Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Monday, January 07, 2019
Monday, November 19, 2018
SJA #24 - 19 November 2018 - Alchemy & Offense
Alchemy
I’m skipping right over the akashic record in the skeptic’s online dictionary and getting right to alchemy. The akashic record was part of the theosophical movement, a mystical gnostic thing from the 19th century. It’s a bit of spiritual mumbo jumbo about how all human experience and knowledge is contained in some sort of spiritual realm. It’s not really different from other spiritual or supernatural nonsense, except in that it honestly looks a lot like a celestial filing system.
Seriously. They … they talk about it like it’s an actual set of records. Tablets, or microfilm… Obviously they mean it metaphorically, but come on. Anyway, I haven’t seen references to the akashic records around, though maybe that’s just me, and it really fits in with any other kind of supernatural otherworldly stuff or gaining access to special knowledge through mystical means. Basically, just plain false.
So, alchemy! The popular conception of alchemy is of the attempt to turn lead into gold (and other “base” metals into other “precious” metals, but lead into gold is the popular one), and the skeptic’s dictionary falls for this one hard. They open with the mysticism, and eventually get around to mentioning an alchemist who contributed something to real knowledge (Paracelsus, in the 16th century).
Alchemy is a pseudoscience. It is a bunch of mystical nonsense about the transformation of one material into another and creating magical potions to do wondrous, impossible things. But that’s not what it was.
It’s really easy to see the connection between alchemy and chemistry. Alchemist. Chemist. Alchemy was the ancient world’s fumbling, hesitant steps toward a genuine understanding of physical materials and their chemical properties. Yes, it came bundled with a lot of nonsense; that’s what you expect. It was hampered by the fact that storing, transmitting, sharing knowledge was difficult and incredibly expensive. There were individuals scattered all over the place, working entirely alone, pursuing false leads, making discoveries, all in almost complete ignorance of what everyone else was doing.
Like everything else, the discovery of cheap paper and the development of the printing press revolutionized alchemy. It took a few hundred years, but the mystical and religious horseshit was pared away and we were left with chemistry, a solid foundation of genuine knowledge about materials and their interactions. The elixir of life, the philosopher’s stone, the four elements (and the elusive quintessence), those all stuck around in alchemy while chemistry joined the rest of the world in the light of day, doing things that actually worked.
I think it’s helpful to remember that ancient people weren’t stupid and the things they were doing … in some ways what they were doing then is exactly what we’re doing now. The ancient alchemists were early scientists, struggling, alone, in the dark. They were also early mystical dipshits doing stupid, dangerous things and fooling themselves into believing nonsense. The people haven’t really changed; some are better at deluding themselves and others have a better knack for honesty.
What’s really changed is the method, the way we talk to one another and cooperate. We all record information and share it, we talk and argue, we work together. Mysticism, religion, faith, for all it looks like a community, always boils down to solitary individuals, talking only to themselves, thinking they’re talking to something else. A scientist in the lab, no matter how lonely they look, truly is part of a global community, is never working alone.
Alchemy today is nothing but magical potions, supernatural elements, impossible dreams, and the denial of science and medicine. Once upon a time, alchemy was a difficult, mostly blind, sometimes dangerously misguided, but ultimately noble quest for greater understanding.
Offense
It’s not about offense. It was never about offense.
Riley Dennis, a phenomenal youtuber, recently had a video about people being offended, how the term is used in defense and … offense on both the right and the left. Riley speaks mostly about her personal experience being attacked by people claiming she’s a snowflake and how she tries to use different terms to better communicate what she’s really trying to say. I really recommend the video in particular and her whole channel. She’s pretty goddamn awesome.
That video inspired me to talk about this in my own way. This has been rolling around in my head for a while. I read an article, years ago, which I’ve never since been able to find. I wish I could, because it had a really great line in it that, obviously, I have to paraphrase because I can’t find the damn article. “Offense was the greatest own goal the left ever scored.” And the author was really correct there. Unfortunately, I don’t think we could do anything else. It was the only way to move the conversation forward.
