Hint to Theologians

This is not my work, but rather the words of H.L. Mencken in 1924. The reason I am posting it here is because with satire, Mencken makes a simple point that should be evident, but is not. Namely, that we should try to explain things using logic and common sense or not all; and certainly not by inventing explanations with no basis in any other experience of reality we have.

But, since humanity seems bent on needing to “know” things rather than admit uncertainty, we are left with bizarre explanations that are nothing more than an exercise in fantastical intellectual gymnastics. To wit, people coming up with nonsensical explanations for the anatomical imperfections of man.

Read Mencken’s own account of this state of affairs below, and ask why his explanation is less believable than the supposed conventional rationale? I’d argue that it’s better, even if still non-demonstrable and only slightly less absurd.

“HINT TO THEOLOGIANS

The argument by design, once the bulwark of Christian apologetics, is so full of holes that it is no wonder that it has been abandoned. The more, indeed, the theologian seeks to prove the acumen and omnipotence of God by His works, the more he is dashed by evidences of divine incompetence and irresolution. The world is not actually well run; it is very badly run, and no Huxley was needed to point out the obvious fact. The human body, magnificently designed in some details, is a frightful botch in other details; every first-year student of anatomy sees a hundred ways to improve it. How are we to reconcile this mixture of infinite finesse and clumsy blundering with the concept of a single omnipotent Designer, to whom all problems are equally easy? If He could contrive so efficient and durable a machine as the human hand, then how did He come to make such dreadful botches as the tonsils, the gall-bladder, the uterus and the prostate gland? If He could perfect the hip joint and the ear, then why did He boggle the teeth?

Having never encountered a satisfactory—or even a remotely plausible—answer to such questions, I have had to go to the labor of devising one myself. It is, at all events, quite simple, and in strict accord with all the known facts. In brief, it is this: that the theory that the universe is run by a single God must be abandoned, and that in place of it we must set up the theory that it is actually run by a board of gods, all of equal puissance and authority. Once this concept is grasped all the difficulties that have vexed theologians vanish. Human experience instantly lights up the whole dark scene. We observe in everyday life what happens when authority is divided, and great decisions are reached by consultation and compromise. We know that the effects, at times, particularly when one of the consultants runs away with the others, are very good, but we also know that they are usually extremely bad. Such a mixture of good and bad is on display in the cosmos. It presents a series of brilliant successes in the midst of an infinity of bungling failures.

I contend that my theory is the only one ever put forward that completely accounts for the clinical picture. Every other theory, facing such facts as sin, disease and disaster, is forced to admit the supposition that Omnipotence, after all, may not be omnipotent—a plain absurdity. I need toy with no such nonsense. I may assume that every god belonging to the council which rules the universe is infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, and yet not evade the plain fact that most of the acts of that council are ignorant and foolish. In truth, my assumption that a council exists is tantamount to an a priori assumption that its joint acts are ignorant and foolish, for no act of any conceivable council can be otherwise. Is the human hand perfect, or, at all events, practicable and praiseworthy? Then I account for it on the ground that it was designed by some single member of the council—that the business was handed over to him by inadvertence or as a result of an irreconcilable difference of opinion. Had more than one member participated actively in its design it would have been measurably less meritorious than it is, for the sketch offered by the original designer would have been forced to run a gauntlet of criticisms and suggestions from all the other councillors, and human experience teaches us that most of these criticisms and suggestions would have been inferior to the original idea—that many of them, in fact, would have had nothing in them save a petty desire to maul and spoil the original idea.

But do I here accuse the high gods of harboring discreditable human weaknesses? If I do, then my excuse is that it is impossible to imagine them doing the work universally ascribed to them without admitting their possession of such weaknesses. One cannot imagine a god spending weeks and months, and maybe whole geological epochs, laboring over the design of the human kidney without assuming him to be moved by a powerful impulse to express himself vividly, to marshal and publish his ideas, to win public credit among his fellows—in brief, without assuming him to be egoistic. And one cannot assume him to be egoistic without assuming him to prefer the adoption of his own ideas to the adoption of any other god’s. I defy anyone to make the contrary assumption without plunging instantly into clouds of mysticism. Ruling it out, one comes inevitably to the conclusion that the inept management of the universe must be ascribed to clashes of egos, i.e., petty revenges and back-bitings among the gods, for any one of them alone, since we must assume him to be infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, could run it perfectly. We suffer from bad stomachs simply because the god who first proposed making a stomach aroused thereby the ill-nature of those who had not thought of it, and because they proceeded instantly to wreak that ill-nature upon him by improving, i.e., botching, his work. Every right-thinking man admires his own heart, at least until it begins to break down; it seems an admirable machine. But think how much better it would be if the original design had not been butchered by a board of rival designers!”

