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.
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.
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’
This morning, I was listening to Jeremiah Wright’s speech to the NAACP last night. He had some interesting points, but he was definitely wrong about one thing — and this is a common error a lot of people make. He equated bias against (more generally: being judgmental of) someone because of their religion with judging someone based on skin color or sex.
These are completely different categories. People cannot control their gender, skin color, hair color, eye color, or sexuality — it is unfair and simply wrong to judge people based on these characteristics. But the beliefs a person holds? That’s fair game for judgement. Some beliefs are simply wrong. The idea that some beliefs, philosophies, religions, perspective, whatever, are beyond criticism or judgement is dangerous. You have the right to hold those beliefs, but I have the right to criticize you for holding stupid or wrong beliefs. Wright used Pentecostals as an example in of religious discrimination. Sorry, but glossolalia is silly, and I will continue to judge Pentecostals as such. Young-earth creationists are ignorant (willfully or not), and their religion is stupider than most. Nazis are hateful, vile, dangerous people, and I will continue to judge them so.
Judging an individual or group based on their belief system (or even a particular belief) is not in any way comparable to racism or sexism.
So, one of my favorite authors is Orson Scott Card. And I’m not just talking about Ender’s Game; I really do like almost all of his books. That’s all well and good, but OSC happens to have a significant internet presence, and oddly enough for the S.F. community, he’s an extremely conservative, extremely religious Mormon, and I find his politics quite revolting. This generates an internal conflict for me: how can he be such a good writer and yet display such extremely poor logical thinking skills?
Continue reading ‘OSC’
Ah, I love people who don’t understand science or statistics. This CNN article is about how some parents believe that vaccines have caused their children’s autism. For example:
Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says the connection between vaccines and autism is nothing more than a sad coincidence… “The studies compared autism rates among populations of children who did and did not receive the MMR vaccines, and among those who did and did not receive vaccines containing thimerosal. It’s been asked and answered: Vaccines don’t cause autism,” Offit says.
Michelle Cedillo’s parents disagree. “I think there is a link,” says Theresa Cedillo, Michelle’s mother.
Wow. She disagrees. Personally, I go through the day disagreeing with facts all the time. No, wait, that would be the definition of insanity.
An article on CNN details how heterosexual marriages are being protected. Ha, ha, just kidding. The article’s really about how some people in this country are still deprived of rights and benefits so many of us take for granted. The background is this: Ralph Martinelli works for Konica Minolta and is married to Robert Ryan. They previously lived in New Jersey, which does acknowledge gay marriage, and the company extended health benefits to Ryan. Now they’ve moved to Idaho, which doesn’t acknowledge gay marriage. The company has since seen fit to retract Ryan’s benefits because they can.
Continue reading ‘Let’s Protect Marriage’
After doing some additional reading about various fusion projects (as a follow up to this article on Michio Kaku’s book), I’ve uncovered my own misunderstanding. I’ve always taken “cold fusion” to mean “controlled fusion”; that is, I understood “cold” to essentially mean “not a bomb”. But I was wrong. “Cold fusion” actually refers to room-temperature fusion; Prof. Kaku was clearly referring to “controlled fusion at high temperatures” as being possible within a few centuries. I’ve made edits to my original article to rectify this.
On the other hand, I’m glad for my mis-labelling, because it seems to have attracted an actual cold-fusion crank, Jed Rothwell, which has been an interesting diversion. While I am no where near qualified (as evidence I give you the first paragraph of this post) to judge the scientific merits of the research he is propagandizing, I can still point out several characteristics that smack of quackery to me.
Continue reading ‘Crank Physics’