Naive Generational Influence

"Good Warriors"? Who chooses these names?

Reading yet another article trying to assign generational responsibility for the current state of America I realized that I didn't have the best grasp of generation definitions or population distribution across the decades. That inspired me to whip up a quick spreadsheet to compute a simple measure of political influence across time, under the premise that ultimately responsibility lies with the electorate. Since generation definitions are debatable and birth rates can vary a lot I did it year by year and then turned it into a generational overview afterward. The goal isn't to directly make any responsibility assignment (an arguably pointless aim) but to examine what people's contribution over time would've been minus any idiosyncratic events (i.e. all other factors being equal) and therefore provide a better starting intuition for such factors.

Births in a given year: I neglected the issues of infant mortality, woman's suffrage, slavery, and voter suppression generally as this is intended as a rough analysis only and those can arguably be included in the historical idiosyncrasies I mentioned earlier. Here is the birth data by year, which required going back as far possible so that boundary issues are minimized.

Years of political activity: As an estimate of the years during which an individual can have political influence on society, I chose a starting age of 18 and an ending one of 75. All years are counted, not merely election years as political activity can (and should) extend beyond the mere act of casting a ballot. This chart shows the number of voters in each generation of interest that are in the age range of 18 to 75 over time, with preceding generations lumped together.

Political Inertia: To reflect the time it takes for the course of events to be altered, I employed an exponential decay model. Here is the generational influence with a couple choices of decay rate:

Since exactly what decay rate to use is difficult to determine, I plotted the share of generational responsibility for the state of affairs at the end of 2017 across the entire range of possible values:

The values approach a limit fairly quickly and quite a bit of the full range is rather extreme anyway, so here is the area with a decay rate less than ten percent:

Even given the simplistic nature of this analysis, it's pretty clear that one group shares little responsibility for the current state of affairs (for good or ill): New Boomers, or "Millennials" to use the more common label. Additionally, for all their numbers, Baby Boomers maximum value of impact for any choice of decay rate is 32.5%. While certainly not a small share, previous generations had a vast, ongoing influence.

More generally, I would argue that this basic model serves as a useful basis for considering more nuanced historical, societal, and psychological influences. I also would strongly advise against assigning more significance to it beyond that. Indeed, the major takeaway is that previous generations didn't simply evaporate once newer ones came of age. Patently obvious, but not properly reflected in the tone of many articles on the topic I come across.

Pop Up Politics

Live debates are a terrible way to vet a president, but it's a tradition we appear to be stuck with. One way to improve them, and political speeches generally, would be a more integrated method of fact checking, perhaps along the lines of VH1's Pop Up Video format. In addition to the videos, a website with verifiable fact checking sources would be required for true credibility. There should be more than facts, though, as keeping it entertaining through humor will help more people stay engaged. I believe this is the driving force behind why Daily Show viewers have hisotrically had a high level of news knowledge: because they watch consistently. The popularity of that (I submitted the suggestion to them in 2008 and again in 2012, but never received a response) or a similar program would help offset diminished interest stemming from the fact that the political events would have already aired and they'd have the resources to achieve a rapid turnaround time. 

Turn Signal Enforcement

If we only had hand signals there'd be an actual excuse.

Failure of drivers to signal is one of my pet peeves (the ratio of personal to public benefit being so small) so I was reflecting on what it would take to actually discourage since it is widespread and considered minor enough that human based methods are impractical. Of course this is purely a hypothetical exercise as such a universal system would be difficult to implement and likely meet with widespread condemnation (a combination of properties which seem to be the unofficial theme of my blog).

While it is certainly possible in theory to have a GPS based system that would attempt to catch every infraction, this not only would create all sorts of problems and be needlessly expensive, but is also unnecessary. All that's required is to ensure that drivers are not failing to signal chronically. To that end, a system that detects whether or not a signal was used before a maneuver was taken and keeps track of the overall ratio would be adequate. The difference between a hard turn and a lane shift would need to be accounted for and very low speed failures likely excluded but such hardware should not be difficult (and is something we've had the capability to implement for decades). Of course the device would need to be tamper resistant to the extent it discourages most drivers from attempting it.

