subject:"OT\: The Monty Hall Problem"


James A. Donald
 This works in those fields where there is a lot of private funding, but
 in fields that are politically sensitive, and wholly government funded,
 we unsurprisingly get politics rather than science.

Kent Tenney wrote:
 Do you think oil and coal companies have political power?

Sure they do, hence the carbon credits, which is a carbon tax in which 
some large part of the tax receipts is paid back to those who have in 
the past produced carbon.  Carbon credits is a tax on petrol and 
electricity to be paid by you and me, and received by various greeny 
groups, and by people who produced carbon in the past.



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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


Edward K. Ream wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:59 AM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:
 
James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:
 Unsupported and unexplained politically correct pseudo
 science appears all the time in Science and Nature

Edward K. Ream wrote:
 If you want me to believe it, you must cite a reputable source.

And the only reputable sources are Science and Nature?

The proof of what I say is that we only *now* know that Bricca's results 
depended on a mere ten trees, which unsurprisingly give results quite 
different from other trees that might equally well have been used.  If 
Bricca had nine years ago explained how he was reconstructing 
temperatures, the criticism that his twentieth century data sample was 
far too small would have been made nine years ago.

Since the criticism was not made nine years ago, he did not make the 
data from which he supposedly calculated past climate available nine 
years ago.  Therefore, until a few days ago, his results were 
unsupported and unexplained, for only now are we able to criticize the 
support and explanation.


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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


Edward K. Ream wrote:
  I am asking for reliable data, from peer-reviewed
  articles.

You want an article appearing a peer reviewed journal
proving that the journals are not genuinely peer
reviewed?

You are, however, happy to rely on assertions by peer
reviewed journals that they are in fact peer reviewed?

That only now are we complaining that the blade of the
replacement hockey stick is based on a mere ten trees
proves that for the past nine years we did not know what
the blade of the replacement hockey stick was based on.
Obviously, people would have complained as soon as they
knew.

Therefore Science was violating its policy, and the
basic principles of science, that the calculations and
data supporting any result must be made available.

That the calculations and data supporting the
replacement hockey stick graph was not made available,
proves that there was and is no real peer review for
politically correct science.

That basis for the replacement hockey stick blade was
ludicrously weak, proves that there was and is no real
peer review, for peer review is supposed to catch such
things.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-09 Thread derwisch




On Oct 8, 4:28 pm, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 6:15 AM, derwisch 
  Science is full of schools

  which rather resemble competing tribes than people presenting
  contradicting facts, and agreeing to a common mindset might rather
  accelerate than impede a scientific career. I suppose you are familiar
  with Kuhn's scientific theory:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.

 Of course I am.  Kuhn's work in no way implies that science is full of
 hoaxes. It acknowledges that science is done by human beings, and science
 must compensate for our human failings.

I don't think there's a contradiction.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-09 Thread Edward K. Ream

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 6:16 AM, derwisch 
johannes.hues...@med.uni-heidelberg.de wrote:


 Kuhn's work in no way implies that science is full of
  hoaxes. It acknowledges that science is done by human beings, and science
  must compensate for our human failings.

 I don't think there's a contradiction.


True, but irrelevant.  Kuhn was talking about changing world views, not
fraud.

One negative aspect of Kuhn's work is the proliferation of bozos trumpeting
paradigm shifts.  The great ones tend to understatement. For example
Watson  Crick's paper (Nature, April 25 1953) starts with,

We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid
(D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable
biological interest.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-09 Thread Edward K. Ream


On Oct 9, 9:14 am, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

  You want an article appearing a peer reviewed journal
  proving that the journals are not genuinely peer
  reviewed?

 No.  I want an article appearing in a peer reviewed journal indicating that
 the threat of global warming is significantly over-stated.

There is, in fact, plenty of real debate among climate scientists.
Opinions do get revised.

For example: Science 17 November 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5802, p. 1064

QQQ
News of the Week
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE:
False Alarm: Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All
Richard A. Kerr

A closer look at the Atlantic Ocean's currents has confirmed what many
oceanographers suspected all along: There's no sign that the ocean's
heat-laden conveyor is slowing. The lag reported late last year was
a mere flicker in a system prone to natural slowdowns and speedups.
Furthermore, researchers are finding that even if global warming were
slowing the conveyor and reducing the supply of warmth to high
latitudes, it would be decades before the change would be noticeable
above the noise.

The full realization of the Atlantic's capriciousness comes with the
first continuous monitoring of the ocean's north-south flows. In March
2004, researchers of the Rapid Climate Change (RAPID) program moored
19 buoyant, instrument-laden cables along 26.5°N from West Africa to
the Bahamas. A few months later, they steamed along the same latitude,
lowering instruments periodically to take an instantaneous snapshot
of north-south flows. While waiting for the moored array to produce
long-term observations, physical oceanographer Harry Bryden and his
team at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, U.K.,
compared the 2004 snapshot with four earlier instantaneous surveys
dating back to 1957. They found a 30% decline in the northward flow of
the conveyor (Science, 2 December 2005, p. 1403), sparking headlines
warning of Europe's coming ice age.

The first year of RAPID array observations has now been analyzed, and
the next European ice age looks to be a ways off. At a RAPID
conference late last month in Birmingham, U.K., Bryden reported on the
first continuous gauging of conveyor flow. Variations up and down
within 1 year are as large as the changes seen from one snapshot to
the next during the past few decades, he found. He observed a lot of
variability, says oceanographer Martin Visbeck of the Leibniz
Institute of Marine Science at the University of Kiel in Germany, who
attended the meeting; so much variability that more than 95% of the
scientists at the workshop concluded that we have not seen any
significant change of the Atlantic circulation to date, wrote Visbeck
in a letter to the British newspaper the Guardian.

Although the immediate threat has evaporated, a difficult challenge
has taken its place. Scientific honesty would require records for
decades in order to pick out a greenhouse-induced slowing, says
physical oceanographer Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in Cambridge. How do you go about doing science when you
need decades of record? For their part, RAPID researchers will be
asking for funding to extend array operations to a decade, says
Bryden. Then some combination of government agencies would have to
take on the burden of decades of watchful waiting.
QQQ

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


Edward K. Ream wrote:
  Your language gives you away.  There is nothing
  fraudulent about attempting to reconstruct past
  climate data.

It is entirely fraudulent to claim to have reconstructed
past climate data when ones results depend entirely
on a group of ten trees, and to refrain for nine years
from revealing how few trees were involved

It is a gross violation of the scientific method, and
rules of the journals involved, to present the results
of one's calculations and for nine years to refuse to
reveal how the calculations were done and what they were
calculated from.

