Biocentrism and Other Quantum Mechanical Artifacts

Given the massive scientific, technological and philosophical significance of the great discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics since Max Planck saved us from the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, it’s odd how little of that knowledge has percolated down through even the more educated and well-informed strata of society. Occasionally you might run across someone who’s heard about the quantized energies, quantum states, and quantum numbers that Planck postulated more than a century ago. However, the stunning theories about the wave nature of matter developed by the likes of de Broglie, Schrödinger, Pauli, Heisenberg, and many of the other giants of 20th century physics are usually terra incognita for anyone other than physical scientists. It’s a shame, because the implications of what they revealed to us are profound. Among other things, the purely deterministic universe of classical physics is no more. It is no longer quite so “obvious” that, as so eloquently put by Edward Fitzgerald in his translation of the Rubaiyat,

With earth’s first clay, they did the last man’s knead,
And then of the last harvest sowed the seed,
Yea the first morning of creation wrote,
What the last dawn of reckoning shall read

We have discovered that the reality of the universe does not exactly correspond to the picture our senses present to us, and we are still far from knowing what all this stuff around us really is, and why it exists to begin with. It is a strange reality of fields, wave functions and space and time whose measurements depend on who is doing the measuring. It’s too bad most of us are so unaware of all these developments. There are many good books out there, including some that should be easily comprehensible to an intelligent undergraduate and even high school student, that could clear up a lot of the mystery.  It would be well if our schools devoted more time to teaching some of this material. 

Meanwhile, all sorts of fanciful notions are floating about to charm the unwary and impose on the gullible.  Among these is the idea of biocentrism, according to which the universe has no independent existence, but is created by life, or, more specifically, consciousness, and could not exist without it.  The modern incarnation of this Berkelian universe was recently set forth by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman in a book entitled, “Biocentrism:  How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe.”

A review of the book appears on the website of Discover Magazine with the byline, “Stem-cell guru Robert Lanza presents a radical new view of the universe and everything in it.”  Terms like “radical” and “new” are a bit of a stretch.  Berkelian ideas supposedly informed by quantum discoveries have been around since at least the days when Schrödinger came up with his famous parable of the cat.  We can forgive the authors for a bit of hype though, as it is unlikely that something more realistic, like “hackneyed old view,”  would have encouraged sales of their book.  In any case, according to Lanza,

For centuries, scientists regarded Berkeley’s argument as a philosophical sideshow and continued to build physical models based on the assumption of a separate universe “out there” into which we have each individually arrived. These models presume the existence of one essential reality that prevails with us or without us. Yet since the 1920s, quantum physics experiments have routinely shown the opposite: Results do depend on whether anyone is observing. This is perhaps most vividly illustrated by the famous two-slit experiment. When someone watches a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through the slits, the particle behaves like a bullet, passing through one hole or the other. But if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave that can inhabit all possibilities—including somehow passing through both holes at the same time.

Some of the greatest physicists have described these results as so confounding they are impossible to comprehend fully, beyond the reach of metaphor, visualization, and language itself. But there is another interpretation that makes them sensible. Instead of assuming a reality that predates life and even creates it, we propose a biocentric picture of reality. From this point of view, life—particularly consciousness—creates the universe, and the universe could not exist without us.

Here it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Lanza is deliberately imposing on the reader’s credulity.  The only other conclusion is that he simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  The results of the ”famous two slit experiment” have been well understood since at least the time that Heisenberg proposed his famous Uncertainty Principle.  It is well known that a measuring device capable of detecting a particle at either of the two slits could not measure its passage without interacting with it, and that if it had sufficient spatial resolution to determine which slit it passed through, it would necessary disturb the particle’s momentum so much that the double-slit interference pattern would be destroyed.  If any “great physicists” are still “confounded” by these results, I would like to know who they are.  How a biocentric view of the universe somehow explains this imaginary paradox is beyond me.  Continuing with Lanza:

In 1997 University of Geneva physicist Nicolas Gisin sent two entangled photons zooming along optical fibers until they were seven miles apart. One photon then hit a two-way mirror where it had a choice: either bounce off or go through. Detectors recorded what it randomly did. But whatever action it took, its entangled twin always performed the complementary action. The communication between the two happened at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light. It seems that quantum news travels instantaneously, limited by no external constraints—not even the speed of light. Since then, other researchers have duplicated and refined Gisin’s work. Today no one questions the immediate nature of this connectedness between bits of light or matter, or even entire clusters of atoms.

Before these experiments most physicists believed in an objective, independent universe. They still clung to the assumption that physical states exist in some absolute sense before they are measured.

All of this is now gone for keeps.

In the first place, the belief in an objective, independent universe is not the same thing as the assumption that physical states exist in some absolute sense before they are measured.  In the second, “All this” is not gone for keeps in either case.  Such comments have nothing in common with scientific hypotheses.  Rather, they are ideological statements of faith.  Lanza continues with a discussion of the so-called Goldilocks principle:

The strangeness of quantum reality is far from the only argument against the old model of reality. There is also the matter of the fine-tuning of the cosmos. Many fundamental traits, forces, and physical constants—like the charge of the electron or the strength of gravity—make it appear as if everything about the physical state of the universe were tailor-made for life. Some researchers call this revelation the Goldilocks principle, because the cosmos is not “too this” or “too that” but rather “just right for life.”

