Illiteracy is a pretty minor problem in Canada these days. It is quite the problem for those who are illiterate of course but there are not very many of those people now. Innumeracy, on the other hand, is still a huge problem and honestly the majority of the population suffer from it. Consider the following front page news article in a local newspaper:
Data shows not all local hospitals are stacking up when compared to peers across the country. - 11 of 18 GTA hospitals fall below the national average at preventing inpatients from dying within 30 days of being admitted for a major heart attack.
Taken from the Toronto Metro weekend edition, April 8.
This data is presented as if somehow it is useful or meaningful when it fact it is neither. Since we expect 9 of 18 hospitals to fall below the average *no matter how good hospitals in general are* the chance of having 11 of 18 below average for any given area is extremely high. Average is not bad, it is normal and there is no reason to panic if we aren't better than average. We also have no idea how far below average the GTA hospitals were. If the 11 'bad' hospitals were running at 99% of average and the 7 'good' hospitals were running at 200% of average we could safely say that the GTA hospitals are amazing... on average. Since we have no idea how they actually compare to the national average though this statistic is completely worthless. The article goes on further to talk about Lakeridge, the worst performing hospital, which falls below the national average on 13 of 21 indicators. If the worst hospital is actually ranking above the national average 8 of 21 times I think the only thing we can conclude is that hospitals are generally of pretty consistent quality when it comes to keeping heart attack patients alive!
What drives me bonkers is that there is some real news in this article that is completely overshadowed by the statistical spewing. It is good to know that hospitals have developed a series of indicators to determine how well their patients do and they are looking at each other's performances to attempt to improve. Great! That sounds like an idea that will help keep people alive and healthy simply by sharing information effectively. Once that has been communicated however there is little to no value to spewing meaningless numbers around aside from stirring up the populace and making people upset.
There are two things that we can take away from this: One, that people like to read useless statistics and can't properly figure out which ones are meaningful and which are noise. Two, the writers and editors of newspapers know this and deliberately cram their stories full of numerical junk that can't be falsified but doesn't contribute anything to the discussion either. I wish that media stories would be better about this sort of statistics porn but the fact is that until we get a population that is educated enough to reject this tripe in favour of real data (or an admission of not having any real data!) it is going to fill the evening news, the internet and local rags forever.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
A step towards peace
There is a crack in the facade of the worldwide war on drugs. Finally. In the upcoming Summit of the Americas several national leaders will be pushing for an end to the entirely unnecessary and unsuccessful war on drugs; there is little hope that Obama will actually accept any notable changes to the US strategy of tossing away money to imprison people for victimless crimes but it is a good sign. It is unfortunate that Obama is in such a delicate position politically at the moment because I think that is a sure sign that we can expect nothing innovative in terms of drug policy. His 'Obamacare' legislation may well be struck down by the Supreme Court and the economy continues to be mediocre, sure signs that he will face a real battle in the upcoming election. Unfortunately that means that he will stick to the old strategy of interfering in other countries affairs and loading up the prisons because that is popular.
Thankfully there are a few countries that are more courageous in this matter like Switzerland and Portugal who have very successfully implemented strategies of treatment and education instead of war and which have had amazing results both in terms of cost savings and reduction of drug use. Eventually the fact that the war on drugs simply doesn't work will help spread these strategies and countries like Canada will fall in line even if the US does look on in disapproval. I would love to say that the US will follow suit, though rather later than sooner, but I am not actually sure this will happen. The death penalty is considered a dysfunctional, inhumane anachronism throughout most of the world and yet it remains in force in the US; I think that there are enough similarities between the two ideas that the same thing will happen.
To my mind it comes down to the desire for revenge. It is clear that sometimes innocent people are killed when the death penalty is in effect and yet it is supported on the basis of taking an eye for an eye. It isn't cheaper and it causes no end of injustice but people support it because they want revenge. Same goes for drug use. Rather than paying to treat users (which is cheap and more effective) people would rather have revenge and put the user in jail (which is expensive and less effective). Some countries, cultures and individuals have a greater desire for revenge than others and when revenge is considered of paramount importance then all kinds of terrible decisions are made.
