Category: ideas

I recently finished reading a book that got me thinking about the relationship between science and religion.  The book in question is The Universe In A Single Atom.  A reading of this book, coupled with current events should give anyone pause for thought.

First, it was refreshing to read that in Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama encourages all monks (and lay people) to have a knowledge of science.  It is in no way perceived as a threat to religion.  In fact, both are seen as a way of understanding the nature of reality by means of critical investigation. This is not surprising, as one of the fundamental tenants of Buddhism is to ‘believe only what you have found to be true yourself’ — religious dogma is not forced on the follower.  Throughout the book, the position held is that the benefit of science is that it can work to ease suffering at a physical level.  Religion can strive to do the same for mental suffering.  Contrast this with the veritable war on science that is coming from the right in this country and you have to wonder about the nominal aims of such a course of action.  For religious fundamentalist, there is no place for science (or any opposing view point for that matter), only blind faith.

One longish quote from the book expands on a more enlightened view of the interplay of science and religion (in this case Buddhism):

In one sense the methods of science and Buddhism are different: scientific investigation proceeds by experiment, using instruments that analyze external phenomena, whereas contemplative investigation proceeds by development of refined attention, which is then used in the introspective examination of inner experience.  But both share a strong empirical basis: if science shows something to exist or to be non-existent (which is not the same as not finding it), then we must acknowledge that as a fact.  If a hypothesis is tested and found to be true, we must accept it.  Likewise, Buddhism must accept the facts — whether found by science or found by contemplative insights.  If, when we investigate something, we find that there is reason and proof for it, we must acknowledge that as reality — even if it is in contradiction with a literal scriptural explanation that has held sway for many centuries or with deeply held opinion or view.  So one fundamental attitude shared by Buddhism and science is the commitment to keep searching for reality by empirical means and to be willing to discard accepted or long-held positions if our search finds that the truth is different.” (emphasis mine)

The book develops with the Dalai Lama exploring various scientific topics such as quantum physics and neuroscience and how they compare and contrast with Buddhist scripture and cosmology.  He even states openly, where, in light of current science, some of the cosmological explanations for the origin of life seem quaint at best and in many cases are regarded as a point in time view of the world rather than an enduring truth.  Other areas examined at the intersection of religion and science are human values and ethics.

Overall, a very thought provoking read.

technorati tags: science, religion, buddhism

Seeing this article about Google and their recruiting and hiring practices reminds me of an observation that has been backed up by experience over the years.  That observation is that intelligence does not lead to effectiveness.  In fact, it can lead to some of the more misguided actions and conclusions that I have ever seen.

The seed of this observation came when I was working at a small consulting firm that had an external consultant as it’s chief technology person.  This guy was incredibly bright, but had created a system for merging and reporting on data using flat files that was very nearly unmaintainable.  Since the task of maintaining this train wreck was passed onto me when I was hired, I immediately started looking at ways to make the process more automated.  It seemed a natural fit for importing the data into a database and driving the transformations and reporting from there.  Here is where the fun started, I mentioned my plan to bright-guy and he launches into this red faced tirade about how it will never scale and database b-tree algorithms were too inefficient, he knew because he had written his own b-tree algorithms, etc.  This rant went on for at least ten minutes.  While he was ranting away (and in between mildly disagreeing with him) I was typing away in r:base (of all things) and knocked together a prototype that basically proved, well, he was demonstrably, dead wrong.  He poked and prodded on the prototype for about a half hour, then finally conceded that ‘things had changed with data algorithms in the last few years’.  Indeed.

Intelligence is great, but it needs to be pragmatic and relevant.  When I discuss this with others, I usually take it to a non-technical domain, just to remove any of the techno-zealotry that surrounds most of software and technology.  For the pragmatic developer, if you ask them to make mashed potatoes, they will either know how to do it or consult a cookbook for some reasonable guidance on how to achieve the desired outcome.  The bright-guy, will likely produce some studies around the required crushing force of a potato, white papers on starch combinations, argue that beans are more appropriate for mashing and possibly even conclude that mashing potatoes is not possible.  I’ll take the pragmatic guy and his results any day.  He will achieve a quality result in the amount time the bright guy spends on arrogant tirades and irrelevant research whose aim is to refute your request rather than respond to it.

