Month: August 2011

by Patrick Appel

A reader counters an earlier one:

Your reader writes:

"Hang up on a telemarketer without so much as a "not interested" and the thick-skinned telemarketer will not think, "Oh, gee, I guess they don’t want it." They'll know that. They'll just keep calling you back to punish you."

Having worked in 2 call centers in my life one inbound (tech support) and one outbound (unashamed telemarketing), I can assure you that the person that is on the other end of the line has NO control over who his/her phone will call. The phone systems are automated and have been for a very long time, the "thick-skinned telemarketer" is a likely a high school kid with a headset, a computer terminal, and if s/he is lucky, a good chess game with the person in the next cube. These are not demons seeking vengeance, just kids seeking paychecks.

The notion that a telemarketer would "keep calling you back to punish you" is wildly uninformed. I had to make a certain number of sales per hour to receive my full wage. If a call is not going to end in a sale the telemarketer knows it and wants to get off the line ASAP so that they can move on to the next person. Much of the advice about handling telemarketers (including the pranks) rings hollow to me. The folks I worked with wanted sales and smoke breaks and nothing more, try to play a game and the marketer will say goodbye to get another call on.

I would also like to point out that the notion that sales are rare, is false. I sold a whole great heaping ton of unemployment/disability insurance for credit cards (not a good deal) to real, normal people who thought it sounded like a good idea. The faster I talked the more I sold, I don't know why but the best sellers were the ones who could enunciate at high speed. Strangely the hardest thing to move was free 3 month memberships to the local gym. You offer a good deal, no-strings and even the suckers get skeptical.

Another reader provides further insight into the industry:

I am the telemarketing manager for a well-respected regional theater. Having followed this conversation with some interest I have to agree with the commenters on the worst practices of the industry at large. And I certainly have no patience with bad telemarketers or scammy operations, they only make my job harder. A few tips on dealing with telemarketers:

• Register with the national do-not-call list if you do not wish to receive commercial telemarketing calls, but be aware that non-profits are exempt from the list, as are businesses with which you’ve had commercial dealings within a one year period

• That being said, we are required to keep an in-house list of patrons who do not wish to be called. If you wish to be placed on this list, any legitimate operation will be happy to do so: we still consider you a potential customer for our larger organization and have no desire to purposely piss you off. Please note though: simply hanging up will not put you on an in-house Do Not Call list (and by the way, I know of no professional who would call back a “hang-up” out of spite, there is no profit in it).

• Use caller ID or otherwise monitor your calls. Every time I receive a new email pop-up I don’t stop what I am doing to answer it. I give it a quick glance to see if it is something that needs my immediate attention or not. Do the same thing with your phone: If you are too busy to answer, don’t.

• Be up-front. I you are not at all interested in what we are selling just say so. Trust me we can take it. If you are just too busy to talk at that moment, please let us know that, we would be more than happy to arrange a better time to talk.

• Finally, when dealing with legitimate non-profits, for the most part, the people who call you are honest, hard-working folk, who actually believe in the cause they are trying to support. In fact for many non-profits telemarketing accounts for a substantial proportion of their incomes. This is especially true for groups that are too small to afford television advertising and must rely on the tried and true (though never popular) telemarketing call.

by Maisie Allison

In light of Tuesday's "incident," longform.org points to this 2005 article from Smithsonian magazine on paleoseismology and the maddening, endless quest to predict earthquakes. Meanwhile, Simon van Zuylen-Wood highlights a recent discovery about the extraordinary seismic instincts of toads:

Despite studying fault lines and poring over historical trends, most scientists are as clueless as the general public at predicting when they might occur. But it turns out there is someone on earth that can predict earthquakes: bufo bufo, the common toad. According to a 2010 study in the Journal of Zoology, an entire population of toads in the throes of mating season abandoned their breeding site five days before an earthquake. The toads were 74 km from the L’Aquila, Italy earthquake when they smelled something funny and scurried away. Picking up on “pre-seismic cues such as the release of gases and charged particles,” the toads were nowhere to be found at a time in the lunar cycle when their site is traditionally packed. 

