Journalister, ‘forskere’ og tillid

“Ifølge en anden undersøgelse fra forskere ved Københavns Universitet er danskere generelt tillidsfulde, fremgår det af den netop udkomne bog “Små og store forandringer”. Hovedforklaringen her er, at uddannelsesniveauet er stigende, siger forskerne.” (link)

Ikke ‘mere tillidsfulde end tidligere’, bare tillidsfulde sådan generelt. “Y ligger på et højt niveau fordi X er stigende”. Kender journalisten forskel på en variabel X og dennes differentialkvotient? (jo, en differentialkvotient er også en variabel, but you know what I mean..).

Det var ikke det, den linkede undersøgelse fandt. Ifølge artiklen der linkes til fandt den, at tilliden var steget. Tilliden mellem hvem, fristes man til at spørge. Vi får ikke at vide, hvad de har spurgt om eller hvem de har spurgt, selvom vi dog får at vide, at de trods alt ikke har tilpasset spørgsmålene, så de passer endnu bedre ind i det multikulturelle Danmark end de gjorde i ‘gamle dage’. Det kunne ellers være spændende. Er tilliden anderledes i Gellerup, og afhænger den måske af, hvem man spørger? Anyway, tilliden var ikke bare høj, den var højere.

At forklaringen er uddannelse er indtil jeg ser en statistisk model der sandsynliggør hypotesen alene Morten Frederiksen’s postulat og intet andet. Det eneste han lægger for dagen i artiklen er snik-snak om et par variable han gerne vil have samvarierer med den tillid han er så vild med, sandsynligvis fordi han tror disse variables signifikans på området bakker de politiske præferencer han har i udgangspunktet op. Journalisten er selvfølgelig ikke selv behjælpelig med at præsentere modellen for os, hvis der da findes sådan en. Prøv at læse hvad MF siger:

“»Det, der har ændret sig, er, at uddannelsesniveauet er steget, og sammen med det er tillidsniveauet gået opad. Dels er folk blevet højere uddannet, og dels giver også kortere uddannelser mere abstrakte og refleksive kompetencer, der gør, at man er i stand til at håndtere større social forskellighed og føle sig tryg i flere sammenhænge, end man måske ellers har gjort,« siger Morten Frederiksen.”

‘mere abstrakte og refleksive kompetencer’, ‘i stand til at håndtere større social forskellighed’. Held at lykke med at måle de ‘mere abstrakte og refleksive kompetencer’, og held at lykke med at finde på en måde at teste for, at stigningen i de variable driver ændringerne i tillidsindikatoren.

Når en ‘forsker’ siger, at der er en sammenhæng mellem forskellige ting og han eller hun ikke overhovedet kommer ind på den kvantitative metode, vedkommende har brugt til at etablere den pågældende sammenhæng, så fylder han eller hun dig sandsynligvis med øregas. Forskerne der kan noget statistik lyver også (for både sig selv og andre), men de er bedre til det, og det er ikke helt så iøjnefaldende, når de gør det. Hvilket så igen sandsynligvis er både godt og skidt.

Dobbelte standarder

Hvis det væsentligste modargument mod indvendingen om, at ‘der er tale om en offerløs forbrydelse’ i proponenterne bag den slags lovgivnings optik er, at lovgivningen kan forhindre udbredelsen af den type illustrationer i at lede til flere overgreb end der ellers ville være – hvilket betyder at forbrydelsen ikke er offerløs – hvorfor er det så stadig lovligt for TV-stationer at vise Tom & Jerry tegnefilm? Hvorfor er det lovligt at vise film – levende billeder, ikke bare nogle tegninger – som handler om mordere og deres ofre?

Enten kan folk skelne mellem fantasi og virkelighed og holde de to ting adskilt, eller også kan de ikke. Hvis nogle manga-tegninger skal forbydes, så skal Rambo, Robocop og Terminator-filmene også.

$5000 / American

That’s how much Obama & co. will be borrowing this year. Then again, of course a per capita number like that is a deceitful way of measuring that debt accumulation, because how many of the Americans alive today are going to have to service that debt? How many over the age of, say, 65? From the article:

“The still-fragile economy and fresh tax cuts approved by Congress last month will drive the federal deficit to nearly $1.5 trillion this year, the biggest budget gap in U.S. history, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.” [...]
“At $1.5 trillion, the deficit would equal 9.8 percent of the economy, the CBO said, making it one of the largest by that measure since the end of World War II.“

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Here’s a (long) CBO report on the subject. An excerpt:

“if most of the provisions in the 2010 tax act that were originally enacted in 2001, 2003, and 2009 or that modified estate and gift taxation were extended (rather than allowed to expire on December 31, 2012), and the alternative minimum tax
was indexed for inflation, annual revenues would average about 18 percent of GDP through 2021 (which is equal to their 40-year average), rather than the 19.9 percent shown in CBO’s baseline projections. If Medicare’s payment rates for physicians’ services were held constant as well, then deficits from 2012 through 2021 would average about 6 percent of GDP, compared with 3.6 percent in the baseline. By 2021, the budget deficit would be about double the baseline projection, and with cumulative deficits totaling nearly $12 trillion over the 2012–2021 period, debt held by the public would reach 97 percent of GDP, the highest level since 1946.”

