It's A Wonderful Life II

 

Buffalo Girls

Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight?
Come out tonight, Come out tonight?
Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,
And dance by the light of the moon.

Don’t we all want to lasso the moon!

45 years ago I married into a family from Tioga County, PA.  I spent many Fourth of Julys traveling from my in-laws home to see the see the Elmira Pioneers play baseball.  I shopped in downtown Elmira, Corning, and Horseheads.  While in college, I traveled to Cornell to root against Ken Dryden playing hockey against my college.  I toured most of the baseball stadiums in the New York-Penn League of baseball when it included the St. Catherine Stompers, the Welland Pirates, the Batavia Clippers, the Geneva Cubs, etc.  I am kicking myself now that I was so close but never visited Seneca Falls the inspiration for Bedford Falls,  especially after hearing the podcast, George Bailey Was Never Born.

My favorite movie of all time is still Casablanca.  My favorite Christmas movie fluctuates between Die Hard and White Christmas, depending on my mood.  But those are emotional decisions.  Intellectually, IMHO,  the most important movie of all time is It’s A Wonderful Life.

It is the movie cited most often by economists as being the best teaching tool.  https://www.npr.org/2023/01/10/1148144705/its-a-wonderful-life-bank-run-economics.

The movie intuited Nash Equilibriums before they were articulated by John Nash in 1951, where someone, e.g. George Bailey, blocks the bad impulses of some Users so that the rest of the Users can be equal.  Yes, the second act is a horror movie when George is not born and everyone can pursue their User Optimal. Yes, the first act is a horror movie where George has to accept something less than his own User Optimal to achieve a Nash Equilibrium for everyone.  But his is the price of achieving something approaching a System Equilibrium, and that seems better to him, and to everyone else, as is revealed in the final act.

The movie intuited that our reality is the exact opposite of what we would like it to be if you consider life to be complex. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2023/09/distribution-of-income-ii.html

I eagerly look forward to the new museum quarters being completed in downtown Seneca Falls.  My favorite  museum in the world is the Charles Shultz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA, and yes I have been, and am comparing it, to: the Louvre, the MFA in Boston, the Met in New York, the MOMA in Los Angeles, the Vatican Museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Getty Center, etc.  It is because the Schultz Museum loves its subject, and not merely its possessions.  And my goodness there is a great subject to love in It’s A Wonderful Life.

Rules

 

The Rules of the Road

So these are the ropes
The tricks of the trade
The rules of the road
You're one of the dopes
For whom they were made
The rules of the road

Let’s hear it for the rules!

A contest for dominance between only two players involves no rules.  Either player can lie, cheat, or steal to be dominant, win.  A contest with rules, especially rules enforced by referees, does not have to only be a contest of dominance.  If the losing player is not destroyed, can complete in future contests, either with the winner of that contest or some other player, then the result of that and many contests can also be one of certainty, in addition to dominance.

It might seem like a contest is only between two teams, contestants.  But if you look closely that is because the third team in the field/arena/court, the referees, are virtually invisible if they are doing their job correctly.  That does NOT however mean they are not there, and it does not mean that they are not important.

Players in such contests may “work” the refs to try to gain an advantage, but that is implicitly acknowledging that there are rules and referees.  A player who acts like there are no rules, or is not subject to rules,  and that there are no referees, may win every contest in which he competes but he will never achieve certainty.

In elections or other political contests, it might seem like you are competing for dominance. That may be a winning tactic, but it is a losing strategy.  A winning strategy is to compete in accordance with the rules to achieve certainty.  Learn and follow the rules.

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.