Priceless treasure guide disguised as the confused ramblings of a misanthropic iconoclast. Seeking the next level is not a quest for the timid, not for the easily discouraged.
27 December 2012
Philosophy is for Thinkers; Ideology is for Stinkers
Philosophy encourages participation in discussions in order to strengthen their theories and explanations. On the other hand, ideology does not encourage discussions of any sort that do not agree with their beliefs. _Difference Between Philosophy and Ideology
Young children come into the world needing to learn to think for themselves, in the face of a nearly incomprehensible flood of stimuli, ideas, and information. Instead, they are typically taught:
what to think
what not to think
and how to "think" like authority figures tell them they should think.
There are very fundamental differences between philosophy and ideology. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs, doctrines that back a certain social institution or a particular organization. Philosophy refers to looking at life in a pragmatic manner and attempting to understand why life is as it is and the principles governing behind it.
...philosophy and ideology, if measured on a scale, would occupy two extreme ends of the scale. The purpose of any philosopher is to seek knowledge for the sake of wisdom and truth whereas an ideologue’s sole aim is to advocate and enforce his or her ideology wherever he can. _Differences Between.net
It was once the purpose of universities to teach students how to reason, by teaching the great thinkers and great ideas in all their variations -- from the earliest to more recent.
These days, universities are more the province of ideologues, whose purpose is to indoctrinate young minds into "proper" and "politically correct" modes of thought and action.
Popper’s famous distinction between science and pseudo-science (or ideology) depends on his equally famous principle of falsification. Quite simply, he argues that if a theory is in principle open to being disproved or ‘falsified’ by the facts of the world, then it is scientific. If it is not open to being falsified by the facts of the world, then it is pseudo-science, ideology. For example, the claim “Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light”, on which the Special Theory of Relativity crucially depends, can in principle be falsified by observing something in the actual world that does travel faster than the speed of light. But the statement “God’s in His Heaven” cannot be scientific, because it’s unclear what sort of evidence in the world would count as falsifying it. Therefore it must be pseudo-science or ideology. _Philosophy Now
Similarly, theories of anthropogenic climate catastrophe are being put to the test by real world data which show a divergence between steadily rising atmospheric CO2 levels, and global temperatures which have plateaued. The alarmist branch of climate science is flirting dangerously close to pseudo-science in its over-dependence on computer modeling and its willingness to avoid possible falsification of its hypotheses.
Very few people today have learned to think on the basis of first principles, which is why classical philosophy is not a very popular subject, at least not as popular as it was during the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s. Ideological thinking has more appeal to some because it involves less work. One does not have to spend years reading the great works of the great thinkers. All one has to do is buy the ideological package and one has something by which to make sense out of the world. It is quick and easy, like instant Oatmeal or a McDonald's Drive Thru....
...An ideological construct comes as a package that contains all sorts of things, such as starting points, assumptions, premises, conclusions, prejudices, etc., and it is through this package that the world can be interpreted. The problem, however, is that if one does not know how to think on the basis of primary principles (principled thinking), one will be unable to critically evaluate the ideological superstructure through which one interprets data. Rather, one will be critical of things on the basis of the ideological package, and thus feel as if one is a free and critical thinker, but one isn't quite sure whether the ideological package contains some rotten items that should be discarded. _Ideology vs Philosophy
The willingness of modern universities to discard classical philosophy and classical reasoning in favour of politically correct ideological indoctrination, constitutes a dark omen for the future. When even the educated elite can no longer interpret data from the real world in a valid manner, society will be drifting more rudderless and out of control than it is at present -- which is more than bad enough as it is.
In conclusion, here is a summary of differences between philosophy and ideology.
1.Philosophy refers to a pragmatic approach of looking and analyzing life. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs and rules belonging to a particular group or set of people
2.Philosophy aims at understand the world as it exists whereas ideology is born out of a vision for the future and aims at changing the current state to that particular vision
3.Philosophy is objective whereas ideology is dogmatic and refuses to participate in any discussion that does not agree with that ideology
4.Philosophy does not have as much impact as an ideology would have on the world ‘“ for ideology aims at spreading the beliefs and imposing them on the rest of the society irrespective of its relevance
5.All ideologies have some underlying philosophy but it is not vice versa.
_Philosophy vs Ideology
Religions are ideologies, as are political "isms," most mass movements, and almost all "advocacy" groups and movements. Almost all "non-profit" organisations are actually ideologically driven, as are most tax-exempt foundations.
Ideologies may sometimes have a "good" impact -- as in immediate post-disaster relief, for example. But any ideology that aims to institute forced redistribution, is no better than a criminal organisation. If you see such an ideologue on the road, kill him. [Apologies to the zen koan: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."]
It is clear that a world that is driven by ideology is an impoverished world in terms of innovation, exploration, and discovery.
Which points out the growing importance of training children -- and yourselves -- to be truly dangerous. Dangerous children are slaves to no one and to no idea.
The late Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, was more famous as a skillful teacher and a razor sharp thinker, than for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics. Feynman did not tolerate foolish thinking -- particularly when it contaminated science.
A good scientist must be willing to be wrong. Such an inclination is liberating, for it allows him or her to investigate potential answers — however unlikely they may be — to the difficult questions inspired by this vast, wondrous universe. Not only that, a willingness to be wrong frees a scientist to pursue any avenue opened by evidence, even if that evidence doesn’t support his or her original hunch.
“The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away,” The great science communicator Carl Sagan wrote. “Don’t waste neurons on what doesn’t work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data.” _Feynman's Science
When a science becomes corrupted by political or religious thinking, its proponents are unwilling to admit to being wrong. They lie, cheat, obfuscate, and ruin innocent lives in order to maintain a public credibility that allows them to continue to mislead.
Climategate (PDF) is an astonishing window into the perverse shenanigans of the principle academic leaders of the climate change movement. In an astonishing display of the will to dominate and mislead, principle IPCC authors are exposed by their own internal communications.
Here is what Richard Feynman said about proper science:
“I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law,” he said in his unvarnished Queens accent, referring to his work as a theoretical physicist.
Feynman walked over to the chalkboard and began to write. His oration continued, almost in a manner synced with his scribbling. “First we guess it… Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what it would imply. And then we compare those computation results… directly to observation to see if it works.”
Feynman paused, removed his left hand from his coat pocket, and strode back over to the lectern to briefly peruse some notes. He then launched right back into his sermon.
“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong,” he asserted, craning his neck forward and adroitly pointing his left hand at the chalkboard to accentuate the point. “In that simple statement, is the key to science.”
“It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is,” Feynman proclaimed, gesticulating in wide, circular, somewhat flamboyant motions. “It doesn’t make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” _Feynman on Science
But if a scientist identifies so closely with a movement that his own position and well-being depends upon maintaining that movement's momentum, he may be willing to break with the rules of "ordinary science" and enter the realm of "post-normal" science -- where anything goes, including deception, and the hiding or altering of his data.
