Cherry Picking

Yesterday, I noticed a post on my Facebook newsfeed about carbon dioxide in the past and climate change. It quickly became apparent that the data was incomplete, and someone had already posted a note about that. I posted links to two similar articles that had more complete information, and, of course, my comments were heartily criticized, because the original was from NASA, while I posted links by people who do make their livings backing an issue.

Since then I have been thinking about the problems that can be created by cherry-picking data. "Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. [1][2] Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate.[3]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking "Rigorous science looks at all the evidence (rather than cherry picking only favorable evidence), controls for variables as to identify what is actually working, uses blinded observations so as to minimize the effects of bias, and uses internally consistent logic."[7] ibid Cherry Picking is very much like using a false premise, because with cherry picking one can tailor the data to provide that results that one wants.

It is clear that this sort of cherry picking has been used to create "big lies", and it appears that the people who call themselves climate scientists are tailoring their output so that they will keep their jobs, but most people do not have the background and critical judgement to know that. But the scientists who engage in intellectual fraud should remember that it is fraud. They are presenting something that is false in its basis, and other people may act differently as results of their fraud. There may be additional reasons for the cherry picking in this field, but financial gain is adequate.

While I started this as a result of cherry picking in the climate business, but they are not the only ones who use cherry picking to tailor their results to push a particular opinion. Cherry picking is also popular in most political debates: taxes, trade, gun control, labor issues, vaccination, education, and almost everything else. And the use of cherry picking isn't restricted to a particular political persuasion; the people who use it are people who want to twist arms into accepting their beliefs, regardless of actual facts.

In public discourse, everyone is pushing his preferred opinions (myself included), so it is valid to suspect everyone of cherry picking facts or using other logical fallacies to make their opinions look better.

We should question our sources of information and wonder whether they presented all of the facts. Even when a person or entity should be objective, there may be reasons why they do not bother with the whole truth. While we expect that from news media, it is also true of government agencies and educational institutions.

While multiple sources are necessary, one must also look at the information provided and consider whether it even makes sense, and whether it is consistent with the rest of the world. Critical judgement is essential in determining whether data could be faked or accurate.  

A few relevant articles

1

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cushman/courses/engs43/ClimateChange.pdf

http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm

long term CO2 and temperature, this mentions the lack of any consistent relationship between CO2 and temperature

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20130096

https://www.the-scientist.com/tag/false-data

https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-published-research-findings-are-probably-false

Climate Change Is the easiest News to Fake

https://www.axios.com/climate-change-is-the-easiest-news-to-fake-1529698183-579c584b-25da-49fe-a46a-cc77e913ba1c.html

Fake journal articles epidemic

http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/06/26/sciences-fake-journal-epidemic/

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20130096

Equal Before the Law

I am shocked that young people haven’t already stood up and demanded their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Young citizens of the United States of America fairly often take to the streets to demand something for someone, but I don’t recall them demonstrating to demand their own rights. I didn't even think about it when I was a young college student and drinker, but having a minimum age for buying and using alcohol is a clear violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (My bold to emphasize the relevant parts)

If people of fifty years can legally use alcohol, then so can anyone else who was born in or naturalized to the U.S.A. The concept is quite simple.

I do not especially favor eight year olds getting ploughed, but some could. If had gotten thoroughly inebriated, barfing, falling down, etc., when I was eight, I wouldn't have done that again for a very long time, if ever, and I think that the same would be true for most people, so I am not concerned with creating alcoholics. But there are some people who would regain consciousness and say to themselves: let's do that again, and such people will become alcoholics, and they would regardless of what barriers might be put between them and alcohol. Conversely, there are some people who would never touch another drop. If restrictions are created to save a few, then the majority might be harmed, and laws that benefit a few are also forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Unfortunately, the states also violate the Fourteenth by not allowing all citizens to vote. I can understand refusing to register anyone who cannot state his or her name, but most people who are of school age are quite capable of voting. Many twelve year olds are more qualified to vote than are many forty year olds, but politicians are afraid of knowledgeable voters.

One dodge for the politicians would be to require that people pass skill tests before they could vote, drive, or whatever. That dodge might work, but it might not work for long, because there are good arguments against it; arguments that might prevail in court.

Everyone should realize that making all ages equal would not make anyone immune to laws against crimes against persons and against society such as: drunk and disorderly, and age related sex crimes would not need to be changed; it could still be presumed that anyone under fourteen years was incapable of cooperating in sex acts.

