On the Right to Self Determination

In 2014 a Scottish independence vote lost 55%-45%. It probably seemed a little odd to most people that such a thing could happen in a stable, first world nation. However, yesterday the pro-independence parties of Catalonia won the majority of seats in their legislature. They have stated that they will move toward independence from Spain. However, the rhetoric holds no force, since the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that it would be illegal for Catalonia to secede from Spain. Yet, there it will be - nearly 8 million Catalonians have formally, if not legally, declared that they don't want to be part of Spain.

This is not ourt of the ordinary, actually. Abkhazia and South Ossetia don't want to be part of Georgia. Transnistria doesn't want to be part of Moldova. The Donbass doesn't want to be part of Ukraine. Chechnya doesn't want to be part of Russia.  The Kybelians don't want to be part of Algeria. The Sahrawians don't want to be part of Morroco. The Tamil do not want to be part of Sri Lanka. The Kurds don't want to be part of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to separatist movements. We don't know much about them because the press won't give them oxygen. The Catalonia vote may change that.

Thirteen British North American colonies, in their declaration stated 'The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.' Anyone who is familiar with the history will likely conclude that this was hyperbole in the support of what they wanted to do. However, in retrospect, the secession generally has been granted legitimacy.

It seems that a right to secession won't be viewed as legitimate without some justification. In other words, a people can't just decide one day, 'Hey, you guys are nice and all, but we really have decided that we want to be us, not a part of you.' I'm not sure why, but that seems to be universally frowned upon.  

We readily confess, however, that at some point subjugation of a region reaches a level of severity where secession is morally justified. However, there has been no formally stated set of criteria that delineates when that point is reached and we have ample evidence that the severity of usurpations is in the eyes of a, usually, not unbiased observer.

The secession of the Balkan states from a Serbian dominated Yugoslavia was generally assessed to be legitimate by the EUNA, but not by Russia. The secessation of Crimea was assessed as legitimate by Russa, but not by EUNA. In a just world, the criteria for legitimate secession would be clear, allowing for objective adjudication.  

I, for one, would be inclined to institute a relatively low hurdle. I have stated that, in my opinion, the first principle of Information Age political philosophy will be that no person should be required to live under a body of laws, programs and policies that they consider to be fundamentally unjust. That is not to say that political disagreement constitutes justification for secession. However, morality informs us as to what constitutes just laws and if we can't agree on basic moral questions, we can't very well craft a nation ruled by law that seems just to all. It assertion seems quite reasonable if, to many, impractical. If shown to be practical, I do not think there is will great resistance, at least in principle.

From a practical standpoint, I think that any region that can demonstrate that their will is consistently thwarted by the will of the national majority is in a strong position to say that their right to self-determination has been sufficiently abridged. I realize that this would probably allow much of the South to secede from the U.S. even today. However, I would argue that it is well justified.  

The South, in a majority, doesn't want abortion on demand, gay marriage, the current level of adjudicated separation of church and state, etc. The, in the main, believe in less Federal control of local affairs. In other words, they are, generally, not living under a body of laws, programs and policies that they consider to be morally correct. While they would not vote in favor of any of these, the majority of Americans do not live in the South and in its entirety, these laws have support. However, the notion that the people of New York and California, by virtue of their very large populations may impose their will upon the people of Alabama and Mississippi is sharp, to say the least. I am having this problem right now with the Ukraine. The Donbass was OK, if not thrilled, with being part of Ukraine until a government came to power that stated without equivocation that it intended to pursue EU membership. The ruling party has a history of disenfranchising the Russian language, the majority language of the Donbass. These are what is causing this violence in the Donbass, not Russia. The Donbass, by a rather wide margin, does not want to be in the EU, given the hostility that the EU has demonstrated in word and deed toward Russia. Kiev is attempting, through force, to enforce a continued sovereignty over the Donbass to do so.

The International community of nations has 'international law' that prohibits self-determination for the Donbass. Most countries have national laws that forbid secession (the USSR was an exception). So, it is claimed by the people of Brussels, Washington, or Kiev that Donbass secession (and Catalonian secession if it comes) is illegal. Isn't this properly an issue between and among the people of the Donbass? We can, improperly I think, get it all lost in issues of Russia-EUNA relations which may mean little or nothing to the people of Eastern Ukraine who are just looking for some right of self determination.

