Evolution

What's all the hubbub about Intelligent Design?

I just watched Ben Stein's "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed."  I didn't catch the irony of the name.  I thought it would be a movie about public education, but it's about Intelligent Design.  As a scientist and one who believes the Bible quite literally, this video was informative.  The only thing I had ever heard about Intelligent Design was the typical propaganda that it's a shallow excuse for the religious right to try to get the Bible into schools.  I still expect that that's a large component of it, but I also realize that some proponents have a legitimate scientific approach.

Public Education is to Blame

The video shows numerous cases were Intelligent Design has received severe censorship from the academic community.  I suggest that most of the blame for this behavior belongs to the dominance of government run education of children (i.e. public education in the US).  That is, it's a matter of public discourse to decide what's in the curriculum for our children.  This should be a personal and family decision.  Instead the public votes and argues about it, law suits are filed, and people have a very serious need to persuade the public toward their beliefs.  The impact is huge.  How unfortunate.

The Scientists Feel Threatened

An interviewed scientists mentions from first-hand experience that many scientists who profess no concerns over the theory of evolution will in private and in trusted circles mention concerns and questions that are unanswered, perhaps even problematic.  I can understand where they are coming from.  The same thing happens in my religious community.  While we individually might question many things, we don't wish to share these concerns with those who are less knowledgeable and confident about our precious beliefs, in case they blow the concerns out of proportion.  This reflects the fact that we feel it is important for others to come to accept the truths that we believe (for their own sake).  What's odd is for a scientific community to feel this way.  It means they feel threatened.  They're worried that the public will move the wrong direction on this scientific topic, and that's important to them.  It's important that the public buy into what they feel confident about, even if serious concerns remain.  What an unhealthy scientific environment.

Evidence Doesn't Prove Science Right

It's a little odd to hear scientists claiming that the evidence proves Darwin's theory of the origin of life, and disproves religion.  This is not the typical role of evidence.  Evidence can prove wrong a specific hypothesis or model (due to measurement noise and errors, this usually happens by rendering a hypothesis less and less likely until it is dismissed), but it doesn't prove it right.  It's always possible that you just haven't figured out the right questions and experiments to break the theory.  Newton's physics is the standard example of this.

You might ask, can't the evidence prove wrong the hypothesis that there is a God?  Let me be a little more clear.  Here is what I know about the subject of hypothesis testing.  I teach a class at Princeton that covers hypothesis testing from a mathematical point of view.  If you have a set of alternatives to choose from (maybe one is that God created man and the other is that chance and evolution did), then sure, the evidence can tell you something about how likely you are to be wrong in rejecting one.  For example, you might decide on one hypothesis and feel confident because you know that under the other hypotheses the evidence you've seen is very unlikely.  However, there is a catch (actually, two).  First, rejecting one hypothesis can lead you to believe the other only if you know that one of the two must be true (i.e. the set of hypotheses must be exhaustive if you wish to "prove" that one is right by rejecting all the rest).  Second, and more importantly, to apply such a hypothesis test, you need a very precise definition of the hypothesis.  If the hypothesis is vague, allowing for many possibilities, then it can be much harder and sometimes impossible to reject.  It never works to have one hypothesis be a precise theory and the alternative to be anything but that theory.  The "anything but" alternative will not be able to be rejected based on the evidence.  So scientific theories are proven wrong but not proven right.

Many scientific theories are very precise and mathematical.  They are perfect candidates for subjecting to the rigorous testing that forms the backbone of science.  It's not clear that the theory of evolution as the origin of life is as precise as one would like.  At least, the video interviewed people who suggested otherwise.  On the other side, Intelligent Design is much more vague.  It's basically anything but unguided evolution and creation.  There will be no evidence to reject this.  Strictly speaking, advocates of intelligent design are simply trying to poke holes in the null hypothesis---Darwin.  They're doing what any scientist should do.  The real question is whether the Darwin skeptics have enough fuel to cast legitimate doubt on the theory.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.  There are and should be doubts about most scientific theories.  I have many questions about the story of the evolution of life that I've never had answered in a satisfactory way.

When it comes to scientific education, evolution is one of the few topics where phrases like "the science has proved it" come to surface. I believe it's because it's such a politically charged topic.  No other science was taught to me in such a manner.  It's usually taught with much more healthy skepticism behind it.

So if you can't prove a scientific theory right, what are scientists trying to do.  Well, it turns out that the ability to test a theory is integrally connected to the ability of the theory to make predictions about the world.  If a scientific theory is precise and has not been rejected, then it must be making reasonably accurate predictions of the behavior of nature, and that's useful.

