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Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The Election of NOT

This election is between NOT Trump and NOT(NOT Trump). Before you point out that 2 "NOTs" cancel out, they don't in this usage. For example, a pear is a fruit that's NOT a grapefruit, but a fruit that's NOT a pear isn't inherently a grapefruit - it might be a blackberry.

Our first candidate, NOT Trump, happens to be Joe Biden, but it could be a rabid dog or a rotten tomato and it would still get a similar number of votes. Biden is a nice enough fellow. There's concern by some about his age and declining mental capabilities, concern by others about his occasionally sniffing about the ladies when maybe he ought not, concerns by still others about signs of corruption, and various other fairly mild personality concerns, but really, he's one of the most milquetoast candidates for president in quite some time.

But it doesn't seem that a lot of people are really that excited about Biden and really think he'll be a great President. Rather, they're voting for him primarily because he's NOT Trump. Again if it was a rabid dog instead of Biden they'd still be voting NOT Trump.

But how many people are voting FOR Trump? Some, for sure, but I suspect not all that many. I think never-Trumpers are a good example. One commenter here, PatrickH, claimed to be a never-Trumper, but said he was gonna vote for Trump this time around. At first I thought that was contradictory and certainly sounds contradictory, but then I realized he wouldn't vote FOR Trump but he would pull the lever (or punch the chad or whatever) for NOT(NOT Trump) and that it isn't contradictory at all! The fact that NOT(NOT Trump) happens to be Trump in this case is immaterial.

So what's so scary about NOT Trump that people would consider voting for NOT(NOT Trump)? Hardly anything really. EXCEPT! NOT Trump coupled with far left Democrats controlling all other branches of government scares a LOT of people to death. And when I write all other branches, I mean ALL other branches. It's believed, perhaps incorrectly, that NOT Trump with a democrat controlled congress will pack the Supreme court with far left judges that will strongly assist in completely remaking America, and not in ways that will benefit non-Democrats or Conservatives. Indeed, the belief of non-Democrats and Conservatives is that this remaking of America will badly damage their well-being in many ways from economic to spiritual.

Note that many of these beliefs about how they're going to be damaged may not be objectively true. But the NOT Trump party has done a poor job of allaying these fears and NOT(NOT Trump) has been able to exploit these beliefs to his advantage. Here are a small subset of the fears:

Religion: The vast majority of atheists and anti-religionists belong to the NOT Trump party and many of those do think that religion is a very bad thing and should be squashed as much as possible. For evidence look no further than the contentiousness of nominating Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice. She's Catholic and it's clear that the left believes that somewhat devout Catholics should NOT be allowed on the Supreme Court no matter what. If you don't believe that to be true, show me one at least somewhat devout Catholic that the left would accept as a Supreme Court justice going forward.

Manufacturing Jobs: While NOT(NOT Trump)'s foreign policy includes trade wars and border walls, NOT Trump's foreign policy is likely to be more globalist and more pro-China. While NOT(NOT Trump)'s policy may or may not have increased manufacturing jobs in the United States, it is strongly perceived by many that it did and NOT(NOT Trump) has very successfully exploited this perception.

Riots: Many who will vote NOT(NOT Trump) are watching with horror and fascination as Democrat run cities with Democrat headed police in Democrat controlled states burn because of riots (allegedly) caused by Democrat controlled police forces brutally killing black males. NOT Trump and the NOT Trump party have been slow to condemn the violence leaving many to fear that the whole country will burn if NOT Trump is elected. This fear is perception and not necessarily reality but NOT Trump and party have done little to nothing to alleviate the fear.

Abortion: Many people are very anti-abortion and want to limit it as much as possible. NOT(NOT Trump) has been much more supportive of their position than many of the NOT Trump party.

Systemic Racism and Other Wokeness: Many people greatly fear the concept of Systemic Racism, Critical Race Theory, White Fragility, etc. After all, the general concept is that all white people are racist (and therefore evil) no matter what. It's not surprising that not everyone wants to jump on that bandwagon. NOT(NOT Trump) has banned Critical Race Theory training for government institutions and that was very appealing to many.

And many more.

Again, all of these things are perceptions and fears as opposed to some cast-in-concrete objective future reality. But what is certain to me, is that the party of NOT Trump has not only done very little to address these fears and perceptions, but has in many cases actively stoked them and has "othered" those with different perceptions, goals and beliefs (for example, Obama's "bitter clingers," Hillary's "basket of deplorables," etc.). The problem with "othering" many tens of millions of people is that a very large "other" is created and they become the enemy.

And that enemy is voting for NOT(NOT Trump). Not because they like Trump but because NOT Trump is extremely scary to them.

Who am I voting for? Well, I endorse NOT Trump. Mostly because many of those I care about are severely negatively affected by Trump being president. For the most part, they're not directly or tangibly adversely affected, rather the mere circumstance of Trump being president badly damages their mental health and well-being.

If not for that, I might have been a NOT(NOT Trump) voter. After all, trade wars and border walls coupled with ever rising minimum wages is fantastic for a roboticist like me and I'm guessing I'll be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars richer if NOT(NOT Trump) wins.

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Looking for the Math gene

Imagine if being shortsighted, a bit shy and socially awkward, not much handsome or strong, would still end up being a great boost to your chances of making babies and passing on your genes?

That’s what arguing for a genetic ability for ‘mathiness’ may entail, as the qualities above are pretty common among ‘mathy’ people (I know, I live among them). I can get why at least ‘mathy’ people would very much like to believe that :-)

As I see it, if anything, genes for “mathiness” would be more of an evolutionary burden than a gift. At least up to the last three decades, when being a ‘nerd’ shifted to being acceptable or even a positive trait – though in social circles where they also have lower than replacement reproductive rates, not helping much with the evolutionary part.

