not friendly

At several points yesterday afternoon, Nikki Giovanni mentioned she is not friendly. We laughed loud at the start, because she had already shared stories about her life with grace and wit. I could feel her presence close, as though she were talking to a small audience instead of a jam-packed auditorium. (Why didn’t they open up the room, taking down the wall and pulling out the seats, this is Nikki Giovanni we’re talking about.)

But each time she described herself as not friendly we laughed a little less. With the repetition it resembled a joke told too many times. I have to admit wondering whether she was aware she had used the phrase before, because she also did tell some rambling stories, with a manner that you are not surprised to hear from a grandmother (which she is).

Slowly I awoke to what she intended by not friendly. She simply meant that she does not have many friends. It’s clear that she can make friends; she befriended Rosa Parks after spotting her in an airport during a layover. It’s also clear that she can confide personal details, writing and speaking about her inability to weep until recently, about how she straightened up her father as he approached death, about how she conceptually married her mother and they lived together for decades, about how she’s going to hell but will get a day pass to heaven. So she can make friends and can share herself with strangers. But still, she doesn’t make friends easy.

She is a black woman and a public figure. She has learned to be mindful about trusting others. She knows the score, she has lived through segregation and still every day she observes the attitudes that many whites hold against blacks, that many men hold against women. She sees this with clarity and speaks it with humor. She is personable but she is not friendly.

At every single poetry reading I have attended, the backstories are more engaging than the poems themselves, because the published poems represent only the tip of the iceberg of experience. We engage and learn more as we hear about the process of development of the poem and of the poet. While her informal delivery was considerably more warm than usual, this was also true of Nikki Giovanni’s reading. It’s strange to me that this has become our convention at poetry readings. Shouldn’t poems speak for themselves? 

But poems are short (or, if they are long, our attention is short). And why go to a poetry reading when we can read the words ourselves on paper or screen? It’s because we are interested in the poet herself. The poem is the rosary bead; we want to hear the prayer. We are interested in creating a human connection with the poet and the rest of the audience. We seek the theatrical and performative.

When it comes to public presentation, novelists and short-story writers are like humanities professors. Philosophers and historians prepare their manuscripts ahead of time in order to read them verbatim at conferences. In contrast, scientists prepare slides and then refer to them while speaking off the cuff. In this way, scientists are like poets.

Nikki Giovanni is 75, which she recommends. It is better, she said, than being 50 or 25. I hope to discover what she means through direct experience. Yesterday she delivered a talk “Dying by Ignorance, Living by Words, Creating by Grace”.

 

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technology and gender equity

Today I learned that Ivanka was here in Pittsburgh, visiting Astrobotic Technology and meeting with Girls of Steel. Astrobotic is the Carnegie Mellon robotics spinoff that I hope will send one of my artifacts to the Moon; Girls of Steel is the CMU-based all-girls robotics team co-founded by colleague Patti Rote.

Despite the well-earned praise for both operations, the university has plenty of room to improve gender equity in STEM. A fellow professor wrote me last week about the 82% male imbalance in one of this summer’s pre-college computer science classes. I share his concern and will discuss this issue, among many other diversity-related topics, with the Admission Office tomorrow, as well as with him and other colleagues in the School of Computer Science later this month.

In addition, there’s this other piece of news today, that Lenore and Manuel Blum have resigned from SCS because of “professional harassment” and “sexist management” over the past three years, which the article mentions in relation to changes under a “new entrepreneurial management structure on campus”.

This is a big deal. Both are renowned computer scientists and they are resigning, not retiring. While she and I served on a Faculty Senate committee at the beginning of the decade to prepare materials for the university’s presidential search, I really don’t know either of them well. I want to ask her about her experiences that led to this decision. Because if two of the most prominent professors at one of the world’s finest computer schools are resigning due to harassment and sexism, I want to know what I can do about that.

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tilting towards windmills

A group of 21 young plaintiffs has filed a lawsuit against the US government against climate change — more specifically, for “creating a national energy system that causes climate change, is depriving them of their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property and [failing] to protect essential public trust resources.”

While their lawsuit, Juliana v. the United States, seems quixotic because the burden of proof will undoubtedly be set high, today the Supreme Court allowed the suit to proceed to the US District Court in Oregon.

