Darwin and Marx

Here's something I've never thought about before: Charles Darwin and Karl Marx were contemporaries. Not only were they aware of each other's works, they corresponded.

I'm currently reading Stephen Jay Gould's Ever Since Darwin, where he recounts some of Darwin and Marx's interaction:

The most ardent materialists of the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels, were quick to recognize what Darwin had accomplished and to exploit it's radical content. In 1869, Marx wrote to Engels about Darwin's Origin:

"Although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view."

Marx later offered to dedicate volume 2 of Das Kapital to Darwin, but Darwin gently declined, stating that he did not want to imply approval of a work he had not read. (I have seen Darwin's copy of volume 1 in his library at Down House. It is inscribed by Marx who calls himself a "sincere admirer" of Darwin. Its pages are uncut. Darwin was no devotee of the German language.)

Darwin was, indeed, a gentle revolutionary. Not only did he delay his work for so long, but he also assiduously avoided any public statement about the philosophical implications of his theory. In 1880, he wrote to Karl Marx:

"It seems to me (rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and Theism hardly have any effect on the public; and that freedom of thought will best be promoted by that gradual enlightening of human understanding which follows the progress of science. I have therefore always avoided writing about religion and have confined myself to science."

Reading more about Gould (whose contributions to evolutionary theory include punctuated equilibrium), it appears that he had some fondness for Marxism as well. From Stephen Jay Gould, a Man for All Seasons:

He was an ardent opponent of the evils created by capitalism and employed his pen and wit to ridicule social injustice wherever he saw it.

Interesting stuff. This may be worth an afternoon WILFing on Wikipedia.

Cargo Cults

I'm busy reading Richard Dawkins' latest book, The God Delusion. It's interesting, if quite opinionated and arrogant, but there are quite a few things within its pages that I was surprised to learn of.

One example is the existence of Cargo Cults in the Southwest Pacific. From wikipedia:

Cargo cults have been recorded since the 19th century. The cult participants generally do not fully understand the significance of manufacturing or commerce. They have limited purchasing ability. Their understanding of western society, religion, and economics may be rudimentary. These cults are a response to the resulting confusion and insecurity. They rationalize their situation by reference to religious and magical symbols they associate with Christianity and modern western society. Across cultural differences and large geographic areas, there have been instances of the movements independently organizing.

The most famous examples of Cargo Cult behavior have been the airstrips, airports, and radios made out of coconuts and straw. The cult members built them in the belief that the structures would attract transport aircraft full of cargo. Believers stage "drills" and "marches" with twigs for rifles and military-style insignia and "USA" painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers.

Utterly amazing! The Cargo Cult demonstrates, in a way more real than any other, how an unexplained phenomenon can spark a religion, complete with rituals, a messiah, and miracles. And it can happen independently, again and again. Dawkins talks about one, the cult of John Frum

The cult is still active today. The followers believe that John Frum will come back on a February 15 (the year of his return isn't known), a date which is observed as "John Frum Day" in Vanuatu. The name "John Frum" is possibly derived from World War II GIs introducing themselves to the locals as "John from America".

Humans will believe anything, and rationalize to continue believing it. I can't wait until the aliens come, and we worship them.

Everyone: Cool it!

I read this interesting article the other day: Thatcher economist de-hypes climate debate

"There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than the retreat from reason we see all around us today."

I, personally, want to poke out my eyes when I read this article - but only because the author has a thesaurus stuck up his ass. What in the hell do ambit and adjure mean? But I do think he captures the subject of his article well. Nigel Lawson's article, The Economics and Politics of Climate Change: An Appeal to Reason is slightly longer at 18 pages, but well worth the read.

Several of his points (he makes others - it is well worth the read):

• the science on climate change is not conclusive
• the debate about climate change is being actively stifled
• the assertion that global warming is all bad is unfounded

I've noticed in all of my interactions with people who feel passionately about global warming that the discussion has taken on the same tone as an abortion debate: emotion rules over reason. Articles that talk about some "effect of global warming" only mention one side of the story. For example: Greenland's Ice Cap is Melting at a Frighteningly Fast Rate only briefly mentions that Antartica's ice sheet is thickening, doesn't mention that melting ice is only a secondary cause of rising sea levels, and throws out a scare about the Gulf Stream disappearing -- an idea that is controversial.

What we need is more nuanced information - The Greenland Ice is interesting - which might actually allow us to think about this. Clearly the extremist argument isn't working - not for the leaders of our nation, and not for the people who continue to buy SUVs.

It's time to sit back, think about things rationally, and cool it.

The Singularity Is Near

Could the biotech revolution finally be producing some fruit? This disease kills thousands every year - have we entered bridge two?

Diabetes Breakthrough

Results Only Work Environment

It's time for a revolution.

