Critical Independence Theory

When I first noticed that the US was one of the few former British colonies to wage a bloody war of independence, while many other colonies in the empire figured a less bloody way out, I started to suspect something wasn’t adding up. Maybe the US founders were too hot-headed, as partially right as their grievances may have been. Maybe they sucked at negotiating a smarter way forward. Maybe the US was not the architect of democracy it crowned itself in 1776. But more disturbingly, maybe it wasn’t as interested in unalienable rights as it proclaimed in its declaration of independence. 

I mean let’s be clear about one thing: the monarchy in 1776 was far from perfect. In fact as ways to lead large masses of people go it was on thin ice and borrowed time. 

And yet as monarchies go, the House of Hanover with its four Georges was fairly savvy. 

Peeling back the onion:

The Kingdom already had a Parliament. America was not God’s gift to democracy, even if to be fair it did move the needle significantly to the left. Great Britain’s parliament dated back to 1707. And that parliament was actually a merger of two parliaments dating back to the 1200s (England and Scotland).

There were two houses in that parliament: Lords and Commons. As the names imply, the monarchy controlled the ruling House of Lords.  Commons had influence, but not exactly in control. And yet, wisely, they were allowed to exist. By a monarchy that understood it could not hold on to absolute power forever.

In 1832 the Reform Act in Britain turned the tables, and democracy experienced another seismic shift. Without a single shot fired. No fireworks needed, no PR stunt. The House of Commons roared.

Almost immediately the British Parliament, led by the House of Commons, abolished slavery. 30 years prior to the United States. Once again, not a shot fired. 

Unintentionally I’m sure, the United States Declaration of Independence was set up for a fatal flaw from the start. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” 

Not all founders of America were slaveowners. In fact less than you’d expect from the time. And yet the majority were. Exactly two-thirds. Makes you wonder about that “two-thirds majority” ratio inscribed from the start. Article V.

The cynic in my brain now believes that the mighty American Declaration of Independence was just another oligarchic tantrum in the history of human civilization.  No, we don’t want to play by anyone else’s rules. Look at all this rich land. We don’t need you anymore, go away. There’s a new sheriff in town. I’m the new king now. Er, president. 

And yet the fair-minded side of my conscience refuses to throw out the baby, when throwing out the dirty bathwater. The US has contributed amazing wonders to our world. Even in a parallel universe, without a bloody revolution, it very likely would still be a beacon of civilization. And as it flirts with fascism today, dancing with the devil it has never known, history will still remember it kindly. 

Progress is scrappy. Civilization is painfully slow. Evolution can only be fathomed as a freeze frame.

“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Take heed, Republican & Democratic parties: the course of human events is coming around full circle. 

Don’t Feed The Fascists

The progressive movement is often weak at messaging a cause. It’s like the definition of insanity for communication: speaking only among yourselves, expecting everyone else to accept what you’re saying. If it weren’t for the damage inflicted I’d say who cares, it’s all sticks and stones. But unfortunately the stakes are often too high.

The nazis, the soviets, Donald Trump, et. al. ad nauseam were and are naturals at power-messaging. Irrespective of the moral content of the message. In Trump’s case his super-power is dumbing-down hate.

The problem with political bumper-sticker ideology is that it can almost always be fixed (or derailed) by adding or subtracting a word. So while we spend the next interval in between mass shootings arguing over amendments and overreach, the next crazy fuck is reloading. The registered firearms in my house are not going to stop the next blood shed. Pretending and claiming they will is crazy fuckism at its worst.

Examples from The Marketing of Fascism vs the Meekness of Liberalism:

Problem: Black Communities at a social and judicial disadvantage.

Liberal Message: “Black Lives Matter”

Fascist Response: “ALL LIVES MATTER”

What the message should have been: BLACK LIVES ALSO MATTER (BLAM)

(Runner-Up: Black Lives Also Count - “BLAC”)

…

Problem: Homicide, especially with the use of guns. 

Liberal Message: Gun Control

Fascist Response: “2A”. “GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE. PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE.”

