Monday, May 31, 2010

Seven Summit Super Cycling Sufferfest Spectacular

Seventy-five miles by bike. Twenty miles and 5,800 vertical feet by hike. Last weekend I completed the Seven Summit Super Cycling Sufferfest Spectacular, and here's the manifestation of the bragging rights earned.

The Sufferfest was my self-initiated, one-man race inspired by the official Seven Summit Challenge (ftp://www.phoenix.gov/pub/PARKS/psc81day.pdf) to hike the seven “summits” of the Phoenix Parks system without the traditional use of automotive transport. Seven hikes. Eight bikes. Fourteen unassisted transitions. And (almost) no stopping. It was a day-long exposition of human power and attrition.

Here are links to the eight “suggested” bike routes of the Sufferfest:
My actual routes deviated just slightly: I missed a turn on the way from South Mountain to Papago because I still haven't figured out the roads in north Tempe, and I detoured to gas up (buy some burritos) between Camelback and Lookout Mountain. Additionally, between Papago and Camelback I added the out-of-the-way 56th St. and Castle climbs (included in the map link) for an “honor point”, and I rode to the top of Squaw Peak Pkwy (also included in the map link) before climbing Piestewa for a second honor point.

People who followed the link to the official Seven Summit Challenge PDF earlier in this post may notice that I did the hikes out of order. This was intentional. Firstly, it allowed me to bike to South Mountain and back, the traffic-heaviest routes of the ride, before the Sunday morning motorists took to the roads, and I decided to make Piestewa the last climb because I figure the last hike should be one of the biggest ones.

So how did it go?

The Sufferfest was windy and tough and took me all of 13 hours and 40 minutes to complete (2 hours and 40 minutes over the 11-hour time limit set in the official Challenge), but it needn't have been so hard and time-consuming. Here are some of my thoughts on how to do it quicker and easier in case there's a next time.
  • Train some. The 5,800 ft of trail descent took its toll on my unsuspecting legs. Let me make this clear: I did no specific training for this event. I think if I had spent just a few weekends hitting the Piestewa or Camelback trails multiple times each day then I would have been able to maintain a much faster pace on the descents during the Sufferfest. As it was, I descended the final climb, Piestewa, in 32 minutes, which is about half-speed for me. Next time I would train some and expect to be able to ascend and descend the final climb in about the same speed as if it were the first climb.
  • One pair of shoes. I switched between my trail runners for the hikes and my cycling sandals for the biking. Next time I would install a pair of clip pedals on my bike and wear only the trail runners to save time in transition.
  • Faster bike lock. I used my commuter bike lock for securing my bike at the trail heads. It's a heavy, durable lock and takes an extra minute or so to use. Next time I would use a simpler lock.
  • No backpack. I lugged all my gear in my hydration backpack on all the hikes, and the extra weight made running the trails needlessly harder and uncomfortable. Next time I would carry nothing with me on the hike except my wallet, phone, bike key, and a single water bottle, and I would keep all other gear in a trunk bag on my bike rack.
  • No Clif bars. Next time…well, it's hard to say “no” to Clif bars, but I'm beginning to suspect that energy bars and real food don't mix.
  • Know the hiking trails. I lost about 15 minutes being lost on the Papago buttes because there's no “official” trail between them. Fortunately I had the hike route instructions with me so I was able to figure it out. Next time I'll be prepared.
The big question is: is it possible to do the official Challenge—with the hikes done in the official order—without automotive transport and in under 11 hours? Now that's a challenge.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Triathlon, pt. 2

Swimming does matter, as I found out the hard way in my second triathlon. It was an Olympic-distance race and thus entailed completing a 1500m open-water swim, which I thoroughly bungled.
What you're looking at here is the result of a guy with a love of charts and too much time. This is a histogram showing the distribution of swim times for male participants in that triathlon I bungled. The horizontal axis signifies time in the water as measured in 1-minute buckets, and the vertical axis signifies the number of swimmers in each bucket. Note two things: (1) the chart's bars form a shape resembling a bell curve, as we'd expect, and (2) far, far on the right side of the chart one of the small bars is red. That's my bucket. It happens to be about two-and-a-half standard deviations below average and was good enough for 414th place out of 428 male participants.

