Everything is more than one thing

Or: nothing is one thing?

One of my favourite TV shows is Halt and Catch Fire. There’s a scene where one of the characters’ daughter behaves like a total idiot at dinner one night by suddenly becoming a vegetarian and refusing to eat dinner thus causing a huge scene between her Dad and the women he has over for dinner, only to come down in the morning to eat meat for breakfast. She explains it away by saying “nothing is one thing” and her Dad, surprisingly, agrees.

Nothing is one thing

I think about that scene a lot because my initial reaction was that “nothing is one thing” is at least as stupid and meaningless as my all-time hated phrase “it is what it is”. But over time I’ve come to realize it is true. We live in a polarized world where we want everyone to be one thing. We want all our friends to be liberals or conservatives, we want everyone to be gay or straight, rich or poor, smart or dumb; anything specific that helps us pigeonhole people in order to make sense of the world. But, in reality, nothing is one thing.

I’m taking that attitude into 2021 with me and it will be reflected a little more in the style and content of this newsletter you’re reading now. I’ve been trying to make this newsletter one thing: a tech newsletter. And while it will definitely remain tech-centric, I’m not going to kill myself trying to produce long-form posts in great detail every single time. I will still do some of that because I like that, but there will be some shorter-form posts from time to time because I like that, too. Hopefully, you’ll like it as well.

World view

I recently posted this on Facebook and on my Fediverse account at Hackers.town, and I wanted to give it a wider audience here.

There's a scientific observation named "world view". Essentially, it means that in order to understand something, it has to fit into your world view framework. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to you, and you can't understand it.

Being aware of this constraint is one way in which scientists try to avoid bias in their work.

The best example is witchcraft. A tribe consults the oracle on the potential success of an upcoming hunting trip. The oracle throws chicken bones and declares it will be a success. Yet, the hunters come back empty handed. An investigation into what went wrong ensues. Where the chicken bones too old? Were they not cast right? Were they read wrong?

But at no point does anyone question that magic just doesn't exist because that's part of their world view and they can't understand a world without magic.

Somewhere in here is an explanation of what's happening to Trump right now.

Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, I think we can all agree that there’s a massive mental meltdown in play at the White House these days. It’s painful to watch it roll out because it’s so obvious that Trump and his ever-decreasing pool of friends have all lost their minds completely. The only explanation I can think of for this crazy behaviour is the world view thing. I can’t relate to them, and they can’t relate to virtually any sane person anymore, because their world view doesn’t include Trump not being President. I’ve never seen anyone so unprepared for something they had four years to prepare for.

Sleeping while driving

Here’s another case of strange behaviour. When automated cars became a reality, I predicted that the highest level of crazy we’d see first was drunk people letting their cars drive them home. But, as usual, I was wrong. It was those damn Canadians sleeping while their car zoomed along at 150 km/h.

The current batch of fledgling automated cars on the roads today are not designed for that. The driver is required to be awake and able to override the car at any time because guess what? The current batch of fledgling automated cars on the roads today tend to do things like drive into other cars and kill pedestrians.

But let’s look at this a little deeper. It’s bad enough the tired Canadians were asleep while their car drove unattended on public roads. But also - it was going 150 km/h. There is literally no place in Canada that has a 150 km/h speed limit. I’ve never seen a speed limit above 120 km/h so a car going 150 is definitely going to attract the attention of any police officer in rage. So, like most crimes, the bad guys were apprehended solely based on their own silliness.

Buh-bye 2020

The “buh-bye” phrase is a holdover from my Army days. Two guys I served with, James and Jav, would say that to each other all the time when they parted. I don’t know why, but it has stuck with me for decades. I don’t actually say it much, but I think it a lot. But in this instance, I am happy as hell to say buh-bye to 2020.

There has been a lot of pain to go around in 2020. Covid took, and continues to take, a big toll on our society. We’ve each learned, with painful precision, exactly how much “scale” plays in our daily lives. The only reason we have things like restaurants and airplanes and public transit and stores is that we have a lot of people using them which drives the cost down and makes these things affordable. When those people go home to isolate, the press of humanity subsides, and businesses close, many forever.

We’ve also learned a lot about “Just In Time” (JIT) inventory which is the holy grail of successful retailers. Big retailers like Walmart strive to eliminate tying up their money in stock sitting in a warehouse doing nothing, and instead try to have new inventory arrive “just in time” to re-stock the shelf when the last thing is purchased. That’s another innovation that keeps costs low, but Covid has taught us that we’re all in this together and when the whole world goes home to isolate, there is no residual inventory sitting anywhere to tide us over, so shelves almost immediately go bare and prices start to creep up.

Personally, 2020 had extra pain for me because I lost my Dad. He died unexpectedly while doing what he loved - puttering around his lakefront property. Intellectually, I know I am at the age when this type of thing happens, and while I am sad, I am OK. But I also feel lonely. Losing someone who has always been in the background fabric of my life is a new experience for me. One less ally in the world.

So, buh-bye 2020 - I won’t miss you at all, but I am looking forward to 2021. Vaccinations have started and while I know we’re a long way away from normal, it’s nice to have some light at the end of the tunnel. It’s nice to have hope.