What the message should have been: GUN ACCESS CONTROL.

Also, the liberal counter response to the fascists’ “2A” dog-whistle should be R2A (Real 2A) Meaning, STOP CHERRY-PICKING THE CONSTITUTION, FASCISTS. 2A clearly includes the words A WELL REGULATED MILITIA.)

…

Problem: Homophobia and related sexual identity bullying. 

Liberal Message: 2LGBTQ+

Fascist Response: WTFBTQ+

What the message should have been: ALL SEXUALITY MATTERS. 

By the way, a much smarter fusion of the classic HUMAN RIGHTS does exist, called HRC (Human Rights Campaign). While it encompasses all human rights causes it is driven by the LGBTQ community.

…

Problem: Unplanned pregnancy, for a variety of reasons, unsolicited or otherwise. 

Liberal Message: Pro-Choice.

Fascist Response: “PRO-LIFE”

What the message should have been: WOMEN ALSO MATTER (WAM)

…

The “Black Lives Matter” slogan was especially unfortunate. For a demographic that prides itself in its “inclusiveness” (liberals as a whole, not just blacks in this example), it sure did exclude everyone else there. As they do with LGBTQ. Dissonant messaging. 

Sure, fascism will always try to delegitimize everything that threatens its agenda. That’s what they do. But let’s take the Gun Control movement. If liberals had been more clear in their mission they would have forced conservatives to counter with, “they’re coming for your ACCESS.” Yes, their shameless propaganda machine (AKA the NRA, aka the firearms industry) will still shoot for “they’re coming for your guns”, no doubt. But logical dissonance soon enough finds a way to self-own. It’s the access, stupid. You can’t fool all of the people, all of the time.

So especially knowing that’s what they do, when you launch your message don’t make it ridiculously easy for them to twist and shout you down. For a message to be powerful it must stump the delegitimizing machine. You must severely limit their response options, speed-up their retreat. Poor messaging may not be solely responsible for long, drawn-out social injustice, but it has been instrumental. And when you lose sight of the struggle this is what ends up happening: one hundred years from Civil War to Civil Rights. It doesn’t get much more painful than that.

Dr. ML King, Malcom X, and Muhammad Ali all spoke truth to power in the 1960s, one-hundred years after the bloody civil war. They were clear as a cloudless day, straight as a bullet. There was no confused hesitation, no intellectually cryptic code. But it took another half a century for THEIR message to find their way into our mainstream today. Why? Certainly not because they weren’t clear. Perhaps because their followers botched and diluted one too many messages.

The latest message casualty the progressives just fed to the machine is “Critical Race Theory. “Theory”? Jesus Christ, who’s writing these messages for the progressive movement? Do they think that by making it sound like an advanced course at an elite university it will scare the undereducated? Good grief, snap out of it. It’s called RACE HISTORY. 

Urgently reconsider your compromised messaging, progressives, or you’re going to keep getting beat up in every street fight. We all know you’ll win eventually, but why the masochism? One hundred years the first time around, fifty the second, what are you shooting for, a Christ complex? Why are you sacrificing the message through either half-baked or cryptic messaging? Weakness in what you say and how you say it feeds the fascist machine.

The Twilight Boarding Zone

When the Wright brothers first took off on an airplane 121 years ago, their boarding time took 10 seconds. It would have taken 5 but Wilbur stopped Orville and demanded he check his oversized bag. Orville flipped his brother off and they both had a good laugh.

That was the last time the world saw an efficient boarding process. And it has little to do with passengers shortcomings, as much as they obviously exist. That excuse is simply setting travelers up for failure. 

If you ask an airline employee / manager, they will point the finger at the FAA, TSA, and the M-O-U-S-E for good measure. Some of that blame is well deserved. But not all of it. 

There are a couple of videos on YouTube that show how an efficient boarding process would / should go, according to science. Of course without traveler shortcomings, profit-maximized operations, elitism & politics. 

