IQ is not Everything

Maximum Koanic notes places where women's cognitive skills kick mens' all over the table.  Key finding:

This post will show that women’s social perceptiveness and ability to read body language is on average between .8 and 1.3 standard deviations higher than men’s. To give an idea of the magnitude of this gap, it is similar to the IQ difference between blacks and whites, a gap La Griffe du Lion has referred to as the “fundamental constant of sociology.” The gap is large enough to create an underclass and overclass in the relationship manipulation market. Nor is evidence lacking that such a condition actually exists.

The relevant score [add both male acting incompetence and female perceptiveness together to calculate the total female relationship advantage] is the last one, [...] at a whopping 2.01. [Ed  -- This is somewhat greater than the average difference in IQ between black men and Jewish men]

A flock of women bursting into peals of girl talk may after all be what it seems like to some men – an alien superlanguage.

I've been aware of this gap for a long time, but never numerically.  On the other hand, my wife happens to be a 5+-sigma on social/emotional perceptiveness and I'm...not.  (I swear she can tell the moment  that I get mildly frustrated -- by smell, if I'm hiding under the covers in a different room, and God save you if she can see your face, or you're talking.  Sickness by skin color variations, 3 days ahead of time ("Start superdosing your vitamin D now, you're getting sick").  10:1 she knows more about what you're feeling than you do, if she can see you (even if your back is turned, and you're wearing a heavy coat).  And if she hears you [not me] say "hello" to your wife over the phone, she knows if your wife is ready to cheat -- by means of emotional echoes in your response, whether or not you do. Still pictures of popular trial defendents tell her whether they're guilty. I've never seen anything like it before, and I've worked with Paul Ekman, the #1 world authority on facial recognition of emotion. And hormonal increases (pregnancy, ovulation, PMS) make her more sensitive.  It's truly unreal.  I keep telling her she could make real $ leveraging that properly.  But she's a homeschool mom, and devotes that skill to childrearing)

Anyhow, read the whole thing (both articles).

Word of the Month

I formally declare (a day early) that monkeybrains is the word of the month (for July), as it is the single word that most explains human behavior.  Go forth and use it.

Non-conformism is unitary

Have you ever noticed the overlap between outlier groups?  For instance, I self-define (in rough order of increasing craziness/offensiveness) as an anti-authoritarian, a left-libertarian-anarchocapitalist, an (agnostic) atheist, a transhumanist, a TCS-friendly unschooler, a general medical skeptic, a HBD-er, and a polyamorist.  For any arbitrary position, I am not only a <5% outlier, but an outlier inside the outlier group. 

I claim that once you've exited the polite discussion space on one topic, you are more susceptible to, even attracted to positions that also lie outside the norm. Why is this true?

Claim:  Most "beliefs" are mostly about fitting in, monkeybrains, taboo, status/envy, hatred of the "other" group (Atheists, Communists, Environmentalists, Republicans), and related factors that have NOTHING to do with the truth of the position.  Until you believe a position that (if you shared it) would destroy your social status among most observers, you are locked into the inability to think critically about crazy stupid stuff that is dogma (blank-slate).  However, once you accept one batshit crazy position (agorism, polyamory,  unschooling, formalism, transhumanism, communism, ...), a whole pile of options for analysis open up, and you are now able to think about stuff that was locked away in the status drawer. 

Of course most heavy-outlier positions are wrong...and probably most of the ones I hold are too (I think I only hold outlier positions, which is clearly nuts).   But the odds of finding someone who has exactly 1 outlier position is effectively zero.  Either you conform to the general position, or you have outlier positions all over the place. 

Has anyone else noticed the same thing?

Mindfsck oTD

Tyler Cowen ventures into Robin Hanson territory of making you think hard (if you can parse it) punctuated by flashes of luminous brilliance. Hell, I can't even selectively quote it, so here's almost the whole thing:

I don't know of any systematic evidence, but often I favor portfolio models of dogmatism (by the way, don't argue in the comments about whether religion is necessarily dogmatism; that's not the relevant point here and I'll delete discussion of that. If you wish just treat this as a discussion of dogmatism).

That is, most people have an internal psychological need to fulfill a "quota of dogmatism." If you're very dogmatic in one area, you may be less dogmatic in others. I've also met people -- I won't name names -- who are extremely dogmatic on ethical issues but quite open-minded on empirics. The ethical dogmatism frees them up to follow the evidence on the empirics, as they don't feel their overall beliefs are threatened by the empirical results.

Some people, if they feel they must always follow the evidence, respond by skewing their interpretation of that evidence.

There's a lesson here. If you wish to be a more open-minded thinker, adhere to some extreme and perhaps unreasonable fandoms, the more firmly believed the better and the more obscure the area the better. This will help fulfill your dogmatism quota, yet without much skewing your more important beliefs.

An alternative view is that people become addicted to dogmatism and the dogmatic habits spread to many more realms of their thought. I believe this alternative model is true above some margin of dogmatism and also if the dogmatism infects the "wrong areas of thought."

I would like to know more about what the dogmatism portfolio looks like and what are the relevant coefficients of substitution and complementarity.

I believe in portfolio models of dogmatism very very strongly.

This will take days to weeks to process.  

Health Invitation

So...I've done a semi-intense observation of the paleo- health literature over the last few days.  Summary:

• Paleo diet essentially means either:  
• Nothing you couldn't hunt/forage 100,000 years ago.  That means no to:
• Processed food (A friend says "No Plastic" -- twinkies, corn syrup)
• Sugar
• Grains (bread, rice, pasta).  
• An alternate formulation says: get 90+% of your calories from 
• meat
• fruit
• veggies. 
• There's a dispute over how hard-core to be 
• some folks find perfect adherence best.  
• Others find 1-2 meals a week to indulge better
•  The rest of the diet varies substantially
• Pro- or Con- on Milk (I've got a thing for fermented milk, especially), but weak allergy to non-fermented milk.
• Potatoes (& Yams) -- Seems like some folks do great with, but many folks avoid.
• High Glycemic Index Fruits -- Bananas, etc.  have differing opinions.
• Frequency of eggs, honey.
• Everyone I've read who's gone hard paleo- dropped weight at a 1 lb a week rate until they were back to youthful thin.  Also, once started [1st month], I've heard that it's a tremendously easy diet to stay with. 

Having said that, I start formally tomorrow.  On the other hand, I've got a monkeybrain too, and the best way to do something like this is with social support.  Anyone else want to join up and do a paleo-July?  Perfidy/Buckethead gave me the idea.  I'd set up a googlegroup if we have more than 2-3 of us.

Support for the Aretaevian synthesis

1. Eric Falkenstein hits half a dozen of my favorite points in this post.  College teaches you very little, and even less in the classroom.  College prices are working on absurd.  Any external observer of the world watching 1500-2000 would note that economic growth dominates all other factors into insignificance.
   
   

   Sure, I picked up some things in college, but think about it--it was probably the time in my life when I had the most leisure time, because I wasn't learning as much as other periods in my life. [...]
   
   And for the things [snip] --such as history, political science, and philosophy, it seems like top shelf professors are caricatures of leftist-PC propoganda.

2. Robin Hanson explicates one area of The Grand Delusion (Some groups don't mostly act like monkeys) in his post Non-Conformers Conform:
   
   

   [W]hile people do vary in conformity, this variation is less in how much folks care about others’ evaluations, and more about which others they care about. “Conformists” tend to care about a common standard status audience – a usual mix of people weighted by a standard status. “Non-conformists,” in contrast, “march to the beat of a different drummer” by caring about non-standard status audiences.

3. UPDATE: Ambrose-Evans Pritchard has perhaps the best response (HT: lots of folks) to the Kartik Athreya kerfluffle, where a Federal Reserve economist told econo-bloggers to shut up, because economics should be left to the professionals (the original is hard to find).  Supporting the hypotheses that (a) Macro is Voodoo, (b) the government caused the crisis, (c) elites telling other people what to do is THE problem.  I think he forgets the distinction between Micro and Macro (Two entirely different topics in 1 department).  He does agree with Foseti on Science, though.  Some excerpts:
   
   

   Central banks were the ultimate authors of the credit crisis since it is they who set the price of credit too low, throwing the whole incentive structure of the capitalist system out of kilter, and more or less forcing banks to chase yield and engage in destructive behaviour. [Ed.  Not just the banks though, housing policy as well]
   
   The 20th Century was a horrible litany of absurd experiments and atrocities committed by intellectuals, or by elite groupings that claimed a higher knowledge. Simple folk usually have enough common sense to avoid the worst errors. Sometimes they need to take very stern action to stop intellectuals leading us to ruin. [...]
   
   The root error of the modern academy is to pretend (and perhaps believe, which is even less forgiveable), that economics [Ed -- MACRO!!!] is a science and answers to Newtonian laws [...]
   
   Economics [Ed -- MACRO!!!] should never be treated as a science. Its claims are not falsifiable, which is why economists can disagree so violently among themselves: a rarer spectacle in science, where disputes are usually resolved one way or another by hard data.