If parents will be worried about their children drinking when they are not present, then they should supervise their children's drinking by serving them beer and wine at home and with meals.

Remember that the kind of beer that is commonly available was developed for drinking or breakfast and for women and children. Showing children that malt beverages and wine are beverages, rather than intoxicants might make it less likely that the children will drink in great quantities in other situations.

Some people are prone to abusing alcohol, and these people will abuse it at any age and in any circumstances.

Perhaps the biggest impact of fully implementing the Fourteenth would be to retailers, who would not longer have to check I.D.'s, and that is a significant function in bars, music venues, and sports events. But that wouldn't result in a drop in employment, because at least as many people would be needed to serve the additional clientele, and more bouncers would be needed to keep order with so many more people becoming inebriated.

Fully implementing the Fourteenth would also impact other areas; for example, making all drugs legal and available over the counter would be another area, and I am sure that readers will think of other matters that will be loosened up when we fully implement the Fourteenth.

But I do find it strange that no college rabble rouser has ever raised this issue and organized marches, petition drives and whatnot to equalize treatment before the law. But demonstration are a drag, and besides they may have been too high.

Economic War

Not all wars are examples of diplomacy failing. The economic war that Trump has set up is a personal affair, that he didn’t negotiated with anyone; although at Davos he commented that a weak dollar would help U.S. trade. And it will; it will make U.S. goods less expensive than similar goods from other countries. That should help U.S. manufacturers to some degree. But a weak dollar will make the U.S. less desirable as a place to invest, because it will lower the values of capital assets, especially financial assets.

Investors will quickly notice that the greater financing requirements of the U.S. government will result in bonds losing value and interest rates climbing. People who are highly leveraged, as Trump is, gain when there is inflation, because they can pay back debt with cheaper dollars. The U.S. government has been playing that game for more than a century.

But some lose badly in inflation, and people who work for money are the biggest losers, as we have seen since the 1970's as wage earners have fallen behind others. Generally, wages don't increase as much as inflation, and that is especially true in times of very high inflation, as happened in the late 1970's and early 1980's. If pay is increasing at 5% per annum, and inflation is 18% per annum, wage earners can watch their pays shrink from week to week when they buy food and other goods.

It wasn't long ago when the pay of one industrial worker would support a family, pay for a house, and a car, and allow the family to take vacations and have a merry time. It would take a lot of deflation to restore that situation, but it would be helpful to most of the people in the U.S.A.

It will take time to correct the situation, but switching to a fair income tax that would require everyone to pay an equal percent of their income over a fixed basic exemption (probably $25 or 30,000) and less business expenses. Income from all sources would be treated the same, and everyone would pay at the same rate, but people with higher incomes would pay dramatically more than people with lower incomes. The table below shows a few representative examples.

Gross               exempt      S&L tax     bus. Exp.         net taxable       rate      income tax

$25,000           $25,000           0          $0                    $0                    0.15     0

$50,000           $25,000           0          $0                    $25,000           0.15     $3,750

$100,000         $25,000           0          $0                    $75,000           0.15     $11,250

$1,000,000      $25,000           0          $100,000         $875,000         0.15     $131,250

$10,000,000    $25,000           0          $100,000         $9,875,000      0.15     $1,481,250

These are just some general examples to give an idea of the relative impact on different people in different positions. State and Local taxes (S&L tax) would also have to be deducted, but I did not include them here, because I didn't want to make guesses on those.

What the actual rate would have to be to pay for the government is a question, because the figures available are not as complete as would be best. Persons making large salaries would pay a much higher percent of their gross income in tax, than would people who made under 100,000, because of the relatively high exemption amount. But this system is fundamentally fairer than a tax system that charges a variety of rates and treats money differently depending on its origin.

For most people it would be better, if the dollar were worth more and had a stable value. A relatively painless way to correct for the excesses of the Federal government would by balancing the budget and reduce or eliminate new borrowing. Those two actions would result in the dollar becoming relatively stronger, more valuable. The next step would be to make off-shoring less desirable, and having tariffs of about fifteen percent on everything might do that, but it might not be high enough to bring all of the manufacturing back, but we can be sure that importers would scream at the pain.

These are just a few of the improvements that could be made to the way that U.S. government operates, but I think they show that it would be possible to treat people fairly and equally in economic treatment.