Several times now I have recommended Jennifer Hecht's book, Doubt: a history, and another reason to do so is her treatment of skepticism during the peak of Islamic intellectual achievements (c. 700-1000 CE), the same period during which Europe was plummeting to the depth of its Dark Age.
Just to wet your appetite, consider the story of Abu Bakr Al-Razi, who lived from 854 to 925. While he was praised and accepted by his community because of his charitable work, he also wrote scathing criticisms of Islam and religion in general. Titles of his books included gems such as “The Prophet's Fraudulent Tricks,” “The Stratagems of Those Who Claim to Be Prophets” (this one could have been written by James Randi or Michael Shermer!), and even “On the Refutation of Revealed Religions” (notice the plural in the title). One can get killed for much less in today's “civilized” world.
Al-Razi clearly understood the distinction between common religious people and religious and political authorities, with the latter exploiting the naïve beliefs of the first ones; he also saw the existence of many religions as a pretty good clue that none of them got it right (a powerful argument against the so-called Pascal wager).
Here is what Al-Razi, quoted by Hecht, had to say about the Koran: “By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: 'produce something like it?!'” This is precisely the sort of reaction that modern humanists have whenever they are told about the so-called “good book” or one of its derivatives (like the Koran), and it is rather humbling (and, frankly, a bit depressing) to see how someone saw things so clearly already twelve centuries ago.
What was Al-Razi's answer to those who claim that religion is the only way to find meaning in life and deal with the reality of existence? Philosophy, naturally. As he elegantly put it: “No soul can be purged from the turbidity of this world and escape to the next, except by contemplating philosophy. If a person contemplates philosophy and comprehends anything, be it ever so small, his soul is purged from this turbidity and is saved.” Why would one want to be tied by religion (whose original meaning is in fact “to tie fast,” from the Latin religare), rather than develop love of wisdom, the root meaning of philosophy?
Rationally Speaking: an archived blog about science & philosophy, by Massimo Pigliucci
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
On the pseudo-profoundity of some Eastern philosophy
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?” “What did your face look like before your ancestors were born?” These are some allegedly profound questions posed by Zen masters, as discussed in Doubt: a History, by Jennifer Hecht. It is also the sort of philo-bubble that gives philosophy a bad name – and sells plenty of titles in the Eastern philosophy section of bookstores.
Consider the first question: it is, in fact, utter nonsense, since clapping – by definition – requires two hands (no, you are not clapping if you bang your hand on another source, you are just making noise). The second question is nonsense on stilts, since I did not exist before my ancestors were born, and I need to exist in order to have a face. These are not questions to which it is difficult to find an answer because they are too deep, there is no answer because there is no question, and if you spend decades of your life seeking enlightenment this way, I feel sorry for all the waste of human potential. (And no, I don't believe in metaphorical or allegorical questions, in case you were wondering.)
More generally, it could be argued that there is no such thing as Eastern philosophy – though certainly not all output in that area is so useless as the two questions discussed above. That is because philosophy is an activity of a particular kind, invented 25 centuries ago in Greece. Bear with me, I'm not trying to be Euro-centric, or deferring only to DWM's (Dead White Males). Philosophy, as it has been understood ever since Plato and until pretty recently, is a form of inquiry into the nature of the world and the human condition. Such inquiry is supposed to be conducted by the use of logical reasoning, where possible informed by empirical evidence (hence the origin of science, initially called, appropriately enough, experimental or natural philosophy).
Now, we can find plenty of interesting and stimulating Eastern texts produced over the last couple of millennia, from a variety of traditions including Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and so forth. But none of these texts is philosophical in nature because they do not attempt to argue for a position by using logic and evidence. On the contrary, they are more alike to ancient Jewish (and then Christian) mystical writings, and are therefore not philosophy under any reasonable understanding of the term.
Look, it's like saying that soccer and (American) football are the same thing because they are both played with balls, they simply originated on two different continents. They are certainly not the same thing. They are different sports, using different rules, requiring different skills, and with very distinct histories. To say that American football isn't soccer is not a criticism or a value judgment (ok, I admit that I will be watching the World Cup next month, while I skipped the Superbowl ever since they made it impossible for Janet Jackson to show her breasts again). To claim a difference is simply to state a matter of fact about the two sports. Similarly, Eastern thought – whatever it is, and however useful it may be – is not philosophy. And when it consists of asking questions about sound made by trees falling in forests where nobody listens, well, just answer 42 – it's as good an insight into the question of life, the universe and everything as you'll ever find, and it won't require decades of meditation staring at a wall.
