Welcome to Rogue Analysis

Introduction

Hi. I’m Yusuf and this is my blog - “Rogue Analysis”. I’d like to join the community of philosophy blogs, practice my writing, and clarify a few thoughts.

Why is my blog called that?

So why the edgy blog name? Well beyond it being a fun name, and feeling like I wasn’t embarrassingly edgy enough on the internet in my teenage years:

1. I’ve just resigned from being an analyst in the civil service to go and do some research in political philosophy

2. The name came from a colleague remarking it would be great if there was some unit called “Rogue Analysis” that undertook analytical work with little oversight and a wide remit

3. It seemed like a suitably capacious name to cover things I’d like to write about:

• Political Philosophy

• Social Epistemology

• Philosophy of Social Science

• Public Policy

• Data Visualisation

• Mario Kart (okay I’m hoping to put some lighthearted stuff here too)

A note on form

I’d like to use this space to experiment with combining visuals/text/literate programming in a way that supports openness and clarity¹. To achieve this, my website is built with an open source publishing system called Quarto. With Quarto you can do stuff like easily chuck this interactive visual of Schelling’s model of segregation built by Graham McNeil² right into your blog³:

viewof seed = Inputs.range([0.01, 0.99], {value: 0.01, step: 0.01, label: "random seed"})

viewof squaresPerSide = Inputs.range([10, 120], {value: 80, step: 1, label: "squares per side"});

viewof fractionEmpty = Inputs.range([0.01, 0.1], {value: 0.02, step: 0.01, label: "fraction empty"});

viewof moveThreshold = Inputs.range([0, 1], {value: 0.3, step: 0.01, label: "move threshold"})

AA = import('https://cdn.skypack.dev/@gjmcn/atomic-agents@0.1.6?min');

AV = import('https://cdn.skypack.dev/@gjmcn/atomic-agents-vis@0.4.1?min')

{
  
  // simulation
  AA.random.seed(seed);
  const sim = new AA.Simulation({
    width: squaresPerSide * 5,
    height: squaresPerSide * 5,
    gridStep: 5
  });
  invalidation.then(() => sim.end());
  
  // initialise each square to land type 0, 1 or 2 (empty)
  const nEmpty = Math.round(sim.squares.size * fractionEmpty);
  for (let [i, sq] of AA.shuffle([...sim.squares]).entries()) {
    sq.label('land', i < nEmpty ?  2 : i % 2);
  }
  
  // get unhappy
  const unhappy = () => sim.squares.filter(sq => {
    const land = sq.label('land');
    if (land === 2) return false;
    const layer = sq.layer();
    return layer.reduce((count, neb) => count + (neb.label('land') === land), 0) / 
           layer.reduce((count, neb) => count + (neb.label('land') !== 2), 0)
             < moveThreshold;
  }, true);

  // each tick, move unhappy to random empty
  const rand = AA.random.int(nEmpty);
  sim.beforeTick = () => {
    for (let sq of AA.shuffle(unhappy())) {
      [...sim.withLabel('land', 2)][rand()]  // clunky - copying xset to array each step
        .label('land', sq.label('land'));
      sq.label('land', 2);
    }
  };
  
  // vis
  const tints = [AV.colors.blue, AV.colors.orange, 0xbbbbbb];
  sim.squares.forEach(sq => {
    sq.zIndex = -Infinity
    sq.vis({tint: sq => tints[sq.label('land')]});
  });
  return AV.visObs(sim, {
    stats: true,
    backParticles: true,
  });
}

The code button even lets you see the underlying code used to make it! I’m hoping to experiment a bit further with this stuff, but I don’t want to get carried away with shiny things.

Anyway I think that’s long enough for an intro post. Here’s to hoping it will go okay!

Footnotes

1. I’ve spent some time studying data visualisation because I like how it can embody these ideals. It would be cool if I can combine that with my philosophical interests.

2. I’ve literally just copy and pasted Graham’s excellent code from here with a few minor edits

3. Now this isn’t particularly novel - I’ve seen it done with Javascript and Mathematica elsewhere. Its just that Quarto makes it easier to integrate stuff using multiple languages into one polished piece.