Extremely long odds say that you should not exist.

For me to exist, my mother and father had to meet each other, which is a rather unlikely thing to have occurred in the scheme of things. Even assuming that they met, they would also need to mate at just the right time, and then the right sperm (out of hundreds of millions in each ejaculation) had to fertilize the right egg (or which there were many thousands of candidate eggs).  But the same thing had to happen to each of their parents, and their parents, and so on. How many sets of parents did this need to happen to? Quite a few--consider my earlier post, "Ancestors Along the highway." Before all of those parents came onto the scene, the right non-human ancestors had to meet and mate, and before them . . . [skipping way back] the right sponges had to have offspring, and the fungi before them. Had any of these organisms been eaten as prey prior to having offspring, I wouldn't be here.  If any of them had succumbed to disease prior to having offspring, I wouldn't be here.  If any of them had broken a leg or gotten lost in the forest, they might not have gotten around to mating on that critically important date and time (from my perspective).   The adventures of Marty McFly ("Back to the Future") barely scrape the surface. The seemingly impossible hurdles faced by each of us are addressed by a well-constructed website, "What are the Odds," which stirs quite a bit of eye-popping mathematics into the description. Wait until you get to the bottom of the page to read about the trillion-sided dice. Actually, "What are the Odds" overstates the odds that you or I would exist, because there's far more to being "you" than your biological substrate. If you were raised in a war-torn region rather than a suburban American school, you would be a very different version of you. And ask yourself whether you would be you even if a few of your closest, most influential friends or acquaintances weren't around to influence you. Or what if you hadn't happened to read some of the ideas that most influenced you, or if even one or two of those important character-building events that defined you (joyous or tragic or in between) hadn't occurred? Thus, it's almost impossible that you should be here reading this post. Then again, you are here, because all of the antecedent events necessary to make you actually did occur. I don't know what lesson one is supposed to draw from this idea that it is essentially impossible that you should be here.  Perhaps it's merely an excuse for a healthy dose of humility.  It also seems to me that working through this thought experiment is good for one's mental health, at least once in a while.  I consider it an existential vitamin that I should take periodically.

Continue ReadingExtremely long odds say that you should not exist.

The wrong type of math

In this three-minute talk, Mathemagician Art Benjamin urges that we change our emphasis when we teach our children math. I couldn't agree with him more. It saddens me to consider the immense amount of self-inflicted damage that Americans could have avoided, if only they were more savvy regarding probability and statistics. For example, very few Americans die of "terrorism," whereas the lives of millions of Americans are severely damaged or destroyed every year by crappy schools, lack of health care (including the failure to obtain colonoscopies), wars begun on the basis of lies, various risky behaviors and many other problems almost too many to mention, all of which leave the actual danger of "terrorism" in the dust. Yet Americans spend a massively lop-sided portion of their tax-dollars each year preventing "terrorism." Each of the serious causes of death we face would be much more preventable if only Americans had a better grasp of statistics and probability.    With better training in statistics and probabilities, Americans could better understand the risks that they faced and the probabilities of success of various proposed "solutions."   With better training, as Art Benjamin suggests, we would be better able to order our national priorities to better prevent the things that are most likely to harm us.

Continue ReadingThe wrong type of math

Terrorized by Nocebos, blinded by Sunnydale Syndrome

I had once read of "nocebos" before, but I was recently reminded of nocebos. What are they? The following is from Wikipedia:

In medicine, a nocebo reaction or response refers to harmful, unpleasant, or undesirable effects a subject manifests after receiving an inert dummy drug or placebo. Nocebo responses are not chemically generated and are due only to the subject's pessimistic belief and expectation that the inert drug will produce negative consequences. In these cases, there is no "real" drug involved, but the actual negative consequences of the administration of the inert drug, which may be physiological, behavioural, emotional, and/or cognitive, are nonetheless real.
How powerful can a nocebo be? Wikipedia offers this example:
Writing from his extensive experience of treating cancer (including more than 1,000 melanoma cases) at Sydney Hospital, Milton (1973) warned of the impact of the delivery of a prognosis, and how many of his patients, upon receiving their prognosis, simply turned their face to the wall and died an extremely premature death: "... there is a small group of patients in whom the realisation of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death.
The existence of well-documented nocebos raise some interesting questions for me.  For instance, is it the incessantly spread media claims that terrorists lurk around every corner that is causing Americans to ignore the federal government's wild growth of warmongering, spying and homeland security budgets (and perhaps these things serve as placebos for the disease of terrorism)?   Does the nocebo of ubiquitous terrorism cause us to ignore that our government tortures, spies on us and fights illegal wars?  Perhaps the fear of "terrorism" causes us, metaphorically speaking, to curl up in the fetal position, unable to see beyond our own little lives.  My question is whether we are entire country afflicted by nocebo-inflicted stupidity?   Bruce Schneier offers an excellent rundown of the real risks that face Americans (and don't miss the many excellent comments too):

