"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
1 day ago
Monday, May 30, 2011
Bring 'em Home
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Dear Human
This is good (click the pic to see the whole comic strip):
Tweeted by @michaelshermer. Webcomic by Zach Weiner at SMBC Comics.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
There but for the grace of God ...
Roger Ebert tweeted about this a day or so ago. It's a short film/documentary about the Salton Sea in California called The Accidental Sea:
The clip's only about 6 minutes, so take a look. Powerful stuff about the hubris with which we fuck with nature and how nature will ultimately fuck us back. Some of the scenery you will recognize if you've ever seen Into the Wild, as Chris McCandless' adventures led him to the Salton Sea for a time. I couldn't help but think of The World Without Us as well because of the manner in which the desert reclaims the land ... and quickly. One of my favorite lines from the clip:
And by this he means that basically anywhere we try to alter nature for our purposes, we are in danger of some push-back. We need to work in harmony as much as possible so as to mitigate these wild swings. This has been said before but it bears repeating: "Saving the planet" is really a misnomer. The planet doesn't need saved. It'll be just fine and will outlast us. We are merely a blip in its timeline. What we do need to do is make sure that we do our best to make it livable while we are here.
The clip's only about 6 minutes, so take a look. Powerful stuff about the hubris with which we fuck with nature and how nature will ultimately fuck us back. Some of the scenery you will recognize if you've ever seen Into the Wild, as Chris McCandless' adventures led him to the Salton Sea for a time. I couldn't help but think of The World Without Us as well because of the manner in which the desert reclaims the land ... and quickly. One of my favorite lines from the clip:
It's easy to look at the Salton Sea and say, 'Of course it failed' ... But I look at it and think 'there but for the grace of God go the rest of us'. (paraphrasing)
And by this he means that basically anywhere we try to alter nature for our purposes, we are in danger of some push-back. We need to work in harmony as much as possible so as to mitigate these wild swings. This has been said before but it bears repeating: "Saving the planet" is really a misnomer. The planet doesn't need saved. It'll be just fine and will outlast us. We are merely a blip in its timeline. What we do need to do is make sure that we do our best to make it livable while we are here.
"... in the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house - our houses." -- Alan Weisman in The World Without Us
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead ...
Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says
It's hilarious! Be sure to read the comments as well. They're even better than the article.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Going Green Update
Short of me getting into a completely different line of work and abandoning my company, I'm going to drive a lot of miles. Undesirable, but unavoidable at least for now. So, to make the best of it, we finally got a Prius today. 90% of my driving is city driving at about 40 - 45 mph and that is in the sweet spot of a Prius. At this speed and slower, it primarily runs as an electric car and thus gets some crazy good gas mileage. Our Hyundai that we traded in (may it rest in peace ... 186,000 miles) got pretty good gas mileage, about 30 in the city. With the Prius, I'm hoping to double that. I'll report back here after a month or so with my results. One of the nice things about the Prius is the on-screen readouts that report whether you are running from the gas engine or electric, or both and what your current MPG is. It's very easy to see how your driving habits, the road conditions, and even having the A/C on can affect the gas mileage. So count on me trying some "hypermileage" techniques.
The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris
Jeez ... I never blog. Gotta change that.
As I mentioned earlier, I just recently finished Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape.
Of the Four Horseman of "New Atheism", Harris is probably my favorite author. I've previously read his Letter to a Christian Nation, a very good book and I highly recommend it.
That book, as the title implies, is shorter and is a good introduction to Harris. The Moral Landscape is significantly more scholarly and incorporates a lot of research from Harris particular field of expertise, neuroscience, which he has a PhD in. In The Moral Landscape, Harris not only makes the compelling argument that morality can be defined scientifically but also takes on the criticism of atheists as being moral relativists. If anything, a morality that depends on the well-being of others, as his science-based morality does, is anything but. There are right and wrong answers to moral questions, completely independent of religion. For example, murder is not wrong because the Bible says it is. People would know it is wrong if there were no Bible. The Bible merely reflects many of the universal moral truths that we already know. When religion seeks to dictate morality outside of that is where it runs into problems. Now, obviously, his explanation is not as simple as mine, but that is the general gist of it.
One of the most important things I took from the book was that the morality of separate cultures is not necessarily equal and should not be respected as such. This is a valid criticism of many liberals and where the charge of moral relativism often comes from. As he says, "the moment we admit that we know anything about human well-being scientifically, we must admit that certain individuals or cultures can be absolutely wrong about it."
