Monthly Archives: January 2018

Inference with Sets in Type Theory

It’s been quite a while since I did any meaningful writing on type theory. I spent a lot of time introducing the basic concepts, and trying to explain the intuition behind them. I also spent some time describing what I think of as the platform: stuff like arity theory, which we need for talking about type construction. But once we move beyond the basic concepts, I ran into a bit of a barrier – no so much in understanding type theory, but in finding ways of presenting it that will be approacha ble.

I’ve been struggling to figure out how to move forward in my exploration of type theory. The logical next step is working through the basics of intuitionistic logic with type theory semantics. The problem is, that’s pretty dry material. I’ve tried to put together a couple of approaches that skip over this, but it’s really necessary.

For someone like me, coming from a programming language background, type theory really hits its stride when we look at type systems and particularly type inference. But you can’t understand type inference without understanding the basic logic. In fact, you can’t describe the algorithm for type inference without referencing the basic inference rules of the underlying logic. Type inference is nothing but building type theoretic proofs based on a program.

So here we are: we need to spend some time looking at the basic logic of type theory. We’ve looked at the basic concepts that underlie the syntax and semantics, so what we need to do next is learn the basic rules that we use to build logical statements in the realm of type theory. (If you’re interested in more detail, this is material from chapter 5 of “Programming in Martin-Löof’s Type Theory”, which is the text I’m using to learn this material.)

Martin Löoff’s type theory is a standard intuitionistic predicate logic, so we’ll go through the rules using standard sequent notation. Each rule is a sequence which looks sort-of like a long fraction. The “numerator” section is a collection of things which we already know are true; the “denominator” is something that we can infer given those truths. Each statement has the form $A[\Gamma]$ , where A is a statement, and B is a set of assumptions. For example, $F(a) [a \in A, \Delta]$ means that $F(a)$ is true, provided we’re in a context that includes $a \in A$ .

Personally, I find that this stuff feels very abstract until you take the logical statements, and interpret them in terms of programming. So throughout this post, I’ll do that for each of the rules.

With that introduction out of the way, let’s dive in to the first set of rules.

Simple Introductions

We’ll start off with a couple of really easy rules, which allow us to introduce a variable given a type, or a type given a variable.

Introducing Elements

$\frac{A \,\text{type}}{a \in A \,[a \in A]}$

This is an easy one. It says that if we know that A is a type, then we can introduce the statement that $a \in A$ , and add that as an assumption in our context. What this means is also simple: since our definition of type says that it’s only a type if it has an element, then if we know that A is a type, we know that there must be an element of A, and so we can write statements using it.

If you think of this in programming terms, the statement $A \text{type}$ is saying that $A$ is a type. To be a valid type, there must be at least one value that belongs to the type. So you’re allowed to introduce a variable that can be assigned a value of the type.

Introducing Propositions as Types

$\frac{a \in A \, []}{A \, \text{true}}$

This is almost the mirror image of the previous. A type and a true proposition are the same thing in our type theory: a proposition is just a type, which is a set with at least one member. So if we know that there’s a member of the set A, then A is both a type and a true proposition.

Equality Rules

We start with the three basic rules of equality: equality is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive.

Reflexivity

$\frac{a \in A}{a = a \in A}$

$\frac{A \, \text{type}}{A = A}$

If $a$ is an element of a type $A$ , then $a$ is equal to itself in type $A$ ; and if $A$ is a type, then $A$ is equal to itself.

The only confusing thing about this is just that when we talk about an object in a type, we make reference to the type that it’s a part of. This makes sense if you think in terms of programming: you need to declare the type of your variables. “3: Int” doesn’t necessarily mean the same object as “3: Real”; you need the type to disambiguate the statement. So within type theory, we always talk about values with reference to the type that they’re a part of.

Symmetry

$\frac{a = b \in A}{b = a \in A}$

$\frac{A = B}{B = A}$

No surprises here – standard symmetry.

