The soul needs an intense, full-bodied spiritual life as much in the same way the body requires food. Each person defines beauty, spiritual life, love, pleasure, pain and all the other experiences in a way that makes sense for them. Human beings are tremendously influenced by many things in the cultural experiences. The restrictions against exposed mutual-involvements can sometimes be seen not as a restriction against involvement that withdraws the participants from gathering. Indeed, the individual may at times be obliged to open oneself up for mutual-involvements, as implied in the rule of accessibility. However, one must do this not merely on the grounds of prior relationship but on the basis of the present occasion. (Here we catch another glimmer of the trouble caused by newlyweds or those deeply engaged in courting, who, unlike persons whose relationship is more settled and seasoned, find it awkward to give up their mutual-involvement for the kind of courtesy involvement with a sequence of others that the social occasion often requires.) Thus we find a special kind of exemplary situational conduct when two persons with a long-standing, exclusive relationship manage to treat each other at a sociable gathering with courtesies owed on the basis simply of participation in the occasion; two bitter enemies show a similar regard for the occasion by being “civil.” The same type of courtesy is exhibited by a teacher who addresses her child in class as though he or she were just another student, this being describable not merely as role segregation but also as a gesture of regard for the occasion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Interestingly enough, in the natural history of some social parties, certain forms of fleeting play involving pleasures of the flesh may be a sign that the spirit of the occasion has lifted everyone up with it, not that the party has collapsed into separate pieces. Indeed, should the interactions involving pleasures of the flesh occur between persons brought together only at and for the occasion, it may be a sign of the high degree to which participants have given themselves over to the gathering. The extreme of this, in fact—for example, the kind of interaction involving pleasures of the flesh said to occur at the annual Beaux Arts ball in Paris—can represent not a collapse of duties in regard to the situation, as might at first seem the case, but rather some kind of profane worship of them. Were husbands to engage their wives in this manner, the obligations to the occasion would indeed be threatened. In noting the rule obliging individuals to sustain an occasioned mutual-involvement, we have perhaps a better means of accounting for our response to improper involvements than for predicting actual conduct, for these situational niceties are often ill-sustained. Resistance to the spirit of an occasion, as expressed in a refusal to sustain occasioned mutual-involvements, is apparently so useful a device for conveying so many things that someone in a gathering can usually be counted on to employ it. At public dances in the chief city of Utah, for example, one could usually find a slightly resented handful of couples, solidly middle-class in social status, who withheld themselves from the plebeian pleasures sustained by second-generation crofters. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

This alienation was expressed by dancing in half-time to the vigorous music and sustaining quiet engrossing talk while doing so, conduct that was obtrusively out of mood with the prevailing ethos. We see, then, that there will be ties when the success of a social occasion such as a party is expressed through the success of a social occasion such as a party is expressed through the success of the participants in finding congenial encounters in which to engross themselves. This engrossment provides proof that each person present is a desirable companion, and that each finds the social occasion significant enough to provide one with grounds for opening oneself up to others. Given these assumptions, we can understand that a person caught for too long between encounters—caught “unengaged”—may cause anxiety to oneself and the hostess, and that the latter may try to anchor one in a convenient port, which particular port being of only secondary significance. And we can also understand why an individual may feel that what one owe the gathering at large can at times override what one owes oneself and one’s fellows in an encounter, providing us with additional evidence that the individual’s engagement in a focused interaction is a fact available to all others in the situation, and hence a part of the unfocused interaction in the situation. Here we have the situational reason for one type of tact, namely, giving the appearance of being spontaneously involved in some occasioned encounter when in fact one is not. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Even if you are placed next to some one with whom you have had a bitter quarrel, consideration for your hostess, who would be distressed if she knew you have been put in a disagreeable places, and further consideration for the rest of the table which is otherwise “blocked,” exacts that you give no outward sign of your repugnance and that you make a pretense, at least for a little while, of talking together. At dinner once, Mrs. Winchester, finding herself next to a man she quite openly despised, said to him with apparent placidity, “I shall not talk to you—because I do not care to. But for the sake of my hostess I shall say my multiplication table. Twice one are two, twice two are four—” and she continued on through the tables, making him alternate them with her. As soon as she politely could she turned again to her other companion. Another instance of the obligation to sustain an occasioned involvement with others may be cited from Utah. At a “progressive” whist of twenty tables during a social, the deep engrossment of a member of the gentry in his particular table of whist was likely to be taken as a sign of how thoroughly he was participating in the social occasion. By getting caught up in the spirit of one of the tables, he showed regard for the room as a whole. Had he disdained to invest himself thus, and insisted on wandering from one table to another, making gracious comment to players at all the tables in turn, he might well have tendered the common folk—the crofters—less of a compliment. (And yet if an ordinary crofter became so much involved in a particular hand of whist as to delay appreciably the finishing time for his table, this disregard for the necessity of shifting tables at the end of each game was likely to be considered an affront to the whole social occasion.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

