My HP 110 Mini netbook’s battery pack suddenly failed (0% available, charging… forever). Finding an official HP brand replacement battery turned out to be nearly impossible, not to mention it would cost at least as much as the crappy netbook was worth. So, I got a replacement from . . . → Read More: Gmail is the new AOL]]>

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My HP 110 Mini netbook’s battery pack suddenly failed (0% available, charging… forever). Finding an official HP brand replacement battery turned out to be nearly impossible, not to mention it would cost at least as much as the crappy netbook was worth. So, I got a replacement from one of the second string, ebay store, non-OEM battery manufacturers. Even though, yes, I know it’s got like a 90% chance of exploding or slagging my desk. What else could I do apart from just pitching the whole netbook?

But that’s not what I want to rant about. This manufacturer, unlike most of the other Chinese companies on eBay, was shipping from the USA. Great news! Less chance of import hassles. Then, when I received the package, it was put together in a nice box, with little sealing stickers and foam, anti-static bag, the whole 9 yards. It even came with a warranty card!

OK looks pretty 'legit'

Hmm, wait a minute...

Well, it says “Pay Attention”, so of course I did Apart from the obviously poor translation-ese, here’s a big red flag: the email address ending @gmail.com. I do not GET THIS. Why does a person (or people) go through all the effort to put together such a professional looking package and then FAIL so obviously on what must be the simplest, most inexpensive thing they could have done: use a real email address!

So just for grins I figured I’d get a look at their US corporate headquarters:

Obviously, a going concern

Back “in the day” the email domain you could count on to mean “not a serious company” was reliably going to be AOL. So I guess for clueless entrepreneurs, gmail has become the new AOL.

Note: I addressed the following essay to the general population of the No Agenda Forums, a community that I cherish despite frequent frustration.  It is peopled by many conspiracy theorists and champions of various “alternative” things, such as alternative explanations, alternative medicine, etc.  In short, people I cannot really reach on . . . → Read More: You make and break your own religion]]>

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/somerslea/321513270

Note: I addressed the following essay to the general population of the No Agenda Forums, a community that I cherish despite frequent frustration.  It is peopled by many conspiracy theorists and champions of various “alternative” things, such as alternative explanations, alternative medicine, etc.  In short, people I cannot really reach on a level of reason.  What I say may not do any good, but if even one in a thousand of those readers can see the light, then I am proud to have played a small part in the emergence of a rational mind.

It’s funny to me that no one here agrees on what “the truth” is, even in broad strokes.  But, (most) everyone agrees that authorities or experts must be lying to them about that truth…er, whatever it might be.  And if an authority occasionally says something you accept as truthful, then it must be to distract from something more secret and sinister.  The circular reasoning and contradiction are so palpable I can scarcely believe you don’t trip over them.

Ponder for a minute what this says about your thought process and your own bias.  You begin with an infallible conclusion, only trusting whatever evidence you see that supports it.  Evidence to the contrary is dismissed as untrustworthy by the very fact that it contradicts what you believe.  You decide wholly based on your own internal compass, even embracing the idea of cognitive bias as a sort of meta-physical truth detector.

This is, essentially, a definition of religious devotion to an unassailable faith.  You act as though you have arrived at your belief system through a a rational process, but even a novice critical thinker such as myself can trivially destroy your claims.

When you choose not to be cognizant and critical of your own bias, you disown reason itself, and make it impossible to discern the plausibility, likelihood, or truth about anything (except perhaps stumbling upon it as a complete accident).

When you cry “wake up”, what do you mean by it?  You do not accept what you are told, but instead you accept what you have invented.  To be “awake” as you are, is to be trapped in a fever dream of conspiracy and unreason, with no light to guide you; only the ever-deepening rabbit hole of your own delusion.

There is a much higher level of awareness than the one you defend and so cherish.  You already possess the tools to attain it: intelligence and doubt.  Turn these faculties upon yourself.  Doubt not only “authority”; learn the ways your own mind has evolved to be a poor reasoning machine.  Learn what logical fallacies and cognitive bias are.

The grand collective endeavor of science and reason tell us that the most simple, parsimonious, and mundane explanations are usually (but not always) correct.  This is not a dogma, but rather a good default position from which to begin.  The more complicated a claim is, the more skeptical you should be; the more work the claimant needs to do in order to show it’s valid.  As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.  People untrained in science may not find it obvious why this should be the case–  If you have not had the benefit of truly understanding the methods of science, please find the time to read The Demon-Haunted World.

