Disclaimer


The content on this blog is my personal opinion and does not reflect the views of the Department of Defense or the US Navy in any way.


Sunday, May 27, 2018

Vacation

I'll be posting a bit less often for the next two weeks due to a vacation. I should still have some posts to make, but they won't show up every day like I've been trying to do.

Friday, May 25, 2018

Game review: SteamVR

Sorry I missed the last two days. In my defense, I've been a bit preoccupied with some of my other toys.

... such as my new VR headset.

About the only problematic part was the initial setup, and that only because I'm a bit short on power outlets and wall mounts. It's definitely not something one can pull out of the box, plug in, and be playing immediately - even without the problems I ran into, I don't see how I could have made the setup go any faster than about a half hour.

Everything else is quite unabashedly positive. The accuracy of the motion tracking for the controllers and the head tracking for the headset itself is very good; I was expecting that to be a bit less accurate, but as far as I can tell it's just about perfect. It's also surprisingly easy to forget that you're wearing the headset in the first place and really enjoy the feeling of immersion in whatever environment you've picked, even with the visible hash marks denoting the edge of the play area. (This does mean that I've so far smashed the controllers into the wall about three times. No serious damage to either controllers or wall yet, but I'm going to have to be careful going forward.)

Even without purchasing any games, there's a surprising amount of utility in the free SteamVR setup. There are a number of computer-generated environments, little games that just use basic movement and object manipulation, and real world environments brought into VR by taking hundreds of pictures of the area in question. The list of available places and free gaming options is only going to continue getting larger - and I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.


Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Parenting and Punishment

... because one of the random details that came up in the gun control debate I mentioned yesterday was the (frankly unsurprising) belief that spanking kids was necessary in order to instill respect for authority and the proper fear of disobeying authorities.

Now I'm probably not the right person to talk about parenting advice. I don't have kids, and don't expect to have kids at any point in the near future. But that doesn't stop me from having an opinion on corporal punishment, and that opinion is quite firmly negative.

Here's the problem: Teaching children that actions have consequences, that those consequences can include displeasure or worse coming from other people, and that some of those people will have the authority to impose severe consequences does not in any way require those consequences to be physical. At least as far as I know.

In fact, I'd argue that the sort of rote obedience for fear of punishment that spanking is best for actually teaches kids things they'll have to unlearn as they go from being children to being independent adults. The consequences that mature adults impose on each other do not generally include physical violence, for one. Rote obedience is good in some situations, but can result in adults that don't know how to handle things themselves. And these aren't just hypothetical consequences - studies and testimonials all show people that have been raised this way that have problems as adults.

And finally? One thing I do know is that parenting with less of a focus on obedience and consequences actually works, because I read about people that have successfully used it. I have a lot of their blog posts saved against the potential day in the future where I do have kids.

Monday, May 21, 2018

Understanding Complex Issues

I managed to get in a gun control debate today. One of the comments made was about how the gun laws in the UK affected their violent crime rates... and while I wasn't able to push back on that as well as I'd hoped in the moment, there are a lot of interesting details I found when I was able to look up the statistics later.

So. The short answer to the question "did violent crime in the UK go up after they banned handguns?" is "no, probably not".

Of course, there are a lot of details we can dig into. The first - and the one that any gun rights advocates are probably thinking of as they read that - is that the number of offenses reported to the police has gone up on several different scales - in the last five years, in the last 20, and overall since the start of the data set I cited above.

That doesn't seem to imply that crime is going down. However, there are other indicators. There are also crime victimization surveys and other types of scientific study... and those indicate that violent crime has gone down quite a bit in the last 20 years.

So which is right? Neither, really - both data sets have their limitations. The victimization surveys and studies are almost certainly more accurate for the types of crime and population groups for which they're able to get enough data, since they can evade some reasons why people might not want to or be able to report crimes in order to get a more comprehensive picture. Unfortunately, their data is likely less accurate for less frequent crimes and is mostly useless for some groups of the population. On the other hand, the number of crimes reported to the police makes for a very accurate minimum baseline, but changes in what types of crimes are counted, under-reporting of certain crimes, and the possibility that reporting rates might change without the overall level of crime changing make it tricky to even be certain the trend in reports accurately reflects trends in the overall crime rate, much less to assign causation for those trends.

... Of course, just because neither is fully correct doesn't mean that we can't make a judgment call as to which more accurately reflects reality. And when there have been numerous changes to reporting criteria, surveys indicating higher reporting rates, and other data (such as hospital admissions) suggesting less crime, I think the overall violent crime rate in the UK has gone down since the mid-90s - hence my short answer above.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Standards of Evidence

Today we're going to be reading about a massive failure in the US justice system.

