On a daily basis, I find myself wondering what happened to Chunk from The Goonies. Now, I wonder no more: Chunk is all grown up and successful. And while I’m a straight male, I have a suspicion that he might even be a little bit hot.
See also: Truffleshuffle.com.
I’ll try not to write much here, since this book has already been written about way too much. Briefly, my opinion is that this book doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground, but it puts some common arguments for atheism in popular language and is an enjoyable read. For the most part, it’s well-argued and well-written, and I would recommend it to anyone remotely interested in religion.
Where I think some people may have a problem, however, is that Richard can be a real dick about it sometimes. He tries to remain respectful to religion, and does OK for the most part, but the book is still full of snarky little comments putting down religious folk. While these can be funny, it would have been nice to see someone argue a position without explicitly putting down the opposing position.
In addition, sometimes he can get a little too informal and end up undermining his own arguments. For example, in a section about the consolation that religion can provide, he mentions that there are both happy atheists and miserable atheists; happy Christians and miserable Christians; etc etc. Then he ponders whether, in general, atheists are less happy than religious people, and writes something like “there might be statistical evidence for this. I dunno! But I bet all religions would be about the same.” Dude. You’re a scientist. Look it up. Especially in a book relying on the idea that beliefs should be supported by hard evidence, the least he could do is look up some evidence rather than relying on his hunches. (Incidentally, I did look it up, and as with most things in science, the link between religion and happiness is complicated).
However, don’t take this to mean that Dawkins is some extremist atheist who relies on blind faith as much as many strict adherents to a religion do. The cores of his arguments are grounded in scientific evidence and valid reasoning. In other words, his beliefs are based on reality – the same reality that anyone else can observe, verify, and would likely draw the same beliefs from if they really thought about it. Because of this, most of what Dawkins concludes is almost certainly true.
“Almost” is a key word here. Dawkins himself never becomes so convinced in his own reasoning that he leaves no room to be proven wrong. When speaking of the existence of God, he admits the old cliche that “you can’t prove a negative”; i.e., you can’t conclusively disprove God’s existence. So, he explains why there almost certainly is no God.
[TANGENT] I’m no philosopher, but I have always been confused by the “can’t prove a negative” thing. If something’s existence entails definite, observable consequences, and those consequences are not observed, then that thing’s existence is disproven. It’s a valid argument of the form “If A then B…Not B…Therefore Not A”. So if I say my god is infallible, and she said she would appear to me on March 1st 2007 in the form of a talking polar bear sitting on my front lawn eating Cheetos, and I don’t see this polar bear (which, by the way, I don’t), then my god certainly does not exist. It’s proven. Of course, this only applies to my god, not all gods, which is perhaps what the “can’t prove a negative” rule is really talking about. And perhaps it does not apply to the Christian God, which, I think, has been intelligently designed to avoid positing many concrete observable consquences, and vaguely defined enough to wiggle out of any failures to observe the few that exist. [/TANGENT]
Dawkins provides some good arguements showing why there is no reason to believe that God exists, and perhaps more importantly, shooting down some of the popular arguments for His existence. It probably won’t convince anyone to change their mind, but perhaps atheists can clarify their reasons for believing what they do, and religious people can better understand why atheists disagree with them (and, if they care about justifying their beliefs with reason, try to prepare counterarguments to Dawkins’ in order to strengthen their reasoned faith).
I would recommend the book to atheists, religious people, and people like me who are less easily labeled. At the very least, it will make you think about your own beliefs, which, I believe, is always a good thing.
Sometimes I wonder whether I, or any real scientist, can be considered a “materialist” any more. That is, do I really think that matter – chunks of solid ‘stuff’ – is all there is? Here is a quote from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion which may help clarify (or further confuse) the issue:
We have this tendency to think that only solid, material “things” are “really” things at all. “Waves” of electromagnetic fluctuation in a vacuum seem “unreal”. Victorians thought that waves had to be waves “in” some material medium. No such medium was known, so they invented one and named it the luminiferous ether. But we find “real” matter comfortable to our understanding only because our ancestors evolved to survive in Middle World, where matter is a useful construct.
