His command of the subject is outrun by his ambitions

As an atheist of Islamic background, Razim Khan is very controversial to the Left. The oddity of that statement reflecting the morass of contradictions in our current popular discourse.

He generally writes from a distinct, even idiosyncratic viewpoint and therefore is well worth reading in that he introduces new data and new perspectives, whether amenable to one's own views or not. He is also a good writer.

From There Is No Exception in Islam by Razib Khan, I liked this phrasing.

But there are weaknesses to Harris’ methods, and his grasp of facts for his rationality engine to operate upon can sometimes be lacking (this is unfortunately a general problem with being a dilettante, which I would know, but it also doesn’t excuse people from taking Harris too seriously on topics where his command of the subject is outrun by his ambitions).

Intentions versus execution

I think we should at least give them credit for good intentions.

LAPD Officers went undercover and dressed up as women to catch a purse snatcher in 1960. pic.twitter.com/2tf30ykjyi

— Historical Images (@Historicalmages) June 14, 2016

Mountainous insight

A useful counterpoint to the platitude of "Pursue Your Passion"

Every corpse on Everest was once an extremely motivated person.

— Rabbit KM (@BathysphereHat) June 1, 2016

Conversation is where knowledge is transmitted

Very interesting data that runs counter to many assumptions. The question is how much information is shared word-of-mouth (face-to-face or voice-to-voice) versus is shared online via text messaging, emailing, blogs, social media, etc.

From Comparing Online and Offline Word of Mouth by Ed Keller and Brad Fay.

Even in today's information age, the vast majority of word of mouth conversations about brands happen the old fashioned way, face-to-face. Three quarters of WOM (75%) happens in person, followed by telephone at 17%, and online forms of communication at just under 10%.

TalkTrak further breaks down WOM into the following component parts: email communications (3%), text and instant messaging (3%) and blogs and chatrooms (1%). Another 2% is "other" communications, which includes conventional notes and letters.

We have almost innate biases towards novelty and recency but measurement gives some balanced sense of perspective.

Yes, a lot is happening online but in terms of where brands are discussed and products recommended, good old fashioned conversation apparently still reigns supreme.

The keys to success of a story are to evoke the emotions of curiosity, surprise, and suspense, as well as disgust or ingroup-outgroup hatred, and for its parts to fit together into a coherent structure

A very good summary of the little understood field about what determines whether a story catches on or survives over time. From The Theory of Narrative Selection by Sarah Perry.

Friggeri et al. (2014), studying rumor cascades on Facebook, found that while only 45% of the rumors covered on Snopes.com (the famous urban legend debunking site) are false, 62% of the rumors shared on Facebook were false. 26% of the stories on Snopes are labeled true, while only 9% of the rumors shared on Facebook were true. False stories seem to enjoy an advantage at the outset.

Interestingly, however, the few true stories that were shared had longer “rumor cascades” of subsequent shares than false stories (an average of 163 shares per upload for true stories, vs. 108 for false stories). Unfortunately, being “Snoped” (a user commenting on the rumor with a link to Snopes) does not seem to hinder virality much; over half of the shares of false and mixed items occurred after the item was Snoped.

If the keys to success of a story are to evoke the emotions of curiosity, surprise, and suspense, as well as disgust or ingroup-outgroup hatred, and for its parts to fit together into a coherent structure to produce these emotions, then the truth is limited. A true story is heavily constrained: it must have a source in events in reality, and its elements may not change.

Very interesting. 62% of Facebook shared news (rumors) is false? Quite high. True stories are more shared. Hmmm.

Here were my take-aways from the research. These are the elements that increase the chances a story will be shared across the population and over time.

Integrated structure of the story.

Narrative elements that are counterintuitive enough to be interesting and memorable, but not so counterintuitive as to lose coherence.

Stories that evoked disgust were more likely to be shared, and the more disgusting, the better.

Evoking the emotions of curiosity, suspense, and surprise were crucial to viewers enjoying stories, and perceiving them as stories.

The fit between all the elements of a story, and not those separate elements themselves, underlies success and memorability.

Establishing the goodness of the ingroup and the badness of the outgroup.

The dynamic of story transmission varies depending on whether it is vertical (from respected and admired sources) or horizontal (affiliative peer groups). Horizontally disseminated stories have greater potential for harm than vertically disseminated stories. (Importance of trusted sources)

Summary

If the keys to success of a story are to evoke the emotions of curiosity, surprise, and suspense, as well as disgust or ingroup-outgroup hatred, and for its parts to fit together into a coherent structure to produce these emotions, then the truth is limited. A true story is heavily constrained: it must have a source in events in reality, and its elements may not change.

