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Marco Rubio and the age of the Earth

Posted in Rant, tagged , , on November 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Recently, Senator Marco Rubio told an interviewer from GQ that he wasn’t qualified to say how old the Earth was:

GQ: “How old do you think the Earth is?”
Marco Rubio: “I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.”

This is so absurd on so many levels, I need to parse the quotation out bit by bit—partly to stretch out this blog post, of course, but partly to delve more deeply into the mind that is Marco Rubio.

“I’m not a scientist, man.”

Obviously.  But GQ wasn’t asking you to demonstrate the Earth’s age using science.  They were asking you how old the Earth is, which admittedly is code for: “Do you believe in the most basic science?”  And apparently, you do not.

“I can tell you what recorded history says,”

What does recorded history have to do with the age of the Earth?

 

“I can tell you what the Bible says,”

But unfortunately the Bible doesn’t actually say how old the Earth is.

 

“but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians…”

Wait…what?!  Theologians?  We’re talking about the age of the Earth.  If geologists can’t answer this question, no one can.  Why?  Because geology is the study of the Earth.

 

“…and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.”

So?

 

“I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow.”

True, but the interviewer is really asking if you have any knowledge about science and the scientific method.  If you don’t believe the arguments for a 4 billion-year-old Earth, if you distrust that much the collective human body of knowledge, then you may not listen to economists when they tell you that printing a quadrillion dollar bills and passing them out to everyone would be a bad idea.

 

“I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that.”

Do you have to be a historian to answer the question, when did the Crimean War start?  Do you have to be a biologist to answer the question, what does RNA stand for?  Do you have to be a mathematician to say that pi is irrational?  Are you really claiming, Mr. Rubio, that you have to be an expert to answer the most basic, settled questions that humans have successfully answered?  Are you really saying that you’re not qualified to look up an answer on Wikipedia?

 

“At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created…”

He’s right, check out these 90 different theories from religions around the world…

“and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all.”

Including, no doubt, the story of the water beetle Dâyuni‘sï  that made the Earth from mud, and the story of how Buga set fire to the water…oh, and don’t forget how Mbombo vomited the moon and the sun!  Make sure elementary school curricula cover them all!

“I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says.”

I’m not sure what his point is here.  Is there a movement to ban what parents can and cannot teach their children?

“Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.”

Yes, a mystery, like how the tides work or how magnets work.  I guess the real mystery is why anyone takes Marco Rubio seriously.

(Photo credit: NASA)

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Stay away from quantum mechanics, Deepak Chopra

Posted in Many-worlds Interpretation, Rant, tagged , , on November 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Schrodinger’s cat

I am hesitant, sometimes, to expound upon the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, for fear of something I call the Deepak Chopra effect.  (I won’t give you a hyperlink to the guy, because I don’t want to increase any traffic to any website he’s associated with.)  The Deepak Chopra effect is this:

If you talk about some weird aspect of quantum mechanics, they will come.

Who are “they”?

They are the Deepak Chopras of the world: people who make money by peddling vague new age philosophies.

Suppose you’ve made up some sort of new religion.  You want followers, people to buy your books and watch your DVD’s and attend your seminars and drink your Flavor Ade and buy your T-shirts.  (Yes, Deepak Chopra sells T-shirts.)  What better way to attract attention, to give your puerile ideas a veneer of respectability than to cloak them in the mystique of quantum mechanics?  Quantum mechanics is weird—everyone knows that—but almost no one really knows the details.  PhD physicists don’t grow on trees, after all.  Therefore, if you appeal to quantum mechanics to cover up the stench of your ideology, you will most likely get away with it.

I’m tempted to write some computer code that invents Chopra-esque prose.  The output would look like this:

Your [mind] and [eternal light] have been exquisitely formed by [the cosmic warmth] to help you fulfill [your potential matrix] and your [soul capability].  This is because [wave-particle duality] and [the principle of decoherence] prove that your [neo-human consciousness] transcends the [body-mind paradox] to inhabit the [weak nuclear force] under the auspices of [string theory].

