"One Way Hash"

The following is something I found at FACTCHECK.ORG in September of '09. I copied it and saved it, understanding two things: 1. It is something I would appreciate and want to read again; and 2. It is something I want to share with others. It is a wonderful discussion on why sound bites trump substance, and (underneath it all) why we like our politics and our politicians simple. The stated subject is health care, but the message applies to almost all political discussion.

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Health Care and the “One Way Hash”
September 1, 2009

Here at FactCheck.org, we like to complicate things.
The statement isn’t meant to be (entirely) a flippant one. It really is true that a lot of what we do here is to take what appear to be pretty simple claims and show that the reality is far more complicated than it might appear at first glance. Quite often we find ourselves saying things like, "That’s true, but it’s misleading…"
Julian Sanchez, now a research fellow at the Cato Institute, has dubbed arguments of this sort "one way hash arguments." The term is a nod to one way hash functions, which are used in cryptography. The basic idea is that certain kinds of mathematical operations are really easy to perform in one direction, but much harder to do in reverse. A simple example: Finding a number’s square is relatively easy; given a pencil and paper, most people could multiply a number, say, 125 times itself. Determining the square root of 15,625 is another story entirely. The same idea applies to a one way hash, only with functions that are complex enough that even the fastest computers need unrealistic amounts of time to reverse the functions.
Sanchez points out that certain arguments have the same basic structure:
Sanchez: The talking point on one side is just complex enough that it’s both intelligible—even somewhat intuitive—to the layman and sounds as though it might qualify as some kind of insight. (If it seems too obvious, perhaps paradoxically, we’ll tend to assume everyone on the other side thought of it themselves and had some good reason to reject it.) The rebuttal, by contrast, may require explaining a whole series of preliminary concepts before it’s really possible to explain why the talking point is wrong. So the setup is “snappy, intuitively appealing argument without obvious problems” vs. “rebuttal I probably don’t have time to read, let alone analyze closely.”
Jess Henig’s Aug. 31 post "Cancer Rates and Unjustified Conclusions" here on the FactCheck Wire provides a couple of sterling examples of one way hash arguments. Critics of health care changes argue that since the U.S. five-year survival rate for many types of cancer is higher than the average European rate, despite the nationalized health care systems common in Europe, U.S. health care is clearly superior to European versions. Supporters counter that these same studies show that insured Americans have higher five-year survival rates than uninsured Americans, which simply goes to show that we ought to have universal health coverage.
Both arguments are a one way hash.
The reality is that an enormous number of different factors affect five-year cancer survival rates. Early detection is an important factor, for a number of reasons. For one, most cancers respond more readily to treatment when they are detected early. But even if two cancers received no treatment at all and developed in exactly the same way, the patient whose tumor was detected earlier would obviously have a better chance of living for five years after detection. The U.S. has a far more aggressive early detection program than the U.K. or most European nations. But other countries, like Australia, Canada, Japan and Cuba, all have five-year survival rates that are comparable to the U.S. and all possess nationalized health care systems. The one exception is prostate cancer, but even there the story is complicated. Since prostate cancer doesn’t always require treatment, aggressive detection means higher survival rates, since many cases that never require treatment will be detected. In other words, aggressive screening of prostate cancer dramatically increases the diagnosis rate by detecting cancer that doesn’t need treatment at all, something that then skews the survival rate.
The argument that health insurance coverage positively affects five-year survival rates is equally oversimplified. After all, the same studies that show different survival rates for the insured versus the uninsured also show that Americans covered by Medicaid have five-year survival rates comparable to uninsured Americans. What’s more, the uninsured often have other complicating factors; because the uninsured are generally poorer than the insured, they might also have different diets or different exposures to tobacco or other drugs, all of which could well affect cancer survival rates. The uninsured are also more likely to have more than one illnesses at a time, which affects survival rates. So simply comparing numbers across diverse populations without controlling for other factors isn’t particularly useful.
But notice that two arguments that took only a sentence each to explain required a dense paragraph each to rebut. And even then, the explanations are abbreviated (go read Jess’ post for the full details).
Keep this in mind the next time you see what looks like a knock-down, one-sentence argument for your favorite public policy option. If it looks like a pretty obvious (but not too obvious) argument, there’s a decent chance that you’ve just found yourself a one way hash.
Posted by Joe Miller on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 5:49 pm

Housecleaning

I went looking for some old documents on Word. Since I wrote them, I have replaced my hard drive, lost some things, and added others.

