Certainty II

 

You’re The Top

You're the Tower of Pisa
You're the smile on the Mona Lisa
I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top

But how many are on top!

With apologies to Billboard,  it is not the Top 100.  With apologies to  AP sports polls, it is not the Top 25.  With apologies to David Letterman, it is not the Top 10.  It might be only the Top 3 that matters.

The top, first place, indicates dominance, but it does not indicate certainty.  Appearing on a top list can indicate certainty, but while more than a certain number increases visibility by appearing on the list, it does nothing to increase certainty. It is customary to rank things in order and to award the lowest number of points to the bottom of that list and the highest number of points to first place finishes. For example in a Top 5 list, 5 points for first place, 4 points for second place, and so on.  But the number of places in that list does not usefully increase certainty.  If there is a list of one, the certainty is only 25%.  If there is a list of two, there is a certainty of 50%.  If there is a list of the Top 3, there is a certainty of 75%.  If there is a Top 4 list, there is a certainty that the top is on that list of 100%.  If there is a list of the Top 5, there is a certainty that the top is on that list of 125%.  But anything more than 99.99999+% is also imaginary.  That means that the Top 3 list has the greatest certainty without being imaginary.  The number of podium appearances or the number of Olympic medals matter. Anything more is just window dressing. Good for public relations, but not certainty.

Medals

 

The Best

You're simply the best
Better than all the rest
Better than anyone
Anyone I've ever met

In the upcoming Olympics, which country is the best?

In the upcoming summer Olympics in Paris, during the opening ceremony there will be a parade of Nations of every athlete who participates in the Olympics.  During the closing ceremonies, the athlete participants are supposed to mingle without regard for country.  Between the Opening Ceremonies and the Closing ceremonies will be the events of the Olympics where medals will be awarded.  The closing ceremonies indicate that everyone gets a participation ribbon, but how should you count the medals by Nation during the events to determine which country is the best?

In each event, there are Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals awarded.  To be the Gold medalist in an event is to say that during that event you were the best.  But that does not mean that you are always the best, because that event can be viewed as a random event.  The gold medal indicates dominance on that day in that event, but it does not indicate certainty.  How can you indicate both?

In some countries only the number of Gold medals are considered.  I.e. each Gold medal is worth one point.  The country with the most points is considered the best.  But since the finish is random, that only indicates dominance, not certainty.  In some countries, each medal is awarded a point. Then the question becomes why stop at 3 medals for each event.  Why not award everyone who participates a medal.  Sounds like the political debate of woke vs. non-woke!

It is typical  in the United States, for each Bronze medal to be awarded one point, each Silver medal to be awarded 2 points, and each Gold medal to be awarded 3 points.  The points are totaled and the country with the most points is considered to be not only dominant but certain.

This is a Nash Equilibrium between the User Optimum of considering only Gold medals and the System Optimal of considering all medals as equal.  Is it perfect?  It does not consider Users who shop for a country which allows them the best chance to compete, nor does it consider a country which offers citizenship and/or rewards to athletes who have the best chance of winning.  But it considers the difference among medals, and awards no points to athletes who merely wish to compete with no expectation of winning, such as the Jamaican bobsled team. So arguably the US system is the best at determining the best country with dominance AND certainty.

Submission

 

Submission

Submission to the will, of Him who loves me still,
is surety of his love revealed.
My soul shall rise above this world in which I move;
I conquer only when I yield.

Words matter.  Who has the power when you are submitting?

Submission

the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.

Acceptance

the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable by another.

They sound the same but there is a significant difference between submission and acceptance. Submission is interior focused. You are submitting to an external force that is superior to yours.  Acceptance is externally focused. You are being received as adequate by a force that is external.

If you change and perceive that the external force is no longer superior to you, then you could no longer submit. If you are accepted by an external force and that force does not change, then you are still accepted even if you have changed.

If you submit to an absolute, then you can revoke that submission. If you are accepted by an absolute, then that acceptance will not be revoked. Presumably, the absolute understands how you might change and that was considered in the acceptance. While you might change, that absolute does not change.

The subject has the power. You submit. You are the subject. You are accepted. You are the object.

If you believe that God is an absolute, has the power, and is unchanging , then you don’t submit to God. You ask to be accepted by God and if you are worthy, then God accepts you.

