Liberal thinkers

1. John Stuart Mill
2. Alexis de Tocqueville
3. John Maynard Keynes
4. Schumpeter, Popper and Hayek
5. Berlin, Rawls and Nozick
6. Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche

Today, August 27, 2018, I received my print version of The Economist describing Schumpeter, Popper and Hayek

Out of an abundance of caution

While I was still watching #FakeNews CNN, I would hear Wolf Blitzer (or other anchors) say "out of an abundance of caution".

This is an expensive attitude.  An attitude the "Duck Boat" victims wish their Captain had implemented in Branson, MO, recently.

The Federal Government used to require a Defense Contractor to prepare a System Engineering Plan (SEP).  Like Religion and Law, System Engineering is afflicted by Myths.

One myth is that systems engineering only works for large scale complex aerospace and defense systems. This myth is partially true in that Systems Engineering does work for large scale complex systems and goes a long way to enable success. The myth part is that it only works for these large systems. This myth is also emboldened because the Department of Defense requires their contractors to implement Systems Engineering methods and techniques and to spell out exactly how they plan to do that in a Systems Engineering Plan (SEP). The SEP is a required deliverable on every major defense acquisition program. This can easily lead some to believe that Systems Engineering is a rigorous and robust set of processes only applicable to large complex systems.

The fact is Systems Engineering can tailored to support development of smaller systems across a wide range of industry domains. Some examples include companies that produce medical devices, digital storage devices, laboratory diagnostic equipment and organizations that seek to increase reliability of the power grid.

Another myth is that Systems Engineering costs too much to implement. If you implement Systems Engineering for large complex systems, then it could cost a lot of money to implement, no question; however, it is possible to scale and tailor Systems Engineering methods and techniques for developing smaller systems so it does not cost too much to implement.

The "out of an abundance of caution" approach is expensive.  A good consultant can make it very expensive.  If you tailor the System Engineering approach, you MIGHT not get the reliability.

Syria

Has what's his name learned his lesson?

The Navy is not a military service

The US Navy is one of the seven services for which the Congress commissions an Officer corps.

http://dr2htay.blogspot.com/2016/06/seven-uniformed-services.html

The Constitution says, “The Congress shall have the Power:

…

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

.....

When I was aboard ship or at Naval Bases, they had signs which said for Military and Naval Officers Only.

Even Trump supporters recognize that this means that the Navy is not Military.

President Trump recently said that the removal of illegal immigrants was a "military operation" several news media people criticized his poor choice of words.

Most of those people think "boots on the ground" means soldiers in the field and the Navy is Military.

The Contradictions of Joseph Schumpeter

Is the title of Chapter X (10)  in The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner a Touchstone Book  published by Simon & Schuster.  I have a copy of the revised seventh edition with a 1999 copyright.

For Schumpeter, capitalism was intrinsically dynamic and growth oriented.

Yet for all his faith in the inherent buoyancy of capitalism, Schumeter's long-term outlook was the exact opposite to the optimistic outlook of John Maynard Keynes.  Schumpeter, in an almost perversely teasing way, first maintained in "short run" capitalism would indeed trace a long climbing trajectory, adding that in these things, a century is a "short run".  But then came the disconcerting final judgment:  "Can capitalism survive? No.  I do not think that it can."

Any rational basis for American Exceptionalism must be based on the different economic system we have in the United States.

Schumpeter's dynamism creates problems for equilibrium models. 

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is the name given to the US policy in effect for many years.  It was probably developed by John von Neuman and co-workers.  John von Neuman died in 1957 at age 53.  The basic idea is that US Strategic Nuclear Forces were in such number and physical protection that the US could ride out a Soviet First Strike and retaliate with sufficient weapons to retaliate.  The current Wikipedia entry describes it as a Nash equilibrium.

Strategic Planners brag that Deterrence Worked.

I went into tactical command and control because that is where the work needed to be done.  I tried to avoid Strategic stuff because there was a whole lot of  noise associated with the funding of strategic weapons systems.

