I'm writing a book. Maybe you'll read it someday. If you're at all interested, I hope that you'll have that opportunity, and I hope even more that you'll enjoy it. The process of writing it is difficult, and it's rewarding, and it's exhausting, and occasionally it's even fun.
It's a novel. And there are people in this novel—characters, I mean—with whom I don't agree. It's hard to be fair. I was never really tempted to throw up a bunch of straw soldiers that I could easily knock down, but it's still difficult to be fair when discussing philosophical or ideological positions that I don't share, especially when these elements aren't the focus of the narrative.
But it's important to be fair. There's a group of people in this book who started off as the enemies, the "big bads", the primary antagonists of the story. It was easy to outline. But as I wrote it, I realised that these people weren't people: they were one character—one guy—just repeated over and over, copied ad nauseam. No nuance, no disagreement, only a clone army, dressed differently but marching in ideological lockstep. That's dangerous, and it's boring, and it doesn't make for much of a good story.
It's not all fixed now (I haven't even completed a first draft: nothing's fixed!), but at least I'm aware of the problem. And when and if the book is published, I look forward to hearing from everyone how unfairly I have portrayed those who disagree with me.
I was thinking about all of this last night as I was polishing up a chapter that I was especially proud of, and over lunch today I happened to stumble upon this really excellent video from Hank Green, in which he discusses polarizing ideological monoculture, and the important diversity that thrives in boundary zones.
In this extended round-table episode of Life, the Universe & Everything Else, Gem is joined by Ashlyn, Ian, and Laura to discuss thought experiments that range from the classical to the incomprehensible to the downright bizarre.
Announcement: We're going monthly! That means you'll get podcasts half as often, but we'll make the podcasts twice as awesome to make up for it!
Note: If any of our listeners are concerned about information hazards and wish to skip over the discussion of Roko's Basilisk, the content in question begins at the 1h24m mark and ends at 1h35m46s.
In this episode of Life, the Universe & Everything Else, Ashlyn Noble, Gem Newman, and Ian James discuss several of the things that, as skeptics, they've changed their minds out.
In this episode of Life, the Universe & Everything Else, Greg Christensen, Ian Macaulay, and Gem Newman discuss whether the character of Jesus Christ as portrayed in the Christian Bible is actually based on an historical figure, and Greg gives us a review of Bill O'Reilly's new book along the way.
A new theory of brain function by Peter Ulric Tse, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth College, suggests that free will is real and has a biophysical basis in the microscopic workings of our brain cells.
Well, I guess that's that. I guess I was wrong. I'm skeptic enough to admit that.
Tse's findings, which contradict recent claims by neuroscientists and philosophers that free will is an illusion, have theological, ethical, scientific and legal implications for human behavior, such as whether people are accountable for their decisions and actions.
Broad theological implications? You bet! I'm sure his research will be met with sighs of relief from seminary students who are struggling with theodicy.
In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist...
Oooh-kay. That's enough.
The research sounds interesting, to be honest. It's always nice to nail down neurological specifics, but the way this research is being framed is more than a little disappointing. The article doesn't go into much detail, of course (it basically comes down to "buy the book"*), but none of the findings outlined seem shocking to me, and I doubt that any other determinist would feel differently. In fact, I'm sorely tempted to call out the article for knocking down straw determinists.
This gets around the standard argument against free will that is based on the impossibility of self-causation.
I have literally never heard any determinist argue that "self-causation" is impossible. Assuming everything that Tse says is correct, it does nothing to change my position on free will, because when you get down to brass tacks our positions seem to be basically identical.
My problem with the concept of "free will" as it's expressed in religious contexts is the implication that it is contra-causal. Saying that "free will is real" and that Tse has discovered its "biophysical basis" will just lead to further misunderstandings in the eyes of the public (and will presumably permit Tse to feel smugly superior to philosophers). It seems to me like Tse is trying to puff up his chest a bit and say, "Case closed!" His research seems interesting in that it nails down some specifics of self-causation in a compatibilist (causally-bound "free" will) context, but it does nothing to rescue contra-causal free will (nor do I think it's meant to).
