The phrase “The beauty of the Lord” is thrown around a lot in Christian circles, especially in song. It’s a wonderful thing to sing about, but what is the beauty of the Lord? How can it be appreciated when there is nothing of Him for us to see but His creation?

For a long time I had no idea what it meant to marvel at the beauty of the Lord. I had not even but the vaguest idea of what beauty really meant. In retrospect, my first glimpse was the testimony of a missionary who had been working with Campus Crusade at various universities. He recounted the story of a grad student he met one day, who told him though she was not a Christian, she knew “there must be a God, because math is so beautiful”.

Though I didn’t grasp the profundity of that statement at the time, I could appreciate what she was saying. Math is elegant, cohesive, and infinitely interconnected. Though it’s Simple enough to say 2×8=8×2 and know that fact, one could spend a lifetime on the mechanisms behind that truth. Concepts can be generalized to the point where we get things like imaginary numbers and the complex plane. I recall one day several years ago reading through Wikipedia and stumbling upon Roots of Unity, and almost being brought to tears because of the beauty of it. It’s easy enough to know that i to a power divisible by four gives you 1, but who knew that the same mechanism behind that was also behind -1 returning 1 when raised to even powers? Who knew that the cycle of i, -1, -i, 1 when counting up powers of i is actually circling around the complex plane? Who knew that these concepts could be extended and generalized geometrically so that you can figure out complex numbers that will return 1 raised to any power?

More recently, I have been astounded by the elegance of God in orchestrating all of Biblical history - even all of total history - to one singular object. All of the Old Testament points to Christ. All of the New Testament points to Christ. Christ points to the glory of God, and all of history points to the glory of God through Christ. Realizing this was the same feeling as first comprehending roots of unity - a supreme awe at the elegance of it all.

What then is beauty? What does the beauty of math have in common with the beauty of God? What does a beautiful woman have in common with a beautiful song?

Purpose. Unity of intent and reason for existence and action.

In a beautiful theory, everything that it describes is accounted for and subsumed under a single process or intent, and all variety is a manifestation thereof. Nothing is arbitrary. This is why physicists are after an “equation of everything”: right now, a multitude of (as far as we know) unrelated physical forces populate the theory. A plethora of arbitrary constants litter textbooks, and we have no idea why they are so (for example, the gravitational constant, the speed of light). Scientists as much as anyone else are searching for beauty - looking for the commonality among the forces, looking for reasons behind the constants - for example, the equations that subsumed electromagnetism and the weak force under the electroweak force were a major step forward in the beauty of mainstream physical theory. Likewise, much of the popularity of string theory is because of its beauty and elegance in tying so many disparate branches of science together (though it is well to keep in mind that though truth is beautiful, not all beauty is necessarily truth).

Aesthetic beauty is a bit harder to pin down, because there are so many conflicting conceptions of beauty. What is the purpose of a painting? Of a song? In most cases, the beauty of a song or a painting is self-referential: it is a form of beauty, but only a shadow, because its purpose is itself. A certain melodic fragment is put in a song, and built upon - this is beauty in song. The repetition thereof is a form of pseudo-purpose - arbitrary melodies that never lead anywhere make for an incoherent song. Similarly in painting and other aesthetic arts, beauty comes from thematic coherence. Superimposing the subject of The Scream onto a pointallist painting, though both are arguably beautiful in their own right, does not make a beautiful product. Though they are both internally consistent, they are not consistent with each other.

This is the way that God is beautiful. We know that all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). The scriptures have singularity of purpose - pointing to the glory of God through the work of Christ - and are at no point arbitrary. We see that all things work together for the good of those that love God (Romans 8:28), and that good is God. We know then that none of history - every event, down to the fly on the strawberry - is arbitrary. It is all oriented - the good, the bad, even the downright evil - by God towards good (Genesis 50:20) - the glory of God through the redemption of mankind. Though we mean our actions towards any number of evil things, God works it for good. God is, more than anything temporal, completely internally consistent and singularly oriented towards one goal. God is therefore the pinnacle of beauty - the beauty from which all other beauty derives itself.

To be continued. Coming soon: Taking comfort in a selfish God - How God’s beauty translates into our good.

