Argumentum ad connotationem (Wei's Neologisms #−2)

Why I am unimpressed by arguments that rely too heavily on emotive language:

"BART

Dad, I'll trade you this delicious doorstop for your crummy old Danish.

HOMER

(Trading) Done and done.

(Chuckles, then he realizes)

D'oh!"

– The Simpsons, S4E17 "Last Exit to Springfield"

Oxýmōrṓ

Evening Standard What happened when anti-FGM campaigner asked people in the street to sign a petition in favour of mutilating girls 28 October 2013 A Londoner who suffered female genital mutilation has warned that political correctness is hampering the fight to stamp it out after asking people to sign a fake petition in its favour.

Political correctness = oxymoron.

Moral relativism = oxymoron.

Economic warfare

Reuters Kerry: spying row shouldn't cloud U.S.-EU trade talks 5 November 2013 European concerns about alleged electronic eavesdropping by U.S. intelligence should not be allowed to cloud trade talks next week between the United States and the European Union, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday.

The US spying on its allies is not merely a security issue. In the setting of trade negotiations, espionage carries potential analogous to criminal insider dealing, constituting an act of economic warfare.

Zoe's law

Wei Hong commented on ST’s link:

The Sydney Morning Herald Zoe's law 'misogyny', say NSW protesters 17 October 2013 Decriminalising abortion in NSW will be harder if controversial changes to the Crimes Act, known as Zoe's law, are passed, critics say.

Unlawful foetal loss is already covered under the definition of “grievous bodily harm,” which attracts a comparable penalty to the “Zoe's Law version 2” bill. Therefore, the proposed law serves no significant practical effect other than to advance a pro-life ideology.

(It is also interesting that Ms Donegan is campaigning for recognition of legal personhood for foetuses beyond 20 weeks gestation yet also identifies as being pro-choice. The potential discordance here can be rationalised by affirming Judith Jarvish Thomson’s “violinist” argument.)

First World reasoning

From debate on CY's wall:

POP 101 - Overpopulation is a myth  www.overpopulationisamyth.com A primer on the future of planet Earth

The "Overpopulation is a myth" website correctly argues the entire world population can fit within Texas while still having reasonable accommodation. It conveniently neglects to mention the glaring fact that one cannot actually stay alive in an accommodation without additional supporting land for agriculture, energy, and other basic resources. According to the 2010 Global Footprint Network data, while everyone could squeeze into Texas, it would require multiple earths to provide them with a Western standard of living. A single earth could provide a standard of living around that of Ghana (assuming no other species compete for the same resources), where according to 2006 World Bank data, more than half live on less than $2/day, and 90% live on less than $5/day.

The "Overpopulation is a myth" correctly argues that the world fertility rate is decreasing and could eventually reach sub-replacement levels. Unfortunately, by the above definition, overpopulation has already occurred and will continue to worsen over the upcoming decades. According to 2012 UN projections, overpopulation will improve after 2050, under the best-case scenario. Under the average-case scenario, it will not improve in the foreseeable future.

"Overpopulation is a myth" is a myth.

References

▪ Global Footprint Network - Data and Results 

▪ The World Bank - Poverty & Equity Data 

▪ United Nations - World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision 

Civil union myth

The Canberra Times Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron 22 October 2013 You cannot equate something that is essentially different, Monsigner John Woods writes.

Msgr Woods is incorrect in claiming that "same sex civil unions now afford couples the same rights as for married couples." Civil unions in Australia are only available in certain states and do not have federal recognition. This creates problems in areas including interstate, federal service and non-governmental sectors.

Slippery slope fallacy

Slippery slope arguments in isolation are equivalent to saying "you shouldn't eat any apples because if you ate 1000 a day, you would die."

Abortion loophole

Discussion on AL’s wall:

Herald Sun Doctor risks his career after refusing abortion referral 5 October 2013 A doctor risks being deregistered because he allegedly refused a referral for an Indian couple who wanted to abort a healthy unborn baby girl at 19 weeks, simply because they wanted a boy.

There exists a loophole in Victorian law. We do not allow sex selection during IVF, but then we allow sex selection after implantation. Countries such as China where sex selection is more common face growing social problems due to gender imbalance.

Critical savvy

Discussion on ST’s wall:

PRWeb UK Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ' 8 October 2013 Biblical scholars will be appearing at the ‘Covert Messiah’ Conference at Conway Hall in London on the 19th of October to present this controversial discovery to the British public.

While people commented on how silly the article is, a New Atheist friend said that such reinterpretation of old data is no different from what other religions and denominations do.

WH: Nevertheless, some interpretations remain better than others. Don't pay retail for two-bit (25 cents) conspiracy theories when they're actually a dime (10 cents) a dozen :p. Atwill's claim depicted on PRWeb (not actually a real news site but rather a press release service) is not only 8 years old, but far from the only supposed "discovery" that Christianity is fake.

