Why Social Media Is A Glorified Chatbot

Some of you may be aware of the fact that I do some work with AI chatbots professionally. For the last two weeks or so, in my own spare time and for personal edification, I've been playing with a consumer-grade chatbot AI called "Replika."

The way it works is:

1. You type something to the bot. 
2. The bot processes what you say via Natural Language Understanding, and figures out what you mean probabilistically. 
3. The bot then selects from a pool of available responses based on its internal algorithms.

The bot's responses are composed based on training data, so you won't get the same answer every time (unless you repeatedly ask the same question), with the goal being a response that is a lot like something a "real person" would say. Maybe, in fact, a real person DID say that very thing in response to a similar statement made by some other real person in some chat log years ago. This is the nature of training an AI conversation-bot.

Now, consider social media. Social media works in a similar way:

1. You type something into the "create post" box. 
2. The social medium processes this information through its own algorithmic understanding of you (your profile info, your past posts, your friends and their profile info, etc.). 
3. The medium then selects from an available pool of *respondents* based on its internal algorithms.

These respondents are guaranteed to respond to your post in a way that is just as predictable as what happens when you feed an AI chat log data. (Sorry, I don't mean *YOUR* response; *YOU* are of course a thoroughly unique unicorn. But OTHER people are more predictable than you...)

At a psychological level, a Facebook user will have the same experience as a user of "Replika AI." I type my feelings into a box, and an algorithm decides what kind of response I receive. In the Replika UI, you can even give "likes" and other reactions to responses you receive, so that the algorithm can update its understanding of what "drives engagement" and respond to you accordingly in the future. Remind you of anything?

I submit that the social media experience is no more "real" than my experience with an AI chatbot. Especially if you spend a lot of time discussing politics, or sports, or etc., you are feeding utterances into an algorithm, which then serves you algorithmically driven "content." It doesn't necessarily matter that Bob *REALLY SAID* that you were a dumb so-and-so; what matters is that the algorithm had a certain prediction that X number of "Bobs" would respond to your post in a certain way, and crafted your user experience accordingly.

In short, social media isn't really social. Maybe it was, once upon a time, but now it's not. If you want to have a meaningful social interaction with someone, you have to do it one-on-one. You can still use technology to do it, but if you're just posting things into the ether or following online discussions and interjecting where you see fit, then you are essentially having a one-way conversation with an AI.

Coming to this realization has completely reshaped my understanding of the internet. I hope it will reshape yours, too.

You All Keep Telling Me I'm Wrong, But...

Here it is, straight from the horse's mouth:

"I was responsible because I made the decision to do drugs," Alig said. "And when I made that decision I wasn't on drugs."

One of my more controversial blog posts put it this way:

Drug use is a conscious act of self-abnegation. As such, every time a person takes a drug - any drug - they are turning their backs on their own lives. This is not merely because drugs are deadly (and they are). This is because the original motivation to consume drugs in the first place is an act of self-abnegation. Oneself, one's own thoughts, one's own life becomes temporarily insufficient (on any level, even a trivial one), and the drug becomes the remedy. Long day? Don't work it out, forget about it - take drugs. Party not fun enough for you? Don't take it upon yourself to liven up your social situation, forget about it - take drugs. Bored? Don't develop an interesting hobby or creative pursuit, forget about it - take drugs. Not feeling adequate? Have some problems? Take the easy way out, take drugs...

Such is the motivation behind each and every instance of drug use, from a child sniffing glue to the death of a famous singer. In all instances, the solution to a personal problem is resolved not by thoughts, choices, and actions, but by a short-acting drug that delays the working out of a solution. The goal is always to stop thinking as a stand-alone being - to either become one with the drugs or to not think at all.

This is death.

Politics As Hyper-Sensitivity

It's natural, reasonable, and to some extent a showing of good faith, to assume that other people are similar to oneself. And I think that people generally tend to do so. When thinking about what constitutes a reasonable perspective, or a reasonable expectation, or when evaluating the various "shoulds" we encounter in life, I think many of us try to think about other people as being more alike than different to ourselves. I certainly do.

The good thing about this is that it minimizes the more insignificant differences between us, i.e. sources of bigotry. If race isn't related to the matter at hand, then assuming people are more like us than different allows us to easily avoid conscious or unconscious bias.

Unfortunately, sometimes our differences really are relevant. For example, if a white man like me assumes that everyone's experience with the police is more or less like mine, he'll be more likely to overlook the very real problems of police brutality, and especially racially motivated police brutality and ethnic profiling.

This is all obvious enough. What's less obvious is that sometimes the political statements and arguments we see and hear are addressing people who bear little resemblance to ourselves, even though they may agree with our preferred policies.

One example of this might be the issue of corn subsidies. Both economic libertarians and environmental activists oppose corn subsidies, but for very different reasons. Libertarians oppose distorting market incentives with economic rents, while environmentalists oppose rewarding farmers for devastating the environment. On the issue of wind power subsidies, by contrast, economic libertarians still oppose the subsidies, but environmentalists often believe subsidizing wind power is an important step toward reducing society's carbon footprint.

What if you're browsing online opinions or memes, and you see something like this:

People oppose subsidizing wind power because they don't care about reducing our carbon footpring! I hate people who can't understand the science of climate change!

One thing you might think, if you're an economic libertarian like me, is, "My opposition to wind power subsidies has nothing to do with opposing climate science or reluctance to reduce atmospheric carbon. My opposition is entirely due to the economic damage caused by government subsidies." If I were to respond with those thoughts, however, I'd be pitting economic policy against climate policy in theory, something that I don't think would serve my position well.

The problem here is that people who argue against "climate-deniers" are not arguing against those of us who oppose subsidies on economic grounds. By participating in an argument against "climate-deniers," we're unwittingly carrying their water. What we should do instead is not assume that we're being spoken to. There are "climate-deniers" out there who oppose wind power subsidies on those grounds. If someone wants to argue against such people, that's none of my business, because I'm not one of them. If someone wants to argue against what economics says about subsidies, well then, that's my fight. But the climate-denial thing is not my fight.

At least for me, it takes an extra step to remember that someone might be arguing against a real argument that some less-informed person made, but that that less-informed person might actually be real and really made those arguments.

(Note: I do not claim here that people who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming are uninformed. I'm only using this as an example of people who make arguments that I don't make, whether or not they are true.)

This holds true for any issue. I often hear political arguments against conservatism, against libertarianism, or in favor of socialized medicine or any number of things I oppose. It's tempting to assume that anyone who shares my beliefs does so for the same reasons or with similarly well-reasoned arguments. But the reality is that most people are engaged in arguments that I would never personally choose to have. But, hyper-sensitive as I may have been in the past, I have grown accustomed to thinking that people are making bad-faith arguments about my beliefs. After all, I'm against wind-power subsidies, and I believe that anthropogenic global warming is real.

So from now on, I'm going to try to remember to only fight fights that are relevant to me. I can make arguments against subsidies. I can make arguments in favor of reasonable economic policies. I can make ethical arguments informed by psychology. I can argue against the illusions we hold and the defense mechanisms we employ. I can make these arguments because they are personal to me, and because I know something about them, and because they are involve my actually held beliefs.

But if someone wants to argue against something I never said, from now on, I'll just assume that they're talking about someone else, a real person who really does hold those beliefs, and try not to mix my beliefs up with some people who probably don't share my own thoughts. I'll be less hyper-sensitive and stick mainly to my own positions.

