From the Notebook

By Qin Zhang

I am not aware of the fact that I have joined an “illustrious” and “burgeoning” “club”.  But I must be happy to see that certain law school professor had taken time to mention me in his blog.   However, he somehow felt that he knew me, while I don’t believe that I have the pleasure.  I am impressed that he called me “she”, instead of “he”, though.

I am taking about a blog post of certain Mr. Eric Goldman.  http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/05/google_wins_tra.htm

Without knowing anything about me and about the case, he seemed to be very comfortable and determined to label me as one of those people who want to “extract case from honest businesses”. Does he possess a certain kind of crystal balls like the judges of this case? 

Obviously, I did not get any sympathy from Mr. Goldman.  But even he admitted the appellate court’s decision does not make any sense as a matter of law.  The matter “should go to trial to let the jury decide who they believe.” 

But Mr. Goldman did believe that judges’ decision is correct based on “policy”.  But here Mr. Goldman had his own little glib.  If this case is so much different from the existing law, and if it is a good policy to discourage the growing of the “illustrious” and “burgeoning” “club”, then judges should made the opinion public, so that it becomes the law of the land (the land of California at least).  Isn’t this what the common law system is about?

What prevent the judges from doing so?   Obvious they are not making a policy statement.  They did not want to disturb the law.  But they decided that the law of the land does not apply to this case.  Gee, I wonder what make this case so different so I do not deserve justice as everyone else.  It must be something very special that the judges are willing to ignore the law, but not willing to make a policy statement.  Then, I remember there are times people do things but would rather not tell why they do them.  But I would never guess the Honorable Appellate Court Judges could be those kinds of people.  I guess just being elevated to the “illustrious” and “burgeoning” “club”, I should not assume I know everything (or in this case, anything) about the legal system.

In fact, even if the judges are trying to make new law based on policy but for some unknown reason became shy and made the decision unpublished opinion, the formula cooked up by Mr. Goodman does not fit this case.  First of all, the confidential information was specified in a “trade secret statement” and was to be determined if it met the requirement at hearing a few days after the summary judgment hearing.  Google did not raise this issue at summary judgment, and only raise this issue as the reason to refuse to provide any information in discovery process.  In addition, Mr. Goodman forgot the defense of independent creation.  Where does it fit into the formula?  As the appellate court mentioned this in its decision, it ought to be relevant to this decision.  The fact of the matter is, Google never explained why there are gradual changes in their website after the coffee meeting when they claimed they created all the technology long (a few years to be exact) before the meeting.

And, what could the plaintiffs do?  Even forget the fact that there is basically no discovery responses from Google in this case, what evidence could the plaintiffs offer that would make the judges change their minds?  Without any suggestion, it would not be an actual formula, and it would not make any sense as a policy.  Would it be enough if plaintiffs prove that the employee could have access to whoever implemented the technology?  But I already did it.  Would plaintiffs have to prove that the employee actually told people who implemented the technology?  Even if I can go back in time and become a fly on the wall, it would still be impossible, because nobody knew who were the people who implemented the technology (even Google could not identify them for their own sake).  So, it is quite obvious there could not be a formula because no way could the plaintiffs prove the case.  Wait, the plaintiffs need to prove the case against summary judgment motion?  Well, since we are making new laws, who needs to pay attention to anything about the current law?

If Mr. Goldman really was trying to make sense of this case, he would ask the question: what if?  What if I am telling the truth, and the business that he wanted to protect is far from being honest?   Did I mention that Google did not provide even one piece of document regarding the technology that they claimed that they created (actually, Google did not provide any information about any technology of the company)?  Did I mention that Google did not even identify even one person as creator of any technology that they claimed that they all created?   Did I mention that all discovery responses (except for requests for producing documents) were signed by Mote (the Google employee in question) indicating that he is the person has the best knowledge regarding all questions including questions related to searches, while Google is claiming that they have complete division of the search and advertise departments?  Actually, we don’t even know (and Google certainly did not prove) that the technology in question is implemented in search engine division. 

Did I mention, Mote, who did not complete his PhD in USC, was promoted about five months after the coffee meeting when he had just worked there for about a year?   Did I mention that Mote’s specialty is in Artificial Intelligence, and my technology is also in the same field?  Did I mention that I have asked Mote whether there would be conflict of interest or Google policy that would prevent him from attending this meeting, but he was only too willing and eager to attend this meeting and calling a “mere acquaintance” good friend and suggested that we were all friends at the meeting?  Did I mention that we talked for about two hours and he was shocked by what he heard, and burst out “eye opening” in his hazy state of mind?    

Mr. Goldman probably would not care what I have to say.  He probably is too busy protecting “honest businesses”.   Did I mention that Google is a client of his former employer Cooley Godward LLP (from his bio)?    He may know something about Google that I don’t know. 

For example, he stated: “As you know, Google has a big divide between its advertising and search business units. Google does a number of things to insulate the search business from the advertising business, so the fact that Mote works in advertising means that he should be ‘walled off’ from the search engineers.”  No, we don’t know.  How did he know it?  Did he remember that from the record of the case, Google’s evidence regarding search-advertising division was completely “self-serving assertion”? 

Regardless of what he could know, I have to say that he is very careless about the facts.  Where did he get the idea that the coffee meeting was a sales pitch to Google and Mote sent some citations to me afterwards?   He would not have made this type of mistakes even if he just takes the time to read the decision carefully. 

Because his carelessness with the facts of this case, there are so many things he said about this case are not true.  But I simply do not have much energy left after pick through the jungle of the appellate court decision.  What I want to say is: his carelessness perhaps made him misunderstood this case.   This is not a case where the court is trying to make a policy statement.  Otherwise, it would be a published opinion, and become the law of the land.

            I found out that there are many things in life that are not what people said what they are, but for some, I am not sure whether it is just me, or that people just don’t know what they are talking about.  But perhaps freedom is not in this category.

            What I am trying to say is that freedom is a concept that has been misunderstood by many for a long time.  In a first gleam, freedom is a concept that is both simple and intuitive, but whenever we try to take a closer look in pacific context, there are many things the initial impressions fail to explain.

            The idea of freedom was pushed by a great degree by the concept of love.  As I said in my last post “Sense and Sensibility”, love stories had played a very important part in advancing individual freedom.  But freedom has to be put in context.  Freedom in abstract is meaningless, and absolute freedom is not only impossible, it is harmful.  Freedom should not mean you can do whatever you want and to whomever you want. 

            For example, love is never free.  What I mean is when one is in love, one is never free.  To love someone is to care about someone, whether it is actually care for, or is merely care of.  Ultimately the desire to love is a desire to make connection with the world, but we are also bound by that connection, and defined by that connection.   

            The reason that one should have the freedom to choose who to love (or not to love) is because it is so closely related to one’s identity, and the choice will have significant impact on one’s life.  But in order for people to make the right choice, they ought to know what they have chosen and have the knowledge of what are the consequences of their choices.   

            Although people should have the free choice of who to love, and determining how much they want to do occupied by love, it is different from free love.  As I said, there is no such a thing as free love.  If you are in love, you are not free.  If you are free, you are not in love.  I recently watch what is called a 60s’ cult classic “Girl on a Motorcycle”, which is a good example of this point.  Daniel is free, but he is not in love.  Rebecca is in love (in a somewhat twisted way), and she is not free. 

            This revealed something about freedom.  It is related to my assertion that nothing can be taking to the extent of being absolute.  Daniel is looking for absolute freedom, so he cannot offer any love, and Rebecca took freedom to love to whomever she wants, even though it is not reciprocated.  Intuitively it is just wrong that one can only take and not give, but one cannot take if one is not willing to give. 

            In the end, what enabled this unequal (thus unfair) exchange?  The word is delusion.  It is no coincident that “free love” will lead to domination and submission.  Many movements that started with request for freedom didn’t end well.  Russia and China (etc.) were “liberated” to the communist party’s suppression.  Free market deregulations led to destruction of the economy, and even free speech lead to corporations taking over the democracy.  When people said that Jesus will free us from our sins, could they imagine what kinds of suppressions had been imposed on people under his name?

            This is the complicity of life.  Every bad thing is done under the name of good thing.  The only trick that is needed is to push the truth a little further.  With respect to freedom, in order to use it for the wrong reason, the only thing people need to do is to allure people to “freely” make the wrong choices, then the rest is easy. 

            If freedom is absolute, it is easy to persuade people to make wrong choices even if it is not good for them.  “So what if I am wrong, as long as I am living my life as freely as I want.”  This false sense of freedom not only turning people into ruthless fool, it also fuel the entitlement of the privileged. 

            As far as absolute freedom goes, the closest case that reached this state on earth is the King (Queen) of the monarchy.  Generally speaking, a King (or Queen) can do whatever they want to whomever they want, so the abolishment of this kind of system is a rejection of the idea of absolute freedom. 

            The idea of the free society is not that everyone can do whatever they want, but that the freedom is more equally distributed than before.  In a given society, the better situated people (class) are offered greater degree of freedom than the others.  The ones that are powerful can tilt things more to their likings than the others, and the riches can buy more things and gain more accesses to things than the others. 

            The goal of a free society is for more people to have more freedom, especially with their basic rights.  It is fundamentally different from the idea of absolute freedom.  To the better situated people, insisting on explore their privilege to the full extent is to exploit or even infringe on the less fortunate people further.  And for the less privileged people the only thing that they can do to expand their freedom is to break from the system (either overthrowing the system, or breaking the law of the system) if the system does not provide for them. 

            In the end, in abstract, freedom is a word that is ambiguous.  It is not as simple or clear as many people seem to believe.  It has to be put in the context of reason and humanity.  A blank assertion of freedom often is a beginning of a very wrong path. 

 .       

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            Not too long ago, I read an article talking about Jane Austen’s novel “Sense and Sensibility” that lead me to read the novel. . 

            I first knew about the novel when I saw An Lee’s film based on the novel.  My interest in the story has been steadily growing ever since, but I was not very clear why.  It is not exactly a happy story.  Even in the moments of happiness there are something unsettling.  But there is always calmness in the tone, even in the moments of great distresses.  Some might view it as a defect, but the fact the story is somewhat open ended, that there are many questions to be asked, and not enough answers are given might be what attracts me as well. 

