Philosophy

I'd like to toss around some ideas here.  I hope I'm not displaying my ignorance too prominently.

Proposition:  Philosophy is opinion.

(Philosophy being defined as the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct).

Demonstration:  Philosophers have disagreed and debated for millennia.  One establishes a point, and another tears it apart.  Therefore, philosophy is debatable, and that which is debatable is opinion.

Granted, these are well-established opinions, but they are, nonetheless, nothing more than opinions.  The decision to follow a philosophy, too, is an opinion -- opinion upon opinion.

Therefore, philosophy (particularly metaphysics) does not arrive at objective truth (that which is in accordance with reality) unless the proposition is established by testing and experimentation (I'm a big fan of Francis Bacon here).

But then is it still philosophy, or is it science?

My Take on Global Warming

Here are the reasons I'm a skeptic of the "global warming" (a.k.a. "anthropogenic climate change") movement.  This is condensed and modified from an article by Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace and outspoken critic of anthropogenic climate change.  The "threat" of catastrophic climate changes is routinely, daily, incessantly used as a sledgehammer to drive political and social agendas from energy to international treaties to religious freedoms to military strategies.  I'm skeptical of any scare tactics, especially when they come from individuals or organizations that stand to gain power or money from the proposed "solution," but beyond that are scientific shenanigans that ought to give any reasonable person pause.

1.  The global warming proponents have blind certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model.  I don't buy it because, to paraphrase Wesley in The Princess Bride, "I've known too many computer models."  The interrelated atmosphere, hydrosphere, tectosphere, and sun are too complex a system for any computer model to predict into the future.

2.  The idea that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to catastrophic temperatures is preposterous.

In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.

Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced for the umpteenth time we are doomed unless we reduce carbon-dioxide emissions to zero. Effectively this means either reducing the population to zero, or going back 10,000 years before humans began clearing forests for agriculture. This proposed cure is far worse than adapting to a warmer world, if it actually were to come about.

3.  By its constitution, the IPCC has a hopeless conflict of interest. Its mandate is to consider only the human causes of global warming, not the many natural causes changing the climate for billions of years. We don’t understand the natural causes of climate change any more than we know if humans are part of the cause at present. If the IPCC did not find humans were the cause of warming, or if it found warming would be more positive than negative, there would be no need for the IPCC under its present mandate. To survive, it must find on the side of the apocalypse.

The IPCC should either have its mandate expanded to include all causes of climate change, or it should be dismantled.

4.    Climate change has become a powerful, misused political force for many reasons. First, it is universal; we are told everything on Earth is threatened. Second, it invokes the two most powerful human motivators: fear and guilt. We fear driving our car will kill our grandchildren, and we feel guilty for doing it.

Third, there is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites that support the climate “narrative.” Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; science institutions raise billions in grants, create whole new departments, and stoke a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; business wants to look green, and get huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as wind farms and solar arrays. Fourth, the Left sees climate change as a perfect means to redistribute wealth from industrial countries to the developing world and the UN bureaucracy.

5.  CO2 isn't so bad.  You're breathing it in and out right now.  We are told carbon dioxide is a “toxic” “pollutant” that must be curtailed, when in fact it is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, gas and the most important food for life on earth. Without carbon dioxide above 150 parts per million, all plants would die.

Over the past 150 million years, carbon dioxide had been drawn down steadily (by plants) from about 3,000 parts per million to about 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution. If this trend continued, the carbon dioxide level would have become too low to support life on Earth. Human fossil fuel use and clearing land for crops have boosted carbon dioxide from its lowest level in the history of the Earth back to 400 parts per million today.

At 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide. The optimum level of carbon dioxide for plant growth, given enough water and nutrients, is about 1,500 parts per million, nearly four times higher than today. Greenhouse growers inject carbon-dioxide to increase yields. Farms and forests will continue to produce more if carbon dioxide keeps rising.

6.  We have no proof increased carbon dioxide is responsible for the earth’s slight warming over the past 300 years.  In fact, I (Thinkin' Man) believe it is a logical impossibility to separate natural from anthropogenic climate variability.  Further, there has been no significant warming for 18 years while we have emitted 25 per cent of all the carbon dioxide ever emitted. Carbon dioxide is vital for life on Earth and plants would like more of it. Which role of CO2 should we emphasize to our children?