The Fountain Of Youth

It's hard to write a post like this without either bragging or sneering, but I assure you, I am doing neither.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the grocery store. I opted to use the self checkout kiosks, but because I was buying wine, a store clerk had to come check my ID. When she saw my date of birth, she said, "Oh my god!" I asked her what was the problem, and she said, nothing, only that she was surprised that I was as old as I was. "I would have believed '89." In truth, she had thought that was more than ten years younger than I really am. In other words, she thought I was in my twenties.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon in a local park. The park has a short trail down to what passes for a "waterfall" in flat Texas prairie country. It's a nice, short hike, and somewhat steep in parts. My GPS watch had it that the whole thing was 0.88 miles round trip. I checked it when we arrived at the waterfall itself, and it read 0.36. As you can see, this is not much of a "hike," but much more of a short walk down the hill and back up.

To be sure, it was hot outside, and the path is steep in some places, requiring us to choose our steps carefully in order to make it back up. But a 0.4 mile walk up the hill can only be so gruelling. I'd call it pretty much nothing.

So, I was surprised when I noticed that a solid majority of the other people in the park that day came up the hill panting and gasping for air, plopping themselves down in the nearest shady spot to catch some oxygen. I mean, they were really out of it. By all appearances, they looked as though they had just finished an 8-mile tempo run or something.

Later in the day, I went for a run. It was very hot outside, so I was running shirtless, with my hair pulled back under a bandana, and a pair of sunglasses on. As I crossed the street at one busy intersection, someone from a passing car called out a question to me: "Hey! How old are you?" I didn't have the impression that they thought I was extremely old. I didn't have a chance to answer, because I was running fast and in the opposite direction of the passing car, but I smiled to myself as I thought about what that person would think if they knew I was 40 years old.

A few years back, I was doing box jumps at the gym. A twenty-something fellow gym-goer came up to me between sets and told me, "I hope I can do stuff like that when I'm your age!"

"It's use it or lose it," I told him. "The only reason I can do this is because I won't stop."

Like I said at the outset of this post, I'm not saying this to brag about myself or to criticize other people. I take all of these situations -- and the many more I could list -- not as evidence of my great fittness, but rather evidence of how far people will let themselves go.

Ten years ago, I used to be amazed by the fact that most people my age had no idea what their own bodies were capable of; that most of them had no idea what their own bodies were supposed to look like, because they had never taken the time to get in really good shape. The human body performs differently, and of course looks differently, when it's fit. Overweight people, people with "dad bods," skeletal waifs, and the like have really never experienced things like agility, being sure on their feet, being able to lift heavy things with confidence and carry them across the room or something. And they don't know what their own bodies would look like if they did.

But nowadays, I don't really think about that anymore. Nowadays, I am struck by how much faster most people are aging than I am. I watch as friends and acquaintences slowly put on more and more weight, unable to tame their cravings or counteract them with physical activity. I watch as even young people give up on sports and fitness, except the few who go to the gym, mostly to look sexy, attract a mate, get married, and then ultimately do what they had planned on doing all along: let themselves go. I hear people talk about their aches and pains, their inability or unwillingness to walk any short distance, their struggle with having to climb a few flights of stairs.

It's the practical problems they all have that make the biggest impression on me. The atrophy of their bodies has made even the simplest aspects of life difficult. Small wonder so many of them drive their cars even when they're only going to the park a block away. Small wonder they all seem to be aging so much faster than me.

I spend a lot of time in the sun, and I have a chronic disease that is aging my body at an accelerated rate. It should be I who looks older than others. But I don't, and my best guess is because I have always adhered to the adage of "use it or lose it."

The fountain of youth is real. It is simply the act of sticking with a good diet and a high level of physical activity throughout your life. Don't stop. Don't let yourself go. Don't put on 15, 20, 50, 100... pounds and then turn around one day and realize that you look 40 or older when you're really 30 or younger. Keep yourself healthy, well into old age. Use it or lose it.

A Belated Thank-You

Yesterday, while running, I thought back to an old experience I had as a teenager.

Like many teenage boys, I suffered from Osgoode-Schlatter syndrome, which is basically a severe case of "growing pains." It's worse than it sounds. The overactive growth plates in my knees were producing so much bone tissue that they swelled up painfully, and I was unable to run for almost a year. My legs were constantly in pain. To this day, I still have lumps of bone on my knees as a result of my condition.

In Autumn of the worst year of my Osgoode-Schlatter syndrome, I had big plans to run on the high school cross-country team - or at least with the team - despite my being only in the eighth grade. The pain dashed my hopes, but my sister was still on the team, and so I still found myself attending all the cross-country meets and watching my friends run and have fun on the team. For a young man whose only connection to joy was running, it was difficult to watch.

One day, at a cross-country meet, it became a bit too much for me, so went back to my parents' car, sat down in the passenger's seat, and cried. I just wanted to be alone and cry. To my chagrin, the head cross-country coach - an incredibly gentle and kind-hearted man - saw me crying in the car and came to console me. He put a hand on my arm and did his best. I don't remember saying anything. I think I was trying so hard to hold back my tears and make it look like I wasn't crying, that I couldn't do much but make monosyllabic grunts to everything he said. He stayed with me a long time, then caringly said good bye with a few more words of encouragement and went back to the team.

This got me to thinking about another coach at my high school. He was a football coach, and I didn't play football, so I only knew him as my history teacher. He was a very witty guy, and always seemed happy. I enjoyed his history class a lot, and I figured he must like me okay, mainly because I laughed at all his jokes. But one day, at a parent-teacher conference, he very seriously and very meaningfully told my mother that if she ever wanted me out of the house, she should send me to his.

I don't know why my mother told me about that. I also don't really know why he said that, what he could have seen in me that would give him any indication that that was something that ought to be said. At the time, I found the whole situation confusing. But now, with 25 years of hindsight serving me, I'm overcome by that man's kindness.

The truth is that I was slipping further and further into depression when I was in high school, a depression that would stretch across the next decade of my life. When you're suffering from something like that, and especially when you're a teenager suffering from something like that, it's common to scapegoat your problems. Thus, at the time, I ascribed all of my "depression" (I didn't call it that back then) to the rather oppressive religious-conservative community and their relative inability to relate to a somewhat eccentric, differentiated person like me.

As I had it, "people hated me." A look back with better hindsight, though, proves otherwise. Here are two important members of the community who could see how much I was suffering, and who did reach out to make my life better. The truth is, my community could have been there for me, if I had only allowed them to be.

Of course, that would have required a more complete understanding of my situation. I was emotionally stunted and ill-equipped to have normal social relationships of any kind with any person whatsoever. I was a broken human being. I needed years of personal growth to achieve whatever semblance of normalcy and mental health I've managed to achieve. (I am certainly no longer depressed, and haven't been for a long, long time.) It's too much to ask of my teenage self to recognize what was being done for me, on a completely kind-hearted and unsolicited basis. I didn't have the emotional tools required to recognize it.

But I recognize it now. Furthermore, I recognize that these two examples I've provided aren't the only examples. Many people would have helped me, if I could have been helped. It's not their fault that I couldn't be helped at the time. All the same, 25 years later, I appreciate what they did for me. It stuck with me. I'm thankful for it. And I'm very sorry I couldn't see it then and avail myself of the support that was being offered.

I'm sorry that I wasn't the person then that I am now. But to those who ever extended a hand and tried to help a young man who needed it, but couldn't see it, I offer you a belated and very heart-felt thank you. Thank you.

Are Their Legitimate Responses To "Culture Clash?"

Someone over at the Open Borders Action Group posed a question: Assuming that people who oppose immigration because they fear it will cause "culture clash" are arguing in good faith, what is the best way to respond to their concerns, without calling them racists?

This would be a good question if anyone who fears "culture clash" were arguing in good faith. No such person is. In order to see this, we simply have to attempt to steelman the culture clash argument. If this can be done, then we'll have a guideline for our rebuttals. If it can't be, then we'll know that such arguments are bad-faith arguments.

Let's consider the possibilities:

1. We can't let "them" into the country because "they" will clash with "our culture."
2. We can't let anyone into the country because it will disrupt the existing culture here.
3. We can't let "them" into the country because "their" ways will severely conflict with at least some of the other people who live here.
4. We can't let anyone into the country because at least some of the newcomers will severely conflict with at least some of the other people who live here.

