Fully autonomous vehicles are not legal under current regulations, and California is considering barring self-drive cars that do not have:
- steering wheels
-pedals
-a licensed driver who can take over in an emergency
As with all cases of discrimination, simply set the same test for everyone and there's no problem. All you should have to do is demonstrate that the car is not riskier than a human driver and then you're done.
[Yes, that's definitely easy to do. For sure.]
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36139986
Tuesday, 26 April 2016
Advanced Obfuscation
Every time I read this particular paper I find something else wrong with it. Doesn't matter which paper (maybe in a future post) except that it's a simulation of a famous hydrogen tail from a spiral galaxy. I'm keeping a detailed file on this one. The main points thus far :
- Their figures comparing the simulations and observations are set to the same horizontal but different vertical scales, making it look as though the simulations are in far better agreement with the observations than they actually are.
- The spiral galaxy is already known to be unusually gas rich, but their model would make it even richer - exceptionally so. They simply avoid any remarks on this.
- The gas in the spiral would have been significantly more extended than in reality and with a profile that doesn't match the observations. That might not be so bad except that the real galaxy's gas distribution is quite normal. Again they simply avoid noting this.
- The mass of their simulated spiral is about a factor 2 lower than the real one. They cunningly conceal this by stating only the mass (which is derived from the observations) rather than the circular velocity (which is what's actually observed) and seemingly ignore the fact that circular velocity must be corrected for inclination.
- A major structure in the spiral galaxy is not reproduced at all.
- They identify one real object which could be the cause of the interaction, state that there are others but don't state which ones.
- Very little is said quantitatively about the structure of the tail (which would not have been that difficult to do) so we only have their figures to compare with observations.
This isn't even the most determined effort to hide results that I've seen, but it's a serious contender for "using the widest variety of different ways to massage data". They aren't even small problems of detail either - potentially the main result is simply wrong. It's got 39 citations.
[Later I tested their results through a large series of numerical simulations. Their main conclusion is likely correct, in that the mechanism they present can explain certain observations in general. Whether it can explain the specific observations they discussed, though, is in my opinion very much less clear.]
Monday, 25 April 2016
The opposite of Dunning-Kruger is imposter syndrome
Nothing revolutionary here, but a nice little article all the same.
Yet if it's terrifying to feel like the only fraud in your field or organisation, it's equally terrifying to confront the truth that everyone is winging it. That's another reason why it can be hard to accept that the impostor phenomenon is universal : we desperately want to believe that there are grown-ups in control - especially in fields such as government, medicine or law.
Indeed, it has been argued that this is one reason people believe in otherwise ridiculous conspiracy theories. In some sense, it's actually more reassuring to believe that a sinister cabal is manipulating the course of history than that they aren't: that way, at least someone would be indisputably in charge.
Ultimately, you should probably worry more if someone tells you they've never felt like a fraud. These ultra-confident people may simply be too incompetent to realise how incompetent they are. This cognitive bias is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, and the classic example concerns a bank robber who was astonished to be caught despite having smeared lemon juice on his face, which he believed made him invisible to security cameras. It was an idiotic belief, of course - but he was too much of an idiot to see it. The truly incompetent, in short, rarely worry about being truly incompetent.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36082469
Yet if it's terrifying to feel like the only fraud in your field or organisation, it's equally terrifying to confront the truth that everyone is winging it. That's another reason why it can be hard to accept that the impostor phenomenon is universal : we desperately want to believe that there are grown-ups in control - especially in fields such as government, medicine or law.
Indeed, it has been argued that this is one reason people believe in otherwise ridiculous conspiracy theories. In some sense, it's actually more reassuring to believe that a sinister cabal is manipulating the course of history than that they aren't: that way, at least someone would be indisputably in charge.
Ultimately, you should probably worry more if someone tells you they've never felt like a fraud. These ultra-confident people may simply be too incompetent to realise how incompetent they are. This cognitive bias is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, and the classic example concerns a bank robber who was astonished to be caught despite having smeared lemon juice on his face, which he believed made him invisible to security cameras. It was an idiotic belief, of course - but he was too much of an idiot to see it. The truly incompetent, in short, rarely worry about being truly incompetent.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36082469
Thursday, 21 April 2016
Testing how the EM drive works, if it does at all (hint : it doesn't)
This paper claims to explain how the notoriously click-baity EmDrive could actually be working. If you've been living under a stone on Mars, the EmDrive is a magical copper tube that proponents claim will be able to get you back home to Earth in double-quick time without using any propellant. Everyone else says that's just silly because it means violating the conservation of momentum, which is tantamount to saying that a wizard did it.
There are two very positive aspects to this paper :
1) It wouldn't violate the conservation of momentum after all, thus saving the Universe from magical leprechauns and wicked pixies.
2) It makes a very clear and testable prediction that the thrust the device is supposedly producing could be reversed if the tube was made shorter.
I remain extremely skeptical in many senses of the word (http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/09/skepticism.html) because there are also some very negative aspects of the paper, not least of which is that the idea behind it can also explain galaxy rotation without dark matter and the acceleration of the Universe without dark energy. That rather smacks of being too good to be true, and anyway it's not just galaxy rotation curves which suggest the need for dark matter.
