tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2708717679818726612024-02-01T22:12:48.641-08:00Manuel "Moe" G.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.comBlogger335125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-18981588494651466002021-05-13T14:07:00.000-07:002021-05-13T14:07:00.226-07:00worked out system of decision about intervention/action\\cserve3\e$\MMG_Docs\worked_out_system_of_decision_about_intervention00.txt<br />
<br />
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011/05/improvement_of.html<br />
<br />
Typing this out for my own benefit. Probably to nobody else's.<br />
<br />
You need to build 4 models. [1] A model of the car manufacturers and car market. [2] A model of your negotiation for purchasing a car, and the resources you can bring to bear to the transaction, and the economic constraints you are under for money, time, etc. [3] A model of your hierarchy and compromises between your values and goals. And [4] a model of your rational decision making processes.<br />
<br />
Lets call these models [1] "Car-Make", [2] "Car-Buy", [3] "My-Values", [4] "My-Rational"<br />
<br />
Per Pearl, since the models "Car-Buy" "My-Values" "My-Rational" need to allow intervention experiments, they have to be expressible as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). So "Car-Buy" "My-Values" "My-Rational" may be sub-optimal - they are best candidate (or candidates) out of all models that can be expressed as a DAG.<br />
<br />
Literature exists to help with the construction of "Car-Make" "Car-Buy". "Car-Make" will model different ways goals can be achieved: you can make a car safer with more weight, or you can make a car safer with superior engineering and judicious use of materials, etc. "Car-Buy" could be informed by a few issues of Consumer Reports, etc.<br />
<br />
"My-Values" and "My-Rational" will be constructed with a combination of introspection, objective evidence, tests, and quizzing others. If "My-Values" and "My-Rational" sooth your ego, they will probably perform badly for the task. You want to take every opportunity to have a model be truthful above being a mere advertisement of you being a nice and super nifty guy.<br />
<br />
It would seem that "My-Rational" might involve an infinite regress - you have a model, a model of the process that you judge models, a model of the process that you judge models of models, etc. But this flatters the human mind. Per Herbert Simon, Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, Bounded rationality, Ecological Rationality, your really existing system of "My-Values" "My-Rational" is bristling with irresistible fast and frugal heuristics. You can discover these from poor decisions you make time and time again - fast and frugal heuristics work very well in their preferred ecological setting, but are susceptible to failure modes in other settings because they are not ideally rational. (Sure sign of an irresistible fast and frugal heuristic: these are betrayed by poor decisions made time and time again, that are not followed by a relentless implementation of disciplines and restraints to prevent those poor decisions from being made in the future.)<br />
<br />
A fast and frugal heuristic expressed as a preference for blondes is not revealed by a string of successful relationships with blondes, because this might be due to good qualities innate in all blondes. A fast and frugal heuristic expressed as a preference for blondes would be revealed by a string of difficult relationships with blondes, and forever indulging a habit of buying drinks for blondes at bars.<br />
<br />
There is a tendency to be self-serving in introspection, so objective evidence and third-party observations and judgements are crucial.<br />
<br />
Now you can simulate the outcome of a particular choice of automobile, by combining all 4 models into 1 large model and using intervention experiments on the model, suggested by the particular choice of automobile.<br />
<br />
Not fully succumbing to the infinite regress, but incorporating a model of how you judge models, could be helpful (call it "Judge-Models"). That way, if multiple suitable models can be imagined and the top candidate does not immediately reveal itself, you have an analytic recourse to determine best fitness. As above, your really existing "Judge-Models" is also bristling with irresistible fast and frugal heuristics, which you can discover... etc...<br />
<br />
It would be silly to say a satisfactory decision cannot be made without this level of rigor. But the rigorous fully generalized system can suggest adequate "quick and dirty" substitutes, surely.<br />
<br />
I am a faithful reader of Gelman's blog, but I am constantly irritated by his willingness to fashion models of everything _except_ "My-Values" "My-Rational" "Judge-Models", which is the same as crossing the moat and killing the dragon and entering the castle, but refusing to climb up the stairs to the princess in the tower - just sitting there on the first step.<br />
<br />
Without discussion of "My-Values" "My-Rational" "Judge-Models", you have done so much preparation for a decision about an intervention (calling inaction its own kind of intervention)... but then dropped the bride at the threshold.<br />
<br />
Supplying "My-Values" "My-Rational" "Judge-Models" violates the stereotypical separation of work/concern/responsibility between the academic and the decision maker and the action taker, so the reluctance to discuss them is completely understandable, and my irritation is unreasonable, I know.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-41919527837254804662020-12-14T11:03:00.000-08:002020-12-14T11:03:00.180-08:00If You Want to Stop Procrastinating, Give Yourself a Break<h1>Ten Psychology Studies from 2010 Worth Knowing About</h1><br />
<p><a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/neuronarrative">Neuronarrative - David DiSalvo</a></p><br />
<p><a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/neuronarrative/201012/ten-psychology-studies-2010-worth-knowing-about">Ten Psychology Studies from 2010 Worth Knowing About</a></p><br />
<h2>If You Want to Stop Procrastinating, Give Yourself a Break</h2><br />
<p>Most of us inveterate procrastinators are also world-class self punishers. You miss a deadline because you put something off for too long and your mind instantly turns into the Grand Inquisitor, complete with a studded whip to flog you into self-induced terror. But a study of the past year tells us that we've got this all wrong. If you want to get yourself out of the procrastination trap, stop beating yourself up and try a little self forgiveness instead. Researchers followed first year college students through their first and second midterm exams with an eye toward tracking the effects of procrastination and self forgiveness. They found that students who procrastinated before the first midterm were significantly less likely to do so before their second midterm if they gave themselves a break.</p><br />
<p>This runs counter to the conventional assumption that letting ourselves off easy will foster more procrastination, but the result actually makes a lot of sense for a very practical reason: self-forgiveness allows you to get past your mistake and concentrate energy on correcting your behavior. When you punish yourself, you're also draining energy, sapping focus and taking on too much mental baggage. Not to mention, you also make trying to do whatever you failed at the first time a horrible experience because of its association with self punishment. Instead, acknowledge your procrastiantion and its ill-effects, forgive yourself for screwing up, and get on with the tasks at hand.</p>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-63616320607787814132020-12-07T09:11:00.000-08:002020-12-07T09:11:00.945-08:00Decision Science News - communicating risks<h2>Some ideas on communicating risks to the general public</h2><br />
<p><a href="http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2010/12/03/some-ideas-on-communicating-risks-to-the-general-public/">Decision Science News - communicating risks - 12/03/10</a></p><br />
<p>Representations to use less often</p><br />
<p>Representations to use more often</p><br />
<p>speak of natural frequencies, and the models they are based on</p>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-22007724178568792152020-11-05T16:58:00.000-08:002020-11-05T16:58:00.252-08:00cute ass comment in style of denialistscute ass comment in style of denialists<br />
<br />
http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=1954&cpage=1#comment-4175<br />
<br />
How dare you point to these extreme weather events as proof of global warming. How unscientific of you! Whoever taught you statistics should have their 2.49 children shot, on average.<br />
If we consider all possible worlds, real and fictional, we should be not surprised by extremes. I notice you didn’t mention all the fictional Earths where the planet froze solid. How convenient of you!<br />
I am obliged to end this note castigating you for writing about dead trees when you should have been playing up all the brave scientists working on future speculative Breakthroughs, that allow us to continue burning oil at growing rates, which is the only way we can sustain our current Utopia of Limitless Wealth. It is a strange kind of Utopia – the kind that can stay hidden from 1.7 billion people who live in absolute poverty (our Utopia is such a playful rascal) – but it is a Utopia nonetheless.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-19688287283714610602020-10-28T09:11:00.000-07:002020-10-28T09:11:00.144-07:00A Mashey Gemhttp://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/10/mashey-gem.html<br />
<br />
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/on-replication/langswitch_lang/in/<br />
<br />
People are making an error common to those comparing science to commercial software engineering.<br />
<br />
Research: *insight* is the primary product.<br />
Commercial software development: the *software* is the product.<br />
<br />
Of course, sometimes a piece of research software becomes so useful that it gets turned into a commercial product, and then the rules change.<br />
<br />
===<br />
It is fairly likely that any “advanced version control system” people use has an early ancestor or at least inspiration in PWB/UNIX Source Code Control System (1974-), which was developed by Marc Rochkind (next office) and Alan Glasser (my office-mate) with a lot of kibitzing from me and a few others.<br />
<br />
Likewise, much of modern software engineering’s practice of using high-level scripting languages for software process automation has a 1975 root in PWB/UNIX.<br />
<br />
It was worth a lot of money in Bell labs to pay good computer scientists to build tools like this, because we had to:<br />
<br />
- build mission-critical systems<br />
- support multiple versions in the field at multiple sites<br />
- regenerate specific configurations, sometimes with site-specific patches<br />
- run huge sets of automated tests, often with elaborate test harnesses, database loads, etc.<br />
<br />
This is more akin to doing missile-control or avionics software, although those are somewhat worse, given that “system crash” means “crash”. However, having the US telephone system “down”, in whole or in part, was not viewed with favor either.<br />
<br />
We (in our case, a tools department of about 30 people within a software organization of about 1000) were supporting software product engineers, not researchers. The resulting *software* was the product, and errors could of course damage databases in ways that weren’t immediately obvious, but could cause $Ms worth of direct costs.<br />
<br />
It is easier these days, because many useful tools are widely available, whereas we had to invent many of them as we went along.<br />
<br />
By late 1970s, most Bell Labs software product developers used such tools.<br />
<br />
But, Bell Labs researchers? Certainly no the physicists/ chemists, etc, an usually not computing research (home of Ritchie & Thompson). That’s because people knew the difference between R & D and had decent perspective on where money should be spent and where not.<br />
<br />
The original UNIX research guys did a terrific job making their code available [but "use at your own risk"], but they’d never add the overhead of running a large software engineering development shop. If they got a bunch of extra budget, they would *not* have spent it on people to do a lot of configuration management, they would have hired a few more PhDs to do research, and they’d have been right.<br />
<br />
