Science – Page 33 – a sibilant intake of breath

The Best American Essays 2010

For those without a great deal of time to spend reading GQ and The Atlantic Monthly, an anthology like this one prepared by Christopher Hitchens is probably a good idea. It covers a range of topics – from the political to the scientific to the literary.

As I mentioned before, I found John Gamel’s piece on eye disease especially compelling. Steven Pinker also has an interesting piece on personal genomics, which involves a fair bit of discussion on the genetic influence on personality (something I am meaning to write about at greater length soon). I hope I live to see the day when my entire genome can be sequenced for $1,000 or so.

Perhaps the most educational essay is Frederick Starr’s “Rediscovering Central Asia,” which relates some of the cultural and scientific history of the region that now includes Afghanistan and former Soviet Republics like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Starr argues that Westerners have been wrong since September 11th, 2001 to see the place as doomed to be a backwater forever, and just a source of dangerous fanatics:

Donning a bush jacket and filming at dawn and dusk, [Dan Rather] presented the region as inaccessible, backward, exotic, marginal and threatening – in short, the end of the world…

Even though the Central Asia of Rather’s depiction was and is an evocative image, it carries some bothersome implications. On the one hand, it conjures up a place where the best the United States and the world community can hope for is to limit the damage arising from it. That means destroying whatever threatens us and then getting out. The problem is that the thinking behind such an approach can then become self-fulfilling: a place we judged to be hopeless becomes truly so, and even more threatening than before.

If anything, I think many in the west overestimated the potential for transformation in Afghan society following September 11th. At least, they severely underestimated how much time and effort it would take to put the country on any kind of durable liberal footing.

Increasingly, it does look as though the wisest course after September 11th might have been to capture or kill as many members of Al Qaeda as possible, without overthrowing the central government and making an under-resourced effort to establish a state that respects human rights or democratic principles. Now, it seems plausible that all that will arise from that effort will be a relatively brief and bloody pause in Taliban control, in the space between the dramatic arrival and more subdued departure of NATO armies.

Jordan Peterson on psychology

As a lecturer, the University of Toronto’s Jordan Peterson is quite something. Yesterday, Tristan showed me videos of a couple of his lectures. One of them – The Necessity of Virtue – is available online.

One thing I found striking about the talks (which are mostly about psychology and ethics) is just how much we know about the brain, and how much we can reduce seemingly complex human behaviours and experiences to be predictable operation of certain brain structures. I had not previously realized the full importance of the hypothalamus. In one particularly grim example, Peterson explains that a cat stripped of almost all of its brain, but left with a spinal cord and a hypothalamus, will still behave much like an ordinary cat, except that it will be unusually likely to explore and unable to mate (if male).

What humanity is learning about the brain (which seems to produce the mind) seems likely to have considerable importance both for understanding the world in important ways and for deciding how to act in it. I will be adding Peterson’s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief to my reading list, and may even be able to finagle a way to audit one of his courses if I do move to Toronto.

Taking one action

Talking with my friend Meaghan, the question arose: what is the single most useful thing individuals can do easily to help address climate change? Almost certainly, it is taking some action to influence the politics in their country. For those living in democracies, there is probably nothing more useful they can do than nudging their elected representatives a bit toward understanding climate change, wanting to curb it, and being aware of how to do so.

As BuryCoal argues, the key to dealing with climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels. The more coal, oil, and gas stay underground, the less the climate will change. At the moment, I think that is probably the most important message people can convey to their representatives.

Of course, anyone who you tell that to is likely to come back at you with various objections. Fossil fuels power the world economy, for instance. It may be unrealistic to expect the average citizen to prepare counter-arguments for the major objections they will hear – which range from the realistic to the completely deluded. This major counter-argument, however, seems to have two responses. First, we do have alternatives. The total amount of renewable energy out there is huge, and we have many different ways to capture it. Second, nothing about the universe guarantees our current level of energy use. It may well be that future generations experience leaner times. That is far preferable to a world where they are trying to deal with catastrophic or runaway climate change.

The degree to which members of the general public need to understand climate change and its solutions is debatable. It may well be that the problem can be solved by stealth, without much input from the average individual. My fantasy climate change policy doesn’t call for much in the way of voluntary action. For those individuals who are concerned, I would say that first and foremost they should be expressing their deep concern to their elected representatives, highlighting how climate change is the challenge facing humanity and the most important current force that will determine how future generations live.

Once you have done that, you can go on to take actions that reduce your personal contribution to the problem, like improving the efficiency of your home, going vegetarian, reducing travel, etc. Ultimately, the emergence of society-wide mandatory solutions seems to have a much greater chance of addressing the problem than hoping for bottom-up voluntary actions to do the job.