Yet, as Bret may be arguing, it is undeniable the influence of Jewish heritage, particularly of the Ashkenazi sort, in the mathematical sciences of the last 2 centuries. The disproportinate presence of Jews in modern Academia has been a source of envy with fateful consequences, such as Nazi Germany banning a sizable part of their own academic elite - handing their enemies a most valuable resource, as those same minds led America to the ultimate weapon (and the best proof that “karma is a b****” you may ever find).

Is it possible that Ashkenazi “mathiness” is a genetic trait, as Bret poses? We know intelligence is heritable, and there is even a (reasonable?) case on Ashkenazi IQ being above average. Yet geneticists have been looking – very unsuccesfully – for “gay genes” for half a century now. I wonder, if a nearly primal thing as love for humans can’t easily be represented by a set of genes, what to say about love for numbers?

But if we are to invoke history, we must go all the way through. After all, notwithstanding the cultural hallmarks of Israel, it is not there that you’ll find the great pyramids, Giza (c. 2500 BC) being built way before Abraham or the Kingdom of Judah (c. 900 BC) were around.

The mathematical acumen of the Egyptians was probably acquired by the Babylonians before 1600 BC. Though also a semitic people, they enslaved their Hebrew cousins a thousand years later, and we can conjecture the captives must have learned some math too – the Torah/Old Testament does present the number ‘pi’ as 3 (though Babylonians knew it with a few more decimal places). By the time Judeans were getting back their land (c. 540 BC), the torch of ancient Math was being passed on to another people of no semitic kinship: the Greek.

By then Thales of Miletus had already invented the fundamental stone of proper Mathematics, the Axiomatic method. He used it to prove the first theorems in geometry we know of – though he probably got them from the Egyptians who ‘knew’ it without formal proof. A generation later Pythagoras (or whatever group of people under that name) would initiate that famed school of thought, after traveling around Egypt and Persia, drinking from those mathematical sources too.

In the next 300 years the Greek would advance Math beyond anything seen previously, reaching their highest point with Euclid’s Elements (in Alexandria) and, a generation later, the greatest mathematician of the ancient world: Archimedes (288-212 BC) of Syracuse, though he did study in Alexandria too. This man will be responsible, nearly 17 centuries later, for the resurrection of the Heliocentric system (Copernicus got the idea from an Archimedes’ book, though Archimedes himself built on another Greek, Aristharcus of Samos); and the birth of integro-differential calculus by Fermat-Newton-Leibniz, both hallmarks of the modern scientific revolution.

At this point, maybe a keen observer back then would be justified at wondering about a Hellenistic gene for mathematics, except they had no idea about genes and so far Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians and Greek had not too many genetic connections. They did have cultural bridges built along history though. ‘Nature 0’ X ‘Nurture 1’ so far.

Archimedes will die by the hands of the new up and coming Empire - the Romans - in the second punic war, because his king (and cousin) made the mistake to betray the Romans for Carthago, a city of Phoenician background (so another cousin of the Judeans) trying their hand in the great geopolitical game. The relevant mathematicians of the next few centuries will mostly be around the Library of Alexandria (in Egypt, at some point Roman possession too). For all their mastering of engineering techniques, the Romans themselves won’t contribute much else to fundamental mathematics. We also know that Hellenistic cities of this ancient period had more literacy rates than Israeli ones, for example. So apparently, having a good Library was of much greater value than any genetic consideration back then. ‘Nature 0’ X ‘Nurture 2’.

A bit over 600 years later, the (western) Romans will fall to “barbarians” with no mathematical knowledge whatsoever, taking down also anything resembling an “education system”, with libraries (and whole cities) burnt, no more tutoring paths to Roman citizens, no more engineering corps and orderly societies under Roman pax and law. Western Europe will forget most of the Greek-Roman former ‘high culture’, Greek mathematics very much included. They will take more than 700 years to rediscover it, by translating it from Arab back to Latin after expelling the Muslims from Toledo (Spain) and taking the great Library the Arabs built therein – igniting a process that will lead to the European Renascence a couple of centuries later. There again, ‘Nature 0’ X ‘Nurture 3’.

By the time the Romans fell, they had expelled the Jews out of Judea for nearly 400 years. Though literacy rate of Jews before diaspora was probably below 3%, post-diaspora Jews were mainly influenced by their more nerdy faction, the Pharisees, who placed great emphasis on teaching male Jews from a young age to read their sacred texts. Yet, after six hundred years of diaspora the worldwide Jew population fell from 5 to merely 1 million, if much. A good deal of those lost Jews were not dead, but probably gave up on being Jews, for it was too taxing to keep the strict Pharisaic laws.

It is possible that this ‘selective pressure’ among Jews themselves drove the “strongest/smartest” to stay? Is it possible that continued formal education throughout centuries of father-to-son (or Rabbi-to-students) led to (be it ‘evolutive’ and/or ‘Lamarck-like’ – mind you, epigenetics is in fashion again) a sort of smarter people?

I don’t know, but in what refers strictly to Mathematics that was hardly the case: the new hot point was the Arab world, who greatly developed our computational capability by the introduction of a more intelligent notation (algarisms) and upon incorporating a grossly underestimated invention from the Indians: the zero. They also had libraries full of that old Greek wonderful math.

You will first hear of Jewish mathematicians along history in Spain circa 1100, back in the intersection among Muslims, Jews and Christians, where the last two are trying to cacht up with the first one.

