The Filter^

a Question for 'Fair Deal Phil'

According to Fair Deal Phil,

One of the truly offensive Spectator articles claimed black people have smaller brains and are less intelligent. It claimed:

Orientals ... have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole.

This is a classic example of partisan slander. Phil has objected to a falsifiable claim without providing evidence. One of two things has happened:

• Phil is aware of the evidence that proves this Spectator article wrong, but is too lazy to provide it
• Phil is not aware of any evidence on this issue, but doesn't view this as a scientific debate

Either way, it presents all that is wrong with political debate. I left a comment, but don't hold up much hope for a rational response...

Left vs. Right Brain

Take a look at this test to determine whether you're predominantly "left" or "right" brained... My first instinct was not to see which way she rotated, but once you've done your weekly exercise, try to get her to change direction. I can't. (via Alex Tabarrok)

Gayness (and then something about individualism)

According to BBC News a Canadian study suggests that male homosexuality is determined by genetic factors (what they call "maternal memory") rather than sociological ones. In other words, "rearing" doesn't make you gay:

"If rearing or social factors associated with older male siblings underlies the fraternal birth-order effect [the link between the number of older brothers and male homosexuality], then the number of non-biological older brothers should predict men's sexual orientation, but they do not.

"These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation development in men."

What I find disappointing is how a gay rights group have responded to this evidence:

Andy Forrest, a spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall, said: "Increasingly, credible evidence appears to indicate that being gay is genetically determined rather than being a so-called lifestyle choice.

"It adds further weight to the argument that lesbian and gay people should be treated equally in society and not discriminated against for something that's just as inherent as skin colour."

Why should the nature/nurture argument affect homosexual discrimination? It's as if he's saying "We don't want to be gay so don't hold us against it - there's nothing we can do!". I'd have hoped that a gay rights group would be more concerned with saying "We're humans and are free to choose and live our lives however we wish". It seems awfully defeatist and apologetic.

Whilst we're on the subject of nature/nurture check out Bryan Caplan's: An Economist's Guide to Happier Parenting. Also, whilst we're at it (are we?) Radio 4 had two wonderfully complimentary stories about individualism yesterday:

Summerhill School is 85 years old this year, yet its philosophy - a free school where the pupils are equal in status to the teachers and lessons are optional - is yet to catch on. It's one of only two such schools in the UK and ZOË NEILL READHEAD, the daughter of the school's founder, is the current Principal. She discusses the theories behind the educational example that the school is still trying to promote. Summerhill and A S Neill is edited by Mark Vaughan and published by Open University Press.

Asked to describe the archetypal artist, we would probably think of a bohemian type, quirkily dressed, with unusual ideas about life and a tendency to be a bit different. But where did this characterisation come from? A new exhibition at the National Gallery looks into the roots of the image of the Artist. LOIS OLIVER is one of the curators of the new exhibition, Rebels and Martyrs, which shows how the image we know today began with Romanticism. Rebels and Martyrs: The Image of the Artist in the Nineteenth Century is at the National Gallery from 28 June to 28 August.

Jet Lag

Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of The Edinburgh Sleep Centre:

"It takes five days to recover from a five hour flight to New York from Britain and 50% longer when flying eastwards.
When passengers are travelling west its like a long day
for the biological clock but when flying east, the clock tries to go
into reverse which is obviously harder.
The internal body clock steps up at dawn which is when
we can manipulate exposure to light, it's a way of fooling the
biological clock.
(BBC News)

His solution: wear sunglasses. I don't like the whole philosophy whereby we intend to "fool ourselves". It means you're either very smart, or (more likley), a fool.

Pinker vs Spelke

On April 22, 2005, Harvard University's Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative (MBB) held a defining debate on the public discussion that began on January 16th with the public comments by Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard, on sex differences between men and women and how they may relate to the careers  of women in science.

When I delved into the issue of female representation in the sciences, in Feminists and Academia it generated some interesting comments, so as a follow up check out a recent debate between Steve Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke. Transcripts, audio, video and slides are all available at Edge 

Science to Know

The Guardian asked 250 experts what the one thing everybody should learn about science is. I especially like the contribution of Richard Dawkins:

I wish everyone understood Darwinian natural selection, and its enormous explanatory power, as the only known explanation of "design". The world is divided into things that look designed, like birds and airliners; and things that do not look designed, like rocks and mountains. Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed, like submarines and tin openers; and those that are not really designed, like sharks and hedgehogs. Darwinian natural selection, although it involves no true design at all, can produce an uncanny simulacrum of true design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant.

