AI Developments... and Predictions

 I've been watching the AI developments... and the bloggers writing about the AI "foom".

• Scott Alexander on the feeling of being on the verge of AI Apocalypse.
• Scott Alexander on the new Janus-faced AI simulators, a weird new breed of alien intelligence we didn't expect.
• Erik Hoel on why we shouldn't be cavalier about the potential impact of super-intelligent AI.  (Item 4 of 9 on the page).

But in my opinion, the new AI chatbots may replace Google's current search, but they will stop far short of replacing anything but the most mundane human jobs. 

Its so hilarious that people are worried about artificial intelligence when we haven't even made a robot that can flip hamburgers yet!  Wake up and smell the grease:  the real world is complicated and messy.  We can't even replace the jobs that everyone, even the people currently working them, want replaced.  I don't think we're going to be replacing professionals anytime soon.

Just look at driverless cars.  Driving is a great example of something you'd think computers would be good at.... if you'd never driven a car in the real world!  Computers are great at driving cars in video games, but the real world is messy.  That's the Real World problem.

The second problem is even bigger: the messiness of the human social world!   Even if driverless cars were better than human drivers, that's not good enough.  We expect computers to be perfect.  If a company sells me a car and I wreck it, I'm responsible.  But if the company sells me a driverless car that crashes, the company is responsible.    

For every task that matters we want a human to be responsible.  Even if they solve the Real World problem with bigger and better AIs, the Responsibility problem will always prevent human replacement.  Imagine if my boss could replace me with a computer: he would then be 100% liable for any mistakes the computer made!  Is that the kind of liability any Pointy Haired Boss wants??  As long as he has real humans working for him, there's always someone to share the responsibility.  

Example: imagine something that's even simpler than driving a car: flying a passenger airplane!  I'm sure autopilot could fly an airplane as well as a human.  But would anyone want to fly on an airplane with no human pilot?  We'll always have the human pilots, even if the autopilot does more and more of the routine work.

Humans are social creatures.  The humans who think AI will rule the world must be living inside a computer world.  Its interesting that, as more and more of our world is computerized, we hear more and more from the people living inside the computer world.  But its not the real world!

In These Cheatgrass-Infested Hills

Matthew Miller, The Nature Conservancy writer/editor, has written a beautiful article about coming to grips with beautiful yet non-native landscapes.

In my opinion, there are too many conservationists lost in a dream of pure "native" nature, unable to see the flawed-but-still-beautiful world around them.  I empathize with his struggle to learn to love degraded places, even the hard-to-love places that are infested with cheatgrass.  

Trying to widen our circle of appreciation to include even nasty invasives helps us appreciate the natural in the unnatural: the native pollinators that use invasive wildflowers, the native birds that nest in invasive trees. 

To quote Princess Mononoke, our task now is "to see with eyes unclouded by hate."

What is a Scientist?

"Science is a way of thinking, not an answer."

I hope to explain what science really is, and why its such a good thing (one of the most important in life).  But first, let's start with some examples:

Is Mr A a scientist? He worships spaghetti monster. Doesn't matter, lots of Christians are scientific and they worship similar gods.

Is Mr B a scientist?  He believes Earth goes around sun, is made of atoms, and humans evolved from prehistoric primates because he reads science books.  Doesn't matter what you believe.  Just because its in a book....

Ms. C read a website that earth is flat and evolution is a hoax.  Is one "right" and one "wrong"?  Maybe, but saying one is "science" and one isn't isn't the point.

What is a Scientist?

1) Open mind

2) Respect institutions that promote learning (process)

3) Experimentation

Climate Change Belief Tree

An article in Nautilus magazine analogizes beliefs about climate change to branches on a tree.  I like that the tree diagram emphasizes the unity of thinking about climate change, even if we may be on different branches.  Also, I think it is OK for one person's beliefs to span different branches: belief about the future does not need to be certain but can be probabilistic and can change from one day to the next. 

Diagram and original article by Summer Praetorius.

The article concludes: "What if instead of feeling threatened by differences in opinion, we were to reconceptualize them in much the same way a tree will distribute a canopy to collect as much sunlight as possible—as a multi-pronged approach to getting the job done? In the same sense that both fast and slow processes contribute to Earth change, both steady progress and immediate local action will contribute to climate solutions. Let’s take stock of our pace and work together, thankful there is someone else to fill the space we can’t. After all, we are not lone trees, but a living, connected forest, and balance is essential for stability."

