Author: ramsboth

FINE ART

Yesterday in updating this website, I alluded to a certain urgency about time and tide waiting for no one.  What we have  is a tsunami.   And this is the top of the head effort,  by an 83 year old man,  to respond in real time.

The title of this post is based on something attributed to a multiple folks,  the two most prominent being and Mark Twain, and Disraeli, England’s Prime Minister under, I believe, Queen Victoria.

I felt have always statisticians have gotten a bum rap.   I’ve updated it to take into account the effects of modern information technology.   In the process I may wind up breaking  at least one of the cardinal rules of civil discourse I laid down.

Exigency demands it.

At higher education levels the subject matter is always grouped as probability and statistics.  There’s a thing called the law of large numbers,  Which basically means that if the sample set is big enough, what the statistics show if the data being put into the decision factors them are true, the confidence level of the resulting probabilities can be accepted as true as a basis for human decision.

I just listened to a spokesperson for the administration stating as certainty a statistic, which can be stated in mathematical terms as “N US cities burned to the ground” where N is a random variable of unspecified the value.”

Somehow I missed the news.  I feel confident that had any city of significant size in the US been entirely burned to the ground, someone surely would have called it to our attention.   This is basically my justification for reversing the order of the old quote about liars damn liars and statisticians.

We are now in an age when we have handed over to computers and artificial intelligence the responsibility for determining the validity of the statistical variables and their values.   Now beyond this next statement I’m not going to offer I’m going to try, to avoid–to the best of my ability–judgements of of any individual or their intent, with the following two exceptions:

When the statistical variables and values are generated by the damned liars:  and

When probable consequence of the risks associated with any decision or course of action in light of the potential benefit are simply morally unacceptable.

If the data are true then probability and statistics give us a a basis for civil dialog and making mindful decisions.  The premise is very simple.

At the level of  know absolute truth.   The best any of us can do is state what we believe, truthfully, to the best of our abilities.

My favorite example is my personal belief in my ability to cut a 4 foot long two by four.  I built my own house. I cut many two by fours to length’s precise enough to do the job.  In the real world there’s always some degree of error.   For the physicist in the readership,  if nothing else there’s the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  If by chance I did manage to cut a 2 by 4 exactly 4 feet long, I would never be able to prove it.

What humankind can do it is use probability and statistics to provide information that we can look at and determine whether a given  decision or proposition is right–and the the risks and benefits of  assuming that it is.

The statistical variable of  American cities burning to the ground (and if memory serves the time reference was during Trump’s first administration) was just cited to justify the President assuming authority to deploy US Military forces against civilians.   No supporting data was offered; no analysis of the risks and benefits or statement of assumptions regarding “acceptable risk.”

As a model for governance, authoritarian governance has the advantage of efficiency.  Decisions can be made and executed without delay.   Their fatal flaw is that they rest entirely on the whim of the authoritarian leader or worse the interests of an unknown group on whose  behest the authoritarian leader is acting.

The risk to life and property of  the going chaos in Los Angeles is clearly real.  What we are seeing is a conflict between federal and state and local government regarding the relative risks and benefits.

And setting aside politics entirely,  from the perspective of The People, whose primary source of data is the news and social, the view is chaotic.

I firmly believe that time is the essence.  If in fact lethal force is used by the federal military and innocent US citizens US citizens are killed we will have crossed a line as a society and Ronald Reagan’s shining city on the hill, already in flames, will be reduced to ashes.   Much of the world is likely to follow.

Time is of the essence.   I will follow this with a more complete description of the mental risk analysis I went through to reach this conclusion.

But at this moment my belief is the bottom line risk of that outcome is unacceptable..  However, small it is, it is large enough to be unacceptable.

And what makes it unacceptable is that for better or worse the President of the United States, by virtue of the position, may well be the world’s best  hope for restoring peace between Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East In the Middle East, addressing global climate change, curing cancer and the heart-break of psoriasis.

