Showing posts with label analogies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label analogies. Show all posts

Sunday, January 01, 2012

Demisexual

I learned a new word today: demisexual. The description given in the link is an accurate description of my sexuality. However, I reject the term itself, because I don't feel that my sexuality is less than full and I don't care to have it defined by someone else's standard of what constitutes full sexuality.* I will continue to use my own coinages: "congenitally monogamous" or "orientationally monogamous". Nevertheless, it is interesting and somewhat gratifying to know that there's a name available in case I need it, and that it's common enough to get a name.

*Some might question why I would object to being referred to as demisexual when this term appears to originate from the asexual community, who apparently have no objection to being referred to as asexual. Why the objection to being defined as having half a trait when others have no objection to being defined by the absence of the trait? Here's an analogy: I am childfree, which means I have no desire or interest to have children. That is simply true, accurate, and, in some contexts, pertinent, so I have no objection to being labelled as such. However, there are some people out there who have very few children. I doubt they'd enjoy being referred to as "semi-parents". (Or, for a perfect analogy, "demi-parents", but I think "semi" sounds more natural.) They certainly don't feel they're less than full parents and wouldn't be best pleased if their parenting was defined as less than 100% just because other people parent more people than they do.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Analogy for eating for health

There are a lot of people in the world who eat with the primary goal of providing themselves with optimal health and nutrition. I'm not into this. One of my greatest sources of happiness in life is eating exactly what I want exactly when I want, and I find that focusing on health and nutrition unduly detracts from this simple pleasure. Health and nutrition people can't understand this. "But what could possibly be more important than your health?" they say. "It will make you live way longer."

Here's an analogy:

Imagine a sex act that doesn't give you an orgasm and (either on its on merits or by virtue of the partner you're doing it with) isn't particularly fun for you. The kind of sex act where you wouldn't feel at all deprived if you never engaged in it again. Now imagine the combination of sex act and partner are such that it takes a long time. It takes far longer than it would take you to have an orgasm with your favourite sex act. It takes long enough that you're starting to wonder why people consider premature ejaculation a problem. And imagine doing this sex act in a position where you have to do all the work. You can't just lie down and relax, you have to do it all yourself - and it takes way more work than your favourite sex act does.

Now suppose you have to do this sex act somewhere between three and six times a day, every single day, for the rest of your life. Even if you're away from home or out with friends, when it's sex time you have to drop everything and find a suitable place for the sex act (which is often away from all the fun everyone else is having), and you have to either carry around all the equipment necessary or make sure it's available wherever you'll be going, all of which is rather conspicuous and is detrimental to general social spontaneity.

Even if your favourite sex act isn't contraindicated, it's difficult to fit it into your schedule since so much of your time and energy (and physical tolerance for friction) are consumed by the non-fun sex act.

And if you complain about any of this, people reply with "But it's SEX! What could possibly be more important?" and cite research studies that show that if you have sex this particular way, you'll be able to continue to do so for decades longer than most people can maintain an active sex life.

Doesn't that sound like a special kind of purgatory?

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Analogy for banning niqabs (or any other clothing, for that matter) at citizenship ceremonies

I was so outraged that this is being done in my name that I couldn't blog about it for days. But my shower gave me an analogy:

Suppose there's an elite search and rescue team. Throughout its history, the vast majority of the team members have been male, although there's never been any rule or practice preventing women from joining.

The first step to joining the team is a physical fitness test. Everyone takes their test at the same time, and, because it's such an elite search and rescue team, these tests sometimes attract VIP visits and media attention, and applicants' families and friends often come along to watch. There has never been any dress code for the tests, but it's ended up that the vast majority of the candidates don't wear a shirt when taking the test. So, even though there are no gender or clothing rules, it's not at all uncommon to see an entire test group full of shirtless men. Some of the women who take the test also do it shirtless (Maybe they like the tradition? Maybe they're more comfortable that way? No one has ever thought to ask.) and some wear shirts. We don't have any data on how many do or don't wear shirts. (For that matter, we don't have any data on how many men, if any, wear shirts.) We actually don't even have any data on how many applicants are women. The statement that's it's dominated by shirtless males is based solely on visual observation.

