In an easily recognizable, but nonetheless idiotic, ploy to sell magazines, Wired’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has published a short article called The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete. In it he claims that the mere availability of data on a huge scale means that theories and models are unnecessary. As long as we have statistics that can pick trends, correlations out of the madness, we don’t need the scientific method anymore.

I’ll let this excellent rebuttal by John Timmer at Ars Technica do most of the work in explaining why Anderson’s argument is so flawed it should never had been printed. (Ah hah! More evidence against Andrew Keen’s argument for the return of the old-school editor! Anderson’s crap would never have passed muster on Wikipedia.)

For me, the most important rebuttal is about falsification and repair. Without theories that we can test, how can we know we’re wrong? What will being wrong look like? Without reasoned explanations for why things happen, how will we know what to do when things break? The reason that scientists are so wary of correlations is because they offer no explanatory power - they’re misleading as often as not. If we act on them, completely ignorant of the underlying mechanism, we don’t learn anything at all. Anderson’s most staggeringly ignorant move is to suggest that theories and models are somehow unnecessary simply because they’re often wrong. Wha? I guess the benefit of never having a model or a theory is that if you make no assumptions or predictions no one can ever disprove you.

I’d be willing to dismiss Anderson entirely if, presented differently, he wouldn’t have otherwise tackled an interesting topic. As Timmer says, certainly the availability of massive data is changing the way we do science. But the end of theory? C’mon, Chris, that’s ridiculous, and a transparent attempt to appeal to the data-heads that read Wired. This point of view is SO common, at least around San Francisco. I’m amazed that otherwise smart people would adopt such an ignorant, arrogant point of view. Fighting this kind of thinking is depressing. It reminds me of something Anthony Bourdain said about his most hated chef nemesis, Rachel Ray. (I noted this in a previous post.)

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook… She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?

A lazy, soulless, superficial, inexplicably popular idea. It’s days are numbered, though. I predict that inside of 5 years, Google is going to hit the wall on its data-center driven problem solving. They’ll call for more cowbell, find there’s none to be had, and return to the land of the living where the rest of us live.

I’ve had this rant brewing for a long, long time. Now it’s serious. So serious that I’ve had to create a whole not post category on the blog. Here it is:

I am just so sweating, sputtering, stomping mad at Berkeley cyclists. Commuter cyclists, not the real kind. For so many reasons. Here’s a group of people (myself included!) that bitches endlessly about dealing with cars in Berkeley. And yet it’s so disrespectful of cars and pedestrians, laws and social customs that it singlehandedly creates the horrible tension and animosity that makes the motorists treat cyclists badly to begin with.

But I digress. I’m going to focus this cathartic rant on the single most inexplicable thing cyclists do. Here’s what happens: I’m sitting at a red light, as I should since everyone knows cyclists have to abide by traffic laws. As I’m sitting, a second cyclist arrives from behind, and casually pulls up in front of me. The light turns green, the jackass cyclist pulls off first.

What? When did turn-taking get lost among cyclists? I got there first. If you pull up second, you’d better stay behind me and let me go first. I don’t care if you pass me while we’re riding, but for Jebus sake, wait your damn turn.

This amazes me because turn-taking is one of the social norms that we learn earliest in life - like when we’re 2 years old. It appears in nearly every area of life, and yet somehow these cyclists forget about it. This is FIFO, not LIFO, people.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not buying it. I’m well aware that the cyclist’s foremost priority is the law of conservation of momentum. If you’re going to pull up to the light at the last minute so that you can roll through when it turns green, no problem. But these rat bastards aren’t rolling. They’re stopping. In front of me.

Do they all assume they’re faster than me and so they’d have to pass anyway? That seems unlikely. The bulk of these people are just your average casual peddler. I’m a fairly decent cyclist. I go faster than 9 out of 10 riders I pass on my way around Berkeley. But I still wait my turn at a light, and pass when we move on. Shit, half of the people who stop in front of me at the light are people I blew by a few blocks back.

In the grand scheme of things, this is probably one of the lesser transgressions of your average Berkeley cyclist. So many things they do are way more dangerous. Like blowing straight through red lights and stop signs without looking. Like weaving in and out of traffic as though it was some kind of amusement park ride. Like Critical Mass (ugh!). And (OMG, this is the worst) riding the wrong way down a one way street, e.g. the four block stretch of Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight.

Sure, some of those dumbasses get into accidents. But much worse is that those sorts of choices get other people into accidents while the stupid cyclist is on her merry way down the street. Sigh.