Had he originally revealed how he calculated it, or what
he calculated it from, everyone in the world would have
asked:
TEN trees!  Of which only one grew unusually
fast!  If I was to pick another ten trees, would
the result be similar?

And of course, the result for the next few trees was
completely different - as Bricca well knew, but some how
neglected to mention for nine years.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-08 Thread James A. Donald

James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:
Genuine science is replicable. And replicable
does not mean two priests recite the same doctrine,
it means they explain what they did in such a
fashion that anyone else could do it also.

If they refuse to explain, they are not scientists,
but priests of Gaea.

Edward K. Ream wrote:
You can't be published in journals like Nature or
Science (or any other reputable scientific journal)
if you can't explain your work.

Unsupported and unexplained politically correct pseudo
science appears all the time in Science and Nature
For example:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/01/ross-mckitrick-defects-in-key-climate-data-are-uncovered.aspx
: : Despite the fact that these papers appeared
: : in top journals like Nature and Science, none
: : of the journal reviewers or editors ever
: : required Briffa to release his Yamal data.
: : Steve McIntyre’s repeated requests for them
: : to uphold their own data disclosure rules
: : were ignored.

This sort of thing (that PC science is in practice
exempted from data disclosure, and proudly proclaims
results on the basis of secret evidence) has been an
ongoing scientific scandal from the very beginning
of the global warming movement, and everyone aware
of this unscientific practice should have realized
that global warming science is not science, but
politics and religion, and that global warming
scientists are not scientists, but priests of Gaea.

Environmentalism, and several other isms, are state
sponsored religions, which because of state backing
have the privilege of publishing their holy texts in
scientific journals despite conspicuous and infamous
failure to comply with the standards and rules of
those journals.

Nine years later, Briffa's Yamal data for twentieth
century temperatures turned out to be that one tree of
ten selected trees grew unusually rapidly during the
twentieth century as compared to fossil trees of the
same type from the same area. These ten trees were
selected by Bricca after a great many other trees in the
same area were measured, but the rest of the
measurements were not included.

The larger population of trees, taken as a whole, shows
much the same growth pattern as the fossil trees.

Take out one tree from those ten, Yamal06, and most of
the evidence for climate change vanishes. Restore the
much larger set of tree measurements from which the ten
trees were selected, and all of the evidence for climate
change vanishes - the population as a whole is has the
same growth rates as the fossil tree.

Take out one tree from half a dozen graphs of global
warming in near a dozen papers, and suddenly they do not
show global warming any more.

Bricca has, at this time, not yet explained why those
ten trees, and not other trees in the same area measured
in the same survey. And whatever his explanation, ten
trees is not enough.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-08 Thread derwisch




On Oct 7, 3:35 pm, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:



  Imo, it is impossible to read any of the following and go away with the
  conclusion that evolutionary theory is anything but plain fact:

 One of the most disheartening things about such debates is that many
 people fail to realize that science as a social enterprise has no specific
 agenda, except discovery.  There are *huge* disincentives for scientists to
 mislead themselves or others.  If there were real data contradicting global
 warming or evolution, people would instantly make their career by uncovering
 them.

While I am with you in general, I think your confidence in science
weakens your point rather than stresses it. Science is full of schools
which rather resemble competing tribes than people presenting
contradicting facts, and agreeing to a common mindset might rather
accelerate than impede a scientific career. I suppose you are familiar
with Kuhn's scientific theory: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.

Personally, I would place the anthropogenic global warming denial on
the same scale as the 9/11 was an inside job theory, rather
outlandish but not completely impossible, in contrast to ID and
Holocaust denial.
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:59 AM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:


 James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:
Genuine science is replicable.  And replicable
does not mean two priests recite the same doctrine,
it means they explain what they did in such a
fashion that anyone else could do it also.
   
If they refuse to explain, they are not scientists,
but priests of Gaea.

 Edward K. Ream wrote:
   You can't be published in journals like Nature or
   Science (or any other reputable scientific journal)
   if you can't explain your work.

 Unsupported and unexplained politically correct pseudo
 science appears all the time in Science and Nature


Repeating a false claim does not make it true.  If you want me to believe
it, you must cite a reputable source.

If you continue to pollute this group with nonsense you will be banned.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 6:15 AM, derwisch 
johannes.hues...@med.uni-heidelberg.de wrote:


 On Oct 7, 3:35 pm, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

  One of the most disheartening things about such debates is that many
  people fail to realize that science as a social enterprise has no
 specific
  agenda, except discovery.  There are *huge* disincentives for scientists
 to
  mislead themselves or others.  If there were real data contradicting
 global
  warming or evolution, people would instantly make their career by
 uncovering
  them.

 While I am with you in general, I think your confidence in science
 weakens your point rather than stresses it.


There is no way directly to refute such claims.  Instead, I shall start
another OT thread that will contain nothing but references to spectacular
scientific articles.

Science is full of schools
 which rather resemble competing tribes than people presenting
 contradicting facts, and agreeing to a common mindset might rather
 accelerate than impede a scientific career. I suppose you are familiar
 with Kuhn's scientific theory:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.


Of course I am.  Kuhn's work in no way implies that science is full of
hoaxes. It acknowledges that science is done by human beings, and science
must compensate for our human failings.


 Personally, I would place the anthropogenic global warming denial on
 the same scale as the 9/11 was an inside job theory, rather
 outlandish but not completely impossible, in contrast to ID and
 Holocaust denial.


9/11 was an inside job is the quintessential nut theory.  Indeed, it is
absolutely clear why the towers collapsed: steel loses its strength when
heated, and the trusses that support the floors depend on their shape for
them to work.  The architect for the world trade center gave a talk shortly
thereafter in which he explained that the collapse of the towers was a due
to this common failure mode.

To believe this swill is to demonstrate one's utter lack of critical
facilities.

But I digress.  I'll respond to nonsense as it arises, but I do not intend
to dwell in the mud.  It's time to focus on the great scientific work that
is being reported every day.  To see this work, month after month, year
after year, as I have done, is the best antidote for hogwash.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-08 Thread Matt Wilkie


 Of course I am.  Kuhn's work in no way implies that science is full of
 hoaxes. It acknowledges that science is done by human beings, and science
 must compensate for our human failings.

A great audio series which involves this theme is How To Think About Science,
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html. It has changed my
views in several significant ways that I find hard to articulate. I
come out of it continuing to appreciate the great value the scientific
tradition has brought to world civilization, perhaps even more deeply,
with a simultaneous sharpening awareness of the blind spots the
scientist culture has -- as does all human endeavour.

Replied here instead of the OT Great Science thread as although it is
both great and science* I don't think it can be called primary
research or peer reviewed.

