Not blinded by stats!
Here's a refreshingly HARDASS critique of the FRAUD called statistics, in a mainstream science mag. Bruce Bower tells the history of the 'p-value' that allegedly measures significance. Unsurprisingly it began shortly after WW2, like all the other frauds and crimes of science.

By calculating just one number from their experimental results, called a P value, researchers could now deem those results “statistically significant.” That was all it took to claim — even if mistakenly — that an interesting and powerful effect had been demonstrated. The idea took off, and soon legions of researchers were reporting statistically significant results.

Bower states the solution clearly:

Keep it simple, Loftus advised. Remember that a picture is worth a thousand reckonings of statistical significance. In that spirit, he recommended reporting straightforward averages to compare groups of volunteers in a psychology experiment. Graphs could show whether individuals’ scores covered a broad range or clumped around the average, enabling a calculation of whether the average score would likely change a little or a lot in a repeat study. In this way, researchers could evaluate, say, whether volunteers scored better on a difficult math test if first allowed to write about their thoughts and feelings for 10 minutes, versus sitting quietly for 10 minutes.

Graphs, graphs, graphs. Let readers SEE what's there. Don't smash the graphs into one number that collapses the time axis.

= = = = =

Calibrating: I played the p-value game once. I wrote some rather neat software for one of the speech grad students at Penn State. She wanted to try computers in teaching foreign languages. (This was 1988; sound handling was still a new trick and an expensive option on computers.) She used the software with a fairly large number of students, and taught the same words the old-fashioned way with a control group. She got ambiguous results, which isn't surprising. Tech is NOT magic. The old-fashioned way is often better! As the deadline for her thesis got closer, she wondered if I could use a neural net to reprocess the results. I did, and the significance looked better that way.

I'm proud of making the sample-and-compare software, which was original at the time. I'm not proud of playing the p game.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult, Carver

  ¶ 2:04 PM

  Interesting experiment, unsatisfying description
Via Gizmodo:

The Parker Solar Probe, Collinson realized, had actually travelled through Venus’s atmosphere, providing the first direct measurement of the Venusian atmosphere in nearly 30 years. Parker had detected natural low-frequency radio emissions, which are associated with planetary ionospheres—an atmospheric region packed with plasma, or charged gases.

By measuring the frequency of this emission, we can directly calculate the density of the ionosphere around Parker, finding it to be far less dense than previous missions have encountered,” wrote the scientists in their paper. “This supports the theory that the ionosphere of Venus varies substantially over the 11 year solar cycle.”

Makes sense, and doesn't even need to be called a theory. We know that Earth's ionosphere varies with the sun's activity, so we expect that the same happens even more on Venus, which is closer to the sun.

"Low-frequency emissions" is vague. Without an audio recording it's hard to tell what this means. I suspect it means the hisses and scratches of an active ionosphere, familiar to SWLs and hams. Hisses and scratches may be LF as seen in a long-term spectrum analysis, but they're mainly transients, so mainly HF as heard by the ears. LF without any other description implies a low hum or gradual seismic wave, not a discharge or transient.

Big Science always describes things in a timeless way, by spectra or by statistics. Humans don't sense the world in a timeless way, and useful thinking always requires a time axis.

Later: this NASA video includes audio. The sound is warbly, not hissy. It's described as a "data sonification", which is completely meaningless without more specs. Is it similar to a plain AM receiver, or is it a way of representing something or other with sound?

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 8:21 AM

  Right for dubious reasons
For a century, biology has considered starfish to be the closest major group to vertebrates. This never seemed right on an intuitive basis, and a new gene-based approach agrees that it's not right.

This article runs through a statistical analysis of constants vs variables in genes, and finds that chordates are closer to insects and mollusks, and farther from echinoderms. I'm not especially convinced by the stat approach, but their conclusion is correct.

When you look at things from the PURPOSE angle, the relationships are clear. What do vertebrates accomplish? What do echinoderms accomplish? What do insects and mollusks accomplish?

Echinoderms are the outcast in this view.

Vertebrates, insects and mollusks are all capable of high intelligence and intricate manipulation of their environment. Echinoderms don't do any of that. They mostly sit on the seafloor and wait for food to come into their tentacles.

All PURPOSES were available in the original genome, just as all FEATURES are available in the first technology or the first language. Descendants pick distinct groups from the original tree of PURPOSE, and later descendants along each branch gradually lose features. When two branches share lots of PURPOSES, they're more likely to be closely connected.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:46 AM

  Is this what happened to astrology?
One thought in previous item led back to an older comparison.

Previous item:

We already know that daily activity patterns, involving changes in brain function, are innate. We know that monthly (moonly) activities, involving changes in brain function, are innate. Why not seasons? And taking it to the next step, what about long-term patterns of civilizations? Empires, revolutions, genocides, Golden Ages, collapses, all seem to follow a firmly determined pattern. Each civilization believes that it's "making political decisions" to create or avoid those eras, but they happen to everyone anyway.

This reminded me of an abundantly rehashed point:

= = = = = START REHASH:

How do you know which side of a "debate" is good?

= = =

"Scientists" jail you for questioning "science".

Astrologers don't jail you for questioning astrology.

= = =

MDs force you to follow orders by withholding life-sustaining prescriptions. In any other context this would be called extortion. MDs also forcibly imprison you and bind and gag you. In any other context this would be called kidnapping and MURDER.

