Merivale Awards Ceremony Speech 2014

Today I spoke to a crowd of more than 500 people for the first time, which was quite a thrill. When speaking in front of a packed cafeteria, the number of people may as well be infinite because you cannot count them nor make eye contact with them all. That means that I now can cite evidence to use against my future self's nervousness for any public speaking engagement short of a presidential address. I was invited to speak at the Junior Award Ceremony at my former high school, Merivale High School. Sure, I was nervous, but it would be too ironic to back out of giving the following speech merely due to fear:

First of all, I would like to congratulate all of the award winners for their achievements!

It is an honor to come back to my high school and make an attempt at some words of wisdom. I only want to talk about one thing today. I want to tell you a secret that I slowly realized over the years and why it matters to you.

In grade 12, I was applying to post-secondary schools. I had to pick a school, pick a program, pick a specialization, pick options, pick internships, pick part-time jobs… Too much picking for a ripe 18 year old.

At the time, I felt like I should already know what to do with the rest of my life. BUT I DIDN'T! Honestly, I had barely any idea. But looking at all the people around me -- I thought, you know, they seem to know what they are doing. These 30, 40, 50 year olds seem to have a grip on things. How did they know how to do all this picking when they were my age?

Long story short, I ended up at the University of Ottawa studying commerce. It was at that time that a friend of mine decided to join the Army Reserves because he wanted to try it out. The recruiting centre is near uOttawa, so he asked me if I wanted to go for a walk with him while he went to check it out. Since it was January, I said "Uhh no, not really, it's like 5 Kelvin outside." He said “that’s warmer than 4 Kelvin”, and added that we could get Booster Juice on the way so I conceded and went for a walk because I really like Booster Juice.

Long story short, I ended up joining the Air Force as a pilot and went to the royal military college to study electrical engineering. You can bet that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

But here's the thing -- to begin pilot training, every candidate has to go in a punch-buggy sized simulator that moves around as you steer and fly some courses to prove that you can handle a steep learning curve. Some of the other candidates were much older than me, but when I spoke to them, they told me that they were nervous and apprehensive. How could that be? Shouldn’t they have it all figured out by now? Some of these people even already had pilot licenses!


In Kingston, at the Royal Military College, we were thrust into leadership roles for which we had no experience whatsoever. We were placed in front of dozens of people and expected to be the commander for the day. None of my peers knew what they were doing. I certainly didn’t.
Long story short, the first time I ever had to give marching orders, I ordered a “right turn” too quietly and a block of evenly spaced humans people slowly but steadily marched into the side of a parked white van. Luckily, no casualties other than my self-confidence.

Even now, when I was asked to talk at this ceremony, my first thought was "that’s crazy, I don’t know the first thing about public speaking." “How does anyone talk in front of that many people?”

So here's the secret and if you remember, just remember this one thing. Every person I have ever met has no idea what they are doing. They have no idea what they are doing.

My point is that if at this stage in your lives, you feel afraid, nervous, uncertain – or if you ever feel that way at work or in school later in life, this just means that you have embarked on an adventure and that you are growing as a person.

If you feel comfortable and safe about everything in your life, then you are not growing as a person. Growth is risky. Growth is nerve-wracking. Growth is uncomfortable. But success is worth it.

The best thing you can do with your high school years is get used to being nervous and uncomfortable. Find one thing per month that you might fail at and give it a shot. If nobody else knows what they are doing either, then what’s the worst that could happen?
 When you set out on an adventure to expand yourself, any adventure that suits you, big or small, tell yourself that everyone felt this way, feels this way, and will feel this way. Even those who succeeded and those who are great. It makes the fear afraid. The only ones who never felt this way are those who never tried.

In the end, it went superbly and several parents even came up to thank me personally, which surprised my pessimistic instincts and was a distinct honor. Today's lesson: never back out of something just because you are afraid of what might go wrong. You might miss what goes right.

Fear is Irrelevant

Remember your fear on the first day of school

What if I they don't like me?

What if I it's too difficult?

What if I fail?

Remember your fear on your first day of work?

What if they don't like me?

What if it's too difficult?

What if I fail?

Remember your fear on your first date?

What if she doesn't like me?

What if it doesn't work out?

What if we break up?

Remember every time you were afraid

What if fear is normal?

What if everyone is afraid?

What if fear is no excuse for inaction?

Now remember your success.

Your graduation

Your career

Your marriage

Terrified. You were terrified

Until you succeeded.

You have always been afraid that you wouldn't succeed

Until you did.

And still you made it through.

Remember how you made it.

Next time you are afraid, tell yourself

Those who came before were afraid

Those who come after will be afraid

I am afraid...

And yet

Those who came before succeeded

Those who come after will succeed

I will succeed

Fear is irrelevant

Give Me All the Facts!

I think that our governments will do the right thing after they have exhausted all other alternatives. With that said, I recommend watching this ted talk.

This talk's main argument is that you cannot defy economics for long. The speaker lost $150 million investing in wind energy and argues as a result that renewables just aren't there yet. Instead, he suggests that we will proceed to using natural gas as an energy bridge to renewables.

