We previously saw a Fox News pie chart that had a couple extra slices (here). Now, fair and balanced math adds up to 120 percent of voters indicating that they view the science on global warming to be rigged.
This is an interesting Rasmussen poll when you add up the number and discover that you are in a parallel universe.
The question is: “In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?” According to the poll, 35 percent thought it very likely, 24 percent somewhat likely, 21 percent not very likely, and 5 percent not likely at all (15 percent weren’t sure).
This rather dubious poll is offered to show that people are dubious about the science and math of global warming experts.
For the full story, click here
Buddha,
You said:
“Seriously, you work with statistics and complex differential data sets.”
I don’t (generally) work with statistics and I would say I model complex dynamical systems.
You said:
“It doesn’t strike you odd that such a narrowly defined behavior (orderly collapse) came from such a long string of conditional probabilities (temp/materials/sequence of failure/collateral stresses and factors)?”
Since there are only two examples of skyscrapers being hit by fully fueled jetliners and both resulted in similar collapses, we don’t really have any idea of the probabilities involved. I don’t find any of the links in the causal chain particularly unlikely – The structure was damaged and its fireproofing destroyed by the impact, the fires heated the core structure until it couldn’t bear the load and the building collapsed. This story fits all of the evidence I’ve seen of the collapse.
You said:
“One can answer singular questions in analysis without having answered the underlying math being expressed.”
Not sure what you mean by this.
You said:
“Heisenberg, Bohr and Hawking would have had much different careers if Einstein had been able to “see perfectly” all the math his theories implied. This isn’t solely a chemistry or engineering problem is my point. It’s also a probability problem. Keep in mind the more conditions precedent there are to an outcome, the greater the chance that outcome will not be achieved due to error in operation. More parts equals more chance of error in all systems.”
While the chance of any individual chain of events happening may be extremely small, the probability that some chain of events will occur is 1. If there were many examples of skyscrapers being hit by planes in this manner and these were the only buildings that collapsed, I would of course be skeptical, but I have no way of estimating the probabilities of what ‘should’ happen a priori and since the evidence of the collapse is consistent with the official explanation, I have no trouble accepting it, nor do many experts who have published scholarly articles on the collapse.
You said:
“I’m not saying an anomaly or a narrow result isn’t possible. I’m saying it’s improbable. I’m not going to side other than that on this issue and I don’t think I did above. Mark me down as “present but skeptical”. Like Bob I’ll admit I have some energy deficiency questions too, but that has never been my grind.”
Again, I just don’t think that we can really estimate probabilities here and that’s not the way I think of it. I look at an explanation and ask “does this agree with the facts?”. I think that the official explanation of the collapse (and I am specifically limiting my statements to the events between the first impact and Tower 1’s collapse) fits the observed facts. As to energy deficiency questions, I’ll just note that something like one trillion joules of energy were released in each collapse (the gravitational potential energy of one tower).
You said:
“But what I do find unusual is your easy acceptance of an “optimal” outcome (not truly or no one would have died, but you get my meaning) on based on so many contingent variables. Given what I know you know about complexity from previous discussions, I find this a little curious.”
I have no way of knowing that this was an ‘optimal’ outcome (and yes, I know what you mean – as an aside, I wish there was a hell so these assholes (the terrorists) could be burning in it), I can only fall back on the scientific method – to make a hypothesis and see if it fits the facts. I study complexity in the sense of the emergent behavior of complex systems (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts type stuff) – what happened on 9/11 isn’t really complexity in that sense. The impact of the planes on the structure of the buildings has been modeled and the models are consistent with the facts – this is persuasive to me.
You said:
“That long chain of conditions precedent and the narrow rage of desired behaviors from the complex system(s) under stress nags at me. I don’t have a problem with so much that the building failed but with how it failed. It in spectrum of possible outcomes absent intervention, it’s like winning a lottery. Actually, a consistently good pick at roulette is probably a better analogy.”
Actually, I think that the lottery analogy is better – any particular way of failure might be very improbable, but after the planes hit, some kind of failure was certain. Just like it being very improbably that a particular person wins the lottery, but certain that someone will win.
You said:
“Speaking of probability, probably everyone’s grandfather has said (in this country anyway), “That’s too much sugar for a nickle.”
At least it seems to me anyway.”
Neither of my grandfathers (both natural born citizens) every said that (at least not in my hearing), maybe they weren’t as wise as your grandfather. 😉 I don’t think we’re getting too much sugar here, but if you do I suggest that you put your skepticism to work and look at how well the theories match the events of that day. Like I said, I think they match up pretty well.
