Rebane's Ruminations

Pursuing Prediction

George Rebane

The latest global catastrophes – natural and manmade – again make us re-examine our ability to predict future events and what we are doing to improve those skills.  A current discussion of this is going on at Edge – The Third Culture.  Edge is one of those exclusive foundation think tanks for intellectuals from diverse backgrounds who are invited to come together and “arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.”  There are some impressive names in their list of contributors.

So a group of these folks were asked to consider prediction, and submit short essays summarizing their thoughts on the topic.  As a lifelong worker in this vineyard, I was interested to see who would be saying what about prediction.  My first amazement came when looking at the contributing ‘whos’.  The mix of people was eclectic and politically correct.  It included fine minds practicing physical oceanography, magazine editing, cultural anthropology, psychology, media analysis, science writing, sociology, chaos theory, and, yes, robotics.

A Truce Among Us?

George Rebane

Sierra Business Council President Steven Frisch has proposed a “truce” in the local blogosphere – essentially between what is written on Jeff Pelline’s liberal blog, and on the conservative NC Media Watch and Rebane’s Ruminations.  The main thrust of his proposal is to focus our posted commentaries and comments on the topics of the commentaries, and not engage in ad hominem attacks on bloggers and commenters as individuals – contend the message and not attack the messenger.

Lucy, the Trump of Hope

George Rebane

Tonight Jo Ann and I became great-grandparents when granddaughter Claire gave birth to Lucy, a healthy and ready for the world bundle of joy.  Lucy weighed in at 8lbs 15oz and stretched out to 20 inches long.  Mama and baby both did real well and are glad that the hard part of the evening is all done – now it’s time for a little celebration with friends and family, some of whom flew to Denver where Claire and husband David make their home.  Pictured here is Claire’s mom, now a tired Grandma Teine, with little Lucy who is definitely ready to call it a night.

With all the crises and bad stuff happening in the world, events like this remind us that hope always trumps.  A blessing indeed. 

Bungling the Budget

George Rebane

Republicans have their undies in a bundle about how to go forward on demanding spending cuts to reduce our astronomical deficits, and ultimately getting to a balanced budget.  As you no doubt have read here, there and every other place, nickel and diming the cuts along the current process of continuing resolutions will not solve any existential fiscal problem the country has.  Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, argues in today’s 28mar11 WSJ (here) that nickel and diming is just the ticket for the Repubs to sweep the 2012 elections, and then take the big cleaver to the entitlements, which is required to make a dent in our insane socialist spending spree and intrusive government growth.

Barnes’ argument hangs on the notion that if the government ‘shuts down’ during the Repub control of the House, while the unrepentant Dems successfully beat back meaningful cuts, then the Dems will sweep the elections.  And tiny cuts is the only process that the Dems will accept.  The way forward is to chip away at the budget, getting a couple of bil spending cuts here and another couple of bil a few weeks later (nearby figure filched from the WSJ article).  Barnes summarizes his argument by exhorting the Repubs to avoid “sacrificing spending cuts you can get on the altar of those you can't.”

A closer read of Fred’s piece reveals a pretty big omission in the arguments that he so neatly stacks up for us.  I think the Dems are happier than Brer Rabbit (‘Ooooh, don’t throw me in that briar patch!  No, no, no!!') with this bit by piece approach that the current House leadership seems to celebrate (see also my related post on Congressman McClintock).  Now I don’t claim to be the smartest liberal tactician on the block, but here’s what I see the Dems message next year after the series of these niggardly spending cuts have been negotiated and put in place.

The Dems will simply tell the simpletons out there that ‘It is we who fought tooth and nail for you, and prevented the Repubs from gutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and … (wait for it) the necessary spending for our men and women in the military who keep our nation secure.  We are on the side of Main Street and jobs, not the fat cats who don’t need these entitlements for their retirement and care.  And when you put us back in control of government, it is we progressives who will bring back social justice, and tax the bejeezus out of the rich which will solve all our money problems.  Happy times will be here again.’  This song has made it to the top of the charts before, and given a chance – as Barnes suggests and the Repubs are doing – it will be there again before November 2012.  Count on it.

Socialist Wisdom on Parade

George Rebane

The 26mar11 WSJ has a comprehensive analysis for states’ policies that emphasize the socialist ideal of redistribution – just tax the rich.  Combine that with the other side of their coin of wisdom – buy votes through the unions – and you have the perfect storm in which the country is now writhing.  We are indeed idiots for voting these people into office.  The figure below is abstracted from the WSJ article ‘The Price of Taxing the Rich’.

