It was another year. Suppose I should reflect on what I did and didn't do, but I'm not going to. The year was like most other years. I wrote a bit, but not enough to feel like I accomplished much. I traveled a bit, but nowhere new and not enough to feel like I accomplished much. I did my usual fitness activities to fend off aging, but made no achievements that make me feel like I accomplished much.
Yet, I did OK. I caused no real harm that I can see. I was as good a friend as I can be to the people I care about. I put a good amount of thought and effort into most everything I did both professionally and personally. And while I feel light on actual accomplishments, the value of any stretch of a human life really needs a few years of retrospection to evaluate.
So, yes, there have been 58 years in my life. 2018 was one of them. There will be more.
[Science] Blinded Science
[TV] Letterkenny, eh?
[Movies] Flick Check: The Death of Stalin
[Tech, Rant] Criminal Mind, Digital Edition
Monday, January 07, 2019
[Science] Blinded Science
Science, or more specifically, the Scientific Method, is probably the major contribution of Western culture to civilization. Many cultures have beautiful art and architecture. Many cultures have profound philosophies, both moral and metaphysical. But it was in the West that the scientific method was founded and flourished. To me that makes it sad that the public face of science has fallen into such ill repute. In short, science is a mess right now.
By now you have probably heard of the "replication crisis". Thousands of previously accepted scientific papers have been shown to be simply wrong. Many were just badly designed experiments that just didn't show what they purported to show. As far as I know, no one has done a study investigating whether these papers happened to come to conclusions that supported the opinions of the scientists involved, but it's a fair bet they did. Some have erroneously become conventional wisdom, and since they are almost entirely in the realm of social science, policies with consequences have been adopted under those mistaken beliefs. All this has given fuel to the critics who claim the soft sciences (social sciences) aren't really sciences at all. Whether they are or not, they are certainly not acting like it.
The hardest of the soft sciences -- psychology and economics -- are doing a bit better. There is fascinating work being done in the realm of evolutionary psychology although not much of it seems very rigorous so far. At least it's promising. Economics is struggling to come to terms with its limitations -- party due to all the work the evo-psych people are doing to undermine the assumptions of broad-based rationality in humans. Econometrics can't come to any agreed upon conclusions. You can find a legitimate quantitative studies that end in opposite results. So anything can be good or bad, depending on what you just read.
As we move along the "scientific hardness" spectrum we come to environmental science next, which is wholly dominated by global warming. (Tangent: Scott Alexander considers some of the environmental hot buttons from the past and what happened to them.) Without commenting on my opinion of it, the way high-profile advocates for global warming behave is shameful. They sell their theories like snake oil salesmen, appealing to fear and ignorance while using public ridicule to silence anyone who might question them, then claim scientific righteousness. I have come to the conclusion that the bulk of the people advocating for global warming don't really want to convince anyone of it. They want to raise their own status via demonstrating their superior intellect and rationality and, frankly, if everybody agreed with them, they couldn't do that.
The next step along the way is the biological sciences where, specifically with respect to genetics and microbiology, there are tremendous successes in research. Practical applications get bogged down in ethical issues and political bureaucracy, but at least the science is clipping along. One bright spot.
The harder the science, the less susceptible it is to these machinations of the human ego. Physics of course, is almost immune to twisting facts for a dopamine hit, but it's not immune to human flaws and limitations. Physics is in the doldrums. We can't reconcile the Quantum Mechanics with Relativity after nearly a century; the large and the small don't seem to agree on the nature of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider provided proof of the Higgs Boson, but nothing else interesting. It has been thus for nearly a century now and there seems to be little hope of a systematic breakthrough (there always remains the possibility of an random epiphany). Even the more recent discoveries (in my lifetime) of dark matter and dark energy are really just plugs to solve an equation. We have no clue of what they truly are.
A century hence, I can't imagine looking at this era as anything except a dry spell in scientific progress. If it continues, perhaps even a Dark Age. Or maybe it's forever. Maybe the low hanging fruit of the universe has been found and we are now in a time where it's centuries between breakthroughs instead of decades. Of course, that pessimism has been expressed before and has been uniformly mistaken. Still it has to happen eventually, and as we increasingly encounter situations where we can predict outcomes and measure results with great accuracy but can't describe what is going on, that does suggest we might be approaching a barrier which the evolutionary development of our brains hasn't prepared us to cross.