Now, perhaps my definition of “matter” here is too limited. Surely matter is more than the solid chunks our brains are programmed to understand, and must also include things like photons and gravity. Even then, though, there are weird exceptions that are certainly real but can hardly be said to fit into the label of “material”. For example, quantum entanglement allows two distant photons to be related to each other in a predictable way. But is the nonlocal connection between them really “material”? What about concepts like “memes” – cultural ideas that are passed from person to person? They are real things, which have effects on the material world of our brains and behaviour, and exist in material manifestations, but what about the meme itself? A pattern of information – an idea – can take material form, but is not itself material, is it?
We can broaden our definition of material to include anything that affects or interacts with the observable world. But then how are we any different than dualists, who say that there is an immaterial “soul” which affects (perhaps through the pineal gland), but is not really part of, the material brain?
I dunno. Now I’ve confused myself. Maybe it’s best to leave labels like “materialist” out of science and let the evidence lead us wherever it goes, whether it fits our previous definiton of “material” or not.
Here is a list of 50 things you can do to not feel guilty about global warming. I think this stuff is pretty important, because seriously, we’re going to destroy the Earth. It might be sooner, it might be later, but pumping pollution into the air can’t be a good thing, so we should probably stop that.
Most of these are pretty obvious, but it’s good to have them all in one place. Some should be obvious but aren’t – like not putting your fridge beside your stove. I’ve never thought of that before, but…duh.
There is one thing they forgot, though:
So I TiVo’ed American Idol last night and watched it this morning. I discovered that, if you fast forward through the commercials and useless filler, you can watch a 2 hour episode of Idol in approximately 40 minutes. That means about 66% of the show is skippable. It’s not a good sign when you’re watching a show in which the majority of its material can be discarded without detracting from it. Why do I bother?
Still, I’m glad that this season there are TWO funny chubby guys. They’re always good to watch. And one of them is named “Sundance Head”, which is a pretty damn funny name. Though with a last name of “Head”, pretty much any first name is funny. If it were my last name, I’d name one of my kids Richard so he could be Dick Head. Another one would be Harold, so he could be Harry Head, which would become ironically hilarious when he inherited my baldness genes.
You know what show has even more filler though? Deal or No Deal. If you skip the crap, it’s approximately 30 seconds long (i.e., “I pick case #4! *FAST FORWARD* Ohhh, look, your case contained 2 dollars. Should’ve made a deal. *FAST FORWARD* Here are shots of all the models *FAST FORWARD* See you next time! I’m Howie Mandel! I’m mentally ill…isn’t that funny!?”)
I do find the fact that it’s popular pretty fascinating. I have a feeling it’s getting down to basic psychological principles; like the need to resolve uncertainty (i.e. what’s in each case), the reward that results from resolving it (i.e. opening cases), and the fact that people will keep watching what’s, basically, a person playing a giant scratch-and-win ticket, just for these little rewards. It’s sorta like rats pushing levers over and over if it will sporadically release a reward. In some cases, they’ll just keep pushing until they die. Perhaps people aren’t exaggerating when they say that reality TV will bring about the end of the world.
OK this is pretty cool. A new Nine Inch Nails album is coming out pretty soon, and to promote it, a series of weird-ass web sites have popped up in relation to it, such as this one (click and drag), this one, and this one. There is a whole story emerging out of it, involving terrorism and drugs and corrupt governments and all that good stuff.
An image that recurs on these sites is the following:
A hand reaching down from the sky, or something.
Then, recently, an mp3 file appeared on the internet. Apparently, it was found on an abandoned USB drive in a bathroom at a NIN show. The file contained a brand new NIN track, along with some static at the end. The song can currently be heard here, but who knows for how long.
But the weird, and very cool, thing is that when you run the file through a computer program that allows you to see the “spectrum” of the static, you see this:
The same hand. Creepy.