At the moment there are only four explanations for this mystery. The first two give us little to work with from a scientific perspective. One is simply to argue for incredible coincidence. Another is to say, “God did it,” which explains nothing even if it is true.

The third explanation invokes a concept called the anthropic principle, first articulated by Cambridge astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1973. This principle holds that we must find the right conditions for life in our universe, because if such life did not exist, we would not be here to find those conditions. Some cosmologists have tried to wed the anthropic principle with the recent theories that suggest our universe is just one of a vast multitude of universes, each with its own physical laws. Through sheer numbers, then, it would not be surprising that one of these universes would have the right qualities for life. But so far there is no direct evidence whatsoever for other universes.

The final option is biocentrism, which holds that the universe is created by life and not the other way around.

Why biocentrism, which explains none of the observed phenomena mentioned in the article, must be considered the “final option” is beyond me.  Allow me to suggest a fifth option:  Our knowledge of the physical universe is imperfect, and, as yet, we lack the physical insight to explain everything we observe or to grasp the physical essence of a universe of which our senses give us but a clouded perception.  While I am not quite as convinced as Einstein that “God does not play dice with the universe,” it seems to me that the words of de Broglie, a great physicist who first proposed the theory of matter waves, are well worth heeding:

We can reasonably accept that the attitude adopted for nearly 30 years by theoretical quantum physicists is, at least in appearance, the exact counterpart of information which experiment has given us of the atomic world. At the level now reached by research in microphysics, it is certain that methods of measurement do not allow us to determine simultaneously all the magnitudes which would be necessary to obtain a picture of the classical type of corpuscles (this can be deduced from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle), and that the perturbations introduced by the measurement, which are impossible to eliminate, prevent us in general from predicting precisely the result which it will produce and allow only statistical predictions. The construction of purely probabilistic formulae that all theoreticians use today was thus completely justified. However, the majority of them, often under the influence of preconceived ideas derived from positivist doctrine, have thought that they could go further and assert that the uncertain and incomplete character of the knowledge that experiment at its present stage gives us about what really happens in microphysics is the result of a real indeterminacy of the physical states and of their evolution. Such an extrapolation does not appear in any way to be justified. It is possible that looking into the future to a deeper level of physical reality we will be able to interpret the laws of probability and quantum physics as being the statistical results of the development of completely determined values of variables which are at present hidden from us. It may be that the powerful means we are beginning to use to break up the structure of the nucleus and to make new particles appear will give us one day a direct knowledge which we do not now have at this deeper level. To try to stop all attempts to pass beyond the present viewpoint of quantum physics could be very dangerous for the progress of science and would furthermore be contrary to the lessons we may learn from the history of science. This teaches us, in effect, that the actual state of our knowledge is always provisional and that there must be, beyond what is actually known, immense new regions to discover.

Well said by a great physicist and a great thinker, who, in spite of his fame, still had the humility to present his ideas as hypotheses instead of dogmas set forth imperiously as “the final option.”

Climategate and Scientific Credibility

I think this article at Reason.com by Cathy Young about the global warming debate is spot on (hattip Instapundit). Her conclusions:

There is no doubt that refusal to accept human-made climate change is often self-serving. But the other side has blinders and selfish motives of its own. “Going green” has turned into a vast industry in its own right—as well as a religion with its own brand of zealotry. For many, global warming is the secular equivalent of a biblical disaster sent by God to punish humankind for its errant (capitalist) ways. Those who embrace environmentalism as a faith have no interest in scientific and technological solutions to climate change—such as nuclear power—that do not include imposing drastic regulations on markets and curbs on consumption.

In theory, science should be above such motives. Yet, at the very least, the scientists who back strong measures against global warming have not objected to the alarmism, the political fanaticism, or the pseudo-spiritual drivel promoted by many of the crusaders in this cause.

Public trust is something scientists must work hard to maintain. When it comes to science and public policy, the average citizen usually has to trust scientists—whose word he or she has to take on faith almost as much as a religious believer takes the word of a priest. Once that trust is undermined, as it has been in recent years, science becomes a casualty of politics.

It was obvious to me that environmental scientists had a major credibility problem when I read Byorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist.” This impression was greatly stengthened when a gang of scientific hacks set up a kangaroo court known as the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, and “convicted” Lomborg of “scientific dishonesty,” noting, however, with supreme condescension that Lomborg was “not guilty” because of his “lack of expertise” in the fields in question. How this arrogant, scientific pond scum could have come to such a conclusion when they were unable to cite a single substantial example of factual error in Lomborg’s book is beyond me. Their abject betrayal of science spoke for itself. Needless to say, the credibility of environmental scientists has not improved in the interim, as Young notes in her article.

