Tuesday, May 08, 2007
what would a global civil war look like?
Let's imagine that a war breaks out between two groups of people, X and Y. X type people are mostly concentrated in one part of the world, but are distributed everywhere to large extents. They are wealthy, powerful, advanced, and happy. Y type people are mostly concentrated in another part of the world but are also distributed everywhere. They are far less powerful, advanced, and happy. But a massive percentage of the population sees themselves as a merging of X and Y in varying amounts of each.
Let's imagine that a growing number of Y type people are deeply dogmatic and religious, believing that their Creator has endowed them with the right to kill X type people, not only without remorse, but with joy. Let's say a large percentage of Y type people bitterly want war against X regardless of the impact on themselves.
Let's also imagine that with each passing day, technology from X type people transfers to Y type people because the X type system doesn't have much discrimination against Y type people. Each day, everyone of both X and Y gains more access to more destructive capability.
What happens?
************************ Here's my guess *****************************
One ordinary day we will wake up and find that hundreds of thousands of people in a large city have died in some kind of gigantic blast. The news will be chaotic and no one will know what happened. Bits and pieces will stream into the news echo chambers with each passing minute. Radiation indicates a nuclear device, not just a "dirty bomb." The downtown area entirely destroyed. Southern areas also badly hit. Two experts say it was probably Iran? The triage will be a nightmare: anyone vomiting has fatal doses of radiation, don't bother trying to save them. People with their skin burned off get sent to Memorial Hospital. Now they're saying it's Korea. Broken bones and such go to Children's. Certain signatures indicate Iran. Someone you know will be frantically trying to find out what happened to someone they care about. The President goes on the air in half an hour.
No one really knows what's going on, no one is able to see the big picture, not even the people who committed the atrocity.
Lots of actions will be taken. But it will be chaotic. Things will slowly calm down and return back to normal. Lots of people will be in denial, thinking that it was a one-off event that doesn't deserve the massive response. People go back to what they were doing. Until the next one hits.
Eventually the chaos doesn't calm down and the animalistic parts of people's brains takes over the rational part and people start rationalizing actions that they would have never considered beforehand. These are the people who control huge numbers of nuclear weapons far more powerful than something cooked up in the Third World.
What probably frightens a lot of people is not that Y type people could be so blindly hateful, but that X type people are extremely powerful but act extremely weak. If you and your small children are locked in a room with an angry pit bull and you're holding a loaded gun, no matter how much you might like dogs, if the dog seriously attacks the children, the dog will die. What course of action will most likely save the dog's life: demonstrating the power of the gun somehow or acting weak and submissive?
Sufficiently threatened, America has demonstrated the capacity to invent terrible new weapons never before imagined. And a lot of angry people have never studied history.
Let's imagine that a growing number of Y type people are deeply dogmatic and religious, believing that their Creator has endowed them with the right to kill X type people, not only without remorse, but with joy. Let's say a large percentage of Y type people bitterly want war against X regardless of the impact on themselves.
Let's also imagine that with each passing day, technology from X type people transfers to Y type people because the X type system doesn't have much discrimination against Y type people. Each day, everyone of both X and Y gains more access to more destructive capability.
What happens?
************************ Here's my guess *****************************
One ordinary day we will wake up and find that hundreds of thousands of people in a large city have died in some kind of gigantic blast. The news will be chaotic and no one will know what happened. Bits and pieces will stream into the news echo chambers with each passing minute. Radiation indicates a nuclear device, not just a "dirty bomb." The downtown area entirely destroyed. Southern areas also badly hit. Two experts say it was probably Iran? The triage will be a nightmare: anyone vomiting has fatal doses of radiation, don't bother trying to save them. People with their skin burned off get sent to Memorial Hospital. Now they're saying it's Korea. Broken bones and such go to Children's. Certain signatures indicate Iran. Someone you know will be frantically trying to find out what happened to someone they care about. The President goes on the air in half an hour.
No one really knows what's going on, no one is able to see the big picture, not even the people who committed the atrocity.
Lots of actions will be taken. But it will be chaotic. Things will slowly calm down and return back to normal. Lots of people will be in denial, thinking that it was a one-off event that doesn't deserve the massive response. People go back to what they were doing. Until the next one hits.
Eventually the chaos doesn't calm down and the animalistic parts of people's brains takes over the rational part and people start rationalizing actions that they would have never considered beforehand. These are the people who control huge numbers of nuclear weapons far more powerful than something cooked up in the Third World.
What probably frightens a lot of people is not that Y type people could be so blindly hateful, but that X type people are extremely powerful but act extremely weak. If you and your small children are locked in a room with an angry pit bull and you're holding a loaded gun, no matter how much you might like dogs, if the dog seriously attacks the children, the dog will die. What course of action will most likely save the dog's life: demonstrating the power of the gun somehow or acting weak and submissive?