Easy, right?  Yet Deepak Chopra is the one worth $80 million dollars.  Sigh.

So back to the many-worlds interpretation.  What could someone like Chopra ever do with such an idea?  How could he co-opt the multiverse to scratch out a few more ducats?  I shudder to think on it.

People have been using the strange ideas of physics for a long time now, with predictable results.  Take this garbage:  “What the #$*! Do We Know!?”  I wish I had been blogging in 2004 when this farce came out; my review of the movie would have been six words: “Nothing about physics, that’s for sure.”  Yet part of the blame rests with physicists themselves: they bandy about strange ideas amongst themselves, with nary a thought about how the public at large will perceive said ideas.

Consider Schrödinger’s cat, for example, the popular notion of which is as follows: a cat can be alive and dead at the same time!  Weird!  And yet when Schrödinger first proposed this “paradox” his intent was to attack the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, by pointing out an obvious absurdity.  I know of no physicist on the planet who seriously believes a cat can be alive and dead at the same time.  And yet Chopra and others like him point to such quantum weirdness and use it to excuse all manner of hooey.

But what about many worlds?  Isn’t it just as crazy, just as loony, as anything Chopra peddles to the masses?

Well, no.  It’s weird, sure.  But it is based in peer-reviewed science, and is an active topic of investigation to this day.  (I doubt anyone’s in a lab somewhere, trying to verify Chopra’s claims.)  Many worlds is an interesting mathematical structure to explain our universe, but it doesn’t really affect anyone’s life.  It’s not even relevant to how anyone should live their life.  It should certainly never be used to prop up a shaky religion.

My advice to you, Dr. Chopra, is to quit using physics to bolster your claims.  After all, I don’t use your only field of expertise (endocrinology) to support my idea that Matt Damon is really a cyborg, do I?  Then again, maybe I could start a religion—

[Note: my book Why Is There Anything? is now available for download on the Kindle!]

(Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schrodingers_cat.svg)

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Don’t let the f-word bother you…

Posted in Rant, Socratic dialogue, tagged , on November 14, 2012| 6 Comments »

Please don’t be offended!

A Socratic dialogue

[Inside PASCAL’s home.  SOCRATES is watching television, while PASCAL is kneeling in the corner, praying.]

SOCRATES: They just bleeped a word on my favorite show!

PASCAL: Well, there are certain words you can’t say on TV.

SOCRATES: Like “fuck”, apparently.

PASCAL: Dear Lord!

SOCRATES: What, you don’t like hearing that word?

PASCAL: Heavens, no!

SOCRATES: And I bet you think that we shouldn’t be able to say “fuck” on television?

PASCAL: Certainly not!

SOCRATES: But why not?  The word simply means “sex” or “intercourse” and you can say those words on the air.

PASCAL: The word f—, uh, the word you mentioned, is obscene.  It is vulgar.

SOCRATES: What exactly does that mean?  Would the word, if heard, harm the listeners in some way?

PASCAL: Of course.  People’s sensibilities would be harmed.  Decent people would hate to hear such rubbish.

SOCRATES: But why?  Does the sound of a voiceless labiodental fricative preceding a mid-back, unrounded vowel and followed then by a voiceless velar stop somehow produce a dangerous resonance pattern that could damage the eardrums of unsuspecting people?

PASCAL: You mock me.

SOCRATES: Not at all.  I am simply at a loss to understand how any word, any single morpheme, could possibly harm anyone, apart from the word being delivered at a dangerous volume level.

PASCAL: You misunderstand.  It is not physical harm that such language can cause, but mental harm.  Distress, if you will.

SOCRATES: But how does such distress come about?  Do the concepts cause distress?

PASCAL: Why, yes.

SOCRATES: So the word “sex” offends you.

PASCAL: Well…

SOCRATES: Let me rephrase.  Would the word “sex” offend an ordinary person, a person that…perhaps…had not written the Pensées?

