I realize the folly of trying to predict things right now, but I figured it would be fun to try. Additionally, all COVID deaths are US numbers – this is a pretty US-centric forecast. Lastly, it gets thinner the longer you project out.

I don’t want much of this to come to pass, and don’t make any decisions on it – it’s random guesses by someone who doesn’t know much. I also think there are incredible things that may happen with the BLM movement, but I’m not confident about any of that enough to write it down.

We’ll see how I do, and I’d love your thoughts in the comments!

2020 – August

• News cycle is COVID deaths, unemployment & economy, and schools reopening
• Congress passes a weak ’emergency extension’ of unemployment benefits for about $400 for the next month. This begins a cycle of repeated extensions until the election.
• Biden chooses Kamala Harris as the nominee
• Stock market tanks by 15% in a few days, but then still bounces back about 5%
• Public schools halfheartedly go back in session and none of them last more than a month before closing
• Government goons snatching people off the streets becomes no longer part of the news cycle
• Latin America is widely seen as the most affected part of the world, Trump makes some racist comment suggesting that’s why he wanted to keep Latinx people out of the country in the first place, because they “carry disease” or some other nonsense
• COVID deaths hit 2000 / day and stay there and maybe hit 2500
  • It’s possible that we hit one 9/11 per day (~3000 / day) in mid-August – if this happens, the ads write themselves, and Trump is toast

2020 – September

• News cycle is about schools, mail-in voting fights, decreasing COVID cases, and hurricanes
• Nearly all schools accept a remote semester by this point
• Tons of BS about the postal service and voting and voter suppression 
• COVID starts at 2000 deaths / day, ends at 1000 / day

2020 – October

• News cycle is about the election, economy which has been consistently softening
  • Dear god please let it be over
• Russia tries to start some shit via a proxy, perhaps by heating up the Ukraine war temporarily or via action in the Caucasus region or via cyberattacks on the Baltic countries or Finland. Maybe they lay claim to all of the Arctic Ocean seabed or something
• China has it’s hands full and doesn’t want Trump in office anyways
• A bunch of lame jokes about halloween and masks that are tiresome the first time you hear them
• Most people wear masks, even the Trumpers start to wear them outside
• COVID deaths end at 500 / day

2020 – November

• News cycle is about election, then about violent retributions, then about Thanksgiving being cancelled
• There will be halfhearted “we’re all going to unite” sentiments around Thanksgiving, but no one will buy it.
• Trump loses, but there is massive voter suppression and hijinks
  • There’s immediately a huge section of America that does not accept it
• It becomes a truly dark time, as there are fascist mass-shootings in places like North Carolina, Colorado, and Texas
  • This is especially the case if BLM protests are still ongoing
• Democrats do not take the senate
• There is a lawsuit about the results, and the supreme court ends up siding against Trump by the end of November
• As weather gets colder, cases in the northeast start to inch up
• Congress continues to emergency extend stimulus
• China uses the chaos to legally remove HK’s 1-country 2-systems status
• Several Waco-style groups declare independence from America
• COVID deaths remain at 500 / day

2020 – December

• News cycle is about death-by-despair, with suicides and overdoses increasing.
• Also about vaccine hopes that don’t materialize, and about second semester plans for colleges and schools.
• Assassination attempts against politicians – AOC, for one. These fail, but bystanders die.
• RBG dies, massive protests as Trump tries to nominate and rush through a nominee, but ultimately he does not do so as some ousted republican senators defect (Susan Collins, for instance).
• Additionally at this point one of the old republican senators has died of COVID.
• Chaos in Brazil – streets become a war zone as Bolsonaro tries to crack down on protests 
• Facebook as a platform starts dying as the politics become too much for most people and they exit the platform. Twitter will have its’ own deflation once Trump is out of office and people start going back to work.
• COVID deaths remain at ~400 / day

2021 – January

• News Cycle is about economy and bleak outlook, incoming administration, and vaccine hopes.
• Biden takes office.
• He plans to pardon Trump, but it leaks and public pressure keeps that from happening
• Trump retreats to Mar-A-Lago and other bubbles, continues to live fairly large and be a sore loser for a while
• Trump contracts COVID.
• More schools have figured out how to do a hybrid model, some kids go back to school.
• This is helped by most adults now being able to watch them at home, as unemployment has continued to climb.
• Democrats pass a massive stimulus plan at the end of January, including half of a Green New Deal
• COVID deaths decrease to ~ 250 / day

2021 – February

• News Cycle is about Trump’s death, vaccine starting to be available & who gets it
• Trump dies of complications of COVID.
  • Note: I have this prediction in here as a deus-ex-machina as I have no idea what would happen otherwise. Would he go to jail? Would he somehow escape to Russia? Would he get a pardon? Will he be assassinated?
• People are very, very stuck inside still, and high suicide rates continue.
• Vaccine trials have had some successes, and companies are trying to ramp up production
• Huge fights over who will get said vaccine when it does come out
• COVID deaths decrease to ~200 / day

2021 – March

• News Cycle is about vaccine deployment, litigation & prosecution of Trumpers, light at end of tunnel
• COVID deaths remain at ~200 / day

2021 – April

• News Cycle is about slow rollout of vaccine, cancel of any school left due to that slow rollout 
• COVID deaths remain at ~200 / day

2021 – May

• News Cycle is about vaccine, fears that good weather will cause outbreaks again, dumbass anti-vaxxers
• Feels like the end of the tunnel
• Vaccine becomes available to very rich people, as well as hospital workers, EMTs, police, firefighters, etc
• COVID deaths reduce down to ~100 / day, although covid cases start spiking again

2021 – June

• News Cycle is fear about another wave, vaccine rollout, figuring out if it’s safe for kids and planning for the upcoming school year
• Vaccine becomes widely available to nurses in nursing homes, some essential workers
• COVID deaths start increasing back up to ~150 / day, COVID cases spike as well, although mostly amongst younger people

2021 – July

• News Cycle is about vaccine including anti-vaxxers, school plans, kids.
• US ends up reaching herd immunity in southern states & maybe CA, ironically states that did well earlier now have a harder path back
• COVID deaths remain at ~100 / day

Whew, that’s a lot, I’d be happy about my prediction powers if only half of it came true. There are a few other events that I believe will happen, but not sure exactly when:

• Another George-Floyd-like murder of a BIPOC sparks renewed protests
• Migrant crisis in Europe heats up again
• Far-right / fascist leaders elected in another country (trend continues)

Again, I’d love your thoughts!

– Schimmy

Also please check this out – Lauro Reservoir images that I found – very cool!

The post Predictions for the next year appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

Those are many big things we lost during 9/11. We rightly focus on those a lot, and will teach these topics to future generations. We take care to collectively remember the before and after, and how our society has changed. However, there are a few smaller things that I’d like to mourn as well, and preserve in our collective memory.

But the seemingly-small casualty that I’d actually like to mourn today:

Before 9/11, airports were far better places, hosting the rituals of joyful reunions as well as the rituals of bittersweet goodbyes.

Airports were a place in which you could savor last minutes with someone you might not see again for a while, or where you could celebrate their return comfortably. We have lost small rituals of everyday life that used to exist at the airport, and our lives are just slightly less full because of this. We have traded real, valuable life for false, valueless security.

Following 9/11, the US federal government changed the rules such that only ticketed passengers could go through security. Before that, anyone could just walk on through a metal detector and hang out with their loved one by the gate. As an example, you could surprise your long-distance partner with a marriage proposal, something only military personnel can do today. Imagine doing that in the baggage area instead, with the carousel spinning and creaking, and the arriving significant other chomping into a Cinnabon purchased on the walk from the gate. Not quite as dramatic…!

Think about the stress of that goodbye moment in the departures lane. Some of that stress is because traffic needs to keep moving, but the main source of stress is around security.
“Ma’am, you’ve got to move your car – you can’t idle here, no arguments – it’s for security reasons”
“Sir you can’t leave your vehicle unattended, you’ve got to say goodbye out in the cold”.

Yes, you can still pay to park and walk in. Yet, why bother if what awaits is only a cold lobby and 5 minutes with a departing loved one, who’s already feeling stressed about getting through the long security line in time?

So instead we try to get coffee somewhere near the airport, or try to savor the car ride on the way, and quickly hug goodbye in the chaos of the departure lane. There was a better way, and we should remember it. This is one reason we still love train stations.

There are some workarounds. For instance, often times there is a large area outside of customs at international airports where people can wait, waiting expectantly, looking up hopefully every time the automatic doors swoosh open. The scenes of joy there are heartwarming. Recently, Pittsburgh and SeaTac have started a program where you can actually get a pass to go through security. I’m happy about that program, although it is extremely cumbersome and I doubt the program will really change much behavior.

Of course, there were some downsides to that old world as well – theft probably happened more frequently with less security in place, for instance. However, there is still a slice of life that was lost which we can keep in our collective memory … and, based on those new programs at PIT and SeaTac, perhaps it’s not just one curmudgeonly, sentimental man on the internet who feels this loss.

The post Airports before 9/11 appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

This Thanksgiving I was hanging out with my little cousin, who was dealing cards from a standard 52 card deck. I asked her the question:

“How many times could you deal the whole deck and see a unique order of cards – different than every other time you dealt the deck in the past?”

Or to put it another way,

“How many unique deals (‘permutations’) of all 52 cards are there?”

If you’ve done any number theory (or looked at the title of the post), you know the answer – 52! (Aka 52 factorial. I would be equally excited about 52 being the answer, however – that would be very strange and interesting)

I looked up ways to try to grok that number online, and got variations of the same answer, which were pretty un-explainable to my cousin. So instead I’ve decided to make a try myself.

Imagine you stopped everything you were doing, and for the rest of your life, every second of your life, night and day, you dealt a new, magically shuffled hand of all 52 cards. This magic makes it so that you’ll never get a hand that you’ve seen before. You want to know how many unique deals there are, and have a deep distrust of mathematicians – you need to see it with your own eyes.

