About my grandmother's death

I just returned from a short trip to Italy to attend my grandmother Clara's funeral. I was there for my family, of course, since my grandmother has ceased to exist and will no longer be, ever.

Clara was close to her nephews and nieces, and she was always kind to us while we were growing up. Still, she didn't really die last week at age 95, but rather a few years earlier, when her mind suddenly turned from sharp and alert to hardly being able to recognize where she was or who was visiting her. Despite this, her body was strong, and she physically survived herself for several more years, years that were meaningless to her and painful for us.

Which is why the Catholic service we attended with family and friends rang so hollow, even preposterous. The young priest did his work as well as one would expect. Of course, he didn't know my grandmother, so he had to limit himself to generic statements like “her daughters were lucky to have her as mother” (regardless of what the reality may have been). But that, of course, wasn't the worst of it.

The priest had to utter the standard nonsense, such as “we thank god for her life” (including the meaningless last years of suffering?), or “we make sense of the mystery of death through our faith” (that's like saying that one makes sense of something by embracing nonsense). There is no mystery of death. Death is part of the natural cycle of life, and once the particular combination of atoms that makes our existence possible decays beyond repair we are gone. Sad but natural, no spooky “mystery” involved, no need to prey on people’s emotions and hopes.

My skepticism, indeed my irritation, during the service was of course to be expected. After all, I'm a godless atheist. But I had time to look around me and watch the reactions of people I know well. Perhaps the most distraught of my relatives was my aunt, my mother's sister. She is allegedly a devout Catholic, and yet the priest's words seemed to be of no comfort at all to her, as if she didn't really believe that her mother was now in “a better place,” as if she realized just as much as I did that this was the final curtain, with no possibility of an encore.

And than there was one of my brothers, who is what I think of as a smart Catholic. It still isn't exactly clear to me what he believes, but he often runs into trouble with the more pious branches of the family because of his rejection of concepts like demons and hell. More than anything else he seemed to be ironically amused at the priest's clumsy attempts to turn my grandmother's funeral into a “joyous” occasion for celebrating “the word of god.”

Clara will be cremated, another instance in which the self-professed infallible Popes of the Catholic faith apparently changed their mind about what scripture says: it used to be that you had to preserve the dead body while waiting for the end time resurrection, apparently now ashes are ok, god will simply add back the necessary water (and restore the low level of entropy).

Funerals, of course, are for the living, not the departed. It was nice to be able to offer as much comfort as I could to my mother, my brothers, my cousins, and my aunt. That comfort did not derive from the malicious illusion that we will all soon see Clara again. It derived from the knowledge that we are here for each other, to celebrate the joys of life together, but also to share the inevitable painful losses. Such is the human condition, but we are strong enough to be able to bear it with the help of our loved ones, no divine givers of random suffering need apply.

Julia's Picks

* Why antidepressants may be no better than placebos.

* Relatedly, a New Yorker article takes a skeptical look at the field of psychiatry as a whole, and asks whether it can even be considered a science.

* You may be saved on Judgment Day, but what happens to the pets you leave behind?

* A report card citing violations of physical laws in movies.

* In scientific research, the rich get richer -- what can we do about the "Matthew Effect"?

* Eliezer's drawn up a great list of "conversation halters," tactics that stonewall debate.

Massimo's picks

* xkcd on what it means to join the tautology club...

* Did science spur modern democracy?

* A touching essay against suicide by my friend Jennifer Michael Hecht. With all due respect, however, I am not convinced.

* How to turn your wedding into a science experiment.

* Pompous French philosopher caught citing a fictional colleague to support his "scholarship." Oops.

* How the brain gets jokes.

* The kind of news people share online. You'd be surprised, it's not all about sex.

* There's no hatred like faith-based hatred.

* Jon Stewart on how mind-boggling stupid Sarah Palin is.

Podcast Teaser: The Great Atheist Debate over the limits of science

A new word has entered the atheist vocabulary of late: “accommodationist.” It is meant as a derogatory term toward those atheists and assorted rationalists who try to extend a metaphorical olive branch to moderate religionists and find common ground against the real danger, fundamentalism (of any kind, religious or not). To give you an idea of the landscape, I think it is fair to count Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers among the “purists,” while Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and yours truly have been labelled as accommodationists.

Contrary to what many people think, this isn’t a debate about pragmatic tactics in the culture wars, it is a matter of principle. Few people — possibly not even Dawkins — would disagree that, say, the fight for a true separation of church and state has to include a broad coalition of religious and non-religious groups, partly because the goal is in the interest of both parties, and partly because there simply wouldn’t be hope for just secular groups to prevail, considering that they represent a (sizable) minority of the population.

The Great Atheist debate is a matter of principle because it hinges on the epistemic limits of science. When Dawkins says that science can refute “the God hypothesis,” or Coyne claims that a 900-ft Jesus appearing in London (why London?) would disprove atheism, they are making epistemological assertions that are founded on a naive understanding of philosophy of science (and it is interesting that both of these esteemed colleagues scoff at the very idea that philosophy has anything to contribute to the debate).