If social occasions can be assessed according to their capacity to bring all participants into one occasioned encounter or another, then we can expect that rules will be found obliging those within any encounter to admit entrants. (This corresponds to the previously discussed obligation of the individual to make oneself accessible, the difference being that while an individual may be inaccessible to others because of organic capacity, this excuse is hardly available to encounters.) There are many occasions, as on public streets, where those in an encounter need acknowledge few rights of other to enter. One the other hand, as already suggested, it I characteristic of occasions such as social parties that participants have a right not only to initiate face engagements but also to enter ones that are already in progress. Here participants, in order to demonstrate how thoroughly they have been lifted up and brought together by the party, may feel obliged to admit newcomers to their conversation easily. “Open” topics of conversation may thus be maintained in preparation for newcomers. A conversation that by its tone forbade the entrance of new members would be improper. Consequently, we can understand the strategy sometimes employed by those who would converse about intensely involving private matter in a public place: instead of huddling together in a furtive conspiratorial way, they affect a style of matter-of-fact openness. [Somebody spoke about a useless personality which she enjoyed although she knew that it was useless.] In such a case you can struggle with this personality by strengthening other personalities opposed to it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Suppose you have a certain definite feature you want to struggle with, and try to find some other feature incompatible with it and which may be useful. If in your present equipment you find nothing sufficiently strong to put against it, look in your memory. Suppose you find some feature that is incompatible with the one you want to get rid of, and that can be useful, then just replace one by the other. However, it may happen that even then they can both live happily together. One may present in the evening, the other in the morning, and they may never meet. There is only one real danger. If, for a long time, one goes on without making sufficient efforts or without doing anything seriously, then, instead of becoming one, one becomes divided into two so that all features and personalities are divided into two group—one part useful to the work and helping personal work, and another part either indifferent or even unfriendly. This is a real danger because if two parts begin to form like this, the indifference of one spoils the result of the work of the other. So it is necessary to struggle very quickly and very strongly against that, otherwise it may lead to double crystallization. “What do you mean by crystallizing?” We use the word in a particular sense. Any feature may become crystallized just as buffers crystallize. This term came from the theosophical terminology; it is sometimes a useful term. I think everybody here has heard about higher bodies, the astral, mental and causal. The idea is that man has only one physical body, and development consists in the development of higher bodies. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

So man no. 5 corresponds to the crystallization of the astral body, man no. 6 to the crystallization of the mental body, and man no. 7 to the crystallization of the causal body. However, speaking of the crystallization of features, one person may have very good and very beautiful features and yet behind them he may have one small feature of false personality which makes work very difficult for him, more difficult perhaps than it is for somebody else who has not got such brilliant features. False personality may pretend to take an interest in the work, may take things for itself and call some negative and mechanical action “self-remembering” or something of that sort. However, it cannot do any useful work; it can only spoil the work of personalities which can do some work and get some results. The system in the light of false personality is quite a different system; it becomes something that strengthens false personality and weakens the real system for you. The moment false personality takes the system to itself, it adds one word here and another word there. You cannot imagine how extraordinary some of these ideas are when they are repeated back to me. One word omitted from some formulation makes quite a different idea; and false personality is fully justified and can do what it likes and so on. The problems of inferring proper lessons (attributing credit) based on limited experience occur in almost every sphere of human activity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

