Sacred math, secular math
Started thinking about 'home ec' versus 'ec'. The name 'home ec' was an attempt by the humble Useful Trades to slide upward into colleges where the arrogant and imperial Useless Arts dominated. Industrial training for the farmer and the grocer and the housewife tried to wear the velvet cloaks of Holy Theory. It didn't hold up. The high priests of Sacred Uselessness eventually kicked out the Secular Useful Trades. Ideally the Secular Useful Trades shouldn't have humbly begged. Ideally they should have tortured and shot the Sacred Useless Arts and displayed their bloody heads on spikes.

This line of thought led to some questions.

= = = = =

Question #1: Is there a basic difference between Secular and Sacred math?

Answer: Yes.

High-theory math, cutting-edge math, is high-church math. It always serves a religion. A thousand years ago, high-church math served the needs of prayer and liturgy. Catholics developed astronomy and time-keeping to a high level to insure that Easter and other holy days were observed at exactly the right time. Muslims worked on geometry and trig to insure that prayers were pointing exactly at Mecca.

As the center of religion shifted, the center of scholarly math shifted as well, leading to a sudden reversal around 1800. Newton worked to serve a private mystical version of Christianity, and Laplace explicitly switched the focus to anti-theism, where it's been ever since.

Modern math scholars are always strongly religious in the modern sense. Their work specifically serves the evangelical advance of ferocious sadistic Dawkins/Darwin Gaia worship and murderous anti-theism. They are Dawkins jihadis.

Some pieces of scholarly math have escaped into non-priestly use, but they never make it all the way "down" into the secular masses. Calculus and algebra remain in the diaconate of engineers.

= = = = =

Secular math has not "advanced" into "new territory" because it doesn't feel the need. Secular math serves the merchant, the farmer, the carpenter, the cook, the housewife. Secular math includes the four basic functions and proportions and angles. (Not really trig as such; usually a written or internalized 'lookup table' for sin and cos.)

Our secular calculating devices, from written numerals to abacuses to computers, have always added and subtracted easily. Mult and div are tricky, and proportions simply don't work on these devices. We've developed other devices for proportions, often direct analog computers based on lever arms or gears. The slide rule is the ultimate proportioner, but it requires considerable skill and it doesn't SHOW the proportions nearly as well as an analog mechanism.

What's missing here? (If you've been reading this blog regularly, you know exactly what I'm going to say next.)

TANH! Everything we do in the real secular world, including everything our own bodies do with measurements, is loggish. Sometimes the result is Tanh, sometimes a two-ended Tanh with constraints at both ends. I call it a tuning curve because it's what you get from a bandpass filter.

The basic formula would be like

y = tanh(x) * tanh(c-x) where c defines the width of the hump.

Fussy but important: This shape looks like the bell curve or normal distribution, but the math for the bell doesn't conform to reality as well as the two-sided tanh. Real situations are more like a mesa than a peak, more like a mole than a zit. There's always a flat spot in the middle; sometimes the flat spot covers nearly all of the available range and sometimes the flat spot is zeroed out to provide a peak. The bell math always gives you a peak point.

Polistra tries to show the difference. First the bell curve:


Now the tuning curve:


I'm NOT saying that the bell should be replaced by tanh. I'm only showing the distinction dynamically because the tuning curve is unfamiliar. Bell works nicely for stat distributions; one-sided tanh works for most input-output situations (transfer functions) in life, and two-sided tanh it forms the life-patterns of critters and organizations.

The math for the tuning curve is complicated. Computers can handle it, but there should be a nicer way of calculating such a basic and necessary shape. Secular math ought to find a cleaner way of doing it and writing it, whether by an analog calculator or by a single button on a digital calculator.

Another piece of everyday secular math that is NOT handled by sacred math is 'bracketizing', a calculation that uses integers and continua in separate ways, boundaried by decisions, thresholds or containers. I discussed it in the grocery context here and here. Bracketizing also appears in tax forms. When Alleged Einstein called income tax the hardest math problem, he was speaking from a Sacred Math mindset. Calculations like this cannot be turned into a closed-form Sacred equation no matter how hard you try. If line 37 is greater than 3.2 times line 12a, multiply by 0.376; otherwise add 12 and divide by 5.021. A computer program can handle those mixes of decisions and operations, but ideally there should be a way to handle them in 'pure' Secular math.

