Three Sigma Systems

NYT 8/31/2010 – Trapped Chilean Miners Forge Refuge

“…at 62 years old, Mr. Gómez is the oldest of the 33 miners trapped nearly half a mile underground here and has become the spiritual guide to his men…” Aside from Mr. Gómez, there is Luis Urzúa, the 54-year-old shift leader who organizes their work assignments, is helping to map the path of their rescue hole…”

I can think of no situation more likely to reduce a human being into a whimpering terrified animal greater than that of being buried alive almost 3000 feet underground. Given the generally accepted view of the economics of human nature we should expect initial panic to give way to a King Rat scenario in which the strong prey upon the weak and thereafter, even the strongest give in to the paralysis of terror and hopelessness.

But nothing of the sort is happening among the 33 Chilean miners trapped a half mile below the surface of the earth. What is happening is that these desperate men are acting out their human nature, which is to confront the challenges that life has placed before them with purpose and method. Given the problem they face, they have created a leadership hierarchy that defers to the wisdom of the eldest among them (Joseph Campbell’s “Gray Beards”). These elders have embraced the task assigned to them by willing followers, of focusing the group’s thoughts, deliberations and actions in ways that help them survive.

This self-organizing principle, in which human beings come together to confront the challenges that life puts before them with shared purpose and method is the essence of human nature. Over the millennia the forces of natural selection have built this modus operandi into our genome. This is what human beings do naturally —-unless that is, they are constantly bombarded with messages that intentionally obfuscate the nature of the challenges they face and systematically promote fear and loathing among them.

The misguided “sciences” of psychology  and economics base their sales pitch about human nature on the idea that humans function as economically self-interested individuals. But the economics of human existence are meaningless when regarded in terms of individuals. It is only in terms of our relations with one another in addressing life’s challenges, that human survival becomes possible. Then again, as Dr. W. E. Deming was fond of saying, “Survival is not mandatory”.

Current events should make it abundantly clear that the human race is in no less dire straights then the Chilean Miners buried deep in the earth. We need to stop listening to the “King Rat” claptrap that’s being dished-out in generous portions and come to grips with the challenges that life is putting before us. Once we do that, all that remains is for us to do what comes naturally.

A few days ago I sailed Songline down the California coast with the help of a few friends.

It was cold and windy and confused steel-gray seas heaved our bows this way then that.

For three days we helmed our little ship down each big wave with a rumbling whoosh and a seething sigh.

Hour after hour the miles rolled away under our keel. Whoosh then sigh. Whoosh then sigh.

For a few short days we four became one crew aboard a tiny wind machine, synchronized with the relentless rhythms of the sea,

Whoosh then sigh.

Now I am in port again and listening to news of Glenn Beck’s rally for God and country. No Whoosh. All sigh.

Slater OR Orr?

NYT, August 9 2010 – “Fed-Up Flight Attendant Makes Sliding Exit“

After a dispute with a passenger who stood to fetch luggage too soon on a full flight just in from Pittsburgh, Mr. Slater, 38 and a career flight attendant, got on the public-address intercom and let loose a string of invective. Then, the authorities said, he pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a dramatic exit not only from the plane but, one imagines, also from his airline career.

We know he’s crazy because he didn’t ask.

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Been there, done that!

NYT, August 2, 2010 – “F.B.I., Challenging Use of Seal, Gets Back a Primer on the Law”
The bureau wrote a letter in July to the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, demanding that it take down an image of the F.B.I. seal accompanying an article on the bureau, and threatened litigation: “Failure to comply may result in further legal action.”

What sets human beings apart from all other creatures is their penchant for investing inanimate things with transcendent power. In the early going the behavior of prehistoric man was shaped by animistic beliefs in which symbolic power was vested in the things of nature. Inspired by cautionary tales about the consequences of hubris, told and retold generation after generation, mountains, plants and animals, the clouds and the stars, where all vested with the powers of prediction, retribution, and forgiveness. These symbols served to shape man’s relation with nature into a moral whole that actually worked!