You can escape the wall of religion in which you have trapped your own mind.  From the inside, it’s an insidious, invisible wall that only tells you you’re right.  From the outside it’s an unassailable fortress of irrationality.  Learn how to be wrong.  Revel in your mistakes as you discover them.  Each time you find an error, you win the opportunity to correct it.

I subject myself to the same standard that I ask of you.  Also, the same criticisms.  We are all imperfect in our reason, in some ways irreparably so.  But we can be clever enough to design systems that give reliable results in spite of our bias (science), and modest enough to understand and work around our own limitations (awareness of fallacy and bias).  And as we continue down the road of reason, we find flaws in these systems and refine them as well.  Nothing is sacred, everything is subject to scrutiny.

I can argue against unsupported claims, and try to provide directions for understanding why they are likely wrong.  But there’s no way I know of to plant the seed of desire to reason.  If, like me, you managed to reach adulthood without learning these things, then I hope you too will choose to born again into reason, science, and skepticism.

I received an email forward today from an extended family member, and it upset me more than if it had been spam or malware.  It was a mal-meme:

This is not sent for discussion.  If you agree, forward it.  If you don’t, delete it. I don’t want to know one way . . . → Read More: Prejudice isn’t a discussion]]>

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cowfish/269715/

I received an email forward today from an extended family member, and it upset me more than if it had been spam or malware.  It was a mal-meme:

This is not sent for discussion.  If you agree, forward it.  If you don’t, delete it. I don’t want to know one way or the other.  By me forwarding it, you know how I feel.

-

I’ll bet this was a surprise to NBC.
NBC POLL
Do you believe that the word God should stay in American culture?
NBC this morning had a poll on this question. They had the highest Number of responses that they have ever had for one of their polls, and the Percentage was the same as this:
86% to keep the words, IN God We Trust and God in the Pledge of Allegiance
14% against

That is a pretty ‘commanding’ public response.

-

I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn’t …..
Now it is your turn.  It is said that 86% of Americans believe the word God should stay.
Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having ‘In God We Trust’ on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Why is the world catering to this 14%?
AMEN!
If you agree, pass this on , if not, simply delete.
In God We Trust

A quick check of the net reveals that this isn’t even a real thing.. it’s a fabricated email forward meme from 2004.  If there had been such a poll recently, I expect the results would have been far more one-sided.  I can’t say which side would have won, though: Internet polls on any religion-vs-secular topic are usually won by whichever side has more poll-crashing trolls online at the time.  In a similar fashion, any poll taking suggestions for naming an object will invariably result in “Steven Colbert” winning by an overwhelming majority.  The best uncrashed and non-fabricated poll I read about recently had “people of no faith” as the fastest growing segment of the population.  So why am I so upset by this?  After all, my family sends dumb forwards all the time.

I bristled most at the condescending tone of the author, not even interested in hearing their viewpoint challenged; not even granting that opposing points might be worth a discussion.  It’s so unintentionally analogous to proselytizing– [I don't want to discuss this, just listen to me tell you what is right.  Go forth and convert others, or else GTFO].  The fact that people read this and think “Wow, I need to send this to everyone I know” bothers me.

Every time someone reads this, thinks it’s real, and forwards it, doesn’t that mean they, too are having “a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess” about the establishment clause?  What attempts do you suppose people make to understand?  How hard would it be for someone in the (fake) 86% to find someone in the (fake) 14% and see whether they have any valid points?  When you are part of the majority, the minority’s plight may not be immediately apparent, but that makes it no less real or important.  The author proposes a simple tyranny of the majority to resolve the issue with a minimum of fuss, and sees absolutely nothing abhorrent in that.

Let’s just have the government support all majorities and back-hand dissenters:

Republicans and Democrats are the only serious choices.

-

Straight people are the backbone of America.

-

This establishment doesn’t serve your kind.

-

Firearms are not for individuals, most households trust the police for protection.

I can imagine a reader who wouldn’t take offense at any of these toy examples, but my point is to illustrate that everyone identifies as part of some minority or other.  Where possible we ought to make an effort not to codify prejudice into the laws of the land.

Wishful thinking and unconstitutional legislation notwithstanding, neither our nation nor the universe itself operates according to the god in which you trust.

