The trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie is out. When they can't find anything worthy of even a chuckle for the trailer, the prognosis for the movie as a whole is not good.
News
Friday, February 03, 2012
Christie, You Make Me Misty
With little to do in the evening in Siena, I read a few mystery novels before going to sleep. On the jacket of those by Agatha Christie, I found the following:
"The mostly widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare."
What is this supposed to mean? I can understand eliminating the Bible from the rankings, as either:
1) It was written by many authors; or
2) It was written by one author, but it's not really fair for Him to compete with us in a book selling contest. ("Ooh, God, #1 on the NYT's bestseller list again... I suppose your going to take gold in the Olympic decathlon again, too, aren't you?")
But why isn't Christie number two, and Shakespeare number one? Even if you think it was really the Count of Basie or the Duke of Ellington who wrote the plays, that is still one author, right?
"The mostly widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare."
What is this supposed to mean? I can understand eliminating the Bible from the rankings, as either:
1) It was written by many authors; or
2) It was written by one author, but it's not really fair for Him to compete with us in a book selling contest. ("Ooh, God, #1 on the NYT's bestseller list again... I suppose your going to take gold in the Olympic decathlon again, too, aren't you?")
But why isn't Christie number two, and Shakespeare number one? Even if you think it was really the Count of Basie or the Duke of Ellington who wrote the plays, that is still one author, right?
Thursday, February 02, 2012
A Pepper of Thoughts
* Did you know there are bot nets, managed by bot herders? One has been discovered that contains 4 million computers.
* Very good post from Mario Rizzo on rationality.
* By the way, I am available for editing work. (I have been professionally editing for a globally circulated magazine for the last four years, but I've decided to try to pick up more work like this.)
* Very good post from Mario Rizzo on rationality.
* By the way, I am available for editing work. (I have been professionally editing for a globally circulated magazine for the last four years, but I've decided to try to pick up more work like this.)
I'm Not Quite Getting This
I see a campaign going around on Facebook to "de-fund the Komen Foundation," because of this situation.
So wait a second... because the Komen Foundation de-funded Planned Parenthood's cancer screening, we should now de-fund all of the other cancer screening they still do support?! Wouldn't that be doing the exact same thing you are mad at them for doing: de-funding some cancer screening for political reasons?
So wait a second... because the Komen Foundation de-funded Planned Parenthood's cancer screening, we should now de-fund all of the other cancer screening they still do support?! Wouldn't that be doing the exact same thing you are mad at them for doing: de-funding some cancer screening for political reasons?
What Makes a World Possible?
I was thinking to myself, "The best possible outcome of the upcoming US presidential election is for Obama to be re-elected."
And then I thought to myself, "What do I mean here by possible?"
Let's say someone says to me, "Well, what about if the Dalai Lama became president?"
OK, that might be better, but it wasn't something I was considering among the "possible results."
Well, why not? After all, it's not logically impossible.
I think what I mean by possible, in this sense, is that it could occur without an extraordinary amount of change happening between now and when the event being imagined is thought to occur. For Obama to be elected president, basically nothing has to change except for it to be November instead of February. But I still consider Romney being elected president possible, because for that to occur, the only further thing that has to happen is for him to win the GOP nomination (which seems very likely at this point), and for about 5% of US voters to change their mind about who should be the next president. And I've seen things like the latter happen.
But for the Dalai Lama to be elected president, first of all, the US Constitution would have to be changed within the next eight months. It would also have to become widely known that he wanted to be president. There would have to be some massive change in the opinions of American voters, so that they would desire to make a foreign-born religious leader our president. And probably a dozen other major things, of which I am not thinking, would have to change as well.
And all of that would be, for me, an unprecedented amount of change over such a time span. That's why I discount that scenario as "not possible." But should it occur anyway, I would not think "I made a logical error in determining what is impossible," because I never meant it was logically impossible. Instead, I would think, "There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy!"
And the amount of change involved explains why I can only say it might be better to have the Dalai Lama be the next president: so many other things would have to be different for that to happen that I really can't even guess whether that world would be better than this one.
And then I thought to myself, "What do I mean here by possible?"
Let's say someone says to me, "Well, what about if the Dalai Lama became president?"
OK, that might be better, but it wasn't something I was considering among the "possible results."
Well, why not? After all, it's not logically impossible.
I think what I mean by possible, in this sense, is that it could occur without an extraordinary amount of change happening between now and when the event being imagined is thought to occur. For Obama to be elected president, basically nothing has to change except for it to be November instead of February. But I still consider Romney being elected president possible, because for that to occur, the only further thing that has to happen is for him to win the GOP nomination (which seems very likely at this point), and for about 5% of US voters to change their mind about who should be the next president. And I've seen things like the latter happen.