More than 6% of GDP / year for the next decade. This is for the ‘realistic’ setting with assumptions less likely to be untrue than the baseline model. Note that the ‘debt held by the public’ in that sentence is federal debt. That’s debt equal to ~100% of GDP owed by the federal government in 2021, plus debt held by the states, plus private debt. That’s a lot of debt.

I wonder what would happen if Obama and his collegues were to increase taxation by $5000/citizen this year instead of just borrowing the money. I think people would probably react quite differently in that case. Ricardian equivalence?

Some numbers

“In 1900, global average lifespan was just 31 years, and below 50 years in even the richest countries

By the mid mid-20th century, average life expectancy rose to 48 years

In 2005, average lifespan reached 65.6 years; over 80 years in some countries

By 2030, average life expectancy at birth for women in countries like the USA will be 85 years.”

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“Almost 35 million deaths a year are caused by chronic diseases [out of a total of ~58 million deaths, US]. Of these, heart disease, stroke and related conditions together kill as many people as all infectious diseases combined.

Almost 50% of chronic disease deaths occur in people under 70 years of age; 80% are in developing countries.”

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Change in rank order of global disease burden for the 15 leading causes of disease or injury 2002-2030:

Change in rank order of global deaths:

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Over 24 million people currently have dementia, with 4.6 million new cases annually; over 60% occur in developing countries.

Number of dementia sufferers will double every 20 years

The rate of increase predicted to be 3 to 4 times higher in developing regions than in developed areas.

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“About 30% of all 59 million [global] health workers are in USA and Canada.” [US and Canada make up ~ 5% of global population - 310 mio.+ 35 mio. / 6.900 mio.]

“Only 4% of health workers are in sub-Saharan Africa, which has 25% of global disease burden”

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Here’s the link. And yeah, if the rate of increase in the number of bacteria and viruses that are resistant to the antibiotics we use to fight them continues and we’re unable to come up with new drugs to deal with them, many of these projections will be very far off the mark.

The ’4% of health workers in sub-Saharan Africa’ translates to 2,36 mio. health workers working in the region. The population of sub-Saharan Africa is ~800 mio. That’s ~340 people pr. health worker. In US/Canada, using the numbers given above the corresponding average is ~19,5.

Wikipedia articles of interest

1. If you haven’t found out about the Wikipedia Portals yet, you really need to know about the existence of those amazing things. Here’s the History of Science-portal, here’s one about the Bulgarian Empire.

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2. Age of the Earth. An excerpt:

“In 1862, the physicist William Thomson (who later became Lord Kelvin) of Glasgow published calculations that fixed the age of Earth at between 20 million and 400 million years.[15][16] He assumed that Earth had formed as a completely molten object, and determined the amount of time it would take for the near-surface to cool to its present temperature. His calculations did not account for convection inside the Earth, which allows more heat to escape from the interior to warm rocks near the surface.[15]

Geologists had trouble accepting such a short age for Earth. Biologists could accept that Earth might have a finite age, but even 100 million years seemed much too short to be plausible.” [my emphasis]

I think I’ve heard about that estimate of Kelvin’s before, probably in HS physics. However the main point here to me is that the idea that the Earth itself – never mind the rest of the Universe – hadn’t been around for ever was at a point not all that long ago a new idea. We take so much of our world view for granted.

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3. Timeline of historic inventions. This is just an amazing collection of links. When I was reading Clark’s World Prehistory some time ago, I remember being very annoyed at some point that the book didn’t give any estimate as to how long the bow had been around. That was one of the things I’d like to know. I could have just looked it up. The answer is 60.000 years, give or take. The first know flute was made 35.000 years ago. The horseshoe was invented in Ancient Rome in 200 BC. The pencil? 1565. The first bicycle was made in 1818.

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4. Jevons Paradox.

“In economics, the Jevons paradox, sometimes called the Jevons effect, is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.”

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5. Wolverine.

“The adult wolverine is about the size of a medium dog, with a length usually ranging from 65–87 cm (25–34 inches), a tail of 17–26 cm (7–10 inches), and a weight of 10–25 kg (22–55 lb), though exceptionally large males can weigh over 31 kg (70 lb)”

[...]

“The wolverine is, like most mustelids, remarkably strong for its size. Armed with powerful jaws, sharp claws, and a thick hide,[9] wolverines may defend kills against larger or more numerous predators. There is at least one published account of a 27-pound wolverine’s apparent attempt to steal a kill from a black bear (adult males weigh 400 to 500 pounds).” [...] “Adult wolverines have no natural predators, though they do come into conflict with (and may be killed by) other large predators over territory and food.”

