I'm Thad.I make things.https://blog.thadhughes.xyz/2021-05-07T01:43:23ZThad Hugheshughes.thad@gmail.comhttps://blog.thadhughes.xyz/Vaccines, Duct Tape, Linear Thinking, and Spherical Time.https://blog.thadhughes.xyz/spheres_vaccines/2021-05-07T01:43:15ZYes, yes, two articles on the same topic in a row. Complain, but it’s topical, and if you ask me, it’s a fantastic case study in how different philosophies result in radically divergent material viewpoints.<p>Yes, yes, two articles on the same topic in a row. Complain, but it’s topical, and if you ask me, it’s a fantastic case study in how different philosophies result in radically divergent material viewpoints.</p>
<p>Because there are these different material viewpoints, arguing on the surface about ‘facts’ will be wholly unprofitable. We already know the facts and can reasonably extrapolate other ones from them: there are identifiable risk factors for severe COVID outcomes, new strains are developing, and it took a year under expedited process to develop vaccines for the original strains of COVID.</p>
<p>Let me just lay this out clearly: <strong>vaccination is like slathering on epoxy to fix a leaky pipe.</strong> Sure, it works. I’ve fixed racecars this way. It works for a while. Any “antivaxxer” needs to admit that vaccines can, at least in principle, foster immunity. A strong antivax argument has not much to do with efficacy. It has something to do with safety. But the fundamental argument to be made is about strategy: vaccination as a <strong><em>primary path to immunity</em></strong> is not a ‘proper’ solution. It is not sustainable. It is not robust to new strains or entirely new diseases. It doesn’t consider <em>why</em> the pipes are leaky. The leak can burst right through the epoxy if it doesn’t set fast enough. Rust will propagate beyond the epoxy patch. <strong>The fundamental strategy of vaccination is not sound.</strong> A vaccine that requires some sort of ‘herd immunity’ is obviously utopian rather than robust and pragmatic.</p>
<p>I’m not even saying that vaccines “don’t work”. To reiterate: it’s about using them as a primary path to health. It’s about waiting to mix up epoxy and wait for it to sit, rather than inspecting all the pipes, making sure to use good quality tubing, and keeping the salt and acid levels low to avoid corrosion. <strong><em>The epoxy might hold, but stop relying on it.</em></strong></p>
<p>I don’t think a lot of people have explored the variety of stances on this front. The driveby media portrayal seems to be something along the lines of ‘some people think vaccines are safe and effective, some don’t"…. but that really isn’t what’s going on.</p>
<h1>Strategy requires perspective.</h1>
<p>If we’re to create strawmen, when it comes to a lens of history (and facts, in general), there are those who believe that “history always repeats itself”, and those who believe that history is a tale of ever-forward “progress”.</p>
<p>Both these visions are simplistic and, to some extent, true. If history repeating is a circle, and progressivism is a line (or, more accurately, a <em>ray</em>), then the fuller picture might be something resembling a circle tangent to a line, in contact with it, <em>rolling forwards</em>.</p>
<p>Guillaume Faye in <em>Archeofuturism</em> gives a clear explanation of this sort of thinking and dubs it 'spherical’:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Let us imagine a sphere, a billiard ball moving in disorderly fashion across a surface, or moved by the (necessarily imperfect) will of a player: after a number of spins, the same point on the surface of the ball will inevitably touch the cloth. This is the ‘eternal return of the identical, but not of the ‘same’. For the sphere is moving and even if that very ‘same’ point is touching the cloth, its position is not the same as before. This represents the return of a ‘comparable’ situation, but in a different place. The same image can be applied to the succession of the seasons and the historical outlook of Archeofuturism: the return to archaic values should not be understood as a cyclical return to the past (a past that has failed, as it has engendered the catastrophe of modernity), but rather as the re-emergence of archaic social configurations in a new context. In other terms, this means applying age-old solutions to completely new problems; it means the reappearance of a forgotten and transfigured order in a different historical context.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Archeofuturism is a <em>tough</em> work. I highly recommend it.)</p>
<p>The difference between the 1-D circle-tangent-to-a-line picture and a sphere is interesting and important as well. A sphere is multiaxial. In reality, we should be talking about something that is supremely multidimensional- a twentydimensional hypersphere, if you will. The recurrence of history is not always at the same pace or cycle. At times certain currents wade, and some rise. Some in sync at times, others not.</p>
<p>Beat frequencies, of course, are the real devastating ones.</p>
<p>The circular view of history leaves no room for advancement or progress. Everything is outside our control. “We’re all going to get COVID, it will just have to run its course.” The pipes will burst, we’ll have to replace them, again. But, we won’t resort to that nonsense that is epoxy.</p>
<p>The linear view of history is easily blindsighted. Everything is within our control. “Vaccines helped us rid polio, let’s just do that again, what could go wrong?” The epoxy won’t always hold, and we’ll have to keep applying the goop. Ugh. Oh, and the rust is still getting in the water.</p>
<h1>Sphericism</h1>
