Shelves

I consider myself a clean and organized person.  Lately, though, my bedroom has been a disaster.  I've had such an abundance of stuff crammed into so small a space that my best efforts to keep things looking nice have failed.  Miserably.  You try to cram a business office and a lab into your bedroom!  Let me know if you have better luck.

I finally decided to do something about the problem and asked my landlord if I could install some shelves.  He was hesitant, and probably for good reasons, but I assured him that I would "make them look good," and that if he didn't like them, I could remove them and repair the walls before I move out.  He gave me the green light and so I got started.

I bought shelf brackets, wood, and stain from Home Depot (coming to about $140 total), and made a day of it.  I hadn't made shelves before, so I was a little nervous about making a mistake, but it turned out to be a simple project.  I installed three shelves above my computer desk (my "office"), and I installed three larger shelves above my lab table.

Now that they are finished, I can move the mile-high stack of books off of my dresser, I can organize my tools, and I can stop storing shipping supplies on my bed.  Woohoo!

Air

to us it doesn't
exist
but when it tips birds wings they
fly higher.
We don't notice. We don't
pay attention

The Dating Cycle

Dating sucks away my rationality.  For some reason (hah), women break down all my intellectual barriers and turn my mind into a jumbled mess.  Usually I can tell when I am being unduly influenced by emotions, but I don't have enough mastery of myself to turn the emotions off altogether (if you can do this you might be a psychopath).  So, even though I can avoid acting stupidly most of the time, I experience a roller-coaster ride every time I date someone.

This roller-coaster more or less follows the same pattern every time, and as far as I can tell, other people ride on the same tracks.  In this post I thought I'd describe various phases of dating.  Standard disclaimers apply.  I'm no expert.  I can only describe what I see in myself and in others.  These phases may not be equally well applied to men and women - I have no idea what happens in the minds of women... Also, real-world relationships are complicated and defy simplification into one simple model.  So, what I've written below won't always be true.  But I think the pattern matches many real relationships.

Phase 1 - Helloooooo

 It's not what you think, I swear!  Not entirely, at least.  In the first phase, something about the person captures your interest.  What that "something" is could vary from individual to individual.  Maybe you like to date people who are smoking hot.  Maybe you like deep, introspective types.  Or maybe you only like people who are attractive, deep, introspective, athletic, intelligent, hard-working, socially well-adjusted, and otherwise perfect in every way.

Whatever the case, you've found someone who resonates with you at some level, and you are now interested (for better or worse).  At this point, your knowledge of the individual is necessarily superficial.  Let's face it, there is no such thing as "love at first sight."  There is only "obsessive, unhealthy infatuation at first sight."

Phase 2 - Uncertainty and Self-Promotion

This is where the games are played.  Whether you like to think so or not, almost everyone plays games to some extent.  Complete frankness would be... counter-productive.  You can't generally walk up to your new interest and say, "Hey, I'm interested in starting a casual relationship that might proceed to something more serious and maybe even eventually marriage.  Are you game?"  (I suppose this happens at BYU more often than at other places in the world...)

The "game" is what you use to test the waters, as it were.  You smile a lot when she's around because it makes you seem good-natured and attractive.  You put on a bit of a show.  Pay attention, it happens all the time - guys act very differently around girls who they want to please.  It's analogous to roosters strutting around the yard, rams butting heads, and peacocks showing their feathers.  Real dating connoisseurs excel during this phase - there are all kinds of strategies to engender the interest of the opposite sex.  Not that I would know anything about that...

In general, you'll look for excuses to "be seen," you'll hang out and go on dates.  Then, if everything works out well, you'll start dating exclusively.  Woot.

Phase 3 - Euphoria

As you transition from Phase 2 to Phase 3, it becomes clear that your interest is reciprocated.  Your uncertainty gradually gives way to a biologically-driven euphoria.  Twitterpation.  Your partner can do no wrong.  She is perfect and this is heaven!  You might not think this consciously, but the subconscious mind is rejoicing constantly.  This is the Phase that all the popular songs speak of when they speak of "love."  You can't stand to be away from your partner.  You might even entertain thoughts of marriage - somehow it seems like a good idea.

Here is a telling example of how people behave during the euphoric stage.  In "BYU-approved" housing, you can't have members of the opposite sex in your apartment after midnight.  I used to live in an apartment complex where all the apartment doors faced a central, inner courtyard.  It was easy to see the comings and goings of apartment residents.  Every night at around midnight, apartment doors would open and couples would emerge - not to say goodnight, but to gaze into each-other's eyes for another few hours.