Alternative healers don't force you to do anything.

= = =

Social "scientists" design and operate torture chambers.

Psychics and faith healers don't.

= = =

Non-smokers jail you for smoking in the wrong place, which is pretty much every place.

Smokers don't jail you for not smoking.

= = =

Bankers jail you for using cash.

Goldbugs don't jail you for using debit cards.

= = =

Globalists bomb you for questioning the Empire.

Localists don't bomb you for being a globalist.

= = =


The non-jailing and non-bombing and non-interventionist side of each debate is good. The jailing side is bad. Jailoleth.

The jailing side always says that a godlike abstraction requires them to kill or jail you; but their description and understanding of the godlike abstraction is PERFECTLY WRONG. The non-jailing side doesn't use the abstraction to justify anything, and usually gets the abstraction right.

It's most obvious in "global warming" and "evolution" and "virus".

With "global warming", the environmentalists always say that "the environment" requires them to kill us. But their understanding of "the environment" is backwards, omitting all the negative feedback and adaptation.

With "evolution", the Darwinists say that Darwin requires them to silence dissent. But their understanding of Darwin disagrees with Darwin himself on every major point. The Darwinists don't believe in genes, while the non-Darwinists do believe in genes.

With the Haute-Couture Branded Virus, the torturers say that the virus itself or the epidemic itself requires lockdowns and torture. Exactly backwards. Our immune system works when we live a normal healthy life, without being imprisoned or starved or tortured or forced to recirculate our own breath. All of these measures are EXPLICITLY DESIGNED TO DESTROY IMMUNITY, designed to CREATE AND EXPAND an epidemic.

The non-lockdowners don't bother to cite the virus itself because we know the real reason for the torture.

In all three cases the genocide or torture or silencing is really required by the demented psychopaths who require it. They ENJOY torture and domination and humiliation. They have a BURNING URGENT NEED to obliterate the universe.

= = = = = END REHASH.

Now back to astrology.

Before 1700 or so, there wasn't a distinction between astrology and astronomy. Stargazers with or without telescopes were doing serious observation and real math and real geometry to determine God's will. This purpose was especially dominant in Islam, the most scientific religion. Stargazers were seeking long-term patterns that were reflected in human lives and human civilizations. They found many such patterns.

The Age of Endarkenment forced all "science" into a secular and purposeless mold with Random replacing God. The split was already evident in the disputes around Galileo and Bruno. We think of the dispute in terms of mathematical centers, which wasn't the real argument. Geocentric versus heliocentric is NOT a question of right vs wrong, it's just a question of convenience. One center works better for some calculations, the other works better for others.

The real dispute was between PURPOSEFUL astronomy vs PURPOSELESS astronomy. The PURPOSEFUL branch, which had been offering guidance to people and rulers, lost the battle for Expert Credentials, and eventually decayed into an oversimplified reliance on the Zodiac, which has the flavor of a false flag.

Modern dissidents often get sucked into Deepstate's false flags that trivialize and stupidize their real concerns.

If the PURPOSEFUL branch of stargazing had continued to develop as a living discipline instead of a flattened triviality, we'd have much better guidance for real decisions. The stargazers would have expanded into observing patterns in the magnetosphere and radiosphere, and would have paralleled those patterns with weather and civilization patterns.

The same split gave us "global warming". The credentialed experts MEMORYHOLED all previous knowledge of long-term patterns. We are not allowed to look at magnetic field changes. Only the official secular explanations via CO2 and Trump Cooties are allowed.

And now the same split gives us Holocaust Science that EXPLICITLY MEMORYHOLES all knowledge of the long-term patterns of immunity and the natural trends of viruses. We must assume that immune systems never existed, in order to place ALL reliance on the murderers who switch their rationales and procedures every two weeks.

= = = = =

Among all these similar deletions of PURPOSE and GOD and TIME and PATTERN from science, astrology was the first.

Since we're back in 1000 now, we need to recapture and reanimate the tools that served ordinary people in 1000.

Labels: 2000=1000, Blinded by Stats, Natural law = Sharia law, Trinity House

  ¶ 3:13 PM

  Maybe a new comparison
It's obvious from the only available FACT that FBI has taken over medicine.

The one and only FACT: As reported by AIER, the holocaust was officially triggered by a "bioterrorism" adviser at VA. "Bioterrorism" also gave us the "anthrax" fake panic in 2001, which was directed by FBI.

I was thinking about the inverted meaning of CASES, and realized that the FBI connection is ALSO clear from the behavioral patterns of Public Death Officers.

The focus on CASES in the current holocaust is one of the keys to its success. Public Death Officers are trying to test everyone for signs of the "virus", because they see CASES as a crime instead of a sign of immunity. Worst of all, they are doing EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to make more people sick in general, eliminating all aspects of normal life that help immunity, and sealing people into recirculated air in houses and muzzles where viruses can stay active instead of leaving the body after being perceived and neutralized by the immune system. We're bombarded with bad statistics, totally unconnected to the baselines and contexts that make numbers meaningful. The bad stats "show" us that more and more "disease waves" are coming, which will require harsher and harsher tyranny waves.

