A few years ago, I was landing in San Diego for a couple days' visit. As my plane was touching down, I thought that I could have called my friend Mike* to pick me up from the airport. That would have allowed us to catch up, since we hadn't seen each other for a while. He's a busy guy, and I would be busy for most of the trip, so the ride from the airport and a possible lunch would have been a great opportunity to spend some time together, catch up, and reminisce about the past.

Instead, I rented a car, as usual. Because Mike was busy, I didn't want to impose. Also, since I could afford a rental, I didn't have to impose.

That's when it occurred to me that our prosperity/affluence, coupled with the modern lifestyle, could be a cause of societal isolation/alienation. If I didn't have enough money to rent the car, I would have bitten the bullet and called one of my friends to pick me up from the airport. Economic circumstances would have forced my friends and me to override the demands of our busy schedules and spend some time together.

This observation applies to much more than just picking up people from the airport. There are many activities that due to our prosperity, which increases our self-sufficiency, we end up doing by ourselves or paying people to do, instead of getting our friends to help us with. For example, from the big stuff like help with moving, painting our home/apartment, and renovations, to the small stuff like driving us to the store or picking us up from the airport.

When we are young and have less money, the above are the sorts of things that we ask our friends for help with. As we get more affluent, we slowly reduce the number of cases in which we ask for help and at some point just do everything by ourselves or pay someone to do them for us.

Because our society is overall affluent, it's expected and likely a sign of maturity that we eventually stop bugging our friends for help with these various issues. But I'm not so sure if the end result is that great for social cohesion or personal well-being.

In the book "Bowling Alone" Robert Putnam argues that Americans have become more disconnected from their families, neighbors, and communities. The book lists several reasons for this, but perhaps one of the contributing factors is the simple fact that American society has become more prosperous than it was in the middle of the twentieth century.

If we look at less-prosperous societies, we see more interdependence and usually stronger bonds between friends. Within the US, if we look at the past, there was for example the phenomenon of barn raising which was "an event during which community men come together to assemble a barn for one or more of its households". Today, you just hire a contractor to do the job for you, thus missing out on the bonding experience. Also, within the US of today, the young are a less-prosperous group within the larger society, and there again we see more interdependence than among older people. This may partially explain the disparity between the size of the social circle of young people versus the much smaller social circle of older people.

Some caveats are in order.

First, the above observations don't apply to very social people who call up people anyway, no matter their level of prosperity or self-sufficiency. It does however apply to large swaths of society who, in the absence of that extra nudge that comes from interdependence, are not as social.

Second, being interdependent is not all roses. There are lots of conflicts that arise when you are dependent on others. It's possible though, that we have evolved to emotionally handle the conflicts that arise from social interdependence, which has been around for millennia, and are not as prepared to handle the issues that arise from social insulation/isolation, which is a very recent phenomenon.

Also, it can be argued that it's better to be able to choose who you spend your free time with based on who you are most compatible with, and not based on who you are dependent on to get things done. Maybe, but (a) empirically, people don't have as many close friends now (I am of course not counting 400 "friends" on Facebook as close friends), and (b) going through tough experiences has been shown to produce bonds that are much stronger than the bonds with "fair-weather friends".

Given the above, how should society go about increasing social cohesion and improving friendship bonds? It's not yet clear. Nobody (except groups like the Amish) would recommend reducing our level of prosperity to achieve this. We need new institutions, social norms, and cultural values to achieve these goals. It will take time for society to solve the problematic side effects of the relatively new phenomenon of wide-spread prosperity.

I've always been a very scientific-minded person, and I guess I implicitly assumed that once science had advanced enough, perhaps at some time in the distant future, there would no longer be any practitioners of unscientific mumbo jumbo, such as psychics and fortune tellers. Science would so thoroughly describe the world we live in and so thoroughly debunk psychics that no one would ever consult one.

But something happened a couple years ago that changed my expectations.

