Given that the purpose of the termmometers is to determine local weather conditions as relevant to humans and agriculture... why would anyone calibrate their equipment to that extent?
I'm not arguing that the equipment can't technically do it. After all, the Egyptians built the Pyramids remarkably well given their primitive tools. However, why would I care if I put a given sensor next to an air conditioner out vent? It's not going to change the reading enough to matter to anyone in the area. No one was collecting this data with this sort of study in mind.
This is why in their own data set they throw out up upwards of 70 percent of the data. The data is filtered to remove outliers. However, there is no way to know why a given reading was or was not an outlier. Possibly it was a bad reading. But possibly it was a good reading and the other readings are bad. And once you've determined what is and is not acceptable as n answer in the data, you're now predetermining the output.
This is why the raw data is so important and why it's so important to put the raw data side by side with the filtered data and then demostrate methodically how A is converted to B.
Possibly I'm full of crap. I'm not stupid. And to the best of my knowledge, I am not lying to you. So if I am confused, know that you're talking to an otherwise intelligent and well meaning person that is honestly trying to evaluate a complex subject that has regrettably been biased by partisan politics.
I hate the GW subject because it's both scientific and political. And it's also much more complex then creationism for example. So it's impossible to be totally sure unless you're an expert or you take a blind leap of faith somewhere.
I don't have faith for either side. I don't know if either side is right.
But the skeptics at least invite discussion and the warmists insult me when I ask questions... and that at the very least annoys me. Emotionally, that inclines me to be sympathetic to the side that doesn't seem to open every discussion with an insult. But science isn't a popularity contest. So you can be an a-hole and right. I know that. It simply becomes difficult to take people seriously when they resort to that sort of rhetoric so freely. In my experience it tends to be an intentional mask for something else. As if they offending people to stop a discussion because if it continues there will be problems.
I don't know if that's why such people are so frequently rude. That has just been my experience throughout my life in many different issues.
I'm being upfront about my bias here... I also don't want GW to be true because it is exceptionally inconvenient. But if it is, then that is reality. And if that is reality, then we should come up with real world solutions for it. The ideologues on both sides can go f' themselves. When it comes to real problems the focus has to be fixing it first and arguing about who's pet philosophy is right later.
Is that increase before or after the calibration. Is it before or after the filters?
I guess what is troubling here is that there is so much data and the quality of that data varies radically. Then all this data of variable quality is dumped into a single data set and a level of specificity that goes down to a tenth of a degree is inferred. The instruments with historical data were not the accurate even if you assumed the equipment were the application would introduce a large margin or error. And this becomes geometrically more problematic when you introduce proxy data. You can't infer a tenth of a degree temperature change 10,000 years ago from lake sediment. I'm sure you can get within ten degrees but within a tenth of a degree? I find that extremely hard to swallow.
And once you lose that precision, the fuzzy zone above and below your numbers widens out significantly and it becomes very hard to claim an increase when most of your data didn't move outside the margin of error.
We're talking about 1 degree MAX change. So any move from then to now will naturally be smaller then that. we're talking about tracking a fraction of a degree change over time using data that really doesn't have that many significant digits.
Please don't call me a denier or some other derogatory comment. It isn't helpful to an intellectual discussion on the matter.
I am skeptical. I find many aspects of the situation suspecious. And this is not helped by repeated instances of sloppy behavior. The Himalaya claim for example in the IPCC was based upon a misquoted phone interview of a scientist in a climbing magazine. Literally. That was the whole basis. And who found that out and got the IPCC to edit it? Was it peer review? Nope. It was skeptics that found it.
Now, you can say whatever you want about the education or intelligence of skeptics or deniers or whatever. But if they occasionally spot something that their intellectual betters don't and its a patiently absurd as basing a huge claim on nothing... then what does it say of the those intellectual betters? To a certain extent, arguing that skeptics are stupid doesn't work in your favor because they often spot things the warmists or alarmists don't spot. You'd do better to claim a smaller gap in the superiority if any at all if only because it makes mistakes less embarrassing.
As to turning science into a beurocratic nightmare, that is not my intent. If that is the result then my idea is poor. However, I would ask for constructive criticism on the point rather then flat rejection. That way I know what the problem is and I know whether your complaint is valid.
As to the datagathers, they don't even need to be scientists. The level of training would be enough to collect the data with a high degree of accuracy and precision. The theories it might well relate to would be irrelevant to this profession. As to forbidding them from making theories, I wouldn't forbid it. I would instead require that they disclose the data as they collect it and if they want to download that data later and theorize on their own time they are welcome to do it.
But they can't collect data, not release it, study it in secret, and then propose theories based on data no one has ever seen before.
What is important is that the data all gets pushed to the librarians and that all theory is based on data in the librarians database. So if you want to collect data and then theorize on it, the right way under this system is to collect it, submit the data raw to the system immediately, and then reference that data in your theories. Withholding data for any reason what so ever would be considered an ethical violation under this system.
We could radically increase the amount of data we collect. Might the quality go down? Possibly. The data would also note who collected, who that person is, when they collected it, any comments other people have made upon the data EVER, who those people are, and anything else you can possibly think of remembering for any reason. The librarians would be remembering everything under this system and the context and the comments.
As to archaeology and other fields where a certain amount of specialized education is required to gather data, what is really important is that they submit all the data as they collect it in the rawest possible form. If they want to theorize upon it at a later, it doesn't really matter so long as the raw data was recorded first. And of course, it would be expected that any theories offered would be based upon something in the database even if they submitted it to the database themselves. I'm trying to avoid situations where people propose theories based upon data that isn't publicly available or even available for peer review in a raw form. I am also trying to remove the incentive to withhold data until it can be analyzed. Analysis is optional. Submit it immediately.
