Friday, 16 July 2010
QFT
"It doesn't matter how beautiful the guess is, or how smart the guesser is, or how famous the guesser is; if the experiment disagrees with the guess then the guess is wrong. That is all there is to it." - Richard Feynman
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Inaction On Climate Change
Consider a situation where a whole group of farmers have access to the same shared land in which to graze their cattle[1]. But there's a problem, there are too many cattle for the resources that the land provides. Because of overgrazing, the land is heading towards a state where soon no-one will be able to graze.
If any individual cuts back, then all they are doing is disadvantaging themselves - and not even one person making a sacrifice will be enough to stop the land. And if a system such as a set reduction or proportional reduction is imposed, there will still be those who find it unfair. The people who had few cattle are being punished because of the overuse of others, and those who are overusing it are being hit the hardest.
So the situation goes on and on until the paddock is destroyed because that's the only finality available. Any egalitarian option to try and allocate resources appropriately is lost because it is being imposed on an existing situation instead of planning for a new one.
So much of the climate change political debate revolves around this sort of reasoning. It's perfectly understandable that it would, but lamentable nonetheless. Australian emissions only account for about 1% of the global total, even if we chose to do anything all it would do is diminish the quality of life. Or that no deal that doesn't include the developing nations is worth doing. Or it's up to large polluters like the US and China to cut back.
In other words, the position many in Australia take can be surmised as follows: it's not our responsibility, we need everyone in agreement, and even if we did anything it wouldn't matter anyway. No matter what our objection, it fits into that situation of unfairness or futility.
In all this wrangling it's easy to forget just why there is such wrangling in the first place. Climate change is a real scientific issue. There's a reason why this destructive inevitability is being so hotly debated while the the end of the Mayan calendar is relegated to bad disaster movies. We can decry the unscientific society all we want, but at the core there is the understanding among most that right or wrong science is something to take seriously.
The kind of action that climate change requires makes it really easy not to do anything. It makes it easy to fall into climate change denial, it would almost seem obligatory to serve at the rationalisation of the inability to do anything about it. The self-justification of taking a stand against a discipline that really they know ought to be taken seriously is evidenced by the futility of an almost no-win situation.
No wonder so much of this debate is split along political lines. Instead of separating the science from the political consequences, the science has been associated so deeply with left-wing politics that it's no wonder that so many on the political right reject it. So many times I have been accused of being a tree-hugger for taking sides on what I thought was a scientific issue. I don't care if the left or right support it, I want to know what climatologists think!
Along the same lines, it's again easy to see why skeptic libertarians are more eager to reject the notion of anthropogenic climate change. What's needed to fix the problem goes against the political ideals they hold, so why would we expect them to give up their cherished political beliefs in favour of problems? No, it must be their rejection of climate change is because climate change is wrong[2]...
If a large asteroid was looking like it could collide with the earth, that fact would stand independently of any political action. If certain groups were opposed to this concept it wouldn't change that fact. Accusing astronomers of engaging in scaremongering, stating that NASA is just trying to monopolise funding, alleging that those dissenting against "collision theory" are being silenced in academia, saying that it would cost too much to do anything about it, making it clear it would destroy our frail economy, or even going so far as to accuse physicists of rigging the software that projects such a collision... making any of these accusations would look ridiculous and for good reason too! They are ridiculous, and they are equally as ridiculous when comparable accusations are being made against climate scientists.
The political action to be taken doesn't change the underlying facts. Climate change is not a left wing or right wing issue, it's an issue that evidentially needs to be dealt with. That it is championed by much of the left doesn't change the science underneath, that there are those who use the science to push their ideology isn't a reason to reject both[3].
How to deal with the problem is the political issue. As game theory and history[4] would suggest, actually coming to a solution that will address the underlying facts is not easy task. That people won't even recognise that there's a problem to begin with makes dealing with the problem even harder.
[1] - Taken from the documentary Nice Guys Finish First (available here)
[2] - The same way that a child dying from whooping cough isn't the fault of low vaccination rates against it
[3] - The IS / OUGHT distinction.
