Rational Philosophy

On the remarkable ability of humans to innovate… and to repeat our mistakes.

Hewlett Packard today reports that it has created a new kind of memory chip component — a memristor, part memory, part resistor — that could dramatically reduce the size and heat consumption of computer memory. The memristor hold a record of its state, even when no power is applied, promising to solve a number of thorny problems (like losing RAM memory when a computer is turned off). H.P. has constructed memristors from “tiny, extremely thin spots of titanium dioxide” but the memristor concept goes back to the theoretical work of Berkeley electrical engineer Leon Chua who predicted the usefulness of such a device back in 1971.

Computer technology provides a seemingly endless series of examples of human innovation. Each time a boundary approaches that threatens to limit the increases in computing power, speed and storage capacity, someone finds a new way to shift the boundary.

Many other scientific disciplines provide similar remarkable examples of innovation on a frequent basis. Having just gone through the birth of my third child, along with a brief stay in the ICU, the field of medicine comes to mind.

In fields like technology and medicine the momentum for the innovation seems to derive from two main sources — money and focus: Money helps fund the research. And focus helps keep it targeted on particular goals.

The two are interrelated. Since there’s more money available to pay for certain kinds of research, these kinds of research get more focus.

In some instances, we shake our heads over lack of money and lack of focus in important fields of research. In these days of grave concern in many quarters over global warming, for instance, we despair that the government is so wishy washy or worse in its response. Two of the candidates running for president, one a Democrat, even recommend that gas taxes are eliminated during the summer holiday season!

But such discrepancies, we expect, should right themselves over time as people get their priorities straight. Another class of problem puzzles and worries me more. These are problems that don’t get recognized as opportunities for innovation, areas in which we keep making the same mistakes over and over.

If a computer manufacturer today set about building a valve computer — the kind that used to fill a room and could do less than a child’s calculator can today — we would dismiss it as being eccentric or deluded. In technology and science, innovation tends to be progressive. People accept useful innovations and employ them.

But in other spheres people hold on to old ways of thinking, even if they’re unproductive, wasteful or dangerous. Why is this?

Hillary Clinton managed to give Iran the moral high ground by threatening to “obliterate” it if it were to attack Israel. Condoleezza Rice complained that Jimmy Carter had talked to Hamas and Assad, insisting that not talking to them was the only viable diplomatic option. We cut down rain forests. We allow politics to be overtaken by special interests.

You may disagree with my examples, but my point is that there are whole spheres of human understanding or misunderstanding that relent much less willingly to innovation and progress than technology, medicine, etc.

A couple of thoughts:

1. There’s no money in advancing the fields of government, diplomacy and policy. Or, to be more precise, as George Bush and his cronies have amply demonstrated, there’s money in doing the opposite.
2. There’s no way to bring consistent focus, because there are too many differences of opinion and conflicting motives.

But I can almost hear you saying that there’s another reason, that it’s so hard to define innovation in matters of government, diplomacy and policy, and therefore it’s impossible to recognize a step in the right direction. It may be true to some extent that these fields yield less readily to objective analysis. But that’s hardly a reason not to try.

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

The Golden Compass, Dark Chocolate, Marijuana, and The Future of The Human Race.

When Google’s search engine trawls a website, its bot uses the first couple of sentences at the top of the post as an abstract. I just found this out. So, as of today, I will add a brief topic summary to the top of my posts. As always, I want to add value for you, the reader, so in the topic summary I’ll try to be at least descriptive, and perhaps even amusing.

BBC’s world service this morning interviewed Phillip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, now a movie: The Golden Compass. Some have criticized Pullman for being atheistic and anti-religion. The American Catholic League has launched a national campaign encouraging people to boycott the film. Any “ism” can be criticized of course, and many can be problematic. But when asked about the controversy, Pullman gently steered the question toward one of rationality. Whether he is atheist or not, Pullman’s concern lies with the harm that organized religion can do when it meddles with politics and when politics uses religion as a rationale for war, murder and oppression. Pullman spoke with such sense and good intent that a national campaign in support of the film seems to be called for as an antidote to the actions of the American Catholic League.

Dark chocolate and marijuana, two guilty pleasures for many, both take a medical beating today. Beware of flavenolless impostors, we’re warned, when it comes to dark chocolate, and don’t eat too much. And for the pot-heads among us, it seems that marijuana, which constricts the blood vessels in the brain, may have long term ill effects on memory and the chances of a stroke. For anyone who knows a pot-head, of course, the news about long term effects comes as little surprise. It’s not that spacey, sieve-headed slackers (no offense intended) are drawn to the substance so much as it encourages these qualities in its partokers.

Where am I going? One more story will get us there.

