Adventure Journal - from Chapter 2

The goblins were taken completely by surprise. Eladriel hammered two of them into unconsciousness with staff and elbow, then winded the third with a brutal kick to the solar plexus. Crossbow bolts thudded into wood and sod, none striking flesh. A wolf somewhere howled and fled. The remaining goblin pulled out a sword and, laughing savagely, drove it past El's guard and into her lower kidney. A wolf leaped at El's throat and came away with a mouthful of blood--she had ducked, but not enough, although she did keep her feet. Then her quarterstaff thunked into the goblin's temple, and her elbow hammered the wolf to the ground just as Vlad's quarrel took it in the ribs.

Then all was still.

El sagged in exhaustion, feeling her wounds. A moment later, Jack and Vlad appeared out of the forest growth. "Can you take care of these?" she asked, gesturing to the goblinoids. "Also, I think we should stop for lunch."

*****

An hour later, after a meal and some hydration, Eladriel was feeling much better, and all the goblins were still unconscious. We decided to take their weapons with us and burn down their supply cache, so Jack and I spent a few minutes disassembling the barrels and stacking the goods, and then I set everything on fire. Hopefully these goblins will accept the loss and go home.

Finally we made it to East Landing. We had been forcing our pace and arrived quite late, but Eladriel insisted on speaking with a royal representative, which eventually got us Lord Waldemar, the chancellor.

-Vlad

*****

El was seated at a table when tubby old Waldemar opened the door. Gauging her audience, she waited for him to be seated, and then he ran his fingers through his thinning hair and finally looked at her. "Well, milady DuMorne, what can their Majesties do for the Countess this evening? I suppose she wants an extension on the annual apple tax receipts? It's no use asking, you know, the Treasury is in a dreadful state already."

El said seriously, "Milord Waldemar, as you know, I was recently attached to the staff of the Lord Mordenkainen's punitive expedition against the hobgoblin incursion. The army was ambushed. Mordenkainen is dead, and of the army only 280 men of 8000 remain effective, and those men are desperately short on supplies and require relief. When I left them a week and a half ago, they were fortifying a temporary position in case of renewed attack, but they could be wiped out any day."

Waldemar gaped. "The Army of Landing?"

She nodded grimly. "Gone. I must see the king and queen and beg for relief."

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

On Job

My email .sig comes from the Book of Job, in the Old Testament.

The whole point of the Book of Job is trusting God can make more of you than you can of yourself. That's why it talks so much about Leviathan. But to me, this passage right here is the crux of the whole book:

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; 

  and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: 

  and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; 

  and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; 

  and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

Job's agony all along consists in not knowing WHY these things are happening to him. "On the one hand," he says, "I know God is righteous and just. I will not complain against him." But then, "On the other hand," he says, "I don't understand why this is happening! Haven't I done everything right? It would be nice if I could just believe my friends that I somehow brought this on myself through sin, at least then I wouldn't have cognitive dissonance--but why does a righteous God punish innocents? Because clearly he does." And the resolution comes when he finally "gets it," although since Job doesn't voice his epiphany aloud you don't actually understand what's happening unless you get it too. 

To an outsider it looks very random: Satan tricks God into punishing Job, Job's friends say he's bad, Job says he isn't, there's a lot of poetry, eventually God shows up and talks a lot about animals, and then suddenly it's over and Job gets his life back (although his original sons and daughters are still dead). No closure, no satisfaction. God never even says, "Sorry for letting Satan trick me." To someone who knows what is going on it looks very different, and in fact it looks a lot like it was actually God tricking Satan and not vice-versa, since after all he was the one who drew Satan's attention in that direction in the first place--and he must have known how predictably Satan would react. God doesn't explain precisely why he judged it necessary for Job to suffer these particular trials along his journey to exaltation (and we do know that no one can be exalted without enduring sore trials first), but it doesn't matter: once Job understands that this really, truly, is for his own good, he exclaims, "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes!" and is once more at peace. If mine own right hand cannot exalt me, shall I not trust in Him who can? He paid the price in his own blood and infinite pain.

