Quotulatiousness

June 30, 2018

Wealthy virtue-signalling hurts the poor

Filed under: Books, Economics, Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Catellaxy Files, Rafe Champion discusses some of the points raised by Matt Ridley in his recent book:

Essentially, the poor pay for the virtue-signalling of the rich. Dr Matt Ridley opens chapter 14 of Climate Science: The Facts with some blunt claims.

    Here is a simple fact about the world today. Climate change is doing more good than harm. Here is another fact. Climate change policy is doing more harm than good.

On top of that he points out that the poor are carrying the cost of today’s climate policy. That is something for the ALP [Australian Labour Party] and the social justice warriors to think about.

This should remind people of another great postwar example of destructive virtue-signalling – massive foreign aid to the developing nations aka the Third World. That did more harm than good for the people of the Third World, apart from the crony criminals in power. The great Lord Peter Bauer was onto that very smartly, starting in the 1940s and his findings have been consolidated lately, notably by William Easterly [in] The White Man’s Burden: Why the west’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. There are exceptions to the rule such as hands-on medical care and private education.

Ridley mentions in passing some of the cases where apparently smart people have made very bad calls, starting with a prominent and wealthy leftwinger who he debated on TV. Faced with the charge that climate policy was hurting the poor he replied “But what about my grandchildren?”. As though the future wellbeing of the presumably affluent and privileged grandchildren of the talking head might be threatened by policies that help the poor who are with us at present. Ridley also cited a son of Charles Darwin who thought that eugenic breeding programs were essential to save civilization and Paul Ehrlich who in 1972 predicted that millions would die due to over-population (prompting the one-child policy in China).

June 25, 2018

The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – The World We Know – Extra History – #5

Filed under: History, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 23 Jun 2018

Up until the 20th century, people assumed light behaved like a wave, passing through the “aether wind” — a fluid with incomprehensible properties. When the Michelson-Morley experiment disproved the aether’s existence, Einstein put out the theory of relativity — that space and time were part of the same package.

It’s 1887. Physics is almost complete. We almost know enough to see the clockwork of the universe. Only one last great question remains: how does light travel?

June 21, 2018

Extra Scenes! James May Explains Boomerangs | Earth Lab

Filed under: Australia, Randomness, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

BBC Earth Lab
Published on 23 Aug 2013

James May discusses wings and propellers in these extra scenes from why boomerangs always come back.

June 20, 2018

Kids might interact more with the real world if parents weren’t so afraid to let them engage with it

Filed under: Gaming, Health, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Frank Furedi on the unintended consequences of too much parental protection from the real world:

Every summer, parents are confronted with new threats to their children to obsess about. We used to worry about our children being outdoors and being abducted. This year, we’re told that keeping them indoors will mean they become addicted to the internet.

In recent months, children’s digital activities have become a key focus of adult anxiety. Last month a Pew survey on the ‘silent addiction’ found that 45 per cent of American teenagers admit to using the internet ‘almost constantly’. In the UK, the idea of internet addiction has also become mainstream. Stories of kids becoming addicted to videogames, especially to a hugely popular online shoot-em-up called Fortnite, are everywhere.

[…]

My research has led me to the conclusion that the compulsive attachment of children to their online worlds is down to the fact that adult society has made it very difficult for them to engage with the offline world. Risk-averse child-rearing has created a climate in which children are constantly discouraged from experiencing life outdoors. During the past three decades, a culture of fear has enveloped childhood. Alarmist accounts of stranger danger, bullying or the likelihood of traffic accidents have made parents reluctant to allow their children to go out and explore.

Today, parents frequently accompany children on their way to school. They hover over them when they play in the park. Many children are actively discouraged from playing on their own outdoors. Schools forbid pupils from playing conkers or having snowball fights. No wonder that the simple delights of climbing trees and building dens have been replaced by hours spent in front of screens.

Surveys indicate that young children would rather be playing with their mates outdoors than cooped up in their digital bedrooms. But children are inventive creatures, who will take any opportunity to create their own world and try to establish a measure of independence from parental control. Young people are highly motivated to construct their own space where they can engage with their peers and develop their personality. Indeed, one of the reasons Fortnite has become so popular is that it allows children to join groups and talk live to one another, thus offering the illusion of forging relationships with other gamers – a sense of community.

