Confounding humans

Richard Thaler's piece in the New York Times talking about the rise of behavioural economics (he has a book out on the topic that gets an interesting review in the same paper) was a pretty good read.  But I also liked this comment at the side:

Clarification: (1) Economists have never believed that their assumptions about "rationalism" and "money-seeking" described real people--only that their models derived from such assumptions could predict behavior (at least in many specified situations) with a helpful (utilitarian) degree of accuracy. By focusing on the "unreality" of the model assumptions, critics miss the salient point of emphases: how well do economic models predict? When and under what circumstances? Or perhaps, more significantly, should people think of economists as forecasters (foremost, i.e., as portrayed in the media)?

(2) Behavioral economics does not represent a relatively new field of study--it's only new to the math modelers. Cato the Elder wrote on the subject 2500 years ago. The book from the 1960s, "Bears, Bulls, and Dr. Freud still sits on my book shelve. And, McClellan (1958) "The Achieving Society", explained economic growth and prosperity of nations far better than the economic growth models (then or since) created by Nobel-awarded, growth theorist economists whose work was published during that era. David McClelland was a Harvard social psychologist.

Comic book endings

The Atlantic has an article up talking about Age of Ultron and the "sagas" that the superhero comics have tactically developed to try to keep interest.  (This aspect of the Avengers movies is clearly now wearing thin with critics.)

Anyhow, following the article came this comment, which seems to summarise the problem well:

Meh, this is why I ultimately gave up on comic books. I was a huge comics fan in the late 80's/early 90's - mostly Marvel, but also DC and other imprints. I remember the huge crossover Mutant Massacre storyline in 1986 and the fallout thereof, creating new storylines for the X-Men and New Mutants, creating new teams like Excalibur. But I remember several storylines being drawn on an on, and eventually dropped. I still want to know what happened to the Morlocks! I believe this is a structural problem that comics have - the ability for storylines to get bogged down and reboot is also the frustration of never resolving any long running plots. Aristotle stated that every story needs a beginning, middle, and end. Comics are rife with beginnings (origin stories) and middles, but very poor on ends. This is their entire business model, and it's what ultimately pushed me away from comics.   

A bit of gruesome history for the weekend

Execution by Cannon - Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Can't say I had heard of the practice before...

In the schoolyard

James Mollison photographs playgrounds around the world in his book, Playground.

The photos are actually of schoolyards during recess around the world, and it makes for some startling images.

Well may you mock Maurice Newman...

....but this isn't the first conspiracy he's been exposed to:

(OK, maybe his face blends in too well for this to work.)

This is what a libertarian fantasy looks like

Alternative 2015-16 budget - On Line Opinion - 6/5/2015

David Leyonhjelm's "alternative budget" first appeared in AFR,  but it's since appeared at Catallaxy (to near universal acclaim, last I looked - a clear warning sign it's a crock, if ever there was one) and now it's got a run on Online Opinion.   (Only two comments too - I'm not sure whether that's from the unpopularity of the author or the site.)

I was going to post about it earlier, but really, as no one takes it seriously, I didn't get around to it.

Suffice to say the extensive list of matters on which he thinks its a good idea to cut immediately - foreign aid, research, all capital spending except for defence - shows he's a shallow, nutty ideologue who should stick to brushing cats and patting guns.  

Pigs in history

Good food: Nose-to-tail eating | The Economist

From this review of a book about pigs in history:

The curly-tailed animals have proven extraordinarily useful to human development and have been present from the earliest permanent dwellings to modern metropolises. The porcine ability to turn waste of almost any description into protein—thanks to “a simple gut and multipurpose
teeth”, which means it can eat almost anything—ensured that in the ancient Near East, Anglo-Saxon England and the Americas it was theperfect beast to sustain rapidly growing and colonising populations.