Technology coevolution

From The Development of the Rudder, 100-1600 A.D.: A Technological Tale by Lawrence V. Mott.

From the abstract:

The one instrument which all ships have in common is a rudder. Until the 13th century A.D., the primary instrument used to control ships was the quarter-rudder system. Unlike the present-day rudder which is mounted on the stern, quarter-rudders were mounted on the sides of ships towards the stern.

The Mediterranean quarter-rudder was an inherently simple device and had only three basic requirements for mounting. This simplicity allowed shipwrights to adapt the quarter-rudder for use on a wide variety of vessels. Not only did the quarter-rudder concept permit the use of this type of rudder on different kinds of ships, but the basic system was also sufficiently flexible to evolve, thus insuring its continued use through the Middle Ages. As the methods for mounting the quarter-rudder changed, so did the design of the rudders themselves. The traditional Greco-Roman rudder gave way to the more efficient medieval rudder, which enhanced the overall performance of the quarter-rudder system.

A unique quarter-rudder system indigenous to northern Europe had also evolved, but unlike its southern counterpart, this system was rather inflexible. Northern shipwrights found that their system could not be adapted to the new ship designs which were continually increasing in size. This inability of northern shipwrights to adapt their system to larger ships created a technological crisis which forced them to look for a new device. The result was a rudder mounted on the stern by a hinge device called the pintle-and-gudgeon. Because this new device had several deficiencies, it did not immediately replace the Mediterranean quarter-rudder. Only after a significant change in hull design, and the appearance of the full-rigged ship, did the pintle-and-gudgeon rudder finally supplant the quarter-rudder.

The history of the quarter-rudder shows that technologies which are flexible are the ones which tend to survive the longest, while that of the pintle-and-gudgeon system is a classic example of a technology having to await the development of other before it can realize its full potential. The continued use of the quarter-rudder, despite some inherent drawbacks, demonstrates that there is a human tendency to try to modify existing technologies to their extremes, instead of immediately searching for more radical solutions to a given problem.

The core problem faced by northern shipwrights was that as their ships became larger, the traditional Mediterranean quarter-rudder became less effective. The pintle-and-gudgeon rudder mounted on the stern centerline of the ship was a good solution to the decreasing effectiveness of quarter-rudders on larger ships but brought its own shortcomings. The triumph of the pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, which became the dominant solution, only came about through the coevolution of sails, rigging, and hull shape to optimize the outcome for steering control, size, speed, etc.

The central observation is that the pintle-and-gudgeon rudder solution did not spring to life as an obvious solution. It became dominant only through coevolution.

Having fun with big data sets

Without more details, no possible conclusions.

The tweeter is casting this as "People who dye their hair crazy colors, might be crazy" based on the association between dyeing hair and self-reports of having seen a therapist. An alternative, less catchy but just as valid conclusion based on the skimpiness of details might be, "Social misfits more likely to seek assistance." Or even more positively, "Socially non-conforming are more open to self-understanding." All depends on the song you want to play.

It is fun fodder for speculative conjectures but without robust and controlled studies, it is, simply, speculation.

The speculation, however, conforms with even more unstructured stereotypes and anecdotal assumptions, which makes the speculative conjecture seem more robust than it is.

Is crazy hair color a cue of actual crazy as some have suggested? It appears so. N=8k. OKCupid data. pic.twitter.com/yR9fiyU4lM

— Emil OW Kirkegaard (@KirkegaardEmil) June 11, 2016

Click to enlarge

Free creators lead to growth, coercive regulators do not

Possibly more fun than factual. From A brief history of human time by Olivier Gergaud, Morgane Laouénan, and Étienne Wasmer.

Historical accounts often assert that notable individuals matter for the growth of particular cities. This column uses a new database of 1.2 million people from 2,000 cities since 800CE to show that some types of ‘notable’ individuals have made a difference. Specifically, the presence of many entrepreneurs and artists is associated with faster long-term growth, but the association does not hold for notable military, political or religious figures.

[snip]

We compile the largest possible database of “notable” people rather than focusing only on “very famous” individuals, because we are ultimately interested in detecting the statistically significant local economic impact of these individuals. It turns out that weighting individuals by measures of their impact does not make a big difference, which ex post justifies our collection of information on hundreds of thousands of lesser known artists, business people, and local rulers who are famous enough to have been listed and described somewhere on the internet or in various rankings, but are left out of the vast majority of internet sources.

