People are people no matter our measures and averages.

I have always been bothered by the overreliance of some on self-identity. We get hung up on terms and definitions and froth around about the meaning of trends we don't understand. As a minor example, were my niece and nephews to immigrate to the US from Europe, the census would regard the white population as having been increased. If, on the other hand, they immigrated to Argentina for a couple of years and then came to the US, they would be regarded as Hispanic (because of their paternal heritage) and the Hispanic numbers would increase. And from my perspective, I would have a niece and a couple of nephews closer to home. Our definitions and terminology sometimes get in the way of understanding the important things.

I first became alerted to the fluidity of definitions back in the seventies. After one of the OPEC embargoes, the price of oil went through the roof. In the following census, a couple of Native American tribes showed an increase in population of more than a hundred percent, an impossible fecundity. How were these issues related? Price of oil goes up. Several Native American tribes had reservation land that included oil production. The proceeds of that oil production was distributed to enrolled members. When the value of the oil went up, people who did not otherwise identify as Native American but did in fact have that heritage, enrolled as was their prerogative in order to benefit from the windfall. And thus the census numbers went up with no change in the underlying reality of people.

This is brought to mind by a recent post, Pew Study: 27% of Jewish Children Live in Orthodox Homes by David Bernstein. I have read elsewhere of this study and there apparently was an awful lot of interesting discussion regarding definitions (Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, etc.). Notice the last sentence, though, in this post:

But with being Jewish no longer a substantial disadvantage in American life, and intermarriage unlikely in non-Orthodox circles to lead to serious family disruption, the new Pew study finds hundreds of thousands of children of intermarriage identify as Jews of no religion (and about as many as Jews by religion), hundreds of thousands of others who were raised Jewish but don’t consider themselves such but who acknowledge their Jewish ancestry, and, a bit weirdly, hundreds of thousands of additional individuals who have no Jewish ancestry and who have never converted but for whatever reason consider themselves to be Jewish.

I love that; "a bit weirdly, hundreds of thousands of additional individuals who have no Jewish ancestry and who have never converted but for whatever reason consider themselves to be Jewish." Among other things it is a very loud call to be cautious about survey data. It is not always telling us what we thinking it is saying, no matter how rigorous and effectively it might have been administered. Several hundred thousand people claiming a heritage that in no other context would people recognize, is just plain fascinating. People are people no matter our measures and averages.

A pledge by all parties not to learn anything while doing the actual work

Two articles that are interesting to read as a pair. Both Clay Shirky and Peter Berkowitz are almost always interesting and insightful The first article, by Shirky is a rumination on the Healthcare.gov failure, not as a failed information systems project per se (though it is a fairly spectacular example of that), but rather as an epistemological failure which I believe is really at the core of the issue. And the epistemological model is in part a failure of culture.

Very early in Obama's first term, there was a desire on the part of the Administration to close Guantanamo and bring the terrorists held there to the US for civil trial. There was quite a kerfuffle when it came time to consider a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. In the hearings to review this plan, the Attorney General Eric Holder had the following profoundly revealing exchange with Senator Herbert Kohl, Democrat, Wisconsin.

Kohl: Mr. Holder, last week you announced that the department will bring to Guantanamo [sic in transcript] detainees accused of planning the 9/11 attacks to trial in federal court in New York, as we've talked about this morning. On Friday you said that you'd not have authorized prosecution if you were not confident that the outcome would be successful. However, many critics have offered their own predictions about how such a trial might well play out.

One concern we have heard from critics of your decision is that the defendants could get off on legal technicalities, in which case these terrorists would walk free. Does this scenario have any merit? If not, why? And in the worst case scenario that the trial does not result in a conviction, what would be your next steps?

Holder: Many of those who have criticized the decision--and not all--but many of those who have criticized the decision have done so, I think, from a position of ignorance. They have not had access to the materials that I have had access to.

They've not had a chance to look at the facts, look at the applicable laws and make the determination as to what our chances of success are. I would not have put these cases in Article III courts if I did not think our chances of success were not good--in fact, if I didn't think our chances of success were enhanced by bringing the cases there. My expectation is that these capable prosecutors from the Justice Department will be successful in the prosecution of these cases.

Kohl: But taking into account that you never know what happens when you walk into a court of law, in the event that for whatever reason they do not get convicted, what would be your next step? I'm sure you must have talked about it.

Holder: What I told the prosecutors and what I will tell you and what I spoke to them about is that failure is not an option. Failure is not an option. This--these are cases that have to be won. I don't expect that we will have a contrary result.

