Trumpophobia or “Dump-on-Trump Syndrome” (DTS)

June 13, 2018

The establishment and the establishment media have been reviling Donald Trump for almost 4 years now. Initially it was to try and ensure that Hillary Clinton was elected President. Now Trump has been President for 18 months and the automatic, instant reviling of Trump on any subject and any issue continues. The fervour  is getting feverish and reflects more on the revilers than on the “revilee”.

But what the media missed before the election – and is still missing – is that Trump revels in the headlines. Any publicity is good publicity for him. There has not been a single day in his 500 days in office when he has not been in the headlines. The instant and largely reflex – but thoughtless – opposition is manifested as a global phobia among the liberal/left (where a phobia is “an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something”).

In years to come, Trumpophobia or the “Dump on Trump” syndrome will be studied as a classic example of mass irrationality or a mass political psychosis. Just his name seems to cause brain freeze among those afflicted with the phobia. But the affliction is debilitating. It causes otherwise rational people to sound and act like imbeciles.

But the reality is that no matter how much Trump is held in contempt or reviled or hated, his cavalier approach to government and to diplomacy has shaken the world out of its complacent, self-adulatory comfort zone.

Whatever his popularity or otherwise, history will show that Trump caused a much-needed correction to the self-admiring, self-righteous, sanctimony that was – and still is – suffocating the world.

 

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Pareto’s 80/20 rule is ubiquitous

June 11, 2018

I first came across and learned to use the Pareto principle in the 70s as a young engineer. It was the starting point for fault analysis of any kind.  Root cause analysis always started with a “Pareto diagram”. It was an extremely powerful tool not only for fault analysis but also then in all quality improvement actions.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes – Wikipedia

Pareto showed in 1896 that 80% of land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population and thus was born the 80/20 rule. It has now become almost a cliche in all business processes and in financial and economic analysis to describe the relationship where a minority of causes lead to a majority of the result.

The 80-20 rule is a business rule of thumb that states that 80% of outcomes can be attributed to 20% of all causes for a given event. In business, the 80-20 rule is often used to point out that 80% of a company’s revenue is generated by 20% of its total customers. Therefore, the rule is used to help managers identify and determine which operating factors are most important and should receive the most attention based on an efficient use of resources. – Investopedia

The 80/20 rule seems to apply in almost all fields. It applies in wealth distribution, in personal and public finance, in all kinds of manufacturing, in quality control, in experimentation and in disease control.

It is not perhaps so surprising.

Wherever a phenomenon is subject to a power-law probability distribution, the 80/20 rule will apply, and a power-law probability distribution is perhaps the most common form of probability distribution that occurs in nature and in man-made processes. Put differently it is not at all surprising.

Of all the possible causes of an observed effect, a minority of the possible causes are usually responsible for a majority of the observed effect.

Perhaps we should be surprised only if the 80/20 “rule” does not apply. The “20%” and the “80%” should be taken as symbols for a “minority” and a “majority” respectively and then the 80/20 rule is ubiquitous.

 

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Trump schools the G7 (or Merkel wants her pen back)?

June 11, 2018

Alternative titles for this image.

  • A schoolmaster facing down a bunch of naughty children, or
  • G7 gang face stubborn Trump, or
  • Merkel wants her pen back, or 
  • Trump schools the G7

One may not like Trump but the message is sound.

  1. Real Free trade without subsidies and selective protectionism as in the EU or Canada or Japan.
  2. Ignoring Russia is pointless. Time for Russia to return to the G8
  3. Don’t waste time and energy on “global warming” talking shops.

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Murderous numbers

June 10, 2018

Globally the annual homicide rate is between 6 and 7 per 100,000 of population and this varies from less than 1/100,000 in many countries but up to 80/100,000 in El Salvador. In the US it is 4-5/100,000 and over 12 in Russia and around 20 in Mexico. There are therefore around 450,000 intentional homicides committed every year. To put this into some perspective, road fatalities globally are around 18/100,000 (1.26 million deaths). Around 56 million people die every year so as a cause of death, murders make up less than 1% of all deaths (and traffic related deaths are about 2%).