You first have a hand that happens to start with the Jack of Clubs, then the Jack of Hearts, then the Jack of Spades and then the 49 other cards. “Hmm, interesting one!” You think… to yourself, as you probably don’t have many friends if this is your hobby.

The next second, you have a hand that starts with the Ace of Hearts, then has the 51 other cards.

You keep going, and by the next week you’re pretty bored. When am I going to be done? That Tuesday you see a deal which has the Jack of Hearts, then the Jack of Clubs, then the Jack of Spades and all the rest of the cards in the exact same position as you got in the first deal.

“Wow, that’s super interesting, and super close to the first hand, but still a new hand!” You exclaim to a room full of empty pizza boxes, and at this point imaginary friends as you haven’t slept in a week.

You realize you’ll need some help to keep doing this. So you manage to convince every other person on earth, all 7 Billion of them, to do it with you, every second of every day. You must figure this out! For some reason you aren’t able to convince the mathematicians to work on your project, but again you’ve never been big fans of them anyways.

Still, things aren’t progressing fast enough. You decide to invent a time machine, and a Fountain of Youth, and everyone goes back to the beginning of the universe, starting again with all 7 Billion people all dealing hands of cards, all day, every day, once a second per person. You think this will certainly work, and then you’ll get to see dinosaurs! There are a lot of seconds between now and the beginning of the universe – you asked an Astronomer and they told you there were 4×10^27 seconds since then, or 4 followed by 17 zeros. The mathematicians come with you, but still refuse to help deal cards. They’re just in it to see dinosaurs, they say. One shouts: “Good luck with your little project!” and they all giggle.

This makes you a bit uneasy, but you don’t have time for their antics, and quickly forget them as you return to dealing cards.

The Big Bang happens, and the universe expands. The galaxies are formed and the first stars are created and explode, seeding the cosmos with iron and other heavy elements. The solar system is formed, and ever so slowly the planets. Earth cools, an ocean forms and life is sparked. All the while, 7 billion people, every day, all day, every second, are dealing unique hands of cards. Dinosaurs roam the earth, then are wiped out. Many eons ago you’ve become the most hated person in existence for creating this project and convincing everyone to join you. Time keeps passing and people keep dealing cards until we arrive back at today’s date.

You look back at all the progress you’ve made. Wow! We’ve been able to do 3×10^27th combinations, that’s amazing! That’s a 3 followed by 27 zeros. So many different deals of the deck, all unique.

“We must be close!”, you say confidently to the nearest exhausted card-flipping humans. They look at you with pure hatred in their eyes. You wish that maybe you had just tried to ask a mathematician in the first place to figure out if it’s even possible to find all the unique deals (the mathematicians call these ‘permutations’).

The smartest and most kind mathematician taps you on the shoulder. You asked her to chart the progress you’ve been making towards collecting all the different possibilities, since she didn’t seem to giggle as hard as the others when she walked by and saw you dealing cards. She hands you a chart.

“What is this, some kind of sick joke?” You demand, enraged as she’s handed you a chart of a progress bar that’s blank.

“We have to time travel again to the beginning of the universe… you need more time to finish…” She cautiously suggests.

“Okay, well, fine. How many more times?” You shoot back, still furious.

“10^40 times…” There’s a pause as you stare blankly at her.

“Let me say the number”, she says, “I don’t think that scientific notation really hit home for you… It’s: Three, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero… “

“Just write it down”, you cut her off, muttering under your breath about how you never really liked mathematicians anyways.

She writes it on a piece of paper, explaining: “You’ll have to continue this experiment with all 7 billion people, repeatedly returning to the beginning of the universe to get more seconds to deal cards.”

“You’ll have to travel back in time this many times”, she repeats confidently, with a note of pity in her voice.

The slip of paper says: “30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times”.

Your knees give out as you slump to the floor.

In the depths of despair, you look up at the mathematician. She smiles.

“You know, you could have just asked us mathematicians in the beginning. The number of combinations is 52!, which is just 52*51*50…*3*2*1. This equals about 8×10^67, or 8 with 67 zeroes after it.”

You nod, feeling relieved that you know the answer. Then you look up. You see 7 billion people, all of whom have just abandoned their work and looking strangely at you. You don’t like their look. As they start standing up and moving towards you, you run towards your time machine, setting it to transport only yourself to the Jurassic period.

“I should have trusted the mathematicians …. !” Your voice fades as you begin the time travel. You’re still not sure you understand how large numbers or probability works, but you think it’s wise to take your chances with the terrible lizards instead.

In the background, the mathematicians start giggling again.

Numbers:

• Age of universe = 4×10^17
• 7,000,000,000 = 7×10^9
• 52! = 8×10^67
• 52! / 7 Billion / age of universe in seconds = 3×10^40

The post How large is 52!? appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

Warning: Full spoilers for S3E01 !

Now imagine instead a mentally disabled black man with tattoos and the “wrong” clothes, waving the exact same knife near the high-status bride at the fashionable, wealthy, white wedding he’s crashed.

In our society, that man is shot dead by the cops who respond. Immediately.

Thus my argument is that the “Nosedive” world could be a better world than our current American society. The risks and consequences of screwing up online or in-person on our society are just as high as in “Nosedive”. Social standing is just as influential to your career, to dating, to everything. There are only degrees of difference between the “Nosedive” world and our own world when it comes to how integrated our personas are.

The main difference: in “Nosedive”, everyone starts out with 3 stars, everyone can lose stars equally, and everyone knows the rules. In our society, everyone starts off with wildly different socioeconomic statuses. It’s very difficult to gain or lose “stars”, even amongst generations. And in our society, the higher your status, the more you understand the rules.

It’s a tilted game, but it’s not terrifying to you. Why? Because you, the person reading this on Medium, are likely already above 4 stars. You know how the game is played, and you know you don’t have to worry that what happened to Lacey could happen to you.

So is the scary thing about “Nosedive” that social media might have more power over your work life?

No.

The scary part about “Nosedive” is that it imagines a world in which your privilege is no longer locked in by stable things as race, upbringing, and education. What scares you about the portrayal is the fear that the ladder could be kicked out from under you, and you would have to face the true monster of how society treats those of us who have so few “stars”, who are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

This is what makes Black Mirror‘s “Nosedive” actually terrifying.

The post A Black Mirror thought experiment – what actually scares you about “Nosedive” appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

My Twitter and Facebook feeds are positively on fire with your distaste. I understand it – I can’t stand the guy either, and believe him becoming president might be the worst disaster to befall America since 9/11. Some of you even draw comparisons with Hitler and think Trump would be as bad for America and its less-privileged as Hitler was for Germany. That seems like a stretch to me, but sure, believe what you will.

And so there are the jokes:

• “Oh I hear Canada is nice this time of year”
• “Well, there’s always Canada, even if it’s America’s hat”
• “I’ll have to get used to apologizing, but living in Canada would be better than enduring a Trump presidency”

The premise of the joke is simple: Trump would be so bad for America that you’d rather move to Canada than live in the dystopian nightmare that (you believe) America would become under Trump. Progressives have said the same thing when George W. Bush was running for office, and even when Reagan was running for president nearly 40 years ago.

You need to stop. You need to stop making the joke publicly, at the very least. Let’s be honest: you’re not going to move to Canada, and it’s making us progressives look bad.

The problem with this joke is that, to the right-wing (and to those in the middle), it confirms the suspicions that they’ve had all along. Suspicions that the left doesn’t really love America. That the progressive dislike of our military power is less a principled stand against empire or oppression and instead is a dislike of the people who make up the military. That the progressive championing of marginalized voices is less a support of those speaking and instead more of a means to drown out the voices of those who disagree with us. That the progressive belief in the good of government is instead just a means to meddle in others’ business. And on and on…

The event of a Trump presidency would be the hour of progressive despair. In this moment, if you really care and believe in the causes progressives claim to support, it would become even more crucial that you show up, stand up, and fight for those progressive causes. If you moved to Canada, with your privilege, access and resources, you’d lose the power to impact American politics. You would become a bystander to the dystopia that you’re predicting. You would abandon those marginalized voices you claim to support. In short, you would confirm all the suspicions the Right has of progressives.

Now, it could be that you are Progressive but have Mexican heritage, are Muslim, or are likely putting your life on the line in this dystopia that Progressives predict. In that case I don’t presume to tell you how to take care of yourself. If you feel like you need to leave to do that, I offer no judgement, and wish you the best.

But as a plea to my fellow privileged, progressive compatriots: please stop mentioning, joking, planning, or insinuating that you’re moving to Canada if we lose the election. Not only would moving be the morally wrong thing to do, but just discussing it weakens our cause regardless of the outcome. Let’s toughen up, win this election, and keep pushing.

The post No, you’re not moving to Canada, and you need to stop joking about it appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

I’m going to look at these 3 uses:

1. verb + yìdiǎn = “verbing a bit more”
2. yǒu yìdiǎn + adjective = “only kind of adjective” (negative connotation)
3. adjective + yìdiǎn = “adjective to the extreme” (in comparison)

I’m going to use the word “nèn”, which means “tender” as I think it makes the examples more clear than using “big” or something else.

1) verb + yìdiǎn (modifies the verb)

This one is easy: it’s modifying the verb to say that the action is happening more intensely.
For instance, “Wǒ chī yìdiǎn nèn niú ròu” means “I am eating a bit more tender beef”.

I (subject) am eating (verb) a bit more (modifier for the verb, aka adverb) tender (adjective modifying the object) beef (object).

Notice here that we’re not modifying the adjective at all, and the beef in this case is simply “tender”.