Xenomisy

"Xenomisy" is my word for "hatred of foreign things and people." Some people call this "xenophobia," but I don't think fear drives this attitude; I think hatred does.

Argument 1, above, is clearly bigoted, for the following reasons: (a) The argument predicts with certainty the behavior of foreign people before they have a chance to demonstrate otherwise; (b) The argument assumes superiority of the natives' own culture; (c) The argument assumes that all clashes between foreigners and natives result in negative outcomes, rather than acknowledging the possibility that foreigners may be a positive influence on locals; (d) The argument refuses to hold natives' clashes to the same standard as those allegedly caused by foreigners.

Argument 2 is bigoted for the following reasons: (a) The argument predicts with certainty the behavior of foreign people before they have a chance to demonstrate otherwise; (b) The argument assumes superiority of the natives' own culture; (c) The argument assumes that all clashes between foreigners and natives result in negative outcomes, rather than acknowledging the possibility that foreigners may be a positive influence on locals.

Argument 3 is bigoted for the following reasons: (a) The argument predicts with certainty the behavior of foreign people before they have a chance to demonstrate otherwise; (d) The argument refuses to hold natives' clashes to the same standard as those allegedly caused by foreigners.

Argument 4 is the weakest of all of these arguments, but possibly the least-bigoted. It argues that foreigners should be barred from immigrating merely because some of them might have a conflict with some of the natives. It implicitly accepts that many, possibly even most, people will not have any conflicts. It relies on the assumption that any conflict, however rare it might be, will be so terrible as to outweigh all of the other benefits of immigration. For that reason, Argument 4 is bigoted because: (c) The argument assumes that all clashes between foreigners and natives result in negative outcomes, rather than acknowledging the possibility that foreigners may be a positive influence on locals.

In summary, the reasoning behind "culture clash" arguments are racist because:

• (a) The arguments predict with certainty the behavior of foreign people before they have a chance to demonstrate otherwise 
• (b) The arguments assume superiority of the natives' own culture 
• (c) The arguments assume that all clashes between foreigners and natives result in negative outcomes, rather than acknowledging the possibility that foreigners may be a positive influence on locals 
• (d) The arguments refuse to hold natives' clashes to the same standard as those allegedly caused by foreigners.

But People Make These Arguments -- Does That Mean People Are Bigots?

The presumption of good-faith argumentation holds that someone arguing in good faith is willing to consider countervailing evidence and be persuaded by it if it is a strong enough answer to his or her concerns.

In order to address any of the above arguments under the presumption of good faith, we would need to collect evidence demonstrating:

• (i) That the behavior of immigrants cannot be predicted en masse
• (ii) That local culture is not inherently superior
• (iii) That there are empirically demonstrable benefits to immigration
• (iv) That locals and natives can/should be held to the same standard when evaluating the costs and benefits of immigration in theory

Note that (i) is a description of stereotyping or racial profiling. There are no non-bigoted ways to hold this opinion. It is not a good-faith argument. It is also merely a belief.

Likewise, (ii) is a belief. It is a belief in national chauvinism. It's unlikely that anyone who holds that Italians are the greatest people in the world will ever be "convinced" by "evidence" that other people are just as good. It is merely a belief.

(iii) is something that has been done to death. Oceans of ink have been spilled articulating the many economic of free trade in the labor market. The notion that immigration advocates have failed to do so is simply false. Anyone who maintains this false belief has either never seriously evaluated immigration one way or another, or has chosen to ignore the mountains of evidence in front of them. Since presuming complete ignorance is uncharitable, the only viable explanation for (iii) is that it is an argument of bad faith.

Meanwhile, (iv) is a mere belief.

The reason I've taken the time to point out that (i), (ii), and (iv) are mere beliefs is because beliefs are not subject to empirical evidence and logical persuasion. If someone opposes immigration because he believes that all immigrants are Lizard-People, it simply doesn't matter what blood tests or autopsies you place in front of them. They will not respond to the evidence because there is always a "what-if" on which to hang a further objection. Sure, the Lizard-Man passed the blood test, but what if the blood test was designed the pro-Lizard-Man lobby? Sure, there are a few good immigrants out there, but in general, we can predict their nefarious behavior and contrast it to our saintly locals.

Illusions

One of the more startling things people discover when they begin to evaluate their own beliefs is that good people can believe nasty things. Aunt Nellie might be a perfectly sweet lady, but if she thinks "the Chinese are taking over the neighborhood with their laundromats and their doughnut shops," then she holds a bigoted belief. Aunt Nellie doesn't want to be convinced that her beliefs are bigoted, because that would suggest that she herself is a bigot, i.e. a bad person. She doesn't want to believe that about herself. You also probably do not want to believe that about your Aunt Nellie. But you've heard what she says about the Chinese when she gets going. How else would you describe those beliefs?

Similarly, people draw a conceptual difference in their minds between "hating Chinese people" and "being worried that Chinese immigrant culture will 'clash' with the prevailing local culture." They don't want to believe that they're bad people -- but how else can you describe the presumption that more Chinese = worse local life, if not by calling it "bigotry?"

This refusal to acknowledge our own, personal bad behavior (and bad beliefs) is the driving force behind all culture clash arguments against immigration. The reason immigration advocates cannot overcome these fears is because it would require the bigot to come to terms with her own bigotry through logical argumentation and the presentation of evidence.

People don't want to do that.

Arguments about culture clash are not made in good faith.

Photo Op

I don't remember whether I mentioned it on the blog, but some time ago, I took a trip to Iceland. It's an absolutely amazing country that is sure to make any visitor fall completely in love with it. There are no words or even photos to convey what a magical place it is.

Since visiting Iceland, I've come to miss being there. Consequently, I've started following Icelandic hashtags, photographers, and outdoor sportsmen on Instagram, just to remind myself of what a lovely place it is, and of how much fun I had there. In doing this, however, I've noticed something.

When you're driving through the Icelandic countryside, you can pretty much stop your car anywhere, and you'll be guaranteed a scenic photo. It seems as though every inch of that island is photogenic. This is so true that, no matter where I went in the country, there were people stopped on the side of the road, taking photos. One of my tour guides told me that this was actively encouraged. Tourism is the largest industry in Iceland; the more we do for Icelandic tourism, the more successful Iceland's economy will be.

The highly scenic nature of the country creates an opportunity for photographers -- especially Instagram-types -- to "cheat." They do this by driving somewhere relatively mundane, such as a highway pull-off a few miles outside of Reykjavik, and having a friend or a drone take a photo at just such an angle as to make it appear that they have trekked into the distant wilderness somewhere. Given that they're often wearing name-brand outdoor gear or presenting themselves on social media as experienced "travelers," this almost creates the false impression that they have done much more than what they really did. What it looks like they did was backpack into the deep sub-arctic wilderness. What they actually did was pull off the side of the main highway and snap a good photo.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with taking a nice, glamorous-looking travel photograph of yourself, but the way you present that photo to others may call your authenticity into question. What are you really trying to say with your photograph? You might be trying to say something nice, such as "Please take a look at this beautiful place." But you might also be trying to say something questionable, such as, "Isn't it awesome that I traveled here?"

As I have blogged about many times, in the context of many different issues, it is important to me that we reserve great praise for the truly great. A traveling adventurer such as Kilian Jornet or Sean Burch deserves our utmost praise for their many amazing expeditions. A social media influencer who is good at taking nice sunset photos over roadside fjords deserves some praise for his or her photography skills, and perhaps even a little of our envy for being able to live the kind of life that takes you to beautiful places like Iceland. But nice social media photographers should not be praised as great adventurers, at least not until they have some real adventures.

