Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much
- Excerpt from Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
Hat tip to Matt Ridley and his excellent book The Red Queen
Read the full post
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Management Skeptic #3: Detecting Lemons
This series discusses the concept of "management models" from a skeptical viewpoint. In my first post, I raised the question: do "management models" such as PRINCE2 improve a practitioner's ability to manage? In my second post, I discussed a common argument in support of this claim and demonstrated why it doesn't hold up.
This post analyses a second common argument in support of management models, and provides more reasons why a course can be popular without being any good.
Argument #2: Management models must be good, or why would companies buy into them?
In my last post, I discussed how a qualification can be very useful for job applicants without actually achieving anything in itself. Candidates who have been on well-marketed courses like PRINCE2 will often be seen as more competent, regardless of their real proficiency. As a counterexample I presented the "VISCOUNT4" thought experiment: a training course that is deeply popular despite sucking.
But why, one might ask, does this work in the long term? Why would companies hire people with a worthless qualification, and how can they prosper if they do? In short, why doesn't the "natural selection" of capitalism weed out VISCOUNT4-style courses?
From this question, it's easy to start jumping to conclusions. If these companies survive then preferential hiring of PRINCE2 practitioners must be beneficial for a company, so clearly PRINCE2 itself must make managers more effective...
I already discussed one objection to this chain of logic: it's possible that this preferential hiring is doing damage, but that the self-interested interviewers still favour a qualification that many of them possess.
In this post, I will provide another answer. I'd like to draw your attention to one of the most fascinating developments in economics since the young Adam Smith got a summer job at the nail-making factory: the new concept of information asymmetry.
The basic principle is simple. When someone suspects that a purchase isn't worth the asking price, they won't buy it. For example, why is it that the value of a car drops dramatically as soon as it leaves the vendor's turf? Because a small number of cars in any batch will be dodgy - "lemons" - and, by trying to sell your car on so soon, you're signalling to the world that you've been landed with one of them.
This sounds like common sense, but it creates a headache for economists. For example, back when England's currency was based on precious metals, it was well-known that "bad money drives out good". Some coins would be adulterated, forged, and otherwise tampered with in order to extract some of the value from them. Of course, when you found that you'd been landed with one of these lemons, you'd try to palm it off on some other sucker, but you'd keep the good coins safe in your wallet.
After a while, the very fact that you were trying to pay with a coin sent a signal to the vendor that that coin sucked. The value of money declined, which made it even more futile to pay with a good coin. A race to the bottom ensued that required heavy-duty government intervention to resolve.
The job market seems like it would be very vulnerable to this effect. If companies tend to retain good employees and ditch bad ones, soon the very fact that someone is after a job is itself enough to taint their application. How do we get around this? How does a good candidate signal to the employer that they are indeed a good candidate?
The answer is that they perform a task that is relatively easy for them but would be deeply painful for a poor candidate. Back in the old days, hunters used to prove their strength and tactical expertise by slaying a large predator, and anyone who hadn't yet done so was given reduced privileges within the tribe.
These days, students flock to universities in their thousands, in the safe knowledge that the time spent (wasted?) on some obscure academic subject will repay itself when they hit the job market. It's (fairly) easy for a smart, disciplined individual to pass exams, but very difficult if you're a poor candidate.
Similarly, although VISCOUNT4 may not contribute to a manager's effectiveness, the fact that someone has put themselves through expensive training courses demonstrates a great deal of commitment to the cause. Imagine: they could have gone on a three-week bender, they could have spent a weekend in Amsterdam's red light district, they could have knocked a month off their mortgage repayments, but instead they went on a training course. What dedication that individual must have!
So, counterintuitively, even if VISCOUNT4 sucks it may still be in employers' best interests to hire VISCOUNT4 practitioners. The world is weird that way.
Read the full post
This post analyses a second common argument in support of management models, and provides more reasons why a course can be popular without being any good.
Argument #2: Management models must be good, or why would companies buy into them?
In my last post, I discussed how a qualification can be very useful for job applicants without actually achieving anything in itself. Candidates who have been on well-marketed courses like PRINCE2 will often be seen as more competent, regardless of their real proficiency. As a counterexample I presented the "VISCOUNT4" thought experiment: a training course that is deeply popular despite sucking.
But why, one might ask, does this work in the long term? Why would companies hire people with a worthless qualification, and how can they prosper if they do? In short, why doesn't the "natural selection" of capitalism weed out VISCOUNT4-style courses?
From this question, it's easy to start jumping to conclusions. If these companies survive then preferential hiring of PRINCE2 practitioners must be beneficial for a company, so clearly PRINCE2 itself must make managers more effective...
I already discussed one objection to this chain of logic: it's possible that this preferential hiring is doing damage, but that the self-interested interviewers still favour a qualification that many of them possess.
In this post, I will provide another answer. I'd like to draw your attention to one of the most fascinating developments in economics since the young Adam Smith got a summer job at the nail-making factory: the new concept of information asymmetry.
The basic principle is simple. When someone suspects that a purchase isn't worth the asking price, they won't buy it. For example, why is it that the value of a car drops dramatically as soon as it leaves the vendor's turf? Because a small number of cars in any batch will be dodgy - "lemons" - and, by trying to sell your car on so soon, you're signalling to the world that you've been landed with one of them.
This sounds like common sense, but it creates a headache for economists. For example, back when England's currency was based on precious metals, it was well-known that "bad money drives out good". Some coins would be adulterated, forged, and otherwise tampered with in order to extract some of the value from them. Of course, when you found that you'd been landed with one of these lemons, you'd try to palm it off on some other sucker, but you'd keep the good coins safe in your wallet.
After a while, the very fact that you were trying to pay with a coin sent a signal to the vendor that that coin sucked. The value of money declined, which made it even more futile to pay with a good coin. A race to the bottom ensued that required heavy-duty government intervention to resolve.
The job market seems like it would be very vulnerable to this effect. If companies tend to retain good employees and ditch bad ones, soon the very fact that someone is after a job is itself enough to taint their application. How do we get around this? How does a good candidate signal to the employer that they are indeed a good candidate?
The answer is that they perform a task that is relatively easy for them but would be deeply painful for a poor candidate. Back in the old days, hunters used to prove their strength and tactical expertise by slaying a large predator, and anyone who hadn't yet done so was given reduced privileges within the tribe.
These days, students flock to universities in their thousands, in the safe knowledge that the time spent (wasted?) on some obscure academic subject will repay itself when they hit the job market. It's (fairly) easy for a smart, disciplined individual to pass exams, but very difficult if you're a poor candidate.
Similarly, although VISCOUNT4 may not contribute to a manager's effectiveness, the fact that someone has put themselves through expensive training courses demonstrates a great deal of commitment to the cause. Imagine: they could have gone on a three-week bender, they could have spent a weekend in Amsterdam's red light district, they could have knocked a month off their mortgage repayments, but instead they went on a training course. What dedication that individual must have!
So, counterintuitively, even if VISCOUNT4 sucks it may still be in employers' best interests to hire VISCOUNT4 practitioners. The world is weird that way.
Read the full post
Management skeptic (post #2)
In my last post, I raised the question: what advantage do "management models" such as PRINCE2 convey to the practitioner? Are they really worth the expensive training courses?
I've discussed this with many people, and they all seem to think the answer is "yes". In fact, it's almost unquestioned in management circles that applying management models can improve your management ability. In particular, implementation of quality management models like EFQM is in many cases required before people will entrust you with business. And you have to pass an exam on the Actuarial Control Loop (a variant of the management control loop I mentioned last time) before you can become an actuary.
If management models really are effective then that's fair enough. But I'm not sure the question has been answered.
In this and future posts I'll look at the various arguments provided for management models, with a description of why each gets my skeptical spider-sense tingling.
Argument #1: Management models look good on your CV
This one is actually true: if you've taken PRINCE2 (for example), it's generally assumed that you're a more competent project manager than a similar candidate who hasn't. This contrast is amplified by the number of managers who have taken PRINCE2 and therefore have an incentive to emphasise its coolness.
However, this effect isn't directly due to PRINCE2 itself, but rather to the packaging, marketing and community that surrounds it. Consider an imaginary qualification, which I'll call VISCOUNT4. This qualification is completely useless, but the VISCOUNT4 company has excellent advertising skills and soon manages to convince everyone that what their CV really needs is a VISCOUNT4 certificate.
As a result of this, VISCOUNT4 becomes immensely popular, and is subject to the positive feedback loop I mentioned above where managers with VISCOUNT4 tend to hire other managers with VISCOUNT4. The course quickly becomes a prerequisite for project management. But it still sucks.
In short, the popularity of PRINCE2 is not an argument for the effectiveness of PRINCE2, because the VISCOUNT4 scenario demonstrates another way that this popularity can arise. The PRINCE2 model cannot be said to have value simply because the PRINCE2 marketing is superb.
Read the full post
I've discussed this with many people, and they all seem to think the answer is "yes". In fact, it's almost unquestioned in management circles that applying management models can improve your management ability. In particular, implementation of quality management models like EFQM is in many cases required before people will entrust you with business. And you have to pass an exam on the Actuarial Control Loop (a variant of the management control loop I mentioned last time) before you can become an actuary.
If management models really are effective then that's fair enough. But I'm not sure the question has been answered.
In this and future posts I'll look at the various arguments provided for management models, with a description of why each gets my skeptical spider-sense tingling.
Argument #1: Management models look good on your CV
This one is actually true: if you've taken PRINCE2 (for example), it's generally assumed that you're a more competent project manager than a similar candidate who hasn't. This contrast is amplified by the number of managers who have taken PRINCE2 and therefore have an incentive to emphasise its coolness.
However, this effect isn't directly due to PRINCE2 itself, but rather to the packaging, marketing and community that surrounds it. Consider an imaginary qualification, which I'll call VISCOUNT4. This qualification is completely useless, but the VISCOUNT4 company has excellent advertising skills and soon manages to convince everyone that what their CV really needs is a VISCOUNT4 certificate.
As a result of this, VISCOUNT4 becomes immensely popular, and is subject to the positive feedback loop I mentioned above where managers with VISCOUNT4 tend to hire other managers with VISCOUNT4. The course quickly becomes a prerequisite for project management. But it still sucks.
In short, the popularity of PRINCE2 is not an argument for the effectiveness of PRINCE2, because the VISCOUNT4 scenario demonstrates another way that this popularity can arise. The PRINCE2 model cannot be said to have value simply because the PRINCE2 marketing is superb.
Read the full post
The Pink Link
It's well-known that many animals use colour to signal to each other (the classic example being baboons' bottoms), and of course this applies to humans too. We have the additional advantage that we can change our colour scheme without application of any nasty hormones.
I think I've identified one interesting example of this. It's noticeable in (British, financial-sector) offices that the colour pink is rarely worn by guys - unless that guy is a manager.
My best guess is that this originated as a statement of independence - the guy is signalling "I'm so powerful/self-confident that I don't need to obey peer pressure. That's a message that would be expected to propagate within the management community (because they like to think of themselves as standing out from the crowd) but not outside it. It's like deliberately picking the wrong urinal.
If I've noticed this trend, other people probably have too, so I suspect that the fashion is evolving into a way for management-inclined individuals to make their presence known to each other. In a spirit of scientific enquiry, I'm going to wear a pink shirt into work today and see if my new boss (who I've also seen wearing pink) pays any attention.
Watch this space.
Update: Nope, doesn't make any noticeable difference apart from getting me the occasional funny look from co-workers. I still think there's a correspondence here between managers and pink shirts, but clearly it only goes one way.
Update #2: Just received some rather good feedback from the new boss at the client company via my boss from the company that's farming me out. Bear in mind that this has passed through two layers of management, so is probably more motivation than message. However, this is the first time anyone has ever used the word "charismatic" to describe me, so I must be doing something better than I usually do.
This feedback provides slight support for the Pink Principle. It's a rather weak data point, but I've at least reverted from "skeptical" to "undecided" on this question.
Read the full post
I think I've identified one interesting example of this. It's noticeable in (British, financial-sector) offices that the colour pink is rarely worn by guys - unless that guy is a manager.
My best guess is that this originated as a statement of independence - the guy is signalling "I'm so powerful/self-confident that I don't need to obey peer pressure. That's a message that would be expected to propagate within the management community (because they like to think of themselves as standing out from the crowd) but not outside it. It's like deliberately picking the wrong urinal.
If I've noticed this trend, other people probably have too, so I suspect that the fashion is evolving into a way for management-inclined individuals to make their presence known to each other. In a spirit of scientific enquiry, I'm going to wear a pink shirt into work today and see if my new boss (who I've also seen wearing pink) pays any attention.
Watch this space.
Update: Nope, doesn't make any noticeable difference apart from getting me the occasional funny look from co-workers. I still think there's a correspondence here between managers and pink shirts, but clearly it only goes one way.
Update #2: Just received some rather good feedback from the new boss at the client company via my boss from the company that's farming me out. Bear in mind that this has passed through two layers of management, so is probably more motivation than message. However, this is the first time anyone has ever used the word "charismatic" to describe me, so I must be doing something better than I usually do.
This feedback provides slight support for the Pink Principle. It's a rather weak data point, but I've at least reverted from "skeptical" to "undecided" on this question.
Read the full post
Monday, August 04, 2008
I can has intarweb?
Yes, u can has intarweb!
In English: I'm currently on contract (basically my company decided to farm me out for a few months to another company). This means that I'm staying at a hotel. With wifi (which my flat still lacks). And sod-all to do in the evenings, pardon my French.
Given half a chance, I'll use some of the time to complete the series on management skepticism, and maybe expand it a bit. It's something I need to think through anyway.
Other random thoughts, before I forget:
Read the full post
In English: I'm currently on contract (basically my company decided to farm me out for a few months to another company). This means that I'm staying at a hotel. With wifi (which my flat still lacks). And sod-all to do in the evenings, pardon my French.
Given half a chance, I'll use some of the time to complete the series on management skepticism, and maybe expand it a bit. It's something I need to think through anyway.
Other random thoughts, before I forget:
- Interesting
- Never mind literary criticism, try management...
- I want to be this guy :)
Read the full post
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Argh (or, In Defence of Dawkins)
One comment I hear a lot in discussions about atheism is that Dawkins (who apparently is the One True Atheist) is very simplistic in his approach to religion. This is semi-true - his book The God Delusion does indeed go lightly the "sophisticated" theology.
However, this seems vastly more acceptable when you realise that very few of the folks at whom his book is aimed will have Plantinga's works on their bedside table. In fact, they're rather more likely to be familiar with crap like this.
Given this, can I say once and for all that, despite not discussing the evolutionary transcendental argument in much depth, Dawkins' book is a fine piece of work that is generally appropriate to the audience for whom it was intended.
Read the full post
However, this seems vastly more acceptable when you realise that very few of the folks at whom his book is aimed will have Plantinga's works on their bedside table. In fact, they're rather more likely to be familiar with crap like this.
Given this, can I say once and for all that, despite not discussing the evolutionary transcendental argument in much depth, Dawkins' book is a fine piece of work that is generally appropriate to the audience for whom it was intended.
Read the full post
Thursday, June 12, 2008
DRM rant
One of the things that Linux doesn't do too well at is dealing with the bizarre obfuscations that many media companies use to protect their content. For example, I just came across an interesting-sounding movie called "The Fall". Now, you'd have thought that a trailer, at least, would be easy to find and view. Sadly not.
Step 1: Attempt to view a Flash trailer. Fail. It appears that something in the Flash code is sufficiently weird that Gnash (the open-source Flash viewer) can't handle it.
Blame: partly on open source, partly on whoever wrote the code.
Step 2: Look up the trailer on Apple's trailer site. Find that the page requires some kind of Quicktime plugin, which isn't available for Linux. Blame: mostly on Apple.
Step 3: Download the trailer directly. Discover that the URL actually leads to some kind of 138-byte redirector file. There is no apparent reason for this - I can only assume that it's intended to stop people downloading the trailer rather than streaming (why???). Blame: Apple.
Step 4: Look at the redirector's bytecode, and find the trailer address embedded in it. Guess the URL, download the trailer and watch it as nature intended. For Pete's sake, people, if you're going to obfuscate then a useful tactic would be to NOT PUT THE FILENAME AS PLAINTEXT IN THE OBFUSCATOR!!! What the hell are these people smoking?
Verdict: Apart from the Flash thing, non-Microsoft users like myself would be fine if it wasn't for the IDIOT COMPANIES who apply COMPLETELY POINTLESS "PROTECTION" to their oh-so-valuable film trailers. Gah.
Read the full post
Step 1: Attempt to view a Flash trailer. Fail. It appears that something in the Flash code is sufficiently weird that Gnash (the open-source Flash viewer) can't handle it.
Blame: partly on open source, partly on whoever wrote the code.