The "moral blindness in the name of 'tolerance'" allows "highly educated, secular, and otherwise well-intentioned people to pause thoughtfully ... before condemning practices like compulsory veling, genital excision, bride burning, forced marriage ..." This learned confusion is the same thing that blamed Salman Rushdie for his fatwa or the Danish cartoonists for the Mohammed controversy.
Other parts of the book delve into the neurological reasons for belief and why those who believe reason in a certain manner. Creationism and general Christian distrust of science can be explained by the fact that "people tend to seek evidence that confirms an hypothesis rather than evidence that refutes it. This strategy is known to produce frequent reasoning errors. Our bias toward belief may also explain the 'illusory-truth effect,' where mere exposure to a proposition, even when it was revealed to be false or attributed to an unreliable source, increases the likelihood that it will later be remembered as being true."
Why people initially pick up their beliefs is due to several factors that are "more emotional and social than strictly cognitive. Wishful thinking, self-serving bias, in-group loyalties, and frank self-deception can lead to monstrous departures from the norms of rationality. Most beliefs are evaluated against a background of other beliefs and often in the context of an ideology that a person shares with others. Consequently, people are rarely as open to revising their views as reason would seem to dictate."
People often have certain beliefs because they want to feel good or as Harris says, "to hew to a positive state of mind - to mitigate feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, or guilt ..." Because their happiness is dependent on those beliefs, any evidence that runs counter is ignored.
The ideas that he espouses here are not necessarily new, and I believe most of us already know them to be instinctively true, but he does a good job of establishing a scientific basis for studying and quantifying morality.
In my next post, I'm going to try and touch on some of the possible evolutionary reasons for belief and will also go further into Harris' criticism of noted science/religion reconciler Francis Collins.
As I mentioned earlier, I just recently finished Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape.
Of the Four Horseman of "New Atheism", Harris is probably my favorite author. I've previously read his Letter to a Christian Nation, a very good book and I highly recommend it.
That book, as the title implies, is shorter and is a good introduction to Harris. The Moral Landscape is significantly more scholarly and incorporates a lot of research from Harris particular field of expertise, neuroscience, which he has a PhD in. In The Moral Landscape, Harris not only makes the compelling argument that morality can be defined scientifically but also takes on the criticism of atheists as being moral relativists. If anything, a morality that depends on the well-being of others, as his science-based morality does, is anything but. There are right and wrong answers to moral questions, completely independent of religion. For example, murder is not wrong because the Bible says it is. People would know it is wrong if there were no Bible. The Bible merely reflects many of the universal moral truths that we already know. When religion seeks to dictate morality outside of that is where it runs into problems. Now, obviously, his explanation is not as simple as mine, but that is the general gist of it.
One of the most important things I took from the book was that the morality of separate cultures is not necessarily equal and should not be respected as such. This is a valid criticism of many liberals and where the charge of moral relativism often comes from. As he says, "the moment we admit that we know anything about human well-being scientifically, we must admit that certain individuals or cultures can be absolutely wrong about it."
The "moral blindness in the name of 'tolerance'" allows "highly educated, secular, and otherwise well-intentioned people to pause thoughtfully ... before condemning practices like compulsory veling, genital excision, bride burning, forced marriage ..." This learned confusion is the same thing that blamed Salman Rushdie for his fatwa or the Danish cartoonists for the Mohammed controversy.
Other parts of the book delve into the neurological reasons for belief and why those who believe reason in a certain manner. Creationism and general Christian distrust of science can be explained by the fact that "people tend to seek evidence that confirms an hypothesis rather than evidence that refutes it. This strategy is known to produce frequent reasoning errors. Our bias toward belief may also explain the 'illusory-truth effect,' where mere exposure to a proposition, even when it was revealed to be false or attributed to an unreliable source, increases the likelihood that it will later be remembered as being true."
Why people initially pick up their beliefs is due to several factors that are "more emotional and social than strictly cognitive. Wishful thinking, self-serving bias, in-group loyalties, and frank self-deception can lead to monstrous departures from the norms of rationality. Most beliefs are evaluated against a background of other beliefs and often in the context of an ideology that a person shares with others. Consequently, people are rarely as open to revising their views as reason would seem to dictate."
People often have certain beliefs because they want to feel good or as Harris says, "to hew to a positive state of mind - to mitigate feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, or guilt ..." Because their happiness is dependent on those beliefs, any evidence that runs counter is ignored.
The ideas that he espouses here are not necessarily new, and I believe most of us already know them to be instinctively true, but he does a good job of establishing a scientific basis for studying and quantifying morality.
