Left as an Exercise

July 21, 2010

De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.

Filed under: Commentary — Brian D @ 11:25 am

We lost a hero this week. Dr. Stephen Schneider died unexpectedly on July 19. In addition to much influential work in climatology, Schneider was a talented communicator and a great public speaker - he’s been compared to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Stephen Jay Gould, and even Carl Sagan in that regard. Although I never met him personally, I have long admired him as a scientist and public educator - he was not only the first climatologist I heard speak on the subject, but  his last book is also the most recent one I’d read. (And in light of the discussion brewing over Mich’s Empirical Surrender essay, it’s worth mentioning that although Schneider died of a heart attack, he was also undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer - a treatment regimen that he helped design.)

This is not going to be a eulogy post. There are many better ones out there, which I suggest you read nonetheless. (The third, from Dan Moutal, also includes a digest of Schneider’s talks, so you can begin to see why I hold him in such high regard.) Instead, I’m going to point out a disturbing trend I’ve noticed in the reaction to his passing.

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July 14, 2010

Cycle Tour Break: Hiking Excursion

Filed under: Personal, Travelogue — Tags: , , , — Brian D @ 2:29 pm

Because I promised I’d blog about this one…

This year, I’ve taken up cycle touring, trying to get enough exercise and experience in to consider a run to Vancouver next year. So far all I’ve managed to get in are weekend jaunts, which in general I quite enjoy. Last weekend, a small group and I did one such tour, designed to be an introduction to other new tourists, which turned out to be about a 90km ride followed by a 3km hike through the brush. It’s the third such jaunt I’ve done this year, but the first one I’ve done with a camera, and the first one I’ve had people ask me to blog, so…

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July 7, 2010

Do we think ourselves entitled to progress?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Michel F @ 7:34 am

Over the past year or so, certain events in the politics of the developed West (particularly the passage of health care reform and the recent police brutality against G20 protests in Toronto) have made me wonder about the progressive political movement and how it has changed over history. At this point in time, people who seek progress - real, numerically quantifiable improvements in the lives of everyone regardless of country or class - have unparalleled advantages compared to our political ancestors. We have the Internet and modern telecommunications, which many in positions of power are trying real hard to keep limited so that they don’t compromise their ability to direct public opinion and popular consent, to varying degrees. (That China of all places couldn’t keep mass strikes under wraps was a surprise to me.) We have the ability to communicate ideas and do runarounds on censorship that the labour organizers of the 1800s or suffragettes of the early 1900s would have considered an answer to their prayers, and we are so saturated with that technology and infrastructure that kids around the world use it. It is more difficult than ever to hide an injustice in another part of the world, whenever the wealthy and powerful try to pass the buck. We have reached critical mass of popularity for a lot of progressive actions in many countries; homophobia, sexism, and racism are seen to correlate negatively with youth, and each generation will be less intolerant than its predecessors.

Has that spoiled us?

I started asking this question around the time the healthcare reform bill in the United States was being debated, and liberal dissatisfaction was becoming more loudly voiced. A lot of the left wing felt that they had been betrayed because they had voted an overwhelming political majority into office and were still unable to enact significant policy changes. My personal opinion was “you were expecting to vote real changes into being, just like that?”. It was cynical of me…but it was also informed by knowledge of history. Labour organizers did not just vote the right to strike and organize into being. It was bought with decades of protests, illegal strikes, organizations, and walkouts, and often with the lives of union organizers, as was the case in the Grabow Riot to list just one example. In countries where labour laws are weak, union organizers still run the risk of being murdered. Woman’s suffrage activists, by necessity, could not just vote the women’s vote into being. They paid for it with protests and hunger strikes. I have yet to hear of any health care reform activists being arrested, put in restraints, and force fed. It’s also not enough to say “oh that happened way back then”; the last atrocity is always sooner ago than we’d like to admit. The response to the recent protests in Toronto was abominable, but compared to the 1985 firebombing of the MOVE organization headquarters in Philadelphia, we got off easy. And so on. The electoral unrest in Iran should have been a reminder to everyone what the bad old days were like. (more…)

June 24, 2010

Empirical Surrender

Filed under: Denialism, Philosophy of Science — Michel F @ 6:25 am

I am a skeptical apatheist, strict materialist, and avid follower of  the likes of P. Z. Myers and James Randi. I also believe in the effectiveness of acupuncture and other traditional Chinese medicine.