            The underlining story of this novel is that the livelihood of these women’s had been taken away from them suddenly and uncontrollably.  They had to leave the place they called home for many years without any hope of returning.  Their lives had been forever changed, but they manage to settle in much less grand inhabitant and filled their lives with music, art, literature and other intellectual pursuits. 

            The commentaries about the novel attributed the style of the novel as the continuation, or at least inspired by 18^th century’s moral tale.  I think is quite reasonable to say so.  Good love stories are never simply above love, or at least never just about love.  I believe love stories in western literatures had been a great force to push the boundary of individual freedom and human dignity. 

            I think it is fair to say that this novel is not an ordinary love story, and the moral tale it intend to tell is slightly a different sort.  Instead of dealing with conflict of the individuals and society, it dealt with the conflict within.  In this sense, it is a novel somewhat unique, and especially in relation to the subject matter, I don’t think I have actually seen anything quite like it.

            Just like the title indicated, this novel is about sense and sensibility.  Sense in another word is basically reason, and sensibility is emotion.  The two sisters Elinor and Marianne are two main actors to illustrate the points (but in closer look, all the characters are taking part in this).  But unlike “Pride and Prejudice”, the way the two actors are placed is different.  Unlike “Pride and Prejudice”, it not that two actors each learned their lesson, in “sense and sensibility”, Elinor is more like a model, and the lesson is Marianne’s to learn. 

            From the surface, Elinor seems to represent reason, and Marianne emotion.  But I believe it is not so simple.  Elinor has plenty of emotions, and Marianne was not completely lack of reason even in the beginning. 

            The essence of the lesson is that reason and emotion are intertwined and should be put in the right places.  And it is not a simple lesson to learn.  Just like Marianne, we need to learn the lesson through the unfolding of the events, and though understanding of the true characters of Elinor (and many other characters). 

            Perhaps what is unsettling for many people is that this novel took an unusually realistic approach to an essentially love story (or love stories).  The stressful tone of the novel is more related to the love lives of the two sisters.  There is always something unsettling with the prospect of the Elinor with Edward.  But one can sense some uncertainty in the relationship between Marianne and Willoughby even from the start.  Given the role of reason, Elinor had point out right in the beginning something in Willoughby that she cannot trust.  So we only need to guess how bad could it be, and it got pretty bad. 

            Marianne nearly lost her life.  But unlike many heroines in romantic stories, she survived.  She nearly died because she had let her emotions run uncontrolled, and she lived because she had reasons within her.  Grand passions, drastic emotions make us feel alive and feel like that we have lived like never before.  But just as Marianne, letting our emotions taking us where we want to be might be fulfilling and genuine, it might also lead to us to the world of make-believe, and the reality will often catch up and rock our world not in the way that we hoped. 

Marianne did wake up from her dream, and rise up from her mistake.  Ultimately, it is the truth that did her justice.  Marianne is reasonable enough to realize where is her problem, he is not what she think he is.  Her desire for the best in the world made her too willing to overlook (or not diligent enough to find out) his personality flaws. 

The two sisters are different, but not so different that they cannot talk to each other.  It is interesting that although there are difference of opinions about Willoughby, their opinions about Edward is very much the same, only that one felt love, and one could not see why.  

One of the reasons that I say that Elinor is full of emotions is in her love for Edward, not much in her expression, but in her persistence.  Despite all the uncertainties, and the decreased chance of possibility, Elinor’s love for Edward had never changed.  Her sole consolation is that the difficulties are all in the circumstances, not in her choice.  There could not be more obstacles for her, knowing Edward fully well, the chance seemed even smaller. 

 There are many criticisms about this novel, and one that is obvious is how the love started.  Because Jane Austen set her male characters a bit unconventional (although Colonel Brandon and Edward resembled Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley in many ways, they are less appealing), it takes a bit more explanation for how the love happens, and the she was not able to do so.              

            Although it is difficult to explain how love starts, it is easier to explain how love ends.  There is one simple word, honor.  In the old days, a question for the potential suitors is always about whether the intention is honorable.  But here I am talking about something more general. 

            We can talk about everything with modern life that will have effects on love, but in the end, one thing that makes a difference between fleeing desires and actual convictions is honor.  To love someone is to honor someone, and one cannot honor someone if someone is not honorable.  We might all have our flaws, but in our judgment regarding honor, we are not very flexible, and time and circumstances do really make much difference.  Willoughby did not lose Marianne when he turned his back to her, he lost Marianne when she heard that he had brought dishonor to another woman.  Edward is not Edward if he were to break his engagement with Lucy, both Elinor and Marianne agree on this. 

            This leads to Immanuel Kant’s definition about what is moral (I only read about some people talking about it), which is one must not drawn benefit from it, which is exactly the model for Edward.   If this just sounds too extreme, then the test for Willoughby is different.  For him the question is simply what really benefits “me”.  To him, it about a “quick fix” versus a long term interest.  But even in this battle between himself, he still failed.  He failed at least twice, and it defined his life.  It is an indication that in the realm of morality, the road is a slippery slope, one must be very careful in making decisions. 

            The conservation between Elinor and Willoughby not just revealed the dilemma within Willoughby, it also revealed a side of Elinor that is important for humanity, that is compassion.  It is another reason that I said that Elinor is full of emotions.  I found Elinor’s compassion for Willoughby extremely intriguing.  If she was overcome from the rage towards a man that brought her dear sister all the miseries that almost killed her, she would not be able to feel the compassion for him as he revealed his internal turmoil.  But with pragmatic rationality that we like to think she possessed, she would not care what he felt and how he felt.  The fact that she did care means that she is a romantic after all.  Her compassion towards Colonel Brandon also revealed that her interests towards him also go beyond towards a potential suitor of her sister, but a real friend. 

            It is interesting that the author spent quite some ink on Colonel Brandon, but very little on how Marianne actually accepted him.  One explanation can be that the author’s emphasis is on the correctness of the form, that Colonel Brandon being the right kind of men to love.  But love is love not just because it is right, but because it just is.  The problem with unconventional love is that there are often many factors that lead to the actual occurrences that might not be so easy to describe.

In the end, it is not the defeat of sensibility like some people seem to suggest.   In the case of Elinor and Edwards, it is a story of love overcomes all obstacles.  Even Marianne’s sensibility is echoed in Colonel Brandon.  The picture that the author painted is a picture more or less reflects reality.  We take things as we find it, and try to make the best of it.  As to the choices between imperfections, the question is what is more important and what is not.  At the very least, we should not fool ourselves and see things that are not there.     . 

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            It seems that I am on a row, not ready to get off the subject of politics and economy.  My focus this time is on the bipartisan recommendation for balancing the budget.  I have to say it is very disappointing. 

            I do think some of the recommendations make sense, but the flaws are fundamental, thus fatal.  First, the wealthy is officially untouchable now.  If a bipartisan commission that based on the principle of looking at every possible way of reducing the budget don’t dare to say anything about taxes of the wealthiest people (not even estate taxes), then there is no hope whatsoever anything will be done about this subject. 

            As I said many, many times (and more and more people are talking about it now), wealthy concentration on the top is a serious problem that will damage the foundation of this country, if not corrected.  To fix the economy, to balance the budget, the first thing that needs to be done is about this.  There is actually no real argument against it, but no one is willing to do anything, it is very disturbing. 

            Not willing to see the elephant in the room, the committee had to pick other targets, and I could not think of a choice that is worth than this.  I am talking about gas tax.  If there is one thing that I will pick to point out about what European countries (generally speaking) did wrong, it is to have high gas tax.  And if it is wrong for Europe, it is worse for US (as European countries use train more extensively than US).  Looking back in history, the financial crisis in the 70’s, and this financial crisis are ignited by high gas prices. 

            Reducing friction is the goal for conducting any kind of activities, including economic activities.  Transaction cost is a form of friction, and transportation cost is one kind of transactional cost.  The problem with US now is too much hyper fictional financial transactions, and not enough real economic transactions.  In order to increase real economic transactions, reducing transaction cost is essential.  

            If I buy a computer, and the shipment cost is about half the price of the computer, I am not getting good value for my money, and the computer manufacturers are not benefited from this either.  The shipping costs put a premium on all tangible things sold, thus effectively raise the real prices for all tangible things, and it will certainly reduce the real economic activities, and this effect will be compounded thus accelerated further and further, causing serious damages to the economy.  It is shocking to think that no experts in the committee have thought about this (as this line of thought is pretty much from Adam Smith, and even Milton Friedman), and it is even more shocking to think that they have thought about it, and decided to make the recommendation any way. 

            Tax on essential consumption is not a good idea in general, because it leads to higher living expenses, thus lead to higher wages, which in turn lead to higher costs for good of services.  This effect will be compounded to accelerate the effect further.  Therefore, in general, all the so-called “value-added” taxes will have to be closely scrutinized.  And in my view, it is simply an attempt to shift the tax burden to lower income tax payers.  But of all this type, gasoline tax is the worst.

It will be a different story if taxes are imposed on non-essential goods, such as the soft-drink tax I talked about when I was talking about health care reform.  Soft-drink is not only not essential to life, it is not good for you.  So, I see tax on soft drink as a good way to raise some revenue and help to improve the health of the general population.  But what happened?  It got shoot down without given any reason why.    

Imposing taxes on luxury goods might not be a bad ideas, as luxury goods are not essential to life, and people who buy them mostly because they are expensive, it probably will not have much effect on the consumption.  But as it seems that the purpose of imposing “value-added” tax is to shift the tax burden to low income taxpayer, I don’t think it will be suggested by anyone (and compare the two, income tax seems to be making more sense than sales tax).

Speaking of prices of goods, I also have another comment.  What is up with commodity trading?  It is obvious high commodity price leads to less manufacturing, and less manufacturing jobs.  There are articles that indicated the gas price jump and food price jump in the past few years all have a lot to do with commodity speculation.  If stock speculation is probably not entirely avoidable, the same might not be true for commodity.  There is a difference between end users and commodity speculators, and it is obvious.  Commodity speculators buy to sell, and the end user buy to use.  Frankly, I don’t think the framework of current commodity trading is necessary and effective, and it is very venerable to manipulation. 