Step 2: Look up the trailer on Apple's trailer site. Find that the page requires some kind of Quicktime plugin, which isn't available for Linux. Blame: mostly on Apple.
Step 3: Download the trailer directly. Discover that the URL actually leads to some kind of 138-byte redirector file. There is no apparent reason for this - I can only assume that it's intended to stop people downloading the trailer rather than streaming (why???). Blame: Apple.
Step 4: Look at the redirector's bytecode, and find the trailer address embedded in it. Guess the URL, download the trailer and watch it as nature intended. For Pete's sake, people, if you're going to obfuscate then a useful tactic would be to NOT PUT THE FILENAME AS PLAINTEXT IN THE OBFUSCATOR!!! What the hell are these people smoking?
Verdict: Apart from the Flash thing, non-Microsoft users like myself would be fine if it wasn't for the IDIOT COMPANIES who apply COMPLETELY POINTLESS "PROTECTION" to their oh-so-valuable film trailers. Gah.
Read the full post
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Update on psychic testing
A while back, I mentioned that I'd hopefully be doing some trials with a friend who claims the existence of psychic powers etc. Yesterday we finally got round to doing some preliminaries.
The tests will be a lot less complex than I'd expected because, rather than testing for psychic communication between two believers (my friend and a third party), we're going to test his ability to channel energy through a pendulum into my hand. It'll be a straightforward "which hand am I holding the pendulum over" thing.
Protocol 1 (non-rigorous tomfoolery)
Our initial experiments were not terribly promising. I thought I could feel something the first time we did it, and guessed correctly. So far so good. However, I suspected that the "something" I could feel was in fact heat off my friend's hand, so for the second and third runs I covered each of my hands with a sheet of paper. I got both wrong.
Protocol 2 (slightly more rigorous)
At this point, my friend commented that, when he'd been mucking about with a fellow believer, the first run in any given sequence had generally been the most successful. He speculated that, after that point, there was some kind of psychic residue contaminating the experiment that took a while to wear off.
To eliminate this factor, we arranged a new protocol: every time we see each other (about once a week), we'll repeat the test once. For the moment, the only specific precaution against bias will be closed eyes and paper-covered hands. After five runs, we'll check the tally of results to see whether there's any statistically significant effect. If there is, we'll up the rigour. If not, we'll investigate other test options.
PS. To my friend's credit, he didn't use the "psychic residue" as an excuse for failure. In fact I had to persuade him not to include the initial negative results in the final tally.
What is a statistically significant effect?
The basic approach used for statistical testing is "significance levels". If something is "significant at the 5% level", that means that the chances of getting a false positive (an apparently significant result that appeared by accident) are 5%.
If there is no psychic effect then, over five trials, the probabilities of success are as follows:
P(5 correct guesses) = 1/32 = 3.1%
P(4 correct) = 5/32 = 15.6%
P(3 correct) = 10/32 = 31.2%
P(2 correct) = 10/32 = 31.2%
P(1 correct) = 5/32 = 15.6%
P(0 correct) = 1/32 = 3.1%
If we wanted to do a significance test at the 20% level, we would say that the result were significant if 4 or 5 successes appeared (since P(5)+P(4) < 20% < P(5)+P(4)+P(3)). This is a pretty damn easy hurdle to pass, so if we don't get 4 successes then there's probably not much point carrying on with this protocol.
If we wanted to do a success at the 5% level, we would say that the results were significant if 5 successes appeared (since P(5) < 20% < P(5)+P(4)). This is a slightly tougher hurdle - if we pass it (e.g. if we have 100% success rate) then it'll be worth applying stronger controls.
Protocol 2 scoreboard
Date: 1 June 08
Correct guesses: 0
Incorrect guesses: 0
Read the full post
The tests will be a lot less complex than I'd expected because, rather than testing for psychic communication between two believers (my friend and a third party), we're going to test his ability to channel energy through a pendulum into my hand. It'll be a straightforward "which hand am I holding the pendulum over" thing.
Protocol 1 (non-rigorous tomfoolery)
Our initial experiments were not terribly promising. I thought I could feel something the first time we did it, and guessed correctly. So far so good. However, I suspected that the "something" I could feel was in fact heat off my friend's hand, so for the second and third runs I covered each of my hands with a sheet of paper. I got both wrong.
Protocol 2 (slightly more rigorous)
At this point, my friend commented that, when he'd been mucking about with a fellow believer, the first run in any given sequence had generally been the most successful. He speculated that, after that point, there was some kind of psychic residue contaminating the experiment that took a while to wear off.
To eliminate this factor, we arranged a new protocol: every time we see each other (about once a week), we'll repeat the test once. For the moment, the only specific precaution against bias will be closed eyes and paper-covered hands. After five runs, we'll check the tally of results to see whether there's any statistically significant effect. If there is, we'll up the rigour. If not, we'll investigate other test options.
PS. To my friend's credit, he didn't use the "psychic residue" as an excuse for failure. In fact I had to persuade him not to include the initial negative results in the final tally.
What is a statistically significant effect?
The basic approach used for statistical testing is "significance levels". If something is "significant at the 5% level", that means that the chances of getting a false positive (an apparently significant result that appeared by accident) are 5%.
If there is no psychic effect then, over five trials, the probabilities of success are as follows:
P(5 correct guesses) = 1/32 = 3.1%
P(4 correct) = 5/32 = 15.6%
P(3 correct) = 10/32 = 31.2%
P(2 correct) = 10/32 = 31.2%
P(1 correct) = 5/32 = 15.6%
P(0 correct) = 1/32 = 3.1%
If we wanted to do a significance test at the 20% level, we would say that the result were significant if 4 or 5 successes appeared (since P(5)+P(4) < 20% < P(5)+P(4)+P(3)). This is a pretty damn easy hurdle to pass, so if we don't get 4 successes then there's probably not much point carrying on with this protocol.
If we wanted to do a success at the 5% level, we would say that the results were significant if 5 successes appeared (since P(5) < 20% < P(5)+P(4)). This is a slightly tougher hurdle - if we pass it (e.g. if we have 100% success rate) then it'll be worth applying stronger controls.
Protocol 2 scoreboard
Date: 1 June 08
Correct guesses: 0
Incorrect guesses: 0
Read the full post
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Pissing off Pirsig
I've just been rereading my recent post on "the art of religion", and I'm getting a strange feeling of deja vu. There are a lot of concepts in there that, on reflection, I blatantly nicked out of the early chapters of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M Pirsig. This is the book that this blog was supposed to be about, back when I thought I'd be able to blog with discipline (ha!).
In ZAMM, Pirsig splits the world into two viewpoints: "classical" (logical, structured, analytic) and "romantic" (intuitive, free-flowing, perceptual). This is precisely what I was describing as the "scientific" and "artistic" approaches. So far soplagiaristic good.
But Pirsig spends the rest of the book dumping on this classification. He points out that the urge to classify viewpoints is itself a product of the classical approach. True romantics don't even think in terms of sciences and arts; all that they see is whether stuff resonates with them, whether it turns them on or off.
This also maps directly onto my post. It's noticeable that many people who are religious for "artistic" reasons like to describe their beliefs as scientific (e.g. scientology, Christian science, scientific creationism). This can be seen as a side-effect of their romantic viewpoint - they like the connotations of the word "science", so they attach it to their beliefs. Questions of whether this label is appropriate are as irrelevant as they are ugly.
I'm trying to say what I mean here without coming across as snide, which is quite difficult given that I'm about as analytical as it gets. I honestly don't mean to denigrate this behaviour - it's only from my viewpoint that it seems inappropriate. One could argue that the reverse behaviour - describing scientific concepts as beautiful - is just as inappropriate, and I'm guilty of that all the time.
Still, it's surprisingly hard for me to breach Pirsig's divide and see the world in terms of art not science. It's also mind-expanding, tolerance-inducing, and all that good stuff.
I'm aware that some people are bothered by my description of religion as an art rather than a science. If you're one of them, I'm more than happy to discuss whether religion succeeds or fails as a science - drop me a line in the comments section.
I'm still working in a different country from my primary source of intarweb, so it may be a few days before I respond.
Read the full post
In ZAMM, Pirsig splits the world into two viewpoints: "classical" (logical, structured, analytic) and "romantic" (intuitive, free-flowing, perceptual). This is precisely what I was describing as the "scientific" and "artistic" approaches. So far so
But Pirsig spends the rest of the book dumping on this classification. He points out that the urge to classify viewpoints is itself a product of the classical approach. True romantics don't even think in terms of sciences and arts; all that they see is whether stuff resonates with them, whether it turns them on or off.
This also maps directly onto my post. It's noticeable that many people who are religious for "artistic" reasons like to describe their beliefs as scientific (e.g. scientology, Christian science, scientific creationism). This can be seen as a side-effect of their romantic viewpoint - they like the connotations of the word "science", so they attach it to their beliefs. Questions of whether this label is appropriate are as irrelevant as they are ugly.
I'm trying to say what I mean here without coming across as snide, which is quite difficult given that I'm about as analytical as it gets. I honestly don't mean to denigrate this behaviour - it's only from my viewpoint that it seems inappropriate. One could argue that the reverse behaviour - describing scientific concepts as beautiful - is just as inappropriate, and I'm guilty of that all the time.
Still, it's surprisingly hard for me to breach Pirsig's divide and see the world in terms of art not science. It's also mind-expanding, tolerance-inducing, and all that good stuff.
I'm aware that some people are bothered by my description of religion as an art rather than a science. If you're one of them, I'm more than happy to discuss whether religion succeeds or fails as a science - drop me a line in the comments section.
I'm still working in a different country from my primary source of intarweb, so it may be a few days before I respond.
Read the full post
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Still scary
Read Flowers For Algernon again today. It still seriously freaks me out. I'm definitely developing a love/hate relationship with that book.
On the other hand, the existentialist dread it induced did inspire me to go jogging. Causing low-level damage to one's leg muscles is very life-affirming.
Read the full post
On the other hand, the existentialist dread it induced did inspire me to go jogging. Causing low-level damage to one's leg muscles is very life-affirming.
Read the full post
Saturday, May 10, 2008
How to do it
Let's say you're a creationist, and you've decided to make a lot of noise about evolution. So you reach for your keyboard and start typing:
"The human eye is composed of so many different interlocking parts that it can't possibly have..."
STOP RIGHT THERE! You've just fallen for a schoolboy error: you're about to make an argument for which thorough, accurate and catchy refutations are available. Probably you read this argument in an ISCID pamphlet, right? Didn't you consider that evilutionists may also have read that pamphlets, and prepared themselves to rebut its claims?
Instead, and I cannot emphasise this enough, you should pick an argument that they haven't come across before. Dembski actually had the more mathematically-inclined evilutionists feeling uncertain for a bit. Behe managed to look convincing for at least half an hour. I repeat: the best arguments refer to areas of academia the evilutionist is unlikely to have hitherto explored.
Exhibit A:
"It's simple, really, but the best ideas always are. Make a graph whose vertices are all possible genotypes with two vertices connected if they are one mutational step away from each other. That graph is isomorphic to a Cayley graph of a certain matrix group with respect to a standard generating set. (Surely that's obvious?) Such Cayley graphs attach in a natural way to arithmetic Riemann surfaces, as I explained in obnoxious detial in Chapter Five of my thesis. It is now a consequence of Selberg's eigenvalue conjecture for such surfaces (which everyone just knows is true) that these graphs have weak expansion properties. That is, they have relatively small Cheeger constants, which implies that they fracture easily. Which in turn implies that evolution by natural selection can not move efficiently through the graph. QED."
Pure genius at work!
Read the full post
"The human eye is composed of so many different interlocking parts that it can't possibly have..."
STOP RIGHT THERE! You've just fallen for a schoolboy error: you're about to make an argument for which thorough, accurate and catchy refutations are available. Probably you read this argument in an ISCID pamphlet, right? Didn't you consider that evilutionists may also have read that pamphlets, and prepared themselves to rebut its claims?
Instead, and I cannot emphasise this enough, you should pick an argument that they haven't come across before. Dembski actually had the more mathematically-inclined evilutionists feeling uncertain for a bit. Behe managed to look convincing for at least half an hour. I repeat: the best arguments refer to areas of academia the evilutionist is unlikely to have hitherto explored.
Exhibit A:
"It's simple, really, but the best ideas always are. Make a graph whose vertices are all possible genotypes with two vertices connected if they are one mutational step away from each other. That graph is isomorphic to a Cayley graph of a certain matrix group with respect to a standard generating set. (Surely that's obvious?) Such Cayley graphs attach in a natural way to arithmetic Riemann surfaces, as I explained in obnoxious detial in Chapter Five of my thesis. It is now a consequence of Selberg's eigenvalue conjecture for such surfaces (which everyone just knows is true) that these graphs have weak expansion properties. That is, they have relatively small Cheeger constants, which implies that they fracture easily. Which in turn implies that evolution by natural selection can not move efficiently through the graph. QED."
Pure genius at work!
Read the full post
Monday, May 05, 2008
The art of religion
Henry Neufeld is a really nice guy. He's one of those folks who, if he was a church leader in my area, I'd probably go to church with just for the sake of having more fun discussions. It helps that he has a fair amount of respect for skeptical atheism - and, unlike 99.99% of religious people, he actually understands what it means to be a skeptical atheist.
As a result, my discussions with him tend to throw up a significant number of conceptual gems. In particular, I draw your attention to this post on his site: Believing in Words and Symbols. The underlying theme is that he really only has one core belief: that there is Something out there. Everything else - the Trinity, the Resurrection - is really just a language, a set of myths that seem to convey the feelings he experiences.
It was only once I'd heard this concept expressed clearly that I realised I'd come across it before. Looking back, a number of books I've read and people I've spoken to have touched on the same thought: that the important part of religion is the central Mystery, and the rest is just the clothes we put on it. It seems to be a fairly common theme in the more mystical variants of religion - consider the Gnostic creation myths, for example, or the Buddhist koans. This kind of religion isn't a science - it doesn't claim to describe the universe exactly. Rather, it is an art that allows people to express their deep feelings more clearly.
Possibly the only reason I'm seeing this common thread so clearly is that I've reached a point in my personal journey where I'm able to appreciate it. When I was younger, I spent an inordinate amount of time making what I might describe as a scientific sweep of religion, searching through the stewpot of superstition for anything that might have real applications. I wanted to dissect demons, bottle angels, and unleash whatever power the mind might have.
Sadly, I was born too late. Whilst the early scientists might have deduced vaccines and antibiotics from old wives' tales, in this day and age almost anything useful in religion has already been ripped from its clutches and absorbed into the realm of science. There are no demons, no angels, and the only consequence of trying to "unleash the mind" is a mild headache.
These days I'm attempting a more sophisticated analysis of religion - what might be described as a psychological sweep. Religion is a wonderful resource for students of psychology. Since very little reality-based testing occurs, it tends to attract and retain superb examples of cognitive bias and glitching. I'm of the strong suspicion that some of these are universalbugs features of the human brain - the question is which ones and why.
On a more complimentary note, religious traditions often contain ways of dealing with common cognitive issues that more "rational" approaches leave out. To quote Anton LaVey:
"One of the greatest of all fallacies about the practice of ritual magic is the notion that one must believe in the powers of magic before one can be harmed or destroyed by them. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as the most receptive victims of curses have always been the greatest scoffers. The reason is frighteningly simple. The uncivilized tribesman is the first to run to his nearest witch-doctor or shaman when he feels a curse has been placed upon him by an enemy. The threat and presence of harm is with him consciously, and belief in the power of the curse is so strong that he will take every precaution against it. Thus, through the application of sympathetic magic, he will counteract any harm that might come his way. This man is watching his step, and not taking any chances.
On the other hand, the 'enlightened' man, who doesn't place any stock in such 'superstition', relegates his instinctive fear of the curse to his unconscious, thereby nourishing it into a phenomenally destructive force that will multiply with each succeeding misfortune. Of course, every time a new setback occurs, the non-believer will automatically deny any connection with the curse, especially to himself. The emphatic conscious denial of the potential of the curse is the very ingredient that will create its success, through setting-up of accident prone situations. In many instances, the victim will deny any magical significance to his fate, even unto his dying gasp - although the magician is perfectly satisfied, so long as his desired results occur. It must be remembered that it matters not whether anyone attaches any significance to your working, so long as the results of the working are in accordance with your will. The super-logician will always explain the connection of the magical ritual to the end result as 'coincidence'."
Ever since reading this, I've taken to "warding off bad luck" by drawing a favourite symbol on my chest whenever I feel I'm tempting fate. It works surprisingly well.
Evidently this useful little trick was incorporated into Catholic doctrine a while back, and has lurked there ever since. What other gems of wisdom are waiting to be separated from the dross of accumulated memes?
