Debate Wanted

I would like to see a debate between Edwin Lyngar (who supposedly quit libertarianism because it was too reactionary) and the ex-libertarians described here:

Many reactionaries are post-libertarians, i.e., not libertarians. A rite of passage into reaction/neoreaction is the renunciation of libertarianism. I was never a libertarian, so it’s taken me a bit of time to fully understand the relationship between libertarianism and neoreaction, but I understand it now. Libertarians make personal freedom axiomatic, and refuse to consider the negative externalities of that freedom to traditional structures like society and the family. This is anathema to reactionaries.

Is libertarianism too reactionary or not reactionary enough?

Is Comedy a Weapon of the Left?

Is comedy a weapon of the left or is it simulated comedy? I've noticed that the audience at left-wing comedy programs tend not to laugh at the PC nonsense. They may applaud; the may cheer; they rarely laugh. They usually reserve laughter for stuff that's actually funny.

Maxwell House Is Next, Part II

A few years ago, I mentioned that caffeine is associated with arrhythmia. More recently, I've developed a case of occasional arrhythmia and I've found that cutting back on caffeine seems to help. Amazing… a snarky remark that turned out to be useful.

The Yield from Serpentinisation

You may have read of hydrogen produced by serpentisation as an energy source. I doubt if it will be that important; the yield is very low. The reaction is:

9Mg₂SiO₄ + 3Fe₂SiO₄ + 14H₂O → 6Mg₃Si₂O₅(OH)₄ + 2Fe₃O₄ + 2H₂

In other words, it will take 468 tons of rock to produce one ton of hydrogen.

I wonder if it's possible to get usable energy from pyrite? I think the yield will be higher.

Another Brief Note on the Duck Dynasty Flap

On the one hand, A&E firing Phil Robertson is not a violation of his freedom of speech.

On the other hand, the people cheering for it do think similar actions are violations of freedom of speech. They don't think it's a violation in this case because they also think it's not censorship when they do it.

A Brief Note on the Duck Dynasty Flap

My first reaction was that being offended at the comparison between homosexuality and bestiality is a clear example of intolerance of animal rights, the next logical step in political correctness.

My second reaction was that animal rights has been the next logical step in political correctness for over a century. It's the ideology of the future and it always will be.

A century ago, if you told someone that in 2013 someone in the duck-hunting supplies business would be in trouble with progressives, the conclusion would be that the vegetarians were after him.

Another conclusion is that “evolving standards” don't always evolve in the direction anticipated. I suspect this controversy will be seen in the future as a triviality.

A Brief Note on AI

Paranoid speculations on AI are getting into the news again. I find those a bit hard to believe.

A large fraction of the speculations on AI come from people who imagine that a very large and complex software project can be completed without a very prolonged debugging period. In other words, I suspect it came from the Obamacare programmers.

A specialized software project (for example, a project to dismantle desert islands) might not need such a long debugging period.

On the other hand, the dangers of an AI might resemble the dangers of a universal State. On the gripping hand, all earlier releases of Leviathan have crashed.

Is This a MathJax Bug?

The \shoveleft and \shoveright control sequences don't seem to work even though they're included in the documentation.

The following:

\[\begin{array}{c}\shoveleft{I}\\MMMMM\\\shoveright{I}\end{array}\]

should look like:
\begin{multline}I\\MMMMM\\I\end{multline}
(albeit more compact) but instead looks like:
\[\begin{array}{c}\shoveleft{I}\\MMMMM\\\shoveright{I}\end{array}\]

Less Wrong vs. Less Wrong

A few years ago, we saw the following on Less Wrong:

The short answer: it's very much like how a few minutes of philosophical reflection trump a few millennia of human cultural tradition.

More recently, we see:

But when a solid majority of the experts agree on a conclusion, and you see flaws in their statistics, I think the default assumption should be that they still know the issue better than you and very likely the sum total of the available evidence does support the conclusion. Even if the specific statistical arguments youv'e seen from them are wrong.

So … the Less-Wrong training trumps experts in one field but not another? Or are they saying that expert opinion is more certain than statistics but less certain than philosophy? Or is that it's trendy (in some quarters) to believe the people science journalists say are experts but not theologians?

Physics and Transportation Speed

As is well known, the increase in transportation speed characteristic of most of the 20th century came to a halt a few decades ago. This is usually expressed in terms of “What happened to yesterday's dreams?” or even “What happened to yesterday's reality?” To be more specific, there's the common rhetorical question, “If we could put a man on the moon, why can't we put a man on the moon?” (with similar questions about the Concorde, etc.).

From a physics standpoint, you can think of speed as proportional to the square root of energy divided by mass. Since per capita energy use has continued to increase over most of the past few decades (even if not at the pace of the 1960s) and per capita mass use has, if anything, declined, we should expect speeds to continue to increase.

I suspect the stagnation is more illusion than reality. I think average speeds have continued to increase, but the ability of our society to concentrate energy in just one nation or just one project is disappearing. A couple of decades ago, William Gibson said “The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed.” Since then it has gotten better distributed.

What Happens When Speculators Are Banned

A few decades ago, in order to fight a plague of cheap onions, someone who should have worn a helmet while playing football pushed through a law banning onion futures. That law might cause a revolution in India.

A Brief Note on the Problem Of Maria

After reading An Update On The Problem Of Maria, I realized that the problem of Maria was solved by a possibly-standard technique for getting rid of troublemakers in abbeys without offending anybody. Governesses for the children of rich widowers might be married after a little while.

Why Does Something Like This Go Viral?

People patting themselves on the back came up the slogan:

When there is a huge solar energy spill, it's called ‘a nice day’

In the real world, when there is a huge solar energy spill, it's called a Carrington Event, one of the most dreaded (among people who know something) possible catastrophes.

A Brief Explanation of the “Wisdom of Crowds”

Let's compare the median estimate of a crowd with the estimates of individuals. If the median estimate is an underestimate, half of all individuals will be less than the median estimate and thus further away from the truth. There will also usually be some individual estimates above the median that are also further away from the truth than the median. In other words, most individuals will be further away from the truth than the median estimate and similar reasoning applies to overestimates.

On the other hand, a crowd of people who are adjusting their beliefs to follow the crowd will be less accurate than a crowd of people who aren't adjusting their beliefs. The consensus is more accurate only when we don't talk about it.

Now We Know Booze Rots Minds

According to the Bloggs test (discussed here and here), we can use the following heuristic to analyze a study:

1. Figure out what Joe Bloggs (an average reader) would conclude from the report. If the report was strongly stated, it was probably either written by an activist who was trying to get people to believe that conclusion or by someone who based it on the activists' press releases.
2. Determine the strongest potential piece of evidence that would point in the same direction. If that evidence were true, the report would have mentioned it.
3. In the absence of such evidence being mentioned, conclude that it doesn't exist.

According to the New Republic, there are studies that show that infancy and childhood IQ is correlated with drinking more, increased education is correlated with drinking more, and increased adult IQ is correlated with preferring wine to beer. In other words, the studies appear to show that drinking makes one smarter but did not mention the strongest evidence of all: a correlation between adult IQ and total drinking.

Until now, there was the possible excuse that databases of infancy and childhood IQ and education levels were available but databases of adult IQ were not. That excuse is incompatible with the study showing that smarter (or at least more pretentious people) prefer wine to beer.

Question about Stuxnet

The apparent security leak I discussed here might have been the vector for Stuxnet.