Consider the first question: it is, in fact, utter nonsense, since clapping – by definition – requires two hands (no, you are not clapping if you bang your hand on another source, you are just making noise). The second question is nonsense on stilts, since I did not exist before my ancestors were born, and I need to exist in order to have a face. These are not questions to which it is difficult to find an answer because they are too deep, there is no answer because there is no question, and if you spend decades of your life seeking enlightenment this way, I feel sorry for all the waste of human potential. (And no, I don't believe in metaphorical or allegorical questions, in case you were wondering.)
More generally, it could be argued that there is no such thing as Eastern philosophy – though certainly not all output in that area is so useless as the two questions discussed above. That is because philosophy is an activity of a particular kind, invented 25 centuries ago in Greece. Bear with me, I'm not trying to be Euro-centric, or deferring only to DWM's (Dead White Males). Philosophy, as it has been understood ever since Plato and until pretty recently, is a form of inquiry into the nature of the world and the human condition. Such inquiry is supposed to be conducted by the use of logical reasoning, where possible informed by empirical evidence (hence the origin of science, initially called, appropriately enough, experimental or natural philosophy).
Now, we can find plenty of interesting and stimulating Eastern texts produced over the last couple of millennia, from a variety of traditions including Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and so forth. But none of these texts is philosophical in nature because they do not attempt to argue for a position by using logic and evidence. On the contrary, they are more alike to ancient Jewish (and then Christian) mystical writings, and are therefore not philosophy under any reasonable understanding of the term.
Look, it's like saying that soccer and (American) football are the same thing because they are both played with balls, they simply originated on two different continents. They are certainly not the same thing. They are different sports, using different rules, requiring different skills, and with very distinct histories. To say that American football isn't soccer is not a criticism or a value judgment (ok, I admit that I will be watching the World Cup next month, while I skipped the Superbowl ever since they made it impossible for Janet Jackson to show her breasts again). To claim a difference is simply to state a matter of fact about the two sports. Similarly, Eastern thought – whatever it is, and however useful it may be – is not philosophy. And when it consists of asking questions about sound made by trees falling in forests where nobody listens, well, just answer 42 – it's as good an insight into the question of life, the universe and everything as you'll ever find, and it won't require decades of meditation staring at a wall.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Couldn't have said it better myself
It happens very rarely that a secular humanist listens to the radio in the United States and hears a blunt, no-nonsense statement of how ridiculous the prevailing worldview really is. I couldn't help but chuckling at the gym the other day when I had precisely one of these rare occurrences while listening to an interview of novelist Philip Roth conducted by Terry Gross for her National Public Radio program, Fresh Air.
The two were talking about Roth's latest book, Everyman, which follows the life of an average individual through his medical record, i.e., through the slow but steady decay of his body. Inevitably, the book touches on issues of sexuality (what happens when you are seventy and still have a strong libido?), meaning of life (or lack thereof), and, of course, death.
Gross at one point couldn't help herself from asking Roth – who said earlier that he is not religious -- whether he ever wishes that he were a believer. “I have no desire for the irrational,” was Roth's matter of fact (and absolutely not hostile) response. Gross, undaunted, commented that a lot of people would say that rationality goes only so far in this world, a typical nonsensical comeback that is in fact commonly perceived as a “deep” insight and a clear trump card against the poor rationalist fool. But Roth simply replied: “if only it went further in this world,” and, a few seconds later, again referring to religion and beliefs in gods and the afterlife, “I have no taste for delusion.”
Wow, that was a nice dose of fresh air indeed. Thanks Philip.
The two were talking about Roth's latest book, Everyman, which follows the life of an average individual through his medical record, i.e., through the slow but steady decay of his body. Inevitably, the book touches on issues of sexuality (what happens when you are seventy and still have a strong libido?), meaning of life (or lack thereof), and, of course, death.
Gross at one point couldn't help herself from asking Roth – who said earlier that he is not religious -- whether he ever wishes that he were a believer. “I have no desire for the irrational,” was Roth's matter of fact (and absolutely not hostile) response. Gross, undaunted, commented that a lot of people would say that rationality goes only so far in this world, a typical nonsensical comeback that is in fact commonly perceived as a “deep” insight and a clear trump card against the poor rationalist fool. But Roth simply replied: “if only it went further in this world,” and, a few seconds later, again referring to religion and beliefs in gods and the afterlife, “I have no taste for delusion.”
Wow, that was a nice dose of fresh air indeed. Thanks Philip.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Tricks of the brain
If you think your brain is an objective processor of data about the world, capable of reaching objective, unbiased conclusions, think again. And if you to really worry about it, then read a nicely written little booklet by Cordelia Fine, A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives. Our brain can be vain, emotional, deluded, pigheaded, secretive, and bigoted, all of which are words appearing in the chapter titles of Fine's book.
