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Professor Edward Frenkel, a mathematics professor at Berkeley, discusses in a roundabout way, in this video, the question of free will via mathematics and whether or not humans, or perhaps human behaviour, can be reduced to algorithms. This was on the excellent Numberphile channel on YT. It takes some time for the Professor to come to his point, which starts around 10′ 10″, but essentially, his point appears to be that, even in the abstract world of mathematics, you have entities (e.g. vectors) which are not the same thing as the numbers used to represent them, so how can you believe that a human being is (capable of being reduced to) a sequence of numbers? How can you believe that life is an algorithm, if you already see that not being applicable in mathematics?
For those of you who follow the maths (or even ‘the math’ for those in Illinois etc.), the Professor has more to say in this video.
So people are more than numbers, no matter what those who might tell us otherwise might pretend.
All of which means, if the Professor is right, that in a future Red Dwarf ship, there would be no hologram of Rimmer, but this does not rule out Ace Rimmer.
There is a steelworks at Port Talbot in south Wales owned by the Indian Tata group, which is losing money hand-over-fist. The owners appear to have thrown in the towel after 9 years, and are looking for a buyer, for a works losing a reported £300,000,000 a year. So poor old Tata is consuming its capital to the detriment of its investors, and the benefit, for now, of its staff and contractors.
The reaction to this disappointing news about the works, which will doubtless be devastating for those who work there and rely on it for their own livelihoods, seems to be that ‘something must be done’, but once again the Broken Window Fallacy should be borne in mind.
At present, the UK government appears to be tempering calls for nationalisation of steel works, although one Conservative MP, Mr Tom Pursglove, has come out to call for nationalisation, pointing out that Brexit would make it easier for the UK government to grant state aid to industry.
Conservative MP Tom Pursglove is delivering a letter to the prime minister this afternoon calling on the government to ignore EU rules on state aid and consider nationalising the steel industry. As a prominent campaigner for Britain to leave the EU, it is no surprise that he believes Britain would be in a better position to protect the steel industry if we were not bound by EU rules. Those on the other side of the referendum debate point out that the EU is our most important market for steel, with more than half of our steel exports going to the EU and more than two thirds of our imports coming from it.
As my maths teachers used to say ‘Show your working!‘. Funny how EU rules on State Aid don’t seem to apply to farming.
What is truly depressing is that almost no one, apart from a valiant chap from the IEA I heard on Radio 4 news this afternoon, is suggesting that a steel plant should be profitable, the Zeitgeist seems to be that the plant should simply exist. However, there are reports that the Chinese government is subsidising steel exports by selling it below cost price. The IEA chap on Radio 4 said that China has, in the past 2 years, produced more steel than the UK has produced in its entire history (but there are many different kinds of steel, and they are not fungible).
Is anyone scared that China will up the price of steel once it has caused much capacity in the rest of the world to shut down?
The World no.1 mens tennis player, that well-known Scots-Irishman Jock O’Vitch, has caused some ripples in the usual areas with his remarks over the ATP (Mens) tennis tour being the bigger draw than the WTA Tour in terms of ratings and therefore being deserving of more prize money.
Of course, in a free world, it doesn’t quite work like that, as it depends on the contract that you have, and the comments of the CEO of the Indian Wells tournament, a Mr Moore, appears to have led to the usual media ‘storm’ and to his resignation in a bout of pseudo-Maoist self-criticism.
Moore said female players “should get down on their knees” in thanks to male counterparts such as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The South African – a former player – later apologised for his “erroneous” remarks.
In this Holy Week, should we not remember the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, the only bit of the Bible that resonated with me at school (apart from Balaam’s Donkey, for other reasons), as being an obvious statement of what is right and wrong.
12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
17 And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them,
18 Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death,
19 And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.
20 Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him.
We shall know that there is progress in the cause of liberty when those who protest against the perfectly reasonable comments of the World No. 1 are laughed at and ridiculed, and those who speak as they see things shall not cower before those who scorn reason and liberty.
And where are the complaints from the same horde that sponsorship deals for some women tennis players far outstrip the earnings of male tennis players?
I’ve heard it said that Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be….
Well, we have reports that former President Lula da Silva, he of the Workers’ Party, having had his collar felt recently by police over corruption allegations, has found a way that might help him sidestep further investigations, by joining the government of his successor, Dilma, that ‘likeable’ former Marxist guerilla, who is herself facing calls to resign over corruption.
