How bad is Capitalism?

Per year in UK 94b in dividends, 39b national debt interest, 51b private debt interest = 184b paid to capitalists.

GDP = £2000b.

9% of GDP supplements the income of capitalists.

Compare with treasury receipts at 29%.

However while treasury receipts are spent democratically by and for the country's 66 million, capitalist income is spent solely by a few individuals.

How many benefactoirs of capitalist returns on investment (ROI) are there? Using Pareto's 80/20 Law we can speculate that 20% of the capitalist class claim 80% of that income. Certainly the benefactors of national interest and private debt interest (aka bank owners) number only a few 1000. So being insanely generous say 1 million have enough capital to extract significant ROI from UK economy.

It mean that the capitalist class benefit 20x more than the non capitalist class.

As the public sector is cut back by capitalists, this imbalance will only amplify.

Meeting People and Turing Test

Meeting people is highly complex, or at least can seem so, especially if you do not possess the same language skills as them. While meeting is a lot about the unsaid, about looks and chemistry, there is a language skill also. We may look great, have the right clothes, stand the correct way, behave cool yet find ourselves unable to think of the right things to say, and worse have the right wit for the group: humour being a very important part of language. It all makes for quite a wall that separates people, when all people want to do really is trust and love one another.

Turing Test is a similar problem, but the wall is very refined, just language. Suppose we have a morse-code box and must communicate with just dots and dashes. Suppose we are stranded on a desert island after our ship has sunk with no survivors but us. Hope is lost of ever seeing anyone again, but we keep sounding out ...---... into the empty radio space around. And then we get a signal back perhaps just --- -.- (OK). And we SOS again and get OK back. We don't know if it is machine but we are in communication with something, and that something is enough. Its the most reduced version of meeting someone and speaking to them, with all the social complexities removed simply the bare acknowledgement that each of you exist. Turing asked how complex does the signal need to be to prove that the responder is a human (even if that human looks like a robot). Human's were the best option. If humans think the responder is a human, then it is. But perhaps not everyone agrees and some humans might think the responder human, and some not. I don't know how democratic the Turing Test is.

But there is another way to experience other people, and that is passively. Not in a recording but in listening or sensing another person in real time. Without being the object of a communication, and without all the complications that come from our half of the communication, it is very rewarding to simply sense another person. Voyeurism it could be called. Not secretively, and not with out regard for the other, but simply appreciate their existence in its pure form without the worries of what part we play in the communication. Perhaps hearing someone walking down the road late at night outside our window. It is a very rewarding experience, to peacefully appreciate their existence and wish them well.

There is a slight more personalised version of this where we believe that someone distant is thinking of us. Perhaps when we receive a letter or email. While they are not present we have proof that they were in existence, and they acknowledge our own existence. Yet still without the immediately layers of social activity that a face to face entails. This also is a very rewarding experience, a pure meeting of people, without superficial coatings. And similar to this is just believing that someone is thinking of us, even without proof - that is an appreciation of another's existence, and in turn support for our own existence and self.

But of course the real experience is the full dynamic interaction of people face to face. Perhaps with good friends it is a very peaceful and joyful event. Perhaps with strangers it is a very exciting event. Perhaps also as said above it is fraught with many concerns. But embedded in these colourful and complex meetings are the simple elements mentioned of appreciating each other's existence that we see on the desert island or with the well wishing voyeur or with the essence of the Turning Test.

Fast Tristram Shandy Paradox

I really should do more reading, I just discovered this eponymous paradox. It is the opposite of the situation I find interesting.

