Training to be a fighter pilot

There is one of those urban legends that suggests the US air force used to go to video arcades and look for future fighter pilots.
Personally I have my doubts that this ever occurred but I am sure it made the kids wasting their time and quarters feel better that rather than skipping school they were training to be fighter pilots.

When I was at university I did a fair few hours training to be a fighter pilot myself. Specifically on a game called Defender the premise was you were defending 10 people on a planet by flying your fighter ship against the alien invaders. A pretty generic set up.

The mechanics of the game involved a landscape that stretched past one screen full meaning you couldn't see what was going on across the entire battlefield only the bit you were currently in. There was a radar screen where you could get an idea of the remainder of the battlefield activity.
You had control of your ship for up, down thrust forward and reverse direction and of course shoot with a couple of less important bomb etc options thrown in.
The aliens were varied in their speeds and abilities and all attacked simultaneously across the battlefield. In a nutshell it was pretty complex and fast paced.

I was reminded of all of this the other day when driving which in some regards is just like the game without the shooting bit, I have control of left, right, thrust, brake etc and there are any number of aliens on the roads of varying speed and ability trying to get me. Well perhaps not trying to get me but it can seem that way.

And I tend to treat it just like the game, I watch all the variables and estimate collision points and track a safe path through the obstacles. Compared with the speed of the defender game, driving has less variables and is much slower paced so not that difficult.

My wife is not always comfortable with my decision making and tends to wish I braked or slowed down earlier, or at all, as sometimes I have calculated the car will be gone before I reach that point and don't brake at all. She worries that the driver will not act as I anticipate and so I should be more cautions by braking earlier. To a point she is correct, sometimes people don't act as I have predicted and I have to adjust sometimes quickly and it is very annoying. If I suffer from road rage at all it is this "stupid" choice that a driver makes that annoy or the other trait I notice is slow decision making or incomplete data decisions, such as arriving at a give way sign, coming to almost a complete halt and then looking for any traffic, why not look while approaching?

So I have now realised that the apparent lack of driving decision making skill exhibited on the roads is actually a lack of time playing video games during your younger years when your brain was still developing.
Did playing video games enhance my ability (such as it is) to handle a variable data set and make decisions, I would certainly love to see some research on the topic, or is this just a case of personal bias after all we know from surveys that just about everyone thinks they are better than average when driving. So potentially I am an undiscovered Top Gun candidate or deluded about my driving ability.....

Me Vs We

Jeremy Bentham is most associated with utilitarianism a philosophy which can be boiled down to "the greatest good for the greatest number"

It is the basis for any number of rationing systems with Pharmac and drug buying being a good example in this country.
Some drugs don't get purchased and some people go without treatment because the drugs are really expensive and would therefore use up the budget which could be better spent helping a larger number of people with less expensive drugs. Until the day that you need the expensive drugs people generally accept this as a reasonable basis for decision making, the greatest number of people are assisted within the budget available.

The rights of the individual have an even longer history which from an english law perspective can trace their origins back to the Magna Carta signed in 1215 which established the rights of the subjects vs the powers of the king.

But which is supreme, the rights of the individual or the rights of the society, or group. How you answer this question may well tell me which side of the political spectrum you are likely to fall on.

Those to the right of the spectrum tend to champion individual, you know individual responsibility, reward for effort, my money not the states taxes, small government, big market (a collection of individuals effectively)

Those to the left tend to champion collective goods or groups, increased taxes to assist... (insert group of choice) Protection of the enviroment, gay rights, womens rights etc.

Of course these domains are not clear cut and plenty of "right wingers" can be concerned about gay rights etc but if you listen to the way the ideas are discussed it is effectively group (we) vs the individual (me).

The possible reason why left wingers seem more virtuous as they care about "others" or groups, right wingers appear to care only for themselves "individuals"

This is a bit simplistic though isn't it, both groups seek to advance all, it is where the emphasis goes that counts.

"Tomorrow Me"

A smart chap I know talked with me recently about “today me” and “tomorrow me” as if they were two different things. It was his explanation as to why we don’t eat right, stop smoking, drink less, save more etc which are all things that have an impact on your future but not that much on your today. His inference was that we actually are disconnected from our future selves and regard the future me as an alternative person.

As is obvious I have been mulling this over and it is a good conceptual framework to consider things from. The best example of “today me” and “tomorrow me” is having a great time at a party and reaching for that next drink knowing that there is a likely hood that you will awake with a raging hangover tomorrow. Apart from your mental impairment brought on by alcohol ingestion we all know that too many drinks makes us feel sick the next day and yet often times we carry on drinking... because the hangover is a problem for “tomorrow me” to deal with “today me” is fine and having a good time. 12 hours later when “today me” is hungover “today me” has all sorts of issues with “yesterday me” but gets on with drinking water, sleeping or whatever to deal with the hangover.    