However, now the Catalonians will present the problem again without the International political intrigues. In other words, EUNA vs Russia is not going to cloud the issue. And the Catalonians will hardly be the last. This statement of Catalonian national identity will likely embolden the Kurds, for example, to their desire for an independent Kurdistan. Sooner or later, the community of nations with transcend the 'our friends can secede, but our enemy's friends cannot' approach and develop consistent, objective and fair criteria. Mostly, I hope that EUNA, Russia and China will develop a attitude of neutrality and allow local peoples to resolve local issues.  
When we draw a clear line between International law and the rights of a regional population, the world will become a kinder, gentler place.

The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth and The Inappropriately Excluded

Yesterday I found myself in a kerfuffle over 'The Inappropriately Excluded' on Twitter.  Wow, arguing subtle points of cognitive theory and statistics in 140 character bites - that is insanely frustrating.  So, I'm moving over here to my personal blog where I am not limited and I will link back to the other combatants.

The difference of opinion was over whether https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Kell-Lubinski-Benbow-20131.pdf is a strong refutation to the inappropriately excluded.  Let me say at the outset that every single scientific conclusion is made in the face of some contradictory evidence.  No theory should explain all the evidence because some of the evidence is wrong.  The research into IQ and careers by Robert Hauser is not completely consistent with my conclusions and I do not dismiss that.  It is possible that the exclusion is less dramatic and those who would want to argue that would quite properly use Hauser as an argument.

However, from the perspective of one of the inappropriately excluded the paper under question is a very poor refutation.  In defense of the paper, it really wasn't trying to make a point about very high IQ and commensurate career success.  Still, it is being used as such in my current argument.

The paper states that the children selected are one in 10,000 which implies a D15IQ of 156 which on the surface, if we also accept that their career performance at 38 is commensurate with their intelligence would be a powerful refutation.  However, to begin with, the calculation is incorrect.  The mean SAT score was 1325, which at the time was about 99%'ile and implies, if, IQ equivalent is meaningful, a mental age of about 23.  At age 13, this implies an R16IQ of 23/13=177 which equals a D15IQ of 156.  So, while the calculation is incorrect, on the surface, the conclusion appears correct.

However, that is probably a substantial overstatement of the mean IQ.  Per the Spearman model differential performance is caused by specific factors and a general factor (g).  The general factor explains about 50% of performance differences when applied to a specific performance item.  Now, as we are all aware, some people have a talent that causes them to perform in a specific area much better than their general performance.  That is clear here where the median SAT-M was 690, a truly extraordinary score for a 13 year old, and the median SAT-V was a more ordinary 545.

Among high scorers as a whole, SAT-V tends to be slightly higher than SAT-M, however, generally very close to each other.  a 145 point difference strongly suggests that something in addition to general intelligence is at work.  If we were to estimate IQ from the SAT-V it would imply a mental age of about 20 and a R16IQ of 154 or a D15IQ of 143.  So, in the absence of other problems, which I will discuss later, a more defensible conclusion would be that these young people have a mean IQ of 143 and, additionally, possess a significant talent in mathematics.

However, there are other problems.  If you were to give IQ tests to 100,000 people and select the top 100, you would have selected people with D15IQs over 146.  However, not really.  The reason is that people have good days and bad days and their tested IQ will vary based upon which they were having when they took the test.  Test makers give a margin of error of 4 or 5 points.  Well, when you do the above process, you are selecting high IQ people to be sure.  But you also are introducing a selection bias toward people who were having a good day and would probably not score as well if they took an IQ test again.  It is generally not significant, but when you are selecting one in 10,000 it does become significant and means that the computed IQ of 143 is probably high by 2 or 3 points.

There is a second selection bias.  The SAT is not an IQ test, however, during the time the test was administered, it had a correlation of about 80% with IQ.  So, one can think of the SAT as .8IQ+.2?.  In normal situations, that would probably not be significant.  However, in situations where you are selecting high SAT performers, you are also selecting high ? performers and, therefore, a conversion will tend to overstate IQ, again probably by 2 or 3 points.

Lastly, as all girls do not reach menarche at precisely the same age, not all children reach intellectual maturity at the age 16 that is assumed in calculating IQ tests.  Consequently, when you select high IQ children, you are differentially selecting early maturers.  That is important because their apparent intellectual superiority disappears when they mature early and by age 16 or 17 the other kids have caught up.  Again, in most circumstances this is not very important, but when you choose the very highest performers at age 13, you are, again, introducing a 2 or 3 point selection bias.

So, in total, this group of high SAT performers, if they had their IQs measured at age 38 would probably average between about 134 and 137.  However, because their math talent would cause them to max out their quantitative part scores, they may score as high as 140.  This places them at an IQ range where we would expect the exclusion to be moderate and a significant percentage of them would be expected to have solid careers commensurate with their IQs.

