Me and My Life

My name is Reece.  I am a PhD in physics, a father of two, and a husband (to one).  I have been authoring this blog irregularly since 2012.

When I began blogging, I was an unmarried graduate student who spent most of his time reading books, solving math problems, and programming computers.  I had a lot more time to write, but also more interesting things to write about.  And maybe I felt more cocksure about posting any silly thing that came to mind.

Now I have two children and a career.  I don't really have time to write, and even when I do I have to write other stuff instead.  I have even less time to read, and even when I do, I have to read other stuff instead.

I'm not going to turn this into a rant about not having free time.  I instead just want to leave a note for the handful of people who might read this: I'm sorry I can't post any more.  These are the things I would post about, or started writing posts about, and never finished; but at least you can see what they were.

Firstly, now that I've finished graduate school, I spend a lot less time thinking about ideas in fundamental physics.  Most of my day is spent programming computers that process data from a national laboratory.  So ideas about probability swords or alternate spacetime geometries occupy fewer of my own compute cycles.

Actually, in the time I have to think about anything, I usually think about questions of theology, not science.  Which means most of the things I have to talk about are related to religion, and in particular to Christianity.  Things like, should I baptize my children?  Or what is the meaning of the Lord's Supper?  While I think these are fascinating questions, probably most people don't, and people smarter than myself have already applied all of their brainpower to the issues.

I would love, though, to go back to the days of writing about the probabilities of alien life, of faeries in phase space, of interpretations of quantum mechanics, time travel, field theories and speculative physics and the rest.  I still have some things I've never said.

For instance, I have been planning since the 2010s a blog post titled "All the Multiverses" that walks through all of the different ideas floating around today that all go under the name "Multiverse" or speak of a "parallel universe", and try to clarify how these ideas are distinct.  I see way too much confusion on it, the most egregious being the confusion of Everett's many-worlds hypothesis with some sort of multiverse of counterfactuals, or confusing the quantum interpretation with time travel, or other things.

I have been planning since 2023 a blog post in the "Positions I Don't Hold" series about quantum interpretation, specifically about Everett's hypothesis.  I think the name of the blog and some posts maybe give the idea I hold to a many-world's view.  I don't, and I have reasons I don't, but the main reason I don't is that I favor the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics, because I think it just makes sense.  So since the Bohmian view just makes sense, I don't bother with other views that are weird, quantum-woo-woo, mystical nonsense.

I have a blog post I started authoring in 2014 dissecting evolution, not particularly trying to prove or disprove it, but to illustrate the multiple ways that people who do believe in it misinterpret it to give a teleology to events, or see things from some view of a direction of human progress.  The main point was that just because someone claims to believe in an idea called "evolution," it didn't imply the person was actually any better educated on the actual science of evolution; usually it only means the person is willing to accept cultural norms from authority figures without really  thinking about them.  I have I think the entire thing written, but I never posted it.  I guess I felt it needed more editing, but I didn't want to do whatever was left, and it got forgotten.

I started another post in 2015 titled "On the Operation of DeLoreans" where I tried to actually examine the multiple-timeline theory of time travel from films such as Back to the Future, from the perspective of physics.  In physics, we know exactly how time travel would work and it'd work according to ideas in GR, which I've written about before.  But most people don't care what GR says and want to hear what Hollywood says, and Hollywood says timelines would bifurcate and you could change the past and etc.  So what would that mean, that timelines bifurcate?  And could it mean anything less than the creation of a new universe, with all of the mass-energy present in that new universe?  I wanted to flesh that out as a means of finally putting that idea to rest, in some place, that actually physically analyzed the concept.

I never spoke much about the actual science things that interested me.  Those relate to general relativity, and in particular to the emission of gravitational waves from compact stellar objects.  That was my thesis topic.  I generally jealously guard these ideas, as I think they might actually lead to publication and I want to be the one to publish them.  But also, if I'm honest, I don't have time and I never will. So why be so guarded?   These ideas would relate to novel methods of calculation, or potential measurements of gravitational waves from the interiors of stellar objects.

