#Total Expectation Theorem

[flameshadowconjuring]

Physics is to math as Python is to Haskell.

In physics, everything is typed dynamically. Sure, the codomain, i.e. the units of a function or quantity is usually static, but the domain, i.e. the dependent variable are whatever they need to be.

Meanwhile in math, we specify what our objects are. They are statically typed. Even if I have no clue what a Haskell function does, I can at least look at its type signature to get a rough idea.

I wish physics were statically typed with explicit type annotations because it is driving me up a wall that, for instance, both the force between two points and the net force of a single point are referred as 'the force'. They have different type signatures!

That, and energy. 'Energy' is not conserved. The total energy of an isolated system is, but the energy at a point given by the potential energy field can of course change. This ambiguous use of language makes it really difficult for idiots like me to learn physics. I am not good with wishy-washyness. If you input ambiguous language into my brain, I can regurgitate grammatical connections between vocabulary words (you know, the stuff even an LLM can do), but you can't expect genuine insight from me. For that, I need clear, bright lines. How can you have theorems if you don't spell out your assumptions!

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

Potentially another totally speculative question: What would possibly be some law on Gallifrey that outsiders would find surprising?

What are some surprising Gallifreyan laws?

Gallifreyan law is, unsurprisingly, vast, bureaucratic, and painfully overcomplicated. Most of it consists of dry legalese about causality, paradox regulations, and why you really shouldn't rewrite your own history just because you don't like how your dissertation turned out.

Details on Gallifreyan law are sparse. Some of these are real, some are questionable, and some are utterly fabricated nonsense that we wouldn't be surprised if they existed anyway.

📜 Actual Gallifreyan Law

🚫 No Time Travel for the Religious Class

Shortly after the Eye of Harmony was anchored, Gallifrey banned its religious institutions from accessing time travel, Time Lord genetic benefits, and political positions. This meant Time Priests, Monks, and the Supreme Pontiff of Time (AKA Time Pope) could no longer meddle with causality. Whether this was done to separate the church from the timeline or just to keep certain monks from inventing paradox-based enlightenment remains unclear.

📜 Completely Made-Up (But Very Plausible) Laws

🔄 No Meeting Yourself More Than Three Times in One Day: More than three instances of yourself in one place at one time is considered suspicious. Two is fine. Three is pushing it. Four is a blatant attempt at timeline manipulation.

🍷 No Temporal Duplication at Parties: If you attend a Gallifreyan social event, you are legally forbidden from inviting past or future versions of yourself to avoid "temporal bias" in card games.

🚀 No Claiming a Future Incarnation's Accomplishments: While Time Lords are legally recognised as a single entity across regenerations, attempting to pass off your future self's achievements as your own is considered chronological fraud. You did not "invent" a revolutionary theorem in 4000 years. Future-You did. Get back to work.

📞 "But I Haven't Got the Message Yet" Is Not a Valid Excuse: If someone sends you a message, you are legally responsible for receiving it, regardless of whether it has reached you in your personal timeline.

⏳ Using Your Own Regeneration as an Alibi is a Crime: You are responsible for what your previous incarnation did. If Past-You made a mistake, Current-You still has to deal with it.

🛑 Unauthorised Cloister Bell Activations Are Strictly Forbidden: If you ring the Cloister Bell as a prank, you will be charged with inciting mass panic.

🔮 "I Just Had a Premonition" as an Academic Citation is Prohibited: No matter how advanced their temporal senses are, Time Lords can no longer submit papers claiming "I foresaw this conclusion" as a valid research method.

🌀 You Are Not Allowed to Create a Paradox Just to Win an Argument: If you go back in time and change events just to prove yourself right, you forfeit the debate and may face legal consequences.

🕵️‍♂️ Stealing a TARDIS is a Crime, Even If You "Borrowed It From Yourself": Theft is theft, even if the TARDIS in question technically belongs to your future self.

🕰️ If You Gain Knowledge of Your Own Future, You Are Expected to Act Surprised Anyway: It is a cultural expectation that if you are told your own future ahead of time, you must still act shocked when it happens.

Related:

📺|📜👽How do politics work on Gallifrey?: Detailing all the mechanics and roles of Gallifreyan politics.

💬|🏛️🛒Where’s the Black Market on Gallifrey?: Where you might find shady dealings and what you could trade.

💬|👥🚫What are some cultural faux pas on Gallifrey?: Some things to avoid when a guest on Gallifrey.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[gamingavickreyauction]

It's often said, as a truism, that while climate change is caused by systems, your individual choices can still make a difference, but might not actually be true- not just that you are small, but that the difference your consumption makes is actually zero.

Standard economic analysis

The standard economic analysis is that if you buy more carbon-intensive goods, that has two effects: it increases the total quantity of carbon-intensive goods sold, and it increases the price of carbon-intensive goods (only marginally, because you are small).

This means that while you buying one unit of carbon-intensive goods doesn't increase the amount of carbon-intensive goods as sold by one, it still increases them, and the amount it increases it by depends on the price elasticities of demand and supply (i.e. the slopes of the curves). If supply is very inelastic, we expect it to make close to 0 difference, and if demand is very inelastic we expect it to make an almost one-for-one difference. Suppose PED = PES and you emitted one extra tonne of CO2, the net effect of that is only an extra half tonne of CO2.

Aside: do these diagrams actually work? Yes. This result seems counterintuitive: the price of electricity isn't going to be put up just because you used more electricity this year, so it isn't going to result in others using less - there will be no offset. And this is correct, the world comes in discrete changes. But if enough people use more electricity, prices will go up, and you have no way of knowing whether you're the one who'll push it over the edge or raise the price of electricity from 29p to 30p. So we just look at averages, and on average you will raise prices by the amount shown on this diagram (i.e. very small, because you are very small, but enough to offset an amount of consumption that matters for our purposes).

Accounting for the government

But this standard economic analysis takes place in a policy vacuum. I mean, the same welfare effect would also hold if the government's climate policy was optimal because something something envelope theorem, but the government's policy is ummmm not optimal. In any country. Governments are not trying to set a socially optimal rate of carbon tax (which would be crippling to many industries) they are trying to do something more like reduce emissions enough to satisfy an electorate that doesn't care much, and no further, because they don't want to shrink the economy.

In an idealised version of this strategy, individual actions actually have 0 effect, regardless of PED or PES, because of the policy feedback mechanism: a British person emits one less tonne of CO2 so the UK government go 'oh look an extra tonne of CO2 we can emit without exceeding our internal targets' and spend less on mitigation to cancel it out.

Whilst your individual effect is small and unlikely to be noticed by policymakers, many people's changes will be noticed, and your emissions might be the straw that broke the camel's back, so we can treat the government as if their targets are responding to your individual emissions, just like in the aside. Note it isn't the official targets that matter, but how much governments privately feel they can get away with.

If the government are decided to emit 500MTe, then 500MTe are going to be emitted by someone, regardless of if you're the one doing it. You didn't help the Bangladesh farmer who's losing their livelihood because of harsher monsoon seasons, you just helped Clyde who wants to pay less tax on his SUV.

This argument hinges on this policy feedback mechanism actually being one-for-one, which we don't know, and which is fundamentally an empirical question. Specifically in the long-run. I'm sure it's not actually one-for-one- and if we model the government as maximising some utility function of economy and environment, it can't be.

We would also need to multiply this 'do your actions have purpose (because government is a fuck)' coefficient by the 'do your actions have purpose (because markets is a fuck)' coefficient to find out the actual effect of your actions. The crux of my argument is that the government's fuck coefficient is likely to be very small.

What is the government's fuck coefficient?

The long-run government fuck coefficient is built up over years of repeatedly adjusting policy to look more like what the government wanted to do anyway: if the government undershoots their carbon budget one year, the government will want to take that as license to emit more the next year, and whilst this won't be one for one- it might be quite small- over many years it will add up to mean emissions were basically what they would have been anyway.

Policy and emissions are slow to adjust- maybe a year after you reduced emissions by a tonne, policy change adjustments have only offset it by 10%, leaving a government fuck coefficient of 0.9 which seems pretty good (it means you had 90% as much effect as you thought your were having). Then the next year the government has 0.9 extra tonnes in their budget, and again their policy only offsets 10% of that, leaving a government fuck coefficient of 0.81 after 2 years. This continues year after year, so that in 30 years time, the government fuck coefficient is 0.042- i.e. you think you've saved a tonne of CO2, but because of the policy feedback mechanism, your net effect is only 42kg. Lets call this 10% figure the government fuck decay rate (GFDR).