And that's why it is in my .sig.

-Max

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Letter to Sister Br----

Tuesday, Sept 9, 2014

Dear Sister Br-----,

Hi! Congrats on getting your visa! I hope things are going well and that you're liking your companion.

I just recently left Wicresoft to come back to Microsoft. As part of having joined a new company, I've been doing a bunch of corporate training, and when I was doing my Legal 101 Training, the section on contracts struck me. Paraphrasing, "If you are in a position to sign a contract for Microsoft, it is important to know what agreements you are authorized to make, and which entities within Microsoft you are authorized to sign for." It seems to me that these concepts correspond in interesting ways to priesthood keys and priesthood stewardships, respectively. (Although technically, stewardships are actually a part of keys--a stake president has the keys for his stake. But you know what I mean.) Additionally, there are those who fulfill contracts which have been signed on the company's behalf--priesthood assignments from those who hold keys. The analogy isn't perfect, but I really do think it is useful to think of ordinances and the priesthood as a form of contract law.

As an aside, can I share a personal opinion with you? It seems to me that the temple endowment is pretty blunt about whom a priestess speaks for, in eternity, and it isn't her father. One thing that blows my mind about the whole Ordain Women movement (which has largely gone quiescent) is that they are seeking ordination to the wrong priesthood. (Of course, seeking ordination to the "right" priesthoods wouldn't make any sense right now either because those don't exist yet.)

Have you ever noticed how the sacrament, when it's covered, looks a lot like a body under a burial shroud? I'm sure that's on purpose. What do you think the difference is between the bread and the water? Here's what I think: blood is associated with mortality (Lev 17:14, Deut 12:23, and the fact that resurrected being have no blood). When I take the sacrament, I think of different things on different days (sometimes by drinking to the dregs I am covenanting to finish all of mortality, even the parts I hate because Earth life is stupid--like ninety-plus years of middle school) but most commonly the water (BTW wine is red like blood) reminds me that there is a price for sin, but that price has been paid, and that I can move forward and leave the past behind. I also think it is symbolically important that this happens AFTER I have just covenanted to take upon me the nature of Christ (bread = flesh, and "you are what you eat") in a covenant which is NOT tied to the mortal flesh but to "always" and eternity. ("That they may always have his Spirit to be with them" is not in the blessing on the water. Maybe I'm reading too much into that omission but it fits doctrinally: in eternity there is no blood, only flesh and bone, so the covenant of the blood doesn't concern itself with always and forever, only now. "That they do always remember him" is therefore an "always" meaning "continually," not "of infinite duration.")

One of my favorite things about dying is going to be when I talk to someone who actually KNOWS everything and ask, "So, which of these things [i.e. doctrines] did I get right? At least partially?" I remember how pleased I was one day when I discovered that President Joseph F. Smith shared my aversion to raffles, on the same grounds that I dislike them: gambling is the hope of getting something for nothing, and also taking without giving. I remember one time in high school how a girl I know was selling raffles for the school volleyball team; I bought some to support the cause, but she was quite shocked when I told her to keep the tickets. I hope she got something nice out of them.

Hope you're doing well!

Love,

Maximilian

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Dates In The Book of Mormon

[from http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/the-genghis-khan-effect/]

8% of the men in  Central Asia carry this y-chromosome, half a percent of all men. One of the authors of that study made an interesting mistake: Chris Tyler-Smith, in an interview, said "We don't think that Genghis Khan was the common ancestor, because our best estimate of the time when the common ancestor lived was a few generations before he was born."

Now that's silly, because are big error bars in that kind of TMRCA, not least when you're doing Y-chromosomes with STRs, the state of the art at that time. If you found a piece of trinitite at Alamagordo and came up with a date of  1943 from some kind of radioactive dating, forget it: it was July 16th, 1945, 05:29:21 MWT (plus or minus 2 seconds)...

