Not every opinion deserves as much respect as another. If I ask my doctor about my blood pressure, his opinion carries a lot of weight. He's got the education and experience, and I've known him enough years that I have confidence in his judgment. If I ask my Senator about my blood pressure, his opinion doesn't carry much weight. It isn't a matter of his education or station in life, it's just that he's a lawyer and not a doctor. I have no reason to think he knows any more about blood pressure than I do -- and the only reason I'm asking about it is because I don't know enough!
Other people, though, have the appropriate knowledge and experience, but they lack trustworthiness. You can't trust what they say. Your doubts may arise from prior statements they made that turned out to be less than correct, or because they clearly have some motive driving them other than to be honest with you. Or the situation may be so important that you simply can't take anyone on his word alone.
When you express your uncertainty, the response may either overcome or reinforce your doubts. An honest person, confident in his or her understanding of the matter, would ordinarily explain how they think, the facts and assumptions underlying their opinion. An arrogant (or really busy) person may just brush you away. But the person who attacks you for questioning his views, who dances around the question without actually answering it, who refuses or avoids providing those facts and assumptions, that person's opinion deserves no respect at all.
It may be that they are in fact expressing a deeply- and honestly-held view, and that view may itself be solidly-grounded in fact. But because of its source, you can't accept it.
When a person has shown himself to be a pushy advocate of a position, attacking contrary views with slander and irrelevant gossip about people holding those views, refusing to discuss the basis of his opinions or providing false or faulty assertions or analysis, and when you've clearly caught him in the act, then if you continue to listen to him you're only contributing to his delinquency.
Not a good thing!
When you have someone who accepts contrary views and addresses them fairly, carefully and intelligently, who demonstrates patience with critics and addresses their contentions rather than their connections, then you have someone whose opinions deserve respect.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Respectable Opinions
Opinions are easy to get -- an old military adage about opinions noting, in part, that everyone has one -- but many of them aren't particularly valuable or useful.
So how do you separate the occasional grain from the clouds of chaff?
This is most commonly a matter of the authority, status or position of the person whose opinion is at issue. The opinion of a respected radiologist as to the value of mammography should have a pretty high level of credibility, the opinion of an anonymous responder to a blog should not. This is not a matter of class prejudice, it's a matter of knowledge -- of the person's prior assessment of facts and assumptions relating to the specific subject.
Now, if the radiologist offers an opinion about how individuals obtain health insurance to pay for mammogram, that's a different story. Knowledge about the medical issues does not confer special command over the financial, legal or social issues associated with insurance.
In fact, if the radiologist gets going too much on such issues unrelated to the medical basis of his or her expertise, you may well start having questions as to whether opinions on the medical issues are being distorted to conform to these other issues.
And if the radiologist turns out to have integrity issues -- making spurious claims based on weak statistical analysis of doctored data -- then his or her opinion deserves no more credibility than the hack blogger.
If authority is to be accepted as a substitute for a detailed presentation of facts and assumptions, it has to be built on a solid foundation of trustworthiness, which is the most fundamental of all human virtues...
So how do you separate the occasional grain from the clouds of chaff?
This is most commonly a matter of the authority, status or position of the person whose opinion is at issue. The opinion of a respected radiologist as to the value of mammography should have a pretty high level of credibility, the opinion of an anonymous responder to a blog should not. This is not a matter of class prejudice, it's a matter of knowledge -- of the person's prior assessment of facts and assumptions relating to the specific subject.
Now, if the radiologist offers an opinion about how individuals obtain health insurance to pay for mammogram, that's a different story. Knowledge about the medical issues does not confer special command over the financial, legal or social issues associated with insurance.
In fact, if the radiologist gets going too much on such issues unrelated to the medical basis of his or her expertise, you may well start having questions as to whether opinions on the medical issues are being distorted to conform to these other issues.
And if the radiologist turns out to have integrity issues -- making spurious claims based on weak statistical analysis of doctored data -- then his or her opinion deserves no more credibility than the hack blogger.
If authority is to be accepted as a substitute for a detailed presentation of facts and assumptions, it has to be built on a solid foundation of trustworthiness, which is the most fundamental of all human virtues...
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Opinions as facts
In the military decision making process, we build plans on a foundation of facts and assumptions. I went over the additional category of "conjecture," which is like an assumption in that its purpose is to fill in for a missing fact, but is unlike a valid assumption because it has really weak links to established facts.
