They aren't evil, they're just wrong

My dad has never really been full of "fatherly advice," it was only a little more than a year ago (I'm 27 now) that we ever really talked about relationship stuff, and that conversation lasted about ten minutes-was tremendously useful-and would have been even more useful if we had had it 15 years prior.

At least from what I observed my dad never went out of his way to guide me and my brothers, but if we went to him and asked for help or advise he would give it. I used to think how if only my parents had pushed me I could have, for instance, become an amazing violinist, but mostly I am glad that they simply allowed me to pursue my own interestes, and when those interests changed they allowed me to pursue my next interests. I have a lot of interests. I was given the opportunity to develop a multifaceted-interrelated-integrated view of the world. It seems, for instance (again with the "for instances"), that a lot of the large problems faced in the world persist because a weak ability to see multiple perspectives. The old idiom...something about not being able to see the forest for the trees, is often misused. We must both be able to see the trees, and the forest as a whole, and the soil systems too. I mentioned in the "God is 4" post about models, and how they reduce the details of things in order to give an overall picture. Take a map, if you are good with maps (as I am happy to admit I am), you are able to get a good spacial representation and orient yourself (and if you have a topo-map you can even imagine the hills and valleys you might have to traverse) but you can study a map to your heart's content, but it will never compare to actually stepping foot in the real place.

So, to cut to the chase, where my parents lacked in guidance, they made up for in allowance (not the money kind (actually I might have just made that use of the word up)). They allowed me to explore the world...literally, and see the forest and the trees...literally.

Back to my dad, and his advise. He didn't sit me down and tell me about les oiseaux et les abeilles, mais I leaned early on that he knew a lot about the world, and lucky for me I was very interested in the world. I would complain to him about all the stuff that was messed up in the world, and I was probably 16 when, after espousing the evils of some corporation or political group he told me, "If you think that they are evil and corrupt, then there is no way to win. But if you think that they are just wrong, then you have the ability to help give them the right information and make things better."
...a couple years later Bush somehow became president, and the years that followed made my dad start considering the evil-corrupt argument more seriously.

Sure, there may be some corruptness, but those corrupt folk are just wrong about how they operate.

Why did I think about this post? Because the production side of our economy is steeped in unnecessary and toxic pollution, and it is not that politicians and business people are evil and corrupt and want power and money at any cost, but rather we just haven't fully educated the chemists, engineers, designers, the creators of what we produce, and people in general, to understand the whole picture. A chemist can manipulate atoms, but courses in toxicology aren't required of chemists. Green chemistry, biomimicry, ecology are not part of their education, so how would they know any better about how to create things that are sustainable? They aren't evil mad scientists, they just don't know any better.

Policy and economic incentives can only get us so far. If sustainable solutions are not achievable because people don't know how to find or create them we can't do anything.

Underfunded good

I was just thinking about how I could live a really comfortable life with less than $10,000 per year.

So I looked at what the Gross World Product per capita is, and low and behold, if the money produced this year were equally distributed to every man, woman and child in the world, we would each have a purchasing power of more than $10,000.

Now what would I do with an automatic $10,000 income? I would be able to contribute all of my energy to directly working for a sustainable and prosperous world. I would create things that would make life better. I would meet more people and network, and share. I would follow my dreams, without having to get side tracked by needing to work within our flawed social structures in order to make money.

No one should have to sacrifice their potential to make money to live. We should all be able to do what we are good at and/or enjoy doing. But of course, that is my bias. Since I feel happiest contributing to the well being of everyone and everything in the world, I sometimes forget and think that that is what everyone would like to do. But really, the world would be much better off if people contributed their full potential.

Public goods are underfunded because they are hard to remunerate (receive payment for), so you face the dreaded free rider problem. I would have to say that Ideas are my favorite potential public good. I say potential because they need to be shared openly in order to be non-rivalrous, and non-excludable.

With that, I say that ideas are the biggest underfunded good (save for clear air, water, etc). Which is why I will probably end up getting a PhD, because there are lots of grants that give a decent monthly stipend to PhD students to think and study and produce new ideas to share. But besides that, my dream job is one where I just get to think about and create things to allow all to fulfill their highest potential.

