Outsourcing to Bots?

I subscribe to a publication called New Scientist, a British science magazine. It's a little pricey (because it's a weekly, unlike Scientific American), and my friend the Grump sometimes gets annoyed by its unabashed leftist political slant, and it's a bit uneven at times (for example, the current issue has a large "alternative history" section with some questionable speculations about what would have happened if (for example) Newton had not become a scientist ["there would be no computers or any other advanced electronic devices"]).

But it has three saving graces. First, it always has a few articles that are extremely interesting. Second, it has a large science "news" section with brief descriptions of new studies and findings, along with links to internet sites containing the studies themselves, so you can read more if you like. Finally, it gives one a non-U.S. view.

The current edition has an interesting article on the use of software "bots" to perform tasks formerly done by humans. The focus of the article is the use of "bots" in financial markets, where, it is said, they outperform humans:

In a trial in 2001, IBM showed that [bot] trading agents performed better than humans when they were pitched against each other buying and selling commodities. The bots made 7 per cent more cash than the humans. What's more, when humans were removed from the market so that agents just traded against each other, the average profit margin increased in a simulated commodities market.

The reason for this, according to the article, is that "people only look at three or four variables before making a decision," whereas "Bots can study hundreds, and refer back to a wealth of historical information on trading trends.

The article speculates that bots will take over more and more of these kinds of functions.

I have to wonder if it could be possible to turn Bots loose in the field of law. My sense is that because so much of law is not really law, but rather politics, which in turn is driven not entirely (and perhaps not even primarily) by rationality, but rather by the hopes and fears of the electorate, it would be difficult for a Bot. The outcome of any particular case depends not just on past precedent (which the Bot could presumably review and digest), but on the facts of the particular case, the intellectual, emotional, and political predisposition of the judge(s) deciding the case, the advocacy skills of the attorneys arguing the case, and so on. Perhaps a Bot could take all this in, but it seems to be an exercise quite different from trading in a market.

At least we attorneys hope so.

Spoofs of Proofs of God's Existence

I feel like I'm cheating when write a blog post about somebody else's page, but this one is too funny to pass on. Check out the web page "Over Three Hundred Proofs of God's Existence" for some clever, funny, and even thought-provoking (in a very negative sort of way) "proofs" of the existence of God. So, with apologies to my mother.... here are some of them.

They range from the seemingly serious:

TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT
(1) If reason exists then God exists.
(2) Reason exists.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
(1) If I say something must have a cause, it has a cause.
(2) I say the universe must have a cause.
(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
(4) Therefore, God exists.And move to the ridiculous and sublime:

ARGUMENT FROM INDULGENCE
(1) Atheists like to think that they can control their emotional desires.
(2) But they're Atheists, so they can't.
(3) Therefore, Atheists feel the need to indulge in whatever they feel like without worrying about committing sin.
(4) This just goes to show how they need God in their lives.
(5) Therefore, God exists.

PROOF BY ANECDOTE
(1) God can be seen by those who believe in Him.
(2) If the God is seen, then He must exist.
(3) I have seen God.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM TORNADOS
(1) A large tornado hit Kansas City.
(2) The tornado missed a church but destroyed several hundred homes.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM PAIN AVOIDANCE
(1) If I don't believe God exists, I'll go to Hell.
(2) Please don't hurt me.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM C.S. LEWIS
(1) C.S. Lewis had a lot of good arguments in favor of Christianity ... at least that’s what all my Christian friends tell me...
(2) C.S. Lewis wrote some popular books too!
(3) So anything C.S. Lewis said must be right!
(4) Therefore, God Exists.