Transitivity

$\frac{a = b \in A \quad b = c \in A}{a = c \in A}$

$\frac{A = B \quad B = C}{A = C}$

Type Equality

$\frac{a \in A \quad A = B}{a \in B}$

$\frac{a = b \in A \quad A = B}{a = b \in B}$

These are pretty simple, and follow from the basic equality rules. If we know that $a$ is a member of the type $A$ , and we know that the type $A$ equals the type $B$ , then obviously $a$ is also a member of $B$ . Along the same lines, if we know that $a=b$ in type $A$ , and $A$ equals $B$ , then $a=b$ in the type $B$ .

Substitution Rules

We’ve got some basic rules about how to formulate some simple meaningful statements in the logic of our type theory. We still can’t do any interesting reasoning; we haven’t built up enough inference rules. In particular, we’ve only been looking at simple, atomic statements using parameterless predicates.

We can use those basic rules to start building upwards, to get to parametric statements, by using substitution rules that allow us to take a parametric statement and reason with it using the non-parametric rules we talked about above.

For example, a parametric statement can be something like $C(x) \, \text{type} [x \in A]$ , which says that applying $C$ to a value $x$ which is a member of type $A$ produces a value which is a type. We can use that to produce new inference rules like the ones below.

$\frac{C(x) \, \text{type} [x \in A] \quad a \in A}{C(a) \, \text{type}}$

This says that if we know that given a of type $A$ , $C$ will produce a type; and we know that the value $a$ is of type $A$ , then $C(a)$ will be a type. In logical terms, it’s pretty straightforward; in programming terms it’s even clearer: if $C$ is a function on type $A$ , and we pass it a value of type $A$ , it will produce a result. In other words, $C(a)$ is defined for all values of type $A$ .

$\frac{C(x) \, \text{type}[x \in A] \quad a = b \in A}{C(a) = C(b)}$

This is even simpler: if $C$ is a function on type $A$ , then given two values that are equal in type $A$ , $C$ will produce the same result for those values.

Of course, I’m lying a bit. In this stuff, $C$ isn’t really a function. It’s a logical statement; $C(x)$ isn’t quite a function. It’s a logical stamement which includes the symbol $x$ ; when we say $C(a)$ , what we mean is the logical statement $C$ , with the object $a$ substituted for the symbol $x$ . But I think the programming metaphors help clarify what it means.

Using those two, we can generate more:

$\frac{c(x) \in C(x) [x \in A] \quad a \in A}{c(a) \in C(A)}$

This one becomes interesting. $C(x)$ is a proposition which is parametric in $x$ . Then $c(x)$ is a proof-element: it’s an instance of $C(x)$ which proves that $C(X)$ is a type, and we can see $c$ as a computation which, given an element of $a$ produces a instance of $C$ . Then what this judgement says is that given an instance $a$ of type $A$ , we know that $c(a)$ is an instance of type $C(a)$ . This will become very important later on, when we really get in to type inference and quantification and parametric types.

$\frac{c(x) \in C(x) [x \in A] \quad a = b}{c(a)=c(b)\in C(a)}$

This is just a straightforward application of equality to proof objects.

There’s more of these kinds of rules, but I’m going to stop here. My goal isn’t to get you to know every single judgement in the intuitionistic logic of type theory, but to give you a sense of what they mean.

That brings us to the end of the basic inference rules. The next things we’ll need to cover are ways of constructing new types or types from existing ones. The two main tools for that are enumeration types (basically, types consisting of a group of ordered values), and cartesian products of multiple types. With those, we’ll be able to find ways of constructing most of the types we’ll want to use in programming languages.

A Gentle Explanation of the Intel Speculative Execution CPU Bug

9 Replies

There’s a lot of talk today about the recent discovery of a significant bug in the Intel CPUs that so many of us use every day. It’s an interesting problem, and understanding it requires knowing a little bit about how CPUs work, so I thought I’d take a shot at writing an explainer.

Let me start with a huge caveat: this involves a lot of details about how CPUs work, and in order to explain it, I’m going to simplify things to an almost ridiculous degree in order to try to come up with an explanation that’s comprehensible to a lay person. I’m never deliberately lying about how things work, but at times, I’m simplifying enough that it will be infuriating to an expert. I’m doing my best to explain my understanding of this problem in a way that most people will be able to understand, but I’m bound to oversimplify in some places, and get details wrong in others. I apologize in advance.

