Currently Reading Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny (Vintage) By Robert Wright see related

[From the Str Fry department of unabashed cynicism…]

Life’s a Dynamic, Stochastic Program (and a bitch)

On a recent trip to the airport, it was pointed out to me by an esteemed person that finding a parking space is a dynamic program.  You forgo empty parking spaces that are further away in the hopes of finding an empty parking space closer to the airport.  Therefore, you could select some number such that when you get closer than this number of parking spaces from the airport you take the next available space.  If you choose this number too high, you will likely find an empty space but have to walk inordinately far.  Too low and you may not find an empty space at all.  But there is some optimal number that strikes a balance between these two outcomes, and this can be found with dynamic programming.

Str Fry has done a lot of research on dynamic programming lately and, in particular, stochastic dynamic programming.  The “stochastic” part means there’s uncertainty—like the uncertainty associated with empty parking spaces.  Hours locked in a room doing research makes one introspective; thereby, turning one’s mind to questions about life, death, and purpose.  One conclusion that I’ve reached is that if one were to classify the human mind, or the mind of any creature, it could best be described as a computer that solves a giant dynamic, stochastic program: life.  Some people take satisfaction in their careers, others in their families, hobbies, friends, sports, etc.  Most people get satisfaction from combinations of all.  The human mind makes decisions to ultimately maximize its total expected lifetime utility (or satisfaction).    

Think about how wickedly complex this is.  A single man who works instead of going to a bar has decided that the expected monetary or professional gain from working is greater than the expected gain of finding a mate.  On the other hand, if he spends all his time at bars, he won’t have a job and won’t be able to attract a mate.  So objectives not only compete, but interact.  A person who spends all their money when they’re young and doesn’t save is at risk of having a decreased overall utility because he’s impoverished in old age.  In the exact opposite case, people who save and forgo fun are at risk of either dying before they can enjoy their money or receiving less utility in old age from comparable experiences.  For every person with a given life expectancy and value-set, there should be some theoretical optimal balance between all sources of utility.

A person who is “irresponsible” just has a myopic policy.  They don’t look far into the future and only plan to maximize their utility over short time periods.  They take the largest, immediate utility at the expense of a decision that will lead to a larger, albeit delayed, reward.  If our life expectancies were short, we would be most successful being “irresponsible”; however, it would then be a misnomer to give it that name.  As a person ages and has less time to live, it would make sense that they look bigger risks and took a more irresponsible policy to maximize immediate utility.  It is interesting to note that this is in contradiction to the more conservative, cautious way elderly people behave. 

Everyone’s mind has its own time-horizon capacity over which it can plan.  Perhaps a mid-life crisis occurs when a person’s mind looks far enough ahead to fully-resolve their death and adjusts decisions accordingly for a decreasing time-horizon.  Differences in the minds of animals can be viewed as a combination of both the complexity of their value systems and the time-horizon over which they can plan.  Insects are just concerned with bare survival and reproduction with a planning horizon of a few seconds.  Elephants have social interactions and a time-horizon of years.   Humans surpass all—not only in our time horizon but also the richness and complexity of our utility system.

Trying view every aspect of life as a dynamic, stochastic program is too complex and obfuscating.  However, a particularly excellent case-study is dating.  For simplicity we’ll assume people just get married once, and there is some “compatibility” (utility) associated with a mate.  We’ll also assume that a person meets prospective mates one at a time.  The latter assumption is realistic even if you meet a group of the opposite sex as you can only get to know each person individually.  Finally, it is assumed there is some time limit after which you will not get married.

Our assumptions in place, let us turn back to the airport parking lot problem.  The policy of the parking lot problem is known as a threshold policy because there is a threshold that, once crossed, we select a space.  Let’s consider a young person who sees arrivals of the opposite sex.  In this case, only someone who is almost perfectly compatible will be selected because selecting someone of inferior-compatibility would almost certainly mean forgoing someone of greater compatibility who arrives later.  So the threshold level of compatibility is high.  Now let’s consider someone near the time-limit.  In this case, the person expects to experience only a few arrivals in the remaining time period.  Therefore, someone who is less-than-perfectly compatible may be selected as there is little chance of a person of equal or higher compatibility arriving in the remaining time.  So the threshold for compatibility is lowered.  Thus, the optimal policy for dating can be viewed as a compatibility threshold monotonically decreasing with time.

This leads to such gut-wrenching decisions as: Should you ever settle for less?  If so, when?  When do you release someone to chance that someone of greater compatibility will arrive?  The first two can only be answered by looking at marriage as a part of total utility.  In an extreme case of a person whose only source of utility is via marriage, the answer is yes; it is always better to settle.  For most people, it’s a convoluted decision requiring computation of the tradeoffs between the utility of marriage and the lost utility due to incompatibilities.  The last question of letting go is a crap-shoot and hard-luck judgment call.

