Author: Christopher Berry

Trust Networks and Society

Posted on by Christopher Berry

What you believe has a lot to do with who you believe. Who you believe, and who you don’t, can be represented as a network. Networks cause and reinforce trust. In this post, I’m going to try to make the connection between trust, society, and the delta variant of COVID. As I begin writing this post on July 20, 2021, I know about Delta Variant. We know that it’s burning through large populations of unvaccinated people. I think most people see it coming. And as the days passed, I watched increasing anxiety about what is to come. As a I publish this on August 1, there still isn’t much evidence of a mass urgency to vaccinate. So why the inaction?[…]

Networks and The State

Posted on by Christopher Berry

The Canadian state has had an interesting relationship with networks since the beginning. Networks connect things and enable outcomes. Those who direct and influence the State have preferences for what those outcomes should be. To understand how the state is grappling with the consequences of social networks, it might be useful to look at how it has grappled with physical networks. We’ll begin with some basic theory about the Canadian State. Canada is made of citizens. Some of those citizens become leaders. Those leaders try to create some explainable representation of society’s optimal social welfare function, and package it into something people can recognize, understand and vote for. They do that because they need the consent of the citizens in[…]

The Distinctions Among Information Creation, Transformation, Gathering, and Transmission and What It Means For Data Science

Posted on by Christopher Berry

For the purposes of this post, let information mean stuff that resolves uncertainty. Different people have different relationships with information in part because they have different relationships with uncertainty.  Data scientists, those who turn data into product (Loukides), have a different relationship with information than, say, the median store manager or the median politician. Some data scientists focus on creating new information. Some invent new sensors. Some deploy existing sensors to new places. Some combine sensors in different ways. They have very good reasons for doing that.  They aren’t the only people who deploy sensors. Camera operators deploy sensors at certain times to capture sounds and images. Some data scientists create new information using nothing but their minds and their[…]

Nature Always Finds a Way

Posted on by Christopher Berry

Benedict Evans writes fantastic writing prompts. He’ll make references to different first principles, and he’ll go onto build arguments out of them later. Sometimes I agree with them. Sometimes I don’t. He does provoke thought. One theme is the nature of people. On October 9, 2020, Benedict Evans wrote: We connected everybody, and that meant we connected all the bad people and the idiots, and our own worst instincts, and all society’s problems get expressed in software. Sometimes the Internet amplifies and channels that, but maybe sometimes the Internet is people. On April 23, 2021, Benedict Evans wrote: Old: if you make something idiot-proof, God creates a better idiot.  New: if you create an Internet service that’s proof against assholes,[…]

Because Because

Posted on by Christopher Berry

Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that the word causal came from the word because. Because there’s a cause contained in the word because. The word is almost like a commandment. Be the cause. I don’t think that’s really true. It’s just a silly association. The word because seems to be an element of a persuasive argument. How about a little thought experiment? Consider the assessment: “Peaches are gross.” Okay, you may have one or many positions on this controversial subject: You agree because your experience matches that statement, you disagree because your experience does not match that statement, you may not agree nor disagree because it’s possible that some peaches are gross and some other peaches are[…]

What is Knowledge and What Is Not

Posted on by Christopher Berry

Some communities make decisions about what is knowledge and what is not. You’re probably a member of some of those communities. Maybe you make up your own mind about what is knowledge and what is not entirely on your own? Maybe you’re not fully aware of how much you are influenced by the communities you identify with? Think about what you experienced during your formal education. In order to receive recognition (a grade, a credit, a certificate), you needed to demonstrate that you were able to create evidence that you accepted the knowledge you were told. You didn’t always need to agree that the knowledge that you had to repeat was the truth. You just needed to exhibit behaviour that[…]

Kuhn

Posted on by Christopher Berry

Maybe you should read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Maybe you shouldn’t. Here’s a little bit of information to make up your own mind. When I use the word paradigm, I mean it in the Kuhnian sense. I don’t use it as a hyperbole or superlative. I don’t look at a new ice cream brand extension and breathlessly declare that it’s a paradigm shift in desert delivery. Paradigm shouldn’t be a buzzword. Kuhn defined a scientific paradigm as a set of evidence, experiments, achievements and observations that are universally recognized, that provide a set of problems and solutions that are worthy of a communities’ focus. Communities are very particular about what they consider to be knowledge and what[…]

The meaning of skate to where the puck is going, not where it as been

Posted on by Christopher Berry

Walter Gretzky is credited with the quote: “Go to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” Walter used socratic questioning to teach his son, Wayne, hockey strategy. Here’s the full context from Wayne’s perspective: Him: “Where do you skate?” Me: “To where the puck is going, not where it’s been.” Him: “Where’s the last place a guy looks before he passes it?” Me: “The guy he’s passing to.” Him: “Which means…” Me: “Get over there and intercept it.” Him: “If you get cut off, what are you gonna do?” Me: “Peel.” Him: “Which way?” Me: “Away from the guy, not towards him.” (Gretzy, Reilly, Gretzky: An Autobiography p. 88) Puck On To win a game of ice[…]

What was 2020 like?

Posted on by Christopher Berry

Everybody experienced 2020 in a different way. I offer one perspective. I limped into January from 2019. It was a tough year in that it was tougher than 2018 and 2017. Tough for a few reasons. It was a stretch year. Technology was causing discomfort but not change. Social systems struggled. It was a stretch year for leadership development. After testing dozens of heuristics (rules of thumb), I was in the process of adopting a half dozen. They’d serve me well in 2020. January January was to be a month of consolidating the learning and incorporating the learnings deep into the heart and mind. I chose to dream in Hawaii. And it worked. I experienced sleep that was deep and[…]

The Numbers Beneath, The Numbers Ahead

Posted on by Christopher Berry

2020 hasn’t been easy. Figures from the US Census Household Pulse Survey can be used to tell a story of anxiety, hunger, depression, desperation and hopelessness. Millions are hurting. 2020 is hitting the poor, the young, and those who are low to mid-skilled the hardest. 2021 isn’t looking easy. Vaccines will take time to rollout. The recovery depends on collective health security. Health security causes confidence, confidence causes increased risk tolerance, increased risk tolerance leads to investment, and investment stimulates growth in private sector productivity, labour market demand, and opportunity. It will take time for each part of the chain to develop. It all lags. A return to the previous trend line doesn’t address the underlining cause of wage polarization.[…]