I’m an alcoholic. I’m glad I’m sober. I really don’t want to have the hangovers and bad decisions and behaviour anymore. I’m also an ACoA / co-dependent and I do not attract healthy women and I am attracted by dysfunctional women. In the past, when I was good-looking, we would at least have some sex before the dysfunction pushed us apart. Also I didn’t know about all that stuff, so I didn't know I was getting involved with messed-up women. Now I do know how to identify that stuff, and we don’t get to the sex because I look for the warning signs instead of concentrating on getting her into bed. I’m conflicted here. I am really glad I’m not involved with the post-Wall, Alpha Widow, dysfunctional, emotionally-unavailable women who are, if I’m honest, pretty much all that’s available to me now. But I miss the adventure around the sex. Every now and then, that hits me. I get sad and sour. Every now and then, the sheer lack of physically and emotionally attractive women in this town leaves me feeling close to hopeless. And then it passes and I get back into a groove.
That’s what October has been about. Possibly because it's the month of my AA birthday. I have 22 years sobriety. Shit. But then one reason I have is that I count my sobriety as starting every day I wake up. Sobriety has no memory.
I read Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism and Ghosts of my Life; Jeremy Gray's Plato's Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics; finished George Cole's The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis 1980 - 1991; looked through a hefty chunk of Gelman et al's Bayesian Data Analysis; Mark Kurlansky's City Beasts; Robert Greene's Concise 48 Laws of Power; and Adam Warren's Empowered vol 2.
On DVD I watched the whole Arne Dahl series, and the whole of the Unit One series. At the cinema I saw Red Army at the Renior; The Lobster and Macbeth at the Curzon Soho; and Sicario at the local Cineworld.
I went to the Ai Weiwei exhibition at the RA, followed by supper a conveyer-belt sushi bar in Soho. Talking of food, Sis and I had supper at Tay Do on the Kingsland Road, and I discovered Mas Q Menos in Soho, which is now my go-to place to have a two-course supper if I have time to spare.
The highlight of the month was a wedding (!) in central London between an ex-colleague and her entrepreneur boyfriend. This required wearing a tuxedo, which I haven't done in decades. I left when the dancing started: it was 10:15 and I had to get back to the car at Kew Gardens station.
Monday, 9 November 2015
Thursday, 5 November 2015
The Anthropic Principles as Categoricity Proofs
The Standard Model of particle physics has a number of physical constants which need to be determined by measurement and don't seem to predicted by any more fundamental theories. These are: the charge of an electron, the ratio of electron mass to proton mass (the 137 figure), the gravitational constant, the cosmological constant and a couple of others.
One of the many things that puzzles philosophically-inclined scientists is that there's not a lot of wiggle room for these constants. If the charge on the electron (and hence proton) is a lot higher, then electrons will bind so tightly to the nucleus that chemical reations won't happen. If the cosmological constant isn't 1.0 to a lot of decimal places, the universe would have a) expanded to quickly, or b) failed to expand at all. And so on. The puzzle is: how is it that this universe got created, with the fundamental constants at just the right values to create Nobel prize-winners, and not some other values that created a boring universe?
Something like this happens in mathematics. If you want an algebraically-complete (so that all polynomials of degree n have n roots) set of numbers which is also order-complete (so that every convergent sequence of numbers has a limit) that forms a field, then you can have the complex numbers. Or.... you can have the complex numbers. And if you want something different... you can't. Those requirements can be satisified only by the complex numbers and there's even a proof of it. Strictly, all models of those requirements are isomorphic. The theory is categorical - in second-order logic.
Mathematicians are not puzzled by this. In fact, they are rather pleased by it. The reason they aren't puzzled by it is because they have a proof of the uniqueness of the complex numbers. In all universes, and all civilisations, all algebraically-closed, complete number fields are isomorphic to the complex numbers. Why? Becuase proof.
To me, the lack of wiggle-room for the fundamental constants feels very similar. It says something like this: if we build a universe where the stable particles are electrons, neutrons, neutrinos, protons and photons (an e2n2p universe) then unless the fundamental constants are very close to the values in this universe, you get a boring universe. Why? Because proof.