7.  CO2 has never been a climate drive in the past -- in fact, the data show increased CO2 follows behind temperature rises, even at much higher CO2 levels than today.  Why would it suddenly become THE driver now?

The Ender Wiggin Method

The surest way to stop a bully is to beat the tar out of him.

Those who have been physically bullied understand this.  Those who haven't, usually do not, and they appeal to negotiation or "peaceful methods."  But when a bully is irrationally violent, negotiation never works.  You talk nicely to him, and "teach" him a better way, and appeal to reason and logic and emotion, and he beats you up again.

Only when a bully is rational can negotiation and peaceful methods bear fruit.

In Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin understood this.  Asked why he mercilessly beat up a bully, he said he was stopping all future incidents as well.  Similarly in A Christmas Story, Ralphie Parker stopped his bully by speaking the only language the bully understood -- fisticuffs.  We could find millions of similar real-world stories.

The current extremist religious zealots wreaking havoc in the world and their sympathizers are irrational bullies.  No amount of negotiation or peaceful action can stop their deeply held hatred of things they interpret as against their "religion."  Their goal is to destroy "the West," meaning all things that are not their interpretation of religion, and to force everyone to believe and live their way, by force if necessary.

There is no negotiating with such irrational bullies.  History demonstrates this conclusively.  No such murderous thugs have ever been stopped peacefully.

They can only be stopped by being stopped.  Yes, that means destroying their ability to wage war; it means "killing people and breaking things," as Colin Powell famously said.

Bacon and Novum Organum

No, this is not a food blog!

I stumbled upon Sir Francis Bacon's Novum Organum recently ("A New Instrument," written in 1620), and am dumbfounded that this was not required reading in college.  Where has this been all my life!?  It clearly, simply, and convincingly establishes the basis of the scientific method, which changed the Western world forever and led to the astounding scientific advances of the succeeding centuries, right up to today.

Most of us are familiar with how revered the ancient Greek philosphers were to people in the 16th through 18th centuries, but I think few of us realize what a handicap that was and how it stunted human development for millennia.  The ideas of Aristotle, Plato, and their contemporaries and students were held as nearly inviolable, unchangeable, and as the last word in understanding Nature.  The handicap was three-fold: first, the Greeks were just plain wrong about many aspects of Nature (especially Plato, who force-fit his reasoning into pre-ordained dogma); second, their sophistry lacked experiment, testing, and a quest for results; and third, when "the answer" is supposedly known, there is no incentive for further inquiry.  Bacon criticized their endless arguing without experiments, tests, and inquiries, and their frustrating lack of fruits -- no objectives other than philosophical satisfaction.

Paraphrasing Bacon, "I'm writing this not because I'm the most brilliant person, but rather because it is time.  The astounding thing is that no one had written this before."

He discusses the proper relation of philosophy and science as a feedback loop, the necessary separation of science from religion and politics, the fallibility of human senses, the limitations of human nature and society on science, and the weakness of language and the distinction between words and things/ideas, all before proposing a systematic method to investigate Nature.  It's the perfect paper.

The lessons taught by Bacon in 1620 are still vital today.  Much of the fruitless public discourse on science's proper role was roundly refuted four centuries ago.  Why are we still having the same discussion?

Ignore History at Your Peril

Each culture is the product of centuries of its history.  The way modern Americans think about the world, for example, is a product not only of individual experience, but of America's history.  We abhor slavery, coerced religion, and despotism, and we love liberty, achievement, and individualism because of what we, collectively, have experienced.  Much of this experience is not first-hand, but is passed down through generations or is taught in our schools (which is a topic for another day).

Likewise, other cultures think about the world in ways shaped by their own histories, and sometimes these can be hard for Americans to understand.  The current crisis with Islamic fundamentalists is a stark case in point -- their actions and goals are almost incomprehensible to us.  We shout at the news, "Why would you ever do that!?  How could you think that way!?"

Americans have in our collective experience the writings, teaching, and actions of philosophers, elected officials, writers, and others that gradually shaped our way of thinking -- figures like Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Twain, and writers too numerous to mention.  And we share much of western Europe's ideological heritage from figures like Churchill, Dickens, Voltaire, Francis Bacon, and writers too numerous to mention.  Revolutions, struggles, and upheavals have molded us -- the separation of State from Church throughout Europe in the 1700's, the Age of Reason, revolutions against tyrannical governments and the rebirth of democracy, civil war over slavery, women's suffrage, and the Civil Rights movement.  Without all those authors, leaders, expounders of ideas, and upheavals, the West would be unrecognizable.