More here

Revenge of the Right Brain

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

From a fun article in Wired by Daniel Pink. It's a classic story: the nerds mess about with computers, creating ones so complex and useful that the aesthetes no longer need nerds. Unlucky suckers.

Get Closer

When you have about 5 minutes to spare, I recommend Eye of Science:

Our aim as a two-person team of photographer and biologist is to combine scientific exactness with aesthetic appearances thereby helping to bridge the gap between the world of science and the world of art. Our commitment is to the evidence of scientific investigation but also to the use of colour as a creative and harmonious tool to achieve beauty. In the combination of the aesthetics and the science we hope to inspire the public. Day by day, in a world beyond human vision, we explore fascinating forms and structures.

Highlights include the coral-like microphotography of Velcro, an contaminated apple with mould fungi and yeast and a Little Shop of Horrors-like bladderwort (contrast the micro-version with the innocent flowering plant).

Feminists in Academia

"in a spirit of academic open-mindedness, Summers raised the possibility that "innate difference" might be a factor as well. According to reports, he didn't necessarily embrace this view so much as throw it out for discussion. Indeed, before he raised this point he apparently said several times, "I'm going to provoke you"

He did: MIT Biologist Nancy Hopkins, promptly walked out of the lecture by Larry Summers, in which he suggested that women might have less innate ability at mathematics, compared to men. She said "When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," He has since responded.

Jonah Goldberg provides an account of the events.

Firstly, there are innate differences between men and women. There is plenty of scientific evidence, (see here), and as a science those who contend the findings must respond with analysis, not emotion.

Compare this story to an article that appeared in The Economist last week, The Stronger Sex, Why do women live longer than men? Recent evidence suggests that men lose one-third of the contractile muscle cells between the ages of 20-70, whereas women do not. Perhaps oestrogen, a femal sex hormone, is good for the heart. Is this a valid example of scientific enquiry? Of course. Might it encourage discimination in the workplace? Indeed - CEO's tend to be in their 60s, leading stressfull jobs, and prone to heart attacks. The implications are that on this margin, women have an advantage over men.

The reason that men aren't up in arms about such findings, I imagine, is that we're not used to being discriminated against (at least the middle-class, white, tall, 20-20 vision, intelligent.... ) and as such are not in a battle. If I were in a battle, my strategy would be to compete to my comparative advantage, and not act according to the stereotype I'm trying to contend.

Also, Deirdre McCloskey is a "free-market feminist", and has written some delightful prose arguing that an over-formalism in economics costs the discipline. In other words, discrimination in academia makes it easier for men to progress, but because of this economist's have become too obessesed with their "fancy" mathematical models.

Personally, I think the largest reason that more women aren't in academia is the same reason Summer's claimed:

The numerical predominance of men in science, Summers said, is chiefly explained by the commonsense, and commonly agreed upon, observation that the demands of motherhood tend to interfere with careers that require vast quantities of time at a very young age. Just like top lawyers and bankers, Summers explained, jobs requiring 80-hour workweeks disproportionately hurt women who tend to be primary caregivers for children for long stretches of time.

If a woman could signal to an employer she will not have children, she'd be more likely to get a top job. Of course such a contract wouldbe illegal, and therefore childless women should direct their complaints toward pregnant women, and not men. My old boss took long term maternity leave a month after being promoted to senior management - needless to say the mixed-sex hiring panel were not best pleased.

Since academia is quite insulated from market signals, it is a fertile ground for discrimination. But rest assurred, there are more logical reasons that mysterious "institutional discrimination".

Carpe Diem

It's always a fun endeavour to speculate on how life can be experienced more richly, and the New Scientist has canvassed the opinion of well-known scientist's to compile a new book: 100 Things To Do Before You Die.

