Uselessness

It's fashionable to make fun of what we learn in school as useless. When I was a kid, everyone seemed to agree that math had no value unless you became a math teacher. By the time I was in university, and positions in mathematics, computer science, and data science were the cushiest, most sought-after jobs, the tune had changed. Yet kids still say this, math is useless in regular life.

Let me take up their case for a moment. Even school administrators are bubbling away recently about algebra as "obsolete." They argue that its usefulness is too specialized. They would rather replace the math in grade school largely with data analysis. In short, they want to train the next generation of data scientists. Computers after all can do algebra better and faster than humans can. And surveys of adults do indeed show that few use math beyond arithmetic in their daily and work lives. Interestingly, there's actually a blue-collar effect. Highly skilled blue-collar workers tend to use math more than white-collar workers. Many get promoted out of jobs that require math. They get bigger paychecks and preoccupy themselves with telling others what to do.

Are we just training people for jobs, or are we introducing people to this universe so that they can understand what's going on?

Although most people don't use much math on the job, a majority of people dislike or hate their jobs. The best jobs out there require more than an average level of understanding, including, often enough, in math. Mechanics and welders may use more algebra than you do, but so do people rolling down the tightrope of the frontier, reaching what exists only tomorrow out there by firmly understanding today in here. If his uncle Jakob hadn't taught Einstein math proofs at an early age (and no one else had), he would never have precisely defined the relativistic effects that reveal the large structure of the known universe, nor would he have helped discover quantum mechanics. And no, these aren't so esoteric. Your car battery uses special relativity for 80-85% of its voltage, and that green pigment in plants? It's there to capture individual photons for photosynthesis, a process that would not work without quantum mechanics. That's one reason it's taken us so long to understand. Imagine if we'd grasped photosynthesis and been able to run it with machines a thousand years ago! Life would be radically different today.

We take the power of photosynthesis as a given today, although we haven't quite harnessed it yet. Not long ago, its existence and potential weren't widely appreciated. Take a look at the 1938 movie "You Can't Take It with You," 49.5 minutes in. Between the dawn of history and 1938, I'd be willing to bet most people didn't need to know what photosynthesis was or how it worked to get by in life. A farmer would need to know about the sun and seasons and weather, of course, but apparently none of the details about chloroplasts or chlorophyll. Do you? Is that something you need to know? Does your answer to that question also answer the question "Is it useful?" They're two different questions.

Many people want to be promoted out of technical roles, and that's fine. But I don't really want to do a job that doesn't use more of my internal networks. If you offered me a long-term job that paid much more but required no math or other technical skill, I doubt I would take it; taking it would require some incredible purpose or mission. I enjoy using math and many other problem solving skills in the same hour, and day to day.

I see the fact most people don't use math on the job not as a kick at math, but as a knock against our society. It still lacks vigor at drawing on our collective intelligence.

But let me circle back to my original thought, the reason I started typing this. Simplicity is way more powerful than you think. We have a tendency to dismiss the simple. We think we need to earn our right to answer a question. We think a right answer needs to look a certain way. But solving a problem has nothing to do with rights or earning. If a problem can be solved simply, it doesn't matter how ridiculous people find the solution, or whether you have a PhD in a related field, or who has a right to what. None of that matters. If the solution works, the solution works. That is the character of fact. That is the mechanism of reality: detached from our preconceptions about ought or would.

If you get through university, you have been introduced to a shocking variety of difficult problems and their solutions. Many of those could save lives in the right circumstances, and many have. Do not underestimate the power of simplicity. Do not underestimate the power of complexity.

Let me also address the word "useless." Would you say a medical ventilator is useless, for example? Have you ever used one, personally? Most likely not, right? I would say a medical ventilator is incredibly useful, yet most people haven't used one, and if they have, someone else operated it. If we stopped making them because most people haven't used one, that would suck.

Math and science are astonishingly greater than a medical ventilator, in that a medical ventilator is just one expression of their usefulness.

