Human-powered Gym

Every time I spend time on a rowing machine at the gym (it has been a pretty frequent occurrence lately), there's a number of thoughts that go through my head. The first one has to do with Viking slaves. I think to myself, "wow, hundreds of years, the Vikings went through a lot of trouble to enslave entire villages in order to force them into the involuntary rowing that powered the Viking ships. The Vikings had to force people to do this thing that has now become a voluntary activity that I do for enjoyment. I'll admit that in my case, there isn't some demanding overlord standing over me with a whip in his hand, but I find it striking that a lot of people pay good money for that service now in the form of personal trainers! After all, it's part of the fun of going to the gym to have someone pushing you to your limits and beyond.

The other thing that comes to mind when I'm sitting on that rowing machine is just the sheer pointlessness of gym activity in the grand scheme of things. We pay the gym good money for the right to visit their facilities and expend energy that could have been used doing actually productive things. Even the Vikings, despite their questionable motives, were at least resourceful with the human resources they requisitioned. The rowing done by their slaves actually made their ships go somewhere. But what does anyone get out of my rowing activities? Other than my own personal satisfaction of having beat my 4km speed record, nothing!

I think gym activities are actually part of what's wrong with America. Don't dismiss this as unfounded or slanderous, and don't think I'm somehow against personal improvement or don't love my country. Just hear me out. When we look at the world we live in, we balance the results we see against the effort we're putting in. When there seems to be a disjoint between how much effort we put into life and how much we have to show for it as a country, we start looking around for people to blame. Maybe the financial sector is making risky investments or making dirty money gambling with the retirement accounts of the hard-working middle class. Maybe those middle class guys are actually not pulling their weight, maybe they're dragging down the economy by stretching their credit and living a lifestyle that is actually beyond their means. Or maybe those lower-class people are sucking all the money out of the economy through expensive government aid programs. Somebody has to be not pulling their weight because we're all in massive debt together and that just wouldn't be possible if everyone was putting in as much as they take out.

So where does the gym factor into it? I think my gym activities skew my perspective of how much of the pie I think I contributed. When I look back over a long hard day and think of all the effort I put in today, I subconsciously factor in that 45 minutes of intense physical activity, even though I really know that it doesn't factor in as something I contributed to the world. But since I'm so used to seeing the world as a balance beam between the effort I put in and the results I reap, it makes me feel like I contributed more than I really did. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this one. If you ask any American, you will probably find that they will say they put in more than get. Everyone will say that it's someone else dragging their feet and bringing down the economy, and we're so sure it can't be us. I wonder if gym activities (and other personal activities) trick us into thinking that we give more than we get.

I think we should take a lesson from the Vikings. Not from their barbarism or twisted sense of superiority, but from their resourcefulness. It would be cool if gyms were a place where you could go to get a decent workout and also make a meaningful contribution to the world. I'm not sure how that would work. Maybe all the treadmills should power the electricity in the gym, and maybe there would be some left over to sell or give back to the city, which would reduce power costs and transition some of our power dependency onto a more environmentally friendly power source. I wonder how much power could be harvested if every treadmill and elliptical machine in the country were used to generate electricity rather than consume it (the ones at my gym consume a lot of electricity). It's got to add up to something pretty substantial. Or maybe we could make exercise programs that involve building homes for the homeless or cleaning up public parks, or building bridges or doing construction or any number of other physically demanding activities that also yield a productive result that can be enjoyed by many. I wonder how many forms of public service could be marketed back to the public as an exercise program. The gym could stop being a place where I pay money to get rid of my energy and it could start being a place that finds resourceful ways of putting my manpower to work. But hey, that's just me.

Manual Espresso

This morning, I ordered a short latte from a local Uptown Espresso. I was shocked that after the barista took my order, she did everything by hand. I watched as she ground the beans, dosed them into the portafilter and tamped them down. She attached the portafilter to the machine and timed my shots by hand. And how was the coffee? It was delicious.

