Monday, August 31, 2020

Study of the Parthenon, 1869 by Sanford Robinson Gifford

Study of the Parthenon, 1869 by Sanford Robinson Gifford

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Offbeat Humor

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Spontaneous order is only occassionally logical order

 Wikipedia is an example of global spontaneous order which works usefully most the time and with little centralized intervention.  Most of the time.  But not always.  Wikipedia has multiple editions by language.  One of which is Scots.  From The Sad Story of Scots Wikipedia by Natalie Solent.  She quotes the Guardian:

The Scots Wikipedia entry on the Canada goose – or “Canadae guiss” – was at first honest about its provenance. A tag warned: “The ‘Scots’ that wis uised in this airticle wis written bi a body that’s mither tongue isna Scots. Please impruive this airticle gin ye can.”

 

But, as the author grew in confidence, so he removed the caveat, and continued on his Scots-writing spree.

 

Now an American teenager – who does not speak Scots, the language of Robert Burns – has been revealed as responsible for almost half of the entries on the Scots language version of Wikipedia.

Half all the contributions by a single contributor?  Apparently he started when he was 12 and became habituated.  

Solent has some good observations.

One additional point - emergent order really depends on the free movement of information, ideas, and competition.  Scots Wikipedia is not so much an example of emergent order gone wrong as it is an example of what happens when there is such low interest that there is effectively no competition and a natural monopoly emerges.


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Data Talks



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History



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I see wonderful things



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I see wonderful things



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An Insight



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Sunday, August 30, 2020

Offbeat Humor



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Offbeat Humor

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Standards? I don't need no stinking standards!

 I could have sworn I had posted these at some point in the past decade or so.  But apparently not.  I have seen a couple of versions.

From PBS, here are Jim Lehrer's ground rules for journalism:


  • Do nothing I cannot defend.
  • Do not distort, lie, slant or hype.
  • Do not falsify facts or make up quotes.
  • Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
  • Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
  • Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am. 
  • Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
  • Assume everyone is innocent till proven guilty.
  • Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
  • Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.
  • Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should be able to attack another anonymously.
  • Do not broadcast profanity or the end result of violence unless it is an integral and necessary part of the story and/or crucial to its understanding.
  • Acknowledge that objectivity may be impossible but fairness never is.
  • Journalists who are reckless with facts and reputations should be disciplined by their employers.
  • My viewers have right to know what principles guide my work and the process I use in their practice.  
  • Finally, I am not in the entertainment business.

Halcyon days those were when there were such journalists.  Little in most mainstream media would now pass such seemingly obvious but apparently stringent standards.

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The Three Brothers by Philippe Charles Jacquet

The Three Brothers by Philippe Charles Jacquet

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Saturday, August 29, 2020

Offbeat Humor

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Heigh ho! Heigh ho! Mainstream media mob justice has got to go.

Another excellent example of the 72 hour rule (wait at least 72 hours after a shocking event trumpeted in headlines) before considering making an estimate of what is said to have happened.

A few days ago another African-American was shot by a police officer with an associated video posted online.  It was enough for everyone to leap to conclusions based on stereotypes and ideological compulsion.  

But looking at the video raised a lot of questions about what had just happened and whether the presentation in the mainstream media was even close to being meaningfully aligned with the facts of the case.  

This Is How Biden Loses by George Packer.  


Here is a prediction about the November election: If Donald Trump wins, in a trustworthy vote, what’s happening this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will be one reason. Maybe the reason. And yet Joe Biden has it in his power to spare the country a second Trump term.

Events are unfolding with the inevitable logic of a nightmare. A white police officer shoots a Black man as he’s leaning into a car with his three sons inside—shoots him point-blank in the back, seven times, “as if he didn’t matter,” the victim’s father later says. 

Packer continues with the sympathetic characterization of Jacob Blake as the victim through the rest of the article.   He concludes:

Biden, then, should go immediately to Wisconsin, the crucial state that Hillary Clinton infamously ignored. He should meet the Blake family and give them his support and comfort. He should also meet Kenoshans like the small-business owners quoted in the Times piece, who doubt that Democrats care about the wreckage of their dreams. Then, on the burned-out streets, without a script, from the heart, Biden should speak to the city and the country. 

 Sure, that is one recommendation.  A recommendation unbounded by a number of practical realities.  But the crucial, and largely unstated assumption, is that Blake is the victim.  

Is he?  We are still waiting for the investigations to occur and charges to be filed and trials to be held.  So we don't know.  But as in the cases of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, it sure looks like the Attorney Generals, District Attorneys, Mayors and/or Governors have once again leapt far ahead of the facts to fuel the flames of division and discord.  And it seems to be done deliberately.  

Looking at the original Jacob Blake video, only a vignette of the whole scenario, it certainly appeared that there was a lot more going on than a deliberate and unprovoked assassination attempt by the police.  It was not hard to construct a scenario of how this might be cops gone wild.  It was equally plausible to construct a scenario that this might be one more instance of a violent criminal causing the incident despite the efforts of well-trained and restrained police officers.

