Professor M

2021-07-08 07:21:05 “Stop lecturing me!”

The other day I observed a verbal fight between a couple. Not having seen how it started, I witnessed the ending when one of the people kept crying out: “Stop lecturing me! You’re still lecturing! Stop lecturing!”

Oh, boy. People don’t like being lectured! Interesting. And here was I, someone who gave 78 lectures in the spring of 2021.

Winston Churchill didn’t enjoy being lectured either. He once said: “Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.”

We talked before about how some animal trainers understand these principles and focus on rewarding the desired behaviors taken by their trainees naturally, out of curiosity. The authors of the most emailed New York Times stories ever, “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage,“ argue the same applies to personal relationships. “Ignore the behaviors you dislike, praise the actions you appreciate, and observe the balance shift—slowly but surely—toward the latter.“

If I were to write a book about this, I’d call it “Lecturing without lecturing.”

Having said that, no need for a book. The Socratic method (Wiki) has been around since... at least... Socrates? Preserved by Plato, Socratic dialogues (Wiki) are the original “Lecturing without lecturing.”

I also wonder what the coiner of a phrase “I know that I know nothing” would have said about the following clip (YouTube) featuring the creators of “a show about nothing” (Wiki). Open / Comment

2021-07-04 17:00:15 Data Structures IRL — Part 3

Queues and linked lists are data structures we use to stand in lines. Standing in lines is so natural at this point that we don’t even think about it. But how did the very first standing-in-line experience originate?

This goes back to the question of where the truth comes from. Perhaps, from a combination of theory and empirics? Another way of saying this is deduction (from idea to observation) and induction (from observation to idea). You have an idea and then spin it to make a prediction. Some evidence confirming the prediction is consistent with the initial idea being correct. Good. We may then use this evidence to produce more ideas and use these for more predictions. The longer this chain is, the more accurate our understanding of the world is. (I talk about this interplay between theory and empirics, among other topics, in this longer talk in Russian.)

But, in the above reasoning, where does the very initial idea come from? What’s the source of the firstmost epiphany that gives rise to subsequent conclusions?

Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) (Wiki page) reveals a fascinating, highly visual stand on this. Evolution leaps forward thanks to encounters with alien monoliths. One such encounter (YouTube video) allowed a tribe of hominids to have an epiphany that bones can be used as weapons (YouTube video). Thus, the first tool was invented.

Interestingly, Nora Ephron’s “Michael” (1996) (Wiki page) takes a somewhat similar position on standing in lines. The movie’s central character, Archangel Michael, was sent to Earth to do various tasks. At one moment, he reveals in passing that on one of his prior visits, he “invented standing in line.”

I wonder who planted the seed that gave rise to the tree data structure (Wiki page). Open / Comment

2021-06-27 01:29:52 Data structures IRL — Part 2

A fun thing happened on an international flight I took in the middle of June. A long line to board. A long queue, if you will. A passenger in front of me turns around and asks if I’ll hold their spot in the queue as they walk away for a minute. “Absolutely,” I said.

But then I wondered. If they can walk away, it’s not a queue. As a data structure, a queue allows elements to be added to the back end and removed from the front end. Period. No other operations are permitted. A one-lane road for automobiles in a tunnel or a drive-through with a high curb is a queue. Once in, cars cannot drive away.

The line of passengers at the gate arranged themselves into a linked list (See Wiki page). The physical location per se doesn’t determine the order. Instead, everyone focuses on the person standing in front of them.

When the passenger walked away, I moved my pointer from them onto the person ahead of them. Plus, to undo this operation when they return, the passenger and I stored each other in mutual memories.

But of course, another condition has to be satisfied. The passenger would be able to return to the initial position in the line if and only if I hadn’t boarded yet. If I board fast, they’ll have to go to the back end. That’s precisely what happened.

I ran into this passenger on the plane. “I didn’t see you when I came back to the queue,” they said. I responded: “It wasn’t a queue; it was a linked list.”

P.S. The last paragraph exists only in my imagination, of course, but who cares. Open / Comment

2021-06-20 18:41:36 Data structures IRL

In computer science, a data structure (Wiki page) is a data organization, management, and storage format that enables efficient access and modification. Arrays, lists, tuples, sets, graphs, and trees are just some of the possible data structures in a coder’s toolbox.