Consider that on this very day about 6,700 Americans will die.... Consider then that around 1,900 of the Americans who die today will be less than 65, and that indeed about 140 will be children. Approximately 50 Americans will be murdered today, including several women killed by their husbands or boyfriends, and several children who will die from abuse and neglect. Around 85 of us will commit suicide, and another 120 will die in traffic accidents.

[...]

Indeed, if one does not utter the magic word "terrorism," the notion that it is actually in the best interests of the country for the government to do everything possible to keep its citizens safe becomes self-evident nonsense.

He offers a lot more compelling statistics too, I'd highly recommend his article.   The illustration that stands out is that we don't do everything we can to prevent deaths generally, only potential death by terrorism.  "[W]e seem to consider 43,000 traffic deaths per year an acceptable cost to pay for driving big fast cars."  Here's another excellent recap of the relative dangers of terrorism and other--much greater--dangers, at least between 2000 and 2006.  And here's what you should really be concerned about -- the top ten causes of death in the United States We are freaked out and made socially dysfunctional by the thought of terrorism. We destroy our education, health care and infrastructure budgets to attempt a "perfect" shield against something that will hurt almost none of us. What is the real risk of terrorism?  Consider this, from a 2006 article titled "Don't be Terrorized," at Reason:

[I]f terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America's 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. [Former Business Professor Michael] Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000. Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300.

I learned another interesting term today:  "Sunnydale Syndrome."   This term, associated with the television series "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer,"  refers to the fact that many people overlook real (not terrorism) crushing and surreal social dysfunction and, instead, tend to their mundane lives.  We wake up and see the sunshine, we hear the birds, a car drives by and a neighbor says hello. Focusing on these sorts of occurrences causes many people to overlook the many dramatic problems our country faces, such as oil depletion, chemical toxins in the environment, global warming or the fact that big businesses almost completely owns Congress. Dr. Who summarized this situation:  "Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception matched only by its ingenuity when trying to destroy itself." — The Seventh Doctor, Doctor Who

Continue ReadingTerrorized by Nocebos, blinded by Sunnydale Syndrome

One million pages

Dangerous Intersection is almost five years old, and we've hit a milestone in terms of traffic. In January, 2011, we served out one million pages (1,040,351, to be exact). January was our biggest traffic month so far. We had 230,724 visitors, and 134,695 of those visitors were unique visitors. We averaged 139,404 hits per day and 7,400 visitors per day. Amazing that all of this traffic does not quite pay for our hosting (through the ads), but none of the authors at this site ever expected to make money at DI (we haven't yet made a penny). Anyway, if you were one of our many new visitors last month, welcome. Please understand that we welcome your comments, especially if you disagree with us.

Continue ReadingOne million pages

9/11 as an excuse to say stupid things.

I work in a big office building located in downtown St. Louis, the "Bank of America Plaza." Early this week, I was interviewed for a newspaper article, and I needed an updated photo of myself. A coworker offered to snap that photo using a small digital camera. We want down the elevator to the first floor public lobby of the building, at street level, where we found a large neutral colored wall that we could use as a backdrop for my photo. I stood in front of the wall and my coworker stood about 10 feet away from me. As she took a photo of me a security guard suddenly approached. Me: "In the lobby? In a public lobby?" Guard: "You may not take any pictures here. It’s because of 9/11 and homeland security." Me: "I understand that your employers have instructed you to say these sorts of things, but what you have just told me is about the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. My coworker is simply trying to take a picture of me in front of a wall." Guard: "Sir you cannot continue doing this. You will need to take pictures elsewhere." We left. Apparently, taking pictures of me threatens the United States. Or maybe the threat was taking a picture of the wall behind me. Certainly, the guard made it clear that the building owners prohibit any sort of photos in the lobby. We walked across the street and threatened the United States by taking my photo inside the lobby of a office building across the street, where friendly security guards don’t appreciate the risk of what we were doing. Instead, they naively laughed at our stories about security guards in my own office building.

Continue Reading9/11 as an excuse to say stupid things.