Good Morning,
My apologies for there being no letter last week. I really don't know how Alistair Cooke always came up with one. I tried to write something ("liquid gold") but it just wasn't good enough so it has been shelved for now.
My topic this week the problems we have here on earth with something which we call "the law". It's essentially a code of behavior that we are supposed to adhere to. In most countries on earth, knowing the law is perhaps a little more straightforward. But here in America we have three, sometimes four relevant "jurisdictions" that can enact separate laws: first, there's International law, although most of us aren't directly affected by that; then there's the Federal law which applies to the nation as a whole; State law; and sometimes more local jurisdictions such as the city we live in. The whole thing is incredibly complex.
But there's one big problem in applying the law: humans are inveterate liars. We never tell the truth if it isn't in our interest. The legal system therefore spends an inordinate amount of time trying to decide who's lying in any particular situation.
One of the laws which applies in most jurisdictions is that of libel, which is essentially saying or writing something untrue about someone (we won't get into the difference between libel and slander). It's amazing how sometimes it takes only one person to say something bad about another person in order for that second person to lose their job, the political race they were entered in, or whatever. Often it's entirely unnecessary to prove that fact -- everyone who matters simply takes it at face value. And, perversely, if a libel victim takes legal action against the libeler, it's often seen as an admission of guilt.
There have been many instances in our history of this sort of thing, sometimes causing the death of the victim (for example the Salem witch trials). Another recent situation was the period of "McCarthyism" which ended more or less 50 years ago. All it took to have one's career ruined was for an anonymous person to whisper that you were a communist sympathizer. One of the journalists who covered the hearings, Daniel Schorr, died this week, breaking a link with that period. In fact, it's rather surprising that he wasn't on the list, especially as later he made it onto the "enemies" list of Richard Nixon (U.S. President 1969-74).
I was also reminded of the period today while attending a performance of Gypsy, a musical about Gypsy Rose Lee, perhaps the world's most famous stripper [for reasons far too complex to go into here, we humans generally wear clothes: stripping is taking them off as an entertainment]. Gypsy Rose Lee was one of the personalities accused of being a "commie", although she successfully fought back.
We have something here called a "polygraph" which purports to be able to tell when someone is lying. But it's not 100% reliable so generally isn't used much in the law courts. If someone could invent a perfect polygraph machine, it would save a lot of time in law trials and maybe protect people from malicious libelling.
These days, the situation is actually far worse than ever before. We have something called the "internet" which basically allows anyone to say anything about anyone at any time. There isn't even any provable attribution of who said what. Amazing! And if someone calls someone a cheat, liar, whatever, this piece of information can now be "picked up" by the newspapers (even books) and given a sheen of authority. We had a story just this week of someone losing their job because of this sort of scurrilous activity. I notice today on Facebook (part of this internet culture), one particular person (no idea who this person really is of course) claiming that Alberto Contador, the winner (again) of the Tour de France (the world's most grueling race on two-wheeled transportation machines that we call bicycles) is a cheat. He doesn't offer any evidence. In my opinion, this is just plain wrong! He should have to quote sources to back up his claim, which in turn would quote sources, ...
For now, we're stuck with a very imperfect system.
From a crazy world,
Phasmid
Monday, July 26, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Information Society
Good Morning,
We are in the hottest part of our year now: what we call "summer". Well, the great majority are in summer, including those of us in this country. So, while we enjoy and/or suffer the heat, I'm reminded of the rather alarming trend whereby the average temperature on the surface of the earth is creeping up, year by year. We call this global warming. Along with nuclear weapons, the dwindling supply of oil, and the competition for natural resources by emergent nations (e.g. China), it's one of the most pressing threats to our way of life. Yet, we don't worry much about it. Come to think about it, we don't worry much about any of these four threats, although the government still tries to keep us all afraid of nuclear war (all governments know that fear is one of their most potent tactics to justify their existence).
It's possible that this period of global warming is simply part of a purely natural cycle. We know from ice cores, tree rings and many other sources of evidence that surface temperatures on earth have fluctuated significantly during the 4.6 billion years since our planet first was formed. However, most if not all of the scientific evidence points to the current warming trend as being caused by the things we're doing such as burning fossil fuels (which I started to talk about last week).
