Critical Thinking in Crisis

American critical thinking is hard to find and completely disappears in the face of a crisis. During the virus scare last spring, two types of info emerged. One, often from the medical professionals, was the calm reasonable kind. It was right to be careful, practice social distancing, wash hands frequently and wear a mask. That message was typically drowned out by the breathless, panicky pandemic warnings seen on the news.

 

We got the daily numbers of cases and deaths. We watched stories of people hoarding Purell, toilet paper and water. During the first week of the 15 days of voluntary lockdown, there were a shortage of coconut water and cellphone videos of fights in grocery stores over paper goods! Even before the disease got to the US, diners shunned Chinese restaurants. Then we were asked to stay in and practice social distancing, but some college students on spring break and others couldn’t be bothered. Today’s fun and freedom took precedence over the possible spread of the disease tomorrow or in a few weeks.

 

On the first Monday that the schools closed to protect students, I went to my local grocery store to pick up a prescription. It was overrun with parents who brought their school-aged children shopping. Did they think a good activity to keep them “isolated” and protected was a family shopping trip?

 

Day 12 brought this from CBS News: “Egg prices triple in 3 weeks amid coronavirus panic shopping.” This wasn’t price gouging; it was a genuine shortage. At the same time the price of regular gasoline dropped to around two dollars a gallon, also a result of supply and demand. Most people were driving much less and, for some reason, stocking up on eggs. Only the first makes logical sense. The CBS headline got it right, calling the run on hand sanitizer, paper products, bottled water and eggs “panic buying.”

 

Politicians and media commentators capitalize on this tendency toward fear and panic, encouraging the same reaction to win elections on one hand or to keep ratings up on the other. It has gotten progressively worse. Manufactured fear quickly turns to anger, then to hatred and to more fear. It makes people easier to control. Thus, politicians count on citizens leaving their brains outside the polling place and voting based on fear and hatred while the media counts on them to be glued to the TV for the next shocking update. Since we fail to remain calm and rational, we no longer receive calm, rational messages.

 

The same kind of "thinking" applies to everyday situations as technology gets more and more sophisticated and the people using it don't. We discover nuclear power and use it for bombs and submarines: but try to use it to produce pollution-free electric power and NO! No one can be serious about climate change and not be a advocate for nuclear power. Chlorine gas is deadly; chlorine in a swimming pool is safe. Nuclear bombs are deadly; nuclear power plants are safe. But the opposition is led by politicians and activists who are either well intentioned and ignorant or who have a financial interest in alternative energy sources. Regardless, they use fear and panic to sell their position, and it works.

 

The internet and cell phones allow rapid communications and information, but they lead to a lack of privacy, more sophisticated scams, cyber-bullying, targeted marketing for legitimate and bogus products, a mindset of finding people guilty before evidence is submitted and without a hearing. This technology which has so many positive applications, is used to incite riots and demonstrations and to spread misinformation and whacko theories.

 

We have more food, and people are overeating. We have more prosperity, and people are going broke. We have more leisure, and people are more stressed. We vote based on fear and hatred. We never calm down to think things through. That’s the America we live in.

Flashback – Plastic Straws

I originally called this one "How Much We Take On Faith." At the time it was clear that many information sources are not reliable, a notion reconfirmed by many experiences since then. Politicians, advocates and pundits confidently make assertions to support their agendas. We can never tell what is true, what is pure fantasy, or how much is just so much hot air. 

 

Plastic straw mandates are examples of many symbolic acts. Using bad data or no data, authorities try to fool us, and probably themselves, into believing that they are really making a difference. They want to appear caring about all the right things, then garner enough support to pass laws and regulations forcing everyone to comply.

 

Here is the piece from 2018.

[The other day I got into a discussion with a colleague about plastic, which led to a comment about the amount of plastic in the ocean and what a problem it is. My response that only about 1% of the ocean plastic comes from the United States was met with stares of disbelief. Instead of arguing the point with someone who firmly believed the opposite, I offered to send references. The next day I emailed an explanation of the situation from a number of reputable sources.