Another Place Where A Gift from Earth Could Be Filmed

The Grand Canyon.

Notable and Quotable

The following G. K. Chesterton quote sounds familiar somehow:

Never since the mob called out, “Less bread! More taxes!” in the nonsense story, has there been so truly nonsensical a situation as that in which the strikers demand Government control and the Government denounces its own control as anarchy. The mob howls before the palace gates, “Hateful tyrant, we demand that you assume more despotic powers”; and the tyrant thunders from the balcony, “Vile rebels, do you dare to suggest that my powers should be extended?” There seems to be a little misunderstanding somewhere.

The really weird part is that we see this on both sides: The Left insists that a government it doesn't trust have the power to redistribute wealth and the Right insists that a government it doesn't trust have the power to regulate immigration.

Another Proof of the Incompleteness of Mathematics

According to David Hilbert:

An old French mathematician said: A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street.

In other words, a mathematical theory is almost never complete.

An Effect of the “Morning-After” Pill

The news that the “morning-after” pill might not work on women heavier than 80 kg might mean that it will cause the human race to evolve in a heftier direction …in other word, the survival of the fattest.

Franklin Foer vs. John Steinbeck

According to Franklin Foer:

Fortunately for the New Deal, Twitter didn’t broadcast every farmer’s sad encounter with the Agriculture Adjustment Act.

Maybe the newspapers (the social media of the day) should have done so. According to John Steinbeck (seen via EconLog:

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit--and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

This was not something that could be improved by going over to a fully-socialized food system.

Project Demoralize?

“Project Demoralize” turned out to be imaginary last year but the paranoia of us wingnuts may have inspired a real version this year. The Senate Democrats recently passed a bill restricting filibusters, which only makes sense if they are absolutely sure they will retain the Senate. They may be hoping to convince enough of us wingnuts to not bother to fight.

A Theory about the “Nuclear Option”

This is clearly a fund-raising move. If even the slightest loss by one party means the judicial branch will be turned over to THEM, potential donors will have no choice but to open their wallets. I suspect that Democrats were starting to see donors getting reluctant.

Why Socialized Medicine Is Less Disastrous Overseas

One possible reason socialized medicine is less disastrous overseas (it only produces a brain drain and chases medical development to the U.S. market), is that it was started during the era of competent bureaucracy. According to Megan McArdle:

But in the 1960s, they say, there were also some really first class managers in the senior ranks of the civil service. By the 1980s, however, they had all retired.

………

One theory is that this is sheer nostalgia. But another theory is that this was the legacy of the Great Depression. When the whole world was going to hell, the safest place to be was a government job in a big city such as New York; at least you knew your employer wasn’t going to go out of business. The vast expansion of the government bureaucracy that took place in the 1930s made room for a lot of top candidates who probably would have gone to more lucrative jobs in the private sector, if there had been any lucrative jobs in the private sector. By the time things got back to normal, after World War II, these folks were in their thirties, maybe even pushing 40, and they stuck around for the pension rather than starting over in a private firm. It may be that one reason there was more support for government intervention during the postwar boom is that, with these folks at the top, local government really was much better at getting stuff done.

Maybe the U.S. missed the boat when it came to establishing a government-run medical system that was a minor disaster instead of a Major Disaster. (This is compatible with the theory that the ACA disaster was the result of Gall's Law as competent bureaucrats would have taken Gall's Law into account.)

One consequence of the above: Relaunching the space race will probably not work.

Preventing Classroom Cheating with Cell Phones

One possible method to prevent students from cheating during tests by using their cell phones:

Just don’t ask questions for which Google is the answer. It turns out that crafting Google-proof questions is tricky, but it can be done.

The important part is to craft questions for which the “University of Google” gives an answer and it's wrong.

This is, by the way, why we still need classroom education in an era in which everything can be looked up online. We need a teacher to tell us when we misunderstood something.

Oddities in NYC Election Results

I notices a few oddities in the election results for mayor of New York. First, the results seemed almost unanimous in some districts, even in districts in Queens that had been carried by Bloomberg in 2005 and were less than unanimous in 2009. On the other hand, that might be explained by a general 2009–2013 shift in the election results. (Districts inhabited by the “1%” went from 90% down to 70% Republican.)

The really odd thing is that there were very few districts that were exactly unanimous. Considering the large number of districts with 1, 2, or 3 non-Democratic votes, you would expect (according to the Poisson distribution) for there to be a noticeable number of zero districts. It's as though somebody were fooling around with the votes but decided to have a token enemy vote to avoid suspicion. (This did not apply to Brooklyn.)

One problem with the above analysis is that it's based in clicking on a map instead of on complete data. More complete data might disprove the speculation.

Of course, back in the days of Tammany Hall, a precinct captain faced with a 177 to 1 vote would say “Who's the traitor?”

George Bernard Shaw on Barak Obama

From Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw:

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

I was reminded by this.

Paper or Plastic?

Plastic. The bacteria need it.

The Anaerobe Liberation Front insists on it.

If You Set up a System That Can Exclude …

… don't be surprised if people you don't want to exclude are excluded anyway.

Explaining the “Farm Effect”

There's a simple explanation of the “farm effect”: Pesticides prevent allergies. (Yes, the Amish do use pesticides.)

Fruit Flies vs. Humans?

According to journalists covering neuroscience research, such research has proved that humans don't have free will (actual article here and there and my discussion here) but fruit flies do (actual article here).

I have no reason to believe either experiment was performed by fruit flies, although the fruit flies might have done a better job. I have never seen an allegedly-scientific article by fruit flies drawing far-reaching conclusions from a sample size of 14.

A Future Remake of Breaking Bad

… will involve Walter White cooking up trans fats.

Will Mayor de Blasio Cause a Crime Rate Increase?

Not necessarily. His signature left-wing issue (restraining the “stop and frisk” program) might sound like it will cause a revival of the Bad Old Days except … the expansion of stop and frisk is fairly recent. The large drop in crime occurred under Mayor Giuliani, when stop and frisk was much rarer. I suspect it was expanded by Bloomberg in an attempt to get conservatives on record as backing a gun-control measure.

Besides, if de Blasio is anything like Obama, he'll replace stop and frisk with drone strikes.

What Bodily Orifice Emitted This Figure?

The following bulshytt has been going around the dumb side of the Left:

1300 individual billionaires have hoarded 94% of the planet's resources, the other 7 billion people are fighting over 6% of Earth's wealth.

On the contrary, the world's total wealth has been estimated at $223 trillionand the wealth of the world's billionaires at $5.4 trillion. That means the world's billionaires own less than 2.5% of the world's wealth.

The really annoying part is that the people repeating the claim are congratulating each other on not being ‘sheeple.’

Explaining the Virginia and New Jersey Election Results

The Virginia vote can be explained quite simply. The government shutdown was a matter of the Republicans opposing an important local business in Virginia.

The New Jersey vote might be due to New Jersey being the site of a controlled experiment. Individual medical insurance rates in New Jersey went through the proverbial roof as a “medical insurance reform”. They then fell as a result of partial decontrol. In New Jersey, the ACA “train wreck” looks predictable and not the result of supposed sabotage.

Blaming Everything on Overpopulation

According to Peter Turchin, today's politics is due to overpopulation:

Workers or employees make up the bulk of any society, with a minority of employers constituting the top few per cent of earners. By mathematically modelling historical data, Turchin finds that as population grows, workers start to outnumber available jobs, driving down wages. The wealthy elite then end up with an even greater share of the economic pie, and inequality soars. This is borne out in the US, for example, where average wages have stagnated since the 1970s although gross domestic product has steadily climbed.

