The Drunkard's Walk

How Randomness Rules Our Lives

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I previously enjoyed Leonard Mlodinow's memoir of his postdoctoral time at Caltech, Feynman's Rainbow, quite a bit. And I'm always up for a breezy popular science book every few months, so…

It's a very entertaining look at probability and statistics, branching into statistical mechanics and chaos theory near the end. Like most books of this genre, the math is kept to an absolute minimum. Given that limitation, the breadth of topics covered is admirable. (The famed Monty Hall Problem? Check, it's here.) Mlodinow also does the history of the appropriate bits of math, with many yarns about the characters involved long the way: Pascal, Bayes, Gauss, Cardano,… And Bernoulli! Or, actually, numerous Bernoullis. I'm ashamed to admit that I've always thought there was one guy named Bernoulli.

Adding to the fun: Mlodinow is not averse to making cheap-but-funny jokes every so often. Not laugh-out-loud, but deserving of the occasional snort or moan.

If I had to pick a nit: nobody who's looked at the issue doubts that math, especially probabilistic math, can be counter-intuitive. Casinos rely on this, for example. And (ahem) see that previously-mentioned Monty Hall problem. But (arguably) Mlodinow overdoes this; I'm not sure he's seen a psychological study he didn't like. In at least one case, that leads him astray, on page 161:

In fact, in recent years psychologists have found that the ability to persist in the face of obstacles is at least as important a factor in success as talent.

… with a footnote to a 2005 Psychology Today article, "The Winning Edge." This is that "grit" thing that was popular back then. But: only a few weeks back, I'd read The Quick Fix by Jesse Singal. And that book had a chapter that pretty convincingly depicted "grit" as an overhyped psychological fad. (If you don't want to get Singal's book, here is an article he wrote on the topic.)

So this kind of wrecked the bits of the book where Mlodinow reports psychological "studies" uncritically. I kept wondering: has this research been replicated?

Never mind. It's a fine book, and ("odds are") you'll learn a lot.


Last Modified 2024-02-15 9:34 AM EDT

URLs du Jour

2022-07-19

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  • Have "Progressive Activists" taken over the WSJ editorial page? I ask because our Amazon Product du Jour specifically says it's for "Progressive Activists". I'm not sure if you have to take a quiz before buying it. But I'm pretty sure today's WSJ editorial is in agreement with the shirt: Congress Goes All in for Chip Subsidies.

    Industrial policy is back in fashion in Washington, or as it ought to be called, corporate welfare. The semiconductor industry is first in the queue, but it won’t be the last. Taxpayers should at least know they’ll be subsidizing highly profitable companies that don’t need the help and might end up regretting the political handcuffs they’re acquiring.

    The bill that will head to the Senate floor as early as Tuesday includes $52.2 billion in grants to the computer chip industry. But wait, there’s more. Congress is also offering a 25% tax credit for semiconductor fabrication, which is estimated to cost about $24 billion over five years. That’s $76 billion for one industry.

    Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee point out that for the same money Congress could double the research and development tax credit for all companies through 2025. It could also throw in 100% expensing for companies and allow immediate R&D deductions through 2025. But that would mean the politicians aren’t picking favorites, which is what they prefer to do.

    Yesterday's page-one story on the legislation was more, um, "measured": Chip Investment Decisions Await Congressional Action on $52 Billion Funding Bill.

    Political wrangling in Congress over government funding for the semiconductor industry is leaving tens of billions of dollars of potential factory projects hanging in limbo and could dent the ambitions of some political and industry leaders to recharge America’s chip-making prowess.

    Oh, no! Limbo! That's bad!

    It's rare, very rare, that I agree with Robert Reich, but his take, as reported in the article, is on the money: the industry's tactics in pushing this bill are "pure extortion".

    And (guess what) our state's junior senator, Margaret Wood Hassan, is one of this dreadful bill's cosponsors. (Also: Mitt Romney, Susie Collins, and Lindsay Graham.)


  • If anyone at our local paper wants to know why I didn't renew my subscription… they can check out Chris Stirewalt's story: News Consumers See Balance as Part of Accuracy. The Press? Not So Much..

    It probably wouldn’t surprise you that a much higher percentage of the American public thinks that news outlets fail to report the news accurately compared to the journalists who work in the business.

    If you asked the proprietors of hot dog carts how sanitary the practices of the mobile weiner industry were, you’d probably get a lot better reviews for the healthfulness of hot dog water than you would from the general public.

    So the fact that 65 percent of journalists in a recent Pew Research Center survey said news organizations do a good job at accurate reporting compared to just 35 percent of all adults is maybe not a shocker.

    Stirewalt mentions that journalists, especially younger journalists, decry "bothsidesism". And that view rather easily becomes "there's only one side, my side, and that's the only one that's going into this news story."


  • Ah, yes. Good times. Jim Geraghty has a long memory: Hey, Remember When Biden Pledged to 'Continue to Support the Afghan People'?.

    President Biden, August 31 [2021]:

    Let me be clear: We will continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence, and humanitarian aid. We’ll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability. We’ll continue to speak out for basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls, as we speak out for women and girls all around the globe. And I’ve been clear that human rights will be the center of our foreign policy.

