Stremf in Numbers
Monday, July 9, 2012
Entanglement
As financial trading shifts to algorithmic "black box" transactions, the
decisions are headed towards the autonomous. Let's not even begin to talk about "value." That idea went out the window with the tulips. But, now the human element,
and the decision and bias that goes with it, is being removed. One
might even classify the system as robotic. As human oversight is taken
out of the process, we have an increasingly murky picture of what's
going on and less control over outcomes. It's now bots trading against
other bots. A fun exercise might be to stack these machines up against
Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Ain't no love in the heart of the city
I found this quote somewhere and thought it deserved another look. It's still relevant, but in a completely different way.
Bring me men to match my mountains: Bring me men to match my plains: Men with empires in their purpose and new eras in their brains. - Sam Walter Foss
These beautiful photos deserve another look. Props to Ruins of Detroit
Bring me men to match my mountains: Bring me men to match my plains: Men with empires in their purpose and new eras in their brains. - Sam Walter Foss
These beautiful photos deserve another look. Props to Ruins of Detroit
Labels: They were chanting USA USA USA and I was like huh?
¶ 9:33 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
States, pt 2
The trans-American road trip is cemented in our culture as a Homeric odyssey. This glorification is not entirely undue. No matter how you slice it there are many incredible itineraries.
The Sun Belt route ties the cultural disparities of Savanna, GA and San Diego, CA. For maximum horizontal distance (as measured by lines of longitude) start in Quoddy Head, Maine (easternmost point) and end in Port Orford, Oregon (westernmost point) – 3,600 miles end to end.
Of course, the classic route is the Cannonball Run: NYC to L.A. This last one represents the spirit of American automotive travel. It starts in our most vertical metropolis, spills out onto the plains and eventually moves into the wild west of our imagined possibilities.
Arguably the first to make a coast-to-coast trip was the party of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Since then the journey has been the rite of passage for generations of young men and the ultimate family vacation. Eisenhower, quite literally, paved the way. The Beats showed us the style while modern long-haul truckers exemplify the tedium of 16 hour days behind the wheel.
Three thousand miles is no joke.
To give you a scale of how far this is, let's superimpose this route on Europe. Imagine you start in Paris and drive east. After about 400 miles you enter Stuttgart Germany. You wind around through Beograd (1,150 miles). At Istanbul (1,700 miles) you get a nice view of the Sea of Marmara out the passenger window. After leaving Eastern Europe you quickly dash through Beirut and Tripoli. Finally, as you rolled into Jerusalem you travelled a distance equal to NY to LA: 2,700 miles.
On that trip you would have passed through France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. That's how wide this country is.
The Sun Belt route ties the cultural disparities of Savanna, GA and San Diego, CA. For maximum horizontal distance (as measured by lines of longitude) start in Quoddy Head, Maine (easternmost point) and end in Port Orford, Oregon (westernmost point) – 3,600 miles end to end.
Of course, the classic route is the Cannonball Run: NYC to L.A. This last one represents the spirit of American automotive travel. It starts in our most vertical metropolis, spills out onto the plains and eventually moves into the wild west of our imagined possibilities.
Arguably the first to make a coast-to-coast trip was the party of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Since then the journey has been the rite of passage for generations of young men and the ultimate family vacation. Eisenhower, quite literally, paved the way. The Beats showed us the style while modern long-haul truckers exemplify the tedium of 16 hour days behind the wheel.
Three thousand miles is no joke.
To give you a scale of how far this is, let's superimpose this route on Europe. Imagine you start in Paris and drive east. After about 400 miles you enter Stuttgart Germany. You wind around through Beograd (1,150 miles). At Istanbul (1,700 miles) you get a nice view of the Sea of Marmara out the passenger window. After leaving Eastern Europe you quickly dash through Beirut and Tripoli. Finally, as you rolled into Jerusalem you travelled a distance equal to NY to LA: 2,700 miles.
On that trip you would have passed through France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. That's how wide this country is.