Assuming conservatively that each murderer commits less than 1.1 homicides, the world produces around 410,000 “new” murderers every year. While murderers come in all shapes and sizes and genders and ages, it is not unreasonable to assume that every murderer lives, on for around 35 years after committing his/her murder(s).

There are therefore over 14 million murderers living among the world’s 7 billion people. 

 

 

 

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Swedish Political Mathematics

June 5, 2018

The Swedish General Election is coming in September. The traditional parties are being confounded by the growth of the Sweden Democrats. The Social Democrats are particularly upset that even though their immigration policy now is almost identical with what the Sweden Democrats have proposed in the past, they are losing support. The Greens (Environmental Party) have no soul, very little sense and are an irritation and an irrelevance. The Centre Party is moving left, does not know what it is and has an identity crisis. The Left (Vänster) are die hard Marxists who have camouflaged themselves.

Any combination of parties which can command 45% of the votes will be able to form a government. In some circumstances with a split opposition 40% may be enough. My gut feeling is that the country would accept a Grand Coalition between the Moderates and the Social Democrats but a coalition of the Moderates with the Sweden Democrats would need another 5%+ party to support.

It makes an interesting mathematical puzzle.

 

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History is always a few documented events connected by speculation

June 1, 2018

History is  a narrative of the past, a story. It must be a story consistent with the present and with the available evidence of past events. The further back into the past we go the less is the surviving evidence. Evidence of a past event may be direct in the form of surviving documents or artefacts but it may also be indirect as calculations and estimates in the now about the past. The credibility of the narrative is enhanced by the weight of evidence that can be marshalled but – of necessity – the available evidence for past events , even in the immediate past,  is always spotty and incomplete. Where evidence is not available the historian is free to speculate as long as his narrative includes those events for which evidence does exist and the entire narrative is credible.

Most events in our lives are not recorded and leave no evidence. Even where evidence of actions remain, the prevailing emotions are rarely recorded. The actions of minor players, even if they were crucial, are rarely recorded. Much of what I did yesterday can be remembered but cannot be “proven”. And much of what I did yesterday is already forgotten. For periods without evidence (or memory) any credible narrative is valid.

Histories are never as objective and dispassionate and free of bias as their authors suppose. They are always written and rewritten to suit the present.  Inevitably they carry the current prejudices and biases of the historian. They are often written with a political agenda to justify current actions or to influence the actions of the future. Many histories, for example of Rome, which survive are themselves “rewritten histories” with political bias inbuilt. Yet when they are used as “documentation” for subsequent histories, the speculation of their authors are elevated to be “documented events”.

The actual happenings of the past can never be changed. But the story of those happenings is always changeable as long as the narrative remains credible. The credibility lies primarily in not making statements which are contradicted by the available evidence. From the recent past (such as WW 2) there is an abundance of records of varying accuracy available. Some of the records are intended disinformation where the intention has been lost. Other records are inconsistent or even contradictory. From the distant past there is a paucity of evidence which necessitates a great deal of interpretation and reinterpretation.  Socialist historians bring their prejudices to bear and “free market” historians have their own interpretations.. Liberal historians in the US are rewriting the history of the age of slavery based on their values today. Nationalist historians in India are reinterpreting colonial times based on their current values. A false history written today may a thousand years hence, if it survives, become “documentary evidence” of events which never took place. Histories are written in the present for the present and as long they are credible, what actually happened is irrelevant.

History scholars like to pretend that they can be objective. Scholarly histories and historical fiction are essentially the same genre of literature. A scholarly history has a high density of documented events and a minimum of speculation. But any scholarly work cannot avoid speculation and cannot avoid being political. Historical fiction on the other hand has some story to tell which is hung on a few historical events as the backdrop for the story. The difference lies only in how much of the content is speculation and how much is a reporting of documented events. Whereas historical fiction can tolerate content being contradicted by evidence, scholarly histories cannot.

 

 

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Invasive species and opposing natural selction

June 1, 2018

Sweden is planning to declare the mouflon to be an invasive species. It would then be politically acceptable to eradicate the species.

“The mouflon (Ovis orientalis orientalis group) is a subspecies group of the wild sheep (Ovis orientalis). Populations of O. orientalis can be partitioned into the mouflons (orientalis group) and the urials (vignei group). The mouflon is thought to be one of the two ancestors for all modern domestic sheep breeds.” – Wikipedia

 

I find much of “conservation” sanctimonious, hypocritical and illogical.

