Cold Reading

So a few years ago Victoria found an old receipt in a box. She calls to me, on the other side of the room, and says, “Hey Michael, guess what the date is on this receipt.”
Without so much as a second of hesitation I responded, “2000”.
She was stunned, “How’d you do that?”
“I’m psychic.” And I raised my eyebrows.

Now if that’s all the description I’d given of the event it might seem a little mysterious. But I assure you there was nothing mysterious about it at all. Victoria had actually told me the year a few minutes earlier and she didn’t even realize it. Making it seem really spooky when I repeated it back to her.

This is process that so-called psychic use all the time. It’s called cold reading. They take information from their “mark” a turn the information back on them. When done well it appears that the person claiming to have paranormal powers has actually provided information to you that they couldn’t have known otherwise. Typically they ask a series of questions. Based on their mark’s responses they will fine tune the questions until they can then make a very high probability guess. The real art is to make the mark forget the string of questions, especially all the wrong answers, and focus entirely on the final high probability guess.

Sometimes the psychic will base their first question on a non-verbal detail. If the mark is anywhere outside normal appearance (taller, shorter, thinner, fatter than average) they might start with something obvious like “Were you teased a lot as a teenager?” Then, no matter how you answer, they will build on that to fine tune their final “prediction”. They ask vague questions, expect their mark to narrow them down and forget all the wrong answers. My point here is that they really aren’t telling them anything at all. The mark is providing the answers, not the so-called psychic.

I had a recent experience with a very bad cold-reader. He told several personal stories and expected me to relate to his stories and add details so he could build upon them for his final “prediction”. He would make vague statements and expect me to clarify so he could build on them. In a sense I just turned the tables on him. When he would try to get me to fill in details I would just ask him follow up questions to his story. In the end I think he got rather frustrated with me. I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I just recognized his strategies and did my best not to fall for them.

The sad part is that I honestly don’t think that the guy I was talking to even knew what he was doing. I don’t think he was consciously trying to deceive me. But he was trying to get me to reveal information so he could claim that it was something that he sensed, or suspected all along.

Now back to my receipt story, Here’s the story again with supporting detail and in the full context:
A few years ago we did some remodeling to the house. We stashed a bunch of stuff in shoe boxes to sort through and clean out later. A year or so had passed an Victoria and I were decluttering. We were sitting on the floor each going through shoe boxes of papers. I happened to have a shoebox with mostly stuff from the 90s in it. I remember noticing how so much of the clutter in my box was from the same couple of years. Victoria found some old bank account information form when we opened an account for Noah. She told me about it and laughed at some of the information on the paperwork. Noah was born in 2000 and we opened the account the year he was born because he had an income. Victoria was doing market research on diapers and the checks came payable to Noah.

So half an hour later I was still sorting my papers from the 90s and I assumed that she was still on the same box too. So when she asked me to guess the date I just said, “2000”. It was vague, I didn’t give a month or a day, and I had a pretty good chance of being right. And even if I had been wrong she’d have never thought about it again.

“It’s kind of sad that just paying attention to the little details in people’s lives gets mistaken for a paranormal power.”
Paraphrasing Penn Gillett from a podcast interview with Adam Savage

Humility

I’m going to do my best to get back to blogging more frequently. I really enjoy it. It helps me organize my thoughts. Considering the topic of my last couple posts I took a self-imposed hiatus. I guess I was just being kinda timid about how people would respond. But after several long talks with my lovely bride she has convinced me that I need to get back in the swing of blogging again. So here it goes.

I have a meeting scheduled with the Stake President tomorrow. I haven’t attended church for almost 6 months now, except for one for the primary program because I had kids participating. This is about the fifth time that he has tried to meet with me but previously he’s cancelled at the last minute. I’m not pretending that I don’t know what he wants to talk about. In preparation for our discussion I’ve been reading my previous blog posts and talking things out with friends and family.

This is his meeting. He called it and I’m not planning on hijacking it. However, I am more than aware of the Taylor gene that makes me come across as confrontational when I really don’t mean to be. My goal is to just give him honest answers to his questions. If time permits and depending on that mood I may ask a few of my own, but those are of secondary importance to me. I have no desire at all to have anybody change their mind just because I have lost my believe in the LDS church. My only goal in agreeing to meet with him is shared understanding. I recognize that his goal will likely be more than that and I’m open-minded to new answers. Just because a decade of questioning has not provided any new answers so far I’m not closing the door to the possibility.


I’ve really enjoyed the access that the internet has given me to videos and podcast of some of the most brilliant scientists, philosophers and educators in the world. I am particularly amazed at how most of them deal with people that they disagree. Far from the insults and cut-downs they have shown me that it is possible to vehemently disagree but still be polite, respectful and cordial in that disagreement. I admire this. It’s a trait I am consciously working on developing. The following clip is one of my favorite that illustrates this type of civil disagreement that is all too frequently absent in other aspects of life. Incidentally I am in complete agreement with Ann Druyan on her appraisal of the lack of humility in the religious world today.

