The Ambrosini Critique

Dissertation topics anyone, anyone?

This is cool. Famous blogger YouNotSneaky, recently profiled in The Economist regarding his cool “How much of a jerk do you have to be to oppose immigration?” post, put The Ambrosini Critique on his blogroll. Thanks!

Grandfathers, not so much:

In biological anthropology there is a Grandmother Hypothesis as an explanation for why adult human females live so long after their reproduction ceases, and, why menopause occurs in the first place (male fertility tapers off over time, while women undergo a concerted physiological change which shuts down their ability to reproduce). The basic idea is that beyond a particular age women can increase their own genetic fitness to a greater extent by investing in their daughters reproductive output.

This isn’t true for grandfathers:

The relative lack of a strong effect suggests that the long lives of grandfathers are simply a byproduct of the long life of grandmothers (analogous to the breasts that males have), or, that in the relatively recent past males exhibited far higher reproductive skew (polygyny, etc.) which resulted in continuous reproduction through their lifetime.

I hate when people try to force their religion on others. Usually, my reaction isn’t to get angry, but to press the would-be evangelists further… They’re usually really bad at it, when pushed.

One time, when I was living in Salt Lake City, a missionary came to my door to sell me on LDS. I invited him in, I poured him some coffee and I begin questioning him about Mormon beliefs (I did a little studying before I moved to SLC). “Do you really believe Smith was a prophet and he transcribed the Book of Mormon from gold plates found in his field? Do you really believe Christ came to the New World? etc etc…” In the end, he remained cheerful but flustered, but he admitted he didn’t know if these things were literally true, but any case “that wasn’t important to have the faith” (or some such).

As he left, I asked him to visit again so we could continue our discussion. He agreed, but I never saw him again.

It’s easy to be agnostic (or antagonistic) about evangelism…

BUT, what about theology. It seems to me that it either makes sense or it doesn’t make sense to think about things that can’t be answered by science. Should we be allowed to talk about theories that aren’t falsifiable?

My take on religion: its not a collection of theories, its a correlated equilibrium. Just like it doesn’t make sense to reject expectations of inflation because they’re not falsifiable, it doesn’t make sense to reject religion for the same. Likewise, if expected inflation is a serious area of study, why not religion?

Yes, a flying spaghetti monster might be another correlated equilibrium… but its not the one we have. A Nash equilibrium may be one of a multiplicity, but that doesn’t make it any less of a N.E.

Woot! I guess I don’t feel guilty about taking up my coffee habit again.

I won’t feel guilty up until the study is released showing coffee causes cancer.

Something really important is being discussed in this post at MR. I just wish I was smart enough to figure it out.

Be sure to catch Tyler and Robin’s back and forth in the comments.

Its a two-fer today… The Economist talks about Prof. Clark:

Mr Clark argues that differences in modern economic development are rooted in differences of labor quality. That is, rich countries are rich because their workers are better… Mr Clark is perhaps wisely circumspect in his (non-)explanation of the underlying causes of differences in labour quality. He rather unhelpfully posits that “economies seem, to us, to alternate more or less randomly between relatively energetic phases and periods of somnolence.”

Clark’s “non-explanations” are a bit of a theme.

Arnold Kling gives Prof. Peri a backhanded compliment, “We get more nannies, lawn-care workers, waiters, and hotel maids, the immigrants get more money, and our kids learn skills that keep them out of competition with the underclass. All we have to lose is our self-concept of an egalitarian society…”

I was going to link to this article as a counter to the post I linked to the other day. The headline is “Stronger Link Found between Hurricanes and Global Warming: A century’s worth of records suggests that hurricanes are on the rise and a warming Atlantic is to blame.” Most of the article is making side swipes at “critics” (of global warming? of athropogenic global warming? of climate models? of the hypothesis that the number of hurricanes are increasing? of what?).

“Critics of such a link argue that this trend is merely because of better observations since the dawn of the satellite era in the 1970s. But the authors of the new study say the conclusion is hard to dodge.” What “link” are these critics arguing against? Does anyone doubt ocean temperatures determine the number and severity of storms? The article doesn’t address how patches of ocean are getting hotter or why they would be getting that way almost 3/4 of a century before people ratcheted up the CO2 emissions. What “link” is in dispute?

I expect more out of Sciam. They’re doing the opposite of what good science reporting should do; they’re muddying the waters.