Maybe the GFDR is lower than that, which would mean your individual consumption has more impact for longer. But as long as this GFDR is constant over time, your impact exponentially decays over time. The government fuck coefficient goes to zero. Remember, this isn't your effect on annual emissions decaying over time, it's your effect on cumulative emissions - this means your individual actions really are being undone. Not that annual emissions adjust back to the status quo but cumulative emissions do.

The government fuck coefficient after t years is (1-GFDR)^t

Self criticism like some kind of Maoist

The one weak point in this analysis I can see is it assumes governments' emission preferences care about cumulative emissions, not just annual emissions - i.e. that governments will think they can get away with doing less this year because they did more last year, or ten years ago. This is what gives a GFDR that isn't 0. If they largely don't think like this, the GFDR could be way less than 0.1 per year, leading to a government fuck coefficient that isn't near 0 even decades in the future (and what really matters is what the effect is decades in the future when hopefully governments will doing the right amount of mitigation, at which point there is no more decay).

The GFDR might also decrease over time, as after a certain amount of time historical emissions may basically be considered water under the bridge.

But if the GFDR is anything close to 0.1, we have to accept that, bizarre as it seems, saving energy today doesn't actually result in there being less carbon in the air in 50 years.

This doesn't mean we should do nothing, but it means our actions should be entirely focused on shifting government preferences, rather than on changing consumption habits. Assuming my analysis is correct.

[shankhachil]

Countdown to JEE (Main): Week 2/33

I've done a lot this week! Hit almost all the topics I wanted to. You'll notice that there are some topics I've covered but not solved questions for — these are the ones I studied for the first time and/or made notes for.

Other than that, I have my school unit tests from next Wednesday, so there's that. Sadness.....

Test results:

Test at physics tuition center: 116/120, rank 1/67! Yay!

Aryabhatta National Mathematics Competition: score unknown, result expected on 10/07/2024.

Topics covered:

Physics: Potential and Capacitance; Electromagnetic Waves, Waves on a String; Modern Physics; Gravitation; Electromagnetic Induction (6/3)

Chemistry: Chemical Thermodynamics; Atomic Structure; Chemical Equilibrium; Halogen Derivatives; Solid State (5/3)

Mathematics: Differential Equations; Area Under a Curve; Applications of Derivatives; Determinants; Complex Numbers; Ellipses; Hyperbola; Binomial Theorem; Functions (9/3)

Questions solved:

Physics: - FIITJEE Electrostatics* module, Assignment section — 56 questions, 52 correct - Allen Potential and Capacitance module, O1 and O2 — 88 questions, 77 correct -FIITJEE JEE (Main) archives, Electromagnetic Waves — 12 questions, 10 correct - Allen Waves on a String module, O1 and O2 — 67 questions, 59 correct - FIITJEE JEE (Main) archives, Modern Physics — 40 questions, 34 correct - Allen Gravitation module, O1 and O2 — 61 questions, 55 correct Total: 383/60 questions, 287 correct *FIITJEE includes Potential and Capacitance under Electrostatics, while Allen does not.

Chemistry: - Allen Chemical Thermodynamics module, S1 and S2 — 40 questions, 37 correct - R. N. Sarin, Atomic Structure — 18 questions, 18 correct - R. N. Sarin, Chemical Equilibrium — 11 questions, 11 correct - Allen Halogen Derivatives module, JEE (Advanced) archives — 24 questions, 22 correct Total: 93/60 questions, 88 correct

Mathematics: - Allen Differential Equations module, O1 — 30 questions, 25 correct - Allen Area Under a Curve module, Do Yourself 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and O2 — 51 questions, 46 correct - FIITJEE JEE (Main) archives, Applications of Derivatives — 45 questions, 39 correct - FIITJEE JEE (Main) archives, Determinants — 22 questions, 17 correct - Yellow Book, Complex Numbers, single-choice questions — 20 questions, 17 correct - Pink Book, Ellipses, single-choice questions — 16 questions, 14 correct - Yellow Book, Binomial Theorem, single-choice questions — 15 questions, 12 correct - Pink Book, Hyperbolas, single-choice questions — 21 questions, 18 correct - Allen Functions module, O1 and JEE (Main) archives — 48 questions, 44 correct Total: 268/60 questions, 232 correct

GRAND TOTAL: 744/400 questions, 607 correct

Upcoming tests:

23/06/2024 (next Sunday) — Allen monthly test. Topics: Kinetic Theory of Gases; Physical Thermodynamics; Electrostatics; Potential and Capacitance; Current Electricity; Electromagnetic Induction; Alternating Current; Electromagnetic Waves; Waves on a String; Sound Waves; Ray Optics; Wave Optics; Circle; Functions; Differentiation; Applications of Derivatives; Indefinite Integrals; Definite Integrals; Area Under a Curve; Differential Equations; Matrices; Silicates; Molecules That Do Not Exist; Coordination Chemistry; Metallurgy; Electronic Displacement Effects; Halogen Derivatives; Atomic Structure; Chemical Equilibrium; Solid State; Solutions; Chemical Kinetics; Chemical Thermodynamics. Yeah. I've no idea how I'm going to finish the syllabus in time, since I haven't even started Coordination Chemistry, Metallurgy or Alternating Current — they finished the classes in Allen before I even joined the batch. Anyway, let's see.

That'll be all till next week — see you again!

[smaller-comfort]

2024 fanfic year-in-review!

tagged by @tearitar tagging @ocelly, @kyuohki, and @the-starry-lycan if you want- and anyone else who'd like to!

number of stories posted to ao3: 14- which averages out to more than 1 a month and that's fucking astonishing

word counted posted for last year: 107,457 WHAT. Granted 10k of that was Love Is War which mostly was written in 2010 but STILL.

For some perspective, my total ao3 word count, which includes stuff I wrote going back to 2005, is 144k. That's a 289% increase! what! the! fuck!

fandoms i wrote for: Sea of Stars, The Messenger, Twice Dead King/Warhammer 40k, and Assassin's Creed.

pairings: Aephorul/Resh'an (philosopher's bone(r)); B'st/Resh'an (musical theorems); Oltyx/Yenekh (monster boyfriends); Djoseras/Zultanekh; Altair/Malik/Maria; Monk/Ninja

stories with the most kudos, bookmarks and comment threads: Hilariously, Love Is War has the most kudos. I'm not sure it should count, though. (I promised an update, and I swear I'll do it this year.) Love Is War and A Certain Slant of Light are tied for most bookmarks. And Hotel California has the most comment threads and second-highest kudos, which makes sense because it's got the highest chapter count.

work i’m most proud of (and why): Every time this question comes up I seem to have a different answer- right now I'm  proudest of Love Is Not All, because it was my first exchange fic and I was leery of my ability to finish. It pushed me way out of my comfort zone, and I'm proud of myself for that.

And I think it's a very fun story overall, but my favorite part is the ending- it kind of wraps up with my thesis statements for both characters as they approach biotransference. Djoseras in particular is an extremely difficult character for me to get my head around, and when I wrote out that scene it really helped to make him click in my head. (It's the closing scene, but it was one of the first parts that I wrote.)

work i’m least proud of (and why): I love all my children equally! Once something gets to the point of being posted, I have to be proud of it.

There are certainly places where I think I could improve, but a lot of that comes down to my writing style shifting over the course of the year. I'm still trying to figure out my own voice.

(I'm not that satisfied with the shopkeeper chapter of hotel california)

share or describe a favorite review you received: man. every comment is cherished, but some of the comments/responses to Dreaming Still and A Light Exists In Spring made me cry.  I was in kind of a "crawl into a hole and never speak to anyone ever again" frame of mind when I first posted Dreaming Still, so those comments were the blessed dopamine shot I needed to get my head back in order. And for ALEiS, it was the weirdest/most niche thing I'd written at that point, and I was not expecting such an enthusiastic response. For both of those stories, I had comments that pointed out themes I hadn't even realized I was writing- and as a writer, that's really the most incredible feeling in the world.

Also shout out to that person who comment-spammed most of my SoS fic with tons of quotes and emojis. You are a shining star in the sky, a bright beacon of light in the darkness, I owe you my life/my firstborn/a slice of cake, etc.

Sea of stars fandom has spoiled me rotten when it comes to comments, and I love all of you.

a time when writing was really, really hard:  uggghhhh right now actually. Christmas killed my momentum and now I keep making hissing noises at all of my wips instead of actually writing anything. words r hard, brain iz dumb.

Summer was rough as well, although in retrospect I actually got quite a bit of writing done. My brain was being astonishingly awful for a lot of it.

a scene or character you wrote that surprised you: 

Aephorul, in general. Most of Save Scumming. The way B'st just completely came in with a steel chair and usurped Resh'an's spot as my favorite character- though in retrospect, that shouldn't be surprising, given that he's kind of tailor-made to appeal to me.