Incessantly innovative, it did not take a very big leap for animistic man to begin manufacturing his own transcendent symbols. These man-made symbols were also vested with power, but not the power of the natural world, but rather the power of men. Man’s MANufacturing of symbols marked the beginning of history, in which symbolic artifacts came to signify, legitimize and sanction differentials between human beings.

The symbolic power of manufactured artifacts — shamanic trinkets, totems, religious paraphernalia, badges, cash money, numbered accounts, and WMDs for example —  does not reside in the real and practical use of these artifacts, powerful though such use may be, but in imagined meanings experienced as inhering in these objects.  Once such objects become vested with meaning, their intrinsic meanings convey power to those who are able to possess and monopolize them. By this means, their possessors become able to exert dominion over others merely by displaying such objects. It stands to reason that if these manufactured symbolic objects can be readily reproduced by unauthorized agents, the system by which possessors exercise power and control over others is in serous danger of collapse.

The great revolution of the 21st Century is the ability to reproduce symbolic artifacts with great accuracy and ease, and to disseminate them at little cost. This is why for example, the U.S. Treasury has gone to such great lengths to protect the powers vested in our currency against high quality copying machines — an exercise in futility as Bernie Madoff proved and Goldman-Sachs continues to prove. It is likely that, in our digital age, the horses have already left the barn. Today the symbolic artifacts that embody power are readily counterfeited.  A fake Rolex and a fancy car purchased on no-down-payment credit can open locked doors. Need the powers of a Ph.D degree? Try here. Want to wield the priest’s cross? Go here. Want to flaunt the emblem of a United States Senator? Talk to Mr. Green. Need to instill fear and loathing with an FBI badge? Go here.

For better or worse, the legitimized power that resides in manufactured artifcats is fast becoming obsoleted into meaningless gibberish by technology. In a new age of constant con, the symbolic power that is generated by virtue of shared meanings invested in manufactured artifacts, can no longer be trusted. Perhaps we are in need of a new paradigm by which to organize our relations. Maybe there is a way to move forward towards a system of shared-meanings vested on our creative powers rather than in mystical objects of our own manufacture.  Such a system would not be built upon our belief in the power of our artifacts but upon the power of our responsible relations with others. This idea is not really all that novel.

Do you remember a few months back, when the U.S. media was busily burying Toyota’s reputation as the be-all and end-all of automotive quality? To me, the media’s myth-busting paroxysms came off more like a witch-hunt than investigative journalism. Now that their fear-mongering Toyota-bashing is no longer in the headlines comes this from NHTSA, who have been carefully investigating Toyota unintended acceleration reports.

“The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes.”

And,

“In spite of our investigations, we have not actually been able yet to find a defect” in electronic throttle-control systems, Mr. Smith told the scientific panel, which is looking into potential causes of sudden acceleration.

In the wake of the great Toyota panic of 2010, Toyota’s senior managers have tearfully apologized in public and Toyota’s engineers have created numerous fixes for problems still not found. As of February of 2010, Toyota estimated that their cost for recalls and lost sales at about two billion dollars.

In past posts on this blog I have expressed my feeling that there was a hidden agenda designed to play on the xenophobic tendencies of a declining nation that has squandered its edge in quality manufacturing and is now trying to claw its way back, not by rededicating itself to creating great products, but by denigrating its competition.

