Tuesday, May 31, 2011
The Anthropocene Has Arrived
I am so happy that the BBC has made the entire length of these shows available on YouTube. All 58 minutes and 19 seconds of Iain Stewart's wonderful episode on how humanity is affecting the geological processes of the planet are here for the watching!
The Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, is upon us. It's a moot point to argue whether our species is changing the Earth, or even whether we should. The fact is that we are, and that we have to take responsibility for that power.
Read more here: A man-made world: Science is recognising humans as a geological force to be reckoned with via Economist.com
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Watching the Watchers
I love this crazy French street artist. He goes by the moniker 'JR.'
Watch the video, and I dare you not to be emotionally moved by it. I see him accomplishing a very simple act: He gives the unseen the ability to be seen, in the act of SEEING. He gives them power that way.
When your mother's eyes are plastered, four stories high, across a favela wall that overlooks the entire valley, how will you feel about hitting your wife?
Watch the video, and I dare you not to be emotionally moved by it. I see him accomplishing a very simple act: He gives the unseen the ability to be seen, in the act of SEEING. He gives them power that way.
When your mother's eyes are plastered, four stories high, across a favela wall that overlooks the entire valley, how will you feel about hitting your wife?
Bats Without Belfries
Maria Sagot and Richard Stevens, of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge recently correlated a lot of existing data about bats. Some bats, it seems, make their own shelters of leaves or other plant material under which to hang while they snooze during the day. Some shelters last longer than others, depending upon what kinds of plants grow in the places where the bats live. The scientists wanted to know, what kind of social bonds do these bats develop among them? The working theory was that flimsy shelters would correlate with poor social bonds.
In fact, they found exactly the opposite. Bats with sturdy houses tended to stick together less, and bats with more ad-hoc shelters displayed social bonds that were extremely strong. The Economist, reporting on this work, notes, "[as] in people, so in bats: adversity promotes solidarity."
This strikes at the heart of human instinct. Even in our sedentary, city-bound Western lifestyle, we still talk about our lives as if we are nomadic, although the span of time has replaced the physical path that was once laid in front of us. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Does some part of us suffer from too much comfort? Our distant ancestors walked endlessly back and forth across the African savannah, following game and avoiding predators. Our first shelters were flimsy huts that might have lasted a few weeks to a few months at most, and our tribes must have been very, very closely bonded.
Read more here: Bats building bonds via Economist.com
In fact, they found exactly the opposite. Bats with sturdy houses tended to stick together less, and bats with more ad-hoc shelters displayed social bonds that were extremely strong. The Economist, reporting on this work, notes, "[as] in people, so in bats: adversity promotes solidarity."
This strikes at the heart of human instinct. Even in our sedentary, city-bound Western lifestyle, we still talk about our lives as if we are nomadic, although the span of time has replaced the physical path that was once laid in front of us. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Does some part of us suffer from too much comfort? Our distant ancestors walked endlessly back and forth across the African savannah, following game and avoiding predators. Our first shelters were flimsy huts that might have lasted a few weeks to a few months at most, and our tribes must have been very, very closely bonded.
Read more here: Bats building bonds via Economist.com
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Anonymous No More!
Since Alcoholics Anonymous was founded back in 1935, it has provided a philosophical foundation for millions of addicts trying to get their behavior under control. Used to be, alcoholism (and substance dependency in general) was a shame, and something to hide. Society just didn't want to "see" alcoholics - and so in order for a single individual to acknowledge and address their problems, they had to remove the connection between their bad behavior and their public face.
The world has moved on. Being in recovery isn't a stigma like it used to be - and dozens of different books have been written about the process of kicking substance dependency. If you find yourself addicted to meth, you aren't alone. It is a shame for you, but not a shame in general - there are thousands of other meth addicts out there, self-identified and ready to talk about what worked for them in the struggle to free themselves from the pipe. People who were once meth-addicted are now functioning and productive members of society. If they can do it, so can you!
Humans have always used mind-altering substances. Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians brewed beer, Greeks and Romans used opium, and the history of cannabis is found in archaeological sites all over the near East. Each encounter with a chemical that alters perception is like a dance with a demon; depending on your psychological history and your metabolism, you may find it easy to say no to that second glass of wine and quit the dance floor gracefully, or you may become so enraptured by the experience that you'll let that demon dance you to death. Collectively closing our eyes and covering our ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" does not make this fundamental aspect of human behavior any less fundamental; for our own good we should be dealing with it openly so that we can see what the mechanisms of addiction really are. Too many people have danced themselves to death already. Anonymity is very often the first door to recovery, but maintaining it across the board, far beyond its utility, is destructive. My respects to those who have been brave enough to talk about their journey openly.