Joining the government would mean that only the Supreme Court could hear a criminal complaint against him, and the lower courts have no jurisdiction to hear a case against a Minister. Such is the respect for the rule of law in that country.
So at least in Brazil they are perfectly open, if the cops are after you, you are safe if join the government. Is it any wonder that the country is a mess? This is one way to defend a government against politically-motivated prosecutors, but it is also a way to shield criminals.
I suppose the tipping point comes when politicians join a government when facing indictment, rather than resign from it.
On the 70th anniversary of Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, and the 63rd anniversary of Stalin’s death, the 80th birthday of the Spitfire, I post Mr Bill Kristol’s long (c. 80 minutes) and informative interview with Garry Kasparov, the noted former World Chess Champion, focusing on the collapse of the Soviet Union, with some vignettes on his own life, starting off in Baku, the fifth city of the USSR. As Mr Kasparov likes to tell Americans, he grew up in the Deep South close to Georgia, but around 1,500 miles from Moscow. One should remember that Mr Kasparov makes Muhammed Ali at his prime seem rather diffident.
Mr Kasparov is half-Jewish, half-Armenian, but culturally Russian. He talks about his early life, his Jewish father died when he was 7, he grew up believing in the Soviet system right into the mid-1980s, he thought that socialism’s ills were not due to ‘the rotten nature of socialism‘, but were a problem of implementation. He had been introduced, by his paternal uncle, to non-Soviet Jewish literature from the local Jewish intelligentsia so he got some insight into ‘the other side of the story‘, but it took time before he realised that the problem was the system.
For the talented under socialism, there were very few options, you could not go into law (perhaps a good thing?), into business, into politics (as opposed to the Party) a whole range of careers that Westerners might regard as options were not available under the Soviet system, but sport, ballet and chess were options for ambitious parents eager for their children to do well (they hadn’t quite abolished that). He also points out that chess was never part of the Soviet education system, they had no interest improving education, but only in finding talent, ultimately for propaganda purposes.
He was privileged to go abroad (and to Paris) at the age of 13 for a chess tournament, he had to be approved and recommended by a Party Committee even at that age, and he was the only person in his circle who had gone to a capitalist country (yes, I know). He read Solzhenitsyn in 1981, (when outside the USSR) and said his name was like Voldemort, everyone knew of him, but he was he who must not be named. He talks about how he managed to grope his way away from support for socialism and the Party, and discussions with his die-hard Communist grandfather, baffled by the jamming of Radio Liberty, and how the regime became less ‘vibrant‘, and the panic induced by the election of Ronald Reagan after the ‘malleable’ (my word) Jimmy Carter. Funny how looking back, it’s almost as if the Left in the West did everything that Moscow asked 😉
At one point in 1985, Steve Jobs went to Moscow to talk to the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a rather unproductive use of both’s time.
He talks about the coming of Gorbachev, who was utterly indifferent to the anti-Armenian pogroms in Baku, Azerbaijan in what became the dying days of the USSR, and the SDI being what drove Gorbachev to negotiate a bad deal at Reykjavik.
He says that it is vital for Russia to have a Nuremburg Tribunal on the crimes of communism.
At 1 hour 9′ 9″ he talks about Soviet Nukes and the Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal, 2,000 warheads, bigger than France, China and UK combined, and the betrayal of the guarantees of Budapest in 1994.
If you take a look at his Facebook page, there are some choice quotes from him, e.g. this from 1st March 2016:
I’m enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism. Income inequality is a huge problem, absolutely. But the idea that the solution is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd.
And this over a cartoon of the Bern wearing a hat with the slogan “Make America Greece again”
A Bernie Sanders hat to compete with Trump’s! Needed to prepare for another great Socialist triumph like Greece and Venezuela.
And there’s no chess theory in there, not a single opinion on the King’s Indian Defence, Sämisch variation.
The BBC have produced an article on the ‘crime wave’ that swept Britain during World War Two.
As you might expect, the war provided plenty of cover for criminal elements, with looting of bombed-out houses, stealing rings from the dead and so on.
But, as the article notes:
One of the reasons for the rise in crime was there were suddenly many more laws citizens could break, says Ms Gardiner.