If you feel you are the kind of person who will never use math in real life, that doesn't mean you couldn't benefit or benefit others by using math. It's a choice you make yourself, and we all have different strengths and weaknesses, and that's a wonderful thing. But just because you aren't going to use it in real life, or not much, you shouldn't go around saying it's worthless. Remember the medical ventilator. You might never need it, but if you do, let's be grateful it's there and someone knows how to turn it on.

How to find out

Found a paragraph I copied out three years ago from Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy, chapter 15:

"The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find... that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect."

There is risk in following and in not following the conventional wisdom—all believing comes down to a bet. You can be more informed or less, can cast the bet of your interpretation at a bad time or a good time, but it can only be a bet. And I repeat this too much! But what B.R. calls "liberating doubt" amounts to energy. You could fear, or you could suspend disbelief. Both are doubts, see? There are as many shades of doubt as there are of support. Doubt is chromatic, not monotone. But let's admit this is just another spiritual creed, one I prefer to live by...

Racin data

The French have this phrase, "raison d'état." It means "official reason," more or less; literally, it's "the reason of the state." It can also be translated as "national interest." A leader using raison d'état seems to justify a political move, even sounds diplomatic. But it's really about a cover story. Raison d'état? Everyone knows it's a lie, but it keeps up appearances, gives a little plausible deniability.

For a commonly cited example, W went into Iraq with the raison d'état of quelling terrorism. It was apparent to many (especially foreigners, at first) that the invasion was tangled up in oil with an extra dressing of finishing up for pops. Retaliating for terrorism was opportunistic: any semi-credible excuse would have done just fine. There was a national interest: resources. There was a sheen of diplomacy: keeping the free world free.

When Trump says that he always knew this was a pandemic and very serious, that's his raison d'état for suddenly ramping up coronavirus testing and emergency stimulus measures very late. The real reason is that he was deluded and spent weeks in flat denial of the situation, trying to confidence his way through it. Today, there's a dire need to scramble for lost time. Rather than saying oops I was wrong, I guess this was 'ugely serious after all, which would sound weak to people he can fool, he instead says he always knew it was a pandemic and very serious. Of course of course, he's gotta ratchet ratchet ratchet things up. He always knew it was serious because it was serious. Plausible deniability! See? That's raison d'état.

Maybe his followers are more permissive or accepting of raison d'état than I and people in my filter bubble are.

I see the lie. It insults the intelligence of too many people. And the horrifying fact is his mistake will lead to thousands of deaths.

Reverse mortality

Virginia had its first coronavirus death on Friday, March 14. Working backwards according to some numbers and calculations in a big article I highly recommend (Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now), this means that, statistically, we probably had 692 to 1384 cases in the state that day, rather than the 41 confirmed. Obviously the real number of infections could be more or less, since we're talking exponential growth around 30% per day, which will amplify little differences. The range 692-1384 comes from 1% versus 0.5% mortality when medical services are good. If we assume that healthcare around here is great (0.5% mortality), that actually means 1 death implies 1000+ cases now, and 200 when the person got infected.

Well, hold on.

The big problem with the calculation is that it assumes the first 200 people caught the disease on the same day. That isn't totally impossible, given that COVID and SARS have super-spreading (and people flow across borders), but it isn't likely.

I'll try to fix that "big problem" in a minute. Let's look at the basic reasoning first, though.

The focus is on number of deaths because it's the only reliable count. That will be true regardless of whether people are quarantined, locked down, going to concerts, etc. Asymptomatic passengers get on planes and go to restaurants... corpses don't, really, and it's hard to miss the fact someone died. COVID-19 was discovered when someone died from an unknown virus in China. (It was seen in bats earlier, back in 2015, but never mind.)

For the first critical cases, medical staff can work their miracles. Later on, with overloaded hospitals, mortality goes up to 4 and 5% (it'll look higher thanks to an illusion of record-keeping as partial data pours in), but that isn't relevant early on. Thankfully 0.5% is the best estimate when everything's working (thanks go to Tomas Pueyo for explaining this so well in his article). Around 1 in 200 people wouldn't make it. That's on average, but the virus has not been mutating fast for a virus, and no one has a cure. It should be fairly consistent.

Let's try to address the inaccuracy I mentioned. It changes the emphasis more than the numbers, because of the wonders of exponents.