That result was abysmal by my own low standards for swimming technique, and it motivated me to acquire a gym membership and learn how to swim for real. I used that membership too, for seven months and counting, and so I couldn't help but feel before participating in the Olympic-distance race I completed two weekends ago that I would swim comparatively well. I even had visions of keeping up with a middle-paced pack, a hope that was dashed when I failed to be in the water at the time of the starting whistle.

Two days afterwards I looked up my swim split online only to find out that my swim time ranked a mere 343rd out of all 404 male participants. That hardly seems like an improvement over 414th out 428, so I set about making another chart.
Rankings can be deceiving. There I am in the red bar again, and this time I'm a mere one standard deviation below average. That's still bad enough to be far away from staying up with a middle-paced pack, but I can take solace in being a part of the bell-shape part of a swim-time histogram for once.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Triathlon, pt. 1

I'm not sure what hooks other people into doing triathlons. For me, I was roped into doing my first one late spring of last year. It was a small-town sprint triathlon with a short 500yd pool swim, a distance which Laura assured me I could manage even though that entailed completing ten whole laps. (At once!)

Being a pool swim, the race started a small number of participants, two to a lane, in each of multiple waves. Only after one wave completed did the next wave start. Through what I suppose was a random draw, I was in the first wave, and that gave me barely enough time to cram my bike and gear between two adjacent spots in the transition area, realize that I had left my goggles in the car and had no time to get them, and to jump in the pool in time for the starting whistle.

I surprised myself by finishing those ten whole laps without taking a rest break at the end of the pool, which I think about doubled my previous personal best for farthest swim ever, though by the time I crawled over the pool's edge dizzy from my exhausting thirteen-minute Herculean effort, most of my fellow first-wavers were already far away and on the bike. I discovered, over in the transition area, that putting on socks and shoes is difficult when the world is spinning all around, but strangely riding a bicycle is not difficult in that condition, and I entered the bike course with the advantage of possessing a significant adrenaline rush from having nearly drowned, which is how I described any attempt at swimming in those days.

The bike course was empty because most of the race's participants were still in the pool area waiting for their wave to begin, but after mere minutes of hard riding I passed several of my first-wavers. That adrenaline was still being pumped, and I effortlessly rode fast. (It turns out that the beginning of the bike course was downhill.) Indeed, I was riding so fast that a police siren came up behind me and stayed on my tail as if to pull me over. Was this a race with speed limits? Then the source of the siren, a motorbike, came up beside me and the rider, who was the only bike course referee for the race, politely informed me that I missed a turn a few hundred meters back and that I had to turn around and rejoin the course. So I did, and I had the privilege of passing again several of the same first-wavers who made the turn when they were suppose to. I suppose that if that referee had not just so happened to be at the right place at my wrong time and to have seen me miss that turn, I'd probably be somewhere in New Mexico right now.

The bike course was a two-lap, 15-mile course. It had one notable climb on it, a hill with about 200ft of vertical ascent and a high single-digit gradient—the kind of hill that I train on often a few miles away from my apartment in central Phoenix. I zoomed up and over the hill, down the descent, and around the rest of the first lap, losing no more than several seconds as I proceeded to make three more self-detected wrong turns on the mostly empty course. On that hill climb during my second lap I passed another rider and gained the escort of the motorbike referee, who by then had taken to preceding the first-wave leader. Then at the bottom of the descent, during the hard right turn, I surprised the referee with my bicycle-turning skills by nearly crashing into his motorbike from the rear. I then rode smoothly and quietly for the rest of the course and did an endo over the handlebars into the transition area, landing on my feet and catching by bicycle neatly behind me. I quickly racked my bike, changed my shoes, and entered the run course with still over the half of the race participants still in the pool area waiting for their wave to start.

The 5km run was eerily lonely. Everyone was behind me and out of sight, and I was afraid of missing another turn and running all the way to New Mexico. I had the fear belonging to the guy out in front, occasionally looking over his shoulder and wondering if he's about to be caught. At least, I didn't feel fast on my feet, but I crossed the finish line first with still no one in sight behind me. I waited around as seconds became minutes became about ten minutes, and then the next guy crossed the finish line. And that's my story of how I crossed the finish line first in the first triathlon I ever competed in.

