Choices: Often, we are not able to change a situation, but we can almost always make a choice about our response

     I have a long list of possible newsletter ideas which keeps getting longer. Sometimes, I go back to a topic I put on the list ten years ago and pick it. More often, it is something that popped up for me based on something I have seen or heard recently. When it does pop up, I try to make sure that I haven’t written about it recently. In this case, I thought it had been done within the last year and then I decided … not quite. I wrote about “Control” about a year ago. And control isn’t really the same as choice.

Control versus Choice

     So, what’s the difference? Control says that your choices/decisions will lead to a determinate goal. Choice points out your ability to take a current situation and lead off from there to various potential destinations. Potential is the powerful word. We might subdefine it (in either a fully subjective way or in a “calculated” manner that probably has a lot more assumptions in it of which we are not aware) as likely, unlikely, good, bad, and so forth. Not only do we assign (consciously or not) a label to the choices but there are many. These always include the choice of not doing anything.

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Limitation of Choices

     There are a lot of situations that lead people to say “there is no choice”. Many of these have special names such as “Sophie’s Choice” or “Catch-22” or “Morton’s Fork”. The idea is that, because of our subjective analysis of the potential choices, many can/must be ruled out immediately and, therefore, is not a legitimate choice. But, they really are choices and it is unlikely that the choices are as limited as what we see.

     The simplest of choices is a binary one. Do it or don’t do it. I don’t think it is ever really that simple but it can seem that way to us. Breathe and live for a bit longer or don’t breathe and die sooner. Although I tried to be accurate in my descriptions, I am sure that most of you immediately start seeing additional “sub-choices”. Do I place myself in a situation in which I cannot change my mind (throwing away my helmet while doing a space walk seems hard to change)? Or am I in a voluntary situation where, once the carbon dioxide level in my blood has built up enough, my body takes over and my diaphragm moves “all by itself”? (It is very hard to die via holding your breath if you are sitting in a chair and very easy if you are resting on the bottom of a pool.)

     We are often presented with (or present ourselves with) a limitation of choices. This can be called a “false dilemma” because there are almost always other choices. Some may no longer be present because of waiting too long. Others will “pop up” when time elapses. If you ever find yourself saying “it’s either this or that” then sit back and take some time to comb through the possibilities. In other words, choices always exist but planning ahead can give a person better, more favorable, choices.

Elections and Apparent lack of choice

     In life, we often are faced with choices where we don’t like any of the choices (remembering that not making a choice IS making a choice). Elections often evoke this irritation. What has really happened is that choice has been delayed past the primaries and other possibilities have been discarded. We will hope (probably without reason) that the best candidates have made it through the preliminary processes. But we don’t like either of them. What to do?

     IF it is true that both candidates are “equally bad” then voting or not really makes no difference. But that is highly unlikely. Often, when someone says the choices are “all bad” (or “both bad”) it means that neither really speaks to them as a potential voter. Either a voter wasn’t active during the primaries or they have a specific issue, or set of issues, that don’t seem to be important to the candidates currently available to receive our vote.

     Believe it or not, that one issue does not define a candidate. Maybe you don’t care whom they hate but maybe you do. Maybe you don’t care where they get their campaign money from or maybe you do. Maybe you don’t care how they treat their staff and family or maybe you do. There is very likely to be a candidate that really IS “worse” (according to your own preferences). Guess what!!!! If one candidate is worse than the other then that other candidate (according to your judgement) is BETTER. And that better candidate may lose if you don’t bother to vote just because they aren’t “perfect”. (Still, my opinion is that you should have gotten involved in the primaries and helped to put forth better candidates.)

Too many choices leads to choice paralysis

     Yes, there can be a thing as too many choices. Both heading out of high school and between jobs as an adult, I went through career counseling and workbook procedures. They gave me lots of tests (I also went through tests with a Naval recruiter and he just would not leave me alone after testing) that were to tell me what I was, or could be, good at. They were supposed to narrow down my aptitude, skills, and direction such that I could consider from a small set of possibilities. All they did was to say “you can do whatever you want” which was of zero value.

     Unless a specific choice “shines” for you and makes all other potential choices hard to consider, you will be trying to make a choice by making use of a process of elimination. As mentioned above, if given only two choices, one will almost always be better even if that choice is “not good enough” as far as your feelings go. When you have multiple choice, you have to rate each one and keep discarding the “worst” choice for each round.