Leta Hollingworth placed an upper limit on the range of success at 155 R16IQor 144 D15IQ.  While that is the point where the exclusion reaches a relative 50%, I would set it higher, since about half of Nobelists have IQs higher than that.  So, we see that based upon the 'one in 10,000' statement, this group would appear to be outside Hollingworth's 'success sweet spot' (and mine as well), but based upon the likely actual IQ, they are comfortably within it.  And, with a pronounced talent, high performance especially in STEM is to be expected.

However, in truth, the performance of the group is not particularly impressive.  They achieved 107 graduate degrees out of 320, which, while good, is not impressive.  11% or 35 became tenured professors, but between them, they only published 60 papers by age 38.  Many individual academics manage that by themselves.  Arthur Jensen published over 400 peer reviewed papers, for example.  They are responsible, as a group, for 49 patents.  There are 37 currently active inventors who have individually created more than 500 patent families (a patent family is all the patents registered with regard to one invention).

To reiterate, there are always research data that are at odds with a conclusion.   Robert Hauser's research, while not eliminating the exclusion, is the most contradictory.  I don't place as much weight on his work as I would if he reported IQs above 133.  A few STEM luminaries have taken a few high IQ tests, notably the LAIT and Mega, and have done very well on them.  This, in addition to some theoretical considerations, explains why I have a caveat about Math and Physics in the article.

We need a comprehensive 150+ IQ study similar to the Minnesota Twin Study on the heritability of intelligence.  Without it, my conclusions, while well supported and generally consistent with a preponderance of the evidence, are not as strongly supported as I would like.

Yesterday's kerfuffle is a good example of how confirmation bias interferes with the thought processes of the highly intelligent.  Those who argued with me don't want the inappropriate exclusion to be true and they went out to find evidence that it wasn't.

The Polymath Kickstarter $50 Contribution

I am doing a Kickstarter campaign for $2,000 - $25,000 followed quickly by an equity crowdfunding for $250,000-$500,000, most likely through Fundable.com for the purpose of launching The Polymath, a weekly PDF magazine publishing nonpartisan analysis and commentary at the very highest level of intellectual sophistication.

Background for those new to The Polymath

I have already tested a scalable Facebook advertising strategy that is acquiring subscribers at less than 50¢ each.  Even better, I have reason to believe that breakthrough phenomena may lower this initial cost.

Our writers will be the most intellectually sophisticated individuals in the world.  Intellectual sophistication is a function of intelligence, erudition and intellectual discipline. We will need about 30 regular writers and they will come primarily from the 500,000 smartest people in Western civilization.  Our Editors will search for them, but The Polymath will be a magnet for them, as well, so over time it will become progressively easier to find them.

Monetizing The Polymath presents a challenge and we will need to recruit a few experienced advertising sales people. They will sell ads directly but for the most part, ads will come from ad agencies.  Over the long term the Polymathic Enterprise Network will provide most of the advertising revenue.

Our market is the top 2% of the population in intellectual sophistication.  This is 26 million 16+  y.o. in Western civilization.  My blogs suggest that there are the equivalent of 7 million in the rest of the world, for a total market of 33 million.  This suggests that my goal of 4 million subscribers in three years, given that it is a free subscription, is reasonable.

The $50 Reward

The Kickstarter campaign is going to rely primarily on two contribution levels.  The $25 level is rewarded with The Future 101 e-book and an e-certificate recognizing the contributor as a primary founder of The Polymath.

The $50 level comes additionally with a coupon for one free footer ad in the issue of your choice.  This actually is an opportunity for the non-accredited investor to participate in the success of the Polymath to a proportionate degree as the accredited investors of the equity crowfunding.

After the Kickstarter campaign our circulation should be 20,000 and your ad coupon is worth $40.  After the equity funding (in 6 months to a year) our circulation will be 300,000 and your coupon will be worth $600.  If we achieve our goal of 4 million, which I am confident we will, your coupon will be worth $8,000.  This is similar to my estimate of the value of $50 of equity purchased in the Fundable crowd funding campaign.

You may contribute as many $50 increments as you wish and you will receive a coupon for each.  If you are interested, be sure to subscribe to The Polymayh if you have not only done do.

One Last Try on Monty Hall

My assertion that it doesn't matter if Monty Hall knows has garnered little acceptance even among the highest IQ people.  I woke this morning with my best proof yet.  Here it is.

There is a set that contains three types of members
A= games where I selected the car door and it is always 1/3 of the members.  Monty must open a goat door
B= games where Monty opens a goat door and I did not select the car door
C= games where Monty opens a car door

B= 2/3-C

If Monty knows, the assumption is that C=0 and B, therefore, equals 2/3.  The advantage in switching is B/A or 2.