What are the lessons we should learn from Climategate? That in basic non-commercial science, everything must be kept out in the open and made publicly available, to allow other scientists to either refute or verify your findings. This includes all data and all computer code.
A diverse group of academic research scientists from across the U.S. have written a policy paper which has been published in the journal Science, suggesting that the time has come for all science journals to begin requiring computer source code be made available as a condition of publication. Currently, they say, only three of the top twenty journals do so.
The group argues that because computer programs are now an integral part of research in almost every scientific field, it has become critical that researchers provide the source code for custom written applications in order for work to be peer reviewed or duplicated by other researchers attempting to verify results.
Not providing source code, they say, is now akin to withholding parts of the procedural process, which results in a “black box” approach to science, which is of course, not tolerated in virtually every other area of research in which results are published. It’s difficult to imagine any other realm of scientific research getting such a pass and the fact that code is not published in an open source forum detracts from the credibility of any study upon which it is based. Articles based on computer simulations, for example, such as many of those written about astrophysics or environmental predictions, tend to become meaningless when they are offered without also offering the source code of the simulations on which they are based. _Lessons of Climategate
Climate science has become so politicised over the past 30 years that the science can no longer be separated from the politics. And underlying the politics is $trillions of redistribution funds that are at stake. The redistribution of these vast sums of money is to be overseen by UN agencies including the IPCC.
If you wonder why IPCC affiliated scientists would be willing to "go the extra mile" to promote their own viewpoints and discredit and deny opposing viewpoints, an exercise in "following the money" might make things more clear.
As corrupt politics proceeds to stain more and more aspects of modern life, it is worthwhile to remember the admonitions of Richard Feynman, from that Cornell lecture in 1964.
Climate alarmism of the carbon hysteria variety -- whether in science or in politics -- is simply a clever cover for something deeper and more sinister. Don't let yourself be bamboozled by the jive turkey con men of climate.
Brian embeds several videos in his posting, including Conard debating Jon Stewart of the Daily Show on tax policy, and also videos of Conard debating Nobelist Joe Stiglitz on income inequality.
It is my impression after looking at an excerpt from Conard's book, and looking at Conard debating Stewart, that most people do not want to have an honest debate on the topic of political economy. This is particularly true of celebrities such as Stewart, politicians, academics, and others who are essentially ideologues, rather than honest searchers for what works in the real world.
If the US is to recover from the slow motion economic collapse of 2007 - 2009, it will need to enact economic policies on the basis of what will work over the next few decades, at least, rather than what will work until the next election cycle.
From what I can tell, Conard leaves out some important pieces of the puzzle when he looks at the recent banking collapse of the late "noughts," but on the whole he captures more of what is wrong and what should be changed than knuckleheads like Stewart -- who play to the peanut gallery for laughs and votes as if the future of the world's largest economy were a popularity contest.
A short look at Conard's professional background:
Ed Conard was a partner at Bain Capital from 1993 to 2007. He served as the head of Bain’s New York office and led the firm’s acquisitions of large industrial companies. He sits on several boards of directors including the boards of Waters Corporation and Sensata Technologies. Prior to Bain, Conard worked for Wasserstein Perella, an investment bank that specialized in mergers and acquisitions, and Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, where he headed its industrial practice. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the University of Michigan.
_Ed Conard
The US economy is far too large and complex for anyone to understand completely. But basic fundamentals of human behaviour are likely to apply.
Al Fin's philosophy of political economy follows much more closely with the reasoning expressed by Thomas Sowell in his fine book, "Knowledge and Decisions" (PDF excerpt Chap 3). Along with Walter Kaufmann's "Critique of Religion and Philosophy" and a few other choice volumes, Sowell's look at political decision making helped to form Al Fin's total philosophic approach -- although not his "philosophy."
Wiser and more intelligent people tend to eschew ideologies and fixed philosophies in favour of philosophical systems which are able to grow and learn along with the person's dynamic experience.
That is why popular discourse in North America -- including Canada as well as the US -- can be so depressing at times. The number of ideologues in prominent view always seems to outnumber experienced, competent, and intelligent people of sound judgment -- people who are willing to take intellectual chances and risk looking ridiculous at times so as to discover working principles.
Ed Conard is not a great thinker or philosopher -- he misses a lot of things because of gaps in his knowledge and the limits to his experimentation -- but compared to most of the people he debates, he is a rock of wisdom.
There is a lot of popular discussion on internet forums about societal collapse from peak oil doom, overpopulation, climate doom, resource scarcity, ecosystem collapse . . . But the greatest threat to the greatest civilisation -- western civilisation -- is the neglect of risk taking and hard work in the service of what may be unpopular and not trendy, but true and important, nonetheless.
The dumbing down of the US is proceeding apace. We are reminded of this watching the video debate between Stewart and Conard, taking note of the cheap debating tricks used by Stewart to garner applause from his pet audience. But as more and better alternative methods of acquiring an education become available, more people will avoid the well placed traps of dumbing down which have damaged lare portions of a number of generations to this point.
We should have a better idea of how quickly this will all play out by sometime in November of this year.
Can Humans Invent New Ways of Knowing and Discovery In Time?
Michael Nielsen is a pioneer of quantum computing and a champion of open-source science. Nielsen sees the Polymath Projects -- an open online group effort by mathematicians around the world to solve interesting problems on the edge of mathematical knowledge -- as a prototype for what is possible in open-source science as a whole.
A project that I really like a lot is one called the Polymath Project, which has involved a large number of people, mostly mathematicians, from all over the world. They have started using blogs and wikis to collaborate together on difficult, unsolved mathematical problems. It’s a place where they can pool all their different types of expertise, hopefully get a conversation going, and maybe make some progress on problems that any individual amongst them might find very, very challenging. They have had some big successes. They have also had some other projects that haven’t gone so well, which is about par for the course in research. If you’re not having a lot of failures, it means you’re trying problems that are too easy. But it is exciting to see them doing this and pioneering a new way of doing research.
...By and large, [universities are] not standing in the way except through inertia. As a scientist, you build your career by publishing papers, basically. If you’re spending a lot of time doing that, it’s hard to make time to, say, share your ideas online or to share computer code online or any of the other things you might potentially be doing, even though those things have tremendous scientific value. So, in some sense, the entrenched system of reward that universities use is standing in the way of open science, but it’s not because of anything malicious on anybody’s part. It’s just that we have this established system, and it’s very difficult to get everybody to change at the same time. _Boston Review: Michael Nielsen
Nielsen's open-source group approach to problem solving and discovery is one possible answer to the daunting problem of a rapidly building data glut in science. Scientists have been aware of this problem at least since the 1960s, but it is becoming particularly acute in the 21st century:
When the datasets are so large that they become unwieldy even for the Internet, innovators are spurred to invent new forms of sharing. For example, Tranche, the system behind ProteomeCommons, created its own technical protocol for sharing terabytes of data over the Net, so that a single source isn't responsible for pumping out all the information; the process of sharing is itself shared across the network. And the new Linked Data format makes it easier than ever to package data into small chunks that can be found and reused. The ability to access and share over the Net further enhances the new economics of deletion; data that otherwise would not have been worth storing have new potential value because people can find and share them.