Which movie did the mainstream media and the politicians go with?  Out of control cops of course.  And all without even a tithe of the evidence even collected.

Meanwhile, internet sleuths were examining Kenosha law, the video, radio traffic, legal records etc.  

Within 24 hours they had introduced a lot of counter-evidence to the imagined mainstream media.  Very little of it got into the mainstream media reporting.  

So far, it seems that the occupant of the home where Blake appeared, and who called the police, was the victim of a sexual assault by Blake some months earlier and had a restraining order against Blake which he was violating.  

I came across this press release from Kenosha Professional Police Association Releases Details on Blake Shooting which was just released yesterday and which I have not seen elsewhere.  However, its findings so far map to the other evidence which has emerged.

    • The officers were dispatched to the location due to a complaint that Mr. Blake was attempting to steal the caller’s keys/vehicle.
     
    • Officers were aware of Mr. Blake’s open warrant for felony sexual assault (3rd degree) before they arrived on scene. 
     
    • Mr. Blake was not breaking up a fight between two females when officers arrived on scene. 
     
    • The silver SUV seen in the widely circulated video was not Mr. Blake’s vehicle.  
     
    • Mr. Blake was not unarmed. He was armed with a knife. The officers did not see the knife initially. The officers first saw him holding the knife while they were on the passenger side of the vehicle. The “main” video circulating on the internet shows Mr. Blake with the knife in his left hand when he rounds the front of the car. The officers issued repeated commands for Mr. Blake to drop the knife. He did not comply. 
     
    • The officers initially tried to speak with Mr. Blake, but he was uncooperative. 
     
    • The officers then began issuing verbal commands to Mr. Blake, but he was non-compliant. 
     
    • The officers next went “hands-on” with Mr. Blake, so as to gain compliance and control. 
     
    • Mr. Blake actively resisted the officers’ attempt to gain compliance. 
     
    • The officers then disengaged and drew their tasers, issuing commands to Mr. Blake that he would be tased if he did not comply. 
     
    • Based on his non-compliance, one officer tased Mr. Blake. The taser did not incapacitate Mr. Blake. 
     
    • The officers once more went “hands-on” with Mr. Blake; again, trying to gain control of the escalating situation. 
     
    • Mr. Blake forcefully fought with the officers, including putting one of the officers in a headlock. 
     
    • A second taser (from a different officer than had deployed the initial taser) was then deployed on Mr. Blake. It did not appear to have any impact on him. 
     
    • Based on the inability to gain compliance and control after using verbal, physical and less-lethal means, the officers drew their firearms. 
     
    • Mr. Blake continued to ignore the officers’ commands, even with the threat of lethal force now present. 

What appears to be emerging is an entirely different story from that being propagated by the press.  

Mr. Blake had a criminal history which included a sexual assault on the complainant victim.  He had a restraining order against being on her property which he was violating.  Blake was in the process of attempting to take his victims car which had three of her sons in it.  Mr. Blake was armed with a knife when the police arrived.  Blake did not respond to officer requests and did not comply with officer commands.  Officers became aware of the knife he held.

In seeking to bring Blake under control, Blake actively resisted arrest.  He was tased once but failed to cease resisting.  He was tased a second time with no effect on his behavior.  He managed to get one of the three arresting officers in a headlock.  It was only at this point that officers drew their weapons.

Blake broke from the officers, rounded the vehicle whose keys he had taken and attempted to enter the drivers area while there were three children in the rear seat.  He reached for something on the floor of the driver's compartment or under the seat, despite officers trying to pull him back.

It was at this point that he was shot seven times by a single officer.

Blake did not deserve to be wounded.  However, it appears that this is yet another tragic criminal-police officer interaction.  An outcome dictated by the criminal's actions and not by police malfeasance.

But if the above facts turn out to be true, it appears that this shooting is not due to officer recklessness or negligence.  A known rapist returning to his victim's home and then violently resisting arrest by three officers, while armed, is a dangerous and kinetic situation.  Add the close proximity of his victim as well as three small children and the margin for tragedy balloons.

Will more evidence emerge?  Certainly.  Could it be condemning of police actions?  Quite possible.

But everything on the table at this moment seems to indicate that the police actions were appropriate and that the consequences of his injury reside solely with Blake.  That is, unless the mainstream media, Attorney Generals, District Attorneys, Mayors and/or Governors who have prematurely passed judgment on the police long before any facts were available are able to set justice aside and carry through mob revenge without due process or attention to facts.  

Forget the whole manufactured race and police issue.

The mainstream media seem far more interested in stirring up racial strife than in either justice or protecting victims of sexual assault.  They are far more interested in writing the hagiography of Blake than in focusing on the real victim(s).  


UPDATE:  This twitter account makes the same point.  

Click for the thread.   

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Science and Literature complimenting one another in an argument

 From How the Virus Penetrated Fortress New Zealand by Phillip W. Magness.  New Zealand has been the darling of the coercive ideological statist approach to Covid-19 control.  They have shut down their country and bankrupted the economy for several months now.  The benefit is that they have only had 22 deaths so far.  