PASCAL: I would think not.  No.

SOCRATES: So the content of a word like “fuck” is not what offends, after all.

PASCAL: OK then, it is not the content of the word that offends, but the word itself.  The word is offensive.

SOCRATES: For what reason?  Is there some intrinsic property of the word that offends you…perhaps the way the word rolls off one’s tongue?  Or perhaps you hate the word because it scores 13 points in a game of Scrabble, and 13 is an unlucky number?

PASCAL: The word is offensive.  Everyone knows that.

SOCRATES:  But do you mean that literally?  Everyone?  Would a person who speaks no English be offended?

PASCAL: Of course not.

SOCRATES: But why not?

PASCAL: They wouldn’t know what the word means.

SOCRATES: But we agreed that being offended doesn’t come from the meaning of the word.

PASCAL: Oh, uh…well, they don’t know it’s a vulgar word.  They haven’t been raised in an English-speaking culture, so they don’t know that the word isn’t proper.

SOCRATES: So being offended by “fuck” must be learned.

PASCAL: Of course.  One must learn correct etiquette, the right manners.  Why should language be different?

SOCRATES: So you would agree, would you not, that being offended by a word like “fuck” is a completely arbitrary, learned behavior?

PASCAL: I would not say arbitrary.  After all, that particular word denigrates what is actually a solemn bond between man and wife.  That word cheapens the act itself.  That can’t be tolerated.

SOCRATES: It can’t be tolerated?  How come?  What would happen if you did show tolerance?

PASCAL:  The foundations of society rest on certain conventions, certain morals.  If we allow vulgarities, the whole framework is weakened significantly.

SOCRATES: And then what would happen?

PASCAL: Society would become unraveled; in its place would be—

SOCRATES: A better society?

PASCAL: —anarchy.

SOCRATES: Can you really believe that allowing certain words to become less vulgar would mean that all society would crumble?

PASCAL: But there is nothing we can do.  There are always words that will be vulgar; you cannot make them less so.

SOCRATES: Why not?  We’ve already shown that a word like “fuck” offends only because society arbitrarily says so.  Well, we are society, all of us, are we not?  What if we simply said that “fuck” is hereby no longer a “dirty” word.  It means, simply, “sexual intercourse”—if taken as a verb—or “I am very displeased” if taken as an interjection.  How could such an action harm society?  Wouldn’t it help, in the sense that no one will ever again feel mental distress when that particular word is pronounced within earshot?

PASCAL: Such a thing could never happen.  Proper people will always be aghast at the mentioning of obscenities.

SOCRATES: Ah, but there’s the rub: how will they know which words are obscenities and which are not?  What if society refuses to sort this out for them?

PASCAL:  You propose an end to all that’s decent!

SOCRATES: Not at all, my bridge-dangling friend.  I propose to remove an arbitrary system of “word regulation” from our society, because doing so will make our society that much better.  No one will ever be offended by “dirty” words again, because there will be no dirty words!  We would have a society in which censorship would be nonexistent, and in which freedom of expression would reach new, unexplored levels.

PASCAL: You are persuasive, but servants of the Devil often are.  But now I think I see what you are doing.  In grand Orwellian fashion, you propose to make odious words acceptable by simply indoctrinating people.  Brainwashing them.

SOCRATES:  No, that’s your jurisdiction.  Look at it this way: I am not trying to make murder more acceptable, simply by calling “murder” by another name such as “wexelflugen”.  You cannot change concepts by switching their labels around.  “A rose by any other name…”  But you can change the connotations a given word has, if you want, because words are just placeholders for concepts around us.  Why not take all the so-called vulgarities and throw them out the window?  Who says that our language has to have any vulgarities at all?  Why don’t we all just agree that no word will ever again bother us, ever offend us?  Don’t people have enough control of their own minds to make such a decision…a decision that would benefit everyone?

PASCAL: Well, be that as it may, some concepts would remain offensive.  There’s nothing you can do about that.