Sufficiently threatened, America has demonstrated the capacity to invent terrible new weapons never before imagined. And a lot of angry people have never studied history.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
My Anti-Resume
This is a list of things I don't know, based on repeatedly choosing a random article in Wikipedia. This is all stuff based on the most excellent book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Needless to say, this is a work in progress.
When a random category is part of some larger category, if I don't know most or all of that larger category, I'll identify the largest category as the thing I don't know.
Obviously, once I see these things, I know something about them, so this anti-resume is accurate in the past.
Based on this little exercise, it seems to me that Wikipedia is a sort of imprint of a segment of the population's emotional "stuff": people, sports teams, places where they live or grew up.
This exercise gives me a renewed perspective on the world. How do we get by in the world when we know so incredibly little?
Unexpectedly...
Whenever I think something is unexpected, I consider it an extremely important point. That means it's time to stop what you're doing and organize a place for that unexpected thing. Darwin supposedly said if you don't quickly write down unexpected things that presumably break your internal model of the world, then you end up forgetting them.
Unexpectedly, this exercise seems to make me realize a lot of assumptions that I hadn't been aware of. It's like the difference between walking around inside a hedge maze and seeing the whole maze from above. Obviously this is a very good thing.
as much as half of the words in the English language
anything more than bits and pieces of all non English languages
hardly any species of plants or animals or their characteristics
the names of nearly all monster trucks
the imposter syndrome
categories of skyscrapers
any rivers in Latvia
hardly any of the world's islands
anything about Turkmany people or what language they speak
any districts in Switzerland
any breeds of goat
most types of cheese (except for American, Swiss, Provalone, Parmesan, and TMF)
nearly any subway stations in the world
nearly any towns or cities of the world
anything about the 5 year plans of Russia
nearly all musical groups
nearly all songs
plastic bearings
anything about marching bands
nearly all sports teams
anyone living in a commune or any existing communes in the US or Bergamo, Italy
Battle class destroyers in any navies
World Tuberculosis Day
that Queen Elizibeth II has a daughter, Princess Anne, born in 1950
the Milton Bradley (and later Hasbro) game "Knockout" (similar to "Don't Break the Ice")
nearly all routine amateur sports events other than the Olympics
the World Badminton Grand Prix (deserves its own line)
any amino acids
nearly all poets worldwide
the slingshot argument in logic
raman spectroscopy (does it involve noodles?)
nearly all schools
Iphianassa, obscure Greek mythology figure
nearly all state recreation areas in the US
sequential space in mathematics
hardly anything about PostScript
the Science Police, the official police force of the United Planets in the 30th Century
nearly all radio show teams of the form X and Y
nearly all stadiums
as much about astrology as possible
Air Force Civil Engineer Support Agency
Mass Storage Control Protocol
Wimpy Bar hamburger restaurants
any automobile platforms
anything except the most basic things about longitudinal studies
nearly all novelists
any Middle Eastern animated cartoons
never seen most movies
most science fiction monsters
the names of any asteroids
anything about semantics
anything significant about bit torrent
any clans of India
the names of most mountains
the names of most fish
any cyclists except Lance Armstrong
most dinosaur species
nearly any sports players
most famous musicians
nearly all ancient groups of people
any UFO incidents except for Roswell
nearly all politicians worldwide
nearly anything about synapses
Baire space (set theory)
nearly anything about the Westland WAH-64 Apache helicopter
Stewart platforms
Sahasrara, or any chakras of the Hindu religion
any Tibetan castles
nearly any geographical places
almost no television ads (I watch perhaps an hour of television per month)
the Jawi Australian aboriginal people
most US interstate highways
CARE 30, a blend of iso-butane and propane
almost no explorers of the US, such as Kasper Mansker
almost no fictional characters
the Australian SmartBus program
no famous bridge players other than Omar Sharif, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates
anything about CSI
almost no specific libraries
almost none of the zillions of military terms in the US or other militaries
very few Acadamy Award nominees
the IronPython programming language, although I'm fairly fluent in python, on which it's based.
