The dose-response is not as clean as is believed. It can be very non-linear.
With the new administration appointment of RFK Jr., we will be deep into this problem with fluoride. Flouride is a required nutrient, and your body regulates the concentration, but only over a narrow input concentration range. If the input is too low, as I witnessed in 1962, both the rich and the poor had false teeth by 18 to 24 years old. That area also had a higher frequency of bone problems with their super high purity water (only containing some CaSO4). High concentrations above the optimal amount will cause discoloration of the teeth, and RFK jr claims IQ effects.
As almost all IQ research seems to have been restricted in the last half a century for political reasons, I have a feeling the science backing up the fluoride/IQ dose-response curve is a bit weak as it is probably based upon rural areas with high natural levels combined with many other factors that impact IQ such as inbreeding effects.
Now that we can measure every chemical everywhere, we face the problem of having N variable problems where N is a very large number. The relevant variables can also be interrelated; the resulting correlation can be misleading unless all are considered and measured. Think conic sections to see why you can't describe an N-dimensional problem in N-x dimensions. The fluoride concentration in nature is related to many other chemical components. Environmental activists and social science/humanities areas have long used the exclusion of relevant variables to obtain desired, but false results.
Arthur C. Clarke said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Not really. Magic is a concept we reserve for things outside of that which is so common and reliable that it’s part of the mundane world."
Jason Manning is very much missing the point of that statement. "Sufficiently advanced" is doing an important job he isn't quite getting, in that it is not common in our mundane world, and so in the context of the story and how we think of it it might as well be magic. 80's movies' computers are a good example, where, from the standpoint of today, they are basically magic beings that can come up with impossibly perfect calculations as major plot points.
This applies outside of stories to the real world when you see people with cargo-cult like approaches to technology, being so unable to grasp the basic rules and functions that they just assume it works by understanding what you want it to do. Think people who have car accidents because they set the cruise control while on the highway and took a nap.
My reading of that Clarke comment has always been that it means sufficiently advanced relative to the observer. But my favorite example also supports your viewpoint:
I will probably never forget when a relative asked me (in the mid 1990s) to put together a demonstration of the then-obscure world wide web, and suggest how a car dealership might use it. I spent a few days putting together a demo, then showed it to him and a number of his leadership team. One of them remarked how amazing this new technology was, so I asked what in particular he was impressed by. He said it was how I moved the gadget on the table and the little arrow on the screen moved at the same time.
Thanks for the observations on "lasers vs. economics". As a retired (but socio-politically active) research scientist/engineer with a PhD from an "elite" university, I have long been bothered by claims in many of the "soft science" fields of being "scientific", and, thus, deserving of the same deference as say, laser science. Economics, sure, but also medicine, nutrition - all the "life sciences". There are many more. And don't even get me started on sociology... At the end of the day, if you have to bring into a study statistical methods at all, you are admitting that there are extraneous variables involved which you cannot control for, so you will do the next-best thing, and attempt to average over them in some way. That's a good thing to do, but it's not the same as "science", as you succinctly describe in the laser example.
It would have been good if, many decades ago, we had created a term for this not-quite-science endeavor, distinguishing it from "science". It would still be socially useful - if only for preventing misunderstanding among non-experts - to do so today.
“It could be that mental illness causes people to spend more time on social media…” Here are some important things to consider about mental illness and social media.
1. Remember, before social media there were no social media platforms to help with “mental illness.” Things that took place of social media before social media were: alcohol, TV, church, video games, the telephone, family, sports, work, food, politics, causing trouble, reading, in-person conversations, walks in nature, things to do with your male or female anatomy, etc.
2. Any of these substitutes for social media can be viewed either as: A) cause of “mental illness;” B) cure for “mental illness;” or C) coping mechanisms for “mental illness.” Obviously some of these can hardly be considered cures while others hardly causes, but each is on a spectrum of cure, cause and coping. Each also depends on magnitude. Water can be a cause of “illness” if you drink too much of it. Walks in nature can be a cause of “mental illness” if you take them too far or too often.
