The Pathos Daily

Sunday, January 10, 2010

BBC Parliament Drinking Game

My friend Daniel G sent this today. These rules are from a group on Facebook of the same name. With some tweaks it could make debating interesting even in the worst of bin rooms.

BBC Parliament Drinking Game
A parliament broadcasting themed drinking game.

Essentials:
Freeview or sky with BBC Parliament (ch31 freeview)

alcohol

Rules:

1) Everytime the following words are heard, you must drink the corresponding measure:

Goverment ------ 1 finger
Parliament ------ 2 fingers
Mr. speaker ------ 3 fingers
The right honourable gentleman ---- 4 fingers
Public -------- 5 fingers
society ------- 6 fingers
liberal democrat ------7 fingers

If the words "the war in iraq" are heard word for word, every finishes their drinks.

2) Everytime a speaker points his finger, whoever is sitting in the corresponding place in relation to the TV must drink.

If the speaker non-chalantly waves his hand o'er the majority of the screen, all must drink.

If the speaker sets his hands parallel with each other in the air and brings them upwards and downwards whilst speaking, all must drink the corresponding hand movements to finger measures. (see fig 1)

3) In the chamber, when the rabble is roused, the last person to slam their fist down and call for "order" must drink.

4) In the chamber, when there is an eruption of laughter, the last person to join in laughing must drink.

5) Everytime the speaker says "England", "English", "Britain" or "British" ... the last person to stand up and salute must drink.

***** This game reaches its full potential during a house of commons debate *******
A parliament broadcasting themed drinking game.

AnimeExpo Otaku Parliamentary Debate

AnimeExpo, the anime convention, is running a now regular event of parliamentary debate. They ask for teams to notify of their interest ahead of the con, and use interesting geek motions.

This is one of the most fun links I came across when it comes to debate.

I couldn't get it done last year, but Dan Kaminsky, Steve Llano and myself plan an event such as this at Defcon. Hopefully we will have the time to get it done this year. Naturally, all help is appreciated, and people who understand debate are more than welcome to join in the effort.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Association vs. Causation: Post Hoc Fallacies in Medicine

One of the themes in my daily life is that I closely examine whether what I see happen is actually happening, by examining how I draw conclusions. One of the biggies is; did something cause something else just because one followed the other, or happened at the same time?

In this post, the author Mark Crislip discusses how medical doctors can try and reason this out when diagnosing patients. Fascinating read, if a bit long.. so skim through if you like.

The author draws much from the 1965 paper by Austin Bradford Hill, “The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?”

Association is a much better word to use than what rhetoricians are used to with Correlation, and I think I may adopt it.

You can also check out my post on Debugging for Medical Doctors.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

We Did It: Informative Article on Women at Work

The Economist had an informative and balanced article this week on women at work. It is a good information source for debates on women rights and equality, and a good article regardless.

AT A time when the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce. Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world’s great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France.

Women’s economic empowerment is arguably the biggest social change of our times. Just a generation ago, women were largely confined to repetitive, menial jobs. They were routinely subjected to casual sexism and were expected to abandon their careers when they married and had children. Today they are running some of the organisations that once treated them as second-class citizens. Millions of women have been given more control over their own lives. And millions of brains have been put to more productive use. Societies that try to resist this trend—most notably the Arab countries, but also Japan and some southern European countries—will pay a heavy price in the form of wasted talent and frustrated citizens.

This revolution has been achieved with only a modicum of friction (see article). Men have, by and large, welcomed women’s invasion of the workplace. Yet even the most positive changes can be incomplete or unsatisfactory. This particular advance comes with two stings. The first is that women are still under-represented at the top of companies. Only 2% of the bosses of America’s largest companies and 5% of their peers in Britain are women. They are also paid significantly less than men on average. The second is that juggling work and child-rearing is difficult. Middle-class couples routinely complain that they have too little time for their children. But the biggest losers are poor children—particularly in places like America and Britain that have combined high levels of female participation in the labour force with a reluctance to spend public money on child care.

Learn cross-examination from the pro [Video, Lecture]

The Ethos Debate blog posted a very interesting video lecture from the Vector debate meeting with Jordan Lorence, a lawyer, on the subject of cross examination.

It's worth the time it takes to watch, both to learn how to question people in cross examination, as well as how to defend oneself by seeing what tricks are used.

The following is the first part, and you can follow the links to the other 11.

Interesting studies in social psychology [Research]

These are some of the more interesting studies that caught my eye in 2009.

One dollar a day to prevent teen pregnancy
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104803094&ft=1&f=1007

The city of Greensboro, N.C., has experimented with a program designed for teenage mothers. To prevent these teens from having another child, the city offered each of them $1 a day for every day they were not pregnant. It turns out that the psychological power of that small daily payment is huge. A single dollar a day was enough to push the rate of teen pregnancy down, saving all the incredible costs — human and financial — that go with teen parenting.

