Anti-Small Talk

On Voting: Right and/or Responsibility?

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:33:58 GMT

Most if not all of my readers live in a country where they have been granted by their country a right to vote for their leaders. I'm not sure how it is in countries outside of America, but more and more I also hear people saying not only that we have a right to vote but also that we have a responsibility to vote?

What is the basis for this statement?

I'm considering saying more, but I think I'll just leave it at that for now.

On Leaders vs. Followers

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:46:05 GMT

One of my church small groups was recently playing some silly game at a social. This game was a "Leadership Test". It consisted of a questionnaire that involved performing some physical actions. However, if you read the instructions properly, instead of following all the actions the others were doing, you would find that you were really supposed to skip all the questions, sign your name, and wait patiently.

This test did well at demonstrating who could follow directions, and it may have indicated who would not follow the crowd, but I don't see how this has anything to do with leadership.

It's not the first time this idea has come up. My parents used to tell me I was a leader and not a follower. I agreed with them on the latter point -- I'm not a follower. As an example, had I been given the poll that Dr. Bloom gave to his study subjects regarding welfare, to which I referred yesterday[1], I am sure I would have been the exception to the rule (because I don't consider myself either Republican or Democrat[2]).

But does this make me a good leader?

I don't think so. I don't think that "leader" and "follower" are opposites.

A person who is not a follower may well be a very prideful, rebellious person. This is in stark contrast to the responsible, humble leader that I idealize.

I often do not follow because I do not trust that a leader knows the correct "answer"; this in no way implies that I myself know the correct "answer"!

Have any of the rest of you come across this "black and white" idea about leading and following?

And what really does make a good leader?

More on Steroids

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:16:12 GMT

In Paul Bloom's talk, he gave the statistic that 90% of Americans think steroids are a huge problem in sports. When asked why, people usually answered "It's cheating," or, "Because the side effects are so terrible."

It seems Bloom was as confused as I was back when I posted an entry on steroids.[1] Bloom, however, was better able to study this methodically than I.

Now, some clarifications this time around. Steroids are illegal. They should not be used in sports for that reason alone. The question is "If steroids were not illegal, should they be used in sports?"

Bloom asked this question. The overwhelming answer was, "No! Of course not! Steroids are cheating! And they have terrible side effects."

He polled people with this next question: "Scientists have discovered a new type of performance enhancing drug without any damaging side effects. If such a drug were made legal by the FDA, should they be allowed in sports?"

The people: "Absolutely not! Performance enhancing drugs are cheating!"

Bloom tried another approach. He polled people with the following: "Scientists have discovered a new type of drug without any damaging side effects. This miracle drug has been shown to result in an increase in children's IQs over a 6 month study. If such a drug were made legal by the FDA, should parents give them to their children?"

The people: "Absolutely not! That would be cheating!"

Bloom: "Scientists have discovered that reducing class sizes has been shown to result in an increase in children's IQs over a 6 month study. Should states pass laws requiring smaller class sizes?"

The people: "Definitely!"

It seems that what is considered unfair is the fact that the one case involves a drug. As I have argued before, this makes no sense. It makes less sense still when one considers the response to his next poll question:

"Scientists have discovered a new type of drug without any damaging side effects. This miracle drug has been shown to result in an increase in mental patients' IQs over a 6 month study. If such a drug were made legal by the FDA, should parents give them to their mentally retarded children?"

The people, for the most part said, "Yes."

For some reason people in general are okay with using drugs to raise people up to a (mythical) baseline level, but they consider it cheating to use drugs to rise above that level. (For example, some athletes with asthma are allowed to take steroids for their asthma. How is it not cheating? It is boosting them beyond their own personal baseline.)

Bloom finally did find a disturbing way to get almost everyone to say that steroids in sports are ok. He asked: "80% of Americans think that steroid usage is ok in sports; how do you feel about them?"

Amazingly (or not), this caused the vast majority of people to answer that steroids were fine.

Further confirmation of my original ideas on this topic came when he revealed another interesting piece of trivia. Apparently, it took 10 to 15 years before running shoes were no longer considered cheating in foot races.

Bloom suggests that it is really unfamiliarity and fear, not logical thinking, that makes people so leary of steroids. Once a large enough group of people become ok with the idea, the rest of the people will inevitably follow. (What a scary thought for how people come to ethical beliefs!)

Now, I had a great discussion with shadewright on steroids found here. In that discussion, he brought up the very good point that history comes into play. The point of sports is not just to be the fastest human possible or even to simply win. To some extent, the point is to compare oneself to all humans throughout history. So then, to fairly do this, we would need to duplicate as closely as possible the conditions used by the ancient Greeks, for example.

Now, of course, it is not possible to do this. We cannot go back and eat the same foods as those athletes. Running barefoot is not terribly healthy for the feet. And competition in the nude has its own problems. So we forget the idea of genuinely being fair to the ancient athletes. Instead, we try to compromise in the rules of the games we now play. (I think we're fooling ourselves, but even so....) We are allowed to use some synthetic materials, but others we are not allowed to use.

I find a lot of it rather arbitrary, and history has shown that it will all change anyhow based on society's opinions, not on any logical reasoning.

I think that if they wanted to make games like the Olympics genuinely fair, every competitor in a given event would be given exactly the same diet, exactly the same equipment with which to train, and exactly the same gear. But so much for fairness....