The King Swing

(Warning!! This post is of a very personal nature and may offend some readers.)
This is a video from a very popular rock climbing route in Yosemite. This technique is called a pendulum traverse. Climbers call it "The King Swing” and it takes place on a route called “The Nose” on the 3000’ feature called El Capitan. About halfway up this particular route the cracks and features kind of peter out once you get to the top of that flake the photographer is standing on. Since the rock doesn’t have any little cracks or bumps there is subsequently nothing to pull up on or stand on. Therefore, no way to climb it. The only solution is to go back down and see if you can find another path. Sometimes you see another path but there really isn’t any way to get to it from underneath. The only feasible solution is to do a pendulum traverse. Just as the name implies you lower down as far as you have to and swing back and forth until you can grab a section of rock that is will allow you to climb it.

I’ve done several pendulum traverses, although not this one. They can be quite intimidating. Sometimes you’re not quite sure if you’re swinging into a section that will be just as unclimbable as where you were. One time it was an emergency situation and this was the safest technique to get off the rock during a thunderstorm. But every time I was more than a little apprehensive. The technique requires much more planning than it appears and things have to be done just right in order to stay safe.

Even though the route ahead seems insurmountable it’s quite a weird feeling to hang your butt on the end of a rope and run back and forth hoping to grasp something better, something that will allow you to keep progressing. It’s not exactly the safest thing to do. The times I’ve done them were only in situations where I was absolutely sure that it was the only way to keep on progressing. The risks can be high, but the rewards can be even greater if this leads you to better climbing or a way out of the current predicament.

I’m at a point in my life where I need to take the King Swing. I’ve been on a path that has provided me with much joy and happiness up to this point. I felt like I was growing, learning and progressing. But for the last several years I’ve been stuck on a ledge looking for ways to keep moving up and not finding anything to hang on to. It has taken me quite a while to even consider looking for another path. I’d been raised to believe that the path I was on was perfect and there was no reason to stray from it. But I just couldn’t see where or how to continue. Consequently, I’ve lowered down a little bit and begun to swing back and forth looking for another path.

I believe I’ve found a path. I’m not quite sure how good the climbing will be over there but I’m sure it is more promising than where I am now. Who knows? This new path may lead me back onto my original path from a different angle. Or I may end up having to lower back down this new route too and look for yet another path. I just don’t know right now.

To those of you who aren’t having any problems negotiating the blank sections of the original route, I have no criticism at all. Congratulations. You are better skilled at finding the route than I am. Simply because I am looking for a different path I have no criticism at all if you are making it work for you.

I’m not suggesting that anybody take the steps that I about to without doing at least as much thorough research, soul-searching and earnestly looking for all of the answers. This decision, to take the swing, has not be reached casually. In my case it has been years and years of agonizing study and prayer that has brought me to when I am now.

It’s time to set the metaphor aside. This post has nothing to do with rock climbing. I’m talking about my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For the past several years I’ve been stuck on a ledge and could find no way to keep moving forward. I’ve discussed some of the specifics on this blog numerous times, but I don’t wish to get into them today. To my friends and family who are members of the church I hope that you will take this with the spirit with which it is intended. I am very grateful that you are in my life and I mean absolutely no disrespect to you at all. I have never felt that absolute agreement on everything was necessary for me to love you and this decision will not stop that. I hope that you can see it in your heart to still love me. The most apprehensive part of this decision has been the considering, reconsidering and re-reconsidering the effects it will have on my family.

I fully expect that many of you will not understand my decision. I’m under no delusion that this will be easy. But I believe it will be better in the long run. I’ve seen other friends and family members struggle with some of the same issues that I have. It’s been very selfish of me to let them struggle alone while I conceal my struggles and go through some of the same things they have been.

I am grateful for everything that I have learned so far on my path. Please don’t think that I am going to consider abandoning all of the progress and the good things that I’ve learned in the process. I have no plans to start stopping by liquor stores or breaking any other of the moral and ethical codes the church has taught me. Quite the opposite; I cherish those values and I look forward to continuing to incorporate them into my life.

The private answers to the questions I have asked in my prayers have led me in an unexpected direction, a spiritual path which, at least for now, has proven incompatible with Mormon doctrine. This search for a new route has brought me some of the most profound surprises and also the deepest sadness of my life. It is very hard for me to leave a path that I love so much.

Conflicts

Many years ago I played saxophone in my middle school band. I wasn’t very good at all. Typically I was either 3rd or 4th chair. That depended entirely on how many saxophones there were that semester, 3 or 4. In band if you wanted a promotion to a higher chair you had to “challenge” the chair in front of you. Friday’s were challenge days. We would go around the band and listen to each challenge. Typically the 2 players would each play the same piece and they were judged by the band director. If that challenger played it better they advanced to that chair. Sometimes challenges would be issued to show an expertise in a specific technique. I remember challenges issues entirely on breathing at the correct spots in a piece.

I will always remember one particular challenge. I was in the flute section. Our band director had been working with us on keeping our fingers close to the keys; basically not wasting energy and time by completely straightening your fingers when a smaller motion will get the job done. So the 3rd chair recognizes that she had an advantage in this area and challenges the 2nd chair to a piece. Here’s where it got interesting. She challenged him based on two criteria, accuracy and keeping fingers on the keys. Both musicians played the piece and then the director had to make a decision. The 3rd chair flutist clearly had mastered the concept of keeping her fingers near the keys. However the 2nd chair played the piece with more accuracy. So what do you do? Which of the 2 challenge criteria trumps the other? Without any ground rules in place before the challenge he decided that a tie meant no change in the positions.