Critics have pointed out that the sympathetic mainstream media was creating a delusion.  Yes, New Zealand's closure of its own border to just about everyone very early on has helped constrain the advent of the disease.  But, those critics claim, the absence of significant exposure so far has been substantially the product of New Zealand's remoteness and absence of material interaction with other populations.  

The critics claim that all the domestic shutdown has been so much Kabuki theater with no benefits and the real measure of government effectiveness will come when Covid-19 finally takes root.  In one recent paper, the claim was that after 25 Covid-19 deaths, all countries then see the same shark spike in deaths followed by a slow and then accelerating decline.  

New Zealand - A success story or merely a late victim?  The press has been all in for the former but reality is probably going to be more like the latter.  The government may still end up doing well by not doing stupid things such as placing Covid-19 contagious victims in the same facilities as the ill and elderly.  But its leadership inclination towards dictatorial and coercive action over democratic or science led decision-making does not bode especially well.  

The article above is a good workmanlike dismantling of the argument that the coercive and economically shattering of the New Zealand economy were necessary actions.  It is worth a read simply for its factual content.

What I especially enjoyed, though, was the architecture of the piece.  Interleaved among the elements of his argument, Magness highlights passages from Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death.  It is a markedly entertaining and effective conjoining of the two cultures, the art of literature with the argument of science.  


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Sunlight in a Cafeteria, 1958 by Edward Hopper

Sunlight in a Cafeteria, 1958 by Edward Hopper

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Data Talks



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History



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I see wonderful things



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I see wonderful things



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An Insight



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Friday, August 28, 2020

Annunciation, 1968 by John Shelley

Annunciation, 1968 by John Shelley

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Offbeat Humor



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In a storm, I shall find my own way to a safe harbor.

From Horace, First Book of Epistles, Epistle 1 to Maecenas, line 15.

Ac ne forte roges quo me duce, quo lare tuter,

nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,

quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.


Do not venture to ask whose directions I follow,

for I am not sworn to go by the words of any teacher.

In a storm, I shall find my own way to a safe harbor.


The Royal Society, the very emblem of the Age of Enlightenment, adopted the line Nullius in Verba, take no one's word for it, as their motto.  

A more artful way of saying, question everything.  

Their more contemporary explanation is "an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment."  They seek not the authority of the state.  Not the authority of the mob.  They seek the authority of replicated fact.  

Two millennia on and here we are.  Disinformation campaigns, gaslighting and false reporting to the left of us, to the right of us, and in front of us.  A veritable storm of fake news.  There is no safe harbor of truth other than that to which we navigate using logic, reason, and empirical evidence.  

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Data Talks



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History



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I see wonderful things



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Plausible new ideas don't come along frequently which makes them interesting

 Hmm.  This seems consequential research.  Intriguing, interesting, and risky.

From Network Structure and Performance by Ilse Lindenlaub and Anja Prummer.  I had never considered this comparison before.  As always, subject to replication.  From the Abstract.

We develop a theory that links individuals’ network structure to their productivity and earnings. While a higher degree leads to better access to information, more clustering leads to higher peer pressure. Both information and peer pressure affect effort in a model of team production, with each being beneficial in a different environment. We find that information is particularly valuable under high uncertainty, whereas peer pressure is more valuable in the opposite case. We apply our theory to gender disparities in performance. We document the novel fact that men establish more connections (a higher degree) whereas women possess denser networks (a higher clustering coefficient). We therefore expect men to outperform women in jobs that are characterised by high uncertainty in project outcomes and earnings. We provide suggestive evidence that supports our predictions.

I have always argued that there is a tradeoff between quality control (efficiency) and innovation (effectiveness) and this theory seems to be aligned with that observation.

For enterprises, there is a high premium to consistency and standardization.  If you input X you should always get engineering maximum Y as an outcome.  Any shortfall or variance from that leads to problem solving to bring the process into alignment with maximum feasible outcome.

This leads to high efficiency and in general more compelling profit margins, hence the strong pressure towards process compliance.  It works well where exogenous factors are steady and consistent.  Factors such as inputs, demand, regulatory context, cultural norms, cost structures, inflation, etc.  

So efficiency maximization is good in a stable environment.

But all systems have to have some variance or diversity in order to evolve over time.  Anything deviant from the norm is a cost but it also introduces the opportunity to discover a better, cheaper, or faster approach.  At the same time that we want 100% process compliance, you better also have some bare minimum of deviance.  You need to sacrifice some efficiency in order to obtain some effectiveness.

The more the external environment changes, the more you need evolution, the more you need effectiveness (evolving fit for purpose).  It might be cheaper, more consistent and more efficient to have a single aluminum provider but you probably should have 2-3 aluminum suppliers.  Sure, there will be less compliance and consistency (and efficiency) but you will gain resilience and effectiveness.