A golfer chooses a club depending, among other reasons, on their lie (i.e., the position of a ball) and the desired distance to cover. Coders similarly pick a data structure to match the objective at hand.

The data structure I’ve selected for this entry is a queue—a collection of entities that are maintained in a sequence and can be modified by the addition of entities at one end of the sequence and the removal of entities from the other end of the sequence (Wiki page).

My favorite part of a queue as a data structure is that it predates computer science by thousands and thousands of years.

First-come-first-served is achievable even without an optimal data structure, but only for small groups of people who care about their reputations. After all, it’s easy to remember who was there before you and who came later.

But when the number of people in a group increases, relying on an inappropriate data structure to maintain order creates a prohibitively high cognitive load. What’s the solution?

Well, let’s line up and not move. That way, our physical placement would carry information previously stored in our brains. With this cognitive load freed up, our brains are now free to engage in other pursuits. And these other pursuits will eventually lead to the invention of computer science. Open / Comment

2021-06-13 17:51:52 Will it scale?

Here, here, and here, we talked about rivalry and excludability from the perspective of introductory economics. I am afraid, though, it might be time to rewrite this section of a textbook.

The question is not whether one person’s consumption detracts from the consumption of another person. Instead, the relevant question is: Will it scale? Can we produce and deliver to multiple consumers at a time?

The textbook example of a non-rival good is satellite TV: Many consumers may simultaneously enjoy the broadcast of a film. The same movie on a DVD would be a private good; only one venue can show it at a time.

But the good is intrinsically the same: People are watching a movie at home. How exactly the movie got onto their screens is second-order. What’s the point of calling one good non-rival and another rival if the consumption experience is identical?

It’s the production technology that’s different. The production of movie-watching experiences with a satellite is more scalable than that with a single DVD.

Let’s take it one step further. The textbook example of a public good (i.e., non-rival and non-excludable) is national defense. But again, this is so only for threats the defense against which is scalable under existing technologies. Against a conventional military invasion, national defense is, in fact, a public good.

But what if the enemy appears randomly in different cities potentially at the same time? What if the enemy recruits citizens upon wounding them, and these citizens inadvertently attack their compatriots?

Against such threats, the national defense doesn’t look like a public good anymore. It becomes clear that defense resources will be rationed across regions—producing rivalry and, potentially, excludability. Open / Comment

2021-06-05 12:32:02 Citizen Gates — Part 2

The divorce of Bill Gates, of course, amplifies the irony of putting-family-first listed fourth. But this quirk alone is just an hors d’oeuvre meant to prepare you, my connoisseur reader, for the main course.

Movie aficionados might have seen what’s coming. The word citizen in the title points to Citizen Kane, a 1941 movie widely considered the greatest film ever made. Not to reveal spoilers, let’s just say that Citizen Kane is about a life journey of a person who acquired extreme wealth.

Parallels between Bill Gates and Charles Foster Kane exist. For one, journalists have used the name Xanadu to call Gates’s Washington-state mansion. Xanadu refers to a similarly extravagant estate of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane.

— One hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble. Paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace — a collection of everything so big it can never be cataloged or appraised; enough for ten museums; the loot of the world. Since the Pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself.

The above is a description of Kane’s mansion. Its splendor, though, is no match to the $127+ million Xanadu of Gates.

With this similarity based on observables, I’m curious about a few things. First, has Bill Gates seen Citizen Kane? Second, what does Gates think of others referring to his home as Xanadu?

Why am I curious? Well, because I think it’s mean to call someone’s home Xanadu if you watched Citizen Kane till the end and bothered to understand it. We don’t see journalists call some tycoon’s luxurious yacht Titanic. It’s bad taste. We all know what happened to Titanic. The tragedy of Titanic is the central part of its story (and name), whereas its opulence is just the backdrop.

Unlike Titanic, with its highly observable sinking of thousands, Citizen Kane shows the less observable sinking of one. The tragedy of Xanadu is the central part of its story (and name), whereas its opulence is just the backdrop.

