Doubts about productivity

John Quiggin � Productivity yet again

My comment the other day about not understanding what calls for increased productivity today really mean seems to get some justification from JQ's cynicism about the issue, too.

Voucher wars, continued

I see that there has been push back against the article in Slate that claimed the education voucher system had turned into a failure in Sweden.

True, I would have assumed that there were more private schools there than is apparently the case, but the argument put forward that it is really due to "radically new pedagogical methods" cops a bit of a pasting in one of the comments (by Damien) that follow the post:

Pedagogical innovation was specifically mentioned as a great feature brought about by school choice. E.g.: - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_innovation/2012/07 /free_school_reforms_in_sweden_boost_quality_innovation_and_choice.html : Swedish schools free to adopt innovative pedagogical methods. - http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/03/school-choice-in-sweden-an-interview-with-thomas-idergard-of-timbro : “The lack of choice created a lack of innovation regarding pedagogical concept and ways of learning adapted to different students’ needs”, “almost half of the independent schools differ more or less radically from public schools regarding pedagogical concept and methods to fulfill the curriculum.”, “The educational results data speak for themselves.” - http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20288 : “The variety of independent schools is large in both ownership and in innovative pedagogy and practice” - http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/140383-sweden-a-model-for-american-school-choice-options- : “The variety of independent schools is large in both ownership – from parental cooperatives to corporate chains — and in innovative pedagogy and practice”

But, now that it seems that there are problems in Sweden, it turns out that it was all an illusion and that schools really don’t have that much autonomy. And that new pedagogical ideas are harmful anyway. So you can use the pedagogical innovation in Sweden to sell school choice, but, if it turns out that test scores are not so good, you can *also* blame pedagogical innovation. That’s a bit too convenient. Heads I win, tails you lose.

 As the person who comments next says:

But, of course, that kind of analysis is no fun for internet commenters.

I don't think anyone in comments addresses the point I made in my original post:  from what little I have heard, the system in Finland is the complete opposite of a voucher system.  Are free marketeers just hoping that its example of success is ignored? 

Update:  I see another post critical of the Slate article mentions Finland.  But the article is from Cato, and I would want someone who knows the issue well to go through it with a fine tooth comb before trusting anything it claims.  For one thing - he claims Finland is not doing all that well.   Yet, surely the point is the improvements the country has made over time, and the philosophy they followed to get there.  
 

How about "Operation 'Stop Calling Non Military Actions "Operations" - it's Annoying This Blogger' "

I've complained before about the Abbott's government attempts to appear all gung-ho and full of  military-like action in matters that are not actually security threatening.  (See "Operation Sovereign Borders" and the information refusenik LtGen Campbell running it to the government's tune.) 

It's continuing with this fanciful nomenclature "Operation Bring Them Home" coined by Abbott (or his office, more likely) which does not seem to have exactly caught on in the media much yet. 

Sport ghosts noted

Sure, I hate cricket, but I still take an interest in ghostly experiences which cricketers say happened to them.

In particular, the story of the taps turning on and off by themselves in the hotel room would be very freaky if  experienced.   Ghosts aren't normally so...mechanical.   Although I suppose poltergeists are.

Here's an earlier Guardian post after various sports related ghost stories.

Wait a minute - even Kant had it in for bastards?

Good grief.*  I recently had a go at Bentham for his utilitarianism inspired suggestion that women may well be justified in killing their new born illegitimate babies to save themselves the societal problems of being a single mother.

But, just looking around now at some posts about Kant's loopier suggestions (which, with respect to sex and masturbation I have noted here a few times before,) I have turned up this apparent quote:

A child that comes into the world apart from marriage is born outside the law (for the law is marriage) and therefore outside the protection of the law. It has, as it were, stolen into the commonwealth (like contraband merchandise), so that the commonwealth can ignore its existence (since it rightly should not have come to exist in this way), and can therefore also ignore its annihilation (p. 336).

I see in the comments following that it has been speculated that his lack of empathy might have been caused by a tumour (seeing we are talking Kant, you should pronounce it in your mind like Arnie does in Kindergarten Cop):

This reminds me of Gazzaniga's take on Kant in The Mind's Past, page 121-1, where he speculates that Kant developed a massive left prefrontal tumor and then began writing his major works. This might begin to explain the lack of empathy concerning bastards, women and servants etc. Gazzaniga: "Is it possible that all those Kantians have saluted a man who was writing nonsense - a philosophy for those who do not have a normal cognitive and emotional system?". 

The attitude to children born out of wedlock has certainly improved since those centuries, even though just about everyone thinks it has gone way too far in the other direction now.   Can't we just settle somewhere in the middle that we seem to have missed? 