But for the Dalai Lama to be elected president, first of all, the US Constitution would have to be changed within the next eight months. It would also have to become widely known that he wanted to be president. There would have to be some massive change in the opinions of American voters, so that they would desire to make a foreign-born religious leader our president. And probably a dozen other major things, of which I am not thinking, would have to change as well.
And all of that would be, for me, an unprecedented amount of change over such a time span. That's why I discount that scenario as "not possible." But should it occur anyway, I would not think "I made a logical error in determining what is impossible," because I never meant it was logically impossible. Instead, I would think, "There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy!"
And the amount of change involved explains why I can only say it might be better to have the Dalai Lama be the next president: so many other things would have to be different for that to happen that I really can't even guess whether that world would be better than this one.
Who Should Have the Right to Speak to Lithuanians?
Paul Pillar wonders:
"Should the political authority in whatever state hosts the [alien] contact effort (right now that would be the United States) have the right to determine what is said to the beings in another world? If not, who would have that right? If we receive a message equivalent to 'take me to your leader,' what should be the response? Should the extraterrestrials be patched in to a meeting of the United Nations Security Council? Or how about a G-20 summit?"
Hey, Paul, what about this idea? What about whoever wants to speak to whoever else, they can?
"Should the political authority in whatever state hosts the [alien] contact effort (right now that would be the United States) have the right to determine what is said to the beings in another world? If not, who would have that right? If we receive a message equivalent to 'take me to your leader,' what should be the response? Should the extraterrestrials be patched in to a meeting of the United Nations Security Council? Or how about a G-20 summit?"
Hey, Paul, what about this idea? What about whoever wants to speak to whoever else, they can?
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Science Often Ignores Counter-Evidence
and damned right it should!
Have you ever heard of Orffyreus's Wheel? In the 1700s, a rather eccentric personage named Johann Bessler was exhibiting a perpetual motion machine in Europe. Several prominent scientists examined it and were unable to determine how it worked. There were allegations of fraud, but the method of fraud supposedly employed would not have been possible if first hand accounts of the wheel's operation were accurate. (Note: it is an historical problem to determine what actually was occurring! Science depends upon history.)
In any case, scientists simply ignored this unsolved problem, and went on as if the belief in the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine had never been challenged. And good for them that they did! For science to proceed forward, contrary observations must often be disregarded. Michael Polanyi notes that a very similar thing happened in the 1920s, when a (this time) serious scientist presented multiple observations confirming the existence of the ether. But, by this time, scientists were fully convinced there was no need for this hypothesized entity, and simply ignored the observations. Again, history has proven that to have been a sound judgment.
How does one know when to pay attention to contrary observations and when to ignore them? Well, making that judgment well is why it takes years of training to become a good scientist. There is no rule or algorithm that can be learned from a high school textbook that can make the judgment for you.
Have you ever heard of Orffyreus's Wheel? In the 1700s, a rather eccentric personage named Johann Bessler was exhibiting a perpetual motion machine in Europe. Several prominent scientists examined it and were unable to determine how it worked. There were allegations of fraud, but the method of fraud supposedly employed would not have been possible if first hand accounts of the wheel's operation were accurate. (Note: it is an historical problem to determine what actually was occurring! Science depends upon history.)
In any case, scientists simply ignored this unsolved problem, and went on as if the belief in the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine had never been challenged. And good for them that they did! For science to proceed forward, contrary observations must often be disregarded. Michael Polanyi notes that a very similar thing happened in the 1920s, when a (this time) serious scientist presented multiple observations confirming the existence of the ether. But, by this time, scientists were fully convinced there was no need for this hypothesized entity, and simply ignored the observations. Again, history has proven that to have been a sound judgment.
How does one know when to pay attention to contrary observations and when to ignore them? Well, making that judgment well is why it takes years of training to become a good scientist. There is no rule or algorithm that can be learned from a high school textbook that can make the judgment for you.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
A Pepper of Thoughts
Excellent post from Karl Smith on when an intellectual ought to say, "No, thanks."
Rod Dreher notes that abortion is used very frequently to deliberately kill baby girls just because they are girls. Women's rights, anyone?
When I deposit a check using my ATM card at the teller's window, the teller asks me to enter my pin. But I'm making a deposit: if some stranger comes along and wants to put money into my account, I absolutely want him to be able to do so, whether or not he has my pin.
Bizarre, Alien Customs
I've always known of certain strange, alien folkways, practices such as putting those big plates in your lips like above, or fire walking, or making your bed every morning, or mixing your own cleaning fluids from concentrates when you can just buy a new bottle that is already mixed. And I have never minded if others want to follow those folkways, so long as they don't try to get me involved in them.
Well, I now know of another: the people in Tuscany eat white bread. I don't mean they eat white bread with butter on it, or dipped in oil, or lathered in honey. No, at a restaurant, the waiter brings out a basket of dry, white bread, and the diners begin to simply eat it, as is.
Again, I don't mind if they do it, but I think I'd do the plates in my lips first.
Why No Model Can Beat the Market...
in the long run. And why that says little about the efficient markets hypothesis.