The argument on the “accommodationist” side (a term that deliberately sounds like “collaborationist,” presumably to insinuate a negative connotation, a logical fallacy known as poisoning the well) is that there is a distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism. I first heard this argument from my friend Genie Scott several years ago, and — not having any background in philosophy (at the time I was a scientist) — reacted pretty much like Dawkins and Coyne. But a moment of serious reflection shows that Scott is correct: naturalism is the idea that all there is in the universe is natural phenomena and natural laws, i.e. there is no supernatural. Philosophical naturalism is essentially the atheist’s (eminently reasonable) position, grounded on serious philosophical arguments (e.g., the argument from evil) and informed (but, crucially, not determined) by science — science provides the most reasonable explanation for questions of origins, so it makes sense to accept those instead of fanciful stories about gods and angels that do not amount to explanations at all.

Methodological naturalism is what science does: science cannot investigate the supernatural because the latter — by definition — can be compatible with any given empirical observation, and moreover it simply cannot be experimented upon. But science doesn’t need the stronger philosophical position, it works very nicely by using the methodological (i.e., pragmatic) stance that what it studies likely has a natural explanation, so let’s go and find out if we can.

A common strategy of the “purist” camp is to say that science falsifies specific religious notions, such as Noah’s flood, or that the earth is 6,000 years old. Besides the fact that it is funny for a philosopher to see scientists invoking Popper’s idea of falsificationism (which has been superseded decades ago in philosophy of science), this simply won’t do, for two reasons. First, the claim is that science can reject the God hypothesis, not just a specific version of it. Plenty of Christians do not read the Bible literally, so any “falsification” based on that approach is out the window. But it gets worse: science technically cannot even reject young earth creationism because of an escape clause known in some circles as “last Thursdaysm.” The idea is that, yes, the earth may look like it is billions of years old, and it may look like there are millions of fossils scattered throughout the geological column. But in fact the world was created by god last Thursday (or whenever), and he arranged it this way just to test our faith.

Let us be clear on this: regardless of how many Christians actually subscribe to some version of last Thursdaysm (we don’t know, there are no polls), the example unequivocally shows why science has no business testing supernatural hypotheses: because they are not hypotheses at all, just like supernatural “explanations” do not, in fact, explain anything. They are just elaborate and fanciful admissions of ignorance.

Last Thursdaysm, however, gets into deep theological and philosophical troubles, for what does this sort of divine behavior tell us about the nature of god? Is he a cosmic trickster bent on providing us with the gift of reason only to hurl us into hell if we use it properly? And we are supposed to honor and adore this guy? Notice too that the philosophical counter here gets off the ground by acknowledging the science as background information (i.e., the earth really is much older than 6,000 years), but does not in fact depend crucially on it for its rejoinder (after all, Hume’s and Kant’s arguments against the existence of god were very persuasive before Darwin and Einstein).

So, dear readers and podcast listeners, what do you think of the Great Atheist debate? What about the distinction between science and philosophy that underlies it? What are the epistemic limits of science, and do they somehow constitute a problem for the scientific endeavor?

How to Want to Change Your Mind

Out of all the cognitive biases and logical fallacies, I think the most pernicious of all is a kind of meta-bias, one underlying tendency that makes us more susceptible to all of the others: simply not wanting to be wrong. It's so automatic that it's hard to notice it coloring your judgment unless you really pay attention, but once you do, you realize how frequently it makes you grasp for a fallacious argument just so you don't have to admit to yourself that you were wrong. I'm definitely no exception -- I can't count the number of times I've caught myself reacting to an argument by asking myself, "OK, why is that false?" rather than "Is that false?"

Eventually, I was struck with one of the fundamental ironies of rationalism: that if I want to be actually right as much as possible, in general, then I have to stop caring about being right in any particular disagreement. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to update my beliefs when the evidence calls for it. Below, six tricks I've picked up during my ongoing project of becoming fine with being wrong:

- Divorce your belief from your self. We get so attached to ideas that we think of them as part of ourselves, so that when someone attacks a belief we hold, it feels like an attack on us personally, and we automatically jump into defensive mode. To prevent that from happening, I try thinking of my belief as no longer being my belief, just a belief that I'm examining alongside other alternatives. (In fact, I find it useful to visualize this figuratively, imagining the belief under discussion as being located somewhere a few feet away from my body. Weird, but you'd be surprised how much it can help lessen your sense of identification with the idea.)

- Think of disagreements as collaborative, not adversarial. When I'm disagreeing with someone, I try re-framing the conversation in my mind as, "We're working together to try to figure out the truth about X" instead of "we're debating X." That helps me think of my goal as simply getting the correct answer, as opposed to winning. (Relatedly, I hate the practice of playing devil's advocate. I think it just gets us more in the habit of figuring out how to win, as opposed to figuring out the truth.)

- Visualize being wrong. This tip's from Eliezer Yudkowsky, of Less Wrong; he suggests that before you pass judgment on a claim you find unpalatable, that you first visualize how you would react and cope if it did turn out to be true. "The hope is that it takes less courage to visualize an uncomfortable state of affairs as a thought experiment, than to consider how likely it is to be true. But then after you do the former, it becomes easier to do the latter," Yudkowsky says.

