(Note: This was originally a FaceBook comment to a Libertarian friend's post about registering as a Republican and his friends' criticism of it as well as references to "the wrong party".)
It really depends on 1) How you much you value finances and 2) How far away they are making decisions.
Republicans/Conservatives spend money on defense and on policy that distinctly separates "us" and "them". This doesn't mean that they try to hurt "them", but--when there's a preference, there's a difference. A simpler way to think about it is that Republicans try break connections between the people they identify with and others with a high risk or a high cost to be associated with.
This means--if there actually is a meaningful distinction--like at the international level--it's a useful way of thinking. Their fiscal policies are along the same lines except they tend to think of "us" as being the more contributing people and "them" as being the less-contributing people.
Democrats/Liberals, on the other hand, want to see everyone as equals. Though idealistically noble, this is also their primary problem because this altruism makes them easy to take advantage of. By distributing effort and resources across borders and without much reference to personal differences, they often develop policies that are expensive because people--who are often selfish--are abusing the system.
At home, in small, relatively homogeneous populations, this can be very helpful and encourage success by supporting the people who are key to our society. At higher levels, unless the person has a definite attachment to a distinct group, you create problems. ("Blue Dog Democrats" probably fall into the attached-category.)
Libertarians are sort of a different breed all together. Their dividing line between "us" vs "them" becomes "me" vs. "you" vs. "them". Where Democrats only see one set of ideal living situations and Republicans make a distinction between the in-group and the out-group, for Libertarians, there is an out-group writ large and it's okay for their to be differences between people inside the "in-group".
This is why the Libertarians have a lot of their political problems with numbers. It's like herding cats. Cats are--when they are mature--social creatures that create a hierarchy. However, for the first half of their lives, they only associate with who they want to when they have to and only for as long as the other doesn't create some reason for conflict.
This tendency does not lend itself to stand-alone success in a political system that is based on numbers and cohesiveness. And--while it comes up with equitable--at least as far as effort invested--solutions to problems, selling them to others except where the borders of their political philosophy act, is often difficult. In other words, guns and the Republicans, universal individual liberties and the Democrats, etc.
So, yeah, that's my take. Pick your poison...
Friday, December 31, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Odd dream...
Got a lot of money and a car in my dream--something I'm anticipating for some reason--and was downtown looking for a decent restaurant. Only, it wasn't exactly Phoenix, Arizona. It was a desert city on a grid and the area I was in had a lot of empty lots. Anyway, I helped out someone that may have been homeless by giving them my pre-packed lunch.
I had stopped at a convenience store for something. The convenience store was in an older, commercial area and was directly in front of an out-of-use commercial building, beside another which was still in use, and a large yard containing CONEX's, short sections of concrete traffic barriers, crates of this-that-and-the-other-thing, and a large number of pallets.
One thing led to another, and I found out there was a small group of them including a (putative) couple where the woman was pregnant, a guy that looked like a young Buddy Hackett, and some others. In the process of being friendly, they raided my backpack and acquired some small bags of chips I had in there and one or two other things.
I noticed a large, padded piece of cardboard that might be useful to them and pointed it out. It was for packing and was probably about the area of a full-sized bed but only a few inches thick. They pointed out it would be hard to carry around. For some reason, I got the idea of wrapping it in plastic, tying a cord to one end, and storing it in a narrow vertical space, like between two buildings. My thoughts were, it might be useful for a week or two. They turned the idea down without thinking about it too much.
I was about to go when the manager of the business beside the store offered some of them some shelter in exchange for moving some of the short sections of traffic barrier inside. I think he was primarily looking at the pregnant girl.
The whole group sprang into action, manually manhandling the big concrete sections across the ground to the entrance of the working warehouse. I don't know why, but I wanted to help. I looked around for a lever and some form of skid or wheeled anything. I found a low-slung wheeled trolley that would work, but I couldn't convince them to try and use it. (Primarily, it was the guy that looked like Buddy Hackett.)
By this time, however, they had moved enough of them and the manager was happy. He let in the pregnant women, another young woman, and the putative father. Then, he closed the door and left the others outside.