If you’ve been here over the past few days, the more astute among you will have noticed a few things different. Normally I don’t write about site changes, but I think this one is significant enough - as the biggest single design change to the site since its inception in current form - to warrant a post. The changes include:

1) It’s wider. I’ve been designing for 1024 wide screens for quite a while now - Dragonblade (defunct), Epta Astera, Campus Crossroads, NetUtopia (what ever happened to that anyway? Sheesh) - in fact, this was one of the last 800 wide designs I ever did; almost three years ago. High time to bring it into the future, I figure.

2) The Header is different. I’m not a fan of change for the sake of change - I change because I believe things can be made better. The old header, after a while, came to seem very unbalanced - both horizontally and vertically. This header, while using the same themes as the last, balances itself much more nicely than the last, and comes in a good 44 pixels shorter, saving valuable vertical space (and bandwidth; it’s a pretty wide image). This newfound balance also led to…

3) The navigation has moved! No longer is it in the sidebar, but in the header. I believe it’s much more prominent and accessible there. The sidebar as it was was the only holdover from the last incarnation of the site (anyone remember the gray bevelled border? No? Good) - in almost exactly the same form, though with a black background and different icons. But they were Apple’s icons. No points for originality there. And though they were nice icons in their own right, they didn’t match the theme of the site. I briefly considered a horizontal navigation, but the treeline doesn’t lend itself well to that. Moving them into the header also reclaims a lot of wasted space up there, frees up vertical space in the sidebar, and saves bandwidth by getting rid of that image there.

4) There’s a Twitter there… Yeah yeah, fad, trendy, whatever. For a long time I’ve wanted something like a tumblelog on which to post quick, short thoughts (a Youtube video I enjoyed, a band I just discovered, etc.) - separately from the flow of the rest of the blog, which is more for longer articles. Twitter serves that purpose well enough, and, why the heck not? If it’s trendy, that just means more people to connect with - which is definitely a plus with this sort of thing.

On the backend, 5) It’s completely Wordpress powered. No more static PHP pages patching into the Wordpress loop from the outside. The entire site - pages and all - are all Wordpress now. This brings a few disadvantages with code flexibility, meta keywords (I imagine there are plugins for that), and permalinks (working on getting those fixed - hopefully old blog links should work soon) - but these can for the most part be mitigated, and it brings in a whole host of advantages like pages now being searchable (!) and (so much more) ease of maintenance.

There will be many tweaks and refinements over the next few days and weeks, so if you notice anything strange or broken (like the contact page [UPDATE: Contact page works!] - that will hopefully be up again soon, and work this time), leave a comment and let me know so I can fix it up.

The Dream of Solomon, by Luca Giordano

The concepts behind the recent article What Is Free Will? may seem pretty out there - they are very abstract at points, and it’s easy to question the value of plumbing to such depths. But the framework also has intensely practical benefits for the believer who is open to that way of thinking. Reading that article beforehand will be helpful before reading this one, as I’m going to chronicle the effects that that realization has brought about in my own life.

In 1 Kings 3, God appears to the new king Solomon in a dream, and tells him to ask whatever he wants. Knowing that he was quite unprepared for the throne he has just assumed, Solomon asks for wisdom to carry out his duties. As the story goes, God was pleased with his request, and gave him not only wisdom, but all kinds of earthly riches as well.

Since I first heard the story as a young child, one question I’ve repeatedly asked myself is, what would I have asked for in Solomon’s situation? My initial thoughts were that since I knew wisdom to be a good choice I would ask for that now, but I feared this was the only reason I would choose this. Had I not known the story, would I still ask for wisdom, or would I ask for a sweet car and a million bucks?

Growing up and getting better at looking at my own motives, I slowly came to the conclusion that whatever I asked for ought to be intrinsic and not external - basically the difference between a million dollars and a six figure income, except deeper: the former won’t do any long term good as it will eventually run out (we’ll ignore investments and the like). Somewhat tangential to the former question is the perennial “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”. I decided that if I was asked Solomon’s question I would still probably ask for wisdom, knowing that’s a good choice, and I was also reasonably confident that, not knowing the story, I wouldn’t have asked straight out for a sweet car and a million bucks. But would I have asked for abilities or powers with which to achieve those things anyway? That question was still haunting.

