The always-excellent Slacktivist has a long but very readable post about the evils of big monopolies. Go read it.
I continue to maintain that any Libertarian whingeing about "big government" fails to take into consideration the fact that, in theory at least, the government is accountable to the people, while international corporations (and especially monopolies) can and will do anything that they can get away with. It is only the government that is capable of defining what they can get away with. The government may not presently be as accountable as it should be, but that is the fault of the voters. So, when the opportunity arises, vote, and vote responsibly. Only that way will we get both fair government and fair businesses.
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Ethics and Aesthetics
I had an amazing discussion with a devoutly Christian friend this week. We have discussed religion before, and one of the things that we agreed was not at issue was a question of morality: we agreed that it was inherent, that living a moral life requires no external dictum (such as the Ten Commandments). Our trains of thought departed on the origin of this moral sense (the product of evolution acting on social animals versus a gift of God), but it was refreshing not to have to defend my ability to make moral decisions without God.
This week we returned to the topic, and expanded it to include other things that are (at least commonly considered to be) uniquely human, which he and others have thought evidence of a divine hand. Among those things was ethics, the ability of humans to act in a fair and just manner even to our detriment. But, I contended, we are social animals; experiments with other social animals have shown at the very least a rudimentary sense of justice or of fair play. Our consciences are a safety mechanism that allows us to live together, to rely on one another. I contend that the conscience has its root in the ability to empathise, to imagine ourselves in the place of others. "How would I feel if someone treated me the way that I am thinking of treating this other person?" is perhaps one of the most fundamental questions that we can ask ourselves on a day-to-day basis, and it guides our behaviour in ways too varied and subtle to describe.
Our conversation moved on, and my friend appealed as well to a sense of the spiritual that most people have, the ability to be awed by nature, as well as by great works of humankind. This is something that neither of us had thought much about: where does that sense of awe come from? What would its predecessor be in our pre-human forebears? Again, he thought this to hint at the divine: God gave it to us, a gift with which to appreciate our world. At one point my friend described the feeling that he got admiring a beautiful sunset as "hollow".
Another friend, who was sitting in on the whole conversation, did not quite get what he meant, but think that I did. This is not the bad sort of hollow that we equate with guilt or loss or failure. It is a feeling of inadequacy, of humility, that we can appreciate something so much vaster and more beautiful than ourselves. But, I said, we also feel a sense of gratefulness: we know how much talent and hard work goes into making something beautiful, and we appreciate the sacrifice of those who invest such skill and energy in making beautiful things. It is our ability to empathise with others that gives us this ability -- we put ourselves in the place of the artist, and see how poorly we would do in creating work of such power, and we thank them for having done that for us.
To give an example, there has been and will forever remain, for instance, only one Johann Sebastian Bach, and nobody will ever be able to write what he did. The level of brilliance in his music is so far beyond that of anyone most of us will ever meet that to contemplate it being played -- to contemplate it being written -- for us is to imagine ourselves indebted beyond any hope of repayment. It was not written for us, and unless we are very priveleged we will not ever even experience it being played for us, but we can still appreciate it, and we are grateful beyond words for it. (Of course, one can replace Bach with any icon of artistic brilliance if this example does not stir one's own emotions. I could argue that this would be evidence of a deficiency in taste or exposure, but I will leave that for another argument.)
But what of our ability to appreciate nature? Scientists have possibly the highest proportion of atheists amongst the professions, and yet what drives one to be a successful scientist is exactly this sense of wonder. How can one feel indebted to the Universe? And yet, how can one not? We exist, we experience things. As scientists we appreciate (I cannot honestly say "understand") just how complicated and contingent everything is: how fragile is that existence, how precious is that experience. We empathise with the Universe, knowing at the same time just how impossible it would be for one of us to create the thing being appreciated, and we feel indebted to the Universe for having made it for us. There is a sense of guilt at not being able to repay it -- ever -- and a sense of duty to appreciate it. But more than that, there is a sense of gratefulness, that it is there to be appreciated, and that we are here to appreciate it.
All of this springs from our conscience. It is not the primary function of our conscience, but it is hardly a bad side-effect. It is also not something that I would have connected before this conversation: ethics and aesthetics are not things that I would guess were intertwined, but I am drawn to the simplicity and elegence of this idea. I have no clue how original it is, but I think that I rather like it.
This week we returned to the topic, and expanded it to include other things that are (at least commonly considered to be) uniquely human, which he and others have thought evidence of a divine hand. Among those things was ethics, the ability of humans to act in a fair and just manner even to our detriment. But, I contended, we are social animals; experiments with other social animals have shown at the very least a rudimentary sense of justice or of fair play. Our consciences are a safety mechanism that allows us to live together, to rely on one another. I contend that the conscience has its root in the ability to empathise, to imagine ourselves in the place of others. "How would I feel if someone treated me the way that I am thinking of treating this other person?" is perhaps one of the most fundamental questions that we can ask ourselves on a day-to-day basis, and it guides our behaviour in ways too varied and subtle to describe.
Our conversation moved on, and my friend appealed as well to a sense of the spiritual that most people have, the ability to be awed by nature, as well as by great works of humankind. This is something that neither of us had thought much about: where does that sense of awe come from? What would its predecessor be in our pre-human forebears? Again, he thought this to hint at the divine: God gave it to us, a gift with which to appreciate our world. At one point my friend described the feeling that he got admiring a beautiful sunset as "hollow".
Another friend, who was sitting in on the whole conversation, did not quite get what he meant, but think that I did. This is not the bad sort of hollow that we equate with guilt or loss or failure. It is a feeling of inadequacy, of humility, that we can appreciate something so much vaster and more beautiful than ourselves. But, I said, we also feel a sense of gratefulness: we know how much talent and hard work goes into making something beautiful, and we appreciate the sacrifice of those who invest such skill and energy in making beautiful things. It is our ability to empathise with others that gives us this ability -- we put ourselves in the place of the artist, and see how poorly we would do in creating work of such power, and we thank them for having done that for us.
To give an example, there has been and will forever remain, for instance, only one Johann Sebastian Bach, and nobody will ever be able to write what he did. The level of brilliance in his music is so far beyond that of anyone most of us will ever meet that to contemplate it being played -- to contemplate it being written -- for us is to imagine ourselves indebted beyond any hope of repayment. It was not written for us, and unless we are very priveleged we will not ever even experience it being played for us, but we can still appreciate it, and we are grateful beyond words for it. (Of course, one can replace Bach with any icon of artistic brilliance if this example does not stir one's own emotions. I could argue that this would be evidence of a deficiency in taste or exposure, but I will leave that for another argument.)
