Test Your Bias

Reading a (Dutch) magazine on the toilet I chanced upon a column about discrimination and people applying for a job. The columnist (it's Ben Tiggelaar on the July 6, 2007 edition of Intermediair) wonders if discrimination is mostly a conscious or subconscious process.

(SF aficionados: cut to Peter Watts's Blindsight.)

So he recommends to do a test. His suggestion: Harvard's Implicit Association Test. I did. Well, that is: I did the first one, the skin tone IAT (they have a total of fourteen demo tests).

Tiggelaar says the following (translation mine):

Everyone who takes the test, is shocked by his/herself. The most people I know, reject discrimination in all its incarnations, but – in this Implicit Association Test – end up in the ‘Wilders’ category.

(Geert Wilders is the leader of the PVV, a Dutch political party at the far right of the political spectrum.)

My result:
I must say that I was relieved: somehow I suspected worse. Of course, there are thirteen more tests to take (which I will do after I finish the May slush).

Now the reason for Tiggelaar's column was that our Home Secretary (our minister in charge of the Home Office, whose title in Holland is Minister, and whose assistant is called Secretary. Confused already? Then go to Brussels...;-) Ter Horst is proposing to use anonymous job applications for government jobs. Which is throwing up a storm of protest and opinions: some think discrimination on the job market should be fought through education and agreements with the employers; others believe there is no discrimination; and some think all Turks should return to Marocco.

The point of his column -- and I must agree -- is that *if* discrimination is mainly a subconscious process, then an anonymous job application procedure, in which the first selection should be done while the name, sex, age, religion, and ethnic background of the applicant are withheld, is needed. Like Ter Horst wants.

Then -- Tiggelaar says -- the final selection committee should be a mirror image of our society (we're talking Holland here): 50% male, 50% female, 20% foreign, and graying hair at the temples.

Food for thought: while I still need to take the other thirteen tests (and don't know if these test actually do show subconscious bias), I do agree that the way we judge total strangers is most probably subconscious, for the most part.

Because I distinctly remember a course about dealing with customers I did some years ago, and the way first impressions work.

Question: At first impression, how fast do we -- on average -- make a judgment about a total stranger solely based on appearance?

Answer: in less than 10 seconds.

Question: How much of this first impression do we keep over time?

Answer: about 90%.

This baffled me at first, but I've come to believe that it's true. I find myself doing it: assessing strangers purely on appearance, without having talked to them. Then, if I find out I'm doing it, I have to make a mental effort to suppress this 'first impression judgment'.

I have to consciously force myself to withhold judgment until I know this person better.

Cutting back to Blindsight (and its theme that most of our actions are subconscious), I theorise that this might be a survival mechanism from the savannah: distinguish friend or foe very quickly. A mechanism that is not appropriate in modern society, but didn't have the time to evolve away (or, to play Devil's advocate, is waiting until this folly of a conscious culture has run its time).

Anyway, it makes me wonder: am I, deep inside, a sexist racist supremist alpha male whose conscious brain needs to supress these tendencies all the time (and probably unsuccesfully), or is my subconscious smarter than that, and is my conscious mind responsible, making quick calculations because it's taking up too much computing power as it is?

I don't know. But sometimes I feel like this:

behind the finer feelings--
this civilized veneer--
the heart of a lonely hunter
guards a dangerous frontier

As Rush drummer Neal Peart worded it on "Under Lock and Key" (from the Hold Your Fire album).

Another May Email Reading Period Update

First off: I'm tired. Dead dog tired.

Not to put a too fine point to it: I'm not getting paid for this co-editing gig at Interzone. It's a purely for the love thing.

Now don't get me wrong: I absolutely *love* doing it, more than the day job, actually. But it does mean that I'm reading all these submissions in my spare time.

A typical weekday: get up at 7, bike to the day job (on a push-bike: I don't have a car, by choice, as I do have a driver's license) at 7.30, work from about 8.30 to 17.00 (or from 09.00 to 17.30: I'm *not* a morning type of person), get home at about 18.00, quick meal preparation and eating from about 18.00 -- 19.00, then one to one-and-half-hours of sending out replies, then some three to four hours of reading, go to bed around midnight or later, exhausted, and repeat until Friday night.