Before 2020, doctors and public health officials didn't GO OUT LOOKING FOR CASES. They understood that the presence of antibodies indicates that a person is no longer SUSCEPTIBLE to the virus. This is how immunity works. Doctors didn't try to test everyone. They waited for people to get ACTUALLY SICK, then kept track of the ACTUALLY SICK PEOPLE. And they certainly didn't try to destroy immunity. Their advice, when given, tended to help immunity.

= = = = =

The old approach to medicine is the same as the ordinary police approach to crime. Ordinary cops don't search every house looking for thoughts of crime, and don't go around testing people for criminal tendencies. They wait for an actual crime to occur, then arrest and prosecute the actual criminal.

The 2020 approach to medicine is the FBI approach to crime, more generally the Deepstate approach to crime. Deepstate never waits for actual crimes to be committed. Deepstate monitors everyone's communication, watching constantly for CASES of heresy. A discussion of heretical topics is never seen as a healthy response to heresy. No matter which side you're taking, you're a criminal.

FBI constantly CREATES CRIMINALS, developing "activist" groups and cultivating drug gangs, shaping their activity toward maximum criminality so ordinary people will be scared shitless by "terrorism" and "crime waves". The "terrorism waves" and "crime waves" are false stats, just like the "disease waves".

= = = = =

Just as FBI inverted the function of policing from solving crimes to creating crimes, the Public Death Officers have inverted the function of medicine from solving disease to creating disease.

There's one crucial and lethal difference. Ordinary police still exist, still practice old-fashioned policing on both crime AND disease, and generally dislike the FBI approach. Ordinary doctors no longer exist. All MDs must be assumed to be FBI agents. A handful of MDs, literally two or three, have publicly indicated their displeasure, but haven't taken any actual steps to counteract the tyranny.

= = = = =

Well no, that's unfair. The Great Barrington Declaration has about 37000 "medical practitioners" who bravely put their names and reputations on the line. Skimming through the partial list, there are a lot of currently employed MDs, mainly at universities. Unlike most Open Letters, it's not just the safely retired.

But declarations and Open Letters are not concrete actions. The most important concrete action is OPENING THE BLACKMAIL. Let the public see the emails or text messages from Holocaust Central. Let us see the ESTABLISHED SYSTEM that made the trigger on March 12 work. An email from Carter Mecher, bioterrorism adviser at VA, wouldn't cause all governments in the world to start a holocaust in unison unless the governments had been rigidly organized and prepared in advance. Let us see the threats for non-compliance. It's fairly clear by now that the threats weren't implemented, because several governors have been non-compliant from the start, or turned non-compliant soon after the start, and haven't been assassinated or removed yet.

In short, the Great Barrington outfit hasn't done anything. So far I don't see the usual false flags, but I don't see an effective 'warrior spirit' either. Too many careful hedges and fudges and backdowns, not enough clarity and firmness. No sign of collective action. No crowdfunding for doctors who lose their licenses by practicing REAL medicine.

Most organizations send frequent fundraising emails to keep subscribers energized. For most organizations, that's the whole point of getting people to sign up. I signed GBD at the start and haven't received anything at all. If they begged for money while showing some results, I'd send money. If they showed LOTS of results I'd send LOTS of money. I pay for value.

Labels: #bluelivesmatter, #defundpublichealth, Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 5:11 AM

  Globulin and "stupid" parents
The mention of globulin in previous item reminded me...

Before the Salk vaccine, gamma globulin was the best available preventative against polio. Radio programs from 1949 to 1953 talked about globulin and encouraged listeners to give blood to the Red Cross to help with the globulin project.

I didn't know much about it, so I looked it up. Here's an interesting 2017 account of the project.

Because polio was a REAL epidemic, parents were eager to participate in the testing of globulin. The researchers were trying to run a properly controlled trial, but parents frustrated the scientific purity by bringing in their kids several times to maximize the chance of getting the real stuff instead of placebo. Parents wanted to PROTECT THEIR KIDS. Parents didn't want to help the researchers get grants and prestige.

Globulin created a short-term immunity for a few weeks without mobilizing the immune system's intelligence to form a permanent response. So globulin had to be timed accurately, given at the start of a local epidemic, to help people throw off the virus so it wouldn't continue spreading.

After the Salk vaccine came along, WHO used the "improper" trial to dismiss globulin entirely. But the trial was "invalidated" because parents UNDERSTOOD REALITY AND ESTIMATED RISKS ACCURATELY. Best of all, they knew how to USE RISK STRATEGICALLY.

Modern monsters continue to insist that people can't judge risks. Lethal nonsense.

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 3:55 AM

  Watching a flip
A few months ago I noted that the sudden flip from medicine to murder marked the end of CONSENSUS SCIENCE, which had been the basis for the "global warming" genocide. The new "virus" holocaust needs to obliterate all existing knowledge FAST, so it has switched from CONSENSUS SCIENCE to EMERGING SCIENCE.

Now we see the switchers cramming a theoretical "foundation" under the switch. Cited by Evolution News, a new statistical paper brands consensus with Castro.

The branding is a bit odd, since many academics have positive feelings toward Castro for the wrong reasons. I'm sure the branding will quickly improve, morphing to Putin and Trump as the models for consensus.

