The wrong type of math

In this three-minute talk, Mathemagician Art Benjamin urges that we change our emphasis when we teach our children math. I couldn't agree with him more. It saddens me to consider the immense amount of self-inflicted damage that Americans could have avoided, if only they were more savvy regarding probability and statistics. For example, very few Americans die of "terrorism," whereas the lives of millions of Americans are severely damaged or destroyed every year by crappy schools, lack of health care (including the failure to obtain colonoscopies), wars begun on the basis of lies, various risky behaviors and many other problems almost too many to mention, all of which leave the actual danger of "terrorism" in the dust. Yet Americans spend a massively lop-sided portion of their tax-dollars each year preventing "terrorism." Each of the serious causes of death we face would be much more preventable if only Americans had a better grasp of statistics and probability.    With better training in statistics and probabilities, Americans could better understand the risks that they faced and the probabilities of success of various proposed "solutions."   With better training, as Art Benjamin suggests, we would be better able to order our national priorities to better prevent the things that are most likely to harm us.

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I want to work with Thomas Heatherwick

I have worked with architects, engineers and contractors for nearly 20 years, managing the design and construction of all manner of facilities. As more than 18 of those years were in the public sector (15+ federal - military, 3+ municipal), function over form was unfortunately a primary design consideration. Where form did come into play, it was usually a more decorative stone face instead of some brick. Too often, I was working with budgets set down four to five or more years earlier, and in some cases with unchangeable scopes of work - the military construction (MILCON) program is rather rigid in that respect to ensure what is authorized is built (getting permission and funding for one thing but building another is verbotten). You can imagine that the crystal ball gets a little foggy out that far. And, by the time you get the funding to design and build, the budgets are usually too little to do what is needed, requiring creative scope cutting to get the most product for the buck. And that is why almost no federal, and very few municipal buildings are anything other than sterile designs that serve a functional and nearly never a visual need. So you can probably see why architect Thomas Heatherwick, and his firm Heatherwick Studio are such a treat for me. His designs are visually stunning, incredibly creative and are slap-the-forehead wake-ups to what we should be able to do at no more cost than traditional design. I was amazed at the very innovative solution to a common construction requirement (no spoiler...it's at the 4 minute point in the video), and even more amazed at the focus of his talk: the British contribution to the 2010 Shanghai Expo, the Seed Cathedral. Imagine deliberately designing a building with 60,000 penetrations...and then making it work.

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Explaining the punctuation of equilibrium

The April, 2010 edition of Discover Magazine profiles biologist Lynne Margulis, famous for her well accepted suggestion that eukaryotic bacteria did not evolve in linear fashion, solely as as a result of natural selection. Rather,

mitochondria and plastids--vital structures within animal and plant cells--evolved from bacteria hundreds of millions of years ago, after bacterial cells started to collect and interactive communities and live symbiotically with one another. The resulting mergers yielded the compound cells known as eukaryotes, which in turn gave rise to all the rest-the protoctists, fungi, plants and animals, including humans.
There was a shocking idea at the time (1967), but, as described in this article by Dick Teresi, the more recent ideas of Margulis are even more controversial. The Discover Magazine article documents her arguments that symbiosis is "the central force behind the evolution of new species." This position runs counter to the holding of modern conventional scientific wisdom, that new species arise through "gradual accumulation of random mutations, which are either favored or weeded out by natural selection." Margulis holds that random mutation and natural selection play a minor role and that the big leaps in the evolutionary record "result from mergers between different kinds of organisms, what she calls symbiogenesis." The Discover article takes the form of an interview, in which the dominant theme is that "natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create." Margulis argues that the laws of genetics "show stasis, not change." She was prompted by the fact that there is no record of major fossil change until 542 million years ago, yet all of a sudden we see the Cambrian explosion. Stephen Jay Gould coined this phrase, "punctuated equilibrium," "to describe a discontinuity in the appearance of new species." According to Margulis, her explanation of symbiogenesis explains these discontinuities and should thus be considered the primary mechanism for evolution. Margulis carefully distinguishes her approach from arguments based on "intelligent design." She holds that those who advocate for "intelligent design" have nothing meaningful to offer to the scientific conversation. [More . . . ]

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Read more about the article God is on MY side now

God is on MY side now

I’m tired of justifying my actions based on moral and pragmatic grounds; it’s too often too much work trying to explain that I am motivated to make my tiny corner of the world a better place, or that I’m trying to avoid needless suffering. Justifying my actions based on real-world consequences often requires planning, empathy and evidence-gathering, and I’ve decided that this is too much work. What’s the solution? I have quite recently realized that I am a believer in God, which makes me special and unquestionable. My new outlook germinated about a month ago when I noticed Rick Perry having such an easy time justifying anything he desired, based on things God allegedly told him. Why are you running for President? Because God told me to. Why are going to dismantle social security? Because God told me to. What are you going to do about Wall Street Banks? God will tell me after I allow those nice men to wine and dine me. Such freedom! I was jealous of Rick Perry, so I adopted God too. I like this new power. Because I am now one of God’s special people, when you question me, you question God Himself . . . so you’d better not ever have the arrogance to question me or God. You want to fight me buddy? God’s me Buddy. I like being God, Jr. It’s armor to protect me from all forms of intellectual and moral challenges and evidence. Having God as my Pal lessens my cognitive load, making life much easier, and it’s going to allow me to quickly cut through a lot of moralistic red tape. It’s going to let me invoke my program without having to explain myself. [more . . .]

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Read more about the article The function of reason

The function of reason

Chris Mooney reports on the work of Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, who have argued that (in Mooney's words): "the human capacity for reasoning evolved not so much to get at truth, as to facilitate argumentation." I haven't yet heard Mooney's interview of Mercier, which will soon be posted at Point of Inquiry. I do look forward to this interview, because the conclusions of Mercier and Sperber (which I scanned in their recent journal article, "Why do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory") make much sense in light of the ubiquitous failings of human reason-in-action. Here is an excerpt from the abstract from their article:

Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found. Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought.Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade.
These ideas resonate strongly with me. [More . . . ]

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