Ages

 

What A Piece of Work Is Man 

What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
How express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
The paragon of animals

But man is STILL an animal, NOT a God.

The lyrics above are from the musical Hair, but they are also a speech in Hamlet. The Riddle of the Sphinx in Oedipus postulates that there are 3 ages of man as defined by how many legs are used: all fours as an Infant; two legs as an Adult; and three legs, 2 legs plus a cane, in Old Age. Game Theory would suggest that there are five ages of man, if he is trying to act as he perceives the absolute, God. For the first 1/6 of life, you are a ward of the state. This corresponds to the legal voting age in the US of 18 years. The next 1/6 of your life, e.g., from 18 to 36 years old you have become an adult,  a voter. In the next two 1/6s,  from 36 to 72, you can be not only a voter but a leader. In the next 1/6 of your life, from 72 to 90, you can be an advisor to, but not yourself, a leader.. In the last 1/6 of your life you have returned to be being a ward, say from 90 to 108 years old. (You might make a contribution, but you are not expected to do so, and you might be senile anyway.)

The US Constitution does set a minimum age for President as 35 years old, even though the minimum age for Senator is 30 years and the minimum age for being a member of the House is 25 years old. Leadership positions in the Congress are by seniority so they have only a de facto lower age limit. There are no lower age limits for judges but is rare for anyone to be nominated without a history which implies a de facto lower age limit. But leadership roles in the Congress do NOT recognize the upper or lower age limits. Nor are upper age limits in place for judges. Retirement age is normally 65 and at most 70 years old for Social Security. The age of Minimum Required Distributions for IRAs is currently 73.

So the age limits are roughly consistent with common practices. Maybe it would be appropriate to consider upper age limits? Why were upper age limits not set by the Founding Fathers in the US Constitution? In the late 1700s, at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, the age of life expectancy was so low, nature enforced its own upper age limits, so any Constitutional upper age limits seemed unnecessary. Now that medical science has advanced, maybe it is time to start thinking about the upper age limits, in addition to term limits. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/09/ceilings-ii.html

Republicans

 

Marat/Sade

Four years after the revolution
And the old king's execution
Four years after, remember how
Those courtiers took their final bow
String up every aristocrat
Out with the priests and let them live on their fat
Four years after we started fighting
Marat keeps on with his writing
Four years after the Bastille fell
He still recalls the old battle yell 

Republicans?

In the French National Assembly, before the French Revolution, those who supported the King sat on the right side of the Assembly and were called Jacobites. Those who supported the people sat on the left.  Ironically those who sat on the left were also called Republicans.  Fast forward to today and those who support Donald Trump are called Republicans.  Republicans are in favor of King Donald? Left is right! Dogs and Cats living together!  I think I hear the clock striking 13!

The Republican Party invited bigoted Know Nothings and tax and regulation hating Whigs into their party in the 1850s, as long as they opposed the expansion of slavery. To hold onto power in 1876 they ended Reconstruction, allowed Jim Crow laws, and started nominating presidential tickets that had one faction of the party as president and one as vice president. Thus you got McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt and Harding and Coolidge; Eisenhower and Nixon;or McCain and Palin. But the VP also became the president upon death or as the heir. By contrast, Democrats went with tickets where the VP slot was from the SAME faction. Less likely to win but more likely that the VP would follow the same policies as his President. FDR and Trump; Kennedy and Johnson;  Johnson and Humphrey. The lesson was  also learned by the Whigs and Know Nothing descendants  and thus you get Nixon-Agnew and Trump-Vance. But if forced that faction foem ed by those descendants lets the progressive factions in, Nixon-Ford, and even will let all conservatives tickets like Trump-Pence. Or puppets like GW Bush-Cheney. Or sellouts like Reagan- GHW Bush. 

So given the choice Power or Policies, Power won. But Power corrupts and we get to today and MAGA has drummed most Real Republicans out of their own party. And absolute corruption has won out. And winning at any cost. And  the believers in a republic are no longer in the Republican Party which has been taken over by MAGA the descendant of the Whigs and Know Nothings, who are "republicans In Name Only", rINOs.

Renaissance

 It Ain't Necessarily So

It ain't necessarily so

It ain't necessarily so

The things that you're liable

To read in the Bible

They ain't necessarily so.

It might be true, but maybe it doesn't mean what you think it means!

In high school I remember in history class being fascinated by the Renaissance which was characterized as the “resurrection of forgotten knowledge.” Thinking that only the current way is best way is the height of hubris. I think that we have forgotten much, not only that which has been resurrected but some things that have not yet been resurrected.  

