Polynomial!

Non-modal user interface

The user interface of the new product that I am currently working on will be almost completely non-modal. This is of course only a minor feature, a goodie, rather than its unique value proposition.  ;)

In fact, this has evolved by accident rather than by design. In the process of designing the software (an activity that is not separate from development in my case) quite a few instances already occurred, and continue to occur, where by conventional wisdom I would just pop up a message box, a confirmation dialog, or design a small dialog window for details of the current user task.

Message boxes and dialogs break the user flow and take away the system focus (annoying when you scroll through a list or type text), and so I (and many users) despise them.

Are you sure you want to...?

For confirmations where I really want the user to think twice (very rare, I usually tend to trust the user's decision if he already took the trouble to click a button...), drop-down menus very nicely replace yes/no confirmation message boxes:

Information bars

I implemented flashing information bars (as can be found in the current generation of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox web browsers) which pop up at the bottom of the application window for a couple of other events that would typically produce a message box or dialog:

Wizards

More complex dialogs (such as Options) and wizards are completely integrated into the document window management of the application and are thus non-modal, too:

Standard dialogs

I have no plans to waste time replacing standard dialogs such as Open File, Save File, Print, Page Setup or Print Preview at this point. There would be a very real risk that usability might suffer unduly (people already know how to operate these dialogs) and my intention is not to be religious about non-modal user interfaces, but to avoid breaking the user flow or stealing the focus. The product is meant as a productivity booster for a certain type of task, it is targeting power users, so the main purpose of these experiments is for the software to get out of the way.

Philosophy of Liberty

...laid out and explained in a brilliantly simple fashion; thus demonstrable to and comprehensive for just about everyone... Caution: I wouldn't have chosen such a dramatic soundtrack, nonetheless a very nice piece of work.

Innate Talents

Aaron Swartz' Non-Programmer's Apology has touched an issue that I have been pondering about for a long time:

[...] that statement [...] only makes sense [...] if you believe that abilities are somehow granted innately and can merely be cultivated, not created in themselves. This is a fairly common view, although rarely consciously articulated (as indeed Hardy takes it for granted), but not one that I subscribe to.

I have always taken issue with the idea of unearned privilegues (even as a child I was uncomfortable with the notion that I would have a "special talent for music and languages" as I was told, when all I did was listen to music, sing and read lots instead of playing outside as the other kids did; I concluded for a while that "talent" was a moniker for "special interest"), and an innate talent surely would be just that. What would be the point of celebrating the best sports-people, musicians, composers, writers, painters or the business-people of best productive ability, and of rewarding the "best", if "success" does not stand for individual achievement but for inherited genes. Shouldn't we reward their parents instead, no wait, better yet, their grandparents, no, their grandparents' grandparents' grandparents?

It is obvious that some are born with weak knees while others are not (and indeed this is sometimes due to inheritance of certain strengths and weaknesses, rather than an unfortunate incident at birth), so because of that some may have a lower probability of succeeding at running than others. Why shouldn't it be the same with certain regions of the brain? Again, indeed, this was shown to be the case (forgive my lack of references and general sloppiness, but hey, I'm just blogging, not essaying, and I'm mainly a software developer and entrepreneur, not a sociologist, biologist, psychologist or philosopher).

However, this alone does not constitute innate talents, only starting conditions.

Paul Graham has discussed the issue of innate talents refreshingly in How to Do What You Love:

Of course, figuring out what you like to work on doesn't mean you get to work on it. That's a separate question. And if you're ambitious you have to keep them separate: you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible.

It's painful to keep them apart, because it's painful to observe the gap between them. So most people pre-emptively lower their expectations. For example, if you asked random people on the street if they'd like to be able to draw like Leonardo, you'd find most would say something like "Oh, I can't draw." This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to try. Because the fact is, if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to work as hard as they possibly could at drawing for the next twenty years, they'd get surprisingly far. But it would require a great moral effort; it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years. And so to protect themselves people say "I can't."

I was always planning to research deeper into the issue of innate talents. One of the top-most results on Google revealed a paper titled Innate Talents: Reality or Myth? with the following promising abstract:

Talents that selectively facilitate the acquisition of high levels of skill are said to be present in some children but not others. The evidence for this includes biological correlates of specific abilities, certain rare abilities in autistic savants, and the seemingly spontaneous emergence of exceptional abilities in young children, but there is also contrary evidence indicating an absence of early precursors for high skill levels in young people. An analysis of positive and negative evidence and arguments suggests that differences in early experiences, preferences, opportunities, habits, training and practice are the real determinants of excellence.

Once I have accumulated some of that precious resource, time, I will work through it, as well as look further for discussion and criticism about it. Following academic discourse, unfortunately, is not something that can be done easily or quickly.

If you are wondering why this post is filed in the "Economics" and "Politics" categories, just consider the implications of the two conflicting propositions for the various brances of the social engineering industry (also called politics)... Of course, should it be found that nature is "inherently unjust" by dispensing unearned privilegues (innate talent), then people will find that the world must be "put to rights", society remade and equality of opportunity must be restored, by counter-balancing natural unearned privilegues with artificial ones. If that was the case, I might even find to agree at least with their conclusion, although probably not their approaches (more goals can be attained uncoercively than one would initially believe, and I do and will continue to maintain that a goal that can only be attained by coercion is not worth pursuing).

