Quantum fuzziness

I'm of two minds when laypeople write about science.

On the one hand, I applaud anyone who is willing to delve into the often deep waters of scientific research.  To put it bluntly, science ain't easy.  After all, by comparison to actual researchers, I'm a layperson myself, despite a degree in physics and the fact that I've taught biology for 31 years.  So to any non-specialist who puts in the time and effort to truly understand something from actual scientific research, I have nothing but admiration.

Also in the positive column is the incalculable benefit that has come from popularizers, people like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson.  While they themselves are scientists, they've made abstruse topics accessible to the masses -- something for which they are sometimes criticized, a stance about which I've written before and which I truly cannot understand.

However.  The problem with laypeople leaping into science writing is their potential for getting things wrong, for interjecting fuzzy-headed ideas, and thus misrepresenting the science itself.  It's usually done with the best of intentions; unlike some of the people I write about here, it's seldom about self-aggrandizement or making a profit.  But it does create the difficulty that a person can read an article and actually understand less about the science involved when they're done than they did before they read it.

I ran into a particularly good example of this in the online magazine Medium a couple of days ago.  The article was "Quantum Mechanics and Existentialism: Removing my Fear of Death" by Alex Vervloet.  It starts off promisingly enough; a description of Vervloet's curiosity about subatomic physics and quantum mechanics, which spurred him to do some research and reading on the subject.  (The book he chose to read, Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelli, is one I'm unfamiliar with, but Rovelli himself is a theoretical physicist and one of the founders of the theory of loop quantum gravity, so he certainly has sterling credentials.)

In any case, Vervloet starts out right, both in his search for information and in his article.  But about halfway through, he had passages like this:

You and I are both made up of a seemingly countless number of particles, and those need energy.  Now, when I say energy, I’m not just talking about one thing — there are many different types of energy.  As early as Elementary School we learn about Kinetic and Potential Energy.  Later on we learn about Gravitational, Nuclear, Electromagnetic, Chemical, and other types of Energy.  Calories, sleep, sunlight and water are all converted into Chemical Energy for our bodies.  This in turn gets converted into Electromagnetic Energy for our nervous system, Heat Energy for our blood and skin, Kinetic Energy for our organs, and Potential Energy for our muscles.  Some of it remains chemical as well.

And my expression changed to something like this:

Amongst the many things wrong with this passage is the idea that we convert "calories, sleep, sunlight, and water... into chemical energy."  This is either some metabolic pathway I've never heard of, or else he's just making shit up.

My vote is for the latter.

He also throws in a mention of the Oscillating-Universe Model -- put simply, that the outward motion of the galaxies will eventually be reversed, and we'll have a "Big Crunch" followed by another Big Bang -- and treats it as if it were accepted science, when in fact it is at the moment a mere speculation.  (I could write a whole post on the subject of the mass of the universe, and the possibility of our expanding outward forever or eventually collapsing, which brings in some of the least-understood parts of physics -- dark matter and dark energy.)

Then he takes these pieces and runs right off the cliff with them, with his "theory" -- which I will quote rather than trying to describe, so you can get the full effect:

We know that when certain particles of mass combine, they create elements, and those elements make up the universe.  But what about energy?  What happens when certain energies combine?  Explosions. 

I believe this is the secret to our consciousness.  Just like the universe began with The Big Bang (or bounce), so did we.  Every human being is the product of a Big Bang.  The right combination of entangled energy particles combined into a sperm cell and ovum to create us.  Our body and consciousness explodes into existence and expands to adulthood, then shrinks until it reaches its inevitable death (every mass is eventually converted back to energy and visa versa).  It’s then either buried in the ground to be converted into energy for plants, cremated into heat energy, or donated to science, where the energy leaves the body, and another body can use its energy to power the part(s).

Oookay.  Where do I start?

"Combining energies" does not create explosions.  In fact, I'm not even sure what he means by "combining energies," given that he seems to be using the woo-woo definition of "energy" to mean "the cosmic interconnectedness of all beings" rather than the rigorous scientific definition of "what is introduced to a system either to heat it or to give it the potential to do physical work."  But then he goes even further off the beam with quantum entanglement causing consciousness, there being entangled particles in sperm and eggs, and that the energy in our bodies can be "converted into energy for plants" (which is wildly wrong; plants are solar powered, so while the materials of a dead body might be recycled into a plant, the energy in the body would be devolved as heat during decomposition).

He then goes off into cycles and reincarnation and various other odd tangents, but at that point I kind of stopped paying attention.

Okay, I'm not trying to be mean, here.  Vervloet sounds like his heart is definitely in the right place, and a lot of his muddled ideas could be fixed (and hopefully will be fixed) if he continues researching what the physicists are actually saying.  But what bothers me here is that the publishers of Medium chose to post his article, which is really just the meanderings of someone with a rudimentary grasp of the topic.  (As evidenced by his use of the word "theory" to mean "something I just pulled out of my ass and which could be wrong as easily as right.")

All of which makes me sound like a humorless know-it-all.  And I acknowledge readily that there are tons of topics about which I am mostly ignorant -- but I refrain from writing about them, because whatever I wrote would be irrelevant.  The problem is that a publication, even an online one, becomes a conduit of information, and this is giving a completely wrong impression of what the science actually says.

In any case, I hope Vervloet keeps reading and keeps learning.  It's certainly a fascinating, if difficult, topic.  Ignorance, after all, is a universal condition, but it's completely curable.  You just have to be willing to admit where your understanding falls apart, and find someone who knows more than you do to remedy the situation.

A self-portrait drawn by others

As you might imagine, I get hate mail pretty frequently.

Most of it has to do with my targeting somebody's sacred cow, be it homeopathy, fundamentalist religion, astrology, climate change denial, or actual sacred cows.  And it seems to fall into three general categories:

• Insults, some of which never get beyond the "you stupid poopyhead fuckface" level.  These usually have the worst grammar and spelling.
• Arguments that are meant to be stinging rebuttals.  They seldom are, at least not from the standpoint of adding anything of scientific merit to the conversation, although their authors inevitably think they've skewered me with the sharp rapier of their superior knowledge.  (Sometimes I get honest, thoughtful comments or criticisms on what I've written; I have always, and will always, welcome those.)
• Diatribes that tell me what I actually believe, as if I'm somehow unaware of it.

I've gotten several of the latter in the last few weeks, and it's these that I want to address in this post, because they're the ones I find the most curious.  I've got a bit of a temper myself, so I can certainly understand the desire to strike back with an insult at someone who's angered you; and it's unsurprising that a person who is convinced of something will want to rebut anyone who says different.  But the idea that I'd tell someone I was arguing with what they believed, as if I knew it better than they did, is just plain weird.

Here are a handful of examples, from recent fan mail, to illustrate what I'm talking about:

• In response to a post I did on the vitriolic nonsense spouted by televangelist Jim Bakker: "Atheists make me want to puke.  You have the nerve to attack a holy man like Jim Bakker.  You want to tear down the foundation of this country, which is it's [sic] churches and pastors, and tell Christian Americans they have no right to be here."
• In response to my post on a group of alt-med wingnuts who are proposing drinking turpentine to cure damn near everything: "You like to make fun of people who believe nature knows best for curing us and promoting good health.  You pro-Monsanto, pro-chemical types think that the more processed something is, the better it is for you.  I bet you put weed killer on your cereal in the morning."
• In response to the post in which I described a push by EPA chief Scott Pruitt to remove scientists from the EPA advisory board and replace them with corporate representatives: "Keep reading us your fairy tales about 'climate change' and 'rising sea levels.'  Your motives are clear, to destroy America's economy and hand over the reigns [sic] to the wacko vegetarian enviro nuts.  Now that we've got people in government who are actually looking out for AMERICAN interests, people like you are crapping your pants because you know your [sic] not in control any more."
• And finally, in response to a post I did on the fact that the concept of race has little biological meaning: "You really don't get it, do you?  From your picture you're as white as I am, and you're gonna stand there and tell me that you have no problem being overrun by people who have different customs and don't speak English?  Let's see how you feel when your kid's teacher requires them to learn Arabic."

