Squander Two Blog

Warning!

[ posted by Squander Two at 14:00 ]

Another era.

[ posted by Squander Two at 19:48 ]

John Derbyshire.

William Saletan has written an excellent analysis of the John Derbyshire controversy, touching on what anyone who's known me more than ten minutes will have heard me railing against: the single biggest mistake people make when drawing conclusions from statistical data: "average" does not mean "normal".

Derbyshire thinks his data warrant his conclusions. But all his data references include the crucial term “mean” or “average.” They don’t tell you about the person walking toward you. They tell you what you can assess about the probability of danger when the only information you have is color. Look at Derbyshire’s point 10: “where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences … Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally … If accosted by a strange black in the street …” The common premise in all this advice is ignorance. Not ignorance of data, but ignorance about the person you’re facing.

Derbyshire relies on the same assumption in point 12: “[I]n those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white.” Ceteris paribus is Latin for “all other things being equal.” It assumes there’s no difference between a black person and a white person except that each has the average IQ test score for her race. In other words, the equation holds, as a matter of probability, only if you fail to notice anything about the person you’ve encountered aside from color.

I do want to comment on this one of Derbyshire's pieces of advice:

(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

I used to live in Govanhill on the Southside of Glasgow, in the middle of Glasgow's Asian population, and I have to admit I followed a similar rule: in the street, I would always avoid concentrations of young white men not known to me personally. Young Asian men, on the other hand, were not theatening to me at all, and it would never even have occurred to me to cross the street to avoid a group of them, no matter how large. This is not because I have anything against whites, as I am one, and it's not because I'm especially fond of Asians or of Muslims, both groups containing, like every other group of humans on the planet, large numbers of utter bastards — which is in fact Derbyshire's point 5. And I wouldn't necessarily follow the same rule in other parts of the world — Asian populations in England and Scotland are markedly different, for instance, and you'd have to be a bit strange to feel threatened by a large group of white men hanging around in an East Anglian market town such as Diss. My behaviour was guided simply by my knowledge and experience of Glasgow, a city whose natives are both wonderfully friendly and fucking dangerous. As Frankie Boyle said, "If I had to explain Glasgow to you, I'd say that if I had to pick a city in the world where I could depend on a member of the public to punch a man who was on fire."

Now, it strikes me that I was making, basically, exactly the same judgement as Derbyshire, except, since the group I avoid are white, I won't get much stick for it. Never having lived in the same part of the US as him — or any part of the US, for that matter — I am in no position to judge whether his advice is any practical use. But it does seem clear from his writing that what he's talking about is not his experience of his own life, but extrapolation from statistics, and he does seem rather obsessed with genetics. I don't think Derbyshire would make different judgements in different parts of the world. I don't think he's saying that large groups of black men in his area can be dangerous; he's saying that blacks are dangerous, all the time and everywhere. And that is of course bollocks. Mark Steyn:

He thought that neuroscientists and geneticists’ understanding of race trumped my touching belief in “culture.” I’m not so sure: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados? Why is India India and Pakistan Pakistan? Skin color and biological determinism don’t get you very far on that.

And anyone who's worked in IT will recognise this description of Saletan's:

But it tells you a lot about Derbyshire. It tells you he’s a math nerd who substitutes statistical intelligence for social intelligence. He recommends group calculations instead of taking the trouble to learn about the person standing in front of you.

For what it's worth, this is why I disagree with National Review's decision to sack him. Anyone who's read some Derbyshire will know that the man is not a racist. What he's guilty of here is the obsessive concentration on and extrapolation from easily measurable data and the exclusion of factors that are vaguer and trickier to measure — such as humanity — characteristic of the borderline-Asperger's maths and science nerds we all run into every day. But he was a good writer, and his sometimes overconfident faith in science regularly pissed off National Review's Creationist readers, which was surely a good thing.

He also once wrote this, which I love:

My ideal nursing-home attendant, auto mechanic, or president would be a cheerful, capable, well-motivated person who was thoroughly au courant with the theory of evolution — and indeed with all the most recent advances in astronomy, biochemistry, cosmology, dendrochronology, endochrinology, fluviology, geomorphology, hydrodynamics, ichthyology, jurisprudence, kinesiology, limnology, microbiology, neuropathology, ophthalmology, psychometrics, quantum chromodynamics, rocket science, seismology, trichology, urology, virology, wiretapping, xenodocheionology, yachting, and zoology.