Like most sports, I’m not much good at debate.  I say it’s a sport because it’s a competition with a winner and loser where the participants’ skills have the largest bearing on the outcome.

I think that most people casually lump debate and argument into the same mental bin; if . . . → Read More: Argument > Debate]]>

Image credit: flickr.com/photos/markfbennett/2223565383

Debating

Like most sports, I’m not much good at debate.  I say it’s a sport because it’s a competition with a winner and loser where the participants’ skills have the largest bearing on the outcome.

I think that most people casually lump debate and argument into the same mental bin; if not as exact synonyms, then as different degrees of the same thing.  But they are really quite different!  A debate has almost nothing to do with logic or the correctness of stated facts, but these things are crucial to the outcome of an argument.

Image credit: flickr.com/photos/donsolo/2195033648

Adversarial collaboration

In an argument, the two sides start with differing opinions or understandings about a topic.  Well-conducted arguments can get very pedantic and take a long time to conclude.  Sometimes the facts needed to decide an argument aren’t available.  Although they can get heated with emotion, at the end of a good argument both sides should depart with the same understanding, reached by applying logic to the available facts.

Arguments are a great way to battle cognitive bias!  It’s a system of informal collaboration: each participant tries to find the logical or factual flaws that the opposing side is laboring under, and point them out.  Unlike a debate, this process has nothing to do with ego, wit, or the invocation of clever but misleading fallacies.  The goal of an argument is not to win, but rather to be (or become) correct.  This is a subtle but extremely important distinction.

As a skeptic, I love to argue.  I love to be right and convince someone else of it, and I also love to be proven wrong and thereby learn.

Image credit: flickr.com/photos/theshadowknows/3086771128

It’s a trap! (sometimes)

When you’re in an argument, you have to be vigilant for signs of “impedance mismatch”, i.e. an argument conducted in bad faith–  If only one side is interested in arguing but the other side moves into debating then the the progress and outcome of the discussion will be of undefined significance.  Just as if one person is figure skating and the opposing side suddenly switches to ice hockey.. nothing meaningful can be said about the results except it won’t end well.

If the debating party is clever, they can very easily prevail over the arguing party.  Attractive, unsupported claims can be made quickly so the debater stays on the offensive.  They can weave straw men and ask questions that don’t have snappy answers.  If the opponent is able to keep up, the debater can arbitrarily move the goalposts.  The arguer quickly gets mired down, spending time to refute or reason through even a small portion of the claims.

Citing that your opponent is not being truthful and flagging their fallacies doesn’t win debates.  This is why those with logically inconsistent (or unsupportable) viewpoints love to debate, especially against scientists and critical thinkers.  It gives them the chance to win without being right!  By selecting an opponent who is beholden to logic and really wants to change the other’s mind, the debater is practically assured victory.  Even if the quarry detects the trap and switches to debate tactics, the attacker can force a stalemate by pointing out the logician’s hypocrisy for using fallacies!

Image credit: flickr.com/photos/oberazzi/318947345

What to do

If you are a critical thinker and you love to debate, then dive in, be ruthless, and take no prisoners!  Don’t go to the dark side, though; be ever vigilant in checking your cognitive bias.  Winning debates doesn’t make your position correct.

If you are like me, argumentative but more interested in truth than victory, then surround yourself with like-minded people.  If you find your positions challenged aggressively it can be an ego hit to defuse a debate instead of meeting it head on.  But it’s nothing like getting sucked into a trap when you’re unprepared; losing the debate despite being right.

As Orac states:

Science as it is practiced today relies on a fair measure of trust. Part of the reason is that the culture of science values openness, hypothesis testing, and vigorous debate. The general assumption is that most scientists are honest and, although we all generally try to present our . . . → Read More: Dishonesty in science: we still win]]>

Image credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/go_kusano/2679175875

As Orac states:

Science as it is practiced today relies on a fair measure of trust. Part of the reason is that the culture of science values openness, hypothesis testing, and vigorous debate. The general assumption is that most scientists are honest and, although we all generally try to present our data in the most favorable light possible, we do not blatantly lie about it or make it up.

Science is a massively collaborative endeavor, with each researcher relying on the existing mesh of literature as a starting point for their own contributions.  When everyone is being honest, a good methodology and peer review will prevent most obvious problems of bias and rigor.  In other words, the facts are pretty well understood, and everyone has a pretty good idea about how robust various theories are.