Anyway, what it really got me thinking about were four things:
First, the lack of a durable social group among the homeless. Personally, I saw them as a group when I walked up. I expected them to function as a group. The emotional read I got was that they were socially connected, but the end result was a complete focus on themselves and that was accepted by others.
Second, I really noticed the willingness to violate some of my expected personal boundaries and social norms. This isn't any surprise for anyone who's had a lot of interaction with at least subsets of homeless people, but, hey! It was my dream and my homeless people.
Third, I recognized that--at least as far as I've had real-life interactions with homeless people--and from conversations with others that have or have been homeless, they have an ongoing problem accumulating the "stuff" they need to survive and maintaining control over it.
Fourth, I contrasted them with what I learned this last semester about hunter-gatherer groups. Both share a similar "problem"--lack of a static living situation, a very finite limit on what they can carry, and less control temporally on what resources they have available.
Then, I woke up.
My question is--and I would need to do a literature review to approach this--is how much of the homeless problem is simply the inability to form durable, interdependent social groups?
I mean, if social bonds (and social norms) are strongest between people who are the most familiar, have the ability to build reputations and reciprocal altruistic interactions, and have shared investment in mutual endeavors, could part of the homeless problem simply be a structural problem?
Obviously, the reasons behind the breakdown of group building (or durability) could and probably are psychological--the effects of drug use on decision-making, for example, or simple mental illness--and I would need to identify or at least discriminate which group(s)/demographic(s) have this issue and why, but it's an interesting thesis.
Something to do while I wait for job offers...
I had stopped at a convenience store for something. The convenience store was in an older, commercial area and was directly in front of an out-of-use commercial building, beside another which was still in use, and a large yard containing CONEX's, short sections of concrete traffic barriers, crates of this-that-and-the-other-thing, and a large number of pallets.
One thing led to another, and I found out there was a small group of them including a (putative) couple where the woman was pregnant, a guy that looked like a young Buddy Hackett, and some others. In the process of being friendly, they raided my backpack and acquired some small bags of chips I had in there and one or two other things.
I noticed a large, padded piece of cardboard that might be useful to them and pointed it out. It was for packing and was probably about the area of a full-sized bed but only a few inches thick. They pointed out it would be hard to carry around. For some reason, I got the idea of wrapping it in plastic, tying a cord to one end, and storing it in a narrow vertical space, like between two buildings. My thoughts were, it might be useful for a week or two. They turned the idea down without thinking about it too much.
I was about to go when the manager of the business beside the store offered some of them some shelter in exchange for moving some of the short sections of traffic barrier inside. I think he was primarily looking at the pregnant girl.
The whole group sprang into action, manually manhandling the big concrete sections across the ground to the entrance of the working warehouse. I don't know why, but I wanted to help. I looked around for a lever and some form of skid or wheeled anything. I found a low-slung wheeled trolley that would work, but I couldn't convince them to try and use it. (Primarily, it was the guy that looked like Buddy Hackett.)
By this time, however, they had moved enough of them and the manager was happy. He let in the pregnant women, another young woman, and the putative father. Then, he closed the door and left the others outside.
Anyway, what it really got me thinking about were four things:
First, the lack of a durable social group among the homeless. Personally, I saw them as a group when I walked up. I expected them to function as a group. The emotional read I got was that they were socially connected, but the end result was a complete focus on themselves and that was accepted by others.
Second, I really noticed the willingness to violate some of my expected personal boundaries and social norms. This isn't any surprise for anyone who's had a lot of interaction with at least subsets of homeless people, but, hey! It was my dream and my homeless people.
Third, I recognized that--at least as far as I've had real-life interactions with homeless people--and from conversations with others that have or have been homeless, they have an ongoing problem accumulating the "stuff" they need to survive and maintaining control over it.
Fourth, I contrasted them with what I learned this last semester about hunter-gatherer groups. Both share a similar "problem"--lack of a static living situation, a very finite limit on what they can carry, and less control temporally on what resources they have available.
Then, I woke up.
My question is--and I would need to do a literature review to approach this--is how much of the homeless problem is simply the inability to form durable, interdependent social groups?
