Metadelusion: 2012

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Civilization is fragile

The neurotic obsession with weapons is an expression of selfishness, and reflects a splintered, delusional society teetering on the brink of collapse, increasingly unable to provide even the most basic precondition of civilized life: freedom from maiming and murder. Without this elementary right, it's impossible to secure others, such as civil rights, collective bargaining, or a hospitable climate for future generations. Civilization is fragile, and depends critically on cooperation, altruism, and goodwill. Without them, civilization evaporates rapidly, leaving behind only mob rule and banditry, as history has repeatedly shown. The forty-six percent of Americans who believe "that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" (Gallup) are largely the same Americans who prepare for armed conflict with their own government, and childishly fantasize that they could survive its demise. The triumph of the irrational is rooted in a tragic failure of education.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Climate Change Stress Disorder

I wasn't kidding about Climate Change Stress Disorder. Climate change is ruining my life. Just look at my reading list from the last couple of years. Add to that the parade of climate science papers, government reports, and blogs, and it's a wonder I get out of bed in the morning. Every day, I try to engage everyone I meet about climate change. Here's what I tell them, if I get the chance:

Climate change is going to be much worse, much sooner than they think. Believe it or not, there's going to be serious psychological and physical impact on them personally, and especially on their children. My short list of topics includes:

Climate migration: The forecast calls for latitudes close to the equator to become increasingly uninhabitable. People are already pouring out of North Africa and Mexico, testing the limits of rich northern countries. Fortifying borders may buy a little time, but it doesn't solve internal migration. Fast-growing desert cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas won't be sustainable in the long run. Try telling that to the people who live there.

Coastal property values: It's some of the most valuable real estate, but its future value is zero. Families with vacation homes in Florida love to hear this. Try explaining to people that it was a mistake to rebuild New Orleans. North Carolina's new law that eliminates climate science from real estate assessment is classic avoidance behavior. And then there's Peter Ward's point: we don't have to worry about escaping to exoplanets, because we'll be busy moving our airports.

Suburban life: Instead of developing mass transit, America decided to build a suburban society organized around cars and highways. I work in the suburbs, and the people I meet there drive everywhere, often in SUVs and trucks. For fun they drive to the mall. For vacations they take a plane somewhere. Try explaining to them that the party's over. They don't want to hear it. That's why Obama doesn't talk about it.

China, India and other non-OECD countries plan to increase (NOT decrease) their fossil fuel consumption in order to achieve an OECD standard of living (see previous post), and we're in no position to dissuade them. We are not going to embargo or invade China to enforce carbon rules, and persuasion isn't likely to work either, particularly since 1) a significant portion of their emissions actually belong to us, 2) we owe them vast sums of money, and 3) it's hard to preach austerity convincingly while we're dying of diseases of affluence.

Even climate scientists are frightened and increasingly they're saying so publicly. If they're upset why shouldn't I be? Why isn't it okay to be upset and frightened? It should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with even a modest percentage of climate science that civilization is about to suffer a major setback, far more serious than WWII. States are going to fail, and not only in Africa. I'm traumatized, just by knowing this, and I don't even have children. I was born in Manhattan, and my whole life has revolved around the soft intellectualism of First World civilization, in all of its imperial glory. Mama didn't raise me to be an agriculturalist, or for Mad Max or the zombie apocalypse or whatever is coming. I apologize if my prose lacks the scholarly tone of cautious understatement, but I'm upset from trying to digest vast quantities of terrifying and rapidly changing information.

The future looks impossible

Regarding the alleged majority of voters who care about climate change: even if that's so and Obama is reelected, judging by Obama's performance so far it seems wildly unrealistic to expect him to do a fossil fuel about-face any time soon. But more importantly, I submit that the elusive presidential climate policy is mere distraction, because America is already a sideshow. To wit:

"China's economic growth is projected to continue and to drive increasing energy consumption for several decades (Figure 1). By 2035, China is likely to see a large increase in demand for primary energy, perhaps up by nearly 70% from the present levels (IEA, 2011a). This demand is likely to be met by increasing use of fossil fuels along with other sources, such as nuclear and renewable." [my emphasis]

IEA 2012 - Facing China's Coal Future: Prospects and Challenges for Carbon Capture and Storage, p. 7 PDF here

Friday, September 21, 2012

A world without Quality

@435 SecularAnimist:

I think it is arguable that empiricism - which is the heart of science - is responsible for essentially all of humanity's advancements throughout all of human history and pre-history.

This is almost a dictionary definition of scientism. Please try to imagine the emotional impact this statement has on artists. Have they contributed nothing to humanity's advancement? Are the contents of museums useless rubbish? Should we empty them out and repurpose the buildings as laboratories or factories? What is advancement? Is it inherently good, or does its goodness depend on what we're advancing towards?

I'm not being rhetorical or provocative. I'm trying to understand how we got into this mess in the first place, so I can more effectively inspire myself and others to deal with it. Robert Pirsig raised similar questions in his 1974 inquiry into values, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." He described pervasive technological ugliness, and hypothesized that its source was a split between art and science, or between what he called the "classic" and "romantic" world-views. He then attempted to save reason from its own self-devouring logic, by positing pre-intellectual awareness (which he called "Quality") as the source of both subjects and objects. In my view his solution was naive and retreated into mysticism, but regardless it apparently didn't work, because forty years later we're no closer to a resolution, and the ugliness Pirsig was describing has blossomed into the greatest threat in human history.

In a famous passage Pirsig used realism to prove the existence of his central term, "by subtracting Quality from a description of the world as we know it". His description could just as easily describe a world in which "empiricism ... is responsible for essentially all of humanity's advancements."

We have been listening to scientists, maybe not about climate change, but about nearly everything else, for hundreds of years, and the results are increasingly ghastly. Even scientists are scared. If scientists are now going to tell us that there's no hope without even more drastic technological change, they would be wise to adopt some humility, and acknowledge that mistakes were made, instead of preaching science as a glorious march to advancement.

I know it seems like I'm attacking science but it's more subtle than that. I'm an engineer. I work with scientists and use math and logic all day long, and I don't doubt for a second that science "works", in the pragmatic sense that our explanations of phenomena can improve with time and effort. What I'm questioning is the notion that science is neutral, or as Pirsig would say, Quality-free. Art isn't just "whatever you like" and there's more to life than being right.

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Winning the war on the future

James Hansen is sometimes accused of overstating his case, but I find him controversial for an entirely different reason: he consistently portrays climate change as an intergenerational injustice. His argument is that climate change violates the civil rights of future generations, including the right to a livable world. To my knowledge no one else with comparable scientific reputation is making this argument so forcefully and publicly. It’s clever and plays well because 1) civil society avows egalitarianism, 2) people are justifiably proud of the significant progress that’s been made towards that goal, and 3) climate change threatens to wipe out that progress in short order (along with much else).

Unfortunately, extending civil rights to future generations isn’t new: pro-lifers have been using this gambit for decades, with considerable success. Hansen hasn’t made any public statements on abortion to my knowledge, nor does it seem likely that he would, whatever his private views are, but his otherwise laudable meme is nonetheless potentially entangled with religious oppression of women. The right of future generations to a livable world needs to be distinguished from the right of women to make their own reproductive choices. I don’t find this difficult, but I suspect many Americans will have trouble getting their heads around it. It’s a PR problem that Hansen may not have considered.

