Simple SRH

Just formatting a column in Excel using VBA I thought I'd just do it quick and replace each cell with itself formatted. Just checking the logic to make sure it would do what I thought it would do I found myself thinking that the value of the cell would be copied to memory, formatted and then copied back into the cell. This is the behind the scenes computation of this code:

Cell(2,2) = CDate(Cell(2,2))

Yet the code looks like it implies a self-reference where the contents of the cell is made the same as a function applied to the contents of the cell. A more absurd example would be:

Cell(2,2) = Cell(2,2) + 1

Why don't computers ever end up with a paradox here? It's not really a question because everyone knows that the "=" sign is not a statement of equality but of assignment. The contents of Cell(2,2) are to-be-given the value of themselves + 1.

But semiotically it is interesting that we use the "=" sign here. Better languages than VB have three signs: = for assigment (add 1 to y and put it in y), == for equality (are they the same), and := for definition (resolve the value of y=y+1) . Yet they all recognise these three quite different things as belonging to the family of =.

1) Cell(2,2) = Cell(2,2) + 1 is an instruction

2) Cell(2,2) == Cell(2,2) + 1 is always false

3) Cell(2,2) := Cell(2,2) + 1 is the contradiction! It actually ends up in a recursive loop.

Now it is (3) which is the problem for logic. Loops I have suggested before are the computational symptoms of the same problem as contradictions and paradox in logic. Where a paradox occurs in logic, a computer hangs in a loop. What Godel discovered by contradiction in his famous statement, Turing discovered in his non-halting looping programs. There is a deep connection. I am just starting to read Chaitin on this; looks like it will be very promising.

So what the SRH is crudely saying is that a definition (:=) can't be constructed from itself i.e. impredicativity.

Iterative processes and self-organising systems are a different type of equality (=). They are not created from "themselves" but from their output. Obviously if they were created from themselves then they could never change because they would always be themselves. The equation y = (y ^ 2 - 1) / -3 iterates to its roots -(3 +/- root(13))/2 for certain starting values of y. The complexity of successive applications of a function is extraordinary in many cases. Unlike a snooker ball bouncing around a snooker table where very quickly the ball ends up following a repetitive trajectory, with relatively simple function systems, paths can be created which never repeat (except for precision rounding errors)! Link here to the Lorenz curve. Fractals etc illustrate the enormous hidden structure to iterative/recursive procedures (things built from identical copies of themselves). But the point is that this is all a distraction from the SRH issue of things being built from actually themselves, rather than copies and things that are similar.

An issue here is that of identity. A floor can be completely tiled in repeating shapes. This is of interest to the builder because a simple production process specialised to a few shapes can create tiles that are guaranteed to fit together anywhere and cover any expanse of floor. A wonderful example of mass production. Yet this simplicity ought not be misunderstood as Penrose discovered with just 4 types of tile it is possible to tile a floor without ever repeating. Apparent infinite complexity from a very finite set of building blocks. Shades of the Lorenz curve here where something built from simple components iteratively never repeats. Yet each tile is intellectually the same as its type (same angles and lengths of side) each individual tile (token) is necessarily different. A floor cannot be covered by one tile. It is exactly the interaction of many tiles that covers the floor. The patterns that arise can only occur between tiles, they are not intrinsic to any particular tile. Indeed to even "be" a tile requires that we have seen other tiles before, are familiar with the culture of tiling, and speak this language where they are understood as tiles. A single tile all on its own in the universe is more than useless for covering a floor, it doesn't even get given a name by the people of that universe.

SRH only applies to things built from their own token. Now in maths, unlike with the building trade, this is far from clear.

y := y + 1

There are actually two marks on the page here corresponding to the single letter 'y'. If there were not two marks we would not be able to write this equation. Once read however we understand that the two names, 'y' on the left and 'y' on the right, are supposed to be names of the same thing.

In the case above

y := (y ^ 2 - 1) / -3

are we to understand that the thing 'y' has two possible stable values (a superposition) so to speak. Very quantum physics ;-) This finding of multiple possible values to fit incomplete conditions seems to be me to be more a feature of the language of maths than anything "real". We don't think that some mysterious entity is lying here under the page with two values.

In

y = y + 1

They are names of the same 'storage place' or 'variable' which can have any value. Unlike above the value is not what is named by 'y'. Strictly the two variables should have different names e.g. y(n+1) = y(n) + 1 and a starting value given also y(0) = 0.5. As a function the relationship is a mapping of left and right hand sets. In this case it forms a zig-zag relationship through all members of the sets.

Also things that are defined in terms of themselves can't change because they can only ever be themselves. To change we need to become something else. This means that things that are defined in terms of themselves are both immortal and can't be created. SO impredicativity is violated in immortal, a priori, analyic, uncreated entities. This means obviously that you cannot "build" or "create" something using itself, you can only support it. This is the castle in the sky with its foundations built upon its walls.