Read the full post
As a result, my discussions with him tend to throw up a significant number of conceptual gems. In particular, I draw your attention to this post on his site: Believing in Words and Symbols. The underlying theme is that he really only has one core belief: that there is Something out there. Everything else - the Trinity, the Resurrection - is really just a language, a set of myths that seem to convey the feelings he experiences.
It was only once I'd heard this concept expressed clearly that I realised I'd come across it before. Looking back, a number of books I've read and people I've spoken to have touched on the same thought: that the important part of religion is the central Mystery, and the rest is just the clothes we put on it. It seems to be a fairly common theme in the more mystical variants of religion - consider the Gnostic creation myths, for example, or the Buddhist koans. This kind of religion isn't a science - it doesn't claim to describe the universe exactly. Rather, it is an art that allows people to express their deep feelings more clearly.
Possibly the only reason I'm seeing this common thread so clearly is that I've reached a point in my personal journey where I'm able to appreciate it. When I was younger, I spent an inordinate amount of time making what I might describe as a scientific sweep of religion, searching through the stewpot of superstition for anything that might have real applications. I wanted to dissect demons, bottle angels, and unleash whatever power the mind might have.
Sadly, I was born too late. Whilst the early scientists might have deduced vaccines and antibiotics from old wives' tales, in this day and age almost anything useful in religion has already been ripped from its clutches and absorbed into the realm of science. There are no demons, no angels, and the only consequence of trying to "unleash the mind" is a mild headache.
These days I'm attempting a more sophisticated analysis of religion - what might be described as a psychological sweep. Religion is a wonderful resource for students of psychology. Since very little reality-based testing occurs, it tends to attract and retain superb examples of cognitive bias and glitching. I'm of the strong suspicion that some of these are universal
On a more complimentary note, religious traditions often contain ways of dealing with common cognitive issues that more "rational" approaches leave out. To quote Anton LaVey:
"One of the greatest of all fallacies about the practice of ritual magic is the notion that one must believe in the powers of magic before one can be harmed or destroyed by them. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as the most receptive victims of curses have always been the greatest scoffers. The reason is frighteningly simple. The uncivilized tribesman is the first to run to his nearest witch-doctor or shaman when he feels a curse has been placed upon him by an enemy. The threat and presence of harm is with him consciously, and belief in the power of the curse is so strong that he will take every precaution against it. Thus, through the application of sympathetic magic, he will counteract any harm that might come his way. This man is watching his step, and not taking any chances.
On the other hand, the 'enlightened' man, who doesn't place any stock in such 'superstition', relegates his instinctive fear of the curse to his unconscious, thereby nourishing it into a phenomenally destructive force that will multiply with each succeeding misfortune. Of course, every time a new setback occurs, the non-believer will automatically deny any connection with the curse, especially to himself. The emphatic conscious denial of the potential of the curse is the very ingredient that will create its success, through setting-up of accident prone situations. In many instances, the victim will deny any magical significance to his fate, even unto his dying gasp - although the magician is perfectly satisfied, so long as his desired results occur. It must be remembered that it matters not whether anyone attaches any significance to your working, so long as the results of the working are in accordance with your will. The super-logician will always explain the connection of the magical ritual to the end result as 'coincidence'."
Ever since reading this, I've taken to "warding off bad luck" by drawing a favourite symbol on my chest whenever I feel I'm tempting fate. It works surprisingly well.
Evidently this useful little trick was incorporated into Catholic doctrine a while back, and has lurked there ever since. What other gems of wisdom are waiting to be separated from the dross of accumulated memes?
Read the full post
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Plantinga's unnatural naturalism
So, firstly, I'm back off holiday. Secondly, the rest of my life is starting to settle down. I currently work in a different country from the one I live in, which is causing some problems, but that still leaves me with the occasional snippet of time for blogging.
Thirdly, my sister just started a new module of her Philosophy degree: religious philosophy. Needless to say, this has resulted in many fun discussions. So far, though, it's all been window-dressing - I know the arguments inside out. Most of it stopped being interesting a while back, which is why these days I'm more focused on religious psychology.
One guy that did catch my attention, though, was Alvin Plantinga. This guy gets points for coming far closer than average to a reasonable summary of the skeptical atheist position. However, he still commits some howlers at time, which IMO betray a comparative ignorance of science and, in particular, evolutionary biology.
As an example, I draw your attention to his "paper" (actually more a lecture transcript) An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Eschewing all the philosophical language, the central point is that Godless rationality is self-defeating, since brains that evolved by natural selection don't give a damn about truth as long as they carry on surviving and breeding.
Anyone who's been in the skepticism trenches for a while will recognise this as a variant on the transcendental argument, aka the Argument from It's My Ball And You Can't Play With It. This is one of the more annoying arguments for God because any counter-argument you make can itself be interpreted by the theist as more self-refuting rationalism. Plantinga, however, lays the argument out clearly enough that the fault lines are visible, which is why I like him.
In his article, he summarises the evolutionary position as "beliefs are adaptive". He then uses a neat example to show why this could lead to "pathological beliefs" (beliefs that are adaptive but false) as easily as true ones. Imagine a critter that enjoyed petting vicious tigers, but thought that the best way to pet a tiger was to run very fast in the opposite direction. Then its beliefs would lead to the most survival-enhancing result (legging it) so would be selected for, despite being completely unreflective of reality.
Extending this logic further, the claim is made that a brain produced by unassisted evolution will not be particularly adept at picking true beliefs; rather, it will pick beliefs that cause survival. Hence, if we were produced by evolution, our cognitive systems would be so unreliable that we couldn't justifiably say we were produced by evolution. Catch-22.
There are two objections to this argument, one obvious and the other subtle. The obvious one is the classic "stopped clock" issue: although the critter's behaviour turned out for the best this one time, that doesn't mean it'll be effective in general. Plantinga's critter is going to spend far too much time running away from cute little bunny rabbits, which is a waste of time and resources. So its beliefs are still soundly beaten by the more reality-based position that tigers are scary and scary things should be run away from.
The subtle objection is to Plantinga's characterisation of the evolutionary position. What he is describing is not belief formation in humans. It is closer to belief formation (or the creation of equivalent neurochemical constructs) in nematode worms. Nematodes have only a few "beliefs", so it is possible for evolution to act on each of the worm's underlying rules-of-thumb in turn.
Humans operate by a different method. We are selected on the basis of our belief creation methodology - the generator of our beliefs - rather than the individual beliefs themselves. From evolution's perspective, this is massively more efficient because, rather than selecting for billions of different rules, you can just select for one generator and let it get on with it. The resulting creature will be able to adjust its beliefs on the fly when it meets new evidence, and will hence be more effective.
It's not immediately obvious whether there exist "pathological generators" that could reliably produce pathological beliefs, but I'd strongly suspect not. However, I'm open to informed argument.
Read the full post
Thirdly, my sister just started a new module of her Philosophy degree: religious philosophy. Needless to say, this has resulted in many fun discussions. So far, though, it's all been window-dressing - I know the arguments inside out. Most of it stopped being interesting a while back, which is why these days I'm more focused on religious psychology.
One guy that did catch my attention, though, was Alvin Plantinga. This guy gets points for coming far closer than average to a reasonable summary of the skeptical atheist position. However, he still commits some howlers at time, which IMO betray a comparative ignorance of science and, in particular, evolutionary biology.
As an example, I draw your attention to his "paper" (actually more a lecture transcript) An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Eschewing all the philosophical language, the central point is that Godless rationality is self-defeating, since brains that evolved by natural selection don't give a damn about truth as long as they carry on surviving and breeding.
Anyone who's been in the skepticism trenches for a while will recognise this as a variant on the transcendental argument, aka the Argument from It's My Ball And You Can't Play With It. This is one of the more annoying arguments for God because any counter-argument you make can itself be interpreted by the theist as more self-refuting rationalism. Plantinga, however, lays the argument out clearly enough that the fault lines are visible, which is why I like him.
In his article, he summarises the evolutionary position as "beliefs are adaptive". He then uses a neat example to show why this could lead to "pathological beliefs" (beliefs that are adaptive but false) as easily as true ones. Imagine a critter that enjoyed petting vicious tigers, but thought that the best way to pet a tiger was to run very fast in the opposite direction. Then its beliefs would lead to the most survival-enhancing result (legging it) so would be selected for, despite being completely unreflective of reality.
Extending this logic further, the claim is made that a brain produced by unassisted evolution will not be particularly adept at picking true beliefs; rather, it will pick beliefs that cause survival. Hence, if we were produced by evolution, our cognitive systems would be so unreliable that we couldn't justifiably say we were produced by evolution. Catch-22.
There are two objections to this argument, one obvious and the other subtle. The obvious one is the classic "stopped clock" issue: although the critter's behaviour turned out for the best this one time, that doesn't mean it'll be effective in general. Plantinga's critter is going to spend far too much time running away from cute little bunny rabbits, which is a waste of time and resources. So its beliefs are still soundly beaten by the more reality-based position that tigers are scary and scary things should be run away from.
The subtle objection is to Plantinga's characterisation of the evolutionary position. What he is describing is not belief formation in humans. It is closer to belief formation (or the creation of equivalent neurochemical constructs) in nematode worms. Nematodes have only a few "beliefs", so it is possible for evolution to act on each of the worm's underlying rules-of-thumb in turn.
Humans operate by a different method. We are selected on the basis of our belief creation methodology - the generator of our beliefs - rather than the individual beliefs themselves. From evolution's perspective, this is massively more efficient because, rather than selecting for billions of different rules, you can just select for one generator and let it get on with it. The resulting creature will be able to adjust its beliefs on the fly when it meets new evidence, and will hence be more effective.
It's not immediately obvious whether there exist "pathological generators" that could reliably produce pathological beliefs, but I'd strongly suspect not. However, I'm open to informed argument.
Read the full post
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Roadtrippin' out
I'm gonna be incommunicado for the next few months. I thought I should mention it in advance so that my adoring fans (snigger) don't get too worried for me...
The first reason for this enforced absence is that I'm being shifted to the other end of the country by my company. That's probably not a bad thing - Scotland is a nice place and the work I'll be doing is interesting. It's an opportunity not to be sneezed at.
The second reason is slightly at odds with the first: I've got an exam in mid-April. I'm starting to panic. It's a really evil one, and I'm not feeling at all prepared. Given that I have three weeks left, this would not be a problem but for the third reason.
The third reason is that I'm off on a road-trip with friends from university: from LA to Miami in two weeks. The two weeks immediately prior to my exam, no less. I am going to be soooo jetlagged.
In case anyone's interested (they probably aren't), one of my more techie mates has produced a website for the road-trip. This includes a marked-out route map, so feel free to hurl tomatoes as we pass.
The fourth reason is that I will need a heck of a lot of time to recover from the first three. Jetlag + exam panic + job stress = very little brainpower, let alone inclination to blog. See you in a month or so!
Read the full post
The first reason for this enforced absence is that I'm being shifted to the other end of the country by my company. That's probably not a bad thing - Scotland is a nice place and the work I'll be doing is interesting. It's an opportunity not to be sneezed at.
The second reason is slightly at odds with the first: I've got an exam in mid-April. I'm starting to panic. It's a really evil one, and I'm not feeling at all prepared. Given that I have three weeks left, this would not be a problem but for the third reason.
The third reason is that I'm off on a road-trip with friends from university: from LA to Miami in two weeks. The two weeks immediately prior to my exam, no less. I am going to be soooo jetlagged.
In case anyone's interested (they probably aren't), one of my more techie mates has produced a website for the road-trip. This includes a marked-out route map, so feel free to hurl tomatoes as we pass.
The fourth reason is that I will need a heck of a lot of time to recover from the first three. Jetlag + exam panic + job stress = very little brainpower, let alone inclination to blog. See you in a month or so!
Read the full post
Monday, March 03, 2008
Management skeptic (post #1)
One of the best ways to think of skepticism is as an eternal game of hunt-the-value. When presented with a notion, we ask: is this valuable because it gives accurate predictions, or because it makes us feel good, or because it provides interesting questions, or what? And we don't appreciate being tricked into misclassifying a notion's value.
For example, in discussion with the Buddhist group I've been gatecrashing, one of the points that kept coming up was: does the value of meditation lie in simply sitting and breathing and focusing? Or does the Buddhist cosmology also make a difference? We had a rather lengthy rambling chat about this, after which I concluded that I wasn't going to pin these people down without bringing in a nailgun.
I feel the same about "management models" at the moment. A management model is a chunk of crystallised management philosophy, often described by flow diagrams. The simplest ones are very simple. For example, the management control loop can be represented by a circle with clockwise-pointing arrows round the edge and the words "think", "act", "evaluate", "decide" spaced round the edge.
In this case, the idea is that you should plan out what you want to do, figure out how to do it, and perform some sort of evaluation of how that approach worked for you. Once the results are in, you decide whether you need to adjust your goals, fine-tune your methodology, or simply accept that you're doing OK until the next round of evaluation comes up.
This is a very simple model, but it makes a great deal of sense. It explains, among other things, why so many New Year's Resolutions fail. People may decide what they want to achieve, and they may even work out how they're going to achieve it, but they rarely set themselves any sort of regular evaluation timetable to see how well they've done so far. Lacking an essential component of this management model, they dismally fail.
However, management models don't stop there. For example, a popular project management model called PRINCE2 actually can't be represented on anything smaller than A3. One of my managers has a placemat with it on, and it looks like Management Control Loop meets Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Given the enormous investment in time and money necessary to train as a PRINCE2 practitioner, the question becomes increasingly important: where does the value lie in this system?
To be continued
Read the full post
For example, in discussion with the Buddhist group I've been gatecrashing, one of the points that kept coming up was: does the value of meditation lie in simply sitting and breathing and focusing? Or does the Buddhist cosmology also make a difference? We had a rather lengthy rambling chat about this, after which I concluded that I wasn't going to pin these people down without bringing in a nailgun.
I feel the same about "management models" at the moment. A management model is a chunk of crystallised management philosophy, often described by flow diagrams. The simplest ones are very simple. For example, the management control loop can be represented by a circle with clockwise-pointing arrows round the edge and the words "think", "act", "evaluate", "decide" spaced round the edge.
In this case, the idea is that you should plan out what you want to do, figure out how to do it, and perform some sort of evaluation of how that approach worked for you. Once the results are in, you decide whether you need to adjust your goals, fine-tune your methodology, or simply accept that you're doing OK until the next round of evaluation comes up.
This is a very simple model, but it makes a great deal of sense. It explains, among other things, why so many New Year's Resolutions fail. People may decide what they want to achieve, and they may even work out how they're going to achieve it, but they rarely set themselves any sort of regular evaluation timetable to see how well they've done so far. Lacking an essential component of this management model, they dismally fail.
However, management models don't stop there. For example, a popular project management model called PRINCE2 actually can't be represented on anything smaller than A3. One of my managers has a placemat with it on, and it looks like Management Control Loop meets Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Given the enormous investment in time and money necessary to train as a PRINCE2 practitioner, the question becomes increasingly important: where does the value lie in this system?
To be continued
Read the full post
Monday, February 25, 2008
The Exegesis Impulse
I know, it sounds like a science fiction story, doesn't it? "Exegesis" is a very cool word in its own right, but when "impulse" enters the game you know the result is going to involve lots of polished metal and/or advanced biotech.
Sorry to disappoint. This is actually going to be a discussion of scripture.
The word "exegesis" originally comes from a Greek word meaning "to lead out" - to garner meaning from a text based on the words within it. That's a fair enough pursuit. It covers pretty much the whole range of Bible commentary - technically, any study of the Bible that doesn't make reference to contextual historical information is exegetical.
I was actually quite shocked to read this definition. For some time now, I've understood the word to have a subtly different meaning. Exegesis, in many contexts, means "filling in the gaps by making shit up". It's in this sense that I'll discuss the word.
The prevalence of exegesis
You don't have to go too far to see that exegesis is not a rare phenomenon. Your average nativity play will have a whole host of details that aren't in the original text - the three kings, for example, as opposed to an unspecified number of wise men.
A more fertile field for this activity is creationism. From a scant two chapters of Genesis, creationists have devised a complete history of events surrounding the Earth's origins. It's got everything: huge sheets of water inexplicably falling from low orbit, a fascinating "hydrological sorting" effect to explain why trilobites always appear lower than turtles in the fossil record, holes in the Earth's crust for the water to hide in afterwards, etc. Some versions even have complex relativistic effects to explain how we can see 10,000,000,000-year-old starlight in a 6,000-year-old universe.
All these variants have two things in common. Firstly, they're completely implausible. To pick on one example, hydrological sorting can't account for the different radiological signatures of different layers, because lots of swirling water is too crude a tool to distinguish between isotopes.
Secondly, they're nowhere to be found in the Bible. Genesis doesn't say anything about fossils or plate tectonics or relativity. These ideas are exegesis - people see that Genesis doesn't appear to match up with reality, so they make shit up to fill the gaps.