- Take the long view. Acknowledging you're wrong seems less distasteful when you consider the long-term benefits: If people learn that you're willing to concede a point if it's warranted, then on those occasions when you don't concede, they'll be more likely to take your objections seriously rather than dismissing them as obstinacy. So I try to think of conceding a point as an investment in my future power to convince people of things.

- Congratulate yourself on being objective, not on being right. Part of the reason it's so hard to change our minds is that our self-image is bound up in being right. When we're right we feel proud; when we're wrong we feel disappointed or ashamed. Pride and disappointment can be useful motivating tools, so I'm not suggesting you try to shed them altogether, but they're being put towards a bad end here. Instead, I've been trying to re-train myself to feel pride whenever I consider an issue as objectively and fair-mindedly as possible, rather than whenever my initial belief about an issue happens to be correct.

- If you can't overcome your competitive instinct, re-direct it. Sometimes I really can't shake my desire to be right, to win. Ultimately, I hope I'll overcome that desire, but in the meantime I can at least channel it towards more productive ends: When I'm finding myself reluctant to admit that someone's points are stronger than mine, I remind myself that if I adopt those new beliefs, I can use them to win a future argument with someone else who holds my current beliefs. (Hey, I didn't say I was proud of this one -- but it works, so I'm sharing!)

Any recommendations for techniques you use to get yourself to be more comfortable with being wrong? I'd love to hear 'em.

Massimo's picks

* Yours truly kicks Michael Horner's ass during a debate at the University of Alberta on the question of whether we need gods to be moral. (Duh, no.)

* eSkeptic on why women have sex. It's the usual plausible yet untestable concoction of evolutionary psychological just-so stories.

* Christians complaining about other Christians' infringement on their freedom of speech. How amusing.

* On the epistemic limits of evolutionary biology, and how sometimes even philosophers of science can be surprised.

* School officials pull the Merriam Webster's dictionary because one parent complains: it contains the term "oral sex."

* What's the ontology of numbers?

* Dozens end up in the hospital: "holy water" poisoning...

* Finally, a sane discussion of the hoopla about the "Altenberg 16" meeting that I organzied two years ago, and an expose` of pseudo-journalist Suzan Mazur.

Julia's Picks

* A geologist friend of mine up at Yale just made a groundbreaking discovery that appeared in Science this week: we now know how to infer the color of a dinosaur from its fossil. Spoiler alert: They were pretty zany-looking.

* The infamous, severely flawed paper that originally linked vaccines and autism has finally been officially repudiated by the journal that published it.

* Great interview with David Albert, a Columbia philosopher of science, touching on questions like: How is our everyday notion of time flawed? and What are some of the biggest misconceptions about science? (Note: you can click "Interview transcript" if you'd rather read than watch.)

* Ricky Gervais explains Genesis.

* Hundreds of protestors last week downed entire bottles of homeopathic pills, to prove they're ineffectual.

* Six fields in which the "professionals" don't know what they're talking about, from stock experts to wine tasters.

Podcast Teaser: Can history be a science?

Well, we did it! The first episode of Rationally Speaking, the podcast, is out and available both directly from our New York City Skeptics-sponsored web site and from the iTunes store. The second episode will come out in time for Valentine’s Day, and it will focus on the science and philosophy of love. For our third podcast we will have our first live guest, Prof. Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut. Peter is a biologist by training, with interests ranging from theoretical ecology to population biology to biostatistics. In particular, much of his work has focused on what determines population cycles, a problem to which he has applied an array of statistical and conceptual tools, including chaos theory.

More recently though, Peter has made headlines in Nature magazine for work at the borderlines between science and of all things, history. He has published three books on the topic: Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall (Princeton University Press, 2003), War and Peace and War: The Life Cycles of Imperial Nations (Pi Press, 2006), and Secular Cycles (co-authored with S.A. Nefedov, Princeton University Press, 2009).

In War and Peace and War Peter argues that empires (his examples include the Roman and Russian empires as well as the United States) form and collapse because of continuous cycles of cooperation and conflict. Initially, humans band together and cooperate in the face of common enemies or other challenges, but then increasing prosperity is not equally distributed, with rich people becoming disproportionately rich. This causes conflict, and the consequent breakdown of cooperation, which in turn leads to collapse.

Of course, Peter is not the only scientist to have turned to history in an attempt to make that field more scientific, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse immediately come to mind (interestingly, unlike Turchin, Diamond argues that the collapse of civilization is the result of environmental disasters, not of internally generated social disruptions). And naturally, many historians vehemently object to what they perceive as a crude scientistic attempt at interdisciplinary colonization.

Which raises the question of the podcast, and about which Julia and I would like to hear your opinion: can history be studied and understood in a scientific manner? Are there patterns and logic(s) to history, or is it, as the saying goes, just one damn thing after another? For that matter, how do we determine where the demarcation line — as Karl Popper famously called it — between science and non-science falls, and why?