Empirical and Analytical

 This is an interesting area as you will soon see in this blog.

I have always been a strong advocate for the "analytical" approach to education.  The reason being that as things change in the world, you can still apply your "analytical" knowledge to the new situations.  By comparison if your skills were only based on "empirical" knowledge, you would have to learn a new empirical solution to your new problem.  That means that you could solve totally new problems with the application of your "analytical" knowledge, thus your "analytical" knowledge would be timeless while your "empirical " knowledge would be out of date.

I have always advocated the "analytical" approach to education as being the most economical solution, because you only have to pay for it once or learn it once.  In the case of "empirical" knowledge, you have to keep paying.  This problem is even more serious now, as the world starts to change much faster.  A few hundred years ago, the economy and jobs changed very slowly, but not now.  It is not uncommon for a person who is only 35 years old to have ready had fire or more jobs, while their father may have had only  two or three.in a life time   I think you can see the significance of this point.

This brings me to my important point and that is about computers.  People have always been divided into at least two groups.  Those who operate on empirical knowledge and those who operate on analytical knowledge.  I think you followed my explanation above .  Here is the point.  When it comes to using a computer, it is 99% empirical.  That is the use of a computer does not follow any "natural laws".  It is all empirical to the user.  That means that it was an invention of some human alone and as such most of your analytical knowledge is worthless.  This may not be true for those who designed the computers, but we know that 99% of the users of computers have no idea how they are made or even need to know.

I do not associate with many who are empirical people so when I do it can be a shock.  I had a recent encounter and here is how it turned out.  I asked a simple question to the person which was. "What if you were in kindergarten and wanted to ride the teeter tauter and there was a big fat person on the other end?"  "What would you do?"  This person was at a loss for how to handle the situation. They said that they would just not ride the teeter-tauter.   I know for a fact that most 5 year old's have solved this problem by asking the fat person to move closer to the center.  Why is it that a 5 year old would know what to do and an adult would not?

Back to the computers.  The reason that so many people go around with their thumbs pushing the buttons on their phones and  PC's is that most of us humans are empirical people who deal with life as a recipe or as a protocol as with our many doctors today?  Given that Darwin changes the basic human very slowly, maybe computers are just the thing that we need for the future. 

Responsibility

 How about a little "Responsibility"?  We hear all kinds of talk about saving the planet from Carbon Dioxide, but we never hear about individual "Responsibility".  Why is that?  I will expand in this blog.

It really comes down to us as individuals.  Even our democracy is part of our individual responsibility. Those we elect are supposed to represent our average individual decisions.  Why don't we all just do the right things from the beginning and put those who we elect out of business?  We could if we were individually responsible.  To save the planet for our children and grandchildren, all we would need to do is to act responsibly.  How hard could that be?  As individuals, we could not only act in the right way, we could put social pressure on those around us to also act responsibly.  

That brings me to my important point and that is exactly what are all those "responsible" things that we should be doing and expect from others?  Here is my list.

(1)  People should not be allowed to have children out of wedlock.  There are responsible communities around the world that have "zero" percent of their children out of wedlock so it could not be that difficult to expect those around us to also act responsibly. 

(2)  People who are not high school graduates should not be allowed to have children.  This is about the least we could do for children.  Rather than just provide food and clothing, why don't we require the parents to be "responsible"?

(3)  We know that many children are born to parents who are too young to provide for them so why don't we require them to be at least 20 or 25 years old before the have their first child?  In some countries people have children as soon as they are 13 or 14 years old and you know what the quality of life is for those countries compared to those where they have their first child mostly after age 25!

(4)  How about the number of kids families have?  People should only have the number of children that they can responsibly provide for.  If the parents want to continue their nightly "thrill", they should use birth control.

(5)  As a responsible person, you should not be concerned about showing irresponsible people that they need to be more "responsible".  Looking the other way is not "responsible" nor is the attitude of "go along to get along".  People who are not "responsible" are hurting our children and grand children and you have a right as a responsible parent to protect them.