Even allowing that capacity for language may lead to mathematical skills (since math is a kind of language too), there is still the point that literacy here isn’t a very well defined concept. A sizable proportion of male Jews were exposed to reading from an early age, but how efficient was that? Up to the 1600s (previous to Gutemberg), the best case scenarios would be the most devot (or connected to Rabbinic service) would read much of a very limited literature (few books around); the most common scenario is the one of a majority that would scarcely read any literature in their everyday life. Many probably even forgot what they’ve learned when kids. To drive home this point, even in relatively modern Tsarist empire of 1897, one third of Jewish male population was illiterate. I doubt pre-1600s was even half as good as that.

But let us suppose that a good number (say, at least 50% of males) of Ashkenazi in post-1600 Europe were not only literate, but actually used letters in their everyday life in meaningful ways. They certainly had a head start compared to the rest of the European population. Let us also say that at least 20% of these (hence 10% of total male population) used mathematics – four operations basic stuff at least– in their everyday life in meaningful ways. It remains the question: would 2 or 3 hundred years (give or take a few more if you wish) be enough for selection pressure to act on this group?

Just for comparison, lactose tolerance was developed among European populations in a timeframe considered real quick: a few (3 to 5, give or take) thousand years. And that’s for a genetic variation that depends on far, far less genes than a trait like ‘intelligence’.

I don’t know about you, but I am willing to bet that whatever points “nature” scores on this matter, “nurture” will be far off in the scoreboard.

Monday, September 21, 2020

Eugenist in Chief

 In "The World According to Bret", we learn that this is a complex world - one where millions of lines wouldn't suffice to deal with the complexity of race in America, for example.

I believe the world is indeed very complex, though race in America doesn't look to be particularly so. 

With races, it is all very simple: we have genes, and some have superior genes, while others don't. I've learned it with The President of the United States of America, so it must be right:


"You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota."


How could Bret disagree?



Thursday, September 17, 2020

The World According to Bret

The world is really complicated. I can't figure it out anymore. That's one reason I haven't been blogging much. I find myself unable to put together any coherent arguments with sufficient context to make sense to anyone including myself.

Consider the following image:

You've probably seen this illusion before or at least one like it. The two circles are the same color (yellow). Yet they look completely different because of the context. And the context is kinda similar: a bunch of greenish and purplish stripes.

I subscribe to only one newspaper: The New York Times. It's somewhat left of center in the political spectrum of the United States. I read a number of blogs, most of them to the right of center.

What is striking to me is the difference in context between the left of center New York Times and the right of center media that I read. They can take the exact same yellow circle and make it look completely different.

A trivial example is "mostly peaceful protests." If you have 100 protestors and 95 of them are perfectly peaceful and 5 are not peaceful, it is, by definition, a mostly peaceful protest. Indeed, it's 20 times more peaceful than a protest in which all 100 people were not peaceful.

Now we can build a context around the "mostly peaceful protest." We can focus on the 95 peaceful protestors and their message and their treatment by their ideological opposition and by police and authorities. Perhaps they were tear gassed. Perhaps the were forced to stop protesting. Perhaps they have a very important message that's being stifled. And so forth.

Or our context can be what the 5 not peaceful protestors are doing. Perhaps they're attacking police. Perhaps they're burning dumpsters or even buildings. Perhaps there's other violence: arson, rape, even murder. Our context can be full of the lawlessness and chaos of the non peaceful protestors and can be quite frightening. And so forth.

Same story either way, but radically different contexts which causes radically different optics and impressions.

When I was 15 I was a communist. At 30 I was a libertarian. At 45 I was sort of a conservative. Now? I'm the devil's advocate. Whatever you tell me, I have a strong inclination to argue the opposite. Fortunately, I've also learned to mostly keep my mouth shut because, let me tell you, always taking the other side doesn't tend to make a lot of friends!!

When advocating for the other side, I often am told, "I can't fathom why you believe X, I've just provided evidence that contradicts it!!!!" But that evidence is like the circle above. I said the circle is yellow and they showed me a circle that looks orange within their context, within their perspective, the context on the left. To me the circle looks (or at least can look) yellow, because I can see the circle within the context on the right.

I often try to estimate how many (English) words it would take to fully describe an issue. For example, I estimate that to fully describe race relations in the United States with complete context would be more than a trillion words. I've perhaps read a million words on the subject and based on that extremely incomplete yet still significant knowledge I have developed a certain feel/intuition about the subject.

If you now show me a one-thousand word article that doesn't match that intuition, it's not gonna affect me all that much. Why? First, like every human I suffer from confirmation bias and I tend to discount things that don't fit within my worldview. Second, even if I get over my confirmation bias, you've shown me one-thousandth the information I've already processed, a lot of it already in conflict, so it wouldn't make sense for me to suddenly ignore everything I "know" and adopt a completely new perspective based on this small new bit of evidence you've shown me. Third, while your new information looks like an orange circle within the context you've provided, I probably don't share that context so the circle looks yellow to me.

To put it another way, I know a millionth of what there is to know about race relations, you then showed me a billionth of what there is to know, and either way we'll both continue to swim in a vast sea of ignorance regarding that particular subject with alarmingly incomplete and distorted contexts. Oh sure, I may be off by a couple of orders of magnitude with my estimates but the gist remains the same.

That's one subject. There are millions of subjects with similar complexity so that sea of ignorance becomes a universe (multiverse?) of ignorance.

Given that ignorance is bliss, I'm apparently so blissed out that I'm unaware of it!

Have a blissful day!