I admire the plaintiffs’ audacity and only wish I had known earlier of this lawsuit, originally filed in 2015. Last year the Energy: Science, Society, and Communication Science course I taught with Götz Veser and Gordon Mitchell focused on the multigenerational impact of the energy choices that we are making as a society. Together with participants from the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Center and students from Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, our classroom comprised three generations. As we examined these issues through multigenerational conversations, dialogues about ethical wills, and speculative fiction, the youngest people in our classroom were the college students.

The beauty of this lawsuit is how it gives voice to even younger citizens — those who would be most affected by climate change. Indeed, the argument hinges upon their very youth.

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Erdős number

Yesterday I learned my Erdős number is 4.

-> K. Birgitta Whaley “Monte Carlo studies of grain boundary segregation and ordering”; Journal of Chemical Physics (1992)
-> Julia Kempe “Decoherence-free subspaces for multiple-qubit errors. II. Universal, fault-tolerant quantum computation”; Physical Review A (2001)
-> László Pyber “Permutation groups, minimal degrees and quantum computing”; Groups, Geometry, and Dynamics (2007)
-> Paul Erdős “Vertex coverings by monochromatic cycles and trees”; Journal of Combinatorial Theory (1991)

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little things

I’m writing this over a late lunch that is also serving as an early dinner, before teaching this spring’s first session of Energy: Science, Society, and Communication.

I sprinkle salt on my tomato. Each time I remember staying with an acquaintance in Ann Arbor nearly a quarter century ago, being introduced to the idea of salt on fresh tomato slices from a farmer’s market.

I bring the pepper shaker over to join the salt shaker. Each time I remember a friend telling me nearly a quarter century ago how the pair should always be together, passed together, like a couple.

I sign my email “Best wishes”. Each time I remember my undergraduate and graduate research advisors from over three decades ago, who initialed documents “BW” and “KBW”. Ben Widom is one of the finest human beings I have ever known, as well as a great scientist and teacher. I was Birgit Whaley’s first grad student and together we learned what that meant.

Little things.

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politics and practice of CETI

Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI) is one of the most fundamental political issues facing humanity.

CETI is at a crossroads

Every year astronomers confirm more exoplanets and become better at finding smaller ones with Earth-like characteristics. Within a generation we will likely detect planets beyond our solar system with temperatures and atmospheres similar to Earth. We may even observe signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. As a result, CETI (sometimes referred to as METI) is undergoing a revival not seen since the heyday of the Space Age in the 1960s and 1970s.

There are many fundamental questions concerning communication with potential extraterrestrial intelligence: Should we initiate contact? If we detect a signal, should we reply? What type of message, if any, should we send? Most importantly, who has the right to decide whether and how to communicate with intelligence beyond Earth?

The International Academy of Astronautics proposes that the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space make these decisions. However, if we detect extraterrestrial intelligence, the reality is that many others will claim precedence: the home country of the observatory that detected the signal, the home country of the astronomer(s) who detected the signal, the astronomers themselves, various scientific organizations, political and religious leaders, etc. CETI is currently politically dormant, but in the event of signal detection, it will become one of the most important issues.

CETI is a global existential threat

The most fundamental political questions concern global existential threats: events that could destroy human civilization or disrupt the delicate ecosystem of our planet. Some existential threats are beyond foreseeable human control. Massive volcanic eruptions could release carbon dioxide and start runaway global warming. Conversely, the solar system could pass through an interstellar dust cloud, attenuating sunlight enough to tumble us into another ice age. Our Sun’s output could increase or decrease unexpectedly. The Earth’s magnetic field could collapse, wiping out many species. A small black hole could wander through our planet.

On the other hand, some global existential threats might respond to human intervention. We may be able to detect and deflect the next asteroid before it initiates waves of mass extinctions. By continuing to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, we prevent a hypothetical nuclear winter that would cause worldwide starvation. If we can wean off fossil fuels and become more efficient in our energy use, we can mitigate global warming. If we understand our impact on the environment more thorougly, we can head off crises such as the collapse of agriculture from declining bee populations, or the return of the Black Plague or rise of other global pandemics.

In order to solve these events, we might harness the power of developing technologies such as CRISPR  and artificial intelligence. However, these solutions could bring their own problems. The widespread ability to alter genes makes it easier to create bioweapons. The motivations of intelligences with inhuman speed, knowledge, and control will become opaque to us.

