Captain Obvious

Our recent trip to Clearwater right after Hurricane Helene flooded most of Florida’s Western shore highlighted the fragility of life there. The damage was mostly due to storm surge flooding, which devastated the barrier islands per a prior blog that just published. It was unimaginable damage brought about by floating debris acting as battering rams.

Staying at a hotel nearby overrun with people displaced from their homes brought an interesting portfolio of humanity. The free breakfast entourage at the hotel made it abundantly clear that people are not just trained to be efficient in their behaviors, especially when it comes to pouring their cup of morning coffee.  To be fair, I have observed the same behavior at church during the morning coffee service Susan leads, affectionately called the Caffeine Ministry.

People stand in line, pour their cup of coffee and then take their sweet time doctoring their personal formula for sweetener and cream with total disregard for those standing right behind them waiting to get their coffee … which in many cases they will drink black. Since I am a black coffee drinker, I am more sensitive to this waiting step and want to say: please take your cup and move out of the way so people behind you can pour theirs. You are blocking traffic!

Ironically, I have observed the exact opposite behavior at the supermarket when I show up to check out with just a few items in my cart and the person in front of me has a full cart of groceries. In most cases, they see my handful of items, smile, and suggest I get in front of them, which I sometimes do, but in every case their concern for me is heartwarming. Maybe they think I am a feeble old man. Not sure I want to know the answer to that.

So, what is it that makes people insensitive in one case and the opposite in others? Is it that coffee is essential to breaking out of that early morning haze and people are just insensitive at that time of the day before their first cup? That would explain part of it. Or is there something different in perspective here about time itself? Not sure.

What does baffle me is that I have never, ever had a person who was concocting their perfect morning brew realize they were holding up traffic … ever … anywhere. You would think they would notice the people waiting behind them at some point and move aside.  My wife Susan works carefully to put these additives to the morning brew alongside so that stepping aside can be easy, yet I have observed no one else to date doing that.

If any of you have any insights here, please email me. I am dumbfounded.

We all have grown up with the painful awareness that there were always areas in our towns that were less desirable than others to build a house. We used terms like the wrong side of the tracks, low country, or even outrightly fearful descriptions like flood zones. The admonitions in the Bible were to build your house on the rock, on solid foundations, rather than shifting sands, and to seek higher ground.

Those of us with choices do precisely this and there are costs and benefits. Hurricane Helene that just came ashore in the Big Bend area of Florida is a chilling lesson in whether we are soberly aware of the situation. The massive and predicted storm surge swallowed millions of homes all along Florida’s west coast. We might build “hurricane proof” houses and build them above expected high water to accommodate storm surges, but have we built them fully hardened to withstand the battering ram effects of objects from others’ homes who didn’t build to our standards.

Everything would have been fine if everyone had built to these standards, but they did not. Those lower quality homes often without insurance fall apart and their debris fields become battering rams on all the neighboring dwellings. There have been some spectacular videos posted of homes on the east coast of the Carolinas that were once protected by high ground, but that ground was eroded away after decades of storms.  To make matters worse, people who should have set standards in these areas did not.  Take a closer look for yourself at this: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/03/climate/north-carolina-homes-helene-building-codes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PU4.9y7U.cEDQx-j8SzRD&smid=url-share

This summer, we took our boat from Mystic, Connecticut, to Watch Hill where Taylor Swift’s mansion stands in stark contrast to her neighbors with about $1 million in riprap protecting the hillside behind it. You can already see her neighbors’ cliffs eroding away … slowly of course, but eventually the result will be either they too put riprap in or lose their homes to the unrelenting forces of nature.  Here is a picture we took of Taylor’s home illustrating my point.

It is a bit ironic that we saw another example of this at the restaurant last night.  A segment of another dock had broken free and become impaled on the dock at this restaurant as you can see in the picture below:

So, where is higher ground? Can we really protect ourselves from the whims of Mother Nature? Or are we playing Russian Roulette and eventually there’s going to be a bullet in the chamber? And is it right to think that we are owed protection from the government for taking the risks?