I was looking for a job and had lined up offers from three companies. One was a big, stable company, the other was a mid-sized startup, and the other was a nascent startup. All three had promising products, but of course the risk/reward dynamic was different for the three cases. On one end there was the big company, with very low risk, but also a non-stellar potential reward, and on the other end was the small startup with very high risk but also the possibility of a very high reward.

No matter how much I analyzed the situation, doing research on the three companies and the markets they were in, trying to estimate the probability of success in each case, and discussing this with as many people as I could, I realized that I will never know for sure which path will lead to the highest eventual well-being (where well-being is a combination of career satisfaction, happiness, and wealth). In addition, whatever choice I made would not be something that I could change on a whim. Most likely I'd have to invest at least a few years in any of these paths to give it the full effort it deserved.

So, I was in a situation where I had to make a choice between competing options and where (a) I would commit at least a few years of my life and (b) I had no sure way of knowing, after those years had passed, in which of those paths I would be better-off.

That's when it hit me, that when you desperately need an answer on big life decisions, and nobody has the answers, your mind starts to grasp at straws for anything that may resemble an answer. Even though I did not consult any psychics or fortune tellers to get my answer, I could see how others who are not as pro-empiricism as I am would just go to a psychic when no answers are forthcoming from anywhere else.

And since science will never be able to predict the future, there will always be questions that humans need answering (which job to take, which person to marry, which city to move to, what degree to pursue, etc) that cannot be fully answered via the scientific method, which will lead many to consult anyone who claims to know the answer, including psychics, fortune tellers, astrologers, etc.

There is a another domain for unscientific approaches, and that is in the practice of medicine. When modern medicine fails someone (for example they have a terminal disease that doctors can do nothing to stop), some people turn to anyone who claims to have a cure, such as faith healers, homeopathy practitioners, etc. The difference in this case is that there is, at least theoretically, the possibility that in the future, science and medicine will advance to such a degree that there will be no malady that is beyond the capability of medicine to heal. In that possible future, there will be no room for unscientific approaches to medicine. They will have been made extinct.

But, for questions requiring predictions of the future (who to marry, which job to take, etc), science will never be able to advance to such a degree as to make unscientific approaches extinct. This is because the future is not predicable. Even if the universe is deterministic, there are so many chaotic systems within it that we will never be able to know the precise configuration of every particle in the universe, which means that we will never be able to make accurate long-term predictions about the future, especially regarding human affairs.

As a result, many of the big life decisions that humans make and have the most burning questions for, will never be answerable via scientific approaches. This keeps alive the demand for anyone claiming to have an answer to these questions, which means that there will always be psychics and fortune tellers in human society.

If you do an image search for 'iPad case', what you will find will be very similar to what's shown in the image below

Basically, people want cases that (a) prop the screen up and (b) have a keyboard. The thing is, we already have a gadget that does these two things. It's called a laptop.

I originally bought an iPad, and after holding the screen for a long time, I bought a stand to hold it up for me during long sessions. Then, I found that I could connect my bluetooth keyboard to it, and so I set it up so that my iPad was held upright in the stand and I was typing using my wireless keyboard.

From the abundance of iPad cases that do one or both of the above, I can see that many others see the need for this functionality.

And then it dawned on me: why was I using this limited device (in terms of what programs I can run on it, and in terms of what websites I can watch and interact with) which didn't hold up the screen for me when using it for extended periods of time, and whose built-in keyboard was far sub-par compared to a hardware keyboard, when I already have a MacBook Pro, which is much more powerful, can hold up its own screen, has a real keyboard, can browse all the websites, and allows me to install any program I want (and even, gasp, compile my own programs to run on it)?

So, I returned the iPad.

Granted, the iPad is a beautiful device, its responsiveness when zooming in and out and when scrolling is impressive, and it has many apps that are fun and/or useful. Also, for certain things, like scrolling through a photo album by sliding you finger feels much more pleasant/"real" than doing so by clicking a mouse button.

But, most of the things I do on a daily basis are email, web browsing, and document creation/editing. For those things, laptops excel.