ARGUMENT FROM EXILSTENTIALISIC LONELINESS
(1) This can't be all there is to existence.
(2) I mean it's so horrible, pointless, brutal and nasty.
(3) It's all so depressing.
(4) I'm lonely.
(5) There has to be something else out there.
(6) I mean it, there just has to be.
(7) THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING ELSE OUT THERE!
(8) AGGGRRG!!! THERE JUST HAS TO BE!!!!
(9) God! He can be out there for me.
(10) I'm not so lonely now!
(11) Yay!
(12) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM WIND
(1) You believe in wind.
(2) But you can't see it.
(3) God's the same way
(4) It IS TOO analogous!
(5) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM TAXATION
(1) Churches don't pay taxes.
(2) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM GOD'S PLAN (variation of the MYSTERIOUS WAYS argument)
(1) There is a plan in the world.
(2) The existence of this plan can be seen from the fact that things are the way they are.
(3) My belief is part of the plan, and so is your non-belief.
(4) [Atheist: Why?]
(5) The plan is too infinitely great for our minds to comprehend the "why."
(6) An infinitely great plan must have an infinitely great mind behind it.
(7) Therefore, God exists.

And finally, of course:

ARGUMENT FROM MULTIPLICITY (III) (recursive internet edition)
(1) There exists a web page ( http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm)
(2) That page has hundreds of purported proofs of the existence of God.
(3) They can't all be wrong.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

Via the always good and often excellent Metafilter.

The Routine

Since coming back from Paris, I've slowly fallen back into my normal routine.

Routines are very helpful. They keep us from having to rethink our schedule of activities anew every single day. If every work day I get up at the same time, drink coffee and read the paper for the same amount of time, shower and get dressed in the same amount of time, I can be safely assured of getting to work on time. Doing all the things I have to do in the morning in the same order every day reduces the risk that I'll forget something. All good things.

But routines lead to ruts. Getting up and going through my morning routine every day doesn't mean I have to eat the same things for breakfast every day, but I almost always do. It doesn't mean I have to drive to work over exactly the same route every day, but I almost always do. Ruts are bad.

Being in Paris on vacation made me realize that I have the capacity, the capability, to add small measures of variety to each day. I resolved that I would remember that when I returned, and would try to Paris-ize my life a little each day. To eat a long, different lunch. To take a walk in the afternoon. To go out and enjoy the sun, even for a few minutes.

But most days I don't remember to do that, even though Paris is only two and a half weeks distant. The demands of "real life" -- work, chores, family -- seem to have a dulling effect on my inspiration and resourcefulness. The weight of the everyday -- the decisions, issues, deadlines, and demands (even very politely delivered ones) -- make it hard to remember to surface every so often. I haven't learned how to remember to rise from immersion in my obligations to breathe every so often, out in the openness of bigger life, to remember to create some Parisian moments every day: to create Parisian moments as part of the routine.

Perhaps this represents lack of imagination or creativity on my part, some personality deficit. Or maybe it's more universal, something everyone struggles with. Whichever, I'm resolving to try to break my normal routines a little more frequently. Wish me luck -- I sure don't want to end up like my friend the Grump.

ID and the Vastness of Time

It seems the SSSBlog has inspired the New York Times! A good opinion piece appears today making one of the points made earlier in this blog, that people can't really comprehend the vast time scales necessary to make evolution work.

Heartbreak Dead Ahead

It's almost football season, and that means the SSSBlog will be living and dying each Saturday with the Univ. of Iowa Hawkeye football team. During my time in Iowa City they went 3-8, 3-8, 5-6, 5-6, and 2-9 ... ah, those were the good old days. But the past three years they've finished in the top ten nationally, and last year in their last game they beat defending champion L.S.U. on January 1 with a last second, 60-yard plus TD pass on a semi-broken play, something that just doesn't happen to the Hawkeyes.

So you see, the karma is probably used up.

They're ranked No. 11 in the country in the preseason A.P. poll. They will probably pull what we refer to as a "Squawk" -- be just good enough to make you hope that maybe, just maybe, the Rose Bowl is there for the taking, then die miserably, horribly, pathetically, painfully in a key game.

Still, we love them.

Go Hawks.

Intelligent Design and The Anthropic principle

More follow up to the earlier post on intelligent design: The New York Times published this article today discussing the substantive arguments made by the proponents of intelligent design.