How far back?
Exegesis is also not a recent phenomenon - even as early as the second century AD, people were adding little "finishing touches" to scripture. For example, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, it's strongly believed that Jesus was born in a cave. This is not mentioned anywhere in the scriptures, although it does show up in a couple of Gnostic gospels and in the beliefs of sundry contemporaneous religions about their messiahs.
So how far does the rot go? How can we tell?
One easy way to detect exegesis is what you might call a "comparative biology" of stories. For this I'll call on the writings of a blogrollee of mine, who discusses his deconversion story here. Come back when you've read it, OK?
As this story indicates, a major feature of exegesis is that it gives different results every time you do it. After all, if the meaning of your source was obvious then you wouldn't need to make shit up to fill in the gaps. So all we need to look for is completely different versions of the same story, and we'll know that one or both of the authors is happily exegesising.
A tale of two gospels
Enter Matthew and Luke. It's long been known that these two gospels share a lot of material with Mark and with each other, often word-for-word. The current best guess at which came first is known as the Synoptic Hypothesis. It's generally believed that Mark was first on the scene, and that Matthew and Luke had copies of his work handy as they wrote.
The reason for this is simple. Where Mark tells a simple story or leaves a gap, Matthew and Luke tend to elaborate - and they do so in completely different ways. Consider, for example, the Nativity story. Take the version in Matthew (Matt 1:18-2:23) and the version in Luke (Luke 2:1-40), and compare them. You will find precisely five points of overlap: the names of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, and the towns of Bethlehem and Nazareth.
Everything else, and I mean everything is completely different. Herod and the slaughter of the innocents are mentioned only in Matthew. Quirinius' census is mentioned only in Luke. Matthew talks of magi. Luke talks of shepherds. Matthew says the family fled to Egypt. Luke says that the family wandered over to Jerusalem. And will you just look at the two different lineages given for Jesus...
With sufficient rhetorical wriggling (exegesis!) it's almost possible to construct a single story that covers all the options. But, to be quite blunt, why the heck would you want to? There's so little overlap between these stories that they might as well be about different people.
To me, the reason for this lack of overlap is fairly simple. The authors of Matthew and Luke would have known that Jesus' parents were called Joseph and Mary. They would have known that Jesus came from Nazareth. And they'd have noticed a prophecy in Isaiah suggesting that the Messiah would have been born in Bethlehem. They took these facts and... exegesised. Matthew used Herod as his bogeyman to drive Joseph and Mary out of Bethlehem, whilst Luke took a completely different but believably bureaucratic option by attempting to link the birth to a Roman census.
Taking this as our working hypothesis, it instantly becomes clear why the historical census of Quirinius appears to have happened well before Jesus' birth, and why no contemporary author mentions such a barbarous act as the slaughter of innocents (despite trumpeting a range of Herod's infamies). It's because Matthew and Luke were making shit up.
How far back? redux
You'll notice that, up until now, I've been treating Mark as a reliable source, and only expressing skepticism about Matthew and Luke. There's a very simple reason for this: we have no earlier Gospels, so we have no way of knowing which aspects of Mark were historical and which were innovation.
Until very recently, I wasn't really bothered by this. Probably a few things in Mark were exaggerated a bit, but I saw no reason to disagree with the core of the story. Now, though, my feelings are different.
I've seen how fast exegesis can proceed, even in this modern information age where debate and criticism thrive. I've seen that exegesis was at least as powerful in ancient times - by most estimates, Matthew and Luke were written no more than a decade or so later than Mark. I've started to explore the motivations for these differences, in particular the three-way struggle between Romans, Jews and Christians that inspired much of the Bible's antisemitism. And I'm troubled.
As far as we can tell, Jesus died no later than 40AD. As far as we can tell, Mark was written no earlier than 65AD. That's at least 25 years gap, double the distance between Mark and the other synoptic Gospels.
Given that much time, and that much room for exegesis, how do we know that Mark wasn't... making shit up?
Read the full post
Sorry to disappoint. This is actually going to be a discussion of scripture.
The word "exegesis" originally comes from a Greek word meaning "to lead out" - to garner meaning from a text based on the words within it. That's a fair enough pursuit. It covers pretty much the whole range of Bible commentary - technically, any study of the Bible that doesn't make reference to contextual historical information is exegetical.
I was actually quite shocked to read this definition. For some time now, I've understood the word to have a subtly different meaning. Exegesis, in many contexts, means "filling in the gaps by making shit up". It's in this sense that I'll discuss the word.
The prevalence of exegesis
You don't have to go too far to see that exegesis is not a rare phenomenon. Your average nativity play will have a whole host of details that aren't in the original text - the three kings, for example, as opposed to an unspecified number of wise men.
A more fertile field for this activity is creationism. From a scant two chapters of Genesis, creationists have devised a complete history of events surrounding the Earth's origins. It's got everything: huge sheets of water inexplicably falling from low orbit, a fascinating "hydrological sorting" effect to explain why trilobites always appear lower than turtles in the fossil record, holes in the Earth's crust for the water to hide in afterwards, etc. Some versions even have complex relativistic effects to explain how we can see 10,000,000,000-year-old starlight in a 6,000-year-old universe.
All these variants have two things in common. Firstly, they're completely implausible. To pick on one example, hydrological sorting can't account for the different radiological signatures of different layers, because lots of swirling water is too crude a tool to distinguish between isotopes.
Secondly, they're nowhere to be found in the Bible. Genesis doesn't say anything about fossils or plate tectonics or relativity. These ideas are exegesis - people see that Genesis doesn't appear to match up with reality, so they make shit up to fill the gaps.
How far back?
Exegesis is also not a recent phenomenon - even as early as the second century AD, people were adding little "finishing touches" to scripture. For example, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, it's strongly believed that Jesus was born in a cave. This is not mentioned anywhere in the scriptures, although it does show up in a couple of Gnostic gospels and in the beliefs of sundry contemporaneous religions about their messiahs.
So how far does the rot go? How can we tell?
One easy way to detect exegesis is what you might call a "comparative biology" of stories. For this I'll call on the writings of a blogrollee of mine, who discusses his deconversion story here. Come back when you've read it, OK?
As this story indicates, a major feature of exegesis is that it gives different results every time you do it. After all, if the meaning of your source was obvious then you wouldn't need to make shit up to fill in the gaps. So all we need to look for is completely different versions of the same story, and we'll know that one or both of the authors is happily exegesising.
A tale of two gospels
Enter Matthew and Luke. It's long been known that these two gospels share a lot of material with Mark and with each other, often word-for-word. The current best guess at which came first is known as the Synoptic Hypothesis. It's generally believed that Mark was first on the scene, and that Matthew and Luke had copies of his work handy as they wrote.
The reason for this is simple. Where Mark tells a simple story or leaves a gap, Matthew and Luke tend to elaborate - and they do so in completely different ways. Consider, for example, the Nativity story. Take the version in Matthew (Matt 1:18-2:23) and the version in Luke (Luke 2:1-40), and compare them. You will find precisely five points of overlap: the names of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, and the towns of Bethlehem and Nazareth.
Everything else, and I mean everything is completely different. Herod and the slaughter of the innocents are mentioned only in Matthew. Quirinius' census is mentioned only in Luke. Matthew talks of magi. Luke talks of shepherds. Matthew says the family fled to Egypt. Luke says that the family wandered over to Jerusalem. And will you just look at the two different lineages given for Jesus...
With sufficient rhetorical wriggling (exegesis!) it's almost possible to construct a single story that covers all the options. But, to be quite blunt, why the heck would you want to? There's so little overlap between these stories that they might as well be about different people.
To me, the reason for this lack of overlap is fairly simple. The authors of Matthew and Luke would have known that Jesus' parents were called Joseph and Mary. They would have known that Jesus came from Nazareth. And they'd have noticed a prophecy in Isaiah suggesting that the Messiah would have been born in Bethlehem. They took these facts and... exegesised. Matthew used Herod as his bogeyman to drive Joseph and Mary out of Bethlehem, whilst Luke took a completely different but believably bureaucratic option by attempting to link the birth to a Roman census.
Taking this as our working hypothesis, it instantly becomes clear why the historical census of Quirinius appears to have happened well before Jesus' birth, and why no contemporary author mentions such a barbarous act as the slaughter of innocents (despite trumpeting a range of Herod's infamies). It's because Matthew and Luke were making shit up.
How far back? redux
You'll notice that, up until now, I've been treating Mark as a reliable source, and only expressing skepticism about Matthew and Luke. There's a very simple reason for this: we have no earlier Gospels, so we have no way of knowing which aspects of Mark were historical and which were innovation.
Until very recently, I wasn't really bothered by this. Probably a few things in Mark were exaggerated a bit, but I saw no reason to disagree with the core of the story. Now, though, my feelings are different.
I've seen how fast exegesis can proceed, even in this modern information age where debate and criticism thrive. I've seen that exegesis was at least as powerful in ancient times - by most estimates, Matthew and Luke were written no more than a decade or so later than Mark. I've started to explore the motivations for these differences, in particular the three-way struggle between Romans, Jews and Christians that inspired much of the Bible's antisemitism. And I'm troubled.
As far as we can tell, Jesus died no later than 40AD. As far as we can tell, Mark was written no earlier than 65AD. That's at least 25 years gap, double the distance between Mark and the other synoptic Gospels.
Given that much time, and that much room for exegesis, how do we know that Mark wasn't... making shit up?
Read the full post
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Skeptic's credo
One common rejoinder that we skeptics hear is "what about love and friendship and so on? Are you saying we should be skeptical about them too?"
It's true that the scientific method is not necessarily the best tool to handle other people. As I've discussed previously, science tends to say "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence", even where a wise man would be saying "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action". Science tends to downplay the importance of individual correlations, secure in the knowledge that in the long run any genuine effect will show up again.
Most skeptics are aware of this. The scientific method to us is an ideal: if you have the time to apply it fully then that's wonderful, but in most cases that isn't an option. So to say "skeptics disagree with irrationality" is simplistic. In reality, our position is more nuanced. One statement of it would be:
That has applications far beyond the study of nature.
Read the full post
It's true that the scientific method is not necessarily the best tool to handle other people. As I've discussed previously, science tends to say "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence", even where a wise man would be saying "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action". Science tends to downplay the importance of individual correlations, secure in the knowledge that in the long run any genuine effect will show up again.
Most skeptics are aware of this. The scientific method to us is an ideal: if you have the time to apply it fully then that's wonderful, but in most cases that isn't an option. So to say "skeptics disagree with irrationality" is simplistic. In reality, our position is more nuanced. One statement of it would be:
It’s OK to be irrational as long as you don’t treat your shot-in-the-dark guesses as the final word, and are willing to discard them when better options come along.
That has applications far beyond the study of nature.
Read the full post
Go Google!
I just noticed that Blogger now allows people to sign their comments using OpenID, a truly cool idea that I'm hoping will take off. The basic principle is that, rather than one company (say Microsoft) running an identity-management system (say Microsoft Passport) that no-one else can interoperate with, we should instead develop a system that's "distributed". In other words, anyone should be able to start up their own identity server at any time.
Most other components of the internet have already gone this route. You can use email without your ISP having Microsoft Exchange installed (thank Darwin). You can set up a website without your web host having Microsoft IIS. But identity management still operates as a series of "walled gardens", with each forum or group you sign up to demanding its own username/password combo. It's an unuseable mess.
Better to have a system where anyone can set up their own identity server, or their own account on someone else's server, and have it recognised by all the "identity consumers" (forums etc). I'm expecting Google to start up its own OpenID server in the near future, and I can't wait!
Other interoperability things I'm hopeful about: the OpenDocument format for breaking down the walls between Office applications, MetaPlace for creating easier motion between virtual worlds, BugLabs for encouraging greater reusability of gadget components, and OpenMoko for making it possible to "unbundle" phone software and hardware.
I should mention that IMO there's a small chance that MetaPlace will go evil. It's not actually possible to set up your own MetaPlace server yet - at the moment its just a very big walled garden with lots of sub-gardens. Until the system is truly distributed, the MetaPlace company will have a somewhat unhealthy amount of power.
OpenMoko and BugLabs may be hitting the opposite issue - it's taking them worryingly long to release a commercial product. Openness is not a magic wand, sadly.
In each of these cases, though, the idea is damn good, and the fact that someone's doing something about it is guaranteed to be extremely disruptive, regardless of immediate outcomes. In the technology world, disruption is good.
So much so, in fact, that I'd strongly recommend everyone ensure that they're able to receive OpenDocument files. Since Microsoft is currently being a refusenik (for obvious reasons), this will mean you'll need to download a free Office product such as OpenOffice. Have fun!
Read the full post
Most other components of the internet have already gone this route. You can use email without your ISP having Microsoft Exchange installed (thank Darwin). You can set up a website without your web host having Microsoft IIS. But identity management still operates as a series of "walled gardens", with each forum or group you sign up to demanding its own username/password combo. It's an unuseable mess.
Better to have a system where anyone can set up their own identity server, or their own account on someone else's server, and have it recognised by all the "identity consumers" (forums etc). I'm expecting Google to start up its own OpenID server in the near future, and I can't wait!
Other interoperability things I'm hopeful about: the OpenDocument format for breaking down the walls between Office applications, MetaPlace for creating easier motion between virtual worlds, BugLabs for encouraging greater reusability of gadget components, and OpenMoko for making it possible to "unbundle" phone software and hardware.
I should mention that IMO there's a small chance that MetaPlace will go evil. It's not actually possible to set up your own MetaPlace server yet - at the moment its just a very big walled garden with lots of sub-gardens. Until the system is truly distributed, the MetaPlace company will have a somewhat unhealthy amount of power.
OpenMoko and BugLabs may be hitting the opposite issue - it's taking them worryingly long to release a commercial product. Openness is not a magic wand, sadly.
In each of these cases, though, the idea is damn good, and the fact that someone's doing something about it is guaranteed to be extremely disruptive, regardless of immediate outcomes. In the technology world, disruption is good.
So much so, in fact, that I'd strongly recommend everyone ensure that they're able to receive OpenDocument files. Since Microsoft is currently being a refusenik (for obvious reasons), this will mean you'll need to download a free Office product such as OpenOffice. Have fun!
Read the full post
So much for La Resistance
The problem of psychological blocks is as old as humanity. There are so many actions that would sometimes be both beneficial and socially acceptable to perform, but we just can't bring ourselves to. Trying to convince yourself to perform a task that you just don't wanna do is like trying to claw your way out of a very deep, very slippery well.
I've just been given the proverbial leg up. For the past month, I've been working in my company's Business Development team (aka sales), and a big part of what this team does is cold calling. Not the sleazy 7:00-call-when-you're-in-the-bath cold calling, I hasten to add. This is strictly business-to-business stuff - the people we're calling up are managers who are paid to handle this crap.
And it's a job that needs doing. No company can survive without new business and, while ideally we'd garner new work by word-of-mouth, for a small company like ours that just isn't fast enough.
Sadly, my psyche didn't get the message. For some time now, I've just been sitting there, allegedly making calls but in practice finding every excuse I can to avoid picking up the phone. The aversion I feel is incredible, and scarily subtle. It's like that scene in Lord Of The Rings where Bilbo "decides" to give the ring to Frodo, and sets off without being consciously aware that it's still in his pocket.
As a result, until this week, I've been functionally unable to make many calls. On a good day I'd make one call, maybe two, and then I'd find something else to distract myself with. This has been setting up immense cognitive dissonance, because I know I should be doing it. I just couldn't bring myself to. I've been a very unhappy bunny.
However, as of earlier this week, there are signs of change. On Wednesday, I was feeling extremely tired. I couldn't even muster the brainpower to think about the pros and cons of calling. I just picked up the phone and left some of the most incoherent messages ever entrusted to voicemail. It was only at the end of the day that I realised: hey, I just made five calls. What the heck?
On Thursday and Friday, the change continued. I reached for the phone, I felt the block, but I knew I could ignore it. I was able to make five calls a day, and this coming week I'm looking to increase the rate.
This is the first time I've really been motivated to overcome such a deep-rooted mental block, and the ripples of this change are still spreading. I know my enemy now, and I know that I can overcome it. That knowledge lets me do things that I never thought possible. Maybe I'll finally learn to ask girls out...
Funnily enough, this experience has a lot of shared features with some of the conversion stories I've read. I'm not an alcoholic or a drug abuser, but I was as constrained as any of them in my actions. Those constraints resulted in very deep tiredness - so deep that my overactive superego shut down for a bit. At that point, the slightest push was enough to get me over the hurdle. Such a push could well come from religion, but it apparently doesn't have to.