--[American Mercury, January 1924]
http://epubbookonline.com/b/2892/h-l-mencken/h-l-mencken-on-religion/13

How Racists are Cultivated

Racists are Cultivated (Cultured), not Born

I came across this picture when reading a Washington Post article on how Mississippians are (again) bucking history to maintain racism masquerading as "heritage."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mississippi-resists-calls-to-change-its-confederate-themed-flag/2015/08/18/cd590924-41d3-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html

It has to be said bluntly (Trump-like): This is how racists are born. No, I’m not accusing these parents of explicitly educating their child to grow up as racists. I’m talking about racism of the indirect / complacent variety.

Generations of Southern heritage admirers have sat silently while Klansman, Jim Crow proponents and outright racists have marched under their supposed “Flag of Heritage.”

If non-racist supporters of their “Southern heritage” and its ostensible cloth symbol really cared about what they claim, they would have been on the front line of denouncing racists and haters that have marched under their banner for years.

But, instead, they have sat idly by, year after year, generation after generation. Do they really care about defending their heritage and its symbol? I say the history of their silence says enough about that.

And so, I suggest that teaching impressionable children to hold a symbol and the “good” things it stands for, should also go along with teaching said children the need to protect those “good” things and not allow people to abuse or misuse it for malevolent purposes.

But, does anyone think these parents plan on doing any of this additional teaching? History says, not likely. And so, another generation of racist-enabling citizens will grow up in red states, sitting by as people use their symbol of pride for nefarious and hateful purposes.

In closing, one should not be surprised that this photo came from Mississippi, the most backward, uneducated and regressive state in the Union. It was the last hold-out in defending Jim Crow one century after slavery was supposedly abolished. You’d think the citizens of that state would have some sense of shame and perspective given their history, but their ignorance dooms them to repeat it.

Pope Francis: Improving the Catholic Church, but still far short of being Humanistic

I saw a sign the other day at a Catholic Church bemoaning the fact that a million plus humans have been aborted (prevented from comprehending consciousness). But, they made no mention of the fact that the Catholic Church has directly – or indirectly – perpetuated out-of-control child-birth, with the worst offense being in majority-3^rd world Catholic countries where unsupportable children are born and condemned to an inferior existence at best, or an early death at worst.

Yet, in the name of pro-creation, the Catholic Church washes its hands of the “death” part of this equation. Yet, they have the audacity to stand on-high condemning abortion. Newsflash: Not only does the Catholic Church not have a right to a moral high-ground on “life,” but instead they should be apologizing for the death of conscious-aware humans, whose parents were abiding by the Vatican directive to pro-create for the glory of god.

How Agile Team-ology Ignores Human Nature

In the name of making people more “M-like” in Agile, it has the effect of retarding more competent and advanced developers in order to “spread knowledge” in the name of longer-term agility and efficiency, which is a speculative benefit at best. In any event, this retarding effect is demoralizing and ignores the reality of inherent strengths and weaknesses of human beings; not to mention each person’s unique personality traits. Which is ironic, for an idea that is eager to replace “human resource” with “people.”

I see parallels between Agile and Socialism, where everyone is a cog in a wheel of productivity as if talent and output were (or could be made to be) equal. For all its touted promises of a self-sustaining equality, Socialism destroyed itself as inferior citizens dwelled unproductive in the shadows. And where those who were more inventive, creative, ingenious, entrepreneurial, etc. were demotivated and demoralized. In the end, it had the overall effect of most performing average and few being happy.

An interesting exercise is to move Agile to a different time in history and see how it may have changed the way our world is today. A case in point is Steve Wozniak. Read his book, “I Woz,” and ask yourself how “Woz” would have fared as part of an Agile development team.

For starters, Woz would not have been happy in such an environment and probably would have been considered anti-social or “not a team player” (peer pressure). He would have been stifled if asked to transfer the various tasks bouncing around in his ingenious mind that he knew had to be done to create the first (Apple) Computer.

Woz would have been further retarded as he had to explain those tasks (and the required background technical knowledge) in order to be able to spread out those tasks to multiple team members. And, he would have been asked to do all of that as an introvert – which is to say, not being himself.

