Covid-19 and Exponential Education

Humans aren’t good at some things, like perfect recall of events,

or creating enduring fashion,

or, for this post, understanding math.

The math in question is exponential growth, and it’s what’s occurring in the Covid-19 spread. It is not something that as humans walking around, driving our cars, or buying groceries, we see often. Thus, we’re not attuned to what it means. We don’t see a bamboo tree grow one inch one day and then 1 foot the next and 10 feet the next.

Internationally, the Covid-19 virus is currently increasing at about 8% to 10% per day, compounding. This number is of course limited by how many people can be tested, and whether governments want to tell you what’s really going on.

We are not sure, really, of the denominator of Covid-19 cases well enough to understand its virality and mortality rates. It seems at the moment to be as contagious as the flu we all know and love, and about 20 times more deadly. That would mean in the US, we could imagine an annual 30m to 40m cases (similar to the annual flu), and up to one million deaths per year. That would be somewhere between 1 in 50 and 1 in 30 deaths. At my son’s high school of about 750 students, that’s 15 to 20 dead high schoolers (although, older folks appear to be more at risk than younger, healthy folks). That’s the demographics for this disease, anyway. Spanish Influenza and Zika had different demographics.

Here’s the non-China growth of Covid-19 cases as of yesterday:

That doesn’t look too bad.  (Here’s the source of this data, and thanks to Dominic Hughes for the link)

But notice the Y axis. That’s a log scale, a 10x increase for each horizontal line. Currently, cases are increasing by a factor of 10 every 15 days or so. By this time next week, you’ll see the headline of “Cases of Covid Outside China Now Exceed Those Inside” or some such.

Now, let’s wrap our human brains around this math:

March 15 = 100,000 cases

March 30 = 1,000,000 cases

April 15 = 10,000,000 cases

April 30 = 100,000,000 cases

May 15 = 1 Billion cases

That’s what exponential growth looks like. Now, before we all head to our underground bunkers, most epidemics don’t look like that. They look like a bell curve. We tend to change our behavior, quarantine, don’t shake hands, and the spread of disease levels off and then decreases. Here’s an epidemic curve for the 2003 SARS outbreak, for example.

What we are looking for, then, is when the exponential growth starts to level off, and then decline. That’s when we’ll know we’re improving — for this season.

Right. For this season.

It is possible this is not a one-and-done thing. Covid could be multi-seasonal. The 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic (h1N1) had a mild first season in spring of 1918, but went on to infect 500 million people worldwide (1/3rd of the world population at the time, so gross that up to 4 billion in current terms) and killed 10% of those infected. Any vaccine for Covid-19 will not be ready until after this coming fall-winter 2020 flu season.

There is a lot we don’t know. We need be cautious, but not panicky. Wash your hands for 20 seconds, often. Don’t wear a mask unless you are already infected. If you haven’t had a flu shot, get one. It doesn’t help for Covid-19 but catching Covid-19 while already sick with the flu is worse than being healthy and doing so.

A Herd of Unicorns = ?

According to CBInsights, there are 418 Unicorns in the venture funding world.  A Unicorn is a term coined by Aileen Lee to describe the highly rare case of a startup company that reaches a private funding valuation over $1 billion.

But 418 unicorns is no longer a rarity.  It’s a herd.  Dare I say, it’s an infestation.

So I’m going to coin a new term for this herd of unicorns.  Ready?

A herd of unicorns aren’t unicorns.  They’re “Fantasy Cattle.”

Pass it on.

Facebook is in deep doo doo

Social media could fail spectacularly, and there’s one simple reason why.

Facebook, Reddit, Google, Twitter.  Sure they are private companies, but none of these are a “common carrier”.

Wait, what? What’s a “common carrier”?  It’s the legal standing of the telephone network.    I can use a telephone to harass, lie, coordinate illegal campaign contributions, hire a hitman.  The telephone company isn’t responsible for any of that.  They merely provide the service.  That’s what the legal standing of “common carrier” allows.  I’m merely the messenger, don’t shoot me.

Social media has failed to obtain common carrier status.  Which makes these companies much more like a magazine than a telephone.  A magazine, often also a private company, is responsible for the information on its pages, which is why they have editors and reporting standards and such.  Hate speech in a magazine can be prosecuted against the publisher.