SOCRATES: There isn’t?  Give me an example of something—not a word—that offends you.

PASCAL: OK.  Violence offends me.  Surely you will not try to tell me that we should all just agree that violence is acceptable, and that we should all live with violence happily.

SOCRATES:  You are right, I will not.  I abhor violence; the very idea of murder sickens me.

PASCAL:  A ha!  Then you agree with me.

SOCRATES: Well, yes and no.  “Violence” does not offend me, but violence does.

PASCAL:  Um.  I’m confused.  You just said—

SOCRATES: I said that I abhor violence.  But “violence” doesn’t bother me.

PASCAL: What is this, semantic trickery?

SOCRATES: I do not like violence; I dislike seeing graphic pictures of murder victims; I become nauseated at the thought of war; the sight of blood often makes me sick.

PASCAL: Then violence offends your soul.

SOCRATES: I suppose.  But talk of violence doesn’t bother me at all.

PASCAL: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I experience certain physiological symptoms when exposed to violence, but if someone says “murder” or “rioting” or “rape” or “you may eat the flesh of kings” then I am not offended.  And what I mean by that is this: I do not like to see or hear violence as it is committed, nor do I enjoy thinking about violent acts, and I certainly am very angry that certain forms of violence still exist in this world.  However, the concept of violence, the abstraction, can’t “offend” me any more than the concept of volcanoes or tsunamis or great white sharks.  Maybe I don’t want to be near them, but how can they “offend” me?  And if you talk about them, why should that bother me?

PASCAL: Let me understand.  The word “murder” is not offensive.  And a discussion of murder is not offensive.  But if someone commits murder—

SOCRATES: Then yes, that would bother me.  Look: concepts like murder are too important as issues for people to ignore just because they’re afraid their sensibilities might be punctured.  And this applies to other concepts I dislike as well: bigotry, deception, subjugation—these words do not offend me, because I do not let them.  But the acts themselves very well might piss me off.

PASCAL: But if a word is used in a hateful way, such as a racial epithet…

SOCRATES: Again, don’t blame the word.  What I find offensive in such a case is the insensitivity (or downright malice) of the speaker, their intent to harm.  So saying “fuck you!” might be offensive not because that particular phrase was uttered, but because of the intent of the speaker.

PASCAL: But then it would be too hard to sort out what was offensive and what was not!  If you always had to check the context—

SOCRATES: Sorry, but you have to do that anyway.  “Pain” means one thing to us, and quite another thing to the French.

PASCAL: I am at a loss for words.

SOCRATES: Here is my manifesto.  Many people, when encountering an idea they find distasteful, turn up their noses and say they are offended.  I, however, cannot be offended by ideas—that is, by abstract words devoid of context.  Nothing in the abstract can offend me at all, and I am very proud of this fact.  Sure, there are things I don’t like to see (like rotting corpses) or hear (like fingernails on a blackboard) or smell (like a diaper full of shrimp) but these things don’t offend me.  Why should I hold a grudge against such phenomena?  I don’t like them, but that’s not a problem: I can shut my eyes or cover my ears or pinch my nose shut.  I choose not to participate in these sensory experiences—choose—and for quite understandable reasons.  My aversion to such things is instinctual, biological, untainted by arbitrary sociological constraints.  Now, in certain cases, I cannot choose to avoid something, in which case I am offended by the selfishness of the perpetrator.  If you smoke in an elevator with me, I will be offended because I have no choice but to breathe your noxious detritus.  If you commit murder or cheat on your taxes or beat your wife, I will be offended because you have committed a crime, and betrayed an implied covenant between you and the rest of society.  But I emphasize again that the words “murder” or “cheating” or “beating” can’t offend me, as they’re just words.  And so too, the word “fuck” cannot have any effect on me at all.

PASCAL: Well then.

SOCRATES: Being offended is a learned skill.  There is no evolutionary gain to having people grimace when they hear a collection of phonemes such as “clusterfuck”.  People are offended by such a word because they choose to be offended, but do not even realize that they have a choice.  The content of the word is irrelevant…else “group sex” would offend just as much.  But it does not.