My argument basically boils down to this: When you talk about "free will", most lay people are talking about one thing (contra-causal free will), while most philosophers and neuroscientists are talking about another (compatibilist or causally-bound "free" will). As I've argued on several occasions, I think that the former is absurd and runs contrary to the existing evidence (and this new research has nothing much to add here), while the latter is simply a rebranding of soft determinism in an attempt to rescue the language of free will (and has the unfortunate side-effect of permitting us to continue to pretend that people are morally blameworthy on some fundamental level and to deal with others punitively, rather than with compassion). And that's not okay.
Discussions of free will are rife with equivocation and confusion is to some extent inevitable. I'm happy to have a discussion on the extent to which the language of free will is useful (and in this matter, as in the matter of the Oxford comma, I do not shrink from staking out a clear position) but I wish that others would be more careful in properly defining their terms. Saying what amounts to "Those silly philosophers can't out-logic my hard data!" when you haven't done much to address the points they've actually made is unhelpful at best.
In summary, it seems to me that contra-causal free will remains unsupported by the evidence, that compatibilist or causally-bound conceptions of free will are problematic, and that the Oxford comma generally serves to increase the clarity of complex sentences.
Hat tip to Gary Barbon for the link.
* And no, I haven't read his book, so I cannot fully evaluate every argument that he makes therein. Feel free to sneeringly point this out to your heart's content. That's what the comments section is for, after all.
If you travel (or read) in atheist (or apologetic) circles, then you've probably encountered the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It goes something like this:
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The Universe began to exist.
Therefore, the Universe had a cause.
Although it is historically linked to Islamic scholarship, it's most ardent proponent and popularizer is Christian apologist (and amateur Scott Bakula impersonator) William Lane Craig, who holds it up as unassailable proof of a Prime Mover.
This argument was brought to my attention again when I listened to a debate between Justin Shieber (one of the hosts of Reasonable Doubts, my favourite counter-apologetics podcast) and Scott Smith. Smith brought up this argument, and it was discussed briefly. Kalam is rife with problems, among them the compositional fallacy, one or more potentially unsupportable premises, and what amounts to special pleading. If you want a detailed deconstruction, I'd recommend the deconstructions of the argument on RationalWiki and Iron Chariots (we even covered it briefly on Life, the Universe & Everything Else). But as I listened to the debate, I got to thinking...
What does it mean for something to "begin to exist"?
As I thought about that some more, I got to wondering: Does anything "begin to exist", when it comes right down to it? I mean, at the level of common usage, things "come into being" all the time, from trains to mountains to people. But none of these things are created ex nihilo: they're merely examples of stuff (train parts, rocks, cells, molecules, subatomic particles) moving about. So while it makes sense to talk about these things "beginning to exist" in some sense (as we talk of the sun "rising and setting", for example), in the strictest sense I'm not sure.
I asked a physicist friend friend about this. He thought for a moment, chuckled, and said, "Maybe a photon? But not really..." And he couldn't come up with anything either. So this is something that I'm honestly wondering: Do we know of anything that can meaningfully be said to have "begun" to exist, rather than being simply an example of matter or energy changing form? Because if not, that's another significant blow to the argument. What do you think?
Addendum: On the Facebook thread, my friend Javier Hernandez has pointed out that virtual particles and perhaps even space itself may qualify as "beginning to exist":
How about the "creation" of space in our Universe. The Universe is expanding, which means that more Vacuum is being created. There does not appear to be a Energy-to-Vacuum conservation law that is being followed, so this Vacuum appears to be "coming into existence" on it's own.
I find the idea of space itself "coming into being" tough to wrestle with, since this expansion of "space" is hard to quantify in discrete units, and it's a process that is continuous, rather than instantaneous. That said, both virtual particles and perhaps space itself seem to be fair candidates for what I was looking for here. Thanks to Javier for that!
This in mind, however, neither space nor virtual particles would seem to be "caused" in the strict sense implied by Kalam, so among the examples we've been able to identify, the argument remains incredibly weak on that particular score.
On Saturday, 29 September 2012, the Winnipeg Skeptics held their third annual SkeptiCamp event. SkeptiCamp Winnipeg is a conference for the sharing of ideas. It is free and open to the public: anyone can attend and participate! Presentations and discussions focus on science and free inquiry, and the audience is encouraged to challenge presenters to defend their ideas.
Scott Burton is a professional motivational speaker and corporate entertainer. His hobby is participating in ultramarathons (races longer than 42.2 kilometres) while continually testing his abilities. Scott believes that we can all benefit from reaching for big goals and challenging our self-limiting beliefs.