Take a look at what SJWs get “offended” about vs what fundagelicals and trolls get “offended” about. I don’t know if you can hear it, but I’m putting quotes around “offended” up there, because I want to indicate that “offended” probably isn’t the right word. I also put quotes around it in that last sentence, but that’s because I was talking about my use of the word rather than actually using the word. Ah, philosophy. USE MENTION ERROR.
Anywho, what SJWs are “offended” by, in no particular order:
- people using racist dog-whistles
- people using racist slurs
- people committing racist hate crimes
- people using sexist dog-whistles
- people using sexist slurs
- people committing sexist hate crimes
- people using homophobic dog-whistles
- people using homophobic slurs
- people committing homophobic hate crimes
- people using transphobic dog-whistles
- people using transphobic slurs
- people committing transphobic hate crimes
- people using dog-whistles against religious minorities
- people using slurs against religious minorities
- people committing hate crimes against religious minorities
- people harassing, stalking, doxxing, abusing, attacking, raping, or murdering other people
Things right-wingers get “offended” by, in no particular order:
- people not saying merry christmas
- coffee cups not having merry christmas on them
- not being allowed to use the government to promote their religion
- not being allowed to use the government to stop other people practicing their religion
- being called racist
- being called homophobic
- being called transphobic
- being called anti-semitic
- being called islamophobic
- being called xenophobic
- being called sexist
- being called a harasser, abuser, doxxer, rapist
- being called jerks
- being asked to be kind
- being asked to be polite
- being asked to leave other people the fuck alone
Amanda Marcotte had an article recently and she’s written a book about how the right has gone into full-on troll mode. They don’t care about facts or truth, or even about doing the right thing or making the world a better place, even for themselves. All they care about is winning, about “owning the libs”. They’re driven by hatred and anger, by self-righteousness and fear.
They’re offended. They’re offended all the damn time. They’re offended and upset that they’re losing their power and privilege. They’re incredibly upset that they’re no longer able to get away with the things they used to get away with. Like putting their religion in a special place and using the power of government to protect it. Like not having to think, ever, about the fact that they’re white and not everyone in the world is white. Like not having to think about the fact that they’re men and not everyone is a man. They’re used to just being in the center of everything and having the world set up for them, for their assumptions, and never having to think about anything or work to fit their desires into the way the world functions.
The left isn’t offended. The left has never been offended. It’s never been about offense. It’s about oppression. On the left you have people who have had to fight for their damn lives. Queer folk, trans folk, people of color, women, the disabled, immigrants, native americans, jews and muslims and hindus and every other religious group… Every single group of people who aren’t rich, straight, cis, white, christian men. They’re not crying because you were mean, they’re fighting to get equal pay for equal work, they’re fighting for the right to stability, to not get fired or evicted by a bigot, they’re fighting so they don’t have to fear violence in the street, they’re fighting for all the things middle class white folks take for granted every day.
They’re not upset that you hurt their feelings, they’re worried you’re going to kill them.
Take a look at those lists. The left are “offended” by attacks on the basic humanity of people who don’t have power. The right are *offended* by attacks on their privilege.
It’s not about offense. It’s never been about offense. Offense is for people with privilege. Offense is for when you have a toy and you’re worried someone’s going to take it away. This is about oppression. Oppression is when you’re one step away from starvation and you’re worried someone’s going to take your food away.
In a way, talking about offense was an own goal. It let the right latch onto this narrative and call the left a bunch of spoiled children while acting like the worst brats in existence. But… it was necessary. We had to talk about offense, because it’s the only thing the privileged could understand. White people don’t get followed around in stores by suspicious clerks, straight people don’t get harassed or attacked on the street, cis people don’t live every damn day with the pain of a body that isn’t right, christians don’t have to worry about an asshole in a MAGA kicking down the door and hosing their temple down with bullets.
