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. 

Fine Art of False Premises

Using false premises allows one to create a seemingly logical argument that is false. An easy way to build on false premises is to base one’s argument on opinions, rather than facts. For example, sometime last week I saw several things to the effect that ACC had caused hurricane Harvey. The first time I heard that, I just laughed, but with several repeats I started to be concerned. Apparently, some people have forgotten that hurricanes existed even back in the Little Ice Age; they start without climate change being needed, but that has escaped the notice of some people. But the creators of Anthropogenic Climate Change have claimed that it will make bigger and better storms. And it is easy to say that some storm is the biggest ever, when hurricanes have only been measured thoroughly for a few decades. Starting from the premise that Anthropogenic Climate Change will make hurricanes bigger and stronger and more common it is easy get to ACC caused Hurricane Harvey, but it doesn't make it true. Just as to the man with only a hammer everything is a nail, to the believers in ACC everything is caused by ACC. But those who know climatology know that the atmosphere is chaotic, so it is extremely difficult to predict what a given input will do.

In politics
But false premises are even more common in some other fields. For example, if it weren't for false premises Trump wouldn't have much to say. His presidency and the campaign leading to it have been based on the premise that as president Trump could act however he wished without regard for the law. Apparently, he started his presidential campaign to get some business in Russia. Trump was sure that he would lose, so he didn't even think about policy or futures cabinet officers, etc. Well, his basic assumption that he would lose was wrong, as results he has not done the Russian deal, whatever that was, he has been called upon to run the government, which he is not capable of doing.

Pseudo-science
Another recent example I saw was in an article about the loss of land in the outer delta of the Mississippi River. The article claimed that it was being caused by sea level rising due to ACC, but those islands have been disappearing since the mouth of the Mississippi River was channelized. The Army Corps of Engineers did the work, and it started even before the Civil War, and the channelization was completed in the 1920's. The result was that silt that had spread around the mouth and added to the islands in that area was sent straight out to sea, where it turns the Gulf brown for about a hundred miles. It used to be that when the river flooded the surrounding areas would pick up a layer of silt, but with the river inside levees the silt can't get out there and raise the land. While New Orleans was built on low land, most of it was above water level. If the writer if that article had bothered to do a little research, then it would have been clear that rising sea level was not an issue to those islands, just as parts of the city of New Orleans haven't become below sea level due to that rise. The land was reclaimed from underwater areas; although the rise of the river's level has led to them being even farther below sea level.

Alternate History
There are more false premises in what the people who are taking down monuments to Confederate heroes are claiming. One falsehood upon which their actions are based is that the Second War for Independence was started to preserve slavery. It started over taxes and tariffs. The South's main export was to be taxed higher, and in addition, there was a clash of cultures. The South was mostly agrarian made up of mostly small farmers, while the North was becoming progressively more industrialized and urban. Workers in the different regions were treated similarly, but in the South some of the workers were property of the plantation owners, while in the North the factory owners did not own the workers, so they could treat them worse. Flogging workers was common, except in transportation on board ships (flogging sailors had been outlawed a few years earlier as a result of the uproar from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana), but it was done, and it was an easy way to lose workers, if the workers could afford to move, which they seldom could do. Factory workers in some places were not even allowed to take breaks for calls of nature, while field hands could move freely and care for themselves, as long as they did the work.

And more
If you found this at all interesting, then read my next post, which is more about using false premises and the advantages to be gained from them.

Atlantis Located

    I don't often think about the Atlantis story, but it came to mind recently as a part of a story that I started writing. I needed something like that as a plot device. Well, to make a longish story brief, I didn't find Atlantis, but I am 99% certain that I have figured out where Tartessos is, and one theory is that Atlantis was based on Tartessos. But it turns out that the location of Tartessos is uncertain, or was until earlier today, when I found it.

    I was looking for a good Bronze Age, or so, setting for a story that I am writing. One of the characters was going to make fake ancient metal things for resale, and Tartessian styles became the models. I was aware that there is a large region in the Iberian Peninsula that has very high grade metal ores, especially copper, tin, silver, and gold; that region is called the Iberian Pyrite Belt, and it is the reason why the Rio Tinto has been polluted pretty much for ever. The Rio Tinto itself, its gravel and bed, also has been mined for thousands of years for tin and other metals in its gravel.