*  More good grief!:   I blogged about this exact linked post in 2010, even noting the brain tumour theory!   I had a vague feeling I had read it before, but certainly had forgotten the bastards bit.

Can I be excused, with the wealth of material posted here, for forgetting what I have previously written sometimes?

If only Kantian jokes survived

What's So Funny? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Here's a good article by Mary Beard looking at the various theories of laughter that people have come up with over the years.   It would seem fair to say that the theories are not mutually exclusive, and we all know of some instances where one theory fits, and others were it doesn't.

I lean towards preferring the "incongruity" theory, and the type of humour which is clearly based on it:

The second theory, known as the incongruity theory, sees laughter as a response to the illogical or the unexpected. A big team of philosophers and critics can be marshaled as supporters of this idea, if with a wide range of nuances and emphases. Kant argued that "laughter is an
affection arising from a strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing," another of the better-known sayings in the study of laughter. Henri Bergson argued that laughter is provoked by living beings acting as if they were machines—mechanically, repetitively, stiffly. More
recently the linguistic theories of Salvatore Attardo, of Texas University, and Victor Raskin, of Purdue University, have set the resolution of incongruity at the heart of verbal jokes—as in "When is a door not a door? When it’s a jar."

There, my favourite philosopher pops up again.   I thought I had read before that he was considered good dinner table company, and a Guardian article in 2004 indicated this was certainly true when he was a young man:

He has been famously portrayed as a bore, a man whose habits were so regular that housewives could set their watches by his legendary afternoon walk.

But according to three new biographies, the celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant was not such a dry stick after all. Far from being a dour Prussian ascetic, the great metaphysician was a partygoer. He enjoyed drinking wine, playing billiards and wearing fine, colourful clothes.

He had a sense of humour, and there were women in his life, although he never married. On
occasion, Kant drank so much red wine he was unable to find his way home, the books claim.

The biographies - which shed fresh light on the party-loving behaviour of the young Kant before his fame - have appeared in Germany ahead of the 200th anniversary of his death today....

"He had a sense of humour. Not a German sense of humour where you have to spell out that you are telling a joke but a dry Anglo-Saxon wit."

According to Kühn, whose acclaimed biography of the philosopher has just been published in Germany, Kant also had "amorous interests" in two women - though there is no evidence these were consummated.

It was only at the age of 57, after Kant had published his most famous work, his Critique of Pure Reason, that he was in a position to support a wife. "By this time it was too late," Kühn
said.

Last night Professor Volker Gerhardt - a leading member of Germany's Kant Society, who travelled to Kaliningrad for today's celebrations - said he endorsed Kühn's view of Kant.

Kant socialised extensively with Joseph Green, an English merchant who taught him about British culture, Prof Gerhardt said. His great achievement was to develop a philosophical system that separated morality from religion, as well as a liberal political theory which anticipated both the UN and modern human rights.

Material for my Kant as proto-Bond may be easier to find than I expected...

Bugs against obesity

New study shows therapeutic bacteria prevent obesity in mice

It would explain a lot....

Inspired, of course, by Ms Lambie's radio appearance yesterday, which international readers can google for themselves.   

Another Abbott weathervane moment

From The Age, in 2010:

Australia's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council will be dumped if the federal opposition wins government.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd was the driving force behind the bid for a temporary seat in 2013/14, although his successor Julia Gillard is continuing the campaign.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said it was not a good use of taxpayers' money in tough economic times.

"There are vastly higher priorities for Australia right now than pursuing a seat on the security council," he told reporters in Melbourne, adding that dropping the bid would save $5.7 million this financial year.

Two years later:

Opposition leader Tony Abbott said he was pleased with the win, but wanted to ensure Australia did not squander the opportunity.

He indicated the millions spent to secure the position could potentially have been better resourced.
"I welcome the win, it was an expensive win and I think it probably owes at least as much to Kevin Rudd as Julia Gillard," Mr Abbott told the Nine Network.

"A win's a win, I welcome it. Let's hope we put the next two years on the Security Council to good use."

Today:

The Abbott government's push for a full independent investigation into the downing of MH17 over Ukraine has been backed by a unanimous vote UN Security Council, increasing pressure on Russia to facilitate access to the crash site.

In a joint statement with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop released on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Tony Abbott hailed the result saying that the resolution lent the Security Council's ''full weight'' in condemning the attack.

His inconsistencies on all manner of policy issues show his judgement is hopeless.  

Then as now?