very few defunct department stores
any instructional videos for playing the bass guitar, although I've played bass guitar
any plantations in Maine
the CANTAT submarine communications cable system, although I probably should
any heros of Russian agricultural collectives
the fact that there's a rock poking out of the ocean named "Rock X"
anything about crank sensors in a car engine
the Alberni Pacific Railway which still uses a 1929 steam engine
the Pretectum structure located in the forebrain, receiving binocular input from the eyes
the fact that there are multiple Australian football code crowds
anything about geocodes (latitude, longitude, altitude, date, time)
most airports
Montenegrin News Agency
quantum point contact connections between two electrically conducting regions
almost no Dutch master paintings
Fire Records, a record label
the name of Elvis' mother
that mass graves from the plauge era were informally called "plague pits"
that Japan bombed Darwin, Australia and it was called the "Pearl Harbor" of Australia
new species of deer and antelope discovered in remote parts of Vietnam that I've never heard of
Matrix attachment region, an important chromosomal structure in eukaryotes
the Armenian surname of Guadian, now found mainly in Iran
almost no music festivals
the SafeDisc copy protection program
Nauru Pacific Line, shipping company
the 50 worst movies ever made, although I've seen many of them via MST3K and Manos: Hands of Fate, which should be #1, is not even on the list
the Aguaruna people of Peru
almost no soap opera stars
the Cajo java project
the EAGLE web application server
kite balloon ship HMS Manica
mucoceles on the floor of the mouth
old Hungarian scripts
any communications satellites
any lighthouse names
Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal
the Vani Gospels
linguistic anaphoras
Otago Settlers Museum
Mizrachi Zionist movement
Shamir's Secret Sharing scheme in cryptography
Norweigan glaciers
construction companies in Gibralter
Visakhapatnam (about 25% of the facts listed in Wikipedia)
Green Hills Software (about 30% of the facts listed in Wikipedia)
Kolmogorov space (I don't know anything about it but Kolmogorov is mentioned in The Black Swan book!)
UPDATE months later:
When re-reading this post, I noticed the unexpected discovery noted above. Not only had I forgotten it, but I wasn't able to recall why I considered it so unexpected. So I tried the experiment again, just rifling through a large number of random articles and trying to imagine the extent of what I don't know. Yes, I was correct about what I wrote earlier and, once again, I don't think I could put it into words very well. Perhaps it's an appreciation of the amount of complexity in the world. I'm working on another post about this sort of thing, that the nature of complexity is that the building blocks of a complex system are generally well defined and easy to study (e.g. physics) while the system itself is "solvable" only in that you can learn some of its characteristics by observation and experience.
Meanwhile, I stumbled into what may very well be the most trivial and obscure article on Wikipedia: Charlie Bierman.
When a random category is part of some larger category, if I don't know most or all of that larger category, I'll identify the largest category as the thing I don't know.
Obviously, once I see these things, I know something about them, so this anti-resume is accurate in the past.
CONCLUSION
What I learned from this exercise is that Wikipedia has a very high concentration of people, places, schools, music groups, books, and fictional characters (unfortunately I discarded essentially duplicate information as I created the anti-resume because I didn't think it was important, Homer "D'oh"s). I saw surprisingly few organic compounds, industrial items and terms, legal cases, types of clothing/cutlery/household items, brands, defunct companies, but most of all: anything of any real depth. I must be an outlier because so much of the storage areas of my brain are taken up with abstract concepts and odd knowledge such as the evolution of the fork and paper clip, and various principles of how things work. In fact, I'm greatly surprised that the Wikipedia entry for the paper clip doesn't have anything about the gothic paper clip or any of the various "species" of paper clip during its evolution shown here and here, some of them are still in use.Based on this little exercise, it seems to me that Wikipedia is a sort of imprint of a segment of the population's emotional "stuff": people, sports teams, places where they live or grew up.
This exercise gives me a renewed perspective on the world. How do we get by in the world when we know so incredibly little?
Unexpectedly...
Whenever I think something is unexpected, I consider it an extremely important point. That means it's time to stop what you're doing and organize a place for that unexpected thing. Darwin supposedly said if you don't quickly write down unexpected things that presumably break your internal model of the world, then you end up forgetting them.
Unexpectedly, this exercise seems to make me realize a lot of assumptions that I hadn't been aware of. It's like the difference between walking around inside a hedge maze and seeing the whole maze from above. Obviously this is a very good thing.
WHAT I DON'T KNOW
practically any of the billions of people on earthas much as half of the words in the English language
anything more than bits and pieces of all non English languages
hardly any species of plants or animals or their characteristics
the names of nearly all monster trucks
the imposter syndrome
categories of skyscrapers
any rivers in Latvia
hardly any of the world's islands
anything about Turkmany people or what language they speak
any districts in Switzerland
any breeds of goat
most types of cheese (except for American, Swiss, Provalone, Parmesan, and TMF)
nearly any subway stations in the world
nearly any towns or cities of the world
anything about the 5 year plans of Russia
nearly all musical groups
nearly all songs
plastic bearings
anything about marching bands
nearly all sports teams
anyone living in a commune or any existing communes in the US or Bergamo, Italy
Battle class destroyers in any navies
World Tuberculosis Day
that Queen Elizibeth II has a daughter, Princess Anne, born in 1950
the Milton Bradley (and later Hasbro) game "Knockout" (similar to "Don't Break the Ice")
nearly all routine amateur sports events other than the Olympics
the World Badminton Grand Prix (deserves its own line)
any amino acids
nearly all poets worldwide
the slingshot argument in logic
raman spectroscopy (does it involve noodles?)