...the biological system of an organism is complex beyond imagining. Even the simplest element of life, a cell, is itself a system. A new science called systems biology studies the ways in which external stimuli send signals across the cell membrane. Some stimuli provoke relatively simple responses, but others cause cascades of reactions. These signals cannot be understood in isolation from one another. The overall picture of interactions even of a single cell is more than a human being made out of those cells can understand. In 2002, when Hiroaki Kitano wrote a cover story on systems biology for Science magazine -- a formal recognition of the growing importance of this young field -- he said: "The major reason it is gaining renewed interest today is that progress in molecular biology ... enables us to collect comprehensive datasets on system performance and gain information on the underlying molecules." Of course, the only reason we're able to collect comprehensive datasets is that computers have gotten so big and powerful. Systems biology simply was not possible in the Age of Books.
...The problem -- or at least the change -- is that we humans cannot understand systems even as complex as that of a simple cell. It's not that were awaiting some elegant theory that will snap all the details into place. The theory is well established already: Cellular systems consist of a set of detailed interactions that can be thought of as signals and responses. But those interactions surpass in quantity and complexity the human brains ability to comprehend them. The science of such systems requires computers to store all the details and to see how they interact. Systems biologists build computer models that replicate in software what happens when the millions of pieces interact. It's a bit like predicting the weather, but with far more dependency on particular events and fewer general principles.
Models this complex -- whether of cellular biology, the weather, the economy, even highway traffic -- often fail us, because the world is more complex than our models can capture. But sometimes they can predict accurately how the system will behave. At their most complex these are sciences of emergence and complexity, studying properties of systems that cannot be seen by looking only at the parts, and cannot be well predicted except by looking at what happens. _theatlantic: David Weinberger_via_J.Curry_via_WUWT
In the early 1950s, psychologists of learning attempted to describe different levels of thinking and learning:
Recognizing that there are different levels of thinking behaviors that are important to learning, Bloom, Englehart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl (1956), developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviors. This taxonomy... contains three domains: the cognitive, psychomotor and affective. The cognitive domain had six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. _ Synergy PDF
Moving up the levels from primary recall knowledge up to comprehension, application, synthesis etc. represents increasing levels of understanding and ability to interconnect and utilise knowledge in productive ways.
Here is an example of an attempt to climb up the levels of knowledge, from the field of climate science: A physicist attempts to build a mental model of the radiation balance of the Earth from basic principles. Following physicist Robert Brown's (Duke U.) logic as he tries to make sense of a complex dynamic system, may give you an idea of the process of moving from general knowledge to the early stages of understanding in science.
Nielsen and Weinberger would like to help find ways around the impasse with which modern human societies are confronted. But it is not clear that entrenched modern institutions -- academia, government, media etc -- are as willing to help. In many ways, humans that are good with their brains -- and capable of teaming up with others who are also good with their brains -- represent a significant threat to current ways of doing things, or of preventing things from getting done in many cases.
Human societies are confronted with some very serious problems which may prove to be the end of us all. For example, most governments of advanced societies are wasting time and enormous resources fighting phantom, non-existent problems such as carbon hysteria. To fight this phantom problem, they are committing their citizens to a progressive energy starvation which will inevitably handicap their societies just at the moment that they are being hit the hardest by the twin problems of debt and demographic decline. Tragically, the institutions of academia and the media appear to be solidly behind governments in this suicidal agenda.
It seems a bit futile to worry about the problems and solutions presented by Weinberger and Nielsen, when our own governments and societal institutions are busy doing us in. But in reality, humans can use the powerful networking resources of modern technologies to move beyond their governments and other institutions -- at least to an important, if limited, extent.
Consider this a wakeup call of sorts. A marvelous future waits for us, if we will only wake up and make it happen.
Here is the abstract of the article as it appeared in the International Journal of Health Services:
The multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima plants beginning on March 11, 2011, are releasing large amounts of airborne radioactivity that has spread throughout Japan and to other nations; thus, studies of contamination and health hazards are merited. In the United States, Fukushima fallout arrived just six days after the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns. Some samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal; however, the small number of samples prohibits any credible analysis of temporal trends and spatial comparisons. U.S. health officials report weekly deaths by age in 122 cities, about 25 to 35 percent of the national total. Deaths rose 4.46 percent from 2010 to 2011 in the 14 weeks after the arrival of Japanese fallout, compared with a 2.34 percent increase in the prior 14 weeks. The number of infant deaths after Fukushima rose 1.80 percent, compared with a previous 8.37 percent decrease. Projecting these figures for the entire United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of the expected. These preliminary data need to be followed up, especially in the light of similar preliminary U.S. mortality findings for the four months after Chernobyl fallout arrived in 1986, which approximated final figures. _Source (PDF)
The basic thesis is fairly simple: The authors claim that a comparison of CDC weekly death rates for a select group of US cities -- from just before and just after the Fukushima meltdown -- will provide a valid picture of the fatal effects of fallout from the Japanese nuclear plant on these US cities of the Pacific Northwest.
The authors do present a "before exposure" vs "after exposure" scenario, which they claim demonstrates a significant rise in deaths in the US Pacific Northwest, thousands of miles downwind in the weeks just after the Japanese incident.
Strength
The authors claim nearly 14,000 excess deaths in the US in the 14 weeks after the detection of excess radiation, one week after the meltdown incident.
Dose Response Relationship
The authors are unable to present reliable graduated exposure data which might prove or disprove a "dose-response relationship."
Consistency
The author's claim that the rate of excess US deaths which they detected for the 14 weeks after Fukushima, is comparable to the rate of excess US deaths detected by US researchers in the first 4 months after the Chernobyl explosion and meltdown in 1986.
Plausibility
There is no known biological mechanism to explain this number of excess deaths so quickly, from such relatively low levels of possible radiation exposure. The excess mortality as reported by the CDC were attributed to seasonal infections and SIDS deaths.
Considerations of Alternate Explanations
There is no indication that the authors considered alternate explanations for their findings.
Experiment
An experimental design to test this hypothesis in humans would encounter ethical difficulties. Animal testing up to this point is unlikely to explain how such low levels of excess radiation could lead to such a rapid elevation of death rates.
Specificity
There is no specificity relationship that is detectable in this data. In other words, there is no logical connection between these "excess deaths" and possible exposure to low levels of excess radiation.
.....there are several conclusions to be drawn here:
-- There is no spike in infant mortality due to Fukushima. Instead there is an accidental dip during the 4 weeks before the radioactive releases reached the U.S. west coast.
