Hands-Free Driving

That's the problem.

In Theory
I began my presentation with an evil grin which I hope to be disarming. “I’m here to introduce my organization which has the tiresome task of reminding people that the earth is not flat, Los Angeles was not set on fire by Jewish space lasers, and black Americans are individuals.” My presentation only lasted 5 minutes so I could keep up the joking attitude, but quite frankly I’m getting too old for this, er stuff.

Today I’m going to have to explain to CVS why I don’t have any of my prescription medicine. I donated it to the evacuation shelter in Pasadena. People will scramble to use whatever craptastic systems they have to get the appropriate authorizations and I will have to wait an indeterminate number of hours.

Several years ago I took CERT training and recalled that during actual emergencies, the FCC doesn’t bother asking ham operators for their licenses. That’s a peacetime protocol. Another peacetime protocol was described to me on the day of my presentation which was an EU-style, all-encompassing definition of the ‘potential harm’ of academic publications.

This week on YouTube a man who ran a recording studio showed his 16 track reel to reel tape deck, and explained why analog recording is superior to current digital DAWs and other electronic methods. Because you don’t have unlimited tracks, and you can’t undo and try again. Unlike millions of YouTube stunts.

In that vein I thought of what it takes to make an oboe, and what it takes to learn to play oboe and then what it takes to fund, assemble, direct and perform in an orchestra.

I met some fabulous thinkers and a first order genius at the conference. But I came to a couple more conclusions which I think complete my understanding of what I missed not having participated in post-graduate academia. The greatest benefit of the academic world is its collegiality. There is nothing quite like the ability and practice of having long and inspiring conversations among intelligent folks who understand complex contexts and are all about the inspiration of telling tales of discovery with reason and humility. Sometimes they are even humorous and wise. The greatest deficit of the academic world is that it is essentially an elaborate mechanism of writing, argumentation, publication, and criticism. It is about an ethical commitment to peacetime protocols. It rewards very specific behaviors that are at arms distance from pretty much everything but education.

I got As in a lot of classes the subjects of which I never did anything about in life. So did you. I paid for that teacher, but that teacher didn’t help me change the world. Education just let me know how the world is supposed to work, in theory. Maybe.

Sin Poder, Sans Puissance
All of these examples gel in my mind as a form of wishful thinking, of hands-free driving. Of the kind of frameworks we study and buy into, and get upset when somebody else doesn’t make that happen. I am brought back to a fundamental question I used to ask a great deal more when I was more Socratic in my dialogs. Who is your Leviathan?

With some disclosure, I attended a couple of talks after doing what I could do this week to insure my family’s safety and some non-qualified volunteer work at a shelter in Los Angeles during this disaster. The first was the Adventurer’s Club in which I get to hang around guys who tell tales of living on the extreme edge. The second was a gathering of brilliant people who are determined to save science from mealy mouthed shortcuts and censorship. Both were packed with people whose virtue of courage is one my my closest-held and deeply treasured human attributes. You couldn’t ask for more. You couldn’t, I can.

It’s not enough to know what to do. It’s critical that people have hands-on capabilities and use them to twist the proper doorknobs, or arms, to insure a reasonable, timely and effective implementation of good ideas made functional in the real world.

I say this with the understanding that I’m as much wordcel as any of the pointiest of heads, and I don’t suspect that powerful people of note are reading my observations. Nevertheless, we Peasants have to keep our spirits right and our eyes on the ball. So I continue. But I cannot sit around waiting for somebody else to empower me. I’m ready to be entrepreneurial, again.

Hands Free
Thus, I want to emphasize what we should never forget. We peasants are on our own and we should work as hard as we can to mind who we follow and what we ask for. What we should not ask for are luxuries but the tools for self-determination. We should not work to get hands-free driving. Rather we should learn to drive the truck that delivers what people need. We should strive for end-to-end competence with a critical eye to understanding people. There is a people supply chain in everything we buy and sell, give and get. When we get away from understanding and seeing the motivations of people in that supply chain, we are subject to dislocations that make us completely vulnerable. Right now here in LA since we don’t understand wildfires, we’re looking to criticize politicians who are supposed to know things. Things we keep guessing about, things that make us subject to conspiracies..

‘Defund the Police’ is a perfect example of wishful thinking. To think that peace and order can be maintained without policing is a naive, luxury belief. There is no simple or even complex peacetime protocol that will cover the eventualities.

Net zero carbon is another example of something that has been studied to death, but we still have to ask, who is going to make it happen? Why are we doing all this political squabbling with each other? You want to hear a great idea? A second canal to eliminate the chokepoint of the Suez is a great idea. It’s also wishful thinking.

Human control of the climate is wishful thinking. Heal the world. Nice lyrics. Impossible dream. We have to learn to stop tailoring our ambition towards the aim of convenience. We have to stop being purposefully lazy with expectations in the passive voice - “It will be taken care of” or “They will be empowered” or “We will have flying cars that drive themselves.”

Artificial intelligence, whatever it turns out to be will never get into your hands at full US Government Military strength. Just like you will never get to build a server farm like Amazon when it first started. All you get to do is buy a subscription, like you do for cable TV. You don’t get to choose what it spews out to you. You will be a consumer, not a producer. Producers will get the blockbuster budgets whether or not the content is garbage.

The more weak people beg and complain and the less who know how to build and create, the more the marketplace will sustain cheesy consumer products that nobody gets to fix. Of course it’s planned obsolescence. It’s not like you want to do any better. That’s how markets work. On the other hand, if you know, you know. If you can do, you can do. Again, this is about self-possession.

Clear your own brush. Fire burns everything.