Ideally, what I would like (and I think most people would like) is something of the form factor of a MacBook Air (thin and light), that has a detachable touch-screen that can run apps written for iOS or Android, and when the screen is connected to the main body, acts like a fully-functioning laptop.

I think some devices like this are beginning to appear, but so far none of them are compelling. It might take Apple to show them how it's done, again.

The cliche that "life is what you make of it" is actually true. In a free and developed country, whatever job, friends, or relationships you have are all dependent on you. You have the power to change any of them, just by choosing to do so. And whether you become a wildly successful author, artist, inventor, entrepreneur, or marry a wonderful person, or have a fantastic set of friends, that is solely dependent on you.

Unfortunately, for most people, that's not that great a piece of news.

The fact is that most people's abilities and characteristics (career-wise, personality-wise) are limited, and the sorts of jobs, friends and relationships they have are directly correlated with those abilities and characteristics.

Yes, some people have been able to leave unsatisfying jobs or relationships and have had great results. And by no means should anyone stick with a situation that is making them unhappy. But, one should not expect miracles.

If you follow the cultural paradigm (at least in the US and many western countries), "you can achieve anything you set your mind to". This is usually stated by people who have successfully set their minds on something much higher than what they could ever dream of achieving, worked hard, and finally achieved it.

The problem is that hearing this from people who have achieved great things, is a classic case of the problem of "survival bias". That is, only people who sacrificed a lot and worked a lot and finally succeeded are the ones going around and saying "You can achieve anything you set your mind to, just look at what I did. If I can do it, anyone can". What we don't hear are the countless people who tried really hard, and yet failed, because of bad timing, low ability, bad personality characteristics, etc.

We don't hear from people who quit accounting to become an author, or quit their boring corporate job to pursue their dream of becoming an artist, or went to Hollywood to become a star, and after several years of very hard work failed.

"You can achieve anything you set your mind to" is a nice myth to believe in, but the reality is that what we achieve is limited by our abilities, our personality, timing, and luck. Hard work and monomaniacal perseverance are required, but not sufficient for success.

The idea that you determine your own future, success, and happiness, and that this is not always a great thing was captured by the great poet Konstantinos Kavafis in his poem "The City". It's a bit too pessimistic and but captures the point well:

The City
by Konstantinos Kavafis

You said,
"I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city shall be found better than this.
Each one of my endeavors is condemned by fate;
my heart lies buried like a corpse.
How long in this disintegration can the mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I gaze,
I see here only the black ruins of my life
where I have spent so many years,
and ruined and wrecked myself."
New places you shall never find,
you'll not find other seas.
The city still shall follow you.
You'll wander still in the same streets,
you'll roam in the same neighborhoods,
in these same houses
you'll turn gray.
You'll always arrive at this same city.
Don't hope for somewhere else;
no ship for you exists,
no road exists.
Just as you've ruined your life here,
in this small corner of earth,
you've wrecked it now the whole world through.

It started dawning on me recently that the things I read in any given day (on news sites, in magazines, newspapers, blogs, internet forums, etc) are all mostly useless. That is, after reading them I am in almost no way better than if I had not read them. And yet, I still go through the daily rituals of reading my usual set of information sources.

It seems like many others are reaching similar conclusions. The latest to address this issue is Roshan Choxi, which resulted in a hot discussion on Hacker News.

The way I look at it, this phenomenon is very similar to what happened to humans when food became abundant. In nature, food is scarce, and so we evolved over millions of years to eat as much as we can when we come across food. The problem is that, now that food is abundant and easily accessible, those same impulses have been subverted and are causing us to overeat and become obese.

This is exactly what is happening to information: An age-old desire to learn as much about the world as possible, which was healthy when information was scarce, is causing us to overconsume information now that it is abundant and easily accessible.

In the old days, books were rare and expensive, and only a few could read and learn about the world. And for those who did read, there was no heavy influx of books, likely due to the fact that few people had the luxury of becoming authors. Then, books became cheaper and more people could read them, and more people could afford to become professional authors. The result was a big increase in the amount of information that people had access to. However, with the exception of newspapers, there were not that many sources of daily-updated information, and so the influx of information was manageable.