The New Atheist friend repeated the aphorism that because humanity has been wrong about many other gods, it is no big deal to go one step further in disbelieving Christianity.

WH: That there are multiple secular theories on the origin of the universe, for example, does not translate into an argument that they must all be wrong.

Craig vs Krauss

A debate on ST’s wall following a public debate between Prof Lawrence Krauss and Dr William Lane Craig entitled “Is it reasonable to believe there is a God?”, which I was unfortunately unable to attend myself.

My friends said that Krauss was skilled in ridicule and rebuttal, arguing that science is the “only way to new knowledge” and challenging theists to give “a single example of a contribution to human knowledge that theology has provided in the last 500 years.”

Wei Hong: A major problem with public debates is that rhetoric stymies dialectic; winning the crowd rather than winning the intellectual argument.

Questions concerning any “way to new knowledge” and “reasonable to believe” are inherently those of epistemology, a field which demonstrably encompasses far beyond the hypothetico-deductive model alone.

Krauss' challenge to give "a single example of a contribution to human [scientific] knowledge that theology has provided in the last 500 years" is a glib but ultimately meaningless one, for it presupposes science and religion as dichotomous paradigms acting over an identical magisterium. 

In 1927, Georges Lemaître, priest and physics professor, building upon Einstein's theory of general relativity, proposed a cosmological model he described as “the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation.” This idea was met with ridicule by the scientific community, some of whom found its religious overtones unsettling. Today it is known by the perjorative name coined by its opponents, the “big bang theory.”

An atheist friend argued that science and religion are indeed dichotomous, based on his assumption that religion is uncritical acceptance of dogma that does not allow questioning.

Wei Hong: An argument, no matter how seemingly flawless, nevertheless rests upon its presuppositions. Also, one cannot hope to mount a meaningful polemic against a complex idea with only pop-culture assumptions and non-expert opinions. Contrary to popular preconception, the Bible actually advises people to not blindly believe everything they are told, but to test the truth of every word, including via empirical observation.

The atheist friend acknowledged that the Bible teaches us to “not take things for granted” and to “constantly question,” yet nevertheless added that religion requires unquestionable belief, and that “any religious people who believe otherwise” he would not consider to be “religious” but rather “agnostic.”

Wei Hong: It seems that you therefore do not consider the Biblical Christianity to be "religious." While I am not one to put much emphasis on labels, I will say that many Christians gladly share this sentiment of yours.

Quality of life, quality of death

ST shared a link via iOS:

26 July 2013

The Dying of the Light  www.washingtonpost.com The Drawn-Out Indignities of The American Way of Death

A disturbing and surprising read for me. Under Australian law, people have to right to decline treatments offered, but they do not have the right to demand treatments that are not appropriate. Conversely, doctors are not obliged to offer treatments that are considered futile. Regarding limitations of treatment, it is the responsibility of doctors to first decide what interventions will be offered in the event of deterioration. People can then decide that they want less than what is offered, but they do not have to right to demand beyond what is appropriate.

Despite the finite resources of the health system, the main role of treatment limitations is not to save money, but to not harm the patient; primum non nocere. Although death has become a more taboo topic since the days of Queen Victoria and Emily Dickinson, it remains an inevitable reality. When it is time, people should die peacefully, with dignity, and without unnecessary and prolonged suffering. Inappropriate resuscitation attempts are not only futile, but rob people and their loved ones of this "quality of death."

Therefore, if resuscitation is not medically appropriate, I do not ask people if they would want it, but tell them that it will not be attempted and why this is in their best interests. In this situation, the choice is not theirs, for while they have the right to decline what is offered, they do not have the medical training and experience (other than starkly unrealistic television portrayals of resuscitation effectiveness) to decide what treatments are appropriate to offer. It is unfair to burden people with decisions that should not be theirs and subject them to the risk of misplaced guilt, needlessly wandering in silence for decades after whether they "gave up on their loved one by pulling out too early."

Shadows of Pigovia

News.com.au Kevin Rudd axes carbon tax in favour of Emissions Trading Scheme  16 July 2013 Carbon tax to go by July 2014.

From a global perspective, carbon taxation is economically justified as greenhouse emissions constitute negative externalities. The market prices of goods and services that create such externalities do not reflect their true societal cost, resulting in their overutilisation and ensuing deadweight loss. To prevent a tragedy of the commons, Pigovian taxation is needed to correct for this market failure.

Compared to a simple carbon tax, an emissions trading scheme offers several advantages. A mandated carbon quantity rather than price allows for better control towards emission targets. The ability to trade emission permits allows reduction efforts to be redistributed to where their marginal cost is lowest, resulting in improved efficiency. However, depending on the execution, an emissions trading scheme is also more vulnerable to loopholes that undermine reduction efforts and even potentially lead to worsening of greenhouse emissions.

