for no reason...

A Perspective on Context

Imagine yourself walking through the wilderness. Deep wilderness. There is not the faintest sign of civilization for miles and miles around, and no sign that humans had even set foot in this part of the wilderness before.

As you are walking, you suddenly come to a large stone statue, perfectly sculpted in to the shape of a human being. You are immediately struck by it's beauty and craftsmanship, even as you are completely perplexed as to how it got here. Upon coming home to your friends and family, you tell them about this wonderful thing you discovered; you might even subject them to a slide show of the photos you took of it.

Now we human beings are an inquisitive bunch, so inevitably as word got out, this statue would come under heavy scrutiny. Some people would be interested in who made the statue and brought it there. They would admire the artistry and wonder what it told us about it's maker. Why did they create this statue? What message or emotion were they trying to convey? What can we learn from their creation?

Other people would be interested in what the statue was made of. How long it had been there? How did it get there? Where did the stone come from? They would take samples and examine the area around the statue to look for evidence. They would come up with theories, and then test their theories.

If these two groups of people were to have a conversation, they may disagree about what the most important topics to cover were, but in the end, they're still talking about the same statue. The first group would suffer no backlash if they were to say that a skilled craftsman had obviously shaped the stone, but they would be foolish to suggest that someone created the stone itself. Likewise, the second group could tell us a lot about the composition of the stone, and likely how stone of that type ended up in the area where the statue was found, but it would be ridiculous for them to presume that there was no sculptor, and that natural processes had coincidentally conspired to create this perfect human likeness.

Now you probably see where I'm going here, and quite possibly you're frustrated at how I've used an over-simplified metaphor. However, I still think it serves my point well enough, and my point is this:

Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive.

Have you ever thought about why we use a base-10 number system? By that I mean, why do we count to nine, and then suddenly start using 2 digits instead of 1? What is the significance of that quantity? For that matter, when the Romans created their number system, why did they choose characters to represent multiples of 1, 5, and 10, and not other numbers? The answer is fairly simple: people have 10 fingers, 5 on each hand. If people had 8 fingers on each hand, the number system we use would be very different (i.e. hexadecimal).

So the only reason that counting to 10 makes sense to us is because we have a context of 10 fingers. If someone gave you a dozen roses, there would still be a dozen of them whether you had ten fingers or sixteen, but you would represent the number differently.

It is my opinion that science is the context of Creation. To put it differently, as we continue to try and understand the world around us, we are creating a context by which we can continue to learn and study things deeper and more fully. Imagine if all scientific endeavors just stopped where they were because everyone decided, "Welp, that's just how God made it." We need science. But science has to exist within its own context.

Skeptics and atheists would argue that science describes the real world, not some theoretical sub-context of it. However, my point is simply that all the science we perform today is dependent on the science that came before it, and thus all science is relative to itself. That doesn't invalidate anything, it just puts it in context.

As a Christian, I believe that there is a God, and I believe that He created the universe and everything in it. As a person with a healthy dose of curiosity and a love for science, I also believe that in order to understand something from a scientific perspective, you have to adhere to that context. The big bang, evolution, all those "anti-religious" theories - they're all the context in which science is performed.

However, I don't see those beliefs as being at odds; I simply see them as two different perspectives of the same universe, each with its own context, but not exclusive of each other. I don't attempt to - nor do I feel obliged to - bridge the gap between those viewpoints.  For example, I would never say, "God created the big bang," or, "God created evolution." That's not what I believe. If I had to put words to it, I would probably say, "God created the universe and all living things through processes that we cannot understand, but which left behind artifacts that are left to our interpretation, and which in the context of humanity's current scientific knowledge can be described as the big bang and evolution." (Contrived much?)

I also don't attempt to talk to someone about God from a scientific perspective, or have a scientific debate from a religious perspective. I think that's the reason so many people think that religion and science are polar opposites - proponents on both sides tend to try to win arguments from their own context, and the other side refuses to acknowledge that context. I really wish that everyone could, for just one shining moment, see the world from a perspective they've never considered. There's no reason to feel threatened by a different viewpoint unless you're really not that sure of your own.

A Wave of Frustration

A while ago I posted about Google Wave, a project I'm very excited about. Wave has the potential to augment (if not replace) nearly every single form of electronic web-based communication we use today. It encapsulates all of them without depreciating any of them. Email, IM, wikis, blogs, collaborative office documents, social networks - it does it all, and transitions seamlessly from one to the other, such that the boundaries between all these different forms of communication start to break down.

On Wednesday, Google started handing out "preview release" invitations to the general public. They were only giving out 100,000, but people that receive those invitations can invite 8 more people to try it out. Google said the first invites were going to the people who'd already been involved in testing, some were going to Google Docs customers, and the rest were going to "the first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com."