(6)  Don't wait for your government or elected officials to solve this problem.  They do not have the tools that you and I do and we need to start using them.

All you need to do is to act like the "responsible" person that you really are!!

What Is Our Objective?

 Everyone is arguing about all kinds of things, but they don't ever talk about their "Objective".  How can you judge if something is right or wrong without first having an "Objective"?  In this blog, I will expand on this concept.

Exactly what is the objective of our democracy?  What is it all about?  How can you tell if we are going forward or backwards?  The only way that I know is to first agree on a simple objective and what should that be?  You would thing that our objective was a bigger economic pie from what we see n the TV news, but that can not be it. My objective is a bigger piece of pie for the median person.  You could also have the objective be the "Quality of life for the median person".  It can't be the average, because if a rich King  significantly raise the average.  It has to be the median.

Let's first look at some history.  Before Columbus discovered America the people in Europe were on the brink of starvation. Their quality of life had reached it's limit.  The median family had to devote 100% of their time to producing food just to stay alive.  The capacity of Europe to support a population had reached it limit.  It may have gone a little past its limit such that 50 or 100 ears before Columbus discovered America the median family in Europe was actually better off.  Their increase in population had pushed them past the optimum point and they were actually going down hill as the population increased.  What the discovery of America did was to breath new life into the European quality of life.  That was because of the discovery of the potato, corn and beans.

The reason that I want to point out the above facts is that the human race is now at another one of those points.  The USA is wealth, not so much because of how smart or hard working American are, but the fact that we have all of these free natural resources.  Notice that the richest countries around the world are those that have an abundance of natural resources and a smaller population.  Russia has half the population of the USA and three time the natural resources.  What about countries that have larger populations compared to the their amount of natural resources? Most are poor and are only going to get poorer.

If the objective is to have the highest or at least a high quality of life, it hat to be clear that it is a simple trade off between resources and size of the population.  Millions or thousands of years ago the Earth's population was small and the limit was the based on the human ability.  It was not until the population increased that the environment or natural resources became the limiting factor as now.  Is the Green Movement going to save the Earth or the human race?  It doesnot look like it to me if we continue to grow our population. Exactly where are we in terms of the size of our population compared to the Earth's carrying capacity?  Did you ever think about that?  If it was deer or rabbits, we would think objectively about the subject, but if it his humans we block out our normal logic.

I think that we have passed the optimum size population for the highest median quality of life and are now on the down trend.  Look at California and it fantastic agriculture.  What they did was to dam up most of the rivers and then drill water wells down in the valley.  It looked great, for a while.  Now the valley has dropped as water has been pumped out.  It has to be clear that they can not keep on pumping water out of the ground for ever.  What are they going to do?  Drip irrigation is the new answer.  How is that going to work?  Over time the ground is going to be filled with salt as the water evaporates and the plants take up the water and leave the salt behind.  It is only a matter of time.  The wine industry is trying to use less water.  How is that going to work out?  California is going to produce less and less wine over time.  That is how it is going to work out.  I read that we us 25% of our corn to make fuel for our cars?  How do you think that is going to end up?

The only alternative that will produce a long term solution is a reduction in the human population here on Earth.  If you have a better one, I would like to hear it.  The problem is that once we go beyond the holding capacity of the Earth, the solution is for the population to have to go lower than the 100% point to allow the Earth to recover.  Once the Earth has recoverd, it may then be possible for the population to increase back to the 100% point.

What we should be talking about is how to reduce the population of the Earth in the least painfully way and what is that?  We have to have fewer kids and have them later in life.  I have explained the math behind this before, but I think you can follow the idea.

     

Immigrants May Be Our Answer

 I have been against the open Southern border, but it might be our answer.  Read on!

