text:
# I Is the Universe a 3-sphere or a 4-sphere?

#### Herbascious J

When discussing the shape of the universe (flatness/curvature), I often hear of three possible examples; spherical, flat and hyperbolic. Presenters will often use a 2-D analogy of how a flat sheet can be curved or shaped, like a saddle, table, or surface of a ball, where triangles can be defined with different sums to their angles. This analogy makes perfect sense to me. In the same discussion they often talk about how the universe is expanding and depending on the shape, rate of expansion and matter density, it may rapidly expand into infinity, just slow down enough to never quite collapse, or turn around and collapse back down to a point. In GR I believe we are talking about space-time, which is a 4-D ‘space’. My question is this, when thinking of the 2-D analogy, do I extend this analog to a 3-D space, or a 4-D space in my imagination? Part of my confusion is whether to include the time-like aspect of space-time into the shape of the universe, or is it handled separately? In the spherical example, I understand the universe to be closed, so does this imply that time also goes in a circle and closes on itself? Can a spherically closed universe just be a 3-sphere and then expand forever without collapse?

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
When discussing the shape of the universe (flatness/curvature), I often hear of three possible examples; spherical, flat and hyperbolic.
These all refer to the spatial geometry (surfaces of constant time according to comoving observers).

In GR I believe we are talking about space-time, which is a 4-D ‘space’.
We are, but unfortunately most discussions of cosmology implicitly split these 4 dimensions up into 3 of space and one of time in a particular way (as noted above, the way comoving observers--observers who always see the universe as homogeneous and isotropic--would naturally do it). So nobody really talks (at least, not in the discussions you refer to) about the overall 4-D geometry of the spacetime of the universe.

In the spherical example, I understand the universe to be closed, so does this imply that time also goes in a circle and closes on itself?
No. Even for the case where a universe that is spatially closed (i.e., spatially a 3-sphere) recollapses to a big crunch, time is not "circular"--the end of the universe does not connect back around to the beginning.

Can a spherically closed universe just be a 3-sphere and then expand forever without collapse?
If there is zero cosmological constant (dark energy), then no; a closed universe will always recollapse. But if there is a positive cosmological constant (dark energy), then it is possible for a spatially closed universe to expand forever (although our best current model says that our actual universe is not an example of this--it's spatially flat, not closed).

#### Herbascious J

Ok, that makes more sense to me. So (disregarding dark energy/lambda) in theory, the time-like aspect is more about the expansion and whether or not it will collapse, correct? So I can disregard 'time' as being being identical to the other dimensions in shape? it's more like the bouncing ball that either gains enough momentum to escape earth's gravity or not and comes crashing down. So then it's not possible for an infinite universe to re-collapse? I get confused on this last note because when I imagine a big bang inflation event, I can't decide it was ever finite with a high density and that somehow the dimensions laid out flat becoming infinite, or if the universe just suddenly exploded from nothing and instantly became an infinite expanding space. It seems strange because if space was ever finite within even 10 to the -35 seconds after it seems like the matter/energy would also be finite and how could that energy evenly fill out an infinite space?

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
the time-like aspect is more about the expansion and whether or not it will collapse, correct?
More or less. But see below.

So I can disregard 'time' as being being identical to the other dimensions in shape?
No. Expansion means there is curvature in the time dimension, even if space is flat (as it is in our best current model).

So then it's not possible for an infinite universe to re-collapse?
It is if there is a negative cosmological constant. But that's not considered physically reasonable so it's not a case that is often discussed.

when I imagine a big bang inflation event, I can't decide it was ever finite with a high density and that somehow the dimensions laid out flat becoming infinite, or if the universe just suddenly exploded from nothing and instantly became an infinite expanding space
Neither of these are correct. A spatially infinite universe was always spatially infinite.

#### metastable

Has the scenario of a "collapsing" spacetime co-occurring simultaneously with an expansion of matter within said spacetime ever been seriously considered?

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
the scenario of a "collapsing" spacetime co-occurring simultaneously with an expansion of matter within said spacetime
What would this even mean?

Please review the PF rules on personal speculations.

#### metastable

What would this even mean?
If we take the distance and therefore flight time of light between 2 electrons at rest relative to each other (within a small margin of error), each in a separate intergalactic void, and therefore separated by vast intergalactic distances, I expect due to the effects of observed accelerating expansion, that the distance between these 2 particles will increase as a result of said expansion. But will the flight time of light change linearly as this assumed distance between the electrons changes?

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
If we take the distance and therefore flight time of light between 2 electrons at rest relative to each other (within a small margin of error), each in a separate intergalactic void, and therefore separated by vast intergalactic distances, I expect due to the effects of observed accelerating expansion, that the distance between these 2 particles will increase as a result of said expansion.
If they are sufficiently far apart, yes, this is what will happen.

will the flight time of light change linearly as this assumed distance between the electrons changes?
Linearly with respect to what?

Also, I fail to see what any of this has to do with "a collapsing spacetime co-occurring with expansion of matter", which is what you originally were talking about.

#### metastable

Linearly with respect to what?

Also, I fail to see what any of this has to do with "a collapsing spacetime co-occurring with expansion of matter", which is what you originally were talking about.
Will the flight time of light increase linearly with the increasing distance? I see three possible outcomes:

-the distance increases, and the flight time of light increases linearly with any distance increase
-the distance increases, and the flight time of light stays the same
-the distance increases, and the flight time of light decreases

^I am not saying all of these are possible, I am wondering which is closest to reality, how we know and what it implies about the "expansion," "contraction" or "steady-statedness" of the geometry of spacetime.

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
Will the flight time of light increase linearly with the increasing distance?
Again, linearly with respect to what? Your question can't be answered until you specify that.

#### metastable

Again, linearly with respect to what? Your question can't be answered until you specify that.
At Time = 0 seconds, the electrons are separated by 1 billion light years, and are at rest with respect to each other within a small margin of error in traps on 2 spacecraft with synchronized clocks and each craft detects no acceleration or fictitious forces. One craft emits pulses of light every second that the other craft can eventually detect. Due to accelerating expansion, although neither craft ever detects any acceleration, I expect the distance between both electrons increases. As time passes and the expansion rate increases, does recorded interval between the received pulses as recorded by the second craft increase to greater than one second per pulse, decrease to less than one second per pulse or stay exactly one second per pulse?

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
Due to accelerating expansion, although neither craft ever detects any acceleration, I expect the distance between both electrons increases.
I believe a billion light years of separation is sufficient for that (and I'll assume it is for the rest of this post). If the separation is not large enough, the electrons will start falling towards each other because of the gravity of the matter in the universe between them. The effect of dark energy, which is what you are describing, only overcomes that if the separation is large enough.

As time passes and the expansion rate increases, does recorded interval between the received pulses as recorded by the second craft increase to greater than one second per pulse, decrease to less than one second per pulse or stay exactly one second per pulse?
First, it's important to point out a key factor in the scenario as you've specified it: neither electron is comoving. That is, neither electron sees the universe as homogeneous and isotropic. If they did, they would not start out at rest relative to each other; they would start out moving apart.

Second, since the electrons are a billion light years apart, it will take at least a billion years (actually more, as we'll see in a moment) for a light signal to travel from one to the other. And in that time, the universe will have expanded. Even if the expansion is not accelerating (i.e., even if there were no dark energy), that expansion itself would tend to pull the electrons apart (because the matter in the universe is expanding). So even without dark energy, the electrons would move apart over a billion years and the light travel time between them would increase, which would cause the spacing of the pulses as received by the second electron to increase.

All that dark energy really does is make the spacing between the pulses increase faster than it otherwise would.

#### Herbascious J

If there is no dark energy, shouldn't the electrons signals remain at a constant interval? I assume this because even though they would be moving apart, their apparent 'velocity' between them would be constant and any Doppler like shift would be constant. It would just take the impulses longer to reach them (hence the constant doppler shift)?

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
even though they would be moving apart, their apparent 'velocity' between them would be constant
No, it wouldn't. Remember that you specified that the electrons start out at rest relative to each other. The rest of the matter of the universe, as it expands, will pull the electrons apart given that initial condition. That means the electrons will accelerate away from each other even without dark energy. Dark energy, as I said, simply increases the acceleration.

