Online Hotel Booking Debacle

I used a website to book a hotel for my Italy trip. When I hit the submit button for my credit card information, FireFox told me the data was being sent without encryption and allowed me to cancel the submission. Then I found a confirmation email in my inbox anyway! Huh?

But before I found the confirmation email, I had switched to another website to book the same hotel, but for $100 more. I then used the first website's lame, non-interactive "chat" feature to request that they cancel my transaction.

Then I noticed that the second website (a much superior website except for the price) offered a much more certain cancellation procedure, so I did that just to be sure I didn't get a double purchase.

I then realized that the surprise confirmation was probably some how valid: Would their system be bad enough to send me a confirmation email without actually receiving my credit card info? That seems like something even the most sloppy company wouldn't let happen. Because it was $100 cheaper, I sent them another "chat" message asking them to ignore my first one and just verify with me that the confirmation is valid and they actually have my credit card information. Then I sent them an email trying to explain the whole situation, because this is kind of ridiculous.

Any bets on what is going to happen? For full disclosure: I only included my "booking ID" in the email, not the two messages.

41 Whys

I was Googling for information on that thing little kids do when they just keep asking "Why?" I didn't really find the discussion I was after, but I did find this Wikipedia article. And that will have to do as my hook.

Last night, during an insomnia spat, it dawned on me that existentialism is basically the reason that little kid always wins.

1. Wow, Micheal Phelps is awesome!
2. Because he won 8 gold medals; that's an amazing achievement.
   
3. Because that's really hard to do.
4. Because there were many other good competitors.
   
5. Because they were very dedicated to training.
6. Because they wanted to win Olympic gold medals.
7. Because people respect gold medals.
   
8. Because most people cannot do it.
9. Because they haven't trained enough.
   
10. Because it doesn't seem worth the effort.
11. Because they don't like it that much and they don't believe they could ever reach the Olympic level.
12. Because they are not successful enough.
13. Because it wasn't in their genetics or formative experiences.
14. Because their parents didn't make it a priority.
15. Because they weren't good at it.
16. For the same reasons their children aren't.
17. Because that's how people become dedicated enough to sporting activities to get to the Olympics.
18. Because there's really no other reason to put that much effort in.
19. Because sporting activities are not really of any importance.
20. Because sports don't have any inherent value for people except for the competitors.
21. Because sports don't really affect other people.
22. Because their livelihoods don't depend on the outcome, except for risk-takers.
    
23. Because our quality of life depends on caring for ourselves and our loved ones and having the freedom to make choices.
24. Because modern Western culture emphasizes family and freedom.
25. Because those are our traditions.
    
26. Because people acting under those beliefs have survived – it's social evolution.
27. Because families sustain the young and then provide unconditional emotional support while capitalism justifies actions that give people an advantage.
    
28. Because the roles of bread-winner and home-keeper were effective at raising healthy and capable children and anonymizing inequity behind markets means consumers don't realize the ultimate, negative consequences of their actions.
29. Because "out of sight, out of mind."
    
30. Because abstract things that don't affect our immediate safety don't carry much weight in our minds.
31. Because the human mind evolved in environments that did not include such complex systems.
    
32. Because before we formed societies, there were no natural systems under our influence that actually had indirect consequences on our survival, like global warming, terrorism, deforestation, water pollution, or fair trade. (Things like meteors and natural climate change did exist, but we had no mental model of our influence over those things.)
    
33. Because no human system could effect change on a global scale.
34. Because no human systems had yet reached the global scale.
35. Because there weren't enough of us yet.
36. Because our species' growth rate wasn't that big.
37. Because we didn't have the knowledge to survive en masse.
38. Because we didn't develop language until relatively recently.
39. I don't know.
40. I'm tired.
41. I just played 40 rounds of the why game with you!
42. Want some cake?

Disagree with anything?

It always boils down to something like "I don't know why we were the first species to develop language; we just were." And that's a pretty dissatisfying reason to work with when you're trying to make a difficult decision. There is no root cause to rely on, unless you bring faith into the picture. But I also find that dissatisfying. I'm looking for some reason that exists beyond my mind.

Here's what I find most frustrating. Tyler C just got a free subscription to Seed magazine, and in the first issue there was an article that caught my eye. One of the two experts says,

[Thoughtful evolutionary biologists are] saying, "Look, there are basic aspects to human nature that are common to all members of our species and have been there a long time." What's exciting is that we've developed this cognitive mechanism to free us from the things that determine so much of our behavior. And by doing so, we've sort of cut the rope from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Emphasis mine. That sentence pisses me off. I can identify my natural tendencies, I just don't know if I should listen to them. "Being free of them" is really confusing. Very few things compare to their immediacy, but our societal norms tell me it's laudable to deny some of them and to embrace others. Who says so? Why is that?