Hvis nogen gider…

Jeg kan læse på 180 at Lars Kragh Andersen nu er blevet indkaldt til samtale med politiet for overtrædelse af racismeparagraffen som et resultat af ytringer han fremførte med henblik på at opnå dette udfald. Jeg har ikke en profil på 180 og har ikke tænkt mig at få det, men hvis en af Jer der har ville gøre mig en tjeneste, kan I evt. gøre Lars bekendt med Ezra Levant’s videoer af sit møde med Shirlene McGovern (smid et link i den relevante tråd).

Hvis du klikker se på youtube ligger resten af videoerne fra afhøringen også på nettet. Lignende danske optagelser ville være guld værd.

Det danske politis repræsentanter som håndterer sagen vil sandsynligvis hælde til, at hele sagen er lidt noget pjat, men at loven nu engang er overtrådt og at Kragh derfor bør få en (lille) bøde for sine ytringer. Enten det eller også kommer han til at møde en dansk Shirlene McGovern, og gud hvor den slags mennesker trænger til at komme ud i den friske luft og blive vist frem for resten af befolkningen. Hvis politiet får lov til at underspille sagens betydning, give udtryk for at det er spild af deres tid at tage den og stå uimodsagt med den opfattelse, så vil det udfald næppe have nogen synderlig virkning på befolkningens mening om §266B. Hvis Lars vil gøre størst mulig skade på paragraffen bør han gøre sit bedste for ikke at lade politiet nedtone, hvor alvorlig sagen er. Han kan komme i fængsel for at sige sin mening. Det er alvorligt.

Videoer der bringer skidtet frem i lyset vil være optimalt. Han kan bruge Ezra’s adfærd og argumenter som en model til efterfølgelse; man kan næppe gøre det bedre end han gjorde det, da han konfronterede systemet.

Danish death panels

Mostly to the non-Danish readers. It seems there’s recently been a story about widespread use of secret DNR-codes by Danish doctors, I haven’t been able to find an article about it in English but here’s google translate. The doctors apparently systematically write in the journals of some sick people that nurses and staff should not try to save the individual in case they have a heart attack. In some cases, the code states that they shouldn’t be put in intensive care.

There’s been zero debate about this before this story broke, it was just something doctors did. A study from 2007 that apparently now has come to some journalist’s attention found that whereas almost all departments use the ‘no resuscitation in case of heart attack’ (natural enough, some people want to avoid becoming a living vegetable and people are given the choice) one third of all medical departments (n= 138) use these codes in secret, where the doctor makes the decision, often without informing the patient. 38 percent of the departments uses the codes in cases where the individual is not terminal.

Another article – which google translate translates into something that makes absolutely no sense – makes it clear that the practise is illegal, as it’s currently (on paper) illegal to decide whether a patient should be attempted resuscitated or not without informing the individual. The doctor actually can decide you should not receive treatment, but he has to inform you about the decision and your response to the decision should be put into the medical chart. I didn’t know that you could be denied resuscitation attempts but it doesn’t surprise me.

I think the health care system is one of those places where people sometimes can convince themselves that it’s better just to pretend tradeoffs don’t exist, because then they don’t have to deal with the ethical dilemmas which are all over the place. But the tradeoffs don’t go away by pretending they do, and somebody has to make some hard choices at some point. If nobody else do, the doctors have to; if everybody else just ignore the incompatibility of the current political demands (the laws) regarding medical service provision and the ressource constraints that exist in the field, well, the doctors are pretty much left with the bag.

Nedlæg etisk råd

“I torsdags havde Deadline inviteret to gæster ind til en diskussion om organdonation. Den ene var Mickey Gjerris fra Etisk Råd, den anden var lektor i praktisk filosofi Thomas Søbirk Petersen. Sidstnævnte fremlagde det forslag, at organdonation kunne trækkes fra i skat. Det ville øge incitamentet for, at den enkelte valgte at registrere sig som organdonor. Hvert år er der mennesker, der dør, fordi der ikke er organer til rådighed. Et flertal af danskerne udtrykker åben sympati for at donere deres organer, men antallet af donorer er stadig for lavt. Dette skyldes, at de færreste ulejliger sig med at tage stilling, da de ikke lige ser døden som umiddelbart forestående og derfor udskyder valget. At give et skattefradrag kunne være et bud på en løsning, der ville øge incitamentet til at tage aktivt stilling her og nu.

Men det ville Mickey Gjerris fra Etisk Råd ikke høre tale om. Han mente, at den slags løsninger var dybt suspekte, da det ville bidrage til en yderligere markedsliggørelse af vores samfund. At give et skattefradrag til organdonorer var efter hans mening blot endnu et skridt på vejen mod et ‘hyperkapitalistisk samfund’. Med andre ord mener eksperten fra Etisk Råd, at det er mere etisk korrekt at lade folk dø i en ikke-kapitalistisk verden, end at lade dem leve i en kapitalistisk.