With the obvious intrusions when the real world really cannot wait (bills, social commitments, Interzone non-slush-reading stuff, and more).

I realise that some will see this as the 'I-suffer-for-my-art' rant. Maybe it is, but I'm also saying it because quite a few of you think I'm doing this as my day job. Well, I'm not: I very strongly suspect that no magazine -- whatever its circulation -- would be willing to pay me what I now make in my day job as a technical specialist.

So if some submitters wonder why I don't respond as fast as -- say -- John Joseph Adams (who is doing a phenomenal job, BTW, no disrespect intended: rather the contrary), then you now know why: it's not my top priority (even if it's a thing I love to do).

So bear with me as I struggle onwards.

As to the actual update: I have caught up with all submissions until May 24 (with three exceptions, and I'm thinking really hard on those).

I still have about 75 stories still to read, and about 110 still to respond to (these include the ones I still need to read).

The plan is to finish it all over the coming weekend, but with a huge party on Saturday July 7, this is unrealistic. So sometime next week.

From July 21 onwards I have a two week holiday. The plan is to do something I haven't done for over half a year: write. One short story. Two if I'm lucky.

Or I might just visit family and friends to show them I'm still alive. It'll probably be a combination of the two.

May email reading period update

The long-awaited update, people!

After a tremendous start (like, 52 submissions on the very first day), May 2007 delivered on its promise and broke records.

Total number of submissions: 499;
Total wordcount: about 2527900;
(Which brings it to about 5060 words per story on average.)

Number of male submitters: 329
Number of female submitters: 150
Meaning I'm not sure about the sex of 20 submitters (who only used letters for their first names, like J. Doe, or have a sex-ambiguous first name, and one who is deliberately ambiguous about it).

I've read somewhat over 200 of these stories so far (more responses to go out tonight), noting that my trip to Australia -- while very enjoyable -- slowed things down. This is unfortunate, but originally it was planned for April, so that I would start the email reading period refreshed. Then it got delayed by a month...

So bear with me while I go through the last 299 submissions.

Hobart and the Aurora Australis

The last week of May I was in Hobart, Australia. I like Hobart: a certain rough-edged charm, a centre where everything is within walking distance, and excellent beer (can anybody say Cascade Pale Ale?).

I stayed at the Grand Chancellor, which was not very busy -- so I could sleep quetly at night -- and charged some 20 to 27 Aussie dollars for breakfast. Oh well.



I was giving a training to people of the Aurora Australis: this Antarctic ice breaker is driven by our CPP (controllable Pitch Propeller). As a service engineer I've done several dry-docking repairs/inspections on that vessel for our propeller (in Fremantle and Auckland), so I know the vessel quite well. It was also good to see some familiar faces, and I had a great time.



The Thursday after I left P&O Polar (who own the vessel) were going to charter the vessel for another 8 years to the Australian Antarctic Division, so the atmosphere on board (there was only a skeleton crew, as it had finished its Summer expeditions) was fine.



I had dinner in the renowned Ball & Chain Grill and the Customs House Hotel (where I had goodbye drinks with the crew on the last evening), and lunch in several cafés. Food is always very good in Hobart.



I also tasted some Tasmanian Whisky in the Lark Distillery. The had three of their whiskies for the tasting in their café: two of their single malts, and one cask strength single malt. I did quite like the cask strength single malt, and thought shortly about buying one bottle.

However, they charged 125 Aussie dollars for a 500 ml bottle (about 75 euros, or 90 US$), which I found rather steep. A few months back I flew to the UK, and at Schiphol 700 ml bottles of 18 year old Highland Park were on sale for 54 euros (for both EU and non-EU passengers).

I'm sorry, but even the normal price for the superb (and superior) 18 year old Highland Park (and the Lark single malts had no mention of their age, BTW) is 70 euros, which is still cheaper than the Lark cask strength. So I decided to give it a pass (and I always wonder why the whisky isn't cheaper at the source: but it isn't in Scotland, nor in Australia).

Nevertheless, I had a good time in Hobart.

More on the May Emails Subs

Since today is a rainy day in beautiful St. Kilda, I'm sending out my first responses.