1. Because philosophy over the past 3000 years has not identified – Ooooo! Is that cream cheese icing?

Whatever the reason, is it good enough? Or is it also something vacuous and underwhelming like, "we just were."

JD in Alaska

My friend JD spent the summer in Alaska. Beautiful place.

An odd justification for stewardship

I had dinner with Ilya last night. We like to discuss how we make decisions and to butt heads about it, but part with a smile anyway. During our discussion, I realized one reason why the notion of planetary stewardship – sustainability and such – appeals to me.

I recently recognized my existentialist thoughts as such. The relevant idea is that values do not exist outside of individuals: there is no way to justify an action outside of yourself. I find this debilitating. I cannot justify the consequences of my potential actions, so I have trouble choosing an action. I'm scared to act if I can't explain why it's the right thing to do. And I can't because – rationally – such a "right thing" simply does not exist.

One reason stewardship appeals to me, I realized, is because it minimizes consequences. I strive to not influence the planet. I want it to proceed as if we were not here. There's an angelic, ethereal feel to that: existing without leaving a mark.

It's interesting that an accepted value such as sustainability can be derived from self-doubt.

Existentialism's notion of freedom

I feel like I never really understood the term until tonight. I'm blockquote-ing this section of the Wikipedia article.

The existentialist concept of freedom is often misunderstood as a sort of liberum arbitrium where almost anything is possible and where values are inconsequential to choice and action. This interpretation of the concept is often related to the insistence on the absurdity of the world and that there are no absolutely "good" or "bad" values.

I'm on board with this. There are no absolute values to be obeyed.

However, that there are no values to be found in the world in-itself doesn't mean that there are no values: Each of us usually already has his values before a consideration of their validity is carried through, and it is, after all, upon these values we act.

I'll reference this previous sentence below. Again, existentialism and I are in accord. I think I pretty much got to where I am by coasting. And then, abruptly, I stopped coasting and am having to deal with the atrophy.

...[M]aking "choices" without allowing one's values to confer differing values to the alternatives, is, in fact, choosing not to make a choice - to "flip a coin," as it were, and to leave everything to chance.

I am acutely aware of this. I feel this way; recall abulia. My frustration with this observation is what leads me to think about these things.

This is considered to be a refusal to live in the consequence of one's freedom, meaning it quickly becomes a sort of bad faith.

"Bad faith" sort of translates to giving up and lying to yourself about it. And I am uncomfortable leaving important decisions to a coin flip.

As such, existentialist freedom isn't situated in some kind of abstract space where everything is possible: Since man is free, and since he already exists in this world, it is implied that his freedom is only in this world, and that it, too, is restricted by it.

Pure freedom – the misinterpretation – is indeed ridiculous. You cannot fly by flapping your naked arms: you are not free to do so. You cannot be a bluejay. Your freedom is inherently bounded in some ways. Recently, I have claimed to "not know myself anymore". What I mean is: I don't know what parts of me constitute restrictions and what parts constitute my free will. Is liking apples more than oranges a restriction? Or a choice? What about having children? Or a dependence on propinquity? What is hardwired in me – a restriction unless I follow asceticism, which I don't – and what it just up to me?

What isn't implied in this account of existential freedom, however, is that one's values are immutable; a consideration of one's values may cause one to reconsider and change them (though this rarely happens).

A big YES here. I used to consider myself a rationalist, but I'm struggling through some emotional times. So I'm less taken with rationalism, since none of this seems rational. Recall the sentence I asked to you remember. I think one of those times when our values change is when we first attempt to validate them. For me, that took place when I first had to make difficult choices. It is embarrassing that I was 24 years old at the time.

A consequence of this fact is that one is not only responsible for one's actions, but also for the values one holds. This entails that a reference to "common values" doesn't "excuse" the individual's actions, because, even though these are the values of the society he is part of, they are also his own in the sense that he could choose them to be different at any time. Thus, the focus on freedom in existentialism is related to the limits of the responsibility one bears as a result of one's freedom: The relationship between freedom and responsibility is one of interdependency, and a clarification of freedom also clarifies what one is responsible for.

The big question: am I responsible for my emotions? When should I use them to make a decision and when should I overrule them?

Coinage, Sucka!

bleg

A portmanteau of beg and blog: to beg someone to post on a particular subject. I just blegged Graham to continue about LOST.

It's actually a coin flip between bleg and beblog. Bleg is easier to say, but just sounds odd.

I think I'm obsessed

I dislike modeling dynamic systems. Here's my favorite quote from this article on bees' colony collapse disorder.

If it turns out that [we were wrong], it will be evidence that something is wrong with our model: perhaps it is too crude, perhaps we need better data, or perhaps a contagion is not responsible for colony collapse disorder after all.

I imagine this quote was followed by a drastic, slow shrug. The tricky part is we can only recognize that we don't have enough data or we have the wrong model after the fact &ndash which makes the predictive model pretty silly.