Let's look at opinions, which are far more often substituted for facts than mere conjecture.
Not that this is always a problem. Opinions can be a lot like assumptions, filling in for missing facts, and dependable to the extent justified by the knowledge of the person giving the opinion about the subject of the opinion. Also like an assumption, an opinion should be examined repeatedly to determine whether it is in fact negated by evolving events. If the basis is sound, if the expert knows his stuff and if he had been given sufficient facts on which to base the opinion, you should be walking on pretty solid ground.
Opinions more often are useful only to the extent that they tell you something about the person stating the opinion, and not about the assertion of the opinion itself. I may tell you oranges are great fruit but apples are not -- does that tell you anything about the fruit? No! But it does tell you something about me.
People are free to have opinions. If President Bush the Elder did not like broccoli, he was entitled not to eat it. If you're a Yankees fan, so be it. We should all be glad that people have a sense of taste.
But opinions based on likes and dislikes need to end with that. To fight with someone because their opinion differs should be, well, distasteful. The ancient Byzantines got into huge riots over sports team affiliations, showing how silly even the members of a great civilization could be at times.
Facts and assumptions. If you want to make an intelligent investigation into what's what and what to do about it, get down to facts and assumptions. If it's a fact, it will stand on its own. If its an assumption, it is as strong as the facts that it's built on. If it needs your opinion to hold up against criticism, maybe you should find something else to work with...
Let's look at opinions, which are far more often substituted for facts than mere conjecture.
Not that this is always a problem. Opinions can be a lot like assumptions, filling in for missing facts, and dependable to the extent justified by the knowledge of the person giving the opinion about the subject of the opinion. Also like an assumption, an opinion should be examined repeatedly to determine whether it is in fact negated by evolving events. If the basis is sound, if the expert knows his stuff and if he had been given sufficient facts on which to base the opinion, you should be walking on pretty solid ground.
Opinions more often are useful only to the extent that they tell you something about the person stating the opinion, and not about the assertion of the opinion itself. I may tell you oranges are great fruit but apples are not -- does that tell you anything about the fruit? No! But it does tell you something about me.
People are free to have opinions. If President Bush the Elder did not like broccoli, he was entitled not to eat it. If you're a Yankees fan, so be it. We should all be glad that people have a sense of taste.
But opinions based on likes and dislikes need to end with that. To fight with someone because their opinion differs should be, well, distasteful. The ancient Byzantines got into huge riots over sports team affiliations, showing how silly even the members of a great civilization could be at times.
Facts and assumptions. If you want to make an intelligent investigation into what's what and what to do about it, get down to facts and assumptions. If it's a fact, it will stand on its own. If its an assumption, it is as strong as the facts that it's built on. If it needs your opinion to hold up against criticism, maybe you should find something else to work with...
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Conjecture and Opinion
I've gone on a bit about facts and assumptions, what they are and how they're used. But consider also what they're not.
An assumption takes the place of a fact you don't actually have. You think it's true, and you're confident that is it probably true -- you just don't know for sure. An assumption is as strong as the actual facts it is assembled from or based on, and you need to understand that basis to decide just how to use the assumption.
For example, during a conventional war soldiers might spot a self-propelled artillery piece on the battlefield. You know that enemy doctrine always groups these into batteries of four, and that they are deployed only with an independent tank regiment, which in turn operates only as part of a specialized division. Because you know enemy doctrine, one fact allows you to deduce all the other facts.
But then come the assumptions: that the artillery piece is operational, that it has a trained crew, that it has ammunition and fuel. How strong are these assumptions? You need more information. And depending on that additional information, you may have greater or lesser concern about the presence of that one gun out on the battlefield.
If the facts are not so certain, if, to use this example, there were no published doctrine on the organization and deployment of self propelled artillery systems, then any statement you might make about the units out there would be guesswork, perhaps reflecting how you would run the enemy's army. But it wouldn't be very strong. And if your soldiers didn't actually get a good look at the gun, or weren't particularly well-versed in how to recognized various artillery pieces, then even the observation itself might be pretty weak.
At some point, if the solid facts lack sustance, then you can't make a valid assumption at all. If you insist on making a claim anyway, it's really nothing more than conjecture -- a guess, a hunch, something that may be more imagination than real, based more on instinct than observation.
Conjecture is not a good thing to build on.