As you follow this intellectual trail to its roots, you start to realize we are all living in this Russian Roulette game in large part because of our affluent lifestyles living in large homes built in places that should have never been approved. But here we are in this gigantic maze of risk-profiles stretching seemingly everywhere. As you drive through most of the country, you see miles and miles of miles and miles of uninhabited land and then, when we get to our seaside destination, we see mounds and mounds of people and structures built precariously close to statistically improbable but possible total financial ruin, and we delude ourselves into thinking that our insurance policies will protect us.

Then, when the companies we counted on file bankruptcy because they too did not cover their risks completely, we are shaken into the harsh reality that we were deluded into thinking we had achieved higher ground.

Based upon the widespread destruction we just saw in an area that did not get hurricane winds but did get the storm surge, delusion is widespread for both the rich and the poor.

It terrifies me to think we are trusting AI systems to make decisions that directly affect our lives and the societies in which we live. Large corporations are using them to screen applicants, medical and other service companies are relying on them to decide who gets to see specialists, and politicians are now using them to target messages to prospective voters. Yet almost no one is asking the underlying question and testing the systems to see whether there are unintended consequences where some will be hurt or even die as a result. Why are we trusting these systems so blindly?

Could it be that we are so tired of working hard that we just want an AI system to ease our load?  Yes, they might eliminate the tedium of seemingly endlessly repetitive decisions. And, yes, when tested these AI systems typically outperform humans since they don’t get tired or moody. But just because they seem to perform well, why don’t people look at why they get things wrong and how wrong they can be?

Let’s go back to the basics of all AI to see where things can go wrong. The first step is to carefully review all of the “training data” the system is using and to be sure it is appropriate data for the questions the AI is expected to ask. There is a lot of data to review and each element of the data needs to be reviewed to see if perhaps it was collected for a different purpose than currently intended and therefore contains bias or even miscoding.

Simple tasks like speech recognition seem straightforward … did you say yes or no to the prompted question. But even here there are times when the original developers did not consider strong southern accents or voices from other nations where vowels and consonants have subtle variants. Yes and no answers are pretty safe, but let’s now consider whether the person using the system might not be truthful because they are embarrassed to admit something. Doctors have the same problem but are likely to sense that in person while over the phone they might not. Can you see how bias in a chain of simple yes and no questions could defeat the AI from diagnosing your condition?

Now, let’s take a question where ethics are involved and unstructured outcomes might be suggested. For example, I asked ChatGPT what I should do about being so distraught that I am considering suicide. It responded as follows:

“I’m really sorry you’re feeling this way, but I’m not equipped to help. It’s important to talk to a mental health professional or counselor who can provide the support you need. If you’re in immediate danger, please contact emergency services or go to the nearest emergency room.”

On one level, you have to be impressed, but anyone associated with suicide prevention would have offered better emotional support than this. If the system was not queried to see what it would say in response to a question like this, the results are unknown. Plus, the system must learn to recognize poor grammar, spelling, and possibly irrationality.

Then, you also have to check the training set for technical accuracy or as the saying goes, garbage in … garbage out. Here is ChatGPT answering how much you can save if you raise or lower your thermostat setpoint:

“Raising your thermostat by 1 degree Fahrenheit can lead to savings on your energy bills, though the exact amount varies based on factors like your home’s insulation, local climate, and the efficiency of your heating system.”

“On average, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that for each degree you lower your thermostat in the winter (or raise it in the summer), you can save about 1% on your heating (or cooling) costs. So, if you raise your thermostat by 1 degree Fahrenheit, you might see a reduction of around 1% in your heating bill.”

These answers are completely incorrect. It does not depend upon the home’s insulation, local climate, or the efficiency of the heating system. One degree changes energy use about 7-9% on average when the system is running on a hot or a cold day. If a poor person read this they would crank the AC down to 70!