So the only problem that SRH is referring to is the idea that something is built with exactly itself. It is perhaps an ontological problem as much as anything.

If r is a random number between 0 and 1 then how do we model a coin flip?

The set of outcomes is {x >=0 & x<=1 & x in set of Reals}

I am blogging this because it is the same problem as boundaries before.

To split this set in half we cannot use a member of the set. So the obvious choice is 0.5 but what about 0.5? It is infinitely unlikely to occur in reality but never the less it sits there "outside" the sets.

The set {0,...,0.499...99} maps to {1 , ... , 0.50...01} or better the intervals

[0,0.5) (0.5,1]

This is an old problem that still gets me. When programming a for loop we need to set the condition to end. But what when counting through a string. Happily C style languages are 0 based so the following will work

for (int i=0; i < length(string); i++) {

//the length function returns the number of characters e.g. length("hello") = 5

//but conventionally the first character is in the 0th position

//and the last character in the 4 position so the loop above works

}

More obvious in a ruler where each interval has a start and ends with the start of the next interval until the final measurement which needs a final 'cap'. So there are one less intervals then measures. Hence the old problem that the millennium actually came at the end of the year 2000 not the start.

Now are these issues of boundaries connected? I'm in a hurry here not sure. I understand that this is still a real problem in some areas of topology.

FTSE Probabilities

The structure below represents the probability of successive up (green) and down (red) moves in the stock market on successive days. [This is worth redoing on 2 day, 3 day trading windows]

The underlying belief is that Up/Down data is what is critical for a trader in a stock. This determines the buy/sell behaviour. The size of the moves on the other hand is only critical for the trader who is choosing a stock. Those stocks with the biggest moves might attract the attention of high-risk investors looking for big gains etc.

The daily FTSE close price since 1977 is linearly skewed so the data set ends on the same price it started. Reason for this is to try and reveal more of the intrinsic up/down data away from the background of economic growth and inflation.

Chains of particular sequences were then counted through the data set. There were 6715 days in the data. This meant that for strings of 4 days (e.g. uddu) of which there are 16 possibilities the total count of all 16 possibilities was 6715. This was true of all sequences. The probability of a particular sequence was easy to calculate as: Occurrence/6715. Dividing each probability by its parent (so that udd is the parent of uddu) gave the probability that the market went up at that point.

The obvious point is to see if there are daily trends in the stock-market that drive patterns of movement. While not tested yet these data are very likely to be significant so that the distortions to the tree below represent actual features of the FTSE.

Because this is FTSE data no single group of traders is responding to the FTSE moves. This is not speculative strategy, but rather patterns in the whole market together. The tree ought to be more regular than it is!

Red means a move down in the price, Green is a move up. The higher the probability the longer the bar and the heavier so it tilts in that direction. For example, the first branch between a stock going up and down from a random entry point is biased in the up direction, as is the second move.

"Services" that rip me off

Interesting page here with old tickets on it:

http://www.joyce.whitchurch.btinternet.co.uk/tickets/c7.jpg

From this we can see the cost of a single from London to (with year, average salary, relative salary index):

Av.Salary Relative salary

Bath £6.65 1975 114.5

Feltham £0.52 1979 6K 126.7

2010 23K

There is incomplete data on salary, but very roughly approximating exponentially gives a value of 5k for 1975 against the relative salary data which suggests a true figure of 5.4 ; I'll take 5.2. So the expected value of these tickets is £28 for the trip to Bath and £2 for the trip to Feltham.

Surprisingly the price today to Bath (for the cheapest ticket) is £28. If you fail to get these the next is £34 but to travel at peak time costs £77. In contrast the trip to Feltham costs £5.

This is my experience also. What the travel operators have done is not logical on the principle that we pay for what we buy. Instead the charging plan is designed to maximise the cost to the customer. I have been equally displeased with mobile phone pricing and as a result refuse to get involved with mobile phone companies any more. I am ASDA (Vodaphone) pay as you go - this ensures some of the logic that I get what I pay for.

Thus, for short journeys that cost only a few pounds, the new costs seem to be only a few pounds more and so bearable. Expensive journeys have carefully kept down so that they don't spark too much anger since 100% on a £100 ticket is very noticeable when you start spending £100 in one go more!

Yet most journeys are short journeys, I assume, so the average increase experienced across the the population is very high, and the profits gained by the operating companies huge.

Now what I don't understand, and which I have argued with customer services on many occasions, is why I should pay for "services" from a company that is clearly trying to rip me off? Where is the "service" is that? Where above all is the trust!

