The Principles that I Live and Work by

In the process of composing a new engineering team, I thought it might be useful for members of the team to hear the principles that I live and work by. As I created the list I was mindful to only write those things that I can and have demonstrated, and avoided principles that I aspire to but have not been able to consistently demonstrate.

 

So here they are:

• I take risks.
• I think hard.
• I am humble.
• I am curious.
• I am creative.
• I am courageous.
• I do not sweat the small stuff.
• I take pride in the work that I do.
• I celebrate the victories of others.
• I live on the ground, not on the map.
• I make other people better at their jobs.
• I am honest, with myself and with others.
• I challenge my own most strongly held opinions.
• I am mindful of my own strengths and weakness.
• I am continuously improving my tactics and craft.
• I learn from the successes and failures of others.
• I am self-reflective and act on that self-reflection.
• I fail, and I learn from both my successes and failures.
• I am transparent with my team, leadership, and partners.
• I am authentic, and I give others the space to also be authentic.
• I always looks for ways that I and my team can do things better.
• I consider how the products that I build make people’s lives better.
• I take responsibility for the consequences of my words and actions.
• I tell the people I work with how I am feeling when it might impact them.
• I treat everyone with respect, even when I vehemently disagree with them.
• I support my opinions with data, or a model that can be communicated to others.
• I consider the consequences of my words and actions before I speak or take them.
• I respect and adhere to the values and policies of the organizations of which I am a part.
• I have cognitive empathy for everyone and build mental models of what it is like to be them.
• I say when I feel confident that I or my team can or cannot accomplish a task we have been given.
• I make space for everyone to have their voice heard, no matter what their preferred mechanism for communication.
• I communicate the confidence that I have in my estimates and am prepared to support that confidence with data or a model.

 

I am also a human, and I have bad days when I do not embody all of these principles. And I have compassion for myself, knowing that I am as subject to the limitations of my humanity as the rest of my species. It takes work to not fall back to pathological instincts, biases, heuristics and conditioned behaviours. It takes work to be your best self. I do and will do that work. If I have one principle that subsumes all these others it is that if I want to change the world, I first have to change myself. As above, so below.

Fac, ergo sum

I make, therefore I am.

A solitary human out on the African Savanna is mostly some other animal’s lunch; we aren’t particularly strong or fast. But we are crafty, and when we get together in groups we become formidable. So it is not surprising that we are social animals, and that we receive significant neurochemical rewards for social behavior.

Dunbar’s Number, 150, has now been found just about everywhere we look for the size of human communities, be they in Meatspace or Cyberspace. I suspect that the minimum number of human individuals required to make a functional, self-sustaining, durable collective is not surprisingly Dunbar’s Number. I would go so far as to suggest that we should redefine One Human as being made up of 150 individuals; any less or more than this is not sustainable. If this hypothesis has any merit we should find significant evidence for it, in the neurological rewards systems in the human brain, and the number of individuals we are hardwired to keep track of. We most certainly find it in data associated with the size of human communities.

Humans are also tool makers. And probably the greatest tool they have made is teaching other humans how to make tools. Civilization could be thought of as nothing more than a evolutionary framework for propagating the knowledge of how to make specific tools through spacetime. Given the massive evolutionary advantage that this ability has given us, one would imagine that we have evolved specific neurological mechanisms that would incentivize us to make tools and to teach others how to do so. It is highly likely that Making (which inherently includes the didactic component), is a natural and powerful antidepressant, which gives Makers a durable sense of purpose, meaning and accomplishment.

Given how beneficial Making is to our species, this also introduces the possibility that the primary purpose  for human clumping, other than staying off the menu, is to maximize the opportunity for making tools and directly passing that knowledge on to others, while minimizing the caloric cost (cognition is SUPER expensive after all) of keeping track of the other constituents of one’s Human.

Given their utility, are tools not the most durable of memes?

Regardless of the validity of the above hypothesis, nobody can argue that Making, and then teaching others how to Make, is one of the most consistent sources of satisfaction and meaning. Certainly I have found being a Maker, along with investing in making other peoples’ lives better, to be the best anti-Nihilism I have come across.

On the Merits and Risks of Being a Frank

And by Frank I am not referring to a member of a Germanic tribe, or a person named “Frank”, though I can imagine that bearing that moniker has its own merits and risks; I am referring of course to an individual who readily speaks their mind, is brutally honest, is forthright in the extreme, doesn’t beat around the bush, calls a spade a spade, chooses polemic over other forms of discourse, and so on and so forth. Let us call this kind a Frank.