That's not to say any of this is holding up progress. Here is one list of interesting scientific discoveries just this year. With our technology we can measure things more accurately than ever. With our models we can predict the behavior of the world far better than ever, perhaps better than we would ever need to. There is enough science around to keep technological development going indefinitely so there is no need to be pessimistic about the quality of life. Still, it's very unsatisfying if the best we can do is treat existence as a black box.
Perhaps we should focus on how to evolve faster. That may solve the replication problem, too.
By now you have probably heard of the "replication crisis". Thousands of previously accepted scientific papers have been shown to be simply wrong. Many were just badly designed experiments that just didn't show what they purported to show. As far as I know, no one has done a study investigating whether these papers happened to come to conclusions that supported the opinions of the scientists involved, but it's a fair bet they did. Some have erroneously become conventional wisdom, and since they are almost entirely in the realm of social science, policies with consequences have been adopted under those mistaken beliefs. All this has given fuel to the critics who claim the soft sciences (social sciences) aren't really sciences at all. Whether they are or not, they are certainly not acting like it.
The hardest of the soft sciences -- psychology and economics -- are doing a bit better. There is fascinating work being done in the realm of evolutionary psychology although not much of it seems very rigorous so far. At least it's promising. Economics is struggling to come to terms with its limitations -- party due to all the work the evo-psych people are doing to undermine the assumptions of broad-based rationality in humans. Econometrics can't come to any agreed upon conclusions. You can find a legitimate quantitative studies that end in opposite results. So anything can be good or bad, depending on what you just read.
As we move along the "scientific hardness" spectrum we come to environmental science next, which is wholly dominated by global warming. (Tangent: Scott Alexander considers some of the environmental hot buttons from the past and what happened to them.) Without commenting on my opinion of it, the way high-profile advocates for global warming behave is shameful. They sell their theories like snake oil salesmen, appealing to fear and ignorance while using public ridicule to silence anyone who might question them, then claim scientific righteousness. I have come to the conclusion that the bulk of the people advocating for global warming don't really want to convince anyone of it. They want to raise their own status via demonstrating their superior intellect and rationality and, frankly, if everybody agreed with them, they couldn't do that.
The next step along the way is the biological sciences where, specifically with respect to genetics and microbiology, there are tremendous successes in research. Practical applications get bogged down in ethical issues and political bureaucracy, but at least the science is clipping along. One bright spot.
The harder the science, the less susceptible it is to these machinations of the human ego. Physics of course, is almost immune to twisting facts for a dopamine hit, but it's not immune to human flaws and limitations. Physics is in the doldrums. We can't reconcile the Quantum Mechanics with Relativity after nearly a century; the large and the small don't seem to agree on the nature of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider provided proof of the Higgs Boson, but nothing else interesting. It has been thus for nearly a century now and there seems to be little hope of a systematic breakthrough (there always remains the possibility of an random epiphany). Even the more recent discoveries (in my lifetime) of dark matter and dark energy are really just plugs to solve an equation. We have no clue of what they truly are.
A century hence, I can't imagine looking at this era as anything except a dry spell in scientific progress. If it continues, perhaps even a Dark Age. Or maybe it's forever. Maybe the low hanging fruit of the universe has been found and we are now in a time where it's centuries between breakthroughs instead of decades. Of course, that pessimism has been expressed before and has been uniformly mistaken. Still it has to happen eventually, and as we increasingly encounter situations where we can predict outcomes and measure results with great accuracy but can't describe what is going on, that does suggest we might be approaching a barrier which the evolutionary development of our brains hasn't prepared us to cross.
That's not to say any of this is holding up progress. Here is one list of interesting scientific discoveries just this year. With our technology we can measure things more accurately than ever. With our models we can predict the behavior of the world far better than ever, perhaps better than we would ever need to. There is enough science around to keep technological development going indefinitely so there is no need to be pessimistic about the quality of life. Still, it's very unsatisfying if the best we can do is treat existence as a black box.
Perhaps we should focus on how to evolve faster. That may solve the replication problem, too.