I found this profoundly shocking from two perspectives. Either what the AG said was true and that failure would not be countenanced, in which case this was simply a show trial. He wasn't arguing that failure was unlikely, he was arguing that it couldn't happen at all.

Alternatively, the most senior lawyer in the land truly believed that there was simply no way that an unbiased and fair jury trial could render anything other than a guilty verdict. A belief that could not possibly be grounded in experience or reality.

The distress was the realization that our AG was either corrupt (rigged trial) or stupid (mistaking desire for reality). It seemed that there were few alternative interpretations. But perhaps it was simply a flawed epistemological model founded on a faulty culture. Read Shirky's whole post to see the parallels with the Healthcare.gov failure.

From Healthcare.gov and the Gulf Between Planning and Reality by Clay Shirky

The idea that “failure is not an option” is a fantasy version of how non-engineers should motivate engineers. That sentiment was invented by a screenwriter, riffing on an after-the-fact observation about Apollo 13; no one said it at the time. (If you ever say it, wash your mouth out with soap. If anyone ever says it to you, run.) Even NASA’s vaunted moonshot, so often referred to as the best of government innovation, tested with dozens of unmanned missions first, several of which failed outright.

Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.”

The management question, when trying anything new, is “When does reality trump planning?” For the officials overseeing Healthcare.gov, the preferred answer was “Never.” Every time there was a chance to create some sort of public experimentation, or even just some clarity about its methods and goals, the imperative was to avoid giving the opposition anything to criticize.

[snip]

This is not just a hiring problem, or a procurement problem. This is a management problem, and a cultural problem. The preferred method for implementing large technology projects in Washington is to write the plans up front, break them into increasingly detailed specifications, then build what the specifications call for. It’s often called the waterfall method, because on a timeline the project cascades from planning, at the top left of the chart, down to implementation, on the bottom right.

Like all organizational models, waterfall is mainly a theory of collaboration. By putting the most serious planning at the beginning, with subsequent work derived from the plan, the waterfall method amounts to a pledge by all parties not to learn anything while doing the actual work. Instead, waterfall insists that the participants will understand best how things should work before accumulating any real-world experience, and that planners will always know more than workers.

This is a perfect fit for a culture that communicates in the deontic language of legislation. It is also a dreadful way to make new technology. If there is no room for learning by doing, early mistakes will resist correction. If the people with real technical knowledge can’t deliver bad news up the chain, potential failures get embedded rather than uprooted as the work goes on.

Now read Peter Berkowitz's Obama's Slow Learning Curve.

But perhaps the president’s most astonishing statement involved an insouciant confession of ignorance. Returning to a common but under-appreciated motif of his presidency, Obama remarked: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.”

What deficiency of Obama’s education and of the education of those who surround him accounts for administration officials not knowing what is perfectly well-known to most ordinary Americans?

This discovery that purchasing health insurance is complex is just the most recent of the rather stunning lessons that Obama professes to have learned on the job about how the world really works.

Berkowitz then goes on to list and discuss additional things that Obama ended up acknowledging not knowing what he was talking about; Peace between Palestine and Israel - “I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that"; the 2008 stimulus program - “shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected"; the implementation of the Affordable Care Act - “Now, let's face it, a lot of us didn't realize that passing the law was the easy part.”

Contrary to the president’s breezy attitude suggesting that these drastic miscalculations were not knowable in advance, we know that all were foreseeable because all were perspicaciously foreseen by critics from the beginning. (The only possible exception is the staggeringly inept rollout of the HealthCare.gov website, the magnitude of which caught even the president’s toughest critics off guard.)

It’s a cliché that democracy is messy and difficult; it’s a truism that politics demands the cutting of deals and the hammering out of trade-offs; it’s common knowledge that implementing public policy and conducting diplomacy involve unforeseen obstacles and intricate maneuvering that are hard to grasp from the outside.

Yet all this keeps catching Obama and his aides by surprise. Team Obama’s surprise, however, is really not all that surprising.

Berkowitz's explanation for serial disengagement from reality?

The president and the officials around him are the product of the same progressive version of higher education that simultaneously excises politics from the study of government and public policy while politicizing education. This higher education denigrates experience; exalts rational administration; reveres abstract moral reasoning; confidently counts on the mainstream press to play for the progressive political team; accords to words fabulous abilities to remake reality; and believes itself to speak for the people while haughtily despising their way of life.

The education President Obama received at Columbia University and Harvard Law School -- and delivered to others as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School -- encourages the fantasy of a political world subject to almost limitless manipulation by clever and well-orchestrated images. This explains why the harsh exigencies and intractable forces of politics keep stunning the president, each new time as if it were the very first.

Is Berkowitz right? Probably in part. Our best universities do serve as an effective sorting mechanism. You know where to go to find the brightest candidates. But they are not always the most effective or the best. The best of them are able to acquire truly phenomenal educations. But many, regrettably, end up wandering into academic la la land from whence few are known to return with any desirable capabilities and many distorting beliefs.

The infusion of post modernism, critical race theory, gender studies, etc. have put large swaths of reality beyond critical discussion to the great detriment of all. More spectacularly they have created an environment in which the fervor of belief is allowed to supersede logic and evidence. It is a somewhat ironical turn of fate that segments of the academy are the ones so married to an entirely faith-based postmodernist secular creed whose foundations are patently separated from reality. Is it any wonder that the products of such education can find themselves in such deep water when their fervid belief that failure is not an option turns out to be founded on quicksand.

Reality is a cruel mistress to the post modernist faithful.

when we moralize, we are monotheists

From Maxims and Reflections by Goethe.

When we do science, we are pantheists;
when we do poetry, we are polytheists;
when we moralize, we are monotheists

Tis the good reader that makes the good book

From Society and Solitude by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Our collective intelligence is often excellent

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, page xiv.

Groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart. Even if most of the people within a group are not especially well-informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision. This is a good thing, since human beings are not perfectly designed decision makers. Instead, we are what the economist Herbert Simon called “boundedly rational.” We generally have less information than we’d like. We have limited foresight into the future. Most of us lack the ability – and the desire – to make sophisticated cost-benefit calculations. Instead of insisting on finding the best possible decisions, we will often accept one that seems good enough. And we often let emotion affect our judgment. Yet despite all these limitations, when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right ways, our collective intelligence is often excellent.

A memory like the breath of summers full of sunshine and of showers

In the Churchyard at Tarrytown by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, commemorating Washington Irving.

Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame!
A simple stone, with but a date and name,
Marks his secluded resting-place beside

The river that he loved and glorified.
Here in the autumn of his days he came,
But the dry leaves of life were all aflame
With tints that brightened and were multiplied.

How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;

Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summers full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.

Trade-offs - Diversity vs. Cohesiveness, Efficiency vs. Robustness

From The Paradox of Diverse Communities by Richard Florida, reporting on the results of a computer simulation of diversity and cohesiveness. I have long argued that our policy folk are misguided in their blind pursuit of diversity and integration, treating these as outcomes to be valued in their own right rather than as dependent variables arising from more important variables.

After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive. As they write, “The model suggests that when people form relationships with similar and nearby others, the contexts that offer opportunities to develop a respect for diversity are different from the contexts that foster a sense of community.”

The graph below, from the study, plots quite plainly the negative relationship between community cohesion and diversity.

These findings are sobering. Because homophily and proximity are so ingrained in the way humans interact, the models demonstrated that it was impossible to simultaneously foster diversity and cohesion “in all reasonably likely worlds.” In fact, the trends are so strong that no effective social policy could combat them, according to Neal. As he put it in a statement, “In essence, when it comes to neighborhood desegregation and social cohesion, you can't have your cake and eat it too.”

Two key issues in the field in general and reflected in this study. Diversity is not a monovariable item. While we usually speak of diversity in terms of race and then gender, it is much richer than that including religion, personality orientation, language, morbidity, class, accent, region, ethnicity, culture, profession, income, age, etc. One person can wear many hats. Our idea of diversity is terribly anemic and we fail to identify what has always been true in the US, that the important thing is not diversity per se but tolerance.

It has long been known that segregation arises primarily from free people making individual choices informed by preferences. Aversive racism is only a miniscule issue, swamped by issues such as religion and class and education valuation, etc.

In any major city, the diversity of neighborhoods is usually immense. There are clusterings by race and class but also by age and religion and profession and hobby, etc. With everyone wearing so many identity hats there is also an awful lot of graduation between segregated clusters.

The second key issue has long been noted in international economic development - that trust and mutual reciprocity are characteristics shared in most highly productive OECD nations. Think of the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Germany, South Korea, Japan, etc. All notable for highly productive economies over long durations. All different cultures and histories but all having developed high levels of intra-cultural levels of trust and reciprocity. And all notably homogenous. The US is the only large OECD country with a high degree of heterogeneity (on all vectors of diversity) which also has a high degree of trust and mutual reciprocity - one of its many aspects of exceptionalism.

High degrees of trust and mutual reciprocity foster a high level of efficiency. Sharing the same cultural construct and language makes communication easier and more precise, makes collaborative efforts more efficient, makes risk management much easier, reduces transaction costs and insurance costs, etc.

