Page proofs of Getting It Wrong, my forthcoming book on media-driven myths, arrived just before Christmas.

The pages look handsome. They’re set in a Sabon typeface, which stands out nicely. Especially attractive are the all-cap subhedes, as are the chapter headings. The chapter-opening epigrams (e.g., “Accurant reporting was among Katrina’s many victims”) are set off well, too.

It’s a very appealing package.

The page proofs are due back to the publisher, University of California Press, by January 21.

If all goes as planned, Getting It Wrong should be out in May.

FAQs about the book are available here and here.

“Media-driven myths,” by the way, are well-known stories about and/or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, on close inspection, prove to be apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.

They are dubious tales that often promote misleading interpretations of media power and influence.

They can be thought of as the “junk food of journalism.”

Media-driven myths arise from a variety of sources—including a tendency to believe the news media are very powerful and sometimes even dangerous forces in society.

Media myths also are appealing because they offer simplistic answers to complex issues. Stories that are too good—too delicious—to be checked out can become media myths.

Those three factors—media power, simple answers to complex questions, and a sense of being too good not to be true—help explain the emergence and tenacity of one of the most famous media myths—the purported vow of William Randolph Hearst to “furnish the war” with Spain.

That anecdote is rich, telling, and delicious—and fits well with the image of Hearst as an unrestrained war-monger. But it’s almost certainly apocryphal, as is discussed in Chapter One of Getting It Wrong.

WJC

**Note: This is essentially a repost of an earlier entry…

Let’s balance some eggs, kids

Happy Winter Solstice everyone!  It might seem a strange thing to be celebrating, this specific position of Earth in its orbit around the sun, but we skeptics have our reasons.  This, of course, has to do with the old myth of being able to balance eggs on their ends only during either the vernal (spring) or autumnal equinox – of course, all references are in regards to the northern hemisphere.

But wait, it’s not the equinox, so why bring up this myth now?  To debunk it, of course.  According to adherents of this myth, usually the same folks who are into astrology-related woo, during the equinoxes “things line up cosmically” (probably some misunderstood reference to the fact that the length of day & night are the same), and this should result in the capability to stand eggs on their ends.

The funny thing about this particular myth is that it contains a kernel of truth… you can stand an egg on its end on the equinox, just as you can at any time of the year – even the solstices, as far away from the equinox as you can get.  Case in point, I’m away visiting family, and I just balanced an egg on end in the kitchen…

This supposedly “cosmic event” took me all of fifteen seconds to accomplish – with a little practice, it’s easy to do. To understand why it is that eggs can be balanced in this manner, it is more helpful to look to the science of physics rather than the pseudoscience of astrology – this link at the Bad Astronomy blog explains in more detail.

So, the next time you hear someone make this loony claim, have a little fun with it – whip out the eggs and balance away!

The enduring myths of bra-burning — a topic explored in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong — were invoked not only ago in a column posted at the Syndey Morning Herald’s online site.

The passage was brief, but stunning in the ways in which it was in error.

The Morning Herald column was about the National Organization of Women and its opposition to a proposed tax on Botox. But here’s the passage about bra-burning, which refers to a demonstration in Atlantic City in September 1968 that targetted the Miss America Pageant:

“The most famous NOW action — burning a trash can full of bras and girdles outside a Miss America beauty pageant – became the stuff of folklore, and made ‘bra-burning’ a universal symbol of women’s liberation. As a symbol it’s perhaps been over-hyped, but at least it grabbed attention and made a point.”

Where to begin?

The protest on the boardwalk at Atlantic City had little to do with NOW. It was organized by a small group called New York Radical Women, a leader of which was the writer and former child actor, Robin Morgan.

At the Freedom Trash Can, 1968 (Duke University, special collections)

A highlight of the protest came when Morgan and other demonstrators (described by the New York Times as “mostly middle-aged careerists and housewives”) tossed into a barrel what they called “instruments of torture,” which included brassieres, girdles, high-heeled shoes, and magazines such as Playboy and Cosmopolitan. The protesters dubbed the barrel the Freedom Trash Can.

Morgan and others have long insisted that the bras and other contents of the Freedom Trash Can were not set afire during the protest that day.

Moreover, “bra-burning” scarcely was “a universal symbol of women’s liberation.” Far from it: Feminists like Morgan abhorred the term. They never embraced “bra-burning” as anything remotely approaching a symbol or metaphor.

But “bra-burning” did become a media-driven myth.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, the term was often invoked “to denigrate women’s liberation and feminist advocacy as trivial and even a bit primitive.”

The notion that bras were demonstratively and flamboyantly set afire at the Atlantic City protest was driven by syndicated newspaper columnists such as Harriett Van Horne.

“My feeling about the liberation ladies,” Van Horne wrote soon after the protest at Atlantic City, “is that they’ve been scarred by consorting with the wrong men. Men who do not understand the way to a woman’s heart, i.e., to make her feel utterly feminine, desirable and almost too delicate for this hard world. … No wonder she goes to Atlantic City and burns her bra.”

The author of the Sydney Morning Herald column, by the way, was Virginia Haussegger, whose Web site identifies her as “a journalist, author and commentator whose extensive media career spans more than 20 years.” She is further identified as “the face” of Australian Broadcasting Corp. TV News in Canberra.

Haussegger is the author of Wonder Woman: The Myth of Having It All, a 2005 memoir that takes feminism to task. Read the first chapter here.

WJC

The typical white liberal assumes that non-white people have more “culture” than white people, and may express “envy” as an attempted compliment. Given that white liberals feel that they are denied access to the non-white culture which they “envy”, it is likely that their “envy” is directed at the imagined culture of non-whites, rather than culture (or loss of culture due to white cultural imperialism) as experienced by non-white people.

One example of the white-imagined culture of people of colour is the Oriental Riff, or rather, the Orientalist Riff:

This riff (click on the above image to play the sound file) appears in orientalist American and British pop songs like “Kung Fu Fighting” (1974) and “Turning Japanese” (1980). However, the “proto-cliché” or rhythmic pattern of “da-da-da-da, da da, da da, daaah!” originated in the 1800s, and has since been ubiquitous in pop culture to signify (and other) Asian culture or Asian people. Martin Nilsson has dedicated an entire website to the history of this rhythmic pattern, The Musical Cliché Figure Signifying The Far East: Whence, Wherefore, Whither?, and defines what he calls the “the Far East Proto-Cliché” as the following:

In other words, the “proto-cliché” is a riff with the rhythm of “da-da-da-da, da da, da da, daaah!” with varying tones, where the first four notes have identical tones, and the bracketed first six notes are obligatory. Additionally, “the instrumentation and general context should be meant to suggest the Orient in order for this pattern to actually be the Far East Proto-Cliché”. Nilsson’s website tracks this “proto-cliché” and provides ninety-seven examples of it from 1847 to 2001.

The painful irony of white people envying Asian people for our “culture” is that what white people perceive as cultural unattainability is actually our perceived cultural otherness. The otherness-disguised-as-unattainability evoked by the ubiquitous “proto-cliché” is a white construction of Asian identity, and this white construction of Asian identity is what they envy and already own without realizing it.

The “proto-cliché” and the most offensive instantiation of it—the Orientalist Riff itself—are used to dehumanize Asians. Kai Chang describes the Orientalist Riff as Musical Yellowface and writes:

Having grown up in a music-loving household filled with both Chinese and Western classical music, this little melody has always annoyed me. It’s basically what white folks play every time Orientalism is invoked in a TV show, movie, or pop song. It’s so prevalent that I honestly suspect that many white folks unconsciously hear this ditty when they see me walk into the room.

Funny thing is, it’s neither Chinese nor even representative of Chinese music. It’s a white supremacist construction whose artistic purpose is to caricaturize, mock, and dehumanize Asians.

Racialicious commenter Elton writes (17 Dec 2009):

Just yesterday, I was at Walmart, shopping for Christmas, when a kid walking by gave me a suspicious look and, as he walked away, sang what I call the “Chinese Stereotype Melody.” I have no idea where it came from, but Asian Americans probably know what I’m talking about. It goes something like, “da-da-da-da duh duh, duh duh, da” and has been used in countless shows and movies (often accompanied by fake martial arts, a gong sound, bowing, fake Chinese words, and just all around mockery of Chinese people, and, by extension, all Asians).

[...]

Anyway, even though this melody probably had the original intention of cheap laughs for people who think Orientalizing, exoticizing, and marginalizing people who are perceived to be perpetual foreigners is funny and entertaining and safe because they’ve never had to confront their own racism, it has the effect, over generations, of making millions of people victims of taunting, bullying, concentration camps, anti-immigration laws, colonization, fetishizing, rape, terror, torture, and socioeconomic inequality. We call this racism.

“It’s just a stupid melody,” you might be saying to yourself. “It’s just a stupid gesture.” And you would be right–it is stupid. It’s something that I would have hoped to leave on the playground 20 years ago. But the persistence of mockery of Asians, particularly the extent to which it’s accepted as innocuous, represents a growing trend that racism against Asians is not only acceptable, but doesn’t even exist.

Not only is the Orientalist Riff racist, but the similarly racist and orientalist “proto-cliché” is a long-standing tradition in the music culture of white-majority societies, even older than classic music genres that defined American music. A blogger puts the ditty into historical perspective:

The thing’s been around longer than jazz, longer than rock, and depending on how you measure these things, longer than the blues, which is where jazz and rock came from. It’s older than the Chinese Exclusion Act. It’s been around at least since 1847, in a melody in The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp.

[...]

It really kicks into first gear, though, in the 1880s, which is about when the blues properly started up (which is where pentatonic scales started taking over Western music), and when… let’s call it “social tensions” began building up, as expressed in the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Clearly, the Orientalist Riff and the equally-orientalist “proto-cliché” originated from historical, anti-Asian sentiment in white-majority countries. Yet even today, the “proto-cliché” (or the riff itself) is being perpetuated in television and film, as if the rhythmic pattern is a natural representation of Asian culture instead of the obvious manifestation of white racism that it is. For example, in Karl Lagerfeld’s Paris-Shanghai: A Fantasy (2009), which debuted just this month (December), the “proto-cliché” appears in the second video (part 2) at about 6:06.

To expand on Nilsson’s fascinating research, I will be saving to Delicious instances I find of the “proto-cliché” (which includes the Orientalist Riff itself) and tagging them with the tag protocliche. If you find other contemporary examples of it and you use Delicious, please tag them with “protocliche” as well. If you are not a Delicious user, you can post links to “proto-cliché” examples in the comments of this post.

A couple of tenacious myths associated with American journalism’s most famous editorial, “Is There A Santa Claus?,” made another appearance today.

The West Milford Messenger in New Jersey reprinted the editorial in its entirety and then added a few observations, which are in error.