I'm prepared to accept as fact what can be logically and convincingly shown as fact (i.e. whatever we find to be the laws of "nature", or more concisely, reality), although I'm not yet sure about what conclusions to draw from either proposition and to what extent. Some thinking left to be done here...

An ancient conflict

Over at his new blog, as well as here, Ian Leitch asks:

There must be many, many developers out there working on software that will replace the job of a human being; how do they feel about it?

Fortunately, the economic effects of technological advances can make you feel good about it. Unemployment has a variety of causes (notably statist interventions) but a new machine (or software) that can perform automatically a job previously done manually does not necessarily reduce the demand for labour (which derives from the intention to produce for consumption, and there is no limit to how much people want to consume), it merely increases the output, the product, of human labour ("productivity") and this is in fact where "growth" (rising nominal wages that are inextricably linked to productivity) happens.

Ian continues:

I am firm believer in survival-of-the-fittest and I'm not about to give up my own job so someone can keep theirs, but at the same time I still have a sense of morality.

Quoting Francisco d'Anconia: Contradictions do not exist—check your premises, you will find at least one of them to be wrong.

Whoever claims that economic competition represents 'survival of the fittest' in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics. The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.
~ George Reisman

The morality of capitalism is based on volitional trade of value for value, voluntary exchange. The labourer your software might be replacing has no claim on what you choose to do, as long as you do not violate his right to his own life and property. Such a claim would violate your own rights. You are acting morally because of this, but also because the demand for the labourer does not actually, necessarily disappear, speaking economically, as I have outlined above. The best description of this process I have read so far has been written in 1848 in French by Frédéric Bastiat in his wonderful essay series What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen:

James Goodfellow had two francs that he let two workers earn.

But now suppose that he devises an arrangement of ropes and weights that will shorten the work by half.

Then he obtains the same satisfaction, saves a franc, and discharges a worker.

He discharges a worker: that is what is seen.

Seeing only this, people say: "See how misery follows civilization! See how freedom is fatal to equality! The human mind has made a conquest, and immediately another worker has forever fallen into the abyss of poverty. Perhaps James Goodfellow can still continue to have both men work for him, but he cannot give them more than ten sous each, for they will compete with one another and will offer their services at a lower rate. This is how the rich get richer and the poor become poorer. We must remake society."

A fine conclusion, and one worthy of the initial premise!

Fortunately, both premise and conclusion are false, because behind the half of the phenomenon that is seen is the other half that is not seen.

The franc saved by James Goodfellow and the necessary effects of this saving are not seen.

Since, as a result of his own invention, James Goodfellow no longer spends more than one franc for manual labor in the pursuit of a given satisfaction, he has another franc left over.

If, then, there is somewhere an idle worker who offers his labor on the market, there is also somewhere a capitalist who offers his idle franc. These two elements meet and combine.

And it is clear as day that between the supply of and the demand for labor, between the supply of and the demand for wages, the relationship has in no way changed.

The invention and the worker, paid with the first franc, now do the work previously accomplished by two workers.

The second worker, paid with the second franc, performs some new work.

What has then been changed in the world? There is one national satisfaction the more; in other words, the invention is a gratuitous conquest, a gratuitous profit for mankind.

From the form in which I have given my demonstration we could draw this conclusion:

"It is the capitalist who derives all the benefits flowing from the invention of machines. The laboring class, even though it suffers from them only temporarily, never profits from them, since, according to what you yourself say, they reallocate a portion of the nation's industry without diminishing it, it is true, but also without increasing it."

It is not within the province of this essay to answer all objections. Its only object is to combat an ignorant prejudice, very dangerous and extremely widespread. I wished to prove that a new machine, in making a certain number of workers available for jobs, necessarily makes available at the same time the money that pays them. These workers and this money get together eventually to produce something that was impossible to produce before the invention; from which it follows that the final result of the invention is an increase in satisfactions with the same amount of labor.

Who reaps this excess of satisfactions?

Yes, at first it is the capitalist, the inventor, the first one who uses the machine successfully, and this is the reward for his genius and daring. In this case, as we have just seen, he realizes a saving on the costs of production, which, no matter how it is spent (and it always is), gives employment to just as many hands as the machine has made idle.

But soon competition forces him to lower his selling price by the amount of this saving itself.

And then it is no longer the inventor who reaps the benefits of the invention; it is the buyer of the product, the consumer, the public, including the workers—in a word, it is mankind.

And what is not seen is that the saving, thus procured for all the consumers, forms a fund from which wages can be drawn, replacing what the machine has drained off.

Thus (taking up again the foregoing example), James Goodfellow obtains a product by spending two francs for wages.

Thanks to his invention, the manual labor now costs him only one franc.

As long as he sells the product at the same price, there is one worker the fewer employed in making this special product: that is what is seen; but there is one worker the more employed by the franc James Goodfellow has saved: that is what is not seen.

When, in the natural course of events, James Goodfellow is reduced to lowering by one franc the price of the product, he no longer realizes a saving; then he no longer releases a franc for national employment in new production. But whoever acquires it, i.e., mankind, takes his place. Whoever buys the product pays one franc less, saves a franc, and necessarily hands over this saving to the fund for wages; this is again what is not seen.

Anarchy on the streets

The beauty: it just works! Unregulated road traffic flowing smoothly in India—and it worked for the Netherlands, too.

I'm not sure "anarchy" is the proper term to describe this kind of self-regulating system. In fact, naked streets seems a much better one.

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