Facebook and others are stuck in the middle.  They would like to say they are only providing a service, but they are clearly involved in setting and enforcing standards of use (Radiolab has an excellent story on this).  These rules have grown from a few paragraphs to 50 pages.  An example:  A photo of a breastfeeding woman is not pornography.  But this simple rule had to be expanded with “if there is no nipple or aureola showing, if the baby is in contact with the breast, if the baby is not old enough to walk, and if the baby is a human baby.”  This is an impossible task, with gray areas.  What if it’s art? What if breastfeeding a goat is societally acceptable (which, apparently it is in some countries experiencing drought)?

Technology may not be able to help, particularly when humans struggle at the same task.  As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said during an obscenity case before the court (forgive the paraphrasing) “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.”

Without common carrier status, social media may end up overwhelmed by editorial responsibilities, leading to its diminishment or demise.

Let’s talk Constitutional Amendments!

I’m not a Constitution expert, nor do I play one on TV.  However, in our current state of affairs, we’ve seen some cracks in the system that may only be able to be filled by Constitutional amendment.

These are bi-partisan issues, because eventually whatever side you’re on will be out of power, and the abuses that we’ve identified need to be fixed to keep good ole’ America humming along.

With that, let’s start with the Articles of our Amendment that seem most sound:

1. The Supreme Court will have an even number of Justices.

   Currently the Court sits at 9 jurors, but it has varied over time.  The Constitution does not specify a number.  In our current environment we have 5-4 decisions for things like Citizens United, allowing even more money into politics (more on that later) and Bush v. Gore.

   An even number requires the best legal minds of our generation to have a clearer opinion, a 6-4 or 5-3.  This keeps the Court out of contentious cases, sending them back to lower courts.  Germany, a system we helped establish after World War II, has an even number of Justices.

2. Presidential candidates are required to disclose their financial dealings.

   The emoluments clause in the Constitution is not enforceable without data.  In the future, we could have a President being actively paid for, say, foreign policy decisions, with no record for voters or Congress to consider.  In fact, we may have that now.  Don’t know, because the data is unavailable.

3. The Electoral College will be modified to vote the popular vote.

   The Electoral College was originally designed to be a deliberative body.  Electors met in person, and though they were loyal to those that selected them, they had the ability to change their votes after that debate.  This was created at a time when it took days to travel from Boston to DC, and weeks to complete the vote count and Electoral College decision.  The Electoral College was a buffer against the vote.

   No more.  The Electoral College is a passthrough entity.  I’ve heard debates that it makes small vote differences appear larger so as to amplify the feeling of mandate for the new President.  Also, it adds power to voters in perhaps otherwise less powerful states like Ohio or Pennsylvania.

   Poppycock.  A vote should be a vote, whether it’s from Nebraska or New York, and should be considered equally.  After all, the Electoral College has led to a different answer than the actual vote count 40% of the time since 2000.

   Several states are considering laws to force their Electors to vote the popular vote.  If a majority of Electors are so bound by their States, then this can be accomplished without a Constitutional amendment, unless those efforts are found unconstitutional.

4. Congressional districts are established by independent redistricting commissions, not by state assemblies.  

   Today, a citizen’s vote is not necessarily a vote.  Because of gerrymandering, we have a set of congressional districts that guarantee a Republican majority in the House unless there is a 5% margin advantage for Democrats.  Doesn’t seem like that’s reflective of the people’s will.

   Independent redistricting commissions have proven to generate more competitive and less partisan districts reflective of their voters.

   There are details required here.  The charge to the independent commissions is typically to consider some things, like racial bias protected by the Voting Rights Act, and not others, like political party (in the case of California).  California subsequently has more competitive districts than the nation as a whole.

   This is already happening at the state level, but a specific Constitutional amendment would make it the law of the land.

5. Election advertising in all forms requires disclosure of citizens responsible.

   I don’t think we can keep money out of politics.  It’s free speech, after all.  If a wealthy person or a corporation wants to put millions into advertising their opinion of a candidate, that’s on them.

   I also think it’s hard to enforce laws that prevent that money from “coordinating” with the candidate.  So, essentially, limits on campaign contributions are dead — the money has just moved from the campaign to Super PACs, to be run by close personal friends of the candidate who are not allowed to “coordinate”.  But they probably do.  You know, we should probably just enforce that law against “coordination”.  But I digress.

   What we can do is require complete disclosure of the source of the money.  And not just the private LLC shell corporation set up to get around disclosure, but the owners of that, and the owners of that, until we get to individuals with social security numbers.  And they have to have social security numbers, because foreign nationals are not allowed to influence elections.

   If the donor is a publicly held company, then that’s sufficient disclosure.

Now here are some Articles of our amendment that I think are a bit more problematic.  These need more work:

1. The Senate, as part of its “advise and consent” duties with judicial nominees, requires 3/5ths to approve a Supreme Court candidate.

