Purpose I’m writing posts about the summer just gone for a few reasons. I’m including this at the start because the reasons for writing informs the way that I’m writing it and what information I include - not all the information will be interesting to everyone. In no particular order:
Before the trip We did a few practice camping rides where we took basically everything we ended up taking on the trip, but less clothing. This included a combination of unsealed and sealed roads. For reference, the trailer is a Thule Chariot and the “front” is the Kids Ride Shotgun seat in between Hannah’s seat and her handlebars. He’d already done a lot of trailer time and enjoyed the front seat in the few weeks that we had it. We had two 40L Ortlieb rear panniers each. We didn’t really have an exact route, just an idea of the first leg and a map of Victoria which Hannah had put the rail trails on. We were aware that we might do 70 km a day, or we might only manage 30 km depending on how Rupert went, so it was good to keep the plan flexible. This was good in the end because our route was really not what we initially had in mind, but that’s because we got new information and acted upon it. Before we started cycling We drove to Devonport on the Saturday afternoon after school finished and left the car at the Bingham/Harcombe’s then cycled to the Spirit. We unfortunately left bunny in a toy dump truck so Rupert didn’t have his one attachment item, but as it turns out we found a better one eventually. The boat was already a late sail (10:30pm) and it was very delayed, so we only actually departed after midnight. Rupert was a champion about this, including the insane demonstrations of the various boat sirens while we were trying to go to sleep. We had to adjust our plans based on the late arrival in Melbourne. This turned out to be great because we caught up with friends and family and stayed a night in Melbourne. The lesson here was that all plans would be subject to change and embedding flexibility in the plans is a necessity. We got the train on Monday morning to Wangaratta. The train was significantly delayed as it literally always is on that line. We got Hannah a new rack as her other one seemed under-spec with all the extra things we were carrying to support a toddler. Finally by lunch time on Monday, we were ready to ride. Wangaratta to Wodonga We were fortunately starting the trip on the Murray to Mountains rail trail from Wang’ to Beechworth. I somehow remember pretty much nothing between the start and Everton which is about 24km. From there the main trail continued up to Bright, but we took a left turn to Beechworth. It was uphill, but rail trails have a reasonable upper limit to their gradient because the trains I suppose couldn’t go up something too steep. For a fair section up to Beechworth we were in a low gear, and it was hot, but much of the path was in the shade, so it wasn’t too bad. I do remember Rupert being a little hot and bothered, but he’d been on a train for hours, then in the trailer for a while, so it’s unsurprising. We arrived in Beechworth hoping to go directly to the brewery, but it turned out to be closed for an undisclosed reason. So we got a supermarket feed and sat in the shade in the park. There seemed a likely spot for bush camping a few k’s down the road called the Beechworth Bushland Reserve, which we eventually went to. I’m unclear on whether it’s legal to camp in a bushland reserve. The next day we got up pretty early and left at 7:17am according to my google maps timeline. The small road we were on was super rough and ended in a dead-end, so we lifted the bikes and trailer down to the main road. to get on the main road. The next section of road was kinda scary. Firstly it was the first real road we’d been on rather than bike path/rail trail. Then there was a little verge, but there had recently been a storm so it was filled with big sticks and debris. At Woragee we found a bike path for around 6km, then we were back on the road with a smaller verge, but less traffic and no debris. We followed this into Wodonga and it was hot but about 10 degrees less hot than last time we cycled into Wodonga in early 2018. In Wodonga We did a bunch of fun things in and around Wodonga depicted below. We were there (this time) from the 22nd until the 28th. We also treated ourselves to new cushiony seats and got new helmets. Jingellic Loop We set off from Wodonga at 8:44am in a veritable peloton as Dad escorted us through Wodonga and Dora continued with us for the whole day. We stopped at Hume Dam then continued across the bridge and along the Victorian side of the Murray. Riding along the Murray was nice and not too busy. Dora was on a mountain bike in need of maintenance which meant she was slow on the fast bits, but we all got there in the end. We went across to NSW on the Wymah ferry and instead of a campground as Google Maps said, there was a couple’s house. We spoke to them and they said we could stay anyway. Thanks Peter and Sandra! We borrowed their kayaks for a paddle on the Murray. Mum was going to ride with us from here but her battery unfortunately and inexplicably fell out of her e-bike while her and Dad were driving, so they just came and camped with us for the night. Next day 8:12am departure sans Dora and went on the ferry again after consulting with Peter and Sandra and deciding that staying on the Vic side would be preferable seeing as it wasn’t very busy, was sealed, and hugged the river closely. Riding along the river was scenic and gave a bit of cool breeze (could have been the placebo effect). At one point Rupert was on the shotgun seat on the front and decided he didn’t want to be so just let go and took his feet off his pedals in a bad spot which was a bit scary. We eventually got to a safe spot and into the trailer he went and straight to sleep. It was around here that he formed a strong attachment with his new object of choice - the poo trowel aka ‘digger’ - he would hold it to go to sleep and still be latched on when he woke up! We met a guy at the top of Mount Alfred Gap where we had lunch who was fun to talk to. He needed a PCR test to get into Tassie, so he booked a business class international flight for that night, went to get the test, then cancelled the flight for a full refund. He had much excess ice and sorted us out with cold water. He was heading to Tassie to do some mountain biking. We had new cushiony seats, but that meant different contact points than usual which meant pain. This was the toughest part of the trip so far. At Jingellic we had an icy pole, a swim in a nice warm creek and a nice cold river, a ginger beer and camped on the oval instead of at the pub campground with the noisy hens party and other drunks. The next day we rode south to Shelley. This day would be tough (more uphill than previous days, and forecast for 35 degrees) so we got up early and left at 7:05am. Rupert did a full 90 minutes on the front during some steady uphill, then went into the trailer to sleep through the climb. We added hydrolyte to our water for the first time - it became a staple. At Shelley we joined the High Country Rail Trail, which would take us all the way back west to Wodonga. The rail trail started out in quite poor condition with coarse gravel which was slow going. We followed it to Koetong Pub where we met Julie and Ian who were in a bind. They’d had a bad combination of 33 degrees Celsius, flat bike tyres, bushbashing for kilometres on foot with bikes, hitchhiking, their car breaking down, not being members of RACV because they live in Canberra or Sydney or something, and living in Canberra or Sydney or something which meant they were a long way from home with nowhere to stay and no way to move. Fortunately for them, Dad was meeting us there with Mum so she could ride with her now functional ebike, which meant he was heading in the right direction with an empty bike rack. They left so we rode until we found a spot to camp right next to the bike path. Hot. We got up at 4:30am and departed at 6:45am. All downhill for a long time through farms, gates and lovely scenery. We went on a lot of rail trails, but this was the only section through farms as it was. We found a curved handmade bench seat in a cool oasis to have a break. Rupert loved having his digger (the trowel) in the trailer with him. We got to Lake Hume and went to the bakery and playground in Tallangatta. It was hot, did I mention that? Anyway, we kept going to Ludlow Reserve on Lake Hume and Hannah took the trailer, going very fast. We would have been able to gain full satisfaction by cycling back to my parents place in Wodonga which was the plan, but it was so hot and Rupert was hot and it just wouldn’t have been worth it. I’m not the guy who “has to get to the top at all costs”, so I was fine with getting bailed out. We got a lift back to Wodonga with Dora, except because of bike carrying limitations, Hannah stayed at the lake reading for a few hours until I returned.