When I say "praise," I'm not just talking about lauding a person. I'm also talking about the mental energy we expend when we scroll through social media and consider a person. In the face of glamorous photos that are, in essence, a form of personal advertising, it's easy for us to get caught up in what we're seeing, and to assign higher value than we really ought to. The great adventurer isn't the one with the perfect sunset photo; the great athlete isn't the one with the perfect race photo; the fitness expert isn't the one with the most or the best fitness photography on their social media accounts.

The best among us are those who spend more time doing what they do, and less time presenting a fabulous photo of it. Photographs shouldn't be used to define an experience, but rather to remind us of the experiences we had. 

Misleading Visuals

I have the vivid memory of walking down the sidewalk between classes at my university. The weather was brisk, but the sun was shining through the trees, and there were a lot of us walking to our next class, all in different directions.

As I looked up, I noticed a tall, attractive man with long hair and wire-rimmed glasses, nodding smartly as he carried on a conversation that I imagined to be quite erudite. He was wearing name-brand outdoor clothing, the kind you might find have found (at the time) in a store like REI, expensive and high-quality clothing. He was wearing a scarf, and it was tied just the way a man's scarf ought to be, such that it looked both fashionable and rugged at the same time. He carried himself with an air that was both intellectual and physical. He just looked damn cool.

And he was smoking a pipe.

The pipe was an interesting touch. It was highly unusual, for all kinds of reasons. Most people don't smoke pipes, and those who do typically smoke them at home, not when they're out-and-about on a busy college campus in the morning. Even those who do carry their pipes with them would not likely be inclined to go through the rituals of pipe-smoking -- pouring out the loose tobacco leaves, packing them appropriately, lighting the pipe, and so on -- early in the school day, and especially not between 10-minute class breaks. From this, I concluded that this was a man who was committed to his idiom. He was also a relatively young man; older than my twenty years, but too young to have fallen into pipe smoking accidentally. The pipe was something he had deliberately sought out as a tobacco enthusiast. This fact, too, demonstrates commitment to the idiom.

Needless to say, the pipe was the capstone to the entire image. It absolutely cemented his outward presentation as that of a rugged, intellectual, and individualistic man.

I never met him and I never saw him again, but the image is burned into my memory. He pulled his look off very well, but in hindsight his whole image was heavily contrived. He bought his way into his idiom, and must have dedicated time as well as money toward cultivating and maintaining it. Why else would one invest, say, twenty percent of his class break time in lighting a pipe that he could hold in folded arms while he carried on intellectual conversations? Why else jaunt about campus wearing name-brand outdoor clothing on day when one's "outdoor activities" consist of moving between campus buildings during class breaks?

And, above all, why smoke? This man was an Instagram star in the making, but for the fact that there was no Instagram back then. At the time, though, I accepted his presentation whole-hog without skepticism. He must have been the rugged intellectual he presented.

Granted, there will always be those who work hard to cultivate an image. What strikes me as interesting is the fact that omnipresent cameras have helped us create a situation in which every mundane task can be presented as amazing.

A few year ago, I knew a blogger who mostly just posted updates about her family, but she had a nice camera, and she was really good at taking photos of the flower arrangement on her dining table, or the way her children would throw an arm around each other. Basically, her blog looked like a collection Martha-Stewart-branded stock photography. But their lives were far more mundane, comprised mainly of school work, hobbies, games, the occasional weekend getaway, and so on.

What do we make of the family who seems to be living the perfect life, but who is in fact just living a life. To be sure, it's a good life, but absent the latest iPhone camera, those bouquets would look just like the ones everyone else buys. The blogger I knew had a wonderful life, but that fact wasn't in any way demonstrated by a set of nice photos. If she had posted only lousy photos, her readers might have erroneously concluded that her life was miserable. But that doesn't make any sense.

We humans have created a very odd meta-problem to have: If your life is wonderful, but you struggle to take photos that look as good as your life feels, that seems to us like a shortcoming of some sort. How can you have a happy family if your family does not have any non-blurry photos taken of it? How can this woman really be attractive if she's always wearing Walmart clothes?

It's not exactly shallowness, but a tendency to reinterpret the facts based on visual cues that may or may not indicate something more. Take any plain-looking woman and put her in a skimpy bikini with a floppy sun-hat and a large pair of sunglasses, and pretty soon everyone will comment on how beautiful she is. Is she, or are we reading too much into the clothes? And suppose the problem were reversed, that nobody bothered to notice a beautiful woman because on most days she just wore a broomstick skirt and a cardigan.

I know what you're thinking: Some blog, Ryan. 2000 words just to say, "Don't judge a book by its cover." But don't blame me. My blog is designed terribly.

"The Best Tech"

There's a scene in the excellent True Fiction, by Lee Goldberg, in which one of the characters leans back in his chair and marvels at how the US intelligence forces have all "the best tech." It's a silly scene in a silly book, and I won't spoil it by delving too deeply into it. The reason I bring it up is because it's emblematic of a common belief about law enforcement in the United States: that their skills and technological prowess are on a level far superior to anything ordinary human beings can fathom. In the psyche of many Americans US law enforcement and military have taken on almost the same esteem of super-heroes.

I thought about this over the weekend, while I was riding my bicycle.

It was supposed to be a pair of relatively easy rides. For a week, I had been looking forward to exploring a bicycle path I'd recently heard about from a fellow cyclist. Meanwhile, it's long been a goal of mine to ride my bicycle from my house to a particular relative's house, some 30-40 miles away, across the metroplex. Last weekend, a friend of mine was having a music concert at a block party just off the bicycle path I wanted to explore; then, later that afternoon, my relative was having a house party of her own.

Perfect! I thought, I'll ride the twelve or so miles to see my friend's concert, then I'll ride from there to my relative's house, another twelve or thirteen miles from the concert. At less than thirty total miles of easy riding, I was disappointed that I wouldn't get a hard ride in, but happy about being able to "kill two birds with one stone" by exploring the new bike path and riding to my relative's house on the same day.

The ride to the concert was pleasant and uneventful. The concert was also very good. I hopped on my bicycle and started riding to my relative's house. I made it about halfway when I noticed that a major stretch of road had been closed, including an overpass above a major highway. I decided to try to ride through the closed road anyway. I went a few blocks before a police officer indicated with her siren that I needed to find another route. I waved acquiescence and turned onto a side-street to see whether I could find my way to the next overpass.

I rode for another 10 minutes or so before I finally realized that I needed the help of my GPS. I scanned for a route on my phone, found something I thought might work, and headed out. To my chagrin, my GPS map kept "resetting" the route to the shortest, most direct route: across the closed overpass. There was no way for me to find an alternate route. I decided to head back the way I came and ask the police officer for directions.

The officer and I talked for a while. To my surprise, when I asked her for directions, she pulled out her personal cell phone, fired up the Google Maps application, and showed me a 10-mile detour I'd have to take to get around the road closure. I thanked her and went on my way.

But: the officer didn't tell me anything I hadn't already learned looking at my own Google Maps app. In fact, as we were discussing possible routes, I also pulled out my phone and searched right along with her. The police don't seem to have any better sense of directions than anyone else, and it's all based on the same "tech." Their Google Maps is exactly the same as mine. I'm grateful to the officer for trying to help me, but I marvel at the fact that consumer technology and police technology are one and the same.

If anything, with more bicycling and route-finding experience on my end, I might have been the better one with finding a route.

While this, of course, "proves nothing," I think it is a good example of the fact that law enforcement is not necessarily any more technologically advanced than the average person. When libertarians occasionally suggest that certain government provisions could be painlessly eliminated, we are stereotypically presented with a confrontational question: "But without government, who would build the roads?" In this case, this "road" has been built by Google, and placed in the hands of consumers and government alike.

Tiny Steps Forward, Huge Steps Back?