Life viewed as a dynamic, stochastic program is both intriguing and depressing.  It gives insights into our actions, but forces us to confront the finite nature of our existance.  And if you’ve read this and don’t hope God exists, then you don’t understand what I’ve written.

\\Signed\\

(Introspectively)

Dr. Str Fry

[From the Str Fry department of movie criticism…]

 Movie Reviews:

Last Wednesday I marked the end of the quarter by handing in a take-home final.  Finding myself with a mounting head cold and nothing to do, I headed to Blockbuster and picked up five movies.  Little did I know that by the time I went to sleep that night I would have watched all of them.  In order of viewing, reviews for each are as follows:

Riding Giants (4/5) – This is actually a documentary about surfing and, in particular, big wave surfing.  It gives the entire history of surfing.  Starting with the ancient Hawaiians, it was banned by Calvinist missionaries and brought back in Hawaii as a tourist gimmick.  Of course it really took off in the 1950’s and has been going ever since.  Hawaii is the Mecca for big wave surfing, but other locals include Northern California and Fiji.  There’s lots of footage of monster waves and bone-crushing wipeouts interwoven with an awesome soundtrack.  You understand the passion of professional surfers.  It made me want to head into the line-up and take-off on a gnarly wave!

Murderball (4/5) – A documentary made by MTV Productions about quadriplegic rugby players.  A common misconception is that quadriplegic means a person can’t move his arms or legs, but it actually means impaired use of all four limbs.  None of the players can walk, but all have some use of their arms.  Murderball, as quad-rugby is called, takes place on a basketball court.  Players have supped-up wheelchairs that they use to knock their opponents down.  Unlike the gee-it’s-nice-you-guys-try aspect of most handicapped sports, both the players and coaches of Murderball are out for blood.  The documentary focuses on the Team Canada coach, a man so hyper-competitive that ludes might drop him down to the level of Vince Lombardi.  Quad-rugby is his life, and it’s sad to see his wife and son orbit as peripheral elements.  Murderball will light a competitive fire in anyone and leave those who can walk thankful they can.

Heights (4.5/5) – Heights explores the relationships amongst a group cosmopolitan New Yorkers.  The characters appear random and unrelated, but the arcs of their lives intersect as the story progresses.  The films settings are intriguing and provide glimpses into very foreign aspects of big-city culture.  Anyone who likes character studies will appreciate Heights, but it’s not a movie to watch just to munch popcorn and kill time.  Heights is about blown opportunities and uncertainty, and all but the most stoic will be left melancholy and circumspect.

Happy Endings (3.5/5) – Maybe it was because this was the fourth movie in the line-up and my attention was faltering, but this movie left me in a lurch.  It stars Lisa Kudrow, and I don’t know how to summarize it.  It’s a dark-comedy and not uncreative.  I could tell it was a good movie, but it wasn’t at my personal resonance frequency.  While it hummed, I remained silent.

High Tension (2/5) – A French horror movie.  I didn’t know this when I rented it, but the European license plates and asynchronous voice to mouth movement tipped me off.  I refuse to watch dubbed movies, so I switched to subtitles.  In French even people getting eviscerated sounds classy.  The movie has a twist, so I don’t want to say too much.  Let’s just say two college girls go to one of their parents’ homes in the country, and there’s an unwelcome visitor.  This is a horror movie for anyone who likes horror movies!  I didn’t get many laughs in the last movie, but this one more than made up for it.  Say what you will about the French; but when it comes to blood and gore, this is the piesta résistance.  One notable scene is when the unwelcome visitor first makes an entrance.  The father, who opens the door, gets sliced and falls backward on a staircase.  The unwelcome visitor appears to step on his head, but he is actually trying to put it between the banister rails.  Having succeeded, the visitor stands behind a heavy, antique piece of furniture and pushes it along the banister shearing off the  victim’s head—a scene no doubt inspired by the French guillotine!  Copious amounts of spurting blood follow.  If you don’t find that funny, what the hell can you laugh at?  High Tension is an entertaining movie that is a broad plain with a few very high peaks.  The twist is also implausible and borders on cheating.

Watched more recently—

xx/xy (4.5/5) – Three things to say: WOW, WOW, and WOW!!!

[From the Str Fry department of economics…]

It’s called capitalism, stupid!

