George 6: Starting a World War

While still chopping a road through the wilderness, looking for a place to make a desparate stand against the French, George Washington wrote letters to the Governors of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland asking for help. The Governor and Assembly of Pennsylvania wasted time arguing about how any money appropriated should be raised.

Over and over in his military career George would experience frustrations like this with weak colonial governments, weak Governors, and militia units that felt they had the right to go home whenever they felt like it. By the time of the Revolution – still 20 years away - these experiences made George a firm advocate – unlike some other Founding Fathers - of strong central government, a strong executive, and a standing army.

In May George had his men start building a circular pallisade he called Fort Necessity at a place named Great Meadows. George's ally from his diplomatic expedition a few months earlier, the Seneca chief Half-king, sent him a message that the French army was on the move in his direction. His old guide Christopher Gist arrived to tell him that 50 French soldiers had passed his house 15 miles away. On the journey Gist had seen signs of perhaps the same group only five miles from George's fort.

It looks like George was spoiling for a fight at this point and he took 40 men to Half-king's camp. Here there were more signs of French soldiers on the move and George and his ally set out to track them down.

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The young leader and his men, along with the Half-king and his men, moved stealthily through the forest searching for the French. Then..., well, then we don't know for sure what happened. Here is our chance to act like real historians and analyze bits of incompatible evidence. Check out the accounts of what happened at Jumonville Glen and then try to figure out what "really" happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumonville_Glen

Based on my studies this is what I think: George was in the lead when he spotted a group of French soldiers. Some of the French ran for their guns. I'm quite sure George would have ordered his men to fire first. According to his report to Dinwiddie he set out that day with the intention of attacking so he was ready to fight. The French returned fire and the gun battle blazed for several minutes. People were killed and wounded on both sides. The Indians seem to have stayed hidden in the woods for a time.

Then Jumonville, the leader of the French, although wounded, made his voice heard and got everyone to stop shooting. He said he had a written message from the French to the English. I believe George would have had this message brought to him so somone who spoke French could translate it for him. At this point the impatient Indians burst from the woods and started killing the wounded French and scalping the dead. The uninjured French soldiers would have rushed forward to surrender to the colonists to escape from the Indians. When George realized what was happening he would have rushed forward to stop the Indians, but not before they killed Jumonville who may have been on a diplomatic mission similar to the one George had gone on a few months before.

This fight on May 28, 1754, was George's first combat action. These were the first shots in the French and Indian War that would last nine years in North America and of the Seven Years War that would spread around the globe.

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Note:

My biographical study of George Washington was intended for my own education but I thought I would also like to share what I have learned here on my blog. The main sources of information I used were:

First, "George Washington: A Biography" by Washington Irving. I like this one because it was written by one of our early American literary masters and because it was written so long ago that Irving often mentions talking with people who had actually seen George.

Second, "Washington: An abridgement in one volume By Richard Harwell of the seven-volume George Washington" By Douglas Southall Freeman. I wanted the complete seven volume set but that is not yet available on Kindle. Too bad. Still, this abridgement is a great work, packed with information.

Third, "Washington: A Life" By Ron Chernow. This is an excellent modern biography that came out in 2010, helping me to get some of the more recent research missing from the older biographies.

***

Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

Did the polls in 2016 GET IT WRONG?

I am interested in cases where almost everyone seems to believe something that is actually NOT true.

An interesting example from the 2016 election is that most people seem to believe that: THE POLLS WERE WRONG! I have heard Trump supporters say this and I have heard Trump opponents say this. It is accepted by so many people on both sides of the political divide that it might seem crazy to even challenge it now.

But maybe these are the beliefs - the ones most widely and unquestioningly accepted - that we most need to challenge.

So is this belief true? Were the polls really wrong in 2016?

Let's consider what the polls were saying just before the election. Here is an article that came out the day before the election that discusses the latest poll results. It is called “Presidential Election Polls for November 7, 2016” and appeared in Newsweek.

According to this article “Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leads her Republican rival Donald Trump by 2.5 points, according to the Real Clear Politics average of most state and national polls. Clinton has 46.8 percent of voter support compared to Trump's 44.3 percent.”

The article also says that “Forecasts still show Clinton winning the election. “FiveThirtyEight” shows Clinton with a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election, while Trump has a 34.5 percent chance of victory.”

