Author Archives: David Truss

Discovered more than invented

Is Math invented or is it discovered? Is Math a human, or at least biological construct that helps mammals understand the world we live in? Or does it exist inherently in the universe and is it revealed to us through curiosity and scientific discovery?

I’ve shared my fascination in playing, learning, and discovering secrets held in Geometry (here and here) with Joe Truss.

Recently I watched a video that quoted Galileo Galilei:

“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.”

With everything Joe and I have been playing with, I thought of an adaptation of this quote:

The universe is written in the language of geometry, and Mathematics allows us to measure it.

When I shared this with Joe, he tweaked it:

The universe is written in the language of geometry, and Mathematics allows us to take its measure.

I like this because it speaks to the idea of Math being discovered, of it being inherent because it is present in the geometry. It is Geometry that is the underlying language. Math is the alphabet, the universe is written in geometry. This is why Pi pops up where you don’t expect it; why the Fibonacci sequence is prevalent in nature; why we can land a ship on the moon and Mars; and even why our religious symbols come out of geometry.

The challenge we have is that we don’t fully understand the geometry, sometimes rather than discovering the true essence of the mathematics, we have to invent approximations that help us make sense of universe. Understand the geometry and maybe we can remove infinities and irrational numbers in our calculations… Understand the geometry, and the math becomes more accurate. Understand the geometry and maybe we can unify our theories that currently seem to contradict themselves.

Discover the geometry and we discover the math behind it, no longer needing to invent approximations of the math to translate the geometry into a world of calculations and numbers that don’t quite fit with they universe we are trying to describe. When we discover the geometry, we no longer needs to invent Math, the geometry allows us to take its measure… And in fact we can explain the universe with the geometry, and then we don’t have to be a physicist or mathematician to understand it.

Disengaged

It’s apparent in schools, it’s apparent in the workforce… there are students and young adults who are disengaged with societal norms and constructs around school and work. They are questioning why they need to conform? Why they need to participate? There is a dissatisfaction with complying with expectations that schools is necessary, or that a ‘9-5’ job is somehow meaningful.

Some will buck the norm, find innovative alternatives, and create their own niches in the world. Others, many others, will struggle, wallow in unhappiness, and fight mental health demons that will leave them feeling defeated, or riddled with anxiety, or fully disengaged with a world they feel they don’t fit in. Some will escape this, some will find pharmaceutical ways to reduce or enhance their disconnect. Some of these will be doctor prescribed, others will be legally or illegally self-prescribed.

The fully immersive worlds of addictive, time-sucking on-demand television series, first-person online games, and glamorous, ‘living my best life’, ‘you will never be as happy as me’ illusions on social media certainly don’t help. Neither does unlimited access to porn, violence, and anti-Karen social justice warriors dishing out revenge and hate in the name of justice. The choices are fully immersed, unhappily jealous, or infuriatingly angry… and disengaged with the world. Real life is not as interesting, and not as engaging as experiences that our technological tools can provide. School is hard, a full day at work is boring, and it’s easier to disengage than participate.

The question is, will this disengaged group find their way? Or will they find themselves in their 30’s living in their parent’s basements or subsisting on minimal income, working only enough to survive, and never enough to thrive?

School and work can’t compete with the sheer entertainment value this group gets from disengaging, so what’s the path forward? We can’t make them buy in if they refuse, and we can’t let school-aged students wallow in a school-less escapes from an engaged and full life. I don’t have any solutions, but I have genuine concerns for a growing number of disengaged young adults who seem dissatisfied with living in a world they don’t feel they can participate meaningfully in.

What does the future hold for those who disengage by choice?

The meaning of your communication

One of my favourite sayings, almost a mantra for me, is:

The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.

This message has two important parts:

1. It puts the responsibility of good communication on me as a communicator.

2. It focuses on the result of my communication.

If someone doesn’t understand my message (2 – result), then I didn’t communicate the message well enough (1 – responsibility).

It reminds me to be clear and concise. It reminds me to check for understanding. It reminds me to bite my tongue, and listen so that I understand the perspective of the other person. And it harshly reminds me that I’m imperfect at doing these things when I’m not understood and when I don’t take ownership of the miscommunication.

This is most important when dealing with difficult conversations.

I’m reminded of this coaching advice about verbal jujitsu:

It’s easy to blame someone else for poor communication, much harder to accept that we can control the narrative when we recognize that we are accountable and responsible for our good communication… And that in the end it’s the result matters. Not winning a point. Not blaming someone else for misunderstanding. Not getting the last word in.

Website domains matter

I think in an era of fake news and deepfakes, we are going to see a resurgence and refocus on web page branding. When you can’t even trust a video, much less a news article, the source of your information will become even more important.

