benjaminmhaley's comments

Living systems are in dynamic equilibrium. They bound from one extreme to another. A large adult gives way to a small child and back again. If they reach static equilibriums we call them dead.

The beautify of life is that it is perpetually moving towards new equilibria. We can't really settle it down without killing it. Instead we need to be sure it keeps going through boom and bust.

Actually we need local and universal time.

Say you have a meeting with remote participants. You want to know that it's at 9am UTC. With only that everyone knows when to meet. You also want to know that it's at 4am local time. That way you know that you will be asleep.

Universal time is useful for communicating. Local time is good for understanding whether people are likely working, eating, or sleeping.

The major problem with legalization is the incentive that companies have to promote addiction in our society. Tobacco use is much higher than it would be if it weren't for marketing that promotes tobacco (this is why those companies spend so much on marketing).

The same is true for alcohol, prescription medication, illegal drugs, and many non-drug products like food and materials goods. Businesses, legal and illegal, have an incentive to promote addiction that caters to customers short term desires but not their long term happiness and satisfaction.

The ultimate manifestation of this is the horrors inflicted on China from opium sales.

So we are stuck with a balancing act. Black markets create violence. Free markets create addiction. Planned markets create poverty. We need laws that try to balance these problems against each other and find the best mix of incentives to minimize violence, addiction, and poverty.

The #1 problem is with p-values is the word "significant". We should use "detectable" instead. Significant implies meaningful to most people, but not in a statistical context. This is quite confusing. Detectable is better because the mainstream meaning aligns with the jargon.

So:

> "Discovering statistically significant biclusters in gene expression data"

becomes:

> "Discovering statistically detectable biclusters in gene expression data"

This rephrasing makes it evident that "statistically detectable" adds little to the title. So the title becomes

> "Discovering biclusters in gene expression data"

A better title.

It's an old strategy. I was reading Grimm's Fairy tales to my wife this morning and the brave little tailor used the same clever approach.

* * *

Leaping into the woods, he looked to the left and to the right. He soon saw the two giants. They were lying asleep under a tree, snoring until the branches bent up and down. The little tailor, not lazy, filled both pockets with stones and climbed the tree. Once in the middle of the tree, he slid out on a branch until he was seated right above the sleepers. Then he dropped one stone after another onto one of the giant's chest. For a long time the giant did not feel anything, but finally he woke up, shoved his companion, and said, "Why are you hitting me?"

"You are dreaming," said the other one. "I am not hitting you."

They fell asleep again, and the tailor threw a stone at the second one.

"What is this?" said the other one. "Why are you throwing things at me?"

"I am not throwing anything at you," answered the first one, grumbling.

They quarreled for a while, but because they were tired, they made peace, and they both closed their eyes again. Then the little tailor began his game again. Choosing his largest stone, he threw it at the first giant with all his strength, hitting him in the chest.

"That is too mean!" shouted the giant, then jumped up like a madman and pushed his companion against the tree, until it shook. The other one paid him back in kind, and they became so angry that they pulled up trees and struck at each other until finally, at the same time, they both fell to the ground dead.

Then the little tailor jumped down. "It is fortunate," he said, "that they did not pull up the tree where I was sitting, or I would have had to jump into another one like a squirrel. But people like me are nimble."

Drawing his sword, he gave each one a few good blows to the chest, then went back to the horsemen and said, "The work is done. I finished off both of them, but it was hard.

* * *

From The Brave Little Tailor by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

I agree that it is interesting to wonder why certain cultures are more violent and militant than others. My points, more clearly:

1. That # of Jihadist does not indicate how violent and militant a culture is because it is not a cross-cultural term.

2. That cross cultural measures of murder rates do not indicate that the Middle East is home to particularly violent cultures.

3. That the Middle East is home to lots of military action, but that it is produced by foreign and local interests and can be explained by financial motives rather than cultural ones.

> why many middle eastern countries generate so many young angry jihadists

This is akin to wondering why Europeans generated so many young angry crusaders. The term jihadists denotes a religion and a region. Its associated with Middle Eastern countries by definition. Angry young militants from other religions and regions are given different names.

If we look at objective measurements of violence, like murder rate by country [1], we can see that the Middle East is not particularly violent, rather its on par with America. It is harder to find meaningful information on militarism. We do know that the Middle East was host to 3 of the 4 world conflicts that killed more than 10,000 people in 2014 [2]. All of these conflicts have included significant foreign and local involvement. Their causes are complex. In my opinion, they are driven by a desire to control the world's most valuable resource (Oil!) not by cultural factors.

Finally, it is worth noting that Americans use the word Jihad to mean holy war, but in the Middle East the word does not have the same violent meaning [3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad#Current_usage