Read 1491, a book about the Americas before Columbus. It is possible that the Amazon rain-forest is the remnants of a garden feeding the Incas or some other Native American civilization and what we characterize as the “Stone Age” tribes of the Amazon are merely the “doomsday prepper” descendants of the caretakers of that garden. ( IOW that last scene in Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston is correct except we haven’t yet found the Amazonian Statue of Liberty.) 

Thinking that we can’t learn from the ancient Romans or any ancient Civilization is dead wrong, IMHO. if you believe that history repeats, MAGA, then wouldn’t  you want to learn from that history, Then the saying should be “ My country right or wrong.  If it’s right then keep it right, and if it’s wrong then make it right”, instead of just “My country right or wrong” .  I.e. MAGA isn’t wrong so much as it is incomplete.  

We should think “Those Romans,  I want to resurrect their knowledge. They knew how to make concrete.”  Not just their art, but the material that made the art possible. I want to find that medieval Irish monk before the Renaissance copying ancient Roman and Greek texts, not just the poems and plays, but the concrete handbooks. 

DOGE

 

Hare Krishna (from the musical Hair)

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna
Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama
Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare

And Krishna is the eighth avatar of Vishnu.

To look at the Hindu god of creation, Brahma, from another perspective, isn’t he a hoarder.  If you keep creating and never destroy anything, then isn’t the bad way of looking at that as being a hoarder?  Similarly the Hindu god of Destruction is Shiva.  From a bad perspective isn’t destroying everything without regard to its value a sign of mental illness?  But at least then you will have room for anything which Brahma creates from that point.  To keep both those gods in check, there is a third member of the Hindu pantheon, Vishnu, the Preserver. Vishnu decides what of creation should be preserved and what of creation should be destroyed.  As such he appears to be the Marie Kondo of the Hindu pantheon of supreme gods. You only keep those things that bring you joy.  If you were an ancient Greek, you might call these the three fates: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.

There is a lesson in this for today.  You should not only create government programs.  Some may be good, but others may be bad.  Similarly you should not destroy all government programs.  Some may be good, and some may be bad.  We need a Vishnu, Krishna, Marie Kondo, in our government to judge what government programs should be kept and what should be destroyed.  Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Marie Kondo. Isn't that the real function of a Department of Government Efficiency?.  It should be preserving not just destroying.  The problem isn't government despite what Ronald Reagan said.  The problem is BAD government, not ALL government. and you can't just assume that ALL  government is bad.  There is old wisdom for that.  It is don't throw out the baby with the bath water.  Hear that Elon Musk!

Certainty IV

 

Pistol Packing' Mama

We're a rough rooting tooting shooting trio
But you ought to see my sister Cleo
She's a terror make no error
But there am not no nicer terror
Here's what we tell her

Certainty is NOT its error, despite what I may have implied in an earlier post.

Absolute certainty is the ABSENCE of error. Therefore the formula for certainty should be the additive inverse of error, 100%- Standard Error%. If the formula for Standard Error is  σ/√N, then as N goes to infinity, the error goes to zero according to L’Hôpital’s rule, This is  regardless of the Standard Deviation, σ , or what engineers would call tolerance. If the tolerance is zero then the Standard Error is of course zero. But it also would be zero at infinity, the absolute, in any event. And the certainty would then be 100%.

If the certainty is NOT 100%, then that also can be used to compute the tolerance, the square root of the variance. If the certainty is perceived as 90.9% and N is two dimensions, space and time, then the tolerance is 100%-90.9%*√2=σ. Individuals acting as a group can be expected to follow a normal logistics, hyperbolic secant squared, distribution. In that case  the variance, σ², is equal to s²π²/3. If  the certainty is 90.9%, the variance is (100%-90.9%*√2)², thus 
s²=(100%-90.9%*√2)²*3/π² .  And in hyperbolic space this is
s=ln(0±sinh((1-.909*√2)*√3)/π)- cosh((1-.909*√2)*√3)/π)). This is approximately equal to 47.3%, On a hyperbolic surface the absolute value of the range variable, s, should be 50%, ½.

A series of 7 games would have a perceived certainty of 52.8%,(5/6)^7/2. A jury of 12 members would have a perceived variance of  36.9%, (5/6)^12/2. If there are 3 outcomes to a contest, then the theoretical outcome of the absolute should be 1/3, or 33.3% .  If there are two dimensions, then the chances of being one of those two dimensions is 50%, ½.  On the negative portion of hyperbolic space, you are able to perceive 5/6 of the absolute, and 1/6 on the positive portions. While on a flat surface, you could perceive 50% of an absolute on both the positive and negative portions. The fact that these are the traditional members on a jury and the traditional number of games in a series is not an accident. Those best approximate the rounded values of what can be perceived on a hyperbolic surface.