Islamic fundamentalists have not gone through those revolutions and evolutions (yet -- I believe they will come).  Many reject all things "Western" out-of-hand.  They also reject five hundred years of science and the hard lessons taught by history, and they selectively reject parts of their own histories.  In extreme cases, they limit education to the Koran, and that for men only, completely ignoring the lessons learned from history and other cultures.  And so they have no heritage or understanding of concepts of personal liberty, democratic/republican government, scientific discovery, civil rights, women's rights, tolerance, etc.  These are only seen through the lens of narrowly restricted, dogmatic education.  For the masses, it can be said that they reject that of which they know nothing.  These are also the reasons a democratic/republican form of government cannot be successfully imposed on them -- it must be earned, and yearned for from the grass roots.

Those who reject history are dooming themselves to repeat its hard lessons, and the ones who will pay the heaviest price are they, themselves.  History teaches us, however, that there will be a lot of collateral damage.

Finding God

I cringe whenever I hear someone say, "I could never believe in a God that would [fill in the blank]."

<I'm going to use the pronoun "He" here for simplicity in writing.  Your beliefs may differ.>

With the premise that God exists, then He is already defined.  We cannot define Him any more than we can personally define what the chemical makeup of quartz is; we must discover Him.  We must accept what He factually is.  We cannot choose what God is.

The fact that, for example, innocent children suffer in this world is evidence that this tragic occurrence fits somehow with God's nature.  God allows it for some reason.  It may be difficult for us to understand, but once we discover Him and learn His nature and His Big Picture, we should be able to understand the "why's."

If you have an "I could never believe..." in your head, stop and think for a moment.  Perhaps you're asking the wrong question.  Perhaps you should be instead trying to find God, to discover Him.

As a scientist, I cannot prove scientifically that God exists.  The supernatural is just that -- beyond science's ability to test, touch, experiment, and prove.  And, by the same token, it is also impossible to prove that God does not exist.  But as a man of faith, I know that I can prove to myself that God exists by praying to Him and, once I find them, putting His promises to the test.  I can testify so to others and share my beliefs and experiences, but I cannot objectively prove it and transfer that knowledge to others -- it is a matter of personal faith.  To discover God, you must exercise faith (knowledge/belief in something you cannot see).  To find God without faith would be like finding a scientific fact without observation and experiment -- it cannot be done.

An interesting outcome of this essay is that not all religions could be fully "true;" that is, that all their teachings about God are factually accurate.  They may be "good," and they may be close to reality, but if there really is a God, then God has one definition, one reality, one identity.  It is up to us to discover whether those differences between religions matter to God!

The agnostic may dismiss my premise, but consider this:  you cannot prove that God does not exist!

If Only You Understood!

There is a disturbing trend in today's politics to say, "If they just understood my idea, they would accept it."

This philosophical abomination is used across the political spectrum, but has been particularly prevalent in the Obama administration.

It is an abomination because it presumes that only one side of an argument is valid.  That is almost never the case in the political arena.  It dismisses the opposing ideas out-of-hand, giving them and their adherents no due respect.  It presumes that opposing opinions are not valid, or are morally and/or intellectually inferior, while implicitly exalting the speaker's ideas.  It is pure intellectual and moral arrogance.

Watch for this tactic, and see it for what it is.

Knowledge Gap

The headline goes something like this:  "Wide gap between scientists and public on scientific issues."

Here's why this should be no surprise, and why the focus is on scientists rather than other kinds of experts.

Anyone who develops expertise in an area distances themselves from the average person's level of understanding in that area.  Whether a carpenter or chemist, physicist or physical therapist, farmer or pharmacist, the expert develops a depth of knowledge on their topic that Joe Public will never attain.  When detailed discussions ensue, Joe Public is quickly out of his depth; he cannot sustain an intelligent conversation at the expert's depth.

And so the headline should be no surprise, because there is a wide gap between public understanding and experts' understanding on almost any topic.

The problem is, no one doubts a carpenter or a farmer.  Pharmacists are trusted implicitly, as are most personal physicians.