The original UNIX guys had their own priorities, and would respond far less politely than Gavin does to outsiders crashing in telling them how to do things, and their track record was good enough to let them do that, just as GISS’s is. They did listen to moderate numbers of people who convinced them that we understood what they were doing, and could actually contribute to progress.<br />
<br />
Had some Executive Director in another division proposed to them that he send a horde of new hires over to check through every line of code in UNIX and ask them questions … that ED would have faced some hard questions from the BTL President shortly thereafter for having lost his mind.<br />
<br />
As I’ve said before, if people want GISS to do more, help get them more budget … but I suspect they’d make the same decisions our researchers did, and spend the money the same way, and they’d likely be right. Having rummaged a bit on GISS’s website, and looked at some code, I’d say they do pretty well for an R group.<br />
<br />
Finally, for all of those who think random “auditing” is doing useful science, one really, really should read Chris Mooney’s “The Republican War on Science”, especially Chapter 8 ‘Wine, Jazz, and “Data Quality”‘, i.e., Jim Tozzi, the Data Quality Act, and “paralysis-by-analysis.”<br />
<br />
When you don’t like what science says, this shows how you can slow scientists down by demanding utter perfection. Likewise, you *could* insist there never be another release of UNIX, Linux, MacOS, or Windows until *every* bug is fixed, and the code thoroughly reviewed by hordes of people with one programming course.<br />
<br />
Note the distinction between normal scientific processes (with builtin skepticism), and the deliberate efforts to waste scientists’ time as much as possible if one fears the likely results. Cigarette companies were early leaders at this, but others learned to do it as well.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-3673327193391006242020-10-26T09:43:00.000-07:002020-10-26T09:43:00.495-07:00Breakthrough Narrative and Time Machines, and Carbon Eating Treeshttp://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/stop-the-presses-climate-journos-think-the-emissions-reduction-issue-looks-an-awful-lot-like-a-narrative-problem-no-word-yet-on-just-how-nail-shaped-people-wielding-hammers-see-it/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ThingsBreak+(The+Way+Things+Break)<br />
<br />
Wow. Not to put too fine a point on it: """<br />
Did I mention that this New Narrative meme is being pushed by the same people who are arguing against any sort of meaningful emissions pricing? They wouldn’t have a vested interested in framing emissions legislation as a dead, would they?<br />
...<br />
It’s nice that you have a meme. It’s nice that some journalists bit. When you feel like getting around to actually hooking some grassroots support, give us a reason to support your Narrative besides an appeal to novelty.<br />
"""<br />
<br />
This Breakthrough meme is exactly like a call for more time-machine funding. The only reason they are pushing for stratospheric saline geysers and carbon-eating mega-trees is that they would seem more plausible to the uninformed than a time-machine. Their plausibility is the foremost attraction, their actual viability is a far distant concern -- and that is morally noxious.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-73729106409985759702020-10-07T10:37:00.000-07:002020-10-07T10:37:00.212-07:00Education: "Waiting for Superman", Union Busting, and Obscuring the role of Parental Responsiblityhttp://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/1/waiting_for_superman_critics_say_much<br />
<br />
I agree that the teachers' union get hit with cheap shots in the school debate. I agree that the teachers' union is full of professionals dedicated to providing excellent education in the "really existing" world, and the construction of alternative scenarios (maybe fanciful) for education that blink the teachers' union out of existence has less to do with delivering quality education in the real world and have more to do with crude union busting.<br />
<br />
But it silly to pretend that there is no conflict whatsoever between the education needs of the students and the political convenience of the teachers' union. Those are two distinct entities, and they have different political needs. For example: the mechanism that prevents capricious termination of union employees is in conflict with the discretion a school principal would wish to assert to fire a lacking teacher to replace with a potentially better suited teacher. For example: the mechanism that prevents threat of pay reduction being used to punish a union employee is in conflict with the discretion a school principal would want be able to better compensate superior teachers working from a constrained budget for teacher compensation.<br />
<br />
The key point as I see it: the *existence* of teaching as a professional discipline is obscuring the primary role of *the responsibility of parents* for America's education of children. The parents are all too happy to shed responsibility, and push the responsibility to teaching professionals. If parents appropriately shouldered the responsibility for the quality of education of children, the primary role of teaching professionals would diminish, plainly.<br />
<br />
Taking responsibility does not necessarily mean home schooling. It DOES mean attending PTA meetings and supervising children's homework every school night and being aware of trends of grades and children's enthusiasm or frustration in coursework -- parents taking every and all opportunity to take a full role in their children's education, paid for in *time*. If that time is then not available for television and amusement or if that time is then not available for working to support a certain level of consumerism, so be it.<br />
<br />
In America, teaching professionals take the primary role, for praise and for blame, fair and unfair, because of the sloughing off of responsibility by America's parents.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-7641179424255225152020-10-05T10:38:00.000-07:002020-10-05T10:38:00.293-07:00race on the brainhttp://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/10/racism.html<br />
<br />
I would much rather deal with racists than people who have "race on the brain".<br />
I am not interested in searching the world for people free of racism, because it is hard to imagine people who *really* don't allow race to inform *any* judgement whatsoever. I have met some children and adults who I would guess come very close, but so very very few to make the effort not worthwhile.<br />
So I would much rather deal with racists, because, honestly, I must judge myself a racist.<br />
I *do* have a problem with people who have "race on the brain" -- when the topic of race comes up they are reduced to blithering idiocy and vile reactionary tribalism. White males haven't cornered the market on this particular form of idiocy -- it is embarrassing when Latino candidates win office on nothing more than their publicized ethnicity (such as the insubstantial Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, aka Tony Villar).<br />
Political correctness makes physical and verbal violence against traditionally disadvantaged groups less likely, and that is good, but it cannot do much to lesson "race on the brain" on both sides of the racial divide. Only the self-imposed discipline of critical thinking can do that, and people get too much pleasure from their vile reactionary tribalism to self constrain their thought.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-82207315609479484702020-04-15T17:28:00.000-07:002020-04-15T17:28:05.358-07:00good summary gelman philosophy of Bayesian statistics<h1 class="asset-name entry-title" id="page-title" style="color: #6699cc; font-family: verdana, calibri, arial, helvetica, hirakakupro-w3, osaka, 'ms pgothic', sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Bayesian statistical pragmatism</h1><div><br />
</div><div><a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011/04/bayesian_statis_1.html">http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011/04/bayesian_statis_1.html</a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thank you for writing this. This is the clearest and quite comprehensive (even though short and to the point) support for your philosophical views, and I am inclined to agree on all counts.<br />
<br />
I read Gelman and Shalizi 2010, and enjoyed it a lot, what my novice brain could understand. But the summary above hits and handles all the difficulties, and is easy to read.<br />
<br />
I would recommend people read Gelman and Shalizi 2010 "Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics" [ http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/philosophy.pdf ] for the section on Mayo's "severe" testing of models, Section 4 "Model checking" - the only lack of the summary above that I can see.manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-86528233740592701382020-04-14T18:32:00.000-07:002020-04-14T18:32:00.583-07:00size of genome<dt class="comment-author " id="c1663047036846499582" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-big-is-human-genome.html?showComment=1300992550197#c1663047036846499582">http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-big-is-human-genome.html?showComment=1300992550197#c1663047036846499582</a></dt><br />
<dt class="comment-author " id="c1663047036846499582" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><br />
</dt><br />
<dt class="comment-author " id="c1663047036846499582" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><br />
</dt><br />
<dt class="comment-author " id="c1663047036846499582" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0 goog_qs-tidbit-hilite" style="background-color: #ffff88; color: black; display: inline !important; text-decoration: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541" rel="nofollow" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;">manuel "moe" g</a></span><span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0 goog_qs-tidbit-hilite" style="background-color: #ffff88; color: black; display: inline !important; text-decoration: inherit;"> said...</span></dt><br />
<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-1663047036846499582" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.25em;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0 goog_qs-tidbit-hilite" style="background-color: #ffff88; color: black; display: inline !important; text-decoration: inherit;">[Part 1 of 2]</span><br />
<br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0 goog_qs-tidbit-hilite" style="background-color: #ffff88; color: black; display: inline !important; text-decoration: inherit;">Forgive my ignorance, but I am trying to make sense of different descriptions of the human genome,</span> and different descriptions of the information needed to fully specify a large mammal, like a man.<br />
<br />
You talk about 3.5 Gb for the genome, and, giving Ray Kurzweil the benefit of the doubt, 50 million bytes after loss-less compression.<br />
<br />
If someone made extravagant claims about a computer program that runs on some unknown hardware and unknown OS, I would be unamused if they handed me a thumb-drive containing the compressed binary executable, and nothing more. This single file would demonstrate nothing.<br />
<br />
I would demand the original source code, the specification for the code (including the business decisions the code is meant to automate, at the very least), some documentation demonstrating that I can move back and forth between points in the specification and the source code lines encoding that part of the specification, and the code for the automated tests (so an automated test can demonstrate what changes to the code will still keep it within specification, at the very least).<br />
<br />
And maybe the same for some of the libraries and hardware - maybe needing the full specification if the libraries, OS, and hardware if they all are very novel, quite unlike any I have worked with before.<br />
<br />
So there would be a dramatic explosion of information needed, moving from the binary executable to a bare minimum specification of a computer program as defined above.</div></dd><dd class="comment-footer" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.25em; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="comment-timestamp"><a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-big-is-human-genome.html?showComment=1300992550197#c1663047036846499582" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2011 2:49:00 PM</a></span></dd><br />