The men’s satellite TV channel, Bravo, commissioned evolutionary theorist Dr. Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics to report on the future of the human race. Dr. Curry hypothesizes two mid and long-term shifts, the first a racial homogenization over the next 1,000 years, the second, in the 10,000 year time-frame, a split in the human race into two species, one talk, attractive, intelligent, graceful, and the other short, stupid, ugly and goblin-like. We can take heart in Dr. Oliver’s first prediction: Us men will be taller, more athletic looking, deeper-voiced, square-jawed and with bigger peckers. You gals will be wide-eyed, downy-skinned, pert-breasted… But watch out if you rely too much on technology, because 10,000 years on your heirs may be part of the underclass.

I warn my daughter about this when I’m helping her with her math homework. (Not the ultimate goblin-featured fate of her progeny, but the over-reliance on technology.) It’s a terrible thing. We don’t know how a sine function works. We don’t know how our cars work. We don’t know how our phones work, or the GPS devices that guide us from point A to point B. We don’t know how our HDTV works, or what HDTV is for that matter. Well, somebody knows, presumably, since it has been invented, trademarked, licensed and mass-produced, but most of us don’t.

But is Dr. Curry’s work conjecture or science? Is it prejudice wrapped as prescience?

We’ll never know. We’ll be long gone. But it strikes me (my own conjecture!) as sinister, mean-spirited, and downright pessimistic to predict that the long term effects of human consciousness will be to make one segment of the population more stupid. Being conscious and aware, we also have the capacity to self-monitor as a species, to detect our own over-reliance on technology and do something about it. If we can divert ourselves from the rocky shores of faux dark chocolate and pot smoke, we can surely counteract the dangers of technology.

I try to keep this in mind as I read about poor Robert Schoff, who made it to seventy seven years of age before suffering the indignity of spending his Christmas Eve stuck upside-down in the opening of his septic tank, feet waggling in the air. It would be uncharitable to dwell, as Dr. Curry might, on Mr. Schoff generous girth and diminutive stature (5-foot-5 and 135-pounds). His septic mishap notwithstanding, Mr. Schoff sounds like an eminently sensible man. He knew, after all, that he had a septic tank, that it was blocked, and how to unblock it. His fault lay not in his cognition, but in the execution of his plan.

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

Is it ‘what we don’t know can’t hurt us,’ or ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you?’ I’m not sure. Let me look it up…  Hmmm, still not sure. I found both versions out there, and no origin. I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

But David Brooks’ Op-Ed today “The Outsourced Brain“ got me wondering about the harm of not knowing. Brooks recently installed a GPS system in his car and now can’t live without it. He lets iTunes select his music, and he finds himself wedded to his Blackberry. Brooks, tongue in cheek, professes oneness with the idea of an outsourced brain, but clearly remains ambivalent on the matter.

He makes an interesting point: “I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less.”

Last night, my wife and I went to our son’s pre-school to hear a little from his classroom teachers about the learning environment. It’s a Montessori school, and we both marvelled at the teachers’ efforts to make the learning process organic, tactile and structured. Each activity aims to add a specific strut or pillar to the incremental development of the child’s understanding of the world.

Listening to the teachers at my son’s school it seemed incontrovertibly right that children should learn from first principles how the world works, including the world of abstract concepts. If we don’t understand the foundations of abstract thought as they relate to the world around us, we can never have a solid rational understanding of life and existence. Going through life without that understanding seems a bit like tying one arm behind your back for a game of tennis. (The arm you would usually hold the racket with!)

Unlearning things in later life or dispensing with the regular exercising of pieces of knowing or know-how for the sake of efficiency perhaps isn’t such a big deal. Outsourcing navigational worries to a GPS system (which will navigate a whole lot better than most of us,) for instance, doesn’t seem problematic.

But as the old adage about art goes: You have to know the rules before you can break them. When technology allows or encourages us to avoid knowledge or understanding that seems like not such a good thing. Using a calculator is fine, then, as long as you understand the computations it’s performing for you. But if your only interface with the art of navigation is a GPS system, that seems to be a problem.

(Incidentally, I just learned for the first time that GPS systems use relativistic calculations to account for time dilation. When I found this out (I was helping my daughter research her Physics homework on Doppler effects) I reeled at the depths of specialized knowledge embedded into a device that will soon seem like an everyday driver’s tool.)

But what about some of the common and seemingly innocuous holes in our collective understanding? How many of us know where our electricty is generated, and by what means? How many of us know the source of our local water supply and potential risks posed to it? And what happens when technology becomes unavailable or breaks down? Do we wait for someone to fix it, or do we have the wherewithall to get on without it?

You’ll be relieved to hear that all of this leads me somewhere. It’s to this: We can’t outsource to our school-teachers the importance of understanding the world from first principles. This is perhaps the most important reason for adults and parents to remain in touch with a direct and comprehensive understanding of the world, rather than divesting this understanding to gadgets and gizmos.

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