SkeptiCamp is an open conference celebrating science and critical thinking. For more information please visit SkeptiCamp.org.
In this episode of Life, the Universe & Everything Else, the LUEE hosts take the day off to enjoy a wonderful Canada Day, which allows hosts Robert Shindler, Richelle McCullough, and Gem Newman a chance to look back at the past year to share with you a couple of presentations from our vault.
This is a talk that I gave at TEDxManitoba on 9 February 2012. Below the video you can find the full text of the talk, with annotations and sources provided.
As a kid, I loved playing Monopoly. I was great at it, too! I was very nearly unbeatable.
I remember one game, looking down at the board and wondering how I was ever going to win. My mother had just pulled a $500 bill out from where she'd hid it between the couch cushions, my stepfather's hotels were crowding two sides of the board, and my houses on Mediterranean and Baltic just weren't paying off. How could this be? I thought to myself. I'm a smart kid. I'm great at Monopoly! But the odds were stacked against me, and the situation seemed impossible.
But that's what made me such a great Monopoly player, I guess. Somehow, I'd always pull out a win in the end. Thinking back, I don't remember losing a single game!
At some point, we all need to come to terms with the fact that maybe things didn't happen quite the way we remember them. As humans, we're just not that great at telling what's true from what we want to be true. Let's be frank: I was ten. I probably sucked at Monopoly. But I remember being awesome.
As Yale neurologist Dr. Steven Novella notes, "Our memories are not an accurate recording of the past. They are constructed from imperfect perception filtered through our beliefs and biases... Our memories serve more to support our beliefs rather than inform them."[Source]
We're not great observers, we humans, and we tend to pay much more attention to data that confirm our preconceived notions than to details that don't fit our theories. We have a marked tendency to remember the hits and forget the misses; presumably why people like Sylvia Browne and John Edward remain so popular.
It's for this reason that independent confirmation is one of the cornerstones of science.
I'm not a scientist, but I do think of myself as a "science cheerleader". And science needs cheerleaders, for a couple of reasons.
First, because it's important for everyone to have a basic scientific understanding. Professor Art Hobson put it this way: "the most crucial decisions [in industrialized nations] concern science and technology, and in democracies, citizens decide."[Source]
The second reason that science needs cheerleaders is that it is so oft maligned. Scientific skepticism is often portrayed as cold, unfeeling; antithetical to compassion or human emotion. Those with a penchant for whimsical nostalgia stubbornly insist that life was better and that times were simpler before science got all muddled up in society.[Note]
Could it be that they're right?
Science is the quest to understand ourselves, our universe, and our place in it. Science is curious by nature, for its goal is to figure out what's really true—but for that reason, science must also be skeptical. It insists that we shouldn't simply take claims at face value, but instead we should proportion our belief in a proposition to the evidence supporting it.
A series of studies conducted in the 1980s found that roughly 80% of people consider themselves above average drivers.[Source][Source] A 1987 study of Australian workers found that only 1% of them rated their workplace performance as below average.[Source] Unless I badly misremember how numbers are meant to work, it seems to me that something very near to half of them are mistaken.
The way that we see the world is coloured by many things, our own egos foremost among them. Perhaps when it comes to Monopoly games we can be forgiven if we see ourselves through rose-coloured glasses. Concern may become warranted when our callous assumption that we outperform our contemporaries affects the quality of our work or the safety of our driving.
But what about when it really counts? What if your child is sick? There are clearly many cases where we simply cannot afford to let our petty biases influence the way we see the world. And that's where science comes in.
While it's true that public support for science has remained generally high over the last several decades, and scientific literacy has been increasing more-or-less steadily, there have been some troubling developments in the popular media and in culture at large.[Note]
The image of the "mad scientist" is deeply ingrained in our culture, and probably dates to Mary Shelley's celebrated Frankenstein, in which the relentless pursuit of knowledge leads inexorably to unspeakable horrors. This idea is not a new one. Anti-science messages have been with us for hundreds of years.
Here's the problem: science is seen by many as unnatural, inaccessible, or even sinister. Scientists are widely regarded as arrogant, superior, or closed-minded.
What's the common thread here? Aside from being totally awesome, that is. Any guesses?
As unbelievable as it might seem, all of these stories are riddled with anti-science or anti-reason messages. Even in science fiction, the genre that inspired so many of the technologies and conveniences that we take for granted today, it is common to see science portrayed as sinister and destructive.