Read more here: Challenging the Second ‘A’ in A.A. via NYTimes.com
The world has moved on. Being in recovery isn't a stigma like it used to be - and dozens of different books have been written about the process of kicking substance dependency. If you find yourself addicted to meth, you aren't alone. It is a shame for you, but not a shame in general - there are thousands of other meth addicts out there, self-identified and ready to talk about what worked for them in the struggle to free themselves from the pipe. People who were once meth-addicted are now functioning and productive members of society. If they can do it, so can you!
Humans have always used mind-altering substances. Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians brewed beer, Greeks and Romans used opium, and the history of cannabis is found in archaeological sites all over the near East. Each encounter with a chemical that alters perception is like a dance with a demon; depending on your psychological history and your metabolism, you may find it easy to say no to that second glass of wine and quit the dance floor gracefully, or you may become so enraptured by the experience that you'll let that demon dance you to death. Collectively closing our eyes and covering our ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" does not make this fundamental aspect of human behavior any less fundamental; for our own good we should be dealing with it openly so that we can see what the mechanisms of addiction really are. Too many people have danced themselves to death already. Anonymity is very often the first door to recovery, but maintaining it across the board, far beyond its utility, is destructive. My respects to those who have been brave enough to talk about their journey openly.
Read more here: Challenging the Second ‘A’ in A.A. via NYTimes.com
"Son, Have You Rehabilitated Yourself?"
The Daily Mail online has printed an article about a "cushy" prison in Norway, where prisoners are treated well, given privileges such as living in cabin dormitories and taking care of livestock, and are trained to live in the outside world before they are released. Recidivism rates are the lowest in Europe. What's going on?
Well, for one, it appears that we now have a clearly working model of rehabilitation versus punishment. If the goal of a prison is to create a better society, then it matters a lot how we treat our prisoners. What interests me even more about this article are some of the very well-written and cogent comments, some "voted up" many dozens of times. Public opinion, at least some portion of it, supports rehabilitation. We get that "an eye for an eye" leaves everyone blind. We want better for ourselves, and we understand how to accomplish that.
Read more here: Norway's controversial 'cushy prison' experiment - could it catch on in the UK? via DailyMail.co.uk
Well, for one, it appears that we now have a clearly working model of rehabilitation versus punishment. If the goal of a prison is to create a better society, then it matters a lot how we treat our prisoners. What interests me even more about this article are some of the very well-written and cogent comments, some "voted up" many dozens of times. Public opinion, at least some portion of it, supports rehabilitation. We get that "an eye for an eye" leaves everyone blind. We want better for ourselves, and we understand how to accomplish that.
Read more here: Norway's controversial 'cushy prison' experiment - could it catch on in the UK? via DailyMail.co.uk
Underwater Aliens
Researchers are developing a system that will allow humans and dolphins to speak to one another. Can I get a "woah! dude!" please? This is straight out of Star Trek. We were supposed to have to wait another 300 years at least for this kind of technology.
This is incredibly interesting stuff. Much is made about the existence or nonexistence of extraterrestrial intelligence, but we've been sharing this planet with several other intelligent species the whole time - and we haven't been able to communicate with them much at all. Gorillas and chimpanzees have learned American Sign Language and given us some clues about what it's like to be a different kind of ape, and Alex the parrot helped prove that higher cognition isn't just the purview of mammals, but what kind of culture develops underwater? What differences in the development of mind does an aquatic environment make? What's it like not to have fire or opposable thumbs? Learning from the other inhabitants of this planet can give us a much better idea of how self-awareness arises in response to wildly differing environments.
Read more here: Underwater Translator May Finally Let Us Talk to Dolphins via Techland.Time.com
This is incredibly interesting stuff. Much is made about the existence or nonexistence of extraterrestrial intelligence, but we've been sharing this planet with several other intelligent species the whole time - and we haven't been able to communicate with them much at all. Gorillas and chimpanzees have learned American Sign Language and given us some clues about what it's like to be a different kind of ape, and Alex the parrot helped prove that higher cognition isn't just the purview of mammals, but what kind of culture develops underwater? What differences in the development of mind does an aquatic environment make? What's it like not to have fire or opposable thumbs? Learning from the other inhabitants of this planet can give us a much better idea of how self-awareness arises in response to wildly differing environments.
