Monthly Archives: December 2013

Minority Report

This past Friday (December 27) a federal judge ruled that it is perfectly fine for the NSA to collect and review your phone and Internet records . Why is that? Well, those records don’t actually belong to you. This ruling is consistent with an interpretation of the 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure known as the “3rd party doctrine.” Under this doctrine anything you disclose to a third party is no longer yours and therefore loses all expectation of privacy. Since it is no longer private the government has free reign to sink their teeth into it without any of those annoying justice-impeding anachronisms known as search warrants.

Innocent until proven guilty will soon be replaced by harassed until proven innocent.

As with all government propaganda there is a thin veneer of truth that shamelessly attempts to obscure the larger lie – but these truths are about as effective in that goal as Miley Cyrus’s underwear are in making her appear demure in her Wrecking Ball video. Yes, if you disclose something about yourself to a third party that information is technically no longer strictly private (private meaning known only to yourself). However what eludes this judge and those before him is that it is possible to convey private information to a third party under the protection of a contract. The privacy policies of some companies inform their customers how the company will and will not use information collected in the course of the business relationship. This establishes a reasonable expectation of privacy concerning any information stipulated to remain private. Therefore the 3rd party doctrine does not apply (even though the government wishes otherwise) in those situations where the consumer has a reasonable expectation of privacy per agreement with the third party. It would appear the mantra of the government is that expediency in catching the “bad guys” trumps all other concerns.

The judgment in this case is moving this country backward. Back to the 18th century that is. Back then the use of the “general warrant” by the British rulers was commonplace. A general warrant is distinguished from other types of warrants (i.e. arrest warrant, search warrant, etc.) in that it permits the holder of such warrant to pretty much do anything they want. They can search anything, anytime, anywhere and arrest anyone for any reason. If the principle of the 3rd party doctrine is applied consistently in future cases then it means the federal government has a general warrant to search anything not in your house. There is therefore no barrier to the government demanding the bulk disclosure of: patient records from doctors, purchase records from credit card companies, banks or other businesses, or school records from universities. This data could then be placed into a massive database and “mined” in order to uncover patterns and connections in a futile attempt to flush out the “bad guys.” Today the bad guys are the terrorists, the drug dealers or organized crime (ironically all entities created as a result of government interference). Perhaps tomorrow the enemies will be anyone who dissents from the approved public opinion of his or her masters, that is, The State. Someday soon the world’s mightiest super computers will employ predictive algorithms upon this ocean of data as they attempt to predict undesirable future behavior. Department of Pre-Crime at your service.

Perhaps the above sounds a bit far-fetched, but remember, there is nothing in the arguments currently employed to justify mass collection of data that would preclude these alternative forms of data collection. Just ten years ago the currently revealed mass collection of data would have seemed far-fetched. Just imagine what they can do ten years from now.

In this brave new world that is fast approaching our freedom will be instantly curtailed at the pleasure of any investigatory bureaucrat who doesn’t quite like our answers as they relate to our algorithmically questionable activities. If you become ensnared in this trap then you’d better hope you have an alibi. Innocent until proven guilty will soon be replaced by harassed until proven innocent.

Popular science?

If you were ever looking for proof that climate science is based more on consensus than actual experimentation, you need look no further than the IPCC’s recent “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis” report in which the report’s “Summary for Policymakers” states it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Really? Extremely likely? You sure that isn’t just “very likely”? Is climate science based on nothing more than subjective opinions of probability?  There is no possible way to isolate this one variable (human actions) from the ocean of factors that may influence global temperatures and state with near absolutely certainty that this one variable is not just a cause, but the dominant cause. Unless of course they have a time machine stashed away we don’t know about in which to explore the outcome of alternate timelines. Popular opinion is an illegitimate means to finding truth. The pronouncements of scientists are not endowed with scientific certainty by virtue of them having been made by a scientist. Truth is determined by the evidence, not by the credentials of the messenger. The scientific method (observation, hypothesis, confirmation, prediction) is the only objective means we have to uncovering truth about the physical world. We must understand what science is and is not in order to recognize those who would claim to stand for science but in fact have adulterated the method in order to serve their own interests. Oh, and for those wondering where I get off discussing the scientific method, I have a Ph.D. in organic chemistry – so I know a little something about the scientific method.

 Popular opinion is an illegitimate means to finding truth.

 

It is one thing to make observations and conclude the earth is warming, however it is quite another to leap from that observation and conclude there is one and only one possible cause. It is the height of cognitive dissonance to accept that local weather patterns are far too chaotic to predict beyond a few days but that global long term weather is a vastly simpler system, so simple in fact that we can say with high confidence it is a function of only one variable: carbon dioxide. We can’t predict next month’s weather, but somehow we can say that in one hundred years the temperature will be X. Properly conducted climate science could only be done if we held godlike powers over all activity on the planet (in the same way the chemist can control the conditions of his experiments in the lab). Obviously we do not posses godlike powers. So to get around this lack of omniscience we build an environment in which we can be omniscient: the computer model. But models are imperfect; they rely on both empirical evidence and assumptions. Computer models work well over very short time spans but are inherently flawed at making long-term predictions. The difficulty arises out of the attempt to predict unpredictable quantum level events. Just as we can make reasonable short term predictions about what the traffic around us will do we will utterly fail to predict what that same traffic will be doing 30 minutes later.