This is unfortunate, as it seems to me that the evidence is strong that we may be facing a serious problem with artificially induced global warming. However, because, as Young points out, “…the scientists who back strong measures against global warming have not objected to the alarmism, the political fanaticism, or the pseudo-spiritual drivel promoted by many of the crusaders in this cause,” the issue has become politicized to such an extent that the chances that we will be able to do anything more effective than ideological grandstanding to address the problem are almost nil. As usual, the politicians, who rejoice whenever a crisis comes along for them to “save” us from, will promote any number of very expensive but useless nostrums that present us with the pleasant illusion that we are doing something about the problem, perhaps reducing greenhouse emissions by some insignificant fraction in the process, but accomplishing nothing in the way of really solving the problem. In the meantime, the rest of us must keep our fingers crossed that some fortuitous technological advance will allow us to dodge the bullet, perhaps in the form of the discovery of a way to tame fusion or a transformational improvement in the efficiency of solar collectors. For those of us who possess the means, it is, perhaps, not too soon to begin looking for attractive tracts of land in Alaska, preferably on high ground.

Germany to Reverse Course on Atomic Energy?

As a result of their dismal showing in the elections to the Bundestag on September 27, Germany’s left of center Social Democrats (SPD) have been replaced in the former “grand coalition” government with the more conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) by the market oriented Free Democratic Party (FDP). One salutary result has been an apparent reversal of course on the irrational but ideologically fashionable decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear generating capacity. According to Der Spiegel,

The Union (CDU) and FDP will accommodate the nuclear industry – but under stern conditions. The operational lifetime of German nuclear power plants can be extended on condition that high safety standards are met. According to a paper by the new coalition’s working group on the environment made available to Spiegel Online, “Nuclear energy will be necessary as a transitional and bridge technology until climate friendly and more economical alternative means of producing sufficient electricity are available capable of meeting baseload electric generation requirements. Therefore, the operational lifetime of German nuclear power plants will be extended to 32 years.

Human Enhancement and Morality: Another Day in the Asylum

The Next Big Future site links to a report released by a bevy of professors that, we are told, is to serve “…as a convenient and accessible starting point for both public and classroom discussions, such as in bioethics seminars.” The report itself may be found here. It contains “25 Questions & Answers,” many of which relate to moral and ethical issues related to human enhancement. For example,

1. What is human enhancement?
2. Is the natural/artificial distinction morally significant in this debate?
3. Is the internal/external distinction morally significant in this debate?
4. Is the therapy/enhancement distinction morally significant in this debate?
9. Could we justify human enhancement technologies by appealing to our right to be free?
10. Could we justify enhancing humans if it harms no one other than perhaps the individual?

You get the idea. Now, search through the report and try to find a few clues about what the authors are talking about when they use the term “morality.” There are precious few. Under question 25 (Will we need to rethink ethics itself?) we read,

To a large extent, our ethics depends on the kinds of creatures that we are. Philosophers traditionally have based ethical theories on assumptions about human nature. With enhancements we may become relevantly different creatures and therefore need to re-think our basic ethical positions.

This is certainly sufficiently coy. There is no mention of the basis we are supposed to use to do the re-thinking. If we look through some of the other articles and reports published by the authors, we find other hints. For example, in “Why We Need Better Ethics for Emerging Technologies” in “Ethics and Information Technology” by Prof. James H. Moor of Dartmouth we find,

… first, we need realistically to take into account that ethics is an ongoing and dynamic enterprise. Second, we can improve ethics by establishing better collaborations among ethicists, scientists, social scientists, and technologists. We need a multi-disciplinary approach (Brey, 2000). The third improvement for ethics would be to develop more sophisticated ethical analyses. Ethical theories themselves are often simplistic and do not give much guidance to particular situations. Often the alternative is to do technological assessment in terms of cost/benefit analysis. This approach too easily invites evaluation in terms of money while ignoring or discounting moral values which are difficult to represent or translate into monetary terms. At the very least, we need to be more proactive and less reactive in doing ethics.

Great! I’m all for proactivity. But if we “do” ethics, what is to be the basis on which we “do” them. If we are to have such a basis, do we not first need to understand the morality on which ethical rules are based? What we have here is another effort by “experts on ethics” who apparently have no clue about the morality that must be the basis for the ethical rules they discuss so wisely if they are to have any legitimacy. If they do have a clue, they are being extremely careful to make sure we are not aware of it. Apparently we are to trust them because, after all, they are recognized “experts.” They don’t want us to peek at the “man behind the curtain.”

This is an excellent example of what E. O. Wilson was referring to when he inveighed against the failure of these “experts” to “put their cards on the table” in his book, “Consilience.” The authors never inform us whether they believe the morality they refer to with such gravity is an object, a thing-in-itself, or, on the contrary, is an evolved, subjective construct, as their vague allusion to a basis in “human nature” would seem to imply. Like so many other similar “experts” in morality and ethics, they are confident that most people will “know what they mean” when they refer to these things and will not press them to explain themselves. After all, they are “experts.” They have the professorial titles and NSF grants to prove it. When it comes to actually explaining what they mean when they refer to morality, to informing us what they think it actually is, and how and why it exists, they become as vague as the Oracle of Delphi.

