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just a brief comment on my last post. some dating sites that don’t follow the rules i said work too, so don’t take my previous post too seriously. stats are out there and they tell many different stories. back to heavy topics, and please correct me if you find an error, today’s math is extra fancy

a long time ago, we began discussing structure as property of things. as previously summarized, we can think of things as letters in a gigantic soup called reality. structure is when, through stirring this soup, words come up. but how does one quantify structure? this is a big challenge that i’m currently embracing but haven’t put into good numbers yet. so for now, we will deal with our abstract quantity thing and not apply it to the physical reality, until this develops further. since we do not have any laws of physics that change our distribution of things, we will assume we are dealing with an entirely abstract system. this means letters have all equally likelihood of banding up with any other letters, and nobody adds letters or eats letters from the soup.

this means we can apply basic information theory. no special distributions, just letters, means that this specific arrangement (our message) of the letters (our message space) is equal to . note that the base of the logarithm can be chosen, i chose 2 so we could use the SI unit bits. how does this arrangement compare to another, less specific, such as ? using the same math, we’ll get . here we can see that this quantity is intuitively coherent with the abstract idea of structure. to us, abc is more specific, more structured, than just ab. this is a key concept. note that in a miniverse like this one, there are no minds, so it is impossible for ab to represent any other concept and carry more information than itself.

now if we feed the concept of thing discussed previously as the letter of the above equation, we can apply it to (virtually) any structure in any layer of abstraction. but wait, didn’t i say layers were an illusion? yes. but i also discussed the need for compression. for example, to compute all the possible arrangements of all the atoms in a brick that is used to build a cathedral, one would have to calculate the information of the system as a whole. this would be the real quantity for the system. but since it is impossible to know all the possible states of all these atoms at a single moment in time, we will use things to solve the problem. here’s how.

consider that the information of brick a and brick b are, respectively, Ia and Ib. if they do not mix, i.e., their constituents aren’t switched at any point, we can assume that their information is independent. note that quantum physics tells us that this isn’t true, but for the sake of my margin of error, i won’t add the probability of an electron of a brick showing up in another brick. since they are independent, there is no mutual information, and therefore the total information of the system It is Ia + Ib. the total information of the two bricks is It, but not together. why? because bricks are being seen from another system, the cathedral which uses bricks as its constituents. therefore, bricks are the letters of a new message space. so this information, It, is the information that each brick has on its own, but not the entire system. let’s try to calculate the total information of a cathedral then. let’s conceive a very simple cathedral, with only 3 bricks and enough space for each brick in any orientation. if we now calculate all possible positions of the 3 bricks versus the single set of positions for the cathedral, we will obtain a new quantity, the information for the cathedral, which is, again, . though it is possible to do the math, it already seems a bit more complex. the probability of a brick occupying a certain volume is (where b is brick and s is space). but the brick can be in any position, so we need to count the probability of a position versus all possible positions. let’s consider rotations around its own axis. we get a total rotation for , so a single orientation in all of these is where  is the smallest section of motion (let’s say it’s as small as planck’s constant). the likelihood of a position and orientation is, therefore, . this is for only one brick. for all three, it is now . the information for our tiny cathedral is therefore (the numerator is always bigger than the denominator). also, obviously, we consider the bricks don’t move around and that the whole thing isn’t zero (that would make it explode to infinity).

now for the prestige. if we accept abstraction as a part of our model of reality, the total information of a Cathedral made of N bricks is , where is the information of a brick and is the information of a whole cathedral, both greater than 0. the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. we can also simplify it, if we assume all bricks have the same information, then .

but let’s be critical of this. the whole is only bigger than the sum of its parts if and only if the constituents of a system are seen from another system, i.e., if concepts and abstraction exist (or we use recursive things in my definition). if we consider nature, it has no concept of a cathedral, therefore, it is impossible to define what a cathedral is. for a mindless universe, or a mindless system, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts because there is only one set of symbols (the message space is all letters in the universe) and only arrangements of these symbols (the particular message is a local arrangement of these letters).

i know that this is a bit confusing, but this is the proof of how, depending on your axiomatic structure, you can end up with emergence or reductionism. as you can see, this is a simple proof, whose only “leap” is considering the bricks as constituents of another system. this, as we saw when we analyzed the concept ouroboros, is a consequence of our own way of dealing with the world, that requires us to use compression to fit information in our tiny minds.