A more serious criticism of Hansen’s intergenerational justice meme is that it doesn’t go far enough. I propose a more strident alternative: war on the future. The idea is that we’ve declared war against future generations, and we’re winning. Victory means no future, for our species and countless others. This may seem absurd, but in my experience paradoxes are very useful in PR, because they expose hidden assumptions. Here the assumption is that climate change is merely an injustice to future generations, when in fact it’s an existential threat, the type of threat that wars are usually fought over. Injustice implies the possibility of compensation, but in the worst-case scenario, future generations won’t even get the opportunity to bitterly resent us, because they won’t exist. War on the future is also totally asymmetric: future generations can’t defend themselves, because they’re not here yet.

WWII and the Manhattan project are commonly used as analogies for the global effort that will be needed to mitigate climate change, and this is part of my inspiration, but “winning the war on the future” is primarily inspired by Jeremy Jackson’s work. Daniel Pauly’s shifting baselines feel mild-mannered compared to Jackson’s incendiary “How we wrecked the ocean” presentation, which he starts by telling the audience that everything he ever studied disappeared during his lifetime. Jackson very effectively communicates devastation and irrevocable loss, not only with his emotional intensity and relentless examples, but also by using vivid metaphors such as “silent ocean” and “the rise of slime.” Similarly visceral memes are desperately needed in the struggle to wake people up to the reality and consequences of climate change.

There are many versions of Jackson’s presentation, but my favorite is here: Silent Ocean – Perspectives on Ocean Science

Monday, September 3, 2012

A World Without Oil

Bruce Mau doesn't want to imagine a world without oil since it would be boring and bad for his business model, so you shouldn't try to imagine it either. Instead you should just keep saying "yes" to unlimited profits for corporations like General Electric and Coca-Cola (his customers), because that's personally thrilling (and profitable) for him. Despite overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that we either stop burning fossil fuels or stop existing, 1) we should keep on burning them anyway, because it's smart and sexy, and 2) the resulting global ecological collapse will be magically avoided by better product design. There's no shortage of self-serving collaborators, but even by postmodern standards this is a monstrously irresponsible proposal.

It wasn't enough to wreck the ocean, exterminate countless species, and plunge Earth's climate into chaos. Now we should declare total war on future generations by slurping up every last drop of oil, so that ingenious designers can fly to conferences and ride around in cool-looking cars. Obama-style grass-roots pretensions aside, this is just regurgitated technological utopianism and boosterism for limitless growth. Cornucopian fantasies are perennially popular, especially with robber barons. As our situation deteriorates, escapism is increasingly indistinguishable from schizophrenia. Humans may be an intelligent species. We'll soon see. If we're intelligent, we'll stop burning fossil fuels. If we listen to greenwash from corporate toadies and roast ourselves, bacteria will inherit Earth a little ahead of schedule is all. If you find naivete and narcissism abhorrent, you're not entirely alone. Check out Dan Miller's A REALLY Inconvenient Truth instead.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Bull in the china shop

“The very idea that human beings, who are demonstrably unable to control our own most destructive behaviors, are going to be “stewards of the ecology”, or “manage ecosystems”, is absurd. It’s proposing that the bull should become the “steward” of the china shop.”

Believe it or not I'm actually sympathetic to your views, and shared them 100% until fairly recently. You'd be hard-pressed to find an artist whose work has criticized humanity more stridently than mine, but my views are evolving.

We're at a juncture in human history when more than ever before, it actually matters what people think. This wasn't nearly as true in centuries or even decades past, because information traveled much more slowly and was less crucial to people's daily lives. Today decisions frequently have global ramifications, and the discussions that influence them are increasingly volatile and public. Some of those discussions may be occurring right here, and not all of them are purely scientific or technical. Ideas spread like wildfire at the moment, whether they're constructive or not.

Mitigating climate change means rapidly transforming the entire physical basis of our existence: energy infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, architecture, urban planning, population size and distribution, and on and on, like a kind of green Manhattan project. In order for people to actually get up every morning and deal with the enormous amount of work involved, they need to be inspired.

E.O.Wilson tries hard to inspire people by comparing them to ants, with the best of intentions, but it won't work. Reminding people that they're insignificant on a cosmic scale won't work either: they already feel helpless. One idea that possibly could inspire people quickly enough is betterment of the human condition, via active participation in civil society. This implies a widespread invigoration of existing civil traditions and values, including literacy, tolerance, egalitarianism, association, and cooperation. There's already momentum in this direction, in the Occupy movement and elsewhere, building on the civil rights and anti-war struggles.

The problems civilization faces won't be solved by flash mobs alone, any more than by the invisible hand of the market. Only governments have the power to effect change at the needed scale and pace, and governments are comprised of people, all the way up to the top; people who like the rest of us need to be convinced of the urgency and scale of the problems, persuaded that solutions exist, and inspired to fight for a livable future.

People need to believe that what they're doing can and will make a difference, no matter how uncertain things seem. They also need education, and health care, and countless other things, but above all they need hope. The problem with antihumanism, whether scientific or artistic, is that it deprives people of hope, at exactly the moment when they most need it.

Indifference

SA @307:

Of course the cessation of human activities, such as the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, that would accompany the disappearance of all that human biomass would be a boon to the biosphere.

It's like you're trying to impress everyone with your indifference to humanity, as though cultural insensitivity is somehow a corollary of scientific knowledge. The whole point of us becoming more enlightened (in both the sciences AND the humanities) over the last four centuries was to make us MORE sensitive to human culture, and more willing to make sacrifices for, and exhibit altruism towards people who aren't immediate family members, aren't from our 'tribe', or aren't even born yet. Eventually that altruism may even extend to the biosphere and your beloved algae. Obviously it's a work in progress and we're facing severe difficulties at the moment, but I don't see how it helps anyone to say that we should just buzz off and leave Earth to the ants, nor do I believe that's E.O.Wilson's view; on the contrary he expresses great fondness for humanity in his latest novel "Anthill," and apparently believes our achievements are worth fighting for.

It would be one thing if we were having this discussion on an Earth First blog, but I'm amazed to see stuff like this on RC. Your audience includes highly educated people who have devoted their lives to complex intellectual, linguistic, and symbolic activities that are beyond the capacity of most humans, never mind ants. On RC in particular people are clearly focused on the struggle to save civilization--science included--to whatever extent that's still possible. I sincerely doubt they enjoy hearing that humanity is useless rubbish and that the sooner we disappear the better. I know I sure don't.

Human specialness

SecularAnimist @303 said:

And social animals, including chimpanzees and wolves, clearly do have rights within the context of their social groups. ... do some reading in cognitive ethology. Yes, human beings are "special" — and so are all other species.

A mere 150 years ago, we fought a bitter and protracted war in the United States in large part over the question of whether our society should continue to permit human beings to be treated as, or worse than animals. The Union victory was an essential step forward but was by no means a final resolution of the question, which has continued to plague us, through the horrors of the Jim Crow South, well into the present era.

In Europe an even more catastrophic war was fought against an ideology that proclaimed certain groups of people to be subhuman and therefore without rights. Unlike the Civil War, this is recent history, within the living memory of my parents. There have been plenty more examples since then, including the breakup of Yugoslavia, though thankfully none at similarly global scale (yet).

