On early mornings of late December, Jaipur, like any large city in north India, quivers in a silvery film of pollution. As you drive past the city’s last high-rises and elevated roads, the atmosphere is an emulsion of dust and smoke. Every movement lifts the earth into the air.

Dawn comes, but not day. The dim, silver sun in an aluminum sky offers little heat or light. The fields are a naked beige after the monsoon groundnut crop has been dug up. The first green shoots of winter wheat and bajra have barely broken through the soil.

In a census of lifeforms here, trees would be an inconsequential minority. Among the trees, neem and khejri (also known as shami in most of north India and vanni, banni and jammi in the south) dominate. When I say dominate, they average two-or-three an acre.

The shami is considered a symbol of kshatriya valour. Legend says the Pandavas hid their weapons in a shami tree. Now, these trees, pruned and sheared for the season, resemble charred limbs raised in silent prayer. By summer, the khejri would yield nutritious pods called sangri used in the Rajasthani dish ker-sangri.

A wonder in the desert

Once we reach Gurha Kumawatan, a village 40km to the west of Jaipur, the transformation is startling. The fields are suddenly green and scurry with life. The raw sting of the air carries the red-wattled lapwings’ shrill and quirky ‘did-he-do-it’ call.  Towering above the farmland, giant semi-circular enclosures—like Amazon warehouses—dot the landscape.

These are polyhouses, industrial-scale farms that allow farmers to produce up to ten times more food than in open fields. Using a technique called protected farming, they require only a fraction of the water, fertilizers, and chemicals needed in traditional agriculture even on poor soil and climate that’s oppressively extreme.

Read the full story https://theplate.in/how-polyhouse-farming-in-rajasthans-desert-is-turning-farmers-into-millionaires/

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/0ClJa5ICJpY?si=ouZZtPtl-bU9thQL

” The algorithm is …the second great scientific idea of the West. There is no third.”

This sentence at the very beginning of the book should warn us that this is not going to be science writing in the Asimov vein. Dr. Berlinski once boasted that he can be accused of many things, but shrinking from controversy is not one of them. A professor of mathematics, a novelist, something of a poet and the successful author of “a tour of the calculus”, Dr. Berlinski is also famous for his very public insistence that Darwinian evolution does not add up; that something is missing from the story and the high priests are engaged in a cover-up. In “the advent of the algorithm” he sets out to tell us about the algorithm: “a procedure, written in a symbolic vocabulary, that gets something done step-by-step without the need for any intelligent assistance”. But he ends by questioning the ability of science to explain the mind: the intelligence that fashions and uses these algorithms and infuses them with meaning.

The book begins and ends with Gottfried Leibniz. Between inventing the calculus, imagining the monads and carrying out his diplomatic duties, Gottfried Leibniz also laid the foundations of mathematical logic and the science of computing. He is followed by Guiseppe Peano, Gottlieb Frege, George Cantor and others, till we get to the great David Hilbert and his challenge to mathematicians to show that mathematics is consistent, complete and decidable (in principle, if not in practice). Within a few years, Kurt Godel was able to show that this is not possible. After an explanation of Godel’s revolutionary result, Alonzo Church, Alan Turing, Emil Post, Claude Shannon and others are introduced and the reader learns about the developments in logic and mathematics that form the foundations of our modern digital world.

Berlinski’s explanations of these developments are lucid, even brilliant, and someone with little mathematical knowledge beyond high school should still be able to understand what he is saying. But he does not want to stop at the bare bones of the theories. He is determined to give his readers a hint of the larger import of these matters, and he presses into service a number of stories, asides and literary flourishes. Sometimes the prose is so purple, it throbs and begs to be deflated, but the overall effect is not unpleasant. Here is a typical fragment about Liebniz:

“And then, by some inscrutable incandescent insight, Leibniz came to see that what is crucial in what he had written is the alternation between God and Nothingness. And for this, the numbers 0 and 1 suffice.

Twinkies and Diet Coke in hand, computer programmers can now be observed pausing thoughtfully at their consoles.”

And here are the last days of Hilbert in Nazi Germany:

“Hilbert closed his remarks with words that were later inscribed on his tombstone: we must know. We will know.”

“We realize now that that was the last time those words could have been uttered without irony…the mathematicians who had heard his voice and fallen under his command had scattered, some going to the US or South America or even China, others, for all their sophisticated and intellectual cunning, finding themselves packed in freight cars, grinding their way to some place in the east.”

This powerful and humane sense of history and tragedy is accompanied by an almost wicked sense of humor and an absolute unwillingness to submit to fashionable opinion. The stories and asides are generally delightful, though the author could easily have spared us his own amorous adventures and multiple marriages without any loss to the book. The math is challenging, but not overwhelming and worth the effort to understand it. In the last chapters, he takes on the issue of whether the mind is simply an algorithm, albeit a very sophisticated one? The question is not if the mind uses algorithms or if many of its functions can be reduced to algorithms (it does, and they can). The 300-pound gorilla in the room is consciousness: an algorithm is merely symbols, manipulated according to rules (themselves strings of symbols) but an intelligence creates those symbols and assigns them meaning. When the mind sees, something is seen by someone. Who is this someone who sees? Berlinski knows that even the scientists do not know the answer to that. The attack on scientific monotheism in the last chapters may upset those who suspect that such “attacks from within” will provide ammunition to those who wish to bludgeon us into more extreme monotheisms of their own. But Berlinski believes that doubt has brought us this far, it is too late in the day to stop. All the emperors are naked, why should the emperor of science get special treatment? And so he ends with Heraclitus:

”you could not discover the limits of the soul, not even if you traveled down every road. Such is the depth of its form”

In my view  a level 5 PISA score is the minimum requirement for a person to be considered a high school graduate who is literate in math, able to function in the modern global economy, or be qualified to attend college. The PISA report defines a level 5 PISA score or better as a fifteen year old that “can model complex situations mathematically, and can select, compare and evaluate appropriate problem-solving strategies for dealing with them.” How does America perform in the 2018 PISA report?:

• United States: 8% of students scored at Level 5 or higher in mathematics
• OECD average: 11%
• Six Asian countries and economies had the largest shares of students who did so:
  • Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (China): 44%
  • Singapore: 37%
  • Hong Kong (China): 29%
  • Macao (China): 28%
  • Chinese Taipei: 23%
  • Korea: 21%

Note that these six countries were among the poorest countries in the world in the 1950s, far poorer than poor Americans or poor Europeans or poor Chileans can even imagine. In 1979 China was unbelievably poor. Much of the population of China–perhaps as many as 100 million–had starved to death because of extreme poverty in the 1970s. Poor children around the world are outperforming American children in mathematics despite extremely low education spending per student and very low socio-economic level of their legal guardians, where socio-economic level is defined as:

• income
• wealth
• formal education of parents

Do any American high school student subgroups perform well in Mathematics? Yes, “people of color” or “minority” Americans perform well in Mathematics. America’s “people of color” or “minority” students are orders of magnitude more likely to get an 800 on the mathematics SAT than European Americans. If we assume this is an extreme tail end distribution issue related to European Americans having a lower standard deviation and non standard distribution in mathematics performance relative to “people of color” or “minority” Americans, we can explore the breakdown of Americans who score between 750 and 800 on the Mathematics SAT. Here European Americans perform far better relative to “people of color” or “minority” Americans.  In 2015 16,000 European Americans scored 750 or higher. 33,000 “people of color” and “minority” Americans scored 750 or higher. We further know that 51% of SAT test takers were European Americans and 49% were “people of color” or “minority” Americans.  “People of color” or “minority” Americans are [33,000/16,000]*[51%/49%] or 2.15 times as likely to score 750 or higher on the mathematics SAT compared to European Americans.  If we examine the 107,900 test takers who got SAT math scores of 700 or higher; 59,900 are “people of color” or “minority” Americans, versus 48,000 European Americans. “People of color” or “minority” Americans are [59,900/48,000]*[51%/49%] or 1.30 times as likely to score 700 or higher on the mathematics SAT compared to European Americans. For data junkie geeks like me there is a lot more data on SAT math score distributions here and here. The Greta Anderson article’s comment section in particular has some very intelligent commentators who have studied the American SAT score distribution. This is likely to be the subject of many future blog posts and Brown Pundits Podcasts.

What about this is worrying?:

1. European Americans in particular are sharply under-performing both very poor children around the world and “people of color” and “minority” Americans in mathematics.
2. American mathematics SAT scores have fallen between 1972 and 2016. 1972 is the earliest year for which I could find comparable SAT mathematics scores. In 2017, 2018 and 2019 the SAT mathematics exam was completely restructured to make scores no longer comparable to SAT mathematics scores between 1972 and 2016.
3. 90% or more of current jobs and businesses are likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), brain electro-therapy (meditation . . . practiced by civilizations around the world for over 5,000 years), brain sound therapy (naad or mantra yoga and their equivalents in Native American, Egyptian, Sumerian, Taoist and other civilizations around the world for over 5,000 years), bio-engineering tissue, genetic editing, and fused AI-brain interface synthesis intelligence. Almost all of these future disciplines are complementary to mathematics.

Future articles and podcasts are planned all six of these future disciplines. If you are curious about fused AI-brain interface synthesis intelligence, please watch my main man Elon Musk:

Some say that the tension and relationship challenges between America’s four big castes–European Americans, European “Latino” Americans, Black Americans and Asian American–are driving low math scores for European Americans “AND” other Americans. One example is where thought leader Mark J Perry explores the possibility that tension between the European American caste and the Asian American caste are lowering American  mathematics performance. Excerpts of his article are reproduced below:

Here’s a little creative editing below of the Star Tribune article “Bipartisan bill to build Minnesota’s ranks of white teachers of color sputtered: Legislation added less than bipartisan backers sought to increase ranks of color whites”

.  .  .  .

Minnesota is increasing spending to hire and retain white teachers of color as the state struggles to close a persistent achievement gap between whites and students of color. Asian students (see chart above).

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former schoolteacher, and legislators recently increased funding for the effort in the coming years, to $3.1 million more for various programs. But that represents an increase of only $299,000 from total investments of the last two years.

Advocates — who were seeking $80 million overall — said they were disappointed that lawmakers did not invest more to create a diverse teaching force with more white teachers to close the Asian-white achievement gap (see chart above). They said some of the additional funding approved will help retain minority white teachers, but ultimately it is not enough to increase the percentage of white teachers of color overall.

“We’re struggling just to move the needle one percent a year,” said Paul Spies, legislative action team lead for the Coalition to Increase White Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota. “The Legislature refuses to appropriate the money and make the policy amendments needed for systemic change to address the Asian-white achievement gap.”