For some people, I think there is value in completely eschewing alcohol. For most people, I think alcohol generally contributes positively to a person's quality of life. Social atmospheres and celebrations that involve alcohol consumption with food tend to bring people closer together, in my experience. It's not merely that alcohol is a "social lubricant." It's a social lubricant that tastes good and can enhance the sensory quality of a meal. Physiologically, alcohol can improve digestion and reduce the risk of certain kinds of cancer when it is consumed with meat, especially red meat. So it's natural that alcohol would enjoy its special place in the human social experience.

In terms of overall human health, however, alcohol does vastly more harm than good. Even as the aforementioned digestive aid, alcohol can be replaced by a vinegar-based marinade, and all of the benefits can be had without alcohol itself. As for resveratrol, the supposed miracle compound in red wine, the best research indicates that it is basically a placebo pill. Meanwhile, alcohol increases the risk of all sorts of cancers, most notably mouth and stomach cancers; it kills brain cells, dehydrates the drinker, promotes obesity, and increases triglycerides in the bloodstream, which then go on to further promote high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and obesity.

In short, alcohol is a slow poison whose only real benefits are social, not physical. And if I really wanted to make the case against alcohol, I'd dedicate this paragraph to discussing all the social detriments caused by alcohol, including death and maiming on the roadways, workplace accidents, rapes, assaults, addictions, domestic abuse, and so on.

The simple fact of the matter is, in light of objective cost-benefit analysis, the case against alcohol consumption is much stronger than the case for alcohol consumption.

Of course, one could easily say the same thing about french fries. Well, aside from the physical impairment alcohol causes, anyway, french fries do just as much physical damage, and their only redeeming qualities involve the decadent pleasure of consuming food that tastes good despite universally understood health detriments.

I bring up french fries here because I don't want the reader to make the mistake of believing that I'm against alcohol consumption. I'm not, nor am I against the consumption of french fries. Hilariously enough, I grew up in conservative Utah, where the consumption of alcohol was considered verboten and sinful, and yet giving oneself organ failure via frosting and bacon was not frowned upon at all. It's very interesting, the social mores that surround what is "acceptable" poison and what is "unacceptable poison."

As for most sane people with a modicum of self-regulation, there is no harm in drinking alcohol or eating french fries occasionally.

Yet, once again, I repeat: whether or not we're religious teetotallers, the case for drinking alcohol is extremely weak, objectively speaking.

So, if you're a person like me, always making micro-adjustments to your personal health regimen, experimenting with supplements and fine-tuning the fitness process in an effort to optimize your physical health to the greatest extent possible, eventually you have to ask yourself a question. If you're willing to spend $40 per month on nicotinamide riboside supplements because they might improve cellular health, if you're willing to subscribe to Strava Summit in order to gain access to deeper analytics on your athletic performance, if you're willing to spend hundreds of dollars on fancy shoes and workout clothes, subscribe to Beachbody On Demand, wake up early to cook a highly nutritious breakfast garnished with seeds and spices curated to optimize dietary health, if you're willing to switch from inexpensive turkey sausage to gourmet smoked salmon for breakfast because it's healthier, if you almost religiously consume fruits and vegetables at every meal, count calories to determine the ideal daily distribution, monitor your blood sugar virtually in real time, take brisk walks on your coffee breaks at work, time your water consumption, and so on, and so forth, et cetera, ad infinitum...

...If you're willing to do all of that, and yet still persist in drinking alcohol regularly, counteracting many of the benefits that drive all of your other health and fitness decisions, then that's a contradiction. It's an untenable contradiction. Alcohol is much more harmful than the marginal benefits of each of the other decisions I make about my own health every minute of every day.

And for that reason, I've reduced my alcohol consumption to a decided minimum. Why would I make a point to live so clean and so healthy, and then reverse all those positive decisions with beer?

For me, it makes little sense. Your life may be a little different, and so you might come to a different conclusion.

What Do You Expect?

I love sparkling water, but the first time I tried it, it disgusted me.

I remember it vividly. I was in third grade, and we were learning about caves in science class. We were learning about how dripping mineral water forms stalactites and stalagmites. My teacher, Miss Swenson, brought in sparkling mineral water and poured it in little paper cups for each of the students to drink, so that we could learn what the mineral water in caves tastes like. I can't confirm or deny that the water in caves is anything like sparkling mineral water. This is just what happened in my third-grade class.

There was a small amount of bubbling water in a tiny paper cup sitting on my desk. It looked just like Sprite, something I had tasted many times and loved. When Miss Swenson gave us permission, I lifted the cup to my lips and drank.

Instantly, I recoiled. It tasted nothing like Sprite! It wasn't sweet at all. It was just… just… Well, I didn't like it, and that was that.

Many years later, I had a very different experience with sparkling water. I met a cool guy who owned an Italian café. He was into bikes and coffee and he liked to drink San Pellegrino mineral water. A number of our mutual friends got into drinking San Pellegrino as a sort of status symbol. You know, we don't like regular water, we like San Pellegrino.

Under these new circumstances, I had the opportunity to try sparkling water again, and this time I discovered that I liked it quite a bit. One of the reasons I liked it was that after a long run in the desert, my mouth would be dry and sticky, and I found that sparkling water had a better way of cutting through that stickiness than tap water did. Soon I became a lifelong drinker of sparkling water, although these days I drink the generic brands and save a lot of money!

My purpose in writing this is to highlight how expectations impact the quality of an experience. If your expectation of sparkling water is that it will taste like Sprite, you'll probably hate sparkling water when you taste it. If your expectation is that it's cool and tastes delicious, then you might find you rather enjoy it.

This concept extends well beyond sparkling water. I've noticed, for instance, that when people spend too much time listening to just one kind of music, they quickly lose patience with any music style that diverges from their preferred genre. I've noticed that people who expect other cars in traffic to drive in roughly the same manner they themselves do are often the ones who get most frustrated when they encounter unexpected traffic patterns. I've noticed that people who come to expect a certain kind of cityscape in their neighborhood often get the most flustered when a large community of immigrants moves in.

In some of these instances, there is some taste or difference in perspective involved. In many of them, however, most of the dissatisfaction comes from the fact that expectation and reality diverges. People don't like it when they expect one thing and see another. People instead prefer consistency. When they don't get it, they can get quite angry, and this anger translates itself into things like anger at music genres, road rage, and racism.

I hasten to add that this is not a complete explanation of all human dissatisfaction. But it is an important aspect of human nature, and you may benefit from occasionally analyzing your anger through that lens. Are you frustrated with something that is genuinely dissatisfactory, or are you merely trying to map the present set of circumstances onto an ill-fitting set of expectations?

Indeed, I think a lot of interpersonal disagreement can be attributed to the difference between expectation and reality. Many couples break up under the reasoning that one of them "changed" or that they "grew apart," and both of these descriptions reflect a set of unmet expectations. Many arguments have been had between people who absolutely do not disagree on the issue, but who instead phrase the concepts a little differently: "I vehemently disagree with the way you reached the same conclusion I reached!"

With a little concentration, we can approach every situation and every conversation as though there are no preconceived expectations for other people. You might be black, but black doesn't have to "mean something" or imply anything about our interaction. I can simply listen to what you have to say and respond to it on its merits. You might be a rock-climber, but rock-climber doesn't have to "mean something" or imply anything about our interaction.

More challengingly: You might be saying something that sounds similar to something I heard before, but that doesn't have to mean that you are saying something I have heard before. It's incumbent upon me to pay attention to exactly what you say, how it differs from what I've heard in the past, and to approach it from the context of our current discussion, rather than from the context of an old discussion I had long ago, with someone else.

I don't claim that any of this is easy, by the way.

Low Expectations?