The people who immigrated originally were not "normal" people.  They were not average either.  They were people who were either dissatisfied with their situation or who had big ideas and the motivation to adventure into the new world.  The historical story of the USA and the Americas is an exciting story as is a similar story about Australia and New Zealand.  The USA was ahead of the pack and did very well.  They took advantage of the natural resources, but their efforts and hard work were important too.  Because the USA was out ahead of the pack, it stands to reason that they might be the first to show signs of wear and tear.  What I am saying is that the USA and its people have changed over time and are not now the kinds of people who originally immigrated here.  The people of the USA have gotten fat and soft.  People now wear gloves to protect their tender hands from the smallest tasks.  Look around and you can see it.  Our kids are the ones who are at the point of the new spear and are the most fat, soft and worthless.

In my prior blog, I pointed out how we have failed our kids by not seeing that they were prepared for the future.  If we could just turn back the clock and start all over again, we might do things differently.  Is that possible.  Yes, it might be and that would come from the new immigrants who are coming across our Southern border.  They are not like us fat and soft Americans.  They are hungry and want a better life and are willing to work for it.  Do you think that they may be our answer?  They look like a grubby bunch, but look at those Okies who left the dust bowl and immigrated to California.  What ever happened to them?  The answer is that they built California as did other immigrants from other states and around the world.  It just might be that this new bunch of immigrants will turn out the same.

Notice that they join the military at a much higher rate than our fat and soft children.  What would the Army do without them>  I was an Okie who picked prunes and cotton and now I have a bigger house than most of my friends.  It is possible that these new immigrants will do much the same thing.  Most do not want handouts from the government, they want to work.  I was looking at some data that showed that the literacy rate of these new immigrants was higher than the USA and that means they will actually raise our literacy rate.  I also have seen data that shows that 36% of people in the USA are obese.  From looking at the immigrants on TV, I can tell you that very few are obese and that is good. It is true that some have been forced to live on the streets, but unlike those who chose to live on the streets of California, these people will do almost anything to "not" have to live on the streets.  That is one step in the right direction and you know it.

Thinking about it now, are you still against immigration across our Southern border?  Think about it.  What is your alternate?

More Than Interest Rates

 There is more to the economics than "interest rates" as I will explain in this blog

The big news is that the economy is not that bad.  Look at all the job openings.  that is good, but you have to look a little deeper.  It is true that we have a lot of new job  openings, but what about the workers/  It looks to me like we have a lot of jobs, but few competent workers willing to take those jobs.  You only have to look at how our government spent trillions of dollars over the past 30 or 40 years to understand the problem that we are now in to.  That money was spent giving free money to our American kids to "follow their dreams".  Exactly what was that?  What were you dreaming when your 16 or 17 years old?  It was not about preparing yourself to be able to perform in a new job 25 or 30 years from then!

What we have done right under our noses is to allow our kids to squander their opportunity to compete in the workforce of the future.  We are not preparing our kids for the jobs that their fathers had, but the new jobs of the future.  Why did everyone look into the rearview mirror and then try to prepare our kids for those jobs?  It has to be because they were totally ignorant.  That is as simple as I can put it.

How big of a how have we dug?  That is the real question once our eyes have been opened.  Well, it is a  lot deeper than you might think.  While we were digging, places like China were preparing there kids for the real future.  Not the USA!  We let our kids "follow their dreams".  It was like most of us were living in some kind of fairy land.  What were we thinking?  Look in the mirror, it was you and me who let this happen.

How are going to dig out? I am not sure.  I know that while were digging, others were marching on ahead of us.  That means that not only will we have to cover up the hole that we have dug, we will have to try to catch up to the ground that we have lost.  for the record, that is an almost impossible task.  That means than our actions have caused us to have lost the war.  That is right.  Once we have gotten so far behind, there is no way that we can ever catch up.  Do you understand that?  I don't thing so.  Even if we work as hard as we can, we can't ever catch up to those who also are now working as hard as they can.  That is a fact.  We have lost the war, so get used to it.  what ever advantage that we once had is now history.  Sorry, but we screwed up so bad that we have to accept second or third place or worse.