Do expect one of the two headers in your email:

"REJECTION": "Your Story" when it's (obviously) rejected;

"HOLD": "Your Story" when I'm holding it for a second read.

At first sight, this might look cruel, but after some discussion on Nick Mamatas's LJ I agreed that being upfront from the get-go is better than unnecessarily maintaining any tension.

One thing that stands out in the slushpile so far is the unusual large amount of religious/God stories. Half of those are about how the Christian right in the USA has taken over power, and the way people rebel against it. Without exception, I found these stories boring. They just didn't tell me anything new or unusual.

Then there's more than the usual amount of stories where either an aloof God learns to become humane, or where missionaries to alien worlds have more success than they expected (the 'don't ask for it, because you might get it' cliche). I would strongly recommend that people doing a 'missionary to aliens' story to read Harry Harrison's "The Streets of Ashkelon" first (not online as far as I know, but widely reprinted, like in 50 in 50 or Stainless Steel Visions.

Although I'm an (agnostic) atheist, I'm not against religion per se. The point is that it is -- like many other themes, but especially with religion -- extremely difficult to come with something that hasn't been said about it before. If you want to capture my attention with a religion-themed story, then it either needs to have a very original angle, or the execution must be absolutely superb.

You have been informed/warned*

(* = delete as appropriate)

And three good ones, so far (of which one was *very* good, I think).

NB: and about a third of submitters don't single-space their submissions. It does take me about 10 seconds to do that myself, but it's annoying, especially when I'm doing it in an internet cafe where I pay by the hour. So do ignore your ingrained habits (I realise that standard submission format is still holy in a lot of places, even in the 21st Century), and single-space, as this makes *my* reading of *your* story easier on my PDA.

Thanks!

In St. Kilda

Where I had three days of beautiful weather (sunny, 23 degrees) and two days of rain (like today).

First and most importantly I caught up with my sister, as it had been over two years since I last saw her. Typically, I arrived Sunday evening around 20.00 hrs (PM), and my sister had to start on a new job the next morning.

This is actually a very good thing as she's been looking for a suitable job for years, and this one -- where she starts as an assistant to a production manager for a small film company (who mainly produce documentaries) -- might very well be the one.

She was hired for three days a week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday), but it was so busy they asked if she could work Thursday, as well. I told her to do it, as nothing is as important on a new job as making a good impression on the first day, and the first week.

Then Murphy's Law struck again, as her car was broken into when she was parked near her work on her very first work day. It's like my bad luck (see previous post) jumped over to my sister.

But she got the smashed door windscreen replaced, had to buy a bottle of champagne (for celebrating the completion of one documentary. and the bottle was paid for by her company), and all ended well.

Then I had lunch with her -- my apartment is actually a ten minutes' walk from her new job place -- and she told me she brought some of the 'speculaas' -- typical Dutch cookies -- for her to her work, and announced that day was 'Special Dutch Cookie' day. It was very well received.

I have a good feeling about her new job, and I hope she can keep it for quite a while.

Tonight we're going to a play of a friend of her (Chris Wallace) in South Yarra, and tomorrow, when she has Friday off, we'll probably go to the 'Chinese Wall' exhibition in the Melbourne Museum (and might visit Federation Square in the process).

The forecast is rain, so no more beach weather. But I wasn't complaining when it was 23 degrees, which even according to Melburnians was quite warm for the time of year.

Ah, and I had dinner with Sean McMullen and his girlfriend Zoya (I hope I spelled that right!) in Elwood yesterday evening. A very nice evening, and Sean gave me an advance copy of his new YA novel " Before the Storm", which looked particularly good. I'll read it when I've finished the slush, which will be somewhere near the end of June.

I'm having quite a good time, and the only thing slightly bothering me is all the slush I have to read (originally, this trip was planned for April, so before the May Interzone email reading period. Then the job -- training a crew in Hobart -- got delayed by a month. Oh well.

Why Frequent Travellers Should Have Two Credit Cards..

...or more.

Last week, there was a news report in Holland that hackers had broken into a data account of a Dutch bank, getting hold of -- among other things -- the credit card numbers of several thousands of people. Specifically Visa and MasterCard holders. I think that was on Wednesday. Those whose credit card numbers had been hacked would be informed.

