The Week That Is
2009-06-25 21:07:58
This week is, as usual, slipping away from me. I should be preparing for this Monday's show, but I'm not. Well, that's not completely true, I've had two excellent discussions with some very smart people that have restored my faith in humanity. One was with a good friend of mine who introduced me to the concept of atheism. And to pay him back, I accused him of being a 'fundamentalist athiest' the other night (a charge which I later withdrew). After that discussion what I realized was that in the end you're free to think whatever you want about whatever you want, but if you have no evidence to back it up (which few of us really do) then you're engaging in science fiction-ism. Which I have no problem with, in fact, I rather enjoy. For instance I find the idea of a 'universal conscious force' that is ever present in the universe and that we're all tapping into, a very appealing idea, but I have no grounds for defending it beyond it being a neat idea. Same with my leanings toward 'idealism'. It feels to me like we're creating reality with our thoughts, that we're dreaming it all up, but I can't prove that. Just another neat idea. Where I run into trouble with the atheists (hence the accusation of 'fundamentalism') is that I didn't understand that there is no room for middle ground. Religious people doing acts of kindness in the name of God is still unacceptable. As Dawkins writes in this interview: In any case, the universe doesn’t owe us comfort, and the fact that a belief is comforting doesn’t make it true. The God Delusion doesn’t set out to be comforting, but at least it is not a placebo. Well, I'm not there yet. This is 'zen scientist' front, a person like Dawkins who claims to be able to look into the void of unparalleled uncertainty and not blink. They say that they can grasp a world without meaning, but I'd like to know what lingers in their soul (hah!) late at night. ---- In other news, finished an excellent interview in Salon by Robert Wright he has written a book called 'The Evolution of God'. What surprised me most was that for a guy who has done an amazing job of exposing the roots of religion, he still is a pretty spiritual kind of fellow. You'd think after engorging on the hypocrisy of a system that says it connects with a higher power when it is so blatantly set up to manipulate the masses that you'd be pretty cynical about any divine encounters. Fortunately Mr. Wright isn't afraid to get into himself with some meditation and introspection. This is the last question which sums it all up. I love the Weinberg quote.
As opposed to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who famously said, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."
I think he's wrong. But it's not surprising. Physicists don't think much about the animate world. So he probably hasn't given a lot of thought to the human condition and the direction of human history. But I'd say even the realm of physics -- just the weirdness of quantum physics -- should instill in all of us a little humility. It should make us aware that human consciousness, designed by natural selection to do really mundane things, is clearly not capable of grasping some ultimate things that are probably out there.
---- “Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.” - Stanley Kubrick ---- I also listened to a great program on WNYU's Radiolab about Stochastisity, which is a fancy word for randomness. Statistical analysis is one of the main themes, about how we, as humans have a bias towards seeing patterns where the do not exist. Mostly because we love a good story. I will get one of these statisticians on the program and talk about how much the numbers rule our lives. ---- From an article about the creation of 'sonic black holes': "This is about understanding the basic laws of physics," said Steinhauer. "What this research is good for in day to day life I'm not sure, but we as humans want to understand how the universe works." Exactly.
 | 7 0 posted: 29 June 2009 at 06:48:22 PM | Article EMAIL logs can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point. That's the tantalising suggestion to emerge from the pattern of messages exchanged by Enron employees. |
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| 8 0 posted: 29 June 2009 at 10:00:30 AM | Article The answer appeared to be that our unconscious responses are far quicker than our conscious ones. A stimulus applied to the skin produces an 'evoked potential' or EP in the brain within tens of milliseconds, and that seems to be enough for it to register unconsciously but effectively. A series of experiments have shown that we register unconsciously a whole host of things which may influence our response to events but which never cross the threshold into consciousness. Among other evidence, Libet quotes experiments which show that a conditioned response - a blink - can be created to events which the subject is never actually conscious of. The remarkable phenomenon of blindsight might perhaps be seen as a related case. |
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| 8 0 posted: 25 June 2009 at 09:30:46 PM | Article The hardback God Delusion was hailed as the surprise bestseller of 2006. While it was warmly received by most of the 1,000-plus individuals who volunteered personal reviews to Amazon, paid print reviewers gave less uniform approval. Cynics might invoke unimaginative literary editors: it has “God” in the title, so send it to a known faith-head. That would be too cynical, however. Several critics began with the ominous phrase, “I’m an atheist, BUT . . .” So here is my brief rebuttal to criticisms originating from this “belief in belief” school. |
