Obscurity of Unlikely Facts

In this era of vast flow of information, it has become harder and harder for anybody to keep up with any topic of interest in a comprehensive way. This particularly applies to topics which provoke heated debates and appeals to mankind's intrinsic desire to reinforce their already existing opinions and views.

To this end, I've been playing around with a thought pattern lately which I've now fancily dubbed the law of Obscurity of Unlikely Facts. The purpose of this rather simple "check-list" of a cognitive bias can be applied rather universally, though in fields where it's hard to quantify and to measure a phenomenon in an exact manner it's harder. Simply put the idea behind the whole thing is the saying "Even a Blind Chicken Finds a Kernel of Corn Now and Then". This saying doesn't seem very popular in English, but it's used time to time in Finnish.

The basic idea is, that if we can do the (false) dichomization on whatever topic to be able to say whether a certain fact is TRUE or FALSE, let's say on a political debate, usually people have a set of e.g. 5 main commandments they follow. Suppose a person with an agenda posting the following list (which might be in a narrative format but can be reduced to a list of main hypotheses):

The great Tomato debate thread example:

Arguments by tomato-specialist Foo Bar:
1) Natural tomatoes are always yellow
2) Tomato farmers have gone too far in bringing out unnatural red tomatoes
3) Farmers are backed up by an international tomato X company wanting us to eat addictive (red) tomatoes
4) All tomato farmers are evil
5) Tomato farmers want to make a profit

A pro-red tomato person counters this post in a relevant forum, and pushes in for a counter-attack. He makes a list of the hypotheses and starts collecting counter-material. He then posts the following post (shortened from what you would encounter in real-life):

Counter-post by red-tomatoist Qwerty Asdfg:
"Mr. Bar recently posted a seriously misguided list of curious facts that I feel need to be corrected. He claims that all natural tomatoes are always yellow, but we have discovered many varieties of tomatoes in the wild that are by nature red, as recently published in the International Journal of Tomatoes by Prof. Tomatogic et al. Furthermore, as we encounter these red tomatoes in the wild, it is hilarious to even propose that farmers would be the ones propagating the advance of red tomatoes over yellow ones - majority of tomato subtypes are red, as shown by Prof. Tomatogic. There is zero evidence that e.g. Prof Tomatogic would have any affiliations to company X, and looking at their catalogy at my nearby tomato store I discovered that they do offer a large variety different colours of tomatoes, including yellow ones. Bringing in X in relation to tomato farmers is just ridiculous. This all just shows how misguided Mr. Bar is in his original post; to claim that tomato farmers are evil is just a cherry on the top, and tomato farmers do not want to make a profit - they just aim to produce the healthiest of products and take great pride in their work!"

Now, for starters, both posts by Bar and Asdfg would rub me the wrong way. Both are very extreme and show no signs of lenience towards the opposing view, which in my opinion is the key to detecting a triggered argument which should be taken with a truck-load of salt. But the point of the law of Obscurity of Unlikely Facts is to systematically evaluate Asdfg's counter-arguments, disregarding how ridiculous the original claims may have been.

While Asdfg appeals to reason and even science in his shooting-down of mr. Bar's post, I find above sort of counter-posts questionable. First of all, it addresses every single point from mr. Bar directly in a list-like manner, even if it's narrative. When I see this sort of counter-post, red lights start flashing. To me, it only indicates that Asdfg has first decided that mr. Bar's arguments are to be proven wrong, and then Asdfg has collected the evidence and/or rhetoric arguments to address every single one of them. A statistical basis for the law could probably be found in False Discovery Rate or the lack of corrections for multiple testing, but that's beyond this post.

Now the key point is that when I see somebody go through their opposer's supposed arguments in this non-constructive, list-like systematic way, it makes me question Asdfg's motives - he or she has probably not even tried to understand the original arguments and/or taken the time to consider whether they can be interpreted in a manner that is true.

To summarize the law of Obscurity of Unlikely Facts:
The longer the list of arguments by person A, the more likely that at least one or more of these arguments are true to at least a reasonable extent. In reverse, the longer the list the A's opposer B shoots down systematically, the more likely the person B is biased to just counter A without a proper, through-out and fair inspection. There are multiple factors that affect this (e.g. ad hominem yes/no) or lenience in B's comments, but a systematic list vs. list discussion is very likely to include a degrading amount of cognitive bias and probably ought to be ignored altogether.

If you engage in multiple discussions of sensitive topics, I have found the above simple rule useful in filtering out discussions where the discussion is just not worth my time. Usually they degrade into a kindergarten-level "yes! no! yes! no!" poking spiced with ad hominem, so it's better to move on to a better forum/thread if one really wishes to find out information on the various views to the topic. But above rule can also be used to detect discussions that are a great source of humorous content (Dunning-Kruger effect usually increases in this case as a function of time), in which case one should go grab some popcorn, just sit back, relax and see it unfold in its glorious marvel.