We stayed in Wodonga for a few days break. I wrote down some reflections/things to do which apparently were:
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Democracy is a flawed system, but it’s the best system we have (or whatever the actual quote is). I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have come up with what I think is a better system than the current version of democracy that we have. It ends up still falling under the umbrella of democracy, maybe even more than the current system of democracy. In my system:
Here’s how it works: Election Week is coming up. If you are happy to be voted for, you nominate yourself. When you nominate yourself, you must answer questions based on bills that were proposed in the previous/current parliamentary period (or whatever that’s actually called). This all goes on a database. I anticipate that something like 10,000 people would be on this database having nominated themselves. Nominations close two weeks before election week. In those two weeks, nominees must list where they want their votes to go if they are eliminated. It’s Election Monday. People can start voting (online only for the whole thing). You can see the answers people gave to the questions. You can either search for people and see their answers, or answer some of the questions which you deem “essential answers”, then see who has answered how you did. You have until midnight on Friday to submit your vote. Similar to the current system, you can pick someone and allow them to choose the preferences, or you can vote for multiple people and your preferences will filter down. Starting with the nominee with the fewest votes, nominees are eliminated and their votes are given to their preferences (or the voter’s preference if that’s how they voted). When there are either 250 nominees remaining or all the remaining nominees have more than 30,000 votes, those people are considered elected to parliament The results would be announced at 9am on Saturday. Those elected would have the following week to determine who is the Prime Minister, and they would follow a similar process to the voting process (preferences, etc.). Importantly, on this issue and everything they vote on while in office, they will have voting power based on the number of votes they finished on in the election. I think there should be some cap on the amount of voting power people have. It would be something like 5x the lowest amount of voting power is the highest and everyone is scaled between those two points. This means there will be a minimum of 250 and a current theoretical maximum of about 500 (based on current voting population and the 30k minimum) representatives of the people of Australia. Problems it addresses: At the moment each person has the choice between a bunch of people who aren’t really going to represent them in parliament. In the past week I’ve received letters from four people representing their party (I recently updated my enrolment address). I don’t like their party. Voting for them is basically a non-starter for me. And yet one of them will get elected as my representative in Australian Parliament. There will be nobody there actually representing my views, or anything close to be honest. The idea of having electorates (to the best of my knowledge) is so people who are facing the same issues (or perceive this to be the case) can vote for someone to represent them when those collective issues are up for debate. This made sense in the past but is becoming less and less important as people become more connected on issues with those spatially disparate from themselves (people take into account issues beyond their immediate surroundings). I don’t really see any benefits to the current electorate system over something which isn’t based on locality. It also eliminate those people who are some nobody in a political party who are essentially given a seat in parliament because they are put in a safe seat. They just vote with the party all the time and there’s essentially no point to them being there as an individual. In my system, if they aren’t actually getting a vote over all the other candidates, they don’t get in. It will mean each representative will need to have convictions which they are willing to stand on, not just toe the party line. It's helped by the fact that extra votes for someone who's definitely going to get in just means they have more voting power, rather then being wasted or passed on to the next person on the ticket. The fact that there’s a big change in the way voting works will (hopefully) mean that people actually think about how they vote (not just who they vote for). This means they might follow the part of my voting guide and vote for the person they truly want to get in, even if there’s no chance they will ultimately win a seat. It will also mean (in my opinion) that those elected are truly held to a higher standard than the rest of us plebeians. I don’t think this means their history should be heavily scrutinised, I’m thinking more along the lines of “let’s see who you actually are and if you’re worth voting for”. If someone was convicted of a crime 30 years ago when they were 20 years old, but has since been on a journey and by all indications is now a great person full of moral virtue, they shouldn’t pay a political price today for their crime long ago. Similarly, if someone say, I dunno, cheats on their partner, then the Australian Public have a right to know that, because it’s something that might affect their voting (not for all, but for some). Here are the flaws: Money. It takes away a lot of the motivation to be in a political party (the way they are currently structured). This puts the onus on the candidates to raise funds for themselves which is usually straight up bribery. I’m not really sure how to get around this one, but there are a few whacky ideas that I’ve heard. One I like is to get a little “election economy” going. It would be something like nominations close six weeks before election week and every nominee gets $100k worth of $20 and $30 advertising tokens. These can only be redeemed if filled out by an enrolled voter, and each enrolled voter can only fill out $50 worth, not for the same nominee. The only money allowed to be spent on election campaigning comes from these tokens, and that’s the only way the money can be spent. As I’m typing this I can see that it adapts poorly to this situation because the barriers to entry are so low that many people could nominate themselves, then spend all their advertising money on votes for themselves (as this would be mandated), then farm out their preferences to another candidate. This may be solved by having to provide some sort of proof for genuine intent to win, but that would make it messy. Let me know if you can think of a way to either solve this, or circumnavigate it. Even if the above plan or something like it were to work, that would make elections super expensive, though I think the only answer can be that elections are expensive. If the money comes from business, then that’s essentially businesses buying votes. If the money comes from individuals, that’s kind of spending money to buy votes too, isn’t it? I think what people really want is for the money side of things to not be an object, so basically anyway can nominate themselves, and they gain votes based on their merit alone, not their financial situation. The only way that can even vaguely work is if the government (taxpayer) funds it. It probably means less advertising, more references to whatever the database is that allows us to look up each candidate and more work to be done by the voter (I’ll need to research rather than have whoever pays for it blast images at my eyeholes, which is a good thing, but will people actually do it?). The funding waters are also muddied by the power of social media to essentially “create free advertising” and the power of news media (funded/owned by not that many people) to report on certain candidates, also creating free advertising for them. Trump used this to great effect in 2016. Parliament won’t work well without parties. That’s the whole reason things get passed, right? Yeah, at the moment, but that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Anyway, I’m going to come up with a new way that parliament works too, more on that now. Things required for this to work: For all this to work, we also need to “fix” the way parliament works. I don’t know much about how parliament works. I know there’s a theory about the way it works, then there’s the actual way it works. I think the actual way it works is trash, its relationship to the media is trash, hence its relationship to the public is trash. I’m going to look a bit more into the theory of how it works before I full criticise it. I know the above change to democracy has the flaws I mentioned, and the changes I’m going to propose to parliament will hopefully address them. What prompted this and why am I posting it: Firstly, watching the Crash Course Philosophy series on Youtube has taught me the value of rational argument. This will feature more prominently in the “how to fix parliament” post.