I really appreciate when things are done by hand. Almost every other coffee chain I know has fully automated machines. You push a button and the machine grinds the beans, doses and tamps the grounds in the same precise way each time, and pulls shots that come out more or less exactly the same each time. The automatic method is obviously popular for lots of reasons. It enables chains like Starbucks to achieve s sense of consistency across all their stores. Whether you're walking into a Starbucks on the upper east side of Manhattan or in downtown Seattle on Pike St., you know that the beverage you order will taste exactly like the ones you've had at other Starbucks establishments. It also renders a major factor of barista training unnecessary. Pulling good, consistent espresso shots is an art, and it's a lot easier to train new employees how to push a button than it is to teach them how to time shots. This also allows them to spend more of the employee training process on other things like customer service or individual recipes (i.e. how many pumps of what goes in this or that drink). It also enables them to service more customers with a smaller staff. I've read somewhere that a single Starbucks store can serve hundreds of customers in a single hour. That wouldn't be possible without automatic espresso machines.

But still there's something that really draws me to the manual approach. On most mornings I pull my own espresso shots. I prefer my own espresso to the ones I could get at my local Peet's or Tully's or Starbucks. Do manual shots always taste better than automatic ones? Not at all. There's plenty of things that can be done wrong. I'm always trying new kinds of beans too, which means I constantly need to adjust the fineness of the grind, the pressure I apply to the tamper, and the duration of the shot. Sometimes, when getting used to new beans, the result of all my hard work doesn't even taste like coffee. But when you get it right, it makes everything worth it.

Some enthusiasts claim that the best manual shots are consistently better than their automatic counterparts. I don't know if that's necessarily true. A lot of time is spent fine-tuning the automatic machines to produce the most consistently high-quality espresso possible. Of course, there's a little bit of a tradeoff between consistency and quality, but in general, they can make decently good coffee. But then again, it's not necessarily the quality of the brew that draws me to the manual process. Like all manual processes, it's the personal aspect it introduces. You can curtail your espresso to be exactly the way you want it? Do you want a lighter brew or a heavier brew? Do you prefer it to have a hint of bitterness or would you rather shoot to extract all the aromatic flavors of the beans without the bitterness that comes toward the end of the extraction? You won't find any buttons on an automatic machine that'll let you make any of those choices. If you don't want to make those choices, it's fine. You can keep your Starbucks. But there's something about my coffee every morning that says it was made specially for me, just the way I like it. That's why manual espresso will never go out of style. Not because it's better than the automatic kind, but because it's more personal.

Thrasymachus's Claim

At the heart of Plato's Republic lies a question that is never really answered. This question, originally put forth by Greek Philosophers thousands of years ago (and likely even earlier by others) has still not been satisfactorily answered even to this day. The question comes in many forms, but at its root, it is simply this:

Why be moral?

Socrates puts forth the question in a little bit different of a way:

What is the benefit of being Just? Why choose a virtuous lifestyle over a non-virtuous one?

To which Thrasymachus (no doubt a politician) replies:

There is no benefit of being Just. The only  benefits that appear to come from being Just really come from appearing to be Just.

According to Thrasymachus, Justice means compromising ones own personal gain for that of the State, choosing someone else's gain over your own gain. He does admit that there are cases where it seems  like there is a benefit to being virtuous. For example, Others may not be interested in doing business with someone with a bad reputation. Virtuous appearances can make it easier to get other people to trust you, which is of utmost personal advantage. However, Thrasymachus argues, the benefit doesn't come from actually being virtuous but only from appearing to be so. Thrasymachus and Socrates agree that being virtuous and appearing to be virtuous are two separate things. In order to separate the benefits and drawbacks of each one, they propose this thought experiment:

Imagine two men. One of these men is purely non-virtuous and yet appears to be purely virtuous. He is held in high esteem by all people. He is daily praised by the general public for his virtue. He gets the seat of honor at all the fancy banquets. Everyone wants to be his friend and do business with him. But in reality, his actions are purely self-interested. He deceives everyone. He stabs his friends and business partners in the back to the full extent that he can get away with. He is very good (almost supernaturally) at covering his tracks and putting on appearances. Anything he wants, he steals from others, and yet he is loved by all.

The second man, on the other hand, is purely virtuous and yet appears to everyone to be purely non-virtuous. He spends his days looking out for the general welfare of all people. He doesn't have much in the way of worldly possessions, because he gives much away to others in need. And yet he is despised by all people. He lacks what the first man has: the ability to appear to be virtuous. As such, all his good deeds go unnoticed. Even worse, he is suspected of dishonesty, treachery, and the worst of things. No one trusts him. No one will do business with him. Even his family has abandoned him. He is thrown in jail, beaten, and forced to live out the rest of his days in a dank dungeon, where even in the depths of his despair, he continues to do good for anyone he can with whatever little means he has left.