This is important, because it means when research is invalidated (or some theory is shown to be inferior to a new one), it tends to be an incremental change, not a destructive one.  Anything we learn will update, clarify, and add to our existing understanding.  Any new theories we employ will work at least as well as the old ones they unseat.  Relativity is more correct than Newton’s laws, but that doesn’t mean apples must be re-checked to verify that they do in fact fall toward the earth instead of levitating or falling toward the moon.

When a researcher repeatedly confabulates data in a case of massive fraud, it knocks everyone for a loop.

It’s hard to overstate how serious this revelation of scientific fraud is for the field of anesthesiology and medicine. Dr. Reuben was considered a pioneer in his field, and his work is not only widely cited, but serves as the basis for an amount of anesthesia practice that few academic anesthesiologists can lay claim to.

Ripping out all his results will weaken everything that has been based upon them, even indirectly.  This is a rare case where we actually know less now than we (think we) did before, so everyone’s pissed off about it.

There is much wailing about how this fraud will be used as an illustration of the evil conspiracy of science and business.

Every crank alt-med site and blog on the Internet is going to be harping on this incident as The Proof That Conventional Medicine Is Hopelessly Corrupt and their favorite woo is being kept down by The Big Bad Pharma Man.

I agree that is likely to happen, but that argument is an obvious faulty generalization.  All you have to do to break the spell is to point out a more important result:  When the scientific community discovers an error (be it an innocent mistake or a calculated fraud) we freely choose to reexamine and, if necessary, excise all the affected parts of the corpus.  Lies and mistakes happen, but when we find them we fix it, even if it’s unexpected, embarrassing, or painful.

This is why, even when individuals can epically FAIL, science will still WIN.

Hybrid fusion-fission energy generation a possibility via Futurismic.

Isn’t it interesting how this story swept through the internet?  Everyone, of course, wants to get rid of nuclear waste right?  Awful, evil stuff.  Bury it in the earth if you have to.  Making it disappear in a magic theoretical reactor is even . . . → Read More: The emotions of energy]]>

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/takver/1963128315

Hybrid fusion-fission energy generation a possibility via Futurismic.

Isn’t it interesting how this story swept through the internet?  Everyone, of course, wants to get rid of nuclear waste right?  Awful, evil stuff.  Bury it in the earth if you have to.  Making it disappear in a magic theoretical reactor is even better, what great news!  But what struck me is how no one seems to realize that this is by no means the first idea for a reactor to deal with nuclear “waste”, and that the stuff isn’t really waste at all once you understand a little about it.

Read on, and discover a whole nuclear world that you’ve probably never even heard of.

I’m not an expert, but it should be mentioned that this “hybrid’ is not the only idea for handling spent LWR fuel, not by a long shot.  There are several (fission) reactor designs that can actually gobble up all our “spent” fuel and burn up the long-lived radioactive compounds to produce energy.  Vastly more energy than the once-through LWR reactors managed to extract from it in the first place.  An order of magnitude more– energy that’s just sitting around in the spent fuel being all nasty and lethally dangerous now, and we could be using it to power our elecrtic cars and toothbrushes for the forseeable future.

I’m not going to try to make the case here, I’m not a nuclear physicist and my research into this has been limited so far.  Just enough to realize there’s a lot more here than most people know about.  The sites Energy from Thorium and Nuclear Green are good places to start for anyone who’s interested to learn more.  These sites are maintained by strong advocates and enthusiasts, but I would ask you to at least familiarize yourself with what they have to say before writing them off as cranks.  And they’re not good candidates for “industry shills” because frankly the current nuclear power industry is nowhere near this far along, and shame on us for that.

While we’re swinging for the fences with fusion research (that’s cool but seems to stay 2 decades away forever), there’s a lot of great fission approaches that are comparatively easy, but research and development are languishing basically because public sentiment associates nuclear energy with bombs and accidents.  The bitter irony* here is that the new reactors, by design, can be safe in all the ways that people associate with nuclear danger, and green in all the ways people associate with nuclear .. um, evilness?  I’m not talking about throwing more security at it, or digging a deeper hole for the nasty byproducts.  I seriously mean safe and good.  I know, it knocked me over too when I first started hearing about it.