But what of our ability to appreciate nature? Scientists have possibly the highest proportion of atheists amongst the professions, and yet what drives one to be a successful scientist is exactly this sense of wonder. How can one feel indebted to the Universe? And yet, how can one not? We exist, we experience things. As scientists we appreciate (I cannot honestly say "understand") just how complicated and contingent everything is: how fragile is that existence, how precious is that experience. We empathise with the Universe, knowing at the same time just how impossible it would be for one of us to create the thing being appreciated, and we feel indebted to the Universe for having made it for us. There is a sense of guilt at not being able to repay it -- ever -- and a sense of duty to appreciate it. But more than that, there is a sense of gratefulness, that it is there to be appreciated, and that we are here to appreciate it.
All of this springs from our conscience. It is not the primary function of our conscience, but it is hardly a bad side-effect. It is also not something that I would have connected before this conversation: ethics and aesthetics are not things that I would guess were intertwined, but I am drawn to the simplicity and elegence of this idea. I have no clue how original it is, but I think that I rather like it.
Monday, 2 June 2008
Rejected!
This morning I received one of the least-welcome messages it is possible for a scientist to receive: my manuscript was rejected for publication. I was assured by the professor for whom I had originally written the paper that it would sail through peer review, but apparently it did not: both reviewers were negative.
This was my first real introduction to the receiving end of peer review. I have always been in favour of the process: it is a sort of quality control for science. It has its flaws, to be sure, but they are far less significant than some of the other problems with science.* I always figured that I could take a rejection gracefully, that I would grow from it and make my work into something better when I resubmitted it. It took this experience to show that I was really not prepared for dealing with it. I managed to pull myself together, though, and thought about it on my way into campus.
For one thing, my paper is not on a topic in which I am actually doing research. It is a review of work done in a distantly related field, written for a class and coached into publication by the class's professor. I suppose that I had started to feel somewhat overconfident of my talents in the latter stages of submission. Getting a paper published outside of my field would be something of a coup, proof of my versatility. But at the same time, there is nothing halfway about this. Publishing a paper is not playing in a sandbox: submitting something for publication is tantamount to saying that one is ready to play with the big kids. One is asking for the roughest treatment that one's work could possibly merit. Like the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," and that is certainly true here. If a paper survives the peer-review process, it was either exemplary to begin with, or (more likely) was considerably improved through its criticism. I was asking to be taken seriously as an expert in a field in which I have in fact had little formal training (none at all, in the case of palaeontology, of which I had much to say in this paper), and I should have expected a thorough smacking in any way that could be delivered.
However, things are not as negative as that implies. One of the reviewers provided about four pages of commentary, which I take to mean that s/he thought my work of sufficient merit to indicate at the very least that I was thinking along the right lines. If nothing else, s/he has helped me learn more about the field, pointing out where I was making false assumptions or missing critical papers. Although there was nothing explicit by way of encouragement in what s/he wrote, it is not reading between the lines too much to see that, at the very least, the reviewer respected my effort.
The other review was quite different. For one thing, it was well under half a page. It began with explicit praise for my writing, and regards the paper's principal flaw as a lack of novel ideas (which, being a review paper, is not a particularly hurtful observation). However, the second paragraph reads almost as if it were describing a different paper entirely. It deplores my lack of expertise and experience, and concludes by calling my work "poor". I am not sure what to make of the conflicting messages in this review, but I will continue to ruminate on the matter, and both the professor for whom I originally wrote the paper and my supervisor have promised advice and encouragement. I may take the first reviewer's suggestions to heart, rework the manuscript, and resubmit it. I may get my coup after all. But overall, this is a side project, and not a critical one to my career, and if it fails to produce anything that can go on my CV, so be it.
In any event, I have made it through the day with my dignity largely intact -- challenged, to be sure, but not broken. This is part of the process. I would expect nothing less: I have asked for my work to be taken seriously, and it was, even if that amounted to being told that it was not an effort worthy of being taken seriously. This is a sign that science is working. If I am to make anything of my effort, it will be all the better for having weathered such a challenge. In short, things are not so bad.
* This is worthy of another post in and of itself. The principal problems with science that concern me are research priorities, funding, job availability, and regard for educational talent -- but those are all problems within science. More significant still is the general public ignorance of what science is, how it works, and what scientists do, running from general lack of exposure all the way to the mistruths spread by Creationists. But I will restrain myself: I will post about that another time.
This was my first real introduction to the receiving end of peer review. I have always been in favour of the process: it is a sort of quality control for science. It has its flaws, to be sure, but they are far less significant than some of the other problems with science.* I always figured that I could take a rejection gracefully, that I would grow from it and make my work into something better when I resubmitted it. It took this experience to show that I was really not prepared for dealing with it. I managed to pull myself together, though, and thought about it on my way into campus.
For one thing, my paper is not on a topic in which I am actually doing research. It is a review of work done in a distantly related field, written for a class and coached into publication by the class's professor. I suppose that I had started to feel somewhat overconfident of my talents in the latter stages of submission. Getting a paper published outside of my field would be something of a coup, proof of my versatility. But at the same time, there is nothing halfway about this. Publishing a paper is not playing in a sandbox: submitting something for publication is tantamount to saying that one is ready to play with the big kids. One is asking for the roughest treatment that one's work could possibly merit. Like the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," and that is certainly true here. If a paper survives the peer-review process, it was either exemplary to begin with, or (more likely) was considerably improved through its criticism. I was asking to be taken seriously as an expert in a field in which I have in fact had little formal training (none at all, in the case of palaeontology, of which I had much to say in this paper), and I should have expected a thorough smacking in any way that could be delivered.
However, things are not as negative as that implies. One of the reviewers provided about four pages of commentary, which I take to mean that s/he thought my work of sufficient merit to indicate at the very least that I was thinking along the right lines. If nothing else, s/he has helped me learn more about the field, pointing out where I was making false assumptions or missing critical papers. Although there was nothing explicit by way of encouragement in what s/he wrote, it is not reading between the lines too much to see that, at the very least, the reviewer respected my effort.
The other review was quite different. For one thing, it was well under half a page. It began with explicit praise for my writing, and regards the paper's principal flaw as a lack of novel ideas (which, being a review paper, is not a particularly hurtful observation). However, the second paragraph reads almost as if it were describing a different paper entirely. It deplores my lack of expertise and experience, and concludes by calling my work "poor". I am not sure what to make of the conflicting messages in this review, but I will continue to ruminate on the matter, and both the professor for whom I originally wrote the paper and my supervisor have promised advice and encouragement. I may take the first reviewer's suggestions to heart, rework the manuscript, and resubmit it. I may get my coup after all. But overall, this is a side project, and not a critical one to my career, and if it fails to produce anything that can go on my CV, so be it.
In any event, I have made it through the day with my dignity largely intact -- challenged, to be sure, but not broken. This is part of the process. I would expect nothing less: I have asked for my work to be taken seriously, and it was, even if that amounted to being told that it was not an effort worthy of being taken seriously. This is a sign that science is working. If I am to make anything of my effort, it will be all the better for having weathered such a challenge. In short, things are not so bad.