-- The infant mortality rate in the northwest U.S. was actually 23% higher in the first 7 weeks of 2011 than after Fukushima, 108 cases in 7 weeks give a weekly ratio of 15.43. We can thus say, by using Sherman and Mangano's own way of phrasing it, that this amounts to a decrease of 23% and is statistically significant.
-- The data for the full time period of weeks 1 - 21 amount to 272 infant deaths over 21 weeks, i.e. a weekly rate of 12.95. This is slightly higher than the weekly rate after Fukushima (12.50).
-- Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano have a lot to explain for us...if anybody cares to listen to them after this low point in their so called scientific careers. _Source
Excess deaths from relatively low, transitory radiation exposures should only show up years after the exposure. One would not reasonably expect to find "instant deaths" from such low level, short term exposures. And yet, that seems to be what the authors were trying to find, using quite noisy data from the CDC which was never meant for this type of comparative analysis.
But what is the question that everyone should be asking of the authors? "What does your follow-up data show, over the subsequent time period since the Fukushima event?"
A quick check of the most recent CDC MMWR of 6 Jan 2012 (PDF) shows a total death count for the sample 122 cities, as 9,530. This is down by over a thousand from the 3 June 2011 MMWR (PDF) which shows a death count of 10,839, for the sample 122 cities. Should I then claim that radiation from the Fukushima incident was beneficial to the health of US residents, since the US death rate has declined over time since the meltdown? Of course not. The data bounces up and down every week, for a large number of reasons. Simple correlational studies based upon this type of data should never be used to prove causation.
The remarkable aspect of Mangano and Sherman's paper, is the number of people who were taken in by their shoddy "research." This includes the International Journal of Health Services, as well as a wide range of "green" and anti-nuclear political sites. One of the most disheartening articles linked to this issue is this article in Oilprice.com, by John Daly.
In the real world, people are paid a lot of money to generate such pseudo-scientific "studies", "surveys," opinion polls, marketing research, and the like. Billions of dollars can change hands based upon the results of such shoddy analysis. In the case of the UN's IPCC and global climate policy, monetary redistribution into the $trillions might be easily achieved, by "scientific" methods no more valid than those used by Mangano and Sherman.
At this point in time, most of the global media is willing to cut corners on fact-checking, for the sake of "a good story," or for the sake of "advancing the agenda."
The book, How to Lie With Statistics, is as timely now as ever. If you read it and understand it, you are likely to grow angry more frequently when consuming media pieces. If you prefer bliss, you should probably choose ignorance, like most folks.
Complexity, Causation, and Crucial Failures of Science
Khan Academy Video: Correlation and Causality
The confusion of correlation with causation is a common mistake among journalists, celebrities, academics, and political activists -- not to mention ordinary people. It is difficult to blame one for making this mistake, since modern media -- even much of "scientific media" -- is drowning in this error.
If you do not have a grip on the distinction between correlation and causation, then you do not have a prayer of understanding the deeper issues that will be touched on here. Therefore, we will take a look at "Hill's Criteria of Causation," which are applied to possible causal links in the field of medicine and public health.
1. Temporal Relationship:
Exposure always precedes the outcome. If factor "A" is believed to cause a disease, then it is clear that factor "A" must necessarily always precede the occurrence of the disease. This is the only absolutely essential criterion. This criterion negates the validity of all functional explanations used in the social sciences, including the functionalist explanations that dominated British social anthropology for so many years and the ecological functionalism that pervades much American cultural ecology.
2. Strength:
This is defined by the size of the association as measured by appropriate statistical tests. The stronger the association, the more likely it is that the relation of "A" to "B" is causal. For example, the more highly correlated hypertension is with a high sodium diet, the stronger is the relation between sodium and hypertension. Similarly, the higher the correlation between patrilocal residence and the practice of male circumcision, the stronger is the relation between the two social practices.
3. Dose-Response Relationship:
An increasing amount of exposure increases the risk. If a dose-response relationship is present, it is strong evidence for a causal relationship. However, as with specificity (see below), the absence of a dose-response relationship does not rule out a causal relationship. A threshold may exist above which a relationship may develop. At the same time, if a specific factor is the cause of a disease, the incidence of the disease should decline when exposure to the factor is reduced or eliminated. An anthropological example of this would be the relationship between population growth and agricultural intensification. If population growth is a cause of agricultural intensification, then an increase in the size of a population within a given area should result in a commensurate increase in the amount of energy and resources invested in agricultural production. Conversely, when a population decrease occurs, we should see a commensurate reduction in the investment of energy and resources per acre. This is precisely what happened in Europe before and after the Black Plague. The same analogy can be applied to global temperatures. If increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere causes increasing global temperatures, then "other things being equal", we should see both a commensurate increase and a commensurate decrease in global temperatures following an increase or decrease respectively in CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
4. Consistency:
The association is consistent when results are replicated in studies in different settings using different methods. That is, if a relationship is causal, we would expect to find it consistently in different studies and among different populations. This is why numerous experiments have to be done before meaningful statements can be made about the causal relationship between two or more factors. For example, it required thousands of highly technical studies of the relationship between cigarette smoking and cancer before a definitive conclusion could be made that cigarette smoking increases the risk of (but does not cause) cancer. Similarly, it would require numerous studies of the difference between male and female performance of specific behaviors by a number of different researchers and under a variety of different circumstances before a conclusion could be made regarding whether a gender difference exists in the performance of such behaviors.
5. Plausibility:
The association agrees with currently accepted understanding of pathological processes. In other words, there needs to be some theoretical basis for positing an association between a vector and disease, or one social phenomenon and another. One may, by chance, discover a correlation between the price of bananas and the election of dog catchers in a particular community, but there is not likely to be any logical connection between the two phenomena. On the other hand, the discovery of a correlation between population growth and the incidence of warfare among Yanomamo villages would fit well with ecological theories of conflict under conditions of increasing competition over resources. At the same time, research that disagrees with established theory is not necessarily false; it may, in fact, force a reconsideration of accepted beliefs and principles.
6. Consideration of Alternate Explanations:
In judging whether a reported association is causal, it is necessary to determine the extent to which researchers have taken other possible explanations into account and have effectively ruled out such alternate explanations. In other words, it is always necessary to consider multiple hypotheses before making conclusions about the causal relationship between any two items under investigation.
7. Experiment:
The condition can be altered (prevented or ameliorated) by an appropriate experimental regimen.
8. Specificity:
This is established when a single putative cause produces a specific effect. This is considered by some to be the weakest of all the criteria. The diseases attributed to cigarette smoking, for example, do not meet this criteria. When specificity of an association is found, it provides additional support for a causal relationship. However, absence of specificity in no way negates a causal relationship. Because outcomes (be they the spread of a disease, the incidence of a specific human social behavior or changes in global temperature) are likely to have multiple factors influencing them, it is highly unlikely that we will find a one-to-one cause-effect relationship between two phenomena. Causality is most often multiple. Therefore, it is necessary to examine specific causal relationships within a larger systemic perspective.
