Leibniz Clockwork

I only got 7 pieces of chicken in my 8-piece box.

The world is a dark and cruel place.

The pattern of romance is:

1) These two characters should NEVER get together.

2) But, hypothetically, if they did they’d be perfect for each other.

3) Repeat 1 and 2 to hit wordcount.

4) They get together.

It’s surprisingly difficult to come up with reasons characters shouldn’t be together that aren’t impermeable but are valid. These reasons shouldn’t be possible to overcome with an adult conversation about needs and limits. However some change in circumstances, relatively unforeseen, should remove the reason keeping them apart.

The trick is that the easier it is the remove the reason keeping the characters apart, the lower intensity point 1 will be. That reduces the whole meaning and weight of the plot. But if point 1 really is never-ever-ever, than when the two characters come together, the story may not work outside of niche.

Some of this is set in terms of theme. So any remotely realistic story will have some guide-rails. Alice can’t murder Bob’s wife Charlie, and then have a healthy relationship with Bob. That’s a bridge too far. But a non-realistic story might be able to break that rule. Alice can murder Bob’s wife Charlie if Charlie is a vampire. Now we’re in vampire romance, so eh, murder away.

Also I, the writer, have to be able to think about the characters involved in a meaningful way. I’ve got guiderails and so forth. I also don’t really read vampire romance; my appreciation for vampires is mostly about the mythology and thematic elements. This exposes me to a lot of really, really trashy romance fiction, and I get it, I just don’t appreciate it. Some time ago I read Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master. That also fit into the category of ‘I got it, it just didn’t work for me.’ That’s why I described Night’s Master as better than I liked it.

If the characters solve ninety percent of their problems with gun-fights, the readers don’t have a moral high ground to argue trashy romance is bad. But there is a ‘this doesn’t work for me’ argument, which is both infuriating from inside looking out and yet valid.

The point is I’m not writing Alice murders Charlie, vampiress, and gets together with Bob unless… actually, I’m not sure how this would ever work. It’s probably possible, but I don’t see it happening.

Deep Learning is a branch of Artificial Intelligence, which is a nonsensical name. A better name would be computers-doing-repetitive-but-useful-math, but that’s not as exciting and won’t get the attendees at a convention. Coincidentally, any time someone tells you the computers are going to take your job through AI, mentally replace AI with ‘addition’ and see if the FUD still works. If not, don’t worry about it.

Anyway, DL used to be called big data, and while they’re not exactly the same, they’re closely related. The computer does a lot of math very quickly, but it’s an awful lot of math so it takes a while. For the math to be useful, it has to do an awful lot. What the computer is doing the math on is the data, and that ‘awful lot’ referenced above means the computer needs a lot of data, ie big data.

With me?

So to train a DL network, I need a lot of data, and that means I spend hours a day waving targets over detectors. It is boring.

It’s boring but necessary in the way getting fit requires eight hours of sleep a night and eating a healthy diet. No one wants to do that.

Lifter: Coach Matt, I want to get jacked.

Coach Matt: Sounds good. Start with 8 hours of sleep a night and a healthy diet.

L: That’s boring. I see the huge guys in the gym lifting. How do I do that!?

CM: Patience, 8hrs of sleep a night, and a healthy diet.

L: LAME!

Lifter leaves.

L: Coach Bob, how do I get jacked?

CB: Benchpress. Chest day, benchpress. Shoulder day, benchpress. Leg day, benchpress. Ab day, benchpress. Back day? No one cares about your back. Anyone saying anything to your back should come around and say it to your face. And if they’re staring at your face, you should work on your front. Benchpress.

L: There is no way this can go wrong.

Meanwhile, like a loser, I’m trying sleep right, eat right, and stretching.

The lab equivalent of this is taking data, and it’s boring. Maybe I should wave a target over a detector for 8 hours and get some data!? Fun? No. Not fun.

The trick IT companies use is that they have a network of engineers doing various jobs, so one set of engineers creates the data collection system, another develops and implements the network-trainer algorithm (algorithm means ‘specific process done by computers’), a third examines the trained network and so forth. This cycle is sometimes called the product development triangle, and once you go around it five or six times, iterating and improving, it gets pretty good. Then the DL algo works well, some IT company feeds it huge data, and they try to take over the world.