When I started the blog, I was actually mostly motivated to share theories about the Kingkiller Chronicles and A Song of Ice and Fire.  I actually re-read all of the ASOIAF books (that were then published, and, as it happens, which are still the only ones published) and took extensive notes in my kindle to use in the post and then... my kindle just lost all of the notes, to the great bit bucket in the sky.  I don't even remember what I had to say about ASOIAF, and all I'd have to say today is, don't read the books expecting a conclusion, and if you do read the books then consider it a trilogy and pretend the others after Storm of Swords don't exist.

I have no energy to write out speculation on what's going to happen, because it has become clear to me that Martin doesn't know what's going to happen and is just making it all up; or he does know, and it really sucks and is infuriatingly unsatisfying.

I also wanted to speculate on the King Killer Chronicles.  I have a few posts up, and my post on Dena and her Patron still gets some traffic.  I haven't gone back to it because... I wrote those posts 13 years ago and Rothfuss still hasn't updated the series.  Once, on a Reddit AMA someone asked about why he chose to give the map that he did,  and Rothfuss promised to write a blog post about it... but that was ten years ago and I never saw the blog post.  On a later AMA the next year I asked him why he didn't write the blog post, but he didn't answer that question (in fairness I probably missed his window of attention).  According to Rothfuss, the entire trilogy was finished before the first book was published.  So how does it take over 13 years to get the last one out?   Was he just lying?  Does he also not know what happens?  Or (worst of all) he does know, and he did have it written out, and devoted fans who were paying attention guessed or deduced a lot of details, and now he's trying to change everything.  Because that would be a sucky way to punish fans just for paying attention.

For instance, I really believe Rothfuss wanted the reveal about Bredon being Dena's patron to be a huge surprise.  And I think for most people it still will be.  And for the fans who paid attention, it will be a satisfying confirmation that they saw the right clues, and that the author had a direction.  If Rothfuss is delaying because he doesn't want to write that reveal anymore, then it's not worth reading even the books that were "good".

But I actually have two more posts I wrote at the same time as the original three (back in 2012), one about the nature of angels in the series, and another about the identity of the king Kvothe kills.  But I don't have the energy to continue with that series, either.  I've been meaning to write something explaining my theory for why Rothfuss hasn't finished the series, similar to my post about Martin, but since KKC isn't frequently in the news, I just don't even have the motivation for that.  

My theory for Rothfuss isn't the same as for Martin.  For Martin, I think he always intended an ending that will piss off fans, got a preview of how fans react with the TV series, and is deliberately stalling getting to that point.  But with Rothfuss, I think he's firstly milking the status of being an author, but also trying to find some "out" in a rewrite that will still have all the clues but point to different resolutions than the ones fans guessed.  But I don't have the time or motivation to explain why I think that.

I've written about some other book series, and sometimes do movie reviews, but actually, lately I don't even have time to watch anything.  That's about two hours on some specific night, and I don't even have that amount of time.

For a while I was on a DnD kick and posted some ideas related to that.  But I was never able to really get the game that I want, and with the lack of realization of it the ideas sort of dried up.  Maybe I should write a post about my difficulties finding a way to play my ideal game.  I actually feel like I'd have motivation for that.

But lately I mostly think about theological questions.  And for some reason, I feel some kind of guilt posting too many theological posts in a row.  But that's really all I have the motivation to think or write about.

I have two children, so the main issue I've been considering lately is about infant baptism.  I came to faith in the South, and down here even the Methodist churches are Baptist churches.  However, infant baptism is an ancient practice, and the majority of Christians historically, and the majority alive today around the globe, and the majority of Christian traditions, all practice it.  So it's probably worth seriously considering it, and looking at the arguments for and against.  And I did, from several traditions, and looked at it historically, and have conclusions. But I think it's only worthwhile to express my conclusions by also expressing the contrary views, and summarizing those views accurately.