Read John Stuart Mill’s “Utilitarianism,” and you will quickly see the difference between the poseurs and someone who knows what he’s talking about. Mill was not able to sit on the shoulders of giants like Darwin and the moral theorists who based their ideas on his work, not to mention our modern neuroscientists. Yet, in spite of the fact that these transformational insights came too late to inform his work, he had a clear and focused grasp of his subject. He knew that it was not enough to simply assume others knew what he meant when he spoke of morality. In reading his short essay we learn that he knew the difference between transcendental and subjective morality, that he was aware of and had thought deeply about the theories of those who claimed (long before Darwin) that morality was a manifestation of human nature, and that one could not claim the validity or legitimacy of moral rules without establishing the basis for that legitimacy. In other words, Mill did lay his cards on the table in “Utilitarianism.” Somehow, the essay seems strangely apologetic. Often it seems he is saying, “Well, I know my logic is a bit weak here, but I have done at least as well as the others.” Genius that he was, Mill knew that there was an essential something missing from his moral theories. If he had lived a few decades later, I am confident he would have found it.

Those who would be taken seriously when they discuss morality must first make it quite clear they know what morality is. As those who have read my posts on the topic know, I, too, have laid my cards on the table. I consider morality an evolved human trait, with no absolute legitimacy whatsoever beyond that implied by its evolutionary origin at a time long before the emergence of modern human societies, or any notion of transhumanism or human enhancements. As such, it can have no relevance or connection whatsoever to such topics other than as an emotional response to an issue to which that emotion, an evolved response like all our other emotions, was never “designed” to apply.

Alternative Energy Myths and the Nuclear Orphan

Another interesting article turned up in Foreign Policy recently entitled “Seven Myths about Alternative Energy,” by legacy media environmental journalist Michael Grunwald. His collection of “myths” provides a revealing look at the psychology of the “green” would be saviors of the planet. Let’s run down his list.

Myth number one is, “We need to do everything possible to promote alternative energy.” Grunwald prefers a different emphasis: “…though the world should do everything sensible to promote alternative energy, there’s no point trying to do everything possible.” The information content of this bit of wordsmithing as it stands is epsilon (a very small number). From the left to the right of the ideological spectrum, I have never encountered anyone who proposes that we should do everything possible to promote alternative energy, including things that don’t make sense. Reading on, one notes that, in a blurb that is supposed to be about alternative energy, Grunwald studiously avoids any mention of such credible candidates as wind, solar, and geothermal. Rather, he directs his ire at alternatives that aren’t quite ready for prime time: “Hydrogen cars, cold fusion, and other speculative technologies might sound cool, but they could divert valuable resources from ideas that are already achievable and cost-effective.” This statement is logically absurd.

Consider fusion for example. The amount of resources being “diverted” worldwide to the energy applications of fusion, including both its hot and cold flavors, is utterly insignificant in comparison to the amount we spend on energy production, the total amount we spend on research, or any other number one could reasonably compare it to. I am no fusion true believer. It is a high risk technology, and one that will almost certainly not figure in the world’s energy equation before Grunwald’s target date of 2050. If, on the other hand, we can overcome the daunting technological hurdles Mother Nature has put in our path and find a way to use it, fusion has the potential to meet the world’s energy needs indefinitely while releasing no greenhouse gases and with an insignificant radiological hazard compared to nuclear and coal. There are many interesting research efforts afoot to finesse the technological problems that beset such “traditional” approaches as magnetic and inertial confinement fusion. The amount of research dollars being devoted to these efforts is miniscule. They can all be characterized as high risk, but it is hardly implausible to suggest that, eventually, one of them will succeed. If so, the payoff will be enormous. The problem of greenhouse gas emissions might be solved once and for all, without the severe environmental impact of covering massive areas with wind farms and solar collectors. In a word, if we are truly worried about global warming, it would be utterly reckless and senseless to eliminate the tiny resources we currently devote to energy applications of fusion. As we shall see, Grunwald’s reasons for rejecting such alternatives, not to mention the seeming lack of interest in such immediately available sources such as wind, solar and geothermal have more to do with psychology than logic.

Moving on to myths 2 and 3, Grunwald turns his ire on biofuels, such as ethanol derived from corn. No surprise there, as he has often hammered the “clean energy” hype emanating from that sector in the past. He notes that such “renewable fuels” have been heavily promoted by governments around the world, including ours, but points out, “…so far in the real world, the cures — mostly ethanol derived from corn in the United States or biodiesel derived from palm oil, soybeans, and rapeseed in Europe — have been significantly worse than the disease.” So far, so good. I have yet to see a convincing argument in favor of biofuels that seriously addresses such problems as the facts that their production results in a net loss in energy, horrific environmental damage, and a reduction in the world’s food supply. The problem with myths 2 and 3 is that they are strawmen. I know of no credible authority outside of industry advocates who is seriously suggesting that biofuels are a plausible solution to global warming.