The newspaper said the editorial, which first appeared in the the New York Sun of September 21, 1897, “was an immediate sensation” and “was reprinted annually until 1949 when the paper went out of business.”

The New York Sun

Well, no, not really.

The editorial wasn’t “an immediate sensation.” Nor was it reprinted annually by the Sun, which ceased publication in 1950. Those mistakes are often enough associated with “Is There A Santa Claus?,” though.

As described in my 2006 book, The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms, the editorial stirred no comment by other newspapers at the time. And in 1897, the New York City press routinely commented on—and often disparaged—the work and content of their rivals.

But the oddly timed editorial that contained the passage, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” prompted no comment from the Sun’s rivals in New York.

Moreover, “Is There A Santa Claus?” was diffidently embraced by the Sun.

In the ten years from 1898–1907, “Is There A Santa Claus?” was reprinted in the Sun at Christmastime only twice.

The first time was in 1902. On that occasion, the Sun reprinted the editorial with more than a hint of annoyance, stating:

“Since its original publication, the Sun has refrained from reprinting the article on Santa Claus which appeared several years ago, but this year requests for its reproduction have been so numerous that we yield.” The newspaper added this gratuitous swipe:

“Scrap books seem to be wearing out.”

Francis P. Church of the Sun

The Sun next reprinted the editorial in December 1906, as a tribute to its author, Francis P. Church, who died eight months before.

The Sun then said it was reprinting the editorial “at the request of many friends of the Sun, of Santa Claus, of the little Virginias of yesterday and to-day, and of the author of the essay, the late F.P. Church.”

But it wasn’t until the early 1920s when the editorial begin appearing prominently, and without fail, at Christmastime in the Sun.

In the years that followed, readers implored the Sun not to fail to reprint the editorial.

“It will neither be Christmas nor the Sun without it,” declared one reader in 1927.

A letter-writer told the Sun in 1926 that “Is There A Santa Claus?” offered “a fine relief from the commercialism and unsentimental greed” of the Christmas season.

“Every year, as I grow a little older,” another reader wrote in 1940, “I find added significance in its profound thoughts.”

WJC

The AOL Television online site today recalls as a “TV moment of 2009″ the death five months ago of Walter Cronkite, the famous CBS News anchorman.

The AOL Television post recalls the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, when the anchorman’s downbeat assessment about the U.S. military effort in Vietnam was said to have had immediate and stunning effects on President Lyndon Johnson and his war policy.

The AOL post says of Cronkite: “In 1968, after extensive on-the-ground reporting, he advocated the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. The Johnson White House reeled.”

Reeled?

Hardly.

As I write in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong:

“Scrutiny of the evidence associated with the program reveals that Johnson did not have—could not have had—the abrupt yet resigned reaction that so often has been attributed to him. That’s because Johnson did not see the program when it was aired” on February 27, 1968.

Lyndon Johnson at Connally's birthday party

Johnson then was in Austin, Texas, engaging in light-hearted banter at a black-tie party for Governor John Connally. “Today you are 51, John,” the president said in Austin, at about the time the Cronkite program was ending.

“That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority. Throughout the years we have worked long and hard—and I might say late—trying to maintain it, too.”

Even if he later heard—or heard about— Cronkite’s assessment, it represented no epiphany for Johnson. Indeed, soon after the Cronkite program, the president gave a rousing, lectern-pounding speech in which he urged a “total national effort” to win the war in Vietnam.

So Cronkite’s program scarcely was decisive to American war policy. It certainly did not send the Johnson White House reeling.

It is noteworthy to recall that Cronkite in his program on Vietnam did not urge the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces.

He hedged, holding open the possibility that the U.S. military efforts might still force the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table. Cronkite suggested the U.S. forces be given a few months more to press the fight in Vietnam, in the wake of the communists’ surprise Tet offensive, stating:

“On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this [Tet offensive] is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

What’s more, Cronkite’s assessment was scarcely exceptional or extraordinary.

In his year-study about 1968, Mark Kurlansky wrote that Cronkite’s view was “hardly a radical position” for the time.

Four days before the Cronkite program, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam “may be doomed” and that “everyone had better be prepared for the bitter taste of defeat beyond America’s power to prevent.” And nearly seven months before the Cronkite program, New York Times correspondent R.W. Apple Jr. cited “disinterested observers” in reporting that the war in Vietnam “is not going well.”

Victory, Apple wrote, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

WJC

The blog Secondhand Smoke yesterday likened coverage of the global warming debate to “a new yellow journalism,” arguing:

“When journalists so emotionally choose sides, they cease to be journalists.”

The blog author may be right about U.S. media coverage of the global warming phenomenon. It’s hardly been searching, or challenging, in any sustained way.

But he’s quite incorrect in saying the coverage represents “a new yellow journalism” (which he vaguely defines as “using all the tricks of the trade to panic the world into granting tremendous power to an unelected and unaccountable global warming scientocracy, that will ’save the planet’ via anti human and economy  killing policies”).

Yellow journalism, he further writes, “helped push the USA into war back in the 1890s.”

Well, that’s a media myth. A delicious and enduring one, too.

As I wrote in my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies:

William Randolph Hearst in 1896

“The yellow press is not to blame for the Spanish-American-War. It did not force—it could not have forced—the United States into hostilities with Spain over Cuba in 1898. The conflict was, rather, the result of a convergence of forces far beyond the control or direct influence of even the most aggressive of the yellow newspapers, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal.”

I also wrote that claims that the yellow press fomented the war “are exceedingly media-centric, often rest on the selective use of evidence, and tend to ignore more relevant and immediate factors that give rise to armed conflict.

“In the case of the Spanish-American War, the policy objectives between the United States and Spain ultimately proved irreconcilable. Months of intricate diplomatic efforts ultimately failed to resolve what had become an intolerable state of affairs in Cuba, dramatized by the destruction of the Maine in [February 1898] in a harbor under Spanish control and supervision. To indict the yellow press for causing the Spanish-American War is to misread the evidence and to ignore the intricacies of the diplomatic quandary that culminated in the spring of 1898 in an impasse that led to war.”

Yellow journalism has been equated (as Secondhand Smoke suggests) to lurid and sensational treatment of the news. It’s often the term of choice for egregious journalistic misconduct of almost any kind. And sometimes, yellow journalism is seen as synonymous with Hearst, himself.

None of those shorthand characterizations is adequate, revealing, or very accurate. None of them captures the genre’s complexity and vigor.

As practiced in the late 19^th century, yellow journalism was defined by these features and charactersitics:

• the frequent use of multicolumn headlines that sometimes stretched across the front page.
• a variety of topics reported on the front page, including news of politics, war, international diplomacy, sports, and society.
• the generous and imaginative use of illustrations, including photographs and other graphic representations such as locator maps.
• bold and experimental layouts, including those in which one report and illustration would dominate the front page. Such layouts sometimes were enhanced by the use of color.
• a tendency to rely on anonymous sources, particularly in dispatches of leading reporters.
• a penchant for self-promotion, to call attention frequently to the newspaper’s accomplishments. This tendency was notably evident in crusades against monopolies and municipal corruption.

As so defined, yellow journalism certainly could not be called predictable, boring, or uninspired—complaints of the sort that are frequently raised about U.S. newspapers of the early twenty-first century.

Jack Shafer, the inestimable media critic at slate.com, put it well in a column early this year:

“I wish our better newspapers availed themselves of some of the techniques of yellow journalism and a little less of the solemnity we associate with the Committee of Concerned Journalists.” Well said.

WJC

Talk about heavy-duty debunking.

The Times of London not long ago posted an item at one of its blogs about a book published last month that challenges the veracity of well-known quotes attributed to French rulers and intellectuals.

The book, Le Petit inventaire des citations malmenées (or, roughly, the Small  inventory of abused quotations), calls into question such famous lines as Louis XIV’s  “L’état c’est moi,”  Louis XV’s “Après moi le déluge,” and Queen Marie Antoinette’s “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (let them eat cake).

As described by Charles Bremner, the Times‘ correspondent in Paris in a blog posting late last month, “Those famous royal remarks are among dozens of misattributed, misunderstood and outright false quotations in a fun little book just published by two academics,” Paul Desalmand and Yves Stallini.

Bremner writes that the authors “delight in knocking down famous lines that were outright invented or wrongly attributed to great figures of the past. They blame lazy journalists and historians for populari[z]ing dodgy quotes and making them up because they sound right.”

Lazy journalists: Seems right.

Journalists can be quite eager to invoke famous quotes that “sound right” or are simply too good to check out. Too delicious not to be true.

The long-lived but almost certainly apocryphal remark attributed to William Randolph Hearst, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war,” comes readily to mind.

So does the comment attributed to President Lyndon Johnson, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Johnson supposedly made the remark after watching Walter Cronkite’s special report on Vietnam in February 1968. As is discussed in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong, Johnson did not see the program when it aired.

And Hearst denied ever having vowed to “furnish the war” between the United States and Spain.

In its review, the Parisian daily Le Monde calls Le Petit inventaire des citations malmenées “clever” as well as “instructive and amusing. Also sad, sometimes.”

The book, Bremner further notes, challenges the quote attributed to King Henri IV, “Paris vaut bien une messe” [Paris is well worth a mass]. “No trace of this legendary quip by the ex-protestant king can be found in historical records,” Bremner writes, adding that authors Desalmand and Stallini “suggest that it may have been invented by enemies of the popular 16th century ruler who switched to Catholicism in order to have the crown.”

Le Petit inventaire des citations malmenées sounds like a neat little book of impressive debunking. It runs 188 pages, but hélas, is available only in French.

WJC

Twenty years ago, a Canadian man, who believed that he was fighting “feminism”, massacred fourteen women at an engineering school.

Some men think that all female engineers are “feminists”, because they find female engineers threatening, not because of any professed political beliefs of the female engineers. Female engineers are engineers who happen to be women; they are probably not doing it as a political statement, but because they enjoy engineering.

Ironically, if the 1989 killer wanted to find feminists, the feminists would most likely be in the social sciences, not engineering. (I find that most engineering students (including female engineering students) know nothing about feminism,* and think that social science degrees are useless.)

Yet even people who are not feminists and not majoring in Women and Gender Studies are affected by sexism and misogyny. In the real world, feminist issues affect engineers, and engineering issues affect feminists. The real world is not divided into separate domains of knowledge.

December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

* * *

Update: Aboriginal women are five times more likely to die of violence than women of any other race in Canada. Jessica Yee remembers violence against women who are much less likely to be remembered.

In addition, trans women are particularly at risk for hate crimes, and murdered trans women are also much less likely to be remembered than murdered cisgender women.

or We Marginalized People Need to be More Like Feynman.