The switch also puts the "carbon" genocide in an uncomfortable position, but this conflict won't be as hard to resolve. The "carbon" theory of "global warming" was never ACTUALLY settled science in the same way that gravity and inductance are settled science. It was always an EMERGING theory designed to satisfy the murderous needs of psychopaths. Now that Oceania is at peace with EMERGING science and at war with CONSENSUS science, "carbon" can be treated more honestly.

Later, a clearer Shared Lie thought about this question.

Labels: #defundpublichealth, Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 9:26 PM

  More in the same mode
In the current fake emergency, as well as previous fake emergencies, many skeptics are focusing on misperception of risk. Innumeracy. Bayesian denominators. Inadequate evolution. Inadequate education. That's not even part of the story.

Most people perceive real risks accurately. We don't need numbers. What happens in these fake emergencies is a barrage of FALSE INFORMATION about the EVENT ITSELF. We end up perceiving the risk of the MYTH accurately, and forget about plain old REALITY.

Example 1: Three Mile Island. Most people perceived the risk of nuclear power accurately, and the ACTUAL EVENT corresponded EXACTLY to our perception of risk. Some employees at TMI were injured or killed, but NOBODY outside the plant was even bothered. ZERO radiation escaped. Design and engineering worked perfectly to protect the PUBLIC from a cascade of stupid operator errors. The media pounded us with FALSE INFORMATION about the event itself. Even though I knew what happened, I still have to slap down the impression that thousands of people died.

Example 2: AIDS. Most people perceived their risk accurately. Active homosexuals saw their friends and "husbands" dying, and knew they were in immediate and lethal risk. People outside of that culture saw nobody dying, and knew they were at zero risk. Then the media POUNDED US over and over with the FALSE INFORMATION that AIDS was spreading to everyone. It was, as fucking always, an Equal Opportunity Disease.

Example 3: The current holocaust. People who are already dying know they're dying, and know that their risk from any virus or stress is 100%. People who are not already dying know that we're not sick, and NOBODY is sick. THIS IS NOT AN EPIDEMIC, and probably isn't even a "virus". Both groups perceived their own risk accurately. Then the media BARRAGED US AND MACHINEGUNNED US with holocaustally false disinfomation that the "virus" is an Equal Opportunity Killer, as fucking always.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 7:49 AM

  Stats point-missing
Twitter item from Austen Allred on the only subject that matters:

The default math class in high school should be Statistics instead of Calculus

Goal and purpose well chosen, but the curriculum choice misses the goal.

Stats as typically taught doesn't provide the type of thinking we need.

We need EXPERIENTIAL math, project-based math, job-based math. Give the student a job that really needs to be done, for pay or for a visible and relevant purpose. While performing the job or project, moments of frustration will inevitably occur. Use those moments of frustration to show how math solves the problem.

In each case the math must start with a GRAPH. Learn how to isolate the relevant variable and measure it, and how to relate the relevant variable to your desired goal.

After the GRAPH is visible and grasped, the student will be able to learn the math functions that perform this graph. Graphing leads naturally to some aspects of calculus. Graphing does not lead to stats.

Stats as usually taught is graphless and timeless. It's a subject designed by cheaters to help them cheat.

So the only good purpose for learning ABOUT stats is to learn how the enemy fools you and screws you. This is NOT the same thing as learning all the details of stats.

When you think in graphs, you don't need stats.

A good math course should use graphs to debunk stats.

= = = = =

Later footnote:

So the only good purpose for learning ABOUT stats is to learn how the enemy fools you and screws you. This is NOT the same thing as learning all the details of stats.

Thinking about this.... It's clear that you'll never get this type of learning in public schools, which are funded by the enemy. Schools funded by a LARGE and INDEPENDENT institution like Trinity House, devoted specifically to giving normal people BULLYPOWER against the enemy, could provide this type of learning.

Labels: AI point-missing, Blinded by Stats, Experiential education, Trinity House

  ¶ 10:31 PM

  Nice but useless
From PLOS:

Amid growing criticism of the traditional "publish or perish" system for rewarding academic research, an international team has developed five principles that institutions can follow to measure and reward research integrity.

Principle 1: Assess researchers on responsible practices from study conception to delivery, including the development of the research idea, research design, methodology, execution and effective dissemination

Principle 2: Value the accurate and transparent reporting of all research, regardless of the results

Principle 3: Value the practices of open science (open research), such as open methods, materials and data

Principle 4: Value a broad range of research and scholarship, such as replication, innovation, translation, synthesis, and meta-research

Principle 5: Value a range of other contributions to responsible research and scholarly activity, such as peer review for grants and publications, mentoring, outreach, and knowledge exchange

Can't argue with any of them. All are in the right direction. All are abstractly good.

But the effort is a day late and a dollar short.

Or more precisely 60 years late and trillions of dollars short.

60 years late: Tenure and P-or-P have been problems since the 1950s. My father wrote an article criticizing the system in 1959, his first year as professor. He practiced what he preached. He never wrote another article. His career didn't advance, but he later found a college that allowed him to TEACH.

Trillions of dollars short: These proposals ignore the real problem. Grants are given for results. Grantors always have an agenda.

Paying for value makes perfect sense in research that really solves problems. When Ford pays an engineering college for research in adaptive suspensions, the desired result is clear. There's no pretense of openness or random discovery, thus no conflict.