Of course, I didn't really finish in first place. The event was chip-timed, and two other guys from later waves beat me with faster total times for the course, and they beat me by a sizable margin both. In fact, if you were to add to my time the margin between the first place result and my third place result, the total time would have ranked 25th place. I squeaked in to 3rd place.

The anomaly for my 3rd-place result was that my split results were: 109th for the swim, 3rd for the bike, and 4th for the run. Mathematically, that doesn't seem to make much sense, like a series of positive numbers adding up to a negative sum, and especially so when considering that that 109th-place swim was the 6th worst swim among finishers in the race. I went away from that triathlon thinking that (1) the swim portion isn't important in a triathlon and (2) I got lucky. It turns out I was right about one of the two.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Hero

Today I was planning on writing about my experience in the Tempe International Triathlon, which I competed in this previous weekend, but my intention to present a nerdy, statistical analysis of my performance—including a graph!—has met with the reality of time constraints, so I must delay that post until next week. Instead, in that post's place, I'd like to write about today's big professional cycling news: Floyd Landis's admission to doping and his accusation of other big names involved in performance-enhancing drugs.

Firstly, bonus points are awarded to those of you who are asking how a guy who doesn't seek out the news can know about this event. Really, really, I don't seek out the news, but it seems that at times that the news seeks me out. This is one of those times. Coworker Nick told me about Landis this morning, and, I admit it, I then sought out more information on my own on the matter. I want to clear my conscience from the start about my use of performance-enhancing news. Phew, I'm glad that nasty bit is over.

I imagine that all over the Internet thousands of strangers are engaging in heated debate about Floyd Landis and his accusations. Specifically, I imagine most people are most interested in Lance Armstrong because he is, frankly, professional cycling's number one star. I'm not going to detail my own opinion as to whether I think Armstrong doped; that question has been covered in great detail in numerous places in the Internet, and I suspect that if you care about the matter enough then you will do your own homework and reach your own conclusion. I have a different point to make.

I remember once having the topic of Lance Armstrong and doping come up when I was with my family, and my sister asked me my opinion. My response was that, basically, yes, I think it's highly probable that he doped. To me, after doing my own homework on the matter, this just seemed like the straightforward and common sense answer. What surprised me is that Rachel was disappointed by my remark; she had figured and hoped he was clean. “Why does my sister care whether Lance doped?” I wondered. It was only after asking myself this question that I realized that Lance is not merely a seven-time winner of the Tour and an amazing cyclist (even when assuming he doped), but rather he is an inspiration for countless people, including many non-cyclists, and that many people have developed an emotional investment in his image remaining clean. For some people this investment is rather large; you need only search for a few of these heated debates doubtlessly taking place right now in Internet fora to understand what I'm talking about. For others, like my sister back then, the investment is small, but it's there nevertheless.

In this light I think it's unfortunate that we are a sports-obsessed culture that collectively pays millions for the privilege to worship individuals who then become incentivized to act in dishonest and non-upstanding ways. Maybe Armstrong is clean. Maybe he's not. The point, as I think many golf fans may better understand these days, is that the problem isn't whether a sport's number one star is clean and upstanding or not but that we ever placed our personal interest in the matter.

There remain plenty of ways to develop one's own separate peace and to admire Lance Armstrong regardless whether you think he doped. In the meantime, let's not elevate the guy to hero-worship even if he is clean. Watch and read about his exploits on the bike. Enjoy them. Then get off that couch and onto your own bike and be your own hero.

Monday, May 17, 2010

The wisdom of many hats

A cousin of mine once owned two differently branded gas stations located across the road from each other. I remember him describing the situation many years ago, saying how there was no such thing as brand loyalty in the gas station business. He smiled as he explained how he'd spend time working at one gas station, cross the street, replace his Brand X hat with his Brand Y hat, and go work in the other gas station. And to customers, what would it matter? Probably the most important attribute of a gas station to a potential customer is that the station is located on the right side of the road, not the left.