Then, suddenly, the head of the search and rescue team announces that all fitness tests must be taken shirtless. In support of his statement, he cites a story told by one of his colleagues about how he was observing a fitness test and saw a group of women wearing shirts. The colleague told this story in a tone of voice that suggested he thought it was a problem, but the best reason given is that wearing a shirt is not what most people do. There's no logistical reason why a shirt would get in the way (they do need to briefly listen to applicants' lungs with a stethoscope before the test - although some question whether that's even medically necessary - but that could easily be done around a shirt or behind a screen away from the crowds and cameras), and there's no other dress code for the tests.

On top of all this, they announced the no-shirt rule at the last minute. There are thousands of applicants already in the system, who have spent years getting in shape and training their dogs and learning how to climb mountains and fly helicopters and scuba dive so they can fulfill their lifetime goal of being a part of this team, all without any idea that they might suddenly have to perform in front of a crowd and cameras in less clothing than they feel comfortable wearing.

Isn't that just assholic??? It's disproportionately cruel and humiliating to the people affected, and for no good reason. It's not going to give people a sense of belonging, it's going to give them an urge to flee.

The new recruits will grow comfortable as members of the search and rescue team on their own, as time passes and they collect empirical evidence that they are welcome and valued members. As we all know from our private lives, if you want to make someone feel comfortable about wearing less clothing, you don't start by removing their clothing; you start by making them comfortable. There's no reason to force people to do something they're uncomfortable with in front of a large audience on their very first day just for superficial visual consistency.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

You can't just replace screen time with exercise

I was annoyed to wake up yesterday morning to my radio telling me that the Heart and Stroke Foundation thinks we should be exercising when we would normally be watching TV or looking at the internet. As though those two things are anywhere near interchangeable.

Screen time is pleasurable and relaxing; exercise is a chore.

Screen time is multitaskable, conducive to cooking or eating or housework or light reading or more than one kind of screen time at once; exercise requires the full attention of your whole body and entirely too much of your mind.

Screen time is logistically simple - just turn it on and plop down; exercise requires different clothes and a shower afterwards and, depending on your health situation, planning what you do or don't eat before and/or after.

Analogy: suppose I decide that people aren't intaking enough current events and should read more newspapers. When they protest they don't have the time, I say "How much time do you spend driving around in car every day? Why don't you spend that time reading a newspaper instead?"

Not that simple, is it?

This irritated me so much that I skipped exercising yesterday just because I didn't want them to win.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Analogy for Greece

I've been reading a lot about the situation in Greece, and one thing that keeps popping up is that, depending on how it's framed, either there are an awful lot of people who aren't paying their taxes, or the government is particularly ineffective at tax collection. In any case, the salient point is that taxes that, by law, should be ending up in government coffers, aren't.

The more I think about this, the more that it seems that "austerity" isn't going to solve this problem. Here's an analogy for why:

Suppose you own a store. It's the only store in the area and it sells practically everything a person might want.

Unfortunately, your store has a severe shoplifting problem. Entirely too much merchandise is walking out the door without being paid for.

Downsizing employees isn't going to stop the shoplifting. You'll have fewer people to look out for shoplifters, plus a bunch of people with insider knowledge of your store who are suddenly disgruntled against you and lacking money to pay for their purchases.

Raising prices isn't going to stop the shoplifting. If your merchandise is less affordable (or even just perceived to be unfairly priced), that's certainly not going to stop existing shoplifters from shoplifting, and might incite more people to start shoplifting because they either can't afford your new prices or don't feel it's fair to pay your new prices.

Cutting back on the range or quality of your products isn't going to stop the shoplifting. People who are going to shoplift are going to shoplift what you have. Particularly discerning customers with the means to do so may opt to travel to a larger centre to buy the product that you no longer stock, or to special-order them, which means that the customers who are best positioned to provide you with revenue will have fewer opportunities to do so.

It's true that any of these measures might fix your balance sheet temporarily, for the next quarter or so, but none of them are going to solve the real problem and they may well actually make it worse. To solve the actual problem, you need to either incentivize your customers to pay for their purchases, or make it more difficult for them to walk out without paying. Similarly, Greece needs to either convince its people to pay their taxes, or make tax evasion more difficult.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The problem with conventional thinking about machine translation

Reading In the Plex, Steven Levy's fascinating biography of Google, I came across the following quote from machine translation pioneer Warren Weaver:

When I look at an article in Russian, I say, "This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode."


