Saturday, January 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Beauty in Utility and the Utility of Beauty
Hmmm... So, I guess I am patching up the holes in my literature education, currently reading Walden by Thoreau. Not exactly sure how it fell off the radar when I was growing up...
One of the things that struck me is how right he is in a lot of his discussion of the chains which bind society. I had spent some time thinking of this myself over many years (hahaha, I'm making myself sound old right now). .. But as right as he is what I started thinking about is that yes, I do agree with him that we have far too many things, we exist for the material, trinkets and useless things to fill our lives and act as a kind of projection of our personalities and nature. Although, having said this, very few people have this gift, of originality mostly, more often than not, people simply acquire items which are currently fashionable, hence having others make this decision for them.
Now, what struck me, is that yes, I agree with Thoreau on the undue importance we place on our possessions, work and abode, as they utterly surpass their utility, and yet, I enjoy owning beautiful things like clothes and jewelry very much. So how can I reconcile this? Well, here's my attempt...
As a species in my opinion we strive for aesthetics, the beautiful in most things that we do. From the very basic, where faces which are most pleasing to us are those which are most symmetrical, symmetry being most practical, which beautiful features also being those which bring most utility (or at least did, when we sat behind computers less). So, our idea of beauty is necessarily linked with utility on a fundamental level. And yet, I think if we had all the things we 'needed' in the most ideal form, I believe we would still want/need desire and acquire things that have absolutely no utility and yet somehow we would desire and find them beautiful. Why is this? What is the utility of simple beauty? I guess this comes about as an attempt (in the most sincerest form, I do not refer to people who blindly follow) to project our personality, and of course we desire/prefer to see ourselves as beautiful.
If for example I were a hermit... would I still want to own a beautiful bracelet? what would that mean to me? I think yes, I would, once I had satisfied all my basic needs/necessities, I would have a desire to own not just any bracelet, but a specific one which pleased me. I guess, this comes from the fact that if I were a hermit, I would still marvel at the beauty of nature around me, wouldn't I? and beauty of nature does not exactly have any direct utility for me.
Hence, there is utility in 'simple' beauty as a means of projection from the abstract thought space/subconscious of a person to the 'real'/tangible world, something we all crave, and yet very few of us manage to do it with honesty.
One of the things that struck me is how right he is in a lot of his discussion of the chains which bind society. I had spent some time thinking of this myself over many years (hahaha, I'm making myself sound old right now). .. But as right as he is what I started thinking about is that yes, I do agree with him that we have far too many things, we exist for the material, trinkets and useless things to fill our lives and act as a kind of projection of our personalities and nature. Although, having said this, very few people have this gift, of originality mostly, more often than not, people simply acquire items which are currently fashionable, hence having others make this decision for them.
Now, what struck me, is that yes, I agree with Thoreau on the undue importance we place on our possessions, work and abode, as they utterly surpass their utility, and yet, I enjoy owning beautiful things like clothes and jewelry very much. So how can I reconcile this? Well, here's my attempt...
As a species in my opinion we strive for aesthetics, the beautiful in most things that we do. From the very basic, where faces which are most pleasing to us are those which are most symmetrical, symmetry being most practical, which beautiful features also being those which bring most utility (or at least did, when we sat behind computers less). So, our idea of beauty is necessarily linked with utility on a fundamental level. And yet, I think if we had all the things we 'needed' in the most ideal form, I believe we would still want/need desire and acquire things that have absolutely no utility and yet somehow we would desire and find them beautiful. Why is this? What is the utility of simple beauty? I guess this comes about as an attempt (in the most sincerest form, I do not refer to people who blindly follow) to project our personality, and of course we desire/prefer to see ourselves as beautiful.
If for example I were a hermit... would I still want to own a beautiful bracelet? what would that mean to me? I think yes, I would, once I had satisfied all my basic needs/necessities, I would have a desire to own not just any bracelet, but a specific one which pleased me. I guess, this comes from the fact that if I were a hermit, I would still marvel at the beauty of nature around me, wouldn't I? and beauty of nature does not exactly have any direct utility for me.