Suppose Shandy starts writing his autobiography on his 30th birthday. He is a very fast and detailed writer and each day he puts to paper a whole year of his life, exactly moment by moment, missing nothing out. After a month he comes to the Betty Blue moment of sitting at a table writing about the build up to writing his autobiography. Then a new chapter starts of life after 30 and the final pages of the autobiography are the month he has sat writing his autobiography. Assuming he is able to compress the events, and write about them, rather than get stuck in the finite loop of copying his biography out, then a moment will come where he is writing about the actual present**. If he is writing with a pen he will be able to describe the movement of the pen nib on the page, the thoughts he is having, but he won't be able to ever end because even the final full stop on the last line that stops his autobiography will not be discussed in the autobiography. How can he discuss the end of the autobiography? How does he end it? The ending becomes something else very interesting to write about. Perhaps he can anticipate the end. For example,

"So as I write this perfect account of myself detailing all the things both big and small that have happened to me, there naturally comes a time when I must give up writing and return to living again. Hang up this pen, and walk out of this room where I have incarcerated my self for 31 days , and join the world that has travelling past my window this long while, apparently unperturbed by the secret attempt to defeat time that has been unfolding in this meagre room. Unfolding just as steadily as the words that have marched across these many pages now and which tired seek some sort of conclusion, some nucleus upon which to coalesce and cessate, an impenetrable wall that might arrest their flow. But where might one find this? I might be be interrupted by a knock on the door, or perhaps and emergency that demands my attention, or perhaps Death may steal into my room and take me away mid word, but this is not an end. Perhaps through pure will power I may stubbornly just stop, take charge of this situation and end the act of writing that, after all, I did initiate 31 days ago. But I was a different person then, that person is no more to be seen, that person I wrote about some pages ago, this person the one who must stop this autobiography is faced a challenge not met by the person who began this work. And I so I can keep writing forever looking for that conclusion, searching within the writing process for an end, but I have a paradox and the paradox is that to complete this ultra-detailed autobiography I must put to paper what is happening, and what is happening is me trying to end this autobiography, and so I can never put to paper the end of the biography. And were I to suddenly come upon the end (as indeed I am about to), I would only know after it has ended for sure whether this end has come. Perhaps in another day I may go back and make corrections, and these (to be accurate) would make new pages at the end of this stream of consciousness."

And so I can only end it by stepping outside the autobiography and look back at the quote marks and see that I did finally end. But the real paradox here is that the person who was writing is trapped inside those quotes. It takes me, outside the quotes, spreading down these words here, to look back and make a judgement from outside that the section above was ended. And if only I know that it was ended, if only I have that sort of perspective on the work, then one wonders whether the person writing really had a full view of themselves. And if they did not have a complete view of themselves then is the autobiography complete, is it really not just a biography from a perspective, albeit rather limited perspective. Were I to rewrite that passage above, I could say all sorts of things about the author that they were clearly unaware of as they wrote. And as the work already points out the person who started the autobiography was facing quite different issues to the one who was tasked with ending it.

So in conclusion there are many paradoxes to be had with trying to take ownership of what we write, and also with realism and the attempt to write the truth. If we cannot even write an autobiography that accurately records this moment in time, what chance do we have of writing the past. Suddenly what seemed to certain, is really more creative and abstract.

** If he translates time into writing at an even constant pace then he will arrive at the Fast Tristram Shandy Paradox after an infinite series with ith term = (30/365)^i. = 5475/182. SO it will arrive at the singularity point on the 31st day at 1.49am and 26.4 seconds exactly. At this instant he will be transcribing to paper the instant of transcription itself. It is also a fixed point of the transformation of writing because what is written is the same as writing itself.

Unconditional Truth

First off Conditional Truth. This seems like a contradiction. Truth surely is true under all circumstances, it is universal and there are no counter examples. A law of physics is called a law because it is always true. Even the law of the country is so called because no one is beyond it.

But consider a trivial example. If it was sunny at lunchtime on Monday then it can't have been cloudy. It is true it was sunny, and false that is was cloudy. Yet we know nothing about Tuesday. This truth is conditional as it depends upon it being lunchtime and Monday. Without it being lunchtime and Monday the truth is undefined. So it is with facts. Other facts are less dependent however. The speed of light is a constant regardless your frame of reference. Unlike other speed measurements which depend upon your own velocity, the speed of light is always the same. That is very unconditional it seems. Yet it is about light. It doesn't tell us the velocity of the planet Earth.

An unconditional truth then is a marvel. It can't be about anything and must be true for everything, in all times and places and regardless in fact any conditions. It is just true.