A wiser coworker developed a graphical display of a "nuclear laydown".  He used an HP TRS-80 to drive a flat bed plotter.  His work with the HP TRS-80 grew into a facility housing the most user friendly IBM system a 4341.  The IBM 4341 system could accommodate about 10 user terminals.

The facility was TEMPEST tested.  It was expensive.

The coworker developed an event-driven Monte Carlo simulation model which our customers liked very much.  For simulations, we considered 30 repetitions to be a large number.

I was able to use the system to support the Joint Chiefs of Staff in collecting the Operational Information Requirements for the World Wide Military Command and Control System.  This was useful work and it help my employer be in a position to bid on and win contracts.

As happens in Defense work, I needed continued employment and I had skills relevant to the analyses of the simulation runs.  I performed some analysis that was "well received" by everybody with a physics background.  It ran into problems with MAD people because my analysis is likely to lead to a "Use or Lose Decision Point".  The Measure of Effectiveness I was forced to use to get any perceived benefit to communication architecture alternatives is "additional decision time."

The analysis was labelled a "LUA" analysis and essentially went no further.  LUA is the acronym for
Launch Under Attack.  LUA scenarios were "not well received."

Proponents of MAD as part of US and USSR strategic doctrine believed that nuclear war could best be prevented if neither side could expect survive a full-scale nuclear exchange as a functioning state.  Since the credibility of the threat is critical to such assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in their nuclear arsenals even if they were not intended for use.  In addition, neither side could be expected or allowed to adequately defend itself against the other's missiles.  This led both to the hardening and diversification of nyclear delivery systems (such as nuclear missile silos, ballistic missile submarines , and nuclear bombers kept at fail-save points) and to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The MAD scenarion is often referred to as nuclear deterrence.  The term "deterrence" was first used in this context after World War II, prior to that time, its use was limited to legal terminology.

Feyman on an Honest Politician

It has long been a part of the physics folklore that Richard Feynman said that an honest politician can’t win.  While with Harris Corporation in Florida, I mentioned this as a possible analogy for marketing.  The idea is that an “honest marketeer” is at a big disadvantage and/or can’t win.

The best reference to this that I have found is on pages 65-6 in The Meaning of It All, Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1998.  This is on page 28 of my downloaded copy of The Meaning of It All Feynman discusses two politicians running for president.  One goes through the farm section and is asked, “What are you going to do about the farm question?”  And he knows right away – bang, bang, bang.  Now he (the farmer) goes to the next campaigner who comes through.  “What are you going to do about the farm problem?” Well, I don’t know.  I used to be a general, and I don’t know anything about farming.  But it seems to me to be a difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem.  And it must be a hard problem.  So the way that I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it….

He continues on for a while and then observes that we would not elect the second politician. 

 In the discussion earlier in the book, Feynman has stated that when it comes to the profound questions (which can appear simple), an honest man will say that he does not know the answers.  The answers are not known to anyone.

The book, copyrighted in 1998, consists of three lectures Feynman gave considerably earlier.  He is dead now and was in 1998.  I believe the lectures were given in the 1960s.

More recently, James Carville and Jim Morris, using polling and focus groups, have helped William Jefferson Clinton have the good sounding bang, bang, bang answers.  Whatever the issue/problem, it was ole Slick’s #1 or “Top” priority.

Translation for 2016:  "Bang, bang, bang answers" translates to a "plethora of plans"; the translation of the second politician is left as an exercise for the student.  [Hint: TBD might be useful.]

As lessons/guidance for Sales/Marketing,

 1)                  Customers/voters like vendors/candidates with products/answers.  If you don’t appear to have the product, you lose the sale.

2)                  An “honest vendor” does not have the (ideal) product.  I have found that it is much easier to “promote” someone else’s work because, in part, I do not know all the weaknesses and so can do so honestly.  This says that you shouldn’t try to understand fully the technical aspects of the product.  The better you do, the harder it is to be a good politician (marketeer).

3)                  Like the political process with respect to “campaign promises”, the marketing process does make it extremely difficult to fulfill “marketing promises.”