Internet TV is Still Only Half Here

In 1999 I wrote an article explaining why Internet delivered TV would kill Cable and what the Industry would look like after the transition.  With Internet services, such as Netflix, the online presence of most networks, the episode and season purchase option through Amazon and others and now the subscription offering of CBS and HBO, there is little doubt that I was correct.

However, the transition is no more than half over.  Networks, for the most part, are still broadcast era artifacts that have simply replaced local cable distributors for the old local affiliate broadcasters.  Even the new networks, such as U.S.A., Fx, Syfy, etc., though never broadcast networks, still reflect that structure.

We need to take a step back and see that television has two relationships with its audience that are really quite different.  The first is the premium relationship that actually exists between the producer and the viewer.  For example, The Good Wife is really a relationship between Robert King, Ridley Scott, et alia and the viewers.  The second is the rerun library service, such as Netflix.  In both cases, the cable distributor is of no use and the Network now provides no more than marginal value added.

The first run producer has two basic needs.  First, save for those who are very established, funding for a new show is needed.  Networks no longer routinely provide funds directly.  Rather, funds are acquired to produce a pilot.  That pilot is then shopped to networks.  A network may purchase 13 or more episodes and that contract is used to acquire the remaining funds required to produce the show.  Ultimately, what the Network brings to the table is cheap and nearly universal access to viewers but, today, little more.

To put it simply, if you are a fan of Elementary, your allegiance is to the producers of the show, not CBS.  If CBS cancelled it and it started being distributed elsewhere you would have no thoughts of loyalty to CBS  You would go to wherever Elementary was being offered.  This is one of the strategic problems that networks have - almost zero brand value.

One of the problems with the network business model is that the budget available to the producers is determined by the number of viewers that the network can attract multiplied by the amount that advertisers are willing to pay in order to talk to a viewer.  The perceived value of the show by the viewer is irrelevant.

Internet delivery is different since it is the viewer who determines the value of an episode. If the show's budget needs to be $2.00 per episode, in the Network universe, the show is dead.  If viewers are willing to pay $2.00 per episode in the Internet universe the show may continue.  This ability for a highly committed subset of viewers to support a show will, over the next decade, completely transform the industry.

The beginning of the end for Networks will be when a show that they cancel, rather than going out of production, continues to be produced at a per episode fee and is marketed through Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and blogs and magazines with proper demographics.  If the marketers 'take' is less than that of the Networks, the 'producer to viewer' business model will grow and the network business model will die or more likely transform.

Today Netflix, Amazon and Hulu provide access to programming, mostly shows in syndication.  Netflix provides some limited original programming.  This business model needs to change as well.  The problem is that your subscription pays for programming that you don't want to watch.  As a customer, it is in your best interest to subscribe to a service whose subscription base is homogeneous and whose viewing preferences are most like your own.

Over the next five to ten years, the broadcast and cable networks, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and some new entrants will converge on a business model that will offer a monthly subscription that will provide unlimited access to a library of syndicated shows and older movies along with episode or season pass purchase for new shows, video magazines, sporting and other events.  Right now, with Amazon Prime and Instant Access, Amazon is the closest.

Over time, because of the market pressures mentioned, these various Internet TV providers will each find their own niche.  As they do, they will collide with Internet sites that already serve the niche and will find it profitable to offer Internet TV.  An example is Huffington Post.  It already has a sophisticated web presence with over 100 million unique visitors and a strong urban, college educated, 'soft Left' profile.  'HuffTV' would be a relatively easy start up.

There will be some interesting transitional issues.  At market maturity there will be a number of enterprises each of which will have access to a specific demographic.  They will offer a first run and rerun library specifically tailored to its subscribers.  However, at present first run contracts and syndication ownership does not conform well to a market niche segmentation.

For example, the new subscription service offered by CBS, through its CBS Television Distribution, owns an impressive library of syndicated shows that will make it an instant contender in the streaming rerun market.  However, much of it doesn't match well with its current first run lineup that skews heavily to the more intellectual crime/investigation genre.  On the other hand, websites that have a strong market niche presence, such as Huffington Post, will need to acquire both a syndication and first run library.

While this will lead to a period of increased acquisition and divestiture, it has been the general pattern, albeit at a lower level, with syndicated shows in the past and doesn't cause much of a change from business as usual.  The significant change will be with first run shows.  Because networks have controlled the industry in the past, first run shows have traditionally been exclusive to one network.  As producers take control of the industry, they will see benefit in striking distribution deals with several distributors.

Polymathica, though targeted at a much smaller market than Huff Post, still represents a wonderful opportunity to enable refined, erudite programming that in today's market simply couldn't get produced.  It will simultaneously enable several thousand Knowledge Class Polymathican careers.  Additionally, most shows will be financed through crowd funding which will provide high return potential to its small investors.

So, this impending development is significant on two levels as investment intelligence and as career opportunities. First, television is a growing and volatile industry that has been dominated by a handful of companies.  While cable television is going to die, the same companies typically provide Internet service.  As people transition to Internet TV, they will need to upgrade to higher bandwidth service.  While cable companies may see their revenue decrease, their operating income may actually increase.

The broadcast and cable networks will need to choose a market niche.  While that means that their viewership will almost surely decrease, their revenues may actually increase.  An ad supported show will typically generate about 60¢ per viewer, which must be shared with a cable, satellite or broadcast distributor.  A show that is distributed over the internet via a season pass will typically create $2.00 to $2.50 of revenue and the distribution costs decrease.

While the industry is in turmoil, it does not present much in the way of investment opportunities.  The existing mainstream players will lose viewers, but will increase its revenue and income per viewer.  When I wrote the 1999 article, I thought that AT&T was in the best strategic position.  Now, it appears with the acquisition of the NBC family of businesses, Comcast may be best positioned.

The real opportunities will reside in new, smaller market niches, such as Polymathica, whose viewers were disenfranchised in the cable TV era, but will be enabled in the Internet TV era.  PolymathicaTV will be joined by ZeitgeistTV, PolyamoryTV, ChristianTV, GothTV, AryanTV, AynrandianTV, SingularityTV, etc. that, in total, will likely capture about 15% of the market.

I estimate that PolymathicaTV will capture about 0.7% of the market, or about 15 million people.  PolymathicaRerun will, at this level, generate about 1.4 billion USD in revenues.  The majority of this revenue will accrue to the owners of content.   PolymathicaTV should be able to support about 100 shows at an average of 1,000,000 viewers.  This 4.5 billion USD of annual revenue will support about 2,500 FTE career opportunities.

It will also create impressive private equity opportunities as well.  Creators of a show will acquire enough funds to produce a pilot and some marketing funds, say 1.0 million USD in the anticipation that some viewers of the pilot will purchase a season pass which will generate sufficient funds to produce the show.  Most participants in the project, including the creators, will be paid scale or siilar, against a percent of revenue.  This allows low risk and potentially high returns for both investors and participants.

Skills needed for a successful team include:

• Production
• Writing
• Directing
• Acting
• Casting
• Sets
• Wardrobe
• Editing
• Musical composition
• Special effects
• Sound

The principals will typically have mastery of several of these skills.  The deal structure will usually be gross margin = Revenue - non-equity expenses.  The Gross Margin will be broken into 10,000 shares and allocated to the equity participants.  

