Humanity

Imagine a World Where Everyone Typed in CAPS LOCK

There used to be a Twitter account called Best of Wikipedia — it was a wonderful source for quirky things you might not have chanced upon in your normal browsing. Alas, it’s been quiet since November, so we’re left to our own devices. For some reason or another I was reading about Scholasticism, the dominant approach to teaching and learning in medieval Europe. Its early days came to pass during the Carolingian Renaissance in the late 700’s under Charlemagne.

Besides uniting Central Europe, Charlemagne was also a patron of learning, and used his influence to bring scholars from across the continent to his court. Most importantly, he recognized that the decline of literacy and the splintering of Latin into mutually incomprehensible regional dialects caused difficulties for the administration of an empire, so he ordered that every abbey in his domain should start a school. The idea of widespread schooling was a novel one at the time, and the long-term impact of this decision is probably incalculable. Sure, most of the scholarship may have been devoted to the interpretation of classic texts rather than the production of new knowledge, but you have to think that all that learning helped lay the groundwork for the eventual climb out of the Dark Ages. Start people thinking, and you never know where they will go.

Alcuin So I was especially fascinated to read about Alcuin of York, one of Charlemagne’s greatest scholars. He was a respected teacher in Northumbria before being brought to court, where he had an enormous effect on the scholarship — establishing the liberal arts (the trivium and quadrivium) as the basis for the curriculum, and convincing Charlemagne not to put pagans to death if they refused to convert. He also produced a textbook of math problems with solutions, from which we learn that medieval word problems were more colorful than those we have today — these include the problem of the three jealous husbands and the problem of the wolf, goat and cabbage.

But it’s clear to me what Alcuin’s greatest achievement really was: he’s the guy who invented lower case letters. Can you imagine a world in which everything was written in ALL CAPS? Every time we read a crazy person ranting on the internet, we should give thanks to Alcuin that not everybody sounds like that.

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How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

This year’s Edge World Question Center is out, posing the query mentioned in the title. My own answer is kind of lukewarm — the internet did allow me to find my future wife, which certainly changed the way I think about a lot of things, but that’s not the tack I wanted to take for this project. Instead, I’m basically giving credit to you blog readers for keeping me honest. (Among other things.)

But many of the other answers are fascinating. Just to pick some at semi-random, I enjoyed the responses from Danny Hillis, Anthony Aguirre, Frank Wilczek, Victoria Stodden, Martin Rees, Scott Atran, Lisa Randall, Irene Pepperberg, and Clay Shirky. Keep thinking!

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Black and White and Blue All Over

By now a lot of people have seen James Cameron’s Avatar, and a much larger number have formed an opinion about it. Anticipation had been building for months, as people were excited by the prospect that ultra-realistic computer animation would combine with dazzling 3D technology to produce a different kind of movie than anyone had ever seen.

It’s generally not a good sign when the buzz is about the technology behind a movie rather than the story within it, and in the case of Avatar the worries are justified. There’s no question that the moviemaking is truly impressive; not only is it a great technological achievement, but Cameron is an accomplished storyteller. The film is long but never ponderous, the set pieces are thrilling, and one’s heartstrings are tugged at all the right places. As a bonus, the acting is fantastic — Sigourney Weaver’s gruff scientist in particular is a great character.

Alas, in a world that one would like to see fleshed out in shades of gray, Cameron’s contrast knob is stuck resolutely at eleven. (Spoilers henceforth.) …

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Being Polite and Being Right

It’s been simultaneously amusing and horrifying to read through the comments on my post about the misguided atheist holiday display in Illinois. This is still the Internet after all, and “reading comprehension” is not a highly valued skill, even among subsamples self-selected for their logic and reasoning abilities.

In brief: thinking that atheists shouldn’t be needlessly obnoxious doesn’t make me a “faithiest” or an “accommodationist” or someone without the courage of my convictions. Those would be hard charges to support against someone who wrote this or this or this or this. I just think it’s possible to have convictions without being a jerk about them. “I disagree with you” and “You are a contemptible idiot” are not logically equivalent.

