I try and make a habit of reading actual scientific papers. Science journalism, while providing a valuable service, often exaggerates or loses the point, or fails to contextualize properly. With Google Scholar, SSRN, arXiv, PubMed and many more, this gets easier and easier (no thanks to companies like Elsevier).

Although there are some problems with reproducibility - or are there? -  I still like do keep this habit up (even though Links to the Damn Paper isn't updating anymore).

One of my favorite sources is the JASNH: Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis

[PDFs ahoy!] What's not to like about finding that the phases of the moon aren't linked to births or deaths, that questionnaire color doesn't affect feelings about the environment, that jackdaws don't remember things in order, that culture doesn't affect Olympic performance, or that women do not systematically prefer a man in uniform.

One of the biases we confront every day is one of events. We notice and remember things that have happened, not things that haven't happened. It's difficult to measure non-events, but the JASNH helps. And sometimes - a lack of information is still information.

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Black Swans

I am working my way through Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Black Swan, and I am hearing my own half-formed thoughts and developing ideas already expressed! With statistics, examples, counter-narratives and an engaging style. I should have picked up this book sooner, and I will probably buy a copy so I can mark it up myself with notes. Taleb brings up a few ideas I have already been pondering: the human tendency to seek narrative explanations, the dismal way we evaluate risk, the difficulty people have of dropping out of their cultural, and indeed possibly biological, frames of thinking.
I disagree with him on the ability and utility of forecasting, but I am in complete concurrence with his requirement that professional predictors keep a record and go back and evaluate their records.

Since this is supposed to be an "outlook" of sorts, I will have to come up with a list of things that I think I am capable of predicting, and track them.

One of Taleb's arguments dovetails neatly into Goodhart's law and Campbell's law. As soon as a big investment player uses a strategy, it becomes apparent, and is no longer counter-systemic. This suggests two options: make moves so opaque as to be incomprehensible  - which may be easier if you just make it hard to think about - or be so little as to be beneath notice.

I can't wait to get through <i>Antifragile</i>, which I have also been thinking about: the tradeoffs between robustness and efficency, the way  interconnected networks respond to damage. How can we build robust, resilient systems? This, I think is the great question of the 21st century. We will answer it, or die.

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True Detective

We moved across the country, and the place we're living in now has HBO On Demand. So I started watching True Detective. There's been quite a bit of discussion on the 'Net about it (here and here for starters) and I watched and felt like my head cracked open.

Like I was mainlining the truth of the Universe.

After one episode, I could tell you who killed that girl, and the others like her. And why they may have caught the killer, but another DB, similar fashion, showed up.

The girls are outputs of a fucked-up set of interlocking interconnected systems that people have made, trapped, built, woven and imposed upon the world. I'm not slipping into Rust's nihilism, which is a covering for his essential woundedness. People made these systems, and people carry out these actions, and these stories have meaning for the people that do them, because story and meaning are the frameworks through which we view our lives.

But these girls are just as dead as if they OD'd, or were in a car accident, or had a brain aneurysm. Only nobody gives a shit if those things are cause by structural failures like those imposed on the landscape of South Louisiana.

There is some kind of structure or system in place that is killing these girls, and it was built by the powerful for the powerful, and as long as it doesn't, on balance, hurt them, it will continue.

Incidentally, I was annoyed by the preacher and the task force for crimes with 'an anti-Chrisitan connotation.' Deer antlers and bound women, placed bodies and little woven nests? That is old, deep stuff. That is Venus of Willendorf, cave paintings, Our Lady Underground type stuff. Way older than Christianity.

Learning to Swim

It was my mother's family who taught me to swim.
  We would go to the Sea, and stand on the shore, looking out over the gray-blue ocean. I remember my uncles and cousins teaching us how to wade out, how to shuffle our feet, how to judge the rush and pull of the waves.
  As a child, I would stand on the edge of the waters, watching the waves race up the sand and running just in front of the advancing foam. As I got older, I ventured out farther, and they taught me to ride the waves. First to let a wave pull me off the sea floor, then how to float and swim over them - then how to dive under breakers, avoiding the churning water.
 And they taught me to feel the currents, to look for discoloration, to look for waves that moved wrong. That was the riptide, and you could feel it swirling around your legs, beckoning at first, then insistent. They taught me not to fight it, but to ride it out. To swim parallel, to escape, and to call for help.
  They taught me that Ithere would always be someone to help, but I would have to call out.

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Creative Commons

What Is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a copyright system that promotes "the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools."

What does it mean for the site?
Everything on the site is under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): Human readable, legalese, unless otherwise marked. Every post should be be marked anyway.

Why CC?
Because the locked-up nature of the copyright system in the United States is stifling creativity and destroying the public goods that make up our culture.

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The End of the Westphalian System?

  I've been thinking that the rise in non-State violence indicated a breakdown in the Westphalian system. I thought that the interventions by hegemonic powers or regional actors in weak States indicated something about how technological development allowed small groups of non-State actors to act effectively against States. I thought that the breakdowns and border areas created new opportunities for non-State groups to create networks of their own.
  But now I'm thinking about historical events - the rise of States, how centralized power has slowly expanded and contracted over time, how loosely-organized non-State groups have impacted and afflicted States from uncontrolled areas ever since there was something resembling a State.
  What if the use of hegemonic power to prop up weak States, or to expand those States' control into border regions, is part of a trend of expanding State control?
  States will prop up and legitimize other States. It is in their interest to reinforce and normalize the existence of States, as this give their own existence legitimacy. This is seen in Syria, where the US prefers to work with an organized council, who creates a government with prime ministers and presidents, just like the established States.
  The conflict between State and non-State actors has long been tilted in favor of States, with organization, funding, legitimacy - the victors write history, after all. Technological developments, specifically allowing network effects and efficiency, are allowing and will allow organizations smaller than and independent from States to act.
  Originally SF writers and futurists predicted that the democratization of tech would reduce State power and would allow people to form free networks of their own, without coercion.
  But power accumulates power to itself, and anything that increases power inherently aids States, if they are smart enough to take advantage.

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Reports of the Net's demise are greatly exaggerated

So anti-spam group and a hardened hosting company are going at it. The security firm that runs interference for the anti-spammers is engaged in a bit of self-promotion and all the usual suspects are breathlessly reporting on it.

I picked up on this in Ars a few days ago, and groaned inwardly when I heard it on NPR this afternoon. While this is an example of the kind of conflict that can occur on the Internet, it isn't the world-shaking, Netflix-stuttering event that it has been made out to be. It is common knowledge that large criminal organizations employ botnets for the purpose of creating and sending spam, and their cost for doing it is so incredibly low they can deploy thousands and thousands of computers to execute DDoS attacks. What's interesting is that this is being reported on at all. The comings and goings of The Internet as a purely Net phenomenon is still fairly new for mainsteam publications. That's why they focus on things people can identify, like slow downloads and Netflix cutting out - neither of which seem to have actually happened. The Net as place, where things happen, has yet to enter the mainstream.

This is not the first time a botnet has been deployed in an offensive fashion. It may be the first time you've heard about it.

It will not be the last.

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