An awesome dream I had this morning

Before waking up this morning I was engaged in one of the coolest game experiences I have ever had. It was a two person head-to-head virtual reality Wand Dueling game. It used these three technologies:

A brainwave headset for casting silent spells and manipulating the virtual world. (TED.com Brainwave Headset)

The Kinect Controller expanded to for observing all 3D movements.

With Kinect Controller, Hackers Take Liberties - NYTimes.com

And some form of virtual reality glasses, to allow proper game viewing.

The two opponents stand head to head and cast spells to try and defeat each other...

This type of game is not very far off. I'm excited to play.

Sweet! Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOTItUNg6dc

When you assume...

There is a spelling rhyme that goes : when you assume, you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'. Or as my brother Simon says, "When you make an assumption, you make an 'ass' out of 'umption'." In either case asses are involved. Studying economics exposes a person to a lot of assumptions. However, most people's understanding of economics is limited to the fair price mechanism where price is determined by the interplay between supply and demand. "Supply and demand" doesn't mean anything without understanding the assumptions behind it. And once you know what the assumptions are you can begin to learn about where these assumptions fall short. But these little assumptions don't compare to the big one. We can also say that an assumption is a belief that is taken for granted. The big ass is the one that the majority of people in the world take for granted. That big assumption is that the world belongs to humans. If the world belongs to humans, than it is ours to do with however we please. And how do we prove it belongs to us? Well, who knows how, but it is at least worth considering this basic assumption when we make our decisions about what we do with it. And really, if we extrapolate out from historical events where Europeans claimed countries that were already populated, we could find our selves in a situation where aliens have already claimed Earth for their own, and we don't know that we are destroying somebody else's property.

God is 4.

God is a very complex system. I would actually go so far as to say that God is the most complex system.

Like with any complex system, in order to understand God we have to make assumptions and models.

For instance, before we could see Earth from outer space, we made the assumption that Earth is a sphere. You can go to the science store and find a model of the Earth that is about the size of a basket ball, with blue for oceans, and slight rises to indicate mountain ranges. These models only indicate the crust, they don't indicate anything about the core, or the mantel, unless of course you have a slightly cooler model, but even then it can't include the troposphere, stratosphere, or mesosphere. No model of the Earth can indicate how hot the center of the Earth is, nor how cold the glacier peaks of the highest mountains are, nor the way ocean currents circulate and bring life in upswell regions. But it is at least useful to recognize that the Earth is a sphere, and that there are continents on it... and an added benefit of this model is that even folk without vision can understand it.

So, for God I will design a model around this assumption: God is God is god is God is god is god is God is god.

This model of God will look at god as a whole and not discuss God's complex parts.

The model is: God is the number 4.

In this sense, 2+2=4. If all you know is the number 2, then you can recognize God. However, God can also be recognized even if all you know is the number 1, as in 1+1+1+1=4. Similarly, God can be understood as 1 and 3. Or further, the square root of 16. There are infinite ways of understanding God, just as there are infinite ways of mathematically arriving at the number 4. And for the "atheists," 0+4=4, too.

That last bit about the atheists may have not been understandable, so I will provide a slightly more detailed model of God.

For this model we add these assumptions: God is Life is God is Life is Life is God. And, God is everything. And, God is infinite and finite.

For this model all you have to do is take a deep breath. Or blink your eyes. Just the fact that you are you allows you to experience God. In fact, under the assumptions of this model, since you exist, you are a part of God. And since I broached the subject of parts, I will just add that god isn't just the sum of God's parts, God is god's parts.

Whenever people ask me which God I believe in I get very confused, because according to this model there is only one. And further, you would never ask, "which Life do you believe in?" Neither would you be more grammatically correct in asking, "In which Life do you believe?"

Life is Life. Beyond that, there are some commonly held misunderstandings about different Life and God systems, but I won't go into those right now.

Now go get your God on. Live your Life. Live, you're God.