Auxiliary Memory

Where Are You On The Handling Complexity Scale?

by James Wallace Harris, Monday, January 6, 2020

I like to think our minds are like the mixing boards you see in recording studios, with dozens of sliders, each for a different cognitive ability. Think of the autism spectrum as one slider, and artistic ability, spatial perception, and mathematics as other sliders. I’m not sure how many mental spectrums exist, but I’ve been thinking about a possible spectrum to consider – handling complexity.

It’s obvious some people handle complexity better than others. People who can’t handle complexity want everything to be black and white. To them, everything is binary – for/against, male/female, good/evil, theism/atheism, rich/poor and so on. These people seem to have made up their minds early in life and will defend their beliefs with great tenacity. It’s easier for them to build an array of defense mechanisms than it is to deal with complexity. Successful people handle complexity and thrive. However, if you can’t handle complexity can you recognize people who can?

Ever since Donald Trump was elected I’ve been trying to understand why people like him. My current theory is neither Trump nor his follows can handle complexity. Trump’s simplex approach to problems resonates with their own simplex relationship with reality, and they find that comforting.

Republicans have taken an ostrich’s head-in-the-sand, ass-in-the-air approach to complexity. Denying complexity is their great survival mechanism. However, to solve the world’s problem involves dealing with complexity. We need leaders who place high on the handling complexity scale.

Trump is low on the scale, seeing reality in terms of black and white. People like voting for candidates like themselves. We need to vote for people who are higher on the handling complexity scale than ourselves. But how do we pick people who have cognitive skills we can’t imagine? How do we pick a person whose solutions might not make sense to us?

One way is to judge how they’ve handled complexity in the past. Trump has zero political, diplomatic, or leadership skills. His businesses have very few employees. He has no handling of complexity skills at all. Millions of people voted for him because he handles complexity in the same way they do – which is at a simple gut-level.

Most people see the world with a binary vision. Most voters see the political spectrum as left and right. That’s incredibly simple-minded. Just seeing the world in a grayscale of 16 adds great complexity, but it’s still extremely low on the complexity scale. Remember when computers only had 16 colors and how bad computer games looked? At the time we thought it an amazing step up from black and white (or black and green) monitors. Then when graphic cards went to 256 colors images started to look somewhat realistic. It wasn’t until graphics cards could handle millions of colors did photographs begin to look realistic. (The above graphic is CGA, EGA, and VGA.)

People have an extremely difficult time juggling 16 variables. We embrace ideas like the Myers-Briggs scale, trying to pigeonhole people into 16 types. The Myers-Briggs scale has its appeal because it vaguely works — but does it really?

Take climate change. Its complexity is immense. Even computer models that track millions of variables can only paint a rough picture of what is happening. Simplex people prefer accepting a blowhard’s opinion on climate change who has no understanding of the complexity of climate change over scientists with supercomputers and billions of dollars worth of scientific measuring devices. Why? Because binary thinkers prefer binary solutions.

We can’t solve complex problems with binary solutions. We need an army of PhDs who have armies of supercomputers working with artificial intelligence to even begin to understand climate change. Why don’t we require such expertise from our politicians? Isn’t our country’s social/economic/political structure nearly as complex as the weather? Why don’t we expect all politicians to have PhDs in political science? Why shouldn’t the highest political jobs require the greatest political experience? Shouldn’t a president at least have the experience being a governor or senator, if not a whole lot more?

How can we possibly expect a person with no experience to succeed at a job that requires the most experience? How can we expect a person who has no ability to handle complexity to succeed in a job that requires the most understanding of complexity?

Only a simplex person would vote for another simplex person.

Think of it this way. Say you’re a betting person and want to win some money on a football game. There are two teams. One team consists of professional football players, and the other team is made up of regular guys who believe they can play football. Who’re you going to put your money on? Or imagine you need brain surgery. Who will you pick? The surgeon with the most experience, or some egotistic guy who thinks anyone can do brain surgery?

JWH

Thinking About the Future Without Making Resolutions

by James Wallace Harris, Thursday, January 2, 2020

This year I didn’t even try to make New Year resolutions. I can’t make myself do things just because I think I should do them. I can’t lose weight. I can’t stop wasting time. I can’t be more productive. I can’t want to go to the gym. I can’t make myself write that science fiction novel. I can’t make myself be a better person.

