04 | May | 2009 | The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Equal Protection Clause

The secret latter heart of the U.S. Constitution.

All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day – Aesop Rock

Aesop Rock

Yo…put one up shackle me, not clean logic procreation
I did not invent the wheel I was the crooked spoke adjacent
While the triple sixers lassos keep angels roped in the basement
I walk the block with a halo and a stick poking your patience
Ya’ll catch a 30 second flash visual
Dirty cooperative Neptune blue head hurt splits
Ridiculous fathom the splicing of first generation
f**k up or trickle down anti hero smack (Cracking!)
I paste the game to zero all completion green (Splash!)
Took an early retirement pick a dream
American nightmare hogging the screen
I’ll hold the door open so you can stumble in
and you would stop following me around the jungle gym
Now it’s an honor and I spell it with the ‘H’ I stole from heritage
Marry crutch stolen wretched refuge refuse my teaming resonance
I promise temperance storm breed with a leaning conscious
In a credence relax responsive with my sports outsource the wattage
And I’m sleeping now (Wow!) And the settlers laugh
You won’t be laughing when your covered wagons crash
You won’t be laughing when the buses drag your brother’s flags into rags
You won’t be laughing when your front lawn is spangled with epitaphs
You won’t be laughing
And I hang my boots to rest when I’m impressed
So I triple knot them then I forgot them
This origami dream is beautiful
but man those wings will never leave the ground
Without a feather and a lottery ticket, now settle down

All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day,
put the pieces back together my way.
All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day,
put the pieces back together my way.
All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day,
put the pieces back together my way.
All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day,
put the pieces back together my way.

Slacker bounded emit a tabloid headlined with the post
Shimmy cross the centerfold, and a dead time engulfed,

Giving crumbs for the better souls with seven deadly sins
To hear the plane to crystal conscious
The result’s a low life counting on one hand what he’s accomplished
Ok, lift me to activism chain activate street sweep
Plug in deteriorating xenobit pen dragging
I hack swords wars for the morbid spreading of mad men
Now he’s got soul
Sitting there lincoln log cabin in Charlie Chaplin waddle
I could zig zag and zig ’em again for the bad dreams
Sparking my brick wall windows another thick installment
of another night in Gotham without the wretched
Houston we have a problem
Dispatch a task of infested patch of city goblins
Who split how many freaks with box cuts of a high road bellow
Heads ripped! Watch red bricks turn yellow
Sort of similar to most backbones at camp Icarus
Raw feelings start congregating at pamper for bickering

Life’s not a bitch life is a beautiful woman
Your only call her a bit*h because she won’t let you get that pussy
Maybe she didn’t feel y’all shared any similar interests
Or maybe you’re just an asshole who couldn’t sweet talk the princess

Kiss the speaker wire or either pass it for some pagan thresh hold
Stomach full of halo kibbles
Wings span cast black of porn visuals hear the duck hunt ticker tape
Vision and pick apart the pixels
I got a friend of polar nature and it’s all peace
When I seek similar stars but can’t sit at the same feast
Metal Captain!
This cat is asking if I’ve seen his little lost passion
I told him: ‘Yeah, but only when I pedaled past him’

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May 4, 2009

The Unknown Known

Psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Zizek extrapolates from these three categories a fourth, the unknown known, that which we don’t know or intentionally refuse to acknowledge that we know:^[4]

“

If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the “unknown unknowns,” that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the “unknown knowns” – the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to known about, even though they form the background of our public values.

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May 4, 2009

there is nothing more predictable than randomness

“there is nothing more predictable than randomness”

an aphorism when unpacked degenerates in tautology? though I would take exception to “predictable;” how is it being used?

Though we can (generally) predict that randomness will occur, can we predict when it will occur and can we predict the content of the random walk? Sometimes >> but if we can, is it truly random, or does it then become just variable? doesn’t randomness include implicit in its definition unpredictability, both as to time and to content? To be aware that randomness is a feature of the universe (and what kind of randomness? is the imprecision of electron position random or is it merely imprecise?) is not the same thing to render it predictable. To predict that randomness will occur is no prediction at all, since being early is the same as being wrong. A weatherman who said “one day it will rain” would be unlikely to get the words “some weatherman” spun above his domicile.

An anecdote:

re: Nasser Taleb, The Black Swan — the Black Swan is of course the concept that large unpredictable events are unpredictable and consequently no one will predict them, and that because of several cognitive biases, being unpredictable will mean that will not be prepared for or even considered; ironically, I bought and read this book in the spring of 2007, before law school, before Europe, while the Dow was still humming along nicely.

Nevertheless, the housing market still burst, only Goldman got out in time, and we call came tumbling after. In August 2005, when I began working at B21, I predicted to Bill Hatton that the housing market had about a year left in it. I’m not sure I got it right, but I was close — but did I predict randomness? That wasn’t so much randomness as the chickens coming home to roost anyway —

What’s really random? Barack Obama. I like to think about how in 2000, while everyone was up in arms about recounts and Chad, nobody even knew who this guy was. How many other hidden heroes are out there in America, in the world, appearing to slumber even while they plan? Is someone like Barack Obama predictable? Not while he remains random, I would argue.

I would counter then, Old Father, All Father, that there is nothing predictable about randomness, which is the true tautology, since randomness = impossible to predict. To the extent that information becomes forecastable, it is no longer random.

Finally, then, we are confronted with the conundrum. What to do with all this randomness. Taleb, not knowing when or how randomness will occur, nevertheless was able to craft an investment strategy that loses money in normal years but makes outsized gains in extreme ones. How does this work? How can we apply this lesson to our own lives?

I believe people dismiss randomness because it makes them uncomfortable. How do we live and prepare and save money in a world where there is a nontrivial risk of sudden death at every moment? Well, the first step may be to lose the angst. The fact that I might die at 30 gave me great pause for many years — until I realized what the effect on my life would be if I operated as if I’d die at 30 but instead lived until 100. Not too much money for shoes in my extremity, I surmised.

Randomness was not lessened, and when deciding to go to Law School, I neglected to include a sufficient discount rate on my future earnings to actually make the proper analysis. But nevertheless, I found some path to action. By controlling what I can control.

We cannot pinpoint the position of an electron, yet we’re still able to turn on lightbulbs. The sky has fallen yet we live. To live in and admidst uncertainty is foreign to the human mind. It is why we invent Gods and Laws and Metaphysics, which serve to reduce the random to only those things that are necessarily random. When we walk out on the street, we could randomly get stabbed by people — but that’s something within our power to control, and control it we do — not because we can predict randomness, but because we can see a path of control.

Perhaps the answer is traps? But then again, is a randomness foreseen truly random? A corrollary to the Black Swan is that once it appears, it ceases to be black; i.e., it is no longer truly random, it will become foreseen, and fooled, forecasters will begin to think that because it is visible in hindsight, the next Black Swan will be visible with foresight — which misses the point. The Black Swan is the one you don’t see coming.

What’s the strategy then? To be quick like mercury, so that when the Black Swan comes you can hitch a ride? To build your house as well as you can, and when the tornado knocks it down, to rebuild it as well as you can? To live frugally and cheap, to keep yourself close to yourself so that it is easier to clean up when the mess does get made?

My suggestion is that you cannot predict randomness — any randomness you can predict is not random. But perhaps you can prepare for it — and once the random reveals itself, it does possess a wholesome certainty about it — is is now the world, and no matter who tangled the knot that appears, it is now amenable to the tuggings of men and women.

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