As I have said before, Toyota is just another automaker in business to make a profit. Their products are far from prefect, but have thus far been much better than anything produced by U. S. automakers. To begin to understand why this is the case we need only study Toyota’s corporate response to the media witch-hunt. Rather than dig their heels in with denials and blame-shifting (see BP oil spill), they bowed, apologized, bent with the wind and went on about the business of improving their products. Their response reflected what has come to be known as “The Toyota Way”. Meanwhile GM, having learned nothing, is giving lip services to digging itself out of the grave it dug itself into with a taxpayer funded sham product called the Volt (see NYT “G.M.’s Electric Lemon“)

No design is perfect and the imperfect design of Toyota vehicles certainly contributed to crashes. After all, if the operator of a vehicle can accidentally apply the gas rather than the brake, the gas-pedal next to the brake-pedal design could stand improvement. But the two billion dollar rush to judgement in the media was most certainly fueled by a desire to take the number-one automaker in the world (not made in America) down a few notches rather than a legitimate concern for product safety.

This is the same con as the one being used by the Republican Party in the U.S.  Rather than earn the respect and loyalty of customer-audiences by creating great product and improving it continuously, the Republican party spends all their effort attacking the other party’s products. This method has the benefits of being cheap, requiring no thought, and by creating nothing, immunizing it perpetrators from responsibility for their (not) products.

But there’s a downside to this technique as well, and I am not defending Toyota. I am attacking the con-artistry of U.S. business interests and media lackeys and more importantly, the gullibility of American audiences who mistake creating nothing for doing something. People who are lost in the funhouse had better wake up soon. These con-artists are shoveling dirt into our grave faster than we can dig ourselves out!

In a recent interview conducted at the University of Oregon, Seymour Hersh (no relation), a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist who writes for the NYT and New Yorker, invokes the Quaker wisdom that the moral imperative of the journalist is to “speak truth to power”. As I see it, the Quakerism applies to more than just journalists.

Hersh goes on to discuss two subjects of great interest to me: the myth of objectivity and the reality of our futile wars of adventure that prove most tragically, that we do not learn from history! I see his comments against a backdrop of ideologues and fools battling over petty self-interests in which we become caught up in deadly games of lies and deceits that render us helpless in solving the problems that threaten our survival as a nation and a species.

For a breath of fresh air, watch and listen to this interview.

NTY – “U.S. Economic Growth Slowed to 2.4% Rate in 2nd Quarter“

• The United States economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, after expanding a revised 3.7 percent in the previous three months.
• Nonresidential fixed investment…was a key driver of growth in the second quarter, rocketing up at an annual rate of 17 percent.
• Consumer spending… a leading indicator of a recovery in part because it accounts for such a large share of the economy, has been leveling off. It grew at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the second quarter, after an annual increase of 1.9 percent in the previous quarter.
• The personal savings rate in the second quarter was estimated to have been 6.2 percent.
• Imports spiked at an annual rate of 28.8 percent, the biggest jump in a quarter-century, compared with an annual increase of 10.3 percent in exports.
• Government spending shot up more than many anticipated, growing at an annual rate of 4.4 percent after a decline of 1.6 percent in the first quarter.
• Residential fixed investment spending on items like new homes grew at an annual pace of 27.9 percent in the second quarter. “This will almost certainly reverse hard next quarter,”
• Many economists to believe the recession that began in December 2007 is technically over… [but] The nation’s unemployment rate continues to linger just below 10 percent [and] Some forecasters have predicted even slower growth in the second half of the year, perhaps close to an annual rate of 1.5 percent.

“Given how weak the labor market is, how long we’ve been without real growth, the rest of this year is probably still going to feel like a recession,” said Prajakta Bhide, a research analyst for the United States economy at Roubini Global Economics. “It’s still positive growth — rather than contraction — but it’s going to be very, very protracted.”

Huh!?

So what do all these gyrating numbers — these supposed course indicators  — really mean?

The book “The Heart of the Sea” tells the story of the whaling ship Essex. Along with other whalers of the day, the entrepreneurial spirit led the captain and crew of the Essex to take ever greater risks in order to find and harvest the diminishing population of profitable whales.  On November 20, 1820, while killing the members of a sperm whale pod they located some 2000 miles west of the coast of South America, a member of the pod turned and rammed the Essex twice, breaking the ship’s back and sending her to the bottom. Regrettably, in their enthusiasm for the hunt for profits, the ship’s lifeboats were under-provisioned and neglected, as were any contingency plans should the complement’s adventures go awry.

