On Sunday, I was sitting back in Macy’s in Flagstaff, the coffee house where I discovered what musicians experience in hell.
Sunday’s entertainment was a retarded young hippie espousing hippie wisdom to the hippie girl whom he was trying to hippie impress so that they might hippie screw. He bemoaned the terrible state of the world, and expressed many pieces of canned hippie philosophy on peace, love, freedom from chemicals and technology, and a virginal Earth, without presenting any actual plan for how to achieve these ends. For example:
“All those angry men with weapons, we just need to take their weapons away and give them plastic toys to play with.”
That is goddamned brilliant. The belligerent and armed are always thrilled to hand their weapons over to unarmed ultra-pacifists. Perhaps they will let you touch their guns after they finish clubbing you to death with them. But this was the show-stopper:
“I don’t understand Viagra. Are we really so sexually fucked up that we need all these pills to help us get it up? I mean, what did we do before Viagra when we got old?”
If I am not mistaken…WE DIDN’T FUCK.
Hear my words, retarded hippie dipshit.
This is not a perfect world. The exploding world population is an ever increasing problem, and our global resources are being depleted. Urban sprawl spreads onto arable farmland we will eventually need. We have not figured how to turn most garbage back into usable resources, and it is piling up at a disturbing rate. Nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented, and there is always the possibility that they will be used. We have real problems.
Nonetheless, things are pretty fucking awesome, here in the western world. 200 years ago, slavery and a second-class status for women and non-whites were considered perfectly normal. Today it is taken for granted that these institutions are vile and unacceptable, even if the process of eliminating them isn’t complete. We still have war, genocide, torture, rape, and religious fanaticism…but we have had these things continuously for at least as long as recorded history, so it isn't as though things are worse...and we at least have a general consensus across most of the civilized world that these things are bad.
The woman in front of me at Safeway the other night buying groceries with food stamps walked off with a cartload of food that would make real poor people shit themselves blind, and went back to some warm shelter with a television and fridge. Even with our fucked-up health care system, her diet, health, hygiene, and general standard of living would be the envy of most European nobility up until just a couple hundred years ago.
9/11? FUCK 9/11. During World War II, entire CITIES were leveled to the ground, two of them by nuclear weapons. Remember what it was like to have a competing superpower with a gigantic nuclear arsenal pointed at us and ready to go at any second, like we did just a few decades ago? The last major war between the European superpowers is almost outside of living memory.
Compared to the broad scope of history, we live in a time of remarkable peace and prosperity. We have a long way to go, but there is no prior time or place in history I would rather live than right where I am: western civilization in the early 21st century, where we have instantaneous access to the collective knowledge of mankind on our bitchin' new iPhones, and we live and fuck past 60. And I would rather live 10 years ago than 30, 30 rather than 60, and 60 rather than a 100. I think that bodes pretty well for the future.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Limits Of Science
So far, January has been kind of a bullshit month. Final revisions on the paper have been a never-ending nightmare due to PlosOne’s odd and sometimes vague formatting requirements (why would an online journal require abbreviated references?), and it has been snowing and raining too much for me to get out in the field. It has also been cold, and kind of lonely. I wish my cat was here, or a woman. Or both. A furry, sexy, cat woman.
Motivation is scarce, and I haven’t felt like working on the monophyly posts. I felt like writing this instead:
I want to deal some more with alleged limitations on science. I talked about Ken Miller's ad hoc application of the term “supernatural” to keep the existence of God safe from scientific inquiry, and want to deal here with the more general claim by Miller and others that science is restricted to asking questions about things working according to natural, materialistic laws.
In a prior blog, I described what I think science really is, and what it does. The scientific process is designed to establish if something is imaginary or not. We look for observable, repeatable phenomena, and rigorously test whether or not what seems to be happening is just in the imagination of certain individuals, or whether it exists outside of their heads. That is all.
What is it about the scientific methodology that requires that a phenomenon operate within the known laws of nature? Nothing. Science does not distinguish between the “natural” and the “supernatural”, just between the real and the imaginary. Science requires that a phenomenon must be repeatable observable to multiple parties…not that it operate according to the known laws of physics or chemistry.
Saying that “natural laws” put limitations on scientific inquiry is completely ass-backwards in the worst possible way. Our understanding of the laws of physics and chemistry do not dictate scientific inquiry…it’s the other way around. Scientific methodology was looking for what is real, and determined that the laws of physics and chemistry are (probably) reality. If this same methodology could establish that magic was not imaginary, acceptance the reality of magic would be scientific.
Saying that the supernatural is outside of the natural is like distinguishing medicine from “alternative medicine.” As Tim Minchin put it, “alternative medicine” that has actually been shown to work is just…medicine. If the “supernatural” can be shown to be not imaginary, then it becomes “natural”, whether it works according to the known laws of physics or not. What else would it be? If fairies, ghosts, and angels are real, why wouldn’t they be “natural?” We didn’t create them in a lab. What is it that makes them “unnatural” or “supernatural?” Why wouldn’t the “laws of nature” just be expanded to encompass…whatever it is that makes them work, regardless of whether we ever understand that process?