PASCAL: Speak for yourself.

SOCRATES: You don’t look convinced.

PASCAL: Well, your discourse has offended me.

SOCRATES: Touché!

PASCAL: And I would wager that some part of you is offended, as well.  You just can’t admit it.

SOCRATES: You and your wagers.

PASCAL: Anyway, I’ve made some tea out of Queen Anne’s Lace.  Would you like some?

SOCRATES: Not really.  There’s something about that plant that offends me—

PASCAL: No matter.  I have to catch the carriage to Neuilly anyway.

SOCRATES:  And I must kill a rooster for Asclepius.  So long.

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Nate Silver was right, and he’s still not a witch

Posted in Rant, tagged , on November 7, 2012| 4 Comments »

This blog was supposed to be about science, not politics, so today (the day after the 2012 US presidential election) I will limit my comments to two brief points.  Then hopefully I will be able to forget about politics until 2014.

(1)    The election results shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s a fan of hard data, scientific analysis, and cool-headed statistics.  On Monday, Nate Silver predicted an easy electoral college victory for Obama, and his predictions were spot-on.  Some ballots are still uncounted, and I don’t think Florida has been called yet, but as far as I can see he got all 50 states correct.  No, Nate Silver is probably not a witch; he just analyzed all the polls, and refrained from cherry-picking “one data point” to match some preconceived notion.  (In my opinion, media outlets just said the race was “close” because that’s what generates buzz and revenue.)  Nate Silver’s approach is moneyball all over again, but in the political arena.  (Knowing Nate Silver’s history with baseball prediction makes this statement all the more pertinent.)

I have friends who doubted Obama could win because of economic indicators that traditionally make re-election improbable.  There are two problems with this.  One is that the Republicans have shifted so far to the right of mainstream America on social issues that a tipping point has been reached: for many, it’s no longer the economy, stupid.  (See yesterday’s blog post.)  But another problem is that Americans, for better or worse, don’t tend to see the economy in absolute terms but in terms of change.  Objectively, the economy might have been bad; but it had been improving slowly but steadily since 2009.  As Nate Silver (the not-witch) put it back in August, “The economy is bad enough as it is, but voters in past elections have judged incumbents by the amount of progress in the economy, rather than how productive it is in an absolute sense.”  In physics terms, you feel the acceleration, not the velocity.

(2)    Ultimately, the bigger news might be the sea change on issues such as same-sex marriage and the legalization of marijuana, due in large part to younger voters.  If one looks at history—if one looks at social issues—one can only conclude that liberals always win in the end.  Monarchies are abolished, human rights are proclaimed, governments sever ties to religion, slavery is abolished, workers are unionized, women get the vote, disenfranchised groups gain civil rights, and humanity moves forward.  The writing’s on the wall.  All I can say is, get used to it.  Younger voters will all become tomorrow’s older voters.  No doubt tomorrow’s older voters will be dead-set against suffrage for cybernetic organisms, but that’s another issue entirely.

I’m stopping now.  Most of this blog is opinion, and in no way expresses the thoughts or opinions of theoretical physicists in general.  No wait: maybe it does.  Remember, a 2009 survey found that only 6% of scientists are Republicans.  I wonder why.

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Economics don’t matter

Posted in Rant on November 6, 2012| 11 Comments »

Economics don’t matter in today’s election.

At least, they don’t matter to me.

There are smart people who think Obama’s economic plan is better for America.  There are smart people that think Romney’s plan is better.  We have some idea of Obama at work, and with Obama at the helm the economy has improved gradually since the Wall-street induced recession of 2008.  But maybe you think Romney could make the recovery go faster.  Who knows?  My own opinion is that we are crossing a stream, and by all indications the horse we’re on is slow but he’s getting there.  But maybe you’d rather switch to an untested and mercurial horse instead.  I don’t really know which horse would be better, from an economic standpoint.