The privileged don’t understand oppression. Sometimes it’s possible to explain it to them, to get them to take the tiny step from “people treat you differently because you’re poor and that’s wrong” to “people treat you differently because you’re black/gay/a woman and that’s wrong”. That’s often difficult because they’ve been fed lies for so damn long about how minorities aren’t being treated worse, but actually have more privilege than WASPs. They honestly believe that black people don’t have to pay for college, that women get jobs more easily, that being Jewish means you’re rich.
White people also used to think that black schools were better than white schools in segregation, and they were upset about that. Different era, same lies, same racism. Same hatred all around.
Talking about offense is a good first step, but we need to keep going. We need to talk about oppression and why people on the left aren’t upset about being insulted, they’re afraid because bigots are attacking their humanity. And attacking someone’s humanity is followed, as we’ve been seeing more and more in Trump’s America, by attacking them with guns, knives, fists, cars. Dog-whistles and slurs lead to murder and genocide. That’s what people on the left are fighting against.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Science is a Hologram
A hologram is a really cool thing where you can produce a three dimensional image. It's not just a two-dimensional representation of a 3D image, the image actually is 3D. When you move around it, you get the parallax effect of different elements passing in front of and behind it.
Another aspect of a hologram, and the one more important to my analogy is that each piece of the holographic image actually contains the entire image. Look at just a small part of the hologram and you'll see the same picture, but at worse resolution (like zooming in on a picture and seeing more pixels). If you include more elements of the hologram, the picture resolution improves.
Every piece of scientific research improves the whole picture. It may be hard to see it, but a lepidopterist publishing a paper on the genitalia of the female Large Chequered Skipper is actually advancing the cause of all science. The paper improves knowledge of the Large Chequered Skipper biology, of the biology of all hesperiidae, of all lepidoptera, of all insects, of all animals, of all life; it improves the knowledge of the evolution of genitalia, of butterflies, of insects, of animals; it improves the knowledge of chemistry and physics; it improves the study of biology, of science. At all levels, in increasingly small ways, every bit of study improves our knowledge and understanding of increasingly broad methods.
In the other direction, each act of science contains the whole of science. The scientific method is iterations of1:
And every time someone goes out and sciences, they're performing part of that process. Each bit of science contains in itself the behavior of the whole institution, the epistemology of the verfication of observable knowledge and the construction of theories therefrom. Every piece contains the whole, and every piece is part of the whole. Science is a hologram.
Another aspect of a hologram, and the one more important to my analogy is that each piece of the holographic image actually contains the entire image. Look at just a small part of the hologram and you'll see the same picture, but at worse resolution (like zooming in on a picture and seeing more pixels). If you include more elements of the hologram, the picture resolution improves.
Every piece of scientific research improves the whole picture. It may be hard to see it, but a lepidopterist publishing a paper on the genitalia of the female Large Chequered Skipper is actually advancing the cause of all science. The paper improves knowledge of the Large Chequered Skipper biology, of the biology of all hesperiidae, of all lepidoptera, of all insects, of all animals, of all life; it improves the knowledge of the evolution of genitalia, of butterflies, of insects, of animals; it improves the knowledge of chemistry and physics; it improves the study of biology, of science. At all levels, in increasingly small ways, every bit of study improves our knowledge and understanding of increasingly broad methods.
In the other direction, each act of science contains the whole of science. The scientific method is iterations of1:
- Define a question
- Gather information and resources (observe)
- Form an explanatory hypothesis
- Test the hypothesis by performing an experiment and collecting data in a reproducible manner
- Analyze the data
- Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
- Publish results
- Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
And every time someone goes out and sciences, they're performing part of that process. Each bit of science contains in itself the behavior of the whole institution, the epistemology of the verfication of observable knowledge and the construction of theories therefrom. Every piece contains the whole, and every piece is part of the whole. Science is a hologram.
1 - Stolen, without shame, from wikipedia.
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Google Science
At Google Science, we do what we must because we can.
What does Google have in common with Aperture Science? Bear with me here, I'm not talking about this part of Aperture:
Okay, actually, I am. Ignoring the hideously malformed ethics of what was actually common among ... well, let's not go into it, but let's just say that once upon a time some people thought it was okay to inject other people with syphilis, and then watch them and their families slowly die. For science!
