Lord Tebbitt commits some Logical Fallacies

In a bid to make myself feel like a good samaritan I bought a copy of The Big Issue today. In it, Lord Tebbitt, who is, shall we say, slightly opposed to the idea of gay marriage, makes several charming statements:

“When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?’

“It’s like one of my colleagues said: we've got to make these same sex marriages available to all.

“It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I’d be allowed to marry my son. Why not? Why shouldn't a mother marry her daughter? Why shouldn't two elderly sisters living together marry each other?”

What a nice man. I write about this today though, not to make any comment on the issue itself (I know people who have strong opinions in either direction) but because it provides an excellent platform for discussing something I find interesting - logical fallacies.

First off, the obvious - The 1949 Marriage act has a completely different set of rules for marrying relatives; they're listed out in the Table of Kindred and Affinity, which quite sensibly states that not only can you not marry your son, you also can't marry his wife if he is still alive. Also there are seperate incest laws, not to mention the possibility of getting accused of tax evasion, although ultimately I discount the idea that Lord Tebbitt genuinely wants to marry his son and is instead not being serious. This is our first fallacy, and it's called the Appeal to Ridicule - presenting an opponents arguments in a way that makes them seem absurd. 

If I was being cheeky, I could also call the middle sentence an Appeal to Anonymous Authority - if this colleague said it, why must it be true?

But the first paragraph is truly a gold mine. Here, he posits a series of occurrences, which leaving our fallacies for a minute deserves a closer look. The question posed at the end relies on a number of things happening, but let's for a minute assume that he could be talking about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's baby. Below, I list the assumptions his question has to make, followed by my best statistical estimation of them actually occurring.

• The baby is a girl
• 50%, give or take. The couple may be genetically predisposed one way or the other (but we don't know), and there is a slight difference in the rate of boys to girls at the moment, but not enough to shift the percentage.
• The girl is gay or bisexual
• Bit trickier, this one, but the UK census suggests a rate of 1.1 % for the former and 0.4 % for the latter. This obviously only includes those who self-identify as gay, but I realized this isn't a problem because Lord Tebbitt assumes/implies that this Queen must have self-identified at some point.
• The girl is married
• This is where it gets tricky. Assuming that all those in a civil partnership would get married if the opportunity arose (a statistical leap in itself) and that the rate stays the same (again, bit of a stretch) there would be around 53,000 same sex marriages in the UK at this mythical point in the future. Assuming it takes two to tango, that puts the number of people (in total) in same-sex marriages at around 0.16 % and (assuming straight people aren't in same-sex marriages) the number of gay people at around 14.5 %.
•  The girl wishes to have children via artificial insemination
• This is apparently about 41%, according to one survey. I am not going to cite all of my references, as these are all approximate.
• It is successful
• This is tricky to estimate, but assuming she's under 35, the success rate is about 32.5 %, according to the NHS, and the percentage declines after that point.

How likely is Lord Tebbitt's hypothesis? By multiplying all of these together, the odds come out somewhere around 0.1 %. I think the primogeniture question of the throne is pretty safe.

So which fallacy is this he's using? This is called using Misleading Vividness. He has described a  scenario in such detail that you see the problem before considering how likely it all is. Interesting stuff.

And if you think, even after all this, that this particular argument is one that still needs to be thought about, I direct you to your own personal fallacy: the Appeal to Probability. Just because something can happen, doesn't mean it will, even if it is likely. This is very, very unlikely.

The conclusion we can all draw from this is that this doesn't exactly add anything to the debate about gay marriage on either side, just that we can safely ignore Lord Tebbitt and instead look at this cool diagram of logical fallacies.

Pussy Riot

I am going to get hate mail for this.

Like most people, I've been following the Pussy Riot story with half-interest over the previous couple of months, and it now appears to have reached a conclusion. Trouble is, I have a feeling we are being told one side of the story, or at the very least one perspective. And that perspective is "Evil Russian State oppresses Innocent Protestors."

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not on the side of Putin and his cronies. Russia as a state is still mind-blowingly corrupt. Quotes from the website Freedom House ...

