Wow. Reading this story on CNN boggles me. It’s about a sighting of “uncontacted” tribes in the Amazon. Apparently Brazil has an entire government bureau dedicated to “protecting” these tribes from encroachment. The entire article reads like a zookeeper’s report about how to best ensure we don’t disrupt their “natural” habitat and living conditions. Wow.
These are people, and they shouldn’t be treated like a curiosity. Is the “National Indian Foundation” going to keep them ignorant of the outside world in perpetuity? How stupid — that is essentially condemning them to historical and cultural obscurity. And don’t give me that crap about they might be living an idyllic life - the “noble savage” is a myth. Our advanced civilization isn’t the product of cultural isolation, but the product of communication and trade (see Guns, Germs and Steel for more details about how Eurasian cultures got the benefit of ease of communication and cross-pollination). Preventing contact with these people isn’t humane, it’s the exact opposite. They will never grow or advance in isolated small groups; no one would.
No posts the past couple weeks, and sure to continue for at least a month more probably. Swamped at work and other things.
When I get back to this, I’ll be starting a project that was the initial motivation for starting the blog.
I’ve said it once, I’m sure I’ll be saying it the rest of my life. Correlation does not imply causality. Why is it so hard for people to understand this? Here’s a great example in sports: The home team wins 67% of playoff games in the NBA. The author writes this as if it’s a huge revelation and this is an indicator of how strong home field advantage is.
Gah! No — these two (home field advantage and winning) are correlated, but that doesn’t mean one causes the other. Home field advantage doesn’t cause winning. Instead, home field advantage and winning are caused by a third thing — namely, actually being better than the other team. A team has home court advantage if they performed better over the course of the regular season, and are thus also more likely to win. There’s nothing mystical about it. Yes, home court is an advantage, but it shouldn’t at all be surprising or warrant a two page “investigation” that the home court correlation is more pronounced in the playoffs.
Wow. This would get me interested in the election. Chuck Hagel as running mate to Barack Obama. Very, very interesting. I need to get my review of Hagel’s book finished. So little time though.
I’m not, but I frequently get called one. Since I’m opposed to socialism, that must mean I’m a capitalistk, right? Does being opposed to monarchy make you a democrat? Not necessarily — you could be many other things. The socialism/capitalism divide is a false dichotomy; there are many other choices. Hardly anyone gets called a “democrat” these days; that debate was settled a long time ago, and democracy won as the “best” form of government. People generally assume that you are a democrat because you’d almost have to be a raving lunatic not to support democracy. Why hasn’t capitalism won and the term fallen by the wayside like “democrat”?
Continue reading ‘I am not a Capitalist.’
Correlation does not imply causality. The logic is even worse when your supposed correlation is false. Today, I got an email from a friend about gun control; the email was one of those typical internet forwards. This one was about how crime rates in Australia went up after the ban (and subsequent buyback) of many types of firearms. A brief look at snopes turned up a thorough rebuttal. A simple investigation of primary sources at the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) shows how the data in the email was cherry-picked.
Continue reading ‘Correlation, Causality, and Gun Control’
What do environmentalists1 want? They want better, cheaper, cleaner energy (all good things). For a long time, I’ve held a grudge against environmentalists because while they want these things, they are also opposed to the one known way to get it - nuclear power. Now, maybe they have a principled stance here: it’s true that nuclear power can be dangerous, but more people die in coal mining accidents than from nuclear power plant accidents. Nuclear power could also leave a mess in some cases (a la Chernobyl), but it’s less dangerous than the amount of carbon dioxide we’re putting out, and less risky if properly engineered (as long as plants are designed fail-safe, we’re okay — see Three Mile Island). So, I’ve always been suspicious that what the environmentalists really want is to throttle technology and exert some kind of control over other people.
Continue reading ‘Gas Prices and Environmentalists’
Revere has a series of videos up depicting just how vile and stupid John Hagee and Rod Parsley are. These are people McCain has accepted endorsements from. As I have pointed out before, these people are not any better than Jeremiah Wright. Seriously, watch the videos and tell me that you still hold Wright against Obama without being equally critical of McCain. I much preferred McCain back in 2000 when he explicitly rejected such sanctimonious twits.
In the last video linked above, Parsley goes off on activist judges. This is one thing I’m so tired of — anytime a judge strikes down a law as unconstitutional, they are labelled as activist for thwarting “the will of the people” or their chosen representatives. Bullshit. These are the same people who claim to have special insight into the ideas that America was founded on (insisting on “Judeo-Christian” principles), yet don’t seem to realize that one of the most important roles of the judiciary is to protect the rights of the minority from the will of the majority. It astounds me how many people misunderstand this basic principle of our government.
My wife is Indian, so I try to pay some attention to Indian politics at least a little. India Uncut by Amit Varma is a pretty good source for the little things that make Indian politics and culture a little bizarre. Indian society is still very conservative in many ways, but what I see in the short blurbs Amit points out is a society much like what the Religious Right seems to want here. On the other hand, it’s comforting to know that the problems in the U.S. aren’t unique. Amit’s most recent post on victimless crimes mirrors my thoughts almost exactly:
Our dubious sense of morality is responsible for all these stupid laws…Morality’s a damn good thing, but only when it is rooted in respecting the rights of others. Laws that infringe on the rights of people to live their lives as they please are deeply immoral – and they exist even in countries that pay lip service to freedom.
Indeed. Some other gems:
On protectionism: “Producers exist to satisfy consumers; production is the means and consumption is the end. Protectionism is a policy built on the premise that consumers exist to satisfy producers.
On reservations (similar to affirmative action here in the U.S., but for castes instead of race): “With prosperity and an open economy, barriers of caste gradually erode. Yes, India has a long, long way to go before we’re prosperous enough and open enough, but consider that reservations actually increase one’s awareness of caste, and exacerbate tensions between them. You cannot fight injustice with injustice. ”
Good words. I highly recommned the blog.
I just reread “The End of Faith” and picked up on an internal inconsistency in Sam Harris’ logic with respect to torture. In an early part of the book, Harris chides many on the left for comparing Bush to Hitler and/or Saddam Hussein because Bush has been indirectly responsible for the deaths of innocents due to “collateral damage”. He uses the concept of a “perfect weapon” to characterize the differences. This mythical perfect weapon gives the wielder the ability to kill only the intended target with 100% precision. Harris asks: How would Saddam Hussein have used such a weapon and how would Bush? The answer, I should hope, is clear: despite all of Bush’s faults, he’s not a homicidal or genocidal maniac. Hussein would have wiped out the Kurds and pretty much anyone else.
Continue reading ‘Sam Harris and Torture’
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