Secondly, I’m reading Mein Kampf because of the conversation between Dan Carlin and Daniele Bolelli. The reason that book did what it did is because it correctly identified a lot of problems people saw in the political system. You can’t flout racism amidst a bunch of trash ideas about politics and get away with it, you have to scatter it on something which resonates well with the public. I don’t really know jack about the historical reality of politics in Vienna and German-Austria pre-WWI, but a lot of what Hitler wrote is relevant to the shortcomings of the political system in Australia today. His solution is to get rid of democracy, among other things, but I’d like to keep democracy, and make it closer to actual democracy, rather than the super pseudo-democracy which we currently have. And before you say “dude, Chris, mate, you probably shouldn’t be taking political advice from Adolf Hitler”, don’t worry, I’m not, it’s just thought-provoking. Also, actually read the book and tell me that his criticism of politicians in the first three chapters isn’t accurate for many of those in Canberra (and everywhere) today. As to why I’m posting, I’m really hoping for people to critique it. I’m not an expert on these things, so I assume there are some major, probably critical flaws. I can’t see them with my current depth of knowledge, so I’m hoping my smart friends will be able to shoot it down for specific reasons so I can change it to something that actually does make sense. Also, let’s go easy on the “the biggest flaw is that how would it ever get through, anyone in politics (who are the people voting on it) stands to lose” flaw for now, we can look at that once we have the final version. When politicians a while ago were talking about minimum wage increases, they seemed to all say that the independent investigator’s recommendation of a 3.5% increase is a good step forward, but it could be more. Saying anything about limiting the increase of minimum wage seems like a political third rail, but I feel like on this issue in particular, politicians seem unwilling to say anything logical. I’m not saying that anyone should come out against a minimum wage increase that big, I would just like them to acknowledge that there are two sides of the argument, and the points they were making didn’t address that in the slightest (as far as I heard). There was the point made that corporate profits are increasing year on year, and employees should get a share in that. Should they? Let’s say you have a cleaning business with 100 minimum wage employees doing simple work, three middle managers and one top dog/owner. The top dog decides that it’s a good idea to spend $100,000 on a new middle manager. The middle manager does some good work making the business more efficient and increasing sales. The business grows and they hire 50 more minimum wage employees. The profits of the business go up because they have more business, despite spending money on a new manager and new minimum wage employees. Should the minimum wage employees share in the increased profits? For me, that’s a clear no. They are doing the same work and have done nothing to increase profits. I’m not saying that if I were the top dog, I wouldn’t raise wages, but I don’t think they should be required to. If you think they share the profits with everyone, you’re kind of saying “here’s your reward for that other person’s hard work” and that sounds like a 20th century something that starts with C and rhymes with communism. By the way, the 50 jobs created are a pretty good thing too, maybe let’s talk more about total wages increase, not minimum wage increase. Also, say a business has a good year due to factors out of its control so it pays workers more, if the next year sucks due to factors out of their control, it’s tough to pay people less. People also made the point that there’s no real wage increase (minimum wage growth compared with inflation). I am sure I’m missing at least two things here.
It also feels like people don’t understand risk. If you have a job working for someone else, there’s no risk. The money goes in your bank account and you have it. If you start a business, you’re taking a huge risk, especially in industries that have minimum wage workers. Around 60% of cafes and restaurants fail in the first year. You should get a payout for taking that risk. If I open 10 cafes, the 4 that are successful need to be 250% successful for me to even break even (which makes no sense, what I mean is if they all cost the same amount to set up the successful ones would need to make say 10% profit annually for long enough that it paid off the ones that failed). Anyway, people seem to think (or at least people respond to politicians who say) that you should only get paid for work you do, hours on the job, but really that’s not the only thing you get paid for.
