alan-crowe

The question is: how did your test reader respond to the version without the "It's not just an X, it's a Y." ? Perhaps the discussion went:

Test Reader: I got confused when you started talking about X as though it were a Y.

Author: But it is a Y. I should flag that up, where I introduce it.

Alternatively, the test reader comments

The villains monologue wasn't unhinged enough. He says that making himself universal dictator is democratic because he gives people what they secretly desire. I feel he would express himself with more empty rhetoric.

Author: Agreed. I'll add "It's not just democratic, it's not just super-democratic, it's ultra-democratic!!!"

Test Reader: Scary!

The error lies in using "It's not just an X it's a Y." for emphasis rather than to ward off a likely misreading.

Not a troll. As recently as the 1870s, when Jevons, Menger, and Walras pioneered the Marginal Revolution in economics, this was a deep new insight about elasticity.

Imagine yourself a shop keeper, hoping to boost the money coming in at the till. If you increase prices by 10%, you will get more? Right?

That depends on the elasticity of demand. If the elasticity is two, the drop in demand is twice the increase in price. 0.8 times 1.1 is 0.88. Takings fall from $100 to $88.

But if the elasticity is one half, the drop in demand is half the increase in price. 0.95 times 1.1 is 1.045. Takings rise from $100 to $104.5.

When the price goes up the shop always sells less goods, (Law of Demand) but that still leaves it unclear whether more or less money goes in the till. This is first year University economics today.

Back in 1865, it was obvious to every-one that the increased efficiency of steam engines would lead to a reduced demand for coal. Jevons pointed out that increased efficiency makes steam power cheaper. Goodbye water wheel, hello steam engine. More steam engines, greater consumption of steam power, any-one who wants to make a prediction needs to invent the concept of elasticity and try to measure it. Greater than one? Less than one? That is going to decide whether total demand rises or falls.

It is interesting to a pure mathematician. Since it is obviously true, one's intuition is that it should have a simple proof. In particular, the obvious induction ought to work.

The base case is n=2. The line joining them passes through exactly two points because that is all you have.

Now we attempt the induction step. We have n+1 points. Leave one, p, out. We know that the theorem applies to the n points by the induction hypothesis. So we have points q and r that have a line going through them. And the point of the theorem is that the line goes through only q and r, exactly two points of the n. All we have to do is add in p, not on that line, and we are done.

But we are also stuck. Point p is not one of the n points participating in the induction hypothesis. Nothing tells us that p is not on the line joining q and r.

So how do we prove it? It is a good, intriguing puzzle, but in proof theory, not geometry.

That depends on where you live.

If nuclear power is trying to match a fluctuating load it needs storage for a day or two, to escape the Xenon dead time. But solar power for air-conditioning only needs an hour or two of storage to bridge from peak solar at noon, to maximum demand mid-afternoon.

On the other hand I live in Scotland. Solar power for space heating needs to save the summer sun for six months to heat homes in January. Ouch! Adding a day or two of storage to a nuclear power plant is much more practical.

People with serious illnesses long to get on to a clinical trial, hoping to get the latest and best treatment, even before it is approved. But it is not really like that. Only one phase III drug in ten really helps. And what of the other nine? Derek Lowe doesn't go into the downside, so I'm left to guess that eight out of ten do neither good nor harm and one in ten get their trial stopped in a panic when they turn out to be harmful. By all means volunteer for a clinical trial as an altruistic act, hoping to advance science and confer a benefit on those who come after. With such a high failure rate, the expected benefit is likely net zero.

As a child, I noticed that the proofs of mathematical theorems were esoteric knowledge, known only to a few adults. I struggled to follow even the simplest proofs, and hoped that one day I might learn to create a proof or two of my own. This was not only a high aspiration, but a dangerous one. I saw no reason why certain knowledge of a true fact would be accessible to humans via proof. Any-one who embarked on the quest to find a proof risked embarking on a doomed quest to find a non-existent proof.

For me Gödel's completeness theorem is the miracle. Every valid statement has a proof. Amazing!