It seems to me that this error stems from geneticists thinking that genetic data is the only real data: sloppy genetic time estimates trump precise historical dates.  In much the same way, people (using the old too-high mutation rate) estimated that the split with Neanderthals was ~300,000  years ago, even though the fossil record clearly showed hominids in Europe shambling towards Neanderhood half a million years ago.  The new, lower estimates of the mutation rate have reconciled genetic and paleontological evidence on the split time  – but the geneticists should have realized that there was an inconsistency.

Unfortunately other disciplines have the exact same problem.

I would include "Biblical scholarship" among disciplines that can have this problem. Biblical scholars often estimate the reign of king Zedekiah as beginning around 597 BC, and the birth of Christ at somewhere between 1 and 5 BC. For pure Biblical scholars, that's fine, but for LDS Biblical scholars the more precise dates are available and should be preferred: Christ was born 600 years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem and 92 years into the reign of the judges. While there is some uncertainty as to how literally to take D&C 20 when it comes to the date of Christ's birth, when it comes to king Zedekiah, the Book of Mormon trumps the biblical scholarship estimates: 597 BC is wrong. We know this because the Book of Mormon date is not reconstructed from multiple historical sources, they were tracking this specifically as the foundation of their calendar. Unless you think that Nephites were total incompetents at basic arithmetic, you have to take this date more seriously than the indirect arguments which result in the 597 general consensus.

-Max

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Kingdoms of Glory

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Dear Sister G--------,

Have I mentioned to you lately how much I like your weekly status updates? Even setting aside how much I like you personally--even on top of that, you always have interesting stories that make me think. I was thinking this morning about your latest missive in which you describe a member's attempt to characterize the kingdoms of glory for her son. "Snakes! Fire! Worms!" It made me ponder how I would try to teach this principle to someone--just as I suppose it made you ponder the same.

Suppose I'm dealing with someone who spends time outdoors occasionally. I think I would explain it something like this:

First imagine that you are outside in the mountains. It is cold, and wet, and muddy, and miserable. You can try to seek shelter under a tree but it is still wet and miserable, and you can dig a hole in the ground, but with only your bare hands as tools you cannot make yourself very comfortable. I will compare this to outer darkness.

Now imagine that someone takes you to a concrete bunker. Inside this bunker there is no rain and no wind. There is a shower facility with hot water that lets you get the mud off, and there is temperature control and a sleeping bag and a few cans of baked beans for you to eat. Maybe there is even an automatic dishwasher. Compared to where you were before, this is great! I will compare this to the telestial kingdom, which is the lowest of the kingdoms of glory.

Now imagine that someone takes you from that bunker to a large mansion. You have nice furniture, a swimming pool, a fancing dining room where your friends can come and visit you. You have a pantry stocked with good things to eat, and a kitchen with all the latest electric appliances for your convenience. Upstairs you have fancy bedrooms with soft feather beds for you and your guests. There are recreation rooms filled with gadgets and gizmos and entertainment centers and every kind of play-box and x-box and other electronic device. Compared to where you were, this is fantastic! I will compare this to the terrestrial kingdom, which is a higher kingdom of glory than the telestial.

Now imagine that someone takes you from that mansion to a high-tech mansion factory. In this place you have comforts not only for yourself and your friends comparable to the mansion, but you have the capability to actually construct mansions for your friends and your children. There are drafting machines and automated diggers, and 3D printers, and solar-powered tractors, and robots that can make anything you can imagine. Compared to where you were, this is magical! I will compare this to the celestial kingdom, where God dwells.

Now I want you to realize something about all of these places in my story. They each have requirements, and so it is with the kingdoms of glory. 

To move from a muddy hole in the woods to the clean bunker, you must be willing to accept help from someone else. You cannot be too proud. Likewise the scripture says (D&C 88:32-33) that those who refuse to accept Christ's gifts must remain in outer darkness and not in a kingdom of glory, because they will not receive that which has been given to them. 

