Category: Science
Four important ideas from Russ Roberts
These are from Russ Roberts:
Over the last six years or so, since coming to George Mason and in the last three years since conducting a weekly podcast, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the following ideas:
1. Some orderly things are not intended by anyone.
2. The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.
3. It is easy to fall prey to confirmation bias.
4. Politicians respond to incentives.
These are pretty simple ideas. When you give people the one sentence version or paragraph version they nod and tell you they agree with the essence of the idea. But I find these ideas to be quite deep. They are easy to understand but very difficult to absorb. The more I think about them, the deeper is my understanding.
What will battling spacecraft look like?
Joseph Shoer isn't afraid to make predictions:
So, I think the small fighter craft would be nearly spherical, with a single main engine and a few guns or missiles facing generally forward. They would have gyroscopes and fuel tanks in their shielded centers. It would make sense to build their outer hulls in a faceted manner, to reduce their radar cross-section. Basically, picture a bigger, armored version of the lunar module. The larger warships would also probably be nearly spherical, with a small cluster of main engines facing generally backward and a few smaller engines facing forward or sideways for maneuvering. Cannons, lasers, and missile ports would face outward in many directions. On a large enough space cruiser, it would even be a good idea to put docking ports for the small fighters, so that the fighters don't have to carry as many consumables on board.
The article is interesting through and I hope it raises your appreciation of F.A. Hayek. For the pointer I thank Scott Cunningham.
Tie CO2 Tax to Temperature
John Tierney relays today what seems like a very sensible idea from economist Ross McKitrick, tie a carbon tax to the temperature. If the temperature rises the tax goes up, if the temperature does not rise (as McKitrick, a climate change skeptic thinks) the tax will stay at a low level. Temperature of the troposphere would be measured by satellite at the equator and averaged over a period of time. (More here and a more detailed version here).
In theory, both climate change proponents and skeptics ought to agree to this proposal, but I predict the proponents will object.
Addendum: As predicted most of the objections (in the comments) are from climate change proponents. In essence, they argue that the problem is so serious that we must act before the evidence is in. Aside from the obvious epistemic problems with such a position do note that a) this is a way of getting agreement where otherwise there might be none b) the tax can be non-linear so it rises (in Bayesian fashion) with the strength of the evidence, i.e. the tax need not always lag.
Asteroid Deflection as a Public Good
I wrote this post over the weekend but given Paul Samuelson's classic contribution to public goods theory and to economic textbooks it seems to also fit today.
In Modern Principles we use asteroid deflection as our example of a public good. Aside from memorability, the example has two virtues as a teaching tool. First, asteroid deflection is a true public good for all of humanity which raises free riding issues on a worldwide scale. Second, asteroid deflection is an example of a public good that is currently provided neither by the market nor by government. Thus the example underlines the fact that public goods are defined by their characteristics–nonexcludability and nonrivalry–and not by whether they are publicly provided, a point of confusion for many students.
The example may seem fanciful but Tyler and I are quite serious about the
importance of asteroid deflection. Large asteroid hits are rare but if
a large asteroid does hit, billions will be killed. As a result, sober calculations suggest that the lifetime risk of dying from an asteroid strike is about the same as the risk of dying in a commercial airplane crash. Yet we spend far less on avoiding the former risk than the latter.
A new report from the National Academy of Sciences discusses efforts to detect near earth objects (NEOs). Progress is mixed:
The United States is currently the only country with an active, government-sponsored effort to
detect and track potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs)…
Congress has mandated that NASA detect and track 90 percent of NEOs that are 1 kilometer in diameter
or larger. These objects represent a great potential hazard to life on Earth and could cause global
destruction. NASA is close to accomplishing this goal.Congress has more recently mandated that by
2020 NASA should detect and track 90 percent of NEOs that are 140 meters in diameter or larger, a
category of objects that is generally recognized to represent a very significant threat to life on Earth if
they strike in or near urban areas….The administration has not requested and Congress has not
appropriated new funds to meet this objective….[Thus] the current near-Earth object surveys cannot meet the goals of the 2005 NASA
Authorization Act…
Moreover, detection is only the first step towards deflection.
