Category: Chapters

I sat down the other day to do a simple thing. I was going to write a C# implementation of a distributed Map/Reduce computation engine, akin to the Google implementation that they use to do “hard” things.

Coder speak: you provide two function definitions that mimic the Lisp commands Map and Reduce. Applying Map to a large data set is an independent operation for each element, and Reduce can be used to combine the answers of each computation into intermediaries and then finally into one answer. Splitting up the dataset to multiple machines and sharing the Map/Reduce functions makes it easy to do large scale distributed tasks. Hide that in an computation engine and boom, money and fame.

Non-coder speak: Google wrote about a hard problem, and I’m bored and want to do it.

But as is generally the case in computer science, the Map/Reduce problem is a specific example of the more general problem of designing a distributed system that can execute arbitrary C# code. The Map/Reduce problem would just be a specific example of a program able to run on the general system. But really, when I start talking about C# I am just using that as a placeholder for Lisp, a functional programming language that is much more suited to the task. So I should implement it in that. But maybe I could make it so that the execution of a language is defined in a grammar, and just write a parser and interpreter.

Somewhere shortly before my head exploded, I stopped. What had started as a simple enough program (not entirely true) ending up being rewriting an operating system and compiler, all distributed. That’s not just reinventing the wheel, it’s reinventing the Apollo program. Sure, it might be a good time, but it’s a nasty place to end up if you were looking for a casual programming project.

The problem with programming is that in almost every case the program you need to write is a special case of a more general problem. Whether it be a specific business need or a specific scheme of communication, generality is always more attractive than special cases to programmers. It’s more attractive to philosophers as well.

A student cheats. Why, and what should be done?

He cheated because he was out late at a party and doesn’t know the material, and if he doesn’t do well he’ll flunk the course. On a fundamental level he knows that the results of his test scores benefit him in the long run and that the time spent studying distracts from his chances to secure a woman to be his …. how do you say … “baby’s mama”. If he can manage both with the minimum effort, he has maximized his chances at reproductive success by giving himself more time to procreate and a larger monetary means to support them so that they too can be successful. Even more fundamentally he is acting in his own perceived self interest because all humans and animals are inherently selfish creatures. This is the only way it can be because of the law of survival of the fittest. Darwin is God.

So we let him go, right?

Nope, he flunks, cause that’s the rule. But it’s hard to keep your eye on the ball if you just generalize away reality.

I yelled at them to stand on the board, to hold in counterbalance the large guys’ weight while he stepped from it to the other platform. In between us was lava, smoldering lava that could burn you if you touched it. Drop a tool in and you don’t get it back out. Drop a person in, well, nobody dies in these sessions, they just don’t come back. Oh, and also in the lava were sharks, razor tooth sharks that would rip you to shreds almost as fast as the lava. I never stopped to ask our leader to explain the biology of the situation; I was interested in keeping people alive.

I had signed up for an orientation leader position to help incoming freshman adjust to life at my college at the end of my freshman year. Now, the beginning of my sophomore year, we were at a woodland camp near Cleveland doing leadership training exercises in small groups. Get everyone up a large wall, through a small hole, over a pit with a rope, etc. Our current challenge was to navigate between three wooden squares without touching the ground, using only two boards. The ground was lava, and our leader threw in the sharks at the last second, maybe to add a jovial aspect to the perceived life and death situation we were facing. We weren’t feeling jovial.

We had messed up in the transfer of one of our group. We had accidentally let him bend the board too much, his weight picking up the others who were “standing” on the board. I wasn’t because I was leaning out to help him, but our counterbalance people were only making a half hearted attempt. His foot touched the ground but we picked him up swiftly and pulled him back onto the board. Unfortunately, our leader told us that lava had splashed him in the face, and putting a blindfold over his eyes rendered him blind. Several people cursed.

It took us a long time to guide him across the chasm of molten rock, but eventually we did. We moved one by one over the double gap that separated us from freedom. Any witness who was watching the scene would know immediately that I not only liked being in charge, but that I was fairly capable. I gave orders constantly and used the team as extensions of myself while moving through the obstacles.

The blind man was standing on the board counterbalancing someone else when a stray foot made contact with the lava. Our leader/instructor told us that the foot had accidentally kicked some lava into the air, and had burned my mouth, rendering me unable to speak. Being unable to speak, I couldn’t complain, but the silence was broken by a single word uttered by someone in the back.

“Fuck.”

We finished the exercise through a combination of my motioning and my friend Amit’s commanding. I would tap him on the shoulder and motion the move, and he would see to it that it was done. It worked slick, though it was hard not being able to talk and the other dude being able to see.

We were standing in a circle reviewing all that we had learned, and our leader asked me what I had said immediately after the guy was blinded. I didn’t know, but he told me that I had said, “He’s useless.”