#### metastable

I believe a billion light years of separation is sufficient for that (and I'll assume it is for the rest of this post). If the separation is not large enough, the electrons will start falling towards each other because of the gravity of the matter in the universe between them. The effect of dark energy, which is what you are describing, only overcomes that if the separation is large enough.

First, it's important to point out a key factor in the scenario as you've specified it: neither electron is comoving. That is, neither electron sees the universe as homogeneous and isotropic. If they did, they would not start out at rest relative to each other; they would start out moving apart.

Second, since the electrons are a billion light years apart, it will take at least a billion years (actually more, as we'll see in a moment) for a light signal to travel from one to the other. And in that time, the universe will have expanded. Even if the expansion is not accelerating (i.e., even if there were no dark energy), that expansion itself would tend to pull the electrons apart (because the matter in the universe is expanding). So even without dark energy, the electrons would move apart over a billion years and the light travel time between them would increase, which would cause the spacing of the pulses as received by the second electron to increase.

All that dark energy really does is make the spacing between the pulses increase faster than it otherwise would.
So in your view dark energy causes the durations between received pulses at the second craft to increase over time, by a greater amount than can be explained through gravity alone.

I'd like to clarify a few points of the thought experiment. I define Time = 0 as the same time a light pulse is received by the second craft which is measured by the second craft to be the same wavelength as a pre-agreed transmission wavelength. We've also pre-agreed the first craft will cease transmissions if it detects fictitious forces or acceleration and the second craft will cease observations if it detects acceleration or fictitious forces.

Suppose I'm on the second spacecraft and I don't have enough information about the universe to know in advance or deduce what the outcome of the measurements on red shift and interval between pulses will be. In my craft I consider what possible outcomes might be measured. Since Time = 0 is the time that I first measure a pulse which from my spacecraft appears not to be red or blue shifted from the pre-agreed transmission frequency and I know the first spacecraft is sending pulses every second and I know the wavelength, over time I can observe both whether these pulses appear red or blue shifted and whether the interval between arrival times changes.

Since I've stated I don't have enough information on the second craft to know what the results will be in advance, I consider the possible measurements and what implications they have.

I consider a subset of possibilities-- I am now only considering the range of possibilities in which measurements show that over time the pulses become more and more redshifted from the pre-agreed frequency.

From this subset of red-shifting possibilities, I consider the implications of what it means if the following occurs:

-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses increases to more than one second
-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses remains exactly one second
-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses decreases to less than one second

Now from this list of possibilities I consider the implications of only one:

-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses increases to more than one second

I can list possible meanings of this particular result without being entirely certain if any of the meanings I've listed are true:

Possibility A: Subtracting the effects of gravity, since light is taking a longer and longer time to reach me from the first craft and the light is redshifted, the second craft must be increasing its distance, because light always takes the same amount of time to cover a given distance between 2 co-moving points in spacetime

Possibility B: Subtracting the effects of gravity, Since neither ship measured acceleration or rotation, the two ships are in fact the same distance according to some metric, but the geometry of spacetime is contracting, causing light to take a greater and greater time to cover the same distance

From the results of the experiment plus any other information I could gather from the second ship, how do I correctly interpret the meaning of the results of the described a measurement showing the pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses increases to more than one second as measured on the second craft?

#### PAllen

No, it wouldn't. Remember that you specified that the electrons start out at rest relative to each other. The rest of the matter of the universe, as it expands, will pull the electrons apart given that initial condition. That means the electrons will accelerate away from each other even without dark energy. Dark energy, as I said, simply increases the acceleration.
Actually, it depends on the form of a(t) on the FLRW metric. While still having expansion, you can have the particles converge, diverge, or stay same distance, per some reasonable definition. It depends on a derivative of a(t) - I can’t remember right now whether it is the first or second derivative that determines this behavior.

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
So in your view dark energy causes the durations between received pulses at the second craft to increase over time, by a greater amount than can be explained through gravity alone.
More precisely, than can be explained by expansion of the universe without dark energy. Calling the effect of the expansion of the universe without dark energy "gravity", while not technically incorrect, is probably not a good choice of terminology, since the effect is very different from the gravity of an ordinary isolated gravitating mass like a planet or star.

I define Time = 0 as the same time a light pulse is received by the second craft which is measured by the second craft to be the same wavelength as a pre-agreed transmission wavelength.
There will be no such pulse for the scenario as you have given it, unless I am misunderstanding the scenario. In the scenario as you have given it, the first craft starts emitting pulses when it and the second craft are at rest relative to each other. If that is the case, then the very first pulse the second craft receives will be redshifted.

-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses increases to more than one second
-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses remains exactly one second
-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses decreases to less than one second
Only the first of these is possible. The redshift factor is also the factor by which the time between pulses will increase. You can see why this must be the case if you consider the behavior of wave crests and realize that it will be the same as the behavior of pulses.

Now from this list of possibilities I consider the implications of only one
Which is a good choice since it's the only one that's actually possible. See above.

Possibility A: Subtracting the effects of gravity
Possibility B: Subtracting the effects of gravity
You can't subtract the effects of gravity; the effects of gravity are the effects of spacetime geometry, and if you change the spacetime geometry, you change the whole scenario, including the predicted observations. If there were no gravity in the scenario, you would be in flat Minkowski spacetime, and if the two craft started off at rest relative to each other, and neither one ever fired its rocket engines, the redshift of the light pulses would start at zero and would stay at zero forever.

how do I correctly interpret the meaning of the results of the described a measurement showing the pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses increases to more than one second as measured on the second craft?
As showing you that the two craft are in an expanding FRW spacetime geometry. The exact behavior of the redshift/pulse interval as a function of time tells you exactly which particular expanding FRW spacetime geometry the two craft are in (i.e., what kind of "stuff" is present--ordinary matter, or ordinary matter + dark energy).

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
it depends on the form of a(t) on the FLRW metric. While still having expansion, you can have the particles converge, diverge, or stay same distance, per some reasonable definition
I was assuming that the expansion scalar is positive, i.e., $\dot{a} / a$ is positive.

#### metastable

From this subset of red-shifting possibilities, I consider the implications of what it means if the following occurs:

-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses increases to more than one second
-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses remains exactly one second
-Pulses become more and more red shifted and interval between received pulses decreases to less than one second
Only the first of these is possible. The redshift factor is also the factor by which the time between pulses will increase. You can see why this must be the case if you consider the behavior of wave crests and realize that it will be the same as the behavior of pulses.
You can't subtract the effects of gravity; the effects of gravity are the effects of spacetime geometry, and if you change the spacetime geometry, you change the whole scenario, including the predicted observations.
If I understand what you are saying correctly:

-I will certainly detect the redshift caused by a "recessional" velocity by the time I receive the 1st pulse if the 2 ships were both "at rest" with respect to each other when the first pulse was sent, and this redshift effect increases with increasing initial distance.

-I can be certain in advance given the setup scenario that the interval between subsequent received pulses increases to more than one second

-None of this requires invoking a faster than light interaction between the 2 craft

-Effects of gravity travel at no more than the speed of light

#### PAllen

I was assuming that the expansion scalar is positive, i.e., $\dot{a} / a$ is positive.
But That has more to do with the behavior of comoving observers, not observers starting with no mutual spectral shift. I am having trouble finding a paper I saw on this, but I’m thinking the criteria involved the second derivative of a(t).

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
-I will certainly detect the redshift caused by a "recessional" velocity by the time I receive the 1st pulse if the 2 ships were both "at rest" with respect to each other when the first pulse was sent, and this redshift effect increases with increasing initial distance.
Yes, because the separation between the craft is large enough that the expansion of the universe cannot be ignored. If the craft were only separated by one light-year, the expansion of the universe wouldn't have enough of an effect to be detectable (at least I don't think so given our current level of technology at detecting frequency shifts).

-I can be certain in advance given the setup scenario that the interval between subsequent received pulses increases to more than one second
Yes.

-None of this requires invoking a faster than light interaction between the 2 craft
Yes.

-Effects of gravity travel at no more than the speed of light
This is true, but irrelevant to the scenario since no effects of gravity need to propagate; the effects of the expansion of the matter in the universe are felt locally by the light pulses as they travel, they don't have to propagate anywhere.