Labels: Manifold destiny
¶ 4:38 PM 0 Comments
Friday, September 30, 2011
Zut Alors!
The French Revolution is commonly understood in terms of political philosophy. The Enlightenment ideals of individual liberty and vested interest in political discourse caused the masses to revolt against tyrannical rule.
That theory is certainly accurate. Here’s a fun supporting narrative.
France heavily financed the American Revolution in a vindictive move against England. These expenditures may have been detrimental to the aristocrats of Paris and Versailles. By the end of the American Revolution, war debt bankrupted the French economy, which led to increased taxes. Accordingly, this destabilized the historical order causing revolt.
That theory is certainly accurate. Here’s a fun supporting narrative.
France heavily financed the American Revolution in a vindictive move against England. These expenditures may have been detrimental to the aristocrats of Paris and Versailles. By the end of the American Revolution, war debt bankrupted the French economy, which led to increased taxes. Accordingly, this destabilized the historical order causing revolt.
Labels: No taxation without vino libations
¶ 7:52 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
States, pt 1
The drafters of our government cleverly divided it into a trinity of opposing powers. And, of course, benefits of a democratic system are axiomatic. But, a more subtle and unintentional aspect lies in the coevolution of states and federal powers.
Fifty states are, to some extent, fifty simultaneous experiments for common problems. They each offer solutions to, say, the gay marriage issue, or how to tax capital gains on earners in the $82k – 171k bracket. The hope is that the most intelligent and just answers rise to prominence.
Whenever a state (or increasingly a city) becomes the epicenter for an issue (AZ on immigration, NY on public health, MA on gay marriage, CA on solvency, AK on energy) we ought to sit up and pay attention. It’s in these crises and advancements that we find enlightenment.
Fifty states are, to some extent, fifty simultaneous experiments for common problems. They each offer solutions to, say, the gay marriage issue, or how to tax capital gains on earners in the $82k – 171k bracket. The hope is that the most intelligent and just answers rise to prominence.
Whenever a state (or increasingly a city) becomes the epicenter for an issue (AZ on immigration, NY on public health, MA on gay marriage, CA on solvency, AK on energy) we ought to sit up and pay attention. It’s in these crises and advancements that we find enlightenment.
Labels: what about solids liquids gases and plasmas?
¶ 11:57 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Path Dependency
I've been reading a book called "Chances Are... Adventures in Probability" by Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan. This passage was so good I had to type it and shamelessly post. Enjoy.
Sometimes you play the game; sometimes the game plays you: situations that are themselves irrational but stable need to paranoid dictator to set them going. Mark Shubik (another RAND staffer) described a particularly worrying party game. He would offer to auction a dollar bill to the highest bidder; the only difference from a traditional auction was that the second-highest bidder would also have to pay. So if you bid 70 cents for the dollar and your neighbor bids 75, he gains a quarter while you lose your money-and also lose face. Even if you have to buy the dollar for $1.10, at least you've lost only a dime; the underbidder has lost much more. The bidding would usually slow as it approached the dollar mark, but once past would zoom well beyond it. People were buying a dollar for an average price of $3.40, just to avoid being the person who had bid so much for nothing. ...it applies to much more than just auction or political assassinations-it describes engineering white elephants, strikes, dead-end weapons development, and all the little conflicts that escalate relentlessly.