2. What does Arnold Kling mean by mental illness? I would say that mental illness begins with a source of pain. Something is causing a person pain. Pain could be as simple as boredom. It could be stress due to lack of money or food. Pain could be due to shame or lack of love. Pain might also be discomfort from lack of exercise, movement, or poor diet. Pain could also be a consequence of making poor decisions. Pain can be as simple as being tired or fatigued from work. Pain might be due to loss of a friend of loved one.
What we do with this pain matters a great deal.
What matters is whether the individual feels like they are in control if there actions. Someone that feel “mentally ill” is likely unhappy with the lack of control the have over their decision making.
As a result of pain, they do activity X. Such activity could either be a cure, coping mechanism, or cause of more pain.
It’s not clear to me that social media is always a cause of mental illness. Of course social media varies from platform to platform. It depends on what social media is, who is using it, how it’s being used, etc.
Yes. Pain the way I’ve defined it is any feeling that isn’t “perfect.” Implications? I haven’t thought past this far yet. We might call this Scott’s Pain Model or Scott’s Pain Ideology.
"…Corrected formulation: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature." Nice try but I don't think this quite works. Of course, Clarke didn't mean his dictum literally. It makes best sense when it involves one culture meeting another with far more advanced technology. A culture is used to its own technology, so it doesn't seem extraordinary.
Magic produces *extraordinary* effects, nature produces regular, expected effects (well, some exceptions -- meteor strikes, hundred year floods, etc.). The reformulation does make some sense -- really advanced technology should be seamless and integrated into our lives and respond to us with natural gestures and voice. We're only just getting there. In that sense, highly advanced technology might seem "natural."
As a Karl Popper fan, I understand that no amount of empirical evidence – inductive reasoning - can ever PROVE anything. PROOF can only be achieved through falsification. Rather than producing extravagant, self-referential models to impress their peers, economists should spend more time trying to figure out why they are always wrong about everything. As Friedrich Hayek observed, “I confess that I prefer true but imperfect knowledge to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.”
“In physics, your theory predicts what a laser will do.” This is not always true. Light is made up of photons. Photons are quanta of energy that have many stochastic properties. For example, the wave function sets a limits on our knowledge of velocity and position of the photon. We cannot know both velocity and position of a photon (or an electron at non-zero Kelvin). There is a tradeoff between our knowledge of velocity and position of photons.
Aside: Photons come from accelerating and decelerating electrons.
We can view “light” using a Newtonian mechanics model, a diffractive optics model, or a quantum mechanics model. Sometimes we also use an electromagnetic wave model. But the truth is that light is made up of photons. Photons are quanta of energy with quantum mechanical and stochastic properties. See Richard Feynman.
When we try to understand photons we run into similar problems as in economics because photons are stochastic. Economics is probably more complicated because humans have minds and photons do not. (But consider that all life comes from and consists of simple particles of energy and matter, as far as I know). At some point things become religious and further knowledge seems impossible.
We don’t know for sure where a photon will end up. We can count individual photons and measure “their position” only after they cease being photons (using photon counting detectors). This is only the case because the photon is in another form of energy; i.e. it’s not a photon propagating through space anymore. Rather it’s a blip of energy on our light meter or is potential energy “waiting” to be turned into a photon. We can only say, “there was a photon here,” but now it’s gone; turned into a packet of energy in our sensor or a quanta of heat energy making up an object.
Aside: Heat is the movement of electrons and atoms. All things with non-zero Kelvin temperature are giving off “light.” Only we don’t call this light because it’s invisible to our eyes. We call it heat instead. Formally however, it is electromagnetic radiation or photons. The invisible nature of this form of “light” is simply due to its short or long wavelength. It’s the same stuff though.