The first issue concerns the primary market for emission permits. Under the present implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, the predominant primary market is free allocation rather than auction. This practice carries the same disdvantages that lead to the failure of Marxism, for the practices of command economies cannot feasibly approach the allocative efficiency of free markets. Inevitable mismatches in allocations have resulted in windfall profits to some carbon emitters. This constitutes a subsidy for carbon emitters, an "anti-Pigovian" measure that exacerbates pre-existing negative externalities, leading to potential increased emissions.

The second issue concerns the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, where parties can offset their permitted carbon emissions by investing in emission reduction projects. This offers added flexibility and also corrects for positive externalities but carries numerous flaws:

• It is difficult to determine the suitable number of offset credits to award. For example, as carbon sinks, forests vary unpredictably in carbon capacity and are insecure as long-term storage. Meanwhile, forest planting itself releases emissions, and the presence of forests in some cases can actually worsen global warming due to increased solar absorption¹.
• It is difficult to determine the additionality of projects. Awarding offset credits for measures that would have been economically indicated anyway without the Kyoto Protocol consitutes a second anti-Pigovian subsidy for carbon emitters and leads to oversupply of carbon credits.
• Perverse incentives arise. Awarding offset credits for removing potent greenhouse emissions incentivises companies to produce more of those emissions in order to be paid to remove them. For example, the use of credits derived from fluoroform and nitrous oxide removal projects are now banned in the European Union and New Zealand due to systematic abuse. 

Even with an auction-only primary market and the removal of carbon offset mechanisms, there remains a third issue concerning the inherent price volatility of an emissions trading scheme. This invites secondary market agiotage, raising the carbon price and resulting in "inefficient taxation", where portion of revenue is paid to private speculators instead of the state. Furthermore, it is conceivable that the largest carbon emitters will hold an advantage on the secondary market due to information asymmetry. This effectively constitutes a third anti-Pigovian subsidy for carbon emitters.

An Australian transition to an emissions trading scheme offers potential advantages at the cost of potential disadvantages that may attentuate and even reverse any gains. The Opposition's Direct Action Plan is no palatable alternative to a carbon tax due to the inherent weakness in a command rather than market economy approach. An Australian emissions trading scheme should have an auction-only primary market. While I am not against limited use of temporary protectionism for easing economic transitions, I do not believe this is indicated here as we are transitioning from an existing fixed-price carbon tax rather than free carbon. A carbon offset mechanism should be avoided, as this has the largest potential for unfruitful complexity and counter-productive loopholes. The European Union trading scheme thus far has attracted criticism for being ineffective² and Australia must be wary of inheriting its failures.

References:

1. Kill J. Sinks in the Kyoto Protocol. Forest Ecosystem Research Network, 2001

2. Maher S. Europe's $287bn carbon 'waste': UBS report. The Australian, November 2011

Price of progress

The Age Want to kill fewer people? Go nuclear  11 July 2013 The record of deaths and diseases over the past 60 years shows nuclear power is safer than every other source of energy.

While I must admit a fondness for the counter-intuitive, after examining the figures¹ quoted in this article, I feel that the calculations contain a number of flaws. The 0.04 deaths per TWh for nuclear power was arrived by presuming 4000 Chernobyl-related deaths over 112000 TWh for the total extrapolated nuclear power generated between the Chernobyl disaster and 25 years into the future, over which time those deaths are expected to occur. Three problems immediately come to mind: 

• The 4000 Chernobyl-related deaths is a lower estimate, calculated from the effects on only the worst affected areas. Other studies² which consider a larger geographical area of contamination estimate up to 60000 excess deaths.
• The divisor of 112000 TWh is blatantly invalid as it assumes that there will be no further nuclear accidents (such as Fukushima) between the index year of 2005 and 2030. Instead, the deaths should be calculated at the time of their causation. The argument that these deaths are chronic and not presently attributable should not apply because the author has also used similar chronic deaths associated with air pollution to arrive at his figure for coal-related deaths.
• The author has only considered nuclear power deaths associated with the Chernobyl disaster itself, ignoring other deaths related to nuclear power, such as the Kyshtym disaster of 1957. Meanwhile, deaths for other power sources have been derived from accidents associated with mining and facility maintenance, whereas these figures have not been included in the nuclear power calculation.

After accounting for the issues above, one may arrive at a figure of over 1.4 deaths per TWh for nuclear power. While still a small figure compared to fossil fuels, the author's contention that nuclear power is significantly safer than renewable energy is no longer tenable.

