Category: crazy ideas

Wicked Problems

The subject of wicked problems is discussed in Rethinking Wicked Problems.

The following wicked problems in Israel contribute a lot of heat to the political discourse:

  • Place of religion in Israel (Israel as a state of Jews vs. Israel as a Jewish state).
  • Civil rights of Israeli Arabs vs. security of Jews by their being majority. By extension, dealing with the Palestinian refugee problem.
  • How best to help the hungry and poor in Israel.
  • Traffic accidents – human factors vs. infrastructure factors.
  • Balance of the right to make money by one’s efforts with the governance-distorting political clout caused by being very rich.

On the other hand, the problem of optimal management of the health system and health insurance does not appear to be a wicked problem.

The fabricated danger to Al Aqsa Mosque

The 2000 Al Aqsa Intifada erupted in Arab cities and villages in both Israel and the occupied areas. The theme was that the Jews want to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem – the third most sacred site to the Muslims.

Jews did not understand from where did this claim come. If any mosque were at risk due to conflicting religious demands, it would have been the Dome of the Rock, which stands at the location of the Temples of old times.

Bob Wallace’s How Propaganda Works is the best explanation to this phenomenon, which I read. The life of the Israeli Arabs has been relatively peaceful. Very few Israeli Arabs indulged in terrorism without first leaving Israel. Some sick leaders want to get them to fight the Jews, to make life in Israel more difficult than it is. To accomplish this goal, the Israeli Arabs need to be persuaded that the Jews are after something sacred to them.

To point out the inequality in standards of life, level of education in schools, electricity supply, disposal of sewage – is not enough – because those are problems which can be solved in few years once the will and pressure are there. Therefore, some grievance, which cannot be resolved because it was not based upon fact in the first place, had to be invented. Hence, the accusations that Jews want to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque.

See Preservation of Al Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim holy sites about sites important to the Muslim world, which are under Muslim control, and which are not preserved by the Muslims, to say the least.

Housing 100 billion humans on Earth – another take

More than a year ago, I wondered what modifications are needed on and in Earth in order for it to house 100 billion (1011) humans, without serious interference with other life forms.

X-SEED 4000: World’s tallest tower will house 1 million people falls short from being a full answer to such a question.  However, the costs and engineering complexity seem to approach those needed for construction of a space station housing this number of people.

Organizations need more people with leadership skills than you think

I would like to take issue with a point made in Why do we persist in trying to turn ourselves (and other people) into what we and they plainly are not?

The writer believes that only one or two leaders are needed to work with a very large number (tens or hundreds) of people. The following are counter-examples and counter-arguments.

  • A committee typically has between 5-10 members. It needs a leader to function effectively.
  • When an emergency, such as fire, earthquake or serious equipment malfunction occurs, there is not always time to bring the leader (assuming that the leader is not already busy putting out a fire elsewhere). At least one of the people dealing with the emergency needs to have leadership skills and be able to organize his colleagues as necessary to deal with the emergency.
  • People with leadership skills have also better team membership skills. They would support the current endeavor’s leader and make him more effective.
  • It is easier to restructure and expand the organization if external circumstances so require, if it already has high percentage of people with leadership skills.
  • People with genuine leadership skills would not indulge in petty politicizing to the detriment of themselves and their fellows.

Stephen Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science”

Few months ago, I at last bought my copy of “A New Kind of Science” by Stephen Wolfram (ISBN 1-57955-008-8). I expect to finish reading the entire book few months from now, and then go on to reading other books.

The book fulfilled my expectations of being interesting and intellectually stimulating book.

The first observation, which I made from reading the book was that Continue reading “Stephen Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science””

Responsible adult vs. lawsuit-happy childish

There are some countries, in which people are lawsuit-happy. USA is the notorious example. In such countries, whenever something bad happens to someone, he sues the nearest deep-pocketed individual or organization.

As a reaction, several organizations make laws restricting the freedom of people to take risks and do things. The organizations know that they cannot expect people to take responsibility for their mistakes.

The result is that even responsible people have their freedom limited. Because someone else was bruised and sued the organization for $2 million, you cannot take that shortcut way but have to walk the long way.

The problem is that people do not declare if they want to be treated as responsible adults or as irresponsible (but lawsuit-happy) children. My proposal is that each service provider shall register its clients as either childish or mature.

  • If you are childish, you are restricted, but can sue the organization for any slight wrongdoing.
  • If you are mature, you are expected to accept responsibility for whatever is happening to you. You may sue only at extreme circumstances.

People will declare how they want to be treated – as childish or as mature. The declaration for one organization is not related to declaration for another organization.

The distinction is by competence. For example, someone may want to be adult car driver yet childish scuba diver. Some organizations may want to provide more than two maturity levels (gradual steps from childish to mature). The declaration is not reversible – once you declared yourself as a mature adult, you cannot revert to being childish.

If you do not know if you can handle a situation, you may want the organization serving you to provide you with a self-test to help you decide if you want to be considered as childish or as mature in your dealings with the organization in question.

Needed: an USB socket in computer keyboards

I had a chat with , in which he told me about http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?perl. This Web page proposes that qwertyists and dvorakists, who program in perl, switch to yet another keyboard layout, which is optimized for this task.

The problem is that if someone, who trained himself to use a customized keyboard layout, needs to temporarily work with another computer, which does not already have his layout – he needs to mentally switch to the standard keyboard layout. Very difficult and highly error-prone.

A solution to the problem would be for people to carry around personalized keyboards. When they need to work on another PC, they plug their keyboard into it and start typing. This calls for standards, and for hardware+software design, which allows keyboards to be plugged and unplugged at any time.

A first step could be for a standard keyboard to provide an USB socket, which allows an user to plug in his own USB keyboard. When a customized keyboard (which, by the way, could be also a chord keyboard for very rapid text entry) is plugged in, the standard keyboard will just pass on the keycodes from the user’s customized keyboard to the PC.

Another problem, which the proposed USB socket in standard keyboards would solve, is that people, who need to use special keyboards due to motor disabilities, are no longer confined to the single PC provided to them at work with suitable keyboard.

How to say "my car was stolen"?

  • The bastards stole my car shortly before it was going to need overhaul!
  • My car succumbed to the charms of a car thief and eloped with him.
  • My car has been organlegged (inspired by Larry Niven).
  • I suspect that my car was enlisted to assist in a bank robbery.
  • My car was sold, in exchange for $0 and notification of the police, to a car thief.
  • The powers from the Guild of Car Thieves decided for me that it is the time to explore the antics of public transportation and my friends’ cars, as a passenger.

About having two ears and one mouth

According to Dale Carnegie, God gave humans two ears and only one mouth so that they’ll speak less and listen more.
For deaf people, it is two eyes vs. one mouth.
What about exterrestrials with two mouths and one ear? If they have a Dale Carnegie, he would have said to them that this is what they got because speech is cheap – they got two mouths – but listening is precious – they have only one ear for this.

Static vs. dynamic aspects of brain structure

There is a book called “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins, and it is about yet another theory of the human brain’s operation. The author pointed out several gaps in current researches in neurology and AI.

However, the book dealt with static aspects of the brain’s structure. It omitted the dynamics. In particular, the following points were not covered:

  1. Factors affecting formation, destruction and strength of synapses connecting two neurons to each other (see also: Hebbian learning).
  2. Growth of axons and dendrites – where do they prefer to grow?
  3. Initial wiring in a fetus’ brain.
  4. Existence and effect of any chemical means for non-local communication between neurons.
  5. How are new neurons created and how do they integrate into the existing network?

The only dynamic aspect of brain operation, which was dealt with by the book, was the firing pattern of neurons.