<p>Spherical history will allow us to have real, genuine progress, but also maintain dynamism and reaction to the circumstances at hand. “Let’s look at what happened, but extract the key aspects. We must then also remember that our circumstances are different than in the past.” Yes, the pipes failed, if we do nothing, they will fail again. The reason they failed wasn’t a lack of epoxy, it was because of chemical incompatibility between the caustic brine being pumped through them and the shoddy black iron pipes. Let’s filter our water better and switch to stainless steel. Maybe we even upgrade to glass in some key regions so we can inspect for buildup. Or we switch to polysulfone.</p>
<p>Is there risk to the spherical view? Yes, definitely. That glass upgrade has obvious risk of fracture under additional loads. And we aren’t entirely sure how the polysulfone reacts with the special blend of water we’re putting through it…</p>
<p>Hey, Faye has another word for that: <em>Heterotelia</em>: “what we intend does not always result in a perpetuation of that state when put into practice”. The spherical, multi-dimensional view of history allows for this and anticipates it.</p>
<p>A <em>lot</em> has changed in the course of a century. Untangling and decoding the waves to find true models (think strong AI rather than weak AI) is tough. We’ve come a long ways and we must be certain to not misattribute successes and failures.</p>
<p>Our health in developed nations is simultaneously staggering and perilous. Lifespan is at record highs, but so is rates of heart problems and cancer. To say that this is a result of simply living longer is spurious as many markers of vitality are on the decline as well. The point of living is to be vital, not simply to consume as many years of air as one can.</p>
<p>The path forward is not doom and gloom or more hotfixes. A rethinking is necessary.</p>
Immunity is a Spectrum.https://blog.thadhughes.xyz/immunity_spectrum/2021-04-17T02:09:49ZI should have wrote this a year ago. Some things are crystal clear in hindsight. Disclaimer: this whole piece is conjecture. I play with ideas. Increasingly I view my job as to get general forms and trends, and try out different ideas. Less black and white (ironic, coming from a moral absolutist). Which flows nicely into the hypothesis I’m putting forth, which seems pretty uncontroversial, but has horribly controversial rammifications if true: <strong>Immunity is on a spectrum.</strong><p>I should have wrote this a year ago. Some things are crystal clear in hindsight. Disclaimer: this whole piece is conjecture. I play with ideas. Increasingly I view my job as to get general forms and trends, and try out different ideas. Less black and white (ironic, coming from a moral absolutist). Which flows nicely into the hypothesis I’m putting forth, which seems pretty uncontroversial, but has horribly controversial rammifications if true: <strong>Immunity is on a spectrum.</strong></p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/sir.png" alt="S-I-R Process"></p>
<h1>S-I-R Model</h1>
<p>Early when COVID-mania started making its way through the globe, everyone jumped to these things called S-I-R models (susceptible, infected, recovered). The general idea being you can lump people into three general categories: susceptible, infected, and recovered. This is… well it’s a model, certainly. Models are useful insofar as they contain the underlying physics. The model of S-I-R is quite benign:</p>
<ul>
<li>The rate at which people transfer from susceptible to infected is proportional to the population that is susceptible, and infected, and a constant (let’s use β).</li>
<li>The rate at which people transfer from infected to recovered is proportional to the population that is infected, and a (different) constant (let’s use γ).</li>
</ul>
<p>What is this physics implying? There’s some magic constants β and γ that dictate how this disease will spread. There can be a lot of factors that go into β and γ. It’s hard to get a good guess unless you actually correlate against data… yadda yadda… the important thing is we’ve lumped everything into β and γ, and we’ve created ‘populations’. These populations do not consist of individuals, they are just populations. We assume that the constants apply evenly across the population.</p>
<p>If the S-I-R model is, in your mind, how disease spreads, you’re going to be thinking of things that influence the constants. That is to say, you think of how you can impact <em>everyone</em>.</p>
<p>The trouble, of course, is that these populations are quite vastly different in most cases. Not everyone’s β will be the same. A lot of people will acknowledge this- but here’s the interesting thing. Instead of asking “are there behaviors that individuals with low βs have in common”? They just write off that “your β is your β… and we just average the lot. We have to increase the average β by increasing everyone’s β”. This is foolish if there are some individuals whose β is practically zero, and some whose β is nearly one.</p>
<h1>Severity is on a spectrum.</h1>
<p>The other interesting aspect to consider is that even the difference between S, I, and R populations is not so black and white. It’s really more of a scale.</p>
<ul>
<li>Zero exposure to disease</li>
<li>Disease caught, no symptoms, full recovery</li>
<li>Disease caught, mild symptoms, full recovery</li>
<li>Disease caught, ICU required, full recovery</li>
<li>Disease caught, ICU required, partial recovery (chronic symptoms or sideaffects)</li>
<li>Disease caught, ICU required, no recovery (death)</li>
</ul>
<p>(Whether or not the last two are in the right order is an interesting question, but beyond our scope).</p>