Read more here: Underwater Translator May Finally Let Us Talk to Dolphins via Techland.Time.com
If Memory Serves
New research on marine snails suggests that science is drawing closer to the day when memories may be erased at will, like something out of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There's some debate as to whether this could possibly be a good thing - after all, even our worst traumas prove formative and can mold us into wiser, happier people in the long run.
But what about those trapped in the endless nightmare of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Sometimes the mechanisms in the brain for dealing with bad memories become stuck, and we lose our ability to move on.
Memory is more than just a read/write function of the brain though - it's made up of somatic feedback loops and automated responses that arise from the body, not from the mind. I wonder, if we remove the memory, would that necessarily remove the behavior? Or would it perhaps just remove the fulcrum against which we might eventually get some traction to change the out-of-control distress response?
My father died of complications related to senile dementia, and I've watched several other close relatives falter under the gradual erosion of Alzheimer's disease. From my own observations I am unconvinced that memory erasure would bring definitive relief from behavioral problems, but I'm glad to see that we're learning so much about the physical mechanisms involved.
Read more here: Even If We Could Erase Bad Memories, Should We? via TheAtlantic.com
But what about those trapped in the endless nightmare of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Sometimes the mechanisms in the brain for dealing with bad memories become stuck, and we lose our ability to move on.
Memory is more than just a read/write function of the brain though - it's made up of somatic feedback loops and automated responses that arise from the body, not from the mind. I wonder, if we remove the memory, would that necessarily remove the behavior? Or would it perhaps just remove the fulcrum against which we might eventually get some traction to change the out-of-control distress response?
My father died of complications related to senile dementia, and I've watched several other close relatives falter under the gradual erosion of Alzheimer's disease. From my own observations I am unconvinced that memory erasure would bring definitive relief from behavioral problems, but I'm glad to see that we're learning so much about the physical mechanisms involved.
Read more here: Even If We Could Erase Bad Memories, Should We? via TheAtlantic.com
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Dr. Not-So-Evil
Simon Baron-Cohen has been working his whole life to understand the scientific nature of what we call "evil," and he believes that the keystone to the phenomenon is a lack of empathy. Well, yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I have been telling this story through article after article, but each new one I post just makes me feel better about our chances as a species. YES, we are finally "getting it." Armageddon is optional. No ideology or doctrine contains us; we exist in a sea of influences both internal (genetic, metabolic) and external (cultural, environmental). The future is clearly in our hands, and we are capable of harnessing both the intelligence and the motivation to make it a good one.
The opposite of empathy is contempt. Baron-Cohen talks a lot about empathy, and in previous work Paul Ekman and John Gottman talk about the effects of contempt on relationships. Marriages may be full of conflict and yet still be successful and fulfilling to both parties, as long as empathy and respect exists between them. Once contempt creeps into a relationship, it has a tendency to expand until it destroys the fabric of it.
Empathy and contempt are both just concepts, but they are powerful ones and are no less influential for being incorporeal. A large, strong, and morally questionable person is able to coerce your body, so early in life you learn the social cues needed for detecting these people (and the places they might hang out) and avoiding them. Contempt has no physical existence, but it's just as big and powerful and unscrupulous. It sits inside your body, manipulating your endocrine system and making itself a comfy little nest in your reptilian brain - but like hanging out with any big, unpleasant, sweaty galoot, it's totally optional if you can but figure out how to get away.
Back when the human superorganism was much more loosely connected, contempt functioned to keep individual tribes and their memetic heritages safe against competition and extinction. There are too many of us now, and we are too closely connected. Vestigial contempt turns us against ourselves. Shake yourself loose, go take a shower, and go find someone nicer to hang out with!
Read more here: FEATURE-Scientist seeks to banish evil, boost empathy via Reuters.com, and here: Predictable Patterns of Marriage Breakdown via MentalHelp.net
The opposite of empathy is contempt. Baron-Cohen talks a lot about empathy, and in previous work Paul Ekman and John Gottman talk about the effects of contempt on relationships. Marriages may be full of conflict and yet still be successful and fulfilling to both parties, as long as empathy and respect exists between them. Once contempt creeps into a relationship, it has a tendency to expand until it destroys the fabric of it.
