Gay marriage, the New Zealand Herald and the absurdity of online polls

Online polls are evidence only of the existence of online polls, oh, and that any conclusions drawn from them are absurd.

A recent online poll conducted by the New Zealand Herald showed that public support for gay marriage , counter to earlier polls which showed huge public support for gay marriage, had dropped to 48%.

Okay, an online poll was conducted. That is all we can reliably say about this poll. However, the Herald began using it in stories to demonstrate that “support had dropped” as the parliamentary debate about the proposed gay marriage bill went on.

Can we really say this? Can the results of an online poll be used to draw such conclusions? Or indeed, any conclusions at all?

Methodology? What methodology?

The reliability of any survey or poll comes down to the methodology employed in collecting the responses. Is it a representative sample of the population? Can it reliably ensure only one response per person? What is the sample size? Is it statistically significant?

Online polls typically violate all of these measures and controls. Other than that, it is totally possible to ‘game’ an online poll by rallying supporters to vote one way. My conservative uncle even tried to get me to vote like this on the Herald digipoll in question.

With regards to said Herald digipoll on gay marriage, the sample is self-selected — in other words people voluntarily choose to vote on it. Who would choose to vote on such a poll? Not only those who are emotionally engaged (which touches both sides of the argument) but specifically, those who feel incensed by gay marriage, predominantly those of a conservative persuasion.

This is the same phenomenon that research shows has been employed on social media: negative views on an issue outnumber positive views.

Probably the best illustration of this is review websites. For example, 10,000 people go to a hotel — 9900 have an enjoyable experience while 100 do not. Which reviews are most likely to end up on the hotel review website? Negative views on an issue motivate us to speak out and “right the wrong” so to speak.

Absurd methodology, absurd conclusions

The Herald did repeatedly refer to the result of the Digipoll as a change in opinion — something that cannot be justifiably determined from a poll that was clearly being gamed.

Worse still, Bob McCroskie, director of Family First NZ took these results as confirmation that his campaign of intolerance has swayed public opinion in his direction and that now it’s just politicians who are failing to realise this.

Conclusion

It is ridiculous to suggest an online poll has any correlation with real public opinion. Emotionally heated issues such as gay marriage are always going to attract those who are emotionally invested in the debate and for the most part it is the outraged — the conservative minded who feel gay marriage will signal the end of civilisation.

The unreliability of online polls, indeed any self-selected poll has been noted before. However, media outlets without actual data are using these polls as if they have some validity. This in turns feeds into people’s biases which in turn doesn’t help fuel a productive public debate.

Functional exercise, functional body (move it or lose it)

How can functional training make you a better human?

As you get older there are several processes occurring that diminish your ability to move as you could 10, 15 and 20 years prior.

Muscles lose their elasticity, strength and flexibility. Joints become less mobile or less stable (depending on their function). All of this adds up to less physical wellbeing.

The symptoms are often made worse by your body’s “history”. Something I heard a few years ago from a 90 year old man really struck me. He said “every bump gets recorded”. His contention was that, while the body can heal from knocks, when one is older those aches and pains come back to haunt us.

Modern society doesn’t help either — sitting down in hunched positions hour-after-hour, day-after-day ultimately trains the body into bad postures and poor function. We sit down for hours, use escalators when we could use the stairs and we slump down on couches for a few more hours to end the day. In short, everyday life is training us to be in bad shape.

strength as a skill versus strength for “show”

Functional strength is more than just about strength in the traditional sense (“look how much I can lift”). Functional strength is primarily about training the nervous system. Renowned trainer and Kettlebell guru Pavel Tsatsouline calls this “greasing the groove”. In other words, strength is muscle recruitment in the correct sequences trained repetitively. Strength is a skill.

This is why athletes train radically differently to the average gym goer. Professional athletes typically get functional movement screening to see where there are deficiencies in their joint mobility, strength and flexibility.

Because athletes repeat specific sequences of movements at great speed and with great force generation, the risk of injury is always lingering. Minimising that risk while maximising the efficiency of movement is what modern physical training has become for athletes. This is the lesson ordinary humans can take from the pros.