<p>Being higher up on the list is better. Denying that there is a spectrum is nonsense. Being at level three is not a bad outcome- it’s a totally different cost than level 4 or 5. If your metrics do not capture severity, not only are you throwing away data that can be used to make appropriate cost-benefit analyses, you’re throwing away data that can help you understand ‘what are the risk factors for complications’.</p>
<p>Mild symptoms are better than requiring ICU admission.</p>
<h1>Immunity is on a spectrum.</h1>
<p>Immunity causes non-severity. The more immune you are, the more capable you are of fighting off an infection before things go south. We know that in the range from mild-symptoms to death, there are some pretty obvious risk factors. Would it be unreasonable to expand them all the way down to the zero-severity cases? I don’t see a clear reason why these risk factors should ‘cut off’ at the ‘no symptoms’ stage- immunity scales all the way across severity. Immunity is inversely proportional to severity.</p>
<p>Vis a vis, immunity is on a spectrum.</p>
<p>If it’s on a spectrum we can probably make mild shifts and nudges. There are things we can do to move towards the higher end of immunity beyond innoculation.</p>
<p>The presence of innoculations touting near β=0 levels of immunity seems to overshadow that the spectrum still exists… but it does nonetheless. If our goals are long-term health, we really should be seeking not to put all our eggs and resources in one basket by setting the β of one disease to zero, but seeking to holistically understand what causes a lack of immunity, and from there, foster generally high immunity across a wide swath of diseases. The answer may not be innoculation. The answer may be learning to master immunity and <strong>everything</strong> that goes into it.</p>
<p>Let me look both ways before crossing the street here… are you still there? OK. Let me walk right into this bus.</p>
<h1>Fighting the next war.</h1>
<p>COVID was mild. It was nothing. It has a fairly reasonable-to-understand set of risk factors (don’t be inflammed, don’t be obese, don’t be vitamin-deficient, don’t… well, you don’t really have control over your age). It should have been <em>cake</em> to bolster immunity, but it wasn’t. The general societal mindset has been “wait for a vaccine” or “it’ll just run its course”.</p>
<p>Will we learn from this folly?</p>
<p>Whenver I think about vaccination, I think about the general quote cited by those critical of militaries: “soldiers are always training to fight the last war”; “economists are always ready to fight the last depression”. Vaccination is <em>reactive</em>. General immunity is <em>proactive</em>.</p>
<p>Vaccine manufacturers are suggesting that booster shots will be required. Yeah… this is a rider on humanity. It isn’t “just the flu, bro”… it’s the new flu, bro. (Whether it was destined to be, is an interesting question). It will evolve, and continue to evolve. Immunity via innoculation has the same pitfalls of any corporate affair: information takes time to travel up from the field to planners.</p>
<p>What happens when we have the next COVID? Will we have to put a pause on humanity again? Or maybe, we can start looking back at this year, look at the data, and learn some valuable lessons about how immunity works and how we can produce general immunity for <em>any</em> disease. Is that too much to hope for?</p>
Failure to Feast.https://blog.thadhughes.xyz/failure_to_feast/2021-04-14T00:07:56ZAlexander Schmemann’s “For the Life of the World” is a <em>beautiful</em> work. It’s absolutely stunning. There are a number of topics and poignant things you could pontificate over… but the one which stuck out to me, especially since in the (Catholic) church we just entered into the joyous season of Easter, is that of feasting.<p>Alexander Schmemann’s “For the Life of the World” is a <em>beautiful</em> work. It’s absolutely stunning. There are a number of topics and poignant things you could pontificate over… but the one which stuck out to me, especially since in the (Catholic) church we just entered into the joyous season of Easter, is that of feasting.</p>
<p>Much has been said about the relationship between feasting and fasting; that there are no highs without lows, and that abstinence makes a return all the more sweet. But what isn’t discussed so much is that this return, this feasting, is <em>really necessary,</em> not just something which we should enjoy temporally.</p>
<p>“Feast means <em>joy</em>… yet if there is something that we- the serious, adult and frustrated Christians of the twentieth century- look at with suspicion, it is certainly joy. How can one be joyful when so many people suffer? When so many things are to be done?” </p>
<p>Growing up on a farm with a heavy ‘protestant work ethic’, this mindset is deeply ingrained, and something I’m still trying to dig myself out of. God doesn’t just open the doors and invite us to be joyful, he expects us to take him up on the invitation. To scoff at this and say ‘there is still pain in the world’ is in fact, the very sin Judas commits in John 12. Even in the world of suffering, there is time to rejoice and make waste for joy to flash forth.</p>
<p>Schmemann mentions that a good number of Christians take feast days as not really part of their life, or at best, as nice excuses for leisure.</p>
<p>“To understand the true nature - and "function” - of feasts we must remember that Christianity was born and preached at first in cultures in which feasts and celebrations were an organic and essential part of the whole world view and way of life. For the man of the past a feast was not something accidental and “additional”: it was his way of putting <em>meaning</em> into his life, of liberating it from the animal rhythm of work and rest. A feast was not a simple “break” in the otherwise meaningless and hard life of work, but a justification of that work, its fruit, its- so to speak - sacramental transformation into joy and, therefore, into freedom.“</p>