<dt class="comment-author " id="c1670501423943653392" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><a href="" name="c1670501423943653392"></a><div class="avatar-image-container vcard" style="height: 37px; left: -45px; position: absolute; width: 37px;"><span dir="ltr"><a class="avatar-hovercard" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541" id="av-3-04878149837118503541" rel="nofollow" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" class="delayLoad" height="35" longdesc="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQmouizrIpEtCboikJnX_hmR9LDNbei4LW5uoaI0p_t3rYW3jamPSEZkqzXwtcj4bsei9GLJuo7pdX1-6LSXAtvcw1aV_Yyy98ipv4x4pwaVjsi0S8Ksqo9mZIFBdiBVFj1483_k2gaPb_/s45/moe_96pixels.jpg" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQmouizrIpEtCboikJnX_hmR9LDNbei4LW5uoaI0p_t3rYW3jamPSEZkqzXwtcj4bsei9GLJuo7pdX1-6LSXAtvcw1aV_Yyy98ipv4x4pwaVjsi0S8Ksqo9mZIFBdiBVFj1483_k2gaPb_/s45/moe_96pixels.jpg" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; float: right;" title="manuel "moe" g" width="35" /></a></span></div><a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541" rel="nofollow" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;">manuel "moe" g</a> said...</dt><br />
<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-1670501423943653392" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.25em;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">[Part 2 of 2]<br />
<br />
In the debate between PZ and Kurzweil, PZ makes this point:<br />
<br />
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php<br />
<br />
"""<br />
<br />
Let me give you a few specific examples of just how wrong Kurzweil's calculations are. Here are a few proteins that I plucked at random from the NIH database; all play a role in the human brain.<br />
<br />
First up is RHEB (Ras Homolog Enriched in Brain). It's a small protein, only 184 amino acids, which Kurzweil pretends can be reduced to about 12 bytes of code in his simulation. Here's the short description.<br />
<br />
MTOR (FRAP1; 601231) integrates protein translation with cellular nutrient status and growth signals through its participation in 2 biochemically and functionally distinct protein complexes, MTORC1 and MTORC2. MTORC1 is sensitive to rapamycin and signals downstream to activate protein translation, whereas MTORC2 is resistant to rapamycin and signals upstream to activate AKT (see 164730). The GTPase RHEB is a proximal activator of MTORC1 and translation initiation. It has the opposite effect on MTORC2, producing inhibition of the upstream AKT pathway (Mavrakis et al., 2008).<br />
<br />
Got that? You can't understand RHEB until you understand how it interacts with three other proteins, and how it fits into a complex regulatory pathway.<br />
<br />
"""<br />
<br />
I am inclined to grant PZ the point, and say his understanding of the immensity of the task outstrips Kurzweil's understanding.<br />
<br />
Would the explosion of information needed to move from the complete genome to the complete specification of a large mammal be on the same order of the explosion of information needed to move from the binary executable to a bare minimum specification of a computer program as defined above? Did I capture the gist of it, or am I hopelessly mistaken?</div></dd><dd class="comment-footer" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.25em; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="comment-timestamp"><a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-big-is-human-genome.html?showComment=1300992576701#c1670501423943653392" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2011 2:49:00 PM</a></span></dd>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-78352698307238501002012-03-21T09:09:00.000-07:002012-03-21T09:09:00.324-07:00SOCIALISM AND TEMPORARILY EMBARRASSED MILLIONAIRES<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a class="title " href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g877k/socialism_never_took_root_in_america_because_the/" style="color: blue; font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." John Steinbeck</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="domain" style="color: #888888; font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;">self.politics</a>)</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="domain" style="color: #888888; font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="domain" style="color: #888888; font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g877k/socialism_never_took_root_in_america_because_the/#">http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g877k/socialism_never_took_root_in_america_because_the/#</a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g877k/socialism_never_took_root_in_america_because_the/c1lngjo">http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g877k/socialism_never_took_root_in_america_because_the/c1lngjo</a></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="tagline" style="color: #888888; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a class="author id-t2_3gyde" href="http://www.reddit.com/user/cephas_rock" style="color: #336699; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">cephas_rock</a><span class="userattrs"></span> <span class="score unvoted" style="font-size: xx-small;">106 points</span> 5 hours ago<a class="expand" href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g877k/socialism_never_took_root_in_america_because_the/c1lngjo#" style="color: #336699; font-style: normal; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-decoration: none;">[-]</a></div><form action="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g877k/socialism_never_took_root_in_america_because_the/c1lngjo#" class="usertext border" id="form-t1_c1lngjoncq" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="usertext-body" style="background-color: #ffffcc; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class="md" style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 60em; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: auto; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">"Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor." - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JDNTS2wHHo" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">John Dickinson, "1776" (the musical)</a></div></div></div></form>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-13820206164135228802012-02-27T14:16:00.000-08:002011-03-04T11:27:14.771-08:00Nice sarcastic invite for blog comments<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Two_young_men_being_sarcastic.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Two young men being sarcastic" height="225" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/64/Two_young_men_being_sarcastic.jpg/300px-Two_young_men_being_sarcastic.jpg" style="border: none; font-size: 0.8em;" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Two_young_men_being_sarcastic.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></span>While reading Reddit Politics, I spotted this comment pointing out the solicitation for comments on the site "The Big Picture":<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ftpis/president_of_fox_news_will_be_indictedmaybe_even/c1ijv3p">http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ftpis/president_of_fox_news_will_be_indictedmaybe_even/c1ijv3p</a><br />
<br />
<em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;">The Big Picture - </em><a href="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/">http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/</a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><em style="font-size: small; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;"><br />
</em> <em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;">"Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous."</em></span><br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=7facce8b-22f7-4d0e-8060-2fa656529564" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-63498883794269063742011-03-04T11:32:00.000-08:002011-03-04T11:32:16.291-08:00The importance of stupidity in scientific research<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weird_Al_Yankovic_-_Dare_to_Be_Stupid.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Dare to Be Stupid" height="194" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Weird_Al_Yankovic_-_Dare_to_Be_Stupid.jpg" style="border: none; font-size: 0.8em;" width="200" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; width: 200px;">Image via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weird_Al_Yankovic_-_Dare_to_Be_Stupid.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></span>From a comment to<br />
<div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2011/03/bad-media-advice.html">Only In It For The Gold - Michael Tobis - "Bad Media Advice"</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">by <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/17110810881843699172">Dan Olner</a> <a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2011/03/bad-media-advice.html?showComment=1299229900127#c5752779293329398570">March 4, 2011 1:11 AM</a>:</div><div><blockquote><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lytxafTXg6c">Here's Feynman on</a> the 'terrible uncomfortable feeling called confusion'. And <a href="http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/121/11/1771">here's a great little paper</a> on 'the importance of stupidity in scientific research' - "actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid."</blockquote></div><h2>The importance of stupidity in scientific research</h2><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/121/11/1771">Martin A. Schwartz - 9 April 2008 - jcs.biologists.org</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Excerpt:</div><div><blockquote>I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.<br />
<br />
I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way. Let me explain.<br />
<br />
For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it. That can't be the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart.<br />
<br />
A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly frame the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did.<br />
<br />
That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.</blockquote></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=f3b6b5fd-1a77-4efa-89b0-abda136cbbd4" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-42128768398338332692011-01-03T12:18:00.000-08:002011-01-03T12:18:21.045-08:00Links on Rational Discussion<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KOPPITZ_0016.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Heavy Burden" height="311" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/KOPPITZ_0016.jpg/300px-KOPPITZ_0016.jpg" style="border: none; font-size: 0.8em;" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KOPPITZ_0016.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></span><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Currently, I see that Rationality is all about a very high standard for yourself and for your allies. Worrying about the standard of rationality of enemies and opponents should be a very small part. There is a finite amount of energy, and that energy is best used to keep the self from deluding the self with comfortable ideas.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">It is interesting that nobody wants to be seen as irrational, but very few happy assume the burden of a very high standard for rationality for their own thoughts.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://evolvingthoughts.net/about/">John Wilkins - Evolving Thoughts</a> - <a href="http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/">A Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion</a><br />
<div><ol><li>The Fallibility Principle</li>
<li>The Truth-Seeking Principle</li>
<li>The Clarity Principle</li>
<li>The Burden of Proof Principle</li>
<li>The Principle of Charity</li>
<li>The Relevance Principle</li>
<li>The Acceptability Principle</li>
<li>The Sufficiency Principle</li>
<li>The Rebuttal Principle</li>
<li>The Resolution Principle</li>
<li>The Suspension of Judgement Principle</li>
<li>The Reconsideration Principle</li>
<li>Fleck’s Addendum</li>
</ol>Some of my own posts on Rational Discussion and Rationality:<br />
