Stories of Your Life and Others

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

This thought provoking science fiction collection deals more with philosophy than hard science. (Though mathematicians and linguists may beg to differ.) The story notes were rather short and placed at the end rather than after each story.

Story List (titles rom Wikipedia entry):

"Tower of Babylon" (originally published in Omni, November 1990) (Nebula Award winner)

This is an exploration of the Tower of Babel with a "literal" cosmology like the bible. It is fun, but not super insightful.

"Understand" (originally published in Asimov's, August 1991)

A man receives a medical treatment that gives him super-human intellect. The scientists are trying to study this, but he is always one step ahead of them due to his abilities. He later secretly obtains more of the treatment, making him even more intelligent. He eventually connects with another super-human. They fight with their capabilities, leading to one surviving. Could we have any control over "super-capabilities"? Part of super-smartness would be an understanding of what people are trying to test, making it difficult to measure. 

"Division by Zero" (originally published in Full Spectrum 3, June 1991)

What if math were not fixed and division by zero were possible? The woman who discovers this struggles with sanity and causes issues with her marriage. Her husband is both her support and falling out of love with her.

"Story of Your Life" (originally published in Starlight 2, November 1998) (Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner)

How would we learn to communicate with aliens? A scientist is tasked with understanding the language of heptapods that have visited earth. Their language is structured different from ours, with a non-linear structure closely related to how they are. They also find some math "simple" that we find more advanced. It is an intriguing look at the challenges of communication when there are large differences. It also comes to an abrupt end when they decide it is time to leave.

"Seventy-Two Letters" (originally published in Vanishing Acts, June 2000) (Sidewise Award winner)

Names have power. While this was one of the reasons I read this collection, I was a bit lost in the story.

"The Evolution of Human Science" (originally published as "Catching Crumbs from the Table" in Nature, June 2000)

What would the role of humans be if we had "metahumans" with greater capacity?

"Hell Is the Absence of God" (originally published in Starlight 3, July 2001) (Hugo Award, Locus Award and Nebula Award winner)

In this world angelic visitations are common, but not worry free. Sometimes people are healed, while others may be injured by flying shrapnel. People may end up in heaven or hell depending on their behavior and everyone knows where they go. The story focuses on people with different faith journeys. It is portrayed as pure fantasy which allows it to better explore relationships between faith and knowledge. It has an interesting structure nearer to a documentary of intertwined people.

"Liking What You See: A Documentary"

People can get a special treatment that causes them to not notice people's looks. Thus they will not be lead astray by common concepts of beauty. Many parents would have their kids undergo this process. The central focus is a college where the students are voting to have this treatment mandatory so as not cause harm to people without good looks. It is an interesting exploration of equality gone to extremes, while also exploring how we often make bad decisions based on appearance. How would life be if we could have this treatment?

The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

The Nordic countries tend to show up near the top of well-being surveys. What can we learn from them for our own culture? As a big fan of Nordic culture, I expected to buy into everything in this book. Alas, I found myself being extra critical. Some of the ideas seem pretty clear, if counter intuitive. You want to increase women's pay gap relative to men? Provide for better paternity leave.
Education was a little more questionable. It seems everybody likes to pick the part of the Finnish education success that best suits them. The author claims Finnish education was reformed primarily around equity. All schools were high quality and everybody had access to the highest level of education. (Even "private" schools would fall closely under the similar government scheme.) Alas, much of that is missed in the US. Seattle schools are obsessed with equity. Yet, the implementation method often involves lowering the bar. There is also the matter of private schools. If the public school district provides an equally bad experience for all, yet there are abundant, high cost, high quality private offerings is that really equitable? The author also noted some problems with "school choice" in other Scandinavian countries. Public school advocates will use this to fight against vouchers and charter schools. However, the school districts get into the same game with open enrollment, option schools and magnet schools. It is just school choice controlled by the education bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is the real difference. US schools have a significantly greater number of administrators per student. They also rely extensively on standardized tests. The antagonistic union situation results in teachers being treated more as cogs in a system rather than skilled professionals as they are in Scandinavia. School districts are also fragmented and rely on a local property tax base for funding. Nordic countries tend to be fairly homogeneous populations, however, there are plenty of states that are similar in population and homogeneity to Nordic countries. They could likely reform their education system to have similar success, but there will be big fights from both the parents and schools in order to get there.
The book lauds the social welfare benefits of the Nordic countries, while lamenting the lack of high cost of medicine and lack of social benefits in the United States. Taxes, however, are not too different in both. What gives? The United States often tries to do "socialism on the cheap". Rather than give a benefit like healthcare to everybody, it is only given out to a certain population under an income threshold. There are also a large number of tax breaks for different behaviors or activities. This makes for a highly complex system that is in many ways highly restrictive in behavior. You arguably have a choice in health plans in the United States. However, medicaid is only for the poor, medicare for the elderly, VA for veterans. There is a huge tax subsidy for private health insurance plans - but only if purchased through an employer. If you want to purchase insurance on your own, you lose out on most government largess (and tend to pay higher rates on top of that.) And this just gets you insurance which may or may not let you see the doctor you want. (And there is no guarantee that you can even purchase a policy that will let you see them.)
The Nordic model of benefits provides similar benefits to everyone. Anybody has access to the same health care at the same cost. Education, parental leave, unemployment and other benefits are provided by the government. This frees companies and citizens to focus on adding value rather that entrepreneurial risks will leave their family on the street. These benefits are covered by taxes. However, the tax rates are mostly flat, instead of highly graduated. They are still somewhat progressive, but not obsessively so as in the United States. In the US, it seems too much effort is spent on making a "progressive" tax system and then limiting benefits to those that are "in need". Then the tax code is filled with a bazillion loopholes to prevent these high taxes from negatively impacting "special interests". The result is a lower class that receives a large amount of benefits and pays no taxes and an upper class that can spend the effort to legally avoid taxes. This leaves a middle class that earns to much to qualify for benefits, yet doesn't have the resources to avoid taxes and thus pays away a large portion of their income. Public benefits tend to be stigmatized and associated with the "poor". (However, tax breaks carry no such stigma - even though they are essentially just another "payment" from the government. Would removing income validation change things? (It could also reduce some incentives for "reducing" income and working under the table to qualify for benefits.)
The book ends with the author becoming a US citizen. She was willing to sacrifice the Nordic safety net after falling in love with an American. Despite the challenges, there are advantages of the US way. I had met a Dane who was similarly desirous to move to the US due to the more dynamic start up culture. There may be something in the lack of safety net that pushes people to work harder. (Though there may also be the advantage of a much larger market.) There are many places in the US that would love to have a similar social welfare system. However, attempts often fall victim to entrenched interests (such as insurance companies and government agencies.) How can the United States keep the entrepreneurial spirit and move beyond third-world social welfare?