Hawking Radiation

While the following post doesn't quite get me to the point of understanding Hawking radiation, it gets me much closer to the point of understanding what Stephen Hawking was attempting to say in A Brief History of Time: now I know what he means by "virtual particles" and that I need to read up on Feynman diagrams to understand the argument.

Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/higgs-field-and-the-casimir-effect.405738/#post-2736124 

Graphically in a Feynman diagram a virtual particle is a particle that does not escape to infinity; so its line has two ends (two vertices) where it meets with another line or lines. Now draw a circle and two vertices on the circle. This is a vacuum fluctuation where at one vertex a pair of virtual particles is created out of nothing (vacuum); the two particles propagate to the second vertex where they annihilate into nothing (vacuum). Usually this is a mathematical [artifact] and is "subtracted" from the theory.

Near the event horizon something strange happens. One of the two virtual particles tunnels through the horizon whereas the other virtual particle is eventually sucked into the black hole. The particle outside the event horizon does not annihilate with the other particle, so it escapes to infinite and is therefore not a virtual particle. The confusion is due to the fact that we compare a process in flat space (with two virtual particles in a vacuum fluctuation) with another, different process in curved spacetime (with one real particle). That's why its strictly speaking not a virtual particle that becomes a real particle, but a particle that is created by tunneling (similar to the alpha particle that tunnels from a nucleus causing alpha decay).

The mathematical reason is difficult: in order to set up quantum field theory one must define a vacuum state. In curved spacetime this is no longer possible uniquely. So what we call virtual particle when its located inside the event horizon is a real particle when it is located outside the horizon. One can evaluate this vacuum ambiguity mathematically. In doing so one finds that one has to redefine the vacuum state outside the event horizon in such a way that is contains real particles with thermal spectrum.

A similar effect is the so-called Unruh effect. It simply says that if an observer at rest observes vacuum w/o particles then a constantly accelerated observer observes thermal radiation! So the same volume of space contains no particles at all or thermal radiation - depending on the observer. Again the very notion of vacuum is no longer unique. The two effects are closely related as in the Unruh case there is again a "kinematical horizon" which means there is a region of spacetime from which no signal can reach the accelerated observer. This is not due tothe eometry of spacetime but due to the acceleration only, but nevertheless it is a horizon.

Reference: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/higgs-field-and-the-casimir-effect.405738/#post-2736124

-Max
 

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Global warming evidence(?) and positive feedback loops

Article: https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/29/will-the-global-warming-hysterics-never-tire-of-being-wrong/?fbclid=IwAR2jf6xiN7uOIcjst3kv1mbX4aFKSa954Y3mNmENKxR7cv_hDEJMQ712xkw 

 
But some remember those frenzied forecasts. Following is but a small taste of a smorgasbord of baloney:

Al Gore once declared that "unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases" were taken within the next decade, "the world will reach a point of no return," eventually suffering "a true planetary emergency." That was 13 years ago.

Gore is of course the same fellow who in the mid- to late-2000s kept telling us the Arctic Ocean would soon be ice-free. The ice, which is still there, had grown thicker and had wider coverage in 2014 than when Gore made his prediction. Earlier this year, before the growing season had ended, Wattsupwiththat reported the "2019 Arctic sea-ice extent is already higher than the previous four years and six out of the last 14 years."

In January 2009, former NASA scientist and corporate witch hunter James Hansen swore that the incoming president had a mere four years to save the world.

Later in the year, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (the Thames, again) said there remained "fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years and more."

Also in 2009, 124 months ago, the prince of Wales worried out loud the world had "less than 100 months" to save itself.
2009 was a particularly looney year. Elizabeth May, leader of the Greens in Canada, wrote "we have hours to act to avert a slow-motion tsunami that could destroy civilization as we know it. … We need to act urgently. We no longer have decades; we have hours."

While speaking to then-Secretary of State John Kerry in May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." Nearly 1,900 days have passed since. The chaos is in the foreign minister's head.

In 2015, mayors from around the world signed a statement that said the "last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees" Celsius had arrived.

Almost 20 years ago, in Y2K, the British Independent quoted a climate researcher who said in coming years the children of England "just aren't going to know what snow is." Thirteen years later, that same newspaper told readers to "stand by for icy blasts and heavy snow."