A selection:

• see Galileo's middle finger (preserved in Florence)
• joining the 300 Club at the South Pole (they take a sauna to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, then run naked to the pole in minus 100 F)
• learn Choctaw, a language with two past tenses - one for giving information which is definitely true, the other for passing on material taken without checking from someone else
• swim in a bioluminescent lake
• achieve multiple orgasm
• assisting at the birth of an animal
• solve a mathematical puzzle
  
• boil an egg with a mobile phone
• measure the speed of light with chocolate in a microwave
• visit Shark Bay in Western Australia
• scour the night sky for comets
• let a dung beetle roll away your faeces
• inhale helium and start singing

and after you've gone, let your legacy remain:

• leaving your body for use in car crash research
• become a diamond - a company in Chicago will converted your ashes into a one carat gem
• rot in a field and let forensic scientists practice on you

          (most of those have come from The Guardian)

and i'll recommend:

• go to a Merseyside Derby
• top Uluru
• complete a voluntary transaction in a Communist regime
• appear in a Shakespeare play on the London stage...
  

A Different Kind of Hotspot

Sometimes, a good analogy can really kick start a research programme. Take this, for example:

It is a cliché to say that crime spreads like a disease, but [a team of criminologists from Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, led by Kate Bowers] found that this is exactly how crime does spread. Using statistical techniques developed to study the transmission of infections, they found that burglaries cluster in space and time in predictable ways. For example, properties within 400 metres of a burgled home, particularly those on the same side of the road, are at an increased risk of being broken into for up to two months after the initial incident.

Independently conceived by Bowers and Michael Townsley (also at JDI), the "disease" model turns out to be highly effective, "hindcasting" about 50% better than other previously developed models. An abstract of the journal article, "Prospective Hot-Spotting", can be found here. Somehow, this reminds me of Minority Report...

Randomness

Some people believe that computers are Turing machines and are only capable of generating numbers that are "pseudo-random". It is a common misconception.

Jef Raskin writes:

The essential difference seems to be a small one: a Turing machine does not have access to a number selected at random (an NSAR) from some range of numbers. Real computers do.

There are many ways for a computer to obtain NSARs, for example, to get a random digit at a given moment, look at one of the low order digits of:
- number of people active on some very large network;
- the output of a light sensor pointed toward a fireworks show;
- the digitization of the amplified sound of your own breath;
-the interval between detected decays of radioactive nuclei (which, according to quantum mechanics, cannot even in principle be predicted).

A Computer without I/O is like a Newtonian world with no friction and an economy without transaction costs - interesting to a point, but rather unilluminating.

Jef Raskin is the original creator of the Apple Macintosh. His website provides many insightful articles on Science, Technology and Philosophy - I especially recommend Effectiveness of Mathematics.

Stay Cool

Mohammed Bah Abba of northern Nigeria has just won a Rolex Awards for his simple, but effective device that has changed people's lives. From Hinterlands (via Slashdot):

This is Mohammed Bah Abba's Pot-in-pot invention. In northern Nigeria, where Mohammed is from, over 90% of the villages have no electricity. His invention, which he won a Rolex Award for (and $100,000), is a refrigerator than runs without electricity.

Here's how it works. You take a smaller pot and put it inside a larger pot. Fill the space in between them with wet sand, and cover the top with a wet cloth. When the water evaporates, it pulls the heat out with it, making the inside cold. It's a natural, cheap, easy-to-make refrigerator.

So, instead of perishable foods rotting after only three days, they can last up to three weeks. Obviously, this has the potential to change their lives. And it already has -- there are more girls attending school, for example, as their families no longer need them to sell food in the market.

Is it just a wine chiller in disguise? It will be rude to be so cynical, surely! Many have also argued that this is old technology ("This has also been done in Spain for centuries. We have a traditional earthenware pitcher called "botijo" with a very characteristic design" & "Unfortunately such methods have been used in ancient Egypt 4000 years ago already." - more, generally dismissive, comments like that here) and that Rolex has simply picked out the first Nigerian villager they saw and gave him the prize!

More on the man himself can be found here, the offical Rolex Awards site is here.

Sokal's Hoax

I am sure Alan Sokal is a good physicist, being a Professor of the subject at NYU etc. But he will be remembered for his hoax played on a "post-modern" sociology journal, Social Text. From the New York Review of Books:

Late in 1994 [Alan Sokal] submitted a sham article to the cultural studies journal Social Text, in which he reviewed some current topics in physics and mathematics, and with tongue in cheek drew various cultural, philosophical and political morals that he felt would appeal to fashionable academic commentators on science who question the claims of science to objectivity.