So sadly companies are stuck between a devil and the deep blue sea. They have fickle investors demanding big profit reports and dividends, and they (hopefully) have customers refusing to be ripped off. Sadly in the age of private/public monopolies most customers don't have the choice but to be ripped off, probably the biggest oversight of all by the governments.

I should add of course that the public services were subsidised by the government from the tax payer so we did indirectly pay more for our rail services than today. Government spending on transport in billions is as follows:

Spending GDP AV. Salary Av Salary as millionth%

of GDP

1975 3.8billion 106.7 3.56%

1979 4.5 199.2 2.30% 6k 3% (millionths)

2010 21.5 1474 1.46% 23k 1.56% (millionths)

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_year1970_0.html#ukgs302

What doesn't tally however is that salaries have not kept pace with economic growth. We take home on average half of what we did in 1975 compared with the total countries productivity. One explanation is that the extra money lies in the hands of just a few thus biasing the average figure. This makes the data using GDP difficult the compare.

Let us take the government spending per head (assume 60million) and compare it with ticket prices, and salary:

1975 £68/person/year 10 trips to bath 1.3%

1979 £75 144 trips to Feltham 1.25%

2010 £358 12.8 bath / 71.6 Feltham 1.6%

SO extraordinary result that actually we are spending more on transport now than we were! So the rail operators can't complain about changes in funding... although I do suspect that the money we do spend goes on cars.

Can we be Wealthy and Equal?

This Xmas has been a time of upheaval for me. It seems that the ground work for the alternative way of thinking has been set and now it is time to be accepted back into society and see how it fares.

The impact of the heavy snow showed up the weakness of capitalism very clearly to me: a socialist economy would be able to redirect huge resources much more precisely and efficiently than the fragmented capitalist industries watching their profit margins at every turn. That said I was brought to consider more how BAA might be operated as a capitalist venture than to use it's failure as a demonstration of Thatchers far reaching errors. If we can mend capitalism would it be better than a mended socialism? My only problem is that I still see Capitalism as working superficially in a society of competitive and selfish individuals better the socialism but intrinsically it remains illogical and flawed; Socialism on the other hand is fundamentally rational but superficially fails because of errors in the Western cultures. It seems absurd to justify Capitalism based on a human culture that is flawed. And so here we are at the big challenge: is Human Culture and Society flawed? A summary of this blog's positions says yes and also how.

It is Xmas and the church is spreading the message of peace and goodwill. The Archbishop of Canterbury calls for the rich to shoulder more of the burden of the economic down turn, there is the (brilliant) adaptation of "The Christmas Carol" on Dr Who this Christmas Day (most satisfyingly well thought out by Stephen Moffat - lots of SRH in there) and the general looking after the poor. But I have always wondered why there are poor at all and why they have and always will exist. The Christian message is missing something. Well this blog seems to have the answer and now i see it vividly.

Firstly Wealth is Relative. It is a simple idea but gets held up the the belief in "needs". Whatever a human situation there will be a hierarchy of value. Even if it comes to dying some ways of dying are better than others. "Needs" are a red herring completely - this should be apparent hearing kids learning English and, realising that want is not as good as effective as need, decide to need everything. Once we realise that Wealth only exists in relation to other things then naturally it follows that a wealthy society must have a poor also. This is not an accident it is fundamental to the concept of wealth.

Secondly is the idea of Power. This is the other type of hierarchy. Humans exist in a society that is dominated by relative social status. We judge our position, obviously, relative to other people. A friend's girlfriend was saying that she was offered a better title at no extra pay, the title supposedly being the reward of the new workload. What has confused me about authority hierarchies, but now I understand, is that obviously systems of organisation must exist in order to harmonise complex groups of people working together. "Orders" mean that information and responses to new information can rapidly spread through a complex network. Certainly in the army an order enables very fast and accurate implementation of plans.

Yet lots of people who take up positions of authority seem to confuse this with something else. It is I now see the hidden notion of status. By being in power people can consider themselves "better" than other people. It is the instinct of status and hierarchy.

So why does all this exist? The obvious place to look is biology. Higher animals have very complex dominance structures. I discovered on BBC Autumn Watch this year that even birds at a feeding table have strict dominance hierarchies - and these aren't even considered to be social organisms. Dominant individuals will take control of the food resources with progressively marginal individuals getting less and less control. When a predator strikes and the birds scatter, researchers have found that the most subordinates return first - I am guessing because an empty feeder offers a high reward and so it is worth risking breaking cover. Once they have proven that the coast-is-clear then the dominant individuals return and take charge of the food again. Thus individuals experience risks from predation and also other birds on the feeder - and the two are balanced. I was surprised to find this in rabbits when I studied them at BSc but see that it is a universal phenomenon that predators offer a similar level of danger to one's own species and kin! The evidence is that Rabbits spend as much time watching for predators as for proximity to dominant individuals! This is the one thing that Darwin got wrong that there is nothing special about individuals being of the same species - fellow species members and even clan members are as likely to kill you as predators!

