Nathaniel

Nathaniel launched Difficult Run in November 2012 and ran the website alone until August 2013, when he invited the first Difficult Run Editors to join him in adding content to the site. Nathaniel has a background in math, systems engineering, and economics, and his day job is in business analytics. His real interests are science fiction, and theology, however. He is an avid runner, but not a very fast one. He is married to fellow DREditor Ro and they have two little children. In addition to Difficult Run, Nathaniel blogs regularly for Times And Seasons and writes a lot of reviews on Goodreads.

How the World Really Works

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Institutional stupidity is the bane of modern human existence. As a customer, a citizen, a soldier, or an employee we all deal with organizations that behave in such a mindbogglingly idiotic fashion that it’s a wonder they survive. And yet they do. Why is that? Why is it that people in groups seem to be so much dumber than individuals? What happens to the wisdom of the crowd when you give them all cubicles?

Scott Adams’ Dilbert cartoons: one of the extremely rare known positive consequences of institutional stupidity.

As it turns out, there’s an answer. It’s not that people are dumb. It’s that they are doing work that they don’t really care about. 

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Podcast with A Thoughtful Faith

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Micah Nickolaisen enjoyed the series of posts that I wrote for Times and Seasons about epistemic humility, so he asked if I’d like to do a podcast for A Thoughtful Faith. After I got over the surprise that someone wanted to do a podcast with me, I said sure and the week before last we had a nice conversation.

If you liked the Times and Seasons articles, or if you missed out on them but are curious about epistemic humility, then please give this podcast a listen.

Air Pollution in Beijing is Crazy Scary

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You may have heard that air quality in Beijing is hitting an all-time, low. Here are the photos to prove it.

Natural-color satellite image of Beijing from Jan 3, 2013. Normal levels of pollution.

For reference, the photo above is from before the spike in pollution. Now, here’s what Beijing looked like on Jan 14, 2013 during the middle of the smog spike:

Natural-color satellite image of Beijing from Jan 14, 2013 showing the extent of the air pollution.

The US has its own sensors at their embassy, and so we can get some idea of just how bad the air quality really is. According to the article at NASA, Beijing had 291 micrograms of fine particulate matter (tiny particles small enough to get into the passageways of your lungs) per cubic meter of air. The safe level is considered to be 25. The air quality index at the time of the second satellite image was 341, while anything above 100 is considered dangerous to all human beings (not just those already sick), and a level of below 50 is considered healthy. That’s bad enough, but the peak was actually on Jan 12 (two days before the second satellite image) when there were 886 micrograms per cubic meter and the AQ was 775, which isn’t even on the scale the EPA uses.

Artist Creates Anti-Drone Stealth Hoodies

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Last year, British artist Adam Harvey created a line of facial makeup that can be used to foil face-recognition cameras. This year, he has created  a line of sweatshirts with thermal-blocking materials designed to hide people from drones.

According to the article:

Wearing the fabric would make that part of the body look black to a drone, so the image would appear like disembodied legs. He also designed a pouch for cell phones that shields them from trackers by blocking the radio signals the phone emits. For those airport X-ray machines, he has a shirt with a printed design that blocks the radiation from one’s heart.

Obviously the sweatshirts can’t make people invisible (not without cooking them by trapping all the thermal energy), and so I’m not sure if the hoodie is supposed to trick automatic tracking or just make people harder for human operators or drones to track, but with permits for domestic use of drones passing in the US it’s no wonder that libertarians and privacy activists believe it’s time for a little push-back.

It’s also interesting to think that the odd styles imagined by science fiction writers might emerge in part as a kind of arms race between surveillance states and their citizens. If only a few  people wear clothes or makeup like this, they will stand out. But if they actually gain even moderate acceptance, then we’ll be off to the races.

The Pursuit of Happiness Occludes Happiness

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Viktor Frankl

There’s a great article from The Atlantic which ties into the recent piece I wrote about euthanasia and hedonism. And it quotes Viktor Frankl extensively, so there was no way I was not going to link to it. It turns out that the perspective of pleasure / pain (happiness) on one axis and meaning on another now has some research to back it up:

In a new study, which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology, psychological scientists asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness, and many other variables — like stress levels, spending patterns, and having children — over a month-long period, the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a “taker” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a “giver.”

“Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided,” the authors write.

I had a really hard time picking just one quotation because the article is so full of good observations, so definitely check it out to read more.

Notre Dame: A Genuine Example of Rape Culture

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Salon has a really sad article contrasting all the coverage of the bizarre story of Manti Te’s hoax girlfriend–an imaginary dead girl–with  the very real death of Lizzy Seeberg:

Less than a day into the Manti Te’o revelations, we’ve heard more about a fake dead girlfriend of a Notre Dame football player than a real dead girl. Lizzy Seeberg committed suicide, not long after being intimidated by Notre Dame football players for reporting a sexual assault by one of their teammates. A second woman who was taken to the hospital for a rape exam declined to formally accuse another Notre Dame football player after getting a series of bullying texts from players.

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AutoRip: Another Reason Record Labels Suck

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Amazon recently announced a service that would have been cutting edge in 1999. AutoRip lets you buy a physical CD and automatically get sent the MP3 files to go with it. Why didn’t someone think of this in the last century? Someone did. Michael Robertson started companies to offer this service in 1999, 2005, and 2007. Each and every one was torpedoed by the industry (with the occasional help of incompetent courts). Turns out some kind of stupid are just beyond helping.

Michael Robertson, whom I imagine saying, “I told you so!”

Read the ArsTechnica article for more of the sad story, and some excellent quotes from Robertson.

Pictogram Movie Posters

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See a collection of movie posters for famous movies based on pictogram representations of their plots. The posters range from the humorously simple:

Did they really need a title for this one?

To complexity that might be a little confusing if you don’t remember the movie pretty well:

I think I understand all of this one, but it took me a minute or two.

Check out the full list here.

Don’t Blame This Man (For Your Lost Cell Phone)

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The Las Vegas Journal-Review has an interesting article about what happens if Sprint decides to use the GPS coordinates for your home as the reference point for GPS navigation in your area. The answer includes numerous middle-of-the-night interruptions from people with phone-locating software who are convinced you have their device. Oh, yeah, and lots more interaction with the neighborhood cops than you might otherwise have.