Saturday 16 December 2017

thoughts: The Pale King



"How odd I can have all this inside me, and to you it’s just words."
- The Pale King p. 758

The Pale King was a posthumously released novel and the last work to be published under David Foster Wallace's name. It was released in 2011, 3 years after Wallace committed suicide in the garage of his home in Southern California. The novel was technically unfinished at the time of his death, so its compilation, organization, and editing were the efforts of Wallace's long-time friend and editor at Little Brown Books, Michael Pietsch. Pietsch was encouraged to complete the novel from members of Wallace's family, including his wife, Karen Green. Even though The Pale King can't really be considered a "competed" novel in relation to the rest of Wallace's bibliography, I think it is still a blessing that this writing was shared with the world. Better that the writing became an accessible text for all his fans to enjoy, as opposed to it being sent to a university or archive somewhere. Wallace was working on this novel for close to 10 years apparently, so I find think it is important that his efforts were not wasted. It seems like the most fitting tribute to a prolific author would be to publish whatever writing they left behind. Truly great writers do not come around often, and as such their body of work is valued greatly.

David Foster Wallace is a member of this class of great writers. His writing has been highly praised and regarded as progressive literature, in both his reader base as well as in the literary community as a whole. His body of work is considered some of the best post-modern fiction of the last century, and his magnum opus, Infinite Jest, is touted as one of the greatest novels of all time. His work has inspired and enriched the lives of many people, and I believe he had much more to share with the world. One listen to his 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech makes it clear that his words had the power to reveal the beauty and abundance of life around us, while also providing a sense of clarity to our place within it.

Wallace suffered from depression for much of his adult life, and it is likely he battled with addiction and substance abuse at times as well. These are prevalent themes in many of his stories; it seems like Wallace wrote these traits into the characters he created as a way of dealing with his own feelings (and in the process providing a sense of therapy for readers who are afflicted by similar troubles).

My prior relationship with DFW's work - I read Infinite Jest in 2015, and it took me nearly the whole year to complete it. I decided to read it due to its reputation mostly, I can't say I am much of a contemporary fiction aficionado in general. Reading Infinite Jest was a very unique personal experience; it took me awhile to understand the direction and purpose of the novel, if I can even call it that. Wallace's writing is as important to the novel as the story itself, and at times it feels like the story's plot is almost a subterranean layer, meant to be impressed upon rather than spelled out for the reader. Not that the plot may matter much anyways, Wallace was not one to ruin a good story for the sake of including a tidy, satisfactory ending. Which is another reason why it is not too important that The Pale King wasn't completely finished, an ending is not a requirement in Wallace's writing.

Truthfully, I think Wallace's novels are an example of the idiom "it's about the journey; not the destination", because what you should appreciate while reading is the clever prose, dark humour, and expressive imagery that is woven into every sentence and page he has written.
In addition, I think what makes DFW's work so highly regarded amongst literary circles is that he respects the readers intelligence. He does not waste space spoon-feeding the reader obvious plot points and character motivations that could instead be learned tangentially. His array of unique syntactical flourishes are also provocative and memorable; he is effective at taking reader's of all skill levels out of their comfort zone. It definitely requires focus, but the trade-off in the end is a more interesting and immersive reading experience, in my opinion.

On the other hand, this sort of rationalization may just play into a reader's ego and make them feel more intelligent that they can decipher this unconventional writing style, which then creates a motivation to ensure the novel receives praise and is highly regarded by others so that the reader may feel they have superior literary taste as well as the sense that they belong to an exclusive group that actually can understand and appreciate the book. 

Or maybe that's just being cynical.

...I do totally feel all those feelings though. 

Anyways, I felt like The Pale King was a bit more approachable than Infinite Jest. I feel like the prose was less experimental than IJ and more coherent in certain ways. But from a macro level, it was similar structurally and definitely still very Wallace-esque. By that I mean there isn't really a linear narrative to the story; most chapters are essentially isolated from each other and should really be treated as short vignettes. This might be in part due to the fact that the book was never finished, so Michael Pietsch had to work with the drafts and notes that were available and try to construct a coherent a story as possible. So there is always the possibility that Wallace had intended to fill in a lot of the gaps in the story (or maybe even pare off some of the more sprawling, laborious tangents eventually) . We will may never know, but if this excerpt from the forward written by Pietsch is any indication, it seems like many gaps are there by design:

"Some notes among David’s manuscript pages suggest that he did not intend for the novel to have a plot substantially beyond the chapters here. One note says the novel is “a series of setups for things to happen but nothing ever happens.” Another points out that there are three “high-end players… but we never see them, only their aides and advance men.” Still another suggests that throughout the novel “something big threatens to happen but doesn’t actually happen.” These lines could support a contention that the novel’s apparent incompleteness is in fact intentional."

Its somewhat relieving to know that the buildup and indicators in the last few chapters that some dramatic event was set to occur in real-time in the story may not have actually resolved even if Wallace had competed the novel.

What was the purpose of this story? What was Wallace trying to convey through The Pale King? Pietsch's remarks on this subject from the forward:

Even unfinished, it is a brilliant work, an exploration of some of life’s deepest challenges, and an enterprise of extraordinary artistic daring. David set out to write a novel about some of the hardest subjects in the world—sadness and boredom—and to make that exploration nothing less than dramatic, funny, and deeply moving.

It is evident after reading The Pale King that the recurring themes throughout the novel were boredom, monotony, loneliness, focus, and discipline - how these feelings and concepts relate to each other and the various forms they take within our lives.
I can't say confidently that I found a coherent idea or "lesson" to extract from the story that relates to those main themes. I don't know if that's because Wallace never finished it, or if I just have not realized it. However I found many interesting insights into the nature of these feeling when reading certain chapters. But that's not to say that Wallace only wrote about dullness and boredom, there is a wide range of topics, voices, and themes explored in the 30 chapters that make up The Pale King. Some of these chapters I'd consider amongst the best writing I've ever read.

My favorite chapter, or "vignette", in the whole book was chapter 6, and like a lot of the chapters it really had no connection to the rest of the story except for one character from the chapter reappearing later. The chapter describes an early morning scene at a park somewhere. A young man and woman sit on a picnic table beside a pond, not talking but it is made clear that there is tension between them, and something important has either happened, or is going to happen.

The chapter is told from the perspective of Lane Dean Jr., the young man, in a third person kind of way which Wikipedia tells me is called Limited Third-Person Subjective narration. Lane Dean, the subject, is feeling subjectively anxious, and he is also experiencing some deep internal conflict, which is why he is barely speaking. He is so conflicted that he cannot even look at the young woman; Wallace spends much of the time describing the scenery at the park to evoke a distracted feeling in the reader, analogous to how Lane Dean is trying to distract himself away from the focal point of the scene.

The subject of this conversation is gradually revealed (again, implicitly) throughout the chapter. I believe Wallace was especially careful in writing it this way to make you feel the same aversion to the topic that the two characters are feeling. A sort of elephant-in-the-room dynamic. Although the word abortion is not used once in the whole chapter, you begin to realize this is the topic of conversation as Wallace remarks:

One thing Lane Dean did was reassure her again that he’d go with her and be there with her. It was one of the few safe or decent things he could really say. [...] Where he’d be was the waiting room, she said. That he’d be thinking about her and feeling bad for her, she knew, but he couldn’t be in there with her.
 But this is really the most direct that the chapter gets in terms of the details of the situation. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to Lane Dean's thoughts and struggles.

What I loved about this chapter, and in general what makes Wallace such a great writer, is how he immerses you into a complex situation in a way that reveals the nuances and details in such vivid and emotional language. The way he describes the internal conflicts of Lane Dean invites you to feel the emotional weight of the potential actions and decisions that he considers. It is very moving writing; I feel I learned something after reading it.