Incidentally, there's a strange phenomenon that operates here in the reporting of news. Let's say just for an example that at a conference on global warming, 1000 scientists are asked the question: is global warming caused principally by man's activities? And let's further postulate that 999 of these scientists answer Yes [this is actually a very realistic scenario]. The newspapers, here in the United States at least, will report on this with a headline such as the following: World Scientific Opinion Divided on Global Warming Cause. In other words, they will tend to give equal weight to the one dissenter as to the 999 who give their assent! That's because the perceived news value of a 500-500 split would be close to zero and barely worth a mention in a back page. The news value of unanimity would be considerably higher but, perversely, not as high as the news value of the 999-1 split.
Aside from this strange application of information theory, there is also a more prosaic and indirect reason for the newspapers thus reporting. By and large, the media outlets are owned by people who enjoy the status quo. That means big profits from selling (and burning) oil. It is very much in their short-term interests (and what other interests could possibly be as interesting?) to persuade the population that it's OK (even good for them) to keep burning lots of oil.
In the same vein, there is another parallel oddity of information flow here in this country. Let's line up another 1000 scientists, this time, experts in the field of biology and ask them the following question: did the existing complexity of life here on planet earth evolve over billions of years as a result of natural selection, as opposed to being created less than 10,000 years ago by an omnipotent agent, for example a god? This time all 1000 scientists will say yes. But the newspapers will report it as something like Scientists think that maybe life has evolved here on earth but cannot prove that it was not created by God.
Partly as a result of the news media treatment of this subject, if you stopped 1000 people in the street you would get something like 450 yes answers and astonishingly 550 nos. Actually, if you were conducting this poll, you'd realistically expect that the vast majority would respond "don't know" since most ordinary people are not experts in the biological sciences. If you don't believe me on this (and I wouldn't blame you), check out Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution (2004).
And yet, we believe that we live in an enlightened democracy where information rules!
More detail on these curious aspects of life on Earth to come.
From a crazy world,
Phasmid
We are in the hottest part of our year now: what we call "summer". Well, the great majority are in summer, including those of us in this country. So, while we enjoy and/or suffer the heat, I'm reminded of the rather alarming trend whereby the average temperature on the surface of the earth is creeping up, year by year. We call this global warming. Along with nuclear weapons, the dwindling supply of oil, and the competition for natural resources by emergent nations (e.g. China), it's one of the most pressing threats to our way of life. Yet, we don't worry much about it. Come to think about it, we don't worry much about any of these four threats, although the government still tries to keep us all afraid of nuclear war (all governments know that fear is one of their most potent tactics to justify their existence).
It's possible that this period of global warming is simply part of a purely natural cycle. We know from ice cores, tree rings and many other sources of evidence that surface temperatures on earth have fluctuated significantly during the 4.6 billion years since our planet first was formed. However, most if not all of the scientific evidence points to the current warming trend as being caused by the things we're doing such as burning fossil fuels (which I started to talk about last week).
Incidentally, there's a strange phenomenon that operates here in the reporting of news. Let's say just for an example that at a conference on global warming, 1000 scientists are asked the question: is global warming caused principally by man's activities? And let's further postulate that 999 of these scientists answer Yes [this is actually a very realistic scenario]. The newspapers, here in the United States at least, will report on this with a headline such as the following: World Scientific Opinion Divided on Global Warming Cause. In other words, they will tend to give equal weight to the one dissenter as to the 999 who give their assent! That's because the perceived news value of a 500-500 split would be close to zero and barely worth a mention in a back page. The news value of unanimity would be considerably higher but, perversely, not as high as the news value of the 999-1 split.
Aside from this strange application of information theory, there is also a more prosaic and indirect reason for the newspapers thus reporting. By and large, the media outlets are owned by people who enjoy the status quo. That means big profits from selling (and burning) oil. It is very much in their short-term interests (and what other interests could possibly be as interesting?) to persuade the population that it's OK (even good for them) to keep burning lots of oil.
In the same vein, there is another parallel oddity of information flow here in this country. Let's line up another 1000 scientists, this time, experts in the field of biology and ask them the following question: did the existing complexity of life here on planet earth evolve over billions of years as a result of natural selection, as opposed to being created less than 10,000 years ago by an omnipotent agent, for example a god? This time all 1000 scientists will say yes. But the newspapers will report it as something like Scientists think that maybe life has evolved here on earth but cannot prove that it was not created by God.
Partly as a result of the news media treatment of this subject, if you stopped 1000 people in the street you would get something like 450 yes answers and astonishingly 550 nos. Actually, if you were conducting this poll, you'd realistically expect that the vast majority would respond "don't know" since most ordinary people are not experts in the biological sciences. If you don't believe me on this (and I wouldn't blame you), check out Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution (2004).
And yet, we believe that we live in an enlightened democracy where information rules!
More detail on these curious aspects of life on Earth to come.