It happened right under our noses and we now know it.  As parents, we did not do our jobs and now we only have ourselves to blame.  Sorry to have to be bring you this news, but it id ture.  Get ready to accept a second class life style for your self and you children..

Yes Men

 Are you a "Yes Man"?  You might be surprised as I will explain in this blog.

Have you ever worked for a dynamic boss?  I am talking about a boss who was both very competent and a good salesman.  I know that you have.  Have you ever been in a meeting with your boss where he or she made some kind of proposal with the objective of finding out if his group of managers agreed that it was a good idea?  I have been in those types of meetings many times.  What do you think that I found?  I found a big group of "Yes Men".

Why are people "Yes Men" in the first place?  It is because they want to keep their jobs and if possible, to get promoted.  It is human nature isn't it?  Why would you ever want to take the personal risk of telling your boss that his idea was worthless?  Most would not want to do that.  I know from experience that telling the boss that his idea is no good often bring the boss down on you big time.  Why does the boss act like that when his manager only wants to be honest about the idea?  

Many bosses get there by pushing their ideas and so why would they want to stop once the had the top job?  Sounds logical to me.  Like many good ideas they are mostly "luck", but those ideas that work out have many fathers, while bad ideas are orphans.  I think that you can see the bias that operates in this area.  If a boss is surrounded by too many "Yes Men" the die is set.  The boss will be fed a picture that they are the smartest person in the room and it will go down hill from there. How many "flash in the pan" bosses that you have seen?  Many!

What is the answer?  We need more managers and people who want to get promoted to be more honest and not fall into the "Yes Man" category.  It is like the "go along to get along" idea that I blogged on earlier.  We need more people with the back bone to be honest  and not cowards to share what they really think.  Democracy depends of following the honest opinions of the voters, but if the voters are dishonest, where does that leave democracy?  It is the same with our economy and business.  I feel that we can do better if more of us were just a little more honest.  Think about it!

Radical Minnesota

 Did you ever wonder why a state like Minnesota is so politically radical?  Well, there is a simple reason as I will explain.

I do not live in Minnesota, but I have visited there many times.  Minnesota has one of the highest literacy rates of any state in the union.  They are also among the best educated.  They have a strong technical economy too.  They also have a very high life expectancy.  You might say that Minnesota is a great place and it is.  The people there are great.  So why is it so radical?

The people in Minnesota are so polite that no one would ever purposely offend you.  Minnesota has to be one of the most polite states anywhere.  For most that would be good, but like most things that are good, like sugar, there can be a down side.  What is that down side?  People in Minnesota are among the easiest to get along with and that is the problem.  They "go along to get along".  They have been doing that since before Minnesota became a state and it worked.  Exactly what is the down side?  If too large of a percentage of a group of people adopt the principle of "go along to get along" it leaves no ne to mind the store.  If this happens, it leaves the state or group vulnerable to loud and vocal minorities who can proclaim radical ideas and there is no one to confront them.  That is what has happened to the state of Minnesota,

It only takes a small, but vocal group to propose something and the "go along to get along" group will "go along" rather than risk confronting the radical ideas which may make them look rude and no Minnesotan would want that.

Think about it.  The "go along to get along" may be a good policy, but it can be catastrophic if too many people adopt that philosophy as in the state of Minnesota.  It is not my objective to be hard on Minnesota.  It is a great state, but there is this danger awaiting any group or state where too many people operate on the principle of "go along to get along"!    

Skill

 The name of the game is "Skill".  You could say that the quality of life is the game, but "Skill" comes first as I will explaipay n in this blog.

A lot of people brag about the USA having the strongest or biggest economy in the world or that the USA is the richest country in the world.  What they are saying is that we "now" have the biggest pie.  What they don't tell you is that we don't have the biggest slice of pie.  The USA is way down the list on our size of the slice.  In the past I pointed out the significance of natural resources in determining the wealth of country and "Skill" is the next.

