Hob from Dresden Codak

I feel a deep connection to Kimiko in this story. I too wish to be more than human.

An analysis of tipping

From a waiter's perspective, there are two types of customers.

a) Customers who always tip the same percentage. It could be the standard 15%, or it could be less from the bad tippers. They are indifferent to the quality of service and there's nothing a waiter can do to change the tip amount.

b) Customers who tip an amount correlated positively with the quality of service. Better service means more satisfied customers, which brings in a bigger tip. The correlation function might not be linear at all, and it probably has lower and upper limits.

Note that there are no bizzaro customers who tip more for worse service. Assuming the percent of B type customers is non-zero, waiters will always have an economic incentive to provide better service.

However, if the service-tip correlation function resembles a logistic curve, then the waiter would have to commit significant effort before any noticeable increase in the amount of tip received. This model might discourage many waiters from investing into the relationship.

Even worse, if the service-tip correlation is a step function, then the waiters would see no benefits at all until they overcome a threshold of service quality. The result of this model will be a segmentation of waiter behavior:

a) Some waiters will decide not to invest any additional effort into their service quality, because they don't expect any returns. They treat all customers as type A.

b) Other waiters will do their very best to satisfy their customers, because they believe that reward will follow quality. 

On the other side of the table, the customer's perspective is quite different. There is no economic benefit at all for tipping a greater amount. Disregarding any social, moral, or karmic influences, the customer has no incentive to tip. Since the service has already been provided, the customer can not affect the quality of service by varying the amount of the tip, not in the way that a waiter can affect the reciprocal relationship.

However, from a macroscopic point of view, there is benefit to tipping more for better service. Each type B customer helps to reinforce the proactive mentality of the waiters who work harder. In this way, the customers are all contributing to the system of rewards that encourages better service. Though the customer may not be able to retroactively improve his experience, but he may find consolation in the thought that he may convert a type A waiter to a type B waiter.

Of course, if the customer plans to return to that particular establishment, he would benefit from building up a good reputation there by tipping more. On the other hand, the customer is more likely to return if the service was excellent. Successful business relationships take advantage of this positive feedback between the type B groups for mutual benefit. Better service leads to more tips, which leads better service. The flip side of this is increasing apathy among waiters and decline of repeat business.

Though the restaurant can not control the type of customers coming in, it can control what type of waiters to hire. The only way to build up positive customer relationships is to staff only waiters who are reward-minded and willing to put effort into their service.

For the customers, indifference in tipping can never help increase the quality of service they receive, no matter if they always tip 20% or 0%. If they reward good service and punish bad service, they may be able to reduce apathy from the waiters and ensure better experience in the future.

A parable

I like to imagine there exists another paragraph to my favorite story, the parable Inferno, I, 32 by J. L. Borges.

In the middle of the 20th century, Borges, a sucessful writer, a beloved professor and a respected literary critic, was turning old. Like all men of his age, he comtemplated his own mortality and whether or not his life and his work had a higher purpose. But he had read Nietzsche. He knew about existentialism and nihilism. And he was hoping against hope that Nietzsche was wrong, that the cold slithering feeling in the back of his mind was wrong. He wanted to believe that everything he has done and accomplished in life has a significance and that meaning and significance were not just illusions. Borges wrote the parable to reassure himself, but he wasn't satisfied, because deep down he knew that the machinery of the world is oblivious of man.

On Realism and Pancakes

Hollywood gives us paper cut-out heroes, archetypal characters from the tradition of Greek epics. They hold our larger-than-life expectations, fight against impossible odds, make inhuman sacrifices, and in the end, things always work out. To them, their lives are already written and their decisions are guided by higher fate. There's never any uncertainty when Ripley goes back to save Newt, or when T-800 melts himself in the foundry, or when Jack Bauer tortures a suspect for intel; they do what has to be done. Sarah Connor Chronicles is the opposite of everything we've come to expect from the entertainment industry. The FOX show challenges us with a study of realism in our modern mythology of science fiction. This magic realism is a clear departure from the march of the ordinary, and the discordance may be the cause of the show's downfall.