So, let's see.  That makes me a white English-only wacko vegetarian enviro nut (with crap in my pants) who eats weed killer for breakfast while writing checks to Monsanto and plotting how to tear down churches so I can destroy the United States.

Man, I've got a lot on my to-do list today.

I know it's a common tendency to want to attribute some set of horrible characteristics to the people we disagree with.  It engages all that tribal mentality stuff that's pretty deeply ingrained in our brains -- us = good, them = bad.  The problem is, reality is a hell of a lot more complex that that, and it's only seldom that you can find someone who is so bad that they have no admixture whatsoever of good, no justification for what they're doing, no explanation at all for how they got to be the way they are.  We're all mixed-up cauldrons of conflicting emotions.  It's hard to understand ourselves half the time; harder still to parse the motives of others.

So let me disabuse my detractors of a few notions.

While I'm not religious myself, I really have a live-and-let-live attitude toward religious folks, as long as they're not trying to impose their religion on others or using it as an excuse to deny others their rights as humans.  I have religious friends and non-religious friends and friends who don't care much about the topic one way or the other, and mostly we get along pretty well.

I have to admit, though, that being a card-carrying atheist, I do have to indulge every so often in the dietary requirements as set forth in the official Atheist Code of Conduct.

Speaking of diet, I'm pretty far from a vegetarian, even when I'm not dining on babies. In fact, I think that a medium-rare t-bone steak with a glass of good red wine is one of the most delicious things ever conceived by the human species.  But neither am I a chemical-lovin' pro-Monsanto corporate shill who drinks a nice steaming mug of RoundUp in the morning.  I'll stick with coffee, thanks.

Yes, I do accept climate change, because I am capable of reading and understanding a scientific paper and also do not think that because something is inconvenient to American economic expediency, it must not be true.  I'd rather that the US economy doesn't collapse, mainly because I live here, but I'd also like my grandchildren to be born on a planet that is habitable in the long term.

And finally: yes, I am white. You got me there.  If I had any thought of denying it, it was put to rest when I did a 23 & Me test and found out that I'm... white.  My ancestry is nearly all from western Europe, unsurprising given that three of my grandparents were of French descent and one of Scottish descent.  But my being white doesn't mean that I always have to place the concerns of other white people first, or fear people who aren't white, or pass laws making sure that America stays white.  For one thing, it'd be a little hypocritical if I demanded that everyone in the US speak English, given that my mother and three of my grandparents spoke French as their first language; and trust me when I say that I would have loved my kids to learn Arabic in school.  The more other cultures you learn about in school, the better, largely because it's hard to hate people when you realize that they're human, just like you are.

So anyway.  Nice try telling me who I am, but you got a good many of the details wrong.  Inevitable, I suppose, when it's a self-portrait drawn by someone else.  Next time, maybe you should try engaging the people you disagree with in dialogue, rather than ridiculing, demeaning, dismissing, or condescending to them.  It's in general a nicer way to live, and who knows?  Maybe you'll learn something.

And if you want to know anything about me, just ask rather than making assumptions.  It's not like I'm shy about telling people what I think.  Kind of hiding in plain sight, here.

Faith in science

I was asked an interesting question by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia yesterday: Are people who say they "believe in science" admitting that for them, it's a religion?

I think that a good place to start is with the definitions of "religion" and "belief."  So here you are, courtesy of Merriam-Webster:

• religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods; a particular system of faith and worship.
• belief: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing; conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

I think you can see that in its most literal sense, science isn't a religion given that it has nothing to do with any superhuman controlling powers, but it does involve belief by the second half of the definition -- becoming convinced of the truth of a statement because of examination of the evidence.

However, I think this is a fairly shallow analysis.  People have come to use the word "religion" to mean "any set of beliefs arrived at by faith, or that cannot be arrived at by rational analysis."  The belief in reincarnation, therefore, would qualify as a religion in that sense, because there's bugger-all evidence that it happens, and yet people believe it fervently.

My own perception of things -- and I'm no philosopher, so take this with a grain of salt and feel free to argue with me if you like -- is that the only sense in which science is like a religion is at its very basis, i.e., the assumption that the universe obeys certain physical laws, and is knowable through examination of evidence.  Belief systems that reject the reality of the external world -- such as the stricter forms of Buddhism -- would also reject that science is telling you anything valid, because in their view, there's nothing relevant about the external world to study.  But we do have the fact that science has a pretty damn good track record of producing results consistent with what we observe.  If you reject the basic assumption that the scientific method is a valid way of getting to the truth, you're also rejecting just about every technological advance humanity has made since our distant ancestors left their caves.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But once you've accepted the baseline assumption that the method works, the rest doesn't rely on belief at all.  Anyone with access to the data can do the evaluation themselves; anyone with the equipment can replicate the experiments that generated the data.  Science is, in that sense, the most egalitarian of pursuits.  It's open to anyone with sufficient brainpower, and even the most set-in-stone law of science can be challenged if the data contradict it.

It's why this video, that appeared on YouTube last week, pissed me off so much.

This is a woman speaking to a class at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), claiming that science needs to be "decolonized" -- i.e., that it is the province of rich white males, and therefore the results are suspect.  It's inarguable that the pursuit of science has for years been accessible only to rich white males; the fact that our society has for centuries been male-dominated and white-European-dominated is hardly in question.  And she's right that it's a tragedy.  The idea that we have for generations wasted the talent, brains, and creativity of anyone but the privileged few is dreadful.

But the claim that because of that, the results generated are probably wrong is idiotic.  Again, once you accept the methods of science -- and that does not appear to be what she's arguing against -- you are driven to your conclusions by the evidence, not by what gender or ethnicity you are.  Further, anyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or any other personal or social criterion, is able to challenge your claim if they have better or different evidence.

So science does share some things in common with religion and belief, but it is only at its most basic assumptions, which hardly anyone questions.  After that, logic and evidence take over -- no faith, trust, or blind belief necessary.

Control vs. conspiracy

Being a science teacher, I'm perhaps to be excused if I think that a lot of the world's problems would be significantly mitigated if everyone learned more actual science.

It wouldn't fix everything, mind you.  Even I'm not gung-ho enough to think that.  But if we all could admit that anthropogenic climate change is real, that evolution happened, that vaccines work, that scientists aren't some kind of evil cadre of conspirators who would like nothing better than to destroy the Earth -- well, it would go a long way toward making this a much saner world.

This idea is bolstered by some research that I just ran across -- although it dates to 2008, I hadn't heard about it.  Entitled "Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception," by Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky of the University of Texas, it describes research supporting the idea that when people feel confused or out of their depth, they have a tendency to see patterns that don't exist.  It's as if the mind becomes desperate to find something to hang on to, and attempts to force order from chaos.  The authors write:

Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions.  Additionally, we demonstrated that increased pattern perception has a motivational basis by measuring the need for structure directly and showing that the causal link between lack of control and illusory pattern perception is reduced by affirming the self.  Although these many disparate forms of pattern perception are typically discussed as separate phenomena, the current results suggest that there is a common motive underlying them.