9. Coherence:
The association should be compatible with existing theory and knowledge. In other words, it is necessary to evaluate claims of causality within the context of the current state of knowledge within a given field and in related fields. What do we have to sacrifice about what we currently know in order to accept a particular claim of causality. What, for example, do we have to reject regarding our current knowledge in geography, physics, biology and anthropology in order to accept the Creationist claim that the world was created as described in the Bible a few thousand years ago? Similarly, how consistent are racist and sexist theories of intelligence with our current understanding of how genes work and how they are inherited from one generation to the next? However, as with the issue of plausibility, research that disagrees with established theory and knowledge are not automatically false. They may, in fact, force a reconsideration of accepted beliefs and principles. All currently accepted theories, including Evolution, Relativity and non-Malthusian population ecology, were at one time new ideas that challenged orthodoxy. Thomas Kuhn has referred to such changes in accepted theories as "Paradigm Shifts". _Hill's Criteria of Causation
This is basic stuff which most basic and clinical scientists and physicians studied in the early stages of their training. But there is little evidence that many science journalists have given these criteria any thought, to judge by what they write.
All of the preceding is by way of introduction to the phenomenon where science gets bogged down by complexity and by a confusion of logical levels -- or a failure to recognise "emergent phenomena." (PDF)
The story of torcetrapib is a tale of mistaken causation. Pfizer was operating on the assumption that raising levels of HDL cholesterol and lowering LDL would lead to a predictable outcome: Improved cardiovascular health. Less arterial plaque. Cleaner pipes. But that didn’t happen.
Such failures occur all the time in the drug industry. (According to one recent analysis, more than 40 percent of drugs fail Phase III clinical trials.) And yet there is something particularly disturbing about the failure of torcetrapib. After all, a bet on this compound wasn’t supposed to be risky. For Pfizer, torcetrapib was the payoff for decades of research. Little wonder that the company was so confident about its clinical trials, which involved a total of 25,000 volunteers. Pfizer invested more than $1 billion in the development of the drug and $90 million to expand the factory that would manufacture the compound. Because scientists understood the individual steps of the cholesterol pathway at such a precise level, they assumed they also understood how it worked as a whole.
This assumption—that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system—is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry or even to biology. It defines modern science. In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information, by our ceaseless accumulation of facts. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism. By breaking down a process, we can see how everything fits together; the complex mystery is distilled into a list of ingredients. And so the question of cholesterol—what is its relationship to heart disease?—becomes a predictable loop of proteins tweaking proteins, acronyms altering one another. Modern medicine is particularly reliant on this approach. Every year, nearly $100 billion is invested in biomedical research in the US, all of it aimed at teasing apart the invisible bits of the body. We assume that these new details will finally reveal the causes of illness, pinning our maladies on small molecules and errant snippets of DNA. Once we find the cause, of course, we can begin working on a cure.
...The truth is, our stories about causation are shadowed by all sorts of mental shortcuts. Most of the time, these shortcuts work well enough. They allow us to hit fastballs, discover the law of gravity, and design wondrous technologies. However, when it comes to reasoning about complex systems—say, the human body—these shortcuts go from being slickly efficient to outright misleading.
Consider a set of classic experiments designed by Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte, first conducted in the 1940s. The research featured a series of short films about a blue ball and a red ball. In the first film, the red ball races across the screen, touches the blue ball, and then stops. The blue ball, meanwhile, begins moving in the same basic direction as the red ball. When Michotte asked people to describe the film, they automatically lapsed into the language of causation. The red ball hit the blue ball, which caused it to move.
This is known as the launching effect, and it’s a universal property of visual perception. Although there was nothing about causation in the two-second film—it was just a montage of animated images—people couldn’t help but tell a story about what had happened. They translated their perceptions into causal beliefs.
...There are two lessons to be learned from these experiments. The first is that our theories about a particular cause and effect are inherently perceptual, infected by all the sensory cheats of vision. (Michotte compared causal beliefs to color perception: We apprehend what we perceive as a cause as automatically as we identify that a ball is red.) While Hume was right that causes are never seen, only inferred, the blunt truth is that we can’t tell the difference. And so we look at moving balls and automatically see causes, a melodrama of taps and collisions, chasing and fleeing.
The second lesson is that causal explanations are oversimplifications. This is what makes them useful—they help us grasp the world at a glance. For instance, after watching the short films, people immediately settled on the most straightforward explanation for the ricocheting objects. Although this account felt true, the brain wasn’t seeking the literal truth—it just wanted a plausible story that didn’t contradict observation.
This mental approach to causality is often effective, which is why it’s so deeply embedded in the brain. However, those same shortcuts get us into serious trouble in the modern world when we use our perceptual habits to explain events that we can’t perceive or easily understand. Rather than accept the complexity of a situation—say, that snarl of causal interactions in the cholesterol pathway—we persist in pretending that we’re staring at a blue ball and a red ball bouncing off each other. There’s a fundamental mismatch between how the world works and how we think about the world.
...Although modern pharmaceuticals are supposed to represent the practical payoff of basic research, the R&D to discover a promising new compound now costs about 100 times more (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than it did in 1950. (It also takes nearly three times as long.) This trend shows no sign of letting up: Industry forecasts suggest that once failures are taken into account, the average cost per approved molecule will top $3.8 billion by 2015. What’s worse, even these “successful” compounds don’t seem to be worth the investment. According to one internal estimate, approximately 85 percent of new prescription drugs approved by European regulators provide little to no new benefit. We are witnessing Moore’s law in reverse.
...Given the increasing difficulty of identifying and treating the causes of illness, it’s not surprising that some companies have responded by abandoning entire fields of research. Most recently, two leading drug firms, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, announced that they were scaling back research into the brain. The organ is simply too complicated, too full of networks we don’t comprehend. _Wired
The author of the Wired article, Jonah Lehrer, provides other examples where medical science has foundered on the rocks of complexity, in the full article. He also alludes to philosophical theories of causation -- particularly the ideas of David Hume -- to help the reader to get a better idea of the scale of the problem.
Most people have not thought too deeply about cause and effect. For most lives, such deep thinking is completely unnecessary -- and probably counter-productive. But if one wants to better understand what is happening when science butts its head against the wall -- as in the examples given by Jonah Lehrer -- such thinking becomes unavoidable. Here are a couple of web-based overviews which you may wish to look at after browsing through the Wikipedia entry "Causality:"
Here is the problem that human science faces, as I see it: We do not truly understand the mechanisms of what is happening within us and around us at any scale, but we wish to. In order to understand these underlying mechanisms -- in the absence of a valid overarching theory -- we are forced to collect a large amount of data, which we can only correlate in fairly crude ways.
