Rebane's Ruminations

Progressivism and the Certainty of Ignorance

George Rebane

One of the unambiguous tenets of a conservetarian is that collectivism, in any of its forms, is a gateway to human suffering and eventual tyranny.  Collectivists, under whichever banner they assemble – progressive, liberal, national socialist, international socialist (communist), … - will first seek to silence their foes by whatever means they are able to muster, from public proscription, government censorship, and finally by marching them to the wall.

On the path to such draconian ends, much demonstrated during the 20th century, they will attempt to justify their attacks on ideas not suitable to their agenda, they will fashion their arguments and present them in the guise of scientism – the collection of convenient unscientific assertions disguised as science.  The birth of progressivism in America used scientism – specifically in what was then called eugenics - as a companion to their social justice apologetics.

America’s union schools have carefully obliterated the history of eugenics from the history of progressivism.  Their only mention of it today is to give the lie that it was a politically motivated error of the Right seeking to establish a ruling society of the Űbermenchen.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Amity Schlaes reminds us of the details in her ‘The Progressive History of Eugenics’ wherein she also reviews two recent books on the subject.  In it she writes about how the certitude of ideology driven scientism has been used by our central planners and social engineering elites –

And that’s the trouble with reformers. They are so sure, and so wrong. How often comes clear in two new books. The first, Adam Cohen’s compelling “Imbeciles,” focuses on Buck v. Bell, the 1927 case in which the Supreme Court upheld Virginia’s right to sterilize citizens it deemed mentally ill, somehow deficient or, indeed, shiftless. In the second book, “Illiberal Reformers,” Thomas C. Leonard also treats the horrifying rise of compulsory sterilization and, in a deft analysis, goes on to compare the thinking behind eugenics to other forms of supposedly enlightened policy.

Nowadays eugenics is portrayed as an unfortunate detail in the story of an otherwise glowing movement, Progressivism. What these two volumes, especially “Illiberal Reformers,” reveal is that eugenics served as a key tool of the Progressive policy makers of the 1920s. “Darwin’s ambiguity on the question of whether evolution resulted in progress or merely change left enough leeway for progressives to claim society must take charge of its own evolution,” Mr. Leonard notes. The consequences of Progressive Darwinism were policies as imprecise, superstitious and inhumane as any they superseded.

Eugenics was received by our polity as a gift from science the application of which to broad populations would immeasurably improve society.  Famous adherents of scientistic eugenics were thought leaders of the day like President Teddy Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, H.L. Mencken, Margaret Sanger, Helen Keller.  All of them celebrated the consensus of scientists that eugenics was the real deal.

(For completeness we must include Frances Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, in that list with an asterisk.  Crick decried the National Socialists’ (Nazis’) use of eugenics to justify the Holocaust and engineering humans.  Crick really saw how his discovery would lead to the new science of genomics which could use genetics to battle diseases (in- and ex-utero), benefit agriculture, and, yes, even provide designer babies.  We leave the discussion of society and genomics to another time.)

Today the Rosemary’s Baby of eugenics - the new scientism that has been introduced to compel the compliance of those lovable “poorly educated” in the sciences - is preventable global warming or climate change or some other fashionable label that histrionically calls for a controlled and massive global response that will be overseen by the progressive elites.

Sandbox - 27feb16

[Here is what Joe Biden had to say about filling SCOTUS vacancies.  And the record here shows that no liberal has explained why this time is so different that the Senate should not continue to follow the advice of our VP and several of his prominent Democrat colleagues.  We expected crickets, and they have spoken.  gjr]

Ruminations – 23feb16 (updated 28feb16)

Look to him who comes in with another’s concern in order to go out with his own. … Gracian #193

George Rebane

No debate about replacing Justice Scalia should proceed before the Democratic precedents denying a sitting Republican president the same privilege receive full airing. At that time the debate should commence with the Dems demonstrating why the case is different today when one of their own occupies the White House.  Here is what one of the Dynamic Democrat Duufuses, Sen Schumer, has to say about it - pay attention all you liberals who gleefully cite past Repub ripostes.

“The Use of Cash is really a Civil Rights issue.” (more here) The latest Agenda21 objective involves the central planners’ desire to monitor and control ALL financial transactions.  But first we must eliminate cash, and the first step in that direction is making cash more cumbersome to use as a medium of exchange and store of value.  (Electronic money serves equally as a unit of account.)

Sandbox - 22feb16

[Now we read that young blacks are among the most dedicated of the millennials lapping up Sander's socialism on the campaign trail.  And do you notice that there is not a smidgeon of contrition coming from the Republican establishment about their failures to live up to their promises in Congress, a silence that reeks of hubris and gives rise to the populist support for Trump?  gjr]

Does Trump's Advocacy of Torture Disqualify Him From the Presidency?

[This is an invited post by my longtime friend and colleague Dr Wayne Hullett that expands on his comment under the 16feb16 Sandbox.  gjr]

Wayne Hullett

"Civilization is hideously fragile... there’s not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish." - C.P. Snow

"Civilization: a thin veneer over barbarianism." - John M. Shanahan, The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less)

Modern humans have been on the earth for around 200,000 years, yet it is only within the last 0.1% of that time (200 years or so) that western civilization, at least, has mostly eliminated torture, thus demonstrating that a civilized society can exist without this barbaric practice. With us as an example, and with the rest of the world gradually becoming modernized, there is reasonable hope that it will eventually follow suit.