Getting drunk on people

Extended quote from http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2017/06/tasting-godhood.html

"In early college, when I drank wine for the first time outside of Mass, my experience was very different. I was mainly concerned with whether I could tolerate the taste long enough to get drunk.

My brain is programmed to efficiently assess whether food is safe to eat, and whether it is calorically rich. Chefs, winemakers, and other culinary artists are doing their own thing, which is almost orthogonal to the goals (so to speak) of biological evolution. So, if I want to know what a carefully crafted food actually tastes like, then I have to do something weird with my mind. I have to be an epicure, which I would not do by default, because it’s not part of a human mind’s factory settings.

This is, of course, a metaphor for rationality in general. But I’m going to apply it a bit more precisely than that.

When I struggle to empathize with someone (which is pretty much every time I try, in my case), the main obstacle is the very same thing that originally prevented me from tasting wine.

By default, I’m only perceiving a few blunt fragments of info about how they relate to my goals and values. Are they smart? Do they signal like my in-group? Are they easy to talk to? Do they enjoy the same things as me? Can I tolerate this wine long enough to get drunk?

And I’m filtering the info so quickly that I’m not even aware it’s happening, unless I’m looking right at the process. The thing that makes it to consciousness and feels like “my perception of the person” actually contains more of my song than theirs. I’ve discarded most of their personhood."

Does truth exist in analogies?

"Truth is not revealed; it is discovered. And in this process, anything goes."

We use observations to shape or formulate a concept; while on the other hand, we use a concept to shape the nature of future inquiries or observations of reality. Under these circumstances, a concept must be incomplete since we depend upon an ever-changing array of observations to shape or formulate it. Likewise, our observations of reality must be incomplete since we depend upon a changing concept to shape or formulate the nature of new inquiries and observations.

“If one’s understanding is always imperfect, it cannot be committed to print because revision is imminent”. The accurateness of one’s storytelling becomes less important that the purpose of the story itself: moving forward in the infinite and mutually influencing loop of observation and conceptualization.

CF: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/01/18/the-unapologetic-case-for-bullshit/

Thinking with the Body - Eugene Gendlin's Breakthrough Embodied Cognition Philosophy

Gendlin is the heir to Heidegger and Lakoff.  His work bridges psychotherapy and philosophy.  I can't believe I haven't read him before.

Excerpts from "Thinking at the Edge":
"THINKING AT THE EDGE" (in German: "WO NOCH WORTE FEHLEN") is a systematic way to articulate in new terms something which needs to be said but is at first only an inchoate "bodily sense." It is the difficult task of getting students to attend to what they implicitly knew but could not say and never considered trying to say.

"Oh," one student exclaimed when he grasped what I was looking for, "you mean something about which we have to do hemming and hawing." Yes, that was just what I meant. Another asked: "Do you mean that crawly thing?"

An internally intricate sense leads to a series of statements with certain recognizable characteristics. Statements that speak-from the felt sense can be recognized by the fact that they have an effect on the felt sense. It moves, opens, and develops.

This is in contrast to what we normally call "thinking", which seems to require unitized things which are assumed to be either cleanly identical or cleanly separate, which can be next to each other but cannot interpenetrate, let alone have some more complex pattern. The unit model is regularly the reason why some new insights cannot be said. But to reject the unit model in general is not possible, because it inheres in our language, our machines and in all our detailed concepts. The capacity for breaking out of the unit model cannot be imparted simply by studying Heidegger, McKeon, etc. Critique does not prevent us from falling into the old model.

We must develop a new use of bodily-sourced language with which we can speak directly from the body about many things — especially about the body and language. . Language does not consist just of the words. The situations in which we find ourselves, the body, and the language form a single system together.

We find that when people forgo the usual big vague words and common phrases, then — from their bodily sense — quite fresh colorful new phrases come. There is no way to say "all" of it, no sentence that will be simply equal, no sentence which will simply "represent" what is sensed. One strand emerges from the bodily sense, and then another and another. What needs to be said expands! What we say doesn't represent the bodily sense. Rather it carries the body forward.