Grunwald’s myth 4 is, “Nuclear power is the cure for our addiction to coal.” This seems counterintuitive, since, according to the most reliable studies, the carbon footprint of nuclear plants is a small fraction of that of its fossil fuel alternatives. Among the reasons Grunwald cites for dismissing the nuclear alternative is the fact that it will be too slow coming on line to make a dent in carbon emissions in the near term. That’s quite true, but while one may certainly point to it as an unfortunate fact of life, it is certainly no reason to abandon nuclear altogether. If global warming is really the problem Grunwald claims it is, than surely late is better than never.

Be that as it may, Grunwald cites cost as the real show stopper for nuclear power. As he puts it,

Nuke plants are supposed to be expensive to build but cheap to operate. Unfortunately, they’re turning out to be really, really expensive to build; their cost estimates have quadrupled in less than a decade. Energy guru Amory Lovins has calculated that new nukes will cost nearly three times as much as wind — and that was before their construction costs exploded for a variety of reasons, including the global credit crunch, the atrophying of the nuclear labor force, and a supplier squeeze symbolized by a Japanese company’s worldwide monopoly on steel-forging for reactors.

At this point, the familiar anti-nuclear “green” narrative emerges from the mist, and Grunwald leaves logical argument in the dust. Amory Lovins is certainly someone worth listening to. He is also one of the legacy media’s beloved “mavericks,” and hardly someone whose cost estimates represent the final word on the subject. In fact, if one looks at the credible cost estimates of nuclear versus its alternatives, not just from sources connected with the industry, but, for example, from a study done in 2003 by an interdisciplinary group of MIT professors and updated in 2009, the suggestion that nuclear is “really, really expensive” compared to the alternatives may be dismissed as bunk. Grunwald might have had some credibility if he had taken the trouble to dispute these estimates with arguments more substantial than anecdotes about Japanese steel monopolies. As it is, it is clear that his rejection of nuclear has nothing to do with its intrinsic merits or lack thereof. Rather, it simply doesn’t fit in the “conservation and efficiency” narrative he shares with Lovins. Grunwald uses myths 5 through 7 to outline the narrative.

It turns out that myth 5, “There is no silver bullet to the energy crisis,” is only a pseudo-myth. As Grunwald himself admits, “Probably not.” Be that as it may, he clearly has a silver bullet in mind; efficiency. In his words,

But some bullets are a lot better than others; we ought to give them our best shot before we commit to evidently inferior bullets. And one renewable energy resource is the cleanest, cheapest, and most abundant of them all. It doesn’t induce deforestation or require elaborate security. It doesn’t depend on the weather. And it won’t take years to build or bring to market; it’s already universally available. It is called “efficiency.”

Conservation and energy efficiency are certainly laudable goals, and ones that should be pursued aggressively. However, Grunwald’s problem is that he sees them in typical journalistic black and white. They are the one true path to salvation, as opposed to the “inferior bullets.” This setting up of artificial barriers separating the plausible alternatives to solving our energy problems into a “good” approach standing in opposition to other “bad” approaches is more a reflection of human psychology than logic. For example, the hard fact is that rejection of nuclear power has and will continue to result in the building of more fossil-fired generation capacity. That is precisely what is going on in Germany, whose “Greens” have forced the foolhardy decision to shut down nuclear plants rather than refurbish them and keep them on line, resulting in the building of new coal plants even as we speak, and in defiance of these same “Greens” warm, fuzzy rhetoric about the virtues of alternative energy. Similarly, Grunwald’s blasé attitude towards alternatives such as wind, solar, and geothermal is more likely to encourage complacency than, for example, an aggressive approach to building the power transmission infrastructure we need to accommodate these new technologies. According to Grunwald,

Al Gore has a reasonably plausible plan for zero-emissions power by 2020; he envisions an ambitious 28 percent decrease in demand through efficiency, plus some ambitious increases in supply from wind, solar, and geothermal energy. But we don’t even have to reduce our fossil fuel use to zero to reach our 2020 targets. We just have to use less.

Al Gore may be right, but he may also be wrong. Regardless, it would be foolish of us to put all of our eggs in one basket. In particular, it would be very foolish to cut off the already miniscule support we are currently giving to high risk, high payoff technologies such as fusion. It is highly unlikely that global energy demand will go down as the world’s population continues to increase, or that the citizens of emerging economic powers such as India and China will continue to be satisfied with a third world lifestyle. Ignoring technologies that could plausibly solve the problem of global warming because Grunwald thinks they are dumb would be both illogical and, potentially, suicidal. His attitude is typical of the representatives of what H. L. Mencken used to call the “uplift” on the left. Though I suspect most of them don’t realize it themselves, they are far more interested in posing as saviors of mankind than in actually saving mankind. Hence, for example, the hand waving dismissal of nuclear technology. The Grunwalds of the world will continue to dismiss it, not because it is not a plausible piece of an overall solution to the problem of global warming, but because it is unfashionable. If one would strike a truly heroic pose, one cannot afford to be unfashionable.

German Trains for US Cities?