Let’s be honest.  You don’t know either.

Oh, there are a few people who claim to understand the economic issues involved.  But let’s face it, “experts” can’t really pick stocks better than monkeys or dartboards.  Why do we expect the American economy to be any more tractable?  In the language of mathematics, the economy is a chaotic system.  Any small change in policy is likely to produce unpredictable results.  So when you pick a candidate based on “economic principles” you’re really just saying “I believe this candidate’s meaningless economic rhetoric more than the other guy’s meaningless economic rhetoric.”  If you have a PhD in economics, maybe I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt…but if you’re a truck driver, or a doctor, or a waitress, or a welder, then your ideas about the economy are probably total bullshit.

I am a physicist.  My ideas about the economy are bullshit.

Ever play one of the Civilization computer games, such as Civilization V?  If you have, you see how complicated and interconnected every decision is.  You have to juggle money, and the happiness of citizens, and threats foreign and domestic, and culture, science…the tiniest decisions can have huge ramifications, and no monolithic blanket ideology will get you to the promised land of victory.  It’s a balancing act.  Sometimes you have to raise taxes.  Sometimes you have to cut them.  Sometimes you increase education, sometimes you build infrastructure, sometimes you go to war, sometimes you seek a diplomatic solution.

If the pundits are to be believed, being president is simpler than this.  Just drink the Flavor Aid, follow the party line, and everything will be great.  Being president is as simple as doing everything that Rush Limbaugh (or Michael Moore) says.

I don’t buy it.  And if you’re honest with yourself, you won’t either.  Just say it to yourself: “I know nothing about economics.  I know nothing about economics.”

Why is it that people who admittedly know nothing about chemistry, poetry, physics, differential equations, music theory, pottery, animal husbandry, statistics, number theory, ancient history, modern Japanese culture, biology, leatherworking, genetics, Shakespeare, phonetics, linear algebra, astronomy, geology, philosophy, music history, Greek, marketing, calculus, modern history, evolution, quantum mechanics, medicine, world religions, and engineering, think that they know anything about complex economic issues?

(Not you, Ken Rogoff.  I know you know economics.)

Why is it that people who are ignorant of 99% of the world’s body of knowledge still have strong beliefs concerning tariffs or debt ceilings or free trade agreements or progressive taxes?  Let me be frank: if you don’t know what something is, you have no logical right to an opinion about it.  (Do you think that decoherence is sufficient to explain effective wave collapse, a la the Copenhagen interpretation?  Or do you feel that, ultimately, some non-local theory will gives us the loophole we need to sweep Bell’s Theorem under the table?  I didn’t think so.)  Just once I’d like to see a fry cook from Burger King say, “I have no opinion regarding stimulus money…I don’t understand all the complex economic concepts involved…but you know, the Thirty Year’s War was less about Catholic/Protestant bickering and more about the Bourbon-Habsburg rivalry.”

So.  The economy shouldn’t matter in your voting decision.  So where does that leave you?

Well, what’s left are social issues.  Issues like civil rights for the LGBT community, civil rights for women, civil rights for immigrants, the failed war on drugs, the continuing (attempted) theocratization of America.  I can’t in good conscience vote for a party that denies the fact of global warming (and here’s where I will play the “PhD in physics” card), the fact of evolution, the fact that the Earth is billions of years old.  The Republicans give every impression that they are the anti-science party, the anti-women party, the party of a solely-Christian America, the party of Wall Street.  If that is not the case, it is still true that very few Republicans distance themselves from such stances.

If you vote for Romney, don’t hide behind the “I just prefer his economic policies” defense.  At least have the courage of your convictions.  Say what you truly are, and why you prefer the Republican social nonsense.

I am a liberal, in the best sense of the word: the world could be better, and we have a long way to go.

What are you?

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One Data Point

Posted in Rant, tagged , , on November 1, 2012| 2 Comments »

The name of this blog was originally not “Many Worlds Theory”.