#### PeterDonis

Mentor
That has more to do with the behavior of comoving observers
The expansion scalar describes the congruence of comoving observers, yes. But it also constrains the overall spacetime geometry, which affects everything. You're right, though, that it would be good to actually look at the math for that spacetime geometry as it applies to objects that start off at relative rest instead of being comoving.

#### metastable

I'm confused how to interpret the meaning if I observe a null spectral shift at distance of a billion light years...

As we've already discussed, If the 2 spaceships are both "at rest" at time = 0 seconds at distance = 1 billion light years, the second spaceship sees redshift.

So if the second ship sees null spectral shift, does the recessional velocity match the approach velocity? do we say the distance is changing?

#### Bandersnatch

But That has more to do with the behavior of comoving observers, not observers starting with no mutual spectral shift. I am having trouble finding a paper I saw on this, but I’m thinking the criteria involved the second derivative of a(t).
The expansion scalar describes the congruence of comoving observers, yes. But it also constrains the overall spacetime geometry, which affects everything. You're right, though, that it would be good to actually look at the math for that spacetime geometry as it applies to objects that start off at relative rest instead of being comoving.
@PAllen is right, the behaviour of initially stationary observers depends on the sign of the deceleration parameter. In the decelerating scenario, as in the example discussed above, the observers approach each other.
Paper here:
Solutions to the tethered galaxy problem in an expanding universe and the observation of receding blueshifted objects; Tamara M. Davis, Charles H. Lineweaver, John K. Webb

#### PAllen

@PAllen is right, the behaviour of initially stationary observers depends on the sign of the deceleration parameter. In the decelerating scenario, as in the example discussed above, the observers approach each other.
Paper here:
Solutions to the tethered galaxy problem in an expanding universe and the observation of receding blueshifted objects; Tamara M. Davis, Charles H. Lineweaver, John K. Webb
Thanks!

I thought of a heuristic argument why you would expect this to be the case. The tendency of initially at mutual rest test bodies to diverge or converge is a tidal gravity effect. Tidal gravity is expected to be determined by second derivatives of the metric, not first derivatives.

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other querymodes : Identifierquery Coordinatequery Criteriaquery Referencequery Basicquery Scriptsubmission TAP Outputoptions Help

2000AJ....119.1737G - Astron. J., 119, 1737-1747 (2000/April-0)

OB stellar associations in the Large Magellanic Cloud: identification method.

GOULIERMIS D., KONTIZAS M., KORAKITIS R., MORGAN D.H., KONTIZAS E. and DAPERGOLAS A.

Abstract (from CDS):

We describe an objective method for the identification of stellar OB associations in the Large Magellanic Cloud under the assumption that they are loose, unbound stellar systems with a young OB stellar component. The method is based on star counts and spectral classification. First we detect the areas where an enhancement of star number density occurs above 3 σ of the average field density in large regions. The boundaries at 3 σ provide the size and morphology of the detected stellar concentrations. Further examination at different magnitude ranges allows us to select the systems with a bright stellar component within the detected areas. In the second step, star counts around the peak density of each detected stellar concentration provide a typical value of the projected half-mass radius, in order to calculate the central density using the appropriate mass function slope. The central density, being a crucial parameter for the bound and unbound systems, has been used as a tentative criterion for the distinction between open clusters and associations. Finally, spectral classification from objective-prism plates provides further evidence for the existence of OB-type stars in these concentrations. The faintest magnitude at which the various systems were detected is found to be independent of the presence or absence of gas and varies by up to 4 mag. An explanation for this effect is the possible existence of pre-main-sequence stars that are not visible in the optical region.

Journal keyword(s): Galaxies: Star Clusters - Galaxies: Stellar Content - Galaxies: Magellanic Clouds - Surveys

Nomenclature: Tables 3, 4: [GKK2000] NN (Nos 1-44).

Full paper

2023.02.05-18:11:11

format: plain


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# Help with testing three variables (non-metrical) perhaps GEE

#### rokochan95

##### New Member
Hi,
I ran a survey (n=38) and now I'm trying to analyze one hypothesis with Rstudio:

H4: People workout more when working from home, than in office.

I'm trying to combine two items to test this hypothesis.
1. sporting activity (frequency per week; ordinal scale) in 4 different periods (pre-covid, first lockdown, between lockdowns, second lockdown)
2. homeoffice [homeoffice, no homeoffice] in 4 different periods (as above)

I tried to do a GEE-test (someone recommended that). For that I created another variable time [1;2;3;4] for the periods, but not sure if I'm on the right track.
Thing is, I don't know nothing about GEE, but it seems the only way.

1. The created the dataset:
Code:
id = subject [1,38], time = periods [1,4], sport = frequency per week [0,4], homeoffice [0,1]

# A tibble: 6 x 4
id  time sport homeoffice
<dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <fct>
1     1     1     2 1
2     2     1     4 0
3     3     1     4 0
4     4     1     2 0
5     5     1     3 0
6     6     1     2 0
2. Then I set a factor & formula (I don't know, if either are correct) and ran geeglm:
Code:
gee$homeoffice <- as.factor(gee$homeoffice)
mf <- formula(sport ~ time + homeoffice)
geeInd <- geeglm(mf, id=id, data=gee, family=gaussian, corstr="ind")
summary(geeInd)

##I don't know, if the "arguments" id, family, corstr are correctly chosen

Coefficients:
Estimate Std.err  Wald Pr(>|W|)
(Intercept)   2.2927  0.2574 79.34   <2e-16 ***
time         -0.1309  0.0911  2.06   0.1507
homeoffice1  -0.7092  0.2190 10.49   0.0012 **
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Correlation structure = independence
Estimated Scale Parameters:

Estimate Std.err
(Intercept)     1.41   0.142
Number of clusters:   152  Maximum cluster size: 1
I have no clue if anything in this procedure is correct or if GEE is even the right model I'm supposed to use.
I would appreciate any help. Looking forward.

Kind regards,
rokochan95


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# sklearn.manifold.MDS¶

class sklearn.manifold.MDS(n_components=2, metric=True, n_init=4, max_iter=300, verbose=0, eps=0.001, n_jobs=None, random_state=None, dissimilarity='euclidean')[source]

Multidimensional scaling

Read more in the User Guide.

Parameters
n_componentsint, optional, default: 2

Number of dimensions in which to immerse the dissimilarities.

metricboolean, optional, default: True

If True, perform metric MDS; otherwise, perform nonmetric MDS.

n_initint, optional, default: 4

Number of times the SMACOF algorithm will be run with different initializations. The final results will be the best output of the runs, determined by the run with the smallest final stress.

max_iterint, optional, default: 300

Maximum number of iterations of the SMACOF algorithm for a single run.

verboseint, optional, default: 0

Level of verbosity.

epsfloat, optional, default: 1e-3

Relative tolerance with respect to stress at which to declare convergence.

n_jobsint or None, optional (default=None)

The number of jobs to use for the computation. If multiple initializations are used (n_init), each run of the algorithm is computed in parallel.

None means 1 unless in a joblib.parallel_backend context. -1 means using all processors. See Glossary for more details.

random_stateint, RandomState instance or None, optional, default: None

The generator used to initialize the centers. If int, random_state is the seed used by the random number generator; If RandomState instance, random_state is the random number generator; If None, the random number generator is the RandomState instance used by np.random.

dissimilarity‘euclidean’ | ‘precomputed’, optional, default: ‘euclidean’

Dissimilarity measure to use:

• ‘euclidean’:

Pairwise Euclidean distances between points in the dataset.

• ‘precomputed’:

Pre-computed dissimilarities are passed directly to fit and fit_transform.

Attributes
embedding_array-like, shape (n_samples, n_components)

Stores the position of the dataset in the embedding space.

stress_float

The final value of the stress (sum of squared distance of the disparities and the distances for all constrained points).

