Blogtrek

CNN misleads on the Shuttle

I heard that the shuttle Endeavour was going to launch tonight, but it may not because of bad weather in Spain, where the astronauts would have to land if trouble developed on takeoff. This made me wonder about the shuttle. I was going to walk out to a place in my development with a low southeastern horizon so I could see it take off. I had seen one of these before. But I could go out there and wait and wait and wait without knowing that it had been scrubbed at X minus 3 seconds. So I carried out a cellular phone and asked my wife to call me if a report on CNN says the mission is scrubbed. I took this extra measure to ensure that I see the shuttle. I stood out there a while and then my wife called me on the cellular phone. She said that CNN reported that the mission had been delayed to see if they could get better weather in Spain. So I walked back to the house to find out when they were going to launch it now. I was surprised to find instead that the shuttle launched! It was too late to go back. I was misled by an erroneous CNN report. It is all the more galling because later on CNN contradicted themselves by saying the shuttle launched.

This shows you can't trust the media any more. I asked my wife to call me if the shuttle was scrubbed as protection against waiting a long time for a shuttle that won't come. Instead, this prevented me from seeing the shuttle by getting me to leave the place before the shuttle was visible. It used to be that I could trust stations like CNN to tell the truth; I could have relied on it for information on the shuttle. But I can't. Since I can't, I feel I need to treat it as though they were going to do the worst against me. That results in this matrix game:

	CNN tells truth	CNN lies
trust CNN	see shuttle(10)	don't see shuttle(-20)
don't trust CNN	wait forever for shuttle(0)	see shuttle(10)

Game theory says then I should flip two coins. If both come up heads, I trust CNN; otherwise, I don't. CNN's most perverse strategy is to tell the truth 3/4 of the time and lie 1/4 of the time. This implies that the chance that I see the shuttle is (3/4)*(1/4) + (1/4)*(3/4) = 3/8 or 37.5%. The most probable outcome is to wait forever for the shuttle; actually, probably only 20 minutes. If I could fully trust CNN, the probability would be 100%. Amazing what a lack of trust can cost. Trust is lacking in our world today and sooner or later we will pay the penalty for it.

At least I helped someone see the shuttle. I sent a notice to an Internet group, someone noticed it there, looked for the shuttle and found it.