The puzzle isn't about the values of the fundamental constants. It's why this universe is an e2n2p universe, and if there might be other ways of building molecules that don't use atoms made up of electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos and photons. What needs to be proved is: all universes must be e2n2p-universes or be boring.
You're going to remind me that there are quarks which make up neutrons and protons. Also other short-life hadrons, and muons, which also have short lives. For my purposes that doesn't matter. How the stable particles in a universe are constructed, or perhaps we should say, how the stable particles in a universe break down under high-energy collisions, isn't relevant. What's relevant is that the stable particles are what they are.
The Anthropic Principles are really a statement that a certain kind of theory is in a (possibly metaphorical) sense categorical. So what's really interesting is: can we build another universe out of stable particles that aren't isomorphic to the ones in this universe? And if we can, how much wiggle room is there for the values of the relevant fundamental constants? My guess is that, even if we can find an non-isomorphic set of fundamental particles, there won't be much wiggle-room.
(An "isomorphic set of particles"? Either treat it as a metaphor, or remember that fundamental particles correspond to generators of groups. So it would be the groups that were isomorphic.)
One of the many things that puzzles philosophically-inclined scientists is that there's not a lot of wiggle room for these constants. If the charge on the electron (and hence proton) is a lot higher, then electrons will bind so tightly to the nucleus that chemical reations won't happen. If the cosmological constant isn't 1.0 to a lot of decimal places, the universe would have a) expanded to quickly, or b) failed to expand at all. And so on. The puzzle is: how is it that this universe got created, with the fundamental constants at just the right values to create Nobel prize-winners, and not some other values that created a boring universe?
Something like this happens in mathematics. If you want an algebraically-complete (so that all polynomials of degree n have n roots) set of numbers which is also order-complete (so that every convergent sequence of numbers has a limit) that forms a field, then you can have the complex numbers. Or.... you can have the complex numbers. And if you want something different... you can't. Those requirements can be satisified only by the complex numbers and there's even a proof of it. Strictly, all models of those requirements are isomorphic. The theory is categorical - in second-order logic.
Mathematicians are not puzzled by this. In fact, they are rather pleased by it. The reason they aren't puzzled by it is because they have a proof of the uniqueness of the complex numbers. In all universes, and all civilisations, all algebraically-closed, complete number fields are isomorphic to the complex numbers. Why? Becuase proof.
To me, the lack of wiggle-room for the fundamental constants feels very similar. It says something like this: if we build a universe where the stable particles are electrons, neutrons, neutrinos, protons and photons (an e2n2p universe) then unless the fundamental constants are very close to the values in this universe, you get a boring universe. Why? Because proof.
The puzzle isn't about the values of the fundamental constants. It's why this universe is an e2n2p universe, and if there might be other ways of building molecules that don't use atoms made up of electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos and photons. What needs to be proved is: all universes must be e2n2p-universes or be boring.
You're going to remind me that there are quarks which make up neutrons and protons. Also other short-life hadrons, and muons, which also have short lives. For my purposes that doesn't matter. How the stable particles in a universe are constructed, or perhaps we should say, how the stable particles in a universe break down under high-energy collisions, isn't relevant. What's relevant is that the stable particles are what they are.
The Anthropic Principles are really a statement that a certain kind of theory is in a (possibly metaphorical) sense categorical. So what's really interesting is: can we build another universe out of stable particles that aren't isomorphic to the ones in this universe? And if we can, how much wiggle room is there for the values of the relevant fundamental constants? My guess is that, even if we can find an non-isomorphic set of fundamental particles, there won't be much wiggle-room.
(An "isomorphic set of particles"? Either treat it as a metaphor, or remember that fundamental particles correspond to generators of groups. So it would be the groups that were isomorphic.)
Monday, 2 November 2015
Commitment Isn’t A Gate You Can Keep
There’s a Sphere phrase that everyone repeats: women are the gatekeepers of sex, men are the gatekeepers of commitment. Everyone nods wisely. Except it’s not true.
Once the sex you’re having with her is done, she gets to decide if there’s going to be a next time. And she gets to stop you half-way through. She’s a doorman at a nightclub: just because you get in Wednesday night, doesn’t mean you’ll make it in Saturday night. That’s what being a gatekeeper means.