Asia today echoes divided Europe of 1914

A somewhat interesting comparison by Hugh White of the geopolitics of the world at the start of the 20th century, and those that exist today.

Krugman being optimistic

An Imaginary Budget and Debt Crisis - NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman argues that there is reason to be optimistic about America's long term debt position, and notes that budgetary changes would not need to be all that great to make it even better.

I get the feeling that a similar column could be written about Australia.   And the first two points would be -

1.  don't give up revenue that you don't need to (carbon prices and mining tax.)

2.  don't start spending money on one man's pet idea that hardly anyone actually supports.

I might also add (and the same in the US):  don't increase defence spending beyond your means.

As for Australian pessimists, I see that Garnaut has that title currently.   I don't really understand the proposal though - how does a dramatic increase in productivity really happen these days?   He does mention the Australian dollar needing to come down (and even Judith Sloan mentioned that in her eye rolling performance with Joe Stiglitz a couple of weeks ago.   As I complained some time ago - right wing debt obsessed economists complained bitterly about Labor government spending and wages during the Gillard reign but barely mentioned the high Australian dollar which soared during her Prime Ministership.  Now that it's a Coalition government, have they decided it's the right time to acknowledge the problem?) 

No substitution effect

Does marijuana affect sales of alcohol in legal states?

Early figures from Colorado indicate that legal marijuana has coincided with an increase in sales of alcohol.

The suggestion is that this is caused by marijuana tourism.  Either that, or all the discussion of drugs makes all legal drugs look good?

Yet another potential cosmic worry?

Quantum bounce could make black holes explode : Nature News & Comment

So, Nature has a story up about the suggestion that black holes could become "white holes".  The story is more intriguing that I thought:

The theory suggests that the transition from black hole to white hole
would take place right after the initial formation of the black hole,
but because gravity dilates time, outside observers would see the black
hole lasting billions or trillions of years or more, depending on its
size. If the authors are correct, tiny black holes that formed during
the very early history of the Universe would now be ready to pop off
like firecrackers and might be detected as high-energy cosmic rays or
other radiation. In fact, they say, their work could imply that some of
the dramatic flares commonly considered to be supernova explosions could
in fact be the dying throes of tiny black holes that formed shortly
after the Big Bang.

Given that small black holes from the start of the universe might be everywhere, it would seem any planet could be in for a surprise at anytime.  At least, if this idea is right.

The glum world, and the 30 minute survivalist

Gee, it's hard to be cheery about the state of the world at the moment, isn't it?

Israel, Iraq, Ukraine, Syria:  all a mess with no obvious resolutions in sight.   China has had a strong typhoon that has killed 18; barely noticed amidst all the other death and mayhem.

All we need now is for Tokyo or LA to have their long awaited earthquake disasters and people will stop getting out of bed. 

Speaking of which, as a depressing distraction, does anyone else ever think about what they would do if they knew they had to clear out of home due to earth shattering disaster that may mean living off the land for a protracted time?   Being a cheery soul who likes science fiction-y scenarios, I often think of this while driving between Brisbane and Toowoomba, because the geography of that area makes it clear that if one knew that a mini asteroid had hit the middle of the Pacific, and a gigantic tsunami was on the way,  collecting the family and heading up to Toowoomba at the top of the Great Dividing Range would be one of the safest things you could do.  (Or if aliens had started picking off capital cities one by one, War of the Worlds style, getting up to the vast and relatively sparsely populated area west of the range would be a good idea too.) 

But if I only had 30 minutes or so to pack the car with gear that might best equip my family for the end of civilisation for a time, what household items should be given the highest priority?   I keep thinking of steak knives, or any good kitchen knive really;  any axe or shovel lying around; any rechargeable batteries in the house and a radio to go with them; tarpaulins; ropes; sleeping bags; warm clothes (no matter what time of year);  a few substantial saucepans; a magnifying glass (for both starting fires and reading in my old age); and any medicine in the cabinet.   Oh, and water containers.  Buckets and any water container.  And any spare sets of prescription glasses, even if out of date.   Dry food from the cupboard too (pasta and rice especially - perhaps?), but I think I would still have room in the car.  I don't think I would take the family tent - it takes up a lot of space, and long term, you would probably be better off building a shelter.

Beyond those, I have trouble deciding what household items are really going to be valuable, either for direct use, or trade.  I can imagine soap, shampoo and toothpaste being in high demand, but would I be better off taking whatever of that I have in the bathroom, or my binoculars instead?   How much modern stuff would be adequately circulating from ransacked stores amongst survivors?

I wonder if Douglas Adams advice about the importance of towels is really worth paying attention to?