On Double Deference in Religion and Science

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:58:11 GMT

Dr. Paul Bloom returned to our campus to speak his third out of four lectures. Previously, he spoke on "moral circles".[1, 2, 3] His topic this time around was "Religion Is Natural".

He opened by citing statistics of the number of people around the world who believe in a creation, a god or gods, spirits, and life after death. Those who do not are an exception, not the rule.

As a researcher, Bloom is interested in descriptively studying universals and near universals with which we seem to be born.

It is known, for example, that children have a sort of pre-programmed system of physical understanding. Almost all children believe the world is flat (usually rectangular, actually) until they are taught otherwise. Almost all children believe that a ball rolling down a spiraling ramp will continue to curve upon leaving it, when in fact it will travel straight after that. Almost all children believe that the air is weightless. These seem to be programmed into us.^*

Bloom also believes that people are pre-programmed with a system of social understanding as well, such as programmed morality. (Refer to the previous entries on his lectures for more information.)

As for non-physical pre-programmed systems of understanding, Bloom has found three beliefs to be near universal:

animism

creationism

dualism

Animism is the attribution of consciousness to what are considered (by modern thought) to be inanimate objects. In the previous "Helper/Hinderer" studies[1], for example, the babies seemed to have no difficulty with solid shapes performing moral actions. They preferred the objects based on how those objects behaved "morally".

In general, it has been shown that humans tend to see intention even when something is known to be accident.

Creationism is not limited to a Judeo-Christian, six-day creation belief. No one is born knowing that. But it has been shown that children are more creationist than their parents. Even children with atheistic parents are still very likely to believe that the world was created by a higher power.

People have been shown to "find" patterns where there aren't any. In a line-up of disordered pennies, studies have shown that people think they can see a pattern. One argument, then, is that people think they see design in the world when they are not really seeing these patterns at all.

Children are also more likely to assign purposes to objects than adults are.

An experiment involving order I found to be interesting. Children were shown a picture of a messy room and a clean room and asked which was caused by a sister? There was no significant difference in answers. They were equally likely to suggest that the sister had messed up the room as they were to suggest that she had cleaned it. However, when asked, "Which result was caused by the wind through the open window?" nearly all answered that the messy room was caused by the wind.

This was repeated in babies, using the staring assumption (that babies stare longer when they are surprised by something). When shown an animation of a cartoon person entering a box and either ordering or disordering pins, they did not seem surprised. When a ball was shown rolling and knocking over the pins, they still did not seem surprised. However, if that ball set up the pins, they stared at the image far longer, indicating perhaps their great surprise at this.

Humans seem preprogrammed with the idea that anything can bring about disorder, but only animate beings can create order.

Dualism is the belief that "I" can be thought of separately from the body. This was the topic of his first lecture, which I missed, but he brought up a few examples.

He mentioned how there are many children's books and movies about "body-swapping". They have no difficulty grasping these stories.

Also, more children believe in life after death than adults.

I was not as impressed by his examples this time around, but what he next spoke about was really good. He moved on to discuss hypotheses explaining what causes these initial pre=programmed beliefs to change.

Scientists and thinkers tend to propose two main hypotheses:

Children are like sponges. They absorb new beliefs from their culture.

People come to scientific beliefs from doing science.

Bloom stated that the former is only partly true, whereas the latter is almost entirely false.

Dawkins is a strong holder of the first hypothesis. In his view, children will blindly accept whatever lies they are taught as children until they are wise enough to understand that ideas of religion are stupid.

Bloom, however, doubts this. His and other studies have shown that children are not blind sponges. They have a selection process for what knowledge they accept as true.

In word learning, children are very sensitive to the amount of confidence the teacher shows in the meanings of words. They are also sensitive to past reliability and age of the teacher.

As for this last one, they seem to naturally hold that adults know more facts. However, they pay more attention to peers in matters of accent and slang.

The same trends seem to hold for other kinds of learning.

It makes evolutionary sense for children to have a mechanism to separate truth from fiction.

As for the second hypothesis above, Bloom argues that -- excepting philosophers, theologians, and the like -- people don't care about the details of their so-called beliefs. They may claim to believe in a god, but when asked about that god, they aren't likely to be able to tell you much.

People use what Bloom calls a double deference. They go to "experts" when deciding which beliefs to believe, and they also leave the details to those experts. This happens subconsciously most of the time.

In some (I find) very scary studies, pollsters presented an extremely generous welfare plan and an obviously cruel welfare plan to voters. With each plan came the statement, "The Republicans support this plan," or, "The Democrats support this plan." The researchers alternated whcih party supported which plan. The voters almost always chose the plan that matched with their political party. The scary part is that, when asked why they made their choices, they almost always made up reasons for why one plan was better than the other!

He gave numerous examples of this sort of phenomenon. (One involved opinions on steroids, which I'll give its own entry.) Many of the examples had to do with what people thought other people believed. Take Wikipedia, for example. It is truth according to the masses.[4] Most of us assume that if most people believe something, it must be true.

And contrary to snobby scientists, there is a double deference in science as well. How do I know there are quarks? Have I done the experiments? Can I even understand the mathematics behind their discovery? No. I defer to the particle physicists, whom I trust.

The fact of the matter is that most people who believe in natural selection have no idea how it really works. Most people who believe the earth is billions of years old cannot explain how they "know" this. This is no different than all of the "religious folk" who believe in a god and yet cannot tell you anything about him or her.