I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is incorrect, and people who don't find themselves able to get past this way of thinking end up being very poor translators.

A more accurate approach would be "This idea really exists in a system of pure concepts unbounded by the limits of language or human imagination, but it has been coded in a way that one subset of puny humans can understand. I will now encode it for another subset of puny humans to understand."

To translate well, you have to grasp the concepts without the influence of the source language, then render them in the target language. You're stripping the code off and applying a new one.

If you translate Russian to English by assuming that the Russian is really in English, what you're going to end up with is an English text that is really Russian. Your Anglophone readers will be able to tell, and might even have trouble understanding the English.

The Russian text is not and has never been English. There's no reason for it to be. The Russian author need never have had a thought in English. He need never have even heard of English. Are your English thoughts really in Russian? Are they in Basque? Xhosa? Aramaic? Of course not! They're in English, and there's no need or reason for them to be in any other language.

This is a tricky concept for people who don't already grasp it to grasp, because when we start learning a new language (and often for years and years of our foray into a new language) everything we say or write in that language is really in English (assuming you're Anglophone - if you're not, then, for simplicity's sake, mentally search and replace "English" with your mother tongue for the purpose of this blog post). We learn on the first day of French class that je m'appelle means "my name is". But je m'appelle isn't the English phrase "my name is" coded into French. (If anything is that, it would be mon nom est.) The literal gloss of je m'appelle is "I call myself", but je m'appelle isn't the English idea "I call myself" coded into French either. If anything, it's the abstract idea of "I am introducing myself and the next thing I say is going to be my name" encoded into French. The French code for that concept is je m'appelle, the English code is "my name is".

I'm trying to work on a better analogy to explain this concept to people who don't already grok it, but here's the best I've got so far:

Think of the childhood game of Telephone, where the first person whispers something to the second person, then the second person whispers what they heard to the third person, and so on and so on until the last person says out loud what they heard and you all have a good laugh over how mangled it got.

What Mr. Weaver is proposing is analogous to trying your very very best to render exactly what you heard the person before you say.

But to grasp concepts without the influence of language and translate well is analogous to listening to what the person before you said and using your knowledge of language patterns and habits to determine what the original person actually said despite the interference.

Which defeats the purpose of Telephone, but is the very essence of good translation.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

How long do we have to keep stating the obvious for?

Despite the bombshell nature of many of the cuts suggested this week by a city-hired consultant, there is no stampede of Torontonians signing up to tell the politicians face-to-face, or in writing, how they feel about them.


I'll admit it never occurred to me to tell politicians how I feel about them. You know why? Because it's so blatantly obvious that they're destructive and unworkable, and I figured it's just as blatantly obvious to anyone who lives in the world. The KPMG study proves that there simply aren't workable cuts to be had by listing what few remaining things could even legally be cut. It isn't advocating cutting these things, it's pointing out how destructive large-scale cuts would be by saying that these important things are the things that would remain to be cut if large-scale cuts were to happen.

It really frustrates me that not wasting my time stating the obvious to politicians could be interpreted as support for or indifference to such destructive measures. And I think, on top of all the damage already being done to our city, this need to constantly be loudly shouting the obvious at the top of our lungs is also destructive to our city, because it takes away energy that could otherwise be used to think of ways to make things even better.

It's like if you had to say to every person you encountered "Please don't hurt me," and if you didn't they'd hurt you. That would be really draining, wouldn't it? You have to be totally on top of making sure you noticed every single person around you and said "Please don't hurt me" to them, plus it would preclude saying "Hi, how are you?" or "I love your shoes!" or "Can I pet your doggie?" And on top of that, it would also take up the energy you need to think "This sidewalk would be more easily navigable if the planters were flush with the curb" or "Hey, that store might sell greeting cards" or "What if I used the egg slicer to slice the mushrooms?"

Real life operates under a tacit assumption of the obvious. Of course people don't want you to hurt them. Why can't politics do the same?