But once you’ve committed, you don’t get to throw her out if she misbehaves. She gets to throw you out if you misbehave. There’s no re-considering, there’s no natural break that gives you the chance to say NO to further commitment. Commitment isn’t a gate: it’s a leap over the cliff.
What men keep the gates of is attention, excitement, arousal and status.
In the past there was an option b): provisioning, attention, care and support. However, women can get jobs, and they get paid more than a man does for the same job. If they can’t get jobs, they can get welfare. If they lose their job, they can find another one faster than a man can. Men stopped being the gatekeepers of provisioning a long, long time ago.
Once the sex you’re having with her is done, she gets to decide if there’s going to be a next time. And she gets to stop you half-way through. She’s a doorman at a nightclub: just because you get in Wednesday night, doesn’t mean you’ll make it in Saturday night. That’s what being a gatekeeper means.
But once you’ve committed, you don’t get to throw her out if she misbehaves. She gets to throw you out if you misbehave. There’s no re-considering, there’s no natural break that gives you the chance to say NO to further commitment. Commitment isn’t a gate: it’s a leap over the cliff.
What men keep the gates of is attention, excitement, arousal and status.
In the past there was an option b): provisioning, attention, care and support. However, women can get jobs, and they get paid more than a man does for the same job. If they can’t get jobs, they can get welfare. If they lose their job, they can find another one faster than a man can. Men stopped being the gatekeepers of provisioning a long, long time ago.
(Small edit 28/1/2023)
Thursday, 29 October 2015
Learning from Fitbit Food Tracking
I’ve had a couple of chats about fitness trackers and the real benefits of a Fitbit. Tracking what I eat is one of them, even if it feels a little obsessive at the start. Taking photos of bar codes to get the nutritional information turns out to be slightly cool.
The trick for the first couple of months is not to use the calorie counter to control what you eat, but to be honest in recording it and hence understand what you’re eating and how you feel when you do.
I got a cold and saw exactly what I’ve always suspected. My calorie intake goes up, I eat more biscuits and chocolate and my exercise goes down. Colds make me put on weight, or at least stop me losing it. It lasted a fortnight, and I can see it in the colour of the calorie counter target icons: green and red instead of yellow and green (yellow means I’ve eaten even less than my 500 calorie deficit).
Understanding must, of course, lead to action. So in the morning a single Penguin (106 calories) has replaced the cellophane pack of Belvita biscuits (220 calories), and a home-made sandwich (220 calories or so) has replaced something from Pret (400 calories or more). The ingredients (bread, ham) of the sandwiches costs as much as one Pret sandwich. So there’s a financial saving here as well.
I’m trying to find lighter lunches. I find an Itsu sushi plus a Miso soup, at around 400 calories, is a little light and slightly bland, whereas a Square Pie is tasty but has silly calories – because pie means pastry and pasty means calories: 620 for the steak and kidney. There’s a Crepe Affaire in Spitalfields Market which does a few reasonable savoury crepes. I suspect that if I didn’t eat the bread on a salt beef at the Lower Eastside Deli in Shoreditch that would take lunch back to around 400 calories. (It is at least solid meat, so more filling than the Itsu.)
The afternoons between 3 and 4 are my bugbear. I need something. My senses are bored, and I’m slumping. (If I go straight home, I fall asleep on the train.) I've been having a yoghurt and maybe tea or coffee and a Kit-Kat. A mess: useless caloires. Fruit doesn’t do it. Maybe the mistake I’m making is thinking that food will pick me up, and it won’t. Perhaps I need to schedule some routine stuff for that hour that I can bash out to pass the time.
I’m right now trying a couple of pieces of dark chocolate. Maybe I need something sweet at lunchtime instead of all that dreary protein and carbohydrate. Ice cream, for instance. That is well-known to be medicinal. Perhaps I have a starter and dessert at Canteen, instead of fish-and-chips. It’s worth a try.