So what Florida is reporting in this article is merely a conformation of what has been long known in different fields. We know there are trade-offs between diversity and tactical efficiency and social cohesion.

The really interesting questions are somewhat different. Increased diversity comes at the cost of reduced efficiency in the short term. But every system needs diversity in order to evolve over the long term. A purely efficient system will run at maximal productivity until circumstances change which make the system obsolete. It tends to binary - highly productive or non-productive. If you introduce some variation to the system, the system tends to evolve. New ideas are introduced, an error in the production process turns-up a better way of doing things, a botched batch of materials yields a new product.

The net result is that you need at least some diversity in the system in order to foster evolution and robustness at the expense of pure efficiency. In other words, you have to sacrifice some short term efficiency (by increasing variation) in order to achieve long term robustness (by evolving the system).

To me, the interesting question is: How much diversity is necessary to optimize short-term efficiency while ensuring long term robustness and evolution? Too little diversity and you suffer episodic painful adjustments. Too much diversity and you lose social cohesion before the long term arrives. How much is too little? I don't know. Based on anecdote and experience, my sense is that less than 5% diversity is, barring special circumstances, easily ignored and marginalized. Upper boundary? I am guessing somewhere around the 15% level is the boundary. Pure speculation though.

Florida and his ilk focus too much on ideological concerns such as diversity as a desirable trait in itself, instead of looking at the dynamic system as whole and over time. It is what leads to so many government policies that end up having negative unintended consequences and not achieving their stated goals.

You can't take non-cognitive skills for granted

From Job Outlook 2013 from NACE.

What are employers looking for from prospective new hires? Much of our national education debate focuses on such macro issues as STEM (whether or not we have enough of), Creativity, Critical Thinking, etc. Articles such as The Real Reason New College Grads Can’t Get Hired by Martha C. White and College Grads’ Bad Habits Driving Unemployment by Walter Russell Mead suggest that the challenge is not so much with regard to hard cognitive content as it is about the softer issues which the economist James Heckman refers to as non-cognitive skills. Non-cognitive skills are those pertaining to behavioral attributes such as propensity to show up on time, follow-through on commitments, willingness to work hard, flexibility, trustworthiness, etc. Heckman has done some interesting research on exactly how critical, and under-recognized are the non-cognitive skills.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers conducts an annual survey of businesses and their anticipated hiring needs. Among the questions they ask is one regarding the attributes that employers are seeking. For 2012, the results were:

All sorts of questions regarding the range of attributes that were allowed to be selected from, etc. But given what is in the report, it is interesting to note that of the top most sought after non-cognitive skills, 4 are personality or values related (leadership, teamwork, work ethic and initiative), 2 are communications related (written and verbal), and 2 are general critical thinking/numeracy related (problem solving and quantitative analysis).

There is a lot of energy (and money) invested in education reforms at both the K-12 and university levels but you rarely hear these basics discussed, much less brought into any kind of focus. There is a lot of happy clappy talk about critical thinking but not much of that translates into real world problem solving and quantitative analysis.

You have to take all these such surveys with a grain of salt. There is often some element of self-serving excuse making. But it does comport broadly with what I have seen over the years hiring hundreds of entry level people from the staff consultant level on up. Technical knowledge is nice to have, but if they are bright and hard working that gap can be filled later. What is critical are all those non-cognitive skills of work ethic, diligence, timeliness, etc. Without those, there isn't much of a career.

Sometimes, it seems, as if we lose sight of the fundamentals (non-cognitive skills) while focusing so much on the cognitive ones (grades and test scores).

Those days when I was young enough to know the truth

From Goin' Back by The Byrds

I think I'm goin' back
To the things I learned so well in my youth
I think I'm returning to
Those days when I was young enough to know the truth
Now there are no games
To only pass the time
No more electric trains
No more trees to climb
But thinking young and growing older is no sin
And I can play the game of life to win

I can recall a time
When I wasn't ashamed to reach out to a friend
Now I think I've got
A lot more than just my toys to lend
Now there's more to do
Than watch my sailboat glide
But every day can be
A magic carpet ride
A little bit of courage is all we lack
So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back

La la la la la, etc.
Now there's more to do
Than watch my sailboat glide
But every day can be
A magic carpet ride
A little bit of courage is all we lack
So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin. Imagine how much better off we might be were these to be taught in school.

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined.[66] While my care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name. Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex'd to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express'd the extent I gave to its meaning.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

1. Temperance

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence.

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. Order.

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. Resolution.

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality.

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste nothing.

6. Industry.

Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity.

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice.

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. Moderation.

Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness.

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. Tranquillity.

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. Chastity.

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

13. Humility.

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.