Later still, I came to the conclusion that of all intrinsic abilities, knowledge - particularly omniscience - was the best of the lot. This was around the same time that I was thinking about self-interest frameworks of free will - I concluded that, had I infinite knowledge (and the capacity to make sense of it, of course), indecision would be eliminated and my will would be completely free to act in my own permanent best interests - that is, to set the highest good (God) as my goal and strive for that in the best manner possible without becoming encumbered by distractions since I would know enough to make value judgements on what is and is not important towards that goal. I decided that, both knowing the story and imagining I did not, I would now ask for knowledge and the capacity to make sense of it. This was the first time that knowledge of the story as it happened did not cause my hypothetical answer and my current decided answer to differ, but even this was not as far as it would go.

More recently, reading through things like C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and thinking further into the issue of free will as simply the expression of one’s beliefs, values, and knowledge, I came to realize that the man with infinite heavenly and earthly knowledge would conclude that most of that knowledge was irrelevant. The previous idea of infinite knowledge freeing one from distractions contains the seeds of this revelation: thus, all the knowledge necessary for a truly free will consists of: 1) the meta-knowledge of what is important (good) and what is not, and 2) factual knowledge of these important things. This knowledge is God. Thus, given these conclusions, I’ve come to the conclusion that my answer would honestly be “I want to know You, Lord”.

Reaching these conclusions through the self-interest framework of free will is the first time I can honestly say that I have been, as Tozer puts it, desperate for the highest will of God. The percolation from knowledge to belief that God is the ultimate good and that most everything I would otherwise strive for is a distraction from that highest good started out in me (and continued for quite a while) as a meta-desire - that is, the desire to desire God - the state of knowing and believing you should desire to know God and it is in your best interests to do so, but not yet having that earnest desire. Though this is perhaps easier to have and is insufficient in itself, I’ve learned it was an important first step, as God is faithful and will not ignore the plea of His children (Matthew 7:7-11). Over time and since that final conclusion, this has translated into an honest desire to know God, the better to live my life for His glory and my own final good, and I pray that framework and knowledge would be used to work change in other lives as well.

the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that [prices in] financial markets already reflect all known information. It further states that it is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck.
-Wikipedia, Efficient Market Hypothesis

Efficient Market Theory holds that because all investors are rational, this requires that they use all the information they possess in making purchases or trades. Thus, if information exists in the market, it will be reflected in the price. A corollary of this is that only unexpected information can bring about true changes in the market: by the time an expected change happens, the market will have adjusted. This can be seen every time the Fed changes interest rates. Most investors have a reasonable expectation as to the action they will take, and so adjust their behavior to compensate well beforehand, making the effect of the rate change itself virtually nil.

Certain behaviors follow from this theory: first, that since you can’t outperform the market in the long term, buying an index fund and holding it forever is the best investment one can make in the long term. By pegging your earnings to the average growth of the stock market (the S&P 500, for example), one doesn’t incur fees by trading around, and trading around wouldn’t do much long term good anyway except as a function of luck, meaning you’re just as good holding onto it as putting it somewhere else. You cease to collect information because you trust the information that the stock price gives you

There is strong evidence that certain variations of the theory very closely correspond to actual markets in the US and UK. On the other hand, there are certain investors who can consistently outperform the market:

These investors’ strategies are to a large extent based on identifying markets where prices do not accurately reflect the available information, in direct contradiction to the efficient-market hypothesis which explicitly implies that no such opportunities exist.

If all available information is contained in a stock price (and it is), then how do people like Warren Buffet and George Soros exist and consistently profit from the stock market?

The answer lies in trust, and weighted information. EMH requires that all investors use all their knowledge, but it does not require that they know everything, nor that different investors know the same things. Consider a horse race: every better knows the same information about the horses, and the normal distribution of decisions based on risk is perfectly adhered to. Let’s say the odds on one spectacular horse are 70-30 in its favor based on the collective and informed bets of everyone currently there.

Now imagine the crowd doubles due to an influx of newbies. Each one sees the odds on the screen, trusts the wisdom of the crowd before them, and bets on this horse. Suddenly the odds are 85-15 in its favor. Did anything in the horse inherently change? No. Was any information lost or changed in the marketplace? No; the information was simply disproportionately weighted. Suddenly the underdog horse is a much better buy - you get an 85% return (not counting what the establishment skims off the top) for what is still essentially a 70% risk. Nevertheless, you would not know this from trusting the board.

