An Important Lesson I Plan on Teaching My Children

In elementary school, most subjects weren't too difficult for me.  I could blast through reading, social studies, and science with no problems.  But math was another matter.  It didn't come easily.  This led me to the conclusion that I wasn't good at math because I wasn't a "math person."  Throughout my primary school years and into my middle and high school years, I struggled with mathematics.  In high school, I wanted to get a good GPA to make college scholarships more available.  This meant avoiding as much math as possible.  Of course, this didn't help me on the SAT and ACT, considering I had no clue what a cosign or tan were (I still don't).

My frustration tolerance level was low.  At the earliest signs of difficulty, I would give up.  I made it through algebra I, geometry, and algebra II.  That was the end of my mathematics education.  Although I enjoyed science, the mathematics portion was very challenging for me.  This also meant my career opportunities were limited.  I wouldn't be attending medical school or majoring in physics.  Since my natural strengths were in the humanities, I ended up going to a liberal arts school and receiving a bachelor of arts degree.

With age, my patience in dealing with frustration has increased.  Now that I am within a few years of forty, I don't feel like my self-esteem and self-worth are tied to my grades or my failures.  I don't feel the need to prove anything to anyone.  I no longer worry about seeking the approval of older authority figures.  This has been very freeing.  I feel more comfortable taking intellectual risks and failing.  I don't mind being more playful in my approach to solving problems.  This is enormously freeing.  It allows me to actually have fun solving problems instead of seeing them as existential threats or indicators that I am unintelligent.  If I would have known this as a child and later as an adolescent, my life might have been very different.

The concern I have is that the current educational system does little to encourage the playful and creative approach to problem solving that people need to be successful in life.  By awarding grades, it encourages perfectionistic children to avoid risk and avoid challenges.  It discourages the kind of intellectual risk taking and playfulness in problem solving that is so vital to life and living in a new, constantly changing, technological society.

It murders the natural curiosity of young learners.  If I had the money, I would send my children to Montessori school.  I worry about their futures.  I really worry about all the standardized tests that children are expected to take.  Memorizing facts and filling in bubbles on forms is not the sort of education that builds a love of learning or encourages creativity.  In a world filled with smartphones that can access all of the world's knowledge and compute equations with little difficulty, I don't see the point in memorizing facts.  I would rather my children learn how to do research on the computer and then use this information to synthesize it and solve difficult problems.  The future is going to require them to work with computers, not calculate basic math in their heads or memorize a list of historical dates.

As a child, I assumed that you were naturally good at some things and not good at others.  Some people were born lucky, others were not.  No sense in trying to improve the things you weren't good at.  I didn't have the notion that with deliberate practice and extreme effort, one could achieve great things.  I didn't see Michael Jordan practicing for hours.  I believed talent was innate.  If I had had a different view of human nature--one that led me to believe that talent was the result of hard work, and that the brain was like a muscle that needed strengthening to really improve, this would have done me an enormous amount of good.  Had I possessed more grit and a different philosophy, things might have been very different for me.

I want my children to learn the lessons I failed to learn until middle age.  If I were independently wealthy, I would quit my law job and dedicate 100% of my time individually tutoring my children based on the classics, active learning projects like learning how to prepare microscope slides, conducting experiments, writing letters, programming computers, and visiting museums.  My wife was home schooled and learned to love learning for its own sake.  To this day, she spends hours each day reading up on her various interests.  Our home is like a college seminar as we watch TED talks and graduate school lectures on Youtube.

I hope my children learn that you can do far more than you might think.  80% of success is just having the courage to try.  Most people give up before they get started.  "That is for experts," and "I don't know how to do that" are the famous last words of someone about to get his wallet drained by a professional widget installer.

"Try goddamnit."

 I wish I knew this years ago.  Better late than never.  Maybe by tackling tough projects together, my children will learn that few problems are so large that persistence, planning, and practice cannot solve them.

How Privacy May Kill

Like many people, I was horrified when the Snowden leaks revealed the massive NSA spying apparatus that was invading the privacy of millions of Americans.  I was disturbed at how the government was using its power to abuse the privacy rights of average Americans without respecting the Constitution.

Privacy is important.  Without it, we are not free to be ourselves and feel comfortable in our own skin.  We risk being falsely charged with crimes we didn't commit.  It promotes an unfair power relationship between those in charge and the governed.  There's a reason why the Stasi existed--to suppress people.

