Author: lukas

Just what we needed: a somewhat forced tail [sic] of metaparadox designed to clarify wavefunction collapse.

Imagine if you will, a world with an infinite number of scientist clones named Schrödinger. Two of them, lets call them Schrödinger A and Schrödinger B, watch a box in a room in a laboratory. The box has a cat and a Zyklon B gas canister rigged to an avalanche photodiode sensitive to cosmic rays. If a cosmic ray comes with enough energy and the right trajectory, hey presto, the cat is dead. If not, the cat is still alive. For the moment, the curtains are drawn on the box and both scientists are looking rather contemplative as they observe the system.

Schrödinger A believes that his cat is both alive and dead, as he has not collapsed the wavefunction by observing the system directly.

Schrödinger B believes that his cat is either alive or dead, but not in reality both at once despite his not having observed the cat to be either alive or dead with his own eyes. His idea is that the wavefunction is already collapsed, one way or the other, trough interaction with the material in the box though of course he has no proof of that or knowledge of whether the cat is alive or dead.

Schrödinger A holds in his head the uncollapsed wavefunction, while Schrödinger B holds in his head the concept of a collapsed wavefunction, just not yet observably clear as to which way it has collapsed.

—

A third and fourth Schrödinger clone observe the room from a neighboring room via closed circult cameras. Schrödinger C believes that both Schrödinger A and Schrödinger B are correct at once. C’s wavefunction includes a superposition of A and B’s world, namely that the cat is both alive and dead, but also that the cat is either dead or alive but not both, at the same time. Schrödinger D is of the opposite opinion, that either Schrödinger A or Schrödinger B is correct, but not both at once, as at some level the wavefunction representing the (original first) two Schrödingers has collapsed due to natural evolution of the system even though it is unclear which scientist is correct.

—

A third room holds another pair of Schrödingers. Schrödinger E is of the opinion that Schrödinger C and D are both right simultaneously in their description of A and B. Schrödinger E’s wavefunction is a superposition of the two possibilities represented by the wavefunctions of C and D.

Schrödinger F is of the opposite opinion, that either Schrödinger C or Schrödinger D is correct but not both at once, though he isn’t sure yet which one of the two is correct.

—

At this point, you are probably expecting that we are going to describe a Hilbert Laboratory, with an infinite number of rooms, and Schrödingers going on forever with each ones wavefunctions describing a superposition or non-superposition of the previous Schrödingers.

This infinite sequence of superposed and non superposed wavefunctions exists at this point as a possibility, a potential observable which might emerge from collapse of the wavefunction representing this post.

Sure that would be cool, but…. well if you were expecting this post to go that direction, forgive me for collapsing your wavefunctions abruptly, but we aren’t going there.

Instead that we are privy to some insider information, and have in fact we are looking at nothing more than a single pair of Schrödingers watching themselves on the closed circult television with a delay so they don’t know it is themselves!!

At this point in the reading of the story, an infinite amount of wavefunctions have just collapsed, and yet the two Schrödingers we watch still hold that infinite heirarchy of wavefunctions in the uncollapsed state in their heads.

So what can we conclude from this gedankenexperiment? Wavefunctions are on the one hand a sophisticated tool to describe quantum mechanics, and on the other hand a very feeble human concept prone to collapse. We look around and learn something about our environment and they collapse like Hilbert’s dominoes with a great big whooshing sound.

I may have first learned about gimbal lock from Andrew Chaikin’s excellent book “A Man on the Moon” (pdf) (epub). In orienting the Apollo lander, gimbals were used to control the orientation of the rocket engine, and so gimbal lock was a potential problem. A gimbal is a part of an apparatus that lets you orient something (for example to rotate a globe, to rotate a rocket engine, to rotate a 3D image on your screen). A rotation of the object on one gimbal is a rotation on a particular axis set by that gimbal. Rotation on an exterior gimbal changes the axis of interior gimbals and so if one is not careful, gimbals can become aligned in such a way that temporarily limits the ability to quickly change orientation through some range of possible orientations.

