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Sunday, Feb 14, 2016 - 22:02 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Gift Of The GEB

"I'd love to run against her. I'd also love to run against the communist. We're going to have a communist against an entrepreneur. I like the entrepreneur, right? Don't you think?"

- Emperor-elect TRUMP the First, Blessed Be His Name
(we called it first)


This Friday's dinner was Tekka Centre's nasi briyani, where I realised that the Rochor MRT had opened right beside Sim Lim Square. Not that it matters to me...


The Gift That Keeps On Giving

"英雄未有俗胸中, 出没岂随人眼底?"

- 《邺中歌》, 借评特朗普



When you see it...
(Source: The State's Times front page, 11 Feb 2016)


I'm aware that this blog may be leaning overly to American politics, but what can one do when it's plainly The Greatest Show on Earth at the moment? And, lest one thinks that it doesn't impact Singapore, observe The State's Times' Thursday headlines (shown above), which were - either intentionally or otherwise - hilarious.

For those who need it spelt out, our dear incumbent establishment may well be sweating profusely after watching two outsiders rip it up in the American proceedings, and are now wringing their hands over allowing only "individuals with character" to handle the ceremonial custodial role "with dignity and distinction" (translation: guai guai zuobolan and don't ask too many questions, hor); since they've evidently figured out that they couldn't simply just abolish the elections without setting tongues wagging for very good reason, their strategy looks to have switched over to the trusty quiet background fix.

They may win some sympathy from the embattled Republican leadership, whose paid audience stooges could only boo ineffectively in the latest CBS debate, as TRUMP THE MAN called them out for what they were. And, in case you missed it, TRUMP tore into Bush II for 9/11 and the WMD fiasco that led to the Iraq quagmire, which led shocked reporters to gasp that he had finally gone too far, with his spluttering rivals seizing on it as proof that TRUMP is not truly a Republican.


TRUMP: having opponents potray him as an action hero since 2016.
[N.B. Cruz's ad team has admittedly shone... with slight mishaps]


And you know what? Both sides are right. TRUMP was right when he held Iraq up as a Bush family c**k-up of epic proportions, and Jeb! and his fellow piñatas were right in accusing TRUMP of not actually being Republican... or even properly conservative, especially after TRUMP praised Planned Parenthood - a Democrat favourite - in the debate.

However, this is missing the forest for the trees - the key is, TRUMP's support by and large knows that he's not actually Republican, in the "anionted party insider Republican" sense. But why should they care? Increasingly, annoyed voters on both sides are waking up to the realisation that the Big Two parties have become two heads of the same Wall Street War Machine hydra; oh, they will smile ever so sweetly during election season, but it's Business As Usual after that, whatever name goes onto the Oval Office desk.

Now, unenlightened newspeople and analysts have been making TRUMP out as a bumbling, foul-mouthed buffoon, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that TRUMP has been honing an exceptionally well-crafted masterplan. You didn't think TRUMP just decided to beat around the Bushes and pivot towards the centre out of nowhere, did you? On the first part, Jeb! dragging his 90 year-old mom to campaign for him was just asking for it, and about the second part, one gathers that he's already testing the waters for the general election.

You see, TRUMP transcends petty politics - while others are falling over themselves to secure a (R) or (D) next to their nametag, TRUMP (and to a lesser extent Bernie) is the only one who's bold enough to say, to hell with the pony show, I'm the South Bronx Stallion, and to hell with the shadowy puppetmasters in their D.C. offices; the elite - whether political, business or academic - may not "get it", but this blend of rough-hewn, irreverent bluster is an intoxicating mix for an increasingly cynical and well-informed electorate.


Bloomberg: Donald TRUMP's Beautiful Siren Song
(The background, just in case)


TRUMP has walked the long walk, from Democrat to Reform to Independent to Republican, and he has found himself: as a populist nationalist Real Man. Despite what the evil news conglomerates are portraying, the simple fact is that TRUMP is supported across the board - men, women, young, old, rural, urban, religious or not, educated or not... they're all stumping for the TRUMP, because he is a Man of the People and a Role Model, and because, let's face it - how many Americans really wouldn't - pinky finger swear - want to be a billionaire with three supermodel wives who says what he damn well wants?