Sunday, July 03, 2011

Analogy for everything

This comes from an article on why dogs bite, but it applies to everything in the world:

Bites are usually caused by an accumulation of stressors. Each time a dog is exposed to a stressor, stress hormones are dumped into the brain. These stress hormones are like the puzzle pieces in Tetris. They build up over time. You have to actively reduce the stress (like a Tetris player clearing lines) through management, desensitization, counter conditioning, and general stress reduction techniques. If you are not taking steps to reduce the stress, it begins to accumulate. The dumping of stress hormones into the brain leaves the dog increasingly sensitized to stressors, which replicates the puzzle pieces dropping faster and faster until you eventually reach the threshold. Soon, the dog bites. The game is over.

Stressors vary in individual dogs. One dog may be stressed by loud noises, nail trimming, men with beards, wearing a shock collar, foul weather, and a bad diet. Another dog may not seemingly respond to these factors but is sensitive to visits to the vet’s office, small children, cats, people that smell like beer, dogs walking past the fenced in yard, and people approaching or entering the home. Every dog has stressors (commonly called “triggers”) and a big part of effective behavioral modification strategies is identifying these as accurately and thoroughly as possible, which allows behavior consultants and handlers to focus their efforts most efficiently. Stressors, like Tetris pieces, accumulate over time.


This explains introvert brain. The more time you have to spend in the company of other people without a moment of privacy, the more stressors (Tetris pieces) accumulate until you melt down.

This explains how phobias work. The more you're exposed to triggers (or the threat thereof) without having time to reset, the jumpier and edgier you get, and the more susceptible you get to future triggers. (Among other problems, this is why desensitization therapy is problematic when you're likely to have uncontrollable exposure to your triggers in everyday life.)

This explains why, when I was a kid, I often had trouble just being nice and putting up with stuff that grownups thought I should be able to just be nice and put up with. After being bullied all day in school, and having my sister get all up in my business when I got home, and being subject to whatever lectures and judgement external factors had made my grownups feel like delivering regardless of whether I needed to hear them, and having no control whatsoever over when I arrived and left and went to bed and woke up and ate (or even what I ate), I had very little room left to just fake being nice so we can all get along. It's not that I've matured, it's that I can now go home or eat potato chips whenever I damn well please, which clears a lot of Tetris lines.

It's the most multi-purpose analogy I've ever met. I think if you're lacking an analogy for anything, this one just might do the trick.

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Analogy for why potlucks suck

Think of a group of people ordering pizza. Everyone contributes an equal share of money. That's how it works. Barring certain exceptional circumstances, it is inethical to not contribute as much money as everyone else but still eat pizza.

At a potluck, the coin of the realm is food. Specifically, it's quality, quantity, interestingness, yumminess, and awesomeness of food. So if the food you bring is somehow not up to the standard of compared to what everyone else brings (it only feeds 2 people when everyone else brought enough for 12, it isn't very good and therefore not worth eating compared with everything else, it's something everyone can have at home or buy in any store when all the other contributions are interesting things that you hardly ever get to try, etc.), your behaviour is just as inethical as not contributing your fair share for the pizza.

The first problem with this is you don't know what other people will be contributing, so you have no way of knowing in advance what your fair share is. It would be like if we lived in a world where it's impossible to find out the price of pizza before it's delivered, and the price fluctuates wildly from day to day. You couldn't pay your fair share of the pizza in advance then, could you?

The second problem is that once you discover your contribution isn't up to par, there's no way to bring it up to par. Apart the fact that different people have different abilities and resources (in other words, all the hard work humanly possible within a reasonable period of time isn't going to bring my contribution up to par with my mother's, because she has 3 extra decades of practice and acquired equipment, and a kitchen twice the size of mine), it's very difficult to vastly improve a potluck dish at the last minute. If everyone else brought cake and I brought supermarket cookies, there is nothing I can do to bring them up to par with a cake (other than running out and getting a cake, which isn't always feasible either.) If you don't contribute enough for pizza, you can always give the person who covered you a few extra bucks later. There's no way to do this with potluck, so even if your inethical behaviour was accidental, there's no way to fix it and you're stuck being inethical all day. And, given people's annoying habit of attempting to strike up a conversation by saying "So what did you bring?" you're stuck with the humiliation of having to constantly admit to everyone that your contribution isn't good enough.

I have never in my life encountered any social event that's worth all this trouble and stress and angst and humiliation.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Analogy for why I still don't feel safe a year after the G20

You know how in Vancouver there were some riots after the Stanley Cup?