Yet the pig’s indiscriminate appetite has also been its worst enemy. Not for nothing is there a Chinese character, qing, that designates both “pigsty” and “outhouse”, and the idea of consuming a beast fed on communal waste has appalled societies from the ancient Egyptians to the Jews and 19th-century New Yorkers. Pigs have also been beset by snobbery, given that pork has regularly provided calories to the poorest members of society. After the Black Death carried off a third of Europe, demand for meat plummeted and so did prices. Peasants
started eating pork; uppity nobles chewed on birds and beef instead.

Mr Essig’s main point is that the better people treat pigs, the more they like them. Romans lavished love and attention on their pigs, allowing them to wander in the woods, eating nuts and grains. In return, they enjoyed delicious meat. Post-war America industrialised pig production, inventing indoor cages and “a litany of horrors” for their sows, and found the meat was mushy and tasteless. As a consequence, pork consumption has been static for 30 years.

Amateur philosophy and the superhuman

The moral imperative to research editing embryos: The need to modify Nature and Science | Practical Ethics

I see via Jason Soon that there is a bit of a push back against the backlash in Nature and Science about the Chinese who conducted gene editing experiments on (non viable) human embryos.  The article above is one of them.

Now I understand, to a degree, their complaint that the Chinese research was not on viable embryos, so there was no risk of harm in that particular experiment.  And if anything, its results serve as a warning that such editing is not reliable enough to try on viable human embyros, so in that sense it could be welcomed as showing that the dangers from trying to do such work are real.

However, it is pretty clear that the defenders go further - they actually want to see human genome edited for improvement, seeing it as our science fiction-y, transhumanist destiny.   The rest of us are sticks in the mud (probably Christians) standing in the way of progress.   All very Nietzschean. 

But you really have to wonder about the dubious way the guys who wrote the article linked above deal with the question of responsibility in this paragraph:

Imagine that I am a scientist. I have a promising candidate treatment
that could save the lives of 30 million people per year. I decide not to
continue the research. I am responsible for the deaths of those 30
million people if my research would have led to a cure.

This is just a silly attempted extension of the concept of  "responsibility" if you ask me, and reeks of amateur, late night bar room philosophy.   How could they have left that line in and not expect it to detract from their credibility?

The desire to improve humans developmentally is not per se wrong - ensuring adequate nutrition and vitamins for mothers to prevent avoidable problems is a good thing.  But the obvious solution to eliminating the worst genetic disorders is by either not having babies at all once it is discovered you are carrying a dangerous gene, or at least screening embryos for the defect.  Neither carries the risk of inadvertent harm caused by what is likely to be the inevitable imprecision of seeking to repair individual genes, and it's not as if humanity doesn't have enough healthy gene lines to keep the species going.

As for the desire to improve the germ line - you're a philosophical amateur if you can't acknowledge the ethical question it raises as to which human qualities deserve enhancement or removal.  

All was revealed

I woke up this morning from an odd but not unpleasant dream, which initially featured zombie like re-animated dead people (they could talk but not move much) who basically appeared puzzled as to why they were alive again.  To one of them talking about death, I made a comment along the lines that matter may eventually disappear, but information is never lost.  He scoffed at the suggestion, saying that he couldn't see how that made sense, as you needed matter to encode information.

Dream-me then had some exciting insight into information leaking into another universe, and the idea that other universe information watchers became the people who decided what was moral or not in this universe.  I ran off somewhere in a dream Brisbane to write it all down, but someone rudely suggested it might just be a good plot for Dr Who.

I have the feeling seafood somehow got involved too.

Anyway, I woke up to think for a while if there is any theory floating around that does involve information never being lost.  (I keep remembering a line from Spielberg's AI when I think about this.)

I then watched David Leyonhjelm (or his missus) brushing a cat.

More American right wing paranoia

Paranoia Strikes Derp - NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman brings to my attention some current Right wing nuttiness in America, that the dim Ted Cruz is prepared to entertain, at least to the extent of asking the Pentagon about it.  (I bet they're impressed with the idea of him as a possible boss.)