Gjerris er endnu et af mange eksempler på, at Etisk Råd er en absurd konstruktion, der producerer absurde tanker. I det hele taget er der få offentlige institutioner, der kan konkurrere med Etisk Råd om graden af absurditet. Hele rådets raison d’être bygger på en vanvittig forestilling om, at etiske overvejelser omkring samfundsforhold er hævet over politik. At det er muligt at indtage en etisk position fra et punkt, der er hævet overdet politiske. Et punkt hvorfra man med en direkte livline til den etiske korrekte kan anskue verden etisk uden ideologi og uden at være drevet af særlige interesser. Men når Gjerris er villig til at ofre syge menneskers liv til fordel for en principiel modstand mod markedet, bliver det tydeligt, at dette punkt er nøjagtig lige så lavt, beskidt, jordbundent, politisk og ideologisk farvet som alt andet i politik.”

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Jeg ser ikke tv, så selvfølgelig er det ikke mine egne ord – ordene stammer derimod fra Troels Heeger og Søren Villemoes’ blog, læs resten her. ‘They have a point’, som man siger over-there.

Et skattefradrag betinget af tilmelding til det nationale donor-register er en interessant ide, men det er værd at huske på, at organer fra levende individer som oftest ‘holder’ betydeligt bedre end organer fra afdøde. First-best fra de syges perspektiv er i videst muligt omfang at bruge organer (nyrer, lever-væv) fra levende donorer, hvor det overhovedet er muligt. Jeg ser Heeger og Villemoes’ skattefradrag og forhøjer med ideen om også at kompensere levende donorer, monetært eller på anden vis. Det behøver ikke være en check på X kroner, det kunne også være et skattefradrag resten af livet på X kroner om året; det kunne være et uddannelsessubsidie; forhøjet offentlig pension når den tid kommer; måske bare kompensation i form af båndlagte midler, der først ville kunne inkasseres efter en tidsperiode, så ingen donerede pga. personlig akut likviditetskrise eller lignende; noget helt sjette. Der er rigtigt mange måder at bedre situationen for de mennesker, der lige nu dør pga. mangel på organer. Så vidt jeg ved, for jeg følger altså ikke samfundsdebatten særligt tæt, så tales der for lidt om dem. Jeg vil helst ikke være en af dem, altså en af dem der dør, før man kan finde en nyre, hvis/når den tid kommer – og op mod hver tredje type 1 diabetiker udvikler nyresvigt, så min bekymring er altså ikke bare rent teoretisk.

At nogle af donorerne ville give et organ – og redde et liv – bl.a. fordi de fik penge for det, ja det er altså ikke problematisk, med mindre man vil argumentere for, at læger og sygeplejersker bør arbejde gratis. Det problematiske er, at politikerne (ikke vælgerne, jeg er ikke blevet spurgt) lader folk dø som med simple midler kunne have fået forlænget deres liv betydeligt. Fra en økonomisk synsvinkel kan jeg heller ikke lade være med at føje til, at det bestemt ikke er udelukket at flere transplantationer kan vise sig at lede til en statslig besparelse på området, på trods af indførelsen af en form for økonomisk kompensation af donorerne:

Tal fra UK, dec. 2003:
“The cost benefit of kidney transplantation compared to dialysis over a period of nine years (the median graft survival time) Ref 5 is £191,000 or £21,200 per year for each year that the patient has a functioning transplanted kidney.”

Fra USA, 1999:
“The cost of a kidney transplant has dropped so significantly that University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers say it is cheaper to have a transplant than to stay on dialysis for more than two and a half years, even among the sickest patients.

“We found that the break even point was 2.7 years for all of the cases we analyzed. And, for 30 percent of our patients who did not need to be re-admitted to the hospital during the year after their transplant, the break even point was only 1.7 years,” says Eugene J. Schweitzer, M.D., a transplant surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.”

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Du kan tilmelde dig donorregistret her. Du kan altid omgøre beslutningen senere og det tager under et minut at udfylde de relevante informationer (CPR#, navn, adresse).

Random stuff

1. The jumping skills of the Rocky Mountain tailed frog suggest that frogs’ ability to land gracefully might have come after they’d learned how to jump far. A very nice video (via Ed Yong) – turn the speakers off/down before playing the video if you’re in a workplace environment, the music is quite loud:

Here’s a video of a drunk squirrel trying to climb a tree. Well, I thought it was funny/cute:

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2. Evil Overlord list (TvTropes). Everything you’ve always wanted to know about how to become a successful evil overlord in a fictional world. Well, perhaps not everything, but it’s a good starting point. There are links to several extensions to the list at the end of the article.

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3. Kposowa examined the link between suicide and marital status using data on nearly 472,000 men and women included in the National Longitudinal Mortality study. Between 1979 and 1989, 545 of these individuals committed suicide.

“Men were nearly 4.8 times as likely to commit suicide as women,” [she wrote] [...] In addition, divorce or marital separation more than doubled the risk of suicide in men, whereas in women, marital status was unrelated to suicide.

Kposowa suspects that this difference is related to the social networks men and women form outside their marriages, which may be stronger or more meaningful in women than in men.

Here’s where I found that piece. Yes, the fact that divorce impacts male suicide risk greatly but does not have any significant impact on female suicide risk is clearly because females are better at communicating. That’s surely the most likely explanation.