so we could extract a quantity from the equations above, and if we use things, we can even quantify bigger, macroscopic structures and compare them to each other. as we saw above, a brick is less structured than a cathedral (has less information) for example. i will be building upon this from now on, and though i favor reductionism, both are compatible as it has been demonstrated.

i generally don’t do gendered articles (see my previous posts on categories), but this topic has been very interesting to me lately.

more and more data is coming out that demonstrates that in the west females suffer a lot with self-censorship. a good example of this is the fact that a female will have a hard time dealing with the promiscuous nature of our species and instead conjure up elaborate requirements for prospective mates.

one of these requirements is that the candidate must not be desperate for reproduction, because that might mean he is unfit. therefore, dating sites or websites where dating is accepted signal females that the males there are desperate for mating because they can’t get it any other way. this means dating sites in general are flawed in principle. if females favor males that are sexually successful, they will not want to join a website where males have to join it because they are sexually unsuccessful.

so how can a website be a dating site and still attract females? by restricting dating. if a website says “no dating on this website”, it signals females that the males there are (at least in theory) not there for dating and therefore, sexually successful through other means. this allows females to contact males with a good cover, even though they might be just interested in dating.

the best dating website capable of attracting females is a website where dating is forbidden!

let’s see some examples, not just for websites. on CS dating is forbidden, yet females are known to use it as dating very frequently. i personally have been harassed by females on the website, even though i state i do not seek any such encounter. i’ve never been harassed online in any other website, so there is definitely something going on.

being an Erasmus student, for example, is also another widespread, real life, covert dating machine. it provides, again, a good cover for females wanting to try exotic sexual encounters and express their sexuality freely. whenever someone asks what they are doing, they will say “i am in an erasmus exchange”. i’ve been to some of these parties, i’ve met dozens of erasmus students and to put it very bluntly, there are even females keeping a tally on how many different cultures they had sex with. what we have here, again, is a socially sanctioned way of allowing females to express their sexuality with a cover story that prevents their public “slutification”.

why is this important? we are dealing with widespread social misogyny, especially towards sexually promiscuous women. but towards sexually promiscuous men, there is no social effect, because that is considered the standard behaviour. women and therefore forced to go through elaborate ways of finding mates through networks that are not for dating, because of this paradox: a woman cannot be promiscuous, and the mate she’s seeking must not be desperate, two things that dating sites break by definition. so the easiest way is to join the local choir, the local ballroom dancing class, do an erasmus exchange or travel using couchsurfing. whenever someone asks what the female is doing there, there is a cover story. i’m just doing X, where X is completely unrelated to dating. and whenever a male hypothetically joins it, he’s actually just looking to do whatever activity that place was for, and not necessarily hook up.

we all know that this is false. people meet through networks all the time because that’s what life is all about (isn’t it?). be it the network of friends or mutual interests, it is expected that people will hook up or fall in love.

this means that the best networks to meet people are networks that are not designed to meet people and the best networks for dating are networks where it is forbidden. just like the best network for freeloading (CS) is a network where freeloading is not encouraged.

we are so driven by cultural and social definitions that we are willing to do the exact opposite of what it would be expected, exactly because it wasn’t expected. so if you’re starting a dating site, you better name it “just talk” and say dating is forbidden. i’m still amazed at how people are so incredibly skilled at being unintuitive and tortuous in their everyday logic.

today i’ll be writing about the common scientific deepity “everything is just x“. i previously approached this, but today i’ll give a clearer example.

idealization is a common habit of most knowledge based activities, best exemplified by the problem “describe the forces affecting a falling rock R on earth E”. to answer “F=mg” where g is the acceleration of gravity, we would have to idealize the problem and its constituents:

• g is a constant not depending on where R is relative to E;
• R can be modeled by its center of mass and therefore all its “parts” are equally affected by the force;
• there is no atmosphere on earth to cause air resistance, no wind to push the rock;
• the rock does not absorb, dissipate or produce any kind of heat or energy that might cause it to move;
• the rock does not lose mass, dissolve, evaporate;
• the planet does not suffer from any of the issues mentioned.

so our idealization of the problem will give us a working, real world approximation of the answer, which, for the most part, should be enough. it is important to understand this because this is where some people diverge when dealing with models.