No you’ve probably already realized that this post isn’t really about who sits where in a middle school band class. At our company we have a long standing safety creed. Until a few years ago it read,
“No job is so important and no service is so urgent that we can not take time to perform our work safely."
I have no problem with that at all. It’s simple and to the point. When I would get spot checked while on site my supervisor would ask me what it meant in my own words. I would typically say something like, “It’s just your phone or your internet. Nobody should have to get hurt to make this work.”
Well a few years ago we were bought out by a larger company. And that company made a slight change to the safety creed. It now reads,
“No job is so important and no service is so urgent that we can not take time to perform our work safely and in an environmentally responsible manner."
Hmmm. Now like our band director I am presented with a possible conflict. I have no problem with either of the goals expressed in this creed as long as they don’t conflict with each other. But what about when they do conflict? I can think of several cases where the most environmentally responsible thing to do would not be the safest thing to do in the short term. What if a coworker is being attacked by a Canada Goose? Whose side do I take? The coworker’s or the threatened migratory bird? While I have no criticism of either goal, I just think that bringing up environmental issues in the context of a safety creed waters down the creed and could actually make a situation more dangerous.
Now on to other issues. How many times do we find ourselves in situations like this? Do I swerve to miss the animal in the road and endanger my passengers in the process? Or make a professional decision without considering the family? I guess my only point is that you need to be clear which goal would trump the other before you get into that situation.

Proofiness

Years ago I my dad had a book laying around the house called How to Lie with Statistics. The book took the form of a how-to book. The entire premise being that people don’t really understand statistics or even math very well so it presented some tongue in cheek suggestions on how to spin your numbers to say something that they don’t really. The book was intended to be used as a defensive tool to teach the readers how to notice when somebody else is lying to them with numbers.

If How to Lie with Statistics was the 101 course then Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception by Charles Seife is the masters level course. If you are uncomfortable with uncertainty you might want to avoid this book. Seife successfully shows that many of the numbers that control our lives are at best gross estimations and at worst deliberate fictions. Instead of saying "Hey there are a bunch of Communists in the Justice Department.” Joseph McCarthy knew that we would give more credence to a number so he made one up, 205. Where did he get that number? He just made it up. And people bought it. Seife shows that people tend to believe numbers even if there is no reasonable expectation that the number is even correct. This reminds me of the story of the surveyors who were measuring Mount Everest and found out that it was exactly 29,000’. The supervisors in charge altered the data because 29,000’ looked like and estimate so they added a few feet to the mountain and called it 29,029’.

Seife shows how pervasive our trust of numbers are in everyday life. Most people accept that 98.6F is the normal temperature for a human. Is this number really accurate to one decimal point? No it isn’t. The doctors who determined the average normal temperature for humans only claimed it was accurate to the decimal point in Celsius and even then it could vary by person. 37C is the normal temperature, but when you convert that to Fahrenheit you get a number that appears more accurate than the number you started with. The real average temperature for humans is somewhere between 36C and 38C or 97F to 100F but we really can’t be more accurate than that. Yet how many times have you assumed that you had a fever at 99.0F? Not to say you weren’t really sick, but you don’t need the artificially accurate number to tell you that. This is Proofiness.

Seife explains case by case how proofiness has been used to free the guilt; O.J. Simpson, execute the innocent, elect Presidents and Congressmen, justify military action, justify backing out of arms treaties, support just about every type of legislation on both sides of the aisle on issues ranging form abortion to gun control etc. etc. etc. The abuses of math in our society were very disheartening. Personally I think Seife had his own bias as to which side of the aisle was more guilty of proofiness than the other. That being said he was just as thorough in his rebuke of the right as he was the left.

Many parts of the book were quite depressing. The specific cases, especially those were lives were lost seriously caused me to question the motives of some of our elected official. However, overall I thought the book was an excellent primer on what to look for and what follow up questions to ask when you are given information, especially information that involves counting , math and statistics.

The whole time I was reading this book I keep thinking about this one joke. 5/4th of American’s have problems with fractions. Seife has convinced me that this number may even be higher.

