The Origins Of Language

I’m surprised I haven’t seen this research appearing with the headline “Humans Running Out Of Sounds, Linguists Report“.

The Mouse Is Not A Finger

I’m just now listening to it, and I still need to finish the last 15 minutes, but I’ll recommend episode 3 of Hypercritical, John Siracusa’s podcast with Dan Benjamin.

In the first half* of the podcast, John explains the vision behind the major UI changes planned for Mac OS X Lion, and really sold me on the vision.  Then in the second half, he explains that about half of it won’t work, and he’s probably right.

* The first portion is actually spillover discussion on backups from episode 2.  So it’s the first half of the main part of the episode.  That’s also a good episode.  Are you doing your backups properly?

Lotteries

No, this post isn’t about epistemology. Cosma Shalizi defends lottery players:

The benefit to playing the lottery comes entirely between buying the ticket, and when the winner is revealed. During this interval, someone who has bought the ticket can entertain the idea that they might win, and pleasantly imagine how much better their life could be with the money, what they would do with it, etc. It’s true that in some sense you always could thinking about “what if I had $280 million?”, but many people find it very hard to get our imaginations going on sheer will-power. A plausible and concrete path to the riches, no matter how low the probability, serves as a hook on which to suspend disbelief. In this regard, indeed, lottery tickets are arguably quite cost-effective. If a $1 lottery ticket licenses even one hour of imagining a different life, I don’t see how people who spend $12 for two or three hours of such imagining at a movie theater, or $25 for ten hours at a bookstore, are in any position to talk.

Despite having held this idea for years, I have never played the lottery, because I couldn’t begin to make myself believe.

This only applies for the largest lotteries. But in North Carolina, people drop a lot of money on smaller games that offer a better chance to win, but no more than a few hundred or a thousand dollars. Maybe the fantasy is still good enough to offset the monetary loss–so long as you’re thinking about the vacation you’ll take and not about having the money for your light bill.

Here’s my own bit of contrarianism: in those smaller lotteries, the expected value of winning may well be negative. On the plus side, there is the money and the enjoyment of winning. On the negative side, winning is positive reinforcement so you play more in the future. Thus, when my mother-in-law put $1 scratch off tickets in my stocking, I spent the next few minutes thinking “don’t win, don’t win”. Anyone who knows my history with video games will understand. Thankfully, while I won seven dollars, I have not been tempted to play in the meantime.

I actually told someone who was addicted to the lottery: “you don’t want to win–it’ll make you keep playing” and he responded “I guess that’s right.” So perhaps the theory is less contrarian than I think it is.

P.S The Slate article that Cosma links to is also a lot of fun.

Smoking Regulations Or A Smoking Ban?

One thing I’ve yet to see from someone supporting bar and club smoking bans is a serious attempt to justify a ban as such. Even assuming that you’ve established that there’s a public interest in, say, protecting waiters from smoke, and that this interest justifies regulations, you still have to show that you can’t achieve your goal with something weaker than a ban. If incentives or regulatory “nudges” do roughly the same work, then they’re to be preferred.

In the case of smoking bans, there are a lot of replacement options, and it’s a heavy burden to argue that they wouldn’t suffice. Here are a few ideas I’ve brainstormed–someone more familiar with restaurant or OSHA regulations could surely find more:

1. Require expensive licenses for bars that allow smoking
2. Auction a limited number of smoking permits
3. Mandate a wage-supplement for servers and bartenders in smoking restaurants (perhaps this wouldn’t work because it couldn’t apply to cooks, etc).

Bear in mind that roughly a third of the American public smokes, and food service workers are presumably no exception. There’s little reason to worry about them being exposed to second-hand smoke, so even a regulatory regime that leaves a substantial fraction of bars might be compatible with protection for workers.

There’s a lot of variance in state and local smoking bans, so this challenge applies quite differenly to them. Pennsylvania, for instance, allows smoking in any establishment that makes more than a certain percent (80% maybe?) of its income from alcohol sales. Such laws are much more forgiving, and I legitimately can’t be too bothered by them. That said, I think that they could still be better. Once you’ve admitted that some bars can have smoking, why is the relevant feature the percentage of income coming from booze?

They’re Spending Eleventy-Billion Dollars To Promote The Singularity, But They Can’t Afford A Damn Designer

Jason Bobe, who works on the Personal Genome Project, an effort backed by the Harvard Medical School to establish a huge database of genetic information, points to forecasts that a million people will have their genomes decoded by 2014.

“The machines for doing this will be in your kitchen next to the toaster,” Mr. Bobe says.

