So, I was watching Criminal Minds...and I wondered: If women were physically stronger than men, would we see more cases of assault of men by women?

It nags at me when a company tries to promote itself by highlighting the number of years it has been in business, making comments like "leveraging 75 years worth of experience".

What an absurd statement!  I mean, really...how many of their employees were around for 75 years, or even half of that period? If they haven't been around and exposed to the 75 years of company existence, how are they supposed to leverage it?

If one is going to use that type of logic in self promotion, why not just say "We hire humans...leveraging 10,000 years of human experience"?

This is not to say that none of the company's operating knowledge has accumulated over the years, but I doubt enough of it has accumulated, or remained unchanged, to warrant the implications of necessarily promoting a lengthy company history.

However, not everyone thinks like me.  If enough people are impressed by a company's lengthy operating history, I suppose it's worth it for a company to use that to its advantage.

Should blacks be paid reparations for slavery?

If you ask someone that question, I bet the chances are that they will answer with something like:

"Whites today didn't commit slavery, so why should they be punished?" or "Blacks today aren't slaves, so why should they be rewarded?".

The problem with those comments is that they have a perception problem. What they should be asking themselves is this:

"If blacks weren't slaves, how would the financial position of blacks and non-blacks differ today?"

It's clear that slavery resulted in white families having more income than they otherwise would (income that they could pass through the generations through inheritance) and resulted in black families having less income (than they otherwise would) passed through inheritance. Hence, white families are richer, and black families poorer, than they otherwise would be had slavery not occurred.

Hence, using that criteria alone, you could strongly argue that it would be the right thing for whites to pay reparations.

However, you could argue that affirmative action programs that have lasted for 40+ years acted as a form of reparation. This would be one of the strongest arguments against further reparations being paid.  However, I have no idea whether reparations through affirmative action are enough to offset the financial damage done through slavery (however, I feel it's plausible that affirmative action resulted in a gain to blacks above and beyond any concurrent damage done by discrimination in hiring, etc.)  There is no doubt that whites and asians have been discriminated against heavily in academia and the workforce as a result of affirmative action programs.

But what if affirmative action wasn't enough of a reparation to compensate for slavery? What factors should be considered when trying to calculate how to go about further reparations?

Try to estimate which blacks actually have slaves as ancestors, and which whites (or other races) had slave owners as ancestors. Only they should be impacted

And since the mode of damage was conducted by financial inheritance, it's families that should be concentrated on.  What I mean is that you'd need to trace or estimate which families were burdened or benefited by slavery, and to trace the impact.  For example, if a slave family was poorer due to slavery, and if that family had two sons, then those two sons should be paid a sum of money, not the entire families of those two sons (not the sons' sisters and brothers, etc.)  And since blacks have a higher birth rate than whites, if it was determine that whites paid, say $50 per white in reparations, the amount blacks received in compensation would be less than $50 per black.

Another important factor is the impact of African slave traders. After all, they profited by selling their countrymen to Americans.  Their ancestors should pay reparations too.

And perhaps the most important consideration is this: Even if it's fair to pay reparations, would the benefits of doing so (fairness) outweigh the costs of doing so? What if other groups start making claims for grievances? What if women or natives or handicapped or homosexuals start asking for reparations? What if it results in such a significant shift in transfer of wealth that it results in rich businesses firing some workers or changing their spending habits?  You can easily see how it might not be a good idea to proceed with reparations.

At one time or another, many groups could have been victimized unfairly. In order to remedy this, it could require extremely complicated calculations.  For example, a white woman might end up owing money to blacks for slavery, but that same woman might end up being owed money for being discriminated against in the workforce.  It could become a huge tangled web of financial calculations.

When it comes to compensation for past systemic (but since largely/partially remedied) unfairness, perhaps it's best to let old dogs lie.  After all, as society evolves and new information becomes available daily, do we really want to endlessly compensate for the way "things should have been?"

I don't know, but a discussion should occur.

Here's a list of the most intelligent and rational personalities that I'm aware of.  (Note that it's important to note that these people are rational; there are many intelligent people that don't appear to be rational, judging simply by the number of intelligent people that support opposing viewpoints.  However, I believe the persons listed below are not just intelligent but extremely intelligent)

This list is subject to addition over time.