Crowd funders for most projects will have a 1,000 USD minimum investment requirement, with $500 increments above that. They will be pitched with a proforma statement.  For example, the show may anticipate one million viewers with an average season pass of 45 USD.  Distribution services takes 25% and non equity costs are 4 million USD for a gross margin of 29,750,000 USD or 2,975 USD.  A 1,000 USD investment, receiving two shares, will earn 5,950 USD per year for the run of the show.  If the show gains 1.5. Million viewers the 1,000 USD investor will receive 9,325 USD per year for the run of the show.

Because of the nearly immediate high return potential and the small amount risked, investors do not need to be risk averse.  An investor who invests in five projects in a year and hits on one will be cash flow positive the first year and have 100% return for the run of the show.  Because of this, a lot of pilots will be produced which can be laid off to the rerun service if they don't succeed thus reducing risk.

This is an exciting end game scenario that creates thousands of opportunities within Polymathica and tens of thousands of opportunities in other market niches.  Readers who are interested in polymathicaTV either as a participant or investor should subscribe to The Polymath.

Microstate Design Group

Nearly half of the nations with the top twenty standards of living, according to the CIA Fact Book, are microstates.  Generally, a microstate has an area of less than 5,000 square miles and a population of under 1,000,000 and is generally either partially or completely autonomous from a sponsor state.  The classic example is Liechtenstein which is a sovereign nation but sponsored by Switzerland (the official currency is the Swiss Franc.)  It has the highest standard of living in the world.

All microstates of significance, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Jersey, Isle of Man, Bermuda, Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, appear to have collegial relationships with their sponsor nation and the community of nations, in general.  So, for the most part, microstates do not appear to be something that should be feared.  In fact, I am about to argue that the larger nations should all develop processes that allow disaffected groups to create microstates.  By doing so, the large nations will be legitimzing their claim to sovereignty and also will likely lower the cultural friction within their population.

The process should include the following:

• The microstate will buy land that it will occupy from current owners.
• It will compensate any current residents who do not want to be part of the new microstate.
• The microstate and the sponsor state will negotiate an arrangement by which the sponsor state will provide certain services to the microstate at a negotiated price and will retain certain rights of sovereignty while relinquishing others.  
• The microstate will likley need to enter into an ongoing payment to compensate the sponsor state for its loss of sovereignty and taxing authority.
• A series of treaties will be executed, such as visa requirements, trade status, etc.

This process will lead to an orderly and more collegial establishment of the microstate.  It will generally assure the community of nations that the creation of microstates will not lead to the proliferation of rogue states.  

Most Political Philosophers today rely upon some form of Social Contract as justification for the right of nation states to hold authority over its citizens.  However, a contract is coercive if their are no practical alternatives.  By declaring no right to secession, today's nation states are on weak philosophical ground.  By having a practical mechanism for microstate alternatives, nation states, for as long as they are the dominant form of government, will stand on stronger philosophical ground.

The Internet is creating cultural fragmentation and polarization that makes the democratic processes more contentious, often leading to 'gridlock' and, in extreme cases to terrotist acts and/or insurrections.  This is being caused by a relatively small percent of the population with very strong ideological positions that are fundamentally irreconcilable with the mainstream population of the nation state.  Even a small number, say 5% of the population, establishing microstates can reduce political and cultural polarization sufficiently to return a degree of equanimity to the political process. 

As the Information Age civilization emerges, with its Cultures of Affluence, the first principle of political philosophy will become, 'No person should be required to live under a body of laws, programs and policies that he or she considers to be fundamentally unjust.' Few people will assert the opposite, that people should be forced to live under a body of laws, programs and policies that they consider fundamentally unjust.  However, few people can imagine how the problem can practically be solved.  Now we see a way.

To date, microstates have been comprised of ethnic minorities within the sponsor states.  However, as new microstates form, they will be comprised of international populations with shared cultural, social, political and economic values.  The first of these are the planned Libertarian city-states in Honduras.  This will often create a practical benefit to sponsored microstates.  These microstates will be comprised of an International population who have achieved, 'live anywhere' Information Age incomes.  They will become a very lucrative, new trading partner.

New technologies in desalination and alternative energies, such as OTEC and EGS, are making coastal, arid land that historically has been uninhabitable or sparsely populated very attractive for microstates.  Public water use in the U.S. is between 200 and 250 cubic meters per year per capita.  Desalination costs about $0.30 per cubic meter more than groundwater or about $60 to $75 per year per capita.  For an Information Age community, that averages 600,000 USD per year household income that is not significant.

This suggests that Australia, Mexico, Chile, South Africa, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, et alia, are all very attractive locations for microstates.  Again, the new microstates are likely to be comprised of populations that have values very different from the prevailing values of Liberal Democracies.  These will include, but not be limited to Marxists, Libertarians, Gaians, Polyamorists, Polymathicans, Pagans, Eugenicists, Transhumanists, Zeitgeist, etc.

We are entering a period when a profound transformation from an Industrial Age civilization to an Information Age civilization will take place.  Microstates can be crucibles for social, political, economic and cultural experimentation.  They can try new combinations that would be too radical and risky a departure from current institutions.  However, they can be tested safely on smaller scales.

This is an exciting opportunity for thoughtful and intellectually disciplined people to engage in a mutual exploration of the possibilities of mirostates.  For those who wish to participate, we have created a closed Facebook group.  If you are interested in participating, please message me in Facebook or e-mail me at DoctorPolymath@yahoo.com.

How the Income Explosion Happens

I am encountering, with greater frequency, people who are confused over how people losing their jobs to robots and AI can lead to an income explosion.  So, here, I am going to lay it out, piece by piece and, in the process, hopefully, help people understand what we need to do in order to get through this transformation with a minimum of pain.

When a robot or AI salesperson visits the engineering or IT department with the latest gizmo, the potential customer has a form that they need to fill out and submit to the Financial Analysis department for approval.  The purpose of the form is to provide the Analyst with the information that he or she needs to determine the financial impact of the purchase and implementation.  The form usually quantifies expense savings, generally in labor, against the costs of the equipment or program.  If the purchase is found to increase shareholder return, it will be approved.  If not, it will be rejected.

So that is the first important point.  Automation lowers costs and increases profits or it isn't done.  What this almost invariably means as the first step is that someone loses their job and the shareholders earn more as a consequence.  So far, not good.  In fact, it plays right into the 1% narrative.  It is a transitional phase and the situation changes in a second step.

However, before we get to step two, we are going to pause and do a little Economics.  An economy has X hours of human input that results in Y output.  So, Y/X = productivity or the amount of production that can be done with a unit of labor input.  There is a labor constraint on the economy and through all of history, it has been so.  Output is limited to Y/X times the number of hours that are available for productive activity.  The number of hours can only be affected (given constant population) by changing the number of hours per worker or by changing the percent of the population that works.  Both of these are severely limited in their range.

For example, if there are 120 million people who are willing to work full time and productivity is $200,000 per worker, Gross Domestic Product is limited to $24 trillion.  However, economies do not function perfectly and there are always unutilized hours (unemployed or underemployed people).  However, there are two things that are clear.  One, the only way to sustain growth in standards of living is to increase productivity (X/Y) and that involves automation.  Two, as long as X/Y is not infinite, full employment is possible; it simply requires an increase in GDP.

In other words, suppose X/Y doubled to $400,000.  If GDP remained $24 trillion, 60 million people would lose their jobs.  However, if GDP grew to $48 trillion, there would still be 120 million jobs and, essentially, the standard of living would double.  This is always the case.  If X/Y = $1,000,000, without economic growth, there would only be 24 million jobs (80% unemployment).  However, if the GDP grew to $120 trillion, again, there would be 120 million jobs.