Imagine if, after the riots finished and in a completely different part of town, the police started rounding up people who were wearing hockey jerseys and people in their general vicinity, even though none of them were engaged in rioting behaviour. The police beat some of these people, threaten some of them with sexual assault, and detain many of them for hours in conditions without proper toilets or sufficient drinking water.

Now picture the scene of the riot the next day. Some people are cleaning up, some people are taking pictures of the mess and of the people cleaning up, and some people are going about life normally. Now imagine if the police swooped in and kettled all those people who happened to be in that general area the next day and didn't let them leave for hours - no washrooms, no food or drink, threat of arrest, rapidly-worsening weather conditions.

Then imagine if, a year later, you still have no assurances that this won't happen again. Nothing has been said or done to give you the remotest hope that some day in the future you won't be detained, arrested, brutalized or tormented for being in public in a city where a riot recently happened. Or for some other equally valid reason.

Sunday, February 06, 2011

Analogy for childcare decisions

I've noticed an awful lot of people like to make sweeping declarative statements about which childcare choices are good or bad. But one thing I've noticed from watching my peers who become parents is that, in addition to the dictates of circumstance, so much depends on the personalities of the people involved. Some kids are ecstatic about going to daycare. Some (like me when I was little) would absolutely wither if forced to spend their days in a large group. Some parents find it fascinating to watch their kids every single moment of the day. Some find it outright dull, and do better once the kids are old enough to have an actual conversation.

So here's a series of analogies:

Is it a good idea to go to grad school?
Is it a good idea drink milk?
Is it a good idea to live with roommates?
Is it a good idea to retire at 65?

The answer to all of these questions is "It depends." It depends on your personality, and the personalities of the other parties involved. It depends on your financial and career situation. It depends on your state of health. It depends on your personal values. It depends on the current economic context.

The same goes for childcare decisions. And it really disturbs me that so many people who think their choice is right for everyone are going around having kids.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Analogy for the current state of municipal politics?

The following is a quote from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germ, and Steel, on the subject of why and how China lost its technological advantage over Europe.

The end of China’s treasure fleets gives us a clue. Seven of those fleets sailed from China between A.D. 1405 and 1433. They were then suspended as a result of a typical aberration of local politics that could happen anywhere in the world: a power struggle between two factions at the Chinese court (the eunuchs and their opponents). The former faction had been identified with sending and captaining the fleets. Hence when the latter faction gained the upper hand in a power struggle, it stopped sending fleets, eventually dismantled the shipyards, and forbade oceangoing shipping.

[...]

That one temporary decision became irreversible, because no shipyards remained to turn out ships that would prove the folly of that temporary decision, and to serve as a focus for rebuilding other shipyards.

[...]

From time to time the Chinese court decided to halt other activities besides overseas navigation: it abandoned development of an elaborate water-driven spinning machine, stepped back from the verge of an industrial revolution in the 14th century, demolished or virtually abolished mechanical clocks after leading the world in clock construction, and retreated from mechanical devices and technology in general after the late 15th century. Those potentially harmful effects of unity have flared up again in modern China, notably during the madness of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, when a decision by one or a few leaders closed the whole country’s school systems for five years.


The first thing that came to mind as I read this was the harmful and far-reaching decision to kill Transit City. Is Toronto being collapsed?

Friday, December 17, 2010

Analogy for "people want subways"

In one of the newly-built condo buildings in my neighbourhood, there's this gorgeous penthouse. Massive suite, south and east exposure, lots of rooms - a dining room and a breakfast nook and a fricking library! - and priced well into the range of $2 million.

I want it.

Now let's suppose, for plot purposes, I'm engaged and pregnant. I'm very soon (and non-postponably) going to have to be able to house my growing family. So I do the sensible thing and but a down payment on a condo that's big enough for three. It's a nice, clean, safe, sensible two-bedroom. Nothing posh, but it will do the job far better than the tiny one-bedroom I'm currently living in. A two-bedroom is a bit out of my price range, but my parents give me some money to help me out. In general they don't believe in helping out adult children financially, but they do see the value of this specific investment to make sure that their future grandchild is properly housed.