Numerous orders were issued by the government to keep the wheels of war rolling smoothly.
For example, compulsory work orders were made and anyone failing to do their bit could end up in court.
An engine tester in Coventry was sentenced to three months’ hard labour in 1943 after taking 10 days off without permission when he got married.
And there were price controls as well, again creating new crimes.
Other orders included maximum price controls to prevent businesses from profiteering.
In 1941, in Newcastle, the Blaydon District Industrial and Provident Society was fined £290 after it sold two pounds of apples for about £11 when the maximum price was £4.
£11 for 2lbs of apples would be criminal now of course, but only because of the use of Imperial measurements, but £12.10p per kilo would be fine, rather than lead to one.
It’s a good thing the War is over and freedom prevailed….
But back to the War, the government had its quotas for production
Elsewhere a farmer near Darlington was fined more than £1,000 in 1942 after failing to grow two acres of potatoes, as ordered by the minister of agriculture.
The Northern Echo reported County Durham needed to grow 23,000 acres of potatoes that year for the war effort which “depended entirely on each individual doing his share”.
So that’s ‘The Common Good before the Individual Good‘, fighting fire with fire. At least it was only a gross input indicator, cultivate two acres, not produce X thousand lbs of potatoes, with fines for not having a good crop.
And would you believe it, a government compensation scheme was abused by an unscrupulous person!
One man in London was jailed for three years after claiming to have lost his home 19 times in a three-month period. On each occasion he had received at least £500 compensation.
My image of life during the war is one of a life of dreary, unrelenting anxiety: Will we have enough to eat? Will we be killed by bombs? Will my family survive? When will it all end? Whilst the war had to be fought and won, I cannot help wondering if the brutal conditioning of the populace helped to pave the way for the subsequent strangulation of the freedoms preserved by victory.
The article concludes:
“Human nature doesn’t change. There was a great deal of bravery, strength and fortitude shown by many people but there were also those willing to abuse the situation for their own advantage.”
Isn’t that what the Soviets called ‘speculation‘?
And from that long lesson in human nature and economics, never in the field of human conflict, has so little, been learned, by so many.
The University of Harvard has decided to eliminate the job title of ‘Master‘, (but not the degree title) for certain members of staff after protests that the title had connotations of slavery, although they maintain that there is no connection between the protests and the change, and degrees at ‘Master’ level are unaffected.
Harvard has not accepted that the use of “master” was a link to slavery, but it has responded to a campaign for a name change.
It will mean a change in job title for 24 members of staff – but will not affect other uses of “master”, such as a master’s level degree.
Of course, with one apparently trivial point conceded, other demands continue:
Student campaigners are also calling for a change in the official seal of Harvard Law School, with a sit-in being held this week.
The seal includes the coat of arms of 18th Century college donor Isaac Royall, who as well as establishing the college’s first professorship in law, was a notoriously brutal slaveholder.
Well yes, seals belong on the shore, in the seas, or perhaps at Lake Baikal etc., so I find some common (seal) cause, and harbour no ill-will.
Otherwise, I have to say that I know next to nothing about American Universities, and I could not name the (5?) members of the ‘Ivy League’ with any certainty, but I do sense in this a canary dropping drowsily off its perch in the coal mine of self-referential academia as the flatulence builds up, with no outlet for its escape.
* Inclusive terms for those who are not ‘Jacks’.
Update: Harvard Law School has yielded to protests about its crest, which I assume is the same as the ‘seal’ issue. A flock of these, they are.
A valiant group of Russian activists, the Last Address project, have been commemorating some of Stalin’s many victims with plaques, the BBC tells us.
The rectangular plaques are small and simple. Etched into the metal there is a name, date of birth and occupation: radio technician, journalist, student.
Then come the dates of arrest and execution.
Fixed to buildings across Russia, the nameplates are gradually restoring the memory of some of the hundreds of thousands of victims of Joseph Stalin’s political repressions.
The initiative of a group of activists, it is also a direct challenge to the growing number of Russians who see the Soviet leader in a positive light.
Here is one example of a victim:
Gennrich Rubenstein was a manager on Soviet Railways, arrested as a “counter-revolutionary” in 1937 and then executed. The grainy, sepia photograph Anna holds shows a smart young man, hair carefully parted to one side.
She has just had a memorial nameplate fixed to his home.