It’s also early days for this problem. Intel is still trying to keep the exact details of the bug quiet, to make it harder for dishonest people to exploit it. So I’m working from the information I’ve been able to gather about the issue so far. I’ll do my best to correct this post as new information comes out, but I can only do that when I’m not at work!

That said: what we know so far is that the Intel bug involves non-kernel code being able to access cached kernel memory through the use of something called speculative execution.

To an average person, that means about as much as a problem in the flux thruster atom pulsar electrical ventury space-time implosion field generator coil.

Let’s start with a quick overview of a modern CPU.

The CPU, in simple terms, the brain of a computer. It’s the component that actually does computations. It reads a sequence of instructions from memory, and then follows those instructions to perform some computation on some values, which are also stored in memory. This is a massive simplification, but basically, you can think of the CPU as a pile of hardware than runs a fixed program:

def simplified_cpu_main_loop():
  IP = 0
  while true:
     (op, in1, in2, out) = fetch(IP)
     val1 = fetch(in1)
     val2 = fetch(in2)
     result, IP = perform(op, in1, in2)
     store(result, out)

There’s a variable called the instruction pointer (abbreviated IP) built-in to the CPU that tells it where to fetch the next instruction from. Each time the clock ticks, the CPU fetches an instruction from the memory address stored in the instruction pointer, fetches the arguments to that instruction from cells in memory, performs the operation on those arguments, and then stores the result into another cell in the computer memory. Each individual operation produces both a result, and a new value for the instruction pointer. Most of the time, you just increment the instruction pointer to look at the next instruction, but for comparisons or branches, you can change it to something else.

What I described above is how older computers really worked. But as CPUs got faster, chipmaker ran into a huge problem: the CPU can perform its operations faster and faster every year. But retrieving a value from memory hasn’t gotten faster at the same rate as executing instructions. The exact numbers don’t matter, but to give you an idea, a modern CPU can execute an instruction in less than one nanosecond, but fetching a single value from memory takes more than 100 nanoseconds. In the scheme we described above, you need to fetch the instruction from memory (one fetch), and then fetch two parameters from memory (another two fetches), execute the instruction (1 nanosecond), and then store the result back into memory (one store). Assuming a store is no slower than a fetch, that means that for one nanosecond of computation time, the CPU needs to do 3 fetches and one store for each instruction. That means that the CPU is waiting, idle, for at least 400ns, during which it could have executed another 400 instructions, if it didn’t need to wait for memory.

That’s no good, obviously. There’s no point in making a fast CPU if all it’s going to do is sit around and wait for slow memory. But designers found ways to work around that, by creating ways to do a lot of computation without needing to pause to wait things to be retrieved from/stored to memory.

One of those tricks was to add registers to the CPUs. A register is a cell of memory inside of the CPU itself. Early processors (like the 6502 that was used by the Apple II) had one main register called an accumulator. Every arithmetic instruction would work by retrieving a value from memory, and then performing some arithmetic operation on the value in the accumulator and the value retrieved from memory, and leave the result in the accumulator. (So, for example, if 0x1234 were the address variable X, you could add the value of X to the accumulator with the instruction “ADD (1234)”. More modern CPUs added many registers, so that you can keep all of the values that you need for some computation in different registers. Reading values from or writing values to registers is lightning fast – in fact, it’s effectively free. So you structure your computations so that they load up the registers with the values they need, then do the computation in registers, and then dump the results out to memory. Your CPU can run a fairly long sequence of instructions without ever pausing for a memory fetch.

Expanding on the idea of putting memory into the CPU, they added ways of reducing the cost of working with memory by creating copies of the active memory regions on the CPU. These are called caches. When you try to retrieve something from memory, if it’s in the cache, then you can access it much faster. When you access something from a memory location that isn’t currently in the cache, the CPU will copy a chunk of memory including that location into the cache.

You might ask why, if you can make the cache fast, why not just make all of memory like the cache? The answer is that the time it takes in hardware to retrieve something from memory increases with amount of memory that you can potentially access. Pointing at a cache with 1K of memory is lightning fast. Pointing at a cache with 1 megabyte of memory is much slower that the 1K cache, but much faster that a 100MB cache; pointing at a cache with 100MB is even slower, and so on.