1)Ann Coulter

I haven't read all of her books, but i have read one of them, and I have read many columns of hers, and I have heard her speak.  She is extremely intelligent, extremely rational, provides arguments that are so strong that they would be difficult to rebut, and she rebuts other arguments brilliantly.  There is only one single point she's made that I find to be irrational.

She is a conservative.

2) Vincent Bugliosi

I've read two of his books-the first being his thoughts on the OJ Simpson trial, the second being "The Prosecution of George W Bush".  He is brilliant and provides arguments that are airtight.

Based on the implications of a few comments made in the George Bush book, I assume he's liberal.

3)Donald Trump.

I haven't read his books. I base my judgement on The Apprentice.  He makes excellent decisions based on aggregate information provided to him by contestants, and he's excellent when it comes to noticing flaws in contestant's arguments.  It would be interesting to read some of his books.

I have no idea if he's a liberal or conservative (but based on his level of rationality, I have my suspicions).
He often seems diplomatic-I remember an interview in which he priased both John Kerry and George Bush-he wouldn't choose sides.

Honorable Mention:

1) Jesse Ventura

I don't know much about how smart he is.  He may be intelligent. Simply by probability, however, he's unlikely to be among the 99.99th percentile.

I include him here in order to honor his positive intentions, and his willingness to tread where others won't. To investigate "conspiracy" theories that actually do appear to be conspiracies.

Who would have thought that so many people in the business world apparently don't understand basic probability statistics?

The media has commonly stated that, prior to 2007, most people assumed that American home prices would continue to rise indefinitely, due to the fact they had never once fallen, on a national level, during 50+ years (although, to be fair, I don't recall particular executives being singled out).

Now, a 50 year history of the housing market may sound like a long time. It's actually a very SHORT time.

If you measure 50 years in terms of seconds (1,576,800,000) or minutes (26,280,000) or even days (7,300), the sample size is moderate to large.

I would argue that many people (who were otherwise capable enough) who made decisions based on the 50+ year housing history were actually making decisions based on the sample's number of years, not days, minutes or seconds. This is where they erred.

If they were basing it on days, they never could have made the claim that the national housing market prices never fell from one day to another during the entire 50-year history. They never could have claimed that the national housing prices never fell from one second to the next.

So, they were making a claim based on a sample size of only 50.  That is not even close to being a significant enough of a sample size for making ideal predictions (and anyway, such a prediction would need to be adjusted by accounting for the context of the past 50 years and the expected context of the future; for example, home prices in the past could have been inflated, relative to future expectations, due to the baby boom, which resulted in a larger than usual number of people buying homes during a certain decade (when the boomers were reaching their 20s and 30s).

Sometimes even very large sample sizes aren't enough to provide an accurate snapshot of actual expectations.  When it comes to blackjack, if you play basic strategy, which results in a loss of about 0.5% over time, one simulation I saw showed that you can run 10 different sets of 100,000 games, and during one of those sets you will actually win money, even though the strategy used is a losing strategy!

So, at times even 100,000 isn't a large enough of a sample size to properly reflect long term expectations.  Yet, supposed experts apparently believed that a sample size of 50 was enough to make judgments about the housing market.  Does this frighten anyone?  Perhaps I should be hired to consult the "experts" (note that the blackjack example is rarer than others, because blackjack has a very high standard deviation. Still, a sample of 50 is extremely low by just about any standards).

Think about how tiny a sample size of 50 is.  You could run a simulation of coin flips, and it would be quite common to find sets of 50 flips that had results which deviated quite a bit from the expected long term reality (25 heads, 25 tails).  You would see sets of 30H/20T, 26H/24T etc.

Now, it is true that during university I earned a grade of 100% (actually >100% when you include the bonus question) on an exam testing probability (finite mathematics), so I do have an advantage over most.  But were none of the executives and quants brainiacs regarding probability?

Maybe executives actually did understand probability statistics but had a problem with intelligence and perception: perhaps they actually did believe their sample size was huge. They thought in seconds instead of years.

Who would have thunk it?

Who would have thought that an American presidential candidate would:

Publically refuse to wear an American flag lapel pin

Publically refuse to place his hand over his chest while the Pledge of Allegiance was played

Be linked to a terrorist who 1) ran a group that caused explosions in a police station and the Pentagon
2)was banned from entering Canada after the election

Claim that he didn't know the terrorist, when he actually did

(After it was exposed that he knew the terrorist) Not criticize the actions of the terrorist in an attempt to disassociate himself from him; instead, claim that he was only a child when the terrorist's group committed the bombings.