4. UPDATE 2: IOZ writes (as is his wont) a considerably more pithy response to the Ron Rosenbaum agnosticism thing than I did yesterday.  IOZ:
   
   

   Now. Insofar as science has explained natural phenomena, it is a useful tool and method. Most atheists would agree. However, science has no opinion on the fundamental nature of being or the meaning of life. The scientific method is a means of inquiry, a system for developing descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive models of natural systems, not a means of answering all the questions that occur to you when you get stoned. Eat some fucking Doritos and chill the fuck out.
   
   Personally, I do not think that human science will ever adequately account for the existence of existence, because I think that the question itself contains a category error. Nothing about this conviction of the limits of human knowledge implies the existence of divinity.

5. UPDATE 3: Roissy is perhaps the most sexist, and least politically correct really smart guy writing on the web.  So much so that Tyler Cowen, the epitome of restraint and eclecticism calls him evil. Today, he finds a study that confirm my analysis of weight and the sexual marketplace. My line:  Men care subconsciously and strongly about fertility, as (primarily) signaled by hip-waist ratio...and if a female has a bad hip-waist ratio, her ability to compete in the sexual marketplace is massively decreased, therefore she is forced into an inferior bargaining position.  Roissy and LJWorld:
   
   

   Scientists say being fat can be bad for the bedroom, especially if you’re a woman.
   
   In a new study, European researchers found obese women had more trouble finding a sexual partner than their normal-weight counterparts, though the same wasn’t true for obese men, and were four times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy. Fat men reported a higher rate of erectile dysfunction. [...]
   
   Obese women were 30 percent less likely than normal-weight women to have had a sexual partner in the last year. In comparison, there was little difference among obese men and normal-weight men as to whether they found a sexual partner. [...]
   
   Previous studies have found similar trends, but researchers were surprised by the discrepancy they found between the genders as to how excess weight affects peoples’ sex lives.[...]
   
   The researchers found that obese women were less likely to ask for birth control services, and thus, four times more likely to accidentally get pregnant. Pregnant fat women and their babies also faced a higher risk of complications and death than normal-weight women.

   “Accidentally” my ass. Fat chicks know that they have fewer chances than slim chicks to bed a man, so when the opportunity arises, they take full advantage [...]

   
   

A goose well done

So...one might suppose that the Huge Republican majority in 2002/4 would have turned into a political juggernaut.  However, there's a natural divide between the interests of the elite (1.  Beltway pols, 2.  K-Street,  3.  The Polygon/Cathedral) and those of the people.  When a political party starts focusing too much on the interests of the elite...they tend to get voted out of office, thus allowing a different group in to focus on the interests of a very marginally different elite. Usually the marker of the turning point is when the base of the party decides that the leadership has sold out, and stops supporting them.

Having said that...I give you Tom Tomorrow on Obama (HT: Instapundit).  For those who don't know, Tom Tomorrow is a serious progressive.

Why Homeschool?

Foseti asks:

Have you ever written a post on your initial decision to homeschool? 

Why no I don't think I have, but an excuse to expostulate is always welcome.

My decision to homeschool came when I was about 17, I was thoroughly fed up with school, and swore that my kids would never have to put up with that kind of crap.  Of course, I was a math-/computing- prodigy, taking CSC 110 at the local college when I was 9...and the continuous dispute between me and my parents was:

Parents: Do your homework.
Aretae: It's stupid work.
Parents: Yes, but you need good grades.
A: It's so stupid that my brain's going to melt from extra stupid-lasers.
P:  Please do something, and turn it in.  We know you won't learn anything, but the grades are important.

Of course, I was also the kid who was unmoved by punishment or restriction.  If you don't get good grades we'll ... nothing worked.  I could not bring myself to take the schools' worthless approach to learning seriously, threats, punishment, or anything else.

Anyhow, I've been involved with homeschooling for about 15 years now, and there's one question and ONLY one question worth asking:

Is the cost of one parent not working (much) outside the home (I threatened to stay home with the kid if my wife wouldn't back in '01) worth the benefit of keeping your kid away from the crap they get in school.

Benefits:

1. Closer family --  In an awful lot of modern families, kids are somewhat external to the family...with most/all of their cares/interests elsewhere.  Not true in homeschool families.  Kids share with parents/siblings... you have a better, closer bond with your children than if they're schooled.
2. Academics -- A long time ago, I read something that suggests that homeschooled kids are, on average, several years ahead of traditionally schooled kids in general.  My aunt the college admissions councilor says that there's coming to be a preference for homeschooled kids who know are better learners.   Since something like 6-9 minutes of each school hour is devoted to learning, this isn't shocking.  
3. Socialization -- The Lord-of-the-flies social aspects of school are atrocious.  Single-age kids competing with one another for scarce resources (teacher favor, class position, etc.) is about the most toxic social environment anywhere outside of Daytime TV.   Drugs/gangs don't help.  
4. Obedience -- I know I've said it a billion times...read Gatto's 7-lesson schoolteacher...and assume he's not exaggerating.  You know how the formalists say "people need to be led".  An awful lot of that is schooling where they're taught to need to be led.  Schools teach obedience. I don't like that. 
5. Freedom -- I'm a hard-core libertarian.  I think that freedom is good.  Homeschooling massively increases the opportunity for freedom for the kids.
6. Flexibility -- 1 parent working substantially increases family flexibility.  If you're Foseti who tours the world on his job, or Aretae who used to travel the states...it's nice to have the ability to bring the family with sometimes.  
7. Family size -- Homeschooling tends to lead to larger families.   Interesting correlation...can't prove causation.

Costs

1. Financial -- 1 income household is a BIG difference.  However, if one parent makes substantially more, one parent isn't working already, and/or the other parent would spend more (on clothes, on cars, on childcare after school, on private school), this might be mitigated
2. Time away -- most people do much better if they have some time away from the kids.  Folks starting homeschooling don't realize how important it is for the homeschooling parent to get some time away, doing stuff with other adults. 
3. Abnormal -- It's weird.  It's not the same as expensive private schools.  It doesn't sound good at dinner parties.  It takes over your life, finding stuff, and then explaining why you're doing it.
4. Difficulty -- the homeschooling parent works hard to help the kid learn.  And there's little in the way of guidebooks, you actually have to learn new stuff all the time.  And your first plan for how things will go won't work.  Probably not your 2nd, 3rd, 4th plans either.  "I had 6 theories, then I had 6 kids, now I have no theories".  

Good luck with the decision, if you're thinking that way.  

A Theism (vs. the new agnostics)

Ron Rosenbaum has a post up about Agnosticism (HT: Radley Balko), and why he's not an Atheist.  I think he's mostly misguided, with some positive steps.  Hence, my rejoinder.

First, my lead.  I have used the term Atheist to describe myself for about 20 years now...with a refinement after reading the book, and talking to the author.  Being rather pedantic, I still stick with the actual definitions of the words.  Theism and Atheism are positions about belief in a god.  Gnosticism and Agnosticism are positions about whether you can KNOW things...and usually talking about the ability to KNOW about God.  I, like 95% of all the other atheists I know are Agnostic Atheists.  We do not believe in a god.  And we do not believe that such a thing is knowable.  And mostly, we think that the question is silly, along with the question of whether you are an A-Thor-ist, an A-Faerie-ist, or an A-6-dimensional invisible blue banana-ist.  Yeah, whatever.  (If you're trying to promote skepticism, I think the 1st edition AD&D Deities & Demigods book MAY be the best inoculation ever)

At the same time, I find  Nathaniel Branden's (in person, IIRC) comment that he hasn't found that he can predict a person's moral conduct from hearing their religion, or vice versa to be pretty powerful.  I have since relegated Theism to something that is abstractly interesting, but which doesn't predict a damn thing, either positive or negative.  At least one of the 10 smartest folks I know (someone I'm not excited about going toe-to-toe on rationality contests with) is a theist.  But one of the other 10 smartest folks I know is George Smith.  And when participating in the Christians vs. Lions debates back in my college days, I found one of the Christians to be substantially smarter than the rest of the atheists "on my side".

On the other side of things, I recognize that folks have different opinions than me.  One consequence of my being a truth-seeking agnostic (atheist) is that I am compelled, at least a bit to take other folks arguments seriously.  Except...I've put 2000 hours at the question, and don't think that there are arguments on the topic that I haven't addressed.  At the same time, I'm not compelled to convince anyone that they're wrong.  It's a belief that has low practical impact, and seems to do some folks some emotional good.  

Now, the history of atheism goes something like this:  In the beginning, there was Hume, and he collected and collated all prior arguments, and decimated the intellectual case for God.  It was dead, it was not getting up, etc., much to the chagrin of several (thousand? ) folks since who've tried.  Unfortunately, monkeybrains don't deal well with uncertainty, and so even though it was a slam dunk case...there was no alternative presented to the problem of creation, and so no one (besides Thomas Paine) actually became an atheist.  Later, this dude Chuck D.  came along and provided an alternate explanation for how humans came to be...and with an alternate explanation, the flow towards A-Theism was substantial among the intelligentsia.