But that's not what I want to accuse Google of. They've not been perfect, but it seems that Google actually does want to live up to the company motto of "Don't Be Evil."
So instead I want to associate Google with the following, clearly related, but without the outright corporate villainy:
I'll be honest, we're just throwing science at a wall here to see what sticks; no idea what it'll do. Probably nothing. Best case scenario: you might get some super powers.
I think this is Google's actual strategy in a lot of cases. Just come up with something and throw it out there, let the world play with it and come up with things to do, ways to use it, ways to break it. This is explicitly what they're doing with Google Glass. They've developed the functionality, and now they've thrown it out there to let people come up with uses and apps. After all, there are a few thousand people at Google, but there are billions of people in the world. They'll play with it and come up with stuff Google never could've.
They're doing the same thing, I think, with Google+. They've rolled out a new social tool and they're letting people use it while they experiment with it, find out what works and what doesn't, what people love and hate, and so on. It's a bit rough on the users (there are some things about it I despise; that frickin' header...), but constantly tinkering with it means that it can evolve rapidly and respond to the users in a way that facebook simply doesn't. That sort of thing, when implemented well, can make the best sort of stuff. In the end... that's science. Or at least, that's a critical component of science.
Peer review is the social network/crowdsourcing of science. You put your ideas out in public and the public beats the everlovin' crap out of them. The end result is that only good ideas thrive. Everything else falls by the wayside. In the last few centuries, science has climbed from height to height; let's see how this works for
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Children as Natural Scientists
Carl Sagan was a devoted educator who spoke to children of all age groups. His observation was that children are intensely curious, spontaneous with their questions, and infectious in their desire to learn. They're unafraid of looking ignorant and leap at the chance to explore. Teens, on the other hand, introverted, afraid of looking stupid, anti-intellectual, and have been beaten down by a culture and system that doesn't value scientific exploration or education in general. His opinion was that children are born natural scientists and have their intellects bored out of them.
On the other hand you have the view that children are extremely magical thinkers, natural teleologists, and incredibly gullible. Children will leap to any explanation that seems, to them, plausible. Ask a child and you'll learn that clouds are for raining, rocks are for animals to scratch themselves. Tell a child anything and you will be believed.
So which is it? Are children natural scientists or natural theologists? Will they explore and learn or will they make crap up and stick to it regardless?
Neither extreme is true.
Children are natural explorers and they're driven to learn. Just put them in any new and interesting environment and watch as they explore the shit out of it. Part of the problem of childhood gullibility, in my opinion, arises from this. They're built to take in new information and put it into a comprehensive worldview. That's an aspect of scientific exploration.
Children can be natural theologians, as well. They don't just explore and discover; they're willing to make shit up at the drop of a hat. They develop and explore wild fantasies just as easily and happily as they'll explore a natural history museum. They're also thoroughgoing teleologists1 from an early age. Show a non-speaking infant a video of a square and a triangle moving across a screen, one after the other, and the infant will register surprise when the one "stops following" the other. These are aspects of theology.
But children aren't full scientists or theologians. Leaving aside theology as a useless practice not worth exploring, science isn't just curiosity. It's hard work. It's a systematic approach to asking and answering questions, to collecting and analyzing data, to questioning your own assumptions. As Einstein said, science is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Childhood provides inspiration in abundance, but the discipline and hard work simply isn't there.
1 - Teleology, ascribing purpose to things. Like how the appendix in other animals is used to break down plant-matter and in humans to cause death.
On the other hand you have the view that children are extremely magical thinkers, natural teleologists, and incredibly gullible. Children will leap to any explanation that seems, to them, plausible. Ask a child and you'll learn that clouds are for raining, rocks are for animals to scratch themselves. Tell a child anything and you will be believed.
So which is it? Are children natural scientists or natural theologists? Will they explore and learn or will they make crap up and stick to it regardless?
Neither extreme is true.
Children are natural explorers and they're driven to learn. Just put them in any new and interesting environment and watch as they explore the shit out of it. Part of the problem of childhood gullibility, in my opinion, arises from this. They're built to take in new information and put it into a comprehensive worldview. That's an aspect of scientific exploration.
Children can be natural theologians, as well. They don't just explore and discover; they're willing to make shit up at the drop of a hat. They develop and explore wild fantasies just as easily and happily as they'll explore a natural history museum. They're also thoroughgoing teleologists1 from an early age. Show a non-speaking infant a video of a square and a triangle moving across a screen, one after the other, and the infant will register surprise when the one "stops following" the other. These are aspects of theology.
But children aren't full scientists or theologians. Leaving aside theology as a useless practice not worth exploring, science isn't just curiosity. It's hard work. It's a systematic approach to asking and answering questions, to collecting and analyzing data, to questioning your own assumptions. As Einstein said, science is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Childhood provides inspiration in abundance, but the discipline and hard work simply isn't there.
1 - Teleology, ascribing purpose to things. Like how the appendix in other animals is used to break down plant-matter and in humans to cause death.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Absence is Absence (God Proof Part II)
Read part one, here.
I've said before that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but I want to expand on that a bit.
Once I decided to make a sandwich. As is my wont, I mused quietly to myself whilst I pulled items off of shelves and out of the fridge. I grabbed my bread, my turkey, my cheese, my mustard, and where the fuck is my mayonnaise? My mayo's gone! I just bought some at the grocery store yesterday! I checked the fridge again. No mayo. I checked a third time, carefully perusing the mostly empty shelves. No mayo. For about five seconds, I briefly considered the possibility that someone had broken into my apartment for the sole purpose of stealing my mayonnaise; a brief checked showed me that, yes, my TV and video games and whatnot were still there so that notion was beyond absurd. I turned and looked again and, it's a miracle! My mayo was sitting on the counter next to the mustard. I'd already gotten it out of the fridge and hadn't really noticed because when I talk to myself I tend to not pay attention to what I'm doing. This is how I've occasionally gotten lost on the way to the bathroom or driven to the wrong campus on my way to work.
No one, on hearing that story, would find it reasonable to ask, "But how did you know the mayonnaise wasn't in the refrigerator? Just because light failed to reflect off of a jar of mayonnaise and impinge on the cones and rods on the back of your eye doesn't mean that there wasn't any mayo in the fridge! Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, after all!" Unless, of course, they were philosophy majors. Twenty-year-old jackasses love to say things like that, mostly because they don't know how ignorant they are.
But the absence of evidence for something can be evidence against it. When you're talking about the abstruse realm of particle physics, in which you have to accelerate things nearly to the speed of light and smash them against each other and pick up the pieces (a method unfairly compared to hitting a watch with a hammer to learn how it's put together), not finding a particle doesn't mean it doesn't exist; unless you designed your experiment such that it would be unreasonable for it not to show up. When you're talking about a jar of mayo, arguing that just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it wasn't there is just fatuous. I didn't see it in the fridge because it was on the counter.
So, what about god? I've already discussed why I dismiss the purported evidence (miracles, scripture, revelation) in favor of the god hypothesis. Most everyone who says they don't believe in god state that they lack belief because they haven't seen any evidence. It bothers me that they then go on to refuse to say the believe there is no god (the two aren't equivalent positions) because they claim science can't talk about god. Then why the hell don't you believe? Agnosticism because of a lack of evidence is a scientific position; it's the default scientific position. Why, then, do I go on from there to say that I believe there is no god? What is my evidence in the other direction? I feel that the god hypothesis, if true, would have a measurable impact on observable reality and the lack of that evidence is a compelling argument against the hypothesis.
For example, scripture. I've already stated that if there were a deity, there wouldn't be many mutually exclusive scriptures. There would be one, it would be definitely accurate and demonstrable true. It wouldn't contradict itself and there would be no pretenders purporting to give an alternative truth. A deity so moved as to provide a scripture would also be able to censor false competitors. The celestial dictatorship would have no trouble silencing opposition or critics.