I like to think about it as if you had squished the words together into a compound word. In that case it’d be: “I am more-eating tender beef”

2) yǒu yìdiǎn + adjective (modifies the adjective)

This one is moderately hard. I think of this as “only kind of adjective”. It carries a negative tone, almost implying that the adjective is less than you’d expect. For instance, we could say:
“Wǒ chī de niú ròu yǒu yìdiǎn nèn”, which would mean “I am eating somewhat tender beef”. The “yìdiǎn” in this case is “weakening” the adjective instead of “joining forces” with it, as I think of the third case. The “little bit” is modifying the adjective “tender”. Again, this has a negative connotation – if you said this to a friend, they might ask you if you cooked the beef too long, or want another piece, etc.

I (subject) am eating (verb) somewhat (adjective modifying the next adjective, thus indirectly modifying the object) tender (adjective modifying the object) beef (object).

As a compound word: “I am eating not-very-tender beef”.

But really, if you’re living in California in 2016, you’re likely going to say instead: “I eat kinda tender beef”.

3) adjective + yìdiǎn (modifies the noun)

This one is the hardest. I think of this as going “somewhat extreme” with the adjective. It always implies a comparison to another noun, even if the other noun is not explicitly included.

For instance, we could say “wǒ de niú ròu (bǐ nǐ de niú ròu) nèn yìdiǎn” which means “My beef (compared to your beef) is more tender”.

My beef (subject) compared to your beef (explicit or implicit comparison) is more (adjective modifying how tender the beef is by “joining forces” with the next adjective) tender (adjective modifying the object)

Maybe you’re comparing against your normal beef, or perhaps the tenderness of the beef people were expecting you to eat. You could also perhaps translate as: “I am eating beef that is more tender than usual” or “I am eating beef that is more tender than expected”.

As a compound word, it’s: “I am eating more-tender beef”.

Again, if you live in CA you might say: “I eat hella tender beef”.

To summarize:

Hopefully this helps! Also note that the “yì” in “yǒu yìdiǎn” might not be there – apparently many speakers leave it out. Please also let me know if there are any issues with the post.

The post Using yìdiǎn and yǒu yìdiǎn correctly appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

I’m here to show that you can help fight climate change even if starting a clean tech company or working on a new programming language is out of reach.

The three actions seem small, but given our industry’s future trajectory (up and to the right, of course), these can have a huge compound effect into the future:

1. Choose carbon-efficient server hosting, from the start
2. Change tech culture around climate change from passive to active
3. Work for a company tackling an aspect of the climate challenge

We often see climate change as something for other industries to handle – after all, those other industries are moving crops or making steel or feeding cows and we are “just moving bits”. How bad can moving bits be for the environment? Aren’t we already doing well?

It’s true that the tech industry is less carbon-intensive than other industries. However, we are only as “green” as the power our servers draw. While some companies have spent massive efforts on clean energy (kudos, Google!), no one expects or should reasonably expect companies to work outside their core competency.

Luckily for the environment, the more accurately carbon is priced, the better the tech industry does as a whole (see item #2), and so the entire tech industry should be united in working for a solution to climate change.

1) Use carbon-efficient server hosting

Again, we don’t need to smelt aluminum, move wheat, or drive a tractor to do our jobs. But if cloud computing were a country, it would rank 6th in the world for energy usage. This gives us an outsized impact on the energy sector, about the same size as Germany!

If tech demands clean energy, utilities will have to start providing the clean option, and economies of scale and political barriers start to tip in favor of non-carbon energy sources.

If you’re in one of the green bubbles in the image below, skip to the next section, you’re doing great. However most of us when starting a business just opt for AWS, and while they have some efforts to improve their carbon footprint, there’s little transparency.

If you do use AWS, set your default to us-west-2/Oregon or another carbon-neutral datacenter. At least for the US, us-west-2 has consistently been the cheapest datacenter so this also helps your business. Of course you may need to use some east-coast centers for web latency, but it makes complete sense that data processing should be done with cheap, water-powered, renewable energy.

When you have 100% carbon-neutral servers, your salespeople will happily use this as a selling point, another positive impact to your business. Go ask them how useful that point would be – just send a single email…

Some things you personally can do:

• Use Google or Rackspace to host your servers if it’s easy or you’re starting out. AWS is pretty pricey these days, so it might be a good move for the future
• If using AWS, use one of the carbon-neutral datacenters
• Ask your sales team how effective “our servers are 100% carbon neutral” is as a selling point
• Bug your AWS rep to release their plans for achieving sustainability goals – they won’t continue the program if they think no one is watching, and they’ve been very secretive so far
• If you work at these companies, start pushing internally for cleaner power:
  • Oracle
  • EBay
  • HP
  • IBM
  • Microsoft

  At the next all-hands, submit a question: “How is X working to reduce the carbon content of our electricity?”. Don’t be appeased by promises to reduce carbon footprints of campus buildings, etc – these are not as effective at changing the energy sector, which is the most important contributor to climate change.

2) Change the tech industry from politically passive on climate change to politically active

Dirty energy allows the old industries (which we often are pushing to change) a free ride at the expense of our future world. For instance, the negative externality of emissions pollution from a gas-powered delivery truck compared to an electric-powered truck (or drone!) isn’t yet priced into the market.

A quick list of the technologies which face headwinds without a carbon price:

• LyftLine and UberPool vs taxis and cars
• Electric cars (Tesla, Nissan Leaf, BMW i-series) vs gas cars
• Cloud computing vs self-hosted computing
• Amazon’s delivery vs Walmart stores
• Airbnb using unused rooms over excess capacity built into hotels for peak times
• Netflix vs Blockbuster (obviously Netflix is stronger than the headwinds…)
• Nest vs traditional thermostats
• Obviously any green tech targeting energy production like OPower, Mosaic, SolarCity, etc

We’ve united to fight for Net Neutrality, but we haven’t lobbied as hard to end carbon-emission corporate welfare. Again, in this case I’m not even talking about the direct ~$10 billion/year subsidies of fossil fuels in the US alone, but just the invisible negative externality that we’ll all have to pay down the road for each gallon of gas burned and each ton of coal sent up a chimney.

One of the issues holding back cleaner power for our datacenters is a lack of renewable energy available where we need to place datacenters. I’m looking at you, mid-atlantic states…

Some tech companies are spending millions building out their own renewable power because local utilities are fighting against even providing clean energy as an option. Only this year, after years of lobbying, has Google succeeded in changing policy in North Carolina. Our industry should have the ability to purchase the cleaner power we want – reactionary politics shouldn’t stop us from paying for something that is actively better for the community.

So how do we change the culture of tech?

For one – fight the idea that companies and employees should stay apolitical on climate change issues. I believe that companies should not try to support democrats over republicans (or vice versa, etc) or even speak out on less economically focused issues such as gun rights. However, that climate change exists and will be damaging is not a scientifically seriously debated phenomenon, and the health of the economy and the climate is important for the well being of all tech companies.

Do you want your company to thrive for decades? A global economy under pressure, spending billions to fix basic infrastructure issues from climate change is not the best environment to grow a business in. Let’s start acting like the future of the economy matters to our industry, simply because it’s the truth.

So if we’re united, what can we actually do to change policy?

You may not believe it, but politicians listen to us. Yes, the big tech companies have lobbyists with cash briefcases on Capitol Hill and that helps, but there are also a lot of small donations which come from the tech industry employees and executives.

Less cynically, politicians also listen to us because they believe we have some sort of innovation “secret sauce” that keeps American competition alive. This might be true, or it might have been something ad-libbed to get funding from DARPA at some point and everyone’s in on the joke. Doesn’t matter: they believe it!

• On Davos/TED/Atlantic panels, talk about how carbon pricing would help your innovative business
• At Obama fundraising events, ask awkwardly-well-researched questions on renewable energy standards
• If you happen to rub shoulders with the Washington DC power crowd, chit-chat about Tesla or clean energy, and make it clear that the tech industry expects carbon emissions to be fairly priced, soon

They’ll trust that you can see your way around corners that they can’t, and will start thinking about how they’ll transition their own constituencies to the future that we in the tech industry already take for granted.

If you personally don’t have that kind of access, framing carbon emission pricing as welfare to fossil fuel companies is sure to score a point with your annoyingly-political uncle Joe at the Thanksgiving table. Also, I’m sure you have friends who one day will be a part of the power structure in DC – make sure they understand this idea!

3) Work for a company which is trying to solve the problem

You, personally, have skills which can be literally impossible to purchase. While Bret Victor lays out a number of new projects to tackle, there are also tons of existing organizations out there working on solutions to the crisis. Let’s face it – the job you currently have is unlikely to be your last job. Why not use your skills in the next job to help tackle the climate problem?

Some examples (after 5 minutes of Googling) of places to apply your skills:

• Tesla, especially Tesla Power
• Solar Power Financing: Mosaic or SolarCity
• Less fashionable, but all the more important: angel.co/energy-efficiency
• Dynamic consumer power demand: OhmConnect
• Efficient industrial lighting: transcendlighting.com
• Drone delivery: Flirtey
• Construction efficiency: Vernox Labs
• Solar in developing countries: Oolu Solar
• Efficient industrial lighting: Transcend Lighting
• Even just regular utility companies: NRG Energy
• 350.org and other climate groups

You may have to accept a lower paycheck, but I’d argue that the intangible benefits are worth it. You have the means to work on one of the most important projects in human history; consider this an invitation to join the project.

All three points have some common elements:

• Tackling climate change is good business for the tech industry
• Your company can help, even if it isn’t directly working on cleantech, and even if you’re only a regular employee
• There are plenty of ways to earn your paycheck fixing climate issues. You don’t have to try to squeeze it in as a side project

Of course, there is always donating and side projects / volunteering. Those are great options, but make sure you’re actually being effective when doing so! Otherwise, enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving, thankful for the opportunities you have to not just make a living, but also to make an impact on a crisis critical to solve for the well-being of centuries of human life.

The post Three ways to fight climate change that Bret Victor missed appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

There was one thing which really blew my mind, though. We visited the beautiful Bruce Peninsula and took a ferry out to Flowerpot Island on Lake Huron.

