Subliminal messages in "documentaries"

An Inconvenient Truth:
Scientific message: Anthropogenic Global Warming is real and dangerous.
Subliminal message: George Bush kills innocent animals.

Supersize Me:
Scientific message: Fast food outlet policies are unhelpful for losing weight.
Subliminal message: McDonalds is evil.

Farenheit 9/11:
Political science Message: The events of September 11th should not have resulted in war against Iraq.
Subliminal message: George W Bush is an evil warmongerer.

More dumb climate change stuff

Realclimate has become too tedious to follow up on anymore and I'm getting a gist of what it is that bugs me. The climate scientists in general pin a great deal of importance obviously on science and the scientific method (at least that which specifically concerns climate per se). Firstly, I don't believe that the all the answers to important questions lay in the cup of reason, and secondly, I find the scope of the science limiting when they are only dealing with the science of the physical earth rather than the associated political science, economic science, biological feedbacks, game theory etc. For instance if one only argues about whether the science is factual in "an inconvenient truth", it misses the point that everything other than the science is "selling" to a certain point of view and way of thinking. Movies like "an inconvenient truth", "supersize me" and "farenheit 9/11" I do not consider to be documentaries, but "brainwashing" through subliminal messages embedded in otherwise factual footage. I must admit I have not found any sites which take a multi-denominational science analysis of it. "the Economist" comes close, by assuming that the world will act on climate change, whether for good or ill, and is analysing the most cost effective ways of going about it. It, like me, has left aside the question of whether we "should" do anything as a moot question, for the majority seems to have made up their mind, both individually and collectively as countries to act one way or another.

Game Theory 101

I was casually browsing the web googling game theory, and the third lecture listed on a university schedule explained the "tragedy of the commons" game/situation. It escapes me why this stuff isn't taught in primary school alongside other special interest science stuff they learn, such as the environment etc, but I digress. A critical lesson is that if a situation can be proved as such, the solutions, though obviously difficult should be obvious. The trick is always about reorganising such that the common resource is no longer common.
The less talked about opposite twin of the situation is the "tragedy of the anti-commons" This is rarer, but any argument against Kyoto would have to play up the possibility of this occuring.

Iraq and "the surge" d'uh

Tactics work best with a full understanding of what tactics your "enemies" are using. Ever since 1983 and the first big suicide terrorist strike it should be clear what the terrorists achieved that time and what they have since used as a tactic. That is to remove a big army from the region at the lowest cost to themselves. These tactics will fail if proper countertactics are used. There has got to be a clear signal to the various terrorist groups that every terrorist attack on US interests in Iraq will result in more troops, not less. Thus it would have been more helpful to have started with a much smaller, more expert force, to give room to surge at every opportunity. The example I am thinking of is Australia in the Solomon Islands. There was a small complement of federal police working there, and a sniper shot and killed one. Australia immediately sent in troops. When things had calmed down somewhat, the troops quietly moved out.

The problem with fear

It often comes up in arguments about global warming, Y2k bugs and nuclear armageddon. People feel vindicated in sending and propagating alarmist arguments, whether or not the aftermath ends up completely benign or not. For the Y2k bug for instance, people who wildly exaggerated the dangers felt that it turned out well at least in part because fear focused peoples minds to fixing the problems. I will argue right here and now that widespread fear is neither sufficient nor necessary to "fix" global warming (I'm using the word fix loosely, to indicate the avoidance of civilisation threatening disaster). The example I am going to use is Easter Island and the emptying of the Aral sea. These are the kind of situations we are trying to avoid with the Earth in a sense. There was very likely widespread fear in both of these cases. The math/science was not very hard to work out and well within the grasp of the citizens involved. The problem on Easter Island was in one sense statutory - given the location of the island, human nature, and the technologies and cultures they had at the time, the island was doomed from when the first settlement took place. The problem is easily described in game theory as the "tragedy of the commons", and the various "fixes" are completely "structural" in nature. They generally involve some kind of "ownership" of the common resource (ownership leads to good stewardship by correctly valuing it), and a central arbitration of competing interests on the resource. In other words if applied to global warming, the Kyoto protocol, carbon trading, and the continuing measurement and tracking of all the variables is vital and probably sufficient if it doesn't completely break down in acrimony. The continuing risk is both cheaters, and a lack of central authority which may enforce aspects in the future. Fear, as it stands may not even be helpful, as it breeds mistrust of any future central arbitrer.