Donald Trump's statement advocating torture puts him in favor of erasing this hard won gain on the long climb to civilization by legitimizing torture as a matter of national policy. He would admit (and in fact he has already publicly admitted) to the world that he believes that the most powerful nation on earth cannot exist without the use of torture.

I do not expect western civilization's forbearance of this practice to significantly influence the immediate actions of our enemies whose barbarism is the very reason that they are enemies, except that if we use torture, our enemies will use that fact to justify their use of that terrible practice and will likely redouble their efforts. If the US legitimizes torture, I think that a "torture arms race" will ensue - with countries researching ways to inflict the maximum pain possible on their hapless victims, and with accompanying medical research on how to keep them alive in order to feel the pain for as long as possible. Captured Americans will be subject to hideous tortures. Squads will be sent out to try to capture servicemen and women for the express purpose of torturing them, possibly even shown on TV. Would you want your son or grandson to be in that situation? Or your daughter or granddaughter, as more females go into combat roles?

I can even envision civilian citizens (working on highly classified projects, for example) being kidnapped off the streets and out of their homes and spirited out of the country for torture to extract classified information. What if one of these targets had a name similar to yours, and a van pulls up in front of your house at 3:00 AM and you and your loved ones are taken by mistake? How far down the slippery slope is torturing children in front of their parents in order to extract information from the parents. And what if you did not have the information sought?

While I do not deny that torture still happens, it is deplorable, it is illegal, and it is wrong. Trump's approach is a giant step backward for a species that is still striving to become civilized. Even if he changes his mind, the damage is already done. The world already sees him as a torturer. The only way for us as citizens to override that perception, redeem ourselves in the eyes of the world and avoid backsliding into barbarism is to soundly defeat his bid for the presidency. For my part, I would rather have another four years of gridlock than see our country go down his terrible path.

Administrivia - RR joins the social networking melee

George Rebane

Our daughters - Sini and Teine - have urged me to link RR to some of the popular social network servers for a number of reasons which have not always been an attractant for me.  RR's numbers have increased over the years, and that has kept this labor of love going.  But finally I relented and had them (Teine did the work) install the appropriate links to what today are the communication channels of the 21st century.  Apparently my readers know how to use these icons and I am already grateful for their participation.

I thank the kids for getting their daddy off the dime.  Love you both.

Scattershots – 20feb16 (updated 22feb16)

George Rebane

Consider that it is the progressive college administrators who back public policies that let them raise tuition costs to levels out of reach of the same poor whom they cynically claim to champion.

Pope Francis’ latest foray into politics on his Mexican visit includes his now familiar socialist screed of demanding “justice for undocumented migrants”.  Delivering this message 90 yards from the US border to thousands of Mexicans (and “hundreds” of Latinos on the American side) castigates the United States and other western countries for seeking to stem the tide of thousands of illegal aliens seeking to live in more hospitable and economically fruitful lands.  At the same time it exhorts the desperate from dysfunctional cultures to violate the borders of the more successful sovereign nation-states.  Never mind that such open border policies have to date been a disaster for countries that today have firmly established enclaves of Muslim colonists unwilling to assimilate into the cultures of their host countries.  The Pope’s political missive does nothing but strengthens America’s support for a Southern Wall.  It may also serve as a litmus test to identify those who among us are for a fundamental transformation of what we still call America.

5D data storage – major breakthrough.  Most readers know that digital data is eventually frangible.  Storage devices degrade and data formats change over time.  Now a UK university announces that it has developed a method to put data in 5-dimensional formats (x, y, z, color, size) onto/into “nanostructured” tiny glass discs that each hold 360TB of data.  The glass is supposed to be stable for billions of years.  I look forward to such drives being commercialized soon (more here). [H/T to Russ Steele for reminding me that my fingers added a sixth dimension which I automatically do when I type 'x, y, z, t'.  I have corrected the error.  And 'color' is the label often given to the polarization attribute.]

More evidence pours in weekly that a very plausible case can be made to support the proposition that Obama is the world’s most egregious practitioner of taqiyya.

FBI vs Apple on getting data from the San Berdoo raghead’s iPhone.  FBI wants Apple to provide a ‘backdoor’ in their iOS so that law enforcement can scrape that phone as a one-off exercise.  Apple and no one else on the planet believes that such an approach will be ‘one-off’ – the new backdoor will soon be known to all.  Don’t know why the FBI doesn’t just give the phone to Apple to scrape its data, put it on a thumb drive, then return it and the iPhone to the FBI.

Hospice bills are helping bring Medicare to its knees with the expenses related to caring for slowly dying demented patients (more here).  We in the west don’t have a culture that permits humane euthanizing an individual when all hope is lost and only expense and suffering remains for everyone concerned.  How many of us have seen loved ones languish insentiently or in pain until the long delayed end finally brings resolution?  I wonder if we could accept a legal process that would allow loved ones to make such a decision to end it sooner than later.