"Only a handful of radio stations and publications with limited audiences offer a wide range of viewpoints. At least 19 journalists have been killed since Putin came to power, including three in 2009, and in no cases have the organizers of the murders been prosecuted. The authorities have further limited free expression by passing vague laws on extremism that make it possible to crack down on any speech, organization, or activity that lacks official support."

"The judiciary lacks independence from the executive branch, and career advancement is effectively tied to compliance with Kremlin preferences."

 ... tend to suggest that Russia is a bit authoritarian and oppresive, to put it mildly. To say that this is a step up from the Soviet Union and the economic chaos of the 90s seems a bit redundant.

In the media circus that has erupted around this, what the three members of Pussy Riot actually did has been a bit lost. In simple terms, they went into the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (fun fact: tallest orthodox cathedral in the world) wearing home-made ski masks, crossed themselves, and then began an obscenity-laden song asking the Virgin Mary to 'become a feminist' and get rid of Putin. They also filmed part of it for use in the music video. They were later arrested, and tried for 'hooligansim'. The main thrust of the criticism is that the police and Kremlin response has been disproportionately severe. That is about as neutral account of it as you will read.

So, what's wrong with this picture?

At the risk of seeming pedantic, the most obvious thing is that they weren't accused of Punk Rock as an offence. The right to free speech and the right to perform your music wherever and whenever you want are two completely different things -  you can think of them as stuffy or old-fashioned, but members of the Russian Orthodox church do have a case for being legitimately offended. Propaganda aside, it is instructive to note that only 6% of the Russian population support their actions.

The second, and this is just my personal opinion, is that the whole thing comes across as marginally juvenile. I would be a lot more sympathetic if it had at least seemed more sincere - if you have a serious political point to get across, swearing is unnecessary.

The third is that two of the women, when arrested, denied that they had anything to do with it. Again, if you honestly believe in your 'cause', you stand up for it when the going gets tough. That's what Mandela did, and he was a lot more unfairly treated.

The final point, and one that has been glossed over slightly, is that if they had done what they did in St Pauls Cathedral in London, they would probably have been arrested as well - it's called 'Disturbing the Peace'. They would not have got anywhere near the response from the police or the government (Hooray for liberal democracy!) but I would put money on the public approval ratings being about the same.

There is a story here, and a very good one, about the nature of the Russian political and judicial systems, and how they are manipulated. Russia has a hell of a long way to go in terms of its freedom indices and its treatment of defendants in high profile cases. Unfortunatrly, it's being buried at the moment beneath a layer of partisan political protesting that oversimplifies the issue horrendously.

Why I take the train

So, rail prices have gone up again. Angry commuters have been interviewed on the BBC (well, one) and there have been dark mutterings about "poor service" and "rip-off". Again.

Apart from the well-entrenched position that the service is unreliable (when in fact it's more reliable than ever) one of the main arguments I have heard for owning a car as opposed to getting the train is that it's cheaper. The conversation usually runs along the lines that the cost in petrol is less than the cost of a train ticket.

Obviously this is true. The trouble is, petrol isn't the only cost associated with a car. And I began to wonder, starting from scratch, how far would I have to travel in order to make a car worth my while?

Let's start with a typical journey, one that I make reasonably often. St Neots (where I live) to Southampton (where I party). Let's also assume a few other things. I own a new, reasonably priced, small car. A Fiesta say. That way I don't have to factor in things like 'reliability' because hopefully it won't break down. Let's also assume I drive the average mileage - roughly 13000 miles a year. Assuming I'm using my car for nothing else, this equals (rather conveniently for my maths) about 50 round trips to Southampton a year - about once a week.

From a train fare point of view, if I'm buying my tickets the day before or on the day, the fare is equal to £52.40 if I'm not returning the same day. This means that I am potentially spending £2620 per year on rail fares. This number, of course, goes down considerably if I'm buying my tickets in advance. Easy peasy.

My brand-spanking new Fiesta does an average of 34 MPG, according to Ford's website. A gallon is fairly roughly 3.8 litres, so my Fiesta does 8.95 Miles per litre of fuel I put in it. This is all petrol, by the way. The lowest petrol price near me is 134.9p, so it costs me about 15p per mile I travel in my lovely Fiesta. This means it costs me £1950 in petrol per year to drive it the 13000 miles to and from Southampton repeatedly. At this point, in my car, I'm pretty happy that I have come out nearly £700 ahead of my train taking alter ego. And that's if I'm travelling alone - stick someone willing to pay half the petrol cost and you're really in the money.

