Reboot!

Only by posting again will the WTWT reboot ever get off the ground. Guys, let's post our responses and thoughts in the comments section of this article rather than over e-mail, for posterity's sake.

So we've had an election recently, which I'm sure everyone who reads this blog is fuming over. My first thought was (other than "ding, dong, the Bloc is dead!") what happened, Canada? Why did we give a scheming, autocratic, neoptism-prone tyrant, who's proven time and time and time again over the last five years that he cannot be trusted, a majority?

A friend and reader of WTWT said simply "because Canadians are stupid". I replied that it's equally possible they're ignorant, or apathetic, or right-winged idealists. Her response was "no, they're stupid".

To support my assertion that Canadians voted Harper back in with purpose and not out of imbecility, I started doing research Unfortunately, trawling the blogs and reading the news has given me very little insight over why 40% of voters supported Harper. The electoral map doesn't say too much either - electoral maps over-represent rural areas for obvious reasons, and so it's difficult to tell why some areas went blue and some orange without zooming in.

My hypotheses so far:

1. Canadians are apathetic and went for the sitting government. This seems false - apathetic people don't vote, and when they do vote they either select at random or vote for the Rhinoceros Party. This did not happen, unless lots of people had their hands slip.

2. Canadians are ignorant of Harper's deceptions. On the surface this is false - they probably know Harper hatches political schemes on a daily basis. The trouble is they think this is politics as usual. I'm worried that because the Conservatives came in after a decade of Liberal scandals (none of which, arguably, are as bad as the scandals of recent years) the Conservatives now have a free pass to do whatever they want, since people now expect corruption no matter who takes office.

3. The Liberal Party has no direction. A colleague of mine at work lambasted the Liberal party for their poorly run campaign this time around. He's a political afficianado, but even looking at the Liberal platform, and Ignatieff's performance in the debates, it's obvious the Liberals had no vision of Canada other than to replace the Harper government. On the other hand, the Conservatives had a fairly strong message going in: sound economic policy to dampen the effects of recession, a backing out of the government from social safety nets to destroy the "culture of entitlement", a strong legal and military arm, and job creation through tax reduction and incentives. The Liberal platform had no overarching ideal. What does the Liberal party stand for, other than standing up against Harper?

4. Canadians LIKE libertarian ideals. I mean, 30% of people did vote NDP, while 40% of people voted Conservative. Assuming we have no centrist party, this simply means more people prefer right-winged governments than left. It also might make sense that the Conservative have broader-than-expected appeal. I can easily describe why, in richer East Asian ridings (Richmond, for example), people voted conservative. Immigrants from China nowadays are largely middle/upper-class people (both from Hong Kong and the mainland). Their experience with government in general is that it is wholly corrupt and filled with entitlement and patronage at all levels, a simple money sink you deal with only out of legal necessity. It's little wonder that when they come here they gravitate toward parties that say they'll reduce government intrusion into their lives. They're also not big on gay marriage, and since Asians have cultures fairly compatible with North American culture, they don't care too much about minority "special needs". Could other unusual Conservative Party wins be explained similarly?

By the way, I imagine now that Harper has a majority his so-con base from the Canadian Alliance will demand that he bring gay marriage and abortion back on the table. I'm fairly sure he personally won't want to (since he's making a killing by being a socially moderate libertarian). We'll see how that plays out.

What are your thoughts? Discuss below.

What happens when you flip “all you can eat” on its head?

After waking up from an “all you can eat sushi” induced sleep (you know the kind when you’re so full you just can’t move and fall into a strangely uncomfortable sleep), I remembered some lines from a Japanese drama I watched recently.

A famous sushi chef slaps his sushi-chef-in-training son on the cheek.

“Ouch! Why did you slap me?”

“We take only what God* gives.”

“Only what God gives?”

“That’s right. We only catch the amount of fish God gives us. A true fisherman always keeps that in mind when they go out to sea every day. It’s the job of sushi chefs like us to provide customers with just the right portion they need.”

The son looks confused.

“That customer (talking about a customer who came earlier) was already finishing up and was about to leave fully satisfied. But you got carried away after a few praises and gave her another piece of chuutoro (a kind of tuna sushi). You used the tuna’s life as a tool for self-satisfaction!”

The son starts to understand.

“Son, remember to closely observe your customers. Breathe as your customers (become one with them) and know what they want.”

