The Surplus Population

3-To Believe Or Not To Believe

In this episode, we discuss what sources we can trust. Has science been wrong all this time? Notes: iTunes: The Surplus Population thesurpluspopulation@gmail.com Twitter: @surpluspop soundcloud.com/the-surplus-population reddit.com/r/TheSurplusPopulation facebook.com/thesurpluspopulation 0:00:35 http://www.gq.com/story/tila-tequila-flat-earth 0:03:15 “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science” http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716 0:04:40 “Weekly Fluctuations in Risk Tolerance and Voting Behaviour” Jet G. Sanders, Rob Jenkins 0:05:00 https://xkcd.com/435/ 0:06:10 “Believe it or not: how much can we rely on published data on potential drug targets?” Nature, Answer? 25% http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.html 0:06:10 “Drug development: Raise standards for preclinical cancer research” Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html 0:08:00 “Results of social science research have failed to confirm any of these concerns about children of lesbian and gay parents” http://www.apa.org/about/policy/parenting.aspx 0:08:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqIIeGmhL2Q 0:09:05 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment 0:10:45 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_parenting#Methodology 0:15:45 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology) 0:16:20 Number of trials to make this effect negligible: 1-0.6^14 = 99% 0:19:30 “Visualize Success if You Want to Fail” - Forbes 0:25:50 “Almost 500 Foods Contain The 'Yoga Mat' Compound. Should We Care?” NPR 0:30:00 “The relationship between confidence and accuracy” Kevin Krug http://dev.cjcenter.org/_files/apcj/3_1_confidenceandaccuracy.pdf 0:34:20 False memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory 0:34:20 Flashbulb memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashbulb_memory 0:35:40 “Expert political judgement: How good is it? How can we know?” Phillip E. Tetlock http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=2005-09833-000#toc 0:36:35 “Pundits predict no more accurately than a coin toss” http://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/pundits-as-accurate-as-coin-toss-according-to-study 0:39:00 “Even Donald Trump’s supporters are ashamed of him: Many backers too embarrassed to admit it to pollsters” Salon’s take http://www.salon.com/2015/12/24/even_donald_trumps_supporters_are_ashamed_of_him_many_backers_too_embarrassed_to_admit_it_to_pollsters/ 0:39:00 “Why does Donald Trump perform better in online versus live telephone polling?” The actual poll http://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Morning-Consult-Donald-Trump-online-versus-live-polling-methods-study1.pdf 0:43:45 Powerball meme http://www.snopes.com/powerball-wealth-sharing-meme/ 0:46:45 http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/ 0:50:45 “The White House Is Not a Metronome” By Nate Silver https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/the-white-house-is-not-a-metronome/

2-The Problem With Average

Thomas and Simone discuss the problems with using averages. Social Media: iTunes: The Surplus Population thesurpluspopulation@gmail.com Twitter: @surpluspop soundcloud.com/the-surplus-population reddit.com/r/TheSurplusPopulation facebook.com/thesurpluspopulation Istagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesurpluspopulation/?hl=en My “Genuinely Good Conversation” episode: http://ggcpodcast.com/no-thanks-given Show notes for "The Problem With Average" by timestamps: 0:45 The average person has one testicle: https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/27mzxz/the_average_person_has_one_testicle/ 1:45 Mean: good for bulk properties 6:00 Example of media misusing “average” (mean) 7:15 The mean cell life is a few years. But, your body does not “renew every cell over seven years.” In fact: “Some cells are made and they're killed off, and replaced very, very regularly, very, very rapidly, blood cells last 120 days for example, others do have to genuinely last you a lifetime.” http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/2961/ 7:50 Infant mortality drags down life expectancy 9:30 Actuarial tables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_table 10:45 Median: 11:30 Average US income $72,641 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Mean_household_income 12:10 Median US income $54,462 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States 16:05 Mode: finds the most important groups 16:30 Multi-modal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution 18:25 Height Distribution: Hmm, wikipedia says “The combined distribution of heights of men and women is sometimes used as an example of a bimodal distribution, but in fact the difference in mean heights of men and women is too small relative to their standard deviations to produce bimodality.” Interesting. Maybe I was wrong to use it as an example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution#General_properties 20:20 Amazon wish list of a teacher (softcover vs hardcover): http://gottwurfelt.com/2012/05/16/a-real-life-example-of-a-bimodal-or-trimodal-distribution/ 21:45 Color spectrum in different languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate 22:45 Linguistic relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity 24:00 Life expectancy of cats/dogs/humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy 25:25 Malcolm Gladwell TED talk on pasta sauce https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce 29:00 Gavin McInnes Battles Tamara Holder: 'You'd Be Much Happier At Home with a Husband and Children' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuWlOhP36LY (This clip is presented under US fair use copyright law) 29:40 By the way, he’s also committing the “Ecological fallacy”: “a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data where inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inference for the group to which those individuals belong.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy 32:15 Poe’s Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law 37:10 Average Attractiveness from oktrends. Looks like there is some modality to people’s ratings. So I was wrong on that. https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/ 38:15 Also, as I mentioned “women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium” https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/ 39:30 Average Penis Length: ~5”, Gaussian, Standard deviation 1” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size#Erect 41:00 Women cheat for love (57% feel love for lover compared with 27% for men) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-weiss/women-cheating-5-reasons-for-female-infidelity_b_1936934.html 44:50 Big Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits 48:45 Malcolm Gladwell TED talk on pasta sauce https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce

1-Neutrinos vs God

Email us: thesurpluspopulation@gmail.com Show notes: Nobel Prize in Discovering Neutrinos have mass: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2015/ 100 trillion neutrinos passing through you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-y4m6c2h8o 1:55 More particly than wavy: “Neutrino: An electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic PARTICLE. [emphasis mine]” https://www.mpg.de/12928/Glossary 3:15 Neil Degrass Tyson Clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-y4m6c2h8o 4:30 Forces interacting with Neutrinos "Neutrinos are affected only by a 'weak' sub-atomic force of much shorter range than electromagnetism, and are therefore able to pass through great distances in matter without being affected by it. If neutrinos have mass, they also interact gravitationally with other massive particles, but gravity is by far the weakest of the four known forces." (written before the discovery that neutrinos have mass) 15:15 This is the Nietzsche piece I was trying to quote about no one remaining in the infinitely skeptical state. "[The intuitive man] suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch." "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense" Frederich Nietzsche http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Nietzsche/Truth_and_Lie_in_an_Extra-Moral_Sense.htm 16:20 "Pyrrho is said to have been so seriously bound to skepticism that it led to his own unfortunate and sudden death around 275 B.C.E. According to the legend, he was demonstrating skepticism while blindfolded when his disciples tried to warn him of a dangerous cliff he was headed toward. He refused to believe them, and thus, his life ended abruptly. The historical accuracy of this claim is, however, doubtful." http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pyrrho_and_pyrrhonism 20:40 "Not a scientific claim example" 26:40 Concrete and Abstract Objects http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/ 29:15 "Proof of Heaven" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Alexander_(author)#Proof_of_Heaven 34:20 Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor 35:55 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#History Credits: Thomas Long (host, editor, researcher, artist) Jaen Simone Hawkins (host, manager)