June 19, 2018

The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – A Most Terrible Possibility – Extra History – #4

Filed under: History, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 16 Jun 2018

In the early 19th century, people started to wonder if the Fifth Postulate couldn’t be proven at all — meaning that it could be right, but it could also be wrong. Bolyai, Lobachevsky, and Riemann started exploring hyperbolic geometry and other strange realms…

June 14, 2018

QotD: The gender-neutral child

Filed under: Health, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The media is full of excited stories heralding the revolution in children’s play. This recent headline in Time is typical: “The Next Generation of Kids Will Play With Gender Neutral Toys.” But children are not gender-neutral, and they famously resist efforts to make them so. If 40 percent of millennials think otherwise, that’s probably because they haven’t had kids yet.

Parents and teachers should certainly expose their kids to a wide range of toys and play, and teach them to accept kids who enjoy gender non-conforming toys. When toy companies rigidly classify certain toys as girl-only or boy-only, that may create a stigma against those who cross the line. Overt signage is superfluous anyway. So let’s hope other retailers follow Target’s example.

But the crusade promoted by the White House is not about tolerance for non-conformers. Its goal is to re-socialize the majority of gender-typical children toward gender neutrality. Jarret is right that it won’t be easy. With few exceptions, children are powerfully drawn to sex-stereotyped play.

Parents who read too much Judith Butler in college and view gender as fluid and malleable may be startled by the counterevidence their three-year-olds provide. The usually eloquent Julia Turner, editor of Slate, became tongue-tied a few weeks ago when she tried to explain a mysterious development at home: Her little twin sons were obsessed with wheeled objects — particularly cement mixers. Parenthood, she confessed, had “complicated” her worldview. Turner kept affirming her loyalty to the gender-is-a-social-construct school. But then, referring to her sons’ insistent boyishness, she uttered four heretical words: “There’s a there there…”

Indeed there is. And it takes a liberal arts degree not to see it. A 2012 cross-cultural study on sex differences confirmed what most of us see: despite some exceptions, females tend to be more sensitive, esthetic, sentimental, intuitive, and tender-minded, while males tend to be more utilitarian, objective, unsentimental, and tough-minded.

The female penchant for nurturing play and the male propensity for rough-and-tumble hold cross-culturally and even cross-species. Among our close relatives such as rhesus and vervet monkeys, researchers have found that females play with dolls far more than do their brothers, who prefer balls and toy cars. It seems unlikely the monkeys are acting out a culturally manufactured gender binary. Something else is going on. Most scientists attribute typical male/female differences to some yet-to-be understood combination of biology and culture.

Christina Hoff Sommers, “Those Who Push For Toy Neutrality Don’t Get Little Girls At All”, The Federalist, 2016-09-11.

June 12, 2018

Conformity

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

June 11, 2018

The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – Squaring the Circle – Extra History – #3

Filed under: History, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 9 Jun 2018

Euclidean geometry eventually found its way back into Europe, inspiring René Descartes to create the Cartesian coordinate system for maps, and Isaac Newton to invent calculus. Both these tools helped humanity understand the world better.

June 6, 2018

QotD: When the “Right Stuff” becomes “old school”

Filed under: History, Quotations, Space, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Consider the popular conception of firefighters: brave, selfless, strong enough to haul an incapacitated person from a burning building.

A few years ago, at a conference, I learned that many women were failing to qualify as firefighters, because they were coming up short on the strength test. What was so interesting, though, was that in practice, it turns out that one of the most important skills a firefighter needs is not so much the strength to drag an unconscious person from a building, but, far more commonly, the ability to coax someone who’s in danger and is terrified to come with them. Apparently, many women turn out to be far more persuasive than men – highlighting the importance of selection based on real-world skills, rather than legacy stereotypes.

Space flight offers another striking example of this phenomenon. In the context of a recent Tech Tonics podcast interview with Dorit Donoviel, director of the Biomedical Innovations Laboratory at the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, I had told Dr. Donoviel about my lifelong interest in astronomy and space, about launching Estes rockets and my love of the National Air and Space Museum and above all, about my affection for the heroism captured in the movie The Right Stuff, an all-time favorite.

In response, she laughed, and told me how “old school” that thinking was. When the space program started out, she explained, there was an exceptional degree of risk involved, and astronauts tended to be selected from the ranks of fighter pilots – because, in her words, they had “the skill sets and the cojones.” But today, she said, things are different – in large measure because the “space program is a lot safer than it used to be.”

Consequently, Donoviel explained, “Today what we’re looking for is less of the sort of alpha-male pilots, and more of the sort of scientists and engineers, geologists and earth scientists, folks who can work together in a cohesive manner in a team.”