The fact that we can perceive only 5/6 of the absolute, means that we can never achieve the 100% certainty of the absolute, but society has tried to achieve as much of that 100% certainty as possible and thus settled on those numbers. If the surface being perceived was flat, then the size of juries should be  (1/2*2)/ln(1/3)= -1.09 and the number of games in a series would be only (1/3*2)/ln(1/3) =-0.369, of a single game, and these would be the negative of the expected number. If the surface was spherical, the percentage that could be perceived depends on the Radius of the sphere compared to the distance between the observer and the object being perceived.  On a flat surface, juries would consist of  a single member and there would be no need for any games to determine a winner.  That society has settled on different rounded values for the size of juries and the number of games in a series shows that they are being perceived as rounded values on the negative portion of a hyperbolic surface and this means they have a perceived variance of 5/6. This also means that the certainty can only approach, is not as good as, the absolute. That there is error is based on what can be perceived. If there is perception, there is no certainty.  If there is certainty, then there is no perception.  Only the absolute can perceive 100%, and the observer is NOT the absolute.

Fair

 

All in Love is Fair

But all is fair in love
I had to go away
A writer takes his pen
To write the words again
That all in love is fair

What is fair?

According to game theory, a fair game requires at least three players. one of which could be the referees enforcing the rules of the game. This creates a problem when there are only two players or one of the two players in a “fair” game cheats to achieve a false win. To avoid this a fair game should also be normal (false wins equal to false losses) and N, the number of potential players, should approach infinity. Even with these caveats, a fair normal game in two dimensions can only be certainly correct 91.29% of the time.

Any attempt to limit the number of players ( e.g. by voter suppression, discrimination, etc.) or by making any component of the game a zero-sum goes against the assumption that N is approaching infinity. (Currently the number of congressional seats and thus their electoral votes are fixed, a zero sum.)

Any attempt to award a win with only a plurality of votes and not a majority of votes also violates these criteria and this is why Rank Choice Voting is provided so that each voter has at least three choices. Only Alaska awards votes using Ranked Choice Voting.

In the US, electoral votes are supposed to be awarded on the basis of State (Senate) AND congressional districts. Only Maine and Nebraska currently award electoral votes in this manner, all other states award electoral votes by whole State only.

Making these changes (Eliminating voter suppression; eliminating zero-sum components; Ranked Choice Voting: and awarding electoral votes not by entire states)  does not change the fact that the elections can never be 100% certain in the two dimensional reality of space-time, but will ensure that each election is closer to being 91.29%, √(5/6)%, certain. Maybe they can’t be 100% certain, but they can be fair.

Perceptions V

 

Big Boss Man

Well, I'm gonna get me a boss man, one gonna treat me right
Work hard in the day time, rest easy at night
Big boss man, can't you hear me when I call?
Well, you ain't so big, you're just tall, that's all

You ain’t better, you’re just bigger, that’s all.

“All that glitters is not gold” and “All that is gold does not glitter”. And just because something is bigger does not mean that it is better. Toddlers are often asked to choose between a nickel and a dime. If a toddler does not understand the value of each coin, that toddler might pick the nickel because it is bigger.

Similarly in viewing laminar/uncongested/orderly flow versus turbulent/chaotic/congested flow, the chaotic flow may appear to be bigger but that does NOT mean that it is better. It may appear that the chaotic range is 5 times the size of the orderly range, but that does NOT mean that order is 1/6 the value of chaos. In fact there are three outcomes, win, loss and TIE and that does not change. If you are perceiving more of the observable outcomes, then you should be perceiving less of the unobservable outcomes ( if you could indeed perceive them). The two dimensional odds of a win or a loss are only 50% because in a two dimensional space 50% of the surface can be perceived. But that 50% is 2/3 of the outcomes. If orderly range is 5 times the size of chaotic range, that may only be because while the dimensions are two and the surface is hyperbolic, not flat. What is being perceived as 5/6 would continue to be 2./3 on a flat surface. So the fact that the orderly observable is 5 times the size of the flat domain may only indicate that it is being perceived as 5 times the size, not that it IS 5 times the size.

In fact the unobservable ties, if they could be observed, would be perceived as 20% when they should be 33 1/3%. Thus while the observable percentage is larger, the unobservable percentage is smaller. If the mirrored but observable ties are larger, regardless of the perception that the total with unobservable wins and losses should also be larger. The median percentage of observable is .5, but it would be perceived as .6. If this is half of a half a period, then the full half period would be perceived as 120% of the actual half period. It is not bigger; it is merely PERCEIVED as being bigger. If the surface is curved, then the objects in the mirror may appear larger (or smaller) than they actually are. While passenger side view mirrors on automobile often come with this warning, it would be wise to remember this for any curved surface. Don’t ever confuse perceptions with an absolute. Don’t ever confuse bigger with better. Choose the gold not the glitter.