The officers and crew of the Essex were competent sailors but in their recklessness, they became cast adrift in a situation in which the course indicators that had served them well in the past —- their charts, their ship’s performance characteristics, and their count of whales rendered — no longer applied. In their quest to profit their quarry had turned against them, transforming their intention to profit into a problem of survival.

During the three months that followed, the officers and crew of the Essex struggled to keep their lifeboats afloat and to divine some course of action that would take them to safety. As their situation grew more dire they repeatedly changed their plans, sometimes going this way and sometimes that. The numbers that had guided them in the past were no longer reliable in their new circumstance and in their final calculations they came to see their only salvation as cannibalism. By the time the last of the eight survivors from the original compliment of twenty-one were rescued on April 5, 1821, they had consumed the corpses of seven of the fellows.

It seems to me that in our obsessive drive to profit by entrepreneurship, we take ever greater risks in the interest of profits. As our harvests threaten to become diminished we reach ever farther for resources and markets that can be profitably exploited.

In some cases our folly comes in the form of our over reaching belief in our technologies of which the BP oil spill on but one small example. A confusion of senseless numbers continues to proliferate in that event. The confusion of numbers associated with climate change provides another indicator that we treading uncharted waters.

More significantly is the confusion of numbers that flow from our entrepreneurial adventurism around the world. We should not be surprised when the whales we have been hunting turn against us in an effort to break the back of our predatory ships. Osama Bin Laden is just one example of the ever increasing number of  whales who are turning against us in defense of their pods.

What the numbers tell me is that although we still imagine ourselves as noble hunters, ranging widely aboard a stout and well armed ships, we are actually already in the lifeboats, sizing up our shipmates for dinner.

AP Story: Bernanke: Fed to hold off on steps to aid recovery.

There is a general consensus today that in the upcoming elections the economy trumps all of the cultural issues that have long divided liberals and conservatives. On one extreme of the debate are those who believe that in the midst of our economic crisis, we must commit to spending whatever resources we possess, even borrowing more as needed, in order to restore our economy to a balanced forward motion. On the other extreme are those who say that we must harbor our resources, cut our expenditures and bide our time so that the economy can restore itself to its natural balance and growth.

Let me recount an experience I had that might help you decide which course of action you should support.

As readers of this blog know, I am an avid and lifelong sailor. Sailing is all about balancing natural forces through a process of continuous feedback and control. It is like walking a tightrope in which the enormous and impersonal natural forces of wind and sea can be turned to the seafarer’s advantage by finding and managing a dynamic balance point between those forces that enables forward progress.

At sea it is the situation that determines how the sailor selects a strategy. When the boat is in balance, only very small adjustments are needed to keep it on course and safely moving forward, but once the system becomes unbalanced, the conservatism of small adjustments is no longer sufficient. and more dramatic tactics become necessary.

Some years ago I was doing a solo race that took me some miles off the coast of Santa Cruz, California and well out of sight of other boats. On the upwind leg of the race things worked quite well, but then came the time to turn downwind and set the spinnaker. I clipped into a safety line and as I moved to the bow to hoist the sail an unexpected wave struck the side of the boat and I was thrown overboard into the cold waters of Monterey bay.

Although I had given thought to the possibility of going overboard and had taken the precaution of using a safety harness that clipped me to the boat, I was unprepared for the chaos that ensued once I was in the water and no longer controlling a balanced boat.

At first I wasn’t very worried. I was firmly tethered to the boat. All I needed to do was to get back onto the boat, retake control, and start racing again. But it wasn’t as simple as I had imagined.

To begin with, the boat began to oscillate out of control. First it would right itself because of the weight in the keel. Once righted, the partially hoisted spinnaker would fill with wind and violently knock the boat down again. The effect of these uncontrolled oscillations was to produce a zig-zag motion that dragged me through the water.