<p>This immediately says to me something akin to a county fair. A capstone. An annual affair. "It’s what we do.” I grew up in a heavily-4H-involved county and for us, our feast was the county fair at the end of every summer.</p>
<p>The key here isn’t so much that there is material good and luxury and feel-good. The key is that the luxury and feel-good is the <em>result</em> of all the other activity. Fully automatic luxury space communism does not bring the same joy that hard week’s work and a banquet at the end of it all does. Even a jail cell with three square meals is hardly model of joy, even if the average consumption of utility is the same or better. No, the joy arises clearly not from luxuries, or from the laboring for them, but in the relationship between the two.</p>
<p>The joy of a feast does not stand high because it is of a better nature than the fast. The joy of a feast is high precisely because it is built out of the works of the fast. But when we are done fasting, we must enjoy the feast we have built.</p>
Method and Antimethodhttps://blog.thadhughes.xyz/method_and_antimethod/2021-03-14T05:32:35ZPaul Feyerabend’s Against Method is certainly a thinker in these modern times. There are already many great praises of it so I won’t add much to it, but I do want to be distinct about something.<p>Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method is certainly a thinker in these modern times. There are already many great praises of it so I won’t add much to it, but I do want to be distinct about something.</p>
<p><img src="/_assets/images/am.png" alt=""></p>
<p>Feyerabend, in AM, is Antimethod. He believes that method does not yield fruit. I think this is slightly disingenuous (he even concedes this is for rhetorical reasons in Science in a Free Society). There’s certainly a place for method alongside antimethod. The two are friends not enemies.</p>
<p>Method refers to a systematic process, or at least, continuing to think within the confines of some presuppositions or prevailing opinions. Method is deductive (though it may also incorporate empiricism).</p>
<p>Antimethod is ‘jumping out’ of the set of presuppositions. Breaking a subroutine. Throwing an exception. The prevailing metaphor of our times is ‘taking the red pill’ to jump out of the existing system. Putting on a new set of eyes.</p>
<p>Method is going down the rabbit hole. Antimethod is coming back up.</p>
<p>The thing, of course, is that we don’t want to jump <em>out</em> of a system and stay <em>out</em>. We want to jump <em>over</em>. Neo goes back into the Matrix with fresh eyes. Exceptions get handled. To throw your hands up and reject this call to go back into reality is the heresy of the Gnostics.</p>
<p>Antimethod isn’t something you can base your worldview and life on. It is something you use to break free of an oppressive strain of thinking, so you can then resume using method with a different set of presuppositions. </p>
<p>In engineer-speak, we call this part of the engineering process. We build things, then we test them and break them. Oftentimes, we find data that does not fit into our narrative we had going in. We have to use antimethod to brainstorm possible explanations for these processes before we can resume using method.</p>
<p>I’d personally best call this a <em>heuristic interrupt</em>. The goal of good thinking is to tune your rules of thumb and BS-detectors (your heuristics) so that they trigger you to jump out and into a different mode of thinking- a different bit of code- an interrupt handler. Not every problem can be tackled with the same mindset. Mindset shifts are required.</p>
<p><em>Scientific</em> thinking has been hindered by such a refusal to break out of monotone and to harmonize. The engineers of the world, of course, are not impeded by such monotony. We have ‘blower-uppers’ like myself working hand-in-hand with clipboard-warrior rule followers. One group always doesn’t like the other. This push-pull dynamic isn’t a debate. It’s an argument. It’s not about facts in a presupposed environment.</p>
<p>Usually disagreeing engineering parties are fully informed. They know all the facts. Often, they aren’t even that stupid. They just have different value scales. As such, good engineering usually isn’t weighing facts- it’s applying heuristics about what is important.</p>
<p>Use your gut on how to use your brain.</p>
Arithmetic Thinking is Smoothbrained.https://blog.thadhughes.xyz/geometric/2021-02-06T03:31:13ZThe development of early western philosophy is undoubtedly intertwined with mathematics, and in particular, geometry.<p>The development of early western philosophy is undoubtedly intertwined with mathematics, and in particular, geometry.</p>
<p>You may recall from your math classes, or from calculus two, geometric series and arithmetic series.</p>
<h2>Approach</h2>
<p>A <em>geometric</em> series is one where the next number is some constant <em>multiple</em> (a ratio, or proportion) of the previous, e.g.:
<code>1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 243</code></p>
<p>An <em>arithmetic</em> series is one where the next number is some constant <em>additive</em> of the previous, e.g.:
<code>2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14</code></p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/geo_arith_plot.jpg" alt=""></p>