That said, just as aceologists use students to do most of the work, I think it is possible in most fields to use less educated and trained personnel to collect the data. By all means, if you want to do it yourself, have fun. But this would hopefully encourage scientific organizations to use laymen with enough training to collect good data but not much else. There are a lot of things that aren't practical to study because there aren't enough people to do it.
I believe the British natural history musem had a policy where they encouraged people throughout the empire to send plant and animal samples back to England for study. An enormous number of new species were discovered in this way. People would pull some leaves off an unusual tree, press them between dry paper, and mail them to the museum. They have thousands of books of such leaves to this day categorized by location, time, etc.
Don't discount the value of laymen in collecting data. I wouldn't forbid theorists from collecting the data. I'd prefer if they didn't. But the real worry on my part is hording information and then throwing out theories based largely upon private data sets.
As to science standing or falling on evidence, that's if the evidence is disclosed. Often only filtered evidence or data is disclosed and and the raw unfiltered data and the exact methodology used to filter it is both not released and more importantly can't be verified because you can't compare the raw and filtered data.
Certainly doesn't help. But that's correlative. You'll find that people from Korea or china for example that don't speak english when they come to the US tend to have much better demographics despite having no money when they come here.
Why would they do well and someone else might not?
See? You have to widdle down all the correlative issues until you find the cause.
It's not race. It's not gender. It's not money. It's not language. It's not location.
It's culture. Given cultures fail and given cultures succeed.
When you cancel out all the bits that have exceptions it's all that's left.
Much of the market crisis came about because they had boiled down "risk" which is an extremely complicated subject using mathematical models down to one number.
Basically, the higher the number was the more risky the investment was according to the models.
The problem is that you can't boil risk down to one number. There are different types of risk and it's impossible to combine them.
The model made all sorts of hilarious assumptions like "the market will never crash"... Never mind that it has in the past and therefore can and therefore you can't make that assumption.
I'm just not a fan of intellectual masturbation. Keep it useful and keep it relevant. That's all I'm asking.
As to not wanting to hear anything contrary, I love being proven wrong. I simply require it be proven. I don't like people saying I'm wrong and not proving it. How would you like it if I simply contradicted you and provided no basis for that contradiction? You don't like it either? Don't do it.
As to "specifically," define it immediately. This comment is especially annoying. If I've said something that is wrong and you're claiming to in anyway represent some higher order of learning then you have to justify that pretense.
I think a good way to deal with would be similar to the separation of powers in the US federal government.
hear me out.
What if one group of scientists only collected data. Nothing else. No theories and they didn't store the data or interact with the scientists that want to support theories.
The next group are librarians and information specialists. They collect all known data and sort it. They also have all studies on file. They are the keepers of the knowledge. But they do not collect the data and they do not theorize on it.
The last group neither collects data nor stores it. These are the theorists. They collect data from the librarians and use that data to form their theories. The data held by the librarians is open to all. So rather then having to state your data in a study, you could simply offer a reference number to the data stored in the system.
If the librarians don't have the data then theorists request the data from the librarians and they then pass that request publicly to the data collectors.
This all sounds complicated but what it does is make everything very transparent. The people collecting data have no incentive to bias their data. They have no vested interest in any conclusion. Rather, their bias is in getting the most precise and accurate results possible. They might over state their precision but they are less likely to bias their results.
The librarians are very key to the whole system because they record all requests for information from the theorists, all the data from the data collectors, all studies published by the theorists, and all opinions written about those studies. Again, everything categorized and filtered. So lets say a given paper has 10,000 different opinions written about it. Well, some of those might not be written by scientists. Some of them might be written by scientists with no experience in the field. And then you need to break it down by year. Maybe a given opinion was written right after the paper was published and another one was written ten years later. Then break it down by location... etc. It's not for the librarians to say what is an isn't relevant. They should collect all information they're given, categorize it, and make it available.
The above concept would make scientific disclosure redundant. The theorist wouldn't need to disclose anything. All the data would be open to everyone from the exact same place the theorist got it.
I'd rather not get drawn into a stupid semantics debate.
Can we agree to this:
"Junk in; Junk out."
I think what we're seeing in many fields is that the data is poor or doesn't exist. So scientists have convinced themselves that they can use magical computers and mathematical models to turn fuzzy imprecise data into something crisp.
It's like taking a picture of the Mona Lisa with a 3 MP camera from 50 feet away and believing that using a mathematical model you can see every crack in the paint. You just can't.
If you want that level of detail you need to have better data. Or purge any greater specificity then that from your conclusions. During analysis, I believe it's allowed to keep raw averages. But when you're stating final conclusions you are supposed to limit your results to significant digits. Which means the conclusions can't claim to be more precise then the input data.
Well, it's funny when they do that with proxy data. They use samples of biomass in sediment from 10,000 years ago and pretend to derive a.01 temperature difference. You can't get that from pine cones, ice cores, and fossilized vegetation.
The real problem with all this stuff is that the data was never collected for this purpose. The standards and precision were for crop forecasts and whether or not people should go to the beach. It was never collected to be compared to a tenth of a degree across continents and throughout centuries.
Even the satellite data has problems because it's calibrated. The sats don't know what temperature it is on earth without calibration. Basically, you ask the sat what temp it is in a place where you know the temp and from that you infer what all the other temps are in it's readings.
