Books and literature – Page 21 – a sibilant intake of breath

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula Le Guin’s slim novel tells the story of the early life of Ged: a wizard whose hubris leads him to over-extend his powers, and who must undertake an agonizing quest to address the consequences:

There was no need to hunt the thing down, to track it, nor would its flight avail it. When they had come to the time and place for their last meeting, they would meet.

But until that time, and elsewhere than that place, there would never be any rest or peace for Ged, day or night, on the earth or sea. He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.

It’s a classic parable and well crafted. It’s actually the first book of Le Guin’s I have read, so I feel like I partly corrected an oversight in my general exposure to speculative fiction.

The book is successful at evoking the sense of a fully-formed world, despite not having to give over much time or space to elaborate exposition. That, combined with the consistency and convincingness of the tone, makes the book seem immersive and meaningful.

Zero History

Zero History is the third novel in Vancouver author William Gibson’s latest trilogy of science fiction set in the present. It is the sequel to Spook Country, which came out in 2007.

Like all of his work, it is clever and well written. This trilogy succeeds in meshing together the trends and technologies of the past with those of the near-future. It also generates some intriguing characters – in this case, the recovering benzodiazapene addict Milgrim is the most interesting. Unfortunately – as is common in science fiction – Gibson does a better job of setting up a mystery than of resolving it. That and a few forgettable, interchangeable characters constitutes the biggest limitation of the work. Once again, Gibson hasn’t risen to the standard he set with his first novel, back in 1983. That said, while Gibson doesn’t display the same ability to tell a story that is compelling from end to end, in this case, Zero History does seem indicative of his maturation as a writer and a person. For instance, whereas the protagonist of Neuromancer was an unrepentent stimulant addict, Zero History explores the psychological processes of addiction recovery in an intriguing and authentic way.

Certainly, one of the interesting aspects of Gibson’s latest work is his exploration of what kind of societal changes may emerge from the most recent real technologies. As he famously remarked: “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” In particular, he is concerned with the emergence of wholesale surveillance technologies in areas ranging from international communications to citywide networks of video cameras paired with facial recognition technologies. The ways in which such technologies intersect with the operating practices of governments, criminal syndicates, and special forces groups is certainly something that has cropped up in interesting ways in both reality and other recent fiction, ranging from the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai to the fictional engagement of both police and drug gangs with communication technology on The Wire.

The climax of Zero History is probably the most disappointing part. Without revealing too much about the plot, it seems fair to say that it is a letdown after all the preparation the characters undertake beforehand, and the revelations that follow it do not seem to justify all the earlier intrigue. That said, Gibson’s latest work is a solid piece of fiction and an interesting exploration of some of the implications of emerging and existing technologies. It will also expose a lot of geeks who normally have nothing to do with the world of fashion to some of the elements thereof, in a way that suggests that the industry is not so very different from the high tech sector, with its secrets and large personalities.

The Stuxnet worm

There has been a recent flurry of discussion online about a piece of malware that targets the control systems of industrial facilities – specifically, one that seems designed to sabotage one particular facility. The speculation is that the target is either the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran or Iran’s uranium enriching centrifuge cascades at Natanz. If so, the idea would presumably be to slow down the development of Iranian nuclear weapons.

The sophistication of the worm has led many security researchers to speculate that only a nation state would have the resources to assemble it. That said, there are a great many unknown factors in play. The entire situation could be someone’s attempt at misdirection, or making a threat. Assuming the basic elements of speculation are correct, this would be an interesting development in unconventional military tactics. It probably wouldn’t be entirely unprecedented, however. There have already been three generations of Suter: a computer program developed by a British defence corporation, designed to interfere with communications and communications systems in a military context. Suter or similar software may have been used in Israel’s 2007 airstrike on a suspected nuclear facility in Syria.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning 800-page account of the history of the atomic bomb is a comprehensive and highly important book. He covers the science, from the earliest theorizing about the structure of the atom through to the early stages of the development of thermonuclear weapons. He also covers the political and military history associated with the Manhattan Project, and touches upon attempts to develop nuclear weapons in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Rhodes also goes beyond straight history to examine the scientific and military ethics associated with the development and use of the bomb, while also raising questions about what the existence of nuclear weapons means for global politics in the long term. The book goes beyond being a detailed historical account, by also engaging in serious ethical questioning about the implications of this dreadful technology. The book is also quite philosophical in places, such as when contemplating the nature of science.