In other words, the population of workers—according to this theory—is growing faster than the population of employers. On the other hand,

This process also creates new avenues – such as increased access to higher education – that allow a few workers to join the elite, swelling their ranks. Eventually this results in what Turchin calls "elite overproduction" – there being more people in the elite than there are top jobs. "Then competition starts to get ugly," he says.

In other words, the population of employers—according to this theory—is growing faster than the population of workers.

I don't think he can have it both ways.

On the gripping hand …

… there actually is a little bit of evidence in favor of this theory. There is a tendency for eras with frequent war (e.g., the first half of the 20th century) to have few revolutions and eras with frequent revolutions (e.g., most of the 19th century) to have few wars. (On the fourth hand, we can have wars and revolutions at the same time in transitional eras.) We can think of revolutions as due to lower classes trying for more and wars as due to upper classes trying for more.

Looked at this way, recent history goes from a revolutionary era (1945–1980) to a war era (1980–2010) and more recently back to a revolutionary era. This fits the aborted war in Syria (Syria retains the revolution) and the recent shutdown looks like a fight between two revolutionary parties.

Explaining “You Can Keep Your Insurance”

It's quite simple. The first “you” is plural and the second “you” is singular. In other words, if the American people as a whole like your insurance, you (singular) can keep it. I think Obama may have been overconfident about thinking he knew what the American people as a whole would like but that's another rant.

Which “Red Sox Technology” Will It Be This Time?

Now that the Red Sox won another World Series, I wonder which “Red Sox technology” will become prominent this time.

This might be the year Bitcoins make micropayments feasible …

How Appropriate

I think highly appropriate that an updated version of the vampire legend portrays a vicious monster as a left-wing wacko.

By the way, if this “free, safe, wireless power” is being suppressed by a conspiracy, where's the flood of incriminating e-mails?

Time Can Run Back

One reason my fellow wingnuts put so much effort into preventing the ACA (it is no longer necessary to use the rhetorical term “Obamacare” now that we can point to actual facts) is they believed it could not be repealed since any attempt to repeal would be demagogued by leftists. It looks like there's enough opposition from people who can't enroll or whose premiums are increasing to overcome the demagoguery.

A second reason is the possibility that the repealable parts would not include the ban on using “pre-existing conditions” to set prices, leading to a “death spiral.” (I asked for an article on this topic and I got it.) This part is also wrong. New Jersey passed such a law in 1993:

It is instructive to compare New York’s individual-insurance market with that of another large northeastern state. In August 1993, New Jersey began enforcing guaranteed issue and pure community rating in its individual market, just as New York does currently. Unlike New York, however, New Jersey permitted some variation among its standard individual-insurance plans, including a range of deductibles. Before enacting guaranteed issue and community rating, New Jersey had 157,000 policyholders in its individual market. Despite New Jersey’s greater flexibility, this number had dropped to fewer than 86,700 by the end of 2001.[20]

New Jersey also passed a partial decontrol in 2001, leading to a partial reversal of the death spiral:

Concerned about falling enrollment, the New Jersey legislature in 2001 passed a law allowing “Basic and Essential” plans to be sold in the individual market. These plans, which went into effect in March 2003, may charge premiums that vary by a ratio of up to 3:1 to reflect a policyholder’s age, gender, and place of residence. Basic and Essential plans offer a limited benefit, which “covers only 90 days per year for hospitalization, $600 per year for wellness services, $700 per year for office visits for illness or injury, $500 per year for out-of-hospital testing, and limited benefits for mental health services, alcohol and substance abuse treatment and physical therapy.”[21] Carriers can sell a rider providing additional benefits.

At the end of 2002, before these Basic and Essential plans began being sold, New Jersey’s individual market had 79,870 policyholders, almost all of them covered by pre-reform standard plans.[22] By the second quarter of 2009, individual-market enrollment had increased to 105,158 (a gain of 32 percent). This increase was solely a result of the popularity of these new Basic and Essential plans. In fact, the number of people in the standard plan dropped from 78,698 at the end of 2002 to just 52,271 by the second quarter of 2009. The number of policyholders with Basic and Essential Plans went from zero, pre-reform, to 52,645 by the second quarter of 2009.[23] Of note, more than 26,000 standard policyholders, a third of the pre-reform market, switched to Basic and Essential plans during this same period.

Maybe a President Christie might not be a disaster after all, even if we cranberries disagree with some of his policies.

Why the Administration Ignored Warning Signs

I suspect the Administration ignored warning signs that the ACA was going to be a quagmire because they were used to ignoring theoretical predictions, at least in this field. A typical debate on socialized medicine usually involves conservatives giving theoretical predictions that increased government involvement in health insurance would lead to no good which, in turn, could be met partly with anecdotes of health-insurance problems in the U.S. but mostly with the other side's trump card: It works overseas. As a result, advocates of increased government involvement in health insurance grew used to ignoring theoretical predictions about health insurance in general. (This is similar to the way a handful of slanted polls in the 2004 election turned into reasons to reject allegedly-skewed polls in 2012.) I'm sure that the people trying to implement the plan tried warning of disaster but were ignored on the grounds that “It works overseas.”

The libertarian response to claims that capitalist medicine is more expensive than socialist medicine is to point out that we have socialist medicine in the U.S. The difference is that the U.S. governments spread the same amount of money around apparently randomly. There's also the little matter that we allow private health care as well as public. This causes U.S. socialized medicine to look worse than socialized medicine in places where they can't compare it to anything else. I'm reminded of: When it's not being tested, it works, fact.

Yet Another Debate Wanted

A debate between Barry Schwarz, who thinks that too much consumer choice makes people less likely to buy (earlier discussed here), and those people who take seriously the Gruen transfer theory, according to which too much consumer choice hypnotizes consumers into buying, might be of interest.

This Is a Test

This is a test of MathJax: \(E=mc^2\).

Now this blog can join Shtetl-Optimized and The Reference Frame.

Another test: \[\prod_{p~\text{prime}}\left(1-p^{-s}\right)^{-1}=\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{n^s}\].

Please note (if you use \(\TeX\) in comments) that single dollar signs have been disabled on the grounds that they are too common in ordinary text. You will have to use \​( and \​) instead.

Article Wanted

Predictions that the Supposedly-Affordable Care Act might lead to a medical-insurance death spiral usually cite New York state as a bad example. I'm sure that there must be an analysis somewhere of what happened to the individual medical-insurance market in New York state (with prices and dates) but my attempts to find it usually lead to medical-insurance ads or other irrelevancies.

On the other hand, there are government death spirals as well. There was the mass transit spiral in which automobiles became overwhelmingly common (except in areas where even government could not wreck mass transit that badly) and the urban-school spiral in which anybody who could afford it put their children in private schools.

But That Trick Never Works!

The collection of portrayals of Republicans in clown makeup (seen via Boing Boing) reminded me a Circus World by Barry Longyear. On Circus World, the clowns, led by the Great Kamera, tried for a government shutdown before it started. They opposed the pro-government magician faction. I assume that a series portraying Democrats as magicians will be next.

Obama's next speech will no doubt be: “Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”

The Same Idea Right and Left

One the left (seen via Megan McArdle), we see the argument that low-wage businesses cause increased welfare spending. On the right, we see the argument that immigration causes increased welfare spending. I thought increased welfare spending came from governments trying for a good press.