Last August I started writing a blog post about the Shroud of Turin I think conclusively disproving its authenticity.  It was a more serious post than my others (this and that), which were pretty flippant; here I actually scrutinized the primary arguments for authenticity, including its historical provenance as the Image of Edessa (or Mandylion).  All I really have left is some editing and adding citations -- but I haven't found a lot of time to do that.

Most of my life is as a computer programmer.  I write software used at a national laboratory, unrelated to my thesis research.  When I get off work, I'm a husband and father.  I am a part-time student, studying theology -- I can take about 1 class per semester, barely, turning all assignments in late.  I usually go to bed around 2 in the morning, and wake up again at 8.  And while I used to blog about cool stuff, I just can't any more.  Something in my life had to give.  The blog was one of the first things.

I wrote this just to mostly update whoever reads it.  I do think about the blog, and have ideas.  I just don't execute.  But at the same time, in writing this out, I had some ideas for things I might be able to post with less effort.  Or this blog will just become a series of posts of me complaining about my lack of time.

The Actual Fault with the Electoral College

 Every four years in America, we have to explain our confusing presidential election process all over again, and even then people walk away not understanding.  Maybe especially foreigners, who might be more used to popular vote elections and parliamentary systems, are perplexed at how it works and why anyone would ever choose to conduct elections in this way.

Exacerbating this problem is no doubt the fact that while we actually elect the president one way, we pretend that we elect the president in a different way.

What we pretend is as follows: Each state is apportioned a number of "electoral votes", based on population, to select the President.  Citizens of each state go to a polling place and cast a vote for the President.  Whichever candidate wins the majority of the popular vote in a state receives all of that state's electoral votes (with exceptions of Maine and Nebraska), and whichever candidate receives 270 or more electoral votes wins.

The way we actually elect the President is as follows:  Each state is apportioned a number of Electors.  The office of Elector is uniquely invested with the power and responsibility to vote for the President.  The states choose their Electors, and the Electors assemble to cast their votes for the President.

An Elector is like a Representative.  A Representative represents your interests when voting for budgets and federal regulations.  An Elector represents your interests when voting for President.  Just as you have never voted on a federal budget, you have also never voted for the President (unless you are very active in a political party).

Under the Constitution, states are free to pick Electors however they want, provided it accords with representative democracy.  We could imagine many ways of selecting Electors.  But the way most states have actually chosen to select Electors is also probably the stupidest way imaginable, and leads to much confusion.

In most states, every candidate assembles as slate of Electors all pledged to vote for him/her.  These slates of Electors are legally recognized by the election boards, and must swear legal oaths, and face legal penalties for not voting as pledged.  Which slate of Electors is sent to cast ballots is chosen by popular vote.  Citizens are usually presented a ballot with the names of the registered candidates.  While it seems the question being asked of citizens is "Who do you choose as President?" the question actually being asked is "Which slate of Electors do you choose to vote for the President on your behalf?"  Whichever candidate name receives the majority of votes, that candidate's entire slate of Electors is chosen to cast votes for the President on behalf of the entire state.  And because those Electors are all pledged under law to vote for that candidate, this results in a winner-take-all system.  Even if a swing state has a razor-thin margin of 49.9 to 50.1, all of its dozen or so of the Electors pledged to a single candidate in the slate are sent by the state.  Or to put it in the pretend speak, all dozen or so electoral votes for the state go to one candidate.

This is the system we're used to, but has the flaw that it does not correspond to reality.

I think the problem with this process is that it conceals from us what is actually happening.  It is trying to make one situation the reality by obfuscation and legal fines, while another situation is still what actually happens.  We are trying to pretend there is a democratic, and not representational, vote for the President.  We write on the ballot that we are voting for President, and we're not.  We say that states send electoral votes, and they don't.  We try to pretend that Electors don't exist, and maybe we prefer if Electors don't exist... but Electors voting for President is still what actually takes place.  

