Conversation with Adam Rogers: DARPians and the Social Science Problem

By: | August 7, 2017

Ann:  Please meet Adam Rogers. He wrote a story about DARPA looking for solutions to the credibility problems of social science, only what I’m calling “solutions to credibility problems,” he called bullshit detection.

First, social science’s credibility problems.  Here’s the way I said it in 2015: Start with any question involving human behavior or motivation and try to find an answer.  Google it, GoogleScholar it, search the PsychLit database, read the titles and abstracts.  Your question will probably be profoundly interesting: Why do siblings stake out their own territory? Why do some people in a community accept what the community offers but avoid offering anything back? How long does grief last? Every single answer you find will be one you could have figured out if you’d arrived yesterday from Mars, taken one look around, and said the first thing that came to mind.  

However, that’s a rant, not an explanation of a problem.  So Adam, why is a BS detector necessary in the first place?  What is wrong with social science that it can’t reliably answer some of the most vexing, important questions we have?

Adam: Hello, Ann! Well, you’ve hit upon the problem right at the top, of course, which is: Why are there no good answers to the best questions? The questions are not, as I perhaps crossed a line by saying, bullshit. The answers, though? Ugh. Across disciplines—from sociology to anthropology to economics to political science—they hew to frameworks that are at least internally consistent (a good start) but don’t talk to each other. This is what the sociological Duncan Watts called his field’s “incoherency problem.” Which I might rephrase as “WTF social science?” Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | August 5, 2017

July 31 – August 4, 2017

Jessa’s on a trip that’s so far out in the back of beyond that it needs a guide.  The guide doesn’t show. But nobody quits.

Michelle finds a splendid metaphor for surviving ridiculously unpleasant situations: imitate the reindeer and assume Arctic resignation.

I redux the struggles that Helen and I, and now Jenny, have with creating epiphanal and life-saving mint lemonade.  We’re almost there.

Helen reduxes a mountain hike with her father.  He hikes, she plods.  But she plods with a good eye, a willing heart, and good family.

Craig find labyrinths and mazes when he travels with his kids.  Craig says the labyrinths are almost holy; his kid knows exactly what to do with them.

Redux: Plodding With My Father

By: | August 3, 2017

A couple of years ago I climbed Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park with my dad. I’m back in Colorado this week, again with family, so I thought it was a good time to recall that hike.

The rising sun really does turn things pink.
The rising sun really does turn things pink.

The Milky Way hung overhead. The lights from the far-off plains made a faint glow in the eastern sky. I made one last visit to the pit toilet at the edge of the parking lot, put on my day pack, and began to plod.

I was setting out to climb a mountain with my dad. The mountain was Flattop, a 12,324-footer in Rocky Mountain National Park, in Colorado.

My dad claims Rocky Mountain is the best place in the world for day hikes. Now, I happen to think he is right. For one thing, he’s been a lot of places. And his argument makes sense: The park has a long list of trails that offer a short walk to a dramatic cliff face with a gorgeous lake at its foot. He has tested most of these trails personally. His first visit to the park was as a toddler in the mid-1940s. My great-grandfather was a dentist in Kansas who started going out to Colorado for long trips in the 1930s or so and was spending whole summers in Estes Park, just outside the eastern border of the park, by the 1950s.

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Redux: Helen and I Smack Down Unhappiness

By: | August 2, 2017

This ran not that long ago, August 23, 2016.  But I feel it should be run again because it has an important update.

Recently, Helen and I made mint lemonade again, this time with Jenny.  As the post suggests, we blended-and-spigoted at the same time, and instead of demarara sugar, we used white.  The pond scum effect entirely disappeared so that was good.  But we put too much ice in blender and ended up with mint-lemonade slushies or however you spell it, and mint lemonade needs to be drunk, not spooned and strawed.

So we tried a second batch and this time the liquidity was perfect but the amount of plant matter was noticeably chewy.  Helen suggests that we blend mint and sugar together before adding ice and why didn’t we think of that before?

Also this time it wasn’t stinking hot on the porch so the mint lemonade was only refreshing and not resurrection.

Here’s the original.

________

Photo by Pearl Pirie, via Flickr

Science Metaphors (cont.): Arctic Resignation

By: | August 1, 2017

The Svalbard archipelago, midway between continental Norway and the North Pole, is famous for its polar bears, but it is also home to the distinctive (and distinctively adorable) Svalbard reindeer. Shaggy-haired and stubby-legged, the Svalbard reindeer is not only the world’s smallest subspecies of reindeer but also the world’s northernmost herbivorous mammal, and its survival is something of a daily miracle.