Where things get squirrelly is that you can have two way calibration. That is data is used to calibrate sat data and then that sat data is used to filter the ground stations. So rather then everything being based on a wide data set everything suddenly becomes based on the calibration data.
And what's troubling is that the calibration data for the sats is not fixed. It changes. If you use the old calibration data for new readings most of the sat data reports cooler temperatures. Its only after calibration that it reports higher figures.
Possibly this is all legitimate. But it would be very easy to bias the calibration data slightly to show a warming trend.
Ultimately, the solution is to collect a lot more data, make that data publicly available with no filtration, and then hand that off to another group of scientists to analyze it.
There is too much theory crafting and too little data collection.
They're overstating precision. Which rather then a forgivable error is an elementary mistake no trained scientist should ever make.
A VERY basic concept they teach at the lowest level of science education is the distinction between accuracy and precision. This is science 101.
Accuracy is whether or not a given conclusion is correct. Precision is to the degree of specificity.
Typically you run into problems on complex subjects because they overstate the precision of their data or their ability analyze the data.
This can boil down to simple thinks like significant digits.
For example, I'm measuring volume to two significant digits in a giant data set with thousands of measurements. When and if I average those numbers the final average can't have more then two significant digits. That sounds elementary but you see this error made on some big studies. You'll have a situation where something is being measured in a crude sense by many sources and then in the analysis a much higher degree of specificity is implied.
Often that degree of specificity is required to make certain conclusions which is why they break the rule. This is lazy and a breach of scientific ethics. What they need to do is collect the data all over again this time to the level of specificity they need.
Simply saying its too hard to collect the data properly so they're going to make assumptions is not reasonable or ethical. I suppose you could do it so long as you kept an asterisk next to the data and the findings to make it very clear throughout that the conclusion is a guess and not in any way empirical science since at some point people were guesstimating results.
I haven't thought of selling votes. I guess you're right. F*ck.
I'm trying to come up with a way to detect fraud without causing bigger problems.
Okay... to make the votes unsellable it have to be impossible to let someone else use that one off serial number to see your vote. Okay... here's a way to fix it.
What if rather then letting people check their vote online, we have a special room with booths in the federal building or something where people can bring one voter stub and check a vote. But we only let them do it once per election cycle.
So you could sell a vote but you wouldn't only be able to sell one of them because whoever was checking them would only be able to check one vote.
I don't like this compromise because it's so cumbersome. Do you have a way of fixing it that doesn't cause bigger problems?
They've been excluding a lot of people recently for very silly reasons. Apparently someone have been given more power then they have wit to manage and they're basically going power mad. It's one thing if you're excluding people that present a public risk. It's another if the reasons are totally arbitrary.
I'm not saying anything tracable. You shouldn't be able to say "robert voted for mark"... But you should able to tell valid votes from invalid votes.
For example, lets say we give every voter single use serial number. It doesn't link to who they are. Like a scratch card with some numbers under it. Then when they got o vote those numbers have to be entered before the machine will accept the vote.
Lets say the code is long enough that the possibility of a machine erroring out and accidentially getting one of those numbers right is a million to one. When the votes are tallied the system will only accept votes with a valid serial number and no dublicate serial numbers will be accepted.
That won't stop someone from changing votes but it will make it very hard for people to add votes without a list of the serial numbers.
Now a problem with these serial numbers in the computer software world has been that the mathematical model used to deterimine what is and what is not a valid serial number gets out at some point and then it's becomes rather easy for a machine to automatically generate thousands of bogus numbers.
That is only possible because the cracker gets their hands on the software itself that determines if it's valid or not. In the voting system, this software would be retained only one a couple very secure machines and it would be exceedingly difficult for a cracker to get it.
I also think it would be good if the system let voters call up what the machine had stored as their vote. Again, this wouldn't be linked to their name but to that single use serial number. So if you keep that paper stub you can login to a site after the votes are counted and pull up that record of that vote. And if someone is compromising the votes then enough people should know which way they voted and see that the system has their vote wrong. Obviously we'll just have their word for it. We could possibly have several redundant databases that don't have two way links. Thus someone changing votes would be unlikely to be able to change them in all the databases and the inconsistencies between the databases would be a smoking gun.
A lot of people think voter fraud isn't a big deal. And maybe it isn't. But it is easier to commit voter fraud then it is to buy a bear under age. And that doesn't sit right with me given that our whole political system hinges on the legitimacy of those votes.
All the subprime loans are were backed by the feds ultimately.
And I know from several friends in the banking business that prior to the bubble bursting they were being pushed very hard by the government to make those subprime loans.
Wellsfargo for example didn't want to do it. But the feds told them they would screw them through the FDIC if they didn't make the loans. So they set up a minor sub bank specifically designed to make subprime loans. That's all the sub bank did. And when the bubble burst that bank went bankrupt. But there was no liability between the Wellsfargo proper and that sub bank. So wellsfargo survived.
As to passing a law capping the cost of education, you have no right to tell a school especially a private school what they can and cannot charge. And furthermore, even if you did, price controls don't work.
I think your idea is fine for public universities. They are owned by the state. But the private universities have a right to charge whatever they want. You force their prices down by not paying them.
Not really... What is the road to hell paved in?...
They don't let them declare bankruspy because students have no assets and it would almost always be in their interest to declare bankrupsy. This is why a student can't buy a new car without it getting cosigned by their parents or putting a lot of money down. Auto dealers don't trust the student to make good on the loan.