The disparity between top managers and people on minimum wage is also cited as something that’s unfair. Back in my uni days I used to love a policy in an Asian country that I can’t remember which limited the highest salary to 10X the lowest salary for that company (or of minimum wage, I’m not sure), so I understand the attraction. The problem is that the value the top managers add to the company can be way more than the value a minimum wage worker does. That’s nothing to do with how hard they work and how smart they are, purely the value they add to the business. Granted it’s unlikely in a small business that someone adds ten times the value of someone on minimum wage, but it’s definitely possible in a medium business. Actually, I take that back, it’s totally possible even in a small business. Say you’re a top bird lawyer who gets charged out at $1,000 per hour. It could make sense to get paid $500/hr and it would make sense to pay an entry level data entry admin type person less than $50/hr. (As far as I know it doesn’t work like that because if you’re a top dog at a small firm you’re almost certainly a partner and getting paid partly by the hour and partly per profit for the business or something.) Anyway, enough lawyer-speak, filibuster. Then if you’re talking about companies with 50,000 employees, some of whom are probably on minimum wage, surely the person at the top should be on more than 10x that based on their value to the company. If they increase the efficiency by 0.5% on something revenue related and the revenue is $25bn, that’s $125m. That’s looking at it from the point of view of the business where you ask the question “will our profits increase overall if we pay this person $10m?”, rather than “why on earth does one person need $10m?”. I know I seem to be trying to explain concepts that everyone already knows. I’m mostly doing the thing of trying to understand it by writing it down, while simultaneously venting some frustration at politicians who speak like politicians, which is actually their job I suppose. I’m probably super out of touch with all this anyway, as I pretty much know nobody who’s currently on minimum wage, though I’ve done maybe four years on minimum wage in various countries (minimum was less than $7/hr in France, then had to pay the high not-French person tax on that, maximum was obviously in Aus). I also remember being told that minimum wage is effective at keeping people out of poverty, though I’m not sure how relevant that is to Australia. OriginOne of my boys Jordan Peterson (Dan Carlin and Sam Harris are my other boys) interviewed Steven Pinker recently, and they spoke about Steven’s new book Enlightenment Now. I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to. Similarly to The Better Angels of our Nature (Pinker) and Factfulness (Hans Rosling), it tells the true story of the world getting better for humans. They acknowledge that there is a long way to go, and things are perfect, but it’s undeniable that overall, it’s better to be any age today than that age at any time in the past. I digress. At one point they were discussing something I think Pinker thought of when he first heard about how much the world was getting better (in the ‘80s I think). Of Mother Teresa, Bill Gates and Norman Borlaug, who did the most good? This was before the Gates Foundation, but I think the question is equally as askable today. Here’s my analysis (opinion). It’s not even close. Mother Teresa I have had it in for Mother Teresa for a while now. She was not the angel people think she was. “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.” Um, what? Her houses of suffering did not distinguish between curable and incurable illnesses. She would baptise people regardless of their religion by offering a “ticket to heaven”. She didn’t help many people, but had literally billions of dollars in donations, some of which came from questionable sources. The money was spent to “spread the good word”, instead of actually helping people. She built places for people to suffer without modern medicine, because the suffering bring them closer to God, yet when her time was near, she brought the whole western arsenal to bear. When they did use western medicine on the suffering, they did it poorly: they reused needles, “cleaning” them under cold water, not sterilising them because “what’s the point?”. One kid just needing antibiotics died because they wouldn’t take him to hospital. If one person goes to hospital to get well, they all go, then what are we doing here? Her main crusade was to prevent people using contraception. “Let us promise our lady who loves Ireland so much that we will never allow in this country a single abortion. And no contraceptives.” Finally, 21 years after her death, Ireland have legalised abortion. The rich need to think that they are helping the poor, Mother Teresa was the conduit for that (such a sieve that almost none of the actual money got through). She was the ultimate band-aid that does literally nothing to tackle the root cause of poverty. Even Salon doesn’t like her. I could go on. It’s easy to say that she did many immoral things. It’s impossible to say she didn’t do any moral things. She became a symbol of hope for many of the suffering, and she did devote her whole life to travelling and converting people (not inherently moral), which had the effect of spreading hope. I don’t think I’m saying I think she's the actual devil, but she’s due for a reevaluation and Carol in HR is ready. Lives saved: 100s, maybe 1000s absolutely tops. Positive effect difficult to measure just using “lives saved”. Negative effect could be measured in “unnecessary suffering added”. Bill Gates This man is a hero of epic proportions. He has donated over $50bn to charity. His charity has saved over a hundred million lives. He does the most effective and efficient things to help people and communities. This means having the right targets based on which areas have the most room for improvement for the least money. It means having the long view of building the community and infrastructure so people can continue to build things on their own rather than having more things given to them when those resources can be used elsewhere. Gates knows that he got lucky by being born at the right time in the right place to the right family so he could start a giant tech company (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell does a great analysis of this). He does what I would call the exact right thing by cashing in on his luck then starting a giant charity. Lives saved: Probably a couple of hundred million at this point. Also has improved the lives of many on their way up. Norman Borlaug In the event of the colonisation of Mars by one million people and a catastrophic disaster on earth killing every single last nine billion earth humans and the colony on Mars surviving for 300 years, Elon Musk would make Borlaug look like Borlaug makes Gates look. They are the lengths you need to go to see the perspective of what he did. Borlaug was an agronomist who developed new varieties of wheat and help implement modern farming techniques in Mexico, Pakistan and India. Not only did this improve food security in those countries, but some started exporting. His focus on increasing crop yields was not only to prevent starvation, but also to reduce deforestation. His life was incidentally plagued by environmentalists saying things like “inorganic fertilisers are bad” and “you’re just making profits for big American corporations”. Unsurprisingly, those environmentalists happened to not be the people starving to death *cough* GMOs *cough*. He also created the World Food Prize, which goes to people who improve the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. If you’re interested in people who save billions of lives, also check out Fritz Haber. You probably partly have him to thank for being alive. Lives saved: over a billion. CaveatsI know that everyone stands on the shoulders of cumulative giants and nobody would be able to do anything without all the geniuses before them laying the way. There are also other ways to save the world, but the focus here is on people who dedicated all their efforts to helping others for a large portion of their lives. Also there are opposing arguments to everything I've said. For example, Fritz Haber has brought forward the date that we will run out of nitrogen by a great margin. I see this as a "he kept us going until we can balance out" type of thing. World population is expected to cap at around 11bn in 2100, by that stage I'm not too stressed about food production and sustainability, and I think reducing the suffering in the population boom phase is really important. Why all this?I think this topic probably piqued my interest because I like the idea of knowing things that other people don’t know. It makes me feel smart, whereas really I’ve just spent more time and interest on one topic rather than another. I think the point of all this is that I don’t like that people know who Mother Teresa is, but not Normal Borlaug. I know he won a Nobel Peace Prize which is definitely recognition, but it’s not like people talk about him often these days. Why aren’t Fiona Wood, Michelle Simmons and Graham Farquhar household names, yet Beyoncé can do almost literally nothing without it being reported? I know the answers to these questions, I know we default to taking the path of least resistance, I know singing “girls run the world” and shaking it is more fun than hearing about a woman patenting a “spray-on-skin” technique, I know it’s nice to think hey, I sometimes wear sweatpants and a hoodie, I’m just like Beyonce. All the time I default to looking at foota or cricket scores rather than reading something interesting. I’ve no ire directed at anyone on this topic, it would just be interesting to hear about more scientist people rather than pop musicians. I think I'll do a listicle post about my top 10 influential yet little known scientists or something, so if you have a little known favourite scientist, please let me know!
