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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| Nooooooo! Someone needs to Do Something, Right Now! Beware: A cheese crisis looms  Gird your curds! Say a prayer for Camembert! A collapse in microbe diversity puts these French cheeses at risk. Just to get ahead of this: no, if this Vox article is correct, it's not because of climate change; yes, it's peoples' fault. This looming cheese crisis, this Camembert calamity, stems from a much bigger problem: a collapse in microbial diversity. On the plus side, Camembert Calamity would make a great name for a heavy metal Depeche Mode / Tears For Fears cover band. Each hunk of Camembert or smear of brie is an ecosystem, an assortment of fungi and bacteria that turn milk fats and proteins into hundreds of different compounds. Those compounds produce the flavors, smells, and textures we love. Hopefully, you already knew that the deliciousness of cheese is due to the action and presence of beneficial microorganisms. While we usually associate these things with spoiled food, they're all around us, and inside us, all the time; and as with multicellular plants or animals, the helpful ones outnumber the harmful ones. Some are also responsible for beer and wine. In recent decades, however, the genetic diversity of some of those microbes has caved. The article will, of course, expand on this statement, but of course they gotta hook readers with the bad news. To make cheese, producers typically take fresh milk and mix in bacteria and often fungi, including both yeasts and molds (fungi that tend to be fuzzy). Different microbe melanges produce different varieties of cheese. It's obviously way more complicated than this, but the full process isn't really relevant to the story. That's also a very simplistic description of mold... but an accurate enough one. Historically, Camemberts and bries likely relied on mold strains from a species of fungi called Penicillium biforme, according to Jeanne Ropars, an evolutionary biologist who works at a lab affiliated with CNRS. Each strain was slightly different genetically, and so the resulting cheeses had slightly different colors, flavors, and smells. I'm sure we all recognize at least part of that binomial. Roughly a century ago, however, cheesemakers identified a particular strain of P. biforme that was fast-growing and albino; it produced a fluffy white mold that was, apparently, quite appetizing. This strain, known as Penicillium camemberti, was henceforth considered the gold standard for brie and Camembert (which differ from one another mainly in size). It quickly dominated the cheese industry, and the diverse group of other mold strains used to make Camembert and brie, and the colors they produced, vanished from disuse. And, basically, that strain needs to be cloned, not bred, and cloning eventually results in DNA transcription errors. The whole thing reminds me of the banana problem, which I've written about before, here: "Going Bananas" Ironically, the problem there is one of the bad fungi (the kind that wear leather jackets, smoke cigarettes, and hang out in front of liquor stores). So it's analogous but not exactly the same thing. To its credit, the article mentions that.This rapid caving of genetic diversity threatens other food industries, too, as the author Dan Saladino writes in his book Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them. Hey, this was actually a book advertisement all along! That cheeses me off. At least be up front about it. Ultimately, this doesn’t mean that we must bid farewell to brie, or that Camembert on toast is, let’s say, toast. There is a way to save these cheeses, though it requires some changes in our own taste and tolerance. As for me, I look forward to greater cheese diversity. You want uniformity? Use that "pasteurized process cheese food" that America substitutes for culture (pun absolutely intended). As with beer and wine, I'd be happy to taste different cheeses produced with different friendly microorganisms. As the Mandalorian might say, "This is the Whey." |
| This week's retrospective takes me back to 2009, when I was still scrambling around for a blog theme that worked for me. While I wouldn't settle on "mostly links and commentary" for a while (and then, only after a long hiatus), I did sometimes feature links to things I found amusing or interesting (or both). The particular entry I landed on today is one of those, and it's from August 7 of that year: "Links are Back!" The first link, from Cracked (yes, it's been one of my go-to sites for well over 15 years), was apparently about Clinton rescuing American hostages in North Korea? While Cracked is obviously still around (as of two days ago, anyway), that link is broken. And somehow, we've collectively memory-holed that event. For context, at the time, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, but Bill didn't have a government position, having stepped down as President in January of 2001. While I often rely on a comedy site for my information, I know it's even less reliable than Wikipedia, which has this entry on the event. If you're curious.Speaking of Wikipedia, the second link in that 2009 entry of mine was to an entry about the really remarkably small "town" of Tenney, Minnesota. While the amusing line I quoted back then has since been edited out, the entry remains, and is a gloriously long and thorough one for a roughly 140-year-old rural community with a population of 5. These days, if I put more than one link in a blog entry, I find a way to relate one to the other. Back then, it was just whatever I happened to find at the time. So now, 15 years later, I'm not even going to try. I mean, the obvious common ground is "the US," but that's entirely too broad a category. If you can think of one, great. Me, I'm going back to video gaming. |