So what we actually do in practice is have multiple tiers of memory. We have the registers (a very small set – a dozen or so memory cells, which can be accessed instantly); a level-0 cache (on the order of 8k in Intel’s chips), which is pretty fast; a level-1 cache (100s of kilobytes), an L2 cache (megabytes), L3 (tens of megabytes), and now even L4 (100s of megabytes). If something isn’t in L0 cache, then we look for it in L1; if we can’t find it in L1, we look in L2, and so on, until if we can’t find it in any cache, we actually go out to the main memory.

There’s more we can do to make things faster. In the CPU, you can’t actually execute an entire instruction all at once – it’s got multiple steps. For a (vastly simplified) example, in the pseudocode above, you can think of each instruction as four phases: (1) decode the instruction (figuring out what operation it performs, and what its parameters are), (2) fetch the parameters, (3) perform the operations internal computation, and (4) write out the result. By taking advantage of that, you can set up your CPU to actually do a lot of work in parallel. If there are three phases to executing an instruction, then you can execute phase one of instruction one in one cycle; phase one of instruction two and phase two of instruction one in the next cycle; phase one of instruction three, phase two of instruction two, and phase three of instruction one in the third cycle. This process is called pipelining.

To really take advantage of pipelining, you need to keep the pipeline full. If your CPU has a four-stage pipeline, then ideally, you always know what the next four instructions you’re going to execute are. If you’ve got the machine code version of an if-then-else branch, when you start the comparison, you don’t know what’s going to come next until you finish it, because there are two possibilities. That means that when you get to phase 2 of your branch instruction, you can’t start phase one of the next instruction. instruction until the current one is finished – which means that you’ve lost the advantage of your pipeline.

That leads to another neat trick that people play in hardware, called branch prediction. You can make a guess about which way a branch is going to go. An easy way to understand this is to think of some numerical code:

def run_branch_prediction_demo():
  for i in 1 to 1000:
     for j in 1 to 1000:
          q = a[i][j] * sqrt(b[i][j])

After each iteration of the inner loop, you check to see if j == 1000. If it isn’t, you branch back to the beginning of that loop. 999 times, you branch back to the beginning of the loop, and one time, you won’t. So you can predict that you take the backward branch, and you can start executing the early phases of the first instructions of the next iteration. That may, most of the time you’re running the loop, your pipeline is full, and you’re executing your computation quickly!

The catch is that you can’t execute anything that stores a result. You need to be able to say “Oops, everything that I started after that branch was wrong, so throw it away!”. Alongside with branch prediction, most CPUs also provide speculative execution, which is a way of continuing to execute instructions in the pipeline, but being able to discard the results if they’re the result of an incorrect branch prediction.

Ok, we’re close. We’ve got to talk about just another couple of basic ideas before we can get to just what the problem is with these Intel chips.

We’re going to jump up the stack a bit, and instead of talking directly about the CPU hardware, we’re going to talk about the operating system, and how it’s implemented on the CPU.

An operating system is just a program that runs on your computer. The operating system can load and run other programs (your end-user applications), and it manages all of the resources that those other programs can work with. When you use an application that allocates memory, it sent a request called a syscall to the operating system asking it to give it some memory. If your application wants to read data from a disk drive, it makes a syscall to open a file and read data. The operating system is responsible for really controlling all of those resources, and making sure that each program that’s running only accesses the things that it should be allowed to access. Program A can only use memory allocated by program A; if it tries to access memory allocated by program B, it should cause an error.

The operating system is, therefore, a special program. It’s allowed to touch any piece of memory, any resource owned by anything on the computer. How does that work?

There are two pieces. First, there’s something called memory protection. The hardware provides a mechanism that the CPU can use to say something like “This piece of memory is owned by program A”. When the CPU is running program A, the memory protection system will arrange the way that memory looks to the program so that it can access that piece of memory; anything else just doesn’t exist to A. That’s called memory mapping: the system memory of the computer is mapped for A so that it can see certain pieces of memory, and not see others. In addition to memory mapping, the memory protection system can mark certain pieces of memory as only being accessible by privileged processes.

Privileged processes get us to the next point. In the CPU, there’s something called an execution mode: programs can run in a privileged mode (sometimes called kernel space execution), or it can run in a non-privileged mode (sometimes called user-space execution). Only code that’s running in kernel-space can do things like send commands to the memory manager, or change memory protection settings.