And in the name of said frankness, I consider myself an instance of the aforementioned kind. As to why I am this way, I cannot rightly say; perhaps it is genetic, perhaps I learned it from my dearly departed father, perhaps I am on the spectrum, or perhaps I have a strong desire to reveal the underlying truth in all things, primarily to satisfy my own curiosity about life, the universe, and everything.

My life as a Frank has taught me something important that might help other Franks; regardless of the strength of one’s belief, the depth of one’s righteousness, the eloquence and sophistication of one’s argument, and the indomitable passion with which one delivers that argument; if one does not effectively engage the audience, either in hearing and responding to the subtleties of their points and counter-points, or in at least getting them to hear the subtleties of one’s own, then all of that passion, energy, and commitment are for naught.   

The mechanism one uses to elucidate the truth is just as important as the truth itself. If one is solely concerned with one’s own righteousness then perhaps it doesn’t matter, but if one is actually concerned with revealing or discovering the truth then it is not enough that one can identify the weaknesses or inaccuracies in an argument; one has to strive to successfully communicate one’s argument or position in such a way that it has the highest likelihood of being given any consideration by the listener (who may initially strongly hold an opinion quite opposite to one’s own).

In general, our most self-destructive behaviors, are occluded from us. If one doggedly seeks to elucidate the truth of a thing, but finds oneself driving one’s point no matter what the response from the listener or audience; or worse yet, one doesn’t particularly care what the listener’s response is, then one is probably not in it for any noble reason. One’s frankness in this case is probably motivated by some deep-seated sense of inadequacy, a need for attention, or worse.

Franks need to always keep in mind that most people will not initially take the passion, energy and commitment that a Frank demonstrates for interactively discovering the truth of a thing, as noble or good; they will just think that the Frank is an arrogant asshole. And despite the fact that the Frank’s intentions may indeed be noble, those people may still be correct in their assessment. And even those relatively self-aware Franks have bad days, when their forthrightness smothers their empathy and compassion, and becomes belligerence or just plain cruelty.

Wisdom, truth and fact need to find fertile ground in the minds of the listener, else they are no better than fallacies, lies, and superstitions. You as a Frank are entirely responsible for ensuring that it is not the demeanor of the messenger that causes the audience to raise stone walls around that ground.

The truth will set you free… and in most cases also scare the bejesus out of you.

There’s No Going Back in The Box

I have always had a Hobbesian view of the human condition, but over the last couple of years the fine and rather disturbing details of that view have been elucidated by the The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Free Will by Sam Harris, a number of books by Steven Pinker, Risk : The Science and Politics of Fear by Daniel Gardner, and most recently by Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

I have also always had a strong suspicion that the human condition would be completely codified in my lifetime. What I did not suspect however is just how thoroughly depressing the coalescence of that codification would be; indubitable scientific research shows that we are pathologically, recursively and absolutely  deluded as a species, and that the vast majority of judgements and decisions that we make individually and collectively are non-optimal in the best cases, and patently wrong in the worst.  This goes a long way to explaining why the planet is in the state that it is in.

As I have attempted to internalize the codification contained within the aforementioned books, I have struggled with how one can turn the awareness of the limitations of one’s meatware to one’s advantage. Basically it would require the insertion of the equivalent of a  perhaps-you-should-think-hard-about-that  hardware interrupt into all of one’s cognitive processes, or at least those that don’t involve having to respond to a flesh and blood Panthera leo that has put Homo sapiens sapiens on the menu. Achieving this level of mental discipline is hard enough in its own right, but then once the interrupt has fired there is the not-insignificant challenge of identifying and adjusting for the cognitive biases and heuristics that might be in play; and there are A LOT of them and their effects are most often very subtle and  totally counter intuitive (as their name implies). It may simply be beyond my, and most human’s, cognitive abilities to avoid making decisions with a “sub-system” evolved for avoiding the inadvertent consumption of toxic plants, hungry predators and randomly falling trees in The Savannah.       

Having an awareness of this codification also leads to the uncomfortable realization that humanity is utterly vulnerable to manipulation by amoral agents (sociopaths, politicians or artificial intelligences)  who have deep knowledge of this research and the motivation to use/misuse it.  