| Like to daydream? Well, consider this article from The Conversation. Author is British, so there are some weird-to-Americans spellings: If daydreaming has a dark side, wouldn't that be a daymare? Despite what we’re often taught to believe, daydreaming can be immensely useful. Especially when you're approaching a deadline. Daydreaming, when defined as thoughts that aren’t tied to what you’re currently doing, occupies a good chunk of our waking lives – an average of around 30% of the time if you randomly probe people. Hopefully not while you're at work. Because that would be time theft. You'd be stealing from the Company. You're not stealing from the Company, are you, Janice? But it’s estimated 2.5% of adults experience a type of excessive daydreaming which is defined as the disorder “maladaptive daydreaming”. So-called maladaptive daydreamers compulsively engage in vivid fantasies and daydreaming plots so excessively that it interferes with their ability to function in daily life. I suppose there is no activity (or, in this case, usually inactivity) that someone, somewhere, can't find a downside to. Unlike typical daydreams which can be fleeting (lasting seconds), maladaptive daydreamers can spend several hours at a time in a single daydream. Okay, fine. That does seem a bit excessive. These invented worlds are often rich and fantastical, with complex plots and intricate storylines that evolve over many years. You've just defined fiction writers. Except for the, you know... writing it all down part. With maladaptive daydreaming, there’s a strong urge to daydream and annoyance when this is not possible or interrupted. Most also find it difficult to stop or even reduce the amount of time they spend daydreaming. I'm no expert, but isn't that pretty much the classic definition of addiction? It’s important to note that immersive daydreaming and vivid fantasy activity isn’t by default maladaptive. I'm just leaving that quote here in case you can't be arsed to read the article (perhaps because you're too busy daydreaming), and are wondering if you should be concerned about yourself. Chances are, no. I think the article is about making the rest of us aware that people like this exist, not, for once, trying to tell us that we're doing something wrong. There seems to be a strong relationship between OCD and maladaptive daydreaming. One study found that over half of participants with maladaptive daydreaming also exhibited signs of OCD. This may suggest possible shared mechanisms between the two disorders, including intrusive thoughts, dissociation and a lack of cognitive control. Again, far from expert here, but I'm pretty sure that by OCD, they mean diagnosed by a professional, not just someone being coy about their cleaning and/or organizational habits. The fact that maladaptive daydreaming is not recognised as a psychiatric condition also means we know little about treatment options. There is one documented case study published in a peer-reviewed journal showing a 25-year-old man was able to cut the time he spent daydreaming in half – from nearly three hours daily to under an hour and a half. This was done over the course of six months using a combination of psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness. At last, a practical use for cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness. Maybe. As always, one data point does not a scientific study make. Somehow, "directing the patient to become a writer" doesn't seem to appear in the list of treatments. Finally, I can't do a title like that without posting the song I cribbed it from, which was written by John Stewart, but not that John Stewart: |
| Booze laws can be convoluted. You think they exist to promote public health and safety, and maybe some of them do, but mostly, the laws are about who does and does not get to profit from alcohol. (In order, that would be "governments and rich people," and "you.") Leave it to Cracked to find some of the weirdest ones. 5. In New York, Bartenders Are Forbidden from Not Giving Alcohol to Pregnant Customers Of all these examples, this one's actually the least weird. In general, bartenders are allowed to refuse service to customers. In the case of an intoxicated customer, they’re legally bound to refuse service. But they are legally banned from refusing service to a customer because they're pregnant, as this may be “pretext for discrimination or as a way to reinforce traditional gender norms or stereotypes.” For starters, the header is misleading. Bartenders aren't known for "giving" alcohol. They're known for selling it, and for patiently listening to sob stories in hopes of getting a tip. Further, while late-stage pregnancy is usually quite visible, from my understanding, some of the worst and most (eventually) visible effects of drinking while pregnant occur during the first trimester, when it's not usually obvious. And finally, we either need to assert that all adult humans are responsible for their own decisions, or go the way of places like Texas who exert government control over the pregnant ones. 4. The Very First Campaign Finance Law Was About Banning Alcohol Sales *in the US In 1811, Maryland banned liquor sales on Election Day, but the goal wasn’t just keeping the electorate sober in general. The goal was to keep politicians from buying voters alcohol — as bribes. As a result, this is remembered as the first campaign finance law. Well, this one's not that strange, either. If I'm having a hard time choosing between two evil politicians, I would definitely vote for the one who bought me a beer. 3. Happy Hour Bars That Legally Must Give Discounts on Soda During happy hour, bars slash prices on drinks, maybe selling you two for the price of one. The laws I'm most familiar with are, obviously, those of my own state. I still don't fully understand them, but to the best of my knowledge, in Virginia, you can't do two-for-one promotions or ever give out free booze. We do get to enjoy discounts, sometimes, and a half-price beer is functionally the same thing without forcing you to buy two drinks. This drives up business during times that are otherwise dead, and if they’re able to make a profit after halving their prices, that lets you know just how high the markup is on drinks the rest of the time. Markups can be high, but this is not necessarily the case. Sometimes it's about ensuring the bartender has the opportunity to get tips so they're less likely to run off and work somewhere else. France has it’s own anti-happiness law. They do have happy hour there (in France, they call it apéro hour), but since 2019, if a bar offers discounts on alcoholic drinks, they also have to offer discounts on soft drinks. Sadly, the law we need is to fine people for misusing apostrophes. 2. A Special Car for Drunk Drivers Also in France, if you get caught driving under the influence, they might suspend your license, leaving you unable to operate your car. I mean, technically, no, not unless they also impound the vehicle and put you on the "no-buy-vehicles" list. But legally, sure. If a vehicle moves at a top speed of 28 miles per hour or less, and has an engine with an output of no more than 5.4 horsepower, it’s a quadricycle, and in France, it’s known as a voiture sans permis, a VSP. That means you can drive it even if you have no valid license, so long as you’re 14 or older and have a few hours of recorded driving experience. On the one hand, a top speed of 28 mph (or, as I'm sure they express it over there, 45 kmh) is going to reduce, though not eliminate, the hazards of drunk driving. On the other, you're pretty much limited to city driving, and cities there tend to have bars within walking distance, so what's the point? 1. The U.S. Has No Minimum Drinking Age, Actually Yeah, technically correct. But effectively not. Today, all 50 states set a 21 minimum. Even so, nearly every state offers some exceptions. In states like Wisconsin, for example, people of any age can drink so long as they’re with a parent or spouse who’s over 21. Wisconsin's drinking culture is a truly awesome thing to behold. In Puerto Rico (which is part of America, despite what that one song from West Side Story left entire confused generations thinking), the minimum drinking age is simply 18. Puerto Rico has highways, but they gladly reject 10 percent of the funds they could get. Some things are more important. Me? I say lower the drinking age and increase the driving age. That way you get most of the stupid out of your system before you even get behind the wheel of a car. Better yet, hurry up with the self-driving car thing. As you know, I'm alcohol-positive. But drunk driving? Let's just say I agree more with the French on that one. |
