I’m still trying to figure out if Elon Musk is a mad genius or a supervillain. Perhaps that’s a false dichotomy. Seriously, I do like his approach – he has billions of dollars laying around, so he decides that we need some specific technology in order to build the future, and he builds a company dedicated to developing that technology. Wherever he sees holes, he tries to fill them.

SpaceX has been, in my opinion, his most dramatic success. He has pioneered the technology of reusable rockets, and anyone who has seen one of his falcon rockets landing vertically has to be impressed. Tesla cars are impressive as well, but from what I understand he still has to make the company profitable. I’m still skeptical about the hyperloop, but at least he’s trying. It all depends on how cheap he can make tunneling, and the real innovation may be in his Boring company.

Not all of his companies involve travel. He also wants to change humans, in order to ultimately keep up with the AI he thinks we will inevitably create. In 2017 he tweeted, “If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea,” along with a picture declaring, “In the end, the machines will win.” The existential threat of AI is a separate question.

Now for most people, if you are worried about AI you talk about it with your friends and colleagues. Perhaps you have a blog where you can share your concerns with the world. But if you are Elon Musk you can start a 100 million dollar company designed to thwart the perceived threat. So that’s what he did.

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Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) companies are inherently, in my opinion, exploitative. The MLM model is that the sales force is hierarchical – you are hired by someone who takes a cut of what you earn. You, in turn, can make money by recruiting your own sellers, who each pay you a cut of what they earn, and what everyone below them earns. In other words – it’s a pyramid scheme.

A raw pyramid scheme is just a transfer of money – I give you $10, and recruit five people to give me $10, and so on. Everyone makes money, except for those who get stuck at the bottom of the pyramid. Pyramid schemes are generally illegal because only the people at the top really make money. The math of the situation guarantees that even in a few generations the pyramid will burn itself out. (1-5-25-125-625-3,125-15,625-78,125-390,625-1,953,125-9,765,625-48,828,125-244,140,625) In 13 levels you get close to the entire population of the US, in 2 more, close to the population of the Earth.

An MLM is basically a pyramid scheme in which a product is used as cover for the transfer of money. Sellers need to buy product from the company, which they may use themselves but are also meant to sell. Some MLMs require a minimum purchase each month, whether you sell it or not. In this way also the salespeople are also customers. It amazes me that this is at all legal. Most states and the federal government regulate MLMs rather than outlaw them completely For example, sellers need to demonstrate that they make most of their income from actually selling products, not just getting paid by those under them. Certain practices, such as requiring a minimum product purchase, can be outlawed as well.

The numbers tell the story. An analysis by the FTC found that 100% of the 350 MLMs they looked at were top heavy, meaning that the vast majority of the profit went to the very top promoters, while everyone else lost money. A staggering 99% of those involved lost money. In fact, it’s worse than a no-product straight pyramid scheme, in which 90% of participants lose money. There, of course, will be exceptions – that seller who is 2-3 standard deviations from the mean, who was in the perfect situation, or just has exceptional business and marketing skills. They make money, and then they become the poster child for that MLM. If they can do it, you can do it.

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A paper is making the rounds on climate denial sites that claims to debunk human-caused climate change in a single stroke. Predictably, the paper does nothing of the sort, but it does raise a complex issue regarding climate change that is worth reviewing. But first let’s get to the paper itself.

The paper, by J. Kauppinen and P. Malmi, is a pre-publication paper on the Arxiv. This means it is not peer-reviewed. Their central claim, from the abstract:

In this paper we will prove that GCM-models used in IPCC report AR5 fail to calculate the influences of the low cloud cover changes on the global temperature.

Right in the first sentence is a huge red flag – claiming to be able to “prove” that the IPCC report is false. That’s a bold claim, and suggests a less than rigorous intellectual approach. They also claim to rebuke a rather robust conclusion built on many lines of evidence with a single line of evidence – the single stroke approach. This is also a huge red flag.

The claim is built around one major line of reasoning, that if you compare low cloud cover with changes in global temperatures, you see a strong correlation. In fact, the authors argue, you can explain most of global warming as resulting from a decrease in low cloud cover, leaving almost nothing left for anthropogenic forcing. There is a great deal wrong with this claim. The site ClimateFeedback has helpfully curated much of the response from climate scientists, who eviscerate the Kauppinen paper, and I will give you a summary of their summary.

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Vitamins are, by actual definition, essential nutrients for humans. They are substances we need but cannot make ourselves from other nutrients, and therefore must consume. Each of the vitamins have a disease resulting from a deficiency of that vitamin. For some there may also be negative health effects from having an insufficiency (less than optimal levels, but not low enough to cause a deficiency state). This is why you should eat your vegetables, and have an overall well-rounded diet – to make sure you get enough of all the vitamins and other needed nutrients.

