How Donald Trump's false statements are secretly brilliant

Donald Trump makes a lot of statements that are false. That gives him a great defense strategy. Imagine he is being investigated for wrong doing of some kind. If investigators find that he said something incriminating in private they would expect to use that to build a case. But instead Donald can just say look at how many public statements that I have made are false; that one you found is false as well. Given the track record that is a reasonable conclusion.

Canada has longer wait times for health care is a bogus claim

The claim that Canada has longer wait times for health care versus the United States is bogus. They compare the wait times of people for procedures. So in Canada if Fred, Joe and Bob waited 6 months for an elective procedure in Canada but Phil, Alice and Jerry waited 2 months in America then Canada has longer wait times. They are neglecting to include people who don't even go for the procedure because they cannot afford it in America. Those people wait forever for the procedure. They are left out of the America health care system efficiency calculation so the comparison is not even valid.

That kind of comparison is like saying that Mike Tyson has a perfect win record as long as you ignore all his losses. Yeah no shit. The American health care system is faster as long as you ignore the people who can't use it at all. No shit. The comparison should be made accounting for people who cannot use the system at all. That would be a more accurate comparison.

Why power hungry people lead us

Power hungry people want power. They want to get power for themselves and use it. They form groups of like minded people. Imagine a non-power hungry person trying to lead. They give the power away because they don't want power they want to help people. By giving the power away they cannot compete with the people who keep the power. The people who keep the power for themselves use it against the people who give it away and win because the nice person who gives away the power cannot compete. We will always be lead by power hungry people who use the power to get more power.

The Evolution of Fat People

I have heard that birth control pills are not as effective for fat people. That means we are creating selection pressure where fat people are more likely to have kids because birth control does not work for them. Also applies to people that don't plan ahead.

The incredible irony of Brexit

Almost one hundred years after the end of world war one when the allies forced Germany to accept crippling debt, the EU want Britain to accept crippling debt to exit the EU.

Assume we are living in a computer simulation

Any computer program can be modeled by a particular Turing machine. A Turing machine has a countably infinite state. That implies that the universe that we 'live' in has a countably infinite state. That means that in between two different points in space there is a finite number of position. In real number based models there would be an uncountably infinite number of positions. That also means that in between two different times instead of being an uncountably infinite number of times there is a finite number of times.

How many position would be between two different points. There is a number called the Planck length that "is believed to be the shortest meaningful length, the limiting distance below which the very notions of space and length cease to exist". That is consistent with the universal being countably infinite. There also is a notion of Planck time which is also consistent with reality being countably infinite. I wonder what things become true if you assume the universe is countably infinite that would not be true if you assume the universe is uncountably finite.

If the universe was a finite but perhaps increasing size then that implies the number of position and things in the universe is finite. For that case Godel's incompleteness theorem does not apply. Since the model for the universe would not be capable of representing whole numbers. That would also imply that any theorem could theoretically be proven through enumeration. That is not practical but still theoretically possible unlike the case when Godel's incompleteness theorem applies.

Are we living in a computer simulation?

Let's figure out a testable hypothesis for whether we are not living in a computer simulation. The Turing machine is a model for all computers. The memory of a Turing machine is countably infinite. If we can show that the universe that we live in has uncountably infinite objects or positions or time divisions then that would imply we are not living in a computer simulation because a computer can only have countably infinite states.

The Benefits on One World Government

There has been a long term movement to tie countries together through treaties or directly combining countries into larger groups. This has a great benefit that no one is talking about. The fewer governing bodies there are the less money corporation have to spend influencing decisions. This is great for the corporate bottom line and will help increase profits.

For example, before the European Union if a company wanted to influence an outcome in France and Italy they would have to give donations, pay lobbyists and create fake groups to simulate 'public' discussion in Italy and France. Now they just have to deal with people in Brussels to create policy in their favour. That is a great reduction in cost. There is half the number of politicians to deal with.

The other advantage is that larger groups diminish the power of the individual. The population of Italy is about 60 million. The population of Europe is about 800 million. Prior to the EU the influence of a person in Italy over policies affecting Italy was roughly 1/60 million. Now it is 1/800 million. That is significantly less influence over the creation of policies that affect Italy than before. This greatly reduces the value of democracy and enhances the value of lobbying the central government.

Another advantage is that centralized power increases the power of elected officials. This in turn increases the influence obtained per dollar spent in obtaining influence. That is greater value for money for the corporations. This in turn will help create policies that benefit the companies while reducing the cost of obtaining the results.