[4] - Deforestation on Easter Island for example
If any individual cuts back, then all they are doing is disadvantaging themselves - and not even one person making a sacrifice will be enough to stop the land. And if a system such as a set reduction or proportional reduction is imposed, there will still be those who find it unfair. The people who had few cattle are being punished because of the overuse of others, and those who are overusing it are being hit the hardest.
So the situation goes on and on until the paddock is destroyed because that's the only finality available. Any egalitarian option to try and allocate resources appropriately is lost because it is being imposed on an existing situation instead of planning for a new one.
So much of the climate change political debate revolves around this sort of reasoning. It's perfectly understandable that it would, but lamentable nonetheless. Australian emissions only account for about 1% of the global total, even if we chose to do anything all it would do is diminish the quality of life. Or that no deal that doesn't include the developing nations is worth doing. Or it's up to large polluters like the US and China to cut back.
In other words, the position many in Australia take can be surmised as follows: it's not our responsibility, we need everyone in agreement, and even if we did anything it wouldn't matter anyway. No matter what our objection, it fits into that situation of unfairness or futility.
In all this wrangling it's easy to forget just why there is such wrangling in the first place. Climate change is a real scientific issue. There's a reason why this destructive inevitability is being so hotly debated while the the end of the Mayan calendar is relegated to bad disaster movies. We can decry the unscientific society all we want, but at the core there is the understanding among most that right or wrong science is something to take seriously.
The kind of action that climate change requires makes it really easy not to do anything. It makes it easy to fall into climate change denial, it would almost seem obligatory to serve at the rationalisation of the inability to do anything about it. The self-justification of taking a stand against a discipline that really they know ought to be taken seriously is evidenced by the futility of an almost no-win situation.
No wonder so much of this debate is split along political lines. Instead of separating the science from the political consequences, the science has been associated so deeply with left-wing politics that it's no wonder that so many on the political right reject it. So many times I have been accused of being a tree-hugger for taking sides on what I thought was a scientific issue. I don't care if the left or right support it, I want to know what climatologists think!
Along the same lines, it's again easy to see why skeptic libertarians are more eager to reject the notion of anthropogenic climate change. What's needed to fix the problem goes against the political ideals they hold, so why would we expect them to give up their cherished political beliefs in favour of problems? No, it must be their rejection of climate change is because climate change is wrong[2]...
If a large asteroid was looking like it could collide with the earth, that fact would stand independently of any political action. If certain groups were opposed to this concept it wouldn't change that fact. Accusing astronomers of engaging in scaremongering, stating that NASA is just trying to monopolise funding, alleging that those dissenting against "collision theory" are being silenced in academia, saying that it would cost too much to do anything about it, making it clear it would destroy our frail economy, or even going so far as to accuse physicists of rigging the software that projects such a collision... making any of these accusations would look ridiculous and for good reason too! They are ridiculous, and they are equally as ridiculous when comparable accusations are being made against climate scientists.
The political action to be taken doesn't change the underlying facts. Climate change is not a left wing or right wing issue, it's an issue that evidentially needs to be dealt with. That it is championed by much of the left doesn't change the science underneath, that there are those who use the science to push their ideology isn't a reason to reject both[3].
How to deal with the problem is the political issue. As game theory and history[4] would suggest, actually coming to a solution that will address the underlying facts is not easy task. That people won't even recognise that there's a problem to begin with makes dealing with the problem even harder.
[1] - Taken from the documentary Nice Guys Finish First (available here)
[2] - The same way that a child dying from whooping cough isn't the fault of low vaccination rates against it
[3] - The IS / OUGHT distinction.
[4] - Deforestation on Easter Island for example
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Science Is Magic That Works
The title of this entry comes from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and I think to the layperson this is a brilliant summation of science. It works, it evidentially works if you're reading this because you're not talking to a psychic[1], but because you're on a computer that has internet access.
So when someone utters the phrase:
This problem isn't only on the frontiers of knowledge, however, it applies for most of what we know. We are surrounded by devices which we don't have anything more than a superficial understanding of how it works. Take the television, it's a device that has been in homes for more than half a century now, yet as consumers we couldn't be more removed from how the technology works. We don't know how it works but we know that it does.
