Entries from September 2008 ↓

1. The great unacknowledged environmental disaster of our current age is probably the collapse of fish stocks. Unlike headline-grabbing global warming, this is happening now and the magnitude of the effects are beyond discussion (they are mostly catastrophic).

Furthermore, unlike global warming, over-fishing is one of the few things where consumers are directly at fault and a change in consumer habits in Western nations could have a fast positive impact on the situation on the ground (in terms of global warming, “fast action” means anything that has an impact over the next 40 years; reducing over-fishing could have a large positive impact which would start to see in 4 years).

It is thus a bit puzzling that this doesn’t get more press. I guess a big cod just isn’t a cuddly animal.

2. Good has a well-written report of what’s happening of the American coast (which happens to be the a well-managed coast in the world—elsewhere is generally worse—but the bar is low):

Twenty years ago, if you had come to this spot off Wellfleet or, for that matter, any other along the Atlantic coast of North America, you would have found an ocean still brimming with life. The waters had been fished for hundreds of years, but they still harbored an impressive number of species. And none were more abundant than cod. They seemed innumerable and inexhaustible, and when they disappeared, as if overnight—decimated at last by years of overfishing—it came as a profound shock.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

3. Governments are also at fault:

Many experts think that governments have been too kind to the fishing industry. The European Union, China, Japan, and the United States spend as much as $20 billion a year to subsidize a $90 billion industry.

In the EU, fishing represents one of the failures of the shared-sovereignty principles. Every country seems to have taken upon itself to defend its fishing industry, in a bad case of one special interest (fishers) taking over policy.

4. This is one case where consumers could have an immediate, large-scale positive impact as most fishing is to supply consumers directly. I have stopped buying wild fish at the supermarket. The farm-raised alternatives are much more responsible (especially if they come from decent countries like Chile which take care to minimise the negative impacts of fish farms).

In this week’s Science:

The only two peer-reviewed scientific papers showing that electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from cell phones can cause DNA breakage are at the center of a misconduct controversy at the Medical University of Vienna (MUV). Critics had argued that the data looked too good to be real, and in May a university investigation agreed, concluding that data in both studies had been fabricated and that the papers should be retracted.

Unfortunately, this won’t put a stop to the ignorant scare-mongering, but it might shame those who should know better into not spreading superstition.

From the ongoing series we report. you decide.

Fannie & Freddie, seen by a social-democrat:

The fact that the credit crisis has reached this point marks the failure of the central claim of the neoliberal program.

Crooked Timber

Seen by a libertarian:

The claim that this represents the failure of markets is more than a tad silly. Fannie and Freddie weren’t truly private companies, didn’t act like truly private companies, and wouldn’t have been allowed to so dominate the market if they had been. This is yet another failure of a government program.

Megan McArdle

People have wonder whether the post-convention bump is a real thing (what Russ Roberts has called the scary idea that people would change their minds on something so devoid of real content as a convention) or whether it’s simply a matter of the energised faithful replying to pollsters more (without any change in the number of people who actually plan to vote for any one candidate).

At least the betting markets seem to believe that McCain has got a real boost from his convention: he was trading at 49% earlier in the day(i.e., the consensus view of the market is that he has a 49% chance of becoming president). This is better than it ever was for him.

A brilliant post at Overcoming Bias: The True Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s a bit geeky, but here are some highlights:

The classic visualization of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is as follows: you are a criminal, and you and your confederate in crime have both been captured by the authorities.

Independently, without communicating, and without being able to change your mind afterward, you have to decide whether to give testimony against your confederate (D) or remain silent (C).

Both of you, right now, are facing one-year prison sentences; testifying (D) takes one year off your prison sentence, and adds two years to your confederate’s sentence.

Or maybe you and some stranger are, only once, and without knowing the other player’s history, or finding out who the player was afterward, deciding whether to play C or D, for a payoff in dollars matching the standard chart.

[...]

We fixate instinctively on the (C, C) outcome and search for ways to argue that it should be the mutual decision: “How can we ensure mutual cooperation?” is the instinctive thought. Not “How can I trick the other player into playing C while I play D for the maximum payoff?”

For someone with an impulse toward altruism, or honor, or fairness, the Prisoner’s Dilemma doesn’t really have the critical payoff matrix – whatever the financial payoff to individuals. (C, C) > (D, C), and the key question is whether the other player sees it the same way.

[...]

To construct the True Prisoner’s Dilemma, the situation has to be something like this: [...]

Let’s suppose that four billion human beings – not the whole human species, but a significant part of it – are currently progressing through a fatal disease that can only be cured by substance S.

However, substance S can only be produced by working with a paperclip maximizer from another dimension – substance S can also be used to produce paperclips. The paperclip maximizer only cares about the number of paperclips in its own universe, not in ours, so we can’t offer to produce or threaten to destroy paperclips here. We have never interacted with the paperclip maximizer before, and will never interact with it again.

Both humanity and the paperclip maximizer will get a single chance to seize some additional part of substance S for themselves, just before the dimensional nexus collapses; but the seizure process destroys some of substance S.

The payoff matrix is as follows:

1: C	1: D
2: C (2 billion lives, 2 paperclips gained)	(+3 billion lives, +0 paperclips)
2: D (+0 lives, +3 paperclips)	(+1 billion lives, +1 paperclip)

[...]

We would vastly rather live in a universe where 3 billion humans were cured of their disease and no paperclips were produced, rather than sacrifice a billion human lives to produce 2 paperclips. It doesn’t seem right to cooperate, in a case like this. It doesn’t even seem fair – so great a sacrifice by us, for so little gain by the paperclip maximizer? [...]

What do you do then? Do you cooperate when you really, definitely, truly and absolutely do want the highest reward you can get, and you don’t care a tiny bit by comparison about what happens to the other player? When it seems right to defect even if the other player cooperates?

[...]

So if you’ve ever prided yourself on cooperating in the Prisoner’s Dilemma… or questioned the verdict of classical game theory that the “rational” choice is to defect… then what do you say to the True Prisoner’s Dilemma above?

Woody Allen made a nice little European movie. Go see it.

I drive a grad student’s car, a 15-year old Toyota Camry. I get 32 mpg on the highway. The new non-hybrid Camrys are being advertised as getting 31 mpg highway driving.

As part of the ongoing series when I grow up, I want to be like Megan McArdle:

The central contradiction of today’s environmental awareness is its relationship with the high price of gas. Many environmental minded friends have commented how good it is that high oil prices increase support for environmental policies. However, the two goals are, often, opposed. While both high prices and environmental awareness pushes for energy conservation (the good thing), most people want gas prices to go down and long-term gas conservation requires them to go up.

This leads to ironic contradictions like Barack Obama’s proposed tax on oil companies. It gathers support from a visceral need for revenge against the supposed large profits of oil companies (in fact, they aren’t really all that great). This need for revenge is derived from anger against high oil prices. However, the only good that would come out of such a tax is higher gas prices. It’s just a form of an increase in gas tax in a disguise aimed at gathering support from people who are upset at the price of gas. In some ways, it’s brilliant politics.

Cleaning up the Guggenheim.

From PLoS Biology, a paper which asks the question Is Sleep Essential?

The authors find that there is no solid report of an animal that does not sleep at all. The bullfrog is often cited as an example of a sleepless animal, but the evidence is old and needs revisiting.

Dolphins sleep half a brain at a time (one hemisphere sleeps while the other stays awake). This strongly suggests that sleep is important (and not just a type of resting). Why else would such a complex mechanism have evolved?

In general, reading this paper, it’s surprising how little we understand about sleep. Should we still be arguing whether animals sleep?