From a crazy world,
Phasmid
Monday, July 5, 2010
Oil and the piping plover
Good morning,
if you have very powerful telescopes on Europa, you might have noticed that there's been a change here on Earth. There's a big oil slick down in the Gulf of Mexico caused a couple of months ago by trying to drill a well on the sea floor on the cheap, so to speak. Saving about a million dollars in drilling operations, the perpetrators have now caused an environmental catastrophe that is going to cost themselves at least $20 billion (20,000 times as much as they planned to save) and the country and rest of the world ecological damage whose monetary value is simply immeasurable.
In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, oil (also called petroleum) is a liquid formed from fossilized organisms laid down many millions of years ago. We use the stuff to power and/or produce just about everything here on Earth. The problem is that, although there's a lot of oil under the ground, we consume it quicker than we can find it. And, it's not being made any more – at least not at a rate that could ever be useful to us.
I'm interested to know what you use for energy up there so far from the sun. We haven't figured out an alternative yet, but we are definitely looking for ideas, as the stuff's going to be all used up shockingly soon. One plan is to use the wind to generate electricity (you have that, right?). But the oil lobby is determined to stop that by using "pseudo-green" arguments like dangers to piping plovers and whales. As it happens, the piping plovers and whales aren't of course threatened in any way by wind farms. But they are two species that are massively threatened by the oil spill. Indeed, the plovers which winter on the Gulf shore could even be wiped out entirely by the oil.
But this kind of thing is normal for our world. The dollar (the pound, yen, yuan, etc.) rules. Truth exists on a sliding scale. There is no truth so absolute or profound that someone can't be found to deny it, given sufficient cash incentive. Examples abound, depending on which historical period you'd like to examine. Probably the most ludicrous, and long-lived, example of all is the subject of evolution by natural selection. We'll look into that in a future letter.
Meanwhile, you'd expect that on Earth we would be guarding every precious drop of oil for the future. A relatively easy way to do that would be to impose a large tax on the sale of gasoline (the derivative of petroleum that we put in our cars). Not only would it cause us to be less wasteful, but the proceeds from the tax could, among other things, be used to research new forms of energy. However, we have a democracy here which explicitly excludes voters from among the generation most affected by the future oil shortage and any presidential candidate who proposed such a tax wouldn't last five minutes in the race.
From a crazy world,
Phasmid
if you have very powerful telescopes on Europa, you might have noticed that there's been a change here on Earth. There's a big oil slick down in the Gulf of Mexico caused a couple of months ago by trying to drill a well on the sea floor on the cheap, so to speak. Saving about a million dollars in drilling operations, the perpetrators have now caused an environmental catastrophe that is going to cost themselves at least $20 billion (20,000 times as much as they planned to save) and the country and rest of the world ecological damage whose monetary value is simply immeasurable.
In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, oil (also called petroleum) is a liquid formed from fossilized organisms laid down many millions of years ago. We use the stuff to power and/or produce just about everything here on Earth. The problem is that, although there's a lot of oil under the ground, we consume it quicker than we can find it. And, it's not being made any more – at least not at a rate that could ever be useful to us.
I'm interested to know what you use for energy up there so far from the sun. We haven't figured out an alternative yet, but we are definitely looking for ideas, as the stuff's going to be all used up shockingly soon. One plan is to use the wind to generate electricity (you have that, right?). But the oil lobby is determined to stop that by using "pseudo-green" arguments like dangers to piping plovers and whales. As it happens, the piping plovers and whales aren't of course threatened in any way by wind farms. But they are two species that are massively threatened by the oil spill. Indeed, the plovers which winter on the Gulf shore could even be wiped out entirely by the oil.
But this kind of thing is normal for our world. The dollar (the pound, yen, yuan, etc.) rules. Truth exists on a sliding scale. There is no truth so absolute or profound that someone can't be found to deny it, given sufficient cash incentive. Examples abound, depending on which historical period you'd like to examine. Probably the most ludicrous, and long-lived, example of all is the subject of evolution by natural selection. We'll look into that in a future letter.
Meanwhile, you'd expect that on Earth we would be guarding every precious drop of oil for the future. A relatively easy way to do that would be to impose a large tax on the sale of gasoline (the derivative of petroleum that we put in our cars). Not only would it cause us to be less wasteful, but the proceeds from the tax could, among other things, be used to research new forms of energy. However, we have a democracy here which explicitly excludes voters from among the generation most affected by the future oil shortage and any presidential candidate who proposed such a tax wouldn't last five minutes in the race.
From a crazy world,
Phasmid
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