Ken's Blog

I was meeting with a student today, and we got on the topic of how the Internet can influence public opinion. The student was pointing out that people tend to believe what they hear if the source seems to be authoritative.

The key here is the phrase “seems to be”. As you probably know, seeming to be authoritative and actually being authoritative are two quite different things.

For example, organizations with lots of power, like large corporations, have many resources that they employ to create the appearance of being authoritative.

The student summed up the problem quite nicely. He said: “Unfortunately, people make a link between power and trustworthiness.”

To which I responded: “People who make a link between power and trustworthiness clearly are not following politics.”

I know I’m not supposed to discuss politics with students. But sometimes you just gotta say something.

Fortunately, the student knew exactly what I was talking about, and was in sad agreement.

I was having a conversation today with a colleague about the potential benefits or hazards of giving real-world rewards to learners. For example, you might think that it would be motivational to pay somebody in cash every time they did well on a test. But it’s complicated.

The situation can be described in terms of “playing a game”. When you practice the piano, or do a crossword puzzle, or engage in any other activity which challenges your brain, you are playing a kind of game.

You know you won’t receive any tangible rewards for solving that crossword puzzle, yet you do it anyway. Your reward is the intellectual challenge itself.

That’s why people usually don’t cheat on crossword puzzles. Of course you could just look up the answer, but then the challenge goes away. The entire enterprise would just become boring and pointless.

But if you pay somebody to do something, you are actually inviting them to play a different game. This new game might be called “How much money can I make by doing this?”

While the person is playing this new game, their goal is to win at the new game. So cheating at the first game no longer seems entirely pointless.

In fact, earning money by looking up the answers or some other loophole can be a very effective way to win at the new game of making money. The monetary reward isn’t exactly inviting people to cheat, but it might manage to remove the motivation to win at the first game, by effectively replacing that game with a different game.

Which is why paying somebody to score high on tests can actually backfire. You might just succeed in removing their motivation to learn.

And that would be a bad thing.

Success is problematic. As soon as you get something working well, you become nestled in a very comfortable plateau.

The tendency is to stay within the warm embrace of that plateau, savoring the sweet taste of success. But that, of course, is a trap.

Somehow, despite the siren call of successes safely achieved, you must row against the tide. Embrace the possibility of failure, be the agent of your own potential cataclysm.

Always, there must be risk. Without the possibility of failure, success is but a hollow victory.

Caffeine is most definitely a drug, albeit one that is apparently not terrible for you. Within twenty minutes after I drink my morning cup of coffee, my mood generally becomes one of elation, and I feel that I can accomplish anything I set my mind to.

This felling gradually fades over the course of the day. But while it lasts, it is awesome.

I also find that the chemical effects of a good aerobic workout are similar. And rhe combination of the two is unbeatable.

So my question for the day is this: Can a similar effect be achieved by entirely non-chemical means?

With proper training, can we will ourselves, using only our mind, to this sort of positive mental state? If so, that would be pretty darned awesome.

Recently I experienced a blackout. All of the power in our neighborhood went out for about a day.

At first it seemed incredibly inconvenient. You can’t use the electric stove, the washing machine, the dishwasher.

Lights don’t work at night, and you can’t charge your phone or your computer. The entire modern world seems to disappear before your eyes.

But after a while, I started to see the up side. Life gets simpler. You no longer run to the computer or to Netflix for distraction.

Natural light can be quite beautiful once you embrace it. Not being able to run to the computer for entertainment can be downright refreshing. Going to bed at an earlier hour actually feels great.

Eventually the power came back on and the lights were restored, along with all the modern comforts and conveniences. But somewhere in my mind, I miss that brief journey back to a simpler and more uncomplicated time.

There is an old saying that a great way to make someone feel good is to start hitting them on the foot with a hammer. The reasoning is that after you stop, the lack of pain will feel sooooooo good.

The stock market seems to be following that pattern. Consider the recent shenanigans of the U.S. president and the people around him who are pretending that he is not insane.

His actions in Iran suggest that he is working very hard to destroy the world’s economy. But now there is a temporary truce.

Mostly this means that the U.S. is not currently bombing little schoolgirls and other innocent people into oblivion, and therefore that the price of oil is no longer going through the roof. The peace may not last, but it’s something.

The stock market is acting exactly the way that you would if you were no longer being hit on the foot with a hammer. The sheer sense of relief is causing the market to soar.

I guess this is a good thing. But maybe it would have been better if there had been no hammering in the first place.

We look young in old photos
But we don’t look old in young photos

We drive on a parkway
But we park on a driveway

How can something be flammable
When it is also inflammable?

Nothing is better than having it all
Yet having it all is better than nothing

How can all of these things be true?

In the immortal words of Jules Feiffer:
We find that out, we find out everything.

Imagine that you are committed to avoiding the topic of an inconvenient scandal. You are so committed, in fact, that you are willing to go to war to change the subject.

You are willing to spend trillions of dollars and wreck the world’s economy, to bomb thousands of innocent people out of existence, even to destroy an entire civilization. Just so that people will talk about something else for a change.

Then your wife, of all people, gets people talking about the scandal again. After all of your hard work.

Wouldn’t you find that frustrating?

Today I asked the students in my VR class what they would want for future virtual reality or mixed reality devices. A lively discussion ensued, and they had many cool ideas.

But one theme emerged above all else: What they really want is not more power, but rather more social integration. They would rather have a true mixed reality device that looks like an ordinary pair of glasses, even if the graphical display is not perfect, than an ever more powerful yet clunky headset.

That makes sense to me as well. Technology that is actually used by millions of people is better than technology that is only used by a chosen few.

If I understand correctly, after our president criticized the pope for the cardinal sin of having empathy, The president then posted an AI generated image of himself.

When he was asked why the image seemed to portray him as Jesus Christ, he responded that he thought it was portraying him as a doctor. Which raises some interesting questions, when you look at the image itself.

Does he sincerely believe that this is how medicine is practiced? When you go to your doctor, does the doctor put on biblical robes and place one hand over your head to magically cure you?

If the president of the United States has a deep ignorance of how medicine works to the point where he doesn’t even have a 5-year-old’s knowledge of the subject, should he be running a country? Should he be commanding armed forces?

Should he be trusted with something as tricky as tying his own shoes? I leave it to you to decide these things for yourself.