A growing body of education research shows that increasing the number of white teachers of color can help narrow the achievement gap between Asian students of color and their white peers. Teachers who reflect the students’ racial background are critical to keeping students engaged, in class and successful, researchers say.

Advocates lobbied the Legislature this year to fund a range of existing and new programs, such as student-teacher grants, scholarships for aspiring teachers, teacher-retention funds, expanded pathways to teaching careers and bonuses to entice white out-of-state teachers of color to work in Minnesota to address the achievement gap between white and Asian students.

In the end, a new program focused on retaining white teachers of color — who are already in the pipeline through mentoring, training and fostering racial-affinity groups — was awarded $1.5 million for the next two years.

Meanwhile, white teachers of color in Minneapolis and other school districts have formed white racial-affinity groups as an “informal” way to mentor and support one another, talk about difficulties and find ways to recruit and retain more minority white teachers to address the achievement gap between Asian and white students.

Many European Americans respond to low American mathamatics performance by saying that we don’t need to learn mathematics because mathematics is racist. I shared my deep meditative feelings (ananda maya kosha) and intuition (vijnaya maya kosha) understanding about the beauty of mathematics here:

Post Modernism (d)

Because many European Americans think mathematics is racist or otherwise not correlated to college, career and business performance, they are trying to prevent the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) System from using standardized mathematical tests to determine college admission. There is a high probability that the State of California will comply in the near future. If this happens, this would likely sharply increase the number of European American students admitted to UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego and sharply reduce the “people of color” or “minority” Americans admitted.

In my view this is dangerous for three reasons which will be elaborated on below:

• If done in a nontransparent and misleading way it could increase American caste tensions between European Americans and “minority” and “people of color” Americans.
• The vast majority of Americans students enrolling in college have been mathematically illiterate for some time. Many or most of these Americans students DO NOT learn math in college and suffer from admission mismatch. The results for American society in the long run are likely to be ruinous.
• It avoids dealing with the main crisis–low mathematical literacy among American K-12 students. Especially disastrously low mathematical literacy among European Americans.

“People of color” or “minority” Americans will be the first to celebrate increased European American university enrollment and reduced “People of color” or “minority” American enrollment IF this is based on Yogyataa and Adhikaar (worthiness). However if increased enrollment is not based on merit, capacity and competence, the admitted students will suffer from admission mismatch. US Presidential candidate Andrew Yang (who I think the world of) warned that only 59% of European Americans admitted to college graduate. (About 72% of European Americans who graduate high school are admitted to college.) This is often disastrous for 41% of students admitted to college who fail or drop out with a lot of college debt and many years of their working life potentially partly wasted. I suspect that most of these 41% who drop out of college partly did so because of weak math preparation before entering college.

Another of America’s greatest problems is the soaring number of college graduates who are functionally illiterate in english and mathematics (where the standard for literacy in english and mathematics is extremely low). One of the world’s greatest thought leaders who embodies the merging of human heart with wisdom–Glenn Loury–explores this phenomenon:

Michele Kerr is a teacher in a tough Fremont California school.  She discusses the crisis in illiterate college graduates and unqualified teachers. [She has amazing ideas on how to improve K-12 academic performance that I think could be discussed in a future Brown Pundits podcast.]

Another reason American society as a whole should publicly acknowledge that most Americans who enter college lack mathematical literacy (causing high college drop-out rates and high percentages of recent college graduates who are functionally illiterate) is to  encourage humility on the part of college attendees in their interactions with non college attendees. Aside from very elite universities and stem degrees–does college attendance tell us much about mathematical literacy any more?

If European Americans want preferences at the expense of “minority” and “people of color” students in college enrollment, we should recognize that it is unlikely to improve American math literacy.  Having said this, we can try to minimize the damage to American mathematical literacy through transparent, open, explicit race based affirmative action that tries to minimize college mismatch. Preferences to benefit European Americans can be modeled after Bumiputera in Malaysia. Aside from the UC system and Caltech, most prestigious US universities employ a non transparent race based affirmative action. Race based affirmative action has sharply increased the number of European American students admitted and sharply reduce the “people of color” or “minority” Americans admitted because “people of color” or “minority” Americans academically outperform European Americans at the top right of the distribution curve. European Americans suffered less from preferential admission related admission mismatch because in these cases the universities could still sort out European American applicants who were not good in mathematics. Because of this, we would all be better off with race based affirmative action than going to a world where colleges were not required to consider mathematical performance in standardized tests. This would satisfy European American demands for more preferential treatment and increased college admissions. I think “people of color” and “minority” Americans would accept this if Universities were explicit in exactly how these preferences to benefit European Americans worked.

If America goes down the Bumiputera route, certain high academically performing “Asian” “European Americans” should be re-characterized as “minorities” and “people” of color so that that affirmative action benefits are concentrated to academically low performing European Americans. These high academically performing “Asian” European Americans would include:

1. Jews
2. Israelis
3. Lebanese
4. Iranians
5. Armenians
6. Azerbaijanis
7. Russians
8. Bulgarians
9. Romanians
10. Slovenians

[I would prefer a third option other than not considering mathematical performance for admission or race based affirmative action where European Americans were the primary beneficiary, but that is for another blog post.]