Degeneration interrupted

One thing that always raises my eyebrows is the tendency of trainers to take on clients and give them a vanilla programme to help the client reach their fitness goals. For instance, it is not always a good idea to put a person straight into a weight training program when they can’t even move their bodies properly.

The purest form of functional training is bodyweight training — probably the most underrated form of training there is. What a lot of people don’t realise is that a lot of guys that are gym strong but not functionally strong. This because moving an external load (barbells/dumbbells) is vastly different from moving your own body. Also, external loads can force the body to move through unhelpful lines.

Someone may well be able to squat a 300 pounds but they probably can’t do a one-legged squat for 1 rep let alone 6-10 reps. As a general rule, why not getting people to train their bodies to move themselves properly before overloading the body with weights?

Relics of a bygone era

In the move from aesthetic, bodybuilding paradigms to a more functional, athletic training ethos, there are inevitable casualties and cast offs. Some exercises — once thought to be staples in any gym goers trick bag — are now relics of the past. Others are borderline but tough to get rid of because they’re so ingrained in the collective psyche.

Leg extensions, leg presses, peck deck flyes, chest flyes, machine squats, leg curls and bicep curls (heresy!) are often ignored by athletes. Why? For the most part, these exercises take the target muscle out of a position of strength, compromising the ability of the muscle to perform as it functions normally. Leg extensions and leg curls are two prime examples and are largely useless to athletes.

Functional rules of thumb

Muscles are evolved to fire holistically — as part of a sequence. In the previous example, both leg extensions and leg curls take quadriceps and hamstrings out of their strength and put them into isolation. This is also a way to create functional imbalances, which is a surefire way to invite injuries.

So with all that in mind, here are a few guidelines:

• Forget isolation exercises (movements that involve one joint and isolates specific muscles).
• Discard the body part approach to program design a take movement-centric approach instead.
• Address structural and movement asymmetries.
• Use bodyweight training to condition muscles , joints and tendons to move through full ranges of motion (a full depth squat is difficult for many people). Train the body to move through natural body motions.
• Use progressive bodyweight exercise to increase functional strength (see Paul Wade’s excellent book: “Convict Conditioning” for more on progressing basic bodyweight movements. View some sample workouts).

The vision

I want to be clear about the last point — developing functional strength via bodyweight training. The main point is thus: If you can’t mover your own weight properly then that’s where you need to start.

Bodyweight training will help you move properly, through full ranges of motion and stave off body degradation that happens as one gets older. Getting stronger in these movements will enable you to be the best human being you can be while avoiding the kind of self-induced “paralysis” that hits most people later in life. Move it or lose it is the name of the game.

The functional fitness revolution

Fitness and health is such a massive industry that the conventional advice is often never questioned. Despite this, a quiet revolution is happening in the fitness industry.

[This is the first in a 2-part series of posts on how the fitness industry has changed and how you can avoid bad advice and hokey marketing gimmicks].

It was bound to happen. After the heyday of the muscle bound bodybuilding hulks in the 1970s and 80s, physical training had to change.

When I began looking into training and physical fitness in the mid-1990s, pretty much the only resources you could find were of a bodybuilding nature. Many fitness programmes relied on weight training and a bit of aerobics to develop that cardiac-respiratory system (aka heart and lungs!)

While all this is great and the average guy or gal could improve their fitness, these routines were limited in scope and therefore may not have been entirely appropriate for the average gym goer.

Recalibrating fitness goals

Muscle growth in and of itself is great but there must be something more to training than that. Whether this was an overt observation of the fitness community or not I can’t be sure of. What I do know is that sports science and the study of kinesiology (how humans move) have come along way since weight training really took off in the period from the 1950s–70s.

The fitness industry as a whole owes a lot to the pioneers of bodybuilding and strength training. The musclebound hulk like figures (such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno and Lee Haney) were poster boys for an entire generation of trainers.

Bodybuilding is awesome, but in some respects it is a victim of its own success. The huge bulging over-bloated bodybuilders that have become the norm now are such extreme outliers that most guys don’t want to look that way, don’t have the time and simply the perseverance to develop such massive physiques.

