So, as it turns out hurricane Melissa did a lot of damage, but it wasn't as catastrophic as I feared it might be because the storm center passed far enough west of the capital that the airport and seaport remained functional, and the storm surge in the harbor was less than feared. Of course the disaster in the southwest of the island was maximal, but at least they'll get some help.
This should be a reminder that world history, and individual lives, are very much about luck. Many people try to develop grand theories of history that explain why important events had to happen, and many people think that people's station in life are a function of their effort and good judgment. Of course if you don't try hard and you make stupid choices your chances aren't as good, but on the other hand look at Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Of course there are discernible patterns in history, and the accumulation of capital and the evolution of technology have shaped it in particular directions. But . . .
Even great historical events can hinge on very trivial happenstance. If Anthony Wiener hadn't sent a dick pick to an underage girl, Donald Trump never would have become president. (I'm pretty much 100% sure of that.) If a single mid-ranking Soviet officer hadn't doubted what he was seeing on his radar screen, civilization would have ended and you sure wouldn't be reading this. If Hitler hadn't survived his injuries i WWI . . . You get the idea.
In other words, nobody knows anything, and there isn't always deep meaning in momentous occurrences. Or, to put it in technical terms, shit happens.
3 comments:
And lately, a LOT of shit is happening. Or should I say, being perpetrated by the thieves and criminals in the US federal government. While there's always a stochastic element to events, probability dictates that the disasters in our human-driven world are increasing in number. And when a storm -- or an election -- "hits" here in the US, we're going to be in deep shit unless somebody starts taking these motherfuckers down by whatever means.
And there are more places for such events to happen in complex systems than in simple ones. You have to be pretty brave to buy a used luxury auto.
Current systems, technological, economic, and political, are all but incomprehensible due to this fact. We can create AI apps, but but have a really hard time explaining what they're actually doing. Economics is known as the Dismal Science for good reason. Trump"s mods to our government will make for very "interesting times", as the ancient Chinese curse goes.
I see myself becoming more conservative, in the original meaning of that term. Many things need to be, and should be, changed, but with great care that the change not inadvertently screw something up in the current system which, flawed as it is, still pretty much gets the job done.
I would like to see, as much as possible, that changes be introduced gradually. If anything is going to hit the proverbial fan I'd prefer a small load rather than a large one.
Any competently developed computerized business system goes through an inordinate amount of testing before it is released into the wild. After "normal" transactions have been verified, the testers put on their black hats and try to break it. They overload it to see if responds in a civilized manner, and they deviously feed it garbage or demand it do impossible/impermissible things.
I'd like to see the same sort of thing being done before implementing a big change in our national systems. Not so easy, but some options are available. A computer model mimicking our entire system as much as possible could be created, and the proposed changes be added to it to see how the model responds. There may also be a pool of black hats available: People who have been caught successfully tampering with this or similar systems. They could get a legitimate job practicing the same skills that got them in trouble. Their mission would be to come up with ways they could subvert the proposed system to do bad things.
I don't know how much work is done along these lines on Capitol Hill, but it sure isn't visible to me, at least,
Apparently, no work is being done on Capitol Hill at all these days. Doing so would require swearing in Adelita Grijalva ... which could lead to exposing the sex crimes of Shitler with his "friend," Jeffrey Epstein.
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