Category Archives: Web Article Review

Big History

I hadn’t heard of Big History, and this article in Aeon is actually critical of it, but it sounds interesting as an attempt to fuse natural and social science into a curriculum.

The Big History narrative itself is given shape by the interplay between the forces of entropy and complexity that are represented, respectively, by the second law of thermodynamics and evolution. The second law of thermodynamics postulates that there is a finite amount of energy in the Universe that is slowly dissipating, but evolution shows that there are moments when a particular threshold is reached and overcomes entropy by the creation of new forms of complexity. Big History proposes there are eight ‘threshold moments’, when profoundly new forms of complexity appear in the past: (1) the Big Bang; (2) stars and galaxies; (3) new chemical elements; (4) the Earth and solar system; (5) life on Earth; (6) the human species; (7) agriculture; and, our currently proposed geological epoch, (8) the Anthropocene.

Aeon

A lot of thinkers I admire, among them Howard T. Odum (not mentioned in this article), have focused on entropy as a sort of defining principle to understand the universe we find ourselves embedded in. Our universe is spirally toward disorder and randomness, but that process is very slow and somehow we find ourselves in a tiny pocket of increasing order within that universe. It starts with the Earth somehow orbiting the sun, and continues with life, the purpose of which seems to be to continue creating order out of chaos where mere physics and chemistry leave off, and then it seemingly culminates in intelligent life and the things intelligent life is able to create.

That’s my quick take from a skim of the article, but this article references a number of articles and books by the Australian developer of the Big History idea (the somewhat ironically named David Christian, because this is a system of belief at least somewhat intended as an alternative to traditional religion.) There is also a TED talk out there for people who like that sort of thing (give me a book, please), and apparently a middle- to high-school curriculum developed by the Gates Foundation.

the Thwaites glacier

The Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is roughly the size of Florida, according to USA Today. It is held back by a Game of Thrones style ice wall (seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if pictures of this or similar structures inspired the visuals in the show, if not the original concept. I always thought George R.R. Martin’s original concept might have been inspired by Hadrian’s wall, although I think a sprightly child could jump or climb over that.) Over the next few years to decades it could slide off the continent, float away, melt, and raise average sea levels by a foot. Or “up to 10 feet, if it draws the surrounding glaciers with it.”

I have in the back of my mind that we are looking at “a meter of sea level rise over a century”. This is bad, but it leaves a few decades for me to take my children on beach vacations not too different from the ones my parents took me on in my own childhood, wrap up raising said children to adulthood in my home not too far from the Atlantic coast, eventually sell my coastal real estate empire (consisting of the family home and a small condo I have hung on to for an older relative) at a reasonable market price, and advise the adult children not to buy property anywhere near the coast. I myself would not live to see the worst effects, and as much as I care about my children and their hypothetical children on down the line, it is just human nature that I don’t sit around worrying too much about risks that far into the future.

There are some numbers in this article that suggest I might not have decades to accomplish this long-term plan. The numbers are a bit confusing and conflicting, however.

  • The ice shelf (official name for the Game of Thrones wall) could collapse in the next 3-5 years. This would be the “beginning of the end” of the glacier, which would then begin sliding into the sea.
  • Then there will be a “dramatic change in the front of the glacier probably within a decade”.

The article refers to “rapid” sea level rise, but it doesn’t quantify that, so I don’t have any really new or good insights on whether my 1 meter in 100 years idea is too rosy. I still don’t think coastal property is a great investment anywhere in the world. A few rich, small, low-lying, technocratic countries like the Netherlands and Singapore will probably do whatever it takes to physically alter their coastlines and raise their urban areas, but many other countries will just sit on their hands.

my holiday offering

According to The Onion, you should not attend your office holiday party. But if you choose to ignore that advice, you should under no circumstances give a six-hour lecture on how “Christmas” evolved from pagan winter solstice celebrations. Because “No way you can cover all the relevant material in less than eight. And remember to build in time for questions!”

I say make it a double header and add at least two hours on the pagan origins of Halloween (spoiler: it involves fairies). I can see how this can be annoying, but it is still more interesting than whatever it is that “normal” people jabber on about. Perhaps what we introverts fail to understand is that the jabbering itself is the point, and the content mostly irrelevant.

Happy holidays!

Decentraland

I always assumed that Second Life popped up in response to the novel Snow Crash, and I always thought that Second Life was a bit lame because the technology just wasn’t there yet. Second Life may still be limping along on fumes, but it has been seeming to me that the sequels to Second Life have been evolving through video games like World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc. Today I heard about a plot of virtual land being bought and sold for $2.43 million in a new (to me) one called Decentraland. This is clearly speculation at the moment, and you would expect booms and crashes. These platforms are slowly but surely creating their own marketplaces and even currencies behind the scenes. It may already be possible to create and run a business through these platforms. A big question is whether they will become interoperable at some point. I assume it is a given that they will take advantage of virtual reality technology as that continues to evolve. Another question is to what extent they will remain in the entertainment realm, as opposed to connecting to the real world economy and workplace at some point, which is where actual value would start to be created.