Update: There are some problems with the original post, as I had assumed that everyone else’s work was technical in nature and had formalized customs on what are considered “wrong” answers. In non-technical work situations, telling others that they are wrong would more likely get you fired. See the comments for some criticisms. I have amended this post, which appears as a strikeout correction and a note in the comments.

When the subject of discussion was physics, Feynman’s brain did not process the higher authority of the people he spoke to. For example, even when he was unknown in his field, he could easily state, “No, you’re wrong,” or “You’re crazy,” to a famous and established physicist, because he would forget “who he was talking to”.

While some people may consider this behaviour arrogant, it actually indicates a temporary extinction of self-consciousness and ego, which is ideal when solving problems.

In Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, chapter Monster Minds, Feynman recounts his experience as a graduate student at Princeton, and research assistant under John Wheeler:

[...] Wheeler said, “Feynman, you’re a young fella—you should give a seminar on this. You need experience in giving talks. Meanwhile, I’ll work out the quantum theory part and give a seminar on that later.”

So it was to be my first technical talk, and Wheeler made arrangements with Eugene Wigner to put it on the regular seminar schedule.

A day or two before the talk I saw Wigner in the hail. “Feynman,” he said, “I think that work you’re doing with Wheeler is very interesting, so I’ve invited Russell to the seminar.” Henry Norris Russell, the famous, great astronomer of the day, was coming to the lecture!

Wigner went on. “I think Professor von Neumann would also he interested.” Johnny von Neumann was the greatest mathematician around. “And Professor Pauli is visiting from Switzerland, it so happens, so I’ve invited Professor Pauli to come”—Pauli was a very famous physicist—and by this time, I’m turning yellow. Finally, Wigner said, “Professor Einstein only rarely comes to our weekly seminars, but your work is so interesting that I’ve invited him specially, so he’s coming, too.”

By this time I must have turned green, because Wigner said, “No, no! Don’t worry! I’ll just warn you, though: If Professor Russell falls asleep–and he will undoubtedly fall asleep—it doesn’t mean that the seminar is bad; he falls asleep in all the seminars. On the other hand, if Professor Pauli is nodding all the time, and seems to be in agreement as the seminar goes along, pay no attention. Professor Pauli has palsy.”

I went back to Wheeler and named all the big, famous people who were coming to the talk he got me to give, and told him I was uneasy about it.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll answer all the questions.”

[...]

Then the time came to give the talk, and here are these monster minds in front of me, waiting! My first technical talk—and I have this audience! I mean they would put me through the wringer! I remember very clearly seeing my hands shaking as they were pulling out my notes from a brown envelope.

But then a miracle occurred, as it has occurred again and again in my life, and it’s very lucky for me: the moment I start to think about the physics, and have to concentrate on what I’m explaining, nothing else occupies my mind—I’m completely immune to being nervous. So after I started to go, I just didn’t know who was in the room. I was only explaining this idea, that’s all.

In chapter Los Alamos from Below, Feynman started working on the Manhattan Project in a junior position, right after he received his Ph.D.:

Every day I would study and read, study and read. It was a very hectic time. But I had some luck. All the big shots except for Hans Bethe happened to be away at the time, and what Bethe needed was someone to talk to, to push his ideas against. Well, he comes in to this little squirt of an office and starts to argue, explaining his idea. I say, “No, no, you’re crazy. It’ll go like this.” And he says, “Just a moment,” and explains how he’s not crazy, I’m crazy. And we keep on going on like this. You see, when I hear about physics, I just think about physics, and I don’t know who I’m talking to, so I say dopey things like “no, no, you’re wrong,” or “you’re crazy.” But it turned out that’s exactly what he needed. I got a notch up on account of that, and I ended up as a group leader under Bethe with four guys under me.

Later in the same chapter, Feynman says:

I also met Niels Bohr. His name was Nicholas Baker in those days, and he came to Los Alamos with Jim Baker, his son, whose name is really Aage Bohr. They came from Denmark, and they were very famous physicists, as you know. Even to the big shot guys, Bohr was a great god.

We were at a meeting once, the first time he came, and everybody wanted to see the great Bohr. So there were a lot of people there, and we were discussing the problems of the bomb. I was back in a corner somewhere. He came and went, and all I could see of him was from between people’s heads.

In the morning of the day he’s due to come next time, I get a telephone call.

“Hello – Feynman?”

“Yes.”

“This is Jim Baker.” It’s his son. ”My father and I would like to speak to you.”

“Me? I’m Feynman, I’m just a—“

“That’s right. Is eight o’clock OK?”

So, at eight o’clock in the morning, before anybody’s awake, I go down to the place. We go into an office in the technical area and he says, “We have been thinking how we could make the bomb more efficient and we think of the following idea.”

I say, “No, it’s not going to work. It’s not efficient. . . Blah, blah, blah.”

So he says, “How about so and so?”

I said, “That sounds a little bit better, but it’s got this damn fool idea in it.”

This went on for about two hours, going back and forth over lots of ideas, back and forth, arguing. The great Niels kept lighting his pipe; it always went out. And he talked in a way that was un-understandable—mumble, mumble, hard to understand. His son I could understand better.

“Well, “ he says finally, lighting his pipe, “I guess we can call in the big shots now.” So then they called all the other guys and had a discussion with them.

Then the son told me what happened. The last time he was there, he said to his son, “Remember the name of that little fellow in the back over there? He’s the only guy who’s not afraid of me, and will say when I’ve got a crazy idea. So next time when we want to discuss ideas, we’re not going to be able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes, yes, Dr. Bohr. Get that guy and we’ll talk with him first.”

I was always dumb in that way. I never knew who I was talking to. I was always worried about the physics. If the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy. If it looked good, I said it looked good. Simple proposition.

I’ve always lived that way. It’s nice, it’s pleasant—if you can do it. I’m lucky in my life that I can do this.

Most people take into account the social position of the person with whom they are interacting when discussing matters of fact, but this is an intellectual defect, not a useful heuristic not a useful heuristic when “wrong” answers are well-defined and can be uncovered with formal proofs, such as in technical fields. Except for Feynman, everyone at Los Alamos deferred to Niels Bohr’s authority, which prevented them from seeing flaws in Bohr’s ideas about the atomic bomb. In other words, when you focus on the person making a claim instead of the claim itself, it interferes with your analytical ability.

In addition to scientific and academic authority, other forms of social authority include those based on gender and race. It is socially appropriate for a man to interrupt a woman while she is speaking about something important, but it less socially appropriate for a woman to interrupt a man while he is speaking about something important. It is socially appropriate for a white person to explain an academic or technical subject to a non-white person, but when a non-white person explains an academic or technical subject to a white person, the explanations are often dismissed without consideration.

Most women and people of colour internalize these social authority hierarchies, just as most men and white people do. Women and people of colour are reprimanded for questioning male or white authority, in addition to being rewarded for accepting academic social authority. White men, on the other hand, are only rewarded for accepting academic social authority, taking for granted the privilege of being able to challenge women and people of colour without being automatically dismissed.

Tentativeness is not a female essence.

Women are stereotyped as more tentative than men, which suggests uncertainty, lack of confidence, and low status, but new research shows that both men and women are tentative when writing about a topic stereotyped as inconsistent with their gender. Men write more confidently only when it comes to stereotypically masculine topics, and write tentatively about stereotypically feminine topics. Women are write more tentatively about stereotypically masculine topics, and write more confidently about stereotypically feminine topics. Unfortunately, science and academia are gender-stereotyped as masculine.

Blogger thinkingdifference seems to assume that tentativeness is a female essence and that the culture of proving wrong originates from the male ego; she argues that academic culture perhaps needs to be more tentative. However, in addition to tentativeness not being a female essence (as demonstrated from the study), the practice of proving wrong is a fundamental component of scientific activity. Scientists make exact and definite claims because exact and definite claims are falsifiable, i.e., it is possible for such claims to be proven wrong. If a scientist makes a claim so inexact and indefinite that it is impossible for it to be false in any situation, then she protects herself from being proven wrong.

This illustrates the difference between how most scientists and most non-scientists view scientific claims from new research. Most non-scientists seem to view a scientist’s strong claim regarding new research as a claim of absolute authority, as something that will persist through the ages, as if a scientist is a modern-day sage. However, scientific claims are made in the context of science being a social activity, a collaboration between scientists with competing theories. A scientist who makes a strong claim makes herself vulnerable to being proven completely wrong by other scientists with hard, empirical evidence. Again, when a scientist makes a claim, the primary target audience is other scientists in the same field, not the general public. A scientific claim is embedded into a larger dialectic within the field; science implicitly uses the Socratic method as a way of discovering truth.

The gendering of confidence is not based on fundamental, innate personality differences between women and men. It is created from gendered socialization and gendered stereotypes, which is why when it comes to stereotypically feminine topics, men are tentative and women are confident. When it comes to science and other academic disciplines involved in the creation of knowledge, the ideal situation is for women to make strong claims and to have their claims taken seriously before being appropriated by men at a later date; the ideal situation is not for the discipline to be more hesitant. Dismissal of ideas based on ad hominem already slows down the process, and hesitancy would only slow it down further.

Feynman helped advance the ideas of Hans Bethe and Niels Bohr in theoretical physics by engaging in a dialectic and forgetting his social position. For marginalized people who are considered uppity if we challenge the ideas of someone in a higher social position, we need to be more like Feynman in dialectical contexts, and reject or suppress the social construction of our ideas as inferior. We need to be unafraid of making strong claims. We need to be comfortable with and unapologetic telling a white man, “You’re wrong!” when appropriate.*

Of course, if we are proven wrong, it may reflect poorly on our gender or our race, while a white man risks only his reputation as an individual. However, we should not let self-consciousness about our group membership paralyze us from participating in the advancement of knowledge, or experiencing the thrill of a heated intellectual debate.

The difference is essential. Human beings can and will freak out over anything, ignoring the real, life threatening issues. I do not claim perfect accuracy in my perceptions, only that I believe these things are true, and unlike you, can back them up with evidence on occasion.

Swine Flu. Are you cowering in fear yet? You shouldn’t be. It has claimed several thousand lives, yes, and drastic measures have been taken to vaccinate against it. However, ordinary flu claims hundreds of thousands world wide. This is almost like comparing a papercut to, say limb loss brought about by machetes. The only reason for the initial panic was the fact that it is descended from Spanish Flu, which did claim a devestating 50 million people in 1918. Swine Flu has definitely not done so, and probably never will.

Al Qaeda. Did that one do it? If it did, it shouldn’t have. Al Qaeda comprises no more than five percent of the insurgency in Iraq. They were merely seized upon as the poster childs of terrorism. Instead, please fear the Mahdi Army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, who led the first assault on U.S. occupying  forces and maintain strong government and police influence.