Bloom claimed that it is not knowledge that triggers beliefs but rather deference -- whom do you trust?

He also noted that people only say, "I believe...," when there is some uncertainty or controversy. No one, for example, ever says, "I believe in ants."

*This is why science education is so difficult. It is not that the students cannot understand science; it is that they come into science with so many incorrect beliefs about the physical world that need to be corrected.[5]

On Another Reason Not To Buy “Organic” Food

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:38:42 GMT

I've rambled before about how much the term "organic" when referring to food irks me,[1] but this is primarily a matter of terminology.

I am all for healthier food. And it may well be that (some) more "old fashioned" methods of raising crops and animals are healthier.

However, I think it a very faulty idea that natural is always better than man-made.[2]

Still, this idea is very ingrained in many people. It is one of the reasons I think that "organic" food is so popular.

Some other reasons people buy "organic" food are that they are scared of pesticides causing health problems and that "organic" food is supposed to be better for the environment.

Personally, being a chemist, I am well aware of the effects of dilution. The odds of any pesticides actually harming me are so low at the dilutions involved that it hardly warrants the outrageous overpricing stores give to "organic" foods. But "organic" food hardly hurts.

The third reason I mentioned for why people buy "organic" is because people are trying to buy "green", that is, they think that buying "organic" food is better for the environment, because the "organic" methods used in raising the crops and animals are better for the environment.

Consider, however, that most "organic" food is shipped from other locations. This means two things:

The food is not going to be as fresh. Whatever health benefits one may have gained from eating such food are most likely forfeited from the food losing its freshness during the travel. It is almost always healthier to eat fresh non-"Organic" food than it is to eat old "organic" food.

The effect on the environment due to the transportation of the food is more damaging than any benefit to the environment from the farming practices used. For more on this, click here.

(This should not really come as a surprise. The reason "organic" foods are becoming easier to buy is not so much because more companies are concerned with the environment, but rather, they want more money.^* They can charge more for "organic" food and get away with it. Furthermore, since the word "organic" is such a meaningless term, they can get away with selling things as "organic" that aren't natural by any stretch of the imagination. For example, some companies have been accused of selling re-hydrated powdered milk as "organic" milk.)

There is never a simple solution to either your own health or to protecting the environment. Don't be fooled by marketers.

*This reminds me of what I termed "trendy charity".[3]

More on How to Decide What People in a Culture Should Know

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:27:40 GMT

Last week was crazy busy. I had started posting this, but it included another poll on your opinions that got far too long.

My last public entry did not really trigger much debate on this actual question. I think the science poll distracted everyone (except for jeltzz).

Rather than trying to poll you on each and every possible topic one could teach to those in a culture, I'll just comment on a few things I've thought about. Feel free to add new ones or comment.

Mathematics

I think that everyone in a culture should be able to do basic math skills: count, add, subtract, divide, use fractions, and solve basic algebraic equations.

I believe these are important for everyone to know because I think they are tied to logic and how people think. Everyone in our culture should be able to use logic. Not doing so is not only a detriment to themselves but to the entire society.

As for higher maths, like calculus, I don't think everyone needs to understand them. I think it may even be a waste of resources to teach calculus ot all people. Perhaps it should be limited to those who wish to learn it or who need it for other undertakings, such as in the sciences or engineering.

Languages

Everyone in a culture should be able to speak the primary language of that culture, as well as being able to read and write. While I think it is a great personal benefit to be multilingual -- and I wish I truly was -- I'm not sure if it is a benefit to a culture for everyone to be multilingual.

I think that basic grammar should be taught to everyone, because grammar also enforces logic.

History

I'm not sure what to think about this one. I love hisotry now, but I hated it in school. I hated it because all I saw was a push to memorize dates. I don't see how dates mean anything still, except of course as markers of chronology. But if one can learn the sequence of the chronology, the dates aren't as necessary.

At the same time, I think people can learn much from the important mistakes and triumphs of the past. I just don't begin to know how to determine what is "important".

What are "important historical events"?

Science

A problem with science in schools is that it is often reall science history. Students are taught facts about scientific discoveries, without really learning how to do science or understand scientific thought. Science education should be focused more on how to think in a methodical way, how to make hypotheses and test them.

People need to better understand how to understand science, rather than just accepting everything they hear from scientists because they are scientists or rejecting everything they hear from scientists because they are scientists.

Art and Music

I think everyone should have to learn about art and music to some extent. Art and music are almost like other forms of language.

Any thoughts thus far?

On How To Decide What People in a Culture Should Know

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:12:53 GMT

Last night, I began co-teaching a course on chemistry for science teachers. The other teacher showed a video about the American science education system and problems with it. Our students were also given a test on common chemistry misconceptions. I was amazed at how poorly both the ones interviewed in the video -- Harvard graduates, even -- and those in our classroom -- who are supposed to be teaching science -- did at answering questions correctly.

Here are two sample questions. See how you do.

Edit: The second question should read, "...bulk of the mass of a log...." Also, "diozide" is supposed to be "dioxide". Sorry.

View Poll: A Couple Basic Science Questions

Last night, after class, at dinner with my wife, we were discussing these kinds of misconceptions and from where they come and how to avoid them.

It's a difficult question.

But more than that, who decides that it is really necessary for people to know these things anyhow? Is it?

Do you really need to know that the boiling points of substances do not change based on volume?