I've noticed this for some time: I'm expected to show up for work at 9, but often I don't get into the idea of doing work until late morning. Then I break for lunch, and it takes a couple of hours to get back into the flow.

When I've had consulting gigs, I've noticed that it's much easier to work. I sit down only when I'm ready to work, and I get up when I'm tired. Since I'm fully engaged when I'm working, I can get two hours of work done in two hours.

Contrast this with the work I get done in an average 8 hour day. I don't need to get into details, but it's lower than 8 hours of work.

Enter the Results Only Work Environment. Best Buy has recently (within the last two years) been operating (much of that time without the knowledge or permission of its CEO) under a no meetings, no schedules, no mandatory face time principle. As long as employees get their work done, it's policy not to require them to be in the office. Some of the rules are interesting, too:

No.7: Nobody talks about how many hours they work. No.9: It's O.K. to take a nap on a Tuesday afternoon, grocery shop on Wednesday morning, or catch a movie on Thursday afternoon.

Does this work? Productivity has gone up. Best Buy's stock is up over last year's. It will be interesting to see if they can make this model work for non-corporate employees (like retail salespeople).

Given my inherently lazy nature, would I be able to pull off getting all of my work done if I'm getting up at 10 and going to a movie once a week? I think there's only one way to find out.

But, how do I convince my boss?

Government Theft?

Here was are, a day after the election. The Democrats are rejoicing that they have "swept" the elections, and Rumsfeld has resigned. Finally, say Democrats and liberals, our voice will be heard! Our freedoms will not be run over roughshod!

Or will nothing change?

Normally throwawayyourtv.org has a lot of liberal clips on it, ranging from BBC documentaries to Daily Show clips. This one, however, appears to be focused on the government as a whole. It is a bit of a conspiracy theory, but the dots are well connected. The whole thing is about 2 hours long, but he gets to the point in the first few minutes: Freedom to Fascism

Here's an article which sort of sums up the main points of the film (and throws some Populist BS in there too - watch out!) : Outing the Constitutional Criminals

Is the income tax really not based on law? This guy makes the argument that, while it's not contitutionally based, there are plenty of indirect contractual agreements that make this legal. I find it hard to believe, though, that we're paying taxes and there's no hard solid law to base it on. The Tax Freedom Movement - Establishment Controlled?

Of course, if the government and the IRS didn't have anything to fear, why are there such vitriolic reviews of this movie? Who is out there claiming absurdity, instead of scratching their heads and wondering why people are out there protesting and winning court cases? Two Hit Pieces for "America: Freedom to Fascism"

Once again, I can't wait for Google to amassed enough intelligence for it to be "The Great Validator," because I'm not smart enough to figure all of this out.

A Call for Reason

A recent episode of CNN's Broken Government series, Do Nothing Congress, made claims that Tom Delay was instrumental in creating the current political environment, through his escalation, to the expense of all else, of fundraising and re-election. Whoever caused it, it's becoming more and more clear to me that the center is no longer valued. Extremism, on both sides of the political spectrum, rules.

It's obvious in the media as well. O'brian, Hannity, Colmes, Krugman, and on and on, view the world through their one sided filters. They only nominally defend their positions - whatever they don't have a good answer for, they lob some controversy about the opposition into the mix, and deflect.

My personal conversations quickly lose focus. Discussions with friends degenerate when labels start being thrown around -- Communist, terrorist, draft dodger, incompetent, heartless, inhuman. Politicians and scientists alike are accused of being in the pocket of Big Corporations and activists are accused of being alarmists.

Most surprising to me, I've been accused of being both a Republican and a liberal (separately -- I don't think anyone's calling me a liberal Republican). It's surprising to me because I identify with neither.

In a recent conversation, I was told to get off the fence and stop flip-flopping. I suppose my opinions aren't written in stone, true enough, but I think my opinions are reasoned. I'm not arrogant enough pretend to know everything - so I'm willing to think about something again when I learn something new. Not so the case for people who have strong political identifications: Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds

"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," [study author Drew] Westen said.

Scott Adams had a recent post about what he calls advocates: Stem Cells. I think he's right when he points out it's not worth it to argue with them.

I read an article in the SB Independent, a liberal stronghold (which, curiously, endorsed Schwarzenegger for Governor over Angelides), which I thought would be appropriate to share: Republican Reason

According to last week’s Angry Poodle column, “True-believers, flat-Earthers, and witch burners,” employing the techniques of homophobia and racism, control the Republican Party. Independent Executive Editor Nick Welsh could not be clearer as to what he thinks about the party that a majority of American voters has regularly elected to office. May a Republican respond? It is counterproductive and beneath the stature of a writer such as Nick Welsh to engage in such personal invective, other than perhaps in jest—but I don’t think he was attempting to be funny here. By way of contrast, the better approach is to affirm the goodness of one’s political opponents’ motivations, while also allowing that reasonable individuals can differ in their views.