And then there is the problem of the unknown unknowns that plague even simple models. For example, if one knew nothing about humans and tried to build growth models based on the first five years of life one would predict that by age 20 humans should be 20 feet tall and weigh 400 lbs. Climate models are now bearing this truth out. In the journal “Nature Climate Change” (that wellhead of conspiracy nuts) a study was published that showed during the last 20 years observed warming was half of what the models predicted and only one quarter of what those same models predicted over the last 15 years. The power of science is prediction, but when the predictions do not pan out one must reevaluate their hypothesis.

Even those demanding “something be done” about climate change should call for a reevaluation of what we think we know. It would be quite disastrous indeed if we made drastic changes in society that resulted in the deaths of billions (due to higher energy costs resulting in decreased food output) only to find out that while global warming is indeed real – it turns out humans have actually played little to no role. We could waste decades prescribing aspirin for the patient’s headache while remaining blissfully ignorant of the brain tumor.

Ignore the Cause and Suffer the Effects

The Washington Post recently published  a retrospective account of the deaths of 91 children in 2012 to highlight the one year anniversary of the senseless shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in December 2012. Clearly this article was intended to strike an emotional chord that would resonate with any sane person. The media revels in painting emotionally charged landscapes in the hopes that it will rouse the public to call on their saviors in government to save us from ourselves. And while the stories are indeed heart wrenching they actually undermine the narrative that these deaths are entirely a consequence of the prevalence of guns in society. Although the deaths were indeed the direct result of gun fire per se, the stories broadly fall into two categories of causation that have nothing to do with guns themselves being the causative agent of death. The first category is the most heart wrenching: that of the child’s parent or paramour of the parent being the killer. These were not accidental shootings; these were clear and deliberate murders of these children at close range. Had there been no guns available in these situations clearly a knife or any large blunt object would have done the job. In other words, absent guns, the outcomes for all of these stories would have been tragically identical.

The second category is that of accidental crossfire in drive by shootings or other gang activity. Obviously distance based killing is more easily facilitated by guns, however consider the fact that gangs are simply groups composed of criminals (people who already ignore all laws) so how could one reasonably expect even a total ban on all guns to have affected such activity? Criminals are no more going to obey laws banning guns than they obey laws against murder or theft. However, it is important to step back for a moment and ask why do these terrible drive by shootings occur? What is the source of so much gang violence? Drugs, or rather the prohibition of drugs. The prohibition of an economic good drives up its price and thus the incentive for people to engage in providing that economic good to those wiling to pay the high price. However, being outlawed, the trade of such goods lacks any formal legal protection, therefore those parties involved in its trade have no choice but to resort to violence in order to settle their disputes. The result? Far more innocent people being killed by drug prohibition related violence (as well as wrong-address-no-knock police raids) then have ever or could have ever been harmed by the drugs themselves.

If we are truly desirous of decreasing not only gun violence but all violence we must address the causes and not simply attempt to put band aids on the effects. Absent drug or other economic goods prohibitions all gang violence would cease insofar as most if not all gangs would dissolve as their central raison d’être (exorbitant profits from the sale of prohibited goods) would cease to exist. In terms of violence committed by parents against their children it is immaterial to question the means by which such violence is perpetrated: gun, knife, rope, hands – you can’t ban them all. All we can do is resolve to be more engaged with our neighbors in order to see the signs of potential violence.

If we wish to change the society we live in, we must individually act to be part of that change. It is our responsibility, not government’s. Delegating our wishes to government is the act of the indolent and cowardly; too lazy to try and persuade and too afraid to carry out the violence needed to force your neighbors to follow your worldview.

Minimum Wage: Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it

Last Friday a group known as “Fast Food Forward” (tightly affiliated with the SEIU union) led a series of demonstrations in over 100 US cities at fast food restaurants where they called for a near doubling of the federal minimum wage to $15/hour. In further news there were a number of similar demonstrations in which short people demanded to be declared as tall, the overweight demanded to be declared as thin, and the un-athletic to be declared as athletic. Oh, wait, that last bit didn’t actually happen. Sure would have seemed silly if such events had taken place wouldn’t it? Well, if you can see why a “raise the federal minimum height” rally would be silly you’re on the first step to understanding why calls to increase the minimum wage are equally absurd.