Dominance is expressed essentially through violence. Birds for example have very sharp beaks and they don't use them for feeding only! Rabbits don;t just use their powerful jumping feed to move they can disembowel with a single kick. So why do individuals go to such lengths to achieve dominance and be violent to other individuals? It is so that they can secure essential resources. The issue is not our own absolute fitness but our relative fitness. If we can ensure that no-one else breeds then we don't need to be that fit to secure all the future offspring and so spread this gene. Thus it pays to spend time upsetting ones competitors as well as acquiring resources. The balance depends upon circumstances.

So given the simple brutality of nature it is no surprise to find EXACTLY the same structure in humans. Humans find that rather than play the game straight it is actually beneficial to dominate other humans and ensure our mastery of resources that way. With humans, and the sophisticated way we can communicate our wishes, it is possible for dominant individuals to steal (tax) resources from others and get them to completely support the dominant individuals. Of course we do this because being in the hierarchy to a powerful dominant individual places us in the running for resources ourself (from which non loyal subjects are excluded) and also offers us protection from other dominant individuals who would wish to upset us.

Large populations can be supported within violent systems when resources are plentiful, but when resources become scarce it is the "poor" subordinates who die first. When food on bird feeders is scarce the strong dominant individuals will be able to secure the food better and so remain strong, while the subordinates will die. This ramping of fitness offers an inbuilt buffer to extreme environmental changes. It may be (and I like the idea of group level selections) that species that don't incorporate a hierarchy of fitness, when faced with sudden scarcity, experience the shortage equally through the population and all individuals out compete themselves and the population dies together. So in this view intrinsic violence is actually an adaptation to environmental heterogeneity. It would be an interesting test to see if dominance hierarchies are more ramped in species from temperate climates where winter produces a regular time of scarcity and so group level selection. In humans it certainly seems that it is the historically recent Northern tribes who have been the most socially organised and dominating in human history (Aryans, Mongols and Saxons especially). Anyway pure speculation here.

So Human Society and culture obeys the most fundamental laws of nature, and many right wing thinkers would happily stop there. But as this very argument shows humans exist on a higher level than mere resource allocation. One of my poorly realised argument against Dawkins is that "his ideas" do not have fitness: they don't obviously make his children fitter; and, if they are fitter memes of the mind, so that they spread, then the prevalence of meme theory is attributable only to what meme theory says and not being a theory of Truth we can't say that meme theory is True! Why Dawkins then gets so irate about other memes doing well I don't understand: it can only be because he secretly believes in Truth as the measure of fitness and this contradicts meme theory which is not a theory of Truth! This is SRH in action. It is incredibly hard to argue even after all these centuries of art, philosophy and religion, and these many thousands of words in this blog, but the Human Mind transcends the physical and even its own contructions. This is the realm of the essentially indefinable which has been called the spiritual. It intersects human society in this issue of wealth and equality.

We have only two choices. We understand that wealth is relative and so have to accept inequality; or we believe in equality and so must abandon wealth. It is the argument at the heart of spirituality and it is why those who seek the Higher Mind have such a difficult relationship with the material.

If we abandon wealth then we also abandon Hierarchy and this was difficult even for World spiritual leaders. Jesus most famously in Matthew 15 called a Canaanite woman a "dog" because of her low standing with the Jews. It was here commentators say that he had to face this side of his culture and understand that faith, and hence the Lord's power, extended outside normal social hierarchies. It was with Buddhism that we first see a spiritual leader teaching equally to all. This was as far as I know the first time that the idea of Equality arose (2500B.C.).

Our Western society is certainly a messy admixture of contradictions. We believe in professions, education and skills yet we also believe that the unskilled masses can run a country (or at least have the collective power to chose leaders to do highly skilled tasks). We believe that each person has equal power to vote, yet in the market place some people can buy multimillon pound pleasure yachts while some can barely buy a car... it goes on. Democracy is based upon an idea of equality that is completely (and essentially in places like the flight deck of a plane) absent. At least we have made the effort to incorporate this idea but democracy is just a superficial add-on the a society that is at root flawed because of its belief in wealth.

The great economists have resolved huge problems in markets, and modern oil based transport and communication have aided in providing us with an efficient trading world that rapidly distributes produce and information to maximise spending and money flow. Complex debt management has also increased the availability of credit and the flow of money. People have more to spend and more work to do. It is a miracle of wealth. (Personally I attribute almost all this apparent wealth to energy from oil rather than economics but I'll gloss over that here.) Most apparent of this success is the fact that people in the West don't starve any more. It appears to produce the solid basis for a belief in wealth. Yet Economic growth seems to contradict this notion of wealth. If there is an absolute wealth then at what point will we be satisfied? It is hard for modern people to realise but we are no more wealthy than at any point in history. At every point there have always been people more wealthy and less wealthy and we have always felt "as" wealthy as we do today. It is by focusing on this inequality that we get the sense of wealth. Indeed it is by the difference between things that we get the sense of physical matter at all. Wealth sadly for economics is not a real thing and it can't really be created or destroyed materially.