However, privacy also has its limits.  This is especially true as new medical technologies become available.  IBM's Watson, the computer which was able to understand natural human language and beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! has now gone to medical school.  Watson is able to read over 4 million medical journal articles and process entire libraries of medical records and data in a matter of seconds.  Using this information, Watson is able to diagnose diseases and suggest medical treatments with varying levels of confidence based upon percentages. Working with a doctor, Watson can suggest treatments that might otherwise be beyond the ability of a doctor to put together.  Studies have shown that the average doctor is so busy he or she only has the time to read about five medical journal articles per month in his or her chosen field.  The demands of economics require these doctors to see a massive number of patients to be able to sustain his or her medical practice.  This does not lend them time for additional research.

Advances in DNA analysis and genomics allow the human genome to be sequenced for about $1,000.  Within a few years, this cost will be $100.  The human bacterial microbiome is also being sequenced.  By collecting this data on a mass scale, comparing the results with disease profiles, and then analyzing this data, Watson will be able to come up with new treatments for diseases that would be impossible for the average human to figure out unaided.  The problem is that current privacy regulations greatly reduce the ability of such scanning to take place.  Most of the reason for this is to protect consumers against unfair targeting by health insurers if they discover someone has an expensive disease.  The same goes for employers firing people for having expensive diseases.  These problems would be non-existent if we had a functioning health care system.  These are legislative issues, not technical ones.

Smartphones are becoming smarter and smarter.  The proliferation of self-monitoring devices permits data to be collected that formerly was impossible. This allows small changes in one's vital statistics to help indicate the early signs of disease.  "Prevention", as Benjamin Franklin once said, is "Worth a pound of cure."  Imagine this data being stored and analyzed in the cloud by Watson to find new patterns in disease pathology.  It would be a real paradigm shift away from what is done now.

Solving the problem of privacy should involve a program that redacts the personal information of patients while permitting medical data to be centrally stored on electronic servers and made accessible for big data analysis.  This will help preserve privacy while still permitting computer intelligence to help solve some of our most difficult medical problems like heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases.  Technology is leverage.  Just as we cannot go 60 mph without an automobile, we won't be curing cancer without the assistance of artificial intelligence.  Overcoming problems is what humans do.  Tools exist for this purpose.  We owe it to humanity to solve these problems because we can.  Let's get to it.

Watson Treating Cancer Demo

Watson Goes to Medical School

The Quantified Self

Smartphone Medical Devices

Overcoming Problems Is What Humans Do

Without modern technology, we would be dying from unsanitary water, simple bacterial infections, and likely face mass food shortages.  Without the polio vaccine, millions of children would continue to be paralyzed each year.  My wife has Type 1 diabetes.  It is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the islet cells of the pancreas.  The body is unable to make insulin.  Without insulin, people can eat but the energy cannot be released to the cells.  Type 1 diabetics essentially starve to death.  The disease is incurable.  Watching one's diet and taking pills will never cure this disease.  Without artificial insulin, my wife would die within a few days.  The insulin diabetics now use is produced by bacteria.  It is a genetically engineered product.  She wears an insulin pump that delivers insulin to her system via a mini IV all the time.  There is nothing "natural" about her survival.  Yet thanks be to God because of science and technology, she is here.  She is thriving.  Thanks to the technology which allows her to test her blood sugars and keep them within the normal range, she can safely be pregnant.  Sixty years ago she would have been dead. 

As human beings, we use tools to solve problems.  We use understanding and learning to observe things, make adjustments, and test our theories.  Those that work are kept, those that do not pan out are discarded.  The process may be messy, but it is the best we've got.  Overcoming human problems is what humans are designed to do.  We have been doing this since the invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire.  Yet it saddens me that in recent years there has been a war on science. 

When Ray Kurzweil, the inventor of the flatbed scanner was a child, the philosophy of his family was "There are problems in this world.  It is up to you, Ray, to find a solution.  You need to go find the answer and when you do, share the solution with others."  This personal sort of can-do attitude is what will help the human race make progress in the future.  Grit and persistence can go a long way when combined with rational planning and the scientific method.  My wife and I have twins on the way.  As they grow, I plan on teaching them this philosophy. 