Do you really need to know that a tree grows into the massive life form it is primarily from converting the carbon in carbon dioxide into protein and carbohydrates?

The latter fact has always filled me with wonder -- converting simple air into solid mass is quite a feat. But should everyone know that? Is it a need for anyone? Does it benefit the general populace to know this?

I tend to be libertarian in many of my views on society. But I must admit that I would much rather live in an educated culture than an uneducated culture. Thus, I think education is good for this country, and I am glad that education is legally required of our children here.

How they are being educated is an altogether different issue, but I am glad that they are being educated.

So then, what things should every person know? How do we as a society decide that?

On Dieting Fads

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:29:32 GMT

It is no secret that I hate fads.[1] In fact, I generally will avoid doing or buying something I might thing is good if it is currently a fad. I'll wait until the fad has passed, because I do not want to be associated with the fad in any way.

Fads occur in so many areas of life, and dieting is no exception. For a while, it was Weight Watcher, then Atkins, then South Beach. I'm sure I've missed quite a few; I've never cared enough to pay much attention, as I've been skinny all my life.

We started the SBD on the recommendation of my parents, for whom it worked well, long after the fad seems to have died out.

Last night, we were eating out at Ruby Tuesday. I was surprised to find no "Low Carb" section in the menu. I was simultaneously disappointed and delighted -- the former, because I am looking for foods with few carbohydrates on this phase of the SBD; the latter, because it is a good indication that the fad of the SBD is dying.

This is not the only restaurant I've been to recently where this has happened. A year or two ago, it was hard to find a restaurant that did not have a new "Low Carb" section in their menus. From my observation, that section is now starting to go disappear again.

anyhow, just some observations, not anything terribly deep...

On Nature Shows

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:45:59 GMT

My wife and I are currently watching two British nature documentary series, "The Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth", both narrated by David Attenborough.

I find them at the same time utterly amazing and... depressing.

There is so much variety, so much beauty, so much majesty, so much extraordinary.

Yet, there is also so much pain, so much suffering, so much struggle, so much death.[1]

It has been interesting watching the "diaries" segments included with each episode, where the photographers and teams describe how they captured the difficult shots on film -- often a process taking up to a month of simply waiting.

In those segments, more than once I have heard one of the teammembers share my amazement and sadness. For example, they were delighted to actually observe (with night vision cameras) a pride of 30 plus lions take down an elephant, but they were all too sad to watch the elephant struggle as it died and was then eaten. Or those filming the great white sharks -- they cheered each time a seal outmaneuvered the monster. They couldn't watch when a wounded seal hid under their boat. Yet they were exhilirated by the shot of a shark breaching the surface by two meters to snag a meal.

Most of the time, they mention how they will not interfere, just observe. But in a few cases, they broke their own rule. They found a baby emperor penguin trapped in a hole in the ice, so they rescued it. It happily wobbled back to its waiting and concerned mother.

Why save the baby penguin and not a baby whale being slowly drowned by killer whales? I don't see the distinction. Is it because one is cuter than the other?[2]

I suppose I can understand the reasoning behind not helping prey escape from predator. But some of the animals were just struggling from other matters, like getting lost in the desert in a sandstorm or falling into a pile of bat dung. It seems cruel to me to just let the animal suffer. Yes, nature is cruel, but in this world where many environmentalists are vegetarians, why the heck not help a poor bat-dung-trapped bird?

How is it cruel for humans to hurt animals, yet not be cruel for animals to hurt animals?

What depresses me the most is not that animals eat other animals. Heck, I eat animals. It is the slow suffering that saddens me. Yes, sometimes, the predators take out the already-dying,[3] but, as often, they take out the young. Many animals slowly kill or, worse, play with their prey, all the while, the prey scream and cry out for someone or something to save them.

On Culturally-Attributed Animal Qualities

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:48:11 GMT

At the last GCF meeting, daschwartz asked a fun question about the moral qualities that different cultures attribute to different animals. I thought it might make a good poll, but I'm not sure I have enough readers from non-Western cultures to get a good sense of any trends. Even so....

View Poll: Animal Moral Stereotypes

On No-Name Brand Names

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 08:19:54 GMT

I always get a kick out of the silly names that store brand products have -- particularly cereals and sodas.

Some of my favorites are the sodas Mountain Lightning and Doctor Thunder. I bet you can guess what sodas those are supposed to taste like.

In fact, here is a fun list of all of the Dr. Pepper want-to-be's known to man: http://www.kibo.com/kibofood/dr_pepper.html

My question is, why stop with sodas and breakfast cereals? Why not have no-name brand names for, say, candies?

How about O & O's? bite-size chocolate candies?

Babe the Pig candy bar? Or Babe Esther? Kid Ruth?

Supernovas fruit chews?

Stix chocolate bars?

Twisters licorice?

I should join a marketing company, yes?

On Dieting Young

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:59:02 GMT

We tend to get a lot of weird looks when my wife and I tell people that we are dieting.

During coffee break, M. said, "You're the second skinniest person in lab." He said this to make one of K., who is taller and skinnier than I, but for most of my life, yes, I've been called skinny.

sadeyedartist, also, has been tiny all of her life.

Granted, I am primarily dieting because she wanted someone to do it with her, and I love her, so I agreed.

But the fact of the matter is that I have gained some 30-35 lbs. in the last year or so. I'm not sure how much of that is not muscle mass from lifting, but some of it is definitely in my belly.

