Quantitative Aspect : of a general education

 Quantitative Aspect : 

• ... of a general education syllabus - these are often piecemeal, and ineloquent in describing how the "whole thing" works. Here is a sketch of what should be done.

etymology : kaypohchee

it might be that kaypohchee's characters are chicken-wife-chicken ( hokkien-universal-mandarin )

So the trail looks like :

1.

家婆 : kepo : MY source babanonya : house wife / home - woman : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kaypoh : next SG source says this is the current usage in TW

2.

鸡婆 : kaypo : corruption to : chicken - woman : idiomatic : whore - woman : https://www.languagecouncils.sg/mandarin/en/learning-resources/singaporean-mandarin-database/terms/busybody-colloquially-known-as-ikaypohi : but this goes sideways : "originated from the Hokkien (Minnan) term “牙婆”. In the olden days, “牙婆” referred to women who were involved in human trafficking and helped court officials find concubines or hand servants."

2b.

This was quite interesting : https://www.ntu.edu.sg/docs/librariesprovider120/lms/sample-students-work/lms_ssw_ay2012-samanthacatherinebokshiyun.pdf?sfvrsn=d28ed5d6_2

3. xref: 2.

However according to this, the usage of "chee bai" is just the same idiom of using "chicken" : TW mandarin : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%86%A3%E5%B1%84

The life of a symbol table

At this point in history, computers are mostly passive beasts. There was a time when they could take themselves to the bathroom, but now, no more. A computer remembers how to do things, but only does them when it is told by a human.

Told to translate this or that ... a computer remembers how, from prior instructions stored as machine code(1B) : the computer then takes source code(2A) written by some human, and the computer passes that source code(2A) to its processors, along with its prior instructions(1B). The processors read (1B) and (2A), and turn (2A) into machine code(2B).

In doing so, the computer keeps track of its work in a notebook called a symbol table(2T). These are dictionaries which remember the stories of things mentioned in source code(2A). By the time the machine code(2B) is produced, there is usually no more need for the symbol table(2T), and so it is thrown away.

The symbol table lives a short life, yet it delivers a story that communicates purposes and destinies. Symbol tables are dictionaries, or maps. Living humans are also maps, albeit a little more complicated. But ultimately neither the symbol table nor a human accomplishes more in its time, than passing a message from an earlier thing, to a later thing.

Nevertheless, humans are whiny things, and they make a big deal about doing all that.

Capital in Deployment : a map of war

 Things, where I am scratching on a hard surface :

• (1) COMPILER data flow : there are about 5-30 language FAMILIES on one end, 2-3 major architectures on the other, and a L-steps-from-M-to-N set of flows which is rather unparsimonious, like that word; the tool needed here is an LMN mapper; a homomorphic problem is WWW architecture; 
• (2) MATHS & STATS terminology : there are some 5-30 entrypoints to the body of knowledge, each having 3-10 important concepts, each have 0-10 synonyms ... at this point it's the semi-formal synonym spaghetti that's really irking me; the tool needed here is an interface-concept-synonym mapper;

Things, which I feel are decently managed :

• (3) PHYSICS : no time for material science ... but I am edging along with home economics and physiology; of the tiny subset I am working on, the ontology of concern is economicOutput-cellularPathways-physiologicalInputs; no time to get into true details, so I manage this at arm's length, with spreadsheets;
• (4) FINANCE : I'm always fighting the error of being too lazy here; markets are mad, but there is something to be said for infrequent asset allocation;

Things, which I feel are easy :

• (5) SOCIETY : as always, since grade school, people seem like they are easily traversed, and it is just that I don't make the time to traverse this graph frequently;
• (6) MIND : much above seems to pivot on my identity as a phenomenologist, and work previously accomplished.

Things you are allowed to say, when someone dies.

• To an enlightened person : why so serious?
• To a pleb : you have my condolences.

That is politics. And business is built on politics.

Clutter. In language-design.