| It's about that time of year for most of us, so here's a timely article from Atlas Obscura (copied from The Conversation) to consider: Why Daylight Saving Time Messes With Your Brain To “spring forward” is more damaging to our health than to “fall back,” according to some surprising science. While health shouldn't be the only measure of a thing's worth, if something's unhealthy, then it at least ought to be fun or provide some other benefit. And I'm not convinced switching clocks around twice a year is of any real benefit. This bit is US-centric, but other countries use some variant of DST, so it may be relevant. As people in the U.S. prepare to set their clocks ahead one hour on Sunday, March 10, 2024, I find myself bracing for the annual ritual of media stories about the disruptions to daily routines caused by switching from standard time to daylight saving time. And now you've added to them. Oops... so have I. Damn. But the effects go beyond simple inconvenience. "Inconvenience" is a valid reason to do, or stop doing, something; let's not dismiss it. Researchers are discovering that “springing ahead” each March is connected with serious negative health effects, including an uptick in heart attacks and teen sleep deprivation. On the other hand, an unreplicated study or two is not a valid reason to do, or stop doing, something. Mind you, I'm not saying the findings are bullshit, or that I don't like them (I happen to be on the "no time switching" team, personally), just the same sort of thing I've been harping on all week. I’ve studied the pros and cons of these twice-annual rituals for more than five years as a professor of neurology and pediatrics and the director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s sleep division. Admittedly, those are some impressive credentials. I do have one quibble, and it's not about neurology, medicine, or somnology: However, the two time shifts—jolting as they may be—are not equal. Standard time most closely approximates natural light, with the sun directly overhead at or near noon. This is misleading. Or, well, misleading in most locations. And I'll mansplain why. First: On a world with 24 equal time zones whose boundaries exactly follow lines of longitude, set up so that the middle longitude of each time zone most closely matches the average zenith of the sun at noon, you still have edge cases: on each edge of the time zone, noon will be off from average solar zenith by 30 minutes. Imagine two people standing on either side of this boundary line of longitude, close enough to touch each other. For one of them, it'll be 11:30 am; for the other, 12:30 pm. And yet both would see the sun at its daily high point in the sky. Well, there would still be a day-to-day wobble, because of the complicated interplay of the Earth's elliptical orbit and its rotation, but hopefully, you get the idea. This offset changes as you cross the time zone going east or west, but only at the middle longitude is it near zero. Second: For sociopolitical reasons, few areas follow the designated time zones. Some countries (even large ones like China) do away with time zones entirely. This leads to even greater divergence between noon and solar noon at many locations. Hell, some places split the difference (notably areas within Australia and India), and the time there is always something:30 when most of the world sees something:00. Third: as I noted in "First," solar noon occurs at a different time (based on a standard 24-hour clock) every day, no matter where you're standing. The sun's location in the sky, throughout the year, at any given clock time, moves around not only north to south with the seasons, but also a bit east to west. This results in a very pleasing pattern known as an analemma (that link, which will take you to Wikipedia, explains the whole thing better than I can in a relatively short blog entry).I'm focusing on solar noon here because that is traditionally what was meant by "noon:" when a sundial's shadow is shortest during the day. I recently found an interesting map  that displays the difference between solar time and clock time, by country and time zone. If you go to that link, you'll see a preponderance of red. This does not mean that the country or area in question voted Republican in the last elections; it means that politicians of all colors seem to favor solar time being behind standard time, rather than vice-versa. Note especially Argentina, which should be mostly in the same time zone as the far east of Canada but is not; and China, which, as I said above, only acknowledges one official time.Other things I found interesting from that map: 1) if you look closely, you can see the 1/2 hour time zone areas; 2) England and France are in different time zones despite being mostly the same longitude (which is terribly on point for both countries); and 3) even London, which through accidents of history defines the basis of all time zones, isn't set for solar noon = clock noon. Whew. That was a lengthy diversion, especially considering the huge number of people who insist that DST gives them an extra hour of daylight. It does not. It only moves the clock around. Hell, even the end of the article is worded like that. So I won't quote further from the article; suffice it to say that the author lays out her case along with some fascinating history and statistics. She seems to be on the side of "just adopt standard time year-round," though to that I'd add "bring the time zone boundaries closer to where they ought to be based on UTC." In closing, then, I'll just add this: it doesn't much matter to me one way or the other, as I'm retired and a night owl. So I don't care on a personal level; I just like things to be logical and consistent, which I know is asking too much of humanity. The most common objection I've heard to year-round DST is: "I don't want to wake up and go to work in the dark." That argument is a condemnation of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic, not a reason to keep switching clocks around. |
