Ceilings

 

One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor

I was walking with my dogs
And the night was black with smog
When I thought I heard somebody call my name
Remember: one man's ceiling is another man's floor, goddamn
One man's ceiling is another man's floor

It’s just apartment house rules.

A Nash Equilibrium says that to ensure that 95.8% of the individuals will join the group, that 4.2% have to be blocked from achieving their User Optimal. It does not say that those 4.2% are being punished, only that they are being capped at the mean/median of the group plus two Standard Deviations. So those 4.2% are being capped at 45.8% MORE than the median. This includes anyone among that 95.8% who might have otherwise been among that 4.2%.

A minimum wage, standard deduction, earned income credit, poverty line, etc. is a floor below which individuals in the group should not be allowed to fall. In order for the group to have decent shelter, shouldn’t there also be a ceiling. A ceiling is neither good nor bad. It can prevent you from climbing, but it also can provide you with protection. A ceiling that is imposed only on a selected group, like a Glass Ceiling on women, is bad. But a ceiling that is imposed by the group, for the good of the group, as long as it applies to all members of that group, can be good.

Groups

 

United We Stand

For united we stand, divided we fall
And if our backs should ever be against the wall
We'll be together, together, you and I

We will hang together, or we will  hang separately.

Anything that increases the size of the group, unites us, is good. Anything that decreases the size of the group, divides us, is bad. This includes :

Voter suppression

The group making decisions should be as large as possible. Anything that limits voting in the group, when only voters make decisions for the group, including those excluded from voting, is bad.

Discriminatory laws or any segregation.

There always will be wards of the state. If the state is the people, then wards are the children who have not yet become the people. But excluding anyone from the group, making them wards, on the basis of race, sex, income, sexual orientation, immigration status, ethnicity, caste, etc. has the same impact as voter suppression.

Opposing Anti-trust

Monopolies (only one seller) and monopsonies (only one buyer) are bad for a reason. They decrease competition, choices, of the group. That is why mergers are looked at askance. They are a first step on the road towards monopolies/ monopsonies. 

Anti Union Activities

This includes right to work, firing union organizers, opposing the minimum wage,child labor, OHSA, etc.  The people uniting is good.  Their organizing does not make you bad.  If it offends you, but does not effect you, try to remember this is about the other guy.

Stock-buy backs

They only increase the value per existing investors, they do NOT increase the number of investors.

Market Segmentation

Market segmentation that directs advertising towards certain markets is good. It offers more choices to those markets as buyers. Market segmentation that only offers price differentiation by market when the product has no reason to be segmented, is bad.

Eliminating Competition

Actions to buy up competitors to put then out of business, pricing at a loss to drive competitors our of business, or anything that decreases the number of competitors. It may be good for you , but it is bad not only for that competitor, but anyone working for that competitor as well as your existing and potential customers.

Focusing on the short term and not the long term

The future, long term is where growth of the group will occur.  The short term is only the current group, with no increase. Since members of the group will be  constantly dying, focusing on the short term is accepting that the group will get smaller.

Solutions

 

1, 2, 3

1-2-3, oh, that's how elementary it's going to be
C'mon, let's fall in love, it's easy
Like takin' candy from a baby

1-2-3 is elementary, NOT deterministic.

I am a fan of three. For example https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/02/three.html. A system  has three part: 1) an input; 2) a process; and 3) an output. Just because an input is deterministic, it does NOT mean that the process has to be deterministic, or the output has to be deterministic. For example take a coin. It has only two sides. What could be more deterministic than that. Flipping that coin is random NOT deterministic. The outcome is NOT deterministic either. It is 50% the coin is heads AND 50% that the coin is tails. So while the input was 100%, a coin,  the output AND the process are random.

When the input and process are combined into a scenario,  that also does not mean that the scenario has therefore become deterministic and therefore the output is deterministic. It still depends on the process. If the process was not deterministic, the output won’t be deterministic because the scenario can’t be deterministic. If a process is random, then it has a variance of more than zero. Goldilocks is a solution when the process is deterministic: not too hot, and not too cold; not too hard, and not too soft; just right, halfway between the two extremes. But if a process is random, its variance is NOT zero, then the output can not be Goldilocks, and Nash Equilibriums govern. At equilibrium the solution is 5/6 of the variance, σ², which is identical to the mean, μ, plus two times the square root of the variance, σ. Only when the variance is zero, will the solution be the mean, just right.

Sides

 

Both Sides Now 

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all 

You don’t need to pick a side, or repeat both sides.  Life IS both sides. 