In order to move from the bunker to the mansion, you must be prepared to take care of nice things--you must know how to take care of swimming pools, and vacuum floors, and make beds. Otherwise your mansion will not remain a mansion for long. Likewise the scriptures say (D&C 76:98, 103) that those who break the commandments, who lie and steal and commit adultery, cannot come into the terrestrial kingdom but remain in the telestial kingdom.

To move from the mansion to the mansion factory, you must be prepared to utilize the tools in the factory. You must be someone who has a desire to build and discover and create things to serve others--otherwise the tools will go unused and you might as well just have stayed in the mansion! I cannot fully describe the celestial kingdom because I cannot see it now, but I do know this: the scriptures say (D&C 76:55-59, 70) that they will dwell with God and receive all things, and become "gods, even the sons [and daughters] of God," and that only those who are valiant in the testimony of Jesus can dwell there. And I know that the work and the glory of God is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man," so I know that those who are in the celestial kingdom must also be those who are dedicated to that work.

And I think that's pretty much how I would describe the kingdoms of glory.

And now for a quick snippet, here is something that a friend of mine wrote on Facebook about her boys. [Names changed]

This morning while checking pockets in jeans, so I could throw them in the wash, I smiled when I realized that I could tell who's jeans were who's just by the contents of their pockets. Andy's pocket are always full of candy wrappers, Kyle's have knives, or some sharp object in them, Brian's have lego men. A pocket size glimpse into their personalities.

Max adds: Something left in a pocket is so ordinary and everyday that you probably never even think about it. It's just a consequence of the life you live every day. When the Savior comes, what will he find in my pockets?

Love always,

Maximilian

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Disbelief and mental models

[excerpted from a letter to Sister G.]

Okay, last thing I wanted to tell you about: I want to share with you a thought about investigators' concerns and the conversion process, but first I have to read to you from a CIA publication called /The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis./ The CIA is pretty good at collecting lots of information but relatively bad at making good predictions, and the book is aimed at helping CIA analysts improve their analysis by, among other things, understanding the human mind and how memory works and the difference between how people think they think and how they actually often think.

Experienced analysts have an imperfect understanding of what information they actually use in making judgments. They are unaware of the extent to which their judgments are determined by a few dominant factors, rather than by the systematic integration of all available information. Analysts actually use much less of the available information than they think they do.

The expert perceives his or her own judgmental process, including the number of different kinds of information taken into account, as being considerably more complex than is in fact the case. Experts overestimate the importance of factors that have only a minor impact on their judgment and underestimate the extent to which their decisions are based on a few major variables. In short, people's mental models are simpler than they think, and the analyst is typically unaware not only of which variables should have the greatest influence, but also which variables actually are having the greatest influence. 

All this has been demonstrated by experiments in which analysts were asked to make quantitative estimates concerning a relatively large number of cases in their area of expertise, with each case defined by a number of quantifiable factors. In one experiment, for example, stock market analysts were asked to predict long-term price appreciation for 50 securities, with each security being described in such terms as price/earnings ratio, corporate earnings growth trend, and dividend yield. After completing this task, the analysts were asked to explain how they reached their conclusions, including how much weight they attached to each of the variables. They were instructed to be sufficiently explicit that another person going through the same information could apply the same judgmental rules and arrive at the same conclusions. 

In order to compare this verbal rationalization with the judgmental policy reflected in the stock market analysts' actual decisions, multiple regression analysis or other similar statistical procedures can be used to develop a mathematical model of how each analyst actually weighed and combined information on the relevant variables. There have been at least eight studies of this type in diverse fields, including one involving prediction of future socioeconomic growth of underdeveloped nations. The mathematical model based on the analyst's actual decisions is invariably a more accurate description of that analyst's decision making than the analyst's own verbal description of how the judgments were made. 