Until their CEO runs off with all the money.

Come to think of it, maybe the ethical choice is just the benchpress. You don’t accomplish ****, but no one makes enough money to commit fraud.

My data is processing. I’m really bored.

I like drawings with lots of people doing stuff. Take the header image. It’s a bunch of people doing stuff, and they’re all thrown together but still somewhat independent. I like to play the game: What’s that guy doing? Who is she looking at? What are those two saying?

There’s nothing wrong with being a conglomerate. Investors don’t punish conglomerates.

Investors punish unfashionable conglomerates. They punish conglomerates that aren’t growing.

JnJ? PE(ttm) 17.3. Old and busted.

Facebook? PE(ttm) 23.4. New hotness.

Salesforce? PE(ttm) 122.8 (even newer and hotter)

MSFT? PE(ttm) 37.6 (the devil)

Fergal O Connor once drew me a picture of a pigeon in a hat with a cane. He (the pigeon) has a little bow tie. It’s outstanding.

And right on time Toyota releases a rumor someone who is totally not being fed by Toyota releases a rumor that the Supra will get a manual.

I’m being too snide here. I want a manual Supra. I’m just a bit cynical about the timing.

Narrative works written to be epics tend to fail. Of epic narratives that succeed, most seem to be written to tell stories that grow into epics.

It is worth being very careful with your denominators here.

Eh.

The Integra is a four-door hatch, so technically a five-door, but definitely not a coupe. The price is right. The transmission correct. 1.5L stock engine is a little small, but we don’t have performance numbers.

I was super stoked when they reppred the 6-speed, but… 1.5L and a sedan? For ‘around 30k’?

I’m interested but cautious.

Some things are ‘Practicable.’ You get better at practicable things by practicing. Playing the violin. Running. Even though in the short term practice might reduce performance and over practice may as well, in the long term, the best way to get better is to practice.

Take running. If you run five miles, and suppose that’s a lot of running at your fitness level, you can’t run well immediately after. But a few days later after rest, you can run slightly better.

Some things are ‘Accountable.’ You get better at accountable things the less you do them. Spending money. Recovering from injuries. Multitasking. The less you do whatever, the better you will be at doing the whatever when you do have to do it.

Suppose you have a checking account. You want to buy some stuff. The less stuff you buy, the more expensive stuff you can buy when you choose to.

Practicable and Accountable are two poles of a continuoum. Things are practicable or accountable not by absolute singleness of being, but rather by where they lie on the line between them.

The Authority Account

Government authority is an accountable power. The more it is exercised, the weaker it is.

Deposits or the Democratic Income

In a democracy (specifically, but maybe other systems as well), authority works like a checking account. If you want to use your authority balance to do something, you spend it. The institution exercising authority now has less. This is like money in a checking account. In a democracy (now very specifically), every election the voters make a deposit into the institution’s authority account. If the voter votes for the winner, the deposit is big. If not, the deposit is smaller. This is the influx of authority that determines the institution’s authority balance.

What’s more, there’s a level of personal reciprocity. If Alice votes for candidate Zebo and Zebo wins, Zebo has a large amount of authority over Alice. She’s somewhat committed to Zebo, and when Zebo says she’s going to raise taxes or implement new laws or any such inconvenience, Alice is somewhat more inclined to support Zebo than she might otherwise be. If Bob voted for Yanne but Zebo won, Zebo’s authority over Bob is quite as strong as Zebo’s authority over Alice but not nothing. If Charlie didn’t vote or thought her vote didn’t count, Zebo’s authority will cover her the least.

These factors hold how well Zebo is doing her job irrelevant. Zebo might be great, but Bob and Charlie are going to be less supportive than Alice holding other factors constant. Since those other factors aren’t constant, but presumably the number of voters is large, we can do statistics.