***

[So why did Hillary lose in 2016? Read this new book to find out.]

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***

There is additional information in this article but I will focus on the two extracts above to evaluate the claim that “the polls were wrong.”

Before we look at the results of the election I would like to consider four points about the information above: what polls do, what “chance” means, the danger of lazy language, and what did these polls actually measure?

1. What do polls really do?

First, what do polls really do? Well, for one thing, polls do NOT predict the future. Polls tell you what answers people gave at a certain point in time. When you take polls at different points in time you get different results. If people who say “the polls were wrong in 2016” mean that the polls predicted Hillary would win but then Hillary lost, then that just means these people don't understand what polls do.

According to the article we quote from above Hillary had 46.8 percent of voter support at the time the polls reported on were taken. That does not PREDICT she will get 46.8 percent of the vote at some later date. If the election were still several weeks away many things might change, and many voters might change their minds, between the poll and the election. On the other hand, it is probably logical to assume that, if nothing significant has changed between the polls and the election, then Hillary will probably get about as much support as she had in the poll. But this is an ASSUMPTION based partly on the poll and partly on the belief that nothing has changed since the poll. The poll ITSELF does not predict anything about the future.

2. What does "chance" mean?

Second, what does “chance” mean? The article we are studying here says that Hillary has a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election. This does not mean that Hillary will win! It means exactly what it says, Hillary has a 65.5 percent chance of winning.

Let's illustrate this with an example. Suppose I give you two coins and a cup. I tell you to shake up the coins in the cup and then toss them out onto a table. I tell you “there is a 75 percent chance that there will be at least one head showing when you toss these coins onto the table.” You toss the coins and we see there is no head showing. If you then say, “Ha ha. Your prediction was wrong” you would be mistaken. I did not predict there would be a head showing, I just said there was a 75 percent chance that there would be a head showing and that statement is absolutely true even if, on any particular toss, no head is showing.

This is the same thing that happened to forecasters in the 2016 election. The polls themselves did not predict anything. The forecasts, based partly on polls and partly on other information, did not predict anything either. They did try to calculate the “chance” or “probability” that Hillary would win, and the fact that Hillary lost does not prove those calculations were wrong any more than getting no head when tossing two coins proves that there is NOT a 75 percent chance of seeing at least one head.

[Note: One big difference between tossing coins and having elections is that we can toss the coins many times to see if the calculated 75 percent chance of seeing at least one head really works out over many tries, while we cannot repeat an election many times to see if the calculated probability was correct. Still, the principle is the same. If the probability of something happening, like Hillary winning, is calculated as 65.5 percent, the mere fact that she did not win does not prove that the calculated probability was incorrect.]

3. The danger of lazy language

Third, the danger of lazy language. One of the statements from the article we quoted above is “Forecasts still show Clinton winning the election.” This certainly looks like a prediction that Hillary will win. Notice first, that this statement is not saying that polls show Clinton winning, but rather that forecasts show Clinton winning. But is even that LITERALLY true?

The statement above is immediately followed by another statement that explains what the author means. “FiveThirtyEight shows Clinton with a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election, while Trump has a 34.5 percent chance of victory.” In other words, saying that forecasts show Clinton winning just means that forecasters have calculated that Clinton has a higher probability of winning. As we showed above, even if Hillary loses, which she did, that does not prove that the calculation of her probability of winning was incorrect.

The problem here is just that people sometimes save time by using lazy language. Instead of saying the more accurate “Forecasts calculate that Hillary has a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election” sometimes people take a shortcut and say the less accurate “Forecasts show Hillary winning the election.” We have to be on the lookout for this kind of lazy language and it should usually be fairly obvious from the context of what we are reading.

4. What did the 2016 polls actually measure?

Fourth, what does the poll actually measure? The poll results quoted above, from just before the election, are talking about popular vote and not Electoral vote. It is natural to assume that whoever wins the popular vote will also win the Electoral vote because that is what usually happens. But it does not ALWAYS happen and 2016 was one of those unusual years when the winner of the popular vote did not also win the Electoral vote.

So here again, the fact that Hillary lost the Electoral vote on election day does not mean that a poll measuring popular vote a few days before the election, was wrong.