 

Shrugging Atlas is back

George Rebane

Many Americans, I among them, are witnessing our country well along its way into the dystopian nightmare Ayn Rand described in her Atlas Shrugged that came out in 1957.  The book is being reprised in a three part movie, the first of which is slated to open across the country on the auspicious 15 April 2011.  In the book, which she considered her summa, Rand develops and demonstrates objectivism, her contribution to philosophy.

Without giving much away, the novel's story takes place in a United States that is pretty much what we have today, and what our progressive friends are promising to deliver in spades tomorrow.  The protagonist is a female railroad executive who is trying to save her railroad in the face of draconian government attack on industry, and worse, the withdrawal and disappearance of the nation’s producers.  As these entrepreneurs and captains of industry literally disappear, they leave their firms to the mercies of government break-up and management.  This is the ultimate strike of the wealth creators - instead of thuggery, coercion, and/or destruction, they simply leave and let the new collectivist order do what they will.  These sacrifices are made as the only remaining alternative to demonstrate to the nation at large, by their absence, the blessings of individualism, capitalism, free markets, and a salutary profit motive.

According to early reviews of its premiere at the Heritage Foundation, this powerful stuff is brought off well in its modern screen version as summarized in the video.  H/T to RR reader for the heads up on this. 

Occam Observes Obama

George Rebane

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.  It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.  It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.

This is statement is attributed to a Czech source.  I can’t vouch for that, but I do subscribe to most of it as these pages reflect.  But, let's examine an alternative to the "fool" part.

The news and commentaries these days are full of serious people on both sides of the aisle wondering what in hell is going on with the Obama administration.  The man is revealing himself to be an American disaster from all angles – experience, constitutionality, domestic policy, foreign policy, his halo of advisers, character, ideology, … .  People are trying to put together all kinds of coherent models that explain what motivates and propels the man.

My own attempts in this arena are guided by tools that have served me for decades.  Occam’s Razor (modern spelling) advises us to accept the simplest hypothesis that correctly explains all observables – past and predicted.  In science such explanations almost always yield elegant theories that serve us for generations if not centuries.  Within that aura I have to again conclude that Obama’s actions (pre- and post-presidency) are most easily explained by acknowledging him to be the nation’s first post-American president.  In the global scheme of things he sees his current job as a stepping stone to higher office.  To his progressive constituents worldwide he wants to be remembered as the President who was able to cut the United States down to size, to fashion it into an undistinguished peer with an apologetic past and compliant future in the new global order.

When his administration, confidants, mentors, and allies are viewed in this light, it all falls into place.  We need not scratch our heads about the stimulus packages, bailouts, nationalized healthcare, cap and trade, new controls on entire industries, hobbled energy industry, and a daily blizzard of stultifying regulations requiring an unbounded government to enforce them.  The stated hypothesis anticipates and explains them every one.

America’s current escapade in Libya has all the appearance of being managed absent adult supervision.  But that may be an explanation that is too gratuitous and self-serving of the conservative commentators.  If rank incompetence were the case, then it would appear more likely that, while thrashing around in a random fashion, Obama would get something right.   Since this is not the case – he has a perfect ‘cutting us down to size’ record – it allows Father William of Okham to advise us to seek enlightenment elsewhere.  I again offered my simpler hypothesis of an assiduously purposive presidency that does explain all that we have seen this man do.

Unfortunately, to the extent that the opening quote is true, we as a nation are defenseless against such internal shortcomings.  Do we need another world war to focus our intellect and energies so as to demonstrate to one and all our country’s unique and exceptional qualities?

Post-Singularity Science Has Arrived – sort of

George Rebane

Machines are being developed that can analyze realworld observables (think of it as data from experiments with real things) and come up with not only the mathematics that describes the data, but also the mathematics that describes the underlying principles at work.  By ‘underlying principles’ I mean things like conservation laws (energy, momentum, information, …) that underpin the complex processes which generate the observed data.  You might say ‘what the hell, Man has been doing that for a few centuries now’, what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that humans know how to do that very slowly with relationships that have few variables and few constants prescribing their action.  (Think of the law of gravity F = G*m1*m2/r^2 which has three variables – m1, m2, r – and one constant G to describe the gravitational force between two masses separated by a distance.)  The real world is full of very complex processes that have oodles of variables and their related constants.  And underneath these processes may be entirely new principles and laws that are part of the fabric of our universe.  The hot flash here is that machines have now demonstrated that they can abstract existing laws from data much faster than humans can, and already distill out some new ones that we didn’t even know were there.

