Rational vs Rash, or Utopian Society

Hmmm.... so time for another break....The world is fascinating, and today it's also ridiculously hot! Such a pleasure :) Just beautiful to run down streets where the air stands still and heavy with the warm perfume of flowers. And there are lightning bugs here :) so pretty, and makes running interesting as you try to avoid bumping into them.

Okay, so now, to the point, and the latest thing that I've been thinking about is climate change, and how it relates to our society. I am by no means as well informed on the issue as I would like to be, even though my PhD is in some way related, but mainly from an observational point of view. In addition, fortunately as a student I have the luxury of sitting on the fence which I will exploit to full capacity for now.

I was saddened recently to hear an ad on the radio - 'to decrease climate change in your area, be the number X caller after song Y to go in the draw to win an electrical lawn mower'... WTF?! (so now I listen to classical radio; fewer ads, mostly they want you to donate your car...)
The ad was wrong in so many ways.... yet, I'm sure people buy into this stuff... So how to prevent this? People generally speaking have their hearts in the right place and want to do the right thing, and of course when they are told of polar bears drowning, ice caps melting... (i'm going the way of: 'end of the world' flash... check it out) it pulls at heart strings and if all they have to do is call a radio station to 'decrease it in their area' well then what's the harm?
It was sad for me to hear climate change cheapened in such a way, used as a marketing tactic. And leads to the question of why are not people more informed?
Well, people are also generally lazy, thinking takes energy, and thinking is frustrating because we aren't that good at it. When you think and form an opinion, you immediately expose yourself to being 'wrong'. Which of course we feel as an attack on our ego and it smarts. It's so much easier to believe, because well frankly if you believe the wrong thing, it's not you that is 'wrong' it's that your trust was betrayed... you're a victim... or whatever...

Anyway, I'm scattered, this whole debate on climate change, right or wrong, do or don't and what to do and when makes my head spin...

But trying to get back on track. I want to blurt this out, because I even after talking this over with a few people I still don't think I've formulated my opinion in a concise enough way, and writing always helps, and the story goes like this:

Once upon a time, in a cave far far away there lived people that did not think at all... Times were tough, the land was harsh and unforgiving, animals where savage, summers blistering hot, and winters numbingly cold. There communication consisted of grunts, and where mainly expressions of desires and instincts.
One day a huge lightning storm raged for days and days on end, and struck fear into the souls of the cave dwellers. There was among them one cave person known as Lazyone, a particularly poetic soul, that one night over a fire weaved a story about how this was the anger of the sky gods. This caugh the imagination of the cave dwellers and hence started belief on a primitive level.
The older generations when they could no longer pull their weight in the small tribes became the elders and where the story tellers. Religion grew from such gathering, and gave people a cause outside of themselves to fight and die for. Particularly useful if you're trying to mobilize a group of people to fight a war against a neighbouring tribe to tell them that they may die today, but live on forever in the after life. Anyway, that's nothing new, I'm getting carried away (hahah, I'm definitely the "Lazyone")...
As societies grew, the belief system became more elaborate, a documentation system developed, and a few where chosen in the soceities to record this knowledge. Now, most people didn't have time to think, and so on their 'off days' they went in large numbers to hear the readings and teachings of this select few who told them what was wrong and what was right.
The main point I'm trying to make is that morality back in the day was externalized, it was impressed on the majority of people from outside, by the chosen few.

Then we skip ahead some time, to the agricultural revolution when the majority of people found themselves with the time on their hands to 'think'. What where their thoughts turned to? Morality, philosophy, natural sciences. And with time, morality became internalized to some extent... (or you could fairly argue so entrenched in the makeup/web of society, that it was now almost absorbed by osmosis? maybe... but that's not helping my point too much :))

However, these societies where still largely 'imperial' (is that the right word?...no)... 'monarchial' (is that spelt right?...). There was a single person who ruled over the people, and they had little say and choice of who or what they did... With time, people started thinking about this, seeing that perhaps it wasn't exactly fair... (wouldn't blame them after Nero for example)... Whatever the reasons people felt that they had to have a voice and a voice that had to be heard...What gave them such crazy ideas?... too much time on their hands :)... point is that more internalization occured, people 'thought' they had a right to decide their form of government...