Unlike stocks, the essential commodities will always have buyers.  So, if someone is being able to manipulate the market and raise price, they will almost certain make money.  As financial institutions are getting bigger and bigger, a single financial institution can fuel the raise of the market if they select the right target (for example, I saw some articles indicated that the global food price jump a few years ago was the making of Goldman Sachs).

Frankly, due to technology development, I don’t see why commodity speculation should be allowed to exist at all.  An auction house structure that allows only the end users can be established that will better serve the commodity market.  If this is not done, at least heavy taxes should be imposed on any profit made by commodity speculation, as this is the kind of activities that should be discouraged. 

Going back to gas price, there is a down side for keeping gas price low, as it will encourage more consumption, thus aggravate global warming.  The solution I will offer is to reduce the price of alternative clean energy (and/or provide lower cost alternative way of transportation).  This requires more incentive and active involvement in technology development, basic establishment of new ventures (for example, I have to have some doubt on how gasoline companies will be very willing to develop technologies that will provide lower cost alternative).   

Not all investments are made equal, thus the tax policies should be divided further for different kinds of investment.  If we want to encourage more companies to make and do things, then different tax treatment can be applied to different type of activities.  The cross the board suggestion on reducing taxes for all capital gain taxes, dividend taxes and corporation tax again raise the question of how un-biased, or how serious the bipartisan committee is.   

I can agree with reducing corporation tax rate if capital gain tax mostly related to stock speculation (capital gain taxes should be gradually increased with shortened length of transactions) can be significantly increased (and tax should be imposed based on transactions, regardless of status, so foreign entities ought to pay taxes as well.  This will not only raise revenue, but also help to put the financial market in order).  It is true that a C corporation will in effect make the shareholders paying taxes twice (and S corporation have other draw backs).  But this has no effect on capital gain tax for public stock trading, thus not justify low capital tax.   

I can appreciate the idea to cut some tax exemptions such as mortgage exemptions to make the tax code simpler, and reduce unintended results (I believe mortgage exemption is a bad idea to begin with, but to undo the damage is not easy, I believe the mortgage exemption for the top earners should be eliminated first, so the market will first make some adjustment, in order to help to ease the pain for lower income earners.)   But I think different tax policies for different investment make sense, because if used effectively, it can achieve regulative effects and raise revenue as well. 

It might be inevitable that the age to qualify for social security will have to be raised (though there are related problems.  For example, where are the extra jobs that can be offered to people who will work longer)?   But I disagree that the benefit should be cut for those who qualify.  The question is who should qualify.  After all, social security is a security.  So, it should be offered for those who actually need it (as sole source of income, or supplement), not just as a retirement plan.  Reducing benefits for people who need it and keep it for people who do not need it will have the same effect as the current tax policy, reducing the size of market.  Whether anything can be done about it will go back to the question of whether the wealthy can be touched. 

If President Obama does not have people who can answer this question, then maybe he should look for other advisers.

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            I don’t want to write another post on politics, because it is not my focus.  But the mid-term election shocked and saddened me, I could not help but to write this post.

            I gradually learned more and more about American politics after I came from China. After 9/11, and I started to noticed the similarity between American politics and Chinese politics, as oddly as it sound.  There is a phrase I often want to use when talk about politics, especially politics in China, which is “there will not be violent king without violent subordinates”.  Whenever there is a conclusion to be drawn about Chairman Mao, this phrase is always handy.  If I change the phrase a little, to “there will not be dishonest politicians without delusional voters”, then I think it can explain American politics in recent history well.

            The “great communicator” told what people want to hear, “feeling your pain” continued this delusion, and “mission accomplished” is simply the highlight of this sentiment.  The story about King Lear is not just fit for a king, it seems that when the masses are put in the place of the king, they too cannot escape the fate.

            Delusion is often more tempting that reality, especially when you get used to it.  To keep a clear head requires discipline, it is hard to do in good time, and it is especially hard to do in bad time.  And if it is difficult for an individual, it will be much harder to masses. 

            I became a Christian not too long after I came to US.  In retrospect, it certainly is against my principle of doubt, and I am pretty sure my doubt had never been surcomed.  I was never a “good” Christian, but my submission is not entirely forced.  My good will towards Christianity has a lot to do with a book I read by a famous Chinese sociologist (Fei Xiao Tong) about the impact of protestant Christian faith on the American society. 

            I later realized that this type of attribution is not guaranteed, as far as the ground to validate Christian faith.  But as a culture conduit, the value that it promoted should not be equally dismissed. 

            In “The Wealth of the Nations”, Adam Smith illustrated the nature economic advantage of United States in its early days.  What United States had in the early days was much more than countries such China and India have now.  With vast and rich land and few people, not only the products and labors were cheap, the living expenses were cheap.  Wealth was generated up and down. 

            With the brilliant creation of the new political structure, US was no doubt to a very good start.  But political structure and constitution do not exist in vacuum, many countries have copied the laws of United States but with far less desirable results, so the difference is with the people, which is the determining factor.

            It is fitting for a sociologist to observe the value that was carried on the early American society.  That value was discipline.  Along with can-do spirit, it is essential for the success of the United States of America.  And I am afraid that this spirit has been forgotten by right and left. 

            You might think this is exactly what tea party or even Republican party in general is about, but I don’t think it is the case.  The discipline I am talking about is the discipline in financial system, and economic system. 

            All we hear about the mid-term election are “jobs, jobs, jobs”.  So it is clear that high unemployment rate has reached a boiling point in US.  But I would think that any of the “European socialist democracy” country would be rather pleased with this kind of unemployment rate. 

            The reason is two-fold.  The unemployment number is not a true reflection of the number of the people that need jobs.  Many say that the real number could be double, if not more.  If we double the number of the official unemployment rate, then it will reach to almost 20 percent, which is not much lower than the number in the Great Depression. 

            The reason that the number does not reflect reality is that many people are falling off the crack, not noticed and helped by the system at all.  Which lead to the second point.  In the “European social democracy” country, there is something called safety net (which in the real socialist country China doe not actually have, US has gotten rid of a few decades ago).  Therefore, although unemployment is not desirable , it is more tolerable in these countries.

            The “European social democracy” is used as dirty words in American politics for sure, without many people explaining why.  The only reason that I can think of is that it is related to low growth, and high unemployment rate.  But it is a question of chicken and egg. 

            From the surface, US economy took off after it departed from the “European social democracy” in 1980s.  But what is the real reason for it?  I scratch my head every time when people praise President Reagan.  What had he done?  Huge military spending and deep tax cut for the riches (deficit spending) certainly lead to growth with huge deficit as natural consequences. 

            This is only a tip of the iceberg.  A series of policy changes such as pension reform, mortgage reform, lower capital gain taxes, reducing financial regulations, etc. set a trend of bubble generating economy.  Since then, everything is inflated, financial institution has more and more piece of the pie of the economy, and fewer people have larger piece of the pie of the economy. 

            If you dare to look back, you would clearly see a financial and economic system that is out of control.  What is the average housing price in any given region? 

What is the Dojone average in 1970s?  

Inflated housing prices mean that no average wage earner can afford to buy a home without mortgage.  With mortgage payments, people often end up paying three times of the price of the house if not more.  Obviously it generated more revenue for financial companies, and reducing purchasing power for other products and services. 

The same is true with stock market.  Inflated stock prices mean that average investors will not be able to share any benefit of the real growth, and often are victim of the volatile stock market.  (as mutual funds are not permitted into short market, only hedge funds that often require 50 million per investment are permitted to do so, any down market is a bad market for the average investors, but could be windfall to the rich). 

Obviously if the bubbles can keep on growing, average person would not feel the pain.  This is why the entire country is hooked on the hype of “growth”, rich, poor and everyone in between. But the problem is it cannot go on forever.  The bubbles had to burst, and everything is priced so high, it is more and more difficult to create bubbles. 

It seems tome that every trick that can be used to generate bubbles are being used:  Retirement investment in the stock market to inflate the stock price, lower capital gain tax to further generate bubble in the stock market, lower interest rate to generate housing bubbles and stock market bubbles, increase credit card debt and home equity loans to inflate the purchasing power, etc. 

 All responsible economists will say that the high unemployment rate is likely to last for very long time, and if they are especially candid, they will say that without a bubbled economy, the low unemployment rate in the bubbled economic years can never be achieved again. 

            So, it seems to be a time to come out of denial.  This is why it is especially upsetting when Republican Party is now taking control of the congress.  Either Tea party members or more traditional Republican party members are all fixated in tax cut for the riches and grow “businesses”. 

            But businesses do not grow in vacuum.  Without market, no businesses can grow.  There will not be a market economy without mass consumers, this is a point I made many times.  As I illustrated above, the economic bubbles (and the burst of the bubbles) will always hurt average consumers, results in reduction of purchasing powers.  Compounded with high unemployment rate, the purchasing power of the consumers has taken a nose dive. 

            As the purchasing power is reduced because people don’t have money to spend, tax cut to the rich or even business can only lead to more money to people who had money and sit on it, so it is the wrong solution to the economy.  At best, it will create some bubbles, which can only push the problems to the future.  But as the Bush tax cut fail to reverse the course, and tax cut in the stimulus bill fail to generate visible results, this trick just will not work this time. 

            The immediate result of the midterm election is President Obama had to give in to extend Bush tax cut to the rich.   Frankly, even Fed’s 500 billion “stimulus” is at least troublesome.  If I understood it correctly, then by waving the magic wane, the Fed just eliminated 500 billion national debts (and reduced the tendency of deflation), this ought to make people that are worried about the debt a little happier.  But besides these, I see this move is still within the playbook of bubble generating, but providing no real cure. 

            To be honest, I think it is a time to take a good look at the “European social democracy”, and more specifically, think about amending and expanding the safety net.  Based on the reason I stated, the country need FDR, not Reagan.  I am certain that President Obama can be FDR if we let him (and it is so sad that we just saw that he had one of his wing broken). 