I was pleased this year to see my state's ballot actually made the reality of the election clear.  Rather than having simply the names of the Presidential candidates, it said instead "Electors for X", indicating the office I am actually voting for.

If the Electors for X receive a majority in my state, they will go on to actually vote for X... or they might not.   Those Electors might decide to vote for someone else.  If Electors pledged to X all vote for Y, the state might fine them, but their votes still go to Y.  In a situation where X wins more than 270 "electoral votes", but the actual Electors decide to vote for Y instead, then Y actually wins the election.  Which is to say, it is the votes of the actual Electors, and not the imaginary "electoral votes" of a state, which select the President.

We might ask at this point, what is the Electoral College supposed to be?  Why is it set up this way?  Why wasn't it set up for direct nation-wide democratic vote?

The US President has tremendous power under the Constitution.  All executive power is vested in the President.  The legislative branch is Congress, which is made of the Senate and House, with 538 people total.  The judicial branch is a set of higher and lower courts culminating in a Supreme Court.  The executive branch is the President.  All other executive positions derive their power from the President, and serve at the President's pleasure.  The Founders of our nation were at least partly concerned that the common people could be swayed by demagogues, and that this incredible power would end up in the hands of unsavory, corrupt, or tyrannous leaders.  Go ahead and think of your least favorite past president; that's almost certainly the sort of person who the Founding Fathers had in mind.  To prevent this, they deliberately set up the office of Elector, to add one step between the people and the power of the executive branch.  For Elector, the people (through their state government) are to choose a responsible representative, and the Elector (vested with the confidence of the people as to character and discernment) will then go vote for the President.  So the President is not approved by the people directly, but by a selected group of people, picked for their better judgment.

You can already see how the pledged Elector system, and Electoral slate system, undermines some of this intention.

Another concern of the Founders was that in a democratic vote, the more populous states would be able to overwhelm the interests of the less populous states.  So the count of Electors deliberately includes the number of Senators, which also deliberately over-represents the less populous states.  The Electoral College tending to favor less populous states is not an oversight or flaw but a deliberate design decision.

So why don't we treat the Electoral College as it actually is?  Why don't we vote for Electors?  Not pledged Electors to X, whose names aren't even on the ballot.  I mean, why don't we actually vote for the Elector?  Why am I not casting a ballot for Jimmy H Smith, Elector for District 32, my man in the Electoral College?

In part, because of parties.  In part, because of the media.  In part, because people do prefer this way.

Parties want to say who their candidate is.  The primary is supposed to determine the candidate for that party.  If unpledged Electors are the ones who ultimately choose the President, then the electoral college vote is the only "primary" that matters.  You could imagine a primary challenger with huge support by the base, being selected by that party's Electors in favor of the official candidate.  Changing would also require sharing.  In the winner-take-all method, the dominant party in the state gets to ensure all of that state's votes go to their party.  Which political party is really going to propose splitting those up?  Since it benefits political parties, and since parties control the politicians, it will never be changed.

The media prefer this method.  On the first Wednesday in November, the only reason we can say with confidence who the President-Elect is, is due to the system that we have.  Otherwise we'd only be able to list the names of the chosen Electors and make guesses about their future votes.  Newsrooms want the drama of tracking maps as they fill in red and blue and the ticker bars move one way and another.  They want "X Wins Presidential Election" printed in the title on Wednesday morning.  We could not talk about how many total votes X received vs Y, or what percent of the popular vote X received vs Y, or votes for X or Y broken down by demographic, if we did not have a system pretending the people cast votes for X or Y.

Lobbyists want to know who is likely to be in the White House, as early as possible, so they can figure out which to begin courting as soon as possible.  When the two major parties put forth their candidates, those are the two people the lobbyists need to try to influence.  Targets are focused.  Having only two is manageable.  Courting somewhere around 1076 possible nation-wide Electors is too much for them.