In my next post, I'm going to try and touch on some of the possible evolutionary reasons for belief and will also go further into Harris' criticism of noted science/religion reconciler Francis Collins.
"We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach." -- Bertrand Russell
Friday, April 22, 2011
Saved! ... or not
I just finished Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape (a great book BTW) and I will review it later, probably doing several posts on different topics, but, in honor of Good Friday, I thought I'd tease with the following bon mot. Harris was speaking of Francis Collins, the head of the NIH and a scientist that Christians like to parade out when trying to say that religion and science are compatible, because Collins professes to be a Christian.
Thus, Collins’s faith is predicated on the claim that miracle stories of the sort that today surround a person like Sathya Sai Baba and do not even merit an hour on cable television somehow become especially credible when set in the prescientific religious context of the first-century Roman Empire, decades after their supposed occurrence, as evidenced by discrepant and fragmentary copies of copies of copies of ancient Greek manuscripts. It is on this basis that the current head of the NIH recommends that we believe the following propositions:
- Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.
- He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven” -- where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.
- Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truths ever revealed about the cosmos.
- Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.
- In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases, curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not), consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency.
Just how many scientific laws would be violated by this scheme? One is tempted to say “all of them.”
"... And you stare at me
In your Jesus Christ pose
Arms held out
Like you've been carrying a load
And you swear to me
You don't want to be my slave
But you're staring at me again
Like I need to be saved, saved ..."
Jesus Christ Pose by Soundgarden
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Pregnant with knowledge
Again, from Roger Ebert's Journal, on the importance of reading:
"... At the end of the day, some authors will endure and most, including some very good ones, will not. Why do I think reading is important? It is such an effective medium between mind and mind. We think largely in words. A medium made only of words doesn't impose the barrier of any other medium. It is naked and unprotected communication. That's how you get pregnant. May you always be so."
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Philosophy/Religion Song of the Day: "New Dark Ages" by Bad Religion
Yeah can you hear the call in our rambling land
Susurrations that can expand beyond all hope of light
and plunge us into into unrelenting night
A pall on truth and reason,
It feels like hunting season
So avoid those lines of sight
and we'll set this right
Welcome to the new dark ages
Yeah, i hope you're living right
These are the new dark ages
And the world might end tonight
Now come ye children one and all, let's heed Ezekiel's call
And bide until the word is good and ripe and get plucked clean out
of sight
The world will be erased
Our kin will be immaculate ejaculate in space
Before the kind of king's love, he'll snatch us
From above, brothers help me sing it
Welcome to the new dark ages
I hope you're living right
These are the new dark ages
And the world might end tonight
So how do you sleep? “ there's nothing to keep“
This is deep
Because we're animals with golden rules
Who ... who can't be moved by rational views yeah
Welcome to the new dark ages
I hope you're living right
Welcome to the new dark ages
And the world might end tonight
"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it." -- James Michener
Monday, March 21, 2011
The so-called "wrath of God"
A former Phoenix Mercury (WNBA player) tweeted this Saturday on the subject of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan:
And, to add insult to injury, in a remarkable example of Christian condescension, she tried to apologize:
Besides revealing the obvious fact that celebrities should self-edit prior to releasing brain droppings to the world, it brings up the more important subject of religion.
Now, I want to get this out of the way right now -- I'm not intimating that this is how all Christians think. But, by the same token, we all know that this isn't just the lunatic fringe that believes that disasters are God's retribution.
But that isn't even the subject of my post. My beef is with how religion is deemed to be the source of morality when statements like this show it to be something very different. People that are bigoted, or racist, or in Pondexter's case, remarkably ignorant, use the veil of religion to justify themselves. When you feel that God himself is behind something, you have the moral certitude to make statements that an atheist would be pilloried for. After all, "he makes no mistakes". And that's exactly the point. I have no problem with an atheist being judged upon his statements and beliefs. But that is how all people should be judged.
Godless people are deemed to be immoral and anarchistic, but I suggest that most are the exact opposite. I believe that all my actions and statements must be held to an even higher standard and must stand on their own. I don't have the luxury of misinterpreting some ancient text of dubious origin to justify a belief that outside the protection of religion would be considered bigoted.
If any other segment of society had done the atrocities to children that Catholic priests have, imagine what would have happened.
Within the framework of religion, it is considered godly and moral to be against gays, or to subjugate women. Under any other criteria, those would be hate crimes or speech.
I am not saying that religious people are universally immoral. I am saying that they are not moral because they are religious. Religion does not define one's morality. A religious person can be good or bad, as can an atheist.
