Moral Luck

I want to tell you how amazing my Son is; the story won't start out sounding that way; please be patient with me; it is also a story of a father's tendency to belabor the point.

Several years ago, he was following me so I could fill up his car with gas; just before we got to the station, he rear-ended my car. Nobody was hurt, but the bumper bears the scar to this day. This story might have been a typical tale of a minor accident, but there is a deeper issue: he knew the brakes were not strong and/or failing, and he kept driving it in that condition. I saw an opportunity for some parental guidance, so I introduced the idea of Moral Luck into the telling of the accident (knowingly driving impaired and not injuring someone is just morally lucky; if you hurt or killed someone while driving impaired, you would be thought of as a monster).

For my part, I have declined to fix the rear bumper, leaving it as a conversation piece, giving me an excuse to tell the story and introduce more people to the idea of Moral Luck.
 

Over the years I doubt a month goes by without me telling this story in some way or another. Often, while my Son is present, he has repeatedly informed me that he understood my point and has even taken up the mantel to explain the idea of Moral Luck to coworkers and customers in his job as an auto mechanic. Despite this apparent parental success, I keep telling the story, believing the world is made better by sharing stories and tools for thinking, and Moral Luck is a big idea.

Here is the amazing part: The other day, we were at an appointment together, and I launched into another Moral Luck seminar. I know it makes him uncomfortable, but social progress isn't always comfortable. On the drive home, he informed me that I should stop telling this story, not because it makes him uncomfortable, but because it looks like I'm bullying my Son in public and making the other listeners uncomfortable.

I'm still processing his advice, but I wanted to capture his empathetic insight into the effect I was overlooking in my listeners, as well as his persistence in insisting that his father listen to his advice. 

WiFi and Bluetooth Troubleshooting Weekend

My motto is "Mysteries are Questions, Not Answers," which is evident when troubleshooting signal interference problems.

The WiFi Mystery/Answer

I dismissed interference as an issue because we mostly had good service even though we had an old Google Nest WiFi router sitting right next to our primary cable company WiFi router. I didn't think it was a problem, and all of our lights, switches, and smart speakers were on that router, so why change it? Over the years, we did notice several dropouts of the WiFi signal from the primary router, so much so that I scheduled a job on all my MacOS and Linux machines that logged the WiFi strength every minute. I saw the signal strength drop to single digits during one sustained dropout. I unplugged the Google router, and the signal shot immediately back to max! So now I just had to visit every one of the dozens of our Internet of Things devices and reprogram the SSID. 

The unraveling of mysteries did not stop here. While reprogramming, I solved two more. One of the smart plugs was using an extension cord that only pretended to have a ground wire (which often acts to enhance the WiFi signal), so I swapped that out of a properly grounded cord, and plug was much smarter and much more reliable. The other mystery was the reading lamp smart bulb. That bulb had never worked well, and I hoped the new configuration would fix everything. It seemed to at first, but I was reprogramming all the lights in the same light socket closest to the router. When I put it back into its light socket, it didn't respond. Other lights even further away were perfect. Then it hit me: this light has a metal shade! When I tipped the lamp over and (awkwardly) pointed the cone toward the room where the router was, everything was fine. Not a good solution, but at least we know the problem.

The Bluetooth Mystery/Answer

That was Saturday. The next day, I set out to troubleshoot another bothersome issue that, again, initially wasn't a problem but had grown to be seriously annoying. I have a MacBook from work and two personal Mac Minis, all three connected to the same Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with a special button to cycle between them. This configuration has been perfect until a few weeks ago. The interface with the Mac Minis had become sticky, and the mouse was sluggish and tended to stutter. It was impossible to work with, but I never had trouble with the MacBook. Remember that this is the same physical keyboard, so it isn't sticky keys. When I moved the MacBook into the next room, everything was great. So, I rearranged the monitors and minis so that the computers were under the metal stands that supported the monitors, acting as a shield from all the interference of the MacBook. Now everything coexists nicely.

Summing Up

Creating the scheduled job to monitor the WiFi strength every minute was a massive help to troubleshooting. Logs and experiments are the best tools for troubleshooting. I have yet to find a way to get metrics on the Bluetooth, but the results from the "separate and shield" experiment strongly hint at the answer.

The WiFi and Bluetooth devices have been in the same proximity for over a year, but the problems seem to worsen over time, so there is still a little mystery. Maybe there was a software update? Maybe antennas and transceivers bleed into adjacent frequencies as they age? Keeping such equipment separate has always been a best practice anyway.

Keep looking for answers; there will always be more mysteries.

I asked ChatGPT4 this totally disingenuous question:

Is it even possible to improve on this great motto: "Mysteries are Questions not Answers"

Monocausotaxophilia

An interesting restatement of H. L. Mencken's often restated:

"There is always an easy solution to every complex problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."

From Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future":

Monocausotaxophilia: the love of single ideas that explain everything, one of humanity’s most common cognitive errors.