Also, the fundamental idea isn't new. Various forms of the so-called "anthropic principle" have been around for many years. The principle tries to answer the question of why so many fundamental physical constants in our universe are precisely what they have to be in order for life to have arisen on Earth. In it's "weak" form, the principle merely says that the physical constants in the universe must be such that life can form in the universe, else we wouldn't be here to talk about why universal physical constants are the way they are -- not (in my view) a particularly satisfying principle, but there you go. Other "forms" of the principle go off in wilder directions, and some have used the principle to argue for some sort of intelligent creation of the universe. Good overviews are here and here.

Grump Wants His Own Blog

Give somebody a post, and all of a sudden they want everything their own way. My friend the Grumpy Moderate is feeling too big for his breeches and has decided he needs his own damned Blog. Well OK then.

His political/current events comments will migrate to a new blog, The Grumpy Moderate. My less serious, more eclectic posts will remain here on SSSBlog.

He was already getting on my nerves, anyway.

Intelligent Design Follow-Up

Inspired, no doubt, but the Grumpy Moderate's views on "intelligent design," the New York Times published today this article about the funding origins of the movement. Kudos to the professor at my old school, the University of Iowa, quoted in the article, who while apparently believing in "intelligent design," makes the same point as the Grumpy Moderate in his post yesterday:

"They're interested in the same things I'm interested in - no one else is," Guillermo Gonzalez, 41, an astronomer at the University of Iowa, said of his colleagues at Discovery. "What I'm doing, frankly, is frowned upon by most of my colleagues. It's not something a 'scientist' is supposed to do." Other than Dr. Berlinski, most fellows, like their financiers, are fundamentalist Christians, though they insist their work is serious science, not closet creationism.

"I believe that God created the universe," Dr. Gonzalez said. "What I don't know is whether that evidence can be tested objectively. I ask myself the tough questions."

The Grumpy Moderate, Post No. 1: Intelligent Design

I introduce my readers today to a new character: The Grumpy Moderate. The Grumpy Moderate is a guy (apologies to my female readers, but he's a guy) who views the news through a pane of skepticism. He's pretty bright, but thinks that intelligence is overrated. The Grumpy Moderate loves science, though. He likes to parse through the b.s., dislikes dogma and extremism, loathes pretense, likes pragmatism, and is highly suspicious of hoity-toity intellectual musings untethered from the ground of fact.

Today the Grumpy Moderate is going to go off as a result of this story, which reports that Bill Frist (that's Dr. Bill Frist, isn't it?) wants "intelligent design" to be taught in schools alongside the theory of evolution. Now the Grumpy Moderate has heard a lot about this "intelligent design" theory, but never really investigated it. What exactly is "intelligent design?" According to the Intelligent Design Network:

The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion.

In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection -- how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.

The science part of the Grumpy Moderate's mind can pretty easily see the flaw in the claim that "intelligent design" is a scientific theory. It's this: The central idea of the theory of evolution is that forms of life that are more suited to prosper in a particular environmental niche will, in fact, prosper more than those that are less well-suited. The mechanisms of this process are, to the Grumpy Moderate's understanding, pretty well understood. But of course, the adaptations that cause a life form to be well-suited to a particular environment look just like the adaptations that a "designer" would "design" to make a life form well-suited to a particular environment. So the theory isn't really testable. The results are the same whether you posit a "designer" or not. Viewed another way, if one does posit a "designer," there is no way to conduct an controlled experiment in which the effects of the "designer" are eliminated from the experiment, to see if the results are the same as under the theory of evolution. If the theory isn't testable, it isn't scientific.

In other words, you have to take intelligent design on faith. The Grumpy Moderate thinks that people ought to be able to believe that some supreme designer is behind all the mechanisms that lead to the formation of our natural world. But to say that such a belief should be taught as scientific alternative to the theory of evolution doesn't cut it. Besides, the Grumpy Moderate thought that faith was supposed to transcend science.

With all due respect to Dr. Frist, of course.

The Grumpy Moderate is really digressing now, but he wants to point out that part of the difficulty with accepting the theory of evolution is that the human mind can't really conceive of the timeframes involved in its working. We can't really get our minds around the immensity of 500 years, of 5,000 years, of 50,000 or 500,000 or 5,000,000 years. The Grumpy Moderate thinks that these timeframes are so very long that it is not surprising that extraordinarily remarkable things have happened over these vast spaces by chance.

