Random quote
The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked, 
‘What are those?’
‘Soldiers.’
‘What are soldiers?’
‘They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can.’
The girl held still and studied. 
‘Do you know ... I know something?’
‘Yes, what is it you know?’
‘Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.

From The People, Yes (1936), an epic poem by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) 

Noise

Recently I wrote a blog about Informational Cascades, after having read about it in the book Noise by Daniel Kahneman et al. Actually, I should have written about the main theme of the book in the first place, of course: Noise. According to the authors noise is a much ignored and neglected problem in research and in many daily practices when decisions must be taken. Noise must be distinguished from Bias, so the authors. Unlike noise, they say, bias does get much attention in decision practices. The reason is that bias is relatively easy to establish and to avoid, if you invest some time in doing so, while noise is often difficult to establish, and once you know that it is there, it is difficult to get a grip on it.
When reading the book I got the impression that it is a rather recently discovered problem, though the authors do not say so. Anyway, I remember that already when I studied sociology around 1970, my methodology books paid attention to the problem of noise and bias. However, then they had other names. Then it was called the problem of reliability and validity of measuring instruments (since we are talking about sociology, you must think of 5-point or 7-point measuring scales, questionnaires and the like, but in fact the problem applies to any measurement). A measuring instrument is called valid if it measures what it is supposed to measure, and it is called reliable if it gives the same result each time when it is used to measure the same object.
This brings us to the heart of the noise-bias distinction, for a reliable measuring instrument is noise-free and if it is a valid instrument it is bias-free. Preferably it is both. Instead of further clarifying the valid-reliable distinction, I’ll continue discussing the bias-noise distinction, since in fact it is the same.
Kahneman et al. give a clear example of the distinction and once you understand it, you know what bias and noise are and the rest is “only” the problem how to avoid them. Four teams of four archers go to an archery range. Each person does one shot. Ideally, each archer should hit the bull’s eye. These are the results for each team (for practical reasons I copied the figure from the Wikipedia):

As you can see in the figure, all members of team-a hit the bull’s eye. The result was accurate. The result of team-b was also accurate in a sense, because all team members hit the same point but the shots are systematically off the target. Therefore, we call the result biased. The results of team-c are all around the bull’s eye, but they are scattered around the target. Therefore, we call the team result noisy. The result of team-d is both systematically off the target and it is scattered around the wrong target point. Therefore, we call this team result biased and noisy at the same time. I think that this illustration makes clear what the essence of bias and noise is, especially if we summarize the concepts this way: Bias is systematic deviation, while noise is random scatter. The difference between bias and noise becomes especially clear, if we look at the back side of the targets the archers were shooting at (see the figure below):

If you didn’t know where the bull’s eye of the target is, you couldn’t know whether team-a or team-b was closer to the bull’s eye, but it will be clear to you that both the results of team-c and team-d are noisy. As Kahneman et al. say: “A general property of noise is that you can recognize and measure it while knowing nothing about the target of the bias.” Or in terms of validity and reliability: We don’t know whether the results of teams a and b are valid, but we do know that the results of teams c and d are not reliable. Once you know what the problem is, the question is how to solve it, which often is far from easy. However, this must not be a reason to ignore the problem, for it’s really important as some examples by Kahneman et al. show:
- Faced with the same patient different doctors often make different judgements.
- Case managers in child protection agencies often make mistakes in judging whether a child must be placed in foster care since there is a risk of abuse. Some managers are more likely to send a child to foster care than others. However, children wrongly assigned to foster care have poorer life outcomes, like delinquency rates.
- Weather forecasts are known to be noisy.
- Interviewers of job candidates make widely different assessments of the same people. Moreover, performance ratings of the employees depend more on the person doing the assessment than on the performance being assessed.

Source
Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgment. London: William Collins, 2021; pp. 3-7.

Random quote
When empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name, without effectively grasping anything to which they refer, since what they refer to can never have any reality, for the simple reason that they mean nothing.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) 