Take the WW2 cargo cults. They would build replicas of the technology they saw the Americans using including straw planes and wooden headphones[3]. It's as if having the form of those technology would make the technology work, like a child making a television out of a cardboard box. Yet we do have working televisions, as we do working planes and working headphones (I'm listening to music right now). Science really does appear like it is magic that works!
But magic in this sense is like a stage magician, the product is an illusion to the underlying explanation. No prayers, no incantations, no sacrificing livestock, just technology that harnesses the underlying nature of nature. Much in the same way that we don't need to rely on magic to see that objects fall downward. Harnessing the power of electricity is no more magic than harnessing the power of gravity.
It's unfortunate that we are shielded from how the devices we use work. Because underlying that technology is the scientific explanations that would otherwise seem mystical. Jon Stewart's example was anti-matter as something he is asked to accept of faith. Except that anti-matter is the science underlying PET scanners. It's not only something that can be created in high-energy particle colliders - it serves an everyday use! Yet it is another device that we have no idea about how it works, it is indistinguishable from magic.
The third of Arthur Clarke's three laws of prediction is as follows:
Science as a process would not be able to operate if no-one understood it. In that way, it's the opposite of faith. Theories that are in principle unfalsifiable are unfavoured[7], and theories that don't adequately explain the data are modified or discarded.
It does seem like an exclusive discipline, far removed from anything we do on a daily basis. But in principle any person should be able to partake in the process. To get an education in the tools and processes, to read the studies and look at the empirical data, and see whether it checks out. Many people from many different backgrounds around the world do this already, science transcends culture because of its strive towards objectivity.
And even without doing that, there are plenty of books put out by those experts in order to explain it as clearly as possible to the layperson. In addition, there are radio programs, podcasts, public lectures, online information and a lot of public outreach. While it may be incomprehensible to many, there's at least the effort to share the knowledge. And if nothing else, we all benefit from these advances... that you're reading this right now attests to that.
[1] - Because psychics don't exist
[2] - Jon Stewart
[3] - Read about it here
[4] - Clarke's three laws of prediction
[5] - The Daily Show is not all bad.
[6] - Say no more! Say no more!
[7] - A theory that explains everything explains nothing. Psychoanalysis is a great example.
So when someone utters the phrase:
The more you delve into science, the more it relies on faith.[2]I really have to wonder what they are talking about. Yes, the current body of knowledge that we call science is very anti-intuitive and we as laypeople essentially rely on the expertise of those telling us.
This problem isn't only on the frontiers of knowledge, however, it applies for most of what we know. We are surrounded by devices which we don't have anything more than a superficial understanding of how it works. Take the television, it's a device that has been in homes for more than half a century now, yet as consumers we couldn't be more removed from how the technology works. We don't know how it works but we know that it does.
Take the WW2 cargo cults. They would build replicas of the technology they saw the Americans using including straw planes and wooden headphones[3]. It's as if having the form of those technology would make the technology work, like a child making a television out of a cardboard box. Yet we do have working televisions, as we do working planes and working headphones (I'm listening to music right now). Science really does appear like it is magic that works!
But magic in this sense is like a stage magician, the product is an illusion to the underlying explanation. No prayers, no incantations, no sacrificing livestock, just technology that harnesses the underlying nature of nature. Much in the same way that we don't need to rely on magic to see that objects fall downward. Harnessing the power of electricity is no more magic than harnessing the power of gravity.
It's unfortunate that we are shielded from how the devices we use work. Because underlying that technology is the scientific explanations that would otherwise seem mystical. Jon Stewart's example was anti-matter as something he is asked to accept of faith. Except that anti-matter is the science underlying PET scanners. It's not only something that can be created in high-energy particle colliders - it serves an everyday use! Yet it is another device that we have no idea about how it works, it is indistinguishable from magic.
The third of Arthur Clarke's three laws of prediction is as follows:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.[4]This holds painfully true. iPods are really just magic song bricks and medicine is God pills[5]. We don't know how they work, they just do. It's no wonder that people fall for magic products like perpetual motion machines or homoeopathic remedies, a nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat[6].