= = = = =

Question #2: If everything in our life and senses runs logly, why did so much of secular math develop as pure linear addition and subtraction?

Answer: Because one important sense is NOT loggish.

Our senses of pressure and weight are linear. When I put one item, two items, three items, in your hand, the weight-measuring inputs to your brain are linear and even countable. A fast series of pulses from your muscle spindles.

What does that remind you of? Money. One shell, two shells, three shells. One coin, two coins, three coins. Money began as weight, and many monetary units still denote weights.

Because we weighed gold and silver, we became accustomed to treating money, and then transactions involving money, in linear form ... EVEN THOUGH the transactions and our judgments and feelings about the transactions are loggish.

Our sense of relative income is unquestionably log or percentage-based. Even economists have figured this out. As with decibels or lumens, our judgments are the log of the underlying quantity. "My neighbor is one step above me in income" = neighbor has 3 * my income. "If I could jump one step up in wealth I'd be satisfied" = If I had 3 * current wealth I'd be satisfied.

Actual prices of actual goods are also loggish. This is somewhat disguised by the piecewise linearity of a small part of any curve, but when you scale up you can see it. Two cans of soup = same price as one can + one can. Twenty cans of soup cost less than 20 * one can. A thousand cans cost MUCH less than 1000 * one can.

Because overhead is relatively constant, price is a loggish function of quantity.

= = = = =

Question #3: How would commerce and everyday life differ if we had a more loglike system of secular math?

Unanswered for now. As usual, I'm hoping to return to this. As usual, I probably won't.

Later partial answer or starting point.

= = = = =

Bonus:

I've supplied an attempted 'easy proportioner' or 'software slide rule' as mentioned above.



The proportioner is here. The ZIP contains a (hopefully) self-explanatory Python program. It has an Input side, a Ratio, and an Output side. When you fill in either the numerator or denominator on the Input side, the Ratio shows and the Output side changes appropriately. When you fill in numerator or denominator on the Output side, the Ratio doesn't change, but the other member on the Output side changes.

I've been wanting this little helper for a long time, especially to deal with Aspect Ratio in images. You may find other uses.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Experiential education, Real World Math

  ¶ 5:00 AM

  Event shape
I'm constantly yammering about sin and tanh and exp. Sin and tanh are natural and exp is imaginary. But sin and tanh don't really describe the typical shape of an EVENT in nature. I don't think there's a single math function for this shape, but it's extremely common, nearly universal.



First is an epidemic of a virus. This particular Haute-Couture Branded Virus is a virus, so it does what viruses do. It expands to reach most of the population, then fades as the LIVE HUMANS kill it off with their LIVE IMMUNE SYSTEMS. The same pattern occurs no matter how you respond. We now have plenty of evidence that the lockdowns don't change the pattern, they just extend it over time to give the Public Death Officers a longer and more satisfying death-fetish orgasm. Lockdowns are Viagra for psychopaths.

Second is four of the bangs from last night's fireworks, which were intended as a LIVE IMMUNE RESPONSE to the DEAD MECHANICAL MONSTERS who are killing us. Same thing. Initial expansion, followed by fadeout as various surfaces echo the bang and absorb some of it.

Third is 'One Two Three Four', in my voice.

= = = = =

Epidemics, explosions, syllables.

Syllables by other animals (barking dogs, chirping birds) have the same shape.

Responses by single neurons have the same shape.

Fads and trends have the same shape.

The growth pattern of a single business or product has the same shape.

WHEN YOU KNOW HOW THINGS WORK, YOU CAN SPOT FRAUDS.

Every claim that a natural event expands exponentially without limit is a FRAUD.

Labels: #defundpublichealth, Real World Math

  ¶ 5:14 AM

  Constants and Variables 152, Parkinson edition
Parkinson is a good way to test responses to problems.

Natural problems, such as viral infections, are tanh or sin.

A good response to a natural problem is also tanh or sin. Our bodies work this way, and a sane organization or government also works this way. The body or organization doesn't notice the problem immediately. As soon as it notices, it cranks up an appropriate solution or response or defense. The response is metered by negative feedback. As the problem increases, the response increases in an attempt to push the problem down. As the problem fades, the response fades.

In the current holocaust, EU countries have surprisingly turned out to be the proper non-Parkinson responders. They hit hard at first, following the holocaust model, then faded their response quickly as they realized THROUGH NEGATIVE FEEDBACK that the response was harmful.