All that is also predicated on the assumption that there is something to get revenge *for*. I can get high by sniffing gas or glue or just by taking a couple daytime cold medication pills I can buy at the drugstore. None of this is illegal. Using marijuana is illegal though, and for no reason other than it was illegal before. Of course crack and heroin and other drugs are really dangerous but so is downhill skiing, sniffing gasoline, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. We need to get past this idea that Prohibition is a sensible state of things and accept that people will do drugs no matter what the government does about it. All we can do is legalize it (to strangle organized crime), tax it (more revenue, huzzah!) and treat those who do end up addicted (which we do anyway). I am allowed to go to a ski hill, go too fast and break my leg and the government puts a cast on my leg and sends me on my way. Lets respond to me smoking up exactly the same way and skip the whole revenge shtick.
Thankfully there are a few countries that are more courageous in this matter like Switzerland and Portugal who have very successfully implemented strategies of treatment and education instead of war and which have had amazing results both in terms of cost savings and reduction of drug use. Eventually the fact that the war on drugs simply doesn't work will help spread these strategies and countries like Canada will fall in line even if the US does look on in disapproval. I would love to say that the US will follow suit, though rather later than sooner, but I am not actually sure this will happen. The death penalty is considered a dysfunctional, inhumane anachronism throughout most of the world and yet it remains in force in the US; I think that there are enough similarities between the two ideas that the same thing will happen.
To my mind it comes down to the desire for revenge. It is clear that sometimes innocent people are killed when the death penalty is in effect and yet it is supported on the basis of taking an eye for an eye. It isn't cheaper and it causes no end of injustice but people support it because they want revenge. Same goes for drug use. Rather than paying to treat users (which is cheap and more effective) people would rather have revenge and put the user in jail (which is expensive and less effective). Some countries, cultures and individuals have a greater desire for revenge than others and when revenge is considered of paramount importance then all kinds of terrible decisions are made.
All that is also predicated on the assumption that there is something to get revenge *for*. I can get high by sniffing gas or glue or just by taking a couple daytime cold medication pills I can buy at the drugstore. None of this is illegal. Using marijuana is illegal though, and for no reason other than it was illegal before. Of course crack and heroin and other drugs are really dangerous but so is downhill skiing, sniffing gasoline, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. We need to get past this idea that Prohibition is a sensible state of things and accept that people will do drugs no matter what the government does about it. All we can do is legalize it (to strangle organized crime), tax it (more revenue, huzzah!) and treat those who do end up addicted (which we do anyway). I am allowed to go to a ski hill, go too fast and break my leg and the government puts a cast on my leg and sends me on my way. Lets respond to me smoking up exactly the same way and skip the whole revenge shtick.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Remembering badly
Humans have much more confidence in their memories than is really warranted. Do you remember any really interesting facts about the Titanic sinking, for example? I certainly had a few memories of it which I assumed were probably all true (clearly Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't actually on it when it sank...) because presumably I kept those memories from textbooks and such, right? Not so much. After reading a bbc article on the sinking and the myths that surround it I was forced to conclude that what I really knew after seeing the Titanic movie and reading many articles and books was pretty close to zero in terms of substantive fact. I had plenty of ideas swirling around in my head but my ability to sift the actual facts from movie tidbits has vanished. Even if my memory for data was perfect, which it most assuredly is NOT, then my memory for the sources of my data is so full of holes that I can't trust anything I recall.
I recall reading recently a study that looked at eyewitness recollections of events. Researchers got people who witnessed an event and who were convinced they would remember it forever to answer questions about it and then followed up much later on to find out how long their memories would remain. After 16 months their answers to questions about the event had degraded to the point that they only got 50% of the answers correct. It is pretty reasonable to characterize their memories as no better than random guesses at that point even though their confidence in their memories was almost entirely intact. And this was for an event that the observers were sure would stick with them; how bad must our memories be of events we didn't ascribe much importance to at the time?
