Zero Sum

A better understanding of the complexity and multitude of roles and relationships in society:

Suppose every person is entirely self-sufficent. There would be nothing I could do to help anyone else, nor they for me. Suppose the resources available are limited. Then the only way I could get more resources is to take it away from other people. I would be in direct competition with everyone in the whole population; my gain is their loss. If the gains and losses are added up for everyone, we would have a net of zero: the situation is called zero-sum.

Now instead, suppose the population is divided into five roles: A, B, C, D, E. Each group works on a separate task, using up different resources, and receives reward from the other four groups. Now I, as part of group A, would no longer be in competition with anyone from groups B, C, D, or E. I can work harder for them, and they would pay me more. The relationship is no longer zero-sum: both sides benefit from the trade. I would only have to worry about competition from within group A.

What's more interesting is that if I could find a way to create a new group, A1, with a distinct role, then I would have no competition at all. If I could establish mutually beneficial relationships with the rest of the population as A1, then I would be in a brand new niche, and I'd have plenty of room for growth. This is the mechanism by which the society we live in become more specialized and more complex.

The same reasoning can be applied to biological evolution. Animals and plants create and fill new niches to avoid competition, and at the same time establish intricate interspecies relationships. The push toward greater complexity in an ecosystem, as in human society, is a result of non-zero sum interactions.

The Infinity Blade

The Economist did this satire of Moore's Law: More Blades Good. The razor blade meme recalls the incredibly prescient Onion article Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades. Well, the Economist predicts that, if the trend continues, razors will have infinite number of blades by the year 2015.

Ridiculous? Satire? I don't think so. I'm calling it now. Before 2020 at the latest, we will see a razor with so many blades they can call it the Infinity Blade. The shaving surface will be a shiny, smooth surface that deforms to fit the unique contours of your face. It will be made of trillions of nanobots that can disintegrate hair on a molecular level, while protecting and moisturizing any skin tissue. Just run the Infinity Blade across your face or any other sensitive part, and the hair will simply disappear, leaving behind skin so soft you could be mistaken for a new born. Best of all, it won't leave any nasty hair shavings to be cleaned up! The Infinity Blade.

A pre-historical essay

I love fictional non-fiction. Funny piece by Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak.

A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism by Thog, Professor of Finding an Animal and then Killing it.

It raises an awareness of how far humans have gone beyond biological evolution. Life, for billions of years, have been limited by their genetic code. Improvements could only take place over thousands of years, through reproduction, mutation, or chance viral infection. With the development of what people call the "mind", humans can improve themselves through learning, invention, and creation. Ideas take the place of genetic material. The span of human development has been a history of how ideas can be communicated and passed on.

The apes in Aaron's essay were on the cusp of a great change. They had access to the power of thought and speech. All they were missing is the imagination, the willingness to see past what they were, and a leap of faith to take them into the next level. Will we humans be able to take that next step?

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.