What would be done with such information? While the obvious use would be as a penalty, a carrot and stick approach would likely be more effective. Given the coarse nature of the data, perhaps a three tiered system: chronic offenders get a punishment, reasonable signalers are left alone, and fastidious ones rewarded with a reduction in insurance rates. The magnitude of those two extremes should be informed by research into the relationship between signaling and accident rates.

Not only will this never happen but I suspect it's too late in the car's life cycle for it to make sense now even were the political will there. With luck, in the next few decades self-driving cars will largely end the signaling problem.

Cosmic Ray Mitigation

I do enjoy a good pun.

I have mentioned previously that I am opposed to manned space exploration as it now exists, but am absolutely in favor of continued research (of a reasonable magnitude relative to that in other areas, as robotic exploration is advancing quickly) since my objections are of a practical nature. This is especially true because often there are unintended applications of such study. It occurred to me this morning that perhaps one of the most significant crossover discoveries might come from one possible technique to mitigate the effects of long term cosmic ray exposure: cure cancer. Even this manned space travel skeptic would have a tough time arguing against that.

Global Disaster Insurance

Radar image of the ground changes due to the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

Rather than the patchwork of often ad hoc disaster assistance systems we have now, really all nations should be part of a global disaster insurance plan. This would provide is certainty as to what degree of response would be mounted so that planning can be done and in theory lead time could be reduced. It would force not only a systematic evaluation of all the risk factors each nation faces but also provide economic incentive to take preventative steps to lessen them. Too often a disaster occurs and obvious, generally inexpensive (relative to the costs of the damage itself) preventive measures come to light. It bears mentioning that a large part of any risk assessment would include the impact of corruption on general preparedness, again providing incentive for solutions to be found before such systems are needed. It is tempting to think this would be useful to only less developed nations, but many other faults, such as Boston's earthquake deficient buildings, could benefit from a sober assessment of the risks and the price of potential remedies, especially placed in a global context.

Note that there is nothing about this proposal that would lessen the opportunity for charitable foreign assistance. In fact, by better highlighting the problem areas and encouraging more efficient mitigation efforts it should vastly improve it.

The Supreme Consensus

The first U.S. penny touted science

I've posted about how to increase the influence of science in government previously but it was a complete overhaul of our entire democracy, so wanted to explore less drastic alternatives. Modeled on the supreme court, scientists would be appointed to assess the validity of laws, which would be required to cite research. If such research weren't available metrics and studies to gauge the impact of laws would need to be outlined, along with the necessary funding to implement them. An important detail is that this is not necessarily an all or nothing judgement in many cases, as proper risk management requires partial measures be taken in the face of insufficient evidence in order to serve as a hedge. This could be quite far-reaching. For example, a farm bill could be ruled unscientific because it does nothing to address climate change impacts. Inaction is not a way to circumvent reality.

Of course having a small number of experts opens itself up to the same personal failings the Supreme Court suffers from. A better method would be to utilize all those qualified in the relevant fields, possibly weighted by expertise, to provide a broader base. An approach the Supreme Court itself could benefit from and one that was at the core of my previous posting.

Effective Immortality (Your Results May Vary)

Consider a persistence of personality thought experiment:

You are traveling anonymously (no one knows you are there) in a foreign country when you suddenly acquire an incredibly convenient form of amnesia that wipes out all specific memories other than those forming your beliefs and abilities. Are you still you?

For me, the answer is much more "yes" than "no". When confronted with the same basic high level situations I will tend to react in the same manner which is what matters to me. Put another way, I can envision large changes in my personal details that wouldn't effect my core responses all that much (I can also identify trivial ones that would utterly alter them, but that's besides the point).

This leads me to the conclusion that a clone of myself raised with a rationalist world view and a technical background (clearly there is some genetic propensity given the number of engineers in my family) would effectively be me in all the ways I truly value. The idiosyncratic personal details just don't matter to me very much in the grand scheme of things.

This attitude factors in directly to my decision not to reproduce. I did not expect a miniature version of myself by any means, but I was not prepared to take the chance that my progeny would not be highly intelligent. That being an utterly unfair and irresponsible opinion for a parent (in our society at least) I chose not to become one.