Gas prices (formerly) at four dollars. Seems bad, right? Wrong; the U.S., as always, has it made compared to everyone else. In Europe and many countries worldwide gas tops six dollars, around double what we’re complaining about. Please stop whining, and complain about carbon emissions in it’s place. That should keep people occupied.

There are no subliminal messages needed to keep the populace in line (probably). What is actually done is much simpler, plainer, and slightly more disturbing. The following are techniques used often and well to make you obey, and the reasons why they work.

First, mantras.

A mantra is a phrase which is repeated ritualistically to induce calm, focus, or just to relax. It operates on the principle that the analytical capacity of the mind is shut down by repetitive tasks. Any demonstration is unnecessary, everyone can tell that it’s hard to focus while, for example, digging a hole.

This wouldn’t be so bad, and isn’t for many people. A chant or meditation has worked to relax for centuries. However, for those who care to notice, it’s shown up everywhere else as well. Most recently, crowds at political rallies are prodded to fill silences with chants (USA! USA! USA!) instead of keeping quiet and considering what you’ve heard. The same technique to quiet self-doubt can also quiet the feeling that the man on the stage is, in fact, an imbecile.

Next, conformity enforcers.

It may sound like a particularly unpleasant person to meet in the universe of George Orwell’s 1984, but it is not a job title; conformity enforcers are those many people who feel that commonality is both good and right, and should be kept. The problem is, they include nearly everyone on Earth, and start around age two. Months.

For all of recorded history the strange and disfigured have been shunned and mistreated. Even those just slightly outside the socially acceptable norm are excluded. It is an age old knee jerk reaction, originally purposed  to deter humans from coming into contact with  those carrying strange infectious diseases, and later to give humans the cohesion necessary to form societies.

These enforcers still keep humans banded together, just against other humans. It’s known in debate as the appeal to ridicule fallacy, and it goes like this. “What that guy said is stupid. Are you stupid enough to believe him?” It doesn’t matter what he said, if you make it seem ridiculous, people are unlikely to examine it closely. Two good examples of it’s use are both found in the recent election; the Right mocking Obama for being a community organizer without stopping to explain the job, and the Left mocking McCain for his age, as if living is inherently silly.

Lastly, fight or flight.

This single instinct has caused more bloodshed than any other, if not the most overall. However, the same reaction that leads to war can sell you cars, or make you take sides.

Human instinct always boils down to two choices. It is an inevitable conclusion, proven time and time again. Of course, any person who stopped to consider options in the past was quickly devoured by tigers, and it still helps individuals today in dangerous situations, but it’s just too easy not to abuse it. Any human can be influenced to a decision by presenting two options, then applying stress or hinting at danger until they decide. It divides humans into opposing groups, and has since we achieved some small amount of control over our peers. You immediately return to the limbic system of the brain, a basic and primitive part, for immediate decisions.

According to this philosophy, if you’re not constantly generating positive brain waves, you’re dooming yourself to a life half-lived, and you deserve whatever hardships may come your way (obviously, as you’re the one who psychically invited them in).

Read more

On my other blog, I’ve done an overview of the H1N1 virus and vaccine.

Summary:

The “pandemic” H1N1 (aka “swine flu”) is a very serious strain of flu. It is separate from the standard seasonal flu and to be protected for both you have to vaccinate from both. The actual effects are similar to the normal flu, which kills about 36000 people a year. The expected combined deaths of seasonal flu (3 strains) and H1N1 is about 65000 deaths. The H1N1 vaccine has been shown to be as safe and effective as the normal seasonal vaccine that people take yearly.

I have not been on youtube for awhile.  Just look at all the good things I miss.   Thanks Thunderfoot.

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The conceit of deceit (The Economist):

YOU are deciding between two magazines to read. The one you choose just happens to feature photos of women in very small swimsuits. But you do not, you claim, pick that particular magazine for the bathing beauties; it happens to have more interesting articles, or better coverage of copper mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You will say this even in the midst of a lab experiment that has been set up so that the only possible difference between the two magazines is the presence (or absence) of swimsuits.

Such was the finding of Zoë Chance, a doctoral student, and Michael Norton, a marketing professor, both at Harvard Business School. The pair were investigating how people justify “questionable” behaviour (Mr Norton’s word) to themselves after the fact. They asked 23 male students to choose between two sports magazines, one with broader coverage and one with more feature articles. The magazine which also happened to contain a special swimsuit issue was picked three-quarters of the time, regardless of the other content. But asked why they chose that particular magazine, the subjects pointed to either the sports coverage or the greater number of features—whichever happened to accompany the bikinis.

This may not seem surprising: the joke about reading Playboy for the articles is so old Ms Chance and Mr Norton borrowed it for the title of their working paper. But it is the latest in a series of experiments exploring how people behave in ways they think might be frowned upon, and then explain how their motives are actually squeaky clean. Managers, for example, have been found to favour male applicants at hypothetical job interviews by claiming that they were searching for a candidate with either greater education or greater experience, depending on the attribute with which the man could trump the woman. In another experiment, people chose to watch a movie in a room already occupied by a person in a wheelchair when an adjoining room was showing the same film, but decamped when the movie in the next room was different (thus being able to claim that they were not avoiding the disabled person but just choosing a different film to watch). As Ms Chance puts it: “People will do what they want to do, and then find reasons to support it.”

[...]

Via MindHacks:

I recommend reading the original study. It’s very accessibly written, and if you read nothing else, skip to page 9 (page 10 of the pdf file) and read the section entitled ‘Are People Aware That They are Justifying?’.

One of the key insights from psychology and one of the most practically applicable findings (particularly in clinical work) is that people’s explanations for why they do something are not necessarily a reliable guide to what influences their behaviour.

This also goes for ourselves and there are probably many areas in our life where we justify our actions, good or bad, with comfortable, plausible, fantasies.

Links:

• The conceit of deceit (The Economist)
• I only read it for the articles (MindHacks)
• “I read Playboy for the articles”: Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences (HBS Working Knowledge)
• “I read Playboy for the articles”: Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences Full Working Paper Text (PDF)

In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing and to keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose, and in the end, we get it all. Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro), Casino

Blackjack is the only fair game in the casino. It’s the only game where you don’t expect a net loss after repeated play. Ever other game will cost you money in the long run. Take roulette for example. For any bet the expected earnings is negative. If you make the same bet over and over and add up what you have at the end you will always find that you have lost money. Therefore, if the casino keeps you playing, they will eventually win your money. Its statistically inevitable.

I came across a “strategy” to win at roulette that I wanted to discuss. A quick google search will reveal that this strategy is everywhere and some pages offer some discussion as to why it is supposed to work. The strategy is as follows:

Now, before any of you go running to an online casino to win big money consider yourself warned: This strategy does not work. The flawed reasoning behind the strategy is simple. A progressive series of losing numbers is increasingly unlikely and by continually betting on the red you are essentially betting on the change of such a series occurring. Since that chance is increasingly small your probability of winning the next round in the series approaches one.

The problem with this logic is two fold. The most serious of these errors is that the roulette wheel has no memory of what occurred in the previous round. A bet on red has a 18/38 = 47.37% of winning regardless of what occurred in the past. There is a probability that is approaching zero but it’s the probability that a specific sequence occurs in a particular order. The sequence “black, black, black, black, black, red” is just as likely as the sequence “black, black, black, black, black, black” which is also just as likely as the sequence “black, red, black, red, black, black” or any other specific sequence of six outcomes. (Here i have neglected the difference between black/red and loss/red, which produces slight difference in the probabilities but does not change the discussion appreciably.) However, the probability of any of these three is approaching zero as the length of the sequence grows. What drives the probability to zero is the fact that the number of possible sequences is growing exponentially.

The second flaw in the logic is that the strategy ignores the fact that you have to have enough money to cover the geometrically increasing bet size. Everyone enters the casino with a finite amount of money to bet. Even if they allow themselves to mortgage their lives there is still a finite amount of money from which to draw. Since the probability of 5 loses and a win is a little less likely as 6 loses, the odds are, that next bet is going to cost you a lot. If you continue to play you will eventually hit a sequence where you cannot afford to bet the increased amount and collect your net dollar. And what is worse is that that final bet will wipe you out financially.

To make this more concrete I decided to model the strategy numerically by simulating repeated plays of a game of roulette. Starting with some initial pot size, the program will play the outlined strategy above. However, once the pot size hits zero or less, the pot size is set to zero for the remainder of the simulation – once you have lost all your money it stays lost. I then repeat this process thousands of time and average the size of the pot after n bets to obtain the expected pot size at the nth bet. The results are plotted below as a percent of the initial pot size.

The red, green, blue and black lines correspond to initial pot sizes of 100, 200, 300 and 400 dollars.  The results are striking and the strategy clearly fails.  Even for the large pot sizes the player is broke, on average, before 5000 pays have been made.  Furthermore, the player expects to begin losing money immediately.  This is steaming from the fact that a red bet has a negative expectation value and geometrically increasing your bet to cover your loses doesn’t change this fact.

The reason the larger pot sizes result in a slower rate of loss is because the initial bet of one dollar was used for each of the cases.  As a result, the player is betting a smaller percent of the pot per turn and thus the rate of loss is slowed.  If you scale the initial dollar bet accordingly all of these curves would fall on one another, as shown below.

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Seguimos hablando del crecimiento económico.

Recapitulando un poco lo descrito en el anterior artículo.

¿Qué es el crecimiento económico?

El crecimiento económico es un término que designa el aumento de la renta o el valor de bienes y servicios finales producidos por una economía (generalmente un país) en un determinado período de tiempo.

Es decir, que el crecimiento es una medida del bienestar de la población de un país o región económica y del éxito de las políticas económicas que en él se realicen.

Ello implica que se supone que un elevado crecimiento económico es beneficioso para el bienestar de la población, es decir, que un elevado crecimiento económico sería un resultado deseado tanto por las autoridades políticas como por la población de un país.

Por eso están toooodo el día los economistas y jerifaltes del gobierno y de la administración obsesionados con el “crecimiento económico”.

En términos económicos el crecimiento económico se refiere, básicamente, al incremento porcentual del Producto Interno (o Interior) Bruto (PIB) de una economía en un período de tiempo.

El PIB se utiliza como medida y es muy importante porque es una forma más o menos empírica de CUANTIFICAR el aumento (o disminución) del nivel de vida de los habitantes de un país. Que sirve para ver si va bien o mal la Economía de un país a grandes rasgos, vaya.

