Category: Science

Love and the Future

On By Swarn GillIn Parenting, Philosophy, Psychology, Science6 Comments

Lately and perhaps not surprisingly with a newborn in my arms I have been pondering love again.  This, in addition with a psychology class I sat in on last semester about the subject, and some other articles I read recently, has led me to feel like exploring my thoughts a little.  Not too long ago I was conversing with a fellow blogger who posted some writings from a Buddhist about love that said something to the order of “true love can only exist in the present”.  As I paused for thought, I appreciated the truth of those words in an ideal sense, but it struck me as not how love seems to

From www.mindbodygreen.com
From http://www.mindbodygreen.com

work.

When I’ve fallen in love before, and others that I’ve talked to share similar experiences, thoughts of the future seem to go with it.  I often described it as painting pictures in your mind.  You fall in love, you start to see happy times, future celebrations, children, growing old together.  These pictures seem extremely vivid.  Like memories you’ve built on events yet to happen.  From a biological sense this seems to make sense because that is how love should work.  Love builds attachments, and attachments in this world give you strength.  If love did not make us feel this way it seems like we would lose an important part of what love is really for; to give us companionship and togetherness, and increase our chances of survival in a world filled with uncertainty.  Feelings of security and visions of the future seem so tangible to me, I wonder if it is true to others who have been in love.  Nevertheless, if you could truly stay focused on the present, maybe this could take away much of the pain when a relationship ends.  And I think sometimes this is why a relationship ends.  You focus on the future that you take the other for granted in the present.   And the loss of a relationship leaves you with vivid visions of events that will now no longer take place.  Those events are in your memory and I’ve always felt that recovery from a relationship literally requires erasing those memories.

As I look at my son in my arms, I am filled up with love.  Of course this also makes sense from a biological standpoint.  I think the love of a parent in animals is somewhat proportional to how helpless they are when they are born.  Human children are completely helpless such that any indifference on our part would lead to less care and more infant mortality.  Some creatures have the ability to “hit the ground running” parents are protective to a certain degree, but especially if you are born prey, the kid has to kind of take care of himself a bit too and learn to run as fast as possible.  Love comes in many forms and certainly the love for one’s child is different than romantic love, but  I started to ask myself, what is that I love about my son?  If asked the same question about my wife I could point to a large list of qualities in her, I could recount numerous wonderful memories and happy moments. There are of course physical attributes too as a basis for attraction. The love has a clear basis.  No quality is perhaps unique in her, but all together she certainly is unique.  The fact that I love her is not surprising, and the fact that there aren’t others out there who I might love or have loved her is not surprising either.  But as I look at my son I wonder what is it based on other than a biological drive to love my child.  I find him beautiful of course.  Every parent finds their child beautiful.  Once again if we didn’t, we might be less likely to want to take care of them.  But he has no personality to speak of.  He hasn’t been alive more than a month yet and we have few memories together at all.  We have nothing in common except some DNA.  We can’t really do a whole lot together.  It is a purely one sided relationship.  We give and he takes.  If this were anybody else, friends would say,” you need to get out of that relationship.” Lol

I then read a story about someone having twins prematurely and losing one of them and of course I naturally thought about how I would feel if

My wife and our son
My wife and our son

my son were to die.  Of course it would be grievously painful, but I thought to myself what would I be grieving about?  If I lost my wife, the pain of numerous past memories and a deep sense of loss over qualities she possessed that I would no longer be privilege to would flood my mind for many years to come, in addition to the loss of the future I dreamed of us having together.  It seems that if I did lose my son the majority of my grief would be grieving the loss of his future.  For as someone in love with his child I see a future filled with vacations, camping trips, teaching him science, helping him with homework, going to graduations, seeing him grow and hit milestones in his life as we all do.

The future is truly uncertain and so loving only in the present seems wise in some respect, but I’m not sure it’s possible.  I think the best we can do is try not to build those hopes and dreams so solidly that we allow them take different shapes.  Nevertheless a part of me feels like the love I have right now for my child seems less solid somehow because it seems largely based on a feeling completely intangible and dreams of the future.  However, I know that as he grows and I spend more time with him it will simply gets stronger and I know that as we do build more memories and I do get to know him as a person that I will be more and more in love with him.  Given how much I love him already the thought of that fills me with nothing but pleasure.  That is at least one vision of the future that I can hold on to without fear.

Correlation vs. Causation

On By Swarn GillIn Commentary, Education, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Science7 Comments

I decided to write a response to one of the many excellent posts written by a fellow blogger.  It became long enough and I thought a worthy enough to be a blog post of it’s own!  If you are interested in the idea of correlation vs. causation you can read his blog here first.

In your last paragraph I was reminded of Dawkins’ argument in the God Delusion when he is talking about miracles.  Since miracles are by definition unique and rare events there is no way to really disprove a divine explanation.  This is of course if the same thing doesn’t keep happening again and again, which if it does, you really don’t have a miracle on your hands anymore.  He uses the example of the one documented miracle in Catholicism in which some 100,000 witness near Fatima, Portugal reported the Sun doing some odd things including zigzagging towards them and crashing to the Earth.  Dawkins argues that in looking for a natural explanation for the event, all of them, including the possibility that all 100,000 people are lying are actually more probable than the laws of physics being thwarted for a group of people in one part of the world (no other people reported seeing anything other than those at the event).  So I think that you are very correct that we the “correlation does not mean causation” argument does not negate a particular postulation for why a correlation exists.   However I would go a step further and say that it is not even an argument in of itself.

It is of course the responsibility of anybody who poses a correlation to provide a reason why such a correlation exists.  Provided you have done that, then the “correlation does not mean causation” response isn’t a logical argument in response to yours.  The person on the other side of the debate must either address why your reasons why are not valid, or must present something else that correlates better and why their reason for x causing y is more probable.  So I think you might be giving a little too much weight to the argument in how much it actually negates a correlation between two variables.