Now I fall squarely in to that last category, but since I heard about Wave a little later than other people, it's very possible that I didn't sign up early enough to be counted among the "first." I'm okay with that.

However, as these invitations have been going out, I've been scouring the web to see what people's impressions are, and some of the results have really frustrated me. A lot of these people just don't seem to "get" it. There are too many bloggers that have met Wave with a yawn and said, "so what's the big deal?" - which is fine, everyone's entitled to their opinion - yet when you read what they have to say about it, it's apparent that they either misunderstood what Wave is intended to do, or they incorrectly assumed that the interface was the product, which is not the case - the product is the technology.

The reason this frustrates me is that I get the sense from many of these people that they kind of went, "Meh," and have no intention of continuing to try it out. These people likely signed up for invites not because they thought the technology was impressive, but because they'd heard it was the "next big thing" and they wanted to check it out even though they didn't know what it was. So if they've already decided it's not worth their time, then Google wasted an invitation as far as I'm concerned. How many of these invites have reached their lucky recipient only to be cast aside because said recipient never intended to actually do anything with it (other than write a scathing review, which people like to do just because it makes them look tough).

So I'm not bitter or frustrated that I didn't get an invite, but I am bitter and frustrated that the invitation I could have had went to someone who squandered it. Many times over.

On the other hand, this could be indicative of the kind of hurdle this technology faces in the mainstream. If you're old enough to remember the time when you got your first email address, but most of your friends still hadn't gotten theirs, then you probably can see how a technology like Wave needs widespread adoption in order to really, well, make waves. If these first preview users give up on it so quickly, that could mean trouble, and that makes me really sad.

Here are a couple things I would do with Wave at work if I got the chance to play with it:

• Refine the proofing cycle. Currently, one of my customers emails me with a change they'd like to make to a document, I delegate that task to an employee by forwarding them the email, and they email the PDF proof back to me. I review the PDF and if it looks acceptable, I forward that to the customer, who may send back some additional changes. Rinse. Repeat. Wave could improve this process because, even if it was just being used internally, the back-and-forth nature of the revision process could be reduced to a single document that had a complete history of changes made during that proofing cycle. It would be easier to review, easier to discuss changes, and easier to keep a record of everything that happened.
• Refine the process for resolving production problems. If we have a data-related problem with a customer's file, there could be many reasons. It could be a customer-side issue, which means our CSR would need to contact them and resolve it. It could be a common internal issue, which can be delegated to our junior programmer. It could be an internal issue that's never come up before, which would probably require my attention. Sometimes, it's a combination of those. The problem is, the production team doesn't know the difference, so it can take a while to figure out who should be dealing with it. However, if the production team was able to create a wave and add all the people who might be able to help, we could collaborate on the issue, delegate specific tasks, and keep tabs on the resolution, all from the same place, without a half-dozen emails flying around.

I know that eventually I'll get to try out Wave; it just may not be as soon as I'd like. I really, really hope that most of the people getting their hands on it today are testing it and giving quality feedback, the way my staff and I would.

A Twitter post says they're still working on getting invitations out, so there could still be hope, but they could also just be referring to the additional invites that can be handed out by each if the initial 100,000. I don't know. I'll try not to hold my breath.

The End of Evolution

Disclaimer: I'm not going to turn this particular post in to a Creationism/Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate. The only fact I'm claiming for the purposes of this discussion is that evolution is the language of science, regardless of whether or not to happen to believe it's 100% true.

I was watching an interesting documentary on National Geographic this week, entitled, "The Human Family Tree". The topic was The Genographic Project, an effort to trace genetic lines of ancestry back to a single point of origin, and also to trace the path that different genetic lines took to get from then to now. In other words, by examining someone's DNA in context with the hundreds of thousands of other samples, they can begin to build a map that shows when and where your ancestors might have lived, and what path they took as the earth became more widely populated. It's interesting stuff and I highly recommend checking it out.

Anyways, during this program there was some discussion about how some of the different physical characteristics may have appeared, primarily due to adaptations to different environments. This got me thinking, if evolution is supposedly driven by adaptation, has technology stunted our own evolution? After all, these days if you need to adapt to your environment, you don't do it by breeding out the members of your society that don't cut it - you do it with technology.

It could be said that perhaps technology is the means by which our species will continue to evolve, and I suppose that's true. As someone who doesn't subscribe to the theory of evolution as the only viable explanation, I'm not privy to what the "official" position on this is; it just made me think. What will mankind look like in another ten thousand years, assuming we make it that long? Will our physical form change to adapt to whatever environment we happen to find ourselves in, or will we simply rely more on technology to do that work for us?

Why the metric system isn't metric

Alright, so scientists like the metric system because it is consistent with itself, rather than being arbitrary like the "standard" system. In other words, 1 kilometer = 1,000 meters = 100,000 centimeters = 10,000,000 millimeters as opposed to 1 mile = 5,280 feet = 63,360 inches. Round numbers are nice, and easier to remember and convert between.

