Is a fact, in fact, a fact?

I'm very interested in the climate change debate, not just as an environmental scientist, but also because of my abiding fascination with epistemology.  Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge:  how do we know what we know; or how we know what we think we know; or how we think we know what we know.  You get the drift.

Nothing characterizes the debate over environmental issues more than the accusations that the other side is ignoring science.  Today for example, I typed "ignores science" into Google:

• Arkansas legislature ignores science, mandates toxic fluoridation for entire state
• Government's badger-culling plan "ignores science"
• DeGette Embryonic Stem Cell Research Bill Ignores Science

In the climate change arena, you have on one side the combined weight of virtually every scientist conducting research in a relevant field stating with a high degree of probability that global warming will likely be quite nasty for future generations.  And you have on the other side a collective "Pshaw!"  What is fascinating to me is the enormous success the Pshaw! side is having.  They have basically managed the climate change file off the top ten list of government policy.

People agitating to do something about climate change are somewhere between puzzled and livid.  They double-down:  "Very well then, we'll do even more research, and present them with even more facts, with even more certainty. That'll learn 'em!"  But, of course it doesn't.

This is because facts are vastly overrated.  It's one of our enduring illusions that we, humans, are rational beings. 

Look at addicts--their worlds can be collapsing around them, but they will all steadfastly maintain that their addiction is not a factor.  We view this behavior as pathological, but all of us, I think, in our minds, build these elaborate labyrinths of mirrors and glass so that we simply don't see what we don’t want to see.  We're all, untimately, prisoners of our own biases.

René des Cartes, the founder of modern philosophy, sought to unshackle himself from those bonds of bias.  His primary motivation for his seminal work Meditations on First Philosophy was to find a single,  irrefutable fact.  His epiphany, perhaps the most famous one-liner in philosophy, was Cogito, ergo sum.  I think therefore I am.  But of course, people refuted it.

Even the word itself--fact--is suspicious. What is the difference between "I am in Kabul" and "It is a fact that I am in Kabul"?  They both say the same thing; the second just emphasizes the point by appealing to truth, to the set of Things That Are Real.  Therefore, preceding a statement with "It is a fact that..." is not a logical argument, but a rhetorical one.  I don't go around saying "It is a fact that my name is Adam" because I don't need  to persuade people to believe it.  "I am Adam" suffices.

And there are virtually an infinite number of facts from which to choose, so the selection of even perfectly "objective" facts (if there were such an animal) itself becomes subjective.  Even if it's the same fact.  For instance one person says that 99% of all UFO reports are proven false, and another says that 1% of UFO sightings cannot be explained. 

Science actually has a way around this. Scientists tend to use the term "observation" instead of fact.  Instead of "It is a fact that it is raining" they say "I observe that it is raining."  So they move out of the "objective reality" of a fact to the "subjective perception" of the observer.

So hammering the so-called deniers over the head with facts is ultimately futile, in our post-objective world.  The main reason the skeptics deny climate change is because it challenges values.  And facts may be transient, but beliefs and values are not.  They are bedrock, baby. 

The deniers are almost exclusively on the political right--that's telling right there.  What the so-called deniers are denying is not climate change itself but the implied policy remedies to climate change--one-world government; international regulation of capital; centrally planned wealth distribution; unrepresentative technocracy.  These things are all more threatening to many than some potential nastiness with the weather fifty years down the road.

If you want to get somewhere, start the discussion with values, not facts. And state the way you see things as observations instead of facts.   But I grow weary.  More of this another day.

Surviving in Kabul: Walk Slowly, Stare Straight Ahead

People are strange / When you're a stranger
     —Jim Morrison, The Doors

I used to get mad at the Afghans crossing the street in front of me walking so slowly.  It's like they were deliberately taking their time to tick me off.  However, having had to cross busy streets a few times myself now, I can see that walking at a slow and steady speed is a crucial survival mechanism. 

Mind if I cut in?

There are no traffic lights here — at least none that I've seen. Even if there were, I doubt anyone would pay them much heed.  I know the crosswalks are ignored.  So there's nothing for it when you need to get across a highway but to just venture right into the mad parade of beat-up Toyotas and jingle trucks.  Running or stopping just screws up the drivers.  They have timed themselves to miss your front toe or back heel by about a quarter of an inch.  Eye contact means you will yield to coming traffic, so just stare straight ahead, walk slowly and ignore the blare of horns.

Courtesy of Wiki.