Phil just pointed to a good post by Steve Cumo about precisely the same issue, with “atheism” replaced by “skepticism.” A lot of skeptics/atheists are truly excited and passionate about their worldviews, and that’s unquestionably a good thing. But it can turn into a bad thing if we allow that passion to manifest itself as contempt for everyone who disagrees with us. (For certain worthy targets, sure.) There’s certainly a place for telling jokes, or calling a crackpot a crackpot; being too afraid of stepping on people’s toes is just as bad as stomping on feet for the sheer joy of it. But there’s also a place for letting things slide, living to dispute another day.

We atheists/skeptics have a huge advantage when it comes to reasonable, evidence-based argumentation: we’re right. (Provisionally, with appropriate humble caveats about those aspects of the natural world we don’t yet understand.) We don’t need to stoop to insults to win debates; reality is on our side. And there are many people out there who are willing to listen to logic and evidence, when presented reasonably and in good faith. We should always presume that people who disagree with us are amenable to reasonable discussion, until proven otherwise. (Cf. the Grid of Disputation. See also Dr. Free-Ride.)

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Joy to the World

Atheists can be such uptight downers. And I say that completely seriously and non-sarcastically, despite being a card-carrying atheist myself.

The latest example appears at the Illinois State Capitol, where someone from Freedom From Religion Foundation had the genius idea of erecting this sign among the holiday displays (via PZ):

At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Well now, there’s an uplifting and positive message. I’m sure that lots of religious folks came along to read that sign, and immediately thought “Gee, whoever wrote that sounds so much smarter and more correct than me! I will throw off my superstitious shackles and join them in the celebration of reason.”

There is a place to argue for one’s worldview — but not every single place. I happen to agree with all of the sentences on the sign above, but the decision to put in front and center in a holiday display merits a giant face-palm. (So does calling it “hate speech,” of course.) It’s like you’re introduced to someone at a party, and they immediately say “Wow, you’re ugly. And your clothes look like they were stolen off a homeless person. And you’re drinking a domestic beer, which shows a complete lack of sophistication.” I don’t know about you, but I’d be thinking — “Such taste and discernment! Here’s someone I need to get to know better.”

Until atheists learn that they don’t need to take every possible opportunity to proclaim their own rationality in the face of everyone else’s stupidity, they will have a reputation as tiresome bores. They could have put up a sign that just gave some sort of joyful, positive message. Or something light-hearted and amusing. Or they could have just left the display alone entirely, and restrained the urge to argue in favor of waiting for some more appropriate venue. (Maybe they could start a blog or something.)

Understanding how the real world works is an important skill. So is understanding human beings.

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How We Spend Our Time

“Sleeping, working, and watching TV” is the short answer. The New York Times has increasingly been taking advantage of the powers of online presentation to offer some amazing interactive graphics, and last week they tackled how Americans over the age of 15 spend their typical days. The overall most time-consuming activities were:

  • Sleeping: 8 hours, 36 minutes per day
  • Working: 3 hours, 25 minutes
  • TV and Movies: 2 hours, 46 minutes
  • Household activities: 1 hour, 46 minutes
  • Traveling: 1 hour, 12 minutes
  • Eating: 1 hour 7 minutes
  • Personal Care: 47 minutes
  • Other Leisure: 44 minutes
  • Socializing: 43 minutes

Where is blogging, you ask? “Computer use” (presumably non-work related) was down at 8 minutes per day.

But they went way beyond that, to break it down by time of day and by demographics. Various cheap shots suggest themselves, about how all that TV is rotting our brains, we’ve entered the late decadent period of our civilization, back in the old days everyone spent evenings composing piano sonatas and writing epic poetry, etc. But I think it’s more interesting to simply appreciate the typical allocation of time during an average person’s day. If you’re wondering about the short work day, a lot of people are pre-employment, post-employment, or just unemployed. Also, “traveling” isn’t mostly about flying to Paris; it’s about commuting to work or school. And sex falls under “personal care,” but if you break out a separate category of “personal or private activities,” it adds up to 54 seconds per day.