There's great benefit to being able to change your hat to suit the situation you're in, and yet I think this is a lesson that is lost on many people. Of course, I'm not really talking about actual hats; I'm referring to ideologies. But talking about hats is more fun.

I think of myself as a person who has many hats, and when discussions degrade into disagreements and disagreements degrade into frustrations, some people find it exasperating that I'm “difficult to pin down.” Welcome to the multiple-hat club. It turns out that life is not an Oxford-style debate; you're allowed to change sides whenever you want and argue different points of view.

I graduated from high school, like most people, having only one hat, which I wore much of the time. Back then the world I saw had many simple problems, and those problems required nothing but simple solutions, and wouldn't you know it but my one hat happened to cover most of those solutions. Then I found myself a little older and sitting in college classrooms and frequently trading my current hat for a different hat. The hats were all better constructed than the flimsy one I wore as a teenager, though in hindsight I now realize they were a bit lopsided and awkwardly fitting, but I found the whole hat-swapping experience exhilarating. College is a fun four-year hat-trying-out period in one's life.

A while after college, though, it occurred to me that the whole point of those four years wasn't to trade one's existing hat for a new, better one; rather, the point was to acquire new hats without giving up one's existing hats. And so I bought back all the hats I had ever owned and even went looking to acquire a few totally new ones, and I'm proud to say that now I own some strange and even, well yes, rare hats. I love my hat collection.

Many people feel differently. They look at my extensive hat collection and see a waste. “Where's your hat loyalty?” they ask. “Surely one of these hats fits most comfortably or is the best looking. Why not just stick with that one hat?” My answer is that a hat's usefulness is dependent upon the situation, and I want the hat I'm wearing to weather my current situation optimally. I don't see any way of getting this result but to own many hats and to don the one that fits best at any particular moment.

Though, if you're a one-hat kinda person then I'll probably find it difficult to convince you to try out some new ones. After all, hats take time to break in, and most hats are going to feel downright uncomfortable and alien compared to the one you've been wearing for a long time. And although I'm wont to say that every hat out there has some potential value for nearly everyone, experience has shown me that some hats are indeed suited for a wider range of situations than are other hats. But again, the point isn't to own one best hat; it's to wear the best hat for the occasion.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

A hypothesis about rises and falls

Recently I've been reading about Islamic history. It's a topic about which I admit to knowing little, owing to a personal bias favoring classical and Western European history. The period during which Islam flourished, from the 7th century to the 13th, I know as the Dark Ages. How's that for a bias?

The book's author, I suspect, shared a similar bias. I suspect this because the chapters covering the Islamic side of things from the 7th century to the 13th century comprise about 200 pages, whereas the European side of things during the same time period, supposedly a dark age, is covered in three times as many pages. And to be clear, I'm not even halfway through those 200 pages about Islamic history. I write this to make it clear how much of a novice I am with Islamic history.

And yet, I'm already struck by an interesting realization about the rise and fall of progressive Islamic civilization: it was actually the rise and fall of two distinct Islamic civilizations. I'm not referring to the individualistic tribes or provinces of Islamic civilization; rather, I'm specifically referring firstly to the Arabian expansion, starting in the early 7th century shortly after Mohammed's death and lasting until the early 11th century, and secondly to the Turkish conquest of Persia and much of what the Arabs had conquered. Both the Arabian expansion and the Turkish conquest were carried out in the faith of Islam---indeed, the Turks' invasion seemed to strengthen the declining faith of the Arabs---so it's convenient to join the two into a single entity called Islamic civilization, but a more nuanced understanding of this period entails two distinct civilizations (or sub-civilizations), each with their own ascent and descent.

There's a specific reason why I find this interesting. The Arabian expansion, which exploded into Persia, northern Africa, Spain, eastern Europe, and southern Asia, was done with exceptional speed. It took the Arabs fewer than two hundred years to conquer a larger amount of territory than the Romans ever managed in their thousand years of dominance. Then, about another two centuries later, Persia was invaded by the Turks, many of the remote Islamic provinces declared independence in all affairs but religious matters, and Arabia was left much to itself after having given the world a new major religion.