The fact is that Steve Wozniak is a creative genius and nearly everything about Agile would have gone against his strengths and personality. Agile undercuts specialization that free enterprise has been promoting for decades. And, it ignores human psychology as if people can (or should) be transformed into being something they are not.

To my observation, it’s as misguided as “gay therapy,” thinking that if you just reason a certain way, or think/do X, Y and Z, you will transformed (cured) into a different way of thinking that will benefit the whole team (society). And, if you don’t, you are not collaborating and are not a “group fit” and should move along to another place where your specialized expertise and/or introversion have value.

In some ways, you can compare the Agile Team Ideal to the Soviet notion of (re-)education, where the idea or system is considered the best of all worlds, if only people were made to think and act the “right” way. You hear this a lot with organized religion as well. Any time a Christian, Muslim, etc. says or does terribly inhumane things (e.g. quoting the Bible to justify slavery/homophobia, engaging in bombings for Allah, etc.), it’s never the idea (religion) behind it. It’s always made to be the fault of the practitioner in order to save the purity of the idea. As if the idea does not have any culpability in shaping the way someone sees the world.

If you don’t believe me, scour the Internet for articles where people write opinions contrary to Agile (or religion). Invariably, you will find an abundance of replies from Agile Evangelists either engaged in ad hominem on the author; or performing intellectual gymnastics to explain how documented failures are not really a failure of the idea, but rather the way it is practiced, implemented, etc.

Of course, Agile, like religion thrives on these kind of “defenses” (compartmentalization, rationalizations) because there is no metric to measure the validity (truthfulness; helpfulness) of Agile. And something that cannot be measured can also not be shown to be false, invalid or unhelpful. In short, the ideas of Agile are not falsifiable.

The reality is that Agile is just the latest in a long history of attempts to add structure to research and development, except its proponents pretend it’s less structured. However, Agile is the first such imposition in my lifetime where it goes against human nature – where inherent strengths and personality traits are considered malleable. Agile, rather than trying to co-exist with knowledge specialties and human personalities, proposes a soviet-like idea where people can be transformed into Agile Team Players, where everyone becomes an outgoing jack-of-all-trades, while simultaneous maintaining team motivation, energy and happiness. It’s a bold idea to be sure. But, since it goes against the realities of human existence, it really is just a fantasy.

In the end, the chief beneficiaries of Agile are consultants and authors that make their livelihood denigrating other methods and rationalizing Agile. And, academicians who invent equations, metrics, statistics, and graphing models that consultants and authors can put in their published works; and managers can use to appear busy. This all merely creates a mirage of making Agile appear more scientific and demonstrable than it actually is.

For those tempted to point out those rare situations where teams exist that already have personalities and breadth of knowledge consistent with where Agile wants to take everyone: This is not a success story. It’s just another way of saying that things would go swimmingly if everyone thought and acted the way I think things ought to be done (and that does sometimes happen – but rarely).

Socialism works in some places, too. But, not because it is able to transform people into a working model that maintains motivation and happiness. But, rather because the people were already of like mind and personality that fit well with the M.O. of the system.

A marriage made of a couple with highly incompatible traits cannot be made to work by transforming one or both people in the marriage. At least, if you have any interest in maintaining the happiness and motivation of the couple. If you don’t care about those things, I suppose you can technically make anyone a cog in whatever wheel you are trying to sell.

This is why you hear horror stories of the adoption of Agile followed by a mass exodus of highly-skilled and creative engineers. It’s not because they weren’t team players. It’s more fundamental than that. Most were no longer happy as they felt their creative energy being sucked out of them. If they also happened to be more introverted, they probably felt a similar energy drain from being asked to perform daily in a way that goes against their personality.

If Agile Team-ology wants to be discriminatory in a manner that is Darwinian in its selective effect, then it should just say so. But, it should not be promising (to managers) dual (incompatible) goals of team agility and team happiness. Certainly not if team is being defined as everyone on the team.

Below are links to some articles I found online that speak out against Agile. Some are rational and cohesive. Others, are more like venting or ranting. But, I’ve still included the latter (labeled) as well because even they have useful arguments and experiences to share:

Rational

·      https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-and-especially-scrum-are-terrible/

·      http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/process-kills-developer-passion.html

·      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/08/erik_meijer_agile_is_a_cancer_we_have_to_eliminate_from_the_industry/

Vent/Rant

·       https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5406384

·       http://programming-motherfucker.com/

What is Leadership? Who is Competent?

I've recently encountered people who dismiss others out-of-hand because they don't have experience. Whether it's in politics or business. And, to a certain extent, questioning one's experience is valid. However, if the assumption is that someone has nothing positive to offer on a subject until they are well-versed, is both unfair and potentially counter-productive.