Honestly, the specific details of this case aren't entirely what I want to talk about. I'd like to focus instead on one line from the start of the article: "The police are under great pressure to solve a sensational crime, they are sure they have the culprit, and when evidence is lacking they plant it and give false testimony." It's a pretty good summary of what probably happened here.

If one knows they have the culprit in custody but can't find the evidence to support it, sometimes that means one doesn't actually have the culprit in custody. This seems like it should be a trivial point, something that almost anyone should be able to realize, but apparently it's not. Apparently multiple people throughout an entire police department were too overconfident to question how they'd reached their conclusion or realize that there was evidence available which could easily disprove that conclusion.

This is not acceptable job performance for anyone with investigative duties. If it were up to me, everyone involved would not only lose their job but would not be able to get another one until they had demonstrated quite a bit of improvement in their critical thinking skills.

They're not the only ones who need to take a close look at what standards they're willing to accept, though. Their leaders aren't holding them responsible for their errors, nor are they willing to double check when someone presents evidence that something may have gone wrong. And ultimately the people that elect those leaders aren't punishing them for their failures either, whether because we can't or we won't.

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Reducing Gun Deaths

Here we go again.

One of these years we might want to consider that no matter how much we may want our massive arsenal of personal weapons to actually help reduce crime and reduce gun deaths, it doesn't seem to be working out particularly well for us.

If we want to actually avoid having a absurdly high number of firearm deaths compared to any other nation in the world, at some point we're going to have to actually do something about it.

Yes, the recommendations in that article might make it harder for some people to get guns. It might require some safety measures to become mandatory - which I'm sure we'll hear about in great detail the first time someone can't get their gun out of its locker in time or when someone's gun fails to fire in a situation where they really needed it because the access control built into it broke.

However, there are ways to solve those problems that don't involve ignoring a problem we already know exists. And let's not have any illusions: That's exactly what we're doing right now. I don't think I can say it any better than this bit from the end of the article:
That’s the blunt, damning truth: Friday’s school shooting was 100 percent predictable. After each such incident, we mourn the deaths and sympathize with the victims, but we do nothing fundamental to reduce our vulnerability.
Let's take a careful look at what it will actually take to bring gun deaths down, and then we need to do it. "Just add more guns!" or "We just need to enforce existing laws!" haven't worked, nor does there seem to be any reason to believe they ever will.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Game review: Forgotton Anne

I just got my hands on a new adventure game! Forgotton Anne was released yesterday.

If you read nothing else, here's the summary: It's awesome, go play it now.

... Okay, I suppose I should be a bit more detailed. I'm not done with it myself yet, so it's possible my interpretation of some of the details will change, but I'm still fairly confident that my impression so far isn't going to change much.

I will start by noting that this isn't the most difficult game in the world, nor is it intended to be. If you're looking for the sort of puzzle or action platformer that will have you staying up late trying to shave another few seconds off your stage completion time, this probably isn't the game you want to be spending your time on. About the most difficult this game gets is struggling with the controls in order to land exactly where you need to or to get another few pixels closer to a ledge you need to grab - and while control problems are one of the few things that really irritate me, those moments are quite rare, and getting rarer as I grow more used to controlling which direction I'm jumping or getting used to the input delay.

For me, of course, those problems don't change the fact that I love it so far. The graphics are absolutely awesome - the animation is very smooth and neatly done. And the story is incredibly touching and compelling. Even having a fair idea of where it was likely to go from the beginning (it's not like the tropes it uses are particularly rare) didn't dispel the power behind it. It reminds me quite strongly of Hayao Miyazaki's movies; being able to play through something that feels like one of those is just as awesome as I could have imagined.

The way it handles decision points is also rather interesting. It does use the standard selection between two dialogue options at multiple points, but there are a few points where you can choose to deal a death blow, or spare your enemies - and the lack of a dialog displaying those options doesn't mean you can't choose to walk away if you desire. And while many games with branching routes have a large number of throwaway options, which change a few lines of dialogue following them and then nothing else, this game largely doesn't - even if the lasting impact isn't apparent for a while.

I think that's all I have to say. Seriously, go buy this game now that you're finished reading about it.


Wednesday, May 16, 2018

League of Legends: MSI 2018

I'm not that much of a fan of most sports - I'll watch football or basketball if I've got nothing else to do, and I keep track of a few teams - but I don't spend a great deal of time on it.