Communication with potential extraterrestrial intelligence is clearly a global existential threat. Throughout our own history, more technologically advanced humans often display little regard for other species and cultures on first contact.

the need to practice ceti

Despite the global existential threat, many will want to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence because the exchange of knowledge could bring great benefits to humanity. Furthermore, we humans thrive on and crave connection with others. It may simply be impossible to prevent every individual on the planet from attempting to send a signal.

However, we are not politically ready to face the important decisions surrounding CETI. In this sense, we are fortunate that we have not yet detected extraterrestrial intelligence, because we still have time to build cultural infrastructure to prepare ourselves.

Science fiction in print and on screen provides a great start, imagining possible consequences of communicating with other intelligences. However, narratives alone are insufficient. We need people to engage in decisions that resemble the ones they would make for CETI. We need as many such models as we can dream and develop, to provide alternative perspectives. These models can prepare us for making CETI decisions in the future.

One of my projects, Earth Tapestry, invites visitors to identify locations that are delightful, awe-inspiring, ingenious, information-rich, durable, famous, irreplaceable, and noble. Earth Tapestry’s process of democratic deliberative curation invites the user to consider what to include and what to exclude in a message to unknown future recipients. I created the project so that anyone — not just experts — can participate in determining the most important places on the planet. I will store this data on the Moon: the current limit of humanity’s sandbox, as well as the traditional boundary between ourselves and the heavens.

Just as I hope we are not alone in the universe, I hope this project will not stand alone. Musicians practice before playing on the big stage. Likewise, we must practice CETI in advance of the real thing.

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big problems facing science

Julia Belluz, Brad Plumer, and Brian Resnick have co-authored a beautifully articulate article on the 7 biggest problems facing science:

  1. Academia has a huge money problem
  2. Too many studies are poorly designed
  3. Replicating results is crucial — and rare
  4. Peer review is broken
  5. Too much science is locked behind paywalls
  6. Science is poorly communicated
  7. Life as a young academic is incredibly stressful

Many of these problems are not new; I witnesssed many of them a quarter-century ago as a graduate student in chemistry at Berkeley. In addition, I recall my beloved undergraduate research advisor at Cornell longing for the time when NSF took a more generous view towards long-term, speculative projects. Nevertheless, I would agree that these problems in science are even more severe than ever.

Throughout my career, I have purposefully worked “off the grid”, only taking jobs that have not required me to publish papers or pursue research grants. While it has not always been ideal to live at the margins, overall I’ve had a fulfilling career.

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sleeping through classes

Dear Alby,

Today I missed my morning classes, sleeping through several alarms. I’m going to get notes from my friends and talk to my professors about the work I missed, but this isn’t the first time it’s happened. I’m tired all the time and stressed out. What should I do? <Sleeping Through Classes>

Dear STC,

Congratulations on recognizing you have a problem. Some college students believe there’s no harm in skipping classes. However, there is a strong correlation between class attendance and earned grades. Quite simply, if you want to be in college, go to your college classes.

While the National Sleep Foundation recommends 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night, their study also shows wide variations in how much sleep an individual may need. Some of your peers may be fine with only 6 hours, while you find yourself craving nearly twice as much (11 hours)! Or your roommate may be sleep-deprived, needing much more than you do at this particular moment. The person who needs less may experience peer pressure to stay awake longer, compounding the problem. It’s hard to pay attention when your mind is drifting into dreamland.

If you can’t wake up when you’re supposed to, go to sleep earlier. While obvious, this solution requires examining and arranging your life accordingly. Schedule an appointment for the time you will stop looking at glowing screens. Set an alarm for when you’re going to bed. After a while, you will find yourself naturally waking up early enough. During the quiet hours of the morning, you may find that you can get more done.

My second piece of advice is also simple. Be consistent in your sleep habits. Even if you have a Mon/Wed/Fri class at 8:00am and a Tue/Thu class at 10:30am, go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. You’ll throw yourself off balance if you deprive yourself of sleep some nights and try to catch up later.

You would be foolish not to drink water when you’re thirsty, or if you alternated starving and binging on food. So sleep when you’re tired, and keep a steady schedule.

As you become more attuned to your body’s needs for sleep, you might find yourself able to get by with less, either regularly or occasionally. Maybe you can even train yourself to do this. But you need to establish a firm baseline first.

Take care of yourself. <Alby>

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Pre-College welcome address

Every summer since 2005, I welcome more than a thousand students and family members arriving for the summer Pre-College program at Carnegie Mellon University. With slight variations, my remarks are substantially the same from year to year. Here is the speech I delivered today, retaining some of the punctuation marks I use privately to help when speaking aloud.