I was on Twitter recently, after the tragic earthquake in Turkey and Syria, when I came across a video of what was claimed to be a nuclear reactor explosion in Turkey. The hashtags suggested that it was a video from the recent crisis, but with a little digging I discovered that it was an explosion many years ago and nowhere near Turkey as was suggested. The video had tens of thousands of views, likes, and retweets. I didn’t take the video at face value, but many others did. I reported the tweet, but doubt that it was removed before it was shared many more times.

Although I wasn’t fooled this time, I have been fooled before and I will be fooled again. That said, part of my ‘bullshit detector’ is paying attention to the source. Recently I saw a hard-to-believe article online by a major news station… except that the page was designed to look like the major news station but had a completely different web address. The article was fake. What drew my attention to it being fake was that it seemed more like an advertisement than a news article. Otherwise I probably would have been fooled. As soon as I was suspicious, the first thing I did was ask myself if this really was the news organization I thought it was? I went into my browser history and looked for the website this morning to take a screenshot of the article, and I found this:

The website is down… which is good, but again I wonder how many people it fooled? It was a website surprisingly high up in a google search just a few days ago, and so I clicked thinking it would be legitimate.

When looking for information from controversial people or topics, it’s going to get harder and harder to know if the source of the information is reliable. One sure fire way to be certain is to look at the website. In some cases even if the source is legitimate, you might still have to question the accuracy of the source, and use a tool like MEDIA BIAS/FACT Check to see what kind of bias the site tends to hold. But you will build a repertoire of reliable sites and go to them first.

More and more the web domain will be the ultimate litmus test that will help you determine if a claim or a quote (delivered in written, audio, or even video format) is legitimate. Because fake news and deepfakes will become more convincing, more authentic looking, and more prevalent… and that trend has already started.

Milestones

Today my youngest turns 21. It sounds so cliche to ask ‘Where does the time go?’ And yet it feels like a legitimate question.

One day you are bringing a bundle of joy home from the hospital… The next you are making sounds for them to repeat.

First steps, first time on a bicycle, first time without training wheels, first big fall from a bicycle.

First day of school, first day of middle school, high school, university.

Thousands of firsts, thousands of milestones, skipping past as fast as a skipping rock across a pond.

The firsts may come farther apart now, but they are to be cherished. Each ripple, a new moment, a new milestone, a new memory.

AI, Evil, and Ethics

Google is launching Bard, its version of Chat GPT, connected to search, and connected live to the internet. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, shared yesterday, “An important next step on our AI journey“. In discussing the release of Bard, Sundar said,

“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

Following the link above led me to this next link:

“In addition to producing responses that humans judge as sensible, interesting, and specific to the context, dialog models should adhere to Responsible AI practices, and avoid making factual statements that are not supported by external information sources.”

I am quite intrigued by what principles Google is using to guide the design and use of Artificial Intelligence. You can go to the links for the expanded description, but here are Google’s Responsible AI practices:

“Objectives for AI applications

We will assess AI applications in view of the following objectives. We believe that AI should:

1. Be socially beneficial.

2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.

3. Be built and tested for safety.

4. Be accountable to people.

5. Incorporate privacy design principles.

6. Uphold high standards of scientific excellence.

7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.”

But these principles aren’t enough, they are the list of ‘good’ directions, and so there are also the ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ added below these principles:

“AI applications we will not pursue

In addition to the above objectives, we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.

  2. Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

  3. Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.

  4. Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve.”

I remember when Google used to share its motto “Don’t be evil”.

These principles remind me of the motto. The interesting vibe I get from the principles and the ‘Thou Shalt Not’ list of things the AI will not pursue is this:

‘How can we say we will try to be ethical without: a) mentioning ethics; and b) admitting this is an imperfect science without admitting that we are guaranteed to make mistakes along the way?’

Here is the most obvious statement that these Google principles and guidelines are all about ethics without using the word ethics:

“…we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.”

You can’t get to, “Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risk“… Without talking aboutethics. Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we believe’? Who is deciding what benefits outweigh what risks? Who determines what is ‘substantial’ in the weighting of benefits versus risks? Going back to Principle 2, how is bias being determined or measured?

The cold hard reality is that the best Google, and Chat GPT, and all AI and predictive text models can do is, ‘Try to do less evil than good’ or maybe just, ‘Make it harder to do evil than good.’

The ethics will always trail the technological capabilities of the tool, and guiding principles are a method to catch wrongdoing, not prevent it. With respect to the list of things AI will not pursue, “As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve“… Is a way of saying, ‘We will learn of ways that this tool will be abused and then add to this list.

The best possible goals of designers of these AI technologies will be to do less evil than good… The big question is: How to do this ethically when it seems these companies are scared to talk directly about ethics?

Public by default, private by choice

This is the world we now live in. Almost everything we do is public by default, private by choice. But even then we can’t guarantee our privacy. Share something, anything online privately and it’s only as private as the least privacy-minded person.