When the internet came along, connecting us to the sum total of human knowledge and information, the floodgates opened. It meant that not only did people have access to a lot of information, but they now had access to continually-updated information. The number of sites you can go to to satisfy your thirst for news (whether hard news, entertainment news, tech news, sports, etc) is now so large that no one can catch up with all the information. This may have been the first time in history that this happened, since in the past it was at least conceivable to read all the newspapers and magazines you had access to in your city.

I think though that the true deluge started with smartphones. Before smartphones, at least you had to be in certain locations (your house, your office) to access all the information out there. With smartphones you can access all the information 24/7 no matter where you happen to be. In addition, they are able to satisfy not only our desire for information, but also our desire for keeping in touch with friends and loved ones, and a more recent need to stay in touch with work issues.

As a result, you see people constantly checking their smarphones for news, discussions, texts from friends, twitter updates, emails from work, etc. Our desire for information has been subverted by the 24/7 ubiquitous access to more information than we can ever keep up with, to the point where a lot of people are constantly looking into and pecking at their phones like lab rats pressing a lever for food pellets.

Not all people are affected equally by this, of course. But for some, to the degree that the overconsumption of information is causing them to be unproductive, not-present-in-the-moment with friends, stressed, unfulfilled by the endless search for new news, etc, this is, essentially, information obesity.
 
Of course, it's ironic that, by writing this post, I'm contributing to information obesity. Here, have another cheeseburger.

Last night at the 2012 Grammys, Lady Gaga sat there in an expected-by-now loud costume and saw the three awards that she was nominated for pass her by and go to Adele. Moments like these bring to mind the expression "It's the music, stupid" (to paraphrase Bill Clinton).

When Lady Gaga burst onto the scene with "Just Dance", it was such a great tune, a refreshing change over the stagnant music that was available at the time. And people responded. According to Wikipedia, that song went on to become multiplatinum in many countries around the globe. And so did the next several of her songs.

Due to the extravagant way she dressed, many assumed that her success was mainly due to that, and not to how good her songs were. With every meat dress and every kermit dress she wore, she drove home the fact that she was weird, eccentric, loud, different, and it became her trademark. But, then, "Born this way" album came out, and the results weren't pretty. The performance of the singles from that album pale in comparison to her previous singles, both in terms of failing to reach platinum in major countries and in terms of chart performance.

It turns out that, lo and behold, no matter how many meat dresses or kermit dresses you wear, or how much publicity you get, if your songs aren't good, people won't buy them. And as last night showed, you also won't get any Grammys for them. It turns out that the success of Gaga's early songs was due to the songs themselves and not due to the whole persona that Gaga had created and the related publicity.

I think this is indicative of a general trend that wrongly undervalues the content, and overvalues the marketing, publicity, and execution. This is true in many forms across multiple fields that deal with the creative element, such as music, movies, books, and even technology startups.

The thinking seems to be that, no matter how mediocre the content or idea, if you execute perfectly and have the right marketing strategy and publicity, you will be a success. Execution, marketing, and publicity matter of course. But for something to be great or legendary, instead of just a minor hit, it has to be based on a solid foundation of great content.

For example, there are many big-budget Sci-Fi action movies, and they all get the best computer graphics, marketing, and PR that money can buy. But, they all seem to blend into one another and are soon forgotten. Some however, are based on a story that captures the public's imagination, and are talked about for years, such as The Matrix or Star Wars. No matter what computer graphics you use or how much PR you do, no movie will reach the success and legendary status of The Matrix or Star Wars if the underlying story is boring.

The doers vs the thinkers/creatives

It's as if there is a battle between the doers and the thinkers/creatives in society, for who gets the most credit, the most respect, and/or the most money from products that have a creative element.