Wednesday, July 08, 2020

X is Hitler?

In my lifetime, there have been a lot of people compared to Hitler - especially presidents: currently Trump, but before him Obama, and before him Bush (who was often called "bushitler"), and before them many others.

It's so prevalent that Godwin's law was created: "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".

But none of these Hitler comparisons resonate with me. That's because for Hitler, specific attributes, actions and characteristics subjectively stand out to me in sort of a personal Rorschach test where instead of looking at an inkblot I picture or think about Hitler. The very first thing I think of when I think of Hitler is that he put millions of Jews (and others) in concentration camps in terrible conditions then horrifically killed the vast majority of them. Note the past tense of that last statement. It's not that Hitler might or would have done that in the future, but rather he actually did do that. To me, that's the number one unique characteristic of Hitler that pops into my mind when I think about him.

But if I ignore that, my next Rorschach response is that he was a major instigator of the biggest global conflict ever (WWII) that claimed many tens of millions of lives. Again, note the past tense.

If I ignore both the genocide and the world war, then other more trivial things jump out at me; perhaps things that were enablers of some of his terrible actions. For example, I believe that he was fairly intelligent, extremely well read, a persuasive orator, and charismatic. Lastly, during my Hitler Rorschach test, for some reason I generally remember that he was a vegetarian for part of his life.

After that, my Hitler Rorschach test yields very little response. That's not to say that objectively Hitler didn't have many other attributes, actions and characteristics that defined him. I'm just saying that when Hitler pops up in my mind (pretty much universally because someone else brought him up), subjectively, those handful of things are what I think of.

So when I hear "X is Hitler" it just doesn't resonate or convince me because subjectively, to me, if X hasn't actually killed millions in a concentration camp based genocide and started a world war, then X is simply much different than Hitler in my mind.

A variant is "X is as bad as Hitler." For example, "Trump is as bad as Hitler because ICE puts foreign children in cages." This is also subjective, but to me, no U.S. president or politician has come close to being as bad as Hitler. It's bad that foreign children are separated from their parents and detained (put in cages), but there are orders of magnitude fewer children and many orders of magnitude fewer children are killed (and none intentionally) relative to Jewish children in Hitler's Germany. The size of the atrocity makes a difference to me. Sure, one child dying is really bad, but 1,000,000 children dying is a lot worse to me.

As I mentioned above, the tense of the verb matters (subjectively) to me. Thus, "X might/will become as bad as Hitler" just doesn't work for me at least partly because even Hitler wouldn't have become as bad as Hitler except in the very specific set of circumstances that he lived (childhood, WWI, Treaty of Versailles, external influences, economic depression, etc.). A variant of this is "X is on the same path as Hitler." That's more possible but none of our Presidents nor politicians have been on a path anything like Hitler's in my opinion. For example, none of them have written a screed like Mein Kampf which foretold Hitler's ambition and genocidal nature.

I also question to what extent "X is like Hitler" or one of the many variants I listed above more so than "X is like Y" where Y is some other tyrant such as Franco, Stalin, Pinochet, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander the Great, etc. Why is X more like Hitler than any of these others? There are thousands of tyrants to choose from.

I'm always wondering why Hitler?

Tuesday, April 07, 2020

Until the End of Time

Here I sit in California where there is a (partial) lock down of its citizens' activities for the purposes of "social distancing" in order to (partially) reduce the impact the COVID-19 epidemic.

The toll the virus is having is bad. While merely hundreds of people have died in California as I write this, many thousands have died in New York (mostly in and around the city) and more than 10,000 have died in the United States.

The toll from the lock down is not insignificant. Many have encountered or are facing economic devastation from which they will never recover. Mental health issues including domestic abuse (from going stir crazy), depression, and suicide are likely to be much high than usual. Other adverse health impacts (for example from not being able to exercise since parks and gyms are closed) and life impacts (marriages and things like court cases being substantially delayed) are increasing by the day.

Someone had to analyze the tradeoffs between the impact of the virus and the adverse effects of a lock down. Because of the federal structure of the United States, this responsibility falls primarily to the governors and mayors of the country (states and localities).
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC), state governments, and not the federal government, have most of the power to place people in isolation or quarantine under certain circumstances.
I don't envy those who have had to analyze such tradeoffs and make decisions based on that analysis. It's definitely a lose-lose situation and it's impossible to know with the limited and erroneous data available at the moment what overall impact a given decision will have.

The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, shut down New York state in the face of exponentially increasing deaths from COVID-19. All-in-all, I personally thought he did a good job in both making and communicating his decisions.

In the press conference where he announced the lock down, he said a couple things that I think are notable. The first was "I take full responsibility for this decision [to lock down New York]." I applaud that and that statement is part of the public record so he owns it and will own it in the future.

However, I found one of his statements quite frightening: "if everything we do saves just one life, I'll be happy." The reason I find this frightening is I've been wondering just what the threshold is in order to justify extreme measures such as a lock down.

Approximately 1,000 people die every year in New York from influenza or resulting complications. There's no doubt a yearly winter long social distancing lock down would save at least one life. Could that justify an annual lock down? A permanent lock down? If not, why not? What is the threshold in lives that justifies it? Did that threshold get lower now because of COVID-19?

There is little doubt that governments at all levels have broad powers that pretty much trump the constitution when there is a state of emergency. But defining an emergency is a subjective thing. About 3 million people die from all causes in the United States every year. If draconian measures are taken, that number could be reduced substantially. Is anything that causes significant death sufficient to declare a state of emergency? If not, why not?