Hence, there is utility in 'simple' beauty as a means of projection from the abstract thought space/subconscious of a person to the 'real'/tangible world, something we all crave, and yet very few of us manage to do it with honesty.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Jerks vs Creeps vs Roy Spencer (...and Sebras)
Let's start first with Sebra's... I have just recently noticed how excessively patriotic I'm becoming in spelling. I guess sometime I just miss the balminess of home and the roar of the ocean... so I make a point of maintaining my Australian spelling. However, being a poor speller to start with, I have just taken the bulldosing approach and started spelling everything with a 's' instead. Yup, in Australia we have 'seros' and 'sebras'! :D
Now onto the main point, reading Gould's book (actually his Wiki bio...) I came across two contending theories of the mechanics of evolution - punctuated theory vs gradualist theory of evolution (affectionally refered to as jerks and creeps respectively - isn't the English language just wonderful?).
(Note, no one is asking my opinion... I don't need to have one, which is so entirely refreshing.)
Hmmm... fascinating theories and both proposed by 'evolutionists', however, I feel like the punctuated theory lends itself more to alignment with intelligent design. I wonder what Gould would think of this? I am in the last couple of chapters of the book, and while it has been jaw dropping reading and looking at the pictures of the marvels of the Burgess fauna, these last few chapters are full of philosophical musings which are equally jaw dropping, especially given it is all so new to me.
Interesting aside note to me, is that while other similar soft bodied preserved fossils have been discovered in nearby and far (China) places, it seems like there is no record of juveniles...
Okay, so how does Roy Spencer come into this? Well, he was mentioned to me recently for reasons of his having a loud opinion on climate change, and when I went to see what his opinions where which I am now interested in, so I'll have to go find his book to read...I stumbled upon the fact that well he was a 'creationist'. And was quoting Gould's theory of punctuation as a supporting point.
So then reading Spencer's case for intelligent design it is interesting but my heart just fell when I read 'Christianity'. Why, why do people need to be religious?! Why cannot supporters of intelligent design/creationism be apart/segregated from religion??? it's absolutely depressing. People are not capable of being/doing good in large numbers.... the social experiment and failure of communism is a prime example of this...
And this is all I seem to be capable of today... I feel drained, it has been such a long week...
Now onto the main point, reading Gould's book (actually his Wiki bio...) I came across two contending theories of the mechanics of evolution - punctuated theory vs gradualist theory of evolution (affectionally refered to as jerks and creeps respectively - isn't the English language just wonderful?).
(Note, no one is asking my opinion... I don't need to have one, which is so entirely refreshing.)
Hmmm... fascinating theories and both proposed by 'evolutionists', however, I feel like the punctuated theory lends itself more to alignment with intelligent design. I wonder what Gould would think of this? I am in the last couple of chapters of the book, and while it has been jaw dropping reading and looking at the pictures of the marvels of the Burgess fauna, these last few chapters are full of philosophical musings which are equally jaw dropping, especially given it is all so new to me.
Interesting aside note to me, is that while other similar soft bodied preserved fossils have been discovered in nearby and far (China) places, it seems like there is no record of juveniles...
Okay, so how does Roy Spencer come into this? Well, he was mentioned to me recently for reasons of his having a loud opinion on climate change, and when I went to see what his opinions where which I am now interested in, so I'll have to go find his book to read...I stumbled upon the fact that well he was a 'creationist'. And was quoting Gould's theory of punctuation as a supporting point.
So then reading Spencer's case for intelligent design it is interesting but my heart just fell when I read 'Christianity'. Why, why do people need to be religious?! Why cannot supporters of intelligent design/creationism be apart/segregated from religion??? it's absolutely depressing. People are not capable of being/doing good in large numbers.... the social experiment and failure of communism is a prime example of this...
And this is all I seem to be capable of today... I feel drained, it has been such a long week...
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Wonderful Life
Having a particularly irritating day at work, which started off well, but quickly degraded into a heap of disappointment, and physically painful struggle trying to stay awake, I came home to do nothing but read, and found solace in 'Wonderful Life' :) Admittedly I understand very little (but I sense Gould's superhuman attempt to relate his field to the layman and greatly appreciate it), however, it is just filled with such eloquent wonder at the intricacies at the complexities of diversity and 'disparity' (newly acquired understanding) of life that it healed my crushed soul.
I was just about to start on a long lament at my predicament, but I am stopping myself as it is rather tedious...
I recently observed in reading the book on the statistics and also, a while ago on mathematical illiteracy (which I need to purchase and reread), I find that like fashion the 'fashionable ideas' of the day are recycled about every 10 years. The book on how statistics was written a while back, back when making $15,000/yr meant you where well-off, and it was addressing the same problems in society as we are today, and the same for the mathematical illiteracy book... However this is both comforting and scary. Comforting in the sense that it seems that humanity is globally, what we are all internally: short sighted and love wallowing in our current unfortunate circumstances. Scary in the sense that our progress to higher moral, educational and ethical standards seems slow, perhaps we are even regressing....?
On a side note, I am making it a goal to go to the Burgess Shale (soon)!
I was just about to start on a long lament at my predicament, but I am stopping myself as it is rather tedious...
I recently observed in reading the book on the statistics and also, a while ago on mathematical illiteracy (which I need to purchase and reread), I find that like fashion the 'fashionable ideas' of the day are recycled about every 10 years. The book on how statistics was written a while back, back when making $15,000/yr meant you where well-off, and it was addressing the same problems in society as we are today, and the same for the mathematical illiteracy book... However this is both comforting and scary. Comforting in the sense that it seems that humanity is globally, what we are all internally: short sighted and love wallowing in our current unfortunate circumstances. Scary in the sense that our progress to higher moral, educational and ethical standards seems slow, perhaps we are even regressing....?
On a side note, I am making it a goal to go to the Burgess Shale (soon)!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
2 + 2 = 4.0000
I love Mark Twain for many things: his sharp wit which I didn't appreciate him for until I read his "How I edited an agricultural paper once", and now an excerpt from his writing takes the honorable place of the concluding thoughts of the book "How to lie with statistics":
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
So having read "How to lie with statistics", which is an amazingly informative book (and is sure to make my PhD thesis more convincing ;)) I applied it recently to a report I read on public perception of science. So, here are a few points I made reading the report:
1. When conducting surveys, perhaps in order to avoid introducing hidden bias should not contain emotive phrases which necessarily incite people when 'binning' their opinions.
2. What is the definition of scientists? - there are people who hold PhDs who are not scientists, and people without PhD certification who are excellent scientists...?
3. It was interesting to see agreement in the polls (comparing 'scientists' opinions with the 'general public') when the point was concerning children vaccines. Possibly because this was addressing the common ground of both, as both are parents and want best for their children.
4. I noticed that the 'geosciences' had the most positive outlook of their profession (I can see why...).
5. It was annoying to note that it was seen as a negative that the American public didn't know that an atom was larger than an electron. This was seen as a lack of knowledge in science. What a big smelly load of garbage! Okay, now I've worked myself up, and probably won't make much sense, but I cannot stress how infuriating it is! Who the hell cares?! This is a small, small insignificant 'fact' (I'm cautious using this term), it's basically on par with remembering jokes so that you can entertain your dinner guests. Science is an approach to facts, the systematic ordering of ideas rather than remembering stupid dumb things. How can you expect people to 'anchor' random facts like this, like remembering the names of new people they have met, some do it better than others. AH! (btw, I am partial to this idea of anchoring, fascinating way of looking at why we attach ourselves to certain things and situations. I'm working on being all Zen ('unanchored' about life)...