Science writer Ed Yong draws a connection between this phenomenon and belief in conspiracy theories.  In his wonderful blog Not Exactly Rocket Science, Yong writes:

Obviously, the effect has both good and bad sides that should make for interesting discussions.  For a start, an ability to spot patterns isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It could be downright beneficial if it ramps up a person’s skill at spotting subtle trends that are actually real (although future studies need to test whether this actually happens). 

Even spotting false patterns could have psychological benefits if it restores a person’s sense of control, increases their confidence or even reduces their risk of depression.  Scientists, fond as we are of truth and fact, would typically argue that it’s better to get an accurate picture of the world around you.  Whitson and Galinsky agree but they also take a pragmatic stance, saying that “it may be at times adaptive [to allow] an individual to psychologically engage with rather than withdraw from their environment.” 

Of course, there are instances when making false connections can be downright damaging, especially if they’re used as the basis of bad, or even fatal, decisions.  Imagined pharmaceutical conspiracies or implications drawn about medicines from one-off anecdotes could drive people to embrace fruitless or potentially dangerous forms of alternative treatment.  People can avoid taking responsibility for, or psychologically coping with, events in their lives if they ascribe them to higher powers or sinister agencies.  And seeing too much meaning in the actions of others could lead to paranoia and severed social ties.

Which certainly supports the conjecture that belief in conspiracy theories would be stronger amongst people who feel that they have little control over their lives.  If you feel yourself to be at risk, if you think your home, family, or your entire way of life is in danger of being irreparably damaged, you begin to cast about for explanations -- because, after all, even a terrifying explanation is better than all of those bad things happening for no reason at all.  So you begin to put together pieces of information, all the while looking for a pattern.

And Whitson and Galinsky's research implies that if there is no pattern, your brain simply invents one.

See the pattern?  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It's not that I don't understand the drive people have for there to be an explanation.  The idea that bad things just happen because they happen -- that the world is so constructed that it raineth alike on the just and the unjust -- is a pretty bleak view.  

But there are a lot of things that we do understand, and that's where science education comes into play.  Whitson and Galinsky's research shows once we know more about those phenomena for which we do have an explanation, we not only make smarter decisions, but our feelings of befuddlement and confusion diminish.  We're less likely to find illusory patterns and miss the reality, or to be taken in by people who are muddying the situation because of a specific agenda (currently the case with the political attitudes toward climate change).  

It brings me back, as I have many times, to the wonderful quote by Carl Sagan: "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."  

Ten questions, ten answers

The site Today Christian posted an article a couple of days ago entitled, "10 Questions for Every Atheist."  The subtitle reads, "Some Questions Atheist [sic] Cannot Truly and Honestly REALLY Answer!  Which leads to some interesting conclusions…"  Because evidently we atheists never think about these things, and faced with questions have no choice but to say, "Golly!  I hadn't considered any of this!  I will go out and become a Christian immediately!"

Only ten, actually, but close enough.  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So in the interest of setting the record straight, I thought I'd answer them.  Not that the Today Christian people are ever likely to read my answers.  But just in case.  So here they are:

Question 1:  How did you become an atheist?

I was raised Roman Catholic, and spent the first part of my life trying like hell to believe the whole shebang.  There was (and is) something attractive about there being a Grand Pattern to it all, something bigger than myself that gives meaning and purpose to life (a topic I'll deal with more in a moment).  However, after reading the bible more than once cover-to-cover, and talking with various priests, ministers, and other true believers, I was forced to the conclusion that belief came from one of three sources: (1) I believe this because it's how I was raised; (2) I believe this because I've had a personal experience that convinced me; or (3) I believe this because I was convinced by an authority figure I trust.  None of these seemed to be acceptable reasons to commit to a belief, so I started casting about for actual evidence that any of it was true.  When I was about 28 or so I realized that there didn't seem to be any, or at least no evidence that would be acceptable to someone from outside the system.  At that point, I had no choice but to admit to myself that I was at least an agnostic, and that the complete dearth of hard evidence strongly supported atheism.

Question 2:  What happens when we die?

I don't know.  I'll find out when I get there.  Furthermore, not only do I not know, neither does anyone else, despite what they'll tell you to the contrary.  Wherever death leads, it's a one-way trip, with no possibility of sending text messages back to the ones we've left behind.

Question 3:  What if you're wrong?  And there is a heaven?  And there is a HELL!

Ah, yes, it always comes up sooner or later -- Pascal's Wager.  "I'd rather be a Christian who is wrong than an atheist who is wrong."  The problem with this is twofold.  Of all the gods humans have ever worshiped, how do you know that the Christian version is the one we need to worry about?  What if you die and find yourself in Valhalla? 

Of course, the other problem is that it's hard to conceive of a just deity who hides every shred of available evidence of his/her/its existence, creates a world full of confusion and ambiguity, and then when people come to the wrong conclusion says, "Ha ha!  You're wrong!  Into the fiery furnace with you, sucker!"  I'm not sure that such a deity would be worthy of worship in any case.

Question 4:  Without God, where do you get your morality from?

Easy.  My morality is based on doing the least harm I can and the most good I can, and continuing to learn and grow.  This sort of attitude is seen in all social species -- sharing food, taking care of family, banding together to face dangers.  So the reason I am moral is because I'm a social primate, and morality evolved to make the social structure cohere.

Question 5:  If there is no God, can we do what we want?  Are we free to murder and rape?  While good deeds are unrewarded?

Cf. my answer to question #4.  And if the only reason you're not murdering or raping is because the Big Sky Guy says no, I think you're the one whose morality needs some analysis.

Question 6:  If there is no God, how does your life have any meaning?

I create the meaning of my life.  For me, the meaning in life comes from connections with the people I care about; from learning and teaching; and from creativity.  I don't need an external source of meaning. 

Question 7:  Where did the universe come from?

Physicists are hot on the trail of this question, and current research on the topic of cosmology is tremendously exciting.  I find that people who criticize cosmology usually don't have the vaguest clue of what the physicists are actually saying, and almost never have read a single scholarly paper on the subject.  So before you start spouting nonsense like "atheists say that nothing exploded and made everything," try learning some actual science first.  Then we'll talk.

Question 8:  What about miracles?  What about all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?

Throughout the ages, people have claimed to be in touch with gods, demons, spirits, whatever.  I think the more pertinent question for you is: if you think that such experiences are real, what about all of the Hindus who have claimed to have an experience of Krishna?  What about the ancient Greeks who believed that they'd gotten prophecies from Apollo?  What about the Cheyenne who had vision quests in which they met, and spoke with, Coyote?  Accepting these kinds of mystical experiences as real actually creates a far bigger problem for you than it does for me.

Question 9:  What's your view of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris?

I think they are (or were, in Hitchens's case) strident because they've needed to be.  The religious model has dominated all discussion for thousands of years; in a lot of places, it's impossible to hold public office unless you are religious.  In some places, being an atheist can get you imprisoned or executed.  But because I largely agree with them about religion doesn't mean that I agree with them about everything.  They're not the Popes of Atheism, or something.  They're human, which means they'll be right about some things and wrong about others.

Question 10:  If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?

Let me ask you a question: if the Christian god is the only real one, then why does every society have a different religion?  The things that drive religious belief -- the desire for explanations for the deep questions, fear of uncertainty, fear of death, trust in authority -- are universal to the human condition.  It's unsurprising that many societies have landed on religious explanations.  What's more puzzling is that if only one religion is true -- and it's hard to see how they could all be true, despite what some ecumenical types might claim -- why the various religions aren't at least similar.