First we'll assume "low" mortality at 0.5%.

If the very 1st person who caught the virus in a region was the one who died, and we assume steady growth from 1 case, then there could be as few as 7 cases (on average) when that person died 17.3 days later (about how long it takes).

On the other hand, if the 100th sick person was the one who died, there would be 692 cases at that point, on average.

If the last of the 200 people was the one who died, or if they all contracted it on the same day, then there would be 1384 cases at that point.

The article estimated ~800, which is the exact same calculation as the one with "probable" next to it below, only rounding the exponent off to 3 for simplicity. Anyway, here are the calculations if you're curious (doubling happens every 6.2 days according to lots of data now):

1*2^(17.3/6.2) = 6.9
100*2^(17.3/6.2) = 691.8     ← probable
200*2^(17.3/6.2) = 1383.6

And if healthcare isn't quite as great and mortality is 1%, the expected total number of sick people on Friday would be more like:

1*2^(17.3/6.2) = 6.9
50*2^(17.3/6.2) = 345.9     ← probable
100*2^(17.3/6.2) = 691.8

Notice two of the numbers get repeated above (6.9 and 691.8). We're just highlighting different parts of the same curve. Neither mortality rate nor the patient's "position in line" for catching the virus alters that fundamental curve.

Looking at the reporting for Saturday, March 15, I see there are 6 states with 1 death each. Colorado and Georgia have about 100 cases each, but the others have a lot less: 45 for Virginia, 36 for Oregon, and Kansas and South Dakota with 8 and 9. Those numbers are systematically a lot less than 692, which should be a typical number of cases with 1 death reported so far. (Many would be silent or still incubating, so the discrepancy wouldn't be surprising even in a fantasy land of excessive testing.)

That's an average of 50 cases when we'd expect 692. So... for lack of a better approach, maybe multiply cases reported in the US by 14?

Unless I've missed something else major—other than that people get better and this changes the dynamics (but not much early in an outbreak).

Also, I must say calculus would give a slightly better estimate than 692... wait, scratch that! Exponential curves are neat. Integrate x*2^(17.3/6.2) from 1 to 200 and divide by 200. The mean number of cases by the time of the first death (whatever that person's position was in the first 200, averaging all the possible infection counts when they die, ie from 7 to 1384) is precisely the same, 692.

Out-rocked

It's easy to think of things like rains, hills, or sunshine as earthly. But think how many places out there have rains, hills, sunshine.

Almost everything you associate with Earth is out there in incomprehensible quantity.

Look straight ahead of you. What's there? Whatever you see—yes that—and about half of the universe behind that.

When you take a long flight over the ocean, and you land, and you notice that this new place is real, just as real as your own, yet feels so different...

That's arriving in a new star system, landing somewhere you can put your feet. Hey look, there's rock. There are breakers. Little puddles of water bake in the sun. Sand is over there, oh wow, and there's a pebble beach. You can pick up pebbles and skip them. The sun is different, but it's more of the same. It's star.

Neither of us has any idea how much of that is out there, other than: it's more than we imagine.

If you think an ant is small and expendable, never forget that you're about the same size. The difference seems big to you, but if it were really big, you'd have difficulty comprehending the scale separation. An ant feels small to you because you're almost the same in size. An atom doesn't feel small to the stomach. We have little comprehension of it.

This isn't abstract. Try to feel how much damn rock is out there, out in space orbiting, spinning, heating and cooling at the same time, forming new chemicals. How many galaxies of that. How many galaxy-sized containers of rock evolving like that? Trying to feel it all is like trying to pick up a brick wall. You're going to lose traction. That's very concrete.

The July 19, 2013 Cassini image of Earth from Saturn (The Day the Earth Smiled), Earth glinting under its rings, was the prompt for these efforts to express the wonder I feel. It's as if those rings are a foreign airport terminal, a very foreign one.

Where's that?

The question "where do you get your ideas" is a really weird one. And I've heard a number of creative people answer this, and they always seem bemused. It's as if people think there's this special place you go, a corner cafe maybe, and if they dutifully mosey their flip-flops on down to that same corner cafe, now they will have great ideas. In reality, ideas come from absolutely all over. It isn't a place you go. It's called opening up your skull and using your sense of wonder. Anything can be an idea. Turn your head to the left. There are 5 ideas right there.