Commentary by Max:

Predictions of climate disaster have always rested upon the implausible assumption that earth's climate is an unstable equilibrium, when everything we know about earth's history and planetary systems indicates it's more likely to be a stable equilibrium. If heating led to further irreversible heating, the Earth would already have turned irreversibly into a furnace way back in the Medieval Warm Period. Climatology's arguments in favor of positive feedback loops are extraordinary claims, and we have yet to see extraordinary evidence. It's hotter than it used to be but in all likelihood this is about as hot as it's ever going to get, and the history of the past two decades bears that out because it's no longer getting even hotter--there is no temperature-driven positive feedback loop.

Also carbon dioxide has diminishing returns. At some point you're already capturing about all the energy in the CO2 bands, and increasing CO2 levels cease to matter (in terms of temperature at least--high CO2 levels do still make air feel less fresh, while increasing plant growth rates, and extremely high CO2 levels can give you a headache or eventually even kill you).

-Max
 
 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Pre-marriage Discussion

[Responding to questionnaire taken from https://www.marriagebuilders.com/choosing-the-right-one-to-marry-2.htm?fbclid=IwAR2lOe9xcmN-U825aaUkY9yhADyYaGLxThLn4DHvM91krQZriQWK7JLpfj8. My responses to B.F. in brackets.]

However, you can make up your own version of the PREPARE test if you like. It won't be as sophisticated as the one a professional counselor would give you, but it could give you a rough idea of where you might have serious conflicts. But more importantly, it would help you understand how you would handle those conflicts after marriage.

Ask yourselves these questions:

1. Do you want to have children, and if so, how many? [Ideally I'd like four daughters named Samantha (Sam), Alexandra (Alex), Riley, and Jill.]
2. What religion do you want for our children? [I would like our family to be completely committed to the teachings of Jesus Christ, especially as taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.]

3. When our children are disobedient, how will you discipline them? [Ideally I'd like to raise my eyebrows and let them suffer the consequences of their own foolishness. I'm open to other approaches, especially when they are very young, but that's how I'd prefer to handle it. I'm a big believer in freedom of agency.]
4. How do you want to spend our vacations and holidays? [I'm not sure. For my own sake I'd probably just want to stay home, read books, and relax, but I expect that for the girls' sakes I'd want to frequently do things that give them new experiences, indoors, outdoors, and in the worlds of the mind.]
5. How much money do you expect me to earn? What if I never earned any money? [It would be fine with me if you never earned any money. In fact as a matter of fiscal discipline I would prefer it if we never, as a family, relied at all upon any money that you happened to earn even if you did feel like getting a professional job. That way you'd feel completely free to take any job you wanted, or leave any job you wanted, without any economic repercussions to family welfare. My goal is to make enough money for you to have that complete freedom.]

6. What kind of house would you like to own? Where would you like to live? [My mild preference is to have a house with no yard so there is no yardwork. If you decide that you want a yard because it looks nice I will do my best, because what's important to you should be important to me, but it's possible I might never learn to enjoy doing yardwork so please be patient.]

7. Do you expect me to make love to you whenever you want? If not, would you EVER expect me to make love to you? Would you leave me or have an affair if I never made love to you? [I don't think I would feel cheated if you never made love to me as long as we had a good friendship. That would obviously be inconvenient for our daughters, because they'd never get born, but as far as I'm concerned it's not something I feel like I need. I am not saying I won't feel physical desire for you and won't WANT to reach out to you that way, because you're super-cute and very desirable--but I don't think I would resent it if you hypothetically said "You're my best friend Max but I'm just not into touching and I think I never will be." I could be completely happy, I think, with a 100% verbal relationship with you, as long as I can count on you when I need you.]

8. If you don't like one of my friends, would you want me to give up the friendship? [I'm really not sure. At minimum I'd want to understand why we have different perceptions of this person. How is it possible for me to not like someone you like? I can imagine circumstances where I might try to persuade you that someone is bad for you, and if I successfully persuade you then I expect that you would give up that friendship voluntarily, but I don't think I would expect you to give up a friendship without being persuaded first.]

9. What should our budget priorities be? How will we make financial decisions? [This is a complicated subject. Let's talk about it at more length.]

10. Would you support me financially if I wanted to educate myself for a new career? [Sure. I know you've sometimes considered becoming a veterinarian, for example. If you want to, we'll make it happen, in as many different careers as you feel interested in.]