That seems to me to be in many ways analogous to the higher degree of connections versus higher clustering of connections distinction they are making.

Higher degree of network (more nodes more widely spread with lighter average investment per node) enables a broader range of information to flow more quickly - valuable attributes in an uncertain and evolving context.  And analogous to high effectiveness (capacity to adapt to changing contexts).

Higher density of networks (fewer nodes more closely related and with higher investment per node) is the analog to efficiency where you are seeking to establish compliance and conformity (valuable in stable modes).

Male networks are characterized in their findings as a higher degree - they are broader, more variant and more lightly invested in (per node).  Effective at incorporating new information from exogenous conditions.

Female networks are characterized as denser, more compact and with higher investment per node.  I.e. Efficient at forcing compliance.  

For any process, you need both higher degree networks as well as more clustered networks, each serving effectiveness and efficiency respectively and the balance between the two types of network is conditioned on the relative variance, uncertainty and volatility of conditions in the exogenous environment.

This is also highly consistent with Claudia Goldin's work.  Goldin has documented that wage differences between men and women are substantially driven by different predilections towards risk, uncertainty and adaptability.  Women, from personal choice and decisions around family welfare, tend to opt towards businesses which are highly predictable, plannable, process oriented industries such as pharmacists.  

The more stable the work, the less well compensated it tends to be.  Stable processes tend to be commodity processes.  It is not discrimination that drives gender imbalances in compensation.  It is choices around working conditions.  

Men tend to opt for more higher risk, more volatile, faster evolving sectors.  The compensation is higher in part because of the greater risk and the need to constantly adapt and evolve (a psychological and time investment).  

These two models are exemplified in Sweden.  Culturally and legally the country is highly egalitarian.  But women tend to choose to work in the government sector which is highly regulated and slow to evolve.  Men tend to work in the much riskier private sector where things tend to evolve rapidly.  

Linenlaub and Plummer are introducing a further wrinkle.  Do women develop social networks that are dense and clustered because they choose to work in stable sectors and do men develop broader more varied networks because they are working in more dynamic sectors?

Or, do men and women have some sort of genetic disposition to those different styles of network creation and is it that genetic disposition regarding networks which then drives them towards different sectors?

I have no idea.  But it seems like a very plausible factor which I have not seen much researched at all.  


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An Insight



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Thursday, August 27, 2020

Offbeat Humor



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Seaside Funfair, 1980 by Ernst Haas

Seaside Funfair, 1980 by Ernst Haas

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Data Talks



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Where we stand in Covid-19 lessons learned

Nowhere near the last word but an interesting analysis that is supportive of what I anticipate will become the mature assessment once the dust has settled.

From Four Stylized Facts About Covid-19 by Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky, and Tao Zha.  From the Abstract:

We document four facts about the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide relevant for those studying the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on COVID-19 transmission. First: across all countries and U.S. states that we study, the growth rates of daily deaths from COVID-19 fell from a wide range of initially high levels to levels close to zero within 20-30 days after each region experienced 25 cumulative deaths. Second: after this initial period, growth rates of daily deaths have hovered around zero or below everywhere in the world. Third: the cross section standard deviation of growth rates of daily deaths across locations fell very rapidly in the first 10 days of the epidemic and has remained at a relatively low level since then. Fourth: when interpreted through a range of epidemiological models, these first three facts about the growth rate of COVID deaths imply that both the effective reproduction numbers and transmission rates of COVID-19 fell from widely dispersed initial levels and the effective reproduction number has hovered around one after the first 30 days of the epidemic virtually everywhere in the world. We argue that failing to account for these four stylized facts may result in overstating the importance of policy mandated NPIs for shaping the progression of this deadly pandemic.

 If I am interpreting correctly, in slightly plainer English:

  1. There is a 20-30 day window after crossing a threshold of 25 deaths.  Once that threshold is crossed, there is a spike in the growth rate of deaths across the next 20-30 days.  Growth rates of Covid-19 start very high, around 3 and plunge to near zero by the close of the 30 day window.  
  2. The transmission rate in deaths remains near one after the 30 day window.
  3. The decline in the rate is due to a falling transmission rate rather than approaching herd immunity.
  4. These characteristics are true in all locations.  Social distancing, mask wearing, commercial closures, etc. seem not to have any influence on the above facts. 
  5. A second spike remains a real but incalculable possibility.  

Ultimately:

The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The stylized facts established in this paper challenge this conclusion. We argue that research going forward should account for these facts when assessing how important NPI policy is in shaping the progression of COVID-19.

We'll see.  We still don't know what is going on but I see a lot of research now trending towards a conclusion of this nature.  

  • It is just another pandemic
  • Non-pharmaceutical interventions have made little or no difference
  • We should have stuck with the pre-pandemic planned strategies of little or no interventions
  • Anti-viral treatments are still a ways off and likely will not have an impact on the course of the disease.
  • Coercive NPIs probably had no impact on the disease progression but have caused excess economic damage with additional collateral health impacts.