Jingle Truck with Beautiful Plumage

If you do get hit, there will be likely no ambulance will come and aid you.  The hitter will find his vehicle swarmed by locals, preventing him from driving off.  There then ensues some kind of verbal contract where parties come to a conclusion as to fault and how many goats must change hands.  (OK the last part is a joke.)

 

On my perambulation yesterday I came across a local dump spot.  There is some sporadic trash collection in the city, as far as I can tell, but not nearly enough.  These ad hoc dumps develop by natural selection.  Once dumped there, the poorer Afghans sift through all the garbage with amazing efficiency.  Absolutely anything worth a coin is recycled —  plastic bottles, metal, batteries.  The donkeys and stray dogs and cats feed on the organics there.

Ad Hoc Dump, Kabul

"Ooh, Dennis, there's some lovely filth down 'ere."

These fellas insisted I take their picture.  Nice guys.

There's some discussion here about starting a recycling program for plastic bottles from the enormous quantity of bottled water we go through.  There's a lucrative child-labour market down at the Kabul dump--an ever-burning festering pit.  The kids are issued with little knives to remove labels and work long, hard hours scouring the dump for plastic bottles.  So, on the plus side a recycling program might prevent some Afghan Fagan from exploiting kids.  On the flip side though, it would be putting a bunch if destitute kids out of work.  A typical Afghanistan dilemma.

Kids Rambling Thorught the Dump. They do not even issue them with iPods.

Treasure Hunting the Kabul River.  At least these little ones have shoes.

It is not the conflict here that gets to me, but the suffering of this country's children.

Midnight at the Vomitorium

I know that everyone has to die; but in my case I thought that they would make an exception.

     —Writer William Saroyan, on his death bed

Now I don't really mean it to sound all that pessimistic by any means, but sometimes I do wonder if humanity—taken as a swarm—is really any more capable of altering its future than a community of yeast cells.

Think about it. You're a yeast cell in a beer vat.  Temperature's around, say, 40°C and you're surrounded by your favourite food—sugar—and life is good.  Eat. Drink.  Fu Procreate.  Yeast cells piss alcohol and fart carbon dioxide.  Fast forward a couple of weeks.  It's way more crowded now from all the breeding, there's not nearly so much sugar about as their used to be, and the rising concentration of alcohol and carbonic acid is making life a tad uncomfortable.  Yeast cells, as you know, are not renowned for their sparkling intellect, and so, not surprisingly, don’t really change their behavior. They continue to expand as fast as they possibly can, until the entire population essentially drowns in its own filth.  It's an ugly way to go, but on the plus side, it does result in beer.

Brought to you by a yeast world's Armageddon.

Can we, as humans, do any better?  I wonder.  I mean, we are facing an embarrassment of riches as far as potential Armageddons go—global warming, fisheries collapses, peak oil, errant meteors, nuclear holocaust. Personally the one that scares me is a plague.  I mean, you get these virologists on TV and they're not jumping up and down like Al Gore. They are just very calmly sipping their tea and saying, "Yeah, well, just a matter of time really.  We're just one roll of the ol' snake eyes away from some airborne Ebola doing in 90% of the population.  Can you pass the sugar bowl, please?"

And unlike the humble yeast cell, we can actually see these coming.  In excruciating detail.  But has it changed our behavior?  Have we, as a species, stopped expanding as quickly as we ever have?  Have we rid the world of the nuclear armaments capable of destroying it? Have we done anything but scribble in the margins with fishery depletions and climate change?

I don’t think so.  Not really.  because we don’t work like some organism seeking to preserve the whole.  We work as six-odd billion automata each seeking to propagate its genes, at the expense of others if necessary. So all that intelligence isn't focused in any direction.  Au contraire, as the global warming debate points out, a lot of it cancels out in the partisan bickering.  The vaunted intellect of humanity, that which, we pride ourselves, separates us from the animals, ends up a zero sum advantage.

TheLotka-Volterra Equation is a pair of non-linear differential equations used to describe the dynamics of biological systems.  Here they are.

y is the population of the predator; x of the prey. α, β, γ and δ are parameters.  Note there is no variable or parameter here for intelligence.  It applies to all biological system, from yeast cells and sugar, to cheetahs and baboons, to humans and the ecosystem.  You don't get bonus points because you are moved by King Lear, or because you once had a Zen moment where you appreciated the multiverse as an undifferentiated whole.

Maybe it's simply vanity to think that we can escape the harsh mathematics that bind everything else in our ecosystem.  Simply knowing the equation does not mean we can transcend it.  The poor breed like crazy, the rich live ever more extravagantly and over the chaos, is that the merest hint of Nero's violin?  It's midnight at the vomitorium.