[22feb16 update]  Well, about time.  This morning on NPR there was an interview with a former counterintelligence officer who put in years with the CIA and NSA.  To solve the current impasse between Apple and the FBI, he too suggested what I advocate above about just giving the phone to Apple and let them dig out the data and give that and the phone back to the FBI.

Bush2 painted by yellow journalism on CBS's 14feb16 '60 Minutes'.  During their interview with CIA Director Brennan the show's producers displayed a photo of George W and Connie Rice in the Oval Office as Brennan described the intelligence and decision failures that occurred "a year to eighteen months before 9/11".  Showing the photo had no place in the interview since Bush2 had been in office for less than nine months when Al Qaeda attacked.  Yet that photo was broadcast the entire time that Brennan was talking about what occurred during the Clinton administration. 

Dr Anna Haynes strikes again (updated 4mar16)

George Rebane

Dr Haynes is the formerly strident voice of Preventable Global Warming and little known owner of NC Voices, a generally useful concentrator of regional news sites, media outlets, and blogs.  She has run this site for some years and recently did a redesign of it.  On it we conservative bloggers have always been consigned to the rightmost, off-page column that is labeled ‘Climate Contrarians’ – I think we were formerly called ‘Denialists’ or some such thing.  In any event, that column of recent conservative blog posts always reserves significant real estate at the top for castigating the skepticism of the bloggers below.

Before the redesign she listed in FIFO order the posts that appeared on our blogs with new ones pushing down the long stack of about 25 entries until they dropped off the end.  Fair enough.

Well it now appears that RR may have been a bit too popular with its click-thrus from NC Voices.  So applying the ever popular Progressive Proscription Principle to communications they disagree with, she has started limiting RR posts to the most recent five.  The complete list is then made up of the most recent and less frequent commentaries by a couple of fellow bloggers (currently Todd Juvinall and Russ Steele) whose featured posts go back to early January, while the oldest RR post is less than a week old.

I just became aware of this a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that RR posts are bunched at the top of the list and appear nowhere in its long tail.  Over the years Ruminations has become one of the more popular socio-political commentary blog in the region whose content is the constant topic of interest and target of vitriol from the leftwing blogs.  Now I don’t think that Dr Haynes is an avid reader of RR, but other leading leftwing lights are.  So a reasonable conclusion is that someone has got to Dr Haynes and advised her to do her part in curtailing traffic to this site.  Ever a diligent soldier in the fight against freer markets and climate skeptics, it appears that the good lady has complied.

As for me, I remain grateful that she deigns to include RR at all, no matter how minimally – after all it is her site and the First Amendment still holds (at least for progressives).

[update] True to her progressive impulses, this post was not granted visibility on NC Voices.

[20feb16 update]  After all these years I may have overstepped my welcome.  NC Voices no longer recognizes RR, even were it consigned in limited form to the Contrarian column.  Oh, to have sunk so far so quickly.  Does this mean that these scribblings have finally been acknowledged as a burr under the progressives' blanket?  I cannot imagine that they would grant that.  Oh well.

[23feb16 update]  Alas, methinks NC Voices is off the air.  I do hope that this does not indicate a health issue with Dr Haynes and that the interruption will be a short one.  I and all of us online addicts in the county wish the good lady nothing but the best.

[4mar16 update]  NC Voices is back on the air.  Welcome back Dr Anna.  All is well.

March of the Mini-minded Millennials (updated 20feb16)

George Rebane

[This is the addended and linked transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 February 2016.]

In this election year the millennials are going to make their mark, and both parties are doing their best to woo them.  Why?  The simple reason is their numbers; but that’s not the whole story.  The US Census Bureau tells us there are 83.1M young adults in the country born between 1982 and 2000 – the so-called millennials.  They now overshadow the previous big cohort of generational voters – the Baby Boomers – who today number only 75.4M (more here).

The millennials are not only the largest voting group, they are also the least knowledgeable to put it politely.  Studies show that they have an embarrassingly deficient knowledge base, especially when it comes to economics and finance.  Their deficits come from having been educated by the now perfected system of unionized public education, honed since Great Society days to produce cadres of voters ready to fundamentally transform America.

Sandbox - 16feb16

[I believe that Trump did himself irreparable harm in last Saturday's debate with his extraordinarily boorish behavior toward Bush and Cruz.  His follow on interviews over the weekend gave clear evidence that he is more than a bit panicked about his campaign, as when he had to also claim that the RNC stacked the audience against him.  The latter allegation let him drop the threat that he may now become a third party candidate since he is "not being treated fairly."  I'll go out on a limb and predict that he is now at his zenith, and from here on it's all down.  gjr]

Response to Jim Hemig (updated 27feb16)

George Rebane

Yesterday I responded to Union publisher Jim Hemig on his ‘January challenge’ editorial about the NCRWF’s ongoing ideology audit of the newspaper’s op/ed items.  Mr Hemig’s challenge was accepted by two respondents – a liberal lady and Jo Ann Rebane, my wife who is the NCRWF auditor.  Mr Hemig waxed philosophical about The Union’s sought role as the community’s “fair and balanced” forum of public opinion on issues near and far.  Enough has been said about the audit counts, so my response covered a broader purview of what we might want out of our newspaper.  Yesterday I sent in the following as an Other Voices submittal.

