Rebane's Ruminations

America's Dystopia has Dawned

Dystopia has dawned – Trump convicted on all counts.  The greatest American travesty has happened in my lifetime.  I have seen my country slide from its heights of glory to the now confirmed beginning of its dark age from which recovery to its former self is unlikely.  With evil and corruption now firmly ensconced in our government, it is doubtful that my children will ever again witness America in its full promise as the shining city on a hill. (more here and here)

Terry McLaughlin: A better policy on homelessness

[Ms Terry McLaughlin is a longtime regular columnist for The Union and contributes well researched and written reports on current issues and happenings (quite often vocally proscribed by our local liberal contingent).  Her columns are always factual exhibiting high journalistic standards now mostly lost from the industry.  Recently she attended an important town forum on the homelessness problem focused on Nevada County and contributed an excellent report to Barry Pruett’s Sierra Thread blog (here).  However, she seldom if ever injects her own opinions into her reporting.  As her friend I know that her perspectives are well thought out, and I requested she write a follow-on piece in which she would state her own perspectives on this important issue.  She kindly submitted the following.  gjr]

Terry McLaughlin

Despite enormous sums of tax money being provided to “solve the homeless problem”, the size of the unhoused population is only growing and increasing.  How that tax money is being spent and who is benefiting from it is an issue for another discussion, but it appears that we, as taxpayers, are not getting any “bang for our buck”, and those who are homeless are not getting the help they need.

A very small subset of the homeless population is the “working poor” who have truly hit upon a serious economic problem, either because of employment layoffs, large unpaid medical bills that have saddled them with debt from which they cannot recover, or other similar experiences.  People in these situations, who do not suffer from mental illness or substance addiction, will most likely transition out of homelessness successfully, either because they were able to find new employment, family or friends offered temporary housing, government benefits allowed them to find reduced-rate housing, non-profit organizations came to the rescue with temporary aid, or other similar methods of assistance.   A very small number of those who are homeless fall into this category.

As discussed by both Nevada City Police Chief Dan Foss and Grass Valley Police Chief Alex Gammelgard during the community forum sponsored by the Sierra College Foundation, the main causes of homelessness are mental illness and substance abuse and addiction, whether it be drugs or alcohol.   Both chiefs agreed that the problem of homelessness will never be solved until we deal with the underlying causes that created the situation in the first place.

Memorial Day 2024

Bayes and Monty Hall

George Rebane

From some reader comments it seems that there continues to be some confusion about how the 3-door Monty Hall relates to Bayes theorem, and how that relationship is different from some more usual applications of Bayes.  We have covered Bayesian probability extensively in these pages over the years (for example here).

The fundamental takeaway in the use of Bayesian probability is that 1) all of our knowledge, compiled of countless propositions, is and can be formulated in terms of their probability of being true; and 2) knowledge (i.e. any given proposition) is most correctly updated with new information/data by combining its prior truth probability with the truth probability of the newly obtained info/data according to the Bayes formula (see above link).  The updated (posterior) probability of the proposition may be an increased or decreased value depending on the nature of what new stuff was learned.  All critters know how to do that instinctively with an evolved Bayes-like algo that has promoted their species’ survival.

A more usual application of Bayes can be illustrated with a wet driveway which you discover when you awaken and look out the window.  Did it rain or did your neighbor again soak your driveway with his wayward lawn sprinkler.  You know that rain was predicted to start overnight with a 20% chance, and you also recall that your neighbor sets his sprinkler to do a predawn watering two or three times a week.  You decide to set that probability at 2.5/7 = 0.36.  Should you still carry an umbrella today?

Now for Monty Hall.  I explain the solution to my students by upping the number of doors to a thousand behind one of which is a new care, each of the others hiding a smelly goat.  The contestant nominates a door to open.  It’s obvious that the probability of having a car behind it is 1/1000, and the probability that it’s behind one of the other unopened doors is 999/1000, almost certainty.  Now for the duration of the problem it is important to realize that no matter what happens before the prized door is opened, THESE TWO PROBABILITIES DON’T CHANGE.

Monty knows the door with the car, and he won’t open it until the contestant makes the final pick of the door he wants opened.  So in the first version of our game Monte opens 998 doors with nothing but goats behind them.  Only two doors remain closed – one initially nominated by the contestant, and the other belonging to the set NOT nominated by the contestant.  Knowing that the probabilities have not changed, the contestant knows that he will almost certainly (999/1000) win the car by switching to the door Monty has left closed for it’s the only other door that could possibly hide the car.  The remaining unopened door will always have the complimentary probability (N-1)/N no matter the value of N representing the original number of closed doors.

