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Garden Logic – understanding correlation and causation in our gardens and landscapes

August 21, 2021

Garden Logic – understanding correlation and causation in our gardens and landscapes

This home landscape is managed using science-based methods; the only routine additions are water and arborist chip mulches.

Upon reading this post’s title, you may be inclined to stop right there. (That’s why I have an eye-catching photo to lure you in.) While logic may seem irrelevant to your enjoyment of gardening, I can guarantee that reading this blog post will challenge many seemingly logical assumptions you’ve heard or read about. Recognizing unsubstantiated assumptions and avoiding their pitfalls means you can make wise choices about how you care for your gardens and landscapes.

You can find this and thousands of other silly correlations at www.tylervigen.com

A few definitions are needed before we get started:

Correlation refers to variables whose changes mirror one another. For instance, the addition of nitrogen fertilizer to container plants is correlated to plant growth: as nitrogen levels increase so does plant growth. You can also have inverse correlation, where the variables move in opposite directions. An example is water availability in soil and planting density: the more plants you have in a specified area, the less water is in the soil.

Plant growth is correlated with increased nitrogen and other nutrients (from Xu et al. 2020)

Causation takes correlation one step further: it establishes that one of those variables is causing the change in the other. Using the same examples, we know through published evidence that the increase in nitrogen is causing the increase in plant growth, and the increase in planting density is causing the decrease in soil water because of competing roots. These relationships are obvious to us, but what’s important is that these causative effects have been established through scientific experiments.

Inverse relationship between planting density and soil water content (from Shao et al. 2018)          

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Language: The Indispensable Fundamental Actuator of False Orthodoxy

November 15, 2018

Language: The Indispensable Fundamental Actuator of False Orthodoxy

In Ayn Rand’s penultimate magnum opus, “The Fountainhead”, there was a minor antagonist by the name of Ellsworth Toohey whose raison d’etre was to undermine Rand’s ideal man and protagonist, Howard Roark.

Although Toohey considered his parasitical power as having a major stifling effect on capitalistic society, in reality, all his cumulative efforts ended up as a mere minor footnote in the long march of Man; as evidenced in the story’s denouement and ensuing towering city skylines.

Of course, much of Rand’s life consisted of excoriating the parasitical aspect of the Collectivists and their government, as both defined by dependency; in stark contrast to the rugged self-reliance of the men who moved the world.

In The Fountainhead, a discussion took place whereby Toohey said he wanted to make the “ideological soil” infertile to the point where young heads would explode prior to expressing any individuality (or similar to that).  Then, later, near the end, Toohey asked Roark what Roark thought of him, and the egoistic, self-reliant architect replied: “But I don’t think of you.”

In reality, is it possible today to ignore the Collective? Or, has it propagated sufficiently to where it can be ignored no longer?

Acceptance of reality requires honesty.  And the author Ayn Rand identified reason as the means for Man’s thriving existence on this blue marble. Therefore, if we are to examine reality with honesty, then we must by all means factor logic and time as follows:

If (this), then (that)

Stated another way, either the decisions we make now will improve our reality in the days ahead –  or, we will be worse off than we are at present.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The 10 Habits of Logical People

January 22, 2018

The 10 Habits of Logical People

The authentically logical person keeps his logic rooted in truth and never lets it devolve into mere verbal trickery.

Becoming a logical person is not just a matter of memorizing and applying formulas, or learning how to tell the difference between a valid and an invalid syllogism. Rather, it involves cultivating intellectual habits and skills that, though they may seem simple and obvious, are only achieved after years of struggle and education.

In his book Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking, venerable philosophy professor D.Q. McInerny lays out the following 10 habits that people must cultivate if they are to think clearly and effectively:

1) They’re Attentive.

“Many mistakes in reasoning are explained by the fact that we are not paying sufficient attention to the situation in which we find ourselves,” writes McInerny. The logical person has thus trained himself to always pay attention to the details—even in situations that are familiar—lest he make a careless judgment.