Beware those "evangelicals" who have submitted to Jesus.  They are implictly saying that they believe that they can be more powerful than Jesus.  Trust only those that have asked to be, and were, accepted by Jesus.

Close Enough

 

The Long And Winding Road

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I've seen that road before
It always leads me here
Leads me to your door

How long are we taking about?

Pythagoras' Theorem is for a Euclidean, flat, surface.  The universe may be a hyperbolic surface.  This makes a difference for the solution of Pythagoras’ Theorem.  It does not really apply on spherical surfaces such as the earth, when the distances that are the sides of the triangle are large compared to the radius of the spherical surface (for example, the Earth).  On Earth, when the distances are small, the difference between the results of Pythagoras’ Theorem and the Great Circle Distance on the Earth is trivial. The same seems to be true for a hyperbolic universe.

For 1/3 of the size of the universe the difference between the hypotenuse on a hyperbolic surface of the universe and Pythagoras’ Theorem is less than 6%.  Since the size of the universe is approximately 14 billion light-years, until the sum of the squares of the distances exceeds 22 trillion billion miles the difference is less than 6%.  The distance from the Earth to the Sun is 93 million miles, 8.3 light-minutes, 1.6*10^-5 light-years.  The distance from our solar system to the Andomeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years, so we are talking about much more than intergalactic distances before there is an appreciable difference.  In fact for distances of a thousand miles on each side of a right triangle, the difference between a hypotenuse calculated with Pythagoras' Theorem and one for a hyperbolic surface is far less than 0.01%.  So don’t throw away Pythagoras' Theorem.  It is simpler and has very little error from the hyperbolic solution at most distances that you are likely to encounter.  So what is long to you, is insignificant to the universe.

Freedom of Speech

 

Everybody’s Talkin’

Everybody's talking' at me
I don't hear a word they're saying'
Only the echoes of my mind

Is it the public town square where the talking is taking place?

Does the First Amendment of the US Constitution  guarantee freedom of speech?  It does protect against government regulation.  Your right to speak in a private place, not a public place, is never an abridgement by the government.  In a private setting, your rights are subject to the owner of the space in which you are making that speech, not the government.  You are also free to exercise the right to speak, but you are not exempt from the consequences of that speech.  Libel, defamation, harassment, etc. can be judged a consequence of that speech.  The owner of the space in which that speech is made may be judged an accomplice and thus be liable for your speech.

The problem is that the space in which that speech is exercise is probably NOT a public space.  A town square is a public space, but a retail store is NOT a public space.  Most social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, X [formerly Twitter], Instagram, Tik Tok, etc.) are private companies/spaces, not public spaces. They may use public resources (e. g. air waves) in which case they may be subject to public regulation, but they are still private companies.  They can regulate your speech to protect their own interests. 

You are also only guaranteed the right to speak.  There is no guarantee that anyone will listen. Maybe you will hear only the echoes of your mind.

Privatization

 

Anything You Can Do

Anything you can do, I can do better,
I can do anything better than you

No, you can't
Yes, I can
No, you can't
Yes, I can!

Anything you can be
I can be greater, 
sooner or later
I'm greater than you

Can private companies do better than governments?

Before 1998,  for 18 years I was employed by governments.  Since 1998, I have been employed by a private firm selling its services to those governments.  Thus I am not asking whether there are services that governments can obtain from private companies or else I would be a hypocrite.  But when I offered those services, the action was ultimately taken by a federal, state, or local government.

But there are services that are offered exclusively by governments, like armies, postal delivery, prisons, law enforcement, fire fighting, education, libraries, etc.  Should those services be offered by private companies?   It certainly seems like they are cheaper than government in many cases.  When I was in government service between 1992 and 1998, I served in an administration that was convinced that anything a government did, a private company could do better. IOW, all government services should be privatized.  This included road construction and road upkeep, which was my government department.  The government functions seemed to devolve to just purchasing these services.

But the USDOT took the step of saying, not with our money you don’t.  They took action to decertify our state transportation department because they felt that the procurement officers were no longer capable of telling whether their federal standards were being followed or we were simply being lied to by those private companies.  If those private companies were cheaper because they were smarter, then the government should of course pay to become smarter.  But if those private companies were ignoring acceptable standards, or paying their employees or contractors below fair compensation, or ignoring laws, didn’t this merely make the government complicit in those actions.  And there is that little thing called profit.  Public governments do not have to make a profit, private companies do.