Even as our computational machines improve along with our methods of correlation, we must still face up to the fact that "correlation is not causation." And even as we approach theories, hypotheses, and explanations which appear to be valid on one logical level, we are liable to be completely stymied when these explanations fail on higher and more emergent levels.
The intractability of many problems in science forced the reluctant, back-door acceptance by part of mainstream science, of some of the ideas of complexity, chaos, and paradoxical causality.
But most "bad science" of today is merely the failure of scientists to scrupulously stick to the rules of the scientific method. In other words, modern climate science is not unreliable and untrustworthy due to the chaotic nature of climate. Modern climate science is untrustworthy because the most powerful and best-connected of the group are willing to lie, obscure, strong-arm, and cover up the many weaknesses of their arguments and theories in order to enlarge their influence and power. That has everything to do with human weakness, greed, and immorality, and nothing to do with deep level difficulties in science.
Many observers of science -- and even many scientists -- feel that philosophy has been superceded by the power of modern science. But that is not actually true. In fact, the more powerful the science, the more it needs a sound philosophical underpinning. But that is easier said than done.
More on this topic -- including an attempt to clarify many of the most critical ideas in simpler language -- at a later date.
Unfalsifiable Intellectuals and the Rise of Cargo Cult Science
...among people in mentally demanding occupations, the fault line between those most likely to be considered intellectuals and those who are not tends to run between those whose ideas are ultimately subject to internal criteria and those whose ideas are ultimately subject to external criteria. _Sowell_Intellectuals and Society
Intellectuals do not like to be judged or called to account. Because most of their ideas cannot be tested -- or falsified -- by the real world, they see themselves as being above mere scientists, engineers, builders, merchants, accountants, crafstmen, and labourers.
[The intellectual] sees himself as a leader and a master. Not only does he doubt that the masses could do anything worth while on their own, but he would resent it if they made the attempt. The masses must obey. _Eric Hoffer The Ordeal of Change _The Intellectual and the Masses
In other words, intellectuals see themselves as above judgment by the mundane real world, or by anyone other than their own kind. They generally take care to avoid situations where they would become vulnerable to the judgment of the outside world.
Science is different, being traditionally under the discipline of repeatability and falsifiability. Genuine science goes out of its way to demonstrate an impartiality, and a fairness to competing hypotheses. But we are seeing the corruption of modern science by the "intellectual ethic", a degradation of science by the closed polemics of a clique mentality. Nobel Prize physicist Richard Feynman referred to such perversion of science as "cargo cult science."
… there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. … It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Compare Feynman’s scientific integrity with the continual attempts by the leaders of climate “science” to prevent skeptics from checking their data. True scientists would be extremely pleased to provide all raw data, and they would make the data available to all on the Internet. A state attorney general would not have to file suit to make them disgorge. _Frank J. Tipler, mathematical physicist
Tipler singles out climate science as an example of "cargo cult science", but any science can be corrupted by the desire to be unfettered by the discipline of verifiability.
When scientists -- individually or as a group -- try to break free of the necessary restrictions inherent in honest science, they become very much like intellectuals, or like the pompous priesthood of an earlier age.
Intellectuals grew to become a "secular priesthood", beyond the judgment of the common man, by default.
With the decline of clerical power in the eighteenth century, a new kind of mentor emerged to fill the vacuum and capture the ear of society. The secular intellectual might be deist, sceptic, or atheist. But he was just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct his affairs. _Johnson_Intellectuals
Honesty is a rare commodity among modern intellectuals, because honesty does not serve "the cause" to which most intellectuals are devoted. But never has honesty been more important to the average voter and taxpayer, who must now decide the best way to extricate himself, his family, and his community from the catastrophic effects of the implementation of the policies of today's intellectuals.
Why should we expect the policies of modern intellectuals to lead to catastrophe? The scrupulous avoidance of judgment by intellectuals (and cargo cult scientists) means that these persons are generally devoid of practical skills or knowledge, and typically incompetent in any area outside the realm of verbal polemic and the slipperiest forms of sophistry. You would think that such persons would at least have a good grasp of logic, or some rudimentary skills of good writing, but that is only rarely the case.
Their ideas are thus disconnected from actual mechanisms of cause and effect in the real world, and spring from their mouths and pens "ex cathedra," as it were.
If the above portrait of intellectuals reminds you of a prominent person -- or prominent persons -- in politics, media, activism, philosophy, punditry etc., that is not a coincidence. The tragedy is that such a portrait might well describe persons prominent in particular areas of science.
We Are Marching to Utopia, We Will Soon Be There...
...optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries....instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we [should] focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts. _OUP Review of "Uses of Pessimism"
Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. _Captain Malcolm Reynolds
There is something deep in human nature which has resisted change -- despite the best efforts of crusaders, utopians, religionists, and wishful thinkers -- for many [tens of?] thousands of years. After countless failures to reform the human spirit, most utopians are unfazed. If they can only grab enough power and control over how resources are distributed, they are sure that they can bring perfection to the land, under their own benevolent leadership. "The land will heal, the sea levels will begin to subside, and every man will say to every other man, you are my brother." And so on.
Philosopher Roger Scruton -- author of The Uses of Pessimism -- takes a somewhat more reluctant view:
The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt.
...In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. _GloomMerchant
In another piece, Scruton presents a paradoxical recommendation for how to teach children to think for themselves, logically and clearly:
...children are drawn to magic...they spontaneously animate their world with spirits and spells...they find relief and excitement in stories in which the heroes can summon supernatural forces to their aid and vanquish untold enemies – these facts reflect layers of deep settlement in the human psyche. But they also remind us that, in the life of the child, belief and imagination are not to be clearly distinguished, and that both serve other functions than the pursuit of truth.
...humanists should wake up to this point, and be careful when they seek to deprive their children of enchantment, or to replace their spontaneous fantasies with the cold hard facts of empirical science. It could well be that religion is a better discipline than pop science, when it comes to shaping the rational intellect, and that [we can offer our] children more in the way of a solid foundation, by anchoring their imagination in sacred stories and religious doctrines, than they are likely to be offered by those “Darwinian fairy tales’” as David Stove has called them, which have gained such currency in the wake of Dawkins and Hitchens.
In response to a child’s metaphysical curiosity grown-ups can say that everything has a scientific explanation. But they will know that this is a lie. The proposition that everything has a scientific explanation does not have a scientific explanation – it describes an amazing fact about our universe, a point where reasoning falls silent. There are many such points, as anyone who has children knows: why is there anything? Why should I be good? What existed before the Big Bang? What is consciousness? You can wrestle with these questions through philosophy, but science won’t answer them.
Children have an inkling of this. They also recognise that behind these questions lies a huge void – an emptiness which must be filled with love and reassurance, if their existence is not to seem like an accident. _Art_of_Certainty
Utopians try so hard to purge their children's minds of falsehood and "error", to create the perfect children of rational thought, capable of seeing through all the corrupt fables of the past. Except...children will be who they will be. You cannot make boys into girls or girls into boys without destroying who they are. And you cannot make humans into angels without ruining the essence of what they are. And still the utopians continue to try -- until they finally throw their hands up in complete exasperation at and condemnation of the utter evil of those who do not think along the same lines as themselves, the utopians.