* in the etymological sense of to know by study,
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Science

in the true spirit of sharing knowledge,

-- 
-matt

PS: To the discussion theme which spawned this byway: Climate change
is real, it's happening. We'd better start paying attention if for
there to be any hope of lessening the impending suffering. Debating
whether it is induced or influenced by human endeavour is almost
beside the point. Though in my mind there is no debate, we're doing
it. Oh, and climate change isn't the only thing to pay attention to.
Environmental contamination from human-created substances is at least
as big. Not to mention changes to ecosystems; when my
great-great-something-or-other uncle came to north america as navy
lieutenant there were so many fish in the harbour the ship's passage
was actually slowed. They caught their dinner by lowering a bucket
over the side. Now our boats have to travel hundreds of miles to get
their catch. Failure to recognize our impact on the planet and it's
many systems is the most significant delusion we have to overcome, I
think.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Matt Wilkie map...@gmail.com wrote:


  Of course I am.  Kuhn's work in no way implies that science is full of
  hoaxes. It acknowledges that science is done by human beings, and science
  must compensate for our human failings.

 A great audio series which involves this theme is How To Think About
 Science,
 http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html.


Thanks for this.  It looks like an interesting mixed bag.  Plenty of
controversy in the scientific world.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-08 Thread James A. Donald


Edward K. Ream wrote:
 There are *huge* disincentives for scientists to
 mislead themselves or others.  If there were real data contradicting global
 warming or evolution, people would instantly make their career by uncovering
 them.

This works in those fields where there is a lot of private funding, but 
in fields that are politically sensitive, and wholly government funded, 
we unsurprisingly get politics rather than science.

The government likes data that supports more government power, rewards 
those that tell it what it wants to hear, and punishes those that tell 
it what it does not want to hear.

Environmentalism is a state sponsored religion, for it is perfectly 
visible to anyone that wants to look that it is not subject to the same 
standards as normal science, the story of Briffa and the Yamal data 
being one example of a great many.

People have lost their jobs for reporting that glaciers are advancing in 
a particular area, even though they fully agreed that most glaciers are 
retreating.  This makes it hard to tell whether most glaciers are indeed 
retreating, though they probably are.

Environmentalism generally, and the Global Warming movement in 
particular, acts like a holy and sectarian religious movement, a 
religious movement backed by state power, not like science.






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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-08 Thread James A. Donald


Edward K. Ream wrote:
 My wish is that we, individually and collectively, become connoisseurs
 of evidence. And especially evidence that *disconfirms* our own
 views.

Your view is that Global Warming Science is science

Well then, you should go and look at the evidence that disconfirms that 
view, the evidence as to whether Global Warming Science is subject to 
the normal restraints, rules, and requirements of science:

Here is the tale of his correspondence with the journal Science
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=597
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=643
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=668
Which concludes:  This the 39th email in my correspondence with Science 
and I still don't have a complete record on either Esper et al 2002 or 
Osborn and Briffa 2006

Here http://www.climateaudit.org/correspondence/cru.correspondence.pdf 
is some more correspondence on two other bodies of secret data and 
mystery calculations, where Steve unsuccessfully attempts to get 
journals to follow their own policies that scientists who publish must 
make the data and calculations supporting their results available.

There is plenty more where that came from - I just googled and skimmed 
the first few links.

We now know that the reason he did not get the complete record for 
Briffa is that the crucial part of the record, the data that supposedly 
shows the twentieth century is substantially warmer than the last 
thousand years, was one cherry picked tree of ten cherry picked trees, 
which one remarkable tree has been revealed to have been much used in a 
wide variety of papers.  The Esper data are still not available.

If Global Warming Scientists can publish bare assertions and get away 
with it, as that correspondence proves, then, by the standards you have 
set forth, by the rules of what science is and how it should be 
conducted, by the unwritten rules accepted by all scientists, and the 
written rules set forth as journal policies, Global Warming is not 
science, but Gaean theology, Global Warming Scientists are not 
scientists, but Priests of Gaea, and the fact that they can publish in 
science journals is state sponsored and state enforced religion.

 A) Science, which imposes harsh penalties for those who misstate the
 truth, and rewards those who discover new kinds of valid evidence, or

Yet again and again, Global Warmers have mistated the truth, most 
recently with the Yamal data.  Far from being penalized, they have been 
rewarded with wealth, power, fame, the defunding and dismissal of their 
enemies, and state enforcement of their theology.



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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-08 Thread Kent Tenney


On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 2:31 PM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

 Edward K. Ream wrote:
 There are *huge* disincentives for scientists to
 mislead themselves or others.  If there were real data contradicting global
 warming or evolution, people would instantly make their career by uncovering
 them.

 This works in those fields where there is a lot of private funding, but
 in fields that are politically sensitive, and wholly government funded,
 we unsurprisingly get politics rather than science.

Do you think oil and coal companies have political power?
If so, do you think they exercise their power?

Thanks,
Kent


 The government likes data that supports more government power, rewards
 those that tell it what it wants to hear, and punishes those that tell
 it what it does not want to hear.

 Environmentalism is a state sponsored religion, for it is perfectly
 visible to anyone that wants to look that it is not subject to the same
 standards as normal science, the story of Briffa and the Yamal data
 being one example of a great many.

 People have lost their jobs for reporting that glaciers are advancing in
 a particular area, even though they fully agreed that most glaciers are
 retreating.  This makes it hard to tell whether most glaciers are indeed
 retreating, though they probably are.

 Environmentalism generally, and the Global Warming movement in
 particular, acts like a holy and sectarian religious movement, a
 religious movement backed by state power, not like science.






 


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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


On Oct 8, 3:29 pm, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

 Here is the tale of his correspondence with the journal Science

I am asking for reliable data, from peer-reviewed articles.  Your guy
is free to make as many wild accusations as he likes, as he is
responsible to no one.

Submit a reference to an article in a peer reviewed journal, or hold
your tongue.  This is the last warning.  Any more garbage and you will
be banned.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-07 Thread ne1uno



On Oct 6, 3:56 pm, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:
 Jesse Aldridge wrote:

   The connection to global warming is that there are
   situations where cooperation breaks down.  Not because
   people don't understand the situation, but because
   circumstances compel them to take harmful (though
   logically sound) actions.

 Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global warming is a scam.
 The direct, scientifically established effects of CO2
 will warm the planet about 0.5 degrees centigrade by
 2100, which is small compared to the random century to
 century drift of climate.  The sky is falling effects
 are the result of pseudo science, junk science.
[]
 Climate change is indeed real, in that the climate is
 usually changing.  Bur climate change right now is not
 real, or at least not real enough to be measurable, in
 that it is not clear whether over the last few decades
 the world has been getting cooler or warmer, or, as the
 sea ice would suggest, staying quite unusually constant.
 In another hundred years or so, it will be easier to say
 whether things were getting cooler or warmer in our
 time.

so what's your spin on the anti junk science view of glaciers
receding? or continuing to depend on the internal combustion engine?
overreacting to climate change will hardly make the top 100 major
follies of the human race in the last 20 years even if it proves to be
an overreaction. of course, if we were to wait for confirmation, by
then it may be too late to change in any organized manner.



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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-07 Thread James A. Donald


ne1uno wrote:
  so what's your spin on the anti junk science view of
  glaciers receding?

As Climate skeptic sarcastically observed:  Somehow,
man’s burning of fossil fuels in the late 20th century
has caused glaciers to begin melting … starting in the
18th century.

glacier change is evidence of climate change, but not,
however, anthropogenic climate change.

  Glaciers have been retreating at a roughly steady rate
from 1850 to the present, but substantial increases in
CO2 only set in after 1950 or so

Glaciers are a lagging indicator of climate change,
because the current position of the glacier front
reflects snowfall centuries ago - glaciers are
retreating today because of seventeenth century global
warming.

Sea ice is as more responsive indicator, and since 1978,
there has been no trend in global sea ice, resulting in
ever escalating prophecies of sea ice melting real soon
now, and orgasms whenever the arctic melts more than
usual in the summer.

Glaciers have yet to retreat to the positions they were
in shortly after the Medieval Climatic optimum - telling
us that climate changes from time to time, but that it
is today not as warm as it has been, nor as cold as it
has been.

  or continuing to depend on the internal combustion
  engine? overreacting to climate change will hardly
  make the top 100 major follies of the human race in
  the last 20 years

As the communists intended to annihilate the
bourgeoisie, and the Nazis intended to exterminate the
Jews, the greenies intend to destroy industrial
civilization and reduce the earth's population to
sustainable levels.  If they actually believed it was
important to reduce CO2 production, they would support
building nukes and building solar thermal hot salt power
stations in the desert.  That they oppose solar thermal
hot salt power stations shows they want the lights out.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-07 Thread Ville M. Vainio


On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 1:56 PM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

 As the communists intended to annihilate the
 bourgeoisie, and the Nazis intended to exterminate the
 Jews, the greenies intend to destroy industrial
 civilization and reduce the earth's population to
 sustainable levels.  If they actually believed it was

Never thought I would be mentioning Pentti Linkola on leo-editor, but
since we are disturbingly OT already:

http://old.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id382/pg1/

-- 
Ville M. Vainio
http://tinyurl.com/vainio

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-07 Thread thyrsus


The current glacier melt is not about snowfall, it's about feedback
loops.  Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY about the
failure of past experience to deal with exponential changes.

Characterizing those who want to mitigate climate change as interested
primarily in population reduction is like characterizing the U.S.
Republican party as secessionist: there are a few such extremists, but
they do not constitute the serious majority.  Thermal hot salt plants
sound like a prima facie good idea to me, and I'd be happy to
entertain any controlled nuclear solution that dealt sustainably with
spent fuel disposal.  The key is sustainability.  As the technology
improves, the sustainable population capacity improves.

- Stephen

On Oct 7, 6:56 am, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:
 ne1uno wrote:

   so what's your spin on the anti junk science view of
   glaciers receding?

 As Climate skeptic sarcastically observed:  Somehow,
 man’s burning of fossil fuels in the late 20th century
 has caused glaciers to begin melting … starting in the
 18th century.

 glacier change is evidence of climate change, but not,
 however, anthropogenic climate change.

   Glaciers have been retreating at a roughly steady rate
 from 1850 to the present, but substantial increases in
 CO2 only set in after 1950 or so

 Glaciers are a lagging indicator of climate change,
 because the current position of the glacier front
 reflects snowfall centuries ago - glaciers are
 retreating today because of seventeenth century global
 warming.

 Sea ice is as more responsive indicator, and since 1978,
 there has been no trend in global sea ice, resulting in
 ever escalating prophecies of sea ice melting real soon
 now, and orgasms whenever the arctic melts more than
 usual in the summer.

 Glaciers have yet to retreat to the positions they were
 in shortly after the Medieval Climatic optimum - telling
 us that climate changes from time to time, but that it
 is today not as warm as it has been, nor as cold as it
 has been.

   or continuing to depend on the internal combustion
   engine? overreacting to climate change will hardly
   make the top 100 major follies of the human race in
   the last 20 years

 As the communists intended to annihilate the
 bourgeoisie, and the Nazis intended to exterminate the
 Jews, the greenies intend to destroy industrial
 civilization and reduce the earth's population to
 sustainable levels.  If they actually believed it was
 important to reduce CO2 production, they would support
 building nukes and building solar thermal hot salt power
 stations in the desert.  That they oppose solar thermal
 hot salt power stations shows they want the lights out.
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 5:56 PM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:


 Jesse Aldridge wrote:

 Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global warming is a scam.


Not a supportable proposition.  Try reading a year's worth of Science
Magazine (as I do) or Nature.  You will not find anything at all to support
it.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 5:19 AM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:


 Kent Tenney wrote:
   The science is beyond me, but I'll take the word of
   100's of climate scientists from many countries over
   several decades over an economist who says what people
   want to hear.

 Genuine science is replicable.  And replicable does not
 mean two priests recite the same doctrine, it means they
 explain what they did in such a fashion that anyone else
 could do it also.


Exactly.  There has been an explosion in climate-oriented research in the
past decade or so.  None of it is friendly to global warming deniers,
despite the deniers claim that somehow it isn't real research.

If they refuse to explain, they are not scientists, but priests of Gaea.


You can't be published in journals like Nature or Science (or any other
reputable scientific journal)  if you can't explain you work.

This misrepresentation of what Science is all about is a bad faith attempt
to explain away facts that happen to contradict one's unscientific
opinions.  In contrast, the climate deniers cite each others non-scientific
works as proof that science is a grand conspiracy among scientists.

We see this most forcefully in the debate over evolution.  In fact, the
general facts *and* the theory are extremely well established.  There is no
disagreement over the essentials among scientists.  This is not at all a
conspiracy. There *are* a huge number of remaining questions to be asked.
These questions are what make evolutions the most *successful* scientific
theory of all time.

