Category: Science

In reference to my Bloggingheads appearance, one loyal MR reader emails me:

you said don’t be certain, be 90-10 or 60-40 then [you] said 1-99 that humanity dies out when sun’s gone.

Yes, I believe the chance is very small that humanity survives the death of our sun or even gets close to that point.  I’ll give it p = .005.  But what’s the chance I think that is the correct p or even in the neighborhood of the correct p?  Maybe 60 percent.  Of course my p estimate could go either up or down and after I apply meta-rationality p = .005 is where I end up, for better or worse.  I expect that fragile estimate to undergo lots of revision as I age, read more, etc.  I just don’t know if it will go up or down, thereby satisfying one of Robin Hanson’s canons of rationality (or some approximation thereof).

Why am I skeptical?  The Fermi paradox, for one thing, plus I observe that humans aren’t very good at solving large-scale collective action problems.  Our environment may be more fragile than we had thought and that’s without even considering the impact of man.

Under one scenario, the shy become more extroverted and everyone enjoys their new bon mots and witty asides.  Gains from trade increase all around.  Under another scenario, shyness and extroversion are part of a larger positional game.  Some people take the anti-shyness drug, but the previous extroverts, facing new competition for sex and friends, become even more extroverted, thus feeling more strain.  Many of them start taking the drug to stay ahead.  The previously shy exhibit more "juice," so to speak, but without much net result in terms of an improved life since they are still coming in second, so to speak.  And those who don’t take the anti-shyness drug are even worse off than before, given the new and higher standard for extroversion.

Some of the remaining shy, however, might in fact feel relieved.  If the new standard of extroversion rises so high that they can’t possibly meet it, they might, to some extent, withdraw from social competition.  The truly shy might even form social clubs and band together in the interests of promoting shyness.  If they can signal that they do not take the drug, their shyness might become more socially acceptable than before.

Seth Roberts asks:

The photo shows the full faces of 22 men; 7 of them are touching
their mouths. I have noticed something similar at many faculty
meetings. I started to notice this after I read about its observation
in a study designed to measure something else.

I’ve known about this for many years but have never read an
explanation. Do we enjoy touching our mouths – or is the absence of
touch for a  long time unpleasant? If so, why?

Here is one poker player’s answer.

…the modelling, done by the world-renowned Hadley Centre at the Met
Office but using emissions calculated by the Stockholm Network,
highlighted three problems: ‘Current policy comes in too slowly, it
internationalises too slowly and it binds developing countries too
late.’

Privately, many climate scientists believe it will be impossible to
meet the 2C target, but they are reluctant to say so because they do
not want to discourage moves to cut emissions.

Here is more and that is from The Guardian not National Review.  I believe that some parts of the world will be in for a very rough ride.

By the way, while I was in Japan I read that a) about half the world’s people are consuming subsidized energy, not taxed energy, and b) Chinese energy-users are typically paying about half of the world price.  Recent energy price increases in India have induced riots.  Those are all signs of the magnitude of the problem.

Here and here.

Hat tip to Kottke.

Until recently, nearly all the thinking about the risks of space-rock strikes has focused on counting craters.  But what if most impacts don’t leave craters?  This is the prospect that troubles Boslough.  Exploding in the air, the Tunguska rock did plenty of damage…

That is Gregg Easterbrook in the latest Atlantic Monthly, June issue, "The Sky is Falling," not yet on-line.  Here are previous MR posts on the asteroid problem.

I am still thinking about Nick Bostrom’s stimulating essay (and Robin Hanson’s precursor essay).  Nick of course is worried about finding signs of alien life, which would suggest that life has arisen many times, leading to the question "where are they?" and the fear that life dies out pretty easily.  For Nick it is cheerier, from our point of view at least, to think it is very hard for life to get underway in the first place.

In pondering the Fermi question, I often wonder if I am not simply missing the party, so to speak.  Most people already *do* think they see signs of an alien presence of some kind, of course defining that concept broadly to include The Gods.  So how can we say we don’t see "them"?  Maybe I, the agnotheist, don’t see "them" (Him?) but surely most other people think they do.

Doesn’t that make the Fermi paradox go away in a snap?  No one cites Blind Boy Blake and screams "He doesn’t see them!".

Another way of putting it is to say we don’t take David Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion seriously enough.  We really have just one data point, so who can say what "they" look like, or what kind of "display" they would have made for us?