Read the full post
I've just been given the proverbial leg up. For the past month, I've been working in my company's Business Development team (aka sales), and a big part of what this team does is cold calling. Not the sleazy 7:00-call-when-you're-in-the-bath cold calling, I hasten to add. This is strictly business-to-business stuff - the people we're calling up are managers who are paid to handle this crap.
And it's a job that needs doing. No company can survive without new business and, while ideally we'd garner new work by word-of-mouth, for a small company like ours that just isn't fast enough.
Sadly, my psyche didn't get the message. For some time now, I've just been sitting there, allegedly making calls but in practice finding every excuse I can to avoid picking up the phone. The aversion I feel is incredible, and scarily subtle. It's like that scene in Lord Of The Rings where Bilbo "decides" to give the ring to Frodo, and sets off without being consciously aware that it's still in his pocket.
As a result, until this week, I've been functionally unable to make many calls. On a good day I'd make one call, maybe two, and then I'd find something else to distract myself with. This has been setting up immense cognitive dissonance, because I know I should be doing it. I just couldn't bring myself to. I've been a very unhappy bunny.
However, as of earlier this week, there are signs of change. On Wednesday, I was feeling extremely tired. I couldn't even muster the brainpower to think about the pros and cons of calling. I just picked up the phone and left some of the most incoherent messages ever entrusted to voicemail. It was only at the end of the day that I realised: hey, I just made five calls. What the heck?
On Thursday and Friday, the change continued. I reached for the phone, I felt the block, but I knew I could ignore it. I was able to make five calls a day, and this coming week I'm looking to increase the rate.
This is the first time I've really been motivated to overcome such a deep-rooted mental block, and the ripples of this change are still spreading. I know my enemy now, and I know that I can overcome it. That knowledge lets me do things that I never thought possible. Maybe I'll finally learn to ask girls out...
Funnily enough, this experience has a lot of shared features with some of the conversion stories I've read. I'm not an alcoholic or a drug abuser, but I was as constrained as any of them in my actions. Those constraints resulted in very deep tiredness - so deep that my overactive superego shut down for a bit. At that point, the slightest push was enough to get me over the hurdle. Such a push could well come from religion, but it apparently doesn't have to.
Read the full post
Oh yeah...
...Sadly, the aforementioned gunk about female education probably wouldn't work on those Western countries (you know who you are) with large populations of fast-breeding semi-educated folk. In these cases, the power of education is devalued by the fact that everyone else has it too. Getting a degree in English is, genetically speaking, a complete waste of time if you end up flipping burgers anyway.
I'm honestly not sure how to handle this second-phase population boom.
Read the full post
I'm honestly not sure how to handle this second-phase population boom.
Read the full post
Thursday, February 14, 2008
On Charity
The parable of the sparrows
Imagine a little old lady sitting at her window. She looks out and sees a flock of the local sparrows desperately pecking at the frozen ground, trying to find food where none exists. In her kind-heartedness, she gets out of her chair, fetches some bread, and scatters it around the door. The sparrows descend on the bread in a cloud of tiny fluttering wings, and the nourishment it provides gets them through the day.
The next day, the little old lady sees the sparrows hungry again, and feeds them some more bread. This turns into a habit that she keeps up for the rest of the Winter. As a result, many more sparrows survive the cold.
The following year, the sparrows breed at their usual rate of a couple of surviving offspring per adult. But, because there were more adults, there are more offspring. More survive the Autumn.
When Winter strikes, the little old lady's heart breaks for the sparrows. She feeds them again and again, and far more survive than would usually have done so. The following year, the flock size increases yet again.
The next Winter, the sparrows frantically peck round the old lady's door, but she isn't there. She's gone to live with her daughter in Melbourne.
Any observer watching the poor starving birds struggle and fail and die in the snow would have to ask themselves: was the old lady actually compassionate, if her actions resulted in more sparrows starving to death than would otherwise have done so?
Malthus strikes back
Painful though it may be to make the link with human populations, the analogy is inevitable. In many poor countries, most members of the population are happy to breed at the maximum possible rate. And, if we include this "animal assumption" in our assessment, we can see that cataclysm - war, famine or plague - is inevitable.
Many commenters have looked at the world today, in all its technological glory, and asked why, if our science is so advanced, we can't cure world hunger or bring an end to disease. Some even declare this to be a failing of science, that it can't welcome us into an age of universal utopia.
But the problem isn't science. The problem is that the people we have in this world are too inclined to squander the windfalls which science offers. Science is no more culpable for hunger in Burundi (with its 3.6%pa population growth rate) than it is for the AIDS-related deaths of South Africans (whose president is an AIDS denialist). Technological solutions to social problems almost never work.
Darwin takes his due
So the question becomes: how do we break the "animal assumption" of blind increases in population size? The problem is that, in many circumstances, this increase is actually the best evolutionary strategy. In a high-risk environment such as your average third-world country, the more kids you have, the better your genes' chance of survival in the short term. It's a classic tragedy of the commons.
But why isn't this true in the western world too? How have we overcome this paradox?
The answer seems to be: education. An educated population is in general slower-breeding than an uneducated one. In particular, education of females makes a hell of a difference.
There are two obvious reasons for this. Firstly, a good educational system will typically include some sex education, which reduces the chance of "accidents". This alone could be a major aid in poor countries, but its effect is limited by the fact that (for the aforementioned Darwinian reasons) people want to have kids early and often.
Secondly, and more significantly, education creates opportunities. If you're a young woman without education, you've got no prospects - the only consequence of waiting to have kids will be to reduce the number you can have. If you're a young woman with education, though, waiting to have kids may give you the chance to grab a high-paying job, earn lots of money, and thus raise the kids in an environment where their survival odds are greater.
Conclusion
Charity that treats its recipients as animals, that simply feeds, shelters and heals them, may make the donor feel warm and tingly in the short term, but in the long term it's self-defeating. If we're going to perform acts of pure charity, we should do so in a way that achieves greater happiness for a greater number. We can only do that by breaking the "animal assumption".
In this post, I've discussed one possible way of achieving this: education, and particularly education of girls. If anyone knows of any others, please tell me. In the meantime, I know where my money is going to go.
Hat tip to Berlzebub at the Common Ground group blog for reminding me I had this essay in my Drafts folder.
Read the full post
Imagine a little old lady sitting at her window. She looks out and sees a flock of the local sparrows desperately pecking at the frozen ground, trying to find food where none exists. In her kind-heartedness, she gets out of her chair, fetches some bread, and scatters it around the door. The sparrows descend on the bread in a cloud of tiny fluttering wings, and the nourishment it provides gets them through the day.
The next day, the little old lady sees the sparrows hungry again, and feeds them some more bread. This turns into a habit that she keeps up for the rest of the Winter. As a result, many more sparrows survive the cold.
The following year, the sparrows breed at their usual rate of a couple of surviving offspring per adult. But, because there were more adults, there are more offspring. More survive the Autumn.
When Winter strikes, the little old lady's heart breaks for the sparrows. She feeds them again and again, and far more survive than would usually have done so. The following year, the flock size increases yet again.
The next Winter, the sparrows frantically peck round the old lady's door, but she isn't there. She's gone to live with her daughter in Melbourne.
Any observer watching the poor starving birds struggle and fail and die in the snow would have to ask themselves: was the old lady actually compassionate, if her actions resulted in more sparrows starving to death than would otherwise have done so?
Malthus strikes back
Painful though it may be to make the link with human populations, the analogy is inevitable. In many poor countries, most members of the population are happy to breed at the maximum possible rate. And, if we include this "animal assumption" in our assessment, we can see that cataclysm - war, famine or plague - is inevitable.
Many commenters have looked at the world today, in all its technological glory, and asked why, if our science is so advanced, we can't cure world hunger or bring an end to disease. Some even declare this to be a failing of science, that it can't welcome us into an age of universal utopia.
But the problem isn't science. The problem is that the people we have in this world are too inclined to squander the windfalls which science offers. Science is no more culpable for hunger in Burundi (with its 3.6%pa population growth rate) than it is for the AIDS-related deaths of South Africans (whose president is an AIDS denialist). Technological solutions to social problems almost never work.
Darwin takes his due
So the question becomes: how do we break the "animal assumption" of blind increases in population size? The problem is that, in many circumstances, this increase is actually the best evolutionary strategy. In a high-risk environment such as your average third-world country, the more kids you have, the better your genes' chance of survival in the short term. It's a classic tragedy of the commons.
But why isn't this true in the western world too? How have we overcome this paradox?
The answer seems to be: education. An educated population is in general slower-breeding than an uneducated one. In particular, education of females makes a hell of a difference.
There are two obvious reasons for this. Firstly, a good educational system will typically include some sex education, which reduces the chance of "accidents". This alone could be a major aid in poor countries, but its effect is limited by the fact that (for the aforementioned Darwinian reasons) people want to have kids early and often.
Secondly, and more significantly, education creates opportunities. If you're a young woman without education, you've got no prospects - the only consequence of waiting to have kids will be to reduce the number you can have. If you're a young woman with education, though, waiting to have kids may give you the chance to grab a high-paying job, earn lots of money, and thus raise the kids in an environment where their survival odds are greater.
Conclusion
Charity that treats its recipients as animals, that simply feeds, shelters and heals them, may make the donor feel warm and tingly in the short term, but in the long term it's self-defeating. If we're going to perform acts of pure charity, we should do so in a way that achieves greater happiness for a greater number. We can only do that by breaking the "animal assumption".
In this post, I've discussed one possible way of achieving this: education, and particularly education of girls. If anyone knows of any others, please tell me. In the meantime, I know where my money is going to go.
Hat tip to Berlzebub at the Common Ground group blog for reminding me I had this essay in my Drafts folder.
Read the full post
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Meditation session
The Buddhist group wasn't nearly as scary as I thought they might be. Their leader was - there's no other word for it - ditzy, and talked well past the limit of the audience's attention span, but no attempts were made to brainwash the participants (unless they've just purged all memory of it from my mind...)
The meditation technique was extremely simple, just a slight elaboration on "breathe slowly and pretend stuff doesn't exist". Currently I'm trying to work weightlifting into my daily schedule, but, once I've made space for that, I'll definitely start trying to fit a little meditation in.
The tea-and-biscuits session afterwards was interesting. Having done my background reading, I was sensitised enough to pick up on a few slightly worrying concepts, but nothing worse than the average Christian group spouts on a regular basis. My concerns were comfortably defused by the comparative openness of the person I was chatting to (the group leader/teacher). By contrast with my last attempt to study meditation, she didn't try to conceal the religious beliefs colouring her thoughts.
I don't find the Buddhist cosmology any more realistic than those of other religions, but I don't find this particular tradition any more scary than most of the other religions out there. As such, I'll keep going to the meditation group for a bit longer.
Incidentally, I had one of those perfect Kodak moments today. During lunch with my friendly neighbourhood evangelists, one made a comment about the importance of scripture. That gave me the ideal opening to reach into my bag and pull out the Koran, the Bhagavadgita and a collection of Buddhist scripture (which I happened to have on me - no really!), with a comment along the lines of "which scripture did you have in mind?".
Read the full post
The meditation technique was extremely simple, just a slight elaboration on "breathe slowly and pretend stuff doesn't exist". Currently I'm trying to work weightlifting into my daily schedule, but, once I've made space for that, I'll definitely start trying to fit a little meditation in.
The tea-and-biscuits session afterwards was interesting. Having done my background reading, I was sensitised enough to pick up on a few slightly worrying concepts, but nothing worse than the average Christian group spouts on a regular basis. My concerns were comfortably defused by the comparative openness of the person I was chatting to (the group leader/teacher). By contrast with my last attempt to study meditation, she didn't try to conceal the religious beliefs colouring her thoughts.
I don't find the Buddhist cosmology any more realistic than those of other religions, but I don't find this particular tradition any more scary than most of the other religions out there. As such, I'll keep going to the meditation group for a bit longer.
Incidentally, I had one of those perfect Kodak moments today. During lunch with my friendly neighbourhood evangelists, one made a comment about the importance of scripture. That gave me the ideal opening to reach into my bag and pull out the Koran, the Bhagavadgita and a collection of Buddhist scripture (which I happened to have on me - no really!), with a comment along the lines of "which scripture did you have in mind?".
Read the full post
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Curse these cults!
I'm feeling a bit irritated. Yeah, I know that's not exactly a rarity, but at least the reason is interesting.
A Buddhist centre down the road from me is running a meditation class. To me, this sounded great - I've always wanted to learn meditation - and I've been gleefully anticipating the taster session for weeks.
This morning, though, I bothered to look up the group that's doing the lessons. It turns out that the New Kadampa Tradition is to Buddhism what ISKCON (aka Hare Krishna) is to Hinduism. It's a semi-cultish movement based loosely on the original tradition, nothing more.
Why do these groups seem to be so popular? Why do the Hare Krishnas have the manpower to canvass the high street? What's with the sudden growth of these rather imitative little cults?
My conjecture is that the situation is analogous to the phenomenon of invasive species. These traditions typically have their roots in rather minor subtraditions of age-old practice, and grow up fighting their corner against equally sophisticated, often quite similar competitors.
But then the tradition gets exported from its native habitat, into the midst of a population that's never been exposed to it before. This population has no basis for comparing the new tradition with its rivals, and no culture of criticism to provide resistance to its spread. Like bulfrogs in Australia, the tradition grows and spreads. For some reason, there's normally a personality-cult aspect to this phenomenon, although that could just be selection bias on my part.
I like this way of thinking about the formation of religions. As with language, the analogy to biology is not precise - species have no feature corresponding to patois or to combined traditions. But it's easy to visualise, which helps me to spot further examples.
And, of course, there's one very obvious example. A strain of Judaism that was inspired by a charismatic personality, transmitted to a large population of non-Jews, and as a result quickly morphed into a new religion that had little in common with its ancestor.
What would have happened if Srila Prabhupada had been killed off when his movement was just becoming popular, murdered by a government intent on removing the disturbance he caused? What would the backlash have looked like, as his followers fought to spread their truth before it could be obliterated? What would the world have looked like three centuries later, after the Hare Krishnas had become the dominant religious force? What about five centuries later, when "heretical" works had started to be purged? What about two millennia later, when all the newspapers and books that would have placed ISKCON's beliefs in context had long ago rotted away?
What stories would be told of his life? Would we think of him as a Messiah?
Read the full post
A Buddhist centre down the road from me is running a meditation class. To me, this sounded great - I've always wanted to learn meditation - and I've been gleefully anticipating the taster session for weeks.
This morning, though, I bothered to look up the group that's doing the lessons. It turns out that the New Kadampa Tradition is to Buddhism what ISKCON (aka Hare Krishna) is to Hinduism. It's a semi-cultish movement based loosely on the original tradition, nothing more.
Why do these groups seem to be so popular? Why do the Hare Krishnas have the manpower to canvass the high street? What's with the sudden growth of these rather imitative little cults?
My conjecture is that the situation is analogous to the phenomenon of invasive species. These traditions typically have their roots in rather minor subtraditions of age-old practice, and grow up fighting their corner against equally sophisticated, often quite similar competitors.
But then the tradition gets exported from its native habitat, into the midst of a population that's never been exposed to it before. This population has no basis for comparing the new tradition with its rivals, and no culture of criticism to provide resistance to its spread. Like bulfrogs in Australia, the tradition grows and spreads. For some reason, there's normally a personality-cult aspect to this phenomenon, although that could just be selection bias on my part.
I like this way of thinking about the formation of religions. As with language, the analogy to biology is not precise - species have no feature corresponding to patois or to combined traditions. But it's easy to visualise, which helps me to spot further examples.
And, of course, there's one very obvious example. A strain of Judaism that was inspired by a charismatic personality, transmitted to a large population of non-Jews, and as a result quickly morphed into a new religion that had little in common with its ancestor.
What would have happened if Srila Prabhupada had been killed off when his movement was just becoming popular, murdered by a government intent on removing the disturbance he caused? What would the backlash have looked like, as his followers fought to spread their truth before it could be obliterated? What would the world have looked like three centuries later, after the Hare Krishnas had become the dominant religious force? What about five centuries later, when "heretical" works had started to be purged? What about two millennia later, when all the newspapers and books that would have placed ISKCON's beliefs in context had long ago rotted away?
What stories would be told of his life? Would we think of him as a Messiah?
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Saturday, January 26, 2008
More ways not to communicate
So I'm in Oxford to meet up with a few friends from work, who are for some explicable reason meeting up a couple of towns over from our actual office. Should be a good evening - drinks at a pub, followed by a nice Lebanese restaurant.
Unfortunately, I get to Oxford before realising I was supposed to look up directions for the pub. Oops. I ask around, but no-one round the train station has ever heard of it.
Brainwave! I've got my mobile with me. I only have the one phone number, it being a new phone, but surely that should be good enough?
"We're sorry, but the person you called is not available right now. Please leave a message after the tone..." Dammit.