Imo, it is impossible to read any of the following and go away with the
conclusion that evolutionary theory is anything but plain fact:

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/04cv2688-111.pdf

Why Evolution is True, By Jerry A. Coyne
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0670020532

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, by Stephen Jay Gould
http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evolutionary-Theory-Stephen-Gould/dp/0674006135

What we see in all these works is the dishonesty, pure and simple, of the
opponents of evolution.  In particular, the judge in the Kitzmiller case
accused some of the witnesses for the defense (intelligent design) of lying
under oath.  I highly recommend a thorough reading of the Kitzmiller
decision.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

Imo, it is impossible to read any of the following and go away with the
conclusion that evolutionary theory is anything but plain fact:

One of the most disheartening things about such debates is that many
people fail to realize that science as a social enterprise has no specific
agenda, except discovery. There are *huge* disincentives for scientists to
mislead themselves or others. If there were real data contradicting global
warming or evolution, people would instantly make their career by uncovering
them.

In contrast, the deniers have obvious personal agendas that underlies their
doubt. In the case of evolution, the religious (rightly!) feel threatened
by the mountain of evidence that we were created by a simple process acting
over billions of years, rather than a complex supreme being. In the case of
climate change, the deniers would prefer not to face the implications that
human beings might be having an extremely negative impact on the world. The
two views may be related. If the supreme being were, in fact, supreme, it
might create a world in which those created in its image would have more
benign impacts.

Another disheartening aspect about such debates is that it obscures the
real excitement that is inevitable when one reads scientific discoveries
without an agenda. This is, truly, the golden age of science, regardless of
the rear-guard attacks on it.

For example, we are on the brink of learning in detail, exactly how life
arose. The work of Gerald F. Joyce is particularly exciting:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci%3B1167856v1?maxtoshow=HITS=10hits=10RESULTFORMAT=fulltext=lincoln+joycesearchid=1FIRSTINDEX=0resourcetype=HWCIT
Imo, this work is the stuff of Nobel Prizes.

Edward

Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:



 For example, we are on the brink of learning in detail, exactly how life
 arose.  The work of Gerald F. Joyce is particularly exciting:

 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci%3B1167856v1?maxtoshow=HITS=10hits=10RESULTFORMAT=fulltext=lincoln+joycesearchid=1FIRSTINDEX=0resourcetype=HWCIT
 Imo, this work is the stuff of Nobel Prizes.


The abstract doesn't convey the excitement :-)  Here is a summary that does:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-in-a-bottle

EKR

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:


 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
 http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/04cv2688-111.pdf


BTW, one of my hobbies is reading interesting judicial cases.  I was
surprised at first by how easy they are to read.  It's hard to become a
federal judge and not write well :-)

EKR

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.comwrote:


 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
 http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/04cv2688-111.pdf


 BTW, one of my hobbies is reading interesting judicial cases.  I was
 surprised at first by how easy they are to read.  It's hard to become a
 federal judge and not write well :-)


Ops.  Got the wrong pdf.  Here is the full text of the decision.

http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf

EKR

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:


 What we see in all these works is the dishonesty, pure and simple, of the
 opponents of evolution.  In particular, the judge in the Kitzmiller case
 accused some of the witnesses for the defense (intelligent design) of lying
 under oath.  I highly recommend a thorough reading of the Kitzmiller
 decision.


The judge in the Kitzmiller case said:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the
Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these
individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions
in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the
real purpose behind the ID Policy.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


On Oct 7, 8:35 am, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

 In contrast, the deniers have obvious personal agendas that underlies their
 doubt.  In the case of evolution, the religious (rightly!) feel threatened
 by the mountain of evidence that we were created by a simple process acting
 over billions of years, rather than a complex supreme being.  In the case of
 climate change, the deniers would prefer not to face the implications that
 human beings might be having an extremely negative impact on the world.  The
 two views may be related.

The two views are more strongly related by their utter contempt for
evidence.  Repeating something endlessly does *not* constitute
evidence, no matter how many people repeat it, and no matter how
fervently they believe it.  This point is made brilliantly in other
ways in the book, The End of Faith, by Sam Harris.
http://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-Future/dp/0393035158

What strikes me most about the various deniers and conspiracy
theorists is how boring their views are.  They say the same things,
over and over again, as if repetition constitutes evidence.  To make
this project work, they must somehow convince themselves that the
*mountain* of disconfirming evidence does not exist.

It's sad because the contents of the actual evidence is the most
exciting and pleasurable intellectual news in the world today.  I am
often thrilled at how clever people can be in deducing what is
hidden.  For example, a recent article in Science uses the size of
stomata in leaves as an indication (proxy) for CO2 levels going back
millions of years.  A major project in science is determining the
strength and applicability of such proxies.  Nothing in the
creationist/denier literature matches this project.

As another example, the book Collapse, by Jared Diamond
http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed/dp/0670033375
abounds in inferences that can be (plausibly, but not certainly) be
made about pre-historical events.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


On Oct 7, 9:37 am, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

 The two views are more strongly related by their utter contempt for evidence.

My wish is that we, individually and collectively, become connoisseurs
of evidence. And especially evidence that *disconfirms* our own
views.  See, for example, The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb,
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/1400063515
In my view, the discovery and critical evaluation of new kinds of
evidence is close to the heart of science.

Evidence, or our evaluation of it, does depend on human interaction.
Scientists are often given the scientific death penalty for
misstating or falsifying results.  They are barred from further grants
and given other harsh sanctions.

It's hard to imagine anyone at the Discovery Institute being
disciplined for misstating facts, which happens regularly. For
example, Stephen Jay Gould was often portrayed by creationists as
someone having doubts about evolution!  A more recent example:
http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numbers/  This is pure
dishonesty, which will never be punished by the Discovery Institute or
any other creationist organization.

So which culture is the more reliable?

A) Science, which imposes harsh penalties for those who misstate the
truth, and rewards those who discover new kinds of valid evidence, or

B) Creationism, which rewards those who find ever more devious ways of
misstating the truth, and which recognizes only the Bible as the
ultimate authority on everything.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:


 On Oct 7, 9:37 am, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

  The two views are more strongly related by their utter contempt for
 evidence.

 My wish is that we, individually and collectively, become connoisseurs
 of evidence. And especially evidence that *disconfirms* our own
 views.


I like to pepper these kinds of posts with references to high-class books
and articles.  It's a way of avoiding just discussing my personal opinions.

To practice what I preach, I must actively seek high quality books and
articles that tend to *refute* my opinions.  This is the only honest way.

So if you think that evolution or global warming are dubious propositions, I
invite you to correct me by referencing high-class books or scholarly
articles that refute my views.  But be warned, feeble sound bites will not
suffice.