Moreover, she added, the astronaut of the future needs to be able to endure long periods of boredom and the prolonged lack of stimulation – in many ways, the opposite of high-adrenaline “seat-of-the-pants flying” that in some ways characterized the early astronaut missions.

In space travel, as in firefighting, our notion of what constitutes the right skill set has evolved appreciably.

David Shaywitz, “Evolving Notions Of The Right Stuff — In Spaceflight And In Medicine”, Forbes, 2016-09-20.

June 4, 2018

The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – The Great Quest – Extra History – #2

Filed under: History, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 2 Jun 2018

For hundreds of years, Euclid’s geometry disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire. But in Constantinople, Islamic mathematicians, including Al-Khwarizmi (who gave us the word “algebra”) worked long and hard on proving the Fifth Postulate.

June 2, 2018

QotD: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In the early hours of April 20 1995, police knocked on the door of McArthur Wheeler and arrested him for holding-up two Pittsburgh banks the previous day. Wheeler could hardly have been surprised that the police were on to him: wearing no mask or disguise, he had ambled into the banks during business hours and brandished a gun in full view of security cameras. Nevertheless, he was astonished, protesting “but I wore the juice!” Wheeler had formed the erroneous belief that lemon juice rendered people invisible on video.

Wheeler is now a legend in psychology, since it was his regrettable escapade that inspired two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, to figure out whether we have a good sense of our own strengths and weaknesses. Dunning and Kruger set tests of grammar, logic and even having a sense of humour to a group of undergraduates. Then they asked them how they stacked up to others in the group. Was their grasp of logic and grammar better or worse than average? Were they better able than other students to distinguish funny from unfunny jokes?

Most students thought that they were above-average logicians, grammarians and wits but the Dunning-Kruger effect is not mere overconfidence. The competent people in the study had a reasonable grasp of where they stood in the pecking order. The incompetent ones were blissfully unaware of their incompetence. The good students knew that they were good; the bad students had no clue that they were bad.

Perhaps because Dunning and Kruger opened their 1999 research paper with the story of McArthur Wheeler, the Dunning-Kruger effect has now become a popular insult in some corners of the internet. We chuckle at people who are far too stupid to know that they are stupid. Unfortunately, such mockery misses the subtlety and universality of the effect. All of us are incompetent in some areas. When we stray into them, the Dunning-Kruger effect may be lurking.

The fundamental problem is a person trying to diagnose his own incompetence is — almost by necessity — likely to be missing the skills needed to make that diagnosis. Not knowing much grammar means you’re poorly placed to diagnose your ignorance of grammar.

Tim Harford, “Can trivia help us to be less ignorant of our own ignorance?”, TimHarford.com, 2016-09-06.

June 1, 2018

Pushing back the beginnings of life on Earth

Filed under: Australia, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Wired, Rebecca Boyle discusses the fossil record of life and how recent discoveries keep moving the date further and further back in Earth’s history:

In the arid, sun-soaked northwest corner of Australia, along the Tropic of Capricorn, the oldest face of Earth is exposed to the sky. Drive through the northern outback for a while, south of Port Hedlund on the coast, and you will come upon hills softened by time. They are part of a region called the Pilbara Craton, which formed about 3.5 billion years ago, when Earth was in its youth.

Look closer. From a seam in one of these hills, a jumble of ancient, orange-Creamsicle rock spills forth: a deposit called the Apex Chert. Within this rock, viewable only through a microscope, there are tiny tubes. Some look like petroglyphs depicting a tornado; others resemble flattened worms. They are among the most controversial rock samples ever collected on this planet, and they might represent some of the oldest forms of life ever found.

Last month, researchers lobbed another salvo in the decades-long debate about the nature of these forms. They are indeed fossil life, and they date to 3.465 billion years ago, according to John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin. If Valley and his team are right, the fossils imply that life diversified remarkably early in the planet’s tumultuous youth.

The fossils add to a wave of discoveries that point to a new story of ancient Earth. In the past year, separate teams of researchers have dug up, pulverized and laser-blasted pieces of rock that may contain life dating to 3.7, 3.95 and maybe even 4.28 billion years ago. All of these microfossils — or the chemical evidence associated with them — are hotly debated. But they all cast doubt on the traditional tale.

As that story goes, in the half-billion years after it formed, Earth was hellish and hot. The infant world would have been rent by volcanism and bombarded by other planetary crumbs, making for an environment so horrible, and so inhospitable to life, that the geologic era is named the Hadean, for the Greek underworld. Not until a particularly violent asteroid barrage ended some 3.8 billion years ago could life have evolved.