And natural occurrences like floods, and hurricanes, and earthquakes are not caused by God. And they do not occur to present a moral or punish us for sin. They may present a lesson or warning to us insomuch as our actions or inaction may contribute to them or our lack of preparation leads to additional suffering. If one feels that God is infallible and omnipotent, then every happening has to mean something. But most things don't mean anything. Life can be beautiful and wondrous sometimes ... but it also can be a cruel bitch. Learn from life, but don't attach causality to random events. To think that God would punish the Japanese for Pearl Harbor while letting the US off the hook for Hiroshoma, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. is an example of not only Christian blindness but also a scary kind of nationalism.
So, Cappie, keep your tweets and your religion to yourself. You are entitled to your opinion and your free speech, but you are also entitled to be criticized for such.
"What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes."
"u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so u can't expect anything less."
And, to add insult to injury, in a remarkable example of Christian condescension, she tried to apologize:
"I wanna apologize to anyone I may hurt or offended during this tragic time," the tweet said. "I didn't realize that my words could be interpreted in the manner which they were. People that knw me would tell u 1st hand I'm a very spiritual person and believe that everything, even disasters happen 4 a reason and that God will shouldn't be questioned..."
Besides revealing the obvious fact that celebrities should self-edit prior to releasing brain droppings to the world, it brings up the more important subject of religion.
Now, I want to get this out of the way right now -- I'm not intimating that this is how all Christians think. But, by the same token, we all know that this isn't just the lunatic fringe that believes that disasters are God's retribution.
But that isn't even the subject of my post. My beef is with how religion is deemed to be the source of morality when statements like this show it to be something very different. People that are bigoted, or racist, or in Pondexter's case, remarkably ignorant, use the veil of religion to justify themselves. When you feel that God himself is behind something, you have the moral certitude to make statements that an atheist would be pilloried for. After all, "he makes no mistakes". And that's exactly the point. I have no problem with an atheist being judged upon his statements and beliefs. But that is how all people should be judged.
Godless people are deemed to be immoral and anarchistic, but I suggest that most are the exact opposite. I believe that all my actions and statements must be held to an even higher standard and must stand on their own. I don't have the luxury of misinterpreting some ancient text of dubious origin to justify a belief that outside the protection of religion would be considered bigoted.
If any other segment of society had done the atrocities to children that Catholic priests have, imagine what would have happened.
Within the framework of religion, it is considered godly and moral to be against gays, or to subjugate women. Under any other criteria, those would be hate crimes or speech.
I am not saying that religious people are universally immoral. I am saying that they are not moral because they are religious. Religion does not define one's morality. A religious person can be good or bad, as can an atheist.
And natural occurrences like floods, and hurricanes, and earthquakes are not caused by God. And they do not occur to present a moral or punish us for sin. They may present a lesson or warning to us insomuch as our actions or inaction may contribute to them or our lack of preparation leads to additional suffering. If one feels that God is infallible and omnipotent, then every happening has to mean something. But most things don't mean anything. Life can be beautiful and wondrous sometimes ... but it also can be a cruel bitch. Learn from life, but don't attach causality to random events. To think that God would punish the Japanese for Pearl Harbor while letting the US off the hook for Hiroshoma, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. is an example of not only Christian blindness but also a scary kind of nationalism.
So, Cappie, keep your tweets and your religion to yourself. You are entitled to your opinion and your free speech, but you are also entitled to be criticized for such.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
There must be some kinda way out of here ...
"There must be some kinda way out of here"
Said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief ..."
Lyrics by Bob Dylan. Song covered numerous times, most notably by Jimi Hendrix
I'm not posting this for any particular reason. No tie-in to a current political or cultural event. The excerpt I quoted above certainly describes how I feel sometimes about work, life, the world ... whatever. But, I'm just posting it because it's a damn good song.
I just heard Hendrix's version on the radio the other day and realized how much I love the song. Dylan's version is great as well, but Hendrix imbued the song with a fire that even Dylan had to acknowledge. Dylan has even admitted that the manner in which Hendrix played the song informs his own performances since that time.
The song has obvious allusions to the Bible (as do other Dylan songs), but what strikes me is the out-of-order manner in which the lyrics unfold. The thematic start of the song is at the end, both lyrically and musically. Kinda like you would expect if Quentin Tarantino wrote a rock song. This propels the song forward and gives one a sense of anticipation or urgency for it to repeat. It's this sense of bottled-up repetition that makes it perfect as a recurring plot element in season 3 and 4 of Battlestar Galactica and really an encapsulation of the series as a whole.
"All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."
