Whoever fights monsters

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you" -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Wired: Why Your Brain Thinks These Strawberries Are Red

Lazarus Lizard (Podarcis muralis)

I remember first seeing these lizards about fifteen years ago crawling on the rock walls while I was taking a walking through Mt. Lookout. Living in Northern Kentucky, I'd never seen the little critters before. Today, they seem to be everywhere.

In the Cincinnati area they are generally referred to as Lazarus lizards. Apparently they are not native to the area. According to Buckeye Yard & Garden Online:

"In 1951, 10-year-old George Rau Jr., step-son of Fred Lazarus III, came across some common wall lizards scurrying across rocky slopes while on a family vacation to Lake Garda in northern Italy. George smuggled a few (6 to 10 depending on the reference source) through Customs to release them at his family's home on Torrence Court located in the eastern Cincinnati suburb of Hyde Park.

Some of the European expats thrived to eventually become so numerous that Torrence Court became known as Lizard Hill. Local residents called them "Lazarus lizards" in misplaced recognition of the lizard's perceived patrons. Of course, they should have been named "George's Lizards" in honor of their true sponsor.

The lizard story may ring like local folklore; however, George Rau wrote a letter in 1989 to herpetologists at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History detailing his role as the lizard leader. He also repeated his story in several interviews with the news media.

Research conducted by Cassandra Homan for her 2013 University of Cincinnati M.S. Thesis (see "More Information" below) added credibility to Rau's claim. She compared genetic samples collected from the Cincinnati lizards to samples taken from the reported source population in Europe and confirmed a substantial loss of genetic diversity indicating a genetic bottleneck. Her computer simulations suggested the bottleneck was likely associated with only three individuals surviving their release to become the founders of the Cincinnati populations."

Buckeye Yard & Garden Online: The Rise of Lazarus Lizards

Sucked into a story about crooked Chinese ex-mayor

A recent New York Post article stated that "Chinese authorities found more than 13 tons of gold stashed away in the basement of a former mayor’s home during a corruption investigation, according to news reports.  Police found the loot — worth hundreds of millions of dollars — in a secret cellar in the home of Zhang Qi, a onetime high ranking communist party official and former mayor of Danzhou, the Pakistani newspaper The News International reported.  And it wasn’t only gold — police also seized more than $37 billion in cash and assets."

New York Post: Cops in China find 13 tons of gold stashed in ex-mayor’s cellar

The story got me thinking. How does one hide 13 tons of gold and another $37 billion in physical cash and assets? For that matter how much space are we talking about here? What does a ton of gold look like? What does a billion dollars in bills look like? Well, let's find out.

Starting with the gold, I found this image of 80 replica gold bars representing one ton of gold.

From this we can visualize 13 tons of gold taking up about as much space as 3 or 4 washing machines. Not all that significant and easily doable for a crooked politician or villainous drug lord. 

More interesting is the $37 billion in cash and assets. We have no idea how much of the assets were in cash but even if only a small portion of it was cash it would take up a great deal of space. Here is artist Michael Marcovici's depictions of what $1 billion in $100 USD notes would look like.

Of course the bust happened in China, so it is likely the bills where not United States Dollars. Chinese banknotes are in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 Yuans. As of today it takes 7.15 Yauns to equal 1 US Dollar. So if the crooked ex-mayor was hording Yuans you have to visualize the image above times seven just to equal one billion. 

So returning to my original thought, it would take a significant amount of space to hide $37 billions in assets (actually $37 and a half since the gold was worth about half a billion dollars). The article says the police found it in a secret cellar of Zhang Qi's home. I guess it was one hell of a cellar. 

Moral Outrage

A cleansing fire: Moral outrage alleviates guilt and buffers threats to one’s moral identity

  -Moral Outrage Is Self-Serving, Say Psychologists

  -What makes people express moral outrage?

  -Why Moral Outrage is Self-Serving and Counterproductive

  -Study: Guilt predicts expressions of moral outrage

  -Moral Outrage: A Theory on Why We’re Seeing So Much of It

"Human Trafficking" Has Become a Meaningless Term

The New Republic: "Human Trafficking" Has Become a Meaningless Term

Relevance and Sufficiency

The relevance and sufficiency conditions of a good argument appears to be an expansion of the validity concept in classical logic. Splitting the validity condition provides the benefit of allowing the making of nuanced judgement about the level of premise support.(1)

I. Relevance

Relevance refers to premises that provide some evidence or offer reasons that support the conclusion or can be arranged in a way from which the conclusion can be derived. Relevance can be categorized as positive relevance, negative relevance and irrelevance.

A. Positive Relevance, Negative Relevance & Irrelevance

1. Positive Relevance
When assessing an argument we would say that statement A is positively relevant to statement B if the truth of A counts in favor of the truth of B. In other words, A provides some evidence or reason to believe that B is true.

In each of the following cases, the first statement is positively relevant to the second:

P. Smith has appendicitis, gout, and cancer of the bladder.
C. Smith is not healthy enough to run the 26-mile Boston Marathon.

Here the first statement provides evidence for the second statement, because it describes adverse aspects of Smith’s health, and good health is required to run a marathon.(2)

2. Negative Relevance
Statement A is negatively relevant to statement B if the truth of A counts against the truth of B. So if A is true, it provides some evidence or reason to believe that B is not true.

Consider the following examples of negative relevance:

P. Jogging often results in knee injuries.
C. Jogging improves a person’s general health.

In (d), the first statement is negatively relevant to the second, because having knee injuries counts against having good general health.(2)

3. Irrelevance

Statement A is irrelevant to statement B if it is neither positively relevant nor negatively relevant to B. In other words, when statement A does not logically support or logically undermine statement B, we would say it is irrelevant.

P. Natural catastrophes such as earthquakes are beyond human control.
C. Human beings have no freedom of choice concerning their actions.

Here, the first statement cites some natural events that are beyond human control and the second statement is about human choices about their own action. The truth of the first statement would not count as any reason to accept or reject the second statement, which is why (f) exemplifies irrelevance.(2)

B. Argument Analysis
If the premises of an argument, considered together, are irrelevant to its conclusion, or are negatively relevant, the argument is not cogent. Any case in which the relevancy condition of argument adequacy is not satisfied will be a case in which sufficiency is not satisfied either. (If premises are not even relevant to the conclusion, they cannot provide sufficient support for it.)(2)


II. Sufficiency
Sufficiency refers to the degree of support provided by the premises to support the conclusion. Whereas relevance is a property of individual premises, sufficiency is a judgement made about all the premises that support the conclusion. Hence, to be considered sufficient, the premises must provide enough support to reasonably accept the conclusion. 

This is perhaps the most difficult principle to apply because we have no clear guidelines to help us determine what constitutes sufficient grounds for the truth or merit of a conclusion. Most argumentative contexts are different and thus create different sufficiency demands. 

The feature of the sufficiency principle that is most difficult to apply is the assignment of weight to each piece of supporting evidence.  Some sciences have well-developed sufficiency criteria in place. Statisticians, for example, have determined what constitutes a proper sample from which to draw defensible conclusions. But in informal discussion, it is usually very difficult to determine when enough evidence or evidence of the appropriate kind has been presented.

(1)Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies
(2)A Practical Study of Argument: Grover
Informal Logic and logic: Blair
Attacking Faulty Reasoning: Damer

Hedgehog's Dilemma

Wikipedia: Hedgehog's dilemma