A good case

Coalition economic agenda is crony capitalism | Crikey

I don't always agree with BK, but I reckon he makes a reasonable case here.

Good TV

Two great shows on the ABC last night:

*  Foreign Correspondent visited King George Island, at the northern top of Antarctica, and which has several national research bases.  (I had posted a photo of its "what's that doing here?" Russian Orthodox church a few years ago.)   Eric Campbell spoke to scientists, all concerned about climate change and the clear melting it is causing in that part of Antarctica, and talked about the international co-operation in that part of the world.   A fascinating show all around.

*  Griff Rhys Jones is making his way through Africa - by train.  (! Didn't realise there were many trains to try there.)  Last night's show, up on iView for now at least, had him starting in Morroco and making his way to the east, while having to cross disputed borders by jumping back to Europe. (! again.)

Travel shows rarely visit Northern Africa, apart from Marrakesh perhaps, so it was a great surprise to learn that the French had built some pretty fancy train lines and stations, and much of the countryside of in that part of the world looked pretty attractive.

The city of Fez in Morocco looked fascinating, but the biggest surprise was the remarkable appearance of the city of Constantine (in Algeria), built around a huge gorge.  As this article says, it may be the most beautiful city you've never heard of.  Pity the show didn't spend more time there...

Avengers backlash stronger than I thought

Who is this Jason Wilson who writes at the Guardian, and why does he look sort of like an aging daggy hipster but without the beard?

Anyhow, he spends a lot of time complaining about the Marvel franchise in light of Age of Ultron, which saves me doing it.   (Well, not that I can do it well, seeing I am not going to see it.)

Elsewhere, I see that a conservative Catholic priest complains about the movie in a post with the title ''The Avengers'' and Friedrich Nietzsche".

That said, I'd still see a Guardians of the Galaxy sequel if it gets good reviews.

Update:  and still it comes!  I had missed the iO9 "Hater's Guide to Avengers: Age of Ultron".   The lameness of the (apparently) recurring glowy cubes is dealt with here:

Nearly every Marvel movie has had one of these f**king glowy cubes or gems or eggs or whatever, and they’ve all contained an Infinity Gem, which means quite a bit to longtime comic readers, but I have to guess next to nothing to anyone else beyond, “Jesus why are all these movies about cosmic jelly beans?” Anyway, lots of Infinity Gems, and we’re going to get a whole TWO PART space-Avengers movie, and it will probably be cool, but if you follow the logic of the after-credits scene with Thanos saying he’ll just go do it himself ... what the f**k has he been doing? This guy has just been sitting on a space rock for like four movies now sending other, clearly incompetent dipshits around to zero effect! The guy in Guardians of the Galaxy even told him to eat shit once he got an Infinity Gem, and Thanos didn’t do shit about it! Is Thanos even going to be that hard to fight? Like, how does he do cardio on that lil asteriod? Thor in 8.

The only surprise to me is that it has taken this long for people to realise that comic book superhero stories just aren't that good.

Not mentioned in polite company anymore

I guess the free travel and accommodation paid for by mining billionaires and mystery funded "think tanks" has dried up, so former climate change denier guest speaker Christopher Monckton may feel free to be more open about his conspiracy thoughts:

Found via Hotwhopper.  (See link at the side.)

Slow science

Warm oceans caused hottest Dust Bowl years in 1934/36

This seems to makes sense, given that California has been hot lately with a large pool of warm water off its coast.

But why has it taken so long to look at this with respect to the unusually warm years in the 1930's.  (Or has it already been done in other studies, and this is just inadequate science reporting?)

Pot windfall skepticism

Interesting article in The Atlantic expressing skepticism that one of the key selling points for legalising marijuana in Colorado (raising money needed for schools) is likely to work as advertised.

