Justice and Engineering

I am a strong believer that anyone who goes into Engineering has a little bit of a "save the world" complex. Those who are good at STEM are aware of a the gift that they have for numbers and logical thinking, and with this I think (and hope) that we strive to create a better world through technology. We are the seerers of potential, the wizards, shamans, and priests of the ever growing technological world and we have the amazing ability to craft and cultivate a grander infrastructure of happiness for mankind.
Now at this point it may seem that I am building those who are STEM oriented to be these grand infallible individuals, but my intention is not this at all. I want it to be understood that I truly believe Engineers are the builders of tomorrow and that we hold a tremendous power. What I don't want to be taken away is that I believe we are without fault. I think our greatest fault is actually because we are so logically thinking.
Our logical thinking, along with the way we are taught, leads us to strive heavily to be more and more technologically knowledgeable. We seek out paths that will increase our knowledge of science. We take internships in design to better our resumes. We do research as a job to refine our interests. We code and read science magazines to enhance our understanding. We fill all of our down time with activities to stuff our memory banks with a very specific type of knowledge. Then once we have pushed ourselves to the limits and finally rest, we do so completely. When we rest we wholly shut down our brain because it can't take anymore and we neglect to stretch our other mental muscles.
Now doing all of this is admirable, but in acting this way, we as engineers neglect something. We forget people and how they interplay into what we learn. We forget that the things we build and learn really affect people. We learn grand things in our education, but we don't learn how to best use them to help others. We don't ponder ethical and just ways to wield what we know and I think this is incredibly unfortunate. We lack a rounded education that helps us weld the sciences and humanities.
I'm glad that we ended the class with Justice, because I think that it is one of the greatest bridges between the sciences and humanities. Engineers do not act in bubbels. What they design has direct impacts and if we don't think about justice and humanity, we lose out on being better engineers.

Ads and safety

Personal responsibility is an interesting concept. My roommates and I had a lengthy conversation about the importance of being the master of your own life and our class on Justice caused me to reflect on some of the things we discussed. One of my roommates was convinced that a type of utopian society would effectively operate if everyone exercised personal responsibility and the government had much less control over its people. In this way, everyone would simply be responsible for looking after him or herself and fewer resources would be expended ensuring the safety of everyone. A main concept was that of advertising. It was claimed that in this society, a person had the right to produce and market any good they wanted without being held responsible for the effects of the product. It was up to the consumer of the product to exercise the appropriate cautions when deciding whether or not to purchase the good. An explicit case would be a drug advertised to cure symptoms of an illness but was not required to list possible side effects, or even prove that the drug was effective.

This concept of strict individuality seemed quite disconcerting to me, especially with the presence of the FDA and other safety administrations in the US that act as safeguards to these types of actions. My question on this matter is simple: is it the responsibility of the consumer or the producer to ensure the safety in products? On what grounds can the producers claim no responsibility for any harmful consequences? These questions can also be related to the recent government mandated cigarette ads that were the result of a 2006 court case.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/27/566014966/in-ads-tobacco-companies-admit-they-made-cigarettes-more-addictive

The Gods of Gilgamesh as the Landscape in the Journey of the Self: Conversation Continued

In class we ran out of time before discussing the majority of the god figures in Gilgamesh, but I found that my understanding of the the story as a whole deepened due to my considerations of this topic, so I thought I would bring the conversation to the blog for all of our benefit. I believe we left the discussion at the death of Humbaba, just before Ishtar made an appearance in the story. I thought I might try to encourage the same style of Socratic dialog that we were having in class, so I'll lay out a few questions on the remaining gods in the story, without much of my interpretation. Over the next few days, we can flesh out the conversation.

1. Ishtar- Story Summary : Comes to visit Enkidu and Gilgamesh after they kill Humbaba, tries to extort marriage from Gilgamesh. When he refuses, she sends the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk (the city) and kill Gilgamesh. Enkidu kills the Bull, but is mortally wounded in the battle, and eventually goes mad with fever and dies.

Question: This section of the story is a major part of the story arc, and is just chock full of symbolism within symbolism, symboliception. When Michael and I discussed this, we went in many different directions and all of them seemed to be pertinent to the story. Without leading in our direction/s then, we decided that it would be interesting to hear your interpretations of Ishtar in the context of the "landscape of the journey of the self?"

2. Siduri- The Barmaid who nurses Gilgamesh back to health when he arrives at the valley, after an extended journey across the Road of the Sun, where there is no light. Gilgamesh is said to have arrived at Siduri's emaciated and half-crazed. For whatever reason, the valley of Siduri once again posses light, signifying that the Gilgamesh successfully crossed through the engulfing darkness of the Road of the Sun.