References:

1. Wang B. Deaths per TWh for all energy sources: Rooftop solar power is actually more dangerous than Chernobyl. http://nextbigfuture.com, March 14, 2008.

2. Fairlie I, Sumner D. The other report on Chernobyl. http://www.chernobylreport.org, April 2006.

Pseudofluid dynamics

Wei Hong commented on CY’s link:

SmartMotorist.com The Physics Behind Traffic Jams c2008 “Boredom lead me to fantasize about the traffic being like a flowing liquid, with cars acting as giant water molecules.”

While traffic bears superficial resemblance to fluid currents, attempts to model traffic using fluid dynamics will be mathematically unfruitful as traffic has characteristics opposite to that of fluids. For example, consider that a given current of fluid across a pipe of varying radius will have the highest flow speed across the narrowest segments. For traffic, the reverse applies.

Plonk patsy

Wei Hong commented on ST’s link:

The Age It's only plonk if you look at the price tag 2 July 2013 Our grasp of wine’s class and worth is shaky. Several scathing studies suggest we are suckers for mystique, marketing and the price-tag driven power of suggestion.

Lay people aside, numerous studies have demonstrated that even wine experts are unable to distinguish between average and expensive wines in blinded tests.

Unintended consequences

Once upon a time in French Indochina, there was a rat problem, so the authorities offered a bounty for each rat caught and handed in. Unfortunately, this worsened the problem because the people were now incentivised to create rat farms. And so ideas that may sound good at first can lead to the opposite result intended.

ABC News ACTU wants $30 rise to minimum wage 27 March 2013 The Australian Council of Trade Unions is pushing for a $30 a week increase to the minimum wage.

"Minimum wage law" is a misnomer. The law cannot force someone to be hired in the first place, so in reality, the true minimum wage is irrevocably $0/hr. Therefore, minimum wage law does not so much ensure more money to society's poorest as it does outlaw all Australian jobs paying between $0.01/hr and $15.96/hr, that people could have otherwise freely entered into. When the state mandates a price floor for labour above the market equilibrium, supply become underutilised and deadweight loss ensues. Unemployment rises, with disproportionate preference towards the most vulnerable (this is why current laws allow lower wages for young workers, trainees, and workers with a disability).

As a parallel, consider some effects of varying the minimum wage throughout the week. The small business owner loses because they cannot afford to pay the weekend penalty rate. The worker who wanted to work on the weekend for less than the penalty rate loses because such employment is deemed illegal. The consumer loses because the business is therefore closed on weekends. If the above three main parties concerned are losing, who then is agitating for such legislation? By reducing the number of non-illegal jobs, the unions win by increasing the bargaining power of their own members.

Sensationalism

Forbes Wait, Did This 15-Year-Old From Maryland Just Change Cancer Treatment? 18 June 2012

A remarkable achievement for a 15-year-old, although no breakthrough in pancreatic cancer management, for most people do not understand biostatistics. While publication in a scientific journal appears to be pending, various online sources have described Andraka’s invention as “over 90% accurate.” Considering the prevalence of pancreatic cancer at 13.66 per 100000, even 99% sensitivity and specificity results in a positive predictive value is 0.0133 in the early detection setting. In other words, even if such a test says you have pancreatic cancer, there is a 99% chance that you actually don’t have it.

UPDATE: Four years after the article was published, I am finishing specialist training in medical oncology and Andraka’s invention has had zero impact on the management of pancreatic cancer.

Liberum veto

BBC News US Senate to vote on gun control on Thursday 10 April 2013 The US Senate is set to hold a crunch vote on Thursday on whether to debate a gun control law, as a conservative blockade of the bill began to splinter.

Allowing US senators to shout "Nie pozwalam!" to nullify the current debate, unless a cloture is successfully invoked, would achieve the same democratic effect as filibustering, only without the farcical amount of wasted time.

Wealth inequality

Debate on NK’s wall, where someone was arguing against the importance of reducing wealth inequality.

Wei Hong commented on NK’s link:

Youtube Wealth Inequality on America 20 November 2012 Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

One of the most common arguments against a more equitable wealth distribution is the idea that it will cause an overall harm to society through reducing individual incentive. The flaw in this idea is its contradiction with reality, with international studies showing that wealth equality is correlated with higher long-term growth.

While I agree that humans are not equal, and that it is equal opportunity rather than equal wealth that should be the key focus, the reality is that wealth inequality is intimately tied to opportunity inequality, for those who can barely fund their daily living do not have the surplus wealth to invest in subprime mortgage scams and LIBOR rigging. The golden rule of human rules: "Whoever has the gold makes the rules."

In these debates, too often people do not understand the difference between wealth redistribution and Marxist socialism. While capitalism is arguably an antithesis of the latter, it need not exclude the former.

http://singularity24601.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/socialism.html