Is waiting to board a plane such a big deal? Within reason, not really. But that presupposes a nominal amount of mutual respect. It assumes you’re not telling a passenger that they need to be somewhere when it’s not necessary. “Boarding time” is one of the most disingenuous promises in free enterprise. 

The aircraft I’m in at this time has 38 rows, 1 aisle, 3 seats on each side of the aisle. So 6 seats x 38 = 228 souls on board. “Pre-boarding” (see George Carlin for a definition of what that means) started at 10:09AM. Departure was scheduled for 10:49. It is now 10:48, and we’re pulling back. So far so good, textbook boarding for 228 spinal cords. 

So is 40 minutes really that bad, especially for that number of people? Not really, with one exception: half of that time was spent having the aisle passengers sit down, only to be asked by a middle seat passenger to get up or pay up for a lap dance. Rinse and repeat for window passengers. Also, the example above is the airlines’ best case scenario. And their best case already takes twice as long as science says it should.

There is zero common sense (and as much common decency) in not boarding a plane from the rear to front first. They used to. What they din’t try was perfect logic. What does science say? This: special assistance first, in a section of the plane that their own. The rear of the aircraft actually makes perfect sense for them, for a number of reasons: closest to the bathrooms, and on longer trips closest to flight attendant assistance. Then window seats, then middle seats, then aisles. Every passenger is given a boarding number, so that last row window seaters are passengers #1 & #2. The aircraft can be divided into zones, as it is now but for a logical reason, not for “classism”. Nor for “communism” either. To make it more efficient, period. So in our case that could be 8 zones of 5 rows each, 30 passengers per zone. Color-code each of the zone sections, to make it visually easier for passengers to see their zone up ahead while walking down the aisle.

Remember the feet outlines on floors during the pandemic, meant for social distancing? Airport gate areas can do exactly the same. So based on your boarding number, which is based on your seat location on the plane, you find your number and stand on those happy feet. Then off you go, when the nice person herding cats waves you on. 

The whole elitism of “boarding first” has to be the dumbest thing ever concocted by corporate yahoos. And that’s coming from someone who flew and still flies on first often enough. You want to cater to Mr. and Mrs. busy-wealthy? DON’T MAKE THEM COME TO THE GATE SO EARLY. I would rather be the last to board. Close the door and let’s get this candle lit. 

Thirty passengers that don’t have to play musical chairs with each other can board in about 2.5 minutes. Tried and tested. That’s a 20 minute board for 228 passengers. 

As for the busy and the wealthy? Tell them they have 15 more minutes to sleep or sip on their mimosas at the VIP lounge. So in my flight, pre-boarding (zone 0) would have been asked to be at the gate by 10:20, zones 1-7 would have been asked to be ready to board at 10:30, and the beautiful people could have been asked to not bother showing up till 10:45. Steerage all strapped in, practically no wait for the chosen ones. And not to mention they’re already the first to get off. What better advantage is there? How fragile are their egos that they have to go in AND out first? C’mon. Let’s all grow up a little, shall we?

For those wondering what about those passengers who are delayed through no fault of their own, show up late due to their own poor planning, etc, there’s a simple response: since when do the airlines care about leaving people behind? Except this time at least everyone else would have a much better experience.

This is for the most part a “first world problem”, no doubt. But you know what part is not a first world problem? You guessed it: the elitist part. When elitism gets so dumb that they’ve cornered themselves into sitting down way too early, forced to wait for 200-400 passengers to shuffle past them, with steerage class looking down upon them with that smirk that says, “you know what? I’m going to take my sweet time.” And all the elites can do is just sit there and wait, while they get the Queen Elizabeth royal wave. 

The Useful Idiots

My parents had terrible stories about polio. They saw one too many friend and family fall victim to the disease. Quite fortunate for the following generation, science quickly found a way to help eradicate the nightmare. Jonas Salk was the scientist, to be precise. But two generations later, false equivalence and couch-baked correlations are attacking the science, pegging autism to vaccines. They're not actually questioning the science, mind you. Questioning science is a good thing, in fact welcomed by true scientists. They are attacking it without real research or credible peer review.

