Orton's Arm

Exactly. The Patriots have formed the habit of beating the Bills twice each year. Until the Bills prove, on the field, that they can at least split games with the Patriots, we have no right to go around talking about owning this division. The Patriots have the better QB, the better OL, the better RB, the better coaching staff, and the better defense. The Bills have the better #1 WR, and the better special teams. While the Bills are catching up to the Patriots, they're still the front-runner.

I see you're once again attempting to create a distinction between the things I wrote about regression toward the mean, and the things that came from Stanford or other top universities. Let me reiterate: the "mean" in the phrase "regression toward the mean" refers to the population's mean, not the mean of the error. Consider a group of 100 people, each of whom got a 140 on an I.Q. test. That group will contain more lucky 130s than unlucky 150s. When those people retake the test, their scores will--on average--be closer to the population's mean I.Q. of 100 than they'd been the first time around. I'm not sure what point (if any) you were trying to make. The point I was making is that species change over time because some traits are selected for, while other traits are selected against. If you start breeding dogs for, say, aggressiveness, you'll end up with something like the pit bull. Darwin understood the power of artificial selection, and this power was one of the things which caused him to adopt his theory. By selecting for a trait, you cause the species to move in a certain direction. Right now, stupid people are having more kids than are smart people; so that's the long-term direction the species is moving in. A eugenics program could potentially halt this decline, and might even cause our species to resume its traditional increase in intelligence.

I know you idolize the people of the Third World, and look forward to the day when they've completely displaced our present population. So this may be difficult for you. Of all the people in the Third World, which do you think are most likely to "slip up" and have babies they themselves can't take care of? The geniuses, or those who lack a little something upstairs?

You just looooove to accuse me of flip-flopping, don't you? But just like everything else you've ever said in your entire pathetic life, this particular accusation is baseless. I pointed out that, by adulthood, the correlation in intelligence between unrelated people raised together is zero. In other words, there's no direct evidence that environmental differences explain a meaningful portion of the observed variation in people's intelligence levels. I've also pointed out that there's a selection process involved for adoptive parents, so the study in question wouldn't necessarily capture the intelligence-lowering actions that the very worst parents may be engaged in. Moreover, very few adopted children come from high-I.Q. parents. It's possible that high genetic-potential children could significantly benefit from an enriched environment, and that this potential for benefit wouldn't be captured by the adoption study. Your interpretation of the above paragraph requires a level of stupidity which I thought was beyond even you.

Are you really this stupid?

You're right.

Ah, you're back to your "mean of the error" nonsense. That isn't the "mean" that the phrase "regression toward the mean" refers to, by the way. In a test/retest situation, where the correlation between test and retest is less than one, results on the retest will be closer to the population's mean than were the results on the original test. If there's a significant amount of measurement error, the correlation between test and retest cannot be a perfect 1 (except in Dave's 11" ruler example). Ergo, there will be regression toward the mean. Natural selection is a relatively simple theory. Below is a quote from On the Origin of Species Darwin argued that artificial selection could--and did--produce quick changes, while natural selection produced changes at a slower pace. Natural selection works by choosing those with the most favorable phenotypes, which over time changes the composition of the genotype.

You really don't have the faintest clue about what you're talking about, do you?

Wrong. I've been perfectly clear about the fact that when results are obtained by random chance, regression toward the mean will generally occur. You may recall the coin flip example I gave a while back. A group of children is asked to predict the outcome of 100 consecutive coin flips. The best child is right 62% of the time. When this kid's retested, her expected score the second time around is 50%--complete regression toward the mean. Measurement error means that the correlation between test and retest will be less than one. Whenever there's a test/retest situation, with a correlation of less than one, there will be regression toward the mean. The fact that normally distributed error is zero over the whole population simply isn't relevant to that phenomenon. I suggest you start reading up on Darwinism.

I absolutely love the Dockery signing. I couldn't be happier about that. As for Langston Walker--conventional wisdom suggests there are better ways to improve your offensive line than by signing the worst lineman from the league's worst line. I see Langston Walker as a poor man's Mike Williams, except without the run-blocking. My expectations for him are precisely zero. But that's just one man's opinion, and it's possible I'm being overly optimistic. On the other hand, some Oakland fans hinted Walker makes a better guard than tackle. Teams generally try to hide their weakest lineman at RG. I have no doubt about which of the Bills' linemen is the weakest, nor about where Walker will be playing. I don't expect any improvement at all from the RG spot, unless Walker suddenly becomes a lot meaner and more motivated. Does the addition of Dockery alone make up for the loss of both Clements and Fletcher? On paper, no. But if Youboty plays lights-out, and if Fletcher's replacement turns out to be an upgrade, we could end up with a better team in 2007 than we had in 2006. For example, we could move Crowell to MLB, with Spikes and Ellison on the outside. If Spikes heals some more from his injury, that LB corps could provide a higher quality of play in 2007 than we got in 2006. I do expect a downgrade in our overall level of CB play; but that could be mitigated by Youboty doing well, and by McGee bouncing back from his bad year last year. Overall, our defense won't necessarily be worse than last year's, even if we don't make a single improvement to it between now and opening day.