     When I have an election to choose among candidates, I go through the descriptions and, for each candidate, give them a “-” for each thing I don’t like and a “+” for each thing I do like. Adding them up after reviewing all (-1 for “=”, +1 for “+”) I hope to come to a number. Get rid of the lowest and leave either the single highest or the group with the same highest number. Multiple left, try to evaluate again, and be pickier. Although I think it happens MUCH less often than I hear from fellow voters, it IS possible you will be left with more than one with the same score. Pick according to your own subjective insight or use a dart board.

Sophie’s Choice

     As in the book,or movie, a sadist may force you to choose one of two horrible fates. I have no advice to make such a situation less painful. May God, or the universe or whatever, guide you and console you.

Conclusion

     Choices give you a chance to change the odds for your future. It may not be easy. You may have been provided a situation, from which to make that choice, that makes all options less visible and makes all options have more bad aspects. Choice is still your influence on the future. Blessed be.

Leading, and loaded, questions: And other ways to bias questions and polls.

      “When did you stop beating your spouse?” Ludicrous, but such questions happen. By phrasing the question such that some type of foundational axiom is assumed, you bias the situation and make it very difficult for the person to answer. In a poll, the answer, “I have never beat my spouse” is highly unlikely to be part of the limited choice of answers. In a direct interview, it is easy to edit the situation to make the reader or viewer assume that there is some basis for the question. A firm denial may make the responder sound defensive. Perhaps the best response, in a verbal exchange, would be to invoke humor — respond with “that’s the question I was planning to ask you!”.

     Such questions can be called leading questions, loaded questions, presupposition, or begging the question. In the court of US law, this situation of embedding an accusation within a question, is called “leading the witness”. The same thing can occur with inexperienced counselors and can be part of the process for implanting false memories.

Some additional leading questions examples (derived from Google searching):

• “You enjoyed the movie, didn’t you?”

• “How much do you love our new product?”

• “Wouldn’t you agree that our service is the best in the industry?”

  Any question that requires a “yes/no” response — that is not referring to factual data — is almost always leading. “Does 2 come after 1” is a factual question with a binary response. “Do you approve of Politician A’s desire to improve schools” is a question with two embedded biases — it states there is a politician’s desire that may, or may not, exist and it gives a vague directive that few would disagree with (“desire to improve schools”).

It is too easy to manipulate from either direction — the question or the responses.

     Have you ever encountered a poll (or a test, for that matter) where you said “Where is option E”? For polls, that is often deliberate. For tests — well, they probably don’t do it deliberately but it is probably done because of too little, or too much, experience.

What is the color of the sky?
a) Red
b) Yellow
c) Blue
d) Green

     The creator of the test PROBABLY meant the answer to be C (blue) but have you ever seen a sunset, or sunrise, that contained red, yellow, or orange? Very likely. It would have been better to rephrase the question to “What color is the sky, when not obscured by clouds, most of the time?” By the way, it is not unusual for the sky to appear green near tornadoes.

     I have seen something very similar to the following in a poll. I found it amazing that anyone would not see it as just a way to implant false information — but, apparently, many don’t see it that way. Note that it misleads on BOTH the question and the response.

How do you feel about the Democrats’ open door policy for immigration?

a) I think it is wonderful
b) I think it is terrible
c) I think all Democrats should feel ashamed
d) The policy should be squelched immediately

     Of course, Democrats have never had an “open door policy for immigration”. But the question indicates that they have had such a policy and, unfortunately, many people do not do any research on their own — so they believe it. Embedding lies within a question is a time-honored (though not honorable in any other way) method for politicians to mislead. There should be an “e” response:

e) I think the creator of this question should be seated at a blackboard and be required to write “I will not lie” 500 times.

     I am sure that there are questions with embedded lies for other political party situations — but I have seen the above sent in an email. As mentioned in a recent newsletter, it is always dangerous to just believe what you read or have been told. Research, get multiple viewpoints and data sources. What you hear is NOT necessarily what exists. Polls can indirectly lead people to accept lies as truth, and a bad poll question can lead many a recipient astray.

Watch out.