References

“Modern Multidimensional Scaling - Theory and Applications” Borg, I.; Groenen P. Springer Series in Statistics (1997)

“Nonmetric multidimensional scaling: a numerical method” Kruskal, J. Psychometrika, 29 (1964)

“Multidimensional scaling by optimizing goodness of fit to a nonmetric hypothesis” Kruskal, J. Psychometrika, 29, (1964)

Examples

>>> from sklearn.datasets import load_digits
>>> from sklearn.manifold import MDS
>>> X.shape
(1797, 64)
>>> embedding = MDS(n_components=2)
>>> X_transformed = embedding.fit_transform(X[:100])
>>> X_transformed.shape
(100, 2)

Methods

 fit(self, X[, y, init]) Computes the position of the points in the embedding space fit_transform(self, X[, y, init]) Fit the data from X, and returns the embedded coordinates get_params(self[, deep]) Get parameters for this estimator. set_params(self, \*\*params) Set the parameters of this estimator.
__init__(self, n_components=2, metric=True, n_init=4, max_iter=300, verbose=0, eps=0.001, n_jobs=None, random_state=None, dissimilarity='euclidean')[source]

Initialize self. See help(type(self)) for accurate signature.

fit(self, X, y=None, init=None)[source]

Computes the position of the points in the embedding space

Parameters
Xarray, shape (n_samples, n_features) or (n_samples, n_samples)

Input data. If dissimilarity=='precomputed', the input should be the dissimilarity matrix.

yIgnored
initndarray, shape (n_samples,), optional, default: None

Starting configuration of the embedding to initialize the SMACOF algorithm. By default, the algorithm is initialized with a randomly chosen array.

fit_transform(self, X, y=None, init=None)[source]

Fit the data from X, and returns the embedded coordinates

Parameters
Xarray, shape (n_samples, n_features) or (n_samples, n_samples)

Input data. If dissimilarity=='precomputed', the input should be the dissimilarity matrix.

yIgnored
initndarray, shape (n_samples,), optional, default: None

Starting configuration of the embedding to initialize the SMACOF algorithm. By default, the algorithm is initialized with a randomly chosen array.

get_params(self, deep=True)[source]

Get parameters for this estimator.

Parameters
deepboolean, optional

If True, will return the parameters for this estimator and contained subobjects that are estimators.

Returns
paramsmapping of string to any

Parameter names mapped to their values.

set_params(self, **params)[source]

Set the parameters of this estimator.

The method works on simple estimators as well as on nested objects (such as pipelines). The latter have parameters of the form <component>__<parameter> so that it’s possible to update each component of a nested object.

Returns
self


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# Disposable Bodies (Reading Health Communism)

## Transcript

### Start gameplay

Hey, how are you doing? You’re feeling alright? Or are you maybe a bit stressed? Burnt out from a heavy week at work? No worries, mate. I’ve got something to take your mind off of things for a couple of minutes.

Oh and, by the way: Hello! Welcome to Vulnerable By Design, with me, Chris Onrust. In this episode, we will dive into a new-ish game that has been making the rounds for a bit, which you may have heard of? It’s called Capitalism.1 In particular, we would like to find out how all of this capitalism fanfare may be affecting your health. Are you ready?

### Level 1: What is capitalism?

First things first: What is Capitalism? From what I have heard: ‘Capitalism is an intense strategy game (…) where players must constantly think ahead.’ It is ‘very realistic’, encourages ‘sensible strategies’, and allows even office clerks to ‘claw [their] way to the top’. They say that Capitalism offers ‘… hundreds of hours of gameplay for the corporate enthusiast’.2 Okay, good. But then how do you play Capitalism? Do you fancy having a go?

Let’s start with the basics. In capitalism, you have got an economic-political system that works on a cycle. Businesses, investors or other private parties control the wealth, the land, or other sorts of assets that are needed to produce, distribute, and exchange goods or services. They use wage labor to get other people to do the work of actually producing those goods or services for them. Those produced goods and services are then sold on a market for a profit, resulting in the accumulation of wealth and assets in the hands of those same initial businesses, investors, or other private parties. In short, we are working with a cycle of assets and wealth accumulation.

Terminology alert! This wealth and these assets are sometimes known as ‘ca-pi-tal’. And, by association, the businesses and people who own such wealth and assets can be known as ‘ca-pi-ta-lists’.

Okay, now for clarification: when we’re talking about wealth and assets, do I mean that if you’ve got a couple of quid on you, and you own a laptop, does that mean that you are a capitalist? No!

The hallmark of capitalism is not people owning or producing things. If you have a computer and you build software, that computer is not thereby capital, and you are not thereby a capitalist. If you own a loom, and you weave rugs, that loom is known to thereby capital, and you are not thereby a capitalist. If you have your own van, and you drive your mates to a rave, again: that van is not thereby capital, and that does not make you a capitalist.

But then when is something capital? What does make you a capitalist? We’re only dealing with capitalism in a very specific economic-political structure. When a person, business or whatever type of shell organization they can come up with, owns and controls things—computers, looms, vans, whatever—but does not use those assets to code, weave or provide transport themselves. No. It is when, instead, they get other people to do the actual work (of coding, weaving, driving). They pay those workers a wage that is lower than the actual value of the work that’s been delivered. They slap a price tag on it, and—cha-ching—they sell that for a profit.

So, my friends, having some savings or cooking utensils does not a capitalist make. It’s when you’ve got this—this specific structure—in place, that you’ve got capitalism.

### Level 2: Player types

Let’s talk strategy now. The aim of capitalism, and the only thing that matters when playing, is capital accumulation. The language of this game is that of: profit, profit, profit, and that of growth, growth growth.

You’ve got different types of player options that you can choose from. The two main ones are: that of the capitalist, which today is mostly known by the more innocuously sounding name of ‘business owner’ or ‘investor’. For this player type, the challenge is to own things, and to cash in on value produced by workers.

There is also the player type of worker. For the worker, the challenge is to produce things for the capitalist, which the capitalist can then sell on the market for a profit. You will get some wage in exchange, but one that is always lower than the value of the work you delivered, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any profits. And you’re expected to consume and buy things as a worker. As a worker, you’re meant to satisfy all of your life’s desires by buying things from the capitalists. You do not DIY, you do not share things with your neighbor, nor will they be sharing any things with you. And you never, ever, ever are satisfied with who you are, with what you already have. In other words: as a worker, your job in capitalism is basically to act as a vessel through which the capitalists can get richer and obtain more capital. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

When the capitalist and the worker player types successfully collaborate together—successful from the viewpoint of capitalism, that is—then you will get a steamroller cycle of businesses raking in profits, to accumulate more capital, to gain more profits, for yet more capital.

Beware: as a system, capitalism is greedy. To continue accumulating capital, it has a tendency to try to dominate and extract value from ever more territories and societies across the globe, as it’s done over the past two and a half centuries. It also has an inclination to expand into ever more areas of life. In the old days, you might share books or music with strangers. Now, we have Digital so-called ‘Rights’ Management. In the old days, you would let a mate crash on your couch. Now they can make a booking. In the old days, people used to write blogs and newsletters. Now, the full thing is locked away for premium subscribers. In the old days, you used to be able to go for a walk, or just browse the web. Now, every single step you take and every website you visit is tracked, with someone, somewhere out there making money off of you.

In their book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the author Shoshana Zuboff suggests that data mining, manipulation, and the monetization of people’s personal experiences and behavior, means that today we are dealing with a new form of capitalism, namely: surveillance capitalism. But of course we aren’t. And, of course, this isn’t new. Expanding it to ever fresh territories for value extraction was part of the blueprint of capitalism from the very beginning.

### Level 3: Capitalism has no winners

Then on to a more pressing concern: how do you win this game? What does it take to win at Capitalism? Uuuuuh… well… you can’t. There just isn’t any winning in this beautiful game.

If you play as a worker, obviously you can’t win, because you’re stuck in a cycle of wage exploitation and high-pressure consumption. But if you play as a capitalist, you also can’t win, because you can always accumulate more capital, right? The only end game for capitalism is when we have gobbled up all of the earth’s resources, monetized every dimension of life, and all we’ve got left to eat is stable coins.

Some fun facts while we are at it. It might be difficult to grasp if you’re living in a capitalist-run society today, but capitalism is not the only game around. Capitalism is not inevitable, natural, or somehow the only viable option. Plus, in the wider scheme of things, capitalism itself is actually quite a recent invention. It’s only been with us for what, two, three centuries? And throughout that period, always only for a subset of all of the people on earth.

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, in an address from 1883, compared wage labor to slavery. Douglass said that wage slavery was ‘… only a little less galling and crushing in its effect than chattel slavery’, and that ‘… this slavery of wages must go down with the other.’3

Maybe right now you’re thinking: ‘Ah well, my boss treats me fairly. My colleagues are nice. I get quite decent compensation—with stock options too! In fact, I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this!’