Along the same lines, the National Zoo has catalogued the particular reactions of animals before the quake:

About five to ten seconds before the quake, many of the apes, including Kyle (an orangutan) and Kojo (a Western lowland gorilla), abandoned their food and climbed to the top of the tree-like structure in the exhibit. About three seconds before the quake, Mandara (a gorilla) let out a shriek and collected her baby, Kibibi, and moved to the top of the tree structure as well…The red ruffed lemurs sounded an alarm call about 15 minutes before the quake and then again just after it occurred…The Zoo has a flock of 64 flamingos. Just before the quake, the birds rushed about and grouped themselves together. They remained huddled during the quake.

Ben Greenman has more. (Photo by Flickr user erikpaterson.) 

by Zack Beauchamp

Josh Foust reports on an alternative to the standard methods of building up a shattered economy:

One doctrine that shows promise for unlocking the natural business savvy of the Libyan people while avoiding an expensive, difficult, and possibly counterproductive international reconstruction process is Expeditionary Economics. Expeditionary Economics, as its known, is a framework for creating the framework of a functioning private-sector economy–the foundation of any successful, stable society. Instead of focusing on the large-scale investment of transnational corporations into feeble state-run corporations, as is typical in "private sector development" efforts, Expeditionary Economics instead calls for a focus on personal entrepreneurship, small business development, and the laws and institutions that enable them.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

For most of my adult life, I have been periodically plagued with what I have termed "infinity dreams". They appear to be instances where my id tries to understand infinity while I am in a dream state.  The manifestation is my mind traveling through the universe; trying to grasp infinity.  It's a horrific experience.  The depth of horror regarding it may not be describable, but it can be put into perspective. 

I have died in my dreams … my kids and my wife have died in my dreams; I have been in a mall with both my kids and lost them … and spent the rest of the night not being able to find them again … that is the worst horror I can imagine awake … and, nothing has compared regarding the actual affect and lingering psychotic pain after an "infinity dream".  It is staggering in a way that I can not put into words.  

I had a similar crippling feeling when seeing the above book cover as a kid. Another reader:

You have a great discussion going. I wanted to make a quick correction. Your reader wrote: "Eventually came Godel's first Incompleteness Theory, which, simplified, says that *every* logical and consistent system will have assertions which can not be proved." Though I like the connection to Godel, this is not quite true.

As a counter-example, the standard logical system one learns in any introductory logic course is probably both sound and complete. In other words, the system's rules are consistent and, pace your reader, all theorems of the system can be proven using the system. The proof is a bit complex but it works and one version can be found here.

The problem is that introductory logical systems are very simple and have lots of limitations. One such limitation, simply put, is that though you can talk about math, but you cannot speak math. This is like a tourist who knows everything about the language of his destination country except how to speak it. So logicians supplement such systems with more rules and tools in order to make them 'speak math'. There was a lot of hope that this would do for all of math what Euclid did for geometry (axiomatize it). But Godel ate their lunches. What he showed is that any logical system sophisticated enough to 'speak math' will have true consequences that cannot be demonstrated using only the logical rules within that system. The 'within the system' constraint matters a lot because many of these truths are otherwise demonstrable. Though Godel crushed a lot of nerdy dreams, it was a lot like crushing the dreams of Ptolemists in that there emerged new and enticing possibilities in the world of mathematical logic. 

I know this isn't as sexy as "there are truths about math and logic forever and mysteriously inaccessible to us" but it does have the advantage of being true.