Question: Why is the story of Gilgamesh set up in such a way that he finds a place to rest and recuperate just as it seems that he is being overcome by his grieving of Enkidu's death? It could have been that he just continued on to Urshanabi the Boatman, in his emaciated and half crazed state, so there must be some symbolic significance to the rest and nursing back to health that occurs at Siduri's. Any insight as to what this might be symbolic of in the journey of the self?

3. Urshanabi- The boatman who assists Gilgamesh in crossing the sea of death.

Question: What are the implications for Gilgamesh's journey when he smashes the magical portal rocks that would have been able to assist him across the sea of death if only he were to have asked nicely?

Additionally, at this key moment in the story, just before Gilgamesh is to once again "conquer death," by crossing the sea of death, what archetypal role does Urshanabi serve?

4. Utnapishtim- The immortal man on the other side of the sea of death, a.k.a Noah. Gilgamesh seeks him out for he has supposedly conquered death, a man become god, and Gilgy seeks to bring back his friend from the dead.

Question- Why is the resolution, when Gilgamesh makes it to the end of the rainbow/sea of death, just a beat down, depressed old man. He has achieved one of Gilgamesh's goals, eternal life, true victory over death, yet he seems to be bereft of satisfaction. Is eternal life truly victory?

Aesthetics in Robotics

I've been reading over your blog posts for the last hour, your poems and music and introspections - I love it! I am always nostalgic, for McBride classes that started sleepy and became contentious and ended sleepy again, for Golden in the fall, for running along trails as the mountains settled into winter. Thank you Lincoln for inviting me into your space, and I hope the discussion below is relevant for your class.

As I make my way through my PhD, in the compact, corn-locked town of Champaign-Urbana, I find myself running into as many questions of ethics and aesthetics as I do questions of mathematics and computational modelling. My physics degree prepared me well for the latter, and classes such as the one you're in now prepared me well for the former. As well as can be expected.

I include this caveat because many of the questions I face, as a physicist-turned-computer-scientist-turned-roboticist, cannot be tackled with the same calm precision as mathematics. Every day, I am assaulted with media, friends and family that are questioning automation, artificial intelligence, backflipping robots.

Every day, something - the above backflipping robot was presented by Boston Dynamics without context of why such a thing was made nor any contextualization of the methods used and their limitations, at the same time the UN began meetings to make a plan to start talking about possibly making a statement about autonomous weapons. Never mind who is paying for those robots in the first place.

Every day, something - classifiers that can recognize people after gender transition, at the same time that governments are rounding up LGBT people and putting them in camps. It is impossible to not have your location tracked by your smartphone.

Every day, something - Elon Musk is painfully lonely, but responds to sexual harassment cases by emailing the entire company and saying that "We have had a few cases at Tesla where someone in a less represented group was actually given a job or promoted over more qualified highly represented candidates and then decided to sue Tesla for millions of dollars because they felt they weren’t promoted enough. That is obviously not cool." And yet, despite this strong claim about relative qualifications, Tesla does not seem to evaluate their own interviewing processes - a glance through Glassdoor shows that they ask the same old tired "how many ping pong balls would fit in a 747" questions.

 
But being struck dumb by this dystopian parade helps no one. Instead, I work, one termite among billions, to build the community I want to inherit the earth. I teach kind people how to use computers. I question my coworkers about the tools they are making. I live in a house with fourteen people and we feed each other, keep our house clean, invite strangers to Thanksgiving with us. I find other people in academia who agree that "to appreciate the vast capacity of our bodies (and minds!) and to contextualize technology’s role in them, engineers need to value qualitative methods and we all need to dance more." I make art, move my body, water my plants, remember that the fate of the human race and universe cannot hinge on one person. Remember all those thousands of scientists at Los Alamos, not just Oppenheimer. I research topics which are are beautiful, or useful - rarely are they both. Beauty often is called out as subjective, but rarely is usefulness, for some reason. I ask myself, if I could direct all human endeavors, what would be the most useful work to do? And often, the answer is to create beauty.

Engineers: Professional Explainers

In a conversation with Lincoln last week he made a statement that really changed my perspective on the work I have been creating this class, and I wanted to share it with all of you. While reviewing my work, Lincoln commented that I have a tendency to make an artistic statement and then immediately attempt to explain it. He was able to improve the quality of my work not through revising it but by simply deleting these explanations and allowing it to stand on its own.