It had not really hit me how arid, how much of a desert California is, until I was on a boat with drinkable, clean, clear water stretching out past the horizon. So much water that you could get on a vessel which floats on the water and travel to the horizon multiple times before reaching the end of the lake. An ocean of drinkable water!

At the time, it reminded me of Dune. It felt to me like I was from Arrakis (the desert planet), and had just landed on Caladan (the home world of the Atreides). This thought was probably triggered by this post. It’s actually inspired me to reread Dune!

The thing is, I’m from a place (Massachusetts) with abundant water – looking back from California, I could hardly believe that as children we would have watergun fights and have little wars with hoses. Visiting Ontario reminded me that there are places which don’t have the water pressure that we do… at least not yet.

The post Ontario is different appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

This is an obviously biased post (see the title) but I think its better to have an explicitly biased post than to make an “objective” post that can’t help but be influenced by my own opinions. Whether you agree or disagree, I hope this post is useful. Please let me know what you think below!

This is a long post, so here’s a short version of it:

• Swarthmore cares about Climate Change
• I start with the assumption that we agree (like 97% of scientists) that human-created climate change is real and if left unchecked will drastically change the way humans interact with our climate.
• I also assume that we agree that those changes will be catastrophic and should be avoided at great cost, as those changes involve at the very least massive loss of life and hardship.
• There is no doubt that this assessment and the need to act is agreed upon by the wider Swarthmore community.
• We now can talk tactics and pragmatic priorities – the Swarthmore community also cares about financial aid, the long-term success of the college, etc. and must balance those priorities.
• Divestment is useful:
• Divestment is worthwhile, but not to affect share price directly. Instead divestment is effective as a way to change the perception of the fossil fuel industry.
• Swarthmore is well positioned to affect those whose opinions have the most affect on investment in fossil fuels.
• The current college’s sustainability plan is weak and ineffectual. When looking at this tactically, divestment is a smaller cost for more benefit than retrofitting all the buildings on campus.
• Even if you don’t care about divestment…
• It’s actually not clear that divestment will cost anything – in fact we would likely avoid significant losses in the future due to overvaluation of fossil fuel stocks now.
• Divesting preserves Swarthmore’s values and brand – failure to divest chooses short-term savings at the cost of institutional integrity and perceived brand.

A Quick History of Divestment (focused on fossil fuel divestment and Swarthmore)

The Swarthmore community agrees it should help combat Climate Change

In writing this post, I assume that the entire Swarthmore community agrees on a few basic things:

1. Human-caused Climate Change is real (97% of scientists agree, it’s hard to get more certain than that)
2. If left unchecked, Climate Change will cause significant changes to how our civilization functions
3. These changes will be catastrophic, causing large loss of life and wealth, and should be avoided at great cost

Note that I don’t specify that we agree on how much cost we should bear to avoid Climate Change, nor do I suggest that there is a consensus on how to combat it.

However, these three items show that it is not “political” in the Swarthmore community to suggest that Climate Change is a problem that must be solved. Indeed, our presidents and deans have been speaking for the community recently when they have touched on the topic:

I believe we all share a deep commitment to finding effective ways to combat the myriad ills that threaten the environment, indeed, the very future of our planet. It is obvious that we agree that sustainability is among the foremost priorities facing our society—and the world—today.
– President Rebecca Chopp, April 2014

The managers of Swarthmore College agree that climate change is the most pressing issue of our time and that Swarthmore College can—and must—play a leadership role in helping to curb the seemingly insatiable appetite for fossil fuel.
– Board of Managers, May 2015

We see that Swarthmore community believes that:

1. Swarthmore is able to help tackle the issue of Climate Change
2. Swarthmore is morally obligated to do so given its privileged position

Pragmatic concerns

So we have determined that Swarthmore as a community is unanimously (or close enough) on board to help solve Climate Change. Now it just becomes a discussion about how we balance our resources between Climate Change and other agreed-upon priorities. This is the political debate – a discussion of how to allocate limited resources amongst a set of priorities.

In an ideal world, Swarthmore has infinite money, time, and focus to address all the wrongs in the world that we agree about. In the real world, Swarthmore has a few other significant obligations and goals that we must take into account.

The Swarthmore community also:

• Desires to continue as an organization as long as possible
• Desires to help less-wealthy applicants thrive at Swarthmore
• Desires to gain the highest status possible amongst universities and colleges
• Desires to end racism, sexism, etc in the wider world

That’s a lot, but we do have some powerful resources to help us:

• A $1.88 billion dollar endowment (in the top 20 in the U.S. for per-capita endowment)
• Respect amongst the academic, cultural, and political elite
• A strong network of alumni who also share these values

The first three other desires Swarthmore as a community agrees on are directly tied to the size of the endowment and the returns on it. In order to continue as an organization in perpetuity, a large endowment helps – returns from the endowment helps Swarthmore pay for buildings, faculty, etc. and serves as a reserve fund in times of need. Those funds also help offset tuition breaks offered to less wealthy applicants (and help offset full-price tuition as well). Finally, one mark of respect amongst institutions comes from the size of one’s endowment.

The last desire is a set of other socially beneficial causes that the community agrees on which we would like to help with. I don’t pretend that Climate Change is the be-all-end-all social cause, but I will argue that much progress in other causes would be undone due to the pressure from Climate Change in the future, and so it would be wise to tackle this issue with a higher priority.

Additionally, there are fewer clear paths forward for the other social causes: combatting Climate Change requires the world to emit fewer greenhouse gases and ideally reduce the amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Simple and clear.

Influencing (as an example) the Black Lives Matter issue is not as straightforward – the Swarthmore community agrees that our society does not value the lives of our black citizens enough, but how do we help? Should we divest from St. Louis-based businesses? Should we support body cameras on police? etc. It is not quite as clear, at least yet, that divestment would be the most effective use of our resources in helping that cause. One could imagine a situation in which divestment would help (for instance divesting from Woolworth’s during the civil rights era to pressure change), and in that case I believe it would be fine to use the endowment as well.

The Logic of Divestment

So we have unanimous agreement that there is a problem and we have a clear goal to avoid catastrophic Climate Change: reduce greenhouse gases across the world. So how do we do this in practice?

The divestment movement suggests that one way to reduce usage of fossil fuels is by altering the perception of the fossil fuel industry amongst investors, particularly large, influential investors. This will inspire less investment in fossil fuels and less consumption following that decrease in investment. Note that the divestment movement does not think that selling the shares themselves will actually cause the share price to change, not without a wider change in perception.

Currently, fossil fuel companies claim large amounts of coal, oil, and gas reserves as assets on their balance sheets. These companies use investment capital provided by the financial markets to fund more exploration for new resources and to fund R&D to better exploit their current holdings. Investors fund these companies (and by extension, further exploration and consumption of fossil fuels) because it has historically been a good investment. Ideally, however, the negative externalities of carbon in the atmosphere would be priced into the costs of fossil fuels, and the value of these reserves (and therefore the value of the stock) would decrease. This is called the Carbon Bubble.

Right now, the stock prices of these companies reflect the assumption by investors that the negative externalities of carbon will never be taxed. However, for our civilization to avoid catastrophic Climate Change (see above that the Swarthmore community agrees that we should avoid this), those fossil fuels must not be burned or the negative effects of emitting the carbon should be included in the price of the fuel itself. As an example, each gallon of gas might be priced to include carbon capturing and sequestration of an equivalent amount of carbon elsewhere in the world, similar to offsets you can optionally buy on an airplane. Or more depressingly, the tax on every 100 gallons of gas might go towards resettling a Bangladeshi refugee from sinking land.

Divestment is a powerful statement about this situation:

We believe that Climate Change is real, and that the costs of burning fossil fuels will be priced into the fuel itself at some point in the future. We believe that it is unjust to push the burden of dealing with the negative externalities of carbon onto the rest of the world, and that this injustice will end sooner rather than later. We are so confident in this that we are betting large sums of money on this outcome.

That such powerful institutions both believe that this outcome of carbon being accurately priced will occur and have vested interests in this outcome occurring should encourage all investors to reevaluate the true value and future of fossil fuels. Politicians should as well take notice that fossil fuel jobs are no longer as desirable to attract as before, and that the fossil fuel industry is likely not a reliable, powerful ally beyond the near future.

Or more succinctly:

The Carbon Bubble exists, and we as an institution find that the status quo is fundamentally shifting. Divestment is our institution acting upon that finding.

This statement is somewhat symbolic, but that is the point – divestment highlights to other large institutions and investors that the world has changed, and that investments in fossil fuels are no longer likely to offer decent returns. When the elites of our society suggest that the future will look different, and back that suggestion up with the money that they steward, they’re probably onto something, and you as an investor should probably listen.

Arguments against divestment by the board

There are a few common arguments against divestment, starting with the glib response that “someone else will buy the shares”, which is true but misses the point as shown above. The Swarthmore Board of Managers (a body of individuals who elect their own successors under no obligation to listen to the wider community) asserts that divestment will be very expensive and will compromise other priorities the college cares about:

The College’s budget is dependent on the endowment to support financial aid, sustain its exceptional faculty, provide academic and extracurricular programing, and build and maintain facilities.

In particular, we seek to preserve our increasingly rare stance of need-blind admissions, funding student need with all scholarships and no loans, and expanding access to our education for those who cannot afford it. In fact, increasing the access of exceptional low-income, first generation, and minority students to Swarthmore is a top priority.

If we were not able to work with these investment managers, it would cost the college between $10 and $20 million annually based on the past performance of our current managers.

However, the Board is enthusiastic about spending tens of millions of dollars on sustainability measures on campus. So the Board and the divestment advocates agree: Climate Change is important to combat and we should be willing to spend millions of dollars to do so. The Board’s argument is not that divestment will not work or that it would not be a useful step, but that it is too expensive relative to other alternatives. I’ll detail later on why I think individual action like building a sustainable building is not actually high-impact when it comes to the collective-action problem of Climate Change.

