I trust technology numbers. In fact I understand that strict adherence to numbers and the rules surrounding them is what makes technology possible. Failure to properly use those numbers leads to failure and _ at worst _ explosions where they are not wanted.

But at the same time I heavily mistrust social numbers. Each human is unique, almost every human situation and event is also. Trying to tell me about the average person or the average tribe or the average society is a lesson in futility.

Yet people continue to think that can be done. After all, computers and cars work. Let’s use the same technique and build Utopia!  So far, technocracy fails badly.

Social numbers rely too much on average and statistics. That is always suspicious. If five people are dead and five are alive that does not mean that on average each is half alive. If one person has $1,000, 1 has 0, and 10 others have $1 each, they do not each have an average of $100 each. Telling me that “people who relax are more effective” is useless. The details can be presented in so many ways.

In fact, most social technology is prejudice seeking supporting evidence. 

Manipulating numbers is always fun _ medieval theologians did it with angels on pins and biblical generations. But it can be a dangerous game if applied to the other people with whom we exist.

A “culpable victim”, I suppose, is one who is somehow responsible for his injury. Mostly we fret over all the “innocent victims,” especially in war, who presumably had nothing to do with what happens to them and just were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

But it gets sticky. We are all prisoners of our fate. Most societies are somewhat cohesive, and they are led by elites that control how they react. And, like individuals, societies are also subject to outside random forces. By the rules of the universe, we are all innocent victims, affected by plague and famine, and _ yes _ war. 

It’s been a conceit of modern civilization that we are beyond all that, that someone is now in control. But that “someone” must be in the elite, and the elite are embedded in the population, and therefore the whole society is hardly “innocent.” More to the point, those innocents support the strength of the elite if only by living and contributing to the society. A “good German” was supporting the Nazi war effort even if all she did was grow a garden and sit quietly at home.

The real culprit is overreaction. It’s easy to end crime in a city by dropping a nuke. Lots of innocent victims, but also eliminate the guilty and those who even implicitly supported them.

A true civilization tries to understand and moderate the complexities of innocence.

We seem to be losing that naive hope once more.

Were I a young man, I would be rushing to develop an AI app which could give me a quick evaluation of how sane some comment or question is. Not, mind you, “truth”, but just common sense-wise. 

Ideally it would only be trained on academically accepted reliable sources, like Wikipedia or encyclopedia Britannica. Then it could be fed statements, or questions or whatever and would respond with a common sense analysis.

At one level, it would simply give a few words. “I don’t know”, “impossible”, “unlikely”, “maybe”, “almost certainly”, “definitely”. Just like your mom. 

At the next level perhaps a paragraph or two explaining why it reached that conclusion. And finally, perhaps, a reference to the sources it used. 

I’d want it to answer complex questions “can you walk barefoot on burning coals without being burned”, “will a guilty person sink in water.” As well as stupid ones “can you live forever by eating jade”, “why did the chicken cross the road.” 

Could it do it, I think.  Common sense is basically weighted logic, contradiction, and unknowables factored into reliable axioms. So why not? 

I’d sure like to see someone try as soon as possible. Common sense seems to be in short supply among the current batch of RI (real intelligence) humans. 

Logic is a handy tool to tie things together, but it can be easily misused. Such as by assuming conclusions then using all evidence to support them. Just as a Spanish Inquisitor could justify any evil by referring to his inflexible beliefs: a witch, a Jew, or Muslim could only be saved in the eternal long run by torturing and killing them now. 

A more relaxing example is Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss, so like us in believing that everything happens for good reason in this “best of all possible worlds.” I am reminded of him every time the news presents us with yet another victim of a disaster who dazedly claims how lucky or blessed they are to be alive.

We’re good at constructing story narratives of the meaning of our lives. Logic ties together events real and visionary into a tough fabric of belief. But… 

At least the Spanish Inquisition had only a few models of what was “real truth” to choose from. Today there are a myriad of possibilities, still including all kinds of gods, but also conspiracies and any wild vision developed on the media. 

I’ve tried to immunize myself a little by pitting intuition against logic. Trusting intuition is out of fashion, but I refuse to believe that eating this or not eating that matters much in spite of TV news. I would also hope that such an attitude would have helped me avoid cheering torture now for the later good. 

The last few centuries have been the era of mass standardized production. Artisans were replaced by industrialization that commodified just about everything to a basic pattern. But perhaps that is about to change.

There will, of course, always be standard commodities as long as our current civilization survives. Automation can increasingly produce most of them with minimal intervention. These will no doubt continue at the core of wholesale raw materials. Flour and cotton cloth, for example.

But the final consumer product can quite likely be taken over by individualized targeting relying on individual stored preferences. Already patterns can be transferred onto most goods automatically by machine monograms, pictures, etc. Clay can be shaped to make, for example, individualized pottery sets based on historic AI specifications. 3D printing can vary almost any product in the same way. 

Even though it may not be as instant as we have become used to, I suspect most of these individualized orders will be completed in a few weeks. 

Not that it will make more than a faddish difference to anyone. Just another creeping change that will make our descendants wonder why we were always willing to live with the same identical, boring, purchases.

Entranced as we are by scientific technology, numbers have taken on the aura of holy writ. “Numbers don’t lie,” supposedly profound thinkers chant. We often plan to base decisions on numerical analysis.