Really, your kitchen? Who wants that?

A Matter Of Terminology

I recently found myself disagreeing with a fellow on these here internets about the “new atheists”. As a prelude to writing something more substantive, let me define a few terms, at least as I have been using them–not everyone is required to use them the same way, and you’re welcome to comment if you view the terms differently.

As I see it, the most important feature of the new atheism is its public profile and the attention it’s received in the press, attention that has accrued to a very specific set of individuals, based on works published within the past decade. I would put Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens as the primary members of this group, based on my casual impression of whose names I read and whose books I see.

Atheism itself is old, as is public profession of atheism. Nor is it the case, as I have heard it said, that today’s prominent atheist intellectuals are less deferential. It’s true that Bertrand Russell was somewhat more polite than Christopher Hitchens, but I don’t recall any evidence that Russell censored his ideas. In any case, the difference in tone might be grounds for calling Hitchens a jerk, but in the larger scheme of things, it’s not that important.

I also don’t see much evidence of anything intellectually new going on here. However, let me be clear that I don’t mean anything negative by that. If you are critiquing the cosmological argument or the ontological argument, especially for a popular audience, there is little need for novelty. We have known that these arguments are bad arguments for a long time, but so long as their proponents offer them, someone will have to stand up and remind the world how bad they are. That’s not something I’d like to spend my time on, but it’s still work that has to be done. Intelligent design is more or less new, I suppose–you can cite Paley here, but there’s clearly something new going on today. Of course critics of ID are legion–they’re just about everyone who’s thought hard about the issue, new atheist, old atheist, or theist. So I don’t think ID can really be a defining feature of the new atheists.

For those reasons, I see new atheism as a media or sociological phenomenon, and that matters, because it means that there’s no point in applying the term to most individual atheists. Aside from atheism itself, there isn’t anything connecting them. I suppose in a derivative sense, you might say that Joe atheist is a “new atheist” because he was made passionate about the issue by Dawkins, thinks that Dawkins is almost always right, or whatever else. But in the first instance, the term applies to Dawkins and his fellows, not Joe.

That means that generalizations about the new atheists are generalizations about a relatively small group of people who are in the public eye. It’s not incredibly important whether my use of the term is the right one–though I do think it’s the way that the term is being used–whether or not it’s right, it’s the sense that I attach to the term, and it’s the way to understand anything that I say.

Amnesiacs Form Impressions Of Their Own Personalities

Recently, I’ve been listening to John Kilstrom’s UC Berkeley Social Cognition course (available through iTunes U) during my commute. One incidental fact jumped out at me during a recent lecture.

Amnesiacs continue to have impressions of their own personality–if asked, they can describe what they’re like, despite not having the episodic memories necessary to do that. Moreover, it’s not just based on memories from the period prior to acquiring amnesia–even patients whose personalities changed over time or as a result of the damage that gave them amnesia were able to give assessments which matched their current personality. That suggests that one’s representation of one’s own personality is not entirely based on episodic memory.

The Sake Period

I didn’t immediately enjoy it when I first listened, but I’ve recently really been digging You Look Nice Today a podcast by Merlin Mann, Adam Lisagor and Scott Simpson. It’s comedy, and depends on the very idiosyncratic senses of humor of the three friends, so I won’t necessarily recommend the podcast to everyone.

That said, if your youth was anything like mine, you’ll love The Sake Period, which is about growing up uncool, and all the bizarre ideas you develop about what you would need to do to become cool. So you have the guy who shows up at school in August with a fake British accent that he acquired over the summer, or my friend who intentionally developed a huge interest in the Spice Girls in 9th grade. I was always too chickenshit to try to reinvent myself, but if I had, I’d have been the guy sitting in Central Park with a towel on his head.

You can find the episode at the You Look Nice Today website, or on the iTunes store under podcasts.

What I’ve Learned From Cosma Shalizi

Ignore all social scientific results based on statistical inference.  That’s even if you’ve read the underlying research, so that you know you’re not getting snookered by careless popular journalism.

Of course, the three posts I linked to are a bit, ahh…complicated, and I may have oversimplified or overgeneralized them.  Maybe we’ll call my version a layman’s heuristic?

Do I have it right, Cosma?

Catherine Mohr’s Talk About Energy Costs

My friend Michael mentioned a talk by Catherine Mohr in which she discusses how complex it is to judge the environmental costs of your actions (TED talk; video podcast on iTunes).  Her specific concern is energy use, and she analyzes a few examples in frightening detail.  It’s frightening because by the end, you might despair of ever getting these decisions right yourself.