So it struck me as funny when I read this article today. Basically, there's a single block of metal in Paris that officially represents 1 kilogram, and scientists are concerned because it doesn't weigh what it used to, by a few billionths of a gram.

See the thing about measurement is that it's always relative. It just so happens that the entire system of metric weight is relative to this single chunk of metal in Paris. I mean, they had to pick something. But if their baseline is changing, what's a scientist to do?

Well, you reverse-engineer it of course. As the article points out, it's been done before, with the meter. The baseline for 1 meter used to be a stick next to the one kilogram chunk, but they decided to make it "less arbitrary" by defining a meter as the distance light travels in... wait for it... 1/299,792,458th of a second. Phew, thanks guys, glad you cleared that up.

I decided to hit Wikipedia to figure out where they came up with this number. It turns out that they based it on the fact that light travels 299,792,458 meters per second. You see what they did there? They used the speed of light, measured in meters, to define the length of a meter. Wow, impressive. In reality all they did was take two "non-relative" units of measurement - the speed of light, and one second - and figure out how much of each it would take to come up with the length we were already using. So if you know the speed of light, and you can remember the number 299,792,458, you can figure out how far a meter is.

That's all well and good, except a second is no less relative. 1 second is 1/60th of a minute, which is 1/60th of an hour, which is 1/24th of a day, which is 1/365th of the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun. Fortunately, science reverse-engineered the second as well, and decided that it can be expressed as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom". And no, I have no idea what that means. However, it's just another example of taking "non-relative" units of measurement to define an existing "standard".

Does this seem a little ridiculous to anyone else? I mean, science has other systems of measurement based on "natural units", or dimensions based on nature. It seems like those would be the best systems to use for scientific endeavors while leaving inches and seconds and pounds to the rest of us. There has to be a way to convert from one to the other, I suppose, but still... at some point it just seems silly.

I hope there's intelligent life on other planets. I hope we someday meet that life. I want to watch our scientists explain to them that to get to the U.N. building, they just need to head towards the positive planetary magnetic pole for the distance that light travels in 1/299,792th of the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom, then take a left.

The Morality of Morality

A friend posted a link on Facebook to this article. It details the divorce proceedings of a man who has been an active and outspoken advocate for a ban on gay marriages, and makes a point of saying that he was opposed to gay marriage because of his Catholic background, which makes the divorce he is now going through ironic because the Catholic church also opposes divorce.

Okay, so I totally agree that it's a shame to see such "inconsistent morality", especially in someone who has taken political actions based on moral (or religious) inclinations. However, I also think that to make a public spectacle of someone simply because they've failed to live up to their own moral code is just as much of a shame.

Nobody can be 100% moral 100% of the time, no matter what their particular moral code happens to be. Of course, when you make public statements about specific moral perspectives, especially as they concern heated social debates, you're just asking to be strung up the second you do something contrary to those statements.

So that begs the question: is morality all-or-nothing? If I am incapable of being 100% moral 100% of the time, should I abandon morality altogether? After all, without morals I cannot be scrutinized for immoral behavior; the measuring stick would not exist. People may say that there are some "universal morals" to which everyone must hold themselves accountable, but every religion (or lack thereof) has its own set of "universal morals" which hardly makes any of them "universal". If there are no universal morals, therefore, and the only morals I am responsible for maintaining are my own, why not just make it easy on myself and live the rest of my life without scruples?

What's funny about this to me is how blind people can be to their own moral violations while lambasting other people for theirs. People who would otherwise state that lying is wrong wouldn't bat an eye at telling a "white lie" to spare the feelings of a loved one. Someone that complains to you about a stupid driver that tried to beat a red light is quite likely the same person that passed you going 15 miles over the speed limit the day before. We "pick and choose" our moral incentives all the time, every day, and we don't even think twice about it, but that doesn't seem to stop us from blowing other people's transgressions out of proportion.

Jesus puts it this way, in Matthew 7:1-5 (from The Message translation; other translations can be found here):

Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Now I can't make a post like this without finishing by saying: I'm not perfect either. I freely admit that I fail at following my own moral code from time-to-time. My religious beliefs are sometimes at odds with my social beliefs, and the issue of gay marriage is one of those areas that I can't always agree with myself on. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe. Probably. At least I can admit it. Can you?

My Anti-Bias Bias

I am really, really tired of a society filled with bias.

More to the point, I'm tired of rhetoric, the propegator of bias. Rhetoric is the tool the leaders of any given cause or agenda give to lesser members of their flock so that they can enlist new members, who are also equipped with the rhetoric. You can easily identify rhetoric when you are engaged in a debate or discussion with someone and realize that you just heard someone on TV say the same thing with the same words less than 24 hours ago.