Because military organizations only rarely obtain feedback from actual combat, their circumstances make adaptation especially difficult. Since credit attribution has long been so problematic in warfare, military organization have a rich history of refining various forms of simulation, including many forms of gaming and field exercises. The techniques used by the military to cope with the problems of credit attribution when feedback is scarce are therefore particularly illuminating. For these organizations the problem of determining what works well is especially vexing. Large-scale fighting is infrequent—and much work goes into keeping this true. That means that opportunities to try new weapon systems or tactical concepts, or to test officer capabilities, come rarely. Learning only from real combat experience is an unacceptably slow strategy for improvement. This is a price society happily pays for peace, but it leaves military organizations facing a difficult learning problem. Where a firm might have several different versions of a consumer product tested in the field within a few months, a military organization might not accumulate the equivalent amount of useful experience in several decades. For n extreme example, there has never been any full combat experience for our intercontinental ballistic missile hardware, operational concepts, and crews. (This field is the only branch of science where success is achieved by never having any data.) A large portion of what military organizations learn about new technology and operational concepts must come from various forms of experience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

This experience may be war games, field exercise, small-scale engagements, mental experiments, computer models, or even imaginative reconstructions of military history. The Information Revolution is providing computer tools that dramatically expand simulation possibilities. The United States of America military now routinely employs simulated aircraft, tanks, ships, and soldiers in its investigations of combat possibilities. Mobilizations of large forces for field exercises incur substantial resource costs, and even without live ammunition, there are inevitable injuries and deaths from the risky movements of personnel and heavy equipment. Such exercises cannot be repeated many times in minor variation of multiple factors may reveal large consequences. The value of these new possibilities is also becoming evident in the business World. Although useful experience is not as scarce as in the military case, there are many situations in which exploratory trials with the real system are not possible, Major reorganizations or changes of corporate strategy are like this. They often have huge costs, and if they do not work, they risk the bankruptcy of the entire firm. In response to this need, simulation tools for business decision making are beginning to appear. Firms are arising that specialize in building such simulation models. Some are spin-offs of computer gaming companies, while others have arisen from consulting practices. There are limitations, of course. One shortcoming is that simulations often place sharp and arbitrary limits on improvisation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