But numbers are, in fact, imaginary. The number “one” has no more existence than the “root of minus one.” Because numbers only have power when applied to objects or concepts. Our definition of those attributes can be fuzzy indeed.

“Wait! If I say I have one apple it means something, right?” It’s one less than two, at least. But well what about one piece of fruit, or one shiny red delicious apple as opposed to one good and one rotten one. We need to define and define and define, often beyond the bounds of common sense.

And that is where “by the numbers” becomes unglued. It is great for general estimation, as long as we remain aware of the definition pitfalls. But as a culture most people find that too hard, and the ones who need to sell something are quite willing to fudge to the point of lying.

I’m obviously not against the concept of numbers. I just think their “truth” in any given situation should be open to severe questioning.

And as soon as anyone tries to influence me with social analysis “by the numbers” I become suspicious. It’s not only “statistics” _ numbers themselves can lie convincingly.

One of the things I have pondered over the years is what I would have done had I been living in Germany in the 1930s. Like many of the population then, I am fairly intelligent, well-educated, and social. Would I have resisted the horrors, or become just another “good German?”

We used to call it the “big lie” but Nazism was truly a religious cult. The “master race” was being suppressed from its destiny of ruling the world by hoards of inferior people led by a secret cabal of evil, subhuman, Jews. 

Phrased so bluntly that sounds silly, but many Germans believed it wholeheartedly, most thought it contained at least a grain of truth, and more than a few considered it a social fad which would fade, like so many others. Aristocrats and the military thought they could use it to regain power and prestige, until they were forced to become acolytes themselves or were crushed.

I was taught that it could never happen in America, a melting pot vibrant democracy. I used to believe it. But the rise of the authoritarian religious Republicans has me facing my old questions. Their cult chant now is that if anyone has troubles, they are victims, and the evil godless intellectual elite are responsible and are leading subhuman socialists to destroy all that is good and holy.

Phrased so bluntly … etc …  America has no aristocrats, but plutocrats and the military/police complex think they can use it to gain power and prestige. They plan to control it. Maybe. 

I vote dutifully, but I know I have no power. Many of those around me are cultists already, and they will not allow argument to their holy slogans. I tend my garden and hope for the best. 

I remain _ or have turned into _ a “good American.”

In my corporate salaried days we were frequently directed to strip down our duties and become a “lean, mean, fighting team.” Hogwash even then, more irrelevant as the bloat of recent years traded hours of free time for extravagant boondoggles at the workplace. 

The advice was always misguided. Being lean and mean, hungry and anxious, has never been the best condition even for wildlife. You are prone to hasty and stupid decisions focused on the short run rather than any better long-term options.

Of course, “bloated and cheerful” has never been much admired by this society. Which is kind of amazing because, of course, a lot of us are usually very happy and too often bloated _ in body, possessions, or passions. But it is not seen as a goal to strive towards.

The true goal in a sane life, I think, is rather to be optimally conditioned and emotionally balanced. Neither doing nor being too much or too little. That is difficult, the top of a hill from which it is all too easy to descend.

I’m no guru and my particular balance always requires adjustment. Sometimes too lean, sometimes too bloated, taking on or throwing away all the time to maintain equilibrium.

But I admit that in this possessive consumer culture, my house is witness to the problems of stripping down as much as I probably should.

There are many ways to judge a work of art. I think the most important, but nearly independent, scales are: concept, impact, and execution. A true connoisseur focuses almost exclusively on execution, particularly the artisanship involved.

For a casual audience, it is impact that counts. And this is exactly similar to the effects of nature _ a sunset or a stormy ocean. For intellectuals, the concept overrides almost everything. But the connoisseur recognizes difficulty and workmanship and compares those to other known masterpieces.

For those not know, swooning over tiny and usually unnoticed or even irrelevant details is quite tiresome. They often see those who do so as bores at best, snobs at worst.

However, I believe that being a connoisseur is a way to become close to an artist, particularly a great artist. The work’s concept is certainly important, its impact depends on circumstance. But understanding how well something is accomplished, how hard a thing is to do, how much actual handicraft is involved, is very similar to actually doing that something oneself. 

Today, in art as in all activities, much can be conceived with little effort, given impact with instant fads. A connoisseur feels a deeper satisfaction in what can be truly appreciated for how well it has been done. 

I am constantly amazed at the inconsistency of political theory. For example, those who most strongly deny that social issues in the past have any influence on the present are often those who glorify the role of parents in their own past.

None of us choose when and how we are born. No humans would be here if an asteroid had not wiped out the dinosaurs. I was privileged to be instantiated into a wonderful time and place. I had nothing to do with that, and I will accept no guilt.

But I do believe that society should help those in less fortunate circumstances. Children especially need to be helped a great deal.

After that _ well, I am not so sure. I understand that some people are geniuses, some work better and harder than others, some are just lucky. Society is usually enriched, and those folks should be rewarded. 

But luck affects us all, and sometimes those who most affect society are not particularly virtuous nor constructive. Typically they lack empathy for chunks of the population. But all firmly believe that they are not slaves of any past.

I have embraced all I was and all those who helped and recognize situations and luck in my life. I also think I lived well and worked hard and helped a little. I used my past adequately.

Mostly I recognize how complex the world is, and how all political slogans are simplistic and wrong. Creating slaves to the present.