I’m reading a depressing book for a book club, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. Even though Wallace-Wells claims to be optimistic we’ll deal with climate change his litany of statistics and predictions are soul-crushing. The world has clogged arteries, COPD, an A1C of 9.3, and is grossly overweight, but like me, it can’t stick to any New Year’s resolutions either. There’s no chance humanity will give up excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and start exercising.

Even though we’re on the Titanic and see the iceberg we can’t alter our course. Does that mean the future is set in stone? Is it hubris to think we can pilot our personal and collective destinies?

I spent a good bit of time last year trying to understand Republicans. We can’t make any decisions about the future if we’re polarized by two views of reality. I’ve concluded there is a total failure of communication between liberals and conservatives, and like New Year’s resolutions, I should give up trying.

Now, this might all sound like I’m depressed, but I’m not. Even though I’m an atheist, I’ve always loved the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

The trouble is I keep thinking I can change more than I can. I guess that’s why they say wisdom comes with old age because I’m starting to realize the difference.

What I love doing is reading. I love figuring out how things function. I will continue to do that. I can easily study how things work while giving up trying to make them work differently. I need to swim with the current rather than against it.

I can change little things in my own life, but I think I’ve finally found the wisdom to know I can’t understand, communicate, or influence Republicans, which means we can’t do anything about climate change. I give up. Climate change is theirs, they own it.

For the rest of my life, I’m going to feel like those strange visitors from the future in “Vintage Season” by C. L. Moore who came to watch a terrifying event in our present. Readers always wonder why those visitors from the future don’t alter our fate, but if you reread the story enough…

JWH

2019 Year in Reading

by James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, December 31, 2019

This is the 12th year I’ve been doing these “Year in Reading” posts. They’re really written for my poor memory because I can’t imagine anyone caring about a list of books I’ve read. It’s a ritual where think about my reading habits and contemplate what I might want to read in the next year. At the end of last year I said, “Other than gorging on short science fiction, I’ll make no promises for 2019.” I think that’s the first time I’ve actually done exactly what I said I was going to do regarding my reading predictions.

This year I won’t list the books I’ve read. I’m being lazy because it takes a lot of work to create that HTML table. I’ve started using Goodreads to track my reading so here’s my 2019 summary for those who care. It’s much more visual anyway since it displays the list by the covers.

This year I read many anthologies and author collections of science fiction short stories. I’m guessing well over two hundred stories. I also read several books about the history of science fiction. I’ve separated my obsession with science fiction to another blog. I’m starting to wonder if I read too much science fiction, especially older science fiction.

What’s interesting is when I look over the books I read in 2019 the books that stand out the most weren’t science fiction. I’d have to say my novel of the year was The Overstory by Richard Powers. I was also very impressed with The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Picking my favorite nonfiction book is harder, so here’s my three-way tie:

Since I don’t feel like spending a lot of words on describing these books I thought I’d link to reviews that do:

I will say that I wish I could remember what’s in these books. It bothers me that I read intensely fascinating nonfiction books and then quickly forget it. I’ve written about this forgetting angst before. My best existential solution is to tell myself that feeling knowledgable about these subjects while I read them is good enough. This is my second reading of the Hugo Award-winning The World Beyond the Hill, and it’s already fading away. I hate that.

Quite often when I reread one of these Year in Reading posts I discover so many titles that I no longer recognize at all. And I’m not even talking Alzheimer’s forgetting, but merely mundane I’m-getting-old forgetting. Part of my problem is I chase too many squirrels. One comforting aspect of focusing on old science fiction this year is the feeling that I’m becoming knowledgable about something. It is a rather useless academic territory to claim, but at least it feels familiar when wandering around in the same small land.

I assume next year I will continue exploring deeper into the history of science fiction. However, I would like to broaden my reading somewhat. At the end of this year, I read A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan because several best-of-the-decade lists praised it. This literary fix-up novel (13 short stories that have connections) was far better written than any science fiction I read and does broaden my reading experience, but I’m not sure I cared. Still, I might try some more contemporary literary fiction in 2020.

I feel in my waning years that I need to specialize in a few subjects because I can’t maintain a coherent sense of a generalist. On the other hand, I am impressed by how many Jeopardy clues trigger lost facts to pop out of my head. There’s a jumble of knowledge in there, I just can’t organize or quickly access it.