Even if our memories didn't degrade we would do well to disbelieve eyewitnesses. They have an unfortunate tendency to fill in gaps with assumptions and guesses which are often informed by events that happen afterwards and vastly overestimate how accurate their understanding of the situation was. I think this is largely due to a very serious misunderstanding of our memories; people often think of memories as pictures that are stored in our brains but they really don't work that way. We don't have a matrix of pixels filled with colours but rather a collection of emotional impressions and fragments of ideas jumbled together. We might well remember a striking colour or object but even that simple idea will often be corrupted or mistaken; we really do remember emotions with associated objects and not photographs.
I find it funny that sometimes I have memories that are truly flagrant lies. I remember stories (like the story of the groinpost, for example) from university and I recall the incident. I remember the whole scene... except I was never there. I have heard the story told so often and so vividly though that my mind has constructed the entire thing and the memories of it are just as real for me as the people who were actually there! It makes me really grateful for modern police investigations; they aren't perfect but I shudder at what masqueraded for justice back when an eyewitness who saw the event in bad lightning at long distance (and who today would get glasses) was considered *good* evidence.
I recall reading recently a study that looked at eyewitness recollections of events. Researchers got people who witnessed an event and who were convinced they would remember it forever to answer questions about it and then followed up much later on to find out how long their memories would remain. After 16 months their answers to questions about the event had degraded to the point that they only got 50% of the answers correct. It is pretty reasonable to characterize their memories as no better than random guesses at that point even though their confidence in their memories was almost entirely intact. And this was for an event that the observers were sure would stick with them; how bad must our memories be of events we didn't ascribe much importance to at the time?
Even if our memories didn't degrade we would do well to disbelieve eyewitnesses. They have an unfortunate tendency to fill in gaps with assumptions and guesses which are often informed by events that happen afterwards and vastly overestimate how accurate their understanding of the situation was. I think this is largely due to a very serious misunderstanding of our memories; people often think of memories as pictures that are stored in our brains but they really don't work that way. We don't have a matrix of pixels filled with colours but rather a collection of emotional impressions and fragments of ideas jumbled together. We might well remember a striking colour or object but even that simple idea will often be corrupted or mistaken; we really do remember emotions with associated objects and not photographs.
I find it funny that sometimes I have memories that are truly flagrant lies. I remember stories (like the story of the groinpost, for example) from university and I recall the incident. I remember the whole scene... except I was never there. I have heard the story told so often and so vividly though that my mind has constructed the entire thing and the memories of it are just as real for me as the people who were actually there! It makes me really grateful for modern police investigations; they aren't perfect but I shudder at what masqueraded for justice back when an eyewitness who saw the event in bad lightning at long distance (and who today would get glasses) was considered *good* evidence.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Crime and punishment
A couple blocks away from my house there was a terrible car crash two days ago. I would say 'accident' instead of 'crash' but that would be terribly inaccurate; the driver was a 19 year old who was drunk and driving at immense speed when the crash occurred. He hit a pole so hard his car was ripped into several large pieces and large chunks of the vehicle were scattered all over the area. Despite that he walked away with only minor injuries; his passenger was not so lucky and was instantly killed. He is facing a number of extremely serious charges and will likely spend a very large portion of the next decade of his life in prison; it might even be a lot longer than that. Justice? I don't know.
Obviously this is a tragedy and society's paramount goal needs to be preventing these sorts of disasters from occurring but I wonder if long prison sentences actually accomplish anything in this type of case. We need to establish that there are terrible punishments for crimes but in many cases once the crime is committed there isn't much to be gained by actually going through with the punishment. In a case like this it is likely that the perpetrator in question is wracked with remorse and he will almost certainly face great difficulty going forward. Everyone he knows will be well aware that he caused someone else to die because he made terrible and foolish decisions and moreover he will be aware of that failing all the time. There is no escaping this sort of thing.