An assumption takes the place of a fact you don't actually have. You think it's true, and you're confident that is it probably true -- you just don't know for sure. An assumption is as strong as the actual facts it is assembled from or based on, and you need to understand that basis to decide just how to use the assumption.
For example, during a conventional war soldiers might spot a self-propelled artillery piece on the battlefield. You know that enemy doctrine always groups these into batteries of four, and that they are deployed only with an independent tank regiment, which in turn operates only as part of a specialized division. Because you know enemy doctrine, one fact allows you to deduce all the other facts.
But then come the assumptions: that the artillery piece is operational, that it has a trained crew, that it has ammunition and fuel. How strong are these assumptions? You need more information. And depending on that additional information, you may have greater or lesser concern about the presence of that one gun out on the battlefield.
If the facts are not so certain, if, to use this example, there were no published doctrine on the organization and deployment of self propelled artillery systems, then any statement you might make about the units out there would be guesswork, perhaps reflecting how you would run the enemy's army. But it wouldn't be very strong. And if your soldiers didn't actually get a good look at the gun, or weren't particularly well-versed in how to recognized various artillery pieces, then even the observation itself might be pretty weak.
At some point, if the solid facts lack sustance, then you can't make a valid assumption at all. If you insist on making a claim anyway, it's really nothing more than conjecture -- a guess, a hunch, something that may be more imagination than real, based more on instinct than observation.
Conjecture is not a good thing to build on.
Facts and assumptions
Serving as a planner with a heavy infantry division going to Iraq in 2005 I learned a lot about many things -- other than just how hot it actually is in the desert in the summer! One of the most useful things was a process called the Military Decision Making Process. It is a way of looking at a situation and deciding exactly what to do and how to get it done. And central to this whole process is the identification of critical facts and assumptions.
Being the military, the terms are defined and structured in a few field manuals and other publications, and used in fairly precise ways there. It's not the exact military process that is so important, though, but rather the idea that you need to be specific, objective and thorough in laying out exactly what the world looks like and what makes it move before you take any action to change it.
Facts and assumptions. Facts are things, relationships, influences, etc., that are firmly known. Facts are important only if the relate somehow to what you're trying to do, but you need to make sure you look at and consider every fact that actually could influence success. A fact that doesn't have that relationship isn't something to worry about.
Assumptions, according to the doctrine, fill in gaps in the facts. They are things you believe to be true, but can't quite nail down with certainty. When you make an assumption, you need to continuously evaluate whether or not the world is behaving as though it were true -- if it doesn't, then you need to consider dumping that assumption and replacing it with one that is more consistent with the facts you have developed.
Why is this important?People argue and fight over all kinds of things, the cop attitudes towards other people because they see things differently, they get fired up because of expectations about what a decision or a situation will develop into.
In a formal way, litigation is just a way to uncover, validate and evaluate facts and assumptions as presented by two sides to a controversy. So we are all quite used to the idea that both truth and wisdom can be uncovered by presentation and evaluation of evidence and testimony, and by intelligent argument between people with views at odds with each other.
I propose that people should use facts and assumptions to work their way through every controversial issue they are interested in, to critique politicians, pundits, news media, and even to make decisions in their own professional, business and personal lives.
The process involves laying out what you think are critical facts, and why you think they are facts. Where does this knowledge come from? Is it solid, or does it depend on other facts and factors? Work your way backwards until you get to the ground truth.
If you can't get down to an absolutely clear, solid, unquestionable fact, then you're dealing with an assumption. Assumptions are only as strong as the facts they are built around. A valid assumption has to be more than a guess, conjecture or an opinion. Like it, don't like it, it doesn't matter if it's not grounded in unquestionable reality.
When you think you have something solid, be open to contrary views. People like to shoot down any view that disagrees with their own, but the honest fact is that truth and wisdom stand on their own, and they stand up against criticism. If your view can't stand up against a contrary view, then why would you want to stand on it? You can't fly by flapping your arms, no matter how much you believe or how loud you yell... If anything, stubborn refusal to acknowledge an error is something to be ashamed of...
Well, enough for now -- look forward to sharing more!
Being the military, the terms are defined and structured in a few field manuals and other publications, and used in fairly precise ways there. It's not the exact military process that is so important, though, but rather the idea that you need to be specific, objective and thorough in laying out exactly what the world looks like and what makes it move before you take any action to change it.
Facts and assumptions. Facts are things, relationships, influences, etc., that are firmly known. Facts are important only if the relate somehow to what you're trying to do, but you need to make sure you look at and consider every fact that actually could influence success. A fact that doesn't have that relationship isn't something to worry about.