How to be good at Mathematics

I think the way to be good at mathematics is to fall in love. In this romance sometimes hours or days fall way as equations fall into place. We lose all external awareness. And then we find out a day has passed. When we come back to the world our body may have pain or bleeding  that we did not know.  It takes us beyond this world to music and dance . . . to an inner music softer still:

Mathematics is a pathway to what neuroscientists might call a nonsexual orgasm. Beyond gross thought. To goose bumps throughout the body where the hair stands on end.  Goose bumps up and down the back and with loving still sweetness in the brain A synthesis of the peripheral nervous system with the central nervous system perhaps? An awareness of many subtle parts of the brain and nervous system that always are but rarely observed. A slight observation of our autonomous nervous system? The parasympathetic nervous system begins a series of reactions. Our Vagus nerve slows our heart beat and breathing. Oxygen levels fall extremely low. Our glands start producing large quantities of endorphins and psychedelics (aushadi). A psychedelic high of drunk ecstasy as drops of bliss fall down:

Stanford’s Dr. James Doty (who we might interview) says that this resolves 80% of health challenges, sharply improving physical health, mental health and intelligence:

If we can meditate in action while doing mathematics vibhuti (spontaneous answers) come. If we can take tests this way miracles happen.

Mathematics becomes beauty. Becomes art. Patterns in patterns . . . a symphony.  Insightful concepts, products, process, academic papers flow unasked. The waves slow. The tanmatra of sight say some. Sacred geometries unlock. Spatial intelligence. General Intelligence or G increases:

Higher mathematics becomes possible. But I think this is only the smallest hint. Could G be a subset within a superset of deeper intelligence (Buddhi)?  If the brain and nervous system is a machine as Dr. Richard Haier believes, then the brain machine can be altered  in ways that transform our our big 5 psychological traits, unconscious brain, unconscious patterns, sensory inputs, preferences and subtle intelligences (Siddhis) . Ancient civilizations around the world have long explored the subtle intelligence (Siddhis) that meditation (electro-brain therapy) manifests. Mark Gober would say that meditation allows our brains connect with conciousness.

The education system needs to be transformed to increase mathematical competence, G (General Intelligence), deep intelligence (Buddhi), subtle intelligence (Siddhis), and connection with consciousness.

In addition to encouraging a lot more sports, exercise, stretching, breathing, music (brain sound therapy) and meditation (brain electro-therapy), America needs to:

• fire a very large percentage of teachers and ask them to reapply. No one is entitled to be a teacher. The old saying that there are no bad students, only bad teachers is partly true
• bring in large numbers of highly capable foreign teachers.
• be willing to increase class sizes if we can’t find qualified teachers, maybe by a lot
• hire special teachers for pre-school to 3rd grade who do not need to be literate in english and mathematics who can hug and serve as surrogate moms, dads and mentors for children who lack functional families
• pay teachers a lot more where their pay is based on performance with no tenure pay
• keep schools open from 7 AM to 7 PM including some weekend and holiday hours
• hire idealistic tutors who do not have teaching credentials
• implement strict discipline in disorderly schools and if necessary suspend and remove many children from schools
• inspire through all 5 senses. Some neuroscientists speculate that we have 33 sensory inputs instead of 5 sensory inputs. If this is true, inspire through activities that integrate all 33 sensory inputs.

A series of other blog posts and podcasts are planned to elaborate on the above. Below are successful examples of how to bring in foreign teachers to teach American K-12 children math:

This next part is very hard to say. There is an ancient popular saying in the east:

Many Americans have been intentionally speaking sweet untruth for a very long time about a great many things in an effort to be sweet and because they don’t want to hurt feelings. This makes it very hard to be truthful without completely and traumatic shocking many Americans.

To help others we need Yogyataa (worthiness), merit, capacity and competence. To use STE (spiritual transformative experience) terminology, we need physical strength, mental strength and spiritual strength to help others. Most people who try to help others lack this and inadvertently hurt the people they are trying to help. Many or most challenges and conflict in the world comes from people trying to help others and inadvertently hurting them. If we do not have physical strength, mental strength and spiritual strength it is enough to love others.

Krishna in Bhagavad Gita 18.25 warns “Anapekshya (disregarding) cha Paurusham (one’s ability) mohaad (delusion) aarabhyate (is begun) karma (action) yat (which) tat (that) taamasam (ignorant) uchyate (is).” Or when we disregard our ability out of delusion and begin action this is tamasic (or ignorant).

Love is not nothing. Love transcends thought and transforms our brain and nervous system. (Please read more about electro-brain therapy a couple paragraphs above.) Love helps us become better in math, improves our physical health, improves our mental health, increases our G (General Intelligence), increases our deep intelligence (Buddhi), increases our subtle intelligences (Siddhi), our connection with conciousness. Love increases our capacity, competence and merit. Love in time gives us the Yogyataa (worthiness) to help others.

To help others academically we personally need to be good at math. If we are not good at math, then we should love others with all our hearts, all our soul, all our minds, and all our might and step aside. Love gives us the wisdom and courage to not help and not suggest how others can help.

I think this is why one of the world’s greatest heroes, Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), famously said in 1865 during his “What the Black Man wants” speech:

• In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us… I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone, — your interference is doing him positive injury.

• Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man. A great many delusions have been swept away by this war. One was, that the Negro would not work; he has proved his ability to work. Another was, that the Negro would not fight; that he possessed only the most sheepish attributes of humanity; was a perfect lamb, or an “Uncle Tom;” disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be whipped by anybody who wanted to whip him. But the war has proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro.