Paying for value is destructive in open-ended research. If the goal is to observe an unfamiliar part of Nature and see what it's doing, a grant that seeks specific results will put blinders on the researchers. Most government or foundation grants serve the murderous ends of globalist tyranny, defined by "climate emergency" and now by "virus emergency". When the grantor wants to see that corals are being destroyed by "climate emergency", the researchers aren't going to observe that corals are actually being destroyed by overfishing.

Traditionally the best open-ended observation has been supported by independent wealth. In modern times, with all wealth rigidly tied to Share Value and thus to NYC globalists, independent wealth is no better than government grants. But crowdfunding CAN be better.

These proposals don't even mention money, so they're basically pointless.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 11:08 PM

  The warning is right there on the label.
Still thinking about the misuse of stats vs time graphs. How did this happen and why?

When you ask the right question, the answer is easy.

The right question: Cui bono stats?

Easy answer: Stats were invented by cheaters to cheat suckers.

Specifically, stat methods were developed by dissipated effete aristocratic English gamblers to gain an advantage in their useless nonproductive games of chance.

Stat methods are explicitly and solely meant to handle the turn of a card or the spin of a roulette wheel. Single independent time-free events.

When we learned stats in high school, this explicit warning was in the textbook.

Anyone who uses stats to describe TIME-DEPENDENT variables is cheating, using stats as those aristocratic criminals intended, to steal an unfair advantage over suckers who don't know the game is fixed.

The motto of all stats users is:

Never give a sucker a p=0.5 break.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Blinded by Stats, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 6:28 AM

  Always graphs, never stats.
This is why I'm constantly hammering on the necessity for GRAPHS with a TIME axis, not time-free statistics.

A graph of deaths per million in Sweden over the last 40 years. The graph shows monthly totals, smoothed with a 3-month moving average.



When you see the CONTEXT across time, you can't be fooled by claims that this Branded Virus is something unique and new and unprecedented.

Sweden is one of the few countries that continued using REAL PUBLIC HEALTH AND REAL SCIENCE, so there are no confounding variables. This graph shows the effects of the virus itself, not the effects of the infinitely evil perpetual holocaust that was "required" "by" "the" "virus" in crazy countries.

In these 40 years there were about ten bad flu seasons. Roughly every fourth year, but not periodic. Among the ten bad seasons, four were about the same as this year, and four were notably worse than this one. This year is one of the 10 bad seasons, but it's not among the top 5.

If you weren't told in advance that this year was a Martian superpathogen, outside of the experience of all immune systems, you'd just assume that this virus is a normal virus.

And that's what it is, despite all the HOLOCAUSTAL branding. This virus is a virus. It's about the same as the COMMON cold, which is the most COMMON type of virus, not the most UNIQUE. We've been handling them internally for a billion years, and we've been handling them technically for many centuries. We know how to do it.

Reminding yet again that the BIG QUESTION hasn't been touched. Who gave the command to kill the world? How was the command distributed INSTANTLY to all the Public Death Officers? What was the threat behind the command? How did Sweden and Belarus resist the command, and why were they allowed to resist? Why haven't they been invaded and bombed down to bedrock? None of this shit makes sense, and none of it will permanently disappear until the blackmail is opened.

Next day, continuing on the basic question of stats vs graphs.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Constants and Variables, Fucking constants and fucking variables

  ¶ 3:37 PM

  Sort of interesting but sloppy science
Via Eurekalert, a study tries to link the patterns of lightning discharges to the frequency patterns in living things, especially neural frequencies.


"Neither biologists nor doctors can explain why the frequencies in living organisms (0-50 Hz) are similar to those in the atmosphere caused by lightning," adds Prof. Price. "Most of them are not even aware of the similarity we presented in our paper."


Well, that's not a similarity or even a correlation worth pursuing. All sorts of electrical and magnetic wiggles are in the range under 50 cps.

If you want to talk about natural patterns driving evolution, you need a natural pattern that is ALWAYS PRESENT EVERYWHERE**. Sunrise, moon phase, seasons. Nearby lightning happens only during thunderstorms, which are a tiny segment of time even in the stormiest places; and many parts of the world never have thunderstorms.

The sound of near and distant lightning is familiar to shortwave listeners, and it's emphatically not periodic or even quasi-periodic. It's random by the strictest definition. The miniature lightning discharges in a Zener diode are often used as the BEST random generator. You can't call it a frequency or a range of frequencies.

Everything in the nervous system is at least quasi-periodic. Most of the important action is chordal, a complex mix of harmonics, and many of those harmonics and formants are WAY above 50 cps.

This is a classic example of statistical thinking without a time axis leading scientists astray.

= = = = =

** Well, always present everywhere is too extreme. I should say often present in widespread areas. Rain isn't always present, but it's daily in some parts of the world and some seasons. Likewise snow in other parts of the world. Animals in those areas know how to deal with rain and snow.

Update: Here's a much earlier experiment on lightning and nerves, which recognized the broadband nature of both.

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 4:44 AM

  Briggs is on the case
Aha! Statistician Briggs, the only valid statistician, is on the case. I've been repeatedly citing his uniquely accurate insight into the consequences of the 2008 TARP coup. Now he applies the same uniquely accurate views to the Branded Flu coup.