Welcome, students, families, and friends, to Carnegie Mellon.

***

I want to share with all of you some of my perspectives about the summer academic programs here. During the next six weeks as you walk around campus you will see other students your age who have decided to dedicate their summers to becoming finer artists in Architecture, Art and Design, Drama, and Music; who are learning how to design and develop video game technology; or who are focused on math and science. Of course I must also mention the students in the program I direct, the APEA Program, who are taking college classes from across the entire university: through the College of Engineering, College of Fine Arts, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mellon College of Science, School of Computer Science, and Tepper School of Business.

You will also see people on campus who are not your age. The life of this university, as with every institution, has a seasonality, and summer tends to be a quieter time on campus. I’m also here during the regular year as the Director of the Science and Humanities Scholars Program, and the kind of work I do for that program when most undergraduate students are away from campus is different than in the fall and the spring.

Nevertheless, the relative, apparent tranquility belies a great deal of activity. Undergraduates are taking classes too, sometimes alongside you, as well as doing research, and working on their art. Likewise, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and professors are all here on campus continuing to observe / to experiment / to write / to think / to create / to learn.

And now you are going to join them, here at Carnegie Mellon.
Your youthful energy / and your capacity for learning / enliven the university.
Welcome to our academic community.

***

For some of you, this is your first visit to campus. Those of you who were here last summer can share why you returned: because you enjoyed and learned well here. You recognize the quality of our faculty and staff, who work hard throughout the year to create the finest educational and student life experience we can offer during the summer. We want to be just as good – better – than we were last year. Be careful, however: even when if you are returning here, this summer will not be the same. You will be taking different classes with different professors and different classmates. Most significantly, you are different than you were last year.

***

Thirty-five years ago, in June 1981, I was about your age, between my junior and senior years of high school. That year I myself attended a summer program to take classes at another great university; in fact, five years ago I attended my 25th college reunion at that same place. For over three decades, I have held a certain fondness for the learning and teaching that can happen during the summer: I have taught, founded and directed summer programs across the country, and this is my eleventh summer here at CMU. Drawing upon these experiences, I have six perspectives to share with you about becoming a student in the Pre-College Program at Carnegie Mellon.

***

First, there must be a reason you are here, and you have to own that reason.

Earlier in the year, you might have had a number of reasons for applying here. Maybe you thought that succeeding here would be a way to prove something about yourself to yourself: to build a portfolio, to build a stronger academic record, to work towards an eventual career. Maybe you wanted to impress someone else, or maybe someone you know has been a student here in past summers, or is a current student in the fall and spring semesters. Your parents may have thought it would be a good experience for you… Maybe your friends are coming and you decided to be with them. Maybe you thought it would be fun. Maybe you just thought it would be a good way to occupy… your time. Maybe you thought it would be a chance to get away from home.

There may be any number of reasons that you have decided to come here this summer.
All of those reasons can be valid, as long as they can sustain you while you are here.

You need to decide for yourself what moves you, what motivates you to be here. The reasons may shift, but as Aristotle indicates in the Physics, there must be a cause that will motivate you through the long hours of work here, some reason that for the sake of which you are pushing yourself.

I hope for you that you find your summer academics to be challenging but not overwhelming.

Ultimately, you have to want to be here, because at times the work will not be easy.

***

Now the good news is that everyone here wants you to succeed, from your counselors to your professors. This brings me to my second point: your professors are people too. They were once as young as you were, they have dreams, their own families and friends. Most of us are nerds… … just like you. Get to know us. Ask us about our projects and interests, ask me about sending artifacts to the Moon next year. Our staff are amazing, also with their own lives. We know a great deal more than you do about many things, but we also know less than you do about certain things, such as where you come from and who you are.

This means that one of your primary goals here is to introduce yourself, by asking questions. You are responsible for your education.

You have arrived at an academic institution, where we are in the business of asking questions, of each other and of ourselves, and also finding answers that in turn can elevate us to new questions.

If you don’t understand something that’s going on in your class, ask. That’s the culture of higher education, we are not going to check as frequently as you may be accustomed to in high school, it is your responsibility to ask if you don’t understand.

Is there such a thing as a stupid question? … Yes. Don’t ask lazy questions – when I said the university is in the business of asking and answering questions, I meant that we are in the business of carefully wrought, well-considered questions. Being knowledgeable involves having one answer, but becoming more knowledgeable requires developing good questions.