* This is worthy of another post in and of itself. The principal problems with science that concern me are research priorities, funding, job availability, and regard for educational talent -- but those are all problems within science. More significant still is the general public ignorance of what science is, how it works, and what scientists do, running from general lack of exposure all the way to the mistruths spread by Creationists. But I will restrain myself: I will post about that another time.
Monday, 25 February 2008
Perils of Electron Microscopy
I do a lot of work with electron microscopes. This is amazingly neat stuff, every bit as fun as I imagined it would be, and perhaps the closest thing that biologists have to being astronauts. I get to play with exotic, highly expensive equipment, and I get to see alien things that nobody has ever seen (or, in some cases, dreamed of) before. Twice in the last six months my lab has had a visiting scientist come to do work that is right up my alley, and since I am checked out on the microscope and she is not, I got to "drive" (the term that we seem to use for operating the 'scope) with her giving me instructions. It was very illuminating, seeing what is pertinent to our study and what can be skipped over, and at the same time there were several moments of both of us sitting and gaping and asking each other, "What on earth is that?!" It is fantastic stuff.
There are several kinds of electron microscope. The one that my lab uses most is the transmission electron microscope (or TEM), which operates in a very intuitive way: it works just like a regular light microscope, except that instead of shining a beam of light through the specimen, it shines a beam of electrons. The electrons are focussed using lenses, and (just as with the more expensive light microscopes) the images are captured by a camera. Of course, there are other significant differences as well: the lenses are in fact magnetic fields, and because electrons do not travel very far through air, the inside of the microscope is pumped down to a high vacuum.
Specimens for a light microscope are generally mounted on slides. This means that the specimen, usually aqueous in nature, is dropped onto a glass slide, over which is placed a coverslip. If the specimen is important enough, and stable enough not to degrade on its own, the slide may be sealed using Vaseline or fingernail polish, which can preserve the specimen indefinitely, but otherwise, that tends to be it. Of course, there are often also specific ways of preparing specimens, but I will not get into that right now.
Specimens for a TEM are analagous. The specimens are mounted not on slides but "grids", which are little (3 mm diameter) copper circles with a slot-shaped hole in the middle. (Yes, they are not actually gridlike: this is a historical term, used because other grids actually do have mesh gridwork in the holes. Many labs use those kinds as well, but my lab has so far used only the other kind, called slot grids.) The specimen is actually mounted on a very thin plastic film, on the order of 40-100 nm thick, which is suspended in the middle of the grid. Like a well-preserved slide, the specimen will last indefinitely.
There are of course other differences, many of which are obvious upon contemplation, and some of which require further explanation (which I may get to in other posts). However, one difference that is significant here is that electron microscopes (all of them, but particularly TEMs) are not just sending a beam of light through the specimen: they are shooting charged particles, which can and often do interact with the specimens. Electrons can be really harsh! In the case of my recent work, for which I was using very thin films (40 nm or so), the electrons can rip right through the specimen. This means that -- often right after discovering the perfect example of a cell amongst dozens of unusable contenders -- one can watch one's precious work tear apart, wrinkle, and wither away before one's eyes. No amount of preparation can prevent this: it just happens. Thicker films are less prone to this sort of damage, but they also impede the electron beam more, and so lose resolution. Resolution is the reason why we use electron microscopes in the first place, so we tend to use the thinnest films that we can. Obviously, I need to experiment more with this, to find a better film thickness that will not break apart in the electron beam, without losing too much resolution.
There are numerous other ways in which TEM specimens can be irreparably lost. One of the most frustrating is tweezering -- putting a hole in the film with clumsily handled forceps while moving the grid around. I have had much hapless experience with that. Another is that some of the stages (the devices that hold the specimens inside the microscope) hold the specimens in place with spring clips, which can and often do tear through the films when removed (or, on occasion, when put in). There are ways of minimising this, which I have only recently become competent at.
Unfortunately, "recently" means that I had lost several specimens while learning how to handle, mount, and dismount them. Up until last Friday, I had only one pristine specimen left, undamaged by my apprentice clumsiness. That specimen, last Friday, self-destructed in the 'scope, as the film gave way spontaneously. This is a setback, of course, but I can always make more specimens. This is of course how science works. Only now, I will try thicker films!
There are several kinds of electron microscope. The one that my lab uses most is the transmission electron microscope (or TEM), which operates in a very intuitive way: it works just like a regular light microscope, except that instead of shining a beam of light through the specimen, it shines a beam of electrons. The electrons are focussed using lenses, and (just as with the more expensive light microscopes) the images are captured by a camera. Of course, there are other significant differences as well: the lenses are in fact magnetic fields, and because electrons do not travel very far through air, the inside of the microscope is pumped down to a high vacuum.
Specimens for a light microscope are generally mounted on slides. This means that the specimen, usually aqueous in nature, is dropped onto a glass slide, over which is placed a coverslip. If the specimen is important enough, and stable enough not to degrade on its own, the slide may be sealed using Vaseline or fingernail polish, which can preserve the specimen indefinitely, but otherwise, that tends to be it. Of course, there are often also specific ways of preparing specimens, but I will not get into that right now.
Specimens for a TEM are analagous. The specimens are mounted not on slides but "grids", which are little (3 mm diameter) copper circles with a slot-shaped hole in the middle. (Yes, they are not actually gridlike: this is a historical term, used because other grids actually do have mesh gridwork in the holes. Many labs use those kinds as well, but my lab has so far used only the other kind, called slot grids.) The specimen is actually mounted on a very thin plastic film, on the order of 40-100 nm thick, which is suspended in the middle of the grid. Like a well-preserved slide, the specimen will last indefinitely.
There are of course other differences, many of which are obvious upon contemplation, and some of which require further explanation (which I may get to in other posts). However, one difference that is significant here is that electron microscopes (all of them, but particularly TEMs) are not just sending a beam of light through the specimen: they are shooting charged particles, which can and often do interact with the specimens. Electrons can be really harsh! In the case of my recent work, for which I was using very thin films (40 nm or so), the electrons can rip right through the specimen. This means that -- often right after discovering the perfect example of a cell amongst dozens of unusable contenders -- one can watch one's precious work tear apart, wrinkle, and wither away before one's eyes. No amount of preparation can prevent this: it just happens. Thicker films are less prone to this sort of damage, but they also impede the electron beam more, and so lose resolution. Resolution is the reason why we use electron microscopes in the first place, so we tend to use the thinnest films that we can. Obviously, I need to experiment more with this, to find a better film thickness that will not break apart in the electron beam, without losing too much resolution.
There are numerous other ways in which TEM specimens can be irreparably lost. One of the most frustrating is tweezering -- putting a hole in the film with clumsily handled forceps while moving the grid around. I have had much hapless experience with that. Another is that some of the stages (the devices that hold the specimens inside the microscope) hold the specimens in place with spring clips, which can and often do tear through the films when removed (or, on occasion, when put in). There are ways of minimising this, which I have only recently become competent at.