People live through a great deal which cannot be said. When the living body becomes able to carry itself forward by symbolizing itself, it acts and speaks from a vast intricacy. . Humans don't happen without culture and language, but with and after language the body's next steps are always freshly here again, and always implicitly more intricate than the common routines. You can instantly check this by becoming aware of your bodily aliveness, freshly there and implicitly much more intricate than the words you are reading.

We need to build new social patterns and new patterns of thought and science. This will be a mutual product no single person can create. On the other hand, if we work jointly too soon, we lose what can only come through the individual in a focusing type of process. Nobody else lives the world from your angle. No other organism can sense exactly "the more" that you sense.


--------
Excerpts from "Three Assertions about the Body":
A felt sense comes. It isn't just there waiting. We have to let it form and come. That takes at least a few moments, sometimes longer. So we understand that a felt sense is a certain development, a certain bit of further life-process. What does it stem from? How can we think about ordinary events and experience in such a way that we could understand what a felt sense is and how it forms?

A felt sense is distinctly something there, something with a life of its own, that we attend to directly. If we attend to our bodies, in the middle of the body it comes, and then it is in an odd sort of space of its own. It brings its own space. In that space the felt sense is a direct object, that, there.

The kind of experience I mean is sometimes attributed to "the unconscious," although such a body-sense is, of course, conscious. We are aware of sensing it when it is there, yet it is true that much of the knowledge that can emerge from it was unconscious before. There is no such directly felt body-sense in the unconscious. When we invite it to come, we can feel it freshly forming. It is not already there, underneath. At most one could say that it forms itself from "the unconscious."

But calling it "unconscious" does not explain this kind of experience. It is only a mysterious name, just as "hunch," "intuition," and "instinct" are mysterious names for it.

What can we say about this kind of experience just from these two examples?

 The experience is felt rather than spoken or visual. It is not words or images, but a bodily sense.
 It does not fit the common names or categories of feelings. It is a unique sense of this person or this situation.
We must also notice one more characteristic of this kind of experience:
 Although such a body-sense comes as one feeling, we can sense that it contains an intricacy. Let me explain that.

Your body-sense of the person you know contains all your past history with that person and what you hope for with that person. It also contains what that person rouses in you and some of your own unresolved troubles. In there as well is the exact way in which you[Page 24]do and don't like the person, and much more. Let me roll all that together and call it "an intricacy." You might be able to think three or four of those things, but most of them remain implicit. Such a body-sense contains an implicit intricacy.

We don't usually think of physical feelings as containing a whole complex mesh. Physical sensations are supposed to be simple. A pain or a sensation is just what it is. It is opaque. We don't expect a hidden complexity, for example, in the stabbing pain of a twisted ankle or in the sensation of red. A complex situation might have led to the twisted ankle, but we don't expect to find the intricacy of the situation inside the pain. What distinguishes the kind of physical sense I am discussing is that it does contain an implicit intricacy, "all that" about that person.

You can sense that it is implicitly complex, even if you don't find any of it out, even if you don't succeed in opening it and entering. I speak of "opening and entering." This kind of bodily experience is a door. If we open it and if we enter, we can go many steps into it...

The Problem with Ecosystem Services

There is a controversy in the conservation community about monetary valuations.  A recent podcast on Freakanomics looked at rational altruism using a Consequentialist cost/benefit analysis.

The example was between treating HIV and malaria.  A person infected with HIV might cost $100,000, while a person dying of malaria might only cost $1,000 to cure.  Since we can help 100 people with malaria for every one with HIV, shouldn't we focus first on malaria, and only turn to HIV once we've helped everyone we can with malaria?

The logic is sound, but try telling that to a doctor working on HIV (let alone a patient with HIV).  But how else could we decide?

The big idea seems to be to add up the (monetary) costs of charities and look at some simple metric (like lives saved) to pick and choose the best charities.(link to bjorn lomberg's thinktank)  But do we only care about a single metric, a single value?  And how compare education to disease, senile dementia to juvenile delinquency?

The same problems bedevil conservation...

I think the simple answer is that there are no simple answers, and every approach has a place.  If some government minister will only listen to economic arguments, use them... but others will listen to other values, and those also matter.  Whether people care about the scariest diseases (terminal diarhea) or the cuddliest endangered animals (link to cockapo), these interests are meaningful.
There is a long tradition in decision science and economics of critiquing irrational human preoccupation with infrequent, but salient/scary crises (link to risk diagram disasters axis) as opposed to rational actors (link to behavioral economics discussion, maybe wikipedia) dispassionately evaluating statistics.  I try to avoid news sources because of our (link) well-demonstrated cognitive biases, but I don't think we can (or should) "fix" every element of human thinking.

