toosigma

As a resident of Colorado, I have a lot of research to do regarding the various amendments and referendums that will appear on November’s ballot. I’ve found a couple sites that purport to give a “fair and unbiased” suggestion on how to vote, but I don’t really believe there is such thing as an unbiased perspective.

In discussing a couple of the initiatives at work, my colleagues were somewhat impressed by my knowledge of the various initiatives and when I asked if they would appreciate a more thorough rundown, they all agreed it would be helpful. My basic plan is to post one issue each day, with Pros, Cons, My Bias, and My Verdict sections as best as I can present them. I will do my absolute best to make the Pro and Con sections as free from bias (mine or otherwise) as possible.

My General Biases

• Politically, I’m closest to a libertarian. That makes me socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
  • Fiscal Conservative - The government should be as small as possible to ensure the common good - i.e. low government spending, and as a result, low taxes. I tend to favor a “free market economy” and oppose governmental regulation of business unless it is necessary to correct a market failure or imbalance.
  • Socially Liberal - The government should interfere as little as possible with the private lives of its citizens. So long as something does no direct harm to a citizen, the government has no business sticking their nose in. As such, I’m strongly opposed to most “morality” based legislation which seeks to impose a tyranny of the majority.
• I tend to oppose special interest groups. The benefits allocated to special interests usually result in an increase in taxes and the size of government.
• When in doubt, I prefer the status quo. Unless there is a compelling reason to change the law, I prefer to err on the side of not changing it until such a clear reason becomes available.
• I have no affiliation with any of the groups behind the initiatives.

I’m very interested in hearing any comments anyone might be able to provide - discussion could very well reveal flaws in my logic and might change my opinion.

This post was prompted by this article at Marginal Revolution, which was in turn prompted by a recent court case denying ID “scientific status” and access to science classrooms.

The article presents the hypothetical situation - if you find a watch in the forest, do you assume that it was the product of endless iteration and random chance, or do you assume it was made by a watchmaker? The only time the former is plausible is if you do not allow for the possibility of a watchmaker. Where this argument fails is that it simply presents a hypothesis, which is decidedly not the only step necessary in science.

The Scientific Method presents the following iterative sequence of steps:

1. Use your experience
2. Form a conjecture
3. Deduce a prediction from that conjecture
4. Test - run experiments both to confirm and falsify the conjecture.

If the conjecture is falsified, then you must go back to step #2 and form a new conjecture that takes into account the new information.

Intelligent Design fails as a scientific theory in two very crucial ways:

• Intelligent Design offers no predictive value. Given the theory of Intelligent Design, there is no way to make a logical prediction of how the universe works that is not already in evidence. Any prediction made by a proponent of ID is simply random guesswork.
• Intelligent Design is not falsifiable. There is no way to disprove Intelligent Design. Any evidence that is presented contrary to the theory can be hand-waved away by saying “God made it that way” - the “theory” never adapts to new information, it simply accepts any new information without any need for critical thought.

There’s also the infinite regression problem - Intelligent Design requires the axiom that a Designer exists. Taking the existence of a Designer as a hypothesis, the theory has the same problems as Intelligent Design - it provides no predictive value and is not falsifiable. In the event that unquestionable proof that Designer(s) exist is found, we’re still left with the question of how that Designer came to be, why he chose to design life, and most importantly why he chose to add so much superfluous “junk” DNA and otherwise pointless organs like the human appendix. It’s somewhat ironic that the latter can most easily be explained by assuming that the Designer was intelligent enough to realize that he could create an infinite variety of robust lifeforms using the relatively simple mechanism of genetic drift and natural selection - rather than spending billions of years hand-crafting lifeforms.

After a holiday weekend of excess, I’ve decided that it’s definitely time to get back in shape and lose some weight. Since my last few attempts to gain momentum in weight-loss have failed, I’ve decided to start making my efforts more public and to (hopefully) improve my accountability. The plan is to blog and twitter my progress in various 30-day project goals, starting today.

Currently, I’m hovering right around 240, so I’m looking to drop 40 pounds to a goal weight of 200. This morning, I restarted the Hacker’s Diet - a relatively simplistic diet plan based only on eating less and exercising more. I’m starting at Rung 16 of the Lifetime Ladder with the medium-term goal of reaching Rung 30 by August 1st. This morning’s effort felt pretty good, but I usually find that the first day back on an exercise routine is easier than the next few days. The first 30-day trial is focused on exercise, but I’m also planning to twitter all of my meals, with an eye to reducing my reliance on fast food and pizza. Since trying to change multiple habits simultaneously is more prone to failure, I’m not going to hold myself to a strict diet regimen until the second 30-day trial.

If you’re at all interested, you can follow my progress here and on twitter - and if you see me slipping, please give me as much harassment as you like.

My primary Windows machine, which had happily been running Windows 2000 for nearly 5 years, finally gave up the ghost about two weeks ago. While sad at the loss, I had been contemplating an upgrade for some time, so I broke down and bought the new hardware. Given that I still need at least one Windows box on my network, and that my preferred Win OS was nearly 8 years old, I splurged and bought a copy of Vista Home Premium. I’ve been reading plenty of articles that while Vista may be slow, it still works and most of the major bugs have been worked out since the release over a year ago. I figured that I needed to take the step forward, since Windows isn’t going away anytime soon, and I need at least some familiarity with it for my job.

All the parts arrived on Monday, and I had everything assembled and ready to install. I plug in the Vista install disc, and leave it to run overnight. After waking up, I find Vista is installed, and waiting for final configuration info - which I enter, and then start the OS. Everything runs fine for about five minutes, before the system mysteriously reboots. Figuring it was just some patch or driver install, I log back in, and about two minutes in, I get a lovely BSD, followed by a reboot. After getting back in, the troubleshooter tells me there’s an unrecoverable hardware error with either the CPU, RAM, Power Supply, or the Motherboard. I’ve gotten the occasional bad part before, so I take it at face value, and start testing the various components. Three days later, after running the most stringent testing programs running for over 16 hours each, I’ve discovered no errors, no reboots. Of course, my testing utilities all run off Linux kernels, so I’m reasonably certain there isn’t a problem with the hardware.

Still, every time I boot into Vista, I get IRQ conflicts, random graphics errors, and the repeated BSDs that Windows seems so fond of. I’m almost ready to break down and install Windows 2000 - since it served me so well for so many years - I actually managed to achieve a maximum uptime of 74 days. Of course, the video card manufacturers seem to have decided that Win2k is no longer viable, and have stopped writing drivers for that OS. If I do go that route, I’ll probably have to drop $40-$150 on a older video card, or I could finally take the Windows XP plunge I’ve managed to avoid for so many years, also at a cost of $130+.

Suffice to say, I’m not a fan of Microsoft at this moment.

The Chatty DM just posted an excellent article that sums up a lot of what I’ve been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to express about D&D 4th Edition.