| Speaking of backing things up with science... from Big Think: Everyone is wrong about “Love Languages.” Here’s why. Big Think spoke to the author of "The 5 Love Languages" about the popular relationship theory — and its lack of scientific support. I'm not immune to knee-jerk reactions. Sure, I try to reason through them later, but, as I suspect most people are, sometimes I just hear about something and react with instant rage or disgust. I'd speculate that this was an evolutionary adaptation on the part of our ancestors, who had to make survival decisions in a dangerous environment, but one of the things that sets me right off is speculation based on evolutionary psychology. So I won't. One of the things I immediately scoffed at when first hearing about was "love languages." Then, after taking some time to find out what was meant by that, my reaction softened somewhat. After all, the concept boils down to "we all appreciate different things," which I wouldn't deny. If you're reading this, and somehow still wondering what the hell I'm talking about, well, the précis is right there in the bullet summary at the top of the linked article: The idea, created by evangelical pastor Gary Chapman, is that to make your partner feel truly loved, you must show them affection in their preferred "language." Birthed in a perennially best-selling book over three decades ago, the idea remains ever-present in popular media, dating apps, and social media. The book’s resonant success might make you assume that the theory was born in the lab of a superstar relationship psychologist, but the notion has humbler origins. Actually, I immediately suspect any book, especially purported nonfiction, that achieves huge success, because I distrust the zeitgeist. And it's exceedingly rare that a book written by an actual scientist climbs to that level. The only one I can think of offhand is Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and that one had pretty pictures. (It was also worthy of the success.) The architect of the theory is evangelical pastor Gary Chapman. Okay, here's where I feel compelled to make an embarrassing confession: In my view, evangelicals are all guilty until proven innocent. Some of them are responsible for those grifting megachurches. Others are doing their best to turn our secular country into a theocracy. Many outright reject science in favor of superstition. The ones you hear about are always trying to make life difficult for gays, trans people, and anyone else who doesn't conform to their narrow view of what people should be like. When your ranks include the likes of the thankfully-late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (and those are just the famous ones from my home state), you have a hell of a lot to answer for. This may seem to contradict my radical acceptance of diversity. And maybe it does. But to me, there's a big difference between being born into a demographic, and choosing to align oneself with a certain philosophy. Even that difference, though, contradicts my assertion that we never really "choose" anything. So I don't know. I guess that, in this way, I've been prejudiced (even though I already had a counterexample in my cousin's evangelical wife, who's one of the kindest people I know). I should work on that. Everyone's a hypocrite in some way. I figure at least I recognize some of my hypocrisies. Point being, when I heard the author was an evangelical pastor, I instantly dismissed anything it might have to say. And I was (probably) accidentally right to do so... but not because of the author's affiliation. The popularity of his book, quiz (taken more than 133 million times), and theory confirm to Chapman that love languages work. No. No, it doesn't confirm any such thing, any more than the popularity of books on astrology confirm that astrology works. Still, popularity and anecdotes do not prove that love languages actually work, or even exist at all. For that, science must weigh in. You knew that was coming, because I'm writing these comments. In a paper recently published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, a trio of social psychologists specializing in relationships reviewed the science conducted on love languages and found it wanting. And yet, one paper does not a definitive takedown make. First off, research contradicts the notion that people have a primary love language, they write. Chapman’s quiz is fundamentally flawed, they argue, because it forces takers into binary this-or-that choices. I'm on board with that finding, myself. As I keep saying, life is rarely binary. Not everything has to be "cool" or "sucks." Maybe it's just me being Gen-X (another labeling system I question), but to me, there's always "meh, whatever," too. In various shades. Second, the five love languages overly simplify forms of love in relationships and are based on a homogenous sample. For example, the love languages “do not include mention of support for a partner’s autonomy or personal goals outside of the relationship, factors that have been associated with relationship satisfaction,” the authors noted. They added that Chapman formulated his ideas after counseling couples “who are all married, religious, and mixed gender and likely share traditional values.” That is, to me, a serious problem. Like with the study I mentioned yesterday, which was all Brits. Or a lot of postdoc papers, which draw from a sample core of "American college students who want a few extra bucks." Third, and most glaringly, the limited research that has been conducted does not support the idea that speaking someone’s preferred love language yields greater relationship satisfaction or success. As the article admits, though, the research is scant. So though I want to agree with the conclusion, I can't quite rise to the level of "science says it's bullshit." Chapman had a chance to respond to these issues, and this is the part where my mind gets blown because it doesn't fit in with the prejudice I stated above: Chapman, who throughout the interview expressed intellectual humility that any scientist would admire, wanted to make clear that he appreciated researchers’ work to study love languages. “I’m not against research,” he said. “Scientific research is wonderful.” So there you have it. I'm not changing my opinion that "love languages" are airy nonsense, but maybe I came away from this with a little less animosity to evangelicals in general. And the world just got a little, tiny bit more tolerant. |