Unfortunately, "recently" means that I had lost several specimens while learning how to handle, mount, and dismount them. Up until last Friday, I had only one pristine specimen left, undamaged by my apprentice clumsiness. That specimen, last Friday, self-destructed in the 'scope, as the film gave way spontaneously. This is a setback, of course, but I can always make more specimens. This is of course how science works. Only now, I will try thicker films!
Monday, 17 December 2007
God, Morality, and Progress
I recently finished reading Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. Partially this has been because I admire Dawkins but have read comparatively little of his work, and partially this is because I have gotten rather annoyed with people that criticise the book without having read it (which seems to amount to most published reviews and many book-length rebuttals). Mostly, however, I read it because the Evolution Studies Group at Dalhousie chose it for their most recent reading.
Although one might think that it comprises mostly biologists, this group is actually made up mostly of people from the social sciences: philosophers, mainly, with some historians and sociologists for good measure, and I believe a stray psychologist or two as well. This makes for some interesting discussions, usually in directions that I cannot predict. In the case of Dawkins, though, I am right at home: a biologist wandering through theology, generally in agreement with the philosophers, but somewhat out of place all the same.
Much of the criticism of Dawkins is levelled at his lack of philosophical sophistication. I had heard this myself, but did not appreciate it until the philosophers explained things. Indeed, as it turns out, there are far better versions of the historical proofs for God's existence than are addressed by Dawkins. They are just as flawed, only in a more sophisticated fashion, and take far more verbiage to refute. I would argue that a proper refutation would require the book to be twice as long as it is, and probably nowhere near as witty. More than that, Dawkins's intent is not to provide the final word in the question of God's existence (something that talented philosophers and theologians have attempted for millennia) but to demonstrate that his dismissal of said entity's existence is not without consideration of the more famous arguments. Still, I would be a little less embarrassed by proxy if Dawkins had at least acknowledged that he was not dealing with the best versions of the arguments, that he had considered them but found them to be just as lacking. Instead he seems to think that any one version is as good as any other, and tackles at best mediocre and at worst laughable takes on the matter.
His argument against the existence of God is oddly one-dimensional: he merely refutes the argument from design (which as a biologist I know to be complete poppycock, although an understanding of that may take some considerable education to acquire fully). He does so very well, but I am not certain that he has made his case merely through the inversion of a popular (if fallacious) argument. He does take it to be illustrative of a far more powerful concept, though, one which I feel is the most important aspect of the matter: there is really no reason to support the notion of God in the first place. The argument from design purports not only the existence of God but that God created, designed, or guided the development of the material universe. As Dawkins succinctly puts it, a universe with such a God is demonstrably different from a universe without one, and every prediction made by the creator/designer/intervener-God hypothesis can be shown to be contradicted. There is thus no evidence for God, and Occam's Razor suggests strongly that such a fantastic entity must therefore be very unlikely. As Carl Sagan put it, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and here we have one of the most extraordinary claims ever put forth, with no evidence whatsoever. Still, this is not a demonstration of non-existence, and it leaves the reader somewhat unfulfilled.
It is a tremendous stretch from the purely philosophical discussion of the existence of a creator God to assertions of God's nature and desires, and of God's past actions, as are made in the Bible. The number of a priori assumptions that must be made to require that God fit the character of the Bible is stupendous: one must specify God's positions on a vast number of completely arbitrary issues (positions that are themselves often impossible to justify without a holy text to dictate them). However, it is exactly this version of a God that is used by the faithful to argue for a religious foundation of morality. This is implied in every offhanded assertion that atheists are immoral, or less moral than the religious: God dictates morality, and without God, one's morality is arbitrary.
This is an assertion that has repulsed me for as long as I have been aware of it. It is demonstrably false, both from a philosophical perspective and from empirical evidence. I would argue that the opposite is in fact true: I (as an atheist) try to do good because it is good, not out of fear of punishment or hope for reward. I identify what is good through reflection and compassion, and while my complete set of "good acts" may differ in small ways from that of another, I have enough confidence in the goodness of human nature to expect that it will not differ substantially. We each have our own moral compass, and each points in more or less the same direction. (I make exceptions, of course, for psychopathic individuals such as Hitler, Stalin, and more recently, Saddam Hussein. Of course, while the religious like to attribute their evils to atheism -- a demonstrable falsehood in Hitler's case, at least: he outlawed atheist groups, and ranted against the evils of atheism -- the fact of the matter is that these were twisted, evil people, and fortunately such are very rare in society.) Dawkins makes a compelling point on the matter: the Bible is full of contradictions on what is ethically correct, and so one must choose which one agrees with. What one agrees with is guided, either by one's own moral compass or by edicts from one's church, but ultimately, it is and must be guided.
My view of atheist ethics goes further than this. I pity the religious people who do what they identify as good exclusively through hope for reward or fear of punishment. Such a view of morality must result in little short of paranoia. Life is far more than what one understands as a toddler, when every interaction with the wider world revolves around pleasing one's parents. I suspect (and others in the group agreed) that in fact the deeply religious operate more by their own moral compasses than by constant comparison against some Biblical standard of behaviour. They may calibrate their compasses by Biblical standards, but ultimately they operate, to all intents and purposes, autonomously. The religious fear that atheism leads to chaos overlooks the fact that they themselves operate using the same equipment as the atheists, with more or less the same effects. Many aspects of our morality are, I am fairly certain, so deeply ingrained as to be universal: the edict that one must do unto others as one would have them do unto you is one such aspect. Other things, such as conservative sexual standards, are functions of culture: how one calibrates one's moral compass is not ingrained. The only difference is that the religious have an external and absolute set of standards, while atheists must come to their own conclusions.
This leads to the real argument behind religiously-guided morality: that without that external set of standards, people will have differing moral compasses. The religious do not trust that moral compasses will all point in more or less the same direction (aside from the psychopaths, who will not be improved through religious influence). One might say that atheists such as I have faith in humanity, but I would not go so far. Humans are social animals, and all social animals have internal mechanisms to help them to get along with others of their kind. Our moral compass is a manifestation of those mechanisms, and all the more wondrous for it. That it varies, and that it is influenced by others, allows it to evolve.
This brings up another point made by Dawkins: that morality evolves. Darwin was, by the standards of his day, liberal and progressive, and yet he held attitudes toward race that would make modern-day conservatives cringe. As Dawkins put it, the moral Zeitgeist has changed. We see this as a good thing: racial bias (to take just the one example) has proven to be founded in error and has been perpetuated to the detriment of all. The fact that European culture and those derived from it is more liberal than it was a hundred years ago can be argued to be a good thing from any number of perspectives. I would certainly make those arguments myself, but I would also point out that, having been brought up in a liberal environment, I would see any change in the moral Zeitgeist towards the direction of the values that I hold myself as a good one, regardless of the direction of that change. If I were taught from an early age that (say) people of Asian descent were constitutionally untrustworthy, and this was a common belief in the culture in which I grew up, a history of cultural change towards distrust of Asians would be seen as a good thing. The fact that I can attribute such differences to differences and misunderstandings between cultures leads me to believe that, by objective standards (if they can be said to exist at all), modern European morality has improved from its past state, but I must still be cautious of the very real possibility that a perception of positive progress in other values is merely a reflection of them having become more like my own, which may in turn be entirely arbitrary from an objective standpoint.