I’m also curious if Gates has a rosebud; and if he does, what is it? (If you don't follow this last sentence, you need to watch Citizen Kane till the end and bother to understand it.) Open / Comment

2021-05-31 16:47:51 Citizen Gates – Part 1

In 2019 (see this Inc. article), Bill Gates said that “his level of happiness is much higher at 63 than at 25 because he chooses to do these 4 things”:
1. Follow through on your commitments
2. Have a mindset of giving
3. Treat your body like a sacred temple
4. Put family first

My favorite part about this list is that “putting family first” comes fourth in the list. “Oh yeah, the family totally comes first; it’s just there’re three other things before it. But other than that, the family is totally first.”

Or maybe Gates is so cool that his array indices start from not even 0 but -2? Open / Comment

2021-05-27 20:53:47 The next time you watch one of the predator-prey nature shows on public television or one of the wildlife channels, watch the chase scenes carefully. There are always one or two in which the lion or the cheetah is not successful, and each time the scenario is the same: The predator gets closer to the prey … closer … closer, then slips back slightly—and immediately gives up. On the spot. When the distance to the prey begins to widen, the hunter quits. She (the females do most of the hunting) will never waste energy on a losing cause. She saunters off, because it doesn’t matter. There are other wildebeests, other gazelles. Likewise, the trained negotiator has no needs, because it just doesn’t matter. There are other deals. Turn the page on this one. Let it go.

Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know | Jim Camp Open / Comment

2021-05-22 18:30:36 You-Know-Who and Know-Your-Why

Long before the wizarding world started referring to Lord Voldemort as You-Know-Who, the same moniker had already applied to someone else in the wide web world. That someone else is still occasionally called You-Know-Who.

I’ve been following You-Know-Who’s work for more than a decade. And I admit that I did get a non-trivial boost of pride and vanity when You-Know-Who subscribed to this channel in the fall of 2020. It felt good—for a bit. Eventually, the effect wore off.

That’s when I got attached to You-Know-Who following my work. What if You-Know-Who unsubscribes? I’ll feel bad if this were to happen. What do I do to make sure You-Know-Who stays subscribed?

Having realized that pandering to You-Know-Who is a losing strategy if the objective is to keep You-Know-Who as a subscriber, I chose a different way to insure against the negative feelings if You-Know-Who were to unsubscribe. I just stopped checking if You-Know-Who is still a subscriber.

Good. This felt like progress. But the real progress happened next.

Why should I even care if You-Know-Who is a subscriber? Why allow pride and vanity to influence my thoughts and actions? Having (partially) removed the pride and vanity packages from my brain’s operating system, I searched for You-Know-Who in the list of subscribers. You-Know-Who was not there. But guess what else was missing? Absent were the negative feelings about You-Know-Who’s departure.

When we worry about some event X, typically, it’s because we want to avoid negative feelings associated with it. On the one hand, we may throw our energy at preventing X from happening. On the other hand, we might learn that the link between X and our sense of fulfillment may not even exist. If so, direct your energy elsewhere. Open / Comment

2021-05-15 17:35:00 Club goods

We talked earlier about the distinction between private and public goods. The former are rival and excludable; for the latter, the opposite applies on both dimensions. Let’s mix and match.

Club goods are excludable and non-rival—for example, watching a movie in a cinema or attending a concert. Checking tickets at the front door ensures excludability. Once the person is in, however, their consumption doesn’t take away from the consumption of others. This ensures non-rivalry.

My recollection of introductory economics is that this is where the story ends. But I believe there’s more to it. And it goes back to the following questions. What is the product? What is it that the consumers are buying? (We talked about these themes here, here, & here.)

When you are in a cinema or at a concert, the presence of other people at the venue is part of the product you are buying. Watching a movie alone in a cinema or being the only person at a concert is frankly creepy and unappealing. You specifically choose to have this experience in a public setting because you want to experience the group’s energy.

The point of cinemas and concerts is not that the presence of others doesn’t take away from your consumption. Instead, other people contribute to your consumption. To a large extent, the company of other people is what you’re consuming. And so are they. Open / Comment