So, there you are.  Ten questions, ten answers.  Despite the condescending attitude of the person who wrote the original post, I've tried to keep the snarkiness to a minimum and answer the questions as honestly as I can.  Like I said, it's unlikely that this post will be read by the person who asked them; my sense is that in any case, they didn't want answers, they were just hoping to be able to say "Gotcha!" and have us atheists retreat in disarray.  But if anyone who is religious does read this, and wants to discuss these points further, feel free to post a comment.  Increased understanding is, as always, the watchword around here.

Changing the river's course

In talking to friends and family members, I've found that a common experience we have is in there being a small number of people who have radically altered our lives in a positive direction.  Sometimes a single gesture, smile, or well-placed word can shift our pathway profoundly, and the sad truth of it is that we seldom ever get around to telling those people how much they have changed us.

This comes up because a few days ago I found out that my high school French teacher, Shirley Taylor, died last summer.  I remember Mrs. Taylor well -- I had her class for four years running -- and she stands out in my memory as everything a teacher should be.  Firm but not harsh; high standards, and with a determination that every student can meet them; and a subtle and wry sense of humor.  But the one thing she did that I remember best is something she probably didn't even recall herself afterwards.

I was a fairly good French student but lackadaisical in most other classes, content to get by on a minimum of work, rarely pushing myself to do any better than I had to in order to stay out of trouble when I brought my report card home.  But Mrs. Taylor saw in me an ability to learn languages, and pushed me more than once to spend a year in France after I graduated.  I'd excel, she said, and I'd come back completely fluent.  It surprised me that she singled me out; like I said, I was no great shakes as a student.  The funny part of it all in retrospect is that I didn't take her advice about spending a year in France.  I didn't travel until much later -- to Mrs. Taylor's intense disappointment -- but when I first went to a non-English speaking country, years afterwards, I still remembered Mrs. Taylor's confidence in me.

"You're a natural," I recalled her saying.  "Someone like you needs to see the world."

I haven't stopped traveling since.

My French teacher, Mrs. Shirley Taylor (1936-2015)

The strangest thing about those moments is that we ourselves sometimes don't recognize them as the earthquakes they are while they're happening.  My entire life jumped to a different set of tracks when my high school counselor, Mr. Grace, grabbed my arm as I was walking down the hall in my senior year, and told me I needed to take a scholarship test that was being offered at the University of Louisiana.  I wasn't planning on going to college -- what I really wanted to do was to join the Park Service and move to Arizona -- but he said, and I quote, "You're taking that test if I have to go to your house on Saturday and drag your lazy ass out of bed."

So I did.  And I was one of the scholarship winners.  Automatic admission and full tuition to the University of Louisiana.  He turned my life a different way by that one action -- who knows where, or who, I would be now if it hadn't been for that one thing?

I remember with great fondness three other teachers who shaped my world -- Ms. Jane Miller, my high school biology teacher, whose passion for her subject and deep enthusiasm were absolutely contagious, and whose style I still model in my own classroom after nearly thirty years of being a teacher myself.  Dr. Harvey Pousson, my college calculus teacher, whose gentle, soft-spoken wit and brilliant way of explaining abstruse concepts made calculus one of my favorite subjects (and how many people do you hear that from?).  Ms. Beverly Authement, my high school creative writing teacher -- who I can say, without hesitation, turned me into the writer of fiction I am today, and without whose cheerful encouragement I would never have had the confidence to tell stories to the world.  (And who is, by the way, still a teacher today!)

I've been able to thank a few of these and other folks who have sculpted my life's path, and who have forever enriched my world.  Even though they may think they're forgotten -- that what they did was insignificant -- they remain the people whose influence has lasted.  And it makes me more determined not only to give gratitude to the ones whose lives so inspired my own, but to have more awareness myself about what I say and do.  Will anyone look back, forty years from now, and remember me as one of the pivotal connections in their lives?  And, most importantly, will that memory be a positive one?

I may never know the answer to that -- and that's okay.  Maybe the force that diverts the river doesn't recognize the effect it has, then or perhaps ever.  But it does highlight something I've known for a while: that we all need to be a great deal more cognizant of how we interact with the people around us, because we may be having a much larger effect than we will ever realize.

Profound bullshit

Considering what I write about six times a week, it's nice to have some validation on occasion.

The topic comes up because of a paper by Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek J. Koehler, and Jonathan A. Fugelsang that just came out in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, and which has the wonderful title, "On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit."

I want all of you to read the original paper, because it's awesome, so I'll try my hardest not to steal their fire.  But you all have to see the first line of the abstract before I go any further:

Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation.

Just reading that made me want to weep tears of joy.

I have spent so many years fighting the mushy, sort-of-scientificky-or-something verbiage of the purveyors of woo-woo that to see the topic receive attention in a peer-reviewed journal did my poor jaded little heart good.  Especially when I found out that the gist of the paper was that if you take someone who is especially skilled at generating bullshit -- like say, oh, Deepak Chopra, for example  -- and compare his actual writings to phrases like those generated by the Random Deepak Chopra Quote Generator, test subjects couldn't tell them apart.

More specifically, people who ranked high on what Pennycook et al. have christened the "Bullshit Receptivity Scale" (BSR) tended to rate everything as profound, whether or not it made the least bit of sense:

The present study represents an initial investigation of the individual differences in receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit.  We gave people syntactically coherent sentences that consisted of random vague buzzwords and, across four studies, these statements were judged to be at least somewhat profound.  This tendency was also evident when we presented participants with similar real-world examples of pseudo-profound bullshit.  Most importantly, we have provided evidence that individuals vary in conceptually interpretable ways in their propensity to ascribe profundity to bullshit statements; a tendency we refer to as “bullshit receptivity”.  Those more receptive to bullshit are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.

That... just... leaves me kind of choked up.

No, it's okay.  I'll be all right in a moment.  *sniffle*

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Then, there's this passage from the conclusion:

This is a valuable first step toward gaining a better understanding of the psychology of bullshit.  The development of interventions and strategies that help individuals guard against bullshit is an important additional goal that requires considerable attention from cognitive and social psychologists.  That people vary in their receptivity toward bullshit is perhaps less surprising than the fact that psychological scientists have heretofore neglected this issue.  Accordingly, although this manuscript may not be truly profound, it is indeed meaningful.

 I don't think I've been this happy about a scholarly paper since I was a graduate student in linguistics and found the paper by John McCarthy in Language called "Prosodic Structure and Expletive Infixation," which explained why you can say "abso-fuckin-lutely" but not "ab-fuckin-solutely."

The paper by Pennycook et al. has filled a void, in that it makes a point that has needed making for years -- that it's not only important to consider what makes someone a bullshitter, but what makes someone an, um, bullshittee.  Because people fall for platitude-spewing gurus like Chopra in droves, as evidenced by the fact that he's still giving talks to sold-out crowds, and making money hand over fist from selling books filled with lines like "The key to the essence of joy co-creates the expansion of creativity."

Which, by the way, was from the Random Deepak Chopra Quote Generator.  Not, apparently, that anyone can tell the difference.

And it brings me back to the fact that what we really, truly need in public schools is a mandatory course in critical thinking.  Because learning some basic principles of logic is the way you can immunize yourself against this sort of thing.  It may, in fact, be the only way.

Anyhow, I direct you all to the paper linked above.  The Pennycook et al. one, I mean.  Although the paper by John McCarthy is also pretty fan-fuckin-tastic.

