Predicting Love and Politics

The awkward moment that you realize you already know things almost not many know, yet you commit mistakes none of them would make.

p.s.1. I had always said from early days of social networking, that a website like Facebook can come up with the best dating advices, far better than any dating website, only if they want to use it that way. For one apparent reason: They have the data. Indeed they have so much data that no dating website even finds it important or useful. Check this example. I warn it may hurt if you fit the data individually!

p.s.2. This other article doesn’t really tell you how, but it tells you it’s possible to predict a revolution. Four years ago Bruce Bueno predicted in a TED talk what will happen to the Iranian nuclear negotiations. It all happened just in a longer period. He doesn’t go into details but you get some idea.

mind-reading

My newest mind-reading magic trick: Think of a food, of any color, or any combination of colors for that matter. Then go order it. Or make it. Pay attention to the colors of your meal as you slowly eat it. Now take your time and digest it. Keep thinking of the food… And its colors… When you’re ready go to toilet and take a dump. Your sh!t is, let me guess… BROWN!

Lord Christian’s Magic Stunt

I was mentioned among other magical friends in Adressa (Trondheim’s main newspaper) regarding Lord Christian Wedøy’s magic stunt:

– Folk som gikk forbi stoppet opp og tok bilder, og responsen var veldig bra. Jeg sto der fra kloken tolv til halv to, sier Wedøy, som med hjelp fra Allan Hagen, Nima Darabi og Hans Henrik Verpe fikk gjennomført stuntet.

Read more about it here in Norwegian.

Poverty

The way primitive tribes are living in poverty is the way human kind have been living for hundreds of thousands of years. If some kids have swollen bellies is not because you have a rich diet to make your belly muscles. If a considerable part of human kind is still left behind is due to being geographically located far from the heart of recent un-natural developments.

Let’s don’t forget that poverty is ugly, but natural. It’s not, unlike wealth, a product of civilization. Humans are born naked and poor, like other species. All other animals are poor by our very recent norms and standards. The extreme contrast is what civilization caused and made it visible by comparison. Not to justify the poverty, let’s just remember this to be able to reduce and eliminate poverty for our species.

The Candy

So with the post-start-loan-rejection shock I did some math to plan my future. Here in Norway there are two alternatives after I defend my PhD:

If my cafe finally works out I can go there on weekdays after my full-time programming job and serve costumers from 7pm to 11pm. I will employ myself and pay less than half tax (only 48%) as a second occupation. Then I have the only cafe in Norway where you can order food with a phone application and pick it up quick on your way. Since the plan sounds good enough to survive on its own, I won’t get any funding or sponsorship from the government. As long as I pay tax (on my benefit too) I am good to go. It’s tough but I will work harder and keep the business alive as long as I don’t cross the limits: it is illegal to work more than a certain limit! So I am already saved by the law from burning and exhaustion. And God also created weekends to chill so no more than four hours a day (from 11AM to 3PM) on Saturdays and Sundays. It is also illegal to work for free because of the black money involved (zero amount). So please don’t ask for longer opening hours if I can’t afford hiring someone else. There is nothing I can do about it. At least it will be open 4 hours every day. I won’t get time to travel though, but hey, do I need it? Now how about investing in a house instead? I have a small problem: I have already spent my savings on the cafe project and my salary before tax is already a bit higher than a certain limit to get a start loan (I already got a rejection). Then to get the initial capital I have one option left to choose from and that’s called saving. The good thing is that after few tax deductions on both jobs and living an economic life I can still put aside a little each month. It will take me only another three or four years to save the start money and then yeah! I will buy that small cozy apartment I once saw at Ilsvika. And later on a car beside it. And there will be even some left to buy a candy. Think of it. Five years from now, I own an average house, an average car and a good candy.

Now as an alternative. Let’s say after two years of bureaucracy (already passed) I give up the cafe project. Then I get depressed and will have to quit my job cause I am sick [of my situation]. No job. No cafe. Then I am entitled to get unemployment money which is off tax, I assume. And my net income which was a tiny bit more than the limit will be a tiny bit less and meets their criteria! I get the start loan and buy that small cozy apartment I saw once at Ilsvika. I will try to work here and there if my tough condition allows me. Meanwhile the government pays my energy bills and other basic costs of survival like beer, restaurants and travel to the south, which I need for my dignity (don’t laugh). They may not cover the gas for my crappy car though. That if I wait a bit more I save to buy a newer model, which is green and consumes less. I should also add that I always felt sorry for those who don’t care about the environment, but let’s don’t talk about them here. Anyhow, my humble life goes on and in five years, it’s me, with an average house, an average car, but no candy. No candy! Is that fair you think? I love candies!

Darwin, Erdős, Mystery

Here it is argued that Darwin was wrong about dating cause women can be as promiscuous as men. Then it brings examples of revisions in studies like in the number of sexual partners that were previously reported quite higher for men than woman and further research does not show this gap.

Just a quick mathematical thought on that. The average number of lifetime sexual partners can not be a good measure for sexual attitude as the sexual attitude may be different in genders but this number has to be equal between them (Graph theory: total out-degree equals total in-degree in a bipartite graph, aka high school prom theorem and in this case works also for average rather than total as both sets are about the same size, read more):

Beyond the abstract world of graphs, men may like casual sex more than women, or not. Whatever the case is, the average number of lifetime sexual partners in straight couples must be exactly equal. There are dozens of studies reporting this number for men versus women as 7 vs. 4, or 12 vs. 7 or … They are all wrong. The error could be due to sampling. Either improper statistical sampling, like leaving out sex hubs such as pick up artists and prostitutes, or local sampling, i.e. in the community asked the numbers were 7 to 4 at a cost of another community having it as 4 to 7. The error could also come from the fact that that genders lie about it: Women report it lower and men higher. And let’s say it’s not even a lie. Men and women estimate this number differently.

Anyhow such ratio not a good measure for a sexual attitude comparison, simply because sex happens between the two genders. So they didn’t really need to put so much effort to perform new research to prove this number is equal as Boromir says:

One does not simply walk into the male side of a heterosexual bigraph to count the outgoing edges to the female side. And if does he doesn’t go to the other side to count the incoming edges, wrong, to come up with two different numbers! And even if he does, he wouldn’t report this error as some shocking result!

And about replacing mean with median: It is only introduced to fix the tautological problem. That can be even more problematic: the median is reported lower for women, which could arguably be even higher, due to the different skewness of the degree distribution between the two genders. That depends on if there are more sexual hubs in men or in women. Which basically asks if we have more womanizers and sex machine in men, than more prostitutes in women? A median is neither a measure of sexual attitude.

So such results doesn’t necessarily prove ultra-Darwinians wrong: In an extreme yet consistent scenario a male may evolutionarily have the desire to mate a thousand females lifetime and a typical female may be hardwired to pick the one and the best. Both fail! It’s simply not possible. Men don’t have more sexual partners than women but want it. Women don’t want as many but they get it.

Remember religion suggested heaven when it firstly encountered death. Trying to please everyone with such limited resources and mathematical barriers, solutions like afterlife 72-virgins are the only way of explaining such statistical difference.

NM Magi 2012

Believe it or not I took part in the Norwegian Championship of Magic 2012 and placed 4th out of 5 people!

Given 40 degrees of fever and that I didn’t chicken out even though I am not Norwegian, and not even a magician It’s OK!

Plus that I was the only one with a 100% original trick and my “mathemagics” was not believed since several professional magicians told me that trick was not bad but how did you know the guy who came to the stage? Well I didn’t!

So laugh at your mom.