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History



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I see wonderful things



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Baghdad Bob, grandfather of contemporary mainstream media

 The self-immolation of media credibility increases pace.

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Oh, dear. Affiliative networks, personal choices and behaviors once again seem causally determinative

 Another drop of information added to the pool.  From The Wealth of Parents: Trends Over Time in Assortative Mating Based on Parental Wealth by Sander Wagner, Diederik Boertien and Mette Gortz.  From the Abstract:  

This article describes trends in parental wealth homogamy among union cohorts formed between 1987 and 2013 in Denmark. Using high-quality register data on the wealth of parents during the year of partnering, we show that the correlation between partners’ levels of parental wealth is considerably lower compared with estimates from research on other countries. Nonetheless, parental wealth homogamy is high at the very top of the parental wealth distribution, and individuals from wealthy families are relatively unlikely to partner with individuals from families with low wealth. Parental wealth correlations among partners are higher when only parental assets rather than net wealth are examined, implying that the former might be a better measure for studying many social stratification processes. Most specifications indicate that homogamy increased in the 2000s relative to the 1990s, but trends can vary depending on methodological choices. The increasing levels of parental wealth homogamy raise concerns that over time, partnering behavior has become more consequential for wealth inequality between couples.

 The Danes and Swedes tend to have pretty excellent longitudinal data.  The first couple of paragraphs give some good context.

Partnering behavior is a key determinant of various aspects of well-being (Schwartz 2013). From an economic point of view, marriage and cohabitation are a foundation for sharing many public goods, specialization, risk pooling, and the coordination of domestic labor among partners (Browning et al. 2014). Therefore, it is unsurprising that couples do not form at random or irrespective of partner’s characteristics and that marital sorting is a key feature of marriage models (Becker 1973, 1991; Lam 1988). Social scientists have long documented patterns of assortative mating based on ascribed characteristics, such as parental occupation and ethnicity (Kalmijn 1998; Schwartz 2013), as well as on acquired characteristics, such as education and earnings (Blossfeld 2009; Pencavel 1998; Rosenfeld 2008; Schwartz 2010; Schwartz and Mare 2005).

 Besides the impact of partnering on individual well-being, assortative mating has been of interest for research on social stratification because it potentially impacts the distribution of resources across households and shapes boundaries between social groups (Kremer 1997; Schwartz 2010, 2013). In this article, we study partner selection based on parental wealth, a characteristic that is of particular interest for social stratification research for several reasons. First, a substantial amount of own wealth is the result of inheritances. These transfers can be observable in the wealth of individuals if parents have deceased, but they are generally a latent expectation of future transfers that are not measurable at the moment of couple formation given that most parents are still alive. Kopczuk and Lupton’s (2007) review of the literature estimated bequests to account for approximately 35% to 45% of the overall wealth of an individual in the United States. Therefore, high levels of parental wealth homogamy may contribute to wealth inequality between households. Second, wealth homogamy can shed light on important questions about intergenerational mobility processes. The extent to which families reproduce their accumulated wealth across generations through dynastic wealth is bound to depend on partnering choices.

35-45% of overall wealth arising from inheritances?  That sounds too high to me, except perhaps at the 5% or 1% level of the population.  Most studies show, in the US, a lot of dynamism as to who are on the Fortune 400 list or among billionaires.  People move in and out of these lists at a relatively high rate and family fortunes tend to dissipate across three generations.  Not that they go from riches to rags but Gilded Age robber baron families, three generations on are merely middle class or upper middle class. 

At a decadal level there seems to be a lot of movement but at the century level, Gregory Clark's work seems to indicate that across countries and cultures and across several centuries, the same families tend to keep appearing in the upper reaches of a society, come famine or war or civilizational collapse or invasion or what not.  They keep bubbling up.

Then there was the study out of Sweden within the last five years or so, looking at how lottery winnings change life outcomes of families.  My recollection is that basically it does not other than the rate of consumption goes up.  Education attainment, family formation rates, adherence of the law, work patterns all remain the same to what they were before the windfall.  If they were diligent, hard working, maritally stable, educated before, those behaviors continued.  Likewise with those who had broken labor patterns, high divorce rates, brushes with the law, low education attainment.

Access to resources does not determine behaviors, it merely amplifies them was the broad conclusion.

In sum, across these three studies we have a reality much more shaped by longterm conditions than we might otherwise wish.  It would be nice if every generation started afresh and everyone rose to their meritocratic desserts.  In much of the developed West, we are not far from that vision.  

But the closer we get, the more choices people have, and the more the underlying hardwiring becomes apparent.

These three research paths suggest that 1) choices around marriage are material and somewhat determinative of future wealth outcomes, and 2) that there is a substantial genetic component that drives familial life outcomes across multiple causal mechanisms including physical condition, cognitive capability and behavioral attributes.  

Much of this evidence cuts directly against contemporary academic ideologies (critical theory, postmodernism, feminist theory, etc.), at least those within the humanities.  It is no wonder there is such factionalism.  Personal experience, evidence, history and scientific research point in one direction and theoretical ideologies passionately believed point another.  