School Uniforms

I've already discussed this before here but if you are looking to buy school uniforms but are worried about exploitation, you should think about all the school products we get that are imported from overseas, and how we can over-think this and realise that using our purchase choices is too indirect a technique to lessen crimes of exploitation. Exploitation in Australia tends to only be possible within the context of organised crime. In other words, to force someone to work for well under the going rate (with the job market the way it is) they would have to be locked up. It is ironic that the local prisoners labour on sewing machines.
I suggest when looking for school uniforms to search for the best quality. Quality demonstrates attention to detail and pride in one's work. This only happens where the sewer is comfortable, happy and satisfied with the conditions of employment. Unhappy workers can easily sabotage the interests of the employer without risk of getting found.

Tight job market advantages

The flip side of a tight job market is that there is less angst about job security. Employees are just as happy to be classed casual, will leave at the slightest whim without fear of unemployment, and have way less fear of asking the boss for a favour, time off or whatever. Change of scenery, rather than destitution is the only challenge.

That sucking sound

It's Townsville inhaling labour from all over Australia and around the world.

New Year Resolutions

I had been stumped for new years resolutions for years - so I asked my therapist (no really!). She made me realise that goals are good, and there was just a few simple guidelines about them. ie. they must be achievable, it had to be something I was interested in achieving, there should be just a hint of satisfaction or challenge about them, and that they can be given enough priority in the context of day to day activities. It came to me clear as day once I realised all this. I am resolving to join Townsville Brass. Whether I end up the conductor, become a soloist or just have a minor part in their second or third tier bands doesn't really matter. I've been away from it for so long (while people I knew when I was there over 15 years ago are still there), that it will have the "prodigal son returns" feel to it. I am looking forward to the first practice on the 24th of January.

half Milosevich, half Rachel Hunter hmmm....

http://www.myheritage.com

Freakonomics

I am not sure if it means I am intolerant of "other" world views, but reading a book that matches my own has overcome my general avoidance of books in general. I could describe its style as rambling, which matches my own style of argument. However, I guess that the concept of disproving some conventional wisdoms is absolutely necessary, but I would like it to go further and use the discoveries as assumptions to come to even more startling conclusions. With the abortion link, "modern" economies that attempt "prohibition" as pre Rowe vs Wade US or Romania become increasingly "unstable" due to the intergenerational positive feedbacks. I think one can come to this conclusion without necessarily coming to moral conclusions. Even as this book manages to disprove many conventional wisdoms, there are a thousand other conventional wisdoms that don't lend themselves to data mining at all. For instance, school results don't seem to be affected by changing schools, but other less measurable things are very likely to be affected. For instance, our choice of school change for our children had nothing to do with our desire for better school results, but a more subtle desire for better "life" results. It does make a mockery of peoples stated reasons for changing schools however. Every time I mention how good the reputation of the new school is, they tell or ask how many OP 1's they get. I hope that challenging conventional wisdoms becomes a worldwide habit. Other ones to work on - "War is bad", "Doctor visits make you live longer", "chicken bones should not be fed to dogs", "Global warming is the most serious global environmental problem". In that sense, does Levitt have a more important message than Lomborg? Probably. Levitt challenges conventional wisdoms overall and asks us to look at motives behind experts in general. Lomborg principally concentrates on environmental activists/experts and questions their record on excessive fearmongering and looks at a more pure economic approach, without also addressing the non-monetary aspects of environmental motives and where they may lead us both in a negative direction or a positive one.

Reading Freakonomics cover to cover

It is so easy to read books in which the world view matches one's own. Nearly finished it in one day.

If water was bananas

Due to the suddenness of the onset of drought, retail prices of water are expected to be up to 10 times greater than normal. Therefore the price for one thousand litres of drinking quality water will go up from an average of $1.20 to an estimated $12.00 per thousand litres. Just think about that for an average family of four who drink a litre of water each (+ dogs) that is nearly .8 of a cent a day just for drinking water! Add in the hygene necessities like washing and cleaning clothes that goes up to 5 cents a day! It is no wonder that people are fretting about the crisis. In a thirld world country droughts like this bring ruin and famine. Thankfully for us it just means spending a little less on our lifestyle this Christmas. Luxuries like watering the lawn for an hour will go up from $2 to about $20. Looks like another miserable summer with brown lawns again, except for the lucky rich. Thankfully, the higher water prices will make it worth while to truck in supplies from areas with plenty of water, or to pay rent on recent new pipelines.