In Star Trek, a series that celebrates human ingenuity, Spock is set up as a straw man, his much lauded Vulcan logic inevitably knocked down by Kirk's emotionally driven human pluck. When it comes time to choose between thinking with your head and thinking with your heart, the message is clear: human emotion wins every time.[Note]
In Jurassic Park, the audience is shown the consequence of scientists "playing God". As in Frankenstein, disaster is the inevitable result of scientific excess.
In Lost, John Locke constantly admonishes the other characters to have faith, that they are all on the island for some mysterious purpose. And, because it's a fictional story, it turns out that he's right.
Oh, and then there was that episode of The X-Files that showed faith in the supernatural triumphing over the skeptic... Which one was that again...? Oh, right: all of them. Don't get me wrong: I loved The X-Files, but seriously—it was always a monster? Every time?
And even Scooby-Doo, a longtime favourite among skeptics of the paranormal, isn't blameless. Recent adaptations are much more likely to feature real monsters than grumpy old groundskeepers who would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!
But perhaps the most egregious example of anti-science rhetoric in popular fiction is found in Ronald Moore's 2003 reimagining of Battlestar Galactica.
While dramatically enjoyable, the emphasis of faith over reason was a thread that wound its way through the entire series. What's worse, the final episodes first hinted then proclaimed that in a society that embraces science and technology, a technologically driven holocaust is inevitable. This has all happened before, we are told, and it will all happen again.
The series culminates (spoiler alert) with the entire human race abandoning all technology in favour of founding a nomadic hunter-gatherer society. Science fiction becomes luddite fantasy—famine, disease, and the concomitant contraction of the human lifespan be damned.
This message is getting through to the public, loud and clear. A 2001 NSF survey found that 50 percent of Americans believe "We depend too much on science and not enough on faith".[Source] I find this distressing.
From The Terminator to The Matrix to 28 Days Later, the idea that science will lead to some sort of technopocalypse is ubiquitous these days. And after all, why not? Isn't there a grain of truth to the idea?
Perhaps you might rightly scoff at Ben Stein's contention in the pseudo-documentary Expelled that the science of evolution led to the Nazi holocaust...[Note]
...but what say you when the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are laid at scientists' feet? Who can help but shiver upon hearing Oppenheimer's words? "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." How can we answer such a charge?
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were forbidden the knowledge of good and evil, but their curiosity got the better of them. According to this story, it was our thirst for knowledge that led to the fall.
Curiosity, we're told, is what killed the cat.
Knowledge can, of course, be used for good or for ill. Scientists invented the bomb—but it was politicians who called for it, taxpayers who funded it, and the military who saw it deployed. If you want to lay death and destruction solely at the feet of scientists, I don't think that you're playing fair.[Note]
"Curiosity killed the cat." How unjust!
That we should be incurious is perhaps the single most damaging message that our children receive from popular culture. Curiosity is one of the greatest assets that we as a species possess. It fuels free inquiry! It fuels innovation! Without nurturing our curiosity we risk retarding our progress as a civilisation.
Knowledge is not evil, nor is the pursuit of it. Knowledge of the way this wondrous world really works equips us to better our own situation and that of every other living being with whom we share this planet.
"Curiosity killed the cat." You would be hard pressed to find an idiom that irritates me more.
You want to know what probably didn't kill the cat? Diabetes, hyperthyroidism, intestinal parasites! For every cat killed by curiosity, I would wager that there are hundreds who have been saved by veterinary practices unknown a century ago.
Curiosity cured the cat!
Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, is credited with saving one billion people from starvation. We have indoor plumbing and flush toilets, and hand-washing, and the germ theory of disease, all of which save countless lives every day. These victories aren't just victories for science; they are victories for humanity. Science wins this fight.
As for the arrogance and closed-mindedness of scientists: I find this charge frankly startling, for in the process of skeptical inquiry I see the most amazing intellectual humility. The success of the scientific endeavour requires us to admit to our human foibles and failings, our petty biases and conceits. It is only in accounting for these human weaknesses that we make progress. Science is rooted in curiosity, and one cannot be curious without being humble. To wonder how something works, first you must admit that you don't know.
So if science is so successful in improving our lives, why does science still have such an image problem? Why do people fail to understand that science isn't the enemy of nature, but merely the study of it?