In the classic Monty Hall problem we had N = 3.  So, of course, it always paid the contestant to switch since his probability of winning doubled from 1/3 to 2/3.  In fact, no matter the value of N, it always pays for the contestant to switch after Monte has opened M doors where now M can range from one to N – 2.  This can be seen from our N = 1000 door problem even when Monte opens only one door.  Switching then will increase the contestant’s win probability from 0.00100000 to 0.00100200.  We see this by writing the formula for winning after switching to a door selected from the N – 1 – M remaining closed doors – i.e. the new evidence is opening M of N-1 prizeless doors.  In that case the win probability of switching is easily shown to be (1/(N-1-M))*(N-1)/N.  In our case of N = 1000 and M = 1 calculates to (1/998)*(999/1000) = 0.00100200.  And when we use Monte Hall’s N = 3, M = 1 we have (1/1)*(2/3) = 2/3, where switching doubles the probability of winning.

Scattershots – 26may24 (updated 29may24)

George Rebane

Gracian (#261) speaks to Bumblebrain – Do not persist in folly.  Some make a duty of failure and having started down the wrong road, think it a badge of character to continue; they accuse themselves of error before the bar of their inner selves but before the bar of the outer world they excuse themselves, to the end that if at the start of their unwisdom they were marked imprudent, in its prosecution they are marked fools; neither rash promise, nor wrong resolve lays obligation upon any man; and yet some will on this account continue in their sulkiness, and carry on in their contrariness, wishing to be known as constant in their idiocies.

Reasonable fear of Islam.  If Islamophobia is the “unreasonable fear” of Islam, then what is the term for a reasonable fear of Islam?  I am among those who identify with such a reasonable fear the evidence for which abounds as proclaimed by both Muslim intellectuals and the Muslim street.  As an example, consider the opening comment to the 7may24 Sandbox (here).

[29may24 update]  The New York judicial system is rotten to the core as demonstrated by the Trump hush money trial judge’s instructions to the jury.  He never told them what was the specific crime that Trump was supposed to have committed when his financial records showed the $130K payment to Cohen as a ‘legal expense’ (which it was).  Instead he invited each juror to come to their own conclusion on whatever crime suited each the best, and the court would still accept that as a ‘unanimous’ judgement.  So now the precedent is set that New York (and other?) juries can be exhorted to convict the defendant on whatever crime each juror would gin up – no agreement or cohesive thought needed.  That’s one way to  avoid hung juries and nail whoever the trial judge does not like.

Was that really (famous person)?

George Rebane

The ethics of AI is currently a hotly debated topic.  The high tech companies are congratulating each other about practicing ‘high standards’ in that arena.  Today’s little ethics dust devil involves Scarlett Johansson in which she “rebukes OpenAI over ‘eerily similar’ ChatGPT voice”. (here and here)  The real problems in the use of such audios and videos, which can easily recognized to be like, similar to, or the same as known public personages will not involve ethics so much as questions of what exactly is considered as the intellectual property (IP) of an individual whose videos and speech are available every day in the public domain.

OpenAI asked for and did not receive permission to use Ms Johansson’s voice in their new AI assistant, but went ahead and lifted her ‘voice’ (actually her unique formants or frequency dependent speech building blocks) from available videos and films.  These were slightly modified, but not enough for the human ear to be confused and not recognize the speaker.  Ms Johansson objected and lawyered up; OpenAI pulled her voice from their product.

Similar things are happening in videos in which publicly recognized characters can be inserted into scenes which are slightly modified, but still recognizable as the intended person.  So the big questions going forward will be 1) what really are the IP boundaries of a person whose unique ‘persona parameters’ are captured and/or displayed daily in the public media, and 2) what are the sufficient metrics that characterize modifications so that the purveyor of such products can remain ‘litigation proof’.

Successfully answering these questions will open up new business and revenue possibilities for both producers of entertainment and advertising media as well as for those fortunates whose likenesses still have value or can be resurrected.  Nevertheless, today’s actors are already signing agreements that anticipate the use of their likenesses after their current job is over or after they die. (more here)  Of course, in this coming brave new world the opportunities for fraud will be endless, and launch yet another age of full employment for lawyers.

