Wonder and Doubt: Solved by Machines

Reading about how IBM's Watson computer is learning to make pastries on NYTimes.   If we had the right Bayesian statistics, the right DNA code (to predict likelihood of gene X "liking" taste Y), and the supercomputer to put them all together... theoretically you'd have a Utopia where everyone always got precisely what they ordered in life.  The right taste, the optimum number of calories.  Maybe Watson can even do Kosher...

Taking the hypothesis of ultra intelligence to its next step, what if we really know the absolute outcome of every recipe we make in life?    Not fake, not "The Truman Show".  What if our experience and judgement and data and correct premises were increased a thousand-fold, or by a million?   If we could almost intuitively anticipate the "butterfly effect?"

It might make life incredibly boring.   Would we be like cattle or ants, grazing?   Grazing on lots of different ideas and information, but all predictable, and it would pass through us like cud.

Or we might replace the "risk" and uncertainty by expanding our horizons geographically, taking what we know and are certain of, and placing ourselves in new frontiers.  "Star Trek" or "Dr. Who" is a way we can always imagine shaking things up, going to other solar systems, to seek out new worlds and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before.

Trying new foods is good.  Eat the same thing, every time, is like ... eating grass.

What if we actually make ourselves feel more in command of all information by reducing the amount of information?  What if we limit our geography so much that we really do know and can anticipate an extremely high percentage of what we encounter?  Instead of a hypothesis where we increase our intellect a million-fold, and then reach outside the solar system, why don't we shrink our system so that the intellect, intelligence, and data we have is preponderant.

If we put our butterflies in fishbowls, or vacuum tubes, their effects will be easier to predict.

When an African really wants to buy something from me... not everything, not all assorted junk, not 75% of the "e-waste", but something rather specific - say a 17" display screen (which will light up in a slum with electric current too weak for a 27"), I may have to admit I don't know what will "ultimately" happen to it.  Perhaps I cannot predict the fate of the monitor in our custody.

If we shred it together with the 32" TVs and obsolete printers and clickety keyboards, and spit out a stream of shredded plastic, shredded copper, aluminum, and steel, drawn by magnets, optical sorters, and eddy currents, then I don't really need Watson to make the decision what to sell anymore.   Everything is now a commodity, a stream of raw material.

Moo.

Banning the Exportation of Ladders

We would be heartless to ignore the images.   Poor child workers, huddled over fires, stoked with the coals of yesterday's technology.   As westerners spend more and more lavishly on shiny smart phones, flat screens, and tablets, with the world's wiki-media at our fingertips, it seems apt to pause and think about the impact of the wealthy's consumption on the planet's resources, and of the worlds poor, left seemingly farther and farther below us, inside a muddy pit of toxic fumes.

Photographers like Pieter Hugo capture the wet irritation in the eyes of the black teenager.  Filmmakers like David Fedele slowly let the reel turn and record the images of kids trying to make a living off of the scraps of electronics once imported into their cities.

Cairo, Lagos, and Accra, the megalopoleis of urban growth, stream with cell towers and internet today.  But the poor just outside those cities, at their unlined, unregulated, unspoken dumps, seem to stretch their arms out of a moat.  Their slow effort to climb out of poverty, through urban mining, makes Europeans and Americans feel guilty, ashamed of our wealth.  Reminded of these "poster child" recycling workers, seemingly without even boots to lift as they climb, we want to check a box.  We want to say we are certified.  We want to pass a law, a ban, to address the unfamiliar black faces hauling too familiar CRT televisions, VCRs, and refrigerators.  To say we have done our part for Africa and change the topic.  Turn the page, please, make the images go away.

There are indeed many important topics in the so-called "third world".

• Endangered species poaching.
• Sex trade.
• Toxic alleuvial gold mining.
• Blood minerals.
• Crime.
• Despotism.
• Child soldiers.

How much of our time should we devote to "e-waste"?  Where does it belong on this list?