With all of these technical preliminaries out of the way we are finally ready to look at what actually happened in the election. According to the American Presidency Project Hillary ended up with 48.2 percent of the vote and Trump got 46.1 percent of the vote. What did the last polls say just before the election? According to the article we are discussing the average of poll results was 46.8 percent for Hillary and 44.3 percent for Trump.

This is pretty close agreement between the polls and the election, isn't it?

• The polls showed Hillary at 46.8 percent and she actually got 48.2 percent. A difference of just 3%.
• The polls showed Trump at 44.3 percent and he actually got 46.1%. A difference of just 4%.
• The polls showed Hillary ahead by 2.5 percentage points and at the time of the election she led by 2.1 percentage points.

Anyone who says the polls in 2016 “got it wrong” should take a close look at these numbers. The polls got it right! What caused the surprise was an incorrect assumption that whoever wins the popular vote will also win the Electoral vote.

***

[So why did Hillary lose in 2016? Read this new book to find out what her explanation is.]

[If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

***

Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

George 5: Preparing to Fight the French

George Washington's journal of his diplomatic mission to the French in the Winter of 1753-54 was printed and distributed throughout the colonies and in England. By the time he was 22 years old then, George was already famous. The journal warned the British of French intentions in the Ohio Valley and paved the way for the Seven Year's War between the two great empires.

George's mission to the French had also demonstrated two of the characteristics that would make him great: courage and perseverance. He had dealt with difficult frontiersman, scheming French officers, and both friendly and hostile Indians. He had endured physical exhaustion, freezing cold, and heavy rain and snow. He had been almost shot, almost drowned, and almost frozen. But through everything that happened there is no sign that George ever deviated from his course, ever took his eyes off the goal, ever hesitated to take the next step forward, ever considered - even for a second - giving up.

In many ways George was a normal man. In some ways he even fell short of the skills or accomplishments enjoyed by other Founding Fathers. But what he demonstrated on this diplomatic expedition, and what he would show many times in later years was that when it came to courage and perseverance he did not fall short and he was not normal at all, but rather extraordinary. These are the same traits that would later carry him through eight years of revolution and then another eight years as President.

***

[This is one of the best single volume biographies of our greatest President.]

[If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

***

Now that imperial conflict seemed inevitable, Governor Dinwiddie decided to raise an entire regiment and send it into the wilderness to thwart French schemes. George Washington was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. He would join the regiment as second-in-command.

The Governor understood that the race in the Spring of 1754 would be to see whether the French or the English would first reach the fork of the Ohio – the point where the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio River. George Washington himself – in his Journal – had described this spot as ideal for a fort. When the French moved in the Spring they would undoubtedly find the same spot and reach the same conclusion.

Dinwiddie sent a Captain Trent with one company of soldiers (about 50 to 100 men) to reach the fork first and start building a fort. George set out with two more companies (about 150 men) on April 2, planning to join Captain Trent and take command of the new fort. Along the way George and his men would prepare a road for the regimental commander, Colonel Joshua Fry, who would follow along with an additional three companies and some artillery.

At a place called Will's Creek, far from the fork, George was surprised to find Captain Trent, and horrified five days later when Trent's men came straggling in. They reported that a force of 1000 French soldiers had arrived at the fork to seize their half-finished fort and drive them away. Trent's men had seen enough and headed for home. George heard rumors that more French were on the way with 600 Indians.

Far from home, with evidence that he would be outnumbered more than 10 to 1, George started looking around for a place to build his own fort.

***

Note:
My biographical study of George Washington was intended for my own education but I thought I would also like to share what I have learned here on my blog. The main sources of information I used were:

First, "George Washington: A Biography" by Washington Irving. I like this one because it was written by one of our early American literary masters and because it was written so long ago that Irving often mentions talking with people who had actually seen George.

Second, "Washington: An abridgement in one volume By Richard Harwell of the seven-volume George Washington" By Douglas Southall Freeman. I wanted the complete seven volume set but that is not yet available on Kindle. Too bad. Still, this abridgement is a great work, packed with information.

Third, "Washington: A Life" By Ron Chernow. This is an excellent modern biography that came out in 2010, helping me to get some of the more recent research missing from the older biographies.

***

Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

How to Think #14: Ferison

The 14^th syllogism we will study is called Ferison.

In symbols Ferison looks like this:
No M's are P's.
Some M's are S's.
Therefore, some S's are not P's.

