Four years in, a retrospective, WTF

Four years in, it's 74 Years Old WTF.

I've published 215 posts. I've written 105 drafts, some of which are crap, I am sure, and some of which may just need a bit of work. Who knows. I write shit, and I don't come back to it. Rarely, anyway.

So I decided to review what I've written, I'm four posts in. It's not great, but it's not bad. And it reminds me of things that I've forgotten.

Some may be best forgotten. A few are worth resurrecting, remembering, and even embellishing. Like SANFU. That's my acronym for "Starting and Not Finishing Up." I wrote about it here. There are certainly others on the same topic, trying to get back into a regular, disciplined posting routine.

Here's what I said:

So I'm going to invent and apply a few anti-SANFU policies. First, I hereby threaten myself to publish utter crap and incomplete work unless I have something good and complete to publish. Really it ain't that hard to finish something. All I have to do is sit my ass in the chair and the words come. And it's not that hard to produce something decent. Decent stuff comes when I am not overly ambitious

So let me riff on that for a few moments, and then move on to other things.

I've just sat my ass in the chair. Some words have come. Others will come as I continue my retrospective.

And more will come as I connect one of my good habits, the 750words habit to my posting habit.

I've written about my 750 words habit several times. I've gotten back into it, and I'm on day 166 of my latest streak.

Some of what I've written has been pretty good. And some has been truly awful. So here are my instructions to Future Self: if you can't post anything else, post what you've written in your 750 words site.

That'll teach you.

More debugging

Seventeen days ago I had an insight. I wrote about it here. I decided to make an important and beneficial change in my life and break my conditioning.

And promptly forgot.

That was December 6.

That was 17 fucking days ago.

I forgot about it. Forgot that I had even written it, that's how deep my conditioning is.

Today I reinvented this wheel. For my future self's reference, the long form wheel-reinvention appears below.

The fact that I could have had what I thought was an important insight, decided to do something, and then completely forgotten about it is horrifying.

I've had moments of "awake" since then, but in not one of those moments did I remember my "awakened" intention work on debugging, and my intention to recondition myself.

Even more horrifying: I wrote a whole bunch of posts that day, almost nothing since, and didn't have enough sense to go back and see what I wrote.

I am going to try again.

It's clear my conditioning is much stronger than I realized. I need aids and help if I am going to break it.

So on a piece of paper I have written "Debug" to remind me.

I have written this post as penance.

I will enlist some friends in the effort.

And I will post some of my notable debugging insights.

For the record, I tried four times(!) to write a new post about debugging before I realized that I had written one before.

Here's the CFAR post that kicked this off the first time.

Below, my earlier attempts, all written without recollection of having been here 

(Don't bother reading. Historical interest, only)
Debugging

I'm trying to develop a debugging mindset: when I see a bug, then if I'm not under time pressure, I fix it. Right then. Like right now: I'm writing this post, which is an interruption of another post because I ran into a bug and I wanted to document what I did.

And there's another bug, right there. What I wanted to do is simple: I want to document my debugging mindset and give an example. Instead I've sidetracked into explaining what I was doing, how it came about, etc. So let me start again.

I've decided to develop a debugging mindset about what I write and what I do. If I see a bug, and I'm not under time pressure, I want to stop, analyze what's going on, fix the problem, and move on.

A common bug is distraction. I'm doing something, and I veer off to something else and often don't come back to the original task until much later.

But underlying the distraction is lack of clear intention. I started this particular post with a vague intention: "Write something about debugging mindset." And, as you can see from the first draft (below) I started wandering pretty quickly.

To focus my intention I want to try doing this--for this post: start with a summary; define my terms. Give an example of the problem. State the solution.

So try three:

When I find myself doing something other than what I've set out to do, it's due to a bug in my cognitive processes. After all, it's my cognitive processes that are driving my behavior.

Usually, I ignore the bug. A better idea is to stop, fix the bug and move on.