Another principle is at play here.  Those who question the universe and existence have often been naturally guided by a principle that's become associated with the 14th-century Father William of Ockham (Occam's Razor).  The simplest explanation is the most believable.  If a sequence of ten arbitrary coincidences would explain how your car broke down, and another very simple explanation matched your experience as well, you're inclined to believe the simple explanation.  This principle applies to creating a theory that matched data already observed.  In the end, if your theory can make predictions about the world, then testing it in that way is all that is important.  It turns out that simple explanations help avoid over-fitting your theory to the random noise of your measurements.  The simpler explanations that match your data pretty well often have more accurate prediction capabilities.  On top of that, don't we expect or at least hope for the laws of nature to be fairly simple.

Intelligent Design doesn't propose a specific alternative to Darwin's origin of life.  However, the burden of the Creationist and anyone who adopts a specific alternative to Darwin's origin of life is to have an explanation simple enough to be believable (which depends on personal beliefs and experiences), especially in comparison to Darwin, yet which still matches and explains the data.  Ultimately, to be confident from a logical point of view, the theory should provide predictions that can be tested.  Then again, the hard thing about testing religious beliefs with the classical scientific approach is that it is hard/impossible to test a superior being (God) in a way that He does not desire.  We have to follow His guidelines for testing His word.

Arrest me at the Pentagon

I almost got arrested at the Pentagon (in my version of the story). :) I wanted to see the Pentagon while I was in DC. There's a station called Pentagon station, so I got off the subway and stepped outside. There's a bunch of people walking and buses and stuff, and I turn to my right and there's a big boring looking building behind a construction fence. Then I checked my GPS on my phone and saw that it was the Pentagon. So I stopped and took some pictures with my phone, including a picture of the security guard standing there. That's when he noticed me. He walked over and and said, "man, what are you doing, look at the sign." Then I noticed a sign that said "no pictures." So I felt embarrassed and showed him that I was deleting the picture.

But something was a little funny about the whole thing. And then I realized what it was. I've never been in a public place, outside, and been told not to take pictures. So I asked him where I could go to take pictures. He said I couldn't take pictures of the Pentagon from anywhere. Clearly he wasn't understanding, so I said, what about that highway with all the traffic. I can take pictures from there, right? "No" was the answer. So I rolled my eyes and said I was going to walk away a ways to find a spot to take a picture.

I walked about 200 feet away and didn't see any signs around. I was still on a sidewalk with a bunch of people. So I held my phone up and took a picture. Then I noticed a guy in his cop car, from the other direction, pointing to me. He got out and walked over. "Where are you from." I said "New Jersey." "Why are you taking pictures of the Pentagon." My simple response: "It's the Pentagon. It's famous." He told me that I couldn't, and I then proceeded to engage this guy with logic. He lightened up and turned out to treat me decently. He said I'm on a military base and have to respect where I am. There are vehicles of military personnel parked all around, for instance, and they don't want licence. plates photographed. It was news to me that the subway popped us out in the middle of a military base, but I appreciated the explanation. He told me I could go to the other side of the building where the 9/11 memorial is to take a picture. So that's what I did.

As I walked the direction of the 9/11 memorial, I backtracked to the place where the first security guard was standing. He came over my direction, about 50 feet, and asked, "Did you just go over there and take a picture." I said yes. "After I told you not to---you must be stupid." Then I said, "You didn't give me accurate information. I asked you if I could take a picture from that highway." He responded, "And I told you 'no.'" I cut in "...and that was a lie. I can take a picture if I'm not on base." He just continued to call me stupid while one of his buddies laughed about it. I was quite upset but just decided to leave him behind with a "whatever."

Deficit Reduction

Yesterday the news was that the President's deficit-reduction panel came back with a list of unpopular suggestions to reduce the national debt by $4 billion over the next decade. Here's an example of an article on the subject.

Housing Prices will Drop

When I bought my house last year, I knew the housing prices were inflated. They always will be as long as the government subsidizes mortgages by giving a tax break for the interest. I told my family and friends that I was betting on the government not changing their policies anytime soon. Sounds like a pretty good bet. Well, the housing prices have continued to drop, but for other reasons entirely (no one is really good at determining the real worth of real estate). But it looks like I might lose my bet about the government as well. Part of the proposed effort to reduce the national debt is to end the tax break on mortgage interest.

Can I tell you---I’m thrilled. Sure, I would suffer from this decision, as I don’t plan to sell my house soon (for one thing, there is a huge loss incurred during a sale due to realtor and closing costs). If I were to venture a guess, I would say that this will cause an eventual 25% drop in home prices, but it won’t happen all at once. In fact, it might not be finished by the time I do sell my house (I hope).