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AI Caution: AI does have limitations to be aware of

     I took an AI course at the University of Idaho in the fall of 1976. Forty-nine years later they are releasing products that have that name associated with them. Is this the same AI as was talked about in 1976? No, not really. If you search for what kinds of AI exist, you will get various lists according to capability, functionality, and techniques/approach. The current AI implementations are at the beginning levels — often called “Narrow”.

     The course that I took in 1976 was more a matter of showing early investigation of programs such as Eliza and early approaches to Machine Learning (ML). Memory capacity, as well as CPU capabilities, were very, very small compared to that of today — and that limited implementations of various approaches. As is true of all computer programs, the main advantage of the computer doing it is that it can do things very, very, fast. Today’s computing power can achieve results only dreamed of in 1976. (And, if the reality is desired, it takes a lot of electricity and hardware to provide the capabilities even today.)

GIGO

     Current Narrow AI implementations such as ChatGPT, Siri, Google maps, or facial recognition are focused on a single type of task. Even the task of answering questions (ChatGPT, etc.) is a single focus. Responses are made according to the data that the program has had access to — and the training (yes/correct, no/incorrect) about appropriate responses. Two problems (among many) arise — are the data that are examined valid (do they meet definitions of facts and correctness) and is there bias (usually according to the trainer) — if they are given proper data but the trainer tells them to reject the proper data in favor of dubious, or clearly incorrect, data?

     Whether it is because of faulty data sources or deliberate subversion by the trainer, these are instances of “Garbage In Garbage Out” (GIGO). This is an old term used by early programmers but it is still valid today. If bad data are part (or all) of the input then the output cannot be trusted. A search response collator (such as ChatGPT) must be treated the same as individual searches which bring back various “hits” at different websites. In other words, even responses from “AI” bots need to be fact-checked.

     Even though you should not blindly trust the output, the use of a Narrow AI can be very useful. It can be used to very quickly gather, compare, and present results similar to the results if you had done a search (or multiple searches), read through the contents, and correlated the contents. The differences are that the Narrow AI can do it much faster but, since it does not have true creative/interpolating intelligence, it does have the caveats mentioned above.

Creativity

     When a Narrow AI presents you with a result in the form that you might submit somewhere or directly use, recognize that this is an “average” of many sets of example data. Although the definitions of such things as “average” are a bit vague — you will be presented with results that are somewhat the average of many possible results. It is very unlikely to be of the very highest quality but is likely to be adequate for your purposes. Personally, unless you have absolutely no skills in the area of the query, I would suggest using the AI result only as a starting template. Change, emphasize, and make it your own.

Permissions

     When a Narrow AI is trained on data, it just grabs data from wherever it has access. When presenting results, the sources are fully hidden from the user. Unlike what would happen if you did the same research, it is difficult (perhaps impossible) to know how much came from this and how much came from that. There is no explicit cautioning about taking the source into consideration and respecting intellectual property rights. This is a legal issue that needs to be pursued (soon) by various governments and legal bodies.

Timeliness

     When you do a search through the Internet, you have the option of age of responses. However, one of those options is to get only the very latest (say — past month) data. When you use a collating “AI” search bot, you do not know just how old the data are. During the first beta testing periods of the various collating search bots, they had an explicit warning that data was obtained only from sources older than a specific date — current data was not included. Lately, such warnings have disappeared but that does not mean that the latest data is incorporated. Given the way that these programs must be trained, it is very unlikely that the latest data are used.

Summary

     Use of an AI program can be beneficial. It can help you create a good, average, example of your desired result. It can speed up searches and correlations of large amounts of data. Results will not be as good as that from expert human intelligence. And there are potential permissions conflicts. Do not treat AI collating bot results as firm, objective, truth — treat all results the same as you would of any other search of data throughout the Internet — with care and a need for fact-checking of potentially subjective results.

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Control: The Addictive Illusion

 I would love to be able to control my life. Control the fates of the country, the world, the challenges of the loved ones in my life. I can’t. No one can. That doesn’t mean to imply that we are powerless. We can help to make certain paths more likely and other paths less likely. We are movers of statistical probabilities!

But, somehow, that doesn’t sound all that impressive. It doesn’t sound like something to put on a tombstone or as part of a eulogy.