The wisdom of Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895) applies not only to black Americans but to all poor people and all struggling people everywhere who are trying to learn math. I believe this only applies to people who lack Yogyataa (worthiness) to teach math. We should also try to inspire the small minority of Americans who are good at teaching math to help others learn math.

The example of Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895) lit a fire that Booker T Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois grew into an economic and academic miracle of success and excellence. Black Americans dramatically improved academic performance between 1865 and 1938.  When  the US Army tested Americans from across the country to recruit soldiers for WWI the world was stunned learn that American blacks outside the south substantially academically outperformed European Americans who lived in the south. American blacks who lived outside the south also had substantially higher measured IQs than European Americans who lived in the south. Black wall street in Oklahoma was a mecca of excellence and achievement between 1906 and the 1920s. Most astonishing though was the outstanding performance of black Americans in Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech–New York’s elite high schools between 1900 and 1938. In 1938 Black Americans were represented in Stuyversant almost proportionate to the percentage of New York City’s population which is black. Or that black kids substantially academically outperformed non Jewish European American kids in 1938.  (Please read chapter 9: Mental Abilities in Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell.)

It is hard to explain how extraordinary this was. This is 1938, long before the Asian economic miracle and the rise of nations all around the world. The US had almost half of global income and wealth compared to only one sixth today. New York was by far the most successful, important, rich, admired, professional city in the world by an ENORMOUS margin. New York had the largest pockets of excellence and achievement in the world with the best companies, the world’s undisputed financial center, best museums, best research and development, best schools, smartest people, best culture. Blacks kids were competing and winning with the best, hardest working and smartest kids in the world. Many of these children were Jewish–the smartest people in the world. [Full disclosure I am a complete total Judeophile.] To be in Stuyvversant in 1938 would probably put a child into the top 0.1% academically of all children in the world. This is the very right extreme of the distribution of performance. This is vastly more impressive than performance at the median, mean, or 75% or 98%. For so many black Americans to be in Stuyvversant meant either that blacks had a large standard error of performance or a high mean. I am betting on the second. Black American  must have been knocking mathematical performance out of the park.

Black Americans and the rest of us were inspired and lead by giants of men. Heroes such as Fredrick Douglas, Booker T Washington,  George Washington Carver, W.E.B. Du Bois. Leaders that belong to our entire species. May they inspire us as long as our species flourishes on this tiny earth (blue marble as the Native Americans call it). Their legacy lives through our continued excellence today.

Several paragraphs above we discussed how many believe that low American math performance is driven by tension and sub-optimal relations between America’s big four castes–European Americans, European “Latino” Americans, Black Americans and Asian American. I have read an enormous amount of literature and seen a lot of video content of academics and thought leaders making this case. The more I study their arguments, the less I understand what they are saying. I would like to steel man and present their arguments in a way that they would regard as descriptive, but I don’t understand them well enough to do this. Can anyone explain them to me in the comment section? Professor Wilfred Reilly finds that many or most of the supposed incidences of caste relationship challenges–also called “hate crimes”–either have not happened, or are ordinary crimes or are exaggerated. These “hate crimes” are incredibly rare and statistically insignificant.

My observation is that America’s big four castes deeply love and respect each other, intermarry and intermingle seamlessly . . . forming a beautiful unity in multiplicity of heart and soul. A symphony of grace moving towards synthesis. Beautiful, sweet and mysterious are the relations between America’s castes as the castes dissolve away.

I understand when Glenn Loury speaks of trans-humanism and christian charity. Because this is what I see. I understand when Kmele Foster (another of the world’s great thought leaders) does not see American caste or identify with the American caste of black American. This makes sense to me.  Maybe there are no castes at all.

Maybe the solution to our challenges, math and otherwise, are unrelated to caste. Do the phrases “minority” and “people of color” have no meaning?

Maybe we can all fall in love with math instead!

In the following interview, Glenn Loury and William “Sandy” Darity discuss the idea of “caste”–or “blackness”, “hispanic-ness”, “asian-ness”–having little meaning (5 to 10 minutes in):

Professor Glenn Loury–one of the world’s greatest economists has very considerately agreed to be interviewed by the Brown Pundits Podcast.  We will likely discuss education. Please send your questions for Glenn Loury.

We are also about the interview one of the world’s greatest thought leaders on socio-economic data, violent crime, hate crime, education and intelligence on Brown Pundits Podcast, Professor Wilfred Reilly. Hopefully we will be able to discuss how to improve mathematics performance. Please leave your questions for Professor Wilfred Reilly in the comment section:

Is there an interest in interviewing global heart-throb and male model paragon of male attractiveness Gad Saad and asking his perspectives on how to improve our capacity, competence and merit in mathematics? Please let us know.

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American Caste (a)

American Caste

Five thousand years ago the greater Egyptian, Sumerian, Eastern (defined as pan Arya plus China) civilizations were very mathematically oriented.  Many caucasians appear to believe that these ancient civilizations were racist. Possibly because of this many caucasians believe that math is racist.

Another possible reason many caucasians appear to believe that math is racist is because they fear it might unfairly advantages “brown” people (Asians, Arabs, Latinos) and “brown” cultures (eastern philosophy including Toaism and Confucianism, native american religion) at the expense of caucasians in the new global artificial intelligence, neuroscience, genetics economy.

Could part of the anger against math come from fear that mathematics, science, technology, seeking the truth through thought, seeking the truth without thought might be haram or blasphemous? (Obviously most Abrahamics do not believe this and this is not a critique of Abrahamism.)