our model of the rock was initially “F=mg” where m is the mass of the rock. but if we drop some of the idealizations and add wind resistance for example, it is now “F=mg – bv” where v is the velocity and b is a constant that depends on the density of the air and on the size of the object. so already idealizing our rock has prevented us from a more accurate solution. we can keep adding terms to this total to get a more accurate description of the problem, yet already with this one we have to deal with differential equations (remember g is acceleration and v is velocity, meaning v will change over time). if we then add the density of the air around the rock, which depends on atmospheric density, which changes in space and time, we will complicate our problem so much we won’t be able to solve it properly. then there is the heating of the rock and the likelihood of it breaking and/or losing mass and its shape. we can go on endlessly.

now, it is true that usually, the broader idealization has results good enough for every day precision, and precision can increase by “de-idealizing” the problem. the more we “de-idealize”, the more accurate (and complicated) our model will become. but there is no way of completely “de-idealizing” something, since we are always dependent on observer error. we can increase our precision to a certain extent, but our accuracy might be fundamentally biased.

so a model is just that, a model, with a certain accuracy and precision. so saying that when a rock falls all it has is gravity pulling it is wrong on many levels. but this is not the main problem of idealization, since what i described is what engineering deals with every day, and we don’t trust our bridges any less because of this.

the problem of idealization is when it is subsequently used for induction. for example, i assumed my rock was a certain idealized hypothetical rock, and then i use this idealized rock as an argument for another model and deduce the properties of the new system with the idealization as an undiscussed assumption. the deduction will have amplified my idealization error and might yield completely wrong results.

for example: there is no such thing as a square or a circle in nature (not as real objects, but they exist as physical ideas in brains). these are two examples of completely idealized shapes. now, multiplication, as it is defined, calculates the area of a rectangle a times b. so the area of a square is its side l times itself. but an idealized circle has no sides! how can we calculate an area if our multiplication operation assumes two sides of a rectangle? we conjure up a magical number, lets call it , that turns our circle with radius r into a rectangle with side and side b = r. our area is now , a very known formula. note that what i did was idealize a magic number that turns a circle into a rectangle (that number happens to be ). since this situation is completely disconnected from the “real world”, this number can “exist” in our minds. and it’s very surprising how we can manipulate these transcendental numbers as if they were real things, and how idealizing actually “works”, in the sense that it makes us be able to do calculations properly.

but this is where the blindness begins. instead of saying “there will always be error in calculating the area of a circle because the formula for area is based on multiplication, which is based on rectangles” we say “there will always be error in calculating the area of a circle because is an infinite number”. isn’t this confusing? is this number real, so much that it can be used like any other? the idealization has taken over the very definition, and with it, turned us away from the real problem itself, and allowed us, on one hand, to advance our abstractions, but also, to disconnect from reality.

my favorite example is when people say “everything is energy” or “everything is just atoms and molecules” or “reality is quantum physical”. following the example, it’s like saying “the area of a circle is “. these terms used are idealizations, superficially true, but deeply false (hence the deepity). if any of these sentences was true, we would be talking of a total and complete understanding of nature, which is not the case.

but an anecdote illustrates what i mean very simply. to a mathematician, everything is just numbers in very elaborate ways. and to deal with them, we can just approach reality using these abstractions instead of the real thing. but this would be like saying “the entire works of william shakespeare is just the collection of letters from a to z and some minor punctuation and line breaks, so we can just deal with the alphabet instead of reading the books”. sounds ridiculous, but it’s exactly what idealization blindness is. we must be aware that reality is beyond our subjective ideals, and that all we do must be tested by it, and our accuracy will always be limited. at least, that’s how i’ve idealized my own subjective experience.

again, some unexpected pipe tune

in an age where we are “forced” to digitize ourselves, i’ve chosen to name a disorder that is starting to emerge from the interaction with logic machines such as computers. i call it pixelated personality disorder. to describe it, let’s go through the process of signing up for a service. i will use a web service as an example but this works for any kind of service.

when we sign up for anything, we are presented with a form. this is especially obvious online, with forms being a standard interface element that we’ve grown accustomed to. this form is designed by one or more workers with a specific, usually business oriented, goal. so to fulfill it, they provide us with several fields with closed or open fields.

what is a field? it is some personal attribute A with value V, where V can be anything (open) or only some specified values (closed). note that if someone gives you a text field, you can still only choose words to fill it out (making it more closed than open). you can’t doodle a dick in it. that’s a big plus of paper forms.

so first of all, once a form is designed, it is purposefully limiting whatever information it will receive, by desire of the maker of the form. so we, as users, are already limited to a pixelated version of ourselves. 255 words, male/female, nationality, age. these are interpolations of a continuous reality that is a human being.