If we run enough test cases we see that photons tend to follow statistical models that agree with geometrical and diffractive optics, but these models are just statistical. They are just approximations of reality. Our models are good enough if they accurately predict what we are trying to predict. When our models fail to predict what we want we want to predict, then need a better model that incorporates more reality.
This becomes more and more mathematically difficult, and increasingly abstract, until eventually even our best models fail, or our measurements alter the outcome of the experiment? Not my wheelhouse.
Dealing with quantum mechanics is often unnecessary and would be wasteful of our resources to do so. Instead we use geometrical optics and/or diffractive optics. In geometrical optics we treat light as consisting of rays that travel in straight lines (until reaching a index medium boundary) with each ray carrying a certain amount of power, known wavelength, and known refractive properties using Snell’s Law. We can include polarization in this model too.
Aside: Polarization is the orientation of the electric field as a function of time and/or propagation space.
In addition to geometrical optics we use diffractive optics models. Diffractive optics adds another level of sophistication to our model. This model allows light rays to “bend.” See Young’s Double Slit Experiment.
Geometrical and diffractive optics are used in designing cameras, lasers, and sensors. So the above quote is true for many cases in laser applications, but not in laboratories that study quantum mechanical properties of light.
Even though photons don’t have minds like humans they seem to have some sort of “mind” that we don’t completely understand. We have a statistical model that says, “Here’s where we expect the photon to land.” We have a probability distribution describing where it should land called the point spread function, but because the photon has a “mind” of its own we can’t predict where exactly it will land. Why can’t we predict its exact termination point? What determines its exact termination point? I don’t know. It seems to have a “mind” of its own.
Regarding electrons: If our minds our made up of particles that that “minds” then what does this mean for us? Does it mean that we are inherently stochastic.
"In economics you say that your statistical study proves some theory. But it remains speculative, because there isn’t the decisive test that is equivalent to a laser working or not working."
The dose-response is not as clean as is believed. It can be very non-linear.
With the new administration appointment of RFK Jr., we will be deep into this problem with fluoride. Flouride is a required nutrient, and your body regulates the concentration, but only over a narrow input concentration range. If the input is too low, as I witnessed in 1962, both the rich and the poor had false teeth by 18 to 24 years old. That area also had a higher frequency of bone problems with their super high purity water (only containing some CaSO4). High concentrations above the optimal amount will cause discoloration of the teeth, and RFK jr claims IQ effects.
As almost all IQ research seems to have been restricted in the last half a century for political reasons, I have a feeling the science backing up the fluoride/IQ dose-response curve is a bit weak as it is probably based upon rural areas with high natural levels combined with many other factors that impact IQ such as inbreeding effects.
Now that we can measure every chemical everywhere, we face the problem of having N variable problems where N is a very large number. The relevant variables can also be interrelated; the resulting correlation can be misleading unless all are considered and measured. Think conic sections to see why you can't describe an N-dimensional problem in N-x dimensions. The fluoride concentration in nature is related to many other chemical components. Environmental activists and social science/humanities areas have long used the exclusion of relevant variables to obtain desired, but false results.
"Jason Manning writes,
Arthur C. Clarke said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Not really. Magic is a concept we reserve for things outside of that which is so common and reliable that it’s part of the mundane world."
Jason Manning is very much missing the point of that statement. "Sufficiently advanced" is doing an important job he isn't quite getting, in that it is not common in our mundane world, and so in the context of the story and how we think of it it might as well be magic. 80's movies' computers are a good example, where, from the standpoint of today, they are basically magic beings that can come up with impossibly perfect calculations as major plot points.
This applies outside of stories to the real world when you see people with cargo-cult like approaches to technology, being so unable to grasp the basic rules and functions that they just assume it works by understanding what you want it to do. Think people who have car accidents because they set the cruise control while on the highway and took a nap.
