The Law of the Harvest

Is it always true that you reap what you sow? The answer to that has to be no. Even when the law of the harvest applied to an actual harvest, there was always the chance that your harvest could be stolen, or wiped out by an enemy army, or simply taken by the government. Given the possibility that we won’t reap what we sow, why bother sowing at all? Patents rest on the fear that we won’t bother to sow without the guarantee that we can reap the rewards. However, there are other possible reasons to work. One is the fulfillment received by making progress. Why else would we spend all day playing a mind-numbing video game while thinking about how we could be doing something useful? Often, it’s because we just want to beat this next level. Similarly, we work to see progress. That feeling of progress can’t be taken away, so it’s possible patents could be.

Guns and Information

Guns and information have at least one thing in common: controversy on how to control them. In both cases, there are two major camps. The first group distributes control to everyone. If everyone has a gun, then an unscrupulous individual can’t hurt a lot of people before being stopped. Likewise, if everyone has information, then organizations lose the power to control people through ignorance. The second view on control is to limit control to just a few people. For guns, making it hard to get a gun limits the number of unscrupulous individuals who obtain one. For information, limiting access decreases the likelihood that the information will be misused.

Another way to frame this issue is trust. Those who distribute control trust the general public to make the best decision. This is problematic because it is essentially trusting the average citizen who, statistically, will know little about any given issue. Giving someone a gun is different than teaching him how to use it. On the other hand, limiting information is trusting a minority to make the best decision. This is also problematic because the motivations of a minority are unlikely to line up perfectly with yours. For example, a business’s first priority is getting money. Protecting your personal information is secondary to that. If selling your information became more cost effective than maintaining your loyalty, the business would probably sell your information. In the end, most people would probably prefer to trust themselves over either the public or a minority. Unfortunately, for information and guns, that isn’t usually an option. Unless you happen to be part of the small minority controlling the guns or information, you have to pick either the minority or the public to make the final decision. As for me, I chose to trust the minority. Even if the minority doesn’t have my best interests at heart, at least they are more likely to have researched the issue.

Scotch Tape

The ‘miracle material’ graphene was discovered by examining scotch tape that was usually discarded. Is it common to throw away more than we realize? When dealing with data, we frequently discard a significant amount due to lack of quality or missing values. Maybe there is just as much value in examining the throw-away data as there is in examining the quality data. The main take away message is that there is still plenty to discover about the world. After all, the most intelligent scientist in the world could have easily missed the scotch tape.

Family History

My greatest barrier to working on family history is the nagging thought that a computer could be trained to build genealogies and list temple names without my supervision. Why should I give time to something a computer could do for me? So far, my best answer is that the more time and effort I put into something, the more it will mean to me. Family history requires my time because building genealogies and listing temple names is only part of the purpose. The other part of the purpose is to change me.

Traditions

The control-alt-delete shortcut on windows is traditional, yet Bill Gates admits that it was a mistake. Does the origin of the tradition impact its value? For some traditions, like waffles as a breakfast food, the origin probably doesn't matter. For others, like the value we place on college education, the origin could matter a great deal. In the end, the traditions we do bind us together as a culture regardless of the origins. However, the traditions we believe are worth examining.