[TV] Letterkenny, eh?
I'll file this one under shows that I'm ashamed I laugh at. The adventures of assorted eccentrics in a rural community in Ontario, or as the opening cue card states: "There are 5,000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems." It is coarse, crude, and moves at a breakneck pace. Filled with quotables, as you can tell from a Letterkenny memes search or better yet, hit YouTube for some highlights.
It is also quintessentially Canadian. So much so that you can't get the bulk of the series here down south. They seem to randomly release a 6 episode season along with some holiday specials. I believe they are on season 5 but the best we have, legally, in the U.S. is season 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu.
This pisses me off to no end because the highlights to the later seasons on YouTube have split my sides. It's very hard for me to not break my long standing policy of not pirating stuff. Come on Hulu. Pitter patter.
It is also quintessentially Canadian. So much so that you can't get the bulk of the series here down south. They seem to randomly release a 6 episode season along with some holiday specials. I believe they are on season 5 but the best we have, legally, in the U.S. is season 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu.
This pisses me off to no end because the highlights to the later seasons on YouTube have split my sides. It's very hard for me to not break my long standing policy of not pirating stuff. Come on Hulu. Pitter patter.
[Movies] Flick Check: The Death of Stalin
A terrific movie. It is the blackest of comedies -- set in the midst of one of the two most horrific events in history, Stalin's purges. (The other would be the Cultural Revolution of Mao). The story revolves around a highly fictionalized account of Stalin's death and the maneuverings among the politburo that eventually led to Khrushchev's taking power.
At this point I have lost anyone under 40, possibly anyone under 50. That's OK, I understand it's ancient history to them. But these were household names way back when -- the leaders of the Soviet Union and some of the most monstrous people that ever lived (Stalin and Beria could put Hitler to shame).
Without taxing my memory too greatly, I think I can safely says this movie has the most skilfully developed "tone" I have ever seen. I would venture that "tone" may be the most difficult aspects of movie making, simply because so many movies fail in that department. Contrasting comedy/tragedy, light/dark, or love/hate and such gives a movie a sense of reality since that's how the world operates. Problems of tone occur when an incident sticks out and makes you go "huh?" When a character does something completely out of character or events take a turn that doesn't really flow from the previous events it can either bring an entirely new dimension to the movie, or it can stick out like a sore thumb. I don't know enough about filmmaking to know what will make or break "tone" -- I suspect acting skill, or at least casting skill, has a lot to do with it -- but I know if it fails or succeeds when I see it.
The Death of Stalin mixes horrific tragedy and broad farce so perfectly that for nearly the full running time, those two dramatic tenses are running simultaneously. It's really astonishing. And it fits because that is exactly what life was like for the players in the politburo. They had to behave like cartoon dictators while simultaneously fearing for their lives at every move. Imagine having to manufacture farcical rationale to defend comically ludicrous policies that both killed people by the thousands and potentially positioned you for mortal payback. This is the feeling the movie captures.
There is no shortage of stunning acting on display. Steve Buscemi dips into the well that served him in playing the lead on Boardwalk Empire so well. Simon Beale and Andrea Riseborough also stand out, but the entire cast nails it.
In the very end, the farce perfectly drains away and we are left with the horror. Absolutely one of the best movies I've seen in a while and better than pretty much every nominee for every best of 2018 award.
At this point I have lost anyone under 40, possibly anyone under 50. That's OK, I understand it's ancient history to them. But these were household names way back when -- the leaders of the Soviet Union and some of the most monstrous people that ever lived (Stalin and Beria could put Hitler to shame).
Without taxing my memory too greatly, I think I can safely says this movie has the most skilfully developed "tone" I have ever seen. I would venture that "tone" may be the most difficult aspects of movie making, simply because so many movies fail in that department. Contrasting comedy/tragedy, light/dark, or love/hate and such gives a movie a sense of reality since that's how the world operates. Problems of tone occur when an incident sticks out and makes you go "huh?" When a character does something completely out of character or events take a turn that doesn't really flow from the previous events it can either bring an entirely new dimension to the movie, or it can stick out like a sore thumb. I don't know enough about filmmaking to know what will make or break "tone" -- I suspect acting skill, or at least casting skill, has a lot to do with it -- but I know if it fails or succeeds when I see it.