The doers have their well-oiled machine, ready to be deployed, and are simply waiting for some content to act as grist. For example:

• Given a hit single: make the music video, commission the cover art, book talk-show tour, plan national/global music tour, etc.
• Given a hit startup: put them in touch with biggest VCs, contact biggest tech blogs and top news organizations, get featured in NYT, partner with big names like Facebook/Google, etc.
• Given hit movie script, hit book, etc: there is always a tick-off-the-check-marks set of things that the doers are great at implementing.

Without that killer content though, they simply apply their skills to bland content, and the result is often a dud. Only when combined with great content (e.g. The Matrix, Lady Gaga's first songs, Google's algorithms, etc) do the doers' methods shine. Without the great content, they are a hammer in want of a nail: useless.

Of course, a nail in want of a hammer, i.e. great content without some help from the doers, is also useless.

Essentially, both the content/idea and the marketing/execution are essential, like two links in a chain. You can't have good results if either link is weak. 

Yesterday I saw a truck with two incongruous elements: a big cross on the left and a huge National Rifle Association sticker on the right. Whether these two specific items are actually incompatible with each other may be debatable, but they did remind me of the strange make-up of beliefs and ideologies of the two political parties in the US.

Specifically, it's strange that there is a large swath of the population that is so strongly Christian and so pro-gun, pro death penalty, pro war, pro amassing as money as possible, indifferent to poor people and unforgiving of their perceived laziness, etc. It's strange that Christian conservatives use 'bleeding heart' as an insult; it should be they who should be striving to be as 'bleeding heart' as possible if they were true to their religion. It's strange that it is the liberals (who have a higher percent of atheists) who are more concerned with the welfare of the poor, about a social safety net, about being more forgiving towards transgressors, about avoiding war, etc.

Putting aside arguments about whether or not Jesus existed or whether or not he was divine, the following statements define what Jesus was all about, and are in stark contrast to beliefs/ideologies of Christian conservatives:

• "But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also"
• "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you"
• "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God"

If political parties in the US made sense, the allocation of beliefs and ideologies of the two parties would be closer to the following than to what we currently have:

* In the sense of a survival-of-the-fittest approach. "Everyone should take care of themselves".

Note:

• Most of the above follows current patterns, except for the first and last two items.
• I understant that not all conservatives are Christians and not all liberals are atheists, but the overall pattern is that there is a higher percentage of Christians in the Republican party.
• It's clear that some people might be pro war and pro death penalty, and other people might be deeply Christian, and these can be different constituencies of the same party. Not all constituencies of a party can agree on all topics. It's only when the same person is both deeply Christian and pro war, pro death penalty, pro gun, "screw the poor because they're lazy" when it becomes irrational. I claim that there is a large number of such people.
• It's also clear that being an atheist does not automatically make you pro-war, pro death penalty, indifferent to the plight of poor people, etc. So the above table is not the most sane allocation of beliefs and ideologies, it's just a more sane allocation than the current one, while trying to keep the number of "item swaps" to a minimum.

I was watching Frontline a while ago about domestic spying by the NSA, CIA, etc, and they were talking about the fact that all of our day-to-day actions leave electronic trails that can be traced, more and more places are getting video cameras (e.g. they are nearly ubiquitous in Las Vegas), and the data mining capabilities of computers keep increasing.

The logical conclusion is that, at some point, our every move will be either monitored, or at least "monitorable" (i.e. will be able to be monitored, if the government so chooses). For example, imagine "Google Earth", but instead of static images taken months ago, it will be live video of any spot on earth.

All is well and good, if the government is benign and is working under a democratic framework with checks and balances.

However, as soon as someone gets a hold on power and establishes a totalitarian regime (either abruptly through some type of coup, or slowly, each step taken "for our protection against terrorism"), it seems to me that there is no way that people will ever be able to become organized to overthrow this government.

In the old days, even if someone succeeded in establishing totalitarian control of a country, people were still able, to a degree, to move around undetected and organize against the regime. This meant that there was at least some theoretical chance of someday overthrowing it.

But, in some future era, say a couple hundred years from now, where our every move and action is monitored, as soon as a totalitarian regime is established, it will be there indefinitely.