Empathy and contempt are both just concepts, but they are powerful ones and are no less influential for being incorporeal. A large, strong, and morally questionable person is able to coerce your body, so early in life you learn the social cues needed for detecting these people (and the places they might hang out) and avoiding them. Contempt has no physical existence, but it's just as big and powerful and unscrupulous. It sits inside your body, manipulating your endocrine system and making itself a comfy little nest in your reptilian brain - but like hanging out with any big, unpleasant, sweaty galoot, it's totally optional if you can but figure out how to get away.
Back when the human superorganism was much more loosely connected, contempt functioned to keep individual tribes and their memetic heritages safe against competition and extinction. There are too many of us now, and we are too closely connected. Vestigial contempt turns us against ourselves. Shake yourself loose, go take a shower, and go find someone nicer to hang out with!
Read more here: FEATURE-Scientist seeks to banish evil, boost empathy via Reuters.com, and here: Predictable Patterns of Marriage Breakdown via MentalHelp.net
Twisted, Messy, Perfect.
NASA just announced results from an epic experiment some 47 years in the making; the rotation of the Earth does indeed twist and distort the fabric of space-time, and data from a set of the most perfect gyroscopes ever made now confirms this aspect of Einstein's theories of relativity. The gyros, part of the Gravity Probe B satellite experiment, were engineered to an unbelievable degree of precision. The quartz-silicon spheres at the heart of the devices are as close to Euclidean perfection as the human race has yet been able to achieve, and the slight observed precession of their spins over time, as predicted by Einstein, measured the relativistic "frame drag" created by Earth's great mass rotating at the bottom of its gravity well.
I'm impressed. The scope of this experiment is amazing, and it speaks volumes about our drive to understand the reality that contains us. The world is messy, and creating precision is one valid reaction to the chaos. A ruler brings order - we can begin to fence off little pieces of the infinite fields of data available, testing pieces one against the other so that we can begin to make some sense of the constant riot that surrounds us.
Does precision oppose chaos, or does it pay respect to it? The Universe will never be precise, but by creating precision we can perhaps enjoy the mess a little more.
I'm impressed. The scope of this experiment is amazing, and it speaks volumes about our drive to understand the reality that contains us. The world is messy, and creating precision is one valid reaction to the chaos. A ruler brings order - we can begin to fence off little pieces of the infinite fields of data available, testing pieces one against the other so that we can begin to make some sense of the constant riot that surrounds us.
Does precision oppose chaos, or does it pay respect to it? The Universe will never be precise, but by creating precision we can perhaps enjoy the mess a little more.
Outside of the Box
We live in a box we can't see out of. Quite literally, because light has a speed (186,000 miles per second), as we look out into the night sky, the farther out we look the farther back in time we see. And since the Universe has an age (our best current guess is just shy of 14 billion years), it has an observable limit. More Universe surely exists beyond the limit of our visibility some 45.7 billion light years away*...but we won't ever get to see it.
Not only that, but we won't personally get to see most bits of the universe that are inside the observable limit, simply because what's going on there "now" won't be visible to us til the light reaches us. A star 7,000 light years away from us could have ceased to exist yesterday, and we won't know it for another 7000+ years. To us, that star is still shining. Light and time, those phenomena easily detected by our senses, have set boundaries around us. Even though the geocentric theory of creation has been roundly debunked on several orders of magnitude, in one very important way it is still valid. The point of observation is, by definition, the center of the observable universe.
We still keep searching for ways to escape the box, though. We keep dreaming up new theories, testing and wringing new data from the stuff that makes up our physical reality. We sit at the center of the Universe, but the edges of it are right here as well, nested in the folds of the human mind.
Read more here: Five weird theories of what lies outside the universe via io9.com and here: Observable Universe via Wikipedia.org
*The Universe is expanding at an apparently increasing rate. This means that what we can see is farther away than the age of the Universe in years times the speed of light, because space keeps getting "bigger." Weird enough for ya yet?
Not only that, but we won't personally get to see most bits of the universe that are inside the observable limit, simply because what's going on there "now" won't be visible to us til the light reaches us. A star 7,000 light years away from us could have ceased to exist yesterday, and we won't know it for another 7000+ years. To us, that star is still shining. Light and time, those phenomena easily detected by our senses, have set boundaries around us. Even though the geocentric theory of creation has been roundly debunked on several orders of magnitude, in one very important way it is still valid. The point of observation is, by definition, the center of the observable universe.