The solution in education is to do the same thing. And that means a lot of people simply can't afford it. That's bad because an educated population is more valuable. It is in our interest that these people be educated. So they're given a way to finance it but they're forced to pay it back.
That is one way to do it and I think it's a bad way.
A better way might be to debt a percentage of income from the student after they graduate. See, we want them to get the educations because they're more valuable educated. But only those that pursue valuable careers are valuable once educated. So for example, it makes no sense to give federal loans for people to get liberal arts degrees. It isn't a good investment. Now, if they get a scholarship because they're gifted or they use their own money... fine. But if they're neither they should get a degree that is more likely to yield a useful job.
Furthermore, if the university is paid based on the success or failure of their students it makes it very important for the university that students become employed after they graduate. That means partnering with businesses, job fairs, etc. Because they don't get jobs the university is screwed.
Another idea would be to just socialize the whole thing basically give everyone a free university education. Some people really like that idea, but it has most of the problems our existing system has only the students don't even need to try to pay society back.
I like the middle choice if only because it makes the school accountable for what they've taught the students. If they've taught them a bunch of bullshit that isn't useful to anyone then that will hurt them. Someone might say that the universities will stop making well rounded students and instead focus entirely on vocational studies. But the reality is that businesses like well rounded students if only because they don't like hiring ignorant people.
There's a balance somewhere. Some of the more frivolous studies might become more ratified but in general the school will be serving it's role in society more if it helps students become productive members of society. And in so doing they'll justify the patronage of the state. If they don't prepare students they have no purpose and deserve nothing.
This is a serious problem.
Technology is already playing a role in bringing costs down. Universities are putting many classes online. Lecture classes are especially well suited to this task. And over time these lectures might even be simple recordings made at one university and duplicated to all the others. If you're taking an undergraduate mathematics lecture it's not like you need the lectures done fresh every time. Nothing will be different. That could lower costs radically while not lowering the quality of the education. Paper grading etc can be done by teacher's aids or possibly if the answers are all rerecorded the whole thing could be totally automated.
These are options. The costs have to come down. Universities that don't take that seriously are in for a rude shock.
Well, increasing funding means tuition prices go up. Example? The last 20 years.
So find a way out of it because we can't afford the price increases indefinitely.
This is a bubble. Do you really want to wait until it's fully leveraged and pops?
I'm sure a consequence of killing federal funding for housing is that fewer people buy houses. Reactions aren't going to be instant.
We've been building this bubble for a long time and it might take awhile to deflate. Unless you want to pump it up to max, have it pop, and then collapse. That will probably be faster but it will also be far more painful.
That's fine. And if he declares bankruptcy that should be the end of it. For all debts prior to that point. Period.
So if the woman knows that if she gets too greedy the man can simply declare bankruptcy she'll have to moderate her demands to be reasonable. Or wind up getting whatever his liquidated estate is worth which may or may not be a fraction of what she wanted... and there after jack and/or sh*t.
If she keeps it reasonable and doesn't demand an absurd amount then it could be fine.
Why did the price of housing go up and up? Sub prime loans. you can blame wall street for making it worse but the prices were ticking up for years before wall street got involved. The prices started going up with the cheap government loans.
What we can see from the universities that they're responding in the same way. The more you increase the loans the more the tuition goes up. The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education.
It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have... so if you reduce what can be spent on education rather then causing kids not to get educations it will probably cause prices to come down.
Furthermore, the US is giving national tuition rates to foreign students. That's US tax dollars paying for someone's education that isn't even a citizen and isn't likely to stay. So what exactly is the point?
I don't know... I have a lot of problems with the current way we finance tuition. They're the only loans you can't escape by declaring bankruptcy and that strikes me as wrong. There is no legal obligation that you shouldn't be able to escape by declaring bankruptcy. Everything from child support to a student loan. And I know what people are saying, lowlifes will just ditch their obligations. Yes they will. Which is why you don't loan lowlifes money in the first place. As to single mothers getting screwed out of alimony... well, it's a reason to make your separations demands reasonable. If the alimony is so high that it becomes in his interest to declare bankruptcy then you're asking for too much. Pointblank.
Just a little house cleaning and a lot of these problems will go away.
No, it's not really a good find. This was all over the press at the time.
I actually heard the Manson interview shortly after it was made and he also expressed his belief in AGW. Which is weird but it doesn't matter. A scientific hypothesis doesn't become more or less credible because a psychopath believes in it. If we very carefully divorce our notions about the validity of something from the person that said it we should get closer to talking about the actual facts.
The pro AGW faction has a lot of good science on their side and the anti AGW faction has some very relevant counter points and questions.
Lets talk about that indifferent to the political bullshit without name dropping or saying "all scientists agree" or "the science is settled"... that just pisses people off and doesn't accomplish anything. It's as pointlessly inflammatory as pointing out that Manson and OBL were AGW supporters.
Slashdot Mirror
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sorry for the typos...
Given that the purpose of the termmometers is to determine local weather conditions as relevant to humans and agriculture... why would anyone calibrate their equipment to that extent?
I'm not arguing that the equipment can't technically do it. After all, the Egyptians built the Pyramids remarkably well given their primitive tools. However, why would I care if I put a given sensor next to an air conditioner out vent? It's not going to change the reading enough to matter to anyone in the area. No one was collecting this data with this sort of study in mind.
This is why in their own data set they throw out up upwards of 70 percent of the data. The data is filtered to remove outliers. However, there is no way to know why a given reading was or was not an outlier. Possibly it was a bad reading. But possibly it was a good reading and the other readings are bad. And once you've determined what is and is not acceptable as n answer in the data, you're now predetermining the output.