The crux of the issue is the fact that both of them, Lane Dean Jr. and his girlfriend Sheri Fisher,  are Christians, and they are also only high-school seniors. What we learn from context is that they have both known about the pregnancy for some time, and that they had reached a previous consensus for Sheri to receive an abortion, which is scheduled for later that day. However, Sheri showed up at his home early that morning because she wanted to talk, and this talk is the scene which is presented to the reader.

Lane Dean's struggle stems from the incongruity between his desires and his moral beliefs. The first conflict is with his faith, of which Wallace does not treat as some simple character trait or stereotype. Wallace's paints Lane Dean's relationship with his religion in a more realistic way I felt, his faith is a dynamic part of him, and it is clear that this moment will affect his future stance towards his religion just as its currently affecting his decision. He feels he finally understands the reason why the act that caused the pregnancy is a sin (out of wedlock). He says:

"He so fervently wished it never happened. He felt like he knew now why it was a true sin and not just a leftover rule from past society. He felt like he had been brought low by it and humbled and now did understand and believe that the rules were there for a reason. That the rules were concerned with him personally, as an individual. He’d promised God he had learned his lesson. But what if that, too, was a hollow promise, from a hypocrite who repented only after, who promised submission but really only wanted a reprieve? He might not even know his own heart or be able to read and know himself. He kept thinking also of 1 Timothy 6 and the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words. He felt a terrible inner resistance but could not feel what it was it so resisted. This was the truth."

He is remorseful, yet feels like he cannot reconcile his feelings and pull apart what he is actually guilty about.

His second conflict is his feelings towards Sheri; he has never told her he loves her, yet he has also never told her he doesn't love her. He knows that saying either will be the decision-maker for her, and he does not want to be the "salesman of it". Anything he says will affect her, which is why he is so stricken and afraid to say anything substantial. I really loved Wallace's writing here - he captured something very poignant about relationships that I had not considered before. 

The scene described in chapter 6 didn't really fit into, or reinforce, any of the main themes of the book directly. This was not about boredom or loneliness, it was about battling internal conflicts and overcoming yourself. Although in a way, the decision Dean made was one that would lead him down a path of tedium and monotony that would eventually land him a career at the IRS to support his young family, a decision which definitely has parallels in other chapters.

The book is structured as a series of independent character arcs which serve to illuminate how these characters all came to begin work at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois on the same day in 1985. I think the point was to emphasize the different paths and motivations that all led these individuals deciding to cosign themselves to this type of career. A career marked by excruciatingly dull paperwork combined with constant boredom. Boredom so pervasive it becomes a existential threat, so intense that those that work at the IRS are prone to hallucinations and visions of ghosts. This was one point I believe Wallace was trying to make: that accepting tedium and boredom as a way of life is not as simple as a personality trait. How one perceives and rationalizes the acceptance of these feelings in their daily life can vary greatly. Some may view them as akin to nothing less than torture, while others may find comfort or take pride in the ability to carry out tedious, repetitive tasks every day.  During a story of a man's path of finding purpose during his early adulthood revolved around an advanced accounting lecture he accidentally sat in on one day. The lecture resulted in an almost religious-type epiphany for him, the words and mannerisms of the professor were so impressive that this became a turning moment in his life, in which he later joins the IRS. The lecturer descries the accounting profession as a sort of heroic self-sacrifice:

"Gentlemen, here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is. Such endurance is, as it happens, the distillate of what is, today, in this world neither I nor you have made, heroism [...] actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested."

I feel like this definition of heroism could be used to describe David Foster Wallace deciding to write a novel about the tax profession. Tackling a a very intimate, personal topic that everyone experiences, but one that I don't think most people would choose to read a novel on. In the end though, I was thoroughly engrossed while reading this novel, which I think is a true testament to Wallace's ability to extract something important from almost any topic. He observed the world in a much different way than most of us - and we are lucky to get to experience this perspective through his writing.


Fiction Scoring
Imagery: 6 / 7
Entertainment: 3 / 7
Writing: 6.5 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: bologna on sliced white bread

Wednesday 1 November 2017

highlights: The Better Angels Of Our Nature



It can be quite difficult to stay focused while reading a relatively long book, especially with regards to maintaining the coherence of the story, or the overall thesis in the case of non-fiction. The challenge is obviously heightened when reading less frequently. When I read infinite jest, which clocks in at 1,079 pages, it took me close to 6 months at the rate I was reading. This definitely affected my overall experience with the novel, which although was still positive, I feel like I lost sight of the overarching thematic elements at times. It feels like at some point you are just trying to consume pages to get you closer to completion, without really appreciating or thinking about what you are reading. This sort of reading is not how I want to enjoy books, so I'm glad I have carved out more time in my day for reading. I can more consistently progress through a novel and I feel like I am not rushing to finish as much as possible in each "session". This is why reading The Better Angels Of Our Nature, which is not a short story by any means, felt like a richer experience for me.

The Better Angels Of Our Nature, which henceforth I will refer to as "Better Angels", is a non-fiction book by Steven Pinker which explores the history of violence in humanity. It is certainly an expansive topic, with a multi-faceted and complex lineage. Pinker certainly does a fair amount of exploration over the course of 90X pages; the bulk of the book is a fairly chronological look at the role of violence and how it's changed throughout human history. Pinker makes stops along the way to investigate significant changes in society, technology, or psychology that he correlates with reductions in violence. He also attempts to define and describe the overall forces and processes which our human nature has been shaped by. And finally, Pinker examines what he believes are the "better angels of our nature" - unique features of the human condition which propel us towards peaceful benevolence.

All in all, I feel like Better Angels was informative, introspective, and safe from overreaching causal conclusions about violence in humans. I think Pinker presents a lot of data to the reader, yet does a fair job at not forcing too many conclusions on the reader. He certainly spends time discussing many possible relationships, but I felt like the language he uses is careful and he often presents counter-arguments too many ideas.

I have taken the time to read a critical review of Better Angels, because I think different perspectives are important on topics such as this. The author, Edward S. Herman, essentially posits that Pinker's work is apologist propaganda for Western (specifically American) violence and the military-industrial complex it's built on. One of his main criticisms is Pinker's frequent use of per-capita statistics to justify falling rates of violence, which Herman describes as "vague and misleading". I did not agree with much of what Herman wrote, mostly because I feel it was written with aggressive and condescending language   in order to coerce the reader into believing Herman's objections; on their own I don't think his arguments held much weight. Additionally, Herman is the author of various nightmare-inducing bedtime stories such as "The Terrorism Industry" and "The Politics of Genocide". To me, it seems like someone who may have a vested interest in having a thesis like "we are living in the most peaceful age in the history of humanity" proven wrong.

I feel like I've written quite a bit already, but with a book of this length I think I will benefit from writing a longer piece on it. As with all non-fiction reviews I've done so far, I've decided to just highlight some excerpts from the book I found interesting, thought-provoking, or just humorous, and talk briefly about them. Hence why this is called the "highlights" series. Without further ado...



And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. With a world population of exactly four, that works out to a homicide rate of 25 percent, which is about a thousand times higher than the equivalent rates in Western countries today.
The first chapter of Better Angels  starts the examination of human history by looking at religious texts, especially the Bible. I wouldn't necessarily call it a scathing review, since Pinker is essentially just listing Bible passages that concern violence (of which there are numerous)  - it's pretty unfiltered however. There are undoubtedly some quite gruesome and horrific events described in the Holy Bible, that much I learned.
Despite the voracious subject matter, I think it's one of the more light-hearted chapters in the book, example being the passage describing Genesis above. I think because Pinker, along with most people, understand at this point that the Bible is very hyperbolic, and may not be the most accurate historic text to draw conclusions from.