= = = = =


A bad response, a CANCEROUS or TYRANNICAL response, is Parkinson. The response starts appropriately, then completely loses all connection to the real problem. The problem grows then fades as always, but the organization is in a POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP WITH ITS OWN NEED FOR GROWTH AND POWER, so it continues to create fake news and fake panics and fake emergencies and fake problems, even after the natural problem has completely disappeared.



Britain and most US states are Parkinson. Cancer. Exp. Start the holocaust at a time that appears natural. As the virus fades (doing what viruses always do) the tyrants keep cranking up the "response" higher and higher and higher, satisfying their own wicked demonic bloodlust but making ALL problems, including the virus, INFINITELY WORSE.

Repeating for the nth time, THIS IS THE MOST EVIL ACTION IN ALL OF HISTORY. NOTHING ELSE COMES CLOSE.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, Parkinson

  ¶ 10:59 PM

  Major question by a real expert
Via RCS, a major piece by a major expert with unquestionable credentials, raising major questions about all of our assumptions on Branded Swine Flu.

Ioannidis is a prof of public health at Stanford. His big point is that we simply HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA what this flu will do. He runs the numbers, such as they are, and concludes that the dire scenarios are much less likely than a typical flu scenario. Flu is always serious but not worth closing the world.

Note especially what he does with the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where we know for sure that a specific number of people were fully exposed to the virus, and we know for sure that a specific number died.

In contrast, we KNOW what happens when we close down half the jobs in a country for an indefinite period. Lots of people die, lots of people switch to crime. We're already seeing the latter here, after the police department stated that they were releasing some prisoners and going slow on arrests to avoid putting more criminals in jail.

Ioannidis agrees with those sane 1938 experts that Nature does sin and tanh, not exp. Our modern idiots presume that Nature always does exp, because exp is their Share Value wet dream.

Labels: NOT blinded by stats

  ¶ 10:29 PM

  Reprint plus update
Reprinting from June 2020:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

This guy, Saifedean Ammous, is more hardass than I am!

Epidemiology is a pseudoscience based on the astonishingly idiotic idea that diseases are programmed to spread & kill according to mathematical curves when there is absolutely no reason to believe this. But epidemiologist morons get paid more if they pretend it's true, so they do.

He's solidly correct that math models are murder. But the profession of public health wasn't totally infected by math until this year. Most public health officials were using real science and real knowledge about viruses and immunity, until around March 1, when all of them switched instantly to mass murder.

Neil Ferguson's exponential nonsense was largely ignored by public health experts until this year, when his wildly wrong fake predictions suddenly became absolute truth and gospel and "SCIENCE".

Ammous later says:

The only deadly pandemic in modern times came at the end of World War I, when most the world didn't have sanitation. No pandemic since has killed more than pneumonia kills every year. But the epidemiologists still get paid to pretend their exponentials bear relation to reality.

Yup. Sanitation was the main difference. Also, the 1918 epidemic was part bacterial pneumonia and part viral influenza. Viruses weren't well understood or visible in 1918, so it's impossible to backdate the real mix; but the scientists in 1918 were seeing a lot of pneumococcus bacteria in the flu cases they examined. So 1918 wasn't necessarily an exception to the general rule.

The big point is simple. As I try to point out every day, NATURE DOESN'T DO EXPONENTIALS. NATURE DOES TANH OR SIN. Negative feedback is everywhere in life. A species that starts growing ALWAYS runs into negative feedback, whether the growing species is a virus or a bird or a human. Other animals compete or eat the overpopulated species, or it runs out of food, or it runs into immune systems in the animals it's trying to attack.

Any "expert" who tries to tell you that anything in nature will go exponential is LYING. You can be 100% certain. When you know how things work you don't need the details.

Exponential curves ONLY exist in pure math or software. Debt and Dow can go exponential now because they are pure math, unconstrained by the limits of real business or resources. The government can print an infinite amount of bonds or currency to sustain those curves.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Today one of the fact-gatherers noted that even Demon Fauci understood the bacterial nature of the 1918 epidemic, back in 2008 before he turned into a full-time demon.

In essence, the virus landed the first blow while bacteria delivered the knockout punch...