The last chapter of Hotel California happened almost entirely by accident. I later found out that the Shopkeeper/Muse theory is a pretty common one, but at the time it made me feel slightly feral. Shared fandom braincell; the games force you to extrapolate a lot, and its very fun to see what conclusions people arrive at independently.

a favourite excerpt of your writing: 

“I don't blame you." Aephorul turned to lean his head against Resh'an's, and press a kiss against his brow. "Not anymore.” “Maybe you believe that, too.” He closed his eyes, listening to the echo of the false heartbeat in Aephorul's body. “And maybe we're both better at lying to ourselves than anyone else ever was.” Aephorul's arms tightened around him. He didn't say anything; there was nothing more to be said. They held each other together, and the stars moved in their slow, inevitable circuit above them.  > Continue? Maybe not quite yet; you can rest here a little longer. You've got all the time in the world.

I get excited whenever I can tie things in different stories/different scenes together. The cyclical mirroring thing that Resh'an and Aephorul do in all my fic is mostly intentional, and kind of integral to the way I approach their characters. So the way the ending to Save Scumming refers back to the ending to Loser Takes All is one of my favorite things about it.

(But I'll be honest, sometimes this happens unintentionally; there's a really funny repetition in YMTE(E) that I didn't catch until after I posted chapter 2, but I actually love that it's there.

Theres that post that's like "sometimes as a reader you just want nine carrot cakes in a row" and I have embraced that philosophy wholeheartedly.)

how did you grow as a writer last year: I wrote so many words! So many. Just an absurd number of words, gosh.

I think I'm getting better at taking risks and being less apologetic about what I write.  Don't get me wrong- I do think I'm hot shit, actually. I'm not reflexively apologizing for the quality of my writing, just the content; the mortifying ordeal of being known gets me every time. I used to get hysterically panicked every time I posted something, and now I don't, mostly. Progress!

how do you hope to grow this year:  I'd like to try writing longer, plottier things; there are some wips (outshine the sun, the obyron/zahndrekh thing) that I've been avoiding because I'm not confident enough in my ability to execute. I'd like to find that confidence.

Also 2025 is the year of the snake so idk I should really write more monsterfucking. Get weirder and hornier about everything, write some new kinks, push myself further out of my comfort zone.

who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer, beta, cheerleader, etc.): so many people. most of what I wrote this year probably wouldn't have happened at all if not for the friends I've made here on tumblr. Fandom is this perpetual game of "yes, and" and it's been a delight getting to play it with all of you.

I struggle a lot with making and maintaining connections with other people in general, so just know that if we've talked or interacted at all over the past year, it means a lot to me.

anything from your real life show up in your writing last year: ahahaha oh god. Well, the setting for my modern AU is really just places I've lived with the serial numbers sandblasted off. And in lieu of doing actual research, I'm just pulling from my own memories of the early 2000s for the college-era au. (It's not autobiographical at all; my memory is so fucked that it's really just vibes at this point anyway. But those vibes specifically are very much 'being queer and closeted during the bush administration wasn't great, actually.')

There's also a bunch of the medical/mental health stuff that comes from my day job, but most of that is pretty obscure. Again, rather than actually doing research, I prefer to just absorb the stuff that's going on around me at any given time. Sometimes this is my growing familiarity with all the ICD-10 F codes, and sometimes this is all the things I wish I didn't know about my coworkers' sex lives. *sighs very, very deeply*

any projects you’re looking to starting (or finishing) this year: I don't really think ahead about starting things; I'm kind of always just flying by the seat of my pants. But I definitely want to write more snecrons, and finish all of my current posted wips. So, Love Is War; the parting is all we know of heaven series (which has an actual plot trajectory, I swear); You, Me, Them, Everybody (Everybody); Devotional. And then there are the wips that haven't gotten posted yet, like all the various Etudes stories, the sequel to Save Scumming, and half a dozen other modern AU things.

I'd love to clean up/expand some of my very old ffvi fic, too. Mostly, I'm looking forward to writing more! It's been a trip; I hope 2025 is just as productive.

[mitigatedchaos]

What are your thoughts on the Coase theorem?

Hold on...

Coase developed his theorem when considering the regulation of radio frequencies. Competing radio stations could use the same frequencies and would therefore interfere with each other's broadcasts. The problem faced by regulators was how to eliminate interference and allocate frequencies to radio stations efficiently. What Coase proposed in 1959[2] was that as long as property rights in these frequencies were well defined, it ultimately did not matter if adjacent radio stations interfered with each other by broadcasting in the same frequency band. Furthermore, it did not matter to whom the property rights were granted. His reasoning was that the station able to reap the higher economic gain from broadcasting would have an incentive to pay the other station not to interfere. In the absence of transaction costs, both stations would strike a mutually advantageous deal. It would not matter which station had the initial right to broadcast; eventually, the right to broadcast would end up with the party that was able to put it to the most highly valued use. Of course, the parties themselves would care who was granted the rights initially because this allocation would impact their wealth, but the result of who broadcasts would not change because the parties would trade to the outcome that was overall most efficient. This counterintuitive insight—that the initial imposition of legal entitlement is irrelevant because the parties will eventually reach the same result—is Coase's invariance thesis.

OK, sure, assuming that the wealth from the initial allocation of property rights does not alter subsequent performance, then if Radio Broadcaster A does a regular performance worth $100,000, and Radio Broadcaster B does a regular performance worth $10,000, then we would expect Radio Broadcaster A to just buy the rights from Radio Broadcaster B, assuming that B is willing to sell.

But-

Coase's main point, clarified in his article 'The Problem of Social Cost[1],' published in 1960 and cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1991, was that transaction costs, however, could not be neglected, and therefore, the initial allocation of property rights often mattered.

Ok, yeah.

Transaction costs are everywhere, and initial wealth allocations may have significant effects on production efficiency (e.g. from economies of scale, or a firm's ability to hire talent) resulting in path dependence. At the same time, a lot of economics is about rates (such as the rate at which a house breaks down), so we can still expect a flow of property rights depending on thresholds.

I would say that transaction costs are not uniform.

We should expect a "Coasean correction" to be more likely when transaction costs are a small percentage of the transaction, and less likely when transaction costs are a large percentage of the transaction.

Let's setup another scenario.

There is a town where the shipping cost of importing cheese is $1/lb. The outside market price for cheese is $2/lb. As such, imported cheese costs a total of $3/lb. The city offers a monopoly on local cheese-making to 3 firms: { A: $10 -> 1 lb, B: $2.50 -> 1 lb, C: $2.19 -> 1 lb }.

Firm A is much more likely to sell off the cheesemaking rights than either firm B or firm C, because it can't sell at the local market price ($3/lb). Because the difference in profit margins between B and C is smaller, the movement from B to C is more likely to be subject to other considerations rather than just cheesemaking efficiency, such as capital costs, verification costs, profits or risks compared to other industries, and so on.

We could imagine, for example, that the town has a tiny market where only 12 lbs of cheese is sold annually, so the difference is only $3.72. Would it take longer than 15 minutes to decide to enter the market? Alternatively, we could imagine that cheesemaking is a very capital-intensive industry, so it's not worth firm C building an entire second factory to compete after firm B builds the first one.

Another, more refined, normative conclusion also often discussed in law and economics is that government should create institutions that minimize transaction costs, so as to allow misallocations of resources to be corrected as cheaply as possible.

Government can increase production by reducing friction, certainly. Acting as an external (and more neutral) enforcer for property rights is actually one of the chief ways that they do so.

Overall, I would say that this argument feels more like it's meant to be deployed against people who argue that "we shouldn't establish property rights to the radio spectrum," because "the initial allocation is too difficult to determine and won't be perfect."

In his later writings, Coase himself expressed frustration that his theorem was often misunderstood. Some mistakenly understood the theorem to mean that markets would always achieve efficient results when transaction costs were low, when in reality his point was almost the exact opposite: because transaction costs are never zero, it cannot be assumed that any institutional arrangement will necessarily be efficient. Others have argued that because transaction costs are never zero it is always appropriate for a government to intervene and regulate, though Coase believed that economists and politicians "tended to over-estimate the advantages which come from governmental regulation."[9] What Coase actually argued is, that it is important to always compare alternative institutional arrangements to see which would come closest to "the unattainable ideal of the world of zero transaction costs."[10]

Uh-huh. "Guys, please stop flattening my theory."