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Pre-Copernican geocentrism

Something I learned from the book Lost In Math, by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder:

People love to make fun of pre-Copernican geocentric models of the universe, but it turns out that there were some interesting arguments against heliocentrism, back in the day.

For one thing, scientists back then knew how to do trigonometry, and they noticed that the stars (unlike the planets) didn't seem to move, which meant that either (1) the stars were fixed in position relative to the earth, not the sun, or else (2) the stars were implausibly far away, thousands of times farther away than any of the planets, far enough away that their parallax motion was impossible to detect.

It wasn't until much later that we developed instruments sensitive enough to detect that yes, the stars really do show parallax motion as the earth goes around the sun. But if you went back in time to the 16th century, and you didn't bring any of those modern instruments with you, you'd have a pretty tough time answering that argument.

This is good in the sense that it teaches you something true about the way human beings search for knowledge, including the fact that people can be wrong without being stupid.

It's an interesting book.

-Max

Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray-ebook/dp/B0763L6YR7/ 

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

What Is Pornography?

The definition of "pornography" I would give to my kids is "pornography is material produced by one person in an attempt to gain power (money, attention, etc.) over another person by manipulating their physical desires."

This definition makes it possible to talk clinically about accidental exposure to pornographic material, and without feeling shame. Case in point: I was on a web site today, skimming an article about Soviet whaling practices, and I kept seeing these highly-inappropriate bikini ads from a company called Venus. The body language of the models was aggressively sexual, and unlike most Google ads, these ones didn't have a little X in the corner for easily closing the ad and opting out of seeing it in the future. The ad bugged me enough that I held up my hand to cover the screen while I searched for ways to disable it, which I _think_ I was able to eventually do after some trial and error. (I clicked on Google Ad Choices, which sent me to Criteo's web page, and I told Criteo not to show me that product again, and reloaded the page--no luck, still the bikini porn. So I clicked on Google Ad Choices again and opted out of Criteo entirely, and reloaded the page, and this time I saw some ad for a hotel or something, so maybe it worked.)

Whoever was selling those bikinis is clearly trying to gain power (money, attention) by manipulating physical desires (aggressively sexual stances, making it hard to opt out), and therefore it's pornography. To them it's just business, probably, but they don't care about the damage they inflict on other people as long as they get their money. And if I had kids, I would want them to know that, and to be able to react to ads like that one by (1) realizing that they're under attack, (2) taking countermeasures, (3) feeling free to calmly discuss the attack with family members without feeling ashamed of the experience.

Am I always successful in fending off such attacks so calmly and disinterestedly? No. I was just lucky today. Do I want my kids to be even better than me at my best? Yes, I do.

-Max
 
 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

TED talk on connectivity vs. addiction

Hi [redacted],

I was thinking about our conversation about addictive behaviors and phone usage. Here's a short talk that might change the way you think about certain things and/or which might help you communicate your concerns about social media to your kids. I will summarize it to save you some time but it is worth watching:

One of the most interesting things about it is the story he tells about where our ideas on addiction came from: rats in a cage that would basically take heroin until they died. But that's only because the cages were boring. When you put rats in a cage with lots of other rats and a rat amusement park and lots of other fun rat things to do, they basically ignore the heroin.

The insight: at its core, addiction is how people escape from their cage (life) when they don't have anything to feel connected to. They connect to their addiction.

One application: social media can be helpful to the extent that it facilitates real connections to your friends, family, etc. and harmful to the extent that it functions as a cheap substitute for connection which prevents you from developing real connections. Spending lots of time on Instagram trying to generate likes = fake connection. Using Instagram or Facebook to arrange a weekend rendezvous with friends and share a few photos of the event afterwards = real connection.

Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en

Hope you like it,
Max

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Priorities

March 21, 2019

My thought process today after work:

I want to play Dominions 5, but I'm trying to cut down on screen time for my own sake and the kids' sake, so... I could go to the temple!

But wait, I think I'm almost out of clean church shirts. It's still early in the evening, so maybe I have time to do a load in the washer and dryer and be at the temple by 7:30. But I know realistically that if I try that, it will take twice as long as I expect, so maybe I should just go tomorrow (oh, I'm busy) or some other day--

Then my left brain said, "...wait. This is stupid, Max. Heavenly Father cares more that you do the right thing and help some people receive their saving ordinances today when you've got the chance than he does about whether your church shirt has some dried sweat on the neck. Go to the temple first, and do your laundry some other day."