   This is important to keep the Supreme Court from becoming just another political arm.  These are lifetime appointments precisely to prevent it from being overly politicized, and now the process of selecting justices is supercharged with politics thanks to a change in the Senate rules to make this approval a simple majority (technically by changing the rule on ending filibusters).  3/5th votes worked in various forms since the 1800s, and the change has not improved things, leading to more politically lopsided Justices.

   Note I’m not even suggesting we return to 3/5th votes for lower court nominees.  Could do that too.

   3/5th vote thresholds increase the odds of an obstinate minority blocking ALL nominees, for years.  This was not a problem in the past, but now…. I suspect that article 4 above could help with that.  Gerrymandering leads to the most partisan divisions in Congress ever.

   I also worry that as a Constitutional amendment makes Senate rules too rigid.  The Framers were quite open to changing Senate rules, basically allowing each seated Senate to make its own rules.

2. Election advertising in all forms requires adherence to libel laws.

   This is the hardest clause to get right.  Libel laws don’t apply equally to public figures.  Public figures can be criticized at length and with shoddy support, it’s the American way.

   But what is the consequence to false fact claims that Ted Cruz’s dad helped assassinate JFK?  That’s not hyperbole created in the heat of the moment, it’s not alternative facts, that’s a lie.  It seems that buying an advertisement claiming your opponent is a philanderer should at least be backed up with some facts.  Otherwise, money, and the internet, can amplify all sorts of crazy.  So, you can say whatever you want.  You can even speak in the form of an opinion, like “my opponent, to me, has the beady eyes of a philanderer”.  But to purchase an ad that says “My opponent sleeps with goats” should require some photo evidence.

   The concern as I’ve written it, of course, is that this would be a boon for the legal industry.  Every claim would have to be deliberated pre or post hoc, leading to a nonstop slew of lawsuits.  That’s not good either.  But there is a balance to be found here.

That’s it for now. Do you like these?  What would you add?

Since 2003, More American Kids have been Shot than US Soldiers During the Iraq War

Today is the march by empowered kids against the violence they receive because of guns in the US (or because of crazy people with guns.  Regardless, bullets keep hitting kids).

During the 7 years of Iraqi Freedom, there were 36,377 US casualties.  That’s over 5,000 per year.

These military deaths are better reported than US gun violence, because US gun violence is not well researched.  The CDC is prohibited by Congress from looking at gun violence after their 1993 finding that a gun in the house increases the chance of injury rather than reduces it.

So, we have to use non-government data like The Gun Violence Archive, which shows about 3,000 to 4,000 kid casualties per year due to guns.  Over 7 years, that’s 21,000 to 28,000 kids gunned down in the US. Since the Iraq War started in 2003, it’s closer to 45,000 kids.  It’s an average of at least 250 bullet riddled kids per month.

But that’s just kids.  Include adults and there are more domestic American casualties due to guns EVERY YEAR than during all 7 years of Iraqi Freedom. (same sources)

Some countries where kids (and you) are safer from guns on a per capita basis? Philippines (who just pulled out of the International Criminal Court), India, Belarus, Serbia, Cyprus (now run by the Russians), Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.

Ode to a Friend

Andreas and I have, I think, a strange relationship.  Or perhaps to clarify, a male relationship.  Same thing, really.  We don’t speak with lots of words, but we say a lot.  We talk a lot while exercising, which means oxygen-efficient conversations.  There just isn’t a lot of room for positioning and nuance and bullshit when you can only spare 3 words every breath.

These types of conversations tend to become very penetrating.  We talk about work, and dreams, and frustrations, and wives.  Those last two are not necessarily related.  I know the intimacy of Andreas’ heart rate, and how it compares to mine.  I know if he’s feeling ill, or I’m in a good way, based on relative differences in the beatings of our hearts.

Nearly 20 years of exercise means that essentially every runnable or ride-able trail and road near us has Andreas’ footprints, and tire treads, alongside mine.  When I’m in the woods, the trees and the wind are as much a reminder of Andreas as they are of God’s creation.

This morning I was riding my indoor trainer, alone.  And I realized that even when I’m doing things by myself, there is a background process running, which is “will this make a good story for Andreas?” combined with “will this allow me to put the hurt on Andreas?”

It’s not all exercise, of course.  I’ve had the joy of vacationing with the LInkwitz’s at the ski house, Thanksgiving-ing together.  Eating.  A lot.  Andreas isn’t an adventurous eater.  He hates bananas.  Even the smell of them makes him queasy.  Yet he’ll eat the nastiest flavor Gu that has been in the cabinet for years because he doesn’t want to let it go to waste.