Another:

Those "different sizes of infinity" that a previous reader mentioned, even worse, in no way square with what we usually think of as "size." Imagine the number line, from negative infinity to positive infinity. Pick any two points on that number line: 1 and 5, .0000000001 and .0000000002, e and  ?. It is easy to intuit that there are infinitely many numbers between those two points, no matter how closely you have selected them. What's not so easy is that the "size" of the infinity between those two points is actually the same size of the infinity of the number line. In the way we perceive it, the "length" of the number line between those two incredibly close points is the same "length" as the entire number line. Infinity hurts your brain, indeed.

Another:

Most people are only aware of one, perhaps two of Zeno's paradoxes, but there are four (well, nine, but several of them demonstrate the same principle) paradoxes in total–the Dichotomy Paradox (you always have half the distance yet to be covered,) the Arrow Paradox (because at any given moment an arrow is exactly where it is, it cannot ever be moving,) Achilles and the Tortoise (in order for Achilles to ever pass the tortoise, he needs to first reach the point the tortoise is currently at; since they both move continuously, the tortoise will always be some small amount ahead of Achilles,) and the Stadium Paradox (the least famous, because it's difficult to explain in a pithy fashion; it does some funky stuff with the notion of the divisibility of time that I'm not really qualified to try to explain in a small space)  

The fact that there are four is significant, because if you assume that time and space can each be either finitely small or infinitely small, there is exactly one paradox that cannot be solved given the four permutations of these assumptions.  For example, if you assume that time and space have no "smallest unit", then Achilles can never catch the tortoise, but you can make other paradoxes work.  Taken together, though, there will always be one paradox that breaks the premise.

This is the true beauty of Zeno's Paradoxes: not that you can't walk across a room, but that combined, they break logic.

Another:

As a math major I do agree that the concepts of different infinities can get complicated and previous readers have explained this concept very well. However, as a physics major, I'm going to have to complain that the video posted about ten dimensions, while very well done, is wrong in crucial ways. based on his other videos, the person appears to be a crackpot, albeit a well spoken one.

Any person with knowledge of string theory knows that the extra spatial dimensions have absolutely nothing to do with extra paths the universe can take in its evolution. Something like that is along the line of extra temporal dimensions, an idea thought about in physics but not seriously studied. Extra spatial dimensions are simply what they sound, different ways we can move in spacetime, the difference being that the shape of the these dimensions is vastly different from the three we all know. 

These dimensions are compactified and small, but otherwise the same as ours. You can imagine that something small enough, say a closed string (which is on the planck scale) moving in these extra dimensions just like it would move in any other dimension. The man in the video had the right idea in the beginning, but somewhere he got lost with the whole "all possibilities of the universe are in the 10th dimension". In other videos he talks about the extra 7 spatial dimensions being somehow
built off/reliant on the structure of the time dimension, which is simply ridiculous. If there are extra spatial dimensions they have to be independent of the dimensions we know, 3 space and 1 time.

Finally, I'd like to clear up one misconception that's often propagated. When dimensions are curved or folded they are NOT folded or curved in some higher ambient space. There is no need to say something is folded through a higher dimension. For example, the sphere is curved. We view the sphere as a shell embedded in a 3 dimensional space, but the sphere itself is 2 dimensional (if we zoom in enough it looks like a flat plane and we only need two coordinates to describe any point a la latitude and longitude). The curvature of an object is intrinsic to the object, it doesn't matter on what space we embed it in, whether the embedded space is 3 dimensional or higher. This is important to keep in mind when you read that General Relativity says our four dimensional space time is curved and that's what accounts for gravity. Its curved but not in any 5 dimensional space. 

Curvature in the mathematical sense is defined in how if you take a vector around a closed loop, its orientation will be changed. If the space is flat, the vector will return to where it was in the same position. If the space is curved, it will be rotated. The picture above demonstrates the curvature of the sphere well where the vector is taken from A to N to B and it's obvious that its orientation is changed.

In conclusion, extra spatial dimensions have nothing to do with extra paths for the universe, you don't need to fold something through an extra dimension, and for your devoted readers, keep crack-pottery off the site. Especially for us physicists who have to deal with enough of it as is. 