I mean, if social bonds (and social norms) are strongest between people who are the most familiar, have the ability to build reputations and reciprocal altruistic interactions, and have shared investment in mutual endeavors, could part of the homeless problem simply be a structural problem?
Obviously, the reasons behind the breakdown of group building (or durability) could and probably are psychological--the effects of drug use on decision-making, for example, or simple mental illness--and I would need to identify or at least discriminate which group(s)/demographic(s) have this issue and why, but it's an interesting thesis.
Something to do while I wait for job offers...
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Governmentally mandated paternity testing... (Part IV)
Analyses
Given the payoff matrices constructed last time, I constructed decision matrices for several sets of parameters. I constructed tables for each type of payoff--prosocial, fiscal, and offspring quality--and reverse ranked each outcome within the table. For example, the offspring with the highest quality had the highest numeric rank in the offspring quality chart. I created a summary chart where the ranks for each payoff were added after being multiplied by a weighting parameter to allow for analysis of the priorities for each player.
The "basic" table looks like this:
Given the payoff matrices constructed last time, I constructed decision matrices for several sets of parameters. I constructed tables for each type of payoff--prosocial, fiscal, and offspring quality--and reverse ranked each outcome within the table. For example, the offspring with the highest quality had the highest numeric rank in the offspring quality chart. I created a summary chart where the ranks for each payoff were added after being multiplied by a weighting parameter to allow for analysis of the priorities for each player.
The "basic" table looks like this:
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Governmentally mandated paternity testing... (Part III)
Starting with:
| Payoff matrix with formulas. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Female payoffs | Male payoffs | Offspring payoffs | ||||
| Prosocial | Financial | Prosocial | Financial | Offspring | Financial | |
| Marriage (2) | P1 + P2 + bP1P2 | ($1+$2)/2 | P1 + P2 + bP1P2 | ($1+$2)/2 | ||
| Separate (1+1) | P1 | $1 | P2 | $2 | ||
| Marriage (3) | P1 + P2 + bP1P2 | pCON{[($1+$2)/3]} + (1 - pCON){[($1+$2)/2]} | P1 + P2 + bP1P2 | pCON{[($1+$2)/3]} + (1 - pCON){[($1+$2)/2]} | pCON{[(P1+P2)/2] + [(G1+G2)/2] + bP1P2G1G2} | pCON[($1+$2)/3] |
| Alone/Abandoned | P1 | pCON($1/2) + (1 - pCON)($1) | P2 | $2 | pCON{[(P1/2) + [(G1+G2)/2]} | pCON[($1)/2] |
| Alone/Paying | P1 | pCON[$1/(2 - c)] + (1 - pCON)($1) | P2 | pCON[$2/(1 + c)] + (1 - pCON)($2) | pCON{[(P1/2) + [(G1+G2)/2]} | pCON{{$1-[$1/(2 - c)]} + {$2-[$2/(1 + c)]}} |
| Alone/Adopted | P1 | $1 | P2 | $2 | pCON{ 0.75 + [(G1+G2)/2] + 0.56b(G1G2)} | Max: $1 or $2 |
| Grayed cells represent non-reproductive outcomes. | ||||||
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Governmentally mandated paternity testing... (Part II)
Deriving a payoff matrix
Before we can derive a payoff matrix, we can consider the fact not all combinations of choices are compatible. For example, all results from a non-reproductive partner cannot produce a baby and therefore rule out all but two of the parental responsibility options. If we go through the current process model and identify those sets of choices resulting in no baby (as seen marked in gray lines in the diagram below), a pattern can be discerned where non-reproductive relationships can only produce one of two basic outcomes: marriage [MRY] or abandonment in combination with alone [ABA x ALO] as the other outcomes require a baby.