What bothers me about bias and rhetoric is that it's indicative of a society that doesn't think for itself. This is especially dangerous in a democratic society - the public determine its leaders, but the leaders are all too happy to keep them supplied with a steady stream of rhetoric to keep them in line. Basically, once someone has aligned themselves with a particular group of people, whether it's a political party, religion, or conspiracy theory, they allow the other members of that group to shape their opinions and beliefs in such a way that it becomes very hard for them to be open-minded.

Here are a couple specific forms of bias that really drive me crazy:

• Religious Bias. I'm a Christian, and this is one that I find I have to keep in check pretty carefully. The problem with religious bias is that it's essentially intertwined with the belief system. When your pastor or priest or imam says, "this is what our religion believes about that," it's really hard to try to see it objectively. You've been supplied with the answer, and if you start from the beginning and work your way up (i.e. scientific method), you feel guilty (and are possibly shunned) if you come up with a different answer. Religious bias is also dangerous because it can often lead to the violation of basic tenents of the religion all while trying to advance its agenda (suicide bombings, burning down an abortion clinic, hate speech, etc.).
• Political Bias. Republicans and Democrats have got to be the most sheep-filled institutions on the planet. People wait to be told what their political party believes, and then they all jump on board. Drives me nuts. One of these days, I'm going to perform an experiment. I'm going to walk up to a Republican or Democrat and tell them some story about a politician on the "other" side - some story that is completely fabricated. I'm going to make it juicy, so that they waste no time in jumping in to decry that person's foolishness, and when they're done, I'll say, "Oh you know what? I remembered the name wrong. It was actually [someone from their party]." I'd love to see how fast they backpedal.

Google Wave

Holy cow, what cave was I in?

Somehow, nearly a month and a half ago, Google announced a new product in development called Google Wave, and I didn't catch wind of it until today, despite it popping up on several of my RSS feeds.

So what is Google Wave? Basically, it wraps up all of the contemporary text-based forms of communication in to one tool. That hardly sounds impressive, I know, but it is. A Wave document is essentially an email message, IM message, and collaborative document all rolled in to one. There's no way I can do it justice in a short blog post, especially since I haven't gotten my hands on it yet, but you should really check out the link above and watch the video (or just check out the highlights).

I'm impressed, and personally, I can't wait.

How did I not see this earlier?

Ireless Wireless

As my first "real" post, I'd like to share some advice to anyone on Windows XP who might be having wierd problems with their wireless internet connection: disable the Wireless Zero Configuration service.

Anyone who's ever bought a new wireless adapter has undoubtedly noticed that they come with drivers, and when you install those drivers, they also install some sort of application that helps you manage the wireless connections. These programs always bothered me because Windows XP has a built-in wireless manager, so they seemed superfluous. However, it turns out that there is a strong case for using the manufacturer's software instead of Microsoft's (which is often the case).

The Wireless Zero Configuration service is the one that allows you to "View Avaialable Wireless Networks" and choose one to connect to. It also constantly checks to see if there's a better one than the one you chose. That seems like a nice feature (especially for mobile computers), but the act of checking can actually produce lag with some adapters. So, if you're experiencing 2-3 seconds of lag once a minute or so, you might see a big improvement by disabling the WZC service and using the manufacturer's software that came with your adapter instead.

Here are the steps I took to solve this problem when I experienced it this week:

1. Uninstall manufacture software, if it was previously installed.
2. Disable the Wireless Zero Configuration service by going to Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Services, find the Wireless Zero Configuration service and double-click it, and change the startup type to "Disabled".
3. Install the manufacturer software, and run it to configure your adapter.

Hope that helps somebody!

Intro

World, rejoice. I've started a blog.

Rejoice because herein I will present so much wisdom and helpful information that it will blow your mind.

Rejoice because herein I will present such deep and insightful thoughts on current events and issues, that you will find your mind opened to points of view you may have never before considered.

Rejoice because herein I will present musings that thus far I have been reluctant to share with the world due to their sheer power.

Rejoice because you don't have to listen to me do any of that in person.

Alright, seriously, I'm not that stuck up. I'm basically planning on using this blog as a mind-dump from time-to-time. You know, sometimes you see something or hear something or do something and you think to yourself, "Self, other people should see or hear or do this." Sometimes it's hard to find the right people to share this with, because they're either not interested in the same subject, not interested in debating the subject with you, or fixated on the fact that the way your hair is parted it really highlights the big zit on your forehead. Blogs don't have zits, don't care when people walk away, and cyber-people have a lot more opinions than actual-people, so debate is practically guaranteed, even if all you said was, "Hey, the sky is blue."

So sit back, relax, subscribe, enjoy, and don't take yourself too seriously. I mean, come on, look at you. You're wierd.