The phenomenon can be described as “parking yourself in” in orientation space. After a set of adjustments, putting your car in a tight space, the only way out is to do something akin to reversing your earlier adjustments – performing a lengthy multipoint turn. Typically this occurs just when one would like the ability to simply reorient quickly, thus ruining your quick getaway. With gimbal lock, it is not exterior cars that force us into a tight space which limits us, but the mechanics of the control mechanism itself: the gimbals.

Political Gimbal Lock

In political science, we like to describe the actions of governments and people using the analogy of orientation:

In the sense of orienting a lunar lander, we wish to orient our political ambitions and orient our governance. We wish to point our political apparatus in a certain direction (for example to fight a specific crime, to end a social ailment, to create a pyramid, or to improve some aspect of education) and to step on the gas, firing our political lunar lander rocket. Or, simply to refer to such a plan of orientation for the sake of a theoretical argument. To do so correctly requires communication of this orientation to our political actors, precise readjustment and focus along an infinity of axes presented by every detailed decision.

The left and the right, the red and the blue, socialism and capitalism, all examples of directionality on a gimbal which we rely on in our indication of political orientation. The meanings of these words, like meanings of all words, are contextual, and can change with time. Sure, we could remind ourselves that left and right referred to something specific when they emerged after the French revolution, the left referring to those on the left of the hall who wished the government had less power, and the right referring to those on the right side of the hall who desired more power for those currently in government. However this might not be as clear after exterior gimbals have swung and now perhaps these words have different meanings in new contexts.

We have seen these exterior political gimbals swing often. Lets avoid specific examples in this post, sticking with the abstract metascience, but one example is that those who publicly questioned the federal 9/11 commission report 20 years ago were labeled as left wing while those who publicly question the same report today might be labeled right wing.

If the only accelerator buttons in the voting booth are labeled red and blue, but both red and blue are directions which share the same orientation on some issue, then we might say we face a political gimbal lock on that issue. Well to be fair, with only a binary choice gimbal lock is guaranteed, but even with multiple binary indicators gimbal lock is a reality. Our mechanisms of describing the state, or affecting change, cannot be moved easily into certain directions, as the very symbols of our language can have meanings which prevent it. Spooky innit.

How to Avoid Political Gimbal Lock

So how can we avoid it? Well the first point is that we might not always want to avoid it. The class of people in power, which keep in mind could still mean anything you like it to, doesn’t usually want to enable political change. Therefore an alignment of political gimbals in such a way that locks the system is therefore desirable – until it isn’t. Eventually there will be need for some change and so we don’t want to be too stuck at that point.

A second point would be that we shouldn’t rely on gimbals at all, if they can bite us like this. However, gimbals are useful. Red and blue are concepts people can quickly voice, republican and democrat are teams with history and people know them already. Therefore it can be easier to use this existing linguistic infrastructure rather than to create an entire formalism to describe the direction we really wish to indicate. The mind is drawn to simple one dimensional or binary structures, black and white, up and down, us vs. them, and so we are always tempted to use such simplifications when they at least somewhat apply. The problem is that they can lead us into extremely tight parking spaces, which are impossible to evacuate in a timely manner. We will be forced pushing hard to e.g. ensure that e.g. blue points one way on an issue, then pushing for blue, and going back to realign for a further push and so forth in a multipoint turn.

There are then two strategies for escaping political gimbal lock: to perform the multi point turn and navigate to desired orientation using the existing gimbals, or to escape the existing gimbals temporarily and reorient using new external gimbals (possibly quaternionic in nature). In some sense these choices are analagous to Balaji’s binary political choice of “exit” and “voice”, taken from “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States“.

As Michael Penn would say, that’s a good place to stop.

it is possible to work ourselves into a corner of political orientation space in which

The best solution I found was:

pip3 install-i https://pypi.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/simple the-library-you-want-to-install

Warning: This post is an incomplete research project.