    Sierra Moreno is one place where the Pyrite Belt is above ground, and on the Northwesterly side of it there has been active mining since before 2000 BCE. The mine was only closed in the twentieth century; the copper mass was depleted by about 1890, but taking pyrites for sulfur continued after that. The name of this mine, and the associated town, is Tharsis, and they have been called that for a long time. The name is unusual for Spanish, and it certainly appears to be a shortened version of Tartessos. I just found out that gold is still being mined at Tharsis; a gold mine, Filon Sur, produces 1000 kg per year.

    The Tharsis mine is about thirty miles North of Huelva, the regional capital, and about twenty miles West of the Rio Tinto, where there also still is some mining; although Rio Tinto Mining now does its mining in other places around the world, but it started out by reopening ancient mines on the Rio Tinto.

    While archeologists haven't said pinned down the location of Tartessos; it is well accepted that Huelva was the port of Tartessos. There have been enough archeological finds, including ship wrecks in the river, that there is no doubt, and there are two rivers that empty into the ocean there, the Rio Tinto to the East and the Rio Odiel to the West. Rio Odiel is rather small, but it probably would have been useful for hauling metal from Tartessos to the port. It appears that there has been a town adjacent to the ore body at Tharsis since very early times, but it appears that there is little or nothing remaining from thousands of years ago, because buildings were torn down and replaced when they had deteriorated. There are mentions of some pieces of mining equipment from Roman times having been found in abandoned pits, but it appears that all of the earliest sections of the mine were completely dug away when it was turned into an open pit mine during the Roman era. The same is true of the Rio Tinto mine, which is even bigger, but soil was moved from one section to another when it was expanded.

    Within the last decade, or so, someone theorized that Atlantis ended up under the marshes of the Park National of Donana about thirty miles southeast of Huelva. As I recall it, the theory is that there was a rise in sea level that flooded the city, and Plato wrote that the city subsided beneath the ocean. Someone else guessed that Atlantis was somewhere else in that area. I'm not certain about Atlantis, but I think that it was dreamed up in Plato's mind based on data that could not be readily checked; it was 9000 years before Plato's time. In Plato’s time Tartessos was a place that was almost unreachable, and it was beyond the Pillars of Heracles, so Plato put his fictional city beyond the Pillars of Heracles.

    I would love to go to that area and look around; it's the oldest industrial region on the planet. There was mining and smelting on a substantial scale before 2000 BCE, and it's the closest that I could ever get to Atlantis. There is a lot more to the Iberian Pyrite Belt, so maybe someone will decide to mine even deeper.

    References:
    MBendi's listing for Filon Sur, Gold Mine (1000 kg/year), located in Tharsis, Huelva, Spain
    http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tharsis_%28Alosno%29

    A blog about Tharsis
    http://amigosdetharsis.blogspot.com/

    Google view of Tharsis showing mining pits now filled with water.
    https://www.google.com/maps/place/21...b7cd4b6b788f70

    About archeology at the Rio Tinto mine
    http://barryyeoman.com/2010/09/the-m...built-empires/
    http://www.spainthenandnow.com/spani...efault_37.aspx
    A site on Huelva including history, museums, etc.
    http://www.andalucia.com/cities/huelva/history.htm

    The websites of the archaeological museum seville and Huelva, If your Spanish is good, then they will be useful.
    http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/cult...te/museos/MHU/
    http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/cult...ect=S2_3_1.jsp

Self- Delusion for Your Own Good

Remain calm. All actions are futile.

We all know in our subconscious minds that there is no hope, and that everything is predetermined, so our actions and decisions are predetermined, so we might as well not do anything. Yes, life is completely pointless, except as a tool for DNA to develop more complicated organisms. We are all in the same position as the character on The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut who produced a replacement part for the Tralfamadorians by a series of acts that appeared to be random or accidental. While our innermost thoughts accept the facts, our DNA demands that it be given the opportunity to reproduce, so even the ugliest misbegotten person tries its best to do the best in its life.

To further that end, our subconscious minds create the personality complete with the delusion that each of us is the most wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, sexy, strong, etc. person in the world, or something close to that. Alas, the delusional thinking isn't confined top personal attributes, and many people think that they are less than completely successful in all things only because there are forces acting against them. Thoughts of this sort sometimes lead to conspiracy theories by the subconscious mind creating or borrowing something that could prevent the individual from being happy and successful.