Additionally, the Board is (rightfully) worried that opening up the endowment to divestment from fossil fuels will encourage activists to approach the Board seeking to use the endowment for other social causes. However, few causes are as apolitical as Climate Change is in the Swarthmore community – there can still be a strong barrier to using the endowment, requiring a sustained campaign to convince the Board that, yes, issue X has near-unanimous support amongst faculty, students, and informed alums.

Another suggestion which the Board has proposed is using the fractional ownership of these fossil fuel companies to push for sustainability measures. However, I highly doubt this would be effective: without a divestment movement there would always be others to purchase shares, and there is no chance that Climate activist investors will form a large enough section of the shareholder body to effect change.

As for the Board’s (paraphrased) argument that: “in the past (in 1991) an unelected body decided not to consider social objectives in endowment investments, so we will not consider social objectives today”, well, I can’t imagine any member of the community finding that argument convincing.

Arguments against divestment by Professor Burke

A separate and more interesting discussion came from professor Timothy Burke, who has a few great points and one strong concern about tactics. He suggests that:

• We need to stop treating people who disagree on tactics as if they reject the scientific consensus – there are legitimate debates to be had on the most effective use of limited funds, time, focus, etc.
• Screening the endowment for “moral purity” is impossible – the college will always end up invested in some form of exploitation
• Colleges are no longer institutions which can lead the broader nation on social issues, a condition which has been true for at least 30 years

The first point is important – the ferocity of activists turns off many people I know, and the divestment movement at Swarthmore still has a bad reputation amongst alums from when activists shut down healthy debate and discussion via chanting a few years ago.

The second point is probably true, but less interesting; complete moral purity is not an outcome which many in the divestment community are actively seeking. Impact is the more important goal of the movement.

The third point is the most interesting, as we are now talking broader tactics. Professor Burke argues that starting the divestment movement from elite bastions that have little connection to normal Americans and are often resented by a broad spectrum of the country does the movement no favors. He contrasts it with the anti-apartheid movement, a campaign that divestment supporters often reference:

The anti-apartheid coalition moved outward from progressive activism to a wider political base, and was largely careful to attend to the conditions that would facilitate that movement. It used the university as one stepping-stone because the university was part of a constellation of respected civic institutions that included churches, community groups, local municipal governments, and mainstream journalism.

That cluster of institutions was already beginning to fragment in the 1980s, and is now almost wholly dispersed. You cannot keep running the same plays if the game itself has fundamentally changed.

Professor Burke is 100% right that the game has changed. However, I don’t think he realizes how it has changed. The 1970s and early 1980s were a time of institutions and characterized by people having the power to affect change en masse. Unions, coalitions of faith groups, and student groups were successful in actualizing change. This is no longer the case, even amongst people who still belong to unions and who still belong to organized religious groups. In today’s world, star power is more important than ever, and only a few people have the power and influence to make change succeed. For policy, we can take a look at the influence of George Soros or the Koch brothers on energy & finance legislation, or how selective applications of funding from the Gates foundation have transformed large sectors of education. Even teachers unions have been continually on the defensive, and both union and church enrollments have been in decline for decades. Culturally speaking, the local pastor or union leader is an endangered species – an endorsement from Ben & Jerry is probably more valuable than the support of the Methodist churches, for instance, and will get you more press and notice from the people who actually have influence.

So trying to convince large numbers of Americans is actually not very valuable in today’s society if you actually want to get anything done, and is a hell of a lot harder than the alternative. That alternative is to convince the people with power that you are right. This is even easier than you might think as currently the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined! As the divestment movement is structured, it doesn’t even need to appeal to the moral side of those with power, just to the desire for those with power to avoid the risk for the “Carbon Bubble”. As discussed before, Swarthmore actually does have a good amount of influence and respect amongst other education institutions, the media (i.e. David Brooks, Arthur Chu, etc) and the political world, and is thus a good candidate to lead the movement.

So yes, I agree with Professor Burke that Swarthmore is a terrible place to start a mass movement. However, we don’t need a mass movement – we just need to affect a very small, elite segment of the world population which holds most of the cultural, political, and financial capital. Undemocratic? Yes. Cynical? Yes. The only way to avoid effect real change and avoid catastrophe? I believe so.

Why individual sustainability actions are not very worthwhile

The Board suggests that Swarthmore should lead by example and conserve in an individual way. I find this plan weak and vain, and the money spent on building sustainability essentially wasted in comparison to how it could be used to drive meaningful change. This is a strange position – every little bit helps, right?

While individual action might buy us time in resolving Climate Change, individual action is fruitless in the long-term for this problem. Professor Burke’s criticism that Swarthmore is not the right place to start a worldwide social movement rings true – fossil fuels are consumed by individuals everywhere, and realistically no one really cares how many barrels of oil Swarthmore saves, or how many trees it plants in the Crum. Those individuals will continue to drive and consume, and if oil is slightly cheaper because Swarthmore uses less of it, someone else out in the world who has never heard of Swarthmore will use more of it.

Climate Change is a collective action problem on a global scale. The businesswoman in China starting a coal mine and seeking favorable investment from global finance will never hear about nor care about how “green” the new biology building is, she will decide to open the mine based on economic considerations. The carbon emissions of those economic considerations dwarf the savings that Swarthmore can provide, even if we became 100% efficient. It is those economic considerations you must change.

A particularly sharp reader might object that this parallels share price – when Swarthmore divests, wouldn’t someone who has never heard of Swarthmore or doesn’t care will simply purchase the shares or provide the loan for the mine? However, we have shown that the true purpose of divesting is to advance the idea that the Carbon Bubble exists and will materially affect the fortunes of fossil fuel companies. As long as an investor has heard of the divestment movement (and at this point all large investors have), understands the concept of the Carbon Bubble, and has their own self-interest in mind, that investor is less likely to invest.

If you want the college to divest, why not just donate to the special fund set up by the Board?

In May of 2015 the Board reiterated that the general endowment was off-limits for divestment, but opened a special fossil-fuel-free fund one could donate to. The argument is: Others in the past donated to the college for the explicit purpose of running of the college, not for affecting the social issues that a future generation might care about. Thus it is improper to use those funds for any other purpose.

I find this argument weak as well. Swarthmore itself was started by radical Quaker abolitionists – these original benefactors strongly believed that Swarthmore should push forward on issues the community believed in, even if these issues were not central to the day-to-day mission of education. As an example, the first Board was made up partly of women, which at the time in Pennsylvania was illegal and highly unusual. Could the college have started with a Board officially made up of only men? Certainly, and it would have been less distracted from its mission of creating an environment to educate in. However, the founders of Swarthmore decided that the morally right thing to do was not the most short-term advantageous thing to do. This is a value that Swarthmore strongly holds, and always has.

Donating to the college is not like donating to a factory trying to make as much ‘education’ as possible, but instead a donation to a living community which has agency to govern themselves as it sees fit. The donation to the college is just that – a gift, something which the community can use as it sees fit, and it is pretty obvious what values the community holds.

On a tactical level, that special fund did not get any press and is useless to combat Climate Change (again, an outcome that the community desires). The headlines are along the lines of: “Swarthmore chooses not to divest”, and are not even along the lines of: “Swarthmore allows for some divestment, going forward, which will be a very very small fraction of the funds it manages”. For divestment to be worthwhile, Swarthmore needs to indicate that the entire community sees the danger of the Carbon Bubble and has decided to avoid the risk. Silent divestment via the special fund is worse than doing nothing – at least when you’re doing nothing you know that you’re doing nothing instead of believing that you are having an impact.

Still think we shouldn’t touch the endowment for moral reasons?

Fair enough – I understand the reluctance. This section is to convince you that divestment is actually a necessary step to:

• Avoid downside risk to the endowment (aka that we’ll lose money) from the Carbon Bubble
• Ensure that Swarthmore is still seen as a leader, with the benefits that come with that position
• Ensure that Swarthmore avoids hypocrisy and maintains its values

While I could write about this, someone with better qualifications has already done a better job than I would do: http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2015/03/05/the-financial-advantages-of-divestment/

This article was written by a financial professional who spent time looking at Swarthmore’s case specifically, and who concluded that it is actually a wise investment decision to divest. The Board suggests that Swarthmore’s endowment will lose $10-20 million a year if we divest. That number is almost certainly an exaggeration, and ignores the downside risk of the Carbon Bubble, as the investment professional explains:

If we agree that climate change is a huge threat that society will act on, then it necessarily follows that divestment will occur to limit losses, that fossil fuel company prices will drop substantially and that institutions with these stocks in their portfolios will experience large losses.

He then identifies the other reputational risks that come from failing to lead:

Aside from the financial risk of being a late exiter, the moral and brand damage to Swarthmore from being a late mover would likely be large.

A January 15, 2015 letter by many of Stanford’s faculty to the Stanford President and Board of trustees puts the issue this way: “If a university seeks to educate extraordinary youth so they may achieve the brightest possible future, what does it mean for that university simultaneously to invest in the destruction of that future?”

This analysis lays a convincing argument that by divesting we avoid significant risks to Swarthmore, both financial and reputational. This is without even considering any moral argument for divestment.

So how do I help?

Great – thanks for joining us! It might seem hard to affect change, as the Board’s response recently seems final. However, the student activists at Swarthmore are not quitting anytime soon, and your power as an alum is greater than you might think.

Ways to help:

• Join in actions when you return to campus for your reunion. Email me if you want to help plan.
• Help spread this information to others. There are divestment movements on many many campuses, and many alums who don’t yet have enough information to make a decision. At the very least the conversation about divestment will be pretty interesting.
• Next time the college asks you for a donation, let the college know that you won’t be donating until they divest the entire endowment. Alumni giving rates are very important to elite colleges, and this is one of the stronger levers we have. Make sure you can explain why donating to the side fund is not worthwhile (see the section above).
• To still donate but actually put pressure on the administration, donate here
• Like these groups on Facebook: 350.org and Swat MJ
• Personally pledge to divest from fossil fuels (I find this less effective than getting an institution to divest – your personal divestment probably will make few headlines!)