[nextengineer]

SSC JE 2025: Complete Guide with Syllabus for Civil and Electrical Engineering

The Staff Selection Commission (SSC) conducts junior engineer (JE) exam every year for recruitment of engineers to different departments under India's government. The SSC JE 2025 exam is expected to follow a similar pattern as previous years, but with updated courses and guidelines. This article provides detailed information on SSC JE 2025, including the SSC JE 2025 course, qualification and specific details for civil engineering and electrical engineering branches.

What is SSC JE 2025?

SSC JE 2025 is a competitive examination conducted by the Staff Selection Commission to recruit Junior Engineers in government departments like CPWD, MES, BRO, and others. The exam is open for candidates with diplomas or degrees in Civil, Mechanical, or Electrical Engineering.

This is a golden opportunity for aspiring engineers to secure a stable job in the central government with good pay, job security, and career growth.

SSC JE 2025 Eligibility Criteria

Before applying, candidates must ensure they meet the basic eligibility:

Nationality: Must be a citizen of India.

Age Limit: Varies by department, typically between 18 to 32 years. Relaxations apply for reserved categories.

Educational Qualification: Diploma or degree in Civil, Mechanical, or Electrical Engineering from a recognized university.

SSC JE 2025 Exam Pattern

The SSC JE exam is conducted in two phases:

Paper 1 (Objective Type)

General Intelligence and Reasoning – 50 marks

General Awareness – 50 marks

Part A (Civil) or Part B (Electrical/Mechanical) – 100 marks Total: 200 marks | Duration: 2 hours

Paper 2 (Descriptive Type)

Subject-specific (Civil/Electrical/Mechanical) – 300 marks Duration: 2 hours

SSC JE 2025 Syllabus Overview

The SSC JE 2025 syllabus is divided into common subjects and branch-specific subjects. While Paper 1 tests general reasoning and awareness, Paper 2 focuses purely on technical knowledge.

Let’s look at the detailed syllabus for Civil and Electrical Engineering.

SSC JE 2025 Civil Engineering Syllabus

Paper 1 – General Sections : SSC JE 2025 Civil Engineering Syllabus

General Intelligence & Reasoning

Analogies, similarities, differences

Space visualization

Problem-solving, analysis, judgment

Arithmetical reasoning, syllogisms

General Awareness

Current events

India and its neighboring countries

History, culture, geography, economic scene

Scientific Research and Indian Constitution

Paper 1 – Civil Engineering

Building Materials

Estimating, Costing, and Valuation

Surveying

Soil Mechanics

Hydraulics

Irrigation Engineering

Transportation Engineering

Environmental Engineering

Paper 2 – Civil Engineering (Descriptive)

RCC Design

Steel Design

Theory of Structures

Concrete Technology

Water Supply and Sanitation

Highway Engineering

Construction Management

CPM and PERT

Fluid Mechanics

Building Planning and Drawing

SSC JE 2025 Electrical Engineering Syllabus

Paper 1 – General Sections

(Same as above for General Intelligence & Reasoning and General Awareness)

Paper 1 – Electrical Engineering

Basic Concepts of Electrical Engineering

Circuit Law (Ohm’s Law, Kirchhoff’s Law)

Magnetic Circuit

AC Fundamentals

Measurement and Measuring Instruments

Electrical Machines

Fractional Kilowatt Motors and Single Phase Induction Motors

Generation, Transmission, and Distribution

Estimation and Costing

Utilization of Electrical Energy

Basic Electronics

Paper 2 – Electrical Engineering (Descriptive)

Detailed theory of Electrical Machines (DC, AC)

Power Systems and Protection

Transmission Lines and Cables

Control Systems

Electrical Measurements

Power Electronics and Drives

Microprocessors and Digital Electronics

Energy Efficiency and Renewable Sources

Circuit Analysis using Theorems

Tips to Prepare for SSC JE 2025

Understand the Syllabus: Go through the SSC JE 2025 syllabus carefully and mark high-weightage topics.

Follow a Study Schedule: Make a realistic timetable covering theory, practice, and revision.

Solve Previous Year Papers: Analyze past questions to understand the pattern and difficulty level.

Mock Tests: Attempt regular mock tests to improve time management and accuracy.

Use Standard Books: Refer to trusted authors and publications. For Civil, books by EA Publication.

Why SSC JE is a Good Career Option?

Government Job Security: Permanent position under central government departments.

Attractive Pay Scale: Basic pay of Level 6 (Rs. 35,400 – Rs. 1,12,400) plus allowances.

Work-Life Balance: Regular working hours with job satisfaction.

Promotions & Growth: Opportunity to rise to senior technical roles.

Conclusion

The SSC JE 2025 exam offers a prestigious and safe career path for civilian and electric engineers. With the right preparation strategy, SSC JE 2025 Understanding the course and continuous practice, candidates can clean the exam with flying colors.

Be sure to stay up to date with official information from the SSC website and start your preparations to stay ahead of competition quickly. Whether you target the SSC JE 2025 Civil Engineering Plan or SSC JE 2025 Electrical Syllabus, structured preparation is the key to success.

FAQs

Q1. What is the age limit for SSC JE 2025?

The general age limit is 18 to 32 years. However, it may vary depending on the department and category of the candidate. Age relaxation is applicable as per government rules.

Q2. Can diploma holders apply for SSC JE 2025?

Yes, candidates with a diploma in Civil, Electrical, or Mechanical Engineering from a recognized institute can apply.

Q3. Is there any interview in SSC JE 2025?

No, there is no interview. Selection is based on the marks obtained in Paper 1 and Paper 2.

Q4. How many attempts are allowed for SSC JE?

There is no limit on the number of attempts, but candidates must fulfill the age and eligibility criteria.

Q5. Is the SSC JE 2025 syllabus the same for all branches?

No. While the general subjects are the same in Paper 1, the technical syllabus differs for Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering.

[cutepg]

CUET PG Mathematics 2025: A Comprehensive Guide to Previous Year Question Papers and Preparation for the Upcoming Exam

As the CUET PG 2025 exam draws nearer, aspiring candidates are increasingly looking for ways to optimize their preparation and boost their chances of securing top ranks. One crucial aspect of successful exam preparation is understanding the pattern of the exam and practicing with previous year question papers (PYQs). In this blog, we will delve into the significance of CUET PG Mathematics question papers, explore the format of the 2024 exam, and provide helpful tips on using past papers to excel in the CUET PG Mathematics exam.

Why Previous Year Question Papers Matter

When preparing for competitive exams like CUET PG Previous Year Question Papers (PYQs) serve as one of the most valuable resources. By solving these papers, candidates can:

Understand the Exam Pattern: Analyzing past papers gives students a clear picture of the types of questions asked, the distribution of marks, and the overall difficulty level of the exam.

Identify Important Topics: Some topics may frequently appear in previous years’ papers. Focusing on these topics can help students allocate their study time more effectively.

Improve Time Management: Practicing with PYQs allows candidates to develop a strategy for managing their time during the exam, as they become familiar with the pace required to complete the test.

Build Confidence: Solving multiple papers provides exposure to the exam format and builds confidence in handling different question types, reducing exam anxiety.

What to Expect in CUET PG Mathematics 2025

The CUET PG Mathematics exam for 2025 will be similar to previous years, consisting of two sections: Section A and Section B. Here's a closer look at the key details:

Section A: This section will feature 75 questions from core mathematics topics, including Algebra, Calculus, Differential Equations, Probability, and Real Analysis.

Section B: The second section will have 75 domain-specific questions focusing on areas such as Linear Algebra, Geometry, and Mathematical Logic.

Each question carries four marks, and there will be negative marking for incorrect answers (one mark will be deducted for each wrong answer). The total marks for the exam will be 300.

CUET PG Mathematics Previous Year Question Papers are essential tools for understanding how questions are framed, especially in relation to these core sections.

The Importance of CUET PG Mathematics Previous Year Question Papers

To kickstart your preparation, it's critical to go through the CUET PG Mathematics previous year question papers. These papers can help you get acquainted with the types of questions you can expect, along with the difficulty level and weightage of different topics.

CUET PG Maths Question Paper 2024 will likely follow a similar format to previous years. By solving the previous years' papers, you'll notice recurring themes and question patterns, which can guide you in focusing on the most important topics. A few notable areas of focus are:

Algebra: Look for questions related to matrices, eigenvalues, and determinants, which have been recurring topics in previous exams.

Calculus: Ensure you are well-versed in differentiation, integration, and limit problems, as these often appear.

Probability and Statistics: Pay attention to questions on probability distributions, Bayes' theorem, and statistical methods, which are frequent in both Section A and Section B.

Differential Equations: Understanding first and second-order differential equations and their applications is critical for this section.