            I am especially frustrated by the fact that the term “European social democracy” has become a conversation stopper.  Labeling something to stop a conversation, that is so from the playbook of Chairman Mao.   If the socialist China can start to not letting ideology getting in the way of what need to be done, there is no reason the democratic United States of American ought to be scared of anything. 

            The technology changes are accelerating.  This and globalization have all contributed to the changing landscape of global economy.  There will be many fundamental changes and adjustments that will need to be made, and in some instances the overall adjustment cannot be made soon enough to reduce pressure on the labor market.  Technology development ultimately is for the benefit of the entire human race, not just for a few.  Government ought to be by the people and for the people.  In order to face challenges and solve social and economy problems, governments have the power to use taxation to achieve these goals.

              The solution is not just tax the rich.  A lot more ought to be done.  For example, many articles have pointed out that tax dollars have been used to subsidize the high income earners’ mortgages which contribute to real estate bubbles, and enriched the financial institutions.  Low capital gain taxes ought to be dealt with (especially in some relatively short term investment), as it mostly solidified the casino like characteristics of the financial market.  And, frankly, I did not see the reason that “buying short” is necessary for private institution.  If it is for insurance reason, we have seen from the AIG incident, government is often the biggest and ultimate insurance company, then government at least ought be able to put significant taxes on it.  . 

            Before a lot of people cry socialist, they should ask what would Jesus do. 

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life, politics and economy,  about discussions related to issues in this post.

**Permission is needed to use contents of this blog.  All rights reserved.

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life, politics and economy,  about discussions related to issues in this post.

**Permission is needed to use contents of this blog.  All rights reserved.

 

            I like to call myself an dependent when people are talking about political affiliation.  One of the reasons is that growing up in China, I was overwhelmed by the communist propaganda, that it somehow made me resisting any firm commitment of ideology. By ignoring all the hints and pressures of “getting close to the communist party”, I practically give up the prospect of “getting ahead”, and was quite obviously deprived of the right to continue my graduate studies (due to school policy, I ought to have a guaranteed spot in our graduate program due to my good grade, but was replaced by someone what was not qualified).

            This reason aside, there is another reason.  Call me picky, I have trouble identify with Democrat or Republican, and did not find any other party that I can identify with.  In any election, what it often comes down to is Democrat or Republican.  So I like to offer my opinion about the two.

            If you pay attention on what I said, you might think that I am a Democrat, and I agree at least on most of the issues that are in question, I sided with Democrat.  So, my disagreement with Democrat is not about the conclusions, but on part of the reasons, and  how to get there.  I do think it is a significant difference.

            All party supporters can be divided into two groups, the ones that agree with the ideology, and the ones that believe that the policies will benefit them.   Besides this, the rest of the comments I am going to make might often seem too general, not necessary apply to some people in the groups. 

            Based on my understanding about American politics, the groups that generally benefited by the Democrat’s policies are labor unions, and businesses (especially big businesses) and wealth individuals will be benefited by Republican’s policies.  In this sense, as large scale manufacture jobs declined significantly, union membership in private sectors are in decline, the support groups of democrat party is some times in question (as some democratic agendas will be in conflict with union members of public sector). 

            But what Democrat lacks in identifiable support groups, they may be able to gain on individual base, if they can dig deep into the issues, and get to be more effective in solving the problems. 

            To be honest, I could not find one major issue that I can agree with the Republican.  It is not that their basic ideology is bad, but that their conclusions are mostly wrong, especially under the current circumstance. 

            From pure ideological point, Democrat and Republican derive from one idea: freedom.  But the interpretation of freedom by Republican has more flaws.  The reason that freedom is so importance is because human mind is a wonderful thing, and the most amazing things in the world (i.e., “ideas”) are the products of the minds.  Ideas can change the world.  But the most useful ideas are the products of the free minds.  The human mind works alone, and ought to be left alone.  This very reason is the reason why I came to America. 

            But we are not completely free.  The difference of the freedom the mind and the freedom to act is not to be confused.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, the source of many problems in the world is that that people tend to take things to the extreme.  We cannot do whatever we want, as one person’s freedom may lead to another’ dismay.  Thus, there is the concept of social responsibility. 

            The concept of social responsibility has two aspects, one is towards others, and another is towards the world.  Government functions are derived from this concept.  Criminal law and enforcement is related to the first aspect, so is the civil law and government regulations.  The second aspect is mostly related to taxation (although in the broader sense, since the world are build on individuals, all measures that related to the first aspect will also help with the second aspect). 

            I believe that on the issue of freedom of the mind and the freedom to act, Democrat are better situated that Republican.  But, I will also offer my criticisms with Democrats.  First, is that they failed to provide sufficient justifications for their policies that are persuasive, and second is that they often failed to give sufficient considerations on implementations in their policies.  Most of the policies that are supported by Democrats will benefit the society, and the majority of the people.  But somehow, they often fail to resignation with the public sufficiently, and sometimes fail to achieve the intended results. 

First of all, the talk about big government or small government is misleading.  In strict sense, Democrat or Republican are all for big government.  It is just that Democrat focuses more on regulations and social welfares, Republican focuses on warfare. 

The talk about big government and small government has a lot to do with taxation.   At this point Republicans did a good job of branding itself as a party who cut taxes, even though they helped to create many economic problems. 

Although no one like paying taxes, everyone can understand the reason that taxation is necessary.  The small government argument is fundamentally flawed because that it is based on a somewhat romantic, and yet out of touch sentiment. 

Many people have said that there are fewer true Republicans left.  What they are referring to is the type that their policies are based on ideology of small government, to keep things as they were.  But government will inevitably become bigger and more complicated as everything else becomes bigger and more complicated.  As our lives become more sophisticated, technology becomes more and more sophisticated, businesses becomes more and more sophisticated, government will have to become more and more sophisticated as to its functions of regulations and to the services it provided.  And a measurement of the civilized society is general improvement of the living standard, which include welfare and social services.

As I said earlier, social responsibilities are not just about the obligations to others, they are also related to our relationship to the world, about improving our environment (physical environment and social environment).  And one of the biggest deficiencies of Democrat is failing to emphasis this aspect. 

Of Democrat’s agendas, education, and environmental protections are getting better public acceptance than others because they are better conceived as a problems with the environment.  But many other agendas are not different from them.  The reasons that they are not well received are that the rationalities for these policies are not well explained. 

Despite of whether the culture development emphasized too much on the right to be selfish, policies that that are solely based on altruism reasons are not going to get to far, even if there are only potentially the possibility of some harm to someone.  The example of this is the policy of health care, taxation, and financial reform. 

For example, when talking about the taxation on the wealthy, almost everyone automatically think it is the issue of fairness, not the issue of better economic policy.  It would not bother me too much if deep tax cut for the rich will help grow the economy.  But when it is the basic cause of the economic crisis, anyone that is for it is being irresponsible.

The same is truth with health care reform and financial reform.  The message that Democrat conveyed is mostly about fairness and compassion to the individuals, but I believe the issue is more about efficiency and lower health care cost for all, and the health of the system.  Therefore, I simply cannot see any reason for opposing health care reform and financial reform (other than protecting the particular interests of particular group). 

The inability to establish sufficient rationality for their policies obviously has significant effects.  I am not an expert in many fields, so I don’t know if they are right when people talked about many policies such as health care reform, financial reform, and stimulus plans did not go far enough.  But I think at least some arguments are valid.  I also wonder whether the measures set up to achieve the goals will be effective due to lack of sufficient understanding of the rationality.

Another more obvious example is the two wars, and lacks of opposition by Democratic party.  With all the debates about the cost of health care reform, not much was heard about the cost of the two wars.  To be honest, I think both of on going two wars are mistakes (I hold this thought from the very beginning), though my reasons are a little different. 

If the mistake of Iraq war is mostly about lack justification, then the Afghanistan war is a mistake for technical reasons.  Some people are blaming the decision into war on the Neo-conservative.  But I think many of the politicians (and general public) are lacking of history lessons.  Since World War II, when a country can win a major war in the land of another country?   Many people are attributing the clasp of the Soviet Union as the result of US cold war policy, especially Regan, but I think the economic hardship (manifested by the clasp of currency) due to the cost of War in Afghanistan is the real reason.   If US a special force or CIA operation in Afghanistan in stead of war, Bin Laden might have already been captured, and Al-Qeada dismantled.  The worst it could happen is something like we have now, but cost much less.

Why Democrats had to pretend to be tough on national security issues?  Any superpower can use their position to be tough, that is not what makes good name for America.  What was admired and respected in the world is when they put peace above the war.

The deficiency in Democrat’s policy is not just in explaining the fundamental reasons for their policy, it is also about the implementation, and the two defects are related.  I believe that at least for the most part, a policy that is fair is also a policy that is right.  Finding real world rationality and carrying on real world implementation both require paying attention to details, and be very disciplined about reasons.  In this context, it requires not stopping at what is fair, but going further to what is right and possible. 

This is not easy task, but I hope that it will happen.  For my hope is still in the Democratic party.  One reason is that when dealing with education, Democrats seem to be willing to deal with the teacher union, which makes me think that they are putting the interests of the country first.  Until the Republican party did something similar to the insurance companies, oil companies, banks, wall streets and so on, I don’t think I can have much hope for them.

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life, politics and economy,  about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            Lately many people are talking about education, especially education related to science and technology.  I like to say a few words as well.  I choose this title because I like the sound of it, but you can say that my point is for education, and science education, we should look beyond school, and/or what we think of about the school.

            There are many comments about the new movie “The Social Network”, and different people took different angles in their comments.  For me, what this movie did is to shine some lights on the start-up world (or more broadly technology world), which to my knowledge have been mostly over looked by Hollywood.   I certainly do not know what is true or not true in the movie, but it seems that all the scenarios in the movies could happen in this world, if they have not happened many times yet. 

            But the movie, and the talks about what is and what is not about the movie will expand the public awareness and insights to this world.  And the interests and knowledge generated due to this movie (and hopefully other movies and artistic and entertainment programs similar to it) will make the science and technology world more visible in the public conscious in the United States. 

