It IS Fair

 

To Close For Comfort

Be firm and be fair, be absolutely sure, beware
On your guard, take care, when there's such temptation
One thing leads to another
Too late to run for cover
Much too, too close for comfort now

And more important than being fair, be certain!

In any fair game there are three outcomes: Win, Loss, OR Tie. Tie breakers are often employed after regulation time, but sudden death, extra innings, overtime, shoot outs, etc. do NOT change the fact that during regulation, the game ended in a tie. Thus in any two-player game, there are three outcomes even if one of those outcomes results in another, or a continuation of the current, game.

When a jury renders a verdict, it is Guilty or Not Guilty; NOT Guilty or Innocent. On a 12-member jury there are 2¹², or 4,026,  possible outcomes of Guilty and Not Guilty. Only one of these is unanimously Guilty, which makes means it will only occur 00.02% of the time and its certainty is thus 99.98%. For all other outcomes, at least one member of the jury had reasonable doubt. Thus it only APPEARS that there are two outcomes, even though there are really more than three outcomes. In a classic two-player game, with no punishment for lying, cheating, or stealing, if one player lies, cheats, or steals then that player’s choice may be the winning choice. The certainty however is always 100% minus the probability of one (NO lying, cheating, or stealing) outcome. It will never be 100% certain unless the number of outcomes is infinite.

There are various ways to increase certainty that include: increasing the number of games or members; seeding; ranked choice voting; awarding of points in the inverse order of the finish; group stages followed by knock-out stages; double elimination tournaments, etc. The issue is that dominance is NOT certainty. Complaining about the outcome by saying that if you don’t win it is not fair might merely shows that you do not understand the difference. Dominance is the probability of all winning outcomes. Certainty is the inverse of the probability of a single outcome. Being dominant does not mean that the outcome is certain. Certainty is fair, dominance isn't.

Ethics

 

The Eyes of Texas

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the livelong day.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away.
Do not think you can escape them
At night or early in the morn --
The Eyes of Texas are upon you
Til Gabriel blows his horn.

What are you looking at? Are you looking at me? Are you talking to me?

While I don’t think highly of certifications, I have accepted that others do and am willing to do my part to be certified, since I already know that I am certifiable.  Oh not that kind, huh.  It means in my case being certified as a Professional Engineer. This mean that others have examined my credentials and are willing to vouch for me .  My attitude without this necessity has been  “I don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member,” and “Who are you to judge me?”  Nevertheless, professionally as a short cut I have allowed others to certify me. And while the certification of a driver’s license is honored in every state, certification as a Professional Engineer is not always honored in every state. And to protect themselves various government agencies require that a member of its consultant project team be a certified PE in that jurisdiction. My firm, which has almost no engineers, wanted to pursue a project in Saskatchewan. Canada for the Ministry of Transport, but the catch is that their had to be a someone with a Saskatchewan PE on the team, which fell to me.

Many states have reciprocity with other state licensing boards such that the requirements to apply for a PE are much reduced, ( although the fees are never reduced!) The only US state which had reciprocity with Saskatchewan at that time was Texas ( because largely of the need to transfer oil PEs to the Saskatchewan Tar Sands). Thus since I had PEs in MA, RI, NY it was time for me to apply for a PE in Texas using the reciprocity of those other states, only for the purposes of then using Texas’s reciprocity to apply for a PE in Saskatchewan.

While most of the requirements are waived, the ethics exam is almost never waived. Since my son calls me “By the Book” Beagan, I had no qualms about taking an ethics exam. To my surprise the ethics exam for the Texas PE was not “Should you lie under oath, Yes or No?” It was “ When you lie under oath, what statue of the Texas Penal code are you violating?”  Not being familiar with the Texas Penal Code, I naturally failed the first attempt at the Texas PE ethics exam. However the exam was on‑line, and you were immediately given the chance to retake the exam. The on-line exam also had exactly the same questions every time which meant that since each question was multiple choice with only 4 possible answers, eventually by the laws of statistics, I knew that by simply guessing I could pass the exam. On the fourth try I passed the Texas PE ethics exam. I am so proud that Texas has determined that I am ethical. BTW,  that Saskatchewan project never never materialized and to save money I never applied for a Saskatchewan PE. But for a time the Eyes of Texas were upon me and certified me as ethical. Nice to know, Texas! And while I never certified any construction documents in Texas, I could have. But fortunately I am wise enough not to ride in a tunnel whose plans I certified.

Judges

 

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

Katie Casey saw all the games,
Knew all the players by their first names
Told the umpire he was wrong all along
And she was strong

And Katie thanked God that there was an umpire.

When you are at the next Red Sox-Yankee game, realize that there are THREE teams on the field.  The Red Sox, the Yankees, AND the Umpires.  It is the job of the umpires to call balls and strikes.  It is also the job of the umpires to penalize, and even eject, members of either team who don’t abide by any of their calls, including balls and strikes.  I can root for the Red Sox, and root against the Yankees, and if they are doing their job correctly, I might not even notice the umpires.

The courts have said that the role of Judges is to call balls and strikes.  Hear, Hear.  But is also to penalize and eject.  Do your job! Don't be wrong all along.  And then we can all happily go out to the ballgame!

Threats

 

Marine Hymn

From the Halls of Montezuma
To the Shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom.
And to keep our honor clean; 
We are proud to claim the title  of
United States Marine.

So where are the shores of Tripoli anyway?

