Transcendental Generalization

It’s All About Perspective

Anushka got me thinking about where true and lasting happiness is to be found. I think the answer is: in your own choice of perspective. Our choice of perspective allows us to determine, at every moment, our place on the continuum between joy and despair.

A close friend once told me that whenever he feels depressed, he thinks of people less fortunate than himself, and that takes away his depression. Though it may seem cliche, this advice is true and powerful. I am reminded of people like Jim Carrey, who suffered through depression to become a famous comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, another comedian who had lousy parents, and Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor. These are all examples of people who successfully changed their perspective to find humor or happiness under the most unhappy circumstances imaginable.

Adopting the “attitude of gratitude” is a key to health and happiness. It changes our perspective from the selfish

“I’m disappointed for not getting everything I believe I deserve.”

to the grateful

“I may not deserve all the things I have, but I’m grateful for them.”

The attitude of gratitude is a way to suck happiness out of the environment, no matter how unhappy it may seem on the surface.

It has been said that “Prayer may not change things for you, but it can change you for things.” Certain prayers cause us to think through the important and valuable things in our lives. These are made in the attitude of gratitude. They can make us happier without supernatural intervention. By the same token, prayers recited from the selfish perspective naturally will make us unhappy.

In the next part, I’ll talk about why we don’t always choose happiness.

Having seen countless good and bad PowerPoint presentations and produced several of my own, I wanted to publish what I consider the most important rules of PowerPoint presentations.

1. Respect your audience. Once, I was part of a group that was refining several presentations for a conference. Upon seeing one slide rich with data, the leader of the group told the author to “dumb it down” to only the “takeaway bullets”. When I asked why, his response was that the data would confuse and overwhelm the audience. In retrospect, I am firmly on the side of Edward Tufte. Do not treat your audience with contempt, like idiots with miniscule attention spans. Do not insult their intelligence by forcing your conclusions down their throats. Instead, lead them to those conclusions by presenting complete data transparently and describing your reasoning.
2. Minimize the number of words on each slide. This has to be the most common problem I see with PowerPoint presentations. Usually, it is because the presenter is too lazy to produce separate speaker notes and documents for the audience to take away, in addition to the slides. So he ends up with a single file intended for multiple purposes: to remind him of what to say, to supplement what he says, to give members of the audience a record of what he said, and to give people who couldn’t attend the presentation a useful substitute. During the actual presentation, the presenter either reads what is written on the slides, which is a useless waste of time, or says something slightly different, in which case the slide distracts the audience from the speaker and the speaker distracts the audience from the slide.

   One reason people do this is that many of us learned our presentation skills in school before PowerPoint was even invented. We were taught to prepare an outline and then index cards and then deliver a speech. PowerPoint lends itself very well to this approach. But we were never taught to blow up our index cards into posters or project them on the screen, so why do we do it? The only answer I can think of is that the modern conventions of presentations demand a screen full of something while we are talking.

   Putting too many words on a PowerPoint slide has one other problem: the more words there are, the smaller they must be to fit, making them harder to see. Each line of text becomes longer, straining the eyes as they move over it.

   Replace words on slides with pictures or illustrations. Don’t describe it–show it! The human visual system can absorb a picture far more rapidly than a passage of text, and the audience can then attend to the speaker. Another great technique is simply to blacken the screen for sections of the presentation that are primarily oral. Perhaps the conclusion is: “Less is more.” whether you consider the number of words on each slide or the number of slides in the presentation.

   An interesting variation on this theme is the famous presentation on Identity 2.0 by Sxip CEO Dick Hardt. Here, the slides contain a few words at most, and serve to emphasize the speaker’s words.

3. Use subtle effects intentionally. PowerPoint makes it far too easy to put dramatic colors, fonts, transitions and animation effects in your slides. Presenters often use these as a crutch because their presentation lacks emotional appeal. Avoid these except when the effect itself serves to communicate, and choose subtle effects.
4. Three E’s: Engage or draw people’s attention to your presentation. Entertain them so they feel the time spent was worthwhile and enjoyable. Educate them so they go away with something valuable they didn’t previously have.
5. Practice practice practice.