How often do we think of our food that way? What if we thought not of “all you can eat” but “eat only what you need?” How often do we use the lives of living beings as a tool for self-satisfaction?



On a different note, who says you can’t learn anything from TV shows?



*God (kami sama) in Japanese is often used to refer to a larger entity not necessarily with the same meaning as in a Western context.


-- Paper Sheep

More Gwynne Dyer

This is really good:

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Of%20Pandemics%20and%20Pork.txt

"The new diseases, and new strains of old diseases to which we have no immunity, will surely come, and not just one, either. We have created the ideal environment to maximise new mutations among the diseases that kill large numbers of people, and we will pay a high price. Unless we get out of factory farming, which does not seem very likely.

"But then, pork prices in the United States dropped by one-fifth between 1970 and 2004, according to the US Department of Agriculture. That means that factory farming is saving the average American consumer $29 a year, or about $2.40 a month. What's the risk of a lethal global pandemic compared to savings like that?"

Right on, Dr. Dyer!

~Charles

But What Can I Do? (Part II.)

A long, long time ago, Jacob wrote an article that tackled the question, “Is it ethical to pour money into basic science, while there are still suffering people in the world?” He divided the question into two parts: do these projects have any real merit at all, and whether or not such projects deserve the funding they receive. Jacob answered the first with an eloquent and succinct defence of basic scientific research. He saved the second for a later date. Well, after a long and fruitful conversation with Jacob, I’m going to try tackling this problem (the ideas, of course, belong to Jacob as much as they do to me).

But what is the proposition, and how should we think of it? Straightforwardly, the proposition is that the societal benefits of funding programs that alleviate suffering (foreign aid, welfare, etc.) significantly outweigh the societal benefits of basic scientific research. Therefore it is economically unadvisable to continue funding basic scientific research so long as so much suffering remains in the world. For the purposes of clarification, basic research is trying to understand the fundamental aspects governing some kind of natural system, such as determining the workings of DNA or finding a way of mathematically uniting the four fundamental forces of the universe. What makes basic research “basic”, and what makes it appear superficially useless, is the fact that there is never a practical goal attached to the research. Jacob showed in Part 1 that this is uselessness is only superficial: basic research is the foundation on which all technology arises. For anyone who believes that a technical civilization (that is, any civilization that uses tools beyond sticks and rocks) is a good thing, basic research is not a luxury. It should be obvious that the proposition cannot at all be easily proven.

This is not to say that it cannot be proven, and that the proposition isn’t compelling. When we see images of the poor and the starving, people left to fend for themselves against disease, starvation and the wrath of warlords, it certainly is tempting to reroute money away from enormous experiments meant to probe things most people don’t even care to understand. It doesn’t help that so many grants lead to dead ends, and so many space probes crash. I can understand the sentiment behind the proposition, but this is an overly simplistic way of thinking about the situation. Economics isn’t like shopping at the mall: you don’t walk in with a wallet full of cash, and buy what you want.

In a mall, you can pay $4.99 to buy yourself lunch. You can pay another $4.99 to buy a lunch for your friend, and for a few dollars extra, you can buy ice cream too. You know what you’re paying for; it’s advertised on the poster, and the price tag is right below. But investing $1 million in scientific research doesn’t guarantee you a million-dollar discovery, and neither does giving $1 million to foreign aid or health care guarantee that you feed a million starving people or cut hospital waiting lines by ten percent. The economy is a complex system, and changing any variable can have a great number of far-reaching consequences. Imagine instead, going to a shopping mall and ordering a sandwich, and being charged $4.99. Then you ask for a sandwich for your friend, and the price for hers drops to $4.50. Then you ask for ice cream, and you’re charged $15, then $30, then $150, and finally all they tell you is “we’re out of ice cream; come back next week.” That’s perhaps a more appropriate analogy.

To look at our proposition in the simplistically abstract way of “every dollar not spent on research could be one spent on helping people” is not doing the problem justice. It is more appropriate to ask whether or not we are spending too much on research, and not enough on alleviating suffering, right now. We can show that there are benefits from basic research, and there are clearly benefits from foreign aid too. But while it might not be obvious, there are also diminishing returns the more one invests in each pursuit.