I don't think I need to diet, but now at least dieting won't kill me -- and it could very well be preventative.

But my question is this: doesn't it make a heck of a lot more sense to diet before you become truly overweight? It's a lot easier, I would presume to lose 15 to 20 lbs. than it is to lose 50, is it not? Isn't it better to diet younger, when the metabolism runs faster?

It is generally a smarter idea to clean a house each month than it is to wait and only do it once a year. Rather than a series of quick dustings, one has to do some serious scrubbing. Why then do people find it so weird that we want to stop the weight gain early?

On Cleanlinees Not Being Next to Godliness

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:04:41 GMT

I debated whether or not to make this a Biblical entry, but I decided against it. I think this concept applies regardless of whether one believes in the teachings of the Bible or no.

But first, a short vent: I think I'm going to write a book someday called something like 100 Things People Think The Bible Says That It Doesn't. Included in the list will be "God helps those who help themselves," Eve ate an apple[1], Jonah was swallowed by a whale, Satan's name as an angel was Lucifer[2], and "Cleanliness is next to Godliness."

And now the bigger vent, triggered by discussions with my wife: I hate the terms "clean cut" and "really a good kid".

I understand that the first term came about to mean someone who wasn't rebellious, but sometimes, rebellion is a good thing, and sometimes the rebellion is internal. And rebellion is not the only possible vice out there, nor does not having a beard make you any closer to God.

People often use the clause, "He's really a good kid," with the quite disruptive kids in my wife's class. Generally, they really mean, "He's clean cut." Translation: "He doesn't make me feel uncomfortable, because he looks clean and non-rebellious."

Why is our stupid culture so fixated on the outward appearance? They claim to (rightly) hate hypocrisy, yet it runs rampant regardless of one's religious background.

It seems to me that not a small number of those clean cut, "good" boys in high school and college were A) disrespectful of women, B) proud about stupid, immature things, and/or C) overly concerned with pointless, unimportant matters -- all very godly things in every religion I've looked into and also generally encouraged among atheists as well. Um, no.

This all reminds me of a certain rabbi who once said, "Woe to you, whitewashed tombs...."

More on Public Fear and Ignorance: Irradiated Food

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:05:18 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted on public ignorance, but having read most of the John Stossel^* book I received for Christmas, I've got a whole new list of things to post about.

Today, we talk about irradiated food.

Just like with the story behind the name MRI[1], people hear the word "irradiate" and they freak out. Eek! Radiation! People will start turning into Dr. Octopi if they eat such food!

In this case, they freaked out so much that states began banning irradiated food under pressure from the public and environmentalists, thanks to crappy reporting by ignorant science reporters.

Get a clue and educate yourselves, people! Do you even know what radiation is?

Radiation is the transmission of very small particles through space. Think of them as little bullets.

It is not some green, cancer-causing ooze.

Radioactive material is (dangerous) material that emits these little "bullets". Think of radioactive material as you would think of a gun.

Now let me ask you this, if I were to take a 14 guage and shoot a deer, should I then eat the meat? Why the heck not?

Does the deer morph into a shotgun? Um, no.

In the same way, all you do when you irradiate food is shoot a billion smaller-than-microscopic holes through it, killing all of the dangerous bacteria inside. The food in no way becomes radioactive any more than a shot deer mutates into a bazooka and begins blasting the hunter who shot it.

(Of course, if you had someone irradiate you, that would not be terribly smart. Having billions of smaller-than-microscopic holes shot through you would result in you having millions of smaller-than-microscopic holes in your DNA. Holes in DNA equals bad, very bad.)

There, was that terribly complicated to understand? I should hope not.

But no, the reporters who originally started this scare didn't bother taking two minutes to check out the facts. Instead, they cared more about a "good" story, which nearly always involves fear-mongering. Instead, the brilliant company that came up with the idea went out of business and the entire industry was shut down.

Ignoring the people who lost money because of this, consider the loss of lives. Have you ever heard of E. coli, perhaps? Raw meat is swarming with bacteria, and there are a whole slew of them out there that don't like humans very much.

John Stossel reports that the Centers for Disease Control believes that a million cases of bacterial infection, including 350 lives saved, could be avoided per year if only half of our food were irradiated.

Plus our food would not spoil as quickly.

If you don't take the CDC's word for it, the World Health Organization and American Medical Association also agree, as do the FDA and the USDA.

(Ironically, the same thing occurred when Dr. Pasteur came up with his method of purifying milk. People freaked out then too, claiming that "raw" milk was somehow better.)

People also do not realize that spices have been irradiated for over 20 years.

So please, shoot my food with radiation; I'll gladly pass on getting food poisoning.

*For those of you who do not know of John Stossel, he is a reporter for the ABC TV news magazine show "20/20". He is known for doing investigative reports he titles, "Give Me a Break!" They tend to focus on scams, urban legends, and other such lies. He also is a Libertarian, which is a very nice change from the constant Republican vs. Democrat battle in the states. The book is titled, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity. Can you see why I like him?

On Modern Humor

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:44:22 GMT

My philosophical hairdresser[1], when last I was having my hair thinned, shared with me an anecdotal observation he has had.

He claims that younger people who sit in his chair do not understand jokes anymore.

I found this an interesting comment. And you know, it makes sense.

Our world is becoming more and more visual. When people want to share humor, what do they do today? They share a link to a stupid YouTube video.

It used to be that dialog was where one found humor.