[...]

It seems to me though that Sokal's hoax is most effective in the way that it draws cultural or philosophical or political conclusions from developments in physics and mathematics. Again and again Sokal jumps from correct science to absurd implications, without the benefit of any intermediate reasoning. With a straight face, he leaps from Bohr's observation that in quantum mechanics "a complete elucidation of one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description" to the conclusion that "postmodern science" refutes "the authoritarianism and elitism inherent in traditional science." He blithely points to catastrophe theory and chaos theory as the sort of mathematics that can lead to social and economic liberation. Sokal shows that people really do talk in this way by quoting work of others in the same vein, including applications of mathematical topology to psychiatry by Jacques Lacan and to film criticism by Jacques-Alain Miller.

On the day of publication Sokal announced in Lingua Franca that "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" had been a hoax. Sokal played the postmodern game against a postmodern journal.

Later, Sokal and Bricmont wrote Intellectual Impostures, as a response to the controversies surrounding the hoax. Sadly, the book was too self-righteously "scientific", "justificationist" and "classical", ignoring a lot of the recent developments in the philosophy of science. A critique of that book by a leading Popperian (as a matter of warning) can be found, in PDF, here.

IMPROBABLE RESEARCH - Klutz Testing

Q:how do you ensure an object's foolproofness?
A:Test it on fools, suggests Marc Abrahams:

Ultra testing is almost entirely an art, virtually not at all a science. There are no government specs for how to do ultra testing. There are no schools that grant degrees or certificates of, er, merit in this field.

One firm, UltraBang, has virtually cornered the market on mechanical ineptitude. UltraBang's testers have the hard-to-define, impossible-to-measure talent of being accidents waiting to happen. Filing cabinets topple onto them. Ceilings fall on their heads. Steering wheels fall off. Seats shatter. Watches run backwards. Cookies crumble. Steel-reinforced concrete is putty in their hands.

These uniquely blessed individuals are now being beckoned, courted and enriched by designers on every continent. Their special skills, their god-sent gifts of destruction, are much celebrated.

A job for Ian Jamieson perhaps?

67% CHANCE THAT GOD EXISTS

Dr Steve Unwin, a graduate of The University of Mancester and risk assessor in Ohio has calculated the probability of the existence of God according to Bayes Theory, a theory used to determine the likelyhood of events such as nuclear power failure and earthquakes. The theory begins by assuming that an event has a 50/50 chance of occuring, then builds in as many factors as possible, both positive and negative, before calculating the statistical probability of the outcome.

According to Dr. Unwin's book 'The Probability of God: A simple calculation that proves the ultimate truth' the question of God's existence is merely a matter of statistics, and the result of the application of Bayes Theory to the question produces a result of 67% in favour of the existence of a supreme being.

More on Dr. Steve Unwin

How much is a trillion?

If you're like me, and big numbers bamboozle you then you might find it useful to convert to a recognisable scale.

One million seconds are the equivilant of 11 days
One billion seconds are 32 years

How much are one trillion seconds?

317 centuries.

source: The Remnant Review

Monty's Dilemma

Rachel's just finished Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. There is an interesting puzzle that goes like this:

You are playing a game. In the game, there are three doors with prizes hidden behind them. One door hides a new car while the other two doors hide goats. If you pick the door with the car behind it, you win the car.

You pick a door. At this point the game host opens another of the doors, revealing a goat. Now the game host offers you the opportunity to change your pick to the other door.

Should you switch?

Answer here.

News from Space

Two pieces of Space-related news:

1. The Great Wall of China is not visible in space. According to this report, the Chinese government has officially stated as such. One to remember for your local's quiz!

2. Is Sedna the 10th planet of our solar system? Heather Cooper doesn't think so. Speaking on BBC Five Live this morning, she claimed that neither Pluto or Sedna should be classified as planets, that they are no more than large asteroids. Her claim is echoed in Wikipedia:

The discovery of Sedna has also re-raised the question which astronomical objects should be considered planets and which should not. Even though on March 15, 2004, several news sources reported the tenth planet has been discovered, it seems unlikely that Sedna will be called a planet; however, with Sedna not being classified as a planetary body, the justification for Pluto's classification as one also becomes more questionable.