Internets Polls and other Cons

The book I’m currently reading has a whole chapter on opinion polls. Specifically, it focuses on how systematic errors in the polls can cause error bars so broad that the data is completely worthless. Unless your goal in the first place isn’t to measure public opinion but to shape it, then they aren’t worthless at all.
Yesterday on my facebook feeds I got a request to answer a survey about where I get my news. Sounds good on the surface, but then the problems start popping up.
What’s wrong with this kind of a survey? Well first off, it’s voluntary. They aren’t gonna get any mediocre opinions. People don’t log on to a volunteer survey to say that they really don’t have an opinion. So right off the bat the survey will be artificially polarized, since it will only take responses from people passionate enough to participate.
Second, I didn’t see this same survey come across any other media; radio, TV etc. This isn’t a problem by itself. They may have been specifically looking for the opinions of facebook users. It’s only a problem if they then try to extrapolate from there out to the general population. Many surveys often do exactly that.
But the big death nail in this survey’s credibility is the surveyed audience. This came across my NPR feed. Yup, this survey was only sent out to people who are already self declared fans of NPR. Are you kidding me? You’re taking a survey of people who are already fans of NPR and want to know where they get their news? Gee, I wonder how that will turn out.
Of course this is nothing new. Fox news can’t seem to go a whole hour without asking you to log in and tell them what you think. Then they come back with some ridiculous misinterpretation of the data like, “55% of Americans think Obama is Muslim.” As if the opinions of their viewers makes it reality. I’ve grown to expect this kind of meaningless polling from most news outlets. I was just a little bit surprised the see if from NPR. In fairness to them, I don’t think they were being partisan. They were just trying to create a poll that disproportionately favored NPR itself.
So If you’re ever around me when somebody tells me about a recent poll, you’re liable to hear sigh or a snicker and then a series of follow up questions about things like statistical errors v systematic errors, controlling for sample bias, error bars, etc. You see polls themselves aren’t news. At best, they are what news organizations talk about while they are waiting for real news to happen. At worst they are an attempt to manipulate opinion or politics.

Hypocrisy

It snowed in the Southeast a few weeks ago. Since Atlanta has no appreciable snow response plan other than to just wait for it to melt, most of Atlanta was stuck at home burning vacation days as fast as they were their Kroger bought firewood. Nothing pulls out the deniers of Global Warming more than a colder than average day. Never mind the fact that most of them were conveniently silent during the records highs of only a few months ago, 87 degrees on October 11th and I didn’t hear a peep out of any of them Saturday and Sunday when it was in the 70s. I could do a whole post on confirmation bias here. If you only look at the data that supports your conclusion and ignore the rest the world looks just like you imagine it would. But I’ve done that before.
Of course a few hot days in October or a few days in the 70s in January don’t prove it is happening any more than a few cold days in January proves it isn’t. If you are talking about a global issue increasing over the long term you have to average all of the data for the long term.
My post today is to issue a challenge to those who honestly believe that a few cold days mean that the general trend is not increasing. Let’s put your money where your mouth is. Do you believe the same thing about your stock portfolio? I propose that we take all the stocks in your portfolio and every time one hits a localized low you sell it to me at that low price. If we apply the same logic to your portfolio that you apply to the weather then a localized low must mean that the general trend is not increasing. So why would you want to hang on to it anyway?
Any takers? No I didn’t think so. Because most people are smart enough to realize that when it comes to their stock portfolio it’s the long term trends that are important not the localized highs and lows. Sure there are bad stocks out there that are not performing well. But if you look at all of them all and average them out, it’s still a pretty good place to invest. Why, because in spite of localized events the trend is generally increasing.
I think that most people who deny the evidence of global climate change are smart enough to realize this point. They obviously accept the same logic when applied to their portfolio. They just choose to deny it because they don’t like the political implications that accepting the evidence would have. And they know that a cold day in January doesn’t prove anything except that it’s a cold day in January, yet they deliberately play on the emotions of those that follow them to lead you to a fallacious conclusion. They think their listeners are that easily manipulated. Unfortunately, many of them are.

Trust

Every now and then I like to watch the Barrett-Jackson auto actions. I’m never going to be able to afford any of the cars they sell but I still enjoy looking at beautiful cars. Week after week people will show all sorts of cars and the commentators will give you explanations of what kind of restorations the car has been through, the history of the car and even focus on some of the details that may be either custom or were specific to that year and model. I don’t pretend to be an expert on any of the cars they show. I can guess the decade of most cars and on a few I might be able to get a little bit more detailed, but not much. The only possible exception to this would be air-cooled Volkswagens. I’m still not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know more about them than any other make.

Well a few months ago they did a show that had quite a few classic VWs come across. I missed the show but I read quite a bit about it on a VW chat room that I visit frequently. From the discussions in the chat room it became quickly apparent that the commentators just had no clue what they were talking about when it came to the VWs. But that didn’t stop them from repeating nonsense with the same confidence that they did with other cars.

Now I don’t fault anybody for not being completely familiar with the brand that I choose to take particular interest in. People like different things and I’m completely OK with that. What bothers me is something different. Up until know I had taken them at their word that they knew what they were talking about. It is clear that at least in one category they were clueless. Sure the guys talking were probably just the talking heads recycling the facts that somebody was telling them about in their ear bud, but up until now I had trusted them. And the confidence with which they gave the facts was partially to blame for my lack of skepticism.

The show has been somewhat disillusioning since then. How do I know if what they are telling me about the Mustang currently on the block is true? Considering how much hogwash they dished out when it was the VWs up there, how do I know? Up until now they had my trust, but now I find myself asking questions. How much of this do they really know? How much are they just making up out of whole cloth and hoping that nobody will call them on it? I still watch the show periodically. The cars are no less amazing. I just have to take the narrations with more than a few grains of salt.

I had a similar event happen recently. A friend was telling a story about another subject that I know quite a lot about. In telling his story he messed up a few of the details with which I am familiar. I can look at the point of his story and his overall point is unaffected by the slight deviations. That being the case I found myself analyzing every detail. If he got that wrong, what else is not quite the way he told it?