It is the sort of dilemma you often see in games. It is important to establish to other players that you cannot be pushed around and that you will react in a punitive, irrational way to being attacked and yet it is rarely a good idea to do that when the situation arises. Society needs to establish tremendous punishments as deterrents (though in many or most cases the deterrent is irrelevant to the decision to commit the crime) but following through has tremendous costs for society as a whole and for the individual in particular. There are people who are terrible and unrepentant enough that they must be imprisoned for long periods or forever but they are a minority of those in prison I suspect. In most cases it is better to try to keep people integrated into society rather lock them up and throw away the key.
We should be grateful for a system that allows judges leeway in this sort of case. Sometimes it is clear that a defendant really did make a stupid decision with no ill intent and is unlikely to reoffend; in most cases a light sentence will be by far the greater good. I would guess that this is the case here from the little we know from the news article but obviously that is hardly conclusive. We also need judges to be able to step in and deliver punitive judgements when necessary as sometimes the accused is really quite beyond redemption. I wonder what it would be like to make those sorts of decisions on a daily basis. It would be really hard, I think.
Obviously this is a tragedy and society's paramount goal needs to be preventing these sorts of disasters from occurring but I wonder if long prison sentences actually accomplish anything in this type of case. We need to establish that there are terrible punishments for crimes but in many cases once the crime is committed there isn't much to be gained by actually going through with the punishment. In a case like this it is likely that the perpetrator in question is wracked with remorse and he will almost certainly face great difficulty going forward. Everyone he knows will be well aware that he caused someone else to die because he made terrible and foolish decisions and moreover he will be aware of that failing all the time. There is no escaping this sort of thing.
It is the sort of dilemma you often see in games. It is important to establish to other players that you cannot be pushed around and that you will react in a punitive, irrational way to being attacked and yet it is rarely a good idea to do that when the situation arises. Society needs to establish tremendous punishments as deterrents (though in many or most cases the deterrent is irrelevant to the decision to commit the crime) but following through has tremendous costs for society as a whole and for the individual in particular. There are people who are terrible and unrepentant enough that they must be imprisoned for long periods or forever but they are a minority of those in prison I suspect. In most cases it is better to try to keep people integrated into society rather lock them up and throw away the key.
We should be grateful for a system that allows judges leeway in this sort of case. Sometimes it is clear that a defendant really did make a stupid decision with no ill intent and is unlikely to reoffend; in most cases a light sentence will be by far the greater good. I would guess that this is the case here from the little we know from the news article but obviously that is hardly conclusive. We also need judges to be able to step in and deliver punitive judgements when necessary as sometimes the accused is really quite beyond redemption. I wonder what it would be like to make those sorts of decisions on a daily basis. It would be really hard, I think.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Three at one time
A few days ago Elli asked me "Daddy, where did the first human come from?" The answer, of course, is that it is very complicated and there isn't exactly a first human. Being able to say "Well dear, God made Adam and Eve" would be much simpler but instead I find myself trying not to get too deeply nested into scientific definitions. I can try to give a simple explanation of evolution but I end up saying "generation" or somesuch and then Elli asks what *that* means and we get all tangled up without ever really answering the first question. Heck, even ignoring the fact that she doesn't understand the concepts of mutation, generations or heritability of traits we have the issue that she doesn't really have a good concept of numbers bigger than 10. She can count to 100 but I don't think numbers that big have an intuitive meaning for her; when I say that the first human was hundreds and hundreds of generations ago she probably thinks it happened about when her great grandma was born.
I finally got some semblance of an explanation of evolution completed by talking about babies and mothers instead of generations and she follows up with "Where do babies come from?" This one should be easy for me; I know exactly what to say and the terminology shouldn't prove such a barrier, right? Well, I ended up mentioning 'egg' in reference to a human egg but she took it as a chicken egg (quite understandably, though it sure made things confusing) and it took a bit to sort that out. I finally noticed that she was giving me her 'I know the answer but I want to see what you will say' look and figured out that she remembered very well the explanation she got from Wendy a few months ago. She was just unconvinced by the whole penis in vagina thing and wanted to see if Daddy would give the same explanation Mommy did. It seems our stories matched up well enough though and she eventually stopped being suspicious; whether or not she believes me or is just convinced that we are both involved in some bizarre conspiracy is unclear.
