Category: Science
*Agora*
I am surprised this film, set in ancient Alexandria, has not occasioned more controversy. It is the most pro-science, pro-rationalist, anti-Christian movie I have seen — ever. — and it does not disguise the message in the slightest. The director and scriptwriter is Spanish and Chilean, namely Alejandro Amenábar. It offers a Voltairean portrait of Judaism, as an oppressed rabble, most of all responsible for the crime of having birthed Christianity. There are some not-so-subtle parallels shown between the early Christians and current Muslim terrorists.
The visual rendering of antiquity is nicely done and without an excess of CGI.
Here is a positive New York Times review. Here is a positive Guardian review. Not everyone will like this movie.
*The Fever*
The author is Sonia Shah and the subtitle is How Malaria has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years. Excerpt:
The mosquito's immune system instinctively attacks the parasite, encapsulating the intruder in scabs and bombarding it with toxic chemicals. To survive, the parasite must unleash armies of progeny in such massive numbers that fighting it off becomes more trouble than it's worth. Male and female forms of the parasite, called gametocytes, then fuse, and the resulting parasites create cysts that cling to the walls of the bug's gut. (The spasmodic waving of the male gametocyte's long tail, which precedes the act of fusing with the female — yes, this microbe reproduces sexually as well as asexually — is called exflagellation.) Tens of thousands of slithering threads explode from the cysts and swarm up to the mosquito's salivary gland. This is the form of parasite must take to infect human beings. Malariologists call it the sporozoite. When a mosquito starts a blood feed, some two dozen slivery sporozoites will escape into their next host.
It's an excellent book. There is a short review and excerpt here.
The History and Future of Private Space Exploration
In The Rational Optimist Matt Ridley asks:
Can you doubt that if NASA had not existed some rich man would by now have spent his fortune on a man-on-the-moon programme for the prestige alone?
In fact, we have some pretty good historical data on this issue. Bearing in mind that observatories are an early form of space exploration, Alex MacDonald, a NASA research economist, notes:
For the majority of its history, space exploration in America has been funded privately. The trend
of wealthy individuals, such as Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, Robert Bigelow, and Elon Musk,
devoting some of their resources to the exploration of space is not an emerging one, it is the
long-run, dominant trend which is now re-emerging.
MacDonald gives the following list of major observatories and their costs (click to enlarge). Privately funded observatories are in bold.
Private spending on space exploration is even more impressive when we scale by personal wealth.
…rather than scaling the expenditure as a share of the total resources of the U.S. economy, the expenditure can be scaled as a share of the resources of the individuals who undertook the projects. James Lick was the richest man in California and the Lick Observatory expenditure represented 17.5% of his entire estate. The equivalent share of the wealth of the richest man in California today, Larry Ellison, is $3.9 billion dollars, approximately four times higher than the GDP equivalent share.
Private space exploration and commercialization are likely to increase substantially in this century and, perhaps surprisingly, President Obama is pushing NASA in this direction. Here, for example, is a headline you don't see very often, "Obama defends privatization of space travel."
What is really going on is contracting-out rather than privatization per se and as such there is significant room for abuse. Nevertheless, if done carefully, I think Obama's efforts to encourage private efforts in space are a step in the right direction. What would be much more welcome and useful, however, would be a titling system for establishing property rights in space (see also here). Homesteading the highest frontier is our best bet for moving humanity off planet.
Is “futile busyness” good for us?
The researchers proceed to argue that, unfortunately, most people will not be tempted by futile busyness, so there's a paternalistic case for governments and organisations tricking us into more activity: 'housekeepers may increase the happiness of their idle housekeepers by letting in some mice and prompting the housekeepers to clean up. Governments may increase the happiness of idle citizens by having them build bridges that are actually useless.' In fact, according to Hsee's team, such interventions already exist, with some airports having deliberately increased the walk to the luggage carousel so as to reduce the time passengers spend waiting idly for luggage to arrive.