However, I do watch some e-sports quite religiously - mostly League of Legends. The group stage of the Mid-Season Invitational Tournament just ended... and the North American team is, as usual, going home with a bit of a disappointing performance. We just can't seem to manage much of anything at the international tournaments, although I suppose we did get pretty close to getting into the knockout stage this time.

Incidentally, it's kind of fascinating to note the ways in which each team's play is influenced by the trends from their home league. (Particularly how the Vietnamese teams are always incredibly aggressive.) The coldly logical side of me thinks that all of the leagues should converge more on whatever the optimal way to play the game is for a particular patch, but in practice the differences in play styles are quite noticeable. Which is probably why we keep losing, as much as it's kind of irritating to think that our entire region has somehow just settled on a worse way to play the game.

Still, I have faith we'll figure out how to compete and win internationally... eventually. In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to cheer for the team from the EU instead. (Not that they're going to win, but then I'm used to hoping for my teams to beat seemingly impossible odds by now.)

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Causes of Violence

The title of today's article speaks for itself fairly well, so I'll just share it in full: "'Unfuckable' Women Don't Go on Killing Sprees". (With thanks to Love Joy Feminism, since I got this link from her post last Saturday.)

The one point it covers that some people might not have heard - or might not be willing to accept - is that it's quite possible for women to end up feeling like they have no shot at relationships or sex. I think the article goes a bit far in saying that such women never blame men for the problem, but it's pretty clear that it's a lot rarer - and violent responses are completely absent.

Then the other point it covers is: Why do we only see the extreme response to this problem from men, not women? Some people might be tempted to say that men just are that much more intrinsically violent - hell, there'd probably be people saying that both as a insult and as a compliment. I think that explanation is a bit too simple, though; I think we need to ask why that is rather than assuming that it's something that will never change. That's where we have to look at the culture we're willing to tolerate and ask how we can change it - because that's where we can effect that change, if we are going to manage to change things.

Monday, May 14, 2018

Balanced Representation

There are a lot of interesting and irritating ways in which women and minorities end up getting shut out of society. When I read editorials like this one from the NYT or this one from the Atlantic, it just seems to reinforce the degree to which we can prove this and the importance of this issue.

There's one line at the top of the Atlantic piece which, for me, really captures why this is important. It reads: "... if you read my piece, you could be forgiven for thinking that CRISPR was almost entirely the work of men." 

This is the sort of thing that affects how people view the world around them - most of us don't usually go trawling for data to confirm or disprove our common sense and/or gut instinct (even thought we probably should). This is part of the reason why people don't think women make contributions to the world, and it's part of the reason why the pipeline for STEM fields is quite leaky for women. As the articles I linked to point out, it drives better reputations for more men, makes it easier to find and refer to them, and becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy after long enough - unless we take active steps to change that.

These articles also describe what we should do about it - go out and make sure we're capturing women's perspective as well, and double check our own work to hold ourselves responsible. (For the record, I'm at 33% - 2 women out of 6 people total - for the people I've referred to over the past five days, including this post.) Keeping track is a bit of extra work, but there's every reason to believe that the benefit society gets will be worth it.

Sunday, May 13, 2018

The Spread of Ideas

Recently a friend gave me a link to this interactive presentation about how the connections between people support or inhibit the spread of ideas. It (and most of the other things its creator has produced) are very easy to understand, very thought provoking, and easily worth the time to look through them. If you're not familiar with it, now's a great time to go take a look!

There are some things I'd like to expand on, though - as the additional notes on that little game acknowledge, there are lots of other ways to model both the networks connecting people and the ideas that spread across those networks.

In particular, I'd like to add a couple notes about groupthink and what happens when we have multiple competing ideas. If I could pick one thing I wanted to add to the simulations in the above presentation, it would be to have multiple competing ideas, and belief in one or more ideas would change the chances or required exposure that the competition needed to spread. A close second would be to add more types of relationships to reflect the fact that we're more likely to believe something a few close friends believe than we are to adopt something even a huge number of distant acquaintances believe.

I'm not sure how that would change the result, admittedly! I don't think the advice the presentation closes with - pay attention to how your network affects ideas, put in the effort to build a good one that includes bonds with people like and unlike you, be skeptical of ideas that flatter you, and take the time to understand complex ideas - would change much. But I can't help but feel there's more to encouraging the spread of good ideas than that, and I'm really glad to see things like this presentation that might encourage all sorts of people, including me, to think about it a little more.

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Irrational Rationalists

Earlier this week, the New York Times put out an editorial about something called the "Intellectual Dark Web". It's quite a good summary of some increasingly influential academics, pundits, and intellectuals; I recommend reading it if you have time.