By dint of searching via various lanes of 'documents', I found what I was looking for. I also found quite a few other things I have written over the years. Some are good, some are bad, and some needed to be deleted.

Word being the intuitive, user-friendly program that it is (sarcasm font off) it took me a while to even figure out how to delete the old c**p. I THINK I managed that, although some of the various Word indices still list items I sent to the recycle basket which I then emptied.

We'll see about that at a later date.

Anyway, in the stuff I had written in the past and not taken further, I discovered two or three starts to pieces of fiction that I never re-visited. I may just do that and see if they still have any ability to call me. Maybe someday, I'll finish one.

I also found a few essays that I wrote to express myself before I started this blog. Some of THOSE just might make it here, with a bit of editing. I need to re-read them again, to see if I still agree (or at least feel about) what I wrote then.

I have read that nothing written on a computer is ever truely lost. (Absent taking out the hard drive and destryoing it with a hammer and some battery acid) That appears to be true of what I put in Word. Whether any of it deserves to live forever is another matter. But if it doesn't, why did I start this blog?

Anyway, a word to all of us. Look at your old files. Are any of them something you want your heirs to discover?

Friends are the Families We Have by Choice

Friends are the families we have by choice.

I have some friends for certain emotional situations

I have some friends for certain social situations

I have some friends for certian intellectuial situations.

I have some friends for certain undeterminable situations.

And my family? Those persons who share the same DNA our parents shared at our conception........?

A friend with whom I can share emotional, social, intellectuial, and undeterminatable situations?

THAT is a friend I call family by choice.

Changing focus

I realized that since we got back from our trip, I have been less inclined to post. Somehow, it doesn't seem worth my while to write, or yours to read. I think I fugured out why.

While we were in California, we visited my mother. Mother is in assisted living, and we have hired someone to screen her mail. She had managed to get on EVERYONE's "gimme" list. Every day, she received four or five solicitations for contributions to various charitable causes. Some of them were more charitable to their directors than others. She felt overwhelmed. She couldn't decide which organizations to give money to. She saved much of the mail, inundating her office space. She gave sums to suspect organizations. It was too much for her.

We put an end to the deluge of begging mail, but she complained that it was hardly worth opening her mailbox anymore.

So, I started writing her. I remembered how, all my life when I lived with my parents, my mother would receive a weekly letter from her sister who lived in North Carolina. Aunt Margaret would send a single-spaced, type-written letter (usually typed on both sides of the paper) EVERY WEEK!

I've been trying to do the same. Every Sunday I sit down and recount my week for her. I try to throw in something of local interest, or some cultural reference or something more than a dry recitation of activities. Acautally, it's fun. I enjoy remmebering the highs and lows of my week. When something happens, I'll think, "I have to remember to write that to Mother"

But if there is a downside, it is that I feel less comuplsion to write here. I AM sharing myself, with my mother on a weekly basis.

So, why am I writing this now? I called her today and told her I would not write to her this week. I'm going to visit her in person instead. She forgave me for not writing.

I got over by blog-block

I have an outlet for expressing the mundane in my life now. It's called Mom.

Half-full or Half-empty?

Today, a janitor at a local elementary school was arrested for soliticing sex on-line. His intended partner? A 14-year-old. At some point during the communications, the police became aware of the internet intercourse and monitored it.

My husband's question; "How can these idiots continue to keep trying this? Almost every week, there is a story in the news of one of them being arrested."

My response; "IF the police are only catching one out of ten, then what is the risk"

How many cases are reported and caught, and how many are literally consumated?

It is one of those crime statistics that very likely is highly under-reported. I'm not talking about the 18-year-old with the 17 or 16 year-old. I'm talking about the person 25 or older with a minor.

The internet is so vast, and so annonymous. You may pretend to be any age -- older or younger than you actually are. You can pretend to be interested in actions that you would never actually engage in.