The euphoric stage is a lot of fun.  A lot of fun for the couple, but not necessarily for their roommates.

Phase 4 - Rudely Awakened

According to some "experts," the euphoric stage can apparently last for as long as two years!  In my own experience, it usually lasts for maybe three to six months.  Then the dream-land disappears altogether.  In Phase 4, one or both parties start to notice eccentricities in their partner.  Personalities no longer seem to mesh perfectly, and it is no longer clear that the relationship is "right."

Unfortunately, this phase is unavoidable.  I think that one of the biggest reasons for it is that men and women think and act differently.  There are endless pages of jokes about the differences between men and women, jokes that are only funny because they are so... true.

When the euphoria disappears, all the fairytale ideas about true love and happily-ever-after endings disappear as well.  It can be a rude awakening.  Sometimes the relationship ends here.  Sometimes it staggers along.  Ideally, though, both parties understand that the end of the euphoria is a natural event.  That leads to the next phase.

Phase 5 - Talking, Working, Talking, Working

Everyone knows that "relationships take work," but not everyone knows what that actually means.  Not everyone knows how much work it really is.  Forming a successful relationship is no passive endeavor.  If you aren't prepared to invest significant time and effort into a relationship, you aren't ready to be in one.

The specific "work" involves learning to communicate, working to meet the needs of your partner, interacting reasonably when you are tired or in a bad mood, learning to forgive human errors, learning to overlook the bad and see the good.  In a very real way, the "work" is in changing our naturally selfish natures.

While this phase is one of the more difficult ones, it is also one the most productive.  While in the euphoric stage, emotions easily interfere with our decision-making.  Our emotions tend to skew our view of our partner (in their favor, usually).  With the euphoria gone, however, the true personality of each individual comes out.  There is no more strutting, there are no more shows.  Just real unvarnished character.  In this phase, you really get to know your partner.

Sure, it takes work.  But if you really think about it, this phase is where the real discovery takes place.  It should be exciting!

Phase 6 - Adieu or I Do

Unfortunately, there is no simple measurement that says how much effort is reasonable and how much is over the top.  At what point do you decide that the relationship is just a poor match?  At what point do you decide that the work you've invested is the norm?  If only there were an easy answer to this question!

The core issue is to decide whether the person you are dating would make a good life partner.  Are your goals compatible?  Your lifestyles?  Are you able to communicate well?  Are you both capable of fully committing to make the relationship work?

Barring the possibility of dating indefinitely in a kind of stagnating limbo, eventually we have to decide whether to go for it, or whether to call it a failed experiment.

Conclusion

So, that's it... My six-phase, oversimplified dating model.  I have to confess that most of my relationships have ended with the euphoria.  Some progressed to the "talking, working" phase, but none have ended the final phase with an "I do."

Doing Business in China

It's amazing, really.  I can sit in my bedroom, run a search on Alibaba or GlobalSources, and get into contact with companies on the other side of the world.  Even as a college student running a business out of my bedroom, I have access to the same global companies that major corporations have access to.  I can easily find a company that produces the exact items that I need (IR band-pass filters and lenses, in this case...), order them, and have them at my house inside of a week.  The world has definitely changed.

The biggest downside is that their day begins when mine ends, so that if I want to get anything done quickly I have to stay up late.  Like tonight.

God in a Realm Outside our Experience

While I was having a conversation with a friend today, an interesting idea occurred to me.  I'm not sure why I hadn't thought about it before.

If we say that God created the natural laws, which were then capable of building our universe without His interference, then we move Him out of the sphere we traditionally place Him in.  We usually say "God created the heavens and the Earth," not "God created the natural laws, which created the heavens and the Earth."  I know that the Bible says nothing about natural laws specifically, but I can't imagine that the ancient prophets knew enough about physics to comprehend them anyway.

I always assumed that the laws of physics were somehow eternal, and that God simply harnessed them and used them to organize things.  But if the laws of physics were created, then the truly eternal laws could be completely outside our realm of experience.  Maybe God doesn't dwell in a universe governed by gravity, inertia, time, matter, and energy as we know them.