My reading of that Clarke comment has always been that it means sufficiently advanced relative to the observer. But my favorite example also supports your viewpoint:
I will probably never forget when a relative asked me (in the mid 1990s) to put together a demonstration of the then-obscure world wide web, and suggest how a car dealership might use it. I spent a few days putting together a demo, then showed it to him and a number of his leadership team. One of them remarked how amazing this new technology was, so I asked what in particular he was impressed by. He said it was how I moved the gadget on the table and the little arrow on the screen moved at the same time.
Thanks for the observations on "lasers vs. economics". As a retired (but socio-politically active) research scientist/engineer with a PhD from an "elite" university, I have long been bothered by claims in many of the "soft science" fields of being "scientific", and, thus, deserving of the same deference as say, laser science. Economics, sure, but also medicine, nutrition - all the "life sciences". There are many more. And don't even get me started on sociology... At the end of the day, if you have to bring into a study statistical methods at all, you are admitting that there are extraneous variables involved which you cannot control for, so you will do the next-best thing, and attempt to average over them in some way. That's a good thing to do, but it's not the same as "science", as you succinctly describe in the laser example.
It would have been good if, many decades ago, we had created a term for this not-quite-science endeavor, distinguishing it from "science". It would still be socially useful - if only for preventing misunderstanding among non-experts - to do so today.
“It could be that mental illness causes people to spend more time on social media…” Here are some important things to consider about mental illness and social media.
1. Remember, before social media there were no social media platforms to help with “mental illness.” Things that took place of social media before social media were: alcohol, TV, church, video games, the telephone, family, sports, work, food, politics, causing trouble, reading, in-person conversations, walks in nature, things to do with your male or female anatomy, etc.
2. Any of these substitutes for social media can be viewed either as: A) cause of “mental illness;” B) cure for “mental illness;” or C) coping mechanisms for “mental illness.” Obviously some of these can hardly be considered cures while others hardly causes, but each is on a spectrum of cure, cause and coping. Each also depends on magnitude. Water can be a cause of “illness” if you drink too much of it. Walks in nature can be a cause of “mental illness” if you take them too far or too often.
2. What does Arnold Kling mean by mental illness? I would say that mental illness begins with a source of pain. Something is causing a person pain. Pain could be as simple as boredom. It could be stress due to lack of money or food. Pain could be due to shame or lack of love. Pain might also be discomfort from lack of exercise, movement, or poor diet. Pain could also be a consequence of making poor decisions. Pain can be as simple as being tired or fatigued from work. Pain might be due to loss of a friend of loved one.
What we do with this pain matters a great deal.
What matters is whether the individual feels like they are in control if there actions. Someone that feel “mentally ill” is likely unhappy with the lack of control the have over their decision making.
As a result of pain, they do activity X. Such activity could either be a cure, coping mechanism, or cause of more pain.
It’s not clear to me that social media is always a cause of mental illness. Of course social media varies from platform to platform. It depends on what social media is, who is using it, how it’s being used, etc.
Social media might be good, bad or neutral.
You seem to be defining "pain" as anything that makes you feel not great. Which kind of makes your theory tautological.
Yes. Pain the way I’ve defined it is any feeling that isn’t “perfect.” Implications? I haven’t thought past this far yet. We might call this Scott’s Pain Model or Scott’s Pain Ideology.
It’s just a model.
"…Corrected formulation: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature." Nice try but I don't think this quite works. Of course, Clarke didn't mean his dictum literally. It makes best sense when it involves one culture meeting another with far more advanced technology. A culture is used to its own technology, so it doesn't seem extraordinary.
Magic produces *extraordinary* effects, nature produces regular, expected effects (well, some exceptions -- meteor strikes, hundred year floods, etc.). The reformulation does make some sense -- really advanced technology should be seamless and integrated into our lives and respond to us with natural gestures and voice. We're only just getting there. In that sense, highly advanced technology might seem "natural."
As a Karl Popper fan, I understand that no amount of empirical evidence – inductive reasoning - can ever PROVE anything. PROOF can only be achieved through falsification. Rather than producing extravagant, self-referential models to impress their peers, economists should spend more time trying to figure out why they are always wrong about everything. As Friedrich Hayek observed, “I confess that I prefer true but imperfect knowledge to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.”