If Monty doesn't know, it is assumed that C=1/3 and B/A=1.  There is no advantage or disadvantage in switching.

We see that it doesn't matter if Monty knows or doesn't know.  All that matters is the value of C.  If C=1/2, then B=2/3-1/2=1/6 and B/A=1/2 and there is an advantage in not switching.

This is all Bayesian friendly.

In the case as stated, the set has one member.  In other words there is no reason to assume that this game belongs to a set of games that has more than one member.  In this set C=0, B, therefore equals 2/3 and B/A=2.  One should switch.

Now, if the problem stated that several games were to be  played, THEN you would need to know the likely value of C.  But that is not the problem as stated.

I think I am done with the Monty Hall Problem.

The Polymath PDF Magazine

We are doing a $3,000 - $25,000 Kickstarter campaign to launch The Polymath, a weekly PDF magazine publishing the most intellectually sophisticated analysis and commentary in the world.  The proceeds will be used to create sufficient subscriber base to follow up with an equity crowdfunding for $250,000.  That will be sufficient to create a circulation of 300,000 which will create sufficient revenue to grow circulation to 4,000,000 in three years.

I am currently asking for 30 people to commit to contribute $25 before I open the campaign.  The purpose is to create 'buzz'.  At the outset I am telling people that I am going to be a major pest for a week or two.  However, after the initial promotion I will begin 'boosting' Polymathica and Polymathic Institute page to 50,000+ targeted leads. This is really important; The Polymath will be of ongoing benefit for you, directly and indirectly.  Here are the major reasons why:

• Non-accredited investors can contribute $1,000 and will receive 25 footer ads in the future issues of their choice. By achieving our three year goals contributors will turn $1,000 into $200,000.  The contribution can be syndicated conveniently into twenty-five $40 units.  Accredited investors can invest in the equity crowdfunding and our three year goal will also turn $1,000 into $200,000.
• Articles in The Polymath will encourage readers to move away from politically motivated positions to fact based ones.  Because our readers tend to be thought leaders in their social circles, The Polymath has the potential to significantly improve the public discourse.
• The Polymath will finance the growth of Polymathica.  A multimillion member Polymathica will vastly improve the social and lifestyle landscape for Polymathicans.
• Right now self published books and articles at our level of intellectual sophistication rarely reach a readership that justifies the time and effort put into them.  That is because the market is not organized to allow writers to cost effectively find their readers.  The Polymath changes that.
• The Polymath will provide members of Polymathica Enterprise Network with cost effective access to investors and customers.   Even if you don't have a business model now, The Polymath will substantially improve your options going forward.
• 80% to 95% of The Polymath will be owned by The Polymathic Institute.  Since its mission is to promote polymathic research, education, careers and lifestyles, revenue that is not used to produce and promote The Polymath will be used to improve options for Polymathicans.

It is not hyperbole to assert that this could be the best $25 you ever spend.  For the inappropriately excluded, it may be an essential ingredient for Information Age success.

If you have not subscribed to The Polymath you should fvnow. There is a subscription form on this page.

You should visit the Polymath Archives site to learn more about how you may become involved in The Polymath.

The Polymath Entertainment Supplement

The Polymathic Institute uses Mailchimp.com to manage its e-mail lists.  The primary use will be for the weekly PDF magazine of erudite analysis and commentary, The Polymath.  I believe that The Polymath's calculated circulation of six million will be closely approached in the three to five year time frame.  It will reach this circulation because one of its most important editorial policies is to publish articles on topics where the mediocracy gets it wrong.  Consequently, The Polymath will surprise and engage its readers.  An example can be found in the Omega Hypothesis page under 'Divine Intervention Through Synchronicity.'

Mailchimp.com provides 12 e-mails per name per month in its standard account.  The Polymath will take four or five of those leaving seven or eight e-mails per subscriber per month.  Some of that will be used for a peer reviewed, Journal of the Polymathic Institute.  We also will likely send personal invitations to Fellowship and a limited number of special communications. However, such supplemental e-mails will still leave a whole lot for other uses.

One idea, and I am truly excited about it, is The Polymath Entertainment Supplement.  Amazon and others sell books, music, videos and games on their site, generally taking 30% from the content provider, paying 4%-6% to the affiliate, and retaining 24%-26% for processing the payment and sending the content to the customer.  This is a big number that leaves plenty of room for improvement.

On Amazon content that would appeal to Polymathicans is not uncommon, but typically languishes, often selling 100 units or less per year.  On YouTube the same is true about music and video.  Creating a video on YouTube is relatively easy, but micro-niches rarely find even 1% of their market.