In 1805, Marine Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and eight Marines led a force of mercenaries on a 500-mile trek across the desert. Their surprise attack on the city of Derna, on “the shores of Tripoli,” helped bring an end to the Barbary Wars. It had been the custom of the rulers of the Barbary Coast to seize ships, their crew, their cargo, and their passengers, by piracy, and ransom them to the owners and the countries of those ships. If you paid those rulers a tribute in advance, they would promise not to pirate your ships. “Nice little ship you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”  A battle has a beginning and an end. The threat of a battle is forever. The US would not negotiate with terrorists and their threats. “Millions for defense and not a cent for tribute.”  Thank you, Marines but what do expect from "Semper Fi", "Forever faithful". 1805! Now THAT is originalism!

Hostage Rescue

 

To Life

Be happy! Be healthy! Long life! 
And if our good fortune never comes
Here's to whatever comes
Drink, l'chaim, to life!

Amen to that!

Israel rescued 4 hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023. That is a reason to be happy.

There are still living hostages who have NOT been rescued. That is a reason to be sad.

One Israeli IDF officer lost his life in the rescue. That is a cause to be sad, but that officer died a hero so be happy for him.

274 Palestinians also lost their life in that rescue. Among them were Hamas terrorists. Those in Hamas did not kill these hostages but taking innocent hostages to pursue their own aims was unspeakably EVIL and deserves to be punished. But many of those in Hamas responsible for the taking of hostages were NOT  killed in the rescue attempt. The fact that all of those in Hamas who were guilty but unpunished is a reason to be sad.

But among those 274  Palestinians were children and others who were NOT members of Hamas or even sympathetic to Hamas. They should not have been punished, especially not by losing their life, and that is a reason to be sad.

Be happy.  To Life.  L’chaim!

Juries

 

I Fought the Law And The Law Won

I'm breakin' rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won

And the law used a jury.

There seems to be a misunderstanding as to why there is a jury. It is not to determine whether the law has been broken. The evidence is supposed to do that. It is to serve as a lie detector for the evidence which was admitted. A single individual might be dominant, but in error. As the number of members increases, the number of possible outcomes also.  If all of those members agree, then the evidence is probably true without error.

Dominance is backward looking. Certainty, as used in lie detecting, is forward looking. A jury should have an even number of members so that it is obvious that dominance is never an outcome since a tie is possible. If all members agree, then it is possible to use that with the number of possible outcomes, only one of which is unanimously Guilty, to compute certainty. Thus a jury of 12 members rendering a unanimous verdict of Guilty has a certainty of 99.976%, which rounds to 100.0%. Certainty is sysmetric aound a tie, such that a unanimous verdict of Not Guilty has the same certainty.  A jury of 10 members rendering the same unanimous verdict has  a certainty of only 99.902%, which rounds to 99.9%. You can never get to 100% certainty unless there are an infinite number of members on the jury, but 12 members is the fewest number that rounds to 100.0% certainty. 

The jury system may not be perfect, but it beats the alternative of trial by combat, which can only show dominance not certainty. The fact that a jury was used shows that is not a historic witch trial since those trials assumed that witches float in water and can’t drown but the innocents would drown. With a jury system the innocent does not drown, so I guess using a jury is not a witch trial.

Gold Standard

                                                                     Heart of Gold

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
For a heart of gold
I've been in my mind
It's such a fine line
That keeps me searching
For a heart of gold
And I'm getting old

But not a CROSS of gold.

Before 1933, the United States Dollar was on the Gold Standard. William Jennings Bryan famously campaigned for the Free Coinage of Silver, arguing that there should instead be a Gold AND Silver Standard, saying that “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” 

Ironically silver historically was long a part of the monetary system:  

• Judas Iscariot’s 30  silver coins; 
• the British Pound Sterling was the weight of a pound of Sterling Silver at one time;  
• the US Dollar was based on a Spanish silver coin that was often divided into “Pieces of  Eight”, such that a shave and haircut was once 2 bits ( 2/8^th  of a dollar, $.25).  

It is only because Isaac Newton as the Master of the Royal Mint, knowingly or unknowingly, set the ratio of monetary silver to gold so low that effectively currency became only a gold standard.

This continued as the basis of the US Dollar until the domestic ownership of gold was prohibited in 1933, making the US Dollar no longer a commodity currency based on gold, but a fiat currency. During World War II, the United States came to have almost all of the international supply of gold. To accommodate international trade, the US entered into the Bretton Woods agreement in 1945 that effectively put international trade on a fiat basis, with the US Dollar at a fixed price of gold (instead of John Maynard Keynes’ counter proposal that the international currency should be a NEW fiat currency, the Bancor.) But the adoption of the US Dollar as the international unit of currency DID not mean that international trade was based on a commodity, but that it was fiat currency whose unit of exchange was also the domestic US Dollar.

This continued until 1971 when President Nixon pulled out of the Bretton Woods agreement and effectively returned international trade to a commodity (gold) currency. That much of international trade was still conducted in US dollars did not change this fact. The Triffin dilemma, the use of a domestic commodity for international trade, was arguably responsible for much of the moderate inflation from 1945 to 1971. However in 1971 , the US dollar whose supply was only intended to accommodate the US domestic economy, competed with US Dollars used in international trade which were NOT constrained. Inflation, heavy at first, declining but persistent, has resulted.  This continued until the adoption of the Euro which became a competitor to US dollars in international trade. While the Triffin dilemma deals with the inflation caused by the usage of a domestic currency as an international currency, Greece and Italy can speak to the reverse-Triffin impact of the usage of an international currency, i.e. the Euro, as a domestic currency.

At the heart of this matter is whether currency, domestic or international, is based on a  commodity which by definition is  a zero-sum game subject to bank runs, hoarding, currency inflation, and currency deflation, or based on a fiat, which is NOT a zero-sum game and can grow. Search for a heart of gold, but do not get crucified on a cross of gold.