            One of the most important things is how to motive people.  The difference between humans and any other things (such as animals, machines, etc.) is that humans often are motivated by certain goals, and do things that have no short term benefits, but only for the purpose of achieving long term goals.  This is especially important for education.

            There are many things that are related to motivations.  First is inspiration.  Probably not many people in US would know who is Madame Curie (an physicist who won Nobel Prize twice), but when China first adopt the policy of reform and opening up, she was a household name, and many young people saw her as a role model, including me.  Interestingly enough, there seems to be a lot of girls going into science and technology in China (for example, when I attend University of Miami graduate program, there was about equal amount of Chinese female students as the male students in our department, but no other female students).

            When we talk about inspiration, we often are talking about role models.  But there are different types of role models: the ones that you will see in movies, or TV programs, etc., or the ones that you know in real life.  If you see someone that did some extraordinary things, then you would start to think that it would be nice if you can do the same.  But if you see someone that you know did something, then you are likely to think that you might actually be able to do the same thing.  I remember the First Lady Michelle Obama had talked about the influence of her brother on her.  Basically, she said as she saw that her brother was able to get into a good school, she thought that if he could do it, she should be able to do the same. 

            The role model as in someone that you know will not only turn fantasy to reality, but also provide access to unknown world.  When we talk about obstacles, we often focus on things that are tangible.  But there are many intangible things that people did not pay attention to.  One of which is lack of role models that people can have access to. 

            To some degree, access to a role model is an access to a new world.  This is especially true for the world of science and technology.  There are many entertainment programs that basically monitoring every moves of actors, athletes, etc. But the lives of scientists and engineers are not the attentions of most programs.   

            If you don’t know anything about something, then it will seem to be very difficult, even if it actually is very easy.  At least it will seem to be very remote.  The sciences taught at schools can only show the students nuts and bolts of the science and technology world, many of the students would not be able to make the connection between the classes and the real world experiences. 

            All in all, inspiring, planting, and cultivating interests is the first step about science education, and I believe the most important step of the education. One suggestion I can make based on this insight is to bring scientists, engineers, and technologists to schools, and to the students.  This means regular scientists to regular schools and students, more clubs, talks and mentor programs that can reach every student.  In the end, not only will it benefit the students, it will also provide good opportunities for scientists, engineers, and technologists to gain new perspectives and fresh looks of their world, which could be very valuable for them.

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life education and science,  about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            This post is not about start-up know-how, as I am not qualified to do so.  Frankly I don’t really know who might be interested in reading this. I have walked into the start-ups space as a complete outsider.  But I have spent sometime hearing or watching how things are.  I write this because I have not seen something very much like this.

            Since this post is about business, so I will try to write in business style, by using sub-headings.

1.      Big Ideas

            If I learned anything, it is that all investors care about big ideas.  I once said something to an angel investor suggesting that angels don’t necessarily emphasis on big ideas as much as VCs do, and he was not happy about my comment.  This obviously means that angles and VCs are all seeking big ideas (so, in this post, I will use the term VCs to represent both angel investors and venture capital investors). .

            Their actions told the same story.  Before I had any contact with the field, I read some books, that suggested that it would be very difficult to even talk to a VC.  But later I found out it is not true.  VC firms and now most of the angel groups are very diligent in reaching out to the start-up community. They can be approached from various meetings or even from the websites. It is not necessary that you have to know them personally.

            But getting the opportunity to pitch is not the same as getting the investment and other helps.  Although VCs are seeking big ideas, whether they will make an investment on particular start-up often is based on other factors, most importantly the team.

2.      Teams.

            Everyone will say team is a very important factor in making an investment, but there are different opinions on how important is this factor, although many people will say it is a determining factor.

            No doubt team is important.  All ideas had to be implemented in order to build a successful venture, and implementations depend on people.  People ultimately are the determining factors in successes or failures. 

            But how to determine the criteria for a successful team is a different question.  For many people in the space, the interpretation is too narrow.  A lot of time things will go bad when people try to get “too smart”.  The same thing often happens here.  For many people, the emphasis for team often becomes the requirement for serial entrepreneurs or some big names in the space.  When incubators will only incubate start-ups that are founded by serial entrepreneurs, it is obvious that it had gone too far.

            This practice is trouble-some because in reality it often end up undermining the principle of seeking big ideas.  In the decision making process, the team and idea are often two competing factors, so over emphasis on one inevitably will reduce the importance of the other.  It is not very rare that some not so good ideas get funded because of this mistake.

              There could also be hidden problems related to this trend.  It is undeniable that experiences do count, and most people that had gone through this process will learn many valuable lessons that will make them more likely to be successful in their next venture. 

            But the very fact that they are smarter could actually be a problem.   Through out history, most of the game changing events became possible due to effort of many people who don’t know better.  Courage is an asset that could diminish from experiences.  Without the enthusiasm to make the impossible possible, very few will go on to push the boundary.  Most of them will fail, but in doing so, they often pave the way for the next new comers to continue the journey.  And if they do succeed, the world will be a different place.  A thriving society is built on the can-do spirit.  It will be very unfortunate to see the fire get dimmed.

            It is understandable that VCs are businesses after all, that they are in it for the money, so they will try their best to find sure thing.  But this inherit requirement for certainty is in conflict with the nature of start-ups.  In other word, in start-ups space, uncertainty is often factor to take advantage of, not just to avoid. 

3.                  Model for Business model

            The topic about business model becomes tricky when it comes to web start-up space.  In many new technology areas, the business model for start-ups is not much different from traditional model for products or services (although in some cases, it is no longer true as well).  But for web start-ups dealing with the question of access or connections, the first and foremost uncertainty is the business model.  In fact, for many start-ups, the secrets of their success are their business models.  In these cases, the model for business model is that there is no model (because any pre-set model might eliminate many possible unknown models).

            It is impossible to predict what a particular startup will be, or what the landscape in the web in the very near future will be.  But we can say where we want it to be eventually, which is to establish transparent and frictionless connections in the world, which (hopefully) will enable the establishment of new economic model of the society that will lead to fulfillment of ultimate human goals such fairness and equality.

            In this sense, the newly surged interests in web space may very well be the exciting news.  The question is whether they will be misguided into to confined space that cause waste and lost opportunities.

`           I am a fan of the Charlie Rose show, because I like its style.  My impression is that he genuinely has the curiosity about what the guests would say, and to be surprised by them, rather than fulfilling his agenda or criteria, which often resulted in ideas to be presented in their ordinary forms, not to be tailored by some preset criteria.  The reason I mention this here is that should also apply to VCs.

            It is obvious that VCs are very well informed.  It is even possible that many VCs know more about t what is going on in the space than most entrepreneurs.  But what VCs don’t know are that particular ideas that the startups are working on (otherwise, there is no point of making the presentations).   But conversations and presentations are too much focusing on what the VCs want to know, rather than what the entrepreneurs had to say. 

            I remember someone said that how you frame your questions often determine the answers, this is true at least in the sense that you will leave out something you don’t know if you don’t ask the relevant questions and if you construe your questions too focused. 

            The problem with deal presentations is that they often treat startups as ordinary businesses, following the format of business plans of ordinary businesses.  Even many insiders admit it is nonsense,  as not only many projected numbers don’t really means anything, many actual numbers don’t really mean too much for bases for future projections.  Even some mythologies that might be helpful for making future predictions could be not of much help, especially if what is the business model is still a question. 

            This ultimately lead to the conclusion that in some cases, the only driving force in the initial stage is passion, passion for big ideas, or passion for doing something new and useful (in some sense), which ultimately lead to the question of whether VC investment could be a good model for such ventures.  In many past cases, it indicated that many startups simply cannot rely on VC investment for early stage investments.

            Many would say that what the entrepreneurs need to present is a vision. But I think what is also needed to have the vision come across is the attending ears.  Entrepreneurs often have to treat VCs as audiences and try to catch the attention of them, which often will distort their visions.  As the results, deals will be tailored more or less alike, which will limit the possibilities in the space.  To solve this problem, VCs ought to first buy into the visions before they know what are the visions.  This makes VCs more like mentors not audiences.  This suggests that access or superficial access is not enough.

4.                  Fairness

            I mentioned in the beginning that the initial access to VCs is not as hard as some suggested.   But that is just half of the story.  You may get VCs to listen to you, but how they are listening to you, and whether there will be a chance to make a deal is another story.

            I have to spend a lot of time on my litigation recently, so, I am not very well informed on the status of current VC activities.  But I think it is safe to say that in general startups are competing to VC investments, so they got to have something to stand out in the many. 

            There might be time that VCs are fighting for the attention of a start-up, but that usually come in the later stage when it have the momentum going.  In order to get there, many ought to seek some investments.  Most of the time, personal relationship will make a big difference. 

            There are some talks about lack of women and minorities in the startup space.  As a woman and minority, I will say something about this topic here.  I once heard in a meeting an angle investor said out loud that investors just not going to invest on women (I appreciate his honesty).  But beside him, I have not heard other people said the same. 

            But it does not have to be clear cut like this.  To me, it seems that the problems can be mostly about excess and trust.  The relationship between VCs and entrepreneurs are like partners or somewhat mentor relationship, so the relationship is quite personal, so it naturally could require some personal connections, especially in the early state investment.  In the later stage, as long as the business is attractive, the investors can deal with it one way or another, even by changing or appointing new executives. 

            People are more comfortable with others that are like them, this natural rule obviously will create some invisible barriers for women and minority.  The best way to overcome this problem is for VCs to realize this problem and make efforts to reach out more, as it will benefit themselves as well.  As the VCs business is all about new ideas, and the best way to access new ideas is to approach it from different perspective.  Talking to people that are different is a very effective way to gain different perspective.  If more people realize this, all will benefit.

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life and economy,  about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            Whenever I hear people talking about statistics, I will often remember a little real life story about an investment industry figure (I read his book, which I thought was interesting and useful).  The story goes, one day he and his wife went for a ride with their relatively new luxury car. All of sudden, the car broke down in the middle of the road.  Needless to say, they are surprised.  Then, he started his sentence with “statistics show…”, which made his wife fierce. 