I've heard people say that there must be a way to communicate instantaneously across long distance, because "God can hear our prayers."  I've heard people say that instantaneous travel must also be possible for similar reasons.  But maybe these things are not actually possible within the framework of the universe-governing laws that we know.  Maybe they are only possible in a universe where distance and time have no meaning at all.  Maybe God pops in and out of our universe wherever he wants without actually physically traveling any distance at all.

Idle speculation, all of it.  But it's fun to think about.

Worlds Within Worlds

I don't own a car, so I walk almost everywhere I go.  It isn't too big a deal because my stomping grounds consist of a tiny circle around campus.  One negative side-effect, though, is that I've developed an irrational hatred for motorists (unless I happen to be driving, of course).  I can't count the number of times I've waited on the edge of a crosswalk, not daring to put my life in the hands of... that guy who just drove by texting with his cell phone.  I have the right-of-way!  Stop so I can cross!  Sometimes I want to stand on the edge of the crosswalk and throw rocks.

Anyway, today I was waiting at a crosswalk on a particularly busy street (900 E in Provo, if you care to know).  I made it obvious that I wanted to cross, and then stood there and seethed as car after car obliviously drove by leaving trails of exhaust for me to enjoy while I waited.  After an eternity (a couple minutes, probably) everything started to bother me.  The dirty asphalt.  The drab curbs and gutters.  The endless traffic noise.  The exhaust fumes.  The longer I waiting, the more aggravated I became.

Now, I would never really do anything irresponsible or dangerous, but... for some reason I found myself  looking around for a handy little rock.  I didn't find one.  Instead, I was distracted by something much more interesting.  Ants.  There was a line of them crossing the sidewalk right at my feet.  As is probably obvious to anyone who reads this blog, I am fascinated by those little critters.  So when I saw them, I immediately forgot about crossing the road.  I stepped away from the road edge, bent down, and started to watch.

It was like they were constructing a little underground empire.  They'd emerge from a little hole in the ground next to the sidewalk carrying little pebbles and sticks, while at the same time other ants would make their way inside with pieces of foliage or little pieces of food dropped by oblivious passers-by.  They all worked so hard.  Did they even know what they were doing?  What was inside that tunnel?  Where were they getting that stuff they kept bringing inside?

I followed a line of ants leading away from their colony across the sidewalk, around a bend, and then right along the edge of a deep gutter.  Looking in, I noticed that an enterprising spider had built an intricate web right underneath the edge.  As hordes of ants passed by above, one or two would inevitably slip over the edge during the day and the spider would have a nice meal.  Was that little spider just lucky in her placement of her web?  Or did she somehow know that ants would be marching above her new lair?  I watched with mixed interest and horror as an unfortunate ant wandered a little too close to the edge, slipped, and fell to its doom.  As it scrambled to escape, the spider quickly approached and then unceremoniously ended the ant's life.  I wondered if ants were capable of feeling fear or pain.

Finished with the gutter, I looked up again to follow the line of ants and quickly discovered where they were all going - there on the edge of the sidewalk were the remains of an ice cream cone.  For a human it would have amounted to less than one bite, but to the ants it must have been a treasure trove.  I found it ironic that the person who dropped the ice cream cone must have been completely oblivious about it.  When that tiny morsel of food fell out of human interest and onto the ground, it transformed the world for those little ants.  And it transformed the world for the spider.

Observing this hidden little world also transformed my own perspective.  There, next to a busy street in Provo, I had discovered a miniature eco-system, a whole world of underground tunnels, empire-building ants, and cunning spiders.  How ironic that I would have been completely oblivious to all of this had I been able to cross the street immediately.  I looked back up at the traffic and suddenly my plight really didn't matter anymore.  Our petty inconveniences seem all-important until we realize that there are other worlds besides our own.

Quick to Characterize

If only we were omniscient.

As humans, it is our unfortunate lot to make decisions and judgments based on hopelessly incomplete information. This applies to almost every aspect of life. We form impressions about people who we don't really know, we develop political ideas without a full understanding of how our economic and political systems work, and we hold to moral models without really knowing how they might affect society at large.

People will disagree with what I just said. They'll say, "You are wrong, I think I understand how our economy works pretty well." Inevitably, these are laymen whose economic experience amounts to a couple college classes and a big dose of either naivete or arrogance. Sure, there are basics that come readily. But how closely do you think a linear supply and demand curve really approximates reality?

The fact is that we can't comprehend the millions of factors that affect economic growth. We can't access the information, and even if we could, we couldn't retain it. Similarly, we can't perceive all the inner motivations that compel people to do what they do.