How many of us would honestly rather be the second man?

In this light, Thrasymachus argues that since the non-virtuous man is obviously much better off than the virtuous man,  all personal gain clearly comes through appearing to be virtuous and not from actually being virtuous. He admits that sometimes it is not possible to appear to be virtuous without doing virtuous things, so in this case, sometimes virtuous deeds are a necessary evil that one must perform, thus giving up some personal advantage in return for a good reputation that will continue to pay dividends.

This is the disturbing problem which Socrates sets out to solve at the beginning of Republic. He wants to show that there is reason to pursue virtue (not just the appearance of virtue). Although disturbed by the possibility that Thrasymachus might be right, he clings to the hope that the virtuous man still has something priceless that the non-virtuous man still lacks, something still more valuable and worth pursuing than all the riches of the non-virtuous man. He never quite reaches a satisfactory answer.

There have been a ton of answers to the question of morality over the years. Maybe doing good makes you feel good and that makes virtue worth it. Maybe God knows the good things you've done and rewards you for them. Maybe you will be rewarded in the next life for the good things you've done in this one. Maybe you'll be tortured for all eternity for the things that you've done. Maybe we were designed to do good things and this is how we reach our true potential. Or  maybe Thrasymachus is right and we should all be more concerned with how we appear than with what we do.

The problem with the question of morality is that it wants a non-moral answer. It asks for a rationally self-interested reason to participate in morality. No wonder it lends itself well to the type of answer that Thrasymachus gives. In a lot of ways, Thrasymachus is right. You don't get anything for being virtuous. But at the same time, the benefits of being rationally self-interested are vastly overstated by the above thought experiment. Ultimately, any way you look at it, living entirely to please yourself is a limited and fruitless existence. For me, anyone begging the question of morality is starting off on the wrong foot. It is just not the right question to ask if you want to end up somewhere compelling. The real question is "how do I live a life worth living?" or "How do I live a life that is part of something bigger than myself?". This is the kind of language to which discussion of morality is actually accessible, to which compelling answers can actually be given. Regardless of whether discussing morality in a religious or secular perspective, if you don't start out with the right questions, you'll easily be distracted by the perspective of rational self interest that often dominates modern thought.

To get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.

Change the World

This is something I've been thinking about lately.

Growing up, I convinced myself that it was my calling in life to change the world in a major way, that somehow my life was not worthwhile if it didn't have some far-reaching impact on "the way people live their lives". Recently reading a lot of news about Steve Jobs and the way he "changed the way people live their lives", it's really made me think about what kind of mark I want to make on the world. Here's what I came up with.

It's not enough to change the way people live their lives. What's vastly more important is improving the quality of life. Although I love technology and innovation, I look over the past decade of innovation in consumer electronics (smaller/more powerful laptops, mp3 players, smart phones, WiFi, touch UI, bluetooth, hyprethreading, quad core, Facebook, Netflix, Kindle Fire, etc.) and I'm left thinking that the quality-of-life improvement all of these things have brought me has been marginal at best. Am I really that much happier because I'm writing this blog on a tablet instead of a desktop computer? Am I dramatically better off now that I can browse the internet from my phone? More importantly, is that the kind of legacy I want to leave behind? A new UI paradigm? A new social network? The next "innovative" new Software-As-A-Service?

Touch-based smart phones aren't life changing. Tablet devices aren't life changing. You want to know what's life changing? Clean water for the 12% of the world's population that doesn't currently have access to it, that's what's really life changing. That's the kind of thing that is really changing lives in a meaningful way. That's something that's worth being part of, a legacy much more worth passing on. If you're interested in being a part of that, you should check out http://www.charitywater.org/.

To be clear, I am totally into electronics innovation. There are some really cool things going on, and a lot of really interesting opportunities. But for me, I think the passion to innovate on technology stems from my passion to improve lives. An innovation is only as compelling to me as the life change it brings, which makes a biosand water filter demonstrably much more compelling and innovative in my eyes than any consumer device I own. That's right. Given the right context, a bucket of sand is more innovative than my smart phone. ;P