This is the explanation for why the Luddite fallacy is a fallacy, today, as it was in the 19th Century.  However, there is a potential fly in this particular ointment.  As we see, today we live in a labor constrained economy.  It is true that there is unemployment and there are people who would work if they could get a job.  However, if we completely solved those two problems and everyone who wanted a job could get a full time job, the economy would still be labor constrained at about 112% of today's GDP.

There is the possibility that with a sufficiently high X/Y the economy would become either resource or demand constrained before it became labor constrained.  In other words, there would be some permanent unemployment as is feared.  While this may be an issue at some time in the future, it is not in the near term.

First, the economy is becoming progressively less resource dominated which argues against a resource constraint.  In other words, as the economy grows, a smaller percentage of GDP is comprised of energy, steel, cement, etc. and more is comprised of design, knowledge, content, etc.  For example, a Rolls Royce costs ten times the cost of a Toyota.  However, it does not use ten times more steel.  Its design component comprises an enormous amount of the price difference.  As we become more affluent, the economy will continue to become more design and content laden.

Second, while small parts of the economy are already demand constrained, we are a long way from the majority of the economy being constrained in this way.  For example, lowering the cost of flash memory will not greatly increase demand.  In other words, very few people want more flash memory but don't buy it because it is too expensive.  Flash memory is essentially demand constrained.  However, housing, automobiles, services, the primary components of end product consumption are far from approaching demand constraints.  In other words, there is some point at which people will say, 'Enough house', but we are not even close to it.

Consequently, we can safely conclude that incomes can increase without meaningful constraints, but that it will go to the owners of enterprises, not to the employees.  That is not an untrue statement and is a component of why workers' wages have stagnated over the past two decades.  However, this is not the end of the process.

To this point, companies have fewer employees and higher profits.  However, to the extent that free enterprise works, the lower costs will translate into lower prices as companies either attempt to increase their market share or defend their current market share.  This price competition is a major reason why predominantly unregulated economies have historically outperformed centrally planned and heavily regulated economies.

Companies will continue to drop their prices until the incremental decrease in price does not pay for itself through higher market share or economies of scale. Lower prices, of course, benefit all people who buy products and services.  So, on the surface, lower prices look like a good thing.  However, to Economists, comprehensively lower prices, called deflation, is a bad thing and they will take measures to 'fix it'.

Because the Central Banks are full of Economists who believe that the best state of affairs is inflation in the 2% to 3% range and that deflation is bad, when automation causes deflationary pressure, they will make it go away by printing more money.  Historically, this has usually been done by lowering interest rates.  However, as deflationary pressures have continued, interest rates have fallen to close to zero and they can't use that method anymore.  So, they have started buying debt, usually either government or mortgage debt.

Here is the really cool part.  Usually, as is the case in the U.S., the Central Bank is granted a modest return and, beyond that, all the proceeds from printing money goes back to the government.  Lately, that amount has been around $80 billion per year in the U.S.  There is essentially no down side to this.  It is a process by which a portion of the increase in GDP ends up in the Treasury without anyone being taxed.

Something similar happens when the Central Bank buys mortgage bonds, but rather than the government benefiting, home owners benefit through lower mortgage rates.  The U.S. Federal Reserve did this and right now mortgage rates are historically quite low.  In all likelihood, they will return to Treasury Bonds in a QE-IV.

Here is the counterintuitive part.  The Central Bank can never sell the bonds and when they mature, they must replace them.  They bought them to increase money supply and eliminate deflation.  Selling them or allowing them to mature will undo that.  It, then, would be deflationary because it would take money out of circulation and would need to be fixed just like the original purchase.

What that means is that when the Central Bank buys government bonds, the interest paid becomes income to the Central Bank and from there it goes back to the government for a net zero interest expense.  The Central Bank can never accept payment on the principle or it will undo the deflation fix.  So, when the Central Bank buys government bonds, they functionally disappear.  They never have to pay back the principle and the interest they pay is refunded to them.

When the government spends tax dollars, it does not stimulate the Economy.  The government spends it instead of the taxpayer, but there is no increase in total spending.  But when the government spends the money that it receives by selling bonds to the Central Bank, the taxpayer keeps their money and is free to spend it AND the government spends the money without ever having to pay it back.  This is very stimulative and GDP grows.

So, in the final step, the people who lost their jobs at the beginning of the process get jobs back because X/Y and GDP have increased such that, in the end, jobs remain constant.  However, the process takes time.  In a way, that is good, because the people who lost their jobs lost them to robots and AI and that loss is permanent.  They need to retrain for jobs that have not been automated.  And, of course, two or three years of unemployment while being retrained is a severe hardship for mid career workers.

Many Economists, accustomed to productivity gains that fall comfortably within traditional economic growth rates have difficulty imagining substantial technological unemployment.  Yet, it is and always has been the case that economic growth and technological unemployment balance each other.  In the long term, through the mechanisms described above, that is correct.  However, if technological unemployment is very high, there is a lag and the net unemployment can, temporarily, get very high.

Suppose that structural unemployment is 4% and over ten years GDP is going to increase 10X.  Productivity must grow 10X which is the equivalent of 90% of jobs being replaced by robots and AI.  Further, let's suppose the process described above takes 3 years, on average, from the loss of jobs to automation to the eventual re-employment.  If the Transformation takes 18 years, unemployment will need to be 90%/6+4%= 19% during that time.  If it takes 24 years, unemployment will average 90%/8+4%=15.25%.  On the other hand, if it takes 12 years, unemployment will average 90%/4+4%=26.5%.

If we slow down the Transformation, the unemployment peak will be less. However, the  total pain will not be less.  The total number of unemployment years is the same.  The benefit will be in an increased ability of the economy to ameliorate the pain since it will be less in any given year.  The problem is that we have mechanisms that allow us to delay the onset of the Transformation and, not surprisingly, it appears that government and industry are availing themselves of them, but we don't really have good mechanisms for delaying full implementation.

For example, some governments have asked Google to delay the introduction of their driverless vehicle technology and Google seems to be agreeable.  On the other hand, once they introduce it, it is not clear how we slow full implementation.  In other words, our behavior seems to be shortening the Transformation and, in the process, increasing the average and peak unemployment rate.

If we can shorten the cycle, say, from three years to two years, we then can make some significant strides to lessening the trauma of the Transformation.  For example, in the 18 year example, rather than an average unemployment of 19%, it will average 90%/9 + 4% = 14%. We also can lessen the pain by using our 'deflation fix windfall' to increase unemployment benefits to two years and to fund retraining expenses.

We also see on the horizon some spectacularly disruptive individual events that are imbedded in the 90% job loss.  What happens if SAP and Oracle get together and eliminate the tasks currently done by AR, AP, Payroll clerks and staff Accountants?  This is within current technological capabilities and primarily require the various accounting software packages to be able to talk to each other directly.  It will tend to happen all at once, because, for the most part, only two companies need to upgrade their software and it is over.   What happens when three million clerks and accountants hit the unemployment line as almost the same time?

It appears that once over the road drivers start getting replaced by robot drivers, competition will drive this to be a one year event.  A typical 18 wheeler may cost $0.75 per mile to operate of which about $0.50 is for the driver.  If a robotic driver cuts the driver cost in half, suddenly there will be trucks that are charging $0.50 per mile.  The unconverted trucks have a choice of losing money or converting.  If it is a profitable implementation for one company, it will be profitable for all and the conversion of the national fleet will happen very rapidly.

