Lessons from Afghanistan

 

Exhuming McCarthy

Enemy sighted, enemy met, I'm addressing the realpolitik
You've seen start and you've seen quit
(I'm addressing the table of content)
I always thought of you as quick
Exhuming McCarthy
(Meet me at the book burning)

What lessons should we have learned from Afghanistan?

“Rule number one in war is that young men die.  Rule number two is that doctors can’t change rule number one.” This was a line of dialogue from the TV “comedy” M.A.S.H that it would be well to remember today.  We might not like what is happening in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean that we can change what is happening in Afghanistan.  We might be able to stop it, or reverse it, for a period of time, but we may not be able to change it forever.

That may be one of the lessons of Afghanistan.  The original mission, to retaliate against the attack on the World Trade Towers, got lost to the mission creep of nation building.  We achieved the original mission ong ago. The second mission was probably never realistic anyway.

Should the United States become isolationist?  Absolutely not. As long as we participate in global trade and need things from others in the globe, we have to protect our interests.  But our interests do not extend to the sovereign national rights of others. 

Should we deal with or trust those who punish those who practice other religions or women?  Maybe.  As much as we may not like it, or work to try and change it, others may still do things that offend us.

We can choose not to deal with those who practice those behaviors.

We can make it clear that we don’t condone those behaviors.

We can work to change those behaviors.  But,

We can not force a change in the those behaviors. 

What we may perceive as change may only last as long as we provide force.  That is not change. That is the illusion of change.

Another lesson might be to end any pretense that Realpolitik ever works.  There might not be a Taliban if the US had not supported the Mujahedeen in opposition to regime backed by the Soviet Union.  The Taliban might not have overrun Afghanistan in recent days if the US had not dealt with them in 2020 and chosen to release so many of their leaders.  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is demonstrably false.  “If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas” is demonstrably true. Let's definitely not lie down with dogs that are not our friends.

Defense!

 

Witchcraft

Those fingers in my hair
That sly come hither stare
That strips my conscience bare
It's witchcraft
And I've got no defense for it
The heat is too intense for it

So if you do have a defense, how good is it?

For those of you watching Ted Lasso ( and for those of you who are not, you are missing the best show on Television.  Season 2 Episode 4 is going to be on constant repeat at my home during the holiday season), in Season 2 Episode 6, Assistant Coach Nate Shelby executes  a surprise move in the closing minutes, by calling for a focus on defense rather than on offense when a winning goal is needed. Richmond FC is able to score the winning goal when the opposing FC makes a mistake.  While the media is surprised by Nate’s move, it should not be a surprise to any sports fan who know that, while it may not be exciting,  it is true that it is defense that wins championships.  The best defense is a good offense is exciting, but wrong.  A defensive strategy is also the Minimax strategy from Games Theory,  which is minimizing the maximum score by your opponent.

This is true of any repeating two-player game.  In the two-player game in the US Senate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be particularly adept at this strategy ( “100% of my focus is on blocking this administration’s (Biden’s ) agenda”).  This is not necessary the best long-term strategy for society.  That is why there are 100 senators .  They are supposed to not simply play a two-party game but play a 100 Senator Game for the good of all society, not just Republicans.

Flat Tax

 Widow's Mite

"Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood." Mark 12:41-44

Is a flat tax a tax on surplus, or a tax on livelihood?

Any flat income tax, a fixed percentage of income, is regressive.  Income can be divided into need, or livelihood, and desire, or surplus.  Desires are met only after need is satisfied.  However there is a maximum amount that will be devoted to needs.  A flat tax is the same on both surplus and livelihood.  A progressive tax is not merely a ramp up to the percentage of that flat tax.  If a lower, or no tax, is imposed on livelihood then the percentage of taxes has to be greater than the flat tax on income that is surplus.

This is basic math. If the revenue from taxes is

Tax Revenue=% Flat Tax * Total Income

and income is divided into income for Livelihood and income for Surplus,

Total Income= Income for Livelihood  + Income for surplus

then to raise the same revenue and also have a smaller tax rate on livelihood,  the percentage tax on the surplus must be greater than the flat tax.  If we call the income for livelihood the standard deduction, on which no taxes are paid, then if the standard deduction is raised, and the tax on surplus is lowered, then mathematically the total tax revenue has to decrease. 