From National Geographic in a story about the large accumulation of waste in the Pacific: "Microplastics make up 94 percent of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch. But that only amounts to eight percent of the total tonnage. As it turns out, of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today."

My next stop was a Bloomberg article with a sub headline of: “Skipping straws may be hip. But there are much better ways to fight pollution.” They first point out that the original estimate, the one activists and news media cite with confidence, that Americans use 500 million straws per day is based on highly dubious data that came from a small survey by a nine-year-old for a grade school science project. Then it was spread without any attempt to verify it by those who wanted to emphasize the problem. "Similarly, two Australian scientists estimate that there are up to 8.3 billion plastic straws scattered on global coastlines. Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for about .03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the oceans in a given year.” So what we have been told about straws being the problem is a gross exaggeration.

A Science report on marine pollution verifies exactly what I was saying with a table on their site,  Table 1 titled: “Waste estimates for 2010 for the top 20 countries ranked by mass of mismanaged plastic waste (in units of millions of metric tons per year).” The US is listed at the bottom of the table with a contribution of .09% – less than one percent. That same information is repeated in pie charts on other sites.

So all this fuss about banning straws is bogus. It is a feel-good exercise that grows because so few people take the time to do the research. Ocean pollution is a problem, but the advocates and politicians are misinformed and are passing along that poor information to the rest of us – and we are buying it.

This and many other trends and movements have become their own religions. They depend on blind faith. The preachers stand up and confidently make ignorant and absurd allegations about chemicals, food safety, pollution, economics and a host of other subjects. The general population takes it on faith, chanting “amen” in all the right places. This leads to poor policies and results in those responsible for poor policies being reelected on the basis of making their followers feel good about themselves, about how pure they are, about how caring they are. It’s much more about ego and self esteem than science or actually saving the planet.

In reality these policies deliver little or no benefit and may have unknown side effects or unforeseen consequences. They are at best a waste of time. Critical thinking is the answer, but no one wants to deal with facts or reality.] Feeling good is more important.

Flashback - Unbelievable Numbers?

[Almost a year ago I wrote about the statistics that politicians, pundits and experts spread without any support. They are repeated to the point where everyone accepts them as gospel, and no one bothers to check. It happens often. These are just a few that I highlighted at the time.]

Politicians and other entities trying to raise awareness to one or another kind of problem or injustice love to toss out surprising numbers to gain support for their cause. In many cases these are not real numbers. They could be based on data collected by the program itself with no effort to be unbiased, in fact, the more shocking the better. They may have been based on a single survey that made no effort to confirm results, and may directly conflict with the results of similar surveys. Like the unverified number of discarded plastic straws that was really based on a small survey for a grade-school project that led to such an uproar, the numbers are often repeated so many times by so many people that everyone assumes they are correct. 

With so many examples, how can we tell what to believe?

Everyone knows that ten thousand steps per day is the recommended amount to stay healthy and to boost longevity – or do they? This NPR piece tells us “the idea of walking at least 10,000 steps a day for health goes back decades to a marketing campaign launched in Japan to promote a pedometer” and is not some kind of magic number. In a recent study published in JAMA, older women who averaged 4,400 steps per day were better off than those taking only 2,700, with little or no benefit over about 7,500 steps. This finding was confirmed elsewhere.

The myth of 10,000 daily steps is akin to 8 glasses of water daily. There is no basis. Someone made it up. The best advice, to drink when you are thirsty, continues to be drowned out by the “hydration parrots” who swear by 64 ounces.

Other examples include the unacceptably high number of school shootings. The Campus Safety Magazine puts the number for 2018 at 82, “the highest there have ever been since 1970.” They mention that the second highest was 59 in 2006, so it can hardly be called a trend, perhaps more of a blip. They then state that the majority didn’t happen on school property – indicating a rather loose definition of school shooting. Compare that to the Wikipedia list of each occurrence by location with a total of only 36 for the same year.