Also, if the promise of drastrically reduced accident rates holds up, it is likely that the companies that insure the 18 wheelers will demand that the change out takes place as quickly as possible.

An ameliorating factor is that the faster the transformation the faster will be the deflation which leads to larger amounts of government funds that can be used to increase unemployment benefits and retraining grants.  This is a theme that will come to dominate the political dialogue over the next 10 to 15 years.

So, to summarize

1. Companies buy productivity enhancing robotics and AI.  They lay off workers and profits increase.
2. Companies 'spend' their increased profits to gain or defend market share.  Prices fall.
3. Falling prices, when nearly universal, creates economically destructive deflation.
4. Central Banks respond by creating money by buying government bonds.
5. 'Deficit spending' findanced by debt that carries no net interest expense and doesn't need to be paid back is economically stimulative and creates jobs.  Unemployment decreases, X/Y is higher and standards of living are increasd.

An enlightened government response would lead to the Income Explosion dominating the minds of people over the technological unemployment.  There is also a significant advantage to people switching to Information Age careers now and the government should encourage it.  The 'Jumpstart Our Business Startup' legislation, commonly referred to as 'crowd funding' is a step in that direction.  There are several benefits to this.  As people move to Enterprise Networks and Knowledge Class jobs, the number of people chasing a decreasing supply of Industrial Age jobs will decrease and, through supply and demand, the wage stagnation will be reduced.  Second, as jobs disappear, it will lead to smaller layoffs.  Much of the job loss will be handled through attrition.

It is unlikely that governments will respond in an enlightened way.  However, the more we talk about it, the more we 'spread the Transformation meme', the more likely it will be.  It would be wonderful if this article went viral.  However, because it contains no kitties, I'm pretty sure it won't.

The Polymath

The Polymath will be a weekly .pdf magazine of news, analysis and commentary for an erudite readership.  It will contain feature articles on world affairs, economics, business, investing, science, technology and the arts.

We will do a crowdfunding, probably for $1,000,000 with the proceeds used primarily to build readership. I know from years of experience that with complete awareness we will be about 4.5 million subscribers.  The crowfunding will be sufficient to build a 1.5 million subscribers and should be sufficient to create organic growth. 

The key to success for The Polymath is to appeal to the upper 5% of the population in intellectual sophistication that, per research by D.K. Simonton, is currently substantially underserved.  In other words, our articles need to be well researched, well considered and say something unlike what is flooding the press.  If it is the same thing, just said differently, we shouldn't publish it.

For example, with regard to the Crimea situation, I said,

"In 1238 Crimea was taken from the Rus' and Byzantium by the Golden Horde. Crimeans were not asked if they wanted to be part of the Mongol Empire; they were told.

In 1475, Crimea became part of the Ottoman Empire. They were not asked; they were told.

In 1783, Crimea became part of the Russian Empire. Again, they were not asked; they were told.

In 1954, Crimea was made part of Ukraine. They were not asked; they were told.

Finally in 2014, they were asked. They decided that they want to be part of Russia. NO, NO, NO!! protests U.S. and EU. It is illegal. Yet one more time, they insist, the people of Crimea must be told."

This is the kind of material we need in The Polymath.  It is correct, it is cogent and it is different.  It raises a question that will surface again and again over the next few years.  Should the community of nations make laws without the consent of national minorities that prohibit that national minority from enjoying self determination?  Are the interests of Russia, the E.U. and the U.S. of greater merit than the interests of the people who actually live in the affected territory?

According to D.K. Simonton, The Polymath superstar authors will have IQs around 150 (+/- 10).  We won't be asking for an IQ test result; the quality of the work is the driving factor.  However, clearly, it will take some work to find our article and column writers.  So, we will be looking for five or so 'Editors' whose job is to go out and find such authors, help them meet the editorial standards of The Polymath and keep them working.

The Polymath will be ad supported.  In other words, people will get a 128 page weekly magazine in their inbox at no cost and will also be able to access archived articles.  That is a lot of advertising.  Our objective is to have all the advertisers be Members of the Polymathica Enterprise Network with adverstising placed on an affiliate basis.  That is another project I will be posting on soon.  We will need 'Monetizers' to go out and find appropriate advertising.  They will also be expected to place the advertising properly so that the right readers are seeing the correct ads.

This is a shared enterprise.  What that means is that everyone gets a piece of the revenue and is responsible for their own budget, keeping the excess as their profits.  Authors will receive 35%, Editors will receive 10%, Monetizers will receive 10% and 15% will be retained for Administration.  The Polymathic Institute will have 80% of the 30% profit or 24% and the crowdfunders will have 20% of the 30% or 6%.  The Polymathic Institute will use its proceeds to promote polymathic research, education, careers and lifestyles.  At the outset, the majority will probably be used to crowdfund enterprises in the Polymathica Enterprise Network.

Total Revenue is forecast at 1.5 million subscribers X 128 pages per week X 52 issues per week X ½¢ per page = $49,920,000.  At this level, authors will receive $2,500 per page while Editors and Monetizers will receive $750 per page each.  A five page article will provide authors with $12,500, Editors and Monetizers with $3,750.  Clearly, Editors and Monetizers will have a reasonable opportunity to earn mid six figure USD annual income placing just three articles per week.  Of course, this is only about 1/3 of what I anticipate to be our mature distribution.

We will have a tab in Polymathica.com for The Polymath which will archive all articles.  Revenue from affiliate ads there will be shared in the same proportion as the .pdf magazine.  The articles will have the facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc. 'share' buttons as well as a 'subscribe' box.  Of course, we will work to achieve SEO.  Because the articles, in order to be accepted for publication, must bring a new and intellectually rigorous perspective to the issue, the should be highly shareable within our market.

We absolutely need this to hit fast, which means crowdfunding, editors, authors and monetizers must grow and succeed quickly.  If you want to be an Editor, go get an article.  If you want to be an Author, write a feature article.  If you want to be a monetizer, go find advertising (affiliate preferred), that is appropriate for a refined and erudite audience.  We need someone who will spearhead crowdfunding.  We also need an Editor-in-Chief, a layout artist and a tech-type to maintain our subscriber list and e-mail functionality.  You each will receive a portion of the 15% administrative share.

Contact me at DoctorPolymath@yahoo.com if you are interested in becoming involved.



 

Balancing the Evidence on Global Climate Change

Let's get something straight from the beginning.  Humans are spewing carbon dioxide into the air and, while there are a number of sinks that will take up much of it, it takes time and much of what will eventually end up in a sink will spend significant time in the atmosphere first.  This increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will generally contribute to a higher mean global temperature.  If you are inclined to deny these two assertions, you are, indeed, an unscientific, head-in-the-sand, Climate Change Denier.

However, there is an enormous gulf between CCD's and the-sky-is-falling, apocalyptic prognostications of the Climate Change Industry.  Somewhere in that gulf is the most probable scenario.  Precisely where that point is constitutes one of the most, if not the most important question, facing us today.  That is not because we need to avert the apocalypse but rather because we are very likely to impose upon ourselves a cure that is far worse than the disease.

The Climate Change Industry is an unholy alliance between the climate science community and a small, but highly influential, community of socialists and globalists.  Scientists outside of the climatology specialties are mildly liberal and vaguely globalists.  Consequently, in addition to the 'science team loyalty', they generally look favorably upon any arguments made from the perspective of taking global action for the betterment of Mankind.