| Here's an example of finding an article that aligns with my existing worldview but having my doubts. That doesn't mean it's right, of course. But it also doesn't mean it's wrong. Optimistic thinking, often celebrated in self-help literature as a pathway to happiness, health, and longer life, can also lead to poor decision-making. This has been clear to me for a while. Research from the University of Bath shows that excessive optimism is actually associated with lower cognitive skills such as verbal fluency, fluid reasoning, numerical reasoning, and memory. Whereas those high in cognitive ability tend to be both more realistic and pessimistic in their expectations about the future. Basically: ignorance is bliss. Well, no, not really, because ignorance is simply not knowing something, which has nothing to do with how smart you are. Everybody's ignorant about lots of things. But stubborn, willful ignorance is another matter entirely... also not necessarily correlated with intelligence. In any case, I'll note that the passage I just quoted seems to be very careful not to imply causation. Does excessive optimism make a person less clever, or does being an idiot lead to optimism? Or, alternatively, is there something else causing both effects? Much as I want to believe the article, that seems like an important thing to find out. “This points to the idea that whilst humans may be primed by evolution to expect the best, those high in cognitive ability are more able to override this automatic response when it comes to important decisions. Plans based on overly optimistic beliefs make for poor decisions and are bound to deliver worse outcomes than would realistic beliefs,” Dr Dawson added. Okay, I'm going to need a reference on that "primed by evolution" thing, hopefully not from bogus evolutionary psychology. Also, why isn't this "override" attributed to evolution? “Unrealistically optimistic financial expectations can lead to excessive levels of consumption and debt, as well as insufficient savings. It can also lead to excessive business entries and subsequent failures. The chances of starting a successful business are tiny, but optimists always think they have a shot and will start businesses destined to fail,” Dr Dawson said. But, clearly, they're not all destined to fail (unless you take the really long view that every business will fail eventually, even if it takes a few centuries). If we didn't have people taking a shot at these things, we wouldn't have businesses at all. It's like the baby turtles' march to the sea. The study took data from a UK survey of over 36,000 households and looked at people’s expectations of their financial well-being and compared them with their actual financial outcomes. The research found that those highest on cognitive ability experienced a 22% increase in the probability of “realism” and a 35 percent decrease in the probability of “extreme optimism”. For once, I can't complain about the sample size. But there are other obvious yellow flags here. UK only, for starters. How cognitive ability was determined from a mere survey: did they basically ask trivia questions? Even if not, there are major issues concerning the standard IQ tests. And how do we know that they're studying truly independent variables? “Unrealistic optimism is one of the most pervasive human traits and research has shown people consistently underestimate the negative and accentuate the positive. The concept of ‘positive thinking’ is almost unquestioningly embedded in our culture – and it would be healthy to revisit that belief,” Dr Dawson added Sounds to me like someone hated the idea of positive thinking and set out to debunk it. I can understand that impulse, as I share it. But, first, if science goes into an investigation wanting a certain outcome, that outcome is more likely (even excluding fraud or other shenanigans). And second, I have serious questions about the methodology. So I put this in the category of "stuff I want to believe, and which tracks with stuff I've been saying, but can't trust the science." |
| Here's a scientist's take on battling nuttery. From Ars Technica: The key to fighting pseudoscience isn’t mockery—it’s empathy Evidence shows that shoving data in peoples’ faces doesn’t work to change minds. Empathy? Well, then, my efforts are doomed to failure. As a scientist heavily engaged in science communication, I’ve seen it all. Somehow, I doubt that is true. This article is less than two months old, and I'll bet that this author saw even more in the scant 7 weeks since it was published. But okay. I'm being pedantic. Believe it or not, scientists have a poetic license, too. People have come to my public talks to argue with me that the Big Bang never happened. There have indeed been whisperings in the physics world about alternative origins, mainly based on data collected from the JWST. But it's one thing for trained scientists to use available data to come up with new hypotheses, and quite another for non-scientists to assert something without real evidence. Yes, that group includes me. People have sent me handwritten letters explaining how dark matter means that ghosts are real. I had a long discussion with myself in here, quite recently, about the spectrum between "real" and "not real." Ghosts lie somewhere on that spectrum. I have no doubt that people have experienced... whatever... and called that whatever "ghosts." (I also have no doubt that there are hoaxers out there, as documented in Scooby-Doo.) The leap there is from "experiencing something I can't explain" to "it must be the disembodied spirit of a dead person." Analogous to "lights in the sky = space aliens." In any event, there is not one single shred of evidence that I'm aware of to link dark matter with unexplained haunt-like phenomena. Hell, the whole point of dark matter, as far as I understand the science, is that it only interacts gravitationally with ordinary matter. People have asked me for my scientific opinion about homeopathy—and scoffed when they didn’t like my answer. As Tim Minchin explained, funny how water "somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it." People have told me, to my face, that what they just learned on a TV show proves that aliens built the pyramids and that I didn’t understand the science. Sure; they were spaceship landing sites, as seen in the well-known documentary Stargate: SG-1. Notably left out of this introduction is any discussion on flat-earthers, UFOs, astrology, psychic powers, cryptozoology, vaccine refusal, climate change "skepticism," or moon-landing hoaxers. Among myriad others. Fortunately, the author nods to these later. But in all my years of working with the public, I’ve found a potential strategy. And that strategy doesn’t involve confronting pseudoscience head-on but rather empathizing with why people have pseudoscientific beliefs and finding ways to get them to understand and appreciate the scientific method. I figured the answer to "why" is that people want certainty, which things like religion and pseudoscience can give them the illusion of. Science is the best tool we have of approaching the truth, but it's imperfect and it knows that. But I'm not a very empathetic person. I try to be, but there are some things I just have to accept without understanding. To get things started, let's figure out what we mean by “pseudoscience.” Unfortunately, there’s