One North American group focused on encouraging ordinary citizens to lobby their representatives for action on climate change is the Citizens Climate Lobby.

Batteries for large-scale energy storage

One challenge associated with renewable forms of energy like wind and solar power is that power stations of these types cannot usually produce energy all the time, and may not generate it at the time when it is needed most.

Energy storage is one mechanism for dealing with that, and can rely on various mechanisms like compressed air, pumped hydroelectric storage, and multi-lagoon tidal systems.

It is also encouraging that battery technology is improving. A company called Corvus now makes lithium ion batteries that consist of assemblies of 6.2 kilowatt-hour modules. These can be charged in 30 minutes and discharged in 6. They could be joined together in large arrays of up to 40 megawatt-hours and may eventually be cost-effective in some energy storage and load balancing roles.

Small nuclear reactors (SMRs)

Climate change definitely strengthens the case for nuclear power, but it is very hard to determine just how strong that case really is, particularly on economic grounds. Climate change does nothing to lessen the risks associated with accidents or nuclear proliferation, but it does represent some of the most significant risks associated with fossil fuel based forms of electricity generation.

Some of the major barriers to the deployment of new nuclear power plants are cost and long lead-in times. Construction can easily take a decade or more. One means by which both of those issues could potentially be addressed is through the use of small modular nuclear reactors. This is an approach being experimented with by a number of groups, including Russia’s state nuclear energy company (which is building a floating, towable nuclear power station) and firms like TerraPower, which has been enthusiastically endorsed by Bill Gates.

One of the most interesting possible uses for small nuclear reactors is as ‘drop-in’ replacements for the coal-burning parts of old power plants. Potentially, the heat source in a power plant could be switched from the combustion of coal to the fission of uranium, keeping most of the rest of the plant’s infrastructure in place. In particular, such converted plants could make use of existing transmission capacity.

I can’t say whether small nuclear reactors really are a more economical or appealing option overall, but it seems like a technology to watch as the world struggles to find ways to achieve carbon neutrality.

Common misconceptions

XKCD has some good advice. Everyone should read the article ‘List of common misconceptions‘ on Wikipedia, if only so that they personally can stop spreading them.

There are a few on the list I have been guilty of believing myself at various points. The truth is:

There is no evidence that Iron maidens were invented in the Middle Ages or even used for torture.
Napoleon Bonaparte was not especially short.
A belief that decades/centuries/millennia begin not on the year ending in 0, but rather on the subsequent year ending in 1 (e.g., “The current millennium didn’t really begin on January 1, 2000, but rather on January 1, 2001”) — based on an assumption that there was no year 0 — are founded in an incomplete understanding of historical calculation.
Sarah Palin never said “I can see Russia from my house.” Palin actually said “They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”
Some cooks believe that food items cooked with wine or liquor will be non-alcoholic, because alcohol’s low boiling point causes it to evaporate quickly when heated. However, a study found that much of the alcohol remains – 25% after 1 hour of baking or simmering, and 10% after 2 hours.
When a meteor lands on Earth (after which it is termed a meteorite), it is not usually hot.
Different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue by taste buds.
Although there are hair care products which are marketed as being able to repair split ends and damaged hair, there is no such cure.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children.
A person who is drowning does not wave and call for help, as in fictional depictions of drowning.
It is not nutritionally necessary to combine multiple sources of vegetable protein in a single meal in order to metabolize a “complete” protein in a vegetarian diet. Unless a person’s diet was heavily dependent on only fruit, only tubers, or only junk food, he or she would be virtually certain of getting enough protein if he or she were eating enough calories.
It’s a common myth that an earthworm becomes two worms when cut in half. This is not correct. When an earthworm is bisected, only the front half of the worm (where the mouth is located) can survive, while the other half dies.
The flight mechanism and aerodynamics of the bumblebee (as well as other insects) are actually quite well understood, in spite of the urban legend that calculations show that they should not be able to fly.
Contrary to the common myth, the Coriolis effect does not determine the direction that water rotates in a bathtub drain or a flushing toilet.
It is not true that air takes the same time to travel above and below an aircraft’s wing.
Glass is not a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature: it is an amorphous solid, although it does have some chemical properties normally associated with liquids.
No scientist ever lost his life because of his scientific views, at least to the knowledge of historians of science.

I have seen many of these repeated in rather reputable sources.

John Gamel on vision

For Christmas, I received The Best American Essays 2010, edited by Christopher Hitchens. So far, the most interesting among them has been “The Elegant Eyeball” by John Gamel, originally published in The Alaska Quarterly Review.