Some estimates of the COVID-19 impact were millions dead in the United States. However, those numbers came from models that were based on terribly incomplete and probably extremely erroneous data. Are worst case numbers based on bogus data sufficient to declare a state of emergency? That's pretty much what happened in this case. Those numbers might turn out to be correct but that's very unlikely. But we'll never know since we don't have an alternate universe in which to test different courses of action (including doing nothing).

I find the issue of punishing everybody to protect the few interesting as well. A healthy 20-year-old has very little (or at least much less) to fear from the virus. To restrict and harm a whole and very large class of people (young) in order to benefit other people (older folks like me) without any sort of compensation seems wrong to me. The psychology of that may backfire at some point - 20-year-olds may eventually say "enough" and ignore the lockdowns.

I'm also concerned that giving police extraordinary powers is often a really bad idea because it gives a great deal of authority to people who like power and authority and often aren't terribly thoughtful or responsible. For example, yesterday police arrested a man paddleboarding in the middle of the ocean for violating California's lock down laws. They got two boats in order to chase him down, forced him to shore, handcuffed him, and took him to the nearby Sheriff's station to book him.

I guess the thinking is that if they allow one guy to paddleboard in the middle of the ocean by himself, then everybody's gonna paddleboard in the middle of the ocean by themselves and, uh, and, well, I'm not sure what the problem would be with that. Indeed, it seems to me that the police were abusing their authority and not using common sense and wasting resources.

In full disclosure, I've been sneaking on to the beach (all the beaches are closed along with the ocean) in the middle of the night in order to run because my knees only can withstand running on very soft surfaces such as deep sand. So I might also end up in the slammer like the paddleboarder. I would stick to bicycling but they've also closed all the bicycling trails. They've also closed all the gyms. So I can either sit around and get fat and out-of-shape and unhealthy or I can break the laws of this state of emergency.

But it's not just people playin' in the parks:
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced plans for a spying program to look for businesses that are open. He announced this week that he has already shut off the water and power to eight businesses that he didn't deem "essential."
Essential? Essential to whom? That's another subjective term. In Vermont, clothing seems to be considered non-essential:
...retailers such as Target, Walmart and Costco are now required to limit the sales of nonessential items in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Yet I imagine if someone goes to the grocery store naked, the police would decide that clothing was indeed essential!

Where does it end? COVID-19 may be with us forever now. It may or may not be susceptible to a vaccine (other corona viruses are just colds and nobody has come up with a vaccine for them yet). It may or may not ever be reliably treatable (perhaps anti-virals will work to some degree but they probably won't be completely effective). People are still arguing over whether or not masks will help significantly (I personally am absolutely convinced masks will help).

So keeping the lock down going forever may always save one more life and give Cuomo and others the reason they need to keep New York and much of the rest of the country locked down until the end of time.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Recent Real World Example of Efficiency vs. Resilience

I'm not a very good libertarian because I don't support unlimited free trade. One reason is that unrestricted free trade tends to concentrate manufacturing of given products in a small number of countries. That's very efficient, of course, because of amazing economies of scale. But what if something happens to one of those massive manufacturers? For example, in this post I wrote:
As a roboticist, I have almost a fetish for electric motors and actuators and the production thereof. While I’ve never visited their factory in China (Hong Kong area), some colleagues that have visited it describe Johnson Electric[johnson] as one of the most awesomely efficient motor production facilities in the world; in one end goes copper ore and other raw materials and out the other end comes millions of motors per day. It’s a shining example of economies of scale and efficiency. Their specialty is automotive electric motors (for power windows, for example) and they produce a significant fraction of all motors worldwide in that niche. If trade restrictions and tariffs were further reduced, no doubt they would have even a larger share of the market and be even more efficient and be able to produce and sell the motors at a somewhat lower cost.
I imagine that part of the appeal of free trade is that there would be many extremely efficient companies like Johnson Electric, each thriving in a specific niche with tremendous volumes, yet with enough competition from a handful of other companies to drive relentless innovation, quality improvement, and cost reduction.
However, there’s potentially a downside to such a scenario. What happens if something happens to Johnson Electric? What happens if there’s political unrest (war), a fire, or a natural disaster?
To war, fire and natural disaster we can now add epidemic. China's latest coronavirus problem is causing economic turmoil beyond the epicenters of the epidemic:
Some of this would happen if there is any international trade at all. But the more free trade there is, the more susceptible we all are to the economic disruptions that have been (and will be) caused by the virus. Having multiple sources for those things manufactured predominantly in China would be less efficient in the general case, but more resilient in the face of issues in one part of the world.

My company has been adversely affected (but not badly) by these disruptions. We have most of our electronics boards manufactured in China and we had to scramble to move that production elsewhere because the factories we normally use have been shut down due to quarantines.

Nobody twisted our arms and told us we had to manufacture in China, but in a world with minimal tariffs and minimal trade restrictions, that's simply what naturally happens. If China hadn't taken over manufacturing small quantities of boards, domestic companies would develop and while they wouldn't be as inexpensive and efficient as China was before the coronavirus outbreak, I believe it would be close enough to not matter much. In other words, less efficient, but not terribly less efficient.

Somewhat less efficient but more resilient.

Monday, October 28, 2019

And in Other Sports News...

The National Ultimate Frisbee Finals were held in San Diego last Sunday and an a capella quartet I was in sang the national anthems of the United States and Canada at the beginning of it. I've always wondered where they get the random people to sing the anthems at these sporting events and now I know - it's people like me! There's no recording (alas!) but here's a picture of us intrepid singers (it was windy - that's why it looks like I'm having a bad hair day):

The men's finals was really exciting. The Seattle Sockeyes won 13-12 in sudden death overtime against the Chicago Machine. The Sockeyes were up 11-6. Then the Machine scored 5 in a row to tie it up, then it was tied again at 12-12 with the next goal deciding the game. Both teams went all out for the last point for an exciting finale!