I believe that mathematics is part of art; and that it derives from beyond normal gross thought. From what in Sanskrit is called Buddhi, Vijnayamaya Kosha, Ananda Maya Kosha, Sukshma Sharira, Kaarana Sharira, the subtle heavens.

Perhaps the anger against mathematics is part of a deeper anger against the subtle heavens? If so, one possible way to look at this is that to transcend the subtle heavens (including mathematics) it might be helpful to love them and love our way through them. Or to love and respect the racist (subtle heavens–including mathematics) until we transcend the various subtleties of thought and feeling.

What are everyone’s thoughts?

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Post Modernism (c)

Post Modernism (b)

Post Modernism (a)

Intellectual Dark Web (a)

Intellectual Dark Web

DoubleQuote I: St Greta, Virgin and Guevara:

Questions:

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**
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DoubleQuote II: St Greta and St Malala:

Each of these young women is addressing the United Nations, Malala asking for universal education, Greta for immediate action on climate change.

Questions::

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It’s a commentary on our times that the 21st-century “space race” is between India and China (and Elon and Jeff). As for me, I’m pretty happy, because no matter who wins the race, the human race will benefit from inspiration, science, and technology.

The only “brown” thing I will note is that Joan D. Vinge’s space opera Summer Queen features a dominant civilization which is obviously based on that of the Indian subcontinent. Brownz in space!!!

My HipBone Games began as an attempt to make Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game playable, preferably on a paper napkin in a sidewalk cafe, so I began with boards like my WaterBird —

— with ten moves, ten concepts arrayed in such a way that players or later readers could see ten richly interconnected concepts in one place — concepts that might be textual, musical, mathematical, visual, filmic — if we’d known how to convey smells via the internet, I’d have included those, too..

And over time, I discovered the obvious — that the fundamental game move involved two concepts, with one bridging link between them. So that’s the fundamental way to learn to play the HipBone Games. Over time, I’ve come to rely more and more on this simplest of HipBone Games, the DoubleQuote:

— leaving the larger HipBone Gameboards — the 8-move Dart board on up to the 120-odd Said Symphony board, dedicated to, you may have guessed it, Edward Said, and available for possible competition games and solo symphonies.

**

What’s a concept, you might ask — what constitutes a move?

I might use a different definition if I were taking about anything other than the Bead Game, but in this context, a concept is a rich idea — an idea with rich possibilities for association. Let me take a paragraph from a New Yorker piece as an example:

Melissa and Ashley, identical twins from Georgia, shared a bedroom while growing up. They had the same best friend, took classes together in high school, and dreamed of becoming artists in their own collective. “We’re like two different people with one brain,” Melissa liked to say.

The article in question is titled An Underground College for Undocumented Immigrants — so there’s room associations with the underground railroad perhaps, another situation where the official system repressed a minority, and that minority found ways to circumvent the system.

I’ve chosen this example, in fact, because it offers numerous associative possibilities — to other ideas, narratives, or statistical finds about twins, to other New Yorker articles, to underground movie theaters or catacombs, to those who dream of becoming artists — and in particular for my purposes here, because it’s about two people who think, almost as if they are one.

In fact, to emphasis this notion of unity and harmony, I might simply chose this statement for the first position in my DoubleQuote::

We’re like two different people with one brain

**

Let’s use a musical analogy, and say the two of them think in close harmony, or, since there are two of them, that thinking together, they constitute a duet..

The opposite of harmony,in which many notes played simultaneously form a chord, is counterpoint, in which differing melodic lines move between discord and resolution — harmony a “vertical” matter, synchronic, while counterpoint is “horizontal” and diachronic —

— and the opposite of a duet is a duel.

**

The two friends in Don DeLillo’s New Yorker piece, Midnight in Dostoevsky like to keep their minds at opposite poles from each other. As one of the two reports:

He liked to test himself on what he knew. He liked to stop walking to emphasize a point as I walked on. This was my counterpoint, to let him stand there talking to a tree. The shallower our arguments, the more intense we became.

I wanted to keep this one going, to stay in control, to press him hard. Did it matter what I said?

The actual phrase I’d place in juxtaposition to the first paragraph above might come from a discussion of whether the old man walking in front of them that day was wearing an anorak or a parka —

It was our routine; we were ever ready to find a matter to contest.

Again, the context — the article itself — is rich in associative potentials, with parkas, anoraks, Inuits, linguistics, life in the arctic circle, the whole idea of North — on which the pianist Glenn Gould wrote an entire radio opera —

— and note that Gould is himself a master of counterpoint, specializing in the work of JS Bach, and called his radio opera technique “contrapuntal radio” —

So:

“This was counterpoint” — the opposite of harmony, and full of both conflict and resolution, with phrases isolated and overlapping, paused and repeated, denial and occasional agreement and renewed denial — a duel, not by any means a duet.

And yet each of our two excerpts describes the conversations of two close friends, the one emphasizing unity, the other diversity. And it is in the similarities and differences between the two conversation — between duel and duet — that the two concepts link to become a single move.

**

Having given that extended example, let me present a few more DoubleQuotes, in their positions on the board — with minimal explanations:

Some of them are made of names or phrases so simple, they fit on a mini-version of the board:

Some bring Shakespeare to bear on current events — in this case, Saudi Crown Prince MBS and the Khashoggi murder:

Some showing similarities in different materials:

Some making historical comparisons — this one’s in an earlier version of the same board —

or opposite opinions and creative practices of two of the world’s most distinguished physicists:

or — and this is my personal favorite, crossing as it does the great disciplinary boundary — between CP Snow’s Two Cultures — between art and science:

**

But either I’ve been very unclear, or you get the idea.