The Turks conquered swiftly as well, reaching their zenith after a hundred years or so before their decline became the decline of Islamic civilization itself (and the terminal decline of Islamic progressiveness) by the end of the 13th century. To recap: Arabs ascended for about 200 years and descended for about 200 years; Turks ascended for about 100 years and descended for about 100 years.

This fits a pattern that I've observed studying the millennia-long narrative of civilizations rising and falling: that is, civilizations tend to spend about the same amount of time declining as they do growing. The faster a civilization grows, the faster it dies. This is probably best exemplified by the conquests of Alexander, who in the span of fewer than two decades created one of the ancient world's largest-ever empires, only to have that empire permanently torn apart by his very successors upon his death. Conversely, take the case of Rome, which slowly over half a millennium build a complex, self-preserving empire that took roughly the remainder of that millennium to crumble back into the chaos out of which it emerged.

What do you guys think? Can you think of some counterexamples to this pattern?

Monday, May 10, 2010

Ideas and beliefs

I call it the difference between an idea and a belief: an idea is a concept that a person is capable of accepting as true or rejecting as false with little or no emotional stake in the outcome; a belief is a concept whereby a person has a significant emotional stake depending on whether the statement proves true or false.

I've determined that it's rarely worth my time to engage in philosophical discussion with a person about a belief unless I'm in a mood for a one-way conversation from them to me. The key, then, is quickly and accurately determining, when engaging someone thusly, whether we are discussing what is for them an idea or else a belief. So far I have found this difficult.

On the flip side, I try to think of what my own beliefs are and where my own limitations to engagement and understanding lie. What are the statements on whose truth I hang my own emotional well being? I can conjure an imaginary antagonist to try to provoke me with some contentious examples, some statements that center around and about things that I do not merely consider important, but rather I consider sacred.
  • Bicycling is not a possible solution for the widespread obesity problem, for traffic congestion, or for reducing pollution.

    Ah ha! Here my imaginary antagonist strikes right at the heart of what is sacred and discounts a treasured belief of mine, the social practicality of the bicycle. Yet treasure the statement I do, do I carry vested interest in its truth?

    Actually, not really. Although the statement's truth seems reasonable, I would lend a hand to my imaginary antagonist and challenge the bicycle-as-a-cure-all solution as not being viable. Too many people are afraid of bicycles; the economy is a house of cards that requires continual growth and cannot survive the massive downscaling of people abandoning cars; Jevons effect will negate the congestion and pollution benefits of increased bicycle use. And so on. I can argue both sides of this statement; it's not a belief for me.

  • The scientific method is a fundamentally flawed method for attaining knowledge, and the employment of reason is a flawed method for attaining wisdom.

    First of all, I'm not particularly fond of epistemological arguments, so my passion isn't excited by this one. Secondly, I'm curious as to whether the ensuing argumentation for the second part of the statement, the part about wisdom, is at all fruitful. How does one reason against reason? How does one argue against argumentation?

    But thirdly and most importantly, I'll note for the record that I'm unconvinced about the scientific method. It certainly has a successful track record, what with putting men on the moon and returning them to earth as well as countless other achievements, but I wonder as to whether the scientific method necessarily has a blind spot or two in which its bottom-up construction of knowledge is innately unable to grapple successfully with complex, non-linear systems, such as economies and the human mind, where any model for a subpart ends up being a leaky abstraction for concluding something about the whole. Again, I may lend my imaginary antagonist a hand and help him argue his point; this is no belief for me.

  • It's often worth my time to engage in philosophical discussion with a person about a belief even if I'm not in a mood for a one-way conversation from them to me.