Good point Dante! So let it be written. (So let it be done.)

-Max

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Reflection on the nature of love

Reflecting on a recent, unexpected Christmas event:

Love isn't a feeling. It's maybe a cross between a decision and a reflex, or maybe it's a decision to create a reflex, to do anything you can to help that person. Love doesn't go away even if the positive feelings that made you decide to commit to it do. Love is permanent, in my experience.

-B.C.

Rash Vows

The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea...

Let us turn, on the other hand, to the maker of vows. The man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment. He vowed, for example, to chain two mountains together, perhaps a symbol of some great relief of love, or aspiration. Short as the moment of his resolve might be, it was, like all great moments, a moment of immortality, and the desire to say of it exegi monumentum aere perennius was the only sentiment that would satisfy his mind. The modern aesthetic man would, of course, easily see the emotional opportunity; he would vow to chain two mountains together. But, then, he would quite as cheerfully vow to chain the earth to the moon. And the withering consciousness that he did not mean what he said, that he was, in truth, saying nothing of any great import, would take from him exactly that sense of daring actuality which is the excitement of a vow.

...It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.

Source: G.K. Chesterton 

I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not Honor more.

-Max

P.S. I made another rash vow last Friday, December 14, 2018: on my honor, no food shall cross my lips until February 14, 2019, unless I have already reached a satisfactory strength/weight ratio or encounter serious health problems, or unless this vow conflicts with a prior obligation (like taking the sacrament, which obviously takes precedence).

 --

Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove oversimplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, "false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened."[Darwin, 1998, 629] Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light. -Gregory Clark, Preface to Farewell to Alms

Great article on roleplaying

I thought this was great: http://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/models/blacow.html

-Max

 --

Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove oversimplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, "false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened."[Darwin, 1998, 629] Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light. -Gregory Clark, Preface to Farewell to Alms

Hooray for F#

Hooray!

I think I'm beginning to grok F# computation expressions. I realized recently that an abstraction I've been trying to create--generalized input/output so you can write the same algorithm and execute it both synchronously (a la Console.ReadLine/WriteLine) and in an event loop like React/Elmish--is really just a form of coroutine. Put it together with a packrat parser and you wind up with something like this:

// types for test scenario

type GetNumber = Query of string

type Confirmation = Query of string

type InteractionQuery =

    | Number of GetNumber

    | Confirmation of Confirmation

module Recognizer =

    open Packrat

    let (|Number|_|) = (|Int|_|)

    let (|Bool|_|) = function

        | Word(AnyCase("y" | "yes" | "true" | "t"), ctx) -> Some(true, ctx)

        | Word(AnyCase("n" | "no" | "false" | "f"), ctx) -> Some(false, ctx)

        | _ -> None

module Query =

    open Packrat

    let tryParse recognizer arg =

        match ParseArgs.Init arg |> recognizer with

        | Some(v, End) -> Some v

        | _ -> None

    let confirm txt =

        InteractionQuery.Confirmation(Confirmation.Query txt), (tryParse Recognizer.``|Bool|_|``)

    let getNumber txt =

        InteractionQuery.Number(GetNumber.Query txt), (tryParse Recognizer.``|Number|_|``)

#nowarn "40" // recursive getBurgers is fine

[<Theory>]

[<InlineData(4,true,0,"That will be $8.00 please")>]

[<InlineData(4,true,3,"Thanks! That will be $11.00 please")>]

[<InlineData(3,false,3,"Thanks! That will be $6.00 please")>]

let ``Simulated user interaction``(burgers, getFries, tip, expected) =

    let interaction = InteractionBuilder<string, InteractionQuery>()

    let rec getBurgers : Interactive<_,_,_> =

        interaction {

            let! burger = Query.confirm "Would you like a burger?"

            if burger then

                let! fries = Query.confirm "Would you like fries with that?"

                let price = 1 + (if fries then 1 else 0)

                let! more = getBurgers

                return price + more

            else

                return 0

        }

    let getOrder: Eventual<_, InteractionQuery, _> =

        interaction {

            let! price = getBurgers

            let! tip = Query.confirm "Would you like to leave a tip?"

            if tip then

                let! tip = Query.getNumber "How much?"