A lot of people take pride in the fact that the USA helps many other countries around the world.  This is only possible if we have a strong economy and that means we each have a large piece of pie.  In the case of China, they have an economy or a pie that is almost equal to that of the USA, but their people have much smaller slices of pie.  For that reason China is not in as strong of a position to help other countries around the world.

Think of places like Nigeria in Africa.  They have 206 million citizens which makes them one of the largest countries in the world.  They are larger than Russia, for example.  Why is it that you hear so little about Nigeria?  Why are they not pulling their own weight in helping other Africans?  The reason is that they are too poor.  Their citizens have a very small piece of pie.  Why is that?  Mostly it is because the have so little "Skill".  Skill is like merit.  In economics they pay on the basis of "Skill".  Why else would doctors make more money than bus drivers or postmen?

In the case of the USA, we have lived off our natural resources for so long that most are not even aware of it.  They think that it is some kind of natural thing or that we just deserve being more wealthy.  Well, the grass has been growing and many have not even noticed.  That is, the economic model has changed and it is now rewarding "Skill" more than physical labor alone.  Why do you think that computer programmers make more than the guy delivering the mail?  Which job requires more "Skill".  That is an easy one.  Did you know that the USA has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world.  I think it is about 69% compared to many where it is 99%.  As the world shifts toward rewarding "Skill" and merit, the USA is going to be left behind.

I could point out that many want more "equity".  What does that mean?  It means rewarding "Skill" or merit.  If someone is Black or Brown, does that mean they have more "Skill"?  Skill is upto the individual regardless of the color of their skin.  Schools only provide the opportunity.  It is upto the individual to do what is required to actually learn.

Much of the world knows that "Skill" is the currency of the future and are improving their "Skill".  Yet, the USA is focused on all kinds of worthless activities that compete with our winning in the Skill" war.  I am sorry to have to be the one who has asked if you will be able to "cut it" in this shifting world.  Do you have the "Skills" needed for the future?  Have you prepared your kids so that they have the "Skills" to compete?  If not the world is not waiting.  You, your family and your country will be left behind.

Go Along To Get Along

 This seems to be the way that most people conduct themselves today.  Is that a good idea?  Is there any down side?  This blog will open your eyes.

If you  know anything about Newton, then you know that all actions have a reaction.  Did you ever think about the impact of the "Go along to get along"?  Remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch!  So there must be some kind of impact.  In a prior blog, I pointed out that our actions to make things more efficient has also made life much more "brittle".  May be it is the same with people taking the position that it is better to "go along to get along" rather than being totally honest.

I had my eyes opened in this area a few weeks ago.  I know a lot of friends who are basically "go along to get along" people.  When you talk to them over coffee, they answer your questions with an answer that is not what they really feel.  I think that people are not really honest when you talk to them, but you assume that they are honest with their answers when they are not.  That is just a one on one situation.

Think about your view of the world when you are surrounded by a large percentage of the people who are "go along to get along" people.  How do you judge the world around you?  Do you think that you are getting an accurate picture from your friends and associates?  You know you are not.  When I try to cut thru the "go along to get along" attitude, most of my friends become defensive.  Why is that?  Are they beyond hope?

Think about this?  What if some small percentage of the population was honest and very vocal about their odd ball views?  What percentage would it take before they had convinced the majority of people who operated to the "go along to get along" formula for them to be viewed as the "majority"?  The number is a lot smaller than you might think.  My estimate is that it may only take about 25% of the people who were honest and vocal to bring the "go along to get along" people to appear on their side?  Think about it.

The bottom line is with you.  Do you think that by "going along to get along" is the right thing for our country?  Are you such a coward that you can not be honest with those around you?  The "buck stops with you".  If you do not take responsibility for the world that you live it, some one else will and it might turn out very bad.  In the past much of the "go along to get along" was the result of intimidation as in Germany, but not today.  Many of you take this easy approach voluntarily and that is the problem.

All I ask is that we all start being more honest in our dealings.  We worry too much about hurting some one's feelings when it is up to them to learn how to deal with the "real" world.  Get over it! 

PS---Does the Emperor have any cloths?