So all this happens. I'm gestating away, we've scheduled a wedding date and a move-in date, I've given notice to my landlord, I've signed all my mortgage papers and figure out how I'm going to budget for it and made a written agreement with my parents for their contribution...and then one day I google upon the floor plans of the gorgeous penthouse.

And I decide I want it.

So I abandon the condo I've already put a down payment on. I abandon my moving plans. I tell my fiancé "You're either with me or against me". And I insist on staying in my apartment until I can afford to move into the penthouse.

It's very likely I'm never going to afford the penthouse, and if I can it won't be any time soon. The baby will be born and we'll be too crowded in the interim. My parents might not give me any more money after I've thrown away my sensible plan on a whim. Because I've already given my landlord notice, they might jack up the rent if I want to stay (as they normally jack up the rent between move-outs and move-ins). My fiancé may or may not stay on given the crazy way I've been acting, and if he decides to leave it will be even harder to afford the penthouse and all the problems will worsen.

Wouldn't it be far better in every respect to move into the sensible condo and take proper care of my family until such time as we can afford the penthouse? My marriage would survive, my child would have a room of her own, I would retain the trust (and potential for future funding) of my parents, and life would be better for everyone.

This is how the people of Toronto feel about subways. Yes, we want subways. Of course we do! But we can make life better for far more people far sooner and make the transit network as a whole more resilient with Transit City, which is already planned and funded and ground-broken and ready to go. It is far more important to build something already than to delay any more in pursuit of the absolutely perfect plan.

Of course, the flaw in my analogy is that if I had put a down payment on a condo, I could probably eventually sell it and recoup my investment. But there's no way to recoup the money already invested in Transit City or the penalties that will be charged for breaking massive contracts with suppliers.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Grinch?

There's a rumour flying around that Rob Ford is going to completely kill Transit City. Like tomorrow. Despite the fact that $137 million has already been spent investing in it. That's right, before we even look at the costs of breaking the contracts with Bombardier and the other companies, not to mention the wasted time and lost productivity to the city as a whole resulting from failure to build the promised lines (for me alone, using the classic time = money calculation, that will add up to more than I pay in municipal taxes a year), he wants to take the equivalent of $54 from the pocket of every man, woman and child in the city and just flush it down the toilet, producing nothing and hurting many Torontonians.

When thinking about money, I find it useful to think of it in terms of what it will buy. So when I started composing this blog post, I started thinking about what $54 would buy in terms that we can all identify with. And sitting here on the cusp of December, with all the lights on people's balconies and carols being played in stores and even my fricking Tim Hortons cup being decorated, what came to mind was xmas gifts. $54 each sounds about right for a present under the tree for everyone (plus one from Santa if you're a kid and you've been good), and a stocking full of candy and tchotchkes. Everyone gets something that's a little bit nice and a little bit useful and makes life a little bit more pleasant.

So picture this: you come downstairs all xmas morning, all anticipation, to see Santa came! There are presents under the tree, there are candy canes poking out the top of the stockings, and there's even a bite out of the cookies you left out for him! Then your dad grabs a green garbage bag, throws all the presents in it, and throws it away.

As you all scream some variation of OMG WTF, he announces "We don't want toys and candy and sweaters, we want a Mercedes!"

Except that not all of you want a Mercedes. And some of you do actually need the warm cozy mittens that were in your xmas presents. And throwing out the presents isn't going to get you any closer to having a Mercedes, because the money has already been spent on it. And the price of a Mercedes would take up that entire new contract Mum just got at work, except that much of it has already been earmarked for various other household expenses. And a Mercedes doesn't even have enough seats for everyone in your large family.

If this rumour about killing Transit City is true, that's exactly what Rob Ford will be doing tomorrow.

Prove us wrong, Mr. Ford.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Analogy for why I'd rather have the social safety be too generous than too stingy

Suppose you're having a bunch of people over for dinner and you're not entirely sure how much food you'll need. If you buy too much, it will go to waste. If you don't buy enough, not everyone will get fed.

Isn't it better to buy too much, even if you do end up spending more money than strictly necessary, rather than having people at your dinner party hungry? It would be way assholic to have people sitting around hungry just because you were afraid of spending a few too many dollars. And if you do buy too much, it can still do some good - you can give some to your guests to take home or bring it into the office or give some to your friendly neighbourhood panhandlers if they're after food rather than money.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Analogy for different commitment preferences

There was recently a wee kerfuffle in the blogosphere when Stephen Fry said that women like sex less than men, because women don't go around cruising for random anonymous sex.