It is no surprise to most of my readers that I dislike almost all modern comedy films. It may not be as known that I do enjoy many of the old black & white comedies. One of my favorites is "His Girl Friday". Why? Because it is nonstop, quick-witted dialog. Very little of the humor is from the visual; nearly all of it is found in what is said.

But most modern comedies seem to revolve around visual gags and awkward, supposedly-humorous situations.

Could it be that my hairdresser's observations are true, that the upcoming generation is growing almost unable to appreciate verbal humor? Or has he just run into an odd bunch of customers?

On New Year's Resolutions

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:08:40 GMT

My wife[1] and I[2] have both written in the past about the pointlessness of New Year's Day as a holiday.

As such, I've never made New Year's resolutions.

However, I was thinking before the arbitrary turn of the year that New Year's resolutions make a lot more sense in some cases than I at first allowed.

The fact of the matter is that most people celebrate the new year and many people run their businesses based on that date. The former fact means that many people will have a vacation around that time -- oftentimes a long one. The latter fact means that many people will have just finished a mad rush to complete some task for the year and/or will have turned in some end-of-the-year report.

Thus New Year's may well be one of the best and most convenient times of the year to make any major changes in one's schedule or lifestyle. As for me, I've just turned in a long report. All the work I am going to do this year will be written up on a fresh "slate". I've just come off of a long vacation; thus, I should have more energy to integrate new things. Also, because of the big holidays, I should have a long stretch of full weeks for a while. Full weeks make it a lot easier to set up some sort of regular schedule.

So I've still not really made any resolutions this year -- because who ever keeps them. But I have made some New Year's changes. We'll see how long they last, but it's really a rather convenient time to make them... despite the stupidity of starting the New Year now.

On Tetherball

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:52:58 GMT

One of my favorite sports to play outside growing up was tetherball.

There are a lot of good things about tetherball. It only requires two players. It takes up very little space. It is extremely fast-moving. It's easy to learn and challenging to master.

Plus, I was probably above-average at the game.

And you can probably get easily knocked unconscious by the tetherball, which makes it altogether more appealing to nearly any male, myself included.

Sadly, I don't think I've seen a tetherball pole since high school. Are the things still around? I would love to find one and play against someone again. Heck, we should get one for our lab. That would make coffee breaks a tad more interesting.

And why are there no professional tetherball players? Or why isn't tetherball in the Olympic games?

Question

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:53:08 GMT

Can anyone who has read me for a long time recall and/or find an entry where we discussed the asthetics of sports?

Despite my enormous number of tags and "memories", I cannot find such a post or discussion. (I suppose it may have not even occured on my journal.)

Thanks.

On Fußball Tables

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:14:13 GMT

The other chemistry building has a foosball table in their basement. The other day, while waiting to use their (much more well shimmed) NMR, I was looking over the table.

It struck me that there are 13 players on the table/field/pitch.

How odd, I though. Doesn't football/soccer have 11 players on the field at a time, not 13? This is unexpected for a game so obviously based on football.

Yet every foosball table I can recall seeing here in America has 13 players.

So, I decided I would post to you all about it and see what you can inform me. Surely, some of you know more about foosball than I.

Since I decided to write this, I have learned some interesting things about foosball on-line. But I'll just leave this post as is, anyhow, and will leave you with a brief poll:

Edit: In all these questions, add the phrase "per team" to the numerical answers.

View Poll: Fußball Pitch Census

On Bus Ride Linguistics

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:21:43 GMT

Waiting for the Hopkins shuttle bus this morning, I was people watching/listening and heard a young Asian mother tell her little child, "This bus is not us," in a very unaccented accent.

As I often do, I began to analyze the grammar of her sentence.

At first, it seemed wrong, but then I had second thoughts. I'm relatively certain I myself would use or have used the sentence, "This isn't us," in reference to buses or trains. (Which in no way, I admit, justifies the grammar, but do continue.)

Some might argue that the sentence should be, "This isn't ours."

I'm not so sure. The possessive pronoun -- or genitive, if you will -- here, is ok, but the bus isn't really "ours"; rather, it is "for us".

The construction "for us" when used in a noun-verb-object sentence is termed an indirect object. Indirect objects do not always require the preposition, because most verbs using one will imply that they take a double object -- "give" for example.

But one can also use the phrase "for us" with linking verbs: "I am for research."

In English, as in many languages, words can be left out of the sentence when there is no ambiguity. (Take the absence of "you" in commands or the absence of "that" in relative clauses.)

So then, here there is also no confusion, because in, "This is us," we are using a plural objective pronoun where the singular nominative would be expected to match with "this". So clearly, we must not be trying to equate "this" with "us"; rather, we must be using "us" as the object of an unspoken preposition.

This is more clear if I am talking about some other person's bus. I would say, "This is him," with the pronoun in the objective case. If I were, on the other hand, introducing him, I would have to say, "This is he," with the pronoun in the nominative case.

After thinking through all of this on the bus ride over, I think I must conclude that people who say, "This bus is us," are not just mistaking "us" for "our", they are just simplifying things.

On Rapid Evolution

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:04:34 GMT

Once again, I have been vindicated in my weird ideas by recent scientific research in the news.

Many, many times during coffee breaks at lab, I have argued among my fellow scientists that I really believe that evolution occurs much more quickly than scientists have assumed. I said, "I bet if you took humans from America and moved them down to Africa and took Africans and moved them up to Siberia, you would see the skin colors of the people reverse^* in a few hundred or thousand years."

