The Filter^

Nature vs. Nurture

End of the day, I'm with Gould:

It's unfortunate that there's a linguistic similarity between the words 'nature' and 'nurture.' That has helped keep this ill-formulated and misguided debate alive.

Clive Wearing, HM, and amnesia

We recently viewed the 'Identity Project" at the Wellcome Collection. It is quite fantastic, and runs until early April 2010. One of the most intriguing exhibits were the diaries of Clive Wearing, who has been unable to store new memories since developing a virus in the mid 80s. It is haunting to read page after page of the following:

8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.

There is a collection of video documentaries here. The most famous person to have anterograde amnesia is Henry Molaison, following a bilateral lobectomy to cure his epilepsy (which it did). He died last year, and here is The Economist's obituary. Here is what's happened to his brain.

Of course the most famous fictional case is from the film 'Memento' - one of the very few occasions I've looked forward to a film and it's not disappointed. Evidently the documentary "Unknown White Male" (based on Doug Bruce) is a possible hoax.

How long is a piece of string?

Big whorls have little whorls,
That feed on their velocity;
And little whorls have lesser whorls,
And so on to viscosity

Infinite, is my favourite answer - and I especially love how even in physics, the way the question is framed, and the methods used to answer it, determine the result. It's been so long since I've gotten round to blogging about Alan Davies' Horizon programme, that it's no longer available on iPlayer. Sorry. I can't even remember why I felt such a compulsion to write a draft post and advertise it here. If you saw it, maybe you can remind me - my recollection was that it was very good science, and excellent TV.

Are the blue dots moving clockwise or anti-clockwise?

More on that here, also:

Consider two round coins of equal size. Imagine holding one still so that it does not move and then rolling the other coin around it, making sure that it does not slip. The rims are kept touching at all times. How many times will the moving coin have rotated after it has completed one revolution of the stationary coin? (more here)

Depends on your frame of reference, right? Something that has me puzzled is this:

Professor Saunders selects two students [Strauss and Morris] at random from his class. He proposed a simple game: Both students put their wallets on the table. The money is to be counted and whoever has the most money of the two has to give it to the other.

Both would play, because it seems that there's a 50% chance you lose the contents of your wallet, vs. a 50% chance of gaining the contents of their wallet (where their wallet contains more cash than yours). Is this a type of St Petersburg Paradox?

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)

Time Perception

BBC News alerts us to the research of Steve Taylor:

time is related to how much "information" someone is taking in from the world around them.
...
He also gives credence to the proportional theory, which is that as we get older, a year is a smaller part of our life as a whole, so seems to pass quicker.

To them it's the "proportional theory", to us, it's the toilet roll hypothesis.

The Face of Acceptable Discrimination

Much as one despairs at the current climate of legislation-forced equality (the law is not the only anvil on which to forge a happy and integrated society that fosters equality - indeed, it's not really one at all), we are making more and more progress as a planet along the path against meaningless discrimination. Yes, there's a long way to go, but we can be pleased, surely, with the progress we have made.

There is, however, one bastion of discrimination that remains; that, indeed, flourishes. It's the elephant in the pastel-shaded, comfy-sofa and water-cooler clad room of political correctness. It's the most basic, natural form of discrimination and plays a hugely significant role in the lives of almost every one of us. Yep, you guessed it: looks.

That's right. You can't control what you look like, but you can bet that if you're 'no oil painting', you'll be immediately restricted when it comes to finding a sexual partner - which is probably the single most important scientific and emotional quest of the human being. But it doesn't stop there. As if that weren't bad enough, you're likely to encounter problems even if you don't want to pursue a career as a model or date a good-looking person: you may have difficulty forging friendships, embracing current fashions, appearing confident and being taken seriously as a public figure.

So, shock-horror, the character playing 'Ugly Betty' on the Channel 4 TV series isn't actually that ugly. In fact, she's quite a looker. If I was an ugly actor, believe me, I'd be bloody furious - but I'm not an actor, so it's just mildly irritating. Is the media so scared of non-stunners that they can't even cast ugly people into ugly roles? Are we so weak and sex-obsessed in the western world that we're willing to let it go - to grin seedily at the bikini-clad women and male torsos on the advertising hoardings? Well, for the ugly people amongst us, the answer may well be yes - cos it's the only time you're ever going to see something as fit as that, there's no danger of it invading your bedroom now, is there?