Then there's the fact that it references few peer-reviewed journal articles (this article is itself not peer reviewed) and the acknowledgements section consists of : "Many thanks for Dr Jose Rodal and others on an NSF forum for estimating from photographs the proportions of the various experimental arrangements."
Yeah, really ? Some dudes on the internet looked at a photograph for you ?
None of which means the idea isn't true - I haven't gone through it properly. But "too good to be true" ideas with dodgy references have an awfully strong track record of being... well, too good to be true.
[The EM drive has been completely discredited by repeated tests that measured a small thrust even when turned off, indicating that this is a good old-fashioned low-significance measurement error.]
http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.03449
There are two very positive aspects to this paper :
1) It wouldn't violate the conservation of momentum after all, thus saving the Universe from magical leprechauns and wicked pixies.
2) It makes a very clear and testable prediction that the thrust the device is supposedly producing could be reversed if the tube was made shorter.
I remain extremely skeptical in many senses of the word (http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/09/skepticism.html) because there are also some very negative aspects of the paper, not least of which is that the idea behind it can also explain galaxy rotation without dark matter and the acceleration of the Universe without dark energy. That rather smacks of being too good to be true, and anyway it's not just galaxy rotation curves which suggest the need for dark matter.
Then there's the fact that it references few peer-reviewed journal articles (this article is itself not peer reviewed) and the acknowledgements section consists of : "Many thanks for Dr Jose Rodal and others on an NSF forum for estimating from photographs the proportions of the various experimental arrangements."
Yeah, really ? Some dudes on the internet looked at a photograph for you ?
None of which means the idea isn't true - I haven't gone through it properly. But "too good to be true" ideas with dodgy references have an awfully strong track record of being... well, too good to be true.
[The EM drive has been completely discredited by repeated tests that measured a small thrust even when turned off, indicating that this is a good old-fashioned low-significance measurement error.]
http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.03449
Wednesday, 20 April 2016
High altitude Victorians
Or, flying before Ryan Air and security checks came and ruined the whole thing.
“The illuminated dials of Westminster clock were like two dull moons,” he wrote, while Commercial Road “appeared like a line of brilliant fire”. The closest comparison, he thought, was the Milky Way on a clear dark night. “The field of view appeared covered with gold-dust, to be possessed of the power to see those minute spots of light as brilliant stars.”
“A flood of strong sunlight burst upon us with a beautiful blue sky without a cloud, and beneath us lay a magnificent sea of clouds, its surface varied with endless hills, hillocks, and mountain chains, and with many snow-white tufts rising from it.”
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160419-the-victorians-who-flew-as-high-as-jets
“The illuminated dials of Westminster clock were like two dull moons,” he wrote, while Commercial Road “appeared like a line of brilliant fire”. The closest comparison, he thought, was the Milky Way on a clear dark night. “The field of view appeared covered with gold-dust, to be possessed of the power to see those minute spots of light as brilliant stars.”
“A flood of strong sunlight burst upon us with a beautiful blue sky without a cloud, and beneath us lay a magnificent sea of clouds, its surface varied with endless hills, hillocks, and mountain chains, and with many snow-white tufts rising from it.”
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160419-the-victorians-who-flew-as-high-as-jets
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
Scientists will not be gagged by the government
A welcome moment of sanity. No gagging threat for government-funded British scientists, hurrah ! There was quite a surge in the recent poll of ~10,000 signatures in the last two days, so maybe there's hope for democracy yet.
Though I won't be satisfied until the Boaty McBoatface sets sail.
The government has bowed to intense behind-the-scenes pressure from the science community and will exempt some researchers from a controversial "anti-lobbying clause". Universities and royal colleges have been raising questions since the clause, which aims to stop organisations – primarily charities – using taxpayer-funded grants to lobby the government or parliament, was announced in February. Charities have told BuzzFeed News it is an ideological attack on a problem that "doesn't exist" and will actually cost the government money in the long run.
Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, has written to the Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock to say universities will be affected and has told BuzzFeed News the clause is an "extreme restriction on academic freedom will be bad for policy-making, bad for the public interest and bad for democracy".
In a statement he said: "I am very glad that the Government has today announced its intention to create this exemption for university researchers. I do not believe that the Government meant for the 'anti-lobbying' clause to apply to grants for researchers in universities and research institutes, and I am glad that the Cabinet Office has today indicated that it will do the right thing.
"I hope that the exemption will apply not just to grants from the higher education funding councils and research councils, but also to grants from Government Departments for research. Without the exemption, the clause would forbid researchers from using Government grants to attempt to influence policy-making. Such a restriction would be bad for policy-making, bad for the public interest and bad for democracy."
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/government-exempts-some-scientific-researchers-from-gagging?utm_term=.hi9Bwq8Ap#.gu6vEPJ7x
Though I won't be satisfied until the Boaty McBoatface sets sail.
The government has bowed to intense behind-the-scenes pressure from the science community and will exempt some researchers from a controversial "anti-lobbying clause". Universities and royal colleges have been raising questions since the clause, which aims to stop organisations – primarily charities – using taxpayer-funded grants to lobby the government or parliament, was announced in February. Charities have told BuzzFeed News it is an ideological attack on a problem that "doesn't exist" and will actually cost the government money in the long run.
Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, has written to the Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock to say universities will be affected and has told BuzzFeed News the clause is an "extreme restriction on academic freedom will be bad for policy-making, bad for the public interest and bad for democracy".
In a statement he said: "I am very glad that the Government has today announced its intention to create this exemption for university researchers. I do not believe that the Government meant for the 'anti-lobbying' clause to apply to grants for researchers in universities and research institutes, and I am glad that the Cabinet Office has today indicated that it will do the right thing.
"I hope that the exemption will apply not just to grants from the higher education funding councils and research councils, but also to grants from Government Departments for research. Without the exemption, the clause would forbid researchers from using Government grants to attempt to influence policy-making. Such a restriction would be bad for policy-making, bad for the public interest and bad for democracy."
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/government-exempts-some-scientific-researchers-from-gagging?utm_term=.hi9Bwq8Ap#.gu6vEPJ7x
People prefer talking to machines because machines don't judge
Fascinating article which falls firmly into, "well that's obvious, hang on why didn't I realise this before ?" category. With profound consequences for everyone.
People are more open with automated tools because they believe computers don’t judge and that they’re more ethical, studies show. “People who talk to a virtual agent know their data is anonymous and safe and that no one is going to judge them.”
Intensions Consulting found that 26% of Canadian adults believed an unbiased computer program would be more trustworthy and ethical than their workplace leaders and mangers. The study also found that 26% of Canadians would rather be screened, hired and have their job performance assessed by an unbiased computer program.
Nick Badminton, a futurist and a co-author of the study, said in a release that “people are losing faith in human management, and rightly so. Who would you trust, a human with personal biases and opinions or a rational and balanced (artificial intelligence)?”
It’s important to keep in mind that robots are still machines and they can be manipulated by the end user. Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, Georgia ran a study where he simulated a fire in a building and asked people to follow a robot to safety. The robot, though, took them into wrong rooms, to a back door instead of the correct door, and (by design) it broke down in the middle of the emergency exit. Yet, through all of that, people still followed the robot around the building hoping it would lead them outside. This study proved to Wagner that people have an “automation bias”, or a tendency to believe an automated system even when they shouldn’t.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160412-truth-be-told-were-more-honest-with-robots
People are more open with automated tools because they believe computers don’t judge and that they’re more ethical, studies show. “People who talk to a virtual agent know their data is anonymous and safe and that no one is going to judge them.”
Intensions Consulting found that 26% of Canadian adults believed an unbiased computer program would be more trustworthy and ethical than their workplace leaders and mangers. The study also found that 26% of Canadians would rather be screened, hired and have their job performance assessed by an unbiased computer program.
Nick Badminton, a futurist and a co-author of the study, said in a release that “people are losing faith in human management, and rightly so. Who would you trust, a human with personal biases and opinions or a rational and balanced (artificial intelligence)?”
It’s important to keep in mind that robots are still machines and they can be manipulated by the end user. Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, Georgia ran a study where he simulated a fire in a building and asked people to follow a robot to safety. The robot, though, took them into wrong rooms, to a back door instead of the correct door, and (by design) it broke down in the middle of the emergency exit. Yet, through all of that, people still followed the robot around the building hoping it would lead them outside. This study proved to Wagner that people have an “automation bias”, or a tendency to believe an automated system even when they shouldn’t.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160412-truth-be-told-were-more-honest-with-robots
Monday, 18 April 2016
The case for Boaty McBoatface
I'm sort of tempted to start an e-petition to compel them to actually use the name. Yes, the government couldn't directly force them to choose the name, but I'll bet the science minister has some influential clout.
Why I think they should actually use the name instead of dismissing it as the internet having a laugh :
- By having the audacity to use such a silly name for such a serious project, it will project supreme self confidence to the world.
- It will instantly appeal to a huge number of young taxpayers who would otherwise not have cared.
- It's a conversation starter. The name buys you a massive outreach opportunity that a polar explorer or a naturalist just doesn't.
- It will instantly and forever shatter the image of the elitist, out of touch, boring scientist. I can't emphasise enough how important that is. Also this : http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/04/16/ask-ethan-why-dont-you-look-like-a-scientist/#61aedb12272c
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36064659
Why I think they should actually use the name instead of dismissing it as the internet having a laugh :
- By having the audacity to use such a silly name for such a serious project, it will project supreme self confidence to the world.
- It will instantly appeal to a huge number of young taxpayers who would otherwise not have cared.
- It's a conversation starter. The name buys you a massive outreach opportunity that a polar explorer or a naturalist just doesn't.
- It will instantly and forever shatter the image of the elitist, out of touch, boring scientist. I can't emphasise enough how important that is. Also this : http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/04/16/ask-ethan-why-dont-you-look-like-a-scientist/#61aedb12272c
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36064659
Sunday, 17 April 2016
Stop the government from preventing science lobbyists
Sign it for God's sake, unless you want the government to be allowed a free hand to ignore evidence as it sees fit.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/122957
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/122957
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