But also this method puts more control in the hands of the people.  The office of actual consequence to the people is the Presidency, and not this office of Elector.  Therefore, the people want to at least feel like they are voting for the office that matters.  The confusing behind-the-scenes reality of pledged Electors and all that isn't relevant to the people. The people also don't want to feel like it is only a group of easily-corrupted fat cats in smoke filled rooms choosing the most consequential office in the United States.

But despite this being the method we've settled on for convenience, there are many other ways, and some more perspicuous ways, that we might select Electors.

The office of Elector is an office pertaining to the state, and it is in the state's discretion how to choose one.  We could therefore view Electors more like Senators.  Under the Constitution, before it was amended, Senators for each state were picked by the state's legislature, with vacancies appointed by the governor.  It is therefore consistent with the Constitution's idea of representative democracy if Electors are chosen in the same way.  We could imagine a state which has no presidential candidate on the ballot at all, and instead the state legislature gathers and selects a slate of Electors.

The office of Elector is like a Representative.  Representatives are chosen by direct vote within a certain region.  Therefore, it would be consistent with the Constitution if Electors were instead chosen by popular vote in a district.  In fact, two states (Maine and Nebraska) use a variant of this method with pledged Electors.  The number of Electors is always the number of Representatives plus Senators.  There are two Senators, so those two votes go to the state as a whole.  The others are divided in to districts.  Whoever wins the majority vote in the whole state gets the two state votes, and whoever wins the majority in each district gets the district's vote.

But imagine a similar system without pledged Electors.  Suppose instead, people actually voted for their Elector by name, by district.  When you go to vote, you do not see the big presidential candidate names on the ballots.  You see the names of two or more people from your district who you can select to send to the Electoral College vote.  What would that do if one state did it?  Or if all states did it?

If one state did it, it would seriously screw up a lot of accounting in elections.  We would not know who the president was on election night (but maybe we could guess by political party), and we would not be able to say anything about popular vote because at least one state was excluded from the vote.  It would be a weird oddity that annoyed pundits.  But if all states did it, then I think it might even overthrow the two-party system.

There are other alternatives, both with and without pledged electors.  But here's a system I want to propose.  It's pointless to propose because it will never be adopted, but it is fun to think about.

Consider if instead of election, Electors were chosen by sortition.  Election is when citizens vote to choose someone, while sortition is when a citizen is randomly chosen for service.  Jury duty is one example of sortition in the modern United States.  In ancient democracies, the legislatures were also picked by sortition, and this was even considered a crucial element of a democracy.

It would work as follows.

Each state is divided into electoral districts.  How these districts are drawn up I'm not sure, but there are as many electoral districts as the state has Electors.  From each electoral district, from the list of every eligible and registered voter, one is randomly chosen to be the Elector for that district.  It might be you.  It might be your neighbor.  Perhaps, for the sake of accountability, two Electors from each state are appointed by the legislature.  In total, 538 people will be chosen this way.  Those 538 people get to vote for the president.  The candidates then have to convince those 538 random people to vote for them.

The rest of us can carry on, uninterrupted by the relentless screeching media, the incessant campaign text messages, the ads pleading for campaign donations, or the pandering rallies with twerking prostitutes.  No more endless debates about purged voter roles, voter ID laws, noncitizen or illegal voting, broken ballot machines, campaign finances, or any of the rest of this stuff.  There are 538 votes, so it will be pretty easy to cross al the Ts on the voters.

An obvious concern would be corruption.  It is significantly easier to buy 538 votes, than 500 million votes.  It would also be significantly easier to police possible corruption with these 538 voters.  But in fact, it could be possible to keep the identities of these 538 voters secret (as with jurors) until the vote is cast.  Or until very near when the vote is cast.  Let's say the day of the vote, the Electors gather to watch a live debate with the candidates and have a range of questions answered on a multitude of topics, then shortly afterward place a vote, in secret.

In what ways would picking the Electoral College by sortition be better?