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An Insight



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Times which were so different and customs that flow into the future

 An interesting snapshot into old traditions which were more formal and seem archaic but which served their purpose.  These are old Virginia families which extensively cross-married.  From The Cabells and Their Kin by Alexander Brown, published in 1895. 

Elizabeth Cabell was born either in 1774 or 1776.  She was educated with her elder sister Margaret. On April 14, 1791, her father made this entry in his diary: "Clement Carrington informed me of his intention to pay his addresses to my daughter Betsy."  Many years afterwards (about 1845, I think), when Col. Clement was very old, the late N. F. Cabell asked him if he remembered his courtship.  He said: "I do — as if it were on yesterday!  She declined me!  She said she was too young to leave her parents!  I stood up and took my stand in front of her, and said, 'Madame! I will be parents to you!'  But I could make no impression upon her, and I now suspect that her heart was already engaged elsewhere."

Just a vignette but one which adds color to the sometimes dry facts of the past.  A young courter whose offer of marriage was rejected and who carried that memory through his long and accomplished life.

Elizabeth Cabell was only 15 when Carrington (aged 29) proposed but he was probably correct that her heart was already engaged elsewhere.  Elizabeth Cabell married four years later at nineteen, had at least two sons, and died of tuberculosis in 1801 at age 25.  

Carrington had served in the American Revolution and been wounded at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in 1781.  He related this long ago memory to his friend in 1845, when he was 83 years old and just two years before his own death in 1847 when his first love had been dead near half a century.

The Cabells were an established planter class landed gentry.  In the late eighteenth century, that class was already commonly investing in the education of their sons (usually at academies) and their daughters (usually with tutors).  They apparently considered marriage at fifteen as within reason.  The process was formal and harked back to more ancient customs with the suitor having first to ask permission of the father to address the woman.

But the woman had the freedom and power to refuse on her own grounds.  And the suitor had to accept her decision.  

And then there is the simple fact of the awful fragility of life in those days before knowledge of hygiene and germs and medical treatments were very far along.  Dead at 25 from tuberculosis.  Not common, but by no means uncommon.  

And those ancient customs?  I also had to seek permission of my future father-in-law to address his daughter.  I was more fortunate than Colonel Clement Carrington though and my suit was accepted.  


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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Offbeat Humor

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Night Air, 2011 by Dan McCarthy

Night Air, 2011 by Dan McCarthy

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Boyhood of Raleigh by John Everett Millais

Boyhood of Raleigh by John Everett Millais

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Data Talks



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Opinions are facts and social media is more reliable than mainstream media. How on earth did we get here?

I got this email Monday from the New York Times alert in my email.  To me it seemed rather astonishing in its blatant departure from reporting, replaced by quite apparent partisan advocacy.  The Old Grey Lady has been a DNC courtesan for a long time but this was pretty transparent.

Click to enlarge.

I did not watch the convention (either the DNC or the RNC).  I have little interest in them.  They are establishment parties saying what they think will get them elected but which has little correlation to what they will actually do.  It is all Kabuki theater.

Trump is somewhat different in that he is not a professional politician, not an establishment party member and not a respecter of establishment traditions and prerogatives.  Hence the bipartisan hatred among establishment nomenklatura.  

The vernacular substance of this paragraph says that the Republican Party convention focused on making the case for President Trump's effectiveness and on highlighting the prospects of a Biden presidency.

That is what political parties do.  Newspapers of record are supposed to report on what happened.  But apparently that is right out the window at the NYT.  Below are the opening paragraphs from the above article, which is supposed to straight reporting, not from the editorial page:

President Trump and his political allies mounted a fierce and misleading defense of his political record on the first night of the Republican convention on Monday, while unleashing a barrage of attacks on Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party that were unrelenting in their bleakness.     

Hours after Republican delegates formally nominated Mr. Trump for a second term, the president and his party made plain that they intended to engage in sweeping revisionism about Mr. Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, his record on race relations and much else. And they laid out a dystopian picture of what the United States would look like under a Biden administration, warning of a “vengeful mob” that would lay waste to suburban communities and turn quiet neighborhoods into war zones.        

At times, the speakers and prerecorded videos appeared to be describing an alternate reality: one in which the nation was not nearing 180,000 deaths from the coronavirus; in which Mr. Trump had not consistently ignored serious warnings about the disease; in which the president had not spent much of his term appealing openly to xenophobia and racial animus; and in which someone other than Mr. Trump had presided over an economy that began crumbling in the spring.

"A fierce and misleading"? - Both of those are opinion adjectives.  Was the defense factually wrong?  The NYT doesn't make that case.

"Unrelenting in their bleakness"? - A convention, or any argument, intended to establish a contrast between one positions and another.  This is another opinion masquerading as reporting.

"Sweeping revisionism"? - The mainstream media which spent three years pushing a Russia-Trump Collusion conspiracy hoax which has been proven an empty and intentional deception is accusing someone else of revisionism?  You have to admire their chutzpah while despising their dishonesty.