The disconnect is real. Even as media outlets try to paint TRUMP has having "lost" the latest debate, every single actual poll on the question has him absolutely crushing all comers. Frankly, no other candidate has come close to playing modern media like TRUMP has - how many hopefuls have Johnny Depp dressing up as them? And lest we forget, TRUMP has barely even spent anything, compared to the also-rans:

CandidateSpending (thru Jan 31)
TRUMPUS$14.0M
Kasich (angling for V.P.)US$15.6M
Canadian CruzUS$39.3M
Domo Arigato Marco RubotoUS$40.0M
"Commie" BernieUS$46.8M (huh?)
Dr. Zzz CarsonUS$57.1M
¿Jeb!US$89.1M
Totally Not Establishment ClintonUS$90.2M
(Source: New York Times)

Not forgetting that it's mostly his own cash anyway. If this is any indication of what he can do for America's finances, the country should just kick Obama out right now. Ultimately, it's not about the money, as the lobbyist gang is discovering - the American public is tired of being bought, and they know who's gonna look out for them, when all is said and done.

And, and, as if the presidential race hasn't been exhilarating enough, the death of Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia has injected additional urgency into the spectacle. Quick primer on the U.S. system: the judiciary is one of the three main governmental branches, which were specifically designed to check and balance each other, and prevent any one entity from gaining too much power and devolving into tyranny.

The nine-member Supreme Court (SCOTUS), then, is the highest organ of the judiciary, with the power to interpret federal law (passed by the legislative, i.e. Congress). Its strongest relationship with the executive (i.e. the White House) comes in the President's right to nominate new judges to SCOTUS as and when previous members pass on or retire.

So, one might ponder - does this even matter? Like, the law is the law, right? And even if judges have their own biases, shouldn't the President - the elder statesman of the nation, no less - be impartial enough to appoint them without fear or favour? Well, the answer to both is: yeah, right.


Say what you want, he was a man of conviction
[N.B. This is a lampoon on corporate personhood]
(Source: Tom the Dancing Bug)


As it turns out, Republican presidents chose conservative judges, and Democratic presidents chose liberal ones, and given that nobody can force a Supreme Court judge to retire, it stands that an appointment can affect the judicial landscape of the nation for decades to come. Thus, Scalia (one of the staunchest conservatives in SCOTUS) looks set to be replaced by an Obama pick, which in turn will likely tip the balance of SCOTUS to the liberal wing.

Clearly, the GOP wasn't thrilled, with Ted Cruz for one blatantly trying his luck with a statement that "Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, and the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President (hopefully Republican) names his replacement." Of course, this was total bullshit with zero precedent behind it, all the more with Obama having nearly a year left and the longest prior vacancy being just 125 days, but given that Cruz has a personal stake in that his natural-born citizenship remains hanging under a cloud awaiting SCOTUS resolution, one can at least empathize.

And what of the Dems? Well, Bernie has been closing in on Hillary, with a nine-point swing from 51-35 to 46-39 reported in one national poll; he's even gotten a dead heat in a Nevada count, which might however be less than reliable. In the meantime, Hillary hasn't been making it easy for herself, with her classified email scandal finally blowing up big time and her ties to Henry Kissinger (coincidentally praised for his anti-Commie stand by LKY, while being vilified for, well, some seriously shady stuff by others) being bashed by Bernie.

I wouldn't revise expectations just yet, though; while Bernie, like TRUMP, led among most all demographics in New Hampshire, the black vote remains elusive. In particular, the Congressional Black Caucus has officially backed Hillary, even as a civil rights icon slammed Bernie on his claim to activism. Overall, the polls remain solidly in Hillary's favour, and at least for now, the polls have proven accurate in aggregate.

No worries, though - President TRUMP will fix it all.