Imagine if there was only one world government. That would be even better for businesses.

Universal Basic Income

The goal of universal basic income is to address the problem where there is not enough jobs for everyone. People who are unable to find jobs will be provided with funds so they can subsist. There is two other ways that this problem could be addressed which I never hear discussed at the same time.

The first is to lower the retirement age. If the retirement age was lower that would remove people from the work force earlier and open up jobs. It would also create more demand for services from old people. That seems like a fairer way to address the problem. People who have worked for along time get to retire early rather than people who have hardly worked get to have UBI.

The second way to address the problem is with the work week. If there was a law that the work week had to be four days instead of five (not necessarily the same four days). In order for the same amount of work to be done more people would need to be hired. This again is a fairer way the address the problem of not enough jobs. The people who are currently working would have less of a burden and the people who are not working could help with more of the load. That is much better that UBI where the people who are currently working would keep on doing the same load so some other group of people could get UBI. Another variation of this would be to increase the number of statutory holidays per year. That has the advantage that it could be done gradually.

It would be interesting to see policy makers discuss the tradeoff between UBI, lowering the retirement age, and reducing the workweek.

The word people

I think there​ are people in the world that try to figure out how to manipulate other people with words. They are the word people. Then there are other people who just ignore words and instead look at what actually happened. The word people find those people very annoying.

I hate caps lock

WHY do we have the caps-lock key. I have never ever wanted to use a caps-lock key. However I have accidentally turned it on an uncountable number of time. It messes up putting in passwords and is super annoying. In addition I use VI and when the caps-lock goes one all the command are messed up. Usually I type in fast so then my code is messed up. I have never wanted to ever use the caps-lock key ever and never will ever want to ever use it ever. I hate the caps-lock key. Down with caps-lock!

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist

Something has bothers me about the bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. They are the group that puts out the doomsday clock readings. The Doomsday Clock is a political opinion about the state of the world. The clock value is presumably determined by people who are atomic scientists. I have no idea what an atomic scientist is. Maybe they mean nuclear scientist or one who studies the atom. I know what a scientist is so lets run with that. They are scientists who offer political opinions. There is no science of politics at all. Perhaps in the future Asimov will be right but not now. They are people who are good at science giving a political opinion. They are trying to use the great name and reputation of science to color their political opinion. That is not reason to ever even listen to what they say at all ever. Its all just made up by people who are trying to use expertise in one area to claim expertise in another different area. Seem like some kind of logical fallacy, supercalifabricatiousphonylogicalfallacism.

Why I like hash table and neural nets

Most mathematicians do no like hash tables. They prefer trees. All kinds of trees. The prefer trees because theorems can be proven on the properties of trees. Hash tables are not amenable to mathematical analysis. That makes hash tables uninteresting to mathematicians. I like them because of that because they are an example of what happens at the edge of computability.

In 1931 Kurt Godel proved an incompleteness theorem. The theorem is that any system complicated enough to represent integers has true statements that that cannot be proven to be true. I believe that hash tables are a construct that has true statements that cannot be proven to be true. Statements that would be fundamental to showing the effectiveness of hash table are not provable. They are cool because they are clearly defined and effective yet remain hidden from analysis using the foundation of mathematics, First Order Logic. We use them and they work great, are relatively simple and yet not analyzable. That is very cool. Neural nets are the same way.

Godel's Flaw in the Constitution

There are stories about how when Kurt Godel was applying for citizenship he was going to tell the judge about a flaw in the constitution that would allow the United States to become a dictatorship. Einstein told him not to because then the citizenship might not be confirmed. The flaw was never publicly announced and so is the subject of speculation such as in this article, http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-mathematician-who-showed-how-the-us-could-be-made-a-1607024259 . The flaw is the thirteenth amendment.

"The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime."

The constitution does not define what a crime is. The government defines that. Therefore the government can make a law that causes whatever group they want to be criminals. Those people would be subject to being literal slaves to the government turning the government into a dictatorship over those people. The people would have no legal way to fight back against the government because their right to vote is removed. So no right to vote means the government will not change. 

One could argue this is difficult to implement but Godel being a mathematician would not worry about implementing the solution. He would just worry if the solution was possible. Clearly by making everyone criminals the government would remove their rights to vote and most of the protection of the constitution. That would create a government that could not be voted out.