The Square Root of Rubiks Cube

Two-thirds of my life ago, halfway through high school, people started showing up with a cube, each side a nine-square array of a single color. Or at least, that's how it looked when you bought it. The sub-cubes moved, and the aim was to have it scrambled, then work your way back to one color per side. There are about 43.25 quintillion positions possible, so getting there by randumb luck could take a while, so the toy appealed mostly to puzzlers.

At least initially, but upon entering the American market, the company that licensed it of course wanted it to be the next Big Thing, the toy hit of the early '80s. And for that to happen, it should not test consumers' patience or make them feel like idiots. And so began the stupidification of the Rubik's Cube.

I had a friend who had the Cube. No rube was he, but also not a genius, or even especially dedicated. He was, however clever enough to want to look smart, aware enough to know that there was a book that explained how to solve the cube, and rich enough to buy said book. (I should explain to the kids that there was no internet in that benighted decade--books were how we learned back then.)

Scads of cads bought the book, then showed up and showed off how quickly they could "solve" the cube. Soon enough, even the half-bright denizens of the high school halls knew that these charlatans were just going buy the book, and were nothing special. But Americans with money will not be written off lightly, and when fake-solving the cube did not prove impressive, rubbed others' noses in their impecuniousness. Solving the cube through wits alone was a sign of poverty. I kid you not.

The Rubik's Cube became a tool for showing off on a grander scale as well. Tournaments were organized. The joy of solo solution gave way to speed. America's capitalists took pride in the fact that despite it's invention by a commie, it took the U S of A to turn it into a blockbuster. Erno Rubik was from Hungary, but the name sounded Russki to most Americans, and the few who knew better congratulated themselves that Hungarians worshiped blue-jeans and would have gladly thrown off the Soviet yoke given the chance (or, given the US military support that had been implied when they actually did attempt rebellion, but that's another story). By and large, though, it felt like an appropriation of Eastern science for Western profit, which during the Cold Ware conjured a victory on par with our scoring the Soviet-effacing humor of Jakov Smirnoff. Which again, is not a joke.

So the Rubik's Cube became the Big Thing, until it was supplanted by Cabbage Patch Dolls or something equally brilliant. Wikipedia claims it was advertized as having "billions of positions," which is both 10 orders of magnitude too small and completely reasonable, given the target audience's sub-Soviet numeracy and enthrallment with Carl Sagan. It didn't matter how many positions the damned thing could take, since people tended to go buy the book or toss it into the oblivion drawer.

Meanwhile, the un-square had moved on to something more interesting.

The Certainty Fetish (and How it Kills Democracy)

The Grand Oil Party has been at it again, refusing to pass legislation (this time, inexplicably, it is an extension of tax cuts, which they claim to love). As is often the case during their political maneuvering, they deploy the word "certainty" with a frequency that reminds us that: A) they are speaking from a script, B) their consultants continue to advise that uncertainty is what scares American most, and C) they have no idea what the word's policy implications are.

This time, they are demanding that the president approve an oil pipeline. Not review and consider it, as the administration is supposed to. Not even make a decision on an accelerated timeline, as the republicans initially demanded. But approve it. Provide certainty to the petro-economy, so that it can grab more fistfuls of dollars,...um, uh, create jobs. Yeah, that's it. So we have a situation where the oligarchs and their tea party minions are trying to ignore the constitution, foist a favor to the industry onto the president's desk, force the will of one small part of the legislative branch on the executive. Tip the balance and cancel the check, there's money to be made.

Ironically, the party that has enshrined the "Market" for so long finds itself demanding government intervention on behalf of said Market, which in so many other arenas is supposed to work its magic best in the absence of any government action. But as we have seen so many times recently, the Market feigns terminal illness or threatens mass suicide if the government does not act. Remember TARP, interest free loans to banks, stimulus spending? Socialism, plain and simple, demanded by the same Market that says it believes in pure capitalism. Hmm.

What the Market and it's party actually do object to is regulation, and again they call on the ogre of Uncertainty to scare up suspensions of regulations, laws over-riding rules, or appropriations bills that de-fund enforcement of whatever they cannot erase. Clean air and water cost too much, and cause uncertainty among the job creators, we are told. Leaving determinations to trained professionals and basing policy on science rather than expedience can take to long, causing uncertainty.

Odd that rules written in the Federal Register, based on data-driven analyses, can be characterized as counter to certainty, but that's the party line. This paradox reveals that not all certainty is created equal, that what the corporate titans want is Certainty that they will not be constrained in any way, and that profit margins will not be affected by bothersome rules. And if those rules and regs reflect a concern for the environment, or the health and safety of the working class, if those rules reflect the preferences and comments painstakingly gathered from specialists, the people affected by them (among them, the business community), and the general public, too bad. There's money to be made, after all, and the Market is too damned lazy to adapt to its environment.

Speaking of the environment, let me also speak of evolution. Major corporations in the agribusiness sector have sought Certainty in ways that are bound to fail. Farming is inherently uncertain--always was and always will be. Creating a variety of super corn seems attractive to an idiot, but evolution will breed super bugs and fungi and a host of other beings to wipe that smugly certainty away. Inserting genes that make it certain that you can spray away all the plants but the crop give you a few seasons of certainty, until the messy mutations pop up with unexpected consequences. It all looks good in the plan, but reality intervenes, and the Certainty you had on paper erodes away quickly. There is pretty good evidence from archaeology that the greater the emphasis on certainty, the harder the fall.

At the altar of Certainty, there are those who would sacrifice the careful balance struck by our Constitution, the will and the common good of the people, that messy and ungodly Evolution, and for that matter the free market. But this will not bring peace of mind, not even to the wealthy few who get to decide what we are certain about. Certainty demands an unending series of concessions; the freedoms to change, to improve, to innovate are all anathema.

The only system in which Certainty is great enough to satisfy it's business-minded devotees is totalitarianism. Demands for freedom or the welfare of the commoners are troublesome. Democracy is rife with uncertainty, what with everyone getting a vote. People who want to develop a pipeline must face this uncertainty, and always have. To shirk that and insist on certainty is to deny that anyone else gets a voice, and that things change.

History is not about to stop, and absolute Certainty will always elude the captains of industry. Atlas can shrug, oligarchs can strike, but people are waking up and getting fed up. The plutocrats have almost all the marbles, and we the people are not inclined to surrender the last few. Those who whine about a few stray ones rolling around, messing up their perfect order, had better learn to adapt.