An important thing to note is that a conditional truth must be learned. Mankind certainly did not know that the speed of light was constant until Maxwell's laws of electrodynamics were examined. Up until then it was not a fact, it had to be discovered. Now it may be argued that while we did not know this fact, it must have been true all the same. And indeed this can be argued, but it must be noted that while it was true before Maxwell, it was not evident. To become evident required considerable work and learning. Indeed the evidence of the truth was itself conditional.

By contrast an unconditional truth is immediately evident. Because it depends upon nothing there is nothing to learn, and nothing to hold back discovery. Except one thing: unconditional truth is held back by learning and the search for conditional truths.

Conditional existence is most obviously characterised by change. We go from a state of ignorance to  a state of learning. We go from failure to success. We go from hungry to full. Every moment of conditional existence is determined by conditions changing and new truths emerging.

So what of this truth of conditional existence that everything is always changing? It is unlike normal truths which are about things like light, because it is about everything. You name it, it is at this moment changing. Even your own mind is changing as it reads this, or thinks of something that isn't at this moment changing. Memories are emerging, and also thoughts all in a state of change. Even that truth that everything is in a state of change, has been discovered and is conditional.

So where is the unconditional? The point of the unconditional is that it acts as the stage on which all the conditional things play out. We arrive at it not by looking for hidden truths, or playing around with what we have discovered or learned, but rather let go of all this achievement and growth and return to the minds of children. Unconditional Truth is always evident, even to the minds of children. It is egoless and unpossessive. It belongs to no-one and everyone can grasp it. It is not easily grasped however because we are dazzled by the world of changing things, of what will come tomorrow and what has gone today. Yet by accepting this world of changing things and seeing its flow from one thing to the next, of how we uncover things, forget things, learn things, like things, dislike things and so on and so on by seeing all this conditional world we are gradually approaching the unconditional which holds all of this carefully in its lap.

Great Comment to a Peterson video, Ayn Rand and Individualism... really?

Great comment to this video "Jordan Peterson: IQ, Race & The Jewish Question" quoting Ayn Rand:

He is understandably dodging the intent of the question. But by conceding that "human intelligence does not equate to human value" and that "there doesn't seem to be any relationship between intelligence and virtue", he is uncovering the presupposition of the interviewer and affirming the counterfactual, for which I will quote Rand, "Even if it were proved — which it is not — that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one’s judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an inferior because his race has “produced” some brutes — or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has “produced” Goethe, Schiller and Brahms." - Ayn Rand

Thank you Turee Cook for that.

So I can see where Ayn Rand's supporters get off on her thinking. But I've always disliked the way people almost worship her. Surely she would dislike such a profile, wouldn't she be happier for people to think for themselves rather than copy and quote the ideas of other people. Famously satirised by Monty Python in Life of Brian...

And yet it seems almost no one who endlessly quotes this (even Monty Python?) realises that there is an irony that while we joke about people reciting Brian's demands for them to be "all individuals" in the West we adopt the mantra of "being individuals" in exactly the same way. Even Monty Python adopted this meme and mantra in the movie... who exactly is the joke on? Brian? That film is very much a product of its time and age, very much embedded in the rise of "individualism" in the post 1960s. Monty Python aren't stupid, perhaps they were mocking the hollow mantra chanting "individualism" that has arisen, but no-one takes it that way. Its as bad as people quoting Ayn Rand as though she was a prophet.

What is an "individual"? Well the quote is excellent. It points out that "race" and "individuals" are different things. When we say that a race is intelligent, for example as Peterson says the Ashkenazi Jews are a standard deviation smarter on average than the European populations as a whole, this does not tell us how smart a particular Ashkenazi Jew or European is, it just tells us that given a random Ashkenazi Jew and a random European the Jew will on average have a higher IQ. But there are genius Europeans and idiot Jews.

Ayn Rand makes a religion of this notion of the "individual" being different from the group. Really what we are talking about here is what the Greeks would have called the difference between existence and essence. Cups may have handles, but it doesn't tell us about this particular cup: this one may be broken, or it fell part on the potters wheel, or maybe its a goblet being called a cup. And the mystery of the connection between existence and essence is well documented... how "broken" does it need to be before it isn't a cup anymore, and is a goblet a type of cup... and so on. Regardless what it is, we know we have something.