 Institutionalized torture in Christendom was not just an unthinking habit; it had a moral rationale. If you really believe that failing to accept Jesus as one’s savior is a ticket to fiery damnation, then torturing a person until he acknowledges this truth is doing him the biggest favor of his life: better a few hours now than an eternity later.
This is from one of the following chapters, which was still mostly about religion, but from later years where one can look at the role religion played in society. The short answer is really that society WAS religion for most of modern history. Religion influenced every aspect of one's life, from government to dietary habits.  
Due to this tight integration of religion and life, people were much more invested in their particular faith as well as it's proliferation and long-term success. I also believe this is because humans in this period still held onto a stronger form of tribal mentality, which discouraged individualism and dissenting opinions. 
Thus, I found the quote above quite interesting in that it rationalizes torture performed in the name of religion, which to me always seemed hypocritical. But it really is a perfectly rational explanation, if you accept the premise of eternal happiness in heaven.
 
In his book The Selfish Gene, which explained the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology with genetics and game theory, Richard Dawkins tried to pull his readers out of their unreflective familiarity with the living world. He asked them to imagine animals as “survival machines” designed by their genes (the only entities that are faithfully propagated over the course of evolution), and then to consider how those survival machines would evolve.
Shoutout to Dawkins. I read The Selfish Gene last year and I found it extremely fascinating. Albeit it is easy to be overcome with feelings of existential nihilism while reading it. As pointed out in the passage above, Dawkins is essentially saying that we are merely subservient vessels designed with the sole purpose of propagating our genes through to the next generation. Like mushy organic luxury cars for DNA designed over the course of millions of years. Kinda sucks to think that we are only here to procreate for our gene's benefit. At least procreation feels good I guess.


It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. - Sigmund Freud
So this is a quote of a quote, but I still liked it. I guess Pinker did too.  It's a nice succinct idea that expresses the apparent paradox of civilization. Why do we all choose acquiesce to this construct which seems to restrict our freedoms and autonomy? 
I mean, if you think about it for a little while it's easy to come up with a laundry list of reasons why organized society has made all our lives better. Free health care is pretty great - I wonder if Freud ever thought about the benefits of free health care.



If our first nature consists of the evolved motives that govern life in a state of nature, and our second nature consists of the ingrained habits of a civilized society, then our third nature consists of a conscious reflection on these habits, in which we evaluate which aspects of a culture’s norms are worth adhering to and which have outlived their usefulness. Centuries ago our ancestors may have had to squelch all signs of spontaneity and individuality in order to civilize themselves, but now that norms of nonviolence are entrenched, we can let up on particular inhibitions that may be obsolete.
This builds upon the idea Freud proposed in the previous highlight -  that society is a trade-off between our natural instincts and our collective quality of life. In similar words, Pinker asserts here that if our first nature is human instincts, then our second nature is the behaviors we've developed in order to coexist in a civilized society (a renunciation of our "first" instincts). 
Shifting forward into our modern day post-war society, Pinker believes we've now reached a third level, or abstraction, of our natural instincts. We have enough collective experience with these societal norms that we are now looking inwardly at our accepted behaviors and reflecting on their necessity. In a way, this is a form of feedback that is now allowing greater individualism and freedom of expression. 
I think that this is a fundamental and inevitable progression that is inherent to any human activity or skill that is practiced over many generations. Just as the son of the baker has a desire to build on the knowledge passed down to him, and to adapt and change to the environment around him -  all humans have a desire for continual improvement, and this includes what should be considered acceptable conduct within one's society or culture. 
I believe education is the core catalyst to this change and progression. Education teaches the self to ask "why", and to be a critical thinker. Societal norms should only be norms if they are beneficial to all, when adhered to by all. Otherwise, if their benefits are exclusive or if they impinge on the freedom of others, they have no place in a tolerant and educated society.


It began with a conceptual revolution. Instead of taking government for granted as an organic part of the society, or as the local franchise of God’s rule over his kingdom, people began to think of a government as a gadget—a piece of technology invented by humans for the purpose of enhancing their collective welfare. Of course, governments had never been deliberately invented, and they had been in place long before history was recorded, so this way of thinking required a considerable leap of the imagination. Thinkers such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and Rousseau, and later Jefferson, Hamilton, James Madison, and John Adams, fantasized about what life was like in a state of nature, and played out thought experiments about what a group of rational actors would come up with to better their lives.
Again, this is a direct example of looking at the state of things and asking "why". Even if the creation of structured government was an organic change which had no forethought or planning, it does not mean it is infallible or unchangeable.


As Mueller notes, “No longer was it possible simply and honestly to proclaim like Julius Caesar, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Gradually this was changed to ‘I came, I saw, he attacked me while I was just standing there looking, I won.’ This might be seen as progress.”
This quote comes from a discussion of the changing perception of war in society, as well as the decline of certain related values like honour and glory. The romanticization of war had given way to the more realistic view that war was wholly destructive to all parties involved, win or lose.
The political scientist John Mueller summarized this new pacifist attitude using an alteration of the famous quote by Julius Caesar ("Veni, Vidi, Vici"). I found it funny.

go to the mountains and grow beards, or do nothing and stay a modern country.
I loved this quote. This is paraphrased from an interview with former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili after Georgia lost a violent five-day war to Russia in 2008 over control of two small territories along their shared border. It is the choice he made when deciding whether to organize an insurgency against the Russian occupation. In Saakashvili's eyes, the idea of organizing a costly military effort would have been a "tremendous national burden". However choosing to abstain would be a vote for the benefits of modernism in Europe. 
Pinker states that this is an example of the common choice governments in the developing world have to make.


The cognitive psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has estimated that in the year after the 9/11 attacks, 1,500 Americans died in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than fly to their destinations out of fear of dying in a hijacked or sabotaged plane, unaware that the risk of death in a plane flight from Boston to Los Angeles is the same as the risk of death in a car trip of twelve miles.

The payoff was not lost on Osama bin Laden, who gloated that “America is full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east,” and that the $500,000 he spent on the 9/11 attacks cost the country more than half a trillion dollars in economic losses in the immediate aftermath.
I found both of these passages interesting. After reading Thinking Fast and Slow, I learned that terrorism is effective because of a cognitive bias called "denominator neglect". Denominator neglect is the effect of weighing a low-probability event with a higher likelihood than it deserves - especially when the event involves a negative outcome, like being a casualty of a terrorist attack. Humans are not at dealing with extremely small probability events, and the presence of at least one example of an event in our mind will be given more attention in our decision making process than it may deserve.
This bias is amplified by a related effect called the "exposure effect" Our over-exposure to modern news and current-events has led to an inflation of the likelihood of extremely rare events like that of 9/11. The media circus that followed the events of 9/11 triggered an exaggerated response from both the actions of people and the decisions of government.
Avoiding flying and deciding to drive to your destination, which is statistically much more dangerous, is an example of the consequences of these effects.


The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering shrieks went up from behind the barricades. The little girl did not look at the howling crowd, but from the side the whites of her eyes showed like those of a frightened fawn. The men turned her around like a doll and then the strange procession moved up the broad walk toward the school, and the child was even more a mite because the men were so big. Then the girl made a curious hop, and I think I know what it was. I think in her whole life she had not gone ten steps without skipping, but now in the middle of her first step, the weight bore her down and her little round feet took measured, reluctant steps between the tall guards.
This is a description of Ruby Nell Bridges's first day of school. Bridges was the among the first four African-American children to attend a previously all-white school in Louisiana during the desegregation crisis of 1960.
I found it absolutely jarring when I thought about it. The idea that grown men and women would be so against the concept of black and white  children from attending the same school that they would take the time out of their day to come protest and threaten this little girl from entering the school. And not only that, parents unenrolled their children from the school, all teachers except one refused to teach Bridges all year, her father lost his job, her grandparents were stripped of their cropland, one woman threatened to poison the 7-year-old Bridges EVERY DAY on her way to school. Her safety was so much of a concern that four U.S grand marshals accompanied Bridges to school every day during her first year there.
I think of the scene outside that school's entrance that morning in 1960 and it seems so surreal. These men and women held such strong racist beliefs that they chose to become part of this nightnare- inducing scene for the smallest ,most innocent young girl, all because of her skin colour. We are truly capable of some heinous behaviour, especially when it is backed by a group of like-minded people.