While it is an extremely important source of military and business innovation, improvisation is generally not realistically supported in computer simulations, which often insist that the “players” obey rules and constraint that in real activities they might decide to violate. Although they may fall short of realism in significant ways, computer simulations provide the kind of rapidly assessed measure of success we have discussed previously. They generate only surrogate experience, but they can improve learning in an experience-poor domain if they are used wisely, with clear attention to their limitations. So far, our applications of randomized strategies have focused exclusively on games in which the players’ interests are strictly opposed. Somewhat more surprising is the possibility of finding an equilibrium with random behaviour even when the players have common interests. In this case, mixing one’s plays leads to an inferior outcome for all parties. However, just because the outcome is inferior does not mean the strategies are not an equilibrium: equilibrium is a description not a prescription. The reason for mixing one’s moves arises from a failure of coordination. This problem only arises when there is not a unique equilibrium. For example, two people disconnected during a phone call do not always know who should call back. Without the ability to communicate, the players do not know which equilibrium to expect. In a loose sense, the equilibrium with randomization is a way of playing a compromise between the coordinated equilibra. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Sarah and William are the sort of couple you read about in fiction, O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, to be precise. “Nobody could ever count” their love for each other, and each was willing, even eager, to make any sacrifice to get a really worthy Christmas gift for the other. Sarah would sell her hair to get Willian a chain for his heirloom watch, and William would sell the watch to buy a comb for Sarah’s beautiful hair. If they know each other well enough, they should both reorganize the possibility that each will sell his or her one treasure to buy the other a gift, and the result will be a tragic mistake. Sarah should pause and consider whether it would be better to keep her hair and await William’s gift. Likewise, William should consider not selling his watch. Of course, if they both refrain, neither gives a gift, which would be a different mistake. The couple’s strategies interact even though their interests largely coincide. For each, both kinds of mistake would be a bad outcome. For concreteness, we give this a point of score of zero. As between the two outcomes in which one gives a gift and the other receives it, suppose each thinks it better to give (2 points) than to receive (1 point). The situation in which Sarah keeps her hair and William sells his watch is possible equilibrium; each spouses strategy is the best response to the other’s. However, the situation in which Sarah sells her hair and William keeps his watch is also an equilibrium. Is there a mutually understood convention to select one equilibrium over the other? Surprise is an important aspect of a gift; therefore they cannot communicate in advance to establish a convention. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Mixing can help preserve the surprise, although at a cost. It is easy to check that the strategies in which each chooses to give with probability 2/3 and receive with probability 1/3 also constitute an equilibrium. Supposed Sarah uses such a mixture. If William sells his watch, there is a 1/3 chance that Sarah has kept her hair (2 points) and a 2/3 chance that she has sold it (0 point). The average outcome is 2/3 point. A similar calculation shows that if William keeps his watch, the average outcome is again 2/3 point. So William has no clear reason to choose one strategy rather than another, or indeed any mix. Once again, note that the function of Sarah’s best mix is to keep William willing to mix, and vice versa. The probabilities of mistakes are quite large: 4 times in 9 the couple finds that each has sold the item for which the other has bought the gift (an in the O. Henry story), and 1 time in 9 neither gets any gift. Because of these mistakes, the average score (2/3 point for each) is worse than that of either of the two equilibra in which one gives and the other receives (2 points for the giver and 1 for the receiver). This is unlike the tennis example from the past, in which each could actually raise one’s success rate by mixing. Why the difference? Tennis is a zero-sum game, in which the players’ interests are strictly opposed. They do better when they choose the mixing probabilities independently. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

In our account of The Gift of the Magi, the couple’s interest are largely aligned. They need, therefore, to coordinate their mixing. They should toss one coin, and depending on the outcome decide who gives and who receives. The couple has a slight conflict of interest; William prefers the top left outcome, and Sarah the bottom right. Coordinated mixing can offer them a compromise, splitting the difference. When a common coin toss decides who gives and who receives, the average outcome for each becomes 1.5 points. Of course the element of surprise is lost. Major shift in demographics always cause disruptions. Even when we know they are coming, we never prepare for them. Our plans are based on expectations of what will happen. If things do not go as expected, we find that we have “malinvested.” Huston real estate was valuable and looked to become even more so when times were good for the oil business there; when the fortunes of the oil business changed, Houston real estate was found to have been overbuilt, overpriced, and many millions of dollars were lost. Lengthening life spans push people toward taking a longer-term perspective, but rapid rates of change force a shorter-term perspective in investments. Turbulence in technology and in governmental monetary policy have already shortened time horizons. Businesspeople once routinely built plants with a thirty-year useful life. Today, the rate of change is so fast, and uncertainty regarding inflation and potential changes in tax laws is too great for such investments to make sense. Faster change will shrink time horizons further. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Governments have taken on themselves the burden of looking a lifetime ahead, and the Social Security Administration is in for some rough times. When Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s Iron Chancellor, came up with the notion of a guaranteed old-age pension, it was a cynically clever and low-cost way to gain popular goodwill. So few people lived to age sixty-five that the amounts paid out in pension were a pittance. After watching the German experiment for a handful of years, other governments began following suit. None of them expected a World likes ours where a baby girl born in the United States of America today has an average life expectancy of 82 years—more than double that of Bismarck’s time—and even this estimate is based on the faulty assumption that her medical care will be no better than her great-grandmother’s was. At present, the Social Security Administration has two models: one they call “positive” and one they call “negative.” In the “positive” model, people work like slaves until old age, retire, and promptly die—presumably before they have had a chance to collect substantial social-security or medical benefits. In the “negative” model, people retire early, develop illnesses that require medical intervention, and then live a long time making doctor visits and hospital stays during those years. Plans based on these models deserve to be disturbed. A better, more realistic scenario would have people living and able to support themselves for a long time, with illnesses that can be handled easily and inexpensively. Present social-security are enough to provide a certain standard of living—food, housing, transportation, and so forth. In a future of great material wealth, these benefits will be easy to provide, and present projections of economic woe resulting from an aging population seem quaint. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