Gödel, Escher, Bach Proper

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?" asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe." Sussman replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?" asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play." Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

- Traditional
[N.B. Non-traditional]


It was always my intention to review Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB), but after the read-through, I was seriously reconsidering the wisdom of the endeavour, not the least due to trepidation that it would not do the work justice.

To be honest, I acquired the book (a 1980 Pulitzer winner) more on reputation and its cover than anything, with next to no idea as to what was within, other than that surface deduction that the three titular characters - logician Kurt Gödel, artist M.C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach might feature. And so they did, but the story is not exactly about them, not quite.

Fittingly for a text so steeped in the mystique of self-reference and general mindf**kery, GEB eludes a tidy synopsis, and any effort at distillation risks both spoiling its content, while failing to capture its soul. Hofstadter in his new preface mentions disdainfully that some considered it as "the bible of artificial intelligence" - which is not quite it either, and that the title has been found under a huge range of sections at bookstores - even religion and the occult.

And then there are the Zen koans, which motivated me to plonk the Sussman classic down today, rather than reserve it for a future post on neural nets. Perhaps, then, following the non-dualistic paradigm, it is easier to describe what the book is not, despite being eminently qualified to be.

First off, it is not a textbook on the theory of computation, discrete mathematics or natural language processing, although I for one would have deeply appreciated it when I was taking those modules. The content proper begins with a finite state machine, but in a delightfully unassuming way that turns out to tie in with another of the book's many themes... but I may already be giving too much of the fun away.

For what it's worth, students of any of the above could consider checking a copy out of their nearest library out to browse through, if they find it tough going with the standard reading material; GEB offers, so to say, another landing to enter the pool from.

Next, it's definitely not about Achilles, nor about a tortoise, which the author regrets not having made female. Nor is it about genies, crabs or anteaters, all of whom engage in heated dialogue (Mr. Ham bemoans the lack of hamsters). It is not about puns, of which there are many, nor is it about paradoxes, but merely because that would be impossible. Otherwise, I could state that the book is somewhat less not about the evergreen liar's paradox:

THIS SENTENCE IS FALSE

Because that would be too easy. And yet, from my limited comprehension, this is indeed the jewel of Gödel's treasure, after a little additional twisting.

Above all, the book is not about Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, a lofty if forlorn attempt to formalize all of mathematics. Speaking very roughly, they desired a theory that was both complete - in that any true statement could be derived from its axioms and rules - and consistent - in that no contradiction could ever be derived from the same.

The book could very well have been about Gödel's singular insight: that typographical rules for manipulating numerals are simply arithmetical rules for operating on numbers. As such, number theory could be made to propose claims about itself. Once that was established, it was probably not the greatest of stretches to borrow from one of the oldest riddles, and consider the statement G:

G is not a theorem in this system of number theory.

Then, if G is true, it does not exist (is not derivable) in the system, and the system is therefore incomplete; if G is false, it exists (is derivable) in the system despite being false, and the system is therefore inconsistent. Hofstadter knew of the relevant koan, of course:

A man hangs by his teeth in a tree over a precipice. His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb. Under the tree another man asks him, "Why did Bodhidharma come to China from the West?" If the man in the tree does not answer, he misses the question and fails his duty, and if he answers, he falls and loses his life. Now what shall he do?


What a pity, then, that GEB is not about this!

It is with relief then that I state that the book is not about computer chess, or the brain, or visual processing, since it feels like a less flagrant lie. Hofstadter cites Karl Lashley's studies on mice that suggests memory is not localized, and Wilder Penfield's experiments suggesting the opposite. Perhaps there is redundant replication. It remains disputed.

Gödel went mad; I do not recall it mentioned. Did you know that he is also referred to as "Goedel"?

Alright, it's about time to just say it: read GEB. It is much greater than the sum of its parts, if indeed it is. And by the way, Hofstadter has disavowed the current direction of A.I., which as we have seen, is more brute-force statistics than anything. Yet, then again, it could be "not enough force"...


I Deserve To End On Easy Notes

Ending with... Valentine's Day poster in NUS toilet (2016).



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