Public governments also must offer services to all of its citizens, and not arbitrarily turn away anyone. Private companies can decide to not ever offer services to anyone, or only offer services under certain conditions. Like not delivering on weekends, or cutting hours.  Private armies can hire criminals.  Are those actions that governments should emulate?  They should be better, not just cheaper!

Winning?

 

Marianne

All day, all night, Marianne
Down by the seaside siftin' sand
Even little children love Marianne
Down by the seaside siftin' sand

My maternal Grandmother’s name was  Marjanna.  My sister is named Marianne.  This post is of course dedicated to them.

The icon of the French Republic is Marianne.  The comparable in the United States would be Lady Liberty.  The Motto of the French Republic is Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité!

Those who believe primarily in Liberté, Liberty, are perhaps User Optimalists.  They believe that their own Optimal is paramount.  They believe in Winning.  They think that Winning is not the thing, it is the only thing.  They believe that a Tie is like kissing your sister and that second place is first loser.  At its worst this means winning at all costs including lying, cheating, and stealing.  Because of their beliefs it is difficult to find anyone to play with them.

Those who believe primarily in Égalité, Equality, are perhaps System Optimalists.  They believe that the Optimal of the system is paramount to their own Optimal.  They think everyone should get the benefits of winning, that everyone should get a participation ribbon, that everyone should take one for the team, and that no score should be kept.  They believe that a tie should have the same value as winning.  At its worst this places no value on winning.  Because of their beliefs, System Optimalists have no incentive to produce anything if it only can be taken from them and besides, they don’t like playing anyway.

Those who believe primarily in Fraternité, Fraternity, believe in the strength of brotherhood, safety in numbers, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  At its worst, they will give trust to other members of their fraternity which is not warranted, and fear anyone not in their fraternity. Because of their beliefs they are likely to want to produce value and oppose zero-sum games for at least for their own members.

Society needs all of those people. Society wants everyone to play; to produce, not only for themselves but for others.  It does so by instituting rules, which in game theory would be payout matrices.

User Optimalists would be happy with a payoff matrix, which in a classic game of two choices where you are rewarded for being different and penalized for being the same, of

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	-1	1
	Even	1	-1

System Optimalists would be happy with a payoff matrix where you were rewarded for being the same and penalized for being different, e. g.:

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	1	-1
	Even	-1	1

The problem is that while these matrices are fine for zero-sum Games, believers in Fraternity want something more than a zero-sum game, where only members of their own group can be a player, such as

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	1	1
	Even	1	1

None of these payout matrices is acceptable to all three groups.  A compromise is proposed where one choice is the preferred choice (in the example below, Odd).  It has the advantage of awarding the most points for a Win, less for a Tie, but still valuing a Tie more than a Loss, and is not a zero-sum matrix. It is  

		Player One
		Odd	Even
Player Two	Odd	0	1
	Even	2	1

But there is an interesting and simple winning strategy with this payout matrix.  A player always plays the non-preferred option in the first game.  If his opponent also chooses the non-preferred option, then that player gains a point. But if his opponent plays the preferred option, he gains no points and his opponent gains two points.  On every subsequent game with the same opponent, that player opts for whatever that opponent played in the prior game.  In this manner, if his opponent plays the preferred option again, then both players are blocked and get no points.  Let’s call this the “Tit for Tat” strategy. 

But if his opponent plays the preferred option in another game with another player, and that other player also plays the preferred option, then neither player gets any points.  Let’s call always playing the preferred option, the “Always Go For The Win” strategy. 

If person following the “Tit for Tat” strategy continues this strategy with another player who also plays the non-preferred option on his first move, they both get a point. But the “Tit for Tat” strategy gets no points in every game against players following the “Always Go For The Win” strategy.

After a large number of games have been played, players following the “Tit for Tat” strategy have the most points.  Those players may have won no games.  The “Always Go For The Win” strategy, wins more games, wins no games against those also follwing an "Always Go For The Win" stagegy, but it does not have more points. This has been tested repeatedly. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2021/05/tough-but-fair-beats-always-being-nasty.html

This payout matrix not only satisfies Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but society as a whole wins!