Although the existence of this phenomenon has been amply demonstrated, its causes are not well understood. The literature on these experiments contains only the following speculative explanation: Possibly our feeling that we can take into account a host of different factors comes about because, although we remember that at some time or other we have attended to each of the different factors, we fail to notice that it is seldom more than one or two that we consider at any one time.

So what's the relevance of this to missionary work? I think, Sister G--------, that people's mental models for believing or disbelieving the gospel are also often simpler than they think. I'm not saying that there aren't people who have genuine issues with doctrine or history or whatever, but I think there are also people who think they have issues when those issues would actually pretty much resolve themselves (or at least recede) if they had a spiritual witness of the truth and a desire to change their lives. If a stock analyst can fool himself about the real reasons why he thinks a stock is going to go up or down, how much easier is it for us to see false complexity in matters of faith!?!

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Confirmation bias

Abstract from paper: 'Using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases by 50% the probability a woman will be advanced out of certain preliminary rounds. The screen also enhances, by severalfold, the likelihood a female contestant will be the winner in the final round. Using data on orchestra personnel, the switch to blind' auditions can explain between 30% and 55% of the increase in the proportion female among new hires and between 25% and 46% of the increase in the percentage female in the orchestras since 1970.'

My impression of the results: it seems that female musicians were and are genuinely less likely to be top performers (otherwise blind auditions would result in proportionate representation), but also that the magnitude of the difference was exaggerated in the minds of those evaluating--as if confirmation bias were playing a role in the evaluation of individual candidates. It wouldn't surprise me if a similar confirmation bias effect were in play in the software industry.

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Mormon culture and RMs

In response to this article:

I don't know if I would tell someone to take "RM" off their checklist. After all, you only get one shot at marriage (in the general case), and I fully support your right to not marry anyone you don't want to marry for any reason at all, if you are willing to pay the price. But I would encourage boys and girls to be kind to those whom they do not intend to marry, and I would also encourage them to think hard about exactly which qualities they are willing to pay for in the currency of mate-selection, which is loneliness, self-doubt, and delayed fulfillment. Judge as you are willing to be judged.

-Max

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Communist Cuba

Interesting article: http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_2_havana.html

"Tourists tip waiters, taxi drivers, tour guides, and chambermaids in hard currency, and to stave off a revolt from these people, the government lets them keep the additional money, so they're "rich" compared with everyone else. In fact, they're an elite class enjoying privileges—enough income to afford a cell phone, go out to restaurants and bars, log on to the Internet once in a while—that ordinary Cubans can't even dream of. I asked a few people how much chambermaids earn in tips, partly so that I would know how much to leave on my dresser and also to get an idea of just how crazy Cuban economics are. Supposedly, the maids get about $1 per day for each room. If they clean an average of 30 rooms a day and work five days a week, they'll bring in $600 a month—30 times what everyone else gets. "All animals are equal," George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, his allegory of Stalinism, "but some animals are more equal than others." Only in the funhouse of a Communist country is the cleaning lady rich compared with the lawyer. Yet elite Cubans are impoverished compared with the middle class and even the poor outside Cuba."

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Subtlety and the Indirect Approach

Cool story.

By the early 1980s, Van Halen had become one of the biggest rock bands in history. Their touring contract carried a 53-page rider that laid out technical and security specs as well as food and beverage requirements. The "Munchies" section demanded potato chips, nuts, pretzels and "M&M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)."

When the M&M clause found its way into the press, it seemed like a typical case of rock-star excess, of the band "being abusive of others simply because we could," Mr. Roth said. But, he explained, "the reality is quite different."

Van Halen's live show boasted a colossal stage, booming audio and spectacular lighting. All this required a great deal of structural support, electrical power and the like. Thus the 53-page rider, which gave point-by-point instructions to ensure that no one got killed by a collapsing stage or a short-circuiting light tower. But how could Van Halen be sure that the local promoter in each city had read the whole thing and done everything properly?

Cue the brown M&M's. As Roth tells it, he would immediately go backstage to check out the bowl of M&M's. If he saw brown ones, he knew the promoter hadn't read the rider carefully—and that "we had to do a serious line check" to make sure that the more important details hadn't been botched either.

