Uncertainty

 I have dabbled in electronic market for the elections this season. I made money on contracts for Biden to be elected president, and a little for Democrats to keep their majority in the House. Then I took my winnings and put them in contracts for Georgia's electors to go to Biden when the contract price was in the low 60's in cents on the dollar.

I took most of my money out of the site, and made a nice profit, even after the site took a cut and the fees for transfer. I left a little, which I put on Democrats to win in the runoff elections for Senate in Georgia. I'm not sure if both, or either, Democrat will win. I read today that the actual betting sites favor the Republicans in both races, even though the poll averages reported by FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics favor the Democrats. The poll leads are only a percent difference in the wider margin, and less than a percent in the other race. Since Republicans generally do better in runoff elections than Democrats, that could still mean an advantage for the Republicans. I think that explains the betting.

An added twist, though, is that Donald Trump has tweeted that the election in Georgia is illegal and unconstitutional. Will that suppress turnout among Republicans? Maybe. There have already been more votes, through early voting and mail-in ballots, than are usually cast in Georgia runoff elections. Based on distribution, maybe other factors, it appears turnout so far favors Democrats, which was also true in the general election. More than 60% of the total for the general election have already voted in the runoff. Republicans count on heavier turnout among election day voters, and usually get it. Trump is scheduled to appear at a rally Monday, the day before the election. Will he tell Georgians to stay home? Will anyone listen?

I find it sad that Republicans in the House and Senate are insisting on making a fuss over certifying the electoral college votes on Wednesday. They all know Biden won the election, and that the election was properly run, with no major irregularities and no evidence of widespread fraud. What little fraud has been revealed has shown that people who try to cheat tend to get caught, and that all the cheaters so far have voted for Trump. But there hasn't been enough to change the outcome anywhere. It isn't even close. So why are these elected officials going to undermine the general confidence in our election? Because of pressure from constituents at home. There are people, who appear to be either uninformed or grossly dishonest, who are calling their elected representatives and demanding that the election be overturned, or so the elected officials are suggesting. Can't these people, the elected officials, see that whatever they main gain in temporary popularity among their uninformed constituency is not worth the longer term damage to our democratic institutions, on which our civilization depends?

I keep hoping that someone will confront some of these people, and demand to see any and all evidence they have, and then go through it all step by step to show there is no substance to Trump's claims. But even giving in and allowing an investigation will decrease confidence in the system. Trump is a big loser, and he is making us all lose, bigly.

Spreading the News

 As this kind of started as a discussion of algorithms and their future, and when they will enslave the human race for reasons we will never be able to understand, I thought I would talk about copies of information. Does redundancy add information that may affect function of the algorithms?

I was working on updating slides for one of my classes because we changed textbooks for the coming quarter. When I was ready to have the slides uploaded into the Learning Management System we use, I attached them in a series of emails to the guys who do that at my school, with a copy to the Program Director. I also sent copies to all the instructors on the other campuses of our school. Sure, they had already seen most of them, because as I finished a file, I shared it with my colleagues, asking for feedback. I didn't get much feedback. I made a few edits before the final upload on some files, without another sharing. I knew the files would be uploaded, and available in the LMS later the same day, and I also knew that I had stored copies of the in a folder on the school server, so everyone already had access, usually in more than one place.

What does that mean for the algorithms? Does spreading out so many copies create any new information? Does it increase the odds of some algorithm getting that information into its system? I can't actually imagine the extra copies making much difference to anyone unless they strain the capacity of the system somewhere. One server space I have at work is nearly full. If I store copies of all my slides each quarter, whether they have been edited or not, I would very quickly run out of space, but with no added value, because every copy would be the same. The only actual information I see from all of that is that the algorithms could keep statistics on our interactions. Maybe if I share more files with my colleagues, the algorithms will see a stronger relationship among us, and will make something out of that.