My plan had been to use the step at the back of the boat to get back aboard, but each time a tried to use the step, the violent motion of the boat pulled me back down into the water. After several tries I realized that my exertions, along with the cold water, were quickly sapping my strength. I also knew that in the Monterey Bay waters, hypothermia would start killing me after about 20 minutes of immersion.

It then dawned on me that my plan for recovering control of my boat had become untenable. My conservative strategy would be to ball my self up to save my body heat in the hope that, given more time, some external forces would solve my problem. My liberal option was to carefully devise an alternate plan and expend my rapidly waning resources on one go-for-broke effort at self-rescue.

Obviously, I survived that day and now I leave it to you to figure out which approach I used.

In retrospect, my brush with death at sea was a learning experience.

1. I have stopped racing sailboats alone. There is risk enough in putting to sea in small boats.

2. I now have a better understanding the dynamics of being thrown overboard and have created controls that I hope will work better should I ever be in that position again.

3. I know that my mitigation of risk will help make me a safer sailor but I also know that risk can never be eliminated. Sometimes loss of control will create situations in which one must one must go-for-broke to avert disaster.

Solo risk taking, the idea that unmanaged external forces will keep things balanced, belief that you can always be in control, and belief that you can predict all eventualities and devise foolproof methods of self-rescue, are all symptomatic of the thinking that got us into our current economic circumstance. How to go about rescuing ourselves from our delusions is not a matter belief. It is a practical matter that requires a sober estimation of our current situation.

Recently, my son, a young journalist, wrote an interesting story for the Santa Cruz Sentinel: “Despite significant health challenges, 15-year-old Santa Cruzan Tess Dunn finds herself rocking out ...”

The Online Etymology Dictionary explains the origins of the concept of “disease” a follows:

disease

early 14c., “discomfort,” from O.Fr. desaise, from des- “without, away” (see dis-) + aise “ease” (see ease). Sense of “sickness, illness” first recorded late 14c.; the word still sometimes was used in its lit. sense early 17c. Related: Diseased.

Early 14c., “discomfort,” from O.Fr. desaise, from des- “without, away” (see dis-) + aise “ease” (see ease). Sense of “sickness, illness” first recorded late 14c.; the word still sometimes was used in its lit. sense early 17c. Related: Diseased.

NYT, July 13, 2010 – “Rules Seek to Expand Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s“:

If the guidelines are adopted in the fall, as expected, some experts predict a two to threefold increase in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

The new guidelines include criteria for three stages of the disease: preclinical disease, mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease and, lastly, Alzheimer’s dementia.

Under the new guidelines, for the first time, diagnoses will aim to identify the disease as it is developing by using results from so-called biomarkers — tests like brain scans, M.R.I. scans and spinal taps that reveal telltale brain changes.

The changes could also help drug companies that are, for the first time, developing new drugs to try to attack the disease earlier. So far, there are no drugs that alter the course of the disease.

The trick to unraveling this con is to follow the money. In this case you, the mark, begin getting fleeced out of your most precious assets —  your money and your sense of well-being — upon being diagnosed with “preclinical” Alzheimer’s as much as 10 years before you lose your keys!

Doctors, MRI manufacturers and operators, drug companies, and snake oil salesmen get richer.

You and other preclinical sufferers like you, get poorer, even as you begin a pill-popping life as a prisoner condemned to an ignominious death without possibility of pardon.

This con is actually a variation of the oldest con in the book. In the ultimate diagnosis of preclinical disease, the day you are born you are sinful and you must spend the rest of your life in the shadow of your incipient affliction. Although there is no cure for your sinful nature, strong doses of the palliatives dispensed by high priests, along with ample tithing, can mitigate your misery and self-loathing.

At the root of the problem with our health care system is a treatment centered diagnostic terrorism that does more to create diseases and profits than enable human health and well-being.