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Subtlety and the Indirect Approach

Cool story.

By the early 1980s, Van Halen had become one of the biggest rock bands in history. Their touring contract carried a 53-page rider that laid out technical and security specs as well as food and beverage requirements. The "Munchies" section demanded potato chips, nuts, pretzels and "M&M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)."

When the M&M clause found its way into the press, it seemed like a typical case of rock-star excess, of the band "being abusive of others simply because we could," Mr. Roth said. But, he explained, "the reality is quite different."

Van Halen's live show boasted a colossal stage, booming audio and spectacular lighting. All this required a great deal of structural support, electrical power and the like. Thus the 53-page rider, which gave point-by-point instructions to ensure that no one got killed by a collapsing stage or a short-circuiting light tower. But how could Van Halen be sure that the local promoter in each city had read the whole thing and done everything properly?

Cue the brown M&M's. As Roth tells it, he would immediately go backstage to check out the bowl of M&M's. If he saw brown ones, he knew the promoter hadn't read the rider carefully—and that "we had to do a serious line check" to make sure that the more important details hadn't been botched either.

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

/Capital Accumulation In the Twenty-First Century/

So there's a book by an economist named Thomas Picketty which is very big right now, on capital and RoI trends over time. Now, I have not yet read this book so I'm going off of snippets and reviews (positive and negative), but since I've been reading Richard Heuer's /The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis/ (originally written for the CIA) one thing that is big on my mind now is that lots of data doesn't have to lead to good analysis. Heuer reports the interesting result that doctors who emphasize accumulating data over hypothesis testing tend to be worse at diagnosis; and experiments on experts in various domains (from horserace handicapping to social science) reveals that giving an expert more data does not improve the accuracy of his results, but does increase his CONFIDENCE in his own accuracy by a lot. That is, if you make a best-guess based on initial data, you're very aware that it's only a guess and your estimate of your own accuracy is pretty good; if someone gives you a whole bunch of information backing up the initial data, your accuracy doesn't improve but your impression of your own accuracy does--the extra data just makes you overconfident. It turns out that a multiple-hypotheses approach, concentrating on indicators that can differentiate between hypotheses (basically Bayesianism), is one of the best available approaches for avoiding overconfident estimates.

So, again emphasizing that I have only read reviews: Picketty's book, like Herrnstein and Murray's /The Bell Curve/ from two decades ago, appears to be heavily data-driven. Therefore, when and if I read Picketty's book I will be keeping a sharp and skeptical eye out for the following question: what hypotheses are you using your data to evaluate, and which pieces of evidence support some or all of those hypotheses?

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Private charity

The analysis in this article is flawed on multiple levels:

1.) Quote: 'Compared with government relief, private charity is supposed to be more responsive to individual need and less bureaucratic; more of a helping hand and less of an initiative-suppressing "hammock," the term Ryan uses to deride the effects of government programs.' 

Having acknowledge this point (and the related point that private charity builds cross-class social capital and alleviates social inequality), the article proceeds to ignore it, measuring private charity vs. government programs purely in terms of money spent. The goal isn't to spend the most money possible, it's to get the largest effect possible with the money you can afford to spend.

2.) Quote: 'As charitable giving is structured in the United States today, it too often plays out not as the rich helping out the poor, but as the rich increasing the gap between themselves and the poor. A 2007 study by Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy found that only 30% of individual giving in the benchmark year of 2005 was aimed at the needs of the poor — including contributions for basic needs, donations to healthcare institutions, for scholarships and allocations from religious groups. (The study was commissioned by Google.) The smallest allocation of philanthropic giving to basic needs of the poor was made by the wealthiest donors, those with income of $1 million of more, who directed 3.8% of their giving directly to the poor. For the $100,000-$200,000 income group, that allocation was 12.4%.' 