Despite literally centuries of impassioned debate and conflict, humanity is still struggling to implement the most elementary ethical concepts such as equality, liberty, decency and fairness for human beings (that's you!) Many are aware that the rights of non-humans can and ultimately must be defended just as vigorously, however this is a long-term project, and we aren't likely to make much headway while simultaneously claiming that humans are equivalent to dinosaurs, wolves, algae, etc. We can grant wolves rights, and already have to some extent, but the reverse is simply not true: wolves can't grant us rights, any more than they can study cognitive ethology. This should be obvious but apparently it isn't.

Before we worry about the rights of algae, we'd better get the rights of future generations sorted out, otherwise the algae is going to have the planet all to itself.

PS: I happen to be reading David Orr's "Down to the Wire," and he has much to say on the subject of intergenerational ethics, and the need for honest and inspiring leadership during what he calls the Long Emergency. For example:

We are now engaged in a global conversation about the issues of human longevity on Earth, but no national leader has yet done what Lincoln did for slavery and placed the issue of sustainability in its larger moral context." -p. 88

Progressivism

Edward Greisch @ 296 said:

Science is not "fundamentally progressive"

Progressivism refers not only to the corresponding period of American history, but also to the notion that given sufficient time and effort, people can and should make incremental progress towards shared goals, scientific or otherwise. In science this view is associated with scientific realism, scientific pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, and especially John Dewey, who held "that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed truths." (WP, Pragmatic theory of truth)

You should be grateful that science is progressive, because otherwise you would be busy rediscovering the foundations of mathematics, geology, astronomy, chemistry, etc. all by your lonesome self. In fact this was very much the situation at the start of the Enlightenment. On the other hand, if science weren't progressive, we wouldn't be struggling to mitigate climate change right now, because the industrial revolution wouldn't have happened.

The point of the non-existent dinosaur cultural artifacts was to illustrate that it's absurdly and dangerously reductive to simply equate humans with dinosaurs or any other species. If humans weren't special, why would they need names? Why would they need rights? In fact most of them didn't have rights until very recently, and it's been a major source of conflict. Wars have been fought over the idea that people (especially people we don't like) can be treated as things.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Anthropocentrism

SecularAnimist @183 said:

The pathologically anthropocentric view that the world consists of (1) human beings and (2) “resources” for human consumption is really the root of all of our “environmental” problems (and indeed the very word “environment” embodies that view). I don’t think that “solutions” based on that view can solve the problems created by that view.

To be accused of anthropocentrism on a science blog is unexpected and almost comical. Nonetheless the charge is a serious one, and demands a response. The implication is that humanity should be less concerned with its own welfare, and should make sacrifices for the long-term health of the biosphere. This position is not without justification, but also faces several criticisms.

1) Any sacrifices we make for the biosphere will ultimately be futile, because it isn't savable in the long term, due to astronomical factors entirely beyond our control. The biosphere is also totally indifferent to our fate, and would recover with astonishing rapidity were we to exit, voluntarily or otherwise. This scenario has been analyzed in detail, for example by Alan Weisman in "The World Without Us."

2) If humanity was primarily devoted to the welfare of non-humans, we would long since have abandoned sedentary agriculture, civilization and industrialization, and returned to our tribal hunter-gatherer roots. Our treatment of non-humans thus far is instructive: the lucky ones have been domesticated, marginalized, genetically modified, imprisoned and enslaved, while less fortunate species have been starved or hunted to extinction, or willfully exterminated, in some cases for no rational reason. Many subgroups of humanity have received similar treatment, and the trend is uncertain at best. Most ethical problems weren't seriously addressed or even identified until very recently, and we're currently struggling to define and consistently implement universal rights and values for humans, never mind for non-humans or the biosphere.

3) Humanity's anthropocentrism can only be meaningfully debated within the context of our civilization, which is unmistakably anthropocentric in origin. Without civilization there would be no science blogs, and no science to discuss. Science coevolved with civil society, through many stages, including antiquity, scholasticism, and the Enlightenment. The humanistic traditions of rational inquiry, reasoned debate, literacy and democracy are often taken for granted, but without them there's little worth saving. Science not only requires explanations to be testable, but also expects them to improve over time. Science is thus fundamentally progressive, and inextricably bound to the progressivism of civil society.

If people can be persuaded to make sacrifices at all, it will be because they correctly perceive that the welfare of their own descendents--not to mention civilization--depends on such sacrifices. Even this is apparently a long shot, particularly in the United States, where the current leadership seems determined to maximize irrationality, and inflict privation and despair on all but the wealthiest. If civilization survives its present challenges, it may in the distant future attempt to extend civil rights to include the entire biosphere, but in the meantime we should concentrate on more urgent problems, of which there's obviously no shortage.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Saving the biosphere

Responding to SecularAnimist @183 on RealClimate Unforced Variations:

"I am most concerned about 'saving' the Earth’s biosphere from utter destruction."

Saving the biosphere is a laudable goal, but the question stands: what are we saving the biosphere for?

The biosphere is ephemeral. Bacteria will ultimately inherit Earth, and witness its destruction. This is arguably just, since bacteria are the most adaptable, the most abundant and have been here the longest. Even within your body, bacteria grossly outnumber your cells. To say that we exist in symbiosis with bacteria is a charitable interpretation. It's more accurate to say that we exist at the behest of tiny but exceedingly powerful and numerous organisms which are completely indifferent to our fate.

If we're saving the biosphere for bacteria, we needn't bother, because they don't need our help. It's we who need help, along with our fellow apex predators. There's an ethical argument that other organisms enjoy existence as much as we do, and therefore have intrinsic value and an inalienable right to exist. This closely relates to arguments previously advanced for universalism and civil rights. In the 20th century many nations became sufficiently enlightened to extend intrinsic value to all human beings, regardless of their race, color or creed, at least in theory. In the 21st century we're in the process of adding sexual orientation to the list, and non-humans could well be next.

Most civilized people support animal rights to some extent, but few would accept that plants also have rights, let alone bacteria. Obviously humans relate to mammals most easily, because we're biologically so similar to them. People can easily tell that their cat or dog is asleep, bored, or in pain, but they're less likely to identify with the internal states of non-mammals. Are we saving Earth for mammals then? E.O.Wilson would surely object, "What about ants?"

If we're saving the biosphere for its intrinsic value, then we have to face not only its impermanence, but also its incompatibility with many aspects of human society. Should we all become vegans? Many think so. Are we willing to abandon our machines, shrink our population, and worship nature as our aboriginal ancestors did? Or embrace Jainism and avoid harming even insects? Very few would go this far, but people are increasingly aware that we can't continue to have everything our way, that urgent choices need to be made.

For better or worse, humans run the show at the moment. The blade of natural selection that normally trims away failure is temporarily blunted. We routinely nourish organisms that would otherwise fail, and exterminate organisms that would otherwise succeed. In other words, we play god, by deciding what lives and what dies. Playing god is the essence of being human, and we'll keep doing it until we tire of it, or wreck things badly enough to be forcibly demoted. We need to be honest, and admit that we're primarily saving Earth for ourselves, so that the cultural odyssey in which we've invested so much time and energy can continue.

Saving culture is not merely a technical problem. It's not just our ingenuity, but our honor and integrity that are being tested, our willingness to make sacrifices for progress towards shared goals. Our aim is more than survival: it's to survive with dignity, while upholding our commitments to hard-won truths and principles. If we're saving Earth at all, we're saving it for future generations, so that they can fulfill our ambitions, by building a wiser and more enlightened society.