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| 8 1 posted: 25 June 2009 at 09:11:08 PM | Article This hour, Radiolab examines Stochasticity, which is just a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness. How big a role does randomness play in our lives? Do we live in a world of magic and meaning or … is it all just chance and happenstance? To tackle this question, we look at the role chance and randomness play in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body. Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, two friends whose meeting seems purely providential, and some very noisy bacteria. |
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| 8 2 posted: 25 June 2009 at 09:08:19 PM | Article Actually, "The Evolution of God" never grapples with the most basic religious question -- the existence of God. Instead it charts the twists and turns of how God's personality has kept changing over the centuries, and specifically, how the rough-and-tumble politics of the ancient Middle East shaped the Abrahamic religions. The book is filled with richly observed details about the Bible and the Quran, though Wright wears his learning lightly as he guides us through several thousand years of religious history. |
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 | 7 1 posted: 21 June 2009 at 08:11:01 PM | Article Like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. What do you think of their work? I think they have naďve ideas about the importance of religion in the world. They just seem oblivious to the good that religion has done, and I guess one point in my book is how malleable religion is; it has the capacity for good, which tends to come out when people see themselves as having something to gain from peaceful interaction with other people. |
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| 7 1 posted: 21 June 2009 at 08:08:17 PM | Article Put another way, credit-card companies are becoming much more interested in understanding their customers’ lives and psyches, because, the theory goes, knowing what makes cardholders tick will help firms determine who is a good bet and who should be shown the door as quickly as possible. |
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| 8 1 posted: 19 June 2009 at 01:04:46 PM | Video Is your soul weighing you down? Paul Giamatti has found a solution! In the surreal comedy COLD SOULS, Paul Giamatti plays an actor named… Paul Giamatti. Stumbling upon an article in The New Yorker about a high-tech company that extracts, deep-freezes and stores people’s souls, Paul very well might have found the key to happiness for which he’s been searching. But, complications arise when he is the unfortunate victim of “soul-trafficking.” Giamatti’s journey takes him all the way to Russia in hopes of retrieving his stolen soul from an ambitious but talentless soap-opera actress. |
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| 7 1 posted: 19 June 2009 at 11:00:35 AM | Article Using Bose-Einstein condensates, the scientists created a black hole for sound. The new research could help scientists learn more about true black holes and help confirm the existence of as-yet to be discovered Hawking radiation. |
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| 8 3 posted: 17 June 2009 at 09:48:55 PM | Article Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind A lifetime studying quantum mechanics has convinced Bernard d'Espagnat that the world we perceive is merely a shadow of the ultimate reality |
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| 7 3 posted: 17 June 2009 at 09:35:44 PM | Article High levels of brain energy are required to maintain consciousness, a finding which suggests a new way to understand the properties of this still mysterious state of being, Yale University researchers report. |
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| 7 3 posted: 17 June 2009 at 08:33:04 AM | Wikipedia According to Theosophy, nature does not operate by chance. Every event, past or present, happens because of laws which are part of a universal paradigm. Theosophists hold that everything, living or not, is put together from basic building blocks evolving towards consciousness. |
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| 7 3 posted: 16 June 2009 at 10:38:01 AM | Wikipedia Entropy is the only quantity in the physical sciences that seems to imply a particular direction for time, sometimes called an arrow of time. As we go "forward" in time, the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system tends to increase or remain the same; it will not decrease. Hence, from one perspective, entropy measurement is thought of as a kind of clock. |
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| 8 3 posted: 16 June 2009 at 10:24:14 AM | Video Marco Brambilla: Civilization |
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| 8 3 posted: 15 June 2009 at 07:41:45 PM | Blog Entry For centuries people have debated whether – like scientific truths – mathematics is discoverable, or if it is simply invented by the minds of our great mathematicians. But two questions are raised, one for each side of the coin. For those who believe these mathematical truths are purely discoverable, where, exactly, are you looking? |
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| 7 3 posted: 15 June 2009 at 07:40:52 PM | Video Prof Max Tegmark and Prof Brian Cox dicuss the fact that without the minus sign in spacetime, there would be no point in having a brain. |
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| 7 3 posted: 15 June 2009 at 12:25:54 PM | Article I have a vague question that I've never seen addressed specifically in your column, and I was wondering what your thoughts on it are. Where do you think humans' survival instinct comes from? Why do you think so many people go on living day after day when they're completely miserable? |