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The Grid of Disputation

A few days ago the world witnessed a rare and precious event: a dispute on the Internet. In this case, it was brought about by a Bloggingheads episode of Science Saturday featuring historian of science Ronald Numbers and philosopher Paul Nelson. The controversy stemmed from the fact that Nelson is a Young-Earth Creationist — someone who believes that the Earth was created by God a few thousand years ago. You can read opinions about the dialogue from PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, or for a different point of view Nelson himself.

I was one of the people who found the dialogue extremely inappropriate (especially for “Science Saturday”), and as someone who is a fan of Bloggingheads I sent a few emails back and forth with the powers that be, who are generally very reasonable people. I think they understand why scientists would not be happy with such a dialogue, and I suspect it’s not going to happen again.

But it’s worth laying out the precise source of my own unhappiness — I’ll let other scientists speak for themselves. One potential source of discomfort is the natural reluctance to give credibility to creationists, and I think that’s a legitimate concern. There is a long-running conversation within the scientific community about whether it’s better to publicly debate people who are skeptical about evolution and crush them with superior logic and evidence, or to try to cut off their oxygen by refusing to meet them on neutral ground. I don’t have strong opinions about which is the better strategy, although I suspect the answer depends on the precise circumstances being contemplated.

Rather, my concern was not for the credibility of Paul Nelson, but for the credibility of Bloggingheads TV. I’m fairly sure that no one within the BH.tv hierarchy is a secret creationist, trying to score some public respect for one of their own. The idea, instead, was to engage in a dialogue with someone who held radically non-mainstream views, in order to get a better understanding of how they think.

That sounds like a noble goal, but I think that in this case it’s misguided. Engaging with radically different views is, all else being equal, a good thing. But sometimes all else isn’t equal. In particular, I think it’s important to distinguish between different views that are somehow respectable, and different views that are simply crazy. My problem with the BH.tv dialogue was not that they were lending their credibility to someone who didn’t deserve it; it was that they were damaging their own credibility by featuring a discussant who nobody should be taking seriously. There is plenty of room for debate between basically sensible people who can argue in good faith, yet hold extremely different views on contentious subjects. There is no need to pollute the waters by engaging with people who simply shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. Paul Nelson may be a very nice person, but his views about evolution and cosmology are simply crackpot, and don’t belong in any Science Saturday discussion.

This thought has led me to introduce what I hope is a helpful graphical device, which I call the Grid of Disputation. It’s just a reminder that, when it comes to other people’s views on controversial issues, they should be classified within a two-dimensional parameter space, not just on a single line of “agree/disagree.” The other dimension is the all-important “sensible/crazy” axis.

The Grid of Disputation

There’s no question that there is a place for mockery in the world of discourse; sometimes we want to engage with crackpots just to make fun of them, or to boggle at their wrongness. But for me, that should be a small component of one’s overall rhetorical portfolio. If you want to play a constructive role in an ongoing cultural conversation, the sizable majority of your disputational effort should be spent engaging with the best people out there with whom you disagree — confronting the strongest possible arguments against your own view, and doing so with a respectful and sincere attitude.

This strategy is not universally accepted. One of the least pleasant aspects of the atheist/skeptical community is the widespread delight in picking out the very stupidest examples of what they disagree with, holding them up for sustained ridicule, and then patting themselves on the back for how rational they all are. It’s not the only thing that happens, but it happens an awful lot, and the joy that people get out of it can become a bit tiresome.

So I disagree a bit with Richard Dawkins, when he makes this suggestion:

I have from time to time expressed sympathy for the accommodationist tendency so ably criticized here by Jerry Coyne. I have occasionally worried that – just maybe – Eugenie Scott and the appeasers might have a point, a purely political point but one, nevertheless, that we should carefully consider. I have lately found myself moving away from that sympathy.

I suspect that most of our regular readers here would agree that ridicule, of a humorous nature, is likely to be more effective than the sort of snuggling-up and head-patting that Jerry is attacking. I lately started to think that we need to go further: go beyond humorous ridicule, sharpen our barbs to a point where they really hurt.

Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott and others are probably right that contemptuous ridicule is not an expedient way to change the minds of those who are deeply religious. But I think we should probably abandon the irremediably religious precisely because that is what they are – irremediable. I am more interested in the fence-sitters who haven’t really considered the question very long or very carefully. And I think that they are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt…

I emphatically don’t mean we should use foul-mouthed rants. Nor should we raise our voices and shout at them: let’s have no D’Souzereignty here. Instead, what we need is sarcastic, cutting wit. A good model might be Peter Medawar, who would never dream of shouting, but instead quietly wielded the rapier. …

Maybe I’m wrong. I’m only thinking aloud, among friends. Is it gloves off time? Or should we continue to go along with the appeasers and be all nice and cuddly, like Eugenie and the National Academy?

Let me first note how … reasonable Dawkins is being here. He’s saying “well, I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe we should do X rather than Y — what do you folks think?” Not quite consistent with the militant fire-breathing one might expect from hearing other people talk about Dawkins, rather than listening to Dawkins himself.

Nevertheless, I don’t agree with the suggestion. There is an empirical question, of course: if the goal is actually to change people’s minds, is that accomplished more effectively by sweetly reasoning with them, or by ridiculing their incorrect beliefs? I don’t think the answer is especially clear, but very few people actually offer empirical evidence one way or the other. Instead, they loudly proclaim that the mode to which they are personally temperamentally suited — calm discussion vs. derisive mockery — is the one that is clearly the best. So I will just go along with that fine tradition.

My own goal is not really changing people’s minds; it’s understanding the world, getting things right, and having productive conversations. My real concern in the engagement/mockery debate is that people who should be academic/scholarly/intellectual are letting themselves be seduced by the cheap thrills of making fun of people. Sure, there is a place for well-placed barbs and lampooning of fatuousness — but there are also people who are good at that. I’d rather leave the majority of that work to George Carlin and Ricky Gervais and Penn & Teller, and have the people with Ph.D.’s concentrate on honest debate with the very best that the other side has to offer. I want to be disagreeing with Ken Miller or Garry Wills and St. Augustine, not with Paul Nelson and Ann Coulter and Hugh Ross.

Dawkins and friends have done the world an enormous service — they’ve made atheism part of the accepted cultural landscape, as a reasonable perspective whose supporters must be acknowledged. Now it’s time to take a step beyond “We’re here, we’re godless, get used to it” and start making the positive case for atheists as sensible, friendly, happy people. And that case isn’t made most effectively by zooming in on the lower left corner of the Grid of Disputation; it’s made by engaging with the lower right corner, and having the better arguments.

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Suicide

Last week, members of the Caltech community received a dreaded piece of email: a student had taken their own life. The tragedy was compounded by the fact that this was the third Caltech student to do so in the last year.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students. In the aftermath of such an event, there is a feeling of powerlessness; you try to console or sympathize with anyone who might have known the student, but at the end of the day there’s no much you can do. But it is possible to take some steps to try to prevent such tragedies from happening.

It is believed that, in over 80 percent of cases, people who attempt suicide are struggling with some form of mental illness, such as depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. Although there is no way to know for sure whether someone is contemplating such a drastic step, there are certain warning signs, including severe depression and changes in mood or habits. Caltech has set up a website on preventing suicide and violence, which goes over some of the signs and ways that a friend can take steps to help persuade someone from going too far:

I’m sure that many universities (and companies) have similar resources; it’s worth taking a minute to familiarize yourself with what’s available where you work or go to school.

Most importantly, if you’ve ever contemplated suicide yourself: don’t do it. That’s cheap and easy advice, but the crucial point is to make sure you stop, talk to people, and take advantage of counselors. Being a college student can be an extraordinarily stressful and pressure-filled time; if you’re feeling overwhelmed, be assured that it’s not just you, and that it is possible to get through it. You will find people who are willing to listen, understand, and try to be helpful, if you are willing to reach out to them. Tough times can be overcome, but taking a life is irrevocable. Seek help before the pressure gets to be too much.

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