                return sprintf "Thanks! That will be $%d.00 please" (tip + price)

            else

                return sprintf "That will be $%d.00 please" price

        }

    let mutable burgerCount = 0

    let question = function

        | Confirmation(Confirmation.Query txt) ->

            if txt.Contains "burger" then

                if burgerCount < burgers then

                    burgerCount <- burgerCount + 1

                    "yes"

                else

                    "no"

            elif txt.Contains "tip" && tip > 0 then

                "yes"

            elif txt.Contains "fries" && getFries then

                "yes"

            else

                "no"

        | Number(GetNumber.Query txt) -> tip.ToString() // must always answer question by typing text

    let resolve =

        let rec resolve monad =

            match monad with

            | Final(v) -> v

            | Intermediate(q,f) as m ->

                let answer = question q

                let m = f answer

                resolve m

        resolve

    Assert.Equal(expected, getOrder |> resolve)

The neat things about this are manyfold:

(1) You can query for numbers (tip amount), yes/no confirmation, or anything else that you want, and it all comes back strongly typed in the context of the algorithm you're executing (getBurgers).

(2) Even though the unit test executes the workflow synchronously via resolve, executing the same logic via React is straightforward: you just take the Intermediate and render the question (q) via React, and dispatch the answer (in string form) back to f. So you can write your business logic without any reference at all to your UI abstractions, and yet it still works in React event loops.

(3) The parser (active patterns in Recognizer) is easy to read and extensible: it looks almost exactly like BNF grammar.

(4) I think it's probably possible to make the parser give you hints about productions that were being matched at the time it ran out of input, so you could give the user hints about what valid inputs they could type next. You could use this in e.g. mobile web development to show autocomplete buttons with the most likely valid responses.

(5) BTW I really like using string format as a canonical form because it's very amenable to pedagogy (teaching the user how they would replicate via text commands the thing you just did on their behalf via the GUI) but you could pick a different canonical form if you wanted to, as long as it's something your event loop knows how to supply.

I'm really happy because I've been working on this problem on and off for probably at least a year, and I finally have a design pattern for user interaction that actually feels _clean_. And in the process I corrected a lot of my misconceptions about computation expressions and what they are good for, and now I have a fairly compelling example to show people of why programming in F# is better/easier/cleaner than C#. :)

~B.C.

 --

Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove oversimplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, "false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened."[Darwin, 1998, 629] Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light. -Gregory Clark, Preface to Farewell to Alms

ThingTracker

Ahahaha, this makes me happy. I've been wanting an app like this for ages and I finally made it: just something to track stuff on a daily basis, like how much money I spend or how much exercise I do.

Integrating with Facebook identity and Azure cloud data storage turned out to be a real learning exercise.

Disclaimer: I know it is ugly. It doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be easy for me to use. I may or may not invest in prettying it up and showing nice graphs of all the things you're tracking, but for right now it's enough that it shows me what's going on.

https://maxwilson.github.io/ThingTracker/

 --

Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove oversimplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, "false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened."[Darwin, 1998, 629] Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light. -Gregory Clark, Preface to Farewell to Alms

Religion: What Difference Does It Make?

One way my religion has recently changed my life: I'm naturally very sympathetic to the need for law, justice, fairness, etc., so my natural inclination with respect to illegal immigration is to say, "Wait your turn. Don't break the law to cut in line and come here early. That isn't good for anybody."

But this scripture gives me pause: 'Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord.' (2 Nephi 1:6)

And so when I see the news about the migrant train headed for the southern U.S. border right now, instead of being upset, my current inclination is to say, "I do not know what should happen. I will wait and see what happens." The Lord is able to do his own work. He doesn't need my opinion.

New position: neutral.

-Max

 --

Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove oversimplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, "false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened."[Darwin, 1998, 629] Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light. -Gregory Clark, Preface to Farewell to Alms

On /Lamb/ movie and odd friendships

I just saw (part of) a movie called Lamb and I need to vent about how mad it made me at the main character. I hesitate to call him the "protagonist" but from a literary standpoint he's at least the deuteragonist.

I was prepared to be uncomfortable going in because it's got a reputation as a "weird" movie, about a friendship between a middle-aged man and an eleven-year-old girl. What what I wasn't prepared to feel was outraged. Fear not, it's not a Lolita storyline, it's not like that, but it turns out I can get mad over much subtler things like dishonesty and selfishness.