For example, consider vanity. In an experiment with male college students (psychologist's favored animal subjects), a group was told they had performed exceedingly well on a test for manual dexterity, while another was told they did pretty badly – except that the evaluations were assigned randomly to the two groups. When prompted for explanations, students who had to provide them immediately were at a bit of a loss, but those who had a few days to think about the experience had apparently managed to concoct all sorts of apparently logical (but in fact bogus) reasons for their performance. Seems that our brains are great story tellers indeed, especially about themselves.
Being emotional has a bad reputation, unless you like English movies set in the Victorian age, but in fact it turns out that emotions often come to our rescue. Another experiment reported by Fine concerns subjects who were asked to bet on different decks of cards, some of which were biased to occasionally yield high losses and others that were more benign. The statistical underpinning was too complex to be arrived at without actual numerical evaluations of the odds, and yet it turns out that subjects developed an intuitive feeling for the decks to avoid. Interestingly, the experimenters were able to show that the subjects responded emotionally (heightened skin conductance) to the bad decks even before they began to actually implement their intuitions about the game. It seems that an unconscious “fear of the bad deck” was the first response of the brain. Perhaps we should seriously entertain what our emotional intuitions tells us before dismissing them as “irrational.”
A deluded brain, you say? Indeed, just consider another experiment in which people were asked a rather simple question: are you happy with your social life? Generally, subjects answer in the positive, and can provide “evidence” that this is in fact the case. But now ask the same question slightly differently: are you un-happy with your social life? Turns out that most respondents admit to unhappiness, and can as easily provide supporting evidence from their recent experiences. The possibilities for manipulating the public through polls and advertisements are endless. And, of course, have been exploited for a long time.
Wanna know how pigheaded your brain can be? Easily done, again through one of those cunning psychological experiments perpetrated by scientists who seem to derive an unholy degree of pleasure from showing the rest of us how embarrassing it can be to be human (as Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Hocus Pocus). For example, it isn't particularly surprising that explicitly negative headlines in a newspaper will cast a shadow on someone's reputation. What is a bit more surprising is that an innuendo, say a title ending with a question mark, has a similar effect. And even more disturbingly, someone's reputation (and likelihood to, say, win an election) can be affected even by a positive headline, actually denying the reality of charges. Apparently, our pigheaded brains remember the part of the headline mentioning the charge, but not the little and yet crucial negation that accompanies the title of the article!
In what sense are human brains “secretive”? Fine briefly reviews evidence that poses the disquieting question of who or what really is in charge “up there.” We are all familiar with the phenomenon by which repeated tasks that initially require our conscious attention (like driving) become more and more automated while control is delegated to unconscious processing. But the famous “tap your finger” experiment by Benjamin Libet is a window into the possibility that we might routinely be much less in control than we think. Libet asked volunteers to spontaneously decide when to tap a finger, then measured what was going on in terms of electrical potentials inside their bodies and brains. Not only he detected a “readiness potential,” i.e. increased activity in the brain before the muscles were actually activated, but he measured that such potential occurred about one third of a second before the volunteers were aware of their decision to move the finger! Apparently, the decision to engage in the action came from somewhere in the unconscious of the brain, and was made apparent to the conscious after the causal chain eventually leading to the action itself had already started. Again, who's in charge here?
If all of this hasn't convinced you to question your brain's motives and reliability, the final chapter of Fine's book deals with bigotry, and how difficult it is to get rid of. Studies show that if one “primes” the brain (i.e., uses words or symbols connected to a particular concept, like mother, or race) with neutral words, the effect is different depending on whether one is prejudiced on that particular issue or not. So, for example, a racist primed with neutral words about black people will react negatively, while a non-racist will not. However, if the priming is done with negative words, or if the subject is tired, then even non-racists are subject to accept racial prejudices. This goes a long way toward explaining how difficult it is to maintain non-biased opinions when under a barrage of emotionally-charged messages in the media, and presumably also while we are stressed, or simply tired, by our own daily affairs. Moreover, psychologists have discovered that will power is in very limited supply, so that if you spend a lot of mental energy, say, avoiding to overeat and trying to follow a healthy life style, your guard may be too low to protect yourself against ideological assaults that would require a fresh and vigilant mind to be detected. Not a pretty trade-off, if you ask me.
Fine's message isn't that we shouldn't trust our brains – after all, we have no choice! Rather, the idea is that by knowing about our natural tendencies toward biased thinking we will be better able to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism about ourselves and others. The brain is the most crucial of our organs, pity that most of us don't bother to read even a short and sensible manual for its proper care and usage.
For example, consider vanity. In an experiment with male college students (psychologist's favored animal subjects), a group was told they had performed exceedingly well on a test for manual dexterity, while another was told they did pretty badly – except that the evaluations were assigned randomly to the two groups. When prompted for explanations, students who had to provide them immediately were at a bit of a loss, but those who had a few days to think about the experience had apparently managed to concoct all sorts of apparently logical (but in fact bogus) reasons for their performance. Seems that our brains are great story tellers indeed, especially about themselves.