More and more I’m impressed by people who can explain things in detail. The ability to quickly recall bits of information and string them together into a verbal narrative is a skill I envy. I’d love to be able to describe what I read in a coherent speech when my friends ask me about what I’ve been reading.

Next year when I read a book I truly admire I hope I will study it, write a concise summary, and then develop that into a little speech. I wonder if the act of preparing a micro-lecture will help me remember more?

JWH

A Tale of Two Angels

by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, December 25, 2019

This month I’ve watched two films about angels: The Bishop’s Wife (1947) and Wings of Desire (1987). I happen to be an atheist who enjoys movies about angels. Angels are a weird conceptual race of beings that constantly mutates for our fictional needs. In the old days, angels were not human or ever human and existed on another celestial sphere with God. They were God’s messengers in the Old Testament. Humans keep making up stories about angels changing them each time. In the forty years between The Bishop’s Wife and Wings of Desire, what the angels represent are starkly different.

Cary Grant plays Dudley in 1947. Bruno Ganz plays Damiel in 1987. By the way, Bruno Ganz died this year, so it was sad seeing Wings of Desire again. I believe this is the fourth or fifth time seeing The Bishop’s Wife.

With last night’s viewing, I started questioning Dudley’s role in the story. In modern times we think of angels as guardians. Dudley appears to Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) in answer to his prayer for help. Henry is troubled because he wants to build a cathedral and his primary doner wants to pull the plug unless Henry makes the cathedral a monument to her dead husband. Henry believes he’s doing divine work by building an edifice to God’s magnificent and doesn’t want it tarnished by such egotism.

But Dudley doesn’t seem interested in the cathedral. He’s interested in Julia (Loretta Young), the Bishop’s Wife. Last night, I began to wonder just how honest Dudley is in this film. He claims angels are the reason why people do good, implying they work behind us like puppeteers. But he also deceives humans. He arranges for Henry to get stuck to a chair so he can take Julia out. He tells Debby, Henry and Julia little girl, she can throw snowballs when she can’t, he makes boys magically show up for choir practice when they’ve obviously chosen to be elsewhere, and in the end, destroys Henry’s plans for the cathedral. Everywhere Dudley goes in this film, he pulls angelic wool over people’s eyes. Yes, they become happier, but they are still being deceived.

In the end, Dudley goes away and erases all memory of his visit. What has he changed? Will the happiness he arranged for Julia, Debby, and the old Professor continue in their life. Will Henry devote more time to Julia even though he’s been given another big job? Will Sylvestor the cab driver have as much fun with Julia and Henry as he did with Julia and Dudley?

Most of The Bishop’s Wife is depended on the charm of Cary Grant. Every last woman in this picture glows when Cary Grant is in the scene. We assume they feel the presence of an angel, but it appears they are all fawning over a hot guy.

For my last two viewings of The Bishop’s Wife, I’ve wished that David Niven played Dudley and Cary Grant played Henry. The casting was too obvious. They should have reversed the roles and made Grant and Niven act against type. The charm of the angel shouldn’t have been confused with physical beauty.

The Bishop’s Wife is a charming film if you don’t think about it too much. Basically, Hollywood puts two outstandingly beautiful humans together for us to watch. They added some Christmas decorations and an angel but in a philosophically iffy way. It’s not like It’s A Wonderful Life, where an angel merely shows George Baily how much good he accomplished in his life. I’m not sure we’re shown any human doing good in The Bishop’s Wife. Julie wants a husband that pays attention to her, the Old Professor wants to write his book. Henry wants to build a cathedral. None of the humans want to sacrifice for others, and the story implies we need an angel to give us what we want.

In Wings of Desire, the angels are all around us humans. We can’t see or hear them, except sometimes young children can. The angels are immortal and have been on Earth forever. They merely watch. In a way, the angels witness reality, and maybe even give it meaning by their observations. The angels feel great empathy for us and listen to our thoughts. And when they detect a particularly troubled human put a hand on the human’s shoulder. This seems to bring a slight sense of comfort, but that’s all. The angels don’t work magic. They just care.

Damiel eventually falls in love with Marion, a lonely trapeze artist and decides to become mortal. Marion has friends but can’t connect with them. However, this love story comes at the end of a long film, so most of the movie is about listening to people’s inner thoughts. Watching the movie makes us like the angels, we watch and listen, in other words, we get to be angels too. Wings of Desire is a very slow philosophical film. The film doesn’t work unless you have the empathy to feel for the suffering of the human characters.