 

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MH370 search ends – not pilot suicide but the most successful state hijacking ever

May 29, 2018

So the “official” private search has ended.

A privately funded search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has drawn to a close. US-based company Ocean Infinity had been using a deep-sea vessel to conduct a 90-day survey of a vast area of the southern Indian Ocean.

But it found nothing and Malaysia’s government says it has no plans to begin any new searches. The plane disappeared on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. There are still fierce debates over how the flight ended.

The hunt for the missing plane formed one of the largest surface and underwater searches in aviation history, covering more than 120,000 sq km (46,300 miles) of the Indian Ocean.

A few weeks ago the disinformation machine tried to pin the blame on a suicidal pilot – but it was all speculation and fairly idle speculation at that. The most credible explanation – which is still fairly incredulous remains the one I posted on April 13th, 2014 about 5 weeks after the event – that this was the most successful state-sponsored hijacking event ever.

MH370: The most successful, state-sponsored hijacking ever?

…….

This was no accident!

The most parsimonious explanation is that this vanishing trick was the deliberate and intended result of an operation which was spectacularly and successfully implemented.

Who then and why?

There were 20 Chinese software experts on board. They had been working for Freescale Technology in Texas on technology which could convert ordinary aircraft into “stealth” aircraft. Patents had been applied for but have not yet been granted. MH 370 was carrying a “large” package as a Chinese diplomatic package and was therefore not subject to any search or security procedures. The speculative, uncorroborated but plausible and most parsimonious explanation becomes:

  1. The Chinese software engineers “stole” technology on behalf of the Chinese government from Freescale.
  2. Freescale was slow in picking up the theft and alerting the authorities.
  3. US intelligence and security agencies were unable to prevent the engineers and their package from reaching Malaysia.
  4. They were also unable to prevent the engineers boarding MH370 bound for Beijing or the precious cargo from being loaded as diplomatic cargo.
  5. The operational arm of a US Security Agency took the decision – without recourse to their political masters – to prevent the engineers and their cargo from reaching Beijing, at any cost.
  6. Since collateral damage would be high it was imperative that all evidence be obliterated.
  7. With the probable assistance of Boeing, and soon after take-off, the in-flight computer was remotely re-programmed.
  8. The auto-pilot was remotely put into uninterruptible mode.
  9. The Malaysian military was “persuaded” – without the knowledge of their political masters – to ignore the plane’s turn-back and flight westwards over Malaysia for a few critical hours.
  10. The passengers and crew were all “executed” by the excursion up to 45,000 feet implemented by the autopilot.
  11. The remainder of the flight path was to get the plane and it’s cargo into an as inaccessible a location as possible.
  12. The aircraft was allowed to run out of fuel such that the auto-pilot made as soft a  ditching as possible in as remote a place as possible. This increased the probability of the plane sinking intact with little or no debris.
  13. The location was deliberately chosen to be over deep ocean so that any black-box evidence would be almost impossible to come by.

 

 

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Behaviour, not form, defines a person

May 18, 2018

Within a decade or two we will need criteria to determine if an artificial intelligence has achieved consciousness. (I take consciousness without consciousness of self to be impossible). The criteria will have to be consistent and applicable both to life forms and to non-living entities. Within a few more decades, and certainly within one hundred years I think, we will need to be able to determine if an autonomous, intelligent, conscious entity meets the requirements for person-hood. At the same time it will become necessary to create criteria for judging what constitutes a person and what is meant by “mankind” (or person-kind).

Our use of the concept of “mankind” or “humanity”  or “humankind” is both concrete and abstract. It is used variously to mean:

  1. the 7+billion people alive today,
  2. the 110 billion modern humans who have ever lived (starting arbitrarily from about 200,000 years ago),
  3. all the people who have ever lived and all their works and all their dreams,
  4. an abstract vision of those who exhibit some ideal behaviour.