Muscle isn’t the end of the story

At heart, all guys are secretly wannabe superheroes. While bodybuilders no longer represent the ideal that most guys are after, professional athletes do inspire awe and respect in the general populace.

It is hard not to admire a Usain Bolt, a Sidney Crosby or a Lebron James. These guys inspire awe in what they can do, rather than in how massive their biceps are.

There’s nothing wrong with big biceps and this post is not an attack on bodybuilding. I’m keen to bloat my chest, shoulders and biceps through training as much as the next guy. An awesome physique is well, awesome! But there is something about a guy who can move like a cheetah, jump like Mike or power his way through opponents like a charging rhino.

What is this functional buzzword anyway?

Modern life combined with the growing realisation that training for just muscular development has led to this functional fitness revolution.

So functional simply refers to the idea that the average person can reach their physique potential in size and ability. Guys can be powerful athletes; ladies can be nimble like a dancer. In fact, these are powerful reasons for why training has gone the functional way — people play sports, hike, cycle, mountain bike and run marathons. Unfortunately for many of us, we spend hours a day de-training ourselves for basic movement by sitting hunched over desks or other suboptimal arrangements.

The sea change in the way training is done can in part be attributed to a number of popular gym disciplines: Pilates, Yoga, Military training approaches and the emergence of Crossfit. Popular exercise magazines are Men’s Health/Women’s Health and Women’s Fitness/Men’s Fitness magazines. There are many more but these publications capture the essence of fitness as a lifestyle rather than an aesthetic only.

Resources

• Mayo Clinic resources on functional training
• Functional Movement Systems
  
• Gray Cook — Functional Movement Screening

There’s a Yes Music podcast! (And it’s great)

Few people know what progressive rock music is, but if you’re new to the genre or a diehard prog rock fanatic, the Yes Music podcast is the place to go.

Subtitled “One fan’s exploration of the greatest progressive rock band of all time”, Kevin Mulryne and his Yes Music podcast delves into the band Yes, their 40+ years of producing landmark albums and makes for a pleasant end to a busy week.

Tales from Topographic Oceans — Yes would often rely on artist Roger Dean to create the scenery Yes’ music would invoke.

Yes for the uninitiated

Who are Yes and why should we tune into a podcast about them? Quite simply, they are a band of uber-musicians that have rarely followed trends and in the process produced some of the most elaborately beautiful compositions in the history of music.

That sounds like a big call — I mean, there is an awful lot of music produced throughout human history. I like to think that if the great composers of the past were around in the 20th century, they would have ended up being in bands like Yes.

For example, head over to the interweb, fire up Spotify and listen to the ethereal 18 minute Close to the Edge track on the album of the same name. I challenge anyone to find a more dazzling and effecting composition from a rock band. Don’t stop there, keep the album playing and take in the beautiful And You And I — a long time staple in the Yes setlist and a stunning piece in its own right.

Yes, like the prog rock genre they helped pioneer, defy an off the shelf categorisation. Indeed, progressive music is characterised by exceptional musicianship and more elaborate,  often unpredictable arrangements. This fact by itself is what makes the genre so intriguing — you can never predict how one album will sound from an artist’s previous release.

This is certainly true of Yes. In a span from 1971-1980, Yes produced what purists would call “classic Yes”, redefining the genre and blazing the trail for generations of musicians  — not just progressive rockers. However, the procession of albums made critics and fans of the band scratch their heads; what ere Yes going to next?? This evident in the fact that no one saw the band producing a record like 1974′s Tales from Topographic Oceans — a double LP comprised of four 20 minute pieces.

 A grand concept

Yes is more of a grander, transcendent concept rather than any one collection of musicians. The band has had so many lineup changes throughout the decades that it is sometimes hard to keep track of, but the classic lineup (and most enduring) would be:

• Jon Anderson — vocals and arguably the single most important factor in the Yes soundscape
• Chris Squire — co-founder of the group with Jon Anderson
• Steve Howe — probably the most underrated guitarist ever
• Rick Wakeman — an extraordinarily talented keyboard player and prolific composer
• Alan White — took the reins admirably after Bill Bruford left the band in 1972.