It is possible that people of low intelligence have minds that are superior in creating delusions. As an example, people who are more intelligent usually have a more realistic view of their abilities, while people of lower intelligence frequently can't imagine that anyone is more intelligent than they are. The result is that the people with lower intelligences rush in where angels fear to tread. Alexander Pope recognised that fact three hundred years ago, and the fools still don't have the sense to be cautious, and wiser heads may be overcautious.

But the most important sort of delusion that I know of are those things that people believe that keep them from abandoning all hope, even though they all know that there is no hope. I have mentioned the matter of “free will” before, and all humans know that there is none (at least they know that when they pull aside the curtain of self-delusion), but language, common activities, and even religion are set up as if there were free will; this is true even in areas where the culture is nominally deterministic.

The linked article is quite good. It amplifies what I have written, and even someone who has deluded himself into thinking that he is worthy of continued life finds agreement gratifying. I advise that you read the article for your own good. It is well written, and explains the matter more thoroughly than I was willing to.

Both that author of that article and I think that you are doing the wise thing by thinking that you are the most beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, etc. person in the universe, because you are, and anyone who disagrees is simply deluded. Just keep that in mind, and you probably will be able to continue.

How Our Delusions Keep Us Sane: The Psychology of Our Essential Self-Enhancement Bias
by Maria Popova
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06...ancement-bias/
http://www.rantlifestyle.com/2014/04...blade#slide_84

Obama Created ISIS

That is not an exaggeration. ISIS would not exist, if Obama weren’t an ignorant clown who has no idea how the rest of the world runs, and who badly messed up with regard to Syria. He should have supported Assad against the rebels. Apparently he thinks that everyone is supposed to crawl to his side of the issues, especially if he’s wrong. For someone who is supposed to be well educated he seems to have a very poor grasp of the situation in the Middle East. I wonder if he even knew that Assad, both father and son, have ruled a diverse population in Syria since Hafez became President in 1971 and made Syria the most open society in that region. 

The Assads are members of the tiny Islamic Alawite sect, so it was to their advantage to protect smaller religious and ethnic groups. Syria is the home for many ethnic groups who had been run out of their homes or who had survived since ancient times. By holding them together the Assads developed a fairly good power base, even though the Sunnis were the majority.

We can also blame every country and organization that has backed the rebels in Syria for contributing to the development of ISIS, but Obama did more than the rest to assist ISIS. Failing to support the Syrian government was a bad mistake. 

It wasn’t long ago when the U.S.A. had competent leaders who had the intelligence and education to understand the international situation, but in the last few decades we have had ignorant and sometimes stupid leaders who ran foreign policy based on what they thought they wanted, while they ignored facts. Putting the Palestinian situation aside, the present problems in the Mideast were caused primarily by the actions of G. W. Bush, who destabilized the region with his foolish invasions that didn’t accomplish anything except infuriate most of the people in that region and kill off people who were foolish enough to stay in the U.S. military. The stupidity of Bush was followed by the stubbornness of Obama, who continued the failed and wrong policies of Bush. Both of them, and to a lesser extent, prior U.S. leaders had been opposed to the Syrian government, even though it remains the only secular regime in the region. The Syrian government has been non-religious because the people of Syrian are so divided by religious and ethnic differences. Even with a Sunni majority Syria has continued to be open and permissive to all religions. The present rebellion is a campaign to impose Wahhabi Sunni doctrines on all of the people of Syria, and that is what ISIS exists to do. Even though majority rule may be desirable sometimes, imposing majority held beliefs on everyone is not desirable, and the Assads have prevented any religious group from imposing its standards on the rest of the people of Syria. What the Assads did was good, and we Americans and freedom loving people everywhere should encourage Syria to remain open to all opinions. And we should assist the Syrian government to retain religious freedom. 

It isn't too late. We can still save the people of Syria from a religious dictatorship. The U.S. should support the Syrian army in its attempts to defeat the rebels, all of the rebels. We should send weapons and ammunition to the Syrian army, and we should assist in attempts to cut off supplies from ISIS.

Syria is not an ally, but it is on the same side in this war, and it is a friend of the third sort; the enemy of our enemy is our friend.