So. If you encounter difficulty understanding or doing something, ask a good question. But since you are students still practicing how to ask a good question, when in doubt, go ahead and ask your question, keeping in mind there are degrees of quality in asking questions.

***

Third, make mistakes. Then learn from them.

Just as there are good questions and not-so-good questions, there are good ways to put yourself in situations where you might mistakes and not-so-good ways to put yourself in situations where you might make mistakes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference beforehand. But trust me, it would be a bad mistake for you to sit in front of a glowing screen all summer, rarely interacting face-to-face with students in the dormitory or dining hall or classroom, rarely talking with anyone else. Go out with a group of friends and walk across the bridges on Forbes Avenue, enjoying for free with your ID card the museums, conservatory, and entire public transporation network. Meet other students who are in completely different programs from you.

Good mistakes happen when you take a chance and do something that has not only the potential to harm you, but also to benefit you. If you don’t make good mistakes, then you haven’t taken enough risks, in your art, in your academics. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough… you’re not living life.

If everything is going smoothly for you, talk to your instructors and step up the challenges for yourself.

Inevitably you will make mistakes. Good. Understand and acknowledge your mistakes, then learn from them.

***

Four, appreciate family and friends.

As you begin here this summer, you will have to let go of the familiar — your family and friends. You should recognize your roots, where you have come from, and you should stay grounded with your family even when you are away from them.

I recognize that this remark may not seem as relevant to those of you who attend prep school as residential students and are accustomed to being away from family, to those of you who have the privilege of living nearby and will be living with family this summer, to those of you who are returning students from last summer.

Nevertheless, this community is a separate place from your old friends and your family, and while you’re not going to stop being a son or daughter, sister or brother, your relationships with family and friends may change dramatically, in no small part because you yourself are at an age where you change so rapidly. Be patient and respectful of your roots, even though, if they are wise, your family will maintain a certain distance from you, to allow you to grow further into your own individual.

In the meantime, you will form close friendships here. At my college reunion, I met friends whom I hadn’t seen in years. But even though so much time had passed, we picked up like it was yesterday. Deep friendships formed around common academic interests can last a lifetime. Get to know your colleagues.

***

Fifth, be honest with yourself and be honest with others. We encourage you to work together but you must not misrepresent yourself or your work. Several summers ago, two students went home after severe academic integrity violations. I know this is sometimes not as easy as it sounds; I will say more about this when I meet the APEA students this afternoon. Be honest with yourself, and be honest with others.

***

Finally, appreciate the moment. Set priorities for yourself. Your families can tell you how quickly years go by. Let me tell you, as much as can happen in six weeks, as much as you can learn, it goes fast. Follow your heart, your passion, work hard, play well and enjoy the summer. And one day, perhaps even thirty-five years from now, you will look back on this summer and remember it as one of the most important times of your life.

Welcome again to Carnegie Mellon.

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first summer in college

Dear Alby,

I just finished my first year in college as a science major and I’m wondering what to do this summer. Many of my friends say it’s important to land an internship or do research, but it’s been hard to find that kind of job because places want upperclass students with more experience. What can I do? <Fear of Missing Out on Summer>

Dear FOMOOS,

I agree with your friends that it’s important to get work experience while you are an undergraduate to complement your classroom knowledge, whether working at a company or in a research lab or (ideally) both. While it would be fine to do this after your first summer of college, it’s also perfectly fine to begin later. Your greater knowledge will prepare you better to land those types of jobs in future summers.

As for this summer, it can be a magical one in your life, because you have a great deal of freedom. You are young enough that many families would be glad to see you come home and stay indefinitely. (This won’t necessarily be the case for you or them in just a few years.) But you have also reached the age of majority, when you can strike out on your own. You can be anywhere.

Yes, you’re limited by finances. For most students it’s necessary to earn money, and the habit of work is an important discipline. But if you can afford some time during the summer, set aside resources to travel: alone, or with a friend, sibling, or cousin. One of life’s great pleasures is puzzling out how to get from Point A to Point B while staying close to the ground. Expensive hotels are all the same, because they insulate you from the very places you’re visiting. Living cheaply allows you to appreciate the unique aspects of your locale. And traveling can refresh your body, mind, and spirit.

Whatever you decide to do this summer, make sure you do at least one thing that you will anticipate, you will enjoy, and you will remember. <Alby>

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