In a recent post, Scott Sumner says, "I’m still looking for the model that will tell me how to beat the stock market." He then goes on to claim: "Even the smart money can’t beat the market, except by luck."
My response is:
1) Of course there is no model that can beat the market steadily, over the long term; but
2) That does not in the least make the case for Sumner's claim.
And the key to seeing why both of these can be true is... historical understanding! Sumner's claim, in fact, rests on a form of scientism, which holds that, if you don't understand something by means of having a mathematical model for it, you have no understanding of it at all. There is only science and ignorance, and no other valid forms of knowledge. Which is self-refuting nonsense, since that claim itself is not a piece of scientific knowledge.
Here is a variation on the "Sumner hypothesis" to get us thinking about this the right way:
Sumner2: If you cannot give me a model that reliably generates symphonies on the level of Beethoven's, then, that means that composing good symphonies is a matter of pure luck.
I hope everyone can see that Sumner2 is sheer nonsense. (If you can't, well, I'm afraid I see no hope of us having any intelligent discussion on this topic at all, so I wouldn't bother posting a comment disagreeing with this.)
So why is it true that no model will beat the market in the long run? Because, the longer the model beats the market, the more people will start to use it, until it eventually becomes the market... and the market cannot beat itself! If the model says to buy stocks in January and sell in February, once everyone wants to do this, no one will be able to do it. Even earlier on in the model's rise in popularity, by the point that over half of all stock shares are being traded following the model, its anti-model (where a trader simply does the exact opposite of what the model recommends) will become profitable, and the model itself will make losses.
If that is the case, how can individual investors beat the market, except by sheer luck? They do so by judging the true nature of unique sets of historical circumstances better than do others (what Mises would call verstehen). Of course there is no model for doing that: to have a model means to have abstracted out certain common features of a variety of situations. To have a model is precisely to abstract away the truly historical. So of course there is no way to model Warren Buffet. (And, similarly, Beethoven's virtuosity consists in knowing, after precisely the specific notes that have come before, just which note to go to next, a judgment which cannot be generated from a model that deals only with generalities.)
And the fact that investors sometimes judge these circumstances well, and sometimes poorly, is no evidence at all against the cases of good judgment actually being good judgment rather than luck, unless one has already bought into the scientistic hypothesis that only scientific-mathematical knowledge is real knowledge. The fact that Kobe Bryant misses 50% of his shots does not mean that it is pure luck that he is in the NBA and I am not.
In a recent post, Scott Sumner says, "I’m still looking for the model that will tell me how to beat the stock market." He then goes on to claim: "Even the smart money can’t beat the market, except by luck."
My response is:
1) Of course there is no model that can beat the market steadily, over the long term; but
2) That does not in the least make the case for Sumner's claim.
And the key to seeing why both of these can be true is... historical understanding! Sumner's claim, in fact, rests on a form of scientism, which holds that, if you don't understand something by means of having a mathematical model for it, you have no understanding of it at all. There is only science and ignorance, and no other valid forms of knowledge. Which is self-refuting nonsense, since that claim itself is not a piece of scientific knowledge.
Here is a variation on the "Sumner hypothesis" to get us thinking about this the right way:
Sumner2: If you cannot give me a model that reliably generates symphonies on the level of Beethoven's, then, that means that composing good symphonies is a matter of pure luck.
I hope everyone can see that Sumner2 is sheer nonsense. (If you can't, well, I'm afraid I see no hope of us having any intelligent discussion on this topic at all, so I wouldn't bother posting a comment disagreeing with this.)
So why is it true that no model will beat the market in the long run? Because, the longer the model beats the market, the more people will start to use it, until it eventually becomes the market... and the market cannot beat itself! If the model says to buy stocks in January and sell in February, once everyone wants to do this, no one will be able to do it. Even earlier on in the model's rise in popularity, by the point that over half of all stock shares are being traded following the model, its anti-model (where a trader simply does the exact opposite of what the model recommends) will become profitable, and the model itself will make losses.
If that is the case, how can individual investors beat the market, except by sheer luck? They do so by judging the true nature of unique sets of historical circumstances better than do others (what Mises would call verstehen). Of course there is no model for doing that: to have a model means to have abstracted out certain common features of a variety of situations. To have a model is precisely to abstract away the truly historical. So of course there is no way to model Warren Buffet. (And, similarly, Beethoven's virtuosity consists in knowing, after precisely the specific notes that have come before, just which note to go to next, a judgment which cannot be generated from a model that deals only with generalities.)
And the fact that investors sometimes judge these circumstances well, and sometimes poorly, is no evidence at all against the cases of good judgment actually being good judgment rather than luck, unless one has already bought into the scientistic hypothesis that only scientific-mathematical knowledge is real knowledge. The fact that Kobe Bryant misses 50% of his shots does not mean that it is pure luck that he is in the NBA and I am not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)