The virtue and power of out nation is the result of human of progress.  The genius of the US system of governance is that  strength and power resides not in the position itself, but in the virtue and value of  People from all nations, developed over centuries and generations, nurtured in the cradle of democracy.

The Executive Branch is doing what is doing, and under any rationale assumptions can only be expected  continue to do it.   Not to impugn  the values represented or the visions and objective any party,  things will change only if and when members of the Legislative Branch AND the electorate  find the courage to speak for the good of the country ahead of partisan politics and personal comfort.

The consequences to humankind of not doing so are simply unacceptable.

FOOT NOTES:

This was first published June 10, 2025, and has gone through several editorial revisions for corrections and readability.

Random thoughts that occurred during the writing of the basic post.  They were were excised to streamline and expedite the flow of the basic message.  They will be developed and incorporated as time and energy allow.

I built my own house.  I cut many two by fours to length’s precise enough to do the job.  In the real world there’s always some degree of error.   For the physicists in the readership,  if nothing else there’s the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  If by chance I did manage to cut a 2 by 4 exactly 4 feet long, I would never be able to prove it.   The fact that over my long life I have probably cut a thousand two by’s that were too short, a couple hundred that were too long.   Several dozen of the latter, after trimming on a saw that has proven precise enough to bookmatch the top and back a number of stringed careful trimming  instruments, somehow came out a quarter-inch short..

Technology has changed the world:   For better or worse we are a global species.   We (Americans) are a microcosm of a global society inclusive of every breed, voyagers through space and time on a fragile world. Diverse in our past history and abilities;  Wealth and power distributed inequitably as an inevitable result.  We cannot afford to continue to ignore this, regardless of how personally rewarding, profitable, or expedient it may be to those who govern, and those interests they uncompromisingly serve.

We, the People, seduced by the apparent convenience and ease of life offered by advancing technology have allowed our commitment to those same values to erode; and the causes of the continuing damage being done cannot be addressed within the context of a single year’s budget.    regardless of how expedient it may be for those who profit from it.   The unfairness of it is one of the main secondary root of the growing division, hostility and chaos and turbulence in American society.  The tap root of this “Tree of Evil”, is the unbridled greed and love of money, and the list for power that accompanies it.

A Joe Biden comment that he  tried not to base his decisions on assumptions about other people’s intentions, but objectively on their words and the consequences of their actions, is an ideal that I try to aspire to.

Biden’s block during the now infamous Presidential debate is a rare, but extreme form of stuttering.   One of my closest friends is similarly afflicted. . . with the same severity exhibited by President Biden.  Like most of life’s struggles in general, it does not get easier with age or stress.

Particularly when authentic discernment calls for speaking the truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the people I meet and interact with on a regular basis these days are deeply troubled by what they are experiencing in their daily lives, both personally and  vicariously through news and social media.  .

It’s a feeling that’s hard to articulate.  But it’s very real.

We live in a post-truth world.  .  . a world where technology can create an artificial reality out of whole cloth and disseminate it to millions in milliseconds with the click of a key.

This is a world where the value of any idea can be based on vague assertions of  potential profitability and an expedient lie is more admired than any factual knowledge.

The misinformation is acted on;  both truth and consequences buried under a mudslide of outrageous acts;  compounded by a barrage of repeated assertions of more egregious lies.   Again, lies which state-of-the-art information technology  can deliver at a rate impossible to keep track of, much less counter.

For an authoritarian personality post-truth thinking opens the door to a conviction that what a person believes is reality.    They are at liberty–if ordered to by an authoritarian leader they recognize–obligated to act on it.

Within any authoritarian group their actions are praiseworthy and any consequential damage and the resulting suffering and cost to individuals and society at large justified.

Reality is supremely indifferent to what anyone may wish, hope, or believe to be true.  The propensity to believe what is hoped is true enough to act on–even in the face of overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary–seems ingrained in human nature.

Faith–an act of the will to believe manifested by a willingness to act–at times in defiance of doubt and reason.   {To be continued}