Obviously, we’re arguing about this quite vigorously in the US. But paying particular attention to the EU in comparison to the US Judiciary, we see a few institutions that receive very little popular vote deposits to their authority account. At the state level, some US judges are elected, but at the federal level, all are appointed. The Supreme Court, highest court in the US, is unelected. While Supreme Court justices are nominated and confirmed by elected people, that level of abstraction makes their authority balance less than it might be.

Look at the debate of Supreme Court legitimacy, and you find it a reflection of who nominated and who confirmed. Let’s compare to a Senator. People will spend more time talking about what the senator did or who the senator is than who elected the senator (which is often ignored), while any discussion of a Supreme Court justice will always include mention of who nominated the justice and how bipartisan their confirmation was.

Let’s also look at the Speaker of the House. The Speaker won her popular vote to the House of Representatives but not to Speakership. There was no popular election for Speakership. That was a aristocratic election among people elected to the House. And of course, people talk about who the Speaker represents and so forth far more than individual elected representatives.

These tangents are the mark of weaker authority. Other things being equal, a position which must be continuously justified and supported is weaker than one that isn’t. This is how people often attack the office of the US Presidency. They attack the election.

Again, current events being what they are, this is an ongoing big deal around here.

Withdrawals

Deposits are unrelated to the importance or right-thinkingness of withdrawals. This is like money.

If my job pays me a hundred bucks a month (to make the math easier), that doesn’t change depending on how important, morally good, or intelligent my purchases are. Nor does it depend on the foolishness, impatience, or selfishness of my purchases. If I make $100 a month, that’s all I make whether I spend it on wine, whisky, and song or feeding the poor. Emotionally, we think these should be connected, but they’re not. Not when we’re talking about real money.

With regards to power and authority, that means the authority of an institution is limited by its democratic income. This is where the EU and the US Supreme Court face their sharpest limitations. Regardless of how well they do their duties, they have very little democratic income, and that refined and reduced by the various steps to get there. Justices on the US Supreme Court have their democratic legitimacy filtered by the President, who nominates, the Senate, that confirms, and the lesser courts, that must be traversed for an issue to arrive at the Supreme Court. Supreme Court justices have comparatively little authority in their accounts because of these filters. For all that they do a good job, and I tend to think highly of them, their judgements are inherently democratically weaker than those made by elected officials.

Ursula von der Leyen never stood for a EU-wide election, and yet is somewhat the supreme executive of the EU. Her authority is one filtered and reflected by nationalist governments, who were themselves elected but not elected across all of von der Leyen’s demesne. She did stand for, and won, EU parliament, but her authority is distinct from parliament’s. Look at the issue of Chair Gate. In the popular mind and political will, she’s clearly on par with the PM yet was elected in a far less democratic fashion. She was an anointed aristocrat.

No matter what she does, she has a smaller authority balance, and yet she executes more power, does more things, than the European Parliament, the body with a far greater balance.

Recalling my point that the utility of her decisions has no bearing on the democratic income, I admit the wise/foolish dollars of income dichotomy is imperfectly applied to authority but is still applied.

With this lens we can look at Brexit and the controversy there following.

On the Brexit side, the proponents argued about taking back sovereignty. In my lens, they wanted their leaders to pay for everything with democratic income. They thought their EU leaders were writing checks their democratic income couldn’t cover, a crisis of confidence ensued, and the UK voted out.

On the Remain side, the proponents argued about exactly what decisions the EU made. They talked about membership in the single market, an institutional side-effect of the EU’s existence, the importance of travel, trade, and so forth. They argued that the EU should be allowed to buy things because those things were good things.

The first vote might have been close, but Boris Johnson’s campaign ‘Get Brexit Done’ was basically a pure Brexit election, and the people chose. We saw who won.

Notes:

First, My argument isn’t one of wisdom or ‘what should be.’ My argument is one of ‘what is.’ I think the world would be a better place if conservation laws were moderated by wisdom, and that’s the promise of religion. But religion and government are different, and one of the greatest wisdoms of Christianity was a seeming offhand remark, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to the Lord what is the Lord’s.’

Second, I think John O’Sullivan is wrong. The best government isn’t that which governs least. The best government is that which governs as it has the authority to do.