Obviously this is all a marketing ploy, designed to draw attention to the new album. The web sites are created by a marketing company, and the mp3 wasn’t “leaked” at all; it was made to be found. But if an artist wants to draw attention to their work, this is the way to do it. Getting people involved and entertained by using the power of the internet to spread ideas that no individual could figure out (I’d never think to visualize the static like that). This couldn’t have happened a few years ago. I didn’t even know a new NIN album was on the horizon, but now I’m kinda excited about it, so the ploy is working. Good job, Trent.
As a side note, this isn’t the first time a musician has hidden images in sounds. Apparently Aphex Twin did this a while ago:
It’s his own face. Obviously. The dude plasters his creepy face on everything he does, even the music itself. It would be annoying if the music wasn’t so wonderful.
Anyway, just thought I’d share.
Rearrange my name, and this is what you get (from this web site, Sternest Meanings):
Nice. I think I’ll just call myself “hateable victim Satan” from now on.
Also:
A new podcast, called Skeptiko, has just started releasing episodes. It’s about controversial scientific issues, and the scientific method. I’ve enjoyed the two episodes so far, so if you’re interested in this sort of thing, you can download the shows from the official site or the usual way through iTunes.
The reason I mention this is to follow up my review of Dean Radin’s book below. He was just on Skeptiko talking about the book and more. What I found quite cool is that the interviewer gave Radin several opportunities to put down “skeptical” critics – for example, by accusing them of fiddling with statistics in order to support their own agenda – but Radin did not go for it. Instead, he (rightly) pointed out that it’s a double-edged sword. Every scientist, consciously or not, is going to focus on the results and methods that support their hypothesis, which is why it’s good that there are proponents of both sides of the issue to bring balance.
Apparently Dr. Radin is now working on some research involving one of my favourite things in the world: chocolate. This place is where he gets the chocolate. I wish it was possible to taste things through a computer screen. If this research works out, I just might have to change my PhD dissertation to a replication of it. Of course, it will require constant sampling of the chocolate to make sure it’s still good. For science.
Wow. I’m always blown away after reading books about parapsychology. This is no exception.
Entangled Minds is almost like 3 books in one. It starts with a brief overview of what psi (i.e., phenomena like ESP and PK) is, with some examples, and an even briefer review of parapsychology’s relatively long history. Radin is constantly pointing out that parapsychology research has been endorsed and conducted by top-notch scientists, including a surprising number of Nobel laureates. This might be seen as overly defensive, but it is necessary, given the common “no real scientists believe in psi” criticism. On the contrary, my experience has shown that the most vocal opponents of parapsychology are magicians, armchair “scientists”, and other people with no scientific training. Radin points out that the most vocal proponents of psi, on the other hand, are the best that science has to offer.
The second part of the book is sort of a meta-analysis of meta-analyses of psi research. He goes over some of the major categories of psi research that have been conducted, such as dream studies (where one person tries to influence another person’s dreams at a distance), presentiment (reacting physiologically to, say, a shocking picture, a few seconds before seeing the randomly selected picture), global consciousness (e.g. random number generators all over the world acted strangely on September 11th, 2001), and lots more.
This part of the book should blow the mind of anyone not already familiar with the research. It gives me chills even though I am. Radin shows that the results found would be astronomically improbable if chance alone were operating. Since chance is ruled out, he meticulously goes through alternate explanations (a bias in publishing, fraud, shitty experimental designs, etc.) and either rules them out completely or shows that even if they played a role, they cannot explain the overall results. The take-home message is that things like telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis really do exist. Not only that, but they have been clearly demonstrated in laboratories all over the world.
The strange thing is, from what I can tell, parapsychology research is conducted much more carefully than most psychology research. The effects in parapsychology are proven to exist to a greater degree than many effects in psychology. And, no offense to psychology, but parapsychology has the potential for discoveries of much greater importance, both scientifically and practically. Yet parapsychology is shunned, receiving a minuscule amount of funding and mainstream attention, while psychology thrives. I guess this is motivated by the same fear of the unknown that (temporarily) kept Copernicus from telling people that the earth isn’t the center of the universe. But geeze…get over it.