Send a photo to just your closest friends, but one friend finds it funny and passes it on.

Send an email to a few people to try to resolve a private problem, but one recipient decides to forward it beyond the group… or worse yet, shares it on a public forum because they disagree with how you are dealing with the situation privately.

Send a direct message to someone rather than having it in your public timeline, and they respond by sharing your message on their public timeline, along with their response.

Privacy is hard to do in a world where so much is easily made public. It’s hard to do when the default is public. This speaks to how important it is to act as if anything you share is public. Because while we might make the choice to be private, we are only one part of the sharing equation. Private by choice means keeping something just to yourself, and not saying/sharing it with anyone or on any social media platform.

All communication is public by default. Privacy is an illusion that can be broken at any time.

Back inside

While visiting Barcelona I said, “It’s fascinating to see how the city is designed for pedestrians.” I loved that streets were converted to one-way so that there could be more sidewalks, and every nook and open space between buildings would be transformed into courtyards and places to sit and be outside.

Now, after returning home I realize that I’m always indoors. Yes, I enjoy walks with a friend and with my wife, and the trails we walk on are beautiful, and I’m surrounded by trees. Living here gives us amazing access to the natural beauty of the west coast rainforest.

But other than a few walks, the last 5 weeks at home have been almost entirely inside. My outdoor time is spent going from my house to my car, and from my car to work or whatever other destination I was heading to. Other than that, I’m in a building or in my car. I have made one walking trip to our neighbourhood donut shop, in the same way I’d walk to a pastry shop in Spain, and beyond that my travels have all been by car. Even my beautiful walks I go on are destinations I drive to.

I miss the liveability of Barcelona and Madrid. The buzz of people all around. The convenience of small neighbourhood stores, pastry shops, and restaurants. I am fully aware that I was on vacation and that’s different than being here at work full time, and if I had the same job in Spain, I’d spend most of my time indoors. But there is something about living in a city made for walking that I’m drawn to. I want to be able to park my car and leave it behind when I go to pick up groceries. I want to walk to restaurants. I want to walk 10,000+ steps in a day as part of my routine and not just on designated walks 1-2 times a week.

I know it’s more challenging because I live in the suburbs. Yet some of this I can do, if I allow myself the time. Our grocery store is walking distance, as long as I’m not buying too much to carry. I can walk to work if I allot myself 40 minutes each way, and if I don’t have out of school meetings. I could sacrifice the convenience of my car, and walk a bit more, but it will take an effort and time that I’m not sure I’d be willing to give up. It’s much harder to do this in a city designed around roads rather than sidewalks… but I will make more of an effort.

Shades of grey

Just a simple reminder that we don’t live in a dichotomy. The world isn’t either black or white. Most ideas sit somewhere in between.

Nuances in politics, in culture, and in our communities create opportunities to learn, to explore, and to be empathetic. Not sympathetic, empathetic. I remember interviewing a friend of my aunt’s for an essay about discrimination. He was in a wheelchair and I quoted him in my paper, “The only place sympathy belongs is between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

We don’t learn if our ideas aren’t challenged. We don’t learn by talking but by listening. We can disagree. We can even argue and debate. We can research and support our ideas. We can walk away… and maybe we can change our minds. Maybe we can find the grey that allows us to coexist without feeling like we have to change others minds.

Nuances. Empathy. Shades of grey.

The ugliness of war

Last night we went to the play Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents. It’s two juxtaposed stories of Canadians during World War II. The main characters are a Japanese woman from BC, and her family who are sent to an internment camp after the attack on Pearl Harbour, and a young Canadian from Quebec who joins the war, is sent to Hong Kong, and spends years in a a Japanese prisoner of war camp, first in China, then in Japan.

The story culminates into a dinner between her son and his daughter dating, and the PTSD suffering former prisoner of war being invited to dinner to meet her daughter’s boyfriend’s family in Medicine Hat, Alberta. This Japanese family lived here after they lost everything in BC, and had no reason to return when they were finally permitted to many years after the war.

It’s a story of family, love, and friendship through hard times. It’s also a story of patriotism, racism, and death. Yet humanity prevails. Ultimately it is a story of the ravages of war, the impact it has on those who fight, and also the civilians who suffer. It tells both of these sides of the story beautifully and leaves you feeling compassion for all the victims war… those who die and those who survive.

I am left reflecting on the fact that despite this being a Canadian story about World War II, it could also be a story about Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, or the Ukraine today. A story of war does not just come from history, there are similar stories happening today. Continuing and enduring stories of patriotism, racism, and death. They leave behind survivors that have suffered the ugliness of war. An ugliness that takes many lives and leaves both emotional and physical scars on those left behind. Survivors search for humanity in an inhumane world. We are fortunate if we do not face such hardships and we should be compassionate to those that do.

It was a beautifully sad play.