Here's the thing: ever since I was a kid, I've always been willing to transcend both space/time and age boundaries. I *am* conscious of age barriers in dating relationships but not in other kinds of relationships. I was nice to substitute teachers in middle school because I recognized that they were in a tough situation and I kind of pitied them. I feel older than my biological parents, emotionally and spiritually and behaviorally, and have at least since the age of twelve or so. I'm perfectly willing to learn from experiences I haven't actually had yet including parenting, and you'll occasionally see me comment in Sunday School about things like what we learn from raising our kids or how it feels when your kids go astray--this may seem odd to some but to me it's just me trying to project my knowledge back in time so I can be my full self even before I become myself. I still see myself as older, in many ways, than even the physically oldest men and women in my social circle; I try to treat kids with respect the way I would have wanted to be treated at their age, because you never know how old someone really is inside; and my best friend is an eleven-year-old (who nevertheless has a lot of catching up to do before she'd be anything like a peer).

So if there is anyone who ought to be able to relate to the social discomforts of an "odd"-looking friendship, and having it anyway, it is me. I was afraid that I might see too much of myself in the movie and it would make me uncomfortable.

But what I wasn't prepared for was to see a friendship so superficially similar yet fundamentally opposite to what I believe in. If you have seen the movie you may recognize some of these elements, but here are some: David lies to Tommy (the girl) about his name. He tells her he's "Gary." He lies to other people in his life. He's having an affair with a younger woman named Linny at work, and he lies to her about his home life. His boss at work confronts him about how his affair is really causing problems for Linny's prospects of promotion, and David shows no remorse. He gestures in the direction of doing the right thing--the first time he pretends to "kidnap" Tommy but really just drops her off at her apartment, he says, "You should probably tell your mom about this," but later on he gets more and more selfish and secretive. He influences her for good in some ways--she stops dressing provocatively after that first "kidnapping" trick, and she stops wanting to smoke--but in other ways the effect of their relationship is to socially isolate her (as well as him). He gets her away from bad friends but doesn't help her make new, better ones. He maintains the outward form of equality between them, offering to take her home instantly if she decides that's what she wants, but for me the final straw and the thing that made me quit in outrage was when she says, "I think I might want to call my mom," to tell her that she's okay and not to worry... instead of instantly obliging, he asks her, "Tomorrow?" and she says yeah, and he starts asking her what she'd tell her mom, clearly wanting to change her mind. I couldn't stand to watch any more and in fact I wanted to tell him off. "That's not friendship! That's selfishness!"

I think Tommy deserves a good life and good friends, and to the extent I kept watching it is because I wanted to see her get good things, but at a certain point in the movie I felt like watching any more would make me complicit in the same kind of thing as David: putting my emotional needs before hers. So instead I'm rewriting it in my head as a half-hour-long movie, and the next thing that happens is Tommy says firmly, "No. I need to call my mom," and she gets up and does so, and then they get in a fight and she realizes what he's really like, and goes home. And then she hurts, because that's what betrayal does to us, and she gets stronger, and some day she finds better friends.

I'm really, really mad at David Lamb. Tommy's a fictional character, and so are you, Lamb, but you are breaking her heart, you selfish jerk. She deserves better. And so did your wife, I bet, and even Linny, and your boss, and everyone around you. You're nice but you aren't good.

 --

Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove oversimplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, "false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened."[Darwin, 1998, 629] Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light. -Gregory Clark, Preface to Farewell to Alms

Historical evidence

Looks like horses may not have been extinct in pre-Columbian North America after all, according to the DNA evidence.

Link: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/neanderhorse/

-Max

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

The Parable of Two Programmers

[re-posting from https://realmensch.org/2017/08/25/the-parable-of-the-two-programmers/]

The Parable of the Two Programmers

Neil W. Rickert

Once upon a time, unbeknown to each other, the "Automated Accounting Applications Association" and the "Consolidated Computerized Capital Corporation" decided that they needed the identical program to perform a certain service. Automated hired a programmer-analyst, Alan, to solve their problem.

Meanwhile Consolidated decided to ask a newly hired entry-level programmer, Charles, to tackle the job, to see if he was as good as he pretended.

Alan, having had experience in difficult programming projects, decided to use the PQR structured design methodology. With this in mind he asked his department manager to assign another three programmers as a programming team. Then the team went to work, churning our preliminary reports and problem analyses.