The band underwent its most dramatic change in the 1980s with the introduction of now film score composer Trevor Rabin, producing probably their most well-known hit Owner of a Lonely Heart
on the stadium rock sounding 90125 album.

About the Yes Music Podcast

Having the exciting proposition of spending some iTunes vouchers that I got for Christmas, I plugged “Yes” in the search bar and amongst the enormous back catalogue, the search returned a podcast.

“A Yes Music Podcast,” I exclaimed! Intrigued I had to give it a listen and impressed I was. The host, Kevin Mulryne, is based in the West Midlands region of the UK (Stratford-upon-Avon), which lends a degree of street cred for me as it is hard to imagine a podcast dedicated to Yes without a soothing British accent.

So the podcast is an excellent introduction for people looking to find out about Yes and their extensive back catalogue. Kevin’s take on the 1996 Yes double album Keys to Ascension was a sufficient sales pitch for me and I dashed off at once to purchase it via the iTunes store.

Kevin’s passion is undeniable and his descriptions of Yes songs often evoke powerful emotions for me, a fan who shares that passion and knows exactly what Kevin means when he says “and that my friends is a Yes champagne moment”.

If you’re a Yes fan, or curious as to why there are numerous fans claiming that Yes music is in class of its own, listen to Kevin’s spellbinding exploration into the greatest progressive rock band of all time. There is no better Yes resource around.

Get off the new year’s resolution merry-go-round

It’s 5 days into the new year and we’re already tempted to cave in on our newly formed, I’m really gonna do this resolutions. Before you get sucked back into the vortex of bad habits, I’ve got a few ideas that might help.

This year, I only have two resolutions — to adopt two very simple principles that will open up the world of possibility in everything else I want to achieve this year. Let’s call these meta-resolutions.

After much failure and frustration in my own life, I realised the problem is busy-ness. In other words, I was doing stuff but ultimately progressing very slowly. This was true in my career, playing the guitar and finances.

The meta-resolutions in a nutshell:

• Cut your options down — focus on a few things
• Quit looking for the magic bullet

Too many options

Realise that too many things — be they books, websites, audio and video material or whatever — is ultimately a distraction. To make progress, cut your options down to a few resources, and focus on reinforcing the fundamentals of what you’re trying to learn/achieve.

This is the root meaning of the word “decision” — literally to cut off. The more “stuff” the more time you’ll spend sifting through it rather than actually learning.

Psychological research has shown clearly that it is not always a good idea for a company to expand its product line. There comes a point too many options makes it hard for the consumer to make that snap decision in the store, therefore the decision can be delayed or even completely withdrawn.

Cut to the chase

1. Find out what the fundamentals are: the 20% you can focus on critical content — those actions that will result in 80% of successful results. (This takes a bit of upfront research).
2. Take everything you have on the subject you’re wanting to learn and choose the top 3. These resources will cover off all your critical content and action steps.
3. Focus on these resources exclusively.
   

It may not be necessary to focus on everything a particular resource has to offer — in fact you can cull even further by finding the absolute essential chapters and action points that will contribute the most to your progress.

Then stop searching for more. If something good comes up, great, but once you’ve decided what is most important, make sure you focus most of your time on that. Stay on the path!

There is no magic bullet

It is human nature to look for the one thing that will change the game but this kind of thinking is illusory. The Next Big Thing (NBT) can at best give you a new idea or approach but the problem  remains: you still need to take action.

Ultimately, the search for the NBT is fruitless because (a) it doesn’t exist, and (b) all you’re really doing is delaying action (and most probably using the search as an excuse for why you’re not succeeding).

The neediness cycle
You see, another thing humans are great at is doing a bunch of stuff that makes us feel better but ultimately is not leading to our goals at all. Once in place, this self-fulfilling failure cycle doesn’t stop. As long as you continue to think there is something better, the more you’ll fall into trap of seeking. and reinforcing that failure cycle. This distracts from what you should be doing which is using what you have and extracting as much juice out of it as you can.Positive momentum
By focusing on the fundamentals right now (which you can usually find in one or two good resources) you create a foundation for success as well as the habits of success in your chosen area. Quit searching for more and start using what you have.