This is why the raw data is so important and why it's so important to put the raw data side by side with the filtered data and then demostrate methodically how A is converted to B.
Possibly I'm full of crap. I'm not stupid. And to the best of my knowledge, I am not lying to you. So if I am confused, know that you're talking to an otherwise intelligent and well meaning person that is honestly trying to evaluate a complex subject that has regrettably been biased by partisan politics.
I hate the GW subject because it's both scientific and political. And it's also much more complex then creationism for example. So it's impossible to be totally sure unless you're an expert or you take a blind leap of faith somewhere.
I don't have faith for either side. I don't know if either side is right.
But the skeptics at least invite discussion and the warmists insult me when I ask questions... and that at the very least annoys me. Emotionally, that inclines me to be sympathetic to the side that doesn't seem to open every discussion with an insult. But science isn't a popularity contest. So you can be an a-hole and right. I know that. It simply becomes difficult to take people seriously when they resort to that sort of rhetoric so freely. In my experience it tends to be an intentional mask for something else. As if they offending people to stop a discussion because if it continues there will be problems.
I don't know if that's why such people are so frequently rude. That has just been my experience throughout my life in many different issues.
I'm being upfront about my bias here... I also don't want GW to be true because it is exceptionally inconvenient. But if it is, then that is reality. And if that is reality, then we should come up with real world solutions for it. The ideologues on both sides can go f' themselves. When it comes to real problems the focus has to be fixing it first and arguing about who's pet philosophy is right later.
Is that increase before or after the calibration. Is it before or after the filters?
I guess what is troubling here is that there is so much data and the quality of that data varies radically. Then all this data of variable quality is dumped into a single data set and a level of specificity that goes down to a tenth of a degree is inferred. The instruments with historical data were not the accurate even if you assumed the equipment were the application would introduce a large margin or error. And this becomes geometrically more problematic when you introduce proxy data. You can't infer a tenth of a degree temperature change 10,000 years ago from lake sediment. I'm sure you can get within ten degrees but within a tenth of a degree? I find that extremely hard to swallow.
And once you lose that precision, the fuzzy zone above and below your numbers widens out significantly and it becomes very hard to claim an increase when most of your data didn't move outside the margin of error.
We're talking about 1 degree MAX change. So any move from then to now will naturally be smaller then that. we're talking about tracking a fraction of a degree change over time using data that really doesn't have that many significant digits.
Please don't call me a denier or some other derogatory comment. It isn't helpful to an intellectual discussion on the matter.
I am skeptical. I find many aspects of the situation suspecious. And this is not helped by repeated instances of sloppy behavior. The Himalaya claim for example in the IPCC was based upon a misquoted phone interview of a scientist in a climbing magazine. Literally. That was the whole basis. And who found that out and got the IPCC to edit it? Was it peer review? Nope. It was skeptics that found it.
Now, you can say whatever you want about the education or intelligence of skeptics or deniers or whatever. But if they occasionally spot something that their intellectual betters don't and its a patiently absurd as basing a huge claim on nothing... then what does it say of the those intellectual betters? To a certain extent, arguing that skeptics are stupid doesn't work in your favor because they often spot things the warmists or alarmists don't spot. You'd do better to claim a smaller gap in the superiority if any at all if only because it makes mistakes less embarrassing.
As to turning science into a beurocratic nightmare, that is not my intent. If that is the result then my idea is poor. However, I would ask for constructive criticism on the point rather then flat rejection. That way I know what the problem is and I know whether your complaint is valid.
As to the datagathers, they don't even need to be scientists. The level of training would be enough to collect the data with a high degree of accuracy and precision. The theories it might well relate to would be irrelevant to this profession. As to forbidding them from making theories, I wouldn't forbid it. I would instead require that they disclose the data as they collect it and if they want to download that data later and theorize on their own time they are welcome to do it.
But they can't collect data, not release it, study it in secret, and then propose theories based on data no one has ever seen before.
What is important is that the data all gets pushed to the librarians and that all theory is based on data in the librarians database. So if you want to collect data and then theorize on it, the right way under this system is to collect it, submit the data raw to the system immediately, and then reference that data in your theories. Withholding data for any reason what so ever would be considered an ethical violation under this system.
We could radically increase the amount of data we collect. Might the quality go down? Possibly. The data would also note who collected, who that person is, when they collected it, any comments other people have made upon the data EVER, who those people are, and anything else you can possibly think of remembering for any reason. The librarians would be remembering everything under this system and the context and the comments.
As to archaeology and other fields where a certain amount of specialized education is required to gather data, what is really important is that they submit all the data as they collect it in the rawest possible form. If they want to theorize upon it at a later, it doesn't really matter so long as the raw data was recorded first. And of course, it would be expected that any theories offered would be based upon something in the database even if they submitted it to the database themselves. I'm trying to avoid situations where people propose theories based upon data that isn't publicly available or even available for peer review in a raw form. I am also trying to remove the incentive to withhold data until it can be analyzed. Analysis is optional. Submit it immediately.
That said, just as aceologists use students to do most of the work, I think it is possible in most fields to use less educated and trained personnel to collect the data. By all means, if you want to do it yourself, have fun. But this would hopefully encourage scientific organizations to use laymen with enough training to collect good data but not much else. There are a lot of things that aren't practical to study because there aren't enough people to do it.