Here is much more.
Number of Birds Killed
Number of birds killed by the BP oil spill: at least 2,188 and counting.
Number of birds killed by wind farms: 10,000-40,000 annually.
Number of birds killed by cars: 80 million annually.
Number of birds killed by cats: Hundreds of millions to 1 billion annually.
Don't worry there is some good news.
Number of birds killed by fisheries: tens to hundreds of thousands annually (fortunately for the birds, some of these fisheries are now shut down).
Robot Parking
In the first DARPA Grand Challenge for driverless vehicles in 2004 not a single team came close to finishing the course. Later this year a driverless car built by a team from Stanford will race up Pike's Peak at speeds up to 90 mph. Amazing. And from the same team, I would pay for a car with this type of automated parking.
What your blogging style shows
Here are a few sentences to ponder:
Some commentators have suggested that the internet allows people to present idealised versions of themselves to the world. Contrary to that idea, Yarkoni found that bloggers' choice of words consistently related to their personality type just as has been found in past offline research.
More neurotic bloggers used more words associated with negative emotions; extravert bloggers used more words pertaining to positive emotions; high scorers on agreeableness avoided swear words and used more words related to communality; and conscientious bloggers mentioned more words with achievement connotations.
Can we all agree that the cited post represents a considerable success? And might it apply to blog commentators as well?
Addendum: Arnold Kling comments.
Sentences to ponder
Picky eaters tend to gravitate to certain foods, including blander products that are often white or pale colored, like plain pasta or cheese pizza. For reasons that aren't clear, almost all adult picky eaters like French fries and often chicken fingers, health experts say.
This article gets at some deep questions as to the differences (or possible lack thereof) between disorders, differing capabilities, and differing tastes. The stories are interesting, but it doesn't get far on developing a good conceptual framework…
Robin Hanson responds on cryonics
Does Tyler think the world would be equally better off if foodies were to act contrary to type, express less via buying less fancy food, and give the difference to charity? If so, why has he never mentioned it in his hundreds of food posts?
Could it be Tyler knows that tech nerds are low status in our society and fair game for criticism? Is this really any different than rich folks complaining about inner city kids who buy $100 sneakers instead of saving their money or giving it to charity, even while they buy $1000 suits and dresses instead of saving their money or giving it to charity?
There is much more here. This is not essential to the points under discussion, but I should add that I consider tech nerds to be a relatively high status group in American society, at least above the age of thirty.
Why pick on cryonics?
A few of my lunch compadres have asked why I compare cryonics (unfavorably) to acts of charity, rather than comparing other acts of personal consumption (I enjoy the gelato here in Berlin) to charity. My view is this: the decision to have one's head frozen is not primarily instrumental but rather expressive. Look at the skewed demographics of the people who do it, namely highly intelligent male readers of science fiction, often with tech jobs. Is it that they love their lives especially much? Unlikely. Instead it's a chance to stand for something and in a way which sets them apart from many others. It's a chance to stand for instrumental rationality, for Science, for attitudes which go beyond traditional religion, for the conquering of limits, for probabilistic reasoning, and for the notion that the subject sees hidden possibilities and resources which more traditional observers do not.
It's like voting for a very unusual political candidate.
In my view the people interested in cryonics are often highly meritorious, as is Robin. So I'm very sympathetic with a) letting them do what they want, and b) praising them and their affiliations, simply because they are productive and smart and also not harming others. Those factors militate in favor of cryonics and indeed I am happy to endorse laissez-faire for the practice but still I don't find myself settling into really liking the idea.
Let's say I use another Hansonian construct and put everyone behind a contractarian veil of ignorance. I then ask: given that we don't know who will be born into which position, which expressive symbols do we want these highly intelligent individuals to send, and also to identify with, given that reputation is limited and publicity is scarce? Keep also in mind that society is insufficiently appreciative of intelligence and we would prefer that more people had greater respect for analytic thinking. There are also many worthy causes out there.
