Monthly Archives: April 2017

Self-Refereeing and North Carolina vs Gonzaga

Posted on by

don-denkinger-bad-callI did not watch the NCAA Basketball Championship game between Gonzaga and North Carolina but the articles in the various sports websites I visit seemed to indicate that the referees intruded fairly heavily. This usually means they called a lot of fouls. There are two points of view on this.

One is that officials should let the players play the game. This means not calling many fouls. The problem there is when the players realize the officials aren’t going to call anything other than obvious fouls they start to play outside the rules of the game. Things can get ugly and out of control when that happens.

A second idea is that the officials are right to make the calls and the job is difficult. This sometimes means that the flow of the game is disturbed and it is less enjoyable for the audience. The audience essentially provides all the revenue and without them there isn’t nearly as much money to be made.

Is there a solution? It’s not easy but I harken back to my days of playing sports as a lad. In street games there was no one officiating at all and even in some organized sports like the high school tennis I played, it was up to you to perform self-refereeing.

I remember those days with fondness. When we called our own games. The general idea was that if you made a bad call your opponent had the ability to do the same thing. This meant that you generally called the game fairly. If you didn’t catch the ball in baseball you said you didn’t catch it.

I understand the stakes were considerably smaller on the playground than in the NCAA Championship and the temptation to make an unfair call is significantly greater. Still, there is part of me that imagines if we remove the officials from the game, players are going to be more likely to make accurate calls on themselves. It is the presence of officials that lead to more bad calls. I remember many games where an official made a horrible call and my opponent knew it but said nothing, or vice-versa. I think that in most cases we would never have made the bad call if left to our own devices.

What do you think?

How many bad calls would there be if we eliminated officials?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Gray Horn
May 2017 Release: For the Gray

Flu Shots Save Lives but Not All of Them

Posted on by

Flu-ShotThe CDC just released a study on 358 children who died from influenza in the years 2010 through 2014. What I’d like to discuss today is the disconnect between hard metrics of statistics and the reality of personal experience. I think this study gives a good chance to fully examine the issue.

Despite hard statistical evidence in favor of one thing or another, people will reject it. They will eschew them even in a case like this where the lives of their children might be impacted.

Here’s the idea. Basically about half of all children in the United States received the flu vaccine in the time frame of the study. That means in a random world about 179 children who got the vaccine should have died and an equal amount of those who did not should have suffered the same awful fate. The study shows in actuality about 268 children who were not vaccinated died while only 90 who were vaccinated died.

The implication are fairly obvious. The chance of your child dying from influenza is reduced if they get a flu shot.

Here’s the problem. Ninety children who did get the vaccine died. Meanwhile millions who did not get the vaccine did not get sick at all and certainly did not perish. Only a small percentage of children in the United States died from complications of influenza. There are ninety sets of parents out there who will swear that the vaccine is useless because their child died. There are millions of parents whose children did not get the vaccine and are alive today.

Statistically speaking there are about 189 children alive today because they got their flu shot. But there is no way to identify those 189 children. It is difficult to argue against the parents of the children who died after they received the vaccine. It is difficult to argue with the personal experience of millions of parents whose children were not vaccinated and are alive and healthy.

Personal experience often flies in the face of numbers and it’s not easy for anyone to overcome such anecdotal bias.

People tend to believe what they want to believe and in this case I’m certain quite a few people will continue to eschew the vaccine. They will not suffer because of this. Only a tiny percentage of people will suffer the horrible loss of a child.

This is why I think it’s important to teach Critical Thinking from an early age. We all tend to give credence to our experiences over a statistical study. It’s human nature. I understand it. That being said, the lives of 189 children depend on convincing people empirical studies are more important than personal experience.

Do you get your flu shot?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Gray Horn
April 2017 Release: For the Gray

Privacy in Browsing History Government v Capitalism

Posted on by

internet-browsing-privacyPeople are up in arms because Congress granted Internet Service Providers the ability to sell the browsing history of users. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. In 2016 the Federal Communication Commission began enforcing a rule preventing ISPs from selling such information. Congress just repealed that rule.

The major ISPs have now come out with a statement saying they will never do so.

Here we have in brilliant technicolor the problem with government regulations. Anything the government can do, they can undo with the swipe of pen. Any law they pass to support one thing, can oppose that same thing when an ideologically different party takes power. When we give government the power to restrict an ISP from selling our browsing history we implicitly give them the power to allow it.

Why, you might ask, have the major ISPs taken the unusual step of vowing never to do so? Because of capitalism. If their customers find out they are selling browsing history they might well find themselves short of customers. Oh, but wait, nobody has much of a choice in ISPs because local government puts up enormous and expensive barriers to companies that want to bring you internet service.

Cable companies pay huge amounts in bribes, I mean fees, in order to service a community. Now things are changing. Wireless Internet Access companies are available in many places but the system is still horribly monopolistic.

Imagine if local governments weren’t involved at all and any capitalist could start up an ISP to compete for your dollars. How long do you think the ones that sell your browsing history would last in a truly competitive market?

The only reason the big ISPs are vowing not to sell your information is because of competition, not government regulations.

Competition brings enormous benefits to consumers in a way government regulation never can. Government regulations are often the reason companies can engage in anti-consumer activity, they stifle competition. Without competition there is nowhere else to go. With competition a company that angers its customers just won’t survive.

That’s capitalism.

The more the government does to protect us, the worse off we are.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Gray Horn
April 2017 Release: For the Gray