Our memories together are immense.  The time we were driving up to run Bay to Breakers in the pre-dawn pitch black.  When we got there, Andreas dumped one of his contacts in the car and couldn’t find it.  He ran the whole thing with one contact, and said “I got used to it.”  He is no-nonsense that way.

A few things that make me smile.  We raced Escape from Alcatraz together.  In a triathlon, one typically doesn’t see one’s friends on the course.  At Escape from Alcatraz, there is a run turnaround on Baker Beach.  As I made the turn and started running back, I saw Andreas a few hundred yards behind me.  I was so excited.  I waved and said “Hi!” or “Yo!” or some such and smiled.  And he responded with, “I can catch you from here.”  Game on!  One of my favorite photos is of us sprinting side-by-side down the finish chute, smiling in pain, trying to beat each other while passing another competitor whose look says “what are those idiots doing?”

We pushed the girls in jog strollers up the trails of Huddart Park.  On the way down, they screamed “wheeeeeee!” almost all the way.  We took those strollers to Run to the Far Side.  The strollers were intended to keep us (mainly me) from getting caught up in the race and killing ourselves.  When someone on the out-and-back yelled “You’re 3^rd stroller!” I took off, weaving through joggers while feeding Danielle orange slices.

Andreas makes me a better man.  He calls me on my bullshit, and he’s my first call when I need someone to work through a problem.  He’s clear-headed, he’s direct, and he’s the type of friend every person needs.  I don’t deserve him, but I try to deserve him.  I’ve always said to my wife that he is the one person that I could call any time day or night to say “I need you to do this thing for me.  I don’t have time to explain why, but I need you” and he would be there.  Solid.

On Thursday, before his horrific accident, Andreas and I drove to see astronaut Scott Kelly speak.  We planned to build LX Mini stereo speakers together on Sunday afternoon, a speaker design of his father.  I look forward to him getting better so we can do that.  Primarily because I like using his drill press and his table saw.

And I look forward to adding some side-by-side tracks to whatever trail or road is next.  I think it’s his turn to pick the route.

Get better, buddy.

https://my.lotsahelpinghands.com/community/support-for-linkwitz-family/home

Let’s reduce gun violence in 333 words

Americans like their guns, with about 300 million guns in circulation.  But they have risks. They kill 33,000 people a year and gun violence cost $229 billion. Per year.

Americans like their cars, with nearly 300 million of them on the road. But they have risks. They kill 37,000 people a year and deadly accidents cost $435 billion.  Per year.  Including property costs for those crashed cars.

These are strikingly similar numbers.  The biggest difference between these two examples?  Mandatory insurance.

To manage the risk of automobiles, we are each required to purchase insurance for our cars which covers the cost of accidental (or intentional) death.  Median car insurance is $1,250 per year.

Gun owners are not required to purchase insurance for the risks of gun ownership.  Gun risk costs $0.00 for owners.  The cost is paid instead by victims.

Actuaries at insurance companies are very good at calculating the costs of risk.  What type of vehicle do you have?  Are you young or old?  How is your driving record?  Where do you live?

Actuaries could become very good at calculating the odds of a gun, or an owner, doing something bad accidentally (or intentionally).  Do you have a history of violence? Is it a .22 rifle or an AR-15?  Kids in the house?  Then insurers pay up if violence occurs.

Governments are incredibly bad at calculating the costs of risk.  Gun registries, waiting periods, prohibitions on gun types and limits on crazy people’s gun ownership are political compromises and poorly implemented.

Imagine what happens after mandatory gun insurance engages the insurers’  profit motives.  Costs will be high for more dangerous guns, reducing their use.  A $1,200 per year, per gun insurance bill, with detailed checks prior to ownership, will reduce ownership.  If personal liability continues even if the gun is stolen or resold, then theft and resales decline, too.

This is not “gun rights” vs. “gun control”.  Keep your guns, if you want.  This is letting the free market price the risk and neatly align the American capitalist way with a Constitutional right.

 

Today we hacked a Tesla … it was easy.

This is a story about technologist training and responsibility, but it starts with an interview with a potential tech developer, which included this exchange:

Me: “I’ve been thinking of some practical tests I can give you for skills assessment, and –”

Developer: “If you want, I can hack your Tesla.  It only takes about 5 minutes.”

Me: “Umm, OK?”