A wage is nothing more than a point system used by each of us and applied to all of us that allows us to rate how valuable we find each other’s labor. This value assessment is however tempered by the immutable law of marginal utility: the more there is of something, the less we value any one unit. Water is the most valuable material on the planet (as our day to day survival depends on it) but it sells at a mere 0.7¢ a gallon (from the tap) because of its abundance. Likewise, in any given profession, the more people capable of doing a job, the lower the wage for that job. The wage is lower, you see, not because the buyer (employer) is deciding what it shall be, rather it is the result of the numerous sellers (employees) bidding prices down in order to make the sale. If your wage is lower than you’d like, don’t blame your employer, blame your peers and yourself. You can blame your peers for being willing to work for less than you. You can blame yourself for not improving your skills or productivity so that you can distinguish yourself from your less productive brethren and thereby demand a higher price for your services. To blame your employer for paying you minimum wage when you would prefer to have double that wage is as silly as the shop owner blaming his customers for not buying his wares and opting instead to purchase from his competitor who charges half as much.

If workers latch onto sympathetic politicians (interested in buying votes) who pass laws that raises their wage then the employer is still free to explore all options that might get the job done for a lower price. Minimum wage law does not require employers to buy the product (labor), only that if they do buy the product they must pay at least the floor price. Thus enters the specter of automation: a machine that is economically unviable when competing with low wage rates will suddenly make more economic sense at much higher mandated wage rates. Those looking for a minimum wage increase are going to price themselves right out of the market. The truth of this statement is already evident today in the growing trend of automated self-checkout systems becoming commonplace. In a few years we may find the concept of a human cashier as alien as a full service gas station (and if you don’t know what “full service” at a gas station means, then all I can say is: point made.)

Whenever there is a call to raise the wages of this or that class of worker (whether it be fast food workers, teachers, or police or what have you) there is a major insight that is always lacking by those making the call. They believe that if they get what they desire they will be the ones to enjoy the higher wages. But they are mistaken. It is the more highly skilled and more productive worker that will replace them. The less productive or skilled worker can’t compete with the highly skilled worker if the mandated wage is set at the productivity level of the more skilled worker. Would you buy a Kia or a Mercedes if the minimum car price were mandated to be $70,000? Bonus question: what do you think would then happen to the Kia car company?

Leave my Genes Alone

The aphorism “No good deed goes unpunished” has its counterpart when applied to business, “No good innovation can remain unscathed by the FDA.” To wit: last week the Food and Drug Administration all but ordered the company 23andMe to shut down. Their crime? They have the unmitigated gall to market their Personal Genome Services without having received prior “marketing clearance or approval” from the FDA. Those silly saps at 23andMe forgot they have to kiss the ring of their overlords if they wish to operate a business in this country.

For those unfamiliar, 23andMe sells a $99 genetic testing service wherein a customer submits to them a saliva sample that the company then performs a variety of genetic tests on in order to reveal any potential health concerns (e.g. the presence of genes predisposing one to certain types of cancer or sensitivity to certain drugs, etc.). The tests can also reveal hereditary information to provide one with possible ancestry background as well. All of this is wrapped up in a pretty slick website (that actually works!) that allows the customer to explore his or her results. They’ve basically turned something rather dull and boring (medical testing) into an exciting process of discovery that is actually affordable. With that said, the processes and testing they employ are all well vetted industry standard type testing procedures. They are simply taking existing technology and repackaging it into an easy to understand and affordable package in order to make it available to a much wider cross segment of society.

So what is the FDA’s beef with them? It’s basically semantics. You see, when either the FDA or EPA gets involved with business then all common sense goes out the window. Water becomes an insecticide and aspirin a dangerous drug. A fanciful example will help illustrate: screwdrivers are used to turn screws, and so they can be sold to turn screws, no problem. But if you now decide a screwdriver can also be used to poke holes in things or to act as a tool to pry something open and you wish to market it as a “device for poking holes or prying”, then you are now guilty of selling a “mislabeled and misbranded” product because you have not engaged ABC federal agency to plead for approval of this new application of existing technology. You will need to submit studies and analysis demonstrating that the screwdriver can indeed do these things.

That’s basically the hole 23andMe has fallen into. The FDA is concerned that they are marketing a process in a new and therefore unapproved way and they are also concerned that consumers of this service are incredibly and remarkably stupid. The FDA believes that if someone gets a false positive from one of 23andMe’s PGA tests that naturally that someone will simply take immediate and drastic actions without any kind of follow up testing or consultation with their physician. If a woman finds she has the breast cancer gene, well, she’ll just get a double mastectomy, no questions asked. If someone finds out they are prone to blood clots, they’ll just go out and start eating rat poison (the blood thinning agent warfarin is found in rat poison) in order to self medicate. Yes, as absurd as these concerns are, this is what the FDA is trying to protect us from. Of course never mind that 23andMe has very large and obvious warnings on their site that one should always consult with one’s physician before taking any steps based on test results.

So, at the height of concern in this country about rising medical costs a company steps up to the plate, provides a low cost non-invasive test that affords the customer the ability to proactively manage their health thereby preventing future costs. And how are they rewarded? The FDA valiantly steps in to all but put them out of business by forbidding them from marketing their product. Smart. Really smart. It is through actions such as these that the FDA has caused and will continue to cause far more pain, suffering and death then they have ever prevented.