If bananas were water

Shortages of bananas would lead to harsher and harsher restrictions. Level 1 restrictions would mean we are only allowed to eat bananas on our allocated days based on odds and evens. Voluntary reductions would be encouraged and a "banana wise" campaign launched. By level three restrictions we would only be allowed to consume them at certain times on our allocated days. By this time, fines would be imposed on people eating them outside these times. These restrictions are important because although most bananas are eaten when people can do without, sometimes the nutrients obtained can be a matter of life and death.

The Universe insists I Blog

But in the meantime look for my comments at RealClimate:)

RealClimate:)

False economies:(. Having posted several times in the realclimate forum, I sense a culture, one feature of which is economic naivety. When anyone new posts, many forum contributors feel that you are either for them or against them. For a serious answer to a challenge, it seems that you have to structure it such that you take their "climate world view" as gospel for a starting point.
So far, my challenge to the scientists there to the scientific validity of attributing deaths due to weather events (demonstrably a chaotic system) to changes in climate remains unanswered. Causality is on tenuous ground here, unlike geologic temperature records, extreme weather event statistics are available for an infinitesmally small time period. It is impossible to know whether extreme weather events (drought,floods,hurricanes) are more or less prevalent in previous times of higher CO2 and temperatures. If ocean temperatures were deterministically generating them, they should be more easily forecast year by year using ocean thermometers than they are. It is entirely plausible that high enough temperatures may suppress more extreme events than are caused.

Could be as much as (enter own exaggeration)

This is one of the themes from Bjorn Lomborg's infamous book. It is not lying - It isn't even necessarily an exaggeration, but it encourages people to only talk about alarming figures that are at the far edge of expectations. It doesn't help that the media only reports the alarming "Coulds" and ignore the opposite (eg. any economist which states - there could actually be no net cost to the world due to global warming.) Basically, the outside chance of avertable complete global catastrophe should at least be considered against the possibility that global warming could prevent something that would otherwise cause complete global catastrophe. Basically, putting my scientist hat on, 1)we should concentrate the most on the middle of expectations, 2) note that global conflict, trade and other dynamics will greatly influence trend lines and 3) Make sure the myriad other environmental risks are given sufficient priority and scrutiny.

Banana Republic

Dr. Clam said...
Rereading your post reminds me- have you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Chose to Succeed or Fail" yet? Apparently both the Easter Islanders and the Norse colonists on Greenland began their precipitous slides toward disaster when they allowed banana imports from overseas. Amazing but true!

3:12 PM

Hence the term "Banana Republic" resonates true :). I kind of want to read the book, but I fear it is absolutely great on accurate history and makes grand points about the environment, but fails to abstract a technical theory from it. I feel that to apply what we learn from distinct (separate) cases from history, we have to abstract mathematical models (or at least game theory models) that explain what is happening. It is of absolutely no consequence if the author allows the reader to come to whatever conclusion they like such as - "That means we've got to stop killing whales, right?" or some general environmental platitude like: Lets dramatically subsidise renewable energy.

Without even reading the various examples in the book, I still think they correlate closely to the "tragedy of the commons". Game theory can be used to simulate those examples - then similarities can be compared to the modern world to see if certain fish stocks are going to become extinct, whether pollution is destined to keep increasing, whether drought in Africa is going to cause mass famine etc. EnviroGeometeorologists can predict future temperature rises all they like, but have they even thought of applying game theory to see how the reactions and/or competitive pressure and fears of disaster change the likely future. In a few short years, the world seems to have gone from a free for all for using resources as economy dictates, to a fractured world where fear in some has completely changed the resource economies, while the relatively resource poor have continued to demand them.

The unemployment rate is too goddam low!

As a business manager, I got used to the times when I would put an ad in the paper and you would interview a few people for a job. You would get one or two that you wondered why they didn't already have a job. Nowadays, just to get *one* applicant, I had to advertise higher than award rates; and the applicants are interviewing me! They have a list of current job offers and dictate their terms if I am interested to have the pleasure of their service. Businesses suffer in this way when the economy is going so well. It is of little comfort that you can more easily downsize when it is so hard to find and keep staff at all.

Schicksalstag 9/11

17th anniversary of Germany's "day of fate". So - How's the new world order going? Some of the wounds of WWII were healed, but the emergent uni-polar world has lost direction. The affluent peaceful lifestyle of the West is much more able to be held hostage by militarily insignificant actions. Threats from known enemies have given way to weasel attacks.