The bottom line is that the government should stop sticking its business in things. Lower house prices are a good things for the world. Since when do we want things to be expensive? Hopefully some day we can all afford to live in great big houses (I’m being silly here---this is unrelated to the current discussion). Inflated prices inflate the risk that home owners take on. Some people make it big when they sell their house, and others lose and “need” a government bailout to reduce foreclosures. Ironically, this inflated market was encouraged by well-intended but unsophisticated law-makers who wanted to tamper with the system and help ease the burden of home owners. Didn’t work. Please, let free people be free and take care of ourselves.

What does a tax break have to do with home prices. Well, people tend to buy a home based on their monthly payments. If you give them a tax break, which reduces their monthly payments, there’s a good chance they’ll purchase a more expensive home. So now it’s as if there is a larger pool of money that people are using to buy homes. This translates to increased demand, which sends the home prices up. Who is gaining through all this? After all, the federal government is giving money to someone, or this change wouldn’t be part of a deficit reducing proposal. Well, it depends on a couple of things. If the house prices don’t change enough, then the home owners are the ones pocketing the subsidy. Those with more expensive houses pocket a larger subsidy (don’t read into this too much---I’m against progressive taxes anyway, so this isn’t really a problem in my view, when you work it all out). On the other hand, if the prices increase to the point where a person is still paying just as much for their mortgage with the tax break as they would have been paying without it, then the beneficiary is a little bit surprising. I want to say it’s the banks. They are now able to earn more money from interest because house prices are more expensive. But let’s be careful there. Under a competitive system, banks are only charging enough interest to cover their expected losses from default. Sure, they are earning some profit, but we can’t just say that they are pocketing all of the government subsidy. Consider this. Those who owned houses when the policy was first put into place experienced a welcome increase in house value. They sold their houses and pocketed the profit. Okay, well that only happened during the transition, so where is all the money going now. No, the real answer is that it’s paying the price of greater uncertainty. With higher house prices there is greater uncertainty. A bank charges interest because there is a possibility that a person will not pay off the loan. At the same time the house might have lost money. So there is no guarantee that the bank will recover it’s loan. Interest is the only way for the bank to recover this loss (since they don’t make any money from the home price increasing). With higher home prices, some people are making lots of money off of their home sales. Others are foreclosing. The government subsidy is paying for the interest, which is the expected loss, to allow you to have such high prices and potentially make it big when you sell your house.

In reality, the subsidy is being split between these two expenses. Paying for greater uncertainty, so that individuals can hold larger lottery tickets, and actually paying a part of the mortgage. The degree at which the money is split between the two depends on how much the home prices are affected by the subsidy. Demand is only one factor that affects the price of a resource. Supply is the other. Homes are supplied by construction, so that should anchor the price a bit. However, it’s quite clear that home prices swing around, pretty much superfluous to any kind of anchor. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps it is because of construction laws restricting cheap construction in desirable places. I know that Stanford University can’t build on their enormous lots of land. It’s probably part of the effort to maintain a “healthy” (read: inflated) housing market.

There’s one more thing to consider about interest rates. Interest rates are actually heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve. They are not dictated by a free market. Don’t ask me what that does to my analysis.

Raise the retirement age

Yes, it is difficult for anyone to lose money they were expecting. That’s what happens when a system breaks, such as the entire federal spending system. The good news is that the elderly are not the only ones who asked to wean themselves from government spending. Read my previous statement about my house. If you’re lucky, you downsize your house during the bubble and enjoyed a small inheritance.

The bottom line is that the government needs to get out of almost all aspects of our lives. Let us be free. It’s too bad that someone has to suffer during the transition. Just like anyone else, the elderly should look to family and friends for support.

Health Care

What is the purpose of health insurance (or insurance in general)? I answer the question this way: It can serve three roles of smoothing costs---smoothing over time; smoothing over probability; and smoothing over society. The first two, time and probability, are very similar. They are also individual, and therefore in a free country no one would ever (we can only hope) step in and stop you from taking advantage of the "technology" of insurance if you want it for the stability it brings. Smoothing over society happens to some degree inadvertently and is open to debate whether that should be a mandatory objective or not. This is where a lot of the political debate happens. The stories of people going bankrupt because they have health problems that are expensive.

If smoothing over society were not an objective, then the job of insurance providers is to figure out just how risky each person is for health care expenses. They need to set the price high enough to make up for costs and risk but low enough that you'll buy it. We may complain that insurance companies do a terrible job of correctly assessing health, but in fact this is there job. (With more competition in the industry this would really be a sink-or-swim aspect of the business.) If they lump healthy and unhealthy people together at the same price, then savvy healthy people will eventually catch on and stop purchasing. Then they're stuck insuring only the unhealthy people and average expenses go up. You know where this is going...

In the situation outlined above, I don't see why a natural monopoly exists. The insurance companies compete at their ability to differentiate health. Perhaps if they got really good at this then a monopoly would emerge (like Google).