OTOH, I have already reference three books that disconfirm *your* notion
that evolution is bogus.  If you are intellectually honest, you must treat
these disconfirming data very seriously.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-07 Thread John Griessen


Edward K. Ream wrote:
 Ops.  Got the wrong pdf.  Here is the full text of the decision.
 
 http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf


Thanks.  Skimming the first 50 pp. was a really good read!
The backflips described in getting ID promoted in classes
such as saying a disclaimer that the biology teachers at a school called Dover
wouldn't read, and that was read by admin types shows how salesy
the attempt was.

The cross references are hard though...

John G

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem



On Oct 6, 4:38 am, Jesse Aldridge jessealdri...@gmail.com wrote:
 I see global warming as more of an economic, game-theoretical
 problem.  Assume that cutting emissions means increasing costs of
 production (in the short term).  That means countries that don't cut
 emissions will have an economic advantage over countries that do cut
 emissions.  In Game Theory, they'd call this a sub-optimal Nash
 equilibrium -- no matter what your opponent does, you'll be
 comparatively better off by not cutting emissions.  So little gets
 done.  Check out this video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhrnFGP4zks
 It had quite an effect on me the first time I watched it.

Here is a new web site dealing with the social aspects (including
denial) of various big problems:

http://mahb.stanford.edu/

From http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol325/issue5948/r-samples.dtl

QQQ
Paul Ehrlich is still out to save the world. A generation after
sounding the alarm about overpopulation, the Stanford University
biologist and colleagues have launched an effort called MAHB
(pronounced mob)—the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior. Its
aim is to penetrate public apathy and denial and prod social
scientists to look into the behavioral aspects of Earth's problems.

I'm trying to ... get a global discussion going, says Ehrlich.
Science has laid out the problems—climate change, food and water
crises, loss of biodiversity, and toxins in the environment—in great
detail, the group argues on a new Web site, mahb.stanford.edu, yet
society stubbornly refuses to take comprehensive steps to deal with
them and their drivers, the first of which is population growth. When
Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, died last week, the
blogs were full of ‘This is the person who proved Ehrlich wrong’ in
his dire prophecies, says Ehrlich. What we need is a total change in
the way we think about these problems. ... We need to start talking
very frankly about what people want and what they can have.

Ehrlich, 77, says that at present MAHB's core group, including
atmospheric scientist Stephen Schneider and Donald Kennedy, former
editor-in-chief of Science, is focusing on getting the word out. A
world megaconference is planned for 2011.
QQQ

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem




On Oct 6, 4:18 pm, Jesse Aldridge jessealdri...@gmail.com wrote:
  At first glance, I don't see how the video relates exactly, but I can
  tell you I would not have invested :-)

 I would have invested.  I would have felt it was the morally
 imperative thing to do.  And I would have gotten shafted.  I found it
 shocking and outrageous that so many could take an action that made
 the group as a whole worse off.

Interesting.  I would have done the expected value calculation:

Payoff = 10 * p -10 * (1-p) where p is the probability that 90% or
more of the class would invest.  I'm not sure there is a should in
this calculation, though I think understand what you mean.

The prohibition against communication seems to bias the odds away from
investing, but actually, imo, the possibility of real communication
with strangers (in the everyday world) seems to be remote enough to
make the toy experiment fairly realistic.

Anyway, it's an interesting experiment.  Thanks for bringing it to our
attention.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


On Oct 6, 5:56 pm, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

 Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global warming is a scam.

Or not.  Here is a quote from the 25 September 2009 issue of Science
Magazine.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol325/issue5948/index.dtl#twis

Steven Chu is the U.S. Secretary of Energy and a Nobel Laureate in
physics. Here is the opening sentence of his editorial:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/325/5948/1599

Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that CO2 emissions from fossil
fuels have caused the climate to change, and a dramatic reduction of
these emissions is essential to reduce the risk of future devastating
effects.

Of course, you are entitled to your beliefs.  You are not, however,
entitled to be respected for those beliefs, or to be taken seriously
for repeating nonsense.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem




On Oct 7, 2:48 pm, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Oct 6, 5:56 pm, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

  Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global warming is a scam.

Here is another view:

http://dougcarmichael.com/mahb/2009_solomonirreversible.pdf

From the abstract:

QQQ
The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only
on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for
irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes
place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely
irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.
QQQ

In other words, this is a bathtub problem.  Humans are notoriously
poor at estimating the changes when sources (inputs) and sinks
(outputs) are involved, and even worse at estimating the effects of
changes to complex dynamical systems such as the earth's environment.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem




On Oct 7, 3:06 pm, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

   Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global warming is a scam.

 Here is another view:

 http://dougcarmichael.com/mahb/2009_solomonirreversible.pdf

Here is the entire abstract:

QQQ
The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends
not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential
for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that
takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is
largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following
cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide
decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower
loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not
drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative
irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts
per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the
coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in
several regions comparable to those of the ‘‘dust bowl’’ era and
inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean
provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average
sea level rise of at least 0.4 –1.0 m if 21st century CO2
concentrations
exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6 –1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations
exceeding [approx] 1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers
and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but
may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or
longer.
QQQ

Care to modify your views?

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Oct 6, 5:56 pm, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

For a relatively easy to understand summary of the latest fraud to be
exposed, see
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/...
one of many such discoveries of junk science.'

Your language gives you away. There is nothing fraudulent about
attempting to reconstruct past climate data. It may be a difficult
problem, but that's another matter.

The so-called hockey-stick controversy is yet another example of
magnifying the doubts while ignore the fundamental basis for worry
about CO2 emissions. The problems are discussed in detail in the
wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years#The_Hockey_stick_controversy

It's old news, and does not in any way invalidate, for instance, the
conclusions of the ippc:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
You are going to have to do a lot better than this. In effect, you
are accusing the entire scientific community of not knowing how to do
science.

This is a truly bizarre debate. On the one side, are people who
actually do science. On the other side, are people who don't do
science, know very little science, who are not interested in science,
and yet have large vested interests in disputing the claims of science
because those claims are inconvenient for business or religion. Such
people seize on the minutia, and ignore the mountain of evidence
disconfirming their beliefs.

I don't know what to do about this situation, but it looks like the
tide of pure hogwash is becoming a tsunami. We ignore this tide at
our peril.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:


 On Oct 6, 5:56 pm, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

  For a relatively easy to understand summary of the latest fraud to be
 exposed, see
  http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/..
 .
  one of many such discoveries of junk science.'


 Your language gives you away.  There is nothing fraudulent about
 attempting to reconstruct past climate data.  It may be a difficult
 problem, but that's another matter.