no universally agreed-upon definition for us to turn to, and the lines between science and pseudoscience can get a little blurry. For example, some people accuse super-theoretical investigations like string theory of veering into pseudoscience (I disagree, but that’s another story). String Theory: The Universe is a big ball of string, and God is a cat. Look. I'm allowed jokes, and that's one I'm inordinately proud of. The image of a cosmic feline batting around a stupendously huge ball of string is inherently amusing to me, and, let's face it, would explain a lot of the chaos in the universe. Here in reality, though, string theory might well be a dead end. And that's okay. That doesn't make it pseudoscience, any more than the luminiferous ether was pseudoscience; it was just the best we could come up with when we had a more limited understanding of light. And then there’s science that doesn’t live up to expectations. There are some bad scientists who create junk, lazy scientists who don’t do their homework, fraudulent scientists who tune their findings for a buck, and all manner of not-quite-good-enough scientific output. All of these blur the lines, too, even within disciplines that generally sit on firm foundations. That's because scientists are, generally at least, human, and humans are subject to all kinds of fallacies, biases, desires, distractions, and yes, a certain level of darkness. Perhaps the most obvious example of junk science was Andrew Wakefield's assertion that vaccines caused autism. While later debunked (and Wakefield defrocked), the damage had already been done. Not to mention what the whole kerfluffle said about the general public's attitude about those on the spectrum, which I imagine can be quite hurtful to those on the spectrum. (Okay, maybe I can exhibit empathy from time to time.) An important part of the scientific method is to identify these mistakes and correct them. Unfortunately, it doesn't always happen quickly enough. And then you get branches that even I am wary of, such as nutrition science, which is notorious for going back and forth on things. (I think that's a case of things being so incredibly complicated that it's really difficult, if not philosophically impossible, to control for all possible variables.) The word pseudoscience means “false science,” and that’s where my definition starts. Pseudoscience is a practice, a mode of investigation, that looks like science but misses the point. Or, as I like to phrase it, pseudoscience has the skin of science but misses its soul. "Soul" is very close to the last word I'd expect a scientist to use to describe anything, but again... poetic license. I won't continue to quote too much, but the next section makes clear that by "soul," the author is referring to the scientific method itself. Many people around the world seek the advice of astrologers, whose practice was once considered a scientific discipline. And while astrology uses jargon and complicated mathematics, practitioners keep their methods secret and arcane; there is no community-wide accepted set of practices open to criticism and refinement. The evolution of astrology into astronomy is a fascinating one, and I can't think of any discipline that better illustrates the history of science. I've noted before that Newton had what today would be called fringe beliefs, such as alchemy and astrology. His genius wasn't limited to being inspired by falling fruit, but that he showed the rest of the world a way to separate testable science from folklore and wishful thinking. Just yesterday, I happened upon an article, which I shall not share, written by an astrologer. The argument in the article boiled down to lamenting that astronomers don't consult astrologers before making changes to how they classify things. It was a much-needed laugh, let me tell you. So, after a while, the author finally gets to the question of why people believe pseudoscience. And, at least in part, it closely matches my guess, above: Pseudoscience is seductive; it’s a counterbalance to the often cold, remote authority offered by scientists. It provides a “real” truth about the world that people may accept when scientific statements run counter to their personal or ideological beliefs. In the spirit of the article, though, I'm not trying to interpret the wording here as confirmation of my pre-existing belief. And the article lists several other explanations, as well. The soul of science is there to eliminate human bias as much as possible, to allow for nonintuitive answers to emerge that run counter to our expectations. Which is precisely why I scoff at "common sense." Humans tend to trust the word of their friends and family over distant scientists because that’s the way we’re wired. Humans tend to be swayed by a good story over a good data set. In case you were wondering, that's where writing comes in. As for suggestions on how to battle pseudoscience, that section's in there, as well. Evidence has repeatedly shown that simply shoving data in peoples’ faces doesn’t work to change their minds. Neither does simply telling somebody they’re wrong and leaving it at that (to be honest, that strategy rarely works on me, either). Nor me. As much as I try to keep an open mind about things, I can be just as stubborn as anyone when it comes to data that conflicts with my pre-existing beliefs. Like, recently, some article came out that asserted that alcohol is bad for you at any dosage. My first instinct was denial. And then, realizing my own hypocrisy (we all have hypocrisies), I concluded that, even if the science is sound (which is always in question), physical health isn't the last word on anything; you have to take into account quality of life, not just quantity. What use would it be to live to 100 if you have to give up everything that truly makes life worth living? I don't doubt the facts, at least not any more than I doubt a lot of facts. Just the underlying assumptions. I have a personal rule: Unless someone asks me directly for my opinion, I don’t offer it. Shit, if I had that rule, this blog would be a tumbleweed wasteland. Instead, I try to practice what’s known as radical empathy. This is empathy given to another person without any expectation of receiving it back in return. I try to see the world through someone else’s eyes and use that to find common ground. Now that is, in my humble opinion, a thing worth striving for. If I could just remember to apply it in the moment. I've railed on related topics in here, repeatedly. Most notably, in my "space aliens" rants. It's important, I think, to remember that people believe stuff because it brings them some benefit: comfort, peace, whatever. Something to help them sleep at night. And I think most, if not all, of us want the same benefits, ultimately; we just take different routes to the napping couch. |