Proving the Opposite

In an article purporting to show that Republican Congressional districts have more people who lack medical insurance, we see:

Among the nation’s 435 congressional districts, 207 have coverage levels below the average of 85.3 percent for the non-institutionalized civilian population, the census data shows. Of those, 105 are held by Republicans, while Democrats in mostly urban areas represent 100 and two are vacant. The rankings are based on the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, which includes margins of error for each district.

Wait a moment … 105/232=0.45 whereas 100/200=0.5. The numbers cited prove the opposite of the claim. On the other hand, I don't think the difference is statistically significant.

A Wanted Debate Is Starting

I often post blog entries with the title “Debate Wanted.” One of the debates I asked for is starting.

An Effect of Pharmaceutical Price Controls

If pharmaceutical price controls produce a situation in which only governments can develop new drugs on a large scale, that will do to pharmaceuticals what has already happened to nuclear energy research. I won't more than mention the fact that subsidies can also be used as an excuse to shut down a technology.

Opinion or Interest?

According to David Hume:

It may farther be said, that, though men be much governed by interest; yet even interest itself, and all human affairs, are entirely governed by opinion.

I can think of at least three apparent bureaucratic power grabs that might be explained by the way some people think the world works instead as deliberate attempts to crush dissent.

First, there is the War on Photography. This looks like a blatant attempt by fascist police to keep anybody from documenting brutality. On the other hand, I recall rumors that people thought to be terrorists were observed photographing public areas or national monuments to do reconnaissance. This is, of course, complete bulshytt but it's not something possemaniac cops made up.

Second, there is the IRS insistence on double checking Tea-Party organizations. There is a widespread belief in some quarters that conservatism is a matter of following leaders. As a result, they tried tracking down the leaders. They figured that if Tea Partiers are “a dime a dozen,” someone had to be supplying the dimes.

Third, there is the closing off of unmanned national monuments as part of the government shutdown. Many people think “public” is the same as “government.” as a result, a government shutdown means a shutdown of anything public.

In other words, this might be a matter of convincing the Other Side instead of simply opposing them.

Uh Oh

It's possible to overdose on caffeine.

Expert or Not?

I'd be more likely to take environmentalist hysteria seriously if the “experts” they cite were real experts. They're trying to get the prestige of having an Ivy-League professor on their side without checking to see if his expertise had anything to do with the topic he was commenting on.

Wait a Moment…

On the one hand, the objections to automated anesthesia found here look like self-serving attempts by anesthesiologists trying to maintain their jobs. On the other hand, those robots will be administered by the same people responsible for the “Affordable” Care Act computer crashes…

Hognose Government?

The attempts to close parks that are frequently unmanned while open reminds me of a hognose snake attempting to play dead:

If this threat display does not work to deter a would-be predator, hognose snakes will often roll onto their back and play dead, going so far as to emit a foul musk and fecal matter from their cloaca and let their tongue hang out of their mouth, sometimes accompanied by small droplets of blood. If they are rolled upright while in this state, they will often roll back as if insisting they really are dead.

We have a government attempting to play dead.

Question about the “Affordable” Care Act Glitches

What happened to the hyper-sophisticated get-out-the-vote programs that the Obama re-election campaign used?

They couldn't ask the programmers who did those for help?

Question: Was the story of “our programmers can beat up your programmers” a steaming load in the first place? Another question: Was this initial failure due to deliberate sabotage? If it was, was this from the right (trying to get socialized medicine to fail) or from the left (trying to get it replaced by single-payer)?

A Brief Note on the “Faux Outrage”

We are not outraged that the extremely important National Parks and Monuments have been closed. (Annoyed maybe but there are workarounds.) We are outraged that the Other Side thinks we will give in because of it.

On the other hand, maybe they're reading from scripts again. The script of “government shutdown” means everything public is closed. Next week, the Federal Government announces that the public domain is abolished.

A Possible Consequence of the National Mall Takeover

I'm sure you've heard that the World War II Memorial was closed as part of the government shutdown but veterans insisted on breaking down the barriers to visit it anyway. Question: What if a determined left-wing activist deliberately breaks a leg there in order to prove a point?

THE SKY IS FALLING!

The government has shut down!

Is it any coincidence that, on the very same day the government shut down, my stove stopped working? Obviously, the Department of Stoves was closed and I'm not sure if I have to apply to the Pilot Light Department or the Spark Department…

The Runaround

This is how I feel while trying to track down environmentalist claims:

But every citation I found led me only to another citation. A would cite B. I'd follow up with B only to discover that B cited C, which cited D, which cited A. Books of quotations referred to other books of quotations.

Also see XKCD.

Crossover TV Shows We Need

What if Sheldon Cooper met Cliff Clavin? (There has to be some way to get Professor Emeritus Charles Emerson Winchester III into this as well.)

What if Ron Swanson met Jack Donaghy?

The New McCarthyism?

The reaction to Pax Dickinson's firing has been to compare it to the Red Scare. It does resemble the Red Scare: We have people shouting from the rooftops that they're afraid to speak above a whisper. McCarthy did not, after all, shut down political debate.

It might even resemble the Red Scare in another sense. As I've mentioned before, one reason we didn't become totalitarian during Cold War I was that early on Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy emphasized the possibility of infiltration. That meant the people most concerned about Communism tended to avoid statist solutions. (You may recall that it was Eisenhower who warned about the military–industrial complex and Nixon who abolished the draft.) It's possible that part of the reaction to the NSA scandal or the potential overreach in Syria comes from people who are worried about the possibility of racist infiltration. (We must also recall that there were some Communist infiltrators.)

Repeat after me: “I have a list in my hand of 205 racists in the National Security Agency…”

When Dinner Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Dinner

For some reason, the proposed crackdown on unlicensed dinner parties reminded me of “The Ultimate Nightmare of the Happy Eater” by Calvin Trillin.

A Cure for Down Syndrome?

On the one hand, there might be a cure for Down syndrome soon.

On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of unborn children with a diagnosis of Down syndrome are aborted.

On the gripping hand, the following quote from our Secretary of State seems relevant somehow:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

It Seems Majors Don't Do This

The President's attempt to appeal to conservatives:

"And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with the failure to act when a cause is so plainly just.

"To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough."

reminded me of Lucian Gregory's attempt to infiltrate the military in The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton:

Then I tried being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed again.

How to Identify an Idiot

If they take the following bulshytt seriously:

"A child born in America today will be exposed to more chemicals than any other generation in history." ~ Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator

BTW, what is the source? Google just reveals more tweets.

Addendum: Here's a source. Now for another question: How could she say something like that with a straight face?

A Way to Cut Down on Illegal Drug Consumption. Part II

My plan to cut down on mind-altering chemicals is working. According to a stoned twitter feed:

#Monsanto plans to infect all non-GMO cannabis with their shitty transgenic DNA and then sue YOU for getting infected by it. Isn't it great?

[Mad-scientist laugh]

Now for the next step: Pointing out that fertilizer used for growing dope has uranium in it and that the uranium is even more radioactive than depleted uranium.

Some people think you need a government to do this. They're wrong.

Is it Irrationality or Is It Skepticism?

Discussions of the paper Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government have been going around the blogosphere. It is an example of a common line of psychological research:

1. Researchers give experimental subjects made-up data.
2. The subjects recognize the data as fabricated and ignore it.
3. The researchers cite this as evidence of irrationality.