Ah, but hold on a sec, this new phone has 3G internet, doesn't it? The invite included the pub's website, so I can look up directions!
"Error: can't connect to network. Have a nice day..." Bugger.
As I write this, I'm sitting in a Coffee Republic, having walked halfway across Oxford trying to find somewhere with wifi. And I've just discovered that the pub is actually two blocks over from where I'm sitting.
Can we please just go back to the days of maps?
Read the full post
Unfortunately, I get to Oxford before realising I was supposed to look up directions for the pub. Oops. I ask around, but no-one round the train station has ever heard of it.
Brainwave! I've got my mobile with me. I only have the one phone number, it being a new phone, but surely that should be good enough?
"We're sorry, but the person you called is not available right now. Please leave a message after the tone..." Dammit.
Ah, but hold on a sec, this new phone has 3G internet, doesn't it? The invite included the pub's website, so I can look up directions!
"Error: can't connect to network. Have a nice day..." Bugger.
As I write this, I'm sitting in a Coffee Republic, having walked halfway across Oxford trying to find somewhere with wifi. And I've just discovered that the pub is actually two blocks over from where I'm sitting.
Can we please just go back to the days of maps?
Read the full post
Friday, January 18, 2008
A (stereo)typical conversation
Evangelical: "You know what really convinces me that the Bible is true? Its coherency. So many books, so many stories, and there's no contradictions anywhere."
Me, reaching for a copy of the Bible: "OK, what about this one between ***flickflickflick*** Matthew 2:14 and ***flickflick*** Luke 2:22. One states that the family ran straight off to Egypt and stayed there until Herod had copped it. The other states that, immediately after the "time of purification" (40 days, as per Leviticus), the family went to Jerusalem. FYI, Jerusalem and Egypt are on opposite sides of Bethlehem. How is this not a contradiction?
Evangelist: "Huh, I never noticed that. Did you get that off one of your atheist websites?"
Me: "No, I got it about five minutes into a personal attempt to see how the various Gospel stories line up. It's not exactly a subtle error."
Evangelist: "Mind if I get back to you on this?"
Moral of the story: It's very easy to be sure you're right about something, simply because you haven't solicited enough critical scrutiny. I have no grounds to be smug here - I know I've done the same thing in the past. All I can say is that I'm aware of the problem and do my best to counter it.
Read the full post
Me, reaching for a copy of the Bible: "OK, what about this one between ***flickflickflick*** Matthew 2:14 and ***flickflick*** Luke 2:22. One states that the family ran straight off to Egypt and stayed there until Herod had copped it. The other states that, immediately after the "time of purification" (40 days, as per Leviticus), the family went to Jerusalem. FYI, Jerusalem and Egypt are on opposite sides of Bethlehem. How is this not a contradiction?
Evangelist: "Huh, I never noticed that. Did you get that off one of your atheist websites?"
Me: "No, I got it about five minutes into a personal attempt to see how the various Gospel stories line up. It's not exactly a subtle error."
Evangelist: "Mind if I get back to you on this?"
Moral of the story: It's very easy to be sure you're right about something, simply because you haven't solicited enough critical scrutiny. I have no grounds to be smug here - I know I've done the same thing in the past. All I can say is that I'm aware of the problem and do my best to counter it.
Read the full post
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Abstract algebra
In our last post, our intrepidly heroic mathematicians were hunting around for a new tool with which to attack some classic conundrums of geometry. The tool they eventually settled on is known as abstract algebra. This post will attempt to summarise it very briefly.
Compared to the 100 pages of lecture notes I'm working from, anyway.
Abstract algebra
The purpose of abstract algebra is to study and categorise various kinds of mathematical structure that crop up with depressing regularity. What do I mean by "structure"? Well, let's take a look at a really simple example: a group.
A group is formed of two components. Firstly, you have a big bag of thingies. Any thingies, it really doesn't matter that much. We'll refer to the bag as X, just to save my having to use the word "thingy" too much.
Secondly, you have a rule that combines two thingies to give a third. We'll refer to the bag as #. The rule must have certain "nice" properties:
1) Closure - the product of two thingies is a thingy. Formally, if x and y are in X then so is x#y.
2) Associativity - if you apply the rule twice to merge three thingies into one, it mustn't matter which two order you do the merging in. Formally, (x#y)#z = x#(y#z).
3) Identity - there is a thingy that can be ignored when applying the rule. Formally, there exists a single element e of X (the identity element) such that x#e = e#x = x for all x in X.
4) Inverse - for any thingy, there must be another thingy such that, when they're merged, you get the identity element. Formally, for any x in X, there exists an element y such that x#y = e.
Got that? No? Well that's not a problem, because I'm going to give you a concrete example.
The set will be as follows: {..., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...}
The rule will be as follows: +
So 1+1=2, 2+6=8, etc. Looking familiar now?
The group that we've just described is the set of integers (whole numbers) under addition. It obeys all the four rules:
1) Add two integers and you get a third integer
2) (a+b)+c = a+(b+c)
3) a+0 = 0+a = a
4) If x is an integer then -x is also an integer
There are lots and lots of other examples:
A) The set of integers under multiplication
B) The set of reflections and rotations of a shape under composition (aka the dihedral group)
C) The set of hours on a 12-hour clock under addition (aka the cyclic group of order 12)
Example A is pretty straightforward - proof that it's a group is left to the interested reader.
Example B is more interesting. Consider, for example, the dihedral group of a triangle. Imagine the triangle is a piece cut out of a sheet of paper - you can flip it over or rotate it around in any way, as long as it still fits in the hole. Why not get yourself a real sheet of paper and try it?
Start off with one point of the triangle sticking directly upwards. You'll quickly find that the valid operations are as follows:
a) Keep it as it was
b) Rotate it 120° left
c) Rotate it 120° right
d) Flip it in the top/bottom line of symmetry
e) Flip it in the top-left/bottom-right line of symmetry
f) Flip it in the top-right/bottom-left line of symmetry
So our set is {a,b,c,d,e,f}. Our group rule is composition, which means doing two of these operations one after another. So for example, b#c = a, and d#e = b. Try it!
Is this a group? It quite clearly has closure, identity and inverses. It turns out to also have associativity, although this is less obvious.
One interesting point to notice is that the operations {a,b,c} form a group in their own right, even without including d, e and f. This subgroup consists of all the ways that a triangle can be rotated. It is called the cyclic group of order 3.
Example C, the clock, is fairly basic - most of the time it behaves just like the integers under addition. Just remember that 4 hours past 10:00 is actually 2:00, and you'll have understood most of what's going on here.
This group also has subgroups. For example, consider what happens if you're only allowed to move the clock on in four-hour intervals. The times you can reach are 0:00, 4:00 and 8:00 (I'm writing 12:00 as 0:00 here - either way, it's the identity element).
This subgroup is in fact the cyclic group of order 3 - so the dihedral group of order 3 and the cyclic group of order 12 both share it as a subgroup, despite having very different origins and properties.
Permutations
There's one last group that I'm going to describe, because it will be particularly relevant later on. That is the "permutation group".
A permutation is just a rearrangement or shuffle. For example, we could reorder the list "1 2 3 4 5" to "2 5 3 4 1". Call this permutation p.
How does p behave? Well it replaces each 1 with a 2, each 2 with a 5, each 3 with a 3, each 4 with a 4, and each 5 with a 1. Mathematicians have a very concise way of describing this, called cycle notation. A cycle is just a list of elements [a,b,c,...,z], so that the permutation takes a to b, b to c, c to d, z to a, and so on.
In our example permutation p, there are two very obvious cycles. p takes 3 to 3, so [3] is a cycle of p. Similarly, [4] is a cycle of p. p also takes 1 to 2, 2 to 5 and 5 to 1, so [125] is the final cycle. All our knowledge about p can be conveyed by writing it as [125][3][4].
It's easy to note that these permutations form a group - if you do one permutation followed by another, the result is a third permutation. All permutations can be undone, and there is an identity permutation [1][2][3][4][5]. Associativity is slightly less easy, but not hard, to show.
Permutation groups are a particularly important example of finite groups - groups with only a finite number of members. For example, cyclic groups and dihedral groups are finite, but the integers are not finite. The group of all permutations of n objects is called the symmetric group of order n, written as Sn. For example, the group of all possible shuffles of a set of cards is S52.
These symmetric groups are important because it can be proven that any finite group is a subgroup of some symmetric group. This will become relevant later.
This series of posts has gotten far longer than I intended. I'll take a short break before the next post.
Read the full post
Compared to the 100 pages of lecture notes I'm working from, anyway.
Abstract algebra
The purpose of abstract algebra is to study and categorise various kinds of mathematical structure that crop up with depressing regularity. What do I mean by "structure"? Well, let's take a look at a really simple example: a group.
A group is formed of two components. Firstly, you have a big bag of thingies. Any thingies, it really doesn't matter that much. We'll refer to the bag as X, just to save my having to use the word "thingy" too much.
Secondly, you have a rule that combines two thingies to give a third. We'll refer to the bag as #. The rule must have certain "nice" properties:
1) Closure - the product of two thingies is a thingy. Formally, if x and y are in X then so is x#y.
2) Associativity - if you apply the rule twice to merge three thingies into one, it mustn't matter which two order you do the merging in. Formally, (x#y)#z = x#(y#z).
3) Identity - there is a thingy that can be ignored when applying the rule. Formally, there exists a single element e of X (the identity element) such that x#e = e#x = x for all x in X.
4) Inverse - for any thingy, there must be another thingy such that, when they're merged, you get the identity element. Formally, for any x in X, there exists an element y such that x#y = e.
Got that? No? Well that's not a problem, because I'm going to give you a concrete example.
The set will be as follows: {..., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...}
The rule will be as follows: +
So 1+1=2, 2+6=8, etc. Looking familiar now?
The group that we've just described is the set of integers (whole numbers) under addition. It obeys all the four rules:
1) Add two integers and you get a third integer
2) (a+b)+c = a+(b+c)
3) a+0 = 0+a = a
4) If x is an integer then -x is also an integer
There are lots and lots of other examples:
A) The set of integers under multiplication
B) The set of reflections and rotations of a shape under composition (aka the dihedral group)
C) The set of hours on a 12-hour clock under addition (aka the cyclic group of order 12)
Example A is pretty straightforward - proof that it's a group is left to the interested reader.
Example B is more interesting. Consider, for example, the dihedral group of a triangle. Imagine the triangle is a piece cut out of a sheet of paper - you can flip it over or rotate it around in any way, as long as it still fits in the hole. Why not get yourself a real sheet of paper and try it?
Start off with one point of the triangle sticking directly upwards. You'll quickly find that the valid operations are as follows:
a) Keep it as it was
b) Rotate it 120° left
c) Rotate it 120° right
d) Flip it in the top/bottom line of symmetry
e) Flip it in the top-left/bottom-right line of symmetry
f) Flip it in the top-right/bottom-left line of symmetry
So our set is {a,b,c,d,e,f}. Our group rule is composition, which means doing two of these operations one after another. So for example, b#c = a, and d#e = b. Try it!
Is this a group? It quite clearly has closure, identity and inverses. It turns out to also have associativity, although this is less obvious.
One interesting point to notice is that the operations {a,b,c} form a group in their own right, even without including d, e and f. This subgroup consists of all the ways that a triangle can be rotated. It is called the cyclic group of order 3.
Example C, the clock, is fairly basic - most of the time it behaves just like the integers under addition. Just remember that 4 hours past 10:00 is actually 2:00, and you'll have understood most of what's going on here.
This group also has subgroups. For example, consider what happens if you're only allowed to move the clock on in four-hour intervals. The times you can reach are 0:00, 4:00 and 8:00 (I'm writing 12:00 as 0:00 here - either way, it's the identity element).
This subgroup is in fact the cyclic group of order 3 - so the dihedral group of order 3 and the cyclic group of order 12 both share it as a subgroup, despite having very different origins and properties.
Permutations
There's one last group that I'm going to describe, because it will be particularly relevant later on. That is the "permutation group".
A permutation is just a rearrangement or shuffle. For example, we could reorder the list "1 2 3 4 5" to "2 5 3 4 1". Call this permutation p.
How does p behave? Well it replaces each 1 with a 2, each 2 with a 5, each 3 with a 3, each 4 with a 4, and each 5 with a 1. Mathematicians have a very concise way of describing this, called cycle notation. A cycle is just a list of elements [a,b,c,...,z], so that the permutation takes a to b, b to c, c to d, z to a, and so on.
In our example permutation p, there are two very obvious cycles. p takes 3 to 3, so [3] is a cycle of p. Similarly, [4] is a cycle of p. p also takes 1 to 2, 2 to 5 and 5 to 1, so [125] is the final cycle. All our knowledge about p can be conveyed by writing it as [125][3][4].
It's easy to note that these permutations form a group - if you do one permutation followed by another, the result is a third permutation. All permutations can be undone, and there is an identity permutation [1][2][3][4][5]. Associativity is slightly less easy, but not hard, to show.
Permutation groups are a particularly important example of finite groups - groups with only a finite number of members. For example, cyclic groups and dihedral groups are finite, but the integers are not finite. The group of all permutations of n objects is called the symmetric group of order n, written as Sn. For example, the group of all possible shuffles of a set of cards is S52.
These symmetric groups are important because it can be proven that any finite group is a subgroup of some symmetric group. This will become relevant later.
This series of posts has gotten far longer than I intended. I'll take a short break before the next post.
Read the full post
Galois Theory in brief*
* Disclaimer: may not actually be brief.
Galois Theory is a really elegant area of mathematics. It relates two different topics - abstract algebra and geometry - to produce results that are greater than the sum of the parts.
History
Galois Theory has possibly the most romantic history of any mathematics ever. It was originated by Evariste Galois, a student in France during the 19th century. He was a firebrand of a revolutionary, and kept getting kicked out of universities as a result. Eventually, it seems, someone in government decided that he was too much trouble to have around.
So they set up a honeypot Before Evariste knew where he was, he had been trapped into a pistol duel over a woman (whose identity we don't know). His opponent was one of the greatest duelists in Paris. Galois knew he didn't stand a chance.
The last night of his life, he spent scribbling down diverse thoughts about mathematics. In the margins, he scrawled comments like "I don't have the time! I don't have the time!". The following morning, he went out to fight, and was shot down and left to die. His notes were passed on to a maths professor.
After languishing in various inboxes, the papers reached someone who could see them for the genius they were, and Galois became one of the great heroes of mathematics. It turned out that he'd cracked a set of problems that had been around since the ancient Greeks.
Geometry
Geometry is the study of shapes - triangles, hexagons, spheres, etc. This subject naturally gives rise to a number of interesting questions, one of which involves the concept of constructibility. A shape is constructible if it can be drawn using only an unmarked ruler ("straightedge") and a compass.
For example, the triangle can be constructed by the following procedure:
Et voila, one beautiful equilateral triangle. So a three-sided shape is constructible.
A four-sided shape turns out to be very easy. It turns out to be possible to bisect any angle*, so just take a straight line (technically an angle of 180°) and bisect it. That gives you two lines at 90° to each other - a right angle. Draw two more perpendicular lines and you've got yourself a square.
Well, a rectangle actually. But the idea's the important thing :)
So you can draw a triangle and you can draw a square. Can you draw a pentagon? The answer turns out to be "yes", but the procedure is so intricate and icky that I'm not even going to try to explain it. By this time, mathematicians were coming to realise that a new approach was needed.
That's where abstract algebra came in. To be continued...
* Procedure left as an exercise for the interested reader. Or google it. What do I care?
Read the full post
Galois Theory is a really elegant area of mathematics. It relates two different topics - abstract algebra and geometry - to produce results that are greater than the sum of the parts.
History
Galois Theory has possibly the most romantic history of any mathematics ever. It was originated by Evariste Galois, a student in France during the 19th century. He was a firebrand of a revolutionary, and kept getting kicked out of universities as a result. Eventually, it seems, someone in government decided that he was too much trouble to have around.
So they set up a honeypot Before Evariste knew where he was, he had been trapped into a pistol duel over a woman (whose identity we don't know). His opponent was one of the greatest duelists in Paris. Galois knew he didn't stand a chance.
The last night of his life, he spent scribbling down diverse thoughts about mathematics. In the margins, he scrawled comments like "I don't have the time! I don't have the time!". The following morning, he went out to fight, and was shot down and left to die. His notes were passed on to a maths professor.
After languishing in various inboxes, the papers reached someone who could see them for the genius they were, and Galois became one of the great heroes of mathematics. It turned out that he'd cracked a set of problems that had been around since the ancient Greeks.
Geometry
Geometry is the study of shapes - triangles, hexagons, spheres, etc. This subject naturally gives rise to a number of interesting questions, one of which involves the concept of constructibility. A shape is constructible if it can be drawn using only an unmarked ruler ("straightedge") and a compass.