Nowadays, with evolution being the understood to be the 2nd most impressive scientific achievement ever (after Gravity), you find an awful lot of scientists not theistic.  However, a bunch are, and they seem to do just fine as scientists.  The entertaining thing for me (who thinks it's all a circus) is that evolution simply shows that humankind could have gotten here without divine intervention...not that it did.  Evolution is orthogonal to theism.

On the other hand...there's general politeness to be maintained.  The best path forward is (as Albert Jay Nock pointed out many years ago) to generally remain polite about others beliefs.  Politeness first, then ethics, then law.  And so, I now stay out of religious arguments almost entirely, treating other folks' beliefs with politeness and expecting the same of their treatment of my singulitarianism.  Until they ask for my opinion...and then, well, they can dig as deep as they'd like.  I know that shocks my readership.

At the end of the article Rosenbaum references the agnosticism blog, of John Wilkes who listed 5 differences between "new" atheists, and new agnostics.

1. Too much of the rhetoric and sociality is tribal: Us and Them.

At the risk of laughing too much: "I don't like your tribal behavior so I'll exclude you".  On the other hand, I largely agree with this point.  Marxists (and their group-identity progeny in modern race- and gender- studies) and party-line environmentalists who are atheistic are particularly bad as they think they have a more sensible viewpoint than the Christians.

2. [The New Atheism] presumes to know what it cannot. More on this below.

The new atheism suggests that the topic of theism is worth no more serious consideration than Thor-ism.  That's not a claim about what they know...but about what you don't/can't know, or reasonably believe.  It can come off stronger than it should, and usually does.

3. As a consequence of 1 and 2, it tries to co-opt Agnosticism as a form of "weak" Atheism. I think people have the right to self-identify as they choose, and I am neither an atheist nor a faith-booster, both charges having been made by atheists (sometimes the same atheists).

As before, this misunderstands the words: gnostic and theist, and their opposites.

4. Knowability: We are all atheist about some things: Christians are Vishnu-atheists, I am a Thor-atheist, and so on. [Which is why the "are you agnostic about fairies?" rejoinder is just dumb.] But it is a long step from making existence claims about one thing (fairies, Thor) to a general denial of the existence of all possible deities. I do not think the god of, say John Paul II exists. But I cannot speak to the God of Leibniz. No evidence decides that. 

Not how evidence, learning works.  You take a position seriously after some evidence is provided.  Until SOME evidence is provided, you don't take it seriously.  This silliness is why agnostics get a bad name.  I am a-theist -- I believe in none of those things until you give me some evidence, just like you are a-X-ist about every X you haven't heard about.  Real epistemology would help here, but there doesn't seem to be any laying around.

5. But does that mean no *possible* evidence could decide it [existence or nonexistence of God]? That's a much harder argument to make. Huxley thought it was in principle Unknowable, but that's a side effect of too much German Romanticism in his tea. I can conceive of logically possible states of affairs in which a God is knowable, and I can conceive of cases in which it is certain that no God exists.

Hume makes the argument pretty strongly that it's unknowable, and I think it can be made even stronger.  And I really hate it when people believe that their imagination somehow constrains reality.

Overall, I am an agnostic atheist with an epistemologically founded philosophy that necessitates that position, but I have nothing against folks who disagree with me...though I do limit expression of my position, because it puts me on the out-tribe for most people.  

The anti-HBD position

So...why would someone be opposed to HBD?  As far as I can tell, the science is moderately settled.  Natural selection mostly guarantees that different populations will have different strengths and weaknesses...and once you accept that behavior/mental states can be genetic, differing gender-based risk profiles, and such, you're pretty much intellectually locked in to a HBD position.

HOWEVER, it's not that simple.  Truth is presented for its usefulness.

1. What's the tradeoff between Motivation and Talent?  Aretae the teacher says: Motivation wins.  It's only in cases where motivation is equal that Talent takes over.  Of course, that matters on average, and it matters at the TOP of any skill-set, but it doesn't much matter on an individual basis.
2. What's the tradeoff between crushing hopes (To the second coming of Larry Bird: "You're white, you probably can't play NBA ball"), and supporting realism in career choices (To the second coming of Billy Crystal: "You're white, you probably can't play NBA ball")?  As a teacher, I tend to be far more concerned about the first, even though academia is insane in its avoidance of the first.
3. How much of a difference does the statistical issue make at an individual level?   For 99.9999% of all white folks, there are some black folks smarter than them.  For 99.9999% of Chinese, there are some white folks smarter than them, and some black folks smarter than them.  
4. How valuable is it to treat folks as individuals?  Does an aggressive HBD position convince folks to take folks primarily as representatives of their race/gender, rather than as human beings?  There's FAR more variance between people of a single race than between racial groups.  Could you prevent such an injustice even when we're talking about real human with monkeybrains, not fictional humans?
5. Isn't the primary evil in race issues the refusal to see that an individual is an individual, rather than a statistic?  

I'm personally more interested in truth than most of the above issues.  However, anyone who was above the bottom 5th %ile in social awareness might well conclude that the truth of the matter is irrelevant in the face of real impacts of pushing the truth.  I trust none of the HBD-sphere has that handicap.

UPDATE:  My wife contributed substantially to my thinking on this, and is due recognition, with point 2 being almost entirely hers among other contributions.

Science + Bayes

Foseti has a very nice post up, explaining part of why Climate science is broken.  Very well said.  Unsurprisingly, I have a minor caveat to add, but I wanted to appreciate the post first.  Well said.

Those following this blog might have noticed similar complaints about Macro, Cosmology, and String Theory.

Now for the quibble:  I'm unfond of your definition of science.  Real science is the business of determining what the relationship between aspects of reality is.

In the beginning, there was Aristotelian science.  Observe, conclude.

Then there was Newtonian science.  Collect metric ass-tons of hard data, sift it, find the pattern, predict, attempt to disconfirm, posit general relationship.  Newton showed that there was a stable mathematical relationship between Force and Mass, so long as you ignored friction, air resistance, and such.  We're basically really lucky that other factors are small, so that the mathematical relationship could be seen.  Ditto Maxwell.

In the 2nd half of the 20th century (perhaps the first half in physics), it's shifted again.  We don't appear to have much low hanging fruit left that is amenable to analysis by simple theory.   Now, science seems to have bifurcated into two patterns.

1. Collect data, note correlations.
2. Create theory that has elegant math, but isn't highly correlated with observation.

Of course, as before, these are humans doing the science, so when people from camp 2 encounter data from camp 1, there's a bit of friction.  Usually, the camp 2 folks add 3 free variables at the end and  draw their elephant.

I'm of the opinion that for complicated problems, the ONLY solution is Bayesian analysis.  Newtonian science has been effectively replaced by modern statistical techniques.  Properly used, these techniques can do substantially better prediction of future activity than can wimpy non-bayesian pattern-hoping monkeybrains...including being able to out diagnose both doctors and psychiatrists (mostly due to human overweighting of exceptions to the rules).  If you're thinking about a problem harder than F=MA, and you're not thinking in Bayesian terms, you're just wrong.  (You're usually wrong also if you have an operating probability above 80% on disputed questions.  )

An example:  Suppose there are 3 hypotheses before you, and you have no reason to believe one over another.  Bayesian analysis is the science (really it's beautiful, perfect math) that says: GIVEN this set X of data, I should take my prior probability and update it so that rather than 33/33/33, it is now 75/20/5.

The classic Bayesian problem is well exemplified by a smart doctor I visited about 4 years ago:

"Doc, I'm dying of strep throat"
"Well, Aretae, you certainly have all the symptoms.  But it could be viral as well."
"Is there a test?"
"Yeah, but it's got a 10% error rate, so even if you fail the strep-test it's still decently likely that you have strep.  I'll just prescribe antibiotics, if that's ok..."
"Great."

I didn't die.

Regardless, Bayes has two major weaknesses.

1. It claims that knowledge/certainty is a mirage.  You get only probabilities, no certainties.  Monkeybrains don't like that.  
2. It relies on honesty.  It's really easy to lie to yourself and others with Bayesian analysis...by ignoring bits of the data.  Most monkeybrains are so busy trying to prove something that they don't honestly say something like: The history of colonialism in Africa weakens the hard-libertarian an-cap position...or Switzerland's amazing success with a decentralized, balanced-power constrained direct democracy weakens the formalist case....or Obama weakens the liberal case that Democracy can work with the right people in place...and Bush II weakens the Republican case that Republicans are for smaller government.

Anyhow...Foseti is right...the science of Newton and Maxwell is all but dead.  Now we have the mathematicians, the correlation-coefficienters and Bayes.