Similarly in stock markets, people have a propensity to buy stocks following someone else’s lead. If Soros picks up a lot of stock in a particular company, people trust that and buy stock themselves, giving himself a short-term boost in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Buffet sees this behavior and owns some of that stock himself, he can note that Soros’ information is overweighted in the market, causing a jump in stock price despite no underlying change in the stock’s business itself. By riding this wave and selling at the peak of it, watching the behavior of investors deemed trustworthy (especially big ones like Soros and Buffet) and bidding opposite to them (after a short delay to allow their effects to be felt first - for example, buying a stock newly cheapened after Buffet and followers unload it) is a way to, counter to strict EMH, consistently outperform the market.

In the case of the horse betting example, the reaction of the informed would be quick enough that they would trade their bets and shortly balance out the discrepancy, making the market effectively efficient for all but the quickest and most observant. But that requires that there be quick and observant people that benefit from this. Furthermore, the ability of one in a stock market to reap the returns on his investment by selling at any point he chooses makes it possible for the quick and observant to ride these waves, rather than waiting for the final result and payout, by which time the market will have corrected itself. If there were a substantial secondary market for bets - meaning bets could be bought and sold from peers based on the current odds, with the expectation of a payout on the order of those current odds before they level out - then one could conceivably make a consistent profit on the horse racing tracks just as in the markets by riding waves of misweighted information.

The catch is, of course, that if everyone catches onto this technique, there is no more trust as a heuristic - nobody follows anyone else’s stock picks - so all information is weighted equally, and EMH really holds true in its purest form. Conversely if everyone trusted the market and resigned themselves to matching its growth by investing in index funds, the market wouldn’t have any information to reflect. Stock prices are set by the people who trade, which according to EMH is suboptimal behavior. This is the irony of EMH: it doesn’t hold true unless no one believes in it - and acceptance of it invalidates it.

For as long as there have been different styles of music, there have been people looking out for the purity of that style. Some genres attract these types of people more than others - generally, the more inaccessible the music, the more “pure” the fans will generally want to keep it. Unfortunately these scenes that arise around certain genres carry a lot more baggage than the genre itself, and limits the innovation that comes through synthesis.

For example, let’s look at the scenes behind black metal, and contemporary Christian music. I choose these because I’m somewhat familiar with both, and they contrast in certain ways that illustrate things about all kinds of scenes. Now Christian music, in its most general sense, is simply music that deals lyrically with Christian themes. It makes no stylistic assumptions. However, the average person thinking of Christian music will probably associate the term with mediocre vanilla pop/rock with cliche lyrics. Similarly, the average person will probably associate black metal with corpsepaint, pentagrams, and blasphemy.

The key here is that none of these associations are inherent to the genre. Christian music is a lyrical description, and is not necessarily confined to vanilla pop/rock. Black metal is a style, and doesn’t inherently necessitate any particular lyrical themes. In the case of these two themes, there’s no overlap between the two criteria - but you almost never see Christian black metal. Why is this?

What keeps these two ideas apart is the scenes that have arisen around each. Though black metal is far more diverse than it is usually allowed to be, the expectations from within about what sort of lyrical themes it will have fuel the fears from without about those same lyrical themes, and vice versa. Christians dislike the lyrical themes that the scene has forced into black metal, and generalize that to the entire style. Similarly the black metal scene has some deal of antipathy towards pop in general, and because of its association with Christian music, they reject Christian black metal as an infection. This actually pertains to nearly all genres of heavier music to a lesser extent, as much of it has arisen out of certain countercultural lyrical expectations.

These assumptions about other genres really stifle a lot of musical creativity. Sure there are fusions all the time, but there’s really a dearth of less obvious combinations because of this. Black metal doesn’t have to be about paganism and misanthropy any more than Christian music has to be mediocre pop. Let’s hear more aggressive post-rock, or more big-band metal. Why not have symphonic hip-hop (the occasional synthesized string section doesn’t count) or celtic country-western? The scenes will probably reject it, at least initially, but I think the necessity of their approval is very often overrated.