One overwhelming message from Rhodes’ book is the horror of modern war – from ingenious combination poison gas attacks during WWI through to strategic bombing of civilians in WWII and the ongoing threat of thermonuclear annihilation. While nuclear weapons have certainly increased both the actual and potential horror of war, Rhodes uses appalling examples to show how they are not at all necessary for people to treat one another atrociously. That in turn affects the ethical status of using atomic weapons: was doing so preferable to invading Japan with conventional forces? Were any other alternatives available? Regardless of how you answer such questions for yourself, Rhodes’ account of warfare is one that cannot fail to produce revulsion in whoever reads it. His extensive use of primary documents and quotations – particularly when describing the destruction wrought by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – is effective both at conveying the history and providing some understanding of how people were thinking at the time. Colourful anecdotes also give a human quality to the account, such as when Rhodes describes personality clashes between military officers, or the existence of a women’s dorm at Los Alamos that was “doing a flourishing business of requiting the basic needs of [the] young men, and at a price.”

In addition to providing the broad strokes of history, Rhodes provides fairly detailed accounts of the lives and personalities of the key scientists, military figures, and politicians. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the book is how it draws together timelines that would normally be treated separately: scientific discoveries alongside social and geopolitical developments. Seeing them described in parallel gives the reader a strong sense of context, and hints at some of the linkages between scientific advancement and other aspects of history.

I have some minor quibbles with The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It doesn’t always define terms at first usage, which could make some passages difficult to understand for those who don’t have a pre-existing familiarity with the subject matter. He also provides extremely little information on the spies within the American nuclear weapons program who provided so much critical information to the Soviet Union, greatly speeding the development of their nuclear and eventually thermonuclear weapons. He also only hints at how a permanent nuclear institution emerged in the United States. While many at Los Alamos scattered at the end of the war, there were those who realized as soon as the theoretical possibility of nuclear weapons arose that they would profoundly alter the security of states and the relationships between them.

Ultimately, Rhodes shares the conviction of the physicist Niels Bohr that nuclear weapons have fundamentally changed world politics. He argues that they have “destroy[ed] the nation-state paradoxically by rendering it defenseless” and calls upon states to accept the necessity of “dismantl[ing] the death machine”. Specifically, he argues that nuclear weapons make the settling of disputes between states by armed conflict impossible, creating the need for some form of world government. Rhodes stresses the risk of accidental or unauthorized war – a risk that can only grow in severity as more and more states acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Unfortunately, it is hard to share his conviction that such a transformation is really possible. For people of his generation, the fact that most of humanity could be wiped out in less than an hour in a major nuclear exchange is a novel and terrifying feature of life. For those who were both during and after the Cold War, it is a reality that most have been aware of since childhood. Still, there is every reason to continue to try to reduce the risks associated with nuclear weapons. Doing so includes working to prevent the proliferation of such weapons to new states, as well as working to reduce the danger of accidents and the sheer number of weapons deployed.

Rhodes continues the history of nuclear weapons with a successor volume on thermonuclear bombs: Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. In the course of reading Rhodes’ book, I was also compelled to write posts on cancer and the neutron, anti-Semitism, the nature of human rights, Pearl Harbor, and the distinction between nuclear ‘devices’ and deployable weapons. Rhodes also has a third book on nuclear weapons – The Twilight of the Bombs – which I certainly aim to get around to reading eventually.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Probably the most problematic thing about writing associated with Richard Feynman is repetition. Both his books and books about him tend to be at least quasi-biographical, and often feature the same stories, examples, explanations, and even bits of writing.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out certainly suffers from this flaw, at least for those who have read one or two Feynman books before. It includes, for instance, his appendix to the Challenger inquiry report, which also formed a major part of What Do You Care What Other People Think. It also features Feynman’s thoughts on ‘cargo cult science’ which have been reproduced elsewhere.

All that said, the book does contain some interesting materials that do not seem to be widely available elsewhere, particularly on the subject of nanotechnology. Going back to first principles, Feynman considers what lower size limits exist for things like motors, computer processors, and data storage systems. He concludes that there is ‘plenty of room at the bottom’ and thus enormous scope for improving our capabilities in computing and other fields by relying upon very small machinery and techniques like self-assembly.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I picked up a copy of Stieg Larsson’s book while waiting for a friend at one of those Starbucks locations embedded symbiotically in a Chapters. It certainly satisfied the ideal of the light summer read: quick to get through, reasonably interesting, and lacking in complex plot or literary elements that might impede one’s progress through the pages.

I appreciated the references to Pippi Longstocking, and enjoyed imagining the protagonist as a fictionalized version of George Monbiot. I also appreciated how Larsson showed some awareness of the relative danger of murderous psychopaths compared to commonplace domestic violence. While the former certainly sells more movie tickets and paperbacks, the latter is a far more pervasive danger within society, and deserves a lot more attention, police resources, and concern.