I believe the British natural history musem had a policy where they encouraged people throughout the empire to send plant and animal samples back to England for study. An enormous number of new species were discovered in this way. People would pull some leaves off an unusual tree, press them between dry paper, and mail them to the museum. They have thousands of books of such leaves to this day categorized by location, time, etc.
Don't discount the value of laymen in collecting data. I wouldn't forbid theorists from collecting the data. I'd prefer if they didn't. But the real worry on my part is hording information and then throwing out theories based largely upon private data sets.
As to science standing or falling on evidence, that's if the evidence is disclosed. Often only filtered evidence or data is disclosed and and the raw unfiltered data and the exact methodology used to filter it is both not released and more importantly can't be verified because you can't compare the raw and filtered data.
As to
No they're not. The demographics frequently were inverted.
A few were consistently 20 percent or below all over the country indifferent to state. Where as others were 75 or above regardless of state.
Demographics played a bigger role in predicting grades then the state. Check your own link.
Certainly doesn't help. But that's correlative. You'll find that people from Korea or china for example that don't speak english when they come to the US tend to have much better demographics despite having no money when they come here.
Why would they do well and someone else might not?
See? You have to widdle down all the correlative issues until you find the cause.
It's not race. It's not gender. It's not money. It's not language. It's not location.
It's culture. Given cultures fail and given cultures succeed.
When you cancel out all the bits that have exceptions it's all that's left.
We talk talk a lot about income distribution, health stats, longevity, teen pregnacy... etc.
Who wants to bet the 22 percent that passes the national science exam doesn't have most of these problems?
Now, having determined that there is correlation between many different negative demographic stats. What is the cause? Really?
Fix it.
It isn't education because they're getting the same education as the kids that do well.
It isn't school lunches because those are the same too.
What is it? Go through all the correlating factors and isolate the cause.
Much of the market crisis came about because they had boiled down "risk" which is an extremely complicated subject using mathematical models down to one number.
Basically, the higher the number was the more risky the investment was according to the models.
The problem is that you can't boil risk down to one number. There are different types of risk and it's impossible to combine them.
The model made all sorts of hilarious assumptions like "the market will never crash"... Never mind that it has in the past and therefore can and therefore you can't make that assumption.
So yeah, you see it in finance.
I'm not anti intellectual.
I'm just not a fan of intellectual masturbation. Keep it useful and keep it relevant. That's all I'm asking.
As to not wanting to hear anything contrary, I love being proven wrong. I simply require it be proven. I don't like people saying I'm wrong and not proving it. How would you like it if I simply contradicted you and provided no basis for that contradiction? You don't like it either? Don't do it.
As to "specifically," define it immediately. This comment is especially annoying. If I've said something that is wrong and you're claiming to in anyway represent some higher order of learning then you have to justify that pretense.
I think a good way to deal with would be similar to the separation of powers in the US federal government.
hear me out.
What if one group of scientists only collected data. Nothing else. No theories and they didn't store the data or interact with the scientists that want to support theories.
The next group are librarians and information specialists. They collect all known data and sort it. They also have all studies on file. They are the keepers of the knowledge. But they do not collect the data and they do not theorize on it.
The last group neither collects data nor stores it. These are the theorists. They collect data from the librarians and use that data to form their theories. The data held by the librarians is open to all. So rather then having to state your data in a study, you could simply offer a reference number to the data stored in the system.
If the librarians don't have the data then theorists request the data from the librarians and they then pass that request publicly to the data collectors.
This all sounds complicated but what it does is make everything very transparent. The people collecting data have no incentive to bias their data. They have no vested interest in any conclusion. Rather, their bias is in getting the most precise and accurate results possible. They might over state their precision but they are less likely to bias their results.
The librarians are very key to the whole system because they record all requests for information from the theorists, all the data from the data collectors, all studies published by the theorists, and all opinions written about those studies. Again, everything categorized and filtered. So lets say a given paper has 10,000 different opinions written about it. Well, some of those might not be written by scientists. Some of them might be written by scientists with no experience in the field. And then you need to break it down by year. Maybe a given opinion was written right after the paper was published and another one was written ten years later. Then break it down by location... etc. It's not for the librarians to say what is an isn't relevant. They should collect all information they're given, categorize it, and make it available.
The above concept would make scientific disclosure redundant. The theorist wouldn't need to disclose anything. All the data would be open to everyone from the exact same place the theorist got it.
I'd rather not get drawn into a stupid semantics debate.
Can we agree to this:
"Junk in; Junk out."
I think what we're seeing in many fields is that the data is poor or doesn't exist. So scientists have convinced themselves that they can use magical computers and mathematical models to turn fuzzy imprecise data into something crisp.
It's like taking a picture of the Mona Lisa with a 3 MP camera from 50 feet away and believing that using a mathematical model you can see every crack in the paint. You just can't.
If you want that level of detail you need to have better data. Or purge any greater specificity then that from your conclusions. During analysis, I believe it's allowed to keep raw averages. But when you're stating final conclusions you are supposed to limit your results to significant digits. Which means the conclusions can't claim to be more precise then the input data.
Well, it's funny when they do that with proxy data. They use samples of biomass in sediment from 10,000 years ago and pretend to derive a .01 temperature difference. You can't get that from pine cones, ice cores, and fossilized vegetation.
The real problem with all this stuff is that the data was never collected for this purpose. The standards and precision were for crop forecasts and whether or not people should go to the beach. It was never collected to be compared to a tenth of a degree across continents and throughout centuries.