Trouble is, that's not the only cost associated with owning a car, and nobody else (except perhaps your parents) is going to help you pay these bits. First off, I can't drive. The average cost of learning to drive in the UK is about £1200, depending on if you pass first time. That gets added on. The cost of actually buying the car (the brand new Fiesta, remember) is £9790 and up. I'm a cheapskate, so I'm going with the basic model with no features. It's essentially bodywork, seats and an engine. Road tax and carbon tax adds on £235. My insurance premium as a new driver on this car is £2220.13 (on the cheapest deal, keeping it in a locked garage, me the only driver etc. on Go Compare). This is below average, I would point out.

This adds up to a whopping £13445.13. Clearly, over the course of a year, I should get the train. So, how long do I have to drive before this becomes worth my while? A few things will happen Firstly, I don't have to repurchase the car. The second is that I won't have to learn to drive again. The third is that my insurance will go down. So, essentially, the only figure that remains the same (assuming it hasn't been changed) is the tax. Let's just pretend for a moment that that's the only thing I have to pay (my insurance is now free - this simplifies things considerably, and it biases the following claculation in the car's favour).

So, in order for my car to be better value than the train, assuming things like rail fares and petrol remain roughly the same, it has to have cost me on average less than £2620 a year. I'm already paying £1950 in fuel and £235 in road tax each year, so that leaves £435. Unfortunately for 'cars are cheaper' advocates, this means I have to drive my car for nearly 31 YEARS for me to go into the black. Assuming that my not-new-car-any-more doesn't break down or require repairing and that I don't pay insurance after the first year. EVEN IF I am taking two other people each time, paying their share of the petrol, it's still around 13 years.

This is for a car costing under £10000. It goes up quite a lot if you start looking into Land Rovers.

From a purely financial point of view, I think I'll stick to the train for now.


         

 

Bestsellers and The End of Civilisation.

So apparently, 50 Shades Of Grey is the best-selling book of all time in the UK.

Right.

This was being posted on various blogs and forums and walls with the standard "What is the world coming to?" response, a response I have indulged in occassionally. (It feels good to rail against the artless masses from your Island of Good Taste, even if the island itself consists of Bernard Cornwell novels and an Xbox Live account).

But what troubled me this time was the following - "What on earth does 'best-seller' actually mean?". It's a more difficult question to answer than I thought, especially when you realise that the Telegraph article linked to above essentially qualifies and slightly contradicts itself in the sub-header. "Of all time" is not quite the same as "since records began". Also, I'd imagine in an "Of all time" contest there would be a clear winner. You can guess. It begins with a 'B'.

The trouble is, when it comes to book sales, the data is apparently extremely difficult to collate across everything. The number that has been quoted for sales of 50 Shades, 5.3 million, is a number released by the Publisher, Random House. I'm not implying it's unreliable, it's just useful to know where data has come from.

In response to this, The Guardian produced this list. It ostensibly shows that 50 Shades Of Gray is still behind Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and three of the Harry Potter books. "There's hope for humanity!" I hear you cry. Until you read a bit deeper, and realise these numbers are apparently from sales of the actual physical books, not e-books. If you added on e-book sales, or at the very least adjusted for the sales lost to ebook sales, it would almost certainly be higher up the list, perhaps even top. The e-book industry has taken such a massive bite out of the industry that not including at the very least some kind of + 25 to 33% 'extra' sales on their data make it pretty worthless.

The two other things to note about these data is that firstly the oldest book is from 1989 (To Kill A Mockingbird). If this is the "records" that the Telegraph mentioned beginning, 23 years does not strike me as a long time. The other is that all of the top twenty books have been published since 1997, with all bar three published since 2003. Surely this might mean that more people are reading overall. In amongst all of the hysteria about taste and decency going down the pan, this strikes me as a Good Thing.

So what we go from is "50 Shades Of Grey is best-selling book of all time" to "50 Shades Of Grey may be best-selling book since 1989, during a period of increasing readership in general, but it's almost impossible to tell." Less catchy, I suppose.

As for the actual book, I leave it to Gilbert Gottfreid.

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