Red herring

Since unsound argumentation and wrong reasoning are quite common and can have annoying consequences, I regularly pay attention to this problem. It’s not only for my readers but also for myself, for I, too, often make reasoning errors or don’t see it, when others make them. Some incorrect argumentations are logical mistakes. They are called formal fallacies. Other incorrect argumentations are not so much logically false but they employ crippled reasoning. They are called informal fallacies. Some crippled reasoning is not even that, and it may be even correct. I mean, the reasoning as such is correct but it has little to do with the question it is supposed to answer or the problem it is supposed to solve. From this point of view, there is no rhyme or reason in it. If this happens, the speaker or writer commits the red herring fallacy.
As said, the reasoning in a red herring argument as such need not to be false. It can also be intentionally put forward that way, for a red herring often serves as a way of distraction from the question or problem at stake. It is used as a diversionary tactic.
Let’s see what Heather Rivera in my book Bad Arguments says about it (see Reference): “A red herring is a distraction device and refers to an informal logical fallacy that distracts from the actual issue, allowing one to be sidetracked from what is actually happening and to draw a false conclusion.” (p. 208)
Often a red herring discussion runs as follows (compare p. 208):
1) Person 1 presents argument, issue or topic A.
2) Person 2 introduces argument, issue or topic B.
3) Argument, issue or topic A is abandoned or forgotten and the discussion goes on about argument, issue or topic B.
Red herrings belong to the most frequent informal fallacies. They happen in many discussions and interviews. Let me quote again Rivera: “This [the 3-step argumentation given above] occurs on a daily basis when a reporter or journalist asks the typical politician a question related to one issue (complete with its associated argument), and the politician responds with a wholly different – but often compelling – issue (complete with an associated argument.” (p. 209)
This time I’ll not illustrate my blog with an example, but I’ll ask you to do something: The next time you see an interview with a politician, on TV, on the Internet or in real, just listen whether the person interviewed really answers the questions asked or whether he or she instead (so without answering the questions asked) leads the conversation to a theme s/he wants to talk about or simply leads the interview away from a theme s/he doesn’t want to talk about. If so, the politician throws a red herring to you. Of course, after having read this blog you’ll not pick it up, for you have become wiser. You know now that s/he tries to mislead you, intentionally, or, unintentionally, for example, because s/he is not smart enough to understand the question asked. And what does the interviewer do? Does s/he see that the interview is going the wrong way?

Reference

Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019. Especially Heather Rivera, “Red Herring”, pp. 208-210. 

Random quote
We call on our right to physical integrity to maintain unlimited freedom to expose other people to infection by a life-threatening virus. We then claim a right to care if we become ill ourselves without shame about the care that is being withheld from others.

Govert den Hartogh (1943)

Why do we wear clothes?

Do animals not wear clothes?

Montaigne writes about all aspects of life. He writes about how we live and how to live. Or he writes about practical aspects of life, for example, that it would be useful if each town had a central information point where you can get all the information you need. (see my blog last week) Montaigne writes also about aspects of life that are so obvious that they are ignored by most of us. In this sense the Essays are also a kind of philosophy of daily life in the style as later elaborated by, for instance, Michel de Certeau (see for example here). This branch of philosophy discusses common if not banal aspects of daily life that are ignored most of the time but that belong to the constitutive aspects of who we are. Essay I-36, Of the custom of clothing oneself, is a case in point.
In this essay I-36 Montaigne wonders why actually we wear clothes. Isn’t it strange that while animals and plants live on this earth with the skin uncovered, “it is incredible that we only are brought into the world in a defective and indigent condition, and in such a state as cannot subsist without external aid.” Plants and animals don’t need clothes to protect themselves, and therefore Montaigne thinks that it is a human defect that we need them. That’s also what once many who have discussed the problem often thought. But is it really so?
To my mind, Montaigne actually doesn’t come to the point in this essay, which is – as so many essays – rather casuistic and gives only examples of persons and people who do or do not wear clothes in certain – often the same – circumstances. It’s true, Montaigne makes us aware of a fact of human life that belongs to the human condition, but it is not more than that. Anyway, after having stated that plants and animals are better adapted to nature than humans are, just because they do not wear clothes or another cover, Montaigne observes that “… of those nations who have no manner of knowledge of clothing, some are situated under the same temperature that we are, and some in much colder climates.” At first sight this observation says that clothes are actually not necessary. However, another reading of this passage says, I think, just why we are better adapted than plants and animals that have no other choice than to go naked: Clothes make it possible to adapt to the environment according to your personal wishes. And although in certain climates clothes may seem superfluous, they make it possible to live in climates in which humans without clothes cannot live. In other words, clothes extend the life possibilities. They are not a defect but an improvement of the human condition and they are one of the factors that have made human beings so successful.
I could go on with my close reading of this essay and show that Montaigne, implicitly and without being aware of it himself, points to other functions of clothes as well. See for example Montaigne’s statement “I observe much greater distance betwixt my habit and that of one of our country boors, than betwixt his and that of a man who has no other covering but his skin.” Or, “The Romans fought at a very great disadvantage, in the engagement they had with the Carthaginians near Piacenza, by reason that they went to the charge with their blood congealed and their limbs numbed with cold, whereas Hannibal had caused great fires to be dispersed quite through his camp to warm his soldiers, and oil to be distributed amongst them, to the end that anointing themselves, they might render their nerves more supple and active, and fortify the pores against the violence of the air and freezing wind, which raged in that season.” Such and other observations just point to reasons why clothes are important for humans and why humans can use clothes for certain practical – and also social and personal – functions that do not exist for plants and animals. However, I’ll limit myself to mentioning the most important functions of clothes:
- Protection. This can be a protection against the climate, against the actual weather conditions but also the kind of protection given by work clothes, such as gloves protecting your hands against scratches, the helmet of a cyclist or the clothes of a fireman.
- Identification, like the uniform of a police officer or the club outfit of a sports team.
- Modesty: The clothes you wear for a certain occasion like a feast or a funeral.
- Status: Clothes used to express your rank or position in society. What is actually the same: the clothes you wear to express the group you identify with, like wearing casual clothes or a suit, not on a certain occasion but for indicating your reference group.
- Adornment. Despite the functions just mentioned, in many cases personal variation in colour and style of clothes is possible in order to express personal taste and appearance.
It will not be difficult to find more functions that clothes have. All this makes clear that far from being a defect in the human condition, cloths create possibilities and they are an expression of human adaptation and human culture.