I've been meaning to post about this for some time - the glum state of the world seems to make it an appropriate time to write it.

Update:  as an addendum, you can add the speculation "if you live within five minutes of a supermarket [I do, as it happens], and could get into it, what further items would you take from there before heading off to the mountains?"  

A few things immediately spring to my mind - any vegetable seeds if they stock any, and a range of vitamins.  Also, bandages, razor blades, disinfectant in large quantities.  And more tarps, if they have any.  Matches - but no need to go overboard - you just never let the fire die once it's going.

Tony's mixed bag

Interesting poll results out in Fairfax today show that people still believe Tony Abbott can get things done; it's just that they don't like the things he achieves and don't trust him to do what he said he would.

I can't see his response to the MH17 tragedy helping much here with his popularity - unlike John Howard and his action on guns after one mass shooting too many, it's not as if there is much Tone can directly do. (Beyond, perhaps, agitating to get an uncooperative Putin out of the G20 meeting, but would that count for much in public opinion?)

Tough talk still off putting

Phil Coorey says in AFR this morning:

Tony Abbott’s handling of the MH17 atrocity is being universally admired.

Not by me, or at least in one respect.  I thought his reference to lives being "snuffed out" yesterday on Insiders was a case of him wanting to sound Clint Eastwood style tough, but I doubt it had the right sort of sensitivity to use for relatives of the deceased who may be watching. 

That is my opinion.      

A foolish thing

He's mildly offended by the title of the post, but my son has been learning saxophone for a year or two now, and here he was recently, doing pretty good once he gets going...



(You have to add something visual to post a file on youtube, and that was just at hand.)

No, it's not. [Alternative title - When nerds try to scare themselves around the campfire]

Slate has an entertaining article up with something that must be approaching the best click bait title, ever:  The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time. 

As the many comments that follow it show, normal people tend to be underwhelmed, but amused.   It seems that it may be that the originator of the meme also denies he believed it.

However, I did like the last paragraph:

I worry less about Roko’s Basilisk than about people who believe themselves to have transcended conventional morality. Like his projected Friendly AIs, Yudkowsky is a moral utilitarian: He believes that that the greatest good for the greatest number of people is always ethically justified, even if a few people have to die or suffer along the way. He has explicitly argued that given the choice, it is preferable to torture a single person for 50 years than for a sufficient number of people (to be fair, a lot of people) to get dust specks in their eyes. No one, not even God, is likely to face that choice, but here’s a different case: What if a snarky Slate tech columnist writes about a thought experiment that can destroy people’s minds, thus hurting people and blocking progress toward the singularity and Friendly AI? In that case, any potential good that could come from my life would far be outweighed by the harm I’m causing. And should the cryogenically sustained Eliezer Yudkowsky merge with the singularity and decide to simulate whether or not I write this column … please, Almighty Eliezer, don’t torture me.

There was also a reference to a book or article which I should look up, but later:

(I’ve adopted this example from Gary Drescher’s Good and Real, which uses a variant on TDT to try to show that Kantian ethics is true.) 

Carbon burnout

Bernard Keane's take on the repeal of the carbon pricing scheme seemed pretty spot on to me.  I liked these bits in particular:

It’s an attack, primarily, of old white men, men in complete denial about climate change, on the future and on the young....

But ultimately, this is the result of the right-wing putsch in 2009 that replaced Malcolm Turnbull, a man genuinely committed to action on climate change, with Tony Abbott, a climate denialist and rank opportunist who, in a short period of time, had occupied every single possible position on climate change and what to do about it, except the one he ended up advocating as policy — the risible “Direct Action” policy mocked from the most froth-mouthed climate denialist all the way to the most fervent Trotskyite environmentalist.

And as Lenore Taylor points out:

Perhaps the last word should go to those well-known job-destroying, economy-hating, green-left anarchists in the federal treasury, whose comments in the "blue book" prepared in the event of a Coalition victory in 2010 were released under freedom of information.

Treasury described a carbon-pricing mechanism as "the only realistic way of achieving the deep cuts in emissions that are required".

They went on: ''A market mechanism can achieve the necessary abatement at a cost per tonne of emissions that is far lower than alternative direct-action policies. Moreover, many direct action measures cannot be scaled up, and, for those that can, the cost per tonne of abatement would rise rapidly, imposing further costs on taxpayers and consumers. All of this serves to underscore the conclusion that the sooner an emissions trading scheme can be implemented the better.

"Too much time has already been wasted, for which the Australian community will necessarily pay a high price."

Now everyone knows I think this is the most foolish government lead by a flakey PM, but looking at Abbott last night on 7.30, and on other recent occasions, I honestly get the feeling even he knows he's going to go down as weak and a failure as a PM.  

