Captain Obvious

I must admit I am aghast at the stupidity of anyone thinking that you and I are interested in high-tech toilets that tell us what to do or not to do. Nope, you are not reading that incorrectly … check it out for yourself: Smart Toilet Tech Aims to Make You Flush With Health Data

This week, Personal Tech columnist Nicole Nguyen writes about a $599 smart toilet camera that aims to unlock the mysteries of what lands in the commode. The Dekoda, which started shipping on Oct. 21, analyzes something that smartwatches and other wearables can’t: urine and stool.  

The toilet-mounted gadget, made by Kohler Health, is equipped with sensors to understand waste. The device can help determine hydration levels based on factors such as urine color and stool consistency. It sends data over Wi-Fi to Kohler Health’s secure servers and offers insights in a paired app, which requires a $7 a month subscription.

Oh please, can’t we even have a moment away from our electronic leashes? Plus, can’t you see how slippery this slope is when information like this gets into the wrong hands?

Haven’t we learned anything about informational value propositions? Do you really need a toilet to tell you if you need to drink more water? Do you think anyone will pay $7 a month for this kind of information? Haven’t we learned anything from the frenzy over smart grid data where we thought we could charge customers to see more details about their energy use?

This reminds me of the work we were doing with industrial heat pumps decades ago. This was getting much attention, especially from the equipment manufacturers in Canada. This trade ally technical meeting drew a diverse audience, including Jim Hook, then head of the Canadian Department of Energy. It was a love fest of believers, and that first evening, Jim and my team sat together over dinner.

I thought it would be interesting to hear him talk about his world, so I asked what was going on in his life lately. He was happy to talk about the personal energy-use improvements he made at his house.  Domestic water heating is an important end-use in Canada because the groundwater is so cold, so I wasn’t surprised that he picked that agenda. Nor was I surprised that he wanted to emphasize conservation over efficiency. That is, using less instead of talking about how he heated and stored the hot water he used. But his story has stayed with me ever since. Here it is in his own words:

“When I get home from work, after dinner with my family, I take my bath first and leave the water in the tub for my wife to bathe. Then we bathe the children and finally, we throw some more soap powder in the tub and use it as a prewash for the day’s laundry.”

My colleagues, George Redden and Dick Niess, were sitting with me hearing the story. At a loss for words, it seemed fair of me to ask how much he had saved with this water-saving practice.

Jim was prepared for that question and said that he had done a careful before-and-after analysis that showed he had saved about $79 a year with this conservation plan. I didn’t look to my side where George was sitting, but I did notice he reached into his sports coat, removed his checkbook, and wrote Jim a check for $79 asking him to “Stop doing that.”

You can’t make this stuff up,

I was reviewing Frans De Waal’s book The Bonobo and the Atheist once again in preparation for a Sunday School lesson on why we need to stop trying to fix stupid. As Mark Twain so aptly said, “Don’t argue with stupid people … they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”  

Yes, I know we should not think poorly of others, but I am observing that intellectual elites have a unique form of stupidity. They think they know things others do not. Once again, from Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  We really need to simply “let it go” and trust over time things will correct to sanity.

The reason I start this blog with a reference to his book about his battle with traditional faith and modern critical thinking s that Frans suggests the enemy of science is not religion. The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity about things we accept as dogma.  He points out that convictions never follow straight from evidence or logic. Convictions reach us through the prisms of human interpretation. As a French philosopher aptly summarized, “strictly speaking, there is no certainty; there are only people who are certain.” The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  

Our senses as well as sensibilities are dulled and getting duller!  Chillingly, Frans suggests we still know little about the capacities of the apes, both in captivity and in the field, but in the last few years, we have been getting closer. According to his extensive writing, they are not nearly as selfish as had been assumed and might beat the average priest or Levite when it comes to humane behavior.

Other primates make us look rather stupid about sensing things around us. They can out-hear, out-smell, and out-smart dangers in the wild so much better than we can. We moderns have dulled our memories because we rely on reading and writing, and virtually none of us can read Braille even when we focus on doing so. Go ahead and try it sometime.

Perhaps the best recent book that makes my point is The Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb, which delves into the myth of human exceptionalism and why it matters.  She aptly points out that Darwin considered humans only one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today, many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that has ever lived. According to Webb, this flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But are this view and way of life inevitable? The Arrogant Ape shows that human exceptionalism is an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, more on delusion and faith than on evidence.

My point is that humility seems to be missing everywhere. That is why I don’t refer to AI as Artificial Intelligence but rather as Arrogance and Ignorance.