As a classroom discussion starter I like the video embedded below. The jovial attitude of the announcers contrasts amusingly with the topic while subtly illustrating some of our biases in perception yet the video does cover the main points about the worldwide risk, the fact that asteroid deflection is a public good and it hints at the free rider problem. I do doubt the bit about the riches available from asteroid mining. Enjoy.
The best paragraph I read today
The believe-it-or-not superlatives are so extreme and Tom Swiftian they make you smile. The L.H.C. is not merely the world’s largest particle accelerator but the largest machine ever built. At the center of just one of the four main experimental stations installed around its circumference, and not even the biggest of the four, is a magnet that generates a magnetic field 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. And because the super-conducting, super-colliding guts of the collider must be cooled by 120 tons of liquid helium, inside the machine it’s one degree colder than outer space, thus making the L.H.C. the coldest place in the universe.
The article is here, via Yves Smith and Jim Crozier.
Weeping
In February, a music professor at Stanford, Jonathan Berger, revealed that he has found evidence that younger listeners have come to prefer lo-fi versions of rock songs to hi-fi ones. For six years, Berger played different versions of the same rock songs to his students and asked them to say which ones they liked best. Each year, more students said that they liked what they heard from MP3s better than what came from CDs. To a new generation of iPod listeners, rock music is supposed to sound lo-fi.
Here is more. The whole series — notable new ideas picked out by the NYT — starts here and as usual it is worth perusing the entire list.
99 10 Red Balloons
Earlier this week DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, moored ten, 8 ft red, weather balloons in undisclosed locations across the United States.
The DARPA Network Challenge offered a prize of $40,000 to the person or group who first identified all the locations.
The MIT Group which won the challenge used a clever pyramid incentive scheme. Each balloon was worth $4000. The person to identify the location earned $2000. The person who invited that person to join the MIT group got $1000, the person who invited the person who invited the person who located the balloon got $500 and so forth (any money not distributed in this way was given to charity.)
The incentive scheme meant that contestants not only had an incentive to find balloons they had an incentive to find someone who could find balloons (or find someone who could find someone who could find balloons and so forth).
Incredibly, the MIT team located all ten balloons in just under 9 hours! The challenge may seem frivolous but in fact is a great example
of how prizes and network technologies can combine to collect and use
highly dispersed information–a problem of very general interest and relevance.
Project Cybersyn
Cybersyn was a project of the socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and British cybernetic visionary Stafford Beer; its goal was to control the Chilean economy in real-time using computers and “cybernetic principles.” The military regime that overthrew Allende dropped the project and probably for this reason when the project is periodically rediscovered it is often written about in a romantic tone as a revolutionary “socialist internet,” decades ahead of its time that was “destroyed” by the military because it was “too egalitarian” or because they didn’t understand it.
Although some sources at the time said the Chilean economy was “run by computer,” the project was in reality a bit of a joke especially in retrospect, albeit a rather expensive one, and about the only thing about it that worked were the ordinary Western Union telex machines spread around the country. The
two computers supposedly used to run the Chilean economy were IBM 360s (or machines on that order). These machines were no doubt very impressive to politicians and visionaries eager to use their technological might to control an economy (see picture at right.) Today, our perspective will perhaps be somewhat different when we realize that these behemoths were far less powerful than an iPhone. Run an economy with an iPhone? Sorry, there is no app for that.
Indeed, you don’t have to read far between the lines of Andy “socialist internet” Beckett’s account to get a flavor of what was really going on:
Beer’s original band of disciples had been diluted by other, less idealistic scientists. There was constant friction between the two groups. Meanwhile, Beer himself started to focus on other schemes: using painters and folk singers to publicise the principles of high-tech socialism; testing his son’s electrical public-opinion meters, which never actually saw service; and even organising anchovy-fishing expeditions to earn the government some desperately needed foreign currency.
(Note the classic, ‘the visionary failed because others lacked idealism’ story. Meanwhile the visionary is off on an anchovy-fishing expedition.)
Recently, Jeremiah Axelrod and Greg Borenstein have put together an excellent video essay (fyi, 25 minutes) which gets to the heart (perhaps head would be a better word) of Cybersyn by focusing on the legendary “control room,” which they delightfully call the “inverted panopticon.”
It is no accident, say Axelrod and Borenstein, that the control room looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise because the whole purpose of the room was to exude a science-fiction fantasy of omniscience and omnipotence. The fantasy naturally appealed to Allende who had the control room moved to the presidential palace just days before the coup.