McGeorge Bundy, who had been Kennedy's and Johnson's security and Indochina man, once visited a Boston secondary school during the early seventies, at the height of protests against America's involvement in Vietnam. It was not a welcoming audience: the young, earnest faces surrounding him glowed with righteous disdain for the compromised warmonger. In a quiet voice, Bundy began: "I'll take you through the events as they happened, starting in 1945; when you hear me come to the place where we should have stopped, raise your hand." He started with simple, innocent matters: helping a damaged British navy, bolstering a weak France, supporting a newly independent friendly country, shoring up a local army - a policy here, a commitment there... penny bids. Each further step seemed no more than a logical way to protect the position already established, and there was already so much to lose. The audience nodded; the first hand did not go up until Bundy had reached the point of full commitment of regular troops: hot war. The students, like the U.S. government, had bought the dollar several times over. ¶ 10:59 AM 0 Comments
Sometimes you play the game; sometimes the game plays you: situations that are themselves irrational but stable need to paranoid dictator to set them going. Mark Shubik (another RAND staffer) described a particularly worrying party game. He would offer to auction a dollar bill to the highest bidder; the only difference from a traditional auction was that the second-highest bidder would also have to pay. So if you bid 70 cents for the dollar and your neighbor bids 75, he gains a quarter while you lose your money-and also lose face. Even if you have to buy the dollar for $1.10, at least you've lost only a dime; the underbidder has lost much more. The bidding would usually slow as it approached the dollar mark, but once past would zoom well beyond it. People were buying a dollar for an average price of $3.40, just to avoid being the person who had bid so much for nothing. ...it applies to much more than just auction or political assassinations-it describes engineering white elephants, strikes, dead-end weapons development, and all the little conflicts that escalate relentlessly.
McGeorge Bundy, who had been Kennedy's and Johnson's security and Indochina man, once visited a Boston secondary school during the early seventies, at the height of protests against America's involvement in Vietnam. It was not a welcoming audience: the young, earnest faces surrounding him glowed with righteous disdain for the compromised warmonger. In a quiet voice, Bundy began: "I'll take you through the events as they happened, starting in 1945; when you hear me come to the place where we should have stopped, raise your hand." He started with simple, innocent matters: helping a damaged British navy, bolstering a weak France, supporting a newly independent friendly country, shoring up a local army - a policy here, a commitment there... penny bids. Each further step seemed no more than a logical way to protect the position already established, and there was already so much to lose. The audience nodded; the first hand did not go up until Bundy had reached the point of full commitment of regular troops: hot war. The students, like the U.S. government, had bought the dollar several times over. ¶ 10:59 AM 0 Comments
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Foolish Games, But not Child's Play
Game theory offers powerful and sophisticated methods for working problems. But, in parsing down the world into binary decisions and simple games it's easy to enter a hypnotic state of belief in these games as reality. Through familiarity and repetition with these games we begin to trust them as fact. Porn becomes sex.
For example, I found a notebook from 2003 that had a decision tree for the upcoming year. It had all sorts of options relating to finances, school, love and such. But, moving to Oregon and upending my life wasn't even on the map.
Another example: Kennedy's advisers mapped the nuclear situation as a classical PD utility grid.
a. we bomb them first with no retaliation
b. they bomb us first with no retaliation
c. we bomb them first with retaliation
b. they bomb us first with retaliation
This lead to an obvious conclusion that we should not only strike first, but strike immediately. Why bomb tomorrow when you can launch today? Why wait till 3pm when you can fire at noon? They were drawn into the false assumption that these were the only possible outcomes. They never foresaw a 5th possibility, that it might end peacefully.
We may soon be in a similar situation with a nuclearized theocracy that is even less rational than ol' Ivan. My guess and hope is that it will end in a similarly unpredictable way.
For example, I found a notebook from 2003 that had a decision tree for the upcoming year. It had all sorts of options relating to finances, school, love and such. But, moving to Oregon and upending my life wasn't even on the map.
Another example: Kennedy's advisers mapped the nuclear situation as a classical PD utility grid.
a. we bomb them first with no retaliation
b. they bomb us first with no retaliation
c. we bomb them first with retaliation
b. they bomb us first with retaliation
This lead to an obvious conclusion that we should not only strike first, but strike immediately. Why bomb tomorrow when you can launch today? Why wait till 3pm when you can fire at noon? They were drawn into the false assumption that these were the only possible outcomes. They never foresaw a 5th possibility, that it might end peacefully.
We may soon be in a similar situation with a nuclearized theocracy that is even less rational than ol' Ivan. My guess and hope is that it will end in a similarly unpredictable way.
Labels: you've got to keep making decisions - even if they're the wrong ones. Otherwise you're stuffed.
¶ 11:37 PM 0 Comments