Inevitable leftwardness

Randy Barnett was referred to as brilliant by George Smith, who is himself one of the smartest guys I've ever hung out with.  Having said that, it's interesting to hear Randy on the Monumental shift in Supreme Court precedent that occurred yesterday:

Today, the Privileges or Immunities Clause has risen from the grave.  Only a plurality was willing to use the Due Process Clause to apply an individual right to the states.  The crucial fifth vote was provided by Justice Thomas’ extensive fifty-six-page originalist opinion that rested solely on the Privileges or Immunities Clause.  Neither Justice Alito for the plurality, nor Justices Stevens or Breyer in dissent, even attempted to impeach Justice Thomas’ analysis, which now stands uncontradicted in the Supreme Court Reports.  Decades of academic research that has lead to a remarkable consensus among constitutional scholars that The Slaughter-House Cases was wrongly decided have now been vindicated.  Only a remarkably tepid and barely defended assertion of stare decisis by Justice Alito now stands in the way of a complete restoration of the “lost” Privileges or Immunities Clause at the heart of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Not that this will happen overnight.  It took twenty-five years for Justice Powell’s lone 1978 opinion in Bakke — in which he accepted “diversity” as a rationale for affirmative action in schools — to be adopted by a majority of the Court in Grutter. But adopted it eventually was.

Good Posts today

1. Borepatch demonstrates how to be civilized in response to the death of Senator Byrd.  All other responses I've seen were far weaker.
2. John Robb worries about scary stuff.  While I can't agree with his whole position, I am much more worried about the global plutocracy than the incompetent Cathedral.
3. Patri at LATNB elegantly re-states the need for evolution in government.

Good Mood today

I rode my bike to work for the first time this year, and have eaten basically paleo all day (Caffeine consumption is mostly down, but only mostly.  Pop + Coffee all gone on Thursday after a June of decreasing consumption.  I still have black tea in my desk drawer.).

Overall, once again, I'm pushing health.
With my buddy having done the paleo-/IF thing for a year, and having gone from a portly 5'9"/190 to a fit 140 on the program, I think I'll try it.  His program:

No breakfast
Fruit/yogurt or nothing for lunch.
Whatever I want for dinner...low carb/milk/sugar
No/Low dessert
These are general rules, but guiltless rare exceptions are fine.

I'm tossing in HIT strength training 1-2x a week for exercise, and bicycling to and from work for fun.  (My path is House->Train->Office...or reversed going home.  House-> train is 15 minutes on foot, 5 minutes on bike.  Train->Office is 35 minutes on foot, 12 minutes on bike.  Besides the 1 hour a day of free time this buys me, it's also just more fun.)

My lunch today:
1 Banana -- I should really shift towards lower glycemic index fruit.  But all we had were bananas and peaches. 
2 boiled eggs. w/ mustard.
3 oz (or so) of turkey breast lunchmeat -- lowest fat meat you can find besides shrimp.


And I'm in a good mood.

Science + Monkeys

Aretae's theory of the scientific method is something like this:

1.  Look at the world for a while.  Just observe it.
2.  Think up an explanation (or 6) for why the world would be that way.
3.  Figure out what kind of information would show that you are wrong.
4.  Attempt to get said information. 
5.  Use Bayesian statistical-fu to determine what this means for your hypothesis.
6a.  If you succeed in finding disconfirming information (that is Bayes-wise strong enough), look for a new hypothesis
6b.  If you fail to find the information that shows you are wrong, start bayesian updating the hypothesis.

Unfortunately, human beings don't work like that.  Human beings do this:

1.  Think up an explanation for how the world is
2.  Figure out what kind of information would show that you are right
3.  Try to find information that shows that you're right.
4a.  If you succeed in finding confirming information, publish.
4b.  If you don't succeed in finding confirming information, tweak your hypothesis as little as possible to support your past 20 years of work in the field, and then publish your newly confirming data.

This is actually known to be one of human beings BIGGEST cognitive holes...the search for supporting data as opposed to for disconfirming data...which is simply one element of massive overconfidence in their positions on the part of almost everyone. 

Very politically incorrect + sexist

There is a perpetual question as to whether fat women have more sex.  I'd like to address the question analytically.

The fundamental trade between males and females since the advent of property near 10KBC is that the male gains access to reproduction in exchange for sharing resources with the female/offspring.  This is of course grounded in the fundamental biological issue that the female invests more reproductive energy in offspring than does the male, and that a female simply CANNOT be as reproductively successful as a male (see: Genghis Khan). 

Of course, there are other issues (sexual selection as per Geoffrey Miller), but most of the trade in the property-owning world is resources vs. children.  Of course, the human brain is psychologically unprepared for raw calculation, and so it works off rules of thumb, rather than off straight-up calculation.  The calculation for women is (basically) perceived status.   The calculation for men is (basically) looking fertile (hip-waist ratio).  Beauty (mostly facial and mostly symmetry) operates as well (as a proxy for disease resistance/health), and women prefer the physically large (height + weight), while men prefer childlike faces. 

In general, one can treat sexual relations as a marketplace...where both men and women look for the best catch they can find...but men have a stronger tendency to wish to stray, and an almost infinitely higher interest in flings of lower "quality" than their partner (if they have one).  In Roissy's terms, women are hyper-gamous if they can be, while men are polygamous when they can be.  At least...this is what one might believe if one uses the metric of what one observes, rather than the one of what people say.

Now, back to the starting question.   In the world of sexual relations, women's primary currency is sex.  And given that humans are mostly monkeys, women need to conserve that currency to preserve their balance of power in the trading arena.  Not, mind you, that women don't like sex, but in terms of power dynamics, giving away sex also gives away all their power. 

What does that have to do with fat women?  Fat women (bad hip:waist ratio) have lower visual impact on men...lower interest levels.  In order to keep a man's interest, fat women have to spend more of their currency (sex) in order to maintain a man's interest.   Game theory + evolutionary realism say that if fat women will, on average, necessarily put out more. 

Q.E.D.

Fisking Moldbug

Robin Hanson, quite frustrated, is alleged to have commented about Moldbug's approach to the world thusly:

Not only does Moldbug know such iron fists would rule best, allow emigration, not cheat their investors, and never ever accept manipulator payola, he apparently knows this deductively, as a noble philosopher, not like data-addicted corrupt pansy social scientists. And he has no interest in improvements in the status quo below his philosopher-deduced-best pinnacle.

What more can one say to such a person?

Moldbug responds, and in doing so demonstrates that Hanson is right.

Just real quick...I ran into Robin Hanson the first time in '95/'96 when Jimmy Wales was just a stocks guy who ran an internet philosophy discussion list (MDOP).  Back then, Larry Sanger (the other founder of Wikipedia) was starting up a philosophy discussion group dedicated to foundationalist philosophy...and I joined.  Unless my memory is weaker than I think it is, over the course of a year or two, I became quite impressed with the insight and breadth of knowledge  of one of the most insightful commentators on that list...Robin Hanson.  (UPDATE: If I am wrong, I became a Hanson devotee a year or two later in '97/98, when I was focused on Extropianism )

Moldbug says:

It is small wonder that Professor Hanson has never learned any philosophy. 

I'd be inclined to wager that if trading philosophy, Modbug is nowhere near qualified to talk to Hanson, much less make shit up about Hanson's expertise.   Of course, Hanson is known for proposing ideas that no one else is talking about (prediction markets, which had never been tried before), while the main thrust of Moldbug's fame is a position is convincing Libertarians to accept a position indistinguishable from that of Hugo Chavez.  "Let's get a strong enough leader."

Moldbug says: 

Science and scientists are the eternal enemy of pseudoscience and pseudoscientists.

Of course, as I look up Robin's CV, I see why he was on the Philosophy list I was on.  He has a masters in philosophy of science, and a master's in Physics.  I expect that means he knows more both about philosophy and about science than Moldbug ever will.  Of course, Robin is too interested in the ideas to point out how absurd Moldbug is here, but I'm more focused on the high-strength fertilizer Moldbug is slinging, and would like to set the record straight.

Borrowing a phrase I read today, Moldbug continues casting about like a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen:

For instance, a lot of people (possibly even Professor Hanson) believe that the United States Government (USG) is "limited" by a historical document called "the Constitution." Nothing could possibly be farther from the truth.

I became a libertarian formally, somewhere near '90...before I hadn't been overly focused on politics.  By '94 (I'm kinda slow) I had been disabused of the notion that paper constitutions can restrain real governments.  I can't imagine that someone who's been in the libertarian thought-stream for more than a few years could believe something so naive.

Of course a deeper analysis might notice that nothing thus far tried has EVER succeeded in keeping governments from steadily encroaching on their subjects liberties until such point as the subjects are thoroughly immiserated.  Indeed, one cannot find any instances of ORGANIZATIONS, much less states, restraining themselves without external forces forcing them to do so.   The US Government before 1913 was restrained NOT by the Supreme Court, but by the states who owned the economic power.  The Swiss central government is not expanding...it is controlled by the cantons.

On  the other hand, Moldbug does toss out an intelligent comment from time to time amongst his absurdities:

At the top, power is always a matter of social exclusion.

Of course, Robin Hanson is among the best thinkers anywhere on the topic of people hiding behind nice words in order to gain status.  Perhaps Moldbug, were he to listen, could learn something about it.  Then he wouldn't make patently absurd statements earlier in his attempted rebuttal like this one:

This problem is certainly worth addressing. For instance, my answer is: a sovereign corporation will not tyrannize, for the same reason a sovereign restaurant would not poison its customers, butcher them, and put their chops on tomorrow's lunch menu. It would be bad for business.