In other news, of all the children in Denmark who’ve been involved in a divorce and do not yet live on their own (275.000 children), 7 out of 8 of them live with their mother. From what I’ve gathered, the numbers aren’t equally bad in the US, and they’re getting better. However a majority of cases are cases of joint custody and here it’s worthwhile to compare tables 1 and 2 of this older paper and keep the difference between those in mind every time you read claims about how there isn’t a problem because joint legal custody is now a common way to settle such disputes. On an unrelated note, women currently file slightly more than two-thirds of divorce cases in the US. I wonder if males are more or less likely than females to be denied access to their children? Anyway, of course stats like these are not as important when it comes to explaining the suicide impact of divorce gender disparity as the well-known communication issues of males are. Kposowa isn’t implicitly blaming the victims.

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4. Nostalgia bomb. Not ‘from the times before the internet’, but close. Here’s another.

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5. Crisis provokes anger at god. The last two responses had me laughing out loud.

A few comics

1.

(click to view full size. Found here. I am thankful to Zach Weiner for bringing the existence of this comic to my attention)

2. Right now I feel like this is one of the best Zach ever made:

3. xkcd:

Here’s the list. Some of them are surely more debatable than others, but if people’d read this I consider it unlikely that they’d not be less misinformed on average. Less would actually do too; the children in the comic actually seem to somehow all have learned how to read. That’d be a great improvement on it’s own, schoolchildren that could actually read, whether they read wikipedia articles or not.

4. Dilbert:

I read smbc, xkcd, dilbert regularly and – less frequently – J&M. Anybody out there who has found other great online comics I should be reading?

n = 12 ?

So I see other people are writing a bunch of stuff about Andrew Wakefield, the guy who published a study linking autism and MMR-vaccination. Here’s an article in the British Medical Journal about the case. I haven’t read much about the stuff before, maybe I should have.

It turns out Wakefield’s study was a study based on 12 individuals. 12. I did not know that.

Ok, so this is why there’s no way I’m giving him the larger part of the blame for what has happened here. If you make a decision as risky as one exposing your child to multiple dangerous and easily preventable diseases, you’d damn better have a better reason than a study on 12 individuals. If not, you’re a gullible moron.

Wakefield is a fraud, but even if that’s the new thing others add to this story today, it’s not what I’m focusing on. How the hell did a study on 12 individuals ever get to be considered important enough to have any kind of impact on, well, anything? Who were those fools who were giving a study like this any kind of credence? Well, there were a lot of them (wikipedia):

“The claims in the Lancet article were widely reported;[7] vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland dropped sharply,[8] which in turn led to greatly increased incidence of measles and mumps, resulting in a few deaths and some severe and permanent injuries.[9]

Between 1997-1998 and 20001-2002 the MMR vaccine coverage of 2-year-olds in the UK fell from appr. 91 percent to 84 percent. The number of measles cases in the UK was more than 10 times as high in 2007 as it was in 2000 (children who’re not vaccinated don’t necessarily get sick, if they get sick, right away).

I’m reminded of the recent case of a type 1 diabetic child who died because the parents were too moronic to take him to the doctor, relying instead on the power of prayer to heal the kid. It wasn’t the first time that particular story had played out, nor will it be the last. If you’re that stupid, don’t have kids.

Horoscopes – Onion edition

Some random horoscopes from the horoscope section of The Onion:

1. “You’ll be taken aback this week by the news that your life story has been changed from a lightweight romantic comedy to a lengthy and detailed police procedural.”
2. “Pluto rising in your sign indicates trouble in your work life, which is problematic because, well, for astronomical reasons, Pluto will be rising in your sign for the next 87 years.”
3. “You’ll begin to suspect that your spouse has taken other sexual partners shortly after he or she opens a conversation with you by saying, “I’ve been thinking about taking other sexual partners.”
4. “This week will teach you that there are certain things that really can’t be faked, such as love, respect, and the human arm.”
5. “Love has been compared to many, many things, but thanks to your unique outsider’s perspective, you’ll be the first to spot its uncanny resemblance to the international bauxite market.”
6. “Your week will be so varied, interesting, and surprising that eventually the coroner will just give up, shrug, and write “heart failure” in the spot marked “Cause of Death.”
7. “Sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh at the hilarity of it all, but sometime’s it’s better to actually help people out of the burning building.”
8. “Someday in the future, long after you’ve died and passed from living memory, really won’t be that long from now.”
9. “Mercury rising in your sign indicates that things are getting hotter, as the mercury has expanded, causing it to rise up the thermometer.”
10. “Don’t let people tell you that you can’t be anything you want in life. Surgical techniques and gene-grafting will soon allow anyone to assume giraffe form.”
11. “Life may be a series of small and inevitable defeats culminating in death, but look at it this way: You won’t have to put up with as much of it as most people.”
12. “Before making any important business decisions next week, ask yourself if you’re using the same decision-making criteria that sent you to prison.”
13. “The stars are tired of politely nodding when you say you’re single because you’re “too picky.” You’re 25 pounds overweight and, frankly, the body odor is getting out of hand.”
14. “The universal redshift indicates that the stars are flying away from us at astounding velocities. Perhaps it is more accurate to say “from you.”"
15. “The largest meteorite ever to hit a person was about 45 pounds, making you a posthumous shoo-in for the record next Wednesday.”