According to Der Spiegel, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) want to build a network of high speed trains in the US modeled after Germany’s Intercity Express (ICE) system. I’ll “hold my thumbs” for them (German for keep my fingers crossed.) The ICE trains are a fantastic way to travel, especially if they came complete with the civilized dining cars they have in Germany. According to Spiegel,

Both companies want to get into the US train business ‘in a big way.’… According to Spiegel’s information, the basic idea is to cooperate in building the high speed rail lines that are planned in conjunction with the US government’s stimulus package. Both Siemens and Deutsche Bahn consider it an interesting market… The US Administration wants to build high speed lines between San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as Miami and Orlando, among other places. Within the German consortium, Siemens would be responsible for providing the technology, such as ICE-3 high speed trains, as well as the necessary infrastructure… Deutsche Bahn would then operate the lines. The company’s internal consulting firm, DB International, is already working on the project.

I hope they can make it work. Their main challenge will be to keep the costs down. Given the increasingly painful hassles at airports, travel in a sardine can at 35,000 feet couldn’t compete with rail on some heavily traveled routes if fares were even remotely comparable. Take the Acela route between Washington and New York, for example. You step into a comfortable train with plenty of leg room at DC’s Union Station, and two hours and 45 minutes later you step out at Penn Station, right in the middle of Manhattan. It makes sense for business travelers, because you can easily go up and and back on the same day.

Personal Genetic Testing – One More Step

Personal genetic testing began mainly as a tool for genealogists. The next step, testing for health risks, has already been taken. As the technology continues to develop, individuals will gain increasing control over their own genetic futures. They will, that is, unless the many who, for one reason or another, are opposed to these developments are able to stop them. The only viable way to do that is by enlisting the power of the state. They will certainly make the attempt. It will be interesting to see if they succeed. The forces that have driven human evolution for hundreds of thousands of years have, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist. The outcome of the battle will determine what they will be in the future.

Nuclear Power: Thoughts on Thorium

Rod Adams has an interesting post on thorium power over at Atomic Insights. I tend to think that nuclear power is more environmentally benign than the alternatives, such as paving thousands of square kilometers of our environmentally fragile desert southwest with solar collectors. If we do restart the nuclear industry, it will also make a lot more sense to build breeders of the type mentioned in Rod’s post, which produce more fuel than they consume during operation, than to just burn up all the uranium 235 we can find in natural uranium.

There are two basic breeder reactor fuel cycles. In the first, uranium 238, which makes up 99.3% of natural uranium, is converted to plutonium 239. In the second thorium 232, which is more abundant than natural uranium, is converted to uranium 233. Both are fissile reactor fuels. Both can also be used to make nuclear weapons. If we breed either of these isotopes, it is essential that we be sure of one thing; that they never fall into the wrong hands, either now or in 10,000 years from now. For that reason, it seems to me that thorium breeders are the better of the two options.

As noted above, both types of breeders would produce fissile material that could be used to make a bomb. In both cases, the material could be separated from spent fuel using relatively straightforward chemical methods. However, spent reactor fuel remains highly radioactive for many years after it is removed from a reactor core. It would be lethal to work with without highly specialized equipment unlikely to be available to other than technically advanced states. In the case of thorium breeders, however, the fissile uranium 233 would be contaminated with uranium 232, a short-lived, highly radioactive isotope that could not be separated from the U233, making it even more difficult to work with than plutonium.

In both cases, the levels of radioactivity of the spent fuel would decay exponentially over time, gradually making it easier to handle the material. Eventually, it would become possible for non-state actors to separate the bomb-grade material. It is immaterial whether this happens in a thousand years, or ten thousand years. We cannot simply put such material in a nuclear storage facility and leave it for future generations to deal with. In the case of plutonium, the only way to reliably eliminate it, other than, perhaps, rocketing it into the sun, would be to burn all of it up. However, in the case of U233, it could be “denatured” by mixing it with large amounts of non-fissile U238, rendering it, for all practical purposes, as difficult to convert to a weapon as natural uranium.

Genetic Engineering and the Brave New World of Transhuman Machines

I’ve been reading through a collection of essays on the future of science entitled “What’s Next,” edited by Max Brockman. Today I’ll pick up where I left off in an earlier post, and look at a piece entitled “How to Enhance Human Beings,” by Nick Bostrom.

Once upon a time, in the days before the Nazi paradigm shift, eugenics used to be a topic of polite conversation. Now, of course, the Holy Mother Church of public opinion has spoken on the subject, and only the obvious evildoers among us dare to use the term any more, especially when children are present. Nevertheless, there were some spirited debates on the subject before it became obvious that it was necessary to restrict freedom of speech on the matter for our own good. I have unearthed a few interesting examples, both pro and con, in my archaeological peregrinations, and will post them for your amusement and edification one of these days.

In any event, the subject is now moot. Eugenics has gone the way of the horse and buggy. We are now, or will soon be able to vote with our feet, or genes, as the case may be. Depending on whether our tastes run to biological or mechanical tinkering, we are promised a range of options for ourselves or our offspring to enhance everything from intelligence to lifespan. The emerging possibilities have already turned up in the popular culture in video games such as Bioshock, movies such as Gattaca, and the novels of James Patterson. As one might expect, ethical debates are raging over these technologies. As Nick Bostrom puts it in his essay,

The belief in nature’s wisdom – and corresponding doubts about the prudence of tampering with nature, especially human nature – often manifests as diffusely moral objections to enhancement. Many people have intuitions about the superiority of “the natural” and the troublesomeness of human hubris. Some might base these ideas on theological doctrine, but often there is no such underpinning; often there is nothing more than a discomfort with altering the status quo.