Of course, if power is always a matter of social exclusion, this wishful thinking on Moldbug's part as to why and how government wouldn't do something is not part of the discussion.  Perhaps if he took lessons from Hanson on how social status actually operates, he might understand this.

And then, this is the kind of sentence that makes Robin's critique perfect...and the one on which much of the rest of Moldbug critique rests:

Washington (a) does not change, and (b) does not change in a right-wing direction. Exceptions to (a) are rare, exceptions to (b) absurdly rare.

This, according to an actual scientist like Robin Hanson, is most likely unfalsifiable...and thus a statement used only to bolster Moldbug's credibility, while have no content whatsoever.  It's almost Neitzchean poetry.  Unless we'd like to define the terms so that someone could go about falsifying?

Unless his terms are FAR different than those of normal English speakers, Moldbug shows a remarkable lack of awareness of the history of the 20th century.  The 4th quarter of the 20th Century is a rather continuous flow of governments getting the hell out of the economy...from the US/English deregulations starting in the late '70s to the massive top-rate tax cuts.  But of course, we don't have a definition, so we can't point out that the position is absurd.

As to Moldbug's exercises:

One: write a reasonable response (a document that would be intelligible and convincing, given translation, to the author and his contemporary audience)...

Absurd.  Kuhn explained it well:  Knowledge advances one funeral at a time.  These folks have no access to some of the basic tools any reasonable modern uses as their basic understanding of the world:  Mendel, Darwin, Ricardo, Coase, Hayek, von Neumann.  Any of those ideas takes Months to Years to understand the implications of...and one should explain them to the author?

Two: watch the 20-minute film Detroit: City on the Move. Imagine explaining to the social scientists of 1960, seen on your screen with their blackboards (Detroit, as the film claims, was one of the most progressively-governed cities in America), what would happen to their city over the next 50 years. And why. The what would be easy to explain - but the why?

Equally impossible.  In 1960, the zeitgeist held  that central planning could work.  It wasn't until Hayek's critique permeated the economics profession, and the economics profession started colonizing other areas of social science that this could make sense.  On the other hand, this year, I've read DeLong argue for the Hayekian impossibility of planning.  The state of knowledge has advanced.  We have learned what we cannot know.

He continues:

For anyone, any disaster is either inevitable, accidental, criminal or worthwhile. Either dispute that the fate of Detroit has been a disaster, or attribute it to one of these categories. Whichever your choose, please describe the relationship, if any, between "social science" and this outcome. Assume, again, the audience of 1960 - for which there is no cultural or language barrier

Hayek in the 40s and 50s was preaching the impossibility of central planning.  No one understood him yet. Now they do.   The explanation is, in 3 words: Hayek was right.    

Exercise 3:

Clearly, Professor Hanson is not a ratheist, because - being an honest man - he (a) would have admitted it, and (b) might well have lost his job for it. Therefore, he must be either an egalist or a ragnostic. Since even the latter is dangerous, it is socially obligatory to assume that everyone is an egalist unless discovered to be the converse.

Here, Moldbug asks "do you still beat your wife?"  The intelligent person, at this point ignores Moldbug's question.  Of course, Moldbug hopes to use the fact that a meta-rational Hanson should shut up on this point to avoid further discussion...while making himself (falsely) look better because Moldbug has no public-facing job that requires him to shut up on the issue.  I hesitate to use the word slimy, because it could just be stupidity on Moldbug's part...but barring idiocy, filth is probably a better guess.

UPDATE: As is usual, I had my share of typos in the original, and mid-sentence switches.  I've cleaned it up a bit....but made no substantive changes.

QoLY, Robb, and the Formalists

All my formalist sparring partners have commented on my earlier post referencing John Robb.  However, Fundamentally, I don't understand their responses.  So...I'm going to rephrase/reframe the question in such a way as to maybe understand it better.

Suppose that we have the capability to do ANY government structure we wish.  And suppose also that a small band of folks in Nigeria are discontent, and have the abiltiy, for $10,000, to cause $1T damage to the global economy...and along the way, eating most of the surplus of the Nigerian Government for the next 3 years.  Suppose that the discontents haven't done anything yet.  Where is the balance of power?

By my count...if MEND can do a 100 Million to 1 damage ratio ... and cripple the stationary bandit's profit structure (that it uses to pay it's forces)....then the balance of power no longer lies with the central government.  It's as if the Judean People's Front had the ability to call down an airstrike that destroyed the imperial tribute for a couple years.  

Sure, after that, you could disperse MEND...or crucify them and all their sisters...but the fact is...regardless of what Rome does, the People's Front of Judea would have won the engagement....even if they were all dead at the end...the cost to Rome would have been substantially greater than the cost to the Popular Front of Judea, even if all of them were dead, at the normal rich-world economic value of ~$6M/life.

JPPF blows the tribute, Rome kills them all....substantial net loss for Rome, net win for the Campaign for a Free Gallilee.  

Brutality, power doesn't matter here....it's economics, and the central, geographically dispersed state is screwed.  And John Robb + van Creveld say that power-reality is headed to the first world, probably within the century.  

Of course, it effectively turns the game into Mutual Assured Destruction...but what happens when individuals or small groups can hold MAD Deterrence against the state?  I assure you, it doesn't look like what we've got now.  Think Raven from Snowcrash and his heartbeat listener mininuke.  We live in interesting times.  

Homeschool Curricula

Perfidy asks about homeschool curriculum, after my long discussion of homeschooling theory.

We are John-Holt style learn with life kinds of folks.  And really, the 14yo learned fraction multiplications mostly in order to make an order and a half of crepes.  Most of our curriculum (3/4 of it) is not encompassed in the formal learnings specified below.  Most of it is:  "Dad, is there really ROY G. BIV".  Mom, can I use your camera?  How do you spell cyclone?  Is bookend a compound word?  Are elephants really made out of elements?  No, silly dad, that's an archaeopteryx, not a pteranadon.  Hey, don't you think it's silly that everyone's talking about Lakers 3peats for 2011 already?  So I respecced my Pally protection, and now I'm pulling 10 Mobs at a time.  I'm considering whether to change tactics in Modern Warfare 2 to do more sniping and less rushing.  I think that I'll have a better chance of beating you at 1-on-1 hoops (dad) if I get better at my outside shots...'cuz I'm faster than you.  Is that food healthy?  Why do cows eat grass?  Is the sun really plasma?  -- 2 of the kids cook, and the 3rd helps.


Math
-------------
We tried a lot of math options for the 14yo.  Back when I was teaching Math to 4th/5th/6th graders, I used Saxon math.  I didn't end up liking it.  After a substantial amount of research, we switched to Singapore Math.  I like their stuff, but I'm a math expert teacher.  Their site is hard to use, and their "textbooks" are weak, but I am quite fond of their "primary math" series.  After he finished the 6B materials...he was able to do everything that a normal US kid does before algebra, but wasn't having an easy enough time of it.

Aretae's theory of Math learning (1000+ hours of math tutoring K-16 + somewhat over 1000 hours of math teaching elementary ages) is that ALL math instruction problems are primarily insufficient SPEED at a previous step.  If you can't run multiplication in your head, you can't do long division and have it make sense.  If you can't factor numbers in your head, you can't do decent fraction problems.  If math facts aren't instant, basic algebraic manipulations (2x + 3 = 17) take too long to do..and you never learn the patterns.  Algebraic fractions, quadratic factoring, the fundamental theorem of calculus, Integration over the complex half-plane....it's all the same thing.  How fast are you at the prior step.  Can you do it in your head?

So I picked up (like 10 years ago) the best math-speed software on the planet (at least until my site is fully operational) ... the quarter mile.  I've been using this math practice software on my students since no later than 1992 (well before I had kids...on school apple 2s), and it works.  In addition, a bunch of teen boys from my homeschooling group said: hey, we want to learn math...so every week, I attend homeschooling group, and the teen boys (and now their sisters who were attending high school, but it's summer) come spend an hour in my math class (my boy does too).

My homeschool math class was:
1.  Math facts...learn them to high speeds.  I would print out a math worksheet (Mixed problems, 1-10, +-*/,)
2.  Multi-digit problems.
3. Fractions -- intuitives.
4.  Decimals and percents real fast.
Focus was on intuitives in Math...mostly what can you do in your head, what can you understand...not so much what can you calculate (though we did that too).
5.  Factoring games with math -- Crash Boom Bang (go around the table counting...if it's divisible by 3, don't say the number, say Crash instead.  4-Boom, 5-Bang...if it's 12, say crash-boom.  mild competition between kids is good.)  I cannot say enough about how real math folks tend to think of numbers significantly by their factors...and how good this game is at training you to think that way.
6.  Assorted other math ideas ...  Binary, Ternary numbers.  Find all the primes to 100.  Factor all the numbers to 50.  Group activities, often, but also some worksheets.