Astrological philosobabble

I really get annoyed when apparently intelligent people do something that lends credence to nonsense.

I know it's probably a waste of perfectly good ire.  Confirmation bias and the believe-what-you-want-to-believe tendency of the human brain make fighting this sort of thing a largely fruitless pursuit.

But man, my job would be so much easier if smart people didn't go to such lengths to defend pseudoscience.

The latest attempt to legitimize bullshit comes from British philosopher Martin Cohen, who in his recent book Paradigm Shift: How Expert Opinions Keep Changing on Life, the Universe and Everything describes why we scientific types should give another look to astrology.  (And honorable mention goes to The Irish Times for writing an apparently serious article praising his stance.)

The Twelve Astrological Signs, from Opus Medico-Chymicum by Johann Daniel Mylius (1618) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Cohen is basing his claim on a slightly more sophisticated version of the naïve question I hear from high schoolers; "If science changes all the time, this could all be proven wrong tomorrow, so why are we learning this stuff?"  "Expert opinions" -- including not only opinions about what is right, but what is wrong -- fluctuate.  So we shouldn't dismiss astrology, even though Cohen admits it "is easy – laughably easy – to debunk using conventional methods and ideas."

After this glimmer of sense, he goes on to say:

On the other hand – and this is really the subtext of the entire social science debate over Paradigm Shift – convention is a poor guide to anything. 

Mainstream science regularly rules definitively on things about which, in fact, the state of knowledge really only allows tentative opinions.  In science, the measure is usefulness; we should give astrology the same chance.

No, sorry.  In science, the measure is consonance with the evidence -- usefulness be damned.  Any utility to scientific discoveries comes after they have been supported by hard data.

What about the fact that astrology traffics in broad-brush predictions that can be interpreted any way you like, leading believers to overestimate its accuracy?  This, Cohen says, is a strength, not a weakness:

By presenting ambiguous, vague answers, astrology pushes the seeker to extract information that is really not so much there in the answer but in their own subconscious. It unblocks our minds and frees them to see things in a new way...  Actually, I’m not sure that I do want to give the nod to the description of astrology as a poor predictor, as that reinforces the stereotype image of the subject as given in newspaper columns.  My suggestion is to see it as a tool for interpreting the world, and in particular each individual’s relationship to it – I mean, in psychological terms.  This way, I think, astrology is full of rich and subtle insights.  How it arrives at them is of little importance.

In other words, as long as you feel the answer is right for you, it's right.  To hell with whether there's any mechanism by which it could work.

He then goes on to tell us about the "spooky coincidence" that the "Four Horsemen" of atheism -- Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens -- are all Aries.  The chance of any four randomly chosen people all being the same sign is (1/12) raised to the fourth power, or about one in 20,000.  Which seems like slim odds, until you realize that given the current human population, there are 350,000 such "spooky coincidences" in the world.  Look for long enough, and you'll find more than one cluster of superficially similar people with the same signs -- it's just the law of large numbers at work.

Of course, the claim also ignores a huge study done in England twelve years ago of "time twins" -- people born within minutes of each other who, if any of the claims of astrology are correct, should have similar personalities, tendencies, and fates.  Unsurprisingly, the study found no support whatsoever for any of it.

No matter, Cohen said.  This isn't about physical mechanisms or hard data, it's about "mystical correspondences."

"Why should [the predictions of astrology be accurate], though?" Cohen goes on to say.  "The world changes in innumerable ways at every instant. So what might have been going to happen in one possible world no longer needs to happen in the next....  If astrological predictions really were true, then they would be useless.  The conceit is that we can both benefit from a prediction and still be free to change the future."

Which should win some kind of award for Mushy Philosobabble, and also is awfully convenient.  It doesn't matter if your model accurately predicts anything, or has a basis in reality.  If you find it useful in guiding your life, then whether it lines up with what we know about the real world is irrelevant.

Being a rationalist materialist type, it's no wonder that I read this entire piece while making frustrated little growling noises.  I'm sorry, Mr. Cohen; the truth does matter, and I'm not defining "truth" as being "whatever you decide sounds appealing."  Science gives us an algorithm by which to determine if a claim has validity.  It may well be the only such algorithm that actually works.

So my general sense is that what Martin Cohen is urging us to do is to abandon evidence as the sine qua non of understanding, and look for "mystical knowledge" in whatever bit of pseudoscientific horseshit happens to suit our fancy.  Which is about as opposite to my standard for approaching the world as it could be.

But I probably only say that because I'm a Scorpio.

The science of beauty

I got a curious response to my post yesterday about finding out that my previously-held explanation for why people become conspiracy theorists was probably wrong.

Here's the email:

Dear Mr. Skepto, 

You sound pretty worried that you don't have an explanation for everything.  People aren't always explainable!  They do things because they do them.  That's it.  Some people believe weird stuff and some people like the explanations from science.  Just like some people like the Beatles and some people like Beethoven.  It's silly to wear yourself out trying to figure why. 

Do you worry about why your loved ones love you?  Maybe it's some chemical thing in their brain, right?  Do you tell your wife that's what love means?  Maybe it's a gene or something that's why I think flowers are pretty.  If so, the explanation is uglier than the flowers are.  I'd rather look at the flowers. 

All your scientific explanations do is turn all the good things in life into a chemistry class.  I think they're worth more than calling them brain chemicals.  I'll take religion over science any day.  At least it leaves us with our souls. 

Think about it. 

L. D.

Well, L. D., thanks for the response.  I find your views interesting -- mostly because they're just about as opposite to the way I see the world as they could be.

But you probably already knew that.

There is a reason why musical tastes exist.  We're nowhere near the point in brain research where we could discern the explanation; but an explanation does exist for why Shostakovich's Waltz #2 gives me goosebumps, while Chopin's waltzes do nothing for me whatsoever.  Nothing just "is because it is."

And I can't fathom how knowing the explanation devalues your appreciation of the thing itself.  Me, I would love to know what's happening in my brain when I hear a piece of music I enjoy.  We're beginning to get some perspective on this, starting with a 2011 study that found that the neurological response to hearing a piece of music we love is similar to the brain's response to sex.

Cool, yes?  I think that's awesome.  How would knowing that make me appreciate music less?

Or sex either?

I find flowers even more beautiful knowing that their shapes and colors evolved to attract pollinators, and understanding a bit about the chemistry of photosynthesis.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Understanding light refraction doesn't make me shrug my shoulders at a rainbow.  And even love -- which L. D. evidently thinks lies entirely in the mystical realm -- is made no less by my knowledge that its underpinning has to do with brain chemistry.  It's like that old song with the verse:

Tell me why the stars do shine
And tell me why the ivy twines
And tell me why the sky is blue,
And I will say why I love you.

A more scientific type added a verse, to wit:

Nuclear fusion is why the stars do shine.
Thigmotropism is why the ivy twines.
Rayleigh scattering is why the sky's so blue,
And testicular hormones are why I love you.

Which I think is a good deal more realistic than attributing it all to souls and people "doing things because they do them."

In short: science itself is beautiful.  Understanding how the world works should do nothing but increase our sense of wonder.  If scientific inquiry isn't accompanied by a sense of "Wow, this is amazing!", you're doing it wrong.  I'll end with a quote from Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, who in his 1988 book What Do You Care What Other People Think? had the following to say:

I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with.  He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree.  But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is.  But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull."  I think he's kind of nutty. …  There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower.  It only adds.  I don't understand how it subtracts.

