Gross Inequality

I'm a mathematician, as most people know in maths there are symbols called inequalities, these compare the values telling us which is larger. There's some more closely related symbols, I'm not sure what they are called but they mean simply "loads bigger" or "loads smaller", usually denoted like this ">>". To say the incomes of the developed nations is > the incomes of the developing nations, is not only obvious by definition but almost a gross crime. Even to use >> doesn't sum it up. Perhaps I'm just a naive mathematician but there's something wrong with that graph. The 60-95% range isn't even worth mentioning compared to the stark contrast in the 0% and 100% areas. Even those 4 dots don't do it justice, there are those who earn enough to punch a hole through your screen and through your ceiling. Perhaps a quote from Wikipedia will help.

"As of May 2005, the three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 47 countries with the least GDP"

It was hypothesised that this would decrease, it was said in Victorian times that the gross inequality then would level out. But it hasn't, the trend is that it is increasing, as liquidity of money increases, the more inequality there is. I'm seriously not decrying the internet or Facebook, but when a random undergrad stumbles upon a $70Billion gold mind, you've got to start asking questions. I only have to own about £1500 and I'm in the top half of the asset owning game. That's peanuts. When we have enough why do we continue to need? What do we think we are going to gain? On a moment to moment basis we are driven by happiness, we want more because of the promise of happiness and yet we all know having more than enough gives us nothing of the sort. Why do we keep running on the treadmill? I say this as a runner, I find it impossible to denounce possessions even in the light of reason. What good would it achieve anyway? To have power and give it away without doing anything with it is irresponsible and needlessly self-righteous. If anyone's got any suggestions...

Step II

And so the first of my ordeals begin. I'm surprisingly chilled, although that's no indication of how I will be when I open the paper. Why does a maths paper threaten to illicit a responce which should probably be reserved to fighting large mythical beasts? It can in no way physically harm me and the outcome determines only which institution I study at. I'm not being sarcastic either, we attach massive prices and consequences to tests and other such assessments. It's like I'm telling myself that if I don't go to Cambridge I will be an utter failure. In reality if I get only a level 2 I'll go to Warwick. Terrible fate. If I fail that ill end up at rubbish unis like Manchester or imperial. Perhaps I should see step as an opportunity, very few people even get Cambridge offers. It's a great privilege to sit this paper. Yeah right...

Why do we want the world to end?

It wasn't long ago that the BBC had an article on their site about Zombies, and why we seem to love them. I'm an avid Left 4 Dead 2 player, and personally think it contends for the greatest game made ever (ever). But it's not just my fanatical fanboyish ways, there are myriads of films in various flavours about the apocolypse, even a plant induced apocalypse (Day of the Triffids). I also heard about a "Zombie experience" where one is locked in an abandoned shopping centre or creepy manor house and has to fight off hoards of zombies with airsoft guns. So we've gathered we love the idea of an apocalypse, Zombie or not. But why is it so enticing?

It's now more than ever, at the height of my A Levels, with the STEP papers casting a monstrous shadow over me I can understand why. Day to day we invest massive amounts of effort to achieve goals that appear useless. Our ultimate escape is to be rid of them, all worries and responsibilities. Everything we dislike about the way the world works would disappear "the system" as some extremely cool people like to say. It's a little in vain, an apocalypse would be a pain anyway. All those mindless people mooching about, would be a bit like the Internet...

The Fallacy of Investment

Imagine you have some money in a bank account, every year the amount doubles and you have a chance to take some out. The question is when should you ever take the money out? Every time you think to take it out, you would be much better to take it out next year, where you could take out that same amount and leave the same amount in it in. However, that half could have been doubled the next year, you could have only taken out a quarter and on and on. The answer to the paradox lies only in the practical applications, there is no general solution to it. When dealing with money the answer appears simple, you just take out what you need, when you need, bearing in mind that you will never need the stupid amount that appears after a long time. But is that really how it works?