As always when these things happen to me I get introspective rather quickly. Do I do this too? How many times have I embellished what I considered to be a minor detail? Have I sacrificed somebody’s trust in me just to tell a little bit better story? Am I doing it right now? Perhaps I need to take better care to be sure that I’m not guilty of the very same thing that I find disillusioning in others.

Merchants of Doubt

So the other day I was trying to convince one of my kids to stop playing video games and get studying one of the school subjects in which they aren’t doing very well. No response. So I looked at their grades so far and did my best to persuade them that if they didn’t do a remarkable job in the last few weeks of the semester that they likely would not pass the course. Again, no response. At this point I was getting more than a little irritated at the lack of action. “Why aren’t you doing anything about this?” The response I got, “You don’t know for sure that I’ll fail if I don’t study today and you can’t guarantee that I’ll pass if I do study right now.” This little logical fallacy is one that has bugged me for years. While it is true that I could not know for sure the outcome of doing homework it’s ridiculous to argue that playing video games is a better use of that time.

We see this type of fallacious reasoning all the time. Sometimes it is accidental. I know people who avoid the interstates because don’t know if there will be any construction work going on and they can’t be 100% sure that the off ramps will be open. Other people turn off all passenger side airbags because they can’t be 100% sure that theirs won’t be the one that goes off accidentally. I have even heard of one friend of mine who never wears his seat belt because he can’t be 100% sure that he won’t drive off a bridge and drown because he can’t get out of his car. All of these situations are based on an emotional response to something that had happened to them or a persuasive story they heard or saw on the news. Despite ample evidence to the contrary they still stick to that emotional assessment of risk and a desire for 100% surety.

What really bothers me is when others recognize this fact that you can never be 100% sure and exploit it for political and personal gains. Merchants of Doubt is the history of just such political exploitation of science and the public’s misunderstanding of certainty, statistics and risk.

Industry funded scientists focused on and magnified the uncertainty when dealing with the link between cancer and cigarette smoking. The implication being that since they can’t prove 100% that smoking is what gave this guy cancer then we don’t know what did. And therefore smoking is safe. Later on Industry funded scientists focused on and magnified the uncertainty when dealing with the consequences of the arms race. Then after that it was the link between industries and acid rain. Etc, etc, etc. Time and time again Industry funded experts have used the same tired script to justify their in action. What I found most surprising in this book is that time and time again it is the very same scientists pushing this uncertainty on the public, even when the topics are far afield of their area of training and expertise.

I took this book as a warnign to be skeptical anytime somebody encourages action or inaction just based on the fact that we can't be 100% certian. Do the research and weigh the risks. Sure, absolute certianty is rare, but relative certianty is much more common. I many not no for sure if I'm gonna get driven off a bridge, but I'm far more likely to get into an accident that does not involve a bridge and so I'm gonna continue to wear my seat belt. And the same goes for the other controvertial issues detailed in Merchants of Doubt.

What Happend to Civility?

Here’s a not entirely hypothetical situation I’d like to discuss.
Suppose a friend came over to your house unannounced. You invite them in and they begin to tell you their views on what is wrong with everything from your politics to how to you raise your children. They quote celebrities and politicians to back up their position. You listen politely for a while. Then when they are finished you attempt to point out a few misquotations and other errors in the facts they presented to you. They then get insulted and react as if you are personally attacking them. They make one last speech and storm out of your house telling you that they never want to hear from you again.
The above example is an amalgam of several different events that have actually happened to me in the last couple months. It sounds absurd doesn’t it? But they really happened, several times. If this had happened to you how would you feel? Suppose this was a beloved family member, who you had great respect for, you just disagreed on politics? In my situation each time I just sat there stunned. Where did that come from? Why did they bring this to me?
Now I have concealed one small detail until now. These encounters didn’t happen in person. They happened via email. Yet other than that the details are correct. Why does the fact that their message came via an email excuse them the civility they might have granted me in person? Is it really so all or nothing with some people? What has happened to this world that we are so readily willing to cut all ties with people because we don’t march in lock step with them? Is their value as a person so contingent upon me accepting the premises of the email that they mass forwarded to everybody in their address book?
I share this because I am truly saddened. There are people that I have known for decades who have abandoned having any relationship with me because we disagree. What happened to having a civil disagreement? In many of my cases I didn’t even get around to stating my opinion. I was just correcting the facts they presented. It doesn’t bother me that we disagree on some points. But why can’t we discuss the issue civilly?
In stark contrast to these examples I do have a few close friends with whom I frequently disagree. I enjoy discussing things with them. I know that neither one of us is likely to have a complete change of opinion but the conversation is stimulating. And I believe that we are willing to accept when our opinions are based on flawed data and reconsider. I want to thank these friends for accepting me as one who is still looking for answers. I enjoy the search. I hope I never get so many answers that I no longer need the search. And I hope that no matter how much we may disagree you will still walk away knowing that I still value you as a person.