Unqualified attacks are fueled in part by faded memory. When children are born in disconnected families with little or no memory passed on down from grandparents, and when home schooling intercepts any chance a child may have to hear about science, the recurring nightmare of ignorance emerges all over again.

During the pandemic I started an informal poll of my own: every time I would meet an anti-vaxxer I would ask them if they knew what an iron lung was. Not only did none of them know it had anything to do with polio, more than one thought it had to do with scuba diving equipment. 

For whatever it’s worth here’s the thing about conspiracies: unfortunately they do exist, in the form of a LOBBY. Powerful, political lobbies. They have small empires to protect, and a lot of money to throw at defending their existence. But in every case, science is the David against the lobby Goliath. It is NEVER the other way around. Conspiracists become the useful idiots of competing lobbies when they buy into their strategic distortions of science. 

The perception that science can be corrupted or bought is a gross misunderstanding of how science works. When people of science are corrupted they cease to be scientists. The ONLY purpose of science is seeking the truth, not hiding it. It’s no different than bad cops, bad generals, bad teachers, etc. In a relatively free and democratic society you do not shut down the institutions of teaching, police, or military because of corruption. Not unless you’re hell bent on wiping out freedom and democracy.

The tragic flaw of the useful idiot is that when they become fixated with an irregularity they can't explain they don't follow the science. They follow the noise and convince themselves that their "no one's gonna fuck with me" swagger is their claim to a noble survivalist crusade. The mother of all ironies of course is that fuck with them is exactly what lobby overlords do to and with them.

When I step into a car, or an airplane, I actually understand the science behind them. You don't have to be a scientist to do so, and I don't claim to be as smart as the scientists who developed those technologies. Pioneering scientists are amazing humans: they are super-intelligent, relentless students of science, highly respectful of the scientific method and process. Entire generations enjoy amazing improvements to quality of life thanks to scientists. But ultimately it is not the scientist I follow, it is the science.

The exact same logic applies to vaccines.

The Goliath lobbies manipulate the credibility of science, as long as they can get away with it. Examples are too many to list, but the most infamous ones include the tobacco lobby, the coal lobby, gun lobby, segregationist lobbies, etc. Only when science overwhelms the lobbies do they die or retreat. The death of a toxic lobby is a good thing. But when they  on't die and simply retreat it poses a major problem for evolution. They become sleeper cells. A generation or two later the cells are awoken as memory fades, and it’s anti-science movements, fascism, etc. all over again. The classic definition of insanity on a planetary scale.

If you ever find yourself fighting the science as opposed to the lobby that’s smearing the science, it gives me no pleasure to inform you that you have become a useful idiot. The larger tragedy being, your behavior and choices do not merely impact a pandemic, as terrible as that is by itself. Next time you are watching the news about war or insurrection "crimes", know that the leaders of those actions are NOTHING without their armies of useful idiots.

The Outside Of The Box Fallacy

There’s a classic story about a truck that had become wedged at the entrance of a tunnel, and it goes something like this:

One day, traffic had come to a stop in a metropolitan tunnel. A huge 18-wheel truck exceeded the clearance of the tunnel and got stuck. It couldn’t move forward or backward. The emergency crew were at a loss, scratching their heads as tempers began to fray. Finally a little boy on the sidelines spoke up: “Why don’t you just let air out of the tires?” They promptly did exactly that, allowing the truck to be free.

The moral of the parable is intuitive enough: fresh and simple thinking can dramatically win over entrenched and complex thought processes. I first heard the story back in the late 80’s, which is just about when the business management establishment started using the expression “think outside the box”. While the expression served its purpose for a few years, like all overused jargon it finally lost its meaning. Yet the real problem with this particular jargon lies not in its overuse, but in the logic contained within the jargon itself. 