To a large extent, these debates are also moot. Parents are incredibly competitive when it comes to putting their children in better schools, or even on cheerleading squads. Offered the choice between having their children become the enhanced movers and shakers of tomorrow, or the unenhanced restroom attendants and parking valets, they are likely to choose the former. This will be especially true in developed countries where the number of children one chooses to have is often limited by their expense, and in countries like China that legally limit the size of one’s family. Under the circumstances, people are likely to be as indifferent to moral arguments against enhancement as they were to moral arguments against alcohol during Prohibition. The new technology may be used above or below the state’s legal radar, but it will be used.

Bostrom has devoted some thought to the question of whether particular enhancements are advisable or not, considering the matter more from a practical than a moral perspective. He has come up with a system of rules which he calls the evolutionary-optimality challenge. They are discussed in a paper he has posted at his website, and seem a reasonable start on a subject that is likely to attract a lot more attention in coming years.

In the final paragraph of his essay, Bostrom takes up the more speculative question of building “entirely artificial systems of equal complexity and performance” to the human organism. Continuing along these lines, he writes:

At some stage, we may learn how to design new organs and bodies ab initio. Someday we may no longer even rely on biological material to implement our bodies and minds. Freed from most practical limitations, the task would then become to make wise use of our powers to self-modify. In other words, the challenge would shift from being primarily scientific to being primarily moral. If that moral task seems comparatively trivial from our current vantage point, this might reflect our present immaturity.

One hopes he is merely indulging in some end of article hyperbole here. If not, one must ask the question, “Whose morality?” In other words, this is another example of the “objective morality” fallacy I have referred to earlier, consisting of assuming that, because we perceive morality as real and objective, it actually is real and objective. Morality is an evolved characteristic that exists in human beings because it has promoted our survival. Bostrom makes the common mistake of assuming that, because he perceives it as independent of his mind, morality actually is independent of his mind, floating out there in space as a real, objective, thing in itself. He makes the further error of confusing his conscious mind with his genetic material. Morality did not evolve because it promoted the survival of conscious minds. It evolved because it promoted the survival of genetic material. As I have noted earlier, nothing can be reasonably considered more immoral than failing to survive. The idea that one could somehow serve a profound moral cause by accepting genetic death and transferring the mind, an ancillary characteristic evolved only because it, too, has promoted the survival of that genetic material, to a machine, is a logical aberration.

“What’s Next?” Popular Science and the Narrative

Max Brockman, a literary agent at Brockman, Inc., which also represents such familiar names as Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker, recently published a collection of essays by an assortment of young scientific worthies addressing the question of how developments in their respective fields are likely to have “long-term and fundamental effects on the way we live.” Brockman also works with the Edge Foundation, which maintains a website that’s worth a visit. According to the site’s “About” blurb, “The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.” To the extent that they actually promote genuine inquiry and discussion, I wish them well.

In this post, I will look at the first two essays, and, perhaps, take up some of the rest as we go along. They are both interesting artifacts of the interaction of contemporary scientific research and the prevailing academic ideological narrative, which, at this point in our history, is the narrative of the left. As one might expect, the narrative plays a greater or lesser role depending on the social and political implications of research in a given field. For example, its influence is much greater in the environmental and behavioral sciences than in physics. As it happens these are the fields addressed in the first two essays.

The first essay, by Laurence C. Smith, entitled “Will We Decamp for the Northern Rim?” considers the potential impact of global warming on future population shifts. According to Smith,

“Here is what we know currently: First, the warming is just revving up. It is 90 percent certain that continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above the current rates will induce far greater climate change in the twenty-first century than we’ve yet experienced. In every plausible population-growth or greenhouse-gas-emission scenario for the next century (barring some as-yet-undiscovered nonlinearity in the climate system), basic physics dictates that Earth’s climate must continue to warm, with global average temperatures rising between 1.8° C and 4.0°C by the end of this century.”

I agree that, based on what we know, it is probable that the above comment is true. However, the idea that “basic physics dictates” that it will be true “in every plausible population –growth or greenhouse-gas-emission scenario” is pure poppycock. Who decides what is “plausible?” What “basic physics” is Smith referring to? Global climate is a highly nonlinear system with literally billions of degrees of freedom. The computer models currently available do not even approach the level of having a deterministic predictive capability. The data we have to feed into them is both noisy and insufficient. The idea that they could “dictate” anything is palpably absurd.