By practicing with these papers, you will gain an edge over the competition, helping you identify the sections where you need more focus and ultimately improving your performance.

Where to Find CUET PG Mathematics Previous Year Question Papers

You can find the CUET PG Mathematics question paper for previous years on educational platforms and websites offering downloadable PDFs. At IFAS Edtech, we provide access to CUET PG Mathematics previous year question papers that can be downloaded directly, enabling students to solve them at their convenience.

Additionally, educational apps and coaching institutes often offer collections of past question papers, which might include explanations or solutions to help students understand the answers better.

Download CUET PG Mathematics Question Paper 2024 PDF

For those looking to access the CUET PG Mathematics question paper 2024 PDF download, many online resources provide these in an easily accessible format. This will allow you to simulate exam conditions, further honing your problem-solving skills.

Tips for Using Previous Year Question Papers Effectively

Set a Timetable: Try to solve one previous year question paper every week as part of your study routine. Make sure to complete it within the time limit to simulate exam conditions.

Analyze Your Performance: After attempting each paper, take the time to review your answers. Identify the areas where you made mistakes, and revise those topics thoroughly.

Track Progress: Keep track of your scores on each attempt and compare them to see if you are improving. Regular analysis can help identify weak areas that need more focus.

Practice with a Purpose: While solving papers, try to focus on accuracy rather than speed. Ensuring that you understand each solution will strengthen your grasp of key mathematical concepts.

Conclusion: Prepare for Success in CUET PG Mathematics 2025

The CUET PG Mathematics exam in 2025 is highly competitive, but with the right preparation, you can achieve your desired results. Using CUET PG Mathematics previous year question papers is an excellent strategy to familiarize yourself with the exam format and boost your confidence. Be sure to practice regularly, focus on key topics, and utilize available resources to enhance your understanding of the subject.

As you prepare, remember that consistent practice, especially with CUET PG Maths PYQs, is the key to success. Stay focused, make use of the right resources, and approach the exam with a clear strategy to perform your best on exam day.

[tseneipgam]

"The women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people's names. Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggesting massive insurance coverage."

"an elderly man named Treadwell who lives on the edge of town. He is known as Old Man Treadwell, as if he were a landmark, a rock formation or brooding swamp."

" It seemed to me that Babette and I, in the mass and variety of our purchases, in the sheer plenitude those crowded bags suggested, the weight and size and number, the familiar package designs and vivid lettering, the giant sizes, the family bargain packs with Day-Glo sale stickers, in the sense of replenishment we felt, the sense of well-being, the security and contentment these products brought to some snug home in our souls--it seemed we had achieved a fullness of being that is not known to people who need less, expect less, who plan their lives around lonely walks in the evening."

"A woman in a yellow slicker held up traffic to let some children cross. I pictured her in a soup commercial taking off her oilskin hat as she entered the cheerful kitchen where her hus- band stood over a pot of smoky lobster bisque, a smallish man with six weeks to live."

"Look at the windshield," I said. "Is that rain or isn't it?" "I'm only telling you what they said." "Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses." "Our senses? Our senses are wrong a lot more often than they're right. This has been proved in the laboratory. Don't you know about all those theorems that say nothing is what it seems? There's no past, present or future outside our own mind. The so-called laws of motion are a big hoax. Even sound can trick the mind. Just because you don't hear a sound doesn't mean it's not out there. Dogs can hear it. Other animals. And I'm sure there are sounds even dogs can't hear. But they exist in the air, in waves. Maybe they never stop. High, high, high-pitched. Coming from somewhere." "Is it raining," I said, "or isn't it?" "I wouldn't want to have to say." "What if someone held a gun to your head?" "Who, you?" "Someone. A man in a trenchcoat and smoky glasses. He holds a gun to your head and says, 'Is it raining or isn't it? All you have to do is tell the truth and I'll put away my gun and take the next flight out of here.'" "What truth does he want? Does he want the truth of someone traveling at almost the speed of light in another galax? Does he want the truth of someone in orbit around a neutron star? "

"Heinrich's mother lives in an ashram now. She has taken the name Mother Devi and runs the business end of things. The ashram is located on the outskirts of the former copper-smelting town of Tubb, Montana, now called Dharamsalapur. The usual rumors abound of sexual freedom, sexual slavery, drugs, nudity, mind control, poor hygiene, tax evasion, monkey-worship, tor- ture, prolonged and hideous death."

"

"If it pleases you, then I like to do it." "But it has to please you too, Baba. Otherwise how would I feel?" "It pleases me that you enjoy my reading." "I get the feeling a burden is being shifted back and forth. The burden of being the one who is pleased." "I want to read, Jack. Honestly. "Are you totally and completely sure? Because if you're not, we absolutely won't." Someone turned on the TV set at the end of the hall, and a woman's voice said: "If it breaks easily into pieces, it is called shale. When wet, it smells like clay." We listened to the gently plummeting stream of nighttime traffic. I said, "Pick your century. Do you want to read about Etruscan slave girls, Georgian rakes? I think we have some literature on flagellation brothels. What about the Middle Ages? We have incubi and succubi. Nuns galore. "Whatever's best for you. "I want you to choose. It's sexier that way." "One person chooses, the other reads. Don't we want a balance, a sort of give-and-take? Isn't that what makes it sexy?" "A tautness, a suspense. First-rate. I will choose." "I will read," she said. "But I don't want you to choose anything that has men inside women, quote-quote, or men entering women. I entered her.' He entered me.' We're not lobbies or elevators. I wanted him inside me, as if he could crawl completely in, sign the register, sleep, eat, so forth. Can we agree on that? I don't care what these people do as long as they don't enter or get entered."

"They had to evacuate the grade school on Tuesday. Kids were getting headaches and eye irritations, tasting metal in their mouths. A teacher rolled on the floor and spoke foreign lan- guages. No one knew what was wrong. Investigators said it could be the ventilating system, the paint or varnish, the foam insula- tion, the electrical insulation, the cafeteria food, the rays emitted by micro-computers, the asbestos fireproofing, the adhesive on shipping containers, the fumes from the chlorinated pool, or perhaps something deeper, finer-grained, more closely woven into the basic state of things."

"

"Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there 1 am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to go there in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much les Montana next summer? It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a person and what's some neuron ..."

"There were strained silences before and after each lesson. I tried to make small talk, get him to discuss his years as a chiropractor, his life before German. He would look off into the middle distance, not angry or bored or evasive-_just detached, free of the connectedness of events, it seemed. When he did speak, about the other boarders or the landlord, there was something querulous in his voice, a drawn-out note of complaint. It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point."

"

chair. I turned to meteorology for comfort. I read weather maps, collected books on weather. attended launchings of weather balloons. I realized weather was something I'd been looking for all my life. It brought me a sense of peace and security l'd never experienced. Dew, frost and fog. Snow flurries. The jet stream. I believe there is a grandeur in the jet stream. I began to come out of my shell, talk to people in the street. 'Nice day. Looks like rain.' Hot enough for you? Everyone notices the weather. First thing on rising, you go to the window, look at the weather. You do it, I do it. I made a list of goals I hoped to achieve in meteorology. I took a correspon- dence course, got a degree to teach the subject in buildings with a legal occupancy of less than one hundred. I've taught meteor- ology in church basements, in trailer parks, in people's dens and living rooms. They came to hear me in Millers Creek, Lumber- ville, Watertown. Factory workers, housewives, merchants, members of the police and the fire. I saw something in their eyes. A hunger, a compelling need."

"

"They go to Hawaii," Denise told Steffe, "and wait for these tidal waves to come from Japan. They're called origamis "And the movie was called The Long Hot Summer. her mother said. "The Long Hot Summer," Heinrich said, "happens to be a play by Tennessee Ernie Williams." "It doesn't matter," Babette said, ' "because you can't copy- right titles anyway." "If she's an African," Steffe said, "I wonder if she ever rode a camel " "Try an Audi Turbo." "Try a Toyota Supra." "What is it camels store in their humps?" Babette said. "Food or water? I could never get that straight." "There are one-hump camels and two-hump camels," Hein- rich told her. "So it depends which kind vou're talking about. "Are you telling me a two-hump camel stores food in one hump and water in the other?" "The important thing about camels." he said, "is that camel meat is considered a delicacy." "I thought that was alligator meat," Denise said. "Who introduced the camel to America?" Babette said. "They had them out west for a while to carry supplies to coolies who were building the great railroads that met at Ogden, Utah I remember my history exams." "Are you sure you're not talking about llamas?" Heinrich said. "The llama stayed in Peru," Denise said. "Peru has the llama, the vicuña and one other animal. Bolivia has tin. Chile has copper and iron." "T'll give anyone in this car five dollars," Heinrich said, "if they can name the population of Bolivia." "Bolivians," my daughter said. The family is the cradle of the world's misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The

"After a night of dream-lit snows the air turned clear and still. There was a taut blue quality in the January light, a hardness and confidence. The sound of boots on packed snow, the contrails streaked cleanly in the high sky. Weather was very much the point, although I didn't know it at first. I turned into our street and walked past men bent over shovels in their driveways, breathing vapor. A squirrel moved along a limb in a flowing motion, a passage so continuous it seemed to be its own physical law, different from the ones we've learned to trust. "

"These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it's the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters. People in low-lying areas get the floods, people in shanties get the hurricanes and tornados. I'm a college professor. Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods? We live in a neat and pleasant town near a college with a quaint name. These things don't happen in places like Blacksmith."