* I thought about it, and yes I think that’s an appropriate use of the word ‘irony’

Skeptical threat level orange: Energy production is one of the hardest topics on which to find rational discourse and unbiased information.  Personally I don’t have a horse in this race, I’m not a nuke head or an anti-nuke.  I’d love it if fusion was practical now.  It would be great if solar and wind could produce power on the scale we need**.  Maybe the next breakthrough will do it, of course let’s keep up the fierce R&D.  And that’s all I ask for nuclear.  Get your head out of the 1960′s and give it a fair shot.

** Heck it’s not even a scale problem yet, the EROEI is still so bad on wind and solar that they’re the butt of jokes, among those who bother to do the calculations.  Remember ethanol from corn?  Remember when everyone thought it was going to be awesome… before someone did the math?

But that’s not why these things are a threat to actual real scientific . . . → Read More: Dangerous faith-based mechanics]]> There are many confirmation biases and magical thinking tendencies that fuel testimonial and anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of woo, from acupuncture and chiropractic all the way up to the giant woo umbrella of “complementary and alternative” medicine (CAM) or “integrative” medicine.

But that’s not why these things are a threat to actual real scientific medicine (ARSM?).  The real danger is when CAM seems to get real results.

I don’t possess a great deal of knowledge about cars.  If I took my car to a faith healer, all the prayer in the world wouldn’t change the oil.  (I guess if I took it to a detox loon, their BS might actually apply in this case).  Clearly a complex system like a car is going to need some real work done eventually, or I’m going to notice it doesn’t work right any more.

But what if that car healer chose to learn and incorporate some actual, real mechanical repair and maintenance techniques into their practice?  They might not be ASE certified, sure, but they’d probably be able to do a passable job making my car work.  They can get real, even measurable results.

As an unsophisticated customer of this faith-based mechanic, I might drive away with a great testimonial about how my car’s chi was unblocked and its aura re-alignment took care of that weird noise in the passenger door.  At a minimum, each visit builds trust in my faith-canic, and their authoritative expertise in all things auto.

What’s the harm if he puts a homeopathic sealant on the tires and tells me they’re now good for another 20 thousand miles?  I have a horrible blow-out on the highway, but I’m OK; modern car safety features are extremely well-designed (by science)

This is obviously an absurd example, but I’m trying to illustrate the problem of false attribution in fields based on woo.

Massage, range of motion exercises, strength-building exercises, and mobilization of joints are all legitimate science-based techniques used by physical therapists and physicians with specialties in physiatry, orthopedics, and sports medicine. Some chiropractors also use similar techniques -and with good results. But by doing so and calling it “chiropractic” it legitimizes the pseudoscientific practices that are very common within the profession – like treating non-existent “subluxations” in order to free up the flow of innate intelligence.

Maybe your chiropractor is really a quite rational physical therapist simply operating without a license and has never done any harm.  You know your acupuncturist is really on the level, because transdermal electrical stimulation works wonders on your pain.

The problem, as with my mechanic above, comes when satisfied customers encourage a ground swell of support, and studies showing that (the scientifically sound part of) some woo is effective.  Increasingly, woo promulgators are not only allowed to practice without any kind of “surgeon general says you are stupid” warning, but taken seriously as a form of actual real scientific medicine.  Only leave off on the science a bit you stodgy old skeptic, because we get results!

Are you already a skeptic?  Cool; but I bet you know someone who is into chiropractic.  Please, warn them before this happens.  And if you think I’m picking on the chiros a bit much, it’s because they routinely perform actions, on purpose, that can massively damage important nervous system components, all in the name of healing.  And they may even be covered by your insurance already.

The precautionary principle can so easily be abused to the point that it becomes a zero risk bias .

This is a TED video from 2006, but I just now watched it. Michael Shermer talks about cognitive bias, pareidolia, and other interesting ways we fool ourselves.

Michael Shermer at TED.com: Why people believe strange things

It’s a delightful 12 minute refutation of stupidity.

“In the study, participants could freely decide if they wanted to press . . . → Read More: Hearts and minds]]> As we learn more about how brains work, traditional views can be called into question. Recent research indicates that (at least some) decision-making processes are “prepared” by the brain unconsciously several seconds before there is an awareness of having come to a decision.

“In the study, participants could freely decide if they wanted to press a button with their left or right hand. … The researchers found that it was possible to predict from brain signals which option participants would take already seven seconds before they consciously made their decision.”

I was somewhat surprised by this finding, and look forward to follow-up research as well as independent confirmation. But most of my surprise was not due to the study itself, but rather how the results were interpreted as evidence against the existence of free will.