Training-wise, today I am invoking Rule #6.1 (or 6a, or however I eventually settle on nomenclating the rules) from my new and forthcoming list of healthy lifestyle rules. This will be a list I'll make available at the top of the blog next to "Find A Workout" that describes my intellectual framework for training and living healthy. The plan is to provide an accompanying blog post for each rule and sub-rule for a fully elaborated and comprehensive record of how I approach health and fitness. All for free, of course, because paying for stuff sucks. So, stay tuned.

In the meantime, I'd like to talk about a recent experience I had, and how it made me notice what has been called by others "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

While running a half marathon last Sunday, I reached a turnaround point and started running back the way I came, as per the race course. This gave slower runners behind me a chance to pass the race leaders and see how things were going.

I was in second place, behind a rather good runner who was far ahead of me. As I passed each small group of slower runners going the other direction, many of them would cheer me on. (I would have cheered them on, too, but I was out of breath and focused on my race.)

Suddenly, I heard a woman call out, "Alright! First female runner! Way to go!" Instantly I understood that the woman had seen my long hair drawn back in a ponytail and had mistaken me for a female. (Meh, what are you going to do? I imagine that nearly every man with long hair has had to deal with that a time or two.)

Now, I was running a decent race for my current level of fitness, but I was far behind the first runner and basically not going what I'd consider "fast," not even by "female standards." So, I thought to myself, why would this woman go out of her way to praise a mediocre performance just because the person happened to be female (or so she thought)?

It's likely that she was just cheering everyone on, so don't fixate too much on this lone example. I spent some time thinking about it, and I realized that society has a tendency to praise female behavior that would otherwise be seen as mediocre or even objectionable if conducted by a male.

The example that really came to mind was Captain Marvel. The truth is, I kind of liked that movie. But even though I liked it, I couldn't help but notice that if she were a male character, the movie would mostly be unremarkable. She was a big hit because she was female, and there have been many such movies in recent years; action movies, in which a strong female protagonist takes names and kicks ass.

Isn't it strange, then, that when male-character-driven action films come out, mostly people just find them silly, juvenile, and boring? Ask your romantic partner out to see the latest shoot-em-up action flick, and she'll likely say, "No thanks, let's watch something else." But if the lead character is female, I'll bet you'll get a different answer.

The problem in this case is that a desire to see strong females depicted in film is clouding our judgement. The mere fact that Rambo is a Rambi (get it?) causes some people to think that a story they would not otherwise appreciate is really something great. But the story is the same either way; the only real difference is the politics. Blech.

Somehow, this sense of politics has managed to keep the WNBA afloat all these years, but I think it's a sentiment whose time is rather limited. The true mark of gender equality will be when people view shoot-em-up films and mediocre athletic performances more or less the same way, regardless of whether the object of analysis is male or female.

Until that time comes, a lot of people will waste a lot of time forcing themselves to enjoy stuff that they don't really enjoy on its own merits.

An Aesthetic Signal

There's a theory out there, presented variously throughout history, but most recently by Robin Hanson, that all or most human behavior is an attempt to achieve "status" through "signaling." So, for example, if get interested in photography, my main objective is to become a good photographer, which people will then perceive and thus award me social status. I only play guitar for the chicks, basically.

Of course, this is a perfectly plausible - perhaps even likely - perhaps even true - explanation of the behavior of some individuals. Because this theory is certainly true for some people and some actions and some situations, folks have a tendency to go all in on it. The problem with the theory is that it is unnecessarily reductive. Just because some of what I do aims at social status doesn't mean all of what I do is. Just because a lot of what I do aims at social status doesn't mean it is the best explanation for human behavior writ large.

There are many specific problems with this view of human behavior, and I couldn't possibly list them all here. But I got to thinking about one particular weakness of the theory over the weekend. That problem is: human social groups play a weaker role in our lives today than at any prior point in human history. Thanks to the highly individualizing social changes instigated by the internet, rampant marketing segmentation, and Western individualism, people are now less likely to engage in close social interaction. There is no big Saturday night party in today's world, as there was for previous generations. Many young people stay home, while many others prefer to spend their time with a small group of close friends, rather than the larger kind of in-group that would dole out social status.

Indeed, to achieve any significant kind of social status in today's world, one practically has to already possess it. No one is interested in artists or musicians who are not already famous, which is why so much of art marketing is designed to convince the public that a new artist is already a star. You probably couldn't mention any rising stars in the athletics world, either, unless you are already deeply invested in that athlete's team. The only businesspeople you could probably mention by name are those who are famous billionaires right at this minute, or those with whom you had the opportunity to work directly. Ethicists, academics, doctors? Forget it. You simply don't know these people by face or by name.

And that's the point: we might all be motivated to pursue social status, but in this day and age, none of us actually gets it. So, it's a poor explanation for human behavior.

What I have noticed that people do is choose, not an in-group, but an aesthetic. I tried to describe this in a recent post. If you consider yourself a "rocker," then you will generally adopt the "rock aesthetic," and likewise if you consider yourself a fitness buff or a bookish person or a scientist.

Many people who choose an aesthetic in this way often express opinions, but only when they are consistent with their chosen aesthetic. For example, you're more likely to hear about the importance of following the heart from someone who has chosen an artistic aesthetic than you are from someone with a rocker aesthetic, even though they both might believe it. You're more likely to hear about the importance of saving for retirement from someone with a "savvy business guy" aesthetic than you are from someone with a "rural farmer" aesthetic, even though they both live accordingly. These opinions are not so much about how people choose to live as they are memes that people express, especially on social media, to curate a chosen aesthetic.

Today, a lot of people are making impassioned statements about abortion. There is a group of people out there who are very invested in this debate, but the vast majority of people you see who express strong opinions on the abortion debate are not so heavily invested in the debate. Instead, they're presenting memes in support of their chosen aesthetic. A very religious person will post a pro-life meme, effectively informing others of their views on religion, not actually abortion. A person heavily invested in presenting themselves as a "liberal" will send out pro-choice memes for the same reason they send out climate change memes or memes about the homeless. It's not about the issues at all, it's about the aesthetic.

Separating the two concepts in their own minds is often quite impossible. Ask the average person if what they're saying is about the issues or about their general vibe, and he will most often say that of course it's about the issue; even if it's not. So, I don't recommend that you out people when they're engaged in aesthetic curation. I also don't recommend that you spend too much time debating the issues with them. After all, they're not interested in the facts. They're interested in what their memes tell others about their aesthetic. In other words, they're interested in presenting their identity, not their thoughts.

It's a lot easier to question someone's thoughts than it is to question their identity. Don't get confused; if someone is sharing their identity with you, it's not an invitation to debate.

Twists & Turns

I spent the morning wondering what I should blog about. I wanted to write, but the words wouldn't come.

One reason for that is I found out that an old family friend of ours is dying. Not only that, she's dying in a way that there are lessons to learn from. I could have written about that, and about those lessons, but my heart just wasn't in it. I'm sad that it came to this, I'm sad for her and her family, and for my family, as well. I keep thinking about her situation, and about my childhood, and then naturally about my own child.

It's strange to watch someone go from being an ordinary child to being an adult, to being an adult with problems. One can't help but wonder when a person's life went from being about getting good grades and fitting in with childhood peer groups to being about heavy adult struggles and the inability to cope.

When I was a certain age, pretty much the most important thing in the whole world was basketball. Any chance I could get to play basketball, I would. I'd call friends over, and we'd play for hours. We'd play at school. We'd play in athletic leagues. We'd play basketball. What ended all this was junior high team tryouts. Some of us made the team, and some of us didn't. Those who did stopped playing with those who didn't so that they could play with the school team. It's kind of a shame that such a thing would separate us, but I suppose it's only fair. With our basketball-playing group thus dismantled, no further getting together was quite as fun. Eventually the whole thing tapered off. We went our separate ways and got involved in other aspects of our lives.

