“Opening minds and angravating liberals since 2001”
“I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.”
Genesis 3:19 / John 3:16
My Friends & Fellow Math Scholars:
The other day, one of youse posted something on my personal Facebook page. I was really touched by the post. The fellow who posted it, a fellow vet, has been a long time reader and we have communicated a number of times over the years.
The post simply read: “Hang out with me for too long and I’ll brainwash you into thinking for yourself.”
I was touched, as I said, and I commented “You know me so well.”
That, my friends, is the mission statement of The Daily Fish.
I have said all along, I try to remain as impartial as I can be, difficult given the last decade. But I never pontificate that only I have the right answer. Oftimes, I will suggest a number of possibilities and wax rhapsodic on each. But the bottom line is that I present either an argument or a soliloquy and the end you draw your own conclusions. Don’t go by me alone. After all, you pay nothing for this piece of my time every so often and I try to give you your money’s worth!
One of the things I have stated over the years is to “read between the lines”, that is, what is NOT being stated. How do you know what is not there? Well, if you read enough articles on the same topic eventually there will be any number of things which are different from each one. Some will cancel others out, some are mere repetitions of something else but there will be a few nuggets that will cause you to re-read a sentence or a paragraph as it contains something new.
Recall when I mentioned the brilliant job our brains do 24/7/365 filtering all sorts of things. Some are important (alerting us to alarms, gun shots, Hilderbeast’s lying) and alerting us to be on guard. As well as things mundane, such as background noise, a gentle wind, normal traffic and the like.
And that there was a third possibility; the unsure.
I gave the example of you are sitting in a crowded restaurant with a friend or loved one and there are a hundred people having fifty conversations. You are oblivious to the other forty-nine conversations until you hear your name across the room. You immediately stop and look around to see who spoke of you.
You were consciously listening to your diner mate but your brain was monitoring all the other conversations seeking clues, signs of danger or anything out of the ordinary.
Same thing when you read an article. You have already read a dozen or so articles on the same topic and out of the blue, BAM, there is something new.
THAT is reading between the lines.
Now as we are in the middle of the insane pageant of political chicanery and, as the stakes have never been higher, we have to ramp up our prognostication skills a few notches.
We canNOT possibly believe everything that every candidate says, or 99% of what any Democrat opines. We canNOT afford to be like the Dems where their candidates are equally lethal for our Country. Only the methods of our demise are differing.
George Friedman came up with something called “constraint theory.” It is a nonquantitative piece of multidimensional mathematics. The book he wrote on this topic has more to do with business rubrics but can easily be massaged for most any other situation.
(For instance: Biffistan declares war on Romneyville. We are unsure for whom to back, all other things being equal. It then boils down to an economic exercise in that who much would it cost to do this or that. What will it cost is if we don’t. It is not all fun with numbers as one of the variables can be the number of casualties.)
On the other hand there are the theories of probability and predictable outcome theories.
Do note, the word “theory” is used in all of these as there is no certainty at hand until after the fact. A little hard to “check your work” before handing it in!
Add to all this, the thoughts of one of my favorite SecDefs, Don Rumsfeld.
He mused on one occasion: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
I posit that the good secretary had employed any number and permutations of the previous mentioned “theories” to in an attempt to divine the “unknown unknowns.”
We will get to the politics of the day in a moment, this is all needed for background and, with hope, allow you to draw your own conclusions and candidates.
I have been using a mélange of those theories, unbeknownst to me. In fact I did not even know there were names for them until I “started to do the math.”
Basically take any set of variables. Key to any likelihood of success is not to have any preconceived idea as to any kind of desired or undesired outcome. Think off all possibilities as your children: you do not love one more or less than the others. (Though, my mother favored me. Can’t blame her.)
Like the “constraint theory”, you eliminate all results that would be impossible. (The Hilderbeast becoming a nun and turning herself into the FBI for her crimes, for instance.)
In the process of assigning valuation to the rest of the possibilities a pattern will generally emerge as to the trend as to where the logical result might be.
However, if things are not going according to Hoyle and a representative chart of probability is not providing any kind of rational solution, you may have uncovered one of Rummy’s “unkown unknowns.”
(As I have expressed before, my thought processes are not the type in common with most folks. So nontraditional or nonquantitative thought processes are more the norm for me and I was heartened to see that there was actually math that buttressed my ideas.)
In the next issue we will start to deconstruct the various candidates, their initiatives and platforms, how that plays to the various factions of the electorate and other variables.
My methodology will entail listing the impossible and then coming up with a list of probabilities, possibilities, likelys, and the unlikelys and improbables to go with the impossibilities.
You can all play. Feel free to send me your thoughts on any candidate and any level of thought from impossible to likely. If I get enough of a sampling we can use that as a baseline and see how well your powers of divination are.
In issues prior I have cited the name of the old “Firesign Theater” album: “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” In this election, that just might be true.
Last election, I do not recall many of us excited by the now-called “Judas Mittcariot.” But back then we all detested Biff and wanted him gone. Alas, that was not to be as apparently Judas Mittcariot liked him just fine. Or at least enough to throw the election. IMHBAO.
Time before, even fewer of us backed the RINO McLame. We were temporarily fixated on Sarah Palin who, by comparison, seemed like the real deal. But even Klondike Barbie turned out to be a disappointment on a number of levels. (That is a clue.)
This time we do not have the benefit of hindsight to help us out. Other than the Hilderbeast none of these clowns have been trying for the big dance before.
Most of us are painfully unaware of even a fair amount of what “our guy” REALLY stands for or stood for previously. Some look like one thing and are really another, some seem to stick to their guns while others treat points and positions like moving targets.
And those are the peeps we LIKE! The one “known known” is that none of us (correct me if I am wrong) want any “D” to win ANY seat, especially the big one.
Or, might there be the odd exception? (Recall how I suggested that I would be fine if Earl McCornbread and Smoking Johnny lost their seats? They did not and we are the worse for it.)
So, hang on, it is going to get rough as we dive into the murky waters of uncertainty. We will try to makes sense of these characters, or, at least enough for you to make an educated decision on “our” guy. And I guarantee you that exposed to the same set of “facts” and “deconstruction”, we will not all agree as to the “best” candidate.
Think about all the above and please, PLEASE, take a few minutes to do your homework and send me your thoughts and ideas.
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