Justice Antonin Scalia, 1936 - 2016

Our country's loss, the magnitude of which we will soon suffer.  Thank you, and rest in peace Justice Scalia

Bob Crabb, Mardi Gras Grand Marshal!

George Rebane

Congratulations and kudos to our friend and community icon RL ‘Bob’ Crabb for being most appropriately selected to head up this Sunday’s Mardi Gras parade in Nevada City. He and his lovely wife Mary Ann are featured on the front page of today’s Union.  In addition to a large photograph, the print edition also included Bob’s cartoon of the happy couple's photo, filched below.

(To keep its reputation for grammar intact, The Union included the following caption under the front page cartoon – A drawing by “Bob” Crabb depicts he and his wife, Mary Ann Crabb, in Mardi Gras costumes.)

Scattershots – 10feb16 (updated 12feb16)

George Rebane

NPR reported this morning that the state’s Legislative Analyst Office has concluded that California’s housing shortage is primarily caused by an insufficient number of “market priced” (i.e. low cost) houses being built due regulatory impediments and the state’s mandates for requiring ‘affordable houses’ that must integrated into regular developments and subsidized with non-existent funds.  Hence CA housing prices continue to be highest in the nation due to the government caused housing shortage which keeps the low and middle income workers from owning their own homes because demand for existing homes has pushed prices out of the range for which they can qualify for financing.  But RR readers have known this for years; it’s only the dolts (aka progressive elites) in Sacramento who don’t have a clue (or do they?).

February is Black History Month, and a time to again acknowledge how a certain political coalition keeps those blacks on the perennial plantation to assure a reliable block of votes come election time.  Abetting that liberal contingent is a cohort of professional straw bosses of Sharpton (with whom Sanders had breakfast today) and Jackson ilk whose diligent work, in the “lucrative industry” that keeps their flocks ignorant, is appreciated with considerable recognition, perks, and income.

Columnist and scholar Jason Riley clarifies matters in ‘An Alternative Black History Month’ that describes this industry as “using racial identity to advance groupthink and to discourage black individuality. It is about presenting the history of blacks as the history of their victimization by whites up to the present day—which explains racial disparities in areas ranging from school achievement and household income to rates of unemployment, incarceration and single-parent homes.”  Riley cites eye-opening statistics about black progress and the existence of its large ante-Great Society middle class.  But today “you don’t hear much about this black history during Black History Month (or any other month, for that matter) because it undercuts the dominant narrative pushed by the political left and accepted uncritically by the media.”  Gotta keep ‘em grumbling and compliant.

The ‘Left-Right Revolt’ continues to be the ideological gorilla in the nation, demonstrating to the tin-ear Purple Purveyors that we definitely are no longer the America that emerged from the Great Depression after WW2.  I believe that still-tarnished yet golden age, the one before the Great Society kicked in, to have been perhaps the pinnacle of how human society could manage positive change without fracturing.  Today we have two populist champions with large dedicated followings that could not be more apart in their vision and hopes for our country’s future.  The muddled middle remains an ideological wasteland with a rare politician (Kasich?) wishing to again assemble us there while outlining principles and policies that neither pole can digest, and that remind many of Rodney King’s exhortation.

Multiculturalism's latest pushback.  The Dutch parliament is putting new laws in place that recognize the damage their 6% and growing Muslim population is doing to their culture and way of life.  Besides halting unregulated in-migration, they are introducing new criteria for foreigners assimilating into their society - learning Dutch is key.  Meanwhile Pope Francis will visit Mexico and stick a thumb in America's eye by celebrating mass to promote borderless migration 90 yards from our border.  What a guy!

[11feb16 update]  Here's an Exhibit A on the newest generation of voters about whose intellect and knowledge base I have been reporting to you in recent weeks - I give you the millennials: TaDaaa!!

[12feb16 update]  And now we present Venezuela where "dying infants, chronic power outages and empty shelves mark the world’s worst-performing economy" as the harbinger of the country Bernie Sanders promises to create for us (here).

 

Sandbox - 9feb16

[Lest we forget Obamacare, that federal monstrosity has managed to get another of its tits in a wringer - mandated health insurance for California farmworkers.  The monthly cost for 50 or more workers starts at over $30K which their hiring companies can't afford, so they have to deny it and pay the fine.  But now the workers denied have to be declared to the IRS which will blow their cover as illegal aliens who haven't paid income tax forever, and more importantly blows the liberal bull crap that illegals pay their way in America.  Oh what to do when you're trying to be a proper central planner?  And then there's CA's gasoline price averaging over $2.40 when the rest of the country's average is $1.73/gal, and the margins in CA are so low that the refineries are shipping fuel out of state that adds shortage to the already higher costs of added taxes, green fees (not golf), and refining the special gas legal here.  We can go on, but isn't big government great?  gjr]

Responding to Paul D. Hauck (updated 17feb16)

George Rebane

Scientism - the misuse of science-like arguments to prop up unfounded propositions, policies, and propaganda.