2) They Get the Facts Straight.

“If a given fact is an actually existing thing to which we have access, then the surest way to establish its factualness is to put ourselves in its presence. We then have direct evidence of it. If we cannot establish factualness by direct evidence, we must rigorously test the authenticity and reliability of whatever indirect evidence we appeal to so that, on the basis of that evidence, we can confidently establish the factualness of the thing.”

3) They Ensure That Their Ideas Are Clear.

Our ideas are the means by which our minds understand the objective world. Clear ideas faithfully reflect that world, whereas unclear ideas give us a distorted view of the world. The logical person is constantly testing his ideas to make sure that they accurately depict their objects.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Three Delusions: Paper Wealth, a Booming Economy, and Bitcoin

December 27, 2017

Three Delusions: Paper Wealth, a Booming Economy, and Bitcoin

Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive.”

– Charles Mackay
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Delusions are often viewed as reflecting some deficiency in reasoning ability. The risk of thinking about delusions in this way is that it encourages the belief that logical, intelligent people are incapable of delusion. An examination of the history of financial markets suggests a different view. Specifically, faced with unusual or extraordinary price advances, there is a natural tendency (particularly in the presence of crowds, feedback loops, and potential rewards) to look for explanations. The problem isn’t that logic or reason has failed, but that the inputs have been distorted, and in the attempt to justify the advance amid the speculative excitement, careful data-gathering is replaced by a tendency to confuse temporary factors for fundamental underpinnings.

While true psychological delusions are different from financial ones, a similar principle is suggested by psychological research. Delusions are best understood not as deficiencies in logic, but rather as explanations that have been logically reached on the basis of distorted inputs. For example, individuals with delusions appear vulnerable to differences in perception that may involve more vivid, intense, or emotionally-charged sensory input. While those differences might be driven by neurological factors, the person experiencing these unusual perceptions looks to develop an explanation. Maher emphasized that despite the skewed input, the delusions themselves are derived by completely normal reasoning processes. Similarly, Garety & Freeman found that delusions appear to reflect not a defect in reasoning itself, but a defect “which is best described as a data-gathering bias, a tendency for people with delusions to gather less evidence” so they tend to jump to conclusions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Faulty Logic Fuels Fossil Fools

March 9, 2017

Faulty Logic Fuels Fossil Fools

Suncor tar sands mine in Canada

Apparently, fossil fuel companies protect watersheds and rivers by removing oil. That’s according to comments on the David Suzuki Foundation Facebook page and elsewhere, including this: “The amount of contamination occuring [sic] from extraction is far less than if we just left the oil there to continue polluting the waterways.”

The “logic” of climate change deniers and anti-environmentalists is often baffling. Although the person who posted that comment doesn’t appear to claim professional background or knowledge, Canadian anti-environmentalist Patrick Moore — who capitalizes on his science degree and long-ago association with Greenpeace to shill for polluting industries — told the Vancouver Sun in 2011 that oil companies are “leaving the soil cleaner than they found it because they’re removing the oil from it.”

Those who coat their “alternative facts” with a veneer of “expertise” often employ twisted logic. Take a petition letter urging U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Letter author Richard Lindzen, a climate skeptic whose work has often been debunked, claims “more than 300 eminent scientists and other qualified individuals from around the world” signed the petition. What kind of “eminent scientists” would sign something claiming carbon dioxide “is not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on Earth” and that “warming from increased atmospheric CO2 will be benign”?

The idea that CO2 is little more than plant food is common in denier circles, floated recently by the U.S.Heartland Institute, its affiliated industry promoters like Canadians Patrick Moore and Tom Harris, and others. In a 2014 book, two signatories to the Trump letter, retired Environment Canada scientist Madhav Khandekar and retired Australian geology professor Cliff Ollier, along with database marketing consultant Arthur Middleton Hughes, wrote the world should burn more coal “to produce electricity and increase CO2in the atmosphere.” They also argue for more use of the pesticide DDT.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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