It won't matter, of course. There will never be any "accountability", never any "lessons learned", never any "justice", never any New Nuremberg Trials. The holocausters will get quintillions of dollars and perpetual infinite power and millions of Nobel Prizes.

Still, it's nice to have the ONLY VALID USER OF STATISTICS writing the ONLY VALID BOOK on this holocaust.

As I've been saying forever, the only lesson is NO THEORIES, NO MODELS, NO STATISTICS.

All problems have already been solved by EXPERIENCE.

We don't need to do anything new, because everything we do will be incomprehensibly WICKED and incalculably STUPID. Just follow EXPERIENCE. In USA terms, just copy FDR. He faced all the relevant economic and scientific problems and found the correct solutions by PAINFUL TRIAL AND ERROR. Since 1946 we've been intentionally REVERSING all of FDR's solutions, and we're predictably paying the horrible price.

THEORY KILLS. EXPERIENCE SURVIVES.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carver

  ¶ 3:33 PM

  Not even valid
Vintage.es has a feature on Australian yoots in 1946, originally published by the Aussie equivalent of Life magazine. This picture caught my attention. Three students, obviously dressed for a serious occasion, are using some kind of stylus to poke buttons on a wooden apparatus. The serious dress and faces ruled out a game, so it must have been a mental test, perhaps reaction time? Fortunately the full article with text is available elsewhere online, verifying my guess.

After WW2 "social" "science" was fully dominant, offering false and evil "solutions" to every problem. But aside from the purpose, this machine wasn't even valid by "social" "science" standards. It was crudely built with sharp metal edges and raised parts, so a cautious student would work slower than a risk-taker. In the picture, two boys and one girl are taking the test. The boys are wearing suitcoats with sleeves that could catch on the edge of the box, while the girl is wearing a short-sleeved blouse. She had an extra advantage beyond the innate female tendency toward finer motor skills.

The school system would have been using this device as a supposedly cheat-proof and unbiased correlate of IQ. Risk-takers who rolled up their sleeves would automatically have a higher IQ than cautious and modest students, and would qualify for better scholarships.

Later thought: Despite the invalid correlation to IQ, this test would have correlated beautifully with later status and success. Psychopaths, immune to pain and rules, win every time. Cautious and meticulous people lose every time.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, NOT defensible times

  ¶ 7:01 AM

  All too familiar
Ran across this editorial in a May 1965 issue of 'Electronics' magazine. Bear in mind that the magazine was aimed at the contractor class, so their vested interest dominates. Bear also that contractors were not peaceniks by any means. Even so, the description is objective and horribly familiar.

When President Johnson went before Congress to ask for an additional $700 million appropriation to finance the fighting in Vietnam, he confirmed what almost all the experts in Washington have been saying. The exception has been Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara.

Asked at a press conference on April 26 if more equipment would be bought for the stepped-up fighting in Vietnam, McNamara's answer was unequivocal. "We don't have plans to increase procurement above the previously established level," he said.

Eight days later, the President asked for the additional $700 million "for this fiscal year" and laid out a program that indicated that the Pentagon had done considerable homework.

Either the defense secretary was uninformed, or he was lying. In either case, the incident again raises a question that has bothered people in and out of government since McNamara was first sworn in: Is this pompous egomaniac qualified to be a cabinet officer?

It is becoming increasingly obvious that our government has not been telling us everything.

Less than two years ago, McNamara was issuing statements of confidence on Vietnam. He even predicted that our troops would be out of that jungle country in 18 months. These rosy statements don't mesh with the increased flow of troops into Vietnam these days or the losses of aircraft and life we keep reading about.

McNamara has certainly been one of the most publicized defense secretaries, partly because he is a controversial figure and partly because he has the biggest staff of press agents. The difficult Vietnam war is complicated by political considerations. To bring the fighting to a satisfactory conclusion, the President needs the support of Congress, industry, and the taxpayers.

We wonder if they can give their full support if their confidence in the secretary of defense is shaken. Certainly he has imposed his will on the Pentagon, picking projects that he wanted and contractors that he favored; but the jury is still out on how much he has saved or cost the taxpayers.

Indications from Vietnam are that our troops there have had mediocre communications equipment and outmoded aircraft. The mounting casualty list is indeed a high price to pay for statistically controlled economy.

In '65, well before the full escalation in '67, these folks recognized that the government was not fighting in good faith and not telling us everything. The real fight was between egomaniacs in DC seeking to maximize their personal power. Soldiers and taxpayers were Negative Externalities.

Familiar.

Later thought: One thing is wildly UNfamiliar. A professionally published magazine, normally non-political, was bashing a DEMOCRAT politician, using OBJECTIVE FACTS. This was still possible in '65. Watergate began the rapid slide toward absolute Deepstate and DNC control of ALL experts and publications and writers and thoughts.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, defensible times

  ¶ 5:58 AM

  More on Real World Math
I've occasionally rambled about Real World Math. Using abstract equations works beautifully in the world of abstract equations, but leads us to some serious failures when we believe the world works like math.

The most obvious and most intentional failure is statistics. The mean can be figured in an equation, so we use it instead of the median. In fact the mean is rarely a useful 'handle' on real situations. The median is nearly always a better representation of middle or typical. Economists and Share Value Demons use the mean to persuade us that making Bezos richer is good for everyone. Other stats are just fancy ways of lying. An extremely old observation, but we still ignore it and still use stats as weapons.