    Clever. With a Gödelian stroke of self-referentiality, I am provoked by argumentation against the central point of this very blog post. But again I'm ahead of my imaginary antagonist, and I see how maybe I'm wrong and that it is indeed worthwhile to engage in philosophical conversations out of which I gain nothing ideological. Firstly, there is the warm and fuzzy human side of things, the side that hints to us that it's sometimes important just to listen for the sake of listening. Secondly, engaging another person in a discussion about a belief and not an idea and witnessing the ensuing lackluster results may inspire me to hone and polish my own argumentation skills and to reflect upon my own process for establishing truth and attaining wisdom. I could even end up writing a blog post about the whole matter. How's that for being worth my time?
I'd like to end this post on that note of irony, but I want to clarify a subtle point, which is that I'm not arguing against the possession of convictions about truth and falsehood. Indeed, I would argue that it's important to believe beliefs and avoid a living a life of Cartesian uncertainty. Rather, I'm arguing (and counter-arguing against, as forced by my imaginary antagonist), that unless you can suspend your beliefs temporarily or at least entertain the notion that you're wrong, possibly about everything, you may want to consider what you're actually contributing to the discussion around you.

Maybe that is my core belief: that the discussion itself is more important than the conclusions it produces. Or am I wrong about this one too?

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The upward spiral of complexity

Note: Taking time tomorrow to publish its regularly scheduled blog post is high risk, so here's that post one day early. Enjoy!

Reading Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop has me feeling increasingly confident about using analogy to express ideas, so here goes one of my favorite analogies.

A human body is composed of about two hundred different types of cells. Some cell types include skin cells, nerve cells, muscle cells, and blood cells, and there exist many more. In fact, the cell types in the above list are actually classes of types; there are many types of skin cells, nerve cells, muscle cells, and blood cells.

The differences between the cell types are sometimes quite extreme. Consider a plane-Jane neuron, whose gangly axon can stretch for inches or even feet. In the microscopic world of cells, such a large length for a cell is unusual. Indeed, the entire concept of a neuron is unusual except in the regulated, secure environment of the human body; a neuron cannot independently obtain nourishment, dispose of waste, or protect itself from invasion; rather, it relies upon the other parts of the body to bring it nutrients, to take away waste products, and to thwart hostile attempts to interfere with the neuron's normal functioning.

The main point here is that there's little possibility that a neuron or any other cell like a neuron could exist outside of a human body or some other organism possessing a nervous system. And there would be no reason for a neuron to exist outside the body. The neuron carries out the specific function of quickly generating and propagating signals over long distances (as measured in the microscopic world of cells). A neuron, with its input dendrites and output axon, would be useless both to itself and to others outside the body.

And yet, inside the body, our strange little neuron fulfills a critical role and so the body creates for it that regulated, secure environment where it will thrive. Indeed, our little neuron is not so unique in this regard; the good health of the body is the complex, interdependent synergisms of distinct cell types creating for each other favorable environments where each cell type's specialized form and function help sustain all parts (including itself) within the whole.

Most bacteria and other unicellular organisms, meanwhile, must survive within environments that are unregulated and hostile and so must be more generalized than our body's individual cells. The bacterium must procure nourishment, dispose of waste, protect itself, and reproduce. It is by necessity nature's do-it-itself cell.

One question I'd like to pose, though possibly a little absurd seeming, is: which is better off in the arrangement, (1) the generalized do-it-itself unicellular organism cell or (2) the specialized do-one-thing-well multicellular organism cell, such as our little neuron, that lives within a complex and differentiated multicellular organism?

The question may seem absurd in that both generalized and specialized cells seem to be doing quite well for themselves within the specific environmental niches in which they thrive. In the objective sense where how “well off” a cell is equates to its reproductive success, both types of cells are doing quite well.

Furthermore, cells don't have emotions or thoughts or feelings so we can't probe the cell to figure out any subjective measurement of how “well off” each cell type is.

What we do know is that a complex multicellular organism is better off through the existence of such cell differentiation. Indeed, a complex multicellular organism cannot exist at all without cell differentiation. Imagine an organism as complex as a human being without possessing cells that quickly generate and propagate signals over long distances. How would such an organism react in a timely manner to stimuli within its environment? How would such an organism possess mobility without something like a muscle cell? Or have a protective boundary between itself and the outside world without something like a skin cell? For a complex organism to exist, cell differentiation is not optional; it's necessary.

And now, let's complete the analogy.

The real question I'd like to pose is: who is better off in the arrangement, (1) the generalized do-it-yourself human being who procures his own subsistence or (2) the specialized do-one-thing-well human being who fits, as does a differentiated cell within a complex multicellular organism, within a complex multi-individual “host economy” that provides a safe and nourishing environment for him carry out his specialized tasks?