I admitted it. Then, I thought ‘Now what?’.

It took me a while to reconcile these positions. The first thing I realized, immediately, is that excuses for how skeptical I can be in all other cases won’t do. To the skeptic who is convinced I am holding a belief irrationally, my willingness to follow the evidence in other cases doesn’t justify the case in which I don’t. I hold that antivaxxer nonsense is dangerous, faith healing illusory, and homeopathy a waste of time. I don’t believe in any New Age superstitions. I’m a strict materialist (everything is either physical or information on a physical medium), and I disagree with any explanations of TCM or concepts of chi that involve magical energies. While I agree that most explanations of the phenomena behind TCM are unscientific, I do believe that there is an actual phenomena there that can be exploited for medical purposes (and eventually explained scientifically). I even have a very limited amateur hypothesis attempting to explain how it can work, that is consistent as I can make it with my layman’s understanding of the science. I have standards and heuristics for evaluating TCM practitioners, and only visit those who are both well versed in Western medicine and referred by members of the martial arts community whom I trust. All of this is besides the point. Those who insist on the strictest consistent standards of proof must say I’m cheering on a placebo. That I degrade other placebos does not change that fact. Moreover, without objective and rigorous evidence, I cannot prove them wrong. There’s still a debate on the efficacy of TCM going on in the academic circles, but in this case “still in debate” means “not enough objective proof yet”.

So, then, why do I not change my opinion? I came to believe in the efficacy of TCM for a reason, after all. A personal history of effective TCM treatment, as well as similar histories with people I knew personally, was where I first became convinced. My practice with the internal (‘soft’) martial arts and studies in cognitive science eventually led me to form a hypothesis of my own on how the mind interacted with the body, and how TCM utilized this. I do have evidence - but it’s anecdotal. I do have an explanatory framework - but it’s personal. What I can use to make sense of the phenomena in a way that convinces myself is utterly inadequate for convincing others. Yet I have no reason so far to doubt my own judgment or senses. Is there a solution? (more…)

By Way of Introduction

Filed under: Uncategorized — Michel F @ 6:21 am

Hello everybody. Brian’s such an awesome individual, he’s invited me post on this blog. He’s been extremely busy and Internet-compromised over the past few months, which is why he couldn’t take the time to write me an intro post. I don’t hold it against him, so I figured I’d do it myself.

I am a friend of Brian’s with a background in cognitive science and adult language instruction, though my interests run to many broader subjects (which I’ve discussed and debated Brian on, if you’re wondering why he lets me post here). I’ll leave this as a comment thread for anyone who wishes to make more specific inquiries about myself and my part on Left as an Exercise.

Best wishes and happy reading to you all.

March 19, 2010

Postmodernist Conservatism

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , — Brian D @ 3:59 pm

Everyone knows the basic frames behind liberal-conservative stereotyping: the liberal positions are full of wishy-washy flipflopping and the conservative ones are hypocritical. I’d always assumed that this was an exaggeration on a kernel of truth (due, for instance, to message discipline - if a liberal group values freedom of expression then conflicting opinions will appear in the group, while a conservative group values existing authorities leading to an image of infallibility, so admission of a mistake becomes impossible), combined with a healthy dose of political opportunism on both sides (just interpreted in different ways), but now, I’m not so sure.

A few days ago, I saw an interview between Rachel Maddow and J. D. Hayworth, a conservative former Representative currently challenging John McCain from the right. During that interview, something happened that crystallized a thought in my mind, which may actually explain the entirety of the ideological communication gap. Here’s the followup to the video, highlighting the exchange in question at 3:10:

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March 14, 2010

Obligatory Pi Day Remarks

Filed under: Commentary, Personal — Tags: — Brian D @ 8:02 pm

To all science-people (thanks for the heads-up, Steve!): Time variation of a fundamental dimensionless constant is a must-read example of… something. It’s certainly eye-opening.

To all non-science-people:

To all anti-science people (should any stumble upon this): Let me spell it out for you - the previous link was meant as satire. Though, given the cut-and-paste style of pseudoskepticism (illustrated wonderfully by Kate at ClimateSight and Nexus Six), it’d be interesting to try something similar and see if someone bites.