See “Use a brain scanner, go to jail!“

See also: “That Uneasy Feeling“

CNN Money.com, June 26, 2010, Consumer Confidence News:

“Economists pay close attention to measures of consumer confidence as a proxy for consumer spending, which drives the bulk of the U.S. economy.

Wikipedia, Confidence Trick (Game):

A confidence trick or confidence game (also known as a bunko, con, flim flam, gaffle, grift, hustle, scam, scheme, swindle or bamboozle) is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills. Confidence men or women exploit human characteristics such as greed and dishonesty, and have victimized individuals from all walks of life.

Shills, also known as accomplices, help manipulate the mark into accepting the con man’s plan. In a traditional confidence trick, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be strangers who have benefited from performing the task in the past.

CNN Money.com, July 7, 2010 Ask the Expert (aka Ask the Shill),

Turning $200,000 into $800,000… [I]nvolves nothing more than some simple math. The kind of gain you’re shooting for requires a 6% annualized return, assuming you’ll reinvest your gains each year and that those gains will also earn 6% a year. ]T]o earn 6% annualized you don’t have to actually get 6% year in and year out. You could earn(?) more in some years and less in others. So, for brevity’s sake, to use an example over a three-year span, earning 10% one year, -2% the following year and 10.5% the next year would also work. The key word here is “potential.” When you invest in stocks and bonds, you may do spectacularly well some years (a 50-50 mix of equities and bonds earned 17.4% in 2009), fare poorly in others (the same blend lost 16.4% in 2008) and get so-so returns in yet other years (4.3% in 2005). You’ll find that you can significantly increase your odds of reaching your goal by investing more aggressively. For example, the odds of having $800,000 in 24 years jump to 31% if you invest 70% in stocks and 30% in bonds, and your upside also climbs significantly. There’s a 10% chance that you’ll have at least $1.3 million.

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!

How to Beat the Con

A greedy or dishonest mark may attempt to out-cheat the con artist, only to discover that he or she has been manipulated into losing from the very beginning. This is such a general principle in confidence tricks that there is a saying among con men that “you can’t cheat an honest man”.

Paul Krugman is not sleeping well. He is dreaming about the dragon at the gate. His column today predicts “The Third Depression” in which a deflationary spiral leads to prolonged unemployment that will relegate millions of young Americans to lives of hopelessness — a generation of the hopeless.

Krugman is a classic “liberal Capitalist”. His vision is one in which market  forces are the natural order of things, but that we must manage that order to avoid undesirable excesses. In the current situation, he believes, government must redistribute wealth in order to keep the market system alive. The medicine he prescribes makes perfect sense as far as it goes. It’s the back to normal part that haunts my dreams.

It seems to me that there are two ways of looking at our situation. Either we view the law of the jungle as natural and desirable, but exercise constant vigilance to hold the voracious beasts of the jungle at bay, or we rid the jungle of the voracious beasts by finding another way to keep everyone safe, happy and well fed.

I am reminded of the villagers who invited a fierce dragon to reside in a cave near the village gates in exchange for his protection and largess. Once ensconced in the cave, the dragon began making demands that the villagers set aside a dragon’s portion of their harvest in exchange for services rendered. To the villagers’ dismay, a vicious cycle ensued. As the villagers and the dragon prospered, the dragon’s appetite grew ever greater. With each passing year the dragon grew bigger and stronger and still more hungry. Soon, even the gratuitous sacrifice of the village’s young and innocent virgins was not enough to sate his hunger and temper his predacious instincts.

Given the dragon’s nature, many villagers realized that the day had come when they must slay the dragon or both the villagers and the dragon would die. When faced with this unpleasant prediction, the majority of villagers remained reluctant to undertake such a perilous task, preferring instead to round up more virgins.

And so it goes.

Merlin is an old time master. He can appear either as an old man with a long gray beard or as a young child, and it’s an important motif that appears in many, many mythologies You see childhood and age are eternal conditions. Between childhood and old age you live in a historically conditioned reality. In mid-life you are doing the jobs of your society. These are all historically conditioned roles, so people in midlife are culture bound. They are bound to their cultures.