Being emotional has a bad reputation, unless you like English movies set in the Victorian age, but in fact it turns out that emotions often come to our rescue. Another experiment reported by Fine concerns subjects who were asked to bet on different decks of cards, some of which were biased to occasionally yield high losses and others that were more benign. The statistical underpinning was too complex to be arrived at without actual numerical evaluations of the odds, and yet it turns out that subjects developed an intuitive feeling for the decks to avoid. Interestingly, the experimenters were able to show that the subjects responded emotionally (heightened skin conductance) to the bad decks even before they began to actually implement their intuitions about the game. It seems that an unconscious “fear of the bad deck” was the first response of the brain. Perhaps we should seriously entertain what our emotional intuitions tells us before dismissing them as “irrational.”
A deluded brain, you say? Indeed, just consider another experiment in which people were asked a rather simple question: are you happy with your social life? Generally, subjects answer in the positive, and can provide “evidence” that this is in fact the case. But now ask the same question slightly differently: are you un-happy with your social life? Turns out that most respondents admit to unhappiness, and can as easily provide supporting evidence from their recent experiences. The possibilities for manipulating the public through polls and advertisements are endless. And, of course, have been exploited for a long time.
Wanna know how pigheaded your brain can be? Easily done, again through one of those cunning psychological experiments perpetrated by scientists who seem to derive an unholy degree of pleasure from showing the rest of us how embarrassing it can be to be human (as Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Hocus Pocus). For example, it isn't particularly surprising that explicitly negative headlines in a newspaper will cast a shadow on someone's reputation. What is a bit more surprising is that an innuendo, say a title ending with a question mark, has a similar effect. And even more disturbingly, someone's reputation (and likelihood to, say, win an election) can be affected even by a positive headline, actually denying the reality of charges. Apparently, our pigheaded brains remember the part of the headline mentioning the charge, but not the little and yet crucial negation that accompanies the title of the article!
In what sense are human brains “secretive”? Fine briefly reviews evidence that poses the disquieting question of who or what really is in charge “up there.” We are all familiar with the phenomenon by which repeated tasks that initially require our conscious attention (like driving) become more and more automated while control is delegated to unconscious processing. But the famous “tap your finger” experiment by Benjamin Libet is a window into the possibility that we might routinely be much less in control than we think. Libet asked volunteers to spontaneously decide when to tap a finger, then measured what was going on in terms of electrical potentials inside their bodies and brains. Not only he detected a “readiness potential,” i.e. increased activity in the brain before the muscles were actually activated, but he measured that such potential occurred about one third of a second before the volunteers were aware of their decision to move the finger! Apparently, the decision to engage in the action came from somewhere in the unconscious of the brain, and was made apparent to the conscious after the causal chain eventually leading to the action itself had already started. Again, who's in charge here?
If all of this hasn't convinced you to question your brain's motives and reliability, the final chapter of Fine's book deals with bigotry, and how difficult it is to get rid of. Studies show that if one “primes” the brain (i.e., uses words or symbols connected to a particular concept, like mother, or race) with neutral words, the effect is different depending on whether one is prejudiced on that particular issue or not. So, for example, a racist primed with neutral words about black people will react negatively, while a non-racist will not. However, if the priming is done with negative words, or if the subject is tired, then even non-racists are subject to accept racial prejudices. This goes a long way toward explaining how difficult it is to maintain non-biased opinions when under a barrage of emotionally-charged messages in the media, and presumably also while we are stressed, or simply tired, by our own daily affairs. Moreover, psychologists have discovered that will power is in very limited supply, so that if you spend a lot of mental energy, say, avoiding to overeat and trying to follow a healthy life style, your guard may be too low to protect yourself against ideological assaults that would require a fresh and vigilant mind to be detected. Not a pretty trade-off, if you ask me.
Fine's message isn't that we shouldn't trust our brains – after all, we have no choice! Rather, the idea is that by knowing about our natural tendencies toward biased thinking we will be better able to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism about ourselves and others. The brain is the most crucial of our organs, pity that most of us don't bother to read even a short and sensible manual for its proper care and usage.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Dems ahead, except for the fear-mongering factor
The latest opinion poll on how Americans perceive the political situation in this country, conducted by The New York Times and CBS, is interesting and encouraging for more than one reason. Not only Bush's approval ratings keep spiraling down, but the Republicans are losing to the Democrats on almost every count. And the few exceptions are very revealing.