How does a big rock become classified as a planet? Find out more here.

I quite like the name Sedna, though.

The Science of Love

A summary from I get a kick out of you from the Economist.

Researchers took brain scans of students who described themselves as 'madly in love'.
Interestingly,

the brain areas active in love are different from areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear or anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the the one responsible for gut feelings,.... which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine.

Love, it seems, can literally be an addiction.

In Helen Fisher's book Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love there are three types or love:

1. Lust
In the aftermath of lustful sex, there are increases in chemicals such as endogenous opioids, the body's natural equivilant of heroin.
2. Attraction
A more refined version of lust, it allows people to home in on a particular mate.

This state is characterized by feelings of exhilaration, and intrusive, obsessive thoughts... this mental state might share neurochemical characteristics with the manic stage of manic depression, or obsessive compulsive disorder.

This suggests that anti-depressants jeapordise the ability to fall in love, since Prozac might be staving off romantic feelings.
3. Attachment
Characterised by calm, social comfort and emotional union.

Fisher says that since these three types are independant, it's possible to love more than one person at once. And since promiscuity leads to a bigger stake in the gene-pool, a rather pessimistic future exists for their interplay.

It seems to me, that if you're going to ban cocaine, than to be consistant people who are 'madly in love' are just as destructive....

Mamihlapinatapai

Lying on the sofa, we'd finished our main course, and waffles with Vanilla ice cream was on the cards for dessert. As I stretched, and took a swig of cold beer Faith and I looked into each others eyes with complete and utter mamihlapinatapai.....

A Language Experiment II

Thanks for the comments and emails regarding my original post, which can be found here.

I have received an email from Lera, who sent me an outline of the original report.

Humanzee

Two recent television programs have analysed the near-human characteristics of chimpanzees, and provided many important lessons for economists. Firstly, in controlled experiments the subject is capable of altering their behaviour, providing uncommon results. Also, we must be willing to re-examine and question everything.

On Horizon, we saw how the discovary that chimps used tools provided a fundamental disruption to our definitions of man and ape. Indeed as our definition of 'human' has developed, chimps have consistantly been observed within that category.

1. Humans use tools - chimps will use grass stems to catch termites.
2. Humans have a culture - a 'culture' means that different groups of humans have develop different tools for the same task. This has been observed in chimps.
3. Humans have a language - a study suggested that the grunting chimps make when offered specific foods is understood by other chimps.
4. Humans have a theory of the mind, ie we know that other humans think - a different experiment showed that chimps' behaviour altered depending on whether they were in the presence of other chimps.
5. Humans are cruel - chimps kill their own.

At this point the study fell apart, but it had forced a re-definition of what it is to be human.

Then, on Channel 5 we had the case of a near human chimp, and once more the difficulty of defining humans in a way that doesn't include chimps.
It looked at the legal aspect, and whether we can try a chimp for murder.

During the Napoleonic wars, a French boat was wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool and the only survivor was a monkey (the ships pet). The 'French Spy' was tried, found guilty and hung. More details here.

A Language Experiment

Have a good look at the following three pictures:

Which of the two are most similar?

This is a very crude re-enactment of a wonderful experiment by Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at MIT. Apparantly, Indonesians are more likely to plump for the first two, since they feature the same person. Interestingly, due to an "integral grammatical concept" English speakers are more likely to choose the two pictures occupying the same temporal structure.
According to the article in The Economist, this is related to the tense structure of English verbs - they all have a past, present or future. The crucial question is whether it is the language structure that causes English speakers to choose pictures 1 and 3, or whether the effects are vice versa.

Bearing in mind that these weren't the pictures used in the original study, and scientifically this is very fragile, i'd be interested which two pictures people chose.

Why a pencil is male while a pen is female?

An interesting survey called Object Sex is mentioned in the New York Times:

Nouns are assigned a gender in many languages, but not in English. This linguistic peculiarity is the inspiration for Object Sex, a new site that asks visitors to vote on whether an object is male or female.

I keep referring to our new male kitten Bertie as a "she"...