nearly all schools
Iphianassa, obscure Greek mythology figure
nearly all state recreation areas in the US
sequential space in mathematics
hardly anything about PostScript
the Science Police, the official police force of the United Planets in the 30th Century
nearly all radio show teams of the form X and Y
nearly all stadiums
as much about astrology as possible
Air Force Civil Engineer Support Agency
Mass Storage Control Protocol
Wimpy Bar hamburger restaurants
any automobile platforms
anything except the most basic things about longitudinal studies
nearly all novelists
any Middle Eastern animated cartoons
never seen most movies
most science fiction monsters
the names of any asteroids
anything about semantics
anything significant about bit torrent
any clans of India
the names of most mountains
the names of most fish
any cyclists except Lance Armstrong
most dinosaur species
nearly any sports players
most famous musicians
nearly all ancient groups of people
any UFO incidents except for Roswell
nearly all politicians worldwide
nearly anything about synapses
Baire space (set theory)
nearly anything about the Westland WAH-64 Apache helicopter
Stewart platforms
Sahasrara, or any chakras of the Hindu religion
any Tibetan castles
nearly any geographical places
almost no television ads (I watch perhaps an hour of television per month)
the Jawi Australian aboriginal people
most US interstate highways
CARE 30, a blend of iso-butane and propane
almost no explorers of the US, such as Kasper Mansker
almost no fictional characters
the Australian SmartBus program
no famous bridge players other than Omar Sharif, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates
anything about CSI
almost no specific libraries
almost none of the zillions of military terms in the US or other militaries
very few Acadamy Award nominees
the IronPython programming language, although I'm fairly fluent in python, on which it's based.
very few defunct department stores
any instructional videos for playing the bass guitar, although I've played bass guitar
any plantations in Maine
the CANTAT submarine communications cable system, although I probably should
any heros of Russian agricultural collectives
the fact that there's a rock poking out of the ocean named "Rock X"
anything about crank sensors in a car engine
the Alberni Pacific Railway which still uses a 1929 steam engine
the Pretectum structure located in the forebrain, receiving binocular input from the eyes
the fact that there are multiple Australian football code crowds
anything about geocodes (latitude, longitude, altitude, date, time)
most airports
Montenegrin News Agency
quantum point contact connections between two electrically conducting regions
almost no Dutch master paintings
Fire Records, a record label
the name of Elvis' mother
that mass graves from the plauge era were informally called "plague pits"
that Japan bombed Darwin, Australia and it was called the "Pearl Harbor" of Australia
new species of deer and antelope discovered in remote parts of Vietnam that I've never heard of
Matrix attachment region, an important chromosomal structure in eukaryotes
the Armenian surname of Guadian, now found mainly in Iran
almost no music festivals
the SafeDisc copy protection program
Nauru Pacific Line, shipping company
the 50 worst movies ever made, although I've seen many of them via MST3K and Manos: Hands of Fate, which should be #1, is not even on the list
the Aguaruna people of Peru
almost no soap opera stars
the Cajo java project
the EAGLE web application server
kite balloon ship HMS Manica
mucoceles on the floor of the mouth
old Hungarian scripts
any communications satellites
any lighthouse names
Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal
the Vani Gospels
linguistic anaphoras
Otago Settlers Museum
Mizrachi Zionist movement
Shamir's Secret Sharing scheme in cryptography
Norweigan glaciers
construction companies in Gibralter
Surprising Direct Hits
these are items I know significantly more than you'd expect me to know aboutVisakhapatnam (about 25% of the facts listed in Wikipedia)
Green Hills Software (about 30% of the facts listed in Wikipedia)
Kolmogorov space (I don't know anything about it but Kolmogorov is mentioned in The Black Swan book!)
UPDATE months later:
When re-reading this post, I noticed the unexpected discovery noted above. Not only had I forgotten it, but I wasn't able to recall why I considered it so unexpected. So I tried the experiment again, just rifling through a large number of random articles and trying to imagine the extent of what I don't know. Yes, I was correct about what I wrote earlier and, once again, I don't think I could put it into words very well. Perhaps it's an appreciation of the amount of complexity in the world. I'm working on another post about this sort of thing, that the nature of complexity is that the building blocks of a complex system are generally well defined and easy to study (e.g. physics) while the system itself is "solvable" only in that you can learn some of its characteristics by observation and experience.
Meanwhile, I stumbled into what may very well be the most trivial and obscure article on Wikipedia: Charlie Bierman.