The Grumpy Moderate also wonders why this is occupying the time of the Senate Majority Leader. The Grumpy Moderate knows the answer, of course ... Dr. Frist is said to be planning a run for President in '08, and thinks this will endear him to the Right's right wing. But the Grumpy Moderate thinks that this will make most other grumpy moderates wonder if Dr. Frist is to be taken seriously as a presidential material.

France Declares War on Bullfrogs

From IOL. (Local Sonoma County angle: Bullfrogs are one of the preditors of the California tiger salamander, an endangered species whose habitat is the Santa Rosa Plain. Perhaps someday we can form a local bullfrog militia.)

Le Haillan, France - Picture this: French hunters stealing out at night in pairs, one with a torch to light up the eyes of their prey, the other armed with a .22 calibre rifle equipped with a telescopic sight and a silencer.

Their quarry? Invaders from the United States - bullfrogs, to be precise, that bellow like cows and typically weigh in at a hefty 600 grams.

This is France, to be sure, but the end game of this hunt is not sauteed frog legs.

These marksmen are ecologists, out to exterminate the bullfrogs - a.k.a. Rana Catesbeina - which are threatening the local ecosystem.

"A man living in Vayres (30 kilometres east of Bordeaux) stocked his pond with them in 1968 as a joke, and a few years later every stretch of water in the region was full of them," said Luc Gueugneau, who works in the government agency overseeing wild animals and hunting.

The bullfrogs live for as long as nine years, hibernating from October to March, but the rest of the time gorging on local frogs, shellfish, insects, and even fledgling birds, said ecologist Mathieu Detaint.

They have virtually no predators, and each lay up to 25 000 eggs a year, against 10 000 laid by the local frogs.

"We tried draining the ponds, but it costs a lot and is not efficient enough because there are always some bullfrogs that remain," Detaint said.

One thing that did work, though, he said, was trapping the tadpoles and very young frogs in nets.

Said Gueugneau: "For the moment, hunting the adults with rifles has proved to be the most efficient way of attacking them, because it gets rid of those able to reproduce."

The hunting is done at night, as that is when the frogs are most active and easiest to spot.

"We carried out five hunts between September last year and this July, killing about 120 of them," Detaint said.

"At the start, the idea seemed ludicrous, but we became convinced little by little because they allowed us to eradicate all the adults at two sites where the system was tested."

The ecologists say they a full-scale eradication programme should be in place by 2007, and hope to fully eliminate the bullfrogs in five or 10 years.

"All that I do not have bone to say to you...."

My French friend Laurence loaned me some contemporary French music from her library, and I've been listening to it in the car this past week. I finally decided to go on line to see if I could find lyrics, only some of which (very little, in truth) I could make out. I found a few lyric sites, and to get an overview of the gist of them, I ran them through one of the on-line automatic translators (Alta Vista's Babelfish was the particular one).

I've used these a few times; they often turn out hilarious, especially, as it turns out, for love songs. So I give you the Babelfish translation of Natasha Saint Pier's Tu Trouveras:

As everyone I have my dfauts I always do not have the words which it is necessary But if you read between the lines You find in my songs All that I did not know to say you There are misprints Of "I love you" a little unmethodical Malgr my clumsy agreements You will find in my songs All that I do not have bone to say to you

{Refrain:} You will find... My wounds and my weaknesses Those which I acknowledge only half-word My false step my awkwardnesses And of the love more than it is not necessary of it I am afraid so much that you me leashes Knows that if I make some always too It is so that a little you me remainders You me remainders

I am going to have to use in a song the line, "there are misprints of 'I love you,'" and the phrase "all that I do not have bone to say to you," because, well, it would be the only song ever with those lyrics.

Tu Trouveras is actually a very nice song, and once I parse out the lyrics, I'm sure they will be also. And in defense of Babelfish, it does a passable job for something on automatic pilot.