            The moral of the story is that there are wrong times to use statistics (as the story was told from the perspective of the wife as an evidence of what she had to put up with).  Although in thinking process it is easy to get them mixed up, in real life situations, people often know the differences, otherwise no one will be buying any lottery tickets.

            I rarely buy lottery tickets, but I do know and appreciate the concept of against the odds.  In fact, I think the entire human history is a history of it.  In my last post, I talked about excess, and how the Great Gatsby story as an embodiment of this sentiment is the cause of destruction. 

            But the allure of the Great Gatsby is not simply excess, but the possibility of against all odds.  We certainly don’t see poor boys turn into millineries (and billionaires now a day) often.  And this hope or fantasy can drive people to do the impossible things and some can succeed in certain degree.

            I just saw the movie The Fountainhead (I have not read the novel).  Obviously Ayn Rand’s idea of individualism has a lot to do with the story of the Great Gatsby.  I have not read very much of Ayn Rand’s works, but whenever I read or heard about them, they often give me a mixed feeling.  I think she did get something right, but not quiet right, which leads to something different, which clearly indicate the danger of ideologies with all the possible interpretations.

            It is good choice to use an architect to be her hero, as the struggle for design control is a real and constant struggle.  It is probably the reason that I am not an architect.  Having been spending sometime in my mother’s office, having read books around, and even traced many illustrations, I did remember rambling about studying architect when it was time to think about what to choose as a profession.  The very reason that mother gave to me for against it is exactly this, lack of control, which seems to be a good enough reason, and since I was not very committed to the idea, I quickly abandoned the idea.

            But the reason we care about this struggle is because it turns out it is a manifestation for many things in life.  And, more importantly the dilemma becomes the dilemma of many professions more and more obviously.

            Going back to statistics, I don’t need to tell you that statistics has become more and more important in many professions, and in our society, to the extent that statistics seems to have the danger of overtaking the place of reason.

            Polls dictate politics, numbers and charts influence investment and economic decisions, businesses are directed by marketing surveys, psychologists and social scientists live by questionnaire, and now Google even claims to be able to know what you are thinking before you do.

            We are told that these are science, and obvious science is good.  If we cannot believe science then what can we believe?  But just as statistics cannot determine whether your car will break in the middle of the road, statistics should not dictate you think. 

            It should not be a surprise if I tell you that all new ideas started with one or very few people.  Gradually, and often painfully some new ideas are accepted by more and more people.  Unfortunately as the ideas spread and grow, they are often mutated and expanded that some seemly good ideas can turn questionable or even bad. 

            As far as individualism goes, I agree with Ayn Rand that there is no collective mind.  The development of internet give us more direct access to less censored or uncensored writings or talks which gives us more close access to other people’s thinking process.  We know that people don’t think alike, and the reason for people to agree on something or disagree on something could be very different and sometimes quite unexpected. 

            Another thing I like to point out is that not all statistics are created equal, and not all numbers are hard cold numbers.  As far as I can tell, most survey data are soft and blurry data which can never be as reliable as people would like to think they are.  Even some data that seem to be hard and cold data (such as economical data) can be blurry due the influence of human factors (depending on how the parameters are set).

            Another factor I like to point out is that numbers are not just numbers, what is important, and most people seems to forget is that any number is a number with corresponding parameter, and how than parameter is set is more important than numbers.

            For example, for those who are fascinated by predictions, there is a prediction that I did not hear many people talked about much.  I had read some articles a few years back talking about the wealth concentration at the top is exceeding the degree prior to the Great Depression, and they predicted that there would be an economic disaster just like the Great Depression that would be coming soon.  As far as I can remember it is not just from one person.  The reason they provided for this predict is that imbalance of the supply and demand, as wealth is concentrated on a very few, there will be diminished demand for the market. 

            Imagine my surprise when I heard most of the leading figures in economics and finance were talking about how surprised they are about the financial crisis.  Assuming that they are telling the truth, then the only explanation for their surprise is that they did not consider the parameter of wealth concentration as a factor for economics (then, obviously they are in the supply camp, which will also tell us how ignorance them are). 

            That is exactly why the survey culture is bad.  By focusing on numbers, and having the false sense of security about “numbers that don’t lie”, many will be closely live in their own created reality and have no clue of what is actually happening.

            Just to illustrate how surreal this world could be, I read an article in the Economist talking about the wealth gap has been exaggerated because the prices are falling for the low quality goods.  It is shocking to learn that the author (and probably the editor in the magazine) would think low income people are the type of people bound to buy low quality goods (and high income people had to buy high quality goods). 

            It is even more shocking because it is obvious that they did not pay any attention about the argument presented by the demand side.  The worry about wealth gap for the most part is about economics, about decrease demand, not social factors (although it should be an important concern).  So, the lower prices on low end goods are not even relevant, because we are taking purchasing power in the dollar and cent, not about living standards, etc. To be honest, I could not believe I will read something like this in the Economist.

            The blind obsession about numbers can also be explained by obsessions for certainty.  Representatives of any establishments need to be responsible for the establishments, either institution or corporations, and the easiest way to do so is to show that they rely on some hard cold numbers, as again, numbers don’t lie.

            But one should learn to be suspicious to the easiest way, especially if it is too easy.  This is especially important in the business world.  I have been arguing for the importance of small and new businesses, and talking about the danger of big businesses as I have talked about the danger of big businesses overpowering, and their structural requirement for certainty. 

            Big businesses trying to maintain a sense of certainty will rely heavily on statistics and marketing surveys because they will see it as a controllable way.  But statistics at its best can only tell you how things are now, it cannot tell you what it could be.  For this, we need to activate the individual mind.  Although there is no collective mind, our culture is a collective culture.  There are people who are taking the risk of uncertainty (in the business world, they are often in the small businesses), and we should give them the support and understanding as we can benefit from the possibilities they can bring. 

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life, Politics and economy, science and arts,  about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            From time to time, I could not help but read more posts on subjects related to economy.  As I said in my earlier post, I am not an expert on economics, nor do I have the access to detailed information, and I do not even have much time spent on these subjects.

            Despite all these, I still keep on write these posts.  Because I am disappointed that there are more sound bits and catch phrases than feasible theories, more emotions than good new ideas, especially there are many confusions about the fundamentals.  So, in the risk of talking too much on something I don’t fully understand, I will write another post about economics.

            I will start on something puzzling me these days, which is who are the people talking about economy, and how do they think.  For example, there is an on going debate about whether to extend Bush tax cut, especially for people who earn more than $250,000 dollars.  Based on the argument I heard that is against it (and for the reason I will stated later in this post), I am against it (i.e., we should allow taxes for these people to go back to the level in Clinton Administration).

            A popular argument for extend the tax cut is that otherwise it will cost jobs.  But I have to question the logic or rationality of this argument.  Statistics shows that there are about 3-4% of small businesses that may be covered by the tax increase.  I saw a news interview of a small business owner that supposedly will be affected by this tax increase which could cost him about a few thousand dollars, and he stated he might end up cutting one or two employees to make up for it. 

            I did not do the math to check whether the number makes sense, but I can simply question the logic.  First, when President Obama proposed tax cut for small businesses, people said it would not make any difference, because lack of demand is the real problem.  But why would tax increase automatically result in lost jobs?

            Tax increase or not, there is nothing to suggest that a small business owner will not try to save a few thousand dollars if they can.  To put it in another way, if a small business owner could cut one or two employee and not have any efforts on the revenue and profit, he or she will already done so. 

            In fact, if demand is not the problem, small business owners might end up hiring more people in order to increase their income (to make up the tax increase).  I guess people have to remember that employees generate revenue, not just a cost (otherwise, no business will hire anyone).  If no business can find new demand, then new employees will bring more revenue, and more income (for a health business), that can made up lost from the tax increase, and even more income.  It is understandable that people do not like to pay more taxes, but there is no reason to believe a slight tax increase in high income earners will have a significant impact on jobs (for sure).

            Another example is related with demand or jobs.  I just read article about how little stimulate funds had generated jobs, the ignorance in it is even more shocking.  According to an on line article, over one hundred  millions of stimulate funds used by Los Angeles only created or retained 54 jobs.  It does seem alarming.  But as the article went on to disclose a little bit of what the funds were used for, we will see that many are used to order products.  I don’t think it is too much to ask to make a little inference.  What the orders of products will do is to retain or create jobs for private sectors, and mobilize the economy.  Is it too much to ask for people to use their brains a little?

            There are so many talks related to jobs, so it is obvious it is a problem in many people’ minds.  But not so many solutions had surfaced.  Here, I want to broaden the horizon a little bit, and talk about it in a little different perspective. 

            It is obvious that globalization, and related out-sourcing is a cause of higher unemployment in America.  But globalization overall is a good thing, as cultural infusion is generally the cause of the development of civilization (historically, regions that are isolated were the places that felt back).  As the acceleration of globalization continues, it might make more and more in the sense of global citizenship.  I remember President Obama had suggested Peace Corp for young people to go around the world during his campaign.  It is obviously a good idea for young people to go to developing world to see and help with their problems, and increase culture exchanges, understanding, correlation, and cooperation.

            This kind of activities should include business and private sectors as well.  For example, As China had been more involved with the manufacturing process of many products in US, the lack of understanding about American culture often created a problem with the marketability of the products.  This could generate opportunities for many newly graduated young Americans to go oversees to help the culture exchange.  This type of opportunity in the short term may not be very lucrative (so they may need student loan delay etc.), but from personal and professional point of view, the experience and knowledge obtained from this opportunity could be very valuable, and with their knowledge about both cultures, they can help more products and services to be introduced to China.  

            The problem with economy did lead to many people to do some soul searching, and many people have talked about structural problems with political and economic system.  But I think we need to think further.  The political and economical structures are not abstract structures, and humans are the basic and essential elements of these structures.  This finally leads to human psyche and the problem with greed.

            There are recent studies that suggest that general happiest are related to personal income only if the income is below certain level (the features are set at $60,000 to $75,000 dollars, and it probable with varies differently for different locations).  To me, it does seem to make some sense.  If one has to worry about survival, or cannot afford occasional modest luxury, one could be unhappy. 