Left at the Red Light

If you’ve ever asked for directions in Georgia it is very likely that you have been told at least once to “turn left at the red light”. I used to respond by saying something to the effect of, “How about I stop and wait until it turns green and then turn left?” This usually is met with a puzzled look on their face, as if they don’t even realize that they had encouraged me to break the law and potentially risk my life. You see in the south when you ask for directions the term “red light” actually means the next intersection with a traffic signal no matter what color it happens to be showing when you get there. I’ve learned to just enjoy this little colloquialism. I don’t bring it up to criticize well-meaning people who are just trying to help out, but I do get a little chuckle when I hear it.
Yesterday a friend showed me this story. This lady took the advice of Google Maps at the expense of her own common sense. She got hurt. And now she thinks it’s Google’s fault? I’d be willing to bet that this same person would “turn left at the red light” and then insist that it was the well-meaning guy at the Citgo’s fault for using a southern colloquialism that got her hurt.
It really amazes me how frequently people completely turn off thier brain and then think it's somebody else's fault.

Martin Gardner

When I was about 10 or 12 I went to my Dad’s office with him at CDC. He had to work on a project and I thought it was cool to hang out at his office in a real laboratory. I have a feeling that I was a lot like Noah an I was probably asking him far too many questions. Rather than just shut me out completely he looked for something that would keep my interest and yet still allow him to have an independent thought. He had a book on his desk that he handed me to read while I waited for him to finish his project.
The book was Aha Gotcha by Martin Gardner. It was a really fun read about several mathematical paradoxes and logical fallacies. Gardner used some very simple stick figures to illustrate each problem. This made it very appealing for a geeky little boy. The science was very deep but the cartoons made it fun to read.
This book was my first introduction to the concept of critical thinking. I frequently fall back on the lessons I learned by reading it. Gardner teaches us to not accept things at face value and look a little deeper into the problem and try to find the real solution and not just the paradox that you first perceive. I get a little chuckle when I see a magic trick and realize that I know the core of trick thanks to Gardner.
I was saddened by the news that Martin Gardner had died this weekend. I need to be sure that I do my part to make sure his legacy lives on. Yesterday I pulled my dad’s copy of Aha Gotcha off the shelf and thumbed through it. I’m gonna make a point to share it with my kids tonight.

Dad, Can we listen to another one of those “I’m Brian Dunning” programs?

I don’t remember what exactly prompted it, but Sunday evening we were on the way home from my mom’s house and the kids got started talking about evolution. At some point one of the younger two said that we evolved from monkeys. Then they got into a debate over whether it was monkeys or apes. I had to interject and tell them both that they were on the right track, but that neither one of them were technically correct. I did my best to explain that monkeys, apes and humans all had a common ancestor, but that it wasn’t a modern ape or monkey.
I got my wife hooked on listening to the Skeptoid podcast a year or so ago. She suggested that we let the kids listen to Brian Dunning’s explanation of this common misconception. So with a little searching on the iPhone I downloaded a few episodes. The kids enjoyed the first so I just let it run through a couple episodes. It made for a very nice and educational ride home.
Well yesterday I had Noah and Eve in the car and I had the radio on. Noah piped up and asked, “Dad, Can we listen to another one of those ‘I’m Brian Dunning’ programs?”. Not to be one to stand in the way of a 9 year-old and a 7 year-old who are curious about science, I handing him the iPhone and let him listen to a few episodes. After we got home he kept my phone and ran upstairs and listened to a few more. He was really excited that Brian actually had a video podcast too. So he probably spent and hour watching and listening to Skeptoid and InFact before he went to bed.
I listen to a lot of podcasts, particularly a lot of podcasts that focus on science and skepticism. I enjoy them all but several of them are not safe for children. It’s a shame because as I’ve demonstrated with this little story there is a market for at least a few kids. I want to thank Brian Dunning for doing such a great podcast and keeping it accessible to all ages. I encourage you all to check it out too, no matter how old you are.

That’s Not Fair

So last week Victoria was reading aloud a news article about some of the budget cut that the state is implementing for Georgia schools. Some of the cuts I agree with and others I think are really cutting to deep in the wrong areas. Anyway, not to get off track on a political discussion, one of the budget cuts called for cancelling a certain test that is currently required in 2nd grade. I think this is a good thing. I just feel that we have too much testing in order to qualify for federal moneys, etc, and not nearly enough teaching. Apparently the state agrees and felt that this test really wasn’t needed.
Well as Victoria was reading this article to me my 6th grader, upon hearing that her sibling will not have to take this 2nd grade test exclaimed, “That is so unfair!”. Hmm. This got me thinking. Why did she feel this way? So I asked her. Did she think the test was meaningful? No. Did she herself benefit from the test? No. Then why did she think it was unfair? After a little discussion I discovered that she thought the change was actually for the better but she was upset that they hadn’t done it while she was in 2nd grade.
I wonder how many times we have continued a tradition, a ritual, or anything that we didn’t like when we went through it just because we think it would be unfair for us to have to do something that those coming behind us didn’t have to do. How often do we put our kids through things just because that’s the way we had to do it? I wonder how deep this mindset penetrates our society. Last year Victoria read a book that had Chinese foot binding as a major theme. I wonder how many of these women did these to their daughters just because they felt it would be unfair for them to not go through it after they had. I wonder if there were any salve owners in the south who felt that slavery was wrong but that it would be unfair for them to try to work without them. I could go on but I think you get the point.
I’ve given my kids the “walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways” argument several times. When I do it I hope they are taking away from it that I think it’s cool that they have access to cell phones, the internet, and other modern conveniences. They should be thankful that they have all of these things. I sure hope they don’t think that I’m crying foul. Yes, I wish that I’d have had some of the benefits as a kid that they have now. But I would hate for them to think that I’m putting them through something that I disagree with just because I had to do it.