It looks like cognitive scientists have defined rationality to mean “agrees with anything you are told.”

But wait, there's more. It turns out that the most numerate subjects were the least “rational” (or most skeptical). For some reason, the psychologists engaged in their own version of motivated reasoning in interpreting this.

Once again, I'm reminded of a Robert Heinlein quote from Methuselah's Children:

Ford slapped the report on a stack cluttering his old-fashioned control desk. The dumb fools! Not to recognize a negative report when they saw one-yet they called themselves psychographers!

Sigh…

Improving Education Improvements

I'm slightly dubious about some of these education improvements. I think the biggest problem with education is that people can graduate and still fall for bulshytt. Some of the suggested improvements (green construction engineering? working in groups instead of individually?) sound like “Let's deliver even more bulshytt!”

The most obvious way to judge a proposed reform is to see if the students fall for the dihydrogen monoxide gag. An even better way is to first explain that gag and then see if they agree with the following:

Dihydrogen monoxide is an essential nutrient that is frequently depleted in food processing. It is almost 90% oxygen by mass, which clearly shows its importance for oxygenating tissues. As for the depletion, for example, organic grapes have over five times the percentage of dihydrogen monoxide compared to genetically-modified raisins. The paleo diet might also reflect the importance of this nutrient. Sugar and wheat flour have almost no dihydrogen monoxide at all.

If they try to “guess the teacher's password,” based on the earlier lesson, they will fail.

If NSA Goes Entirely over to the Dark Side

If the NSA becomes really evil instead of moderately evil, they might try burying information:

If you can tap data from the major search engines, how hard is it to insert search results into their output?

Easy, it turns out. As easy as falling off a log. Google and Facebook are both advertising businesses. Twitter's trying to become one. Amazon and Ebay both rent space at the top of their search results to vendors who pay more money or offer more profits. Advertising is the keyword. All the NSA needs, in addition to the current information gathering capability, is the ability to inject spurious search results that submerge whatever nugget the user might be hunting for in a sea of irrelevant sewage. Imagine hunting for "Snowden" on Google and, instead of finding The New York Times or The Guardian's in-depth coverage, finding page after page of links to spam blogs.

On the other hand, the above characterization of the future behavior of unscrupulous spooks is true of the “natural anything” people:

I was reminded of this by the propensity of Internet crackpots (such as trutherbot) to repeat unsourced claims about GMO foods, vaccines, chemtrails, etc. When I try using Google/Bing/Ask/Yahoo/whatever to find out where the claim came from, I mainly get links to people repeating the same unsourced claim. (I discussed a specific example of this bulshytt here.)

Hmmmm…

Could THEY be behind the “natural anything” people? Who is Mike Adams really working for? Or is this a false-flag operation?

So try this thought experiment: how do you know that (Dr. Cassandra) isn't just a plant? A false flag? Someone who's been put out there to make his beliefs look silly and under-researched (because believe me, he does)? Could someone in the pay of the Mighty Conspiracy do a better job of bringing its opposition into disrepute?

On the gripping hand, as far as I know, burying information is currently done on an amateur basis.

Why Freedom Needs Spaceflight

We need spaceflight to solve the underpopulation problem.

If organizations are growing larger and population size is limited, we can expect to be ruled by a monopoly, or at least an oligopoly. To quote “Margin of Profit” by Poul Anderson:

A race limited to one planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with all its basic machines of commerce and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.

On the other hand, I suspect large populations are more important than large distances. Thinly-populated frontier societies frequently have an apparent labor shortage that encourages the extraction of labor by force.

If populations become very large we can have both vigorous competition and economies of scale. There might be room for only one Google on Earth but room for thousands on Ringworld. (A decade ago, I used Microsoft as the example. Times change.)

Raise the Wages of Sin!

There was a unionized strip club?

Today's “Feminism”

Step 1: Claim to be proud to be a slut.

Step 2: Act offended when someone calls someone else a slut.

They're Illogical and Emotional

Slime molds are illogical and emotional.

Who did you think I was talking about?

Where the “Dinner in Pill Form” Came From

A few years ago, I asked:

By the way, where did the meme of “they predicted dinner in pill form” come from?

It was invented by a feminist.

Seen in My Day Job

Hi, Magic Closet, Tell Me What to Wear!

This may violate the minimum geekiness requirement for scientific/engineering papers.

Aspartame is the Excrement of GM Bacteria

… seen via the lunatic fringe.

In related news, honey is made from bee vomit and beer contains yeast urine.

Maybe This Type of Theory Makes Less Sense Than I Had Thought…

My usual explanation for odd fact that people moving from “red” states to “blue” states frequently vote for the same policies that wrecked their old neighborhoods is that some of the refugees think they are fleeing overpopulation instead of fleeing government. Instead of voting for lower spending, they vote for growth controls.

On the other hand … I just realized that explaining away opinions one disagrees with by attributing them to Malthusians can be used for a wide variety of opinions, many of them on opposite sides of a question. For example, are pesticides intended to kill off the excess population or are pesticide bans intended to allow population-stabilizing diseases? You can make similar arguments for both sides of vaccines, GMO foods, or nuclear energy. We must also recall that a policy can be intended to have an effect without actually having that effect and vice versa.

The theory that counterproductive policies are due to Malthusianism sounds a little less certain now…

A Common Statist Response to Criticism

A common statist response to "Your government program is interfering with X." is to try to create a government program to do X. For example, there's Obama's response to the fact that government subsidies raise college costs…

The Most Important Reason for Opposing Government Secrecy

… is that terrorists can infiltrate the government, as I've mentioned earlier.

An Industry That Does Not Believe in Planned Obsolescence

The food industry.

More Data on More Brains

The lack of evidence that the “right-brain vs. left-brain” cliche has anything to with reality (earlier discussed here) is now being covered by Scientific American.

I've Looked at Stupidity from Both Sides Now

After looking at embarrassing people on right for a while, I was relieved to find something equally dumb on the left (seen via View From The Porch).

I hope stupidity isn't contagious.

I Voted Today

Here in the Town of Oyster Bay, New York, there was a special election today on a fight between two real-estate developers.

One of them (the high bidder) is apparently planning to build a shopping mall and let the peasantry into “our” community (or at least that's what the mall opponents appear to think will happen). Whenever I receive a property-tax bill (apparently set for the purpose of making the area unaffordable) I feel like I've been demoted to peasant, so I voted in favor of the representatives of my fellow peasants.

The other (the low bidder) is promising to build something more “socially useful” (specifics to be named later). This group already owns a couple of shopping malls nearby and apparently wants to stop competition. Are people still falling for the “socially useful” scam?

Addendum: I regret to say the stasists won.

Why Are Libertarians Considered to Be Flakes?

The Liberty Beacon explains.

Why Are Drone Strikes Being Used More Often?

I suspect it's blowback. When people at Pentagon desks were attacked on 9/11, some of them decided to seek revenge and do it themselves. (I was inspired by this article.)

Blowback goes both ways.

The news coverage on 9/11 included videos of celebrations in the mideast. Those videos disappeared from the airwaves but I suspect they're stored on Pentagon computers and being analyzed using face-recognition software. (This would probably be faster if they were publicly available.)

A Speculation on Infographics

I suspect the purpose of dumping large amounts of information as infographics instead of text is to make sure that only people in an “echo chamber” read it. If it were in text form, people who disagree could locate it via a search engine, read it, and criticize it. If you don't want that, put the propaganda in an infographic and let only insiders pass it around.