Was there a time when people met as "pen pals" and poured out their souls (or pretende to) to strangers they intended to take advantage of? Of course, the local police could not monitor the Federal mail. Nor could the Feds monitor the contents of communications without Court orders.

Is the explosion in this type of arrest due to the accessability of the internet? Apparently, local police do not need a search warrent or a wire-tap authorization to monitor communications.

I could set up a "sex chat" with any reader of this blog in which we established different e-mail accounts, different ages, genders, likes, identies, and pretend we were persons (at least one of whom was unable to consent) who were plotting to meet and engage in illicit activity.

Would we be caught? Unless one of us tipped off a police agency, we would likely not be caught. If one of us were to tip off a local police agency we might be charged with filing a false report or otherwise wasting their time.

But if I were a 14-year old girl, and if you were a 35-year old man, and if my parents did not monitor my internet usage, what could/would we be able to say and possible accomplish.

Are police actually making a dent in internet child-sex crimes? Or are they merely publishing their occasional successes?

Mom

I lost my "Mom" this week.

Who was she?

Rochelle Kantor was my Jewish Mother. Note that both word are capitalized.

I was a somewhat struggleing tax auditor when Rochelle asked me to come to review and be a stat notice writer. Part of it was out of affection for my husband. Part of it was because she felt that if my husband believed that I was not an incompetent idiot, I wasn't. She knew him. And because she knew him, she believed in me.

I went up on a 90-day detail. I was supervised. I was reviewing "short-90's" Cases that were no-shows, where the notice was based on the initial report. I was quick to pick up the errors. The disallowance of Schedule C expenses without an adjustment to the SE tax. The changes to AGI while ignoring the NOL carryover. My coaches were impressed.

I was put into a position of seeing how many "short-90's" could be issued (signed
and mailed) before the true push of the April 15th statute of limitations would hit.

I reviewed, I signed, I issued some 1,000 or more cases before the statute ran.

Then I was promoted to "long form letters" These were the letters on the cases where the proposed deficiency exceeded the amount that could be petitioned to "S" Court (the Tax Court equlivency to small-claims cout).

This was in the early '80's. There were no computer programs (at least in the IRS) that saved paragraphs of language for disallowance of deductions, credits, expenses or any thing else. EVERYTHING had to be written out in long-hand.

Rochelle (by that time she had become 'MOM') put together a task force to write standard paragraphs of disallowance for the 90% of most common items we encountered.

When we weren't working cases, we were writing "standard paragraphs".

Mom would attend the monthly staff meetings of the managers on her level and above.
She would come back from the meeting and call us into her office. She would explain what upper-level management wanted, and she would ask, "How can we do this?"

She absolutely understood that if EVERYONE, from bottom to top was not involved in the process, there could be no success.

When I was called for Jury duty, and was empanneled on a jury on a murder/kiddnapping trial that was scheduled to last for 6 or more months, she created a job that I could fulfill on the one or less days a week I was in the office. She made me the 'problem slover' (actually, my describtion of it was the 'garbage handler') She woud put aside the things that took more than 30 minutes to resolve, the items that required communication amoungst units, and when I was in the office, I dealt with them.

Mom believed in me. Because she believed I could do things, I could. I owe much of my success in my carrer to her.

She told me I could do things, and because of her words, I could.

Mom once said, "The difference between a child and an adult is that an adult understands AND ACCEPTS the consequences of their actions." Those words have become a template for my life.

MOM, MOM, you're gone!!!!!!! Who will I lean on NOw????!!!!

Remembering Jean

Jean Mitchell, age 92, died today.

Who was Jean? Why should I care? Why should you care?

Jean was a very special lady. Her son, Mike was one of George's best friends in college and after. But Jean (and her surviving husband, Frank) were not "parents" to the group of friends who first met at Fullerton JC. Jean and Frank were part of the group. They were friends, not "Mike's parents" They were our peers, if not in age, in attitude, in mind, in willingness to explore, discuss, examine life and everything around it.

Being around Jean never felt like being around my mother or my mother's friends. Being with Jean was like being with any of my girlfriends.

Jean lived 92 years, but Jean was never old. Jean was always the age of the people she was with.

There is a hole in my heart and in my life tonight.

Jean, I miss you.