The article you cite appears in a political journal. We see articles like
why people like Palin.  If you want to be taken seriously, cite articles
in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

For example, a search for the phrase global warming yields 485 original
research articles in Science magazine.  I would bet quite a bit of money
that exactly none of these articles supports the notion that global warming
is a hoax.  If you find one, please let me know :-)  Similar remarks no
doubt apply to Nature magazine and dozens of other peer-reviewed journals.

Edward

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem




On Oct 7, 8:56 pm, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

 This whole affair has the ring of a bad joke.  So in the spirit of the
 jokester, here are two links:

 Glen Beck tries to kill parody web 
 site:http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/10/beck_tries_to_kill_parody_...

 and the actual parody web 
 site:http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/

And another.  We're on his case like white on rice:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/9gccy/did_glenn_beck_murder_a_young_girl_in_1990/

EKR
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem




On Oct 7, 9:04 pm, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

 And another.  We're on his case like white on rice:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/9gccy/did_glenn_beck_murder...

And another.  Glenn Beck the scientist
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909020033

EKR
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread Jesse Aldridge


Yes.  I love this problem.  I refused to believe the explanation the
first time I heard it.  I ended up writing a script to prove it's
validity to myself:

import random

def monty_hall():
doors = ['car', 'goat', 'goat']
random.shuffle(doors)

# Assume we guess the first door (doors[0])

# Open one of the doors that doesn't have a car
if doors[1] == goat:
del doors[1]
else:
del doors[2]

# Stay with the same door
#return doors[0] == car

# Switch to the other door
return doors[1] == car
#

num_wins = 0
num_trials = 1
for i in range(num_trials):
if monty_hall():
num_wins += 1

print win percentage: , float(num_wins) * 100 / num_trials

---

For fun, try dropping num_trials to a low number like 10 and then
raise it back up to see the variance drop out.  At 100,000 trials,
it's 66 point something percent *every time*.  Probability is amazing.

For me the key insight of the Monty Hall problem is that humans, due
to having limited working memory, collapse a sequence of events down
to just the current state.  Our brains are wired to disregard the
initial door and just see the two doors standing in front of us.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread Ville M. Vainio


On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Jesse Aldridge jessealdri...@gmail.com wrote:

 For me the key insight of the Monty Hall problem is that humans, due
 to having limited working memory, collapse a sequence of events down
 to just the current state.  Our brains are wired to disregard the
 initial door and just see the two doors standing in front of us.

To be fair, this is what they teach about statistic problems in high
school. You should not think of what happened before, and only
consider the situation *right now*.

The key insight for me, again was that Monty Hall cannot open the door
you selected.

-- 
Ville M. Vainio
http://tinyurl.com/vainio

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread Jesse Aldridge


I see global warming as more of an economic, game-theoretical
problem.  Assume that cutting emissions means increasing costs of
production (in the short term).  That means countries that don't cut
emissions will have an economic advantage over countries that do cut
emissions.  In Game Theory, they'd call this a sub-optimal Nash
equilibrium -- no matter what your opponent does, you'll be
comparatively better off by not cutting emissions.  So little gets
done.  Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhrnFGP4zks
It had quite an effect on me the first time I watched it.

I think problems like global warming ultimately stem from the fact
that individual entities, when forced into competition, will
inevitably behave selfishly in the absence of any overarching
authority.  I think the best solution to this problem is some sort of
global government with the ability to enforce cooperation.  Of course
there are enormous challenges and grave dangers along this path, but
it does seem to be the logical conclusion.
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread Jesse Aldridge



 To be fair, this is what they teach about statistic problems in high
 school. You should not think of what happened before, and only
 consider the situation *right now*.

Ah, yes, that's a good point.
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread Edward K. Ream


On Oct 6, 4:38 am, Jesse Aldridge jessealdri...@gmail.com wrote:

 Check out this video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhrnFGP4zks
 It had quite an effect on me the first time I watched it.

At first glance, I don't see how the video relates exactly, but I can
tell you I would not have invested :-)

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread Edward K. Ream


On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

 And in contrast, the worst article ever published in Scientific
 American:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=squeezing-more-oil

Just ran across this site:http://www.badscience.net/

If I were a conspiracy buff, I would say there is a conspiracy to
denigrate everything that is scientifically known that is the least
bit inconvenient for various folk :-)  There certainly seems to be
an epidemic of bad-faith efforts to misrepresent the strength of what
is actually known scientifically.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread James A. Donald

Jesse Aldridge wrote:
The connection to global warming is that there are
situations where cooperation breaks down. Not because
people don't understand the situation, but because
circumstances compel them to take harmful (though
logically sound) actions. For example, China and
India don't want to cut emissions, because they want
to become the new US. And the US doesn't want to
cut emissions because we want to retain our status as
#1. I can easily see the industrialized world
continuing to make half-assed efforts that fail to
effectively address the underlying sources of
greenhouse gases. Instead we will come up with
ad-hoc, expensive adaptations to a hotter planet.

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global warming is a scam.
The direct, scientifically established effects of CO2
will warm the planet about 0.5 degrees centigrade by
2100, which is small compared to the random century to
century drift of climate. The sky is falling effects
are the result of pseudo science, junk science. For a
relatively easy to understand summary of the latest
fraud to be exposed, see
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/01/ross-mckitrick-defects-in-key-climate-data-are-uncovered.aspx
one of many such discoveries of junk science.

The short of the above story is that the evidence that the
twentieth century has been warmer than the past turns
out to be an average taken over TEN TREE growing in a
cold climate, whose growth therefore should reflect the
length of the warm season, ten trees selected from a
large population of trees by Briffa, ten trees that have
appeared again and again in a variety of supposedly
independent graphs of temperature that supposed confirm
each other. Of these ten trees, ONE TREE, Yamal06, showed
remarkable and unusual growth as compared with fossil
trees. However, it turns out these were ten *selected*
trees, selected without explanation from a much larger
set of measured trees.

When we average over whole set of similar nearby trees
their growth patterns are similar to those of fossil
trees from the same area. And similarly, if do our own
selection, by averaging over nine of the ten trees that
Briffa selected, and exclude Yamal06 as an outlier,
again the growth patterns of the nine we select of the
ten Briffa selected are similar to that of the fossil
tree population.

There is no evidence that temperatures have risen during
the twentieth century.
http://blog.jim.com/global-warming/faking-global-warmin
g.html
http://blog.jim.com/global-warming/no-warming-trend-in-
raw-surface-temperature-data.html

Sea ice remains the same as it has been since 1978, when
satellites first gave us accurate observations of total
ice area
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.d
aily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg

There is no persuasive theoretical reason to expect
unreasonably strong warming from CO2 emissions, and we
have not in fact actually observed such warming in
recent times. In 2006 the arctic had unusual melting,
but not as much as it melted in 1959, and every arctic
summer since 2006, the ice has been greater than the
last, despite regular loudly announced predictions of
the opposite. In any given year, there is always an
unusual weather event somewhere, some time, but truly
global averages, such as world sea ice, world tropical
storm energy, etc, show no long term pattern, the show
some warm years and some cold years, some warm decades
and some cold decades - the tropical storm energy shows
pretty much the same non pattern as global sea ice.