Democracy arose, at least for me, who is lucky to be Australian, currently residing in the US, which as to be the most liberal, to the point of being ridiculous, (but I say this with grave admiration, and respect), democratic society. So, although we like to repeat Churchills famous phrase: "the best argument agaist democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter" (Churchill is my hero :)) it's the best we got right now, so don't knock it...

From a young age, since primary school for me, we had it drilled into us that every vote counts! With this we choose our ruling party, we choose our form of government. We have internalized again, we all at least feel we have a voice in our society now. Some of us even read political ideology, and follow the politics of our times, and most of us definitely love arguing about it.

Today for the first time in history, science is no longer just discovering cool gadgets, force fields and observing links in nature which for all their elegance and ingenuity leave most people impassionate. Science today (some science of today to be PC) is actually doing what science is all about in the first place (the whole point), it is 'predicting' and it's predicting something big is about to happen... it is shouting 'dooms day'. Climate change with all it's worst ramifications is the scary unknown, a pushing of our lovely home mother Earth whom we should all love and treasure, into disequilibrium and who knows, a hell so to speak?

What should we do? How should we act? When should we act? What is right and what is wrong? ... Well, I think it's time to internalize again, stop looking at science for facts to 'believe'. "Think, it's patriotic."(from a bumper sticker, oh, God Bless America :)) and we should all think about the fact that we assert our democracy once every three/four years? and we are 'okay' with that, things are going swimmingly... we vote, we poll, we lobby, but not every day.... but every day we assert ourselves on the environment, every day we impact the environment. If we can find the time to think about whether to vote democrat or republican, labor or liberal in the next election, let's hope we find the time to at least 'think' about what we are doing to the environment, and how to best look after the only home we will ever know.

I hope that we all start to think the world is our problem, and we must form an opinion and not a belief.

1 in a million! but it's a chance!

Hello!

'There's a chance!' exclaimed Jim Carrey's character in the brilliant and ridiculously funny movie "Dumb and Dumber" Hahaha :) I still laugh about it... come to think of it, I should watch it again sometime... anyway, this was his response to his love interest in the movie rejecting his advances with the familiar '1 in a million' that she would be interested.... Hmmm... here's to hoping, obviously the eternal optimist...

It sounds funny, and we laugh, and cry (the movie is that good!) exactly because of the ridiculous response he makes in thinking that 1/1,000,000 is actually a possibility. And yet, when I think about it, most of us believe that yes, that is a chance worth noting... Let me explain briefly what I mean, the way I understand basic (and I mean basic) statistics is that you can actually calculate the probability of tossing a coin, and getting 'heads' every time. This is a small number, but it's a 'calculatable' probability and well, most of us would say yes it is a 'possibility'. Why?
Why do we laugh at Jim Carry's character, and not at ourselves?

Do we realize that we could spend our lives tossing that coin, and never ever observe it land heads every time we toss it? And hence, as observation doesn't match theory, perhaps we should say that there are certain probabilities that are actually so improbably as to be impossible?

Hmmm.... well, what about if we had 1,000,000 people toss a coin each, what would be the chance that one of them would always get heads? The chances of consequitive heads 'intuitively' sounds now (at least to me), to be more likely.... so what is going on here...? (Aside note, I read somewhere this amazing quote, which is quite pertinent: Intuition is the product of thousands of years of not thinking, so with this in mind, let's continue.)

Perhaps there should be a statitics which takes into account not only the probability of an event occuring but also the number of tests done? Maybe there already is such a statistical framework?... talking with a bio friend of mine, seems like Baysian stats is something along these lines. As soon as I get a chance I will take a look at this... and we'll see where we go...

