Sane Scientists Need Not Apply Sunday, June 08, 2008

Not much of a game per se, but I know some of you will enjoy this game intended to help you learn about neurons: Make a Mad, Mad, Mad Neuron!

Morality and Evolution Tuesday, October 31, 2006

I'm a staunch evolutionist. Ever since I read Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, I began to understand the subtlety and power of the the idea that incremental changes brought about through natural variation can produce complex structures when under the influence of selective forces. Think about it: imagine you have a bunch of different machines that generate numbers. Each one generates numbers in diffent ways. Now imagine that you decide that machines that generate the number 666 are evil and should be destroyed. So you destroy a machine whenever the evil number comes up. Eventually, you will be left only with the machines that don't generate that number, or are so unlikely to generate it that maybe you didn't notice.

The idea is so simple it seems almost obvious. Like Einstein's general theory of relativity, evolution as a concept is one of those ideas it seems amazing we didn't discover earlier. And it seems that despite the vocal minority of those who feel threatened by science, evolution as a concept has proven more and more predictive since Darwin's seminal The Origin of Species written in 1859. Now, according to an article in today's New York Times, this model is even being applied with scientific rigor to the realm of ethics.

Biologist Marc D. Hauser has released a new book called Moral Minds in which he argues that human morality is the expression of a "moral grammar" that has been written into human DNA through the process of "group selection". This is not to say that the ideas are not controversial, but it represents a daring exploit of biological science into the realm of inquiry once reserved for religion and philosophy. It's theoretical work to be sure, but could represent a new way of looking at human behavior in an evolutionary light.

Dr. Hauser presents his argument as a hypothesis to be proved, not as an established fact. But it is an idea that he roots in solid ground, including his own and others’ work with primates and in empirical results derived by moral philosophers.

The proposal, if true, would have far-reaching consequences. It implies that parents and teachers are not teaching children the rules of correct behavior from scratch but are, at best, giving shape to an innate behavior. And it suggests that religions are not the source of moral codes but, rather, social enforcers of instinctive moral behavior.

—New York Times, "An Evolutionary Theory of Right and Wrong"

Hauser's use of the term "grammar" to describe the appartus within the human animal that inform his moral decisions is no accident. He wrote a paper in collaboration with Noam Chomsky (famous for his work on grammar's "deep structure" embedded in the human brain) and Dr. Tecumseh Fitch about the possible evolution of animal communication systems as adaptations of navigation systems. He believes that moral systems, like language systems, benefit societies of animals as a whole and thus promote the survival of its members. This process of "group selection," while still controversial, is particularly applicable to human beings, who Hauser believes show a penchant for social conformity.

Death Star Energy Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Like Neil Simon did when he described Mississipi's weather as "Africa hot," I'm using a proper noun as a description of scale. Death Star energy is a lot of energy. Like a lot-lot. Enough to blow up a planet. But just how much energy is that? Luckily, we have bored geeks to answer these vital questions for us. Thanks to a link provided by Furrygoat, we now know that the Death Star had to generate about 2.4 × 10³² joules of energy in order to disperse the mass of Alderaan fast enough to overcome the forces of gravity keeping the planet together. If you don't believe me, you can check the math here.

Sure, 240 nonillion joules sounds like a big number, but just how big is that? Well, let's see. It's enough energy to power the entire world for a trillion years (based on 2001 numbers), about a tenth of the kinetic energy of the Earth as it hurtles around the sun in its orbit, or the equivalent of exploding over a quadrillion of the largest nuclear devices ever detonated simultaneously.

Nature of Science Wednesday, November 09, 2005

From the brand-spanking-new Kansas Board of Education-approved science standards (links 1 and 2), a section about the "Nature of Science":

Science is a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us. Throughout history people from many cultures have used the methods of science to contribute to scientific knowledge and technological innovations, making science a worldwide enterprise. Scientists test explanations against the natural world, logically integrating observations and tested hypotheses with accepted explanations to gradually build more reliable and accurate understandings of nature. Scientific explanations must be testable and repeatable, and findings must be confirmed through additional observation and experimentation. As it is practiced in the late 20th and early 21st century, science is restricted to explaining only the natural world, using only natural cause. This is because science currently has no tools to test explanations using non-natural (such as supernatural) causes.

Hypothesis, law, and theory are frequently misunderstood terms used in science. A hypothesis is a testable statement about the natural world that can be used to design experiments and to build more complex inferences and explanations. A law is a descriptive generalization based on repeated observations. A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of the natural world that incorporates observations, inferences, laws, well-tested hypotheses and experimental findings to explain a specific aspect of the natural world. Theories drive research because they draw attention to areas where data or understandings are incomplete, suggesting additional directions for research.

The effect of these criteria is to ensure that scientific explanations about the world can be modified or abandoned in favor of new explanations if empirical evidence so warrants. Because all scientific explanations depend on observational and experimental confirmation, all scientific knowledge is, in principle, subject to change as additional evidence becomes available and/or as new technologies extends our abilities to explore. This open-endedness of science is its greatest strength, and allows for constant refining and improvement of explanations. Although all scientific knowledge is in principle tentative, science has a high degree of confidence in explanations that have been repeatedly tested and shown to be valid. The willingness of scientists to change explanations based on evidence, actually results in more reliable information. Changes in scientific knowledge can occur gradually or rapidly. The early 21st century is a time of quite rapid scientific advancement, characterized by a high rate of both discovery and accumulation of knowledge. Rather then developing “new” theories, the current explosion of knowledge has greatly expanded the basic and well-accepted principles from physics, chemistry, earth sciences, and biological sciences. Scientists recognize that there are still new frontiers of science. (Source, emphasis mine)

I am simply nonplussed. More later.

Of Religion and Social Dysfunction Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Thanks to one Jason Stackhouse (who I have met but don't know well; I found his blog via agent 139) for linking to an interesting study examining the relationship between belief in God and a society's well-being. It's presented well, and cites its research, but neither the author nor the publication is familiar to me. Given the huge bullshit-to-actual-content ratio on the internet, I'm skeptical of authoritative-looking papers from unknown sources. That said, it's an interesting read.

The aim is to critically examine the once-obvious assumption that belief in God is beneficial to society as a whole. To do so, the study compares the United States to other Western democracies, including Australia, Sweden, France, Germany and Japan, graphing indicators of social dysfunction (such as abortion, rate of STD infection, youth suicides, and teen pregnancy) against indicators of religiosity (attending church services regularly, absolute belief in God, Bliblical literalism). And its findings are somewhat surprising. Not only is there an inverse relationship between social dysfunction and secularism, but look at the graphs at the end of the paper (click the links to see the different data). That "U", representing the United States, is always flung way outside the cluster of countries down near the corner of the graph. America is anomalous in that it "is the only prosperous first world nation to retain rates of religiosity otherwise limited to the second and third worlds" (¶13).