Religious intolerance has been in steady decline as well. In 1924, 91 percent of the students in a middle-American high school agreed with the statement “Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples should be converted to it.” By 1980, only 38 percent agreed. In 1996, 62 percent of Protestants and 74 percent of Catholics agreed with the statement “All religions are equally good”—an opinion that would have baffled their ancestors a generation before, to say nothing of those in the 16th century.
In a similar vein to racism, religious intolerance has been perhaps the most violent of all prejudices and the greatest motivator behind both individual and group atrocities in all of history. As the excerpt above asserts, religious intolerance has fortunately been in decline over the past several decades. 
I find the final statistic the most intruiging, and also relieving personally. The fact that a good majority of both Protestants and Catholics agreed with the statement that "all religions are equally good" is a huge shift in mentality. It gives me greater hope that religion will be able to be more successfully integrated into post-modern society in the years to come. This sort of tolerance is absolutely needed if freedom of religion is truly going to be a virtue we want to uphold as a society. 
It is no small feat that this gradual change has started to occur at all, if you think about it. A religion's existence is dependent on the unshaking belief, or faith, it's followers put into its core values and theology. To accept that the theology of another religion is equally "good" is an admittance of one's own fallibility, and the acceptance that they may be wrong. 
I'm not sure exactly how a mentality like this has affected those who have shifted to this view, in terms of their relationship with their faith. I am not religious myself, so I have no direct experience to base an opinion on. Either way, my initial feeling is that this will be a good thing if this trend continues. Humility, and the acknowledgement that your faith is not more important than anyone elses, may make for a more tolerant and respectful global community. 

As long as your exaggerations are not laughable, your audience cannot afford to ignore your self-assessment altogether, because you have more information about yourself than anyone else does, and you have a built-in incentive not to distort your assessment too much or you would constantly blunder into disasters. It would be better for the species if no one exaggerated, but our brains were not selected for the benefit of the species, and no individual can afford to be the only honest one in a community of selfenhancers.
This comes from an assessment of self-exaggeration when speaking about ones qualities and accomplishments. Pretty much an example of the Lake Wobego LINK effect in that everyone thinks, or at least states publicly, that they are above average. And really, that distinction is the only part of the effect that is interesting to study. 
To state that everyone exaggerates to some extent when discussing one's qualities, skills, or accomplishments should come as no great surprise to most people. I feel it's not constructive to consider the rebuttals from those who assert that they do no such thing, since the point of contention is whether they lie or not...so it leads to some circular arguments.
Nevertheless, I think there is enough statistical evidence, of which a fair amount is presented in Better Angels, to warrant a strong likelihood of this being a fundamental component of the human psyche. With that in mind, the question is really whether we are consciously aware of this, or does our subconscious distort our perception of reality and skew our recollection of past experiences in our favour? 
There were some findings shared in Better Angels from studies that attempted to answer this question. Apparently the findings suggest that people do have an undistorted version of their memories available to them, for when they need to analyze the actual facts of a past experience. It is only when speaking on their involvement in such memories that we see this inflation of their positive qualities. Therefore these findings seem to suggest the former hypothesis, that we are consciously exaggerating for our own benefit.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma has been called one of the great ideas of the 20th century, because it distills the tragedy of social life into such a succinct formula.183 The dilemma arises in any situation in which the best individual payoff is to defect while the partner cooperates, the worst individual payoff is to cooperate while the other defects, the highest total payoff is when both cooperate, and the lowest total payoff is when both defect.
I've now read about the prisoner's dilemma in several books, sometimes cropping up in books I thought would have no relation to the concept at all. But I suppose that's what is interesting about the prisoner's dilemma - it's a condensed version of human nature, or more specifically human interaction. 
So much analysis, and so many conclusions have been drawn from the study of this relatively simple theory. However I think the more interesting and complex version to look at is the iterated prisoner's dilemma, because it more closely models real human interactions. In most scenarios, we do not simply interact with someone once and then never again. This makes the initial conclusion drawn from the one-off prisoner's dilemma invalid, as defection against your partner will be remembered, and therefore you may be held accountable on subsequent "interactions". 
So this concept of statefulness is much more intriguing as you can now ask questions like: "what's the optimal strategy in finite, or indefinite, iterated prisoner's dilemma scenarios?"
The answer is that there are many answers. Analysis and simulation has revealed numerous interesting strategies which are usually given anthropomorphic names to represent the human behaviour that the strategy evokes. Just that fact alone suggests that this concept is much more grounded in reality, as we can literally project human qualities onto the simple sets of rules which define the various strategies. 

The psychologist Paul Rozin has identified a syndrome of acquired tastes he calls benign masochism. These paradoxical pleasures include consuming hot chili peppers, strong cheese, and dry wine, and partaking in extreme experiences like saunas, skydiving, car racing, and rock climbing. All of them are adult tastes, in which a neophyte must overcome a first reaction of pain, disgust, or fear on the way to becoming a connoisseur.
I love a good verbose description for why I enjoy eating spicy foods. "Benign masochism" is a great term and I can't wait to use it in conversation regularly.

In many surveys it turns out that every student, questioned privately, thinks that binge drinking is a terrible idea, but each is convinced that his peers think it’s cool. 
This is absolutely hilarious and it doesn't even need any more context. 

Consider a different scenario. This time you are presented with a choice: you can lose your little finger, or a hundred million Chinese will be killed. Would you sacrifice a hundred million people to save your little finger? Smith predicts, and I agree, that almost no one would select this monstrous option. But why not, Smith asks, given that our empathy for strangers is so much less compelling than our distress at a personal misfortune
I call this the "Chinese Finger Trap Thought Experiement".
Jokes aside, I found this idea pretty enlightening in that it highlights something interesting about human character. Although I did not include the previous paragraph in this excerpt which really makes this intriguing, so I will explain it now:
If you wake up one morning and read in the newspaper (or on your Facebook feed more likely), that a gigantic earthquake struck mainland China and it is estimated that 100 million people have died, you would be pretty shocked. You would talk about it with coworkers regularly for days, or weeks, and you may even be compelled to donate some money toward relief. 
However, you still will go home that night and eat a nice dinner, maybe watch a comedy and then probably have a sound sleep. You get the point, it's not going to impact you personally.
However, if you woke up one morning and accidentally SLICED YOUR PINKY FINGER OFF, and then it fell down a manhole or something and you're never ever going to get it back...that would have a huge impact on your life! You would be very sad, probably in a lot of pain for at least some amount of time, you would have trouble doing a lot of regular things (especially if it was your dominant hand) and all in all it would definitely make some level of impact on the rest of your life.
So that's the context, now re-read the question posed in the excerpt from above, and think about why most people (I sincerely hope most people) would choose to lose their pinky finger to save those millions of people on the other side of the planet that they most likely will never meet.
I mean, yeah it's easy to say "empathy", or that we would expect them to do the same for you etc., but really if you subscribe to any level of belief in Darwinian concepts of natural selection, then this choice really doesn't jive with that theory.
At its core, I think it shows how much our species has matured past the point of survival of the fittest. Our "circle of empathy" has been allowed to expand so wide that we can truly account for the well-being of absolute strangers on the other side of the planet. And this fact was a central thesis of The Better Angels Of Our Nature.


Non-Fiction Scoring
Value: 5 / 7
Interest: 6 / 7
Writing: 4 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: Turkey Bacon Club

Tuesday 29 August 2017

thoughts: Dune


"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."
- Frank Herbert, Dune

One of my favourite things about Dune was how Frank Hebert made a concerted effort to root each character's motivations and decisions in believable rationalizations. It was important because most characters possessed some level of "advanced" mental capabilities, therefore taking the time to describe their thought processes, involving levels of actions, reactions, and deceit made for a more believable story.

I think this style of writing is common for the sci-fi genre, where focus is given to explaining and expounding on the analysis of a situation through the mind of characters. What I think separates Dune from other sci-fi books is how Herbert has balanced this analytical subject matter, which can be dry and emotionless if over-done, with beautiful prose. In the afterword, Herbert's son Brian explains that his father would write some sections of the novel as poems first, and work out the details after.  Writing in this way leads to a novel full of colourful and expressive language, such as the quote above, one of my favourites from Dune.