Even the satellite data has problems because it's calibrated. The sats don't know what temperature it is on earth without calibration. Basically, you ask the sat what temp it is in a place where you know the temp and from that you infer what all the other temps are in it's readings.
Where things get squirrelly is that you can have two way calibration. That is data is used to calibrate sat data and then that sat data is used to filter the ground stations. So rather then everything being based on a wide data set everything suddenly becomes based on the calibration data.
And what's troubling is that the calibration data for the sats is not fixed. It changes. If you use the old calibration data for new readings most of the sat data reports cooler temperatures. Its only after calibration that it reports higher figures.
Possibly this is all legitimate. But it would be very easy to bias the calibration data slightly to show a warming trend.
Ultimately, the solution is to collect a lot more data, make that data publicly available with no filtration, and then hand that off to another group of scientists to analyze it.
There is too much theory crafting and too little data collection.
They're overstating precision. Which rather then a forgivable error is an elementary mistake no trained scientist should ever make.
A VERY basic concept they teach at the lowest level of science education is the distinction between accuracy and precision. This is science 101.
Accuracy is whether or not a given conclusion is correct.
Precision is to the degree of specificity.
Typically you run into problems on complex subjects because they overstate the precision of their data or their ability analyze the data.
This can boil down to simple thinks like significant digits.
For example, I'm measuring volume to two significant digits in a giant data set with thousands of measurements. When and if I average those numbers the final average can't have more then two significant digits. That sounds elementary but you see this error made on some big studies. You'll have a situation where something is being measured in a crude sense by many sources and then in the analysis a much higher degree of specificity is implied.
Often that degree of specificity is required to make certain conclusions which is why they break the rule. This is lazy and a breach of scientific ethics. What they need to do is collect the data all over again this time to the level of specificity they need.
Simply saying its too hard to collect the data properly so they're going to make assumptions is not reasonable or ethical. I suppose you could do it so long as you kept an asterisk next to the data and the findings to make it very clear throughout that the conclusion is a guess and not in any way empirical science since at some point people were guesstimating results.
I haven't thought of selling votes. I guess you're right. F*ck.
I'm trying to come up with a way to detect fraud without causing bigger problems.
Okay... to make the votes unsellable it have to be impossible to let someone else use that one off serial number to see your vote. Okay... here's a way to fix it.
What if rather then letting people check their vote online, we have a special room with booths in the federal building or something where people can bring one voter stub and check a vote. But we only let them do it once per election cycle.
So you could sell a vote but you wouldn't only be able to sell one of them because whoever was checking them would only be able to check one vote.
I don't like this compromise because it's so cumbersome. Do you have a way of fixing it that doesn't cause bigger problems?
They've been excluding a lot of people recently for very silly reasons. Apparently someone have been given more power then they have wit to manage and they're basically going power mad. It's one thing if you're excluding people that present a public risk. It's another if the reasons are totally arbitrary.
I'm not saying anything tracable. You shouldn't be able to say "robert voted for mark"... But you should able to tell valid votes from invalid votes.
For example, lets say we give every voter single use serial number. It doesn't link to who they are. Like a scratch card with some numbers under it. Then when they got o vote those numbers have to be entered before the machine will accept the vote.
Lets say the code is long enough that the possibility of a machine erroring out and accidentially getting one of those numbers right is a million to one. When the votes are tallied the system will only accept votes with a valid serial number and no dublicate serial numbers will be accepted.
That won't stop someone from changing votes but it will make it very hard for people to add votes without a list of the serial numbers.
Now a problem with these serial numbers in the computer software world has been that the mathematical model used to deterimine what is and what is not a valid serial number gets out at some point and then it's becomes rather easy for a machine to automatically generate thousands of bogus numbers.
That is only possible because the cracker gets their hands on the software itself that determines if it's valid or not. In the voting system, this software would be retained only one a couple very secure machines and it would be exceedingly difficult for a cracker to get it.
I also think it would be good if the system let voters call up what the machine had stored as their vote. Again, this wouldn't be linked to their name but to that single use serial number. So if you keep that paper stub you can login to a site after the votes are counted and pull up that record of that vote. And if someone is compromising the votes then enough people should know which way they voted and see that the system has their vote wrong. Obviously we'll just have their word for it. We could possibly have several redundant databases that don't have two way links. Thus someone changing votes would be unlikely to be able to change them in all the databases and the inconsistencies between the databases would be a smoking gun.
A lot of people think voter fraud isn't a big deal. And maybe it isn't. But it is easier to commit voter fraud then it is to buy a bear under age. And that doesn't sit right with me given that our whole political system hinges on the legitimacy of those votes.
or people that didn't even graduate highschool.
I've seen people that have nothing get a big home loan on 500 dollars down.
All the subprime loans are were backed by the feds ultimately.
And I know from several friends in the banking business that prior to the bubble bursting they were being pushed very hard by the government to make those subprime loans.
Wellsfargo for example didn't want to do it. But the feds told them they would screw them through the FDIC if they didn't make the loans. So they set up a minor sub bank specifically designed to make subprime loans. That's all the sub bank did. And when the bubble burst that bank went bankrupt. But there was no liability between the Wellsfargo proper and that sub bank. So wellsfargo survived.
As to passing a law capping the cost of education, you have no right to tell a school especially a private school what they can and cannot charge. And furthermore, even if you did, price controls don't work.
I think your idea is fine for public universities. They are owned by the state. But the private universities have a right to charge whatever they want. You force their prices down by not paying them.
They have to fill those seats.
Not really... What is the road to hell paved in?...
