The C.A.B.A. English Congregation

Wednesday was the day we have all been waiting for... some of us for years.  Our little English group was approved to become a congregation!  And there was much rejoicing!

March 1st will be our first meeting as a congregation.  Brings a tear to me eye...

The group has worked very hard for this.  We have had a lot of growth, including families moving in, Bethel couples moving in, and a student getting baptized.  It was time to form a congregation. 

There is much more work ahead, but everyone is excited and ready to roll.

The Fall of Keynesianism

Those of you who know me also know that I think the world economy is going to collapse soon.  It will start with the US.  Here's a peek at the current US debt.  Notice the amounts owed by every single taxpayer, especially at the lower right:

http://usdebtclock.org/

It will get the point where the US won't even be able to pay the interest on the money it owes.  And that $14 trillion figure doesn't even take into account private, business, and especially financial sector debt.  All of these total over $100 trillion.  Unsustainable.  And when the camel's back breaks, it will take the liquidity of the world down with it.

It will be, quite literally, insanity.   

This is of course a highly charged idea, and I don't want to get involved in the politics of it... at least not yet.  But I saw this great quote today that I just had to share:

The first lesson of economics is that we live in a world of scarcity. There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to ignore the first lesson of economics.

— Thomas Sowell

Enough said.

Broken Windows

Broken Window Theory is an extremely powerful concept.  Here's a short article about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

And here is the original article that started it all:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/4465/

It was first developed with respect to criminology, but it has very far-reaching implications.  Malcom Gladwell expounds on the sociology of it in The Tipping Point.  And Steve McConnell applies it to Software Engineering in Code Complete, mentioned last time.   

Why is it so powerful?  If you read the above Wikipedia article I'm sure you can see why: small changes to an environment invoke large changes in the minds of the people therein. 

I don't want to repeat what the article says (please do read it) but in short, here's the point:

An investigation of urban areas was performed to determine what transforms a good neighborhood into a bad neighborhood.  The answer: broken windows. 

When people see broken windows in buildings, it sends them a signal that nobody cares about that area.  So vandals come and break more windows, in addition to other types of destruction.  This is now a stronger signal that nobody cares and that disorder rules.  So crime escalates.  It is a self-perpetuating downward spiral.  And it all starts from broken windows.

The solution is clear: fix broken windows.  New York City tried exactly that starting in 1985.  It first applied the principle to the subway system and then the city in general.  The results were striking.  Changing this small signal drastically improved crime rates.

Again, you can see the import of this.  The broken window is simply a metaphor.  What matters is the signal.  If we want people to follow some norm, we need to ensure signals are in place to encourage such behavior.  Perhaps even more importantly, we need to remove signals that encourage the opposite behavior.

Here's a really simple example.  Let's say you have some roommates and you want them to keep the place clean.  If they see "broken windows" (again, a metaphor here: perhaps a few unwashed dishes, or a dirty floor) what signal are you sending?  That you don't care about cleanliness!  Which is the opposite signal that you want to send.

So anytime we want to encourage a certain social norm, we need to fix broken windows.  They may seem like little things, but that is exactly the point!  The little things are always noticed, at least on some level. 

After learning about this, I started to see broken windows everywhere (especially in code we were writing).  It is worth the time investment to fix them.

The Cost of Fixing Defects

Steve McConnell wrote a great book about Software Engineering called Code Complete.  If you're not a Software Engineer, I wouldn't recommend it.  But if you are, read it now!

But there are 2 really excellent points in the book, even if you are not into Computer Science (really!).  The first is the subject of this post: the exponentially increasing cost of fixing defects as you progress into the development cycle.  It looks something like this:

Along the bottom are the various phases of developing a piece of software.  The far left signifies the early stages and the far right, the stages after deployment.

The chart above actually leaves out a preliminary stage that I always start with: the problem statement.  You can't solve a problem unless you know what it is.  This fundamental truth is all too often forgotten as people rush into a "solution."

The idea is that if you catch a problem in the first stage, which is simply the conceptual defining of the software, it costs 150 times less to fix than if you wait until the final stages.  150 times! 

The idea makes intuitive sense.  What is surpising in the scale of the difference. 

Now, I promised this would be interesting outside the scope of Software Engineering.  I think you can see how:

This same principle applies all around us.  Often we rush forward into something, only to realize a flaw in the early stages of the venture that is now costly (or difficult, or painful, or annoying... or impossible) to fix.  Or if the flaw was in the very definition of the problem, we have now wasted a tremendous amount of energy pursuing a "solution" to the wrong problem. 

I have most often observed this in discussions that turn into arguments.  A simple misunderstanding of a term or idea initiates a useless argument.  One party says something and means one thing.  The other party thinks he meant something else, and off we go!  Hopefully the one with a cool head eventually realizes they are talking about different things and the whole thing is passed off as an exercise in futility, getting nowhere.

So let's now apply our SE principle.  If, at the outset of this discussion, one could actually take a step back and define the nature of the disagreement, likely they would realize it was a simple misunderstanding and no argument would take place.  

How do we do this?  The Bible writer James tells us to be "swift about hearing, slow about speaking."  Oh, if we could only apply that!  Instead of being so quick to support our case, why not ask a question to clarify the other side?  And then listen to the answer!  

I can't tell you how many times this has aided me at my former job and even now in casual discussions.  So often we find that there is really no disagreement at all.  Or, equally importantly, that the disagreement is completely different than we initially understood it to be.  In either case, we save ourselves a huge amount of effort and time.   

Again, we cannot solve a problem if we do not know what it is. 

Now, I mentioned there were 2 great points from this book.  We just talked about the first.  The second is Broken Windows.  I will save that for another time. 

The Quasi-Naïve Democratic Approach

... and why it doesn't work.

Recent events have inspired this post.  But this is just a placeholder, because said events were not sufficient to inspire the body of the post. 

Hopefully other events will take care of that, and I'll return here to fill in the details.