Let's start with the small things. Life is in the details, as they say. One of the first complains about the show was about pancakes. Sarah Connor cooks pancakes for her son, the future savior of human kind. Sarah Connor, the stone-cold bad ass who blew up Cyberdyne in T2, who faced down two killer cyborgs from the future, is making pancakes. And then she's packing lunch for John, maybe a PB&J sandwich. John Connor goes grocery shopping. Absurd? No, the only absurdity is our willingness to accept these characters as super human. Have you ever wondered how Picard could pee while wearing a full body uniform? I have. What do you think goes through Sarah Connor's mind when she wakes up? Would she wake up every morning worrying about the impending nuclear holocaust? In Kafka's The Metamorphosis, the character Gregor woke up one morning and found himself transformed into a giant insect; his first thoughts were about the bad weather and his crappy job. I'm guessing Sarah Connor thinks about what to have for breakfast.

What else would be on Sarah Connor's mind? In many sci-fi and fantasy stories, the protagonist undergoes a transformation from normal to extraordinary. We can see examples in The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. Something happens to the hero that completely alters her perspective of the world, and in essence changes who she is. In the intro to Terminator 1, we see Sarah Connor, naive, fumbling, at her job as a waitress, at home doing her hair and makeup with her roommate -- her normal life. At the end of the movie, she fights for survival against a time-traveling killer cyborg, who was sent to murder her and her unborn son, the future savior of humanity.

In T1, these two Sarah Connors are different people; the chasm between them is so deep that one could not even imagine living the other's life. But both Sarahs are present in the Fox show: the normal Sarah: mother, woman, human, and the extraordinary Sarah: fugitive, guardian, hero. One Sarah tries to raise her son to be a strong, capable man. The other prepares her son to be the leader of humankind in a resistance against the machines. One Sarah tries to protect her son against sketchy girlfriends and unhealthy relationships. The other tries to protect him against cyborg assassins. One Sarah worries about getting breast cancer and is afraid of losing the closeness that she shares with her son (She even had a dream where cyborg Cameron made pancakes for John Connor!) The other worries about a malicious AI that wants to see the world burn. One Sarah makes friends with the neighbor. The other trusts absolutely nobody. One Sarah is paranoid, chasing random patterns and UFOs. The other shoulders the fight against a future that seems inevitable. On the FOX show, the two personas are meshed together into one identity. She did not leave behind her normal life, though she is no longer naive nor clumsy. To her, the mundane and the fantastic are not in different worlds; they coexist in one.

Often, people see the future as depicted in movies and shows: a fantasy, another world, something we watch for a few hours and then go back outside. The year 2009 must have seemed impossibly distant and exotic; and yet here we are. Our future is not fantasy, and the things that only existed in our imaginations have a tendency to catch up with us sooner than we expect.

I think the future will be all right, as long as there will be pancakes.

Consider

Consider three men:

One spends his time in front of a mirror. He dotes on his appearance. He sculpts his hair. He bathes and perfumes his body. He enjoys working out and feeling his muscular form develop into the ideal image he had in mind. He takes the right blend of nutritional supplements. He dresses fashionably, always wearing the appropriate outfit for the occasion. He walks with grace and smiles a practiced smile.

The other spends his time in books. He reads and analyzes and writes, to keep his mind sharp and his wit sharper. He is versed in popular and obscure languages. He plays piano, guitar, and accordion. He enjoys a game of chess, or Go, or poker. He studies mathematics, logic, philosophy, physics, linguistics, and is always looking for connections between the subjects. He smiles when he finds beauty in unexpected places. He speaks with conviction and longs for a deeper understanding.

The third man spends his time helping others. He listens. He gives advice on relationships, on family problems, on the myriad of stresses that weigh on people. He volunteers. He tries to treat others with respect, kindness, and honesty. He pays attention to others' needs and acts with compassion and sympathy. He smiles when he knows that he made a difference. He has loyal friends and ardent followers. His reputation shines like a polished set of armor.

Some define vanity to be an excessive opinion of one's self-appearance, but there is no sense in limiting that pride to the physical self. These three men all work to better themselves, though their goals are vastly different. They all uphold an image of themselves, an icon upon the pedestal of their own expectations. Vanity or conceit or narcissism, whatever it be called, can sneak up on us, and without warning, replace the man with a painted shell. And if the shell should crack one day, would we find anything remaining underneath?

Catching up

As I said before, it is possible to stream interactive media the same way we stream high def video. Well, IGN has an article about OnLive cloud gaming. The future is catching up to us fast.

If this works, it will invalidate the current paradigm of perennially upgrading personal hardware. I'm sure the big tech companies are already thinking about this. If there's no more demand for faster and more powerful consumer electronics, what will happen to Moore's Law?

Meaning and purpose are subjective

"What is the meaning of life?" is not the right question. Rather, ask "What is the meaning of MY life?" And it's OK to not know. Most people don't.