Hey Google, Get on the Stick

I'm so proud ... the SSSBlog is now in the Yahoo and Alta Vista search databases. So if you were to do a search for anything, SSSBlog would also be searched. Thus a search for "Molsberry's" (the local market in Larkfield) and "cheese" would turn up an entry comparing cheese prices and selection in Paris and Santa Rosa.

But my favorite search engine, Google, is lagging behind. It has not picked up the SSSBlog yet. Bad, bad, bad Google. No more stock offerings for you.

A technical note: For those of you having "My Yahoo" or "My MSN" pages, clicking on the appropriate button to the right will put SSSBlog feeds on your page. Those of you who have newsreaders can similarly get feeds by clicking the "XML" or "Atom Feed" buttons.

Please Use the Blog's Best Feature

One of the best features of any blog, including the SSSBlog, is the comment function. Anyone can leave a comment on any post by clicking on the title. The idea is to engage the bloggor and the reader-bloggees in an on-line conversation. Now I grant that many of my recent posts didn't perhaps lend themselves to comments (Dear SSSBlog: It would take only 275 cans of Diet Pepsi to kill me), but hopefully that will get better. So please, comment, comment, comment away.

OK, I'll Jump in the Pool -- Thoughts on Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan, as you likely know, is the mother of a child killed in the Iraq war, who has set up a campsite outside of George Bush's Texas ranch in order to get a meeting with him.

This is a serious post mostly, but I have to begin by saying that whenever I read anything about this subject, I never see "Cindy Sheehan," I always see "Cindy Crawford." No doubt that's because Bush's ranch is in Crawford, TX, so that's always the byline of the story, and the word "Cindy" always occurs in the first line, so for a long time my mind kept calling her "Cindy Crawford." Now I'm not even sure I know who Cindy Crawford is (some blonde actress, or a model?), and I'm pretty sure she has no political association, but there it is. Maybe it's the double-Cs that pull me into the association.

Anyway, as most things political today do, the Cindy Sheehan situation has generated a lot of ugliness. It isn't pretty to see the Left using someone who (admittedly, I haven't followed this closely, so go easy on this next statement) is obviously distraught and seems a little personally unsteady to further their anti-war agenda; they seem to be doing the very thing they are incensed about, fixated on their mission rather than showing real compassion for the suffering of one of their troops. And it isn't pretty to see the Right pile on the insinuation and the character assassination to further their pro-Bush agenda; this woman, after all, lost her son ... show her some courtesy, decency, and respect.

But beneath all the mud, I would think that the pro-Bush folks ought to be concerned about Ms. Sheehan's continued campaign. Because for all they can try to impugn her character, motives, and truthfulness (and again, I don't really know the facts on any of these), the fact is that she and her son's death lead directly to consideration of the single, key question that's been hanging about the Iraq War since before it began: Is it worth it? It has made me pause to ask: Is it worth my sons' lives? And that question, in turn, resonates with all the questions about validity and factual basis for entering the war in the first place. If I'm George Bush, I'm not sure, with gas approaching $3.00 per gallon and the Iraqi nation looking, quite frankly, not very trainable, that I want many people to be thinking about Cindy Sheehan's dead son and asking the question: 'Is it worth it?'

The longer an unstable situation in Iraq goes on with no apparent progress toward resolution, the more this question is going to get asked, and the more folks who are in not Left or Right, but rather folks in the middle, who up to now have withheld judgment and hoped for the best, are going to start answering "no." If that happens, it seems to me that a lot of political bets are off.

Can Diet Pepsi Kill You?

During lunch today my co-workers were making critical comments about one of my few remaining vices, Diet Pepsi. Other than the cost, I don't see that Diet Pepsi can do much harm (even though some scary web sites, including the very subtilely named aspartamekills.com, talk about brain tumors, vision problems, birth defects, hairy palms [no, I just made that up], and the fact that "Michael J. Fox, who was spokesperson for Pepsi, has an old man's disease (Parkinson's Disease) at only 30 years old" [my God, even shilling for diet soda can harm you!]).

But, it turns out that there is something in Diet Pepsi that will kill you if taken in large quantities: caffeine! In fact, some enterprising person has developed a "death by caffeine" web site that allows you to calculate exactly how much of your favorite caffeinated drink it would take to kill you. My co-workers can relax -- according to the site, given my weight, " [i]t would take 331.77 cans of Diet Pepsi-Cola to put [me] down."