There’s more than one in-vogue argument surrounding free will. This post is not meant to address the deterministic issue (i.e. is there such a thing as choice in the universe); I intend to treat that fascinating question in a future post.

Here we are faced with evidence that the “me”/conscious/”in charge” part of us may not even be in the loop at all until after a decision is reached. Certainly big news! But something to assail free will?

For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions. [wired:Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them]

But since I have no control over what I think, believe, or decide, so what? … The lack of free will levels the playing field and makes all humans equal. [skepchick:Free will as illusion]

To me, there is a huge chasm between finding consciousness plays a later role in (at least some) decisions and concluding that there is no free will. Consciousness is already known to be a slippery thing, see anosognosia (my favorite), blind sight, confabulation, déjà vu. Our self-awareness gets sort of an “executive summary” of our sensory experience. Why should it be so hard to swallow the idea that the brain follows a similar pattern for decisions?

So maybe the part of me that believes it is in charge is actually more of an oversight committee. This still casts no aspersion on free will– it just gives us new data on what mental machinery is involved in making a decision. It’s still my brain, synapses wired by my experience. If we find the seat of decision-making is largely pre-conscious, we need not conclude we’re any less free, aware, or in-charge. After all, the seat of emotion was long believed to be the heart. Knowing otherwise has not sapped the vibrance from love or softened the sting of jealousy. We are still emotional creatures. And we are also decision-making creatures.

I wonder: how could we actually test for free will? You’d have to be careful that you’re not just playing to cognitive bias.

And what use then, consciousness? I’m pretty far afield of my expertise, but I could spin just-so stories all day about how an oversight, evaluating sort of self-awareness could be adaptive.

(Above photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_ruotsala/1491259727)

I was reading an analysis at the Oil Drum about nuclear power use and scaling in France. As usual on TOD, the comments are brimming with insight and impassioned discourse. As a rebuttal to the modest conclusion of the article, one commenter linked to UIC Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper # 75, . . . → Read More: “Limits To Growth fallacy”]]>
(Photo credit: RaeA)

I was reading an analysis at the Oil Drum about nuclear power use and scaling in France. As usual on TOD, the comments are brimming with insight and impassioned discourse. As a rebuttal to the modest conclusion of the article, one commenter linked to UIC Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper # 75, entitled Supply of Uranium. It looked like the start of a fine analysis, but then alarm bells sounded.

(Before I dive into details I just want to say that, based on my current understanding, I think fission should be much more widely employed as a power source than we have seen to date. But I firmly claim that I am neither a nutty nuclear zealot nor an anti-nuke hippie )

Now, as an appetizer to the main rant, let me start with this passage:

Changes in costs or prices [...] may alter measured resource figures markedly. At ten times the current price, seawater might become a potential source of vast amounts of uranium.

There’s nothing terribly wrong there, but when the viability of producing an energy resource is measured in “cost”, that’s a danger sign. Instead, (or in addition), I prefer to see some consideration given to Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI). Stated simply, EROEI is the net energy returned from an operation, rather than the net profit/loss. The reason this is important is that the P/L can be misleading in the short term– fortunes can be made while performing operations that make no sense in terms of energy production.

Looking at the EROEI instead gives an indication of the long term viability of an energy operation. At “ten times the cost” to extract, how much energy is being put into the endeavor? Are we still going to turn an energy-profit in the end and come out ahead? If not, then we’ve just converted some amount of energy (x) into some amount less than (x), which on its face seems a bit wasteful.

There are a lot of important details I’m omitting. Sometimes it makes sense to do a net-negative energy conversion, if for example your output energy is in a more useful form. There are also a lot more inputs to consider than the cost of pulling uranium out of the ground (e.g. cost of scaling out plants, keeping radioactive waste from creating a generation of atomic supermen, etc.) Here’s one essay at TOD addressing “peak uranium”, but on all fronts there’s plenty of contention. Even though I have done a very loose treatment of this issue, I hope it is sufficient to show that EROEI is a calculation that merits consideration.

What piqued my interest was not in the above passage, however, but the following (my emphasis):

From time to time concerns are raised that the known resources might be insufficient when judged as a multiple of present rate of use. But this is the Limits to Growth fallacy, a major intellectual blunder recycled from the 1970s, which takes no account of the very limited nature of the knowledge we have at any time of what is actually in the Earth’s crust. Our knowledge of geology is such that we can be confident that identified resources of metal minerals are a small fraction of what is there.