The Line Drawing Fallacy

Take a second and look at these four pictures:
image1 image2 image3 image4
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the cars here, there is a Volkswagen Thing and a Jeep. The question now is “Which is which?” The one that looks like a jacked up thing actually is 4-wheel drive and has the motor in the front and the one that looks like the Jeep has the motor in the rear.
These pictures reminded me of a logical fallacy called the Line Drawing Fallacy. I’m going to modify it from the way I first heard it in order to fit these pictures. Let’s suppose that I have two cars in the garage. A Volkswagen on the right and a Jeep on the left. One day I decide it would be fun to start swapping parts form one car and sticking them on the other. I start with a bumper. Then I move to fenders. Then on to the to more serious stuff, the suspension, the wheels, drive train, frame and on and on. When I’m finished I will have a complete Jeep on the right and a complete Volkswagen on the left. Now for the big question. At what point in the process did the Jeep become the VW and the VW become the Jeep? Was it when they swapped the frame? The motor? The hood emblem? So far there isn’t a logical fallacy, just a philosophical conundrum. But what if I challenged the identity of the cars like this? Since you can’t exactly answer when the VW became the Jeep then the car on the right must still be the VW even though it now has every single part of the original Jeep.
It kind of sounds absurd when you are talking about cars. Nevertheless, people make this fallacy of reason frequently. I hear it frequently in the debate about the definition of life. Some argue that since you can’t really define when a person became alive then we must have always been alive. The most egregious abuse of this concept came years ago during the trial of the officers who assaulted Rodney King. An attorney asked the question, “At what point did the officers use excessive force? Was it after the first hit, the second, the third?” He then went on to tell the jury that if they couldn’t define exactly when it became excessive then they couldn’t accurately define what excessive force meant and the officer was not guilty. The other attorney, recognizing the fallacy, approached the jury and took a book and slammed it against the table the exact number of times that King was hit. I think it was 23 times. He then said, “I don’t care exactly when their actions became excessive. It was somewhere between the first hit and the 23rd.” And that’s the correct answer here too. There are multiple shades of gray in our world. But that doesn’t mean that black is the same as white or that Jeeps are the same as VWs.

Your Inner Fish

At the recommendation of Teacherninja I recently read Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. Thanks for the recommendation. I really enjoyed it.
Shubin is a paleontologist and it was his research that discovered Tiktalik, a fossil animal that was almost exactly what was predicted to have existed halfway between fish and land animals. Much of the book describes that expedition and the others that lead up to it.
The book does not stop at just Tiktalik. He builds on the similarities and spends a great deal of time showing how so much of biology is based on remarkably similar structures. He show how early in the development of nearly every embryo, chicken, fish, squirrel or human the same organs form from the same rows of cells in each species even though they may have drastically different uses in the final creature. I found these chapters very fascinating.
Shubin avoids pretty much entirely that political debate that is currently going on about teaching evolution in schools. I guess from his perspective evolution via natural selection is such an established fact he felt no need to defend it. I agree with this position. It was a science book and I don’t fault him for setting all politics aside and just speaking to the science. I would like to point out that Shubin’s discovery of Tiktalik was predicted by evolution and that Tiktalik made his appearance during the middle of the Dover school board’s attack on teaching evolution in school. I’m sure Shubin didn’t plan it this way, but at the same time the Dover school board had “experts” testifying that no transitional fossils had ever been found, Shubin was uncovering yet another transitional fossil.
I listened to this book on CD while working. I plan on going back and reading it for real when I get a chance. Some of the details in the middle of the book deserve more attention than I could give them just listening while working.

Fear of Science Will Kill Us

Sibling Solidarity

(This is another personal post that will likely upset some readers.)