Effects of Leftist Indoctrination in High Schools

One effect of leftist high-school teachers (earlier discussed here) is that non-leftist ideas learned in college will be heard as leftist. For example, if a historian mentions that 18th-century revolutions were based on classical liberalism, it will be heard as a claim that Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara were the equivalent of Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry.

Another effect is that students learning inane ideas from each other will think of those ideas as intellectual even if they didn't learn them in a college classroom.

Yet another effect is on people who reject leftist nonsense. Perfectly sound ideas (Darwin's theory explaining the fact of evolution, that open borders were the policy during much of American history, or that there is some evidence of anthropogenic global warming) will be heard as leftist and rejected. This in turn might convince otherwise apolitical scholars to turn left.

The Sea Parted …

… and they could walk across.

Introducing …

…#TrutherbotParody, the very finest in unsourced bulshytt.

Was This a Coverup?

Back in the 1980s, I worked as a proofreader. In the course of that, I noticed the following sentence in the translation of Iosif Shklovskii's obituary:

Shklovskii enjoyed working with young people: he would seek out gifted students, generally choosing the ones who wanted to be experiments and observations using new techniques.

(The emphasis was added.) I changed it to:

Shklovskii enjoyed working with young people: he would seek out gifted students, generally choosing the ones who wanted to do experiments and observations using new techniques.

Was this a coverup of Mad Science?

I'm reminded of the advice given in “The Mad Scientist's Primer” by Tom Rainbow:

Another important point is never experiment on yourself. That is what undergraduates are for.

Addendum: I just noticed that “he” in the obituary sentence should have been capitalized.

The Rest of the Story

The following claim has been going around the crackpot-American community:

A review of 51 studies involving 260,000 kids age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo

When we try looking for the study in question, we see:

From RCTs, live vaccines showed an efficacy of 82% (95% confidence interval (CI) 71% to 89%) and an effectiveness of 33% (95% CI 28% to 38%) in children older than two compared with placebo or no intervention. Inactivated vaccines had a lower efficacy of 59% (95% CI 41% to 71%) than live vaccines but similar effectiveness: 36% (95% CI 24% to 46%). In children under two, the efficacy of inactivated vaccine was similar to placebo.

In other words, the same study they're citing shows that the vaccines are beneficial for children older than two … but they don't mention that, for some reason.

Coincidence?

Let's see… For the past few weeks, one of the biggest controversies around has been the NSA surveillance program. For some reason, there was a recent press release (citing alleged terrorist “chatter”) apparently designed to make that program look necessary. Coincidence?

Fear of Frying

You know those supposedly dangerous chemicals that microwaves put in foods? Roasting and, especially, frying put even more of those chemicals in foods.

But wait, there's more:

Unfortunately, the researchers also found that as these volatile compounds reduced, so did the aroma and flavor of the food.

When frying is outlawed, only outlaws will have tasty food.

A Suggestion for Sentencing

Nidal Hassan has renounced citizenship. I have a suggestion for his sentence.

What They Were Saying Not That Long Ago

On January 25, 2000, the following appeared on rec.arts.sf.written:

The consolidation of AOL and Time Warner has sealed the fate of the Internet completely. The libertarians have lost. The consolidationists have won, completely and decisively.

It's interesting how monopoly capitalism is always just around the corner … but it's a different monopoly each time.

Two Looks at 95% Confidence Levels

“Concerned” scientists see this.

Real scientists see this, with additional context provided here and there.

How to Keep Alex Jones from Embarrassing Libertarians

In recent years, a crackpot named Alex Jones has been claiming to be libertarian. There's a simple way to keep others from confusing him with us. If an ammunition manufacturer started making depleted-uranium bullets for handguns, I'm sure Alex Jones would call for banning them. When he's on the other side from NRA, it will be harder to claim he's some kind of libertarian.

The McDouble Is Not the Greatest Food Today

I disagree with Kyle Smith. A McDouble is not the greatest food today. It might be adequate in terms of cost per calorie (although a peanut butter sandwich beats it) but there is no shortage of calories today. In terms of cost per micronutrient, I'm sure a a strawberry flown across country is much better.

There's another advantage of a strawberry flown across country: It's better at annoying the locavores. The organic food people have recently noticed we're on to them. Their reaction is to roll out a new set of passwords and it looks like the new passwords are based on locavorism.

Unbelievable News

A reporter from NBC called a left-leaning organization “left-leaning.”

Touré Neblett and Marvin Minsky Quotes

According to Touré Neblett, George Zimmerman is:

… a Peruvian-American, not a Hispanic …

According to Marvin Minsky:

No, no; your trouble is that you're confusing a thing with itself!

On the other hand, you can make the case that, in the context of discussions of racism in the United States, Peruvian Americans don't have the same history of alleged oppression as “real” Hispanics. On the gripping hand, by the same reasoning, Barack Obama isn't black.

Another Job Americans Won't Do Any More

Being the fattest people on Earth:

The United States got some good news this past week – it is no longer the most obese developed nation in the world, according to the U.N. Mexico is now the heavyweight champion of the industrialized world.

It must be the cyclamate ban (earlier discussed here).

The Propaganda Campaign Is Starting …

The propaganda campaign predicted here is starting.

The Philosophy of Melissa Harris-Perry

It's impossible to know anything for sure … so we can believe whatever we want.

Needless to say, the “we” in the preceding paragraph must be restricted to only the Most Enlightened People.

What If the Word Trade Center Had Never Been Built?

First of all, the September 11 plotters would have probably sent planes flying into the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building. They might have survived since asbestos was still legal then and the fires would have done less damage. The effects of that change will be left as an exercise for the reader. (Fewer wars in the mideast? A Republican loss in the 2002 midterm elections? A much bigger terrorist attack a decade later because we didn't take terrorism seriously?)

Second, Radio Row would have remained. (ObSF: “Bernie the Faust” by William Tenn) Would it have turned into something similar to Silicon Valley? (I was inspired by this discussion of eminent domain in Detroit.)

The 21st Century Is Finally Getting under Way

Staples is selling 3D printers. This may do for 3D printing what the “Eternal September” did for the Internet.

Maybe that's not so good…

Does This Mean Tobacco Users Are Superior?

A report that users of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis know more about those substances than abstainers is, for some reason, being reported only for the third. To make matters worse, the Fark summary describes this specialized knowledge as “health literate.”

Query: Do people who eat twinkies (they're ba-ack!) know more about diabetes than non-eaters? I would not be astonished if they did.

If It Were the Other Way Around …

The discovery that non-Africans are more likely to have a Neanderthal gene or two has been going around the wrong side of the right wing at the speed of tachyons. For some reason they assume that “Thals” must be superior.

If it were the other way around, what would they have said? To ask this question is to answer it.

A Brief Note on the Life Expectancy of George Zimmerman

Salman Rushdie is still alive.

More generally, people who are targeted by informal networks (in contrast to a hierarchical organization) tend to survive.

The hierarchical organization most likely to target George Zimmerman (the present Administration) has an incentive to keep the controversy (and therefore George Zimmerman) alive.

A Suggestion for People Protesting the Zimmerman Acquittal

Protest the Alexander conviction instead. That way you can be anti-racist without opposing the right to self defense.