I didn't think this was worth blogging about in and of itself, but this morning in the shower it gave me an analogy.

Think of different commitment styles as different sex acts, which they kind of are on the emotional level. There's all kinds of sex acts out there. You probably have your favourites, and then some others that are enjoyable enough but not absolutely geil, and then others that you don't particularly mind but don't especially mourn their absence, and then some others where frankly you'd rather go to bed alone with a good book.

Commitment preferences work the same way. Some people like it better with only one partner, some people like it better with many. Some people think having a personal relationship on top of the sexual relationship complicates things, some people think nothing could be sexier.

So to say that someone likes sex less because they have no interest in random anonymous sex is like saying someone likes sex less because they have no interest in, say, figging. (Don't google it while at work).

Monday, November 01, 2010

Analogy for "Don't let it bother you"

I've repeatedly found myself in situations where someone tells me, in response to whatever is bothering me, "Don't let it bother you." As though I can just not let it bother me. As though I somehow had that ability but it never occurred to me to exercise it.

I've heard this from enough different people - and heard enough people state firsthand that they simply don't let something bother them - that I'm beginning to suspect there are people who have this ability, who can just...not let something bother them. But the fact remains that I don't have this ability, and if you want me to not let something bother me you're going to have to give me a step-by-step procedure. (I've been mentioning the need for a procedure for a couple of years so far, but no one has yet provided me with one.)

Here's an analogy: "Build a bridge!"

Suppose someone told me to build a bridge, by which they mean an actual proper bridge that cars and trucks and people can safely use, and by which they mean I should actually build it myself rather than commissioning or convincing professional bridge-builders to do it.

I know what a bridge is. I know what they look like, I've seen them before, I've even had the odd glimpse of a bridge in the process of being built. I know the benefits of a bridge. I've used them before. I'm well aware that it's far more difficult to cross a river or a ravine without a bridge. I know that if you have an expanse to cross, the presence of a bridge will make it far easier for everyone involved.

But I still have no idea how to go about building a bridge.

If you wanted to resolve this situation and get an actual real bridge built by me personally, there would simply be no point in nagging me to build a bridge, or convincing me of the benefits of a bridge. I already know that. What I'd need is basic, step-by-step instructions on how to build a bridge.

What do you do first? IRL I have no idea, but for the sake of argument let's say you start by putting up pillars. Okay, but how do you put up pillars? Where do you get the pillars from and/or how do you make them? Let's say the first step in putting up pillars is digging a hole to put them in. How big a hole? What do I dig it with? Where do I acquire the digging device and how do I operate it?

You'd have to go through this for every single step of the bridge-building process, or else the bridge isn't going to get built. If you leave me to figure it out myself, it's just going to make a mess and wreck stuff and inconvenience people.

Similarly, if you want me to not let something bother me, you're going to have to tell me how step by step. It's simply not going to work otherwise.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Analogy for the dropped G20 charges

Some people have said the fact that the G20 charges were dropped means that everything's fine, the system is working like it's supposed to. But the problem is that the people in question were still arrested, detained, and subject to bail conditions (some of which could seriously inconvenience a person or hinder their ability to live life normally) for four months.

Here's an analogy to explain why that's a problem:

Suppose you are abducted. You're blindfolded, tied up, taken somewhere far, far away, and locked in a basement. After a few days you manage to escape, but you find that you're in another part of the world where you don't speak the language. You can't even read enough of their alphabet to tell where in the world you are. You have no money, no resources, no language in common with the people around you, and look (and probably smell) scruffy and questionable after several days locked in a basement. You have to survive and evade your captors and make your way home, all without money or the ability to communicate or the general social credibility that comes from being clean and neatly dressed. So on top of the fact that you need to convince someone to give you money or let you use their phone or pick you up while hitchhiking with the hindrances of looking scruffy and not being able to communicate, you also have to worry about what's going on at home. You haven't been at work for a while. Do you still have a job? Rent was due the other day. Have you been evicted? Did someone pick up the baby at daycare? Is someone feeding your cat?