For example, Americans think that Democrats represent their moral values better than Republicans 50-37 (the numbers don't add up to 100 because of the usual undecided). This is astounding, considering that “moral issues” gave the presidency to George the second time around (well, actually the first time, since in 2000 he stole the election). It means that Democrats – despite their lack of ideas and leadership – have managed to turn around the moral tide that kicked them out of the House, the Senate, and the White House in recent years. Good news for the 2006 elections.
It is no surprise that Democrats do better than Reps on issues such as immigration (45-29), the war on Iraq (48-30), education (a whopping 53-25!), protection of civil liberties (62-22), health care (62-19), and even gas prices (57-11). What is interesting, on the other hand, is that the progressives beat the conservatives at an issue such as taxes! 55% (against 27%) of the interviewed people said the Democrats would ensure a more fair system of taxation than Republicans. Could it be that the people are beginning to realize that the Republican version of the American Dream is a big scam meant to favor the already ultra-rich?
What is really fascinating (or, rather, irritating), however, is that the poll also shows that a large majority of Americans (55-29) still thinks that Republicans do a better job at insuring that we have a strong military – despite the obvious failures of said military in Iraq, thanks to the unconscionable “leadership” of Donald Rumsfeld (and let us not forget that 9/11 happened under Bush's, not Clinton's, nose). Even here, however, things are not quite so honky-dory for the hawks currently inhabiting Capitol Hill, since they win on the question of making the right decisions when it comes to dealing with terrorism, but only 40-35, a rather slim margin indeed.
Given all this, is it a surprise that the White House and his Republican allies are betting everything on stepping up the fear mongering and the “we are at war” rhetoric? (One cannot possibly be at war with a terrorist organization, just as there can't be a war on cancer, on drugs, or poverty -- all of these are category mistakes, but that's another story.) It's all they've got, folks, and if the American people begin to see through that last desperate gimmick, well, we might be in for some real change over the next few years.
For example, Americans think that Democrats represent their moral values better than Republicans 50-37 (the numbers don't add up to 100 because of the usual undecided). This is astounding, considering that “moral issues” gave the presidency to George the second time around (well, actually the first time, since in 2000 he stole the election). It means that Democrats – despite their lack of ideas and leadership – have managed to turn around the moral tide that kicked them out of the House, the Senate, and the White House in recent years. Good news for the 2006 elections.
It is no surprise that Democrats do better than Reps on issues such as immigration (45-29), the war on Iraq (48-30), education (a whopping 53-25!), protection of civil liberties (62-22), health care (62-19), and even gas prices (57-11). What is interesting, on the other hand, is that the progressives beat the conservatives at an issue such as taxes! 55% (against 27%) of the interviewed people said the Democrats would ensure a more fair system of taxation than Republicans. Could it be that the people are beginning to realize that the Republican version of the American Dream is a big scam meant to favor the already ultra-rich?
What is really fascinating (or, rather, irritating), however, is that the poll also shows that a large majority of Americans (55-29) still thinks that Republicans do a better job at insuring that we have a strong military – despite the obvious failures of said military in Iraq, thanks to the unconscionable “leadership” of Donald Rumsfeld (and let us not forget that 9/11 happened under Bush's, not Clinton's, nose). Even here, however, things are not quite so honky-dory for the hawks currently inhabiting Capitol Hill, since they win on the question of making the right decisions when it comes to dealing with terrorism, but only 40-35, a rather slim margin indeed.
Given all this, is it a surprise that the White House and his Republican allies are betting everything on stepping up the fear mongering and the “we are at war” rhetoric? (One cannot possibly be at war with a terrorist organization, just as there can't be a war on cancer, on drugs, or poverty -- all of these are category mistakes, but that's another story.) It's all they've got, folks, and if the American people begin to see through that last desperate gimmick, well, we might be in for some real change over the next few years.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Colbert-Stewart 2008
By now most people who pay attention even superficially to the news know about the spectacular appearance of Comedy Central’s Steve Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner a few days ago. At first I thought it was superfluous to write about it, because it has already been all over the blogosphere, so why add my obviously liberally biased two cents? (In a nutshell: I thought he was very funny, incredibly gutsy, and that any talk of being “offensive” to the President entirely misses the point.)
Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is a serious issue concerning comedians-turned-journalists who mock the establishment and manage to tell it like it really is. Jon Stewart, also of Comedy Central fame, did a similar number last year with those buffoons who used to conduct the now thankfully defunct “Crossfire” show on CNN, taking them to task for the idiots they really are. Very much like Colbert did with Bush, Scalia, McCain and an assorted number of generals who were sitting right next to him the other night.
