On Rules

Rules are weird.

For one, you don't want too many rules. Too many rules leads to a restriction on creativity, growth, and innovation; progress becomes bogged down in a labyrinth of bureaucracy in which any hope of newness dies. Too many rules easily leads to abuse of authority, oppression, and the stifling of individuality. I'm picturing mounds of paperwork and the U.S. Congress. Neither of those is a particularly attractive image.

Too few rules doesn't work either. Even Fight Club, the ultimate anti-establishment anarchist organization, had rules (two of which I'm currently violating).

Think about the game of chess. Given a chess board and a full set of chess pieces, and being told nothing else, it's not easy to have fun. There's nothing substantive there; the board is just a piece of wood, and the pieces are the worst set of action figures ever conceived. But add in the rules of chess, restrictions on how pieces move, how to capture, win conditions, and so on -- then, there springs out a rich, complex strategy game, loved by some of humanity's greatest minds. By making the board and pieces more restrictive, by imposing more constraints on piece interactions, we've actually increased the amount of stuff we can do with them. We've turned a wood platform and some figurines into a deep, multifaceted battle of wits and planning.

Similarly, math and science are kind of like rules we use to understand and describe reality. Logic, a ruleset on how to think, has guided our thought process from the invention of the wheel to quantum supercomputing. Progress is achievable only through a framework whereby we have some rules on how to think. The human construct of language is a ruleset on how to make noises and create symbols in the same way other people make noises and create symbols. In this way, we can communicate within a framework.

I'm not sure what to think about rules. Do they impede progress, or do they facilitate it? Probably both. The truth is usually complicated.

-Me

On Timing

Here's a thought experiment that's been bouncing around in my head lately, and I apologize in advance for its rather morbid nature: What is the worst day you could be diagnosed with terminal cancer?

You first thought might be your birthday or Christmas, but I beg to differ. On those days, you have the full support of your friends and family, ready to comfort you. No, I submit that the worst time to receive this news would be on April Fool's Day.

The first of April is a cutural construct that immediately demolishes any trust between you and your companions, replacing it with a pervasive, resonant paranoia that refuses to go away. Not only are your words worthless on April Fool's Day, you also have to suffer through others' merriment and hilarious pranking while staring death in the face.

In fact, April Fool's Day changes a lot of things. If the September 11 terrorist attacks had happened on the first of April, I feel like the American cultural landscape would be very different. I imagine a cruel god ruling this universe, laughing at his own brilliance, already planning his next big caprice.

My point is this: Timing is everything. An Olympic sprinter trains his whole life, gives up his favorite foods and activities, relentlessly pushes his body to the limit every day, undergoes a grueling exercise regimen that sacrifices his friends and family, takes steroids to further enhance his performance, risking everything -- then on the day it counts, he starts a tenth of a second too early and gets disqualified. He starts a tenth of a second too late and loses.

Computers designed for trading stocks know when a particular stock is worth .01 cents more in Chicago than in New York. They will buy millions of shares of this stock in New York, then immediately resell them in Chicago. This price disparity only exists for nanoseconds. A single miscalculation in price, and investors lose millions of dollars in less time than it takes for you to blink your eyes.

A surgeon coughs while performing a delicate surgery and kills the patient. A woman is late for her train by two seconds and meets the love of her life at the station. James Earl Ray blinks and misses his shot on Martin Luther King, Jr. Every millisecond is the same length of time as any other millisecond, but some of them have the capacity to alter the course of human history.

What's the takeaway here? Attentiveness. Focus. Importance. Each of your milliseconds matter. Make the most of them.

-Me

That One Time I Created A Chemical Weapon

I've liked science since I was young. For example, I conducted an experiment when I was nine or ten years old: I wanted to see what would happen when I combined a cheap packet of hot sauce, Listerine mouthwash, and toothpaste (brand forgotten). I did not have any kind of hypothesis -- even to this day, I am unsure of what I was hoping to accomplish. Lacking the proper equipment, I emptied a nearby box of dominoes and mixed all the components together in the domino box. I also diluted the contents with some water, for whatever reason. Then I went to bed, excited for the results.

Later that night, a horrible smell woke me. Turns out the domino box was not at all watertight (I has stupidly assumed it was watertight because it was made of metal, although now I suspect it may have been made of faux metal) and the hot sauce mouthwash toothpaste concoction was leaking everywhere. Horrified, I tried to dump the evidence -- but the smell quickly permeated the house, waking my father. To my surprise, he helped me clean up the mess without saying a word of reproach. (Years later, during a visit to China, he would repay me in kind by snoring so loudly it registered on the Richter scale. Seriously, I could feel the floor rumbling.)

This early version of the hot sauce Listerine toothpaste experiment was imperfect, and so would undergo another iteration when I was in seventh grade. I'd learned from my previous mistakes. This time, I set a goal in mind: To create the most vile-smelling mixture of solutions I could find. I wanted to be able to market this thing as a chemical weapon of some sort, produce some odor so damaging the UN would ban its manufacture on a global scale. I don't know why I wanted to do this; something about watching the world burn, maybe.

The finished product was a mixture of hot sauce, Axe body spray, insect repellant, sunscreen, yeast, and some other mysterious item I've forgotten. My friend assisted me in its production. We mixed the ingredients with noses pinched, placed the finished product in a tiny, watertight container, covered it in cellophane, and let it sit for a month in my friend's desk drawer. During this month, we both forgot about it. Then I went over to his house one day, he happened to open his desk drawer, and we rediscovered our experiment. We reached for the cellophane cover, removed it --

Imagine that smelling a delightful flower is like your nose getting a massage. A rotten egg is like if someone gently tossed a pillow at your nose. The smell of our creation was like a nuclear apocalypse, except if fecal matter had the properties of Uranium-235. This analogy may have gotten away from me.

I'm not sure why it smelled so bad. Something about yeast fermenting? That mystery ingredient I failed to remember? Something ironic about Axe body spray? 

Anyway, my friend's dog went crazy and we almost spilled the stuff all over ourselves. The very fact that we didn't was an aversion of a national tragedy. We immediately rushed outside to bury the disgusting substance, which we barely accomplished without passing out. We have never spoken of it since, although the mention of chemical weapons has made us glance at each other uncomfortably. For all I know, the mixture is still buried in a park somewhere. I leave the exact location undisclosed to save the UN the trouble of banning it globally. Woe to the human race should some madman -- someone who actually wants to watch the world burn -- discover it.

Lesson learned: Science can be dangerous.

-Me