Friday, May 11, 2007

Prodigies II

Prodigies II
Andre Willers
11 May 2007

Please reread “Prodigies,Primitives and Cancer” , “Primitives_0”, “Primitives_1”
and “The Origins of War and Peace “ in http://andreswhy.blogspot.com before continuing .

Synopsis:
Powerful analogies and tools are available to analyze human brains .

Discussion :
The discussion in “Prodigies” left us with a model of a brain-body with very fast processors embedded in a network of slow , low-bandwidth communications .

Sounds familiar?
We can form a very good and fruitful analogue here of a LAN or the Internet .

The Primitives (neural complexes like Counting ) are the Pentiums/Parallel chips/Quantum processors . The Neural and Hormonal system is the cabling .

Addressing :
This is vital . From an evolutionary viewpoint and in development order
Dedicated lines . The brain is seen as like a telephone exchange .
Domain addresses . Hormones are a good example . (As Nelson said to Emma Hamilton : “England expects every gland to do its duty .” )
Brain waves . The above processes are asynchronous , but certain assemblies of information (like vision) are dependant on synchronization with previously carried-out processes . This co-ordination is analogeous to clock-speed processes . But beware , as the brain can carry on different processes at different frequencies . This is a method of reducing the redundancy overload in the information packages . Remember that the brain is not designed , but evolved for speed .
Anticipation : eventually some parts of the brain learn to anticipate what other parts will do . This is analogeous to caching and forward-caching . Different sheafs of mirror-neurons have pre- prepared positions . (Cf Socratic internal dialogues) This enables the organism to react very rapidly .This is the origin of the phenomenon of fMRI detecting action decisions before the consciousness is aware of this decision (about 0.5 seconds) . Consciousness can be seen as a mirror-neuron network monitoring the other networks . The degree of feedback is not sufficient to change the decision from the top down (ie the decision is a simple vector summation of forces.) . But information constraints prevents this monitoring network from mirroring every datum . Thus excluding of some data is necessary . This is the definition of concentration .
Concentration : the feedback from the monitoring network(ie consciousness) channels resources into whatever is chosen to be important . Sadly , super-consciousness is not possible , since exclusion (concentration) is the fundamental basis of the system . (See below)
Self-consciousness : eventually the system learns to do the same thing to the consciousness as in para 4 above . The system loops .
Self-consciousness is the termination of this process , since the concentration exclusion process means that only one self-consciousness at a time can exist . Being conscious of being conscious of being conscious etc will just loop you back to para 4 . Note that in Multiple Personalities Disorders there can be many consciousnesses , but they are constrained (ie are subsets) and there is only one in “control” .

Self-consciousness also inhibits optimum resource allocation : an effect well known to anybody on stage or athletes . Hence the unending yak of mystics about letting go of the self .

Yet self-consciousness can override the simple voting system of the conscious systems . This is the basis of human morality . You can always say no , and damn the consequences . Free will does exist .

The End Codon.
From previous arguments we already know that the standard ending of classical symphonies has an actual physiological effect . It tends to force an “All End” on the internal cancer labs in the body . The small ones (responsible for a lot of the ageing processes ) are affected in a major way .

A way to enhance this effect is to engage as many primitives as possible . Music , Mathematics , Language ,Visual , Dancing , etc .

Remember , the ending has to be entrained , but inherent (no fake crashes.) . (The mathematical talent is monitoring .)

I can recommend a sexy soprano singing the 1929 shareprice index , while watching a screen with the graph and doing freeform dancing .

Not more than once a week .

An unlikely bestseller , but try it .


Is there any way out of this Superconsciousness impasse?
We have to go back to the primary nodes (also called primitives) . As noted , the coding for these cannot be simple . They are twisted , quantal and non-local .

Twisted : screw-shaped electromagnetc waves resonates at specific points on another helical molecule (like , surprise,surprise ,DNA) . Limited to lightspeed , but enormous bandwidth .

Quantal : very close molecules transfers information very rapidly via quantum tunneling .

Non-Local : the joker . Since the whole organism evolved out of a few molecules , and every new molecule incorporated had to be in close proximity of these , it is theoretically possible that they are all entangled . But , as Nelson said to Emma Hamilton , “Some are more entangled than others .”

Can you transcend this way ?
Of course .
But do you really want to?
Flip a mental coin , and when you can hear it ringing on the pavement , then decide .

Ho-Ho-Ho !
Homeopathy.
I can’t resist this .
The attentive reader will have noticed from the above that water can retain a memory and an influence in at least three different ways .
Yet they discard amniotic fluid .
Typically human .

They throw the water away and keep the baby .