The problem that we face is the growing belief in this most basic and tragic idea that what is relative creates things that are absolute. Dawkins, and his cohorts are, unbeknown to themselves, no different from rabbits or tits on a bird feeder. It is a great irony that those who would seek to be better and correct are applying for status through arguments that apply also to the lowest organisms who have no choice whether to argue one way or the other. Surely Materialists can see that the very freedom to "apply" for this status places them beyond the level that they are applying to! This is the still poorly realised SRH idea. Dawkin's mind is master of the arena that he believes his lives within and wishes to confine himself within. If you can describe what your house looks like then you must have been outside so you are only choosing to stay inside and that the root choice of Dawkin's and all materialists and atheists' etc that wilfully clouds their vision.

Once we are brave enough to step outside we are faced with a huge challenge: are we ready to abandon wealth and accept equanimity and equality?

De Facto/De Jure

These terms already distinguish the argument made a while ago in this blog between "law" that is natural and "law" that is man made. The existence of "de jure" (de rigueur also) is the evidence of the nature of society in this blog. The rules which have no "real" basis other than custom and norm. Language and maths fit mostly within the "de jure" conception since how a language or maths is constructed is relative. By contrast the knowledge that a man jumping off a cliff will never lead to him flying is de facto and no matter of relativity of construction can change that fact. As Eddie Izzard says " some things ARE impossible, like eating the Himalayas. It can't be done." and I add no matter how fanciful the logic system, story being told or persuasive the King's orders!

Meaning of Life

I have finally started to come to terms with the answer to this question.

The answer is that there is no meaning or purpose. This is not an easy thing to accept however: this is the real problem. The reason why we can't accept it is that we have large amounts of energy to expend, and many desires to satisfy so that while our bodies are poised ready to floor the accelerator in pursuit of some goal, our minds discover with a little investigation that "goals" are not so one sided. An example is that of war. I watched again with pleasure "The Guns of Navarone" yesterday. The pursuit of that goal, and the licence that goal gives the protagonists to floor-the-accelerator (argued out between Peck and Niven many times), rouses the passions and the energy and gives us a view of the Noble Quest that goes back to the Age of Chivalry and probably beyond. I note, as an aside, Peck remarks about his "stupid Anglo-Saxon decency" (while talking to A. Quayle on the boat) and indeed I am beginning to realise this concept that underpins the British concept of the Gentleman is quite unique in the world - it may have existed in India in the concept of the Aryan (as discussed in this blog) but I'm beginning to see that it is all but lost everywhere.

Now the heart and the body rejoice in having all this excitement and useful application, but the mind quickly sees through it. For starters what is a celebration of a goal well done in the film is actually not even the start of the mission to over throw the Nazi occupation of the islands which the men on board the battle cruisers will have to under take. All could still fail! The other more obvious problem in the narrative (and argued at length in this blog) is that the Nazi are trying to do exactly the same against the Allies. A successful story for them is where lots of allies are killed and strategic land gained. It is simply that the narrative puts us on a particular side that the story can be a fulfilling ending; told from the Nazi side, exactly the same story is a crushing blow and very frustrating. The mind who can see both sides thus challenges the body which only wants to see one side. So challenged the mind sees that the body can never be satisfied except through wilful ignorance. This is the state of war, and of much human activity in general.

Another example that comes to mind is the saving of people's lives. We may give someone an extra 10 years, 20years or more through saving them, but the mind realises that death is not something we can run from for ever, it is integral to being alive - you can't have one without the other. So saving a life is only a matter of quantity not of quality, and one might argue that really facing death is a better approach than trying to escape it.

So the mind always leads the body back to the cross-roads of indecision and inaction. This all seems very depressing and frustrating, and that is what has hampered by progress in the question. What is obvious then is the next question what is the meaning of the question? I don't mean how do we understand the question, but rather why should it matter that there is no answer? Why do we struggle with the realisation that struggle never achieved anything!

So eventually the dawning realisation that what seems so catastrophic and depressing about life actually applies to the very depression and pointlessness itself and cancels it out. When the struggle for "something" has evaporated then there is simply stillness. No longer is there even the struggle to find that something, or even the desire to have a something at all. Is this what Buddha means by the "nothing".

Standing at the centre, which is where we always appear to be even after a long journey, then we are free to gaze out on the never changing world; all movements never shift us from the centre so nothing ever does anything or amounts to anything... and even that struggle we once had to measure the changes caused by our actions, or the movement and significance of our lives, or to find a direction in which to travel with full energy and haste, that struggle ends.