Yes, every decision is a choice to focus on one priority over another, and yes it is not rational to make that decision without comparing and ranking all choices.  But pure rationality doesn't take account of the full richness of human life.  We care about many values, not just The Most Important. Is it absurd to try to save endangered species when many people don't have adequate nutrition?  (link to weird conservation stories, nature conservancy).

Traditional Chinese Medicine - 5 Phases Theory

Graphic from pulse-academy.org.

Graphic from pulse-academy.org.
For more archetypal correspondences, see http://www.adducation.info/lifestyle/five-elements/

The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) approach to health is based on categories (types, archetypes) and balance. The first thing to note is that stereotypes actually help individualize nutrition and health by putting human differences front and center. One size doesn't fit all when we acknowledge the obvious truth that humans can be more different than similar. Recognizing these differences and similaries is aided by categories. (see danger below).

Secondly, nutrition and health are pretty complicated. Even the simple dictum to "Eat whole foods, mostly plants."(Michael Pollan) hides a huge amount of confusion and contradiction about what is healthy and how to cook it.  Books like "The Perfect Health Diet" are a great place to start and I won't argue with their research showing the optimum ratio of the various macronutrients and amount of micronutrients to consume.  But which spices to eat, what recipes to make, how much exercise to get, and when to wake up in the morning are not covered.  A more intuitive approach is needed to comprehend the human condition.

Third, the importance of balancing constitutions and forces is absent from much of modern nutrition, which acts as if a simple summation of inputs is enough to insure health. Perhaps the most important insight of TCM-based approaches and Hippocratic humours is that health is the sum of harmonious balancing interactions (i.e. homeostasis, for the scientists). There are too many forces and nutrients to consider to balance every input and output analytically. A wholistic approach is needed.

However, one danger of the archetypal approach is the tendency toward simplification and identification. For example, saying that "I am a water-type", or "I am a phlegmatic". Many people resist such limiting classification, rightly so, and with good reason. The trick to using archetypes is to lean on them gently, maintain perspective, and flexibility.  No one is X.  They are themselves, a real, infinitely-complex human system.  But many of us manifest observable types, and recognizing those types gives us the three advantages described above.

 Another danger, perhaps part of the danger listed above, is the hermetic tendency to see all people, phenomena, etc within one system of thought.  No system can be complete. TCM cannot answer all questions, and it is unbalanced to rely on it obsessively. Another closely related danger is the esoteric tendency to compile endlessly complicated tables, enumerations, calculations, and the like, in order to fit all people and phenomena into a system. This is the inevitable result of the hermetic temptation to apply one categorical system to all phenomena.

 Pavlov encountered this when he tried to explain his dogs' behavior using Hippocratic types. He was forced to expand, and then expand again, endlessly redoubling the complexity of the system to attempt to fit a (probably infinite) range of idiosyncratic variation within a comprehensive system. Somewhat the same tendency can be seen in the 16 Type Indicators of Myers Briggs testing, which was an outgrowth of Pavlov's work. The system could easily be expanded to 32, or 64, or.. types, in order to continue to incorporate more degrees of variation. But the cost to understanding and ease of use is progressive.

 As any system becomes more baroquely complicated, it begins to lose the explanatory power of simplicity. In any analytical system, there must be a balance between conceptual simplicity and accuracy.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

"The logic underlying Chinese medical theory - a logic that assumes that a part can be understood only in its relation to the whole -- can also be called synthetic or dialectical.

The character for Yin originally meant the shady side of a slope.  It is associated with such qualities as cold, rest, responsiveness, passivity, darkness, interior, downward, inward, decrease, satiation, tranquility, and quiescence.  It is the end, completion, and realized fruition.

The original meaning of Yang was the sunny side of a slope.  The term implies brightness, heat, stimulation, movement, activity, excitement, vigor, exterior, upward, outward, and increase.  It is arousal, beginning, and dynamic potential.  

All things have Yin and Yang aspects....and any Yin or Yang aspect can be further divided into Yin and Yang.  