It probably isn't news to you that the media has a huge effect on how we think and behave. That's what advertising is all about, after all, and study after study shows that it works, even when we think that it doesn't.
In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan laments that "Scepticism does not sell well. A bright and curious person who relies entirely on popular culture to be informed about something like Atlantis is hundreds or thousands of times more likely to come upon a fable treated uncritically than a sober and balanced assessment."[Source]
In a culture so steeped in irrationality, a culture that prizes faith over evidence, it can be difficult to make progress in promoting science. Right now, the greatest obstacle to the public understanding of science is the way it's presented in the media.
So what if our stories had skeptical, pro-science messages? What if they encouraged the audience to think critically, rather than just nodding along? What if the heroes of our stories weren't those who simply fought for what they believed in, but those who had the courage to ask themselves why it was that they believed it?
We have the power to reignite the public passion for learning new things. We need to teach everyone (everyone) what science is, at its core. That may sound daunting, but it's really a very simple idea: Beliefs should be supported by good evidence.
None of us are perfect, and so if we're serious about figuring out what's really true we need to understand our own biases and apply a basic skepticism to all claims to knowledge. We need to avoid the temptation to look only for the evidence that confirms what we already believe. Or, as Randall Munroe put it, "You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right."[Source]
And we already have allies in the popular media.
On the front lines, I see novelists like the excellent Robert Sawyer (from whom you heard only a moment ago) and the unbelievably popular J.K. Rowling.
Sawyer is famous for stories that show rationalism triumphing over superstition. In the Harry Potter series, Rowling provides an excellent role-model in Hermione Granger, whose success is due not to some innate talent, but to hard work and a willingness to question popular wisdom.
There are musicians like George Hrab and the inimitable Tim Minchin who encourage us to be skeptical of extraordinary claims. Sara Mayhew infuses her manga with a love of science. Randall Munroe and Zach Weiner pen comics that make us laugh and make us think. We have Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson working to communicate science to people of all ages. Adam Savage, Jaimie Hyneman, and rest of the gang at MythBusters remind us how exciting it can be to figure out what's really true.
At this point, you might be wondering what you can do to help.
Be curious. Question everything. Prize learning over simply knowing, because even things that we think we know can turn out to be wrong. As Carl Sagan said, "it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."[Source]
With everything that science has done for us, it deserves our support. So when you hear someone complain that science is arrogant, closed-minded, or dangerous: speak up. Because you know better.
[9] Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, page 16
Notes
[1] They set science and rationalism here and they set mystery and compassion there and demand that you choose between them, even though such a choice makes no sense. Science is no more a cold, unfeeling monstrosity than is a screwdriver or a pair of spectacles. Science is a tool that helps us overcome some of our inherent limitations. And yet, the idea that life was somehow better, humbler, and more existentially satisfying in some misty, bygone age is pervasive in our society.
[2] In our culture, the scientifically illiterate can get on by saying that they're just not "science people". Basic scientific literacy is very important, but ScienceDaily reports that in North America it sits around 30%. It's perfectly acceptable in our culture for a person to be scientifically illiterate, but just imagine what it would be like to have a similar attitude toward those who can't read or write.
[3] To learn more about the Straw Vulcan, I refer you to the TVTropes page that coined the term. I also highly recommend Julia Galef's talk from Skepticon 4, The Straw Vulcan.
[4] For more about the absurdity that is Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, I refer you to Expelled Exposed, a site created and maintained by the National Center for Science Education. This site cheerfully exposes the anti-science propaganda behind this so-called documentary, while managing at the same time to be an enjoyable read! I doff my proverbial hat to Eugenie Scott and the rest of the folks at the NCSE for their tireless work in combating creationism masquerading as science.
[5] Neil deGrasse Tyson expressed this sentiment well. "Scientists don't lead marching armies!" he said. "Scientists don't invade other nations! Yes, we had scientists who invented the bomb, but somebody had to pay for the bomb, and that was taxpayers, that was war bonds. There was a political action that called for it. But everyone blames the scientists! ... At the end of the day, a discovery itself is not 'moral', it's the application of it that has to pass that test." (This quotation is taken from an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy. The interivew was conducted by a rare out-of-character Stephen Colbert, and is fantastic. You can watch it here.)
In this episode of Life, the Universe & Everything Else, just in time for Valentine's Day, Laura Targownik ponders the nature of love with Laura Creek Newman, Robert Shindler, and Mark Forkheim.