A wonderful Northernism (A saying that southerners probably won't understand (don't worry England banter (Argh nested brackets, are they allowed?))) anyway I digress. I heard a Northernism that says, "There isn't any pockets in shrouds" basically, whatever the ancient Egyptians would have you believe, when you die, you leave your money on the mere mortal plane. Accumulating money is not an end, it shouldn't be a way of life. We shore up to enjoy tomorrow sacrificing today, not remembering that tomorrow never truly comes. Damn consumerism tricking us (Perhaps a rant about that later).

But the paradox comes up in other situations, I may sound cynical but perhaps education is one such paradox. I find myself sacrificing doing things with friends just so that i can pass my Cambridge Admissions test. When college is finished, who is going to make an effort to keep up with the boy that abandoned his friends for his work. Perhaps the answer to this is a balance, perhaps I sound disillusioned but the purpose of education is to enrich your life, not to doom yourself to a cycle of stress in the vain hope of self improvement. You can never set a point where you say, then I will enjoy life, that's when I will stop working so hard. You have to develop a mindset from the start which produces both self improvement and enjoyment. It's obvious I know but much harder to achieve. Tell me if you find it...

On a related note from the Dalai Lama,
“Man sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

Run or Walk in the Rain?

It's an age old question, the most obvious answer is to run, it makes sense that you spend less time in the rain therefore less time getting wet. However, there's always that one person, who likes to be different who suggests it's otherwise. If maths is ever going to be useful its here, its a problem of massive importance. Or at least it is to me.

Okay as with all models we shall make assumptions, first of all, humans are full of squiggly lines and strange shapes so lets just say out test dummy is just a cuboid with the rough dimensions of a human. Secondly rain is all psuedo-random and complicated but I can say with relative surety that in any given metre cubed at any time there is a constant amount of water (law of large numbers). As this is the case, its only a small leap to say that the water is continuous, like a mist of droplets. Also, journeys are all windey and complicated (humans are so awkward) so lets just say its a straight line, as any journey can be split up reasonably into a series of straight lines.

Are you siting comfortably with my assumptions? Then we shall begin. The main body of this problem lies with the fact that however fast you go, you will cut the same amount of water mist stuff. So actually the main body of the water that hits you is independant of speed. However this cuboid human is 3D, and the amount of water that hits his head is directly proportionate to the amount of time he spends in the rain (as it is falling straight down). So as far as this model goes, with rain that drops straight down, youll be slightly dryer if you run. Now when you factor in slanted rain...

Natural Selection of Patterns

This may have been done before, but a while ago I realied that natural selection is not just limited to the realms of nature. It twigged with me from the stability of free protons and neutrons. Why is our world made up primarily of protons? Purely because they are more stable, with a half life much longer than the age of the universe. And thats what it is, things survive because they are more stable. The system they are in favours them. And its not even limited to physical phenonom, its linked to philosophical ideas too. Democracy survives because it can cope with more entropy, a totalitarian dictatorship requires more order, it is by definition less stable, therefore is less prevalent.

We can think of these compared to simple systems of a closed nature. Imagine a box of particles. We can define patterns of the movement of these particles. We could then assess the predicted prevelance of such patterns based on how stable or how little entropy they require. Alternatively the prevelance of a pattern could be predicted by how general its definition is. For example particles spread out in a well defined and non random pattern will be rare. For physical systems it is easy to imagine as this is what these things are, protons and neutrons are a collection of quarks on which various forces act. Ideas and the prevelance of ideas are just the interaction between people and what they cause the people to do. Natural selection is just the prevelance of very complex patterns or atoms, in the form of a rabbit or a bacteria. The patterns are very prevelant as they are so complex they can roughly reproduce themselves.

Think of democracy, the particles in the system can fly around as they wish, with rulers and rules changing at the will of all the particles. Not only that but the definition is more broad too. A totalitarian government is one government and one cabinet. Democracy comes in the form of many different governments with varying styles. You can imagine democracy as a system that is energetic, changable but still by definition democracy. A dictator requires everyone to keep in line, like all the particles need to be nearly still or in a very ordered way. One small collision could cause the system to lose its required order. Therefore, democracies are much more stable.

Maybe someone has made the point before, I care little, but it is interesting none the less. Natural selection should be a physical/philosophical law, the prevelance of a pattern is related to its stability. It's pretty obvious when you put it like that, although I guess natural selection is too.