Good for you. But what I’m telling you is that, regardless of how nicely you’re treated, or whether your employer contributes to dental care, parental leave, or unlimited days off, if you are working for wages under a capitalist system, then you are always, by definition, and by design, being exploited. And I’m not talking about fair pay here. I’m not talking about earning a living wage. I’m talking about the principle. The basic setup of how capitalism works. The logic of capitalism requires that you, as a worker, be paid less than the value of the work you deliver. Why would that be so?

Well, remember, the aim of capitalism is to keep the engine of capital accumulation going. How do you do that? By making sure that you sell goods or services for a price that is higher than what it took to produce or procure them, so that you can cash in the difference as profit. And you do that by making sure that you pay the workers—those who do the actual work—less than the value of the work that was delivered. The capitalist needs to pay you less than the actual value generated by your work, because if they pay you the full value of what was brought in, then what would happen to their ability to siphon off profit? And without siphoning of profit, what would happen to capital accumulation? By any definition of exploitation that I have seen, this is exploitative. So that’s why wage labor under capitalism is always exploitation.

If you hear all that what sounds to me like misery, you might wonder: who would want capitalism? Why would anyone think this is a good idea? Capitalism lovers will at this point often mumble something about freedom. For example, the egoistic philosopher Ayn Rand, in their work Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal from 1966, says that ‘capitalism is the only system that answers yes’ to the question whether humans are, and should be, really free.4 Or consider the economist Friedrich Hayek, who in The Road to Serfdom from 1944 says that market capitalism is a precondition for political freedom.5

Which are both really lovely thoughts. Except that capitalism has, from the outset, always faired remarkably well under dictatorships and oppressive regimes, and has been the pretext of a huge number of mass murder episodes—often US-driven—for example, in Việt Nam, Indonesia, Argentina, and lots of more places. More on that, I suppose in another episode.

Besides, what is free about a system in which by design, the majority of the population is systematically being exploited? Is it the freedom to choose who you’re going to be exploited by? The freedom to be discarded when you’re no longer have productive use? The freedom to hop from gig to gig, not knowing whether you’ll be able to afford rent or food by the end of the week?

The website Investopedia, that fount of wisdom for aspiring investors, suggests, unsurprisingly: ‘Capitalism tends to benefit capitalists the most.’6

### Level 4: What does capitalism have to do with health?

That was probably a way too long tirade about all things, capitalism, when all you really wanted was to settle into a cozy chat about bodies and health, to take your mind off the stress of things. Okay, I hear you!

We are officially gathered here today to talk about a book called Health Communism that came out not too long ago. Which, in a nutshell, says that the economic-political system that you live under can have dramatic consequences for your and other people’s health. Fine.

One of the challenges of this book, written by the authors Beatrice Adler-Bolton, and Artie Vierkant, is that it’s full of super interesting anecdotes, ideas and descriptions. But it gives you no definitions of any of the main topics that it’s covering. No definition of health. No definition of the communism from the title. And it mostly talks about the harmful effects of capitalism, but there’s no definition of capitalism either. This means that, as a reader of this book (Health Communism), there is a lot that you will have to fill in yourself. Because of the books focus on capitalism, we unavoidably will need to fill in what capitalism is to make sense of anything that’s being said here. That is what that lengthy tirade was for. And that we have now already completely covered, thank you very much. So with that out of the way, let’s turn to the contents.

Health Communism (the book) states that the political-economic system that you live under can have massive consequences for your health, for how you think about health, and for the healthcare that’s being offered to people in society. As you may have suspected from my intro (though, less so from the title of the book), the book’s main focus is how the capitalist political-economic system has such massive consequences for your health, for how you think about health, and for the healthcare that’s being offered in society.

Let’s start with the idea that capitalism may impact your health. As Adler-Bolton and Vierkant put it in Health Communism: capitalism needs health. So here’s the thought behind that.

We know that the aim and the engine of the capitalism game is ever-increasing capital accumulation. We also know that, for such capital accumulation to occur, someone needs to be producing goods and services to sell. Because for all the braggadocio of learning to live with no sleep, or of pulling off a 200 hour workweek—it’s a fiction people, there is no such thing!—I can tell you that the capitalist who owns an invest in things is not going to do that work themselves. No. The whole point of owning or investing in stuff is that you can just sit back and own, while other people do all the toiling and the grinding.

Now this is where health comes into the picture. Because those people who are actually doing all the work (the workers) at a minimum should be well enough, or healthy enough—physically and mentally—to be able to provide that labor to produce whatever the capitalist wants producing. Without at least some basic level of health that will allow the worker to perform these actions, there would be no production, there would be nothing to sell. And without any things to sell, there can’t be any profit, can there? Without any profit, there can be no capital accumulation. So without at least some basic level of health on the part of the workers, your whole capitalist fairytale begins to crumble. That is why capitalism needs health: capitalists need some healthy bodies to do the actual work for them.

At the same time, and perhaps paradoxically, capitalism is extremely good at making you sick. And now, just a heads up: I am about to mention some examples of how capitalist actions and non-actions can cause health damage that may come close to home to some of your personal situations. So if you don’t feel in the mood for that right now, maybe just skip forward a minute or so? And we’ll find each other at the other end. All right?

Investopedia agrees here, and admits that capitalism has some ‘negative externalities’ with a fancy term. Investopedia points out that capitalism creates inequalities, that it makes workers miserable, can damage the environment, and that it can harm people’s health.

### Level 5: Reserve army of labour

Now you might spot a tension between the two things I’ve just said. Why, if capitalism so badly needs healthy bodies to work, why would capitalism want to make you sick? Squeeze all of the life out of you? Wouldn’t that be counterproductive? Wouldn’t it, to the contrary, be in the interest of capitalism to do whatever it can to keep people healthy? Good catch! Now, this is also what I initially thought. But it turns out there is more to the story. Here’s the situation.

Remember that we talked about the different player roles in the Capitalism game? It turns out that my initial description was a bit limited. Under capitalism that aren’t just the capitalist player role (meaning: the people who extract and own), and there also isn’t just the worker (meaning: the people who do the actual work). In addition, there is also the player role of what is traditionally called a member of a ‘reserve army of labour’.

The reserve army of labor consists of people who do not own things, and who are, for whatever reason, also not doing wage labor, but who would technically be able to work, and who could be drafted in to do so at any point. This reserve labour force contains people who are unemployed, under-employed, or who belong to what we nowadays call the ‘precariat’—which is the situation of being in temporary, part-time or gig work that barely allows you to scrape by and so engulfs you in a precarious, insecure day-to-day existence.

Here is the capitalists’ dream. The capitalists’ dream is for this reserve labour force—so, this pool of people who are looking for work—to be as large as possible. Because with a massive reserve pool of people who could pick up work at any moment, the currently employed wage workers have less of a negotiating position. They’ve got less of a fist to make when demanding safer work environment, or better compensation. The larger the reserve army of labor, the more easily any individual worker can be replaced. Because for you ten others.

You can see the recent massive layoffs in tech—at Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and the like, they fired tens of thousands of workers—you can see those recent layoffs in this light. Layoffs increase the pool of workers available for tech labour. And so it makes employed tech workers more replaceable.

This, my earthlings, is where the tension that we mentioned earlier, disappears. The tension between on the one hand capitalism needing healthy bodies, and on the other hand, capitalism making you sick—this is where the tension evaporates, with the reserve army of labor. Because yes, capitalism needs healthy bodies to do the work to generate anything that can be sold for a profit. But as long as there are reserve recruits, it does not need those workers to stay healthy. The capitalist would be none troubled if you, as a worker, lose a limb, get burned, get burnt out, can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t breathe anything other than toxic air. The capitalist would be none troubled if it had to squeeze the last inch of life out of an individual worker, because with the reserve pool of labour, as soon as the poor worker tumbles over and collapses, it can just slot in a replacement. That is how under capitalism, individual workers, individual bodies, are disposable.

So yes, capitalism needs health. It needs healthy bodies to work. But because and as long as it’s got this massive reserve pool of unemployed workers, it’s got no trouble whatsoever if its cost-cutting and extraction makes people sick.

Now, if you live under capitalism, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant say, then that affects not only your health, but it also completely skews how you think about health, or how you’re pushed to think about health. What’s the idea here?