| Almost two years ago, in May of 2022, I wrote some commentary on an Atlas Obscura article about the Great Lakes: "Sea What I Did There" Being relatively recent, the article I referenced is still there. Among other things, it's a good read for learning more about the Great Lakes. So, today, I'll just critique my own entry.And now, today's burning (or really, drowning) question I thought that intro was clever at the time. In retrospect, it was just silly. Partly because parts of the Great Lakes indeed have a history of burning, due to the chemicals that apes like to dump into them (I kind of chuckle every time they're described as "fresh water," though I know that's meant to describe lack of sea salt). And also partly because it was a bit insensitive. (Responding to "Are the Great Lakes Really Inland Seas" headline): That's right up there with "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" in terms of categorization questions. (It's not, by the way. It's a taco.) I stand by my categorization of hot dog as not-a-sandwich, but since then, I've been wondering about where gyros fit in. They're kind of like tacos, too. A taco is clearly not a gyro, nor is a hot dog (even if the hot dog has been spinning around on one of those convenience store heat roller machines). But is it fair to lump several different cultures' foods into a category based on that of only one of the cultures? Hot dogs are basically derived from Germany. Gyros are, famously, Greek, though I'd extend that to nearby Mediterranean regions. And tacos are, of course, Mexican. Other cultures have the similar idea of folding some sort of carbs around a filling, but not fully (that would be a "wrap" or a burrito. or perhaps one of those meat pies you can get from street vendors in England, though those are probably closer to calzones). So what we need is an overarching category for foods that are not technically sandwiches, because they're not fillings between two hunks of bread, but also not technically wraps or calzones, but something in between the two. A sandwich sandwich, if you like. It is entirely possible that I spend too much time considering these important philosophical questions. I think we're all aware of how angry the Lakes can become. Frankly (see what I did there?), I have no memory of why I made such an idiotic blanket statement. Maybe I assumed everyone's heard Gordon Lightfoot's most famous song, the one about a ship sinking in the Great Lakes. Another fun categorization question: Ship or boat? The Edmund Fitzgerald was a freighter, which is most definitely a ship, because, well, it shipped stuff between ports, or, in its case, between a port and the bottom of Lake Superior. In any case, I should always know better than stating "we're all aware" of anything. There are always people who don't know, be it from age or geographical distance or lack of exposure to cultural references. Is Pluto a planet? Depends on definition of "planet." Under current internationally accepted definition, no. As of this writing, I'm still obsessed with playing Starfield, a video game that features lots of star systems with planets and moons to explore. One of the star systems is our own solar system. Amusingly, they list Pluto as a planet and Charon as its moon, though here in reality, Charon and Pluto orbit a center of mass which doesn't lie within either body, which should make it a binary system. Further, in reality, this double-not-a-planet has other, smaller satellites. This is, of course, not the only, or even the worst, technical issue in Starfield. But it's a game, so I just take it for what it is. Virginia and three other US states are technically Commonwealths. We still refer to them as states. That was not as apt an analogy as I apparently thought it was at the time. There's a difference between the arbitrary boundaries and technical name of a state or country, and the border between bodies of water and land. Except, of course, when there is no difference; Hawai'i, e.g. The Dead Sea is famously salty as hell, sure, but so is the Great Salt Lake, which is about 7 times bigger than the Dead Sea. Since then, I've learned that the GSL is shrinking pretty fast, so now, two years later, I'm not sure about that size comparison. The Dead Sea is also shrinking, of course. In any case, my real point was that they're both endorrheic bodies of water, and we call the bigger one a lake and the smaller one a sea. In the spirit of what I said above about assuming awareness, "endorrheic" describes a watershed that's self-contained and doesn't allow for runoff into an ocean. They're really common in the American West. Hell, the vast majority of Nevada is endorrheic. Why they're usually found in areas we call deserts, I really do think should be obvious. At one time, though, around the time the dinosaurs bit it, the Rockies were at the bottom of an inland sea, and the Appalachians were much, much higher (and originally extended into Scotland). You know, when I make a claim like the bit about Scotland, I really should include a reference. At this time, however, I can't find where I learned that little tidbit, though I do remember that it involved the really stupendous age of the mountain range, combined with continental drift. Since I can't locate a reference, even on Wikipedia, you can probably safely ignore that bit of trivia, because it might well be the result of a misunderstanding on my part. The relative youth of the Rockies and former height of the Appalachians, though, those are well-documented parts of geological history. here, for one.All continents can be considered big islands, and there is really only one world-spanning ocean surrounding all of them. I object to my use of the word "really" in that sentence. Sure, it's another way to look at things, but there are real differences between the areas we label as "oceans," even if the boundaries between those bodies are fuzzy.I'll just end with this little tidbit, relevant to this entire discussion, which takes the categorization problem to its logical extreme: The Earth sandwich. |