Lets go hunting! This is a hunt for cool numbers, and by cool I mean serious William Gibson cyberspace Neo-Maas black ice. We’re talking uncomputable numbers. Numbers like Chaitin’s Omega.

Uncomputable sequences are fascinating. After seeing a lot of number hunters hit paydirt doing “busy beaver” calculations for different kinds of simple Turing machines, we’re going to go on beyond zebra, keeping busy like beavers, and we’re going to start from scratch with our own Turing machine variant to keep things interesting.

The bitsorter (TM)(R) is a theoretical computer that operates on a tape or input stream of random bits, selecting some to write to the output, and leaving some aside, until it eventually stops with a final output (the answer) or doesn’t stop and goes on forever.

The idea came from reading Chaitin, and from a method a close friend uses to sort mail into two piles, one which might still be important, and one ready to throw away now. Repeat as necessary, and you will never have to open the mail. And from briefly working on a project suggested by Ohad from IDNI, using Binary Decision Diagrams as fundamental units of computation. Further motivation comes from the indispensable randomness or entropy that some algorithms (monte carlo simulation, digital signatures, key generation) require, and so instead of a classic initial condition Turing machine with a blank tape, we begin with a source of random bits.

A state in the bitsorter is a configuration of the sorter with a specific action defined for the two possible cases: either the next bit is a zero, or the next bit is a one. A given state will always do the same thing if it encounters the same bit.

Switch (next bit on tape)
Case 0: [0 or 1] (0 = discard bit, 1=append bit (0) to output) then go to state X
Case 1: [0 or 1] (0 = discard bit, 1=append bit (1) to output) then go to state Y
(This fully defines a state of a bitsorter computer)

A “program” for this computer is a collection of some number of defined states, with one designated to be the starting state.

There is one “do nothing” state called the stopped state, and if a program gets there, it is stopped. If a program needs a “1” for the output, it must wait for a “1” to arrive in the input stream so it can sort it to the output.

Single State Bitsorter Programs

Lets tabulate all the possible single state bitsorter computer programs.

Of course, the stopped state is one single state computer – it is also the only one state computer program that halts. The number of possible states that one could use to make a one state bitsorter computer is therefore five:

1. Stopped (do nothing)
2. 00 – Continue processing input forever, never produce any output.
3. 01 – Collect all the ones into the output and never stop
4. 10 – Collect all the zeros into the output and never stop
5. 11 – Copy the entire input to the output and never stop

Two State Bitsorter Programs

With two states, it is now possible for another state to point to the stopped state, enabling programs that both produce an output and halt.

An example possible state:
Case: 0 (0 or 1) keep or discard the bit. Go to state (a or b)
Case: 1 (0 or 1) keep or discard the bit, Go to state (a or b)

We can see there are now 16 possible non stopping states to choose from, so if we include the stop state we have 17*17 = 289 sets of two states, so choosing which to start from is one more factor of two and we have 678 possible two state sorter programs, many of which are identical because of the symmetry. Before breaking that down however, we can narrow our goalposts by insisting that one of the two states is the stopped state, which isn’t the initial state. In this case we have 16 possible programs, which we can enumerate as follows, using a to represent the stopped state and b to represent the other state:

(0,0) (a,a) stop, no output
(0,1) (a,a) if first input is a one, output it, then stop
(1,0) (a.a) if first input is a zero, output it, then stop
(1,1) (a,a) output first digit, then stop

(0,0) (a,b) stop on first zero, no output
(0,1) (a,b) output the ones until a zero appears
(1,0) (a.b) output first zero and stop
(1,1) (a,b) output all digits then first zero and stop

(0,0) (b,a) stop on first one, no output
(0,1) (b,a) output first one then stop
(1,0) (b.a) output all zeros then stop on first one
(1,1) (b,a) output all digits then first one and stop

(0,0) (b,b) never stop, no output
(0,1) (b,b) never stop, output all ones
(1,0) (b.b) never stop, output all zeros
(1,1) (b,b) never stop, output all input

We can see that the last four of these 16 programs are identical to our four non-halting one state programs, so we really have 12 new programs amongst these two-state-one-of-which-is-the-stop-state programs.

