Exceptionality

Anyone can be an exception to a rule. But when a large number of people all claim to be the same exception to the same rule, they have simply defined a new rule.

I find it interesting which supposed "rules" of society are so broadly unpopular that that the appear to exist for no other reason than to allow people to loudly proclaim that they are an, if not the, exception to said rules.

I suppose it's another way of seeking meaning in life by being better in some way than other people, by presuming that the "average person" blindly, or by virtue of their own mediocrity, falls into some or another undesirable category, when living, breathing examples of such people are nearly impossible to actually find.

The Mountain is Out

 

"The mountain is out" being a local idiom for a being a clear day.

Puget Sound is one of the best places to get a good view of Mount Rainier, and since I had occasion to ride the ferry today, I decided to take advantage of the sunny weather to get a few shots of it.

It's a deceptively placid vista, given that Mount Rainier is still an active, if slumbering, volcano.

Degrees of Human

I've seen a number of "The most valuable professionals of the next however many years will be" posts on LinkedIn recently. If you've seen them, you likely know the sort; they generally end in some bland aphorism about "being human."

And I get it; the goal is to affirm that there's a way to dodge the generative automation "jobpocalypse," at least for a time, by presenting some or another skillset as being immune from automation. But also as accessible. I checked the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics' Fastest Growing Occupations data, and according to that, the most valuable professionals of the 2024 to 2034 period all have a "Doctoral or professional degree" which, according to the National Center for Education Statistics will run someone about $20,000 a year (or about $50,000 with living expenses factored in) on average for a 4 to 8 year program. So, it's understandable that telling people that things they can learn during evenings and weekends will move them to the top of the pile is enticing.

But it doesn't speak to how high the pile actually is. "The people who are getting ahead are doing X" does not entail that everyone who does X gets ahead. If the number of people who have skills that combine "business and data" (to use one common formulation that I've seen) is fairly large compared to the actual number of roles that will exist, then people with those skills might be "the most valuable professionals" on a relative basis, but not an absolute one. And honestly, I haven't seen any particularly scarce skills on people's lists.

These sorts of posts strike me as being an outgrowth of American individualism, placing the onus for being in-demand on the individual, rather than seeking to understand what the broader society would need to look like to keep the overall demand for human labor high. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but as a strategy, history tells us that it doesn't work as well as it's often advertised. As individuals, "leaning into our humanity," whatever that means, will not, in and of itself, solve the problems that will arise if ubiquitous automation torpedoes the careers of a significant number of people. It's going to take something somewhat more focused on the broader question of aggregate demand than that.

Future Present

So, as I noted back in January, I've been re-reading William Gibson. Specifically, the "Sprawl Trilogy" of Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. I've been picking the books up as I found them, and it took a while for there to be a new copy of MLO on the shelves anywhere nearby.

I'm still fascinated by how retro-futuristic it all seems, with random bits of technology, some arguably available today and some still pretty fare out, layered on top of a world that's still recognizable as being the mid-1980s. And it's the degree to which the technology isn't actually all that important to the story that stands out for me, in a way that it didn't when I first read the books back in the 1990s.

The idea that the technology is merely part of the set dressing is a common one; I suspect that a lot of the Star Wars franchise is built around the idea. The difference with Gibson is that he manages, at least to me, to still build a coherent world. Given the amount of data that various technologies in the world are capable of moving wirelessly, the lack of cellular telephony seems strange, but it doesn't give me the sense that it's random, in the way that much of the technology in Star Wars did.

Perhaps this is because it's done more in service to the story being written. When Case walks past a bank of pay phones in Neuromancer, and they each ring as he passes them, the understanding that the AI is attempting to reach him comes through clearly, and this softens the idea that the phones simply shouldn't be there.

I suspect that near-future science-fiction is always going to have a problem with "stepping on its coattails" as it were: technology that's going to be ubiquitous in 50 years time might still be so out in front of what's currently available that only a select few people are even aware that it has any potential. And this makes projecting into the future difficult, outside of "obvious" advances.

For myself, I find the look back into what a compelling vision of the future looked like more than a quarter-century ago to be fascinating. Perhaps I should pick up some other science-fiction of the 80s and 90s, and see what other version of the future resonated with people.

Good Reads

What does it take to be a "good news consumer?" Pew research asked this question, and posted a short article on the answers recently. While a plurality of people (some 32 percent) didn't answer, and a about 10% gave an answer that Pew coded as "Other," the most popular answers are listed below, in order of popularity:

1. Be discerning or skeptical
2. Follow the news or stay informed
3. Get news from quality sources
4. Research or fact check the news
5. Get news from a variety of sources
6. Get news from a variety of perspectives
7. Not share inaccurate information
8. Use the news to make decisions

I suspect that I would have fallen into the other category, because the first thing that comes to my mind is to understand the difference between being informed and being entertained. While I agree with the 3% of people who gave an answer of "Use the news to make decisions," I don't generally find most news to be actionable in that way. It's interesting, occasionally very much so, but things like "The U.S. threatens to revoke the Palestinian U.N. ambassador's visa," "Can the West survive ‘drastic’ Colorado River cuts?" or "Trump's priorities are in deep trouble after his revenge tour" don't have anything in them that I need to, or can, act upon.

And in that sense, they're not really all that informative. Not because the information wasn't new, but because there isn't much I can do with it, when it comes to decision-making. And this doesn't even touch upon the stereotypical "if it bleeds, it leads" type of story, which may give people a certain sense of danger, but doesn't offer anything in the way of solutions.

Now, I'm aware that my own news diet is particularly sparse when it comes to actionable information because I don't follow the news consistently enough to pay to subscribe to anything. And if one really wants information that's useful in making decisions, paying for it is the way to go. I've been toying with the idea for some time, but I'm the sort to go for a few days without really checking in on things, and in a situation where what's really being paid for is temporary access, that's a recipe for wasting money. I'm also unenthusiastic about trial periods that require credit cards, and automatic renewals, in the hope that I'll simply forget to cancel and become a recurring revenue stream. (But I understand the incentive structure. And the fact that this is a case where pretty much everyone is doing it.)

Am I a "good news consumer?" I suspect not. While I understand the difference between actionable news and the sort of things one reads as a diversion, I'm not really motivated to seek out "news I can use," as it were, and that limits my intake to things that I don't really gain much by learning. Perhaps I should rectify that.