A rapidly accumulating international literature tells lurid stories about computer crime—about bank swindles, espionage, viruses sent from one computer to destroy the contents of others. Movies like WarGames have dramatized the dangers from unauthorized entry to the computer and communication systems that control nuclear weapons. According to a published report in France, the Mafia has kidnapped an IBM executive and cut off his finger because it needed his fingerprint to breach a computer security system. The U.S.A. Department of Justice has defined a dozen different methods used in computer-based criminal activity. They range from switching or altering data as they enter the computer, to putting self-concealing instructions into the software, to tapping the computers. Widely publicized cases of “computer viruses” have illustrated the potential for sabotage of military and political communications and computation. However, relatively little thought has been given so far to the ways in which similar techniques might alter political life. One day in 1986, Jennifer Kuiper, a staff aide of Congressman Ed Zschau, saw her computer screen go blank. When she got her machine up and running again, two hundred letters had disappeared. Four days later hundreds of letters and addresses disappeared from the computer of Congressman John McCain. Capitol Hill police, claiming to have eliminated the likelihood of staff error, launched criminal investigations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

According to Zschau, himself, the founder of a computer software firm before entering politics, “Every office on Capitol Hill can be broken into in this way…It can bring the work that a member of Congress does to a complete halt.” With 250,000 word processors being used in the offices of American lawyers, it becomes feasible for a lawyer’s unscrupulous opposing counsel to glean compromising information by illegal access to his or her computer—and that this can be accomplished with inexpensive electronic equipment purchasable in the corner of Radio Shack. Politicians and officials, however, may be even more vulnerable. Thousands of computers, many of them linked in networks, are now found in congressional offices, the homes of elected officials and lobbyists, as well as on the desk tops of hundreds of thousands of civil servants who regulate everything from soybean quotas to air travel safety standards. Unauthorized and secret entry could cause endless troubles and shift power in unexpected ways. Computers also increasingly populate election campaign headquarters. Thus new, virtually undetectable games can be played in the ballot box itself. As you know, voter fraud is real. For example, an Iowa woman was arrested 12 January 2023, in Sioux City for her role in an alleged voter fraud scheme during the Iowa 2020 primary and general elections. Kim Phuong Taylor, 49, of Sioux City allegedly perpetrated a scheme to generate votes in the primary election in June 2020, when her husband was an unsuccessful candidate for Iowa’s 4^th U.S.A. Congressional District, and subsequently in 2020 general election, when her husband was a successful candidate for Woodbury County Supervisor. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Taylor allegedly submitted or caused others to submit dozens of voter registrations, absentee ballot request forms, and absentee ballot containing false information. For instance, although these documents required the singer to affirm that he or she was the person named in them, Taylor singed them for voter without their permission and told other that they could sign on behalf of relatives who were not present. Taylor is charged by indictment with 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration, and 23 count of fraudulent voting. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for each count. Secure elections are the cornerstone of a thriving republic. A key priority for any Attorney General is to investigate and prosecute the increasing allegations of voter fraud to ensure election integrity within the United States of America. In Texas, since 2005, the office of the Attorney General successfully prosecuted election fraud offense against 155 individuals, out of 534 cases suspected. The number of pending offenses against 43 defendants is 510, and currently pending prosecution. There 386 case of active election fraud investigations in Texas. Voter fraud is a reason so many people are demanding Voter ID laws are employed and enforced. However, the objection is that millions of Americans lack ID. In fact, 11 percent of U.S.A. citizens—or more than 21 million Americans—do not have government-issued photo identification. The enforcement of voter ID laws is considered to be discriminatory because obtaining an ID costs money. Even if ID is offered for free, voters must incur numerous costs (such a paying for birth certificates) to apply for a government-issued ID. The combined cost is estimated to range from $75 to $175. However, not requiring voter ID is consider a national security threat. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17