We can improve upon that, immensely.  By doing so we will do two very exciting things.  First, we will enable the '1,000 True Fans' concept.  Second, we will create a community of well compensated Reviewers.  We will take 25% from content producers, but we will aggressively promote their content.  Consequently, the perceived value of Polymathica for our content producers is much greater than Amazon.

Reviewers will retain 10% which is substantially better than Amazon.  However, for the 4%-6% that Amazon pays its affiliates, it still expects the affiliate to deliver the traffic.  The Polymath Entertainment Supplement is part of the Polymathica Enterprise Network and as such, the traffic is provided as part of its 'cut'.  Reviewers are paid for finding and presenting content of special interest to Polymathicans.

Polymathicans are voracious readers and their tastes generally don't conform to mainstream preferences.  Consequently, there may be a market for as many as 25 million book sales per year through the Entertainment Supplement when circulation exceeds 4 million. The $240 million in sales will go $180 million to the authors, $24 to reviewers and $36 million to The Polymathic Institute.

As a rough estimate, we may have 30 books reviewed per month and 15 reviewers.  The 360 authors will sell an average of 70,000 copies for royalties of over $500,000 per year.  Reviewers will review 24 books per year with sales of 1,680,000 copies and commissions of $1,671,600.  At first, the Reviewers will scour the low volume e-books on Amazon.com to find appropriate content.  However, over time, the authors will approach them.

The 1,000 True Fans concept is particularly amenable to the music industry.  There are literally tens of thousands of musicians who are good, but not commercially viable within any of the commercial genre.  Some may have a CD to sell or a DVD concert.  Assuming that our reviewers review two of these ($12-$15 ea) each month and the average sells 50,000 copies @ $12 ea the reviewer will earn $1,440,000. There should be sufficient activity to support 8-10 music reviewers.  Because of the many delivery modes of music it is more difficult to characterize musicians, but it should be able to support at least 200 musicians @ $350,000 per year.

There will be plenty of activity in the future for video and games but at present there are no viable business models.  The books and music reviews can be undertaken immediately, return six figure income soon after the completion of The Polymath crowd funding and seven figures within three years.

This is an opportunity worth fighting for, if it interests you.  You will search for obscure but great books and music and tell millions of people about it.  Even when you are earning seven figures it will be part time which will allow you to create your finely crafted life.

Everyone who contacts me wants to write articles for The Polymath.  I do not want to discourage them, but, frankly, very few will be successful.  To succeed, one must possess a very high level of intellectual sophistication, a penchant for thinking outside of the mainstream box and, of course, you must be a very high quality writer.

On the other hand becoming a successful Reviewer is a more realistic objective.  You need to have the persistence to find the high quality Creative and enlist them in the process.  You need to be a good, but not necessarily great, writer.  And, as you can see, the income is potentially even better than that of the Creatives you will manage.

We will probably send out two supplements so we have about four mailings left.  So, stay tuned for more ideas.  However, be sure to subscribe to the Polymath so you can be sure not to miss anything important.

When Cable Dies, It Will Die Fast

As I said in the last post, I realized fifteen years ago that Internet TV will replace cable as the primary delivery mode.  It was a radical claim then,  but verging on obvious today.  However, I forgot to mention that its demise will be very rapid.  In fact, it could go into a dearth spiral at bay time.

The reason is the high fixed costs of cable.  It works like this.  Suppose a cable distributor has a service area of 200,000 homes of which 160,000 are cable customers.  It charges $45 per month for a total monthly revenue of $7,200,000.  This is comprised of $20 per month of variable costs, $1,000,000 of profit and $3,000,000 of fixed costs.

Now suppose that the cable distributor loses 20% of its customers.  Now, the $4,000,000 must be defrayed over 128,000 and the price must increased to $51.25 per month.  This increase in price causes another 20% to abandon cable and the price must be increased to $61.67.  This causes another 20% to leave which causes prices to increase again to$82.50.  This results in a death spiral of fewer subscribers and higher prices.

The distributors will realize that as people start relying on Internet TV, their basic 7 MBS Internet service will not stream multiple HD videos simultaneously and consequently they will upgrade to 25+ MBS service.  This is a net plus for them, so they won't fight the death spiral.

The losers will be the Networks who try to do Internet TV like cable TV.  The winners will be websites who can deliver a homogeneous market that will have a high density of visitors interested in a program.  Polymathica will be such a market.

The main message here is that Cable will die fast and will probably do so soon.  The corollary is that, with smaller audiences and crowd funding, it will provide many opportunities, especially in new markets like Polymathica.