When I Google the definition of economics, I usually get something about the production and consumption of goods. I think this definition is too specific and misses the point.

Now that I am studying machine intelligence, a key question emerges. How can machines learn? It seems that the best way to answer this question is to ask, "How do humans and animals make decisions?" We use economic theories and game theories to produce machine 'brains.' Thus, I think economics is the study of how groups and individuals make decisions about almost anything. Even when the decision is emotional, a sort of emotional economics is taking place. We always try to maximize whatever it is that we value the most, valuing the future in whatever way we think is proper. i.e. is a reward tomorrow better than a reward today?

Because this is true, we vote with our wallets. Regardless of what somebody tells me they think is important, I won't believe them until I see how they spend their money. I have many friends who rant and rave about the Alberta tar sands, yet they consume disproportionate amounts of gasoline, jet fuel, electricity, consumer goods and so on. They cause the Alberta tar sands to happen. They would not be willing to pay slightly more to use Bullfrog Power. It is clear then that their priorities are different from what they would have me believe.

The question then is how can we convince people -- most of whom think like this -- to act in line with the 'beliefs' that they claim that they have? 

People choose to consume oil and coal because they are made to look cheaper than the alternatives. They are still heavily subsidized in many places, the most externalities are multiplied by zero (most like because they are hard to count). I laugh when I hear someone say that coal is cheaper than oil -- maybe it is if you don't count all of the things that matter to most of humanity.

You can't defy economics for long. Natural gas is now becoming cheaper than coal or oil so I think we will move there next, unless thorium reactors becoming cheaper themselves.

I think that if natural gas becomes our energy bridge, it will prove that our economic system is distorted. I don't say that the economic system is broken because it is quite proven that a free market will choose whatever is 'best.' Remember that 'best' is whatever people actually want most - not what is a lofty goal of society. This might mean that we make iPads instead of feeding the world's poor. It only happens because most people see no reason to care about the world's poor. Can you deny reality?

The question then is: how can we make people care about the things that are in the long-term interest of mankind? If we view people as players in a game, then economics are the rules of the game. We always follow these rules. Therefore, world governments need to ensure that the real costs of our choices are clear.

If there is no price on carbon, then we are saying that we think that climate change is not really a problem right now.

If coal plants can cause acid rain and poison nearby inhabitants without being fined or charged, we are forcing people to conclude that acid rain is not that big of a deal and the people living nearby probably didn't matter anyway.

If people can demand oil so much that we decide to invest billions ravaging Alberta's environment, it must mean that we do not value Alberta's environment.

My main point then is clear: if we value something, then we must put a value on it --  a dollar value. Corporations don't do what is ethically right or nice, they are psychopathic constructs that optimize dollars over some period of time. Coal plants don't have parents to teach them that slowly poisoning people for profit is naughty.

Governments (read: you and I) must assign value to everything. How can you compare things accurately if they are not quantified? Once we do this, the 7 billion clever minds will do the rest. If we end up valuing long-term human survival and happiness, we will achieve that. If we value short-term happiness and the demise of our grandchildren, we will achieve that too.

So if we lay out the options and assign a cost (with uncertainty) to coal, oil, natural gas, solar, wind, geothermal, thorium fission, uranium fission, etc. then we can choose some collection of them and discard the losers based on the objective interests of humanity. I think they all deserve to play by the same rules.

This is not a trivial task, since our values and interests differ so greatly. But right now we are simply excluding some values, while including others. Instead, if we include them all, things will change for the best. I say this because most people on Earth have children at some point. I don't think it is possible to have children and thereafter live with disdain for the future without having some mental defect.

I originally wrote this because Gord asked me what I thought about thorium fission. So to answer your question Gord: if thorium fission is as good as it sounds (and I've read about it too and it does sound promising) then we will inevitably do the right things after we try everything else first.

I am optimistic. The reach of education and information has never been so pervasive and will only improve as humanity marches onward. If we are more educated, we will demand more than just a partial edition of the facts when making our decisions.

The Mathematics of the Earth

Home
I watched the documentary "Home", which I found on YouTube. The initial scenes portray the balance of the planet before agriculture and the remainder discusses what happened thereafter.

I think of the planet as a massively intricate dynamic system. The physics of everything that happens on Earth is incomprehensibly complex. The atmosphere, volcanic forces, the water cycle and countless other systems interact in non-linear fashion. The Earth is one big system and it changes towards equilibria points. Consider what I mean by equilibrium point: if the rest of the universe were to vanish and the Earth were to be utterly alone without the Sun or any other source of external energy, the Earth would perhaps become a cold, dark, lifeless hulk drifting through a void. The Earth's energy would tend to escape its grasp, and disperse itself evenly across space. Energy is always fair -- it spreads itself out as equally as possible. Maybe this is one of Earth's plural of  but it is not an interesting case because we are giving the Earth a big zero -- no energy in from its surroundings. The Sun is not dead yet, so this is not an interesting case right now.