Stop state plus two other state bitsorter programs

The possible non-stopped states in a three state program will look like:

(0 or 1 , 0 or 1) (a b or c , a b or c) (keep or save zero, keep or save one, where to go on zero, where to go on one)

2*2*3*3 = 36 possible such states, of which we are choosing two non-stopped states for our program so there are 2*36^2 = 2592 possible such programs, as choosing which one will be the starting state is another factor of two.

Stop state plus N other state bitsorter programs

The possible non-stopped states in an N state program will look like:

(0 or 1, 0 or 1) (S0, S1, … or SN , S0, S1, lll or SN) (keep or save zero, keep or save one, where to go on zero, where to go on one)

2*2*N*N=4N^2, of which we are choosing N-1 non-stopped states for our program so there are (N-1)* (4N^2)^(N-1) programs, as choosing which one will be the starting state is another factor of (N-1).

Number of possible programs of an N state bitsorter computer with one state being the stopped state, and beginning with a non-stopped state.

1	0
2	16
3	2592
4	786432
5	400000000
6	309586821120
7	340163474251776
8	5.04403158265496E+017
9	9.71516248772754E+020
10	2.359296E+024

Wow, four hundred million possible programs exactly for a five state computer. interesting. Well maybe it’s only interesting because I have ten fingers. The number possible programs of a given state gets big quickly, but not as quickly as some Turing machines which have additional degrees of freedom go change direction on the tape.

Comments on the Method (COMING SOON?)

The questions of course are how many programs of N states halt, which is the busy bitsorter problem: BB(N), and what is the largest output possible with N states: L(N). At this point it’s not exactly clear how the randomness factor might influence these

I don’t have the punchline for you yet but here’s the results of some simulations of all four state machines:

max output is 1000110111
total programs stopped: 945

I think the simplicity of this computing model is desirable for some further excursions into fundamental computer science, however there isn’t enough room in the margin at the moment to go further.

Most likely you already read this account in elementary school, for it is perhaps the best introduction to the concept of what is fiat currency and why we might use it. Read it again. It’s incredibly short and captures the idea well which underpins the most powerful political forces today, so this reading assignment is mandatory.

It’s worth pointing out that while Marco Polo hadn’t heard of them before, fiat currencies had been used in China for centuries already, and others had brought this news to Europe. However Marco Polo’s widely read books contributed to everyone finding out about how fiat worked, and thus to the kings and queens of the rest of the world adopting it to their purposes, leading to the rise of fiat empires in which you dear reader are likely a subject. Take a look at the footnotes here for more background on this translation by Henry Yule. Now without further ado:

• 

How the Great Kaan Causeth the Bark of Trees, Made Into Something Like Paper, to Pass for Money All Over his Country

Now that I have told you in detail of the splendour of this City of the Emperor’s, I shall proceed to tell you of the Mint which he hath in the same city, in the which he hath his money coined and struck, as I shall relate to you. And in doing so I shall make manifest to you how it is that the Great Lord may well be able to accomplish even much more than I have told you, or am going to tell you, in this Book. For, tell it how I might, you never would be satisfied that I was keeping within truth and reason!

The Emperor’s Mint then is in this same City of Cambaluc, and the way it is wrought is such that you might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you would be right! For he makes his money after this fashion.