‘The End is Near’

George Rebane

Were we to discuss really serious topics beyond Trump’s trials and Biden’s lies, I can think of one no more important than that brought up by Victor Davis Hanson in a recent interview (here).  We have extensively covered the various national and geo-strategic factors that portend to end America’s run as the world's leading democratic republic, economy, and white hat world hegemon.  However, most of our neighbors neither care nor are aware of what’s happening.  As witnessed on these pages, if anything, they are more interested in Stormy Daniel’s testimony and various topical policy atrocities launched by our doddering idiot for president and Democrats at all levels of government (especially California).

This is not to say that there is no traction to the warnings issued by our more thoughtful political leaders and commentators (e.g. here) – so far, a sparsely populated bunch.  Today more people are starting to take notice that there is now in the offing a likely “extinction” of the United States we have known.  Letter writers (here) to serious publications like the WSJ acknowledge the current deterioration of America’s defense posture and industrial might, and are showing concern.

Material arguments summarize as follows –

• The US industrial base to make things from ships to medicines to machine tools is essentially gone.
• Our military is tragically under-manned and woke-corrupted with traditional cadres of enlistees no longer willing to join, let alone make military their career. Our country can no longer find enough people willing to fight for it.
• Our unimaginable national debt and reckless social spending programs are destroying the dollar and unseating it as the preferred currency for international commerce.
• Our open borders and illegal alien import policies are destroying the remnants of America’s public cultural cohesion with new levels of unassimilating multi-culturality never before witnessed in a sustainable and geographically compact jurisdiction.
• Our traditional allies in Europe and Asia are aware of America’s weak (non-existent?) leadership and feckless foreign policy, and are seeking alternative geo-strategic relationships that serve their national interests.
• Our electorate is split and largely ignorant of the issues facing the nation; and are in no shape to unify and support reasonably coherent policies to attempt a return to a usefully educated, economically healthy, fiscally sound, geographically secure, and culturally unified sovereign nation-state. Over half of us don’t care and want an autocratic global government run by elites, and the remainder want to return to a liberal constitutional government based on free-market capitalism.
• By passing laws, regulations, and prohibitive tax rates in a transforming neo-Marxist society, we no longer educate a sufficient cadre of high-end (STEM) workers with needed skillsets or provide them the means to produce wealth in an open-market capitalist economy.

So instead –

   

Sandbox – 7may24

[Islamophobia?  Actually, for non-Islamists there is no such thing when we recall that the definition of ‘phobia’ is an unreasonable fear.  A correspondent sent a revealing video (here) of British Islamic scholar Anjem Chaudary calmly describing a Europe that will soon succumb to Islam and sharia law.  “Democracy will most likely be replaced by Islamic Sharia law in the UK, Belgium and France within 15-20 years.”  This prediction is supported by this week’s local elections in the UK – ‘U.K. Local Elections Yield Ominous Islamist Success’.  gjr]

Believable and Indistinguishable Digital Avatars

George Rebane

One of the collateral developments to the coming Singularity (here and here) is the advent of AI-generated ‘digital persons’ or avatars that are so realistic that they are indistinguishable from the real thing.  The technology today permits the avatar designer to select either photos or video sequences and audio recording of a real person and generate a video of his/her avatar in any given context/background and deliver an on-camera monologue from a textual input.

Here are two recent examples of this.  One is of a popular Ukrainian singer cast as the spokesperson for the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (here).  The other is of the pop-star Taylor Swift delivering a highly improbable lecture on the generation of the Taylor series approximation of an arbitrary mathematical function. (here)

The obvious problem for the population at large now becomes one of authentication or vetting of such characters encountered online on sites professing to dispense news, commentaries, politicians’ pronouncements, etc.  The industry has yet to settle on common, let alone minimal, authentication protocols for the consumer.  An attempt at this is made in the Ukrainian video where the avatar immediately announces that she is a ‘digital person’ and cites the display of a QR code with a link to the website of the ministry that claims to have launched the avatar, and where the spoken text is posted.

These problems may be bypassed in the entertainment field where now we will see fresh episodes of ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ along with new movies starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Marilyn Monroe.  It will be a brave new world of long-dormant property rights being litigated from here to eternity – truly a new age of full employment for tort lawyers.