Why the unscientific lack of error bars in Smith’s dogmatic claim about what “physics dictates?” He tells us that, “In my home state of California, Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asserted, ‘The [climate] debate is over’ – and from a scientific and public-opinion standpoint, he was right.” Again, in my opinion it is probable that Smith’s conclusions about global warming are correct, but the claim that “the debate is over… from a scientific and public-opinion standpoint” implies the nonexistent and scientifically insupportable right of a majority of scientists to dictate to the rest their conclusion that “the debate is over,” and assumes that the only public-opinion that matters is that on the ideological left. Again, what Smith is asserting is an ideological dogma, not a scientific fact. He doesn’t leave us guessing about which side of the political isle he stands on, noting that “If you saw An Inconvenient Truth or read climate-change stories in the press, you already know most of this bad news.” It seems to me that neither Al Gore’s movie nor stories in the press represent a scientific gold standard that could serve as a reliable basis for “knowing” anything. Smith’s implication that they do speaks more to the ideological slant we can expect in his essay than to the intrinsic accuracy of his sources.

In a word, I wouldn’t discount the essay’s contention that the economic significance of the “northern rim” is likely to increase, nor would I stand in the way of those who take Smith’s advice to buy land, not “in Labrador, but maybe in Michigan.” However, his comments regarding the status of the global warming debate seem better calculated to stifle and marginalize ideological opponents than to promote healthy, unconstrained scientific discussion. The goal of popular scientific writing should be to inform, not to indoctrinate.

The second article, by Christian Keysers, is entitled “Mirror Neurons: are we Ethical by Nature?” Thirty or forty years ago, the very suggestion would have landed the author in the doghouse of the ideological left, likely attracting accusations of “fascism” and related political sins in the bargain. No doubt we should consider the fact that he can now not only dare to use such a title, but actually seems unaware that it could even be controversial a sign of scientific “progress.” Indeed, not only does Keysers no longer bump up against any shibboleths of the modern leftist ideological narrative, he actually fits comfortably within it.

The topic of the essay, mirror neurons, is certainly worth writing about. These are neurons that are active during particular actions and sensations, but also respond to the sight and even sound of similar actions or sensations in others. For example, Keysers cites the case of neurons in a monkey that were found to be active when the animal grasped a peanut. In his words, “The surprise came when one of the experimenters grasped a peanut to give it to the monkey. The very same neuron that had responded when the monkey grasped a peanut also responded when the monkey simply saw someone else perform the same action.” He goes on to point out that the phenomenon is not restricted to physical movement, but to feelings and sensations as well. He maintains that the phenomena may not only promote our ability to learn from others, but may be associated with the creation of what he refers to as an “ethical instinct.”

Here, again, we can detect a gradual shift in the terms of the narrative over time. Once upon a time, the very use of the term “instinct” in connection with humans was anathema, and evidence of moral turpitude at best, and connection with the political right at worst. Anyone daring to even venture out on such thin ideological ice chose his words very carefully, preferring “innate predisposition” to “instinct,” and even then running the risk of denunciation as a “pop ethologist” unless the term was carefully hedged about with all the appropriate caveats. The young author seems blithely unaware of these once weighty distinctions. Instead, after announcing the “ethical instinct,” he suggests that the shared circuits associated with mirror neurons promote a strong feeling of empathy. In his words, “Since the same brain areas are active whether we are feeling our own pain or witnessing that of others, this means that the vicarious sharing of others’ feelings is not an abstract consideration but a toned-down equivalent of our own.” He then suggests how this might result in sharing a limited supply of food; “If I eat all the food, I will not only witness but also share my companion’s suffering, whereas if I divide the food I will share his joy and thankfulness. My decision is no longer guided only by my hunger but also by the real pain and pleasure my companion’s pain and pleasure will give me… I believe that the brain mechanisms that make us share the pain and joy of others are the neural bases that intuitively predispose us according to this maxim. Our brain is ethical by design.”

Here, of course, as readers of my previous posts will note, the author commits the common fallacy of assigning a real, objective existence to what he refers to as “ethics,” citing as an example the Golden Rule. There is also no mention of the Amity – Enmity Complex we have discussed earlier, and the author seems unaware of the very existence of the idea. He is, at least aware, of certain related incongruities in the application of his theory posed, for example, by the existence of war. The ideological provenance of the arguments he uses to finesse the issue should be transparent to those who haven’t been asleep during the debates over the Iraq War. In Keysers’ words, “In the military, the distance that separates the generals from the human suffering their armies cause minimizes their empathy and favors self-interested decisions. At the same time, the chain of command strips moral responsibility from the soldiers who do directly witness the suffering. In such a way, empathy can be bypassed in the service of efficiency. The development of weapons that kill at a distance has a similar effect. Insights into the biology of our empathy help us to realize the risk of such distancing and point us toward ways to build the natural mechanisms of empathy into our institutions.”

Before indulging yourself in any amused snorts at Prof. Keysers’ naiveté, gentle reader, allow me to remind you that his essay represents real progress. He admits a genetic basis for ethical behavior, and states very clearly that, “Humans are the result of evolution, and evolution favors individuals who will leave more offspring…” He does close with the comment that, “Mirror neurons – and their gift of insight into the emotions of others – enable us to manipulate other individuals but also prompt us to use this understanding for good and not for evil,” apparently blithely unaware that good and evil are evolutionary constructs themselves. Nevertheless, he is pursuing a line of research that holds forth the promise of eventually leading us to the truth. May we find that truth before our minds are once again closed by new dogmas.