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| 8 4 posted: 11 June 2009 at 08:25:07 AM | Article A continually updated archive of good ideas downloaded into English. |
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| 8 3 posted: 10 June 2009 at 08:17:38 PM | Blog Entry Norman Doidge's 2006 book The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science was rightly celebrated on its initial release, and remains fascinating today. It's a chronicle of the checkered history of the theory of lifelong brain plasticity, an on-again/off-again theory that the brain's deepest, most specialized structures can be rewired to accomplish new tasks and to view the world in new ways, all through our lives. |
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| 8 9 posted: 10 June 2009 at 08:14:30 PM | Book   | The history of science is all around us, if you know where to look. With this unique traveler's guide, you'll learn about 128 destinations around the world where discoveries in science, mathematics, or technology occurred or is happening now. |
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| 8 3 posted: 10 June 2009 at 08:33:29 AM | Blog Entry 50 scientifically proven ways constitute 50 chapters of the book, longest of which take 7 pages. The authors take the position that persuasion is a science, not art, hence with the right approach anybody can become the master in the skill of persuasion. So, what are the 50 ways? |
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| 7 3 posted: 09 June 2009 at 09:32:47 PM | Article Both the Chinese and the Tibetan exiles are bracing for an almost inevitable outcome: the emergence into the world of dueling Dalai Lamas — one chosen by the exiles, perhaps by the 14th Dalai Lama himself, and the other by Chinese officials. |
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| 8 3 posted: 09 June 2009 at 09:10:48 PM | Video Schizotypal personality disorder: social withdrawal, odd perceptual experiences, a tendency towards concreteness, metamagical belief. Robert Sapolsky video lecture. |
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| 7 3 posted: 03 June 2009 at 07:12:59 AM | Article Forget the battlefield radios, the combat PDAs or even infantry hand signals. When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, they’ll read each other’s minds. |
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| 7 6 posted: 02 June 2009 at 03:19:11 PM | Video A brief description of string theory. |
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| 8 5 posted: 02 June 2009 at 08:27:08 AM | Web Site Welcome to IdeasProject, an entirely new way to connect with some of the most visionary and influential thought leaders in communications technology and their disruptive ideas. A project of Nokia, hosted at www.ideasproject.com, IdeasProject brings together these important big thinkers to contemplate the big ideas that matter most to the future of communications, joining them up through video clips, links, articles, podcasts and dynamic maps to push the boundaries of Web navigation and the thought process itself. |
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| 8 4 posted: 01 June 2009 at 10:33:01 AM | Article Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. |
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| 8 4 posted: 01 June 2009 at 10:29:39 AM | Article Welcome to OnIntelligence.org, the companion Web site for the book On Intelligence. If you liked the book, want to learn more about the book or want to discuss the book with others, this web resource is for you. |
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| 7 4 posted: 01 June 2009 at 10:19:44 AM | Blog Welcome to John Baez, David Corfield and Urs Schreiber. Their brand-new blog, The n-Category Café, will focus on that heady interface between Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy. |
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| 7 4 posted: 31 May 2009 at 09:01:12 PM | Blog Entry Most of us intuitively feel that we are both a body and a person. In every day life, it makes a certain operational sense to think of our "mind" as being something distinct. From a biological standpoint, however, this doesn't work as well. |
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TAGTL ON THE AIR!
Next Program: Monday, July 29, 2009
On KWMR, 90.5 (in Point Reyes Station)
or stream it live on www.kwmr.org
  | 9 18 posted: 27 April 2009 Blackmore is a parapsychologist who rejects the paranormal, a skeptical investigator of near-death experiences, and a practitioner of Zen. Her explanation of the science of the meme (memetics) is rigorously Darwinian. Because she is a careful thinker (though by no means dull or conventional), the reader ends up with a good idea of what memetics explains well and what it doesn't, and with many ideas about how it can be tested--the very hallmark of an excellent science book. Blackmore's discussion of the "memeplexes" of religion and of the self are sure to be controversial, but she is (as Dawkins says) enormously honest and brave to make a connection between scientific ideas and how one should live one's life. |
  | 8 46 posted: 04 January 2009 A new examination of the surprising origins of human goodness. In Born to Be Good, Dacher Keltner demonstrates that humans are not hardwired to lead lives that are "nasty, brutish, and short"—we are in fact born to be good. He investigates an old mystery of human evolution: why have we evolved positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and are the fabric of cooperative societies? |
  | 8 46 posted: 24 November 2008
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it’s something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt. The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable.