The child — and there’s really only one child in the world — is a new and spontaneous living organism. When old age comes, we have done our bumping into this and that and all problems of the world. Our bumpers fall off. Our headlight go out. But looking across the great curve of a lifetime we have infancy and old age …. and so the one who can guide us in terms of transcendent rather than simply historical wisdom, is either the old man or the child.

Transcribed from Joesph Campbell lecture, “Power of Myth, the Grail Legend”

I have just finished reading “Why the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan” in the New Statesman. The article, by William Dalrymple, is the most definitive contemporary analysis of our doomed military enterprise in that far off land, that I have read up to this point.

One element of the story grabbed my attention. The tribal people of Afghanistan look to their gray-beards for insight and direction in their struggles with adversity. The author writes.

“The following morning in Jalalabad, we went to a jirga, or assembly of tribal elders, to which the grey-beards of Gandamak had come under a flag of truce to discuss what had happened the day before.”

I have traveled a great deal of the world, including Afghanistan, and I have come to appreciate the way in which some cultures value the wise counsel of their gray-beards — their Merlins. In our society, the culture-bound calculus of loss and profit has supplanted the transcendent wisdom that comes with age (we only need ask). We tally our winnings in a zero-sum game of profit and loss rather than value the quality of our lives as responsible and honorable members of an enduring community of fellow humans.

When gray-beard Dr. W. E. Deming was asked about methods for becoming successful, he always answered, “By what measure?”

Although I can find no authoritative figures for our NATO solider-to-Muslim kill ratio, one blogger estimates it at least 30 to 1, but probably much higher, he says. These numbers are quite profitable and one would think that our adversaries and their families would be ready to give up the fight, but it seems that our adversaries are using different accounting methods.

Where are our gray-beards when we need them?

In his NYT column today, “The Renminbi Runaround“, economist Krugman complains that the Chinese are playing unfair currency games.

“China’s exchange-rate policy is neither complicated nor unprecedented, except for its sheer scale. It’s a classic example of a government keeping the foreign-currency value of its money artificially low by selling its own currency and buying foreign currency.”

I like Krugman as much as I can like anyone who subscribes to the nonsense called economic theory. But the fact is that Paul is lost the funhouse. China has learned from us that the way to win the game is to manipulate the vig. In a reality that places profit as the highest calling, why waste energy creating something of value when you can churn money and con the other guy into making you rich? A sense of fair markets has nothing to do with making a profit. Just ask any whiz kid working on Wall Street.

Welcome to the funhouse!

It seems to me that we have become so dazed and confused by our own razzle-dazzle that we are now lost in our own funhouse. We are searching for ways to exit the maze but at each turn we find ourselves staring at the reflections of our own folly. The harder we try to get out, the more lost we become.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics reflects the universal observation that unless we put more energy into a system than we take out, the system will become increasingly anarchic, chaotic and cold. We call this “entropy“. Yet we have bought into this idea that it is right that we strive to profit, by which we mean that it is natural and good that each of us seeks to minimize our investment and maximize our return.

Most of us would be quick to spot the con-artist who tries to sell us a perpetual motion machine. For example, we would think twice before investing our hard-earned money in a car that we are told creates more fuel than it uses. But we blithely accept the idea that we can conduct our human affairs by taking more and more out while putting less and less in.

In our striving to get more for less — in other words in our quest for more feel-good “fun” — the system of human enterprise is fast becoming more chaotic and cold. Entropy makes no exceptions. In our quest for a perpetual motion machine, we have become lost in our funhouse.

Funhouse reflections in today’s news:

Economic chaos

Senseless warring

Environmental degradation

Reduction of biodiversity

Unpredictable climate

Militant belief

Poverty amidst wealth

Endemic fear and loathing

Perpetual Motion Machine