Sociobiology and eugenics

Responding to Edward Greisch @197 on RealClimate Unforced Variations:

"Sociobiology has nothing whatsoever to do with eugenics."

A bold statement, but if true, how do you explain this curious photograph?

There's also the inconvenient Eugenics Manifesto of 1939, signed [1] by more than a few founders and champions of what later became sociobiology. The manifesto interestingly lists "fellow-feeling" (in short supply at the time) as an objective of "conscious selection", for example:

... conscious selection requires, in addition, an agreed direction or directions for selection to take, and these directions cannot be social ones, that is, for the good of mankind at large, unless social motives predominate in society. This in turn implies its socialized organization. The most important genetic objectives, from a social point of view, are the improvement of those genetic characteristics which make (a) for health, (b) for the complex called intelligence, and (c) for those temperamental qualities which favour fellow-feeling and social behaviour rather than those (to-day most esteemed by many) which make for personal 'success', as success is usually understood at present. [2]

There were some post-war defections among the signatories, most notably Theodosius Dobzhansky who later said:

Even if the direction of evolution were demonstrated to be "good", man is likely to prefer to be free rather than to be reasonable. [3]

and:

Culture is not inherited through genes; it is acquired by learning from other human beings.... In a sense human genes have surrendered their primacy in human evolution to an entirely new non-biological or superorganic agent, culture. [4]

[1] Eugenics manifesto, list of signatories
[2] Social Biology and Population Improvement, full text of eugenics manifesto, with original title, as published in Nature, Sep. 16, 1939
[3] Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Biological Basis of Human Freedom, 1956, as referenced in Evolutionary ethics
[4] Against "Sociobiology", NYT Review of Books, Nov. 13, 1975

Friday, August 10, 2012

What's at stake

In a discussion of climate change and its potential solutions, it's important to consider what we're saving, and what we're saving it for. If the goal were only biological survival in the narrowest sense, the problem of climate change would be greatly simplified. For example, imagine a group of geneticists willing and able to reengineer humans so that they no longer posed any threat to each other or their environment. I'm not advocating this, nor is it even my idea: It's the central premise of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel "Oryx and Crake." The geneticists' motto could easily be something like "Preservation of [our] species has to be the primary value."

Most people would (or should) be horrified by the world "Oryx and Crake" and its sequel describe. The books indirectly draw attention to the fact that climate change threatens much more than mere biological survival. What's at stake is the survival of human values. Increasingly those values are no longer tribal or national but global, at least in theory. Science has flourished in the age of reason, but that age was a long time coming, and its persistence is by no means assured, even in the short term. Science is inextricably entwined with civilization and democracy, and all the rights and responsibilities they entail. The ethical assertions of equality and universality at the core of the American and French revolutions sustain science just as much as the humanities. Science sinks or swims with civil society. In Margaret Atwood's nightmare, science is doomed.

By mitigating climate change, we're trying to save not merely people's DNA, but their culture, which paradoxically is also the source of climate change. We're trying to save not just literacy, tolerance, and reasoned debate, but also art, music, and all the less obvious cultural artifacts that make life worth living. This is what makes the problem of climate change so intractable. It's not enough to just reduce CO2. The challenge is to reduce CO2 humanely, preserving not only the oceans and forests but also the fragile traditions of increasing civil rights and intellectual freedom within which science and so much else have evolved. We're more likely to succeed if we're clear about the goal.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Sociobiology

In response to Edward Greisch @ 147, commenting on previous Hubble post on RealClimate.org [list of sociobiology texts omitted]:

"Science will solve ethics. But we don’t have ethical equations yet."

Somehow I don't find this reassuring.

"Preservation of your own species has to be the primary value."

Substitute race for species and this statement sets off deadly alarms. You may not like the transposition, but people have made it in the past and will continue to do so. In every case I'm aware of when the value of human existence has been defined in biological terms, the results have been spectacularly awful.

Forcible sterilization was official policy in the United States well into the 1960s. Margaret Sanger is famous as the founder of Planned Parenthood, but she was also a committed eugenicist, and her ideas were considered normal at the time. Nazi war criminals claimed with some justification that their racial purification laws were inspired by American eugenics. The Wikipedia article on sociobiology includes a delightful photo demonstrating the resurrection of Eugenics Quarterly as Social Biology in 1969.

What makes humans special is that we aren't limited only to biologically determined values. For better or worse people have developed cultures, and eventually civilizations, which completely redefine our relationship to each other and to non-humans. Civilized people are not motivated primarily by a desire to ensure the dominance of their genetic traits. This was as true of the ancient Romans as it is of us. Most of what modern humans do is useless or visibly counterproductive from a strictly biological point of view. Climate change is an apt example: it's simply an unintended consequence of our feverish cultural activity. All around the Mediterranean, entire forests were cut down to make ships, floors, furniture, lutes, picture frames and countless other biologically indifferent but culturally essential artifacts. Much of the area became permanently arid as a result, but this was the price we paid for the Renaissance and subsequent steps toward the global civilization on which our current discussion depends.

For humans, value has to be culturally defined or we become apes. When human beings are reduced to animals or considered only in terms of their biological attributes, rather than viewed as individuals with intrinsic rights, the way is cleared to fascism, as the thinkers of the Frankfurt School rightly insisted after WWII. If the choice is between humans surviving by sacrificing their humanity, and humans not surviving at all, there's no choice: it can only be the latter, because people won't tolerate the former for long.

Hubble

According to Gallup, "Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." Apparently the respondents didn't study much paleontology.

Many people seem to be unwilling to face the consequences of Stephen Jay Gould's work. Evolution doesn't converge on us, or anything else. There's no top or bottom, no good or bad, just a seemingly endless parade of organisms more or less fit for ever-changing conditions. If we make earth an unsuitable environment for ourselves, we and many other organisms will suffer more, and go extinct sooner than we otherwise might have, but slime will inherit earth regardless. This is just one of the many disturbing truths science reveals to humanity. I'm capable of facing it, so others must be capable of facing it too. Facing the pointlessness of existence squarely should be taken as a sign of mental health. What psychological distress I do experience is mostly due to being surrounded by deluded people who believe they're going to heaven. I wish they would hurry up and leave.

The pictures from the Hubble telescope are clear enough. There's no meaning to be found out there. Meaning can only be constructed socially, and this implies cooperation. People could conceivably construct a meaning for themselves that allowed them to coexist in a reasonably steady state over a long period of geologic time. But is there any reason to believe this is likely? What precedents do we have? Ants normally exhibit extraordinary cooperation and altruism, but they also periodically fight wars of extermination, even against colonies of their own species. Aboriginal societies were sometimes stable compared to modern civilization, but only at vastly lower population densities.

The hard problems are all ethical, not scientific. Why should people embrace disturbing truths instead of convenient fictions? Why shouldn't the rich live soft lives and be waited on hand and foot if they can get away with it? Why shouldn't the ruling class use force to take whatever it wants? Why should people make sacrifices for the benefit of future generations? Why should individual humans care what happens after they're dead?

These and similar questions were seriously considered in the wake of WWII. There was some consensus in the West that people needed to be pacified and weaned away from nationalism. At the time, socializing people to embrace individualism and consumerism seemed a logical alternative to repeating WWII with hydrogen weapons. Very few were concerned about the consequences of further industrialization. Pollution wasn't seriously addressed for decades. Climate change was almost totally unanticipated. In the 1950s if you'd told Americans that they shouldn't build suburbs because automobiles would accelerate climate change, they would have given you a lobotomy.