    The Wall Street Journal, this morning:

    The U.N. says over 90 percent of the Afghan population isn’t eating sufficiently and that nearly half of the population is facing acute hunger. Families have resorted to selling their children or their organs to survive. The worst drought in decades has compounded the crisis.

    “The current humanitarian crisis could kill far more Afghans than the past 20 years of war,” warned the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental organization that has been providing assistance in Afghanistan for decades.

    …The current inflationary crisis has put basic goods out of the reach of many Afghans. A basket of basic household goods cost 41.6% more in May than a year earlier, according to data from the World Food Program. Food prices continue to rise, partly because of the war in Ukraine and global supply-chain disruptions.

    President Biden has barely mentioned Afghanistan since that August speech. Nothing this guy says matters. What he says is just pretty words that he reads off a teleprompter, it has no connection to what U.S. policies actually are.

    As Matt Lewis observed almost a year ago:

    This president loves to say “let me be clear” but he’s often anything but clear—including on critical matters of public health.

    It hasn't gotten better. Now, when "this president" says "let me be clear", what comes next is likely to be a lie.


  • Strike a pose. M. Todd Henderson, a UChicago lawprof, writes at Newsweek (still around, who knew?) on The Folly of Land Acknowledgements.

    "Land acknowledgements" are all the rage. For those who haven't been to a graduation or university lecture in Blue America, a "land acknowledgment" is the practice of starting an event with a statement that the land on which the event is taking place once belonged to particular groups of Native Americans. It is easy to dismiss these as ahistorical nonsense, laden with sentimentality. But there is another way to look at these statements that demonstrate American exceptionalism.

    Start with the basics. All of human history has been the displacement of one people by another. No one has a claim on land except if they put it to productive use and are capable of defending it. In fact, land moving to a higher-valued use is the premise on which most wealth creation and human flourishing is based.

    Moreover, once one starts acknowledging, there is no sensible place to stop. Nearly every plot of land on Earth is inhabited today by groups of people that displaced other people who lived there before. Which of the thousands of groups of humans that have once claimed the land that is now Poland should the current Poles "acknowledge?" In fact, why stop there—don't the Neanderthals who once lived there deserve a nod too?

    Henderson's article mentions some bloody history of tribal warfare. I'm pretty sure we don't have to acknowledge the Neanderthals here in New Hampshire, though.


  • "Diversity." I subscribe to Jeff Jacoby's newsletter, which (for some reason) has content that's not available via the web, at least not yet. Yesterday's missive contained a link to this Harvard Crimson article: More than 80 Percent of Surveyed Harvard Faculty Identify as Liberal. And there's a pie chart!

    Jeff's comments:

    Harvard’s 82-to-1 faculty ratio of liberals to conservatives makes a mockery of the university’s avowed commitment to diversity. A handsome page on its website declares that “Harvard's commitment to diversity in all forms” — my italics — “is rooted in our fundamental belief that engaging with unfamiliar ideas, perspectives, cultures, and people creates the conditions for dramatic and meaningful growth.”

    Those fine words aren’t true, of course. Everyone knows that Harvard has no desire to uphold “diversity in all forms.” Like other institutions that go out of their way to trumpet their embrace of diversity — the media, Hollywood, major-league sports — Harvard wants its people to be “diverse” only when measured by the yardsticks that matter least: race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation. But the clash of ideas? A robust competition among worldviews? The exposure of students to compelling arguments that challenge liberal and progressive shibboleths? That’s not what Harvard is interested in. It hasn’t been for decades.

    We can only hope some of those facules are classical liberals.


Last Modified 2024-01-17 9:32 AM EDT

Career of Evil

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The third adventure of British private eye Cormoran Strike and his secretary-almost-partner Robin Ellacott. It's a nasty one, too, right from the start, as Robin takes delivery of a package, addressed to her, containing a severed human leg. It's quickly revealed that Strike is the target of a psychotic killer, who intends to murder Robin as part of his demented scheme.

Suspicion quickly falls on four figures from Strike's past, each of whom would have ample (if twisted) motive for revenge. The cops are called in, of course, but Strike thinks they are, for their own reasons, concentrating their efforts on investigating the wrong guy. So it's up to Strike and Robin to track down and check out the others.

It's a page-turner, especially near the end. "Galbraith" (aka J. K. Rowling) concentrates almost as much on the Strike/Robin relationship as "he" does on the process of the investigation. It's a muddle, with Robin's upcoming wedding threatened almost as much by her job with Strike as it is by being a target of a serial killer.

Caveat lector: Some chapters are third-person POV of the bad guy, describing in pornographic detail his thoughts and deeds. Not for the squeamish. Also, a continuing theme: the oeuvre of Blue Öyster Cult, concentrating on their sinister lyrics.

At a certain point, characters with Body integrity dysphoria are encountered, people with a strong desire to hack off bits of their own bodies. The author clearly is aghast at this, and I can't help but wonder how this informed her "controversial" (aka, sensible) views on transgenderism.


Last Modified 2024-01-17 9:32 AM EDT