% Effective Tax * Total Income =

                        % Tax on Livelihood * Income for Livelihood + % Tax on Surplus*Income  for Surplus.

Increasing the standard deduction might appeal to those whose share of income for livelihood is larger, and reducing the tax rate for all income, might appeal to those whose share of income for surplus is larger, but it results in a lower total tax revenue from all and a lower effective tax rate.  “Let them eat cake” could be a display of ignorance of how things work.  If there is a shortage of flour then there is a shortage of both bread and cake.  You can correct ignorance with learning, you can’t correct stupid.  Let’s not be stupid.

Change

 

Crown of Creation

Life is change
How it differs from the rocks
I've seen their ways too often for my liking
New worlds to gain
My life is too survive
And be alive for you

If life is change, I may have to accept change, but do I have to like it??

I am old enough, and set enough in my ways,  to understand that some changes may be inevitable, but they are not always welcome.  Changes mostly come from the young, and when elders have complained about the young throughout recorded history they may actually be complaining about change.  But there are different aspects of change.  One aspect is the change itself.  The other aspect is the rate of change.

Liberals and conservatives often differ on how change is considered.  Liberals are often perceived to be more open to change, while conservatives resist change.  But this may be the only magnitude of the change.  What is the probability of the change? How much of a change is it?

Also important is the period over which the change is going to happen.  Some changes happen over geological time, like continental drift, while others appear to be instantaneous, like avalanches or landslides.  If the North American plate is getting farther from the Eurasian plate at a rate of 0.25 inches/year, that is an interesting aspect of continental drift. But if one is planning a trip from North America to Europe that will take less than a month, it probably can be ignored.  On the other hand a landslide is also a change, but it happens over a very short period and is not easily ignored.

Complaints about a change, e.g. the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, should be separated from the rapidity of that change.  We might, or might not, have influence on neither the change, nor the period over which that change occurred.  The only difference between evolution and  revolution is that the first is a gradual change and the second is a rapid change.

One of the three dimensions of the proposed framework for human behavior: Rights (User Optimal) versus Duty (System Optimal) also needs to be considered.  A User has a finite lifetime which is typically much, much shorter than the System’s lifetime.  If the change does not happen in the User’s lifetime, but if it does happen in the System’s lifetime, that does not mean that the change does not happen, just that change might not be considered in the User Optimal. Any costs associated with mitigating that change would be resisted by those who only think of their User Optimal solution.

Average vs Mean

 

Average Guy

I ain't no Christian or no born again saint
I ain't no cowboy or Marxist D.A.
I ain't no criminal or Reverend Cripple from the right
I am just your average guy, trying to do what's right

What is the average?

Humans have an innate ability to solve complex mathematics.  That however is not exceptional.  The spiral of sunflower seeds follows a Fibonacci sequence.  A lifeless coastline follows the fractal pattern of a Mandelbrot set.  If plants and lifeless coastlines follow mathematical rules, then maybe humans are not so exceptional.  It may be only the language and symbols of mathematics that are intimating and confusing.

Mathematics uses words that may seem familiar but may have more nuances than the conventional usage.  In mathematics, average means the centrality of the normal.  

Humor is often found in the conflict between what is said and what is meant.  Two jokes illustrate the difference between average in common usage and in mathematics.

A once popular radio show popularized the Lake Wobegon effect, where “all the children are above average”.  The joke being that the average is the centrality of the normal.  If everyone is above average, then that is no longer the centrality and it is time to compute a new average.

Another joke is that a  statistician who has his head in an oven and feet in ice is supposed to say that on average his body temperature is at room temperature, and that is “normal”.  The problem is that what is considered normal to most people, is a Gaussian distribution to a statistician.  This distribution has a centrality of zero AND a variance of 1.  Room temperature is a normal distribution. The variance of having your feet in ice and head in an oven is much greater than  1, the variance of a normal distribution and no statistician would make the statement in the joke.

When people say average, it is often assumed that they intend the mean.  The mean is easier to compute.  It requires the ratio of only two numbers, the total of the observations and the number of the observations.  The median is harder to compute.  It requires identifying the point at which 50% of the observations are above, and 50% of the observations are below. You can calculate the mean from the totals.  You need to sort each observation to compute the median.

A perfect uniform normal distribution has a mean, median, and mode of zero. That is not terribly useful, but if the mean is added to every observation, the coordinate system is translated to a new origin, which is the mean and not zero.  If the median still equals this mean AND the variance is 1, then, and only then, this is a coordinate translation of the “normal” distribution.   If the mean and median are not equal, then the observations are NOT “normal”.