Twentieth century temperatures are warmer than most of
the last two thousand years, cooler than the Medieval
climatic optimum, and cooler than most of the last ten
thousand years. The climate gets cooler, it gets warmer,
it gets cooler again. In recent decades, when most of
the CO2 was released, there has not been much change.
Climate change is indeed real, in that the climate is
usually changing. Bur climate change right now is not
real, or at least not real enough to be measurable, in
that it is not clear whether over the last few decades
the world has been getting cooler or warmer, or, as the
sea ice would suggest, staying quite unusually constant.
In another hundred years or so, it will be easier to say
whether things were getting cooler or warmer in our
time.

Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-06 Thread Kent Tenney

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 5:56 PM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote:

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global warming is a scam.

The science is beyond me, but I'll take the word of 100's of climate
scientists from many countries over several decades over
an economist who says what people want to hear.

see http://tinyurl.com/yag8tpn

The direct, scientifically established effects of CO2
will warm the planet about 0.5 degrees centigrade by
2100, which is small compared to the random century to
century drift of climate. The sky is falling effects
are the result of pseudo science, junk science. For a
relatively easy to understand summary of the latest
fraud to be exposed, see
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/01/ross-mckitrick-defects-in-key-climate-data-are-uncovered.aspx
one of many such discoveries of junk science.

Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-05 Thread Ville M. Vainio


On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

 Take a look at this:
 http://www.philipbrocoum.com/?p=967

 This is the best explanation of this problem I've ever seen.  The
 conclusion: by switching doors, you increase the probability of
 winning from 1/3 to 2/3, **not** to 1/2.

I may be autistic or something, but I still don't get it.

(Unless the game has a rule where Monty Hall would open both doors if
car was not behind any of them).

The whole thing seems like a mathematical prank to me.

-- 
Ville M. Vainio
http://tinyurl.com/vainio

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


On Oct 5, 4:34 am, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:

 This is the best explanation of this problem I've ever seen.  The
 conclusion: by switching doors, you increase the probability of
 winning from 1/3 to 2/3, **not** to 1/2.

And in contrast, the worst article ever published in Scientific
American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=squeezing-more-oil

This article has no basis in either science, mathematics or
economics.  At root, it is enumerate and unscientific. It ignores the
essence of the peak oil claim, that no matter how much oil is in the
ground, the *rate* at which oil can be extracted must reach a peak and
then decline. For a much better treatment, see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
In particular, the peak oil deniers must ignore that production has
**already peaked** in the United States and many other countries,
**despite** the increasing ability to extract oil from oil fields:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Peak_oil_for_individual_nations

The article abounds in nonsense.  It claims, correctly, that much of
the world has not been explored, implying, incorrectly, that this
somehow invalidates the peak oil theory.  This is absurd.  There are
economic reasons why much of the world has remained unexplored, and
those reasons imply that it would be difficult to extract oil if it
were ever found.  To pretend otherwise is to implicitly assert that
oil companies have ignored easily gained profits.

It **doesn't matter** how much oil is in the ground.  What matters is
**how fast** it can be extracted and **at what cost**.  The article
simply ignores this basic fact.

Indeed, economists are strictly correct when they say that the world
will never run out of oil.  The irony is that the reason is that
eventually it will cost too much to extract the remaining oil.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-05 Thread derwisch


I heard it so often that I can't really get it how one could not get
it, although it took me myself a while to appreciate the problem.

On Oct 5, 11:49 am, Ville M. Vainio vivai...@gmail.com wrote:
 I may be autistic or something, but I still don't get it.

 (Unless the game has a rule where Monty Hall would open both doors if
 car was not behind any of them).


You pick a door. Two possibilities:

1. (p = 2/3) You picked a goat door. Monty Hall opens the other goat
door. By switching, you pick the third door, which is the car door.
2. (p = 1/3) You picked the car door. Monty Hall opens one of the two
goat doors. By switching, you pick the third door, which is the other
goat door.

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


 I may be autistic or something, but I still don't get it.

If you don't switch, the only way you can *win* is if the car is
behind your door.  If you switch, the only way you can *lose* is if
the car is behind your door.  There is a 1/3 probability that the car
is behind any particular door, so switching *doubles* your odds of
winning.  This is a plain fact.

Monty knows where the car is.  His showing you an empty door in no way
alters the odds.

The analogy with picking a card is exact.  If you switch, your odds of
winning are 51/52.  That is, the only way you can lose is if you
*correctly picked* the ace of spades originally.  The person showing
you 50 cards **can not change this fact**.  If you don't switch, your
odds of winning are 1/52.  If yo switch, the probability *must* be
51/52.

Similarly, Monty can not change the fact that if you switch the only
way you can lose is if you initially picked the right door.  The
probability of that is 1/3, so the probability of winning is 2/3 if
you switch.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem

2009-10-05 Thread Ville M. Vainio


On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 12:58 PM, derwisch
johannes.hues...@med.uni-heidelberg.de wrote:

 I heard it so often that I can't really get it how one could not get
 it, although it took me myself a while to appreciate the problem.

Hah! I was writing an explanation of why I think this is a prank, and
immediately got it. It seems writing is much, much more efficient
than just thinking :-).

I think I have a much simpler explanation why it's not 1/2.

The twist is that by choosing a door, you BLOCK monty from opening
that door. I.e. the situation is different from monty just opening one
door and you choosing one of the 2 doors.

Just mentioning this game-changer would have made it much clearer.

-- 
Ville M. Vainio
http://tinyurl.com/vainio

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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem


On Oct 5, 4:34 am, Edward K. Ream edream...@gmail.com wrote:
 Take a look at this:http://www.philipbrocoum.com/?p=967

 This is the best explanation of this problem I've ever seen.  The
 conclusion: by switching doors, you increase the probability of
 winning from 1/3 to 2/3, **not** to 1/2.

By the way, I remember seeing a variation of this on Let's make a
deal. Monty said that behind one of the doors was a car.  The
contestant picked a door.  Monty showed another door that contained a
car, thereby inducing (I don't remember exactly how) the contestant to
abandon the game and take a consolation prize.  In fact, there was a
car behind all three doors!  This was the most brilliant moment I have
ever seen on TV.

Edward
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Re: OT: The Monty Hall Problem