Naively, you might think that being healthy just amounts to not being ill or injured. Or maybe something to do with wellbeing or quality of life? Not so under capitalism, the authors of this book suggest. Because capitalism needs at least some healthy workers to keep the engine of capital accumulation going, and because capacity to work is practically all that matters about a worker, ‘health’ becomes almost synonymous with being able to do labour.

‘Are you healthy?’ just becomes, ‘Can you work for me?’ And similarly, the point of healthcare just becomes: not to help you get better or not to alleviate your symptoms, but rather, care gets only and exclusively directed at getting people back to work.

You can see this in the phenomenon of disability assessments, where medical professionals will determine how much labour the authorities can still reasonably expect to squeeze out of you. You’re missing a limb? Oh, well, let’s call you 21% disabled then. You’re unpredictable but chronic pain with bursts of sudden fatigue? Hmm, okay, well, that’s rather more difficult to measure. So let’s just classify you as ‘healthy’ even though you’re just curled up in a ball on the floor wanting it all to go away from time to time. Whatever their pretext, all of these fit to work assessments are to ensure that nobody who could be in wage work will escape it.

You can also see this and how recently, the UK government called upon GPs, not to write out so many sick notes. This happened not because those in government somehow, magically, realized that people weren’t actually sick. Most likely lots of people are sick, because … uuuhhh … pandemic? But the reality is that the level of sickness are getting so bad and so high, that they are causing staff shortages for employers.

### Level 6: Extract and abandon

And then what happens if you’re sick? What happens if you’re long term, chronically ill or disabled to such an extent that you can’t work? Adler-Bolton and Vierkant suggest that under capitalism, there is a very real possibility that in that case, the doors will close for you. That you will simply not get the care that you need.

They say that with capitalism, there is this massive push to think about health care as some scarce good that needs rationing. And that definitely can’t be given to everyone. ‘Do you know how expensive a hip replacement is? Try to walk on this one a little longer.’ ‘You didn’t really think we could give everyone mental health support, did you?’ ‘Sorry, radiotherapy is only offered on our premium plan.’ Especially if you are long term ill or disabled, there is a very real possibility that in effect, under capitalism, you will be abandoned.

The rather morbid label that sometimes is used here is that of ‘relative surplus population’. This surplus would include everyone who for whatever reason, finds themselves surplus to requirements for capitalist production. Surplus in this sense are both anyone in the reserve pool of labour that we discussed earlier—so people who can work, but are not in wage work at the moment. And it includes all people who are too ill, too frail, or who for whatever other reason can’t work.

I think you can guess from the label already that the ‘relative surplus population’ is not obviously a group that you would want to be part of. Although I hope that someone, somewhere, will someday start a post-punk band calling itself The Revenge of the Surplus.

But seriously, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant suppose that this worker/surplus-distinction marks a big, painful cut and division within capitalist societies. And I think there’s something to that suggestion.

Think of casual questions such as: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Toward the people concerned, it is very clear that this question is not asking about a child actually being someone or something. They will just be themselves, presumably with a larger body, more experience, and different daily habits. Instead, the question is asking: ‘What type of employment would you like to perform to ensure your survival?’

Or consider the question: ‘What do you do?’, when meeting new chaps at parties. What I’m doing is, most likely, holding an alcohol free G&T with some olives and crisps on the side. What you mean is: ‘What sort of money-generating activity do you do to earn your place within society?’ And if you don’t have an impressive answer to that, it is likely to be a very brief conversation.

Or consider how people who are sick or frail or who, for whatever reason, can’t work have been portrayed as being in some way ‘less’—less deserving, of less social value, as not full members of society? Or even how they are portrayed as something of a burden. For, since the start of the CoViD-19 pandemic, it has been made very clear that your dying was somehow fine, if you had any of those pre-existing health conditions.

Through all sorts of subtle but persisting messaging, the idea gets reinforced that you don’t really count, unless you’ve struck big in employment. The idea gets reinforced that becoming surplus is a pretty miserable thing to happen to you, something to be avoided at all costs. And as a worker, you’ve got this risk of ending up in the surplus always continuously hovering over you, as some perpetual threat of what can happen if you do not join the wage exploitation bandwagon.

### Level 7: Profitable tricks

Also, let’s not forget the flip side. When, with true capitalist zeal, they have marketized everything, then also medicine, treatment, checkups, or any form of therapy … then those too become products that you will need to buy. Which rapidly brings us to the familiar story of: having your healthcare delivered at the lowest possible cost, skimping on materials, regulations and safety checks, and being charged the highest possible price that the capitalists can get away with.

Speaking of highest possible profits: there are so many fun tricks of the game to help you squeeze out cash from people’s ill health or well-being. Privatize healthcare! Privatize health insurance! Privatize anything that you can lay your hands on!

Think of patents. A patent is when one child has come up with something fun or useful and then bars all the other children from playing with it—unless they pay them their lunch money, of course. Remember that fun time in 2015 when ‘pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli bought the manufacturing license for the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim (or ‘Pyrimethamine’), also used by people living with HIV/AIDS, and took the liberty to up the price per pill with over 5,000%, from around $13 to over$700 per pill pretty much overnight?

Think also about trade agreements between countries, which when it comes to anything to do with medicine or health care, are often pre-drafted by big, for-profit pharmaceutical companies. As a result, these trade agreements may often make trade between countries conditional on, for example, the selling off of parts or all of a country’s healthcare system to for-profit providers. They may also require trade sanctions against any country that decides to produce its own non-branded version of a vaccine or a cancer drug. Because health and well being, they’re nice and all that, but what really matters is preventing intellectual property infringement.

All this, according to Adler-Bolton and Vierkant, and is the effect of capitalism on health: on how people think about what health is, and on how healthcare will be delivered within a capitalist society.

All right, well, then where are we at? It looks like we are stuck at level whatever of this capitalism extortion game, and now it’s suddenly not so fun anymore. It’s getting late, it’s getting dark, and you would want to go home. Can you?

In Health Communism, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant seem to say that if people and societies would take an alternative approach to health, then that could make the whole capitalist system come crashing down. More specifically, what they have in mind is a system in which care is not rationed. Where it’s not made conditional on your doing wage work for capitalist production. Where it’s not locked behind paywalls or formal ability assessment. But where instead, healthcare and other forms of care are provided in abundance. Where everybody has access to all the care they need. So that gives us a slogan, they say what we need is: all care for all people. And they say that such a system, if it were to be realized, must be understood as fundamentally threatening to the existence of capitalism. So basically, their idea is: change how you do health, and capitalism will crumble.

To which an alert reader might respond: Yeah, maybe? Maybe not? How would we know? Health Communism (the book) gives readers flamboyant statements. But it is pretty sparse on the theory, stats, or the causal logic of how any of this might work.

Now, I’m also just a reader in this case, and I shouldn’t go about just making any of this up on the authors’ behalf. But what I can do is give you two pointers that could, just potentially, help us signpost way out: one that’s firmly grounded in our earthly reality, and another a blatant alt-world time-travelling fiction.

### Level 8: Reality check

Let’s start with the reality check. It might be easy to forget if you’re living in a capitalist society, but there are in this world, in 2023, also non-capitalist healthcare systems out there. Think of healthcare in China. Think of Việt Nam. Both of which have communist constitutions and already offer, or working towards offering, universal health care coverage. Though, as I understand it, both also operate a privatized, for-profit health market in parallel.

But the radiant example here is of course Cuba. Cuba’s health system has universal access, and is consistently recognized as among the best in the world. Cuban doctors regularly deliver medical care internationally. Cuban health researchers have developed a vaccine against lung cancer, and were the first to eliminate birth-parent-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. Plus, not to forget, Cuba achieves all of this despite the United States trying to crush its care system with a decade-long trade embargo on medicine.

Now, Health Communism (the book) doesn’t discuss any of this—I suppose, because of its hyper-focus on the United States and Europe. But, just so you know, there are non-capitalist healthcare systems out there. So if you want to liberate health from capitalism, then hey, maybe these living breathing examples are ones to learn from?

### Level 9: News from Nowhere

The second signpost I would like to give you is a fiction and a utopia. Drawn from the novel News from Nowhere, written by the designer and socialist William Morris.