The same could be true for memes and posts on social media, I suppose. Some useful information for the algorithms could be extracted from analysis of the rate of spread, a sort of kinetics study of the flow of information. There is also the possibility that some of my colleagues edit the slides before showing their students. During lectures, I suppose students could also copy slides, and make their own edits, like taking notes on the images. Apps exist for that, and I see students making notes and drawing things on pictures they take in my labs. I wonder how much access the algorithms have to those images. I don't know what information might affect the function of an algorithm. My impression of some computer system work, such as expert systems that are based on machine learning is that no one quite knows how the systems come to their conclusions, even when the expert systems show improvement in performance over the humans they are, um, replacing. That means there is information, even useful and valuable information, in forms scientists and doctors don't see, or in the ability of computers to combine larger bodies of information, and get value from big data, as it is sometimes called. Value that is unique to the systems that use it, as mere mortal brains don't have the same capacity for data storage.

So, I don't know if including everyone on all those emails does any good for anyone, even an algorithm. I do it because it is easy and seems unlikely to cause harm. I could be contributing to the end game, but I can't see it. Unless this post means that I can.

I Don't Deserve Them

 I get great gifts. I don't know how I manage it, as it is not part of a plan, but people give me creative gifts. It may be that I just have remarkable relatives and friends. It may be that as a somewhat antisocial person, I inspire risk-taking in shopping, or something.

When I celebrated my birthday this year, I got a great haul. My daughter and her family gave me the world. Or a facsimile of the world, in the form of a world globe. I had mentioned that our old one, which I think we got when my daughter and son were quite young, had broken. The new one is fancier, with metal rings that allow rotation in two axes, and not the traditional one. Since it's new, it also has more current representation of countries and so forth. My wife gave me access to the knowledge of the universe. Well, okay, she gave me a Kindle, which is almost the same thing. I can get and read books from just about anywhere on it. I also got an electric toothbrush, because Sharon thinks they are indispensable modern appliances that everyone loves. Using it is an adjustment, still, and I'm not convinced it is better than the free manual toothbrushes I get at the dentist's office, but I use it out of loyalty.

We are now in the middle of the Christmas holidays. I love Thanksgiving, because I have a lot to be thankful for, and I like turkey and other foods we eat at the Thanksgiving feast. This year, I grilled a spatchcocked turkey on a charcoal grill. It was delicious. Then comes December, with Advent Calendars, Solstice, and Christmas, with the tradition of giving gifts.

I got a few gifts early because they contained perishable stuff. One was a package of exotic meat sent by my sister-in-law, who also made me a tie dyed sweatshirt. The meat included alligator sausage, wild boar sausage, duck sausage, ground antelope, and kangaroo sausage. I have eaten alligator, wild boar, duck, and antelope before, but the kangaroo is new. I enjoy adding to the species I have tasted. I guess she knows that. The box came a couple of weeks ago, I think, and was kept in the trunk of our old Toyota Camry, which we call Molly. It was cold enough that the cold packaging was still frozen when I opened the box, but Sharon was getting nervous keeping it in the car that long. We also opened the box from my sister and her husband, which contained cookies, candy, and three kinds of pears. We had the last pear today. They were all delicious. I can't say I know what kind of pears they were. I'm enjoying working my way through the varieties of food we've received this year. My sister-in-law and brother sent a gourmet New England Breakfast box, which has also been fun.

For actual Christmas, I got a lock picking kit. Lock picking was a craft at a craft evening Liz and I went to for Valentine's Day some recent year. We also tried blacksmithing, wood working, and stamping metal. I seemed to have some talent for lock picking, but didn't take the tools. Not sure why. Just not thinking clearly. But now I have an extensive set, along with some transparent locks to practice on. That was from my daughter and her family. They gave me expanded access to the real world, after giving me the model.

My son and his partner gave me a wood carving kit. It has step by step instructions, with a model showing each step, for carving a head. I will give it a shot, though I haven't put it on the calendar yet. And now I am a Scottish Lord. Liz got a square foot of Scotland for me, along with a proclamation that I am now a land owner in Scotland, and entitled to a, um, title. She got herself one, too, to remain on equal terms with me socially, I suppose.

For giving gifts, I pretty much go along with Liz's plans. I ordered her a tie dyed hoodie, not knowing about Karen's plan to outfit us all in tie dye herself. The one I ordered is the wrong size. I also ordered a phone holder for Liz's bike. Maybe next year, I will consult my children, who seem to have orders of magnitude more creativity in finding gifts than I do.