Wings of Desire is a much more spiritual film than The Bishop’s Wife. However, it’s much harder to watch. I love The Bishop’s Wife because of nostalgia, but as a spiritual message, it is lacking. It leaves me unconsciously wishing I was Cary Grant scoring with Loretta Young. It makes me wish there was magic to solve any bothersome problem that might come up in life. The Bishop’s Wife feel-good nature comes from making us want to live out a Hollywood fantasy. It’s now making me question the value of a guardian angel. We should be better people from an inner drive and not an outer influence. Magic is corrupting. But then, we don’t see the evil of magic.

JWH

When The Future Has Become the Past

by James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Back in 1965, I read The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein. The story is about a guy named Dan Davis who invents a robot vacuum cleaner. The setting of the story begins in the year 1970 but the story itself was first published in F&SF in October 1956. So Heinlein was assuming a lot would happen in 14 years. Well, two things. One, household robots would appear in 1970, and cold sleep would be perfected so people could pay to be put into suspended animation. In 1965 when I read the book I thought both of these were still futuristic but hoped a lot would happen in five years. I wanted that future.

Not to spoil the story, but Dan decides to take cold sleep and wakes up in the year 2000 when his patents and investments should have grown into a magnificent pile of wealth. This lets Heinlein extrapolate and speculate even further into the future. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned by Dan. In his future, Dan invents Drafting Dan hoping to make another fortune.

What’s funny is I read The Door Into Summer in 1965 when everything in the book was set in the future and I’ve lived long enough so that the book is now set in the past. That’s very science fictionally existential. Essentially Heinlein imagines the Roomba and Autocad back in 1956. And the 1959 Signet book cover artist imagines we’ll be wearing spandex and capes. And even though some people do wear such garb today, it’s not an accurate guess about average Americans in the future. Wouldn’t it have been hilarious if that artist had imagined everyone wearing hoodies, shorts, t-shirts, and flipflops?

I remember back in the 1960s having so much hope for the future. It’s mind-blowing to me that next week I’ll be living in the year 2020.

There’s one thing I’ve learned from experience – the future is everything I never imagined. It’s almost as if I imagine something being possible that the act of thinking it cancels out the possibility.

There is no predicting the future. Science fiction writers never claim to have crystal balls, but sometimes they accidentally get things a tiny bit right. People are always thrilled at that. But imagine if Robert A. Heinlein had written a novel that perfectly captured the Donald Trump years and published it back in 1965. How would readers have reacted? Could they have believed it? Most people would have just brushed it off as crazy science fiction.

However, back in the early 1940s, Heinlein imagined the United States going through what he called the “Crazy Years” and later on experiencing religious fanaticism that leads to a theocracy. Quite often in the 1950s science fiction writers imagined the United States falling apart because of religious revivals convincing people to reject science. Doesn’t produce a tiny bit woo-woo soundtrack in your head?

Science fiction is never right about the future, but sometimes it feels a little eerie. Just enough to hear The Twilight Zone music. In 2019 I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction from the 1940s and 1950s. Those stories had a lot of hopes and fears about the future, a future that is now my past. That’s very weird. But it’s also strange how often they get just a little bit right. Just enough to put a little zing into the story.

By the way, The Door Into Summer is an entertaining novel I recommend and features a wonderful cat character, Pete, short for Petronius the Arbiter. Heinlein loved cats, so do I. Here’s how he said he got the idea for writing the story:

When we were living in Colorado there was snowfall. Our cat — I'm a cat man — wanted to get out of the house so I opened a door for him but he wouldn't leave. Just kept on crying. He'd seen snow before and I couldn't understand it. I kept opening other doors for him and he still wouldn't leave. Then Ginny said, 'Oh, he's looking for a door into summer.' I threw up my hands, told her not to say another word, and wrote the novel The Door Into Summer in 13 days.

And here is a 1958 ad for the book that is fun to read today when we can look back to when they were looking forward.

Yeah, I know it’s bizarre that I’m recommending you read a book set in the past that was supposed to be our future. However, it still features the sturdy standbys of storytelling, love, betrayal, greed, revenge, and of course, a cat.

Merry Christmas — JWH