Losing weight, I’ve had problems with constipation, which is what happens when you don’t eat enough fibre. Also, I think porridge on a regular basis doesn’t help this either, as it is soluble fibre and doesn’t help with bulk. So my evening meal is a full-of-fibre root-vegetable stew with added Polish sausage and some grated cheese. It gets cooked in bulk, and four servings get put in plastic containers and stored in the fridge.
We singles tend to eat the same meal at least twice in succession, and sometimes four times. It’s all very virtuous, except the Penguins, and I suspect I need to add some variety to it, probably from a restaurant at least once a week.
The trick for the first couple of months is not to use the calorie counter to control what you eat, but to be honest in recording it and hence understand what you’re eating and how you feel when you do.
I got a cold and saw exactly what I’ve always suspected. My calorie intake goes up, I eat more biscuits and chocolate and my exercise goes down. Colds make me put on weight, or at least stop me losing it. It lasted a fortnight, and I can see it in the colour of the calorie counter target icons: green and red instead of yellow and green (yellow means I’ve eaten even less than my 500 calorie deficit).
Understanding must, of course, lead to action. So in the morning a single Penguin (106 calories) has replaced the cellophane pack of Belvita biscuits (220 calories), and a home-made sandwich (220 calories or so) has replaced something from Pret (400 calories or more). The ingredients (bread, ham) of the sandwiches costs as much as one Pret sandwich. So there’s a financial saving here as well.
I’m trying to find lighter lunches. I find an Itsu sushi plus a Miso soup, at around 400 calories, is a little light and slightly bland, whereas a Square Pie is tasty but has silly calories – because pie means pastry and pasty means calories: 620 for the steak and kidney. There’s a Crepe Affaire in Spitalfields Market which does a few reasonable savoury crepes. I suspect that if I didn’t eat the bread on a salt beef at the Lower Eastside Deli in Shoreditch that would take lunch back to around 400 calories. (It is at least solid meat, so more filling than the Itsu.)
The afternoons between 3 and 4 are my bugbear. I need something. My senses are bored, and I’m slumping. (If I go straight home, I fall asleep on the train.) I've been having a yoghurt and maybe tea or coffee and a Kit-Kat. A mess: useless caloires. Fruit doesn’t do it. Maybe the mistake I’m making is thinking that food will pick me up, and it won’t. Perhaps I need to schedule some routine stuff for that hour that I can bash out to pass the time.
I’m right now trying a couple of pieces of dark chocolate. Maybe I need something sweet at lunchtime instead of all that dreary protein and carbohydrate. Ice cream, for instance. That is well-known to be medicinal. Perhaps I have a starter and dessert at Canteen, instead of fish-and-chips. It’s worth a try.
Losing weight, I’ve had problems with constipation, which is what happens when you don’t eat enough fibre. Also, I think porridge on a regular basis doesn’t help this either, as it is soluble fibre and doesn’t help with bulk. So my evening meal is a full-of-fibre root-vegetable stew with added Polish sausage and some grated cheese. It gets cooked in bulk, and four servings get put in plastic containers and stored in the fridge.
We singles tend to eat the same meal at least twice in succession, and sometimes four times. It’s all very virtuous, except the Penguins, and I suspect I need to add some variety to it, probably from a restaurant at least once a week.
Monday, 26 October 2015
What to do with a £35m Rembrandt
The Trustees of Penrhyn Castle recently sold a Rembrandt portrait for £35m to a foreign buyer. The export license has been temporarily withheld to allow a UK institution to raise the money. More details can be found at Bendor Grosvenor’s excellent site.
If a bunch of private and wealthy individuals want to stump up £35m for the painting, by all means let them. If a bunch of charities want to, they must consider if there aren’t better uses of the money. Unless their aims are pretty much limited to “financing old estates by the purchases of assets from those estates” the chances are that there will be better uses of the money. “Better” here meaning “more closely aligned with the purposes of the charity”.
The real question is: under what circumstances can the tax-payer be rightly asked to stump up enough money to build several hundred homes for nurses and teachers, just so a canvas can go on hanging in a castle hundreds of miles from anywhere? “Sentiment” is not an acceptable answer. “Because otherwise the taxpayer would be stumping up for regional subsidies that they don’t have to now because tourism generated by the canvas” is an acceptable answer.