I spent (usually) <1 hour...1x a week or less for 6-9 months, and when I started, they didn't know their multiplication facts.  The kids just started Algebra last week.  Why?  88% because they asked me, and wanted to do it.  8% because they're smart kids.  4% because I'm so awesome.

Kid 2 -- 6 -- Singapore Math Primary 2B -- at will, for fun.  she adds, subtracts 2 digit numbers in her head.  Key word: ten-stick.

Kid 3 -- 4 -- Singapore Math -- Primary 1B -- For fun, but less often than the 6yo.  He isn't so good on paying attention to details that don't matter to him at that moment...and like the other boy...he gets things wrong on purpose a lot...to keep your expectations low.  Funny to watch him count correctly, then say the wrong answer on purpose...and "guess" every number but the right one.  The whole "you must get the answer right" thing that schoolkids learn...neither of my boys have it.  They have: "it makes people happy to get to explain stuff to you", or "who gives a *%&".  It frustrated the hell out of me on kid 1.   I'm mostly recovered now that kid 3 does it.

-----------------
Reading
----------------
Kid 1 -- 14 -- lots of eclectic choices, lots of reading to him.  1/2-1/3 chapter a night of 6 Harry Potter books in a row, and part of #7.  Artemis Fowl.  Books on tape, with the associated reading book.  Hank the Cowdog.  Everquest.  DAoC.  WoW.  Now he reads silly amounts of pokemon fanfic, recently lots of basketball reviews.  Also WoW news, instance strategies...some nonfiction.  In order to demonstrate progress for his dad, we're not quite following unschooling like we normally would, and so he now reads 60 pages of something new each day.    No other reading rules...Though he doesn't always remember to get new books, he gets stuck with my Heinlein juveniles, and  the decent lit we have laying around the house.  Vorkosigan soon.  But he's really a non-fiction kind of guy.  Supply of science, basketball nonfiction would keep him happy.

Kid 2 -- 6 -- started addressing reading late...only after she wanted to.  Zig's book.  Made it to lesson 15.  Was NOT working at all.  Quit.  McGuffey readers.  She's through half of the 2nd grade book, which a lot of 4th graders couldn't read.  If we wanted to, she could blow through it in a week, but she's not in a hurry...and she reads everything that comes near her now anyhow.  Her spelling for her text messaging is kinda weak, but she understands effectively anything you write back to her.  She also can now read the text for her level 20 Hunter in WoW....

Kid 3 -- 4 -- Tried McGuffey for 3 months.  No dice.  Zig's book is rocking the world.  Kiddo is reading notably, and excited about it after only lesson 5.  He'll probably be fine at reading by lesson 20.

Kid2+3 -- lots of reading to the kids.
--------------
Writing

Kid 1 -- 250 words a day some weeks.  Choice of topic -- usually game or video review.  Also some weeks, 1000 word book reviews.  Sometimes, instead of book reviews, 1 page summaries of something he's reading, written out.  Longhand-style handwriting practice.  His handwriting is as bad as mine.  Cursive, we ignore.

Kid 2 -- supply pencils and paper -- try not to get buried under the volumes produced.

Kid 3 -- some letter writing practice when he wants to.  Many fun things to encourage it.

-------------
History

Kid 1 -- Cartoon history of the world.  He loves it.  We're moving onto volume 3.  Cartoon History of Econ soon also.
-------------
Programming

Kid 1 -- Write 1 WoW macro a day -- full stop.  it's a 3-6 month process of getting used to issuing commands to a computer that can be reused.  Since he has 4 level 80s, and I have 2 (that he plays), there's a lot of room for macros.  After his summer break, he'll be writing (with the assistance of a book) small add-ons.  Also, historically, we've participated in the lego robotics competition, played around with Logo + Scratch.  Next year, we're going to build a website (mostly from scratch).
---------------

Most of the rest of the curriculum is:

1. Membership at most museums in greater Chicagoland.
2. Membership at the Zoo
3. Membership at the Aquarium
4. Membership at the Arboretum.
5. Library cards
6. Sports + Dance + etc. teams + swim lessons
7. Arts 'n Crafts 'n sports 'n hangouts at the 2+ homeschool group meetups each week + at home.
8. 12' trampoline, basketball hoop, bikes, 1 mile walk to town.
9. They Might Be Giants songs + videos.
10. Assorted Field Trips + classes
11. Until recently, Travel.

QoTD

From Roderick Long:

All you anarchists who criticise our heroic police officers – who are you going to call when you need your bedridden grandmother suffocated, tased, and lacerated?

Bias + Texas Republicans

I am sent this article attacking the Texas Republicans:

In addition to [the very aggressive anti-gay position that this article mostly covers], the Texas GOP seeks to end the state's lottery, which provides millions in funding to public education; restrict citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are citizens; end federal sponsorship of pre-kindergarten schools; impose a jail sentence on any illegal immigrant in the state; shut down all day-labor centers; cut off all bilingual education after a student's fourth year in a U.S. public school; legalize corporal punishment in public schools; mandate that evolution and global warming be "taught as challengeable scientific theory"; and demand that Congress evict the United Nations from U.S. soil and end American membership in the global body.

My response:

Gosh that's a biased article. 

Are you pro-lottery?  Which usually gives a tiny portion of the $ to education, and a slush fund for legislators besides.  I think it should be abolished too.  Not the business of the state to pass a bad-at-math tax which pretends that it's good for education.

My understanding is that most Hispanic-American CITIZENS support the anti-immigration laws in Arizona (by at least a 2:1 ratio).

Citizenship by blood or soil + welfare state is thoroughly unstable.  Pick no more than one.  I think the Texas republicans picked the wrong one.  But it's at least the same one that all the European states picked.  Are the Europeans evil for doing that?

Anti-gay platform is between stupid and evil, and works by demonizing opponents just as liberals now do with Sarah Palin.

Anthropogenic global warming is not only challengeable but probably wrong.  Evolution is as established as Gravity...but all science is challengeable theory.  However, we all know that they don't actually want to teach scientific method any more than the liberals do. 

I like the anti-UN position.  The UN is dominated by thugs, and any pretense it had of being a moral force ended a long time ago.  Also, the fact that we fund a locust-swarm of bureaucrats endeavoring to make the world a safer place for dictators is unwise (according to me). 

I don't think it's unreasonable to pursue the position that if you come to our country, you should speak our language...or at least that you cannot expect us to spend our money to make life easier for you to NOT speak our language.  Certainly no other country I've visited has assumed that visitors to their country should go out of their way to spend their citizens' funds to make my life as a English speaker easier. 

However, it's also true that in general, fluency in English is one of the most important skills that a worker in this country can have.  Hence, teaching in English is perhaps (I don't have figures) a BETTER long-term deal for the foreign student than teaching in Spanish (or Yiddish, for that matter). 

Federal involvement in education is an abomination, and the evidence suggests that pre-K schooling is bad for children socially and emotionally.   Also, AFAIK, that there has never been a long-lasting effect found (more than 3-ish years) for ANY pre-K education program (including Head Start).  Rather, kids revert to the mean rather quickly. 

Corporal punishment...I oppose all state expansions of power, and therefore I oppose state-owned schools having that power.  OTOH, I think that corporal punishment is better than prison for 9/10 crimes.  Also, I think that it ought to be legal in a private school, IF the parent delegates said authority. 

HOWEVER, I also take Sheldon Richman's position on Civil Rights law and apply it to Corporal Punishment:  The proper answer to Corporal Punishment is community organizing, (not stupid European anti-spanking laws).  

The Aretaevian Aphorisms

I've got 3 (+2) claims that I understand that have shifted how I understand the world substantially over the last couple years.  However, I'm thoroughly convinced that they are phrased imperfectly, and would love some assistance from my pithier-than-me commentariat.

Aretae's laws:

1. The feedback system defines the system itself.  -- The intent here is to suggest that the current or formal state of a system universally loses to the feedback system.  It encompasses such weaker statements as "you get what you measure", or related.  Rather, the PDCA/OODA/Lean/Agile approach to systems is better.  Short cycles, improvement each cycle.  Pretending there exists a (good) steady state is messed up, lazy, and ineffective when it comes to reality.  Status wise, on the other hand, it works.  Do, Fail, Learn, Repeat is not the best path, it's the only path. 
2. Economic growth is more important (over time) than whatever you're worrying about.  Growth drives lifespan, happiness, environmental awareness, cleanliness, and all other good things.  It is widely understood among economists that absent immediate, or truly irreversible catastrophic threats, even for global warming, it is almost necessarily better for everyone over time to wait, get richer, and do climate engineering than to decrease growth now.  In a contest between policies that increase economic growth and policies that do something else...economic growth policies have the biggest impact on the kids living 50 years from now.  Only exception I can think of (even potentially) is violence.  And even some amount of violence, if it doesn't impact economic growth, is a better deal for the 50-years from now folks.  Wealth decreases violence better than anything else we know of. 
3. Competitors give up ALL their surplus to the owners of the vied-for resource.  This explains why small city states' citizens thrive, why IT professionals are well paid, why Police forces and Governments are brutal and unaccountable, why Switzerland's government is good, and why the customer service at the DMV sucks so badly.  Who has to compete, and who doesn't.  The ones competing (Gillette vs. Schick) make great products and get miniscule profits.  The ones with no competition (Microsoft, Post Office, Police departments, Public schools) make crappy products, and keep raising their prices.  Regulations are MOSTLY a form of limiting competition...so the Auto industry is not terribly competitive.  