The perfect consumer
Marketers love people in the neediness cycle, in fact they actively try to amplify that neediness. It seems to work.

Central to the chase for the NBT is a scarcity mentality. People that exhibit this form of neediness are essentially saying “what I have isn’t good enough, I need something else”. As mentioned earlier, this insecurity is the symptom of something that “more stuff” cannot fix.

If you’ve seen the TV show Hoarders knows the last point too well, but we all do hoard to a certain extent.

The solution: Use what you have

Whatever you want to do, chances are there are tonnes of material and experience you can draw inspiration and knowledge from. The basics are always present and while approaches vary in scope and effectiveness, the next ebook, next course, next book, next new way is mostly a marketing gimmick and definitely a distraction from what you should be doing now. It simply isn’t true.

So use what you have. It is (often) enough and when you’re in the position to say you’ve conquered your present resources, then you can expand your knowledge.

Can we at least learn something from this Mayan apocalypse mumbo jumbo?

The failed Mayan apocalypse ramblings could be a positive awakening for humanity, but it won’t be. Read on for why I’m not optimistic.

Sorry but I can’t not talk about the supposed Mayan apocalypse hubbub. I just think that we can learn some lessons from this whole thing. I mean, we laughed at Harold Camping for his absurd pronouncements about the end of the world last year (twice as the math was slightly off).

For starters, the Mayans never made such a prophecy. Even if they did — so what!? The obsession with what the Mayans may or may not have said/thought seems in part to be due to the romantic (false) notion that ancient societies were in some sort of wonderful place, in harmony with nature and the cosmos.

My basic premise

Claims such as those made about a mysterious Planet X destroying the Earth or any other apocalyptic ramblings fail because those making/believing such claims are arriving at conclusions from a faulty epistemology.

Check this list of failed predictions of apocalyptic events (Wikipedia).

Remember, ancient peoples were ignorant of many basic facts that we take for granted today. In fact, you only have to go back a few hundred years to see how primitive our collective human understanding really was. It wasn’t long ago we had no idea of: the germ theory of disease; sun centered solar system; expanding universe; DNA and heritability; evolution and the origin of species; radio waves; electricity; gravity… We were blind to so much.

Misconceptions galore — A Primer on Knowledge

A claim I was presented with recently went as follows (paraphrasing):

“At one time, the research of the day showed that the Earth was the centre of the universe”.

I hear similar statements from people quite a bit. The idea that science is somehow flawed because our understanding of the world was primitive at one point is really unconvincing.

Claims such as “the Earth is at the centre of the universe” stem from primitive intuitions based on limited data — such claims come before research is done.

Remember, science isn’t a “thing”. The word is a noun for a process of fact checking and observation. At one point knowledge on a subject is minimal. The scientific method helps us grow a body of reliable knowledge and increases our understanding. This is what makes science a reliable and valid epistemology.

Therefore (and this is the key point): Human understanding improves over time.

That means, we cast off that which is shown to be false and accept that which we find to be true.

Science has allowed us to open our eyes, lift the veil of ignorance and reveal a world that rich and wonderful and even more important — science has shown us that it is comprehensible, even to our limited brains.

“But science changes over time”

Wrong. Knowledge changes over time. Science is just the method we use to acquire knowledge/discard hypotheses. This is a good thing.

The Mayans had a primitive understanding of reality

The Mayans, like all ancient cultures were superstitious, attributing all manner of natural phenomena to gods and mystical beings. Human progress has been a long history of superstitions being replaced by real knowledge and understanding.

I think we can learn some valuable lessons from these facts about our collective understanding of the universe in which we live, and yet another failed end of the world hypothesis:

• Knowledge improves over time.
• The process by which we accumulate claims has changed: We now can produce reliable information about reality through validation and testing.
• Ancient cultures did not validate claims through a stringent process of checking facts.
• They didn’t have sophisticated tools to investigate reality and therefore couldn’t be expected to ask better questions.
• Ancient cultures were largely ignorant of basic facts about the natural order.
• Ancient cultures did not have privileged information that we don’t know now (as much as we would like to romanticise and claim they did).