"

wit's like we've been flung back in time," he said. "Here we are in the Stone Age, knowing all these great things after centuries of progress but what can we do to make life easier for the Stone Agers? Can we make a refrigerator? Can we even explain how it works? What is electricity? What is lighte We experience these things every day of our lives but what good does it do if we find ourselves hurled back in time and we can't even tell people the basic principles much less actually make something that would improve conditions. Name one thing vou could make. Could you make a simple wooden match that you could strike on a rock to make a flame? We think we're so great and modern. Moon landings, artificial hearts. But what if you were hurled into a time warp and came face to face with the ancient Greeks. The Greeks invented trigonometry. They did autopsies and dissections. What could you tell an ancient Greek that he couldn't say, 'Big deal.' Could you tell him about the atom? Atom is a Greek word. The Greeks knew that the major events in the universe can't be seen by the eve of man. It's waves, it's rays, it's particles." "We're doing all right. "We're sitting in this huge moldy room. It's like we're Aung back." "We have heat, we have light." "These are Stone Age things. They had heat and light. They had fire. They rubbed flints together and made sparks. Could you rub flints together? Would you know a flint if vou saw one? If a Stoner Ager asked you what a nucleotide is, could you tell him? How do we make carbon paper? What is glass? If you came awake tomorrow in the Middle Ages and there was an epidemic raging, what could you do to stop it, knowing what you know about the progress of medicines and diseases? Here it is practi- cally the twenty-first century and you've read hundreds of books and magazines and seen a hundred TV shows about science and medicine. Could you tell those people one little crucial thing that might save a million and a half lives?" "'Boil your water,' I'd tell them." "Sure. What about 'Wash behind your ears.' That's about as good"

""Any episodes of déjà vu in your group?" "Wife and daughter," I said. "There's a theory about déjà vu." "I don't want to hear it." Why do we think these things happened before? Simple. They did happen before, in our minds, as visions of the future. Because these are precognitions, we can't fit the material into our system of consciousness as it is now structured. This is basically supernatural stuff. We're seeing into the future but haven't learned how to process the experience. So it stays hidden until the precognition comes true, until we come face to face with the event. Now we are free to remember it, to experience it as familiar material."

""This is the big new worry," he said. "Forget spills, fallouts, leakages. It's the things right around you in your own house that'll get you sooner or later. It's the electrical and magnetic fields. Who in this room would believe me if I said that the suicide rate hits an all-time record among people who live near high-voltage power lines? What makes these people so sad and depressed? Just the sight of ugly wires and utility poles? Or does something happen to their brain cells from being exposed to constant rays?"

"Grappa had a round moist worried face. There was something in it of a sweet boy betrayed. I watched him light up a cigarette, shake out the match and toss it into Murray's salad. "How much pleasure did you take as a kid," Lasher said, "in imagining yourself dead?" "Never mind as a kid," Grappa said. "I still do it all the time. Whenever I'm upset over something, I imagine all my friends, relatives and colleagues gathered at my bier. They are very, very sorry they weren't nicer to me while I lived. Self-pity is some- thing I've worked very hard to maintain. Why abandon it just because you grow up? Self-pity is something that children are very good at, which must mean it is natural and important.

Imagining yourself dead is the cheapest, sleaziest, most satisfying form of childish self-pity. How sad and remorseful and guilty all those people are, standing by your great bronze coffin. They can't even look each other in the eye because they know that the death of this decent and compassionate man is the result of a conspiracy they all took part in. The coffin is banked with flowers and lined with a napped fabric in salmon or peach. What wonderful cross-currents of self-pity and self-esteem you are able to wallow in, seeing yourself laid out in a dark suit and tie, looking tanned, fit and rested, as they say of presidents after vacations. But there is something even more childish and satis- fying than self-pity, something that explains why I try to see myself dead on a regular basis, a great fellow surrounded by sniveling mourners. It is my way of punishing people for thinking their own lives are more important than mine.'"

"

I see these car crashes as part of a long tradition of American optimism. They are positive events, full of the old 'can-do' spirit. Each car crash is meant to be better than the last. There is a constant upgrading of tools and skills, a meeting of challenges. A director says, I need this flatbed truck to do a midair double somersault that produces an orange ball of fire with a thirty-six- foot diameter, which the cinematographer will use to light the scene. I tell my students if they want to bring technology into it, they have to take this into account, this tendency toward grandiose deeds, toward pursuing a dream."

"It turned out to be a functional pale brick building, one story, with slab floors and bright lighting. Why would such a place be called Autumn Harvest Farms? Was this an attempt to balance the heartlessness of their gleaming precision equipment? Would a quaint name fool us into thinking we live in pre-cancerous times? What kind of condition might we expect to have diagnosed in a facility called Autumn Harvest Farms? Whooping cough, croup? A touch of the grippe? Familiar old farmhouse miseries calling for bed rest, a deep chest massage with soothing Vicks VapoRub Would someone read to us from David Copperfield?"

"

"How do I get around it?" I said. "You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens uni- versal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature." "It is?" "It's what we invented to conceal the terrible secret of our decaying bodies. But it's also life, isn't it? It prolongs life, it provides new organs for those that wear out. New devices, new techniques every day. Lasers, masers, ultrasound. Give yourself up to it, Jack. Believe in it. They'll insert you in a gleaming tube, irradiate your body with the basic stuff of the universe. Light, energy, dreams. God's own goodness." "I don't think I want to see any doctors for a while, Murray, thanks."

"

"We start our lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. The efforts of a huge and powerful government are brought to bear on a ceremony that will shed the last trace of chaos. If all goes well, if they bring it off, some natural law of perfection is obeyed. The nation is delivered from anxiety, the deceased's life is redeemed, life itself is strengthened, reaffirmed." "Are you sure?" I said. "To plot, to take aim at something, to shape time and space. This is how we advance the art of human consciousness"

"

"That's what it all comes down to in the end," he said. "A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?" I threw away picture-frame wire, metal book ends, cork coasters, plastic key tags, dusty bottles of Mercurochrome and Vaseline, crusted paintbrushes, caked shoe brushes, clotted cor- rection fluid. I threw away candle stubs, laminated placemats, frayed pot holders. I went after the padded clothes hangers, the magnetic memo clipboards. I was in a vengeful and near savage state. I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they'd put me in this fix. They'd dragged me down, made escape impossible. The two girls followed me around, observing a respecttul silence. I threw away my battered khaki canteen, my ridiculous hip boots. I threw away diplomas, certificates, awards and citations. When the girls stopped me, I was working the bathrooms, discarding used bars of soap, damp towels, shampoo bottles with streaked labels and missing caps."

[coming-up-with-usernames-is-hard]

PhD Blog Week 3

First full week of courses, and I'm suddenly very busy!

Reading

Not much this week, read part of the next chapter of Date's Solitons

Courses

Lie Theory: looked at nilpotent/solvable/simple/semisimple Lie algebras and some basic theorems regarding these special cases

Conformal Field Theory and Vertex Operator Algebras: defined conformal transformations and classified all conformal transformations of ℝ²/ℂ/S². Heavy on the differential geometry at the start, but it looks like the next lecture will be introducing all of the physics

Differential Topology: Defined a manifold, and just about squeezed the definition of the tangent space into the end of the lecture. Slower pace than I feared given that manifolds are considered a prerequisite

Talks

Spent a lot of time this week learning algebraic geometry, a subject I've never studied, so I can give a talk on something next week. It's time consuming because to understand a single sentence I need to look up definitions, and to understand each of those definitions I need to look up more definitions...

