# The world is flat again

In the early third millennium, Human time Common Era, it is widely believed that all parsimonious and useful representations of things and ideas of our world are locally linear. Algorithms represent the world in tensors and then proceeds to analyze it using algorithms that have components which are dominated by their first order terms. Locally, these are linear models. After composition, they seem to be useful and able to forecast macroscopically observable phenomena correctly.

One wonders,… in a fantastic and sci-fi hallucination the day when we declare…

The world is not flat!

again, and rediscover our world under this new light.

# Pacing Model v0.85

Okay, kids! Here’s how we’re going play this one:

Aim high and grand and beyond;

I guess to boost the literary and morale value of this entry, perhaps an enrichment of American child rearing folk spirit will help:

Cast the bantling on the rocks,

Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat;

Wintered with the hawk and fox,

Power and speed be hands and feet.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

# When it rains

Today, it rained in San Francisco. I gave a homeless man a dollar at the red light on the way to work. He thanked me and dried my passenger side mirror with his sleeves.

I feel bad now. This made me see my self clearly, perhaps in that mirror. There is so much that I do that has the effect of giving him a dollar and wiping my mirror dry in the middle of a rain.

# Fairness of Governance III

Some time ago we investigated the equality of benefits. Roughly speaking let us consider degenerate real world actions into discretely selectable choices of action $a\in A$ given individual $x$, who has observable features $f(x)$ and protected feature $p(x)$. Suppose the company has to choose among a set of actions to take $a \in A$. What is a workable definite of fairness or equality in such a decision making effort with respect to protected properties $p$?

Let god bestow upon us, a neutral third party, with a utility functor u whose evaluation on the individual $u(x)$ results in a function $u(x)(a)$ is the utility of company taking action a to individual $x$, $u(x)(b)$ is the utility to individual $x$ of company taking action $b$.

Let $f$ be the decision process of company $g$, $g(x)$ is the decision company makes, some $a$ for the individual $x$. Then the right thing to do

$g(f(x)) = argmax_{a\in A}(u(x)(a)) = g(f(x), p(x))$

Specifies what it means to perform action $A$ indiscriminately with respect to $p$.

Suppose the protected properties $p()$ has domain in a space $M$. These are the values of protected attributes that we choose to strive for equality. For example M could be cartesian product of age, sex, race, birthplace, religion and political party.

$E(u(x)(g(f(a)))| p(x)) = c\ \forall p(x) \in M$

That the expected population utility for each variation of protected property is identically some constant $c$.

But such matter are purely to determine what a company does in consideration of its customers. What should a government do? For example, in a sentencing scenario as described in ProPublica’s Machine Bias? There are other costs more primal to the considerations: prison cost money to build, can justice and correctional actions be served with less prisoners ?

This matter is completely different from what we have considered above where corporations have, purely, the intent to service their customers utilities, in an equitable way with respect to that utility and protected and sensitive attributes.(OMG I have drank too much customer-centric-corporation-philosophy koolaid from my present employer) In this case, the government is trying to optimize for cost of operation–it is profit maximizing if we state it positively.

The part of our government in question is the justice system, aka the courts. It optimizes some “global” idealized justice $J$ Such that we can evaluate such a utility which can best described as “society’s utility in justice” or the “cost of injustice.” What this cost is in material-real-world units is hard to say, however let’s suppose it can be quantified deterministically in the same units. $J$ is functor mapping individuals to the justice of an action the government takes: $J(x)(a)$, or example, would evaluate very negatively if $x$ is innocent and $a$ is imprisonment. We skip innumerable details here regarding the process of due process, as well as the all-eventual-worlds analysis regarding later actions of $x$–god-oracle has given us an instantaneous justice function which we shall use.

The government in order to take action $a$ incurs a material-real-world costs, such as building prisons, let’s call these $C(x)(a)$ for the situation of acting on $x$.

Taking the action yields a utility of $R(x)(a)$. $R$ is the cost to the society after action $a$ is taken. For example: if a criminal is sentenced to no prison time and commits a crime, the damage of that crime, to society, is the cost $R$ (Result or Recidivism)

So, therefore, our rational government seeks to maximize its constituent utility subject to some constraints:

Maximize:

$argmax_{a \in A}(\sum_{x\in X}{J(x)(a) - C(x)(a) - R(x)(a)})$

With the constraint:

$J(x)(a) = c\ \forall x \in X$

(Some population $X$)

If the decision process can only be quantified probabilistically with some distribution of actions

Maximize:

$E_{a,x}(J(x)(a) - C(x)(a) - R(x)(a))$

With the constraint:

$E_{a,x}(J(x)(a)|p(x)) = c\ \forall p(x) \in M$

$M$ is the space of protected properties. Hard to see the link? Consider if $C$, $R$ or even $J$ are actually individually functor of $x$ through the two observation functions $f(x), g(x)$, such as in situations of automated intelligent machines, perhaps trained using machine learning technology.

Do these writings then have some more meaning?

What is the cost of injustice to society? Do we fear that we may lock up Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., or Barack Obama? (That their $R$ for some $a$ are very large to the society?) what is the true cost of injustice? Perhaps it can be reduced to the legal costs and reparation costs due to a lawsuits from the aclu, naacp (what are some other litigious minority individual protection organizations?) what is the cost of injustice when government wrongly accuse, convict and imprison someone? Is wrongful deprivation of many important human rights: rights to privacy, for one, right of property for another, and right to pursuit of happiness for yet another; is the deprivation of an individual’s human right an insufferable injustice? What is the cost of injustice ?

What is the cost of $R$? What happens when a drunken driver, having been insufficiently rehabilitated, drives drunk and causes a major injury or death? What is the $R$ of a flying bullet? Or leaked cypher keys? Or even some “minor” trade secret?

Personally, the best I can imagine is $min(R)=max(J)$ the worst social injustice against a person is the greatest crime a person can commit.

# Still Deus

Still reading Homo Deus. The Human condition is and IPS(information processing system) this is a vast and enlightened concept. Consider entropy of the human kind, etc.

Another idea about regulation of technology from yesterday is that it can be controlled by licensing or encapsulation. Licensed individuals can drive cars, own guns, or fish(in this case for ecological reason not human safety), then the same can be applied to AI: you can run at most 5e9 node neural network for personal activity, any more it is unsafe.

Another idea is encapsulation. I.e. Only the military can use AI with more than 1e10 nodes. Only qualified organization, organization that go to extrodinary length to ensure safety, may use certain technology. This is how nuclear bomb and bazookas work right now, but probably also some gene therapy may be kept quiet and within walls of qualified organizations.

The problem with the latter is of course freedom and transparency. It will be lacking as it is today.

For enthusiasts and fans, this might be the best political party to support in order to advance technology for now…