What is the Sanskrit for "struggle" it seems quite important. Dukkha might be the frustration at things never being quite right, but what of the struggle that we embark on the end dukkha through our ignorance of the Dharma (Law of reality, Word or Logos)? Does this suggest I have it wrong, or simply not read things right?

So the meaning of life is found when we stop struggling. It is that old parable (told by P. Coelho in the Alchemist) that the gold of our lives lies at home, at the start of the journey that we will return back to with wisdom. That parable shows that the very search for " a meaning to life" actually equips us with the wisdom that we had lost and which began the journey, the wisdom that tells us to look at "home", or the centre, from where we shifted in ignorance in the first place. The Mount Kilash from which Shiva almost never stirs. Home as notes in the Blog and known to me long before I started writing this is the issue that lies in all human hearts. I first wrote that in an analysis of caving where caving was seen as an allegory for the return home (caves having been amongst the first homes used by man). Where we mostly end up in family homes, this itself is an allegory for the final stage of finding the family and the home within ourselves.

Once we are at home, then what? What is the working day like for the person who really comes home to his soul, and not just his wife and his bed, at the end of the day? This is what I cannot quite grasp. I have a glimpse in writing the above that while a doctor may be mostly wasting his time creating more years for the ageing, if he spends his time instead leading people toward wisdom and their own souls, and gives them those extra years in order to do that, then his day is well spent. It is the cloud of materialism that blinds the sun which is often the problem. A problem is reduced to a material series of facts and equations and thus "solved". An ill person is mended and then discharged. Yet the real illness probably still continues both in the doctor and the patient, that the point here wasn't the dying, but rather the fear of death. In 30 years time the patient may return and this time there is nothing the doctor can do; neither person can run from the reality this time and then death must be faced. This is not to say that people shouldn't seek to live, that is an absurd thought since we do live already so why change it, it is that it is better to die in touch with our soul than to live in fear of it. I write this as much for myself as anyone who reads it. The doctors priority is really to bring the patient to accept the nature of their body and life rather than gloss over it with science, medical technology and miracle cures.

So it is not that being at spiritual home is an opportunity to be indecisive and do nothing, rather it is the source from which we can see what we do from the right perspective. It gives what we do the added bonus of being true and with good foundation. That said it is more important to get to spiritual home, than to do what we do - I think that is the main shift in approach here. Even if we do nothing if we get back to spiritual home we have lived the full life already. However we may do a very great many thing but if we never taste our own soul then we have a house without foundations.

n digit binary rational numbers

There are 8 binary fractions with 3 digits:

{.000,.001,.010,...,0.111}

If we were to chose such a fraction at random them the probability would be 1/8 or in binary 0.001

This is a 3 digit binary fraction!

So we can say that there is a 1/8 chance of picking the 3 digit fraction which represents the probability that it was picked.

OR we can say that .001 is that binary number that represents the probability that itself gets picked.

Scenario 1) If we have a lucky dip (with replacement) with these numbers buried in the wood chips then on average every 8 tries we will pick out .001. We have only one go.

Scenario 2) If we have another bucket of these numbers and we go seeking the answer to the question above about the probability of picking .001 we don't get one go we need a few goes to get the answer. In this case we are "seeking" the answer and only one asnwer will do.

Let us assume that numbers are things with "selves". We are lying in the bucket waiting to get picked. When we are picked we say what we are. In scenario 1 we are waiting and when we eventually get picked (in one of the trials) we say that we are the probability that we were actually picked. We might think that we were special here because we are saying something about ourself.

In the second scenario however we need to answer that we are the probability that we get picked in random trials - which this isn't.

I have someone talking at length in the library which is distracting me from this quite involved thought - I could ask them to hold the discussion outside but I guess they have their reasons - oh good they stopped...

The original thought was this...
.001 is just one amongst the 8 numbers. It has a property that it will be picked 1 in 8 times in random trials, and it is true that it represents that property. ".010" has the same propertybut it just "happens" that it doesn't represent that property. There is no causal link between the number and it bearing that property. It is effectively chance that it has that property altho the chance can't be easily worked out.

Let Self-Knowing be the name of the property of having the value that represents the probability of that number in binary being picked at random from numbers of equal digits.

The SK(x) function returns true for x=0.001. Then what is the property of Not(Self-Knowing) i.e. SK(x)

The probability of not picking ".001" is 0.111 and the probability of not picking ".111" is 0.111. ".111" represents the probability that it itself is not picked. Interesting if that could be folded into the question of finding the probability in the first place so that it could be proven never to be known!

2bcompleted...