PG seminar was "nuking mosquitos" (based on this math overflow question) using powerful results in areas of maths to prove trivial results. My favourite was proving that the sum of the degrees of the nodes of a graph is even (because every edge has two ends) using a generating function and a multidimensional version of Cauchy's formula to count the number, N, of graphs of total degree k. It turns out that by parameterising the integral around the contour starting at opposite sides you get a factor of exp(ikπ) difference between the two results for N, and so if k is odd then N must be zero

Reading Groups

Complex Geometry: We looked at the preliminary material needed to define the Bruhat decomposition, we should finish this week with this result, and then I'll have to apply that in my talk the following week

Infinity Categories: We looked at the motivation for infinity categories, mostly homotopy theory, which I'm not well versed in. We defined simplicial sets and looked at how they can be used as a model for (∞, 1)-categories

Supervisor Meeting

Met with my supervisors and a new postdoc, spent most of the meeting with one of my supervisors setting out the details of a proposed research area. We defined fermionic Fock spaces and looked at how it relates to combinatorial data such as Young diagrams and symmetric functions. My task this week was to make notes summarising this and chase down any errors, most of which arose from conflicting conventions across the books we're using

Teaching

TA'd three first year classes and a second year class. Talking to one of the students before the second year class he asked how I was finding the course this year, and I had to break it to him that I was the TA, so I was finding it ok

Ended the week with a party to celebrate teaching this year, although most PhD students turned up, you can't just have free food and drink and not expect them to take advantage of it!

[mrdanielwill0]

Daniel Will Combines Kelly Criterion and Bayes' Theorem

The most important aspect in investing is when to commit significant capital.

The essence of substantial losses lies in placing heavy bets on assets where they shouldn't be placed!

In 2022, the U.S. investment firm Archegos Capital Management incurred massive losses of billions of dollars due to misjudged investments. The founder, Bill Hwang, overestimated the valuation of Chinese internet companies, leading to significant losses. Placing too many chips on a single overvalued asset ultimately resulted in a margin call due to China's internet anti-monopoly actions.

In 2008, the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers suffered substantial losses of billions of dollars due to misplaced bets. The bank undervalued subprime mortgage-backed securities during its investment, leading to massive losses.

These cases highlight that the essence of substantial losses lies in misjudging investments. Investors should carefully assess the value of investment targets and avoid excessive bets.

The Kelly Criterion, proposed by John L. Kelly Jr. in 1956, initially designed to address signal noise in the telecommunications industry, was later found applicable to gambling and investment, especially in determining bet or investment sizes.

The core of this formula is to maximize long-term growth rates, aiming to balance risk and reward, avoiding bankruptcy from overly large bets while maximizing capital increase.

In essence, the Kelly Criterion calculates the proportion of funds one should wager to maximize the long-term expected growth rate of the investment portfolio. If the result is positive, one should place a bet; if negative, one should avoid betting.

The significance of the Kelly Criterion is that, during each bet, investors should allocate funds to assets with a win rate higher than the odds.

In investing, investors can use the Kelly Criterion to calculate the optimal bet size. However, the Kelly Criterion has a drawback: it assumes investors are entirely rational. In reality, investors are often influenced by emotions, leading to irrational decisions.

In the investment field, the Kelly Criterion helps investors decide how much capital to invest in a single asset or gamble, considering odds and win rates to reduce risk and increase potential returns. However, in practical application, there are several points to note:

1. Accuracy of estimation: The output of the Kelly Criterion highly depends on accurate estimates of win rate (p) and odds (b). If these parameters are inaccurate, the suggested values by the Kelly Criterion may not be optimal.

2. Long-term application: The Kelly Criterion is designed for long-term growth. Short-term fluctuations may involve significant volatility, requiring investors to have corresponding risk tolerance.

3. Fractional Kelly: To reduce volatility and risk, many investors and gamblers opt for a fractional Kelly strategy, investing only a portion of the recommended amount (e.g., half or one-fourth).

While a powerful theoretical tool, the Kelly Criterion is not always the best practical choice, especially when an individual's risk appetite, capital amount, or ability to estimate probabilities does not perfectly match the assumptions of the Kelly Criterion. Therefore, many investors consider the Kelly Criterion as one reference among several, rather than the sole investment decision tool.

Let's interpret the Kelly Criterion through a simplified investment example:

Suppose you have an opportunity to invest in a stock with a 60% probability of rising, providing a 50% return when it rises and a 50% loss when it falls. Now, we need to decide the proportion of your total capital to invest in this stock.

First, define the parameters in the Kelly Criterion:

· b is the net gain rate of the bet, here 50% or 0.5.

· p is the probability of winning, here 60% or 0.6.

· q is the probability of losing, here 40% or 0.4.

Plug these values into the Kelly Criterion:

As the result f∗ is negative, following the Kelly criterion, you shouldn't invest in this stock because it is expected to incur losses in the long term.

Now, let's alter the conditions. If the probability of the stock rising remains at 60%, but if it rises, you can gain a 100% return, and if it falls, you lose 50%.

Now, the parameters for the Kelly Criterion are:

· b is 1 (or 100% return).

· p remains 0.6.

· q remains 0.4.

Plug in the values:

The result f∗=0.2 indicates that to maximize your long-term growth rate, you should invest 20% of your total capital in this stock.

Remember, the Kelly Criterion provides the theoretically optimal solution for maximizing capital growth. However, in practice, factors such as risk tolerance and liquidity must also be considered. Many investors may choose to invest less than 20% of their capital to reduce risk.

The Kelly Criterion and Bayes' Theorem are both important decision-making tools in investing, although they address different types of problems. Let's explain their applications in investment decisions through examples.

Investment Application Example of the Kelly Criterion:

Suppose you are considering investing in a startup technology company. This company will either succeed, bringing substantial returns to investors, or fail, resulting in a total loss. After analyzing the company's business model, market potential, and team background, you estimate a 30% probability of the company's success. If successful, the return on investment will be three times the initial investment; if it fails, you will lose the entire investment.

Here:

Investment Application Example of Bayes' Theorem:

Bayes' Theorem is a method for updating prior probabilities based on new evidence or information. Suppose you are investing in large-cap stocks in an industry typically closely related to macroeconomic indicators. Initially, you might have a prior belief (probability) based on historical data and analysis that, in the current economic environment, the probability of this stock performing well in the next quarter is 60%. However, the latest employment data unexpectedly improves, a strong indicator of the stock's positive performance.

Using Bayes' Theorem, you can update the probability of the stock performing well. If historical data shows that, when similar employment data is announced, the probability of the stock performing well is 80%.

Therefore, considering the new employment data, with the Bayesian update, you now believe the probability of the stock performing well this quarter is 96%.

In investment decisions, the Kelly Criterion helps you determine the optimal investment ratio based on your win rate and odds, while Bayes' Theorem helps you update your probability assessment of an event based on new evidence. Both are powerful tools in investment decision-making, aiding investors in making more informed decisions amid uncertainty.

From a probability theory perspective, combining the Kelly Criterion and Bayes' Theorem, how to increase the expected return of the portfolio and when to place significant bets?

The Kelly Criterion and Bayes' Theorem are crucial tools in decision theory, particularly in investment decisions. Combining these two tools can allow for more sophisticated portfolio management, potentially increasing the expected return of the portfolio.

Combined Use:

1. Prior Probability Assessment: Use Bayes' Theorem to assess prior returns and risks for each investment. Collect market data, historical performance, economic indicators, and other relevant information as evidence to update your beliefs about asset returns.

2. Posterior Probability Updates: Continuously update posterior probabilities of asset returns using Bayes' Theorem as market conditions change and new information emerges. This helps you quickly adapt to market fluctuations.

3. Capital Allocation: Use the Kelly Criterion to determine how much capital to invest in each asset based on updated probabilities. This optimization allows you to refine your investment portfolio according to the latest market information and your beliefs about future market performance.

4. Risk Management: Utilize the Kelly Criterion to avoid overinvesting, maintaining risk control even in high-odds situations. This is because the Kelly Criterion considers the probability of failure as a crucial parameter in capital allocation.

Combining the Kelly Criterion and Bayes' Theorem can help investors increase the expected return of the portfolio while maintaining risk control. However, caution is needed in practical application, as accurate estimation of returns and probabilities is required, and the ability to adapt to new information poses a significant challenge to investors' judgment and execution.

Investment opportunities validated through Bayes' Theorem and the Kelly Criterion are often the most worthwhile opportunities to place significant bets.

If the odds are high but the win rate is low, it may not be worth risking too much, as in the long term, you may lose more times than you win. Conversely, if the win rate is high but the odds are low, it may not be worth investing too much, as losses could be significant when you do lose.

Only when both the odds and win rate are relatively high will the Kelly Criterion recommend investing a larger amount of capital – this is when it's worth placing significant bets.