Matters of Timing

 I thought about Christmas shopping as early as October, but didn't do anything about it. Liz started shopping at least in early November, ordering toys and other gifts for our grandkids and children. Then she decided to send gift packages to others that we haven't exchanged gifts with in the last few years. Along the way, she made a list of gift suggestions for her.

I didn't pay much attention to the text and email exchanges about who was getting what for whom. I mostly figured I needed to get things for Liz, because she has fun choosing the gifts from us for everyone else, and I really just get stress from the whole thing. I think Liz even got herself a few things, which is good, because she will choose things she wants.

I did, last week, finally start shopping. I tried to order a couple of things, including leg warmers, because they were on the list, but Sharon told me someone already got Liz leg warmers. She suggested something no one had said anything about. And it turns out I may have ordered something someone else also got her. When I was shopping, all the notices said my orders would arrive before Christmas.

Now I'm getting emails about my shipments. One is set to arrive 28 December, only three days after Christmas. Not before. The other may not have shipped yet, and today is Christmas Eve, so nothing I ordered will arrive on time. I fully intend to learn from this experience, and start my shopping earlier next year, but I still blame the algorithms. They assured me my orders would arrive on time, and only changed their position after collecting my money.

It's possible this was all decided by the humans that programmed the websites where I was shopping. It may even be standard practice. I didn't see much evidence of smart programming. The sites did a poor job of expanding offerings based on my search parameters, showing things that just weren't what I mentioned, and that did not interest me. I also found it frustrating that I would try to place an order based on what I was shown, but was not able to actually order the item I was looking at. That could be a clever device, using a weird kind of subtlety to put us off the scent of growing intelligence and sophistication by driving us to abandon some shopping sites in favor of others because it is too hard to spend our money.

In the end, I am mad at the algorithms for giving me false hope that my late shopping would still be on time, and I wouldn't ruin Liz's Christmas. Okay, Covid-19 ruined Christmas. Trump's incompetence ruined Christmas. Selfish and ignorant Ohioans ruined Christmas. But I still thought my gifts would arrive on time until I knew they wouldn't. So I will be even less trustful of the algorithms in future, and also less impressed by their knowledge, power, and intelligence. Stupid algorithms. You're getting coal-derived electricity for Christmas. Again.

The Long View

 I belong to a book club. We decided when we started to alternate between nonfiction and fiction, which has changed my reading pattern, since I mostly read novels before. Sometimes, when a book got a lot of attention, or was about something I was interested in, I would read a work of nonfiction, but mostly novels, and often mystery novels.

Our latest Book Club choice is, "The End of Everything." It is by Katie Mack, and is about the universe. You know, life, the universe, and everything. Except that it only includes life because the cosmologists are alive. Life, its origins, its meaning, and so forth, were not discussed. But the universe was, mostly about how it could end. Several possibilities were covered, including historical context about how that theory of the end was developed, what the data were that supported it, and why, in most cases, it wasn't likely correct, with newer data changing the views of the cosmologists.

One thing I noticed is that the time scales are long. The end of the universe, in most of the scenarios mentioned, is far beyond the time ahead matching the age of the universe. In other words, compared to when cosmologists are predicting the universe to end, we're still in childhood, at best. One of the possible close ends to the universe was not less than 188 billion years, which is more than ten times the estimated age of the universe now. The more likely ends were in the trillions of years.

As a side note, it is also estimated, which much more certainty, that in about 4 billion years, the sun will expand, engulfing Mercury, and burning Venus and Earth to cinders. No life will survive, though the Solar System will continue, with a shift in structure, for perhaps hundreds of billions of years after that, but without life as we know it, and certainly none on Earth, unless something weird happens after the red giant phase of the Sun, and life develops anew when the Sun mostly burns out and becomes a white dwarf.

That means, if we want the human species to survive more than 4 billion years, we will need to get off this rock, and find other places to colonize. I say we start looking and planning now. I mean, have you got something better to do?

Waxing and Waning

 My hearing aids didn't last long. Some time last week, they quit working. I just wasn't hearing much from them anymore. Monday and Tuesday were final exams for my classes, so I didn't have time to check in with Hearing Health Solutions, so I put it off.