Assumptions, according to the doctrine, fill in gaps in the facts. They are things you believe to be true, but can't quite nail down with certainty. When you make an assumption, you need to continuously evaluate whether or not the world is behaving as though it were true -- if it doesn't, then you need to consider dumping that assumption and replacing it with one that is more consistent with the facts you have developed.
Why is this important?People argue and fight over all kinds of things, the cop attitudes towards other people because they see things differently, they get fired up because of expectations about what a decision or a situation will develop into.
In a formal way, litigation is just a way to uncover, validate and evaluate facts and assumptions as presented by two sides to a controversy. So we are all quite used to the idea that both truth and wisdom can be uncovered by presentation and evaluation of evidence and testimony, and by intelligent argument between people with views at odds with each other.
I propose that people should use facts and assumptions to work their way through every controversial issue they are interested in, to critique politicians, pundits, news media, and even to make decisions in their own professional, business and personal lives.
The process involves laying out what you think are critical facts, and why you think they are facts. Where does this knowledge come from? Is it solid, or does it depend on other facts and factors? Work your way backwards until you get to the ground truth.
If you can't get down to an absolutely clear, solid, unquestionable fact, then you're dealing with an assumption. Assumptions are only as strong as the facts they are built around. A valid assumption has to be more than a guess, conjecture or an opinion. Like it, don't like it, it doesn't matter if it's not grounded in unquestionable reality.
When you think you have something solid, be open to contrary views. People like to shoot down any view that disagrees with their own, but the honest fact is that truth and wisdom stand on their own, and they stand up against criticism. If your view can't stand up against a contrary view, then why would you want to stand on it? You can't fly by flapping your arms, no matter how much you believe or how loud you yell... If anything, stubborn refusal to acknowledge an error is something to be ashamed of...
Well, enough for now -- look forward to sharing more!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
An admin note
This may not be news to anyone who has blogged, but it seems to take a fair amount of effort, discipline and technical skill to produce a good blog. As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about something completely different, you know a good blog when you see it. And like so many other things, looking good often looks desceptively easy...
I'm pretty low on the experience curve right now, but over time I want to include links, graphics, maybe even sound and video clips... If economists and statisticians can do it, a soldier should be able to do it, too!
At the same time, this blog is not intended to be an end in itself. No one who knows me will ever deny that I express my thoughts as clearly and forcefully as I can, but just spouting off my views into the digital cosmos has no real significance. Not even if readers throng to the site and praise my brilliance (some kind of mass psychosis, that would be!).
Instead, this blog is intended more as a mechanism to let me formulate my thoughts for publication as a single work -- a book to be generated from the blog, as it were. And the book is intended to provide readers with a structure for understanding problems and determining action, a structure that I don't see in place anywhere out there but possessing strengths that should prove self-evident (and not rely on the non-existant public standing of its author).
If that ever happens in any significant measure, then it is possible that someone with an obsessive-compulsive need to research irrelevant history may wind up reading this post. To that person, I hope you get some satisfaction out of reading this, and that it completes whatever picture you've created. If it is attractive, cool! If not, well, just keep it honest and you'll get no criticism from me.
Zum wohle!
I'm pretty low on the experience curve right now, but over time I want to include links, graphics, maybe even sound and video clips... If economists and statisticians can do it, a soldier should be able to do it, too!
At the same time, this blog is not intended to be an end in itself. No one who knows me will ever deny that I express my thoughts as clearly and forcefully as I can, but just spouting off my views into the digital cosmos has no real significance. Not even if readers throng to the site and praise my brilliance (some kind of mass psychosis, that would be!).
Instead, this blog is intended more as a mechanism to let me formulate my thoughts for publication as a single work -- a book to be generated from the blog, as it were. And the book is intended to provide readers with a structure for understanding problems and determining action, a structure that I don't see in place anywhere out there but possessing strengths that should prove self-evident (and not rely on the non-existant public standing of its author).
If that ever happens in any significant measure, then it is possible that someone with an obsessive-compulsive need to research irrelevant history may wind up reading this post. To that person, I hope you get some satisfaction out of reading this, and that it completes whatever picture you've created. If it is attractive, cool! If not, well, just keep it honest and you'll get no criticism from me.
Zum wohle!