            But we know that too much luxury can lead to people to feel entitled to it, and it will lead to corruption of the “soul”, no matter what is your belief.  So, from moral point of view (and no matter where the moral codes come from), greed not only should not be encouraged, but should be discouraged.

            But some would argue that the American dream is not just a house in the suburb, but the dream of The Great Gatsby, which is the dream of excess.  But just like the connection between Marie Antoinette with French Revolution is not casual, no is the connection between the Great Gatsby to the Great Depression. 

            Excess lead to destruction, this is a general rule for a person, a cultural and a country.  It has been tested over the long history of human civilizations, and been verified but about all cultures and civilizations. 

            For those who are heavily invested in preserving the great American tradition, a tradition I read about is the Pilgrims’ tradition of hard working and self restraint, which for a large part is about resisting the material temptation. 

            There are many discussions about the crisis of education.  I will say the fundamental problem with education is the crisis with identity and ideology, i.e., the crisis of American dream.  The dream of hard working that will lead to prosperity is overtaking by the dream of Great Gatsby again. 

            I recently read an article suggesting that the moral codes should be rewritten.  To me, it is the highlight of moral crisis that the America is facing.  I agree that the moral codes should be reconsidered, but not in the way that the article suggested.

            What troubled me the most is that the author seemed to suggest that wealth should be considered as a virtue.  I have never seen anyone went this far.  I can see how this conclusion was reached, but it does not mean that it is reasonable. 

            If the economy system is set to award members that benefited society accordingly, then the richest people could be people that benefited the society the most.   But the problem is that it is hardly the case for the society and economical system.  The problems exist on two sides.  First, most people that made significant impacts on the society are not proportionally awarded.  For example, science discoveries are not patentable, so scientists that made scientific discoveries almost certainly are not proportionally awarded financially (In addition, due to the structure in academic, people that made the discoveries are sometime not even attributed to).  Furthermore, many ideas that literally changed the world do not usually created financial returns for the creators (and many times they are even attributed to).

            On the other hand, people that are awarded heavy by the current economic system are not properly rewarded.  If you read some of the books about business, you will notice the success business strategy is not always about maximizing the business’ contribution to the society, but is to maximizing the extracted values from the employees, consumers, the competitors, and the economic system.  A successful business person usually will follow the same rule.

            So, in the name of business interests, many people have done, and are continue doing things that would be considered immoral or even illegal (criminally or civil violation) that they would not necessarily do in their personal life. 

            I think it is fair to say that greed is a fruit of a poisonous tree, the dream of the Great Gatsby.  This is to say that greed is not the initial cause of the problem, but only an intermediate cause of the problem.  There was a different study about happiness I read some time ago.  The conclusion is that people’s feeling about satisfaction in life has more to do with the relative position of economic conditions, not the absolute value of income. 

            This help to explain why a seemingly harmless dream of the Great Gatsby is so poisonous.  It is not that turning rich will make any one evil, but the emphasis on excess.  It is the drive for material extravaganza.  When people bus into the idea that a million dollar is not cool enough, that only a billion dollar is cool enough, then America, we have a problem. 

            It is not that no one should be a billionaire; it is that the obsessed admiration for billionaires will created a downward peer pressure of greed, which will lead to immoral and even illegal behaviors.  When shareholders demands more and more, businesses will be driven purely by profits and artificial growth.  Striving for excess will drive people to be more willing to step out of bond and find shortcut, hence the fashionable trend of beating the system.  When everyone are working on beating the system, instead of building the system, obviously the system will be in big trouble.  .      

            Human minds are sometimes stubborn and sometimes very flexible.  They can hold on to some mythological claims that make no sense, or run off to warship machines, and now money.  The question is whether the majority can reach a reasonable position. 

            Going back to tax policy, for the reason I stated I support tax rollback for the high income individuals.  For people that suggest bad time is not a time to raise taxes, I will suggest that we can have a tax cut for the lower income individuals (perhaps those that earn less that $75,000 dollars, according to the study).  Needless to say, they will be able to use the tax cut to increase spending and pay off debts (both of them will be good for the short term and long term health of the economy and national moral). 

            To reduce the national deficit, there could be tax increase for higher income earners (could be divided into more scales) when economic recovery becomes more robust.  For the reason I stated above, this is not a form of socialism (real or European), but really help to restore traditional American value.  This should be something that every one should agree on. 

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life, politics and economy,  about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            Recently, I participated in some online discussions.  The discussions run longer than I expected, and it pretty much turned into an experiment abut how people think.

            This leads me to think about the problem with building consent.   In politics, religions, and even in the theories of academic, and science, there is a question of whether the reasonable discussions or reasoning can be of any good.

            In my last post “Absoluteness”, I mentioned that there is no absolute truth.  Based on this suggestion, then discussion seems to be a good way of fine tune assertions. This way, definitions and pre-conditions can be carefully craved out, so that the assertions would be more sensible.

            But we know it is not easy to do so, and in many cases, it is very difficult, if not impossible.  Discussions often turn into arguments, and arguments often turns into attacks.  There are times that people have personable interests in the outcome of the debates, so that they can not only be bias, but manipulative. 

            But it is not always the case.  Then, there is a factor of personal pride, that people don’t want to lose, so they may be over zealous in defending their positions.  But what make people becomes completely irrational, that it might be impossible to talk to each other?  Or, to put it in a different way, what makes people to end up in a place that they cannot defend themselves with reason?

            As I mentioned in my last post, just about any theory ought to have some merit to it, otherwise, no one would pay attention to it.  So, when people accept certain ideas, they are not irrational to begin with.  What turned them into irrational being ought to happen sometime after they accept the idea.

            The easiest way to turn to irrational is to make something absolute.  Even some perfectly good theory can quickly turn horrible if it overstep the boundary, and a common way for people to be irrational is to insist on the absoluteness of their truth.

            I saw the movie “Shutter Island” (DVD) not to long ago, which reminded me of a book I read sometime ago about a CIA brain wash project (as part of research for understanding the brain).  Contrary to this movie, the real life CIA project (according to the book) is a complete failure. 

            According to the book, the CIA brain wash project is a project responding to the brain wash project conducted on the US POW in North Korea, by the Chinese military.  The US government was astonished that some former loyal American soldiers held rather conservative view would turn into firm believers of Chinese propaganda. 

            According to the book, although the CIA brain wash project failed, people involved in the project were convinced that the transformation must be done thorough some physical, or chemical methods, as they cannot think that it is possible that through propaganda alone the US POW could be converted so firmly..

              The reason I brought this up here is because I think it is possible that propaganda (and similar method) alone could achieve such effect (although I do not know for sure, but the fact that most of the people in China had been brain washed for a long period of time without using physical or chemical methods did indicate that it is possible).  Obviously, many people seems to be ignorant of the fact that some communist ideas can be very appealing, and it is not so difficult to find some flaws with the system in US.

            And, it might not be an coincident of certain kind of people might behave in a particular way.  It is possible that people can be divided by the way of their thinking process.  If people tend to think truth is absolute, then they tend to be firm believer. 

            For this type of people, the rule could be all or nothing.  So, if some doubts are successfully introduced into their thinking process about their believes, it might be easier to convert their believes, and once they are converted, it will take the same special process to convert them again. 

            But what makes people to think this way?  I wonder if it has anything to do with perception or comprehension.  If people are having difficulty of understanding things, then it is reasonable to assume that they might not be inclined to change their minds so easily.

            It is reasonable to assume that someone who is having difficulty of understanding something would not like to find understanding new things so enjoyable, so that they may be hostile to new things, or things that are not in agreement with his or her point of view. 

            Understanding starts with perception.  When related to discussion or argument, this is related to paying attention to what other people are saying.  Needless to say that a discussion that what was said is not closely followed will be a painful experience. 

            Obviously everyone wants to be smart, and the ability to understand things and understand other people will be a welcome ability.  So it seems that the first step is to pay close attention. 

            But is the problem really about people not paying attention?  In case of learning new things, especially when people misunderstand something, it is not that they did not pay attention at all (if this is the case, it would not be that they will misunderstand something, it would be that they have no idea what is being talked about at all). 

            This leads to the question of what is perception.  When philosophers talked about forms or priori, for the most part, they are talking about our presumptions in perceptions.  Perception is not simply accepting information.  It is a process that we accept information and processed the information to be correlated with our internal knowledge structure.  By this means, if our internal knowledge structure is not well defined, it could affect our perception.  Therefore, clear definition is again the key for solving many problems.

**Please look for my other posts regarding human knowledge system, language system, religion and philosophy, science and technology, about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            Of all human problems, the tendency of clinging to absoluteness is on the top of the list.  It is very much understandable because human nature need certainty.  A fundamental reason for religion is due to the need for certainty.

            Looking back in history, the development of civilization is divided among two schools of thoughts, searching for truths, and the sentiment of mystery.  The histories of religion and philosophy are the histories of oscillation between the two. 

            But here I am not repeating this trend, to argue for one or another.  My suggestion is actually to stand outside of this cycle, and to start anew.  The conflict between truth and mystery is actually the conflict between absolute truth and mystery, and the failure of absolute truth does not necessarily lead to mystery. 

            I will start with the process of definition (as continuation of my last post “intelligence”).  Our view of definition process is either the result of our tendency for certainty, or the cause of the need for certainty (in the realm of subjective mind, this does not seem to matter).

            I will explain in detail the process of definition in later post, here I like to say that definition (for the purpose of helping us to understand the world) is to identify new things by making connections to known things (often by attributes). 

            Within knowledge structure, definition is mostly used to make distinctions.  “This” is not “that”.  This is where the need for certainty and tendency for absoluteness becomes very visible.

            Our comprehension of the world and the definition mechanism in our knowledge system is not as definitive as we would like it be.  First, the definition itself might not be well defined (as illustrated in my last post “Intelligence”).  Second, there might also be ambiguity in the things used to define the subjects. 

            For example, as our comprehension of the physical world relies on the assumption of continuity, and definition by attributes is arbitrary in nature, then things with multiple attributes may not be so easily identifiable by definition. 

            If we can accept that the definition processes of most concepts are evolving process, so that concepts have ranges of coverage, then our judgment process will also change. 