Random quote
Terror is a weapon that cuts on one side. It always has more control over those who want to retain their freedom and happiness than those who want to destroy it.

Simone Weil (1909-1943)

A defect in our social system

You may wonder whether there is moral advancement in history, but one thing is sure: many practical problems have been solved that once seemed insolvable; or existing solutions have been improved. Of course, I knew, but again I became aware of how times have changed, when I happened to read again Montaigne’s short essay “Of a defect in our government” (Essays Book I-35). In this essay Montaigne tells us that his father got the idea that every city should have an official that could give you all the information you needed. “For example: I want a chapman to buy my pearls; I want one that has pearls to sell; such a one wants company to go to Paris; such a one seeks a servant of such a quality; such a one a master; such a one such an artificer; some inquiring for one thing, some for another, every one according to what he wants. And doubtless, these mutual advertisements would be of no contemptible advantage to the public correspondence and intelligence: for there are evermore conditions that hunt after one another, and for want of knowing one another’s occasions leave men in very great necessity.” And indeed, when I grew up five centuries after Montaigne wrote these words, much had already been improved, and there were many people that could quickly give you the information you needed. But often you had yet to go to their offices or at least call them up. Moreover, the information was spread, so not concentrated in one person. However, since twenty-five years or so there is a simple solution for this information problem, a solution neither Montaigne nor his father would ever have dreamt of: The Internet. The nice thing about the internet is not only that you have a central point where you can get the information you need, as proposed by Montaigne’s father. But more, you have this “information office” at home and you can consult it any day and any time you like.
Also the two other defects Montaigne mentioned in this essay can simply be solved by the same technology. Montaigne mentions two scholars, one in Italy and one in Germany, who died of hunger, because no one helped them. But he adds: “I believe there are a thousand men who would have invited them into their families, with very advantageous conditions, or have relieved them where they were, had they known their wants.” Who wouldn’t be prepared to help such “rare and remarkable persons”, so Montaigne (and I think, also persons who are less “rare and remarkable”)? Also in such cases, without doubt, a call on Facebook or other social media website would certainly help to find a solution, for example by starting a crowd funding action.
The last problem mentioned by Montaigne actually tells us more about the man himself than about the problem, for Montaigne did know a solution but he simply didn’t use it. His father had engaged a secretary “to keep a journal, and in it to set down all the remarkable occurrences, and daily memorials of the history of his house”, like what happened in his castle, which works had been completed, who visited the castle, which travels Montaigne’s father and his family had made, which marriages had taken place in the castle, and so on. So this secretary kept a kind of diary of the family life and the castle. But apparently Montaigne was too lazy to do so and later he wrote “I did very foolishly in neglecting it.” But could he have used a computer, laptop or smartphone, wouldn’t the task haven’t been much simpler? Even more, many of your life events are automatically registered by the modern media and technology and doesn’t Facebook remind you again and again of what happened a year ago or who knows when?
Modern times, modern solutions. However, though in Montaigne’s days the problem was how to get the information you needed, now the problem is how to get rid of it. For it is not only so that you basically know everything about everything and everybody, but everybody also knows everything about you. 

Random quote
In a group, confident people have more weight than others, even if they have no reason to be confident.

Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein