The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer – Book review

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Blind faith preceeds absolute belief, Book review, Michael Shermer, Proof preceeds acceptance, Scientific skepticism, The Believing Brain, The null hypothesis, Why people believe

In The Believing Brain, Michael Shermer gives a good description of how the scientific method works in his discussion of the null hypothesis. “Where philosophy and theology depend on logic and reason and thought experiments, science employs empiricism, evidence, and observational experiments. It is the only hope we have of avoiding the trap of belief-dependent realism” (p. 335) Basically the null hypothesis asserts that we begin by not believing anything, and that those who claim things to be true must be able to prove their assertions with repeatable tests and high consistency of results.

The main thrust of the book is about why people believe what they do, and the main argument is that it is an inborn human trait. The right side of the brain does things without any particular reason, and the left side of the brain makes up plausible reasons for the fait accompli. This process is helped by the culture’s individuals being raised in situations where most things are already set up to make previous people’s rationalizations about why thing behave as they do, into a functioning system of coordinated beliefs.

Here in Western culture this theory was put into play by Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430), who was a Roman citizen born in Africa. His writings created the foundations of the Medieval Christian church. “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” Upon those unverifiable thoughts, the classic Greco-Roman system of justification by proofs was dismantled, and the millennium named the Dark Ages took over men’s minds. The problem with that method of action is that anything whatsoever can be brought under the concept of “faith.” There are an infinite number of potential ideas, but only a few of those ideas will pass the null hypothesis of proof by physical test. Just saying something exists doesn’t mean it exists, and yet the human brain is prone to believe what it perceives, especially when it is a respected person making the claim.

Shermer explores the various reasons for our human predilection to believe unskeptically, and this book makes a good foundation for observing the world around us more carefully.

Uncharted, by Erez Aiden & J-B Michel – book review

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Erez Aiden, Google, Google Ngram of words, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Ngram the past and future, Uncharted

If you need a couple of hundred pages of nonfiction fun, Uncharted is for you. This is very serious stuff about big data that is sweeping the world, and is already having a massive impact on us personally, but it is written in a friendly and compelling style. Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culturewas written by the super-elite information super-stars Erez Aiden & Jean-Baptiste Michel.

This is a book about Google’s search tool called – Ngrams. It permits anyone to search and compare the historical frequency of usage of words, and presents them on an easy-to-interpret chart.

https://books.google.com/ngrams

Albert Einstein,Sherlock Holmes,Frankenstein,Dracula,Jack the Ripper

The Ngram is opening up the world of BIG DATA to the public. If you know how to apply this technology in the right way it will make you rich and famous. If you think that’s crazy, come back in five years, and with little doubt there will be some newly famous whiz-kid millionaires based on discoveries made possible by this technology. One reason that claim makes sense is realizing the predictive power of this technology. If one observes the trending inertia of the words associated with a given subject, especially when comparing competing ideas and technologies, it will, on average, be an excellent predictor of their future success. Knowing what will succeed and what will fail, before they do, is the very heart of successful strategy.

Of course if your inertia graph is cut off fourteen years ago, and the authors have up-to-the-minute data, you know who is going to predict the future better, and come away with the cash and kudos.

The Compatibility Gene by Daniel M. Davis – book review

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Daniel M. Davis, Immunology, Questing into the knowable unknowns., Scientific research, The Compatibility Gene

Until recently immunology probably wasn’t offered in many universities, and perhaps not even a full course in medical school, and one might assume this obscure subject wouldn’t be of interest to anyone. Au contraire, my uninformed friend, you as an individual exist because of your immune responses. They are able to identify every part of your body as belonging to you, and to no one else. You can live on Earth or in the Space Station without gravity, a rather fundamental condition of your present daily life, but without your fully functioning immune system you would soon perish, even in that originally sterile space environment.

The Compatibility Gene: How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves, by Daniel M. Davis, is written for the educated reader who wants to have a glimpse into the minds, lives, working methods and theories of the scientists who are digging out the ways our bodies actually function. It is an easy read for those who can pay close attention to a plethora of usually easy-to-understand details. That is a challenge to the writer and reader, because organic chemistry isn’t easy, and biological chemistry is even more complex. Davis does make these technical things as clear as can be hoped for in a book written for the general public, and he does make the book infinitely more human by introducing the various champions of the science to us with very human stories. One thing becomes clear — these scientists worked very hard to discover what they did, and very hard to convince their competing colleagues of the truth of their discoveries. Many of the people whose work is described in this book got Nobel Prizes for their efforts, but even those winners will remain largely unknown to the public, although  they shouldn’t remain unknown to you. They are far more important to your health, and the longevity of everyone, than the rich and famous people the media trumpets at our faces. That seems outrageous, but realize that your body’s immune response is a far more delicate instrument for determining what is good for you than the entire drug industry.

When you read this book, you will become more respectful of the dedicated people who are making your world possible. This is but a glimpse of one category of those heroes. Near the end of his fabulously productive life, Peter B. Medawar echoed Thomas Hobbes’s view that “Life is like a race and the most important thing is to be in it, to be engaged, ambitious and go-getting, to improve the world. – ‘There can be no contentment but in proceeding.’”

These scientists are among the human heroes peeling away the obscurity and revealing the knowables within the previously unknown. 

Controversial topics worthy of discussion.

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Controversial topics, International controversy, Subjects to avoid, Wikipedia rewrites

The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis – lead author, Taha Yasseri, compares the rate of change of articles based on subject matter revisions. Some subjects are posted and never change, but others change frequently, because people involved with controversial issues don’t like what their opposition has written. The Wikipedia policy is to permit change by any reader at any time. There are people who monitor the sites and ugly comments are quickly removed by the monitor, reverting to the previous more generally accepted version.  On the controversial issues there are frequent reasonable changes and revisions, and revisions on the revisions and then reverting, etc. etc., but conditioned by a point of view. They call it Wikipedia wars, or Wikiwars, or World War 3. I am an outside observer of this enduring battle. The battles and wars will eventually change with changing times and needs, but the Wikipedia wars will continue so long as controversy exists, which means as long as people and Wikipedia exist in their present form.

The article traces controversial Wikipedia sites in several languages, and it is worthwhile perusing them carefully and comparing them. The current list of top ten most frequently modified articles in English are: George W. Bush, Anarchism, Muhammad, Wrestling, Global Warming, Circumcision, United States, Jesus, Race and Intelligence, Christianity.

A cross comparison of several languages’ articles and the changes in their Wikipedia pages include topics such as Israel, Adolf Hitler, The Holocaust, God, Atheism, Europe, Evolution, Jesus, Islam, Muhammad, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Barack Obama, Scientology, September 11 attacks, Iran, Racism, Christianity, Abortion, United States, Kosovo, FC Barcelona, 2006 Lebanon, Global Warming, Intelligent design.

Those subjects are generally avoided at family gatherings, because they result in irreconcilable feuds. The common characteristic of these subjects is that they have strong positive aspects and strong negative ones too, based on each individual’s personal point of view. The subjects are inherently divisive, and taking a neutral position is almost impossible, when conversing with a true believer of any persuasion, because if you don’t strongly agree with their point of view you are considered an enemy, and are attacked. Perhaps the best a neutral person can do is to say something like, “Wow, that’s interesting. I never saw it like that before. Would you explain how you know that.” Hopefully, the explanation will have obviously silly assumptions, but these must be approached with mild and agreeable questioning or the person will stop thinking and go into a restive attack mode. That will only force them into becoming more bigoted, and less human, and end up having them label you an enemy. Direct presentation of facts to people with fixed preconceptions will either be rejected as nonsense, or integrated into their distorted system of beliefs. Thus, raw facts are counterproductive for clarifying their problem areas and softer methods must be used.

Topics worthy of discussion are those where verifiable truth can have some positive progress.

Google’s Map To Global Domination – review

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Google Maps review, Google's map to global domination, Proba 95, Virtually Berkeley 1999

Today in The Bulletin, Bend, Oregon’s local newspaper was a reprint of the New York Times article Google’s Map To Global Domination, by ADAM FISHER, published December 11, 2013.

What struck me was that I published to the internet, long before Google Maps, as Virtually Berkeley – 1999 a three block street view of Telegraph Avenue, a precursor of the current Google Street View. My technology was primitive, just an early digital camera, but I did composite 360° views along the street, and a series of block-long composite face views of the buildings. Also, there are a few short trips into the stores along the way, which Google is only now partially implementing. Also, for a brief period there were internet links to the various stores, now long gone. I had some computer geek friends who urged me in the strongest possible way to found a commercial venture on the idea, but if you read these posts you know I am lazy when it comes to actual work.

In reading Fisher’s New York Times article it became apparent I had anticipated Google Street Views by many years. It wasn’t until 2008 that Google even attempted what I had published in 1999. In the computer world of Silicon Valley a single month is thought the difference between success and failure with the introduction of a new idea. And there I was, not months, but nine years ahead of Google. If you think that an outrageous statement go look at my work, and do the click-throughs into the Med for example. Its click is in the middle of the lower picture.

A little different from street views is this list of 30 other 360° views from various locations, some of which are on the street and some in more inaccessible locations. Note the space photo of the San Francisco Bay, at the top, with clickable red dots for locations. It gives close-up 360° views of some of the same places. Also, note that I listed the exact geographic coordinates of the photos. All of those things pre-date Google by years.

My point is that in reading the Times’ historically inclined article and then viewing my ancient site you can see that I anticipated Google and its copiers by computer eons. I remember that when I presented Proba-95 in December 1994, it was greeted with a giant yawn, and only a couple of computer friends saw anything in my street views of Telegraph Avenue. And yet, that nineteen-year-old stuff is filled with ideas that are finally becoming “obvious all along,” and other material that is “laughed at,” and some that is still “condemned.”

That development of early ideas now seems obvious. It was ever thus, and still is. And now I have evolved to an even sillier venture, seeking into the unknown unknowns. Will I ever learn? Probably not, I’m too old to learn.

Sex on Six Legs by Marlene Zuk – review

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Book review, Marlene Zuk, Sex on six legs, Why sex is so bizarre.

This book is even better than its title. It is filled with real scientific observations while at the same time having a constant undertone of friendly and intimate comedy. Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language from the Insect World, by Marlene Zuk, is a book that is to be recommended to everyone from pre-pubescent youngsters to totally geriatric oldsters. It is valuable because it clarifies so many perplexing issues that we all ask. What life is really all about. Where babies come from, and why, is a vastly more interesting topic than we ever imagined. There are millions of insect species and each of them has approached passing on its own genes in its own idiosyncratic way. Some real life sexual experiences are far beyond anything human pornographers have even dreamed of, and yet it is all perfectly reasonable and correct when you understand the problems the species are confronted with.

After reading this book you will approach social relations and reproductive acts in both a more dispassionate way when analyzing life, and at the same time a more wholesome passionate one when attempting to create it.

A Brief History of Thought – Luc Ferry – review

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A Brief History of Thought, Book review, Deepity, Luc Ferry, Thruthiness

Luc Ferry’s A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living got off to a good start with the promise that it was going to give a quick survey of Western philosophy, while going deep into the essentials. Ferry is a respected philosopher in France and in the Continental philosophical tradition, but I will leave that praise on the other side of the Atlantic. I found my feelings to be much more often those of annoyance than of pleasure while reading this book. Daniel Dennett’s term “deepity” and Stephen Colbert’s “Truthiness” kept percolating up in my mind.

From the Urban Dictionary – Dennett’s – “Deepity – Something that sounds profound but intellectually hollow. Usually has the following characteristics. 1. True but trivial 2. False but logically ill-informed. –  A proposition that seems to be profound because it is actually logically ill-formed. A deepity balances precariously between multiple interpretations, at least one of which is obvious and trivial and at least one of which would be earth-shaking except that it is false.” And Colbert’s – “Truthiness - The quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.”

Ferry’s book was loaded with those kinds of statements. One particular one which popped up several times — therefore it was an intentional truthiness statement and not an accident — was that the French Revolution was the foundation of modern liberty. He never mentions the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776 which if he would check his calendar precedes his French one of 1789. I can easily forgive errors of fact, and yet this one is difficult to forgive because it concerns one of the most momentous events in history — the founding of the greatest military power of all time, which has got to count for something to take note of and remember. And, although we may not praise the use of military power, it was that American military power which twice in the last century lifted Ferry’s “Free France” from the bondage of slavery. It would seem plausible that he would know that.

It isn’t necessary to go further into his and my biases, and let’s just agree that if you are a Francophile you will probably love this book, and if not you probably wont.

Life at the speed of light by J. Craig Venter – review

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J. Craig Venter, Life on Mars?, Probaway Person of the Year, Projecting life into the Universe., The future of life, The history of life., What is life?

J. Craig Venter was Probaway Person of the Year 2011, and could well be chosen again for this year, he has done so many memorable things. His new book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life, illustrates what a genius in the old sense of the word (someone who had done remarkably creative things) can do when given support by his society. Fortunately, he has been able to garner the resources, and the teams, to make life-shaking progress in the understanding of the forces of life itself. He was the one responsible for creating the techniques for decoding DNA, and gained fame for doing the human DNA, and then doing the genome of many more species, and then he created living DNA out of four bottles of nonliving chemicals, and then he has developed new life forms from computer programs, and he has collected the DNA of millions of living creatures of the world’s oceans, and much more.

His book gives an overview of the history of research into the double helix of DNA and of the progress, much of it personally his work, of the last few decades for understanding and manipulating that DNA to do new things. He is now able to code life into a cell, and because that technology is digital he can transmit the code for that life, or any life, over unlimited time or distance. With an appropriate replicator sent to Mars he could develop appropriate life forms, here on Earth, and transmit them to that remotely located device and create positive-feedback, intelligence-driven, designer life forms to fit that local environment. This is obviously beyond the leading edge of what can be done at this moment, but the technology is almost ready to design equipment that would be capable of doing these things.

These nascent abilities of humanity are the reason for the title. Projecting life across the cosmos at the speed of light is one of the goals. First send information on how to build the appropriate machines to some distant civilization in the galaxy, and then send the DNA code for how to construct the living cells, and how to maintain those cells and grow others. In a short time a complex biological greenhouse could be constructed in that distant world, and the things we have here on Earth could be had on that distant planet. Or, the reverse, find some other planet’s intelligent life that is transmitting to us, how to grow their life forms and make them function. We grow those extra-planetary individuals right here. Hm? This technology has moved out of the world of pure fantasy and on to the technology for doing these things in physical reality.

Venter’s book doesn’t state quite so explicitly those goals, but the implication is that he values life, and wants to propagate it throughout the Universe. Physically moving a few humans into space colonies and supporting them there would be millions of times more expensive than his plan. Even the United States doesn’t seem willing to support the low orbit Space Station it built, and it is now being kept operational by the Russians. Perhaps even now a radio broadcast, or a dedicated laser aimed in exactly the right direction, could carry the information needed to create a human colony to a distant civilization. Those technologies could be had at present for the price of a used car.

Venter is the most authoritative person on Earth to be writing about the subject of life, and he is a clear presenter of the information. The technical chapters will prove thick going for the average person, but they are worth slogging through, because they give the background information that makes the other easily accessible chapters exciting reading. This book is an opportunity to see into the thoughts of a human being who will be renowned for the rest of human history, and perhaps well beyond.

The Universe created the Earth, Eveish women created humanity, Venter is creating Universal life.

TIME Person of the Year 2013 is Pope Francis

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Edward Snowden, Pope Francis, Radhika Jones, TIME editorial policy, TIME Person of the year 2013

Pope Francis is a fine choice for TIME’s Person of the Year. He exudes the positive enthusiasm needed for humanity as a whole to rise up emotionally from the despair and poverty of the unfortunate people among us. Radhika Jones is the deputy managing editor of TIME and head of the Person of the Year process. In this interview she briefly discusses the short list of their editorial staff’s choices for TIME’s Person of the Year 2013.

TIME magazine editor Radhika Jones, the head of the choosing team.

Catholic Pope Francis is the TIME staff’s choice for Person of the Year – 2013

Whistleblower Edward Snowden, a runner-up for TIME Person of the Year 2013

Edward Snowden as he appeared in Wikipedia before TIME fixed him up.

It is strange that TIME Satanized Snowden, because they themselves and the whole media were having trouble with the CIA and the NSA. Everyone is angry with the US government for spying on them, and Snowden could and perhaps should be sainted rather than demonized for exposing their villainy.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

While blackening Snowden’s photo to make him look Satanic, they chose this lightened one with a halo of radiance to make Obama look like a god watching over us from a clear blue sky.

It appears that everyone is watching over our interests, to keep us safe, secure, and well informed. 

How your forethought can avoid a disaster.

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Review of heat pump design

Having a backup plan for potential problems is always a good idea, and one way to accomplish this is to have slack in your operations. That is, always have a little extra money, time, energy, space beyond your immediate and projected needs. I discussed that subject at some length under the title Scarcity – Why Having Too Little Means So Much. That was mostly a book review of that title, but it gave rise to some further considerations of how and why scarcity is eliminated by having sufficient slack in the problem areas to compensate for typical but unexpected failures.

That general procedure is used in my daily living and has saved me some grief several times. This week it was a total failure of our standard home heating system. Because of my habit of keeping slack, it wasn’t a problem, although it was annoying. The outdoor temperature here in Bend, Oregon, fell to record low temperature and our recently installed heat pump home heating system totally failed in the middle of the night.

WeatherSpark.com graphic presentation of our weather in Bend, Oregon, USA.

Notice the weather temperature dropped to minus twenty-two degrees ( – 22°F). That is fifty-four degrees ( – 54°F) below freezing. It was very cold outdoors and it soon would have been very cold indoors, even with recently upgraded insulation. However, I had pre-planned for this eventuality and had left installed a two-year-old pellet stove with a battery backup which powers the electric fan motors and pellet screw-dispenser. Without electricity this wood stove is an expensive but worthless living-room decoration. The car-size battery, sitting behind the stove, was brought to a full charge when the weather forecast was for very cold temperatures.

When the new heating system failed about 4 AM, the backup pellet stove kept working normally. Last week the AC power had failed because of a local blowout of some sort, and 2,000 local residents were in the cold and dark for a couple of hours. So, I took that as a warning and made real preparations for the possibility of a failure happening at the worst possible moment – which is exactly when it did fail.

When the repairman came out, it was later than it might have been because he had to go to several other heat-pump users who were in desperate condition, because they had no backup heat. What commonly happens with heat pump heater/air conditioners is that its humidifier uses tap water to keep the humidity in the house constant. In very cold weather the water freezes and the system totally shuts down. That is such an egregious and obvious failure of a system which must have been installed to many thousands of users’ homes, that it boggles my mind. We installed our system because the State of Oregon government was so enthused about the energy savings that they were offering a refund bonus to those who installed the system. It is seriously irresponsible to sponsor and sell a system costing many thousands of dollars which will fail at the worst possible moment, and put people’s lives in jeopardy. At the moment when heat is most desperately needed it quits and refuses to restart. There is absolutely no way to get heat to the house until it is professionally serviced. The only reasonable procedure for a home owner is to abandon his home and go to a motel, but that is a very poor solution because it is dangerous to be driving around in those weather conditions in the middle of the night.

The lesson! — Always have backup on critical systems and some slack in the backup.