We're caught in a cascade of side effects, and increasingly our reality is spinning out of control. Older people wish for a reversal, back to the relatively pristine conditions they enjoyed in their youth, but this is pure fantasy. Even if we stopped producing CO2 today, the warming and sea level rise already in the pipeline are enough to ensure drastic physical and social changes. On our current course we're facing chaos and disruption on the scale of WWII or worse, something most people alive today can scarcely imagine.

Genetics sheds much light on cancer, but it doesn't seem to cure people of believing that the only possible solution to their problems is unlimited growth. I wish more people would watch Albert Bartlett's famous lecture, "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy."

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

-Albert Bartlett

Clarification:

When I said that the hard problems are ethical, I didn't mean to belittle the difficulties faced by scientists. What I meant is that ethical problems aren't necessarily solvable in the scientific sense of the word. Ethical assertions are social constructions and don't have to be rooted in objective reality at all. For example the U.S. Supreme Court can assert that corporations should have the same rights as people, and there's no easy way to refute it, because it's just a reflection of our society's current power structure. Imagine how different it would be if the same court asserted that ten is a prime number, or that the moon is made of cheese. Many ethical assertions are similarly absurd, but since they're normalized by the culture in which they occur, the absurdities are hard to see except in retrospect. White man's burden may be transparently offensive now, but it was a respected ethical position throughout the nineteenth century.

Humans could turn out to be great at science but lousy at ethics. This would partly explain why we aren't reacting to climate change quickly enough. Dan Miller's "A Really Inconvenient Truth" makes this same point in an amusing way:

"Imagine that you read in the newspaper tomorrow... that all the excess CO2 in the world is being released by al-Qaeda. Think about that. Would we react? Of course we would. We would spend any amount of money ... to fight that. We would spend a trillion dollars, which we just did."

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Hi Chris,
Happy birthday!
Sorry not to hold up my end.
But I did look at a whole bunch of Hubble images when I was in Vermont three weeks ago. Sorry about not posting, after the intense engagement I felt overwhelmed by all the ideas.

Here's my reaction:
I was thinking, "What is it I'm supposed to be getting out of this? Why is it supposed to changed my sense of things?" They are spectacular shots of nature, exotic images. Some of them look as if they could be things seen under a microscope -- I have no sense of the scale when I look at them. They are images I realized that I can't see with my naked eye. They didn't have any apparent emotional or philosophical impact on me.

Can you explain to me to me what Hubble and Hubble images signifies to you and or it has such an impact on you? I don't get it.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Science background reading

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Interesting stuff

There's stuff, in patterns. Patterns emerge from the stuff. Stuff emerges from the patterns. One or the other description may be more useful, depending on the goal. We differ from most stuff/patterns in an important respect: given sufficient time and effort, we can explain how stuff works with increasing accuracy. Our explanations are valuable because they allow us to correctly predict what stuff will do. Worrying about whether stuff is real wastes time that would be better spent understanding stuff. Stuff is real enough, and there's lots of it, and it's complicated and potentially lethal and moving fast, so there's no time to waste. This is the essence of pragmatism.

"A theory that proves itself more successful than its rivals in predicting and controlling our world is said to be nearer the truth. This is an operational notion of truth employed by scientists."
-Wikipedia, Pragmaticism

"Einstein liked to say that the Moon is 'out there' even when no one is observing it."
-Wikipedia, Local realism

Monday, June 25, 2012

Question 4 appears to be a trap. If I say that science is aesthetic, then it's merely subjective, in which case how is it any more "true" than art? On the other hand if I say science is objective, then how do scientists make value judgments? This trap was a major theme of Robert Pirsig's classic philosophical novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". He attempted to solve the dilemma by positing the existence of "Quality," a preconscious, instinctual value awareness that was neither subject nor object. He explicitly equated Quality with Zen, e.g. by stating "The Quality that can be defined is not the real Quality" (paraphrasing Lao Tze).

Unlike Pirsig I'm not going to retreat into mysticism. The scientific search for better explanations may involve aesthetics, but that's not what makes it scientific. What makes it scientific is the requirement that explanations be testable and predictive. This requirement is what distinguishes science from other human endeavors.

If we generalize aesthetics by equating it with value judgments, ALL endeavors involve aesthetics, and not only human endeavors either. Dolphins and ants also make value judgments, though we might find them hard to relate to. But even if you reject my broad definition of aesthetics, clearly many if not most human endeavors involve aesthetics. However I challenge you to identify a non-scientific human endeavor which requires all explanations to be testable and predictive.

So far the only thing I've described as "boring" is mysticism. Mysticism bores me because it's childish and defeatist. Creationism is a good example. Faced with one of the most challenging, fascinating questions of all time--how complex life came to exist on earth--Creationists say: "don't ask." What could be more boring than that? There are no mysteries in science, only unsolved problems.

Freedom is such a vague and overloaded term that I can't even begin to answer questions 1-3 until we've agreed on a definition of freedom in this context. The same goes for autonomy.

I will look at Hubble before I respond to post below or write more myself. I haven't yet read your post below before posting these questions. After looking at Hubble, I will repond to Hubble experience and to your post below. But I would like to post the following questions I've composed for your consideration in upcoming posts.

1. Do you see any notion of a claim to freedom or autonomy on the part of scientists? If so, what's the nature of this claim to freedom? Is it freedom "to" something, or freedom "from" something?
2. Does this claim to freedom relate in any way to the claim to freedom or autonomy on the part of artists?
3. Does this claim to freedom relate in anyway to the claim to freedom of capitalists?
4. Is science an aesthetic activity?
5. Are scientists artists? (or visa versa) Is there some relationship between art and science?
6. How does this relate to the ideas of "interesting" versus "boring" that you mention. In other words, what is the significance to you of the spectrum of interesting--boring as a measure of value?

Sunday, June 24, 2012

From my point of view the allegation that science is a delusion is as bizarre as Christians claiming to talk to Jesus every morning. It's as if we're standing in front of the pyramids at Giza, and you say they're a delusion. I have an urge to bang my (or your?) head on them until you agree they're real. I don't see how to proceed unless we can agree that the universe is real, and that its properties and behavior can be determined with increasing accuracy, given sufficient time and effort.

The Pythagorean theorem relating the three sides of a right triangle has at least 270 known proofs. If you somehow managed to disprove it, reality would come unglued. We'd be unable to measure the distance between two points. Maps would be rubbish. Astronomy and navigation would be impossible. Whole branches of mathematics would disappear, taking most of science with them. Social and physical structures built in accordance with Cartesian geometry would collapse in an avalanche. You might enjoy that, but I assure you it won't happen. The Pythagorean theorem is as true as anything can be. I propose to use it as a proxy for the definition of "truth" in the scientific sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

People can claim whatever they like as personal, subjective truth, but that doesn't make it true for others. Science is concerned with explanations that are predictive, regardless of whether people believe them or not. Most people refused to believe Copernicus at the time, and Galileo was forced to recant, but even if the geocentric model were accepted today, it would still be false, because it always was. You can believe that the sun won't come up tomorrow, and if you're schizophrenic, maybe it won't from your point of view, but for the rest of us, it most assuredly will. Or as Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying, "You’re entitled to your own opinions. You’re not entitled to your own facts."