So, is the prospect of objective morality actually viable? I would like to think that it is, at least for the major issues: respect for the persons and property of others. The Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you") is key here, applied to all humanity. There are many less critical issues, in which I may disagree with others, but my (and most liberals') compass is calibrated by another, relativistic, edict: "live and let live." In other words, I allow others to decide what is right and wrong for them, so long as it does not affect me. I believe that the core of objective morality follows from these two edicts (although I will grant the possibility that I have not -- yet -- identified some further guideline for morality that further refines matters). There are of course situations in which my application of these guidelines differs from another's; further refinement of each compass may be necessary, but I do not believe that objective morality need cover all possible situations. Personal moralities are, I am fairly certain, tied up with personalities, and so cannot be the same for all people; at this point, they are perhaps not properly called "moralities" in the first place. But the fundamentals are the same, for the religious and the atheist alike: we all want to live in a safe place, where we will not be assaulted or robbed or otherwise abused, and that has nothing at all to do with religion. Making the world a safe and secure place is not a mandate of religion: it is a mandate of humanitarianism, something that we all share.
Although one might think that it comprises mostly biologists, this group is actually made up mostly of people from the social sciences: philosophers, mainly, with some historians and sociologists for good measure, and I believe a stray psychologist or two as well. This makes for some interesting discussions, usually in directions that I cannot predict. In the case of Dawkins, though, I am right at home: a biologist wandering through theology, generally in agreement with the philosophers, but somewhat out of place all the same.
Much of the criticism of Dawkins is levelled at his lack of philosophical sophistication. I had heard this myself, but did not appreciate it until the philosophers explained things. Indeed, as it turns out, there are far better versions of the historical proofs for God's existence than are addressed by Dawkins. They are just as flawed, only in a more sophisticated fashion, and take far more verbiage to refute. I would argue that a proper refutation would require the book to be twice as long as it is, and probably nowhere near as witty. More than that, Dawkins's intent is not to provide the final word in the question of God's existence (something that talented philosophers and theologians have attempted for millennia) but to demonstrate that his dismissal of said entity's existence is not without consideration of the more famous arguments. Still, I would be a little less embarrassed by proxy if Dawkins had at least acknowledged that he was not dealing with the best versions of the arguments, that he had considered them but found them to be just as lacking. Instead he seems to think that any one version is as good as any other, and tackles at best mediocre and at worst laughable takes on the matter.
His argument against the existence of God is oddly one-dimensional: he merely refutes the argument from design (which as a biologist I know to be complete poppycock, although an understanding of that may take some considerable education to acquire fully). He does so very well, but I am not certain that he has made his case merely through the inversion of a popular (if fallacious) argument. He does take it to be illustrative of a far more powerful concept, though, one which I feel is the most important aspect of the matter: there is really no reason to support the notion of God in the first place. The argument from design purports not only the existence of God but that God created, designed, or guided the development of the material universe. As Dawkins succinctly puts it, a universe with such a God is demonstrably different from a universe without one, and every prediction made by the creator/designer/intervener-God hypothesis can be shown to be contradicted. There is thus no evidence for God, and Occam's Razor suggests strongly that such a fantastic entity must therefore be very unlikely. As Carl Sagan put it, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and here we have one of the most extraordinary claims ever put forth, with no evidence whatsoever. Still, this is not a demonstration of non-existence, and it leaves the reader somewhat unfulfilled.
It is a tremendous stretch from the purely philosophical discussion of the existence of a creator God to assertions of God's nature and desires, and of God's past actions, as are made in the Bible. The number of a priori assumptions that must be made to require that God fit the character of the Bible is stupendous: one must specify God's positions on a vast number of completely arbitrary issues (positions that are themselves often impossible to justify without a holy text to dictate them). However, it is exactly this version of a God that is used by the faithful to argue for a religious foundation of morality. This is implied in every offhanded assertion that atheists are immoral, or less moral than the religious: God dictates morality, and without God, one's morality is arbitrary.
This is an assertion that has repulsed me for as long as I have been aware of it. It is demonstrably false, both from a philosophical perspective and from empirical evidence. I would argue that the opposite is in fact true: I (as an atheist) try to do good because it is good, not out of fear of punishment or hope for reward. I identify what is good through reflection and compassion, and while my complete set of "good acts" may differ in small ways from that of another, I have enough confidence in the goodness of human nature to expect that it will not differ substantially. We each have our own moral compass, and each points in more or less the same direction. (I make exceptions, of course, for psychopathic individuals such as Hitler, Stalin, and more recently, Saddam Hussein. Of course, while the religious like to attribute their evils to atheism -- a demonstrable falsehood in Hitler's case, at least: he outlawed atheist groups, and ranted against the evils of atheism -- the fact of the matter is that these were twisted, evil people, and fortunately such are very rare in society.) Dawkins makes a compelling point on the matter: the Bible is full of contradictions on what is ethically correct, and so one must choose which one agrees with. What one agrees with is guided, either by one's own moral compass or by edicts from one's church, but ultimately, it is and must be guided.
My view of atheist ethics goes further than this. I pity the religious people who do what they identify as good exclusively through hope for reward or fear of punishment. Such a view of morality must result in little short of paranoia. Life is far more than what one understands as a toddler, when every interaction with the wider world revolves around pleasing one's parents. I suspect (and others in the group agreed) that in fact the deeply religious operate more by their own moral compasses than by constant comparison against some Biblical standard of behaviour. They may calibrate their compasses by Biblical standards, but ultimately they operate, to all intents and purposes, autonomously. The religious fear that atheism leads to chaos overlooks the fact that they themselves operate using the same equipment as the atheists, with more or less the same effects. Many aspects of our morality are, I am fairly certain, so deeply ingrained as to be universal: the edict that one must do unto others as one would have them do unto you is one such aspect. Other things, such as conservative sexual standards, are functions of culture: how one calibrates one's moral compass is not ingrained. The only difference is that the religious have an external and absolute set of standards, while atheists must come to their own conclusions.
This leads to the real argument behind religiously-guided morality: that without that external set of standards, people will have differing moral compasses. The religious do not trust that moral compasses will all point in more or less the same direction (aside from the psychopaths, who will not be improved through religious influence). One might say that atheists such as I have faith in humanity, but I would not go so far. Humans are social animals, and all social animals have internal mechanisms to help them to get along with others of their kind. Our moral compass is a manifestation of those mechanisms, and all the more wondrous for it. That it varies, and that it is influenced by others, allows it to evolve.