To begin, let us consider several pertinent facts. It suffices to say that if you’re doing pure research, especially in fields like cosmology, the direct benefits to your work won’t come for a while. I will also wholeheartedly agree that in a pure economic sense basic research has a diminishing returns problem, and we rightly have more doctors and teachers than we do theoretical physicists. Neither fact supports any suggestion that we should reduce basic research spending, since we do have more doctors and teachers than physicists, and it isn’t at all obvious that short-term benefits are better than long-term ones.

There are also indirect benefits, the values of which cannot easily be quantified and all of which may increase or decrease with increased funding. Large projects can help industrialize countries. A while back I was speaking to my supervisor at MOST (Canada’s space telescope!) who mentioned that South Africa was looking to become the site for the next massive radio telescope network. He mentioned that one of the factors the (international) project overseers were considering is how this will boost South Africa’s advanced technical expertise and industry. Now obviously not all large projects are (or even could be) built in developing countries, and the country already needs to be substantially industrialized. For these countries, however, large projects are proving grounds and a source of income for local engineers and scientists, and can bolster the technical economy of a country reaching full industrialization. At the very least, such projects serve to create jobs for the technically and scientifically minded in industrialized countries.

Basic science labs can create procedures and methods, and not just information and theories, to inspire applied scientists. Someone trying to create perfectly produced lenses for the Hubble Space Telescope may come up with a method that one day creates precision lasers for communications and surgery. Building the LHC’s electromagnets could teach us lessons that one day make nuclear fusion commercially viable. It is, of course, absolutely true that applied labs will also make such innovations. The problem is that, just like Jacob said before, applied scientists do not get paid to explore, and solve hard problems just so that they can be solved. What looks like spending money on things so that people can “play” is an irreplaceable fountain of knowledge. This, by the way, applies to theory as well as experimentation, since mathematics is used so often (although not by so many people) outside of research.

And let us not forget that scientists aren’t huddled in dark caves, only communicating to the outside world through Nature or Physics Review Letters. They’re also educators, and (ought to be) bastions against the irrationality, superstition and bad empiricism that permeates so many societies today.

If anyone’s worried about the efficiency of science, it isn’t like the International Space Station was created so that we could learn if astronauts could tie their shoes in space. Big projects like the Large Hadron Collider get billions in funding because of the promise of big discoveries that could spark revolutions in the pure sciences. Of course, things (like the ISS for example) do not always turn out the way they should, and grants can certainly be politicized, but human error permeates every facet of society, and it isn’t a problem endemic only to the scientific community. (IR students can probably cite a few “large development projects” in African countries that only benefitted the rulers of said countries, and don’t get me started about the Iraqi Reconstruction Project.)

Lastly, it isn’t obvious that putting more money into health care, or development, will help as much as we’d like. Will giving an extra billion to Africa improve living conditions as much as the previous billion? Or will it even make things worse, by fostering dependency and reducing the accountability of local governments to their citizens? Will giving more money to health care make the system more efficient? More money is usually not worse, but sometimes it can indeed be.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argues that foreign aid can indeed cause significant harm, despite good intentions. She notes in particular that “the most fundamental problem is that it allows African governments to abdicate their role. In most of the world, health care, education and infrastructure are provided by government. But in Africa it's provided by aid agencies. African governments today depend on foreign aid for 70 per cent of their budgets. So there's no accountability to the people. Even if governments don't do their job, they can stay in power because they are underwritten by the donor community.”

Many economists would disagree, arguing that Africa is in a unique situation, being faced not only with extreme poverty but also facing epidemic HIV/AIDS and direct consequences of climate change. No doubt the challenges faced by industrialized countries seem trivial compared to the magnitude of those faced by African countries. And there is therefore no doubt that substantial assistance might be necessary and highly beneficial. But Moyo’s arguments have merit, and it seems likely that there can be such a thing as “too much aid”. I am not sure if we have reached the point where an extra dollar does more harm than good, but its existence is likely and should be accounted for.

Both aid and research are in principle justifiable places to devote resources. Now we have to see which one is better, but this is very, very, very hard! What we’re basically faced with now is the gargantuan challenge of comparing two incredibly complicated uber-multivariable cost-benefit curves. There is a point in both research and aids endeavours at which an extra dollar would be desperately needed, and points where one more dollar yields no more benefits.