Art has two sources of economic value: its price to a buyer; and the NPV of the cash flows it generates as an exhibit. When art can’t be sold – as for example the Rothkos at the Tate Modern – its economic value is in its drawing power and the ability of the museum to extract money from visitors. (So those Rothkos at the Tate really aren’t worth the $200m or so that his auction prices would suggest.) If a buyer is willing to pay way more than the exhibit value, the seller is getting a good deal. I don’t know how much money Penrhyn makes, but it can’t be enough if they’re thinking about selling a Rembrandt.
The Rembrandt is worth £35m to the mystery buyer, because the buyer gets to enjoy it and whatever other benefits it brings. It is quite likely that ownership of a painting like that could lead to deals that would easily yield more than £35m. It is quite unlikely that anything like that much would gained if the painting remains in a castle in deepest Wales. It is not worth £35m to the taxpayer. Or to any kind of consortium.
But it is worth £35m of other people’s money to the Trustees of Penryhn. (Or £22.5m after tax, according to Grosvenor.) In fact, it’s worth any amount of other people’s money. Anything is. What the Trustees are really after is having their cake, the Rembrandt on the wall, and eating it, £22.5m in the bank to pay for the roof.
Nope. If they want the money, they can let the Rembrandt go to where it can do some good: the National Gallery, or the NPG. Or they could start renting it out for exhibitions and charge a decent rate for it.
But but but.... isn't the value of Art above mere grubby money? Shouldn't we keep it because Heritage and The Nation?
Art is not an essential part of our national identity, like, say, secure borders and a requirement that all dealings with British government organisations (social security, for instance) are done in English. (But I digress.) Art is, for all the attendance figures at museums and the queues of young foreign students at the Tate Modern, a minority occupation that takes a fair amount of reading, looking and changes of mind to appreciate. Also money. Art books aren’t as expensive as statistics text-books, but they aren’t cheap either. Art is not a spiritual substitute for religion, though we may get spiritual feelings from the contemplation of certain works. Neither is the mere looking at art a form of self-improvement: that comes with the discipline of learning and appreciating more. If you think that simply looking at art is improving, just examine the faces of all those young foreign students being dragged round the Tate Modern.
That's not the argument to keep the Rembrandt in the UK. The argument is that it is more valuable at Penrhyn than it is in some mansion in Dubai or Peking. Because the setting adds, or subtracts, to the experience of seeing the painting. Old Masters make more sense in old castles than they do in new starchitect buildings.
So how about this, which I think Dr Grosvenor suggests as if it would never happen. How about we sell the Rembrandt, but it has to stay in Penrhyn? The owners can let it travel and keep the income, and they can pay the insurance as well. They get a bunch of private viewing days at the castle. And of course, they can sell it on. Under the same conditions.
If a bunch of private and wealthy individuals want to stump up £35m for the painting, by all means let them. If a bunch of charities want to, they must consider if there aren’t better uses of the money. Unless their aims are pretty much limited to “financing old estates by the purchases of assets from those estates” the chances are that there will be better uses of the money. “Better” here meaning “more closely aligned with the purposes of the charity”.
The real question is: under what circumstances can the tax-payer be rightly asked to stump up enough money to build several hundred homes for nurses and teachers, just so a canvas can go on hanging in a castle hundreds of miles from anywhere? “Sentiment” is not an acceptable answer. “Because otherwise the taxpayer would be stumping up for regional subsidies that they don’t have to now because tourism generated by the canvas” is an acceptable answer.
Art has two sources of economic value: its price to a buyer; and the NPV of the cash flows it generates as an exhibit. When art can’t be sold – as for example the Rothkos at the Tate Modern – its economic value is in its drawing power and the ability of the museum to extract money from visitors. (So those Rothkos at the Tate really aren’t worth the $200m or so that his auction prices would suggest.) If a buyer is willing to pay way more than the exhibit value, the seller is getting a good deal. I don’t know how much money Penrhyn makes, but it can’t be enough if they’re thinking about selling a Rembrandt.