Science as a process would not be able to operate if no-one understood it. In that way, it's the opposite of faith. Theories that are in principle unfalsifiable are unfavoured[7], and theories that don't adequately explain the data are modified or discarded.
It does seem like an exclusive discipline, far removed from anything we do on a daily basis. But in principle any person should be able to partake in the process. To get an education in the tools and processes, to read the studies and look at the empirical data, and see whether it checks out. Many people from many different backgrounds around the world do this already, science transcends culture because of its strive towards objectivity.
And even without doing that, there are plenty of books put out by those experts in order to explain it as clearly as possible to the layperson. In addition, there are radio programs, podcasts, public lectures, online information and a lot of public outreach. While it may be incomprehensible to many, there's at least the effort to share the knowledge. And if nothing else, we all benefit from these advances... that you're reading this right now attests to that.
[1] - Because psychics don't exist
[2] - Jon Stewart
[3] - Read about it here
[4] - Clarke's three laws of prediction
[5] - The Daily Show is not all bad.
[6] - Say no more! Say no more!
[7] - A theory that explains everything explains nothing. Psychoanalysis is a great example.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Thursday, 8 July 2010
The False Balance
[This is also posted at the Canberra Skeptics Blog]
It would be odd to expect unanimous appraisal for any idea, even among experts. Humans aren't perfect computers, they bring their own biases and influence into what they do. So while there might be overwhelming consensus for a given idea among experts, chances are there will be dissenting voices.
Science is no different to any other discipline, while objectivity is the name of the game it must be remembered that science is a human enterprise. People make mistakes, see patterns that aren't really there, impose their beliefs into their interpretations, etc. But while there is always this problem, the process helps make it as objective as possible - evidenced by the totality of science on our daily lives.
Because we are all not experts in nearly everything, we rely on expertise to help us make as informed a choice as possible. But of course we as individuals also have biases too, so how do we overcome them when looking to experts for information?
A second opinion?
Imagine upon results from a doctor hearing you have lung cancer. She explains to you what those tests were and why the results indicate the problem. This might all be compelling but surely you'd want to make sure this is true, so you go to another doctor, this time a lung cancer specialist. He runs the tests and confirms with your first doctor that you do have lung cancer. And then just to be sure you go to a third who again confirms the diagnosis. And then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth - all confirming lung cancer.
Eventually you come across a doctor that says you don't have cancer, that those other doctors are paid by pharmaceutical companies to peddle their expensive cancer treatment drugs. Instead the tests are just showing inflammation which would go away with some echinacea and some reflexology.
Now all of those doctors might have similar expertise in terms of qualifications, and there are two different diagnoses as to what it could be. On the one hand you have cancer, on the other inflammation. In the absence of any medical training yourself, how can you trust one over the other?
Say there were 10 doctors: nine who would interpret the evidence as cancer and one who would see it as inflammation. If you went to two doctors, there are 45 different combinations you could end up with. Only 9 of those 45 combinations would have the inflammation diagnosis. In other word, 80% of people if they went to two doctors would not even know that there would be a disagreement. If someone went to see 3 doctors, there would be 120 combinations of which 36 would have inflammation as a minority explanation and 0 that have it as a majority. 70% of people would still be unaware of the potential diagnosis.
Voicing the contrarian
But what's the harm, I hear you ask, of putting alternate opinions of experts on the table? After all, the 1 doctor might be on the fringes but he is still a doctor. He's spent time studying medicine and the human body, even if he might disagree with others he is still qualified as an expert.
The harm is what it does is loft the opinions of one expert at the expense of many others. It's saying that an expert's opinion is proportional to how fringe that opinion is among other experts. In the case above, the opinion of the inflammation doctor is worth 9 times as much as one who thinks it is lung cancer because there are 9 times as many doctors who would think its lung cancer.
So if on a subject like evolution that there are something like 99% of biologists who support evolution and 1% who are creationists, then holding creationism and evolution as equal ideas is giving the opinion of creationists 99 times as much weight as those who oppose it.
The importance of expertise
The false balance comes by taking views espoused by experts as equal regardless of where the weight of expertise lie. It's not to say that the doctor saying inflammation is wrong because he is in the minority, but that us as non-experts should take into account where the weight of expertise lies. Otherwise we run the risk of choosing which experts to listen to based on our own bias, which is as useful as not having any experts at all.