Bob,
Sorry. I do not know why there was metal at or near the heat of fusion at ground zero after the collapse (just out of curiosity, could you provide me with a reference as to evidence of molten metal at ground zero?). I believe that the theory that the WTC was brought down by thermite charges implausible due the extremely (in my opinion) unlikely premises that must be fulfilled for this theory to stand up. Why thermite? It’s not an explosive, nor is it used for purposes of demolition (it takes time to act – not what you want for a precisely controlled and timed demolition). Why would the WTC have been rigged with thermite charges? When was it done? How was it done without anyone’s notice? If it was done as a safety measure (as someone here suggested – itself one of the least likely theories I’ve ever heard), the who approved it and who paid for it? Without (plausible) answers to these questions, the assertion that molten metal at ground zero implies that the building was taken down by thermite charges (which would make it, as far as I can tell, the first building ever brought down this way) seems less likely (to me, anyway) than the theory that the combination of structural damage and loss of fire protection from the impact, heat from the fires led to the collapse.
Slartibartfast,
My apologies, but I find it difficult to carry out an argument with an opponent who keeps inserting his own premises into my argument and reducing them to absurdity.
When I asked you to account for an immense surplus of sustained ‘residual heat’ sufficient to keep the metal at ground zero at or near the heat of fusion, you turned into Fred Astaire with your tap dancing “Indiana Jones Science” bullshit. Thus I replied as I did. Accordingly, when you replied yet again without addressing the issue, which by the laws of physics DEMANDS an answer or so much as an acknowledgment of your ignorance, attempting to attribute more and more of your own premises to my argument, well, as I said above, that’s simply not argumentation.
Al Gore.
He played on our fears!
(Will his photograph go next to the dictionary definition of megalomaniac?)
Gallup should do a poll on it.
That’s what we need. A televised debate on global warming.
It may get more viewers than the OJ trial.
30,000 Scientists
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah6EE8AZIlw&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Slarti:
No problem, I actually appreciate you being willing to organize your thoughts. Although I thought they were well presented and I certainly understood what you were saying.
I dont think the problem is your organization.
Byron,
I’m thinking about your last post – I’ll reply to it later tonight. I’d rather take my time to try to more fully explain my ideas than quickly respond to your posts. I’m finding that you’re challenging me to better organize my thoughts and I like it. Hope you don’t mind.
Buddha
I really wanted to drop this topic, but out of respect for you and an interest in discussing probability, I’ll allow myself to get dragged back in… Oh well, as Emerson said, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. I’m working on a reply to your post.
Slarti:
Perpetual cycles of booms and busts like we have now are caused by the Federal Reserve manipulating interest rates. If you let interest rates float and let markets establish the cost of money, I think you would not have these exaggerated swings of bubble and bust.
Yes I did mean infinite and I corrected it in the post below the original.
Steering your car and a market are not the same things. This is where I think people such as you go wrong. Very smart people have a tendency to think they can control things by virtue of their intelligence and computer models. It may work with a small system like a car or even a human body or a rocket ship. The market is millions of people taking billions of decisions every day about how to spend their money. The complexity is staggering and any computer model would be incapable of determining the correct permutation. Statistically it would be impossible, but by virtue of superior intelligence they believe they can. I think this is called rationalism but I am not sure.
If you damp out the booms and busts? What do you think the Fed has been doing or trying to do for 90 years?
Consumer regulations are market forces. The problem is exactly as you say; business is predictable and when they are given government regulations, in the form of low interest rates you get a real-estate boom that had no basis in reality other than the Federal Reserve artificially holding rates low.
I suggest a healthy dose of Von Mises and Hyack to inoculate you from your Keynesian conundrum.
Sorry Slarti, I am still a capitalist pig.
Byron,
First, I find it amusing that you refer to market forces as ‘consumer regulation’ (that’s not really a criticism, just a little poke at your doublespeak…).
I said:
“You’re an engineer, right? Would you try to control a system with positive feedback? (For those of you who don’t know, if you use positive feedback to control a system, it oscillates out of control.)”
You replied:
“Exactly how will that happen? You assume that this is taking place in a vacuum or closed system it is not. The “market” is a huge diverse, chaotic system with literally infinitesimal inputs.”