Amazing 100BC Babbage machine!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=antikythera-mechanism-an-eclipse-pr-2010-12-09

This is analogue computing!

Random Walk Again

NOTE: I must not forget that the primary purpose of this questioning is to create a realistic stock market model to test cellular automata (bots) on. Altho I realise I could just try them out on actual data and maybe that would be better. However it is intriguing to know the nature of the beast.

===

Using stochastic matrix method with a matrix (M) size 21x21 following this pattern and with data from the BP (NYSE) graph i.e. p(up) = 0.47, p(same) = 0.04, p(down) = 0.49

0.04	0.47	0	0	0
0.49	0.04	0.47	0	0
0	0.49	0.04	0.47	0
0	0	0.49	0.04	0.47
0	0	0	0.49	0.04

Then after nine moves i.e. M^9 the mid row corresponding to the probability of the system arriving at any one of the 21 states starting at the middle state is (and rotated into a column):

10	0.00079792
9	0.00065137
8	0.00789282
7	0.0056751
6	0.03487872
5	0.02192446
4	0.09070506
3	0.04929454
2	0.15376394
1	0.07108634
0	0.17756573
-1	0.06818486
-2	0.14146795
-3	0.04350149
-4	0.07677832
-5	0.01780073
-6	0.02716259
-7	0.00423922
-8	0.00565518
-9	0.00044765
-10	0.00052599

Which is like the computer model I produced by brute force. But doing this again and with a different mental state myself I see that the periodicity (last post) is a natural product of the maths. As a stock market shifts state up and down the probability of it arriving at various prices is not continuous by peaked with low probability troughs between the peaks, and the dy/dx will oscillate. So like electrons around the nucleus in classical physics it will seem to accelerate between levels and then stay relatively stable inside a probability channel. Of course this is a painfully simple model of something that has an indefinable number of influences but it maybe shows the origin of the periodicity and chartist patterns that are clearly visible in the charts.

Being able to remove this random effect from stock data might reveal other things.

Thinking some more however this is probably just a sampling feature since in this model there are only 3 options. A move up, down or no move and to get anywhere in the price space is thus severely restricted making certain positions very unlikely. In reality there is a continuum of moves so these restrictions don't exist. But if higher-order patterns do exist then they may interact with each other to create oscillations. Brain-storming but worth gathering as many ideas as possible!

This also suggests a method for working out an algebraic formula for the probabilities 2do...

More sophisticated stock models...

http://www.utdallas.edu/~rxc064000/Make/01578783.pdf

[PDF]

PREDICTION OF FINANCIAL TIME SERIES WITH HIDDEN MARKOV MODELS

extraordinary that this stuff has only been done in the last decade, as if the financial incentives aren't there for the research... even more profitable than military surely.

some reading todo

http://probability.ca/MT/

Really off to town... need to get Bayesian reasoning under belt.

http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bugs/

pentasyllabic

pentasyllabic: there is a good self referential word. It describes having 5 syllables while having five syllables itself. Give this some thought because this is a con and breaks open the fallacy at the heart of self-reference.

Human Mating Strategies

• A friend was commenting on the news item about a man who had is wife murdered with a machete for trying to leave him. It got me to thinking and posting and thinking some more...
  
  Husband is jailed for ordering machete murder | UK news | The Guardian
  Women are choosy - look who they choose. This hit the papers today, several hours after I posted my headline. Can you understand my bemusement/bewilderment/bitterness even? I cannot understand why. It is shocking how pointlessly nasty some of them can be, yet look who they choose!

  Saturday at 12:00pm ·
• 

  Alva Gosson

  I imagine there is quite a lot of study on this ;-) We did this one in zoology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis. It is not what is good for the woman but what is good for the kids - if they are like her husband and she matedwith him then by circular argument they will also get matings and so the gene spreads. It is true isn't it that mothers fancy their sons. I reckon there are at least two mating strategies in human females: the one for cash/territory/power to ensure a good environment for the kids and the one for "sexy" to actually get the kids (50% of kids are extra-marital in human genetic history - just enough to make it worthwhile for the home-making male to stay around: evolved before the days of genetic test and CSA ;-). Overly simple but there is no question the dominant strategy for men is be rich or be a hunk. That said a deer in Autumn Watch a few years back used to sneak away from the dominant male to mate with her long time favourite: that stag, despite not having territory, obviously did something she liked! So yeah its complicated I agree but then it would be boring if instructions came on the back of condom packets :-) Course the other thing is that sex and breeding usually aren't the point - its more about self-esteem as successful sex/matings are deeply intertwined with social status - which tragically is linked to chance of success so its circular - the more you get the more you get - but if u fail you can always get the big car out :-) Well that's my analysis anyway.