If you're trying to explore a counterfactual universe wherein private charity, not government aid, is responsible for the poor, why would you choose 2005 as your benchmark, a time when government aid is already supporting the poor? The only conclusion the 2005 data supports is that the wealthiest givers feel that the marginal value of giving to the poor is low--whether that's because they see the poor as overserved or because they don't care about the poor under any circumstances is impossible to tell. The article is perfectly willing to use Great Depression-era data when it supports the author's beliefs--why not examine the proportion of individual giving to the poor back in the Great Depression when the poor were certainly underserved and starving to death?

Probably because measuring individual charity is hard. See point #3.

3.) Quote: 'The largest single recipient of philanthropy is religion — 32% of the total, according to Giving USA. But only a small portion of that goes to outreach to the needy; more than three-quarters of donations to religious organizations is spent on "congregational operations," including facilities upkeep, the Indiana University study found.'

This confuses "private charity" with "charitable organizations"--probably because tax-deductible donations to charitable organizations are easily and conveniently measured when you want to write an article. But it's utterly missing the point. While I am more than willing to grant that "congregational operations" are not germane to relief for the poor and should be excluded from the discussion in the same way that support for the arts is--despite that, I also observe that many things that we do within the Church to help each other WOULD NOT SHOW UP in this money-oriented discussion. When Bishop Gordon introduces an out-of-work neighbor to his old colleagues at Microsoft, when he and Dave Koon fix up an old truck to loan to someone so he can restart his business, when you let a friend in need come over and ransack your cupboards for groceries that he needs, when you mentor a young person or an older gentleman who needs to update his skills so he can get a better job--all of that is private charity, and yet it will never show up on the analysis of tax-deductible contributions to charitable organizations because it doesn't fit the standard money-oriented mold. And yet it can change lives.

Conclusion: does this mean that private charity CAN replace government aid? Not necessarily, and IMHO probably not completely, given how socially-disconnected our society is. Eliminating federal aid would probably result in those who have no friends or family starving, or turning to crime--a bad result. But a society which relies on government programs instead of the civic virtue of real people will spend more and more money to achieve less and less. It is inferior in all ways to a society built on individuals who live the gospel of Jesus Christ in their dealings with each other--even if those dealings don't show up in neat statistical analyses of IRS deductions.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Fictional vignette

I arrived. She was there on the cliff. I'm not sure whether she was doing pushups or painting, but she was doing something while relaxing and keeping an eye on the horizon.

She cocked an eyebrow at me. I... dropped down next to her and started doing pushups, which she accepted silently. Eventually I spoke.

"Mount Rushmore?"

"Good guess," she said. "No."

I frowned, then shrugged. She'd tell me when it was done, or she wouldn't need to. "It has," I said, "been months since I vacuumed." 

She grinned lazily at me. 

"Yes, that goes without saying," I added. "I will try."

"What else is on your mind?" she said.

"I'm trying to convert oData queries into FetchXml expressions for CRM. There's a built-in LINQ provider, but it doesn't really fit complex oData scenarios. For example, it doesn't play nicely with $expand, $orderby, $top, or some kinds of $select. Rather than massaging my queries until it does fit that built-in LINQ provider, I think it's going to be simpler to fall back to generating FetchXML queries. Supposedly they are a little slower than LINQ-generated QueryExpressions, although even that is a little controversial, but at this point I'm more concerned with feature completeness... and FetchXml can supply outer joins, which I absolutely need in order to make oData expands work correctly."

"Hmmm," she said. "Parsing the results might be a bit of a job. It's not coming back in a flat table, is it?"

I paused. "I'm not sure." A few minutes later I said, "Actually, it is. I don't have to parse the XML, but conceptually it is coming back in one big SQL table, which I would be responsible for grouping back into the appropriate objects during an $expand scenario using the server metadata."

"Hmmm. Sounds non-trivial."