Got That Straight?

For your reading pleasure, a hilarious "correction" from the Rio Grande Sun in New Mexico. Via Regret the Error.

Le Passe-Muraille

Following up on the strange statute (sort of) that we saw in Montmartre, of the man coming half-out of a wall: We visited my father-in-law in Berkeley last weekend, and he had managed to find a book of short stories containing the story of the man who could walk through walls (Le Passe-Muraille). It's fairly short (14 pages) and he says that it is easy enough that Suzie and I should be able to read it. Since the prior post didn't contain the end to the story (it unfortunately ended "unable to pass through the walls after a night of passion...."), we hope to be able to provide a complete version of the story within a few weeks.

The Blog Must Go On -- What Would You Like to See?

he trip to Paris is over. But the blog must go on! There are a ton of things to blog about, some of which are more dicey than others. But before I start posting willy-nilly, I would ask my small (but I hope growing) readership what they would be interested in reading. Some ideas:

Nuggets from the Net: While I could never hope to duplicate the excellent web site Metafilter (which I highly recommend you check out), I do come across interesting, entertaining, bizarre, funny, and obscure web sites and web news sources, just made for sharing.

Things about France: A new hobby. Whatdayathink?

Politics: Dangerous perhaps, but I'm pretty much in the broad middle (but with some quirks that would probably be viewed as "right" and some quirks that probably would be viewed as "left" but that I, of course, don't see that way). I should probably steer clear of any commentary about my local area, though, for the sake of prudence.

The Wonder of Parenthood: As I write this, my ten year old is pitching a hysterical fit, shrieking loudly and flailing his head against the floor, because he doesn't want to learn his times tables. You are dying to hear more, arent you?

Anything Else that Pops into My Head: A lot does. Some percentage of it is even fit for repeating.

So post a comment and let me know what you would like to see. And thanks to all of you who have been so supportive of the SSSBlog to date.

The Jet Lag Diet -- A Success

Before the trip to Paris, Suzie and I both tried the Jet Lag Diet, which involves alternate days of "feasting" and "fasting" and timing the intake of protein and carbohydrates so as to effect a "reset" of the body's clock to the time zone to which you are travelling. As noted here, the fast days are pretty brutal, but one of us (Steve) had great success with the diet ... relatively little jet lag upon arrival in Paris. (The positive impact on Suzie was less; she had trouble sleeping several nights and took about a week to get totally back in synch.)

I couldn't bring myself to have any "fast" days in Paris, and so bagged the Jet Lag Diet on the way back. I had read and been told that jet lag is less of a problem for east-to-west travel, but jet lag hit me in a major way coming back to Sonoma County. My conclusion from this experience is that the Jet Lag Diet really works, at least for some, and is worth the effort, at least at the beginning of a trip.

A Cow-Lossal Welcome Back

My co-workers, apparently in sympathy with the evil bovines of Flaxweiler (and also apparently having excess time on their hands), went over the top (as sometimes is their wont) and decorated my office in a cow theme. So upon my return, I found, among other things, cow prints, cow paintings, cow statutes, cow wire sculptures, cow stickers, cow posters, pictures of cows pasted over pictures of my childrens' heads, changed book and certificate titles ("Order of the Coif" to "Order of the Cow" and "The Endangered Species Act" to "The Endangered Cow Act"), cow bells, cow-moo-making toys, cows on my Palm PDA, cows on my computer monitor, a large pig sculpture with "Cow" and "Moo" written all over it (I still haven't figured that one out), and a large (real) horned cow skull, to which was affixed a post-it note reading "Don't Mess with Steve."

My ten year old, upon seeing all this, said, "Dad, they must really love you," but that's only partially true; my co-workers love odd spectacles in the office (last year's French-themed Bosses Day extravaganza being an excellent example), and the Flaxweiler cow story gave them both inspiration and an excuse. Still, it was very nice to know people were thinking of me when I was out there facing imminent death.