Some familiar figures are pushing the absurd and defamatory claim that Ken Loach supports Holocaust denial. The story of this bogus talking-point, which relies upon multiple layers of falsehood and guilt-by-association, makes for a revealing case-study. 1/

The public supports less policing and prisons but Harper invested in social discord.

Policing, Prison and construction were linked under the Harper Government.

Richard Bird was VP of Enbridge and he also served as a member of the Canada's Federal Minister of Finance's Advisory Committee on Financing and currently serves as chairman of the board of directors of the Alberta Investment Management

Richard Bird, a former VP of Enbridge is linked to Ecopatrol, missing money and a massive sex scandal in Colombia and Prison Schemes with bid rigging, corruption and collusion.

There was bid rigging corruption and collusion during Prime Minister Harper's term as they invested in private prisons across Canada. Read here. This mentions Bird Construction Inc. Richard Bird was VP of Enbridge Pipeline Inc.

A statement about Stephanie Hayden.

In January I became aware that Ms Hayden (who monitors this account despite being blocked) had made a series of defamatory allegations about myself and my wife.

The allegations were made on Twitter, via Hayden’s account, and were widely retweeted.

The allegations were that as a result of her making a police complaint, (1) the police were seeking to urgently speak to me.

Furthermore (2) that police has spoken to me on 26/12/20 and offered some kind of “robust” advice about my conduct on and off line.

Finally (3) that police attended my home address in November, where my wife mislead them as to my whereabouts.

Hayden commented about this at length on Twitter, said that both and I am my wife had lied, and that I had even given a false address in Hampshire.

I said at the time all the allegations were false.

The police “complaint” was nothing more than Hayden making yet another vexatious complaint to the police, as Hayden routinely does.

The police did not speak to me on 26/12/20, as alleged, or at all.

Survivorship Bias 101

History is written by the victors. But if we exclusively focus on these successes, we allow survivorship bias to distort our understanding of the world.

But what is "survivorship bias" and how does it work?

Here's Survivorship Bias 101!

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1/ First, a few definitions.

Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on survivors (successes) and ignoring casualties (failures).

When we do so, we miss the true "base rates" of survival (the actual probability of success) and arrive at flawed conclusions.

2/ When we completely ignore failures, we lose our ability to correctly identify the differences between successes and failures.

Put simply, exclusively focusing on successes may actually inhibit our ability to identify (and replicate) the actions that led to such success.

3/ Cicero wrote on the topic over 2,000 years ago.

An atheist named Diagoras is shown portraits of people who prayed and were saved from death at sea as proof of God's existence.

Diagoras replies, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked?"

4/ Cicero cuts right to the point - we cannot conclude that prayer led to being saved from the sea if we ignore those who prayed and then drowned.

Survivorship bias can lead to a deeply-flawed understanding of cause-and-effect relationships.

Let's look at some examples.

This column by @ezraklein is very good and I agree with him 100% on policy -- we need a generous child allowance now. But I'm seeing this creeping argument on the left that it's just not important for women to work outside the home, and that's concerning.

Working 60 hours a week at two or three jobs? That's obviously awful. Being paid so poorly that you have no time for your family or leisure? That's not "dignity," that's exploitation. And it is single moms who bear the brunt of this.

But while the argument that at-home work is just as valuable as paid work may be morally correct, in our capitalist reality, not working outside of the home leaves women incredibly financially and physically vulnerable. It also leaves them isolated, depressed, and anxious.

wrote a whole book about this, but paid work is good for women. Not three jobs at $7.50 an hour to stay afloat. But work for pay, which offers a purpose outside of raising one's own children, and friends and coworkers and a $$ lifeline outside the nuclear family.

When women wind up financially dependent on men, good things do not follow. Of course there are individual stories of this working out just fine. But over the whole of a society, women as carers and men as earners is not a good system.