Correlary to the 3rd law

The FIRST and most dangerous thing anyone with power does is to attempt to make it so that no one else can compete...thus ensuring a long-term power dominance.  Without governments interfering in competition (regulations + patents) , an awful lot of libertarians say that there would be effectively no monopolies.  I'm leaning further and further towards believing that position.  Incidentally, this is true in forager bands as well, and it's a big part of why they were so much more violent...attempts to eliminate competition.

The Grand Delusion

People in category X don't mostly act like Monkeys.  So many people think that some group X (usually some group they consider high status, like police officers or politicians or teachers or university professors or military officers) is going to behave from noble motives, rather than like monkeys, with status and self- and ingroup- protection being their primary motivations.  

Can my most excellent commentariat help me to reword these to preserve their meaning, while becoming punchier/clearer/requiring less explanation?

Things you want the Formalist take on

Isegoria links to a John Robb discussion:

In short, MEND’s disruption campaign, yielded tens of trillions of dollars in global economic damage for tens of thousands of dollars spent on making the attacks. That’s a return on investment (ROI) of 1,000,000,000%. How do nation-states survive when an unknown guerrilla group in a remote corner of the world can generate returns on that magnitude? They don’t.

As van Creveld says in his work...the power balance, militarily, that was biased in favor of the nation state from about 1800 to about 1950 is dying.  The power balance now sits with smaller units.  And of course, this is projected to continue.  The more complex the network (the richer the group), the easier for a malcontent to strike a critical node (Devin's point on aqueducts a few days ago).

Does the formalist view this with glee, as the 3rd world nation-state is now unsustainable?  Power/force is now back in the driver's seat, instead of bureaucracy?

Do they view it with fear?  Their model assumes a powerful central authority, and military power is reverting to the individual/small group? 

Do they view it with no emotion?  It's just a fact of nature that power balances swing between individuals and groups. 

I clearly don't understand Formalism still, because I don't know the reaction.

Homeschooling post

As per a request from Perfidy...here are some thoughts + books around homeschooling.  If you're going to be homeschooling, I count there as being some number of authors that constitute required reading. Before my reading list though, there is 1 REQUIRED activity if you're homeschooling.  If you don't do this, it is 10x as difficult.

Find the local homeschoolers.  There are almost guaranteed to be a bunch of them, and a bunch of different groups.  The online homeschool community is huge.  States with friendlier homeschooling laws make it easier to find them. 

Now, on to the reading list:

1. Daniel Greenberg, et. al.:  Free at Last, The Sudbury Valley School Experience. This is the sales job.  If you don't find it beautiful...you probably don't like children.  OTOH, Daniel Greenberg + Friends are genius-level experts, and they make it look MUCH easier than it is, and don't seem to address any of the factors that actually make it work (Their personal presence is a full 50% of it).  I've been on the periphery of 4 other Sudbury schools, and none of them worked anywhere near as well as the original.
2. John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down, others.  This is the get-angry sequence.  How can you even consider letting kids go to school in this circumstance?  Simple...you want them to learn to be submissive...or you dismiss the book as hyperbole (it's not)....or you think you can counteract the school's pressures (hard)...or you're a genetic determinist.  Not a lot of other choices.
3. Maria Montessori: All of it.  She thinks more deeply about teaching/learning than anyone else.  If you don't understand Montessori, you don't understand learning yet.  Really.  The test question is: what did Montessori do that (effectively) none of the Montessori schools now do.
4. Alfie Kohn: Punished By Rewards.  This dude is my favorite communist.  Not kidding about his being a communist, and not kidding about how important of a book this is.  I don't expect most folks to quite believe him at full steam (I mostly do)...but you ought at least shift your probabilities substantially.
5. Farber & Mazlish:  How to Talk so Kids will listen ......  Besides being the best book ever on communicating with children, it's also the best book ever on communicating with people.  And it's got cartoons.
6. John Holt: How Children Fail, How Children Learn, and the rest of it.  This guy shows the thought process, the learning process as you become a homeschooler.  The dude rocks. 
7. Sigfried Englemann: Assorted.  Truly the heir to Montessori in education.  Let's use empirical methods to get better.  Smart guy.  When it comes to 88% of education theory, he and I independently arrive at the same place.  Then it's implementation.  I personally don't like how his stuff moves to the classroom.  Though it is effective at school's nominal goal of teaching stuff, it triples down on all the bad stuff Gatto calls out.  I'd kinda expect my formalist and HBD interlocutors to like him.  Zig's Reading instruction book was bad for my 6yo, back when we did it...and she learned to read off the McGuffey Readers instead, much more easily.  My 4yo didn't go anywhere with the McGuffey Readers in 3 months, but is doing great with Zig's book.  Go figure.  My now-14 yo learned to read by playing Everquest, back near 2000.  
8. Wise & Bauer: The Well-Trained Mind:  If I wasn't an unschooler, I'd probably go in the direction of Wise and Bauer.  But I'm a sucker for the classics, and if I hadn't been such a math geek, I'd have considered St. Johns Great Books program for college.
9. Michael Strong:  The Habit of Thought.  I'd actually go read his website's education section too...but he's politically awfully close to me, and thinks similarly about education...so I may be biased.  Again, Engagement and 10 School Designs are excellent if you're thinking about education.
10. Taking Children Seriously .  This will screw with your head.  It's brilliant.  It has deep, important, partial truths.  And these folks take "children are people" more seriously than ANYONE else.  I don't expect anyone to take 100% of these folks' position.  But if you read them and don't learn something, you're in denial. 

 Apart from books...there's really only a few (serious) positions in homeschooling:

1. Motivation wins.  This is a pure unschooler position.  It's also mostly where I sit. Provide a rich environment, and offer options. 
2. Coercion is bad.  This is also a pure unschooler position, and where more unschoolers sit.  They're not all libertarians though, which confuses me to no end.  Done well, it's beautiful.  Done poorly, it's passive-aggressive crap.  Everyone doing it thinks they do it well. They're not all right.  I'm largely here, but imperfect in practice.
3. School is bad.  This is where a bunch of unschoolers sit.  This crowd has taken to calling themselves "radical unschoolers"...and often this means they don't actively help their kids learn things the kids have interests in.  I'm not so keen on this.  They haven't read enough Montessori.
4. Schools is ineffective.  This is not uncommon either.  If you want your child to have an education, it clearly won't happen at any reasonable pace in the schools (even most of the "good" ones), and so keeping them at home can allow them to actually learn something.  Most common path here is Well Trained Mind.  I reached this position somewhere near 16 (vowing to never send my kids to this useless of an institution)...and stayed for a couple years before moving to 1+2.
5. School is corrupting.  John Gatto pushes this, though the anti-competition left and the religious right agree as well.  Also those folks who live near schools with drug/violence issues that they know about.  These folks care about their kids, and prefer that they not be exposed to drugs and violence on a daily basis.  Education is an aside....but they usually try to follow some curriculum or other.  
6. School is bad for MY child. About 1/2 of this is overprotective parents.  Almost all of it is correct.  I've seen kids come out for medical reasons, special needs reasons, racist teachers, and a dozen others.  Usually, they have no plan. 
7. The State corrupts school.  Libertarian lunatics like me think that one of the biggest problems with education is that it's run by the state.  If you're going to be a principled libertarian, you can't very well let your kids go to public schools.  If you have more than a couple kids, you're not power-earning, and one of the parents likes kids for real, it may well be cheaper to homeschool than to private-school.  The formal manifesto is here.

Kling on Glaeser on Mokyr

Arnold Kling appreciatively links to Ed Glaeser reviewing Joel Mokyr's book.  Money quote from Glaeser, clearly taking insights from new Growth economics:

At its core, this economic and technological revolution was created by connected groups of smart people who stole each others' ideas and implemented them.

Kling adds:

This is also a great way to describe the personal computer revolution.

For what it's worth...this also describes most of historical classical music, modern fashion, and a zillion other highly vibrant industries.  And as usual...the takeaway is...patents are one of the worst ideas ever conceived.  Nice idea, VERY good for lawyers and big business.  Net cost: Trillions+?

What is power?

Power is the ability to make people do what you want.

Where does power come from?  
As far as I can tell, the formalists believe that power comes from military force, and is often unitary.
I believe that power now comes primarily from economics, significantly from persuasion/moral issues, and the idea of unitary power doesn't pass the laugh test, nor has it ever, in any society, for all of recorded history.   

In slave times (Athens, Rome, or US 1850), some slaves were given more power/authority by their masters than most free men.  Why?  Because the slaves had a scarce skill that the master needed more than the slave needed anything the master could give/withhold. 