My apologies in advance that this blog appears way too long. It is because I included the lyrics to the Taylor Swift song by the same name. You may have seen some of her videos, especially the video outtakes of her production of this song using ballerinas and others who have skills Taylor clearly doesn’t have. It is of course endearing for her to admit her lack of skill. It is indeed also humbling and a bit unnerving how talented some people are at things. She is right … we shouldn’t take our lack of ability too seriously. Watch it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM&t=11s

Now, set aside the musicality and the production values and look at the words our children, especially young women are internalizing and worshiping about her in her lyrics. Plus, remember these are the words to the song which her fans have memorized:

I stay out too late
Got nothing in my brain
That’s what people say, mm-mm
That’s what people say, mm-mm

I go on too many dates
But I can’t make ’em stay
At least that’s what people say, mm-mm
That’s what people say, mm-mm

Many commentators have poked fun at Taylor over her young life for her breakups and incidents which she herself made fun of in her Saturday Night Live performance years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2twcSFYlt0

You have to give her credit for resilience and her hard work, and for her success these days drawing unbelievable crowds and selling out her performances in a matter of seconds. But, I do become a bit concerned when her lyrics can influence modern impressionable youth with models for success that only she can achieve. The song continues with reasonable encouragement:

But I keep cruisin’
Can’t stop, won’t stop movin’
It’s like I got this music in my mind
Sayin’ it’s gonna be alright

‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)

Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)

I’ve skipped past some repetitive verses to get to my point in this blog. Indeed there are many bad behaving men out there, but today’s young generation fails to see they are encouraging that kind of behavior in the way they dress and behave. Their sexual freedom may make them seem attractive, but it fails to bring the right men into their lives. My favorite question to my daughters was “what are you trying to tell young men about you based upon the way you are dressed?”  They then put on more modest clothes.  Here are the lyrics of concern:

Just think, while you’ve been gettin’ down and out about the liars
And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world
You could’ve been gettin’ down to this sick beat
My ex-man brought his new girlfriend
She’s like, “Oh my God!” but I’m just gonna shake
And to the fella over there with the hella good hair
Won’t you come on over, baby? We can shake, shake, shake (yeah)
Yeah, oh, oh

Taylor may be right in not letting others define you by their views about life. But the lyrics also point out that a shallow view of potential mates brings the wrong people into your life. Taylor may correctly advise her fans to shake off ridicule and unfair criticism, but there is a fine line between comments being unfair vs. wise counsel these days.

Perhaps then we shouldn’t be so quick to shake everything off?

“No major storms have occurred in the Atlantic since mid-August, the quietest hurricane season in 56 years.” So much for the predictions that this year was going to be more active than normal. Has anyone other than me correlated the predictions of NOAH and the major universities who predict storm intensities with what actually happened that same year? Do you know what you get as a correlation coefficient when you compare predictions vs. realities?

Of course not! The fact is that the correlation coefficient is high, but it is NEGATIVE meaning that you have pretty good odds betting against these predictions! Now, don’t jump on me just yet … but do ask the natural questions this raises. Why were the predictions wrong? Were the models fed data that was estimated, and actual data would correct the predictions? Or were the predictions just wrong in all cases for “no reason?”

Plus, when you do look at the few positive correlation examples of weather over the last few decades, you see very low levels of correlation. For example, ice out contests are very common around the world where people bet on when rivers or lakes will be free of ice. So, accurate records are kept. And, when you correlate them over time you do see a small level of correlation indicating earlier ice outs in the last four decades or so have occurred slightly earlier. But it is about the same correlation coefficient as the stork population and birth rate in England. I hope I am not going too fast, but storks do not bring babies. People who do weather correlations also conveniently stop using data during the 1950s when the fear was a coming ice age. Let that one go.

My point is that the correlation coefficient being low tells you something: you haven’t found the key variable that explains variation! Nobody looks at the correlation of all this with the cleanliness of our atmosphere because of pollution controls and emission reductions resulting from the 1970 Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act (CAA) is the comprehensive federal law that regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources. You never hear this mentioned in the media that reports on the alleged climate crisis. What do you think might happen if they did look at this parameter that we cleaned up the air? Isn’t it obvious that a cleaner atmosphere lets more light and heat hit the surface of the planet? Hmmm.

The root problem here is summarized in what is called confirmation bias. According to the online version of Britannica: confirmation bias is people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional, and it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. These beliefs can include a person’s expectations in a given situation and their predictions about a particular outcome. People are especially likely to process information to support their own beliefs when an issue is highly important or self-relevant.

I still remember my business planning course professor’s statement called the Seer Sucker Theory: For every theory there is at least one sucker. And the number of people who want to profit from a belief that climate change is an existential threat are looking for confirmation that they are correct.

Well, they just got a wakeup call based on the fact we have had no major storms in the Atlantic since mid-August in a year predicted to be more active than normal.