Vindication: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071210/sc_nm/evolution_human_dc_1

For those not wanting to read the whole short article, essentially, it has been discovered that human evolution "has been moving at breakneck speed in the past several thousand years, far from plodding along as some scientists had thought."

It is said in the article that we are more genetically different from our ancestors of 5000 years ago than those ancestors were from Neanderthals.^** (If this is true, it also would confirm another thought I've had that it is rather silly to call Neanderthals a separate species.)

Recent evolutionary adaptations to our modern world include:

Africans who have evolved a gene resistance to malaria

Europeans who have evolved an ability to better digest milk as adults (Milk was, of course, intended for infants, not adults.)

I love it when scientists have to say things such as: "The central finding is that human evolution is happening very fast -- faster than any of us thought." It makes me smile.

*The theory is that dark skin protects from sunburn where there is a lot of sun and light skin allows production of Vitamin D where there is little sun.
*To be fair, I need to read the actual paper in PNAS, because I have no idea how they can make such a statement. How do they have DNA information about Neanderthals now? The article hints at 270 data sets from people around the world, but I don't see how they could have covered all time periods for the last 80,000 years, as they claim.

On Alternate Rhyming Schemes

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:09:39 GMT

The other day I wrote a poem for my wife in which the first word of each line rhymed.

After the fact, I pondered that I've never seen such a poem before.

Nowadays, everyone (except ubersecret) has for the most part abandoned form poetry, but the question I have is, did anyone "famous" ever write poetry in which the rhyming scheme involved the first and not the last word of the lines?

Still More on Moral Radii: The Circle Expands Through Story

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:49:14 GMT

What causes it to grow?

This is a puzzle.

It makes evolutionary sense to help those close to oneself; in Bloom's words, "[i]t's worse than useless from a Darwinian point-of-view" for the circle to grow.

Yet it can.

Some say that the growth of the circle is a sign of a higher power placing in us a conscience.

Some say that the growth is a sign of a "growing global community."

Some say that it is a form of "sexual advertising" -- kind people are more sexy. (The number one thing people want in a mate -- regardless of gender or race -- is kindness.)

Some (Peter Singer, for example) say that it is a result of mature reason. That is, we are not slaves to our passions or evolutionary pressures. (Bloom argued that, were we slaves to our passions, society as a whole would see no moral changes. The fact of the matter is that less and less people are killed in the world as a whole now than in the past, for example.) Darwinism fails to take culture into consideration, which is one of its large flaws.[1] We have reason and we have culture.

Related to this last theory, Bloom is fascinated by the idea of and use of stories in societies in causing the circle to grow.

Stories have a way of making us think of far off places and peoples as kin. If stories are used by cultures as a way of passing on moral codes, why do we use stories and not just a presentation of the moral codes?

Bloom believes it is because of the power of the particular. (I posted on C.S. Lewis' ideas of this once.[2]) While "big" disasters make for bigger "news", people are moved more by the particular stories of people within those disasters.

When human subjects were compared in tests of how much they were willing to give, they gave more to particular people than to general groups.

People also are willing to give more to actual people over potential people. This applies to the abortion issue and stem cell issues, yes, but the studies in mind here actually involved giving to an actual poor person versus giving to a group that would then give money to poor people.

Furthermore, if people detect that they are being persuaded, they very often block the message. (Very interesting studies were done to show this; I wish I could recall all the details here.)

Stories are a way of persuasion that is less detectable as such and that make characters seem both actual and particular.

Sadly, I was not able to hear Bloom's closing remarks, so this entry, too, will have to end open-ended....

More on Moral Radii: The Circle Collapses

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 03:04:07 GMT

Directly continuing from Thursday's late entry, what causes the moral circle to shrink?

Social psychologists have long studied this phenomenon, and I've referred to a few of these experiments in a past entry.[1]

Bloom listed the following (with the exception of conformity, which I have added):

distance -- We are less likely to treat people morally the farther away they are from us.

euphemism -- We are less likely to treat people morally if we use more pleasant sounding terms for things.

removal of names -- We are less likely to treat people morally if we do not use their names. (Consider how prisoners and concentration camp workers are given numbers.)

disgust -- We are less likely to treat people morally if we consider them disgusting.

conformity -- We are less likely to treat people morally if others are not treating them morally or if we are ordered to not do so by an authority figure.

I found the idea of names fascinating, considering how important names were especially in older times.

But what Bloom talked most about was disgust. Apparently, there is no human culture that does not have disgust and no human culture that does not have facial expressions for that disgust. Animal byproducts are almost always triggers of disgust in cultures.

Bloom presented two interesting studies.

In one, it was found that people considered disgusting to subjects did not even "light up" the same neuronal signatures in the brain as "normal" people do. In other words, people's brains do not even consider "disgusting people" as human in the same way.

It is no wonder that American slaves and Jewish concentration camp prisoners had simple human privacies taken away. If they could make others look disgusting by forcing them to do disgusting things out of necessity, they would no longer be seen as human.

Now clearly, different people have different sensitivity to disgusting things. Some people faint at blood; for others it poses no problem, for example. Another study showed a correlation between those more sensitive to disgusting things and those having negative attitudes towards homosexual people. That is, people more likely to be grossed out by, say, animal intestines, were more likely to hold negative views of homosexuals. (Bloom made no effort to interpret this finding further.)

