Oh, That's Just a Theory!

It's often the case that people unfamiliar with or resistant to scientific undertakings dismiss peer-reviewed research by saying: "that's just a theory." As if it were an unsupported guess.

I have even said something like that myself: "I have a theory" about something. What I mean to say is, "I have a hypothesis."

A hypothesis is more than a guess. It is a supposition based on familiarity with the subject, experience, or deep thought. A proper hypothesis must be testable.

The point of testing a hypothesis is to disprove it. No hypothesis can be proven. It can only be disproven. If a proper test fails to disprove a hypothesis, the next step is to try another test. Collect more data. Give the problem more thought. Examine whether we have a case of coincidence or one of cause and effect.

Then take all the data collected, observations made, and develop a theory. The theory must be compatible with all the observed data. The theory should also be testable. If the tests fail to disprove the theory, then it may be adopted as the best explanation available, but no theory can ever be proven. It is the job of scientists to reexamine accepted theory in light of new knowledge, new methods of measurement and observation.

Theory is the best you get. There is never final certainty.

Silence on the Line Explained

Blogger has been down the last couple of days. I need to do a couple of new posts to catch up.

Interdependent World

Bad news for China?

Harold Meyerson in today's Washington Post writes about China's bad economic news and what it may mean for us and Europe. In brief, the answer isn't simple. Worth reading.

Economists

"An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's. "

Will Rogers

I think Will was too kind to the economists of his day. As of his death in 1936, none of the neoclassical economists had figured out how it came about that the economy had stabilized at a low utilization of economic resources. It took John Maynard Keynes to figure that out, and his General Theory wasn't published until after Rogers' fatal airplane crash at Point Barrow.

Here is what Keynes had to say about economists:

"But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

I'm not convinced that even Keynes got this right. The power of vested interests, when coupled with the writings of defunct economists, amplified by "voices in the air" heard only by madmen in authority, can be very powerful, indeed. Present concerns about the nonexistent "debt crisis" and the imagined specter of "inflation" and "bond ratings" are examples. It's like relying on Elwood P. Dowd's conversations with Harvey for economic advice.

Even in Keynes' day, the intellectual influence of defunct neoclassical economists on policy led the Roosevelt administration to prematurely attempt to balance the budget in 1937, setting off a second dip of the Great Depression.

I was there.

It took five more years and immense war spending to dig out of that hole. Let's not go there again.

On Cooperation

"Competition leads to loss. People pulling in opposite directions on a rope only exhaust themselves: they go nowhere. What we need is cooperation. Every example of cooperation is one of benefit and gains to them that cooperate. Cooperation is especially productive in a system well managed. It is easy to make a list of examples of cooperation, some of which are so natural that we may not have recognized them as cooperation. Everybody wins."

W. Edwards Deming

Don't Eat Our Seed Corn

Folks who didn't grow up on a farm may not get the allusion to seed corn. Let me explain.

Back in the olden days (before hybrid seeds and genetic engineering), farmers harvested their crops and set aside some of the harvest to use as seeds for the following year's planting. Even in hard times, they would never eat the grain set aside as seed. If they ate the seed corn, it would extend and intensify the famine into the next year.

Something like that is going on in Raleigh this year as the state legislature is pushing drastic cuts in education programs, layoffs of teachers and diversion of public school resources to charter schools and even private schools. That may even be worse than eating seed corn, because the effects may last for a lifetime of the students affected.

"Why should I care?" you may ask, "I have no children in school."

Such an attitude would be foolish in the extreme. All children in school are our children. They are the ones whose contributions to Social Security taxes and Medicare funds will be used to support us in our old age. Even for those who don't need Social Security to survive, retirement plans depend on future productivity increasing the value of factories and enterprises and expanding our national wealth and the value of our stocks and bonds. Who will labor to cause that increase?

These very schoolchildren.

One of the most pernicious ideas abroad in the land is that children and their parents are "customers" of our schools and that the school systems must compete for their favor. The truth is that we are all recipients of the value provided by effective school systems.

Good schools attract intelligent and capable parents to come here. They attract businesses to our state. Schools are a valuable economic multiplier. We let them languish at our collective peril.

Let's make our schools even better, instead of starving them for resources.

Candidate Filing

Overheard during and after last Tuesday's meeting of Oriental's Town Board of Commissioners were a number of negative comments about the board.

For those who were surprised, dismayed or annoyed, you should know that Tuesday, November 8, 2011 is the date of municipal elections. Oriental also has absentee voting (including one-stop) starting in October.

But to run, you need to file. Candidate filing begins at twelve noon July 25, 2011 and ends at twelve noon August 12. It is also possible to run as a write-in candidate.

For details, call the Pamlico County Director of Elections, Lisa Bennett, at 745-4821.

Power to the Powerful! Wealth to the Wealthy! Blame to the Blameless!

Writing for Slate magazine yesterday, Eliot Spitzer described what he calls the "Republican war against the weak."

It is a multi front war, led by many generals. Republican governors against unions. Legislators against consumers. Judges against individuals and for corporations.

The truth is that the struggle of the wealthy and powerful against what used to be called the common man has been a feature of American politics from the beginning. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, though, it looked for a long time like the New Deal and its subsequent enhancements had permanently evened the tables. Well into the 1970's, Republican efforts to undo the New Deal and its regulatory and safety net features failed.

In the past thirty years, however, as memories of the depression faded and claims were made that we are now so smart we no longer need regulation, Republicans began to make serious inroads into the protections that had worked so well for so long.

"The unifying theme," Spitzer says, "is an assault on the weak. The power of individuals, each of us feeble in isolation, to act collectively and hence stand up to the powerful is being eviscerated. Those who already begin behind are finding the few legal protections afforded them under attack. A critical element of the Republican agenda has become increasing the legal power of those who already have power, and diminishing the power of the weak."

But Spitzer misses the boat on at least one matter. When he tries to explain why these efforts are wrong, he says: "if we are upset at the outcome of an election, we don't take away the right to vote of those who defeated us..." Yet all across the country Republican legislatures and governors are doing just that. They are introducing changes to election law clearly intended to discourage poor, elderly, handicapped, African American, Hispanic and first time voters from voting.

There are currently 41 bills in the North Carolina legislature that will, if adopted, modify election law and practice. The majority of the proposals would impede both voters and candidates. The bills appear to be part of an attempt to rig elections in favor of Republican candidates.

There are at least a half dozen proposed amendments to the North Carolina Constitution with the same apparent aim.

And we don't yet know what will be attempted with legislative redistricting.

It should be an interesting legislative session.