Back at Consolidated, Charles spent some time thinking about the problem. His fellow employees noticed that Charles often sat with his feet on the desk, drinking coffee. He was occasionally seen at his computer terminal, but his office mate could tell from the rhythmic striking of keys that he was actually playing Space Invaders.

By now, the team at Automated was starting to write code. The programmers were spending about half their time writing and compiling code, and the rest of their time in conference, discussing the interfaces between the various modules.

His office mate noticed that Charles had finally given up on Space Invaders. Instead he now divided his time between drinking coffee with his feet on the table, and scribbling on little scraps of paper. His scribbling didn't seem to be Tic Tac Toe, but it didn't exactly make much sense, either.

Two months have gone by. The team at Automated finally releases an implementation timetable. In another two months they will have a test version of the program. Then a two month period of testing and enhancing should yield a completed version.

The manager of Charles has by now [become] tired of seeing him goof off. He decides to confront him. But as he walks into Charles's office, he is surprised to see Charles busy entering code at his terminal. He decides to postpone the confrontation, so makes some small talk then leaves. However, he begins to keep a closer watch on Charles, so that when the opportunity presents itself he can confront him. Not looking forward to an unpleasant conversation, he is pleased to notice that Charles seems to be busy most of the time. He has even been seen to delay his lunch, and to stay after work two or three days a week.

At the end of three months, Charles announces he has completed the project. He submits a 500 line program. The program appears to be clearly written, and when tested it does everything required in the specifications. In fact it even has a few additional convenience features which might significantly improve the usability of the program. The program is put into test, and, except for one quickly corrected oversight, performs well.

The team at Automated has by now completed two of the four major modules required for their program. These modules are now undergoing testing while the other modules are completed.

After another three weeks, Alan announces that the preliminary version is ready one week ahead of schedule. He supplies a list of the deficiencies that he expects to correct. The program is placed under test. The users find a number of bugs and deficiencies, other than those listed. As Alan explains, this is no surprise. After all this is a preliminary version in which bugs were expected.

After about two more months, the team has completed its production version of the program. It consists of about 2,500 lines of code. When tested it seems to satisfy most of the original specifications. It has omitted on or two features, and is very fussy about the format of its input data. However the company decides to install the program. They can always train their data-entry staff to enter data in the strict format required. The program is handed over to some maintenance programmers to eventually incorporate the missing features.

SEQUEL:

At first Charles's supervisor was impressed. But as he read through the source code, he realized that the project was really much simpler than he had originally thought. It now seemed apparent that this was not much of a challenge even for a beginning programmer.

Charles did produce about 5 lines of code per day. This is perhaps a little above average. However, considering the simplicity of the program, it was nothing exceptional. Also his supervisor remembered his two months of goofing off.

At his next salary review Charles was given a raise which was about half the inflation over the period. He was not given a promotion. After about a year he became discouraged and left Consolidated.

At Automated, Alan was complimented for completing his project on schedule. His supervisor looked over the program. With a few minutes of thumbing through he saw that the company standards about structured programming were being observed. He quickly gave up attempting to read the program however; it seemed quite incomprehensible. He realized by now that the project was really much more complex that he had originally assumed, and he congratulated Alan again on his achievement.

The team had produced over 3 lines of code per programmer per day. This was about average, but, considering the complexity of the problem, could be considered to be exceptional. Alan was given a hefty pay raise, and promoted to Systems Analyst as a reward for his achievement.

[Different people might get different things out of this parable. To me it's a reminder to take time to relax and think things through. -Max]

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

That's Life

Here's a story about Xave that I like to tell people. It's the meanest thing I ever did to my little brother:

Once upon a time, I must have been maybe fifteen or so and Xave would have been maybe eight years old, and Xave really, really wanted someone to play Life, the board game, with him. I think he asked my sisters and they must have said no, so he came to me and was like, "Max, will you please play Life with me?" I was going to say no but then I had an idea which struck me as hilarious, so I said, "Okay Xave, if you give me five dollars, I'll play Life with you." He was only a little kid but he must have had some Christmas money saved up or something because after some hemming and hawing, he came up with a five dollar bill. I put out my hand and he put the five dollar bill in my hand. Then I put it in my pocket and went back to what I was doing. "That's life," I said.
And I never gave him the money back.

I feel bad about it now but at the time I was laughing too hard inside to think about the ethics of robbing a little kid of his Christmas money for the sake of a joke.