"A dystopian picture of . . .  a “vengeful mob” that would lay waste to suburban communities and turn quiet neighborhoods into war zones."? - Wait, is the NYT reporting on the convention or on the violent riots in Seattle, Minneapolis, Tacoma, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Kenosha, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc.?  Every morning we wake up to more video of rampaging rioters assaulting residents, assaulting police, assaulting one another.  The Republicans don't have to make the case that under Democrats there is a probability that urban centers will go up in smoke and peaceful suburban neighborhoods will be invaded by rioting looters.  The mayors and governors of Democrat governed cities and states are making that reality obvious even as the conventions happen.

An additional striking thing is the difference between the viewership numbers and the social media response to the RNC convention.  By day two, it appears that RNC viewership is several times higher than the DNC viewership.  These numbers are early reports and may change.

More substantively, even DNC blue check reporters in my twitter feed are commenting on the marked volume of policy substance at the RNC compared to the DNC; the greater diversity of voices and stories at the RNC versus the DNC; the greater optimism at the RNC versus the DNC; and the higher quality of the RNC convention versus the DNC.

If DNC reporters are sharing these observations and commentary in social media, why is their reporting in the paper almost the opposite?  It seems as if there is a reality that they comment on in social media and a party line they have to hold in their "reporting".  

We are left in the odd position, at least at this very moment, that social media, for all its weaknesses and flaws, seems to be providing better visibility into the nature of the two conventions than does the traditional mainstream media.

My old empirical head feels like it is about to explode.


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History



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I see wonderful things



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An Insight



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Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Offbeat Humor

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History



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Not only are you wrong, but ordinary people can see you are wrong.

 From Laypeople Can Predict Which Social-Science Studies Will Be Replicated Successfully by Suzanne Hoogeveen, et al.  From the Abstract:

Large-scale collaborative projects recently demonstrated that several key findings from the social-science literature could not be replicated successfully. Here, we assess the extent to which a finding’s replication success relates to its intuitive plausibility. Each of 27 high-profile social-science findings was evaluated by 233 people without a Ph.D. in psychology. Results showed that these laypeople predicted replication success with above-chance accuracy (i.e., 59%). In addition, when participants were informed about the strength of evidence from the original studies, this boosted their prediction performance to 67%. We discuss the prediction patterns and apply signal detection theory to disentangle detection ability from response bias. Our study suggests that laypeople’s predictions contain useful information for assessing the probability that a given finding will be replicated successfully.

 Highly pertinent given the high replication failure rates to date, particularly in sociology and psychology. 

The take-away is that if you are a reasonably bright person, if you see social-science findings which seem counter-intuitive and unreasonable, you have good reason to go with your good sense over the academic rigamarole.  You are pretty likely to be right.


No wonder academia is falling into such untrustworthy disrepute.  Not only are they publishing overwhelmingly false research findings (at least in the humanities) but the findings are so manifestly obvious that ordinary citizens can reasonably accurately estimate that they are wrong.


Not a branding I would want to hang my hat on.



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Between the Sheets by Phil Lockwood

Between the Sheets by Phil Lockwood

Click to enlarge.

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Data Talks



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I see wonderful things



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An Insight



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Monday, August 24, 2020

Women judges, when working with male judges, impose harsher sentences?

 Well, it is an interesting study but I am unclear what exactly they are finding.  It is behind a firewall so I cannot clarify.  From Judge Peer Effects in the Courthouse by Ozak Eren and Naci H. Mocan.  From the Abstract:

Although there exists a large literature analyzing whether an individual’s peers have an impact on that individual’s own behavior and subsequent outcomes, there is paucity of research on whether peers influence a person’s decisions and judgments regarding a third party. We investigate whether consequential decisions made by judges are impacted by the gender composition of these judges’ peer group. We utilize the universe of decisions on juvenile defendants in each courthouse in Louisiana between 1998 and 2012. Leveraging random assignment of cases to judges, and variations in judge peer composition generated by elections, retirements, deaths and resignations, we show that an increase in the proportion of female peers in the courthouse causes a rise in individual judges’ propensity to incarcerate, and an increase in the assigned sentence length. This effect is fully driven by female judges. Further analysis suggests that this behavior is unlikely to be a reflection of an effort to conform to evolving norms of judicial stringency, measured by peers’ harshness in sentencing, but that it is due to the sheer exposure to female colleagues.

The methodology looks reasonable.  Would have been good to know whether we are dealing with a large volume of cases or small.  Also would have been good to know whether there any trend lines over the fourteen years.  And as always - Show the damn effect size!  If the increase in assigned sentence increases from 12 months to 18 months, I am interested.  If it increases from 12 months to 12.5 months, then we almost certainly have an artifact of the analytical design.  Particularly if we are dealing with too few cases.

Lack of a reported effect size and absence of a sample size should have disqualified this from publication.  There is too much cognitive pollution as it is.