In a previous post, I described the joy I derive from crystallizing the model of a system. This joy is described lightheartedly in Neal Stephenson’s novel, Cryptonomicon:

For each stop…there was a separate row of pipes, arranged in a line from long to short. Long pipes made low notes, short high. The tops of the pipes defined a graph: not a straight line but an upward-tending curve. The organist/math teacher sat down with a few loose pipes, a pencil, and paper and helped Lawrence figure out why. When Lawrence understood, it was as if the math teacher had suddenly played the good part of Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor on a pipe organ the size of the Spiral Nebula in Andromeda…In particular, the final steps of the organist’s explanation were like a falcon’s dive through layer after layer of pretense and illusion, thrilling or sickening or confusing depending on what you were. The heavens were riven open. Lawrence glimpsed choirs of angels ranking off into geometrical infinity.

A friend of mine reacted with some surprise when I told him of my love for the novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Apparently, some people simply can’t get past the fact that it uses the N word numerous times. Or, they are afraid that others will start using the word after reading the book. In my opinion, only a very simple mind would draw the wrong conclusion, from reading this novel, that the N word is perfectly acceptable to use in casual modern conversation. One beautiful aspect of the novel is that its language and style renders it inaccessible to such simple minds. Unfortunately, the novel has frequently been banned for its use of offensive language.

The use of the N word is perfectly justified by the author’s desire to express accurately the colloquial language of a certain time and place. Never does the narrator himself use offensive language—only realistic characters do. This raises another beautiful aspect of the novel: it captures the bittersweet entirety of provincial Mississippi River life, conveying its pastoral charm without glossing over the horrible injustices of slavery and racism.

It has been said that in every good novel, the protagonist undergoes a change or transformation. What makes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn truly great is the profound transformation its protagonist undergoes. Huck uses reasoning and his personal moral compass to shatter his own indoctrination in the institutional racism of the 19th-century South. The critical passages are copied below.

And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s ni**er that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you there that people that acts as I’d been acting about that ni**er goes to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that ni**er’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie — I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter — and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway ni**er Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

HUCK FINN.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking — thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell” — and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

These words give me goosebumps and bring tears to my eyes. Huck is initially shown as a product of his environment, possessing both pastoral charm and racism in his personality. At this critical juncture, he makes the right choice in his heart, evacuating his prejudice with relief like a difficult bowel movement. No doubt there is much injustice left to remedy in Huck’s world, but it must start with the change of heart and mind spelled out here. In this passage, Twain shows that nurture, religion, ignorance, and poverty are poor excuses for prejudice, while honest soul-searching is sufficient to cure it.

I like to think that Twain’s portrayal of historical Mississippi River life has the power to lure modern-day white supremacists to a similar transformation. They may long for the good old days of slavery, or react with glee at language considered offensive today. This passage gives me hope that their hearts and minds might be changed for the better.

A key aspect of Web 2.0 is tagging, the ability of people to assign keywords to web resources, be they del.icio.us favorites, Flickr photographs, blog entries, or YouTube videos. Tagging facilitates personal indexing, for retrieval of items based on a word with a familiar relationship. Tagging also facilitates group or social indexing, letting me retrieve items based on what others believe a word is related to.

One limitation of tags is that they are single words only. If I want to tag something “semantic web” then I must either assign two separate tags or assign a compound tag like “semantic-web,” “SemanticWeb,” or “semantic_web”. When using the tag, I must remember the specific compound tag. Otherwise, I am likely to retrieve the union of items tagged “semantic” with items tagged “web”.

del.icio.us provides recommended tags based on how others have tagged a URL. This is helpful both as a voting mechanism (I agree that the tag applies) as well as providing me insight into how large numbers of others perceive the URL.

By using both mechanisms, I have ended up with a large number of tags in del.icio.us. It then becomes tempting to “consolidate” some of my tags which seem to differ only superficially (e.g. in capitalization or “www” vs. “web”). It also becomes tempting to eliminate some tags that I chose because they were recommended, but which still are not meaningful or helpful to me.

It also becomes tempting to organize tags into hierarchies, like “domestic,” and “international,” as sub-tags under “travel”.

These are issues of knowledge representation. Experts in artificial intelligence have grappled with them for thirty years or more. It seems an unfortunate failure of that field that a solution is not well-known. However, it is interesting to see them play out and be addressed on a massive and public scale.