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Code Re-use

Code re-use is a good thing, but sometimes it really is quicker to throw away OPA (Other People's Abstractions) and write directly against the lower-level code. Especially if OPA have a lot of features that you aren't going to use and your scenario is simple.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

TDD

Q: Why is TDD a good idea when bug fixing?
A: Because sometimes the amount of work required to make a "red test" is so much that if you fix the bug first, you will never get around to writing the test infrastructure. (Plus, after you fix the bug, you don't have a good test case for writing that infrastructure.)

Case in point: I have an oData service which fails on certain queries, because the underlying CRM provider which services the queries can't handle certain LINQ expressions. There are likely to be other queries which fail in the future, and I need automated tests to prevent fixed queries from regressing as I tweak my oData service... but the bug repro I have is too heavyweight for a unit test. So instead of fixing the bug I just spent (three? five?) hours digging through dependencies with ILSpy and writing enough test infrastructure that I now have a failing "red test" to document the bug condition... only uses it uses mocks and reproes the bug without any network communication at all.

It's amazing how good I feel about the progress I've made even though the bug itself is still RIGHT THERE.

(Also, git's branch-per-feature paradigm is great for keeping my cognitive load modest while doing TDD.)

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Bayesian inference

[from another conference--a friend asked for a quick explanation of what Bayesian inference is]

The basic idea behind Bayesian reasoning is quite simple, it's simply quantifying with a formula what you do anyway instinctively. Here goes, without the math:

When you estimate probabilities, it's fair to say that you're guessing at the ratio of possible universes. Saying "Three out of four, Richard Nixon is a crook" means that of all the possible universes you can see from where you are today, Richard Nixon is a crook in three of them. "Fifty-fifty it comes up heads" means you think the possible universes are evenly balanced. That's the Bayesian view of probability, that it's a subjective estimate instead of something real.

Bayesian inference is about how your view of a given probability changes over time as you see new things. When you see something new, you delete all the universes in which that thing would not have happened, and then look at the ratio of remaining possibilities for the new probability. Example: say Nixon says "I am not a crook." If I estimate that Nixon would always say that in universes where he is a crook, and he wouldn't bother to say it in half the universes where he isn't a crook, then as soon as he says it, half of the universes where he was innocent vanish. Instead of 3/4 chance he's guilty, it's now a 6/7 chance. (Remember, the chance of being innocent drops from 1/4 to 1/8, and it's the ratio of 1/8 to 3/4 that matters because any universe not in that ratio has already been disproven.)

This doesn't just work for yes/no questions, it could be that I'm trying to decide between "Richard Nixon is a crook" vs. "Richard Nixon is incompetent." Either way I'm simply eliminating possible universes with each piece of evidence.

So far so good, but the great weakness of Bayesian inference is this: I'm simply narrowing down my hypotheses each time based on evidence. What if the truth isn't in any of my hypotheses? What if the real explanation is that "Richard Nixon is an alien"? Since Bayesian inference is all about ELIMINATING possibilities, I will never, ever tumble to the truth. Even if I see him beam himself up into his spaceship, Bayesianism has no way for me to deal with that. And yet in the real world, I would indeed change my mind if I saw his spaceship--I'd generate a new hypothesis on the fly. So my mind isn't Bayesian, it isn't deductive. What is my mind doing?

Bayesian inference is demonstrably the most reasonable way of deciding between two possibilities, but somewhere inside my head I must have a container that says "infinite number of other possibilities."

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Moroni

"Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men. Behold, he was a man like unto Ammon, the son of Mosiah, yea, and even the other sons of Mosiah, yea, and also Alma and his sons, for they were all men of God."

This is an interesting statement, considering Alma and Ammon's backstory as men over whom, at one point, the devil had quite a lot of power. So it's not something intrinsic to Moroni/Ammon/Alma, but rather a statement about the state which they had achieved by their faith in and obedience to Christ. And therefore you may wish to ponder whether you are, at this time, someone who would cause "the very powers of hell [to be] shaken forever." And if not, how can you become such?

That's what I get out of it, anyway.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.