“There are still people who don’t want to know about this,” Anna reflects, bitterly.
“Especially young people who are taught history in such a way now that these victims are justified.
“They say ‘Well, we leapt forward. We created a country of tanks from a country of ploughs. So there were victims? So what?'”
So what if after NKVD chief Gennrich Yagoda was executed, his dacha was used to dispose of 10,000 corpses?
Just a few steps into the forest off one of the main roads out of Moscow, there is an even starker reminder of why.
Kommunarka was once the summer house of Gennrich Yagoda, Stalin’s secret police chief.
After his execution, at least 10,000 purge victims were brought here by the truck-load and buried.
And should you think that Bernie’s supporters are bad, consider the disdain or hostility that these people face.
“People tell us they don’t want their buildings turned into cemeteries, that the plaques are depressing,” project-initiator Sergei Parkhomenko explains.
“Or they don’t want their children to see them, because it’s too gloomy.”But those we’re remembering are not just VIP victims. They’re ordinary people.”
And yet recent polls show that Russians increasingly see Stalin as an “effective manager” or war hero, rather than a tyrant.
Opposition activists are regularly labelled “enemies of the people” on state TV programmes and Memorial, the organisation long devoted to restoring the memory of the repressions, has been branded a “foreign agent”.
It is accused of blackening Russia’s image for Western paymasters.
They do not appear to be daunted either by that, or by the scale of the task.
But back in the city centre, the Last Address project has already installed more than 170 of their metal plaques on prominent buildings where they can no longer be ignored.
“Our aim isn’t just to put nameplates on every building in the country, although you probably could,” Sergei Parkhomenko says. “What’s important is to gather people around them. So that they explain what happened to those who don’t know, and tell their children.”
There’s hope for Russia yet, whilst there are people willing to commemorate the dead and remind the ungrateful living of what their forebears’ government did.
The now, sadly deceased Chairman of a Parish Council (a toothless level of government in most cases), in Suffolk, the late James Arnold has been found to have had the largest ever gun hoard found in England, says the Daily Mail, reporting on a linked case involving a living firearms dealer.
This is the terrifying collection of nearly 500 guns and 200,000 rounds of ammunition which was seized from a parish council chairman who collected firearms ‘like stamps’.
There seems to be no suggestion that the arsenal was intended for any other purpose than to be hoarded, and from the pictures a lot of the ammo appears to be inert, and none of the weapons have been linked to any crimes.
(The police) revealed that, had the weapons fallen into the wrong hands, they would have been enough to arm nine coach-loads of terrorists. Chief Superintendent David Skevington said: ‘James Arnold never offered any explanation for what he did; he simply said he had come by the weapons years ago and kept them safe to stop them causing any harm.
‘We have asked every question and followed every line of inquiry and have found no evidence of a criminal or terrorist motive.
Well quite, in Suffolk, there is little terrorist activity. Although historically, Saint and King Edmund was martyred somewhere not too far away, and the Danish culprits appear to have escaped justice. Mr Arnold was arrested 3 months before his untimely death from pancreatic cancer, aged 49. The Mail notes, almost chafing, methinks
After the 49-year-old’s arrest in 2014, Arnold died of pancreatic cancer, meaning he could never face prosecution
I don’t know, these days being dead is no bar to a police investigation, even if you were the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Plod are to devote a year to going through Sir Edward Heath KG’s papers, and they aren’t even considering treason charges for bringing about the UK’s entry into the EEC, which could at least lead to a reprise of Cromwell’s posthumous fate.
I note that on the OP, commenter Big George says
Big George, Michigan, United States, 2 hours ago
This is known as a “starter set” in Texas.
Under socialism, we are all equal, and under Communism, we shall want for nothing, or so we are told. However, if you know a socialist who wants that special present, and you are feeling generous, there is North Korea’s flourishing statue export industry, the BBC tells us.
Finding a gap in the ‘market’, North Korea has exploited its comparative advantages to sell the wares of the Mansudae Art Studio:
“The Russians and Chinese don’t make that kind of stuff any more,” says art critic William Feaver.
No, but they don’t have famines any more either, not for now, anyway.
Be warned mind, if you are looking for a surprise present for your favourite dictator, you might be disappointed, as the Hermit Kingdom have uncharacteristically let slip some details of projects.