Por eso están toooodo el día los economistas y jerifaltes del gobierno y de la administración obsesionados con el “aumento del PIB”, sí, otra vez. Que si ha subido un 3%, que si ha bajado una décima en Abril, o ha aumentado dos décimas en Agosto… porque esa es una medida más ó menos tangible… de lo bien que va la Economía y de lo mucho (o poco) que vamos a mejor. El que un país tenga un índice de PIB negativo es un auténtico drama. Significa que está yendo para atrás como los cangrejos, que su gente es más pobre que en el periodo anterior (en líneas generales), y que tanto la Economía como el país, van mal… o van objetivamente PEOR que antes. El que un país tenga ese numerito del PIB en positivo significa que las cosas van bien… y muchos economistas os dirán que cuanto más alta esa cifra en positivo, tanto mejor va el país (en líneas generales).

Cuidado, insisto en que:

-Esa cifra es una medida objetiva pero que no mide TODO lo que sucede en el país. A lo mejor ese país crece a velocidad de crucero como China, pero su gente las está pasando putas bajo un régimen dictatorial. Lo que mide es el aumento de la riqueza y del nivel de vida en general de un periodo de tiempo a otro.

-Que un país crezca a mayor ritmo no significa que sea MÁS rico que otro: sólo significa que es más rico con respecto a sí mismo desde el periodo anterior. China crece en torno a un 8%, y Gran Bretaña en torno al 3% de PIB (es un país muy desarrollado, y ya no puede crecer TANTO como lo hacía antes, mientras que en China está casi todo por hacer), pero eso no significa que China sea más rica que Gran Bretaña. Aún le quedan muchas habichuelas que comer para que toda su población viva como un británico medio del año 2008.

-Los chinos llevan aumentando su PIB monstruosamente desde hace unas décadas. Los chinos de hoy viven, en líneas generales, mucho mejor que los chinos de 1949. A eso se refiere el PIB. Cuidado: a costa de mosntruosos desequilibrios también, claro. Ya le dedicaré un artículo a eso en exclusiva.

Obviamente, ese “crecimiento” del PIB o ese “crecimiento económico” a secas, que supuestamente nos trae la mejoría en nuestras condiciones de vida, no sale de la nada, surge de la elaboración de las cosas que utilizamos para mejorar nuestra vida.

¿De dónde salen las cosas que hacen mejorar nuestra vida? ¿De dónde salen nuestras viviendas, nuestra mejor alimentación, nuestros medios de transporte, nuestros libros, nuestro ocio y nuestra internet?

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De los recursos.

El “recurso” es un concepto muy amplio, ya que es el conjunto de elementos disponibles para resolver una necesidad o llevar a cabo una empresa.

Estos recursos adoptan numerosos aspectos: minerales (hierro, cobre, aluminio…), vegetales (madera y cultivos para la alimentación), agua, energéticos (carbón, petróleo, etc.). Pero también pueden ser recursos “humanos”, como el trabajo y la inventiva humana: un martillo no se fabrica él solo a partir de la madera y del hierro disponible en la Naturaleza, hace falta quien lo diseñe y lo fabrique (un humano).

Insisto en la importancia de que no os engañen. Muchos conspiranoicos y radicales, y muchos de los que no tienen ni PUTA idea de Economía (y aún así se ponen a hablar como si supieran), os dirán que el crecimiento económico es peligroso, o está comprometido, o que nos dirigimos al apocalipsis, etc., porque “el crecimiento económico acaba con nuestros recursos”. Y ahí se quedan. Y no concretan o no especifican o no saben que LOS RECURSOS NO SON SÓLO COSAS “FÍSICAS”.

Me explico: los recursos que mueven nuestra Economía (y nuestro crecimiento económico) no es sólo el agua, la comida y la energía. También lo es el trabajo y la capacidad inventiva humanas. Esas cosas TAMBIÉN son “recursos”, que hacen que tengamos “nuestras cosas”. Ahora lo veremos más adelante con más detalle.

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Los recursos, en general, tienen tres características básicas:

-Su utilidad (la utilidad que NOSOTROS le demos a ese recurso).

-Su cantidad.

-Su utilidad en función de lo que sirve para fabricar otros recursos.

Es decir, un recurso “vale” o es considerado más importante, cuanto más útil es para nosotros, si hay más o menos de él (si hay menos, valdrá más), y si es útil “de por sí mismo”.

Como podéis ver, esas tres características no se circunscriben a cosas físicas. Son válidas para cosa físicas, como el agua, sí. Pero, por ejemplo, la capacidad inventiva o educación formativa de una persona es útil para nosotros, de por sí misma, y si hay pocas personas con esos conocimientos, esas pocas personas “valen más”.

Los recursos tienen varias clasificaciones, pero la que más nos interesa en este artículo sobre el “crecimiento” es la que los clasifica según su capacidad para renovarse:

-Renovables. Bosques, agua, aire, luz solar, cosechas.

-No renovables. Por ejemplo, el petróleo.

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Según cada teoría económica, podemos utilizar los recursos de una u otra manera, para poder optimizar el proceso de crecimiento económico, y lograr con ello, una más rápida, y eficaz mejoría en nuestro nivel de vida.

Estas teorías de “causas” del crecimiento económico se pueden clasificar en tres grandes grupos:

-El primero nos dice que la Economía crece porque los trabajadores tienen cada vez más “cosas” para poder transformar: más instrumentos para sus tareas, más máquinas, materias primas (hierro, madera, etc.), es decir, más capital (no confundir con el “capital financiero”, que es otra cosa). Para los defensores de esta idea, la clave del crecimiento económico está en la inversión. A más inversión, más crecimiento.

-El segundo grupo de teorías es el que dice que los trabajadores con mayores y mejores conocimientos son más productivos y con la misma cantidad de insumos (bienes consumibles utilizados en el proceso productivo de otro bien, como las materias primas) son capaces de obtener una mayor producción que los que no tienen esos conocimientos. La clave del crecimiento estaría pues, en la educación, que incrementaría el capital humano o trabajo efectivo. A mayor eficacia y preparación, más crecimiento.

-El tercer grupo de teorías nos dice que la clave está en obtener mejores formas de combinar los insumos, máquinas superiores y conocimientos más avanzados. Los defensores de esta respuesta afirman que la clave del crecimiento económico se encuentra en el progreso tecnológico. A largo plazo, el progreso tecnológico es necesario a fin de mejorar los niveles de vida, ya que no es posible aumentar las rentas indefinidamente mediante el trabajo, y el intento de añadir capital al proceso de producción constantemente no nos bastará (por cada inversión que hagamos, cada vez obtendremos menos beneficio). A mayor avance tecnológico, más crecimiento.

En general y en la actualidad, se considera que estas tres causas actúan conjuntamente en la determinación del crecimiento económico. Es una visión más amplia, más pragmática y correcta a mi juicio.

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¿Qué es lo “malo” del crecimiento económico?

Aparte de cuestiones éticas y de cambios sociales (como, por ejemplo, un aumento del individualismo) que el crecimiento económico genera (y de lo que no nos vamos a ocupar aquí, ya que aquí se habla de Economía), el principal problema del crecimiento económico es que:

-Para generar las cosas que hacen que mejore nuestro nivel de vida (lo bien que vivimos) el crecimiento económico emplea recursos y muchos de estos recursos no son infinitos ni renovables.

Que se agotan, vaya.

Como el petróleo.

Ahora mismo, por ejemplo, vivimos bastante bien gracias a que podemos mover nuestros traseros de un lado para otro con nuestros vehículos de motor de combustión fósil, cuando mi bisabuelo tenía suerte si podía ir en burro al pueblo de al lado. Pero… ¿eso va a ser siempre así? ¿En qué está fundamentada esa “mejora” de mi nivel de vida (mejor desplazamiento) con respecto a un periodo anterior (tiempos de mi bisabuelo)?

En una serie de recursos, uno de los cuales, el combustible fósil (el que más utilidad tiene al respecto de su uso), esto es, el petróleo, no es renovable.

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La visión apocalíptica, radical y conspiracionista de esta vertiente del crecimiento económico es que nuestros recursos se acaban porque crecemos demasiado, que consumimos por tanto, mucho, y vamos a terminar por gastarlos… hundiéndonos en el proceso y poco menos que yéndonos a la mierda por glotones, avariciosos y ansiosos por vivir una vida cada vez mejor, y más cómoda, etc. Una vez agotados los recursos, nos encontraremos en la miseria (o con un empeoramiento muuuuy considerable de nuestro nivel de  vida)… si es que sobrevivimos al apocalipsis que representará el fin de nuestra civilización, al no tener recursos que la sustenten.

Cuanto más alto el PIB, y cuanta más obsesión por aumentarlo (lo que refleja el aumento de nuestro nivel de vida), tanto más refleja que nos estamos “comiendo a bocaos” el planeta. Cuando más crecemos, tanto más es porque hemos empleado una cantidad cada vez mayor de recursos, ¿no?

Y estamos abocados a este fin especialmente con nuestro cada vez más ansioso nivel de vida, que sólo busca crecer y crecer, en busca de mejorarlo y de vivir cada vez mejor.

Porque, encima, como remate de los tomates, estamos creciendo a más velocidad AHORA que los recursos son cada vez más escasos. Como el petróleo, que cada vez está más solicitado por más gente que quiere vivir mejor (por ejemplo, ahora todos los indios y los chinos quieren desplazarse en coche). Es decir, cada vez crecemos (consumimos) más, y el recurso es cada vez, menos.

Según los conspiranoicos, es cuestión de muy poco tiempo, que acabemos por devorar o agotar nuestro propio planeta. Irremediablemente.

¿Por qué?

Porque dicen que “crecemos” económicamente (gastamos recursos) de manera desmesurada.
Porque crecemos exponencialmente y la existencia de nuestros recursos está limitada. Y, como mucho, nuestros recursos renovables tienen un crecimiento lineal. Pero no los no renovables no tienen ni eso.

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Y ahora, seguramente, muchos os estaréis diciendo… “¡Menudo plan! ¿Es eso cierto?”

No.

O, mejor dicho, no del todo.

Ahora mismo vamos a verlo detalladamente. Lo que viene a continuación es el análisis científico que la Economía hace de estas posibilidades catastróficas.

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Existen tres grandes grupos de teorías conspiranoicas o “radicales” en torno al crecimiento económico, por el alcance y dimensiones generales que le atribuyen al problema.

a) -Los más moderados dicen que a este ritmo de crecimiento exponencial (ahora veremos qué cojones es eso), vamos a acabar con los recursos no renovables, y que nuestro modo de vida se va a ver muy afectado por ello (por ejemplo, el fin del petróleo traerá una crisis económica de grandes proporciones hasta que podamos sortearla). Estos van medianamente bien encaminados.

b) -Otros dicen que el que esos recursos se acaben van a traer una crisis TAL que nos va a arrastrar a poco menos que la Edad de Piedra. Que no vamos a poder sortearla ni superarla, vaya, de tan grande que va a ser.

c) -Los más radicales dicen que da igual lo que hagamos, estamos condenados por sistema (que esto es una crisis sistémica, propia del sistema de crecimiento económico en sí, e inevitable en su misma naturaleza): que si somos muchos humanos en el planeta, que si todos queremos consumir como un estadounidense no hay recursos para que todos vivamos como ellos, que si para que haya un rico tiene que haber diez pobres, que los recursos se acaban, que ya no quedan más continentes por descubrir, que ya no hay más tierras para aumentar las cosechas que alimenten una cada vez mayor cantidad de población mundial, etc. Estos llegan a decir que estamos matemáticamente condenados.