I really don't blame the climate scientists.  Well, not much, anyway.  It is an ineluctable truth that governments fund research proportional to the perceived severity of the problem and industry funds research proportional to the perceived opportunity.  Since climatology just isn't likely to get much industry research funding, it is in the best interest of climatologists, within the constraints of scientific integrity, to emphasize the potential dangers of climate change.

Actually, the problem isn't so much with the scientists as it is with the news media that interprets the science.  For example, the atmospheric CO2 has been increasing at the rate of .5% per year for quite some time.  The latest reported concentration was 397 ppm.  So, the naive projection would result in 397*1.005^87 = 613 ppm at century end.  The IPCC AR5 midrange is 650, not significantly different than the naive projection.  This level of increase suggests a temperature increase of about 1.5°C by 2100.  This value falls within the margin of error of all IPCC AR5 scenarios.  It is also not very alarming either in itself or in its implications.

However, that is not the story being told.  When I google 2100 CO2 and temperature, the top returns, exclusive of government sites which accurately convey the AR4 or AR5 position, try to sell as their scenario

1. 2.8°C
2. 850 ppm 3.5°C
3. "On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter"
4. A factual report on the IPCC AR5 midrange projections.
5. 800 ppm 3.7°C

Essentially, based upon current Climate Sensitivity analysis the AR5 slightly over estimates temperature increases, but keeps the result consistent with a 3.0°C CS value within their margin of error.  Taking the highest range and, in some cases finding reasons to go even higher than that, the media significantly misrepresents the science. 
 As we can see with the graph to the left, we have a consistent CO2 record for more than 50 years that just doesn't deviate very much from the .5% per year increase in CO2.  The Climate Sensitivity number has been found to be 3.0°C +/- 1.5°C for quite some time and more recent research suggests, if anything, it may be in the lower half of this range.  

So, there really isn't much reason to expect a midrange to be much different than 1.5°C implied by the naive projection.  At least unless there is a substantial change in the amount of CO2 emissions.

Again, a full treatment of the science behind climate change would be very extensive and is not my point here.  Rather I wish to show that the climate science community, knowing on which side their funding bread is buttered, has a mild bias toward the upper range of reasonable projections.  However, the media and politicians with a political agenda strongly biases their projections to the upper end, often arguing for scenarios that exceed the margin of error of the highest projections.

The more serious problem, however, is the use of the apocalyptic scenarios based upon the upper end and beyond projections.  Sadly, the research is generally only done on the deleterious effects of warmer temperatures.  For example, earlier research suggested that climate change would result in a decrease in the food producing capacity of the planet.  It has now been replaced by research that concludes that the amount of arable land will increase sufficiently to feed an additional billion people.  Clearly, average yield per hectare will increase due to longer average growing seasons, but, while it has been sporadically mentioned, no research results have been reported.  Despite this the news is still full of starvation scenarios based upon extended droughts and lower yields per hectare.

The Sahel is greening and global warming is consistently credited.  In fact, some research suggests that the Sahara desert may be gone completely within a century.  However, this rarely gets reported.  There was a flurry of reports when the 2009 research was published, but it is not mentioned anymore.  This is potentially an increase arable land equal to the U.S.

At the beginning of the Global Climate Change phenomenon it was regularly reported that rising temperatures would increase the frequency and severity of weather events.  However, over time, it was discovered that the number of severe tornadoes and hurricanes have actually been decreasing.  We are aware that the decrease in severe hurricanes is probably the result of increases in high altitude wind sheer.  The decrease in tornadoes may be due to reporting bias.  However, there are emerging explanations for a decrease in the severity of landbased storms, as well.  Again, this is rarely reported.


It is true that rising ocean levels will almost surely decrease the amount of shorelines and ocean front property is particularly desirable.  However, the warming planet will increase the total desirability of ocean front land, because warm beaches are preferred to cooler ones.  Total land suitable for human communities, by moving tropical, subtropical and temperate zones poleward, will also increase.

I suspect, but do not know, that global warming will not have significant impact on human activities and, after an initial period of transition, will be mildly positive from a human perspective.  I can't make a confident statement because the research needed to have a balanced position is not being funded.

While global warming will displace species, it is not yet clear exactly what the relationship will be between a warmer planet and biodiversity.  We know that, generally, stable ecosystems decrease diversity while perturbed ones often provide opportunities for speciation. 

Also, much of the climate induced threat to species is exaggerated.  For example, polar bears were put on the endangered species list in 2008, citing global warming.  However, on further review, it appears that polar bear populatons may actually be increasing.

It is also questionable that global carbon emissions will remain at present levels or increase.  Total carbon emissions in the U.S. after remaining relatively flat beginning in 2000 began falling in 2007 and will likely continue to do so.  There are currently 4,800 MW of installed solar plants.  However, that is about to explode with 27,000 MW of capacity either under construction or planned.  This will reduce U.S. carbon emissions by about 1/2 % alone and we are far from done.

This burgeoning use of solar energy to equalize the demand curve is simply not being reported.  As reporters say, 'It doesn't advance the narrative.'  This is a horrible journalistic practice but widespread.  By this statement,they mean that the story is that humans are polluting the environment with their rapacious appetite for energy and if they don't take drastic action there will be Hell to pay.  The rapid transition from hydrocarbons to solar energy for much of the peak shaving electricity requirements, for example, will just confuse the audience and detract from the true story.

Enhanced Geothermal Systems, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors can meet all of our energy needs at current prices.  Electric cars, getting their energy from the roads, will provide a realistic way to wean our transportation energy use off of oil.  

What this all means is that by 2050 carbon emissions likely will be falling precipitously.  This will result in CO2 atmospheric concentrations being less than even the IPCC AR5 lowest scenario.  It means that by 2100 atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures may be lower than today.  

This will likely happen even without any draconian global treaties which are useless if they exempt India and China, as the Kyoto treaty did.  As we can see, the U.S. emissions are decreasing and Chinese emissions have increased so dramatically that they now surpass the U.S. as the top CO2 emitting nation.  India is now fourth behind Russia.

In other words, the U.S., E.U. and other developed nations are no longer the problem.  Yet, none of this is making the press because, again, it 'doesn't advance the narrative.'

So, the evidence for dramatic anthropogenic global climate change and projected deleterious effects from it is not as strong as is presented in the press.  However, it is non-trivial, either. 

So, as Acting Editor of The Polymath I will institute a regular column that will present evidence for and against the risk from Anthropogenic Global Climate Change.  I will not allow rabid deniers or alarmists.  The idea that you can present hysterical or extreme views and the reader will average them and come up with a considered position is false.  It becomes my lies against your lies and the truth is nowhere to be found.  However, there is a range of perspectives that should be considered by the erudite person.  I will strive to have them presented them honestly and responsibly. 

Please subscribe to The Polymath if you have not already done so.  It will be sporadically published until we have grown sufficiently in circulation to support ourselves as a weekly news magazine.

Rational Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design has become anathema in most elites.  Many prominent atheists attempt to characterize it as nothing more than Creationism with a new name.  This article calls it 'Intelligent Design Creationism', implying that it is nothing more than a variety of Creationism.  These are sidesteps and should be ignored by thoughtful people.  Intelligent Design, irrespective of any religious assertions, states that the Universe or some aspect of it is the result of intelligent volition.  It does not require that the creator be called God or that 'He' is omniscient, omnipotent, all forgiving, has a plan for people's life, gifts the dead an eternal residence in paradise or that 'He' is imbued with any of the other trappings that religion has conferred upon 'Him'.  