Attend a church led by a radical preacher caught on tape, and claim that he wasn't at church the days that the rants occured

Have a wife who publically stated that the candidate's primary victory was the first time in her life that she was proud of her country

Refuse to provide his birth certificate

Pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to block discovery, which would result in a legal obligation to provide his birth certificate

Refuse to provide evidence of his citizenship

Sign an executive order on the first day of work banning the release of his life history: kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental college records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, his passport (if any), medical records.

Be ranked as the most liberal of all 100 senators

Who would have thought that said candidate would win the Democratic Party presidential nomination?

Who would have thought that said candidate would garner more than 5% of the popular vote in the presidential election?

Who would have thought that said candidate would actually win the election?

Who would have thunk it?

Is it REALLY possible for a nation to become wealthy (or is wealth just a temporary perception that ends up bursting like a bubble?)

The reason I ask is this:  When you think about it, all revenue is simply a transfer of money.  You can't  earn money without taking it from someone.  So can an economy REALLY grow larger?

I have the answer to this, it will be in an upcoming post.

Is it illogical to vote? Here's the problem that I have.

All votes are not considered equal.  Yes, you read that right.

The problem lies with that fact that presidents are not chosen by simply tabulating all the votes and awarding the election to the person that receives the most votes.  Instead, they are chosen by adding up the number of state delegates that his party wins.   This is where the problem lies.

In order for your vote to be considered equal to the next person's vote, you'd have to live in a state that has a voting population demographically equal to the country's as a whole.  Ie. If 50% of the country votes Republican, 40% votes Democrat and 10% votes Independent, then your own district needs to vote the same way, otherwise you're not being treated equally.

The problem is amplified during local elections, where the sample size of voters is smaller, and the local demographics are more likely to be different than the national demographics..

Here's the problem:  Let's say you are a Republican and live in an overwhelmingly Democratic state such as New York.  Let's say, for argument's sake, that Republicans are 20% of voters and Democrats are 80%.  Your vote has a low chance of affecting the choice of President, because it has to overcome a larger block of resistance in your state than would be considered fair (a fair block of resistance would mean the size of the Democratic vote in NY would equal the size of the Democratic vote in the nation) .

The vote would be drowned out by the Democratic votes that are disproportionately concentrated in NY state.  It will never be fairly counted towards the presidential vote because the presidential vote isn't a popular vote-it results from the addition of delegates from each statewide vote.  So, you can have a president that receives 55% of the popular vote yet receives the vote in 80% of the states.

Is that fair? Of course not. This idea has been pointed out by others.

What I HAVEN'T seen pointed out, however, is the reality that in effect, this means that individual voters in districts unrepresentative of the nation are in effect treated UNequally. 

Kind of like someone who's told "sure, you can go vote, but your vote will only be counted as 2/5 of the next person's vote".  

There's been so much said and done about ending discrimination related to race and gender, yet somehow society does nothing about ending discrimination related to voting.  Society doesn't just do nothing; they don't even talk about it; they don't seem to even realize it.

Have you ever wondered why there are intelligent people among both conservative and liberal groups? Why is that?  After all, when you aggregate both liberal and conservative positions, wouldn't evidence almost always favor either the liberal position over the conservative, or vice versa? 

Of course it would. To disagree would mean that you believe evidence would support both the liberals and the conservatives by a split of exactly 50.00% to 50.00%.  That is extremely unlikely.  The evidence is very likely to favor one group's position with at least the support of 50.000000001% of the evidence (I'm not saying what the evidence favors, yet).

And by the way, I realize that there is some subjectivity regarding the importance of issues.  Abortion is different than immigration.  But subjective issues can still be categorized. Simply poll people to rate their importance.  Once you've exhausted objective descriptions, the only way I can think of to value something subjective is to poll people.

So if evidence supports the supremacy of either liberalism or conservatism over the other, then why do many intelligent people appear among both groups?

Well, I believe that intelligence isn't the only factor that influences people's voting patterns. Bias may be one factor, but one factor that I've never seen mentioned is this: rationality.

Is it possible that either liberals or conservatives are more rational, on average, than the other? I believe this is likely the case. Stanovich reported about evidence that suggested there is almost a zero correlation between intelligence and rationality!

That could explain it.  Could liberals be much more rational than conservatives, or vice versa?