Andre

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Sunday, May 06, 2007

Suez and the Canal

Suez and the Canal

Andre Willers
28 April 2007
See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Suez and the Boers”

Discussion :

Have you ever wondered why the Suez Canal has not been built before ?
In the past 6 000 years there have been a number of civilizations that had the technical expertise and manpower to build it .

The Egyptian civilization could have done it at any time . (All they actually did was the tiny little canal dug from the Red Sea to the Nile . Note that this was abandoned after a short usage.)

The various middle east civilizations like the Babylonians , Hittites , Assyrians , Greeks , Romans , pre-Mongol Muslims , British Empire all could have built it .

But they did not .

The answer was that it was not profitable .

The argument:
Competing land routes between the big markets in India , Iran , Spice Islands , Indo-China and China could and did adjust their costs downward to very low levels . They were fairly immune against political instability (These routes are still in operation as we speak , using huge trucks .)

But :

1 . The initial capital costs of the canal has to be amortized ( ie a charge from tariffs in the future )
2 . The operating costs are fixed as well . There is a certain minimum , below which the canal will silt up .
3. Canal profits are extremely sensitive to political instability . A whiff of war , and , understandably , the canal workers and captains of cargo ships disappear or raise their rates to very high levels .

So , the land-route operators simply threaten a combined price and unrest war to render any canal unprofitable in the term needed to recoup capital expenses .

Any vizier , priest , finance person in the last 6 000 years would immediately nix such a scheme .

What must be very clearly understood here , is that the cost of building a canal is very , very high . Maintaining it is cheaper by at least a factor of about 10 .

So how did De Lesseps do it ?

The keys were the limited liability company , stock exchanges and human greed .

Huge projects of this nature at the time was only possible by divorcing the initial capital elements from the maintenance elements .

In plain speak , the construction costs were financed by shares on the Paris Bourse , hyped up by a bullish press and French government guarantees .
The French Government of the time (Napoleon III ) saw this as a part of the French expansion into North Africa ( Guarantees cost nothing as long as he was in power . If he loses power , what does he care . One of the perils of autocracy)

The company went bankrupt after Napoleon III quit in 1870 .It was bought out cheaply by the British . The capital losses were borne by the French investors.

There was enormous amounts of capital floating around at the time , generated by the industrial revolution . France especially , went from a near zero-base to very high growth rates (similar to those seen in the initial industrialization of Russia , Japan ,China) . Britain had even bigger rates of capital formation , but these were soaked up by the US and India .

The Suez Canal company was floated and the share prices bubbled , mostly on the last fool hypothesis and Government guarantees .

The Suez canal was finished by 1869 .

In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war ended with the abdication of Napoleon III . French government guarantees were waste paper . Shares in the Suez Canal Company were about worthless and the company was bankrupt . Egypt went bankrupt .

See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Suez and the Boers”

In 1871 placer gold , with the promise of the Mother Lode was discovered in South Africa . There was the possibility of other large gold deposits , possibly under the control of Muslims .

This was a threat that the British empire could not ignore .

The standard method was used . An international finance house (Rothschild in this case ) was approached to lend 4 Million pounds to the British Government with guarantees of repayment at fixed interest rates , with sweeteners all round . The sweeteners ensured the use of British Troops if things went tricky .

This money was used to buy the controlling interest in the Suez Canal , with various small print proviso’s that meant that small , greedy investers in the Paris Bourse ended up paying for the debts (ie the capital costs) .

Even so , the running costs could only be maintained by a generous subsidy from the British Government . True viability only became possible with high-energy , petroleum powered equipment reducing the costs of maintaining the canal by a factor of ten . This margin has now been eaten up by oil-price increases and tariffs .

Do not be surprised if the Suez Canal is allowed to silt up .

The Strategic value of the Suez Canal .

Surprisingly , this strategic value is zero .

It has a commercial value , namely the interest on the capital value of ships and cargo on the time saved by going through Suez instead of the Cape of Good Hope .Even this is offset by the pipeline effect and the monetary stability in the Empire .

The British Empire did not need to rush troops to India , or vice versa . Any Empire reinforcements could be sent quicker from Britain or India itself .

It was more convenient , but not worth the cost of canal construction.

That was why the British did not build the canal .

But when the French were so obliging as to undertake the work and the initial capital expenditure , even then the British hesitated . Only when the strategic importance of the Suez as a base for force projection into Africa to prevent a possible gold supply not under British control became clear , did they act .

Be very clear on the difference between strategic and economic .
The British had prospered handily without the Canal and could block it any time they liked . The monetary loss would have inconvenienced some traders , but nothing serious .

But for projecting power into Africa , it was essential . At least until it was explored sufficiently so that there was a high degree of certainty that no new Witwatersrands lurked .

The rest is obvious .

Andre