
Inviolability of Telegraphic Correspondence (1879) - cokernel
https://archive.org/details/jstor-3303981/
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jacquesm
There's a lot of stuff that has happened in the past couple of years that
proves to me that history is not necessarily a monotonic increase in state
across a number of measurable parameters, there are a ton of cyclic elements.
Some of those cycles are sinusoidal (pendulum like phenomenon) and some are of
the sawtooth variety (slow rise with eventual crash).

In 1879 the world was ahead of us in some ways and behind in many others, if
we're not careful then we may end up behind 1879 in many others as well.

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phreeza
Re: Sinusoidal vs Sawtooth patterns, in fourier analysis a sawtooth is just a
bunch of sinusoids with the phase aligned. I wonder if these sharp transitions
just occur when many factors with different frequencies happen to align in
phase. 1848 and 1968 come to mind as years when this seems to have happened.

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moyix
In Fourier analysis, _everything_ is just a bunch of sinusoids ;) And it seems
to me that there are also sawtooth patterns that aren't clearly the alignment
of lots of sinusoidal patterns, such as market bubbles.

~~~
jmount
There are definitely graphs that can only be approximated by Fourier methods
(such as square waves). The issue is related to Gibbs phenomena:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon)

~~~
moyix
You're correct; I was thinking of L^p (p > 1) convergence almost everywhere.

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cokernel
This analysis was written by Thomas M. Cooley, who was Chief Justice of the
Michigan Supreme Court at the time. It was mentioned in passing in a Guardian
article discussed here recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401416)

The first page is here:
[https://archive.org/stream/jstor-3303981/3303981#page/n1/mod...](https://archive.org/stream/jstor-3303981/3303981#page/n1/mode/2up)
Not sure why the link shows the final page as the thumbnail.

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contingencies
Blocked in China: the irony.

