Category: Unrefined Thoughts

  • On matters of governance

    One would assume that by now, we have all come to a consensus that there is no perfect system of political governance and that our best hope currently lies in finding a good balance of principles between different governance systems.

    A more controversial proposition may be that all forms of governance are capable of progressing society under the right conditions. This may contradict the common notion that representative democracy carries the day in this regard, but a closer inspection of the evidence in my view shows it to be more nuanced than that.

    The obvious example in this regard is China, to which many will cry out: “It’s a capitalist economy!” The fact of the matter, however, is that the governance is communist from hair strand to toenail. Needless to say, it is important to distinguish governance from economic systems, which many seem not to.

    In addition to China, the dictators in the Middle East seem to also have a good grasp on the concept of progressing society, or shall we continue to pretend that there is a resemblance of democracy in Saudi Arabia or Dubai just because there is some affiliation with western society. We might not be agreeable to the methodology of chopping off heads, but shall we deny that they have well developed societies?

    Having sufficiently poked the bear and provoked thought, to which i am certain to get pushback, let us progress the conversation with a brief look into the concept of democracy. I am fascinated by it; it carries with it so much promise, yet I cannot get over its basic premise, which I earnestly believe to be fundamentally flawed. Democracy assumes that the majority is always right! I do not feel the need to expand on why this is incredibly erroneous, surely dearest reader, you get it, right?

    Whereas in history, humanity has strived to prove that their system of governance is the one system to rule them all, I am of the opinion that we should readjust our perspective to focus not on the systems themselves but the objectives of governance. At the heart of it all, what we are attempting to do is allocate the right resources to the ideas that progress society in the most efficient, incorruptible way possible. Easier said than done, but maybe it’s not an entirely hopeless endeavor, isn’t it. By focusing our efforts on this primary objective, we place ourselves in a position where we are less likely to be predudicial about the origins of the idea and focus more on its merits and pitfalls.

    In the same spirit of focusing on objectives, we ought to also place emphasis on applying our minds towards identifying and resolving societal issues individually and in relation to the ecosystem of society’s challenges. This idea of focusing on actual issues brings to attention the next item of discussion, i.e., the concept of representation.

    For practical reasons, all forms of current governance involve officials who represent the needs and wants of the broader society. What differs from system to system is the manner by which these representatives are selected, whether it be public/private vote or by placement from those with authority. The intent of representation is to select the personnel best suited in skill and temperament to understand and address the concerns of society in a specific area of expertise. The practical reality is that representation is fraught with corruption driven by personal ambition, which renders the exercise meaningless and often results in a frustrated society who fail to see any meaningful change with each elected official.

    Some systems of selection seem to perform slightly better than others in selecting representatives, but in reality, it all boils down to the same soup. Whereas a strongman may pick his bloodline, to which we all know that knowledge, wisdom, and skill are not sexually transmitted attributes; a democratically elected official is equally a nonsensical approach as it assumes that one will actually do what they say they will do. In my view, taking one’s word as gospel is equally as stupid as the strongman’s methodology, but that’s just me, I guess. The more we ponder on the concept of representation, the more we realize that it is a case of choosing the lesser evil, and eventually, it will ultimately end in tears.

    Maybe a better approach to it all is to collect the various ideas to issues from society and then select from those ideas which ones to implement regardless of the representative or even without a specified one. This obviously has its own challenges, but let us entertain the thought for a moment. The concept that what is important is implementing the right idea rather than attempting to pick the right person to find and execute an idea. It is certainly an interesting view and one that speaks directly to our desire to place emphasis on the resolution of actual issues.

    I will leave the thought itching here and scratch in a future article where we will begin laying out the foundational framework of modern governance.