December 11, 2009

Monckton’s Exception

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , — Brian D @ 11:15 am

Definition 1: Godwin’s Law
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Definition 2: Unnamed (longstanding tradition re: Godwin’s Law)
After a Nazi or Hitler comparison is made, the thread is over. He who has made such a comparison has just lost.

Definition 3: Quirke’s Exception
Any intentional triggering of Godwin’s Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. (That is, the exception to Godwin’s Law is intentionally invoking Godwin’s Law.)

Definition 4: Monckton’s Exception
Comparisons of nonviolent activists to the Hitler Youth are kosher, even face-to-face, and especially if the person you’re speaking to is Jewish. (See also: Monckton’s Justification and Monckton’s Solution).

If you’re unfamiliar with this exception’s namesake, pick a random article or two and see for yourself. If he didn’t exist, comedians would have to invent him - but the comedians would have the good taste to keep him locked away and medicated rather than letting him try to influence global policy with his conspiracy theories.

December 8, 2009

What’s Not In The CRU Hack

Filed under: Denialism — Tags: , — Brian D @ 12:27 pm

This is my obligatory post on the CRU hack, which the denialist blogocave is referring to as “Climategate” while the pushback refers to it as “SwiftHack“. It grew out of a comment I did over at ClimateSight.

If you aren’t aware of the CRU hack, there’s an app for that. There’s a lot of good coverage on this, but there’s also a positively ludicrous amount of noise as well. The videos by Potholer54 and Peter Sinclair go into that somewhat, and there’s always SwiftHack if you want up-to-the-second information on it. (Aside: It’s sad that we need that, but oh well…)

This post isn’t about that, though. It’s about what’s not in the e-mails, and thus not causing any fallout. One of the best passages on this subject was also one of the first, from RealClimate:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Let’s take a look at the most common conspiracies and see what the CRU was saying about them in private over the last 13 years. The answers, below the fold, could be shocking.

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November 11, 2009

Review: Denialism

Filed under: Commentary, Denialism — Tags: , , — Brian D @ 9:53 pm

With a title like Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, how could I resist? I dove right in, expecting an interesting discussion on the subject and hoping it’d be more substantive and useful than Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future.

I’ll be brief. Don’t bother. While Unscientific America was vapid and shallow, it at least provided an effective overview of the subject. Denialism, on the other hand, is nothing but case studies of health-related antiscience scares (from Vioxx to GMOs). Even the section on antivaccination is strangely lacking - I’ve seen blog posts and magazine articles that do a better job on the subject (irony alert: That second link is authored by Chris Mooney, who also wrote Unscientific America). Oh, and they do it without citing Gavin Menzies as an authority on Chinese history. (If you’ve never heard of the fellow, he’s as much a Chinese historian as Immanuel Velikovsky is an astrophysicist.)

There’s precious little discussion on denialism in Denialism, except by example - and all of the examples have a narrow focus (mistrust of medical and agricultural science). There’s nothing on your traditional denial movements (a parting shot on AIDS deniers and one mention of moon-landing hoaxers, but nothing on creationism) and, surprisingly, a dearth of information on the most well-known contemporary denial-orchestration movement of our time (the tobacco fiasco), nor the most dangerous (climate denial). There’s nothing prescriptive in it except an even more vapid cry for better scientific communication - in other words, Unscientific America, only even less clear (at least Mooney and Kirshenbaum had the courtesy to discuss the role of journalism here). The only positive thing I can say about it is that it spends ample time reminding us that antiscience denialism is not isolated to one side of the political spectrum - while the majority of the non-antivax denial movements nowadays are predominantly right-wing, anti-health denialism has always had its claws stuck in the left, which is quoted from extensively.

Save your time and money. If this material interests you, Doubt Is Their Product is a far, far better book on the subject, even without trying to be - it actually discusses not only the tactics involved, but the path of information and the methods used by professionals to reshape debate. (It even has a strong medical denialism bias, and it *still* outperforms Denialism as an overview!) I suppose Denialism might have a place on a health policy wonk’s bookshelf, but as for a student of denialism, give it a pass.

See also: Tom Philpot: ‘Denialism’ Misses Its Targets.

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