A Time article calls into question the widely circulated number of one in five women in the US having been raped. They call that number misleading noting “the striking disparity between CDC figures and the Justice Department’s crime statistics based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (which includes crimes unreported to the police).” This article provides much detail and there is room for doubt (as I pointed out earlier), yet we continue to hear the same number.

Of course everyone also knows that crime and teen pregnancy are worse than ever – not so fast! “Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century.” Here is a link to that Pew survey from earlier this year showing several graphs on violent and property crimes all heading in the right direction, although you’d never know it from the news coverage. That explains why the public perception is the opposite. Likewise a site called the Seeker reports, “the fact is that teen pregnancy is low and has been dropping.”

Can the recent increase in tornados be attributed to Climate Change? This article from a Carbon Brief posting calls it highly uncertain – with references to the data. “What is clear is that there is no observable increase in the number of strong tornadoes in the US over the past few decades,” adding: “Any role for climate change in affecting the conditions for tornado formation is still very much an open question and the subject of ongoing research by the scientific community.”

Finally, are there more black men in prison in the US than in colleges and universities? It’s a handy throwaway line for a speech emphasizing victimhood, but I picked that one apart very nicely about 5 years ago.

We can’t rely on the orators, advocates, media and advertisers to get it right. Use critical thinking. Question everything.

What is Income Inequality?

What is the opposite of income inequality? It certainly can’t be absolute equality of income. Without being more specific, how can the term mean anything?

For years we have heard about goals like clean water and clean air. The US has been moving in the right directions. According to the EPA, “Since 1970, implementation of the Clean Air Act and technological advances from American Innovators have dramatically improved air quality in the U.S.  Cleaner air provides important public health benefits.” Follow the link to find a graph of nine measured pollutants, excluding CO2. It shows a downward trend since 1990 for all, excluding unusual events like dust storms and wildfires. Overall, pollutants have dropped significantly despite the fact that “Americans drove more miles and population and energy use increased.”

All the pollution levels dropped below a line labeled “Most Recent National Standard” as of five years ago. Note that there is a standard that defines an acceptable level of particles in the air. Totally pure air is not a practical or realistic goal.

Similarly, the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act “resulted in major changes in the way drinking water is managed and treated in the United States, and it achieved substantial measurable benefits in risk reduction and public health protection.”

On a side note, these facts do not seem to sway Americans influenced by media reports designed to stimulate concerns about hypothetical risks related to drinking water. A survey from 4 years ago showed that 56% of Americans “were concerned or very concerned about their tap water, 77% were regular users of bottled water, and 43% used some type of home treatment device.” The water industry and regulators have their work cut out for them figuring out how to promote acceptance and confidence in public drinking water supplies “and to maintain the public’s support for needed improvements.”

Once again there are measurable standards. Customers of public water systems receive a report from their water utility every year showing how the water supply measures up to various standards. Again, absolute purity is unachievable.

The same is true for lakes and rivers. “Human health ambient water quality criteria represent specific levels of chemicals or conditions in a water body that are not expected to cause adverse effects to human health.” 

Applying this to income inequality leaves critical thinkers puzzled.

The news media emphasizes stories about the shrinking middle class. “A graph from Reason, however, shows that about 50 years ago, 53 percent of people were middle-income, making between $35,000 and $100,000 per year. Although that statistic has since fallen to 42 percent, the reason [behind the change] is that many people moved into upper-income brackets. The share making more than $100,000 rose from 8 percent to almost 28 percent. (These numbers are inflation-adjusted.)” It’s shrinking, but not in the direction the news media and politicians imply.

Stories about income inequality don’t mention this information. Instead they attempt to stir up envy toward the super-rich, at least some of the super-rich. Notice that the emphasis is always on bankers, CEOs and hedge fund managers, not on sports stars, celebrities, Internet influencers or software developers. We are supposed to be irate that some people are rich, undeserving jerks, but others deserve wealth because they entertain us. Often the people who report these stories are rich themselves.