It takes weeks and weeks and weeks, but you finally get home. And you want justice for all that you've suffered! Now imagine if someone says, in response to your cry for justice, "What? You're home now, everything's fine."

Monday, August 09, 2010

The other reason why I feel the police are currently the biggest threat to me

I blogged before about how, in the wake of the G20, I feel the police are currently the biggest threat to me. There's one more important factor that I wasn't able to articulate then.

The scariest thing about the police's G20 actions is how they targeted everyone who happened to be in a given area a the time (Queen & Spadina, Queen's Park, Esplanade).

Civilian criminals don't do this. Civilian criminal acts are target-specific or goal-specific. They're going to attack that one guy who dissed them, or they're going to attack the next likely target who walks by. They aren't out to attack absolutely everyone in the general area.

I can best explain this with an example of a real-life bad guy. This past spring, there was a guy on the subway sexually assaulting people who look like me. (They've since arrested someone, but for the purpose of this example, let's go back in time to when he was still at large.)

Suppose I'm on the same subway car as this guy. What might happen? Maybe he'll attack no one, maybe he'll attack another long-haired brunette, or maybe he'll attack me. If he attacks no one, we're all fine. If he attacks another long-haired brunette, I can, if I choose, take that opportunity to escape. (It's dishonourable and chickenshit, yes, and I'd like to think I wouldn't take that option, but my point is the option is there.) If he attacks me I can fight back, and other people might also intervene, which would make them heroes. The perp cannot stop me from escaping when I get an opportunity, and he cannot attack everyone on the subway car at once. A maximum of one person is at risk.

Now suppose the police decide there's a stealth black bloc person on the same subway car as me. Either they'll act or they won't. If they don't act, we're all fine. If they act, they're going to detain all of us. The fact that I'm not the person they're looking for won't protect me. The fact that there are other, more likely suspects won't protect me. If I attempt to escape, they have grounds to detain me legitimately (evading police). If I attempt to fight back, they have grounds to detain me legitimately (assaulting an officer). If someone else attempts to intervene, they have grounds to detain them legitimately (obstruction of justice). Everyone on that subway car is at risk.

In summary, here are the facts I have. Civilians sometimes do bad things. Police sometimes do bad things. (The value of "sometimes" cannot be quantified in either case.) When civilians do bad things, they are targeting less than 100% of the people in the area, and generally can't get everyone at once. When police do bad things, they're targeting 100% of the people in the area, and can get everyone at once. If you attempt to escape from the area while the police are doing bad things, you are breaking the law and they have legal cause to arrest you. If you attempt to escape from the area while civilians are doing bad things, your actions are perfectly lawful.

This is why my shields now go up when I find myself in the same general area as police officers.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Analogy for trust

This is a rerun straight from the braindump. As was I working on deconstructing and reconstructing it coherently, I realized this needs to be its own post.

Are you in love with me? You should be, you know! You should love me! I'm lovable! Sure, I'm not perfect, but who is? I'm just a decent human being doing my best. You'd better love me, because if not you're going to be alone forever or stuck with some idiot!

That's not going to make you love me, now is it? Even if everything I've said there is true, it's not enough to make you love me. I'd need to provide evidence of my loveability, over a long period of time and ideally through some adversity.

Now imagine if there were a bunch of people out there, saying that they're my former lovers, all with stories of how unlovable I am. Some of these people are public figures with a reputation to maintain, for whom there would be no benefit in repeating this information if it weren't true. Their stories are all consistent, pointing to clear patterns of behaviour (as opposed to being one-off flukes), and some of them are backed up with photographic and video evidence.

In that case, I'd have to work even harder to make you love me. I'd have to show, over an even longer period of time and with greater reliability, that it's safe to love me. I'd also probably have to articulate to you what has changed that will prevent this unlovable behaviour from recurring in the future. If I said "Oh, I was doing that because I once had a lover who treated me poorly," that wouldn't be enough to mitigate your concerns. I would need to give you clear specifics of what has changed that to prevent me from repeating the same pattern in the future, and also show positive behaviour over the long-term, including through the kinds of adversity that triggered my previous unlovable behaviour. The more you hear, the more you can't just love me.

This is why I can't just trust the police, no matter how much people tell me I should trust them.