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Thoughts about God's Debris

A few weeks back something led me to Scott Adam's free book God's Debris ^[1], and I gave it a quick read. I mentioned it to my best friend Steve at work and then forgot about it. I just read the preface and first pages of the story again, and this blog is about my first "discussion point."

About a year ago, I'd spent many weeks reading and pondering the first half of a highly speculative physics book by Frank Tipler (Physics of Immortality, the second half of which is for real scientists and mostly impenetrable). Steve lent it to me and when I brought it back from a trip to Denmark, dog-eared and with some notes added to the back, I was eager to discuss it with him systematically. We didn't do that but instead spent an hour or two dancing around some of Tipler's major points and agreeing he'd gone over the top and that his earlier and less popular (style) book written with with John Barrow (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle) was more enjoyable, albeit slower reading (unfathomable math and physics concepts interlaced with understandable text rather than the sectional approach of POI). So I guess we did discuss it, just not the way I expected to.

Anyway, Adams suggests readers discuss God's Debris to compare notes about fallacious remarks made by the book's characters to "try to figure out what's wrong with the simplest explanations." At second glance, I was struck by Adam's mention of the tension between "most believable" and "true" characterizations of "smart sounding answers" and his observation that while the skeptic's creed says the simplest explanation is usually right his experience has been that the simplest explanation is usually dead wrong. This matches my experience and in my business is perfectly typified by the fact that sometimes I can't properly explain anything technical to management using the number of words they allot me for the task. So while in a recent "Dilbert" strip in which a full day's productivity was defined as "eight slides", I've been working on just three short bullets of one slide for a statement of work to be proposed for the next major version of Sun's Java SE implementation code named Dolphin. But behind those three short bullets is a lot of thinking and verbal spewage into online notebooks. In fact, I could write several pages about each bullet while admitting that I'd just scratched the surface of each topic. I guess one of the Java Gods^tm could write bullets that don't cause management to respond with "what do you mean by that, exactly?"^[2], but I still have a long way to go with slide composition.

So I started to read God's Debris again, and before I could get to any heavy points to ponder, I read this opening remark by the main character, a small package delivery truck driver:

"My story begins on a day I delivered to a place I'd never been. That's usually a fun challenge. There's a certain satisfaction when you find a new place without using the map. Rookies use maps."

Bzzzt. My BS meter pegs as I mentally add the missing sentence "Of course, there's a certain dissatisfaction when you find you misjudged the location, are on the wrong side of a city with serious traffic, and realize you'll be delivering packages well after dark and explaining to customers what went wrong."

Surely an experienced guy^[3] integrates the familiarity of the address to drive to with a hundred other factors and is likely to use a navigation tool part of the time with the "no assist challenge" approach being stochastic. So the character's remark seems aimed at leading rookies to the wrong side of town rather than capturing the real difference(s) between a rookie and an experienced delivery guy.

OK, I guess that was practice for spotting the BS disguised as profundity that Adams has cleverly crafted into this book. This item seems more trite the longer I consider it while hopefully the opposite will be true of the hidden rhinestones. But I'm also beginning to see this book as a tool to help address one of Adams's obvious concerns that is captured by the combination life observation and book title When Did Ignorance Become a Point of View?

And I realize I don't have time to read this book three times and can't be bothered to write down chapter and verse. So I'd better do this second pass the old fashioned way with hard copy and a highlighter while I look for somebody to discuss it with. Hmm. Is this why some folks break down and buy an Adobe Postscript/PDF tool? If it makes creation of a marked up version of the book trivial, it would surely beat using up fractional trees and real yellow ink. But maybe the PDF can't be modified, and I can carry the paper and highlighter in my pockets while my Powerbook is too large and delicate. And this makes me recall the utter disappointment of my Zaurus and what it actually does vs what I'd hoped it would do for me by now. Sigh. With luck I can think of something more cheerful to write about next time.

[1] Warning: Adams cautions readers that this book is not for young minds and recommends against reading it if you're under 14. I personally take this warning very seriously, having had a very bad experience with existential overload that took me many years to adapt to. If you're too young and reading this, please don't race over and read Adams's book because he specifically warns against it. With luck it would just go over your head, but it might also create so much confusion that some part of your life is seriously disturbed while you get yourself sorted out again. There is likely plenty of time to make your head spin like a top once all the parts are firmly and prop erly in place for the spinning. As the saying goes "you've been warned."

[2] I don't know how the Java Gods^tm view themselves but I can't get past the sense sometimes that my feet are playdoh just pretending to be clay, and my head frequently feels as though it's full of tapioca pudding.

[3] I was born in Michigan where "guy" is a unisex term; sorry if this bothers you.

Posted at 01:00PM Dec 31, 2005 by microwaves in Books  |  Comments[1]