Revelation, miracles, and scriptures, in the face of a true god hypothesis, would be so evidently and clearly true that there wouldn't be the need for the fatuous notion of faith. It wouldn't be received truth but perceived truth. I reject the god hypothesis as firmly as I reject the invisible jar of mayonnaise and as I immediately rejected the notion that someone had broken in and stolen my mayonnaise; the lack of evidence was obviously evidence against the hypothesis. I don't believe, at all, because when the universe is presented with the question, "Is there a god?" the response is a deafening silence.
Next: What would it take for me to believe?
I've said before that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but I want to expand on that a bit.
Once I decided to make a sandwich. As is my wont, I mused quietly to myself whilst I pulled items off of shelves and out of the fridge. I grabbed my bread, my turkey, my cheese, my mustard, and where the fuck is my mayonnaise? My mayo's gone! I just bought some at the grocery store yesterday! I checked the fridge again. No mayo. I checked a third time, carefully perusing the mostly empty shelves. No mayo. For about five seconds, I briefly considered the possibility that someone had broken into my apartment for the sole purpose of stealing my mayonnaise; a brief checked showed me that, yes, my TV and video games and whatnot were still there so that notion was beyond absurd. I turned and looked again and, it's a miracle! My mayo was sitting on the counter next to the mustard. I'd already gotten it out of the fridge and hadn't really noticed because when I talk to myself I tend to not pay attention to what I'm doing. This is how I've occasionally gotten lost on the way to the bathroom or driven to the wrong campus on my way to work.
No one, on hearing that story, would find it reasonable to ask, "But how did you know the mayonnaise wasn't in the refrigerator? Just because light failed to reflect off of a jar of mayonnaise and impinge on the cones and rods on the back of your eye doesn't mean that there wasn't any mayo in the fridge! Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, after all!" Unless, of course, they were philosophy majors. Twenty-year-old jackasses love to say things like that, mostly because they don't know how ignorant they are.
But the absence of evidence for something can be evidence against it. When you're talking about the abstruse realm of particle physics, in which you have to accelerate things nearly to the speed of light and smash them against each other and pick up the pieces (a method unfairly compared to hitting a watch with a hammer to learn how it's put together), not finding a particle doesn't mean it doesn't exist; unless you designed your experiment such that it would be unreasonable for it not to show up. When you're talking about a jar of mayo, arguing that just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it wasn't there is just fatuous. I didn't see it in the fridge because it was on the counter.
So, what about god? I've already discussed why I dismiss the purported evidence (miracles, scripture, revelation) in favor of the god hypothesis. Most everyone who says they don't believe in god state that they lack belief because they haven't seen any evidence. It bothers me that they then go on to refuse to say the believe there is no god (the two aren't equivalent positions) because they claim science can't talk about god. Then why the hell don't you believe? Agnosticism because of a lack of evidence is a scientific position; it's the default scientific position. Why, then, do I go on from there to say that I believe there is no god? What is my evidence in the other direction? I feel that the god hypothesis, if true, would have a measurable impact on observable reality and the lack of that evidence is a compelling argument against the hypothesis.
For example, scripture. I've already stated that if there were a deity, there wouldn't be many mutually exclusive scriptures. There would be one, it would be definitely accurate and demonstrable true. It wouldn't contradict itself and there would be no pretenders purporting to give an alternative truth. A deity so moved as to provide a scripture would also be able to censor false competitors. The celestial dictatorship would have no trouble silencing opposition or critics.
Revelation, miracles, and scriptures, in the face of a true god hypothesis, would be so evidently and clearly true that there wouldn't be the need for the fatuous notion of faith. It wouldn't be received truth but perceived truth. I reject the god hypothesis as firmly as I reject the invisible jar of mayonnaise and as I immediately rejected the notion that someone had broken in and stolen my mayonnaise; the lack of evidence was obviously evidence against the hypothesis. I don't believe, at all, because when the universe is presented with the question, "Is there a god?" the response is a deafening silence.
Next: What would it take for me to believe?
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