Pension funds should never rely on correlation

Pension funds should not rely on correlations between mean annual return and variance in annual return when deciding how much stocks and bonds to own, according to this article on which Nassim Nicholas Taleb (the Black Swan guy) is the second author. To paraphrase/oversimplify my understanding of the article greatly, the main arguments are that (1) data from the past is not a perfect predictor of the future, and (2) short term volatility is not a good measure of the risk of achieving a long term goal.

In engineering, I hear #1 all the time from people – why don’t we rely on data instead of “modeling” when trying to predict the future? Of course we do both – try to understand the underlying structure of the system we are dealing with, then use data from the past to try to confirm that we got it right, at least for the conditions that prevailed when the data were collected (and assuming the data themselves are reasonably accurate or at least any measurement error is not biased one way or the other), and then use the resulting model of the system to try to predict the future. Conditions in the future may be different than conditions in the past, and that is why we don’t “just rely on data”. If external conditions are different but the underlying structure of the system doesn’t change (much), we can come up with reasonable predictions of the future. The only true test of whether the prediction is right comes from data which will be collected in the future, but is not available today when a decision has to be made. A lot of decisions are really just playing the odds about what might work in the most likely future, or what might work across several different possible futures that collectively are very likely (a “robust” decision). The decision that is best for the single most likely condition and a group of very likely conditions may not be the same one – now you are a gambler trying to decide whether you go for the biggest possible payoff while accepting a larger chance of a loss, or whether you want to maximize your chances of a positive payoff while giving up your shot at a really big payoff. You would think the pension fund would go for the latter.

#2 makes sense to me. Variability in annual returns doesn’t matter much if you are 25 and investing money you plan to need at 65. A pension fund is a little different, because it is essentially immortal but has obligations it has to meet each year.

In the case of investment returns, the approach seems to be almost purely “data-driven” with no real understanding of the underlying system, and this leads to an existential crisis when people try to figure out what asset allocation advice to stake their future on. We understand the real economy to some extent, we think, but we don’t really seem to confidently understand how the real economy and the financial economy are related, especially over shorter time frames. So we are reduced to just describing the data, which might lead to some insights about the system but has limited predictive value. Still, examining the evidence before making a decision seems like a good idea to me. What is the alternative – guessing, wishing, praying?

wolves create a landscape of fear!

The “landscape of fear” is a thing in ecology where predators control prey behavior just by making them afraid of predation. This article compares the cost of wolf predation of livestock to the money saved when wolves keep deer away from highways. The comparison is overwhelmingly in favor of leaving the wolves to keep deer from the highways, even if they eat a few sheep.

Wolves make roadways safer, generating large economic returns to predator conservation

Recent studies uncover cascading ecological effects resulting from removing and reintroducing predators into a landscape, but little is known about effects on human lives and property. We quantify the effects of restoring wolf populations by evaluating their influence on deer–vehicle collisions (DVCs) in Wisconsin. We show that, for the average county, wolf entry reduced DVCs by 24%, yielding an economic benefit that is 63 times greater than the costs of verified wolf predation on livestock. Most of the reduction is due to a behavioral response of deer to wolves rather than through a deer population decline from wolf predation. This finding supports ecological research emphasizing the role of predators in creating a “landscape of fear.” It suggests wolves control economic damages from overabundant deer in ways that human deer hunters cannot.

PNAS

So in a rational world you would maybe take a small fraction of gas tax or toll payments and use it to compensate the farmers for their sheep, in exchange for the farmers not going after the wolves. Or you could just make it illegal to go after the wolves and try to enforce that law. Or some combination. What makes this sort of thing tough in the real world is that a small group impacted by a policy can organize and get political attention, whereas some nebulous idea of “society as a whole” is not going to organize, understand the issue, and lobby the politicians. You could maybe imagine insurance companies representing car owners and truckers getting involved in this issue, if the savings are really so dramatic.

what would a practical modern arms control framework look like?

I am concerned that nuclear war is becoming more scary and thinkable all the time, and politicians are focused elsewhere. One thing the U.S. can do is just be less scary. We need to put ourselves in others’ shoes and realize that they find us threatening, don’t fully trust us, and feel they have to be prepared to defend themselves against us. Being less threatening does not have to make us appear weak – we can let people know we are strong and ready to defend ourselves and our allies if attacked, while reassuring others that they are in no danger if they don’t threaten us. This seems like a basic playground philosophy, but I don’t see our warmongering politicians talking this way.