Example: distraction. I'm writing something, and I get distracted. As soon as I realize I'm distracted, I need to flag it as a bug, figure out why I was distracted, and how to correct whatever is under that.

Example: I'm writing something and I want to check a reference. Usually I will unthinkingly do the research. Better is to slug a TK into the essay and do it later. If the reference is critical to what I am writing I may not be able do do that. I might have to take the process back a step.

Try 4:

I know my cognitive processes are buggy. Everyone's are. The thing is: am I looking to spot bugs? And when I spot one, what do I do?

Until now, my MO has been: occasionally spot bugs, but mostly, just keep going.

And when I spot a bug, I might ignore it and follow my flawed thinking, or I might hack my way around the bug and return to what I was doing.

Now I am going to actively look for bugs.

And when I find one I am going to analyze it, find the root (or as deep a root as I can find) and then fix that root.

Evidence of a bug, by my definition is: any time results don't match intention, that's evidence of a bug.

So I need to have a clear intention--otherwise what can I compare my results to?

I need to continually monitor my result versus that intention.

I've done that several times in earlier drafts of this post. The earlier versions are below.

The underlying poblem for several of these bugs is that I start writing without a clear enough idea of what I want to say, and perhaps who I am saying it to.

So for this one, I knew I wanted to say: "I am going to look for bugs and fix them when I find them, if I have time" To say that, I need to first define what I mean by bug.

So my plan is going to be (for the moment) to write things to different bugs

My unwitting conversation with an AI

Kismet, a robot with rudimentary social skills (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today I got a phone call. Here's what happened, as best I can remember.

I pick up.

"Hello," I say.

"Hi Mike," comes a voice on the other end. It's a woman with a very pleasant phone voice. If you rated the last hundred strangers I've talked to on the phone, she'd come out way on top.

"You're as hard to get hold of as it is to get my kids to clean up their room," she continues.

I chuckle appropriately.

"I'm calling on behalf of the breast cancer association," she goes on and launches into a spiel. Something tips me off. Maybe she's a bit too smooth.

So I interrupt. "Wait a minute. Are you a real person? Or are you some kind of a robot."

I expect she's going to keep going. But she stops, in mid-spiel.

"Well," she says smoothly, "to ensure quality control, I am using prerecorded segments of speech. But there is a real live person on the call."

My brain freezes. Somewhere in my unconscious, I realize that I just asked a robot if it was a robot, and the robot understood my question and played the pre-recorded speech that explained and excused itself for being a robot. Or maybe a real live person was listening and switched from one pre-recorded segment to another. I don't know, but I'm inclined to believe that it was AI all the way.

"Sorry," I said, mind-numbed. "We don't respond to telephone solicitations of any kind."

"That's OK," the voice continued smoothly. "Just tell three of your friends something something." I hang up in a mild panic state.

Thirty seconds later, I wish I hadn't. I would have liked to explore whatever was on the other end of the phone. Would it have answered other questions? How would it have managed the transition to the "real person" if it had to? If I got to a real person, would it be the one with the awesome phone voice, monitoring twenty lines, and jumping in only when necessary? Or would it be someone who called herself Jane but had a think Indian accent, like so many Janes do.

This is the shape of things to come. Here's a computer system handling a one-on-one sales conversation. The repertoire for this conversation is pretty limited, and I outed it pretty quickly, but I'll bet that it takes a lot of people to the end of a conversation without them suspecting it's a computer, not a person.

And there are lots of jobs that don't require a lot more skill than that. Customer support, for example. It's all flow charted. A computer can follow a flow chart as well as a low-wage operator. Better, actually.

Every interaction provides information for improvement. Alternate speech segments can be A/B tested. The algorithm can match the voice of the "operator" to the profile of the client, based on information that they've scraped off the net. I got someone who sounded like a well-educated white woman. If I was black would I get a well educated black woman? If I was a woman, would I get a man? Or is a woman better? Which one did I respond to? Give more like that. Where does the conversation break down? Fix that segment. What question did someone ask for which there wasn't a pre-built sound bite? Build that bite.