Before we can derive a payoff matrix, we can consider the fact not all combinations of choices are compatible. For example, all results from a non-reproductive partner cannot produce a baby and therefore rule out all but two of the parental responsibility options. If we go through the current process model and identify those sets of choices resulting in no baby (as seen marked in gray lines in the diagram below), a pattern can be discerned where non-reproductive relationships can only produce one of two basic outcomes: marriage [MRY] or abandonment in combination with alone [ABA x ALO] as the other outcomes require a baby.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Governmentally mandated paternity testing... (Part I)
After watching Geraldo Rivera's governmental solution to absentee fathers, it got me thinking about father's and children's rights, primarily the sexual and parental support aspects of them. Geraldo's basic assertions are absentee fathers are a major issue in poverty and the solution is a mandate for governmental compelled paternity testing to establish legal liability.
While I generally agree the most effective environment for raising children is a cooperative, mutually supporting environment, I think his solution has serious risks of unintended and perverse consequences on multiple levels. Ignoring most of the legal issues for the time being, let's talk interpersonal relations.
For argument's sake, let's break the process of having children into a 5-step process model:
While I generally agree the most effective environment for raising children is a cooperative, mutually supporting environment, I think his solution has serious risks of unintended and perverse consequences on multiple levels. Ignoring most of the legal issues for the time being, let's talk interpersonal relations.
For argument's sake, let's break the process of having children into a 5-step process model:
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Blind men with jetpacks and altimeters...
I've been running MrBayes practically non-stop since I cleaned the last of the viruses off my PC. For those who don't know, MrBayes is a phylogenetic software program that uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods in parallel to locate the most likely phylogenies for a given data set.
Most of you probably just went: "Markov... Monte... what?"
I don't blame you, so this is my explanation of what happens.
Imagine all of the possible phylogenies--ways a series of gene sequences might fit together--are actually a piece of land with mountains on it. The mountains--the height above the ground--is how probable THAT phylogeny is given the sequence. The higher the mountain, the more likely it's the right phylogeny.
So, the simple thing is to just look out over the landscape and pick out the highest peak, right?
One problem, it's pitch black and you can't see your nose in front of your face.
So, how do you find that peak?
Well, you recruit yourself some people--blind men--and you give them altimeters, radios, and jetpacks. Their job is to go out, push the button on their altimeter and get a height. Then, they take a step in a random direction and check their altitude again. If they went up, there's a small chance they hit the gas and bounce away on their jet pack. If they go downhill, the chance gets larger.
So, simple solution, you send out your 4 man team, they stumble around in the dark like blind men do and keep radioing in their location and altitude. Except that would be a huge number of positions.
Instead, you have them only call in every thousand steps. I mean, hey! you jump more if you do downhill, jump a whole lot less when you're uphill, and that means--ideally--these guys will be walking around the hilltops in no time and stay there.
Only, how do you know THIS hilltop is the highest when you can't see?
Easy, you do two things.
One is, every 1000, the team members compare how high they are and the lowest swaps places with the highest. This means--as far as the ex-lowest guy is concerned, he's now higher on his next step. The ex-highest guy, however, is guaranteed to jump because he's now lower. Sort of mixes things up, see?
The second thing is to bring two teams. Both teams wander around on their own, totally oblivious of each other. However, what you can do, is track and compare the heights they are reporting. If Team A keeps reporting really different altitudes than Team B, you know that one or both just hasn't found the tallest peaks. If that happens, you just send them more fuel, some hot chow, and tell them to keep trucking.
If instead, after a long, long time, both teams are reporting almost exactly the same heights... You got a good chance they actually found the highest peak because that's the only place on the ground where there is an absolute upper limit to how high they can go. If there were someplace higher, more than likely, given enough time and steps, even a blind man can find and climb Everest.
So, when you're done, what do you have?
You have several hundred or more locations and altitudes. The first few--usually about 25%--are going to be crappy. They'll be all over the place, but probably not that far up the mountain. This is called the "burn-in" where your teams are getting their bearings. So, you just rip those out and ignore them. The rest, the last 75% or so, those are what you're after. Those are the combinations of trees and other factors that "make the most sense" together and are most probably.
But, with that many--say, 750 on a 1,000,000 step run--what can you do? Why can't you just pick "the ONE" and be with it?
First, there's no guarantee your teams found the highest of the high. Maybe they found K2 instead of Everest. Maybe they just didn't get that lucky or Everest is on a diet and got really, really skinny and hard to find. So, if you pick only one, you have no idea how much of the terrain you're actually looking at.