I find it disheartening and surreal to be debating such elementary matters in this day and age, and I increasingly empathize with the tribulations of science teachers, and not only in the red states. According to a recent poll, nearly half of American adults believe "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." This ghastly result did not vary significantly with degree of higher education, suggesting that whatever people are studying in American universities, it usually isn't evolution. See:

http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

I wasn't kidding when I said we've included Pythagorean proofs in the messages we send to extraterrestrials, by the way. You might be interested to know what else we've sent. We've sent the atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which make up DNA, to demonstrate that we've grasped not only chemistry but also the chemistry of life. We've sent the relative position of the Sun to the center of the Galaxy and 14 pulsars, a diagram of our solar system, and many other hard-won truths which you apparently consider unimportant, delusional or both.

You also allege that science is an expression of shame at the ephemeral nature of existence, but again this indicates a crucial misunderstanding about science. In fact science squarely faces impermanence, far more so than any other human endeavor. Geology and paleontology routinely deal with events that occurred millions or billions of years ago. Cosmology investigates the origins of the universe, and predicts events in the distant future, long after Earth is destroyed by the sun. Scientists don't expect perfect explanations during their lives, or any number of lives. They do however hope for explanations to improve with time and effort. The scientific enterprise is cumulative, and must be sustained over many generations to be effective. Science thus depends on the continuity provided by civilization. Science is also communal: scientists collaborate, and both criticize and build on the work of their peers. If each scientist had to discover everything from scratch by himself, we wouldn't have made it past the Renaissance.

Regarding Jasper Johns, you misunderstand me. I am NOT claiming that his paintings are universal or in any way similar to scientific facts. Science has both required and enabled power, and the consequences have proved corrosive to traditional human ethical structures. Humanity may not be capable of adapting quickly enough to the disturbing, "disruptive" truths revealed by science. Some would plunge us into a prescientific dark age in order to avoid this outcome. From my point of view this is similar to destroying modern paintings because they're products of civilization. In both cases the impulse is regressive.

"whether our 'true nature,' fate and destiny is to live in competition and domination (power) or symbiosis and mutuality (wholeness, self-regulation)."

This is another false distinction. All species survive by some COMBINATION of competition and cooperation. The details are complex and vary from place to place, even on tiny scales.

For example, of all animals, ants have the second most highly organized societies, after humans. They exhibit extraordinary degrees of specialization, cooperation, and altruism. Ants normally sacrifice themselves heroically for the welfare of the colony. Ant colonies also periodically conduct all-out wars with other colonies, regardless of whether the colonies are of the same species. These are wars of extermination which only end when one of the colonies is completely destroyed, its territory occupied and its members enslaved or cannibalized. See e.g. Edward O. Wilson for electrifying descriptions of ant life.

Biologically, evolution is the differential survival of self-replicating organisms. Attributes that contribute to survival tend to become more prevalent, while attributes that detract from it tend to die out. On Earth at least, self-replication is an elaborate chemical reaction involving DNA. The attributes themselves are not necessarily competitive or cooperative. The competition in evolution comes from the fact that the energy supply (ultimately sunlight) is limited, and therefore increase of one organism often comes at the expense of another.

Other applications of the term evolution, e.g. to the development of human social systems, or to the spread of ideas or computer viruses, are purely metaphorical, so to avoid confusion I would prefer we restrict use of the term to its biological meaning as stated above.

Your denial of non-human perspective doesn't prevent me from achieving it. In fact this perspective is the source of antihumanism. I reject the statement that "in relationship to cosmic time, nothing matters." To me, the notion that value exists only for humans is just another example of narcissistic humanism. Why should we assume that other organisms don't value their existence? Why shouldn't the universe have intrinsic value?

A note about blogging:

Because I have never blogged before, as we discussed, I am experiencing culture shock about how radically the blog format disrupts the way I'm used to understanding a discussion by ordering in terms of most recent comment first. I can't imagine how anyone could make sense out of it reading it in backwards order, but it encourages people to read it backwards and makes it difficult to read it forwards. It seems to me literally like what it would be like to read a novel from back to front. Have you really read that novel?

It almost seems like the blog format is a way of creating incoherance in a discussion. But I know this is a paranoid anti-technological conspiracy theory....or is it?????

"Are you opposed to power, on the grounds that authority is impossible without it?"

This question is unanswerable to me because I don't understand what you mean. Could you ask it in a more specific way?

I do think that science system concentrates power and is disruptive and destabilizing as the market system does, or rather that they are actually part of the same system.

With the question do I feel lucky not to be bacteria? When I said I didn't understand this question before, you said this question had to do with the risk of being a mammal, and facing extinction, versus the security of being a lower life form and surviving as long as the planet?

I think this question again involves attempting to transcend the human perspective. But instead of getting really huge in scale, you're going in the opposite direction. I still think it's a delusion for a human scientist to think they could transcend the human perspective, the human measure. But the interesting thing is that after doing that, you then embrace being human, with relief. And it seems to see the human from this perspective as being more heroic, rather than just accidental, in being willing to exchange security for the rewards of culture and human progress.

This question also brings up symbiosis and the idea that there is no clear separation between our identity and that of the bacteria, fungus and viruses. Inside our cells are a collaboration of different life forms that came together, according to Lynn Margulis. "I am we."

It also relates to the different uses of evolution, between the conflictual, competitive, winners-losers, best fit for the environment view, and the symbiotic view of mutual influence, in which every being is somethings else's environment, and beings produce their environment, are not just impacted by it.

The relationship between evolution and human progress and the cultural struggle over the definition of evolution in the service of ethical or political goals is underneath this conversation all over the place. Evolution is made into an image of progress, they become like mirror images. Evolution becomes the prototype for the market, science, arts. I haven't read much about evolution, but it's a ground where are the cultural battles are played out, similar to the art world issues of the '80's. A site for a contest of meaning about the possibility of transcendence. And people like Richard Dawkins and David Dennett -- I don't think it's just about them attacking religion, I think they also are opposed to the believers in transcendence who are evolutionary scientists.

And I definitely think the contest of meaning is over whether our "true nature," fate and destiny is to live in competition and domination (power) or symbiosis and mutuality (wholeness, self-regulation). Debates over evolution become a way to define what's possible...Like the contest of meaning about pre-civilization, the short, brutish life versus utopianism of John Zerzan, and Ted Kaczynski's pragmatic middle ground.

On question 4, concerning the fate of the human species in terms of millions of years, this is the kind of question that contains so many of your own assumptions that I can't answer it on that level.

You are proposing questions from an inhuman perspective upon being human. In relationship to cosmic time, nothing matters. I am a human being, not the creator of the universe looking down upon all of time and creation. It's a question of scale. You are framing the question within a timescale within which human agency doesn't even exist. And then you are asking me to express my human will (my sense of agency) about what should be done. To me this is like arguing about how many angels fit on the head of a pin. It evokes a longing for God-like power and control over our fate that can never be satisfied, while annihilating the "zoomed in" realm of our own human-scale existence (our collective human subjectivity) in which we can meaningfully participate.

It also suggests a longing for humanity to have some kind of absolute, eternal value.

Can any human, even a scientist, actually does transcend their humanity, for even a second? Is the objective, third-person (out-of-self) perspective of science, which claims to be the unique truth, a scientific delusion? And in fact a shame at being human, vulnerable, and transient?

Finally, does that third-person, objectifying and aestheticizing perspective lead to the legitimation or rationalization of dehumanizing practices and treating people as objects, simply by treating their experience as unreal and off-the-books, externalized out of the system of thought, in the same way that mainstream economics excludes the lifeworld?