When your program makes a syscall, what really happens is that your program puts the syscall parameters into a special place, and then sends a signal called an interrupt. The interrupt switches the CPU into system space, and gives control to the operating system, which reads the interrupt parameters, and does whatever it needs to. Then it puts the result where the user space program expects it, switches back to user-space, and then allows the user space program to continue.

That process of switching from the user space program to the kernel space, doing something, and then switching back is called a context switch. Context switches are very expensive. Implemented naively, you need to redo the memory mapping every time you switch. So the interrupt consists of “stop what you’re doing, switch to privileged mode, switch to the kernel memory map, run the syscall, switch to the user program memory map, switch to user mode”.

Ok. So. We’re finally at the point where we can actually talk about the Intel bug.

Intel chips contain a trick to make syscalls less expensive. Instead of having to switch memory maps on a syscall, they allow the kernel memory to be mapped into the memory map of every process running in the system. But since kernel memory can contain all sorts of secret stuff (passwords, data belonging to other processes, among other things), you can’t let user space programs look at it – so the kernel memory is mapped, but it’s marked as privileged. With things set up that way, a syscall can drop the two “switch memory map” steps in the syscall scenario. Now all a syscall needs to do is switch to kernel mode, run the syscall, and switch back to user mode. It’s dramatically faster!

Here’s the problem, as best I understand from the information that’s currently available:

Code that’s running under speculative execution doesn’t do the check whether or not memory accesses from cache are accessing privileged memory. It starts running the instructions without the privilege check, and when it’s time to commit to whether or not the speculative execution should be continued, the check will occur. But during that window, you’ve got the opportunity to run a batch of instructions against the cache without privilege checks. So you can write code with the right sequence of branch instructions to get branch prediction to work the way you want it to; and then you can use that to read memory that you shouldn’t be able to read.

With that as a starting point, you can build up interesting exploits that can ultimately allow you to do almost anything you want. It’s not a trivial exploit, but with a bit of work, you can use a user space program to make a sequence of syscalls to get information you want into memory, and then write that information wherever you want to – and that means that you can acquire root-level access, and do anything you want.

The only fix for this is to stop doing that trick where you map the kernel memory into every user space memory map, because there’s no way to enforce the privileged memory property in speculative execution. In other words, drop the whole syscall performance optimization. That’ll avoid the security issue, but it’s a pretty expensive fix: requiring a full context switch for every syscall will slow down the execution of user space programs by something between 5 and 30 percent.

Zombie Math in the Vortex

35 Replies

Paul Krugman has taken to calling certain kinds of economic ideas zombie economics, because no matter how many times they’re shown to be false, they just keep coming back from the dead. I certainly don’t have stature that compares in any way to Krugmant, but I’m still going to use his terminology for some bad math. There are some crackpot ideas that you just can’t kill.

For example, vortex math. I wrote about vortex math for the first time in 2012, again in early 2013, and again in late 2013. But like a zombie in a bad movie, it’s fans won’t let it stay dead. There must have been a discussion on some vortex-math fan forum recently, because over the last month, I’ve been getting comments on the old posts, and emails taking me to task for supposedly being unfair, closed-minded, ignorant, and generally a very nasty person.

Before I look at any of their criticisms, let’s start with a quick refresher. What is vortex math?

We’re going to create a pattern of single-digit numbers using multiples of 2. Take the number 1. Multiply it by 2, and you get 2. Multiple it by 2, and you get 4. Again, you get 8. Again, and you get 16. 16 is two digits, but we only want one-digit numbers, so we add them together, getting 7. Double, you get 14, so add the digits, and you get 5. Double, you get 10, add the digits, and you get 1. So you’ve got a repeating sequence: 1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 5, …

Take the numbers 1 through 9, and put them at equal distances around the perimeter of a circle. Draw an arrow from a number to its single-digit double. You end up with something that looks kinda-sorta like the infinity symbol. You can also fit those numbers onto the surface of a torus.