Several weeks ago we witnessed those greedy oil executives being hauled to Capital Hill to answer for their sins.  With oil and natural gas prices at nosebleed levels, oil companies posted record profits.  Just prior to the hearing, Exxon announced a quarterly profit of $10 billion—more than any other U.S. company has earned in a 3-month period….ever.  Far from being lauded for his success, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond was called onto the carpet to explain to a panel of senators how:

1) As CEO of a publicly owned corporation…

2) In one of the most capitalistic countries in the world…

…he is not really trying to maximize profits.  This in itself is kind of funny because in a recent Fortune magazine article Raymond responded to the interviewer’s question by saying if given the choice between lowering oil prices or making more money, he would always choose more money—far different from the demure tone taken before the senators in which Raymond disavowed trying to maintain high oil prices.  This is most likely a half-truth as his real goal was not to maintain high prices, but to do what any good CEO would: maximize profits.  High oil prices were incidental. 

It’s easy to understand why the politicians were so outraged.  Private enterprise had just bested the government in responding to hurricane Katrina.  Wal-Mart, anticipating the hurricane and routing goods to its stores that would be highly demanded in post-hurricane conditions, was operational and dispensing supplies long before the anemic FEMA.  FedEx was also operational throughout the gulf coast shortly after the storm passed.  Additionally, with the government hemorrhaging money almost as fast as its administration was approval ratings, the oil companies added even more insult to injury—they didn’t lose money.  In an almost show-trial atmosphere, Democrat and Republican senators appeared united, boldly showing their outrage that anyone would dare infringe on their constituents’ rights to inexpensive gas.  This was expected from the Democrats, who have been about as supportive of free-enterprise as Joseph Stalin was of free-press.  But to see the Republicans, long the champion of big business and old money, gladly joining in was disturbing, but sadly, not surprising. 

For years Republicans were known as the pragmatic, common sense party often lambasting the Democrats for their pie-in-the-sky social and economic ideals.  Now it is the Democrats, in a reversal, who are appealing to common sense against the Republicans’ democracy by force strategy.  It is only fitting that the Republican Party, if it can still be called that, is deviating from its fundamental economic ideals as well.  Was it not just a few years ago that the current administration implemented tariffs—one of the most prohibitive of all economic measures—against European steel? 

            But like CEOs seek to maximize profits, politicians seek to maximize votes.  Both Democrats and Republicans lambasted the oil executives based on principals—the Democrats acting on theirs, the Republicans acting in spite of theirs.  This is a special case of a more endemic phenomenon associated with capitalism in the United States which is how selectively capitalist Americans are.  Lots of people rail against Wal-Mart, the “evil empire.”  After all Wal-Mart has put thousands of mom and pop stores out of business in small towns throughout the country.  But did it?  Wasn’t it the consumers who shopped at Wal-Mart instead of the local shops who put them out of business?  And we all hate the sight of twelve-year-olds in third-world countries working in sweatshops, but who is willing to pay twice as much for clothing?  The free-market is what it is.  Wal-Mart puts smaller stores out of business because it is more efficient.  No one wants to see children slaving away in sweatshops, but would anyone complain if the alternative was prostitution (which many times it is)? 

            I’m certainly not for allowing the gears of capitalism to grind men up as the book “The Jungle” alludes to; however, more times than not, interfering with capitalism and free-markets creates more problems than it solves.  Take a situation in which almost everyone would agree interference is a necessity.  For example the gas station owner who charges hurricane victims twelve dollars per gallon for gas.  Clearly such profiteering is against any sort of human decency, or is it?  Charging a normal price for gas, let’s say $2/gallon, means practically everyone can afford it.  Therefore, a person who has a critical need for gasoline and is willing to pay $12/gallon to satisfy that need will be forced to enter a line with people who value gasoline based on their needs at $11/gallon, $8/gallon,  $3/gallon, etc.  The end result is the advent of huge, two-hour-long lines for gasoline.  Instead of the highest needs getting satisfied first, they get no preference at all.  Everyone can buy more gas than they actually need, and it gets wasted.  The gas station owner being a profiteer is a necessary condition for efficient distribution of limited resources.  The gas station owner should be considered a hero, not a criminal.

            Many other examples of interference exists: minimum wage—artificially raises prices and unemployment, anti-trust intervention—punishes efficient organizations, Federal Reserve interest rates—incorrectly assesses the demand for money.  There is an old Vietnam War era saying: “America—Love it or leave it.”  I always felt this was the most myopically, patriotic statement I ever heard.  It tells Americans to shut up and support their country when it is exactly their ability to be critical that defines America.  As much as it pains me, I almost have to say: “Capitalism—Love it or leave it.”  Under a free-economy, it can be win-lose or win-win; but very seldom is it lose-lose, if ever.  Instead of criticizing free-enterprise every time we end up on the losing end, perhaps we should just let the free-market do what it does and say to ourselves: It’s called capitalism, stupid!

REFORM SOCIAL SECURITY: KILL YOUR PARENTS