Antes de proseguir, he de reseñar que estas teorías apocalípticas no son nuevas ni muchísimo menos. Vienen de hace siglos. En todas las épocas ha habido gente con visiones apocalípticas y radicales de este tipo, incluso en el ámbito académico que, de una u otra forma, ha vaticinado el fin de nuestra civilización…

…y aquí seguimos.

Y me congratula sobremanera el informaros que esas teorías ya se llevan postulando siglos, y que hace siglos que se demostraron falsas… o, mejor, dicho, tergiversadas.

Vamos a verlo con un ejemplo es-tu-pen-dí-si-mo, que es a la vez histórico, real, una demostración matemática, y una crítica científica rotunda a las visiones apocalípticas y conspiranoicas. De hecho, es que es lo primero que te enseñan en Economía (y en Matemáticas) para desmontar la teoría radical del crecimiento exponencial. Estamos hablando de…

.

La falsa predicción de la catástrofe malthusiana y el crecimiento exponencial.

Antes de nada…

¿Qué es un crecimiento exponencial?

y = a^x

Eso es lo que es, grosso modo: un número (una base) elevado a un exponente. Se le llama crecimiento exponencial a aquella progresión que aumenta por multiplicación de una cantidad constante llamada razón.

El crecimiento exponencial se produce cuando el ratio de incremento de una función matemática es proporcional al valor actual de la función (que es un múltiplo constante de la otra, vaya).

Le damos a a un número positivo distinto de 1 (porque sería absurda una progresión de base 1, ya que 1 elevado a cualquier número es 1). Por ejemplo, le asignamos a a un valor de 2, y dándole valores consecutivos a x (siendo x un valor entero, se entiende)…

Si x = 0, y = 1.

Si x = 1, y = 2.

Si x = 2, y = 4.

Si x = 3, y = 8.

Si x = 4, y = 16.

Si x = 5, y = 32.

…

Si x = 10, y = 1024.

Y así, sucesivamente. Como podéis ver, cada número de la solución (y) es el doble, esto es, la multiplicación por 2 de la anterior solución. Es una progresión geométrica.

¿Por qué dicen los radicales y conspiranoicos que el crecimiento económico es malo por ser “exponencial”?

Porque dicen que nuestro crecimiento económico es exponencial, mientras que el crecimiento de  nuestros recursos (por ejemplo, las cosechas), es como mucho, lineal.

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¿Qué es un crecimiento lineal?

Por ejemplo:

y = 50·x

Esto es…

Si x = 0, y = 0.

Si x = 1, y = 50.

Si x = 2, y = 100.

Si x = 3, y = 150.

Si x = 4, y = 200.

Si x = 5, y = 250.

…

Y así sucesivamente. Como podéis ver, cada número de la solución es el resultado de sumar el mismo número a la anterior solución (+50). Es una progresión aritmética.

Representados gráficamente, el crecimiento exponencial y el crecimiento lineal de nuestros ejemplos, quedaría así:

La línea roja dibujada en la gráfica refleja nuestro ejemplo de crecimiento lineal (forma una línea recta ascendente), y la verde, nuestro ejemplo de crecimiento exponencial, formando una línea curva ascendente cada vez más pronunciada (la azul es un ejemplo de crecimiento potencial cúbico, donde y = x³).

Como podéis ver, la línea verde acaba superando CON MUCHO a la roja, y cada vez más, y más, y más… Es decir, que nuestro crecimiento económico, que tiene carácter exponencial va mucho más rápido que nuestro crecimiento en producción de recursos que, en el mejor de los casos (recursos renovables), es lineal. Y en el caso de los no renovables, no hay aumento que valga: cuando se acabe, se acabó.

Resumiendo: acabaremos superando la producción de nuestros recursos.

Muchos de vosotros, los que tengáis más sentido crítico, os diréis… ¿pero eso se da de verdad?

.

Vamos a verlo con un ejemplo histórico, el de la llamada “catástrofe malthusiana”.

Robert Thomas Malthus fue un conspiranoico hijo de put… fue un señor inglés (cura anglicano, estudioso de las matemáticas y uno de los primeros economistas, y demógrafos) que vivió allá por finales del siglo XVIII y principios del siglo XIX (en plenos inicios de la Revolución Industrial).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

Este cabr… digo, este “individuo”, como estudioso de su época, pues como que se dedicó a “estudiar” a su manera, una de las cuestiones más en boga por entonces: la sostenibilidad de la sociedad.

Thomas Malthus ha pasado a la historia por ser de los primeros en explicar las consecuencias de un crecimiento exponencial y cómo eso afectaba a la sociedad y su Economía bajo la forma del…

…crecimiento de la población.

Su análisis descrito en su obra principal y más “influyente”, Ensayo sobre el principio de la población (1798), nos describe los peligros inherentes al crecimiento exponencial, principalmente aplicado al aumento de la población. Ese tipo dijo:

El poder de la población es infinitamente más grande que el poder de la tierra para sustentar al hombre.

La población, sin restricción, se incrementa en proporción geométrica. La subsistencia se incrementa sólo en proporción aritmética.

Y se quedó tan Pancho. Pájaro de mal agüero el hombre, ¿eh? ¿A quién os recuerda? ¿A los radicales y conspiranoicos de hoy en día, POR CASUALIDAD?

Según él pudo “constatar”, la población humana crece en progresión geométrica, mientras que los medios de subsistencia (se refería básicamente, a la alimentación, a las cosechas) lo hacen en progresión aritmética. A esa idea se la llamó “malthusianismo”.

Si recordáis bien, ESTE payaso conspiranoico (comentario número 3) llegó incluso a repetirme en los comentarios la misma teoría…

…la de que las “tierras se agotan”, sin saber que eso lleva refutado desde mediados del siglo XIX.

Malthus utilizó los datos que le llegaban del crecimiento poblacional en Estados Unidos, recién independizados, y de Gran Bretaña. Y veía o creía ver que la población no paraba de aumentar. Hablando mal y pronto, este tipo decía que como nos gusta follar mucho, que era inevitable tener cada vez más hijos, y los descendientes cada vez tenían más hijos, y así sucesivamente.

Pero las cosechas producen cantidades de alimentos limitadas. Más concretamente, decía que sólo con más nuevas tierras de cultivo se podría aumentar la cantidad de alimentos para una cada vez mayor cantidad de población, pero que daba igual lo que se hiciera… la población acabaría “pillando” en la carrera a la producción de comida (el mundo no tiene una cantidad infinita de tierras cultivables).

Según él, el resultado, que no era otro más que una muestra de la intervención divina… sería el hambre, la miseria, y el que la población se autorregulara, ojo al dato, señores… mediante la guerra (luchas por los recursos), las epidemias y las hambrunas… hasta que la población, una vez así mermada, volviera a “quedar por debajo” de la capacidad de creación de alimentos. Y vuelta a empezar. Un ciclo de lucha eterno, vaya.

Este hombre predijo (sí, sí, no os lo perdáis, que lo hizo, aunque no dio una fecha exacta, sino generacional) que cuando no hubiera suficiente comida para la población, se produciría una catástrofe por medio de la miseria, a fuerza de doblarse la población cada 25 años (edad de estar ya casado y de tener uno ó más hijos por la época), una estimación que él calificaba de “conservadora”. Según él esta catástrofe sólo podía evitarse sin recurrir a los “frenos positivos” de la guerra, plagas y enfermedades, mediante los “frenos preventivos” de la moral y la abstinencia sexual (lo llamaba “eliminar el vicio”, se nota que era cura, ¿eh? Pues él bien que tuvo tres hijos, el muy hipócrita). Nota cultural: los sacerdotes anglicanos pueden tener hijos.

Como podéis ver era un pesimista de tres pares de cojones, y un tipo muy amargado de la vida que veía las cosas muuuuuy negras. Según he vuelto a leer sobre él desde los tiempos en que lo hice cuando estaba la facultad, parece ser que no era mal tipo a nivel personal, pero las ideítas que se gastaba me hacen dudarlo. “Gracias” a este tipo, a la Economía se la acabó conociendo durante un tiempo como “la ciencia lúgubre”.

Para que veáis lo muy cabrón que llegó a ser, este “señor” de tendencias más que conspiranoicas, se OPUSO (sí, sí, se OPUSO) a la aplicación de leyes que aliviaran la penuria de los pobres en Inglaterra.

¡¡¡Toma ya!!!

¡Que se fueran reduciendo progresivamente las ya de por sí escasas ayudas a los pobres, porque aseguraba que eso iba en contra de sus intereses (los hacía perezosos) y que era inevitable el que la “palmaran” con la catástrofe del crecimiento poblacional que él vaticinaba!

Eso sí: no se oponía a la caridad cristiana privada. ¡Pero qué hombre más majo! ¡Un santo! ¿Por qué no lo canonizaron?

Este tío me recuerda a los neoliberales libertarianos de Ron Paul.

Qué peligro…

.

Bueno, a lo nuestro. Malthus, para demostrar su teoría, acabó desarrollando lo que se dio en llamar el “modelo de crecimiento malthusiano”. Nota: saltaos la explicación matemática, e id directamente al ejemplo si no queréis quebraros la cabeza mucho.

P (t) = P₀ · e^r/t

Donde P₀ = Población inicial, r = índice de crecimiento (también llamado “parámetro malthusiano”), y t = tiempo. Os recuerdo que e es una constante donde e = 2.71828182845904523536…

Expresado matemáticamente con una fórmula matemática genérica para que lo veáis más claro: una cantidad x depende exponencialmente de un tiempo t si…

x (t) = a  · b^t/r

…donde la constante a es el valor inicial de x,

x (0) = a

…y la constante b es un factor positivo de crecimiento, y r es el tiempo requerido por x para incrementarse en un factor de b:

x (t + r) = x (t) · b.

Si r > 0 y  b > 1, entonces x tiene crecimiento exponencial. Si r < 0 y b > 1, ó r > 0 y 0 < b < 1, entonces x tiene decaimiento exponencial.

.

Ejemplo… teniendo un millón de habitantes en un país, ¿a cuánta población llegaría ese país si su población se doblara (x2) cada 25 años en un siglo (100 años), como dijo el mismo Malthus?