This is a super random post that I just felt like doing based on a few things. It won’t be well structured and it won’t be well thought out. It’s just some thoughts based on one particular external stimulus that I found interesting. Hospitality Persona The creation of my hospitality persona occurred in late 2007 working at Davies Grand Central in Launceston. I was working 8 hours at a cherry orchard every day and rocked the 6pm - 12am shift at Davies three or four times a week. It fairly well busted me, but I had a specific goal in mind ($18,500 in 18 months to qualify for Youth Allowance), and I was intent on achieving it. The owners were kind of hard arses, but I was on the right side of them from the start. I had a generally positive attitude towards work, but hadn’t worked in customer service before. One thing the bosses forced on to me (or encouraged to the point where if I didn’t do it, I would no longer be on their good side) was saying hello to every single person who walked in the door. The checkout was right there as customers walked in, and the whole place was set up to make it easy to interact with customers. So I had to do it. No questions, say hi to everyone. And I knew that a glum hi was worth nothing. I didn’t want to be a guy that did a glum hi. So I did a happy hi, how’s it going, and I even threw in a smile. Every time. After a 70 hour week, you’re tired. Cherry picking was literally every day, so there was no day off to recover. Hot days in the orchard, drive into down, smash some food, sleep in the car for an hour, start at Davies. Drive home, sleep 5 hours, get up, go to the orchard. I’d wake up in my car at 5:45pm, walk into Davies and clock on, kind of like a zombie. I wasn’t necessarily in a bad mood, but I certainly didn’t have the energy to be in a good one. 6:00pm, put in the till. 6:05pm, first hi. All of a sudden it’s 6:30pm and I’m in a good mood. The hi’s perked me right up, every time, all summer, and the next one. So when I got to pouring beers and waiting tables in London, tired, frustrated, whatever, I smiled, pretended I was happy and I became happy. Ever since, any service time thing that I’m doing, I have a habit of smiling and being genuinely happy that I’m doing that thing, because I know I’ll end up being happy just based on the action. A barback shift is way harder than a bar shift, because you don’t have to pretend be happy for a barback shift, so you don’t and you’re not. The first few interactions with a customer on a hospo shift may well be dishonest from me, but interactions half an hour later aren’t. Hell yeah I’ll go out of my way to annoy the chef so I can put cream in your coffee! Interactions with customers don’t always go deep, but you can tweak a happy hospo persona to suit you. The serve is hi, how’s it going, the return is nearly always good and you. They expect you to stay deep and try to hit deep, but I like to serve-volley. I can have a superficial conversation and be happy but gain nothing, but if I either keep asking why or even mention something real about my day, I can be happy and gain. And people respond to that. Being interested is an attractive quality. Sharing something that’s happened in my day had having the other person appear interested makes them feel attractive. [I just thought of the tennis analogy now, it’s not actually the way I think about interactions with people, but I think I might keep using it. I guess right now I’m just hitting a ball up against a wall. Distraction vs Boredom
I need a break from podcasts and audiobooks. I love cycling to work because it allows me to consume media while I’m doing something, but I miss cycling the old way. I didn’t listen to podcasts on the trip that initiated this blog. Showerthoughts is a thing because when you’re in the shower, you’re often on autopilot and you’re mind starts going random places. Cycling is my shower (gross). The openness of mind while cycling is rad. But I don’t do it any more. I’m literally either doing a thing that requires thinking, or listening to something. I’m always distracted. I’m never bored. Boredom is when you can be creative. Now when I’m bored, I distract myself. I liked being bored. I’m going to try to be bored more. Step one on The Road To Boredom is to be less impulsive. Do I enjoy watching AP Bio, or does it just distract me? Is it worth spending 20 minutes watching an It’s Always Sunny ep another time, or do I just know that it’ll get me 20 minutes into the future and I’ll obtain some shallow lols? Do you think of all the time you could have better spent as a kid and teenager doing things that weren’t productive at all when you could have been learning something and then now you’d know it and it would be a skill? I do, all the time. If I could have the time back I spent playing Kirby, or a random mod of Warcraft III, and I could have spent it on reading some classics or learning French, I would be way better off now (not playing Pokemon though, that was worth every god damn second). Well then Chris you genius, what about today?! By my estimation, I spend two hours a day on useless things. Not podcasts or books, they aren’t totally useless. I’m talking about re-watching eps, watching youtube, scrolling deep in a stupid reddit thread. I’m not against down time, I’m happy with my Westworld on a Monday evening, watching a debate on the ‘Tube, or reading every top comment in a CMV about whether it’s OK for a white girl to rap the N-word on stage with Kendrick. But for someone who acts like they don’t spend much time wasting time, I sure do spend a lot of my time wasting time. So in that time for the next few days, I’m going to try to be bored. No headphones on the bike or around the house. No eps. No AskReddit threads like “Minimum wage workers, what is something that is against the rules for customers to do but you aren’t paid enough to actually care?” or “What are obvious things you’ve just become aware of?”. I bet I don’t last a day. Discipline By the way, if you join the army and it gives you some discipline because there’s a guy shouting in your face, I don’t think that goes away once you’re back in real life. You learn a mental habit of going from “I should do that thing” to actually doing the thing, so you just do things. Sure, that habit can change over time, even fairly rapidly if you don’t have any structure in your life, but it’s not because the guy isn’t yelling at you, it’s because everything else has changed. You can’t increase your intellect, but you can increase your effective conscientiousness. Not because your ability to overcome impulsiveness is higher by itself, more that you now have a habit to overcome it. Lose the habit, then you’re in trouble. I’m planning on reading some Jocko Willink stuff about discipline, maybe that will help. I’m so “the kind of guy that has read too many self improvement books”. Edit: I think this is missing a key thing: anger. I wanted to be able to blame someone for what happened. Every time there is a near miss on the road, I want to be angry at the person. But in this case it's silly to be angry.