We are all going to die. Unless some dramatic discovery pops up, we have very little ability to even change our death date in a positive manner. (There are a lot of ways to change it in a negative manner.) A lot of the “do this and live longer” people have finally admitted that it isn’t true. So, they have moved to “do this and feel well longer”. I think this is a very healthy migration. Certainly, it is more accurate and, perhaps, by being more honest more people will be open to the message.

     There are many things that can happen to vividly demonstrate that we do not really have control over events of life. “Acts of God” are a group that is becoming more prevalent of late — due to climate change and shifts in population growth and the direction towards which many direct their hopes. Pay that final mortgage payment — earthquake! Farmers are especially susceptible to such — if one saves and budgets then most of the time a person can survive the lean years (and, due to droughts, floods, mechanical calamities, infestations, etc — there will be some). But, change the statistical frequency of events and all bets are off.

     There are also events, which abruptly change potential paths, that cannot be considered “Acts of God” — because they appear to be in the hands of people. Study for six years to obtain a degree in a field that, at the start of study, seems “lucrative and stable”. Public tastes change, technological “breakthroughs” happen, people wielding power make absurd decisions — what was once stable is now a platform of gelatin. Do your best to protect your family by taking only public transportation — and a drunk driver wipes out much of the family when you are walking along the sidewalk. Even when the statistical situation is stable, there is never a guarantee that you won’t be on the losing end of the curve.

     All that is about control of yourself and the world around you. Control of others? Please, please forget about that. It is possible to create confining parameters to greatly limit choices — a virtual, or physical, prison — but choices always exist even if none of them are desired. With choices, control vanishes. That does not mean to imply that people’s situations are their choices. Control doesn’t exist anywhere. And most might choose to live under very restrictive circumstances rather than the choice of death.

     Except for the method of imposing restrictions on choices, we cannot control anyone (including ourselves). We can, however, provide incentives and encouragement to persuade others (and ourselves) to want to change. We cannot make others happy but we can do things, say things, and work to arrange things such that they are more likely to allow themselves to feel happy. We cannot, and do not, make others angry — their reactions are up to them to choose. But, by pushing their “buttons” we can help to create conditions such that they are more likely to choose to be angry. And by creating conditions that they associate with happiness, we help them to allow themselves to be happy.

     People recognize that we cannot control the weather. They recognize we cannot control the traffic lights when we drive (at least, not most of us). There are other things “out there” that people acknowledge we cannot control. But most of us still think there are aspects of ourselves and others that we can control. Would that it were so.

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Choices: They always exist

 

     "I don't like either choice." "Why bother? Neither choice is any good." "I'm going to wait until there is a choice I like." One of the most glaring indications of the failure of students to come out of their formal, or informal, education with the ability to discern logic is that of not understanding the ability to reverse the direction of comparison. By this, I mean that if one object is worse than the other then -- automatically -- that means the other choice is better than this one. Having a "good" choice is not required for a person to make a better choice. "All" it requires (more easily written about than done) is to be able to compare choices.

     "Ah. But if I don't like either choice then I am indicating my opinion by not making a choice." Nope, you're just improving the odds of whatever you consider to be the worst of the choices. NOT making a choice for the better choice is equivalent to improving the chance of the worse choice being chosen. Or, in mathematical terms, no "+1" to the better choice becomes (by not making a choice) "+0" and the comparison is closer.

     It is possible that both choices truly are awful -- perhaps such that you aren't easily able to make a decision as to what is worse. At this point of choosing, there may be no possibility to create, or find, other choices that you consider an improvement. You are forced to fall back to choosing the better of the two. It is also an indication that you need to improve the selection of choices for the future.

     This can happen within a democracy where there are two (or more) stages of the electoral process. By the time of the election, a choice must be made between candidates. But, before that, there is a process where the candidate is chosen between various possible candidates. If you don't like either choice in the current election, then NEXT time get involved earlier in the process (and, for the current time, vote for the less bad). And getting involved doesn't stop at attending rallies -- you have to participate and then actually vote. But, that's for the next election. For this one, vote for the better.

     Lack of making a choice does not change inertia. A rudderless boat will move but only according to the whims of the wind and the waves. Making choices is a core aspect of leadership. Even a poor choice (if evaluated and changed when it is known it is the wrong one) is better than none because it allows focus of energy and future choices. There are a few special cases where only an informed choice is useful. Any other, non-informed, choice is just a guess -- and guesses are not necessarily an improvement.