Alternatively, I am struck by the tension between the Fermi paradox with the "We are probably living in a simulation" claim.  Both are popular with the same group of people because they are nerdy ways of making you believe something weird; in reality the two conundrums don’t fit together.  If you take the simulation option seriously, you again see the creators all around you, albeit in disguised or cloaked form.  Of course you had to use Bayesian inferential reasoning to see them, but what’s wrong with that?  Better than a telescope, some would say.  And since most people believe in God, the creators might even consider their artwork to be already "signed."  (I’ll note rapidly in passing that the arguments against the simulation hypothesis also strike at the Fermi worries, but establishing that would take lots of work.)

Either way, it seems we see "them," or ought to think we see them, even if that turns out to be a visual mistake of sorts.

Addendum: I liked Michael Goodfellow’s point:

After that first species gets control, it makes all the rules.  If it shells over all the stars, no other life can even develop, since all the planets are frozen solid.  If it wants to let biological evolution continue, it can do that, by avoiding stars with fertile planets.  It can prevent any other technology from arising (by monitoring all the planets where life is evolving.)  It can guide or change any life that it does find.

This may seem horrible to you — little robots putting all the stars out!  Spreading like a weed and killing or preventing any new life from developing.  But you’re looking at it the wrong way…The first species out there gets to decide the future, for every species that follows.  For lack of any other evidence, let’s hope it’s us.

Splendid, but I part company at the last sentence.  There is some other evidence (of the Bayesian sort) and I think the most logical assumption is — whether you believe in God or space aliens — to think of ourselves as their product, one way or another.

Or to put it yet another way, what’s the principle of individuation here?  Isn’t "seeing us" and "seeing them" more or less the same thing?

Hail David Hume!

Economists say that people buy insurance to cover themselves if something bad happens.  Some experiments by psychologists suggest that people buy insurance because they think it will prevent the bad thing from happening.   John Tierney has more.

Wow.  It’s supposed to amount to about 90,000 pages; here is an article about the project.  Here are a few indicated highlights.

His new book Common Wealth devotes an entire chapter to this important topic.  Sachs writes:

The main lesson of ecology is the interconnectedness of the various parts of an ecosystem and the dangers of abrupt, nonlinear, and even catastrophic changes caused by modest forcings…It is a basic finding that biological diversity increases the productivity and resilience of ecosystems.  With more species filling more niches in a given location, a biodiverse ecosystem is better buffered against external shocks in is more adept at cycling nutrients, capturing solar radiation, utilizing water resources, and preventing the takeover of the system by single predators, weeds, or pathogens.  In other words, preserving biodiversity helps to preserve all aspects of ecosystem functions.  Removing one or more species from an ecosystem, for example, by selective harvesting of trees or fish or hunted animals, can lead to a cascade of ecological changes with large, adverse, and nonlinear effects on the functioning of the ecosystem.

Now, loyal MR readers may remember that I am genuinely uncertain how much we should worry about the loss of biodiversity.  I do know the following:

1. Many smart people who know much more science than I do are very worried about the loss of biodiversity.

2. Given that the human population has ballooned for the foreseeable future, massive losses in biodiversity are inevitable.  The question is how bad the marginal losses will be, if we do not adapt policy accordingly.

3. If I had to conduct a debate and argue that the marginal loss of biodiversity was going to be a tragedy for human beings (obviously, I can see the loss to animals, and yes I do count that for something), I would not do very well.  Yes Yana’s children won’t eat tuna and then I would sputter something about carbon and nitrogen cycles.

So OK readers, help me out.  I’ve read Sachs’s passage and I don’t think I disagree with any of the claims in it.  But I still cannot articulate to a skeptic exactly what marginal disaster will come if we do not take drastic action to preserve biodiversity.

Please use the comments to set me straight.  What exactly will go wrong?  And do not compare seven billion humans to pristine nature.  Compare seven billion humans with bad biodiversity policy to, say, five billion humans with a pretty good biodiversity policy.  What exactly is the difference?  What are these costs as a percentage of gdp? 

Please be as specific as possible; I genuinely would like to learn more.

From 1968:

A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort,
where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a
sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two-
and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked
underwater trails.

But many of the predictions are good, at least in part.  Get this:

The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.
These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and
waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track
of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units,
communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the
computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even
before any obvious breakdown occurs.

Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages,
keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even
figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other
utilities. Not every family has its private computer. Many families
reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The
machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does
with other utilities.

Via www.geekpress.com.  As usual, it is presumed that traffic and transportation problems will have seen a lot of progress when in fact they have not.  Nor was it understood how unevenly the benefits of progress would be distributed and how possible it would be to continue a life basically devoid of these advances.

The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their
thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of
goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who
successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a
second, seemingly unrelated task.

In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others
received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an
impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on
average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who
were excused from eating radishes.

From the NYTimes with some good advice on test taking, dieting and how to increase your will power over time.