If we are to survive as a species we are going to have to overcome the significant limitations of our own neurology. Given that most humans are seemingly unable to even overcome their petty prejudices, I don’t have a high degree of confidence that we are going to be around long enough to speciate. I can only hope that as awareness of this research becomes more widespread that we will become collectively less vulnerable to the limitations of our own mental processes, and the manipulation of those processes by unscrupulous forces. We could start by requiring that all high school students and politicians learn about cognitive biases and how they negatively impact our ability to make optimal decisions and accurate judgements.

Some or other ancient Greek philosopher suggested that one should “Know Thyself”. They should have followed this gem with a warning that one cannot “Un-know Oneself” after the fact. There is no going back in the box.  

CODE

I am a huge fan of both Barak Obama and Shepard Fairey. I have one of Fairey’s classic Obama 2008 “Change” posters hanging in my home. For the hell of it I did a self-portrait in the style of Fairey’s classic poster.  Obama has undoubtedly brought HOPE, PROGRESS and CHANGE to the world. I thought I should choose a less ambitious slogan; something aligned with my capabilities and chosen profession, and self-fulfilling of course; so “CODE” it is.

Why Software Development is like Ironing a Thneed

 “I’m being quite useful. This thing is a Thneed.
A Thneed's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!
It's a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat.
But it has OTHER uses. Yes, far beyond that.
You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets!
Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!"

                                         – from “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss

During my time in the military two decades ago I become highly skilled at ironing. And not only shirts and pants, but beds, hats, sheets and other items one would not normally consider “ironable”. I continue to this day to do my own ironing. I actually find it rather therapeutic.

Since having children I have also become reacquainted with the works of Theodor Geisel, more affectionately known as Dr. Seuss. It struck me the other day while ironing a particularly pesky shirt that software development is very much like ironing a Thneed.

So let’s make some assumptions about a Thneed based on the description above. Some poetic licence and imagination will be required.

1. Nobody is entirely sure what a Thneed is, not even the manufacturer.
2. When customers buy a Thneed they have only a vague idea of what they need it for and how it is going to make their lives better.
3. No two Thneed’s are exactly alike; they are the snowflakes of garments.
4. Thneed producers create new and improved Thneed’s all the time.
5. A Thneed is too big and awkwardly shaped to fit on your ironing board and Dr. Seuss makes no mention of a Thneed-press.
6. It is hard, if not impossible, to estimate how long it will take you or a highly trained team of Thneed-ironers to iron a Thneed, with any level of accuracy or confidence in your estimate.
7. The market for Thneed-ironing accessories is confusing in its profusion, pace and super-competitiveness.
8. Thneed-ironing methodologies were derived from shirt and pants ironing methodologies, but they are actually poorly suited.
9. A Thneed is like most other garments in that it occasionally requires ironing.
10. Thneed manufactures’ own Thneed’s are usually the worst ironed.

So based on the assumptions above, how does one go about ironing this Thneed thing? Well the trick is known by every person who has ever had to iron a shirt.

Manipulate the garment so that a small piece of it is flat on the ironing board and then iron that piece. Then get another piece flat and iron that piece, and so on and so on, until you have ironed the entire garment. If you are foolish enough to try to iron large sections of the garment at the beginning, you will become very frustrated and will probably run out of steam before you are done. You have to “divide and conquer” when it comes to ironing a Thneed; that is the winning strategy.

I don’t think that I need to actually spell out why this is like software development; if you have done any software development in your life you will know that I am right (or mostly so).

Maybe someday I will post “Why Architects are like the Lorax, and Users like the Once-ler”. On second thoughts maybe I won’t.

Happy Ironing!

Built-In Obsolesce

Here’s another of those thoughts that has nothing to do with software but that I think is interesting enough that I want to post it.

I am a huge fan of science fiction, and I just got done reading a brilliant book by one of my favourite authors, China Miéville, called “Embassytown”. Miéville does not disappoint with his latest work; mashing up New Weird and Space Opera to create a most thoroughly enjoyable yarn. I highly recommend it!