The Rembrandt is worth £35m to the mystery buyer, because the buyer gets to enjoy it and whatever other benefits it brings. It is quite likely that ownership of a painting like that could lead to deals that would easily yield more than £35m. It is quite unlikely that anything like that much would gained if the painting remains in a castle in deepest Wales. It is not worth £35m to the taxpayer. Or to any kind of consortium.
But it is worth £35m of other people’s money to the Trustees of Penryhn. (Or £22.5m after tax, according to Grosvenor.) In fact, it’s worth any amount of other people’s money. Anything is. What the Trustees are really after is having their cake, the Rembrandt on the wall, and eating it, £22.5m in the bank to pay for the roof.
Nope. If they want the money, they can let the Rembrandt go to where it can do some good: the National Gallery, or the NPG. Or they could start renting it out for exhibitions and charge a decent rate for it.
But but but.... isn't the value of Art above mere grubby money? Shouldn't we keep it because Heritage and The Nation?
Art is not an essential part of our national identity, like, say, secure borders and a requirement that all dealings with British government organisations (social security, for instance) are done in English. (But I digress.) Art is, for all the attendance figures at museums and the queues of young foreign students at the Tate Modern, a minority occupation that takes a fair amount of reading, looking and changes of mind to appreciate. Also money. Art books aren’t as expensive as statistics text-books, but they aren’t cheap either. Art is not a spiritual substitute for religion, though we may get spiritual feelings from the contemplation of certain works. Neither is the mere looking at art a form of self-improvement: that comes with the discipline of learning and appreciating more. If you think that simply looking at art is improving, just examine the faces of all those young foreign students being dragged round the Tate Modern.
That's not the argument to keep the Rembrandt in the UK. The argument is that it is more valuable at Penrhyn than it is in some mansion in Dubai or Peking. Because the setting adds, or subtracts, to the experience of seeing the painting. Old Masters make more sense in old castles than they do in new starchitect buildings.
So how about this, which I think Dr Grosvenor suggests as if it would never happen. How about we sell the Rembrandt, but it has to stay in Penrhyn? The owners can let it travel and keep the income, and they can pay the insurance as well. They get a bunch of private viewing days at the castle. And of course, they can sell it on. Under the same conditions.
Thursday, 22 October 2015
What Really Motivates Me
I exercise and eat right because I’m scared that my blood-sugar may once again be 8 to 9 mmol / Litre, and I don’t want to turn into a fat, shapeless old man
I want to stay employed because I don’t want to be poor, and I don’t want to be made to work a zero-hours minimum wage job
I stay sober because I never want to be a self-pitying drunk again
I try to get seven hours’ sleep because I don’t want to go through the day tired and in danger of dozing off at my desk
I keep the house clean and neat because I don’t like mess and chaos
I read serious books and keep up with my bits of art and culture because I don’t want to have my brain turn to mush
I stay at the organisational level I’m at because I don’t want to do the jobs a grade higher
I don’t want you to expect anything of me, because I might not be able to do it
I don’t want any favours because I have no way of returning them: I have no contacts or useful skills
This just about covers every waking hour of my week.
What’s missing here?
I want to stay employed because I don’t want to be poor, and I don’t want to be made to work a zero-hours minimum wage job
I stay sober because I never want to be a self-pitying drunk again
I try to get seven hours’ sleep because I don’t want to go through the day tired and in danger of dozing off at my desk
I keep the house clean and neat because I don’t like mess and chaos
I read serious books and keep up with my bits of art and culture because I don’t want to have my brain turn to mush
I stay at the organisational level I’m at because I don’t want to do the jobs a grade higher
I don’t want you to expect anything of me, because I might not be able to do it
I don’t want any favours because I have no way of returning them: I have no contacts or useful skills
This just about covers every waking hour of my week.
What’s missing here?
Monday, 19 October 2015
Symphony In Grey - Broadgate Tower
So let's get a little Whistler on yo'ass with the titles here.
I've been doing a little more with my life than this, but it's all in Latek and I can't get Blogger to display that very well.
Also, it's been the week of my AA birthday, and that's always a little emotional. Twenty-two years sober, one day at a time. It's easy to think that sobriety is some kind of given after so long, and so it's no big deal, and that dealing with life is just a walk in the park. Well, it isn't. Every night I get to bed sober is another win. And I can forget that.
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