When it comes down to it, though, what makes the moral circle collapse is perhaps less interesting than what makes it grow. That will be the topic of my next public entry.

On Moral Radii: Programmed Morality in Babies

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 18:01:26 GMT

On Thursday, in a second attempt at exploring into other departments' seminar series[1], I snuck into a cognitive science department's talk that proved to be absolutely amazing to me.

(Pay attention triphicus.) The speaker was Dr. Paul Bloom from Yale. (Apparently, this was his second talk of four. I almost cried that I missed his first talk, "Bodies and Souls". His next talk is titled "Religion Is Natural".)

This particular talk was titled, "Moral Circles". Were I to have titled it, I would have called it "Moral Radii" because the discussion was really on how far removed someone or something has to be from you before you consider them morally irrelevant.

Bloom is interested in three related questions:

What moral circle are we born with, if any?
What causes the circle to contract?
What causes the circle to expand?

This entry, I'll review his talk regarding the first question. I'll cover the remaining two questions in my next entries, so consider this the start of a three-part series or lecture review.

Oddly enough, Bloom began his talk with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, pointing out that in Jesus' tale, two interesting points are present:

Group Membership

Physical Proximity

These two points are key to any social study of human morality.

He explained that the Parable is a normative (what a linguist would call "prescriptive") morality, whereas what he (Bloom) studies is "descriptive" -- not what should be there but rather what is there.

Bloom was not the first to use the term "moral circle". (I forget who was.) But he suggested that there may actually be separate circles. He proposed that we have one circle enclosing who/what not to harm and a second and distinct circle enclosing who/what to help. All of his studies have tested for this perhaps subtle distinction.

Bloom's studies focus on babies and young children, in an attempt to study humans before they can be taught such things as morality.

Previous studies have shown that the pain of others is aversive to babies (and also to certain other animals). This test was done by observing how babies cry more when hearing other babies crying in pain. (Now, for you experimentalists or argumentative folk, for the rest of this entry, for the sake of time, I will skip most of the controls done. In this one, for example, the control group was played recordings of their own voice crying, and the babies did not respond the same way.)

However, aversion to pain in others alone is not logically linked to morality. People may well just dislike the sound or some other such explanation.

On the other hand, it has also been shown that the hearing of pain often leads to concern and action and that more empathy in humans leads to more help given by humans. Just as when we thirst, it is a biological sign to us that we should take the action of drinking water, so may our own felt empathy be a biological sign to us that we should take the action of helping the one empathized with.

Altruism has also been studied in young children. 18-month-olds showed altruism to complete strangers in many studies -- as did chimps, but not dogs. (Sorry, dogs_n_rodents. Although, to be fair, I thought the dog experiments were flawed.)

Bloom himself studies babies' moral evaluations of other agents based on the actions of those agents.

He presented video examples -- that were absolutely hilarious -- of his Helper/Hinderer Tests.

In an example of this type of test, there was a wooden ramp. Attempting to ascend this ramp was a little solid object with eyeballs drawn on it -- say, a sphere. (This was controlled by a stick through a slit in the ramp.) The poor little sphere would struggle to climb the ramp as a baby watched. Then, one of two things would occur. Either another eyed solid -- say, a pyramid -- would come and help push the poor sphere up the ramp; the sphere would dance in excitement upon reaching the top. Or another solid -- say, a cube -- would attack the poor sphere and beat him back down to the bottom of the ramp. The babies were later allowed to choose to pick between pairs of the objects. At 10 months, they massively chose the helper over the hinderer; at 6 months, they unanimously did. The test had other varieties such as animal puppets helping or hindering each other at other tasks, giving similar results. They also looked at tests comparing giving/sharing with taking/hoarding. Giving puppets were always greatly preferred over taking puppets.

These tests were also done with younger babies using the "looking test", which assumes that babies look at things they prefer for longer periods of time.

This brought up the question as to whether the babies were responding positively to the helper or negatively to the hinderer -- or both.

When the babies were allowed to chose between the helper and the helped character or between the hinderer and the hindered character, they chose the helper over the neutral character and the neutral character over the hinderer.

Interestingly, however, 3-month-olds (using the looking test, since they cannot reach for objects) showed no preference of helper over neutral character, perhaps indicating that the moral idea of "Do not harm others!" is programmed in earlier than the moral idea of "Do help others!"

Note that all of these experiments were based on a 3rd party; that is, these were not tests on whether the baby him- or herself preferred being helped or hindered.

Currently, Bloom is continuing his studies to test more complicated things involving four or more characters in order to test the babies ideas of moral justice, revenge, etc. How will the babies respond to a fourth agent rewarding or punishing behavior, for example?

Ignoring the fact that watching the babies facial expressions during this presentation was extremely entertaining, the information we can gain from it is fascinating. It certainly does seem to be the case that humans are born with morality programmed in at a certain level.

What causes this programmed morality to change? Stay tuned for more.

(As an aside: I heard a speaker recently talking about how C.S. Lewis was opposed to the idea of social psychology, feeling that man should not be studied. I think this may be one rare case where I disagree with Lewis. I wish I could have discussed this matter with him, but alas, he went and died. As I see it, if one believes in a God who created an idea of morality within each of us, why should we fear studying ourselves with science to see if it is there?)

(So, anyhow, I am definitely going to the next of these talks, which concerns the difference between psychopathic killers and normal killers.)