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  | 8 77 posted: 10 November 2008 How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Sandy Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based "honest signaling," evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates. |
  | 8 129 posted: 20 September 2008 This popular synthesis of a technical field in neuroscience explores how the brain constructs its models of the body. Entangled with the perception of self, these maps are multitudinous and dynamic, as experimenters have discovered. The Blakeslees ground the idea of mental maps in the work of Wilder Penfield, a 1940s researcher whose probes on the brains of living people localized which areas of the brain represent which parts of the body. Subsequently, scientists have refined the concept of body maps, a history that binds the Blakeslees' informative explanations of specific maps, case studies, and psychic disorders. Expressed in an amiable, we're-all-in-this-together manner, their tour describes one's personal space and its extension to one's clothes, tools, instruments, and sports gear. The body in motion generates its own set of changing mental maps, distinguishing the graceful from the clumsy. Maps are plastic, report the Blakeslees, yet they also have permanence: successful dieters may still feel overweight, and amputees retain a map of the missing limb. Varied and revealing, this will intrigue readers interested in the clinical perspective on self-perception |
  | 7 159 posted: 11 April 2008 Twenty years after The Society of Mind, where he introduced the concept that "minds are what brains do," Minsky probes deeper into the question of natural intelligence. Don't look for simple explanations: he believes "we need to find more complicated ways to explain our most familiar mental events"; we need to break our thought processes down into the most precise steps possible. In fact, in order to truly understand the human mind, Minsky suggests, we'll probably need to reverse-engineer a machine that can replicate those functions so we can study it. Thus, he rejects the idea of consciousness as a unitary "Self" in favor of "a decentralized cloud" of more than 20 distinct mental processes. In this view, emotional states like love and shame are not the opposite of rational cogitation; both, Minsky says, are ways of thinking. |
  | 7 21 posted: 27 April 2009 Fed up with suburban teenage life, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries and the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer's tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great salty blue. |
  | 9 54 posted: 09 December 2008 At first blush atheist spirituality may sound like a contradiction in terms, but French philosopher Comte-Sponville makes a compelling argument for a profound dimension of experience that is god-free. His idea of spirituality also bears no small resemblance to Eastern spirituality, and the philosopher-author does not hesitate to cite great Eastern thinkers in this catalogue of references to great minds grappling with important questions. We can do without religion and without God, the author argues, but we can't do without fidelity and community. Comte-Sponville's humanism is deeply traditional, but the red flag atheist will undoubtedly affront religious traditionalists. That's unfortunate, because the author's style of arguing is civil and witty, unlike a lot of public discourse on this subject. |
  | 8 58 posted: 16 August 2008 Author, psychologist and pioneering Buddhist teacher Kornfield writes his best book yet (and his previous ones were pretty good). His newest uses the same sweet narrative voice, provides convincing and illustrative anecdotes and stories, and reaches into world traditions and literature as well as contemporary scientific research. This book offers a systematic and well-organized view of Buddhist psychology, complete with occasional diagrams. |
  | 8 162 posted: 28 January 2008 In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. [via mymindonbooks] |
  | 7 80 posted: 01 January 2008 Standing on the relatively recent achievements of the young field of cognitive science (pointing out that not so long ago, babies were considered only slightly animate vegetables--"carrots that could cry"), the authors succinctly and articulately sum up the state of what's now known about children's minds and how they learn. Using language that's both friendly and smart (and using equally accessible metaphors, everything from Scooby-Doo to The Third Man), The Scientist in the Crib explores how babies recognize and understand their fellow humans, interpret sensory input, absorb language, learn and devise theories, and take part in building their own brains. |
  | "The usefulness of this book lies in Trungpa's uncanny ability to cut right to the heart of the matter and presents his understanding of Buddhism and the way of life it teaches in a manner that is applicable to his students' living situation." |
  | Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates--empirically--that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind. |
  | 8 19 posted: 27 April 2009 The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food. Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. A few small hints: Sign up for automatic payment plans so you don’t pay late fees. Stop using your credit cards until you can pay them off on time every month. Make sure you're enrolled in a 401(k) plan. A final hint: Read Nudge. |
  | 8 30 posted: 29 March 2009 Multitasking is the great buzz word in business today, but as developmental molecular biologist Medina tells readers in a chapter on attention, the brain can really only focus on one thing at a time. This alone is the best argument for not talking on your cellphone while driving. Medina (The Genetic Inferno) presents readers with a basket containing an even dozen good principles on how the brain works and how we can use them to our benefit at home and work. The author says our visual sense trumps all other senses, so pump up those PowerPoint presentations with graphics. |
  | 7 33 posted: 20 March 2009 A clever little book by a neuroscientist translates lofty concepts of infinity and death into accessible human terms. What happens after we die? Eagleman wonders in each of these brief, evocative segments. |
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