I decided to read Dune by Frank Herbert because of its reputation mostly. I have seen its name pop up many times before, usually in contexts such as "greatest books you have ever read" discussions. I know that it is regarded as one of the most important science-fiction novels ever written, and is essentially to SF what the Lord of the Rings is to the fantasy genre. So with that in mind, Dune became next on my hit list. I haven't read either a SF or fantasy book in quite awhile, although I used to love the genre when I was younger. My favorite book of all time is the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, so I would say I have a bit of an affinity for SF already.
I must admit, I enjoyed Dune immensely. There is something about reading SF and fantasy novels that makes it so easy to become emotionally invested and to enjoy reading. They offer a form of escapism that no other form of fiction can really duplicate. I think it's because they are not bogged down by the details of reality and the reader's intimate knowledge of how reality works. However, a good science-fiction novel will offer reminders of humanity in different forms, and will extrapolate the possibilities of technology in realistic ways.

Additionally, when reading older science-fiction stories such as Dune (1966), it is doubly interesting to see how well the author predicted the course of technology since the story was published - especially with regards to some of the more significant advances of the past couple decades, like the internet, and how well authors may have predicted its effect on modern life.
One facet of technology that Herbert touched upon in Dune was the advent, and dangers, of artificial intelligence, or "thinking machines" as they were referred to in the story.  In the canonical history of Dune, thinking machines were outlawed many thousands of years ago when they had become an existential threat to humans, as evidenced in the quote below.

" The Butlerian Jihad, occurring ten thousand years before the events described in Dune was a war against thinking machines who at one time had cruelly enslaved humans. For this reason, computers were eventually made illegal by humans, as decreed in the Orange Catholic Bible: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” "

The dangers that AI could pose to humans would not have been part of the collective zeitgeist of 1966, yet has become a prevalent issue today due to our advances in AI research.  Surely this required prescient thinking and knowledge on the part of Herbert, which I find quite impressive.

As for the story itself, I found it extremely captivating, and by the time I was 100 pages in I was fully engaged and curious as to how things would play out. Of course the first 100 pages come with a bit of a learning curve, which is typical of the genre, as you are introduced to a multitude of terms and names as Herbert lets you become acquainted with his universe. But if you stick through you will find yourself immersed in a rich and complex interstellar society, with issues and conflicts that are still intrinsically human, and are analogous in many ways to issues here on earth. 

Dune follows the story of a young boy named Paul Atriedes, born the son of a Duke whom controls a planetary fief on a paradisaical world of great beauty. However, the Duke's House, House Atriedes, and all the other Great Houses are under the control of a imperial overlord, Emperor Shaddam IV. Emperor Shaddam has "bestowed" upon the House Atriedes a new fiefdom - the oversight of the planet Arrakis, colloquially known as Dune.

Arrakis is an extremely important planet to the Emperor, as well as to the entire solar system, due to the presence of an valuable spice named melange. Arrakis is the only planet on which this spice is found, and as such it turns out to be the most valuable commodity in the solar system. In addition to being a mildly addictive drug, it also gives those who ingest it a small amount of prescient ability. This is especially valuable to the corporation that oversees all galactic travel, known as the Guild. Their pilots rely on the powers of the spice to assist them in guiding and navigating the ships through interstellar space. Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the book, I presume its due to the large velocities these ships travel at, so large that they must take relativistic effects into account in charting their course. Therefore, having the ability to see somewhat into the future would make it easier. That's just my theory though. 

The control of Arrakis was intended to be transferred from its previous overseer,  the House Harkonnen, to the Duke and the House Atriedes. This transfer does in fact happen, but the House Harkonnen has more nefarious plans in mind. They stage a raid upon the planet, with the help of a traitor within the House Atriedes, not long after they have been displaced, and they kill the Duke, take back control of the capital, and they cause the death of Paul and his mother - or so they think.

The bulk of the book takes place after these events transpire. Paul and his mother, the Lady Jessica, flee to the desert in a last ditch escape. They are rescued by a group of native peoples known as the Freman. The Freman live in the harshest areas of the planet, and it is said their global population exceeds several million. Paul and Jessica, while not initially accepted by the Freman when first found, are quickly accepted into their ranks as they learn of Paul's ducal heritage, as well as his and his mother's fighting prowess.

The young Paul Leto, even from a early age, had shown glimpses of extraordinary abilities in mental reasoning and some prescience through his dreams. This aptitude blossomed into a full-blown superpower when he took control of the ducal title after his father died, and he began to eat a diet heavy with the melange spice.  Paul quickly becomes a hero and religious figure of sorts amongst the Freman. He is viewed as a saviour for them and their planet, and promises to lead them into battle against the Harkonnens, who have returned to control the planet. 

I've probably already spoiled a large amount of the story, so if anyone ever reads this with the intention of reading Dune afterwards, I apologize. However, I doubt anyone is ever going to read this, and if it's any consolation - the best is yet to come. The story gets better. 

What Herbert did really well was building tension as the story progressed, as well as the overall pacing. I found that events and information were revealed at a calculated pace, enough to keep you intrigued and anxious to learn of the outcome of events. Herbert conveys this tension effectively in two ways. On the small scale, Herbert adjusts his prose to fit the emotions of a situation, which imparts on the reader different feelings suitable for the context. An example is during the initial raid of Arrakeen, which took the Atriedes completely off guard. The telling of the scene is done in short sentences, using simple, emotional words to reflect the intensity of the character's reactions. For example, the following is Jessica's initial reaction as she realizes what is unfolding around her:

" Where is Paul? she asked herself. My son—what have they done to him?
Calmness.
She forced herself to it, using the ancient routines.
But terror remained so near.
Leto? Where are you, Leto?
She sensed a diminishing in the dark. It began with shadows. Dimensions separated, became new thorns of awareness. White. A line under a door.
I’m on the floor.
People walking. She sensed it through the floor.
Jessica squeezed back the memory of terror. I must remain calm, alert, and prepared. I may get only one chance. Again, she forced the inner calmness.
The ungainly thumping of her heartbeats evened, shaping out time. She counted back. I was unconscious about an hour. She closed her eyes, focused her awareness onto the approaching footsteps.
Four people.
She counted the differences in their steps.
I must pretend I’m still unconscious. She relaxed against the cold floor, testing her body’s readiness, heard a door open, sensed increased light through her eyelids.
Feet approached: someone standing over her. "

Herbert takes time to describe the immediate details of the scene, and he does a good job of conveying the inner monologue of the character so the reader can see through the eyes of the character's in these crucial and important moments.
On a larger scale, Herbert also chose the perspective from which to describe different scenes really well. For example, when the final attack against the Harkonnen ships is launched, the scene switches to the Emperor's quarters, where he and the head of Harkonnen house are analyzing the battle. Despite the rest of the battle taking place from the perspective of Paul and the Freman, the switch to the enemy's view allows the reader to feel the shock as the Freman break through the ships blast-shield and invade the Emperor's quarters. Scenes like this, coupled with beautiful prose and descriptive writing made Dune a very enjoyable story to read.
Details like these made me understand why Dune is such a popular and recognized book. The world of Dune is rich and complex, and the problems and conflicts that its inhabitants face are deeply reminiscent of those in our world. Herbert touches upon elements of religion, environmentalism, ecology, economics, and military strategy throughout Dune, yet manages to tell a concise story where every plot element supports the others. Despite the wide-breadth of subject matter that Herbert manages to include, I was able to gain some meaningful insights and lessons from all these different areas. I think this is due to Herbert's ability to boil down a complex subject like environmentalism into its essential issues, and then reinterpret them into the context of Dune. It adds a level of subtle believability to the story when you can make these connections as you read.
With this being said, it doesn't matter how creatively an author may imagine a world like Dune in their mind if they cannot convey it effectively. It would be trapped within the consciousness of the writer and could never be shared with anyone else - something which must be the tragic fate of many would-be fantastic books. Thankfully Frank Herbert is an extremely talented writer who had the capability to translate the exciting world of Dune into a series of books. I look forward to visiting it again.