He makes them take of the bark of a certain tree, in fact of the Mulberry Tree, the leaves of which are the food of the silkworms,–these trees being so numerous that whole districts are full of them. What they take is a certain fine white bast or skin which lies between the wood of the tree and the thick outer bark, and this they make into something resembling sheets of paper, but black. When these sheets have been prepared they are cut up into pieces of different sizes. The smallest of these sizes is worth a half tornesel; the next, a little larger, one tornesel; one, a little larger still, is worth half a silver groat of Venice; another a whole groat; others yet two groats, five groats, and ten groats. There is also a kind worth one Bezant of gold, and others of three Bezants, and so up to ten. All these pieces of paper are [issued with as much solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or silver; and on every piece a variety of officials, whose duty it is, have to write their names, and to put their seals. And when all is prepared duly, the chief officer deputed by the Kaan smears the Seal entrusted to him with vermilion, and impresses it on the paper, so that the form of the Seal remains printed upon it in red; the Money is then authentic. Any one forging it would be punished with death.] And the Kaan causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this money, which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the treasure in the world.

• 

With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all payments on his own account to be made; and he makes them to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extends. And nobody, however important he may think himself, dares to refuse them on pain of death. And indeed everybody takes them readily, for wheresoever a person may go throughout the Great Kaan’s dominions he shall find these pieces of paper current, and shall be able to transact all sales and purchases of goods by means of them just as well as if they were coins of pure gold. And all the while they are so light that ten bezants’ worth does not weigh one golden bezant.

Furthermore all merchants arriving from India or other countries, and bringing with them gold or silver or gems and pearls, are prohibited from selling to any one but the Emperor. He has twelve experts chosen for this business, men of shrewdness and experience in such affairs; these appraise the articles, and the Emperor then pays a liberal price for them in those pieces of paper. The merchants accept his price readily, for in the first place they would not get so good an one from anybody else, and secondly they are paid without any delay. And with this paper-money they can buy what they like anywhere over the Empire, whilst it is also vastly lighter to carry about on their journeys. And it is a truth that the merchants will several times in the year bring wares to the amount of 400,000 bezants, and the Grand Sire pays for all in that paper. So he buys such a quantity of those precious things every year that his treasure is endless, whilst all the time the money he pays away costs him nothing at all. Moreover, several times in the year proclamation is made through the city that any one who may have gold or silver or gems or pearls, by taking them to the Mint shall get a handsome price for them. And the owners are glad to do this, because they would find no other purchaser give so large a price. Thus the quantity they bring in is marvellous, though these who do not choose to do so may let it alone. Still, in this way, nearly all the valuables in the country come into the Kaan’s possession.

When any of those pieces of paper are spoilt–not that they are so very flimsy neither–the owner carries them to the Mint, and by paying three per cent, on the value he gets new pieces in exchange. And if any Baron, or any one else soever, hath need of gold or silver or gems or pearls, in order to make plate, or girdles, or the like, he goes to the Mint and buys as much as he list, paying in this paper-money.^[

Now you have heard the ways and means whereby the Great Kaan may have, and in fact has, more treasure than all the Kings in the World; and you know all about it and the reason why. And now I will tell you of the great Dignitaries which act in this city on behalf of the Emperor.

• 

There are two very important factors which make the reveal in this post possible:

1. You won’t believe me
2. You won’t think that I believe it myself

If it weren’t for these things, this blog post would not be here.

• 

Of course we are all familiar with Asimov’s classic novella, widely acclaimed as the best time travel story of all time.

Long story short: the secret society of “eternals” who are capable of time travel which Asimov presents in his classic book “The End of Eternity) (pdf) (epub) is actually a real thing, with some modifications.

The real time travellers themselves are known in the society of eternals as “grandmasters” and have learned through intense study how to spread their consciousness over many variable timelines, enabling the use of other chess matches in other times as endpoints for a projection time travel technique. These guys are really travelling in time.

Unlike in Azimov’s story, it doesn’t appear that these time travellers can move physical goods from one century to another in arbitrage, however the ability to observe and even affect at reality in another time is already quite a shock.