Ergo… We must ask ourselves, “How does the ancient claim/philosophy square with our understanding of nature today?”

Ignorance and default thinking

People can still choose to believe that lightning is still mandated by higher powers and that cyclones and earthquakes are sent by gods but this thinking is now optional. When people didn’t know better they defaulted to the supernatural claim. That’s just part of being human.

Conclusion — why nothing will change

If human knowledge improves over time then we can’t look back into the deep past and expect to see great understanding of reality. Even if an ancient culture claimed something about today, that isn’t a reason to believe it (again the Mayans didn’t make an apocalyptic claim, people interpret it that way today).

Here is a prediction: Those invested in the Mayan apocalypse nonsense will probably not change their beliefs even after yet another failed attempt to predict the end of the world. That is just human nature, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias in action

What we will see is more ad hoc justifications on and beyond 22 December 2012.

Then the next craze will hit town and the we will be entertained/bemused at yet another prediction stemming from flawed epistemology and more lame justifications.

Shortcutting the shortcut and learning how to learn

On the eve of the release of Tim Ferriss’ new book on effective learning — The 4 Hour Chef — I thought it timely to reflect on what I’ve learned about learning (usually by struggling) and from Tim’s example.

Experimentation is the key

Why has Tim Ferriss become the “guru” of learning, usually by unconventional methods? Two reasons I see: (1) he challenges assumed wisdom and, (2) he thinks like a scientist. In short, Tim is an experimenter.

Most people spend a lot of time Doing, Contemplating and Preparing but don’t go the extra step to Experimenting. It’s great learning a language in your bedroom or on the train but it’s all for nought if no experimenting is done.

Want to learn German? Go to Berlin and speak predominantly German. Keen to be a web designer? Start building websites (for free at first if you like). Become an accomplished chef? Start cooking and experimenting with new techniques, ingredients and cultural elements.

What stops you?

What I realised from (being myself) and watching others go about learning new skills and moving into new lines of work, is that there is this inherent security about stuffing up.

It is no doubt a type of perfectionist complex as well as this need to not fail. Not failing is a problematic place to be. While we’re trying hard not to fail we’re not prepared to experiment. No experimenting, no learning.

Doing, Contemplating, Preparing, Experimenting

You can spend a lifetime Doing things, Contemplating positive change, Preparing to do it and ending up miserable at the lack of progress.

“You can give someone the prescription but if they don’t take the pill the prescription doesn’t matter. So how do you get people to take the pill?” – Tim Ferriss

I’m keen but what to do I do now?

One thing Tim Ferriss is famous for is using the 80/20 rule to learn skills quickly. Known as Pareto’s Law — so named after the Italian economist that brought the idea to prominence — is simply that some activities are suboptimal (a waste of time) because the benefits gained from doing these activities contributes very little to the overall result.

In other words (as a rule of thumb) — 80% of your results will come from 20% of the activities. The key then is in deciding what to do more of and what to cull.

This will come down to data as often times our intuitions/assumptions about what is effective are flat wrong. That and there is a part in all of us that wants to feel like we’re doing something and getting ahead even when we aren’t (doing things but going nowhere).

Part of the data gathering can come from experts. Tim likes to look at the outliers — the people who are at the upper end of the bell curve who are getting insanely good results. How can exceptional people inform the learning process?

The second part of the data collection process is rigorous note taking and tracking of results? What did I do that worked? What didn’t?
Test assumptions and common “wisdom”. Ideas that are popular aren’t necessarily fact-based.

Finally, what does the science say? In experimenting and researching for the 4 Hour Body, Tim spent a lot of time finding researchers and scientists working on projects that hadn’t passed through the meat grinder of the scientific process but had shown promise.

This is a radical commitment to find cutting edge scientific approaches to body and performance enhancement. A particular goal may not require that kind of research, but the collective knowledge of humanity is vast, growing all the time and more accessible than it ever has been so use it!

Further resources

• Hour_Everything_How_Tim_Ferriss_Tracks_His_Life’s_Data