  Saturday at 2:56pm ·
• 

  Alva Gosson ooo can't believe I 4got this Groucho quote. Much more succinct. If a man could ever see thru a woman he'd be missing a lot! So I guess lets hope we never can ;-)
  
  Rather than continue the thoughts on his page I'll log them here...
  
  The exposition missed making clear the great battle that exists between the males and females of the human species. For females it makes sense to mate around, while for males it makes sense to control a woman so that she has your children only. Basically this is the structure of marriage and the feminist (when they take the time to understand why things are the way they are before they try to change them) are essentially arguing that they want to right to bring children into the family with other fathers than their husband. The genetic evidence shows that most women have children out of wedlock, but only a few males play along and are responsible; it was Scherezade that made me realise tho before the data. Males thus play the strategy of control of females and this is where the behaviour that produced the news article has a historical precedent. Not to say that Human's should behave like this but that is the legacy.
  
  Another point, gleaned while at college and forget the source, is that the same primitive brain pathways are used by males for sex and violence behaviours. It has always intrigued, worried me, that this is true and I worked this out analysing my own mind as a child. The very essence of "sexy" and of "violence" are linked - they are strong passions motivating compulsive behaviour directed toward someone else that in one case demands grasping and in the other demands hurting. Interestingly both involve thrusting something toward the other with great intent and strength and often into the body of the Other! Violence often also shows up in female definitions of "sexy" in men - men fighting, struggling physically for power and dominance, being physically strong, often being criminal also all occur in the structure of sexiness. The very sex act itself is better performed by physically strong individuals also and I am sure that the physical domination of women during sex is a great fetish and turn on (from discussions on the subject). This is not to say this type of sex is itself dominant, but it figures in the female concept of sexiness. The sex from a loyal, supportive partner would be expected to be different. So there are clearly many strategies and sex is not to be understood as a one horse race, I think that is the thing which confuses people who take the simple hegemonic view.
  
  Finally the realisation that I am becoming more convinced is true. Buddha says that the love for his son was so strong that it threatened his desire for enlightenment and so he left home. This I believe is the greatest love: that for one's children. A friend who is very disinterested in life in general, admits that to protect his children he would kill. That is a powerful emotion that in a way thankfully I haven't experienced and hope not to (since I don't like being controlled). Imagine the pain at losing ones children. In the BBC drama "Any Human Heart" running at the moment, it is becoming plain that it is the desire to reproduce that has driven the life of the man in question more than anything. Tragic that he leaves no children in the story. But as I was arguing with my sister what goes up must come down, and what goes down must come up: nothing ever changes, so I disagree with the premise of the program that life is about luck. You just need to watch stock markets to see that. When we love a girl what we are experiencing is not love for her, but a foreshadowing of the love for the children that she can entail. I thought homosexuality would disprove this but my sister argued that actually homosexual couples want children also. I don't know if this is just the force of social conformity or whether homosexual love is foreshadowing also. If it is however it blows homosexuality part because by definition it can't provide children. A gay friend decided he was infertile as a means to reconcile this point - the concept of fertility it is a problem for homosexuality as expounded in this blog before.
  
  As a closing line on this post and also very much on sexuality itself: the thing to realise is just how primitive and basic sexual reproduction is. There is nothing to comprehend. Bacteria, pigeons and plants have sex (sharing of genes) where is the problem for humans then! All the "romantic" art and philosophy that I have expended time in is actually just a displacement from the sordid reality. It is hard for the higher mind to comprehend that the body is involved in such base and humiliating activities. But then eating, sleeping, toilet, dying all come under that bracket also. Together the gradual realisation is that indeed our physical existence is actually rather sordid and dress it up as we may eventually this realisation breaks through and we discover that it is better to just accept it and let it go rather than pursue some reconciliation and mastery of it.
  
  It is interesting that last night I dreamed of "my muse". It is only the third time in 13 years and by coincidence I notice, looking at the calendar, that yesterday was the 13th anniversary of first speaking to her (I see now that it must be the Fri 5th of Dec because she was working Saturdays and Friday was her try out day; Wednesday 3rd the day I first saw her enter the shop and noticed something different about her - not my type sexually but something ethereal interested me). What was different in this dream was that she was trying to patch things up with me and there was a maturity to the relationship. In the very first dream we had a clumsy kiss where I fell off the chair - symbolic of the awkwardness and ill suiting relationship - second time years later she was angry and frustrated with me. This seems to be some reconciliation as finally we have grown up. I always thought it was she who had to grow up; I guess it was me. Certainly I'm sure she is just a part of me that I needed to express, nothing to do with her. She is dead so how can there be a reconciliation! That said it got me to thinking about the psychic link that lots of people report - the Kenobi-Alderaan moment (Star wars IV) when we know something terrible has happened. How did I know she was going to die? There are clearly things in this world very close to our hearts and lives that we have little understanding of! Maybe not all has been told yet...