Veeeeenga, a menear esas calculadoras, queridosss lectoressss.

x (t) = a · b ^t/r = 1 · 2 ^{t/(25 años)}

x (100 años) = 1 millón de personas · 2 ^{100 /(25 años)}

x (100 años) = 1 · 2 ⁴ = 16 millones de personas.

Bueno, pues Gran Bretaña tenía de población en tiempos de Malthus (1815), alrededor de trece millones de habitantes.

http://www.uk.filo.pl/uk_history_9.htm

Los censos eclesiásticos de la época ya eran bastante fiables. Eso nos da una estimación “malthusiana” de población para inicios del siglo XX (cien años más tarde, durante los que no hubo guerras dentro del país ni hambrunas ni plagas significativas), de 208 millones de habitantes.

La población actual del Reino Unido es de 61500000 habitantes.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=6

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/fom2005/01_FOPM_Population.pdf

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¿Dónde falló Malthus?

En lo mismo en que fallaron (y llevan fallando desde entonces) todos los conspiranoicos, radicales, “simplistas” y gilipollas apocalípticos varios, y en lo que cualquier niño sabría responderle acertadamente a su profesora de Matemáticas:

“Seño, en esta cuenta me faltan datos”.

Se olvidó… de añadirle… más variables… a la ecuación, y de prever que las variables que él utilizaba no se iban a comportar siempre… como él decía.

.

¿Os acordáis de lo que dijimos cuando hablamos de los TRES tipos de teorías para optimizar el crecimiento económico? Unas decían que lo importante era tener más recursos, otra que tener mejor preparación, y las otras… que tener mejores avances tecnológicos. Pues en eso se equivocó Malthus: en no tener en cuenta TODAS las posibilidades del crecimiento económico.

Sólo tuvo en cuenta dos variables: población y capacidad de recursos (en un tiempo dado, claro). No tuvo en cuenta los cambios demográficos, sociales y culturales que lleva asociado un crecimiento económico.

Y, especialmente, no tuvo en cuenta los cambios tecnológicos que tuvieron lugar desde que realizó su “estudio”, y que ya debería haber notado, porque eran más que evidentes (Revolución Industrial).

.

Resumiendo mucho, mucho… Malthus no tuvo en cuenta:

-La transición demográfica (a mayor riqueza, los hijos ni se necesitan tanto ni se valoran sólo como fuerza productiva): se tiende a tener menos hijos.

http://club.telepolis.com/geografo/poblacion/regmoderno.htm

http://www.eumed.net/cursecon/2/transicion.htm

http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/geography/Demotrans/demtran.htm

La ONU calcula que para finales del siglo XXI, la población mundial entrará en caída, como sucede en los países “ricos” en la actualidad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population#Forecast

-Cambios sociales (mayor independencia de la mujer y toma de decisiones propias, lo que conlleva el decidir cuántos hijos se quiere tener). En esta área entra el concepto de planificación familiar.

http://www.who.int/topics/family_planning/en/

-Los cambios educativos. A mayor educación formal, se tiende a desear menos hijos, que se ven como una “carga” o un obstáculo para el desarrollo personal y la consecución de objetivos y metas personales. Se prefiere tener menos hijos y atenderlos mejor, en vez de tener muchos y no poder atenderlos tan bien, etc.

-Mejoras tecnológicas en el campo del control de la natalidad (desarrollo de los anticonceptivos, “revolución sexual”). Ya no se dependía sólo de la “moral” y de la abstinencia sexual, ¿eh, Malthus?

http://csp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/1/105

http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR9913.aspx

.

-Las mejoras tecnológicas en general y en la productividad en particular. La infravalorada por los conspiranoicos y radicales variable tecnológica.

Malthus no calculó que el crecimiento de la productividad (el de las cosechas, por referirnos a la variable que él citó como “clave”), DEJARA DE SER LINEAL YA DESDE SU TIEMPO.

La capacidad de producción de alimentos ha variado enormemente, volviéndose no sólo geométrica o exponencial, sino más exponencial que el aumento de población. Que la producción acabó superando, inesperadamente según sus predicciones, al aumento poblacional, vaya.

La clave ha estado en las mejoras tecnológicas.

En los tiempos de Malthus (principios del XIX) se producía de una forma muuuucho menos eficiente que la de hoy en día. En la actualidad nuestras semillas seleccionadas son increíblemente resistentes a plagas y efectos meteorológicos, y utilizamos medidas que aseguran las cosechas sí ó sí: fertilizantes (que se pueden fabricar), insecticidas, técnicas de riego mejoradas, cosechadoras y mecanización del campo (que impiden que se pudra o se pierda la cosecha, recogiéndola a tiempo), financiación y subvención agraria, etc.

Fue la llamada “Revolución Verde”.

http://wparks.myweb.uga.edu/ppt/green/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_revolution

https://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19871/

Países como India, cuya enorme cantidad de población hacían creer a muchos autores, como el neomalthusiano Paul R. Ehrlich, en su libro La explosión demográfica (1968)…

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12166078/Population-Bomb-Revisited

…que nunca podría alimentarse a sí misma, se declaró autosuficiente gracias a las mejoras en cultivos propiciadas por la introducción de semillas resistentes, a mediados de los años 70, por parte del gobierno y de la emprendedora comunidad sikh. Obviamente, los economistas y demógrafos todavía están riéndose de las predicciones apocalípticas del señor Ehrlich (y de otros discípulos “neomalthusianos”) a mandíbula batiente.

A título personal, como ecologista, no estoy de acuerdo con algunas (bastantes) de las llamadas “mejoras de la Revolución Verde”, pero de eso ya trataré en otro momento. Esté de acuerdo con ella en todo o no, ha sido un elemento determinante de la Historia de la Economía mundial, y eso he de reseñarlo.

Como podéis ver, las predicciones malthusianas y neomalthusianas han fallado estrepitosamente desde que se empezaron a formular allá por principios del siglo XIX… y siguen fallando, y cada vez que le ponen una fecha tope a nuestro posible descalabro poblacional… la vuelven a cagar miserablemente. Llevan prediciendo el fin del mundo (en términos demográficos) desde 1798. Y no se cansan de fallar, por lo que se ve.

¿Por qué es eso así? ¿Por qué fallan tanto?

Porque hay que tener en cuenta el mayor número de variables posibles, NO SÓLO UNA O DOS, que es lo que me suelen hacer los conspiranoicos y radicales (entre ellos los neomalthusianos) para así hacer valer sus teorías y predicciones apocalípticas (predicciones que, para colmo, luego no se cumplen) y vender sus libros ante un público “morboso” y amante del pesimismo. Los recursos no son sólo lo que ellos dicen que son los recursos:

La inventiva humana, expresada en el avance tecnológico, TAMBIÉN ES UN RECURSO A TENER EN CUENTA.

Y el no reconocer eso es un fallo matemático y económico de niño pequeño (más bien, una falacia matemática). Esta es una de mis críticas (y una de las básicas que realiza el mundo científico) a los autores radicales y gritones que no buscan más que la notoriedad y el poner el futuro negro como el carbón… y sin soluciones.

Algunos de estos cambios, Malthus no podía preverlos porque se produjeron después de su muerte… pero les recuerdo a los conspiranoicos y radicales que siguen defendiendo esas teorías malthusianas apocalípticas, como a ESTE PAYASO del comentario número 3…

…que ELLOS no tienen esa excusa porque todo eso YA se sabe y YA se ha estudiado y comprobado más que de sobras.

.

No es que el futuro sea de color de rosa ni mucho menos. No quiero transmitir eso desde este espacio de reflexión y transmisión de conocimiento que es mi pequeña página web. El futuro se presenta incierto, de eso… “no hay duda”. Lo que criticamos las personas que tenemos (o creemos tener) un par de dedos de frente es la manifestación de teorías apocalípticas y escatológicas… que no tienen base CIENTÍFICA, y aún así PRETENDAN tenerla.

Y que, encima, no aportan soluciones o no aportan soluciones FACTIBLES y reales a los problemas que de verdad sí que nos aquejan.

Sabiendo como sabemos CUÁL es la solución (mejoras teconológicas y avances sociales)… en vez de MENTIR y de asustar con esas mentiras (la mayor parte de las veces para provecho personal del que transmite esas teorías)… hay que motivar y luchar por mejorar.

Por ejemplo… ¿cómo acabar con la dependencia del petróleo, que es un recurso no renovable, del que dependemos en gran medida para nuestro crecimiento económico y desarrollo humano y que no hace más que causarnos problemas (contaminación, cambio climático, etc.)?

Sustituyendo esa fuente de energía por otra renovable, limpia y eficaz, destinando como sociedad que somos todos los recursos posibles a investigar y desarrollar alternativas… cuanto antes mejor. Como se hizo en su día… luchar e investigar por tener mejores medios de producción agrícola, desterrando el hambre de grandes zonas de la Tierra (y tenemos que seguir en ello, que aún hay mucho que mejorar).

Y por eso es por lo que hay que luchar… para que esas teorías apocalípticas acerca de que el fin de nuestra civilización se va acabar cuando se termine esa fuente de energía, no se cumplan, y podamos seguir viviendo y creciendo a un ritmo acorde a nuestras necesidades.

.

Y algunos estaréis pensando… “bueno, vale, ¿y entonces todo lo que dicen los conspiranoicos y radicales es falso? ¿Todo va bien y estupendamente? ¿No afecta la escasez de recursos?”

Por supuesto que afecta y que no todo lo que dicen los radicales es para desecharlo a la basura de primeras sin examinarlo. Como bien se dice en la facultad de Ciencias de la Información… “a los amantes de las teorías de la conspiración hay que oírlos, pero no escucharlos… por si acaso aciertan por casualidad”.

Pero eso… lo trataremos en otro artículo.

Hasta pronto.

Io, Spaghettovolante, nei favolosi anni '70. All'età di 6 anni.

Su La Repubblica del 10 novembre era presente un inserto Salute dedicato all’omeopatia e ad altre terapie alternative complementari. Premetto che non l’ho letto perché non ho comprato il giornale e perché sono troppo pigro per andare in emeroteca, ma indizi del contenuto si possono trovare anche sul sito del quotidiano.

http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica?query=omeopatia&view=archivio

che infatti restituisce questo risultato:

Omeopatia & Co. dove la medicina complementare può funzionare (10 novembre 2009, pag. 29, sezione: SALUTE)

noto poi due trafiletti tra il tragico e il patetico che lodano l’uso dell’omeopatia come coadiuvante delle terapie tradizionali e del vaccino per l’influenza A.