The issue is this: why don’t we see people who actually have a frank (and even funny!) view of reality actually run for office? Why not start a campaign for a Colbert-Stewart (or Stewart-Colbert, I don’t care) Presidential run in ‘08? Oh, you think it’s ridiculous to ask two comedians to run for an office of such importance? But we have had a bad actor (Regan) in the past, and we have a bubbling idiot (Bush) at the moment. We even have a former body builder-turned-mediocre-actor in charge of California, where he has had the galls of coming out against immigration, despite delivering his speech in a thick Austrian accent. I seriously doubt that Colbert-Stewart would do worse than these characters.
You might say, yes, that’s fine for you to say, since you are a liberal, but that kind of candidate would polarize the country, which isn’t a good thing, we want bipartisan cooperation. No, we don’t. First of all, the country is in fact polarized, split right down the middle, and it will stay this way for a while, until either enough progressives give up and move to Canada and Europe, or enough conservatives will abandon their country bumpkin attitude toward life (especially the part about controlling how people behave in their bedrooms, and the one about starting wars on false pretenses). Second, I don’t want Democrats to embark in bipartisan operations with people who are determined to turn this country into a theocracy, or to roll back the social net to the levels of England’s industrial revolution, or whose idea of capitalism is so simplistic that even Adam Smith himself would laugh at it. No thanks, I’d rather have a multi-partisan system, possibly with several more parties joining the fun.
In this blog I usually try to stay as level-headed as possible, while true to my convictions. This is about dialog, not one-way monologues. But Colbert’s spectacular performance a few days ago reminded me that occasionally one simply needs to hear the brutal truth – better yet if presented with intelligence and humor. Therefore, I hereby invite readers to start a petition to get Colbert and Stewart to run for office in 2008. You can visit the iPetition web site and add your name to the call to be sent to Colbert and Stewart. Come on, we need you, and besides, imagine the ratings of the Presidential debates!
Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is a serious issue concerning comedians-turned-journalists who mock the establishment and manage to tell it like it really is. Jon Stewart, also of Comedy Central fame, did a similar number last year with those buffoons who used to conduct the now thankfully defunct “Crossfire” show on CNN, taking them to task for the idiots they really are. Very much like Colbert did with Bush, Scalia, McCain and an assorted number of generals who were sitting right next to him the other night.
The issue is this: why don’t we see people who actually have a frank (and even funny!) view of reality actually run for office? Why not start a campaign for a Colbert-Stewart (or Stewart-Colbert, I don’t care) Presidential run in ‘08? Oh, you think it’s ridiculous to ask two comedians to run for an office of such importance? But we have had a bad actor (Regan) in the past, and we have a bubbling idiot (Bush) at the moment. We even have a former body builder-turned-mediocre-actor in charge of California, where he has had the galls of coming out against immigration, despite delivering his speech in a thick Austrian accent. I seriously doubt that Colbert-Stewart would do worse than these characters.
You might say, yes, that’s fine for you to say, since you are a liberal, but that kind of candidate would polarize the country, which isn’t a good thing, we want bipartisan cooperation. No, we don’t. First of all, the country is in fact polarized, split right down the middle, and it will stay this way for a while, until either enough progressives give up and move to Canada and Europe, or enough conservatives will abandon their country bumpkin attitude toward life (especially the part about controlling how people behave in their bedrooms, and the one about starting wars on false pretenses). Second, I don’t want Democrats to embark in bipartisan operations with people who are determined to turn this country into a theocracy, or to roll back the social net to the levels of England’s industrial revolution, or whose idea of capitalism is so simplistic that even Adam Smith himself would laugh at it. No thanks, I’d rather have a multi-partisan system, possibly with several more parties joining the fun.
In this blog I usually try to stay as level-headed as possible, while true to my convictions. This is about dialog, not one-way monologues. But Colbert’s spectacular performance a few days ago reminded me that occasionally one simply needs to hear the brutal truth – better yet if presented with intelligence and humor. Therefore, I hereby invite readers to start a petition to get Colbert and Stewart to run for office in 2008. You can visit the iPetition web site and add your name to the call to be sent to Colbert and Stewart. Come on, we need you, and besides, imagine the ratings of the Presidential debates!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
IQ, again
Yet another controversial study on the Intelligent Quotient (IQ) has just been published by Nature (30 March 2006), and once again I have a hard time seeing what the controversy is all about. The study, by a group led by Philip Shaw at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, tracked the growth of the brains of 300 children from age 6 to 19. The children were scored for their IQ early on in the study, and divided into three groups according to their IQ score. The researchers noticed that the bottom third of the distribution was also characterized by a thinner cortex (the area of the brain devoted to memory) and especially prefrontal cortex (where reasoning and planning are carried out). Interestingly, however, these children’s cortex eventually caught up with the rest of the group by age 19, recovering normal thickness.