Here’s the blank DoubleQuotes board again, for you to download and drop your own examples into.

At gmail I’m hipbonegamer — feel free to send me your own, with any explanation you feel like making, and in a later post I’ll put them up here.

In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told medical staff at a Mumbai hospital that the story of the Hindu god Ganesha – whose elephant head is attached to a human body – showed cosmetic surgery existed in ancient India.

I don’t comment much on Indian politics for two reasons. First, I think macroeconomic conditions and trajectories are more important than politics as such for a developing nation like India. Second, the details of the cultural and political dynamics within any given nation are really hard to grok from the outside.

That being said, the widespread percolation of this sort of pseudoscience and pseudohistory on the Indian Right is a problem and has analogs with instances in other nations (e.g., Mike Pence is almost certainly a Creationist). These beliefs are often (though not always) harmless in and of themselves, but they are indicative of deeper maladies in terms of epistemological hygiene.

I have Hindu nationalists who are broadly on the same empirical page as me. We differ on details of values and emphases. And I know they are somewhat embarrassed by these weird ideas about nuclear weapons in ancient India. The key is to keep a lid on it so it doesn’t capture the commanding heights (ergo, why I’m quoting Modi).

Addendum: One issue for me is that I have a hard time taking Indian pseudoscience seriously just as I have a hard time taking Creation Science seriously. Sincere, earnest, and sometimes bright, people taking absurd claims seriously and constructing models out of them strikes me as farcical and funny more than threatening.

Some see the intellectual dark web as the primary global resistance to post modernism. I don’t agree. Rather I see them as ideation and intuition leaders thinking different:

Steve Jobs I believe used the word “hippie” to refer to the intellectual dark web:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgWEQJZENLA

Steve Jobs called it what we experience when there are gaps. This movement inspired by the gaps is changing the world, and I believe will lead to a rapid convergence of science, technology, art, poetry, philosophy and religion into a continuum of possibility. Perhaps this continuum of possibility is poetically referenced:

In the past many saw this as “Wu wu”. But Neurology might soon unlock a larger part of mysticism:

The rapid evolution of technology enabling the “intellectual dark web” is closely related to Enlightenment philosophy and the scientific method:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_5N0N-61Tg

To better explain how all these till now disparate fields are converging would require stand alone articles on genetics, neuroscience, bio-engineering, AI with interconnects to the brain and nervous system, eastern philosophy, Enlightenment philosophy, psychology and economics. And then interdisciplinary articles explaining the covariances between these various threads to connect them all together. Deep dives into particular narrow fields of study assist with finding partial equilibrium that maximize outcomes adjusting a single variable. The “intellectual dark web” is about finding general equilibrium that maximize outcomes by adjusting many variables at once. Economics as a profession often seeks general equilibrium maximization but till now has lacked the understanding, models, technologies and philosophies to do so. More on this will hopefully be elaborated in the future. For now I would like to mention some of the leaders of the “intellectual dark web” who come from the field of psychology.

Jonathan Haidt’s big awakening that helped him understand human behavior, human experience and American conservatism happened during his three month stay in India (29 minutes into the video):

Janathan Haidt was a hard leftist before visiting India.

Another great leader transforming psychology is Jordan Peterson. Large parts of Jordan Peterson’s philosophy is extremely similar to eastern philosophy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHJcyCU0PJQ

Hope to elaborate on how in future articles about how closely the cutting edge of psychology is mapping with empowerment, neuroscience, Steve Job’s “gaps”, religions from around the world and the open architecture of Sanathana Dharma:

These ideas and trends threaten to make human beings far more powerful and knowledgeable in the near future, playing with cosmic powers. Could this be what scares post modernists the most? I would like to end this long disparate essay with a discussion between two of the world’s greatest living intellectuals who just found out hours ago that:

1. There is something called the “intellectual dark web”
2. Prominent journalists think they are leaders of it

Their reactions are priceless. I look forward to seeing Razib Khan’s reaction to being nominated for a similar honor (which will be withdrawn instantly if he so desires). Let us see if it is similarly priceless.  🙂

The “intellectual dark web” is making transparent all the bad things about our society that till now were glossed over and hidden.

John McWhorter expresses the deep frustration and disgust that hundreds of millions of people of African heritage must feel when they are constantly condescendingly, pretentiously, patronizingly talked down to by post modernists about how racism and bigotry directed against them can in any way prevent them from achieving infinitely more than their hearts greatest dreams. Asians can greatly relate to this disgust. This is classic stucturalist, orientalist, imperialist and hegemonic colonization of the mind with inferiority complex to damage self confidence, discredit knowledge and achievement, and keep people down. This is how post modernists kept the Asian poor down for so long. Until Asians started fighting back.

Glenn Loury delivers a devastating indictment of insincere fake caucasions cheering Ta-Nehisi Coates 30 minutes in. Asia and Latin America are rising fast. Americans of Asian and Latino ancestry are rising fast. As he says, “everyone knows it”. Tokenism is insulting to people of African heritage. The paucity of black faces and the soaring number of Asian faces in non humanities academia, science, engineering, business, consulting, finance is known by everyone. No one is fooled. “Everybody knows that it is not the fault of racist white institutions.”. He says that when non blacks nod their heads in affirmation of post modernist Ta-Nehisi Coates type rhetoric, “they know they are lying.” People such as Ta-Nehisi Coates “are dependent upon a certain type of generosity, and certain kind of forbearance, a certain kind of license”. John McWhorter responds 37 minutes in that caucasions back Ta-Nehisi Coates because they think “beat me, beat me, hit me, Ahh, Ahh, Ahh”, or a type of self flagellation orgasm.