Ne riporto uno, per intero, perché contiene un riferimento preciso a un prodotto di cui parlerò nel sermone seguente (che a questo punto si imponeva).

da http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2009/11/10/omeopatia-prevezione-dell-influenza-insufficienza-renale.html

Mara Zuri e-mail Assumere oscillococcinum per prevenire l’ influenza e nella fase acuta, può avere controindicazioni con un’ insufficienza renale modesta? â-DOTT. ELIO ROSSI Responsabile Ambulatorio Omeopatia Asl 2, Lucca Non esiste a mio parere nessuna controindicazione all’ uso di Oscillococcinum, in una persona affetta da insufficienza renale modesta, naturalmente alle dosi e con le modalità abitualmente consigliate. Mi pare, anzi, che non sovraccaricare il rene usando medicinali omeopatici in alta diluizione, quando possibile, sia una dimostrazione di molto buon senso. - A CURA DI ELVIRA NASELLI

Il titolo del sermone enfatizza il fatto che ogni volta che si dice la verità sull’omeopatia (e per verità intendo carta canta), si viene immediatamente bollati come servi delle multinazionali, oscurantisti, fascisti e chi più ne ha più ne metta.

Ma come pastafariano, io mi devo preoccupare solo di seguire i Condimenti. So che lassù un vulcano di birra mi attende accanto a una fabbrica di spogliarelliste.

Posso tranquillamente fare questo lavoro sporco, che per di più è abbastanza divertente.

Cominciamo

Dunque dunque dunque…qual’è il modo più diplomatico con cui posso definire l’omeopatia?

Pseudoscienza?

Truffa?

Fantamedicina?

Medicina voodoo?

o semplicemente incommensurabile stronzata baggianata?

Sia come sia, occorre fare un pochino di chiarezza: l’omeopatia non è (come alcuni pensano) il curarsi con le erbe. In realtà, anche quando prendete un’aspirina vi state curando con le erbe, e moltissimi farmaci contengono principi attivi scoperti nel mondo vegetale, ma senza voler essere troppo pigna in culo, diciamo che curarsi con le erbe vuol dire sfruttare un principio attivo che non sia di sintesi, cioè che sia estratto direttamente da una parte della pianta, o utilizzando la pianta stessa.

L’omeopatia è invece prendere una certa sostanza e diluirla. Poi diluirla ancora. E ancora. E ancora. Ma il passaggio più cruciale di tutta la lavorazione è la dinamizzazione, che è un modo figo per dire che le fiale devono essere agitate ben bene. Il “medico” tedesco Samuel Hahnemann che fondò l’omeopatia determinò una scala della diluizione: una diluizione 2C si ottiene prendendo la sostanza e diluendola in 100 parti di acqua, poi da questa diluizione viene prelevata una dose e la si diluisce ulteriormente in 100 parti di acqua. A questo punto avrete la quantità di sostanza di partenza diluita in 10.000 parti di acqua.

Ma per un omeopata una potenza 2C è una sciocchezzuola, infatti un “rimedio” omeopatico comune, l’Oscillococcinum (TA-DA! Ricordate il trafiletto?), ha una potenza 200c, cioè ci sarebbe una parte di sostanza in 100²⁰⁰ parti di acqua. Il condizionale è dovuto al fatto che alla fine della diluizione nella vostra fialetta non ci sarà nemmeno una molecola. Lo dice una elementare costante della chimica, cioè il numero di Avogadro.

da http://www.cicap.org/new/articolo.php?%20id=100040

Ora si sa che una grammomolecola di qualunque sostanza contiene un numero di Avogadro N di molecole, pari a 6.022 . 10²³

E’ facile fare qualche calcolo; consideriamo per semplicità una sostanza con peso molecolare pari a 100 (per es. CaCO₃). Un grammo di essa in 100 mL di soluzione, quindi alla 1CH ) contiene 6.022 x 10²¹ molecole. Una diluizione 2CH conterrà 10^-2 grammi e 6.022 . 10¹⁹ molecole. Una diluizione 11CH conterrà 10^-20 grammi e 6.022 x 10 molecole. Una diluizione 12CH (attenzione!) conterrà 10^-22 grammi e 0.6022 molecole. Nei 100 mL non resta nemmeno una molecola. Se ora si continua (fino alla 30C e oltre) si diluirà dell’acqua con altra acqua.

Per fortuna che c’è la dinamizzazione (o energizzazione): cioè il passaggio in cui si le fiale vengono agitate. Hahnemann, vissuto prima che il numero di Avogadro venisse accettato, pensava che questo passaggio servisse ad attivare l’ “energia vitale” della sostanza. Ora, i ricercatori Gyro Gearloose e Ludwig von Drake della Duckburg University*, hanno concluso che invece la dinamizazzione sia fondamentale per la attivare la “memoria dell’acqua”: l’acqua mantiene il “ricordo” della sostanza che vi viene disciolta dentro (e che alla fine del ciclo di diluizioni scompare).

Fu Jacques Benveniste a proporre questa soluzione (haha) per aggirare la costante di Avogadro in un suo studio pubblicato su Nature.

Ebbene si, Nature ha pubblicato uno studio dove si afferma l’efficacia dell’omeopatia. Il fatto viene ovviamente sbandierato a destra e a manca su ogni sito pro- voodoo omeopatia

Quello che dimenticano di riportare, è la storia per intero: l’editor di Nature John Maddox acconsentì alla pubblicazione dopo aver concordato che sarebbe stato possibile costituire una commissione ad hoc per indagare sull’esperimento di Benveniste, e quindi fugare ogni dubbio sulla sua validità.

Non solo Benveniste venne in seguito all’indagine sbugiardato senza possibilità di appello (tutto venne documentato accuratamente), ma spuntarono inequivocabili indizi che si fosse cercato di mettere a segno una vera e propria FRODE. Ma il team di Jacques aveva fatto i conti senza l’oste: James Randi. A questo link è riassunta la vicenda, una lettura estremamente interessante.

http://www.brainmindlife.org/benveniste.htm

Qui un documentario, purtroppo in inglese, ricostruisce l’indagine del team di Maddox e testa (di nuovo) l’omeopatia.

Mi spiace, ma non ho finito.

E’ certo che nella vostra fiala non c’è assolutamente nulla della sostanza di partenza, c’è semplicemente un po’ d’acqua e talvolta alcol e/o zucchero, ma questa sostanza di partenza che cos’era? Conteneva un principio attivo degno di questo nome?

No.

Hahnemann riteneva che le malattie si potessero curare seguendo la “legge dei simili”. Per curare un malato, bisognava somministrare una sostanza che normalmente induceva i sintomi tipici di quella patologia, ovviamente diluita. Se volete curare l’influenza, dovete dare al malato una sostanza che provoca sintomi influenzali. L’assonanza col vaccino è solo apparente, questa legge dei simili è totalmente campata in aria.

Prendiamo un farmaco medicinale rimedio omeopatico, a caso: l’Oscillococcinum (dove ho già letto questo nome? Ah si, su La Repubblica. Vedi sopra), popolarissimo rimedio per i sintomi influenzali.

La sua storia è tragicamente comica (link). Un medico francese, Joseph Roy, si trovò suo malgrado nel bel mezzo della più grave pandemia dei tempi moderni, cioè l’Influenza Spagnola, che devastò il mondo facendo più vittime della I Guerra Mondiale che si stava svolgendo (per la serie, le sfighe non vengono mai sole).

Analizzando il sangue dei malati, Roy vide al microscopio un batterio “vibrante” a cui diede il nome di Oscillococcus. Roy ritenne poi di aver trovato lo stesso batterio in persone affette da altre patologie, concludendo infine che l’infame batterio causava una varietà di malattie che andavano dal cancro, agli orecchioni, ai reumatismi. Volendo usare il batterio per farne una specie di vaccino che dopo neanche avevamo il mal di denti, Roy si mise a cercare, finché non trovò quello che cercava nel fegato e nel cuore della dolcissima (e tenerissima) Anatra muschiata (Cairina moschata)

"cresci bene che ripasso" disse l'omeopata

Il “principio attivo” (notare virgolette) è quindi sostanzialmente carne frollata di anatide, ma è molto più cool dire che si tratta di Anas Barbariae Hepatis et Cordis Extractum (le convenzioni della sistematica dei viventi sono un optional per l’omeopatia).

Quanto costa una confezione di pillole di Oscillococcinum, vale a dire palline di zucchero miracolosamente bagnate da acqua con la memoria dell’estratto di carne di una specie di anatra, dove un medico negli anni 20 credette di vedere al microscopio ottico in grande quantità un batterio vibrante, la cui esistenza non è stata mai confermata da nessun batteriologo?

Se E-bay, compresa spedizione, poco meno di una trentina di euro.

Concludo con il lavoro sporco embeddando un geniale sketch del duo Mitchell & Webb, dal loro show That Mitchell and Webb Look, già proposto in un altro sermone.

RAmen

*con mille scuse a Carl (inchino) Barks

I have posted a new entry on my new blog devoted to these things (so my programmer readers don’t have their RSS reader unnecessarily flooded with large texts about things they don’t care about). This one is about energy drinks, specifically whether or not they are bad for you. I don’t really make any attempt to show their benefits or efficacy.

Briefly: I can find no evidence that popular energy drinks are any worse for you than other soft drinks.

Available here:http://whatdoesthesciencesay.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/energy-drinks/ and here: http://www.40two.org/What_the_science_says_about_Energy_drinks.pdf

I am looking to create a more collaborative way of doing all these if any interest turns up… but right now I think most of this is for my own amusement

Cheers.

TAPS members, Steve and Tango spin off their own show.   So far it seems like it might give us folks learning as we go a few tips to up our game.

This this 1st episode the kids get a beat down for telling half truths or not fessing up to making a mistake.   The big issue was that if a person doesn’t just address stuff at face value, then they are hard to trust.

Also one poor fella learned a great lesson.  Steve was spinning a bit of a tale about a smoke smell, and this guy was caught up in the power of suggestion, and instead of really being objective he nodded enthusiastically along.   Its important to think for ourselves and say when our experience differs.

Catch the episodes online at:

http://www.syfy.com/gha/

Its like a free course in Ghost Hunting

Our role as investigators is to well, INVESTIGATE.   There are professional people that investigate and collect evidence as part of their daily job, like crime scene investigators, or CSIs.

They pay careful attention to collecting evidence in a way that can stand up to the barrage of a court rooms scrutiny.  We’re trying to collect evidence to show that paranormal things occur, which is a heck of a lot harder sell then say a murder scene, yet we do a real half ass job at evidence collection.

This is understandable, we’re just hobbyists and not professionals like a CSI would be, but I think there is plenty to learn.    A good starting point is the post from Whisper in the dark blog on Paranormal Forensics.

You can be rest assured this is gonna be something I plan to discuss on a regular basis assuming I have folks listening to me (grin)  From Fujis UVIR DSLRs to loss-less compressed audio.   Evidence collection is no joke, do what you can to be credible, it something we all can work on.