6. Interesting to see that 'scientists' see themselves as liberal, whereas public opinion is that they are very conservative. Perhaps as scientists we are trained to be liberal, as we are trained to form hypothesis and then be unbiased in our testing, and accept the conclusion whatever it may be. But with advancement of our careers, when our hypotheses build on themselves, finding out that our initial one was wrong is a huge blow to the whole scaffold and our personal ego. And we become conservative, as we cherish most of all those ideas which are our own, and hold on like to our ideas once formed as pitbulls. Hence, we perceive ourselves as liberal (as is our professional training), but portray ourselves as conservative (trying to save our careers)? :P
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
So having read "How to lie with statistics", which is an amazingly informative book (and is sure to make my PhD thesis more convincing ;)) I applied it recently to a report I read on public perception of science. So, here are a few points I made reading the report:
1. When conducting surveys, perhaps in order to avoid introducing hidden bias should not contain emotive phrases which necessarily incite people when 'binning' their opinions.
2. What is the definition of scientists? - there are people who hold PhDs who are not scientists, and people without PhD certification who are excellent scientists...?
3. It was interesting to see agreement in the polls (comparing 'scientists' opinions with the 'general public') when the point was concerning children vaccines. Possibly because this was addressing the common ground of both, as both are parents and want best for their children.
4. I noticed that the 'geosciences' had the most positive outlook of their profession (I can see why...).
5. It was annoying to note that it was seen as a negative that the American public didn't know that an atom was larger than an electron. This was seen as a lack of knowledge in science. What a big smelly load of garbage! Okay, now I've worked myself up, and probably won't make much sense, but I cannot stress how infuriating it is! Who the hell cares?! This is a small, small insignificant 'fact' (I'm cautious using this term), it's basically on par with remembering jokes so that you can entertain your dinner guests. Science is an approach to facts, the systematic ordering of ideas rather than remembering stupid dumb things. How can you expect people to 'anchor' random facts like this, like remembering the names of new people they have met, some do it better than others. AH! (btw, I am partial to this idea of anchoring, fascinating way of looking at why we attach ourselves to certain things and situations. I'm working on being all Zen ('unanchored' about life)...
6. Interesting to see that 'scientists' see themselves as liberal, whereas public opinion is that they are very conservative. Perhaps as scientists we are trained to be liberal, as we are trained to form hypothesis and then be unbiased in our testing, and accept the conclusion whatever it may be. But with advancement of our careers, when our hypotheses build on themselves, finding out that our initial one was wrong is a huge blow to the whole scaffold and our personal ego. And we become conservative, as we cherish most of all those ideas which are our own, and hold on like to our ideas once formed as pitbulls. Hence, we perceive ourselves as liberal (as is our professional training), but portray ourselves as conservative (trying to save our careers)? :P
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
2 + 2 does not equal 4
AHHHH! I am too confused to think, let alone write cohesively. One thing is just absolutely killing me right now is that I could have attended a public talk by Waxman on his recent book, and I was in Kansas... albeit for PhD purposes and it was highly productive, but all the same... why did Waxman have to schedule his talk when I was off in Kansas?... :P
Okay, so now I'm back, and again justifying it as a quest of my organising a climate change seminar (I have taken a truly scientific approach to this problem by deciding to gather experimental data), I attended a talk which touched on climate change and also the public's perseption of science, what is wrong with it, and how we can make it right.
Hmmm... just writing this I came to realise that when I was asked 'what is the purpose' of the seminar, I had no answer, and I guess what I have just thought of, is, what would be the 'right' scientific perception? Okay, that's for later, and I think the brief blanket answer would be an exasperated plea for everyone to think a bit more, and feel a bit less.
An interesting point brought up, and I've heard this many times now when working among scientists is this push to 'reach out' to the public (frankly I am a bit cautious of this statement as it necessarily puts up a wall between scientists and the 'public', it has a scent of the horrible 'sheep' sentiment, which we all love exploring, as we all want to consider ourselves wolves).
Anyway, yes, reaching out to the public, how to talk about what you do, and how much fun it is.
I wonder where this push is coming from? Why does the general public need to understand what 'scientist' do? Possibly because people under the label of science have started to tap into peoples emotions and it is starting to get political momentum (climate change being prime example), and money is there to be made. The reason I ask this is not because I think people shouldn't marvel at the wonders of nature, and be exposed to generalised (or watered down) scientific messages, it's just that science isn't always fun, it's a job (a means of making money, and that is all it is for most people).
Well, just imagine an athlete asked to talk about how much 'fun' his training program is, putting in 8hrs a day of exhausting labour, or a concert pianist to try to engage the public's imagination on the 8hrs of practice in front of the piano, when the weather is perfect outside, and all you want to do is play in the sunshine, but no, you must sit on your behind and play that damn Chopin (I love Chopin btw), again and again and again.... Thrilling really. Same with science, for every bright star that 'makes it' there are millions of people who 'do' science 9-5 and it's actually repetitive, numbing and boring, but it pays the bills.
And this push to get science into the public arena can be argued of course to stem from the fact that it is becoming relevant to peoples lives (specifically with climate change and evolution (perhaps). But is it because of this new found relevance or again because of political momentum? I would argue for political momentum, and I hope you agree, it's kinda obvious, but I wanted to illustrate this, or support it with two examples, namely cooking and medicine. Both of these professions are integral and very relevant to our lives. I guess not surprisingly I am terrible at cooking, I used to think this was cool, back in the day I was all about being a tomboy, but then I realised what a handicap it has become, and I wanted to get better, I even tried reasoning with myself that it was just like writing a program (declaring variables, and writing functions, making calls, which is fine, except there's no debugging feature in cooking, once it's done it's done, and as most programmers know, there's always a bug...). Okay, so I've solved this by having simple tastes, and when people come over, we 'all' cook pizza :D.
Anyway, big off topic rant, point is cooking is quite relevant, and well, we aren't all very good at it, and yet, we don't petition cooks to 'reach out' to us the public, and teach us how much fun it is. Or maybe they do? Hahaha, wait... actually come to think of it there's Jamie Oliver, and actually probably bad example, as I said I'm not good at cooking, I don't (should?) watch those shows. Actually just got a hilarious picture of the union of cooks gathering to discuss how to make cooking well more accessible to the general public - "how not to burn water" or "the art of debugging your roast". Okay, so perhaps a weak point?
The other is medicine, it's very relevant, and yet, I definitely don't see doctors reaching out to the public (yes they have their TV shows where doctors, surgeons specifically) are idolized, but in no way is there a message that is it for everone, (...that's homeopathy, and you're a tree hugging hippy if you think that'll make you better [tone of sarcasm]). But I guess I can't stress enough, and again obvious point, how relevant it is! Why are we not pushing this in schools, say, making all high school students pass a comprehensive first aid course, and some basic knowledge of common illnesses and how they may be prevented and treated? Because there is money to be made in not educating people?
A point to be made is that the niche of the scientific profession is that scientist are/truly/really those people that are anti-social and anal (really they are...). This is what science is about, it's about being tediously focused on the 'obvious' when others had moved on to bigger and better things. Okay, Einstein makes his appearance here, consider if he was just like everyone else and accepted ether as the 'truth'? He would never have made his discovery, and you know during the time he was thinking about this, he would have most probably been the most tedious person to talk to... Scientists are the ones that question the obvious, by no means are they (we) generalists, we are specialists, and this is the only method by which scientific progress can be made.
If you're acting as a scientist, you'll find people generally don't enjoy talking to you (unless its in your professional setting) as you're constantly needing to define/outline/establish a common framework, what is obvious for others is not obvious for you, and for that conversation with you is tedious and boring to most.
The reason for this is that so many people love lossy compression (and not just for your 'jpegs'!) What I mean is: How is it possible to learn to compress 100 pages of text (which some reasonable person wrote) into a number of bullet points.... without allowing the possibility of missing something? (In most cases, there are always exceptions, I very aware I'm contributing to this right now, but practice makes perfect!) This is what lossy compression is, you necessarily loose information when you present it succintly, and it fails to be reflection of the truth, just a distant artifact, but important point is that it's an irreversable loss, you can't get the 'true' picture back from your lossly artifact. And the same in science, you just cannot present the 'facts'/truth to a person who doesn't share your 'context'/framework without loosing information and necessarily compromising the integrity of the message. This compression is not science, it's not a scientific message, it's a lie (or less categorically, it is a message with a hint/flavor of truth).
I was thinking about this, because at this talk we were presented with an 'astonishing' statistical 'fact' that only 7% of PhD graduates go on to tenured positions. I started thinking - 'how many tenured positions were actually available?', this would present the figure in a more realistic light. And then I started thinking whether it was honest of the person to state this figure, after all, I'm sure there's a paper out there somewhere which was published in a peer reviewed journal, with that number in it. So is it the truth or not? Well, my conclusion for now is that it is not a fact, that it is actually a lie (which implies an intent to deceive, which may not have existed, but it is at least an error made in neglect and lack of conscientiousness), yes this is where I am tedious and boring. The data should have been presented in a context, in order to judge how closely the figure is a representation of nature, I need to know the context which was not presented. The context was assumed, it was a shorthand statement, and hence leads to misinterpretation. So I guess this example illustrates how tedious science is, and provides an idea of how science is used to 'send a message'. A little note on the side, I'm about to start reading a book on this very topic 'How to lie with statistics' :) (Ah, a fascinating statement - correlation does not imply causation.)
Oh, and one last thing, this is scattered I know, but I wanted to finish on by exploring again this disturbing trend in humanity to... categorise, class, classify, and subtly to differentiate with the necessary implication of heirarchy. We all do it. And this is especially relevant now as well: journalists/evolutionists/creationists/scientists/public (whoever they are?) etc.... this classification takes away common ground, and this is not conducive to either engaging people or changing their point of view (if you so desire). It was sad for me to hear ideas supported at the talk such as - evolution is the right (implication of universal thruth here) theory, climate change is fact, and etc, and the difficulty in 'converting' creationists and making them see the light. You know it dawned on me this idea that perhaps the reason it is hard to convince people or reason with them is that when we do it, we are for ourselves convinced 100% that it is us that are right. We hold the truth, the answer, and for whatever reason: ignorance, stupidity, lack of time, the people we are arguing with hold the 'wrong' opinion. Their opinion is inferior, not just different, again we are heirarchialy classifying. Our disagreement most of the time may arise because we have different context/frameworks with the people we are arguing/convicing. Blinded however, by our personal truth and apparent ignorance of our opponent we do not address the relevant points, and hence fail to achieve our aim. It's like watching people fight sometimes, they seem to just talk at each other, and answer each others questions without addressing the question... it's the weirdest thing... (I do this too, it's just easier to observe in others).
Ultimately I come back to Kant's great words, presented here without context, as with a context they would loose their magic/supernatural/ephemeral and insightful quality and become so darn obvious it would be a waste of time to read: "we do no see things as they are, but as we are".
Underlying case is we are all human, and most of the time we are all wrong.
Okay, so now I'm back, and again justifying it as a quest of my organising a climate change seminar (I have taken a truly scientific approach to this problem by deciding to gather experimental data), I attended a talk which touched on climate change and also the public's perseption of science, what is wrong with it, and how we can make it right.
Hmmm... just writing this I came to realise that when I was asked 'what is the purpose' of the seminar, I had no answer, and I guess what I have just thought of, is, what would be the 'right' scientific perception? Okay, that's for later, and I think the brief blanket answer would be an exasperated plea for everyone to think a bit more, and feel a bit less.