A more subtle failure is thresholds and log-ness. Our senses function logly, not linearly, and we sense deltas, not steady states, and we sense things when they run over a threshold. Closed-form math can't handle any of this. A well-written algorithm can crudely approximate it.

In both of the above cases, computers are actually pretty good at handling Real World Math, but we don't use them properly because we don't understand that computers are sorters, not calculators.

Here's a new thought, still sort of tentative and outlined. I was waiting until I could fill in the details, then decided that the best way to fill them in is to publish it first.

= = = = =

We all learn the commutative, associative and distributive properties in math class. These three work together to make abstract calculation a lot easier, and they also work in a computer.

The commutative property is unnatural.

It doesn't work in any aspect of Real World Math. In real situations, the ORDER of addition is always crucial.

Real things, including lifespans, have a limited capacity. When you get near the top of the tank or the end of the lifespan, it's a lot harder to fill the tank or add the next element to the life.

Real tasks have a specific order of labor. You can't decide to do Step 3 before Step 2.

In chemistry and cooking, the order of ingredients is crucial. A recipe says add 0.5 cup of water, stir and beat, then add the other 1.5 cups. Reversing the order ruins the result.

In driving, the order of control inputs is crucial. Say the brake pedal goes down 2 inches at full pressure. When making a stop, you first move 1.5 inches to start decelerating, then the last half inch after you get near full halt. If you first move a half inch and then the last 1.5, you'll never stop at all.

Diminishing returns, or negative returns, are the NORM. Tanh and log handle this reality.

So it's not surprising that neurons reflect reality with log response.

= = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT:

Look at any war in recent memory. You'll find the war was started by a rich tribe who wanted even more riches (or more macho) ... or by a rich tribe who wanted to bring down a competing rich tribe.

Impoverished people are concrete. They understand how life works. Above all they instinctively understand Diminishing Returns, or in mathy terms the sigmoid curve or tanh function. Life is all about the tanh.



Poor people understand the limits at both ends. Static friction and drag. You have to push the cart for a while before it starts to move; then you can move it faster by pushing harder; but beyond a certain speed extra effort doesn't gain more speed. Diminishing returns.

More broadly, a certain amount of effort is needed to start anything. You have to build a fence around your livestock or plow the fields or set up the fruit stand by the roadside.



After that, you're in the small linear region, where increasing effort will bring increasing return. Water the crops more, or feed the hogs more, you get more food. Spend more hours selling fruit, you get more money.



And poor people also understand that beyond a certain point your results will hit a ceiling, a saturation point where the friction negates your effort. So they don't try to quadruple their returns, and they don't try to steal their neighbor's livestock.



Most importantly, the poor understand the emotional aspects of Diminishing Returns. They know that having more cattle than you can handle is not better than having enough cattle to feed your kids. They sense that enjoyment does not continue to increase after you reach sufficiency.

Rich educated people don't know tanh. They have never planted a crop or turned a wrench or rocked a cradle. They have dealt with life at a clean distance, through lawyers and spreadsheets and Disposable Mexican Servants. They assume that life runs on a straight line.



They believe added effort will always yield added income. Most importantly they assume that increased income will continue to yield more enjoyment. Rich educated man thinks: "I have lots of Money and Power and Lebensraum, and I enjoy them. If I have twice as much Money and Power and Lebensraum, I will enjoy them twice as much."

That's why rich educated people make war. They don't know where to stop. They don't know that pleasure needs a foundation and has a roof. They are too fucking stupid to understand tanh.

= = = = = END PARTIAL REPRINT.

The associative property fails for similar reasons. See cooking and chemistry. Grouping ingredients 1 and 2 together gives a different result than grouping ingredients 2 and 3 together.

The distributive property is removed from reality by one step, so it's more safely contained within the abstract world and less likely to distort our thoughts.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Blinded by Stats, Real World Math

  ¶ 10:53 PM

  I gave my tooth to ???
From the 1962 'Strange as it Seems' book....



This struck me as locally and personally strange. Manhattan watched KC television, so we heard a lot about St Louis events. I was 8 in 1958, so I was switching out my deciduous teeth at the time. If this project had been widespread, I would have known and participated. I do remember reading a lot about Strontium 90. It was a big deal.

Some 'citizen participation' projects in the '50s turned out to be Deepstate fakes. The Ground Observer Corps, which I idiotically admired during my idiotic neocon phase, was supposed to detect invading Russki planes. In fact GOC was a survey to check the stealthiness of our own experimental planes to invade Russia. The UFO craze was exactly the same. Project Blue Book was a survey to see how people reacted to our experiments.

Was this a similar fake? Apparently not. This Wikipedia article gives a complete account. It was clearly intended to frighten the public, and it was scientifically meaningless. The project faded out in 1970 without publishing any results.

Much later in 2001, a separate team did a 'longitudinal' recheck:

By tracking 3,000 individuals who had participated in the tooth-collection project, the RPHP published results that showed that the 12 children who later died of cancer before the age of 50 had levels of strontium 90 in their stored baby teeth that were twice the levels of those who were still alive at 50.

TERRIBLE use of stats.