Furthermore, the evidence that income inequality negatively effects economic growth or social mobility is based on correlation, and, as every student of statistics knows, correlation does not mean causation. Whether or not income inequality is a drag on economic growth remains debatable.

But beyond that, it makes no sense to get upset about income inequality until it is defined and a goal it set. Anything that can’t be measured can’t be said to improve (or get worse). With no goal, there is no definition of victory. (This can also be said about so many other vaguely defined points of contention such as diversity, sustainability, and social justice.)

How Much We Take on Faith

The other day I got into a discussion with a colleague about plastic, which led to a comment about the amount of plastic in the ocean and what a problem it is. My response that only about 1% of the ocean plastic comes from the United States was met with stares of disbelief. Instead of arguing the point with someone who firmly believed the opposite, I offered to send references. The next day I emailed an explanation of the situation from a number of reputable sources.

From National Geographic in a story about the large accumulation of waste in the Pacific: "Microplastics make up 94 percent of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch. But that only amounts to eight percent of the total tonnage. As it turns out, of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today."

My next stop was a Bloomberg article with a sub headline of: “Skipping straws may be hip. But there are much better ways to fight pollution.” They first point out that the original estimate, the one activists and news media cite with confidence, that Americans use 500 million straws per day is based on highly dubious data that came from a small survey by a nine-year-old for a grade school science project. Then it was spread without any attempt to verify it by those who wanted to emphasize the problem. "Similarly, two Australian scientists estimate that there are up to 8.3 billion plastic straws scattered on global coastlines. Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for about .03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the oceans in a given year.” So what we have been told about straws being the problem is a gross exaggeration.

A Science report on marine pollution verifies exactly what I was saying with a table on their site,  Table 1 titled: “Waste estimates for 2010 for the top 20 countries ranked by mass of mismanaged plastic waste (in units of millions of metric tons per year).” The US is listed at the bottom of the table with a contribution of .09% – less than one percent. That same information is repeated in pie charts on other sites.

So all this fuss about banning straws is bogus. It is a feel-good exercise that grows because so few people take the time to do the research. Ocean pollution is a problem, but the advocates and politicians are misinformed and are passing along that poor information to the rest of us – and we are buying it.

This and many other trends and movements have become their own religions. They depend on blind faith. The preachers stand up and confidently make ignorant and absurd allegations about chemicals, food safety, pollution, economics and a host of other subjects. The general population takes it on faith, chanting “amen” in all the right places. This leads to poor policies and results in those responsible for poor policies being reelected on the basis of making their followers feel good about themselves, about how pure they are, about how caring they are. It’s much more about ego and self esteem than science or actually saving the planet.

In reality these policies deliver little or no benefit and may have unknown side effects or unforeseen consequences. They are at best a waste of time. Critical thinking is the answer, but who wants to deal with reality?

Food For Thought

Here are just a few items I have been wondering about.

A common excuse for bad behavior in politics and business is that someone else did it first or the other party started it. Doesn’t that ever strike you as the kind of response you would expect from a couple of third graders arguing on the playground? ("Did not!" – "Did too!" "He started it!") Don’t we deserve better from our leaders? Unfortunately in many cases, before the leaders can say it, their advocates on social media have already started looking for comparisons. Does the liking it and sharing it make us all more like third graders?

Has anyone ever seen something go viral that actually teaches people something or makes them think about an idea? I suppose the “stupid people tricks” might hint at teaching people not to try it at home (or anywhere else), but most of us don’t have to see someone else figuratively “crash and burn” to know what is dangerous. Those videos are obviously for entertainment value rather than instruction. Thinking is not something people do for fun, so we stick with the cute pets, fluffy wildlife, heartwarming stories and YouTubers selling us items we don’t need.