<p>While the typical mathematics course will help remind you of how these work by creating stories such as “One Grain of Rice”, the relation is actually inverse- the story emerges from the series, not the series from the story. The geometric series has many manifestations, all of which could be considered natural, from the Latin <em>“nasci”</em>, meaning to give birth. One begets two, the two beget four, the four beget eight; a flowering out by which the entire space may be filled even as the originals die off.</p>
<p>The arithmetic sequence, on the other hand, is a sterile one, a steady march by which gains are made begrudgingly and uninterestingly, if at all. There are no network effects. This does not describe a natural process.</p>
<p>Interestingly, this is further reflected by the etymology of these terms. Both terms have their origins in greek: ‘geometry’, or <em>γεομετρια</em> (γε ‘earth’, μετρια ‘measure’) regarding the surveying of land and nature; ‘arithmetic’ or <em>αριθμητικη</em> (art of counting).</p>
<p>The error of the arithmetic mindset is made even more apparent when we flip the progression in the other direction, however.</p>
<p>Geometric series: <code>1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16</code></p>
<p>Arithmetic series: <code>1, 0, -1, -2, -3...</code></p>
<p>As far as describing physical phenomena, the former makes much more sense than the latter: negative quantities do not exist, or at least, are unsustainable debts which must be repaid. The geometric series, however, can infinitely collapse and converge upon an essential truth.</p>
<h2>Interactions</h2>
<p>Let’s take this into two dimensions. A dimension is simply an orthogonal axis, an axis that varies independently of the first. Let’s consider the ratio 2 for some geometric series and arithmetic series.</p>
<p>Geometric: <code>A = 2, 4, 8, 16, 32; B = 3, 6, 12, 24, 48</code></p>
<p>Arithmetic: <code>A = 2, 4, 6, 8, 10; B = 3, 5, 7, 9, 11</code></p>
<p>We can visualize the effects that these two dimensions have on each other if we consider them as lengths of the legs of a right triangle. If you have some graph paper, feel free to plot it for yourself.</p>
<p>In the geometric series, the ratio progresses from 2:3 to 32:48 (which, if you notice, reduces to 2:3). The proportion, or shape remains the same. In the arithmetic series the ratio progresses from 2:3 to 10:11, or in decimal terms, from about 0.66 to 0.90909.</p>
<p>If we were to continue these series on, both do indeed continue growing unceasingly, but the ratios diverge. The geometric ratio always remains constant. However, with an arithmetic ratio, the ratio converges to unity.</p>
<p><em>Conclusion A: If all dimensions are geometric, the relationship between them does not change.</em></p>
<p><em>Conclusion B: If all dimensions are arithmetic, the relationship between them changes, and approaches, but never converges to, unity.</em></p>
<p>The keen eye would see that there are more possibilities, though.</p>
<p><em>Conclusion C: If one dimension is geometric, and the other arithmetic, the relationship between them diverges, in favor of the geometric.</em></p>
<p>From series analysis we know that this is true even if the ratio for the arithmetic is higher than the geometric. The arithmetic may have a short-run advance if its ratio is sufficiently high, but there is some point at which it dominates.</p>
<p>Where are we going with this? Early ‘western’ (modern ‘near east’) thinkers recognized the link between morality and beauty- and as such, were keen to the link that morality would have with proportion. It has been said that sin is an aspiration to that which is not possible- mirroring the approaching-but-not-converging nature of an arithmetic-arithmetic ratio.</p>
<h2>Politics</h2>
<p>The co-option of the term ‘progressive’ by some politicians and progressives is quite regrettable, as we can clearly see now there are many ways in which to ‘progress’. Save for the anti-natalists, verily, all people desire progression, at least in the form of begetting replacement offspring. The question is, by which algorithm?</p>
<p>Aristotle advocates for a geometric progress: “for if persons are unequal, they ought not have equal shares”; unequal shares for unequal merit. 10 times 3 is 30, a +20 increase. 100 times 3 is 300, a +200 increase.</p>
<p>The egalitarian, however, advocates for arithmetic progress: equal shares, regardless of merit. 10 plus 3 is 13, and 100 plus 3 is 103.</p>
<p>From this many practical ideas can be plainly illustrated (suppose, say, one modifies the sequence so one can influence their standing in the sequence- in a geometric progression, their efforts are multiplied and rewarded, whereas in an arithmetic progression, they are discarded and ignored). But the key really is a sense of proportion, and that there is good beyond the mere growth of a sequence. A geometric scheme allows for a sense of beauty and proportion that emerges not from the mere magnitude of numbers, but their relationship and harmony.</p>
<p>This may at blush sound like ‘slave morality’ as Nietzsche might describe it (accepting a lower position out of a trick the upper classes play), but it clearly is nonsensical as this same sort of thinking benefits the ‘masters’ as well.</p>
<p>The way out is not in a rat race of arithmetic progression, but in respect for divine proportion and the opportunities that multiplication offers.</p>
<p>Riffing on conclusion C, the arithmetic mindset is ultimately doomed if not alone.</p>
<p>The geometric mindset, being natural, cannot be extinguished- only ran foolishly against. “Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” - Matthew 13:12</p>
<p><code>3 → 6 → 12 → 24 → 48</code></p>
<p><code>-1 → -2 → -4 → -16 → -32</code></p>