The Incident On Monday as I was cycling home from work at about 7pm (darkness), and as I went past the hospital a car door was opened immediately in front of me. After impact I was roughly in the middle of the left lane of traffic. Fortunately the nearest car coming towards me was still about 100m away so I had plenty of time to stand up, pick up my bike and walk to the footpath. I’m not seriously injured, just a few scrapes and some bruises which have started to appear. The Perpetrator A little old Greek dude who was on the way to visit his wife in the hospital, or more specifically, his old maroon sedan was the perp. The door was a bit damaged from the impact, but he managed to get it closed. The man was insistent that he always (by which I assume he means almost always, unless he was saying he did it deliberately) checks his mirror. The Point If I was going to rag on someone for opening their car door and knocking me off my bike in such a way that I could have actually died (this is relatively common, the one I remember specifically happened on Sydney Road in Brunswick when I lived there. An Italian tourist was cycling in front of his girlfriend and he got car doored into the path of a truck and was killed. I can’t even imagine the scene, it’s brutal), I probably wouldn’t write a blog post about it, I'd just rage internally. The reason I’m writing this is that it’s such a dangerous thing, yet many people do it, but they aren’t bad people for doing it, so it's confusing. People are so sorry when it happens and are clearly shaken up by it. Once I was safely on the footpath checking for injuries, the guy came over to see that I was OK. At the time I was just like “all good mate, don’t worry about it, I’m fine, bike’s fine, carry on”, but thinking about it this morning, By the time I got going again, I'd consoled him a bit but he was still pretty shaken up and in hindsight I probably should have spent another five minutes with him. Anyway, I’m wondering what each participant of a constructive conversation in that situation would want. I think for him it would have been to not feel like a bad person (assuming they aren’t a bad person in which case they would be worried about legal things), and to make sure they didn’t do it again. For me it would have been to try to ensure they didn’t ever open their door without looking again (without making him feel like a bad person, because he’s not). Habits I’m listening to a book called The Power of Habit at the moment. Habits start with a trigger and end with a trigger. For example, last Thursday I decided to go a fortnight without caffeine, yet on Friday morning when I got out of the shower, my coffee was magically brewing on the stove. In order to prevent this from happening again, I cleaned the coffee pot and put it above the stove rather than putting it directly onto the sink. The next morning I happened to remember to not drink coffee, but the strategy was that I would look for the coffee pot on the sink and wouldn’t find it, which would interrupt the habit and I would actually think about what I’m doing. The way I’m relating this to the car door thing is that people have various habits when getting out of the car. My suspicion is that a fast flow of traffic near your door is a trigger for everyone to check their mirror. If you’re on a backstreet and you haven’t seen any other cars in a while, that’s probably not a trigger for many people. Some people just do it every time they get out of the car. Anyway, the point is that the fella that opened his car door into me may have check if there was more traffic, and may have check even with low traffic if there wasn’t a cycling lane (as he would have been much closer to the traffic. I’ve never been a fan of cycle lanes in traffic for this reason, but it’s never happened to me before (people are generally really good at looking). I think having the cycle lane between parked cars and the footpath is much safer for cyclists, though I admit that it’s annoying for people parking, plus it takes up more space. They’ve started to do this is parts of Melbourne, and it’s common in Europe to make cities more cycle friendly to reduce congestion. The Conclusion All I’m saying is that it’s hard. It’s hard to make sure you check your mirror 100% of the time just in case, even if you’re in a rush or your mind is somewhere else. The potential consequences are deadly, but it’s still hard. Please try to turn it into a habit. The Actual Consequences I’ll be physically fine, but now when I ride around I’m paranoid that someone will open their door into me. I know this feeling will go away over time as I ride more and it doesn’t happen, but it’s kind of annoying. Riding to and from work is probably my favourite thing of each weekday, so it sucks that it’s kinda been ruined for now. Honest feedback, positive or negative, public or private would be truly appreciated. Here’s my theory: if someone tells you how it is and that makes you feel like you've done the "wrong" thing morally, that’s because it’s something you think you should feel bad about. Some examples to start with then the one I’m kind of deciding on. Example One: Kid in the RiverI go for a walk along the river alone, and I come across a little boy floating down the river, seemingly distressed. I’m a bit scared myself because the current looks strong, but I think I could maybe help him out. There’s nobody else around and I spend thirty seconds deciding if I can actually help him, but by that time he’s too far past me and I can’t do anything to help any more. I don’t feel too bad because maybe I couldn’t have helped him anyway. Later, I relay this story to my friend who is of the opinion that I should have done something, and points out how the boy must have been feeling and how his parents would be feeling. Thinking it over, I do start to feel bad. Previously I was semi-consciously trying not to think about the situation from the boy’s or his parents point of view, because I knew I wouldn’t like the result. Having thought about it now, I resolve to act differently if the situation comes up again. Do you think it’s justified that my friend pointed out the reality of the situation instead of just supporting me and saying it was a tough decision? Example Two: Worm SliceI’m digging in the garden and I accidentally slice some worms with the spade. My friend points this out and says “be careful, you’re hurting the poor little worms”. I have thought about this before and have determined that I have no problem doing it because these worms only have 302 neurons each and don’t have the capacity to suffer in a way that I see as significant (true for the roundworm [wiki], I’m actually not sure what the situation is for the earthworm). It really doesn’t matter what my friend says to me on this trying to get me to emotionally react, because I am sure, deep into my core, that this isn’t a problem for me. The same could be said for having my heater on overnight in winter, or flying to Hobart to visit friends (not the best for the environment, but I consider it worthwhile for me to do it so I don’t feel bad). In the case of the worm, is it justified that my friend points out their concerns for the welfare of the worms? My ReactionsI think this illustrates the two possible scenarios for me following honest negative feedback. The first scenario is that deep down I agree, so I feel bad and change my actions. The second scenario is that I disagree deep down, so I neither feel bad, nor change my actions. This may not be the case for everyone, which is kind of the question I’m asking. It is probably a sign of my narcissism that I either feel bad or don’t based on my opinion of my past actions, whereas someone less inwardly focused might feel bad simply because someone else thinks they have done the wrong thing. Based on my personal feelings here, I think that negative feedback on these kinds of moral things is always OK, because it will either change actions to be closer to what I actually think, or not change my actions at all because they are already in line with what I think (not to mention getting me to think critically about my actions to double check that I’m OK with them). If I proceed with the assumption that it is always good or neutral to give negative feedback on moral issues because the only outcomes are someone feeling bad in the moment, but eventually positive change and future feeling good about oneself and actions, or someone not feeling bad in the moment, then I must ask myself: do I want to be a slightly more whiny vegan? I think in general I do a reasonable job of not being a whiny vegan. I simply go about my vegan business, mainly because I’m semi-consciously avoiding the rabbit hole of “is it morally right to keep my moral realisation to myself?”. It seems on the surface that the tactics of pointing out the cognitive dissonance of simultaneously alleging that one “loves animals” and eating a steak is a bit of a dick move. If I host a barbecue and criticise all those who arrive with part of an animal that was killed for their pleasure, I probably won’t be hosting famously fun barbecues in the future. But do they only feel bad about what they are doing because deep down they know that it’s wrong to buy meat and kill animals just so they can have the pleasure of eating them? I remember a conversation with a vegan in maybe 2011 in which I said something along the lines of “you’re probably right, but I like eating meat so I don’t want to think about it”. I felt bad, because I knew that I really did believe what they believed about an animal’s conscious experience. I’ve spoken to non-vegans recently who are totally fine with me saying whatever I want about animal welfare and my view that eating meat is wrong, because they are certain that there is nothing wrong with it. The people I get pushback from are people that agree with most of what I say, but just don’t want to make the connection between what they think is morally right and their actual diet choices. So The Question Is:If someone criticises one of your morals, and you genuinely can say that you think you’re right and they are wrong, do you still have a feeling of guilt? What do you think the answer would be of people you know?