Yin and Yang mutually create, control, and transform one another.  Although Yin and Yang can be distinguished, they cannot be separated.   Yin and Yang are always subtly supporting, repairing, and transforming into one another.  This constant transformation is the source of all change.  Organic transformation can occur harmoniously in the normal course of events or sudden ruptures can occur. If Yin and Yang are unbalanced for prolonged periods of time or in an extreme manner, the resulting transformation can be drastic.  

Lao Tzu says:  

In order to expand, it is necessary to first contract.  In order to stregthen, it is necessary to first weaken.  In order to create, it is necessary to first destroy.  In order to give, it is necessary to first take.

In Chinese thought, events and phenomena unfold through a kind of spontaneous cooperation, an inner dynamic in the nature of things.  The key word is Pattern - people and things behave in particular ways not necessarily because of prior actions or impulses, but because their position in the cyclical universe and their endowment with intrinsic natures. 

The Chinese assume that the universe is continuously changing.  The cosmos itself is an integral whole, a web of interrelated things and events.  The desire for knowledge is the desire to understand the interrelationships or patterns within that web, and to become attuned to the unfolding dynamic.

A traditional Chinese landscape painting captures the essence of nature in balance and in flux.  The paiting is like the Taoist symbol, containing Yin and Yang in their proper proportions but constantly interacting and transforming into each other.  

The scene depicts a vast range of elements, from the towering mountain to the little trickling stream.  Nature is shown as a balance of the yielding Yin (foliage, water) and the unyielding Yang (rock, trees).  There are the dynamic (water, people) and the quiescent (mountains, houses); the slow (trees) and the fast (mist); the dark and the light; the solid and the liquid.  All things contain both Yin and Yang.  The water, for instance, is both yielding (Yin) and dynamic (Yang).

The picture is a totality, and each detail takes on meaning only as it participates in the whole.  The mountain is immense by virtue of its smaller foothills; the people are small by virtue of the vastness of nature.  All things are imbued with interactive qualities and dynamics in their relationships to the things around them.

The painting depicts a time and place that through their correspondence with the cosmos become timeless and placeless.  It rediscovers the elemental and continuous course of the cosmic pulsation through the figurative representation of a landscape...The tension created by the correlation between the lines and the washes, the visible and the invisible, fullness and emptiness, endows the landscape with a power to suggest more than the merely visible and open it to the life of the spirit. " 

(from p. 7-17 The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchuk)

Wendell Berry on the Problem of Private Land Ownership

"We share a common health....

....If we have the "right to life" as we have always supposed, then that right must stand upon the further right to air, water, food, clothing, and shelter.

It follows that every person exercising the right to hold private property has an obligation to secure to the rest of us the right to live from that property...an obligation to use it in such a way as to not impair or diminish our rightful interest in it.

 But --and here is the catch-- that obligation on the part of the landowner implies a concurrent obligation on the part of society as a whole. If we give our proxy to the landowner to use-- and as is always implied, to take care of -- the land on our behalf, then we are obliged to make the landowner able to afford not only to use the land but also to care properly for it.

This is where the grossest error of our civilization shows itself. In giving a few farmers our proxies to produce food in the public behalf for very little economic return we have also given them our proxies to care for the land in the public behalf for no economic return at all. This is our so-called cheap-food policy, which is in fact an antifarming policy, an antifarmer policy, and an antiland policy.

We hold the land under a doctrine of private property that in practice acknowledges no common health."

---from Another Turn of the Crank.  Essays by Wendell Berry.

Good Comment! Science in the Internet Age

A Place For Dialogue (h/t to Sharon McKenzie Stevens)

As technology and culture change, new avenues of science open up. In the 1600's coffee shops became fertile grounds for political and scientific discussion, even while the royal court argued that these "dens of thieves" were illegitimate, divisive, and undermining of authority. So too, today, with online debate comment-threads and forums devoted to contentious topics such as climate change and genetically modified organisms.

I've been reading and participating in online discussions after reading Smarter Than You Think, a wide-ranging and persuasive case for the good side of technology. The author, Clive Thompson, argues that computers and the new types of communication they enable can make us smarter and more efficient. I've been consistently impressed by the quality of discourse online (especially when it is moderated). Wikipedia's methods are the gold-standard for creating knowledge and their standards seem to be widely adopted in many online discussions. For example, in comment-thread debates, facts are treated skeptically unless they are sourced, and scientific articles are held as better sources than news or magazine articles. So although intellectual debates have moved online and outside of academia, the standards for reliable knowledge have been translated to this new domain.