Instead, with 750 reports, you can identify where your team spent most of their time. If there is--in fact--an Everest around and it's significantly higher than K2, you'll probably find reports telling you about one or more of your blind bouncers roaming around the shoulders of Everest. Additionally, if all you find is that one, single major peak and all of your junior jetmen spent ridiculously large amounts of time and effort crawling around on the top of it, you can argue with a straight face you got the best and only one... or damn close to it.
So... that's why MrBayes makes me think of blind men with jetpacks and altimeters...
Most of you probably just went: "Markov... Monte... what?"
I don't blame you, so this is my explanation of what happens.
Imagine all of the possible phylogenies--ways a series of gene sequences might fit together--are actually a piece of land with mountains on it. The mountains--the height above the ground--is how probable THAT phylogeny is given the sequence. The higher the mountain, the more likely it's the right phylogeny.
So, the simple thing is to just look out over the landscape and pick out the highest peak, right?
One problem, it's pitch black and you can't see your nose in front of your face.
So, how do you find that peak?
Well, you recruit yourself some people--blind men--and you give them altimeters, radios, and jetpacks. Their job is to go out, push the button on their altimeter and get a height. Then, they take a step in a random direction and check their altitude again. If they went up, there's a small chance they hit the gas and bounce away on their jet pack. If they go downhill, the chance gets larger.
So, simple solution, you send out your 4 man team, they stumble around in the dark like blind men do and keep radioing in their location and altitude. Except that would be a huge number of positions.
Instead, you have them only call in every thousand steps. I mean, hey! you jump more if you do downhill, jump a whole lot less when you're uphill, and that means--ideally--these guys will be walking around the hilltops in no time and stay there.
Only, how do you know THIS hilltop is the highest when you can't see?
Easy, you do two things.
One is, every 1000, the team members compare how high they are and the lowest swaps places with the highest. This means--as far as the ex-lowest guy is concerned, he's now higher on his next step. The ex-highest guy, however, is guaranteed to jump because he's now lower. Sort of mixes things up, see?
The second thing is to bring two teams. Both teams wander around on their own, totally oblivious of each other. However, what you can do, is track and compare the heights they are reporting. If Team A keeps reporting really different altitudes than Team B, you know that one or both just hasn't found the tallest peaks. If that happens, you just send them more fuel, some hot chow, and tell them to keep trucking.
If instead, after a long, long time, both teams are reporting almost exactly the same heights... You got a good chance they actually found the highest peak because that's the only place on the ground where there is an absolute upper limit to how high they can go. If there were someplace higher, more than likely, given enough time and steps, even a blind man can find and climb Everest.
So, when you're done, what do you have?
You have several hundred or more locations and altitudes. The first few--usually about 25%--are going to be crappy. They'll be all over the place, but probably not that far up the mountain. This is called the "burn-in" where your teams are getting their bearings. So, you just rip those out and ignore them. The rest, the last 75% or so, those are what you're after. Those are the combinations of trees and other factors that "make the most sense" together and are most probably.
But, with that many--say, 750 on a 1,000,000 step run--what can you do? Why can't you just pick "the ONE" and be with it?
First, there's no guarantee your teams found the highest of the high. Maybe they found K2 instead of Everest. Maybe they just didn't get that lucky or Everest is on a diet and got really, really skinny and hard to find. So, if you pick only one, you have no idea how much of the terrain you're actually looking at.
Instead, with 750 reports, you can identify where your team spent most of their time. If there is--in fact--an Everest around and it's significantly higher than K2, you'll probably find reports telling you about one or more of your blind bouncers roaming around the shoulders of Everest. Additionally, if all you find is that one, single major peak and all of your junior jetmen spent ridiculously large amounts of time and effort crawling around on the top of it, you can argue with a straight face you got the best and only one... or damn close to it.
So... that's why MrBayes makes me think of blind men with jetpacks and altimeters...