You've uncharacteristically written an error-free paragraph about regression toward the mean. Color me impressed. If you could get rid of I.Q. measurement error, the appearance of regression toward the mean would decline. But given that regression toward the mean takes place for height (where there is no measurement error) it's reasonable to conclude that some of the observed regression toward the intellectual mean is a product of a real, underlying phenomenon. That said, there are few if any traits which have a narrow sense heritability of exactly one. This means that for just about every imaginable characteristic, there will be regression toward the mean. Despite this regression toward the mean, Darwinism states that if a given trait confers a survival or reproductive advantage, the species will gradually change to have more and more of that trait. What you seem to be saying is that regression toward the mean makes such long-term change impossible. If your ideas were right, human intelligence should have regressed toward the original, ape-like mean that existed 3 million years ago.

I don't remember you providing any research in our debates about regression toward the mean, eugenics, or our other main points of disagreement. The pot is calling me black!

Wikipedia's relatively small number of serious errors means it's a good starting point. If something doesn't ring true, it's obviously in your best interest to do further research.

Bungee Jumper talks about the wonderful math he claims will disprove some (unidentified) portion of what I've written about regression toward the mean. But given the fact he's done absolutely nothing to back his statements up, there's no reason to believe his claims are anything more than empty bluster.

Once Bungee Jumper and Ramius start their typical cat-calling, whatever discussion there might have been tends to disappear.

I like the "All your base are belong to us" video. Cool stuff.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html

What else is new?

Wow! More insults from you, but still no math. What a surprise. Hey, if you're too lazy to do the relevant math, the least you can do is to tell us a) which of my statements the math is intended to disprove, and b) provide a general outline for how the math would go about disproving it. You haven't done this, and you won't do it, because the math you're pretending exists is an empty bluff.

Fine. Buy copper wire. Allocate the wire where needed. Build new power plants where necessary.

It always amuses me when people actually buy Tom's line about there being some mysterious "math" that would undermine the articles from Stanford, Duke, the University of Washington, etc. I've asked him what that alleged "math" was supposed to pertain to or to prove. His way of answering the question was to throw insults at me. I don't expect you in particular to grasp this, given your apparent inability to grasp anything. But for everyone else out there--Tom doesn't have the mathematical proof he says he does. It's just bluster.

You're wrong. We built our existing grid, didn't we? Why can't we expand it? It's not like the relevant commodity prices make such expansion prohibitively expensive. Nor need there be any obstacles to the construction of new power plants. Expanding the power grid could be done without using technology that was around 100 years ago. So no, I don't have to prove this is possible. Expanding our power grid was possible 100 years ago, it was possible 50 years ago, and it was possible 20 years ago. If GG feels some new factor has arisen to make further expansion impossible, it's up to him to tell us what this new factor might actually be.

I normally have a great deal of respect for OCinPhilly's posts. But in this discussion, he's not up to his usual standard. While he's right to imply that most people on the far left eschew intelligent debate in favor of name calling, that characterization isn't true of all radical leftists. And you're right to imply that raising the salary of superintendents could improve the quality of the applicant pool. But I can't agree with everything you've written either. The crux of a market-based economy is to allow the pricing mechanism to communicate information about relative scarcity. If, for example, gold suddenly becomes much harder to mine, the price will go up, and those who value gold use the least will seek out alternatives. The pay raise you suggest would give us superintendents whose qualities the school board would value most highly. But the qualities valued by a local government bureaucracy aren't necessarily the same qualities that would be valued by a free market. If you want to instill free market-style accountability, you have to allow the use of school vouchers.

I take it you didn't vote for Bob Dole.

No, it means you should stop assuming it's impossible to expand the electrical grid unless you actually have some evidence with which to back up your feelings. In any case, if you actually did believe that expanding the electric grid would be so hard, shouldn't you rethink your enthusiasm for open borders? The tide of immigrants flooding across the border is putting enormous strain on our infrastructure in general, including the electric grid. Suppose there's some limit to the rate at which we can expand our electric grid. Choice A involves using that limited expansion capability to meet the needs of electric vehicles. Choice B is ignore electric cars, keep the border open, and to dedicate new grid capacity to the unstopped flood of immigrants who will continue to absorb the U.S. into the Third World. I'm at a loss to understand your unbridled enthusiasm for Choice B, while being so turned off by Choice A.