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this far. Hopefully you feel informed about the debate, even if the presentation was highly opinionated.

Again, the divestment movement seems complex, but ultimately boils down to a set of simple assertions:

• Human caused Climate Change is real.
• The Swarthmore community agrees that Swarthmore College should help fight Climate Change.
• The Swarthmore is able to be a leader in changing the status quo.
• Divestment can help change the flow of global capital away from carbon-intensive fuels.
• The Carbon Bubble exists.
• Divestment will actually help the college’s endowment value in the long-term.
• There are risks to our reputation from not divesting which have not been examined by the Board.
• Divestment is a more effective strategy than individual efforts by the college and the community.

I believe that all of those assertions are true (although all do not need to be true for divestment to be worthwhile), and I hope that I have shown in this post why I think so. I am always open to new information, however, and would love any perspectives, ideas, or information that I may have missed.

How about it – do you think Swarthmore should divest?

The post Why Swarthmore Should Divest appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

It’s a totally ridiculous ad, almost a parody of itself. How could it ever convince someone to buy the truck? Must the people who own that truck be total idiots if they fell for this advertising? How nakedly obvious is it? At first, this is what I thought, as we laughed at the ad. However, I now think I was wrong.

All of those things are what you think upon first watching the ad spot, but a friend of mine also recently linked to this post: Ads Don’t Work That Way, a fascinating read. Maybe it’s because I used to work at an advertising company, but I love seeing the cultural implications and messages that ads provide. It’s like a mini lesson in psychology, sociology, economics, and anthropology for free in 30 seconds!

In any case, that post suggests that many brand ads aren’t directly trying to convince you of the brand’s qualities. For the uninitiated,brand ads that aren’t trying to tell you about a deal or inform you of the existence of a product, but instead are trying to get you to associate positive qualities with a brand such as “coke is fun and social” or “disney is family-friendly” or “corona is relaxing, like a vacation”. The post suggests that truly these ads are not trying to convince you of the brand’s qualities itself, but instead trying to convince you that others will associate those qualities with you when they see your purchase.

Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product. Whether you drink Corona or Heineken or Budweiser “says” something about you. But you aren’t in control of that message; it just sits there, out in the world, having been imprinted on the broader culture by an ad campaign. It’s then up to you to decide whether you want to align yourself with it. Do you want to be seen as a “chill” person? Then bring Corona to a party.

Later on:

In this way, cultural imprinting relies on the principle of common knowledge. For a fact to be common knowledge among a group, it’s not enough for everyone to know it. Everyone must also know that everyone else knows it — and know that they know that they know it… and so on.

So now we can take another look at the car ad through this “Cultural imprinting” lens. Our ad now makes a lot more sense – it’s not trying to give you feelings about the truck or promise performance or anything like that. Instead the ad is proving that Chevy’s previous campaigns have been successful in imparting common knowledge that “real men drive trucks like this”. If actual schoolchildren understand this association, it means that everyone must understand this association, and so if you show up in a Prius to a party you will be perceived as a total pansy, as someone who “probably owns a bird”.

In this way it’s genius – who needs to spend millions of dollars filming pickup trucks driving through the Mojave desert when you can just get 20 children into a room and ask them basic questions? Of course, Chevy still needs to make those kinds of ads as well to keep the common knowledge going! This one ad is just so efficient at what it’s trying to do I have to tip my hat to it, before I ride off into the sunset in my Prius with my pet bird.

The post Proving cultural signaling – sometimes ads can be laughable and still be effective appeared first on Schimmy's Thoughts.

For those interested, here is:

• An article arguing that divestment is fiscally prudent
• An article arguing that divestment is tactically useful
• A great article by Tim Burke arguing that divestment is not the right course of action for balance

Dear Mr. Kemp and Swarthmore Board,

I know you are busy people, and I will try to be brief.

I understand your concerns and truly appreciate your stewardship of the college through presidents, new generations, recessions, and more. The steadiness and sobriety of the board is important to keep Swarthmore on the right path.

However, after much consideration, I have to respectfully disagree with the board’s decision not to divest our endowment from fossil fuels. Our college for many years has espoused ideals around sustainability, and to keep ourselves honest we must take this step and lead. Yes, we should not use the endowment as an active political tool without great hesitation. Yet, when 97% of scientists agree on an issue and the college’s public statements for years have agreed that climate change is an issue, to not act would be in violation of our Swarthmore’s principles.

Others more elegant have argued why this is useful morally, and others have also demonstrated its utility as a tactical move (it will not be an empty symbolic gesture, but an important signal in how fossil fuels are perceived).

As you all are practical people, however, I’d like to point out some reasons why this is prudent for Swarthmore, moral arguments aside:

• We must align our investments with our values, or risk reputationally being seen as hypocritical
• There is a very strong likelihood that the Carbon Bubble is real – removing our investment in fossil fuels avoids the large downside we are risking if those fossil fuels stay in the ground, which basic logic suggests is likely
• We gain reputation & prestige by leading the charge instead of following meekly

As the moral and financial evidence that this is a good idea becomes more clear, the risk that we are leading down the wrong path diminishes. Let us reap the practical gains by leading this movement, as well as some of the financial gains by being among the first to divest.

Young alums are watching this issue closely, as we know that ultimately it will be us who have to deal with the more extreme effects of climate change. We know that you are working with the best interests of Swarthmore and future generations at heart, and hope that the many arguments in favor of divestment are strong enough to stand up to your intellectual scrutiny. I believe they are strong enough, and that it is time to divest. I believe the moral, financial, and other pragmatic reasons suggest it is time as well, and that we will look back at this decision with pride as a time Swarthmore led the way to a better outcome for both humanity and for itself.

Thank you for your time,
Colin Schimmelfing 2010

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I’ll bet more than a few of the people reading have imagined being a scuba instructor in the caribbean, or just being paid to play Super Smash (which I still can’t believe is now real job – I love the internet!). While it might be an improvement from your current position, I believe the job you imagined wouldn’t keep you happy for long.

After three full-time jobs and five years out of college, I’ve come to (what I believe are) some truths to what makes a job worthwhile. These truths were built up after looking in the mirror in the morning and realizing that what I was doing that day was not what I wanted to be doing if it was the last day of my life. When you find yourself thinking that, the response is not to immediately leave your job, but instead to reflect on why you feel that way. Ultimately, why are you getting out of bed in the morning to go to work?

The Hierarchy:

I present “Schimmy’s Hierarchy of Work Needs”, a guide to answer this question:

#1: Basic

The first reason why you get out of bed is obvious: having a roof over your head and food on your plate is a responsibility you have to your family and to yourself. When sick, you need the money to see a doctor. Also buying clothes is a necessity, at least in other cities where clothing is less optional than in San Francisco. You could categorize all of these needs as ‘Basic’.

That’s fine, but as we can see from the movie Office Space or any number of other sources, that motivation only gets you so far. Given the choice between janitor and video game tester, I think most would choose video game tester even if it paid less – this is a signal that our model is not complete.

#2: Daily Enjoyment

The second reason you’ll get out of bed in the morning is because, hopefully, work is enjoyable in some way. Maybe your coworkers are fun to joke around with and you’ll miss the banter (pleasant coworkers), or you really want to learn golang and you enjoy a real problem to learn it with (personal growth), or you love telling your former high school bully that he uses your messaging app (status). You could categorize all of these needs as ‘Daily Enjoyment’

By now, it starts to sound a little like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and this connection has been noticed before. There’s been a lot of work in this area, most notably Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory. The theory splits the “Daily Enjoyment” factors into “Hygiene” and “Motivation” – a useful distinction between benefits that keep you from leaving, and benefits that cause intrinsic forward creativity and engagement. You can categorize all of the perks in Silicon Valley into these categories:

Hygiene:

• Amazing office
• Delicious food
• Ping pong table
• Laundry
• Shuttle bus
• Internal tools which aren’t a pain to use
• Standing desks

Motivation:

• Hierarchy advancement / achievement rewards
• Status (I work on the most challenging problems, or my work is used by the most people)
• Learning opportunities
• Enthusiastic, engaged, intelligent coworkers

However, while Herzberg put overall impact of a person’s work into the “Motivation” category, I think it deserves its own level of the hierarchy.

#3: Humanist

The third reason to get out of bed in the morning corresponds to the missing top level of the pyramid I would describe as ‘Humanist’. This level concerns the ‘meaning’ that people find in their work, the positive impact that it has on others. This focus on impact might be something which is different in our time, as when Herzberg was developing his theories (the late 1950s and early 1960s) your day job seemingly was less important to self-identity.

At this point I could describe more about what I mean, but I think you’ve already heard the descriptions of what to look for in commencement speeches and sentimental Facebook posts. Instead, I’m going to tell what not to look for.

How can you tell the fakers?

At this point, I imagine many reading this will think to themselves that their job satisfies all levels of the pyramid. After all, their company is changing the world, and making it a better place:

In that clip from the show Silicon Valley, we can see that individuals value humanistic goals in the tech industry, and companies find it important to claim they fulfill these goals. As Mike Judge shows, often the claim is shallow – only put forth to gain status.

To judge the claim for a company suggesting positive social good, there’s an easy test: would the company claim a positive social good if there were no recruiting, PR, or status gains to come of it? If the answer is no, the company is simply behaving as the mimicking actor and the claim should be ignored. A company who truly has that positive social good as a mission will, simply in stating their reason for existence, claim the social good. As examples: OPower, Stellar, Khan Academy, Mosaic, SpaceX, etc. (note that I don’t work for nor own stock in any of these companies)

Does Scientific Discovery Count?