The Pharaoh's Bentley

The Pharaoh's Bentley

So in 2013, one of the richest men in Brazil by the name of Mr. Scarpa (much easier to refer to him this way), announced that he would be burying in a "future" grave of his a million dollar Bentley luxury car. He had the inspiration from the ancient Egypt's pharaohs, who would be buried in their huge graves - pyramids - with their vast wealth, gifts, and utilities to be ready for them in the afterlife. So Mr. Scarpa had an inspiration, and a million dollar Bentley is not much for some.

This was naturally met with extreme prejudice and an outrage from the general public - how can somebody be so irresponsible? Waste some much money on nothing? Give it to the poor! Totally unattached to reality! Trying to evade taxes?! Etc. Mr. Scarpa appeared on multiple talk shows and similar interviews to explain his motivations and how he admired the ancient Egyptians for this grandeur, and that he had every right to do this move - and nobody can deny that from him, definitely. The media followed his steps closely as he progressed to build this structure for lowering his beloved 1,000,000$ Bentley to a final resting place, where he'd presumably eventually join it.

When it the time came for the burying of the Mr. Scarpa's Bentley, he was ready and set to go to lower the million dollar beauty to a deep pit in the ground, when he revealed the genius in his stunt. He was never going to lower the Bentley to a deep pit - instead the scolded millionaire turned to the public, turning their outrage against themselves; numerous people are buried with wealth much greater than a mundane Bentley - their organs. The whole plan of Mr. Scarpa's stunt was to promote being an organ donor, and he had himself been close to death a time ago, realizing the mortality and spending two months in coma. Possibly receiving new piece of the man's cogwheels (I'm not sure of this though but still), he had a great point to make.

The Pharaoh's Bentley is a great story and I was thinking of it tonight during insomnia, though it was much more distressing thoughts that originally kept me up. But the Pharaoh's Bentley made me think of why am I not yet an organ donor (I do donate 0- blood rather regularly, though I've been denied donor a few times lately due to anemia). We feel sacred of our bodies - what if I'm still alive when I'm being buried? In coma, just missed the pulse for a few beats and had a wrong diagnosis? In some countries, people were buried  with bells attached above their graves and a six feet rope reaching all the way to the coffin in case they were alive after all. The feeling of being accidentally killed, even if chances are extremely low, is extremely distressing.

Furthermore, we do feel that our body is a 'whole'. If I'm missing my kidneys, liver, eye(s), heart, ... it's something that was mine, was part of me on my journey, and what partly defined me - how can it be just 'installed' on somebody else? I guess this comes down to what extent we can our selves to our body just beyond the nervous system, which starting from reflexes has voluntary and involuntary functions that make us who we are. I do feel strange thinking that for example my kidney might go to somebody else. But when I think that the somebody might be a kid with a kidney disorder, it starts becoming more clear why it'd be a waste to put it down with me and let it rot. After all, I don't think anybody will deny the fact that eventually we'll be just a scrap of dust, hair and bone - religious beliefs and awkward alternatives like embalming aside. The living issue will inevitably be gone, while it could've served somebody else in very drastic ways. The Pharaoh's Bentley is a great initiative I think, I just need to overcome my own prejudices. I don't know why I remembered it today, but it's definitely worth sharing.

From dust to dust, yet it's not that simple with modern medicine.

The Mensa-Dilemma

The Mensa-Dilemma

So I happened to bump into a friend's forum post with claimed high IQ from a Mensa test today and it reminded me of what I've dubbed 'the Mensa-Dilemma', first time like a year ago. I've been sometimes intrigued of taking a Mensa test, and being what I am, I've evaluated that I'd pass the test. By how much, that I wouldn't know. I could be delusional and might very well fail it as well, so that option has to be open. If I am delusional I'd estimate that I'd still be approximately at the borderline, by mirroring my academic/career/skill achievements in comparison to the common populace (if I remember right Mensa was supposed to be top 5%, 2.5% or 1%, forgot the exact quantile). IQs seem to be kind-of pitch in freebies in certain forums, with nothing to back it up with (i.e. proof), and even if there was, it is used in irrelevant contexts (a high IQ person may very well be incapable of functioning in a specific narrow field).

But what leads to the dilemma is that I loathe the term IQ. Reducing human intelligence (or artificial intelligence or what-ever sentient being in question) to a single numeric value is fundamentally absurd. I've always admired people like ancient Greek philosopher-mathematicians or people like Da Vinci, who were geniuses on multiple fields: inventor, painter, mathematician. Quite the genius, nobody can deny that. However, when projected to a single dimensional numeric value, which bases emphasis on logical thinking, they might've ended up being "mediocre geniuses". So a 170er could go to a 150er and boast in the smaller quantile digits of how they're in the 170er-club. Human mind is nearly incapable of compherehending extremely small or high numbers or probabilities, as well as distribution quantiles, thus in practice this 150er probably is just as smart as the 170er.