Science can overcome many problems, but it is difficult to solve problems when people are too afraid of embracing risk.  Taking chances is required to succeed to solve life's most difficult problems.  Sometimes you have to take a moonshot to making things better.  Sometimes you have to try something even though you think there is a 99% chance it won't work out.  Why?  Because no one else will take that risk because they figure it is too crazy.  So no one ends up doing it.  That is part of the reason why we still are so dependent on gasoline vehicles.  It took someone as insane as Elon Musk to start Tesla and show that electric cars could be a real solution to gas vehicles.  And Tesla is succeeding. 

Look at Japan.  It is a very risk averse culture.  It is also highly conformist.  Japanese workers have tremendous work ethics and discipline.  But Japan doesn't innovate for shit.  That is part of the reason why the Japanese economy has been stagnant for so long.  Being entrepreneurial isn't part of their culture.  Compare this to Israel, which has a thriving economy despite its small size and lack of natural resources.  Israel is a world leader in the biotech industry. 

We can do far more than what we think.  But we have to be willing to try and fail.  Babies will keep trying to walk even after they stumble.  Eventually their brains make the right connections and they succeed.  Why should it be any different for us?  To grow, we must become young again.  We must be open to hearing new ideas, trying new skills, and attempting new solutions to persistent problems.  We must be willing to risk a fall here and there.  If we do fail, we must pick up and move on. 

The future is not going to stop for us.  If technology makes our jobs obsolete, we need to learn new skills, no matter how old we are.  If we stink at a particular skill, we must practice it for hours until we master it.  If not, we lose out on the treasures of the new things which await us.  Our quality of life will suffer.  Being adaptable and open to change is vitally important. 

Coping With Climate Change

Debating whether or not climate change is man made or not is a waste of time.  It wastes time because it doesn't solve the problem.  Either way, the global climate is changing and we are going to have to deal with it.  One way we are not going to deal with it is by radically changing our lifestyles.  For all the calls for renewables and energy conservation, the population of the world is simply not going to accept radically more expensive energy costs or living a greatly reduced quality of life.  People will not give up their cars in favor of public transportation.  They aren't going to be cold in the winter or hot in the summer.  They aren't going to give up their videogames, computers, and air conditioning.  No amount of guilt about future generations is going to change that.  For the Indians and the Chinese, cries from the West to reduce air pollution sounds as smug, paternalistic, and racist.  Why should the average Indian or Chinese person not get to enjoy the fruits of modern technology and comforts as those in Europe or the U.S.?  If renewables like wind, solar, and geothermal could meet our energy needs at the same cost as fossil fuels, we would all be using these technologies now and the matter would be moot.  The problem is cost.  Renewables are still not cost effective for most of the world.

The climate change deniers pose an untenable position as well.  They claim that global warming is a natural thing and that we should simply keep using fossil fuels as we need them.  The problem with this position is that it is unscientific and not based on facts.  The consensus amongst scientists is that climate change is real and that real consequences will follow if we fail to make changes regarding our energy usage.

My position is twofold.  First, solar power will meet 100% of our energy needs within the next 20 years.  Solar power technology is growing exponentially.  Within this time solar power will be much cheaper than fossil fuels.  A distributive energy grid based on everyone having their own solar panels will become commonplace.  We will have a smart energy grid that operates like the global web.  Energy production will become decentralized and locally grown. 

Until this time, however, we must deal with climate change and prepare for it.  Instead of yammering on about it being the end of the world or denying it altogether, we must realistically predict how much the climate is going to change between now and 20 years.  Once we can predict the scope of damage, we can plan ahead to adjust to this new reality.  This may mean relocating people on coastal cities.  It may mean preparing for shifts in agricultural production and new weather patterns.  Adapting to climate change within the next 20 years is the only adult response that will work.  Asking the Chinese to accept a lower standard of living is not going to work because they are not going to do it. 

Discouraging the use of energy also limits technological and human progress.  Google, Facebook, and the Internet in general require massive amounts of energy.  Computing and transportation require energy.  Living in caves is not going to be our salvation.  Improvements in solar technology will. 