It's easy to see obvious bias where an expert is up against a non-expert (climatologist vs politician, biologist vs preacher, doctor vs naturopath) but when its two experts up against each other, there is a grave disservice done to the audience. It's not taking a random sample of two experts from the field, it's deliberately seeking out dissenting voices as if having disagreement means balance. Fringe views do not mean controversy, it just means creating a false balance and does a disservice to the general population and to the disciplines being misrepresented.
It would be odd to expect unanimous appraisal for any idea, even among experts. Humans aren't perfect computers, they bring their own biases and influence into what they do. So while there might be overwhelming consensus for a given idea among experts, chances are there will be dissenting voices.
Science is no different to any other discipline, while objectivity is the name of the game it must be remembered that science is a human enterprise. People make mistakes, see patterns that aren't really there, impose their beliefs into their interpretations, etc. But while there is always this problem, the process helps make it as objective as possible - evidenced by the totality of science on our daily lives.
Because we are all not experts in nearly everything, we rely on expertise to help us make as informed a choice as possible. But of course we as individuals also have biases too, so how do we overcome them when looking to experts for information?
A second opinion?
Imagine upon results from a doctor hearing you have lung cancer. She explains to you what those tests were and why the results indicate the problem. This might all be compelling but surely you'd want to make sure this is true, so you go to another doctor, this time a lung cancer specialist. He runs the tests and confirms with your first doctor that you do have lung cancer. And then just to be sure you go to a third who again confirms the diagnosis. And then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth - all confirming lung cancer.
Eventually you come across a doctor that says you don't have cancer, that those other doctors are paid by pharmaceutical companies to peddle their expensive cancer treatment drugs. Instead the tests are just showing inflammation which would go away with some echinacea and some reflexology.
Now all of those doctors might have similar expertise in terms of qualifications, and there are two different diagnoses as to what it could be. On the one hand you have cancer, on the other inflammation. In the absence of any medical training yourself, how can you trust one over the other?
Say there were 10 doctors: nine who would interpret the evidence as cancer and one who would see it as inflammation. If you went to two doctors, there are 45 different combinations you could end up with. Only 9 of those 45 combinations would have the inflammation diagnosis. In other word, 80% of people if they went to two doctors would not even know that there would be a disagreement. If someone went to see 3 doctors, there would be 120 combinations of which 36 would have inflammation as a minority explanation and 0 that have it as a majority. 70% of people would still be unaware of the potential diagnosis.
Voicing the contrarian
But what's the harm, I hear you ask, of putting alternate opinions of experts on the table? After all, the 1 doctor might be on the fringes but he is still a doctor. He's spent time studying medicine and the human body, even if he might disagree with others he is still qualified as an expert.
The harm is what it does is loft the opinions of one expert at the expense of many others. It's saying that an expert's opinion is proportional to how fringe that opinion is among other experts. In the case above, the opinion of the inflammation doctor is worth 9 times as much as one who thinks it is lung cancer because there are 9 times as many doctors who would think its lung cancer.
So if on a subject like evolution that there are something like 99% of biologists who support evolution and 1% who are creationists, then holding creationism and evolution as equal ideas is giving the opinion of creationists 99 times as much weight as those who oppose it.
The importance of expertise
The false balance comes by taking views espoused by experts as equal regardless of where the weight of expertise lie. It's not to say that the doctor saying inflammation is wrong because he is in the minority, but that us as non-experts should take into account where the weight of expertise lies. Otherwise we run the risk of choosing which experts to listen to based on our own bias, which is as useful as not having any experts at all.
It's easy to see obvious bias where an expert is up against a non-expert (climatologist vs politician, biologist vs preacher, doctor vs naturopath) but when its two experts up against each other, there is a grave disservice done to the audience. It's not taking a random sample of two experts from the field, it's deliberately seeking out dissenting voices as if having disagreement means balance. Fringe views do not mean controversy, it just means creating a false balance and does a disservice to the general population and to the disciplines being misrepresented.
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