I found this process fascinating because I was subconsciously adding in all of this clarification when it really wasn't necessary. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense why I had developed this habit. Because of our field of study, we are constantly asked to explain ourselves. Not just in the technical sense of showing our work and supporting our conclusions, but even in our everyday interactions. Relative asks what about what you are doing in school? You are going to have to explain yourself. Classmate wants to know how your control system works? You are going to have to explain yourself. We're even constantly told that we need to learn how to communicate so we can explain our ideas to others, free of technical jargon and unnecessary detail.

But think about how great it would be if, just sometimes, we didn't have to explain ourselves. This is an airplane, and it will fly because I say so. I have no supporting calculations, no CAD drawings, all I have is an airplane. That is what we have the opportunity to do in this class. I encourage you all to take more risks as we finish the third cognitive fusion and zine, and don't feel the need to explain yourself. A page that has an upside down poem in green font? Sure. A completely illegible page of jumbled text? Sure. No one ever asked Pollock why he put his canvas on the floor. No one asked Ansel Adams why he only shot in black and white. No one asked Hendrix why he played his guitar upside down. Follow in their footsteps and don't explain yourself to anyone.

Shamanism: Is It a Religion?

In doing this week’s readings on shamanism, I was struck by the many parallels that exist between various shamanic ideologies, through the centuries and across the globe. Piers Vitebsky writes in The Shaman that people have speculated that shamanism may be the “original, primordial human religion,” as numerous prehistoric cave drawings have been discovered which depict people entering trances or taking on animal-like shapes, as a shaman might if mid-trance.

For me, it is hard to wrap my head around shamanism being a religion. After all, shamanism lacks many of the things which characterize all or most of the world’s most prevalent religions: one definitive sacred text, movements to convert others, theological beliefs, a following, and the violent conflict which often rises when it comes in contact with another religion. In addition, shamanism is very disorganized with respect to the religions I have become familiar with; while there are many parallels between different shamanic groups, all of the world’s shamen have not met to decide on their holy day, create a set of rules for their congregation to follow, or define a set of answers for life’s biggest questions. Vitebsky himself writes that “shamanism is not a single, unified religion but a cross-cultural form of religious sensibility and practice.”

But if shamanism was the first religion practiced by humans, then does that mean that the very definition of religion has developed over time? It would make sense that the religions practiced by early humans would not be the same as what we would practice presently; early humans (and even humans in recent history) were more concerned with survival than they were with adultery, or being moral, or avoiding certain kinds of meat. Shamanism is very much an ancient practice, which does not adapt very well to contemporary settings. The spirit world which today’s spiritualists, who often live in cities, depend on technology, etc., would likely envision is very different from the one that shamen who live in tribes and in rural areas envision.

So what do you think? Was shamanism the first primordial human religion? If it was, is it still a religion now? And if the definition of religion changes through the course of human evolution, what might it look like in a couple hundred years?

Dialectic, Debate, and Argument

You, much like me, are undoubtedly tired of the continuous partisan argument that is happening at every level of government. The sides are vicious to one another, always arguing, never civil, and seeming to never reach a compromise.  But dialectic can be just as frustrating. Two sides, utterly content with never reaching a conclusion, exploring minute concepts without end. In class the concept was described as two extremes, a sort of pick-your-poison when it comes to making meaningful progress toward a solution.

As engineers and scientists, it makes sense that we find this kind of conversation frustrating. We live in an industry where success is clearly defined by performance standards and regulations. We are told from an early stage in our education that there is no one correct solution, but rather a number of different viable concepts. Our job is simply to find one that works well enough, that is as aesthetically pleasing, cost-effective, and scientifically sound as possible, and then proceed with that idea, not concerning ourselves with the infimum of other possibilities.

Take for example an engineer designing a bridge. They may iterate through several design concepts before ultimately arriving at a final design, which is eventually built. Once this decision is made, the engineer is no longer concerned with the other possible bridges that could be built, he is focused on making this bridge the best it can be.

I posit that Meno and Plato are not focused on building a bridge, but instead focused on determining every possible structure that could span a chasm. While an interesting discussion, Meno and Plato are never, ever going to get that bridge built.

Perhaps when searching for truth in abstract concepts, like the meaning of virtue, engage in dialectic in order to iterate ideas, but then take a step back. Collect those ideas and put them into a meaningful whole, not an absolute truth but rather an objective one, good enough to get the job done on a day to day basis. We might make more progress as a society if we let go of the idea of being absolutely, infallibly correct, and are instead content with reaching a level of truth that is simply good enough.