Is it Science?

Much online discussion focuses on current controversies at the intersections of science and society. Ironically, one of the most controversial questions is whether there is a debate at all, on a range of issues. The crux of the question comes down to whether online debates are legitimately "scientific", in the way that curated debates in scientific journals are supposed to be. Based on my analysis, I would argue that discussions characterized by normative standards of knowledge are indeed scientific discussions. I think an open-minded observer would agree that the substantive discussions being held on topics like Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the adoption of Genetically Modified Organisms certainly look like legitimate discussions, and it is hard to imagine holding ourselves to a higher level of discourse. Certainly there is ignorance and personal attacks, but these come from both sides in these debates.

Interestingly, many self-styled "defenders of science" commonly argue in online discussions that there is no substantive debate over the very issues they are debating. Even when comment threads run to hundreds of entries examing the arcane details of programming Global Circulation Models, the proponents of AGW maintain that "the debate is over." As if the online discussion doesn't 'count' in the way that a discussion in a scientific journal or conference would.  Although there are discussions in journals and conferences on these issues, certain commentators seem to conceptualize science as a monolithic enterprise that generates truth that cannot be questioned.

I find this definition of science more dangerous and erosive to the scientific enterprise than the danger posed by skepticism, debates, and unresolved questions. It is far better to expand our definition of science to include online dialogues and debates than to wall off science in the Ivory tower.  Everywhere people uphold normative standards of truth, scientific discourse is possible, and skepticism and questioning should be recognized as a central --and essential-- component of what defines science.

My wish is that both sides in these debates could see that they are engaging in science and legitimate dialogue -- even if they disagree on the ultimate conclusions. Science doesn't have to be monolithic or hermetic.  It is better (more creative, diverse, and relevant) when any conclusion based on facts can be legitimately believed or legitimately doubted.

An Ecologist Ponders the Microbiome

Fluctuating nutrient concentrations and the timing of peristalsis may affect microbiome growth and composition, which is hypothesized to affect health. Certainly digestive upset is no fun for anyone, and it makes sense to look at inputs (diet) as the primary drivers.

Ecosystem arguments are used to claim that some forms of digestive upset are due to over- or under-growth of bacteria in the intestines.  For example, Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) is treated with what is called the GAPS diet, an effort to restrict all foods that bacteria can digest.

In response, Jeff Leach, of the American Gut Project, made this comparison between diets disturbing the microbiome and ecological disturbances:

"If you think about it from an ecosystem perspective or from an ecosystem restoration perspective, if you take any ecosystem like the gut, the microbiome, and if you starve it... If you starve your backyard and all the diversity of plants, if you just starve it of nutrients, all ships go down with lowering water. And that perturbation, if you will, it wouldn’t be on the same level as an antibiotic, but it is a perturbation; it is an insult. And when you insult an ecosystem, insults like fire, drought, nutrient overload or nutrient deprivation, any of these perturbations typically result in a flourishing of weedy species, in this case, opportunistic pathogens. I know the GAPS diet...from an ecosystem restoration standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to starve your gut microbiome at any level. "

This idea that "a healthy garden needs a healthy soil" is an ecological idea.  Jeff Leach goes on to claim that specific nutrients, like "resistant starch, non-starch polysaccharides like inulin and fructooligosaccharides and galactooligosaccharides, can provide food for the beneficial bacteria in your gut and can increase their levels by orders of magnitude."

Turns out it may be a false analogy, or if the analogy is valid, the hoped-for predictive power of diet on microbiome function may not hold up. While broad temperature-precipitation drivers do determine biome (e.g. tundra versus desert) it is almost impossible to predict the exact species in an ecosystem based on the nutrient inputs to that ecosystem.  And if microbiome bacteria exert their effects in a species-dependent fashion, it may not be possible to predict that eating x will cause bacteria xyz to grow.

Ecologists look (with envy, and skepticism) at nutrition research and commentary because we know how complicated ecosystems can mess with simplistic notions of cause-and-effect.