This story got me thinking about the cultural evolution of sentient species. The one concrete example I have leads me to believe that the same sentiency that allows these species to dominate their worlds, also all but guarantees that they will all eventually self-destruct in the rare case that they are not made extinct by some environmental catastrophe. Though their demise will probably be brought about by technology-accelerated runaway consumption (as my subject species is demonstrating), I suspect that there is a more subtle reason why their demise is inevitable: the species-wide nihilism that I assert is inevitable as the species unravels the mysteries of its own existence and the Universe.

As the human species begins (and I do assert that we are only in the paddling pool of self-discovery) to unravel the nature of their own existence and the Universe of which they are a infinitesimal part, one by one the things that they imagine are vitally important will become meaningless. For example, how can the significance of any individual’s hopes, dreams, aspirations, desires and beliefs, stand firm in the face of an understanding of the biological evolutionary process. I would assert that they cannot.

George Bernard Shaw wrote the following about Darwinism in the preface to Back to Methuselah:

“But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration, to such casually picturesque changes as an avalanche may make in a mountain landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure.”

Note: Shaw wrote this as a criticism of Natural Selection; he was a Lamarckist.

Though there are still many who do not even believe in Evolution, let alone understand it well enough to come to this miserable and inevitable conclusion, it is an unstoppable meme; inevitably all of humanity will come to understand it, assuming we don’t self-immolate first of course. And when the entire species succumbs to this meme it will simply expire from collective nihilism. Perhaps this is why there has been, and continues to be such resistance to this so-obviously correct idea; on some level our genes “know” that this level of species-wide self-awareness is fatally dangerous. And Evolution is not the only dangerous idea that undermines the human condition.

I am a self-confessed Nihilist and Atheist so maybe I am just projecting, or this might just be my attempt to understand the Conservative and “Anti-science” worldview.

It should be kept in mind that I had a smile on my face the entire time I was writing this. I don’t take myself too seriously and neither should you.

Replicator Wars | Consciousness as War Machine

On occasion I have ideas that have nothing to do with Software Development, but that I think still merit being written down. This morning while riding the train reading “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins I had just such an idea.

 

I was reading the final chapter of the original version, which introduces the “Meme” meme. This got me thinking about the tension between genes and memes. This tension exists because an individual can be “infected” by a meme that entirely subverts gene-driven behaviour, e.g. celibacy. A meme can ostensibly override a gene or gene-complex that has been millions of years in the making. This begs the question; if memes are potentially such a significant threat to genes then why have genes not evolved one or multiple defenses against them?

 

And then I had an idea; perhaps Consciousness itself arose as a genetic evolutionary response to the infectious, self-replicating and potentially destructive nature of memes.

 

I would assume that a brain able to replicate memes arose by random mutation, or for some other evolutionary purpose, but as soon as memes were able to replicate from individual to individual with some degree of fidelity, the game was afoot. And possibly this happened before consciousness evolved. A meme is after all just a tool, and there are species besides Homo Sapiens that are tool makers and users. Once memes became a reality the possibility existed that memes could override gene-driven behaviour. And one would have to imagine that, through simple Darwinian evolutionary processes, those same genes would then start to evolve countermeasures to those memes, since the genes of an individual infected with a given “toxic” meme would not survive into subsequent generations. So perhaps instead of evolving specialised adaptations to specific memes, they evolved a handful of generalised ones. And perhaps Consciousness was one of those adaptations.

 

But surely consciousness actually increases our susceptibility to meme infection? I would assert not. The ability to pass ideas from one individual to another does not seem to require consciousness; meme’s do not seem to need self-awareness to replicate, as is demonstrated by other species who pass epigenetic “knowledge” from generation to generation.

 

I assert that Consciousness actually helps prevent meme infection because it gives an individual the ability to filter and analyse memes, and then if necessary immunize themselves against that and similar memes. It also gives the individual the ability to root out destructive memes which they have already been infected by, and similarly immunize themselves against future infections. This would mean that there are genes that are evolving to make us more self-aware, and generally smarter.

 

Perhaps the development of Consciousness was not the only response to the potentially destructive nature of memes; one would assume that genes would also evolve that hinder the ability to process and transfer memes. Perhaps there are also retrograde genes in us that are evolving to turn us back into wild beasts, incapable of self-reflection, poetry, art, science, philosophy and Sudoku.

 

So there may be two genetic responses to the Meme Threat in the human gene pool; one that is making us smarter and one that is turning us into soulless meat puppets. 

 

I think I finally understand the difference between Democrats and Republicans. I kid, the Republicans!