They don't let them declare bankruspy because students have no assets and it would almost always be in their interest to declare bankrupsy. This is why a student can't buy a new car without it getting cosigned by their parents or putting a lot of money down. Auto dealers don't trust the student to make good on the loan.
The solution in education is to do the same thing. And that means a lot of people simply can't afford it. That's bad because an educated population is more valuable. It is in our interest that these people be educated. So they're given a way to finance it but they're forced to pay it back.
That is one way to do it and I think it's a bad way.
A better way might be to debt a percentage of income from the student after they graduate. See, we want them to get the educations because they're more valuable educated. But only those that pursue valuable careers are valuable once educated. So for example, it makes no sense to give federal loans for people to get liberal arts degrees. It isn't a good investment. Now, if they get a scholarship because they're gifted or they use their own money... fine. But if they're neither they should get a degree that is more likely to yield a useful job.
Furthermore, if the university is paid based on the success or failure of their students it makes it very important for the university that students become employed after they graduate. That means partnering with businesses, job fairs, etc. Because they don't get jobs the university is screwed.
Another idea would be to just socialize the whole thing basically give everyone a free university education. Some people really like that idea, but it has most of the problems our existing system has only the students don't even need to try to pay society back.
I like the middle choice if only because it makes the school accountable for what they've taught the students. If they've taught them a bunch of bullshit that isn't useful to anyone then that will hurt them. Someone might say that the universities will stop making well rounded students and instead focus entirely on vocational studies. But the reality is that businesses like well rounded students if only because they don't like hiring ignorant people.
There's a balance somewhere. Some of the more frivolous studies might become more ratified but in general the school will be serving it's role in society more if it helps students become productive members of society. And in so doing they'll justify the patronage of the state. If they don't prepare students they have no purpose and deserve nothing.
This is a serious problem.
Technology is already playing a role in bringing costs down. Universities are putting many classes online. Lecture classes are especially well suited to this task. And over time these lectures might even be simple recordings made at one university and duplicated to all the others. If you're taking an undergraduate mathematics lecture it's not like you need the lectures done fresh every time. Nothing will be different. That could lower costs radically while not lowering the quality of the education. Paper grading etc can be done by teacher's aids or possibly if the answers are all rerecorded the whole thing could be totally automated.
These are options. The costs have to come down. Universities that don't take that seriously are in for a rude shock.
Well, increasing funding means tuition prices go up. Example? The last 20 years.
So find a way out of it because we can't afford the price increases indefinitely.
This is a bubble. Do you really want to wait until it's fully leveraged and pops?
I'm sure a consequence of killing federal funding for housing is that fewer people buy houses. Reactions aren't going to be instant.
We've been building this bubble for a long time and it might take awhile to deflate. Unless you want to pump it up to max, have it pop, and then collapse. That will probably be faster but it will also be far more painful.
That's fine. And if he declares bankruptcy that should be the end of it. For all debts prior to that point. Period.
So if the woman knows that if she gets too greedy the man can simply declare bankruptcy she'll have to moderate her demands to be reasonable. Or wind up getting whatever his liquidated estate is worth which may or may not be a fraction of what she wanted... and there after jack and/or sh*t.
If she keeps it reasonable and doesn't demand an absurd amount then it could be fine.
Why did the price of housing go up and up? Sub prime loans. you can blame wall street for making it worse but the prices were ticking up for years before wall street got involved. The prices started going up with the cheap government loans.
What we can see from the universities that they're responding in the same way. The more you increase the loans the more the tuition goes up. The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education.
It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have... so if you reduce what can be spent on education rather then causing kids not to get educations it will probably cause prices to come down.
Furthermore, the US is giving national tuition rates to foreign students. That's US tax dollars paying for someone's education that isn't even a citizen and isn't likely to stay. So what exactly is the point?
I don't know... I have a lot of problems with the current way we finance tuition. They're the only loans you can't escape by declaring bankruptcy and that strikes me as wrong. There is no legal obligation that you shouldn't be able to escape by declaring bankruptcy. Everything from child support to a student loan. And I know what people are saying, lowlifes will just ditch their obligations. Yes they will. Which is why you don't loan lowlifes money in the first place. As to single mothers getting screwed out of alimony... well, it's a reason to make your separations demands reasonable. If the alimony is so high that it becomes in his interest to declare bankruptcy then you're asking for too much. Pointblank.
Just a little house cleaning and a lot of these problems will go away.
In the words of Socrates... "whatever"...
I didn't say that. I said manson and OBL are on their side and that's a fact because they made public statements to that effect.
Hitler liked dogs... so... he's with those dog lovers... which we could fallaciously argue means dog lovers are nazis...
AGW supporters have nothing to do with OBL or manson. Guilt by association is wrong just as virtue by association is wrong.
A person isn't good or bad based on their friends.
No, it's not really a good find. This was all over the press at the time.
I actually heard the Manson interview shortly after it was made and he also expressed his belief in AGW. Which is weird but it doesn't matter. A scientific hypothesis doesn't become more or less credible because a psychopath believes in it. If we very carefully divorce our notions about the validity of something from the person that said it we should get closer to talking about the actual facts.
The pro AGW faction has a lot of good science on their side and the anti AGW faction has some very relevant counter points and questions.
Lets talk about that indifferent to the political bullshit without name dropping or saying "all scientists agree" or "the science is settled"... that just pisses people off and doesn't accomplish anything. It's as pointlessly inflammatory as pointing out that Manson and OBL were AGW supporters.