The disgusted dismissal of homo rapiens and all his works that we find spelled out by John Gray in Straw Dogs is not a form of pessimism. It is an attempt to dismiss humanity entirely, as a kind of plague on the face of the earth. That kind of misanthropic nihilism is of no use to us. It removes the ground from all our values, and puts nothing in their place. _GloomMerchant
At that point, they often begin to plot and fantasize the great dieoff, to cleanse the otherwise pristine Earth of the incorrigible human demons who infest the lands and oceans. Fortunately, utopians are as incompetent in planning the great dieoff as they are in most other aspects of their lives.
The point is not to resist all change or improvement of humans. But any lasting change for the better is likely to happen from the bottom up, not from the top down.
Nothing illustrates the different approaches to a better world than the contrast between the French and American revolutions of the late 19th century.
The primary difference in causes that led to the American Revolution and the French Revolution was based in the world view of the innate goodness or innate evil of man. _Hyperhistory
Not all utopians believe in the innate goodness of men -- sometimes they only believe in the innate perfectibility of men. But utopias born of such ideas all come to a bitter end.
Every child has to learn to think for himself, from the beginning. But he must have a beginning from which to start.
The need for foundations is quite clearly an adaptation, and these foundations must provide the promise of protection and love, if they are to fit the new organism for its brief time in the world. If that is so, you are not going to eliminate the need for faith: the best you can do is to withhold all objects of faith, so that a child goes hungry into the life to which he or she is destined. More often than not, a humanist education will leave a child exposed to massive and mind-clogging superstitions of the Harry Potter and Star Wars kind. But these superstitions contain far less in the way of insight than is contained in the first chapter of Genesis.
Religious stories are also the result of natural selection – though selection at another level: they have come down to us because they have fulfilled a moral need. They have survived refutation because they contain, beneath their superficial falsehood, the moral truths that people need, when they must order their lives by good examples. _The Art of Certainty
This is true not only of religious stories, but of all the mythology and lasting moral fables from antiquity. Children must have some kind of foundation that transcends deductive logic, because that is how minds begin. Then, later, when they choose to either reshape or reaffirm their beliefs, they will have a sense of having decided for themselves, and feel stronger for it.
Yes, humans can make choices that make them better. Improved nutrition of mother and child can make humans stronger, smarter, taller, and sometimes capable of clearer thought. But a power structure that attempts to legislate morality, to engineer the moral and ideological purity of the human souls of its citizens -- that power structure is morally bankrupt, and deserves to die quickly. If it is allowed to continue, its leaders will eventually decide that the recalcitrant citizens do not deserve the benefit of the leaders' great wisdom. Then, beware.
This question has been acquiring an ever greater urgency over the past century -- even longer. It is now coming to a head in the demographic and economic crises of many of the world's most advanced nations. A culture that has rested on its own laurels, that has comforted itself with mental images of its own progressive improvement, is soon to be reawakened to a coarse and unruly history.
I would laugh at you, except I understand that you were born to believe silly things like that. Like what? Like Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, for example. Or Peak Oil. What about divine creation of the earth and all life? Have I stung you yet? Intelligent Design. Democracy. Monogamy. God or the gods. The true path. Do you believe?
Do you want to know the funny part? No matter how much I may laugh at your silly beliefs, chances are that some of my beliefs seem just as silly to you or someone else just as intelligent as you or I. Whether or not we "believe" does not depend upon our IQ or our level of emotional maturity. It has to do with how our brains are put together--how we think right out of the box. We are born to believe.
At least, that is what neuroscientist/physician Andrew Newberg says in his book and lectures, Born to Believe.
As the field studying the biology of religious experience advances into the next millenium, continued improvements in our abilities to study the brain coupled with better methods of measuring the subjective state of religious experiences will refine our understanding of the mystical mind. However, the ideas presented in this book represent the most up-to-date knowledge and the most complete synthesis of information currently available. The first installment will thus consider several basic principles of brain function as it relates to human experience, and in particular, religious experience.
...The causal operator permits reality to be viewed in terms of causal sequences. This operator seems to have played a significant role in the development of human science, philosophy, and particularly religion. In its basic function, the causal operator tends to impart a sense of causality on all of the events that we observe. Thus, this operator forces us to question why we are here, why does something work the way it does, and what created the universe. In all of these, and in every other instance, we want to know what is the cause that lies behind every event that we experience. Thus, we would suggest that it is the mind or brain itself that is designed to seek out causality. Our brain functions in such a way that it tries to find the cause of all of the things it experiences. If this is the case, then it is a biological necessity for us to seek out causality. Furthermore, there is evidence that our drive to determine causality may be present even as early as infancy. The causal operator has often led to the development of myth formation and in particular, religious beliefs. Religions, in general, offer an answer as to what ultimately causes things to happen in this universe -- power sources, gods, and in the high religions -- God.
The quest to understand religion and mysticism through the lens of science goes back decades.
Scientists and scholars have long speculated that religious feeling can be tied to a specific place in the brain. In 1892 textbooks on mental illness noted a link between “religious emotionalism” and epilepsy. Nearly a century later, in 1975, neurologist Norman Geschwind of the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital first clinically described a form of epilepsy in which seizures originate as electrical misfirings within the temporal lobes, large sections of the brain that sit over the ears. Epileptics who have this form of the disorder often report intense religious experiences, leading Geschwind and others, such as neuropsychiatrist David Bear of Vanderbilt University, to speculate that localized electrical storms in the brain’s temporal lobe might sometimes underlie an obsession with religious or moral issues.
Exploring this hypothesis, neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, asked several of his patients who have temporal lobe epilepsy to listen to a mixture of religious, sexual and neutral words while he tested the intensity of their emotional reactions using a measure of arousal called the galvanic skin response, a fluctuation in the electrical resistance of the skin. In 1998 he reported in his book Phantoms in the Brain (William Morrow), co-authored with journalist Sandra Blakeslee, that the religious words, such as “God,” elicited an unusually large emotional response in these patients, indicating that people with temporal lobe epilepsy may indeed have a greater propensity toward religious feeling.
The key, Ramachandran speculates, may be the limbic system, which comprises interior regions of the brain that govern emotion and emotional memory, such as the amygdala and hypothalamus. By strengthening the connection between the temporal lobe and these emotional centers, epileptic electrical activity may spark religious feeling.
To seal the case for the temporal lobe’s involvement, Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Ontario sought to artificially re-create religious feelings by electrically stimulating that large subdivision of the brain. So Persinger created the “God helmet,” which generates weak electromagnetic fields and focuses them on particular regions of the brain’s surface.