So why the disconnect, well I think we casually think about time as a sort of a ribbon or a path that we trundle along, we have a sort of general idea of a linear progress. This is of course how it looks when you look back over your life. Looking forward we also have general outline of how it will go because we have all met people older than ourselves and the general plot line is somewhat standard we start as babies grow up live for a while and decline. Yes there are people who’s line is interrupted but we are all generally on the same path.

But it is a very wide path we can weave left and right as we go along and the future is not really a ribbon. You see when we are out partying we can actually chose which “tomorrow me” we get, drink lots of booze and become “hungover me”, drink nothing but water become “not hungover me” two completely separate dots in the future from where we can start. So projecting forward you potentially have a scattered lot of dots that you can choose to pick as your “tomorrow me” instead of a just trudging along the path.

I have now begun to think of life as like the milky way which appears in the sky as a strip of clustered stars so if you went from one narrow end to the other if forms a sort of a path (the way) but hoping form one star to another would give you an almost infinite number of ways to get from one end to the other and each star is not really connected to the last one. The possibilities of who “tomorrow me” might be do not need to relate to “today me”

Which brings us to just “me” because I decide what “tomorrow me” looks like. No matter how you got to be “today me”, be it skill and brilliance or bad luck and terrible circumstances we all know that “tomorrow me” is at least in part a function of “today me” and there is no one on the planet who is as interested in “tomorrow you” as you.

When you meet “tomorrow me” will you be pleased? 

Capacity

Capacity: actual or potential ability to perform, yield, or withstand


I hear a lot about the ills of society these days and naturally this discourse tends to focus on the underprivileged which makes sense. Inevitably these underprivileged folk share some things in common and in particular they suffer from some “disability” which prevents them from getting on in society. I am using the word disability in a very wide sense such as a lack of education or skills as well as a physical or mental disability.

So here is a little thought experiment.

Think of a nomadic hunter gatherer tribe of say 20 odd people, basically a family unit making its way in the world as best it can. This is the human reality not so long ago (in a geological time frame). As the tribe hunts game and the like it will experience the usual tribulations of life such as some members aging to a point where they cannot hunt effectively or one of the tribe might get injured in a hunt and some of the 20 might be infants who can’t contribute to food gathering.

These “unproductive” members of the tribe will be supported by the rest and life will be fine. However for the sake of argument let’s assume you need at least 10 hunters out of 20 to make the system work ie each hunter can support one other person. This is what I am referring to as the Capacity of the tribe.

What would happen to the tribe if there were only 8 hunters and 12 young old or weak members? Not sure but it is bound to be bad for at least 4 members of the 12 to bring things into balance. If nothing changed then presumably all the tribe would slowly weaken and everyone would die in the long run.

So what?

Well all groups have a carrying capacity even our really complex industrialised societies. It is not so easy to see but it must still be there after all as nothing has really changed from the tribe days in terms of providing enough resources for all.

But I have never heard a conversation about whether or not we can “afford” the numbers of disabled persons that we carry in society. To be truthful I am not even sure how you would work it out and I know that the idea will seem a bit icky to some people because in the brutal world of our ancient ancestors some or all of the 4 would have been left to die and you could infer that is my idea for dealing with our disadvantaged (which it is not).

This idea potentially matters because let’s just assume the number works out to be 40% of society needs to be productive to support the other 60%. Let’s further assume that we currently sit at 62% unproductive. (there are a lot of kids and older folk out there) Then any attempt to fix the problem that does not address this issue is doomed to failure so it is important that we know.

The current solutions all really boil down to have the rich give some of their surplus to the poor. In comes in various packages but this is the central idea nine times out of ten. However if we are beyond capacity this will result in the death of the total tribe.

In NZ in 2006 (the latest census figures I could easily find) the population was just over 4M and the number of people in full time work was 1.4M so the 35% of the population supports the remainder. (yes I know part time work etc. but it isn’t going to get past 40% ) Bet you thought it was more than that.

Pugilism

“On 6 January 1681, the first recorded boxing match took place in Britain when Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle (and later Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica) engineered a bout between his butler and his butcher with the latter winning the prize.” Wikipedia

That about sums it up really, an upper class gent organising a bout of fighting presumably for the entertainment of his rich chums between a couple of the “servants” (read lower classes)

And it continues to be that way till this day. As a generally rule the backgrounds and education standards of a lot of boxers don’t appear to be that great. Sure some of them earn a lot of money but probably less than the promoters and they do it by putting themselves in harms way.