Fiction Scoring
Imagery: 4 / 7
Entertainment: 6 / 7
Writing: 5.5 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: jerk chicken wrap


Saturday 1 July 2017

highlights: Thinking, Fast and Slow


Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a book about how humans think and rationalize the world around them. It touches upon the subtle, and sometimes unnoticed, factors that influence our decision making. It is backed by decades of research and studies conducted by Dr. Kahneman and his close colleague, Amos Tversky. Kahneman also uses interactive examples to illustrate his points to the reader, some of which I found very interesting. They were effective ways of proving a lot of the concepts and explanations that are introduced throughout the book.

Overall, Thinking Fast and Slow was an engaging book that doesn't get too bogged down in details, while also being thorough enough to get new concepts across to the reader. Kahneman uses simple metaphors and examples to show that we may not have as much control over how we think and arrive at decisions as we feel we do. I thought about what I was reading even while I was not reading it, and when I felt strongly about an opinion or a decision I was making I started to self-reflect on the factors that might be influencing my feeling. That to me is a sign of a great non-fiction book: a book that, in its attempt to explain some aspect of the world around you, actually changes how you perceive the world, and it adds to the context of your living experience in a noticeable way.

I will try to briefly summarize the main sticking points of Thinking Fast and Slow. Very early on, Kahneman introduces the concept of partition within our brain's structure. Or it may be more correct to say our mind's structure as the actual partition most likely does not have any physical manifestation, it is more of a tool to think about the different systems at work within our consciousness.  Kahneman asserts that these systems have identifiable characteristics, as well as physical changes which signify their level of activity at that moment. There are two major "systems" that compose our consciousness, and they are engaged in a constant dialogue to determine who best to handle a particular task. Kahneman refers to them as System 1 and System 2; System 1 is the system that is primarily in charge of acting as your consciousness, in the sense that as you process your everyday sensual experience, you are processing this stimuli with System 1, and System 1 is what offers up the relevant ideas and thoughts that float across your mind as this happens.

For the most part, our waking hours are primarily composed of this state of mind. Most decisions we make and actions we take do not invoke much strain on our mental resources. Only when we require increased focus on a particular task do we need to invoke "System 2" according to Kahneman.  System 2 is in charge of of anything we would consider "thinking hard", like math problems, memorizing things, trying to speak another language, or even things like being in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous situation. What all these have in common is that they require heightened focus and awareness because we place importance on "succeeding" in whatever the task or situation is. We need to invoke System 2 in order to work through things logically and rationally, as well as to remember and form new patterns based on some sensory data.

If our brains were computers, I would liken System 1 to being a browser cache that stores previous answers to tasks we've seen. If our brain encounters a scenario that it has seen before, which is most of what we do every day, it simply checks whether it has seen this question or situation before, and if it has it will return that "answer" and use it. However, if a computer encounters a request it hasn't processed before, it has to call a more expensive procedure in order to retrieve the desired information. This could take the form of a request for a webpage, where the computer will now have to send the request out to the internet which will be expensive in time, or it could be a database query that will be end up being more expensive with computational cycles. Whatever the case, computers would not be as useful or as fast as they are today without a concept like caching.

The reason both our brains and computers have a mechanism like this is that both are lazy and strive to optimize things. If we repeatedly encounter the same situations every day that requires us to carry out some series of tasks, whether they are physical like brushing your teeth or mental like counting change, we naturally form mental automations which allow us to do these tasks without wasting mental resources. A common term for this is "muscle memory" and if you accept that your brain is a muscle then I think it is an apt term to describe the mechanism.

I believe the formation of this cognitive layer of abstraction is what Kahneman calls System 1, and I also believe it is a fundamental component of what gives humans their sentience. We have the ability to call these "modules" without worrying about their details, and therefore our brains can conserve its energy for when we feel the need to focus on something new or important.

Basically, the rest of the book is Kahneman providing examples and reasons why our System 1 cannot be trusted a lot of the time, and the myriad of factors which can influence the answers System 1 provides without us knowing of those influences.

I'm going to now share a few quotes I found especially interesting or poignant in Thinking Fast and Slow, and I will briefly expound on them.


highlight 1
"The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced six-cent-mihaly) has done more than anyone else to study this state of effortless attending, and the name he proposed for it, flow, has become part of the language. People who experience flow describe it as “a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems,” and their descriptions of the joy of that state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an “optimal experience.”"

 I thought this was a great description for a feeling that I have thought a lot about before, and one that I love to experience. When you are working on a task that combines a difficultly level perfectly with your existing level of proficiency, you experience this "flow" as you work towards the solution or completion of the task. In order for the experience to be truly fulfilling, it has to be challenging enough to command your full focus, but you also have to be confident in your capability (from past experience and learning) to complete the task at hand. In my head, I sort of see it as being able to see the rough outline of the solution and the path you must take, but still not yet having figured out the details. Having this finite path in your mind is what evokes the sense of "timelessness" as you work, because you are only concerned with the completion of each individual step along the path, and have already committed yourself to doing so.

The place in my life I have experienced this most commonly has been during school, when working on problems in math and physics. Working out the solution to a lengthly question, especially when in a time-constrained environment like an exam, can provide a very concentrated feeling of happiness to me as I work towards a successful answer. It is a very powerful force, and I strive to find this feeling in any aspect of my life.


highlight 2

"The only difference between the two groups was that the students conceded that they were influenced by the anchor, while the professionals denied that influence."
This insight was the result of a study Kahneman conducted on the influence of "anchoring effects" when people are evaluating something's worth. In this example, it was whether the awareness of a home's asking price was an "anchor value" when asked to determine the value of the home itself. Kahneman asked both amateurs (students) as well as real-estate professionals to conduct the test, and the results indicated that for both groups, those who were told the seller's asking price initially we're influenced by it as an anchor value. What this really means is that their answers were clustered around this value in a statistically significant way, whereas those who were not told the asking price of the home had far more evenly distributed (or maybe distributed around a different value) estimates for the home's true value.

I think the implications of this finding aren't anything shocking; I think its somewhat intuitively known that it will factor into our answer. But it is obviously a useful effect to know about, especially when conducting negotiations. But I think the more interesting finding is what is mentioned in the quote: the fact that those who are the "experts" at the evaluation are still influenced by the value - which proves they are not truly objectively determining the value. I think it says something about the nature of professional opinion - you have to believe in yourself in order to inject value into your opinion.


highlight 3

"Resisting this large collection of potential availability biases is possible, but tiresome. You must make the effort to reconsider your impressions and intuitions by asking such questions as, “Is our belief that thefts by teenagers are a major problem due to a few recent instances in our neighborhood?” or “Could it be that I feel no need to get a flu shot because none of my acquaintances got the flu last year?” Maintaining one’s vigilance against biases is a chore—but the chance to avoid a costly mistake is sometimes worth the effort."
Much of the book Kahneman devotes to explaining the biases that can affect our judgment. One bias in particular Kahneman highlights is called the availability bias. Essentially, when evaluating the likelihood of an event occurring, our answer will be influenced by how easily we are able to recollect past examples of the event occurring in our lives, or even just instances of similar events. The examples provided in the quoted text illustrate this concept well.  You will assess the significance of a problem such as neighbourhood crime much higher if your next-door neighbour had their car broken into last week. Or similarly if you cannot recall any of your friends or family having the flu for the past several years, you will be less likely to be concerned with getting your flu shot due to the seeming absence of a threat to your health.

I would assume that this concept would be rather intuitive, and possibly already evident to those who have never read Kahneman's work, but it is interesting to read about this effect and how its been witnessed in controlled studies. Even in the presence of objective information and statistics concerning the event in question, people still err towards their personal experiences and memory in determining its likelihood. 