“Now Sam, was that true, was he indeed useless? I noticed you used him as a counterbalance the entire time to great effect. Were you yourself useless after losing one of your abilities and rendering yourself more ineffective? Doesn’t every person have strengths that you can play off of, no matter what their weaknesses?”

I did learn things at our leadership training camp, though nothing splendidly new or original. Interesting circumstances can build bonds between people who might not know otherwise connect. They put 10 of us through awkward situations and tricky scenarios, and we were all sort of friends on the outside, at least for a brief time afterwards. The other point that was driven home was that I’m bossy to all get out. This time no one got pissed and claimed I was operating on some vile directive to control the world, they all just trusted me.

Oh yeah, and every team member has a use. I get it, I swear.

I once had a multi-hour argument on the difference between the ideas of “History” and “The Past”. As usual, I have no idea what I was arguing about or what point Sean was trying to make, but I interpret History as a description of The Past, where The Past is the set of all possible true Histories. Circular definitions are fun.

History := partial description of The Past
The Past := set of all possible Histories

History as a word is most commonly used to describe the common set of descriptions about The Past. For the purposes of brevity, we’ll call these descriptions Statements.

History := a collection of Statements regarding The Past
The Past := set of all possible Statements

If you had a burning desire to know about The Past, you would subsequently want to collect as complete a set of Statements as possible. Seems pretty obvious, but formal logic tends to end up that way. You spend all this time and energy to derive something you already knew. And of course that’s assuming your axioms were true in the first place. On the other hand, it looks nice.

Where was I going with this? Oh yes, historical censorship. Any writer that doesn’t lie is a historian of sorts. They document a thought or a moment, and people days or years later can relive that thought through words. The more words, the clearer the picture. And conversely, the fewer the words, the fuzzier the picture.

I recently read a letter I wrote to my grandmother when I was in the 8th grade. Written most of the way through my first year of public school, I wrote in great detail about the “great day” I had just had. Apparently I was in gym and impressed the girls at badminton, and someone whom I remember had great hair commented “Man, he can do math, he can play sports, what CAN’T he do?” This justifiably made me very happy. However, later in the day I asked a girl I fancied out to what would end up becoming my very first date, and there existed perhaps a superfluous number of exclamation points after the section detailing her immediate afirmative answer.

If I didn’t want anyone to know about that day, I never would have written it down. If my mother had never wanted me to remember what it was like to be barely 14, she never would have left the letter sitting on my dresser when I came to visit. If I was really that embaressed, I never would have brought it up.

The enjoyment of reading that letter is probably what made me start writing again. What I write, I’m able to remember. What I don’t write is quite easier to forget. Of course, what I don’t write you will never even know existed. That can sometimes be a wonderful and tragic thing.

You. Yeah, you. Go write something. Read it later. It’s fun.

One fateful day in the ides of May, 2001, my family left me to drive to Salt Lake City. I traveled around, went to college, got a job, and at several points visited the Great Salt Lake. However, visiting home isn’t the same as living at home, the difference in time spent causes the experiences to be incredibly different. Though you might recognize the house, you’ll never grow to know the hills like a resident.

This is why I claim the bottom spot of my families skiing ability (the ranking includes only active skiers, sorry Mom). My dad has been skiing since high school, and although my two younger brothers gave up skiing and picked up snowboarding somewhere along the line, they are both much better than me. Add in the fact that although I claim to play soccer once a week, it’s really not enough to put me into a physically optimal condition (cough).

So I ski. And I’m humbled. And it’s good.

There are a lot of situations where I have had the opportunity to humble someone else. Their reactions all very, ranging from anger (“I hate this game, I’m never playing again.”) to curiosity (“Why did you know to make that move?”). It’s easy to be the humbler. You walk taller than anyone in sight and people ask your opinion on how they could become more like you. You sit on a golden throne and eunuchs spread flowers before you as you walk. Your bed is always filled with buxom maidens, and your stomach is always full of the finest cut of meat. But I digress.

It’s a lot harder to be humbled. You’re the one who always wants to stop and take a break. You’re the one who isn’t up for another run or another game. You’re the one people explain the rules or technique to, even though you know them. It sucks, but it’s good. Its one thing to be the loser when the winner is gracious and helpful, but it’s entirely different when the winner is haughty and full of his or her own ability. That’s when you get angry and stop trying. When you like playing games, it’s a skill in itself to both win and keep your opponant willing to play again. You’ll never know how until you lose.

Stand on both sides of the fence. Neither is healthy as a home.

However, the greatest humbler of all has never been humbled by me. She continues to shock and awe as I run around like an ant. I stood on the crest of a 12,000 foot mountain and felt the force of a god scream in the wind and whip snow across my face until it burned with pain. She made my hands so cold they went white, and I had to hide in a shack with a hand dryer for ten minutes before I was able to unzip my fly. You can feel mighty tall riding in your car in the valley, but I’ve never felt shorter than when I’m standing in the clouds.

Mother Nature, the great humbler. For the record, I’m taking notes.