When I got back to Australia at the start of last financial year, I was in debt a couple k to my parents for the flight home and getting started in Melbourne without a job. Bank account negative, sleeping in spare rooms/on couches. Despite still being in the red last October, I recently gave more than 10% of my 16/17 gross income to the Against Malaria Foundation. This blog post explains:
Why Give?I recently finished Ethics in the Real World by Peter Singer, a collection of 82 essays and articles on a range of topics. Every piece of writing on every topic is incredibly interesting and thought provoking. They are each around five minutes long, and I tended to listen to one then think about it for a while before I could move on to the next one. One of the main takeaways for me was about how cognitive dissonance affects me, even though I try to negate it as much as possible. There are a lot of ethical hypotheticals he brings up which really make you think about your place in the world. Here’s a random example I liked: You’re in a burning art warehouse, trying to escape. You head down a hallway to the exit, knowing that nobody will be able to come in and save any of the art or anyone inside. You pass a set of doors. The one on the right contains three paintings you could carry, each worth over a million dollars. The door on the left has a little girl whose leg has been broken by a falling rafter. You must choose between saving the girl and saving the paintings. Which door do you go for? Almost every human goes for the left door. The more ethical choice in my opinion is to go for the right door. $5m in paintings that can be saved and sold, the money going to a charity which saves literally 1,000 lives, compared with one life here and now. What would I do? Probably poop myself with fear, but afterwards I would definitely try to save the child. The ethical choice isn’t necessarily the right one, or the easy one. If I got the paintings, I would have to live with the image of the burning girl for the rest of my life (until Brienne beheads me, Stannis, what were you thinking, she was just a little girl). I’ve also been listening to a lot of Sam Harris, which gets me thinking about the complete good luck that has me in the situation I’m in, and the complete bad luck that has someone else born into poverty and treated cruelly. Humans tend to think that they would end up in whatever position they are in, with similar values, regardless of where they were born. This is simply not true. Someone born to a rich Toorak family in 2000 does no more to deserve their situation than someone born in Mozambique in 1980. The experience that you have growing up are severely based on those circumstances, not on anything you do yourself, so you don’t really “deserve” them either. So I can think of my current situation as “I’ve got these things and I’m going to have myself a great life”, or I can think “I’ve won the lottery, probably should share some of the spoils.” As I mentioned earlier, last July to October, I had money for food from my parents and a somewhere to sleep thanks to my friends. Plenty of people don't have that net. I get that you don’t want to be sitting at the pub, tossing up between getting a second pint or giving that $10 to charity. You don’t want to be out for brunch talking about this stuff and occasionally looking at each other thinking “why are we spending $30 each on brunch when that’s the same price as 6 mosquito nets”. But maybe you do want to be thinking about how you can save money and have an equally fulfilling experience every now and then, even if it’s a bit more effort socially. The reason I’m not giving away all my money is because I find young philosopher William MacAskill’s view of “give what you can while maintaining a fulfilling life” more reasonable than Singer’s “give everything you can” (which comes across in some of his essays, but isn’t necessarily his view on it). For reference, MacAskill gives everything he earns over I think 35,000 USD (pre tax) to charity. I’m not sure where Singer sits, but I think they both live very humble and minimalist lives. I bet MacAskill gets the second pint at the pub without thinking of himself as a bad person, but he views the relaxation as part of the emotional maintenance he needs to do so he can carry on with the good work. Why the Against Malaria Foundation? One of my favourite Waking Up episode is the one with William MacAskill about effective altruism. He’s really into finding out the actual nature of things, rather than making assumptions and going with what other people think. GiveWell embodies this, and evaluates charities based on their actual effectiveness. The results surprisingly show that even among charities that do what they say they will do, there are many charities that have a zero or negative effect on those they are trying to help. Also, many people give because their friends are part of, or support a particular organisation, rather than that organisation actually being effective. I’m not going to sit here and say “don’t donate to breast cancer charities” or something like that. Personally, the way I see it, if ten lives can be saved (extended for 50 years) for the same amount of money as the extension of one life for ten years, that is an objective ethical no-brainer. That said, if everyone gave to one single charity, that wouldn’t be a great situation, so variety is necessary. Also, I do understand that part of the social contract in many parts of the world involves looking out for those around you, and there are some great evolutionary reasons for this. Similarly, if I get sick and require expensive treatment, it would be a tough call to say “all g, give it to charity, I’ll just check out now”, even if there were a mechanism to do that with insurance money that would be otherwise spent on treatment. Why tell people? Social proof. Humans tend to do things that other humans do, and tend not to do things that other humans don’t do. This obviously isn’t true in all cases, otherwise there would be no progress in the world, but for the majority, it holds true. It’s generally held by western governments that giving 2% of your gross annual household income to charity is what people in wealthy countries should do. The national average in Australia is currently around 0.2%. I’ve contributed to that number being low based on the fact that I’ve spent a fair bit of my adult life living for me (I’ve got some catching up to do). The 2% target depends on what that total household income is ($50k vs $500k) and what your commitments to others are (many dependents vs 28yo healthy man with no dependents). Anyway, if I give a bunch of money to charity and don’t tell anyone, the effect I have is the effect my money has when used by that charity. If I share it on Facebook and write my reasoning on my blog, there’s the potential for other people to start giving, give more, or be more likely to give in the future. If all my friends were writing about this stuff once a year around tax time, I probably would have foregone some luxuries in the past and donated more to charity over the years, which I think would have been a good thing. ActionSo, friends, now it’s up to you. I could ask you to give money to an effective charity. I could ask you to think about giving money, which will make you more likely to in the future, or more likely to give more if you’re already giving. But the fact that you’ve made it to this point means the topic likely interests you and you’re already thinking about it more for having remained engaged. Maybe you should just go to the pub and buy two pints :)