An example of Ferison in words would look like this:
No one who commits war crimes is worthy of respect.
Some people who have committed war crimes were soldiers.
Therefore, some soldiers are not worthy of respect.

If someone says all S's are P's – maybe, for example, that "All liberals are stupid," - you might think that is too extreme to be true. Surely there must be SOME exceptions; surely there must be SOME liberals who are intelligent, or, in other words, it must be that some S's are not P's.

You can use the Ferison syllogism to construct a counter argument. You want to end up with the conclusion "Therefore, some liberals are NOT stupid" which has the same pattern as the conclusion of a Ferison syllogism – "Therefore, some S's are not P's" - so now we just need to find an appropriate first and second premise to complete our syllogism.

The first premise of a Ferison syllogism is "No M's are P's." Given the conclusion we are trying to prove, the P in this line stands for "stupid." So we have "No M's are stupid." Now we just have to think of some group "M" that has no stupid members. How about Nobel Prize winners? That would give us a very reasonable sounding first premise, "No Nobel Prize winners are stupid."

So far we have:
No Nobel Prize winners are stupid.
Some M's are S's.
Therefore, some liberals are NOT stupid.

In the syllogism we are creating M stand's for Nobel Prize winners and S stands for liberals. Substituting these into the second premise we get "Some Nobel Prize winners are liberals."

Our final syllogism is:
No Nobel Prize winners are stupid.
Some Nobel Prize winners are liberals.
Therefore, some liberals are NOT stupid.

This is the valid syllogism Ferison so if the premises are true then the conclusion must be true. We chose the first premise because it seemed obviously true. By doing a little research we can determine if the second premise is true. Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman both won Nobel Prizes in economics and both are generally believed to be liberals so it would seem the second premise is true as well as the first.

Based on this syllogism we conclude that the person who said "All liberals are stupid" is wrong. Our syllogism actually proves that "Some liberals are NOT stupid."

***

Here is a good book to start learning how to think smarter and argue smarter.

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Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

The Vision of John McCain

Today is the funeral of a great American statesman, John McCain.

In the political environment of 2018 he had an unusually unifying and moral vision of America. He left us glimpses of that vision in his last book, "The Restless Wave."

He wrote:

"This wondrous land shared its treasures and ideals and shed its blood to help make another, better world. And as we did we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous...."

I don't know the details of McCain's foreign policy views but from this statement I believe he knew that business is important, but that everything in the world is not business. Human beings and friends and neighbors and allies are not businesses, and the relationships between friends and neighbors and allies are not business relationships.

Helping other countries doesn't mean we are losing, it means we are investing in a better future for all of us. When a friend or an ally needs help you don't try to calculate how much profit you are going to make, you calculate how much you can afford to give, and then you give it, trusting that everyone will be better off when you do the right thing.

He wrote:

"To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than to solve problems is unpatriotic."

Here McCain encourages us to stay involved in the world, to work together with other people, to spend less time looking for people to blame and more time looking for solutions and ways to make our country and our world better for everyone.

He wrote:

"We don't build walls to freedom and opportunity, we tear them down."

This line probably has more than one meaning but surely one of them must be referring to the issue of undocumented immigration to the United States.

I think McCain is suggesting here that we should treat people coming to our borders, and the undocumented immigrants who already live here, with honor and respect. They are, after all, just like us, our brothers and our sisters who are seeking freedom and safety and prosperity for themselves and our children just as we do.

Maybe it is impossible to take all these people in, but even if that is so, there is no reason to hate them, or to be angry with them, or to fear them. Even if we have to turn them away there is nothing to prevent us from wishing them well, and treating them well.

And maybe the image of tearing down walls to freedom and opportunity means that we need to start working with countries like Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador to find mutually beneficial ways to help them become more prosperous and safe so the good people who live there don't need to leave their homes to find hope.

Maybe I am wrong about my interpretations here. John McCain was a Republican and I am a Democrat so I am sure we would have disagreed on many issues. But I feel certain that one part of McCain's vision was that the United States should always be a country where people respect each other enough to talk and to argue, to fight for what they believe in but to still find ways to compromise so that everyone in the country can all move forward together.

John McCain is gone. Let's hope his vision will never die.

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[This was Senator McCain's last book. A good chance to get to know a fallen hero. If you read it before I do please send me a review I can publish here.]

[If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

***

Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Wayne Gadway