Ken's Blog

A friend told me today that she had gotten into a very unfortunate conversation with a guy. He had given unmistakeable signals that he was attracted to her, so she had sent him an email saying that those feelings weren’t reciprocated.

What ensued was a big blow-up. He denied ever having sent her those signals in the first place, and they got into a big argument about it. She asked me for advice.

I told her that the most emotionally evolved person I know has a great way of dealing with these things: She never suggests that she knows what anybody else is thinking. Rather, she makes sure to be clear about what she is thinking, and assumes that everyone else will take similar responsibility for themselves.

Applied to this situation, what my friend should have done was simply tell the guy that she was not interested in anything beyond a friendship, without suggesting that the guy is into her.

Of course this is not so easy to do. The very fact that she is raising the subject could be seen as implying that the guy is into her. So the wording needs to be delicate.

But the principle is clear: When you are dealing with a person who is in an emotionally vulnerable position, do not ever act as though you can read their mind (even if you can). They’ll just get angry at you.

Especially if you’re right.

Today an acquaintance of mine, who recently got his hair cut, showed me his photo id. In the photo he has a big head of hair and a large bushy beard.

Whereas nowadays, post-haircut, he is close-shaven and quite beardless, so the photo in his id now looks like a different person entirely.

In this modern electronic era, it might be interesting to have a photo ID with an automatic “Update from self”, so your photo would would always reflect your actual appearance. If you were to get a haircut, lose a little weight or dye your hair, your official photo would automatically update to reflect that.

Putting aside questions of technical feasibility, I wonder whether this would be a good thing.

Tomorrow evening I’ll be giving a fairly important talk. Not because a huge number of people will be there, but because I am using it as an opportunity to try out our latest interactive research software. Of course the software could fail miserably, and then I will end up looking foolish, but that’s part of the fun.

Over the last week I’ve been gradually pulling the pieces together for this talk, but today those efforts increased exponentially. It’s not exactly that I had been waiting until the last minute, but rather that I was preparing for the last minute.

It seems that just before a deadline, one can attain a kind of superpower — an enormous increase in ability to focus, coupled with a combination of tirelessness and tenaciousness that is usually very hard to come by.

So there is no point in trying to fake it several days earlier, to pretend that you already possess that superpower. The best strategy is to get things ready, line everything up, lay out the tools and the weaponry, and be prepared for the arrival of the superhero that you will ever so briefly become.

The responses to yesterday’s post were fascinating. On the subject of what the founding fathers meant by ‘a well regulated militia’, the nature of the word ‘right’ in this context, the definition of ‘arms’, and just who (or what) is ‘the people’, there is clearly a wide range of opinion.

That the words were certainly written down, and by highly educated and intelligent authors, there is no doubt. Yet two hundred twenty five years and countless political shifts have created a sort of fog around the entire matter.

I wonder how many other indisputable historical facts have created such a wide split in their interpretation. Religion and patriotism aside (those are too easy), what other cases are there where a unquestionably true historical event has been met with the creation of two entirely divergent narratives?

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

I’ve been pondering this statement recently. It’s clear that a lot of people in this country like this amendment. The National Rifle Association, which has dedicated much money and effort to defending the “right to bear arms”, has the support of many politicians and citizens in our nation.

But the part that confuses me is this: I keep looking around for that well-regulated militia. The amendment is quite unambiguous that the need for such a militia is the entire reason for this amendment.

Yet as far as I can tell, many people are walking around bearing arms without serving in such a militia. In fact (as hard as this may be to believe), it seems that there is no such militia.

So what the heck is going on here? Isn’t anybody worried about maintaining the security of a free state?

Am I missing something?

In many creative endeavors there is a tension between “compositional” and “performative” thinking. To compose an opera, or write a play or song, you need a certain amount of quiet contemplation, a space to be alone with your thoughts, and time to hear the sound of your muse.

But the performance of an opera, or play, or song, requires a different sort of thinking. You need to be in the present, to commune with your audience, to be able to pivot at a moment’s notice in response to the energy in the room.

It stands to reason that the best creative tools for these two modes of creation are not the same. And this goes for software tools. If your goal is to implement the best software interface for composing music, you will come up with something very different than if your goal is to implement the best interface for playing music.

Yet so much is the same between these to modes of creation — under the hood you will find much in common between these two types of software. It seems to me that there should be a little slider, one that can be adjusted as needed between “composition” and “performance”. In response, the look and feel of the interface might change radically, yet the underlying power would still be there, only in a different form.

Experienced stage magicians will tell you that what matters most is not the cleverness of your magic trick, but the compelling quality of your narrative. A well-executed card trick is an amusing diversion, but a psychologically effective illusion, one that powerfully draws its audience in to suspend its disbelief, can make an impression that lasts a lifetime.

Which leads to an obvious question: If you are fighting for a cause — let’s say a good cause, like fighting poverty or discrimination, or helping to ensure a cleaner environment — to what extent is is ok to employ the principles of effective stage magic?

I’m not talking about making cards disappear. Rather, I’m talking about the ability to draw in an audience, to weave a compelling and emotionally engaging narrative, to move people to action through the sheer power of your performance.

Is it “cheating” to lean on such tools, rather than letting your good message speak for itself? Or is it in fact the opposite: That to effectively fight for a good cause, you need to use every rhetorical trick in the book?

We had a little family reunion today, and at dinner I ended up having a very nice conversation with my mom.

At one point she was describing her childhood, growing up in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants parents. She explained to me that for their time, her parents were very liberal and openminded, willing to entertain ideas about politics and society in a very forward thinking way.

I love hearing my mom’s stories, but at this point in the conversation I needed to stop her.

“I don’t mean to brag,” I said, “but as cool and liberal as your parents may have been, my parents were even cooler and more liberal.”

On my last day in Dublin, one of my hosts pointed out that both Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde attended Trinity College.

Which of course led me to ask the obvious question: If Count Dracula were to face off against Lady Bracknell in a fair fight, which one would emerge the victor?

As with most questions of this kind, we can never know for sure what the outcome would be. But I suspect the poor vampire wouldn’t stand a chance.

Being in a pub in Dublin, immersed in the sort of ambience of ancient tradition one does not find in New York, it was natural that the conversation with my friend this evening would turn to questions of antiquity.

And at some point I began to describe the 1957 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that I loved as a child, a cherished set of volumes which my mother had purchased, I believe, because it matched the furniture.

When I was eight, nine, maybe ten years old, I would pour over those volumes for hours at a time. Every evening I would choose one volume pretty much at random and do a deep dive.

My favorite topics where things that were no longer true — the nations that did not exist any more, the inventions that had ceased to be cutting edge, the scientific theories that had become hopelessly out of date.

Looking back on it now, I realize that what I loved most about those articles was the way they embodied a sort of time machine. “This is the way things are now”, they seemed to be saying, in a kind of etherial transmission from the past. They were a timestamp out of history, an up-to-date record of the no longer existent, a voice of Truth from a time now gone.

It is no longer so easy to have such an experience. Thanks to the internet, everything is now up-to-date. Yes, you can dig back through the archives of the Wikipedia, and discover the state of the world from an earlier time. But this is not easy to do, especially if you want a consistent snapshot, across a broad range of topics, from a specific moment in history.

Sometimes I miss my old time machine.