The rational person should place in a hopper all explanations, that are not disproved, for a given phenomenon that is without definitive explanation..  That the explanation is 'scientific', judged to be 'rational' or does or does not meet any other preconceived notion of a 'reasoanble explanation' is not important.  If it explains the phenomenon and is not disproved, it should be included.  To do otherwise is actually irrational.  It is akin to insisting that reality conforms to one's expectations of it.

From these, one should be selected, based upon a judgement of strength of evidence, as a working hypothesis.  This situation ends when either one explanation comes to dominate the evidence or all but one explanation has been eliminated, the famous Sherlock Holmes method.  At that point it becomes doctrine in the current world view and is generally referred to as a fact.  Many 'scientists' would argue that this 'working hypothesis' approach is unscientific.  Yet, they do it all the time.  That the Universe came into being through mechanistic processes is an example of one of their working hypotheses.  There is actually no significant evidence to support the assertion.

Evolution as a mechanism by which speciation takes place is a fact, as defined above.  That it is the only mechanism that caused the simplest of self-replicating molecules to transform into the riot of morphological and biochemical variation we see today does not rise to that level.  In fact, it may not even properly be chosen as the current working hypothesis over the full spectrum of events.  That there was intelligent and volitional intervention in the process is a possible explanation that needs to be placed in the hopper.  

The above is far from a comprehensive treatment of Intelligent Design.  In fact, without precluding the possibility that there are more, there are at least three fundamental questions that relate to Intelligent Design. They are 1) How did the Universe come into existence with physical parameters that seem to be carefully designed to allow the emergence of complexity? 2) How did the first self-replicating molecules come into existence? and 3) How do adaptive traits that require mutations on multiple gene sites and that do not appear to have mechanisms for incremental evolutionary reward come into existence?

In each case Science cannot provide us with a definitive answer. In other words, the questions do not have answers that rise to the level of 'fact'.  Rather, we find ourselves with a basket full of speculations that are not disproven. One of these speculations is that it results from intelligent and volitional intervention. The least problematical explanation should be the working hypothesis of the rational person.

The Finely Tuned Universe

The argument is made that if the Universe did not have the force relationships, fundamental structure, etc. that it has, the resultant universe would not be conducive to the emergence of complex structures, such as life.  It has been a matter of great controversy with some scientists arguing quite clearly to a desired conclusion.  Of course, Theists are also inclined to do so.
  
I would assess that the basic natural laws appear to result from intelligent design and, at least at this time, it is a far more plausible explanation than any of the alternatives. The aversion to include Intelligent Design as an explanation for the start of the Universe has led to, what I consider to be, a scientific embarrassment. Physicists are slowly moving away from the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics toward the Many Worlds Interpretation, not because it is less problematical, its not, but because that by doing so they avoid the need to conclude that the Universe was intelligently designed.

This is, I believe, an effort to avoid the difficulties of the Strong Anthropic Principle.  To explain this, suppose that you bought a lottery ticket and won the Jackpot.  That someone was going to win it eventually, is a foregone conclusion.  However, that you won it is likely to appear very, very improbable to you.  We, collectively, are not at all surprised that someone won.  This is equivalent to the Weak Anthropic Principle and does not argue for an intelligently designed Universe. 

Now, however, suppose that you had the only lottery ticket and you won.  In this case, we all are likely to think that something is hinky.  The odds that you have won is no different - extremely remote.  However, that the only ticket that existed won is not a certainty but, rather, is as improbable as it is that the winner was you. 

The Finely Tuned Universe, when considered within the context of the Copenhagen Interpretation, leads to a situation similar to one where you win with the only lottery ticket sold.  The Many Worlds Interpretation, on the other hand, is akin to the situation where millions of lottery tickets are sold and a winner is actually likely.  The Weak Anthropic Principle basically says that we should not be surprised that we live in a Universe that is finely tuned because it is a requirement for us to be here thinking about it.

Remember that Physicists originally believed in a steady state universe.  Einstein inserted a 'cosmological constant in order that his equations predicted one.  They believe so, not because they had evidence, but because a 'big bang' Universe implied a moment of creation which smacked of intelligent design. It is amazing how, when the big bang was more or less proven, they blithely moved right past the idea of creation and without a shred of evidence assumed that a natural explanation for creation would be found.

They found one, of course, and it is non-trivial. They claim that 'nothing' is unstable and given enough time it will explosively turn into something. Surprisingly, the mathematics of quantum physics supports that conclusion, however, that interpretation creates other problems that is requiring Physicists to postulate that the 'universe' is actually just one bubble in a sea full of bubbles... Again getting them out of their Strong Anthropic mess.

There is a serious question under this interpretation as to whether the Big Bang was actually the beginning of the Universe.  In other words, does a sea of quantum foam actually equate to nothing or is it actually a Universe with a net zero mass?  This most surely begs the question of how long the quantum foam existed before it explosively turned into the plus sum mass Universe that we have now.  It actually gets quite peculiar because it is precisely the rules of Quantum Physics that says that the quantum foam can spontaneously and explosively turn into something whose net mass is not zero on a universal scale.  The likelihood of this happening is a probability function.  In other words, given enough time it should happen.

So, we find ourselves with the next logical question.  How did it come to be the case that the quantum foam existed and did with the necessary rules to cause the Big Bang to happen?  In other words, while the 'non-divine' creation of the Universe appears to be supported, it really just 'kicks the can down the road.'  Sooner or later, the issue of first cause will raise its ugly (to athiests) head.

In total, looking at cosmology and theoretical physics, the notion that the universe 'just happened' is not disprovable, but it is, well, a bit fishy. Intelligent design, while not provable, solves the problems efficiently and probably should be our working hypothesis solely on the basis of Occam's Razor.  It has seriously been suggested that our Universe was created by 'aliens'.  Scientists are, in essence, giving up and embracing Intelligent Design, but substitute 'alien' where Theists would put 'God.'  Of course, as aliens, we quite reasonably wonder from where they came.

The First Self-Replicating Molecule
 
How did life begin?  Or more precisely, how did the first self-replicating, mutation prone molecule come into existence?  Evolution cannot provide the answer, since it requires replication to operate and, without such a molecule, evolution has nothing to work upon.  Finding a mechanism for creating such a molecule has proven to be very, very difficult. 

The leading candidate right now may be the polymerization of amino acids in suspension and left to dry on clays or crystals.  Experimentally, we know that this leads to proteinoids and oligopeptides that, at least, give more reasonable building blocks than simple amino acids.  To explain, in 1996 David Lee reported a self-replicating molecule of 32 amino acids.  The specific sequence has the probability of forming randomly of 4^32 or 18,446,744,073,709,600,000:1 against.  In other words, randomly, it just isn't going to happen.  He created the self-replicating molecule, however, by combining two polypeptides of 17 and 15 amino acid chains.  This changes the probability to 4^17+4^15 or 18,253,611,008:1 against or a billion times more likely.

This, then, leads us to an imagined scenario where a primordial soup splashes through tidal action upon volcanically heated rocks, slowly turning the primordial soup from one constitute of amino acids to one containing protenoids and oligopeptides.  These compounds, in the quadrillions combine randomly in the sea until a self-replicating combination happens.  The rest is evolutionary history.
The currently strongest hypothesis suggests that life began by these self-replicating molecules, through evolution, tranforming into self-replicating RNA sequences and, from there, into self-replicating DNA.  There are conditions that quite likely existed in prebiotic Earth that can create 'cells' that could capture the correct combination of self-replicating molecules and thereby assist in creating a controlled environment within which the evolution to RNA and then DNA to exist.