War on the Rocks has a wonky article on what a modern arms control framework could look like. Let’s pull back a little bit and work on peace and risk reduction.

In my book, Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace: The Rise, Demise, and Revival of Arms Control, I propose that we embrace an ambitious goal of extending the three norms of no use, no testing, and no new proliferation to the 100th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Imagine, if you can, a world in which nuclear weapons have not been used on battlefields for 100 years, and a world in which nuclear weapons have not been tested by major and regional powers for almost five decades. Imagine, too, that North Korea remains the last nuclear-armed state. Now imagine the perceived utility of nuclear weapons in 2045. How many potential mushroom clouds would be required for deterrence? How high would the barriers be against use and testing? …

A seven-nation forum consisting of the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Britain, and France would be hard to steer, but the nuclear dangers we now face are interconnected and unwieldy. When the nature of a problem seems intractably complex, the wisest course might just be to expand the scope of the problem. Even as the four pairs compete, they have the most to lose if key norms are broken and the most to gain if they are extended. Existing bilateral conversations on nuclear risk reduction would, of course, continue, but there are no effective channels of communication and substantive exchanges between India and China and between India and Pakistan, where border clashes are becoming more intense. A non-hierarchical, seven-nation approach to norm building might just succeed. All seven have significant concerns about the intentions and capabilities of states with the most dynamic nuclear modernization programs. Each state has its own reasons to engage, as well as to be wary. If other states are willing to sit at the table, it becomes harder for anyone to hold out.

War on the Rocks

The article gets much more specific from there, and is worth a read. Joe Biden should read it. If his major legislative accomplishments are likely to be behind him by the end of 2022 as we expect, he could try to leave the world a legacy on nuclear arms control, climate change, pandemic preparedness and biological weapons control in his remaining 2-6 years in office. He wouldn’t need direct support from the U.S. Congress, although we have learned that without the executive and legislative branches moving in lockstep, international agreements are not always durable and other countries will conclude they can’t rely on us. Still, any forward progress on any of these issues would be a significant contribution to the future of our nation and our global civilization.

clean up that air and get those fat asses moving!

Max Roser has one of his nice data-based articles focused on air pollution. There are a variety of estimates, but they fall within a fairly narrow range (considering the population of the world) of about 7-9 million people per year. Something like 2-4 million of this is estimated to be due to indoor air pollution, which is a big problem in the developing world. The biggest source of the problem is…wait for it…particulates from burning fossil fuels.

He compares these numbers to around 75,000 deaths per year from terrorism and war combined, 500,000 from homicide (I’m rounding to the nearest 100,000, and he doesn’t provide numbers for suicide which I would guess could be similar or higher), 1.3 million for road accidents, and 2.8 million for obesity.

So if you were a politician (or emperor) who wanted to help the most people, you would make this a big priority, along with reducing deaths in and around motor vehicles and deaths from all the sitting around we do. What do these all have in common? We need to work toward electrification and clean energy, sure – but using 100% existing knowledge and technology, we can design safer streets and roads using the designs we (okay, a few Europeans, at least) already know work, and encourage people to live near work and shopping where they can mostly get around by their own muscle power, supplemented by good public transportation. Or to be much more crude, get those fat asses moving and those lungs out in the healthy, fresh air! Every dollar transferred from the defense/security budget to these things would pay off something like 8:1. And that is in the short term, if a thing called global warming caused by burning fossil fuels did not even exist.

On revolution

Today’s topic is random thoughts on revolution. Seems fitting somehow as I write on Thanksgiving Eve 2021. Thanksgiving is a uniquely American (i.e. U.S.) holiday, although it has nothing to do with the American Revolution per se.

First, for Thanksgiving I have purchased a 12-pack of the Yard’s breweries “beers of the revolution”. Yards claims to have based these recipes on ones found in the actual papers of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. However literally or loosely they have interpreted whatever is in those papers, these beers are all yummy! I plan to drink “George Washington’s Porter” on Thanksgiving itself.

Second, I have purchased the novel Invisible Sun by Charles Stross, which is next in the Merchant Princes series and came out just recently. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the idea of revolution plays a role in this series. In fact, there is a book that serves as a sort of cheat sheet for how to avoid the mistakes of revolutions past and successfully mix politically revolution with catch-up technological progress. They seem to manage just this, although they do not avoid the ravages of global warming. A slight spoiler is that the American Revolution is not the primary model for their revolution, and neither is the British Revolution, the French Revolution, or any other European revolution a mostly ignorant American might have heard of. Nor is it based on communism, although they do seem to have decent public transportation, which we here in the U.S. know is a Commie plot!

Partly inspired by Charles Stross, I read a book called The Shortest History of Europe and another called Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West: 1560-1991. I learned that there was something called a Dutch revolution, which I had no idea of. My knowledge of the British and French revolutions was mostly based on being forced to read A Tale of Two Cities in high school, which is mostly about the French revolution. The other fictional account I thought was about the French Revolution was Les Miserables, which I looked up and it is not about the (1789) French Revolution, but takes place around the 1830s. Like I said, I’m ignorant. But it’s not really my fault – in the course of my grade school studies, I had no less than three full years of American history, plus a full year of Virginia history around fourth or fifth grade. Wouldn’t it make sense if we had at least a year of European history at some point, maybe around the same time we are forced to read A Tale of Two Cities? The history of classical Greece and Rome, followed by Europe, used to be called “western civilization”. That might not be politically correct these days – well, maybe a two-year course covering those topics in a larger context of world history would make equal sense.

Continuing my historical theme this fall, I also read (listed to) S.P.Q.R. by Mary Beard, a historian of ancient Rome. I enjoyed this much more than the European history. It all ties together in a few ways. First, the fall of the Roman Republic in the first century B.C. (we are supposed to say B.C.E. now), along with the instability in many European countries around the 1700s right through the 1900s, convinces me that long-term stable governments are definitely the exception and not the rule in human affairs. Stable forms of government, democratic or not, seem to often be measured in years to decades. Centuries definitely seem to be the except to the rule, and I am not aware of any form of government that persisted for a millennium or more. So you could say the U.S. is doing pretty well as it approaches to 250-year mark, but getting pretty long in the tooth. Changes in government are not always sudden or violent. The Roman emperors maintained many of the nominal institutions of the Republic on paper, such as the Senate, while gradually usurping their functions. In the end, the Roman empire did “fall” so much as fade away into regional enclaves mixed in with the quasi-international Catholic and Orthodox churches. The breakup of the British, French, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires mirror this in many ways, and there may be some parallels to U.S. retrenchment in parts of the world, although that history is far from settled. There are probably good examples in the Eastern and Southern Hemispheres too, but I will have to chip away on my ignorance of those another time!

One final thought – something that surprised me is that episodes of inflation are a common theme that often coincide with or trigger political instability in history. Maybe I will give this some more thought and attempt to say intelligent things about it another time.

The Onion on temporary money

If I share an article from The Onion, it is usually obviously a joke. But this one go me thinking:

WASHINGTON—In a unique and limited-time offer for residents of the United States only, Janet Yellen announced Tuesday that Americans could use the promo code “THANKS” for 10% off all U.S. goods and services. “This Thanksgiving, the Treasury Department is saying ‘thanks’ with an exclusive promotion just for taxpayers, whether you need a pack of gum or a new car,” said the Treasury Secretary, who urged Americans to redeem the incredible offer today, stating that she herself was a “huge fan” of U.S. goods and services, which she loved and used every day. “To activate the promo code, simply mention it to your Whataburger cashier, or visit treasury.gov/thanks. Remember, this amazing offer won’t last, so now’s the time to book that babysitter or finally get that Instant Pot! Again, that’s T-H-A-N-K-S, thanks.” At press time, Yellen added that the offer was for first-time U.S. consumers only.

The Onion

So we’ve had this massive economic stimulus – both monetary (low interest rates and “quantitative easing”, which they tell us is printing money but without the paper or coins, just willing it into existence in our computers collective imaginations) and fiscal (the government borrowing money from itself, which is another way of willing it into existence, and giving it back to us as “tax credits”, sometimes by writing numbers in our bank statements each month). A problem with just passing out money is that the poor spend it, but the middle class only spend some of it and the rich just squirrel it away. So you end up with a ton of money sitting around, and then when demand picks up people suddenly start spending it, and the real economy cannot ramp up supply instantly, so prices have to go up to put the brakes on demand and bring it down to what is actually supplied. Gradually, we hope supply will catch up and the rate of price increases will stabilize to something normal. The danger is that people can keep demanding higher wages, companies can raise prices to cover the higher wages, and the system can spiral from there. There are time lags built into the system so while prices can change quickly, the underlying real economy can’t.

So at least part of the root of the problem is people saving rather than spending stimulus money, then spending it unexpectedly. So what if you did have a kind of money that was more like a coupon with an expiration date, and could only be spent in a limited time frame, but not saved long term. Businesses would have to be willing to accept it. This might be accomplished easily if they knew they could use it to pay their taxes. The federal government would have to agree to accept the temporary money as tax payments, and get state and local governments to fall in line. People will speculate on anything given the chance, so the government might have to outlaw complex trading arrangements or derivatives based on the temporary currency.