Been busy.

Been busy with various things the past 10 weeks. PSA: Never never never buy a real antique house. Buy a reproduction. I fell in love with my house because it smelled like my uncle's old farmhouse: wood smoke, lemon-scented cleaner, a hint of cattle/horse manure, and this dusty old musky floral smell that old houses seem to acquire over centuries. I am a moron and a sucker and I bought the thing, despite the inspector's warning that it needed a LOT of work. No less than 12 contractors later, I am back to Contractor #7, whose timescale is clearly different from the rest of humanity's, but was the only one who listened to a word coming out of my mouth and had a reasonable estimate. It's not just the work that needs done, it's that contractors are demons from the nether regions of heck.

Anyway. The subject of today's post shall be Epistemology: The Theory of Knowledge.

The reason this comes up is that in the daily course of events, I run into people who do or say something clearly hazardous, stupid, that puts their own lives and the lives of people around them in jeopardy. When it is pointed out (gently, politely) that what they just said or did is perhaps unwise, the response is, "oh yeah? well all them experts don't know nuthin'."

Experts? You need an expert to tell you that the sky is blue?

Relying on expert opinion is a shortcut in thinking. There's no inherent value judgment to shortcuts, as long as you realize their limitations. It's quicker and easier to use a computer program to solve a math problem than to do it yourself with paper and pencil, as long as you realize that the computer is going to use an algorithm that might add a certain measure of error to the result. The problem with relying on expert opinion is that you're adding their potential errors in thinking to your own--and for someone who isn't an expert in the field themselves, knowing which experts to heed and which ones are blowhards, isn't obvious.

The "ask an expert" algorithm is one we're all raised with, though. When you're a small child, teachers and religious leaders and parents are all experts who guide you through worldly perils. Many churches continue to exploit this algorithm, interpreting holy texts and dispensing wisdom through "expert" designees. Our society is not designed to give people a lot of opportunities to discover things on their own--we are structured and have grown around the concept of specialization and expertise, rather than generalization and discovery. Partly, that's because it's much faster to memorize knowledge on a particular subject from an expert than it is to re-create it for yourself. However, it seems we've gotten to the point that now the process of creating new knowledge is, in itself, a specialty task few can undertake.

I think that for the good of society and education in general, this is wrong. People should be able to gather and analyze data on their own. But our popular media is such that it's difficult for many people to tell the difference between a fact and an opinion. Opinions and controversy and debate sell more papers and get more viewers than simple data sets, unfortunately. Worse, our educational system has collapsed to the point that even when simple data sets are published, most folks don't know what to do with them. The thinking processes that are used to design a question to be answered, the mathematics used to separate the questioner's bias from the data set, are not commonly taught outside of a few post-secondary-school disciplines.

So, let's start with what data is and how to recognize it:

The word data is from the Latin datum (datus, data, datum, 2nd declension neuter), a derivative of the verb dare, do "to give." Data are "givens," i.e. things that exist on their own independent of opinions on them.

Examine these statements:

"The average global temperature is rising at a rate of 1.3 degrees per 100 years; when examined over the past 50 years, the average global temperature increased at a rate closer to 2 degrees per 100 years."

"Global warming will be the next major crisis of humanity"

"Global warming is not caused by human activity."

The first one is data--pure information, no interpretation involved. The latter two are interpretations, although they are presented as facts. The problem with the interpretations is, whose might be more accurate? Most folks, including many scientists, use number of credentials and prestige as a shortcut to decide whose interpretation is best, but unless there is a pressing time constraint (decisions and actions required in a matter of days, rather than months or years) there's no reason to use that mental shortcut. You can collect your own data and decide whether or not your data set matches the data set of any individual "expert," all on your own.

In the global warming example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collects temperature data from their weather satellites, and stores it in a database that is freely open to the public. You could select random longitude and latitude locations around the globe, evenly distributed over the planet, and look up the historical temperature readings in the database over several decades. Then you could graph the results over time, and see if your result matches that of any particular expert. All you need to do this exercise is high school algebra, a pencil, and some graph paper.

Another question about data and how to interpret it is, how do we know that any one particular method of collecting data is correct? How do we know that the satellites that measure the earth's surface temperature are measuring correctly--hell, they could be running on Windows or something. To be sure that our data is true, and not an artifact of the data collection method, we validate the data against some other method that collects similar information.

For example, we know that warmer temperatures will melt ice. We should see more polar ice melting overall, and sea levels rising as a result, if indeed the earth's temperature is rising. And indeed, polar ice is melting quickly.

But I don't have a satellite, and probably neither do you. How could we validate the warming curve in our own backyards? After all, I've got 2 1/2 feet of snow in my back yard, and the polar bears are welcome to borrow some, right?

1. Investigate historical information, and keep diaries of dates for the first snowfall of winter, the first real frost of autumn, the last frost of spring, and the first appearance of spring flowers in your backyard. In my little corner of New England, we normally have the first snow with accumulation (as opposed to flurries) by Thanksgiving, but recently it's not shown up until closer to Christmas. I've been able to keep my swimming pool open till October, rather than September, as frosts come later and later. The last frost date for my area is 1 May, but we haven't had a late April / early May frost in at least five years. Track daily temperature highs, lows, and averages.

2. Make notes of the arrivals and migrations of seasonal birds and insects in your area. When does the first hummingbird show up at the feeder, and when do they leave? When did you see the first robin, the first swallow or flycatcher? I'm looking at my bird feeder and there's a red-bellied woodpecker eating the suet--a bird that rarely overwinters this far north.

3. You can also track reports of insect-borne diseases online, such as EEE and West Nile Virus. In temperate or cold climates, warmth-loving insects like mosquitos can't survive, so northern areas generally have fewer problems with these diseases than warmer areas. If the world wasn't warming up, we would expect that these diseases would stay mostly within their geographic confines.

4. Count the number of annual heat-related deaths vs. the annual number of cold-related deaths. Elderly people and small children typically die of heatstroke or dehydration, although outdoor workers and athletes can also succumb. We would expect the ratio of heat related deaths : cold related deaths to increase over time as the temperature increases.

Which do you think is a better method to determine facts from interpretations? Asking an expert, or independent validation by another means of measuring the same parameter? We can test data by means of validation, or we can trust someone because they've got a bunch of letters after their name.

Next post: Assertions, questions, and logic.