Zero-knowledge Proofs

Lascaux cave painting, ca. 20,000 BCE

A “zero-knowledge proof” in computer science is a way to prove that something is true without revealing anything else about it.*

But is this not what artists, musicians and poets have always done?

Palaeolithic painters show the beasts have souls,

And countless other artists' "zero-knowledge" goals

Need no evidence to prove their points.

Blind fools doubt them, which scant sense anoints.

Bach proved his God a mighty fortress;

Songs prove that love's a real thing;

Piero, that angels walk on air;

Yeats, that bees might supplant a stare.†

Hamlet, act 5, should not distress!

It states its case with gravid flair:

"If it be now, 'tis not to come:

if it be not to come, it will be now:

if it be not now, yet it will come:

the readiness is all."

(But such things might be forgotten

In times when nonsense lacks a bottom)

*https://ethereum.org/en/zero-knowledge-proofs/

†https://poetrybrigade.org/the-stares-nest-poem-and-explanation/

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Back from Syracuse

The Stoic slave-philosopher Epictētus (ca. 50–135 CE) as depicted in Edward Ivie’s 1715 Latin translation of his writings in his student Arian's Enchiridion. His name is derived from epíktētos (ἐπίκτητος), meaning "acquired."

For Babette Salamon

Plato made three trips to Syracuse:

the first to see Mount Etna's fiery crater

—"It was not to savor Sicilian fine cuisine, O noble Aristidēs, as you claim!"—

the second in hope of finding in that city's tyrant Dionysus the Great a philosopher-king;

and third to rescue his friend Dion from imprisonment by the latter's heir, Dionysus II.

Who, however, set Plato up for slavery.

What sort of slave might such a savant be?

Like wise Epictētus, inventory . . .

whose very name was just a simple tag

that read: “Property.”

Put on the auction block in Aegina,

Plato was spotted there by Anniceris,

a Libyan on his way to Ellis

to compete in the four-horse chariot race,

who, finding the philosopher for sale,

snapped him up for eighty owls

(with five obols waived in unpaid fines)

—a bargain price for so much gist!

and returned him to the Athenian Propylaea,

thus earning greater merit than any chariot race could win,

as Olympiodorus observed in Alexandria a millennium after this.*

Even the poor slaves in Sounion's mines†

were made by word of Plato's rescue, it may be, perhaps a soupçon gayer.

“Back from Syracuse so soon?”

a  colleague wisecracked when Heidegger

returned from kissing Goebbels’

ring,

Unter den Linden in Berlin's

Office of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Spin.

Ancient ruins at Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece, where Epictetus spent his life after being banished from Rome.

*See Olympiodorus (ca. 500–570 CE), Life of Plato and On Plato First Alcibiades 1–9, trans. Michael Griffin (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 74–75.

†In the fifth century BCE, the silver mines near Cape Sounion paid for the Athenian triremes that won the battle of Salamis against the Persians, thus preserving Athenian democracy. “Shafts were driven down into the ground and galleries opened where slaves, chained, naked, and branded, worked the seams illuminated only by guttering oil lamps” (Wikipedia).

Monday, January 6, 2025

Doggerel

"Namoore of this, for Goddes dignitee,

Quod oure Hooste, "for thou makest me

So wery of thy verray lewednesse

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This may wel be rym dogerel," quod he.

—Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Tale of Sir Thopas" in The Canterbury Tales

“Doggerel” in French is vers de mirliton—a kazoo, you know.

In Spanish, it’s copia de ciego.

Knüttelvers is its German name,

An Arzneimittel (drug), I've read,

It'll wack you upside the head

And brain. In Dutch, alas, it’s kreupelrijm,

Putting legs into this crowded game.

It’s poesia burlesca, though, in Portuguese,

A language ever sure to please!

In Russian, it's нескладный

In Mandarin, 打油诗

Andドゲレル in Japanese.

If you can’t tell how these last three rhyme,

I pray you not to waste my precious time!

Your frontal lobes are quite unfit to scan

—a tragic case of unpoetic man.

And if you dare call my verses “doggerel,”

I shall in retaliation yell: “Why, go to Hell!

'Stand not upon the order of your going

[so Macbeth begs], but go at once,'

Not fit, as Auden said, 'to teach your grandmama to suck eggs,

much less critique her arts-and-craftsy sewing.'”

Honi soit qui mal y pense!