This is a performance by Bear McCreary, the composer for the series, with a little help from Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck):
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Tyranny of the Fortunate
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." -- John Maynard Keynes
Is it any wonder that we've lost our way (not that we ever really knew "our way") when tragedy happens and the things we are worried about are our stock portfolios? Capitalism is broken. Our media is broken. People are broken.
In these tough economic times, isn’t it nice to know that calamitous natural disasters needn't have an adverse affect on your investment portfolio? After the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan failed to induce a market nosedive, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow expressed his relief in terms that seemed to appall even his fellow cheerleaders for capitalism: “The human toll here,” he declared, “looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that.”
I detest the trolls that populate these channels and I detest the sheep that hang on their every word. Go and get real job. Build something. Make something. Help someone. Don't profit from the suffering of others. We need to stop rewarding people for just moving money around. Insurance agents, mortgage lenders, bankers, stock brokers, venture capitalists, CEO's ... my garbage man contributes more to society than you do.
"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate." -- Bertrand Russell
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Political Song of the Day: BOOM! by System of a Down
I've been walking through your streets
Where all your moneys are earned
Where all your buildings crying
And clueless neckties working
Revolving fake-lawn houses
Housing all your fears
Desensitized by TV
Overbearing advertising
God of consumerism
And all your crooked pictures looking good
Mirrorism, filtering information for the public eye
Designed for profiteering
Your neighbor, what a guy.
BOOM!
Every time you drop the bomb, you kill the god your child has born-
BOOM!
Modern globalization
Coupled with condemnations
Unnecessary death
Matador corporations
Puppeting your frustrations with a blinded flag
Manufacturing consent is the name of the game
The bottom line is money
Nobody gives a FUCK
Four thousand hungry children leave us per hour from starvation
While billions are spent on bombs
Creating death showers
BOOM!
Every time you drop the bomb, you kill the god your child has born-
BOOM!
Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom!
Why must we kill our own kind?
...
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it." -- Noam Chomsky
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Look for me, Mom, I'll be there ...
" ... Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me.""
The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen
100,000 strong in Wisconsin and huge groups across the country protesting the Wisconsin governor's (and by extension the Republican Party) attempt to bust public unions. No matter what they say, it's not about the budget. It's about the rich of one party (Koch brothers and the Republicans) breaking up the biggest funding source of the other party (unions and the Democrats). Remove their funding and the ability of the common man to organize and you will have a self-perpetuating Republican majority that can't be stopped.
But, maybe ... just maybe, the Republicans shot their load too soon. Underestimating the resolve of 14 brave state senators and countless people across the country that make up the backbone of the working class (teachers, firemen, cops and your average private union worker).
Those that are trying to sell you "liberty" and "freedom" are encouraging the exact opposite ... a government funded and dictated to by a small group of huge corporations whose goal this week may be fiscal in nature. But next week, when they have effective control, it will be the removing of environmental and civil rights protections.
We have a choice.
"Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America." -- John L. Lewis(President of the UMWA from 1920-1960)
Friday, February 18, 2011
2011 VNSA Used Book Sale
Finds from our yearly trek to the VNSA Used Book Sale:
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Sci-Fi
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
River of Gods by Ian McDonald
Singularity's Ring by Paul Melko
The Forge of God by Greg Bear
Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
Earthman Come Home by James Blish (1955 1st Ed.)
Science Non-Fiction
"Dragons of Eden", "Cosmic Connection", "Billions and Billions ..." all by Carl Sagan
Black Holes and Baby Universes ... by Stephen Hawking
Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes by Alex Vilenkin
Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh
The Origin of Humankind by Richard Leakey
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel Dennett
The Third Chimpazee ... by Jared Diamond
General Non-Fiction
Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol
May Man Prevail? by Erich Fromm
Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell ... by Bertrand Russell
The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson
The Great Unraveling ... by Paul Krugman
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them" -- Ray Bradbury
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
ASU Origins Great Debate: What is life?
I was lucky enough to have attended the ASU Origins Great Debate: What is Life? at Arizona State University's Gammage Auditorium (a great venue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) this past Saturday. Fittingly, February 12th is Charles Darwin's birthday. I had a great seat, front row off to the side a bit.
Project director Lawrence Krauss (theoretical physicist and famous author) spoke for about 10 minutes introducing each of the panelists: noted atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, Nobel Prize winning chemist Sidney Altman, Nobel Prize winning Lee Hartwell, NASA planetary scientist Chris McKay, theoretical physicist and author Paul Davies, and Biologist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter. The debate began with each of the 6 panelists speaking for 5 to 10 minutes on their own, ostensibly to define what life meant in their opinion. Each of them took a different tact, predictably. Some said what differentiates life from something inanimate. Other explained how you would look for life.