The first is that it is better at representing the will of the people.  The process of selecting a candidate for President is normally determined "for us" by insiders, lobbyists, and wealthy donors.  Sortition removes the wall of division between the political class and the rest of us normal civilians.  Since single moms, inner-city minorities, small business owners, or middle class dads are all equally likely to be chosen for Electors as millionaires, normal people will have their interests better represented by the Presidential candidate chosen.

The second is that it removes the grift, bribery, and frustration of the electoral process.  There are no more campaigns.  There are no more campaign ads, there are no more yard signs, there are no more lobbyists bribing with political contributions, there are no more secret deals and greased palms.  Statistically speaking, the people picking the President are people similar to you, who care about the same things that you do, and who will be back to the same normal world as you in just a few years.

This method would also deeply upset the two-party system.  When looking at 500 million+ votes spread over the entire nation and divided into states, it really is pointless to consider a third party.  It requires convincing millions of people to unionize their votes.  But with just 538 people, even a handful of holdouts could block the extreme candidates the two-party primary system favors, and lead to real possibilities for third parties.

Which highlights the fact, there are no two parties in this kind of vote.  There is no machine-readable ballot printed with names registered at the state election board, with only so many names on it.  All candidates, even the major party candidates, are write-in candidates.  These Electors are not pledged, and while they might align with one party or another, they can ultimately pick anyone, anywhere in the country, to become President.  An Elector might vote for his own daughter.  The Electors might form a coalition to pick an Elector as President instead.  A party of Electors might deliberate and decide to all give their votes to the first person to walk by a specific geocaching camera.  And with randomly chosen citizens (and not party insiders who had to campaign), the usual Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich dilemma brought about by party interests, is entirely removed.

My ideal systems would involve the direct selection of unpledged Electors, either by election or sortition.  I think I favor sortition.  But it will never happen, precisely because it would ruin two-party control of the executive power of the US.

That said, to recap, the actual problem with the Electoral College isn't the one people usually moan about.  The actual problem is that we pretend our elections work one way, when they actually work in a different way.  Perhaps we could fix this by making our elections look more like how they actually work.

A Theory of Children and Happiness

There exists a device for clearing a young child's stuffy nose called a NoseFrida.  It is a thin medical hose attached to a tapered tube.  The end of the hose goes in the parent's mouth.  The tapered end of the tub in the child's nose.  You place it there, and suck in with your lungs, sucking the snot right out of your child's sinus cavities.

To whomever reading this, I hope you too will one day love another human being that much.

When you become a parent, your own happiness becomes tied directly to the happiness of your child.  The number of miserable experiences increases: sleepless night, disgusting messes, constantly dealing with another person's excrement and stomach bile and mucus.  You are no longer able to do most things you used to enjoy (like maintaining a blog), because your time becomes quite devoured.  So by any objective measure, you should become less happy.  And probably on the average you do.

But you also experience periodic moments of intense joy.  And the moments of intense joy can be caused by something as silly as a ladybug existing.

For me, as an adult, happiness is a very complicated thing.  It is some mix of how much I've slept, my relationship with my wife, my recognition at work, time talking to friends, interesting entertainment, the numbers in my bank statement, and overall things in the world going the way I want them.  It's hard to be happy as an adult.

But it's laughably easy to make a small child happy.  Almost any trivial thing will create gasps of elation and giggles of joy.

And seeing the beaming smile of my son or my daughter is all it takes to bring me a deep though momentary happiness, apart from whatever else may be the case in the world.

I find myself liking things I could have never cared about before, like dogs and trucks and tractors and unicorns.  And songs about dogs and trucks and tractors and unicorns.  I find myself becoming excited for every animal I see.  Not for the sake of any of these things, but for getting to see the excitement it will bing my children.

My theory is that being a parent makes it possible to once again experience the childlike happiness of seeing a garbage truck empty the trash.  The simple happiness at the novelty of things that have to me become boring.

It is so easy to make them happy, and thereby easy again to make me happy.