The control room is like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in another respect–both are stage sets. Nothing about the room is real, even the computer displays on the wall are simply hand drawn slides projected from the other side with Kodak carousels.
Ironically, when rumors of the project began to circulate, the illusion of omniscience and omnipotence that Beer had created, the same illusion that so appealed to Allende and that had funded Beer’s visions and experiments, this illusion caused fear that an all-knowing big brother was on the way–and such fear may even have encouraged the coup.
After the coup, rather than destroying the project because of its “egalitarian” nature, the military regime was more likely to have been disillusioned and disappointed to discover project Cybersyn’s impotence.
Hat tip to Boing Boing.
The decentralization of science, including climate science
If you would like takes on Climategate different from my own, here are Megan McArdle, Seth Roberts, and Clive Crook, plus I have mislaid a Bob Murphy post, maybe he can leave the link in the comments (it's here).
I am by no means an expert in climate science but I will explain in more detail why I would stress different issues. (Please do set me straight where I am wrong.) I see science, including climate science, as very much a decentralized process, based on the collective efforts of thousands of researchers. The evidence for our current understanding of climate change also comes from a wide variety of disciplines, including chemistry, meteorology, oceanography, geography, tree ring studies, ice sheet studies, and a good body of theory, which has held up well. These results all point in broadly similar directions. Call me naive but, with apologies to Robert Sugden, I don't think many scientific results depend on what comes out of East Anglia, even if you include its emailing affiliates from Penn State and the like. Even very, very simple climate models generate many of the basic results.
It's correct to claim that East Anglia is a "central player" in climate change studies and that the IPCC looks to its estimates, as most sources report. It's no less important that other, competing models — in a competitive scientific framework — support similar perspectives. Here's a sentence from the unit's own account of its origins:
It is likely that CRU ranks only behind NCEP/NCAR, ECMWF (ERA-40) and NCDC as the acknowledged primary data source by climate scientists around the world.
In other words, it's not the only source. I simply don't think that all those other scientific units are controlled by people who hate capitalism, or SUVs, and wish to conspire to destroy them and succeed in faking and twisting the data. Or if you want to look outside the "conspiracy," consider this short bit:
“We knew about global warming long before you read about it in your newspapers,” says Niels Gundel, as he cocks his rifle and peers out across the water. He is speaking Greenlandic, with a tour guide acting as interpreter.
And:
I find myself grasping at reasons to be hopeful. The Arctic has been subject to some natural warming in the past: there was a brief heating in the Middle Ages. Couldn’t it be happening again? I couldn’t find a single scientist who said this was the primary cause. The warming in the past was localised, affecting only parts of the Arctic; this is affecting everywhere, all at once.
In the last two years I recall seeing numerous (distinct) new findings, all along the lines of "climate change may be accelerating," As far as I can tell, most of these new results do not rely on East Anglia per se.
I'm open to persuasion — I would love to think climate change is not a problem and sadly I don't think it's a problem we will succeed in solving – but so far I haven't seen the discussions of ClimateGate address these points in a manner which would change my mind.
Brain Slicing
See a man's brain sliced to pieces live over the internet. Weird.
Addendum: Background here.
The limits of good vs. evil thinking
Good vs. evil thinking causes us to lower our value of a person's opinion, or dismiss it altogether, if we find out that person has behaved badly. We no longer wish to affiliate with those people and furthermore we feel epistemically justified in dismissing them.
Sometimes this tendency will lead us to intellectual mistakes.
Take Climategate. One response is: 1. "These people behaved dishonorably. I will lower my trust in their opinions."
Another response, not entirely out of the ballpark, is: 2. "These people behaved dishonorably. They must have thought this issue was really important, worth risking their scientific reputations for. I will revise upward my estimate of the seriousness of the problem."
I am not saying that #2 is correct, I am only saying that #2 deserves more than p = 0. Yet I have not seen anyone raise the possibility of #2. It very much goes against the grain of good vs. evil thinking: Who thinks in terms of: "They are evil, therefore they are more likely to be right."
(Which views or goals of yours would you behave dishonorably for? Are they all your least correct views or least important goals? With what probability? Might it include the survival of your children?)