We still keep searching for ways to escape the box, though. We keep dreaming up new theories, testing and wringing new data from the stuff that makes up our physical reality. We sit at the center of the Universe, but the edges of it are right here as well, nested in the folds of the human mind.
Read more here: Five weird theories of what lies outside the universe via io9.com and here: Observable Universe via Wikipedia.org
*The Universe is expanding at an apparently increasing rate. This means that what we can see is farther away than the age of the Universe in years times the speed of light, because space keeps getting "bigger." Weird enough for ya yet?
Monday, May 2, 2011
Plato's Revenge
For Plato, ideas were the only true reality - famously, he compared the material objects we interact with on a day to day basis to shadows of "true objects" projected onto the wall of a cave. We've spent the past 2,400 years (give or take) either simply disbelieving him or arguing one direction or another over what his Theory of Forms actually meant.
The development of memetics - the study of ideas as life forms - explains a little more about what Plato may have been thinking, and the evolution of the Internet provides a visible ground that can show us in very concrete terms how ideas mate, evolve, and die off - and how we give ourselves to them, how we are controlled by them, and how they compete for our attention. A really fabulous article by James Gleick on the Smithsonian site pulls all of the major threads of this new discipline together in an entertaining and readable four pages. Put aside the ten minutes to read it and make yourself a cup of tea, because this is important stuff.
When you say that someone "died for his principles," you are describing the concrete result of a powerful intangible. The concept of nationality is a meme, as is religion, as are the tenets of every culture, and as is the viral spread of our individual emotional reactions to any event. When the Greeks described their gods, they were personifying memetic currents that they very clearly sensed flowing throughout their society. Just like the Greek gods, memes have no inherent morality. They play by their own rules, and the strong ones may easily crush any mere mortals that stand in their way. For centuries we have lived blindly enslaved by them - but at last we are developing both the technology and the awareness to study and understand them - and perhaps, with hope, to tame the worst of them.
Read more here: What Defines a Meme? via Smithsonianmag.com
The development of memetics - the study of ideas as life forms - explains a little more about what Plato may have been thinking, and the evolution of the Internet provides a visible ground that can show us in very concrete terms how ideas mate, evolve, and die off - and how we give ourselves to them, how we are controlled by them, and how they compete for our attention. A really fabulous article by James Gleick on the Smithsonian site pulls all of the major threads of this new discipline together in an entertaining and readable four pages. Put aside the ten minutes to read it and make yourself a cup of tea, because this is important stuff.
When you say that someone "died for his principles," you are describing the concrete result of a powerful intangible. The concept of nationality is a meme, as is religion, as are the tenets of every culture, and as is the viral spread of our individual emotional reactions to any event. When the Greeks described their gods, they were personifying memetic currents that they very clearly sensed flowing throughout their society. Just like the Greek gods, memes have no inherent morality. They play by their own rules, and the strong ones may easily crush any mere mortals that stand in their way. For centuries we have lived blindly enslaved by them - but at last we are developing both the technology and the awareness to study and understand them - and perhaps, with hope, to tame the worst of them.
Read more here: What Defines a Meme? via Smithsonianmag.com
Compassion In The Wake Of The Storm
Our new ability to connect immediately and effectively without regard for distance is fundamentally changing the concept of what it means to be human. The tornadoes that ripped through the heart of America last week are a tragedy on every level, but in the tracks left by those massive twisters we are seeing the blossoming of empathy: photos and personal papers released by the storms, often hundreds of miles away from the homes where they belong, are being collected and returned to their rightful owners via special pages posted on social networking sites.
We often wonder what use Facebook really is, but here's one answer. It is a tool to expand our compassion and our humanity. People who have lost everything they owned to the storms are receiving more than just lost photographs - they're receiving the love of their fellow humans, empathy and solace across the miles. Disaster these days draws us together more than it ever has, and our strength lies there.
Read more here: Memories Lost to a Whirlwind Alight on Facebook to Be Claimed via NYTimes.com
We often wonder what use Facebook really is, but here's one answer. It is a tool to expand our compassion and our humanity. People who have lost everything they owned to the storms are receiving more than just lost photographs - they're receiving the love of their fellow humans, empathy and solace across the miles. Disaster these days draws us together more than it ever has, and our strength lies there.
Read more here: Memories Lost to a Whirlwind Alight on Facebook to Be Claimed via NYTimes.com
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