Coming to Terms with Machine Intelligence

My sense of the general uncertainty that people have about AI, is due to the fact that 99.99...99% of people wouldn't know how to describe themselves to a machine. They barely feel adequate explaining themselves to themselves, and to other humans. They literally believe in the existence of other minds "on faith, and intuition", and have small nervous breakdowns when they feel cognitive dissonance from loss of trust or broken epistemology.

Also we should really call these Machine Intelligences. Most human-embodied intelligence is already artificial.

US bank rate study notes

• 1. Fed Funds Rate : lowest : decided by the Fed, does not affect loans from the Fed, affects loans between other banks and each other; an over-night rate
• 2. Discount Rate : medium : decided by the Fed, affects loans from the Fed to other banks ; pricier than the FFR, so the Fed is a lender of last resort when other banks can't cough up funds at the FFR.
• 3. Prime Rate : highest : decided by market forces, on a regional basis, an index which is used to price loans from non-Fed banks to consumer.

Governance, Cybernetics, and Memory Management

Fundamental reminders, for dealing with the increasing utilisation of Artificial Intelligence. 

All communications engineering, whether intra-entity, or inter-entity ... is beholden to the parameters of memory hierarchy, and its subsidiary concerns of 

• (1) naming things and 
• (2) cache invalidation. 

In short, communications and memory management are the same thing. Since communications and control are also the same thing, we can therefore infer that all controls can be viewed through the lens of memory management.

Error of Sociability

There was a period of time when web startups were trendy. At the time, I made a point to obtain operational knowledge of their fundamental engineering concerns, in order to maximise my financial leverage in the economy. 

However, I made the mistake of being too friendly with business counterparties in my network. Business owners would be friendly when able to obtain STEM services at a discount to the market rate. However, I would not set a rate that was too high, and so I would find that the friendliness of many people decreased over time.

Small mistake - albeit a common one. Assuming intimacy with people who are not fundamentally interested in being friends, for its own sake.

xmas notes : concerns that recently passed my desk

Don't confuse social responsibility, with social validation. This is the difference between prophylaxis and consensual sex.

Don't confuse governance, with regulatory compliance. This is the difference between following poor leaders, and replacing them.

Don't confuse learning, with sophistry. This is the difference between physical models of the world, and large language models.

Don't confuse hard money, with legal tender. This is the difference between a gun, and a gun license.

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Before I got out of bed on Christmas morning ( or afternoon ), I wrote some reminders to my communities. One of those was about how the difference between learning and sophistry is like the difference between physical models, and LLMs. 
 
Later in the day, it occurred to me that maybe, many people are fascinated by LLMs because these people have been educated to think like LLMs, in order to keep them from true learning, and therefore from political economic effectiveness.

 Perhaps it is a paradigm of slavery.

Yield Curve Study Notes

 [ Loosening money Event -> More inflation soon -> Tight money soon ]

• -> [ at the Short-end : 
• { pre-Event coupons } are marginally Larger than { New treasury coupons }, so
• { Buy pre-Event debt }, thereby
• lowering yields to match Event ]
• -> [ at the Long-end : 
• { pre-Event coupons } are marginally Smaller than { Expected future treasury coupons }, so 
• { Sell pre-Event debt }, thereby
• raising yields to match Expectations for the future ]

... study notes, on end-2024 bond markets.

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Further notes :

Trying to understand how the Fed's RRP balance and the yield curve interact, via the Fed's choice between selling bonds, notes, and bills.

Preamble : defining 'currency', 'currency market', and 'value'

( Part 1 in a series on articulating the ontology of money, from first principles. )

Money and currency are used synonymously below.

Axiom 1 : a category of fungible units can function as a symbol of value ... the category can be called a currency ; currencies are subject to property rights

Axiom 2 : a market for a currency, is any context in which property rights over a unit of currency may be consensually exchanged for property rights over other entities ; for simplicity, when we mean that property rights are exchanged, we simply say currency is exchanged

Axiom 3 : the value of a currency unit, in a market, is whatever the market is willing to exchange for that unit ... the value can be called an exchange rate

... In a market, at different times, a currency may have different values in the same denominator. E.g. today 1 Xcoin may be exchanged for 1 apple, tomorrow 1 Xcoin may be exchanged for 2 apples

... in a market, at the same time, a currency may have different incommensurate values based on different denominators. E.g. today 1 Xcoin may be exchanged for 1 apple, or 1 orange, whereas there may be no other way to compare apples and oranges ; other ways to compare apples and oranges would be deemed other markets ; markets may be in disequilibrium at a given time, allowing for arbitrage across times

Therefore : a currency has value at any time, where anyone is ready, able, and willing to create a market for that currency, by trading it for something else.

