Negative Nancy
I felt creative this morning. This happens occasionally, but what was unusual about this morning was that it happened after a short night, while walking the dog, and as I was mildly pressed for time to get to San Jose for a meeting. And during all that, several coherent ideas started to form in my head.
Sometimes such random ideas are grand unification theories that are trite and untrue, like a stoner who starts to see atoms and molecules as possible planets and stars. Luckily, I have a reasonably good internal BS detector to shoot those down before they become embarrassing (more about my negative talents later).
Sometimes they are correct (or sort-of-ballpark correct) rediscoveries of insights found long before by others. I once re-derived a whole bunch of logarithm math from first principles and felt very smart, even though John Napier had done the same thing in 1614. Same for figuring out some clever stuff about π and sines and cosines and the lot, only 300 years after William Jones and thousands of years after Archimedes. I figured out how to measure latitude from the position of the sun and Polaris, but so did the Phoenicians and Polynesians, and the a-ha of finally understanding the movement of the planets and constellations in the night sky by juggling apples and oranges and toilet paper rolls was a bit anticlimactic as it was 2500 years after Eudoxus of Cnidus had described the same (Copernicus gets some credit for the heliocentric model, 500 or so years ago). All such insights are satisfactory nonetheless, even if the normal reaction by anyone you tell is "yeah, and?" or "if you had paid attention in 7th grade rather than trying to be the class clown, you would have known this" or "I wish I had as much time on my hands as you do, so I too could piss it away philosophizing about useless shit" or "wow, you are weird."
My favorite reaction to an idea (at least from someone whose judgment I value), is a hesitant "Huh...", sometimes with slightly raised pitch, something between a frown and raised eyebrows or a smirk, or a slight nod of the head. Like, "I had not heard that before and it is surprising or interesting enough to give it some thought." Mark's version of that is "That's actually not a bad idea." I know, it sounds like "unlike all the other garbage you spew all day long" but it is high praise.
As a "tech elder" (not my term -- credit to Henry), over time you become more cynical. Just like some of my smartest colleagues, upon hearing an idea or proposal, would start every answer with "The problem is..." before they had given the idea any thought at all. This was their version of a filler word, like eh or umm or like or you know. Something to start a sentence with while you gather your thoughts and shoot down whatever someone just felt smart about.
Figuring out why something is a stupid or useless idea is actually quite rewarding. Usually, doing so doesn't save people time or money because they love to spend it on stupid ideas that don't make any sense, but it does make you feel smug and smart. In line with that, I felt quite happy about both my dog-walking thoughts this morning when I realized that both were about something clever and complicated for which I had finally figured out why I thought it was a bunch of crap, and why.
The first one was triggered by an overnight whatsapp-conversation about cancer treatment with an acquaintance. And then I started thinking about the field of medical decision making, something I also knew a thing or two about. And I got the a-ha as to why, even though using probabilities and utilities and QALYs and the lot to optimize high-stakes decisions sounds like a useful technique, it is used so little in practice other than by payors who don't want to pay, researchers who want to write papers, clinicians and patients to justify doing what they already wanted to do, and policy makers to recommend average solutions for non-average individuals. A rather Negative-Nancy thought...
Soon after, I was chatting with a few PG&E guys digging a hole along the sidewalk for yet another heat-pump afficionado shutting off their gas line, and I asked them why so many people are doing that. They answered "they want to feel good about it and pay twice as much" which was consistent with my own back-of-the-envelope math. A surprisingly honest answer, but then again, PG&E doesn't care whether you use them for gas or electricity. So while many friendly, well meaning, educated suburbanites (the same people who used to love Teslas) are jumping on the bandwagon to spend 30K to reinvent their home heating and cooling systems, I started to come to the conclusion that I'm right and they're wrong and no, your heat pump will not save the planet because chances are it was made in China out of high-carbon steel and sent here on a diesel-gobbling freighter that emitted more than all the gas you would use in a lifetime. Call me Nancy again, for the second time in 10 minutes.
And then a bigger picture emerged. I realized shooting stuff down would be kind of a fun theme for a blog. Write a whole bunch of articles about why this thing or that is a terrible idea even though everyone thinks it is necessary and the wave of the future and all that. You would never run out of topics. You would have all the luddites and grumpies on your hand, so you might actually develop an audience. You could create your online persona Negative Nancy or Grumpy Old Man or Karen Knows or Debbie Downer (although that one is probably owned by SNL), and the ultimate success would be if something eventually fails or fades away and you get I-Told-You-So credit as an early messenger.
By the way, I realize that if you're female and were born roughly between the 40s and 60s, chances are you got a normal name like Karen or Nancy or Debbie or Lisa or Susan or Kim or Mary or Patty, before the Amandas and Ashleys and Jessicas of the 80s and the millennial Madisons and Hannahs and Emilys and the Isabellas and Avas and Mias and Sophias of today. And by now all these Nancys and Karens and Debbies are upper middle-aged and full of opinions. They were, after all, the generation of women who overcame serious career headwinds and mansplaining know-it-alls, and were the first en masse to become doctors and scientists and pilots and managers instead of nurses or flight attendants or secretaries. So we can get into a whole discussion about whether it is better to use a gender-neutral term like fun sponge or wet blanket or buzzkill, versus risking stereotyping entitled, demanding, middle-aged white women who have opinions about shit that doesn't affect them, like I do.
Instead of dodging it, I'm inclined to embrace it, as the honorific that it should be. They are, after all, right (or at least believe they are, even if they are not). Just like me.
Although that's probably appropriation. Just because I'm also entitled, demanding, middle-aged, and white, and have opinions about shit that doesn't affect me, that doesn't give me the right to the slur, and pretend I know the full package of knowing what it's like to walk in their shoes.
So maybe I'll just cite my hero Homer, and call it something like
- “Trying is the first step towards failure”
- "You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."
- "What's the point of going out? We're just going to wind up back here anyway."
- "If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing"
- "Good idea, Boss!"