This study indicates that there is some relationship between a measure of cognitive ability (IQ) and some physical characteristic of the brain. While interesting, this should be neither surprising nor controversial: after all, nobody would be shocked by the discovery that someone’s aerobic capacity is a function, among other things, of his lungs’ capacity. Of course mental functioning is related to brain structure: where else would it come from?
Also, the study is entirely agnostic about the nature-nurture controversy: we don’t know if the initial disparity among children was due to genetic or environmental factors (or, more likely, to some complex interaction between the two). Again using the lung-respiration analogy: some people may have larger lungs because of their genetic make-up, though we also know that the environment has a significant effect on shaping lung capacity, because of a widespread phenomenon in the biological world, known as phenotypic plasticity (most of my scientific career has been devoted to that topic, incidentally). Indeed, the fact that the children who started with a low thickness of their cortex caught up by the end of their teenage years seems to indicate a good degree of plasticity in brain growth, and suggests that if we really wish to use IQ for whatever purpose (it is significantly correlated with performance in formal school settings), we ought to measure it repeatedly throughout the growth of an individual and adjust our expectations accordingly.
A long-time critic of IQ studies, Steven Rose (Open University, UK) questioned the study by saying that “performance on cognitive tasks depends on a large number of factors, from emotive state to recall ability, and the IQ approach ignores all of these.” The first part of that statement is certainly true, but then again, it is a bit sterile to argue that one cannot do research because things are just to damn complex. If that attitude were generally adopted by scientists we would have made no progress since the ancient Greeks. The second part of Rose’s criticism misses the point: IQ measures are not meant to pinpoint any particular causal mechanism, they are simply a (probably simplistic) overall measure of a certain type of intellectual performance. Rose is of course countering the equally insane tendency on the other side of the debate, to automatically assume that IQ scores are the result of genetic rather than environmental factors (as in the controversial, and scientifically extremely naïve book “The Bell Curve,” by Murray and Herrnstein). IQ is in fact analogous to lung capacity: it measures something (though the latter is a much more straightforward biologically indicator), but it tells us precisely nothing about the causal pathways producing that particular measure. Therefore, studies like the one by Shaw and collaborators should be welcome as tiny steps toward understanding, rather than either embraced or rejected automatically, depending on one’s a priori ideological positions.
This study indicates that there is some relationship between a measure of cognitive ability (IQ) and some physical characteristic of the brain. While interesting, this should be neither surprising nor controversial: after all, nobody would be shocked by the discovery that someone’s aerobic capacity is a function, among other things, of his lungs’ capacity. Of course mental functioning is related to brain structure: where else would it come from?
Also, the study is entirely agnostic about the nature-nurture controversy: we don’t know if the initial disparity among children was due to genetic or environmental factors (or, more likely, to some complex interaction between the two). Again using the lung-respiration analogy: some people may have larger lungs because of their genetic make-up, though we also know that the environment has a significant effect on shaping lung capacity, because of a widespread phenomenon in the biological world, known as phenotypic plasticity (most of my scientific career has been devoted to that topic, incidentally). Indeed, the fact that the children who started with a low thickness of their cortex caught up by the end of their teenage years seems to indicate a good degree of plasticity in brain growth, and suggests that if we really wish to use IQ for whatever purpose (it is significantly correlated with performance in formal school settings), we ought to measure it repeatedly throughout the growth of an individual and adjust our expectations accordingly.
A long-time critic of IQ studies, Steven Rose (Open University, UK) questioned the study by saying that “performance on cognitive tasks depends on a large number of factors, from emotive state to recall ability, and the IQ approach ignores all of these.” The first part of that statement is certainly true, but then again, it is a bit sterile to argue that one cannot do research because things are just to damn complex. If that attitude were generally adopted by scientists we would have made no progress since the ancient Greeks. The second part of Rose’s criticism misses the point: IQ measures are not meant to pinpoint any particular causal mechanism, they are simply a (probably simplistic) overall measure of a certain type of intellectual performance. Rose is of course countering the equally insane tendency on the other side of the debate, to automatically assume that IQ scores are the result of genetic rather than environmental factors (as in the controversial, and scientifically extremely naïve book “The Bell Curve,” by Murray and Herrnstein). IQ is in fact analogous to lung capacity: it measures something (though the latter is a much more straightforward biologically indicator), but it tells us precisely nothing about the causal pathways producing that particular measure. Therefore, studies like the one by Shaw and collaborators should be welcome as tiny steps toward understanding, rather than either embraced or rejected automatically, depending on one’s a priori ideological positions.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Breuer vs Nietzsche and the meaning of what we do
I just finished reading Irvin Yalom’s novel When Nietzsche Wept, a psychoanalytical - philosophical account of a fictional encounter between Josef Breuer (one of the founders of psychoanalysis) and Friedrich Nietzsche (the philosopher who famously declared God dead). This is highly nerdy stuff, I’m afraid, but in fact well written and worth the time even for people who aren’t too much into either psychology or philosophy.