I believe that most Democrats are well-meaning on social issues and passionate about some issues, such as the environment. My view is also that they are sometimes misinformed on issues that, if they became aware of them, might cause them to reevaluate their opinions. That is the purpose of dialogue and debate: for us to reconsider our views. Voters who disagree with the positions of the Republican Party should vote it out of office. But we are not all stupid and bad (not even most of us). Honest.
 — Lanny Ebenstein

Would that this advice be followed, by both sides.

Actions and Consequences

In the last week, I've watched several video clips from this site: Throw Away Your TV.

Just now, I watched a few recent posts that really scared me - about the direction our country - the one whose leaders we vote for in a few weeks - is taking us.

Fear in Political Ads
This is a continuing and growing theme in the President's arsinal. Apparently, only our current President can stop terrorism - but he hasn't really done that yet.

Bush - I Don't Believe Religious People Kill Innocent People
Here's how he's going to do it - by torturing people. He's not going to talk about what constitutes torture, or whether particular tactics are torture, or have an open debate about this.

Maher Arar Fears the USA
This is the result, when you torture people, when you remove their access to due process: innocent people are hurt. This guy has no recourse - his life has been turned upside down and destroyed by our government, he's been proven innocent, and the US won't even admit it made a mistake.

Isn't this the reason we fought Communism in the last century?

A lot of innocent people have been killed in Iraq.

Mr. Bush, I thought religious people didn't kill innocent people.

Media Context

I can't help but continue to love Scott Adams.

In his latest blog post, Sunday Blogging, he complains that the media fails to give him all the information he needs to make an informed opinion.

For example, Iran has 25,000 Jewish citizens. The media made a big deal – and rightly so – about the president of Iran’s comments about “wiping Israel off the map,” and of his questioning the Holocaust. For context, wouldn’t you like to know how the Jews living in Iran are being treated?

I've never agreed so much. The first time I can remember thinking this was during the media frenzy after 9/11. At the time, I can remember thinking, "Why did Bin Laden attack us?" Yet I can't remember this question ever being answered. Instead, we got simple sound bites like, "The terrorists hate our freedom." I don't for one second believe that. Even Aljazeera fails to elaborate.

President Bush is still misleading you and hiding the real reason from you, which means that the reasons to repeat what happened remain," bin Ladin said.
--Bin Ladin: Reasons to attack remain

So what are the reasons? Wikipedia has some answers:

[t]he ruling to kill the Americans and their allies civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah'.
--Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks

Reading this, though, it's clear that a lot of people believe Bin Laden did it because he is following his violent Muslim beliefs. But even this isn't the whole story - he wouldn't be on the attack if it weren't for our support of Israel and for our military installations in Saudia Arabia.

Now, that's a reason to leave out context. Bringing Israel into the equation, and the ethics of our worldwide military presence, would bring a standstill to the news. Maybe it would be a good idea for CNN to sit down and present a couple of days worth of programming on Israel - but then, maybe it's just easier to let us continue to think we've been attacked because the enemy is a bunch of crazy religious fanatics.

Nanotechnology: I'm Pulling for You!

Well, the verdict is in: either we're destined to become a super-race living in a post-singularity society, or we're doomed, all in the next 94 years.

Experts: Technology Could Save or Destroy Civilization This Century

I was tempted to launch into a diatribe about how the smartest people all gathered in one room can only talk about the obvious, but then I realized that there was probably a lot more that was said, but was left out of the article.

There are truly some amazing things that are happening right now.

• From the same conference: New Power Suit Amplifies Human Strength
• Propulsion with no moving parts: Microwave engine gets a boost
• Chatbots march ever closer to passing the elusive Turing Test: King of the chatbots Nanotechnology continues its soon to be exponential growth: Improbable "Buckyegg" Hatched
  
• Quitting smoking is about to get a whole lot easier: Anti-nicotine vaccine could help smokers: researchers
• Etc, etc, etc!

A century? I think we'll have a pretty good clue in the next 20 years. By then, the Internet will have evolved into something that permeates our lives, oppressive regimes will have fallen to the irrepressible effects of free speech, some major diseases will no longer be giant causes of death, and computers will be able to match the human brain in computation ability, and we'll have our answer to Global Warming, either by technology, or by finding out it was a sham.

OR the Internet will be crippled by Microsoft's innability to fix its security problems, China and North Korea will continue to be able to block free speech at their borders and keep their populations ignorant, we'll find out that Cancer and AIDS are really friggin hard to kill, the end of Moore's Law will be shown to be a brick wall, and the seas will start to rise to uncontainable levels.

I can't wait!