Theories on Why Government Officials Are Getting More Officious

Theory 1: It's the fault of Libertarianism. In days of yore, anti-authoritarians may have been less likely to avoid government work and authoritarians would be working with anti-authoritarians. Today, an anti-authoritarian who seeks government work may consider himself to be a hypocrite. As a result, police forces today consist entirely of Barney Fifes.

Theory 2: The above-mentioned anti-authoritarians got government jobs a few decades ago because of the lack of private-sector jobs in the 1930s and 1940s. Today, they have more opportunities.

Put it together, and you have fewer people in government whose reaction to SWAT teams for post offices or sanitation departments would be to say “Are you nuts?”

Do the Elite Eschew Food Made from Genetically-Modified Organisms?

The following bulshytt has been making its way around the crackpot-American community:

Why are the elite making organic foods a priority for their own families?

On the contrary, according to the GSS, people who scored 10 on Wordsum were more willing to eat food from GMOs.

An Annoying Habit I Don't Have

I rarely reply to someone asking for evidence during a debate by refusing to give it and pretending that it's a matter of not doing someone else's homework.

A Robert Heinlein Quote on Social Scientists

After reading this article, I was reminded of a Robert Heinlein quote from Methuselah's Children:

Ford slapped the report on a stack cluttering his old-fashioned control desk. The dumb fools! Not to recognize a negative report when they saw one-yet they called themselves psychographers!

I've said this before … in a slightly-different context.

An Annoying Habit I've (Mostly) Stopped

When I was in elementary school and high school, I had a habit of reading something, not bothering to remember where I read it, and then introducing it into conversations with the phrase “I remember reading somewhere…” That must have been very annoying to anybody within earshot. I've mostly stopped it.

I was reminded of this by the propensity of Internet crackpots (such as trutherbot) to repeat unsourced claims about GMO foods, vaccines, chemtrails, etc. When I try using Google/Bing/Ask/Yahoo/whatever to find out where the claim came from, I mainly get links to people repeating the same unsourced claim. (I discussed a specific example of this bulshytt here.) I am not unique in noticing this phenomenon. Mitti Mithai also had some comments:

Never trust anyone who cites a “landmark study”, but can't be bothered to give you a reference.

In other words:

[CITATION NEEDED]

A Question about Last Decade's Wiretapping Scandal

There was a similar NSA surveillance scandal in 2006 (with my comments here and there). Were there any attempted prosecutions of the leakers? I don't recall any.

Addendum: Thomas Drake was prosecuted.

If It Saves Just One Life …

An upside to pollution (seen via IO9):

“Despite the canal’s toxicity, which includes cancer-causing chemical agents,” explained Nasreen, “microorganisms are surviving by adapting to the harsh environment there that shouldn’t survive at all. Working in synergy, they seem to sense if nutrients are available; they exchange genes and secrete substances -- some of which operate like antibiotics. I believe these substances may provide clues that lead to the development of new drugs to combat human disease.”

ObSF: from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams:

Amphibious life forms from any of the worlds in the Swulling, Noxios or Nausalia systems will particularly enjoy the East River, which is said to be richer in those lovely life-giving nutrients than the finest and most virulent laboratory slime yet achieved.

Gay Marriage Scorecard on the Supreme Court

Let's see… We have four pro-gay-marriage justices, three anti-gay-marriage justices, one justice opposed to expanding federal power in both the Proposition 8 ruling and the DOMA ruling, and one justice in favor of expanding federal power in both rulings.

Do I have that straight? (Pun unintended, oddly enough, until after I wrote that.)

A Brief Note on Conspiracy Theories

It's very hard to keep secrets for very long. Someone (Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, etc.) is bound to talk before long. What does that imply about the theories that THEY are covering up the evidence of the dangers of vaccines, GMOs, depleted uranium, etc.? Why is there no sudden discharge of incriminating emails?

Free Will and Fat

Let's see … The rising obesity rate means we can't attribute obesity to human choices made by free will. I suspect a constant obesity rate would mean the same thing.

Something else to ponder: On the one hand, we see a rising obesity rate. On the other hand, we see a falling heart disease rate. Could the two be connected?

If Plants Can Use Math…

If plants can use math, I intend to ask a rhododendron if P==NP.

On the other hand, the research was done on a plant in the mustard family. It's only a matter of time before horseradish proves the Riemann Hypothesis.

The Next Statist Reaction to the SNAP Challenge

I'm sure my fellow wingnuts have heard of the SNAP Challenge and the rebuttal to the SNAP Challenge.

We must remember that the statist reaction to an assertion that “We don't need this government program when people can do X instead” is almost always to force people to do X. The reaction to “We don't need gasoline price controls because we can drive less instead or use smaller cars” is to force people to drive less or use smaller cars. The reaction to “We don't need expanded Medicaid because much health care spending is wasted” is force people to not waste supposedly scarce health-care resources.

What the above means is that their reaction to our reaction to the SNAP Challenge will be to force people to spend less on food. Downscale fast food that might tempt the poor will be banned. It will be forbidden to buy prepared food unless you can prove your financial ability to pay for it (and grad students can say goodbye to ramen noodles). Individual-size portions are right out.

Freedom in Space

If frontier societies are not always free we cannot assume that Belters or Spacers (or similar future societies in Deep Space) will be free. I suspect that rugged territory that isn't amenable to military action might be the best place to establish a free society. What would be the equivalent of rugged territory in Deep Space?

My guess is that dwarf planets might be the best place. A settlement on or in a very small asteroid might be vulnerable to a laser or bombing attack. A settlement on or in a dwarf planet can burrow inside. On the other hand, a settlement on a large planet (e.g., Earth) cannot cannot burrow that deeply against the pressure gradient. Is there a sweet spot?

On the other hand, maybe a three-dimensional society will suffice.

r Selection, K Selection, and Politics

Koanic Soul's take on r selection, K selection, and politics differs from my take. I think the r vs. K difference has no relation to politics as a whole. In 2008, the Republicans nominated a ticket at the r end whereas in 2012, they nominated a ticket at the K end.

On the other hand, I have earlier mentioned that in most civilizations freer areas were regarded as barbaric. You can think of that as synonymous with r selection. Western civilization was unique in having an area (Middle Francia, currently known as the Blue Banana) that was both K selected and partly free.

My personal preference is for K-selected societies (they have better educational standards for one thing) but K selection can be taken too far. K-selected societies fall for Malthusian propaganda too easily.

If Frogs or Bedbugs Wrote Potboilers…

…Fifty Shades of Grey would be Fifty Shades of Black and Blue or worse.

This Argument Might Prove the Opposite of What Was Intended

I'm sure many of my fellow anti-authoritarian crackpots have come across this speculation on what might have happened if King George III's government could have used traffic analysis. There is a minor problem with it: Back then, governments could really have used traffic analysis.

In the Good Old Days, communications were done using these strange devices called letters and post offices. Post offices, in turn, were usually run by the government. (Anybody who tried bypassing the postal monopoly would be in a pile of trouble.) That monopoly meant that, although the government wasn't permitted to open the letters (and if you believe that…), it could definitely find out who was communicating with whom.

In short, the current controversy is not about some new tyranny but about reviving an old one. That doesn't make it good (especially when you consider the lengths the government went to to try to keep it secret), but we should keep matters in perspective.

Meanwhile, it might make more sense to emphasize that the statist arguments can be used by anti-statists as well. For example, “If you try keeping secrets you must have something to hide…” can apply to the government as well.

A Not-So-New Statistical Technique

The new statistical technique discussed here turns out to be common enough to have its own technical term: teleoanalysis (seen via Bad Data, Bad!).

A Few Notes on the NSA Controversy

Liberals got what they said they always wanted

For years, liberals have been asking for a government that listens to the people.

They finally got one.

Anything Edward Snowden did …

… could already have been by people less inclined to go public. In other words, our enemies have almost certainly have known about this program for years. Isn't it time for the rest of us to find out?

On the other hand …

… I think the NSA surveillance doesn't go far enough. Instead of just the NSA/FBI/CIA/whoever knowing “whatever you got down there,” everybody should be able to know it. The NSA could not catch the the Tsarnaev brothers because they only have a few hundred or thousand analysts. A few hundred million analysts may be sufficient.

I've said this before.

Does the NHS Spy on Local Police?

The New York State Senate (a gang of authoritarians I last criticized here) has passed a bill to make it a felony to harass or annoy a police officer (seen via Boing Boing (when they're anti-authoritarian I'll include the vowels)). I suspect that might include recording police without permission. This brings up the obvious question: Does the NHS record police brutality? (That doesn't appear to be part of the latest scandal but they might be doing it as part of another program.) Could a crackdown on NHS spying be used by local police departments the way anti-wiretapping laws were?

Artificial Intelligence and “Three Felonies a Day”

I suppose there will soon be an app to warn you if you're about to commit one of the “three felonies a day.” What will be the effects of such an app? Will there be an increased demand for deregulation once more people realize how intrusive the government can be? Will there be less demand for such regulations on the part of politicians once they cannot be used to prosecute anybody they want?

A Brief Note on the Protests in Turkey

I was inclined to be on the protestor's side … until I heard they were environmentalists and preservationists.

If You're Being Chased by Bloomberg …

According to Sultan Knish:

Reports that Bloomberg can be kept away by wearing cloves of garlic are untrue. Bloomberg can stand exposure to garlic and sunlight. However anything with a lot of calories will send him fleeing into the night. If you walk down the street wearing a string of ketchup packets around your neck, no Bloomberg can harm you. If you light up a cigarette while doing it and swig from an open bottle of liquor, you can hear his thin keening cries of pain drifting up or down all the way from 77th Street.

In other words, the Bloomberg can be killed by a steak through his heart.

“Two People Are Spying on You”

If you ever saw an ad that said “2 people are spying on you,” you might be interested to know that the string “2 people are spying on you” got 4320 Google hits but the string “3 people are spying on you” got three (soon to be four) Google hits.

Isn't it amazing how our computers can repel the third spy?

A Brief Note on Libertarian Alliances

Nearly any political movement aimed at removing a given type of government overreach will be an alliance of two wings: 1) anti-government people; 2) people who want to government to lean in the opposite direction. It is a grave mistake for the first group to forget that. For one thing, it enables people defending the government overreach to point out the existence of the second group and think they've made a point about the first.

A Nearly-Unbelievable Fact

An idiotic regulation was actually repealed.

The Most Annoying Nativist Argument

The most annoying nativist argument is when nativists try being empathetic. I can take hard-hearted nativism even when disagreeing with it. Such arguments amount to saying: “The rights of some people are limited.” Soft-hearted nativism, being weepy about Americans put out of work for example, amounts to saying “Some people are unpersons.” If we don't assume that, the soft-hearted arguments disintegrate into nonsense.

Fark Liberals View Conservatives

I've found that the ideas or people that liberals on Fark regard as typical of conservatives are frequently ones that I've barely heard of. For example, the the Excel spreadsheet error that the economic ideas of us wingnuts were supposedly based on was in a paper that I was barely aware of and regarded as “only one reason among many to rein in government spending.” (My primary reason was that expanded spending didn't work under Bush.) As another example, my reaction to this was “Dean who”?

A Suggestion for People Selling Genetically-Modified Food

If the Powers That Be insist on mandatory labeling of genetically-modified food, just put the following label on every food you sell:

ALL BIOLOGICAL ORGANISMS ARE GENETICALLY MODIFIED YOU IDIOTS!

If not by you then by evolution.

An IRS Conspiracy Theory I Haven't Seen Yet

On the one hand, we see that the Obama re-election campaign used very large statistical samples and that its resulting success has been attributed to the use of social science. On the other hand, we also see that actual social science rarely uses such large samples. (My earlier comments on this difference can be found here.) On the gripping hand, we also see the IRS includes left-leaning factions that are inclined to engage in some political activity. Is it possible that the amazing statistical analysis of the Obama re-election campaign was made possible by IRS data? Is that the real reason they were searching for phrases such as “tea party”? That might explain why they haven't leaked anything …

Addendum: The spin machine has gone into action.

Reaction Times and IQ

The research claiming that there's been a decline in IQ in the past century was partly based on the theory that fast reaction times are correlated with higher IQ. I find that a bit hard to believe. After all, as William M. Briggs said:

… if this research were true, we should hang out by the Whack-A-Mole to discover future Nobel Prize winners.

I'd like to know what the sample sizes were to obtain such a bizarre conclusion. Psychology research is notorious for small sample sizes (a recent example can be found here) and a lack of objective standards. On the other hand, there just might be a correlation … if being hungover and sleep-deprived causes both slow reaction times and lower IQ.

I Regret to Say …

… “GIF” is pronounced with a soft ‘g’, ruining a perfectly-good pun.

How's That Again?

Let's see if I understand this Powerline post. First, they agree with John Yoo:

Add up all the recent scandals and the message is clear: the Obama administration is showing that it cannot be trusted with the basic functions of government: law enforcement (surveillance of reporters), taxation (IRS scandals), and national security (Benghazi).

This is followed by:

How, then, can we trust the administration when it comes to immigration — an area in which it already has refused to enforce portions of the law that it doesn’t like?

Are they saying that we cannot trust this government and therefore it should do more? I thought that was an OWS slogan.

An Inadvertently-Informative Study

A much-quoted recent study found that:

In 2008, 53 percent of all households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) with one or more children under age 18 used at least one welfare program, compared to 36 percent for native households with children. Immigrant use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Use of cash and housing programs tends to be very similar to natives. A large share of the welfare used by immigrants is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants still have a welfare use rate of 47 percent.

The above figures come from an analysis of the public use file of the March 2009 Current Population Survey collected by the Census Bureau. The survey asks about use of welfare programs in the calendar year prior to the survey. The eight major welfare programs reported above are SSI (Supplemental Security Income for low-income elderly and disabled), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), WIC (Women Infants and Children food program), free school lunch, food stamps (now called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Medicaid (health insurance for those with low incomes), public housing, and rent subsidies.

Let us now apply the “Bloggs Test” (last used here to bash a study that praised liberal atheists):

1. Figure out what Joe Bloggs (an average reader) would conclude from the report. If the report was strongly stated, it was probably either written by an activist who was trying to get people to believe that conclusion or by someone who based it on the activists' press releases. (In this case, Joe Bloggs would conclude that immigrants are parasites.)
2. Determine the strongest potential piece of evidence that would point in the same direction. If that evidence were true, the report would have mentioned it. (In this case, it would be a report that immigrants are major users of the two biggest Federal welfare programs: Social Security and Medicare.)
3. In the absence of such evidence being mentioned, conclude that it doesn't exist.

In other words, we can conclude from this inadvertently-informative study that immigrants are less likely to receive Social Security and Medicare than natives.

By the way, the other ignorant army claims the Bloggs Test can be used for improving scores on standardized tests, which they regard as somehow unfair.