An interesting point brought up, and I've heard this many times now when working among scientists is this push to 'reach out' to the public (frankly I am a bit cautious of this statement as it necessarily puts up a wall between scientists and the 'public', it has a scent of the horrible 'sheep' sentiment, which we all love exploring, as we all want to consider ourselves wolves).
Anyway, yes, reaching out to the public, how to talk about what you do, and how much fun it is.
I wonder where this push is coming from? Why does the general public need to understand what 'scientist' do? Possibly because people under the label of science have started to tap into peoples emotions and it is starting to get political momentum (climate change being prime example), and money is there to be made. The reason I ask this is not because I think people shouldn't marvel at the wonders of nature, and be exposed to generalised (or watered down) scientific messages, it's just that science isn't always fun, it's a job (a means of making money, and that is all it is for most people).
Well, just imagine an athlete asked to talk about how much 'fun' his training program is, putting in 8hrs a day of exhausting labour, or a concert pianist to try to engage the public's imagination on the 8hrs of practice in front of the piano, when the weather is perfect outside, and all you want to do is play in the sunshine, but no, you must sit on your behind and play that damn Chopin (I love Chopin btw), again and again and again.... Thrilling really. Same with science, for every bright star that 'makes it' there are millions of people who 'do' science 9-5 and it's actually repetitive, numbing and boring, but it pays the bills.
And this push to get science into the public arena can be argued of course to stem from the fact that it is becoming relevant to peoples lives (specifically with climate change and evolution (perhaps). But is it because of this new found relevance or again because of political momentum? I would argue for political momentum, and I hope you agree, it's kinda obvious, but I wanted to illustrate this, or support it with two examples, namely cooking and medicine. Both of these professions are integral and very relevant to our lives. I guess not surprisingly I am terrible at cooking, I used to think this was cool, back in the day I was all about being a tomboy, but then I realised what a handicap it has become, and I wanted to get better, I even tried reasoning with myself that it was just like writing a program (declaring variables, and writing functions, making calls, which is fine, except there's no debugging feature in cooking, once it's done it's done, and as most programmers know, there's always a bug...). Okay, so I've solved this by having simple tastes, and when people come over, we 'all' cook pizza :D.
Anyway, big off topic rant, point is cooking is quite relevant, and well, we aren't all very good at it, and yet, we don't petition cooks to 'reach out' to us the public, and teach us how much fun it is. Or maybe they do? Hahaha, wait... actually come to think of it there's Jamie Oliver, and actually probably bad example, as I said I'm not good at cooking, I don't (should?) watch those shows. Actually just got a hilarious picture of the union of cooks gathering to discuss how to make cooking well more accessible to the general public - "how not to burn water" or "the art of debugging your roast". Okay, so perhaps a weak point?
The other is medicine, it's very relevant, and yet, I definitely don't see doctors reaching out to the public (yes they have their TV shows where doctors, surgeons specifically) are idolized, but in no way is there a message that is it for everone, (...that's homeopathy, and you're a tree hugging hippy if you think that'll make you better [tone of sarcasm]). But I guess I can't stress enough, and again obvious point, how relevant it is! Why are we not pushing this in schools, say, making all high school students pass a comprehensive first aid course, and some basic knowledge of common illnesses and how they may be prevented and treated? Because there is money to be made in not educating people?
A point to be made is that the niche of the scientific profession is that scientist are/truly/really those people that are anti-social and anal (really they are...). This is what science is about, it's about being tediously focused on the 'obvious' when others had moved on to bigger and better things. Okay, Einstein makes his appearance here, consider if he was just like everyone else and accepted ether as the 'truth'? He would never have made his discovery, and you know during the time he was thinking about this, he would have most probably been the most tedious person to talk to... Scientists are the ones that question the obvious, by no means are they (we) generalists, we are specialists, and this is the only method by which scientific progress can be made.