Local media in Zimbabwe report there are two giant Robert Mugabes in storage waiting to commemorate his death.
And I bet they were hoping for champagne in Bulawayo.
The ‘studio’ employs 4,000 artists, and is, they claim, the biggest in the World. State funding of the Arts, with knobs on, the twist being this is for hard currency.
The BBC’s interviewee, an Italian gentleman, tells us about the artists envious lifestyles:
They have an enviable position you know – unlike a Western artist they don’t have to worry about selling their work, they have a salary. They are recognised and have privileges. The ones I know, they seem to live happily, they feel part of something
Part of a socialist slave state, but they have privileges.
Anyway, there’s a handy pointer to where in the world not to go if you want to avoid a craphole:
The export of this bold, direct, firmly authoritarian style began in the early 1980s as a diplomatic gift to socialist or non-aligned countries from their North Korean brothers. More recently it’s become a valuable source of hard currency, with artists and craftsmen from MOP working in Angola, Benin, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia and Togo.
Mind you, am I alone in wondering if one or more of these statutes might just be right for Washington DC in mid-January 2017? Should we crowd-fund one for you-know-who as a legacy, one for Hillary and one for the Donald, just in case. I’m pretty sure Senator Sanders would be too self-effacing for this sort of thing. It wouldn’t be right for Mr Rubio either, but perhaps an Action Man doll, with a string in his back to play the same 25-second speech.
Today, we have heard the toll of the bell for the print edition of the Independent, a new-ish British newspaper founded in 1986 to fill the perceived gap between the sanctimonious Left-wing priggishness of the Guardian and the then-brash Times with, well, what appeared to be more sanctimonious Left-wing priggishness. Although it was mindful of the need to remain in profit to be independent, that rigour has meant that it has now decided to go online only from 26th March 2016, having been as Independent as any newspaper owned by a charitable former KGB officer. Its mini-Me version, the i newspaper, a thinned-down version, is being sold off, stc.
What use is a Lefty rag if you can’t even wipe anything with it*? A sigh of relief at competitors, or an unwelcome reminder that the end of the tunnel is the mountain (of debt)?
*Newspaper is great for making car windows really clear after a wash.
On 2nd February 1921, John Alan Quinton was born in Brockley, south London. He would have been 95 today, had he not died, he was killed in a ‘plane crash aged 30, in the following circumstances, as recorded in his George Cross citation.
On August the 13th, 1951, Flight-Lieutenant Quinton as a Navigator under instruction in a Vickers Wellington aircraft which was involved in a mid-air collision. The sole survivor from the crash was an Air Training Corps Cadet who was a passenger in the aircraft, and he has established the fact that his life was saved by a supreme act of gallantry displayed by Flight-Lieutenant Quinton, who in consequence sacrificed his own life. Both Flight-Lieutenant Quinton and the Cadet were in the rear compartment of the aircraft when the collision occurred. The force of the impact caused the aircraft to break up and, as it was plunging towards the earth out of control, Flight-Lieutenant Quinton picked up the only parachute within reach and clipped it on to the Cadet’s harness. He pointed to the rip-cord and a gaping hole in the aircraft, thereby indicating that the Cadet should jump. At that moment a further portion of the aircraft was torn away and the Cadet was flung through the side of the aircraft clutching his rip-cord, which he subsequently pulled and landed safely. Flight-Lieutenant Quinton acted with superhuman speed displaying the most commendable courage and self-sacrifice, as he well knew that in giving up the only parachute within reach he was forfeiting any chance of saving his own life. Such an act of heroism and humanity ranks with the very highest traditions of the Royal Air Force, besides establishing him as a very gallant and courageous officer, who, by his action, displayed the most conspicuous heroism.
With our recent discussion of genes and selfishness, here was a man, a whole, thinking being, with an infant son of his own, and having survived WW2 as a Navigator in Mosquitos in the RAF, who was, when the ultimate challenge presented itself, prepared to give up his own life for that of a stranger. His example is a reminder that an acting human being is capable of doing things for other than ‘selfish’ reasons. Flight-Lieutenant Quinton’s final act was the ultimate demonstration that a principle – that one should do what is right when in a position of responsibility – can triumph over base instincts, a counter-point to many lesser people who have failed to do what is right in difficult situations, even when not in mortal peril.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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