Aim a little higher, every true statement, and there might not be a proof. It is no surprise to me that this is true. It is a big surprise to me that Gödel was able to prove it; ordinary proofs are hard to find, and proofs of the limits of provability presumably even more deeply hidden.

Non-standard models of arithmetic are weird. Theorems that are true of the standard model of arithmetic and false in some non-standard model must surely be convoluted and obscure. The first order version of the Peano axioms nail down the integers, not perfectly, but very well. Restricting one-self to theorems that are true in all models of them, even the weird, non-standard ones, feels like a very minor restriction. Gödel's completeness theorem raises the possibility of writing a computer program to find a proof of every theorem that isn't convoluted and obscure. Gödel completeness theorem is the really big deal.

Except it isn't. That computer program turns out to be one of those wretched tree search ones that soon bogs down. The real problem turns out to be the combinatorial explosion inherent in unstructured search through the Herbrand universe. One needs Unification and one needs a still missing ingredient to give search a sense of direction. The interesting questions are about the "sense of direction" that lets us find some of the deeply hidden proofs that do exist. Will LLM's help? The answer will be interesting, either way.

My "importance of privacy" story:

I get my gas and electricity from Scottish Power. Recently a rival company, Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute. The front line of defence against this kind of dispute is that the bills give the serial numbers of the meters. The bill from Scottish Power gives the same meter serial numbers that are embossed on the front of my meters, and is therefore valid. The bill from Ovo Energy gives different serial numbers and is therefore in error.

Picture though the internal processes in Ovo Energy. A second clerk is tasked with attending to the problem. He has a choice. He can change the address to agree with the meter serial numbers, correcting the error. Or he can change the meter serial numbers to those for my address, compounding the error.

Since the meter serial numbers are confidential, to me and Scottish Power, Ovo Energy does not have the second option; they do not know the serial numbers (which are long, like a credit card number, not just 1,2,3,...). Thus the clerical error gets corrected, or just left, but not compounded.

My guess is that confidential information, (such as meter serial numbers, credit card numbers, and account numbers), are the front like of defence against both clerical error and fraud based on impersonation. It is a rather weak defence, but it is light weight, and seems to how much of billing and billing disputes work.

We all have lots to hide: the confidential information that the system needs us to keep confidential to stop clerical errors from compounding.

I'm still using fvwm2

    $ pkg info fvwm
    fvwm-2.6.9_4
    Name           : fvwm
    Version        : 2.6.9_4
    Installed on   : Mon Dec  8 02:01:51 2025 GMT
    Origin         : x11-wm/fvwm2
    Architecture   : FreeBSD:15:amd64

Very happy with it :-)

On a 19 x 19 board the ranks are traditionally determined by the handicap needed to give an even game. So a 14 kyu would give 20 - 14 = 6 stones to a 20 kyu. 20 kyu is a rank that often sees rapid improvement, as the basic ideas "click" just through play and experience. You might be stronger than that now.

Handicap stones give a greater advantage on smaller boards, but 19 x 19 is the standard size. I've not seen any specific guidance for smaller boards.

I'm on the other side of this, meeting a friend two or three times a month to play Go and giving him a three stone handicap on a 13 by 13 board.

Sometimes I play a move with a huge, but hidden threat behind it. If he plays elsewhere instead of answering locally, I get to play a clever sequence and capture some stones. I could just wait for the blunder and win. Instead I give a quick lesson in tactics: here is my plan, if you want to play elsewhere, your move needs to have an even bigger threat behind it.

He is learning, and now I face my clever moves being player against me. This makes it harder for me to win (it is about 50:50 with the handicap), but also more fun for me to play.

You could ask your spouses brother for a "teaching game" or a larger handicap, or a bit of both.

You seem to be telling a tale of two industries, sports-betting and advertising. The sports-betting industry lobbies for reduced regulation, while the advertising industry sits on its hands, ticking along providing advertising for other businesses.

Eventually the sports-betting industry wins its lobbying campaign. But what did they win? The different sports-betting companies are in fierce and unprofitable competition, while the advertising industry walks off with all the profits.

That tale is at its most ironic when the advertising industry is consolidated and makes monopoly profits on advertising on behalf of sports-betting companies.