Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Panic Over North Korea

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I’ve been bemused at all the sound and fury over yesterday’s DIA report. I pointed out on Twitter that there’s a lot more to a threat than a nuclear weapon, even a miniaturized one, and a rocket (we don’t even know that it’s a missile, which requires accurate guidance) that is a theoretical ICBM. The news reports keep saying that they’ve “developed” one, but part of development is testing and successful demonstration. I’ve been thinking about writing an explainer, but Tom Nichols beat me to it.

I’ve noted in the past that in order to prevent them from getting the capability, we may have to shoot down their tests. We can’t stop them from testing their bombs, but we can stop them from testing their missiles. The risk in that is whether they would view it as sufficiently provocative to start to bombard Seoul, which would end well for no one, but least of all them.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Google Can’t Seem To Tolerate Diversity

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This is not a new problem. It goes back to Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve and (as she mentions) the mau mauing of Larry Summers out of Harvard when he had the temerity to suggest that math ability in men may have longer statistical tails than in women.

In reading commentary on Twitter, I see a lot of straw-man misrepresentation of what Damore allegedly wrote (I haven’t read it yet). For instance:

But this is what one would expect from people who view everything through a lens of racism, sexism, genderism, otherism. All that matter to them is what group you’re a member of, and the notion of treating people as individuals is anathema to them, because individualism itself is anathema to them (it’s selfish donchaknow). So when someone makes a statistical statement about a group (valid or not), they must take it as an insult to every member of that group. (Note, this isn’t the same as things like talking about “rape culture,” which in fact does implicitly accuse every man of wanting to and finding it acceptable to rape, which is where the #NotAllMen hashtag came from).

Of course many women face sexism, and of course many women have been discouraged as individuals to go into STEM for no reasons other than they’re women, and that’s terrible. And everywhere it occurs, it should be fought and women who want to and are capable of advancing in those fields should be instead encouraged. But it would be utterly illogical for any woman to be discouraged by a simple statistical reality, because no woman is a statistic.

But the notion that every group should be represented in every endeavor in exact proportion to their representation in society at large is…insane. Men and women really are different, and they are statistically likely to be more interested in, and better at, different things. So if there really is a goal that we are going to get as many percentage of women into STEM as there are in the population, it is either doomed to failure, or it will doom whatever organization that attempts to do it, in terms of having to compete with other organizations that make technical excellence their priority instead.

And if Google becomes Mozilla, I won’t weep for it. And after this incident, I will be even more adamant in not trusting them with my data. Because I’m sure I’d be at the top of one of their blacklists.

[Update a couple minutes later]

It’s ironic to note 1) That these women who claim to be so great at STEM who are upset at this are apparently unable to deal with statistics and
2) That when Larry Summers said what he said, he was actually claiming that women are on average better than men at math, because the tail goes both ways.

But apparently “average” is an alien concept to them. Perhaps they think that everyone should be above it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some sane thoughts from Julia Galef:

…as far as I can see, there are only two intellectually honest ways to respond to the memo:

1. Acknowledge gender differences may play some role, but point out other flaws in his argument (my preference)

2. Say “This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it” (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest)

Unfortunately most people have taken option 3, “Pretend there is no evidence of gender differences relevant to tech and only a sexist could believe otherwise.”

I’m going to try to cite only women in this post, just because, even though it’s sexist.

[Update early evening]

Many (but surely not all–there will be many more to come) of the lies that the media has told about the memo have been collected. By a woman.

[Wednesday update]

Kirsten Powers and other women are amazed at the lying and hysteria over this.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

On-The-Job Training

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Over half a year in, the Trump administration is learning that running the US of A is not like running a business (particularly like a business in New York or New Jersey, rife with graft):

…unfortunately, there are so many bills that have piled up and commitments we have made that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling that it’s not fulfilling obligations the United States has offered. I would welcome an opportunity to see a debt-ceiling package that included spending cuts as well. I think there’s some that advocate for that, but I think more likely what we will see is a clean debt ceiling for right now, so that’s probably an issue that will be addressed in the future,” he added.

Actual budget cuts, or even the fake ones that merely reduce the increase in the rate of growth, are the projects of the future, and they always will be. At least until we run out of other peoples’ money, as Venezuela just did.