Life, however, often consists of making a choice between unsatisfactory alternatives. Invited to choose between having my kids educated, my car fixed, or my elderly relatives cared for by (a) people of character, spirit, and dedication who believe in pseudoscience, or (b) unionized, time-serving drudges who believe in real science, which would I choose? Invited to choose between a president who is (a) a patriotic family man of character and ability who believes the universe was created on a Friday afternoon in 4,004 B.C. with all biological species instantly represented, or (b) an amoral hedonist and philanderer who “loathes the military” but who believes in the evolution of species via natural selection across hundreds of millions of years, which would I choose? Are you kidding?

[ posted by Squander Two at 21:02 ]

New music.

As regular readers may know (if there are any regular readers left these days, blogging having slacked off so much), I was in a band once. Well, I still am, and we have done a thing.

It's been a hell of a while — the last time we gigged was our tour of Scotland, back in the Autumn of '05 — but new stuff is now very much on the way. The thing what we have just finished (Yes! Finished!) is this here remix of Lamb's Butterfly Effect:



I hope that brings you some enjoyment.

If you want to keep up with our news, we are on Facebook. If you don't, we're still on Facebook. It's not all about you, you know.

Cheers.

[ posted by Squander Two at 12:49 ]

Clueless.

The BBC costs billions of quid a year. Apparently, one of the advantages of this expense is that we get world-class news reporting and factual programming, which is nice.

Wikipedia, conversely, is famously free.

Today, Wikipedia has blacked itself out (quite ineptly, it has to be said) as a protest against SOPA. The BBC's news division apparently does not see the irony in publishing this headline:

Without Wikipedia, where can you get your facts?

It does rather lead one to wonder: without Wikipedia, where are the BBC getting their facts?

[ posted by Squander Two at 20:50 ]

This actually happened.

I live for headlines like this:

Man misses mouse and shoots roommate, revealing child rapist

A Utah man who was trying to kill a mouse ended up shooting one roommate and getting another arrested for child rape, while a fourth roommate slept through the whole thing.

There's a lot of it about.

[ posted by Squander Two at 18:57 ]

I'm ready to believe in karma now.

I note with interest that CNN don't care if you commit libel, don't care if you commit treason, don't care if you clearly demonstrate both brazen mendacity and a total lack of conscience about it — whatever, they'll hire you. But listening to Heather Mills's voicemail? What are you, a monster?

It really does do the heart good to see Piers Morgan being bitten so hard in the arse by his own low character. After being sacked as editor of The Mirror for knowingly publishing fake photos on the front page, committing both libel and treason while he was about it — action that should have made him unemployable in the news media and, come to that, everywhere else — he somehow managed to parlay that into an inexplicably successful media career, eventually getting one of the highest-profile current affairs jobs on the planet, all the while telling anyone who asked that he was sacked for opposing the Iraq War — as if a British newspaper editor could possibly lose their job for that.

Well, CNN have belatedly noticed what the man is actually like. He may yet weasel his way out of his own written confession, but it does look a lot like his career is quite wonderfully screwed. Hey, he might even end up in prison. It's a Christmas miracle!

It says a lot about Bush Derangement Syndrome that the public was happy to forgive this man for libelling British troops to further the cause of the enemy but draw the line at his eavesdropping on one of the most unpopular women in the country. People are odd, but hey, they're finally right.

[ posted by Squander Two at 15:51 ]

When all you have is a hammer.

This is an amazing and alarming video of a helicopter crash.

The pilot, who walked away with minor injuries, was helping to put up a Christmas tree in Auckland, New Zealand when the chopper’s blades clipped a wire and it spun out of control.

OK, surviving this is amazing, but I do wonder exactly who managed to have this conversation —

"We're going to put up a Christmas tree."
"I'll get the helicopter."

— without anyone saying "Er... hang on."

[ posted by Squander Two at 01:54 ]

Give 'em a Chanel suit and they think they're Hitler.

Mary Portas:

We need a more sophisticated understanding of what is a good deal for consumers looking beyond price.

Translation:

I want to drive up prices for everyone in the country in order to force them to fund my preferred lifestyle.

It must be lovely to have all that spare time on your hands to wander up and down a street buying all your veg and meat and bread and things in separate shops. I imagine it was very pleasant for women in the days before they had to go to work.

[ posted by Squander Two at 00:56 ]

Another letter to Mark Steyn.

Mark Steyn's latest Happy Warrior column is utter tripe. He appears to be under the impression that no engineering or invention worth mentioning has happened since the 1950s.