If nothing else, it is important to understand these biases as best as possible, so that you may be able to mitigate their effect on important decisions you make. I personally strive to be as rational as I can in my decision-making.


highlight 4

"This stark version of the problem made Linda famous in some circles, and it earned us years of controversy. About 85% to 90% of undergraduates at several major universities chose the second option, contrary to logic. Remarkably, the sinners seemed to have no shame. When I asked my large undergraduate class in some indignation, “Do you realize that you have violated an elementary logical rule?” someone in the back row shouted, “So what?” and a graduate student who made the same error explained herself by saying, “I thought you just asked for my opinion.”"
The Linda problem that Kahneman describes is quite ingenious, and almost humorous in how it will trip up even those that are educated in statistics and probability. I highlighted this passage in particular because I found it rather poignant, despite the bluntness of the graduate student who shouted out from the crowd. Even though I think Kahneman meant for this interaction to be viewed as some light-hearted humour, I think it serves as a valid contradictive voice in this discussion of the significance of Kahneman's findings.

Kahneman's entire field of study is based on decision making, which he attempts to describe using his Prospect Theory, which is a theory of human rationality that attempts to predict how humans actually make decisions in real life. With that in mind, you could argue that trying to prove the validity of the theory using controlled studies - which primarily are composed of asking participants hypothetical questions about hypothetical scenarios - is in a way self-contradictory. 

I believe that studies of human nature may suffer from some intrinsic quality that prevents them from ever truly reproducing actual human nature. Much like how a photon behaves differently when it is under observation, I think humans are not completely unaffected by the context with which a question is presented to them. 

In my opinion, the rhetorical "So What?" the graduate student shouted back at Kahneman after he pointed out the logical inconsistency with the students' responses, can be viewed as a realist perspective on the over-analysis of humans. In different settings and in different contexts, perhaps most people would answer the Linda problem correctly. What are we truly gaining from the results of these studies, and can we really say we understand humans better because of them?

That will conclude the critical portion of this book review. 


 highlight 5

homonculus

highlight 6

"As predicted by denominator neglect, low-probability events are much more heavily weighted when described in terms of relative frequencies (how many) than when stated in more abstract terms of “chances,” “risk,” or “probability” (how likely). As we have seen, System 1 is much better at dealing with individuals than categories."
Denominator neglect is a type of phenomenon Kahneman attaches to instances where humans will weight low probabilities much higher in their minds then their true likelihood deserves, especially when the event in question is a negative outcome. Essentially, when discussing outcomes to any particular event or situation, the act of just including some low probability outcome in the discussion will inadvertently increase its apparent likelihood within the minds of those discussing it.
In other words, bringing up the fact that a certain outcome could possibly occur will put it in the realm of possibilities and therefore will be given equal footing with all other possibilities in terms of your attention.

For example, if you require surgery on your eyes, and the doctor tells you there is 5% chance (which itself might be a gross exaggeration) there will be complications and your eyesight will be impaired, then all you will be able to think about is that improbable event and you will not be comforted much by the 95% chance everything will be fine.

Or alternatively, imagine there is a bug spray on the market available which clinical studies have shown has a small chance (<1%) of causing a severe rash in children. There is another premium bug spray available which has no such side-effects associated with it. Kahneman has shown that parents, when presented with the choice between both bug sprays, have been willing to pay significantly more in order to buy the premium bug spray, despite the extremely low probabilty of any actual rash developing on their child. 

Another interesting and related discovery was what the quote above was mentioning. Humans seem to be worse with denominator neglect when probabilities are presented to them in the form of relative frequencies i.e. 1 in 1000 cases. What Kahneman believes is that since people are more comfortable with thinking of whole numbers, it is easier to think about what 1 out of 1000 looks like in terms of scale. Moreso it is also easier to imagine yourself, or your child, as being that 1 case out of however many. That's why when performing a study like the aforementioned bug spray example - there is a significant difference in responses depending on how the probability is framed. If the bug spray causes a rash in 1 in 1000 children, parents will be more averse to buying it compared to stating it causes a rash in 0.001% of children. Just another example of many such idiosyncrasies found within human reasoning.

All in all, I thought this was a intriguing book on a very peculiar topic - the mind. Reading, and thinking, about the way one thinks is definitely a strange concept, as it can lead down winding and recursive lines of thought the more you think about it. However, I think Kahneman has done a great job with unraveling some of the processes that affect our consciousness. Trying to understand a little better how we rationalize and make decisions is a valuable endeavor; I think anyone that seeks a deeper understanding of their personal judgment will become a better decision maker. Removing internal biases allows one to see the world around them, and their place within it, more clearly. In any case, I was definitely more engaged and in tune with my thoughts and feelings while reading this book, and I hope to remember some of the lessons and insights and carry them forward in life. I can't ask for much more in a book.

Non-Fiction Scoring
Value: 6 / 7
Interest: 5.5 / 7
Writing: 4 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: pulled pork on a kaiser
 

Sunday 28 May 2017

thoughts: In Cold Blood


In Cold Blood by Truman Capone was an interesting story, and it was a hard at times to discern what the story was about while I was reading it. I think it's an excellent novel because the focal point shifts and transforms as you read it. It's like slowly zooming out of a very detailed painting in a way. Capote draws our attention-very slowly-towards the characters that are introduced as the villians. That's not to say they don't lose that label as the novel progresses. I think Capote wanted to tell the reader something very profound, and ultimately humanizing, about these murderers.

I also watched the film "Capote" last night, which looks at the story of the author himself during the writing of the novel. The film exposes the tumultous and complex relationship between Capote and one of the murderers, Perry Smith. This relationship is apparent when reading the novel; there is a poetic, artful tone used to describe Perry Smith, almost as if Capote focused harder when writing those parts. He wanted to capture Smith in the right light. A soft, gentle light that was meant to illuminate the details of an extremely isolated and lonely life. I think the underlying incongruity with Truman's relationship to Smith was that he needed Smith's life to end in order to finish his book.

Perry Smith and Eugene "Dick" Hickock committed a heinous crime that ended in the murder of a family of four, the Clutters, on the night of November 14th, 1959. Being a murder novel, In Cold Blood took a different approach to the genre in that the identity of the murderers are known almost immediately when beginning the novel.  The only unanswered question for the majority of the book is their motivation, although you could say its spoiled by the title of the book itself: In Cold Blood.

"In Cold Blood" is how Capote chose to describe the murder of the Clutter family because he believed it captures an important and chilling detail of this story, which it is. Two men murdered a family of  four, whom they had no prior relationship with, and ran off with about $40 after having done so. It does not seem possible that any sane, empathetic individual would be capable of carrying out such a cruel act with so little to gain. The apparent lack of financial motive is the most perplexing aspect of the portrait of these killers. And even stranger, there are some intractable details found at the crime scene that seem to suggest some level of empathy given to the victims. Despite having been delivered point-blank shotgun wounds to the heads of each victim, the murderers decided to lay a pillow under the head of the son, tuck in Mrs. Clutter after already having tied her hands and feet, and leave Mr. Clutter on a boxspring mattress on the floor of the boiler room, which amounted for nothing more than an attempt to make him comfortable in his final hours. Such details suggest that two personalities were among the killers that night, and ultimately two different reasons for why they were there. 

Dick Hickock is the closer of the two to the standard portrait of a criminal. Tattoos, insecurities, smooth talk, and what seemed to be a level of comfort and acceptance with the path he had gone down, even up until the moment of his hanging. Dick only truly cared about himself, and how to achieve personal gain from every situation. Once he and Perry were caught, he blamed all four murders on Perry almost immediately, showing no signs of loyalty to Perry whatsoever. Even once incarcerated, he still sought ways to escape prison. I believe he was able to convince Perry to help him with his plans because of his manipulative salesmen skills (something he used quite frequently throughout the book to convince businesses to accept worthless checks), but more so I think Perry was so lonely that he would've latched on to anyone who believed in him.