Another great example, is then I was hired into a financial services company that up until my arrival were utilizing high priced consultants from Microsoft.  Nine months before, there were given a somewhat simple task — to take a set of financial formulas and create a DLL that would allow a suite of financial planning tools to use a common implementation of these formulas.  Three guys (1 PhD and 2 MS degreed bright guys) worked on this for nine months.  Nine months. What they came back with was the proclamation that it was impossible to implement all of the calculations in a single function call.  Not only was this not what they were asked to do, how they could have ever reasonably conceived that implementing calculations in that manner was a good idea was beyond me.  When I gently pointed out the problem with their approach, the response was an unapologetic  ‘you think you can do a better job, fine…but just look at our stock price!’  No mashed potatoes for that company.  The good news was that after a few more months of my mopping up their crap and making much more progress than they had in nearly a year, they were (finally) shown the door.  They were even ethically challenged enough to try to recruit me before they left.  No thanks.

On another occasion, I was the tech lead at a consumer electronics manufacturer.  I successfully migrated them from a load of mini computers to a client server based environment, got them connected to the Internet and built a web site for them back in the days when Mosaic was THE browser and Mozilla (soon to be the Netscape browser) was a rumor being discussed on Usenet.  I digress.  When I left, the CEO of the company proclaimed that he was going to get a real bright guy ‘to take them to the next level’.  So he went to Carnegie-Mellon and hired a MSc grad. What an unmitigated disaster.   I kept hearing from people who where still there that this guy would do things like reboot production servers, power off network hubs and other clueless activity.  After less than six months, they let this bright guy go (apparently with a lavish severance package to keep him quiet and avoid embarrassing the company and the CEO any further).

I have also had occasion over the years to interview Computer Science PhD grads for various tech positions in business.  Inevitably, I’ll ask what their thesis topic was and then ask how that it could be applied in business or industry.  It is frightening the number of blank stares that simple question receives.  It is always a bit telling when the answer is that it has no application in business.  It is even more telling when I suggest a few applications that make them sit up in their chair and an sheepishly admit that they never thought of applying their work in that manner.

Lack of relevance is also the problem with asking cute little problem solving questions in what are supposed to be technical interviews.  This seems to be a cliquish thing that really has no bearing on software engineering-type problem solving.  I don’t solve word puzzles for fun, because frankly, at the end there is no result (the term ‘mental masturbation’ comes to mind here).  However, solving a technical or business problem is enormously satisfying because in the end there is a tangible, relevant achievement.

technorati tags: intelligence, hiring, jobs, problemsolving

Something that I have noticed working in IT for the last 20 or so years is that the critical thinking and problem solving skills appear to have diminished with the most recent crop of CS grads.  Perhaps this is an unfair characterization, maybe there is less emphasis on ‘the fundamentals’ in the current CS curriculum.  As an example, if you give a set of requirements to a recent grad, their first instinct is to go try to download something from the Internet and start customizing it.  While I applaud the apparent desire to re-use existing code bases, Im not sure that this practice makes them prudent or dependent on the work of others for productivity.  A similar issue exists when a problem or issue comes up — zoom, straight to Google.  If someone else hasn’t solved the problem, well, then it must not be workable — better download someone elses work and ‘fix’ the problem that way.  The other symptom is that inevitably, when asked to do something new, the newbies will insist on having a training class on it.  Suggest picking up a book and building a prototype to learn and you will be rewarded with a grimace as if you had asked them to drink their own vomit.

I contrast this with my education and career where I felt that I had a good grounding in fundamentals (how operating systems, programming languages, databases, networks and other building blocks work).  Having these in place, I have successfully been able to apply and extend by knowledge base without being dependent on someone else providing me with an answer.  I remember one of my first jobs, I showed up and was told, ‘we just bought this minicomputer and we need you to set it up’.  Ok, hadn’t done that before, but love a good challenge.  I took the manuals home, came in the next day, setup the mini, did development on it and it was solid for years.  This has been repeated over the years as, at various times, I was a database administrator, network engineer, computer operations manager, software developer, development manager and so on.  In each of these roles, building on the fundamentals and previous experience seemed natural to me — I wasn’t dependent on someone else solving the problem for me.

There also seems to be the glamor effect at play here as well.  Because there is so much access to so much ‘stuff’ via the Internet, new developers feel the need (if not the RIGHT) to only use the tools and practices that are cool at the moment.  The whinging that accompanies constraining the technology set can be deafening.  In retrospect, somehow I have managed to use the tools at hand to solve the problem at hand without needing to do it with the ‘tool of the moment’ or wasting time on ‘if only…’ .  Oh well, this presents the opportunity to mentor and lead by example.  Maybe an old dog can teach some (not so) new tricks.

technorati tags: problemsolving, education