I figured I was home free; after all, how many tough questions could I get in the space of five minutes? One more, it turns out: "Daddy, where do people go when they die?"
Me:
"Well Elli, when people die their bodies stop moving and their brains stop thinking. We can still remember them and the things they did still matter but they don't do new things anymore."
Elli:
"And their bodies rot away until there are only bones left!"
"And then we can dig up the bones!"
"Dig dig dig dig dig DIG!!!"
So it seems that me trying to come up with the perfect answers for her questions just isn't that important. After all that careful phrasing and racking my brains for just the complexity of expression she is only interested in digging up human bones.
I finally got some semblance of an explanation of evolution completed by talking about babies and mothers instead of generations and she follows up with "Where do babies come from?" This one should be easy for me; I know exactly what to say and the terminology shouldn't prove such a barrier, right? Well, I ended up mentioning 'egg' in reference to a human egg but she took it as a chicken egg (quite understandably, though it sure made things confusing) and it took a bit to sort that out. I finally noticed that she was giving me her 'I know the answer but I want to see what you will say' look and figured out that she remembered very well the explanation she got from Wendy a few months ago. She was just unconvinced by the whole penis in vagina thing and wanted to see if Daddy would give the same explanation Mommy did. It seems our stories matched up well enough though and she eventually stopped being suspicious; whether or not she believes me or is just convinced that we are both involved in some bizarre conspiracy is unclear.
I figured I was home free; after all, how many tough questions could I get in the space of five minutes? One more, it turns out: "Daddy, where do people go when they die?"
Me:
"Well Elli, when people die their bodies stop moving and their brains stop thinking. We can still remember them and the things they did still matter but they don't do new things anymore."
Elli:
"And their bodies rot away until there are only bones left!"
"And then we can dig up the bones!"
"Dig dig dig dig dig DIG!!!"
So it seems that me trying to come up with the perfect answers for her questions just isn't that important. After all that careful phrasing and racking my brains for just the complexity of expression she is only interested in digging up human bones.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Yes, your lordship
Sometimes things go on sale that really shouldn't be on sale. Sometimes you can buy a politician to get legislation you want (looking at you, Disney) and sometimes you can buy human organs on the black market. Other times you can only buy the right to put Lord, Laird, or Lady in front of your name. That's right, if you aren't satisfied with the pedestrian Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Miss you don't have to settle for years of schooling to get a mere Dr. before your name, just slap down $49.99 and you can own a 30 cm x 30 cm plot of land in Scotland and the title that goes with it.
This is genious marketing. You sell something practically valueless (random scrubland in Scotland and some paperwork) for real money and the person who buys it gets to have a grand old time telling all their friends they want to be called 'Laird Someguy' for a month or so. This might be a scam... but even if it is, who cares? All the buyer wants is plausible deniability anyhow so as long as the paperwork looks legit it doesn't even matter if they are technically entitled to the title or not; nobody official is going to call them on it anyway.
Lounge Day
As has happened every year for the past 10 years this coming Good Friday is Lounge Day. This means that a very large number of gamers from the University of Waterloo will be going back to the Lounge where we whiled away our days and skipped classes so many years ago. We will be playing games, catching up and wondering how it is that so many of us have moderately grown children despite still being irresponsible game addicts.
Children have made an appearance quite regularly in these past few years though they don't tend to last as long as the rest of us; although quitting at midnight would have been 'going to bed early' in years gone by that is generally when things get packed up these days.
One and all are welcome to come if you want to play games with a big gamer crowd. Comfy Lounge, 3rd Floor of the Math and Computers building, University of Waterloo, Waterloo. Probably starting about 11:00 AM and going to midnight on Good Friday.
Children have made an appearance quite regularly in these past few years though they don't tend to last as long as the rest of us; although quitting at midnight would have been 'going to bed early' in years gone by that is generally when things get packed up these days.
One and all are welcome to come if you want to play games with a big gamer crowd. Comfy Lounge, 3rd Floor of the Math and Computers building, University of Waterloo, Waterloo. Probably starting about 11:00 AM and going to midnight on Good Friday.
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