The promise of accumulating certain things, and the threat of losing those things seems to spur people to action:

• Money
• Status
• Respect
• Fame
• Power (more specifically, entitlement over the fate of resources and people)
• Relationships
• A feeling of accomplishment, of having made a difference
• Moral superiority, being proven good
• Being proven right, being able to say “I told you so.”
• Unique, special contribution

नेहाभिक्रमनाशोस्ति प्रत्यवायो न विद्यते |
स्वल्पमप्यस्यधर्मस्य त्रायते महतो भयात ||४०||

Translation

Here there is no destruction of effort; harmful effects do not occur
Even a little of this dharma delivers [one] from great fear

Interpretation

Your efforts in this practice cannot be reversed. It produces no harmful effects.
Even a little of this practice saves you from great fear.

Commentary

This verse promises the following:

• there is such a thing as a small incremental effort in pursuit of this yoga,
• there are immediate benefits,
• the benefits are permanent, and
• there are no unexpected harmful side effects.

This should be contrasted with any practice in which

• a large and difficult effort is required for benefits to be realized,
• mistakes are costly, and
• earned benefits can later be taken away.

Indeed, the practice of warfare itself has these defects, so the promises are distinctly appealing to Arjuna in his context. In his commentary on this verse, Swami Chinmayananda refers to Krishna tongue-in-cheek as a “publicity agent for his own philosophy” and referring to the problems in the prospect’s current context is certainly good salesmanship.

I am reminded of this verse whenever I come across “good” habits. The best habits are those that create monotonically increasing and permanent benefits. Certain practices lack dynamic equilibrium, meaning that perfect execution is beneficial but small variations in their execution may lead to failure and/or harm. The best habits possess dynamic equilibrium: small variations in their practice produce little or no variation in their benefits, and these variations lead us toward superior practice.

John Schiech, President of DeWalt was asked what made his company so successful. His answer:

It’s engineers and marketing product managers spending hours and hours on job sites talking to the guys who are trying to make their living with these tools.

pennsylvania home heating oil prices test

I was saddened a few mornings ago to hear of the death of Arthur C. Clarke, one of my (and, indeed, the world’s) favorite science fiction authors. When I first read 2001: A Space Odyssey as a sixth-grader, its ending baffled me. Only later did I appreciate (with the help of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation) its inspiring vision of human evolution. His short story, The Nine Billion Names of God is etched in my memory for the connection it draws between scientists and mystics.

Clarke enriched literature with the awesome grandeur possible and accessible in scientific discovery.

• NPR’s remembrance
• Wikipedia entry
• SciFan’s list of his books.
• Will Rendezvous with Rama make it to the big screen in 2009?

This post (”We’re Screwed”) complained about the tough times Americans are in for, if the price of gasoline continues to rise as rapidly as it recently has. As Liz correctly points out, public transportation has given Europeans low-cost (and lower-pollution) alternatives to cars requiring expensive gas (”petrol”). Reduced dependence on automobiles also seems to improve social ties. Most places in America lack such a transportation system.

One reason Americans avoid public transportation, even in cities that have good systems, is that it requires considerably more walking (and pushing strollers and pulling luggage) than they are accustomed to. (Walking is good for you. Perhaps the rising price of gasoline will have the beneficial side effect of reducing epidemic levels of obesity in America?) However, this difficulty arises from the newness of these systems more than anything else. In cities like New York and Washington DC, shops and services have had time to cluster naturally around stops and hubs, thereby reducing walking distances.

In Portland, urban planners have created incentives for such clustering, with controversial results.

Unfortunately, this means most Americans are in for tough times in the near term: either they pay for gas or they drastically alter their lifestyles and activity levels to adopt public transportation.

I have learned to explain drastic changes as the popping of economic bubbles.  The recent drastic change in the price of gas suggests that the price of gas has been held artificially low in the US. That may not be true, but I have yet to find a definitive answer for why gasoline is considerably more expensive, per unit volume, outside the US (e.g. $5/gallon in India this past December). A friend suggested that other countries simply tax gasoline at higher levels than the US does. If you have a solid reference validating or invalidating this, then please let me know.