Loneliness is one of the major themes throughout "In Cold Blood". I believe the small, isolated town of Holcomb represents loneliness on a communal scale. This sort of macro-loneliness is exacerbated by the murder of the Clutters. Everyone in Holcomb instantly becomes suspicious of each other, and every member of the town has their own opinion on the culprit behind the murders. Families begin to confine themselves to their homes, keep their lights on at night, and stay vigilant due to the fear of another attack occurring. Lonely together, all of a sudden without a well-respected family in their community, Holcomb becomes a shell of what it once was. 

Perry Smith's life was one devoid of stability and structure. His mother, a Native woman, was an abusive alcoholic. Perry had three siblings, all of whom stayed with his mother while he went to live with his father. He travelled with his father to Alaska, and spent most of his teenage years there. Shaped by the desolate land around him, and sparse interactions with anyone other than his father, Perry never experienced the value of relationships with others. His eventual departure from Alaska was not on good terms. Essentially kicked out of his only home, Perry travelled by himself for many years, taking lodge and some temporary farm work at the home of Don Cullivan, one of the only people he might have considered a friend. During the trial of the Clutter murders, Don came to visit Perry in jail. The outcome of the trial at this point a formality, and it seemed more than likely that the jury would decide the men should hang. Capote, seeking to to capture the desolation that Perry felt, wrote during Don's visit:

"Yes. I like you." Sullivan's softly emphatic answer pleased and rather flustered Perry.  He smiled and said, "Then you must be some kind of nut." Suddenly rising, he crossed the cell and picked up a broom. "I don't know why I should die amongst strangers. Let a bunch of prairiebillys stand around and watch me strangle. Shit. I ought to kill myself first." He lifted the broom and pressed the bristles against the light bulb that burned in the ceiling. "Just unscrew the bulb and smash it and cut my wrists. That's what I ought to do. While you're still here. Somebody who cares about me a little bit"

It was at this point that I felt real sympathy towards Perry for the first time. Which is remarkable given the brutal, unforgivable crime I know he committed. But I think this was the whole point of In Cold Blood in Capote's eyes. Not necessarily to convince you to side with the killers, but to show that there was an important story there. And there might be a story in any situation like this. Capote took what was a supposedly one dimensional picture, the murder of a friendly, well-respected family by two ex-convicts for the purpose of robbing them, and he revealed a level of depth and perspective to it that showcased a different world in America at that time. A world that I'm sure many people either did not know about, or cared not to think about.

Either way, Perry's desire to die in the presence of someone who cared about him, at least, "a little bit" was an incredibly powerful emotion to convey. It revealed his most intimate fear I think, which is that no one cared for him. That his life had been meaningless. I hope that by writing this novel about Perry, amongst other things, Capote at least provided Perry some reassurance before his hanging that his life had meaning. Not that it was a great life by most standards, but it had purpose enough that an important novel was written about it. Reading about his life had a an impact on me at least.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. And I enjoyed watching the movie Capote too, which gave a different perspective on the entirety of the events in Holcomb in 1959. It was one of my first forays into the murder / crime drama genre, and although it was a very well written story, I don't think I will be exploring this genre more any time soon.

Fiction Scoring
Imagery: 5 / 7
Entertainment: 3 / 7
Writing: 4 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: cold cut sub


Sunday 26 February 2017

The Code Book

Introduction


I recently finished reading "The Code Book" by  Simon Singh. Published in 1999, The Code Book provided a greatly detailed account of the history of cryptography, and its necessary counter-part: code breaking. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it because it was extremely informative and well structured. Singh guides the reader through the history of humanity and our need to secure our communications. From the advent of written information, there has always been a need to hide important information from certain people who would benefit from the knowing of said information, and would likely disadvantage the sender and receiver in some way.

Most commonly, the need for secrecy arises in times of war and conflict. As such, throughout history war has been the most influential driving force in the advancement of cryptography, and its code breaking complement. Singh describes how the race between these two forces has pushed each to new levels of intelligence and creativity, and the overall advantage continues to alternate between code-makers and code-breakers as breakthroughs in each discipline occur.

[....]

The book also provides a challenge for the reader, a code breaking challenge that Singh has prepared. It was originally offered in 1999 with the publishing of the book along with a $15,000 prize for the first person to complete it. It was first solved in October of 2000. It consists of a series of 10 cipher texts of apparently increasing difficulty. I am going to work through my solution to solving them in this post. The texts themselves can be found directly on the author's website.

Even though the website states that only the last 2 exercises actually require computing power, I decided I would have more fun solving all of them through programming. It will be a good foray into cryptography techniques and I will be building some general functions/tools that I can re-use to solve subsequent problems.

Cipher 1


Cipher text can be found here. It is a "Simple Monoalphabetic Substitution Cipher" apparently, so that means each letter in the cipher text represents another letter in the plain text. Simple substitution x-->y where y is A through Z. The trick is finding each corresponding value of x. I took to Java to start messing around with the text. I assumed that this might just be a simple Caesar cipher, so I built a quick function to convert a String of cipher text into a caesar shifted version. Function shown below.

    public static String caesarShift(String text, int offset){
     
        StringBuilder sB = new StringBuilder();
        char[] textArray = text.toCharArray();
     
        for(char c : textArray){
            if((c >= 65 && c <= 90)){ //Uppercase
                c = (char) ( 65 + ((c + offset) - 65)%26);
            }
            else if(((c >= 97 && c <= 122))){ //Lowercase
                c = (char) ( 97 + ((c + offset) - 97)%26);
            }
            sB.append(c);
        }
     
        return sB.toString();
    }

I ran the cipher text through this function for all 25 possible shifts and the result was...garbage every time. So clearly this was not a shift cipher. This means the reordered cipher alphabet is either random, or rearranged according to some other keyword or relationship. Regardless, figuring it out is relatively simple with frequency analysis, or even just some simple deduction skills combined with knowledge of the English language (I guess I'm assuming the plaintext is in English). I chose to pursue the latter method, and so I turned to some pen and paper!

A little simple pattern recognition lead me to realizing words like "JPX" probably represented "THE" and a single "M" had to represent either "A" or "I". Following those assumptions, its easy to deduce that since "JPMJ" either can be "THAT" or "THIT", then M has to be represented by A. Building upon this, the rest of the cipher alphabet quickly falls into place, and the process is snowballed as more of it is revealed. Finally, once I had finished the cipher alphabet, I made a function to do the grunt work of actually decrypting the cipher text for me. Function shown below.


public static String substituteCipher(String text, char[] subs){
        
        StringBuilder sB = new StringBuilder();
        char[] textArray = text.toCharArray();
        
        for(char c : textArray){
            if((c >= 65 && c <= 90)){
                c = subs[c-65];
            }
            else if(((c >= 97 && c <= 122))){
                c = subs[c-97];
            }
            sB.append(c);
        }
        
        return sB.toString();           
    }

All I had to do was type in a character array representing the substituted letters and use that as the second argument to the function above, along with a string representation of the cipher text, and then print out the output. The output is shown below.

IN THE SAME HOUR CAME FORTH FINGERS OF A MAN’S HAND, AND WROTE OVER AGAINST THE CANDLESTICK UPON THE PLASTER OF THE WALL OF THE KING’S PALACE; AND THE KING SAW THE PART OF THE HAND THAT WROTE. THEN THE KING’S COUNTENANCE WAS CHANGED, AND HIS THOUGHTS TROUBLED HIM, SO THAT THE JOINTS OF HIS LOINS WERE LOOSED, AND HIS KNEES SMOTE ONE AGAINST ANOTHER. THE KING CRIED ALOUD TO BRING IN THE ASTROLOGERS, THE CHALDEANS, AND THE SOOTHSAYERS. AND THE KING SPAKE, AND SAID TO THE WISE MEN OF BABYLON, WHOSOEVER SHALL READ THIS WRITING, AND SHOW ME THE INTERPRETATION THEREOF, SHALL BE CLOTHED WITH SCA
Voila! The first cipher is decoded.