Don’t believe me? Lets start with some incontrovertible facts:

1. Paul Morphy was able to travel to the future and learn chess from Alpha Zero.
2. Technicians in Azimov’s story of the eternal can make small minimal “adjustments” to timelines; Chess masters are told only to make minimal changes to the board without touching anything, unless they are technicians who announce “j’adoube”.
3. Historical scenes which have been “adjusted” are often seen with a chess board in the background.
4. Chess rules seem oddly stubborn to changes over millenia.
5. Timers stuck in predestined timelines are just pawns for the use of masters.
6. The mental projection of a single chess master can spread to allow an entire room or even those in a distant future to participate in the moment of time travel.
7. En Passant. Ok this doesn’t really prove anything but still, it’s kinda time travelly.

Another insight into the workings of this ultrasecretive society of time travellers (described as “eternals” in the Azimov book) comes from the gender inequality in chess masters. As Asimov puts it:

” Could he tell her that women almost never qualified for Eternity because, for some reason he did not understand (Computers might, but he himself certainly did not), their abstraction from Time was from ten to a hundred times as likely to distort Reality as was the abstraction of a man.”

Women are often simply too important in their influence on the future to be taken out of time to join the eternals and their chess time travel.

So that’s about the size of it. Look at some of the pictures of men standing around watching the highest level chess games… you will see it. Why are they there? Why the intensity? The threads of time are being smeared in that location and in effect, a certain kind of time travel I don’t understand is being enabled. The inaction in the present moment enables a smearing of Hamiltonians such the the wavefunctions can tunnel into the less probable tachyonic pathways.

Those who wish to understand further the method of time shifting via multiple lines of game progress are also advised to read Anathem by Neal Stephenson. The Mandela Effect is also relevant in the case of real timeline adjustments. (Since we’re there, lets promote this album.)

For those of you who are interested in more conventional time travelling methods, there is always the option of visiting China to see the future.

In Brief: A Harper is dedicated to three things:
– The freedom and autonomy of all living things
– The balance between the settled and the wild
– The preservation of knowledge

In short: we found this pamphlet in the wild, here it is.

A “low protein” experiment on 3 million subjects, from Denmark 1920, M. Hindhede, Journal of the American Medical Association

hindhede1920

Download PDF

powers-of-2-flash-cards-final-1

How well do you know your powers of two? You gotta at least know the first ten of course. The first twenty is quite good. The first thirty? Better than me.

Print them out, label them, and go study up! The 2048 card is only there because there’s an extra spot to fill, when I have made these flash cards in the past we only went up to 1024.

Enjoy!

(By request, from Dmitry Orlov, reblogged here without apology or permission. Go buy his books or support his blogging on boosty, or feel free to complain about the errors in his opinionated prose on your own pages or in the comments)

• 

Many people around the world gaze in wonder and amazement upon the assortment of geriatrics atop the great American pyramid of power—the withered witches Nancy Pelosi (82), Maxine Waters (83) and Dianne Feinstein (88), the living cadavers Chuck Grassley (88), Jim Inhofe (87), Richard Shelvy (87), as well as quite a few others, and the obviously senile Joe Biden (80) who sits atop it all. How does a pile of oldsters, all of them obviously well past their prime, manage to control a great big empire, the biggest (strictly in budgetary terms) military power on Earth and the sacred keeper of the Holy Dollar Printing Press?

The people old Biden commands aren’t spring chickens either: Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon is 69, Janet Yellen at the Treasury is 76. If you look at the various powers behind the throne, there’s the Yoda-like Kissinger (99) and the moneybag George Soros (92).I don’t mean to be ageist, but it is simply foolish to ignore the toll time takes on our brains, as well as the rest of our bodies, as we age. It is not just our limbs that become less flexible (check if you can still touch your nose to your big toe) but our thinking becomes ossified as well. Our learning ability dwindles over time: short-term memory shrinks, long-term memory decays and receptivity to new concepts and ideas declines. We become emotionally attached to the past, comforted by our memories, shocked by an increasingly unfamiliar present and fearful of an unpredictable future.The political science term for such a system of government is gerontocracy. It can take many forms.