Let's talk JUST about computer programming languages. ( Let's NOT talk about how many ways there are to say the same thing in regular languages like English. ( What's "formal English" to one person, is just "some informal natural language" to another. ) )

• 1. Too many ways to write a loop. There should be only one.
• 2. Too many ways to address a dictionary/ map. TSBOO
• 3. Too many ways to define a block/ function/ subroutine/ scope. ( All "objects" in OOP, are mere managed scopes. ) TSBOO
• 4. Too many ways to address blocks ( et tu, "modules" ) and to mark dependencies upon each other. FORTUNATELY this is usually terse, but perhaps it could be improved further. 
• 5. Too many ways for blocks to interop. FORTUNATELY the pattern of errors as values is getting more popular.
• 6. There are four kinds of brackety-looking-things in ASCII. Maybe they should all mean the same thing.
• 7. Maybe compilers should have some sort of DRY/tsboo error code.
• 8. And because there are so many languages as a result, we don't have a single SIRII ... a standard intermediate representation for information interchange. ( XKCD#927 )

But if we had only one, then all language designers could just target that, for academic purposes, while still doing whatever else they wanted outside of academia.

Plebs & the study of culture : on Zero Trust

• 1. Trust is a device for control.
• 2. Trust with verification, is robust. This is abbreviated as ZERO TRUST.
• 3. Trust without verification, is PLEB TRUST.
• 4. The behavioural incentives to be pleb, are varied.
• (a) subject is lazy, hence pleb
• (b) subject is conned, hence pleb ( POSSIBLY incepted with control mechanisms, prior to autonomy )
• (c) subject has no capital, hence pleb ( synonymous with power, leverage, etc. )
• (d) other?

Culture is by definition, a control mechanism. The study of culture is simply a variety of cybernetics.

Don't be a pleb.

Lisp's Compromise

•  1. The elegance of Lisp, is precisely the terseness of notation, in executing self-evaluation.
• 2. This is cute, which is to say it is appealing to human minds, because it is simple, thus saving memory ( space  ).
• 3. So far, it seems that the trade-off for this is a floor on the speed of evaluation ( time ). 
• 4. I am trying to convince myself that there is all there is to this, if so then I'll temporarily throw Lisp studies away, to focus on more pressing matters.

Computing as a model of Consciousness

I'm writing study notes on the nature of COMPUTERS. It is a good reminder about the nature of CONSCIOUSNESS.

• 1. Operands : memory is a medium, which is capable of STATE mutations.
• 2. Operations : instructions upon memory, are the built-in, and thereafter added, CAUSES of state mutations.

It matters very little if you are a materialist or a spiritualist, a monist or a dualist : there is simply no other concept needed for the quantification of human consciousness.

Absolutely nothing ... and that is the stunning elegance of it all.

The Buddha Awards?

What's a good name for, a diminutive Darwin award?

Use : where someone's choices don't kill them outright, but simply demotivate and confound them, tragically? Maybe, where someone's attempts to be happy are benignly unsucccessful.

I did a quick search on "famous dumb characters" and "most unhappy philosophers". 

I am tending to think, perhaps to call it the Buddha award.

Policy wish-list : 80% reductions in synthetic fibre, and single-use plastic, sales

Two things I want for solid waste management in Malaysia : both are not obviously attractive, both require 3-year plans to set up 10-year roadmaps, reasonably. However, both have the potential to spur R&D into globally beneficial supply-chains, which are potential future economic growth vectors.

• 1. Reduce single-use plastics sold, by 80%. ( Plastic food wrappers, etc. )
• 2. Reduce synthetic fibres sold, by 80%. ( Polyester clothing, etc. )

Mandatory, Explicit, Environments, for Data Objects ... in a programming language

 This week : 

• - practiced, explicit environment-passing across scopes, in a Lisp
• - read, about region-based memory allocation pattern
• - read, about how error handling is implemented at the CPU level
• - read, about, how "the stack" commonly referred to in language implementations is "just a stack of environmental variables" ( vis-a-vis the "stack overflow" problem )

Noticed :

• - basically all contemporary programming languages including POSIX SCL, C, Lisp, JS/Python/Ruby etc. have an IMPLICIT top-level scope which the programmer doesn't handle explicitly.
• - for example, in JS you can do a (var global.x) but this is sugared so you can just write (var x)
• - for example, in JS you can do (try{}catch{}) but this is also the same species of sugaring under the hood!