Recommended viewing if you’ve ever asked yourself “exactly how far would I have to drive these batteries before I’d be better off tossing them in the trash?”

I know most of you have never asked yourself that question, but watch the talk anyway.  It’s just 10 minutes.

April 15th Is For Charity

Perhaps you already know that it’s better to give money to humanitarian organizations before a disaster strikes. Unfortunately, for organizations like the Red Cross, or Doctors Without Borders/MSF, many people give money right in the wake of a disaster. That means that these organizations have to suddenly ramp up their activity with no warning, without a clear picture of how much money they will have for the projects, and without infrastructure in place.  Since this money is often given with explicit guidance that it be spent in the affected area, it means that these organizations cannot focus on helping people where they can do the most good.

If you do give money specifically to help out in a disaster area, ideally you’d find an organization like Partners in Health (Haiti), which focuses on the affected area and is already active, but such organizations are not always easy to find.  In any case, if you give money to the general funds of a good organization, they’ll be more prepared for future disasters, and able to respond whether or not the disaster receives attention in the Western media.  There are always people in desperate need, but their plight rareky makes headlines.

Even if you know this, it’s easy to let time go by without thinking to make a donation.  Moreover, the longer you wait, the less you’re likely to give.  At least for me, if I give money now, I’ll make a larger donation and compensate by spending less later.  If I leave the money sitting in my bank account, I’ll be less frugal, so that when I make a donation it will be smaller.  To combat my general tendency towards inaction, I need simple guidelines for my own behavior–just as many people have an automatic deposit to their retirement account.

So if, like me, you’re receiving a tax refund this month, it’s the perfect time to make a donation during the brief period when you feel wealthy.  The idea just occurred to me this morning, and I’m hereby resolving to act upon it any year that I receive a refund.  MSF is my charity of choice and where I gave money this morning, but you’re welcome to add others in the comments.

UN Rejects Limits On Bluefin Fishing

I’ve had a tiny amount of bluefin tuna in my life, and it was absolutely exquisite.  At the time, I was conflicted about it, because they are so overfished, but if anything, the experience made me even more concerned about its preservation.

What’s remarkable is that Japan lead the opposition to the ban, even though by overfishing bluefin, they’re engaged in a sort of minor cultural suicide.  No one will lose out more than the Japanese if bluefin are no longer available.

In One Line

If there’s postmodern, then there oughta be premodern, and it’s worth betting ain’t neither one will be modern.

Reputation Markets

At leiter reports, they’re discussing letters of recommendation for academic job seekers, and the discussion has moved into a question of whether professors should make explicit comparisons (“this is my nth best student”, or “this student is at least as good as Justin was, which isn’t saying much”).

Naturally, what we need is a database of all the comparisons made by any given professor which can be used to judge their intertemporal consistency as well as their intrinsic plausibility.  Someone smarter than me can tackle the privacy issues.

Sometimes I say things and I can’t decide whether they’re sarcasm or wishful thinking.

Our Disappointing Representative

I’ve previously said that I’m bad with local politics.  Here’s how bad: I just found out that my representative in Pennsylvania’s 14th congressional district, Mike Doyle, was one of the 64 Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment, which would prohibit insurance plans participating in the exchange from covering abortion (a.k.a. any bought with government subsidies, or those bought by small businesses).  The only exceptions are in cases or rape, incest, or when a doctor would certify that the mother was at risk of death.  Although I think the policy is misguided through and through, that last sentence is crucial: in cases where the mother’s health is in jeopardy, but there is no danger of death, an abortion would still be prohibited.  Unless the plain language of the bill is misleading, neither is there any provision for severe fetal abnormalities, even if they meant that the fetus could never become viable.

I can’t say that Doyle is a uniformly terrible representative.  A brief look at his record indicated some high points, including extremely good support for LGBT issues, and support for net neutrality.  Still, I think the headline “Stupak Amendment Passes; 64 Dems Ask for Primary Opponents is roughly on target.

Nor is there any reason the 14th district should have a conservative Democrat as it’s representative.  Obama won in the 14th congressional district by 70% to 29%.  Doyle won in 1994 by ten points, has run unopposed in several subsequent races, including the 2008 election, where he only faced a challenge from the Green party.  In 2010, there’s a Republican challenger, which potentially puts pressure on Doyle to continue behaving like a conservative Democrat.  That’s all the more reason that he needs pressure from his left.

I doubt Doyle will receive a primary challenge, and I don’t know if that would be strategically sound.  But I sure hope he sees a lot of pressure for this decision.  Although it’s over a week late, I plan on giving his office a call to say that I’m disappointed, and that when the compromise bill comes up for a vote, Doyle needs to support it, whether or not the Stupak language has been preserved.  Since Congress doesn’t have takebacks, that’s the closest we can get.