With such complex formulas, personal calculations are impractical. Hence, the AI application tool named "FinTech&AI Turbo" from the AI Wealth Club, powered by super AI, accomplishes this task excellently.

Whether in the stock market or the cryptocurrency market, especially in cryptocurrency contract trading, maximizing profits can be achieved. Place bets wisely for returns!

[gamingavickreyauction]

@max1461 I have another criticism of the diffuse harms point which I think is stronger. This time with harms being diffuse over probability space rather than people (I'm not sure if you approach those cases differently?).

A lottery is a probability distribution of states of the world. Following the Von Neumann Morgenstern Theorem, any total preferences of a set of lotteries can be represented as the expected value of a utility function on the set of world-states, if it meets three conditions:

Your preferences are a total order- that is, they are transitive and always either A>=B or A<=B

Consistency with nested lotteries- If you prefer lottery A to B, then you also prefer a lottery where you get the outcome of A with probability p and otherwise C to a lottery where you get the outcome of B with probability p and otherwise C. I.e. A>=B implies pA+(1-p)C>=pB+(1-p)C

Continuity- whenever we have lottery A strictly preferred to B strictly preferred to C, there is some probability p such that you are indifferent between the combination lottery pA+(1-p)C and B.

You reject that your morality is captured as the expected value of any function, so what do you reject: total ordering, consistency with nested lotteries, or continuity? It seems to me that rejecting any is absurd, which largely explains why I take the view I do on these matters. And understanding which of these you reject will help me understand your view a lot better.

Note that rejecting continuity isn't exactly a get out of jail free card, as you still probably have your preferences described by a utility function in R^n, unless you have something really weird going on.

[aitrasnformationonline]

AI Transformation

This is the age of AI and it is not ordinary at all. Imagine AI as a magician pulling strings and making all things in our lives magical. The changes brought by AI range from revolutionizing healthcare systems to changing economics in totality. This exciting blog is about AI’s compelling benefits and questions as it traverses the top five sectors experiencing stunning changes.

Origins of AI

The history of AI goes deeper than just contemporary civilization as it is evident in mythology and folklore where stories of mechanoid figures or even intelligent machines are abundant. The quest to develop true AI started in the 20th century though.

Early Foundations (1950s – 1970s)

It all began with the coinage of the term “artificial intelligence” by John McCarthy in 1956, signifying the formal initiation of the existence of AI as an academic discipline. This was a period where many pioneers like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Herbert A. Simon formulated theoretical bases for AI through the introduction of concepts for example machine learning and symbolic approach.

Among the major accomplishments of early AI is the invention of the Logic Theorist by Newell and Simon in 1955 who succeeded in proving mathematical theorems. The Dartmouth workshop of 1956 was also remarkable as it was the birth of AI as a research area, with participants seeking to create an intelligent machine.

The AI Winter (1970s – 1980s)

A period of time between the optimistic progressivity of the 1950s and 1960s and a phenomenon commonly known as “AI winter” characterizes the following decades. This was brought about by the failure to meet preliminary standards in addition to an obvious shortage in However, progress in AI systems began to lag down as it was understood that these early systems were not going to match the high expectations set.

The AI Renaissance (1990s – Present)

The revival of AI was witnessed in the 1990’s decade and continues to thrive in modern days. AI research has been rejuvenated through advancements in computer hardware and algorithmic discoveries. Recently machine learning especially deep learning has become a leading paradigm helping to solve complicated tasks and mimic some aspects of human thinking.

[jacob-cs]

MIT RES.6-012 Introduction to Probability 6강

L06.2 Variance https://youtu.be/ZWo1XgAQE5k

L06.3 The Variance of the Bernoulli & The Uniform https://youtu.be/7_livg-uaVs

bernoulli 에 대한 정보 

https://www.statlect.com/probability-distributions/Bernoulli-distribution

uniform distribution의 variance 정보

https://www.statlect.com/probability-distributions/uniform-distribution

L06.4 Conditional PMFs & Expectations Given an Event https://youtu.be/2_KBeHiUDiY

L06.5 Total Expectation Theorem https://youtu.be/GnEyIawrWBg

위의 그림은 total expectation theorem을 설명하기 위한 예시이다. 확률분포가 왼쪽과 되있는 경우. total expectation theorem을 사용하기 위해 두 영역으로 구분한다. A1, A2로 구분하고 각각 주어진 A1,A2의 expectation 값과 P(A1) , P(A2)를 구한후  total expectation theorem를 적용시킨다. 

L06.6 Geometric PMF Memorylessness & Expectation https://youtu.be/MuqLI4otMIQ

L06.7 Joint PMFs and the Expected Value Rule https://youtu.be/7nu97OYx4X4

L06.8 Linearity of Expectations & The Mean of the Binomial https://youtu.be/TbRh71BMJvw

아래 그림은 일반적인 expectation 성질에 대한 것이다. (제목에 Binomial이라고 써있어서 Binomial에만 해당한다고 착각할수 있지만 이 동영상에서 뒷부분은 Binomial에 관한 것이라 제목이 이런것이다. )

위에 그림까지는 일반적인 expectation rule에 관한 내용이다.

[empty-pizza]

thoughts on gideon the ninth chapter 20

one thing i wasn't fully clear on was that there's multiple laboratories, each with their own challenges, keys, and theorems to learn. i'm not sure any of these things actually qualify as theorems, but hey, i don't know necromancy, maybe it follows a fairly mathematical structure.

knowing this is how it works, though, we can assume that every one teaches you a different necromantic skill. it's possible that some are exceptions or that this isn't consistent at all and they teach you totally different things, but i'll assume for now it stays on theme. this means there is something one can do once they have all of the skills.

is that to, say, create the ultimate great big skelebuddy? that can regenerate, and do nine other things? perhaps, but perhaps not. technically harrow learned two things — regeneration and looking from inside gideon's body. are there twenty things to learn, or eleven, or some different number? what kind of thing can one need to accomplish using all of those skills in concert?

of course, there might be more prerequisites than knowledge alone. maybe doing all ten laboratories also opens up a door? but if knowledge alone is the only prerequisite, then is it that you have to do something with the skills you learn that could be done from the start, if you already knew them? why am i expecting this to be like outer wilds? do you actually need all the skills that it teaches you, or is several enough? do they combine into one ultimate skill?

okay, this challenge dulcinea brought them to seems totally different, and not like mastering it would teach you to make the ultimate skelebuddy who can regenerate and have nine other powers. shame, but also neat. i like the vibes of how dulcinea had asked palamedes first; there's many things going on outside what gideon sees.

basically every challenge they face really does just, force gideon and harrow to work together and get closer. also this challenge is literally just to do the thing they do with the Skill magic in Realm of the Elderlings.

i do deeply approve of harrow knowing she has to face whatever is most difficult and uncomfortable for her. i do that sometimes. it's pretty unhealthy and self-destructive.

gideon really likes describing the little details of how harrow's face looks. somehow that's more important to her than harrow's nudity. also talked in front of dulcinea, which is itself understandable under the circumstances. but what she said implies the vow of silence story isn't exactly accurate.

lol a mean girls reference

[goedel-rhymes-with-turtle]

From Real's math asks: 10, 49, 64 ^_^

10. Least favorite theorems?

Canetti, Goldreich, and Halevi's Paradoxical Encryption. There exists an encryption scheme that is secure in the Random Oracle Model, but is broken if you try to instantiate the oracle with any computable function.

Don't like that it's true, don't like the proof, don't like that the proof doesn't give any hints to what actual issues can arise.

"Wow Shafi, I wasn't expecting a cryptography theorem. I thought it would be from something you hated, like PDEs."

I don't know any bad theorems about PDEs. When I finished that class, those theorems lost their power to haunt me and I only remember the nice ones that make sense.

Paradoxical Encryption is a spectre that hangs over my head daily. Nothing makes me feel so powerless as having a security proof in the random oracle model and knowing that it doesn't necessarily mean security in the real world but also knowing I just don't know how to bridge that gap.

49. What’s your favorite number system? Integers? Reals? Rationals? Hyper-reals? Surreals? Complex? Natural numbers?

Natural numbers, easily. They start at zero btw.

Second tier includes integers (inverses are nice!) and rationals (even more inverses!)

The """real""" numbers are a total misnomer; they are fake as shit. They don't exist. (I mean, you can define them, I'm not a finitist. But an equivalence class of Cauchy sequences is not a "number")

Sorry, I think the first question just made me grumpy >:(

64. What’s something your followers don’t know that you’d be willing to share?

You know, I do like sharing personal information but I don't like sharing personal information. So like, I don't wanna just give you a freebie for no reason, but stay tuned and I'm sure I'll overshare soon :)