I've only seen bits and pieces of the news recently, so what I write here could be Swiss cheese from a facts perspective. TrumpyOK, so everyone (everyone not on the far right) is raving about Trump's "both/many sides" comment in the press conference. I didn't watch the whole press conference, and the bits I did see didn't paint him in a great light, mostly because he's actually one of the worst people ever. Anyway, some people are going on about "both sides" because one side is Neo-Nazis and the other side is not. The person killed was not on the Nazi side, the suspect for the car situation (the murder, plus 19 injuries) was on the Nazi side, so yeah, things are stacking up pretty heavily in terms of the direction of the violence. I can't find information on which side the other injured people (there were 15) were on. Police reports say that there were chants from both sides, right wing sources say that Antifa were the aggressors, and vice versa. So who to believe? I've been to one violent rally, by accident about three years ago in Melbourne which was on a similar topic to this. Nazis on one side saying immigration is bad, anti-Nazis, mostly hippies on the other. I can tell you, the people on the front lines on both sides were super unreasonable. No sense was talked at all, it was just getting in each others' faces and more than anything, being provocative. I literally do not think it is possible that the people on the Antifa front lines in Charlottesville were reasonable, non-violent people. I'm sure there were reasonable, non-violent people there, but not on the front lines. If there are 500 people there, it is going to be the top 2% most unreasonable people on the front lines. That's why they go. They aren't there to change minds, or to make up the numbers. Maybe 90% of the attendees just want to show support by turning up, but they aren't on the front lines in the face of the opposition. PaulineThe image of Pauline Hanson wearing a burqa in Question Time today caused a gut reaction in me of "what on earth is she doing?" I generally like people doing ridiculous things to make a point, but this got an instant negative reaction. Brandis condemns it and gets an all around cheer. Great. But putting whether or not it's distasteful aside, does she have a point at all in her stance on Muslims? “Senator Hanson said that she believed that full face covering, such as the burqa, were oppressive, presented barriers to assimilation, disadvantaged women from finding employment, were causing issues inside our justice system, presented a clear security threat and had no place in modern Western society,” - Oppressive? In my opinion, yes. If you're told that it's what you will have to do from a young age, it's not really a choice. This one is totally up for debate and I know my views are not widely held. I'm in the Sam Harris cult so, you know. - Barrier to assimilation? Of course it is. A massive part of communication is done visually. You process people's actual words cognitively, but their tone, facial expression and eye contact gets processed by the fast part of your brain and is done automatically. This is where we decide whether or not we have a feeling about whether we trust someone or not, and it's how we make connections. If I can't see someone's face, it's weird. They can see me but I can't see them. Seriously, put on a buff/neck warmer thing so that it fully covers you face, eyes not showing. You can see through it, but other people can't see in. Watch your friends reaction. Get them to do it and see how you feel. I went to a house party once in a morph suit, but nobody knew that I was going. I hung out with my friends and they didn't know it was me. They really didn't like it. This is part of our biology, being socially evolved creatures. - Employment disadvantages? Put the person with the face you can't see in any job where they deal with a customer/client "face to face". Building trust? Nope. Good communication skills? Nope, not possible. Not because people are racist, but because they miss all the social cues. If you run a business and you're conducting interviews for a sales role, the person with no social skills isn't going to get the job, the 60 year old who has no experience isn't going to get the job, and the person who is covering their face during interactions with customers isn't going to get the job. In customer facing jobs, you want to bring your full communication arsenal to the table, and the smile is arguably the most important weapon. - Issues in the justice system? No idea. I can see why people might think it might be, but I don't have any evidence that this is a thing, and the number of terrorist attacks actually carried out by women in burqas to my knowledge is zero. - Clear security threat? As above, I understand how the idea arises, but am not convinced it's a real thing at all. - No place in modern, Western society? It definitely has a place. Having no fashion sense has disadvantages in today's society, but I don't think I should be locked up for it. Freedom of SpeechBernie Sanders says "It's incredibly painful to see neo-Nazis marching in the US", indicating that it should be condemned. Should it? I think people should be able to say whatever they want, but everyone else retains the ability to treat them accordingly (hate speech inciting violence is different imho, I'm talking about voicing an opinion in public).
Don't want to make a wedding cake for a gay couple? Fine. Don't do it. Sure as hell I'm not going to your wedding cake shop though, and your business probably won't last too long in Melbourne. If someone posts it on social media and it goes viral, then I say sucked in, you made your bed. But it shouldn't be illegal. You believe there is an omniscient being you have no actual evidence of, who created everything you perceive and controls events? Or you think chakras and star signs are relevant to anything apart from your amusement? Totally fine, but I think you're an illogical lunatic and I'm probably not going to believe you when you say I should be careful of flying lesbian ham next week because Mercury will be in full bloom. Maybe I've missed the mark here, I dunno. Who needs 'em?This thought was triggered by Murray, my BJJ instructor, when someone accidentally kneed or elbow him in the balls. His response was along the lines of "they're already used as much as they need to be". In that case, for him, they are just there as a hindrance more than a help right? How is it different for me? It's 2017, we have the techWell I don't have any kids, but one day I might want them. So why not just have a bit of the pearl jam frozen, then it's ready for when I want it. It's more reliable than the natural way of making a baby in terms of timing etc. Plus it would give me information on my fertility which might be important. Once my frozen little sperms are locked in a safe or whatever to prevent some evil genius from creating an army of lanky redheads, I could do away with the fleshy sacs and the potential for immense discomfort would be gone. I know there's always the external protection option, but that is only mildly effective anyway and it would be easier to just not have to worry about it. The T wordTestosterone. There's a super interesting This American Life podcast about it and the effect it has on our lives. Despite being a know-it-all, I'm not actually a medical doctor or medical researcher, so I don't actually know a whole lot about how balls and the manly goodness they produce would affect my life. I drink a lot of soy milk, which I think does oestrogen things to me anyway (apparently). Anyway, the point is that there's a potential downside here that I haven't thought of. So why not?I know there is the potential for complication with any medical procedure, but there are also things like ball cancer and general ball pain caused by low temperatures and stuff like that too, so I'm just trying to work out how the scales balance out on this one. Previously the whole reproduction thing made it a no brainer for me, but yeah, that isn't really a factor in 2017. I'd love to hear what people think. Disclaimer; I'm not doing a draft or anything, just hashing it out, so sorry for speelling, and, grammar errors. And lack of logic.
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