To maintain some kind of standard, I just did that. I stared at my closet door for a minute, and I imagined 5 different visual/story ideas, and they were all based on details of or defects in my closet door. (One was a strange pattern of tall, thin windows that give a view of the seaside; one was a bird's eye view of a dad wearing a long, blue dress jacket walking over a desert of dried paint and falling face-first over a large lump of paint that, to little him in that great white paint desert, is almost a hill; one involved a virus spewing like steam out of a cut wire; one was a sliding door on a cozy spaceship; and I forget the other one, but let's take another and say a closet is covered by a big rectangular granite slab that has misshapen eyes near the top, and maybe that kind of interior decoration is fashionable in this time and place.)

It's like asking, "Where do you go to listen to NPR?" That's fine for a person curious about your habits, but otherwise it shows a misunderstanding of the availability of NPR. If you've got a working radio, you just turn it on and tune in, wherever you are. If it isn't working, or you don't have one, you go and get one, or get it fixed.

The most basic trick to ideas is to stop worrying if it's a great idea, or if it works, and start pulling around the clay in your mind, the clay of all those sensations and memories, and, yes, whatever is in front of you at the time. The weirder, queasier, more outlandish, more half-formed and emotional and impossible to describe, the better. If it's terrible, that's like stretching before a run. There's no shame in it. Ignore any suggestion there's shame in it.

Sometimes an idea will punch you in the gut from around a corner you don't even see.

For example, two days ago, a student mentioned... what was it... ah, the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries wanted to change everything, including the calendar. So they adopted a completely new, bizarre, unfamiliar calendar. And it quickly fell through, because no one got used to it. Were the weeks even 7 days? I wanted to find out more. It excited my imagination. I said, that's a really interesting opportunity for a story, that moment in history, the bewildering calendar, what happened.

And I know I'm right.

What did that take? Almost nothing. It's like going to the supermarket. Go there, you'll see things you can eat. Except... the supermarket is everywhere. "Where is the supermarket?" happens to be exactly the wrong question. Where I S N ' T the supermarket? Now we're talking. Now we're cooking with gas.

There's this misconception that unless you are very responsibly worrying all the time that this idea won't work, you won't come up with any ideas that work. Totally wrong. Just come up with ideas. Don't shut off all critical thinking always, but suspend it sometimes, sometimes completely. And don't be too quick to kill something that doesn't pass the critical filter when you turn it on. Often it just needs tweaking or reimagining.

There's no shortage of people in the world who will delight in telling you what they think is wrong with your idea. They won't always be wrong, won't always be right. And you'll need to do some of that work yourself, a lot of it. But you are being different from them. You can do more than just shoot an idea down.

The biggest mistake most people make with ideas is confusing familiarity with plausibility. In cognitive science, that's sometimes called the availability heuristic. Basically, you try to imagine a thang, and if you run into any resistance, you conclude that this indicates the thang is not plausible. For example, if you are really straining to imagine that Puerto Rico could ever become the 51st state in the US, then you may conclude that this means it is correspondingly unlikely to happen, or unlikely to work if it does start to happen. Conversely, if it's easy to imagine your neighborhood's nuclear power plant melting down and spewing radiation all over the continent, or your next flight losing both wings and crashing into the ocean, you conclude that's very likely.

Just reminding you to remind yourself, then: "imaginability" is a well-known and carefully studied fallacy. Your brain is not half as good at all that as you assume. You are often enough drawing the wrong conclusions without realizing it, just on the basis of ease or difficulty of imagining scenarios. To put that differently: on the basis of familiarity.

If you've ever described new ideas to people, you have run into this. Even if the thang is true, even if it works, even if you know this, people will push back because they have trouble imagining, and they are sure this must mean it just isn't realistic at all.

Don't do that, and you're already a million miles ahead of most people. Notice that isn't a place you go! It's just watching out for a bias and shooting it in the head when you see it. With a Nerf crossbow. But it'll get the idea and leave you alone for a few minutes.