The 8feb16 Union published, as its lead op-ed piece, an Other Voices commentary – ‘An alternative alternate universe’ – by Mr Paul Douglas Hauck of Penn Valley.  In it Mr Hauck responds to my 16jan16 Other Voices commentary (Download OtherVoices_160113), and was preceded here in these pages.

Mr Hauck presented a very curious but polite and measured criticism of my ‘Swansong …’ piece. Unfortunately, in it he gave no “alternative” to the alternate universe from which I characterized Obama’s SOU speech in some detail.  Neither Mr Hauck nor I know each other, so I did a little googling on the man who promptly stated that he was a “numbers junky” and a “victim of (his) training as a scientist” that caused him to “overvalue objectivity at times.”  From there his criticism of what he understood of my piece proceeded in a march of thinly veiled innuendos.

But before addressing his critiques, we should first consider his carefully couched credentials revealed online. The man attended an institution called the Chicago School of Professional Psychology from which he presumably obtained some certification or degree, since he is shown to have worked as the Director of Children’s Services in the Department of Mental Health of the David Grant Medical Center located at Travis AFB.  From this and the offerings of his alma mater, I deduce that he is a child psychologist.

There is no evidence online that he has any training in the hard sciences or the mathematics related thereto. This means that his acumen with the sciences and numbers required to read and understand the literature of “original climatological studies … in reputable scientific journals” is the derived result of a prodigious home study effort.  Among the many other talents he highlights in his piece, his claim to being a “fairly competent writer” who successfully fights back the urge to “build a pretty solid case in support of (his) position” that claims my “accusations” were “disconnected from the facts”, is strained by his gratuitous use of full quotes of words and phrases I never wrote nor even implied.

Mr Hauck also has some problems with the logical development of argument as when he obliquely accuses me of “starting with a preconceived model of how things “should”(sic) work.” of which I offered none, preconceived or otherwise. This may be forgiven because his alma mater proudly proclaims training its graduates to join the ranks of elite government central planners which could explain why he sees such prescriptive behavior in everyone he reads or encounters.

In another part of his analysis of my piece he refutes my assertion, supported by commentators nationwide, that Obama has “driven mainstreet Americans further apart than they were in the sixties”. He does this by citing Gov Nikki Haley’s observation that Republicans also have responded in a polarizing manner. Not sure how that refutes my point about our most divisive of presidents.

In his grand summary Mr Hauck finally allows his progressivism to peep through as an unabashed acolyte of the ‘balanced argument’ as opposed to my “somewhat absolutist style” – readers know that I neither worship balance nor lay claim to that deficit. Given his science credentials, I’m not sure that our psychologist’s studies taught him that human progress is seldom gained through anything considered so bland as balanced.  Quite the opposite, and especially in science, expanding knowledge has always been achieved a fortiori by the most unbalanced of propositions that at the time were deemed outrageous by their target audiences.  What clearly escapes almost all lay people, climate true believers like Mr Hauck among them, is that at the margins of knowledge science is a very messy business and scientists almost never agree – claiming scientific consensus there is blatant propaganda forged from myth.

But I digress. Let me conclude with the letter I sent to The Union today.

In his ‘An alternative alternate universe’ Mr Paul Hauck’s critique of my ‘Swansong from an Alternate Universe’ was almost painfully civil in his quest for balance. The gentleman’s disagreements with my citations of Obama’s iniquities consisted of a collection of innuendos variously veiled in gossamer to sack cloth.  He let us know immediately that he is trained in science and an accomplished student in other more eclectic fields, one who develops understanding of things from “raw data”, a practice that we glean would let him refute the points I made about our president’s tenure.  Nevertheless, he did eschew specifics in order to remain balanced as a penance of his “Lenten discipline this year.”

Being an unabashed patron and purveyor of the unbalanced argument, I gave Mr Hauck the benefit of an expanded response on Rebane’s Ruminations. In turn, as a fellow scientist, I invite him to join me there to do what best may be called ‘dharma battle’ over the points of our obviously disparate ideologies.  His accepting my invitation would guarantee an enjoyable and even entertaining exchange for the anticipated launch of which I must again thank The Union.

[17feb16 update]  Let the record show that The Union published my letter in its 17feb16 edition (here).  I am grateful.

How well do we predict? (updated 10feb16)

George Rebane

In the months leading up to this election year these pages have recorded a lot of predictions, some more vehement than others.  Predicting, estimating, forecasting, …, all of them are hard and involve some level of risk depending how well these efforts are carried out.  We spend almost every waking moment taking some kind of peek into the future, and depending on how certain we are of what we see there, we take an action which may involve some kind of hedging if we’re not too confident about what we see.

I’ve always been interested in how well we can prognosticate.  Recently nobelist Daniel Kahneman of Kahneman/Tversky fame wrote what instantly became a very famous essay - Thinking Fast and Slow (2011) - on the findings of research into things such as prediction, estimation, risk aversion, reasoning and so on.  Bottom line – research to date has shown that humans are mostly not very good predictors, and they don’t always do the reasonable things.  Yet we do have a brain bone that has allowed us to survive over the millennia and evolve our thinking capacity to some pretty commendable levels.  After all, we did discover relativity, sequence the human genome, put a man on the Moon, and are about to devise an AI that may make us second class citizens on our own planet.