Republicans who threw a hissy fit when Solyndra failed were being myopic.  Innovation and new businesses sometimes fail.  Risk is part of creating new things.  The Germans and the Chinese governments directly subsidize their solar power industries because they know that this is the future.  They know that these technologies will dominate.  The market has a hard time supporting these industries now.  But the future will be different.  It is like the Kodak company.  They invented the digital camera but instead of going with it, they buried it away because they were making absurd sums on their film sales.  Management failed to understand that the future was digital.  Now Kodak is bankrupt.  The United States must not make the same mistakes.

We must use creativity to solve the problem of climate change.  Innovation and new ideas will save us.  We were wrong predicting that overpopulation would cause mass starvation by now.  Norman Borlaug and his Green Revolution improved crop yields and saved us.  The same will happen with climate change, so long as we don't have Republicans throwing fits when the government chooses to help solar companies make some progress. 

Rethinking Energy Efficiency

Your smartphone updates itself as needed.  The presumption is that improvements can and should be adopted as they are discovered.  Yet we don't use the same logic with our homes.  While not as sophisticated as a smartphone, your home does rely on technology to operate--complex plumbing, electrical, heating, cooling, and insulation keep your home comfortable year round.  But if you have a house that is more than ten years old, these technologies aren't built in to your home.  You might still be working with a furnace which is older than you.  Efficiency was not the same 30 years ago as it is today.  The same goes for your appliances. 

When fuel is cheap, you may be able to afford poor insulation.  You just crank up the heater and you are fine.  But as the cost of propane and electric go higher and higher, energy efficiency starts to make more sense.  Winters here in Ohio and throughout the country have become harsher.  Summers have been scorching.  Only energy efficiency is going to help you recover these losses.

As a kid, I thought the idea of energy efficiency was totally boring.  But now that I have to pay the bill, I appreciate my father yelling "shut the lights off" or "close the door, I'm not paying to cool the entire neighborhood."  The Germans have developed a new efficiency standard called the "Passive House."  It involves making the home so well insulated and enclosed that it doesn't require much additional heating and cooling, even in such locations as Fairbanks Alaska.  Walls are made very thick with insulation, all gaps are sealed, and a high efficiency air and heat exchanger is used to recirculate the air.

The same incentive for energy efficiency goes for cars.  I never thought the Toyota Prius or other hybrids were particularly exciting.  But as gas becomes more expensive, not paying most of my monthly income on such expenses is looking better and better.  If I were to run across a good deal on a used Prius, I would probably go ahead and get it. 

I never thought I would reach an age where the idea of staying home for a quiet evening and watching Youtube videos about home insulation would be exciting.  I suppose I have officially entered middle age.

Design Matters--Revisited

Design matters.  When I get into my car and the seat belt nanny bot dings until I fasten my seat belt, I don't feel a sigh of relief that the car company is trying to save my life.  Instead, I see it as a paternalistic intrusion in my life that I resent.  I wear my seat belt as a matter of course.  But if I am driving to my mailbox at the end of the driveway, I don't need big brother Co. telling me to fasten up.

The same goes for keyless car door clickers.  The designers of these products seem to have an autistic sense about them--they know precisely how to make the products work for 1% of the population.  An intuitive design would be one click to unlock all doors.  The next click would lock the car again.  This would require only one button.  Instead, the designers create an overly complex sequence that opens some doors, sometimes opens others, and even sets off a panic mode to scare the hell out of you when it senses you are tired or annoyed.

This panic mode is the bane of my existence.  On my Escape, if you unlock the door with the key too fast, and then open the door, it will set off the alarm.  And this alarm is LOUD.  Your ears ring after hearing it.  The only way to stop this torture is to put the key in the ignition and turn the vehicle off.  Sometimes this works, other times you have to disconnect the battery. 

A friend of mine has a Honda Accord.  I am 5 ft 6, the same size as your average Japanese man.  You would think they would have designed these cars for someone my height given their market--wrong.  You have to be a contortionist to get into this car.  And if you have arthritis and want to get out of it, God help you.  Another lovely feature of the design of this vehicle is the window pillar right behind your left shoulder--perfect for eliminating visibility when changing lanes in heavy traffic. 

If you are a corporation spending millions of dollars to develop and sell a product, you would think someone might consider studying the design implications of their products on usability.  After all, this is only one of the most important things in owning a product.  The genius of Steve Jobs was that he took ordinary things and made them more intuitive to use.  The old mp3 players of yesteryear sucked.  They had a half dozen or more tiny buttons that controlled music playback on the device.  Using them was like programming your VCR--impossible.  By introducing the scroll wheel and a large hard drive with an intuitive menu system that made sense, the iPod revolutionized music playback.  The technology got out of the way and let people actually focus on listening to music instead of screwing around.