Persuasion-wise, it reminds me of army recruiters in San Diego's streets during Comic-Coon. With clown make-up, and offering $1 bills. Only to get you to a meeting.

Naturally, once you take the bill you are psychologically committed.

This also reminded me of cult and "workshop" recruitment attempts. Who said these tools of persuasion can't be used for good?

Want to keep your wallet? Carry a baby picture
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6681923.ece

What would you do if you found a wallet on the street? Leave it? Take it to a police station? Post it back to the owner? Keep it, even?

The answer, scientists have found, depends rather more on evolution than morality.

Smiling increases good samaritan behavior
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/01/03/smiling-increases-good-samaritan-behavior/

We tend to think that “good people tend to do good things.” But what if it wasn’t a person’s intrinsic “goodness” or personality that influenced their behavior, but something far simpler?

What if a simple smile could change a person’s behavior?

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Reframing Bonuses at the Factory [Paper]

[Syndicated from my personal blog, here]

A fascinating new paper studies the effect of framing bonuses on productivity:

During our experiment, which lasted almost six months in total, subjects engaged in their regular tasks, and had standard work schedules. As per company policy, the bonus incentives were paid in addition to the base income, and employees were notified of the bonuses via personal letters. The main insights gained in the experiment come from a comparison of productivity measures across a baseline and two treatments: in the positively framed bonus ("reward") treatment employees are notified that if the week’s average per-hour production reaches a certain threshold, a bonus is paid at the end of the pay period. In the negatively framed bonus ("punishment") treatment, employees are provisionally given the bonus before the work week begins, but are notified that if the average per-hour production does not reach a certain threshold, it is retracted at the end of the pay period. In this way, the bonus schemes are isomorphic, except for the frame. Nevertheless, prospect theory conjectures that since losses loom larger than gains, the punishment treatment should outperform the reward variant. Alternatively, if workers are more invigorated by positive incentive schemes, the reward treatment should lead to a higher level of productivity.

You can read more about "The Behavioralist Visits the Factory", here:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/01/the-behavioralist-visits-the-factory.html

Logical Fallacies Theater - Tree Lobsters [Comics]

Reframing in the fight against airport full body scanners

[Syndicated from my personal blog, here]

Full body scanners are becoming a reality following the latest near-miss terrorist attack (the undies bomber).

The old arguments on loss of privacy are fast losing traction in the face of practical need, public fear, and politicians looking for bandwagon theater.

Bandwagon theater, defined:
A combination of "jumping on the bandwagon" and "security theater", similar in purpose but directly opposite to the concept of a scape-goat, trying to show they do something so they can please the public.

New arguments are now being presented, to try and fight this unstoppable bandwagon theater force of full body scanners, trying to reframe the idea as bad now that the privacy concerns are marginalized.

Radiation risk (fear mongering, red herring):
Claims have been made that there is RADIATION risk.
The radiation appears to be so minor it doesn't even register, but it's a good argument, if a red-herring meant for fear mongering

But, it's RADIATION (run for your lives!), need I say more?

Child pornography (straw man):
Claims have been made that child pornography laws may be violated by using the machines. This is obviously a straw-man argument, which if has any basis in reality can easily be avoided.

This campaign against full body scanners at airports, if it is indeed more than just background noise, is certainly fascinating to watch, even if I am against these machines.

To learn about reframing issues in politics, I strongly recommend the lectures from the 2007 Orwell conference, which I review here:
http://gevron.livejournal.com/25314.html

Logical fallacies in presidential debates [Video]

In this video from HowStuffWorks titled "Persuasive Techniques: How Political Candidates Debate", political expert Hal Bruno explains and demonstrates logical fallacies by examples from historical presidential debates.

In this program, viewers will experience firsthand the elements used by political candidates in debate. Primary source footage from some of the great debates of the late 20th century is featured.

A demonstration of the non-commutativity of the English language [Video]

Terry Tao writes on his What's New blog about a video he came across, which exploits a rhetorical trick he haven't seen before:

If nothing else, it’s a convincing (albeit unsubtle) demonstration that the English language is non-commutative (or perhaps non-associative); a linguistic analogue of the swindle, if you will.

Of course, the trick relies heavily on sentence fragments that negate or compare; I wonder if it is possible to achieve a comparable effect without using such fragments.

Is healthcare a right? [Video]

Steven E. Landsburg, author of The Big Questions, writes on his blog about a debate he was recently a part of:

A couple of weeks ago, here at the University of Rochester, two fine student organizations—the History Council and the Finance/Economics Council—joined forces to sponsor a debate on the topic “Is Health Care a Right?”. The disputants were myself and history professor Ted Brown, who graciously agreed to speak first at my request.