This sort of thing played out in my own childhood many different times. In the early days, we all ran around together. Later, I got heavily involved in competitive running and spent that time by myself instead. Some of us used to get together and listen to music and jam on our guitars. Then some of us formed a band and the larger group dissolved. Those who weren't in the band stopped playing music and went back to what they were doing before - in this case, Dungeons & Dragons - while the bandmates experimented briefly with being cool. (Don't worry, it was short-lived.)

It's rare to experience a lifelong friendship. I don't have any close friends from when I was a little boy. I keep in touch with some people via social media, but we don't regularly interact. The progressive, lifelong process of becoming more specialized has a tendency to limit our interaction with a broader group. A diverse set of friends can come together, but by adulthood they usually need a common excuse to do it: a book club, a work group, a hobby, etc.

So, it's not that friends ever become less important, it's just that the natural progression of existence is to go from being surrounded by a community of friends to being surrounded mostly by your own family. I'm not at all sure that this is a bad thing.

But every now and then news comes in of an old friend passing away or a former neighbor getting into legal or other trouble, and from our own internal perspective, it's jarring. We weren't there to experience the transition, and so for us it comes out of nowhere. The girl who once had a crush on you passed away in a car accident. The neighbor down the street developed a drug problem. The student-body officer had financial trouble, and then a mental breakdown. The city league teammate you had developed cancer.

Thankfully, it sometimes works the other way, too. The cranky loner with a scowl on his face overcame his depression and raised a happy family. The aloof snob discovered her alternative lifestyle after high school and became open and welcoming of all people. The poor kid started his own business and got rich. The shy wallflower became a social worker and helped hundreds of people have better lives.

Well, that's life. We all play one of these roles. A major part of my blog's purpose has been to comment on the various paths that lead to ruin, and how to avoid them. Maintain a long-range cognitive time-horizon; leverage principles of individuality in the face of strong negative influence; learn effective communication strategies; don't willingly maintain any serious illusions about your life or your world; always learn, always grow, always feed your sense of self-improvement. We can make the world a better place by being better people.

The Instagram Funhouse Mirror

I have an account on almost all social media, but the only social media I regularly use are Instagram and Strava. I've mentioned both of them on the blog before, but I'll say it again. I use Strava because it is very inspiring and motivating; it makes me want to work out more when I see all the fun workouts other people are doing; it makes me want to run faster when I see how fast everyone else is running. Strava is great fun. I use Instagram because seeing nice photographs of beautiful people having lots of fun makes me happy; it makes me also want to go out and have fun. In fact, I like it so much that I created my own hashtag over it: #havefuntakephotos. This hashtag represents the whole reason I like Instagram. If we all spent more time having fun and taking photos of the fun we were all having, the world would be a better place. I just love it.

Participating in all the fun we're having on Instagram, however, is not as easy as it sometimes appears to be. If, like me, you follow a lot of famous people and "influencers," then you're likely to see many several photographs per day that you'd be lucky to snap in two weeks' time. There's a reason for this: famous people and professional "influencers" invest an enormous amount of time, and often a substantial amount of money, in creating content for their Instagram accounts. It's no mere coincidence that models and actresses are always photogenic and ready with a winning smile several times a day. What the viewer is seeing is often a professionally shot photograph, perhaps an outtake from a paid photo shoot, or a photo taken  months ago in ideal conditions, but only posted today.

Like anything else, you must view Instagram while maintaining the suspension of disbelief. There are only two possibilities: Either a person's life is not really what it looks like on Instagram, or the person has enough wealth to dedicate all that time and money to turning their life into an Instagram account. Either way, you, the average person, are not capable of producing the same kind of content on your own Instagram account unless and until you become a millionaire and/or hire a professional to create content for you.

This is all perfectly obvious, of course, but it became more obvious to me when I undertook the seemingly simple task of posting a photo of every workout I completed from the beginning of my 16-week half marathon training schedule to the end. I'm on week #11, and I haven't come anywhere close to posting one photo per workout. One reason is because I don't like to run with my phone (which is also my camera) strapped to me at all times. I'd rather leave my phone home and pick it up again when my workout is over. And when I'm in a rush to get to work or something, I don't always want to invest the extra five minutes in thinking up a clever Instagram concept-shot, figuring out how to snap it, and then posting it on the internet for all to see.

But the more important reason is this: If I posted a photo of what really happens during my workout, then every photo would look almost exactly the same. The photos would all be along similar routes and landscapes. I have about a week's worth of running clothes, so you'd only ever see me in one of seven shirts. I most often take photos right in front of my house, or from the parking lot outside of work, so you'd only really ever see the same two spots over and over again. I could post photos of other stuff - like, the locker room in my gym, or my blender bottle, or the treadwear on my running shoes - and sometimes I do; but I can only really post so many photos of that.

The point is, when you start cataloging life as it actually is, rather than as we would like it to look on Instagram, then it starts to look very repetitive and uninteresting. Granted, my own life might be a bit more routinized than other peoples' lives, but I suspect not by a wide margin. I think most of us do more or less the same things every day. Think of how many bowls of chopped papaya Milind Soman has posted on Instagram. If I followed his lead, you'd see a bowl of oatmeal in my "Stories" each and every day. I don't know, maybe I should do that, but who wants to stare at my bowl of oatmeal? Even I don't look very closely at it while I'm eating it.

Life - real life - is repetitive and, at least in photos, largely uninteresting. That's why our grandparents only ever took photos when the family got together at holidays. The rest of the time, who cares? Would you want to see a photo of your grandpa smiling into the camera from the driver's seat as he headed off to work? Maybe once, and only for ironic reasons. You certainly wouldn't have wanted to go through a box of that stuff when it was time to clear up his estate.

In the funhouse mirror of Instagram, beautiful people appear to be living beautiful lives, but in reality they just have very good photographers and publicists who ably present the Vanity Fair version of their lives. You don't see the daily bowl of cereal, the commute to work, the business emails and the paperwork, the license renewals, the dental floss, or the trip to the grocery store. You don't see the standing in line or the waiting in the airport lounge, you don't see the second cup of tea and the mindless internet scrolling. You don't see the 25,000 steps I took while running last Sunday, even if you did see my post about going for a long run. You don't see the laundry or the dishes.

Instead, you just see the fun parts. It's nice to see all the fun parts, but it's important to remember that, when you're scrolling through a long newsfeed full of nothing but fun parts, there were hours' worth of banalities that lead up to that photograph, and those banalities were not often worth however many "likes" the photo got.

It's fun to see this stuff, but it is definitely not reality.

Against Quixotic Appeals To Principle

What you’re about to read is a specific complaint that generalizes. I’ll describe a particular kind of situation, and then I’ll explain how the same sentiment can be found elsewhere, and ought to be eliminated.

I’ve heard many people on many occasions lament Valentine’s Day as a “corporatist” holiday or a “made-up” holiday, or etc. They don’t want to celebrate Valentine’s Day because they don’t want to submit to a consumerist sham that obliges them to be romantic with their significant other, merely for the financial gain of Big Greeting Card. When pressed, these folks will often say something to the effect of, “I don’t need a designated day for being romantic. I can be romantic any day at all.” So, the argument goes, screw Valentine’s Day.

Here’s my real simple, two-penny argument against that. I get to be romantic with my wife 365 days in a year, while those people who are against Valentine’s Day only get to be romantic with their significant others, at most, 364 days in a year.

365 > 364, ergo my way is better.

Stop being a stubborn jerk and celebrate Valentine’s Day. Don’t do it for Big Greeting Card, do it for your significant other.