This brings up another point made by Dawkins: that morality evolves. Darwin was, by the standards of his day, liberal and progressive, and yet he held attitudes toward race that would make modern-day conservatives cringe. As Dawkins put it, the moral Zeitgeist has changed. We see this as a good thing: racial bias (to take just the one example) has proven to be founded in error and has been perpetuated to the detriment of all. The fact that European culture and those derived from it is more liberal than it was a hundred years ago can be argued to be a good thing from any number of perspectives. I would certainly make those arguments myself, but I would also point out that, having been brought up in a liberal environment, I would see any change in the moral Zeitgeist towards the direction of the values that I hold myself as a good one, regardless of the direction of that change. If I were taught from an early age that (say) people of Asian descent were constitutionally untrustworthy, and this was a common belief in the culture in which I grew up, a history of cultural change towards distrust of Asians would be seen as a good thing. The fact that I can attribute such differences to differences and misunderstandings between cultures leads me to believe that, by objective standards (if they can be said to exist at all), modern European morality has improved from its past state, but I must still be cautious of the very real possibility that a perception of positive progress in other values is merely a reflection of them having become more like my own, which may in turn be entirely arbitrary from an objective standpoint.
So, is the prospect of objective morality actually viable? I would like to think that it is, at least for the major issues: respect for the persons and property of others. The Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you") is key here, applied to all humanity. There are many less critical issues, in which I may disagree with others, but my (and most liberals') compass is calibrated by another, relativistic, edict: "live and let live." In other words, I allow others to decide what is right and wrong for them, so long as it does not affect me. I believe that the core of objective morality follows from these two edicts (although I will grant the possibility that I have not -- yet -- identified some further guideline for morality that further refines matters). There are of course situations in which my application of these guidelines differs from another's; further refinement of each compass may be necessary, but I do not believe that objective morality need cover all possible situations. Personal moralities are, I am fairly certain, tied up with personalities, and so cannot be the same for all people; at this point, they are perhaps not properly called "moralities" in the first place. But the fundamentals are the same, for the religious and the atheist alike: we all want to live in a safe place, where we will not be assaulted or robbed or otherwise abused, and that has nothing at all to do with religion. Making the world a safe and secure place is not a mandate of religion: it is a mandate of humanitarianism, something that we all share.
Saturday, 10 November 2007
More Thoughts on Immigration
This is another publication that my father e-mailed me. I have found it online here, and it is another, more direct, screed against immigration across the southern US border. Again, because it is not my work, I will only link to it, but again, I recommend reading it before reading my response.
To begin with, I certainly sympathise with the wish that these people change their own country for the better; I would in fact dearly love to see that happen. However, their situation is far removed from that of the Revolutionary War era colonists. In many ways, ours is the heel from under which these people are trying to escape. America is the idyllic land of plenty, after all, and our patriotic posturing does nothing to diminish that image. We project exactly the image that draws them to us, and we do little to ease their misery where they come from.
I have had my own Mexican border experience. I drove through Tijuana to get to my partner's sister's wedding, and saw from a distance but nevertheless firsthand the abject poverty and desperation that has unfortunately come to characterise that city. That people would want to get away from it is more than understandable; it would be surprising to find anyone wanting otherwise. There is most certainly a problem here, and elsewhere along the border, but the solution to the problem is not merely to make it harder for desperate people to escape their predicament. (I would emphasise as well that I acknowledge that even legal immigration will not necessarily allow them to escape their predicament. This is a deeper and more complex
issue than the right wing is usually willing to acknowledge, one which requires a concerted effort on many fronts to resolve.)
The article implies that all illegal immigrants are drug smugglers, burglars, and vandals. Many may be, but I would be surprised if all or even most were. Mostly, they just want a better life for themselves and their families, and I would not deny them that. These people, as the article freely admits, are desperate. Fencing them out will not alleviate that. Treating them like human beings will. In fact, I am amazed at the lack of empathy expressed in this piece. The allusion to the Boston Tea Party in the last paragraph reminds me more of Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake": the Americans here simply have no comprehension of what life is like for the Mexicans. Honestly, I may not have a clue as to what life is like for Americans
on the border, and I certainly wouldn't want to live there. But I can tell pretty clearly that the Americans on the border do not know or care what life is like for the Mexicans on the border. I can say with certainly that, however desperate the Americans may think their lot is, that of the Mexicans is considerably worse.
Actually, rereading this article, I find myself appalled at the writer's lack of empathy. "The first time Kennedy saw 30 illegals
dashing across his property, he'd trip over his Guatemalan lawn guy rushing to the Senate floor to demand enforcement"? I would hope not. I would not. I am not "confused", or without logic, or "all emotion." I want for these immigrants no more than they want for themselves: a reasonable chance at making an honest, sustainable living. You want emotion? My emotional reaction to this is that Americans tend to act as though they are a different and superior species from all other
humans on the planet, and this article does nothing to persuade me otherwise. These are *people* that we're talking about here, human beings, not "just Mexicans". I find that this attitude puts the lie to the supposedly superior moral sense that the Christian right likes to pat itself on the back for.
So, how should we fix things? Honestly, this is not a matter to which I have given enough thought to feel competent to suggest solutions. I am not familiar with the legislation in question, and as such will not speculate on its effectiveness. Amnesty and guest-worker programmes are one step, perhaps in the right direction; I am not sure. I would emphasise that I deplore the Gastarbeiter situation in Germany as you have described it to me. Ultimately, the solution there is to make
things in the Middle East better for the Gastarbeiter, and here to improve the lot of Mexico. More than that, we need to recognise the worth of each of these places, to help their natives acknowledge that they need not leave to improve their lots in life. That cannot happen, of course, unless they genuinely can improve their lots in life in their own countries, and we must acknowledge that, to some extent at least, their inability to do so is our own fault. I think that unrestrained capitalism, combined with an almost religious patriotism, is ultimately at the root of the problem. I do not advocate abandoning capitalism (at least not as regards international competition) but it must be regulated far more, with an eye to the living condition that it fosters amongst other countries, if it is to be fair.
The article's bias is likewise apparent in its disparagement of the ACLU and its approval of the Minutemen. I do not doubt that the latter organisation has many good people with genuine concern for their country amongst it, but the fact remains that it is at its heart a vigilante organisation. Yes, we need to patrol our borders more effectively, but we need to do so with accountability, a principle inherently lacking in vigilante organisations. As for the ACLU, I am not sure what that particular organisation's role in this affair is, and this article does not give the impression that its author attempted to find out. I doubt that the ACLU is "confused": human rights are human rights, and are not limited by nationality or legal status, and with the high emotions, low opinion of immigrants, and lack of accountability here, I would be suspicious as well of how people were treated.
To summarise, I think this article is a prime example of how conservativism is anything but compassionate.
To begin with, I certainly sympathise with the wish that these people change their own country for the better; I would in fact dearly love to see that happen. However, their situation is far removed from that of the Revolutionary War era colonists. In many ways, ours is the heel from under which these people are trying to escape. America is the idyllic land of plenty, after all, and our patriotic posturing does nothing to diminish that image. We project exactly the image that draws them to us, and we do little to ease their misery where they come from.