I don't see the positive deal here. I believe the world would be better off, and the relative status of the virtuous nerds higher, if instead the cryonics customers sent more signals which were perceived as running contrary to type. Ignoring cryonics, and promoting charity, would do more to raise the status of intelligence and analytical thinking than does cryonics.
On the practical side, while I am a non-believer, I also think that charity has a greater chance of bringing a longer life to one's self – or immortality — than does signing a cryonics contract. That's an even stronger triumph for probabilistic thinking than what the cryonics customers have on tap.
Addendum: If you haven't already, do go back and read both Quentin and #44 on these issues. Bracing stuff.
How do higher-IQ people choose?
Our main finding is that risk aversion and impatience both vary systematically with cognitive ability. Individuals with higher cognitive ability are significantly more willing to take risks in the lottery experiments and are significantly more patient over the year-long time horizon studied in the intertemporal choice experiment.
The link is here, gated for most of you (non-gated is here), and the authors are Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman, and Uwe Sunde. The subjects, by the way, were Germans. The results held somewhat less strongly for females and younger individuals.
Whole Earth Discipline
Here's my final quote (earlier quotes here and here) from Stuart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, a quote which sums up the thesis of the book:
Accustomed to saving natural systems from civilization, Greens now have the unfamiliar task of saving civilization from a natural system…
Brand is talking about climate change and in particular the possibility of rapid, difficult to reverse, tipping points in climate. Brand has a challenging message for environmentalists: If we take the threat of climate change seriously we must recognize that Cities are Green, Nukes are Green and Genetic Engineering is Green.
Brand's long history with the environmental movement should give his message credibility with that group. Brand's rationalism, reasonableness, and pro-technology, pro-civilization outlook gave his environmental message credibility with me.
Waterless Urinals
I found this sign over the waterless urinal at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (where I am hanging out this summer) difficult to parse (or follow).
Ordinarily I wouldn't devote a blog post to this kind of thing but believe it or not, this month's Wired has an excellent article on the science, economics and considerable politics of waterless urinals. Here's one bit:
Plumbing codes never contemplated a urinal without water. As a result, Falcon’s fixtures couldn’t be installed legally in most parts of the country. Krug assumed it would be a routine matter to amend the model codes on which most state and city codes are based, but Massey and other plumbers began to argue vehemently against it. The reason the urinal hadn’t changed in decades was because it worked, they argued. Urine could be dangerous, Massey said, and the urinal was not something to trifle with. As a result, in 2003 the organizations that administer the two dominant model codes in the US rejected Falcon’s request to permit installation of waterless urinals. “The plumbers blindsided us,” Krug says. “We didn’t understand what we were up against.”
One thing that does annoy me is the claim that these urinals "save" 40,000 thousand gallons of water a year. Water is not an endangered species. With local exceptions, water is a renewable resource and in plentiful supply. At the average U.S. price, you can buy 40,000 gallons of water for about $80.
A new anti-AIDS strategy?
Leading scientists fighting the world's worst Aids epidemic have called on African leaders to head a month-long sexual abstinence campaign, saying it would substantially reduce new infections.
Epidemiologists Alan Whiteside and Justin Parkhurst cite evidence that a newly infected person is most likely to transmit HIV in the month after being exposed to it. An abstinence campaign could cut new infections by up to 45%, they say – a huge step in countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland.
Unlike most abstinence campaigns, this one requires only a month of adherence [TC: does it break the chain or just postpone it? It depends why transmission is so likely in the first month]. A month with condoms could have similar effects. Will it happen? The full article is here.
Laissez-Faire Genetic Engineering
Every few minutes, every one of the microbes in your body (and the ocean, and the soil, and the air) is defying precaution and the sacred, playing God, performing an act illegal in Europe — swapping genes around in the endless search for competition or collaborative advantage.
Another good sentence from Steward Brand's Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.