<ul><li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/04/next-tack-in-climate-disruption.html">The next tack in Climate Disruption denialism - Scientists must be Nihilists</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/05/difference-between-skeptics-and-deniers.html">The difference between Skeptics and Deniers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/06/juicy-example-of-art-of-controversy.html">Shifting between the genial general and the hard-nosed specific as a form of the "Shell and Pea game" - A juicy example of The Art of Controversy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/07/uncertainty-is-not-argument-for-status.html">Uncertainty is not an argument for the status quo</a></li>
</ul></div></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=83764517-650e-4d7d-b426-781c4929763c" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-43060913217295708962010-12-29T10:32:00.000-08:002010-12-29T10:32:34.928-08:00How trusted is the "Big Five" Personality Traits in mainstream psychology?<table align="right" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3476/3984047524_62e1b7936e_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="145" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3476/3984047524_62e1b7936e_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">flickr | Graela "Bathroom Personality Assessment - Part 2"<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/9441263@N04/3984047524/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/9441263@N04/3984047524/</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">From <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/mlm/">Andrew Gelman, Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science</a>, December 29, 2010 9:10 AM</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Comments to <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/12/brain_structure.html">"Brain Structure and the Big Five"</a></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://hardsci.wordpress.com/">Sanjay Srivastava</a> | <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/12/brain_structure.html#comment-1409604">December 29, 2010 10:36 AM</a><br />
<blockquote><a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mischel" rel="wikipedia" title="Walter Mischel">Walter Mischel</a>'s famous critique predated the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits">Big Five</a>. His critique was of the concept of a personality trait more broadly. If you ask around at Mischel's home department they'll probably tell you that Mischel won the argument, but that's not the mainstream view among personality psychologists elsewhere. In fact, I don't think there's a single mainstream view on traits or the Big Five, but I'd guess that many personality psychologists would endorse, at a minimum, "useful enough until a better model comes along." Some might go a lot farther. (Some of my own views on the Big Five are <a href="http://pages.uoregon.edu/sanjay/pubs/ffmisperception.pdf">in this paper</a>, if you're curious.)</blockquote><a href="http://ralmond.net/">Russell Almond</a> | <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/12/brain_structure.html#comment-1409998">December 29, 2010 11:15 AM</a><br />
<blockquote>A quick comment about the Big-5. A couple of years ago, I did some consulting with a psychologist who was developing new personality measures. The standard practice for validating the new measure was to give it as part of a battery to a sample of the target population, along with the Big 5, and other known measure that were similar to the target. I got the impression that it wasn't that the Big 5 were thought of as the answer to everything, but that it was a starting point that most people in the field understood. The burden of proof was to show that your proposed measures was something other than a composite of the 5 factors in the Big 5.</blockquote>My comments: trying to get a fix on the Big Five. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box">George E. P. Box</a>: "All models are wrong, some models are useful"<br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=a2d39de7-feff-4bdb-9f05-b64016873a5d" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-1252774000595472092010-09-27T11:59:00.000-07:002010-11-21T12:45:30.506-08:00Fetishizing p-Values - The Cult of Statistical Significance<div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/William_Sealy_Gosset.jpg/448px-William_Sealy_Gosset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/William_Sealy_Gosset.jpg/448px-William_Sealy_Gosset.jpg" width="234" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">en.wikipedia.org William Sealy Gosset</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Fetishizing p-Values; Tom Leinster - The n-Category Cafe</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Recovering the insight of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sealy_Gosset">"Student" Gosset</a> from the over-simplification of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher" rel="wikipedia" title="Ronald Fisher">Ronald A. Fisher</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2010/09/fetishizing_pvalues.html">http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2010/09/fetishizing_pvalues.html</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Leinster: Now there’s a whole book making the same point: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Statistical-Significance-Economics-Cognition/dp/0472050079">The Cult of Statistical Significance</a>, by two economists, Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey. You can see their argument in this 15-page paper with the same title. Just because they’re economists doesn’t mean their prose is sober: according to one subheading, ‘Precision is Nice but Oomph is the Bomb’.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://www.statlit.org/pdf/2009ZiliakMcCloskeyASA.pdf">http://www.statlit.org/pdf/2009ZiliakMcCloskeyASA.pdf</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Leinster: it is true that p-value does not measure the magnitude of the effect (but then, anyone who has taken at least one course in statistics should know that)</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">I think Jost, Ziliak and McCloskey would completely agree that anyone who has taken at least one course in statistics should know that. They’re pointing out, open-mouthed, that this incredibly basic mistake is being made on a massive scale, including by many people who should know much, much better. Bane used the term ‘collective self-deception’; one might go further and say ‘mass delusion’. It’s a situation where a fundamental mistake has become so ingrained in how science is done that it’s hard to get your paper accepted if you don’t perpetuate that mistake.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">That last statement is probably putting it too strongly, but as I understand it, the point they’re making is along those lines.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">From the 15-page paper "The Cult of Statistical Significance":</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">In 1937 Gosset, the inventor and original calculator of “Student’s” t-table told Egon, then editor of Biometrika, that a significant finding is by itself “nearly valueless”:</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><blockquote>...obviously the important thing in such is to have a low real error, not to have a "significant" result at a particular station. The latter seems to me to be nearly valueless in itself. . . . Experiments at a single station [that is, tests of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance" rel="wikipedia" title="Statistical significance">statistical significance</a> on a single set of data] are almost valueless. . . . What you really want is a low real error. You want to be able to say not only "We have significant evidence that if farmers in general do this they will make money by it", but also "we have found it so in nineteen cases out of twenty and we are finding out why it doesn't work in the twentieth.” To do that you have to be as sure as possible which is the 20th—your real error must be small...</blockquote></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><div style="text-align: center;">Gosset to E. S. Pearson 1937, in Pearson 1939, p. 244.</div></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Gosset, we have noted, is unknown to most users of statistics, including economists. Yet he was proposing and using in his own work at Guinness a characteristically economic way of looking at the acquisition of knowledge and the meaning of “error.” The inventor of small sample econometrics focused on the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost" rel="wikipedia" title="Opportunity cost">opportunity cost</a> of each observation; he tried to minimize random and non-random errors, real errors.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Edit 11/12/10</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">A very nice write-up here, along same lines: Significance Tests in Climate Science -- Maarten H. P. Ambaum -- <a href="http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~sws97mha/Publications/jclim_ambaum_rev2.pdf">http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~sws97mha/Publications/jclim_ambaum_rev2.pdf</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><blockquote>Consider a scientist who is interested in measuring some effect and who does an experiment in the lab. Now consider the following thought process that the scientist goes through:</blockquote><blockquote><ol><li>My measurement stands out from the noise.</li>
<li>So my measurement is not likely to be caused by noise.</li>
<li>It is therefore unlikely that what I am seeing is noise.</li>
<li>The measurement is therefore positive evidence that there is really something happening.</li>
<li>This provides evidence for my theory.</li>
</ol></blockquote><blockquote>This apparently innocuous train of thought contains a serious logical fallacy, and it appears at a spot where not many people notice it.</blockquote><blockquote>To the surprise of most, the logical fallacy occurs between step 2 and step 3. Step 2 says that there is a low probability of finding our specific measurement if our system would just produce noise. Step 3 says that there is a low probability that the system just produces noise. These sound the same but they are entirely different.</blockquote><blockquote>This can be compactly described using Bayesian statistics...</blockquote></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">This comes from a summary of the paper: How significance tests are misused in climate science -- Guest post by Dr Maarten H. P. Ambaum from the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, U.K. -- <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=456#">http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=456#</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Edit 11/21/10</div><h2>Significance Tests, frequentist vs. bayesian</h2><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/much-ado-about-something/">Open Mind | tamino.wordpress.com | much-ado-about-something</a></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/much-ado-about-something/#comment-45706">Dikran Marsupial | November 14, 2010 at 10:49 am</a></div><blockquote>When we perform a test of statistical significance test, what we <br />
would really like to ask is “what is the probability that the <br />
alternative hypothesis is true?”. A frequentist analysis <br />
fundamentally cannot give a direct answer to that question, as <br />
they cannot meaningfully talk of the probability of a hypothesis <br />
being true – it is not a random variable, it is either true or <br />
false and has no “long run frequency”. Instead, the frequentists <br />
gives a rather indirect answer to the question by telling you the <br />
likelihood of the observations assuming the null hypothesis is <br />
true and leaving it up to you to decide what to conclude from <br />
that. A Bayesian on the other hand can answer the question <br />
directly as the Bayesian definition of probability is not based <br />
on long run frequencies but on the state of knowledge of the <br />
truth of a proposition. The problem with frequentist statistical <br />
test is that there is a tendency to interpret the result as if it <br />
were the result of a Bayesian test, which is natural as that is <br />
the form of answer we generally want, but still wrong.<br />
<br />
The frequentist approach avoids the “subjectivity” of the <br />
Bayesian approach (although the extent of that “subjectivity” is <br />
debatable), but this is only achieved at the expense of not <br />