So how well can we predict?  Here I propose a fun experiment on the topic that invites RR readers to go on record and compete with each other predicting anything they want and, hopefully, get someone else interested enough to also render their prediction.  I offer an easy, intuitive, and enjoyable way to do this using the MAB distribution which asks you to specify four numbers that characterize your prediction.  The method is spelled out in a previous post ‘Predicting with Expressed Beliefs – a formal approach’.

Since this is election season, say you want to predict what percent of the Democrat vote Bernie Sanders will get in this Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.  Today that percentage is a random variable, but next Wednesday it will be known and no longer random.  All such future values are random variables, and the best we can do to express them is to characterize our belief in the value of the variable is to describe what is called its probability distribution.  And as the above referenced post details, this can be done by simply writing down your subjective belief in terms of the Low (L) and High (H) values which bound the range of Bernie’s percentage, the most likely percentage (M) Bernie will get, and your confidence (C) - zero to one - that Bernie’s actual percentage will be in the neighborhood of your best guess or most likely value.  In short, your prediction will be a 4-tuple that might look something like – [L, H, M, C] = [51%, 60%, 54%, 0.7].

Predicting with Expressed Beliefs – a formal approach

George Rebane

We’ll start by skipping the famous Yogism about predicting.  But living life successfully requires us to constantly predict the future – events that may or not happen in a time yet to come.  It’s necessary to do that because we have to prepare for various futures by deciding what actions to take right now, or at least before the predicted event occurs.  Most of our predictions are about whether a certain thing will happen or not, whether it will happen before a given time or not, or which one of, say, five possible things will come true.  In short, very discrete things, things or events that can be characterized by a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  Then there are predictions that aren’t discrete and cover a range of values that are the anticipated outcome.  Things like how many marbles are in a big jar, when will Billy get home from work, how much rain will the coming storm bring, what will our house sell for, a candidate’s poll number after the debate, the closing value of the Dow Industrials at week’s end, this year’s GDP, and so forth.

A little thought shows that all the CURRENT answers to such questions or unknown values are really what the techies call random variables.  But for each such random variable or r.v., all of us have a hunch or belief about how well we can characterize our ignorance about the actual outcome or value realized in the future.

For discrete (random) events we often characterize the chance that something will come to pass as, say, ‘one out of three’ or state your odds such as ‘three to one it’ll rain tomorrow’.  If we really don’t have a clue as to the outcome, we’ll use the old coin flip 50-50 analogy.  For continuous r.v.s most people will state the smallest range of values that for them encompass all or almost all the possibilities.  They’ll use phrases like ‘Tomorrow’s high temperature will be somewhere in the 45 to 55F range’ or ‘The fourth quarter GDP growth will be in the 1.5 to 2.0% range.’

However, when pressed or thought about some more, almost everyone is able to pick a value somewhere in their stated range which they believe will be at or near the most likely value that comes to pass.  And they can also tell you how confident they are about choosing that most likely or best guess value by using words like ‘pretty sure’, ’50-50 it’ll be somewhere near there’, ‘it’s just a wild hunch’, ‘I’d be surprised if it’s not close to that’, and so on.

Well, it turns out that you can usefully summarize your belief in such a future value by just stating your intuition in four numbers – the low/high of the range (L and H), the best guess or most likely value within that range (M), and you confidence (C) in the best guess.  C values will range between zero and one – low C values for little confidence and higher values expressing more confidence.  These four values or the 4-tuple – [L, H, M, C] - expressing your belief defines a very useful and powerful measure of probability that can be combined with other such measures to judge, say, who’s prediction is best or what level of risk is represented by such a ‘state of knowledge’.

Ruminations – 6feb16 (updated 9feb16)

George Rebane

Our ongoing theme on the nation’s economic stagnation – Depression2 - led by California is abetted by Linda Erdmann’s piece - ‘Fleeing the Golden State’ - in the 6feb16 Union print edition and a couple of cogent ZeroHedge links (here and here) sent by Russ Steele on the dissimulation that Team Obama and his progressives are spreading about the great state of the nation’s economy.  (See also the 9feb16 Sandbox.)

Catch & Release illegal aliens has been Obama administration’s reinstated sub-rosa policy of border control. The existence of this great National Lie was communicated to Congress in testimony by a Border Patrol executive that illustrates how every one of Obama’s cabinet secretaries promotes perfidy in covering up what their departments are really doing (more here).  HSA’s Jeh Johnson’s ongoing lies about our borders being more secure is based on the reported reduced number of arrests made of illegal entrants. However, the Border Patrol explained that they have been working under orders to release all illegals caught at the border who declare they have been in the country since 2014 and are not criminals – no further vetting of such claims are allowed, the individual is simply released on his own recognizance and told to appear at a future immigration hearing.  Hence arrests are down, no one shows up at their appointed hearing, and the borders remain open to all who remember the magic ‘Get out of Jail’ mantra.