Kompatibilitet

Rochefoucauld: We hardly find any persons of good sense, save those who agree with us (347).

Ok, så lad os nu først antage, at individ i’s politiske holdninger har ~0 procents sandsynlighed for at være udslagsgivende ved valg og lignende. Intet enkeltindivid har nogensinde afgjort et dansk valg.

Lad os så efterfølgende antage, at en af de primære årsager til, at mennesker deler folk op i grupper af politiske enheder med forskellige synspunkter er fordi det er sådan vi er vant til at tænke. At opdele mennesker i dem der er ‘inde’ og dem der ikke er, hjælper med til at promovere samarbejde internt i gruppen. ‘Hvis ikke vi arbejder sammen stjæler de andre aber vandhullet fra os og så dør vi af tørst’.

Kort sagt, vi bruger i dag abehjernen til at fortælle os, at irrelevante emner har stor betydning og vi træffer beslutninger med store sociale konsekvenser på baggrund af motivationsprocedurer som vi som tænkende individer burde forkaste i udgangspunktet, fordi den slags tænkning for tusinder af år siden gav individer som tænkte på den måde en større chance for at deres gener blev ført videre i systemet i historiens store hjul. Måske gør den det stadig?

Baggrunden for ovenstående: Jeg er ved at nå til den slutning, at en evt. partners politiske præferencer ideelt set måske bør være irrelevante for partnervalget, eller betydningen af denne variabel bør som minimum nedskrives betydeligt. Et stærkt modargument er [347] og det forhold, at vi ikke sådan lige kan slå abehjernen fra. Politiske sympatier korrelerer med mange andre ting, nogle af hvilke sandsynligvis kan vise sig at være væsentlige også på et mere objektivt plan. Og de kan ændre sig over tid.

Politik handler for langt de fleste om følelser lige så meget, nej mere, end det handler om tanker, ideer. Jo mere politisk engagement, jo færre tanker, jo flere følelser. Der skal mange rationaliseringer til for at forsvare følelserne, jovist, men det er rationaliseringer ikke desto mindre. Det er undskyldningerne, vi finder på bagefter for at støtte ‘vores’ gruppe. Men betyder dette at politik bør være irrelevant, men ikke er det; eller måske at det vil være mest væsentligt for den mest politiske, som vil være tilbøjelig til at jage potentielle partnere væk ved at være ufleksibel og på den måde kun øge engagementet og fortsætte den onde cirkel?

Politik kan ligesom religion og forholdet til videnskaberne være, og vil ofte være, en stor del af ens generelle verdensbillede. Det bør et eller andet sted ikke være irrelevant. Men hvis der er et uoverstigeligt problem med verdensbilledet, så er det vel som oftest et andet sted, problemet befinder sig, ikke i den politiske dimension. Hvis et individ mener at staten skal tage sig af alle problemer, kunne det måske være en indikation af, at individet er uselvstændigt og ikke selv kan løse sine problemer – og det er det, der er et problem for partneren, ikke at det pågældende individ støtter en ny socialreform. Jeg kunne godt oppe i mit hoved forestille mig et par give op efter voldsomme diskussioner om Israel-Palæstina konflikten. Prøv at tænke på, hvor vanvittigt det er. Det er en konflikt tusindvis af kilometer væk som ingen af de to har nogen som helst indflydelse på – og som ingen indflydelse, udover på meningsudvekslingsplanet, har på dem selv. Hvis de levede i et 2010 for 100 år siden, uden tv og internet, ville de slet ikke kende til konfliktens eksistens. Grunden til at den slags kan lede til brud er selvfølgelig, at det ikke har noget med politik at gøre, at politikken bare er et påskud. Det handler om, hvem der giver efter, hvad prisen er, i det altid fortløbende spil om magten i forholdet, det som før i tiden var magten over ressourcerne, en væsentlig faktor i både enkeltindividernes og afkommets overlevelseschancer.* Men er det ind i den kontekst man skal tolke alle politiske uoverensstemmelser, eller er der mere i det? Det er der vel nok.

Der gives næppe generelle regler. Måske er det bare det med at tænke sig om, vide lidt om hvilke motivationsfaktorer der er/bør være væsentlige og hvilke der ikke er/bør være det. Det er vist svært nok i sig selv. Indebærer ovenstående bemærkninger, at jeg også bør overveje at være mere potentielt fleksibel på det religiøse plan end jeg måske tidligere har forestillet mig selv, at jeg var/burde være? Sandsynligvis.

Mine familiemedlemmer siger somme tider, at jeg overtænker alting. Jeg har på den anden side svært ved at forstå, hvordan mennesker kan navigere rundt i så komplekse sammenhænge som parforhold uden at tænke over ting som disse hele tiden. Vanens magt, hormoner, biologi? Er der ikke mere i det?