I do understand that this line of reasoning can be abused: "The Nazis went to a lot of trouble, etc." The Bayesian point stands.
Another example of misleading good vs. evil thinking stems from the budget. Many people believe:
3. "If the Republicans win, they will irresponsibly cut taxes and do nothing real to control spending." You may have even seen this view in the blogosphere.
One response to this is 4. "We should ensure that the Republicans do not win and criticize them every chance possible."
An alternative response is 5. "Sooner or later the Republicans will in fact win and I cannot prevent that. Right now the Democrats should spend less money, given the truth of #3. In this regard the Republicans, although evil, are in fact correct in asking the Democrats to spend less money, if only to counterbalance their own depravity."
I do not see many people entertaining #5. #5 implies that a group judged as dishonest should be granted some probability of speaking the truth on an important issue. (Nor will pro-Republicans be attracted to a claim which portrays their group as dishonest.) Note also that by accepting #5 you are admitting and partially accepting the ability of the Republicans to "out-game" the Democrats. That makes #5 even harder to accept.
Again, I am not asking you to buy #2 and #5 outright. I am simply suggesting they have a higher "p" than many people are willing to grant them. And that is because we are accustomed to judging the truth of a claim by the moral status of the group making the claim.
DNA for work and love
University of Akron demands DNA sample from faculty as condition of employment.
Dating sites use your DNA to find a perfect love match.
Hat tip to my true major histocompatibility complex match.
Whale size, an interior solution
How is this for a sentence to ponder?:
It’s a lot of water, the scientists have found: in one lunge, a fin whale can momentarily double its weight.
The full article is here and I'll peg it as one of the very best short pieces I've read this year. Here is another stunning excerpt:
In order to make lunge-feeding work, you have to have a really big
mouth to capture enough water in one gulp. But in order to have a big
mouth, you need a big body. And in order to keep that big body running,
you need to get a lot of food. And in the very act of getting that
food–diving deep, lunging open-mouthed, and then pushing a
school-bus-sized volume of water forwards–requires a lot of energy on
its own.Goldbogen and his colleagues wondered what sort of trade-off
lunge-feeding whales faced between the costs and the benefits of eating
like a parachute. To find out, they took advantage of measurements
scientists made of hundreds of fin whales at whaling stations in the
1920s.
For the pointer I thank Carl Zimmer. Herman Melville would have been proud.
The lessons of “Climategate”
I've had many readers emailing me, asking what I think of the "trove" of emails unearthed from climate change researchers. I'll admit I haven't read through the rather embarrassing revelations, I've only read a few media summaries and excerpts. I see a few lessons:
1. Do not criticize other people in emails or assume that your emails will remain confidential, especially if you are working on a politically controversial topic. Ask a lawyer about this, if need be. "Duh," they will say to you.
2. The Jacksonian mode of discourse, or mode of conduct for that matter, can do harm to your cause, especially if you are otherwise trying to claim the scientific high ground.
The substantive issues remains as they were. In Bayesian terms, if it turns out that many leading scientists do not practice numbers one and two, I am surprised that you are surprised. It's very often that the scientific consensus "sounds that way."
In other words, I don't think there's much here, although the episode should remind us of some common yet easily forgotten lessons.
I should add that this episode will seem very important to you, if you conceive of the matter in terms of the moral qualities of "us vs. them."
Addendum: Robin Hanson offers a similar opinion. I wrote my post before reading his, yet we come to the same conclusions I think.
Jeremy Taylor quotes Richard Wrangham on the domestication of human beings
I think we have to start thinking about the idea that humans in the last 30, 40, or 50,000 years have been domesticating ourselves. If we're following the bonobo or dog pattern, we're moving toward a form of ourselves with more and more juvenile behavior. And the amazing thing once you start thinking in those terms is that you realize that we're still moving fast. I think that current evidence is that we're in the middle of an evolutionary event in which tooth size is falling, jaw size is falling, brain size is falling, and it's quite reasonable to imagine that we're continuing to tame ourselves. The way it's happening is the way it's probably happened since we became permanently settled in villages, 20 or 30,000 years ago, or before.
That's from Taylor's interesting new book Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes that Make Us Human. Taylor does stress that this hypothesis is speculation rather than established fact.
By the way, our skulls are becoming thinner, a process known as gracilization.