But of course if there is a way to exploit a fact to make money, someone will do it. In this case an entire industry has emerged to make money by convincing the public they need to take vitamin pills, the more the better. In 2017 the supplement industry in the US reached $36.1 billion a year. Unfortunately, the path to better health is not so simple, and the science simply does not support the vitamin industry hype.

Yet another meta-analysis was just published again demonstrating that routine supplementation is mostly worthless, and may even be harmful. This one is focusing on vascular outcomes, but since heart disease is the #1 killer, and stroke the #3 killer, vascular risk has a major impact on life expectancy. In 2018 I wrote about a meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. This study found:

• Multivitamins, vitamins D, C, A, B6, E, calcium, β-carotene, zinc, iron, magnesium, and selenium had no benefit or harm for vascular disease or all-cause mortality.
• Folic acid and B-complex (Folic acid, B6 and B12) reduced stroke risk
• Antioxidants and niacin increased all-cause mortality.

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Many outlets are covering the story of Mari Lopez, a YouTuber who claimed, along with her niece, Liz Johnson, that a raw vegan diet cured her breast cancer. Johnson recently updated the videos with a notice that Mari Lopez died of cancer in December 2017. She has refused, however, to take down the videos.

The story, unfortunately, is a common one. When people are diagnosed with cancer it is understandably a psychological shock. They face not only the grim possibility of their death, but also the prospect of surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation therapy – none of which are pleasant. It is a life-altering event. It also makes people vulnerable – in that situation, who wouldn’t want an escape hatch, a way to get back to their normal life? That is what cancer quackery offers – forget surgery and chemotherapy, just engage in this mild intervention, like a diet change, and your cancer will be gone.

Those who get lured in by this siren song experience one of several possibilities. First, many may still undergo some initial treatment, such as surgery, to treat the cancer, but then refuse adjunctive therapy like chemotherapy or radiation. Some of those patients may, in fact, be cured by the surgery. Often the purpose of the chemotherapy is to reduce the risk of recurrence. Others may forgo any science-based treatment.

Following the initial diagnosis, with or without some intervention, there is what we call the honeymoon period. In this phase the cancer may be relatively asymptomatic. This is especially true if it was discovered because of some screening test, like an X-ray or blood test, and not because it had already become symptomatic. This period can last for months and even years, depending on the stage and type of cancer. This is the phase where those who pursued some form of cancer quackery convince themselves that they are cured. They will also tend to credit the alternative treatment with their cure, even if they received surgery or some other standard treatment.

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Today is the Fourth of July. First, I want to say happy birthday to my two brothers, Bob and Joe, fraternal twins who were born on the 4th. But also happy birthday to America. The 4th is always a good time to reflect on what the American experiment in constitutional democracy really means.

I tend to look at it this way – process is more important than outcome. This is true in the same way it is true for science and critical thinking. Science is a system of valid methods used to build an empirical model of reality. In science, using proper methods is what counts, not the outcome of the experiment. When you put the outcome first, and then use whatever methods necessary to generate the desired outcome, that’s pseudoscience.

In the same way we have a system of government that puts the rule of law, with the Constitution being the highest law, above any particular outcome. It is supposed to be a peaceful and fair method of determining things like law, justice, rights, and the expenditure of common resources. It is valid in that it derives from the people with fair and even representation. Obviously the system is not perfect, partly because people are not perfect, but also because running a country with over 300 million people is horrifically complicated and must, by necessity, involve numerous trade-offs.

But the idea of the Constitution is that we have a system, and if everyone follows the system then at least there are checks and balances, there is a system for correction of error, people have a way to make their will felt, and the whole thing grinds messily on. A friend of mine recently observed, however, that what really has surprised and even frightened him over the last two years is the realization that the whole system is much more of a gentleman’s agreement than he ever imagined. I tend to agree.

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A new report details the progress scientists have made in developing brain organoids from stem cells. They use human embryonic stem cells to culture neurons – brain cells. Lead author, Hideya Sakaguchi, describes the process:

“The team cultured the organoids for 70-100 days, dissociated them into single cells and then disseminated them into another culture dish. The disseminated cells created neuronal networks in a self-organized manner.”

Just by culturing individual neurons together, they spontaneously formed networks and some three-dimensional tissue structure, forming into layers similar to the layers seen in human cortex. Further, the networks of neurons demonstrated some coordinated firing. There was both spontaneous individual cell activity, as well as synchronized activity within networks of cells.

The result is not a brain, which is why it is called an organoid (often referred to as a mini-brain, but this is less technically accurate). What this demonstrates is the inherent properties of human brain neurons to spontaneously form tissue structure and to from neural networks that are functional. The cells are essentially trying to self-organize into a brain. They cannot fully do this, however, because there is a huge piece missing – sensory input and the feedback from output.

A human brain, even an infant brain, contains more information by orders of magnitude than is contained in all the genes that are involved in neurological function. The genes are not a blue print for a brain. Rather, the genes are a set of instructions, of behaviors, that if followed allow for the development of a fully formed brain. But that development requires more information – information from the rest of the body. This process continues after birth as babies develop their vision, hearing ability to move, eventually to walk, socialization, and language. If deprived of stimulation in these areas, the relevant part of the brain will not develop.