The mixture of loathing IQ and the intiguing curiousity of a Mensa-test result form the basis of what I called the Mensa-Dilemma, here as a 2x2 table:

.........Did I take a Mensa test?
................................._____Yes_(A)__________No_(B)_____
Did I pass?..............Yes_(1).|......A1......|.......B1.......|
.........................No__(2).|......A2......|.......B2.......|
.................................---------------------------------

The problem rises when I consider all the 4 possibilities, as I can only lose in this game:

- A1: I took a test and I passed test. I feel guilty for trying to prove myself, while already in the beginning I had already estimated that I'd quite easily pass the test. The margin by which I'd pass might affect my opinion. But most likely I'd just cancel my membership right away after feeding my curiousity, but in order to not go for a holier than thou -attitude, I'd probably only tell my wife about the whole thing. I'd regret taking the test because I was right right in the start, and I "lowered" myself in my own standards due low self-esteem or some strange need to prove myself. But it's only a test. People who throw around Mensa-stuff are generally doing it randomly and it only makes the conversations awkward or malicious.

- A2: So I took a test and I failed. This would of course be a big bump on my self esteem. So am I just a random stranger in the street? Why am I even considering philosophical, artistical, or natural scientific achievements, when I have been shown by a metric to be possibly only a mediocre citizen? That'd be hard to swallow. I might go into researching IQ tests more in detail and come up with a false explanation as to why this whole thing's a fiasco, but I don't think I'd fall that low.

- B1: So I never took the test, but if I did, I would pass. I will never find out that I would've passed the test (or by how much), and every time Mensa pops up, I will probably presume I would belong to B1-category - but I got nothing to back it up with. "Sure I could take a Mensa test and top it easily" sounds as vain as it can be.

- B2: So I never took the test, but if I did, I wouldn't even pass. I live in happy ignorance of my own mediocrity, but still I presumably consider myself to be á priori B1-class. It will probably affect my conclusions, behaviour, human interactions, et cetra. But there is always the scare in the back of my head, that what if I'm a B2'er? I must know, I couldn't be a B1'er... could I? Without the test, I would find myself somewhat restless.


So whatever I got, A1, A2, B1, or B2, I'd be discontent. I'd always find a way to be displeased of the outcome anyhow (and let's neglect the aspect of how high the result was, just the Mensa-eligible threshold). So that causes me a dilemma. There is no way I can 'win'.

In some applications, 'the only way to win is to not play at all'. I was thinking that'd probably be the solution in this problem. I'm not an expert in game theory, but however unfortunately here 'not playing' would fall into a choice for the category B, leading again to a B1 or B2, thus a loss.

In reality, amusingly, the only way for me to win is to add a category C, which stands for 'forgot the whole damn thing'. It has now happened to me twice. Approximately year ago I remembered Mensa and checked their local test times - and noticed that the coming Saturday had a single test coming up in my town. However, the week after I remember that particular test, and that I forgot to go to it - well, I won! My dilemma is still unsolved, so I don't have to pick anywhere in A1 - B2! Yay, C-category is the way to go. However now that I was reminded of this, I did check the test schedules again - and luckily there were no upcoming tests within a reasonable interval in our city. Victory, C-category again!

.........Did I take a Mensa test? ................................._____Yes_(A)__________No_(B)_____I forgot the thing (C)_ Did I pass?..............Yes_(1).|......A1......|.......B1.......|..........C1..........| .........................No__(2).|......A2......|.......B2.......|..........C2..........| .................................--------------------------------------------------------

This has so far guaranteed that I can sleep my nights in peace, to exaggerate:

- C1: Too bad, I would've been a Mensa member, but I forgot the whole thing and I'll continue my life like before. I don't think I'd lose anything.

- C2: Whew, I never got to know I wouldn't be eligible. Ignorance is bliss!

It's only a matter of time though when I consciously can't avoid C-category any more. I both wait and fear that day (again exaggeration, it's not really that big of a deal). For the time being I haven't ever taken a Mensa test. Here I completely omitted the factor of how much one would pass the test by (i.e. the exact value of IQ, not just the threshold). I hope I won't have to think about that any day soon.

I've heard rumors that people that attend to Mensa meetings are just like anybody. They play board games, talk about mundane things or sometimes more philosophical, but nothing out of the scope of e.g. a club for students of topic X in University. Maybe I'm shooting a fly with a cannon just because I want to shoot a cannon. Still, 'The Mensa-Dilemma' sounds pretty good, eh?

Tummia Sanoja - Dark Words

Tummia Sanoja

Tuoreita kirjoituksia ja muutamia vanhempia tekeleitä
tummina taittuneet näytön ääreen yön pimeinä tunteina.

En suosittele näitä sanoja juuri kenellekään.
Ne ovat rupisen paiseen valuva visva,
jotta alla oleva haava saisi vihdoin hengittää ja parantua.
Voi olla valoakin tunnelin päässä.

-- 

Dark Words

Recent excavations in my creative texts with a hint of my antiques
words scribbled in the darkest hours embraced by the pale light of a monitor.

I wouldn't recommend these words for anybody.
For they're the punctured pus of a bubonic flesh,
so that the corpus underneath may finally breathe and heal.
There may be light at the end of the tunnel.

Omakuva / Self portrait 2005

Vastuu on lukijalla. / Read at your own risk.

Turussa 13. kesäkuuta 2016,
In Turku 13th of June, 2016,

Teemu Daniel Laajala