Remember that humility is a mindset of accurately assessing oneself, recognizing limitations, and thinking of oneself less, rather than thinking less of oneself. It involves a lack of arrogance, a willingness to learn from others, and a focus on serving others’ interests, as exemplified by Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. For many, true humility also includes a deep spiritual reverence and a dependence on God, but that may be a personal perspective.

It seems that today’s world is dominated by arrogance … just about everywhere you look. The result is a horror story is very likely to end badly … I can feel it.  Can you?  Perhaps today’s mid-term election results will point to improvement.

 

We have had high occupancy vehicle lanes for a while here in Atlanta but have now moved to dynamic pricing to reflect the perceived value associated with shorter times on Interstate 85.  This highway is about six lanes wide on each side in many areas, but it still congests to a standstill during morning and evening rush hours.

I never use those toll lanes even when the traffic is at a standstill.  There is something just wrong in my mind paying $5-10 to save ten minutes or so, but it tickles me to see them grind to a halt as well … with no refunds for the fact that too many people are in them.

These lanes are called Lexus lanes by the locals because that is the typical car brand that uses them.  We drive a Lexus but don’t use the lanes.  I might feel different if I were trying to get to work or had some time dependent issue, but it just galls me to think how much people are spending for convenience.

Maybe I am just out of touch because Disney just announced “Lightning Lanes” that give patrons no-wait access to rides and attractions, thereby avoiding the lines.  I stopped taking my kids to Disney because we spent half the day in lines, so I guess this makes sense, until you realize the surcharge is $300-400 a day per person for this privilege.

Why is it that Disney gets a pass on things like this when they are under the gun by the woke gang to eliminate so many characters that are the bedrock of the Disney stories we grew up liking.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is under fire for obvious reasons as are many other wonderful stories from our childhood. 

How can society say it wants affordability, equity, and inclusion then encourage class discrimination like this?  Plus, where is the moral outrage by those who can afford these fees to the obvious price gauging since there is no way this privilege costs Disney this amount.  This is clearly pricing for the perceived value of convenience and not reflecting the costs of providing the service.

If you only have a few hours in the park, this makes some sense but fails on so many other levels in my opinion.  But perhaps there is something to be learned here for the electric power industry.  We have priced electricity based upon the costs it incurs to provide it.  Is there a market for premium power choices, and possibly for better reliability?  If so, can utilities who have been regulated to keep prices in line with costs charge for something that may just reflect value rather than incurred costs? 

It seems especially odd to me that the trend these days is to avoid price transparency … the push to advanced electric rates seems to have stalled at the alter of convenience.  If you can’t recover costs for this, why not pursue the path of pricing for the convenience people are seeking.

Lots to think about, and possibly some concrete lessons to learn from Disney.  Let’s see.

Perhaps you remember that line from the 1986 Top Gun movie. I guess it is only natural to enjoy going fast … but I also remember the energy crisis of 1978 where we were asked to conserve fuel by driving slower. Do you remember when speed limits were reduced to 55 mph on the Interstate highways to save gas and of course save lives if there were crashes?

We are hypocrites today when we hear wailing that we need to reduce our carbon footprints, yet we are increasing speed limits. There is now a 41-mile stretch of Texas State Highway 130 between Mustang Ridge and Lockhart that has a speed limit of 85 mph, the nation’s fastest. At least nine states allow drivers to legally cruise at 80 mph on highways.

Engineers know the resistance goes up exponentially faster as speed rises above 60 mph. Here is a short table of the relative energy required based upon the carefully researched range estimates for my Tesla Model S. It shows that at 80 mph, you are using 34 percent more fuel than at 65 mph. If we say we care about our energy future, why are we so comfortable allowing such high speeds on our highways?

By the way, I feel like I am going to get run over if I stick to the posted speed limits, especially with people behind me driving like racecar drivers, weaving in and out of lanes to gain a few seconds’ advantage on their trip.

President Jimmy Carter became unpopular because he did the right things, asking people to slow down and to be a bit less comfortable in their homes by lowering thermostats during the winter and raising them during the summer. Every degree reduced the energy for heating and cooling by about 8 percent, so it matters. Three degrees equates to a 24 percent reduction in heating or cooling energy use.

In previous blogs, I have pointed out how egregious it is to consider supersonic flights for domestic travel. Do we really need 100-inch TVs? How about all those SUVs and all-terrain monster trucks rather than small cars or perhaps golf carts for local streets in communities designed to avoid our current commuting and recreational consumptive patterns?

I fully understand how modern whaling methods replaced the seemingly outdated and inefficient methods of the 1800s. However, no country today seems focused on sustainable fishing methods in the big oceans, so we are depleting them quickly. To see this yourself, watch the new movie, David Attenborough’s Ocean, which may be his last, and I would rate it his best.