The "essence" of Human Rights is the recognition that regardless what someone is, under lying it all is the fact that they exist. It is upon that human existence that everything else is worn. This is the sacred antidote to prejudice and oppression that the world sort after the horrors of the Holocaust. Mankind was no longer happy to tolerate indifference to itself, and sort a common brotherhood and underlying recognition of the existence of each individual in their own right regardless what they were.

Ayn Rand originating from Soviet Russia had seen the monolithic Soviet machine bulldoze over the lives of people, people sacrificed for the greater good and the State and she hated it. To her the antidote is a sacred individual and the rejection of the State.

I'm not in any way disagreeing with this, but I don't think its that black and white. Ironically its the grey that has been the essence of the diversity movement and freedom of the individual. This whole topic is steeped in irony and that is what makes it interesting to me.

We have Ayn Rand being held up as a champion of individuals by people who respect the right of the individual to chose and think for themselves.

We have individuals joining forces to fight the tyranny of collectivists.

Ayn Rand's followers don't say this, but there is the idea of fellowship between all people and races - the brotherhood of peoplekind. As much as Ayn Rand uses individual freedom to fight off the tyranny of collectivism, Collectivists use brotherhood to unify mankind and eliminate exclusion and prejudice. Opposite ends with the same goal.

At root the irony is that because we are all individuals we share in one body. (Copying from the Communion liturgy).

I prefer to leave that contradiction as it is because the issue of being an individual is a contradiction. Ayn Rand goes all the way one way, and Stateists can go all the way the other.

Before Marx there was Hegel. And like Marx his system progresses like a dialectical machine toward a great unity in diversity with the famous quote "I that is We, and We that is I" (Ich, dass Wir, und Wir, dass). My favourite philosopher Kierkegaard took exception to this type of massive system philosophy. What of those who break the mould and step beyond such a mechanism, those who break the system. He was searching for an individual freedom that deified rational definition. He found it in the story of Abraham and the divine madness that was his attempted sacrifice of his son. Madness yes, but not chaos but rather madness governed by laws beyond those of worldly society: a direct connection been soul and God accessible only by the self. This is the pinnacle of the Lutherian church movement to remove the Vatican from ones relationship with God. God knows each one of us, and we stand before God as an individual to be counted and pay for our own sins. Ayn Rand stands simply upon the shoulders of this great movement. It goes far back into the mists of time in fact, as it seems mankind has always (since the Bronze Age anyway) believed they will stand individual trial for their sins. In India the god Yama serves this role, so the individual is at least as old as Yama.

But in some ways Hegel has a march on Kierkegaard because while I love and hold very dear Kierkegaards struggle to break out of logic and see the world with immediate and fresh eyes, Hegel captures the irony at the heart of this problem. We are both individual and group at the same time. Its not controversial these days to believe "I" am after all just a collection of atoms! And I wonder what Ayn Rand thinks of that? In her atomic system of indivisible selves which atom am I?

But at the same time individuals being bound up into systems so that they say ridiculous things like "I was only following orders", which appears to have held sway at the Nuremberg trials, is complete nonsense. At this point the establishment shudders and cracks down, because this is where the cracks start to show in feudal capitalist society. Capitalists need law and order to protect their capital, and they need armies to both defend their wealth and attack the wealth of others. And Armies need people who will obey orders and do the bidding of their commanders to protect the society's wealthy elite.

If Ayn Rand and her followers really have an axe to grind it is not really at the altar of the collective, it is at the altar of the elite. The elite gain power and promote a mindless collective of drones to protect them, but the collective alone are harmless. They need to be led to achieve anything. If there is one battle to be had then it is simply that we must never take orders, and must always act from personal conscience. But this not Ayn Rand it's the oldest belief there is: that we will all stand before God before we are done and have to answer for what we have and have not done.