I heared nothing, until Friday afternoon, when I returned from work, and there was a message on my answering machine. It appeared that my Visa card number was amongst those hacked (well, the helpdesk man wouldn't admit it, but it's not coincidence, I tell you, as I've had this card for about twenty years with no problems whatsoever), so it was blocked. Well, my flight to Australia was the next day noon, so there was no possibility that I could get a new one before I left Holland.

It's exactly for these occurances of Murphy's Law that a frequent traveller needs a second credit card (also handy when the first is maxed out in expensive countries like Japan).

It was one of these things.

The second screwup happened en route to Australia: I had checked in for the flight, saw that the first boarding pass (to Kuala Lumpur, as I was flying with Malaysia Airlines) was fine, but I only glanced at the second one to Melbourne, assuming that it was OK, as well.

Never assume that.

In my new job as a trainer I only travel about 3 to 4 times a year (in contrast to almost constantly when I was a service engineer), and I'm losing some of my travel routines, such as *always* carefully checking *all* your boarding passes.

Just before the plane landed in Kuala Lumpur, I noticed that I didn't have a barding pass for the connecting flight to Melbourne of 4 hours later, as was booked and confirmed, but one for the evening flight 16 hours later (and the ground staff in Amsterdam failed to tell me this, as well. Probably didn't notice, either: just printed out the passes). So the next 3 and a half hours in Kuala Lumpur were spent getting myself on the correct flight, which barely worked out.

Still, I was finally relaxing when the plane took off on the last leg of the trip, and even more so when we landed in Melbourne and my sister picked me up.

But, as you can see, there's a reason why I stopped my previous job: I just got very weary of the constant travelling, and all the harassment it brings. And you have to pay attention to everything, otherwise an airline company stealthily tries to move you to another flight when they've overbooked their flights.

Even when you have a business class ticket.

Interzone May 2007 Email Submission Period

Short update on the Interzone May email reading period:

So far I received 238 submissions (58 on the very first day, which gave me pause. It slowed down, thankfully), totalling about 1207000 words (about 5000 words per story).

Jed Hartman asked me to keep track of the numbers of male/female/unknown submitters, which I'm doing. So far, the numbers are:

Number of male submitters: 154
Number of female submitters: 77
Not sure of gender/anonymous: 7

So a 2:1 male/female ratio, which is, for us, a rising trend. I did count the very first email period (May 2005), and the ratio was almost 4:1, and last September it was about 3:1.

In September the ratio for accepted stories was 2:1, that is we accepted 12 stories from September (some of which already have been published):

Eight males:

"Elevator Episodes in Seven Genres" by Ahmed A. Kahn;
"Tearing Down Tuesday" by Steven Francis Murphy (IZ #210);
"Winter" by Jamie Barras (IZ #209);
"If" by Daniel Akselrod and Lenny Royter;
"The Two-Headed Girl" by Paul G. Tremblay;
"The Scent of their Arrival" by Mercurio D. Rivera;
"Cradle of the Mind" by Tristan Palmgren;
"The Shenu" by Alexander Marsh Freed;

Four females:

"Heartstrung" by Rachel Swirsky (IZ #210);
"A Handful of Pearls" by Beth Bernobich;
"Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise" by Sue Burke
"Pseudo-Tokyo" by Jennifer Linnaea.

Make of that what you will: I'm reporting this because Jed asked me.

Also, three submitters sent their stories to the wrong email address: I thought it was self-evident that the May submissions should go to the Interzone.May2007@gmail.com addy, but three of you sent them to the November address: Interzone.November2007@gmail.com . I don't check that one so often, and it's basically the wrong one.

Finally, I'm off to a combined business/pleasure trip to Australia tomorrow. So there will not be the usual 'receive acknowledges' during the weekend, because I'm travelling. I should get back to it on Monday.

Actually, this trip was planned for April, so I should dive into the email reading period fresh, but got delayed, so now they coincide. Not the original plan. I was also back-logged with other things, with which I've mostly caught up now, so have only just started reading the slush. Expect the first rejections after the weekend.