What's the Best Band You Never Liked

OK easy one today.  I'm taking a survey, so please drop a note in the comments section, wouldya?

Topic:  Best band or act that you never liked.  This is the band that, for all intents and purposes, you should love.  They play the kind of music you generally dig, you can't really think of any specific thing you dislike about the band; maybe even you pretend to like them because everyone else is always talking about what a great band they are.

I've got a couple on my list.

Remember Yes?  No?  Well, I'm definitely aging myself here. Early 70s prog-rock band.  Roundabout.  Owner of a Lonely Heart.  What a line up. You’ve got the tasty Steve Howe on the ol' six-string, Bill Bruford on drums, pioneer Chris Squire on bass, prodigy Rick Wakeman on keyboards, all fronted by the ethereal choirboy vocals of Jon Anderson.  Each song they wrote was a musical opus; these boys were dedicated to their craft. What's not to like?  Here they are:  

We're very serious.  Except the one with the hat.

I love Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Rush and other prog-rock bands of the same era. But never could get into Yes. Tried.  Didn’t happen. 

The other one, I'm sorry to say, is The Tragically Hip. I hate not liking thse guys,  First off, it may be my wife's favourite band.  Plus, isn't it downright unpatriotic not to like the Hip?  Unlike Yes, I actually love some songs by the band--Wheat Kings live, Nautical Disaster, Hundredth Meridian.  And Gord Downie is a rock-n-roll poet of the highest caliber.  But apart from a few memorable riffs, I find a lot of the back-up tracks kind of prosaic and repetitive from song to song.  Maybe it's the whole noodling on the slide guitar every song or something.  

iPhone Tragically Hip button.

On the flip side, here's an act that I, by all rights, should have hated, but ended up loving:  Merle Haggard.  My friend Jill thought he was the greatest. I thought she was just being iconoclastic ol' Jill, but turns out he is pretty awesome. I really shouldn't like him.  Never been a huge country music fan.  Merle out-rednecks Toby Keith and out-twangs Dwight Yoakam. When they make jokes about country music, they're talking about Merle.  But he's heck of a singer, a great fiddler and underrated guitar picker.  And as far as I'm concerned, writes some of the finest drinking songs there is.

Merle:  Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink

I did a quick survey at the office and so far got:  Supertramp, Aerosmith and Bryan Adams. 

Anyways, I'm interested in hearing about the best band that you don't like.  Comment section below.  Let 'er rip!

Free* Lunch

Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

   —Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, 2003.

Where do I write to get a new word in the dictionary?  Actually, this word isn't new at all. Ever since I was little, I've seen it everywhere. It's a very common word.  And yet I've never seen it in any dictionary.

You guessed it.  It's free*.

Don’t go to the bottom of the page looking for the note accompanying the asterisk.  The asterisk, in this case, is part of the word.  It adds the following meaning:  Certain Conditions Apply.  Next time you're at the supermrket, check it out.  I think you'll agree, it's a common word.  

Free and freedom are without a doubt among the most important words in our culture and our language.  Every decent philosopher has expounded at length on what it means to be free. Freedom is fundamental to our self-image as Canadians.  

We have, in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, several fundamental freedoms. Eight actually: conscience, religion, thought, belief, expression, press, peaceful assembly and association. All of these are subject to Section 1 of the Charter:

"...subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

That's Section ONE folks, not subparagraph 34(17)(f)(vii).  Section 1.  Right there at the start.  It may as well read:  "Apply asterisk to word free." 

Or perhaps it can be illustrated more colloquially by the following Americanism:  Freedom ain't free. Mathematically this could be represented as:

Free* ≠ Free.

The old saw says, that you can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theatre.  (What if a play has a line where the actor must yell "Fire"?  OK, now I'm just being deliberately argumentative).  And so we have Free*dom of speech.  And Free*dom of religion, and Free*dom of Expression.

And although there's no such thing as a free lunch, you can get a free* lunch just about anywhere.  You just have to listen to the spiel about the timeshare in Hawaii.

I'm not disparaging the idea.  Freedoms can't be absolute in law, in reality.  Nature abhors absolutes the same way she abhors vacuums. I shudder to think what a perfectly free state would look like, although unintentional comedian Donald Rumsfeld hinted at such  at the height of the Iraq Debacle, in his quote at the top of today's post.

Although Mr. Rumsfeld was ridiculed for his statement, he was in fact quite correct.  Free people are indeed free to commit crimes. Free* people are not free to commit crimes. 

All I can say is that I’m glad we live in a free* country.