For example, the triangle can be constructed by the following procedure:
Et voila, one beautiful equilateral triangle. So a three-sided shape is constructible.
A four-sided shape turns out to be very easy. It turns out to be possible to bisect any angle*, so just take a straight line (technically an angle of 180°) and bisect it. That gives you two lines at 90° to each other - a right angle. Draw two more perpendicular lines and you've got yourself a square.
Well, a rectangle actually. But the idea's the important thing :)
So you can draw a triangle and you can draw a square. Can you draw a pentagon? The answer turns out to be "yes", but the procedure is so intricate and icky that I'm not even going to try to explain it. By this time, mathematicians were coming to realise that a new approach was needed.
That's where abstract algebra came in. To be continued...
* Procedure left as an exercise for the interested reader. Or google it. What do I care?
Read the full post
I really like the skeptical atheist community
They raise moral questions that I actually have to think about before discussing.
If anyone's interested then, before clicking that link, I would strongly recommend reciting the Skeptic's Morality Mantra seven* times:
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
* Because the regular septagon is the smallest regular polygon that you can't construct with a ruler and compass. Galois Theory kicks ass.
Read the full post
If anyone's interested then, before clicking that link, I would strongly recommend reciting the Skeptic's Morality Mantra seven* times:
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
"Ick" is not a valid argument
* Because the regular septagon is the smallest regular polygon that you can't construct with a ruler and compass. Galois Theory kicks ass.
Read the full post
Monday, December 31, 2007
My brain on Nietzsche
The spate of low-level panic induced by reading Flowers for Algernon prompted me to spend a lot of time thinking about how my brain works: the good, the bad, and the irritating. After some cogitation, I've got a new model to play with. In this model, my mind is analogous to a boardroom at some large bureaucratic company.
Bear with me.
The reason I'm going off down this highway of thought is one of the most enduring flaws I see within myself: a serious lack of self-discipline. I've never been good at telling myself to jump through hoops. I need to see the cheese before I can bring myself to run the maze. The annoying thing is that, once I'm up against a deadline, I'm really rather effective - at GCSE* in particular I pulled some extremely good results out of a very small bag of revision.
Of course, then I went to Cambridge Uni, which demanded a less deadline-oriented approach to education, and I crashed and burned messily**. So I'm keen to figure out precisely what is going on in my brain.
It's well-known that neural networks operate by a process known as "pandemonium", whereby a bunch of different subnetworks all "yell" loudly, and the loudest one gets listened to. The behaviour of my brain is going to be heavily based on the different subnetworks that are competing for head-room - its cast of characters, if you will. Enter stage left.
The first character is a workmanlike kinda guy, wearing jeans with patches on the knees and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Don't assume that he's a slacker, though; this individual is a creature of pure drive and motivation. He's the part of me that takes over at the end of a long weekend, when I'm in a good mood and get this inexplicably strong desire to tidy my room or lift some weights. I think of him as the Uebermensch - he's the man with the plan, and if he was in charge of me the whole time then the sky would be the limit.
The rest of the characters all have their own individual traits, but I'm going to refer to them by their collective name: the bureaucrats. Most of the time, they're snooty about the Uebermensch - what's this poorly-dressed peon doing invading their boardroom? How dare he! If you want another metaphor, think of the stereotypical pompous arts professor, astounded that anyone would dare challenge the obvious rightness of his opinions about everything. The bureaucrats are the parts of me that bicker and play politics and laze about. When the bureaucrats are out in strength, the Uebermensch doesn't have a chance - his voice can't be heard over the ruckus. That's what happens when I start procrastinating and realise that three hours have vanished.
Of course, the situation all changes when there's something on the line. The stereotypical arts professor, regardless of his social constructivist philosophy, wouldn't want to get in a plane that hadn't been designed by a qualified mechanic. Similarly, when trouble looms, the bureaucrats don't hesitate to hand over the reins to the one guy in their midst who's actually good at achieving things. They go and hide and let the Uebermensch get on with it.
I'm being a bit hard on the bureaucrats here; they're not all bad. In fact, it's probably one of them that's dominant within me as I write this. But they're not good at doing stuff. They're only good at talking about it. That's why I'm sitting here typing rather than doing one of the hundred jobs that are clearly visible on all sides of me.
If this model is accurate, what should I be trying to achieve? I need to feed the Uebermensch, to make him big and strong so that he can hold his own against the orgiastic laziness of the other characters. I need to figure out how to make the Uebermensch appear more frequently. I need to figure out how to make him stay longer once he's out of his cage***.
Observations so far:
1) the Uebermensch comes out most often when I'm well-rested - by his nature, he's more prone to tiredness than the bureaucrats.
2) intellectual activity is actually bad for the Uebermensch - in particular, I'm doing him no favours by blogging.
3) the presence of people tends to act as a disruptor - it's more likely that the Uebermensch will become dominant, but more likely that he'll fall from grace again.
Hopefully I can put together some sort of strategy for boosting my effectiveness based on this. Fingers crossed.
* For you USians, I think this is equivalent to end of high school.
** By which I mean I got a 2:2. Not burned so much as mildly scorched, but I'm convinced I had the potential to get at least a 2:1.
*** In one of my rare nods to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the book that started me blogging in the first place, I would equate this with what Pirsig refers to as "gumption". When you've got gumption on your side - when the Uebermensch is loose - stuff just starts to happen.
Read the full post
Bear with me.
The reason I'm going off down this highway of thought is one of the most enduring flaws I see within myself: a serious lack of self-discipline. I've never been good at telling myself to jump through hoops. I need to see the cheese before I can bring myself to run the maze. The annoying thing is that, once I'm up against a deadline, I'm really rather effective - at GCSE* in particular I pulled some extremely good results out of a very small bag of revision.
Of course, then I went to Cambridge Uni, which demanded a less deadline-oriented approach to education, and I crashed and burned messily**. So I'm keen to figure out precisely what is going on in my brain.
It's well-known that neural networks operate by a process known as "pandemonium", whereby a bunch of different subnetworks all "yell" loudly, and the loudest one gets listened to. The behaviour of my brain is going to be heavily based on the different subnetworks that are competing for head-room - its cast of characters, if you will. Enter stage left.
The first character is a workmanlike kinda guy, wearing jeans with patches on the knees and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Don't assume that he's a slacker, though; this individual is a creature of pure drive and motivation. He's the part of me that takes over at the end of a long weekend, when I'm in a good mood and get this inexplicably strong desire to tidy my room or lift some weights. I think of him as the Uebermensch - he's the man with the plan, and if he was in charge of me the whole time then the sky would be the limit.
The rest of the characters all have their own individual traits, but I'm going to refer to them by their collective name: the bureaucrats. Most of the time, they're snooty about the Uebermensch - what's this poorly-dressed peon doing invading their boardroom? How dare he! If you want another metaphor, think of the stereotypical pompous arts professor, astounded that anyone would dare challenge the obvious rightness of his opinions about everything. The bureaucrats are the parts of me that bicker and play politics and laze about. When the bureaucrats are out in strength, the Uebermensch doesn't have a chance - his voice can't be heard over the ruckus. That's what happens when I start procrastinating and realise that three hours have vanished.
Of course, the situation all changes when there's something on the line. The stereotypical arts professor, regardless of his social constructivist philosophy, wouldn't want to get in a plane that hadn't been designed by a qualified mechanic. Similarly, when trouble looms, the bureaucrats don't hesitate to hand over the reins to the one guy in their midst who's actually good at achieving things. They go and hide and let the Uebermensch get on with it.
I'm being a bit hard on the bureaucrats here; they're not all bad. In fact, it's probably one of them that's dominant within me as I write this. But they're not good at doing stuff. They're only good at talking about it. That's why I'm sitting here typing rather than doing one of the hundred jobs that are clearly visible on all sides of me.
If this model is accurate, what should I be trying to achieve? I need to feed the Uebermensch, to make him big and strong so that he can hold his own against the orgiastic laziness of the other characters. I need to figure out how to make the Uebermensch appear more frequently. I need to figure out how to make him stay longer once he's out of his cage***.
Observations so far:
1) the Uebermensch comes out most often when I'm well-rested - by his nature, he's more prone to tiredness than the bureaucrats.
2) intellectual activity is actually bad for the Uebermensch - in particular, I'm doing him no favours by blogging.
3) the presence of people tends to act as a disruptor - it's more likely that the Uebermensch will become dominant, but more likely that he'll fall from grace again.
Hopefully I can put together some sort of strategy for boosting my effectiveness based on this. Fingers crossed.
* For you USians, I think this is equivalent to end of high school.
** By which I mean I got a 2:2. Not burned so much as mildly scorched, but I'm convinced I had the potential to get at least a 2:1.
*** In one of my rare nods to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the book that started me blogging in the first place, I would equate this with what Pirsig refers to as "gumption". When you've got gumption on your side - when the Uebermensch is loose - stuff just starts to happen.
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The Horror!
Edgar Allen Poe? A rank amateur. HP Lovecraft? A purple-prose poseur. Mary Shelley? Bram Stoker? Cheesy hacks, the lot of them.
If you want a real horror story, try Daniel Keyes.
Flowers for Algernon is a story about a guy with IQ 70 - barely functional - who is experimented on to increase his intelligence. Soon he's at IQ 180, soaking up the world's knowledge like a very smart sponge. In particular, he learns everything there is to know about the experiment that was performed on him. And he learns that the experiment's premise was fatally flawed. In a very short time, his new-found genius is going to dissolve like a snowflake under a blowtorch. He's going to lose it all.
The book tracks his slow deterioration down through normal levels of intelligence, getting less and less coherent as his brain decays. By the time the story is finished, the person he had briefly become has evaporated. I swear, this story had me up half the frickin' night with nervous insomnia.
My mind is what makes me who I am. The thought of losing that freaks me out on a level so basic it's hard to describe*. If I ever contract Alzheimers and degenerate to the point where I cease to be me, someone please shoot me. I don't want to think of myself continuing like that, as a soul without a mind.
* Obligatory religion tie-in: I feel the same about the thought that I might have a road-to-Damascus experience and spontaneously convert. If that happened, if I accepted religion on any other grounds than solid evidence, I wouldn't be me any more.
When people say "just pray to God and he'll change your heart", they seem to have this strange idea that that would be a good thing. I consider this to be painfully wrong.
Read the full post
If you want a real horror story, try Daniel Keyes.
Flowers for Algernon is a story about a guy with IQ 70 - barely functional - who is experimented on to increase his intelligence. Soon he's at IQ 180, soaking up the world's knowledge like a very smart sponge. In particular, he learns everything there is to know about the experiment that was performed on him. And he learns that the experiment's premise was fatally flawed. In a very short time, his new-found genius is going to dissolve like a snowflake under a blowtorch. He's going to lose it all.
The book tracks his slow deterioration down through normal levels of intelligence, getting less and less coherent as his brain decays. By the time the story is finished, the person he had briefly become has evaporated. I swear, this story had me up half the frickin' night with nervous insomnia.
My mind is what makes me who I am. The thought of losing that freaks me out on a level so basic it's hard to describe*. If I ever contract Alzheimers and degenerate to the point where I cease to be me, someone please shoot me. I don't want to think of myself continuing like that, as a soul without a mind.
* Obligatory religion tie-in: I feel the same about the thought that I might have a road-to-Damascus experience and spontaneously convert. If that happened, if I accepted religion on any other grounds than solid evidence, I wouldn't be me any more.
When people say "just pray to God and he'll change your heart", they seem to have this strange idea that that would be a good thing. I consider this to be painfully wrong.
Read the full post
Sunday, December 30, 2007
The art of not listening
Families, huh? I've known plutonium that was less reactionary.
We just had the usual Christmas row, where my mum orders my sister (who is 18 going on 30) to do the thank-you letters, my sister gets irritated at being ordered around, my mum misinterprets the irritation as bone-idleness, and it all spirals down from there.
This is probably a not insignificant part of why I try to be cold-blooded in my decisions: because I've seen the merry hell that an emotion-driven approach to life can wreak.
Read the full post
We just had the usual Christmas row, where my mum orders my sister (who is 18 going on 30) to do the thank-you letters, my sister gets irritated at being ordered around, my mum misinterprets the irritation as bone-idleness, and it all spirals down from there.
This is probably a not insignificant part of why I try to be cold-blooded in my decisions: because I've seen the merry hell that an emotion-driven approach to life can wreak.
Read the full post
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
New laptop
I just got my new laptop through in the mail. I heard that Dell was retailing laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled, so I thought I'd give it a try. Here's a brief review.
Hardware
I went for the absolute minimum on all hardware options, and it doesn't seem to have done me any harm. The system is very fast and responsive. The keyboard is nice and clicky. The touchpad is a pain in the ass cos I keep banging into it, but that's true of every laptop I've ever used.
One concern I have is that I think one of my speakers just spontaneously blew out while I was writing this. I'm hoping it's just a glitch that'll correct itself.
Software
Ubuntu is - as always - a very nice system. The only problem I've had so far is wireless connectivity. My family's ActionTec router has an odd feature: as well as entering the WEP hex key, you have to enter a key number from 1 to 4. This is not supported in the Ubuntu user interface. There's apparently some way to make it work via command-line wizardry, but I'd really rather not.
Fortunately, apparently all I need to do is set the key number on the router to 1. Unfortunately, this has given my dad, who is a Windows geek, an opportunity to be irritatingly smug.
One slight tweak that would have been nice would be if the good folks at Dell had configured the regional information before sending it to me. I had to choose timezone and keyboard layout. This wasn't a problem for me, but someone who didn't know what the different keyboard layouts were might have had trouble. Also, Firefox's spell-checker was set to German for some reason.
Conclusion
Generally a nice system, and fully useable for normal people. This is a laptop that your granny can use, if you spend a whole 5 minutes setting it up for her. And she'll probably enjoy the selection of simple games, too.
A couple of annoying niggles, but nothing life-threatening (apart from the possible speaker failure, which I'm willing to chalk up to bad luck). I hereby give this system an initial mark of 7 out of 10. Not bad for a bottom-of-the-range gizmo like this.
Read the full post
Hardware
I went for the absolute minimum on all hardware options, and it doesn't seem to have done me any harm. The system is very fast and responsive. The keyboard is nice and clicky. The touchpad is a pain in the ass cos I keep banging into it, but that's true of every laptop I've ever used.
One concern I have is that I think one of my speakers just spontaneously blew out while I was writing this. I'm hoping it's just a glitch that'll correct itself.
Software
Ubuntu is - as always - a very nice system. The only problem I've had so far is wireless connectivity. My family's ActionTec router has an odd feature: as well as entering the WEP hex key, you have to enter a key number from 1 to 4. This is not supported in the Ubuntu user interface. There's apparently some way to make it work via command-line wizardry, but I'd really rather not.
Fortunately, apparently all I need to do is set the key number on the router to 1. Unfortunately, this has given my dad, who is a Windows geek, an opportunity to be irritatingly smug.
One slight tweak that would have been nice would be if the good folks at Dell had configured the regional information before sending it to me. I had to choose timezone and keyboard layout. This wasn't a problem for me, but someone who didn't know what the different keyboard layouts were might have had trouble. Also, Firefox's spell-checker was set to German for some reason.
Conclusion
Generally a nice system, and fully useable for normal people. This is a laptop that your granny can use, if you spend a whole 5 minutes setting it up for her. And she'll probably enjoy the selection of simple games, too.
A couple of annoying niggles, but nothing life-threatening (apart from the possible speaker failure, which I'm willing to chalk up to bad luck). I hereby give this system an initial mark of 7 out of 10. Not bad for a bottom-of-the-range gizmo like this.
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Saturday, December 15, 2007
Lovely gesture
I just got a CD through the post. David, the guy running the local Humanist group, routinely records and writes up the meeting notes. Once he'd done that for the meeting I attended, he sent me the recording as a souvenir of my brief tenure as chairperson.
That is just so sweet!
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That is just so sweet!
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Thursday, December 13, 2007
Tat Thoughts cont.
The discussion on this thread is getting hard to read because of its length (most of which is my fault). I'm creating this post to make things more readable. See the comments section for my response to Terri's last post.
When I have a moment I might break each of the key issues out into its own post, which will make keeping track of the lines of argument infinitely easier.
Read the full post
When I have a moment I might break each of the key issues out into its own post, which will make keeping track of the lines of argument infinitely easier.
Read the full post
Monday, December 10, 2007
Humanists ahoy!
I finally got round to checking out the local Humanist group yesterday (Sunday). It was an interesting experience. This is only a short write-up as I'm on lunchbreak at the moment and don't have much time left.
For those who haven't come across it before, humanism is an atheistic/agnostic belief system. I haven't come across any humanist credos that I can recall, but their party line could be summed up as "morality without credulity". In the UK, this belief system is represented by the British Humanist Association, with whom the Berkshire Humanists (who I visited) are very loosely affiliated.