<p>The arithmetic sympathizers do have one option, though, and that is to eliminate all traces of geometric progression. It is only in the utter rejection of all proportion and ratio that the arithmetic approach can stand any chance. It may at times ‘embrace’ a geometric sense of beauty, but it will seek to add and ‘extend’ (extension is clearly a different process than multiplication), and ultimately ‘extinguish’.</p>
<h2>Golden Ratio</h2>
<p>Arithmetic thinkers will often criticize the present distributions. They will rarely criticize the ratios, but instead focus on absolute discrepancies. The acknowledgement of ratio is itself a geometric idea. You may be well familiar with one such ‘golden ratio’, approximately 1.618, often by the symbol <em>φ</em>.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/phi.jpg" alt=""></p>
<p>She’s beautiful, isn’t she?</p>
<p>The delight of this ratio is that squares of proportionately larger diameter can be arranged together to form a structure without gaps. It is not only geometric thinking that enables this, but also the correct proportion. The role of the geometric thinker cannot be merely to rebuke the arithmetic-minded, but to show them that a ratio which could accomplish just ends does exist. I do not argue that there is something about φ which is imbued in every circumstance- <em>φ</em> happens to work for packing boxes in this fashion (among other recursive patterns), but will not work for all problems.</p>
<p>The only ratio which the arithmetic-minded can comprehend is one-to-one, and even that, they must at some point recognize as unstable at best and impossible at worst. The rigidity of their ratio disallows any natural flourishing in nearly all cases. Nothing natural has a ratio of one. Even the ameoba can reproduce multiple times.</p>
<p>OK, fine. There is something neat about <em>φ</em>, or at least the concept it represents. It’s the magical ratio such that:</p>
<p><code>φ = a/b = (a+b)/a</code></p>
<p>It’s a ratio that allows for spiraling down (or up). It represents the idea that the same proportion exists amongst the small things as amongst the large things. That is to say, that you expect to see similar patterns on a macro- as a micro- scale.</p>
<h2>Room for Imagination</h2>
<p>You probably have heard of the <em>Cult of Pythagoras</em>. These swell fellows were of the belief that all numbers could be represented as integers, or fractions thereof. We today would call these <em>rational</em> numbers. It’s plain to see how would would imagine they could exist. Heresy, to these fellows, came in when geometry was introduced. We’re familiar with the pythagorean theorem,</p>
<p><code>a^2 + b^2 = c^2</code>,</p>
<p>“The sum of the squares of a right triangle’s legs equals the sum of it’s hypotenuse.”</p>
<p>However, we know now that the solutions to <code>y = x^2</code> are of the form <code>x = sqrt(y)</code>, which are generally <em>irrational</em> numbers. They cannot be represented as fractions. Indeed, the poor arithmetic-minded cultists of pythagoras could not take the leap of faith required to accept an <em>irrational</em> solution even when the necessity stared them in the face. We see this today in new-atheist types, who having reduced the world so far down to an essential motive force that you could call God, refuse to call it God or at least treat it as such. Their a priori ‘rational’ framework doesn’t allow them the freedom for such concepts.</p>
<p>Geometric thinkers, even if they did not admit that the square root of 5 was a number, would nonetheless admit that the side length of a hypotenuse was <em>real</em>, existent, and useful to speak of. We see this a lot in the post-new-atheist types (e.g. Peterson), who recognize that you must call it God, even if not canonical and real in the same sense the rest of reality is.</p>
<p>The geometric mindset is a playful one which seeks the unknown and mystical.</p>
<h2>Manifestations</h2>
<p>Still not sure what I’m getting at? Here’s a cheat sheet.</p>
<p>Geometric:</p>
<ul>
<li>Flourishing (“flowering out”)</li>
<li>The traditional family across multiple generations</li>
<li>Reinvestment of labor and wealth</li>
<li>Spread of ideas by network effects</li>
<li>Learning from tradition</li>
<li>“Big Bang” theory (or Creationism)</li>
<li>Charity and free sowing of seed</li>
</ul>
<p>Arithmetic:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sustinence</li>
<li>Replacement populations</li>
<li>Universal Income</li>
<li>Extraction of surplus value; usury</li>
<li>Ignorance of history</li>
<li>Steady-state universe theory</li>
<li>Stinginess and hoarding</li>
</ul>
<p>… among many more examples. You have a brain. Think geometrically, and all will be clearer.</p>
<p>Can you think of other schemes than geometric and arithmetic? Sure! I invite you to think of them. I’d be interested to see your parallels.</p>
The Web is a Real Place.https://blog.thadhughes.xyz/web_as_realworld/2021-02-06T03:23:51ZFor years now people have been trying to <a href="https://blog.substack.com/p/welcome-facebook-and-twitter-seriously">fix the internet</a>. Not a lot of people are talking about modeling and understanding the internet in the first place, though. A lot of folk like myself have a sort of ‘nostalgia’ for the ‘old internet’. That’s a nebulous statement, but it’s right. To understand, an analogue is needed.<p>For years now people have been trying to <a href="https://blog.substack.com/p/welcome-facebook-and-twitter-seriously">fix the internet</a>. Not a lot of people are talking about modeling and understanding the internet in the first place, though. A lot of folk like myself have a sort of ‘nostalgia’ for the ‘old internet’. That’s a nebulous statement, but it’s right. To understand, an analogue is needed.</p>
<p>The internet is a <em>realm</em> which has <em>places</em>. Much like reality consists of physical places. They have rules and behaviors.</p>