Ecology: More Work, Less Understanding

This year's Ecology Society of America (ESA) annual meeting featured a recent meta-review of scientific papers published over the last 80 years.  They found that the average number of statistical tests is increasing, but that the explanatory power (the amount of total variability explained) has decreased!

In-depth coverage can be found at Ahmedelazab.

Rosemont Mine and the Scientific Method

In today's Arizona Star Opinion Section, Dr. Ostercamp discusses recent hydrologic research about whether the proposed Rosemont Mine would affect surrounding groundwater levels, and how much.

The upshot?  "More research is needed."  A classic scientific result that, in this case, sides with environmentalists' opposition to the proposed copper mine.  I was interested that this result shows how science often works differently from how most people think. Instead of generating facts to aid society's decisions, normal science (and scientists) thrive on ambiguity, controversy, and the unknowability of the world.

I believe that science, as a human institution, should work this way.  I am deeply suspicious of any scientific field with easy answers and a "97% consensus".  Scientific culture harnesses the creativity, jealousy, and competition inherent in human nature when it is most controversial, when there are a plurality of opinions and accusations.  When I hear that, for example, climate change researchers are united behind the IPCC report, I worry that the incentive structure of that field of science has become corrupted; instead of working to prove each other wrong in order to gain fame and fortune, they have all jumped on the same bandwagon to champion their cause.

In the same way that monopolies are bad for capitalism, unified "consensus statements" are bad for science.  This is not to say that I disagree with the IPCC's conclusions.  In the same way that a monopoly might act in society's interest, the IPCC may well be acting in our best interests.  But without dissent and opposing voices there is no guarantee.  Of course, one might argue that monopolies can be efficient; scientific consensus is necessary to accept what we know and move on.  I agree that arguments and democracy are very inefficient and often only result in stalemate, acrimony, and confusion.  Perhaps the "best" way of running an economy or the scientific method is ultimately a political decision?  

Politically, science (as I have described it in the first and second paragraphs) often argues for the status quo, because any change is inherently unknowable and the amount or "further research" needed is infinite; we can never comprehend everything.  So, in its current manifestation, science plays into the hands of industry when industrial processes are already ongoing: this is why Monsanto's fight for GMOs to be labelled "generally recognized as safe" and widely disseminated is so important.  Science would have argued for limitless further testing if GMOs were acknowledged to be a legitimately novel subject of study.  Conversely, science plays into the hands of environmentalists whenever new industrial projects are proposed.  In the case of the proposed Rosemont Mine, scientists would need to comprehensively understand the geology, hydrology, ecology, and meteorology of the entire Santa Rita mountains, if not the county and beyond, before being able to pass judgement on the effects of the mine.

But what about situations where environmentalists and industry would like to work together to advance some project for the good of society?  For example, thinning projects on national forests are badly needed prevent continuing damage to watersheds and ecosystems, as well as human life and property.  But what can science say about the best way to thin forests?  "Further research is needed..."

History and Philosophy of Science

The current AGW debate (new 2013 IPCC report versus skeptical community embodied in NIPCC and wattsupwiththat.com) mirrors the dynamic described in Leviathan and the Vacuum pump: two groups of men, both claiming to create knowledge and decide what is true for the rest of society.  One is composed of men of authority and credentials, the other composed of coffee-shop debaters and home-experimentalists.  In the 1600's,  the powerful men created knowledge to bolster the monarchy, while they feared the upstart debaters as crypto-revolutionaries.  Today, powerful scientists create knowledge to create societal demand for their power and knowledge, while they fear the "deniers".

(I first read Leviathan and the Vacuum Pump (about Hobbes' and Boyle's argument) in a History of Science course with Dr. Andre Wakefield at the Clarement Colleges.)

Riparian Restoration Quandary

Plants along rivers face a basic quandary: the closer to the channel they grow, the more water they have.  But, closer to the channel, there is more disturbance from flooding.

So:

• Is this a healthy/unhealthy stream bank?
• Is it in need of restoration?

It has:

• invasive species
• sparse vegetation
• obviously eroding banks....

It might be important to ask: What is bankfull here? 

It might also be important to know that this is actually a dry wash, photographed after the first rain in 9 months...it looks grazed, and it is grazed.  By a herd of native Elk, forced out of the uplands by the worst drought in 50 years.

We have to be careful to set our ecological expectations to the history of natural disturbance and the reality of a changing climate.