“A logical fallacy regarding growth?”, I thought. “Hot dog, I’m hooked!” I immediately tabbed out to google to learn all I could, only to find that there’s no such fallacy. This was certainly a bit deflating, but also reassuring in a significant sense: if logic supports boundless growth then it would come into conflict with Physics; a situation that can only end paradoxically.

After reading the rest of the relevant passages and the Appendix that expands on them, I came to understand that the author didn’t precisely mean there was a logical fallacy at play, but rather to malign the work Limits to Growth (and to be fashionable, the even-more-oft-maligned work of Malthus).

Neither work’s specific predictions about imminent doom came to pass; a fact that this author then leverages to refute all limited-growth hypotheses. But this is a fallacy of faulty generalization. It’s true that we didn’t run out of energy in the past, but not necessarily because a limit doesn’t exist. COR and Malthus’ predicted limits were incorrect– practically usable energy reserves often get revised upward due to new data, new technology, and new resource types becoming practical. So far, we have always found ways to bump up the limit faster than we have burned through it. Logically speaking, though, those past events make no prediction about whether this will continue to be the case. (Thermodynamically speaking, it cannot forever remain the case)

The paper’s author claims there is enough uranium in the crust and the ocean that we will always have bunches available, which is very likely true. However the paper refers to availability as the amount existing on earth, but then equivocates it to mean the amount practically recoverable by us, two very different things.

Scarcity of cheap uranium will indeed lead to higher prices, but not in an unbounded fashion. Once the real value that can be derived from the stuff is less than the market price, you’ve hit your limit to growth. Where is that limit? This is what I chiefly want to learn. It depends on a staggering number of factors, but it’s frankly idiotic to claim that something can’t occur simply because it has not yet done so.

Aside: I wonder if I can get DepletedCranium‘s input on this. He has a demonstrated facility for debunking the alleged feasibility of many kinds of green energy, and he’s also all about the nuclear. Perfect combo IMO for this issue.

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and attorneys with the Foundation for Moral Law, representing several Pennsylvania Christians, argued in a brief filed today in the . . . → Read More: Strange speech bedfellows, legislative legerdemain]]> In my previous post I made brief mention of limitations on freedom of expression for hate speech. Today I found this interesting item on topic via Infidel Guy.

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and attorneys with the Foundation for Moral Law, representing several Pennsylvania Christians, argued in a brief filed today in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the state legislature violated the state constitution in 2002 when it added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the state’s “hate crimes” law …

Judge Roy Moore said about this important case:

“There is a dangerous trend surfacing in other countries and here in America where governments are trying to make it illegal to speak out against homosexuality …”

I think people should be able to say nasty things about homosexuality if they want, but not for the same reasons as Judge Moore:

even when such an immoral lifestyle is publicly paraded in the streets. … God alone has the ability to see, and the right to judge, the hearts and minds of men.”

Like most people (imo), he seems to simply be supporting free speech on a subject he agrees with. I assume if the bill had instead added penalties for hate speech directed at Christians, he would have found it reasonable.

An interesting facet to this story is how the contentious provision was attached to unrelated legislation to get it pushed through. For those who agree with any particular rider, this process is championed as a tool for the underdog. The opposition can equally well characterize it as a tool of asymmetric legislative warfare. But it gets used so often and to such a ridiculous extent that it loses any moral context and becomes business as usual– the easiest way to enact your agenda, sidestepping the quaint notion of debating a bill on its merits.

I support the One Subject At A Time Act, because I think that legislative compromise should mean coming to an agreement on something, not a back room quid pro quo. I’m not so naive to think OSTA would have only positive immediate results. In our current two-party feedback loop system, the minority party can use riders as a check against being steamrolled by the majority. But there must be a way to balance power that doesn’t involve this kind of trick.

Growing up I learned about the (US) Constitution and particularly the Bill of Rights. There may even have been some limp discussion about why certain rights were added and what they’re good for. But we never talked about what I now understand to be the most important yet commonly overlooked reason . . . → Read More: Democratically disenfranchised]]>
(Photo credit: Steffe)

Growing up I learned about the (US) Constitution and particularly the Bill of Rights. There may even have been some limp discussion about why certain rights were added and what they’re good for. But we never talked about what I now understand to be the most important yet commonly overlooked reason to codify fundamental rights and limitations on the exercise of power– the tyranny of the majority.

