Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Teaching the babies

In education and development there are various stages everyone passes through. Most do it steadily throughout their lives, maturing to a general extent maybe in their 30s-50s and then as their bodies decline so their wisdom and experience grow, and for example are no longer affected by offers of something for nothing or speculative scare stories from the media and politicians, as like each new generation, they have to learn by experience, and have learnt what is true and what is false. But this process never ends as the combinations are almost infinite, so it is a matter of what level you have got to. This level is adequate and will protect you against all but the worst surprises and new situations no one could really prepare for.

However, despite managing to pass degrees, raise families and earn a fortune, it means nothing regarding maturity. You can do all these things and still (as the papers report regularly) invest thousands in wine which doesn't exist, or help out a friend in dire straits abroad who turns out to be an African who has hacked their account. The greatest trap of all is the lure of authority.

Let me paint a picture. If you start with the Wizard of Oz, where using a microphone and massive set, a little old man convinced an entire land he was a powerful wizard, until at the end when the wall is torn down and the little cheating liar behind is exposed exactly for what he really is. Unfortunately this is a film and real life is not as tidy in its discovery of fraudulent behaviour, and sometimes the sheep being led by the nose are never sure the leader was really bad even when they have been deposed and tried for war crimes, they have developed Stockholm Syndrome and still have a place in their heart for Uncle Joe (Stalin) or the Great Chairman (Mao). These extreme examples require being programmed from birth, and should stand as examples to others of lesser ones in the west, where the tyranny is far more subtle, but as a result much harder for many to see through.

Every now and then we complete a mission where the wrongdoers are exposed, however long it takes, such as the Libor fixing and 23 year delay in exposing the fixed police statements ordered from the top at Hillsborough. A few people wake up, as some did after the Climategate hacked emails proved the great and good doctors were as confused over global warming as the politicians and public. But as long as the babies remain fooled and are in the majority lessons cannot be learned and wrongdoing cannot change. The innate trust in the authority of others is the key to that. The first lesson being that as children there comes a point around 10-13 when children realise their parents don't know everything. This usually comes as an initial shock, but then they realise firstly no one knows it all, and secondly to have some confidence in what they know themselves as well. It is a major stage in the process of maturing. When the odd pupil picks up a teacher for making a mistake, either quietly or openly, they lose confidence in their teacher's authority, but gain far more in their own. This is the key. Your own discretion must overrule literally every single other person. Why? Because sooner or later, two people of equal status will tell you opposing things. In the end who can you believe? You have to make your own efforts in research and work out which is more likely to be right, as people are people first and professionals second, hence doctors guaranteeing second opinions.

On the surface I know it sounds absolutely potty- how on earth is a lay person expected to know better than someone who has spent years studying a subject at college? But however complex and technical their work can be, they can still get sums wrong or get above themselves in their own ability to carry out their job. That is why we have lay juries and magistrates, fully qualified to judge the guilt or otherwise of every single criminal in Britain because they have eyes, ears and minds.

Therefore only a scoundrel hides behind their authority, and only a baby accepts it blindly, and refuses to acknowledge their own natural intuition. Until someone grows up they will simply allow anyone and everyone 'better' than them to take total advantage, as unlike brains ethics are not higher with intelligence, the cleverest and stupidest people are no more or less decent than anyone else, and hand power to an expert with no ethics and watch your back.

The two ways these people normally take advantage is blinding with science and making impossible claims. The first requires patience and effort to tease apart, but can normally done, as if in the end either the books don't balance or their peers disagree with them you can write them off as probably bogus, but the impossible claims break the rules of logic directly.

The best example is your long term weather forecast. The short term ones are bad enough, and if you pay them instead of getting the free ones you will see each is given a probability percentage. In America, especially inland, they are incredibly accurate, as they are a stable climate with little oceanic influence beyond the direct. In Britain the major hits are the exception, and it may just as well have hail, sun and rain in succession where none were forecast. Look deeper and you normally see however many raindrops are on the TV map it may be a 50-50 chance, ie you could have guessed it just as well. That is the easy end. Long term extends maximum 3-6 months, as being a complex chaotic system it simply is not prone to be predicted, and explains why every summer and winter for about the last five years our Met Office have got nearly every one wrong, but because some idiot still pays them to do it they carry on, but the results are of absolutely zero value as how could anyone change what they were doing months ahead on a completely general estimate, but they still do it every time.

Unless you are aware of these phenomena, behind some of the oldest teachings on the planet (eg 'know thyself' being the highest aim), you will get taken for a monkey, and worse still, become the 'useful idiots' working for these cheats supporting their utter bollocks and lies. Extending the principle, another motto is don't learn from your own mistakes if possible, but try and learn from others'. Given the preparation above, here is a test. The background being that after a vast rise in temperature predicted by the UN in 1990, we are now 80% below that spot, and now solar activity is reducing and the traditional (non CO2 driven) modellers are now coming up and noting this influence, while the modernisers (CO2 driven) are claiming all the fall is doing is masking the rise. Some have even said the pause may last another 30 years (which is another bogus guess, but is based on past regular cycles of that period at least), but the point being  we have been given three totally opposing predictions so we can only now use our own intuition as all the experts disagree so no one else is left but yourself.

Here is today's summary from the internet, and now armed with my tools how would you analyse it?


Will temperatures on Earth be dropping until the year 2100 to Little Ice Age levels, as Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, a scientist at Germany's Saarland University, predicted last week? Or will the temperatures only plunge until 2060, as Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of Russia's Pulkovo Observatory, recently predicted? Or has the cooling already begun, and might it end as soon as 2030, as claimed by Anastasios Tsonis, head of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at the University of Wisconsin? --Lawrence Solomon, Huffington Post, 10 December 2013

I already mentioned the fourth set, not included here, who say the length of pause is not important as it will still get warmer eventually, so please include that in your deliberations, and try and decide the true picture. No answer is better than any other, I have my own, but the main thing is it has taken four different views of equal standing into account, and only you can decide the most likely outcome.

2 comments:

rogerhootonof Nuriootpa, south australia said...

Good item but just a little correction. Forecasting the weather for the UK is one of the most difficult in the world because of there being a massive sea on one side and a massive and divided land area on the other side. The UK sits aside the Gulf Stream which does have slight daily variations and on the land side it is almost in the middle of a hot and cold area. It also has the Irish block which again can hold back weather patterns. I used to study weather patterns and knew two very good tv weather presenters when I lived in Norfolk in the 1970's and 80's One was for the BBC and one was for Anglia tv. You also have to factor in the solar winds etc. It is possible to give a 70% accuracy of weather predictions for about a year in most areas of the world but you have to allow the unpredicatble solar etc surges etc.,

David said...

I thought I gave that reason but will make sure. I read 3-6 months for a commercial forecast is the absolute maximum, and the uncertainty widens so much towards the end they really aren't worth as much as making alternative plans in case. As most extreme events only last a day or two (apart from the damn snow) even if you knew a hurricane was likely you couldn't cancel events just in case, and may not bother going on a holiday and nothing could happen. I can't really see a huge amount of purpose in long term forecasts as there's very little we would do in response, especially at such tenuous levels of likelihood.