            When we talk about truths, they are assertions.  A is B, X equals Y, etc. Here we can see the reason why absolute truth is elusive.  As definition for A, B, X, Y, etc. are not as clear cut as we would like them to be, it is difficult for the assertions to be absolutely true, especially if we are talking about many abstract concepts, as they are usually ambiguous concepts. 

            Take, for example, the concept of religion.  There are long lasting debates about whether religions are good or bad, and conclusions are as far apart as one could imagine.  This is first because the concept of religion is an ambiguous term, and it is a concept related to many components, and characteristics. 

            For any theory to gain popularity, it must have something that is appealing (otherwise, no one will pay attention to it).  But it is also truth that religions are related to many unfortunate events.  So, we cannot say religions are good or bad per se, but only talk about what aspects of them are good or bad.  For me, what makes religions bad are often due to the fact that they are assertions of absolute truths. 

            We can all accept that killing is bad.  But even this has exceptions.  If we hold “killing is bad” as absolute truth, then we will not be able to defend ourselves, and end up being killed.  This type of examples is countless. 

            Seeking certainty will lead us to the belief of absoluteness that leads to religious like sentiment.  Ultimately, it is about avoiding making judgment.  If God is almighty, then everything he said is absolute truth, there is no need to make any judgment.  This tendency is not limited to religions alone. 

            In the modern world, professionalism lead to knowledge division, and many well educated people tend to treat philosophy are impractical or redundant, and they often put religious thoughts as a separate part of personal life.  But this division is a careless division. 

            Ignoring philosophy did not put the basic philosophical questions away, it only made more people fall into basic philosophical mistake than it should be.

            As division of professions leads to divisions of knowledge, there is an alarming effect on our collective knowledge, event in scientific fields.  Generally speaking, knowledge is the product of academic.  The structure of academic fields often is hieratic in nature, which leads to predominate figures caring more weights on their theories. 

            As general public has limited knowledge about specific academic fields, they are generally not in the position to make judgment.  This leads to generally warship like sentiment on predominate figures.  If a person established a reputation due to past achievements, then people will look for what they are saying now as the points of reference, not necessarily due to their own merits, but because that they are coming from the particular sources.   This to me is a quite unfortunate state of our culture. 

**Please look for my other posts regarding human knowledge system, language system, religion and philosophy, science and technology, about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            Discussions about artificial intelligence will often lead to the question of what is intelligence, and my criticism about the existing condition in the artificial intelligence field is the general lack of understanding about the concept of intelligence.  So, it seems to be a good idea to discuss what is intelligence in this post.

            I have to admit I could not understand why people are given high remarks about Ludwig Wittgenstein.  I still don’t, but I heard a talk by John Searle which leads me to have a little understanding about why modern philosophers are often concentrating on some trivial discussions.  According to Searle, Wittgenstein basically suggested that a general theory about meaning is just impossible. 

            The reason I mention this is related to the topic of intelligence.  First, can we give a clear definition for the word “intelligence”?  The answer is yes and no.  This is basically my answer to Wittgenstein in general.   The secret is the word fusion.

            It is true that one catch-all definition for each of many concepts is impossible, but it does not mean that definitions are impossible at all.  What we need to do is to be flexible with our definition process.  . 

            What we ought to realize is that definition process is a progressive process.  Things evolve, including words and meaning of words.  This is why I introduce the concept of fusion.  Going back to the definition of intelligence, the reason about lack of definition about intelligence is first due to the lack of understanding about the nature of intelligence, and second, is because this word is also used for purposes other than its core purposes.

            The core definition I like to provide is that intelligence is the ability to understand, which is the ability to establish multi-dimensional connections.

            In the realms of languages, i.e., when understanding is about understanding languages, it is about entities and attributes.  Simply speaking, entity is about the “thing”, and attribute is about what is used to describe the thing. 

            But the complication is things are often used to describe other things, and what we are often treated as things are actually attributes.  For example, if we admit that intelligence is a kind of abilities, then it means that the word “intelligence” should be used as an attribute. 

            As ability is related to action, the question is whether it is an attribute about the entity, or an attribute about the action (which can generally belong to the category of attribute).  So, the question is whether intelligence is an attribute for people, or an attribute for people’s action. 

            This is where fusion comes into play.  When we talk about understanding, we ought to ask understanding about what, i.e., the subject of the understanding, and what kind of understanding.   The fusion of definition of intelligence is related to the answers to these questions.

            For example, when we are talking about understanding language, it is basically about establishing connections between words.  As there are rules that will enable us to do so, once an entity (a person, or even a computer) learns about the rules, and how the rules will operate, the entity will have the ability to understand the languages.

            Some subjects do not have multi-dimensional connection structure, so the type of understanding is different.  This is why there is confusion about whether computer programs that can play chess games should be called artificial intelligence or not.

            But if the ability is about making connections that are not based on defined rules, and the validity of the connections ought to be validated by external (unrelated) conditions, then the ability is not the attribute of the entity, but the attribute of the process.  This type of process is usually called creative process. 

            You can see that the distinctions made are important because it can explain many confusions about the definition of intelligence. 

            I will write more about the principles and structures of human knowledge system in my later posts, here I am using this example to suggest that we can take a different look about commonly known concepts, and gain different perspective on how to understand the language and the world.

**Please look for my other posts regarding human knowledge system, language system, philosophy, science and technology, about discussions related to issues in this post.

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            I support brain simulation, but my reason can be different from others.  For me, the goal for brain simulation is to establish an environmental model to help researches related to brains, so to help find cures for brain related diseases.  But as I read some of the articles related to brain simulations, I realized that for many people, the goal is to solve the puzzle of artificial intelligence. 

            I have to say if people put too much hope on this goal, they are bond to be disappointed.  The reason is simple.  They have it backward. 

            Brain simulations that can work as if they are human brains may not even be immediately possible even if we have all the answers to questions in artificial intelligence, but they will certainly not be able to work as the human brains if we don’t understand most of the principles of human intelligence. 

            The rules or principles of human intelligence are basically in the realm of functionality, or process.  Process or functionality can be realized by various structural or components arrangement.  As simulations are not actual copying of the brain, where neurons will behave as neurons will behave, simulations will have the complicity of caring on both the functional requirements and the structural requirement.  This means the complete accurate representation of the brain will first require clear understanding of the functionality and structure arrangement of the brain. 

            As brain is a very complex and sensitive composition, and measurement cannot be completely accurate, even simple representation of the momentary status of the brain will be very difficult, and accurately simulating brain in action without knowing the principles of how brain functions will be impossible. 

            According to currently available technology, the only way to simulate brain in action will be through using mathematical models that will try to provide processes that will match with the testing data.  The principle of this method will basically be the same as many artificial intelligence methods such as neuron network or machine learning.  The problem of this method is inherit uncertainty and unpredictability. 

            At best, the mathematical model can provide processes that satisfy simulation based on all the testing data, but as the testing data can not limitless, they will not be sufficient indication on the conditions beyond testing data.  For all we know, the unpredictable processes are completely unpredictable because the systems would not have the ability to self verify.  As the mathematical models are based on statistics and trial-n-error, there are no actual control factors or even equations that can put any control on the results when the conditions are not controlled. 

            This means that this type of simulation at best is as good as the static testing data obtained, but usually much worst.  In conclusion, this type of simulation will serve no purpose (but with all the troubles).  People who intend to escape the mess in artificial intelligence field will find that they will see the same problems repeating, but in much big, non-controllable environment.

            This is not to say the brain simulation should not be done.  It only means that it should be done under different principle.  A useful brain simulation can first establish structure composition of the brain, then test different assumptions by modeling the operating process using the assumptions and verifying the results of the simulation models with real world testing data, to verify and revise the assumptions. 

            As there are many level of complicities in the brains, and as we know very little about the principles of the functionalities of the brains, brain simulations will also need to conducted in different levels.  As different levels of functionality understanding will interwine, brain simulation will be a big project that will likely be on going for a very long time, with multiple levels of cross referencing and correcting.  In the end, the actual brain functional and structural rules will take combinations of many general and local testing to obtain.  One thing is clear, complete understanding of the brain will not accomplished easily. 

            As an example of how much the brain is a mystery, I often refer to brain to be like a computer, but there are no regions in the brain that we can identify as like central control unit and memories of the computer.  This is means that we literally know very little about the principle of operation of the brains.

            I come across some talks that refer to brain simulation as “reverse-engineering” of the brain.  This terminology is confusing.  First, brain is not an engineering product, as it is not designed based on known engineering principles, there is no bases to reverse-engineer it.  Second, the word “reverse-engineer” originated with mechanical machinery, where the functions of each component are usually known.  So, by simply looking at the internal composition and arrangement of a machine, the principles of operation of the machine may be obtained.  Even in the case of software engineering, the composition and function of the computer are usually known, and there are many correlations between functionality and programmable logic, so reverse engineering is based on some concrete ground. 

            The basic mistake that lead to this confusion is confusion about the role of science and technology, about understanding about principle and the application of the principle.  This is a confusion occupied the artificial intelligence field and caused most failures in the field. 

            Computer programming is a type of application.  In most computer related fields, the tasks are to embody known principles in computer environment.  Artificial intelligence field is different because there is little common known knowledge that be embodied in computer environment.  But as many computer technologists are used to the role of applications, they seemed to be unaware of the difference.  I have the impression that most people in artificial intelligence field (as most in computer software field) seem to believe that all problems are just one “magic algorithm” away from being solved. 

            In my earlier post, I dismissed the danger that artificial intelligence will eventually produce Frankenstein, but I am not so sure now.  First, I seemed to be too naïve about human nature.  I assume that scientists and technologists would be rational, not driven purely by self interests.  The reality is the cut edge of science and technology is literally a wild, wild west.  There are many people who will steal, lie, make up claims, and do ruthless things for personal gains.

            With this realization, the later enthusiasm about simulating the brain (and some other AI projects in the pipeline) may lead to the creation of Frankenstein and cause harm if the “magic algorithms” can convince people that they represent intelligence while their inherit characteristics of unpredictability and unreliability are not made known. 

**Please look for my other posts regarding modern life, mind and body, science and technology, about discussions related to issues in this post.

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