A Gaussian distribution is commonly called “normal” because nature appears to favor this distribution .  People judge themselves against the average, the centrality of the normal. A problem may be that the “normal” is confused with the mean, because the median may be the harder to compute. The mean and median income, or wealth, in the United States are very different.  A statistician would say that is not “normal”. Nature, or humans, might not do all of the computation that a mathematician does, but you only to do those computations to prove that it is normal. Humans, and nature, can apparently do those computations innately to tell if it is normal.

Average is the centrality of a normal distribution.  If the mean and median are very different from each other, then the distribution is not normal. When the distribution is not normal, the average might be the median, and not the mean.

Anonymity

 You Don’t Know Me

You give your hand to me
And then you say "Goodbye"
And I watched you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
Oh, you'll never ever know
The one who loved you so
No, you don't know me

When we ask to be anonymous, how hard is it to know us?

Recently a right-wing Catholic newsletter unmasked a high ranking priest as using the Grindr App, despite its promise to be anonymous.  Can any App promise to be anonymous?

Any App, or site, that tracks your location, as many smartphone Apps do, can never be anonymous.  At best it can mask your identity, but with enough inductive reasoning it is possible to unmask you.

While the app may not record identifying information, your location may be used to unmask your identity.  If there are certain locations that only you can be, and those location are stored, then if a site observes that you are at that location, then you are not anonymous to someone who also knows who can be at that  location.  If your location has been tracked over many days, it may be assumed that between the hours of 2 AM and 6 AM that the location where you are most frequently observed is your home, and that the location on weekdays where you are most frequently observed between Noon and 4 PM is your work.  Tax assessor, employment, voting and any other public information can be combined with this location information to unmask you.  A site can promise to mask you.  It can make peering behind that mask very difficult.  It can’t promise that no one will ever peer behind  that mask.

Sovereignity

 

Her Majesty

I wanna tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta get a bellyful of wine
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm going to make her mine, oh, yeah
Someday I'm going to make her mine

Queen Elizabeth is the sovereign of the United Kingdom and several other countries. 
Who is the sovereign of the US?

Queen Elizabeth is the sovereign of the United Kingdom, (and Canada, Australia and several other Commonwealth countries).  All property not owned by individuals, or corporations, is owned by the sovereign.  You don’t have to travel to the United Kingdom to experience this first hand.  You can travel north to Canada where you will travel on the Queen’s Highway or visit the Queen’s Parks.  The ships of the Navy of the United Kingdom have HMS, Her Majesty’s Ship, before the name.  But the sovereign needs a government to administer that sovereignty.  The United Kingdom’s Parliament administers the government on behalf of the Queen .  The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy where there is a sovereign, the monarch, but the powers of the sovereign are constrained by a constitution. 

The United States of America is just that, States in America that have chosen to be United.  Before the adoption of the US Constitution, each state was sovereign.  By ratifying the Constitution each state agreed to have as its sovereign, as established in that document, the People.  Thus the People of the United States are the sovereign.  But that does not mean that each person is a co-equal as sovereign.  Think of the United States as a corporation, which owns property. An individual shareholder does not have the right to property of the corporation.  Even though I am a shareholder of Disney, I still pay the entrance fee to use the property at Disneyland.  I understand that have no claim to ownership of Disneyland despite the fact that I own Disney stock.

The head of the executive branch of government, the president, stands in for the sovereign when circumstances require the presence of a person, such as state dinners, weddings, coronations, funerals, etc.  But the fact that the President is standing in for the sovereign in no way makes him the sovereign.  The officers of the United States swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.  As such it is the People’s Supreme Court, not the Justices appointed by the president.  It is the People’s Justice Department, not the President’s Justice Department.  It is the People’s Capitol and those who enter it acting as if they are the sovereign are correct that they are persons and the people are the sovereign, but they do NOT have joint ownership of the Capitol or any other sovereign property.  Just like I expect to be arrested if I trespass on Disney property despite being  a Disney shareholder, if I violate the rules of the sovereign on any public, sovereign, property I should expect to be arrested.  The People are the sovereign, but that does not make each person the sovereign.  The President is not a sovereign, and an election only makes him head of the executive branch of government, but it does not make him a sovereign.