And speaking of entertainment value and oddities going viral – isn’t it interesting that the fad of encountering aliens from outer space, common in the 1950s, vivid descriptions of little green men with large eyes and foreheads, has disappeared? There are so many cell phones with cameras and so many people taking pictures of almost everything they see that if those space aliens were really among us, we would have been exposed to a boatload of selfies by now. I guess the search for intelligent life in the universe goes on – whoops, did I leave out the word “elsewhere”?

I have never thrown a plastic straw into the ocean and never intend to do so, so why can’t I use one? I have accidently dropped a plastic bottle and been thankful it was not made of glass. Once again, it’s not the plastic; it’s the behavior.

Finally, the fuss about the price of gas around the holidays seems to be mostly manufactured by the news media. It happened for Independence Day; expect to see it again for Labor Day. “The price of gas is 60 cents higher than a year ago, what are people going to do? Will anyone be able to afford to get away?”

The average mileage for a car/light truck in the US this year is about 25 mpg. A 60-cent-per-gallon increase adds $2.40 to a 100-mile trip. A 400-mile round trip for the weekend comes to less than ten extra dollars – less than two beers at any major league ballpark in the country or slightly more than a single movie ticket. Remember, that’s based on average mileage, so half the driving public is even less affected. But when they ignore the details and just target people’s emotional gut reaction, it sure makes a good story.

More Problems With Bottled Water

I have never been a big fan of bottled water.  On several occasions I have pointed out that, compared to the tap water in the vast majority of municipalities, bottled water is no safer and far more expensive.  In fact, bottled water, those brands that are not just tap water repackaged, is inspected less often and less thoroughly than water delivered to our house in pipes.  Blind taste tests yield mixed results.

The only advantage is the portability, which anyone can duplicate by filling his or her own container with tap water.

So when this story about bottled water containing little bits of plastic came on the news, it should have cheered me up.  Instead I was skeptical.

The headline in Fortune reads: “Bottled Water You're Drinking May Contain Tiny Particles of Plastic.”  It goes on to tell of tests done by a group called Orb Media at the State University of New York on more than 250 bottles from 11 different brands, sold in nine countries.  They found particles in more than 90 percent of some of the most popular bottled water brands.

CBS News added that the average number of particles found was 10.4 per liter meaning that people could easily ingest thousands of these particles each year. The World Health Organization is looking into the problem.  This makes it sound very scary, but at no point in the report did CBS answer the obvious question about the danger of ingesting tiny particles of plastic.  Do they just go through the system or do they hang around and cause major problems later in life?

Fortune asked the same question:  Is this a problem? No one’s really sure, because there isn’t enough data on the health effects of ingesting plastic.”  At this time health experts think most of the micro-plastics pass through our systems.  It is possible that some very small particles may be absorbed into our organs, such as the liver and kidneys, or that even the particles that pass though may give off toxins along the way.  But not enough research has been done to confirm either of these suspicions.

It turns out the same organization has tested for and found micro-plastic, invisible to the naked eye but detectable with a standard infrared microscope, in tap water from different countries as well as in beer, honey, table salt and seafood.  Sounds like they have an ax to grind.

There is no rational explanation for the fascination Americans have developed for bottled water over the recent past.  It’s not taste, safety or purity.  Fluoridated tap water is better for children’s development.  It’s not concern for the environment since, given that the majority are not recycled, the bottles themselves are a source of pollution.  It may be a slight convenience, but how does this justify the billions spent each year for a resource that falls from the sky.

Critical thinking cannot make sense of it.  But I’d rather people go on making bad decisions than to be frightened into making the wise choice by some half-baked new report spurred by an organization that clearly has an agenda to push.

Tradeoffs

Unfortunately the real world isn’t black and white or true and false.  There are shades of distinction.  Good evaluation always balances the risks and the benefits of any decision.  It is often too easy to overlook the risks or benefits when you are presented with arguments favoring one side or the other.  Some presentations come across so strongly and confidently that it’s difficult to even see that there are tradeoffs.  This is where critical thinking and appropriate questioning come in.