Richard Dawkins spoke first, defining life it as that which can not only reproduce but also pass along its genetic code. Altman followed Dawkins and did not differentiate significantly from his definition. The next speaker, Lee Hartwell,a physician by profession, was perhaps the most out of place. His expertise is in cancer research and he was obviously intelligent but, self-admittedly, he did not have particular insight to this subject.
McKay was next and was perhaps my favorite of the speakers. The area at NASA which he works on pertains to looking for life on other planets (and moons). He spoke on several criteria that they look for to try and detect life but the most interesting to me was in how life affects other things on a planet. The geology and weather of Earth are completely different because of the existence of life. Oxygen wouldn't exist without plant life. Geologic characteristics such as fossil fuels and limestone would not exist without organic life. Maybe because of my education (aerospace engineering) and childhood dream to be an astronaut, McKay spoke to a lot of my aspirations.
Davies talked about the fact that life that would not necessarily be the carbon-based forms we know of. He even went out on a limb and said that non-carbon-based life would be discovered on Earth within 10 years. The study that was released last year was misinterpreted to have indicated that such life had already been found. Rather, the study indicated that a life form was found that scientists were able to substitute phosphorus for arsenic and it adapted. It's still significant in that it shows that life doesn't have to be carbon-based but nothing like this has been found natively.
The last to speak was Venter and he didn't really try to define what life was but seemed more intent on talking about how he was going to create artificial life. The relationship between Venter and the other scientists here is much like it is anywhere else ... contentious. He does not hide his disdain for theoretical scientists. If you can't experiment with something in the lab, it's not worthy of Venter. Research for knowledge's sake is not really his modus operandi but rather will it give him publicity. I don't want it to sound like I'm completely down on Venter. I'm not. People like him definitely have a place and I do believe his research is going to lead to advancements in curing of diseases. But he needs to be tempered by others lest he turn into a modern Dr. Frankenstein. Venter, for those that don't already know, was the first to map the human genome.
The event ended with a round-table between the panelists and Krauss. Nothing earth-shattering was revealed except for the general disdain that Venter has for regular scientists and they for him. Krauss brought up artificial intelligence to get the others take on whether that is life. It was his belief that that A.I. is the future of the human race. With no real concerted effort to advance space exploration, the problems of population growth and depleted resources are going to make our own planet unlivable in less time than some would believe (or blindly hope).
The amount of people attending what one would expect to be a dry scientific forum among erudite crusty professors with primarily British accents gives one hope that our youth value things other than reality TV and mysticism. This was not a talk about religion but it is hard for any discussion on science or the nature of life to not address that elephant in the room. When discussing the age of the Earth, Krauss made a joke about those states that lean towards the Creationist view of the age of the planet. And judging by the thunderous applause for his joke, I'd suspect that there was not a single soul in attendance with the belief that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
The real rock star of the panel, Dawkins, attracts adulation that seems incongruous for a distinctly middle-age Oxford type. And, I'm not making this up, I am convinced that several attractive young ladies in dresses and high-heels in the front row were Dawkins groupies. They even ducked out of the talk a few minutes early to assure themselves a spot near the front of the line to get their books signed. I would have liked to have gotten my book signed as well, but by the time I got out, his line was about 500 deep. We're not talking about Peyton Manning or Derek Jeter here. We're talking about an atheist evolutionary biologist. I settled for getting Lawrence Krauss' autograph and he was exceedingly gracious, talking to me a for a bit, shaking my hand and personalizing his signature.
I figure I'll get another shot at Dawkins as he's already been to ASU Origins symposiums at least three times and seems to be a friend of Krauss. My seat was on the side of the stage where Dawkins was and when he stepped to the podium, he was no more than 10 feet from me. Pretty heady stuff for an evolution and atheist nerd like myself.
I find it gratifying to go to places where smart people speak honestly and politely disagree on some points when necessary but agree on larger ones. Most importantly:
- the need for rational thought
- the need for math and science education
- the need to honestly address the issues of our planet
- to have our investigations and research lead us where they may instead of having a result pre-ordained and fit the facts to it
I'm looking forward to more of the ASU Origins events and plan on attending the next one in April, ASU Origins Project 2011 Science & Culture Festival.