I have had my own Mexican border experience. I drove through Tijuana to get to my partner's sister's wedding, and saw from a distance but nevertheless firsthand the abject poverty and desperation that has unfortunately come to characterise that city. That people would want to get away from it is more than understandable; it would be surprising to find anyone wanting otherwise. There is most certainly a problem here, and elsewhere along the border, but the solution to the problem is not merely to make it harder for desperate people to escape their predicament. (I would emphasise as well that I acknowledge that even legal immigration will not necessarily allow them to escape their predicament. This is a deeper and more complex
issue than the right wing is usually willing to acknowledge, one which requires a concerted effort on many fronts to resolve.)
The article implies that all illegal immigrants are drug smugglers, burglars, and vandals. Many may be, but I would be surprised if all or even most were. Mostly, they just want a better life for themselves and their families, and I would not deny them that. These people, as the article freely admits, are desperate. Fencing them out will not alleviate that. Treating them like human beings will. In fact, I am amazed at the lack of empathy expressed in this piece. The allusion to the Boston Tea Party in the last paragraph reminds me more of Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake": the Americans here simply have no comprehension of what life is like for the Mexicans. Honestly, I may not have a clue as to what life is like for Americans
on the border, and I certainly wouldn't want to live there. But I can tell pretty clearly that the Americans on the border do not know or care what life is like for the Mexicans on the border. I can say with certainly that, however desperate the Americans may think their lot is, that of the Mexicans is considerably worse.
Actually, rereading this article, I find myself appalled at the writer's lack of empathy. "The first time Kennedy saw 30 illegals
dashing across his property, he'd trip over his Guatemalan lawn guy rushing to the Senate floor to demand enforcement"? I would hope not. I would not. I am not "confused", or without logic, or "all emotion." I want for these immigrants no more than they want for themselves: a reasonable chance at making an honest, sustainable living. You want emotion? My emotional reaction to this is that Americans tend to act as though they are a different and superior species from all other
humans on the planet, and this article does nothing to persuade me otherwise. These are *people* that we're talking about here, human beings, not "just Mexicans". I find that this attitude puts the lie to the supposedly superior moral sense that the Christian right likes to pat itself on the back for.
So, how should we fix things? Honestly, this is not a matter to which I have given enough thought to feel competent to suggest solutions. I am not familiar with the legislation in question, and as such will not speculate on its effectiveness. Amnesty and guest-worker programmes are one step, perhaps in the right direction; I am not sure. I would emphasise that I deplore the Gastarbeiter situation in Germany as you have described it to me. Ultimately, the solution there is to make
things in the Middle East better for the Gastarbeiter, and here to improve the lot of Mexico. More than that, we need to recognise the worth of each of these places, to help their natives acknowledge that they need not leave to improve their lots in life. That cannot happen, of course, unless they genuinely can improve their lots in life in their own countries, and we must acknowledge that, to some extent at least, their inability to do so is our own fault. I think that unrestrained capitalism, combined with an almost religious patriotism, is ultimately at the root of the problem. I do not advocate abandoning capitalism (at least not as regards international competition) but it must be regulated far more, with an eye to the living condition that it fosters amongst other countries, if it is to be fair.
The article's bias is likewise apparent in its disparagement of the ACLU and its approval of the Minutemen. I do not doubt that the latter organisation has many good people with genuine concern for their country amongst it, but the fact remains that it is at its heart a vigilante organisation. Yes, we need to patrol our borders more effectively, but we need to do so with accountability, a principle inherently lacking in vigilante organisations. As for the ACLU, I am not sure what that particular organisation's role in this affair is, and this article does not give the impression that its author attempted to find out. I doubt that the ACLU is "confused": human rights are human rights, and are not limited by nationality or legal status, and with the high emotions, low opinion of immigrants, and lack of accountability here, I would be suspicious as well of how people were treated.
To summarise, I think this article is a prime example of how conservativism is anything but compassionate.
Saturday, 6 October 2007
The Next Big Question
Last week I attended the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Next Big Question event. It was an interesting idea, one which has fallen more out of fashion than I would have liked: a public lecture on scientific topics. Importantly, attendance was free, and although I recognised a substantial fraction of people in the audience (CIfAR is a funding body, from which many of my colleagues, including both my former and current graduate supervisors, have benefitted), there were a number of people from the community at large, and that was good to see. It was also interesting to hear their questions, which were good but which belied a general lack of understanding about the subjects at hand. This is a problem, of course, but it is exactly this sort of problem that public science lectures are meant to address.
The idea behind the event was to have representatives from different CIfAR programmes answer a (presumably CIfAR-chosen) "Big Question" pertinent to their research. Although there are around a dozen such "Big Questions", only three are posed at each event; the event "tours" major Canadian cities, with a different subset of "Big Questions" asked at each. All are available at the site, and there is much good food for thought there. The three "Big Questions" asked at this event (the first of the series -- so if you have the opportunity, you can still go to future events, and I would recommend it) were: "How do we build a quantum computer?", "What makes societies succeed?", and "How to microbes change the oceans?"
That the questions were chosen my CIfAR and not the speakers was obvious from the first talk, which was not so much about how to build a quantum computer (although that was covered) but why. It is an interesting topic, one about which I am now motivated to learn more, but still one very much in its infancy. A number of strategies proposed for building such computers was presented; the unit of measurement for quantum-computer memory is the quantum bit (or "qubit"), of which the most advanced design has twelve. The most promising technology currently has only managed to produce four. Considering that eight regular bits corresponds to one letter, that is not much, especially considering the scale of problems that these machines are hoped to tackle. Those problems are, of course, the (partial!) answer to the presenter's preferred question: why to build a quantum computer. These included applications in quantum mechanical models and in large-scale simulations, but perhaps the most compelling case was made for cryptography. A quantum computer can crack pretty much any code set up by a regular electronic computer, and it can set up codes that are completely uncrackable by the same technology (I do not recall whether they might be crackable by other quantum computers, though). Impressive stuff, indeed!
The next talk, on successful societies, was unusual even for this event. Not only was the question posed by CIfAR, but the group tasked to answer it was itself the result of CIfAR's own initiative, rather than (as is the more common case) some independent researcher putting together a proposal for the group. This group is impressively heterogeneous, comprising historians, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and even a biologist or two, and its focus is the same as the Big Question that its representative addressed: "What makes societies succeed?" Of course, such a question is impossible to answer without a definition of "success", and so far the group has spent much of its four years addressing just that, and how to identify it in any given society. I was pleased that the definition was not simply GDP or per-capita income: it had to do with education levels, access to health care, lifespan, and so on. Contrasts were drawn between different countries with similar historical and geographical circumstances but which have had different levels of success, and the reasons for the differences are the focus of this group. The talk brought strongly to mind the work of Jared Diamond and Ronald Wright (the latter's book, A Short History of Progress, I cannot recommend highly enough), as well as more quantitative work by Dalhousie's own Hal Whitehead, all of which carries with it the cautionary message that we must change much about our own society if we do not want it to fail spectacularly.