[*væsentligt for dem, der ikke har læst eks. Dawkins' glimrende Selfish Gene eller tilsvarende fremstillinger kunne det her være at nævne, at ressourceallokeringsspørgsmål som disse ikke behøver overvejes aktivt af arten/parterne for at have vægt, de gælder uanset om der aktivt tænkes over disse ting eller ej. Hvis en han-mus giver for meget mad til moderen og børnene til selv at overleve på sigt, så vil han få færre børn end hans konkurrent, som ikke døde af sult. På langt sigt vil gener som medvirker til at give han-musen en tilbøjelighed til at give 'for meget' mad til moderen blive udryddet, uanset om musen har tænkt over, hvor meget mad det er 'fair' at give til moderen. "Palæstina er en jordnød."]

…

Opdatering:

To links. Jeg har rettet lidt videre i mine gamle posts og faldt over denne post. Efter at have læst den blev jeg lige mindet om, at der er grænser for min fleksibilitet. Måske kan man stadig sige, at politikken bare er et påskud, men mennesker med samme holdninger og verdensbillede som OVC kan jeg bare ikke være i stue med.
Faldt ved samme lejlighed over Yudkowsky’s artikel Politics is the mind killer. Den behandler nogle af de samme temaer; Yudkowsky er klart en af dem, der bør være med på en liste over mennesker som har medvirket til at forme mit nuværende syn på politisk debat generelt.

Conservapedia, selected articles

1. Why you should take Conservapedia seriously. They actually link to this piece from the front page right now.

2. -ll-, part 2. A quote:

“A mountain is a mass of land that is taller than its surroundings. While there is no technical definition distinguishing between the two, a mountain is generally regarded to be much larger than a hill.

There are different theories about the origin of mountains.

All mountains, at every elevation, have limestone deposits reflecting that they were once under seawater. The Great Flood accounts well for the presence of this limestone and the smooth, eroded surfaces found on most mountains.”

3. -ll-, part 3:

“Bishop James Ussher calculated the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC. While this is not the only biblical chronology which has been developed, almost all chronologies give a creation date near 4000 BC.

This gives rise to the “starlight problem” for some Christians, although there is nothing inherently illogical about the creation of light in situ to inform humanity of the existence of objects farther away than 6000 light-years. Believers in relativity have constructed a number of models which explain the age of the universe as being affected by the time-warping effects of gravity as predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, so that the age of the universe as measured by a hypothetical observer at the edge of the universe might be 14 billion years, but as measured by an observer on Earth is only 6,000 years.”

4. -ll-, part 4. The beginning of the article: “A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing.”

…and here’s an illustration from the article:

The second image in the article is a picture of a serial killer. The article also has a list of ‘Infamous liberals’ further down which includes Stalin and Mao.

5. -ll-, part 5. Funny enough, only half of those signs are useful if you don’t have a girlfriend. Only two don’t mention female partners/relations in any way. Let’s just say those signs aren’t particularly useful if you’re a heterosexual female worried that you’re about to become a ‘lonely atheist nerd’.

…

It’s easy to laugh at stuff like this, and don’t get me wrong, of course I do that as well. But then again, imagine for just a moment that you were raised by fundamentalist Christian parents and considered Conservapedia to be a far more trustworthy source of information than wikipedia and relied primarily on the information available on this site to make sense of the world. That kind of thought doesn’t exactly make me laugh.

A game

Here’s the link, no java or other stuff required. This is a good endgame study, I think the game is probably lost for black after the rook exchange because that a-pawn will fall, though I don’t think any less of him for not resigning until much later. I was pretty fond of 51.e5! when I found it (before sacking the a-pawn), and unless I’d found that move the game would have been drawn.

Radiation Dose-Response Relationships for Thyroid Nodules and Autoimmune Thyroid Diseases in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors

Here’s the link. The easiest way to read this study is to save the pdf and open it in a pdf-reader like Adobe or Foxit – it looks quite messy the way it’s set up on that page. They’ve analyzed the data of more than 4000 survivors of the bombings more than 50 years after the bombings – in itself an amazing feat. The main findings:

“Results: Thyroid diseases were identified in 1833 (44.8%) of the total participants (436 men [32.2% of men] and 1397 women [51.0% of women]) (P<.001). In 3185 participants, excluding persons exposed in utero, not in the city at the time of the atomic bombings, or with unknown radiation dose, the prevalence of all solid nodules, malignant tumors, benign nodules, and cysts was 14.6%, 2.2%, 4.9%, and 7.7%, respectively. The prevalence of positive thyroid antibodies, antithyroid antibody–positive hypothyroidism, and Graves disease was 28.2%, 3.2%, and 1.2%, respectively. A significant linear dose-response relationship was observed for the prevalence of all solid nodules, malignant tumors, benign nodules, and cysts (P<.001). We estimate that about 28% of all solid nodules, 37% of malignant tumors, 31% of benign nodules, and 25% of cysts are associated with radiation exposure at a mean and median thyroid radiation dose of 0.449 Sv and 0.087 Sv, respectively. No significant dose-response relationship was observed for positive antithyroid antibodies (P=.20), antithyroid antibody–positive hypothyroidism (P=.92), or Graves disease (P=.10).