I love my kids. Sure they can frustrate the hell out of me sometimes but I still love them. I didn’t enjoy being a teenager and I can tell that my two teenagers aren’t exactly digging it either. It seems that most of their troubles come from peer pressure; so-called friends attacking them, frequently physically, for their opinions and beliefs and trying to get them to just go along with the crowd. What’s really upsetting to them is that most of this criticism comes from people whom they think should know better, members of our church. As a parent few thing make me more proud than when one kid stands up for the other, especially in a situation where they really don’t have anything to gain my doing it. We had just such a situation last night. And although it was very traumatic for her, I couldn’t have been more proud of my oldest daughter.
A little back history: Aaron hasn’t been attending church at our ward for the better part of a year now. He has been arranging, on his own, to get rides back and forth from the Brocket Ward. He gets along with the kids in that ward better, they accept him and genuinely love him. In stark contrast, the kids in our ward tease him, call him a Satanist and frequently physically assault him. In his own words it is rather ironic that the least spiritual hours of his week are spent at church. He doesn’t participate in the Varsity scout program on Wednesday night. We’ve moved him to another troop that is a real community troop where sharing the same religious upbringing is not a requirement to hold positions. He gets along much better with these guys. On Wednesday he even arranges for rides over to Brockett to hang out with the kids from that ward that he gets along with so well. In the entire time that he has been attending that Ward only one person from our ward has asked about Aaron. He was genuinely concerned and I thanked him for caring and not forgetting about him. Not a single other person has given us the slightest clue that they’ve even noticed his absence. In stark contrast, the leaders from Brockett comment to us about how they enjoy having him there and miss him when he’s gone.
Well last night I dropped Rachel off at the church for her Young Women’s activity. She typically doesn’t have the same issues as Aaron so I was a little surprised when Victoria brought her home and she was in tears. I asked her what was wrong. Rachel then proceeded to ask if she too could attend Brockett Ward rather than our ward. Apparently even in his absence Aaron is still a topic of conversation. A few of the kids were making fun of him and it really upset Rachel. I found a bit odd that their primary criticism of Aaron is that he “believes in evolution”. Rachel has never been one to gossip and hence she refused to tell me which kids were involved. But she did say that it really surprised her because she had though that these kids were above that. Apparently she had spent half of the meeting outside crying and just waiting for us to come pick her up.
Rachel didn’t openly defy these kids, that’s just not her style, but she did refuse to be a part of what they were doing. They still fight like, well brothers and sisters, but when the chips are down it’s really nice to see them standing up for what they know is right. Rachel didn’t want to tell anybody, especially Aaron, about what happened. I thought that he needed to hear it. After he was dropped off from his activity at Brockett we talked about it and he gave his little sister a nice big hug.

I chose to post this in order to add my name to Rachel’s. I stand behind my family. You criticize one of us you criticize us all. And we won’t tolerate it.

As far as the chief complaint lobbied again Aaron goes, Evolution is a fact. Get used to it. It used to be a theory but it has long ago graduated to a fact as far as I am concerned. I would even go so far as to say that evolution is more of a fact than gravity. Gravity is still lacking a clear definition of how it works. Like evolution gravity has been tested and tested and tested thousands of times but gravity is still lacking a carrier. We don’t quite know how it works. We have hypothesized the existence of the graviton, but haven’t actually seen one. In contrast we have found DNA and natural selection, the elements that make evolution work. So in a very real sense there is more evidence supporting evolution than gravity. In the past when people have asked me if I “believe” evolution I’ve had to rephrase their question in my answer. Because belief requires faith I don’t think it applies to evolution. Faith is a belief without evidence or even in spite of the evidence. You just aren’t looking if you don’t see evidence of evolution. So I respond something like this, “I accept the overwhelming evidence that life evolved via natural selection.”

"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality." The Dalai Lama
Wise words. It's a shame more people don't apply this same idea to thier own beliefs. I'm glad my kids are.

How Stuff Doesn't Necessarily Work

Years ago I had a friend try to explain to me how a clutch-less manual transmission works. I wasn’t quite getting the picture so I googled it. The first website that was suggested was http://www.howstuffworks.com/. The explanations were sufficiently “dumbed down” that you didn’t need to be a mechanical engineer to understand them, but technical enough that they satisfied my curiosity. The pictures and even the animations worked very well to give supporting explanations and imagery. So I bookmarked the site on my browser and began using it for just about any topic when I needed to break things down to more easy to understand terms. I was even pleasantly surprised that their section on telecommunications has come in handy in explaining to other engineers certain aspects of our job. So I signed up for their email newsletter. A couple times a week I would get updates to the site. It was a neat way to keep up on the latest technology and other topics.
Well I recently sent an email requesting that they unsubscribe me from that newsletter. I don’t know if they hare under new management or what but the focus of the site seems to have drastically changed. I’m kind of a stickler for certain things. Staying on topic is one of them. I don’t like it when politics strays into religion. Nor do I like it when religion strays into politics. I got annoyed when a channel called the History channel started airing programs about UFOs and ghosts. How in it world does either qualify as history? I now have a very similar criticism with howstuffworks.com.
In my mind, before you give any pixel space at all to a topic on a site called How Stuff Works you have the burden of proving that it works. So I really got annoyed when last week they did a feature on the most compelling ghost photos. Huh? Why in the world would this qualify as how stuff works? So I got poking around and also found that they had a whole sections on complimentary and alternative medicine, the paranormal, and even reincarnation and other religious and mythological topics. I decided to read a few to see if they gave more than just the token sceptical treatment on the last few paragraphs. In a few instances they did give some skeptical treatments. One even gave a link to a lecture by Michael Shermer. But I still felt they gave these topics too credulous coverage.
In today’s page they had a cover story about acupuncture and hypnosis treatments for infertility. The benefits to infertility are only based on the fact that hypnosis and acupuncture reduce stress levels. Perhaps I missed it but nowhere in the article did they point out that just about anything else that lowers your stress levels would have that same effect, yoga, meditation, or just playing with a puppy.
I’m not gonna be one of those who disingenuously claims that I’m “never gonna go to this site again.” But now that they have tipped their hand and shown a desire to post anything that’ll get them web hits, regardless of weither it "works" or not, I can’t say I’d endorse it with the same enthusiasm as I used to. And they definitely will not be the final authority on any of my research from now on.