Mar 02

Clear data

“A black man with the same IQ, education, experience, and so on as a white man is predicted to earn about 14.3% less, and the difference is very statistically significant.”

Introductory Econometrics, 2nd Edition by Jeffrey M. Wooldridge (textbook I’m currently reading)

Mar 01

Complexity gaps

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, that is poorly covered by science as it is cross-discipline and that is frowned upon these days.

And I have no credentials so even if my ideas are 100% right, no one will care. So that leaves me free to do what the hell I want, just as I like it.

But what I’ve been pondering is the complexity gap, as I’ve been calling it. There is an idea pervasive in science that more information leads to better predictive ability. This seems obviously true, right? Yes? Well, but is it? (And there is follow-on that everything can be measured and has a mathematical solution, even if just in principle.)

Just because something seems true means nothing; it actually has to be true.

But there are and always will be enormous complexity gaps in reality. Computer science majors will probably know what I am getting at right away without me having to spell it out, but that’s one of the problems: many scientists I’ve met (save a few like a friend of mine) know almost nothing about any other field!

For problems of certain n complexity, adding even a billion or a trillion, etc., times the information will not change your predictive ability at all. (Computer scientists are probably laughing now; others might be puzzled.)

For certain phenomena, more information might actually lead to worse results.

More information is better than not having it, but it doesn’t magically lead to the truth falling out.

Feb 29

Never quite goes away

This post resonates with me.

Some of it, though, was different for me. I’ve always had absurd amounts of confidence, nearly unflappable no matter what depredations others subjected me to do. This is both bad and good. But when I was young it helped me to survive. No one ever could and never did convince that I wasn’t just as good as they were, try as they might. (And so, so many people did try where I grew up.)

But still, once you’ve been the unlovable nerd whipping boy for a protracted and miserable time, that never really completely goes away no matter your extreme stubbornness or self-confidence.

When we were leaving for a restaurant over the weekend, my partner said to me, “You look really nice.”

Then when we got there, there was a cute librarian-ish woman sitting at a table catercorner to us. I noticed that when I wasn’t looking in her general direction, she kept glancing and then staring at me. (I have just ridiculous peripheral and unusual vision in other ways, so it was easy for me to see her even when she thought I couldn’t. She was being furtive and not at all rude, but just not furtive enough for me.)

The old much-hated (by others) nerd inside of me wondered at first if i looked particularly funny that day, or I had a booger hanging out of my nose or something. Then I realized that she wasn’t looking at me that way. She was looking at me the way people look at you when they like what they see.

Still — still — even after all these years, I was half-convinced at first that she was making fun of me or otherwise trying to taunt me. The old nerd talking. I shut that fucker up right quick.

Before I left, I looked over at her when she was in “stare mode” and gave her a smile and cocked an eyebrow, and she turned a shade of red usually reserved for barns and firetrucks.

Yeah.

Go away, old nerd. Go back to middle school where you belong.

Feb 27

Obv

People are really surprised about this?

Of course many white Sanders fans are going to vote for Trump if Sanders isn’t nominated and Trump is.

I’m bad at political analysis, but anyone who didn’t realize this is missing so much that should be utterly obvious. Trump and Sanders have positioned themselves and many see them as voices for the voiceless; they are both candidates that have cross-aisle appeal for this very reason.

And this reason is why Hillary Clinton stands zero chance in the general ceteris paribus if Trump is the nominee since many Bernie supporters — say 15 to 20% — will then swing to Trump.

I think Clinton’s chances of being nominated are nearly 100%, but her chance of defeating Trump if the Repubs don’t find some way to knock him off his perch are 10%. (She’d beat Rubio or Cruz easily, though — and the Repubs would rather lose the election than to allow Trump to gain that power.)

Feb 26

Cashless society

You might have been wondering why you’ve seen so many articles lately about how the $100 bill should be eliminated because it aids terrorists, and also propaganda concerning the magisterial wonders of a cashless society.

There are two reasons for this. One is that cash transactions are one of the last bastions of anonymity and privacy. That alone is enough for corporations and the government to want to trash cash.

But that’s not the main reason. The main reason is of course an even more corporate-focused one and that is compulsion of spending through negative interest rates. If there is still cash then negative interest rates don’t work — anyone with half a brain will just pull all their money out of the bank and avoid that.

But if there is no cash that becomes impossible.

So for the financial industry and corporations in general banning cash will have two benefits: forced negative interest rates on bank balances compelling spending because on balance it is better to buy something now than have less money later.

Second and just as importantly, investments such as stocks, 401ks, IRAs and similar will be immune to these negative interest rates so investment funds and other legal scam purveyors will enjoy trillions of dollars of ill-gotten largesse from negative interest rates combined with possession of cash being made illegal.

So you can see why this is being pushed so hard, and will eventually occur. It’s going to make people like Jamie Dimon billions.

And it is inevitable, even in the US.

Feb 24

Hail

A recommendation I made at work — and which others fought vehemently against for ideological reasons — increased performance on an extremely important, critical system by 600% in one part and 900% in another. And also took it I might add from non-functional to working perfectly.

There were no additional costs and resources are better used.

900% and 600% better. Ta-dow, how do you like me now?

Feb 24

Or something like it

Many of the problems that modern humans experience — especially in the richer Western world — are because we are supremely maladapted to our own civilization.

Our autonomic nervous system interprets many issues as life or death that are merely inconveniences. This acute stress response to small slights was once very adaptive indeed as exile from the group meant a near-certain death, but now means not much at all.

This is one of the many reasons I support genetic modification of humans, despite all the risks.