One blatant example was the controversy almost five years ago over pink slime, a derogatory term used to refer to and gather support against, a beef product that has been in our food supply for years with no ill effects.  Some TV chef decided it was yucky to reclaim meat waste, beef trimmings and other meat by-products, and add them to ground beef to lower the fat content.  The “crusade” began and, in response, grocery chains stopped ordering it.

There was nothing nutritionally wrong with it.  People’s jobs depended on the long-standing practice.  It reduced food waste.  As a result, we all had to pay more for ground beef just because someone dubbed it yucky and many others jumped on the bandwagon without a single thought or question – another social media triumph (?). 

It happened again to a lesser extent in Florida recently.  The residents of Miami Beach protested the aerial mosquito spraying.  The mayor insisted, “public health experts have assured him the amount of Naled [insecticide] used is harmless to humans and has proven effective” against mosquitos.  The public responded that they didn’t think the Zika threat was real.  They compared a safe, but probably scary spraying operation against an invisible, but real health threat and came down on the side of the mosquitos.

The same thing happens all the time on a variety of subjects.

Consider hydroelectric power – build a dam to capture the power of a river and provide low-cost electricity with no pollution.  Environmentalists block the project with lawsuits to protect a fish or mussel.  They don’t even have to prove danger to their fish; just raise the possibility and the developers or governments spend millions trying to prove there is no danger.  Meanwhile we all sit around in the dark.  But we are not in the dark because we still get electricity from the coal plant where other environmentalists are protesting against the CO₂ and particle emissions.  Still other protesters are busy condemning nuclear power, a safe, pollution-free option.  There is never any discussion about whether the benefits of a decision outweigh the risks (real or imagined).

Sitting around in the dark is not the big problem.  We can always light candles.  But you can’t light candles to keep the food fresh in the refrigerator, keep the house warm in the winter or keep the equipment running in the hospital emergency room.  When we have enough electricity, we take it so much for granted that we are not concerned that various groups with their different agendas keep trying to make it harder and harder to get.  At what point do we demand that they or the politicians look at trade offs and not just at one side of the story, usually the side with the most emotional impact.

Now look at all the other subjects where we are exposed only to the negative aspects:  climate change, income inequality, vaccination, the economy, air and water pollution, police interactions with the community, drug policy and the rest.  As citizens we fail to demand a balanced discussion, so get only the often-exaggerated negative warnings.  Many subjects quickly devolve into finger pointing and name-calling to silence opposition.  In some cases the cry is that all experts agree; in other cases the cry is that all the experts are wrong.  We waste time and energy with these non-critical, knee-jerk reactions.  We lose the benefits and go down the wrong road when we are only presented with and react to the risks.

Ethanol Does Pollute

I recently attended a lecture by a college professor about the dangers of climate change.  During the presentation he praised the mechanic of the university airplane for converting it to use ethanol-based fuel.  (He uses this airplane to fly to Alaska and back for his research.)  Since the thrust of his presentation was reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere, it seemed strange that he should commend a switch to ethanol which is a hydrocarbon and also emits CO2 when burned.  Using ethanol is about reducing dependence on foreign oil, not reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.

This may come as a surprise to some, but in this black-and-white world of environmental slogans many are led to believe that ethanol = good and gasoline = bad, as this presenter implied.  After reviewing a number of sources, I found the below table on CO2 emissions and the energy per gallon for various substances.  There is a more detailed explanation on the source website.  The conclusion is that ethanol emits less CO2 per gallon, but also produces less energy per gallon.  When you go through the calculations, it comes out that it emits at least 95% of CO2 as gasoline for an equivalent amount of energy to power your car or this airplane.  Ethanol is not really a “cleaner” fuel in terms of CO2 for climate change modeling.

Now consider how much land area an oil well takes up compared to a cornfield and that use of gasoline does not affect the food supply.  Is this another instance where we have not applied sufficient critical thinking before promoting a politically correct solution?