I used to enthusiastically play Ultimate so it was really fun to watch the sport. I think it's unfortunate that the sport hasn't really ever caught on at the professional level because it's really an exciting spectator sport.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Will Trump Make it to the End of His First Term?

In 2017, in a comment to one of Clovis' posts, I wrote:
And, by the way, I think Trump's chance of finishing his first term is less than 70%. He's old and someone his age has about a 7% chance of dying in the next 3+ years. Nobody's been more hated as a president, and while he's a pretty hard target, I think he has a 10+% chances of being assassinated - all you need is one traitorous secret service agent and Trump's a goner. I think there's a 5% chance he just gets sick of it all and quits (resigns). And I think there's around a 10% chance he is removed from office because they do find something bad enough about him and Russia or whatever.
I think the odds are still roughly the same. He probably won't die of natural causes and he almost certainly won't resign because "he just gets sick of it all." On the other hand, the chance of his being impeached and removed from office is probably more than 10% at this point.

I still think there's a significant chance he'll be assassinated, possibly along with Barr and other investigators in Trump's administration. If those investigators really begin indicting people and if there really is a "deep state," then they'll start killing people to stop the investigations, and I think Trump would be the primary target. And the likelihood of assassination will go up substantially if it looks like Trump is likely to win in 2020.

Whether or not there is a "deep state" is either a matter of definition or degree. There are around 2 million federal employees (far more if you include military) and most of them keep their jobs even when the parties of the president and/or congress change. These bureaucrats are in some sense a "deep state" in that they're entrenched very deeply and nearly impossible to get rid of. However, they're not necessarily a "deep state" by the more commonly used definition of people conspiring to rule over the people while ignoring elected officials and perhaps to use any method, including assassination, to guarantee their continued power.

But do they need to conspire to unseat of assassinate Trump? Or at least conspire on a grand scale? I don't think so. I believe that it is true that the vast majority of federal employees would love to get rid of Trump and I believe that each of those is willing to do at least a little bit in order to achieve that goal. Some percentage is probably willing to do quite a lot more than a little bit. Multiply that percentage, even if pretty small, by 2 million people, and suddenly you have an awful lot effort directed at bring down Trump, perhaps tens if not hundreds of thousands of people.

As a result, no conspiracy is necessary to have Trump assassinated and I think there's about a 10% chance of that happening. From large yet largely unconnected groups of people, unpredictable behaviors will emerge.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

In The Latest Critter News ...

... Rats taught to drive tiny cars to lower their stress levels.

The most important part of this bizarre story: "The rats were not required to take a driving test at the end of the study."

However, I'm wondering, did any of the rats suffer from road rage?

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

In the Wilds of San Diego

I ran into my friend Tom while mountain biking today ...

... My friend Tom T. Tarantula.

(It be more accurate to say I almost ran over Mr. Tarantula).

Friday, October 18, 2019

Quote of the Day

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,—in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." -- EDMUND BURKE, “Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” 1791.—The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, vol. 4, pp. 51–52 (1899).

This quote was embedded in an interesting speech by US Attorney General William Barr.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Epic Construction Projects

There are train tracks directly behind my office. It used to be a single track, but a 2nd one was built and is about a mile long.

It took more than 2 years from the start of construction to finish that mile of track. At that rate, it would've taken 4,000 years to complete the US Transcontinental Railroad. So I was amused when an article by the historian Victor David Hanson (VDH) asked the question:
Does anyone believe that contemporary Americans could build another transcontinental railroad in six years?
Oh I'm sure someone, somewhere believes that it could be done again, but it seems beyond implausible to me. You'd think that with all of the technology we've developed, we could just snap our fingers and voila!, new railroads and regular roads and bridges and ... would appear in no time. But no, not even close.

VDH notes other typical nearly absurdly slow projects:
Californians tried to build a high-speed rail line. But after more than a decade of government incompetence, lawsuits, cost overruns and constant bureaucratic squabbling, they have all but given up. The result is a half-built overpass over the skyline of Fresno — and not yet a foot of track laid.

California’s roads now are mostly the same as we inherited them, although the state population has tripled. We have added little to our freeway network, either because we forgot how to build good roads or would prefer to spend the money on redistributive entitlements.

When California had to replace a quarter section of the earthquake-damaged San Francisco Bay Bridge, it turned into a near-disaster, with 11 years of acrimony, fighting, cost overruns — and a commentary on our decline into Dark Ages primitivism. Yet 82 years ago, our ancestors built four times the length of our singe replacement span in less than four years. It took them just two years to design the entire Bay Bridge and award the contracts.

Our generation required five years just to plan to replace a single section. In inflation-adjusted dollars, we spent six times the money on one-quarter of the length of the bridge and required 13 agencies to grant approval. In 1936, just one agency oversaw the entire bridge project.

California has not built a major dam in 40 years. Instead, officials squabble over the water stored and distributed by our ancestors, who designed the California State Water Project and Central Valley Project.
Contemporary Californians would have little food or water without these massive transfers, and yet they often ignore or damn the generation that built the very system that saves us.