  • A thought on education

    I am not a fan of the global education system, it is not designed to pass on knowledge. Rather it is designed as a competition of memorizing information, which is something i abhor. I refuse to believe that the vast majority of people are not intelligent as the schools’ grading systems will have us believe. Instead i feel they may be misinformed, ill-informed, un-informed, misunderstood, dis-interested or any other of a plethora of information dissemination mishaps. Dare I say, anyone who understands the sentence, “the wind blew of my hat” has already shown a clear understanding of physics. True education is about making people realize that they already understand all that is taught and what we are just doing now is organizing the information into groups which we call subjects. Realize that, anyone who can go shopping and come back home has at least a rudimentary understanding geography, and anyone who knows the reason why two people broke up has an inherent understanding of history and its consequences. And because everyone understands these things, everyone therefore has the inherent intellectual capacity to understand any subject matter on the planet. The problem is not the intellect, the real problem is the drab, dry, lifeless brain fucking wo obtain in the monotonous boredom called a lecture

  • Exploring Hard Surface Modelling as an Architectural Style

    Exploring Hard Surface Modelling as an Architectural Style

    Why Explore Hard Surface Modelling in Architecture?

    A few years ago I decided to begin exploring 3D modelling techniques as part of my effort to understand parametric architectural design. During this exploration I bumped into hard surface modelling art and developed a fascination for the approach. I felt that it landed itself well for architectural adoption as it is usually used for static industrialized visual expressions. Recently, there have been efforts to revive the idea of developing modular manufactured buildings into the main stream built environment as well as the adoption of such aspects as 3d printing. In addition to this, we are seeing increasingly sophisticated industrialized, modular building components as product manufacturers look to provide competitive market solutions. I believe these aspects will be easy to integrate within a hard modelling design expression and thus have decided to explore hard surface modelling as an architectural style. I have done a bit of desktop research on whether this is already a ‘thing’ and thus far have only come upon conceptual expressions which is rather strange to me as i would have expected it to already have been popular. Without further ado, let’s dive right into it.

    Introduction to Hard Surface Modelling

    Hard surface modelling is a technique used for creating 3D models with smooth and solid surfaces. It is quite common in creating models of cars, armor, machines, and generally non-living products. Whilst the are no hard fast rules that define what hard surface modelling really is, there are few characteristics that are found in such models. These include:

    1. Smooth, specular paneled designs
    2. Rigid, structured Bodies
    3. A geometric and often industrial motif
    4. Usually has an axis of symmetry
    5. Colors and Materials are generally delineated by mesh boundaries

    Hard Surface Modelling usually begins with a geometric primitive, which is then refined in hierachy through progressive iterative operations that include extrusion, beveling, Boolean operations, edge looping, and surface subdivisions.

    Relating Hard Surface modelling to Architectural Design process

    Architecture is both a science and an artform therefore this section should be understood from the perspective that there are many ways to skin the design cat. That being said, I personally follow a programmatic step by step design process that has the following procedure:

    1. Desktop Research
    2. Site Analysis
    3. Concept Development
    4. Design Evolution
    5. Design Refinement
    6. Technical Development

    The first two steps in the process build the information required to design the project and create an understanding of the working parameters, the next three create and explore the design idea and the last aspect resolves the construction aspects of the design. This is obviously simplified as design in practice is always evolving but it sets a good foundation of how we can leverage the natural qualities of hard surface modelling into the architectural design workflow.

    One thing I enjoy from the 3D Modelling world is the generic to precise process that it has, you start with a blockout which you continuously refine to the final product. This sits really well with how I do things, I was never the napkin revolutionary sketch type of student, i am methodical and structured in my approach. Much like the broader modelling field, hard surface modelling usually begins with a primitive that is iterated upon with operations. If we take a closer inspection at the concept development and design evolution of the Architectural design process using the programmatic design approach, we see that we start with some form of massing element that we eventually extrapolated into a form through logical steps. And that is exactly what Hard Surface Modelling is!