This doesn't explain it all.  It has been suggested that in order to sustain itself over a sufficiently extended period for evolution to take hold, these original cells would need to have a photosynthetic metabolism.  Additionally, even if the absence of mitochondria, some method of metabolic processes would need to exist.  Once again, we are stretching our credulity to accept that all of this could happen at once within one protocell.

Given the above, Intelligent Design does have a reasonable alternative.  However, there are two caveats.  First, where did these precise qualities of molecules come from and how reasonable is it that that characteristics of Carbon, water, Phosphorus and other compounds are such that they are capable of creating such a complex and self-sustaining system?  It is a more fundamental and philosophical question that is reminiscent of the Finely Tuned Universe.  We might call it the 'Finely Tuned Organic Chemistry' question.  Second, the application of Occam's Razor does not really militate strongly for this abiogenisis hypothesis over the Intelligent Design hypothesis.  Until we have it 'nailed down', the abiogenesis hypothesis is seems more than a little like a 'just so' story.

Another hypothesis that has found favor in the scientific community is the panspermia hypothesis.  Quite simply it argues that the first self-replicating molecules blew in on the stellar wind.  Or, conversely, it is hypothesized that an extra-solar body collided with the Earth and then, somehow, survived the trauma of impact and began replicating.  Panspermia hypotheses have two serious problems.  First, there is, so far, no plausible delivery mechanism.  Second, it, too, kicks the can down the road.  Where did these self-replicating molecules come from and how did they form there?


Recently it was suggested, seriously, that 'aliens did it.' Two problems with that. First, what, precisely is the difference between God and an Alien Creator? Second, where did the aliens come from? Again, the Intelligent Design can is being kicked down the road, not eliminated.

In the final analysis, we do not, at present, know how life began, either here or elsewhere.  A naturalistic process is not unreasonable, though it suffers from the 'fine tuned organic chemistry' problem.  Intelligent Design is and should be in the hopper of possible solutions, though characterizing them as aliens or God is unsupported and, frankly, not helpful.  At present, Occam's Razor would appear to advise us to that some sort of intelligent and volitional agent interceded to reduce the improbability.

The Phyla and Class Problem

Defined as natural selection acting upon random mutations works well in explaining how species radiate within a genus and perhaps explains how genera emerge from within a family. However, it is ill-equipped to explain the Cambrian explosion of phyla and, most likely, the emergence of many Classes. 

I first became aware of this problem with evolution in a Physical Anthropology book that was questioning how evolution could have resulted in bipedalism, if its survival advantage was increasing height in order to see over the savannah grass without a concomitant increase in size.  In essence, there didn't seem to be any benefit to partial bipedalism, since it would be insufficient to provide the benefit of seeing over the grass.  While there are several things wrong with this argument, it got me thinking about the problem of multiple mutations being required to provide the first increment of survival benefit.

I have had the most difficulty with birds and their modifications for the sake of flight.  In order to accomplish the feat, bird must, 1) modify their presumed scales into feathers 2) redesign their bones to make them much lighter without sacrificing too much in strength, 3) reconfigure their front legs in such a way to allow them, with the feathers, to create a wind foil in the form of wings.  Any one of these modifications does not seem to convey any survival benefit on their own.  Only in combination do they allow for flight and its clear survival benefits, both as a predator and as a prey.

The problem is that flight is extraordinarily difficult for animals as big as birds.  In other words, flight seems to require close to complete evolution to take place simultaneously in three separate genetic polymorphisms before any natural selection can act upon the genome.  In fact, partial modifications  would appear to be anti-survival.  If there is a naturalistic explanation, it would appear that we would need to find a different evolutionary mechanism.


Might an intelligent and volitional agent have interceded to make these large jumps in evolution? It certainly is less problematical than any existing theory. Isaac Asimov once suggested that perhaps these large morphological changes are somehow implicit in the chemistry of DNA. Even if we were to accept that, again, we are just kicking the intelligent design can down the road.   How likely is it that the chemistry of DNA would just happen to be such as to cause such dramatic and adaptive modifications to take place naturally.  It suggests that the very structure of chemistry has been purposefully contrived so as to accommodate the needs of life.


The Lesson from Cellular Automata


In the 1940's Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann were the first to work with cellular automata.  The are, essentially, a simple set of rules applied to a grid where the condition (visually black and white is the most common) of every square in the grid at t+1 is determined by the condition of its neighbors at t. Typically, these systems will have four rules, one for birth, one for death and one describing the initial state of the system.


In the 1970's they were popularized by John Horton Conway as 'The Game of Life'.  For the past twenty years, Steven Wolfram has developed them and has reached a number of controversial conclusions. One of his research assistants, Matthew Cook, demonstrated that some sets of rules can be Turing Complete.  The quick explanation is that the set of rules can be used to describe any desired state.

What this means is that some, far from all, sets of simple rules can lead to evolution, complexity and stability that is far from intuitively inherent in the rules.  This is significant to Intelligent Design because it can be used to support Asimov's conjecture that the rules that govern DNA may have implicit in them complexities that are not clearly apparent.  For example, some precursor organism suddenly and simultaneously developing wings, light bones and feathers may not be a random event.  It may be implicit in the DNA itself.

Most dilettantes imagine that there is a long string of amino acids on the DNA molecule where the probability of a base pair substitution is about the same over the full length of the strand.  This is not the case.  While determining mutational rates at a particular gene site is very difficult, we have learned enough to know that, as an example, mutations in eye color are different than, say, the mutation rate for hair color.  Also, the mutation rate for blue to brown, blue to green, brown to green, brown to blue, green to blue and green to brown are probably all different.

What this means is that between celluar automata and differential mutational rates, populations exposed to highly mutagenic environments may with a reasonable probability create organisms with a patterned suite of mutations.  However, there is still something more than a little hinky about the notion that of all the possible mutational combinations, ones such as wings/light bones/feathers, should emerge.  While providing a mechanism for phyla sized morphological differences to emerge, it would seem to suggest that the rules underlying mutation rates has been intelligently manipulated.

However, anyone who experiences the complex and apparently designed systems that can emerge in cellular automata is likely to be inclined to accept that such a complex system of mutations, as suggested by Asimov, may be inherent in the chemistry of DNA.  

So, as should be the case in unsettled scientific questions, there are reasons to favor either a naturalistic universe or a intelligently designed one.  However, on balance, intelligent design is substantially less complex that the purely naturalistic universe.  While carbon based complexity may be inherent in the laws of the universe, the structure of those laws stretches one's credulity as a natural phenomenon.
 

Consequently, as a working hypothesis, I am a Deist.  In other words, I operate on the assumption that the Universe is the result of intelligent volition, but I do not assume that the creator(s) have any particular interest in me or humanity in general.  I do not even assume that the creator(s) even still exists.  It is often stated that the assertion of Intelligent Design is not scientific because it is not amenable to verification.  Actually, that is a bit of a red herring.  That the Universe is a product of natural processes is also not amenable to verification.  Yet it is a foundational assertion of science.

Actually, it is not necessarily the case for either intelligent design or naturalism that they are not subject to verification.  We are not likely to find direct experimental evidence for either.  However, it is not the only route to truth.  Proof through reductio ad absurdum is an acceptable scientific approach.  Both positions could be amenable to it.  The more we know about the Universe the more likely that a disproof of one will surface.  Since either the Universe was volitionally created or it wasn't, the disproof of one serves as a proof of the other. 