That’s really all there is to vortex math. This guy named Marco Rodin discovered that there’s a repeating pattern, and if you draw it on a circle, it looks kinda-like the infinity symbol, and that there must be something incredibly profound and important about it. Launching from there, he came up with numerous claims about what that means. According to vortex math, there’s something deeply significant about that pattern:

If you make metallic windings on a toroidal surface according to that pattern and use it as a generator, it will generate free energy.
Take that same coil, and run a current through it, and you have a perfect, reactionless space drive (called “the flux thruster atom pulsar electrical ventury space time implosion field generator coil”).
If you use those numbers as a pattern in a medical device, it will cure cancer, as well as every other disease.
If you use that numerical pattern, you can devise better compression algorithms that can compress any string of bits.
and so on…

Essentially, according to vortex math, that repeated pattern of numbers defines a “vortex”, which is the deepest structure in the universe, and it’s the key to understanding all of math, all of physics, all of metaphysics, all of medicine. It’s the fundamental pattern of everything, and by understanding it, you can do absolutely anything.

As a math geek, the problem with stuff like vortex math is that it’s difficult to refute mathematically, because even though Rodin calls it math, there’s really no math to it. There’s a pattern, and therefore magic! Beyond the observation that there’s a pattern, there’s nothing but claims of things that must be true because there’s a pattern, without any actual mathematical argument.

Let me show you an example, from one of Rodin’s followers, named Randy Powell.

I call my discovery the ABHA Torus. It is now the full completion of how to engineer Marko Rodin’s Vortex Based Mathematics. The ABHA Torus as I have discovered it is the true and perfect Torus and it has the ability to reveal in 3-D space any and all mathematical/geometric relationships possible allowing it to essentially accomplish any desired functional application in the world of technology. This is because the ABHA Torus provides us a mathematical framework where the true secrets of numbers (qualitative relationships based on angle and ratio) are revealed in fullness.

This is why I believe that the ABHA Torus as I have calculated is the most powerful mathematical tool in existence because it presents proof that numbers are not just flat imaginary things. To the contrary, numbers are stationary vector interstices that are real and exhibiting at all times spatial, temporal, and volumetric qualities. Being stationary means that they are fixed constants. In the ABHA Torus the numbers never move but the functions move through the numbers modeling vibration and the underlying fractal circuitry that natures uses to harness living energy.

The ABHA Torus as revealed by the Rodin/Powell solution displays a perfectly symmetrical spin array of numbers (revealing even prime number symmetry), a feat that has baffled countless scientists and mathematicians throughout the ages. It even uncovers the secret of bilateral symmetry as actually being the result of a diagonal motion along the surface and through the internal volume of the torus in an expanding and contracting polarized logarithmic spiral diamond grain reticulation pattern produced by the interplay of a previously unobserved Positive Polarity Energetic Emanation (so-called ‘dark’ or ‘zero-point’ energy) and a resulting Negative Polarity Back Draft Counter Space (gravity).

If experimentally proven correct such a model would for example replace the standard approach to toroidal coils used in energy production today by precisely defining all the proportional and angular relationships existent in a moving system and revealing not only the true pathway that all accelerated motion seeks (be it an electron around the nucleus of an atom or water flowing down a drain) but in addition revealing this heretofore unobserved, undefined point energetic source underlying all space-time, motion, and vibration.

Lots of impressive sounding words, strung together in profound sounding ways, but what does it mean? Sure, gravity is a “back draft” of an unobserved “positive polarity energetic emanatation”, and therefore we’ve unified dark energy and gravity, and unified all of the forces of our universe. That sounds terrific, except that it doesn’t mean anything! How can you test that? What evidence would be consistent with it? What evidence would be inconsistent with it? No one can answer those questions, because none of it means anything.

As I’ve said lots of times before: there’s a reason for the formal framework of mathematics. There’s a reason for the painful process of mathematical proof. There’s a reason why mathematicians and scientists have devised an elaborate language and notation for expressing mathematical ideas. And that reason is because it’s easy to string together words in profound sounding ways. It’s easy to string together reasoning in ways that look like they might be compelling if you took the time to understand them. But to do actual mathematics or actual science, you need to do more that string together something that sounds good. You need to put together something that is precise. The point of mathematical notation and mathematical reasoning is to take complex ideas and turn them into precisely defined, unambiguous structures that have the same meaning to everyone who looks at them.