     My wife and I like to watch Jeopardy! on a daily basis. Every so often, there will be a situation where the "question" is unknown to the contestants. One person guesses and fails. Then another person guesses and fails also. At this point, I am imploring the person on the television (yes, I know this is irrational as they cannot hear me) to "don't guess, don't guess". At this point, the person who has NOT guessed is "up" in relation to the other contestants (contestant A down x amount, B down x amount, the person not having guessed is UP x amount in comparison to A and B) -- they are in the same position as if they were the person to have guessed the question correctly. Of course, it they know the answer, answering is great. But if they also guess and fail they have just lost their competitive advantage. Yet, many of these third contestants are "caught up" in the moment and guess also.

     "Hobson's Choice" is a situation where there is really only "one choice". That is an illusion. There may be only one non-ludicrous choice but there is always the choice of doing something or not doing it. Get angry or don't get angry. Push the button or don't push the button. The consequences of one of those choices may not be acceptable (and the other barely acceptable) but we are really back into the same situation described in the first paragraph -- choosing the better of alternatives.

      We cannot create what is happening now but our choices often start processes on a path which will lead to future situations and choices. The choices of today make a difference for the future. We are always in the midst of a decision tree where each choice presents us with a different set of choices depending on that original choice.

     And not making a choice is still a choice.

Causation versus Triggering: Keeping our power

      "He made me sad". "She made me angry". "They keep me so frustrated". Do any of these phrases sound familiar to you? Do you ever think about them in preparation to not have it happen again? What do you consider? How do you approach future prevention?

     I certainly would never try to say that a person hasn't done something that you reacted to. They break that expensive vase that has been in the family for years. They track mud and leaves all over a freshly cleaned and waxed floor. He borrowed your car when you were about ready to leave for a job interview. And there are much worse actions that may become part of your life.

     But most people use the word "cause" (or "made" or "keep") in a way that isn't real. If something CAUSES something else then the result is (almost) universal. Whenever A is done then B is the result. If B sometimes happens and sometimes it does NOT happen -- then there is no "cause".

     Let's look at it in a different way. We have two households. In each household, a running child causes a vase to be broken. In the first household, the person in charge gets angry and reacts with harsh language -- perhaps even gets violent. In the second household, the person in charge exclaims, then laughs, and then has the child stop so they can discuss what has happened, how behavior needs to change for it not to happen again,  and possibly what the child needs to do to make up for the problem (they probably need to clean up their mess -- perhaps they also have to save up their allowance to buy a new lamp).

     The initial action (breaking the vase) is the same. The results, or reactions, are very different. Thus, breaking the lamp did NOT "cause" anger. There are characteristics, within the person in charge, that are different -- making each more likely to react differently.

     And that is the way it is with most things in life. There is an action. There may be a dominant reaction -- something that most people do in reaction. But there are alternate reactions possible -- many of which may be more productive.

     As a former child and as a current parent, I recognize that there are always "buttons" that can be pushed with people. Children are especially good at discovering these -- and making use of them. "If I do THIS, then they will react like THAT". Everyone has different "buttons". The full statement should be "If I do THIS with THIS person, then THIS person will react like THAT". Different person, potentially different reaction. Different person, different "button" in effect.

     And that is the way of the world. No one can control the actions that occur -- by other people, by nature, by the universe in general. But we have a LOT of control over how we react.

     Consider that next time you hear yourself say "that makes me so angry". Just why is it so?

Three Wishes: The Djinn out of the bottle

 

     I don't know how universal of a practice it may be but, when I was growing up, at some time or other the question would come up "if you had three wishes, what would you wish?" Answers would vary tremendously. Someone would point out how many stories have the granter of wishes (usually a Djinn, or Genie -- sometimes Lucifer, depending on whether it was a morality tale) finding the loopholes within a wish. Using that loophole, the granter could often make the wish be a terrible thing to obtain.

     Within US culture, one story that has been repeated in prose and video is that of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (by Stephen Vincent Binet). A frustrated, desperate man makes a deal with the devil exchanging his soul for current worldly success. As life continues, he finds that that material success does not bring the joy he had expected and wants to leave life with his soul. Daniel Webster, a New England politician and statesperson known for his oratory was begged to plead his case before a jury consisting of others that the devil had once swindled.