Convenience and the pursuit of near-term profits seem to dominate the user perspective, so why are we saying we all should be doing our part to live sustainably on this planet?

I volunteer at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, over the summer where I explain to visitors the challenges of being a whaler and navigating the planet’s oceans. I share the evolution from reclaiming valuable and useful material from the bodies of dead whales when they washed up on shore.  But, as demand for these products increased, they moved to near-shore whaling, and then to factory ships that processed the whale out at sea. As a result, whalers depleted the near-shore whales, then the ones within a day or so’s sail, which led to the factory ships and voyages typically lasting 3 to 5 years. Had petroleum not been discovered in 1859 in Titusville, PA, there would be no whales remaining in the oceans.

Why wasn’t anyone paying any attention to the pattern back then?

Why aren’t we paying attention to the pattern in our lives today?

One of my favorite politicians is Senator Kennedy from Louisiana who has just published a book by that name. The subtitle is provocative as well: And why Washington never will. Watching him on YouTube is always interesting since he asks such good questions and makes such obvious points. Here are some of the “one liners” from his book:

• “If you trust government, you obviously failed history class.”
• “I believe our country was founded by geniuses but is being run by idiots.”
• “Always follow your heart . . . but take your brain with you.”
• “The water in Washington won’t clear until you get the pigs out of the creek.”
• “I have the right to remain silent but not the ability.”
• “Common sense is illegal in Washington, D.C.”

My prior blogs about trying to fix stupid all point to the same conclusion: don’t bother because you can’t … no one but God can do that and, in most cases, God doesn’t seem to care or be concerned.

I recently lead a Sunday School class on the Book of Jonah which included a puppet show performed by my wife Susan on the comparison of the story of Pinocchio and Jonah. You can watch that on the video and the podcast section of this website https://geektheology.net/podcasts (The podcast is at the bottom of the page and titled Sarah the Puppetarian.)

My point was that the Book of Jonah is proof you can’t fix stupid. Jonah is instructed by God to preach repentance to the archrival of the Jews, the Ninevites. Jonah decides that it is futile and attempts to flee in the opposite direction by sea. God sends a storm which alerts the ship crew that someone onboard had sinned (so nonbelieving crew had more faith than Jonah) and Jonah finally admits he is the culprit, so they throw him overboard upon which he is supposedly swallowed by a big fish … call it a whale … after all, who knew a whale was not a fish way back then.

After three days, this smelly prophet is cast up on the beach and reluctantly starts to preach to the Ninevites who almost immediately agree to humble themselves before God and repent … he didn’t get more than about a third of the way through the city … and even the King orders everyone to get right with God.

What does Jonah do? He gets pissed off that God didn’t punish these evildoers and proceeds to have a pity party under a tree provided by God to protect him from the sun, so God then sends a worm to eat the roots of the tree so it withers and dies. We are left at the end of this brief book with a prophet who witnesses the power of God but is so disappointed at God’s mercy he can’t do anything other than wallow in his despair.

Why is this book in the Bible library? I think it was to prove to everyone not only that we can’t fix stupid, but that God can make things right even with stupid people.  Simple advice: pray for them and let it go.

I finished out the Sunday School lesson with a review of the movie Forest Gump where the message that hit me after seeing this movie again was that our natural emphasis on intellectual ability misleads us. While some may object to the characterization of Forrest as demeaning, on balance, the movie emphasizes that the truth in life is in the simple acts of kindness and generosity.

True happiness is summed up in his life: love your neighbor and seek their wellbeing above your own. Forrest never lost his love for Jenny since the first time they met on the school bus and she offered him a seat. Forrest never lost his love for Lt. Dan even though Dan repeatedly wanted to die in the family tradition of wartime heroes.

Most importantly, Forrest never became obsessed with success or any earthly treasure. He lived his life simply and lovingly. The world might define his intelligence as inferior, but perhaps that is the point. I grew to see Forrest as brilliant for the way he lived his life.

His mother continually tried to tell him that he was no different than anyone else. She was wrong … Forrest was very different, and specifically because he didn’t have the distractions others have. Forrest was a far better and a far more godly person than anyone else in the movie or than many of us have met.

You could say he had a simple faith … that of a child. Nope, sorry … I think he had a profound faith because he could always see a path where he could make a difference. He didn’t wait for others to take care of him. He took care of himself and others, even when they didn’t want or respect him for that.

Reward was not his motive … at least not in the sense of earthly reward. It is so ironic that with all his success, his finishes out his life cutting the grass … for free. What a life well lived.  A good lesson for us all, especially at this time.