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Moreover, it may be hypothesised that a currency has value in the future. For example, we may guess today that a US dollar has value tomorrow, meaning that we establish a falsifiable hypothesis that ( tomorrow there will be a minimal market for 1 USD, meaning that someone will be ready, able and willing to give us something for 1 USD ). We may further nuance the hypothesis by saying what will be traded, and we may also detail the legal environment about that market.

In this way, it is demonstrated that the legality of a currency market is a secondary, non-essential property of money. Legal money is simply money used in an environment where no one asserts regulatory breaches against that use. Legal and illegal money are both special cases of money in general.

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Furthermore, it may be thus shown that the common understanding that money has value because some government has military force to enforce a legal environemnt is a secondary, non-essential property of money. Regardless of the existence of an enforced set of rules about the market, as soon as anyone is willing to trade money for something else, the money becomes valuable.

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Part 2, should address the ontology of 'money supply'

Philosophy of Cryptocurrency : Metaphysics, Ethics, and Epistemology

People often forget that the sole purpose of Bitcoin, as the first-mover in a new asset class, was to short the USD. And the main use of cryptocurrency to-date, as an emerging technology, is to disenfranchise state governments.

All conversations about their its legitimacy, viability, price, popularity, international political economic SWOT, etc. begin, and end there. 

But in order to fully appreciate the breadth of the subject matter, one has to be thoroughly familiar with the legacy of American Exceptionalism,  encompassing USD exceptionalism over the past 80 or so years.

What is money? The ontology of the thing, precedes the ethics of the thing.

• Preamble : defining 'currency', 'currency market', and 'value'
• 
  

Hobbesian Dating

Regardless of business, or pleasure. ( Some view pleasure as a variety of business. )

I view the entire culture of getting into relationships assuming the best of the other person as a patriarchal weaponisation of emotional vulnerabilities built into the genome. Regardless of gender, I think folks need to formalise expectations in as much detail as possible before getting attached, formally or informally. That's the point of dating.

I understand if people want to maintain a culture that normalises an altruistic baseline which should be taken for granted. But it's horrible risk management, and I would never recommend that assumption as a matter of operational security. 

This theme dominates most of the conversations I have with people, on dates, and about dating, these days.

LOL

Peristilahan Kaum dan Bangsa di Malaysia

Saya kurang mengakalkan kejatian perkauman. Saya hanya berminat dengan kejatian kebangsaan. Keseluruhan sejarah negara saya memang dicacatkan dengan hal perkauman yang tidak selari dengan hal kebangsaan. Oleh sebab itu, perpaduan selama-lama ini tidak tercapai antara marhaen, yang memadankan kebangsaan dengan perkaumanan, dan tidak memadankan kebangsaan dengan kenegaraan.

Sejarah kenegaraan mestilah dirujuk. Dalam akal sekelompok marhaen, perkauman adalah kejatian yang wujud sebelum kenegaraan, dan kenegaraan hanya alat ungkapan perkauman. Selama kelompok ini membawa kemarahan dan kesengsaraan hatinya ke pasaran, sebarang percubaan untuk membangsakan Malaysia tanpa kesakitan perkauman, nampaknya kerja sia-sia.

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Further reading :

• Bangsa Malaysia – dahulu dan sekarang
  

Further banter :

Ada pulak pengutuk atas istilah 'kaum', 'puak', 'bangsa', tanpa penelitian terhadap kepelbagaian makna setiap istilah itu dalam kamus, dan dalam bidang khas, lagipun ketidakselarian antara istilah serupa tanpa persamaan dalam bahasa lain.

Further banter :

Ah well ... I guess this is just where I find myself in middle-age ... digging up the spectres of this weird country I live in. 

Valuation Methods : so-called Fundamental, Sentimental, Technical

 Everything beyond book value is a sentimental indicator, because it's a "what if". 

• The allow-list : the only reason people call some of those other things "fundamental" is because they put their faith in certain counterparties, and scenarios. 
• The deny-list : the only reason people call some of those things "sentiment" is because they personally don't have faith in certain counterparties, and scenarios.

The funny thing about technical analysis is that it belongs in the fine arts. It's basically just music and dance. The even funnier thing is that this isn't taught in liberal arts curricula ... the original liberal arts included music and geometry ... skills which separated non-slaves from slaves.

Further banter :

Reminder on valuations :

- goods and services have no true intrinsic value

- the nominal intrinsic value of goods and services is what legal entities will pay for them

- so predictable valuation forecasts, depend on predictable legal entities

- the art of valuation, is forecasting the emotional enslavements of 8 billion plebs

- what will their infatuations do, next?

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