TODO : Now I want to write a language where ENV objects are explicitly declared, passed, and destroyed. But I probably won't too soon, as it's not urgent.

Imagination! ( a model )

Consider a model,

• A : there are signals received at the brain, from various (SNS) organs
• B: the brain has to interpolate all of this into some intermediate representation, which is somewhat different from the separate types of A. This is the sort of data we refer to as conscious memory.
• C : possibly there are other representations of the same data, stored elsewhere.

It is possible that we're only aware of A via B, never directly. Also C may feed into B. B loops within itself. Imagination!

Entering my "Compilers" Phase

I enjoy working on complex projects. ( The trendy term for these may be moonshots. ) At 42, my short-term project to learn about compiler architecture. 

If you know anything about compilers, you know this is RIDICULOUS. I actually have no idea at what point I'll stop digging into it, though it's likely that I will have to stop at some point. The only thing that comforts me, is my experience in approaching problems with an unfamiliar solution domain. 

In college, from 2002 to 2004, I had two interesting results. 

• 1. I obtained a birds-eye view of the history of ideas, ALL ideas, and how they had been documented, and taught, over the history of earth. While impossible to be comprehensive, it was surprisingly interesting to gain this perspective.
• 2. I figured out how to quantify every moment of my conscious experience, and thereby exhausted nearly all my curiousity about its structure. While I had been systematically checking this question since around 2000, I didn't actually expect to reach a conclusion so soon.

After that I immersed myself in more mundane environments, and even there, some interesting projects emerged. Particularly, I have a story about six years in a 24-hour coffee shop, but not here. So back to that short-term project I mentioned ... compilers.

My mid-term project is to build a sort of comprehensive software documentation tool for my studies, integrating literate programming, all of web architecture, and perhaps tools to be acquired via the aforementioned short-term project. My long-term project, since 2005 has been to get around to studying math, but there is no urgency whatsoever about this, as it all fundamentally boils down to killing whatever time I have had left, in an entertaining fashion.

Egad.

Why does anyone do anything?

What is your PURPOSE? This is a common theme in sentimental discussions in life planning, career coaching, and brand management. Much of it hews towards spiritual masturbation, as folks evade the difficulties of empirical data, and veer off into realms beyond.

Well, why does anyone DO ANYTHING? That's more concrete, and it brings us towards the mode of behavioural economics, petty psychology, and realpolitik : and here we find the money, predatory traders, strategy consultants, venture capitalists, and investment bankers.

The identification of a GOAL, describes the structure of a system. Everything else becomes subsidiary to that orientation. So the interesting discussions in life are never about how to get things done - we denigrate it as "ops" - but rather, about WHAT THE HELL we want done - we idolise it as "strategy". 

To understand what a COLLECTIVE wants done, one must thoroughly comprehend what its INDIVIDUALS want done. And talent management has this in common with software engineering : both are about software, and both are about talent : it is the same discipline : because humans and machines are both fundamentally information systems, designed to chase goals.

I have a partner who often asks me why I'm always developing new business. Why is present business not good enough? Well my dear, it completely depends on what we're doing business FOR, isn't it?

Earlier today I met a chap in his thirties, a moderately successful fellow, in this jelloesque economy. We talked about how we spend time differently. My view was that it doesn't matter when you make money - you can make it earlier, or later with interest ... but you can't respend any particular year of your life, though that's probably why parents heap so many expectations on poor children. The question is never "should I make X money now, or X money later?" It's not even "why should I make X money now, not Y money?" The question for everyone, everyday, is "er, fuck, the day isn't coming back after midnight - what can I do with it now, so that I will have minimal regrets over the rest of 120 years?"