But this story is increasingly under fire. Many geologists now think Earth may have been tepid and watery from the outset. The oldest rocks in the record suggest parts of the planet’s crust had cooled and solidified by 4.4 billion years ago. Oxygen in those ancient rocks suggest the planet had water as far back as 4.3 billion years ago. And instead of an epochal, final bombardment, meteorite strikes might have slowly tapered off as the solar system settled into its current configuration.

May 31, 2018

QotD: Difficulties in using self-reported data

Filed under: Britain, Health, Quotations, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Nick Cohen, over in the Guardian, is busy telling us all that we must drink less and that Scotland raising the minimum price of alcohol (hitting poor people’s cheap cider and bargain booze, but not directly affecting craft lagers, appellation d’origine contrôlée wines and artisan gin) is a Good Thing because the industry makes its profits by exploiting addicts who are drinking themselves to death en masse.

    It is a truth universally unacknowledged that, like drugs cartels, the drink industry makes most of its money from addicts. It thrives on hooked customers, who put boosting the brewers’ profits before their and their families’ health and happiness. Sixty per cent of alcohol sales – worth £27bn a year in England – are to “increasing risk” drinkers taking more than 21 units of alcohol a week, in the case of men (about 10 pints or two bottles of wine), and “harmful” drinkers taking more than 50… Twenty one units (14 for women) does not sound much in my world of journalism, but it is a sign of people who cannot go a day without a shot of their drug, which is as good a definition of an addiction as any.

Now, there’s a question there about who decided what that “risk” was and how large it was. Cohen gets into the Salvation Army-style temperance-league apocalyptic warnings about the horrors of heavy drinking and warns that by the time you’re knocking back fifty units a week (for men, thirty-five for women) you’re undergoing “full degeneration”.

But is that based on any firm evidence? One interesting study, reassuring to the toper, can be found here, which among other things makes the gentle point that since we either under-report what we consume, or we pour away half of the booze we buy undrunk, planning policy on what we admit to consuming may not be accurate.

Jason Lynch, “How Much Is ‘Too Much’?”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-05-08.

May 29, 2018

The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – Sacred Geometry – Extra History – #1

Filed under: Greece, History, Religion, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Extra Credits
Published on 26 May 2018

Before we get into non-Euclidian geometry, we have to know: what even is geometry? What’s up with the Pythagorean math cult? Who was Euclid, for that matter? And what the heck is the 5th Postulate?

“[T]here’s just no way that we’re going to get to fentanyl harm reduction without [legalization]”

Filed under: Health, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tim Worstall reports on a recent Nebraska drug bust involving enough fentanyl “to kill 26 million people” (that is, about 120 lbs of the stuff) and explains why the current enforcement regime is going to have to change:

Now, I’m in favour of all of these drugs being legalised anyway. It’s the idiot’s body, up to them what they ingest in whatever manner. If it kills them, well, their choice. The argument that they shouldn’t therefore we must prevent them doesn’t cut much ice with me.

But put that aside and think in a utilitarian manner. If we can prevent overdoses and wasted lives then we should. But only if how we’re going to do it is better than the results of either not doing so or even using some other manner of dealing with the problem.

It’s arguable that clamping down on certain illegal drugs does at least limit their penetration of the market. I don’t think this is true of heroin but perhaps it is potentially true. It’s absolutely not true of fentanyl. For that’s a synthetic opioid. A decent chemist can synthesise it – a good one can make the precursors as well. There is no need to get opium, morphine or any other poppy related product that we already control.

It’s also, as we can see, alarmingly cheap already. Easy to smuggle in vast quantities of doses.

There’s another problem with it. The difference between a dose that gives a high and one that kills is pretty narrow. And it’s an extremely potent drug as well. Quantities for either are small – smaller than can generally be measured by users with candles and teaspoons.

It’s cheap, easy enough to make, has no precursors we can control, kills easily enough and dosage is alarmingly difficult to get right. So, what do we do?

We’re not going to get rid of it for all of the above reasons. So, we need to do damage limitation. Stopping people from dying from it sounds like a pretty good idea actually. And that means that we need it to be pure and in known dosages. That is, we need it to be legal.

I think all drugs should be legal, hey, your body and all that. But even if you think that harm reduction is a more important goal there’s just no way that we’re going to get to fentanyl harm reduction without legality of it. For that’s the only way we will get it in known doses which don’t kill people. And we’re most assuredly going to keep getting it even if we don’t legalise it. Our choices are people tooting on illegal fentanyl and dying or people tooting on legal fentayl and not dying. Not such a toughie that question, is it?

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