And another:

I'm a logic student at UChicago in the mathematics department.   I just wanted to correct a statement made by a number of people in the thread on infinity (including one who claimed to be a mathematician).  They said that the continuum hypothesis stated that aleph_1 is the smallest infinity bigger than the natural numbers, and that the proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis by Godel and Cohen meant that this was undedicable by the ZFC axioms of set theory.  This is false.  In fact, aleph_1 is the smallest infinity bigger than the natural numbers by definition, and then aleph_2 is the next biggest, then aleph_3 and so on.  The continuum hypothesis states that 2^aleph_{0} = aleph_{1} – in short, this says that the size of the set of subsets of the natural numbers is the smallest infinitybigger than the natural numbers.  If the continuum hypothesis were true, it would follow that there is no infinite set with size strictly between that of the natural numbers and the real numbers, for example.  The independence of the continuum hypothesis means that 2^aleph_0 might be, for example, aleph_6.  Interestingly enough, the independence of the continuum hypothesis never stopped professional set theorists from making judgments about the size of the continuum as it stands in the 'platonic universe of mathematical objects.'  For a long time, the smart money among set theorists assessed the size of the continuum to be aleph_2! (For this last argument, there's a nice write-up by Hugh Woodin in these two pdfs.)

Another:

Thanks for this thread; it is nice to be reminded that there are people even nerdier that I am. I know I'm taking gigantic liberties here, but taken together with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, I've always felt that the message is that no matter how cleaver we humans are, there will always be room for God.

Another:

When I was an undergraduate, I decided to take our school's "Math for Poets" class.  The first chapter of our textbook was simply titled "Counting."  That's how remedial this was. But I ended up loving the class, and one of the things I will never forget was working through Georg Cantor's fascinating and elegant proofs of multiple cardinalities of infinity.  My chemistry and econ major roommates – all more versed in mathematics than me, a lowly humanities student – were consistently amused by me that quarter.  But no more so than when for a week and a half my jaw was perpetually glued to the floor as I discovered how staggeringly beautiful and elegant the notion of infinity can be. 

When you have infinity, you almost don't need weed.

by Patrick Appel

David French blames poverty on the poor. His logic:

It is simply a fact that our social problems are increasingly connected to the depravity of the poor. If an American works hard, completes their education, gets married, and stays married, then they will rarely — very rarely — be poor. At the same time, poverty is the handmaiden of illegitimacy, divorce, ignorance, and addiction.

Seth Masket argues, correctly, that French is confusing correlation with causation:

[T]hese key things — education, a successful marriage, and a job — are a lot easier to come by if you're not poor. What's more, they're a lot easier to come by if your parents weren't poor. But just being born into a poor home means a person is going to have a much harder time coming by these key things that keep him or her out of poverty. That doesn't make the person depraved. It makes the person a victim of circumstances.

by Patrick Appel

Raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 won't save money:

Austin Frakt captions:

All told, the cost to the system of raising the Medicare age to 67 would be $11.4 billion in 2014, which is a high price to pay for $5.7 billion in federal savings. It’s exactly a factor of two too high. That’s a massive cost shift. Let’s put it this way, how much would you want to pay for the federal government to save $5.7 billion? I hope your answer is no greater than $5.7 billion. (If not, I’ve got a business proposition for you.) Paying $11.4 billion is a rip off.

Reihan agrees. And Aaron Carroll counters Len Burman's continued defense of raising the retirement age.

by Patrick Appel

Dave Roberts further dismantles Kevin Williamson's argument that the scientific views of politicans don't matter:

[I]n a dispute between "two scientists with different opinions about climate forecasting," what Chait or Huntsman thinks is irrelevant. But that's not the dispute. The dispute is between [climate change skeptic Richard] Lindzen and 97 to 98 percent of other practicing climate scientists. In that situation, Williamson's own heuristic — "argument from credential" — pretty overwhelmingly suggests going with the bulk of scientists. It's hard to imagine what could possibly suggest going with the outlier in the absence of specialist, first-order concerns that Williamson concedes he doesn't have.