The analogy is, I think, a useful one. Most of us within advanced economies do not procure our nourishment but instead rely upon the grocery store (which in turn relies upon the transportation network and the farmer and so on) and water system to provide us our food and water. We do not dispose of our waste but instead rely upon sewage and trash pickup. We do not thwart hostile invasions ourselves but support police and military institutions that do. In return, we do specific jobs for which we have been trained and that not everyone else could do. We are not unlike the little neuron that exists solely within its regulated, secure environment.

The question remains: who is better off in the arrangement? Hopefully it's obvious to you that an advanced economy's existence is possible only through specialization, and so an advanced economy is better off with specialization, much as how a complex multicellular organism requires of its cells specialization. But I am not asking about whether the economy is better off; I am asking about which type of individual is better off. In the objective sense, generalists continue to eke out successful niches within non-advanced economies, so it cannot be denied that generalists and specialists alike are reproductively well off. Furthermore, it can be misleading to judge through a quality-of-life metric. We would expect the specialist to be wealthier in the same way that we observe a typical neuron to have a higher metabolism rate than that of a typical bacterium. I fear there may be no quantitative way of answering this question. But human beings do have emotions and thoughts and feelings, and so might there exist a viable subjective measurement?

For what it's worth, here's my proposed answer to the question. I think that, based on the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens not being a lone survivor type of organism but instead relying upon the differentiated economies of the family, the clan, or the tribe for his survival, that human beings are better off within some sort of economic environment effecting some degree of specialization. However, that Homo sapiens has spent most of his evolutionary history within small, localized economies, it seems to me that human beings are not well suited for the heavily specialized environments that the modern, advanced world has created.

It's tacitly assumed that humans are the ones who have created cities and nations. However, might it be that cities and nations have created the modern human? To return briefly to the analogy, it's not as if all these two-hundred-plus differentiated cells existed within nature and decided to come together to form Homo sapiens. Rather, Homo sapiens came about through millions of years of speciation and increases in the complexity of organisms' composition. Cells differentiated because it was in their individual reproductive interest to differentiate, and the host organism took advantage of the opportunity for additional complexity afforded it by that differentiation. Cellular differentiation allowed for increasingly complex organisms, which in turn allowed for increasing cellular differentiation, and so on. The parts created the whole, and the whole created the parts.

Might an analogous process be taking place between humans and their advanced “host economies”? If so, how much control do individuals have over the world? How much control must the world have over us individuals? Where do emotions and thoughts and feelings factor into all this?

Monday, May 3, 2010

Deflation versus inflation

I'd like to write on deflation versus inflation a bit more today. I think this topic is a critical one for anyone with money or anyone who hopes to have money someday, but more to the point I find the topic interesting because it involves trying to make sense out of a complicated situation.

Even more to the point, I find that a lot of people are unconvinced that a slowdown in the economy and a decrease in the supply of goods and services will likely propagate deflationary pressures. I for one won't argue against being unconvinced of this (for we should resist being convinced of much of anything in economics), but I will argue against people who are convinced of the opposite, that a slowdown will propagate inflationary pressures.

But the inflationists have such a simple and “bulletproof” argument, it does invite a welcoming certainty. Their argument goes something like the following.
A decrease in the supply of goods and services will cause consumer demand to outstrip that supply and thus for prices of goods and services to increase.
(Note: this may smell like a straw man fallacy in that I'm supposing a broad group as making a specific argument. I assure you that it is not my position to say that the inflationists are wrong; instead, it is my position to say that we should be skeptical of this particular reasoning of the inflationists, which happens to be common if not outright assumed.)

It's hard to argue against the time-tested law of supply and demand, and so the inflationist rests comfortably secure, knowing that any challenge to his prediction of inflation will be thwarted with a gentle flick of the wrist, a casual turn of the head away from the challenger, and a mention of the Law.

But let's think about what an inflationist is actually arguing. If he's arguing that prices will increase as the availability of goods and services decreases then it seems that he would also be forced to argue the symmetrical opposite, that prices would decrease as the availability of goods and services increases. After all (*gently flicks wrist and turns head away*), it's the law of supply and demand.