America went to the moon in 1969 with supposedly primitive computers and backward engineering. Does anyone believe we could launch a similar moonshot today? No American has set foot on the moon in the last 47 years, and it may not happen in the next 50 years.
VDH wonders if a new mythology will be born based on our forebearers being able to construct wonders far beyond our modern day capabilities:
Dark Age Greeks tried to make sense of the massive ruins of their forgotten forbearers’ monumental palaces that were still standing around. As illiterates, they were curious about occasional clay tablets they plowed up in their fields with incomprehensible ancient Linear B inscriptions.
We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants who left behind monuments [such as the transcontinental railroad] that we cannot replicate, but instead merely use or even mock.
I do see his point. Who isn't frustrated with traffic being badly slowed for years while crews patch a few holes at a snail's pace?

However, VDH did leave out a few details that I think are important. First, the working conditions were really, really bad for most of those epic projects. Around 1,200 people died building the Transcontinental Railroad. The construction of the Golden Gate Bridge was noted for how "safe" it was - only 11 people died. Things are much, much more comfortable now. Almost nobody would be willing to work in those conditions and take those risks (especially for what they were paid) and even fewer in power are willing to let them take those risks.

Yet before we blame those running the projects for the death toll, we need to keep in mind that those horrible working conditions were often a step up from what the workers were previously experiencing. For example,
Many more workers were imported from the Guangdong Province of China, which at the time, beside great poverty, suffered from the violence of the Taiping Rebellion. Most Chinese workers were planning on returning with their new found "wealth" when the work was completed. Most of the men received between one and three dollars per day, the same as unskilled white workers ... A diligent worker could save over $20 per month after paying for food and lodging—a "fortune" by Chinese standards.
Second, though he does grudgingly admit it, VDH glosses over the fact that working with modern technology very often creates more value than building yet another road. Instead of concrete, we build most of our roads with glass fiber and electrons and both the market and the taxpayer think that's more valuable.

So to me, it's not so much that we were once competent at building immense material things and now we're not. Instead, it's that once upon a time we were very poor and the best we could do was work high-risk construction jobs for the "fortune" of net $20 per month whereas now we can do oh-so-much better doing other things. And those that still work construction jobs (reasonably) demand orders-of-magnitude higher pay, far better working conditions, and far better safety.

VDH ends his article with:
Our ancestors were builders and pioneers and mostly fearless. We are regulators, auditors, bureaucrats, adjudicators, censors, critics, plaintiffs, defendants, social media junkies and thin-skinned scolds. A distant generation created; we mostly delay, idle and gripe.

As we walk amid the refuse, needles and excrement of the sidewalks of our fetid cities; as we sit motionless on our jammed ancient freeways; and as we pout on Twitter and electronically whine in the porticos of our Ivy League campuses, will we ask: “Who were these people who left these strange monuments that we use but can neither emulate nor understand?”

In comparison to us, they now seem like gods.
Perhaps we do "mostly delay, idle and gripe." But we can afford to, our ancestors could not. To me, our ancestors seem far less like gods and far more like people desperately impoverished compared to us trying to do the best they could. I thank them for taking the risks and building our comfort, I really do, but gods? Not so much.

Thursday, October 03, 2019

Flynn Effected

The Flynn Effect is one of the most cited topics in the debate over nature versus nurture regarding intelligence:

The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century.[1] When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first. Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100.
Test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present. For the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, a study published in the year 2009 found that British children's average scores rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008.[2] Similar gains have been observed in many other countries in which IQ testing has long been widely used, including other Western European countries, Japan, and South Korea.[1]
This effect is strong evidence against intelligence being overwhelmingly heritable (though since IQs run from less than 50 to 200+, there's still a fair amount of potential room for nature). As a result, James R. Flynn (for whom the Effect was named), has been somewhat of a hero for those who discount the heritable nature of intelligence.

It seems, though, that Mr. Flynn's hero status has waned substantially. He recently tried to get a book published (In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor), but it was rejected out-of-hand by the publisher. The reasons for the rejection were explained in an email (the whole article is interesting) from the publisher:
The ironies are frightening (to me), yet delicious. The first is that a book arguing for free speech is censored. That's kinda gettin' near the end of the road for free speech, isn't it? The second is that a progressive hero is censored. As long as he was willing to research and write stuff that supports that which all right thinking people are certain is correct, he's a hero and is cited incessantly. Write something a little different and bzzzzt, throw the bastard out.

The truth may be dangerous and now we're at a point where trying to find the truth is even more dangerous.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Another Topic Too Dangerous to Discuss?

I find the topic of sex, gender, identity, power and social constructionism very interesting. And here's an interesting article on the topic with the following catchy excerpt:
I basically just made it up.
Human characteristics generally have a basis in some mix of nature and nurture (or DNA and memes if you prefer). Topics like the above are dangerous to discuss because if it can be interpreted that one is putting just a little too much emphasis on nature (for example that the contribution of nature/DNA is non-zero) then one can get in a lot of trouble.

I sometimes wonder if the study of biology and particularly genetics is going to be shut down in the future. The problem is that it's seemingly increasingly at odds with social science. Biologists are finding more and more correlations between genes and human traits like intelligence and various behaviors via Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and are starting to propose mechanisms for the genetic basis of those traits while Social Scientists clearly assert that what biologists are finding simply cannot be correct.

Perhaps not all of biology will be banned - just those topics that have to do with things like intelligence, behavior and identity. Nonetheless, it seems like we might be headed for a different sort of Creationism - not one that's deity based, but rather social science based.

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Richard Stallman Resigns

There have been topics that I've wanted to write about but have been hesitant to do so. For example, I found the Epstein phenomenon to be fascinating (though awful), from his motivations to his operations to his (apparent) suicide. However, it was moderately clear that writing even one word about the subject that could possibly be interpreted by anybody as not being politically correct could be devastating to me.