answering the question we would most like to ask. It could be <br />
argued that the frequentist approach merely shifts the <br />
subjectivity from the analysis to the interpretation (what should <br />
we conclude based on our p-value). Which form of analysis you <br />
should use depends on whether you find the “subjectivity” of the <br />
Bayesian approach or the “indirectness” of the frequentist <br />
approach most abhorrent! ;o)<br />
<br />
At the end of the day, as long as the interpretation is <br />
consistent with the formulation, there is no problem and both <br />
forms of analysis are useful.</blockquote>This was my favorite comment, the whole sub-thread underneath is interesting. The original <a href="http://tamino.wordpress.com/">Open Mind | tamino.wordpress.com</a> <a href="http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/much-ado-about-something/">article</a> has good qualifications to <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=456">Dr Maarten H. P. Ambaum's Skeptical Science post</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=12ef3bf2-28dc-421b-88cc-0cf78abc55cb" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-41382629416960755362010-09-21T15:18:00.000-07:002010-09-21T18:59:26.779-07:00Valuing stewardship of the environment for future generations, or not<div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Sheep_eating_grass_edit02.jpg/800px-Sheep_eating_grass_edit02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Sheep_eating_grass_edit02.jpg/800px-Sheep_eating_grass_edit02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">commons.wikimedia.org Sheep_eating_grass_edit02.jpg</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Attempted to post comment to <a href="http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com/2010/09/yer-either-fer-us-or-agin-us.html">Offsetting Behaviour - Eric Crampton : Yer either fer us or agin us</a></div>[ I am not speaking to the game-theoretic analysis of New Zealand leaving Kyoto -- Bjorn's swaying this way or that notwithstanding, there is no rational reason for NZ to stay inside Kyoto, unless it was seen as the price for signaling environmental concern. ]<br />
<div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">The same climate scientists that Lomborg disparaged for stating evidence of high sensitivities for <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas" rel="wikipedia" title="Greenhouse gas">carbon emissions</a> are now the same climate scientists he will trust to run <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering" rel="wikipedia" title="Geoengineering">geo-engineering</a>. This is the the most embarrassing contradiction of Lomborg's evolving stance.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">The <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus" rel="wikipedia" title="Copenhagen Consensus">Copenhagen Consensus</a> cost-benefit analysis put carbon taxes at the bottom by valuing stewardship of the environment for future generations at zero. The same way pre-school for my toddler would be at the bottom of a cost-benefit analysis of all uses of my money, if I valued his own future earnings and quality of life at zero.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">If you are standing on the train tracks with a freight train coming in five minutes, you have the choice to leap off the tracks. A "compromise" position of shifting over a few inches will have no effect, no matter how much you value "moderation and reasonableness". If you limit your analysis to only the next step minutes and fifty-nine seconds, the energy expended in the leap is a waste.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">I wish we had the choice to live in an "warmer average" world -- it would be nice. If you put two bullets in a six chambered gun to play <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette" rel="wikipedia" title="Russian roulette">Russian roulette</a>, on "average", you are still alive but with a headache. But the "average" is an abstraction, and in reality you have to deal with the consequences of the spun barrel. The risk is not a warmer world -- the risk is an over-energetic world that no longer has the climate stability that allowed civilization and large-scale agriculture and inexpensive & quick transportation to be developed and maintained.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">It is fine to consider all possible humanitarian uses of scarce capital. The weight that stewardship of the environment for future generations should not be infinite, lest you indulge in pointless profligacy towards but a single goal. But that does not imply that stewardship of the environment for future generations should be weighted at zero.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">[ This implies value placed on trying to give future generations a "western/first world" standard of living much like what we currently enjoy. If we are satisfied with a few hundred thousand on each continent living under conditions like <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples" rel="wikipedia" title="Indigenous peoples">indigenous peoples</a>, living along the new raised coastlines and grasslands freed from permafrost, with climate instability but the net warmth & wetness still giving the ability to feed from the meat of small grazing animals, the costs we would bare would be slight. ]</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Edit 9/21/10: Reply via <a href="http://www.google.com/profiles/crampton#buzz">Google Buzz from Eric Crampton</a>:</div><blockquote><div>If investing in tech reduces more warming per dollar spent than do other things, what's the problem with redirecting spending towards tech?</div><div>Copenhagen valued future generations the same way that cost-benefit analysis typically values future generations: by applying a standard discount rate. That doesn't say that future people don't count; rather, it says that future people might prefer being given cash.</div></blockquote><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">My reply:</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">"""<i>That doesn't say that future people don't count; rather, it says that future people might prefer being given cash</i>"""</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">If I am the victim of blunt trauma, I may not value a cash dispersal later over a medical intervention now. There is a rational case to be made that the two are hardly substitutes in some circumstances.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">I agree that I should have been more careful and said "<b>valuing stewardship of the environment for future generations, *particularly* in reducing the risk of the very worst outcomes</b>". I will be more careful in future.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">"""<i>If investing in tech reduces more warming per dollar spent than do other things, what's the problem with redirecting spending towards tech?</i>"""</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">No argument here. But the lack of breakthrough tech *now* implies non-zero carbon taxes *now* (and there is a moral argument for quite substantial taxes now). I am certain it will take a few decades of people seeing global military preparation for the worst possible outcomes of climate disruption before it is plain that environmental stewardship may be worth 5 or more points of global economic activity. It is not surprising that substantial carbon taxes have near zero political traction in the two largest economies, now.</div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=9f489686-092f-44e0-b15e-c0a7ce69d5eb" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-75306553885042595972010-09-13T17:10:00.000-07:002010-09-14T12:11:32.264-07:00Selling Fantasies: Breakthrough Institute<div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Emperor_Clothes_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Emperor_Clothes_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emperor_Clothes_01.jpg">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emperor_Clothes_01.jpg</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Comment on Michael Tobis post "<a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/09/breakthrough-idea.html">The Breakthrough Idea</a>"</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Breakthrough Institute works like the Copy Protection technology wizards selling their tech to record companies. It cannot work, because the pirates will always find a workaround towards <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_protection" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Copy protection">copy protection</a> - you are merely punishing your customers and training them to be pirates when they try to use your product in convenient ways. The Copy Protection technology wizards are not selling a working solution - because a solution is impossible - they are selling a pleasant fantasy to the record companies in the few years their business model has left.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">People do not confine themselves to buying working products. Sometimes they will purchase fantasies. Look at the exercise gizmos that people buy from TV.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">The Breakthrough Institute doesn't have to provide solutions that work - it will provide fantasies that it can sell. So lets try and figure out who their customers are.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">If you are in the top 0.5% of incomes, you are intelligent and you may be slightly distressed that your great grandchildren will be born into a boiling world (when you can be bothered to consider the issue). You have the ability to direct funding, and in these few years before the climate disruption really hits human agriculture and infrastructure, you are in the market for fantasies, sold to you by the semi-knowledgeable folk (who are probably sincere, because their confidence in their tech solutions surpasses their scientific capabilities). That is what people like the Breakthrough Institute are selling. For example, Warren Buffet doesn't consider himself a bad person, and he cares for his grandchildren. But he has also made a huge bet on coal transport infrastructure. He would love to support the Breakthrough Institute by some means, to reconcile his position on the responsibility of environmental stewardship for future generations.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">"The Breakthrough Institute, a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc." lets you know about the customers they are after. How did good ol' John D. make is money?</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">Lets predict their structure. They will rarely speak in absolute moral terms - they will never flatly state that it is craven to leave future generations a boiling world just because a handful of generations could not bare to lower their standard of living. The absolute moral issues will always be left unspoken. Those that talk about the moral issues will be marginalized as "un-serious" or "alarmist".</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">They will strive to distance themselves from the worst of the denialists. Pielke Jr and Fuller practically fell over their own feet trying to run away from Virginia State Attorney General Cuccinelli. But they will take "warmist" commentators that have a record of limiting themselves to the published science, like Romm, and equate them with denialists that spout off bat-shit nonsense - even thought the implication of equivalence is ridiculous. But you will know them by their actions, because they will spend most of their energy arguing against those with the clearest grasp of the facts, and moral issues, and political challenges.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">It is the foolish "moderate" position of shifting your stance a few inches when you are standing on tracks, freight train coming. The half measure doesn't leave you just half-dead.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;">All you can do is make the case to ethical decision makers that they are being sold a bill of goods, by comparing the statements and techniques and rhetorical stances of the Breakthrough Institute to bunglers that stood in the way of decisions of moral courage, and the weavers of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="The Emperor's New Clothes">the Emperors New Clothes</a>. These are the "moderate" apologists for moral failures - like those who stood in the way of eradicating slavery, or were the audience for the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Letter from Birmingham Jail">Letter from a Birmingham Jail</a>, or were willing to negotiate with Hitler, or were willing to overlook Stalin's crimes. In all these cases, you could find "moderates" that participated in moral failures, and argued for positions with shabby facts and shabby rhetorical devices.