“positive polarity energetic emanation” is a bunch of gobbledegook wordage that doesn’t mean anything to anyone. I can’t refute the claim that gravity is a back-draft negative polarity energetic reaction to dark energy. I can’t support that claim, either. I can’t do much of anything with it, because Randy Powell hasn’t said anything meaningful. It’s vague and undefined in ways that make it impossible to reason about in any way.

And that’s the way that things go throughout all of vortex math. There’s this cute pattern, and it must mean something! Therefore… endless streams of words, without any actual mathematical, physical, or scientific argument.

There’s so much wrong with vortex math, but it all comes down to the fact that it takes some arbitrary artifacts of human culture, and assigns them deep, profound meaning for no reason.

There’s this pattern in the doubling of numbers and reducing them to one digit. Why multiple by two? Because we like it, and it produces a pretty pattern. Why not use 3? Well, because in base-10, it won’t produce a good pattern: [1, 3, 9, 9, 9, 9, ….] But we can pick another number like 7: [1, 7, 5, 8, 2, 5, 8, 2, 5, ….], and get a perfectly good series: why is that series less compelling than [1, 4, 8, 7, 2, 5]?

There’s nothing magical about base-10. We can do the same thing in base-8: [1, 2, 4, 1, 2, 4…] How about base-12, which was used for a lot of stuff in Egypt? [1, 2, 4, 8, 5, 10, 9, 7, 3, 6, 1] – that gives us a longer pattern! What makes base-10 special? Why does the base-10 pattern mean something that other bases, or other numerical representations, don’t? The vortex math folks can’t answer that. (Note: I made an arithmetic error in the initial version of the base-12 sequence above. It was pointed out in comments by David Wallace. Thanks!)

If we plot the numbers on a circle, we get something that looks kind-of like an infinity symbol! What does that mean? Why should the infinity symbal (which was invented in the 17th century, and chosen because it looked sort of like a number, and sort-of like the last letter of the greek alphabet) have any intrinsic meaning to the universe?

It’s giving profound meaning to arbitrary things, for unsupported reasons.

So what’s in the recent flood of criticism from the vortex math guys?

Well, there’s a lot of “You’re mean, so you’re wrong.” And there’s a lot of “Why don’t you prove that they’re wrong instead of making fun of them?”. And last but not least, there’s a lot of “Yeah, well, the fibonacci series is just a pattern of numbers too, but it’s really important”.

On the first: Yeah, fine, I’m mean. But I get pretty pissed at seeing people get screwed over by charlatans. The vortex math guys use this stuff to take money from “investors” based on their claims about producing limitless free energy, UFO space drives, and cancer cures. This isn’t abstract: this kind of nonsense hurts people. They people who are pushing these scams deserve to be mocked, without mercy. They don’t deserve kindness or respect, and they’re not going to get it from me.

I’d love to be proved wrong on this. One of my daughter’s friends is currently dying of cancer. I’d give up nearly anything to be able to stop her, and other children like her, from dying an awful death. If the vortex math folks could do anything for this poor kid, I would gladly grovel and humiliate myself at their feet. I would dedicate the rest of my life to nothing but helping them in their work.

But the fact is, when they talk about the miraculous things vortex math can do? At best, they’re delusional; more likely, they’re just lying. There is no cure for cancer in [1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 5, 1].

As for the Fibonacci series: well. It’s an interesting pattern. It does appear to show up in some interesting places in nature. But there are two really important differences.

The Fibonacci series shows up in every numeric notation, in every number base, no matter how you do numbers.
It does show up in nature. This is key: there’s more to it than just words and vague assertions. You can really find fragments of the Fibonacci series in nature. By doing a careful mathematical analysis, you can find the Fibonacci series in numerous places in mathematics, such as the solutions to a range of interesting dynamic optimization problems. When you find a way of observing the vortex math pattern in nature, or a way of producing actual numeric solutions for real problems, in a way that anyone can reproduce, I’ll happily give it another look.
The Fibonacci series does appear in nature – but it’s also been used by numerous crackpots to make ridiculous assertions about how the world must work!

Good Math/Bad Math

The beauty of math; the humor of stupidity.

Monthly Archives: January 2018