I met Richard Stallman, a MacArthur Fellowship Award (Genius Grant) recipient and quintessential MIT nerd a few times when I was at MIT, both at CSAIL and at parties. He was, in my opinion, quite opinionated and could be very abrasive, but he was also very smart, very talented, extremely productive and seemed to overall have a good heart as far as I could tell.

He was recently forced to resign from various positions:
In 2019, Stallman was reported by colleagues to have made statements by email in defense of Marvin Minsky, then deceased, against allegations of sexual abuse in connection with Jeffrey Epstein's alleged child sex trafficking operation.[114] In the resulting furor, Stallman resigned from both MIT[115][116] and the Free Software Foundation.[117]
I'm not totally sure, but my recollection is that Minsky was at least somewhat of a mentor to Stallman, so it's not surprising that Stallman might be inclined to try and defend his dead mentor and given that he's the quintessential MIT nerd also not surprising that he'd lack the filters to realize it would be a really bad idea to do so.

Anyway, if I needed confirmation that Epstein was yet another topic I should stay way away from, this was it.

My question is: what can I write about that won't get me in trouble? I guess more science and math stuff so that's what I'll focus on.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Interesting Abstract

Here is an abstract I found interesting:

Technological innovation can create or mitigate risks of catastrophes—such as nuclear war, extreme climate change, or powerful artificial intelligence run amok—that could imperil human civilization. What is the relationship between economic growth and these existential risks? In a model of endogenous and directed technical change, with moderate parameters, existential risk follows a Kuznets-style inverted Ushape. This suggests we could be living in a unique “time of perils,” having developed technologies advanced enough to threaten our permanent destruction, but not having grown wealthy enough yet to be willing to spend much on safety. Accelerating growth during this “time of perils” initially increases risk, but improves the chances of humanity’s survival in the long run. Conversely, even short-term stagnation could substantially curtail the future of humanity. Nevertheless, if the scale effect of existential risk is large and the returns to research diminish rapidly, it may be impossible to avert an eventual existential catastrophe.

This has been my intuition for a long time. My metaphor is this. Humanity/civilization is on a runway in a scramjet accelerating towards a brick wall. If we go full pedal to the metal we might, just might, be fast enough to lift off the runway in time to clear the brick wall. If we don't, we won't reach a high enough speed to to clear the wall but unfortunately our forward momentum is too great to stop and we're sure to hit the wall and that will be the end.

Thursday, September 05, 2019

YASP (Yet Another Sunset Photo)

As usual, from my apartment. This time with a little foreground rain. No rainbow though.

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Capitalism on Parade

Socialists have a long standing argument against capitalism: it commodifies human relations, trades lives for money, and exploits the brown working class for the pleasure and benefit of the white rich.

I give you Exhibit A, which actually isn't trying to be Exhibit A.

I was going to summarize the video, except it is so well done as to well reward the 20 minutes spent watching it.

If this shows socialists to be right, why are they, nonetheless, wrong?

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Burning Down the House

Those of a certain age, towards the trailing edge of the Baby Boom, very likely vividly remember Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel.

When the first of his books came out, the pantheon of primary readers was anchored by a trio of pallid characters: Dick, Jane, and some damn dog Spot. They did boring things — run! play! — in various boring ways, enervated by cold porridge prose.

Then along came Dr. Seuss. Off kilter drawings, quirky rhythms, and hare-brained adventures.

He is how I learned to read. I made my parents read those things to me until I had completely memorized them, a process made easier not only by their novelty, but by the cadences shoving the words into my brain. Having made the connection between sounds and words and letters, learning to read came effortlessly.

So how to view Dr. Seuss?

Poisonously, of course:

In the fall of 2017, there was a furor involving Dr. Seuss, the first lady and a school librarian that many people found surprising and disconcerting. In celebration of National Read a Book Day, Melania Trump had sent a parcel containing 10 Seuss titles to a school in Massachusetts.

What could possibly be wrong with this, providing such a powerful tool to help children read?

Lots, apparently.

At that point, we were well into the first year of the “Resistance,” and the librarian, Liz Phipps Soeiro, wanted to make various political points. Attacking Dr. Seuss was one of them. “Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature,” she wrote in an open letter to Mrs. Trump, adding: “Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

Being woke must be a real burden; but then, the savior business is never easy.

To be completely fair, Mr. Geissel was not without sin.

… in Geisel’s juvenilia, his early political cartooning and some of his first books for children, he evoked ethnic and racial caricatures that were common in the early 20th century and that, by the lights of the early 21st, appear shocking and shameful.

Is the full body of Geisel’s work fatally tainted by “harmful stereotypes”? Do the origins of the hat-wearing cat really lie in minstrelsy, as Kansas State University professor Philip Nel and others believe? And if so—assuming these transgressions are detectable to the civilian eye, which is not a sure thing—do they outweigh the joy and love of reading that Dr. Seuss brought to all sorts of children and families?

The author, Mrs. Gurdon, misses a critical point: the librarians presumption of an inborn moral superiority superpower.

This librarian is not alone. Everyone of these wokelings, the ones who want to tear down statues, rename buildings, or rubbish people like Mr. Gessel are, must be, asserting that their wokeness is timeless. That had they been alive in Dr. Seuss's time, they would have been just as enlightened as they are now. We must trust their judgment not as some post hoc virtue signaling, but rather as coming from a deeper place accessible only to the vanguard, give them special dispensation to decide for the rest of us which parts of our culture must be excised.

Thus, the first question to be asked of the this librarian, and every one of her ilk: Just who the hell do you think you are?