Anyway…Radin does rely on quite a bit of math to get his points across, but it is not too deep and he explains it briefly beforehand. It should be easy to understand even for people with no knowledge of statistics. My only complaint is that most of the information was also included in Radin’s previous book, “The Conscious Universe”. The title of Entangled Minds implies that it will primarily be about the relationship between quantum physics and psi, but in reality most of the book is spent establishing that psi exists. The examples here are different and it is a good reference for “proof-oriented” psi research, but he really could have said “see my other book for proof, which I will now connect to the latest advancements in physics”.
When he does get on to the physics stuff though, it satisfies the purpose that the title implies. Quantum physics is spooky enough on its own. Particles can be everywhere at once (or nowhere) until they are observed. A particle can be correlated with the observation of another particle that is miles away, with no communication between them. The observation of a particle in the future can even seem to affect a particle in the past. All this is stuff that mainstream physicists know and accept.
Radin essentially takes what we know about particles and expands it to a larger scale, including, of course, us. His main argument is that every particle in the universe is “entangled” (i.e. able to have the spooky correlations above) with every other particle. There is more to it, but at the very least, this makes it possible for psi to exist without overturning everything we know about science.
It’s explained quite well, and he even manages to get across some very confusing quantum phenomena in a pretty intuitive manner (though I don’t think quantum physics will ever be entirely intuitive to our big classical brains). If I had to complain, though, I would point out that he leaves some things ambiguous. For example, at one point he seems to imply that our unconscious is “in tune” with the entire universe, but we tend to focus on things familiar to us (such as a distant family member in trouble) for psychological reasons. We essentially filter out everything except the important stuff. But then later, he implies that people who are frequently physically close in spacetime are “more entangled” with each other. So which is it? Are we equally entangled with everything, but able to psychologically focus on familiar things, or are things that are physically close more entangled? Both?
(Side note: If it’s the 2nd possibility, it would be fun to test. Have two people in close physical proximity for a few hours, maybe separated by an opaque wall, with half of them being aware of it and half not. Later, pair them up for a ganzfeld or something. Would mere prior proximity improve performance? What about later proximity?)
If little issues like this can be worked out, and details filled in, Radin could be well on the way to providing what could be considered the holy grail of parapsychology: An actual theory of how it works, with testable predictions. Scientists could go beyond proving that psi exists, and move on to figuring out how it works. Perhaps they’ll even bypass the scientific bickering and move on to practical applications. Personally, I am getting sick of moving my physical body every time I wanna turn on a light. A psychic light switch would be so much nicer.
Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. This book is well worth reading for anyone even remotely interested in science of any kind.
[Disclaimer] (in case future academic employers read this): I’m not directly involved in parapsychology. I’m not a believer in the subject matter of parapsychology, per se. I do believe in science and its methods, though, no matter what the topic of study. While there may be disagreement about what the results of parapsychology represent, anyone who reads and understands the literature would have to agree that something interesting is going on. I am not fully decided on whether I think that “something” is purely psychological, statistical, or paranormal, but any of these possibilities are fascinating and deserving of attention. [/Disclaimer]
I picked up this book for a few cents at a flea market, because I hadn’t read a Dean Koontz novel in a long time, but remembered liking the ones I read as a kid.
Sole Survivor is about a dude whose family was killed in a plane crash. On the one year anniversary of the crash, he finds that he’s being followed, and strange things are happening. The book starts out slow, but picks up in pace and scope, and is good light entertainment. I had fun reading it, but I’ll probably forget I ever saw it in a few weeks.
Koontz is an OK author, but I often find myself taken out of the story by excessively cheesy metaphors. Most of the ending of the book also violates the big “show, don’t tell” rule by having one mystery after another explained flashback-style. It would have been nice to have the climax of the book happen “on-camera”, so to speak. Maybe if there were less words wasted on describing how the wind is like a pack of wolves, there’d be room to have the characters actually participate in the plot.
Still, it ain’t a bad read.
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