To make a quantitative measurement of the worth of a research project, we not only have to determine the probability that it will obtain useful results, and determine the worth of such results, we also have to quantify all the additional benefits I have listed above, and figure out a way to give them a value. And then we have to do the same assessment on development and aid agencies, in a way that lets us compare the two. Given the facts on the ground, it is difficult for me to see how anyone could mount a simple, reason-based argument for taking money from pure science and putting it in health care or African development. To argue for change, we must have a convincing argument for a better arrangement than what we have now, and I fail to see one. Accurately determining which is better is a question that is extremely difficult to solve, even with data and expertise, but we cannot give in to intuitions and glib conceptions of the problem to ease the burden of this task, lest we begin to oversimplify.

But wait – there’s another way out! The original question also artificially narrows the scope of the debate in unfortunate ways. The world in no way keeps humanitarian and pure science funding in the same pool, dividing it up as it sees fair. Money can come from a million other places. How about, for example, Beanie Babies? It’s a 6 billion dollar industry (not per year, of course, but 6 billion over less than ten years is still a lot for a single brand of toys). To compare, NASA’s annual budget is 17 billion, and USAID gets more than 27 billion per year. Let us do this systematically. If we compared Beanie Babies to African development, I think anyone who says NASA should be disbanded to help Africa would say Africa is preferable to Beanie Babies. Now compare Beanie Babies to NASA. Shouldn’t we, if we had the choice, pull money out of Beanie Babies first?

Beanie Babies inspire and bring joy to millions every year? So does astronomy (in fact, probably to the chagrin of most scientists in other fields, astronomers and astronauts capture people’s imagination more than any other science). Beanie Babies offer an avenue of creativity and learning? So does astronomy. It seems likely that more children will borrow an astronomy book from the library than will own a Beanie Baby. In addition, NASA makes real scientific discoveries that affect both the pure sciences and more practical pursuits like climatology and meteorology.

We have spent some time discussing how basic research can benefit humanity, but humanitarian missions can certainly also benefit basic research. How could we know if one of the children we saved through humanitarian relief won’t one day become the next Einstein? The answer is simple: we don’t. This falls back to the either-or problem from the last paragraph. Why can’t we do both at the same time? If we are in agreement that both pure science and humanitarian relief is more important than Beanie Babies, why can’t we give Beanie Babies the axe?

There is, of course, the question of whether or not you should help the world more by becoming a basic science researcher. Obviously, if you’re not that great at research, your talents should go elsewhere. Obviously, if you hate research, your talents should go elsewhere. If you’re good at basic scientific research, and you love what you do, then your contributions could make little or much difference in the world, and it is extraordinarily difficult to tell which it will be. Maybe you will become the next Thomson, or Watson, or Crick. Maybe you won’t, and your work will help the next Thomson, Watson or Crick realize a scientific revolution. Maybe you’ll hit a dead end, and prevent future geniuses from ever going down the route you did and waste their precious time. Maybe your work will be forgotten. I suppose if you want to help humanity in the short run, you probably should not go into certain fields (such as astronomy) whose discoveries are likely (of course, not certain) to have long and not short-term benefits. Otherwise, choosing your passion, and choosing what you excel at, are probably the only things you can do, and the only things you should be doing.

So yeah, I didn’t answer the question, I just made it way harder to answer. But I think that’s progress. If someone is willing to volunteer their time toward the monumental goal of auditing government spending and performing a massive utilitarian calculation, I’d be happy (and impressed!) to read the results. In the meantime, we shouldn’t be lulled into thinking that the problem is simple, obvious, and can even be resolved in a debate or conversation. There are too many benefits to basic research, and so many complications in funding, for us to judge without more information.

~Charles

With much thanks to Jacob for both the conversation and editing this piece.

P.S. (Because I don’t think this is a good argument so much as just something I want to ask.)

It is quite obvious that the people who challenge basic research because it prevents the alleviation of suffering value the alleviation of suffering more than the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. The above argument tackles the accusations using practical reasoning, but I now want to pose a question to satisfy the sadistic relativist side of my brain. Why should we believe this? The immediate answer may be that a life (not in the sense of biological life, but experience, essentially) is inherently good (i.e. good because it is). Why should we believe this? That is not an obvious question, and may be unanswerable on moral or rational grounds alone. So, then, why might you believe that? And if I were to say that I believe the “advancement of civilization” (whatever that means) is an intrinsic good more important than (the intrinsic good of) a single life, or two, or ten, what would you say to convince me otherwise?