And yet I can't really leave this here because it is a false conclusion. A nurse working alongside a surgeon trained on a particular operation takes orders. Not because they are brainless and without conscience but because they accept that the surgeon has become skilled in this operation, and they are trained at different things. Let emotively a trumpet player take time from the conductor, not because they are mindless drone but because they have accepted they are a part of this performance. At what point does the trumpet player decide that the conductor is playing too fast and starts plays at their own tempo? Sometime it is better to do something wrong for group cohesion, than to be strictly correct and break the whole thing. At the end of the day the conflict between self and group is a complex compromise with no other answer than you must work it out yourself.

And then we are at real individualism. Granting people the freedom to join armies and become mindless drones as they individually see fit. Yet now I swing to the other extreme of complete laissez faire, and remove myself from the picture. The real truth of this matter is that there is no fixed answer. It is something to puzzle and decide upon continuously throughout our lives. This indeed is Life, having to make decisions on whether to join in, or stay outside, of whether to get involved, or let things carry on without us.

In Soviet Russia Ayn Rand decided to get out and come to America. That was her freedom. But she could have stayed and joined the Soviet machine also. That was her freedom. Perhaps working in Russia which needed to hear the message of individuality she might have achieved more than coming to the West were the lesson was already learned. But then in Soviet Russia she probably would not have become as famous as she would have met resistance from the Communist Party. But that makes a life also. Swings or round-about?

A thought about Anarchism

Anarchism does one thing very well: individual freedom and responsibility. Anarchism says what ever state you live in, regardless your circumstances you are free to chose what you do next. This means you do not need to obey authority or expectations and can just get on with your life. There is no politics because ultimately what you do is your choice, no amount of membership or grouping can change that so no point in joining any groups or working for a collective identity.

Often this is criticised and deliberately misunderstood to mean that Anarchism tells you to do whatever you want. This is wrong, Anarchism doesn't tell you anything, it simply reminds you that you have the final choice. So it doesn't say that if you see someone with lots of money you should just take it from them, it simply says use your head, think and do what you think is right. Which is probably what you are doing anyway.

But a problem. Anarchism is so individual that it doesn't allow any room for group effects at all. It works fine with small items of private property but what about parks? I love the example of parks, or commons, they are a great political play ground. Consider one with a lake and a football pitch. Anarchists could just divide the park into little blocks of land one for each person. But who gets the pond, and how do you play football once it is divided up. To solve this people need to agree on a collective ownership, or give the park to a private trustee.

Now people can continue to be anarchist, but sooner or later a compromise will be needed. Suppose half the people play football and the other half play rugby. The pitch will be booked at weekends for football games and rugby games and if you don't like rugby you will not be able to play some weekends. Suddenly your life is looking exactly like it would under any system, full of compromise and respect for social and group level events.

Now Anarchism as a reminder of personal responsibility and freedom is always valuable. But as a lesson in social and political organisation it doesn't actually contribute anything.

P vs NP and binary searches

If I understand right one part of this is the question of whether working forward towards a solution to a problem is of similar order to working backwards from the answer to check it is right.

In my mind the class of problems I'll call mazes are obviously NP. Or even better a monkey climbing a binary tree to find a single banana. At each fork the monkey must chose left or right. Importantly there is no way to know if the banana is there until we get to the end of the branches.

This splits into 2 problems. (1) checking the solution space made up of all the branch ends where the banana could be (2) checking the solution space of paths to the ends of the branches.

The number of possible solutions grows exponentially with the number of forks, and obviously therefore so does the search time for (1) since the only information we have to go on is to look at the end of each branch and see if the banana is there.

There are ways to do this very badly, like set off randomly each time. But if we equip ourselves with a memory, and always chose a left turn initially, and when failed backtrack to the last branch with an unexplored right and take that, we'll cover the whole tree in pretty much optimal time. Whether there is a better solution to that is another question (2).

While the problem has 2 components with (2) being very hard itself, what we can't do is eliminate the fundamental problem of (1) and having to search an exponentially increasing number of possibilities.

But once a solution is known, it is easy to give the monkey a list of left/right turns and have the monkey shin up the tree and check for a banana.

Nothing rigorous but seems to my initial mind that there is an insurmountable problem here that definitely separates N from NP.