Amusingly, part of the problem is something that sounds like one of those Tea Party/libertarian inspired "let's stop the government getting a cent more than they should" ideas:

What's more, in an awkward (and perhaps embarrassing) twist, all that money could be lost. That’s because, under Colorado’s “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” if in any given year the state reaps more tax money than revenue forecasters had projected, the state must return that extra revenue to taxpayers. This year, the provision will be triggered because—even though the pot money came in lower than expected—the state collected more tax revenue overall thanks to other industries such as energy and oil. Lawmakers are now crafting a bill that would ask voters this fall to approve an exemption to that provision for the pot tax.

Down in comments, someone makes what I think might be a pretty good point:

A legal market in pot never mattered that much to me. It's absurdly overpriced, considering that it can be easily grown in personal-use quantities. The important thing is to allow legal possession of reasonable quantities (a few plants, a few ounces), legal non-profit transfer and gifting between adults, legal seed sales, and home cultivation. Like household brewing of beer and wine.

Two things I don't want: legal pot as a commercially advertised product on broadcast media, and government dependent on pot as a revenue source. Marijuana is better off as something that's low-key, discreet, and no big deal. It's also better off as a negligible expense, which puts more disposable income into the hands of people who can spend it on something other than a non-poisonous, non-invasive annual weed that's easily cultivated in a few square feet of space, either indoors or outdoors.

 Yes.   It seems to me that a major part of the legalisation problem will be from allowing capitalists to actively promote the market for a substance which the government really has an interest in limiting. 

Battery power revolution?

John Quiggin thinks the Tesla domestic battery story is very big indeed.

Nature has a much more conservative take on it.

The truth perhaps lies somewhere between.

China and drug use

'Breaking Bad' in China: how meth is spreading across rural heartland - CSMonitor.com

This is a good report about illicit drug use in China.

I didn't realise that even in that country, a substantial change towards harm minimisation has been underway for nearly a decade:

Since 2006, the Chinese authorities have tackled heroin abuse by decriminalizing the drug’s use and opening nearly 900 methadone clinics to wean addicts off it. But no drug like methadone that would help methamphetamine users break their habit has been found, so no such medical approach has been possible.

Some caught using meth are encouraged to attend voluntary detoxification centers; most – especially if they are caught a second time – are sent to compulsory detox facilities in former prisons and held for as long as two years with no judicial or medical intervention.

Methadone programs have been available across the West for decades; clearly, it is even pretty widely used in the US too.

Libertarians, who like slogans and fantasy more than working out the detailed solutions to real, complicated issues, continually use the "war on drugs - oh my God it's a complete failure!" line while ignoring the fact that it seems nearly all nations incorporate a harm minimisation approach to at least this major illicit drug.  (Well, I guess, if they can afford it.   I don't imagine much is available in somewhere like Afghanistan.)

Legalising highly addictive drugs is always going to be problematic, because the costs of addiction at individual, social and economic levels are always likely to be high.

But let's just chant "we have to end this War on Drugs" and leave it there, shall we?

Good

US 'will not fund research for modifying embryo DNA' - BBC News

As it says at the end:

Dr Collins, who was also a key player in the Human Genome Project, released a statement saying: "The concept of altering the human germline in embryos for clinical purposes has been debated over many years from many different perspectives, and has been viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed.

"Advances in technology have given us an elegant new way of carrying out genome editing, but the strong arguments against engaging in this activity remain.

"These include the serious and unquantifiable safety issues, ethical issues presented by altering the germline in a way that affects the next generation without their consent, and a current lack of compelling medical applications."

Dr Marcy Darnovsky, from the Center for Genetics and Society in the US, argued: "There is no persuasive medical reason to manipulate the human germline because inherited genetic diseases can be prevented using embryo screening techniques, among other means.

"Is the only justification for trying to refine germline gene editing the prospect of so-called enhancement?"

Music video time

So, it seems to have been around for 6 months, but I only recently saw this simple but amusing video clip from George Ezra (and friend):