The Death of Stalin mixes horrific tragedy and broad farce so perfectly that for nearly the full running time, those two dramatic tenses are running simultaneously. It's really astonishing. And it fits because that is exactly what life was like for the players in the politburo. They had to behave like cartoon dictators while simultaneously fearing for their lives at every move. Imagine having to manufacture farcical rationale to defend comically ludicrous policies that both killed people by the thousands and potentially positioned you for mortal payback. This is the feeling the movie captures.
There is no shortage of stunning acting on display. Steve Buscemi dips into the well that served him in playing the lead on Boardwalk Empire so well. Simon Beale and Andrea Riseborough also stand out, but the entire cast nails it.
In the very end, the farce perfectly drains away and we are left with the horror. Absolutely one of the best movies I've seen in a while and better than pretty much every nominee for every best of 2018 award.
[Tech, Rant] Criminal Mind, Digital Edition
Trouble always comes around. When money is involved folks will always find a way to work the system criminally. To wit:
This story from Wired follows the adventure of someone who took it upon himself to track and expose a scammer on the Dark Web, who was offering an assassination service. People who wanted someone dead (or just beaten up) would contact this guy, send him some bitcoin, and he'd promise to arrange a hit man to do your dirty work. Of course, it's all a scam. He pockets the bitcoins, the strings you along as far as he can, then he just stops responding. Face it, you have no recourse -- "Your Honor, this man promised to kill someone for me and failed to fulfill his contract..."
What follows is a cat and mouse game between the scammer and would-be exposer. The most interesting aspect is how, in the end, it's really unclear whether there is a well defined good-guy and bad-guy. We start out rooting for the crusader trying to shut down the scammer, but in time we begin to wonder... The scammer is taking money, time, and energy away from people who are actively trying to be murderers. He is certainly motivated to enrich himself, but are the consequences of that really all that bad?
An observation I'd make is that if this scammer devoted the same level of effort and creativity to non-criminal enterprise, he might be even richer.
Closer to home is this story about Amazon review shenanigans. Not people posting fake reviews to bolster their product, but people posting obviously fake reviews to competitors products to trick Amazon into shutting them down. This can work because Amazon reacts savagely to any reviews that are deemed to be fake. Once you have been suspended for having fake reviews, regaining access to Amazon is an infuriating and expensive proposition. Retailers are so dependent on Amazon that being suspended can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. The process to petition for reinstatement is so complex and shrouded in bureaucracy that there is a cottage industry of consultants/lawyers to get the falsely accused reinstated.
This is unsurprising to me. If you have ever tried to talk to a human being at Amazon, you can imagine the frustration involved. The truth is, if a robot can't handle it, it may not be possible for Amazon to do. In fact, one of the consultant's strategies for getting someone reinstated is simply having them confess and apologize. That is something the system can handle. What the system can't handle is determining that it has made a mistake. Robots aren't so good at self-critique.
So picture this: you are shoestring retailer of widgets. Some Chinese widget firm suddenly starts posting some obviously fake 5-star reviews to your product. You, being a good and honest person, report it to Amazon to get the reviews removed. Amazon responds by suspending your product for having fake reviews. You begin bleeding money. You can't get Amazon's attention to explain what's going on so you contact a consultant. The consultant tells you to admit guilt, even though you are not guilty because it's the quickest, and possibly only, way to get back in business. I can think of few things that would be more demoralizing than that. I have to imagine that, at some point, someone is going to kick off a class action suit against Amazon over this kind of thing.
It's tempting to say this is the result of Amazon's monopoly in the retailer space. That's only partially true. If you can post fake reviews to one site, you can post to many. It probably wouldn't stop it from happening. But with more viable online retailers than Amazon, maybe one of them would at least have a reasonable way to protest mistreatment.
The really interesting concept here is that, because of their scope, Amazon has set up what amounts to a private legal system, and is facing all the complexities and inefficiencies and injustices that the public legal system is facing. Maybe Amazon is planning on making a legal system their next product. Perfect it in house then offer it for purchase. That is how they operate, after all. (I was kidding when I wrote that, but the more I think about it...) In reality this is the sort of behavior that attracts the attention of the government and Jeff Bezos might find himself up in front of a congressional panel of indignant demagogues.