     In the above example, a wish was made (in exchange for something) and it was found to not be a wise wish. There are other examples of wishes twisted by the granter. Midas' wish for "The Golden Touch" left him in a situation where he could no longer pick up food to eat as the food would become gold and inedible.

     In the story "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain, the emphasis is on the double-sided aspect of wishes. If I wish for success am I also wishing for failure for another? If I ask for rain for my crops, is this water being taken from someone else who may experience drought? A wise, careful, wish would come up with a win-win response -- but how many of us have that wisdom? Especially if the granter is deliberately trying to twist the wish?

     The recipient of the wish also may try to get around the limitation on wishes. Such as having "I wish for an infinite number of wishes" as the first wish. That's always disallowed. There may be other restrictions. Some are good restrictions. Can't wish for anyone's death, for example. Some may appear to be unreasonable restrictions. But, as is true of any granter of wishes and rewards, the rules are defined by the granter.

     Wishes are not the same as plans. A wish requires a granter. A plan may include the actions of others but it is moved forward by the efforts of the person who wants the results of the plan. If you "wish" something will happen, you are saying that it is up to someone, or something, else to make it come true. If you "wish upon a star" then, somehow, that star will bring about the result that you want.

     Through the years, I have contemplated on what my three wishes would be. Have you done something similar? About ten years ago, I decided upon a wish (first, or only) that might work. I doubt I'll ever get the opportunity to find out. Meanwhile, I can work on plans.

It comes as a bundle -- one cannot pick and choose

     I love broadleaved deciduous trees and forests. I love the way they provide wonderful shade in the summer and the way the leaves vanish to let the sun through in the winter. I love the rustling sound they make in the wind and the slow unique shapes that they don throughout the course of their lives. Note that I have nothing against coniferous trees -- I just happen to love deciduous trees.
     However, for broadleaved deciduous trees to thrive, they do best with humidity -- particularly "cold-deciduous" trees for which leaves are lost due to cold -- and I strongly dislike humidity. The areas where they gather tend to reinforce their own region of higher humidity due to their higher transpiration rates.
     I grew up in a high humidity area -- without air conditioning -- and not-very-fondly remember flipping my pillow and myself on top of the bed in the night attempting to feel cool enough to sleep. But there were lots of deciduous trees all around with their beginning slender trunks and their older, uniquely shaped, trunks and profiles. They were the trees with which I grew up. Later in my life I moved to drier climates and, although I did enjoy the lack of humidity, I missed all of the wonderful leafy trees. So, in order to have what I love, I also have to have what I don't like so much.
     I enjoy food. But too many calories, too much sugar or fat, or unbalanced nutrition is not good for me. So, I have to notice what, and how much, I eat. It isn't always easy and it is very tempting, especially in modern U.S. society, to get what is easily available, inexpensive, and not necessarily the best for me. So, I cannot just eat what I love -- I have to balance it with conscious decisions. I won't say that it is BAD to have to make those conscious decisions -- they are probably very good but they are part of the bundle.
     In order to work in a job, you have to be able to get to the job and back. I interviewed for one job in a town and the work seemed very interesting and the co-workers pleasant and intelligent. But the commute would have been 75 minutes of heavy traffic each direction (2 1/2 hours per day). All part of the bundle.
     A more complex situation is where a person finds a job that they love but it doesn't pay enough to maintain current familial expectations of living circumstances. Change your schools, housing, and general budget or find a different job that does not appeal as much but can support your current living situation?
     Do you love the ocean? Do you want to live near a beach? Well, it will either cost more than away from the beach or you will have less living space and closer neighbors. Or on a mountain side with a view of the city? The more people who want a location, the more other things one needs to accept as a consequence (more money, less space, ...). It all comes as a bundle.
     Do you want to have a bodybuilder's physique? Be prepared to do a lot of things -- specific and regular exercises, revised and strict diet, possibly even shaving the body if you want to enter competitions. You just cannot have the one thing without having to do all the others.
     How about relationships? Is everything exactly as you would like it -- ever? If so, hearty congratulations.
     There are lots of things that are possible in the world but few are isolated from other things -- and we have to take them as a bundle.