So perhaps there is room for legislation here. Perhaps the government needs to take the initiative. It isn't right that ugly people don't get the same opportunities with the opposite sex as attractive people - so let's make discrimination against ugly people, on grounds of looks, illegal. That would shake up the advertising industry, and would make your Saturday night disco a little more interesting too.

I can imagine it now - the policeman stopping the gorgeous leggy blond as she leaves the nighclub: 'Do you recognise this man, madam?' 'Er, no...' 'Well he may be an ugly bastard but he made several advances towards you on the dancefloor this evening, we have it on CCTV. You rejected them all, which means you're in contradiction of the Non Picturesque Persons Discrimination Act, 2007. Would you mind following us down to the station?'

On Dishonesty (1)

      One Saturday before Christmas I was stood on the Docklands Light Railway platform at Bank station when a lanky man rounded the corner onto the platform carrying a can of Special Brew and sporting an assortment of short-term facial injuries. He smelt strongly of alcohol and promptly approached me and initiated a conversation, which I tried to nonchalantly ‘go with’, confident that I’d find a way out without embarrassing myself in front of the other passengers or appearing offensive. It wasn’t going too well though, and before long he asked me where I was going.

       I panicked, shot a boomerang glance at the tube map, and lied. 'London City Airport' I said.

‘Catching a plane are we? You don’t have any luggage’, he replied. What? These idiots aren’t supposed to have comebacks – secondary inane questions related to the first. Shit. What do I say now?

‘No, I’m just going to book a ticket’, I said – ha, gotcha, I’d recovered.

‘Why don’t you just go onto a computer and book your ticket online, isn’t that much cheaper?’ He’d cornered me again.

‘Well, I’ve actually already booked my ticket, but I have changed my plans and need to go to the ticket office at the airport to sort out my new arrangements – it’s quite complicated and I’d rather do it face-to-face than online or on the phone’, I replied.

He left the airport issue at that. But it wasn’t enough to see him off: the man, and his bad smell, was hanging around like, er, a bad smell.

      As it happens, I did get rid of him rather smartly. He was still attempting a two-way conversation with me when a train arrived – but not the one I wanted (the DLR branches out into two lines and I needed the other branch). I stepped onto the train with him nonetheless, waited for the beeping noise that signals the imminent closure of the doors, and stepped off again, conjuring a moment of faux-realisation that I was on the wrong train. Nice one – off my friend went the other side of the glass train windows, Special Brew in hand, and I resisted the urge to offer him a cheeky Bon Voyage wave.

      I’ve since thought about that brief encounter. Within fifteen seconds of conversation, I had concocted an elaborate lie about having booked at ticket to fly from London City Airport and having to subsequently travel to the airport to organise the changing of the booking in person because of its complexity. But this wasn’t all my doing. My disadvantaged friend had coaxed the story out of me. I had been outmanoeuvred by a drunken, irrational and confused vagabond who had forced my one little lie into a veritable pack of lies – a fictional trip abroad that had encountered planning problems. He had made me a liar; had forced me to deceive him and those around me – for there were the other passengers, whose slow-motion scarper had taken them to a safe distance to listen, but not participate. Did they see through my lies too? Did they pick up on the luggage thing straight-off like he did?

       Part of me was curious as to how the conversation would have proceeded if this super-sleuth had continued his interrogation. Under the pressure of the public gaze, how long could I have kept it up before one of my lies caught up with me? But in reality, under the veneer of this slice of espionage glamour on the underground, I felt stupid. After all, I didn’t have to lie. Why couldn’t I be honest with the man in the first place? Why do I so often do this? Lie when asked simple, innocent questions by strangers? (A ‘can I help you sir?’ in a department store I almost always greet with a ‘no, I’m OK thanks’ even if I am in a rage that I can’t find what I’m after). What are the implications of such casual lying when considering how the day could have panned out – a terrorist incident, a crime at Bank station? But hang on, this guy was invading my privacy. Why should I have told him where I was going that morning? After all, I’m not telling you.

       This is very much the thin end of an enormous wedge. It was immoral but harmless lying – which even some ‘huge’ lies can be. After all, it’s far less immoral to lie about having been at the cinema when you were in fact bludgeoning a lifelong adversary to death down a back alley than it is to, let’s say, earn a lot of money for lying to an entire generation about what they should view as culturally valuable. Perhaps that’s one to tackle in On Dishonesty (2).

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.