but by giving us a discrete version of a continuous reality, we might be unable to properly represent ourselves. for example, let’s say you were born in pakistan, lived there for 10 years, and then moved to chile, where you’ve been for the past 10 years and got married. are you pakistani? chilean? the two? none? if the form requests that you fill out your country, which would you choose? by choosing either, you will be creating a distorted picture of yourself, a quantized version that is not entirely accurate. this data will then be used to do all kinds of statistics and metrics on that website, ignoring quantization error when dealing with personal information.

but this is not what i am discussing. we all have some kind of instinct that understands what i described above. what i am writing about is when pixelation is voluntary. i’ll give you an example of something that’s becoming trendy and is a good example of pixelated personality disorder. there is a major movement to abolish the drop down boxes that say “male” “female” in websites and replace them with neutral text fields. this is promoted by, among others, people who define themselves as “genderqueer”, claiming they do not identify with the two available values for the field. how can we formalize this?

field A (gender) has values V = { male, female }, i.e., two possible values. by demanding another field, through a lot of activism, V then becomes { male, female, other }, or, if we are dealing with the idealized gender definition of “genderqueer”, the field would be replaced with a text field, making V = { .* }, i.e., any combination of letters/numbers/symbols/etc.

but this does not solve the pixelated personality problem, in fact, it makes it worse. by increasing the number of possible categories, we force individuals to interpolate themselves using more specific, and therefore, more incomplete terms. if one’s gender identity is a continuous variable that can take any continuous value, let’s say, in [0,1], what we are doing is, instead of having x < 0.5 male, x >= 0.5, female, is splitting the line into x/n categories, each becoming infinitely small. this means that we force people to not only categorize themselves, but actually categorize themselves into a very narrow part of the gender spectrum.

why the disorder term? the problem is that we end up, through positive feedback, with people that identify themselves with a progressively narrower categorization of human experience. people that identify themselves as “neo-classical heavy metal guitarists” cannot be understood in a big picture as easily as “guitarists”. and though it might seem that we are gaining in “granularity”, in fact what we are losing is the big picture. someone that has pixelated personality disorder is someone that cannot distinguish their own unique and continuous identity from the highly specific categories they were forced to become part of due to informatics.

someone who has pixelated personality disorder will feel compelled to say “i am this, i am that” where “this” and “that” are pixels of a low resolution portrait of a beautiful human landscape. and they will not understand that there is a landscape behind the pixels, confusing the landscape with the pixelated image itself.

what do i propose instead? no field at all. if gender is not important, remove it. if age is not important, remove it. when we do not ask someone what category they fit in, they potentially can fit in any category. and that individual can go on being themselves without any concern about whether they fit in the male pixel or female pixel.

and though this might seem silly, check out this post, regarding the facebook alternative diaspora.

just a small note from a non-pixelated individual, and this might sound contradictory given the name of this website, but hey, i had to pixelate something to register the domain anyway. computers can’t parse continuous just yet.

another diy segment. this time, i completed my membrane pipes using the foonki chanter design by Linsey Pollak (check out his stuff, it’s amazing).

i used a rubber glove as the bag, and made an equal-length drone using a very thin pipe. to connect all the pipes to the glove i made a tiny hole in each finger and used tiny garden hoses to channel the air. the final version had one chanter and 3 drones, octave above, fifth and unison.

though i managed to make all 4 membrane reeds, it’s hard to balance the pressure for all the pipes, since the 3 drones are each less than 1/3 of the diameter. as you can see in the video, it was also hard to keep the chanter from doing the above octave. so the result was an out of tune mess, so this video was the best moment, when the single drone was properly tuned

so i sacked this design and will change to single reeds. this change will allow an easier (and more visually appealing) shape. with these membrane reeds i have to make angles versus making just one base to keep the chanter in.

so far, the only material was metal pipes, garden hose, thread, rubber gloves and plastic bags, with a total cost of maybe 15€. so with enough work, proper pipes can be built for a ridiculously low amount of money. since i used proper measurements this time, it actually sounds good. choosing a cylindrical bore was key, since it makes tuning much easier and the hole position is always the same, plus the volume is slightly lower.

i have a rubber bagpipe bag, and made full pipes with this, but since i had no valve for the mouthpiece, it’s very hard to play. so now i’m doing one with a valve, 3 drones and 1 chanter, but it’s hard to tell when i’ll be done. i’m not very good at making single reeds, so this will be the main challenge.