I was going to call it, at first, “One Data Point”.  I know: not very exciting.

I still think that’s a good name;  it gets to the heart of what I want to say in this blog, for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment.  But I went with “Many Worlds Theory” for purely selfish, economic reasons.

(Here’s the monologue that went on inside my head: “Man, I bet I could have made some money if I had registered bigbangtheory.com a few years ago.  That TV show is quite clever.  My wife says I’m a bit like Leonard.  Anyway it would be nifty if I could register a name that would show up on Google searches… Let me play a round a bit and see what happens on Google.  Holy crap, no one has registered manyworldstheory.com?  How’d that happen?”)

I know, I know.  The chance of making money off a blog is about the same chance that the Carolina Panthers’ coaching staff makes good coaching decisions this coming week.  (Is this a topic for a future blog?)  But the name “Many Worlds Theory” is too good to pass up.  In some universe, this domain name really pays off for me.

So.  Back to “One Data Point”.  I got the idea from a physics lab I taught a few years back.  The lab was about the simple pendulum.  What variables affect the period of the pendulum’s motion?   The instruction up front was minimal; the students were supposed to design the experiment themselves.  They were to vary things like mass, initial angle, string length, and see which parameters were important.  (If you’re curious about the outcome, why don’t you try the experiment yourself?)

Fast forward about a week.  A student turns in a lab write-up, and I am grading it.  And I notice: their graph of “Period as a Function of Mass” has only one data point.

One data point.

Their conclusion is that period doesn’t depend on mass.  And to their credit, they have actually drawn a horizontal line through that one data point to make their case.

Here’s a reconstruction of the subsequent conversation I had with the student:

ME: [Pointing] So, do you see anything wrong with this graph?

STUDENT:  Uh, no?

ME: Well, there’s only one data point.

STUDENT: So?

ME: So how were you able to draw a line through it?

STUDENT: Well, I knew it had to be a horizontal line—

ME: You were supposed to verify that it was a horizontal line, with data, not assume the line was horizontal to begin with.

STUDENT: But it was horizontal.

ME: Only because you drew it that way!

STUDENT: Well, no, it was horizontal because it went through the data point we had.

ME: [Stifling laughter] But couldn’t you have drawn a line going in any direction you like, with only one data point?

STUDENT: But it was horizontal.

I’ll stop here; you get the idea.  It reminds me of the bit about the volume “going to eleven” in This is Spinal Tap.

This sort of reasoning is much more common that you might imagine.  I call it the “one data point” fallacy because I am not knowledgeable enough to know what it’s really called (or too lazy to look it up).  The idea is this: most people seem to be unaware that it takes two points to define a line.

Examples:

  • “Hurricane Sandy is awful!  Global warming must exist.”
  • “My friend Joe lost his job.  Therefore the economy is getting worse!  ”
  • “The drinking water must cause cancer, because our neighbor’s son got cancer.”
  • “The streets are getting more dangerous!  I know because I got mugged.”
  • “TV is getting worse!  Just look at that Honey Boo Boo show.”

I hope you can see that all of the reasoning here is completely ludicrous.  That doesn’t mean that all of the statements are wrong; I happen to agree with exactly two of the statements.  But in each case a conclusion was drawn from one data point.

You know that you can draw a line in any direction, consistent with a single point?  That basically means that you can draw any conclusion you like from any of the above examples.

For instance:

“My friend Joe lost his job.  Therefore the economy is getting better!”

How so?  Well, what if Joe were the only person in the entire country to lose his job?  Then that one data point would be a sign of 0.0% unemployment!

The “one data point” fallacy is so pernicious that you have to stop yourself from using it.  It crops up everywhere.  Politicians love it: it is reasoning by anecdote.  “North Carolina is hurting.  Alice lost her job at the factory and had to go onto food stamps.  Vote for me.”  This stuff drives me crazy.

It almost makes you think that people can’t reason worth a damn.

But then again, I need more data to draw a definitive conclusion.

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