My own view is that it is behaviour which determines. To look like a human or to have the physical form of a human is not enough. It is the exhibition of “human behaviour” which determines who qualifies to be a human. “Mankind” or “humanity” or “personkind” then consists of those who exhibit or have exhibited and met some standard of human behaviour.  It also follows that any intelligent, autonomous, conscious creature or entity which exhibits these qualifying standards of behaviour is then a member of “mankind” (or of person-kind if language needs a new word). Genetics would then be involved only insofar as genetics determines behaviour.

“Human rights” as used today is a false concept precisely because it is divorced from behaviour. It is ethically and logically unsupportable. It is focused on the physical form of “being human” and not on the behaviour which makes a human. As used today, “human rights” is about form rather than substance, and about sanctimony rather than reality. When being a person is defined in terms of behaviour it then follows, naturally, logically and inevitably, that privileges for a person are also determined by behaviour.


It would then be perfectly logical to consider the privileges of personhood to be enjoyed by every entity qualifying as a person. And then it would not be necessary to consider privileges for members of IS or MS13 or Anders Behring Breivik or for an Adolf Hitler when he next appears.

 

 

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Skin colour is written in your DNA

May 14, 2018

There have been taboos in science about studying race and genetics and race and intelligence and genetics and behaviour, among many other “forbidden subjects”. It has been particularly incorrect to study race and intelligence, even though it might seem obvious that race (as a clustering of visible physical attributes) is genetic and that intelligence is partially hereditary and must also have a large genetic component. It has not been  politically correct to study the link between genetics and behaviour especially if the genetics can then be linked to race. Studies concerning the impact of crime and DNA have been deemed taboo.

image IUPUI

But some of these taboos are breaking down. A new tool can accurately use DNA markers to predict skin colour, eye colour and hair colour.

Lakshmi Chaitanya, Krystal Breslin, Sofia Zuñiga, Laura Wirken, Ewelina Pośpiech, Magdalena Kukla-Bartoszek, Titia Sijen, Peter de Knijff, Fan Liu, Wojciech Branicki, Manfred Kayser, Susan Walsh. The HIrisPlex-S system for eye, hair and skin colour prediction from DNA: Introduction and forensic developmental validation. Forensic Science International: Genetics, 2018; 35: 123 DOI: 10.1016/j.fsigen.2018.04.004

Science Daily writes:

An international team, led by scientists from the School of Science at IUPUI and Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, has developed a novel tool to accurately predict eye, hair and skin color from human biological material — even a small DNA sample — left, for example, at a crime scene or obtained from archeological remains. This all-in-one pigmentation profile tool provides a physical description of the person in a way that has not previously been possible by generating all three pigment traits together using a freely available webtool.

The tool is designed to be used when standard forensic DNA profiling is not helpful because no reference DNA exists against which to compare the evidence sample.

The HIrisPlex-S DNA test system is capable of simultaneously predicting eye, hair and skin color phenotypes from DNA. Users, such as law enforcement officials or anthropologists, can enter relevant data using a laboratory DNA analysis tool, and the webtool will predict the pigment profile of the DNA donor.

“We have previously provided law enforcement and anthropologists with DNA tools for eye color and for combined eye and hair color, but skin color has been more difficult,” said forensic geneticist Susan Walsh from IUPUI, who co-directed the study. “Importantly, we are directly predicting actual skin color divided into five subtypes — very pale, pale, intermediate, dark and dark to black — using DNA markers from the genes that determine an individual’s skin coloration. This is not the same as identifying genetic ancestry. You might say it’s more similar to specifying a paint color in a hardware store rather than denoting race or ethnicity.

“If anyone asks an eyewitness what they saw, the majority of time they mention hair color and skin color. What we are doing is using genetics to take an objective look at what they saw,” Walsh said.

The innovative high-probability and high-accuracy complete pigmentation profile webtool is available online without charge.

The study, “HIrisPlex-S System for Eye, Hair and Skin Colour Prediction from DNA: Introduction and Forensic Developmental Validation,” is published in the peer-reviewed journal Forensic Science International: Genetics.

“With our new HIrisPlex-S system, for the first time, forensic geneticists and genetic anthropologists are able to simultaneously generate eye, hair and skin color information from a DNA sample, including DNA of the low quality and quantity often found in forensic casework and anthropological studies,” said Manfred Kayser of Erasmus MC, co-leader of the study.

 

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