I'm thinking of how marginal groups are first dehumanized by the power structure, to prepare acceptance for violence against them.

So the question is, whether the objective point of view promoted by "scientism" lays the ground for violence or oppression of those objectified.

You have said that the Hubble perspective confers humility by showing that humans are mere accidents. That a human-centered perspective is narcissistic.

This brings up the issue of "man is the measure of all things" which is what you say is at the center of what you define as Humanism in the Anti-Humanist manifesto. I think the implications of whether to use a human scale -- in regards to your question 4 on the lifetimes of species -- could have a different relation to humility than you say.

There is an issue of humility in the perspective, and not just in what's being contemplated.

A first thought. I am using the term "pure science" to refer to that science which distinguishes itself from applied science, and the ethical issues associated with it. To you the word "pure" is redundant, because you already assume that science is pure. Thus, according to you, a scientist would reject the term because it implies that there could be such a thing as "impure science" and that would violate the definition of science as inherently pure. In other words, if it's not pure, it's not science.

I am inventing the term "pure science" to draw attention to science's claim to be pure, so that claim to purity (ultimate truth) can be seen for what it is, only a claim. Science's claim to inherent purity (truthfulness) and indeed a unique claim to truthfulness, is what I want to question. First, that there actually is any separation between applied science and "pure science" or what you would call "science." The definition of science, as scientists use it, is self-serving and ideological. Scientists do not have authority over the definition of science. Scientists would like to disassociate themselves from applied science, in the name of their autonomy, the universal value of their work. This universal, autonomous quality, or transcendent quality, is also ascribed to art in our culture.

Therefore it's very relevant that you also invoked Jasper Johns as being sacrosanct. I wouldn't say that Jasper Johns paintings should be destroyed, but I would say that they have no more claim to universal, transcendent value than does science. This also draws attention to the aesthetic value that you ascribe to science. I'm very interested in the ideas about freedom and autonomy (and independence from or transcendence of social conditions and power) that are invoked in three areas: science, art, and the market system. There is something very similar and interrelated about the ideal of freedom in these three pursuits.

I haven't yet looked at the Hubble images. I have had it as an intention, but since I haven't done it, although I am also busy, I clearly am resisting doing it. My first thought is that I'm not interested, because I can't imagine how it would impact on my view of things, it seems off the track of what I'm thinking about (I am preoccupied with the subjective). The perspective of the Hubble seems diametrically opposed to the perspective that seems humanly relevant to me. So the block in me is, "Ok, I need to look up that image, but it's irrelevant to what we're talking about; and I'm not going to see the significance in it that Chris sees." I will make myself look at it and try to understand the significance that it has for you......when I can make myself! I promise I will.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Unanswered previous questions

What scientist would willingly be called impure? Where is the journal of impure science?
Should Jasper Johns' paintings be destroyed because he used acrylic, which is a type of plastic?
Are you opposed to power, on the grounds that authority is impossible without it?
The average mammal exists for a million years. So far we've managed 100,000 years, a mere tenth of the average. What is it exactly that you hope for? Another 900,000 years? Do you wish for a kinder, gentler period in human history? If so, how long would you expect it to last? Is there any precedent for it in human history? In non-human history?
Many parasites are born, live their entire lives, and die of old age entirely enclosed in food (e.g. many of the bacteria in your body). Should we be jealous of this? Or should we feel lucky?
Why haven't you looked at the Hubble telescope images even though I sent you links to them twice? Are you prejudiced against them and if so why?

Reminder notes: issues arising within this conversation:
what is the purpose of the conversation? - is the aim that one convinces the other (capitulation)? or dialogue as mutual development, revealing of assumptions
Discussion of how emotionalism in conversation indicates our dependency upon and investment in ideas that are being threatened. Emotionalism as tracer dye, investigating the conflicts in assumptions is fruitful, rather than angry conflicts being a problem to be avoided.
autonomy: art science market/embedded-means/ends
freedom from what? their work and discoveries of universal value to humanity?
Are scientists like artists, in their social function? (Bohemians)
is ethics separable from science?
Are scientists responsible for how their discoveries are actually used?
Science or "pure science" (does "science" already mean pure?)
authority over terminology, definitions and rules of conversation
science as a system - like tools versus technology - is it neutral?
systems of knowledge - how do you evaluate them? what makes them truthful?
does the word science need to be subdivided? or is everything using the scientific method one thing called science? Is science really about it's method?
Is science an accumulation of true facts and the progressive elimination of errors and superstitions?
Spirituality=errors, delusions, confusions, superstitions Science=facts
Spirituality=first-person perspective, subjective (error) Science=third-person perspective, objective (true)
Spirituality=childish, irresponsible, wishful thinking; Science=adult, responsible, facing the truth
Is science a higher level of knowledge above all other knowledge systems (tradition, religion, mysticism) Kuhn putting everything on level ground.
Is science a religion? Christianity and science - is science really opposed to Christianity, or is it an outgrowth of christianity?
Meaning of the third person perspective (power) (I-It relationships)
Point of view
Time frame (cosmic history? lifetime? 7 generations?)
Is objectivity more truthful than subjectivity?
Science as separating the wheat from the chaff, conclusively proving what is true.
What does "falsifiable" mean?
Determinism
Buddhism
Science as the best of the human. "do science well, but do ethics badly" idea.
Progress
"People are expecting scientists do do something they can't do, they can only provide the facts, they can't solve the political problem."
Political domain is psychology and sociology
I think about psychology and sociology, non-objective; Chris involved with objective;
Mutually exclusive ways of thinking?
Can we even communicate, or are we always going past each other, and not making contact?
Chris: he's asking important questions that I don't answer. Accountability for meeting the points that have been raised. I feel same thing.
First, huge issues being raised, a kind of pile-up. Second, you can't answer a question if you don't concur with underlying assumptions. It's meaningless. You can only answer by starting to talk about the assumptions.
Mutual meaninglessness of our questions and answers.
Thomas Kuhn addresses this!
Idea of trying to slow down the conversation and keep it focused.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Hi Chris ! Can't believe you got all this in here. Is there a way to reverse the order or is always latest most recent?

I hope you'll include this discussion of the title in the blog!

sounds good.

FWIW here's a style reference supporting my contention that the hyphen is unnecessary.

meta-analysis <= hyphen is required because the prefix ends and the base word begins with the same vowel
metadelusion <= acceptable

Hyphens aren't allowed in the blog URL, but I'm OK with using one in the title (which appears on each page) if you think it's important. In my opinion it's unnecessary as many common words have a meta prefix without the hyphen, e.g. metaphysics, metaprogramming, metatheorem, etc. Whether the hyphen is required is merely a typographical convention subject to change. It seems words that begin with a vowel commonly have the hyphen, e.g. meta-economics not metaeconomics.

BTW what meta-delusion means is delusion about delusion, according to Wikipedia:

'The modern sense of "an X about X" has given rise to concepts like "meta-discussion", a discussion about discussion, "meta-joke", a joke about jokes, and "metaprogramming", writing programs that write programs.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta

It sounds right to me! Shall we go with it??

Sounds ok, but would a hypen be good?

I like structuraldelusion, but not collapseofcivilization which seems too general.

Spiritual Liquidation was actually an anti-spiritual thing at the time! I did a book burning. Literally, "everything must go!"

