the weird thing about computers

i love math. i love science (well at least science done by people who know math). i love statistics (well at least statistics done by people who know math). so i guess what im really trying to say is i love math.

but not even close to as much as i love engineering things and as much as i love designing things. but veej/vee/veejizzle, you might be asking yourself - isn't engineering basically a "math thing"? well yes it is - sort of - at least as much as say deciding what piece of furniture to buy at ikea is a "math thing".

the difference is that whereas the discipline of science is the art of correlating, extrapolating, and interpolating the world using and in relation to mathematical models, engineering/design is the art of constructing or assuming a set of obstructions and design restrictions - and then maximizing or minimizing various abstract variables to meet those restrictions as optimally as possible. the fact that it involves math is besides the point, as opposed to science. for example, let's take the engineering/design problem of producing energy without pollution - what might our set of obstructions include?

• minimize CO2 emissions -> zero emissions
• minimize emissions of "other" hazardous waste (problem with nuclear, batteries, electric cars)
• maximize distribution
• minimize centralization
• minimize capital $$ costs
• minimize $$ of energy production/maximize efficiency of whatever physical/chemical/biological process is involved
• minimize use of rare-earth elements (huge problem with solar cells)
• maximize energy produced per unit area of land
• minimize noise pollution
• minimize visual pollution
• minimize impact on animal habitats/behavioral patterns (problem with wind farms, wave energy)
• minimize dependance on space (i.e. sun shines/wind blows more intensely in some places than others)
• minimize dependance on time (ditto for time of day)
• minimize the concentration of these externalities in poor, rural socioeconomic areas

then of course, there is the process of critiquing the initial assumptions involved in framing the problem, however one chooses to frame it. in this case, the best critique of my statement of the design problem is: "who says that we have to keep consuming as much energy as we do in the first place?". i would respond that we know the theoretical limits of efficiency measures and that there is a strong, across-the-board correlation between cheap, reliable energy and quality of life. it would be a moral hazard to deny access to the same thing we enjoy to the 1/2 people in the world who don't over the next 50 years. assuming a just global society, energy use is going to go up - by a lot.

but that's besides the point, the point is to outline the general process that applies to any good engineering decision. but something interesting just happened. notice that every person would go through the process i just made differently in terms of ordering the list and accepting assumptions (even if we took people of the same moral bent). there is no equation that can resolve this conflict, that is because engineering/designing actual things (not just theorizing about the possibility of making them) is a personal, subjective process.

if the universe is turtles all the way down (which i think it is, in a sense), then a computer is subjective hacks all the way down. take this macbook pro im typing on right now. (that's right i've turned to the dark side...more on that another time perhaps.) steve jobs may be a ruthless totalitarian who should be ashamed to call himself a hippie, but he is the creator of one of the greatest industrial engineering processes ever to exist (apple). every decision (not all made by apple) from the layout of each etch in the thumbnail-sized piece of silicon that controls the probabilistic distribution of electron density to the fact that the little apple logo at the upper-left hand corner of my screen is 14 pixels from the left edge of the screen is a personal, subjective decision made by some engineer/designer at some point. this is a fact.

i love how people who have never done a lick of real engineering or design in their lives (read: EVERYONE - including most people who call themselves engineers), assume this is a cut and dried process. that somehow by knowing what the problem is, means that the solution is easy.

wrong. it is in designing the solution where all of the positive and negative actually happens. and this is the case whether one is examining a set of constraints being handed to an engineer or a policy that is passed by the legislative branch and handed to the executive branch.

What's that smell?

So I've thought about my meat consumption for a long time. That may or may not have to do with driving past Harris Ranch along the I5 many times a year throughout college. And it may or may not have to do with the fact that I only seem to date vegetarians.

Regardless, at this point it's clear to me (and seemingly to everyone who's thought about it) that the way we get most of our meat is radically unstustainable, unethical, and unhealthy. Huge amounts of cattle are crammed into tiny tiny lots, pumped full of antibiotics to help them grow to unnatural sizes, and shipped enormous distances to industrial slaughterhouses, leaving enough waste to be rival transport as the biggest contributor to global climate change. Americans eat this cheap meat three times a day and then worry about the "obesity epidemic." There's simply no question that this system must change.

How does a libertarian even begin to answer this problem? Consumer choice? Yeah right. If it were only about people getting fat, then maybe, just maybe, you could say leave it to the consumer, the individual is the only one who can know what's best for them. But we've got people getting fat, diseases evolving immunity to antibiotics, skyrocketing health-care costs, and an incredible amount of waste and green-house gas emissions contributing to potentially devastating climate change. The current trend in conscious consumerism is wonderful and hopefully it will mobilize a thriving economy of sustainable, ethical food production. But it will not transform the system.

At the end of the day you just need governance to limit the power of the profit motive. Even from a purely capitalist theoretical standpoint you have to be able to give consumers equal access to information. But beyond that you have to stop corporations from selling us destruction, or at least you have to force us to pay the full price.