The box represents a process that has already been designed, tested, and under execution for some time. Clear thinking, or a good strategy, actually created the process and therefore the box. Managers and employees are hired to mind the box – until bugs in the process begin to appear. These bugs can be internal (design) issues, or external (competitive) threats. Corrective pressures ensue, and suddenly everyone in the box is asked to think outside of it. This might be akin to building a house for your family, then when things start to go wrong with the house you ask your family to step outside and pretend the house does not exist. Sounds more like a Chinese fire drill than strategic thinking.

Take one example of “boxed” strategic thinking: Iridium was a $5 billion satellite-telephone venture investment by Motorola that filed for Chapter 11 less than a year after the wireless phone system went live. Pundits have been all over the Iridium case study, for the most part agreeing that it was a case of falling in love with a technology idea at the expense of a market reality: Motorola was betting on a wireless technology that had been proven for more than 30 years, with a guarantee to cover the entire globe, regardless of what the market need was for businessmen in the middle of the Sahara desert desperately needing to make a call.

If there is something that Motorola was good at – and still is to be fair – it is boxes. Radio boxes, more precisely: from the first automobile radios, to RF (Radio Frequency) communication devices for the military and for commercial use. But it didn’t just master the production of communication boxes; it also pioneered the Six Sigma process, the mother of all operational quality control processes. So given this track record in strategic as well as process excellence, what went wrong with Iridium? Had Motorola fallen blindly in love with the promise of satellite communications technology, or with its own capability to build the perfect box?

My bet is that neither of those two indictments is as relevant as the fact that Motorola had lost sight of how to think -- never mind where to think. Motorola’s founder Paul Galvin came from the Michelangelo Buonarotti school of visionary thinking: when guys like Michelangelo stand in front of a huge block of marble, they don't see a chunk of rock like the average mortal, they see the David inside of it; Galvin looked at a car radio and didn't just see an RF receiver box, he thought about the driving experience inside the car. Almost seventy years later, Galvin’s successors looked up to the skies and dreamed of sixty-six satellites covering wireless communications for the entire surface of our planet. Apparently they forgot to look back down at earth and find their David, or at least, the ultimate communication experience. 

If only there had been a little boy standing in the sidelines to remind Iridium guys that not much more than 10% of the surface of our planet is actually inhabited -- 1% if you consider only urban areas.

The Shortest Yard

"The NFL and its fans have no right to profess concern. It's hypocrisy. Yes, I understand that the sport may not have caused Hamlin's condition. That's not my point. My point is that the sport destroys bodies and lives, and we love it.

Stop telling me you're concerned, or stop watching. Am I pissing you off? I hope so."

- Scott Wilson, attorney for NFL concussion case

“The sport”. 

I mean, you’re not really pissing me off Mr. Wilson, but you have poked my morbid curiosity. As a numbers guy I had to conduct my own due diligence. And sure, I was just called a hypocrite. By a lawyer, but l’ll let that one slide for now. 

I’m sure I’ve been a hypocrite from time to time, like most mortals. But like anything else it’s not about falling for hypocrisy, from time to time. It’s what you do about it. 

I’m a little stumped by the contradiction of data available on the subject. Credible sources like the Mayo Clinic and similar agree that ”most” TBIs (Traumatic Brain Injury) are caused by falling. Especially elderly and children. One law firm sets falling at 47%, consistent with the label of “most”. The other categories include traffic accidents - 16%, “struck by something - 15%” (which could be sports), assault - 9%, other - 13%. 

But then it gets sloppy after that. The TOTAL incidents in the US are listed at around 2.8 million (between 1.5 million and 3 million). So far so good, except some credible sites say ALL of those are sports related, while others say that 47% of the 2.8 million are from falls. So which is it??

Regardless of the sloppiness from credible sources on OVERALL numbers, there is some consistency on how SPORTS break down.

American football accounts for just under 11% of either sports TBIs or all TBIs. Either way it’s not the highest incidence within sports: rugby has a higher rate at just under 13%. American football is 2nd, followed by women’s ice hockey and then men’s ice hockey. 5th place is women’s soccer, 6th is men’s soccer. 