Conclusions: A significant linear radiation dose response for thyroid nodules, including malignant tumors and benign nodules, exists in atomic bomb survivors. However, there is no significant dose response for autoimmune thyroid diseases."

Basically, the study says that almost half, 45%, of all the atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who're still alive have some sort of thyroid disease. One of the things that surprised me when reading this study is that the lower the age of exposure, the higher the risk of developing malignancies later on. It makes perfect sense, I just hadn’t thought about that. The excess odds ratio pr. Sievert of developing solid nodules was almost four times as high among those exposed at the age of 0-9 than among those exposed at the age of 10-19. As an aside, when Chernobyl blew up I was less than one year old.

And now for something completely different (target group: Danish readers). Here are the titles of the top posts on the front page of the main Danish wordpress site right now:

1. Bla. om at have de forkerte forbilleder og at gøre krav på sin lykke.
2. Færdig med at tørre røv
3. “Du kommer ingen vegne med at have det nemt”
4. Køkkenombygning – vejs ende. Næsten
5. Jernskjorten
6. Der er hylder der skal findes

Guards! guards!

Will finish the book later this evening, this is good stuff. Some quotes:

1. ‘Huh. Wizards. What do they know about a day’s work?’
The Supreme Grand Master breathed deeply. Ah…
The air of mean-minded resentfulness thickened noticeably.
‘Nothing, and that’s a fact,’ said Brother Fingers. ‘Going around with their noses in the air, too good for the likes a’us. I used to see ‘em when I worked up the University. Backsides a mile wide, I’m telling you. Catch ‘em doing a job of honest toil?’
‘Like thieving, you mean?’ said Brother Watchtower…

2. He’d always known he was different. More bruised for one thing. And then one day his father had come up to him or, rather, come up to his waist, and told him that he was not, in fact, as he had always believed, a dwarf. It’s a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species.
‘We didn’t like to say so before, son,’ said his father. ‘We thought you’d grow out of it, see.’
‘Grow out of what?’ said Carrot.
‘Growing.’ [...]
‘What is my own kind, then?’ said Carrot bewildered.
The old dwarf took a deep breath. ‘You’re human,’ he said.
‘What, like Mr Varneshi?’ [...] ‘One of the big people?’
‘You’re six foot six, lad. He’s only five foot.’ The dwarf twiddled the losse rivet again. ‘You see how it is.’
‘Yes, but – but maybe I’m just tall for my height,’ said Carrot desperately…

3.’You’re saying,’ he said, weighing each word, ‘that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle.’

4.’He did what?’
‘I was marched through the streets,’ said Urdo van Pew, currently President of the Guild of Thieves, Burglars and Allied Trades. ‘In broad daylight! With my hands tied together!’ He took a few steps towards the Patrician’s severe chair of office, waving a finger.
‘You know very well that we have kept within the Budget,’ he said. ‘To be humiliated like that! Like a common criminal! There had better be a full apology,’ he said, ‘or you will have another strike on your hands.’ [...]
‘The Watch appears to be having some difficulty with the Thieves’ Guild,’ said the Patrician. ‘Van Pew has been in here claiming that a member of the Watch arrested him.’
‘What for, sir?’
‘Being a thief, apparently.’
‘A member of the Watch?’ said the secretary. [...]
‘But we don’t do things like that!’ said Vimes [the leader of the watch]. ‘You can’t go around arresting the Thieves’ Guild. I mean, we’d be at it all day!’ [...] ‘We’ve got to get him off the streets as soon as possible,’ he muttered. ‘Next thing you know he’ll be bringing in the chief of the Assasin’s Guild for bloody well killing people!’

5. He tried a doorhandle. It was locked. ‘You stick with me,’ he added, ‘and I’ll see you’re all right. Now, you try the handles on the other side of the street.’
‘Ah. I understand, Corporal Nobbs. We’ve got to see if anyone’s left their store unlocked,’ said Carrot.
‘You catch on fast, son.’
”I hope I can apprehend a miscreant in the act,’ said Carrot zealously.
‘Er, yeah,’ said Nobby, uncertainly.
‘But if we find a door unlocked I suppose we must summon the owner,’ Carrot went on. ‘And one of us would have to stay to guard things, right?’
‘Yeah?’ Nobby brightened. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said. Don’t you worry about it. Then you could go and find the victim. Owner, I mean.’

6. In the privacy of the Oblong Office, his personal sanctum, the Patrician paced up and down. He was dictating a stream of instructions.
‘And send some men to paint that wall,’ he finished. [he's trying to cover up that a dragon had burned a man alive in front of the wall]
Lupine Wonse raised an eyebrow.
‘Is that wise, sir?’ he said.
‘You don’t think a frieze of ghastly shadows will cause comment and speculation?’ said the Patrician sourly.
‘Not as much as fresh paint in the Shades,’ said Wonse evenly.
The Patrician hesitated a moment. ‘Good point,’ he snapped. ‘Have some men demolish it.’