Here I want to acquaint you with an evolutionary algorithm called Eureqa.  This is a software system that is now mature enough for broad use by anyone who can master the care and feeding of the beast.  And hundreds of scientists and professionals ranging from micro-biologists to financial engineers are using Eureqa to discover things that they will share, and some more hush-hush stuff that they will tell no one.  For the near term, this points to a direction that man and machine will work together in the next decade or two to do science and engineering.  If you want to join them, go to this website operated by Cornell University computer science.

I described evolutionary algorithms here , and there is another good explanation from New Scientist here.  An excellent survey article on Eureqa, from which I filched the nearby graphic, is here.

My own familiarity with evolutionary algorithms (EAs) dates back to the days of my doctoral dissertation which involved asking a very simple question that required a very complex computational approach involving an EA to get its very simple answer.  The question is ‘what should I do until I know what I must do?’.  The answer required the invention and a solution of the Stochastic Anticipative Knapsack problem.  I say ‘a solution’ because the SAK problem can be so complex that many different methods to solve it may exist, and the one I came up with may not be the best.  But I will say this, I’ll bet you a real fancy dinner that all SAK solutions will center on EAs.

Today I am involved in an extremely interesting financial engineering project about which I hope to be able to report in the near future.  This project involves the modeling and managing of financial risk tolerance for actual human investors.  And it looks like EAs will again be part of my life.  The thought of it alone evokes a thrill chill up my back, because when you work with a GA machine, the feeling you often get is that the damn thing is alive, and you know that it can discover things you can’t.

Today we are still at a stage where a partnership is required between man and machine to probe together these unknown worlds.  I’m not sure how long this little interregnum will last before the machines will venture alone into such new conceptual and intellectual worlds, and then return to us with simplified answers that we will treat like the baubles for which the Indians traded Manhattan.

Congressman McClintock in Colfax (updated 24mar2011)

George Rebane

About 170 of us gathered in the theater of Colfax High School last night for a townhall with Congressman Tom McClintock.  The Congressman started the evening with a PowerPoint detailing the fiscal crisis the country will experience “within five years” unless a radically different course is taken starting now.  There is no more time.

He went through all the arguments, pie and bar charts familiar to RR readers.  The numbers remain astronomical and the crowd seemed to be up on the consequences of the Dems' continuing to identify $2B weekly spending cuts as being “heartless”.   Looking at the coming decade of a trillion plus annual deficits that are growing weekly as people study the ramifications of Obamacare, a more reasonable spending cut rate would be somewhere in the $10-20B/wk level.

Jo Ann and I drove to hear Congressman Tom clear up his vote for last week’s continuing resolution (CR) that maintained the insignificant $2B/wk spending cut rate.  According to the congressman’s arithmetic, this would balance the constant dollar federal budgets in about 15 years.  And then came a point of clarification which corrects the misapprehension that many of us (me included) have had about the meaning of these spending cuts.

The confusion arose when the news reported that these cuts would continue at this rate until 30 September, the end of this fiscal year.  This implied that the spending cuts were only for either this fiscal year or the next.  Wrong concept.  What all the celebration is about in conservative quarters is that these cuts would be in perpetuum – that is, they are permanent and would form the reduced baseline for all succeeding budgets.  OK, **IF** that were to come to pass, then yes, one can argue that would finally balance the federal budget sometime around 2026.  But, of course, not only would Congress have to maintain that discipline in spending, there are a whole slew of other dependers that would have to all fall in line also.  What are the chances of that?

California’s New Illegal Alien Benefits

George Rebane

We are more than broke, we are almost $30 billion in the hole.  Yet the la-la land left is now pushing through Assemblyman Cedillo's bills AB130 and 131 to mandate that the taxpayers of California guarantee more benefits for the state’s illegal aliens.  With their passage, these fugitives from American justice would receive free healthcare, education (K-12), cash, and food stamps.  Please read California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly's appeal to stop this next installment of progressive madness, and help pass AB26 to enforce our border security and immigration laws.