| Hope you're not prone to paranoia. After yesterday's article, clearly, the answer to the headline question is "space aliens." In 2017, Simon McCarthy-Jones wrote an article about schizophrenia for The Conversation. The piece, he jokes, got read by more than two people, which, as an academic—he’s an associate professor of clinical psychology at Trinity College Dublin—was a thrill. Except that, when I read this lede, I thought he was making a schizophrenia joke, like the old "I'm schizophrenic and so am I" one, which perpetuates the conflation of schizophrenia with MPD. Which I might be able to get away with, but not a psych professor. Anyway, no, that wasn't the intent. As far as I can tell. Shortly thereafter, however, he found himself “just gripped by the iron claws of Facebook,” looking over and over again to see who had liked his article, who had commented on it. Isn't there a psych disorder where you attribute your actions to some outside force, instead of taking responsibility for them? I don't mean that in a "we have no free will" way, but in a "the Devil made me do it" way. Was his thinking being covertly, coercively controlled by external forces (in this case, a big tech company)? The experience got him wondering just what “free thought” actually was. And so he started wading into the murky waters of the psychological, philosophical, cultural, and legal assumptions about what constitutes thought—and how it could remain truly free. His intellectual quest has exited his head, as much thought eventually does, and now exists in the form of a new book: Freethinking: Protecting Freedom of Thought Amidst the New Battle for the Mind. Of course it's a book ad. Everything on the internet is an ad, or it's behind a paywall. Well, except for this blog, of course. In any case, the rest of the ad is an interview. We might want to say: No, we’re independent, autonomous thinkers. But I think we have to recognize that in front of a persuasive AI, we are in deep trouble. In my experience, the people who shout "I think for myself!" the loudest are the most likely to follow the herd. The first was that the right to free thought is an absolute right, based on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the United States, it’s as close to an absolute right as there is in the Constitution. And that’s quite exciting because it means that nobody can interfere with your freedom of thought. There are instances where you can limit someone’s speech if it’s defamatory or false advertising or fighting words. But thought is unimpeachable, you can create absolute protection for people’s minds. Well, okay, except that it's (at least so far) easy to say "you have an absolute right to free thought" when there is no possible way to read minds. Introduce a mind-reading device, though, and watch how quickly that right disappears. Sure, we can sometimes take an educated guess as to what's in someone's mind. Like if you're a shoe clerk, and some guy is in there looking at the Nike selection, you'd probably be right in assuming the guy's thinking "I might be interested in buying athletic shoes." But only "probably." After all, he might be idly gazing at footwear while wondering how he's going to trick some lady into bed that night. There’s a quote by Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate, who said: “Human beings are to independent thinking as cats are to swimming. They can do it, but they prefer not to.” Honestly, I mostly saved this article so I could share that quote. Astute readers may note that a lot of this is in opposition to my assertion that we don't really have free will. And it is. But lack of free will doesn't necessarily imply that it's other people pulling on our strings. Sometimes it's just the universe conspiring to keep us complacent. |
| The truth is out there... but you don't believe it. From New York, not to be confused with The New Yorker: Just to get this out of the way: Smart people can still draw bogus conclusions. They can be fooled. They can be exceptionally good at fooling. I wouldn't give a smart person's opinion more weight, unless it's in a field they're credentialed in, any more than I'd trust a rich person's opinion over that of a poor person. Last month, Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon office responsible for investigating unexplained aerial events, stepped down. The article's from the end of January, so I guess that happened in December? He said he was tired of being harassed and accused of hiding evidence, and he lamented an erosion in “our capacity for rational, evidence-based critical thinking.” I feel that. He may have been pushed over the edge by a pair of events from the past summer. In June of last year, Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard, announced that he had found some tiny blobs of metal by dragging a magnetic sled over the bottom of the Pacific near Papua New Guinea. He claimed that these blobs were metallic droplets that had melted off an interstellar object that might have been “a technological gadget with artificial intelligence” — the product of beings from another star system. That's the same numbskull who claimed that the interstellar wanderer called 'Oumuamua was a product of technology.Look, most of the time, I see Avi Loeb's name, Harvard gets mentioned. I think that's an attempt to give him some credentials. But it has the opposite effect on me: instead of being more inclined to believe Loeb's crackpot "it-must-be-smart-aliens" conclusions, I become more inclined to dismiss anything that comes out of Harvard. In other words, that guy's such a disgrace to that prestigious university that his association with it (along with a few other Harvard-associated people recently) decreases its prestige. Oh, and sure, random blobs of metal could have come from an interstellar visitor. I don't consider the odds of that to be very high. Claim like that, though, you're going to have to rule out terrestrial origins, first. Thoughtful, sensible-seeming, non-crankish people at Harvard, at The New Yorker, at the New York Times, and at the Pentagon seemed to be drifting ever closer to the conclusion that alien spaceships had visited Earth. One of those things is not like the others... To be clear, we should investigate these claims, within reasonable budgetary limits. Though any debunking that gets done sure won't convince the UFO nuts. On the other hand, show me definitive evidence, and I'll be convinced. Yet even after more than 70 years of claimed sightings, there was simply no good evidence. In an age of ubiquitous cameras and fancy scopes, there was no footage that wasn’t blurry and jumpy and taken from far away. There was just this guy Grusch telling the world that the government had a “crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program” for flying saucers that was totally supersecret and that only people in the program knew about the program. Grusch said he had learned about it while serving on a UAP task force at the Pentagon. He interviewed more than 40 people, and they told him wild things. He said he couldn’t reveal the names of the people he interviewed. He shared no firsthand information and showed no photos. And that, folks, isn't evidence. It's crackpottery, albeit perpetrated by someone who would be in a position to know. It makes me wonder what he was paid to distract us from. Yes, I have my own conspiracy leanings, but they involve human activity, not purported alien. Now, the article goes on for a while, and it's absolutely worth a look, at least a skim. I won't comment on it further, though, except to say that our collective fascination with the subject says nothing about aliens and everything about humans. |
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