Project director Lawrence Krauss (theoretical physicist and famous author) spoke for about 10 minutes introducing each of the panelists: noted atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, Nobel Prize winning chemist Sidney Altman, Nobel Prize winning Lee Hartwell, NASA planetary scientist Chris McKay, theoretical physicist and author Paul Davies, and Biologist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter. The debate began with each of the 6 panelists speaking for 5 to 10 minutes on their own, ostensibly to define what life meant in their opinion. Each of them took a different tact, predictably. Some said what differentiates life from something inanimate. Other explained how you would look for life.
Richard Dawkins spoke first, defining life it as that which can not only reproduce but also pass along its genetic code. Altman followed Dawkins and did not differentiate significantly from his definition. The next speaker, Lee Hartwell,a physician by profession, was perhaps the most out of place. His expertise is in cancer research and he was obviously intelligent but, self-admittedly, he did not have particular insight to this subject.
McKay was next and was perhaps my favorite of the speakers. The area at NASA which he works on pertains to looking for life on other planets (and moons). He spoke on several criteria that they look for to try and detect life but the most interesting to me was in how life affects other things on a planet. The geology and weather of Earth are completely different because of the existence of life. Oxygen wouldn't exist without plant life. Geologic characteristics such as fossil fuels and limestone would not exist without organic life. Maybe because of my education (aerospace engineering) and childhood dream to be an astronaut, McKay spoke to a lot of my aspirations.
Davies talked about the fact that life that would not necessarily be the carbon-based forms we know of. He even went out on a limb and said that non-carbon-based life would be discovered on Earth within 10 years. The study that was released last year was misinterpreted to have indicated that such life had already been found. Rather, the study indicated that a life form was found that scientists were able to substitute phosphorus for arsenic and it adapted. It's still significant in that it shows that life doesn't have to be carbon-based but nothing like this has been found natively.
The last to speak was Venter and he didn't really try to define what life was but seemed more intent on talking about how he was going to create artificial life. The relationship between Venter and the other scientists here is much like it is anywhere else ... contentious. He does not hide his disdain for theoretical scientists. If you can't experiment with something in the lab, it's not worthy of Venter. Research for knowledge's sake is not really his modus operandi but rather will it give him publicity. I don't want it to sound like I'm completely down on Venter. I'm not. People like him definitely have a place and I do believe his research is going to lead to advancements in curing of diseases. But he needs to be tempered by others lest he turn into a modern Dr. Frankenstein. Venter, for those that don't already know, was the first to map the human genome.
The event ended with a round-table between the panelists and Krauss. Nothing earth-shattering was revealed except for the general disdain that Venter has for regular scientists and they for him. Krauss brought up artificial intelligence to get the others take on whether that is life. It was his belief that that A.I. is the future of the human race. With no real concerted effort to advance space exploration, the problems of population growth and depleted resources are going to make our own planet unlivable in less time than some would believe (or blindly hope).
The amount of people attending what one would expect to be a dry scientific forum among erudite crusty professors with primarily British accents gives one hope that our youth value things other than reality TV and mysticism. This was not a talk about religion but it is hard for any discussion on science or the nature of life to not address that elephant in the room. When discussing the age of the Earth, Krauss made a joke about those states that lean towards the Creationist view of the age of the planet. And judging by the thunderous applause for his joke, I'd suspect that there was not a single soul in attendance with the belief that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
The real rock star of the panel, Dawkins, attracts adulation that seems incongruous for a distinctly middle-age Oxford type. And, I'm not making this up, I am convinced that several attractive young ladies in dresses and high-heels in the front row were Dawkins groupies. They even ducked out of the talk a few minutes early to assure themselves a spot near the front of the line to get their books signed. I would have liked to have gotten my book signed as well, but by the time I got out, his line was about 500 deep. We're not talking about Peyton Manning or Derek Jeter here. We're talking about an atheist evolutionary biologist. I settled for getting Lawrence Krauss' autograph and he was exceedingly gracious, talking to me a for a bit, shaking my hand and personalizing his signature.
I figure I'll get another shot at Dawkins as he's already been to ASU Origins symposiums at least three times and seems to be a friend of Krauss. My seat was on the side of the stage where Dawkins was and when he stepped to the podium, he was no more than 10 feet from me. Pretty heady stuff for an evolution and atheist nerd like myself.
I find it gratifying to go to places where smart people speak honestly and politely disagree on some points when necessary but agree on larger ones. Most importantly:
- the need for rational thought
- the need for math and science education
- the need to honestly address the issues of our planet
- to have our investigations and research lead us where they may instead of having a result pre-ordained and fit the facts to it
I'm looking forward to more of the ASU Origins events and plan on attending the next one in April, ASU Origins Project 2011 Science & Culture Festival.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Life Looks for Life - Carl Sagan
Life Looks for Life - Carl Sagan. Best viewed at YouTube at 720p.
