Choices II

 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Now, her name was Goldilocks
And upon their door she knocked
But no one was there
So she walked right in and had herself a time
Because she didn't care
Soon she got sleepy, went to bed upstairs, when…

Not too hot, hard, etc., or too cold, soft, etc., but just right!

It may seems like there are two choices, but we are like Goldilocks. We want things just right, so there has to be a third choice, between the two extremes. If there are three choices and each player takes one choice, then there has to be at least three players, or one of the choices will be unchosen. This is why there is an optimal strategy for any game with three or more players but there is NOT an optimal strategy for a game with only two players. And as pointed out in a previous post, https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/06/judges.html, most games only appear to have  two players when in fact have three.

Remember this when you are at any debate between liberal and conservative, left-wing and right-wing. There has to be a Goldilocks answer that is just right between these points of view. The more ideologically pure a candidate is in a two-candidate election, then the less likely he is to be chosen as “just right.”  That candidate may be right-wing, but he won’t be rightcorrect.

Dominance II

 

Glad Tidings

And we'll send you glad tidings from New York
Open up your eyes so you may see
Ask you not to read between the lines
Hope that you will come in right on time
And they'll talk to you while you're in trances
And you'll visualize not taking any chances
But meet them halfway with love, peace and persuasion
And expect them to rise for the occasion
Don't it gratify when you see it materialize
Right in front of your eyes
That surprise

Open up your eyes and see in 3-D, full color.

There is a great desire for certainty.  For example, the stock market wants nothing more than certainty.  But absolute certainty is NOT something to which humans can ever achieve.  We can get very close, but can NOT ever get to absolute certainty.  We may be deceived into thinking that dominance is certainty.  If you let dominance determine things, then everything is either 100% or 0%, you either win or lose.  You are then seeing in 1-D, Black and White only. 

If you accept that we can’t ever get to 100%, then you are seeing in 2-D,  acknowledging that Shades of Gray matter, and that the answer is between 0% and 100%.  But even this is incomplete.  If you want to see in 3-D and full color, then Black and White has to be replaced by RGB: Red, Green, Blue. Then the answer is between  0% and 33%, or normalized to between 0% and 100% for each of those three colors.  Open up your eyes and realize that you want to see in 3-D, Full Color and NOT in 1-D, Black and White.  If you accept dominance then you are being simple, not certain.

Payback

 

Instant Karma ( We All Shine On)

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin'
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin' at fools like me
Who in the hell do you think you are
A super star
Well, right you are

Sometimes Karma ain’t so instant, but it’s still there.

Having said that I don’t believe in certification, https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/06/ethics.html, then why do I have a Professional Engineering, PE, certification? It all goes back to 1987. I had written a computer program which was used to compute the performance of an intersection. That program was being used by a town to deny a zoning change to property owners.  In my opinion the town's consultant, who was using the program, had operated it improperly. I let the town know that. I was called as an expert witness for the town’s side in a court case concerning their decision. I expected that my opinion was going to be heard at that time. Instead the town’s attorney asked me one, and only one, question on the stand, “Was I a Professional Engineer?” At the time I was not, so I answered no. I was immediately dismissed from the stand with no further questions. The consultant, whom I thought operated my program improperly, WAS a Professional Engineer, as was established by the first question in his testimony. All of his further calculations were then believed, while mine was not even heard. Needless to say the very first thing I did upon returning home was to start the process of getting my own Professional Engineering license.

Almost 20 years later, I was advising a client in a court case where this same PE in that previous case was on the opposing side. I pointed out to my client’s lawyers a basic mistake which had been made in his report. It was that he averaged averages. It sounds esoteric, but it is not. For example, if  a husband works for a non-profit and has a salary of $40K per year, while his wife works in private practice and has a salary of $200K per year,  then the household has a combined salary of $240 K per year. If the husband gets a 100% pay increase to $80K per year while the wife receives  a 0% pay increase the household does NOT have a 50% increase, the average of those percentage increases. That would mean that the household salary would be  $330 K per year, while in reality it was only $80K plus $200K, or $280 K per year, an increase of only 17%. And that is why you don’t average averages. The consultant had used this error to compute the future growth in traffic at an intersection by averaging the growth in low traffic counts with the growth in high traffic counts and then applying that average to all traffic counts.

When I pointed this error to my client’s attorney, he was overjoyed. When the opposing PE was sworn in on the stand, that lawyer asked about this, and my example was used. My client’s attorney then moved to strike the consultant’s entire report  as inadmissible evidence and the judge concurred. Thus while not even taking the stand, and it had taken 20 years to get there, it felt as if Karma had paid me back.

Mifepristone

 

My Back Pages

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

The SCOTUS unanimous ruling on mifepristone was only that it did not have standing.

The unanimous ruling on mifepristone was only that the doctors bringing the case had an “abstract threat” and not a real threat.  There was no ruling on the merits of the doctors’ suit.  The issue of whether the FDA can determine whether mifepristone can be prescribed was not part of this ruling, only that these doctors had no case, that they could not show that then had been harmed.  Offended? Yes. Harmed? No.

It is an opinion that life begins at conception.  I happen to agree with that opinion which is  “too noble to neglect” but legally life does not begin until birth. It is the belief of fetal personhood that “deceived me into thinking I had something to protect”. The state issues birth certificates, not conception certificates. Government licenses have the date of birth, not the date of conception. Your age from a birth date determines your ability to vote, etc.  The state also can not take an individual’s property without compensation.  If the fetus has no standing, and the doctors have no standing, then isn’t the prohibition on abortions not a taking of the women’s womb by the state without compensation merely because the state is offended?  What public purpose is being served? Protecting a life which has no legal standing? Protecting the opinion of those who have no standing? What compensation is being offered by the government? Be younger than that now.

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!