Accepting on, possibly misplaced, good faith that there is a real finding and that it has a material effect size, we still have one further mystery, which might be explained by the actual paper which is restricted.

What does it mean when they say "This effect is fully driven by female judges."  Does it mean that women judges when on a mixed panel, are more likely to assign harsher and longer sentences than they otherwise would do?  That seems the obvious reading.  But it is possible that they are accepting some unstated standard that all panels are usually male and that merely by adding female judges, the panel sentence becomes more harsh.  

Kind of a critical point.

Marking this as potentially very interesting but near cognitive pollution owing to deficient results reporting and ambiguity in writing.  


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History



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We are no longer in the realm of a marketplace of ideas and instead are in the blighted heath of blind coercion.

 From Public Affairs by C.P. Snow.  

Snow is the originator of the Two Cultures thesis.  In early 1959 he did a couple of radio programs which then led to his publication The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution later that year.  From Wikipedia:

Its thesis was that science and the humanities which represented "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" had become split into "two cultures" and that this division was a major handicap to both in solving the world's problems.

Hardly an exceptionally contentious issue but one which did lead to a lot of debate as to whether there were two cultures, just how distinct they might be and whether indeed there was a divergence between them which had negative consequences.  

The debate continues in many quarters under different guises - EQ versus IQ, emotional thinking versus logical thinking, feeling versus thinking, holistic thinking versus deterministic thinking, etc.  Lots of variations, often riding on small definitional distinctions.

Over time Snow modified his original opinions somewhat and became more precise in his language, but basically remained on the position he had originally carved out.  

But the debates could be heated and prolonged.  Snow was a gifted writer and debater and was open to anyone.  But over time, he began to winnow out individuals who could not be relied upon to argue in good faith.  

With BLM, Antifa, Critical Theory, Postmodernism theory, etc. we are in much the same position.  We accept as a critical position that everyone has a place in the marketplace of ideas, even the most profoundly stupid and or evil ideas such as BLM, Antifa, Critical Theory, Postmodernism theory.  However, when electing whether to debate, we are hostage to whether there is even sufficient common ground to warrant such a debate.  If, as is the case with BLM, Antifa, Critical Theory, Postmodernism theory, there underlying philosophical position is tautologically incapable of such a debate in the marketplace of ideas, then there is no warrant to debate.

It goes against the mindset of the Classical Liberal mind and the values of the Classical Liberal heart, but it is inescapably true.  If your debating opponent demands your acceptance of their predicates, the very predicates that demand debate, then there are no grounds for discussion.

That is the argument Snow reluctantly faced with a bad-faith debater, Leavis.  Leavis was an intellectual who became a crank and eventually only argued based on his beliefs and opinions rather than on logic or evidence.  As always happens, he increasingly ended up defaulting to misdirection, fraud, deliberate misstatements and ad hominem arguments.  


THE CASE OF LEAVIS AND THE SERIOUS CASE 

In his lecture published in the Times Literary Supplement on 23 April 1970 ['Literarism versus Scientism: the Misconception and the Menace'], Leavis refers to 'the debate about [or between] the Two Cultures', and then says — 'There has been no debate.'  The most recent bibliography of this topic that I have seen, compiled in an American university, lists between 1964 and 1968, in the English language alone, eighty-eight separate items.  It would have been more accurate for Leavis to say that there has been no debate between him and me.  There has not: nor will there be.  For one simple and overriding reason.  I can't trust him to keep to the ground-rules of academic or intellectual controversy.  By 'ground-rules' here, I do not mean anything in the least complex or difficult.  If I enter into discussion on any topic, intellectual, moral, practical, or whatever combination you like, it matters very little what I feel for my opponent, or what he feels for me.  But I am entitled to require — or if I am not so entitled then I have to beg to be excused — that he will observe some basic and very simple rules.  If he refers to words that I have said or written, he will quote them accurately.  He will not attribute to me attitudes and opinions which I do not hold, and if he makes any such attributions, he will check them against the documentary evidence.  He will be careful when referring to incidents in my biography, and he will be scrupulous about getting his facts right.  Naturally, I have a duty to obey the same rules in return.  Nothing could be much more prosaic or straightforward; but without these ground-rules any sort of serious human exchange becomes impossible. Leavis has, however, not observed them in his references to me and others.  That is why I will not enter into discussion with him. 

It clearly pains Snow to turn his back on the appearance of a debate but he makes clear the wisdom of doing so when there are no shared bases of trust or rules of debate.

It is marginally reassuring to see such a world-class thinker debating with the same issue we deal with today.

Are there core issues which are valid among at least some BLM, Antifa, Critical Theory, Postmodernism advocates?  Almost certainly.  But we cannot access those issues or the arguments supporting them when the advocates eschew any commitment to evidence, logic, empiricism or good faith argumentation.  As long as their only objective is subjugation and winning at any cost, we are no longer in the realm of a marketplace of ideas and instead are in the blighted heath of blind coercion.

And that is no place for a civilized person to waste their time.

 

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