A couple of findings from this exercise.

The fraction of notable people in governance occupations has decreased, while the fraction in occupations such as the arts, literature/media and sports has increased over the centuries. Sports caught up with the arts and literature for the cohorts born in 1870, then remained at the same level until the 1950s cohorts of the 1950s, and eventually came to dominate the database after 1950.

[snip]

Last and not least, we find a positive correlation between the contemporaneous number of entrepreneurs and the urban growth of the city in which they are located the following decades. More strikingly, the same is also true for artists, with the contemporaneous number or share of artists positively affecting city growth over the next decades. In contrast, we find a zero or negative correlation between the contemporaneous share of “militaries, politicians and religious people” and urban growth in the following decades.

Interesting materials. I am not seeing anything at this level of synopsis about whether or how the researchers managed the direction of causal flow. In other words, did entrepreneurs/artists (creators) cause urban growth, or did urban growth generate the circumstances that permitted the flourishing of entrepreneurs and artists?

The unheard whispers of history as we move through spaces

I find more and more often, as the years advance, some history or story of a place that I used to frequent and was ignorant of at that time. When I was an undegraduate student at Georgetown University, I used to run the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.

I am very interested in history. Having lived in England, which is crisscrossed with canals, I was aware of the role canals played in the early industrial revolution and the role they played as one of the first instances of manmade infrastructure enabling high volume low cost bulk transportation. That history is less well known here in the US but we have our own share of canals here as well. All of which I knew back then in 1978. In going to Georgetown University, I was unaware in advance that it was adjacent to the C&O Canal so that was a pleasant discovery. I spent many mornings and afternoons running the C&O, particularly in the Spring and Fall.

This morning, I came across the story of Mary Pinchot Meyer via Ann Althouse's "Why don’t you leave suburbia for once — come and see me — either here — or at the Cape next week or in Boston the 19th." I was completely unaware of this woman and these conspiracy theories. Some things get clearer with the passage of time. Sometimes they seem to get murkier.

From Mary Pinchot Meyer in Wikipedia.

Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer (October 14, 1920 – October 12, 1964) was an American painter living in Washington D.C. At the time of her death, her work was considered part of the Washington Color School and was selected for the Pan American Union Art Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. She was married to Central Intelligence Agency official Cord Meyer from 1945-1958, and she was linked romantically to the late President John F. Kennedy after her marriage to Meyer. Rumors and tabloid press reports of her affair with Kennedy were confirmed by her late brother-in-law, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, in his 1995 autobiography A Good Life.

Meyer was shot to death on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath on October 12, 1964, three weeks after the release of the Warren Commission Report, whose conclusions Meyer allegedly challenged. The timing of her killing and the effort by CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton to retrieve Meyer’s diary immediately after her murder have prompted investigation of possible CIA involvement in her death. The African American man accused of her murder, Ray Crump, Jr., was acquitted at trial in July, 1965. Her murder remains officially unsolved.

Read the whole complex tale.

Twenty-four years later, I was running exactly where Meyer was murdered, completely unaware of either that event or the link to Kennedy. And now, thirty-four years after that, I learn of the coincidence of which I was unaware at the time.

As knowledge is digitized and as virtual and augmented reality devices develop, perhaps we will get to the point where we will be able to don devices and, as we walk a street or hike a trail, or stroll a hallway, we will be able to have a heads-up display of crimes past, sordid stories, great speeches, battles, inventions, discoveries, etc that were delivered at those locations. Not omniscient knowledge but perhaps greater awareness of context.

One of them was obscenely bald

H/T Ed Driscoll.

From The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. Published in 1937 in England, it is oddly descriptive of our current environment in 2016, nearly eighty years later.

The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from the old Liberal Party. In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured ‘Socialists’, as who should say, ‘Red Indians’. He was probably right—the I.L.P. [Independent Labor Party] were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.

I love George Orwell's writing. Very perspicacious, to use a word upon which he might frown (See, Politics and the English Language).

I am fascinated by that description, "One of them was obscenely bald." Orwell's description does evoke an obscene visual picture of the two individuals. Still, I struggle with how someone might be obscenely bald.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Back on Most Campuses by Eyal Press makes the argument that the Snowflake, SJW syndrome is primarily a function of a small percentage of the entitled middle class. That it is a small percentage is reasonably well attested. That it is from those most privileged is anecdotally sound but empirically untested (as far as I am aware.) But certainly Press's argument is consistent with Orwell's observations.

UPDATE 2: A similar sentiment in A Revolt of the Comfy and Bored by Noah Rothman