But something happens when an astrophysicist explains how old the Earth and the universe are, or a paleontologist explains how life forms have changed over time.  These topics are suddenly not so close to Joe Public.  They're not something the average person can relate to.  The deep, technical details that the expert deals with daily are foreign to Joe Public, and so a distrust or skepticism develops.  He doubts the experts.  He doesn't doubt the scientists who make flight possible, and new medicines, and the internet, and electricity -- he is happy to use those without a second thought.  But for some reason he doubts the experts on other scientific topics.

I think scientists are the target of public skepticism because many science topics are unfamiliar, hard to relate to, and abstract to the average person.  The issues may have implications for public policy, and may contradict the world model Joe Public has set up for himself.  But if we were to formulate a survey like the ones that create the headline, but instead survey people's understanding and trust of farmers or computer engineers or architects or accountants at deep enough technical levels, I think we may find the same kinds of gaps in understanding and trust.

Ballghazi

Tom Brady's favorite opera?  Deflator Mouse.

His favorite movie?  Lords of Flatbush.

His wife's favorite shoes?  Flats.

Where does he live?  In a flat.

His favorite kind of weather?  Low pressure.

What does he do after a game?  Depressurizes.

Wealth: The False Premises

Complaints about "wealth inequality" are common and even popular, but are they based on facts?  I think there are some false premises in current public discussion of wealth.

First false premise:  The very wealthy take wealth away from others.  This assumption goes uncontested in all the news outlets I've seen, yet it's completely false except in cases of theft or despotism.  Take any very wealthy person (who is not one of the exceptions) and examine how they accumulated their wealth, and you'll see that they earned it, were very lucky, inherited a portion of it, or some combination of these.  Wealth is not a finite quantity.  If Bill Gates did not exist, for example, the wealth he created would simply not exist.  He didn't take it away from anyone.

Second false premise:  The wealth "gap."  Wealth is a spectrum, with people at every income level from the lowest to the highest.  There is no gap in the spectrum.  Comparing two extreme or random points of any data spectrum is a relatively meaningless exercise.  For example, the highest recorded temperature on earth is about 70 degrees F higher than the annual average temperature in Duluth, Iowa.  So what?  What matters is the spectrum and its shape.

Third false premise:  Use of the phrase "wealth inequality."  Attempts at wealth "equality" have always been associated with despotism and oppression.  There has never been any such thing as "wealth equality," nor is it achievable where anything that can be called "wealth" exists because individuals' capabilities, opportunities, and desires are unequal.  The phrase is, in the real world, meaningless.

Ignorance and Experience

There are fundamental problems regarding important discussions about climate, energy, federal fiscal policy, foreign policy, terrorism, and many other subjects, that I think few recognize but we all need to understand to be more effective and responsible participants in the discussions.  I'll try to explain my take on them.

The first is, "the ignorant cannot know what they do not know." A correlary might be, "knowledge reveals boundaries," or "only those who have studied a topic extensively know how much they don't know."  This is a problem because the ignorant talk and think and form opinions without realizing how wrong they might be.  We see this every day in public discourse from Facebook posts to blogs to opinion pieces to talk radio shows to politicians' speeches.

The second is that our personal experiences often override other facts in our minds.  There are many examples including politics, economics, and social issues, but good ones to quantify are natural Earth systems (climate, river floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions).  One human lifetime is too short relative to natural cycles to give a meaningful sampling.  If we have a hot or wet or cold or dry decade, many conclude that the climate is changing.  If several big earthquakes occur close together, many conclude that we're having more earthquakes.  If big floods occur in a short period of time, many conclude that floods are increasing.  The fact is that all of these things happen in much more complex cycles and patterns (often random) than any of us will experience in our lifetimes.  None of us has lived in an ice age, for example, and yet our ancestors did.  Our perceptions, then, are only of a small part of the whole story, like the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

How can we personally deal with these issues?  First, to carefully evaluate how much you really know about a subject before forming a solid opinion, ask useful questions like these: How many hours have you spent studying it? (It takes thousands of hours to become an expert).  What were your sources of information, experts or opinion-makers?  (Stick with experts).  Can I put this information into the bigger context of the total possibilities?  (If not, you probably don't understand it well).

This is not to say that we cannot form valid opinions without becoming experts.  We can, but it is vital to recognize the limits of our understanding and the bias that our personal experience puts into our minds.  That just may change our conclusions.

Summary  1) Recognize the limits of your knowledge.  2) Study.  3) Get information from subject-matter experts only.  4) Recognize the bias of personal experience.