The Push of the Sun
The Sun drapes the Earth in energy from its furnace of nuclear fusion and sets the dynamic system in motion. The Sun is like a boy pushing a cart. The boy gives a big push and the cart moves quickly until friction has sucked its energy away and it grinds to a halt. The Sun fuels the Earth as the boy fuels the cart. If the universe were only the Earth and the Sun, the Earth would eternally orbit and the Sun would heat the Earth and push its systems to some equilibrium. The energy patterns create the equilibrium of the climate and the seasons are due to the Earth's tilt. All of these things are cycles: the Sun cycles in intensity and weather on Earth is chaotic over a short-period of time, but in general, the Earth is a very stable place in this scenario. I think this is how the Earth would be if it were not for life. Earth might be stable with the occasional volcano or storm raging here and there, but these would constitute no more than noise in the history of the Earth.

The Control of Life
If the system of the Earth is stable by nature, then perhaps life is its controller. Perhaps life can drive the planet to instability or to other equilibria which would otherwise be unreachable. Consider the impact of algae and their predecessors. They have completely changed the composition of the atmosphere and the climate of the Earth itself. I think life is a powerful feedback system which controls the Earth. Life is capable of taking the noisiness of the state of the Earth and shoving it off kilter. If tiny fluctuations in the climate of the Earth allow life to grow and evolve in one direction rather than another, this is like an inverted pendulum being nudged to one direction.

Early Earth had much carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere which allowed life to evolve to exploit this detail. Algae breathed the carbon-dioxide and emitted oxygen in its place. As more oxygen became available, life evolved to breathe that too. Animals breathe oxygen and emit carbon-dioxide. Thus the cycle of plants and animal respiration created itself out of the noise of the Earth. This is a grand simplification, but it is important to see how life pushed the atmospheric trend in a completely new direction.

Are Humans a Controller Capable of Instability?
If life can change the planet, then certainly we can too, being alive. The only matter is the speed of change. It took millions of years for countless algae cells to change the atmosphere of the planet. Now we are changing the planet in drastic ways too, but the only novelty is the speed with which we are doing it. If the Earth is a delicate inverted pendulum, and life pushes upon it, can it push too hard? If the cart in the picture tries to drive too quickly, the drink will certainly spill, but it is possible to move forward very slowly. Perhaps life has always moved slowly and so the Earth remained relatively stable and the drink did not spill. There have been instances in the past where life has "spilled" from changing too quickly, but we are unsure as to most of there causes. The Middle Miocene disruption, for example, may have been caused by an asteroid impact, or otherwise, -- an example of change too rapid for many species. There are many examples of rapid and widespread extinction throughout geologic history.

Life can change the world and has usually done so slowly. Are we the first lifeforms who are able to change it so quickly that we can actually destabilize the system? Imagine if we could understand the mathematics behind the balance of nature. How can a system so complex keep itself relatively stable for millions of years? Can we ever understand such a system?

Artificial Composers

The other day, I was listening to Tchaikovski's "Valse des Fleurs," which I find to be a particularly excellent song. I wondered, "How did Tchaikovski create this?" How did he know which notes to write down? Music is a bunch of sequences of notes which overlap in different ways. Tchaikovsky had to choose every note in every sequences and when to overlap each one. I wonder if it possible to create a machine capable of doing the same thing?

There are many possibilities of how to arrange notes. Do I start the song with an A#? How long should it last? Which note should come next? Should it begin after the A# is finished, or should it overlap? If it does overlap, by how much? How many notes should be heard at any one time?

Q-learning is a type of learning algorithm where the machine is told whether the action that it just took is 'good' or 'bad.' Usually, the machine is just given a number as feedback which is some function. For example, maybe -5 is bad, -10 is very bad, and 4 is pretty good. Over time, as the machine is rewarded and punished, it learns which actions are the wisest to take based on where it has just been and what it has done before. The machine may learn that after it turns left, it should turn right next, for example.

Might is be possible to use Q-learning to build a machine that writes music? Not just a string of sounds -- beautiful music? Let us call such a machine Beathoven.

How would Beathoven begin a new composition? It might choose a note randomly. After some random time, Beathoven chooses another note. When Beathoven chooses a note, it chooses the pitch and duration at once. We could think of Beathoven as a stream of noise. Whenever the noise spikes above a certain value, a note is produced. At any time, a listener can rate the music on some scale. Beathoven can then modify its policies based on the user feedback. Over time, Beathoven should learn how to create music pleasing to the audience.

The problem is similar to the old idea of infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters. Given enough time, they will necessarily reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Of course, "enough time" is far too long to wait. However, if the monkeys had feedback as they were writing -- we add infinite editor monkeys (1 per writer monkey) to read their work and give a thumbs up or a disappointed look. Without editors, the monkeys will explore every possible combination of letters, but editors can point out that many combinations of letters do not mean anything.

Similarly, we can tell Beathoven that certain notes make us cringe, while others may sound eerie or cheerful. We can explain, through feedback, that we like certain rhythms or melodies.

Update: It looks like somebody may be trying to implement this very idea. Apparently the notion is called "Computational Creativity".