And since, the probability of someone establishing a totalitarian regime in any given year is non-zero, with probability 100% someone will do so at some point in the future.

So, if the above argument holds, with probability 100%, the US (or any other modern country) will turn into a totalitarian regime and stay that way indefinitely.

Of course, the above is not rigorous and is a very hand-wavy argument, but the increasing total-surveilance capabilities that are emerging make the above conclusion a not-too-unreasonable outcome.

To be more pragmatic, even if things don't pan out as stated above, we can be sure of one thing: if someone succeeds in establishing a totalitarian regime in the future when surveillance technology is at its peak, it will be infinitely harder to overthrow that regime than it was in the past.

One of the principal arguments against net neutrality regulations is that there are some websites that simply cause too much traffic to providers' networks, so therefore, these websites should pay more than other companies to have their data carried over the network.

In addition, if the networks don't get this extra money from the data-heavy websites, this "would prevent broadband networks from being built, which would limit available bandwidth and thus endanger innovation".

Pure crap!

Imagine if a company, let's call it United Roads, owned all the roads of a country, and charged people to drive on them. This company observes that when people shop at a place like 7-Eleven they usually buy very few items, and thus carry very little cargo in their cars, and when people shop at Costco, they usually buy a large number of large items, and thus carry a very large cargo. The heavier your cargo, the more demanding it is on the road infrastructure, since it leads to more frequent repairs, which are costly.

So, United Roads proposes to charge Costco, and other stores from which people buy many and/or large items, a lot of money in order to allow customers to carry Costco merchandise in their cars while driving on this company's nationwide network of roads. If Costco doesn't pay up, United Roads will slow down cars carrying Costco merchandise, or even bar them from travelling on the road network.

Meanwhile people who shop primarily at Costco pay the same monthly service to United Roads as people who shop primarily at 7-Eleven.

The above situation is clearly insane. It makes much more sense to simply charge the drivers who are "cargo hogs", i.e. shop primarily at Costco, much more than drivers who carry much less cargo per month on United Roads' network.

The drivers are the ones using the network to carry cargo from the store to their home, so they are the ones who should pay United Roads for the use of the roads. The stores themselves are just sources of cargo. Blackmailing the stores that, unless they pay up, customers carrying their cargo will be slowed down seems like an ill-conceived idea on many levels.

A similar thing applies to internet usage. If some people are using Youtube or Dropbox so much that they are hogging up the bandwidth, just charge them more per month. Why are the websites even being considered?

Internet users are the ones using the network to carry bits from the website to their home, so they are the ones who should pay their ISP for the use of the network. The websites themselves are just sources of bits. Blackmailing the websites  that, unless they pay up, customers downloading their content will be slowed down seems like an ill-conceived idea on many levels.

The extra money to invest in future network improvements to be able to carry more and more bandwidth should come from the consumers who use it the most. Complaining that, unless ISPs get money from Youtube, Google, etc, they will have no money to build next-generation networks is disingenuous.

Of course, if both approaches to raising this money (charge the websites vs charge the consumers) work for the ISPs, from a practical point of view one may ask why favor one approach vs the other? The answer is that if we go the route of having the websites pay, that means that only big companies with deep pockets will be able to pay the added fee that is required to provide consumers a data-rich service. This limits innovation, since it's much less likely that a small startup can start competing in any field that provides a data-rich service to the consumer.

So, overall, charging websites and not users for high bandwidth usage is not only absurd, it is ultimately bad for consumers.

When your car is new, you take it for granted, and what dominates discussions with your friends are all the wonderful places you will go with your car, without ever giving much thought to how your car will get you there.

When your car is old, it starts to malfunction, and what dominates discussions with your friends is the state of your car, what's broken and what's working, and tips on how to fix or work around the things that aren't working anymore. The older it gets, the more you discuss the state of your car and the less you discuss all the wonderful places you will go with your car.

Our bodies are just like that. Bottom line: when you are young, take care of your body so that it can continue to take you to great places for as long as possible.