The reason I’m writing about it is because of a disagreement (in the book) between Breuer and Nietzsche on the meaning of certain actions we all perform, a disagreement that goes at the heart of the human condition, and may therefore be worth pondering for a bit.
To set the stage, imagine that Breuer and Nietzsche are both affected by a psychological condition, an obsession for a young woman (not the same one!) that has befriended them in the past and is now beyond reach. Both men – as it is typical in the case of obsessions – dwell on memories of very personal things the two women have done to them, romanticizing the whole relationship and elevating it to almost super-human levels. I’m not talking about sex here, but about intimate phrases and gestures that made Breuer and Nietzsche feel special, indeed unique, when relating to their respective women.
Breuer is trying to cure his own as well as Nietzsche’s obsession, and eventually hits on the solution to their problem: he finds a way to experience what each woman does with another man, paying particular attention to those “unique” and very personal gestures and phrases that fuel the obsession. Of course, they found that both women use the very same gestures and phrases with other people, and this realization shocks both Breuer and Nietzsche out of their obsession. Their romantic illusion of uniqueness in another human being’s eyes is suddenly shuttered.
And here is where things become interesting. The philosopher reacts very differently from the psychologist (and since the author, Yalom, is a psychologist, I guess it’s not too surprising that it is the psychologist’s reaction that is the most sensible...): Nietzsche feels cheapened by the whole experience, and wows never again to waste time with women, as they are clearly simply robots, condemned to use the same limited tools to get what they want. Breuer, however, points out that – disappointing as their discovery may be – we all in fact do the same, men and women, philosophers and psychologists alike. For all our pride, we as human beings possess a limited range of emotions, and a limited way to express them. While some of us are more creative than others, in the end we are bound to engage in similar behaviors with different people, if we live long enough and have the opportunity to forge more than one important relationship (friendship or otherwise) in our lives.
The point is that we all wish to be unique and treated accordingly. But the reality is that our uniqueness is often established on trivial variations of the human repertoire, and accordingly others behave towards us in a way similar to how they behave with other people in similar circumstances. And yet, Breuer argues in the novel, this should be a source of compassion for our fellow human beings, not one of frustration for the lack of what we think is our due appreciation. A fundamental key to friendship and love is the humility of getting over oneself and enjoy the incredible fortune of actually having someone who loves us.
The reason I’m writing about it is because of a disagreement (in the book) between Breuer and Nietzsche on the meaning of certain actions we all perform, a disagreement that goes at the heart of the human condition, and may therefore be worth pondering for a bit.
To set the stage, imagine that Breuer and Nietzsche are both affected by a psychological condition, an obsession for a young woman (not the same one!) that has befriended them in the past and is now beyond reach. Both men – as it is typical in the case of obsessions – dwell on memories of very personal things the two women have done to them, romanticizing the whole relationship and elevating it to almost super-human levels. I’m not talking about sex here, but about intimate phrases and gestures that made Breuer and Nietzsche feel special, indeed unique, when relating to their respective women.
Breuer is trying to cure his own as well as Nietzsche’s obsession, and eventually hits on the solution to their problem: he finds a way to experience what each woman does with another man, paying particular attention to those “unique” and very personal gestures and phrases that fuel the obsession. Of course, they found that both women use the very same gestures and phrases with other people, and this realization shocks both Breuer and Nietzsche out of their obsession. Their romantic illusion of uniqueness in another human being’s eyes is suddenly shuttered.
And here is where things become interesting. The philosopher reacts very differently from the psychologist (and since the author, Yalom, is a psychologist, I guess it’s not too surprising that it is the psychologist’s reaction that is the most sensible...): Nietzsche feels cheapened by the whole experience, and wows never again to waste time with women, as they are clearly simply robots, condemned to use the same limited tools to get what they want. Breuer, however, points out that – disappointing as their discovery may be – we all in fact do the same, men and women, philosophers and psychologists alike. For all our pride, we as human beings possess a limited range of emotions, and a limited way to express them. While some of us are more creative than others, in the end we are bound to engage in similar behaviors with different people, if we live long enough and have the opportunity to forge more than one important relationship (friendship or otherwise) in our lives.
The point is that we all wish to be unique and treated accordingly. But the reality is that our uniqueness is often established on trivial variations of the human repertoire, and accordingly others behave towards us in a way similar to how they behave with other people in similar circumstances. And yet, Breuer argues in the novel, this should be a source of compassion for our fellow human beings, not one of frustration for the lack of what we think is our due appreciation. A fundamental key to friendship and love is the humility of getting over oneself and enjoy the incredible fortune of actually having someone who loves us.
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