In News from Nowhere, which was published in 1890, Morris sketches a society that has successfully transitioned into what they call ‘pure communism’, which is a society-of-equals type of communism. So very different from any sort of hierarchical state communism, which Morris abhorred.

Under this pure communism, people are free and live in a fellowship of equals. They’re not oppressed or exploited for business interests. They live without wage labour and without government. In this society, everybody does work that they enjoy, or that will benefit either themselves or the community, rather than produce things for some ‘… vague market (…) over which they have no control’.7

Morris’s community came from a system that was not too dissimilar from the capitalism that many of us are living under today. In the old capitalist days, Morris describes, people were forced to engage

‘… in a most elaborate system of buying and selling, which has been called the World-Market; and that World-Market, once set a-going, forced to them to go on making more and more of these wares, whether they needed them or not.’8

To this system:

‘… everything was sacrificed: the happiness of the [worker[ at [their] work, nay and [their] most elementary comfort and bare health, [their] food, [their] clothes, [their] dwelling, [their] leisure, [their] amusement, [their] education—[their] life, in short.’9

Did any government protect people from such exploitation? Oh, no, it didn’t. Instead, as Morris writes, the function of government, ‘… with its army, navy and police…’, was to make sure that ‘… the interests of the Upper Classes took no hurt.’ Where for ‘upper classes’ read: business owners, investors, capitalists. ‘It was a function of government to protect the rich against the poor.’ And the government’s function was also ‘… to delude people into supposing that they had some share in the management of their own affairs.’10

The escape from the misery of capitalist oppression did not come easily for the society that Morris describes. In fact, it had initially seemed completely unachievable to them. People didn’t think that it could work, because looking around them, they only saw masses of fellows who were overwhelmed, miserable, stressed, trying to survive the day-to-day, where the only chance of escape that they could think of was one of becoming a capitalist themselves and start exploiting other people. The ‘get rich or die tryin’-mentality. From the exploited to the exploiter.

So what changed? How did they manage to bring their unfathomably large move away from capitalism about? I’m afraid, or pleased, to say that the short answer is: They just began. There was not one single big turning point. There was no top-down coordination. There were just local networks of people realizing that either they’d be stuck with this wage exploitation game play forever, or they would opt for freedom and equality with a communist system of life.

People just stopped working for the capitalists, the reactionaries. The factory, the shipyards, the mills, the farms, and the docks, owned by for-profit, oppressive businesses—they just stood empty. Everyone refused to work for them. And obviously those owners weren’t going to do the work themselves, were they? Instead, people started working—weaving, forming, soldering, baking, coding (well, okay, I added the coding)—for themselves, for society, for the good and the benefit of everyone who was ready to move away from capitalist exploitation.

Let me jump in here. This is not in the book, but translated to a health situation that might mean: setting up basic, non-profit GP surgeries in your area. Starting a communal online therapy group to support one another. Saying: ‘Bollocks to that!’ with all this patent and intellectual property folly. Doing CoViD-safe meetups. Running a community kitchen to make sure that everyone can eat healthily. That, with such cumulative refusal from within society to participate any longer … that is how the change came about, in Morris’ utopia.

Playing the capitalism game may have been fun, for some players, for the few centuries it’s lasted so far. But today, with the earth simultaneously flooding and on fire, with people getting sick and depleted all around, with the most valued occupations among the young being either that of influencer or of naked short-selling professional, you’ve got to ask: Is capitalism still enjoyable to play? Because if not, then maybe it is time to hit the escape button.

At the end of News from Nowhere, when the narrator time-traveller reflects whether all that they have witnessed about this pure communist society was all a dream, they start musing to themselves. They say:

‘Go back and be happier (…) for having added a little hope to your struggle. Go on living while you may, striving, with whatsoever pain and labor needs must be, to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and rest, and happiness. Yes, surely! and if others can see it as I have seen it, then maybe it may be called a vision rather than a dream.’11

### Level 10: Game over

Game over.

Thank you for tuning in to Vulnerable By Design this week. If you would like to hear more or get in touch, you will find all of our episodes and more information on vulnerablebdesign.net. I am Chris Onrust. Thank you for listening, and bye for now.

1. Quotes from: BusinessWeek (21 October 1996), Thomas Kosnik, Drew Fudenberg, CNN, and Computer Gaming World, stated on Capitalism 2 Official Site. (Accessed 20 February 2023) ↩

2. Frederick Douglass, ‘Address to the people of the United States at a Convention of Colored Men held in Louisville, Kentucky, 24 September 1883’, in: Three Addresses on the Relations Subsisting between the White and Colored People of the United States, 1886, p. 13. ↩

3. Ayn Rand. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York, NY: Signet, 1966. ↩

4. Friedrich August Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1944. ↩

5. The Investopedia Team. ‘What Is Capitalism: Varieties, History, Pros & Cons, Socialism’. (Version: 9 March 2023) ↩

6. William Morris. News from Nowhere: Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance. London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1908 [1890], p. 107. ↩

7. William Morris. News from Nowhere: Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance. London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1908 [1890], p. 102. ↩

8. William Morris. News from Nowhere: Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance. London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1908 [1890], pp. 102-03. ↩

9. William Morris. News from Nowhere: Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance. London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1908 [1890], selections from pp. 82, 84, and 86. ↩

10. William Morris. News from Nowhere: Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance. London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1908 [1890], p. 237. ↩


text:
# Problem: Review the ideal gas law. Without referring back to the text, use algebra to write the ideal gas law and solve for one of the variables.Using the Ideal Gas Law, solve for pressure.

###### FREE Expert Solution

Use the ideal gas equation to solve pressure:

85% (123 ratings)
###### Problem Details

Review the ideal gas law. Without referring back to the text, use algebra to write the ideal gas law and solve for one of the variables.

Using the Ideal Gas Law, solve for pressure.


text:
# Firebird embedded

## What is it

Firebird embedded is a special version of the Firebird database server. It lets you run your programs without a dedicated database server. Instead, you add a library (DLL/.so/.dylib) to your application) and let your application access your Firebird .fdb database file using that library.

This is similar to the way programs like Microsoft Access and LibreOffice Base can work. Advantages:

• runs on many architectures (Linux, OSX, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris)
• no separate server setup necessary, reducing complexity
• you can easily switch from embedded to full client/server - without changing a line of code (except your connection string). This is probably a nice advantage compared to sqlite.

• only single user access
• need to distribute some libraries along with your program when distributing it (unless you can statically link them)

## Warning: Windows x64

Warning: In versions of FPC below FPC 2.7.1 r23738 (March 2013), FPC x64 on Windows does not work well with the Firebird embedded dll - or other DLLs. The section below contains a workaround if you have an old FPC version

On versions of FPC below 2.7.1 r23738 you can get errors/exceptions from the IBConnection object even if you write correct code (see e.g. Create database bug report.

Workarounds:

1. move to a development snapshot/FPC version after FPC 2.7.1 r23738; see [[1]]
2. if on FPC 2.7.1 lower than r23738, compile FPC with -dTEST_WIN64_SEH in order to use the new Structured Exception Handling (SEH) code on Win64.
3. use a 32 bit FPC and Lazarus on Windows 64

## Installation

On Windows, Firebird embedded and regular Firebird client libraries are different files. Firebird embedded can always serve as a regular client, making it a logical choice for inclusion in your installation.

### Windows

Download and unzip the Firebird embedded kit. Make sure the .dll and .manifest files are either:

• in your project directory and executable output directory (where the .exe is generated) or
• in a directory in your PATH (not your system directory) (useful if you don't want to keep copying dlls)

Note that bitness must match: you must use the 64 bit embedded version if you compile your program for 64 bit, and 32 if you're writing 32 bit programs. Also make sure the the .dlls and .manifest files are placed in your project output (executable) directory, and distribute them with your applications, along with the license files.