'$100 Trillion Up in Smoke' trumpets the usually sensible financial pundit John Mauldin about the recent drop in the price of crude.  Such pronouncements join with headlines like 'Investors dump tech stocks'.  Nothing could be further from a more sober understanding of what's going on.  Markets price things at the margin - i.e. the money exchanged during the last buy/sell event.  Current market price never implies that you can buy nor will anyone sell the whole inventory at that figure.  For example, had you the money, you could not buy all of the world's above ground crude oil at the current $31.00 a barrel.  If you tried, the price would immediately sky rocket.  In the same hysterical vein investors did not dump tech stocks because the stocks were simply bought by other investors, not by potted plants nor were they flushed down the toilet by their previous.  It's best to pay attention and not get caught up in misleading one liners.

[update] More on Obama’s strangling our liberties and economy, and California’s secure place as America’s least free state in terms of personal liberties and business freedoms (more here).  McKee’s cartoon says it best.

[9feb16 update]  Bolshevik Bernie is cranking up his class warfare rhetoric which is easy to compare to the rhetoric heard on the streets of Moscow in 1917.  And it is lapped up enthusiastically by the new class of certifiably mindless millennials who have no idea what they will be voting for this year.  They might consider what socialismo has brought to Venezuela in their lifetime (with empty store shelves and citizens driven to destitution but kept in line by government guns).  Their little heads have been carefully kept empty in America's universities finds the National Association of Scholars after surveying the humanities reading requirements at 350 colleges (more here).  Also explains a lot about the political leanings of many high tech executives in Silicon Valley.

Reinette on Voting

A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be. Thomas Jefferson

George Rebane

For those new to Nevada County our Ms Reinette Senum (pictured) needs a bit of an introduction. She is the former mayor of Nevada City and a local liberal activist who has promoted many collectivist causes hereabouts.  I have worked with her and have always found her to be very energetic and good-hearted.  Her enthusiasm may at times be short-lived, but while she has the bit in her teeth about some project she will then be at it 24/7 until it either gets done or a better project comes along.  It is not always easy (at least for me) to follow the threads of her thinking, but her good nature and polished public persona more than make up for such trifles with local audiences.

As a member of our newspaper’s editorial board, Reinette wrote a column – ‘Youth should not let Grandma and Grandpa determine their future’ – in a recent (3feb16) Union that made two strong points in her heartfelt plea to encourage young people to vote in this election.  The first was explicit and advised the young not to listen to their older relatives about matters that impact the upcoming elections.  The second was implicit in the message that you should vote whether or not you know anything about the candidates or issues.  Nowhere did the good lady advise her young audience – which today has plumbed new depths of dumbth – to study up on the things on which they will cast their ballots.  The message was ‘Get your butt into that voting booth and you can do no wrong – never mind your head, just follow your heart!’  More specifically -

Do you realize it’s your grandparents who are still driving the car? Do you realize that if you don’t speak up and do something (aka vote) then the car will never go in the direction you desire and deserve?

Democrats Waiting in the Wings (updated 4feb16)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 February 2016.]

Even before her Monday’s disaster in Iowa, Hillary’s campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination had become so fractured that the line of potential replacements was already forming. Uncle Joe Biden let it be known he will reliably carry the Donkey banner if and when tabbed by Obama. Add to that the growing stream of reports that billionaire and three-term NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is testing whether his ten-year Oval Office dream is finally the now-or-never opportunity. And my personal favorite is Lizzy Warren, the socialist senator from Massachusetts who could easily out-socialist Ol’ Bernie himself.

On the potential Bloomberg candidacy, the billionaire’s camp has leaked his intentions with more yet to come. Bottom line, he would run if Hillary blows a tire. Hillary has told him “not to worry” about that contingency. But the NYT already reported that Bloomberg is definitely leaning forward in the saddle and having described Hillary as a “flawed politician, shadowed by questions about her honesty and the continuing investigation into her email practices as secretary of state.”

I believe that Hillary’s fate will be determined by what some people now call the ‘Comey vote’ – when the FBI director plops his stack of evidence on Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s desk. Lynch is a proven administration hack who faithfully carries on the legacy of her predecessor Eric Holder. Smart money is on Lynch ignoring the indictable evidence from Comey as Obama adds Hillary to the long list of presidential pardons now being assembled.

All this has got to rankle at least some of the higher minded progressive elites who see their anointed one in the public forum as embarrassingly immune to what for the rest of us would be a life changing catastrophe. As an Army intelligence officer of a nuclear artillery battalion followed by over twenty years as a defense contractor developing highly classified combat systems, I held the highest Top Secret clearances. Had I or any of my colleagues treated classified materials as flippantly as did Hillary, we would have been behind bars immediately and would probably still be there today.

To all this we add the findings of Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough, who is the most recent of knowledgeable officials and legislators to confirm Hillary’s sins. And with undiminished hubris, her blaming the entire email server scandal on Republican politicking highlights her growing desperation. The overwhelming evidence of criminality against Hillary in just this one of her several scandals should be damning enough to quickly shut down her campaign and get her off the streets. No leftwing politician since FDR days has enjoyed such fawning media coverage and an administration ready to go to the mattresses for her.