"It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." -– Carl Sagan
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Just Because Something's Unexplained Doesn't Mean It's Supernatural
Before you say something is out of this world, first make sure that it is not in this world
By Michael Shermer
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the brilliant author of the wildly popular Sherlock Holmes detective stories, which celebrated the triumph of reason and logic over superstition and magical thinking. Unfortunately, the Scottish physician-turned-writer did not apply his creation’s cognitive skills when it came to the blossoming spiritualism movement of the early 1900s: he fell blindly for the crude hoax of the Cottingley Fairies photographs and regularly attended séances to make contact with family members who had died in the First World War, especially his son Kingsley. Perhaps fittingly, Conan Doyle’s fame brought him into company with the greatest magician of his age, Harry Houdini, who did not suffer fakes gladly.
In the spring of 1922 Conan Doyle visited Houdini in his New York City home, whereupon the magician set out to demonstrate that slate writing—a favorite method among mediums for receiving messages from the dead, who allegedly moved a piece of chalk across a slate—could be done by perfectly prosaic means. Houdini had Conan Doyle hang a slate from anywhere in the room so that it was free to swing in space. He presented the author with four cork balls, asking him to pick one and cut it open to prove that it had not been altered. He then had Conan Doyle pick another ball and dip it into a well of white ink. While it was soaking, Houdini asked his visitor to go down the street in any direction, take out a piece of paper and pencil, write a question or a sentence, put it back in his pocket and return to the house. Conan Doyle complied, scribbling, “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,” a riddle from the Bible’s book of Daniel, meaning, “It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided.”
How appropriate, for what happened next defied explanation, at least in Conan Doyle’s mind. Houdini had him scoop up the ink-soaked ball in a spoon and place it against the slate, where it momentarily stuck before slowly rolling across the face, spelling out “M,” “e,” “n,” “e,” and so forth until the entire phrase was completed, at which point the ball dropped to the ground. According to William Kalush and Larry Sloman in their 2006 biography The Secret Life of Houdini (Atria Books), the Master Mystifier then dealt Conan Doyle the lesson that he—and by implication anyone impressed by such mysteries—needed to hear:
Sir Arthur, I have devoted a lot of time and thought to this illusion ... I won’t tell you how it was done, but I can assure you it was pure trickery. I did it by perfectly normal means. I devised it to show you what can be done along these lines. Now, I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily “supernatural,” or the work of “spirits,” just because you cannot explain them....
Lamentably, Sir Arthur continued to believe that Houdini had psychic powers and spiritual connections that he employed in his famous escapes.
This problem is called the argument from ignorance (“it must be true because it has not been proven false”) or sometimes the argument from personal incredulity (“because I cannot imagine a natural explanation, there cannot be one”). Such fallacious reasoning comes up so often in my encounters with believers that I conclude it must be a product of a brain unsatisfied with doubt; as nature abhors a vacuum, so, too, does the brain abhor no explanation. It therefore fills in one, no matter how unlikely. Thus do normal anomalies become paranormal, natural phenomena become supernatural, unidentified flying objects become extraterrestrial spacecraft and chance events become conspiracies.
Houdini’s principle states that just because something is unexplained does not mean that it is paranormal, supernatural, extraterrestrial or conspiratorial. Before you say something is out of this world, first make sure that it is not in this world, for science is grounded in naturalism, not supernaturalism, paranormalism or any other unnecessarily complicated explanations.
The particular anecdote may be irrelevant, but noted skeptic Shermer's conclusion,
"This problem is called the argument from ignorance (“it must be true because it has not been proven false”) or sometimes the argument from personal incredulity (“because I cannot imagine a natural explanation, there cannot be one”). Such fallacious reasoning ... must be a product of a brain unsatisfied with doubt; as nature abhors a vacuum, so, too, does the brain abhor no explanation. It therefore fills in one, no matter how unlikely ..."
certainly is not. While most would take this to be aimed at religion (and it certainly is), it can also be applied to conspiracy theorists, new agers, UFO nuts, ghosts chasers, etc.
Any advanced race that would ever come to Earth would have technology and knowledge that would seem indistinguishable from magic to us. But that doesn't mean it is magic. Shermer focuses on points I've always tried to make here. Most notably, doubt is not a bad thing. Get over your own mental prejudices. Just because we can't explain something doesn't mean it is supernatural (or divine). It just means that we don't have the tools to understand it yet. And that's not a discouraging thing ... that's an exciting thing. It means that there is always more to learn.
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