It’s well established that there are many cycles in the market (and when I see the word ‘cycles’ I immediately think of oscillations), so let’s take the ‘bubble’ cycle of boom and bust which, I think you’ll agree, has had a pretty negative effect on our economy lately. If you use positive feedback to encourage booms (cause booms are good, right?) you increase the size of the bubble. Unfortunately, the direct effect of this is to increase the severity of the bust when the bubble pops. If you continue to do this, the highs get higher and the lows get lower until a ‘bust’ occurs that’s so low that you can’t pick up the pieces. For instance, if you take away the controls of risk/reward (say by allowing hedge fund managers to leverage at 30:1 with other people’s money, offer them huge rewards if they’re successful and no risk if they fail (or, as it appears to have happened, huge rewards for failure, too), then inevitably a collapse would happen. To take an extreme hypothetical, say instead you executed hedge fund managers who lost their (and other people’s) shirts – these guys are good at analyzing risk vs. reward – they would find that kind of risk unacceptable compared to the potential reward. The simplest way to add negative feedback to the this system would be to give shareholders a voice in executive compensation (not giving people who presided over epic failure huge bonuses makes sense to me – and Wall Street types are much more likely to be act responsibly if they risk their huge compensation packages by acting irresponsibly.
I don’t want to get into the complexity issues of the market (as that is a much more involved topic and I can’t really do it justice briefly). But I have a couple of comments – to nitpick, you’re using ‘infinitesimal’ wrong (it means very, very small), in context, I think you meant infinite inputs. More substantially, when engineers design control systems, they attempt to remove chaos (while chaos makes for pretty pictures and fascinating mathematics, you don’t want, say, the steering in your car to behave chaotically). They do this by damping out oscillations in order to make the system more predictable and stable. There is no reason that the complex system represented by the economy can’t be controlled in the same way. In order to get rid of the ‘busts’ you damp down the boom and bust cycle (by restoring the balance of risk and reward). As a consequence of this, you eliminate the ‘booms’ as well and are left instead with slow, steady growth. How would this be bad? (It only hurts people that would profit on the loss of others and, quite frankly, screw them!)
You said:
“Please explain to me how consumer regulation will cause it to spin out of control?”
I explained my position above and will clarify anything you like. I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘consumer regulation’, but if you’d care to suggest a method that you think would lead to the end we both consider desirable (no pollution), or explain to me why you think my proposal wont work, I’m happy to continue discussing it.
You said:
“Man I am really waiting to hear this, if you answer this it may just cause me to change my mind about capitalism.”
Now I’m waiting for you to tell me that you’ve changed your mind. 😉 You seem to think that I’m against capitalism – I’m not. There is no known engine that does a better job of creating wealth than capitalism. I just don’t think that it is sacred – it has flaws (while capitalism creates wealth, it also concentrates it, which is bad), and there are things which it does poorly (health care, control pollution, etc.). It frustrates me, because I see the behavior of industry as very easy to predict if you just assume that the players tend to act in an amoral way to increase profits (not saying everyone in business is amoral, just that assuming businesses act amorally is an effective way to predict their behavior) and very easy to control (by the use of negative feedback), but far too many people who don’t think of public policy this way end up legislating with the best of intentions and failing to meet their goals while spawning undesirable, unintended consequences.
‘We Can’t Kill the Business Climate,’ Says Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill (D)
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6428644
Byron,
The site’s only as good as its sources; did you check them?
And per your remark about the speed of the aircraft, here’s a little ditty from the Pilots for 9/11 Truth; n.b. the group’s mission is to never to support any theory but simply show all the places where the ‘knowledge’ alleged in the ‘official report’ fails to agree with the ‘object’ of analysis.
Money and Lobbyists Hurt European Efforts to Curb Gases
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/worldbusiness/11carbon.html?_r=1
Buddah Europe has Cap and Tax do you think their emmisions have gone up or down?
The EPA’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703514404574588120572016720.html
Buddah, I read your post, TWICE, and had to change my underwear twice.
Not only did you shock me, you shocked the S……….. TWICE
Byron, you missed it talking about the inside job on 9-11
Bdaman
1, December 10, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Byron, I have told people many times before, be it in your e-mail box or in a comment section. Pick out key phrases or words and enter it into google, then read away. I sometimes do not provide a link to a story I paste from, Why, because then you get responses of, that came from the blank blank website and they blank blank are a hack ect. ect.
In this case, take this, Rajendra K. Pachauri stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits
put it into Google and pick from whatever site you would like to read from. The Gray Rider post I did the other day shows you that one can take something someone else says and massage it to their liking.
Never trust something someone else post even if they provide a link. The words can be changed in the short paragraphs that they give you and provide you with the link and then you never read the whole story taking what they posted as gospel.
Buddha:
the more I read the more I am starting to think we are being controlled by your man behind the curtain. It doesn’t really matter at this point whether it is corporations, industrialists, environmentalists, socialists, fascists, communists, capitalists.
Although I will point out that when a companies ability to turn a profit is reduced or eliminated by regulations or other non-market forces they will devise other ways to generate revenue. Idle hands are indeed the devils workshop.