I smell something fishy here. And so I present to you, JEC readers, the following transcript of a dialog that really actually did take place back in the year 1860. Maybe, just maybe, it will reveal something to us.
Adam: Greetings, Bob. Who do you think will win the presidential election this year?

Bob: Lincoln.

Adam: Really? One can only imagine what will happen to the Union if he's elected.

Bob: Well, Adam, it's not that hard to figure out what would happen.

Adam: You don't say.

Bob: I do say. In fact, it's pretty clear to me that this country will torn asunder as the southern states oppose the new party's policies. A years-long and bloody civil war will ensue. The southern states will fight fiercely and bravely, but ultimately the northern states will win owing to their superior navy and superior industrial base, and the nation, then brought back together and made free of slavery once and for all, will industrialize with even greater rapidity.

Adam: That's a bold prediction, Bob.

Bob: I'm just getting started! The industrialization process will be unparalleled, both in scope and in achievement, to anything mankind has yet accomplished. Factories will be constructed by the thousands and countless new technologies will spring forth in a sweeping tide of progress. There will develop a mass migration from farm to city, and it will fuel the fires of the growing economy. The nation will obtain levels of wealth and prosperity never before realized or even dreamed.

Adam: No kidding?

Bob: No kidding. Indeed, we will find myriad ways to harvest the energy in the oil deposits recently discovered in Pennsylvania and, as we will later discover, many other areas of the world! With such boundless energy I foresee a wealth of technological possibilities that makes advancements such as the steam locomotive and telegraph primitive by comparison.

Adam: What kind of possibilities?

Bob: Personalized automotive transport. Machines that fly. Mechanical agriculture. An analytical engine on every desk. Telegraphs that transmit sound signals and can fit within one's pocket. A vast, global communication network to make information freely available. Landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. Really, I could go on and on, but I think you catch my point.

Adam: These next few millennia surely will be exciting!

Bob: But that's the amazing thing. All these marvels will come about within the next mere 150 years. Even then there will be entire years and decades of stagnation. Indeed, I can foresee the entire world being plunged into a vast war twice during that time and yet emerging riper for progress than ever before.

Adam: I'll grant you that there's a slim possibility that you're right. And suppose for the moment that I assume you're right. What then?

Bob: Well, isn't it obvious? With such an increase in the availability of goods and services owing to our technological progress, consumptive demand will not and cannot keep pace. It is obvious beyond any doubt that, by the law of supply and demand, goods' and services' prices will decrease.

Adam: Yes, I suppose it is an obvious conclusion assuming such a speedup in the economy. That loaf of bread that costs a dime and those dozen eggs that cost me two and that dress shirt that costs me a dollar—these and more would all be reduced in price to mere fractions of pennies.

Bob: Yes, there's no denying the time-tested law of supply and demand.
Okay, I admit that the whole dialog is made up. But consider the point: the last 150 years have been, on the average, ones of great economic expansion and yet prices have, on the average, increased rather than decreased. This should, at the least, hint to us that if we were to face, on the average, an economic retraction then there's more than meets the eye than a simple supply-and-demand relationship between goods/services and prices.

We know, with our 150 years of hindsight, that even though the availability of goods and services increased terrifically during those years, it has been outmatched by a supply in the availability of money. In other words, banks have loaned money into existence faster than actual, real wealth has been created. Demand is not the product solely of human desire and want; it's necessitated by money. (I may desire chips and salsa at the moment, but if I'm unwilling to pay anything for them then my demand for chips and salsa, economically, is zero.) The law of supply and demand being what it is, if the money supply increases faster than the supply of goods and services, then the prices of goods and services will, all else held constant, increase. And this is what we've seen during the industrial age.

Hopefully you are at least considering the role of the money supply when thinking about inflation and deflation and that increases and decreases in the money supply have the ability to trump increases and decreases in the supply of goods and services. If the money supply were to shrink fast enough then we would have deflation, no matter what happens to the supply of goods and services. As to what will actually happen over the next 150 years, it's anyone's guess. Where's Bob when you need him?