Clinton VS Wallace Followup

From joshvogel's livejournal blog:

Bush's response to not acting on bin Laden

So, to summarize, we have a former President who sounds like he knows what he's talking about but is possibly factually incorrect, and a current President who makes no attempt to rebut the claims, choosing instead to spin his response into an answer about why he needs the power to wiretap our phones.

Clinton VS Wallace

This interview has gained some traction, and is sparking some intense political bashing.

Wallace-Clinton Fox News Sunday interview transcript:
Fox News Sunday, Interview With President Bill Clinton, 9/22/06

Here's a video, although it's chopped up a bit from the transcript:
Video: Clinton vs. Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”
It looks like you can watch the whole thing on Fox's site as well, but good luck finding it on their home page.

Wallace on the interview, with video:
Video: Fox News hypes 'heated' Clinton interview: 'You'll see the good, the bad and the ugly'

Thinkprogress on whether Wallace ever asked other administration officials about Clarke or the USS Cole:
Chris Wallace Never Asked A Bush Administration Official Why They Demoted Richard Clarke
Chris Wallace Has Never Asked A Bush Administration Official About The USS Cole

A link from Michelle Malkin's site claiming the opposite:
Patterico’s Pontifications » Chris Wallace Has Indeed Grilled Bush Officials About Failing to Get Osama Before 9/11

I can't wait until the future, when the AI inside Google will automatically do fact checking and cross-referencing for you. We can't be that far away; after all, Dvorak thinks we should already have computers that do perfect translation. I mean, how hard can it be?

Updated
This may be what Clinton was expecting (from 9/18/06):
John Stewart interviews former President Bill Clinton

Here's what I think about the Wallace interview:
-Wallace didn't think he was going to spark such an emotional reaction, and that he thought it was a legitimate question.
-The question was biased. "Why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?" should have been, "Critic xyz claims you could have done more to capture Bin Laden, do you feel this is true?"
-Wallace was unprepared: he didn't know his facts, and he forgot or underestimated the former president's spinaptitude and intelligence.
-It's unfortunate that news interviews don't throw out more hardball questions. Unfortunately, if Clinton had expected that kind of question, he wouldn't have shown.

Global Warming and Exxon PR Tactics

Back when I was writing Global Warming Pt III, I noticed that I had trouble finding scientists who supported claims that the evidence on global warming is inconclusive but that were also independent. Nearly everyone I found is involved with some an organization with a sciency name and funding from Exxon.

It seemed fishy at the time, but I tried not to think about it too much - I mean, really, are all of these guys corrupt just because Exxon supports their work?

Now, in a book excerpt, George Monbiot is claiming that the tactics Exxon uses are in fact as shady as they sound: The denial industry. From the summary:

For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade.

The tactic is this: set up/fund a wide variety of scientific sounding organizations (TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change), and let these organizations do the obfuscation for you. Monbiot claims that these organizations do not invent junk science, but they loudly publicize contradictory studies, sometimes even long after they've been disproved.

This reminds me of a movie that was out recently, Thank You For Smoking. In the movie, the main character, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry, explains that to win any argument, all he has to do is cast doubt on his adversary's evidence.

That similarity is more than just a coincidence from the movies: the most damning part about all of this is that the tactics Exxon is using, and even some of the organizations they are paying, were invented by Philip Morris during the smoking debates of the last century.

It's unfortunate that this is the tactic Exxon is using, because it casts them as a bad guy with something to hide. If there was truly strong evidence that global warming wasn't happening/caused by CO2, wouldn't it be better for Exxon to stand up for it and act as champion?

That's where this excerpt reveals a little of its bias: there's a strong implication that the junk science is the only anti-global warming science, and that the only scientists who don't support the global warming conclusions are paid by Exxon. It's unfortunate that this article doesn't attempt to disentangle the junk science groups and the real scientists, because global warming skeptics shrug off these claims. After all, just because Exxon is paying them doesn't mean the science is wrong. And even if there are some groups out there using junk science, there are still thousands of independent scientists publishing sound papers skeptical of global warming.

Right?

Here's a video clip from the BBC with diagrams of what's happening, for my reader who can't read: VIDEO: BBC Reveals ‘Direct Link’ Between Tobacco Companies And Global Warming Deniers

Ethical Stem Cells III

The quest for ethical stem cells continues. After the last flap, which I described in Ethical Stem Cells Pt II, now it's been announced that you can take stem cells from embryos that look dead - that is, have stopped growing for 24 or 48 hours.

The work is described here: Stem cells made from 'dead' human embryo

"Regardless of how you feel about personhood for embryos, if the embryo is dead, then the issue of personhood is resolved," [Dr. Donald W] Landry said.

Problem solved. Closed the book on that one.

Right?

Wait, how do you know the embryos are dead? How do you know that the embryos weren't killed by something in the lab environment, and that if they were implanted into a womb, they wouldn't start dividing again? And then there's the question of whether there's something wrong with the cells - the original embryo did, after all, die.