If a surface is hyperbolic then there is a hyperbolic, non-Euclidean solution for the hypotenuse of a triangle on that surface. If life is a complex number, x + y*i, and we are living in reality, y=0, then that solution is cosh(life)=cosh(x)*cosh(y), which is life=ln(cosh(x) ± sinh(x)) beause cosh(0)=1. By subtracting cosh(x) from each solution, and because cosh(x) is symmetrical, that is cosh(-x) is equal to -cosh(x), this can also be stated as life=ln(0 ± (sinh(x)+cosh(x))). If an absolute can be approached but not obtained, then the behavior approaching that absolute is said to be exponential. Since both sinh and cosh can be stated as exponentials, the two solutions are x and -x. This, and the surface being hyperbolic, is consistent with the two sheets of a hyperboloid. If our universe is one of those sheets, then it has the opposite sign of the other sheet. If our universe is observable, then there must exist an unobservable universe that has the opposite sign of any value in our universe. 

Or to put it in New Testament terms, “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”  And life always has both a certain term, cosh(x) and an uncertainty term, sinh(x), which means that uncertainty is a consequence of being on a hyperbolic surface. Any value from an absolute will have two solutions, the value and its opposite. Or from an absolute, again in New Testament terms Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. In other words, remember on Election Day, there is neither liberal nor conservative, neither Democrat nor Republican, for you are all one in America.

Affirmative Action III

 

I’m Sorry

I'm sorry, so sorry
Please accept my apology
But love was blind
And I was too blind to see

Oops I made a mistake, but IMHO so did the Supreme Court!

I took the position that Affirmative Action is always a good thing in a previous blog post,  https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/08/affirmative-action.html, while the US Supreme Court overturned Affirmative Action in its 2024 opinion on college admissions.  IMHO, we were both guilty of being false. I was being a false positive. I was saying that Affirmative Action was always being used for good, and therefore the decision was wrong. The Supreme Court was saving that Affirmative Action is always bad, and IMHO that is a false negative. As it turns out MIT and other elite schools are finding that the racial constitution of the incoming freshman classes is less diverse racially, but is more diverse economically.  Huh?

There is a wealth inequality in the United States that has a racial component. On average Whites are wealthier than Blacks and Hispanics.  But that doesn’t mean that some Blacks and Hispanics aren’t wealthier than some Whites. What the elite colleges were apparently doing is admitting the wealthiest minorities. In that fashion they could be more racially diverse, but NOT more economically diverse. If they had used NO bias, the incoming class should be just like the overall society. By only admitting wealthy minorities, those colleges could be more diverse racially, while being not being economically diverse. The lack of Affirmative Action, as it was being used in admissions, just  might have highlighted the fact that colleges were being less diverse than the general population when it comes to wealth, even if they appeared to be closer to the general position for minority status. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., the goal is to judge on “the content of one’s character, not the color of one’s skin.”  

So is the goal of Affirmative Action wrong? IMHO, not in the least. 

Was the way in which it was being administered producing a false positive? Apparently.

Division?

 

Born Free

Stay free
Where no walls divide you
You're free as a roaring tide
 So there's no need to hide
Born free
And life is worth living
But only worth living
'Cause you're born free

Walls ARE meant to divide you.

The opposite of freedom is to have walls.  The phrase after all is “Divide and Conquer.”  If you accept walls, then you are accepting being conquered.  If life is a Zero-Sum game with walls, then when you win, you take something from others.  If life is a game of growth, not Zero-Sum,  then everyone could have more at the end than at the beginning.

A motto of the United States is “E pluribus unum.  Out of many, one” .  It is the United States, NOT the Divided States. Don’t build or accept walls.

Confused

 

Dazed and Confused

Been dazed and confused for so long it's not true
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you
Lots of people talk and few of them know
Soul of a woman was created below, yeah

Are you confused?

Many of the problems of the world are that some very basic concepts are being confused.

Mean and median.  Mixing up these terms, which sound similar, can lead to unintended things. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2018/08/wonderful-world-dont-know-much-about.html

Effective and Marginal.  The US Tax Code changed in the 1980s because people did not understand the difference between effective (e.g. first derivative) and marginal ( e.g. second derivative) and that has led to more than 40 years of extra income for high income taxpayers.  https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/08/laffer-curve.html

Dominance and Certainty.  The ruling of a panel of judges should be certain.  It should not merely be dominant. A unanimous jury approaches certainty.  A 5-4 panel of judges is merely dominant.  https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/06/dominance.html

If we have dazed and confused ourselves, shame on us.  If others have taken advantage of us because they are dazing and confusing us, shame on them. And shame on us.  Don’t be confused.  The first thing a stage magician learns is to distract the audience so they can't tell they are being tricked.  If you don’t know, take the time to find out before you act, you are effectively letting others act for, and possibly trick, you.