So the real concern seems to be whether the focus on health care (or insurance) should be to smooth expenses over society, from the less healthy or less fortunate, to the healthy. In fact, most of the current turmoil about health care seems to be silently hinged on this question.

Gay Marriage

I admit I'm mostly uninformed. Yet I still feel like I have some things to say about the topic of gay marriage that I don't hear stated very often.

First of all, I don't think it's okay to practice homosexual activity, and even if genetic influences are involved there is still choice in the activities a person participates in. But this isn't about whether or not laws should stop people from immoral behavior. After all, I think it's immoral to have extramarital sex, but that is pervasive and unpunished in our society. So it's important to point out that if marriage keeps its current meaning (i.e. no gay marriage) that does not preclude anyone from behaving how they wish.

The gay marriage argument seems to lump a bunch of issues into one. Supposedly this is about rights that are affected by marriage status. I don't know what all the rights are for families (even though I am married and have children). Two come to my mind. Tax breaks (for kids) and adoption. Let's assume there are many others. By redefining marriage to include homosexual relationships, we uniformly remove all discriminating between the two in all cases (I purposely used the word "discrimination" to bother those who think it's a bad word). I think each case and right should be handled individually. Not only does the gay marriage movement try to change a large clump of legal implications all at once, reaching as far as public education, without specifically addressing what the effects will be, but it also tries to remove the possibility of ever distinguishing between the types of "marriage" in the future.

For example, I'm told that gay couples can currently adopt children, at least in some states, even without gay marriage. This is an issue for many people, and certainly some adoption agencies would not like to be involved in this. However, if gay marriage is legal, this issue becomes void. Agencies that don't want to be involved in giving adoptions to gay couples will face law suits. This has already happened in states where gay marriage is legal. So that's one important issue that's carried in the basket of gay marriage.

It's hard to justify the governments current support of families (I'm not one that likes to look at empirical data involving social behavior and make a case out of it). This is a form of discrimination they we as a society have decided to embrace, thank goodness. Gay unions should be classified as a separate entity, with their own set of rights and privileges established. By legally lumping in these new types of marriage into the marriage category we are diluting our traditional support of families. It seems that the gay marriage proponents carefully avoid talking about two important observations. One---gay marriage brings with it much more than the ability to live together and love. Two---the same arguments about rights and discrimination that are used in favor of gay marriage could also be used to add a variety of other arrangements into the category of marriage or remove the legal status of marriage all together. If that were directly proposed, it would be swiftly defeated. When logic leads to inconsistency or undesired conclusions, you have to question the premise.

My mother went to graduate school for a degree in teaching while she was raising four children. If I remember correctly, we had free "family" passes to the swimming pool for a while. Then the university decided not to discriminate against unmarried couples, so the "family" benefits were extended to a larger group of people, such as "partners." In the end, we no longer could swim for free. Let me restate that: The family privileges were extended to everyone. How generous of them.

In honesty, I realize that my argument for a separate category (like "unions") could be turned against me. Why not say that marriages between people of different races should be in a separate category as well? There was a point in history when this might have gained approval. I don't have a good answer for that. They just seem like fundamentally different issues, rooted as deeply as biology itself.

On top of everything I've said, I don't want the government to dictate that my children must be taught that being gay is perfectly acceptable. It's not hard to see that this is going there and beyond. I can teach my children on my own to love and accept people regardless of their choices.

Ronald Reagan Speeches on Youtube

These speeches by Ronald Reagan are worth listening to:
A Time to Choose
Tear Down This Wall

This compilation is pretty fun:
Ronald Reagan's Humor

Hillary Clinton visits primary school

I received an important story about Hillary Clinton by email yesterday. This is posted all over the web, but it's worth repeating once more here:


Hillary Clinton was spending the morning at a primary school
in Ithaca, New York, to talk to the children about her job as
a US Senator. After her talk, she offered question time. One
little boy put up his hand, and the Senator asked him his
name. "Kenneth." "And what is your question, Kenneth?" "I
have three questions:
First - Whatever happened to your medical health care plan?
Second -Why would you run for President after your husband shamed
the office?
And third - Whatever happened to all the stuff you and President Clinton took when you left the White House?"

Just then the bell rang for recess. Hillary Clinton informed the kids that they would continue after recess.

When they resumed, Hillary said, "Okay, where were we? Oh, that's
right, question time. Who has a question?" A different little boy raised
his hand; the esteemed Senator from New York pointed him out and
asked him his name. "Larry." "And what is your question?"

" I have five questions:
First - Whatever happened to your medical health care plan?
Second -Why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office?
And third - Whatever happened to all the stuff you and President Clinton took when you left the White House?
Fourth - Why did the recess bell go off 40 minutes early?
And Fifth - What happened to Kenneth?"