Quote of The Day

I may try and write about Rep. Bart Stupak’s amendment to the House health bill, which blocked insurance companies enrolled in the exchanges from offering abortion coverage, as it raises a few interesting questions.  However, I don’t have the time right now, so I’ll leave you with a revealing comment from Ezra Klein, in his post The Stupak amendment: As much about class as about choice:

And it did not block the federal government from subsidizing abortion. All it did was block it from subsidizing abortion for poorer women.

Every Night, I Break Into People’s Homes And Replace The Twilight Series With Logic Texts

I’m more than a bit tickled to see that Dover has reprinted an edition of Raymond Smullyan’s First Order Logic.  It’s a Dover book, cheap and thin, so you can imagine someone casually picking it up to find out what this “logic” is about.  But despite its initially inviting exterior, it’s not a book of baby-logic, and section titles include

The Skolem-Lowenheim and Compactness Theorems for First Order Logic; Gentzen Systems; Gentzen’s Haupsatz; Craig’s Interpolation Lemma and Beth’s Definability Theorem

Contrary to my initial reaction, this is par for the course for Dover, which was founded after Tables of Functions with Formulas and Curves was an unexpected smash hit in the United States.

In general, math and logic books range from expensive to insultingly expensive, so it’s more than a little surprising to see serious (if outdated) books on the subject that are cheap.  For instance, I’m sure there are better books on the subject, but I’ve actually had Paul Cohen’s Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis recommended to me.

The Highbrow Life

I’m obviously flattered that Go is the game of the highbrow, according to a 1949 issue of Life magazine, but having played both, I wouldn’t say it’s a more highbrow game than bridge.  I like it better, but I wouldn’t say it’s a better game than bridge.

Even more confusing, Go’s footprint in the US was extremely small in 1949. Not even many highbrow individuals would have played it, even if they’d heard of it.

The King Is Coming

I didn’t initially care that much about the G20, or think that it would be a big deal. Clearly, I was wrong.

What first made me angry was learning that several downtown universities would be closing for the three days surrounding the summit. At least one university is closing its residence halls, though it will deign to provide the students with alternate housing.  To drive into downtown, you’ll need a driver’s license with a downtown address. No word what you do if you just moved.

Pitt is three or four miles from downtown and the convention center, but because of a dinner being held at the Phipps conservatory, Thursday evening, all classes after 4PM are being cancelled, and all classes in the Cathedral of Learning are being cancelled starting at Noon.  I won’t pretend that having the afternoon off is a terrible burden.

What rankles is that this is all for a dinner.  After all the disruption that’s being inflicted on people who live and work downtown, they’re taking the delegation to Oakland just because they fancied the dinner location.

I don’t mind the tremendous expense of security, and I don’t think that the meeting is a waste of time.  I do wonder if there might have been a better city than Pittsburgh (isn’t this why we built DC?), but I have to admit that the visitors will probably bring enough money for it to be a net benefit.  I don’t even mind that the White House is a very nice place, and we the people spend money on ensuring that the president’s bed is comfy.

But when we’re shutting down a university for the sake of a dinner, we’ve crossed a line into treating the heads of state as if they’re kings and we’re their subjects.

Beginners Go Tournament

Just a quick note: there will be a go tournament for beginners held in Oakland this coming Tuesday–I’ve included the announcement below.  I doubt I’ll be there to offer moral support, but it’s a good opportunity to play go if you’re just starting or haven’t played in awhile.  I suspect that the fifteen game limit may be more of a rough guideline, but if you’re worried, you can contact someone at the club and ask.

Let me also note that September is just about the best time of year for new players in our club.  Every year there’s an increase in the number of attendees right after CMU’s activity fair, and it brings in folks of all levels.

——————–

The tournament will be this Tuesday night (Aug.  25) at Phantom of the Attic in Oakland (406 S.
Craig St.).  It will start at 7:30 and go no later than 11:30.

The tournament will be played on 13×13 boards and is aimed at players who are new to the game of go.  Anyone who has played around fifteen games or less is welcome to play.  So, if you’re new to the game yourself, be sure to stop by, and if you have friends that you’ve been trying to get excited about go, encourage them to attend.  First prize is a used go board.  Second prize is $5.

Josiah will be at Phantom of the Attic at 6:30 to give a review of the rules and other tips to anyone who shows up early.  Other
non-beginners are invited to stop by to observe and/or teach before the tournament and between rounds.