For example, you tell me that you have a magic crystal that you can turn into a flower, and then back again, by saying a magic word. So, myself and five other scientists take you into a small room full of cameras and recording equipment, search you to make sure you aren’t concealing anything, have you put the crystal on the table and put your hands clearly where we can see them, and (when WE are ready), have you say the word. We all watch the crystal turn into a flower. We ask you to say it again, and it turns back into a crystal.
We repeat the process several times. We record the transformation, and your voice, and scrutinize both. We bring in instruments to detect electrical activity, magnetism, gravitational changes, etc…, and they detect nothing unusual. We take samples from the crystal and flower, and analyze them chemically, again finding nothing unusual. We subject you to blood tests, CAT scans, all kind of medical tests, and ascertain that you are not a robot or alien with some kind of device inside you that can alter the physical properties of matter. We become convinced that the transformation is really happening, and find no evidence that known any known physical or chemical processes are at work.
Then we send you to another group of scientists, who do the whole thing over again.
What I just described is scientific confirmation of the existence of “magic.” The phenomenon is repeatable, it can be observed by multiple observers (repeatedly), and careful experimental controls demonstrate that it is not a hoax. Moreover, the phenomenon does not appear to not operate according to any known physical or chemical processes. Viola, the “supernatural” just became a thing which can be shown to probably be real, and is therefore scientific.
Why hasn’t this actually happened? Because psychics can’t actually do what they say they can do once you take away all their cheats. Because ghost hunters can’t actually get a supernatural phenomenon on camera in decent lighting allowing observers to establish that someone isn’t using mirrors or wires. Because little girls can only get clear, sharp photographs of fairies with no one else around. The “supernatural” isn’t “unscientific” because it is “outside of natural laws”. It is unscientific because it is bullshit. It can only appear to exist through imagination, hallucination, deception, and lying.
And the day you can show that I am wrong, it will become science.
Motivation is scarce, and I haven’t felt like working on the monophyly posts. I felt like writing this instead:
I want to deal some more with alleged limitations on science. I talked about Ken Miller's ad hoc application of the term “supernatural” to keep the existence of God safe from scientific inquiry, and want to deal here with the more general claim by Miller and others that science is restricted to asking questions about things working according to natural, materialistic laws.
In a prior blog, I described what I think science really is, and what it does. The scientific process is designed to establish if something is imaginary or not. We look for observable, repeatable phenomena, and rigorously test whether or not what seems to be happening is just in the imagination of certain individuals, or whether it exists outside of their heads. That is all.
What is it about the scientific methodology that requires that a phenomenon operate within the known laws of nature? Nothing. Science does not distinguish between the “natural” and the “supernatural”, just between the real and the imaginary. Science requires that a phenomenon must be repeatable observable to multiple parties…not that it operate according to the known laws of physics or chemistry.
Saying that “natural laws” put limitations on scientific inquiry is completely ass-backwards in the worst possible way. Our understanding of the laws of physics and chemistry do not dictate scientific inquiry…it’s the other way around. Scientific methodology was looking for what is real, and determined that the laws of physics and chemistry are (probably) reality. If this same methodology could establish that magic was not imaginary, acceptance the reality of magic would be scientific.
Saying that the supernatural is outside of the natural is like distinguishing medicine from “alternative medicine.” As Tim Minchin put it, “alternative medicine” that has actually been shown to work is just…medicine. If the “supernatural” can be shown to be not imaginary, then it becomes “natural”, whether it works according to the known laws of physics or not. What else would it be? If fairies, ghosts, and angels are real, why wouldn’t they be “natural?” We didn’t create them in a lab. What is it that makes them “unnatural” or “supernatural?” Why wouldn’t the “laws of nature” just be expanded to encompass…whatever it is that makes them work, regardless of whether we ever understand that process?
For example, you tell me that you have a magic crystal that you can turn into a flower, and then back again, by saying a magic word. So, myself and five other scientists take you into a small room full of cameras and recording equipment, search you to make sure you aren’t concealing anything, have you put the crystal on the table and put your hands clearly where we can see them, and (when WE are ready), have you say the word. We all watch the crystal turn into a flower. We ask you to say it again, and it turns back into a crystal.
We repeat the process several times. We record the transformation, and your voice, and scrutinize both. We bring in instruments to detect electrical activity, magnetism, gravitational changes, etc…, and they detect nothing unusual. We take samples from the crystal and flower, and analyze them chemically, again finding nothing unusual. We subject you to blood tests, CAT scans, all kind of medical tests, and ascertain that you are not a robot or alien with some kind of device inside you that can alter the physical properties of matter. We become convinced that the transformation is really happening, and find no evidence that known any known physical or chemical processes are at work.
Then we send you to another group of scientists, who do the whole thing over again.
What I just described is scientific confirmation of the existence of “magic.” The phenomenon is repeatable, it can be observed by multiple observers (repeatedly), and careful experimental controls demonstrate that it is not a hoax. Moreover, the phenomenon does not appear to not operate according to any known physical or chemical processes. Viola, the “supernatural” just became a thing which can be shown to probably be real, and is therefore scientific.