In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence—a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is—or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.
... University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and his late colleague, Eugene d’Aquili, have pointed to the involvement of other brain regions in some people under certain circumstances. Instead of artificially inducing religious experience, Newberg and d’Aquili used brain imaging to peek at the neural machinery at work during traditional religious practices. In this case, the scientists studied Buddhist meditation, a set of formalized rituals aimed at achieving defined spiritual states, such as oneness with the universe.
When the Buddhist subjects reached their self-reported meditation peak, a state in which they lose their sense of existence as separate individuals, the researchers injected them with a radioactive isotope that is carried by the blood to active brain areas. The investigators then photographed the isotope’s distribution with a special camera—a technique called single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT).
The height of this meditative trance, as they described in a 2001 paper, was associated with both a large drop in activity in a portion of the parietal lobe, which encompasses the upper back of the brain, and an increase in activity in the right prefrontal cortex, which resides behind the forehead. Because the affected part of the parietal lobe normally aids with navigation and spatial orientation, the neuroscientists surmise that its abnormal silence during meditation underlies the perceived dissolution of physical boundaries and the feeling of being at one with the universe. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is charged with attention and planning, among other cognitive duties, and its recruitment at the meditation peak may reflect the fact that such contemplation often requires that a person focus intensely on a thought or object.
Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues documented something similar in 2002, when they used fMRI to scan the brains of several hundred meditating Buddhists from around the world. Functional MRI tracks the flow of oxygenated blood by virtue of its magnetic properties, which differ from those of oxygen-depleted blood. Because oxygenated blood preferentially flows to where it is in high demand, fMRI highlights the brain areas that are most active during—and thus presumably most engaged in—a particular task.
Davidson’s team also found that the Buddhists’ meditations coincided with activation in the left prefrontal cortex, again perhaps reflecting the ability of expert practitioners to focus despite distraction. The most experienced volunteers showed lower levels of activation than did those with less training, conceivably because practice makes the task easier. This theory jibes with reports from veterans of Buddhist meditation who claim to have reached a state of “effortless concentration,” Davidson says.
...Brain scans alone cannot fully describe a mystical state, however. Because fMRI depends on blood flow, which takes place on the order of seconds, fMRI images do not capture real-time changes in the firing of neurons, which occur within milliseconds. That is why Beauregard turned to a faster technique called quantitative electroencephalography (EEG), which measures the voltage from the summed responses of millions of neurons and can track its fluctuation in real time. His team outfitted the nuns with red bathing caps studded with electrodes that pick up electric currents from neurons. These currents merge and appear as brain waves of various frequencies that change as the nuns again recall an intense experience with another person and a deep connection with God.
Beauregard and his colleagues found that the most prevalent brain waves are long, slow alpha waves such as those produced by sleep, consistent with the nuns’ relaxed state. In work that has not yet been published, the scientists also spotted even lower-frequency waves in the prefrontal and parietal cortices and the temporal lobe that are associated with meditation and trance. “We see delta waves and theta waves in the same brain regions as the fMRI,” Beauregard says.
...Inducing truly mystical experiences could have a variety of positive effects. Recent findings suggest, for example, that meditation can improve people’s ability to pay attention. Davidson and his colleagues asked 17 people who had received three months of intensive training in meditation and 23 meditation novices to perform an attention task in which they had to successively pick out two numbers embedded in a series of letters. The novices did what most people do, the investigators announced in June: they missed the second number because they were still focusing on the first—a phenomenon called attentional blink. In contrast, all the trained meditators consistently picked out both numbers, indicating that practicing meditation can improve focus.
Meditation may even delay certain signs of aging in the brain, according to preliminary work by neuroscientist Sara Lazar of Harvard University and her colleagues. A 2005 paper in NeuroReport noted that 20 experienced meditators showed increased thickness in certain brain regions relative to 15 subjects who did not meditate. In particular, the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula were between four and eight thousandths of an inch thicker in the meditators; the oldest of these subjects boasted the greatest increase in thickness, the reverse of the usual process of aging. Newberg is now investigating whether meditation can alleviate stress and sadness in cancer patients or expand the cognitive capacities of people with early memory loss.
Artificially replicating meditative trances or other spiritual states might be similarly beneficial to the mind, brain and body. Beauregard and others argue, for example, that such mystical mimicry might improve immune system function, stamp out depression or just provide a more positive outlook on life. The changes could be lasting and even transformative.
Certainly, if we are born to seek the transcendent, it is plausible that doing so constructively could be beneficial to our immune, neurological, and endocrine systems. Rational spirituality is almost certainly good for us. Even "irrational spirituality", like the "irrational" optimism of Seligman, may be good for us is some cases. The pessimist and the depressive may be more rational, in many situations, but are they more constructive and helpful--more functional?
Our brains cannot know and understand everything about those things we think about and care about. So we are forced to "bluff"--to believe. The fact that we often take our beliefs a bit too far may be regrettable. But it is certainly very much human. We are born that way.
More on Newberg's research and ideas here,here, and here.
The human mind is subject to various forms of enchantment. Not a magical enchantment, but more like a trance, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not.
Because our minds are "self organised", they are subject to falling into distinctly different states, at particular "bifurcations."An illustration of this phenomenan is the "bistability" of particular images. Following the series of images above, can you say exactly where the transition occurs? What if you saw only that one image?
But the deeper you dive into the mechanisms of consciousness, the larger the number of possible mind states, so that bistability becomes tristability and so on. Just the single topic of synaptic plasticity quickly acquires a complexity to confound most scientists.
Hypnosis takes advantage of the inherent ambiguity of consciousness, and "adjusts the weighting" of various competing states of mind. Since mind is inherently a self-organizing, ongoing trance-like process, it is often likened to "riding the wave," or staying on the "bucking bronco." From the moment of waking to the release of sleep, that "blinking cursor" of consciousness compels us to provide answers and solutions, even to unknown or nonexistent problems.
Understanding human consciousness is difficult enough. But a lot of people wish to create intelligence in machines. This dream goes back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. But since the computer age beginning in the 1940s, multiple generations of ingenious scientists of mind and computation have dashed their skulls against the wall of computational complexity (not to mention a lack of understanding of the complexity of human cognition or intentionality).
Each person experiences a consciousness of an enchanted mind. Not a mind of equations and computations. Rather a mind of metaphor and narrative. An entranced mind where real world expediencies intrude on waking dreams. Complex trances of strange attractors and slippery bistable conscious surfaces.
There would be no point in trying to emulate all of that in a machine. Not unless that is the only way we can find to create a conscious machine. Perhaps it is better to settle for machines that only seem conscious or intelligent, as viewed by a simple Turing test. After all, we are only looking for help in making better decisions and devising a better world for smarter, healthier, longer-lived people.
We may be entranced, but why burden our machines with all of that? It is our trance that we wish to enjoy far into the future, not the trance of a machine.