Liberation Day

May 5 is Liberation Day in the Netherlands. It's celebrated by Liberation Festivals in the 13 province capitals across the country. Den Bosch is the capital of the province Noord-Brabant, so we have this festival every year. It's one of my favourites.

Originally it celebrated the liberation from the Nazi occupation (actually, it still does), but the festival has grown to a celebration of liberty in general (so the liberty to be different), and as such has become a festival of diversity and multiculturalism.

Bands perform from every corner of the world, this year they included Ghana, Ukraine, and a band with members from Kosovo, Chile, and Belgium. OK, and a few Dutch bands as well. Also a great variety of food stands, while the beer was only from Holland (a thing they should improve).

I had a great time, got rather inebriated, and was happy that the next day was Sunday (instead of a working day).

Peace out!

Qubit Conflicts...

...is already mentioned in several parts of the blogosphere. Gotta love the kind of almost instantaneous feedback that the internet provides (while I do miss holding the physical product of an anthology or magazine, like the last paper version of HUB, although there will be a chapbook, and hopefully an anthology, as well).

Paul Raven quite liked it (so much that he congratulates me "on writing a story that I don't feel the need to pick holes in." Luckily this was followed by a winking smiley). Jeremy Tolbert seems to have enjoyed it as well, and muses about (one of) its implications.

On the other hand, David de Beer doesn't like it at all: "I don't understand the point of this." Fair enough: I expect people will not like, or even hate this story. He also mentions:

I also don't understand the point of writers trying to be obscure and not trying to engage as many readers as possible. Is it that much fun to write only for an eclectic audience?

Sometimes a writer -- especially an SF writer, I like to think -- wants to push boundaries. Imagine something that hasn't been imagined before. Often, the price of this is that the resulting story is not really for the greatest common denominator, but indeed for 'an eclectic audience'. And I had great fun writing this one.

However, I cannot decide if it succeeds: I must leave that up to others, as a writer cannot judge his/her own story. Therefore, I appreciate every comment, negative or positive. Do keep them coming!

Update: Jörn Grote of the entropy pump seems to think that, if I didn't quite succeed, I made an interesting effort.

Update 2: Paul Jessup says it's "the first time I enjoyed a scifi story in a long time".

Update 3: On the Not If You Were the Last Short Story on Earth LJ Community, Random Alex seems to like it. Money shot: "And somehow, de Vries gets ennui and pathos in there too."

Update 4: In his Tangent Online review, Ben Payne seems to say that it's not really his cup of tea.

Update 5: Joe Sherry thinks: "Maybe Qubit Conflicts is a bit meta for me."

Update 6: Pete Tennant (one of his many bylines is proofreading for Interzone, and he was kind enough to proofread "Qubit Conflicts" for me, as well) says at Whispers of Wickedness: "...that at the sentence level whole stretches of the story could just as easily have been written in a foreign language, but regardless of that the overarching structure of the story made perfect sense."
And yes, that is a compliment.

Update 7: Lois Tilton at the Internet Review of Science Fiction recommended it (you need to register to see the review). In the spirit of the story itself, the review is concise:

Quantum theory can be understood either as mathematics or as metaphor. Here, de Vries uses math as part of a metaphor to tell the story of the evolution of quantum artificial intelligence into a solipsistic singularity.

Cleverly Done.

Recommended

Update 8: in Literary Reviews 35, the reviewer thinks that "...Mr. De Vries’s writing within the story is so arcane—[...]—that I at times yearned for the services of an English-to-English language translator." Clarkesworld magazine in general is compared to "...a painting deemed to be a “masterpiece of modern art” that had hung upside down in a museum for two years before anyone noticed." Finally: success!

Update 9: A reaction from a blogger in India: Variety SF rates it a 'C' (which in the site's rating system means 'Time Waster', and Blindsight received the same rating. Hi, Pete!), saying the reviewer feels quite disconnected with most modern stories the reviewer has read on AI, because they are not easy to identify with.

Indeed! Welcome to tomorrow: the strange, dislocated, dizzying feeling you are experiencing is called FutureShock(s). There is no cure, as things will only get weirder and weirder, even in India.