    For more information about architectural concept, a good read is James C Synder’s introduction to architecture

    Learning from precedent movements

    References 

    https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-hard-surface-modeling/
https://all3dp.com/2/blender-hard-surface-modeling-tutorial/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5400254-introduction-to-architecture
  • Value Based Minimum Wage

    Value Based Minimum Wage

    My layman’s understanding of minimum wage is that it is the amount of money one needs to be paid in order to survive in a money based society. Our current approach to setting such minimum wages focuses on the quantitative value of the money to be paid rather than what the money enables the individual to do. This approach couple with the process and governance around minimum wage provide a loophole for exploitation that is naturally pounced upon in a capitalist society. This article will explore a Value Based Minimum wage approach which i believe is a better way to look at the issue

    Minimum wages have been defined as “the minimum amount of remuneration that an employer is required to pay wage earners for the work performed during a given period, which cannot be reduced by collective agreement or an individual contract”

    International Labour Organization

    The challenge of numerical based minimum wage

    Traditionally minimum wage is set through a legislative process, broadly paraphrasing, this usually means that a political representative must raise the issue in a legislative body, the issue is debated and resolutions are made which may or may not result in the change of a previously set numerical value. The fundamental problem with this approach is that it requires constant monitoring of whether this figure is relevant at any point in time as prices are affected by such things as inflation, supply/demand and more. This constant monitoring never happens as legislative bodies are by their nature slow and methodical. Furthermore, it is not in the best interest of society to structure processes that require constant unending legislative arguments, time is humanity’s most valuable resource and it can never be recovered.

    The Alternative Value Based Minimum Wage Approach

    A reasonable alternative to the aforementioned method is to look at which activities an employee must do to have a reasonable quality of life, consider the method of valuing these activities and allow the numerical renumeration to automatically change based on these factors with a buffering factor to allow for predictability which is essential in corporate forecasting.

    This proposal of course is not the magic bullet, it has it own faults that must be addressed but on the balance of play, I believe that it provides better benefits to society as a whole. At the very least, it shifts political discussion on minimum wage from ‘how much’ and ‘what can you do with it’.

    Considerations in setting a value based minimum wage

    Wages and Salaries are a major part of business expenditure and as such it is a hot button topic; any consideration on the value of wages must balance the need of the employer against the need of the employee. In the modern competitive world, more often than not, the employer’s consideration takes precedence as wages are a low hanging fruit to cost cutting in business expenditures. An important aspect of consideration when it comes to minimum wage is the percentage of lower income earning employees on the whole corporate wage bill. My early inclination is that this is actually quite low such that the net effect of minimum wage on the current financial metrics is minimal.

    Another consideration to make also relies on the nature of the employer, one wonders if the minimal acceptable payment for someone who is working at a mom and pops business should be the same as that of a large multinational conglomerate. Should there be a ratio factor that ties the minimum earning individual to the maximum earning individual in a corporate body? The basis of this query is that often upper-level management will get bonuses for figuring out how to cut costs but lower earning employees may actually get their earnings cut as part of cost cutting exercises. By tying in a maximum earner to minimum earner ratio in wage legislature, the decision to cut wage costs becomes more carefully weighed by upper management in corporate organizations. The downside of this idea however is that cost cutting exercises become validated as corporate bodies say everyone is affected equally yet upper income earners main still gain more in bonuses and benefits.

    Assumptions of a value based minimum wage

    The fundamental assumption that a value based minimum wage approach has is that any employed individual has a set of parents and at least one child and calculations must allow this quadrant to survive. I believe that this is critical as it considers real world context of employees and ensures that renumeration is practical. It must be understood however that once this approach is taken, consideration of social securities such as retirement funds and childcare become inevitable. The goal is to fairly compensate without bloating corporate expenses.

    An alternative look at this would be to use real-time information of a person’s dependents to fine tune their minimum earnings. The benefit of this is that if one has many dependents they would not necessarily be punished for having a large family. On the other hand such an approach requires government to obtain a significant amount of individual information such that considerations for privacy become a huge factor. It is in this regard that I believe the first approach carries slightly more merit

    Parameters for a Value Based Minimum Wage

    At the very minimum one must be able to afford to feed one’s family, pay bills, travel to work, be healthy enough to do that work well, remain with something that helps them improve (savings, education) and have some degree of leisure. These considerations must be made with an awareness of how other social interventions are made by government; for example, if government already has a robust public medical health system, then it makes no sense to duplicate the benefit. From this basic assumption of life, we build our foundational parameters as:

    • Medical Aid
    • Food & Clothing
    • Transportation
    • Bills
    • Self-Improvement
    • Social Activity

    Medical Aid

    I consider medical aid as one of the trickier things to evaluate, on one hand, it would be an insult to provide only enough coverage for medical checkups and dental flossing and on the other hand, it would be monstrous to provide enough coverage for an experimental procedure for a rare disease. The sweet spot lies somewhere in between, possibly around the area where you can afford to have an operation after an accident. The said medical aid must cover both the employee and the core assumed unit family.

    Food & Clothing

    An interesting aspect of food and clothing is that there is a heavy element of cultural bias. Regardless of this however, i think the actual calculation of this parameter is easy to ascertain, what is more debatable is what should be included and how much of it. In the case of food for instance, should it be three meals and what consists of a standard breakfast or lunch and so forth? One thing that is certain is that there will be a need for a bread-basket index that tracks the value of food in time as well as some form of lifestyle index to track clothing costs. This parameter should be a calculation that is based on the core assumed family unit.

    Bread Basket Article

    Transportation

    Transportation is the most straight-forward parameter to consider. It is simply the cost of transport required for the average employee to get to work and back which is doubled to assume the child’s costs of going to school and back.

    Bills

    The are two types if bills that are important namely, rentals and Municipal Bills in particular (water and electricity); depending on what is possible within an economy, a case can be made for the inclusion of internet as a basic human need. The calculation of rentals should be based on the market averages for a 3-bed apartment and the municipal bill should also be the municipal average for a

    Self-Improvement

    Self-improvement speaks mainly to the ability to save for a desire to pay to equip oneself with new skills. I believe that the ideal index to use that is easy to evaluate is to factor in a industry advice percentage of wage savings. for example, the current industry advice is that savings should be at least 15% of earning thus all that would be required is to add a +15% after other calculations.

    Social Activity

    Optimization Factors

    It is worth taking into account as well the relative prosperity of the nation as a factor of minimum wage considerations. As a territory that is under governance increases in prosperity, it stands to reason that the lifestyle of the least paid individual must follow.

    Time Elasticity: The period of time before the

    Valuation of Parameters

    The Value Based Minimum Wage Equation

    Payout of the Value Based Minimum Wage

    An interesting idea is that the calculated value of the Minimum wage does not necessarily have to be the paid-out value.

    Concluding Thoughts

    References

    https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/wages/minimum-wages/definition/WCMS_439072/lang--en/index.htm
  • Human Nature: The formation of character

    Human Nature: The formation of character

    Character: The Mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual

    Oxford Languages

    I find myself being compassionate to other people’s struggles and challenges and like many others before me, I ponder upon the nature of human character. Now, this may not be how other people perceive who I am, each has their own view of my nature based on our interaction and the conclusions they draw from it, but this is how I view myself as.

    In my view, there are two important things in the formation of our character, the experiences we endure and the choices we make. Our society is full of diverse opinions and world views and this often leads to unwarranted critique of who we are as we are growing up. This creates the bedrock of our experiences, most of our memories seem to be formed by negative sentiments of our personality rather than positive reinforcement of our qualities. Each of these experiences creates flight or fight attitude that may be either overt or covert. This is where the element of choice becomes important as what we choose to do in each of these moments accumulates to become what can be described as our character

    An interesting element of contemporary society is that social media has given us insight towards the covert nature of our being. Many people naturally enjoy perusing through the image of a social post but I find myself more intrigued by the messages that are attached alongside that post. In many instances, as people post their milestones of achievement, they attach to it a message that seems to vindicate those that have doubted them. On further observation, the “doubters” seem to be specific individuals rather than the general populace. It is the ex-partner that said you would never make it, the crush the never gave you attention, the elder that thought you were disrespectful or maybe the parent that did not think you were not the one they could depend upon, the list is endless.