When we learned about democracy it was touted as the cutting edge political system in the world, where all could prosper. Since everyone gets to vote, the power and guidance of the state rests (in theory) with all the people, instead of some elite ruling class. Leaving aside the inevitability of governmental scope-creep, power-grabbing, and corruption, there is a fairly serious blind spot built in to this system– who is to say that the majority knows what’s best?

As a detour before I get into my real rant, let’s talk about taxes. In order for government to function it needs revenue. Assuming that there’s no lucrative state-controlled export fueling the economy, this means citizens will be paying taxes of some kind. I’m using a simplified model with easy numbers for illustration, a flat tax system where everyone (above the poverty line) pays the same percent of their income to the government: 10%. If you make $100 per week you pay $10. If you make $2000 per week you pay $200. The wealthy are still paying more in total but everyone is at the same rate. Mathematically speaking, it’s a fair, level system.

• Even though most people don’t love giving money away, the majority does understand the need for taxes. Some people would rather enjoy the benefits of the state but elect not to pay taxes at all. Well, the majority doesn’t take kindly to that. This is a pretty black and white example where majority rule comes up with the right answer: no free rides. If you make money, give up 10% of it or get out of our state!
• Now let’s add some economic inequality into the system. Those who have an above-average amount of wealth can never (by definition) be in the majority. If we have an unusual majority comprised of meritocrats or classic liberals, then they may be perfectly fine with the fact that their neighbor has a nicer house, and that everyone is paying the same percentage of their income to taxes.But the majority may just as well decide that those who have more ought to give up a bigger percent than those who have less. After all, the rich are ..well.. rich! Isn’t it unfair to let them off paying the same percentage as the poor when they’ll have more left over at the end of the day? So the majority invents tax brackets. If you make a lot of money then you should pay 40% of it in taxes (or 60% or 85%), and that way we can fund the government at the same level but reduce the majority’s rates to 7% (or 5%, or 2%), and try to give the poor a better quality of life.  But at the same time we have inadvertently created a system where the greater your achievements, the more screwed you get. The path of least resistance is mediocrity.. work hard enough to make ends meet but don’t reach for the stars because they’ll just get taxed away from you.
• Well the minority didn’t vote for those tax brackets, that’s for sure, but what can they do? Move away? Use an offshore tax haven? Create the republican party to fool a religious majority into voting for the interests of an economic minority? In any case, the rich (like anyone else) won’t give up their earnings easily. Now we move into a tale of have vs. have-not, evil vs. downtrodden. When the minority becomes not simply a different point of view but an enemy, then the rosy picture of democracy loses a bit of luster. Now we have class warfare. The minority tries to escape or control the masses, and the majority starts pricing out torches and pikes.

No matter what your views are on economics, what I wanted to point out there was how something basic such as a decision on how to fund the government can quite easily turn very ugly over time, even though “democracy” and majority rule have been applied throughout the process.

To avoid a tyranny of the majority there must be boundaries. We can outline areas that are off-limits for the majority to infringe, even if they feel like it later on. This is the point of a bill of rights– these rights are ensured, protected; inalienable.

I have met very few people who believe that freedom of expression should be an inalienable right, which saddens me. Instead, most people I have encountered only believe in the freedom to express views that are not abhorrent to them. The rules are different depending on individual, culture, and state. It may be fine to speak out against the government, but not utter a disrespect for a certain religion or offend the moral majority’s sensibility. It may be taboo (or even dangerous) to go against the government. It might be ok to say whatever you want as long as it’s not “hateful” (in the US, hate speech is not protected by the first amendment).

It is easy for the majority to support expression that it agrees with. This is not freedom of speech, it is not a right that needs protecting. The majority cannot tyrannize itself (unless perhaps via a tragedy of the commons, a subject for another post).

To protect expression is to embrace that which offends. Not to accept or condone its content, but to champion the right for others to proclaim it (even when we are certain they’re idiots). To guarantee this (or any) right, the majority must choose to uphold it in cases they personally abhor, or else it becomes utterly meaningless. For how can we enforce even a codified protection when the majority chooses to vote it down?

And with that, I direct your attention to the international effort to stop criticism of Islam. (Hat tip to Infidel Guy.) If you live somewhere that nominally supports freedom of expression, take a moment and consider what life would be like when criticism gets banned.