It is ill-advised for advocates of Intelligent Design to militate for its teaching in schools, although something like the above could fall legitimately within the purview of a Philosophy of Science section.  Absent that, teaching evolution without mention to the problems it has as a universal explainer of life or teaching Physics without introducing the student to the problem of creation, is irresponsible.  The Mediocracy generally believes in naturalism, generally and evolution, specifically, as such and that is why it is difficult to change the curriculum. 

Here is a logical peculiarity in our science curriculum.  If a teacher were to mention all the possible explanations for the emergence of life and included in that, 'aliens did it', the teacher would be in no trouble.  However, 'aliens' are just one of several possible intelligent designers.  Logically, they fall within that proscribed category of explanation. What we have here is not scientific principles.  What we have is an animus of the educational system toward religion and by extension any explanation that would not categorically preclude a God.

Anyway, I titled this essay, 'Rational Intelligent Design' and I believe that I have successfully defended my position that Intelligent Design is the most rational working hypothesis in answer to several open scientific questions.  There is a very strong tendency within the Liberal Culture to characterize adherents of Intelligent Design as universally ignorant and stupid.  I am profoundly not either and I hope that disproves that offensive little piece of ad hominem.

An Elaboration on the Monty Hall Problem

Many, many years ago I breezed into a Mensa meeting and saw then Chancellor of the Triple Nine Society, Cyd Bergdorf, and Ron Hoeflin working busily on some kind of problem.  I knew Cyd personally, but I knew Ron only by reputation.  Being the gadfly that I was, I walked over, sat down and asked what they were working on.  It was the now famous 'Monty Hall Problem.'  They explained it to me.  It goes like this:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

I immediately said, 'You switch, of course.  And, by the way, the qualification that the host knows what is behind the door is unnecessary.  I'm going to go get a drink.'  This remark that the qualification is not needed has led to a never ending dispute with other high IQ people, most recently Garth Zietsman and Rick Rosner.  So, I am going to put the argument here where it may be able to garner a larger audience.

To make it very clear, I am stating the the reservation is unnecessary precisely in the context of the problem as stated.  Thee are a whole lot of Bayesian assumptions that, I argue, do not apply because there is nothing in the problem that states that it should be taken as one is a series of similar games.

First, I will reproduce verbatim what I found to be the most clearly stated positions of Rick Rosner and Garth Zeitsman.  If you want to read the full dialogue, it is available here. 

Rick Rosner
Three doors, you pick one, then Monty randomly opens one. 1/3 chance the game is wrecked, because Monty prematurely revealed a car - he's never supposed to reveal the car until you make your final choice of door. 2/3 chance the game isn't wrecked. Two equal possibilities among the 2/3 of games that aren't wrecked - car is behind your first choice, or car is behind the door Monty didn't open. Random door-opening seems to either wreck games or leave an equal probability among the remaining unopened doors.

Garth Zeitsman
There is an urn with one blue and two green balls. A selects a ball followed by B (randomly) who notes his ball is green. If A had selected a blue ball B would have had two ways to select a green ball. If A had selected a green ball B would have had one way in which to select a green ball. However A had two ways in which to select a green and one way to select a blue ball. So the chance of A
having selected a blue given that B's was green is 1*2/(1*2 + 2*1) = 1/2.

When B can look into the urn and deliberately pick out a green then his probability of selecting green is always 1 and the probability of A selecting blue given that B has green is simply the initial probability of his selecting blue.

Michael Ferguson
Now both Rick and Garth are correct if we assume that the game described is one element in a string of games where n>>1.  However, that is not stated in the problem.  We have no reason to assume that this game has ever been played before or ever will be played again.  If that was the problem, they would be correct.  We could expect to improve our odds from one third to two thirds if Monty knows what is behind the doors and chooses to always open a door with a goat behind it.  We would expect that our odds would be the same by either staying or switching if Monty doesn't know what is behind the doors.  However, that is not the problem as stated.

When we flip a coin, the natural odds of a fair toss coming up heads is 1/2.  If we choose one door out of three the natural odds of choosing a car is 1/3.  One might ask how this natural odds of 1/3 could somehow change to 1/2.  The answer is that it does not.  Something very different is the cause.

Suppose we play 12 games.  We would expect that we will choose a door car 4 times.  That gives us the 4/12=1/3 natural odds.  If Monty always opens a goat door we didn't choose, we will have 8 unopened car doors and the odds if we switch is 8/12 or 2/3.  However, if Monty doesn't know, we will have 4 games where we chose a car door, 4 games where the unchosen door has a car and we will have four games where Monty, as Rick puts it, wrecks the game.  So, now, switch or not, we should expect to win 4 cars.

So the odds to not change from the natural 1/3 to 1/2 actually.  Rather, we have created a subset that doesn't include four unopened car doors.  This artificially decreases the probability that the unchosen door has a car.  In other words, and this is absolutely the crux of the issue, the lowering of the odds does not reside in the individual games but rather is a characteristic of the subset that is created.  The changing odds is directly a result of opening car doors.

In other words, by resorting to Bayesian reasoning, Garth and Rick are calling into existence games where car doors are opened when, in fact, there is no indication in the language of the problem that there ever will be played any other games, with or without Monty knowing what is behind the door.  In the only case of the game that we know to exist, Monty revealed a goat.

This game naturally belongs to the set of games string of n length in which no car doors are opened.  By naturally, I mean that there is no way to take this game out of that set.  If I could state that this game belongs to a set of n games in which Monty Hall knows what is behind the doors.  I could take it out of that set by stating that Monty Hall doesn't know what is behind the doors.  But it irrevocably belongs to this set.

I then state that a common factor of all game strings, regardless of the value of n, is that we expect that there are twice as many cars behind the unchosen door than there are between the chosen door.  To illustrate the significance I use the following thought problem.

Suppose we play twelve simultaneous games. We choose one door in each of twelve sets of three doors. Our expectation is that we will choose a car four times and will choose a goat the other eight times. Then Monty opens one door in each set of three doors and reveals a goat. Now, we have chosen a car door four times and the twelve unchosen doors contain the other eight cars. Clearly, we should switch doors when asked.

Now after all this transpires, Monty tells us that he didn't know what was behind all the doors. We are surprised because the odds against him choosing only goats in twelve straight games is (2/3)^12 or approximately 130:1. Yet, it does not change the proper strategy; there are still only four cars behind the chosen doors and eight behind the unchosen doors.

Now suppose that we play three simultaneous games. The logic is the same. Our chosen door has only one car and the unchosen door has two. We should switch. We are not so surprised when Monty tells us that he didn't know what was behind the doors because the odds against have fallen to (2/3)^3 or just a little over 3:1. In fact, for n games in which no car doors are opened, no matter the value of n, switching doubles our chances.

This happens because there is nothing magical about Monty knowing or not. The advantage falls from 2:1 to 1:1 by the process of games with opened car doors being eliminated from the pool. In other words, the odds do not change one iota UNTIL a car door is opened. When we are presented one game in which a goat was revealed and n=1, there are no car door openings that can change the odds of having chosen a car door from 1/3 to 1/2. Consequently, in one game in which a goat was revealed, my initial probability of 1/3 of having chosen a car door remains. The unchosen door still contains 2/3 of the probability.

For some reason, even people at the highest IQ level can have difficulty in grasping this.   I want to make this clear that I am not arguing against Bayesian probability.  I am only arguing that it is applicable only in those cases where multiple 'runs' of the game are taking place.