And sure enough, 5 minutes later, after getting me to download an “SSL certificate” to my phone (the sort of stuff that could be buried in an app download), my car was unlocked and the windows were down.  When he started trying to use the “Summon” function to pull the car out the parking space, I’d had enough.

Now, about my “training and responsibility” opening line.  The developers at Tesla, when coding the API between their phone app and their cloud connection to the car, send completely unencrypted messages.  My developer interviewee was able to see signals exchanged like “door_unlock”.   Hmm, I wonder what that does….

Developers are trained, and companies are built, around fast development cycles.  Consumers want the latest features.  Facebook advertisers want a way to target and place advertising.  Drivers don’t want to think about their self-driving cars deciding between a killing 5 children in a crosswalk or the old dude behind the useless steering wheel.

But in the rush to get new tech out the door, human fallibility along with systems geared toward fast features with limited bugs, means we’re shortcutting security (my Tesla today), legality (Russians placing campaign ads on Facebook), and morality (self-driving car accident avoidance algorithms).

We don’t teach development organizations these things.  We don’t reward them for their sophistication in these areas.  And we really, really need to start that dialogue, and that education.  I’m a tech investor, a trained techie, and I love tech.  But we need to build these new perspectives and systems right now.  Because humans are fallible, and the failure modes around increasingly sophisticated technology are increasingly impactful and dangerous.

 

PS. We hired the dev.  In fact, we’re acquiring his company.

The Mistake of Missing the Meta

In our second week of dating, the girl that would become my wife tried to end our budding relationship.  It started when I was making an important point, which went like this:

I said, “All adults are screwed up somehow, right?”  She nodded, so I continued,  “That means all children grow up to be screwed up adults.”  She looked at me enraptured, or so I thought at the time.  Now I’m pretty sure it was disdain.  I concluded, “Thus, as a parent, the best one can do is screw up one’s children intentionally instead of unintentionally.”  My face no doubt showed a mixture of smugness and triumph at my cleverness and cuteness.

And she said, “Get out of my house.”

I made a mistake, and thankfully she forgave me for it (and plenty of others since).  The mistake is a mistake we all make, constantly, and we need to work on it.  I made the mistake of missing the meta:  the meta-language, the meta-conversation, the meta-context.  Meta is what’s beyond what’s going on right in front of us.  It’s the “third eye” described by mystics that gives extra perception of the situation.  And in this conversation, the missed meta was “I’m speaking with a mother that might take offense”.  And she rightly did take offense.  Another missed meta was “you’re trying too hard to be clever”.

With a healthy dose of meta, we can understand ourselves better, understand the positions of others, and build bridges that are missing.  It makes disagreements more human, solutions more inclusive, and builds context for our situations.

Unfortunately, either as humans or in this particular era, we are struggling with meta.  We have a President with no meta.  We have self-obsessed reality TV stars that miss the meta.  We have Justin Beeber.  Losing ourselves in electronics is a great way to avoid the higher order thinking and observation that meta requires.  Dehumanizing the opposition is lost meta.  Feeling clever rather than kind is lost meta.

This is an easy thing to fix.  In fact, you have the skills today.  You have a voice in your head (or one of many) which is a detached observer.  It’s an ongoing commentary on “what is this person really saying” or “why am I truly behaving this way at this moment.”  Or even “why am I reading this article about Taylor Swift’s new album when I don’t listen to Taylor Swift and I was originally shopping for contact lens solution?”  Seek out that voice, turn up the volume, and create change for the better.

 

I Moved One Inch, and Found This.

I was having a horrible time on my last bike ride. The same hills I typically ride seemed particularly steep. I even hated the bike, a new one, and it apparently didn’t like to climb. Every pedal stroke was “this sucks”.

Then I moved my seat 2cm, less than an inch. And suddenly the bike was wonderful. Turns out the new bike position was wrong, putting too much strain on certain muscles and not enough on others. I moved my perspective one inch, and it gave me a new context — from “sucky” to “joy”. It’s the same emotional transformation that occurs when changing the station after Justin Bieber comes on.

It reminded me that plenty of life’s challenges come not from the situation, but from my context.

“Context” is what we are bringing to the situation, as opposed to what the situation is bringing to us.

If there is a disagreement with colleagues in a conference room, my context can be “my colleagues are out to get me” or “working together to get the best answer”. If I’m listening to my wife, my context can be “I’m bored” or “demonstrate love through listening”. These are things that are entirely in my control, in the moment, and relatively easy to change. Easier to change than my personality, my skill set, or the other people.  As easy as moving one inch.  My negative emotions come from my wrong perspective.

What’s your context when things suck? Do you question it in the moment? Do you change it? How?