This was part of the great design of the iPhone.  The touch screen and intuitive menu system made smartphones accessible. 

Google and its ecosystem of cloud computing products shares a similar simplicity.  With one gmail address, you have access to a world of computing products that can have a dramatic effect on your life.  You can save your important files in the cloud and have them be secure with two step verification, watch Youtube, create spreadsheets and word processing documents that are available to all of your devices immediately, synchronize your calendar, run your voicemail and get visual voicemails on your mobile phone, check your email, back up your photos from all your devices, and much more.  You can restore your lost Android phone in a few minutes without losing your data. 

The bottom line is that design is as important as function.  If you have to interact with a product on a daily basis and that product makes you want to tear your hair out, then you remain alienated from the tools which are designed to make your life better.  Using your consumer goods should be intuitive, fun, and if possible, beautifully designed.  Even the most simple and inexpensive items can be all of these things if the makers of these products spent just a bit more time on design and not just on engineering--or cutting corners to save money.  If the world learned anything from the iPod, it is that corporations can make huge amounts of money by making products people can actually use.

Design Revisited

Design matters.  When I get in my car and the seat belt nanny bot dings until I fasten my seat belt, I don't feel a sigh of relief that the car company is trying to save my life.  Instead, I see it as a paternalistic intrusion in my life that I resent.  I wear my seat belt as a matter of course.  But if I am driving to my mailbox at the end of the driveway, I don't need big brother Co. telling me to fasten up.

The same goes for keyless car door clickers.  The designers of these products seem to have an autistic sense about them--they know precisely how to make the products work for 1% of the population.  An intuitive design would be one click to unlock all doors.  The next click would lock the car again.  This would require only one button.  Instead, the designers create an overly complex sequence that opens some doors, opens others, and even sets off a panic mode to scare the hell out of you.

This panic mode is the bane of my existence.  On my Escape, if you unlock the door with the key too fast, and then open the door, it will set off the alarm.  And this alarm is LOUD.  Your ears ring after hearing it.  The only way to stop this torture is to put the key in the ignition and turn the vehicle off.  Sometimes this works, other times you have to disconnect the battery. 

A friend of mine has a Honda Accord.  I am 5 ft 6, the same size as your average Japanese man.  You would think they would have designed these cars for someone my height given their market--wrong.  You have to be a contortionist to get into this car.  And if you have arthritis and want to get out of it, God help you.  Another lovely feature of the design of this vehicle is the window pillar right behind your left shoulder--perfect for eliminating visibility when changing lanes in heavy traffic. 

If you are a corporation spending millions of dollars to develop and sell a product, you would think someone might consider studying the design implications of their products on usability.  After all, this is only one of the most important things in owning a product.  The genius of Steve Jobs was that he took ordinary things are made them more intuitive to use.  The old mp3 players of yesteryear sucked.  They have a half dozen or more tiny buttons that controlled music playback on the device.  Using them was like programming your VCR--impossible.  By introducing the scroll wheel and a large hard drive with an intuitive menu system that made sense, the iPod revolutionized music playback.  The technology got out of the way and let people actually focus on listening to music instead of screwing around.

This was part of the great design of the iPhone.  The touch screen and intuitive menu system made smartphones accessible. 

Google and its ecosystem of cloud computing products shares a similar simplicity.  With one gmail address, you have access to a world of computing products that can have a dramatic effect on your life.  You can save your important files in the cloud and have them be secure with two step verification, watch Youtube, create spreadsheets and word processing documents that are available to all of your devices immediately, synchronize your calendar, run your voicemail and get visual voicemails on your mobile phone, check your email, back up your photos from all your devices, and much more.  You can restore your lost Android phone in a few minutes without losing your data. 

The bottom line is that design is as important as function.  If you have to interact with a product on a daily basis and that product makes you want to tear your hair out, then you remain alienated from the tools which are designed to make your life better.  Using your consumer goods should be intuitive, fun, and if possible, beautifully designed.  Even the most simple and inexpensive items can be all of these things if the makers of these products spent just a bit more time on design and not just on engineering--or cutting corners to save money.