Its most benign form is the council of elders found in many traditional societies, who accumulate authority through experience and reputation and wield power through the unconditional respect that must be given to old people in traditional societies. In places where centralized authority is weak, repressive, remote or nonexistent, tribal elders are often called upon to help resolve conflicts that would otherwise give rise to violence, and political authority naturally accrues to those with a successful history of conflict resolution.

Obviously, this is not the case in a young country like the US: 236 years is a blink of an eye in historical terms compared to 6000 years for India, 4000 years for China, 2500 for Persia and 1000 years for Russia. Nor is gerontocracy a natural outcome for a system of representative democracy: why would young people ever choose their great grandparents to be their elected representatives? Also, why would crusty old greyhairs be a natural choice in a country undergoing rapid change that in a single generation experienced the end of the Cold War, the rise of new China and Russia, the development of the internet and now the proliferation of artificial intelligence applications and robotics? Obviously, something has gone seriously wrong with the succession of political authority in the US if old people can’t retire from power and younger people aren’t allowed to advance and take their place.The most malignant form of gerontocracy is rule by an oligarchy of the aged. Imagine a small clique of elderly men and women tenaciously clinging to power, protected by a powerful police state and many layers of yes-persons (the woke version of yes-men), shielded from any negative or unexpected news that might undermine their already shaky grip on reality. This characterizes the current state of the American democracy reasonably well, but leaves some questions yet to be answered.

Such as: Why are these oldsters afraid to retire? Why aren’t younger people allowed to take their place? How distorted is their image of the world and what are the consequences of that? and, finally, How long can this possibly go on and how is it likely to end?Starting from the end and working toward the beginning of this list of questions, we have the wonderful and relatively recent example of the slow decline and sudden fall of the USSR. World War I exposed the rotting hulk of the Russian Empire and its dysfunctional monarchy was replaced with a bourgeois democracy which failed spectacularly within half a year and was replaced by the Bolsheviks, who were Marxist communist revolutionaries. A civil war ensued, which the Bolsheviks won. It then fell upon Stalin to quell the revolutionary fervor of Trotsky and his followers, mostly by simply having them all killed, and to reorient the ideology from world revolution to building socialism in just the one country he ruled. In this he succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination: industrialization, World War II victory, the atomic bomb, the space race and various other stunning Soviet achievements are mostly to his credit. But he certainly wasn’t picky about his methods—he didn’t have that luxury—and after his death this allowed his legacy to be very much tarnished by the likes of the very stupid and incompetent

Nikita Khrushchev and the compulsive liar, eclectic prose stylist and anti-Soviet propagandist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Soviet system, although effective for its time, had a congenital defect: it had no ability to renew itself. After Khrushchev was summarily dismissed while on holiday came the overly cautious Brezhnev who opposed even the most necessary reforms. Then came a procession of near-corpses: Andropov with his faulty kidneys and his insane wife; Chernenko who wasn’t quite alive throughout his 13-month term in office. And then came the young, charismatic, popular Gorbachev who destroyed the country in five years and is now the most reviled person in all of Russia, comparing favorably only to Hitler.