But right now, I'm trying hard to write up my PhD... it's hard and soul destroying, and just impossibly difficult, because especially when I am most pressed for time do I find myself branching into other sciences and discovering the most amazingly interesting books and theories. For example, recently walking around the Natural History Museum (again... I have been to that place so many times now :)) I stumbled upon the creatures from the Burgess Shale... Wow :) I love the little note that is attached to their drawings... "Relationship to living organisms unknown." So from this I stumbled upon Stephen Jay Gould and his book (I am reading...) "Wonderful Life"... and then I can't wait to finish that one and read Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"... and then .... oh, I can go on and on! and on and on!!! ....
But when I wake up in the morning... I feel great and elated for the few minutes it takes to download my life back into my brain... and then all the pressures and stresses of the new day weight heavy... so this is why I am writing in my blog!!! ....

Okay, seriously, back to it! :)

Bayesian Stats

Feel like I'm onto something interesting here....
(http://www-biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/prob.html)

okay, probably, quite obviously :)

Skeptic

Hmm... so today I received my first ever 'Skeptic' magazine! :) Very interesting, especially the article on 'climate change'. And apparently it is Darwin's 200 year anniversary .... so lots of info on that and 'how to argue with creationists'. Hahaha! I would say that with people who are 'religious' creationists you can't argue faith... hmm... but it's about time religion was gone as a meme... jeez... to paraphrase, or quote, (or something in between) Schaupy - religion is like a glow worm it glows brightest in darkness. We should really move on!

Anyway! Reading Dawkin's 'Blind Watchmaker' again... and I get the feeling my mind was elsewhere the first time I read it, because I don't remember being in so much agreement with him (still too early in the book to get to the sticky points). Hmm...and I know everyone says this and thinks so already, but gosh, the guy can write! Very well thought out, and leaves your mind feeling organized and clean, which is refreshing.

Liars, damned liars and scientists

"Even after half a century of quantum theory and under the present impact of information theory and cybernetics, one often finds the rather outdated opinion that the application of statistical methods to a problem is dictated by our inability to solve it 'exactly'. Yet unless statistics are understood as a mere averaging process, the opposite is in fact true. A random quantity can be considered as found when not only its mean value, but the entire probability distribution about this mean value is known. In certain rare and usually idealized cases, this probability distribution is such that the mean value is, in the limit, the only value the quantity may assume and in this case the quantity is no longer random. In this special case of a single value instead of an entire distribution, we have a (so-called) 'exact' solution; this is of course much easier to find than the statistical solution, which includes the 'exact' solution as a special case. From this point of view the two opposites are not 'statistical' and 'exact solution', but 'general, statistical solution' and 'idealized limiting case'. "

YEAH! :)
Just wanted to write this out, because I think its particularly relevant today to the interfacing problem of science and society, and also because I keep wanting to remember it, and want to stop carrying the book around with me :)
"The Scattering of Electromagnetic Waves from Rough Surfaces" - Petr Beckmann, Andre Spizzichino, page 71.

Nonsinusoidal Signals

Wow :) I am speechless, this is why I am blogging... :) Hahaha, okay, overwhelmed and stunned. I have stumbled upon the works of Henning Harmuth. It's just amazing, so many of my questions already worked out, and so many things which I have read by people already, worked out by him years ago it seems.

Here is just one paper by him, which is freely available: http://www.emph.com.ua/18/harmuth.htm

and hmmm... I hope to I am not yet a complete invalid in mathematics that I can fully understand his work. It's rare when you read something and notice that you are feeling light headed because you have stopped breathing :)

Metamaterials!!!

Wow :) This is my first exposure the an 'official' debate among the leaders of the scientific community in the area of EM engineering :) Very cool :)
The topic is the existence of 'metamaterials' (of course Wiki has an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial), negative refractive index is the cool bit :) I have to admit having read just a bit about them, I do not have a very good idea what either side is really talking about but it feels very interesting :)
So find the official debate in the IEEE Microwave Mag (Vol 10, Num 3, May 2009) and stay tuned :).
I know who I'm cheering for :) Metamaterial guys of course, makes life more interesting if there's the possibility of a negative refractive index, flat lenses, etc.