First, in a population of 3000, 12 early deaths by cancer is on the low side. A current set of stats shows a cancer death rate of about 900 per 100k for all under 50. That rate would yield 27 deaths in a group of 3000, so the test group would appear to be HEALTHIER than current averages.

Second, it's the wrong direction. The 12 who died had high levels of strontium compared to the MEAN of all others. We don't know how many kids with high strontium DIDN'T die early. You should have sorted the kids by strontium level first, and then looked at cancer among the highest exposures. If most of the high-strontium kids died early, and none of the low-exposures died early, you'd have a point.

Well then, did the study have any consequences? Supposedly it contributed to JFK's efforts to negotiate a test-ban treaty in 1963. The ban on atmospheric testing really made it easier to do more testing overall, which is why both US and Russia agreed to it.

While futilely trying to look up earlier cancer stats, from the era before nukes and cigarettes were major factors, I bumped into this MOTHER OF ALL GRAPHS.



You don't need to read the years or the titles on the curves. If you know anything about history, you know what this is. This is the definition of EPIDEMIC.

Labels: Asked and badly answered, Blinded by Stats, SES

  ¶ 8:37 AM

  Seismology is worthless.
Some branches of science have taken off their theory goggles and started observing reality. Seismologists haven't. Their prediction ability has NEVER IMPROVED. It's still zero. They can't even POSTDICT properly.

After the 6.4 yesterday, seismologists said there was a 9% chance of a larger quake following. A larger quake followed. Now they're saying there's a 5% chance of a larger quake following this one.

When your 9% turns out to be 100%, you should AT LEAST adjust the next prediction upward. Seismologists do not observe reality.

Another seismologist said that these quakes are not on the San Andreas, so there's ZERO chance of a big quake along the San Andreas. This is an ancient and unshakeable bigotry among seismologists. No quake can ever cause another quake. Each quake exists in its own universe. Every quake is strictly an independent Poisson data point.

Sheer nonsense. Or rather shear nonsense. We've had many examples of large quakes triggering distant quakes in areas that had been 'waiting' for a quake. Simple physics requires it. When the waves are strong enough to do damage 100 miles away, they're also strong enough to break the static friction of ANY fault that's stressed and ready to slip.

USA STRONG seismologists have studiously ignored work by Chinese and Russian seismologists who have managed to predict quakes days in advance by observing animal behavior. USA STRONG seismologists do not believe in life. Animals are independent Poisson data points without senses and brains.

When a branch of science has been active for 300 years without ONE SINGLE SUCCESS, it's time to stop funding it.

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 9:15 AM

  Missing the point, the line, and the plane
Linked via RCS, an interesting correlation that seems to hold up across nations.

When he arrived, the suicide rates in his new home made him wonder: Was there something about the elevation that was affecting the way the brain functioned?

His theory didn’t catch on until he and his colleagues published a 2011 paper that looked at all 2,584 counties in the U.S. and found a correlation between average altitude and suicide rate over the previous 20 years. They found that if a county was below 2,000 feet, their suicide rates were about half of counties at 4,000 to 5,000 feet. The counties with the highest suicide rates were above 9,000 feet.

A subsequent study attempted to control for the other factors commonly thought to influence suicide rates, like gun ownership, poverty, availability of psychiatric care, population density, and health insurance status. Renshaw said they still found that altitude was an independent risk factor, calling the correlation “whoppingly strong.” Since then, there have been multiple studies that showed the same association, both on state and county levels. Similar findings have been reported in Spain, South Korea, and Austria.

Within the US, the pattern of suicide by county associates obviously and blatantly with two factors: Native tribes and post-industrial areas. If the "social" "scientists" think they've factored out poverty and status, they're missing the WHOLE FUCKING POINT of human perception. As fucking always.

Perception is a VECTOR, a differential. Perception measures DISTANCE between here and there, and TIME between now and then.

When everyone you see is poor, and you have always been poor, you don't feel poor.

When everyone you see is low status, and you have always been low status with no delusions or hopes of raising status, you don't feel low status.

Since "social" "scientists" do not know what LIFE is, they must assume an INORGANIC and INANIMATE cause for living behavior. So these "social" "scientists" assume that lack of oxygen is the cause. If we were discussing suicides among boiling pots of water, this would be a good explanation. But we are not discussing suicides among boiling pots of water. We are discussing suicides among LIVING humans.


= = = = =

How does altitude relate to status? Simple and universal. High status people seek high altitude. Low status people seek low altitude, or are forced down by high status people. If you're a low status person in a high altitude area, the difference between internal template and external senses is extreme. You feel your lowness much more sharply. And if you move INTO a high-status area, the vector is both spatial and temporal.

Around half of people who died by suicide had moved to Montana from other states, making space for a theory that a shift from low to high elevations was a risk factor. ... People shared anecdotes of lives lost to suicide in their families, sometimes occurring shortly after moves to higher elevation.

How do Injuns and post-industrial areas connect? Reservations are concentrated in mountain states and HILLbillies live in the HILLS. In this case altitude may be incidental. The relevant vector here is long-standing loss of usefulness. For Injuns, the reservation busted up a strong culture where everyone had a place and purpose. For Hillbillies, the destruction of industry removed all utility.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.


= = = = =

Speculative: Bridge jumping is a popular means of suicide here in Spokane. A quick way of relieving the tension of misfit altitude, nulling out the differential.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 12:04 AM