The Economist: Follow the Fixers

From this week's The Economist:  Follow the Fixers

Who to partner with in Africa, if you are trying your hand at business development?

"AS GLOBAL investors salivate over Africa's economic growth, Ashish Thakkar, founder of the Mara Group, explains why success still hinges on local knowledge"

I repost this because it's very close to my takeaway, when I left Africa, thinking "I shall return".   The people who fix things, who tinker, who repair.  They tend not to be liars.  It's not the way a Fixer's brain is wired.

This interview by the Economist with African development expert Ashish Thakkar says much the same thing.

"What do you think is the single most important thing..." to help Africa?

Answer:  People who make improvements.   Follow people who fix things.

Term Paper: Poorly Defined Problems, Rules, and Bias

The Term Paper Theme in the blog (past 3 months) has been a real stretch.   I'm just not able to write a Ph.D thesis from the coffee lounges of hotels, at least not writing which is accessible to non-academic readers.   But I write on.  If there is something "breaking" I think industry should know, I promote it so it gets the 500 page reads.  But the goal is not to have every post widely read.

The biggest problems in the E-Waste and WEEE research-osphere have been from documents like West's of MIT which are written densely but don't define what they are researching sufficiently enough to escape the gravity of bias against trade between Rich and Poor.  Two examples in the past 4 months actually reprint the "80-90% export to primitive recycling" statistic which even BAN.org has abandoned after the UNEP duplicated previous research (Peru) showing only 15% of the exports are for primitive recycling.

Why the stubborn belief that Externalization of toxics from rich to poor describes most of the trade?  In my previous "@term paper" blogs I showed how enforcement does police higher property values, which is why you can't mine gold in the Cleveland Heights OH... and I've written how ROHS inadvertently externalizes a very very small risk (leaded solder) from rich people landfills by destroying coral reefs and creating more toxics in Indonesia (where tin, the non-toxic replacement, is found).   Externalization does happen.  But the fact it happens should not make it believeable that poor people in developing nations pool their money to buy  e-waste and pay thousands to transport it across oceans, through customs, to burn it.

My company ships TVs to our Fair Trade Recycling operation, Retroworks de Mexico.  We pay the transport there.  But that is rare.   Most exports are paid for by the buyers.  We've pretty much proven they have no interest in the junk (unless it's mixed in as TAR), that they have high reuse.  But even a big name consultant like DSM Environmental reprints the fake 80% statistic in a report less than a month ago.

Why the persistant belief in false risks?   Muggings do happen in Harlem, but 80% of Harlem residents are not muggers.  Today's thesis:  Opinion favors the concept of "underdogs".  That is probably genetic ("won't someone please think of the children").  And it is marketed to by all sides, conservative and liberal.  People are more likely to interfere in the marketplace if they believe one of the two parties is an underdog.

Case Study:  Arkansas vs. Florida, Maryland vs. Duke (NCAA basketball)

Humans have an innate or genetic trigger to prefer "Underdogs".   I explained to my youngest son last night why his older brother and I were rooting for Maryland in the final minutes of the NCAA game vs. #2 Ranked Duke.   I'm a fair weather NCAA basketball fan... when my hometown Arkansas Razorbacks beat previous #2 Florida a couple of weeks ago, it got my attention, and I started watching games again.

Export Trade Bracket:  The Externalization Tournament

Warhol Billionaires: The Good News about Phishing, Piracy, Bank Account Compromises

I've done a calculation based on the increase in news stories about proxy bank account compromises, phishing, identity theft, and piracy.

It turns out, at the current rate of increase of online bank fraud attempts, hacking, and proxy server compromises, that we can now project the following:   in the next 50 years everyone in the world, all 13 billion, will be billionaires...  For 15 Minutes of Wealth.   At that time their "15 minutes of life savings" will be snatched and re-deposited to the next billionaire.  And so on, and so on.

It's actually better than Communism, maybe.  The wealth will learn to move so fast that people won't be able to possess it long enough to be spoiled by it.