Tiger’s divorce

By what reasonable standard is a former nanny entitled to $750 million dollars(!!) for marrying Tiger for a few years?

There is no possible answer to this question.

The world is truly insane.

GBFM

Ulysses points out that GBFM has been active in Roissy’s comment section. He certainly has – here are yesterday’s comments alone (I need more words)!

GBFM

What happened to Great Books For Men?

Science and HBD

Modern society only respects science as an inexhaustible provider of what it covets.

– Don Calacho

It doesn’t covet the truth about HBD.

The Fed and science

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

Like a mad aunt, the Fed is slowly losing its marbles.

Kartik Athreya, senior economist for the Richmond Fed, has written a paper condemning economic bloggers as chronically stupid and a threat to public order.

Matters of economic policy should be reserved to a priesthood with the correct post-doctoral credentials, which would of course have excluded David Hume, Adam Smith, and arguably John Maynard Keynes (a mathematics graduate, with a tripos foray in moral sciences).

“Writers who have not taken a year of PhD coursework in a decent economics department (and passed their PhD qualifying exams), cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic policy.” . . .

The root error of the modern academy is to pretend (and perhaps believe, which is even less forgiveable), that economics is a science and answers to Newtonian laws. [emphasis mine]. . .

Economics should never be treated as a science. Its claims are not falsifiable, which is why economists can disagree so violently among themselves: a rarer spectacle in science, where disputes are usually resolved one way or another by hard data.

It is a branch of anthropology and psychology, a moral discipline if you like. Anybody who loses sight of this is a public nuisance, starting with Dr Athreya.

As for the Fed, I venture to say that a common jury of 12 American men and women placed on the Federal Open Market Committee would have done a better job of setting monetary policy over the last 20 years than Doctors Bernanke and Greenspan.

Libertarian society and discrimination

From Byran Caplan, who seems to agree with me:

The more general lesson is that using libertarian legal theory to undermine unsavory private agreements doesn’t really work.

More on “science”

Aretae has a very nice rebuttal to my post.

Our differences come down entirely to how one defines "science." Basically, he thinks my definition of science is too narrow and he prefers a (very) broad one.

I think more is lost by adopting a broad definition than is gained, but even if one takes his definition of science, one still needs to differentiate between the resultant types of science.

An example may help. There is a difference between the following two problems: 1) determine the position of Jupiter at a particular time in the future; 2) determine the temperature at a particular place on the earth and time in the future.

The first problem can be solved repeatedly and exactly.

The second problem is not ever going to be solved exactly (except perhaps by luck). The best method for solving this problem may, in fact, never be absolutely correct (just consistently least incorrect).

Thus, the type of knowledge necessary to solve the first problem is fundamentally different than the type of knowledge necessary to "solve" the second. I choose to call the first science. Whatever they are called, the difference remains.

I’m not saying that unscientific methods (by my definition) are not valid. Bayesian reasoning has it’s place and it’s underrated by some. Just as importantly, however, its overrated by those who mistake its conclusions for the complete equal of the conclusions of hard science.

The problem is that the post-1960s mind is incapable of accepting the existence of a problem that cannot be solved by science.

Why climate “science” is garbage

In short, global warming is garbage because of science are applied to a non-scientific problem. The result is pseudo-science and it’s wrong.

Statistical analysis is not "science"

Science deals with precise, quantifiable variables that can be isolated and experimented on.

Statistical analysis deals with imprecise variables that cannot be isolated and upon which conducting experiments is impossible.

This may not seem like a huge difference, but the difference really couldn’t be bigger.

When you solve Maxwell’s equations, you get a precise answer. If the answer you are looking for is 4. The answer is 4.

When you solve regression equations, you get an answer that is only specifiable in terms of a confidence interval. The answer of 4 means that you can be x% sure that the answer is 4 plus or minus y. In climate "science" the answer would be that you’re 95% sure that the answer is 4 plus or minus 50. This answer is gibberish.

Take a look at figure 4 of this paper. We see that "scientists" believe that the global temperature will rise a couple degrees by 2010 (the dark black line). When a relatively low error-bound is added, we see the confidence interval explode to plus or minus 120 degrees. This is garbage.

Even the best statistical analysis of a problem as complex as predicting average temperatures of the earth to within a fraction of a degree of certainty in hundreds of years is excludes a nearly infinite number of relevant variables. To make the point absolutely clear, here is Nissam Taleb discussing the problems associated with accurately predicting the movements of a billiard ball on a table:

If you know a set of basic parameters concerning the ball at rest, can compute the resistance of the table (quite elementary), and can gauge the strength of the impact, then it is rather easy to predict what would happen at the first hit. The second impact becomes more complicated, but possible; you need to be more careful about your knowledge of the initial states, and more precision is called for. The problem is that to correctly compute the ninth impact, you need to take into account the gravitational pull of someone standing next to the table . . . And to compute the fifty-sixth impact, every single elementary particle of the universe needs to be present in your assumptions! An electron at the edge of the universe, separated from us by 10 billion light-years, must figure in the calculations, since it exerts a meaningful effect on the outcome. Now, consider the additional burden of having to incorporate predictions about where these variable will be in the future. Forecasting the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table requires knowledge of the dynamics of the entire universe, down to every single atom!

Unfortunately, 20th Century thinking rejects all non-scientific methods of inquiry. Thus, pseudo-scientific methods must be applied to non-scientific problems if such methods are to be taken seriously by mainstream sources. The result is trash, but it’s trash that is smiled upon by the universities of the 20th Century.

Interracial marriage

From DC:

But a nationwide study by the Pew Research Center shows the number of of black men who "marry out" soared from less than eight percent in 1980 to 22 percent by 2008.

Why? Interestingly, you get different answers if you ask black men, who say:

Howard University student Miah Tyree told us, "My black friends say white women are a little bit more submissive and a little bit easier."

Fellow student Fred Brown added, "You don’t got to argue with them. Sisters you got to argue all the time."

"Yeah, less of a hassle…less of a hassle," said another student, Karl Lunan.

Than if you ask their professors:

Those were the views among several Howard University students though, according Howard University psychology professor Kellina Craig-Henderson, it’s more about America in general.

"White women are and have been regarded as the epitomy of virtue and of beauty," said Craig-Henderson.

Inactivity

Here:

“Mr. [Calvin] Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is far from being an indolent inactivity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task. Inactivity is a political philosophy and a party program with Mr. Coolidge, and nobody should mistake his unflinching adherence to it for the soft and easy desire to let things slide. Mr. Coolidge’s inactivity is not merely the absence of activity. It is on the contrary a steady application to the task of neutralizing and thwarting political activity wherever there are signs of life.”