Their first car is no different from my first car. Which was no different from my grandfather's first car. To be sure, they've dispensed with the hand crank and rumble seat and installed a GPS and iPod dock, but essentially it runs on the same technology as a century back. Which are the faster-moving times? The age that invents the internal-combustion engine? Or the age that plugs a Justin Bieber download into it?

....

Imagine that Vermont class a century ago, the summer of 1911. The Model T had just gone into production a couple of years earlier, the age of manned flight had gotten off the ground. And they had their version of Justin Bieber downloads, too ... There were so many inventions for singers to sing about, they had no time left to sing about the novelties of their own industry, in which the wax cylinder was about to be superseded by the 78-rpm phonograph record. In the years that that Vermont Class of 1911 had been in college, the Nickelodeon had led to a boom in what we would soon call motion pictures. And yet, what with all the other things going on — with electrification and the internal-combustion engine enabling man to conquer both night and distance, time and space, and other footling stuff — these exciting showbiz novelties were generally regarded as peripheral to progress. Instead of the be-all and end-all of it. In the second decade of the 21st century, technological innovation means we're thrilled if Apple invents a device for downloading Katy Perry that's an eighth of an inch slimmer than the previous model. So today, instead of songs for the age of invention, we have inventions for an age of songs.

So I just had to write to him again.

Dear Mr Steyn,

Speaking as someone who generally agrees with you (apart from your reliably wrong film reviews), I was very disappointed to read your laughably inept "Gliding On Empty" piece.

You claim that the first half of the Twentieth Century was the bit where all the invention happened, because that's when inventors concentrated on vehicles Mark Steyn can travel in, while no engineering worth mentioning has happened since around 1950, because cars and civilian planes haven't changed all that much in that time and computer technology doesn't count because it is possible to use computers to listen to Justin Bieber records.

Can anyone play this game? Let me have a go. Just as Ipods are useless because they don't get us from New Hampshire to Mongolia any quicker, the automobile was a crap invention because I can't use it to peel oranges. And just as modern computers are essentially trivial because we can listen to Katy Perry on them, so the aeroplane is an evil invention because it was used by Stalin.

It will be news to every mechanic in the world that modern cars are "no different" to the cars of a century ago. "essentially it runs on the same technology as a century back" you claim. Yet most mechanics under the age of thirty don't even know how to deal with a carburettor, because they've never seen one — because the modern car engine, while still operating essentially on the principle of internal combustion driving pistons, has been continuously refined and improved beyond all recognition. And I like the way you dismissively mention in passing that they've "installed a GPS", as if building and maintaining a network of satellites orbitting the Earth that enables a small handheld device to pinpoint its exact position to within centimetres is a trivial exercise.

Of course, the modern technology you dismiss can be used for some things other than the ones you mention. Mobile phones not only allow us to listen to music but have also enabled billions of people to get connected to the global communications network without the prohibitively expensive building of old-fashioned cable-based networks. Since communication is the key to human progress, that's rather a big thing. Computers can be used not only to listen to records but to control power stations, compose symphonies, maintain life-support systems, and perform some truly astonishing feats for the military — including the control of the modern fighter jets you ignore. "Air travel went from Wilbur and Orville to biplanes to flying boats to transatlantic jetliners in its first 50 years, and then for the next 50 it just sat there," you write. But it wasn't air travel that progressed in this way; it was aeroplanes; commuter travel is merely one way of using them. And what happened with planes is that they continued to become more and more advanced, progressing far past the speed and acceleration and comfort that any mere passenger would be willing to put up with while drinking G&T and watching a film, so the latest planes, which are inconceivably amazing compared to planes from the 1950s, aren't used for commuter travel. Mind you, Burt Rutan flew a plane into space a couple of years back, and has now teamed up with Richard Branson to found Virgin Galactic, who have every intention and reasonable expectation of selling tickets for spacerides to us plebs. Of course, they might play music during the flight, so presumably it's not real progress, then.

You say "In the second decade of the 21st century, technological innovation means we're thrilled if Apple invents a device for downloading Katy Perry that's an eighth of an inch slimmer than the previous model." Yet the reason computers keep getting smaller is that teams of engineers keep figuring out ways to make subatomic particles do what they're told in increasingly complex and innovative ways. The quantum ratchet is a truly impressive invention, even if you can't ride in it.

I can put an entire university library in my pocket. Or I can put a record label's entire output in my pocket. The fact that you don't much like the latter doesn't make the former unimpressive.

Yours sincerely,

Joseph Kynaston Reeves

OK, that's quite enough writing to Mark Steyn. I'll figure out something else to blog about now.

[ posted by Squander Two at 13:09 ]