Based on my half-century on this Earth, one thing I have discovered is that confidence and competence are not correlated. A good example of this are climbers in the corporate world who are expert at playing political games to advance, but are actually quite bad at their job, assuming they even take the time to apply whatever useful skills they might have.

Yet, time and again, people gravitate towards the confident and cock-sure (see: Bush Jr., Trump, for example). An intellectual is often dry and cerebral and you probably don't want to have a beer with her. Which is a shame, because the intellectual may actually be more competent, notwithstanding their social skills which many may find off-putting.

Give me a medical doctor any day that knows his s**t but has less-than-stellar bed-side manners. I don't want a doctor advising me and making potentially life-and-death decisions just because he's a social butterfly or a confidence salesman. I want a doctor that I know has depth and is sufficiently educated and informed (and curious) to make recommendations I can trust.

I could ramble on about other occupations and how this phenomena might apply, but I'll stop here at the risk of boring the reader (already too late for that?).

Leadership is not knowing everything there is to know about a job (ask any CEO). Leadership is knowing what you DO know; AND just as importantly, what you DON'T know ... and then being wise and humble enough to hire smart and competent people in those areas where you are weak. Lack of leadership is exemplified by bravado, arrogance, willful ignorance and fatalism.

Are We Increasingly Imagination-Challenged?

A failure of imagination - how getting everything handed to our senses - is fueling a generation of rusty brains. By this I mean, technology is delivering most everything to us, which requires little of us - in terms of thinking or imagining.

Take a science fiction book, for example - preferably a book with few pictures. As you read the words on the page, you brain engages to create images, sounds, smells, etc. in your mind. Yes, you are being entertained, but you are also "in the moment," and making it real by virtue of your imagination.

Contrast that with a high-action motion picture that does all the imaginative work for you. It requires very little in the way of our creativity. It satisfies our sense of sight, hearing, etc.

I theorize that that effortless feeding of our senses actually dulls our imagination, making it more difficult to be creative and think outside the box.

In an environment of effortless stimulation, would it be possible for another Einstein to flourish in creativity. Food for thought. Assume nothing.

The Internet of Things and Pro-active Engineering

It seems that everybody and their mother is plunging headfirst into the "Internet of Things." I see very few stopping to ask "should we" or "what if" questions that, at the very least will slow us down enough to contemplate consequences rather than forging ahead with blind faith in technology. A little bit of foresight can go a long way towards avoiding some really bad outcomes.

As wonderful as technology can be, it has demonstrated that problems it sometimes creates, is often patched in ways that serve more as a Band-Aid than a fix. The Internet is prime example of this. The Washington Post ran a story a few weeks ago explaining how one of the most critical functions of the Internet (routing) is insecure and susceptible to hacking; and gives a history of how it came about and how "solutions" have been laid upon themselves to serve as a "temporary" work-around.

It wasn't planned this way, of course. And, the numerous network designers and engineers had positive intentions; and they accomplished the work set out before them. But, alas, we have a serious problem, burdened under 30-years of its own weight, nearing a breaking point with data demand increasing at an astonishing rate. The problem is so ingrained, that nobody is really sure how to go about fixing it as it would likely be very disruptive to do so.

Would more planning and foresight have prevented this? Of course, it's hard to know. However, at each point where a Band-Aid was applied (when data demand was more manageable), provided an opportunity to step back and ask what was done right and what was not done quite right and how to go about making it whole. Granted, it's not fair to be too critical of past decisions as it's not always easy to know the context, priorities, politics, etc. that drove those decisions.

But, the point is still valid that we should ask hard questions of a technology before it is deployed widely. And, the Internet of Things, while a great project for engineers and a fantasy for gadget-eers, we should ask what it means. For example, just because we can put our thermostat on the "web" (or in the cloud), should we? And, if we should, how might it be abused (hacked)? This isn't a matter of being a negative-Nelly on technology. Rather, it's about employing one's imagination to anticipate serious problems in order to drive pro-active design decisions. It's about being smart rather than being reactive. It's also good business, as the key to success is happy customers and fewer field problems.

Yet, time and again, I see either a failure of leadership to see proactive engineering as having value; and/or I see a failure of imagination among designers and engineers to envision possible failure points. I have a theory about this, too, but I'll save that for another blog. It's not about anticipating all potential problems; or even about designing to avoid them. It's to "put them out there" for inclusion in design discussions.