If you have a notion that enough military force can get you what you want...you're talking about a South American dictator, or Stalin....both of whom were simply balancing the other dozen power interests against one another more effectively than anyone else was.  Power is an economic balance...or more accurately a MORAL balance.

Tiananmen Square happened only after the Chinese Central authorities replaced the troops with folks from the provinces who were thoroughly indoctrinated with a central-command approved vision of reality.  They knew that they couldn't rely (Chinese government is strong?) on the local troops to fire on their compatriots.

The colonial times succeeded in their order-keeping brutalities because they were able to assign sub- to semi- human status to their subjects.  Until you succeed in assigning sub-human status to the objector, the central authority loses morally. 

Heck, $10 (I'm poor) says that in 15 years (I like the year 2025), the ability of the Chinese government to force their wishes will have fallen substantially.  The protesters would win Tiananmen Square, or its 2025 equivalent.  And it will have fallen because as the people have become richer, the power of the central government (comparatively) has waned...and the balance of power, entirely economic, and entirely outside the control of the planners, has shifted. 

MLK and Tiananmen Square

One of the key insights from van Creveld is that Morals and purpose wins the day...while simple force tends not to.  Now, my formalist friends will point me at China...but there is a bit of a problem.

There is no space between MLK winning his battle and Tiananmen Square.  If you leave Tiananment square, MLK wins.  If MLK loses, it's because of Tiananmen square.  Which is it to be?  Do you shoot MLK, or lock him in soviet-style gulag...or do you lose the moral battle?  Pick exactly one.

Power is nowhere near as simple as "who has the biggest guns", especially when the people with the guns are part of society.  Does anyone know how hard it is to get folks to shoot on their own people?  Even China had to replace its troops in Tiananmen square with troops from the provinces, and provide excessive lies to get the troops NOT to side with the students.  People side with their neighbors over the central government in any case short of the central government using torture.  North Korea is and Iraq was well past that spot.

Costs of not having a TV

I do have a TV, just no cable/satellite connection....but it's mostly for the kid(s) to play video games.  But anyhow...The costs:  I've missed Penn Jillette (HT: Radley Balko):

There really is a line-in-the-sand political mentality these days, isn’t there? You choose a side and you stick to it.

Absolutely there is. When I disagree with Obama, people always say, “Well, you’re a big Bush guy then.” And I’m like no, I didn’t like Bush either. I disagree with Bush and Obama on all the stuff they agree on, which is pretty much everything. They both want to kill people, they both want the government to be bigger, and they both want less freedom for individuals.

It is just a coincidence that we have a black president and now they’re fed up with big government? Taxing us for an expensive and pointless war in Iraq is fine, but don’t you dare use my taxes to pay for universal health care!

But it cuts both way. We’re killing more people under Obama than we did under Bush, and where the fuck is the anti-war movement?

Touché.

The only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama is killing more people. He’s about double the numbers now. Can you imagine if McCain had won and did precisely what Obama has done, with every speech and every political maneuver overseas? There’d be riots in the streets about the people we’re killing. And yet because it’s Obama, and he’s better looking and better at reading the teleprompter, we let him get away with it.

Odd Juxtaposition

Foseti today:

Happiness in the family is not found through seeking everyone’s opinion. If a decision needs to be made, you don’t tally and equally-weight the opinions of mom, children, dogs and dad. Such a system – i.e. democracy – would result in chaos, absurdity and bankruptcy. Everyone seems to understand this concept when applied at the most basic fundamental level. Happiness for families – like nations – is found in leadership, good leadership.

Someone on my econblog list this past weekend (I wish I could find it -- so paraphrasing):

We should just acknowledge that the family is a horrible model for a country.  It just doesn't work the same. 

QoTD

From Power Line:

The Economist recently compared Obama to Vladimir Putin, Russia's dictator in all but name. However, as Barone points out, there is a difference: Putin is an effective thug.

Hypothesis? Data

While I've been arguing for a long time that (a) growth is what matters, and (b) the big deal in growth is Anglo-Saxon capitalism...Scott Sumner actually went out, found the data, and suggested exactly the same thing:

Wealth is predicted by, in order:
(a) being an ENGLISH system, with Anglo rules/property rights, small government, low redistribution, low taxes.
(b) being a Nordic country, with neo-liberal reforms to match anglo property rights, but high taxes/redistribution.
(c) being MiddleEuropean
(d) being Euro-Mediterranean

FWIW, I continue to believe that if you want your KIDS to be rich, your best possible move is to Singapore.

Father's Day Dinner

For me, it was Korean Beef with Kimchi on rice at a pan-asian, 8000 items-on-the-menu place near where we live.  I'm very impressed.  Kimchi was one of the foods I'd not yet tasted...and I'm rather impressed...it's like spicy saurkraut.  Yum.  Thanks to Tyler Cowen for his incessant experimentation and to Seth Roberts for his push for fermented food...that convinced me to try it.  I hope to have more soon, or even to make it a regular part of my diet.

Indeed, I'm now up to 5 fermented foods I like to eat regularly, three fermented food flavorings, and threefermented drinks I can tolerate in small doses:

Kimchi, Sauerkraut, Yogurt, Miso soup, and Cheese all make me happy.
I cook with Soy, Worchestershire Sauce, and Fish Sauce
I can tolerate apple (or pear) cider in varying states of fermentation, at varying quantities (usually inversely proportional to their fermentation).  Small bits of vinegar even, taken straight.  Also, medium bits of Kombucha, or Kefir. 
Now all I need to do is learn to tolerate Marmite.

Violence

As per my obsession with economic growth....
David Brin links us to Steven Pinker @ TED on the myth of violence.
Violence has decreased almost monotonically since forager times.  Oddly (unless you're me), it crashed hard in the merchant cultures, England and Holland somewhere near the 1500...a crash that correlates strongly with low-power distributed power merchants running the world...and NOT with high, focused power militaries being in charge....AND it's correlated with wealth, like every other good in the world. 

One upping my anarchism

Anarchists like myself are faced with 3 BIG issues around government:

1.  Anarchists support protection agencies rather than police...effectively the Pinkertons of the 1800s.  But with more $ now, there's probably going to be several.  However, the tightly coupled contracting that is needed between the protection agencies, and the tendency for large organizations to (stupidly) want to merge leads often in the direction of a state by another name.
2.  National defense is a real issue (I have read most of the libertarian arguments against this, and I remain convinced that this is a problem)...but so are powerful armies.
3.  A sufficiently powerful organization (the waterworks) might be able to effectively run as a state by having too much irreplaceable power. 

I wonder if the National Defense issue may be resolved by
(a) a strong pro-gun culture...Switzerland is hard to invade, not just because it's mountainous, but because every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the country has an assault rifle in his closet, and a bit of patriotism. 
(b) competition.  I read this article on Slashdot arguing that for many software projects, it might be better to hire 3 different people/teams to do the first part...evaluate them, and then continue with one start.  I'm thinking that actively maintaining private regiments, with sporadic military competitions/prizes is worthwhile.  I bet you can get better ratings than the NFL, what with tanks fighting each other...and we could even throw in CGI explosions.  Furthermore, the small teams basis would make the NML decentralized, and able to do defense effectively, without the cost of having a single entity in danger of taking over the country. 

Public Schools

Mark Horning directs us to PJ O'Rourke on public education.

Mark's favorite line:

Here’s my proposal: Close all the public schools. Send the kids home. Fire the teachers. Sell the buildings. Raze the U.S. Department of Education, leaving not one brick standing upon another and plow the land where it stood with salt.

Incidentally, I'm fully in agreement, and think that this one action would improve educational quality in the country more than ANY other single thing you could do.  But it wasn't my favorite line.  Here's my favorite line:

Close them anyway. I’ve got 11,749 [ed: official $ cost per student] reasons. Or, given the Cato report [that schools lie about spending], call it 15,000 . Abandon the schools. Gather the kids together in groups of 15.4. Sit them down at your house, or the Moose Lodge, or the VFW Hall or—gasp—a church. Multiply 15.4 by $15,000. That’s $231,000. Subtract a few grand for snacks and cleaning your carpet. What remains is a pay and benefit package of a quarter of a million dollars. Average 2008 public school classroom teacher salary: $51,391. For a quarter of a million dollars you could hire Aristotle. The kids wouldn’t have band practice, but they’d have Aristotle. (Incidentally this worked for Philip of Macedon. His son did very well.)

FWIW, I'm available as a substitute for Aristotle.   Anyone who has a dozen kids and $15k/parent...gimme a call.  As I say on my resume...you can't teach a pig to sing, but I can.  I've taught seriously brain-damaged kids, and I've taught 4-sigma prodigies, adults, children, and the animals in between.  Math, History, Programming, French, Latin, Economics...I'll argue curriculum later.

Or maybe this is the best line:

“But some of America’s disadvantaged persons may not have the cultural resources to utilize privatized educational disbursements. Some disadvantaged children may not receive any education at all.” Fifteen grand per kid buys a lot of culture. And the possibility that someone’s child may not receive any education is an improvement on a certainty that the child won’t.