A method worth looking into is “causal inference”, identified with Judea Pearl. I used it to prove that bad regulation (the Basel Capital Standards) caused the 2008 financial crisis. https://charles72f.substack.com/p/basel-faulty-the-financial-crisis
“In physics, your theory predicts what a laser will do.” This is not always true. Light is made up of photons. Photons are quanta of energy that have many stochastic properties. For example, the wave function sets a limits on our knowledge of velocity and position of the photon. We cannot know both velocity and position of a photon (or an electron at non-zero Kelvin). There is a tradeoff between our knowledge of velocity and position of photons.
Aside: Photons come from accelerating and decelerating electrons.
We can view “light” using a Newtonian mechanics model, a diffractive optics model, or a quantum mechanics model. Sometimes we also use an electromagnetic wave model. But the truth is that light is made up of photons. Photons are quanta of energy with quantum mechanical and stochastic properties. See Richard Feynman.
When we try to understand photons we run into similar problems as in economics because photons are stochastic. Economics is probably more complicated because humans have minds and photons do not. (But consider that all life comes from and consists of simple particles of energy and matter, as far as I know). At some point things become religious and further knowledge seems impossible.
We don’t know for sure where a photon will end up. We can count individual photons and measure “their position” only after they cease being photons (using photon counting detectors). This is only the case because the photon is in another form of energy; i.e. it’s not a photon propagating through space anymore. Rather it’s a blip of energy on our light meter or is potential energy “waiting” to be turned into a photon. We can only say, “there was a photon here,” but now it’s gone; turned into a packet of energy in our sensor or a quanta of heat energy making up an object.
Aside: Heat is the movement of electrons and atoms. All things with non-zero Kelvin temperature are giving off “light.” Only we don’t call this light because it’s invisible to our eyes. We call it heat instead. Formally however, it is electromagnetic radiation or photons. The invisible nature of this form of “light” is simply due to its short or long wavelength. It’s the same stuff though.
If we run enough test cases we see that photons tend to follow statistical models that agree with geometrical and diffractive optics, but these models are just statistical. They are just approximations of reality. Our models are good enough if they accurately predict what we are trying to predict. When our models fail to predict what we want we want to predict, then need a better model that incorporates more reality.
This becomes more and more mathematically difficult, and increasingly abstract, until eventually even our best models fail, or our measurements alter the outcome of the experiment? Not my wheelhouse.
Dealing with quantum mechanics is often unnecessary and would be wasteful of our resources to do so. Instead we use geometrical optics and/or diffractive optics. In geometrical optics we treat light as consisting of rays that travel in straight lines (until reaching a index medium boundary) with each ray carrying a certain amount of power, known wavelength, and known refractive properties using Snell’s Law. We can include polarization in this model too.
Aside: Polarization is the orientation of the electric field as a function of time and/or propagation space.
In addition to geometrical optics we use diffractive optics models. Diffractive optics adds another level of sophistication to our model. This model allows light rays to “bend.” See Young’s Double Slit Experiment.
Geometrical and diffractive optics are used in designing cameras, lasers, and sensors. So the above quote is true for many cases in laser applications, but not in laboratories that study quantum mechanical properties of light.
Even though photons don’t have minds like humans they seem to have some sort of “mind” that we don’t completely understand. We have a statistical model that says, “Here’s where we expect the photon to land.” We have a probability distribution describing where it should land called the point spread function, but because the photon has a “mind” of its own we can’t predict where exactly it will land. Why can’t we predict its exact termination point? What determines its exact termination point? I don’t know. It seems to have a “mind” of its own.
Regarding electrons: If our minds our made up of particles that that “minds” then what does this mean for us? Does it mean that we are inherently stochastic.
"In economics you say that your statistical study proves some theory. But it remains speculative, because there isn’t the decisive test that is equivalent to a laser working or not working."
Nicely put.