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver sizes up Perry's lead and what it means for Romney:

Mr. Romney retains a reasonably large lead in New Hampshire for now. The danger is that, if Mr. Perry were to win Iowa convincingly, he could clear the field of other conservative candidates. New Hampshire has a lot of moderate and independent voters — but it is still majority conservative. And although Mr. Romney holds a solid lead over each of the individual conservatives, he does not hold a lead over them collectively: Mr. Perry, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich together have in excess of 50 percent of the vote there, based on a trendline constructed from recent polls of the state, as compared to 34 percent for Mr. Romney.

Mark Blumenthal's analysis here. Bernstein throws some cold water on the Perry surge:

[I]n a contest with little solid support for any candidate, very large short-term surges are likely. Even Herman Cain had a bit of one, and Donald Trump had a huge and entirely meaningless one. Perry isn't Cain, and he certainly isn't Trump; he's a very serious contender who might well win. But at least part of this polling surge may well dissipate in the next few weeks, as his announcement bounce fades. It's impossible right now to know how much of his polling support is real and how much is fluff.

(Screenshot of Pollster's poll of polls)

by Patrick Appel

Nicholas Thompson contemplates Jobs' resignation as CEO:

The big question now is whether Tim Cook, Jobs’s successor, can succeed. I’m sure he’s good, and the people around him are good too. But he won’t do as well, for at least one reason. Steve Jobs built a cult of personality that gave him power. Many of Apple’s future fights will be about content. Which tech companies will get the rights to show what things, in what ways, on their devices? Jobs had a power that Cook could not possibly have here, just because he was Jobs. He could summon anyone he wanted to meet with him; he could get journalists to write whatever he wanted them to write; and, if he and Apple threatened to screw you over, you had to believe them.

Zachary Karabell differs:

Because Jobs was a master of control, his vision suffuses the company and its nearly 50,000 employees. They have drunk the Kool-Aid, and few companies have morale as high, employees as driven, or customers as loyal and growing. The mark of a great company is not just a visionary and capable CEO but the degree to which that vision suffuses the entire organization. On that score, you have only to go into an Apple store to know that the person selling you an iPad is as feverish, opinionated, and focused on perfection as Jobs has been. And now, freed from the darker side of Steve Jobs’s need to control everything, those employees may find that the company is even more creative and even more potent.

by Zack Beauchamp

Michael Few interviews (pdf) Stephen Glaim, author of a new book on the militarization of American foreign policy called State Vs. Defense:

The culprit behind American militarization is domestic politics and those who would use foreign policy as a means of settling parochial scores. Thus McCarthyism, having emasculated and demoralized the nation’s diplomatic core, left the country with no one to debunk the canard of a Sino-Soviet bloc, the irrational fear of which consumed security planners and red-baiters alike until as late as 1968, when Russian and Chinese troops were skirmishing along the Ussuri River. Another enabler of militarization is the habitual failure among American leaders to listen to their area experts – diplomats, military attaches and spies – about the nature of threats perceived or concocted by political tribes in Washington. While researching the book I was struck at how often the White House, having neglected its eyes and ears on the ground, not only reached for the military option but in doing so foreclosed on opportunities for a lasting peace.

Glaim doesn't appear to be a fan of American global power projection, but his argument should be taken as seriously by those who are. If we accept that the ultimate justification of global hegemony is that it's net better for the world (on cosmopolitan moral grounds) than alternative available options, it's as, if not, more important to critique horrific abuses of power (see Vietnam and Iraq Wars, The) as it is to defend the need to maintain that power itself. Further, overreliance on the military also undermines U.S. influence in the long run, for reasons that are well-known and don't really need to be rehashed here.

(Photo: Jason Freeny's exhibit "Think Tank.")