Nevertheless, a growing cohort of national commentators, who know Director Comey as a straight shooter, believe there will be mass resignations from the FBI if Hillary’s crimes are not prosecuted. Couple that with her cliff hanger in Iowa, with worse expected in New Hampshire, and it is easy to see how all this will put the Democrat race into the quandary that Bloomberg now gleefully anticipates.

It was not that many days ago that the nation’s progressives were happy dancing in the streets, citing Republican party’s costly catfight between its many establishment and populist candidates.   Then there was no concern about their unelectable socialist from Vermont, they knew that Hillary would be crowned in Philadelphia. That was before their unelectable socialist suddenly started rising in the polls, and Hillary started tacking noticeably even more leftward so as not to be outflanked by the old revolutionary in ascent.

In the end, should Hillary somehow survive her untrustworthiness and scandals, the question then becomes how will she shed Bernie’s socialist stigma when it comes time to again convince enough people that she is really a faithful Obama 3.0.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.

[4feb16 update] As often happens in these pages, RR’s perspective is soon picked up by major national media and blogs of the more conservative cast.  Now I’m not saying that they read RR, but I am saying that the themes discussed here are mostly in the mainstream of conservetarian thought across the country.  It takes the big guys a bit longer to ruminate on these ideas and check them with their editorial boards than it does moi and many of our astute readers.  With their opaque ideological blinders strapped on tight, it is inevitable that the local looney Left has no clue about what is really happening in the country or on Earth in general.  The notions advanced in the above commentary are an example of this.

This morning’s WSJ has a major essay by Democrat strategist and pollster Douglas Schoen who posits ‘Why Mike Bloomberg Can Win’. In there he points out how Mr Bloomberg may successfully carve out the major middle and take enough moderates from both ends to win the presidency.  And he may be capable of this as either a Democrat or as an Independent.  Schoen’s main point is that “record numbers of voters are independents who won’t be satisfied with Clinton, Trump, or Cruz”  (See also today’s Union cartoon above.)

Some disquieting items that Schoen corroborates – “…Bernie Sanders is leading a lurch toward socialism, and Hillary Clinton is seeking to match if not exceed his leftist agenda.”, and “that 63% of Americans favored compromise, not confrontation, to achieve policy goals. A majority, 52%, wanted the government to do more problem-solving.”  And he concludes with –

A Bloomberg candidacy would make no effort to kowtow to the religious right or labor unions. Mr. Bloomberg would not and has never made deals with special interests. Because he has always been able to finance his campaigns himself, his independence is indisputable.

As this politically frenetic February wears on, the primary process will demonstrate to voters how divided and dysfunctional the nation has become. For Americans in the middle, a Mike Bloomberg candidacy will become more compelling by the day.

Contrast this view of the nation, shared by RR, with what our far left believes. This is illustrated with a letter in this morning’s Union apparently from a writer peeking out of the pits of progressivism, or one having recently made landfall on this planet.

Haven’t we had enough of Ted Cruz and the Tea Party Republican base and their ignorant, xenophobic, racist lies about what is wrong with the country? The country is doing fine and heading into boom times again; people are becoming more understanding and more tolerant of each other no matter what Fox News says.

The freedoms we enjoy today haven’t changed and are just as secure as ever. These misfits in the Republican and Tea Party are just upset because of the fact that the president is black. They have created some delusional Orwellian fantasy in their heads, that they’ve ruminated on for so long, that they’ve actually come to believe it. Get over yourselves and your pseudo patriotism and join the rest of America as it glides into the future.

Iowa Caucus - quick thoughts (updated)

George Rebane

The clear winners were Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio. Neither were projected to make much of a showing against the self-adorned leaders of their parties.  Ted Cruz’s nominal victory is going to have a tough time running a successful race on its evangelical legs.  Things became more clarified for The Donald as he experienced the bracing embrace of reality delivered by the real Iowa voters.

The more interesting contest was between Bernie and Hillary. In my lifetime I have never heard a serious candidate, actually make that two serious candidates, for the American presidency sound like throwbacks from the depression era halcyon days of communism.  The Democrat voters are in a schism – the older ones giving a gimlet eye to Bernie the ‘political revolutionary’, and the younger millennials lapping up everything the old firebrand can deliver and asking for more.  That schism is not surprising since the millennials are found to be the most ignorant generation - especially in economics and finance - to date since the Great Society took over our schools.  These are the know-nothings to whom Sanders' socialist economics looks so appealing.  I reported the PriceWaterhouse study on this in the 25jan16 Ruminations.

[update] There is some question on sample size in the comment stream.  Not to worry.  The 140,000 plus Iowa Republicans contained more sample size than any of the ongoing daily polls.  The only weakness of that sample is its evangelical skew, but that tilt will be repeated in most Republican leaning voting cohorts in the coming months.  Those same arguments will also be welcome on the receptive ears of many religious Hispanics and blacks.  The only Dems that will turn their tin ears to the message of liberty and personal responsibility will be the secular humanist white progressives.  The Dems’ ace in the hole will remain the dumbth of the large millennial horde; Hillary and Bernie and Liz and Joe have got to keep convincing these people that what they learned in school really works in the real world.