Before 1861, education of slaves and free blacks in the American south was either banned or discouraged. Very cleverly slave owners tried to colonize the minds of slaves and free blacks to manipulate them to look down on education, and to make fun of what are today called nerds and geeks. African nerd and geek students continue to be daily bullied, made fun of, beaten up. They are called “uncle tom”, “coons”, and accused of “acting white”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGZN7Kq1o8

In the last century post modernists have done all they can to accelerate this trend, which many say has gotten a lot worse since the 1960s. No doubt some well intentioned collaborators of African ancestry are partly complicit. But most of the blame and most of the people promoting this are post modernists who don’t have African heritage. When President Obama gave his famous speech on fatherhood, he was savaged by caucasion post modernists for blaming the victim. The same happens to all people of African heritage who try to fight back. Caucasion post modernists always put up a “black” face or a “minority” face in front to cover their dark agenda, and love to call anyone who disagrees with them racist. But increasingly the facade is falling. They are the global structural racism that is aimed at preventing the rise of people of African heritage around the world.  And their time is almost up.

The global solution to poverty is improved physical health (obesity and exercise are heavily correlated with income in econometric studies), improved mental health (which includes self confidence), improved intelligence (40% of all variations in income can be explained by IQ scores) and neoliberalism. The “intellectual dark web” is making all of this happen. It is transforming our species into super humans.

PS. Addition. Mir, can you read “Inequality and the Intellectual Dark Web“. It came out after yours truly’s article and gives a different perspective on the intellectual dark web.

With respect to caucasion post modernist social justice warriors advocates advancing the interests of African Americans, please watch the following three videos from John McWhorter and Glenn Loury (who I consider to be among the world’s two greatest living intellectuals). Please share what you think:

• John: America has a white problem…
• White privilege as original sin
• John: Microaggressions can’t keep me down

To summarize the teachings of religions the world over:

• First we must be;
  • For example how the young Mohammed pbuh had to rip himself apart piece by piece to become the prophet he transformed into. Some might call this purity;
• Then do;
  • authenticity or synthesis of thought, word and deed; allowing our true self to manifest;
• Then see;
  • Observe others very carefully. Understand them better than they understand themselves. Ensure that what we are and what we do is relevant and helpful to others;
• Then tell;
  • Help, inspire or advise others;

It is extremely good to want to love, help and serve all. But we need to develop our own hearts and increase our own intelligence (buddhi or बुद्धि in Sanskrit) to be able to help others. We need worthiness (Yogya or योग्य in Sanskrit).

I have not so much read the book as scanned it. For most of the book he builds a case for his basic claim that life, for most people, has improved to an amazing extent in the last 200 years and we can thank science, reason and humanism for all this progress.
I assume he has to provide so much data because he knows this is an unfashionable opinion within the postmodern liberal intellectual elite and this bothers him. By listing all these facts and showing us all these graphs, he thinks he can convince even his most skeptical critics that progress is real, and that it is much more widely distributed than most people imagine. Is there something missing from his account of progress? I think there definitely is. I do not disagree with his claim that progress is real. Hunger, disease, violent death, these are not trivial concerns. The tremendous progress in these areas is real, and it is meaningful. Intellectuals who criticize Pinker by pointing to persistent or new forms of ill health, physical suffering or violence should take a break and actually read the book, they will find that he has the data and it is not bad data. Either argue about his data with better data of your own, or argue on some OTHER grounds. On THESE grounds, he is solid.
But human beings are not just machines for eating and reproducing. Our lives need meaning and just as we are programmed to seek food, sex and shelter, we are also programmed to seek social status and other satisfactions that are not necessarily better delivered to more people today than were delivered to them in older iterations of human society. That many of his critics are wrong about the data, or are straw-manning about science and reason, does not mean all of them are wrong about everything. Yes, Pinker has a powerful point, whatever else you think is important, you cannot deny that food, health and shelter are critically important.. and that they were not delivered by pre-modern societies anywhere close to the levels at which they are delivered to astoundingly large numbers of human beings by modern society. But this still leaves a lot of room for argument about other things (meaning, community, hope, love, family, friendship, power, hate, happiness, the list is endless), argue about those; but if your case is based on some romantic notion of idyllic peasant utopias of the past, then this book should set you right.
So far, so good.
Then you come to the last chapter and Pinker tries his hand at explaining humanism and its philosophical enemies, and boy oh boy, is he bad at it. I agree with him on at least 2 parts of his basic thesis (reason and science have tremendously increased human well being, in ways that most human beings care about very deeply indeed, though not in all ways) and would love to agree with him on humanism too, but cannot. Anyway, that is another story. But even I felt like cutting back to 3 stars or less when I got to his mangling of Nietzsche. My serious suggestion is that you skip the last chapter. You will not lose anything and you may appreciate a lot of the facts in the rest of the book with less prejudice.
Worth a read, especially if you have not read “The better angels of our nature”.. if you have, you can probably skip this one. It is just a more detailed and wider-ranging version of the same book.