If you're acting as a scientist, you'll find people generally don't enjoy talking to you (unless its in your professional setting) as you're constantly needing to define/outline/establish a common framework, what is obvious for others is not obvious for you, and for that conversation with you is tedious and boring to most.
The reason for this is that so many people love lossy compression (and not just for your 'jpegs'!) What I mean is: How is it possible to learn to compress 100 pages of text (which some reasonable person wrote) into a number of bullet points.... without allowing the possibility of missing something? (In most cases, there are always exceptions, I very aware I'm contributing to this right now, but practice makes perfect!) This is what lossy compression is, you necessarily loose information when you present it succintly, and it fails to be reflection of the truth, just a distant artifact, but important point is that it's an irreversable loss, you can't get the 'true' picture back from your lossly artifact. And the same in science, you just cannot present the 'facts'/truth to a person who doesn't share your 'context'/framework without loosing information and necessarily compromising the integrity of the message. This compression is not science, it's not a scientific message, it's a lie (or less categorically, it is a message with a hint/flavor of truth).
I was thinking about this, because at this talk we were presented with an 'astonishing' statistical 'fact' that only 7% of PhD graduates go on to tenured positions. I started thinking - 'how many tenured positions were actually available?', this would present the figure in a more realistic light. And then I started thinking whether it was honest of the person to state this figure, after all, I'm sure there's a paper out there somewhere which was published in a peer reviewed journal, with that number in it. So is it the truth or not? Well, my conclusion for now is that it is not a fact, that it is actually a lie (which implies an intent to deceive, which may not have existed, but it is at least an error made in neglect and lack of conscientiousness), yes this is where I am tedious and boring. The data should have been presented in a context, in order to judge how closely the figure is a representation of nature, I need to know the context which was not presented. The context was assumed, it was a shorthand statement, and hence leads to misinterpretation. So I guess this example illustrates how tedious science is, and provides an idea of how science is used to 'send a message'. A little note on the side, I'm about to start reading a book on this very topic 'How to lie with statistics' :) (Ah, a fascinating statement - correlation does not imply causation.)
Oh, and one last thing, this is scattered I know, but I wanted to finish on by exploring again this disturbing trend in humanity to... categorise, class, classify, and subtly to differentiate with the necessary implication of heirarchy. We all do it. And this is especially relevant now as well: journalists/evolutionists/creationists/scientists/public (whoever they are?) etc.... this classification takes away common ground, and this is not conducive to either engaging people or changing their point of view (if you so desire). It was sad for me to hear ideas supported at the talk such as - evolution is the right (implication of universal thruth here) theory, climate change is fact, and etc, and the difficulty in 'converting' creationists and making them see the light. You know it dawned on me this idea that perhaps the reason it is hard to convince people or reason with them is that when we do it, we are for ourselves convinced 100% that it is us that are right. We hold the truth, the answer, and for whatever reason: ignorance, stupidity, lack of time, the people we are arguing with hold the 'wrong' opinion. Their opinion is inferior, not just different, again we are heirarchialy classifying. Our disagreement most of the time may arise because we have different context/frameworks with the people we are arguing/convicing. Blinded however, by our personal truth and apparent ignorance of our opponent we do not address the relevant points, and hence fail to achieve our aim. It's like watching people fight sometimes, they seem to just talk at each other, and answer each others questions without addressing the question... it's the weirdest thing... (I do this too, it's just easier to observe in others).
Ultimately I come back to Kant's great words, presented here without context, as with a context they would loose their magic/supernatural/ephemeral and insightful quality and become so darn obvious it would be a waste of time to read: "we do no see things as they are, but as we are".
Underlying case is we are all human, and most of the time we are all wrong.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Cool off
So, now after that rant... I had wanted to share this cool photo of ancient tracks of some ancient animal/creature whose fossil remains have not been found, and cannot be explained. The fascinating thing of course is that they look like golf buggy tracks! :)
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