Tarring with one brush

I frequently visit the r/atheism subreddit as a way of keeping abreast of current happenings in the world of the irreligious.  Although I find a good many of the articles linked on the site to be interesting, there's one frequent type of post that drives me crazy.

Almost every time I visit the site, there is at least one article that has to do with some religious person doing a bad thing.  Today when I checked, there was an article about a teacher at a Baptist religious school who is accused of raping one of his (male) students, and an article about the leader of an evangelical Christian megachurch in Nigeria who is being divorced by his wife for "adultery and unreasonable behavior."

And every time these sorts of stories are posted, there are numerous comments to the effect that this sort of behavior shows that the religious worldview is wrong.

Can we be clear on something, here?  Finding people who do bad things has no bearing on whether their views on god's existence are correct or not.  People who preach holiness and then victimize their fellow humans are hypocrites.  Depending on what kind of victimization they perpetrated, they may also be evil.

But neither of those has any relevance to the correctness of their philosophy.

It's not, of course, only something atheists do.  This kind of illogic is no respecter of worldview. This is, in part, why we atheists hate it when one of our number says something outrageous.  (Richard Dawkins' recent statements regarding Down syndrome and abortion are a good case in point.)  It raises the unfortunate tendency for people to tar all atheists with the same brush -- as if either (1) my agreement with Dawkins about god's existence means I agree with him on everything, or (2) Dawkins' views on the ethics of carrying a Down syndrome fetus to term is an inescapable conclusion of not believing in a higher power.

Neither one of these statements is logically correct.

You can be an atheist and be an utter asshole.  You can be an atheist and be wrong about damn near everything else.  Conversely, you can be a kind, compassionate, moral atheist whose other views are brilliantly well thought-out and rational.

And anyone who agrees with the above statement -- which, I hope, includes virtually all of the people reading this -- then the implication is that we shouldn't do the same thing to the religious.

Cherry-picking a few hypocritical nasties who are Christian leaders does not bolster the atheist viewpoint, any more than pointing out that Stalin was an atheist bolsters the Christian one.  Now mind you, I don't think there's anything wrong with calling out a hypocrite on his hypocrisy; we gain nothing by covering up the truth, as (it is to be hoped) the Vatican is finally learning with respect to pedophile priests.

But we have to be careful to separate the logical arguments for and against a particular philosophical view with our pointing fingers at the moral lapses of the people who hold those views.  The two are not the same, and neither side does itself any favors by blurring those boundaries.

Don't get me wrong.  I still think the support for the religious worldview is thin at best.  I'd much rather trust the evidence to lead me where logic and rationality demand, and thus far, that's very much in the direction of there not being some sort of divine Prime Mover.

But that says nothing about whether or not I am a moral person.  And this is why using the transgressions of Christians as an argument for atheism doesn't gain us anything.  All it means is that some of us don't understand the rules of logic ourselves.

Ecological micro-management

Even if I sometimes present a rather cynical front, I really have a deep belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature.  Most of us, most of the time, mean well.  All we want is to have our basic needs met; food, shelter, companionship, security.  Despite what you see on the nightly news -- news that has been selected deliberately to be eye-catching, i.e., usually violent or upsetting -- the vast majority of the human race is peaceful, caring, and kind.

That said, we do have a regrettable tendency to suffer from hubris, mainly with respect to the rest of the inhabitants on Earth.  We often feel like we have the right to twist the environment and its non-human inhabitants to our own desires, and expect that because of our big brains we should be able to predict all outcomes (and avoid any negative ones).  Burn fossil fuels, increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?  Pshaw, how could that cause a problem?  Overhunt, overfish, feed the world with big industrial farms that require millions of tons of fertilizer each year just to remain productive?  No problem.  We have to eat, right?

Of course, right.

Few people think all that deeply about how interlocked the ecosystem is, and how complex.  You cannot affect one piece of it without affecting them all, often in unpredictable ways.  We are dealing with multi-variable analysis of a system we only partly understand, and acting as though we should be able to control it, acting as though we are somehow outside the system ourselves.

A vivid demonstration of this came in the early 1990s with the inauguration of Biosphere 2, the fascinating (and forward-thinking) ecology project in the Arizona desert, which consisted of a huge dome housing a variety of ecosystems.  It was constructed, and populated with plants and animals, so as to be self-sustaining, just as the Earth's system ("Biosphere 1") is.  Chemists, biologists, and ecologists combined their knowledge in the planning process, trying to get the initial balance exactly correct.  Then, in 1991, eight human scientists agreed to be locked inside the dome for two years, with no access to anything that wasn't locked in there with them.

Biosphere 2 experienced problems right from the get-go, and eventually the mission had to be cancelled:

Biosphere 2 suffered from CO2 levels that "fluctuated wildly" and most of the vertebrate species and all of the pollinating insects died.  Insect pests, like cockroaches, boomed.  In practice, ants, a companion to one of the tree species (Cecropia) in the Rain Forest, had been introduced.  By 1993 the tramp ant species Paratrechina longicornis, local to the area, had been unintentionally sealed in and had come to dominate...  [A] number of pollinating insects were lost to ant predation and several bird species were lost.

The oxygen inside the facility, which began at 20.9%, fell at a steady pace and after 16 months was down to 14.5%.  This is equivalent to the oxygen availability at an elevation of 4,080 meters (13,400 ft)...  A mystery accompanied the oxygen decline: the corresponding increase in carbon dioxide did not appear. This concealed the underlying process until an investigation by Jeff Severinghaus and Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory using isotopic analysis showed that carbon dioxide was reacting with exposed concrete inside Biosphere 2 to form calcium carbonate, thereby sequestering both carbon and oxygen.

Now, I'm not criticizing the experiment, mind you; we learned a tremendous amount from it.  It's just that I think it serves primarily as an illustration that we don't know nearly enough to undertake ecomanagement on a large scale.

All of this is simply a preamble to my thoughts about an article sent to me by a friend, called "The Radical Plan to Eliminate Earth's Predatory Species."  In it, we hear the proposal by a British philosopher, David Pearce, who believes that because predation of all sorts causes suffering to sentient beings, we have a moral obligation to eliminate predators if we can.

[image courtesy of photographer Colin M. L. Burnett and the Wikimedia Commons]

Pretty radical.  Pearce says:

Sentient beings shouldn't harm each other.  This utopian-sounding vision is ancient.  Gautama Buddha said "May all that have life be delivered from suffering".  The Bible prophesies that the wolf and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.  Today, Jains sweep the ground in front of their feet rather than unwittingly tread on an insect. 

My own conceptual framework and ethics are secular — more Bentham than Buddha.  I think we should use biotechnology to rewrite our genetic source code; recalibrate the hedonic treadmill; shut down factory farms and slaughterhouses; and systematically help sentient beings rather than harm them... 

Humans already massively "interfere" with Nature in countless ways ranging from uncontrolled habitat-destruction to captive breeding programs for big cats to "rewilding".  Within the next few decades, every cubic metre of the planet will be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control.  On current trends, large nonhuman terrestrial vertebrates will be extinct outside our wildlife parks by mid-century.  So the question arises.  What principle(s) should govern our stewardship of the rest of the living world?  How many of the traditional horrors of "Nature, red in tooth and claw" should we promote and perpetuate?  Alternatively, insofar we want to preserve traditional forms of Darwinian life, should we aim for an ethic of compassionate stewardship instead.  Cognitively, nonhuman animals are akin to small children.  They need caring for as such.