On the good side, the group was lovely - very friendly and considerate. The topic of conversation was interesting to me: we discussed the pagan origins of Christmas traditions (short version: if a Christian ever says Christmas is being co-opted as a secular holiday, feel free to laugh loudly). And they cheerfully encouraged me to chair the meeting, which I enjoyed to a quite unhealthy degree. Also, homemade mince pies.
There were a few bad points. Most obvious was that the average age was roughly 60. This wasn't a problem for me - I like talking to elderly people - but it would put off most people my age. Secondly, the group isn't really big enough to be strongly self-sustaining - only 12 attendees. You may have noticed that in most churches the management committee is a small cabal that quietly deals with all the admin? Well, in this group the committee is everyone, so a big chunk of the meeting was taken up with discussion of these rather tedious administrative issues.
Or, alternatively, the management committee was one person, a guy called David who seems to do most of the admin tasks singlehandedly. A very dedicated individual. However, he was also the single biggest problem I had as chairperson: he insisted on going into excessive detail on the committees he was involved with and the tasks he was undertaking. Completely overran the time limit, and he was so clearly pouring his heart and soul into it that it was hard to ask him to cut short.
If I were to continue going to this, I would feel a very strong urge to start to make changes. The group clearly has momentum - it's been going for decades - but it could use a friendly shakeup. Key points would be:
1) Get all David's information on committees, websites, etc into a structured format. The guy deserves to have his say, but in the meeting it would be far more effective to just reel off a list of headlines and ask that people review a handout for further info.
2) Make a clear break between the management/admin team and the ordinary members. Work on the principle that the members probably would prefer as little dry information as possible, with the caveats that a) the info should be accessible if they want it, and b) the admin team should work to "upgrade" existing members*.
3) Split into smaller groups during the discussion period. I wish I'd suggested this at the time, because I could see that a couple of the quieter members were getting left out in the cold. Humanism seems to attract people with strong personalities.
4) Resist the urge to computerise everything - it leaves the older members out in the cold. With such a high average age, and correspondingly low average degree of computer experience, the internet is mainly useful as an organisational principle and an advertising tool, not as a way of communicating en masse with members.
5) Look less at joining various committees and more at advertising to the general public. For example, I was hooked by a poster in the local library. Encourage David to think in those terms. Maybe I should pass him the link to this site.
* I'm suddenly getting flashbacks to the Loyalty Ladder that we were taught about in my OU training course. Damn, I hadn't realised that stuff had sunk in so well!
Read the full post
For those who haven't come across it before, humanism is an atheistic/agnostic belief system. I haven't come across any humanist credos that I can recall, but their party line could be summed up as "morality without credulity". In the UK, this belief system is represented by the British Humanist Association, with whom the Berkshire Humanists (who I visited) are very loosely affiliated.
On the good side, the group was lovely - very friendly and considerate. The topic of conversation was interesting to me: we discussed the pagan origins of Christmas traditions (short version: if a Christian ever says Christmas is being co-opted as a secular holiday, feel free to laugh loudly). And they cheerfully encouraged me to chair the meeting, which I enjoyed to a quite unhealthy degree. Also, homemade mince pies.
There were a few bad points. Most obvious was that the average age was roughly 60. This wasn't a problem for me - I like talking to elderly people - but it would put off most people my age. Secondly, the group isn't really big enough to be strongly self-sustaining - only 12 attendees. You may have noticed that in most churches the management committee is a small cabal that quietly deals with all the admin? Well, in this group the committee is everyone, so a big chunk of the meeting was taken up with discussion of these rather tedious administrative issues.
Or, alternatively, the management committee was one person, a guy called David who seems to do most of the admin tasks singlehandedly. A very dedicated individual. However, he was also the single biggest problem I had as chairperson: he insisted on going into excessive detail on the committees he was involved with and the tasks he was undertaking. Completely overran the time limit, and he was so clearly pouring his heart and soul into it that it was hard to ask him to cut short.
If I were to continue going to this, I would feel a very strong urge to start to make changes. The group clearly has momentum - it's been going for decades - but it could use a friendly shakeup. Key points would be:
1) Get all David's information on committees, websites, etc into a structured format. The guy deserves to have his say, but in the meeting it would be far more effective to just reel off a list of headlines and ask that people review a handout for further info.
2) Make a clear break between the management/admin team and the ordinary members. Work on the principle that the members probably would prefer as little dry information as possible, with the caveats that a) the info should be accessible if they want it, and b) the admin team should work to "upgrade" existing members*.
3) Split into smaller groups during the discussion period. I wish I'd suggested this at the time, because I could see that a couple of the quieter members were getting left out in the cold. Humanism seems to attract people with strong personalities.
4) Resist the urge to computerise everything - it leaves the older members out in the cold. With such a high average age, and correspondingly low average degree of computer experience, the internet is mainly useful as an organisational principle and an advertising tool, not as a way of communicating en masse with members.
5) Look less at joining various committees and more at advertising to the general public. For example, I was hooked by a poster in the local library. Encourage David to think in those terms. Maybe I should pass him the link to this site.
* I'm suddenly getting flashbacks to the Loyalty Ladder that we were taught about in my OU training course. Damn, I hadn't realised that stuff had sunk in so well!
Read the full post
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Limits of reason
Consider inductive reasoning (or falsificationism or whatever). Broadly speaking, this operates off the principle that assuming the universe has uniformity can't do any harm, and may do some good.
There's a pathological case where this isn't true: where the universe is actively trying to make your life difficult. In that situation, the uniformity assumption is a death-trap. Just imagine trying to win a poker game by rigorous experimentation - you'd get 0wned.
The human brain has access to a different kind of rationality designed to handle these cases. It's a rationality aimed at (to quote Neal Stephenson) condensing fact from the vapour of nuance. It uses rules like "once accident, twice coincidence, three times enemy action". It's not rational in the usual sense - but, insofar as rationality is ultimately pragmatic, it has an equal claim to the title.
So in a sense you could say that conspiracy theorists aren't really irrational - they're just jumping the gun slightly by engaging this secondary mode of rationality before they know there's something there to be investigated. The problem is, of course, that once it's been engaged it can't be turned off. When later tests come back negative, that just means your enemy is even smarter than you thought.
Read the full post
There's a pathological case where this isn't true: where the universe is actively trying to make your life difficult. In that situation, the uniformity assumption is a death-trap. Just imagine trying to win a poker game by rigorous experimentation - you'd get 0wned.
The human brain has access to a different kind of rationality designed to handle these cases. It's a rationality aimed at (to quote Neal Stephenson) condensing fact from the vapour of nuance. It uses rules like "once accident, twice coincidence, three times enemy action". It's not rational in the usual sense - but, insofar as rationality is ultimately pragmatic, it has an equal claim to the title.
So in a sense you could say that conspiracy theorists aren't really irrational - they're just jumping the gun slightly by engaging this secondary mode of rationality before they know there's something there to be investigated. The problem is, of course, that once it's been engaged it can't be turned off. When later tests come back negative, that just means your enemy is even smarter than you thought.
Read the full post
Monday, December 03, 2007
Tat thoughts
I'm pondering getting a tattoo. In fact, there are only two reasons I haven't done so yet. The first is cultural: I'm effectively a yuppie, and the yuppie class in England tends to look down on tattoos. I personally don't hold this opinion, but would I find myself in awkward situations with my peers?
The second reason is metaphysical: I'm not sure what tattoo to get. I feel like, if I start getting needled, my tat(s) should have some sort of theme to them. For example, in Robin Hobb's "Liveship Traders" trilogy, one of the characters gets a tattoo each time he has had insanely good luck. In XMen 2, one of the characters gets a tattoo for every sin. My guiding philosophy is an obsession with reality, so my approach to tats should probably reflect this.
The problem I have is that, as a reality-obsessive, any conclusion I draw about reality would be purely provisional. In other words, it's possible that I'd change my stance later - in which case I'd have to get the tattoo erased. So how about this for an idea: I get a tattoo only when I'm confident enough about my stance that I am willing to take the risk of erasure? Then, when someone asks me how sure I really am about X, I can say "this sure" and point to the symbol of X tattooed on my skin.
This would have an additional psychological benefit. One of the biggest problems that I have is a tendency to revisit old intellectual stomping grounds long after I should have just let the subject drop. If I am truly confident enough to get a tattoo, that will serve as a constant reminder that, absent any major new discoveries, I've done my due diligence and can quit wasting my valuable time.
At this point in my life, I hold two positions that fit the bill perfectly. The first is atheism, for which I would tend to go for the symbol described here (because I'm a maths geek and I love it). The second is evolutionary biology. I'm not entirely sure what to use for this - possibly the Darwin fish?
As an aside, I'd note that any theists or creationists who feel they have a solid reason for belief in God should speak now or forever hold their peace. After I get these tats, Mr Evangelism Target will have left the building.
Read the full post
The second reason is metaphysical: I'm not sure what tattoo to get. I feel like, if I start getting needled, my tat(s) should have some sort of theme to them. For example, in Robin Hobb's "Liveship Traders" trilogy, one of the characters gets a tattoo each time he has had insanely good luck. In XMen 2, one of the characters gets a tattoo for every sin. My guiding philosophy is an obsession with reality, so my approach to tats should probably reflect this.
The problem I have is that, as a reality-obsessive, any conclusion I draw about reality would be purely provisional. In other words, it's possible that I'd change my stance later - in which case I'd have to get the tattoo erased. So how about this for an idea: I get a tattoo only when I'm confident enough about my stance that I am willing to take the risk of erasure? Then, when someone asks me how sure I really am about X, I can say "this sure" and point to the symbol of X tattooed on my skin.
This would have an additional psychological benefit. One of the biggest problems that I have is a tendency to revisit old intellectual stomping grounds long after I should have just let the subject drop. If I am truly confident enough to get a tattoo, that will serve as a constant reminder that, absent any major new discoveries, I've done my due diligence and can quit wasting my valuable time.
At this point in my life, I hold two positions that fit the bill perfectly. The first is atheism, for which I would tend to go for the symbol described here (because I'm a maths geek and I love it). The second is evolutionary biology. I'm not entirely sure what to use for this - possibly the Darwin fish?
As an aside, I'd note that any theists or creationists who feel they have a solid reason for belief in God should speak now or forever hold their peace. After I get these tats, Mr Evangelism Target will have left the building.
Read the full post
Thursday, November 08, 2007
For the record
There are many arguments that people make that genuinely bug me. The one time I ever got really pissed off at a secondary school teacher was when they refused to discuss something because I "don't need know know that for the exam". Other irritating arguments range from patronising remarks, through straw men of my position, to ad hominems and outright lies.
It's not often that I come across a comment that includes all of these at the same time. Via Good Math, Bad Math I being you George Shollenberger, who is quoted as saying:
OK, let's get encyclopedic here. If I as an atheist "show no interest in developing knowledge of God" then why do I have the following piled up within arm's reach (and mostly in the process of being read):
And that's only a portion of a fraction of my collection, because a lot of my books are in boxes at my new (and as yet unoccupied) flat, or buried too deeply in my book piles for me to easily get at them.
That's a minimum of 8 distinct religious stances that I've been actively investigating - and, depending on how you count it, the number could be much higher. How many religions have you studied lately, George?
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It's not often that I come across a comment that includes all of these at the same time. Via Good Math, Bad Math I being you George Shollenberger, who is quoted as saying:
In my experiences with atheists, atheists generally show no interest in developing knowledge of God. If they did express interests in God they would find God and would not be atheists.
OK, let's get encyclopedic here. If I as an atheist "show no interest in developing knowledge of God" then why do I have the following piled up within arm's reach (and mostly in the process of being read):
- "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James
- "Hindu Writings: A short introduction to the major sources"
- "A History of the Sikhs"
- The New Testament
- "Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity"
- "Darwin's Black Box" by Behe
- "A History of the Christian Church"
- "Lost Christianities" and "Lost Scriptures" by Bart Ehrman
- "The Synoptic Gospels: A commentary"
- Another copy of the Bible
- "Zen and the Art of Flower Arrangement"
- "Facts for Life" (a Hare Krishna book)
- "The Satanic Bible" by Anton LaVey
- Sundry atheist books
And that's only a portion of a fraction of my collection, because a lot of my books are in boxes at my new (and as yet unoccupied) flat, or buried too deeply in my book piles for me to easily get at them.
That's a minimum of 8 distinct religious stances that I've been actively investigating - and, depending on how you count it, the number could be much higher. How many religions have you studied lately, George?
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Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Voodoo Kitty
I've recently made a worrying discovery: my kitty is practising magic on me. And we're not talking about rabbit-out-of-a-hat, no-it's-up-your-other-sleeve trickery; we're talking real spooky stuff.
See, over time there have been various people in the family who fed this cat, and one time it was me. For a couple of weeks, if he heard me moving, he'd run towards his foodbowl and I'd obediently trot along behind him. He's apparently never forgotten this. And, in accordance with the fundamental magical principle of sympathy, every time he wants me to feed him he runs in front of me in an attempt to supernaturally "drag" me towards the tin of kitty biscuits.
A similar behaviour has been observed in pigeons. If you feed them at effectively random intervals, they'll associate whatever action they were performing at the time with food. It has been demonstrated (readable summary here) that this can lead to all sorts of weird behaviour - little "rain dances" that the pigeons perform to attract food.
It's fascinating to me to see such a very human form of insanity emerge in lower animals. And in a way, it's kinda reassuring. We as a species may be barking mad, but at least we're not alone.
And finally, the obligatory LolCat:
Maybe I oughta feed that cat before he gets too irritated...
Read the full post
See, over time there have been various people in the family who fed this cat, and one time it was me. For a couple of weeks, if he heard me moving, he'd run towards his foodbowl and I'd obediently trot along behind him. He's apparently never forgotten this. And, in accordance with the fundamental magical principle of sympathy, every time he wants me to feed him he runs in front of me in an attempt to supernaturally "drag" me towards the tin of kitty biscuits.
A similar behaviour has been observed in pigeons. If you feed them at effectively random intervals, they'll associate whatever action they were performing at the time with food. It has been demonstrated (readable summary here) that this can lead to all sorts of weird behaviour - little "rain dances" that the pigeons perform to attract food.
It's fascinating to me to see such a very human form of insanity emerge in lower animals. And in a way, it's kinda reassuring. We as a species may be barking mad, but at least we're not alone.
And finally, the obligatory LolCat:
Maybe I oughta feed that cat before he gets too irritated...
Read the full post
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Placebo Paradox
In my last post, I found myself trying to make a rather subtle point about the perception of religion. I'm fairly sure I failed.
The point was this: there's a popular perception that religion can be split into "good" and "bad" religion, and that atheists ought to restrict themselves to attacking the latter sort. The problem is that this dividing line is, paradoxically, only visible from outside the religion.
The cause of this paradox is quite hard to explain, so I'm going to hijack the superb explanatory powers of a blogger called Skeptico. Please read this article on homeopathy.
To summarise Skeptico's point: the idea that it's bad to treat malaria with homeopathy only makes sense if we acknowledge that homeopathy doesn't actually work. If we believe that homeopathy does work, using it to treat malaria is clearly the right thing to do. This is the paradox: the only people who have standing to say that homeopathic malaria cures are dafter than homeopathic cold cures are those who don't believe in homeopathy!
Exactly the same paradox applies with religion. Atheists are commonly enjoined to restrict their attacks to the "appropriate target" of extremist religion. But this dissection of religion into "moderate" and "extreme" only makes sense if both variants are equally false.
When used in an argument against an atheist, the distinction makes no sense. So can the commentators in this debate please stop spluttering with horror when we turn our guns on the beliefs of people they happen to like?
Read the full post
The point was this: there's a popular perception that religion can be split into "good" and "bad" religion, and that atheists ought to restrict themselves to attacking the latter sort. The problem is that this dividing line is, paradoxically, only visible from outside the religion.
The cause of this paradox is quite hard to explain, so I'm going to hijack the superb explanatory powers of a blogger called Skeptico. Please read this article on homeopathy.
To summarise Skeptico's point: the idea that it's bad to treat malaria with homeopathy only makes sense if we acknowledge that homeopathy doesn't actually work. If we believe that homeopathy does work, using it to treat malaria is clearly the right thing to do. This is the paradox: the only people who have standing to say that homeopathic malaria cures are dafter than homeopathic cold cures are those who don't believe in homeopathy!
Exactly the same paradox applies with religion. Atheists are commonly enjoined to restrict their attacks to the "appropriate target" of extremist religion. But this dissection of religion into "moderate" and "extreme" only makes sense if both variants are equally false.
When used in an argument against an atheist, the distinction makes no sense. So can the commentators in this debate please stop spluttering with horror when we turn our guns on the beliefs of people they happen to like?
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