In many areas in science we can say why pretty easily because there are usually physical laws that explain why quite easily, and those things are testable and repeatable.  In social science this may be harder to do.  Especially since it is not always clear what all the variables are.  For instance it is clear that there is a positive correlation between gun deaths (accidental, homicide, and suicides) the amount of guns per capita in a population.  There are plenty of psychological factors of course to consider here on why would a person own a gun or why would someone choose to kill themselves?  There are practical questions like how to we get people to be more responsible about locking up their guns so their kid doesn’t pick it up, how to we make sure that more people remember to store their guns unloaded, how can make guns safer from accidental misfires, and how can we make sure that people who buy again are well trained in how to use it? There are likely even bigger questions like how does income disparity lead to increased crime in general? What are other ways that don’t involve firearms where people can be made safe?  All of these and plenty more are likely part and parcel of explaining gun violence, but that doesn’t change the fact that reducing access to guns would result a lowering of the number of gun deaths.  So making some laws that create a national gun registry, that do better background checks, and limit the type of weapon the general public could buy, would make some sense even though it clearly won’t eliminate gun deaths completely.  If by a counter-argument someone says “correlation does not mean causation” they haven’t actually addressed the argument being made.  They actually have to find an example with all other variables relatively constant between the U.S. and that country, except gun control laws, and show that an opposite correlation exists. i.e. Restrictive gun control laws and increased gun deaths, or high gun ownership and low gun deaths.  And that would be for a country with similar economies, democratic, with a high standard of living, and that doesn’t have mandatory military service in which the high amount of gun ownership isn’t because they keep their piece given to them in the military (Switzerland the example always used here).

So in the classic humorous example that has been around for awhile is that graph between global temperature and the number of pirates.  I can’t just show that graph and say see…look how the number of pirates is impacting global temperature?  I actually have to provide a reason why pirates might impact temperatures.  I can say there is less plundering and razing of towns so the urban heat island effect has increased thus raising global

From Wikipedia.org

temperatures.  Obviously this is a silly argument, but a response of “correlation and causation are different”, while a true statement, does not negate my assertion.  There are many ways to disprove my assertion but pointing out a correlation is not causation does not. Because the truth is, “correlation does not always mean causation” so one has to go past this statement to further argue one’s point.  This is true for many arguments that contain logical fallacies.  You could take the classic argument used against gay marriage.  Well if we let gays marry, pretty soon we’ll have to let people marry their pets.  Well this is of course the slippery slope logical fallacy.  Slippery slope arguments may not be incorrect, but are very often wrong.  So it’s not enough for me to counter your slippery slope argument with “Hey that’s a slippery slope argument”.  I would be quite wrong to think the argument was done, because they could actually be right.  Some events do lead to a chain of events that are far from where things started.  To win the argument I would actually need to argue that there has never been a push for legislation to marry a pet, that if anybody has tried this they were a crazy person, that this is not a psychological drive of human beings as a species, etc.  I could also point to many other marriage related laws or other laws that have not led to a hyperbolic slippery slope situations.

To say that “correlation and causation are not necessarily the same thing” is actually a Straw Man argument (which is fallacious) because the argument assumes a position that you have not taken in the argument.  Correlating variables is a valid method for discovering relationships, and by presenting that correlation, one’s assertion is not that correlation is a valid method, but rather that two variables are related to each other.  And to say two things are correlated doesn’t imply that this is the only important variable, or that even it is the primary or secondary cause of a particular event.  One has simply said there is a relationship and a counter argument must challenge the relationship.  A correlation must be presented along with some sound reasons why there is a correlation, and an argument in response must challenge those reasons.  The art of argumentation isn’t easy and few people can actually argue well. 🙂

Evidently it’s Evidence Part II

On By Swarn GillIn Education, Science11 Comments

Part I, probably doesn’t provide too much pause for thought, but hopefully this one will.  I’ve been told my posts are long, so I’m trying to shorten things up. 🙂

Perhaps I should also preface before I begin that almost anything can count as evidence.  However it seems that people with little understanding of scientific investigation often make the mistake of delineating good evidence from bad.  Or being able to determine why one source of evidence is weaker than another.  Because after all I could argue that it is faith that I believe the sun will come up tomorrow, when the truth is I don’t really know for sure.  The fact that it has come up all the days of my life, is some pretty good evidence.  It’s even better evidence that it has come up for others.  And it seems as I look through historical evidence from before I was born it has been coming up pretty regularly.  And then there is the evidence that the Earth is rotating and that we are revolving around the sun.  It may be that all that changes tomorrow, but it seems unlikely. So at the very least, I can say that my faith has some pretty solid substance to it. (Also please be aware that I do know that the sun actually doesn’t come up, it is the Earth’s rotation that gives it the appearance of rising. lol)

Here are some of the things that many people seem to think of as evidence:

  • anecdotal evidence
  • a contrary opinion
  • a book
  • a “gut feeling”
  • a low probability event (a coincidence)
  • celebrities or other famous people
  • a documentary
  • a movie
  • media
  • even worse  – social media
  • the number of hits you search for something on the internet

There are probably more things that could be added but these are some of my favorite.  Part of the problem is that any one of these could be right.  I am not going to address each one, but there are times when your “gut” tells you, you are in danger and you are right.

From hm.dinofly.com

Anecdotal evidence can also be correct.  I could say “In my experience the sun comes up every morning” and I would be right.  Sometimes celebrities are correct, and documentaries are accurate.  Someone who is disagreeing with you may actually be doing so for good reason.  Because he/she knows more than you do. And occasionally a news story might even report actual information. 🙂

I am a fairly big food snob.  I’ll admit it.  I’m probably even more proud of that fact than I should, but tasty food is an important pleasure in life to me.  Not to mention sitting down to a good meal, can be romantic, social, and/or cultural.  One of my favorite things is to

Pad thai from myrecipes.com

introduce people to new food and new culinary experiences.  It has often been the case that someone will say they really don’t like a certain food.  Upon further investigation you find that the one time they tried it, the person didn’t know how to cook it properly so they had a bad experience, and then never tried it again.  Often if I get them to give what I have prepared a try, they find that they actually like it.  The point is that our own experiences are often flawed.  I am sure the person when they first tried badly cooked spinach they had no intentions on hating spinach, they simply didn’t like what they had, and assumed it was the fault of the spinach and not the cook.

While it is not surprising from an evolutionary standpoint why we would take our own experiences as truth, it is clear that as individuals we are prone to many biases.  If you know nothing about snakes, it is ALWAYS safer to stay away from snakes since a few can be deadly.  Surviving and being safe represents 99% of our evolution as a species, but if civilization has any true advantages, it is the ability to break free from the fearful uncertainty of the wild and to give us time for reflection and thought.  The lack of detailed knowledge about something is the birthplace of beliefs that are based on little or poor evidence.  This is why education is so important.  This is why understanding of science is important.  This is why critical thinking is important.

More importantly this is why humility is important.  One lifetime, at the very least in the length it is now, is never enough time to know all there is to know (if that is even possible).  But when you have true humility, not just humility before God, but humility before all existence, you accept that you don’t have all the answers.  You accept that there is still more for you to know, and to learn.  You can accept that you can be mistaken.  When you accept this, then you can delve into the next set of questions.  How is it that we can come to know things?  What are different ways of knowing?  How do they work?  What is their reliability?

from http://www.jasonwhowe.com

How boring would life be if you just decided on how everything works at the age of 30 and then just criticized everyone else the rest of your days? Keep asking yourself questions, and enjoy the experience of enlightenment that comes from a lifetime of learning.  The feeling of enlightenment is euphoric and is an edge that never dulls, no matter the age.

Evidently it’s Evidence Part I

On By Swarn GillIn Education, Science2 Comments

It is a common message from atheists that ultimately faith and science are incompatible.  Science forms conclusions based on evidence, and faith forms conclusions despite evidence.  In various debates I’ve had with people of ‘faith’ it occurs to me that there might be a slight problem with this statement.  While it’s true that people who hold strong religious beliefs often do not bother trying to explain evidence that is contradictory to their views.  Sometimes they will simply rationalize contradictory evidence away as not being accurate, or say some blanket statement “well science doesn’t know everything” or “science isn’t always right”.  These always seem like strange arguments of course.  Science doesn’t claim to know everything, and while it is true that science isn’t always right, but in proving a current hypothesis or theory wrong the bonus is that you end up with something that is more correct than what you had before.  And of course it’s true to say that faith isn’t always right either.  If faith was unfailing in the results it provides, I would certainly be willing to submit that perhaps scientific investigation wasn’t always the way to go.

But I would like to look just beyond religion and talk more about belief in general.  People who hold strong beliefs whether it is about religion, their country, or even their sports team (okay being a little glib there about sports) all share something in common.  Not only do they ignore evidence to the contrary, they also seem to have a different idea than most scientists about what evidence actually is.

As a scientist it feels fairly obvious to me what I should count as evidence and what I should not.  In the so called “hard” sciences this is fairly easy to grasp.  As an atmospheric scientist I have often dealt with vast quantities of data, measured from some unfeeling

From images.bwbx.io

instrument.  It’s unlikely to have any personal bias.  Of course instruments are not perfect and they have errors.  As a scientist I always need to be aware of the errors in the evidence.  Then once I have those hopefully close to perfect measurements I must then analyze the data.  My interpretation is thus subjective, perhaps to my own biases.  I of course try to minimize my biases by being well aware of the body of knowledge that surrounds the particular problem I am trying to solve.  I try to be aware of conflicting perspectives and points of view from previous scientist to help me keep as open a mind as possible about what my results might mean.  But in the end, even in a field that is steeped in physical equations, I might present results that are biased.  Most likely I have just made a mistake, but bias is also a mistake. 🙂

So any one study can be biased, but ultimately my mistakes will be revealed by others who are using my conclusions as truth to their study.  If I am wrong, their study will fail, and someone will say, perhaps my conclusions were incorrect thus their experiment started with a faulty premise.  An important part of science is verification and repeatability.  When there is a lot of disagreement amongst researchers, this probably means we don’t understand the problem yet very well.

In the social sciences, disagreements are more frequent, because here data and valid evidence are harder to obtain because so much depends on effective sampling and dealing with imperfect forms of subject material (namely us!).  For instance let’s say I wanted to see how humans felt about death, and I only sampled people in the U.S. who were of a Christian faith.  Meanwhile somewhere in India somebody wanted to perform the same study, but only sampled Hindus.  Any conclusion either of us made about how humans feel about death is incorrect.  Because really all we’ve addressed is how Hindus feel about death, or how Christians feel about death.  At best maybe we could draw some conclusions about how Americans or Indians felt about death.  Someone looking at our studies would say, well there are a few similarities in the our study so perhaps together you are one step closer to answering your original question, but for the most part you have only illuminated cultural difference between Indians and Americans on how they view death.  And if we were responsible scientists we would at least admit at the end of our study that our sampling was biased and thus we can only make limited claims about what humans think about death.

So ultimately any good scientist, regardless of the field, is aware of the errors and uncertainty of their data, and the scope to which their evidence is able to support their

From cdn2.edutopia.org

hypothesis.  And it is through the body of evidence in a particular field that we can turn hypotheses into theories and be confident in our conclusions.  We have a peer-review process to evaluate our application of the scientific method, and we have the process of verification and repeatability to strengthen the findings of any one scientist.

What one should gather from this is that science is actually really hard.  It takes a long time to learn how to interpret results accurately, be familiar with the types of errors that can be made, and to understand to what degree of certainty you can attribute to your research.  Nevertheless no other system has found to work better.

In my next post, I will get back to my original idea, which is what many seem to view as evidence and how much certainty they associate with that evidence.

Valuing Life: Death Part II

On By Swarn GillIn Philosophy, Politics, Science2 Comments

One of the unexpected things that happened when I realized that I was an atheist was that I began to have a greater respect for life.  I know the existence of an afterlife cannot be disproven, but neither can it be proven and so if this is the only existence we have, and death means non-existence, then appreciating this existence is paramount.  I know that being atheist isn’t a pre-requisite for an appreciation for existence, but that’s just how it happened for me (not that I was ever in support of violence).   I realize also that I am in an economic position in life to enjoy it much more than others but it is often surprising to me how often poor people are happier and more generous than those with wealth.  There is something to the old adage “Take joy in the simple things in life”.  Nevertheless there are those beyond just being poor.  Countless millions who do not get their daily need for food and water met.  If one values life then it should be our first and foremost goal to lift all those up to enjoy the marvels of existence.

When someone says they value life, it is often unclear what they mean.  First of all, what do we define as life?  Some people just seem to mean human life.   Some value other animals as well.  For some it is just certain animals that we think of as pets, but not ones that we use for food.  This tends to vary by culture.  Some value the life of animals, provided that they die without suffering and are treated

From http://www.jigzone.com

humanely in their life.  Some value the life of an animal based on how close to a human it is, and are okay with ending the life of simpler creatures.  Finally some value all animals and only eat vegetables.  Why is plant life less important?  Should feelings, or the fact that they are part of Kingdom Animalia at all be the deciding factor on how valuable life is?  As I have argued before that whenever we put value on life just because of its similarity to us, there is a certain human conceit there that I am not so sure is healthy.

For those that value human life, even that is inconsistent.  It is clear that we humans have a different line of reasoning when it comes to the harming of those that we deem innocent.  People often get much more outraged at a mistreated animal, or the abortion of a fetus, than a mistreated adult.     But we were all children once.  A child who is taught to hate minorities will become an adult who hates minorities.  If that adult commits a hate crime, why do we hate him back, call for his punishment, or even death.   In reality he is simply just an older child who was never taught to see the value in all people and that we are all brothers and sisters on this planet.  It is akin to me being upset at someone for not knowing calculus.  How could they if they were never taught?  It always seems to be assumed that as an adult we have choices to just change the way we think in an instant.  This is clearly not true, and in fact it gets harder as you get older, not easier.

From tardis.wikia.com

The biggest paradox I see for those people who are both “pro-life” in relation to abortion, is that they tend to be conservative in their views on capital punishment, war, and gun control.   Abortion is a tough issue, no question, and one where I truly understand the “pro-life” point of view.  What is clear to me is that no legislation should force a woman to go through something that profoundly effects her body, and for which there is no such equivalent or societal requirement on the father.  And the cold reality of the matter is; mothers ending the lives of their infants are a natural part of our psychology.  It is uncomfortable to accept such a cold fact as this, partially because it almost makes no sense in a modern society.  It is important to remember though that most of our evolution did not take place in civilization, but in the wild.  And in the wild resources are often scarce and raising a child, as anybody even today will admit, takes a lot of resources.  So in our brains when we feel like the child is not going to be able to get the support it needs, women will make the logical choice of abortion.  There is some logic to it.  Yes I said it.  Our brains are not programmed for birth control; our brains are not programmed for a society in which adoption is possible.  In the end, our world is the one right in front of us and in that moment ending an unwanted pregnancy is sensible.  This is why abortion rates are lowest in countries with adequate health care for all citizens, especially mothers, easy access to birth control, and plenty of education about sex and the consequences thereof.   Then of course there is the issue of whether a fetus counts as life, counts as human?  I don’t think that it can be answered anytime soon.  All I know is that it is not my place to decide what happens to an embryo inside a womb in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

From talkingpointsmemo.com

But if I weep for an aborted baby, then why do I not weep for all those people killed in war, shot down by gun violence, sent to the electric chair, or for even that matter the 20,000 people who die every day from hunger.  The answer comes down to the fact that killing is serious business and we have to justify it.  Perhaps abortion is just killing that we have justified.  But then it is no less immoral than any other killing that we find acceptable.  If we can justify abortion based on the grounds that it is not a child so early in development, then is it not the same reasoning we use for any other type of killing we support and even call for?  It comes down to dehumanizing people.  Whether it’s Muslims, criminals, poor people, minorities…whenever we say that any human life has less value then our own you will find things like abuse, torture, and killing.  Dehumanizing at a fundamental level involves two things.  First is the stripping away of things like the individuality of a person (i.e.  All Muslims hate Americans).  Secondly it focuses on making out their desires to always be about negative things.  Things that we consider the worst qualities of humanity or just the opposition of the virtues that we value most highly in our species.   So we can say “All Muslims hate freedom”, rather than suggesting that they are more like us than different, and that all Muslims want is to have a livelihood, take care of their families and have self-determination in their lives.  Something we all want.

This same reasoning can be applied to how many people think of the poor, other races, political affiliations, criminals, etc.  It concerns me that in this country that there seems to be a decreasing value placed on life.  The Travyon Martin case exemplifies this all too well.  Not just about his murder (it is at the very least manslaughter) itself but by the “Stand Your Ground” law.  If being threatened is enough to justify killing another human being then I think we need to seriously address this philosophy in our society.  Something must have gone wrong somewhere for such a law to even be proposed. Should someone’s existence end for stealing a television set?  There was a recent story about a woman who shot at a car for turning around near her driveway.  There were 4 children in the car and children could have been shot.  Luckily the bullets only hit the car.  The woman’s explanation was that her driveway was getting ruined because people were turning around on it all the time.  What does it say about our society when something so trivial as a driveway takes precedence over life?

From http://www.screen-wallpapers.com

As far as we know it, death is the very end.  Even if it isn’t, this existence must have value or we would not be born into it.   We must therefore question ALL killing.  We must be forgiving and believe in redemption.  We must look at a human as a product of his experiences rather than a creature who always has the power to make conscious choices to do acts of good and evil.  This planet teems with life and we are connected to it all.  Nothing that lives has more right to life than anything else, and yet killing is also natural whether it is for food or for protection.  As a species we have the ability to kill with the strength and power like no other species, but we also have the equal ability to find alternatives to killing.  The latter should always be our goal.  We should be continually striving to find ways to survive that do not deny the right to life of others even if killing happens along the way.

Agrajag: Defenseless

On By Swarn GillIn Humor, Philosophy, Science2 Comments

Being in Australia you’re supposed to represent my near future, but your blogging into the wee hours of the morning sounds more like my recent past.  Thank you for your wonderful reply. 🙂

Your post can certainly be about racism as it has been on my mind obviously a lot of late.  Not only the last few days, but ever since the Travyon Martin verdict too.  Not sure if that news story hit Australia, but it was a rather sad case where a 17 year black kid was shot by a Latino man on a neighborhood watch because he thought he look suspicious.  He called the police and the police told him to stand down and that they were on their way.  Instead he went after the kid and when the kid attacked him after a forced confrontation and the guy pulled out a gun and shot the kid, claiming it was self-defense.  While I don’t believe the guy was racist, the judicial system certainly is, not to mention the gun laws in the state of Florida supported this man’s actions and he was acquitted of any wrong doing.  Racism is a fine topic to begin with.  Who knows where we will end? 🙂

I don’t think 24 resilient, thinking humans is going to be enough.   We’d probably be exiled, because that would be the stupid thing to do to your last 24. lol What you describe is the premise for a movie called Idiocracy actually.  Not sure if you’ve seen it.  Basically since non-thinking people seem to be outbreeding the thinkers that in the future the population will be dominated by idiots. lol  It’s quite amusing actually. 🙂

Human babies are quite defenseless.  It is true.  I suppose there could be lots of reasons why.  The first thought that comes to my mind that the simple bonus of having a higher intelligence as an evolutionary advantage allows us a greater variety of options in protecting our young, so the young don’t need to just get ready to flee like a fawn or colt.  In addition the fact that we are social animal means that children are also protected by the community and not just by parents.  Humans developing physical attributes quickly simply wouldn’t have been a necessary adaption.

Defenseless Baby (Photo Credit: http://www.dangerouscreation.com/2009/02/so-innocent-so-defenseless-so-gullible/)

If intelligence was favored by our species then we have the ability to also teach more through communication and personal guidance.  We can communicate more complex thoughts and ideas than other animals, but this learning too takes time and perhaps at the cost of the development of physical skills as well.  I would imagine that a human child growing up in the wild with parents would be more independent than ones growing in a more sedentary lifestyle.  That being said, I think it’s interesting how the helplessness of the human child promotes a more sedentary lifestyle.  I guess we were destined to farm and create civilization.  lol

Guns, Germs, and Steel in addition the Douglas Adams speech that I linked you really are the two things that led me down an intellectual path of looking at society in a completely different way.   They were an intellectual springboard I have to say. 🙂  I completely agree with your statement “that change is the only constant”.  It’s especially a good statement because of its seemingly paradoxical nature. 🙂  And you also expressed it quite beautifully when you were talking about using the physical universe to guide our decisions.  It seems so odd to me that, it is quite fearful to people.  It is grand and always changing and I guess that is the source of fear.  It’s probably the change most likely, because after all God is a fairly grand idea and many people believe in God.  Of course the nature of God has changed throughout history but people prefer to see him constant or unchanging.

Agrajag: Luck of the draw

On By Swarn GillIn Philosophy, Science1 Comment

I see your ramble and raise you an ambling ramble. 🙂

If Swarn isn’t my real name, then my parents are keeping secrets from me, because that’s what they told me.  If you like I can call and interrogate them a little more rigorously.  Because you’re right it does sound a bit made up. 😉

I must remind myself to live in the moment.  When you look too hard towards the future you rush to meet it and miss all the other good stuff along the way.  Far too many people live in a world of instant gratification.  If all gratification was instant we wouldn’t need time at all, only space.  Thus those people are often left disappointed and frustrated most of the time and rarely pursue things that have meaning.

I wonder if many of our racist tendencies are related to a lack of acceptance that biological diversity is natural?  The fact that many people don’t know or won’t accept that we are an evolved species?  That all our physical difference are simply slight variations in genetics for which we have no control over?  That it was not planned by anyone, it just is?

A very interesting book to me was Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond who analyzed why certain cultures rose technologically faster than others, and how this too was a simple accident based on environmental factors rather than any one culture  or race being superior intellectually than another.

It principally advances the idea of environmental determinism which is not overly popular especially amongst historians who feel that it simplifies and reduces cultures to sort of the environment in which they developed in, but I am not sure that it isn’t something we should pay a lot more attention to.  I guess my understanding of the natural sciences makes me more inclined to take environmental determinism more seriously.  We had a wonderful speaker come to our university who said that environmental determinism was the splash and all the other historical details are the ripples.   That analogy really connects to me.

Agrajag is starting to become conscious.  As soon as it becomes self-aware is when it usually dies. 🙂

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Why people don’t trust science

On By Swarn GillIn Science17 Comments

So a colleague posted this article on my Facebook wall and queried me for my thoughts on the matter.  With longer things to say, I think I am going to use my blog more than Facebook.  Partly because of the easier formatting, but also the more permanency of keeping my ideas in one place.  The article is a NY Times article in which the author talks about the growing anti-science strain in this country called Welcome to the Age of Denial. Perhaps none of my ideas on the subject our very original and there are a number of excellent comments made under the article itself, but I think it’s worth sort of collecting a lot of them in one place.

The problem itself is much like Climate Change itself in that it is quite complex and no single factor can be completely to blame.  To start simply however many have pointed to a weakening economy as the reason for this change.  Of course weaker economies do tend to breed more extremism, more faith based reasoning as the amount of people living near poverty increases.  The great irony being that as the nation rejects science more the innovation and growth science can bring also goes away too.  In addition the strength of our economy is built on this growth in science and innovation and if we had all that going for us, where did we falter?

Please keep in mind that what I am going to say is a lot of opinion based on what I’ve read and what I’ve observed as an educator for now 11 years.

I think if we are going to make things better there are numerous factors that have to change:

  1. The corporation is out of control.  Money carries a lot of weight and everyone knows that.  Corporations do not want to take responsibility to the damage they’ve caused to the environment or the human body in the case of pharmaceuticals or fast food.  It’s not even conspiracy theory thinking to say that in a capitalistic society that corporations have a vested interested in making sure you are not concerned about important issues and so the spreading of misinformation in an age where information is easily disseminated is a big factor in the growing anti-trust in science.
  2. The politicization of science.  It was interesting to read this article and learn how in a way things have gotten worse in regards to scientific issues according to pulls from 1982 until now.  Especially when I had read about the increased secular population in the U.S.  According to polls also the number of agnostics, atheists or people who do not associate themselves with any particular religion is also growing.  Initially I thought these things were at odds, but not so if you think that U.S. is becoming increasingly polarized.  The continued two party system in this country is getting uglier and uglier, and despite that their is almost no difference between what the two parties actually do when operating the government the platforms they run on give a staggeringly different perception.  Especially when it comes to social issues. It is these social issues that are the main reason why I remain a democrat because quite simply science demonstrates that the democrats are right.  But there are many things I disagree with in terms of how they run the government.  That being said, somehow the democrats have sort of taken science as part of their party platform.  It shocks the hell out of me when, if I support scientific consensus on an issue, that makes me automatically a liberal democrat.  Science doesn’t take sides.  If the science is properly done it simply shows you what is, and once we are okay with that, we can move forward and figure out what is to be done about it, or done with it.  And just for the record I also am quite aware that while the democratic party has sort of taken up the reins of “pro-science” it does very little good with it.
  3. The devaluing of education.  Much could be said about this topic.  Of course it’s no big news that we continue to fare rather poorly in comparison with many other countries on the scientific literacy of youths coming out of school.  This is all too apparent to me as a professor who teaches many freshmen every semester.  Schools continue to get less funding, tuitions continue to rise.  Best practices in teaching are pushed aside in favor of standardized metrics that can be used to compare different schools to figure out who should get a piece of the every shrinking pie of funding.  This leads to increased class sizes, meaning less interaction between student and teacher, this leads to grade inflation where students do not get a meaningful evaluation of their actual abilities, and it leads to less critical thinking skills in place of rote memorization.  One day I will write an entire post probably regarding this subject, but suffice to say there is good reason why a lot of people don’t even respect the institution of education more when many students come out of school without basic writing skills let alone good quantitative skills, how to think critically and understand how science is done.  There is also politicization here too, and there should be one place where both parties agree, is that you can’t really spend too much money on education.
  4. Increasing transparency of science.  There is a word I was looking for instead of transparency, but I need the skills of the person who posted the article to my Facebook page to be able to find it. lol  What I mean by transparency here is that we take less notice of how it impacts our lives.  One commenter on the article said something to the fact that things are so small now we don’t see the gears and the machinery that makes things move so we wonder less how things work.  Well I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that, but I think he is right in some way.    Just like Republicans fail to see how taxes have actually benefitted their lives, I think many don’t understand how science is part of their everyday world and how knowledge of science would actually improve their lives regardless of what they do for their career.  Especially when so many important issues in government rely on a scientifically literate population.  I already have a blog post on this, so I won’t go into too much detail, but there does seem to be a general lack of awareness on why science is important and how many things in this world are actually rooted in science.  This is also a place where perhaps education is failing the young.
  5. Increased strain of biblical literalism.  In Europe, the fact that the Catholic church has publicly said that evolution is not in conflict with biblical teaching is huge in telling you that, while Catholicism may still have its problems it is at least trying to get away from the biblical literalism that plagues science today in this country.  A close relationship with good, good morals, and the happiness that people gain from faith should not in conflict with scientific advance.  One of my big problems is how people here can take one particular part of the bible so literally but ignore many of the other parts that are no longer practiced.  Any time words from the bible are literally used as a direct argument against scientific findings, I think we have a problem.  Much like I am annoyed that science has been associated with the democratic party, I know many good Christians who are annoyed that Christianity has become associated with the Republican Party.  Ultimately we have to take both religion and science out of party associations even if sometimes political decisions have to be made regarding science and religion.

 

Well those are the top 5 I can think of and I think they require a greater amount of overhaul than just one thing.  I think ultimately the most important is to continue the fight to make government value education, and also to make corporations responsible for poor practices.  I feel like the other ones sort of fade away if we can start to increase scientific literacy and not let corporations run the government.

 

What is normal and natural?

On By Swarn GillIn Philosophy, Science2 Comments

The following is a complete rewrite of something I posted on Facebook before about natural and normal.  I wanted to be a bit more comprehensive in my arguments.  Which also means its much longer.

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I remember when I engaged the gay basher that came to our campus last academic year, one of his many arguments included the idea that “being gay was not normal, that it was not natural”.  I am the type of person who thinks a lot about even what I know to be incorrect.  This is because I accept that what I know might actually be wrong and so I want to be always asking questions.  At one point in the argument he even claimed victory because he had got me to admit that it’s not normal.  It took me some time to understand exactly why he hadn’t won his argument and that I had not proved his point.  It comes down to the way in which I see normal, and the way he sees normal.

The word “normal” is one that I’ve come to see as a rather dangerous word and I think that I even need to be more careful about how I use the word.   The first part of the dictionary definition describes it as conforming to the standard or common type.  However it also defines normal as being “not abnormal” and “natural”.  This is where the problem lies.  Allow me to try to make the argument for what “normal” shouldn’t be, before making the argument for what it should be.

The word abnormal has a negative connotation to it, and anything that we define as normal implies those things that do not meet the defined criteria for normal, by definition are abnormal.  And since normal and natural are often used synonymously that thing becomes also unnatural.  Once we’ve reached this place in our mind we have created two categories.  In one is the category of things that belong in our world, and in the other category are things that don’t belong.   And once we decide what things don’t belong in our world, it becomes a very dangerous notion.

Now as a quick vocabulary aside, by definition I believe normal has a broader definition than natural.  Natural does only pertain to things that happen, well, in nature.  So normal can apply to nature, but it can also apply to a lot of other things.  For instance one can say “It is normal for Jim to be late to a party”.  Unless we were sort of being sarcastic or funny “It’s unlikely we’d say “It is natural for Jim to be late to a party”.  So all things natural could also be said to be normal, but the reverse is not true.  And the dictionary definition supports this line of thinking.

I argue that this categorization into normal and abnormal is not only dangerous, but also faulty.  Many of the things that people consider abnormal and normal are actually better served by using the word probable and improbable.  For instance,  only about 10% of the world is left-handed.  Now 10% is still a decent percentage in my opinion, and for a long time in our history even though 1 out of every 10 people were naturally left-handed those people were often oppressed and demonized as being unnatural.  People who are left-handed still are often inconvenienced today, and it wasn’t that long ago before parents actually let their kids be left handed (and I am sure there still kids being forced somewhere in the world to use their right hand).  I was actually a natural lefty, and my dad, not knowing any better forced me to use my right hand (I could have been an artist, or at least a much better writer!).  Language and culture favor right-handedness so much that it’s not surprising that left-handedness was looked down on for so long.  Therefore if we didn’t have this concept in our mind of what was normal and abnormal perhaps we could have avoided this type of discrimination.  Of course the truth is that being left-handed is just as normal or natural as being right-handed.  It is simply the fact that one is more probable than the other.  If we are going to use the term natural we might be better served saying that, “it is natural for humans to have a preference to use one hand more than another.”  Of course then we still might be lumping ambidextrous people into the unnatural category unfairly.  Because about 1 in 100 people are ambidextrous, this too is also natural.  Thus I would argue in situations like these that probable and improbable are the preferred words to use.  Something that is improbable is hardly something that we would consider sinful, bad, evil, or even something that didn’t belong.  It may be that we don’t want an improbable event to occur, but by looking at it as an improbable event means that we don’t have any inherent “wrongness” of the event, but we can study it and its effects and then make a decision about what if anything we need to do about it.  Some events are very improbable, but they happen, and that makes even the improbable events both normal and natural.

One could also make the broader argument that everything can be considered natural to a certain degree, even the things that are purely human products.  As a natural species on this planet, anything that we might do or construct could be said to be natural.  Since it all lays within a realm of probability of what we are capable of and what we can become.   One might be able to get away with saying, “It is unnatural for an object to not fall to the ground once it is no longer suspended in air”.  But using the word “highly improbable” would just be as acceptable and probably safer because hey you just never know. J

In Michael Shermer’s book The Believing Brain he makes the argument that we believe first and rationalize to support our beliefs rather than use rationalization to form beliefs.  Without an objective tool such as the scientific method we are left to trying to make sense out of the world as quickly as possible and then doing our best to preserve that world view through the process of rationalization.  Thus it could also be that things we learn to fear might lead us to rationalize those fears and label things normal or abnormal.  People who are religious and are belief driven tend to do this more often, but we are all capable of it from time to time.  It’s important to remember here that while I think letting belief dominate your life is dangerous, belief is also natural.  It is normal.  But so is science.  It is also normal.  While some scientific advances happen accidentally, most processes require refinement and attention.  If it was not for careful testing and experimentation one could not make the bow and arrow shoot farther and more accurately, let alone make a better iPhone.

So if fear can lead us to categorizing things as normal and abnormal, what do we fear?  I think that humans do naturally fear improbable events.  For most of our evolution, improbable events were probably a bad thing.  A natural disaster, the occasional lion who developed a taste for human flesh, an unknown disease or sickness.  Like all animals we want to feel safe.  Safety means survival.  Improbable events reduce that feeling of safety.   Even if an improbable event didn’t pose any real danger, such events are also harder to predict.   Humans through most of our evolution lived in small groups.  Events that had a 1/1000 chance of happening would not have happened very often, giving even early man very little chance to try to understand why it was happening and what to do about it.  It is only a luxury of large populations and sophisticated technology that we can study low probability events and still have a statistically significant number of cases to reach some good conclusions.  Therefore I also don’t deny that our tendency to categorize things as normal or abnormal is extension of what we fear especially when it comes to improbable events.  This too is something we naturally do.

Finally I think we also, regardless of the probability of an event, tend to regard negative things as unnatural.  Violent  behavior, sexual abuse, genocide just to name a few.  At an emotional level I have also heard many people refer to feelings, for example, like lust, anger, and apathy as unnatural.   Unfortunately science reveals that all these things are quite natural, not only to our species, but to other species as well.  Now, so what do we do if we say it is natural?  The naturalness of something, however, is not necessarily the basis of morality.  I think there is this feeling that once we accept something as being natural that we have to let it happen because there is nothing we can do about it.  We know from our studies of chimpanzees, our closest genetic relative, that they also practice genocide.  Does this mean we should just let genocide happen?  Of course not.  In chimpanzee societies the practice of genocide often is triggered by competition for territory and resources.  However, we have the advantage of coming up with other solutions to resolve differences, make resources and territory available to everyone without the need for killing.  Even primates realize that through cooperation they are better at surviving than without.  If they had the intellect to come up with other solutions, they would perhaps choose alternative solutions too, instead of ones that can end in their own deaths, and reduces the power of cooperative growth.  Therefore all these terrible things that we do should not be evaluated based on whether they are natural or not.  They should be based on what harm they actually cause.

To argue that homosexuality is not natural, or not normal is simply not a valid argument.  And if you are going to allow only natural things in the world, then you have to accept that things like abortion is normal (since even anthropological evidence even shows the abandoning and killing of one’s young when resources are limited).  For humans to kill each other is also normal.  The boon that is granted by the day we live in and the civilization we have built is to understand the reasons for behaviors that cause harm and find alternatives to that behavior when dealing with problems, or to learn how to change our behavior so that we can all live peaceably together.  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I’ve put into the category of natural and unnatural, or normal and abnormal, and it has certainly changed how I look at the world.  I am sure there are many other thoughts that I have that need revisiting that could use a glance through a different lens.  Do yourself a favor and spend some time thinking about how you use those words, how you think about those concepts and what things in this world you tie to them.  It’s worth the effort.

My first wedding ceremony

On By Swarn GillIn Humor, Philosophy, Prose and Poetry, Science4 Comments

So I was fortunate enough to be asked by two former students and friends to perform their ceremony.  As both atheists themselves they wanted someone who would give a more humanist ceremony.  They are both steeped in science and both educators so I wanted to create something that was both expressed my heart and incorporated why I knew about them.  I am thankful it was well received.  I will leave out their last names so that there is at least some anonymity that is preserved. 🙂

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Today we are gathered to celebrate the love between Matthew —– and Christina —–.  For their union to last love must be shown to be more than just an abstract idea.  They are in love,  but how do we know love exists?  If we present the hypothesis that love is real, how do we go about proving such a thing?  The answer is research. As with any good research, we must first conduct a literature review and see what previous studies about love have found.

Literature Review

Many words about love have been written.  We can find metaphors such as Voltaire’s words “Love is a canvass furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.”  But words like these often leave us with more questions than answers.  Love inspires imaginative gestures such as Alfred Tennyson’s words “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”  However, such words are often intangible, since they paint pictures of unrealistic situations that do not touch our actual lives.

We also find in literature many who question whether love can be effectively described at all.  The genius physicist and co-inventor of the first laser Ali Javan said “Love can sometimes be magic.  But magic sometimes can just be an illusion.”  The 17th century French Writer Francois de la Rochefoucauld supported this idea when he said “True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, but few have seen.”  From this we may at least glean that true love is rare and that we can call into question whether written words of love come from a source that has truly experienced what they claim knowledge about.

When it comes to words, many doubt that they are even useful in matters of love. Shakespeare recognized that “One may as soon go kindle fire with snow, as to seek to quench the fire of love with words”. Additionally, 16th century French writer Francois Rabelais said “Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.”  Finally, American writer Zelda Fitzgerald points to the difficulty of our quest when she says “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold”.

Love becomes easier to understand when we define it in terms of our actions.  Van Gogh said “The way to know life is to love many things.”  This is echoed by Mother Theresa who said “Love begins at home and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in that action.”  We can connect further to this idea of love when we consider how love exists even in those actions that seem routine.  Marilyn Monroe said “The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead, or smiling into your eyes, or staring into space”.

But even as we feel inspired and positive about love, listening to what great minds of the past had to say, what tangible evidence do we have for its existence?  Experimentation is the next step and thus we must decide on what methodology will help us demonstrate how real love is.  For love is not just a concept in our mind, or a feeling in our heart.  Love has no value if only kept, it must be shared.  And if it is shared than we can observe it.

Methodology

In matters of love our best way of observing is through our 5 senses.  How do we see love?  How does it taste?  Does love have a smell?  What does love sound like? And finally how can we truly feel love?  These questions we must try to answer in the next section.

Data and Analysis

Visual evidence of love can be seen in many places.  It could be the sight of an object that you built for your loved one to compliment the home, or in a gift prominently displayed demonstrating its importance and appreciation.  It may simply be the sight of the table set and dinner ready after coming home from a long day.  It is the sight of the other person looking especially beautiful or handsome as they put in extra time to make themselves look nice for a night out.

As we turn to taste, we can find evidence when eating at a familiar restaurant where the menu holds some of your favorite foods, and with each bite you are reminded of past memories with each other.  It can be in the taste of a good wine on a romantic evening.  Or, more simply, it can be found in the taste of each other’s lips in a passionate kiss; a flavor that is unique and unlike any other.

Often overlooked is the sense of smell, but it is the one most closely linked to memory.  Love may be found in the smell of breakfast cooking in the morning as you wake up; the aroma of coffee drifting into the bedroom.  It can be in the fragrance of a shampoo in the hair, perfume on the wrist or cologne on a piece of clothing.  But even these things are not required, for just like the unique taste we have, we also have a unique smell that permeates those things that we interact with most closely.  Often it is the quickest way to bring to the fore the memories of the one you love when they’re away…causing you to miss and love them all the more.

Love delights in sounds, for when you are together, sound is what fills the air.  It is in the sound of the voice when sharing feelings and thoughts you would only ever express to each other; knowing that while it makes you vulnerable their love for you is greater.  It is in the familiar sound of sarcasm as you mock republicans together, and it is in the sound of laughter as you both experience good times and joy.  It is the sound of new music that is played for you because the other person knows your tastes so well they instinctively know what you will enjoy.  And sometimes it is in the sound of words “I love you”.  And though we have shown that words are not all, there is never harm in such an expression.

Touch is last because touch is the unique sense that can be experienced by both simultaneously.   And though making love might be an obvious one here, over the course of a lifetime it tends to be the part of touch that gets missed the least.  What we feel when we embrace or hold hands often means so much more. Or that half asleep warm feeling we get when our partner, coming home late after an exhausting day, or maybe a night of carousing, wraps their arms around us as they slip into bed.  It may be in the feel of a comforting caress on the cheek when we are sick, sad, or hurting.

We must remember that grand gestures of love such as this wedding are but a day in the life you have pledged to share through marriage.  Love is experiential, and iterative, and here we have recounted some of the many ways that we can find love in our day to day lives.  Though these days seem ordinary, with careful observation, we can see how filled with love they actually are.  And over a lifetime these simple things grow into something even stronger. This is emphasized by American author Lawrence Durrell, who said: “The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time”.

Conclusion

The evidence you can collect about love in your life is plentiful and thus we can safely conclude that love is real.  And no conclusion would be complete without a look to the future.  As you grow older, so your love grows as well.  Let that love move you to actions not only for each other, but spread that love outward always.  Nineteenth century women’s rights activist Lydia Child said “The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word ‘love’. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.”

Our research is complete, and now as you say the vows you have written for each other, reflect on how those words translate into experience.

Vows

Exchange Rings

Matt and Christina, I’m honored to pronounce you husband and wife.

Christina, you may now kiss the groom.

Finally, no research would complete without peer review.  Those that have come today, do so out of that love which we have worked to define.  Therefore I ask everybody here today to applaud in approval of that love which our research has shown to exist for the happy couple.

Ladies and gentleman I am pleased to present to you for the first time as a married couple Mr. Matthew —- and Mrs. Christina —-!!!!!!!!!!!