The analysis can be done automatically. The system spits out the metrics. Coming up with a solution takes people, right now. But each solution scales across all campaigns and all domains. The AI gets better and better. The jobs that people do become less.

When the system can't deal with a situation, it temporizes while, in real time, a human being gets all the contextual information needed to fill a gap. The person fills the gap, speaking in their own voice. The result is parsed and synthesized in the "voice of the ideal operator for this customer." The repertoire grows larger.

And it's early days.

It's going to better.

On the other hand, if you're hoping that your interpersonal skills will keep you from being replaced by a computer, it's going to get a lot worse.

Universal understanding

I opened my eyes, and the universe appeared.

"Actually," said the universe, "I didn't appear. You created me."

"How did I do that?" I asked.

"You just did it," said the universe. "I don't know how. I just know what you said: you opened your eyes, and I appeared. That act brought me into existence."

"Huh?" I said. "You're saying that you didn't exist before that?"

"That's pretty much it," said the universe.

"I don't understand," I said, confused. "Can you explain how that can be?"

"No," said the universe. "Look, I'm just a universe, not a philosopher. Ontology is beyond me. I just know that I didn't exist until you opened your eyes and saw me. And I'm telling you what I know."

"But I remember the universe existing before I closed my eyes," I said. "What about that?"

"Different universe," the universe said.

"What about for him?" I asked, pointing to an old man sitting in the corner of the room I was in. "Did you exist for him before I opened my eyes?"

"No," said the universe. "He's also got a different universe. I'm your universe, now, not his. And not your universe, earlier."

"So you are saying that he and I are in different universes?" I asked.

"Of course," said the universe. "How could it be otherwise?"

"How could it be the way that you're saying? There's just one universe, isn't there."

"No," said the universe. "There's one universe for each observer. For all practical purposes, you can consider us the same universe. But we are not."

"Makes no sense," I said.

"Well, I'm sorry," said the universe. "It's the way it works. It's not my job to make sense of it. If it's anyone's job, it's yours."

Six phase meditation and reconditioning

I've tried meditation. And I hope one day I can do it. Evidence of the benefits is pretty clear. But there's a bootstrapping problem. If my mind was calm enough for me to meditate, I would meditate. But it's not. Meditation could calm me enough, but my mind is not calm enough. And so on.

Yesterday I came across a YouTube talk about a helpful mind hack: 6 phase meditation. It seemed to fit with my "reconditioning" theme, so I'm experimenting with it.

Here's the original talk.

If you are going to listen to it, I recommend listening to the first part at high speed (click to go to YouTube on a desktop, then use the settings button to speed it up) and the rest at normal speed.

Vishen Lakhiani, the guy who gives the talk, starts with six basic human needs and from them derives six parts for a daily meditation:

1. Compassion
2. Gratitude
3. Forgiveness
4. Future vision
5. Perfect day
6. Blessing

You take ten minutes and spend a minute or two on each part.

You can also try an abbreviated version, without the explanation of underlying theory, here:


I did this yesterday. Today I started doing it, but I had a lot of writing that I wanted to do, and didn't want to take ten minutes to do the exercise formally. And there are people that are so busy that they can't afford to take the time, despite the likely benefit.

So I came up with a variant as a starting point:

1. Do it once, to get the idea
2. Whenever you have a moment, (sitting at a stop-light, just finishing something, whatever) take the list of six items as a checklist, pick the one that needs the most work, and do it.
3. Alternatively, just take a minute or two and run down the list

My experience is that these small steps help.

And since part of my "Perfect day" involves having the time to do this, and a bunch of other, beneficial things, by applying step 4 and 5 to a future in which this is part of my life, and a perfect day in which I do this, I'll be reconditioning myself.

Likewise, this looks like a pretty good six item debug list. So I'm working from there, too.

Broken streak and request for abolution

Shit shit shit shit shit!

My streak is broken!