Friday, November 27, 2009
Peer Review
The controversy over the email correspondence between various scientists involved in research on human-caused global climate change points to an important matter of facts and assumptions, that peer review assures the reliability of a published research project.
But the record of this email traffic appears to refute that assumption. Scientists with a point of view, colluding with enough peers, can instead assure that peer-reviewed research contains a multitude of flaws: analysis that confounds cause with effect, that relies on doctored or fabricated data, and that describes the world in ways unsupported by the full weight of the evidence and even contrary to the simple application of logic.
I'm a lawyer, so I know something about this. My profession's shame is the way its members tend to manipulate the truth to suit the ends of their clients. We punt issues of fairness to a judge or jury, claiming that our job is to make the strongest case we can -- as long as we don't lie or cheat (as defined by our own special rules) -- and not to be fair to the other side.
But at least in litigation one side seldom has the power to keep the other side from presenting its case. That is not the case when scientists run amok. Telling the world to ignore "deniers," that "skeptics" are just shills for evil corporate interests, that the "science" is so "established" that no intelligent person could possibly disagree with certain conclusions, is the approach taken by leaders of a lynch mob, not of investigators of truth.
Lynch mobs are convinced they already know everything they need to know, that there is no other evidence they need to consider, and that they themselves have both the authority and the duty to act immediately. All of which is false.
Anyone presenting conclusions have a duty to present their facts and assumptions, and not only to accept but to seek out contrary views to evaluate and validate their understanding. Truth and wisdom stands on its own against all attacks, as long as the people examining the issue are themselves honest and sincere.
If the scientists investigating how the world's weather works were honest and fair, they would never have felt the need to hide their data, make false claims (the "hockey stick" fraud), attack other scientists, or propogandize the public.
It seems that in this age our culture has lost its moral compass. Lawyers and politicians may be more obvious examples of this, but they are not alone.
If peer review is to have a positive function, the purpose should be to validate the analysis and findings in the paper, to point out weak or faulty logic, clear misinterpretation of data, and so on. A paper should never be rejected simply because it doesn't fit in the existing doctrine -- in fact, an intelligent, coherent examination of matters from a perspective differing from the common wisdom can serve a solid purpose in either confirming what is known and accepted, in correcting errors in the common wisdom, or in highlighting issues that need further investigation. If this is not the point of peer review, then it serves no useful purpose.
But the record of this email traffic appears to refute that assumption. Scientists with a point of view, colluding with enough peers, can instead assure that peer-reviewed research contains a multitude of flaws: analysis that confounds cause with effect, that relies on doctored or fabricated data, and that describes the world in ways unsupported by the full weight of the evidence and even contrary to the simple application of logic.
I'm a lawyer, so I know something about this. My profession's shame is the way its members tend to manipulate the truth to suit the ends of their clients. We punt issues of fairness to a judge or jury, claiming that our job is to make the strongest case we can -- as long as we don't lie or cheat (as defined by our own special rules) -- and not to be fair to the other side.
But at least in litigation one side seldom has the power to keep the other side from presenting its case. That is not the case when scientists run amok. Telling the world to ignore "deniers," that "skeptics" are just shills for evil corporate interests, that the "science" is so "established" that no intelligent person could possibly disagree with certain conclusions, is the approach taken by leaders of a lynch mob, not of investigators of truth.
Lynch mobs are convinced they already know everything they need to know, that there is no other evidence they need to consider, and that they themselves have both the authority and the duty to act immediately. All of which is false.
Anyone presenting conclusions have a duty to present their facts and assumptions, and not only to accept but to seek out contrary views to evaluate and validate their understanding. Truth and wisdom stands on its own against all attacks, as long as the people examining the issue are themselves honest and sincere.
If the scientists investigating how the world's weather works were honest and fair, they would never have felt the need to hide their data, make false claims (the "hockey stick" fraud), attack other scientists, or propogandize the public.
It seems that in this age our culture has lost its moral compass. Lawyers and politicians may be more obvious examples of this, but they are not alone.
If peer review is to have a positive function, the purpose should be to validate the analysis and findings in the paper, to point out weak or faulty logic, clear misinterpretation of data, and so on. A paper should never be rejected simply because it doesn't fit in the existing doctrine -- in fact, an intelligent, coherent examination of matters from a perspective differing from the common wisdom can serve a solid purpose in either confirming what is known and accepted, in correcting errors in the common wisdom, or in highlighting issues that need further investigation. If this is not the point of peer review, then it serves no useful purpose.
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