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><b><i>Edit: 09/14/10</i></b></div><div style="padding-bottom: 6pt; padding-top: 6pt;"><a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/09/breakthrough-idea.html?showComment=1284443568130#c2860909406628614832">Reply by Steve Bloom</a>:</div><blockquote>Moe, Rockefeller is the BTI fiscal sponsor; the main funder throughout has been the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Cummings_Foundation" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Nathan Cummings Foundation">Nathan Cummings Foundation</a>. By itself the fiscal sponsorship doesn't mean much,although it may well in this instance.</blockquote><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=0d46bcce-4ed1-48e1-bcbf-6fb645c37e88" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-39740482976729149262010-08-30T16:01:00.000-07:002010-08-30T16:03:34.217-07:00How can we define "Useful", when it comes to our models of reality?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/N-Gauge_Cassiopeia_E26_&_EF81_from_Kato.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/N-Gauge_Cassiopeia_E26_&_EF81_from_Kato.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wikimedia Commons: "N-Gauge Cassiopeia E26 & EF81 from Kato"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>A comment to <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/08/useful_models_m.html">"Useful models, model checking, and external validation: a mini-discussion"</a> by <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/">Andrew Gelman</a> - <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog/">Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science</a><br />
<p></p>Gelman wrote (with <a class="zem_slink" href="http://bactra.org/" rel="homepage nofollow" title="Cosma Shalizi">Cosma Shalizi</a>) a very fine philosophical justification for real-world, effective Bayesian techniques, which differs greatly from the usual philosophy associated with <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Bayesian probability">Bayesians</a>.<br />
<p></p><a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/philosophy_chapter.pdf">Gelman, Shalizi: Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics in the social sciences</a><br />
<p></p>My own recurring criticism of Gelman is of using Bayesian/statistical models to the exclusion of others. I am more comfortable with the idea of models of different type in competition.<br />
<blockquote><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/search/label/Model%20building"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/search/label/Model%20building</span></a></blockquote><blockquote>The multiple models you then have will now compete in different uses - based on predictive power, accuracy, ability to calculate meaningful error ranges, cost of collecting data, cost of computation, cost of comparison, ability to predict outcomes from interventions, cost of understanding, etc.</blockquote><p></p>quoting Gelman:<br />
<blockquote><i>"We always talk about a model being "useful" but the concept is hard to quantify."</i></blockquote>My comment:<br />
Simply build a model of costs and gains and methods of comparison between models! If a model is good enough for your work, a model must be good enough as a working definition of "useful"!<br />
<div><div><p></p>Sometimes the best answer to "Why" is "Just because". Sometimes the best mechanism for rating different models is another model. The Skeptics will always howl, so you simply have to demonstrate that their own behavior is consistent with putting undue confidence in their own model, whether a conscious model or unconscious. (And, it must simply terminate with a model, because of the limits of the tools available to the human brain. Only a model, probably over-simplified, can be manipulated with the agility needed to predict future outcomes of the universe from actions considered now, in real-time.)</div><div><p></p>Just keep asking the Skeptic "Why" with regards to their own personal actions, and when they hit the "Just because" point, they probably have described a model of utility, assumed true without proof, as an answer to "Why" in the previous step.</div><div><p></p>If the Skeptic refuses ultimate responsibility over their personal actions, and tries to plead pure capriciousness or mystery, then their model is simply statistical, based on stimulus and internal states (like stress) that can be approximately discovered with objective external measures (like <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_skin_response" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Galvanic skin response">galvanic skin response</a>). Of course, it is easier to plead pure capriciousness or mystery than demonstrate it - if their behavior is well predicted by a deterministic model suggested by another, the Skeptic is shut up. Most times the reason for behaviors is gross and banal, no matter how elevated the sophistry of the Skeptic.</div></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=dcc73f15-61e5-4f00-9fd6-2f4c4377a724" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-87793445509158338392010-07-30T15:52:00.000-07:002010-07-31T13:53:39.108-07:00Thoughts on Roger Pielke Jr. | Stand-Up Economist - Yoram Bauman<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Childe%27s_tomb_2.jpg/800px-Childe%27s_tomb_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Childe%27s_tomb_2.jpg/800px-Childe%27s_tomb_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://wikipedia.org%20-%20childe%27s_tomb/">wikipedia.org - Childe's_Tomb</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<a href="http://www.standupeconomist.com/blog/economics/thoughts-on-roger-pielke-jr/">Thoughts on Roger Pielke Jr. | Stand-Up Economist - Yoram Bauman</a><br />
<blockquote>As an economist, I found Roger’s lack of discussion of climate impacts to be extremely disturbing. If—totally hypothetically—the science said that hitting 450ppm would cause the planet to explode, I’m pretty sure Roger’s talk would have looked different. (At least I hope so!) The economic point here is that <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-benefit_analysis" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Cost-benefit analysis">cost-benefit analysis</a> has two halves—costs and benefits—and you can’t do it by just talking about one of the two halves. Why Roger failed to talk about both halves has me totally perplexed and leaves me questioning how much he actually knows about economics. (For the record, he’s not an economist, so I think this is a legitimate question, not an insulting one. He’s a political scientist, but his talk was not about the intersection of science and politics; his talk was fundamentally about economics.)</blockquote><div style="text-align: center;">RPJr's rhetorical trick "<i>there is a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresentation displayed in this post... Fortunately, my new book covers all of these points so that there should be no ambiguity in my views.</i>" is annoying.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">As if a book is a tomb for the ideas of a public intellectual, and it makes them incapable of stating plainly their views in public forums.</span></i></b></div><br />
Y. Bauman refuses to play ball:<br />
<blockquote>"Okay, here are some questions: (1) What did you say about the tenets of climate science? (Then I’ll try to get a video of your talk and see if I owe you an apology.) (2) How would you quickly characterize the main points of your talk? (3) Since you note above that you “did not discuss costs or benefits”, I’m curious about why. Do you not think cost-benefit analysis is important? (4) How (if at all) would your talk have been different if the scientific consensus was that 450ppm would destroy the planet?"</blockquote>Is RPJr so craven as to simply "<a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_and_run_%28vehicular%29" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Hit and run (vehicular)">hit-and-run</a>" from this forum, now that the questions are specific? Stay tuned!<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
Related posts:<br />
<ul><li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/07/post-email-hacking-phase-of-climate.html">The Post-Email-Hacking phase of climate denialism</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/03/complicity-and-sympathy-for-comforting.html">Complicity and Sympathy for Comforting but False & Dangerous Ideas</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/03/it-is-time-for-some-humility-oh-lordy.html">It is time for some humility - Oh Lordy...</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-using-term-denialist-unfair.html">Is using the term "Denialist" unfair?</a></li>
</ul><div><b><i>[Edit 7/31/10]</i></b></div><div><br />
</div><div>To my surprise, RPJr replied; his answers:</div><div><blockquote>1. I used a “bathtub” model to describe the challenge of stabilization and I argued that everyone in the debate on all sides agree that CO2 has impacts. Where there are debates is when those impacts become dangerous (the height of the bathtub, e.g., 450 ppm) and the consequences of spilling over. Such debates are of course legitimate.</blockquote><blockquote>2. Three points: A. Targets and timetables for reducing emissions now being discussed or even enacted in law (e.g., in the UK) are not credible (I think I proved this), B. Stabilizing concentrations requires advances in technology deployment and innovation rather than GDP contraction (shown a bit, but largely asserted), C. Acccelerating decarbonization requires much greater public investments in technology (asserted not proven).</blockquote><blockquote>3. I’ve written a lot of CBA, and teach it as well. This talk was not about CBA, but policy evaluation. I am happy to discuss the topic.</blockquote><blockquote>4. I have no idea.</blockquote></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2291/1806225034_3692692a61_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2291/1806225034_3692692a61_m.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/1806225034/">flickr.com/photos/psd/1806225034</a><br />
"Moral Compass" by "<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/">psd</a>"</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div>My comments to (1): "Such debates are of course legitimate." RPJr has a problem with the debate coming to provisional conclusion, on the side of the science and the moral question of future generations being left a livable world - a provisional conclusion where we begin work on drastically reducing carbon emissions and mitigate previous carbon emissions, where GDP takes a major haircut if need be. RPJr's fretting and fussing is consistent with the moral question of future generations being left a livable world always taking a backseat to today's GDP/standard of living - but he doesn't have the guts to admit that, or he realizes that if his cravenness is so obvious, he gives up any chance of political effect.</div><div><br />
</div><div>My comments to (2): Actually, this is the first sensible thing RPJr has ever said, to my knowledge. It is very true: we have exactly zero experience with asking citizens to voluntarily cut their standard of living for the moral outcome of future generations being left a livable world. "Warmists", it can be argued, don't have the guts to admit this, or they realize that if they are so truthful they give up any chance of political effect.</div><div><br />
</div><div>My comments to (3): Why talk to economists about policy evaluation without reference to cause and effect? That was Y. Bauman's original puzzlement.</div><div><br />
</div><div>My comments to (4): Pathetic. Again, RPJr cannot deal with science predicting catastrophe (catastrophe, because it is hard to imagine the moral monsters that could cheerfully leave future generations an unlivable world), because his goal is that he moral question of future generations being left a livable world <b><i>always taking a backseat</i></b> to today's GDP/standard of living. That can be used to perfectly predict his reaction to anything.</div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=6f952b60-0c45-41e5-b203-ff50707f3f41" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-57324245145953401192010-07-30T10:36:00.000-07:002010-07-30T10:37:29.896-07:00Protect American Jobs! No Soot Tax!<a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/july/soot-emissions-ice-072810.html">news.stanford.edu/news/2010/july/soot-emissions-ice-072810.html</a><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3178/2960116125_1158ba3c59_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3178/2960116125_1158ba3c59_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/2960116125/">flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/2960116125/</a><br />
Ice cased Adelie penguins<br />
after a blizzard at Cape Denison /<br />
photograph by Frank Hurley</td></tr>
</tbody></table><blockquote>"The quickest, best way to slow the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice is to reduce soot emissions from the burning of fossil fuel, wood and dung, according to a new study by Stanford researcher <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Mark Z. Jacobson"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Mark Z. Jacobson</span></a>.</blockquote><blockquote>[...]</blockquote><blockquote>Soot from the burning of fossil fuels and solid biofuels contributes far more to global warming than has been thought, according to a new Stanford study. But, unlike carbon dioxide, soot lingers only a few weeks in the atmosphere, so cutting emissions could have a significant and rapid impact on the climate. Controlling soot may be the only option for saving the Arctic sea ice from melting."</blockquote>I smell <a href="http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&as_q=stealth+advocacy&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images">Stealth Issue Advocacy</a>! I smell a <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=honest+broker&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images">Dishonest Broker</a>! <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(I smell a witch)</span><br />
<br />
Protect American Jobs! No Soot Tax! In my new book, <a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/07/roger-at-face-value.html?showComment=1280259864855#c8903168074699601445">soon to come out</a>, I argue that there are huge technical barriers, costs are too high and that we lack political will.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/10/19/the-global-warming-church-vs-superfreakonomics/">Nathan Myhrvold and the Freeman Dyson</a> recommend painting black penguins white with lead based paint.<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
Related links:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul><li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/04/next-tack-in-climate-disruption.html">The next tack in Climate Disruption denialism - Scientists must be Nihilists</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/07/calling-climategate-for-what-it-really.html">Calling "Climategate" for what it really is - Kerry Emanuel</a></li>
<li><a href="http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/07/post-email-hacking-phase-of-climate.html">The Post-Email-Hacking phase of climate denialism - What can we expect?</a></li>
</ul><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=f6056e79-d131-4098-b072-583f8f12431c" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-77140099370108643502010-07-28T16:58:00.000-07:002010-07-29T15:18:40.055-07:00Can it be Irrational to prize Rationality? What is Rationality?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/D%C3%BCrer_Melancholia_I.jpg/220px-D%C3%BCrer_Melancholia_I.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/D%C3%BCrer_Melancholia_I.jpg/220px-D%C3%BCrer_Melancholia_I.jpg" width="247" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>I am a big fan of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Plous">Scott Plous</a>'s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Judgment-Decision-Making/dp/0070504776">The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making</a>, because not only does it call out cognitive failure modes, but it also suggests remedies. The book is written in a non-technical style, so uses the conventional language of modes of thought being "Rational" or "Irrational", and "biases" leading to "Irrational" decisions.<br />
<br />
I found a blog post "<a href="http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-postdecisional-dissonance-functional/#comment-1674">Is postdecisional dissonance functional?</a>" that takes exception to calling "Post-decision dissonance" irrational (post-decisional dissonance is where the self-judged value of a chosen item increases, and the value of a declined item decreases, compared to the self-judged values before the choice is made: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Post-decision_dissonance">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Post-decision_dissonance</a> ).<br />
<br />
"Is postdecisional dissonance functional?" seems like a yes/no question, but the answer can change from situation to situation. We can construct a situation where this bias is "Irrational/dysfunctional", or is "Rational/functional".<br />
<br />
Example: If postdecisional dissonance is the way that one "stops" the decision process, instead of endlessly revisiting a decision and wasting time and energy, then postdecisional dissonance is functional (<a href="http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-postdecisional-dissonance-functional/">this is the point raised by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski</a>). If postdecisional dissonance keeps you from switching decisions when later you are offered the alternate choice along with a small but real payment, because you deny yourself the additional payment even though the options were judged to be identical in value, postdecisional dissonance is dysfunctional.<br />
<br />
Which is the most likely scenario? What is the cost of a more rigorous and rational analysis? Different answers from subtle changes to these questions...<br />
<br />
All of these biases, because they are manifest in humans today, cannot absolutely prevent reproductive success or success in cultural transmission of ideas, obviously. So you are on very shaky ground calling these biases non-adaptive. And if you cannot call them non-adaptive, what is the exact basis for calling them "Irrational/dysfunctional"?<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Modeling, instead of using the language of Bias and Rationality and Functionality</span></span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://statistics.gmu.edu/images/Box.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://statistics.gmu.edu/images/Box.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Mason University,<br />
Dept of Statistics,<br />
Gallery of Great Statisticians,<br />
George E. P. Box<br />
<a href="http://statistics.gmu.edu/pages/famous.html">http://statistics.gmu.edu/pages/famous.html</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>That is why it is not always wise to use the culturally defined notion of rationality, or assume an implied sound situationally defined notion of rationality, and why *<i>sometimes</i>* there is benefit to specifically stating:<br />
<br />
(1) the failure mode of decision that you are trying to avoid and<br />
<br />
(2) how you are <b><i>modeling</i></b> the<br />
(2A) cost of falling victim the failure mode and the<br />
(2B) cost of remedy<br />
<br />
(3) how you are <b><i>modeling</i></b> the likelihood of different scenarios taking place.<br />
<br />
And different models will give different answers. As <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box">George E. P. Box</a> says "<a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Box">All models are false but some models are useful.</a>"<br />
<br />
<b><i>[Edit 7/29/2010]</i></b><br />
<br />
Very helpful reply [ <a href="http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-postdecisional-dissonance-functional/#comment-1675">http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-postdecisional-dissonance-functional/#comment-1675</a>] from academic <a href="http://bacon.umcs.lublin.pl/~ktalmont/">Konrad Talmont-Kaminski</a>, but my profound ignorance prevents me from getting much from it. I am self-taught exclusively from an engineer's perspective of decision making from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_analysis">Decision Analysis</a> texts [ term coined in 1964 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_A._Howard">Ronald A. Howard</a> ].<br />
<br />
I fixed the post above, to add<br />
<br />
1) specific examples as to how postdecisional dissonance can be functional or dysfunctional,<br />
<br />
2) why one is unjustified to call manifest biases non-adaptive, and<br />
<br />
3) the need to model the likelihood of different situations arising, or else the the analysis is nonsensical.<br />
<div><br />
<b><i>[Edit #2 7/29/2010]</i></b><br />
<b><i><br />
</i></b><br />
<a href="http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-postdecisional-dissonance-functional/#comment-1677">Konrad Talmont-Kaminski recommends</a> the writings of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon">Herbert Simon</a>, Nobel Prize winner in Economics 1978.</div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=afad9b4f-5e43-4607-89c0-e9afe29f9522" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-51249466149605436462010-07-21T17:04:00.000-07:002010-07-23T15:17:50.541-07:00The link between Judith Curry and John Christy<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/11/15139012_201d7a3389.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/11/15139012_201d7a3389.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oobrien/15139012/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/oobrien/15139012/</a> oobrien</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Judith Curry has the annoying habit of constantly recommending articles that she, herself, has not read closely and cannot personally vouch for. As if she is feeding the text of opposing arguments to a mailing list, in partial real-time, and parroting back the links.<br />
<br />
Plus the reality of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer">Singer</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg">Lomborg</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christy">John R. Christy</a> being spent forces for irrational climate inaction and denialism, because prior talking points have been proved absolutely ridiculous over just a few years.<br />
<br />
So the next wave of voices, with watered down arguments and moved goalposts, are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_A._Pielke,_Jr.">Pielke Jr.</a> and <a href="http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/">Judith Curry</a>.<br />
<br />
Offering articles that you cannot stand behind yourself is just another "heads I win, t<s>ails you lose</s> tails I don't lose" trick in the <a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy/">Art of Controversy</a>. So at least I can inform myself about the original source of the weak-soup arguments.<br />
<br />
With not much to go on, and probably too much leaping without looking, I sense a link between the new voice of Judith Curry and the spent force of John R. Christy, made famous for his hatchet job on Al Gore in the Wall Street Journal opinion page.<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/ess/index.html">http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/ess/index.html</a><br />
<br />
NASA EARTH SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE REPORTS<br />
<br />
Last updated August 29, 2009<br />
The NASA Earth Science Subcommittee (ESS) advises the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) on priorities within the Earth Science Division (ESD), focusing on tactical implementation of the strategic vision expressed by NASA Initiatives and by external inputs from organizations such as the National Research Council (NRC). ESS was organized by NASA in April 2006 and presently has the following membership: Byron Tapley (chair), Daniel Jacob (vice-chair), <b>John R. Christy</b>, <b>Judy Curry</b>, James Hansen, Raymond Hoff, Gregory Jenkins, William Large, Patricia Matrai, Patrick McCormick, Anna Michalak, Jean-Bernard Minster, Michael S. Ramsey, Steven Running, Kamal Sarabandi, Robert Schutz, Hank Shugart, David Siegel, Mark Simons, Konrad Steffen, Charles Vorosmarty. Executive Secretary for ESS is Lucia Tsaoussi.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://terryfrank.net/?p=2725">http://terryfrank.net/?p=2725</a><br />
<br />
Nobel Laureate Dr. John Christy: “Without energy, life is brutal and short”<br />
DAILY NEWS & COMMENTS<br />
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal pointed to an interesting notable quote:<br />
<blockquote><i>And when we build — and I’m one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets — we don’t see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place. ??For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum.</i></blockquote><a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1919858/posts">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1919858/posts</a><br />
<br />
JOHN R. CHRISTY: My Nobel Moment (2007 Nobel Peace Prize)<br />
Wall Street Journal | November 1, 2007 | JOHN R. CHRISTY<br />
Posted on Thu Nov 01 2007 18:35:15 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time) by neverdem<br />
<blockquote><i>I've had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.ipcc.ch/" rel="homepage nofollow" title="Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don't think I will add "0.0001 Nobel Laureate" to my resume...</i></blockquote><a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/wiki/index.php/Deniers:_John_Christy">http://www.exxonsecrets.org/wiki/index.php/Deniers:_John_Christy</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=eb776fac-fa94-489e-903b-56ef48d6392c" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a><span class="zem-script "><script defer="defer" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" type="text/javascript">
</script></span></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-28373302334994742412010-07-21T16:34:00.000-07:002010-07-21T16:34:12.107-07:00Calling "Climategate" for what it really is - Kerry Emanuel<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2477/3858586716_e04bf4fa47.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2477/3858586716_e04bf4fa47.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ikaink/3858586716/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/ikaink/3858586716/</a> IkaInk (Julian Wearne) via Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1444"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">“Climategate”: A Different Perspective - July 19, 2010 By Kerry Emanuel</span></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/20/kerry-emanuel-climategate-richard-lindzen">ClimateProgress: Kerry Emanuel calls Climategate “the latest in a series of coordinated, politically motivated attacks that represent an aggravated assault on scholarship” - July 20, 2010</a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Slams Lindzen, Singer and Happer as liars</span></i></div><br />
ClimateProgress:<br />
<blockquote>MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel has been at the forefront of trying to explain many aspects of climate science to the public, especially in his field of expertise — hurricanes. He has written a good essay on the hacked emails, ” ‘<a href="http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1444">Climategate’: A Different Perspective</a> [ <a href="http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1444">http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1444</a> ],” originally published at the National Association of Scholars [NAS] website. Near the end, he notes:</blockquote><blockquote><i>While the climategate email authors are castigated for not being paragons of virtue, the sins of others go unremarked. In the summer of 2009, a one-page letter was sent to Congress, signed by one actual climate scientist and six physicists with little or no background in climate science, three of whom were retired.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i><b>Among other untruths, it contained the sentence, referring to evidence of anthropogenic global warming, “There is no such evidence; it doesn’t exist.” I confronted the sole climate scientist among the authors with this statement, and he confessed that he did not hold that to be the case. Last I checked, lying to Congress was a federal crime.</b></i></blockquote><blockquote>Emanuel doesn’t mention <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Richard Lindzen">Richard Lindzen</a> by name, but that is who he means (as is made clear <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/05/16/global_warming_debate_makes_climate_tough_on_friends/">here</a> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[ </span><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/05/16/global_warming_debate_makes_climate_tough_on_friends/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/05/16/global_warming_debate_makes_climate_tough_on_friends/</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ]</span>). The laughable letter itself is <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-11224-Baltimore-Weather-Examiner~y2009m7d1-Read-scientists-open-letter-to-congress-You-are-being-decieved-about-global-warming">here</a> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[ </span><a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-11224-Baltimore-Weather-Examiner~y2009m7d1-Read-scientists-open-letter-to-congress-You-are-being-decieved-about-global-warming"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">http://www.examiner.com/x-11224-Baltimore-Weather-Examiner~y2009m7d1-Read-scientists-open-letter-to-congress-You-are-being-decieved-about-global-warming</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ]</span>. Emanuel is thus calling out his old friend Lindzen, plus William Happer and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Fred Singer">S. Fred Singer</a>, as liars on climate science. No argument here.</blockquote>Kerry Emanuel:<br />
<blockquote>"those interested in treating the issue as an objective problem in risk assessment and management are labeled “alarmists”, a particularly infantile smear considering what is at stake. This deployment of inflammatory terminology has a distinctly Orwellian flavor. It originates not in laboratories and classrooms, where ideas are the central focus and one hardly ever hears labels applied to researchers, but in the media, the blogosphere, and political think tanks, where polarization attracts attention and/or turns a profit.</blockquote><blockquote>But it turns out that there are not enough mavericks in climate science to meet the media’s and blogosphere’s insatiable appetite for conflict. Thus into the arena steps a whole host of charlatans posing as climate scientists. These are a toxic brew of retired physicists, TV weather forecasters, political junkies, media hacks, and anyone else willing to tell an interviewer that he/she is a climate scientist."</blockquote>The whole Climate Inactivist circle-jerk:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><i>"But, but, but... we must not hamper "spirited debate"... um uh... guilty of "stealth advocacy"... hurr durr... let's be "Serious" and "Reasonable"... herp derp... over-zealous scientists are most responsible for a warming earth..."</i></blockquote><br />
Kerry Emanuel is a welcome remedy to prattle.<br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=e540531a-56b4-4723-bb92-1531cd2b060b" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script defer="defer" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" type="text/javascript">
</script></span></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270871767981872661.post-85357790871231279982010-07-06T15:57:00.000-07:002010-07-06T15:57:08.114-07:00Uncertainty is not an argument for the status quo<div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/114604639_b954682545.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/114604639_b954682545.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The cognitive errors that lets some take demonstrations of uncertainty and confuse them for arguments for continuing the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Status quo">status quo</a>:</div><div><br />
</div><div>(For the following, substitute for "plausible" the phrase "developed/confirmed to such a degree that it is perverse to withhold provisional assent")</div><div><br />
</div><div>1) To inform a rational choice of actions, plausible full narratives compete solely with other plausible full narratives. If I open a door, and in the bright light of the room see a breathing tiger across the room, it is rational to step back out of the room and close the door. Any demonstration of uncertainty of my ability to tell a living tiger from a amusement park animatronic tiger is not an argument to stand motionless at the open threshold. The demonstration of uncertainty can be used to choose between plausible full narratives by discounting some narratives, but it (the demonstration of uncertainty) doesn't have the power to construct a plausible full narrative in opposition to the one under consideration, much less make the opposite of the considered action rationally attractive.</div><div><br />
</div><div>2) Rational action and rational inaction are both born of rational choice. By changing the language, changing the viewpoint, changing the scope, we can phrase action in terms of inaction, and inaction in terms of action. So what is temporally/culturally/situationally described as an action/intervention is under no extra burden of rational justification than what is likewise described as inaction/absence-of-intervention, and inaction does not have a lesser burden of rational justification than action. (Imagine that the decision to burn <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Fossil fuel">fossil fuels</a> is remade on the 1st of each year, for example, with a corresponding decision of how much. So burning fossil fuels in the new year is the intervention, and we wish study if that intervention is rational.)</div><div><br />
</div><div>3) Demonstratively persuading plausible full narratives are not in competition with a swarm of idiosyncratic narratives that are each in contradiction with all others of the swarm. The contradictions inside the swarm renders the whole swarm repellent to the rational. From the swarm should emerge a small number of demonstratively persuading plausible full narratives, first, to challenge the mainstream narrative, second. Or else it is more likely the idiosyncratic narratives are just a symptom of the opposition to the mainstream being handicapped by debilitatingly idiosyncratic minds, incapable of meaningful rational persuasion.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Consider the inability to construct a plausible full narrative for a wide conspiracy to assassinate JFK from those who find fault with details of the many investigators that agree that Oswald was the sole gunman. Consider the inability to construct a plausible full narrative for a wide conspiracy throughout the US government to bring down the Twin Towers by <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Demolition">controlled demolition</a> from those who find fault with the details of the many investigators. Consider their pathetic nature. Likewise, note that those who would dispose of the mainstream narrative about <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Greenhouse gas">carbon emissions</a> and climate disruption and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification" rel="wikipedia nofollow" title="Ocean acidification">ocean acidification</a> shirk from the burden of supplying an persuading plausible full narrative in opposition. How quickly they rush to use the art of controversy! Is it because they have no alternative?<br />
<br />
Inspired by comments to the blog posting...</div></div><div><br />
</div><a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/07/there-are-skeptics-and-then-there-are.html">Only In It For The Gold: There Are Skeptics and Then There Are Skeptics</a><br />
<div><br />
</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">People who do not support vigorous policy</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b><i>can only be skeptics if they offer very high certainty that the science is biased to overstate the risks</i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. Nobody does this very successfully. Some pretend to do this; at least their position is coherent, if not very well supported.</span></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=9671b2f3-0f27-4560-80d4-7795be0554ed" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script defer="defer" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" type="text/javascript">
</script></span></div>manuel moe ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04878149837118503541noreply@blogger.com0