Winter vegetation on Svalbard is sparse to begin with, and because winter temperatures regularly rise above freezing, any greenery is usually covered with ice. So between April and late August, when the Arctic sun shines all day and vegetation grows round the clock, Svalbard reindeer eat frantically, laying on fat for the months ahead. When winter descends, they enter a state that’s not quite hibernation—they stay alert, and their body temperature stays constant—and not quite torpor, for their metabolic rate doesn’t change much. They just … stop moving. Norwegian zoologist Arnoldus Blix has dubbed this curious state “arctic resignation.”

I first encountered the term arctic resignation in The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon, a book I revere (and recommend to everyone, regardless of your brain chemistry). Solomon observes that arctic resignation looks like some varieties of human depression, and it’s true: in addition to spending almost all of their time lying down or standing still, arctically resigned reindeer have low thyroid hormone levels and eat almost nothing. But depression tends to make easy situations hard, and hard situations impossible. Arctic resignation, on the other hand, makes a ridiculously difficult environment survivable. It’s a strategic response to unwelcome but temporary conditions.

Like scale mismatch, arctic resignation strikes me as a strategy that can be applied to all sorts of difficulties. When times are tough, reduce your overhead; get plenty of rest; stay alert; and, when absolutely necessary, trot. When the sun returns, eat to your heart’s content.

 

Photo of presumably resigned Svalbard reindeer by Flickr user Christopher Michel. Creative Commons.

No Maps for These Territories

By: | July 31, 2017

Camping and canoeing are all about self-sufficiency. The sensation of our own competence on the land lets us feel our own strength directly, rather than through oblique measures of success like social status or money. So it’s hard to accept when some trips are just so out of our realm that they require a guide.

Ten years ago, for a journey down the remote Thelon River in Nunavut—a trip whose events I’ve detailed elsewhere—it seemed like just such a special case. My father and I signed on with an outfitter who would ferry canoes up the river, coordinate with the pilots about what July day the ice might come off the fly-in lakes, and buy all of our essentials for three weeks in the Far North.

The trouble began immediately. We flew on a float plane to a village on the Eastern shores of Great Slave Lake, ready to meet our outfitter and get packed and organized. No outfitter. We met our fellow travellers and an assistant guide but our fearless leader did not show. A town council member stopped by the outfitter’s cabin, where we were to stay, to say that the he—we’ll call him Taiga Tim—was not welcome anymore in town. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | July 29, 2017

July 24-28, 2017

This week LWON responds once again to the ludicrous alarmism of Shark Week. Our fifth annual Snark Week reveals the viciousness lurking in the most adorable of animals, if you’ll only lean in closely enough to hear their villainous scheming.

Raccoons, for instance, have had it in for us since they first got evil ideas from Christopher Columbus, says Erik. They have infiltrated our urban spaces for a multi-pronged attack on our security of the person.

And don’t think for a second that man’s “best friend” is some exception to the rule that cuteness is just another word for diabolical savagery. Jenny reminds us that the pets in our home are just patiently waiting for their chance to gnaw on our rib bones.

“What, you like mammals? Poor judgement on your part,” says Sarah. What does the fox say? You’ll never know, because he only speaks after dinner, and dinner is you.

Ever wonder why four-and-twenty blackbirds got baked in a pie? That’s the only proven method for killing a blackbird, says Cassie.

And don’t get us started on pigeons. Richard’s mild-mannered pup has the good sense to know a deadly threat when he sees it pecking at crumbs on the sidewalk.

Until next year, be on your guard against anything warm, small and fuzzy with big eyes. The sharks are the least of your worries.

 

Image: Puss in Boots, via Wikimedia commons

Snark Week: Boids

By: | July 28, 2017

 

They’re out there, all right.


Welcome to Snark Week 2017!

“Dirty . . . disgusting . . . filthy . . . lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!”

The dialogue comes from the Mel Brooks movie The Producers. The super of a walk-up is referring to the carrier pigeons that the Nazi and aspiring playwright Franz Liebkind keeps on the roof.

I empathize. Not with having a Nazi as a tenant. But with the super’s attitude toward pigeons. Because with pigeons, you never know.

About what? you might wonder.

About anything, I might answer.

I once saw a pigeon in a park pecking at a chicken bone. I had to look away. It was just . . . wrong.

On another occasion in another park my family and I were sitting on a bench when a pigeon began hovering in front of us, at eyeball level. “Shoo!” we said, or some such admonition. It didn’t shoo. We waved our arms. It didn’t budge. Maybe the bird was guarding a nest. Maybe it was mentally unstable. Either way, it just hung there, flapping, staring us down. (It won; we moved.)

But you know who else would empathize about a hatred of pigeons? My Havenese.

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