I will spare you the thumbnail sketch of American history and simply note that the US went from a post-World-War-II industrial powerhouse with top-notch science and engineering to a country full of ignorant, lazy, slovenly people that just prints money, scares the world with its aircraft carriers into using that money for foreign trade, and imports most of what it needs, including intelligent, educated people. And now the money-printing business is failing too, with the share of the USD in international trade having shrunk from nearly 100% to barely a third. But the crusty old gerontocrats don’t know that the world has changed and the yes-persons who surround them won’t tell them that the money-printing affair is almost over, that the aircraft carriers no longer frighten anyone and that the intelligent, educated people are leaving.Reasoning by analogy, we might think that once Americans manage to get someone young into the White House, it will take five years for the USA to collapse. Supposing Joe Biden croaks tomorrow, how long would it take his VP Kamala Harris to destroy the country? She would have two whole years to do it; would she manage? No wagering, please! Instead, let us answer the other questions.Why are the American gerontocrats so tenacious in clinging to their offices even as they struggle to fight off Death’s cold embrace? Why were the Soviet gerontocrats so loathe to let in new blood by retiring? Perhaps it was because they and their families enjoyed lives of exorbitant privilege, walled off from hoi polloi in special compounds. They had their own special apartment buildings, clinics, hospitals, sanatoria, schools for their children and shops in which they could buy luxury goods, living in a different universe from the citizenry of their land. Perhaps it was because this entire edifice of exorbitant privilege was build on a foundation of lies, corruption and theft that negated the very premise of a just and egalitarian socialist society. Or perhaps it was that the new blood would naturally have to be their own flesh and blood—their own precious children, that is, to whom would go all the cushiest jobs, except that their children weren’t turning out so well. They were unfit to serve in any capacity, being a special-bred race of overprivileged, pampered, psychopathic assholes. And so their only choice was to cling to power until death’s kiss because the alternative was the kiss of death for the entire Soviet institution—as it in fact happened.

It’s not that unusual in countries around the world for the new president to be the son of the old president. In Syria, when old al Assad died, young al Assad took his place; in North Korea, the great leader Kim Il-sung was succeeded by his equally illustrious son Kim Jong-il, who was succeeded by his grandson Kim Jong-un, who isn’t turning out to be too shabby either, what with his nuclear-tipped hypersonic missiles that can hit California (whereas the US ain’t got none). And let’s not even bring up Muḥammad bin Salmān Āl Su’ūd, who is quite a lively character too; he is there because his country is a kingdom in which his daddy is king. But that sort of family succession works well in honor-based polities; in privilege-based polities like the USSR and the USA, that just doesn’t work.

Imagine Hunter Biden strolling into the Oval Office, crack pipe in his teeth and a couple of underage Ukrainian prostitutes in tow, ready to accept lavish presents from foreign officials in exchange for huge chunks of the American pie. Imagine his crackhead buddies infesting the halls of Congress and enriching themselves through insider trading by buying defense company stocks the day before they sign huge defense contracts, then selling them the day after and pocketing the difference, then getting massive kickbacks from the defense contractors via their employees’ political campaign contributions—all perfectly legally, by the way! Imagine the State Department and the Treasury being restocked with cousins and uncles of the Ukrainian prostitutes in exchange for some very special, extra-kinky bedtime favors.

Mind you, all of these things are happening even with the old guard still in office—the giveaways of huge chunks of the American pie, the insider trading, the kickbacks, Ukrainians all over the place and all the rest—but with the difference that the old guard knows how to be secretive and cautious and how to hush things up when there are leaks, which are traits that develop with age and experience, whereas the young guard won’t know better than to flaunt their wealth and privilege, party like there is no tomorrow (which for them there probably won’t be) and very quickly burn down the house.And that’s the optimistic scenario. The pessimistic scenario, which is similar to what Gorbachev put into motion in the creaky old USSR, is a plague of reformers. The environmentalists would ban all internal combustion vehicles, all power plants and all cows (because they fart). The sound money maniacs would reintroduce the gold standard (only to discover that the Chinese and the Russians now own most of the gold). The libertarians would get rid of fire departments and just let everyone buy their own fire hoses and fire extinguishers. And the wokesters would fire all men who aren’t gay and green-light the careers of handicapped obese black trans lesbians.Now let’s combine the two: the degenerate, sociopathic scions of the old guard usher in the barking-mad reformers as a cover for their crimes. Now they’ll be burning down the house from the top even as the reformers undermine the foundation.

Gerontocracy is bad; but what’s worse is when the gerontocrats start joining the crowd invisible and are replaced by troglodytes of every stripe. The American gerontocrats are all of a single very numerous generation—the Baby Boomers—and they fit quite neatly under a bell curve. If we wish to test this hypothesis, then timing the collapse of the USA is mostly an exercise for an actuary. Perhaps Gail Tveberg the actuary would like to take a stab at it? Let’s ask her.