So as far as I can tell, the leading causes ranking of TBI looks like this (USA):

1. Falling

2. Traffic Accidents

4. Assault

5. Rugby (men)

6. American Football (men)

7. Hockey (women)

8. Hockey (men)

9. Soccer (women)

10. Soccer (men)

“The sport”. Which one are we talking about, Mr. Wilson? 

The reasons athletes are drawn to sports vary from fun to passion, but money takes center stage among the top performers. Which also means there’s huge profit to be made by the owners of sports franchises, leagues, events, broadcasters and related (merchandise, etc). And that’s where it gets “stupid”. For every greed dollar that turns a blind eye to the risks carried by the athletes, there’s a greed dollar for those that would sue by distorting the same risks. 

There’s no excuse for turning a blind eye to the risks of sport injuries. But that also means the nature of sports may one day end up looking like a chess game. Don’t touch me, don’t even look at me. And we better sit down before one of us gets hurt.  

For their part, distorters and hyperbole artists live by the “ends justifies the means” rule of war. So technically in the name of a good cause (defeating an evil enemy or defending an injured athlete) the truth can be sacrificed. To the point of fighting symptoms without understanding the cause.

The shortest yard is the first one. The last yard is the longest. Go deep or go home.

The Pareto Principle

Some of you know it as the 80/20 Rule. The principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from roughly 20% of causes. In other words, a minority percentage of causes have a substantial majority effect.

Politicians and their patron saint Niccolò Machiavelli have known this simple crowd control algorithm for centuries. But to be fair to them it’s not just governments and their politicians who live and die by the Pareto Principle. Capitalism thrives on it, artists are tormented by it.

The internet and its virtual communities of social platforms adopted the principle from day one. It was a prime directive practically ripped from Machiavelli’s “The Prince”: capture no more than 20% of traffic, then tell the world that you are the world. How small can you go in the 20% club and still assume the “I’m king of the world!” position? Well, we now know what share of the social media market $44 billion will buy: 9%. As our Titanic hero Elon Musk would say, “let that sink in.” 

Comedian Bill Burr has quipped an interesting number on more than one occasion, when poked about the blowback from audiences over his sarcasm about women. “What, like 20 of them?” he scoffs, mocking the relatively small number of booers or hecklers. But regardless of how he truly feels about women, you may want to pay close attention to his defiance of the Pareto Principle. Some internet neighborhoods have condemned the likes of him and Dave Chappelle as public enemies. Yet reality is the eighty percent undertow behind the shallow shores of the twenty percent. As Chappelle and Burr enter the deep end of accountability, they manage to outsmart the Pareto effect. They are the Schrödinger cats of the comedy circuit.

If comedy’s not your thing, maybe the dark side of the 80/20 ratio will grab your attention.  The two political parties in the US have never enjoyed much more than 20% of actual population support, never mind 51% of voters over the past few decades. And yet, every time a new politician is sworn in they can’t help but parrot the same tired dogma: “The American people have spoken.” They sure have. Somewhere between half and eighty percent either disapprove of you or at best are apathetic. 

When the American Republican Party splintered in recent years from mainstream conservatism to neo-fascist movements, it mastered the Pareto Principle as an alternative fact maker. Ripped from the cover of survival coffee-table books, it convinced itself that when standing up to a bear you should make yourself look bigger. “Never mind those votes, they’re not real anyway. Look over here, deep into my huuuge eyes... then close your little mind and let me take you back, to a magical place from the past that never existed.”

So the next time you cruise the internet’s underworld, watching the rage Geiger counter shoot up by the thousands and the thirst traps by the millions, you may want to remind yourself about the Pareto Principle. Eighty percent of reality is beyond the interest of media and social platforms. They weren’t developed to enlighten you in the first place, their prime directive is to sell. What you’re seeing is blinding you from what you’re not. Which is how selling works. 

One of society’s greatest oxymorons is street wisdom. Survival is powered by instinct, not by wisdom. Street instinct is the king of urban myths, and as such it roars as the ruling monarch of the internet.