So, out of sheer necessity we simplify. We develop models, approximations of reality that make comprehension and decision-making easier on us. It's like we are looking at the world through a lens that distorts everything. There isn't anything inherently wrong with this. The problem comes when we forget (or never even realize) that we are seeing the world through a lens that may or may not be giving us a correct picture. We forget to recognize our own fallibility, and then our ability to improve our understanding of the world decreases.

This behavior is often displayed when we assign labels to people. I have acquaintances and family members who do this very often. I hear them say things like, "Illegal immigrants are criminals," "Liberals are socialists," "so-and-so is a dumb-ass," "Muslims are terrorists," etc. Or I'll hear people categorize whole groups of people with dismissive statements: "tree-huggers," "environmentalist wackos," "bleeding hearts," "whores," etc. The list is endless. I am sure that I am often guilty of making similar statements.

This kind of blatant mis-characterization is inconsistent with the Christian religion, it is inconsistent with the scientific method, and it is damaging to society. If we really want to understand each-other, we should start by discarding our labels and admitting that we are fallible.

The Reason I Believe in God

A distributed controls problem is one where a number of independent agents (say, robots) need to cooperatively solve a problem. Communication is typically limited, so each robot must make decisions on its own using incomplete and potentially imperfect information. The rule that governs how these decisions are made is called a distributed control law. In distributed controls, we try to develop control laws that guarantee that the overall system behaves like we want it to, even when there is uncertainty about the environment.

Think of ants as an example - they all operate more or less independently, and while they can communicate, there is not a strong enough communication channel for all the information about the growing colony to be transmitted to each ant. Thus, the ants have incomplete information. There is some kind of biological control law running on each ant that "tells" it what to do - pick up this pebble and move it outside. Attack this intruder. Etc. The control law that guides ants is incredibly sophisticated in comparison to anything we've been able to duplicate. The fact that ants are able to produce a colony with such limited communication and with so little "brain power" is absolutely fascinating.

We would like to build distributed systems to accomplish complex tasks, but it is very difficult. Engineers and scientists haven't even come close to producing systems as sophisticated as ant colonies - we get excited when we make ground robots drive around in formation or share information in a useful way. We have a long way to go before we can build armies of independent robots that can build buildings or fight battles. The tools needed to analyze and design complex distributed control systems simply haven't been discovered yet.

I like to think of the universe as one big distributed controls problem. Suppose we were to start from scratch and design a simulation governed by scores of tiny, independent control laws (ie. laws of physics). As a requirement, all the individual control laws must be designed so that when they are combined, stable structures emerge and evolve. Over time, these "stable structures" must become increasingly complex. Some of these structures must develop the capacity to reason, to design experiments and explore the nature of the "universe" that we created for them. Essentially, we would be designing the laws to govern a new universe, laws that would allow the same kind of complexity that exists in our own universe.

The problem is incomprehensibly difficult. Seemingly impossible, even. The thousands of individual laws must be developed just right, so that when they begin interacting everything works out like it should. Any slight deviation by any single law could destroy the stability of the entire system. The new universe would have to be a masterpiece of engineering and mathematics, a giant machine so complicated and intricate that no human being could fully comprehend it.

The miraculous, awe-inspiring, humbling reality is that our own universe is such a machine. The natural laws happen to combine just right, and because they do, we can exist. We exist because there is an incomprehensibly complex machine that allows us to exist. We are the emergent complexity.

Now, to the heart of the matter. Where did the wonderful, ordered laws of the universe come from? There is no clear answer to this question. It is possible that they always existed in their present form, that the natural laws are simply reality. It is possible that they had no beginning, that they just are. This is at least as reasonable as believing that a higher intelligence created them. After all, a preexisting God with enough intelligence to create our universe must certainly be more complex than the universe itself. If it is hard to comprehend how the order in our universe always existed, it should be equally hard to comprehend the existence of a God capable of creating it.

Nevertheless, I am still inclined to believe in a God. Something inside me, biological, spiritual, or whatever, pushes me in that direction. For some reason, it is easier for me to imagine the preexistence of a complex being who created the laws than to imagine the preexistence of complex laws. My reasons don't make strict logical sense, they don't prove anything. But they do provide a way to express my awe, wonder, and reverence toward the universe.

The real irony is that I believe in God not because a complex universe exists. I believe in God because laws exist that allow the universe to exist without a God!