I do have one final question: does pure scientific discovery belong at the top of this pyramid as well? For instance, pushing boundaries of current engineering (at certain divisions of Tesla, Google, Ripple, etc) seems to also provide that higher meaning.

I hesitate to add this, however, as technology is always a double-edged sword. While you may be advancing humanity’s knowledge, it may be a toss-up whether that knowledge was beneficial. There is the usual example of Oppenheimer discovering knowledge which can be used ambiguously, but also drones, Tor, cryptocurrency and even simple number theory can end up being used in ways unimagined ahead of time.

Regardless:

I’ll argue that, no matter how pleasant being a scuba instructor is, or how amazing it would be to play Super Smash all day, ultimately that dream job is going to lose its shine. While those jobs have satisfied the first two levels of the hierarchy, they miss the crucial tip of the pyramid. They lack the purpose that gives meaning to life, or at the very least gives meaning to the 8+ hours you spend under fluorescent lights every day. Find this last piece for yourself and getting up in the morning will be even easier, I guarantee it.

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We’re inviting you to help us – come join the team!

Drop me a line if you want to know more.

– Schimmy

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• In New York City it’s: “How much do you make?”
• In Boston / Cambridge it’s: “What do you know?”
• In San Francisco it’s: “What can you make, and how many people think it’s cool?”
• In DC it’s: “Who / how powerful is your boss?”
• In LA it’s: “What powerful people / how many people know who you are?”

Those are the ones I have a pretty good idea about, here are others I’m less sure of:

• Chicago: I have no idea (perhaps: “How well can you make a pierogi?”), please help me with that one!
• Philadelphia: is tricky – it’s such a chill city that I think people just aren’t likely to care too much about comparing themselves to you
• Seattle: likewise, although probably there it’s something like: “What awesome backpacking trip did you do last summer?”
• Houston: some variant of “How classy is your family?” (again not much knowledge there)
• Portland: perhaps “How organic are the vegetables you are eating and how many hours did it take you to harvest them yourself?”

Now, to be fair I did not come up with the overall idea that there’s a common yardstick that people measure themselves against – that would be the amazing Paul Graham. However I do disagree with his analysis of DC: I may know someone, but if I can’t ask them a favor or I don’t work for them, I gain no status.

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We should divest not to force a corporation into action, but instead to clear our own minds on the issue. Humans are notoriously afraid of loss. When those invested in the university (via having attended and donated, or by receiving monthly paychecks) have an opportunity to confront climate change, it is impossible to ignore that the health of one’s investment depends, even only very slightly, on the decision being made via that opportunity.

This effect might be enough to sway a vote, or to make it less likely someone would share a 350.org post on Facebook; small stuff, but it can add up. While the loss might seem too small to affect someone’s behavior, I suspect a stronger influence given what we know about human irrationality around aversion to loss. I would like scientific validation of this idea – perhaps a psychology department at one of the universities opposed to divestment might take up the investigation…

We must enable our own leadership on the issue of Climate Change. Our voices should be certain, and our judgement unclouded by financial doubts. Divestment is an investment in our integrity and our independence, and I encourage Swarthmore College and all other institutions to take this necessary step.

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Recently I was discussing my Limits of Acceptable Terribleness post with a coworker and we disagreed about my assertions about highways. My argument there is that building more highways with the goal of decreasing travel or commute time is fruitless – perhaps some would have shorter commutes, especially right after the new capacity was added. Ultimately, however, the average commute time will creep back up. Instead, if you want to decrease overall commute times, it would be better to invest in transit.

Recently, a few articles came out bolstering that viewpoint, so I no longer have to do the heavy lifting myself. This Vox article in particular directly addresses the uselessness of building highway capacity, and points out concrete examples where adding a lane caused more congestion!

In addition, it seems as though an added bonus of working public transit is that it can make a city more affordable. It seems as though, when it comes to massive city projects, hosting the Olympics and building stadiums comes out with fewer benefits to the residents of a city than advertised, while public transit still doesn’t do a good job of demonstrating its considerable value. This makes me think that, if we just accounted properly for this value, the high speed rail project between LA and SF might be an easier sell…

So those articles show that well-functioning and subsidized public transit makes it easier for low-income residents of the city to afford that city, but we still have an important argument to discuss. I often hear that the policies which come at the expense of cars makes life harder for low-income people who are being pushed to the suburbs and the exurbs.

First, I’d like to point out that, if those with the highest incomes and social capital desire to live in the city, then there is no intrinsic reason that the suburbs are ‘better’ for low-income residents. Often there’s some sort of echo of a paternalist 1930s social program that suggests it would be beneficial to have poorer residents live in the suburbs because there is grass or something. Thus, for our conversation I am assuming that the suburbs and the city are equivalent from a personal desire viewpoint. However, I do acknowledge that the simplification might affect our discussion – obviously some people prefer living in the suburbs and some prefer the city, and it is possible that the preferences are different for different wealth strata.

But back to the argument I’m worried about: Since less-wealthy people are being pushed to the suburbs, access to the city via car is now a social justice issue. This worries me – it could easily be a wedge to split progressives. One assumption in the argument pops right out at you: access to the city from the suburbs does not necessarily need to be via car. If the funds spent on highways were diverted into spending on public transit infrastructure and subsidies to ride that infrastructure (and to parking by those transit stations, for instance, a problem that the Bay Area is currently facing), the same end goal is met: fast, affordable access to the city by those in the suburbs.

I’d also argue that there is somewhat of a sovereignty issue as well: who are people in the suburbs to dictate to the city what infrastructure to build? To put it in a less emotional frame: why is it that the interests of the suburban visitors to the city should predominate at the expense of the residents of the city? I think historically the answer to that question has been decided in favor of the suburban residents partially due to race and class power dynamics. I currently see the pendulum swinging back the other way (including this blog post) as a symptom of those with the cultural capital starting to live in cities and exercising influence on behalf of city residents. So we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back too hard for questioning the orthodoxy here: we’ve got a pretty solid incentive to justify screwing over the suburbs.

Obviously, cities do not want to drive away commuters from the suburbs – while residents might have a different zip code, they still root for the Giants and help drive the economic engine of the city. Of course, some people who contribute to the city also do not want to live in an urban environment, and it’s good to have a mix of available housing. However, for the good of all residents, the city should be prizing density and walkability. There are many studies which show that these increase the economic vitality of the city, improving economic conditions for all. There is much more in the city lab article above on that.

Additionally, if we are looking at the whole picture and questioning our ideas of what is normal, catering to cars has more drawbacks than you’d think. For one thing, as the stencil on the panhandle states, cars are death monsters:

~30,000 people die every year from cars, compared to the number of deaths from transit (~1000, likely many of these are suicides). In an urban environment often the risk is to pedestrians and bicyclists; so now we have people from the suburbs specifically causing bodily harm to city residents as a result of the transit choices of those from the suburbs. A less visceral (but also important) negative externality is the pollution from cars – how many cases of asthma are car commuters responsible for? Luckily, our gasoline is no longer leaded, but any internal combustion engines on the streets today still cause negative health effects.

But after all of that, the main thing that I care about is: we can have all we want using public transit from the suburbs, why do we have to argue about this? It’s like the old comic about global warming:

What if I’m wrong and we create a stronger city with more transit options, which is more walkable and healthy, for no reason?

In comparison to climate change, this is an even easier solution – if we change our minds, we can always rip out the BART line and turn it into another lane of I-580 if we want, far faster than we can change fuel sources. In the meantime we can do what reason and human experience tell us and decrease our reliance on personal cars.

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1. TRON: Legacy Soundtrack (Daft Punk)
2. The Social Network Soundtrack (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross). Pretty obvious why this is a perfect fit, given that I’m usually listening to this while coding at a startup founded by ex-Harvard students.
3. The soundtrack to Koyaanisqatsi. This is a little more subtle – Koyaanisqatsi is a movie with no words which is scenes (usually slow-mo or time-lapse) of the intersection between humans, technology, and the environment from the late 70s into the early 80s. The title is a Hopi word that literally translates to ‘life out of balance’, and the film generally takes a very negative outlook on the frenzied pace of technological change on humanity and ecology. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend watching. If nothing else, the images of this time of rapid industrialization and mechanization are fascinating.

I suppose I do have two artists I use to focus who are not as ironic, so for full disclosure (and to promote their amazing but weird work), I also love to work to Michal Menert and John Talabot. What about you?

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I’m going to talk about blame, and root causes instead of symptoms. People are looking around for something easy that can be done, and I don’t think they will find it. You might try to blame:

The perpetrator’s mental state / illness

Reading his manifesto and comparing to YouTube comments, it is clear that he is no more than slightly ‘abnormal’ in his thinking, as terrifying as that is. Even if there is something psychologically wrong, I would hope our society is more robust to a slight chemical imbalance – human brains are not perfect, and never will be.

The parents

Yes, he has been raised very poorly, not able to deal with the basics of unfairness in life. I was short and terrible at basketball too, but I was not raised to be entitled, racist, and overly concerned with societal status. I eventually figured out that who I really was was a bigger deal than what others thought of me. However, we are in a rough place as a society if poor parenting is all that separates us from being killed for existing.

Gun availability

Yes, he would have been able to kill fewer people, and should not have been able to buy guns. We already knew there was this problem for decades, however, at the very least since Columbine. This aggravates a symptom, but is not the underlying problem our society is facing.

The ‘Pick Up Artist community’

Let’s face it, these guys are assholes. Trying to use tricks to get laid, premised on a objectified view of women. Yet, why do these groups exist in the first place? I’ll address that later…

Women

If you try to blame women, do everyone a favor and forget how to use the internet. Seriously, it will do both you and the rest of society a favor.

The perpetrator (I’m going to avoid using his name)

He is not a good person, this is true. There are many bad people in the world, however, and I really have to ascribe more blame to external factors. This massacre was not an isolated decision of a psychopath, but instead caused by a large number of compounded factors.