I've been using the website 750words.com to jump start my writing. It's based on the book "The Artist's Way." I've written earlier, and earlier and a few times earlier about using the site.

I've been on a writing streak for about a hundred forty days. Every day 750 words. Whatever comes into my head. No editing. Well, sometimes, some.

Writing on the site is based on faith in the method. If I write every day, get the cobwebs out, or whatever, then the good kind of writing that I want, the writing that the artist within me wants to do will come. If I write it, it will come.

Mostly what comes out is crap, charitably, crap. And that's OK. That's kind of what's supposed to happen. And sometimes what comes out is a good first draft for a post. So, success.  But it's inconsistent. I'm producing something, and that's good. But I'm not producing what I want to produce, and that's not so good.

But faith! Do my words every day. Keep the streak going. Keep working. If I build it, the artist within me will come.

And yesterday it happened. I started the day working on a post that had originally been a shitty first draft in my 750 words writing space, and the stars aligned. Not completely by themselves. I had to help them a little, but they did line up. I wrote that post and another and another and suddenly I was flying. All the backed-up creativity released and my inner editor gave up, and the words came out and I posted another thing and another and another. Seven in total.

Yes, it wasn't just my daily practice that did it. I'd uncovered some "bugs" in the way that I was thinking about the kind of writing that I wanted to do, and that made a difference. That was one of my posts. But the daily discipline helped. I am sure of it.

I went to bed last night, satisfied and happy, with the idea for the next day's first post already in my mind.

And I woke up this morning, happy, looking forward to writing it.

And then, I realized that with all my productivity the prior day, I hadn't written my 750 words! I sometimes do that. I'd like my habit to be: do that first thing in the morning, but I'm sloppy in that, as I am in many things, and did not. I had the page open. I looked at it a few times, but I was having such a good time FINALLY getting things out. And then it slipped from my consciousness. Faded. It was gone.

Lying in bed at 5:45 I wondered whether to get up and start writing or snooze a bit more. I realized that I had not finished my words, but no worries. I could time travel.

Time traveling is when I change my setting so that instead of my time zone being Eastern, I set it to Central, or even Pacific, to get a few more hours in the day. In rare cases, I've had to time travel to Alaska, or even the International Date Line.

So I got up, peed, gathered my stuff, turned on my computer, and prepared to do my writing. No worries. I'd been to the International Date Line before, early in the morning. No rush.

I saw a couple of Hangouts messages including one with a short video of Siena and Daniel "talking."

I switched my time zones and prepared to write. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the time at the date line. 11:58.

Shit.

Shit shit shit shit shit!

I'd wanted to do 750 words of original writing, but now there wasn't time. But I'd written a lot, and I wouldn't be entirely cheating if I grabbed some of those words, put them on the site and saved them. Part of my brain was thinking that I could still do it. Part was thinking shit shit shit shit shit.

I fumbled my way to my blogging site, grabbed a nice long post, copied it. Took it back to 750 words and pasted it. And...too late...

It was a new day in American Samoa and the Date Line. That little excursion watching Siena had been enough to keep me from keeping my streak going--even by somewhat suspicious means.

So here I am, doing what I maybe ought to have done yesterday. Get up early. Do your words. Get the day started out right. Drink water. Meditate. Maybe exercise. And THEN do the rest of your day.

And here I am, having written today's first post, the story of how I broke my streak.

There's another way that I might be redeemed, though. I can write , who runs the site and ask her to restore my streak.  I've done it before, and she's been kind enough to do it. So this post, which I drafted this AM in 750words is my long-winded explanation.

The way you see it is the way that I wrote it (except for adding the links later and fixing a few typos). It's not a bad first draft, and that's the way it's going to get posted.

Then I'll write Kellianne a note, reference this post and hope she restores my streak.

If (when) she does, I'll post an update.

Poo pouri

I don't usually watch ads on YouTube all the way to the end. But I watched this one.

And it's a real product. You can get it on Amazon. They've even got a "Master Crapsman" gift kit.