Despite being slightly astigmatic, I had never given much thought to eye health or ocular diseases. What was most startling and unsettling about Gamel’s account was the description of the pain associated with maladies like dry corneas or glaucoma. For some reason, I had assumed that eye illnesses simply involved the painless loss of sight, not the sort of agony he describes.

Ultimately, the essay is a reflection on the inevitability of deterioration and death in human bodies – the way time invariably takes away the most precious, necessary, and appreciated of human faculties. Gamel describes one patient – a professor of anthropology at Stanford – who responded to Gamel’s ultimate inability to stave off his macular degeneration with a mixture of realism and humility: “Why so sad, doctor? You look like you just lost your best friend. Who do you think you are – a magician, a god who turns old men into young men?”

Gamel does describe one area where there has been significant progress: in the use of intentional retinal scarification using lasers, to reduce the rate and seriousness of sight loss associated with diabetes. He describes how the treatment has helped hundreds of thousands of people to read and drive for years after diabetic retionopathy would otherwise have blinded them.

Such successful extensions aside, the resounding message of Gamel’s piece is that our own sense of the inevitability of our extending lives and vitality is an illusion. As such, we had best make full enjoyment of our vision while it remains acute.

How to start a cult

While I am having difficulty finding a reputable source to confirm it, I have been told the following odd thing about human psychology: if a person wears glasses that flip their vision upside down, about three days later their brain will adjust and invert their sight. If they then remove the glasses, their vision will seem to be upside down before it flips again, more quickly.

I don’t think all that many people are aware of this quirk of human psychology. As such, it seems like something you could build a cult around.

You would come up with a long and convincing build-up to a supposedly sacred ritual in which people wear the glasses. You tell them that if their vision eventually flips, it is because your deity has deemed them worthy of being tested. Then, you tell them that when they remove the glasses, one of two things will happen. Either their vision will be inverted forever, or it will flip back. Tell them that if it flips back, it means your deity has found them worthy, and they are on track for some sort of magnificent afterlife.

Because people would think the flipping was supernatural, it would make a gullible subset believe anything else you cared to tell them (like about how they need to sell their home to help fund the crystal statue that will bring about the end of the world). Eventually, people will leave the cult and tell their story, and neurologists will appear on the news to explain that the vision-flipping is normal and being used to scam people. By then, however, you will be long gone with a lot of money.

I think this could work partly because vision is such a key part of a person’s life. Seeing it flip would be a powerful emotional experience, especially if you were prepared in advance to interpret it in a specific metaphysical way. The period between the first and second flip would be full of anxiety – since you already know the flipping is possible, but fear it could be permanent for you. Then, the second flip would really lock at least a few people in. It would feed their narcissism by telling them they are special, and it would seem to be something beyond the power of ordinary science or reasoning to explain.

I think people have probably bought into cults on the basis of less convincing evidence than this. Get a couple of celebrity adherents and the road to wealth and influence would be short and smooth.

Disclaimer: While you might actually be able to start a cult in this way, it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

The peak-end rule

Some psychological insights have a great deal of practical importance. It seems to me that the ‘peak-end rule’ is among these. Essentially, the idea is that when remembering an experience like a medical procedure or a vacation, our recollection is strongly coloured by the most intense portion of the experience and by the ending. Sam Harris mentions this on p.77 of the hardcover version of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. It is also mentioned in Paul Bloom’s free series of psychology lectures.

The insight has practical value when it comes to unpleasant experiences. Harris describes how prolonguing the least painful portion of a colonoscopy (at the end) reduces how much pain patients later recall having experienced. It seems to me that the insight could also be exploited when planning pleasant activities. If you are setting up a concert, art show, or vacation, it seems like a good idea to include something that will serve as a positive and engaging emotional peak and to put some effort into ending things well.

Setting up a strong emotional peak could also benefit those hoping to cultivate romance. As mentioned before, people misattribute excitement unrelated to a person who they are getting to know. While it might be the scary movie or the rollercoaster that is causing your heart to pound, some part of your brain may wrongly attribute the feeling to the person who you are sitting beside.

The identifiable victim effect

In the second chapter of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values , Sam Harris describes the strange phenomenon in human psychology where we care less about a problem as the number of victims rises. When we see one little girl who is starving, we generally feel more concern and willingness to help than we do when it is her and her brother, or her and her entire village.

This seems deeply irrational. Bigger problems should motivate a larger desire to help. Perhaps it reflects our implicit awareness of our own limitations. Helping one little girl may be within our power in a way that helping a large group is not. Still, this quirk seems likely to be very damaging. If we don’t feel a strong moral impulse in the face of a big problem, we are unlikely to band together and provide a big solution.

That applies directly to climate change. It may also have something to do with our sometimes strange notions about the value of avoiding extinction and our thinking about apocalypse.