Mainstream Objectifying Porn

Yup, this is a factor, but you can’t just stop at porn, because every superhero movie, Axe body spray commercial, bad sitcom, etc objectifies women.

Violent Video Games

Probably don’t help, as a reinforcer of society’s attitude towards women and how ‘real’ men should act, but similar to porn – which brings me to…

Society’s attitude about how men and women should interact

Ho boy, there’s a lot messed up about this, and plenty out there to reference. See this amazing article for a succinct recap of the last week. This is ultimately one of the real causes of the tragedy, instead of a symptom. The perpetrator’s mental state? A symptom. The ‘PUA community’? A symptom. Gun accessibility? An aggravating factor. Society treating women and their sexuality as objects, devoid of humanity and agency? An actual cause. Again, I feel as though I cannot speak to this as well as others have, and encourage you to seek out these other narratives.

Society’s attitude towards men’s worth

Here is a fundamental cause of the tragedy which I don’t see reflected upon as much, and feel I can contribute to. Try to empathize with our perpetrator (Empathize, not sympathize), as hard as that may be. Imagine a society in which a man’s role is to:

1. Make as much money as possible
2. Have sex with as many women as possible
3. Calculate self-worth from some combination of #1 and #2

(Sound familiar? Welcome to mainstream American society.)
In this society, due to unfortunate upbringing and being a generally shitty person (see: the perpetrator), you are unable to make either #1 or #2 happen. Should you be more of a decent human being? Yes, but you are a shitty person and therefore don’t understand that you’re not a ‘gentleman’. Should you make more money? Well, that’s a terribly shallow response to the problem, but sure enough the perpetrator tried pretty hard to do so, spending thousands on the lottery.

Another alternative that a young man might have is to be seduced by the ‘PUA community’, which is a bunch of guys who share psychological tricks to essentially trick women into having sex with them. You may, as I do, find that ‘community’ disgusting. Yet placing the blame on this group is just as much of a lazy shortcut as blaming porn – the men who comprise these groups are themselves desperately trying to gain a place in society, and are suffering. Again, something to be fought, but not the true cause.

So without money and without sex, you are not a ‘true man’. I don’t think many commentators realize how powerful this message is, especially to young, naive men. Imagine society telling you that, regardless of your other qualities, you have no value. (A similar thing happens with women and attractiveness to men, yet society tells women that the way to deal with this is never violence to others, but instead violence towards themselves and their own bodies. Yes, everything is terrible, for everyone.) This value calculation is why you get the rants about women ‘owing’ men sex – to these men, who have bought the party line, they cannot be a ‘man’ without the sexual approval of a woman. Obviously, someone like the perpetrator would find this unfair and resent women for this gatekeeper role. Of course this is ridiculous if you have a healthy view of masculinity, but unfortunately our society’s version of masculinity is objectively not healthy.

Many men who find themselves in this position drink heavily or go be creepy in some place where they can achieve this role (see: Bangkok, gross). For some reason or another, our perpetrator decides not to self-harm but instead harm others who he thinks have caused him the pain of being valued as ‘not a man’ by society. This is an option ‘available’ to him as society also has glorified violence perpetrated by men in the service of a ‘higher cause’. Watching the video the perpetrator created in his BMW, you can hear him talk about his plans as supporting this ‘higher cause’. He resents that he cannot become a man (in his view of masculinity) without the imprimatur of women, and wishes to impose suffering to compensate for his own suffering. The terrible thing is that our perpetrator will not be the last to come up with this conclusion, and the easier solutions (removing guns, disrupting PUA supporters) do not address the root causes. As a society, we need to have a healthier, more human answer to ‘what is a man?’ and ‘how should men interact with women?’ to avoid the next Isla Vista.

How do we do this? Here are some ways to start:

1. If you have children, send the right messages about how men and women interact*
2. Do not buy products which profit from the objectification of women
3. Call out men who objectify women, we’re in the ****ing 21st century already
4. De-emphasize the need for men to make money to be ‘successful’

Side Conjecture:

I’d like to make one last point on #4. Even in the most progressive circles, there is still an assumption that men must make money, or at least be capable of making lots of money, to be worthwhile. So while the man who chooses to quit his high-paying job to raise his kid while his wife works is idealized, a woman who marries a man who could not make as much or more than she does is stigmatized. The reverse, a man marrying a woman without much income potential, is much more accepted, even in progressive circles. This double standard, combined with the perfect storm of the Great Recession and the overall trend of more parity in wages, has led to a great deal of suffering and (I would suggest) potentially is part of why the ‘PUA community’ has grown so quickly in the past decade. So should we go back to a Mad-Men-era time when men made the money and women stayed home? Absolutely not! Instead, let’s resolve the double standard by relaxing the need for men to make lots of money to be ‘successful’. It’ll be healthier for everyone.

Finally

Lastly, I’m in no way absolving the perpetrator for a heinous crime. However, the readers of this blog are not able to go back in time and change his mind, and without an understanding of why the perpetrator felt the way that he did, there is no way of preventing another one.

Let’s let the victims not die in vain, and try to prevent the next Isla Vista. It’s a better use of your time than arguing with internet trolls, that’s for sure.

TL;DR: The actual root causes of this tragedy are society’s messages towards how men and women should interact, and society’s messages about what is required to be a ‘real man’. The other causes are a symptom of these two factors. The good news: we can start addressing this today.

* yes, this is highly gendered and problematic in its own right. Baby steps, everyone, baby steps…

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At Clever, we have ‘Clever Talks’, where we learn from one another about exoplanets or Magic the Gathering or bike maintenance – anything that someone at the company knows about which others find interesting. This week we had a guest, Amil Bera. Amil is a Registered Investment Advisor and was going over basic personal finance – a great talk. I would definitely recommend him as a resource! However, I disagreed with one section of the talk in particular. This section discussed the irrationality of people paying off debts with very low interest rates when they could get a better rate of return elsewhere.

The logic here is sound. If you can slowly pay off your subsidized student loan and put the rest of your savings in something that earns you much more, you are certainly better off in the long run. And yet…… when I got my first job out of college, what I started on right away was repaying student loans as quickly as possible! According to Amil, I’m not the only one, especially amongst Millennials.

Why are all of these rational people making irrational financial decisions? I’d argue that it’s not just human nature, and that there are some factors that make this at least more of a close call than the financial advisors would suggest.

First off, while I’ve heard a similar argument about investing instead of paying down debt from other people, all of those people have been well-off themselves, or have extensive support networks. Essentially, being in a financially privileged position allows you to take these kinds of risks – if the stock market crashes and you lose your job, no big deal – you can just ask your dad to help you out until you get back on your feet. Yes, the advisors say that you should have a 4-6 month window of cash savings to be able to do this yourself, but then you are battling your own psychology daily to prevent from spending any extra cash when you could be paying down liabilities which you’re still on the hook for if your career does go south. Even if right after college you didn’t have these support networks, it’s easy to look back and say that your past self was irrational. Yet this is easy knowing how the next few years played out! As always, hindsight is 20/20.

Second, I find being in debt to be very mentally challenging. The Millennials became financially aware in times where playing with debt was seen as safe (Buy a house on credit in Phoenix, AZ – You can flip it in 6 months for a guaranteed 30% gain!) but many people ultimately got burned. Similar to those who lived during the Great Depression, we’re going to have a wary relationship with debt and credit for some time, if not for life. I think this is healthy – generally credit is dangled in front of Americans as a way to pay for consumption we don’t need. If we have an aversion to that debt, we will consume less and hardly miss out as a result. This aversion to debt also weighs down on you when you have loans, even if you have a steady job. How much is it worth to release a nagging worry at the back of your mind: The worry that there is a virtually unshakable debt with your name on it which you might be paying it off for decades? Stress-wise, I’d prefer the slight regret of a missed percentage point over the daily specter of indebtedness.

Thirdly, I think that the effect of debt is to significantly chill honest self-realization. I’ve already talked about how positive financial incentives can affect your decisions in ways you might not expect and debt is a flip side to this with respect to self expression and ‘rocking the boat’. If you want to be able to think for yourself and decide who you are as a person, having debt is terrible. Having regular debt payments means that choosing to be a ‘free spirit’ is a financially suicidal decision. Jack Kerouac can’t afford to spend his paycheck on gas for cross-country trips and jazz, for instance, if he has student loans due every month. If he forgets to pay his phone bill, no big deal. If he forgets to pay his loan payments, that’s another month of compounded interest tacked on. While someone paying off student loans instead of investing still has the same problem, paying off the loans immediately gives the person freedom to choose their own way sooner instead of having to schlep to the cubicle every day.

Finally, (and this is the argument that will be most persuasive to the financial analysts), being in debt keeps you from properly exploiting opportunities that come up. Having wealth tied up in investments that may be unavailable for long stretches of time (perhaps the stock market is in a temporary downturn, for instance) means that there is little liquidity in your life’s financial structure. This liquidity matters a great deal, especially amongst those just starting their careers. Imagine someone a year out of college gets an offer to join Twitter, working for living expenses and equity. They’ve been an investment banker for a year, so they have been able to save an amount equal to the principal on the loan, which they’ve rationally invested in the stock market. Now, this would be a great career move, but unfortunately it’s 2008 and the Global Financial Crisis has just happened; the money which was supposed to be earning above loan interest is waiting on the markets to rebound. Now, over time the investment will rebound and earn more than the interest rate on the loan, but this is little consolation to our protagonist. Being a little ‘irrational’ and paying off the loans early would have wildly paid off in the long term. I have not read ‘Antifragile’, but paying off the loans early seems to match Taleb’s attitude. You are trading a few percentage points of reasonably sure gains for massive potential upsides coming from unpredictable serendipity. It is, I believe, ultimately the rational choice.

Have I convinced you? Or have I just rationalized my own irrational decisions? Let me know!

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