In answer to the inevitable charge of hubris, Pearce responds:

Inevitably, critics talk of "hubris".  Humans shouldn't "play God."  What right have humans to impose our values on members of another race or species?  The charge is seductive but misplaced.  There is no anthropomorphism here, no imposition of human values on alien minds.  Human and nonhuman animals are alike in an ethically critical respect.  The pleasure-pain axis is universal to sentient life.  No sentient being wants to be harmed — to be asphyxiated, dismembered, or eaten alive.  The wishes of a terrified toddler or a fleeing zebra to flourish unmolested are not open to doubt even in the absence of the verbal capacity to say so.

My criticism of Pearce's proposal -- which, he says, should be accomplished by genetic manipulation, selective breeding, and monitoring of animal populations with microchips -- does not rest on any high-flown philosophy.  It has, in fact, little to do with morals or values.  He is correct that we are already "playing god," and have been for millennia, with our selective breeding and large-scale ecological manipulation for food production and living space.  What I question is purely pragmatic; if we don't know enough to manage even a three-acre simulated biosphere, using the skills, insight, and planning of the world's best ecologists, how in the hell do we think we're smart enough to micromanage the entire globe?

Pearce's motivation, and ultimate goal -- eliminating pain and suffering, even from less-cognitively-developed animals like insects -- is, on one level, laudable.  I've been a biologist long enough that I can consider an incident like a cheetah killing an antelope as positive in the larger sense of keeping the eco-community in balance.  At the same time, I'm compassionate enough that I feel sorry for the antelope, and pity the victim for the fear and pain that it experienced as its life ended.  That emotional reaction is not sufficient, however, to fool me into thinking that we as a species know enough to overturn the predator-prey interaction, evolved for billions of years, in some sort of misguided attempt to make things better.

Pearce says, "A few centuries from now, if involuntary suffering still exists in the world, the explanation for its persistence won't be that we've run out of computational resources to phase out its biological signature, but rather that rational agents — for reasons unknown — will have chosen to preserve it.
"  I think this is not only wrong, but dangerously wrong.  The hubris of his position is not that presumes human moral superiority; it is that it presumes a far greater comprehension of this planet's systems than we have, or are likely to have in the foreseeable future, even considering the expansion of our scientific understanding over the last couple of centuries.

Our ecological management of the world is rife with examples of actions undertaken with the best of intentions, and which had drastic and unexpected consequences.  Pearce might well label me as immoral for accepting the inevitability of predation, and therefore suffering, in the world; but his position -- that we could use our scientific and technological capacities to eliminate it -- isn't just the words of an optimist who makes Pollyanna look like a cynic.  It exemplifies the attitude that got us to the disastrous place where we currently are -- in the beginning of the Sixth Great Extinction, facing radical climate change, facing the collapse of the ocean's fisheries -- all resulting from the stance that "we know what we're doing."

Only Pearce's vision, of micromanagement of the whole world, goes one step beyond blind eco-optimism; it puts us in the position of pulling all of the Earth's strings.  And, I believe, it opens up the possibility of fucking things up on a scale the likes of which we've never seen before.

Cracking the infinity codes

Okay, I know I'm no genius, but I think I can place myself with confidence in the "above average intelligence" category.

A few things, however, defeat me.  A lot of physics rests on mathematics that I frankly do not comprehend, despite my B.S. in physics and minor in math.  When I look at academic papers from physics journals, and am confronted with such arcane beasts as tensors and cross products and weak isospin, I become tense, my eyes cross, and I become all weak and spinn-y.  (I usually require at least one glass of scotch to recover completely.)

Likewise, the deeper waters of philosophy drown me entirely.  I read the first paragraph of a friend's Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy, and said, in a rather thin voice, "That's... nice," and decided forthwith that I should confine myself to the epistemological and metaphysical questions raised by The Cat in the Hat instead.

With the exception of the aforementioned, however, I can usually hold my own fairly well in intellectual pursuits, which is fortunate, given that I'm a teacher.  So it is seldom that I look at a sample of writing, study it from various angles, think about it, and then still come up completely empty-handed.  Which is what I did when I looked at a website called Infinity Codes that a friend sent me, along with the message, "Curious to see what you'll think of this."

What I thought, after forty-five minutes' increasingly perplexed study, was (to borrow a line from the inimitable Eddie Izzard), "Quod... the fuck?"  And lest you think that I'm just being lazy -- or, perhaps, that my brain isn't as all-that-and-a-bag-of-potato-chips as I claim it is -- here's a sample, so you can make your own assessment:

PURPOSE and INTENT

-- Finding the spiral thread --

Split into 4 sets of templates the Infinity Codes have been designed to assist re-establishing our connection to the cycles of the cosmos and the earth (macrocosm and microcosm). The codes are arranged in a fractal sequence in order to reveal the spiral thread of interconnected-ness between us, nature and the universe...

Their purpose is to liberate and inform us with the knowledge of geometric patterns, fractal harmonics and organic ratios of the 13D reality in which we live. Each graphic has ancient wisdom encoded within it that our ancestors knew and based their systems of time and space measurement upon.

Living in a non-linear matrix of time and space, which they understood primarily through observing the movements of the 7 visible ‘spheres’ (5 planets + sun + moon), our ancestors were far beyond us in their development. This enabled them to perceive the fractal design of the tree of life, and our place in it - via the 28 = (4x7), the 365 = (13x28) +1, and 365.242 (1 year). This created a fractal matrix of the alchemy of the organic + geometric, that could then be aligned to zodiacal + celestial, in an eternal map of the cosmos.

And that's just from the freakin' introduction.

If you go to "What is the context?" -- a question I was certainly asking by this point -- you read the following:

Living in the end times (Solstice Sun aligned with the Galactic Center), beginning of the 21st century (7:7:7), Age of Aquarius geometrically speaking, yet in reality (organically speaking) the Age of Aquarius starts circa 2600ad, information Age, cyber era… Peak moment of 2012, Dec 21st, next Winter solstice!

Well, what strikes me about this is the part about the Sun being lined up with the Galactic Center at the beginning of the 21st century.  Which is true, but can someone explain to me how two points could not be lined up?  I mean, didn't Euclid have something to say about this?  If somehow the Sun and the Galactic Center didn't fall on a straight line, that would be a little odder, don't you think?

And then, we have mystifying illustrations like the following:

 

Which are pretty, I suppose, but what the hell do they mean?

But if you really want to make your head spin, though, go to the page called "Cosmic Formulas," wherein we get to see the mathematical basis for all of it.   I think.  I mean, as far as I can tell, and applying my reasonably decent background in mathematics, it looks like he's just multiplying random numbers together, adding them to other random numbers, and saying, "So cosmic, right?  Of course right."

I finally gave up after about an hour of messing about on the site.  What finally induced me to quit was when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the monitor screen, and I realized that my expression looked like that on the face of my dog when I try to explain complex and difficult concepts to him, like why he shouldn't dump the garbage and eat the plastic wrapper that the cheese came in.  He tips his head to one side, his brow furrows, and he gets this really... intent look in his eyes.  You can tell that he wants to understand, he's trying his hardest, but it's just not going to happen.

That's the way I looked after an hour of trying to decipher the Infinity Codes.

Maybe you'll be able to make more of it.  If so, please enlighten me.  I'm perfectly willing to admit when I'm out of my depth, as I was with my friend's dissertation, and acknowledge the better understanding that someone else might bring to bear on a subject.  On the other hand, I strongly suspect that here, there's nothing actually there to understand, and that we all might be left (like Eddie Izzard) saying "Quod the fuck?"