Sure, I'm not sure what I think about the name, the website it's taken from, or how we determine who is and is not part of this group. However, I think there are enough similarities between these people and some of the positions they hold to make a few statements about what they believe as a group and what my opinion of them is.

As you may be able to guess from the post title, that opinion is not particularly positive. I may like the editorial, but I don't think it's quite as critical of some of the people it profiles as they deserve.

In particular, I think the ways in which most of these intellectuals have faced criticism for their ideas makes them more sensitive to criticism than is warranted, makes them more likely to assume someone who has been criticized for their beliefs should be taken seriously, and makes them less likely to look for the best versions of their opponents' arguments. For one example, Sam Harris' reaction to some of the criticism he faced following his interview with Charles Murray had a number of problems. Also, the editorial itself notes that it's surprising how many of these people, who one would think would have no problem saying whatever happens to be true, don't seem to criticize some conspiracy theories, racism, or pseudo-intellectual thoughts even when it's obviously warranted. And my reaction to many of Ben Shapiro's videos has been to note that the things he says liberals believe or the arguments he says they use don't seem to resemble what I and the liberals I know actually believe.

To be fair to most of these intellectuals, none of the problems I've described are particularly unusual. As much as we all try to be rational, basically all of us will fall prey to biases or fallacious thinking from time to time. The problem is that the only way to avoid that is to be careful about checking one's own thought for errors, and I'm not convinced that most of these people are doing that - or even agree that it's necessary. They accept some criticism, if it's framed in the right way and presented by the right people, but tend to automatically assume that anyone they associate with the "regressive left" can't possibly have a valid point. 

All that does is ensure that they, and those who agree with them, won't be able to see any valid points when the other side does come up with them. That's not exactly the sort of search for truth at any cost that this movement is supposed to be building itself around.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Evaluating a Situation

I'm sure everyone has heard the saying "If you see something, say something," from various public safety campaigns. After all, why wouldn't you want to call the police if you see something suspicious; the worst that can happen if you're wrong is a minor inconvenience or a little bit of embarrassment and then everyone goes home, right?

Turns out reality is a bit more complicated than that. There's a lot more that can be lined up on the list of potential negative outcomes, unfortunately.

This shouldn't come as any surprise, either. Editorials like this one from the New York Times are quite common, as are the news stories they cite, as are the testimonials, arrest records, and surveys they're based on. And yet people still insist that this is how the system is supposed to work, or that the trouble caused by overly suspicious citizens and police is worth it.

I don't agree with either. Even if the police reacted appropriately to being called out to investigate every situation, it would still waste resources to call them out for every little thing. There has to be a balance between being so suspicious that we're wasting time and resources and being so apathetic that we're missing legitimate threats. And we're definitely not at the right balance between suspicion and apathy when someone calling the police because a fellow student fell asleep in the common room is regarded by many as a routine, unavoidable event.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Ratification and Nominations

One of the common points I've seen in the wake of President Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran deal is to argue that if President Obama had handled it the right way, then President Trump wouldn't have been able to get us out of it as easily as he did.

Which, frankly, is true enough. The JCPOA was never ratified by the Senate, so it's not a formal treaty, and what one president does by executive order can be cleared out just as easily.

However, I put somewhat less stock by the argument that this obviously means President Obama should have governed more to the center on this and many other things. To be blunt, most of the people I see using that argument are the same ones that argue that President Trump was fairly elected and that the Democrats in Congress need to stop taking advantage of their numbers to throw up roadblocks. If that were true, it would have applied equally well to the Republicans in Congress under President Obama, yet very few conservatives seem interested in acknowledging that.

In reality, there's a balance between the two. A president whose popular support has grown thin enough that they have to deal with a slight majority or minority for their party in Congress should be changing what they support and who they nominate in order to acknowledge that shift in public opinion. Blaming Congress alone for throwing up roadblocks (as with some of President Obama's efforts or with some of President Trump's nominations) isn't quite fair, since the system was set up to give them that power and to force the president to deal with that limit.

At the same time, Congress can't ignore the power the president holds. The best they can do is to make nothing useful happen if the president is pushing for a law or a nomination that most of them don't approve of. Sometimes that's warranted, but much of the time it doesn't actually serve the people's best interest to do that.

Unfortunately, fairly and consistently figuring out where the balance between those powers lies is rather difficult as long as we're all inclined to give our own side more of the benefit of the doubt.


Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Revival (again)

After yet another long hiatus, my interest in blogging is cropping up again.

Nothing to do but see how long I stick with it this time, I guess.