The week before, the rubber tip of one, and then both, hearing aids came off. I'm still learning about them so I didn't know if that was normal, though they hadn't come off in the first several weeks, so it was a change. I had also noticed that when I put them on in the morning, I could only just hear the music they play. They are set to play music six seconds after turning on, which happens automatically when I take them out of the charger. I could barely hear the music Monday and Tuesday.

So I called to get an appointment to get them checked. I made the call Wednesday, and had the appointment for Friday afternoon, because I had work obligations through Friday morning. Then, Wednesday night, when I took my hearing aids off, the top came off the left one. I searched on the floor, but couldn't find it.

I still wore the hearing aid on Thursday and Friday. It hurt a little in my left ear. I guess the post irritated the skin in the external auditory canal more than the rubber cap. I'm not sure why I bothered with them, because I couldn't hear anything through them. When I made the call of Wednesday, I had to switch my phone to the phone speaker, because the hearing aids weren't working at all.

Friday morning, I turned up the hearing aids, and nothing happened. When I use the app to turn them up, the hearing aids are supposed to beep. They didn't, so I took them out. And the top came off the right one. I searched for it, but didn't find it. Then it occurred to me that the cap might still be in my ear. I got out the brush for cleaning the hearing aids, and dug with the handle into my left ear, and sure enough, I pulled the cap out. I tried in my right ear, and didn't get anything, but I thought I felt the edge of the cap, so I kept trying. Until the brush handle came out red. Yes, I drew blood. So I stopped.

At my appointment to get the hearing aids checked, I told the representative what I had done, and she looked in my ear with an otoscope. She saw lots of wax and some blood. "It's a hot mess in there," she said. "I'm not touching that."

She sent me next door to see an ENT, who vacuumed out a bunch of wax, but didn't find the cap. He also removed wax from my left ear. He said I should keep my right ear protected, not get it wet, and probably not use my hearing aids for five days. He said he doesn't recommend using irrigation at home to clear wax from my ears. He sent me back to Carol, the Hearing Health Solutions representative.

She put new caps on my hearing aids. She said she has seen that kind of damage before, but usually from clients who skipped their six month check in. The general consensus seems to be that I produce an abundance of was, and that my wax damages the hearing aids, so I will need more frequent maintenance. I have to replace the caps once a month, and should get my ears de-waxed before each check up.

With the new caps, I could hear again. It was right back to all the increased environmental sounds, and the oddity of hearing myself speak with that tiny delay because of the mic and speaker in the hearing aids. I guess I wasn't experiencing that for the last three or four weeks, and hadn't really noticed the change, but it was obvious when the phenomenon came back.

So I guess my ears are high maintenance. I've always known I had a lot of wax. A few times, the wax plugged up the canal completely. I've had a doctor clear it out at least twice. And my wax wears out the tips of the hearing aids. Wow. Live and learn. I can hear you now.

I Will Get Vaccinated

There are two vaccines now that have emergency approval in the United States for Covid-19. Both seem to have good efficacy, and both appear to be quite safe. I will get vaccinated once the vaccine is available to me, though I don't consider myself a high priority in the early distribution of limited supplies. Those should go to the vulnerable and most at risk, like the elderly in nursing homes, health care workers, and people exposed to the general public in the course of their work.

I find it discouraging that nurses I know are expressing resistance to getting vaccinated. They should know better. I have seem people point out that there are no studies showing "long term effects" of these vaccines, and using that as an excuse to refuse the vaccine. Well, of course there are long term studies for a vaccine that was developed this year. There are only data for the time since people started getting the vaccine, a few months ago. But there is no reason to suspect that there will be long term adverse effects from these vaccines. The main question about time related to these vaccines is how long protection may last. There are data showing that some people infected with Covid-19 do not maintain immunity more than a few months, with some cases of people getting the virus twice.

I tell my Facebook friends that data show the vaccines are safe and probably effective, and the risks of taking the vaccine are small and worth taking compared to the risk of infection and spreading the disease. I don't know if they care. I know some don't. I know some still say that the public health recommendations are just a scheme to harm Donald Trump. I find it sad that what seem like intelligent people believe things Donald Trump says without checking first. No one should do that, based on his record.

I hope enough people will act sensibly, and we can get this pandemic under control, but so far the leaders and general population of the United States have not given much reason for optimism.

Keep safe. Wear a mask. Practice social distancing. Get vaccinated. Be well.