All right. Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today, we're
running a pretty high fidelity simulation of
an extraordinary individual. An absolutely singular
mind. We're talking about Nimrod Allen III, but
he was known as Pudge. And Pudge was operating
in the, let's say, informal golf wagering markets,
high stakes stuff back in 1993, Milwaukee. Right.
And the sources all identify him as an autistic
savant. But his... His anomaly goes way deeper
than just, you know, raw computation. OK, let's
unpack this then, because for Pudge, the entire
world, a golf ball's flight, a conversation,
a bet, it's all translated into the mathematics
of fluid dynamics. Exactly. He doesn't perceive
discrete objects the way we do. He sees a continuous
flowing field. Everything is a solution to a
partial differential equation. So this isn't
just a quirky metaphor. This is his literal operating
system. The source material calls it veridical
mapping. It is. It's a one -to -one translation.
He takes an abstract concept like risk, and for
him, it just is a physical property. So risk
becomes what? Viscosity. The higher the stakes,
the thicker the fluid in his model. It's harder
to move. The action is slower, more deliberate.
And what about luck? Or, you know, just random
variance? That's turbulence. Pure chaotic turbulence.
So when a golfer steps up to the ball, Pudge
sees a boundary condition. He's solving for the
conservation of mass and momentum in his system
that includes the air, the grass, and the player's
entire nervous system. Wow. Okay, so here's the
part that really stood out to me. He gets his
predictive power because he specifically bets
on the error. Yes. He applies what's called Reynolds
decomposition. He completely ignores the intended
shot, the average outcome. He's looking for the
fluctuation, the little twitch. That's it. The
nervousness, the shaky hands, the tight jaw.
In physics, that fluctuation generates what's
called the Reynolds stress tensor. And if that
stress is high? If the turbulent intensity is
high, he knows the flow is about to separate.
In golf terms, that means a total breakdown.
A hook, a slice, he immediately shorts the player.
He's betting against their internal state. not
their skill. So where does he get all this data?
I mean, this is where the 1993 Milwaukee setting
becomes so critical, right? The city is his computational
mesh. It is. The inputs are fascinating. Take
the local dialect, the term bubbler, the local
word for a drinking fountain or pudge. That's
not just a word. It's processed as a point source
in potential flow theory, a singularity where
fluid, either water or, you know, gossip enters
the domain. And what about the money, the time
machine? The ATM. A pressure injection note.
Simple as that. It instantly increases the financial
pressure, the P variable, in his equations. Even
the music of the time was a variable for him.
It set the temporal clock. Arrested developments
laid back hip hop. That's laminar flow. Calm,
predictable play. But if the vibe shifts to,
say, Kali Tribe's intense style. Turbulent jet
flow. Exactly. High velocity, heated escalation.
He knows things are about to get chaotic. Which
brings us to this case study. The Venturi Deception.
A classic. It involves the Hampton Avenue Bridge,
which Pudge modeled as a perfect Venturi choke
point, a wind funnel. The situation was a wolf
game during the big storm of 93. Player B is
in trouble. He needs a miracle. And Pudge tells
him to go lone wolf, to bet on himself against
everyone else, and to aim deliberately left,
straight at the bridge. But wait, that makes
no sense. The Venturi effect would accelerate
the wind there. Aiming into it should have made
a slice catastrophically worse. It should have.
Physically, it was a lie. But Pudge wasn't betting
on the physics of the wind. He was betting on
the player's psychology. Precisely. He knew the
player would see the bridge, feel the wind, and
panic. He would overcompensate. Pudge calculated
the exact vector of that nervous manual overcompensation.
And it perfectly canceled out the win vector.
It was a perfect vector cancellation. The ball
flew straight. He used human error as the winning
mechanism. So when you pull it all back, what
was he actually doing here? This wasn't just
about winning bets. No, not at all. In a way,
Pudge was the necessary viscous damping for that
entire illegal economy. He was the stabilizing
force preventing it from descending into pure
chaos. He was ensuring the conservation of mass.
Money was just transferred, not magically created
or destroyed. Which leaves us with one really
provocative question from the source material.
Go on. In 1993, Milwaukee had that massive cryptosporidium
water contamination event, a profound real -world
change in the physical fluid quality of the city.
So if his models are based on the city's actual
fluid environment, How did a literal contamination
of the city's water affect his metaphorical fluid
models of its economy? That's the question. Something
for you to mull over until our next deep dive.