Minimalist thoughts

Moving day is approaching, and our thoughts are turning toward ways to reduce clutter, obligations, and STUFF!

We found this website useful:

http://bemorewithless.com/more-on-mini-missions/

http://bemorewithless.com/shoot-your-stuff/

Paul Krafel, author of Shifting / Seeing Nature

Paul Krafel is one of the great unsung ecological thinkers.  His original book, "Shifting", self-published in the 1980's, gained a cult following for its blending of meticulous natural history observations (i.e. the entire sequence of insect colonization of a decomposing deer over an entire season) and deep reflections on the role of humans vis-a-vis nature, work, and mind.  His book is now being republished as Seeing Nature: Deliberate Encounters with the Visible World.

He is also a founder and senior instructor at Chrysalis Charter School in Redding, CA.  He writes a series of newsletters about life at the environmental education-focussed school, as well as his continuing explorations into inner- and outer-space (see story about photos above).

Ulrich Beck on Risk Society, Individualization, and the Future of Jobs

Ulrich Beck quotes:

Risk Society
Modern society presupposes side effects that are spatially, temporally, and socially bounded. Without that condition, it can't function. Only against this background, when it was assumed that the side effects of modernization would always somehow be compensated for, could faith in progress become popular and widespread.

In is a general, institutional principle: in any case where a clear chain of causality cannot be demonstrated, there is therefore no risk. When the affected people take their case to the scientists, they find themselves talking to a group whose most identity-defining belief is that the canons of causal evidence and inference must always be strictly adhered to. When these criteria can't be satisfied, scientists can be depended upon to explain away any new risk as a mere fantasy without giving it any further consideration.

Individualization
Class analysis has always been in part an attempt to conjure up class solidarity, to postulate the collective subject as a historical subject, and then to build a political program around it. But as a utopia, and as a political program, class leads to a picture of society that is exactly the opposite of individualized society, and to politics that are exactly the opposite of political individualism. If you ask what are the new ideas and political strategies that class analysis can generate for the present situation, all you get is antiquated answers or total hopelessness.

Class concepts, no matter how subtle, simply can't capture the existing complexity of radically unequal living situations, either within nationstate societies or between them. What they do instead is deceive us with a false simplicity. The frame of reference has changed. Our model of class struggle and class society presumes the nationstate. The old marxist argument that the worker knows no nation has today been turned on its head. It is capital's activists, those who have made globalization their profession, who don't have any fatherland, while the workers and their unions call on "their" governments for aid... Marxists use class analysis in part as a means of finessing their way around the central problem facing us, the question of what we can find that can successfully serve as the basis of long-term, progressive solidarity.

Labor
Labor is a means by which the structure of power is internalized through everyday routines, each of which involves the positing of meaning and the submission to control. When every desire to build a life, an identity, an existence, is forced to be mediated through the labor market, what results is one of the subtlest and most refined systems ever invented for getting people to conform to the societal structure of power. People adapt themselves. They fit in. This self-activated conformity to rule constitutes the core of labor society. It transforms the control of rulers into self-control. Individuals integrate themselves into the system of labor, they makes themselves functional. The net of exploitation that binds them is experienced as self-exploitation, as drive, as something to be proud of.

The voluntarily unemployed say: Screw That. We are using unemployment compensation as a foundation to explore new forms of existence. We are the pioneers of a post-labor society. We are searching out activities that interest us, that we enjoy. We want a life where we an switch from one activity to another, because variety and change in themselves make all activities more enjoyable. We don't need the control claims of labor society to organize ourselves.

Paid labor has a monopoly on meaning (that is, for work to be considered significant, it seems it has to be paid for) and it has a monopoly on the means of existence. But labor society and its totalizing claims are really a very recent phenomenon. For most of history there was a wealth of alternatives. There still are. But these other activities are always practiced in tandem with labor and are often more necessary, though less visible. They form its necessary background, without which society could not exist. Most of these activities seem to share two characteristics. They have a strong emphasis on self-initiative; and they are activities in which the ends and products are transparent to the people doing it.

This necessarily raises a question. If this system is beginning to dissolve, and if, in many ways, we want it to dissolve, then how can we create an alternative milieu in which individuals who have been fragmented and atomized can be socialized? Where they can experience something like society, and internalize the values of society?