But I understand how it could be distorting. Structural delusion seems even handed and specific.

How about metadelusion??

It has a similar meaning but it's shorter and catchier and only has very few hits in Google which is good.

I understand about the Ted issue and agree. I guess I don't want to use the word spiritual because I equate spirituality with delusion whereas you don't, so it makes it appear that I'm conceding the point when I'm not. Also it's a heavily loaded term, and associates with religion and religious blogs. So far I like structuraldelusion the best but I'll keep trying.

also available:
collapseofcivilization

structuraldelusion

I don't like surrogate activities, because that's Ted's thing and I don't want to have Ted's ideas about science come into it at the level of the title and confuse things.

Here are some ideas:

do you like "spiritual liquidation"? That was the name of a project I did when I went back on drugs. I don't know if I showed it to you, but I made a prayer card you would probably enjoy that said "cease all spiritual activities" It also had a little button, "did you find everything you were looking for?" If you wanted we could put the image up, which is a really good image.

surrogateactivities is available!

It's from a list I have of slogans you came up with.

I tried mistakesweremade but it's already taken...

I'd just like to understand whether it's a blog that only we know about it, or if it's public in the sense of being of being part of the COE website.

OK I'll see what I can do. I think a blog would be the easiest, because they're dead easy to set up and don't require any maintenance.

That sounds fine, except that I wouldn't want to have to worry too much about expressing myself in good form. I'm not sure if you mean it would be a public page on COE. Trying to write well is so arduous for me, that I don't want to have to do that. So if you don't have standards of quality of writing, it sounds and helpful. That would be good to excize anything that might violate someone's privacy. Also then we could add things as they occur to us and not be in haste to keep up with email pace.

Would you be amenable to my making our dialogue into a web page? I could redact it to remove names or any other personal or identifying information. This would also make it easy for you to keep track of what's been said previously and/or download the content into a Word file.

I'm at work. I'm sorry for not responding to the questions you raised, and I can't spend time right now with your current email, but thank you for responding so fully. I meant to just briefly address the "confusing ethics with pure sciene" and got carried away. Also I haven't yet had a chance to look at the Hubble images.

Interestingly enough, Mitch Hampton is working on a written piece about "scientism" right now.

His focus is "is experience real?"

The whole thing is a little overstimulating!

Actually, when you mention art, I think there is a strong relationship between the idea of autonomy in science, the market and art. The autonomy of science is the idea that I am raising. Or even more, the meaning of the idea of autonomy.

Have you read woody allen's short story about a chess by mail game when the order of interchange starts to get confused? It reminds me of what we're doing.

I think its about subjective versus objective concept of "truth". The main point about Buddhism is that it's subjective, but using a subjective method to try to transcend subjectivity (ego); almost like trying to become aware of instinctive nature so as not to be ruled by it.

Do you know a way to copy emails into a word file? I'm getting lost in all the emails.
Anyway, can't respond today, I got very excited last night about a new article about mental illness.

The distinction you make between science and pure science has no basis in fact. There is no such category as pure science. What scientist would willingly be called impure? Where is the journal of impure science? Science either conforms with the definition of science as previously stated, or it isn't science. Jeremy Jackson's ethical polemics are NOT science, they are his opinions, and he would be the first to admit this. However any results he publishes in peer-reviewed journals ARE science, and in this area he is obliged to conform to the same standards as any other scientist. His peers check his methods and results, and if they are found wanting he is refuted mercilessly, regardless of how popular he may be.

Biology is as falsifiable as any other science and Jeremy Jackson would be horribly offended if you accused him of practicing non-hierarchical science. Conversely Richard Dawkins would be equally offended if you accused him of being a tool of the power structure. Dividing scientists into good guys and bad guys may be rhetorically convenient, but it's not supported by the evidence. Bad guys do great science, and vice versa. Robert Oppenheimer was reviled for his political views, but his science was sound. Albert Einstein was a pacifist hero but he spent half his life refining a theory that was bunk. Scientists try to explain phenomena, they make errors, the errors are eventually caught, and that's how science advances.

Science depends on the power and leisure provided by civilization, in order to develop the critical infrastructure of logic, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. The entire scientific enterprise develops hierarchically; more specialized fields are built out of blocks provided by more fundamental fields. You may dislike science because it depends on civilization, but the same can be said of modern art. Should Jasper Johns' paintings be destroyed because he used acrylic, which is a type of plastic?

Pythagorean geometry hasn't changed in 2,500 years, regardless of whether it was useful to the many power structures that have come and gone since then. The power structure of ancient Greece is long gone, but their geometry is still with us. It was always true, and it will remain true after humanity disappears. That's why we include Pythagorean proofs in our messages to extraterrestrials.

Of course science has intensified humanity's ethical problems. No one is saying otherwise. That's what I mean when I say science has revealed disturbing truths. Science both requires power, and enables power. It's a positive feedback, and positive feedback is notoriously hard to control, as we're currently discovering with climate change. Power could be directed towards egalitarian aims, but that's determined by ethics, not science. As I said previously, humans could turn out to be great at science but lousy at ethics. On the other hand, there's no scientific proof that humanity has to use its power to destroy itself. In the absence of intergalactic distress calls, E.O.Wilson's claim that intelligence tends to snuff itself out remains merely his (and my) OPINION.

I sometimes wonder if you're simply opposed to power, on the grounds that authority is impossible without it. This would at least make sense. The problem is that power has always been with us, the myth of the noble savage notwithstanding. Early humans wielded power, exerted authority, and modified their environment, just more slowly and on a smaller scale. Fire is power, and we can accuse Homo erectus of abusing it, but I'm sure they were glad to have it.

I asked some questions at the end of my previous reply, which I believe cut to the heart of this whole matter. I look forward to receiving your answers.

There are two easy to address areas where I think you misunderstand me.

One is, I am not at all confused about the separation between the application of science and science itself. That claim to separation is explicitly what I am addressing and questioning. I think that the very severing of application or ethics from science, and the idea of a pure science, is the very guise under which science gains it's authority. The idea of "science for science" sake is, I think, very related to the idea of "art for art's sake" -- a universal zone that transcends the realm of social power. I believe that this very idea of purity and transcendence of science acts to veil the relationship of science to the power structure, and allows the power structure to legitimate itself through science and expertise.

I'm wondering if there could be a distinction made between scientific activity that is about a relationship of love for "creation" (like Rachel Carson, or Jeremy Jackson), a kind of egalitarian, participatory or non-hierarchical science; these are essentially dissidents expressing a sense of responsibility and involvement, emotion, subjectivity, value, respect, humility, etc. Spiritual values, if you will. Then there is scientific activity that is aimed at gaining new powers. Like genetics.

In my view, those who investigate new means of power, even at the pure level before it is applied, are part of the process of providing more power to those who already hold power, military, commercial,and social; and who will use whatever power is available to them for political purposes. Using science as being objective/technical/apolitical, the power structure then can make political decisions but claim that they are scientific and technical decisions. So I don't think pure science is autonomous. The applied science of today is the pure science of yesterday. The ethical problems raised by the exercise of new powers could be seen as having been there all along, unacknowledged, as the groundwork for new power-concentrating technologies was being laid.

I think artists and scientists are actually alot alike, in their supposed autonomy.

The other thing I wanted to note is that I do have strong emotions about psychiatric drugs, but I too had my life saved in a hospital by the medical system when I almost died of spinal meningitis.