How Pleasure Works

After thoroughly enjoying his free psychology course, available on iTunes U, I was excited to read Yale professor Paul Bloom’s new book: How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like. It was certainly very interesting. Though it may not quite have met my high expectations, the book certainly has a number of substantial strengths. It includes both original insights and a useful presentation of the research undertaken by others. Indeed, the book’s greatest strength is probably its accessibility. There is little jargon, terms are clearly defined, and good analogies and explanations are employed throughout.

Bloom’s main hypothesis is that people are ‘essentialists’ and that this has importance for what people enjoy. This concept has a bit of a Platonic flavour, as Bloom explains:

The main argument here is that pleasure is deep. What matters most is not the world as it appears to our senses. Rather, the enjoyment we get from something derives from what we think that thing is. This is true for intellectual pleasures, such as the appreciation of paintings and stories, and also for pleasures that seem simpler, such as the satisfaction of hunger and lust.

Perhaps one reason why I found the book a touch disappointing is that this thesis seems uncontroversial to me. Bloom does bring up some interesting examples and related experiments, but never really sets out a credible alternative theory well distinguished from this ‘essentialist’ view. Perhaps his most interesting argument is that essentialism – the desire to understand the ‘real nature’ of things, and the related assumption that there is such a thing – is inherent, even in children, and not the product of socialization.

Bloom takes a thematic approach: discussing food, sex, objects with histories (like JFK’s tape measure), performance, imagination, safety and pain, and finally the respective appeal of science and religion. His discussions of imagination are one of the most interesting parts of the book, as the author teases apart the different ways in which imagination is useful and pleasant, as well as discussing the limitations it has (such as how we cannot surprise ourselves while daydreaming). His discussion of the importance of evolution to psychology, as well as the processes through which the mental life of children changes as they grow up, are also particularly worthwhile and interesting. While it is not a novel argument, Bloom also provides some nice illustrations of how the human mind evolved in a world very different from the one that now exists, with important consequences for individuals and society.

One thing that sticks out at times are little judgmental comments made by the author. They are all very justifiable, but they do stand out within a work that is largely a summary of scientific research, albeit one written in a manner intended to be accessible to non-expert audiences. For instance, Bloom repeatedly condemns the obsession people have with female virginity. He also talks about steroids in sports, the power of stories to inspire moral change, ‘evil’ in video games, the dangers of awe in relation to political figures, and ‘immoral’ pleasures. A few of Bloom’s claims also stand out as being unsubstantiated, particular several assertions he makes about non-human animals, without reference to either logical argument or empirical evidence to support them. All told, Bloom stresses strongly that humans are quite different from other animals, though he arguably fails to provide adequate evidence to make that claim convincing.

Another thing you won’t find in Bloom’s book is much concrete advice on how to live a happier life. If there is anything of that sort in the book, it is arguments that might make people feel less irrational for taking pleasure in things that are a bit unusual: whether it is collecting objects formerly owned by celebrities or paying somebody to tie you up and beat you.

To his credit, Bloom also considers the logical errors that can arise from the intuitive essentialism that people manifest. He argues that it contributes to some of the basic errors of logical deduction and probabilistic reasoning that people commonly make – and which are exploited equally by advertisers and despots. Bloom highlights how many of the aspects of our minds that evolved for certain purposes have ended up creating other social phenomena by accident, from obesity to paranoia about terrorism and serial killers.

While the book is full of interesting tidbits and pieces of information, the overall thesis is a bit of an overcautious one. Perhaps that is something to be expected from a scientist, given their hesitation to go beyond claims that can be clearly justified by the facts. Nonetheless, this book is a worthwhile discussion of the nature of human pleasure, from a scientific and psychological perspective. For anyone with an interest in seeing the topic treated in that manner, it is definitely worth a look.

Alief

One interesting idea discussed in Paul Bloom’s How Pleasure Works is that of ‘alief.’ Originally developed by Tamar Gendler, this concept refers to how we cannot entirely separate fantasy from reality in our minds. Even though we know better, we respond to fiction in similar ways to how we would respond to seeing the actual events described; similarly, we would hesitate at least a bit to drink from a cup marked ‘cyanide,’ even if we just saw it filled from the tap. We can quite rightly believe that the water is perfectly safe, while at least slightly alieving that it is poisoned.

Bloom highlights how children are more vulnerable than adults, when it comes to being emotionally influenced by alief. Partly, he thinks this has to do with their lesser sophistication about fiction. He points out how, when watching Free Willy II with his child, his child became frightened that characters on a raft could drown. While he was sophisticated enough to recognize that adorable children don’t drown in such films, his child was not.

In general, Bloom has a lot of interesting things to say about fiction and imagination – including why people enjoy tragedies and horror films, the appeal of varying degrees of masochism (from enjoyment of hot sauce to much more extreme varieties), to the limitations of fantasy and the effects they have on social dynamics.