Does this look like a good time?

 I don’t understand boxing, amateur or professional. I do know the rules and I am not squeamish about it and I am not calling for it to be banned, (live and let die as always) but why anyone would participate and or be that interested in watching is beyond me. It is a version of the roman gladiators and I think as a society we should be over that by now. Boxing remains a signpost to the work we need to do to improve our thinking skills.

OK so boxing is not the only way to get injured at work and there are other dangerous jobs, bomb disposal springs to mind. But assuming you have a safe desk job etc why would you sign up for a spot of danger time?

So with that in mind what is with the current popularity of “celebrity” boxing matches. On the front page of the newspaper today are some pictures of some blokes from around the town punching each other in the face (well in truth one puncher one face owner per picture but you get the idea).

As a lawyer or CEO around town why would you sign up for this? It can’t possibly be a good time, it isn’t even dignified and surely in our modern society the promotion of generalised violence is not a good idea and these people should “know better”

The proceeds do go to charity but still a strange way to raise funds.

Now if one of the fighters was a local figure that I didn’t like and the opponent was a trained boxer now that might be interesting......

And all the boards did shrink…

So now Maori own all the water in NZ or at least that is what they are trying to assert in the face of the government trying to privatise state owned electricity companies.

So in truth this is the nub of the problem, “they” don’t like the sale of these state assets. Who “they” are is a point likely open to debate, but what we do know is that by and large Maori (as a group) have been left voting for many decades (although there appears to be a shift in this) and the “left” (another handy generalisation) in the form of the Labour and Green parties don’t like the sale of these assets either.

The National party (slightly right wing) claims it has a mandate to sell these assets because it told everyone at the last election that it was going to do it. Likewise Labour campaigned hard on this matter as an evil idea that would ruin the country. National won in an MMP landslide (more like a small trickle of pebbles but that is what you get in MMP) and Labour suffered its worst defeat ever (I think, certainly in the running for the ever award) This does rather seem to support Nationals position.

But enough with the politics, is it a rational idea? Tough to know from where I sit because I don’t have all the information that Treasury does, however what I do know is how this would work for me as an individual.

Assume my income had declined by a good chunk for some reason (say 20%) but instead of stopping spending I decided to borrow some money and truck on with my current lifestyle. I am hoping to get a pay rise sometime soon so I can fix this problem. After a while the debt starts to mount up and the interest costs are getting pretty big. Now I am worried that the pay rise might be a while coming and I might not be able to pay off the debt.

Good news I have some investments (in a power company) that produces a good steady dividend, problem solved all I need to do is……..

Well that’s the point isn’t it, what do you do? In a normal rational household you would look at your dividend and see that it is say $1200 per annum and the shares are worth $27,000. You have now racked up $50,000 of debt at 7% (personal loans are really expensive) A quick calculation shows that reducing your debt by 27,000 saves you $1,890 per year in interest. You would be better off selling the shares than continuing to borrow to invest. Simple right?

Same answer for the government even though the sums are a bit more complicated as we would in truth be comparing the expected present value of the future stream of dividends versus the expected present value of the expected borrowing costs. (I think) And with the scale of government this can get complicated.

But actually this is not really a guessing game, roughly speaking Treasury knows the answer to this problem and I am assuming the advice they are giving is to sell.

Now in the face of presumably logical advice from Treasury and an election mandate a group of unelected (potentially unrepresentative) people are trying to use the Treaty to prevent government policy. Is that right?

Presbyterian Gays

Why do churches have a problem with gay people?


The Presbyterian Church here in NZ is currently considering the “issue” of gay marriage, or same sex union to give it the politically correct title they are using.

It is simple, either gay people are people (it’s sort of in the name really) in which case I don’t know of any Christian religion that thinks it is ok to discriminate against “people” or

They are not people, which begs the question what are they then?

And the marriage thing again, isn’t this irrelevant, if we have decided they are people and we don’t discriminate against people then how do you justify denying them any of the rights ascribed to all the other members of your church.

Or does membership now come in classes? Not necessarily a dumb idea after all there are a fair number of people who only see the inside of a church for weddings and funerals, personally if I was running a church I would have “B” class membership for these folks and “A” for the people who actually participate and contribute and I am prepared to bet that gay folk would show up in both the A and B category.

So the disclaimer, I am neither gay nor part of the Presbyterian church but I can’t stand people who can’t apply a tiny bit of logic to their arguments.

And don’t give me that clap trap about marriage equals children, no one is calling for a ban on infertile people getting married are they?