~BC

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Faith and rationality

Hey Elder Wilson,

I had a discussion recently with a cousin who is disaffected with the Church, and it occurred to me that it might be worth sharing part of my response. I don't know if you've thought very hard about proof and faith and knowledge, but at your age I was very uncomfortable even talking about "what if" scenarios involving impossible counterfactuals because I didn't have a framework for thinking about it, and I wasn't comfortable making predictions anyway. (E.g. at your age I wouldn't have felt comfortable saying that Jesus not returning to Earth by 2618 A.D. is a zero probability event which cannot happen unless the Church isn't true. It would have felt presumptuous, even overconfident. But I'm not your age any more.)

Anyway, one reason faith is so important is that even though a given exercise of faith is not guaranteed to always work out the way you hope (even if everything I believe is completely true!), if you don't act on faith at all you'll never gather the necessary data to even know. So you act, then observe, then evaluate, then update your beliefs and act again, then iterate from there.

In other words, having faith is rational! There is no conflict between reason and faith (acting before gaining a sure knowledge of a thing) if you keep an open mind, as long as what you have faith in is actually true. And faith in the Son of Man's teachings, and His continuing leadership, is a true faith.

See examples below.

Max

A cousin wrote:

<<The real question I'm trying to bring up is this: If the Word of Wisdom was not correct, how could you figure this out? If scientific studies about the benefits of green tea are meaningless because the Word of Wisdom is correct no matter what, then scientific studies about the dangers of alcohol are also totally meaningless. >>

Max wrote:

If the Word of Wisdom were bogus, there are a number of ways one could know it. For example, that would imply that Jesus Christ will not be returning to Earth at any time (I am here discounting other Christian religions because frankly I don't find them credible; I've long said that if I were not a Latter-day Saint I could only be an atheist, although atheism has huge problems of its own--anyway, the point is that the only hypothesis I'm comparing to the truth of the Church is atheism). If humanity is still ticking along as usual 600 years from now, I will cheerfully acknowledge that this is a 0% probability event under the doctrine of the restored Church of Jesus Christ, and that since it has (hypothetically) happened anyway, this totally disproves the Church. There are other hypothetical events of low-but-not-0% probability which would constitute strong evidence against the Church but not a total disproof, just something that you'd have to weight against other evidence for and against. For example, while my experience with tithing is that the Lord is very proactive about blessing those who show trust in him by paying it, it is also the case that sometimes the Lord gives us trials (see Job), so let's call it a 10% chance that you could pay tithing faithfully for a year and still be in some sense worse off than if you didn't pay tithing. In the Bayesian sense, that would be strong evidence against the Church (even if the Church is completely true!), and so if the Church is indeed true you'd expect to see a lot of evidence conflicting with that evidence against it (lots of things that are very improbable if the Church is false, such as having more peace and a happier home life from devoting time and attention to scripture study). If instead all of the indicators come up negative--if everything you'd expect to be true if the Church is true turns out to be false--then you can treat the Church as untrue. I mean, don't expect _me_ to treat it as untrue in that case, because the results of my experiments are obviously different than your hypothetical results, but you could reasonably just conclude in that case that the doctrines of the Church just don't work for you. (You may or may not turn out to be correct, but you're not being unreasonable.)

F# and Javascript interoperability

Interop is a hugely important part of a programming language's value proposition. For example, F# would be far less interesting for web programming if it didn't integrate so nicely with amazing Javascript libraries like Pixi and React.

Because it does integrate nicely, you can use amazing algorithms for AI/etc. in F#, and you can attach it to amazing UI (thanks to Javascript interop + WebGL via Pixi) as well as to amazing UI on a desktop machine (thanks to WPF/UWP/Windows). And you're using the SAME F# code for both use cases, which is great if you want to e.g. do the same sanity checking/validation of user inputs on both client-side (for usability) and server-side (for system integrity), without duplicating code.

F# is amazing, but good interop with Javascript makes it twice as amazing.

~B.C.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Machiavelli, on the three types of intellects

[T]here are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is also excellent, but the third is useless. -Niccolo Machiavelli

I mostly have the second class of intelligence--I'm good at following ideas that other people have already come up with. In a few areas I have the first class and am able to generate good ideas before other people do. I hope I do not fall into the third class very often or in very many areas.

-Max

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."