Switching subjects

I am relieved to say that my most active area of reading has turned away from biological weapons and towards the question of what makes humans happy. Toward that end, I am reading Yale psychologist Paul Bloom’s new book: How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like. He taught the psychology course that I discussed at length earlier, and which included some discussion of happiness.

Just a few pages into the book, there is a nice nugget from Steven Pinker, who explains that humans are happiest when “healthy, well-fed, comfortable, safe, prosperous, knowledgeable, respected, non-celibate, and loved.” In addition to providing some interesting intellectual insights, I am hoping the book will provide some additional practical advice and insight into how humans operate. In particular, it is always useful and intriguing to learn what people generally misunderstand about themselves.

Biohazard

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ken Alibek – a formerly high ranking official within the Russian biological weapons program – defected to the United States. His 1999 book can be seen as a declassified, commercial, civilian version of what he told the American intelligence officials who he initially debriefed. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Biological Weapons Program in the World focuses on the facilities of Biopreparat: an ostensibly civilian organization that was actually the major developer and stockpiler of biological weapons. They made anthrax and smallpox by the tonne, and developed mechanisms for deploying these agents ranging from assassination-type mechanisms to delivery via intercontinental ballistic missile.

Alibek makes a number of serious allegations:

Russia developed biological weapons as far back as 1928, when work was done on weaponizing typhus;
That Russia violated the Biological Weapons Convention from the start;
That biological agents like plague and smallpox were genetically modified to be resistant to treatments and vaccines, to be more virulent, and to produce additional toxins;
That Russia continued to develop and stockpile biological weapons after the Cold War ended;
And that Russia used biological weapons, both against the Germans during WWII and against the Afghans during the Soviet invasion. In the first case, an attack on German Panzer troops ultimately ended up sickening far more Russian civilians than enemy soldiers.

Alibek’s book also provides considerable insight into the character of the Soviet system of government, including military and security matters. His perspective as an insider in the system is one of the most interesting aspects of the book, including his account of American inspections of Biopreparat facilities (and how he helped to trick them) and the Soviet inspections of US facilities like Fort Detrick that followed.

The book does have some flaws. As with any document on sensitive security matters, it is impossible to know how much of what is claimed is really accurate. Furthermore, this is the work of a defector, and Alibek goes to some length to try to highlight the good things he did. For example, he talks about trying to divert more of the production of a facility he ended up directing towards civilian medical purposes. He also omits any mention of the ‘Alibek’ strain of anthrax that he was responsible for developing. The book also jumps around chronologically in a way that can be confusing, and the chapter titles do not provide a very good sense of the content.

All told, Alibek’s book is interesting and worthwhile to read. It highlights how, alongside all the nuclear dangers of the Cold War, there was another separate type of appalling risk to civilian populations that had been created, and for which the legacy is enduring. Indeed, proliferation of biological weapons may well be a far more serious matter than proliferation of nuclear weapons. Building a working atomic bomb requires fissile material, knowledge, and engineering capability. By contrast, a biological weapon smuggled out of a lab in the pocket of an underpaid Soviet scientist can be duplicated to mass quantity in fermentors, with relatively little technological sophistication required.

That being said, it is worth nothing how biological weapons haven’t yet seemed to live up to their frightening potential. Alibek mentions the Japanese Aum cult as an example of a non-state entity that developed biological capabilities, and yet their attempts to actually employ biological agents failed to produce significant damage. That said, weapons in the hands of states like Russia that have had sophisticated weaponization and testing programs for decades are likely much more dangerous, as all the deaths from the accidental Sverdlovsk anthrax leak illustrate.

The book talks very little about delivery systems for biological agents; quite possibly, that is in response to the particular sensitivity of such information, which may not yet be in the hands of groups that do have access to dangerous strains of bacteria and viruses. Alibek explains that:

Bioweapons are not rocket launchers. They cannot be loaded and fired. The most virulent culture in a test tube is useless as an offensive weapon until it has been put through a process that gives it stability and predictability. The manufacturing technique is, in a sense, the real weapon, and it is harder to develop than individual agents. (p.97 paperback)

He goes on to explain that detailed recipes for the production and weaponization of biological agents were developed by Biopreparat, and that they were retained by the Russian government even after the collapse of communism. In a few months time, facilities re-purposed for civilian use could go back to making smallpox, anthrax, and plague by the tonne.

In light of the increasing authoritarianism of the Russian government, this book makes especially worrisome reading. Back in the Soviet era, the government blamed the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak on ‘contaminated meat.’ Black market vendors were even punished for their supposed role in causing the disaster. For a span after the fall of communism, the reality that it arose from a leak in a bioweapon production plant was acknowledged. More recently, the government has gone back to the old contaminated meat deception.