The final talk, by a professor that I had met but had not gotten to know well at UBC, was about microbial biodiversity. The emphasis here was on the sheer volume of unknown species in existence on Earth, a topic very close to my own heart. Furthermore, although we can characterise the processes that occur on our planet on a global scale, much of the details (such as which organisms do what, how effectively, and what happens when they are perturbed) are a complete mystery. Changes in the oceans' microbial life could have drastic impacts on the world's climate, which we cannot now predict because we have only an inkling of how diverse that life is. At the same time, I did not find the talk very well executed; the speaker was very good, but his understanding of some topics was a little light (he is a virologist, and the sorts of errors that he made about eukaryotes were things that only specialists would catch), and some of his more sweeping statements I thought more dramatic than necessary.
At the end of the three presentations, the audience was asked to vote for what they thought was the "Next Big Question". Given my field of inquiry, I was not at all surprised to be in the midst of a show of hands for the microbe talk; I was surprised, however, at how obvious was the majority of hands from the rest of the auditorium for the same topic. The speaker evidently had impressed his audience, and I did feel some pride in a topic so close to my own being appreciated. I felt a bit of a traitor for it, but I did not vote for that myself. Make no mistake: I am in the right field for me. What I study is more interesting to me than anything else in the world, and I enjoy my labwork immensely. However, my vote went to the societal research, because whatever I might discover or establish will not count for anything if there is not a society around to appreciate it in the future. We as a culture are rapidly approaching the point at which we must change drastically or collapse, and how we must change is a compelling question. What probably clinched the matter for me was that the UN has come to this research group, to ask for recommendations to give to some of those less-successful nations that ask why their neighbours do so much better than they. If there is any chance of this group having any influence, it will be inestimably more important than my own field of study.
That having been said, the vote was all in fun: no decisions were made on its basis, and the funding was guaranteed for each group long before these events were even planned. My personal suspicion was that it was a ploy to keep the audience's attention, although I would prefer to think something less cynical. In any event, it was a good experience, and a nice exposure to a generally good idea -- that of making science more accessible, and more compelling, to the general public.
The idea behind the event was to have representatives from different CIfAR programmes answer a (presumably CIfAR-chosen) "Big Question" pertinent to their research. Although there are around a dozen such "Big Questions", only three are posed at each event; the event "tours" major Canadian cities, with a different subset of "Big Questions" asked at each. All are available at the site, and there is much good food for thought there. The three "Big Questions" asked at this event (the first of the series -- so if you have the opportunity, you can still go to future events, and I would recommend it) were: "How do we build a quantum computer?", "What makes societies succeed?", and "How to microbes change the oceans?"
That the questions were chosen my CIfAR and not the speakers was obvious from the first talk, which was not so much about how to build a quantum computer (although that was covered) but why. It is an interesting topic, one about which I am now motivated to learn more, but still one very much in its infancy. A number of strategies proposed for building such computers was presented; the unit of measurement for quantum-computer memory is the quantum bit (or "qubit"), of which the most advanced design has twelve. The most promising technology currently has only managed to produce four. Considering that eight regular bits corresponds to one letter, that is not much, especially considering the scale of problems that these machines are hoped to tackle. Those problems are, of course, the (partial!) answer to the presenter's preferred question: why to build a quantum computer. These included applications in quantum mechanical models and in large-scale simulations, but perhaps the most compelling case was made for cryptography. A quantum computer can crack pretty much any code set up by a regular electronic computer, and it can set up codes that are completely uncrackable by the same technology (I do not recall whether they might be crackable by other quantum computers, though). Impressive stuff, indeed!
The next talk, on successful societies, was unusual even for this event. Not only was the question posed by CIfAR, but the group tasked to answer it was itself the result of CIfAR's own initiative, rather than (as is the more common case) some independent researcher putting together a proposal for the group. This group is impressively heterogeneous, comprising historians, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and even a biologist or two, and its focus is the same as the Big Question that its representative addressed: "What makes societies succeed?" Of course, such a question is impossible to answer without a definition of "success", and so far the group has spent much of its four years addressing just that, and how to identify it in any given society. I was pleased that the definition was not simply GDP or per-capita income: it had to do with education levels, access to health care, lifespan, and so on. Contrasts were drawn between different countries with similar historical and geographical circumstances but which have had different levels of success, and the reasons for the differences are the focus of this group. The talk brought strongly to mind the work of Jared Diamond and Ronald Wright (the latter's book, A Short History of Progress, I cannot recommend highly enough), as well as more quantitative work by Dalhousie's own Hal Whitehead, all of which carries with it the cautionary message that we must change much about our own society if we do not want it to fail spectacularly.
The final talk, by a professor that I had met but had not gotten to know well at UBC, was about microbial biodiversity. The emphasis here was on the sheer volume of unknown species in existence on Earth, a topic very close to my own heart. Furthermore, although we can characterise the processes that occur on our planet on a global scale, much of the details (such as which organisms do what, how effectively, and what happens when they are perturbed) are a complete mystery. Changes in the oceans' microbial life could have drastic impacts on the world's climate, which we cannot now predict because we have only an inkling of how diverse that life is. At the same time, I did not find the talk very well executed; the speaker was very good, but his understanding of some topics was a little light (he is a virologist, and the sorts of errors that he made about eukaryotes were things that only specialists would catch), and some of his more sweeping statements I thought more dramatic than necessary.
At the end of the three presentations, the audience was asked to vote for what they thought was the "Next Big Question". Given my field of inquiry, I was not at all surprised to be in the midst of a show of hands for the microbe talk; I was surprised, however, at how obvious was the majority of hands from the rest of the auditorium for the same topic. The speaker evidently had impressed his audience, and I did feel some pride in a topic so close to my own being appreciated. I felt a bit of a traitor for it, but I did not vote for that myself. Make no mistake: I am in the right field for me. What I study is more interesting to me than anything else in the world, and I enjoy my labwork immensely. However, my vote went to the societal research, because whatever I might discover or establish will not count for anything if there is not a society around to appreciate it in the future. We as a culture are rapidly approaching the point at which we must change drastically or collapse, and how we must change is a compelling question. What probably clinched the matter for me was that the UN has come to this research group, to ask for recommendations to give to some of those less-successful nations that ask why their neighbours do so much better than they. If there is any chance of this group having any influence, it will be inestimably more important than my own field of study.
That having been said, the vote was all in fun: no decisions were made on its basis, and the funding was guaranteed for each group long before these events were even planned. My personal suspicion was that it was a ploy to keep the audience's attention, although I would prefer to think something less cynical. In any event, it was a good experience, and a nice exposure to a generally good idea -- that of making science more accessible, and more compelling, to the general public.
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