Dreams, wishful thinking, and religious belief

This post is, honestly, a question rather than an answer.

I know I come across as critical of religion at times, and in my own defense I have to say that usually it has to do with the kinds of things that religion incites people to do -- such as Pat Robertson's recent pronouncement that Christians are being oppressed by gays, and that Jesus would have been in favor of stoning gays to death, and evangelist Tristan Emmanuel's recommendation that Bill Maher should be publicly whipped because he's an atheist.

But as far as the religious beliefs themselves, mostly what I feel is incomprehension.  When I've asked people why they believe in god -- something I tend not to do, being that I'm not so excited about being publicly whipped myself -- I usually get answers that fall into one of the following categories:

1. Personal revelation -- the individual has had some kind of experience that convinces him/her that a deity exists.
2. Authority -- being raised in the church, and/or respecting its leaders and their views, have led the person to accept those beliefs as true.
3. It's appealing -- they'd like there to be a god, so there is one.

My problem with all of that is that I'm not especially confident of my own brain's ability, in the absence of hard evidence, to tell truth from fiction.   I know there have been times that I have desperately wanted something to be true -- usually in the realm of personal relationships -- but my own dubious ability to read the signs correctly, plus a regrettable tendency toward wishful thinking, led me to the wrong answer on more than one occasion.

So how likely would I be to land on the right answer with respect not only to whether or not a god exists, but what his/her/its nature is, given the thousands of different answers humans have come up with over the centuries?  It'd be pretty embarrassing, for example, to spend my life worshiping Yahweh, and then die and find out too late that I should have been making sacrifices to Anubis or something.

[image courtesy of Jeff Dahl and the Wikimedia Commons]

I ran into an especially good example of this yesterday on the site Charisma News, where a writer tried to explain how to know if your dreams come from god or not.  Because, I suppose, if you buy into that worldview, there are three choices: (1) your dream comes from god, and you should obey whatever it says; (2) your dream comes from the devil, and you should not do whatever it says; (3) or your dream is just a dream and you shouldn't worry about it.  I suspect that most of mine fall into the last category, because they tend to be bizarre, like my dream a couple of nights ago wherein I was trying to fight off a werewolf by spraying it in the face with a garden hose.

But Audrey Lee tells us in the Charisma News article that it's a real problem, and we don't want to get it wrong:

It would be naive and irresponsible to suggest that all spiritual dreams result in a true God connection.  Dreamers who mistake their own subconscious thoughts or even demonic influence as divine instruction can make grim and historic mistakes.  Recently a woman in a rural village sacrificed her child in the river out of obedience to what she thought was a dream from God.

So, yeah.  That'd be bad.  Lee goes on to tell us that there are four criteria that we should use to determine if our dreams are god-induced: (1) the dream's content doesn't contradict the bible; (2) it's "convicting" [sic]; (3) it lingers in the memory; and (4) it predicts things that come to pass.

So based on these four criteria, I'd guess the werewolf-and-garden-hose dream doesn't measure up except for the fact that I still remember it.  But it does raise a question, which is, couldn't you have a non-bible-contradicting dream that you remember and find convincing, and it still is just a dream?  Doesn't the whole thing still turn on your kind of looking at it and saying, "Yeah, seems right to me?", without anything resembling hard evidence?

I simply don't find that sort of thing a reliable protocol for determining the truth.  Maybe it's because I don't trust myself enough; but I think that our brains come pre-installed with so many ways of getting it wrong that we need to have an external standard in order to be certain.  For me, that standard is science -- i.e., evidence, logic, and rationality.  None of the "internal ways of knowing" have ever really made sense to me.

Now, I'll admit up front that I'm no philosopher, and deeper minds than mine may well have a better answer to all of this.  If so, I'm open to listening.  But until then, I still can't see any dependable way to get at the truth other than hard evidence -- much as my wishful thinking would like to say otherwise.

Elegy for an unpredictable universe

I was asked not too long ago how, as an atheist, I cope with tragedy.

"I don't see how you could possibly find a way to understand loss and grief," my friend said, "without some sense that there's a larger meaning in the universe."

In some ways, of course, I don't.  Not only do I not believe there's meaning in the universe (at least not in the sense he meant), I don't understand loss and grief at all.  I experience it, all too deeply -- I've lost both parents and a beloved grandmother, not to mention friends and colleagues.  It's impossible to live 53 years without going through the sorrow that comes with knowing that you will never, ever see someone you care about again.

But it is when the magnitude of the loss is amplified -- as it was yesterday with the announcement that Malaysia Flight 370 was almost certain to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board -- that we struggle hardest to wrap our brains around what has happened.  How could the world be so built, we think, that something like this could occur?

It brings back one of the formative books of my teenage years, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.  This book chronicles the search by the 17th century Franciscan monk Brother Juniper, who is shocked when a bridge in his Peruvian village collapses, killing six people.  He is a devout man, and is certain that god must have had a reason for bringing those six onto the bridge, and no others, in time to die when the cable holding the bridge aloft snapped.  So he traces the life history of each of the six, trying to see if he can discern a pattern -- to see if he can read god's mind, determine what it was that led those particular six people to die when hundreds of others crossed the bridge daily and survived.

In the end, of course, he fails; and he concludes that either god's mind is too subtle, too deep to parse, or else there is no pattern, and things simply happen because they happen.

 It is a devastating conclusion.

Brother Juniper's search for meaning in apparent chaos is the genesis, I think, of religion, not to mention other worldviews perhaps less sanctified.  When you think about it, conspiracy theories come from the same place; a desperate need for there to be a reason, even a dark one, behind all of the bad stuff that happens in the world.  It seems that many of us would rather there be an explanation -- even if, in Christopher Moore's vivid turn of phrase, it involves "heinous fuckery most foul."  Better that than the universe being some kind of giant pinball game.

And in extremis, even we atheists still look for explanations, don't we?  Faced with tragedy, the first thing I've asked is, "Why me?", as if there is some answer to that question that is even possible given my philosophical worldview.  But it's a natural inclination, and seems to be universal to the human condition.  It is this aghast recognition that the world could treat us this badly that was captured in the starkly beautiful painting by Eugène Delacroix, depicting a Greek woman looking at the ruins of her home after her town was sacked by the Turks:

Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826 [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Sometimes there is no reason, no pattern; the world's machinery seems to work much of the time without any regard to us at all.  I flew Malaysia Airlines a year and a half ago, from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong, and arrived there safely; two weeks ago, a similar bunch of passengers, expecting (as I did) nothing more than a few hours of tedium, ended their lives in the turbulent waters of the Indian Ocean.  And if you think that the phrase "there but for the grace of god go I" hasn't gone through my head more than once in the last few days, you're sorely mistaken.

Of course, for an atheist, that phrase is only a metaphor, and perhaps not even a very good one.  I don't have the recourse of falling back on "they're with god now" or even "god has a plan."  All I'm left with is a sense that the universe is a strange, chaotic, and unpredictable place, full of beauty and goodness and love and pleasure, and pain and danger and fear and death, sometimes meted out in unequal parts and in ways that I will never really comprehend.  But I do know one thing: we need to be more conscious, right now, about the gratitude and compassion with which we treat the people around us.  None of us have any idea how many minutes we will be given; none of us have time to waste.  Hug your loved ones, your friends, your pets -- hell, hug total strangers if you want to.  There is nothing certain about tomorrow, so you damn well better make every second of today count.

As Thornton Wilder put it in the last line of The Bridge of San Luis Rey: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead; and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."