<p>You, saavy internet user, are walking through this realm right now. As of this writing, this domain points to a set of files hosted on github (via their github pages service). I’ve got my own address (a domain, thadhughes.xyz). I also have a P.O. box (my email, <a href="mailto:hughes.thad@gmail.com">hughes.thad@gmail.com</a>). I don’t have a mailbox yet; I haven’t set up a mail server at the domain.</p>
<p>People online are generally in very strange living situations. Most people don’t even have an address. They have P.O. boxes (emails) and are in homeless shelters (such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). The “successful” folks, with tons of subscribers, are just getting out of the shelters- they are starting to make money but still living on the generosity of platforms.</p>
<p>They don’t own their platform. The notion that these e-celebs “have” a platform is absurd. They’re on one, but they don’t have one.</p>
<p>The random programmer with their own website is infinitely more soveirgn than a famous YouTuber.</p>
<p>So what was it about the ‘old internet’ that we’re nostalgic about? What marked it?</p>
<h2>Interactivity</h2>
<p>One sign was less interactivity, and more personality. “Bob posted on your wall” means “Bob put a political candidate’s sign in front of your bed”. “Bob sent you an email” means “Bob sent you a letter”, or “Bob came and talked to you”.</p>
<p>We often think that a more ‘interactive’ world is better. And it is- it is better to be active in the world. But the ‘interaction’ that we typically have is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8754425-a-surrogate-activity-is-an-activity-that-is-directed-toward">surrogate</a>. We’re employing a system to be our messenger instead of being personal. Like corporate gift baskets.</p>
<p>We need to return to a less interactive internet. Shut down the comment boxes. Open your email composer, or IM, or SMS, or just pick up the phone already.</p>
<p>Sending a message or an email may be awkward. But don’t you love those little suprises that come in your email out of nowhere? They’re so much better than corporate gift baskets.</p>
<h2>Soveirgnty</h2>
<p>There are things which a man should be able to control and be soveirgn in. If he cannot be soveirgn in his speech, he has forfeited his soul. I mean that. If he is subject to terms of service in the words he puts forth, they are inherently limited and he lacks the capacity to speak freely.</p>
<p>Not only in content, but in form, too. All facebook pages are the same. All twitter pages are the same. Remember MySpace? Remember the old YouTube layouts? There was so much diversity in how you could lay out your page and rearrange it. There was a degree of soveirgnty in that.</p>
<p>Was it ugly? Absolutely. And that was fantastic. There was room to be gaudy, to be expressive. It made those that managed the medium and created beauty that much better.</p>
<p>Because you’re not the customer, you’re not the soveirgn. You will be subject to increasing conformity and blandness and a narrowing of forms until all is squeezed out.</p>
<h2>Protocols, not platforms</h2>
<p>Remember IRC? Ok, maybe you don’t. Remember email? Yeah, of course you do.</p>
<p>Email isn’t a platform. Google can’t just shut down email. They could shut down gmail, but other email providers would still exist. Even with gmail, you can still connect Outlook to it.</p>
<p>Want to use Instagram? You have to use Instagram. And if you want to post, you have to do it from a phone (or spoof your web browser to act like a phone). You’re not going outside. You’re locked in. There’s no migration.</p>
<p>When you’re going out in public you might frequent different places. But you don’t put on a different outfit to enter every single different establishment. You have your own sense of style and utility. Not everyone pays with card, some pay with cash. If you don’t like how one place is doing business you up and leave.</p>
<p>In other areas, admittedly, we’ve gotten better. HTML5 blows the socks off Flash and Java (like, Java applets) in this category. (I’ll acknowledge wins when I see them!)</p>
<p>RSS is a weird middle ground. Which brings us to the next point.</p>
<h2>Memberships Maybe, F&@% Feeds</h2>
<p>(Unpaid) subscriptions and feeds are a stain on our lives. This is literally the modern day equivalent of junk mail and I don’t think you can convince me otherwise.</p>
<p>Going back to the first point about interactivity- do you keep a list of your friends, and message them every day? No, you message as things come up or you think of ideas. You riff. Things have highs and lows.</p>
<p>You should seek out particular ideas. Not be fed some constant stream. The idea of having someone constantly streaming ideas at you originated with whoever came up with junk mail, and never before.</p>
<p>Paid memberships are different. It goes back to the basic principle that you pay for things that have value. The payment forces you to assess the quality of that which you are given, and encourages you to cut it out when it’s no longer useful. In this way, paying for things is beneficial to you.</p>
The Three S'shttps://blog.thadhughes.xyz/threess/2020-09-29T03:05:00ZWhen I mentored FLL, I came up with three design principles that I could instill in my students. It seemed to take root. The three S’s:
- Simple
- Solid
- Servicable<p>When I mentored FLL, I came up with three design principles that I could instill in my students. It seemed to take root. The three S’s:
- Simple
- Solid
- Servicable</p>
<p>I enjoy expounding and talking about how to improve systems at length, but this pnemonic instills some fundamentals of good design. It’s not inherent to mechanical, or electric, or software design… it’s just good principles.</p>