On Debating Religion (Or Anything Else)

I’ve recently been frequenting the Scientific American website forums (http://www.scientificamerican.com/). Surprisingly (or, rather, unsurprisingly), it’s a den of climate-change deniers, evangelicals, and people who generally disagree with the tone of whatever editor has written an op-ed in this month’s issue. (Let us leave aside the inevitable rant about how forums likely created for people to discuss scientific endeavours leads to discussions on metaphysics and cultural and political conflict.) After several hours of going through page after exasperating page of debate over the nature of God, or something, I decided to write down this list, which I hope will assuage, or at least ameliorate (forgive my arcane language; I’m studying for the GREs) debates of this sort.

1. Understand the purpose of your debate. If it is to convince others, gear your argument toward doing so. In this case, it is your job to convince others of your position, not their job to try to understand yours.

If you post on forums so that you can vent your exasperation, or declare your superiority, please, for the sake of all things morally good, do that on a site that supports your political, gender or religious preferences. In the end, everyone will be happier, and no one will be offended. Once you’ve calmed down and want to try convincing some contrarians, then go back to a neutral website.

My belief is that many people actually want to talk about issues, rather than hurling insults at each other in order to stimulate the pleasure centres of their brains. Call me an idealist...

2. So, you feel up to a debate, then? Okay, here are a few more ground rules. Do not state how sure you are of your opinion, or how righteous you feel, or how immune you are to counterarguments. No one wants to hear about you, they want to hear about your opinions and the reasons you hold them (and not that you’re absolutely convinced by them). If you want to talk about your experiences, start a blog.

3. Do not start, rebuttal, or end an argument by calling anyone (not just the other people on the forum) stupid. This may be obvious, but there are many, many ways to do this. “How can people possibly believe ?” is an obvious one, but so is “isn’t this obvious?”. Again, you are trying to convince others. The onus is on you to perform well, not for them to listen to you. You are nobody until you prove you are somebody.

4. Type in coherent sentences, and use formatting! It is your job to make your argument understandable, not theirs. No, making your argument harder to read will not make it more convincing. This isn’t the fine print on cellphone contracts. I understand that some people may not have English as their first language, and others are computer illiterate. Do the best you can (you might want to apologize if it appears people aren’t getting what you wrote). Native speakers under the age of 25 have no excuse not to capitalize (NO, NOT ALL CAPS) or use periods.

That being said, please do not go after someone because they've mispelled a word. Maybe call them for not capitalizing, but one word? Come on, no one's perfect!

5. Cite evidence, and help others to understand what you’ve presented. Remember, your victory is when the other side concedes the moral, intellectual or philosophical superiority of your position and agrees with you, not when they call you a moron or swear to kill your firstborn. Obviously evidence will be necessary to convince others. But “look it up yourself” when they ask for clarification is not conducive to your victory.

6. Read what others have written carefully, even if it is obviously garbage. To go for four rounds of “but you didn’t answer my point” is fairly pointless, and happens far too often. If you can’t understand what the other person is talking about, ask for clarification on the assumption that you are the one being stupid, not him/her.

7. Respect the fact that they believe, even (especially) if you don’t respect their beliefs. (I’m looking at you, Richard Dawkins!) Yes, God may be a bunch of baloney written onto some books by deluded priests (but very good public speakers, I’m sure) a few centuries ago, but it doesn’t change the fact that the theist you’re debating loves God, and believes God has had a huge part in his/her life. It may actually be true that the person is a better person because of his/her misguided beliefs, and this ought to be addressed from the start. Do you really think calling their raison d’être delusional from the get go (or, alternatively, calling them closed-minded and irrational) will wake them up?

It doesn’t have to be God. Even dealing with racists may work this way. Start by acknowledging that the culture or people the racist cites has done whatever good works s/he adores.

8. Do not exit from a debate by stating how your opposition is too dense to understand your arguments. See #3 above. Chances are you’ll want to return because something else offends you. You might want a good rep so that you’ll convince a few people.

The general trend toward almost all these points is to exude an air of humility when attempting to convince people. I mean, Socrates the legendary debater never bothered to shout (as far as I can remember) “Ah HAH! I win!” when he won, and he never called (or thought) his interlocutor was an idiot. I mean, after all, if s/he’s an idiot, why in the WORLD are you talking to him/her about ANYTHING, other than to excite the pleasure centres of your brain by hurling insults at others?

~Charles

P.S. Okay, I see one reason, which is that something s/he’s doing is hurting you, but even then is it really productive to scream at them? If not, please read #1 again.