Why hasn’t this actually happened? Because psychics can’t actually do what they say they can do once you take away all their cheats. Because ghost hunters can’t actually get a supernatural phenomenon on camera in decent lighting allowing observers to establish that someone isn’t using mirrors or wires. Because little girls can only get clear, sharp photographs of fairies with no one else around. The “supernatural” isn’t “unscientific” because it is “outside of natural laws”. It is unscientific because it is bullshit. It can only appear to exist through imagination, hallucination, deception, and lying.
And the day you can show that I am wrong, it will become science.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Things On The Internet That Jeff Found Entertaining (December 2009)
Hello there, and Happy New Year. I feel clean and new today. 2009 was a good year for me. I would even call it a very good year except for the fact that most of the goodness constituted therapy for the second half of 2008, which I will remember in perpetuity as the Year of Shit. Will 2010 bring me my very own spaceship, or testicular cancer? I can't wait to find out! Yay!
Although I have sworn to stop jacking around and mostly post things that actually have content, things come to me unbidden from across The Internet which are awesome. I have therefore decided to condense them into a monthly blog post. YouTube: Proof of the existence of God, or of the Devil? You decide.
AronRa: Yes, I already posted it. I don't care. Go watch the "Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" series. Then watch all the other shit. Do it now.
The Oatmeal: Many fine cartoons. Be sure to check out "4 Reasons To Carry A Shovel At All Times" (my favorite), "How To Ride A Pony", "The Motherfucking Pterodactyl," "Twenty Things Worth Knowing About Beer." And of course, "What Marcellus Wallace Looks Like." I dare you. I double-dare you motherfucker.
Synapsid Tribute: Synapsids are all right, I guess. The scene with the gorgonopsid fighting the...whatever the fuck it was made me laugh. Can someone tell me what that was from?
Peer Review, Circa 1945: Truth.
http://www.partiallyclips.com/storage/20091201_CrestedBirds_lg.png: Nice commentary on sexual selection. It's funnier if you imagine that the male bird sounds like Patrick Wharburton.
Evolution of Homer Simpson: I'm not sure how the Simpsons has managed to stay funny for twenty years. Look what happened to fucking Garfield in less than a decade.
Harlan Ellison discusses God: Nothing too Earth-shattering, but I'm glad I wasn't eating or drinking anything when he made his final pronouncement on what to do with people who do evil.
The Onion: "Sumerians Look On In Confusion As Christian God creates World," and "Dinosaurs Sadly Extinct Before Invention of Bazooka," and "T.rex Ancestor Was Human-Sized."
Dogs Hate Me: I really like these. I don't know why:
Life. In a nutshell.
Love. In a nutshell.
Prayer. In another nutshell.
Drugs and alcohol are cool.
The Known Universe By AMNH: Space is too big, and something needs to be done about it.
Baboons join the Moving Car Hood Club: Something to add to my "to do before I die" list.
I am working on a follow up to my post on monophyly. Public and private reactions have been extremely interesting.
LNJ
Although I have sworn to stop jacking around and mostly post things that actually have content, things come to me unbidden from across The Internet which are awesome. I have therefore decided to condense them into a monthly blog post. YouTube: Proof of the existence of God, or of the Devil? You decide.
AronRa: Yes, I already posted it. I don't care. Go watch the "Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" series. Then watch all the other shit. Do it now.
The Oatmeal: Many fine cartoons. Be sure to check out "4 Reasons To Carry A Shovel At All Times" (my favorite), "How To Ride A Pony", "The Motherfucking Pterodactyl," "Twenty Things Worth Knowing About Beer." And of course, "What Marcellus Wallace Looks Like." I dare you. I double-dare you motherfucker.
Synapsid Tribute: Synapsids are all right, I guess. The scene with the gorgonopsid fighting the...whatever the fuck it was made me laugh. Can someone tell me what that was from?
Peer Review, Circa 1945: Truth.
http://www.partiallyclips.com/storage/20091201_CrestedBirds_lg.png: Nice commentary on sexual selection. It's funnier if you imagine that the male bird sounds like Patrick Wharburton.
Evolution of Homer Simpson: I'm not sure how the Simpsons has managed to stay funny for twenty years. Look what happened to fucking Garfield in less than a decade.
Harlan Ellison discusses God: Nothing too Earth-shattering, but I'm glad I wasn't eating or drinking anything when he made his final pronouncement on what to do with people who do evil.
The Onion: "Sumerians Look On In Confusion As Christian God creates World," and "Dinosaurs Sadly Extinct Before Invention of Bazooka," and "T.rex Ancestor Was Human-Sized."
Dogs Hate Me: I really like these. I don't know why:
Life. In a nutshell.
Love. In a nutshell.
Prayer. In another nutshell.
Drugs and alcohol are cool.
The Known Universe By AMNH: Space is too big, and something needs to be done about it.
Baboons join the Moving Car Hood Club: Something to add to my "to do before I die" list.
I am working on a follow up to my post on monophyly. Public and private reactions have been extremely interesting.
LNJ
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