<h1>Simple</h1>
<p>Everything should be made simple. This has many benefits: the system can be better understood, and thus improved. Parts count, and thusly cost, goes down. For me this often means eschewing libraries and complex mechanisms when a simpler custom one will do. Use one large bracket, not multiple smaller ones.</p>
<h1>Solid</h1>
<p>Everything should be robust and stand up to abuse. This should be self explanatory. But this also means looking for edge cases, and surviving them. This means testing all possible load scenarios, finding the dirty edge cases in software, and really understanding the full range of conditions your system could be subjected to.</p>
<h1>Servicable</h1>
<p>However, things will go wrong. We ought to be willing to recognize this and plan ahead, making sure that we, and our end users, can fix things in a timely and frustration-free manner when they do. This means providing clearance around fasteners, taking time to care about assembly order, routing wires so they can be accessed, and yes, documenting your design.</p>
<h1>Shipped</h1>
<p>Alas, all good trinities face the problem that Jung cited: that of three versus four. The three in their unity seem to form an idealization, but as they come to fruition, a problem arises, and a compensatory fourth is needed.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, what you’re building needs to be done and shipped. Dwelling too long on these principles, optimizing, will lead you to the deadline unfinished. Real artists ship. This means eschewing that nice custom component when an off the shelf one will do.</p>
Designing for Competent Usershttps://blog.thadhughes.xyz/competentusers/2020-09-29T03:05:00ZA lot of engineering designs revolve around not allowing the user to “do dumb things”. Honestly, this is a great thing to do. There are many cases, especially in protective equipment that is a matter of life and death, where the potential for harm is far, far too high.<p>A lot of engineering designs revolve around not allowing the user to “do dumb things”. Honestly, this is a great thing to do. There are many cases, especially in protective equipment that is a matter of life and death, where the potential for harm is far, far too high.</p>
<p>However, legalism and holding human life as the highest good rather than something divine will always drag human life down, rather than lifting it up. We need danger. We need to afford people the chance to be competent.</p>
<p>We know this in certain senses automatically- it’s why bureaucracy has a bad name. It’s the exercise of rules designed to weed out bad decisions to the point where not only are good decisions weeded out as well, but the costs required are astronomical. Moldbug once quipped that bureacracies are based on the assumption that all particpants are actively seeking to defraud it.</p>
<p>We know that societies work on trust. So why don’t we?</p>
<p>Why do we have that pesky word ‘user’? I really don’t think it’s apt. It puts in your head a sort of default, faceless being which could do any manner of stupid things. It isn’t a title. You don’t go around bestowing people or certifying ‘users’.</p>
<p>A more hopeful word might be ‘operator’. This implies that the person interacting with your apparatus should be competent, and can be trusted. Now, they might be a bad operator. That happens. But if you shift your mentality away from a ‘user’ (dumb, neutral-or-malificent, undignified) to a ‘bad operator’ (thinking (though wrong), good-intentioned, dignified but did their job wrong), you might start coming to their real level.</p>
A Love Letter to Cardboardhttps://blog.thadhughes.xyz/ode_to_cardboard/2020-09-08T03:08:00Z<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVxldyIa0Bg">Steel is the king of building materials. Plywood is the queen.</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVxldyIa0Bg">Steel is the king of building materials. Plywood is the queen.</a></p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/cardboard.jpg" alt="A Love Letter to Cardboard"></p>
<p>But no court is properly full without a jester.
The jester says things that should not be said. He predicts folly and demise to them, letting the repute of the king and queen go untarnished.</p>
<p>Cardboard comes in many flavors. Plain stock is effectively thick, brown paper. It cuts and folds easily, with little bias to grain direction.
Single wall board is the most common type. It’s corrugations provide strength from bending in one axis, but permit bends in the other direction. A blessing and a curse, this allows for some interesting construction methods.
Double wall board stacks two layers of corrugated material parallel to each other. This provides additional strength, and makes bending harder.
However, when the board learns of the queen’s ways, he may find ever more strength.</p>
<p>The commercial overlords fear the power of an overpowered jester, and so seek to limit his power. But by stacking layers perpindicular, the court’s orthotropic member becomes less so- gaining complete out of plane fortitude.</p>
<p>Part of his utility is, of course, his replacability. But a jester is replaced only by another jester. His role is unparalleled. Creating large sheetmetal parts is costly and time-consuming, and plastic is only slightly less so. Cardboard can be cut quickly on a laser- nearly an order of magnitude faster than plywood. It can be cut with knife and welded with hot glue. Shaped, reformed, and thrown in the dungeon without penalty, and pulled off the streets for free.</p>
<p>While if he were to seize the throne, our world would turn to pulp… he serves at hand and foot, keeping our kingdom from ruin.</p>