    References

    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    2D BIM
    
			
    2D BIM
    
			
    

    Introduction: Differentiating 2D BIM
    




    Right off the bat there is a need to clarify that this is not an article on BIM Levels, it is also not an article on BIM dimensions. Rather, it is an article that focuses on exploring the idea of integrating intelligent information in the 2D drafting method so that it becomes compatible with all BIM Levels and Dimensions. If find it necessary to spell this out as there is an inherent confusion around the meaning of dimension and levels and their relationship to drawing techniques. I realize that to label this idea as 2D BIM does not help the case but I find that it is an apt description of exactly what the idea entails so we will stick with it for the time being.
    




    Before we dive deep into the tenets of the idea, it is worth spending a bit of time on BIM Levels and BIM dimensions so that we gain clarity on what it is exactly that we are trying to achieve.  
    




    Bim Dimensions
    




    Whilst originating from the need to differentiate between modelling geometry in 2D or 3D, BIM dimensions have evolved into a description of parameters which are used to categorize building information. 
    




      

    • BIM 3D refers to information that describes the geometry of objects the three axes (x, y, z)
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    • BIM 4D adds information that relates to time on top of BIM 3D (i.e. timelines schedules and durations)
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    •  BIM 5D adds information that relates to finance on top of BIM 4D (i.e. cost estimates, budgets etc.)
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    • BIM 6D adds information that relates to sustainability on top of BIM 5D (i.e. embodied energy values of material, energy consumption of building etc.)
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    • BIM 7D adds information that relates to Facilities Management
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    • BIM 8D adds information that relates to Health and Safety
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    Whilst there is a general industry consensus on BIM 3D to BIM 5D, the other BIM dimensions are still a topic of debate and should be taken in with a grain of salt. In addition, because of the background of BIM dimension in differentiating 2D geometry from 3D geometry, many consider BIM 2D as a valid BIM dimension which refers to information that describes geometry in 2 axes (x,y).
    




    

    A BIM model can be utilized for pre-defined specific purposes, commonly known as use-cases. According to project stage requirements and project complexity, specific parameters are added to the existing information contained in BIM. These additions of pre-defined used cases can be described as BIM dimensions.
    
United-BIM
    




    An important aspect of this approach will be the level of detail to which the information is modelled
    




    Foundational Assumptions
    




    The basis of this idea resides in the understanding the Building Information Modelling fundamentally relates to the management of information that is structured in a specific way rather than the manner in which it is authored. 
    




    The Benefits of 2D authoring
    




    Drawbacks of Traditional 2D authoring
    




    The SVG File Format
    




    Conceptual Framework of 2D BIM
    




    References
    




    https://www.thenbs.com/knowledge/bim-levels-explained
https://constructible.trimble.com/construction-industry/what-is-bim-building-information-modeling
https://www.indovance.com/knowledge-center/bim-levels-and-dimensions-explained/

    What are BIM Dimensions – 3D, 4D, 5D, 6D, and 7D BIM Explained | Definition & Benefits
    

    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Human Interaction: How We Argue
    
			
    Human Interaction: How We Argue
    
			
    

    i find that a vast majority of people rely on unfounded conjecture which occurs naturally due to the vast information ether that we live in. It is simply impossible to know it all as such we spread half truths and sometimes complete falsehoods because we do not have a full understanding of what we are talking about and instead offer information based on our limited experience.
    




    An easy example of this behavior comes from classic arguments such as which is better, apple or android? Very few people understand technology, even the fundamentals of it, therefore they make arguments which are incredibly false based on corporate branding messages and “personal experience”.
    




    for the most part, this type of behavior is harmless, after all, phone arguments never really convince anyone who already has a brand loyalty, but often times this behavior spreads to areas such as economics, politics, medical health, social infrastructure and so forth and fundamentally poisons the well of societies.
    




    Take for example the argument that socialism is all evil and capitalism is all good. This is obviously flawed thinking and intelligent societes have travessed this and found balance between the polititcal systems. Those of us who claim the obsolute evilness of one system over another based on “exprerience” will most likely have very little understanding of political philosophy and our world view is mostly shaped by selective political media.