(And incidentally, the ability of Sarah Ferguson to persist and make all politicians uncomfortable by not having the ability to easily fob her off has become awesome.  She should remain as host.) 

What he said

Sinclair Davidson, March 27, 2014 (based on tobacco industry claims regarding sales):

What a policy disaster! The situation of the ground must be even worse. These figures only include legal tobacco. So once we add on the illegal stuff – including the sophisticated counterfeiters I suspect tobacco consumption has increased substantially above the 0.3 per cent increase.

Sinclair Davidson, July 17, 2014 (based on national survey results of actual use of tobacco):

The proportion of daily smokers has fallen – smoking in Australia is in long-term decline and has been so since the 1960s.

Furthermore, putting on a brave face that there must be something in the survey results that he can cling to:

What is problematic for the nanny staters is the increase in tobacco consumption by young women. Despite media reports suggesting that “young people” are smoking less, the data do not support inference when looking at women aged 18 – 29.

If I understand the table he posts correctly, the figures do show that of young women who smoke, the mean number of cigarettes they smoke per week has increased by between 2 to 3 since 2010.   Horrors!  The difference in health effects between 77 cigarettes per week and 75 (for that is indeed the type of numbers we are talking about) must be wrecking terrible havoc on those women!  

But why would the desperate professor even bother grasping at that when the very same table shows young men's consumption is down between about 11 to 16 per week, depending on the age group?  (And I would also note that another table in the survey shows that are slightly less young smoking women than men anyway - by about 2%).

No matter what attempt at desperate spin and piffle you put on the tables, total young people's mean consumption is down significantly - about 10% in the case of 25 to 29 year olds. 

What's more, with one tiny exception, the survey confirms the percent of young people smoking at all is down, down, down over time: 

Table 3: Tobacco status, people aged 12 years or older, by age, 2001 to 2013 (per cent)
Smoking status	2001	2004	2007	2010	2013
12–17
Daily	n.a.	5.2	3.2	2.5	3.4
Occasional(a)	n.a.	1.5	0.9	1.3	*1.6
Ex-smokers(b)	n.a.	1.7	0.9	1.6	*0.3#
Never smoked(c)	n.a.	91.6	95.0	94.7	94.7
18–24
Daily	24.0	20.2	16.5	15.7	13.4
Occasional(a)	8.1	5.3	4.9	4.9	5.1
Ex-smokers(b)	10.2	9.5	8.3	7.3	4.7#
Never smoked(c)	57.7	65.1	70.3	72.1	76.8#
25–29
Daily	27.0	25.8	25.8	19.3	16.1#
Occasional(a)	6.0	6.5	5.8	5.8	5.5
Ex-smokers(b)	17.5	16.6	16.6	14.8	15.1
Never smoked(c)	49.5	51.1	51.8	60.1	63.3

Hey - daily smokers in the 12 to 17 year group has apparently gone up nearly 1 per cent!   Horrors again - the most immature group of people surveyed just might have had no reaction (yet) to plain packaging.

Of course, a reasonable person might suspect that they will always be some small proportion of young teenagers who will be risk taking and smoke, but if that percentage stays at anything around 3%, it's hardly going to matter as the goal is to get total smoking below 10%.

Obviously, what is important is the percent of young people who are legally able to buy tobacco and can afford it who smoke   The most encouraging thing of all is the number of "never smoked" by age of 24 - now up to nearly 77% and showing no sign of stopping.

The survey also contains no joy for the prematurely hyperbolic Professor's claim that illegal tobacco use is probably soaring.  I'm having trouble cutting and pasting that table, but it shows unbranded tobacco use going down - and quite a lot over time.  (The notes do indicate some caution is warranted due to methodological matters.)   Now whether this just means "chop chop" - or illegally imported but unbranded tobacco - I'm not sure.  But I would guess that illegal but branded cigarettes are counted in the normal smoking figures in the survey anyway.

Here's the thing - not only Sinclair Davidson, but the entire group of Catallaxy and The Australian's "free market" economists and journalists leapt on dubious figures put out by an industry with a reputation for deception on a campaign to stop plain packaging spreading, and made grandiose claims about the policy being a public health "disaster".

Good quality survey evidence shows their gullibility and "ideology over quality evidence" approach to just about every damn thing.

UPDATE:   Heh.   The desperation continues.

The apparent .9% rise in 12 to 17 year olds smoking is latched onto by Sinclair as evidence of the plain packaging not being a success.

Predictable; yet another case of (wilfully) not being able to see the wood for the trees.