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How strong is the password you use for your e-mail account? When was the last time you changed it? Your e-mail is the gateway to pretty much the rest of your security – someone who has captured your e-mail can use it to reset many of your other passwords. Yet, the top 10 passwords that people use are: “123456, 123456789, qwerty, password, 111111, 12345678, abc123, 1234567, password1, and 12345.” There are several reasons for this, but one is that people will generally trade security for convenience.

In addition to this, network security experts don’t always appreciate this fact or its implications. I was in a meeting at work about this topic, and the IT guys actually stated that their password policy is – use a hard alphanumeric, don’t write it down anywhere, use a different password for every login, and change it every 30 days. This is literally impossible for the vast majority of the population. People will just shrug at these silly recommendations, and use “123456.” A better recommendation, meeting people half-way, is to use a password which consists of three independent words that are each memorable to you but someone else would not easily guess.

We are quickly moving beyond the age of passwords, however. Biometrics may save us from our own laziness, at least in part, because they key into something unique about ourselves. They are a biological key that we carry with us. This is partly why hackers are moving toward social engineering rather than hacking software or hardware to breech security. People are the weak link – you can still count on people’s inherent laziness.

The same is true of privacy – people will sacrifice a certain amount of privacy for convenience. Sometimes we have no choice. If we want to live and do business in the modern world, we have to put some of ourselves out there. (Unless you want to “live of the grid.”) If you want to get on a plane, you have to let someone rifle through your things, and may even have to submit to a whole body scan. So while we are individually willing to trade security for convenience, we are collectively willing to trade privacy for security.

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There are bacteria and mold aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This should come as no surprise, as these organisms follow humans everywhere we go. In fact it’s claimed that the ISS astronauts spend several hours per week cleaning mold off the ISS and wiping everything down. However, this first hand report by ISS astronaut Clayton C. Anderson says he did his cleaning duty every Saturday, but not as thoroughly as requested.

Still, as we spread into space, we need to carefully consider the microscopic ecosystem we will bring with us. A space ship or station is a self-contained environment, and as we plan trips back to the Moon and on to Mars, there will be longer and longer missions. Something as simple as a fungus may threaten those missions. A recent study of the resilience of mold spores highlights how challenging this may be.

The study looked at the effects of ionizing radiation on mold. They looked at the two most common species of mold aboard the ISS,  Aspergillus and Pennicillium. They found:

The spores survived exposure to X-rays up to 1000 gray, exposure to heavy ions at 500 gray and exposure to ultraviolet light up to 3000 joules per meter squared. Gray is a measure of absorbed dose of ionizing radiation, or joules of radiation energy per kilogram of tissue. Five gray is enough to kill a person. Half a gray is the threshold for radiation sickness.

Those are some hardy fungi. For context a one-way trip to Mars is expected to expose travelers to 0.7 gray. That will be a problem for the humans aboard, not so much the molds.

As an aside, the exposure to radiation is a major limiting factor for space travel. The ISS is still within the Earth’s magnetic field, and so is somewhat protected. But anything beyond low earth orbit will be slowly fried by radiation. We need to figure out how to shield our ships and colonies if we are going to have a prolonged presence outside of low earth orbit. This, by the way, is why lava tubes may be the best location for stations on the Moon or Mars.

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Social psychology is the study of how people behave in social situations, so it deals with the complex interactions between personality, culture, and social pressures on how we behave and in turn are affected by each other. I took a social psychology course in college and it really opened my eyes. This was one of the first courses I took that challenged my assumptions in a profound way, because there is a disconnect between our assumptions about how people think and behave and how they actual do when objectively observed. In this way social psychology (and psychology in general) is an important pillar of scientific skepticism.

As an example, there is a recent study that uses CCTV to monitor violent incidents in three cities, Amsterdam, Lancaster, and Cape Town. So these are real-life events, not staged for the study. The researchers counted how many times people intervened in such incidents, such as someone being pummeled on the ground by an attacker. First, think how you would respond in such a situation. Now also think about how the average person would respond. What percentage of the time do you think a bystander intervened? Was it the same or different in the various cities, which differ in terms of their crime and safety? If individuals fail to respond, why?

Your answers to these questions probably say more about you and the culture you live in than reality. This is the meta-finding of social psychology. We often are incorrect in our assumptions about what other people think, how other people behave, and what motivates other people. We also judge ourselves by a different set of rules than we judge others (the fundamental attribution error). Research also finds that understanding this is extremely empowering, and this is also something I found fascinating about social psychology. This was the first time I can remember that a little bit of knowledge empowered me to take greater control of my actions, rather than ride passively down the currents of subconscious psychological forces.

I am deliberately putting the link to the study and the results below the fold. When you’re ready, take a look.

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