Friday, December 3, 2010
Update: Computer-wars
I have declared victory. My last two problems--Java Virtual Machine not launching and random browser redirects--were likely caused by a single rootkit bug. For those who don't know, a rootkit is a program or utility that stealthily co-opts system control be being able to intercept what the (authorized) user asks and then doing whatever the hell it wants to do.
After trying to explain what happened and why I was actually in the Computer Commons (the work must go on, even when viruses are about), I sort of felt nerdier-than-though when the computer-lab personnel looked at me with glazed eyes...
My solution was actually using several malware/virus checkers while looking for specific symptom combinations. What I found was info on that rootkit and a combination of software that cleaned out all the temp files, caches, and such then quashed the rootkit. A clean restart and scans by three different scanners and I'm tired, happy, and nerdier than ever.
*head desk*
Now, for a nap and--as soon as finals are over--real posts.
After trying to explain what happened and why I was actually in the Computer Commons (the work must go on, even when viruses are about), I sort of felt nerdier-than-though when the computer-lab personnel looked at me with glazed eyes...
My solution was actually using several malware/virus checkers while looking for specific symptom combinations. What I found was info on that rootkit and a combination of software that cleaned out all the temp files, caches, and such then quashed the rootkit. A clean restart and scans by three different scanners and I'm tired, happy, and nerdier than ever.
*head desk*
Now, for a nap and--as soon as finals are over--real posts.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Iterative methods and impending semester end...
The worst second worst possible thing for a student trying to complete a project depending on iterative, software-intensive methods has happened to me: a computer virus followed by an illustrative lesson paralleling why HIV and other STI's follow each other around.
Basically, I fell for a virus (ThinkPoint) that played off of my efforts to avoid infections by spoofing me with a pop-up looking exactly like a Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) pop-up. After having a hell of a time getting back on-line and avoiding the lovely re-directs away from informative sites--have to admire the bastard that developed it--by way of abusing MEGA's browser capabilities and incapacities, I was able to get rid of the virus.
To be sure it wasn't also a corrupt MSE, I uninstalled it planning on reinstalling it immediately. So, I restarted my PC, opened Internet Explorer, the MSE pop-up came up, and--even though I rationally knew I had uninstalled MSE--I clicked it...
ThinkPoint took 5 minutes to clean the second time, the only problem is that it brought friends the second time and I'm still trying to clean them out using several pieces of software that don't all seem to catch all of them but are highly recommended. I still know SOMETHING is there because something kills Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool as it pops up.
That and everytime I try to run a *.jar file, the window pops up with an error that Java Virtual Machine Loader can't start virtual machine.
So, this means I get to do some of my work on the school's PC's which--frankly--are slower than hell. Which wouldn't hurt for some basic tasks--like internet--but when you REALLY want to run a BEAST run of several million cycles or even just a lowly jModelTest run, it takes forever.
I swear, if/when I get a real job, I'm buying two computers exactly alike just to have a spare...
Basically, I fell for a virus (ThinkPoint) that played off of my efforts to avoid infections by spoofing me with a pop-up looking exactly like a Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) pop-up. After having a hell of a time getting back on-line and avoiding the lovely re-directs away from informative sites--have to admire the bastard that developed it--by way of abusing MEGA's browser capabilities and incapacities, I was able to get rid of the virus.
To be sure it wasn't also a corrupt MSE, I uninstalled it planning on reinstalling it immediately. So, I restarted my PC, opened Internet Explorer, the MSE pop-up came up, and--even though I rationally knew I had uninstalled MSE--I clicked it...
ThinkPoint took 5 minutes to clean the second time, the only problem is that it brought friends the second time and I'm still trying to clean them out using several pieces of software that don't all seem to catch all of them but are highly recommended. I still know SOMETHING is there because something kills Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool as it pops up.
That and everytime I try to run a *.jar file, the window pops up with an error that Java Virtual Machine Loader can't start virtual machine.
So, this means I get to do some of my work on the school's PC's which--frankly--are slower than hell. Which wouldn't hurt for some basic tasks--like internet--but when you REALLY want to run a BEAST run of several million cycles or even just a lowly jModelTest run, it takes forever.
I swear, if/when I get a real job, I'm buying two computers exactly alike just to have a spare...
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