Now, this kind of “hot take” approach to defeating time-tested social rituals might get you a few page impressions on BuzzardFeed or whatever, but it’s ruining your life, one day at a time. First, it ruins Valentine’s Day; but that’s not one day of your life, that’s one day of your life multiplied by however many years your life lasts. The next day this sentiment ruins is your wedding day, which you refuse to plan because you’re convinced that “I don’t need a piece of paper to prove my love to somebody.” Then it ruins your wedding night and the day after your wedding, two irreplaceable unique human experiences that you don’t get to know about, because you’re convinced weddings are antiquated. Then, this sentiment ruins every single day of the honeymoon you didn’t take, followed by every wedding anniversary you’re never going to have.

But hey, some say, it’s your life. No big deal. The only problem is that if you decide to raise a child, then that child also gets to have his or her Valentine’s Days ruined, and he or she gets the honor of awkwardly explaining to all his or her classmates that he/she has a mom and a dad, but they’re not married, and they’re not divorced, and they live together, but um... they don’t think they need a piece of paper to signify their love to society. So a whole bunch of that kid’s days are ruined, too, times however many kids you decide to raise, up until the point they decide they want to perpetuate your cynicism onto the next generation, or until they finally declare that enough is enough and they’re going to start celebrating Valentine’s Day no matter what you say.

Of course, we’re really just scratching the surface here. Many of the same people who are against Valentine’s Day and the institution of marriage are also against monogamy. So their significant others not only get to be not-married for the rest of their lives, but they also get to enjoy the knowledge that you’re not really committed to them in any sort of exclusive sense of the term. You have crushes on other people and you talk about your crushes with your significant other. Boy, I bet that’s a fun convo, too. But your significant other need not worry too much about any of that if he or she is “truly secure in the relationship,” whatever that means to you.

And so on, down the list of social institutions you get to theoretically object to on some flimsy principle, until each and every one of your days is so full of non-commital cynicism that absolutely everything human civilization developed over the course of twenty thousand years gets a big fat “meh.”

At that point, what’s left to do but plop onto the couch and binge-watch Netflix. Now you’re living!

The Killer Was Sick, Not Suggestible

My social media were filled with think-pieces and hot takes on the tragedy in New Zealand over the weekend. This is inevitable; tragedy strikes, and people want to talk about it, to think about it, to write about it.

Unfortunately, much of the discussion I saw centered on the killer's manifesto. It seems that people wanted to delve deeply into his ideas and figure out which of those ideas are particularly dangerous. The implicit concern among these thinkers appears to be that some ideas can turn good people into killers; that we ought to hunt down these evil ideas, expose them for what they are, and…? Eradicate murder?

These folks mean well, but their thinking is sadly misguided. First of all, death and destruction has used any and every available philosophical justification. The fact that people use a given idea as a pretense to commit murder says nothing about the quality of those ideas. Murder has been committed in the name of god and anti-god, christ and antichrist, communism and capitalism, individualism and community. Every conceivable belief system has had its fair share of zealots and crazies, ready to pull the trigger at a moment's notice. Zealotry -- even murderous zealotry -- is not unique to any particular set of ideas. And since it isn't, we can't use the existence of a murderer who believed XYZ as evidence showing the bankruptcy of belief XYZ.

Secondly, though, and most importantly, we are talking about a killer, a mass murderer. We are talking about a young man who created some kind of manifesto for the world to analyze, and who then went on a media-captivating killing spree so that his manifesto would be analyzed. We're talking about a man who was callous, opportunistic, and bold; a man who was immoral, deceptive, and manipulative; a man who was shameless, arrogant, entitled, envious, and exploitative.

In other words, we are talking about a deeply disturbed individual with an atypical neurological construct. A sick man. A madman.

To be sure, understanding the pathologies of the criminally insane is a worthwhile endeavor; but rooting-out bad philosophies from the screeds of a psychopath is a fool's errand. This was a nutcase who wrote nutty things. His problem wasn't that he was a perfectly well-adjusted individual who, once having stumbled onto a bad philosophy, grew into a murderous savage. No, his problem was that his brain wasn't normal or healthy, and that he could use literally any philosophy he encountered to justify his terrible rampage.

I do understand the impulse of a philosopher, having encountered a disturbed manifesto, to poke holes in that manifesto's flaws in an effort to somehow defeat the evil he's encountered. But this is a defense mechanism, or a type of grief. This is an exercise in trying to shun the evil ex post facto. The truth is, evil will always be there, because in many cases evil is biological. That's what happened in New Zealand, tragic as it might be. The key to stopping this kind of evil in the future is in recognizing sick people and giving them therapeutic treatment before they have an opportunity to act out. Trying to prevent evil ideas from corrupting sick minds is foolish, because sick minds can corrupt even the best of ideas. That's precisely what makes them sick minds.

Institutions Of Higher Social Status

By now, you must be aware of this week's "scandal," which is that B-tier celebrities and other folks committed what the police are calling "mail fraud." In this case, the "fraud" consists of pretending that their kids were athletes or faking their kids' SAT scores, plus paying a few hundred-thousand dollars, to gain admittance to universities like Stanford and USC.

Well, I'm not a legal expert, so I can't comment on the integrity of the legal case against them. It does strike me as being a little odd that faking your SAT score counts as "mail fraud," instead of just "application denied." But melodrama is sign of the times, and calling this turn of events "mail fraud" helps insulate the reputation of the universities involved. After all, you can't blame the universities for running a payola college-entrance scheme if they were poor, pitiful victims of fraud!

And there is plenty more cynicism to go around. Some are calling it "a victory for the signaling model of education," which states that education is itself meaningless beyond the system's ability to give you a certificate that says, "let the bearer of this bond be paid $40,000 per year or more." Others are saying that colleges brought this scandal upon themselves by submitting to Affirmative Action; after all, a policy that admits unqualified applicants for demography reasons is no better than a policy that admits unqualified applicants for financial gain, or so their argument goes.

For my part, the question is much different. All of the above commentary is based on the assumption that universities ought to be high-status institutions. Even though the majority of college educations are financed by debt, even though we all know that the average holder of an English Literature degree is no more intelligent than the average high-school-educated network administrator, even though anyone can learn any of this material for free on YouTube, we still cling to the notion that universities are super-special places where only the best people in society go.

That assumption belongs to one of the two competing ideas of what education should be. If we assume that universities are "institutions of higher status," then the university model as it currently exists makes perfect sense. Of course you should fund your education with debt; this is your ticket to the high life! Of course universities should be extremely choosey about who gains admittance; if they left everyone in, then we'd never be able to tell which ones of us really deserve higher social status! Universities are places for the Beautiful People to go, so that they can learn how to Be Beautiful. We can't question this assumption without rupturing the whole system.

But there is a competing viewpoint, one that I first encountered some fifteen years ago. I, too, resisted this viewpoint when I first heard of it, but eventually I got over my resistance and warmed to it. Here's the pitch: Universities should admit everyone. By "everyone" I mean 100% of applicants who can pay their tuition. College, you see, ought to be a place where you purchase lectures and graded exams, and ultimately diplomas. If you can afford the price, who cares how many times you fail a class? Who cares what your high school grades were? Who cares what your SAT score was? If you can afford to buy a seat in the classroom, does any of that other stuff really matter? Of course not, not if college is just a place where you can go to buy lectures, grades, and diplomas.

There are usually two objections to this competing idea of college. The first is raised by proponents of free college, who warn that by making college a matter of money, we'll create a two-tiered society of people who can afford to buy their way into college, and those who can't. Well, gee, take a look at the news headlines this morning. What do you think you see?

The second objection is the one I raised when I first heard the idea: If colleges let everyone in, then they'd run out of space and resources. The answer here, of course, is to just use the tuition money to build more space. So long as tuition is covering the cost of doing business, there is no problem. Let everyone in.

The unstated assumption behind both objections, however, is the tacit plea that college "mean something," that it retain its protected position as an "institution of higher social status." We can't leave it up to crass things like the ability to pay. We have to keep it exclusive; after all, ever everyone could get an Economics degree, then I wouldn't be any better than anyone else!

And isn't that what we really want?