And in the Department of Duhhhh…

“I think one of the lessons learned from the healthcare debate is that did not happen, and so therefore a lot of conservative groups were splintered as the bill came out of the House, which I think left us at a deficit trying to earn back their support over time. And I don’t mean to deflect responsibility for that because that was on all of us, but that bill was moving long before we were ever inaugurated,” he said.

“I think our relationship with the Hill is shared as well, that one of the lessons learned is to make sure we are doing that sort of outreach before we launch a project…”

If only we’d elected someone who actually understood how government works, and who’d at least read the Constitution and respected the rule of law.

And in this, of course, we have another parallel with Barack Obama.

Business, Education, History, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Risk-Averse Millennials

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In response to a young woman who (almost literally) poo-poos being an astronaut, Ben Domenech says that they need to seize their own destiny:

Space is the next frontier. Throughout the history of America, we have been a nation driven by the idea of the frontier—a place where law was slim and liberty was enormous, where you could make your way in the world based on your own ambition and abilities, not fenced in by the limitations of society. The idea of the frontier is a stand-in for the idea of liberty. The danger for the millennial generation today is that even as they inhabit an era providing utopian degrees of choices, they have become too fearful to actually make those choices and seize the future liberty allows. In so doing, they deny their inheritance as Americans.

We have an abundance of evidence on this front. Millennials are extremely reluctant to invest or risk their capital. UBS found that in the wake of the financial crisis, millennials appear more risk-averse than any generation since the Great Depression. Brookings has analyzed the sense of displacement driven by technology, seeing Spike Jonze’s “Her” as a prediction of the world as it will be when millennial values drive society. And Megan McArdle has written eloquently about the fear of failure of any sort, even in the smallest ways, that animates young Americans.

“The other day, after one of my talks, a 10th-grade girl came up and shyly asked if I had a minute. I always have a minute to talk to shy high school sophomores, having been one myself. And this is what she asked me: “I understand what you’re saying about trying new things, and hard things, but I’m in an International Baccalaureate program and only about five percent of us will get 4.0, so how can I try a subject where I might not get an A?”

Consider the experience of millennials today as illustrated by Aziz Ansari in “Master of None,” quoting Sylvia Path’s “Bell Jar,” on the impossibility of making choices when overwhelmed by the options before you.

If there is a novelist who predicted the risk aversion at the heart of the millennial generation, it is the man who wrote that “You can get all A’s and still flunk life.” Walker Percy’s work spoke with the voice of the displaced Southerner wrestling with the inheritance of tradition and the modern age. His understanding of dislocation and despair and regional displacement speak to a different sort of placelessness which animates this generation. His protagonists prefigure the rise of hipsters—the love of irony and pop culture and memes as insulation from seriousness, a tranquilizer for despair. Fear of failure runs through his work, and the crippling fear of making a choice in a world full of choices that could lead down the wrong path.

Read the whole thing, but there’s another point to be made here: Much of West’s perception of what it is to be an astronaut is dated, largely influenced by the Apollo mythology (and yes, I know this is an attempt to be comedic). The vast majority of space travelers of her generation are unlikely to be NASA astronauts. For many, yes, there will be math, but for many others there will not, but the real point is that there will be many, and few of them will be overtrained civil servants. Like the storm-tost’ immigrants of Lazarus’s (non-legally binding) poem discussed so much this past week, they will likely be more akin to the people who set of first from Europe for a New World, and then headed west. And many those who headed west, or their descendants, will decide that the direction of the next frontier is up from there, and then out. And regardless of the generalizations of the nature of her generation (or any), there are many members of it who will know doubt take Domenech’s advice and seize their own moment. It’s not your grandfather’s space program.

As an aside, I’d note that Nolan’s quote was likely influenced by Wilde’s aphorism that we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.

[Update a couple minutes later]

As usual, the comments are figuratively pedestrian when it comes to our future in space.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Diversity

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Thoughts from Glenn re this story from Gizomodo about Google:

You can make diversity your top priority, or you can make profitability your top priority, or you can make technical excellence your top priority. But you can only have one top priority.

Similarly, you can make safety the highest priority, you can make cutting cost the highest priority, or you can make actually accomplishing the mission the highest priority. Pick one.

[Monday-morning update]

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!