The Martian archeologists will want to know how ALL previously sane scientists SIMULTANEOUSLY turned into holocaustal mass murdering zombies ON THE SAME FUCKING DAY. Did they receive credible death threats, or were they just thinking with their paychecks? If death threats, they're legally (but NOT morally) forgivable. If paychecks, absolutely unforgivable at the Nuremberg level. Torture and execute all of them.

Footnote: Looking again at Saifedean's twitter, he fits an odd pattern I've been noticing lately. The best hardass realists are often pushing the Bitcoin scam. Do these people have a blind spot, or are they intentionally using truth as a gimmick? Mostly blind spot, I think.

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 3:46 PM

  Thanks to Robinson
Sort of following on previous item.

I need to partly thank Art Robinson for my resistance to this particular circuit breaker.

The idea of hormesis is old and well-established. It's been familiar for thousands of years, and it's been scientifically precise since Jenner and Pasteur. Along with all scientifically literate folks, I always understood the idea. Robinson acted as a vaccine, helping to boost my knowledge.

In the early '90s Robinson helped me to understand the "Global Warming" fraud. I had been agnostic, probably closer to the Green side. When I closely examined a long-term diagram of CO2 versus temperature and realized it was INTENTIONALLY REVERSED, I started looking around for other sources and found Robinson's newsletter. He filled in the gaps on that subject.

Art Robinson's main lifetime focus was hormesis in all its aspects. He constantly pushed against the culture of inanimate objects, constantly experimented with hormesis in radiation and microbes, constantly reminded us that life IS adaptation.

All globalist fetishes start from the assumption that humans are inanimate mechanisms incapable of adaptation. Globalists are OCD. Every tiny change in every variable must be ruthlessly reduced to perfect constancy, perfect zero. Humans must never be allowed to adapt, never allowed to exert negative feedback or error correction. All aspects of life must be obliterated, reducing the universe to a perfect void with no actions, no boundaries, no objects, no nothing.

Globalists see every change as an exponential. Some exponentials are good. Exponentially rising Dow and Debt are good for The Tribe, so they must be maintained to infinity. Most exponentials are bad. Population, temperature, epidemics, all look threateningly exponential when you don't know what LIFE is. In fact LIFE always blocks an exponential in one way or another. When negative feedback is allowed to function, attempted exponentials flatten into tanh or sin. Negative feedback acts FAST, so you rarely get to see the exp part of the rise in a healthy system with healthy boundaries and modularity.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 3:46 AM

  More hardass than me!
This guy, Saifedean Ammous, is more hardass than I am!

Epidemiology is a pseudoscience based on the astonishingly idiotic idea that diseases are programmed to spread & kill according to mathematical curves when there is absolutely no reason to believe this. But epidemiologist morons get paid more if they pretend it's true, so they do.

He's solidly correct that math models are murder. But the profession of public health wasn't totally infected by math until this year. Most public health officials were using real science and real knowledge about viruses and immunity, until around March 1, when all of them switched instantly to mass murder.

Neil Ferguson's exponential nonsense was largely ignored by public health experts until this year, when his wildly wrong fake predictions suddenly became absolute truth and gospel and "SCIENCE".

Ammous later says:

The only deadly pandemic in modern times came at the end of World War I, when most the world didn't have sanitation. No pandemic since has killed more than pneumonia kills every year. But the epidemiologists still get paid to pretend their exponentials bear relation to reality.

Yup. Sanitation was the main difference. Also, the 1918 epidemic was part bacterial pneumonia and part viral influenza. Viruses weren't well understood or visible in 1918, so it's impossible to backdate the real mix; but the scientists in 1918 were seeing a lot of pneumococcus bacteria in the flu cases they examined. So 1918 wasn't necessarily an exception to the general rule.

The big point is simple. As I try to point out every day, NATURE DOESN'T DO EXPONENTIALS. NATURE DOES TANH OR SIN. Negative feedback is everywhere in life. A species that starts growing ALWAYS runs into negative feedback, whether the growing species is a virus or a bird or a human. Other animals compete or eat the overpopulated species, or it runs out of food, or it runs into immune systems in the animals it's trying to attack.

Any "expert" who tries to tell you that anything in nature will go exponential is LYING. You can be 100% certain. When you know how things work you don't need the details.

Exponential curves ONLY exist in pure math or software. Debt and Dow can go exponential now because they are pure math, unconstrained by the limits of real business or resources. The government can print an infinite amount of bonds or currency to sustain those curves.
  ¶ 10:37 AM