But once again, I am struck by how much effort and creativity the bad guys devote to scams and fraud, when the same sort of energy would pay off more were they to take up legitimate entrepreneurship. Why? Do they think it's easier? Is it the thrill of escaping punishment? Do they just miss-estimate the risk?
I guess crooks just gotta be crooked.
P.S. For $2.99 you can get a Kindle Book telling you how to reach Amazon Customer Service. Satire is dead.
This story from Wired follows the adventure of someone who took it upon himself to track and expose a scammer on the Dark Web, who was offering an assassination service. People who wanted someone dead (or just beaten up) would contact this guy, send him some bitcoin, and he'd promise to arrange a hit man to do your dirty work. Of course, it's all a scam. He pockets the bitcoins, the strings you along as far as he can, then he just stops responding. Face it, you have no recourse -- "Your Honor, this man promised to kill someone for me and failed to fulfill his contract..."
What follows is a cat and mouse game between the scammer and would-be exposer. The most interesting aspect is how, in the end, it's really unclear whether there is a well defined good-guy and bad-guy. We start out rooting for the crusader trying to shut down the scammer, but in time we begin to wonder... The scammer is taking money, time, and energy away from people who are actively trying to be murderers. He is certainly motivated to enrich himself, but are the consequences of that really all that bad?
An observation I'd make is that if this scammer devoted the same level of effort and creativity to non-criminal enterprise, he might be even richer.
Closer to home is this story about Amazon review shenanigans. Not people posting fake reviews to bolster their product, but people posting obviously fake reviews to competitors products to trick Amazon into shutting them down. This can work because Amazon reacts savagely to any reviews that are deemed to be fake. Once you have been suspended for having fake reviews, regaining access to Amazon is an infuriating and expensive proposition. Retailers are so dependent on Amazon that being suspended can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. The process to petition for reinstatement is so complex and shrouded in bureaucracy that there is a cottage industry of consultants/lawyers to get the falsely accused reinstated.
This is unsurprising to me. If you have ever tried to talk to a human being at Amazon, you can imagine the frustration involved. The truth is, if a robot can't handle it, it may not be possible for Amazon to do. In fact, one of the consultant's strategies for getting someone reinstated is simply having them confess and apologize. That is something the system can handle. What the system can't handle is determining that it has made a mistake. Robots aren't so good at self-critique.
So picture this: you are shoestring retailer of widgets. Some Chinese widget firm suddenly starts posting some obviously fake 5-star reviews to your product. You, being a good and honest person, report it to Amazon to get the reviews removed. Amazon responds by suspending your product for having fake reviews. You begin bleeding money. You can't get Amazon's attention to explain what's going on so you contact a consultant. The consultant tells you to admit guilt, even though you are not guilty because it's the quickest, and possibly only, way to get back in business. I can think of few things that would be more demoralizing than that. I have to imagine that, at some point, someone is going to kick off a class action suit against Amazon over this kind of thing.
It's tempting to say this is the result of Amazon's monopoly in the retailer space. That's only partially true. If you can post fake reviews to one site, you can post to many. It probably wouldn't stop it from happening. But with more viable online retailers than Amazon, maybe one of them would at least have a reasonable way to protest mistreatment.
The really interesting concept here is that, because of their scope, Amazon has set up what amounts to a private legal system, and is facing all the complexities and inefficiencies and injustices that the public legal system is facing. Maybe Amazon is planning on making a legal system their next product. Perfect it in house then offer it for purchase. That is how they operate, after all. (I was kidding when I wrote that, but the more I think about it...) In reality this is the sort of behavior that attracts the attention of the government and Jeff Bezos might find himself up in front of a congressional panel of indignant demagogues.
But once again, I am struck by how much effort and creativity the bad guys devote to scams and fraud, when the same sort of energy would pay off more were they to take up legitimate entrepreneurship. Why? Do they think it's easier? Is it the thrill of escaping punishment? Do they just miss-estimate the risk?
I guess crooks just gotta be crooked.
P.S. For $2.99 you can get a Kindle Book telling you how to reach Amazon Customer Service. Satire is dead.
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