As an indication, the minimum necessary files for Firebird 2.5 are:

• fbembed.dll
• firebird.msg
• ib_util.dll
• icudt30.dll
• icuin30.dll
• icuuc30.dll
• Microsoft.VC80.CRT.manifest
• msvcp80.dll
• msvcr80.dll

### Linux

For Debian, probably similar for Ubuntu: Get library files as well as the symlink: e.g. /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfbembed.so linking to /user/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfbembed.so.bla.x.y

aptitude install libfbembed2.5 firebird-dev

For at least Firebird 2.5+: Do not specify a username or password as that will force a lookup to security.fdb which may fail if system-wide security.fdb cannot be accessed. Do specify the role RDB$ADMIN on Firebird 2.5+ as that should give you full control over the database file. Put these files in your project directory (to do: test if this is all needed): firebird/libfbembed.so (or perhaps libfbembed.so.2.5) firebird.conf firebird/security.fdb #perhaps not necessary firebird/intl/fbintl firebird/udf/fbudf.so  For Firebird 3 you will need: firebird/libfbclient.so plugins/libEngine12.so  Had set this in firebird.conf (to do: check if this is all needed) RootDirectory=./firebird #replace with your directory DatabaseAccess = Full #probably useful ExternalFileAccess = Full #probably useful UdfAccess = Full #probably useful #disable #TempDirectories = /tmp #=> didn't fix /tmp/firebird lock issues #TempDirectories = ~/tmp #=> didn't fix /tmp/firebird lock issues 2 environment variables need to be set before the application is started. Supposing the application is installed in /home/pascaldev/embed: # tell dynamic loader where to find embedded lib: LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/pascaldev/embed/firebird # tell server where to find files (messages, config etc) FIREBIRD=. #or use absolute path: /home/pascaldev/embed If you hit errors like EIBDatabaseError/ : DoInternalConnect : -Can't access lock files' directory /tmp/firebird  you probably have stale lock files lying around that are owned by another user Deleting the /tmp/firebird directory works, but the problem is that it will be recreated under your own local permissions See How to setup Firebird embedded on Linux or Mac? for hints on working with embedded Firebird on Linux or Apple OSX. Somebody used Firebird embedded with FPC: Earlier version of Firebird embedded on Linux ### OSX ### FreeBSD ## Connecting to Firebird servers As mentioned, Firebird embedded can work like a regular Firebird client. Therefore, using the embedded Firebird library instead of the client/server Firebird library can help make your application more flexible. Note: there is a bug at least in Firebird embedded 2.5.3 together with FPC 2.6.4 that crashes when closing a connection to a remote server. This bug has been fixed in FPC trunk. ## Use Once you have the proper Firebird embedded libraries in the right path (see above), you need to specify that you are connecting to an embedded instead of a client server environment. Leave the hostname property of the IBConnection object empty. The rest of the properties work like in the client/server version, e.g. the DatabaseName is the full path to your .fdb file - or just the database name if it is in the same directory as fbembed.dll. Additionally, older versions of FPC (FPC 2.6.2+ certainly don't need this) may require that you set the UseEmbeddedFirebird property to true. The property is not present in the SQLDB units, but you need to add ibase60dyn to your uses clause. ### Creating databases #### Using Firebird ISQL You can create databases by using the Firebird isql application (e.g. as provided in the regular Firebird (client) package). On Windows, this executable should be in the same directory as your fbembed.dll. Note: isql expects the fbclient library, not fbembed; you can copy and rename fbembed, e.g. into fbclient.dll on Windows, to fix this. Run isql, then do: CREATE DATABASE 'employee.fdb' USER 'SYSDBA' password 'masterkey' page_size 16384 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET UTF8; exit; Dropping/deleting a database would basically mean deleting the file, but you can also run: isql CONNECT 'employee.fdb' USER 'sysdba' password 'masterkey'; DROP DATABASE; commit; exit; #### Programmatically You can also create a database from within your program. The program in the Creating the test database section below shows how you can detect missing databases and create them on the fly. A similar procedure could be called in Lazarus applications when initializing your form (FormShow event). ### Creating objects like tables,views,triggers,... Creating the objects - as most things - is the same in Firebird and Firebird embedded. Please see Firebird#Creating_objects_programmatically ## Running FPC database test suite It can be useful to run the FPC database test framework (in packages\fcl-db\tests) when you are hunting bugs, trying to find out how something works, or improving the database code. ### Telling the framework which database to use You will need to edit the db test framework .ini file to tell the test executable that it needs to use your embedded database. See Databases#Running_FPC_database_tests for instructions on how to do this. ### Creating the test database If you have set up the framework to use Firebird, you will need to prepare the environment for testing. Copy over the Firebird embedded libraries and other files for your architecture into the test directory. Now create the test database - manually or programmatically #### Manually creating a database isql CREATE DATABASE 'test.fdb' USER 'SYSDBA' password 'masterkey' page_size 16384 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET UTF8; exit; #### Programmatically creating a database You can programmatically create a database. The example below creates a local, embedded database, but it can be easily changed to a remote database (adjust hostname and if necessary path): program firebirdembeddedtest; {$mode objfpc}{$H+} uses {$IFDEF UNIX}{$IFDEF UseCThreads} cthreads, {$ENDIF}{\$ENDIF}
Classes, SysUtils,
sqldb, IBConnection {for Firebird};

const
// Name for the database. Be sure to specify the same name in your database.ini
DatabaseFile = 'test.fdb'; //Sensible name for a test database, right?
var
Fire: TIBConnection;

begin
//Connection to Firebird database
// The next line is needed for quite old FPC versions
// Newer versions will first look for fbembed.dll in the application directory automatically
//UseEmbeddedFirebird:=true; // Using embedded (and fbembed.dll) or regular client/server (fbclient.dll), requires ibase60dyn in uses
Fire:=TIBConnection.Create(nil);
try
Fire.HostName := ''; //must be empty for embedded Firebird; must be filled for client/server Firebird
Fire.DatabaseName := DatabaseFile; //(path and) filename
// Username and password do not matter for authentication, but you do get authorizations in the database
// based on the name (and optionally role) you give.
Fire.Charset := 'UTF8'; //Send and receive string data in UTF8 encoding
Fire.Dialect := 3; //Nobody uses 1 or 2 anymore.
Fire.Params.Add('PAGE_SIZE=16384'); //I like a large page size (used when creating a database). Useful for larger indexes=>larger possible column sizes

// Find out if there is a database in the application directory.
// If not, create it. Note: this may fail if you don't have enough permissions.

// If you use client/server, you obviously don't need this part of the code.
if (FileExists(DatabaseFile)=false) then
begin
writeln('File '+DatabaseFile+' does not exist.');
writeln('Creating a Firebird embedded database...');
// Create the database as it doesn't exist
try
Fire.CreateDB; //Create the database file.
except
on E: Exception do
begin
writeln('- not all files present');
writeln('- wrong architecture (e.g. 32 bit instead of 64 bit)');
writeln('Exception message:');
writeln(E.ClassName+'/'+E.Message);
end;
end;
Fire.Close;
end;
finally
Fire.Free;
end;
end.

### Running the test suite

Finally compile and run the dbtestframework.pas database test program. It should generate status output on the console and XML output in files with test results that can be analysed and sent to developers.


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# 812 dry quarts in milliliters

## Conversion

812 dry quarts is equivalent to 894191.40548458 milliliters.[1]

## Conversion formula How to convert 812 dry quarts to milliliters?

We know (by definition) that: $1\mathrm{dryquart}\approx 1101.220942715\mathrm{ml}$

We can set up a proportion to solve for the number of milliliters.

$1  dryquart 812  dryquart ≈ 1101.220942715  ml x  ml$

Now, we cross multiply to solve for our unknown $x$:

$x\mathrm{ml}\approx \frac{812\mathrm{dryquart}}{1\mathrm{dryquart}}*1101.220942715\mathrm{ml}\to x\mathrm{ml}\approx 894191.4054845801\mathrm{ml}$

Conclusion: $812  dryquart ≈ 894191.4054845801  ml$

## Conversion in the opposite direction

The inverse of the conversion factor is that 1 milliliter is equal to 1.11832879836066e-06 times 812 dry quarts.

It can also be expressed as: 812 dry quarts is equal to $\frac{1}{\mathrm{1.11832879836066e-06}}$ milliliters.

## Approximation

An approximate numerical result would be: eight hundred and twelve dry quarts is about eight hundred and ninety-four thousand, one hundred and ninety-one point four one milliliters, or alternatively, a milliliter is about zero times eight hundred and twelve dry quarts.

## Footnotes

[1] The precision is 15 significant digits (fourteen digits to the right of the decimal point).

Results may contain small errors due to the use of floating point arithmetic.