Connectionist beings and toilet mugs

Many of us would love to believe that we are completely rational beings in the sense that we are able to navigate a world strictly categorized in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Many of us would also love to believe that with sufficient will power all of us can move beyond unwanted emotions and beyond images and thoughts that "don't belong." That description does not comport with reality, of course. Several psychologists once conducted a hilarious experiment: Students were shown a brand new bed pan. Apple juice was poured into the brand new bedpan out of a commercial bottle of apple juice. The students were then asked whether they would drink the apple juice out of the bedpan. Only 28% were willing. My source for this experiment is page 216 of Heuristics and Biases, by Thomas Gilovich et al. You see, we seem to think as connectionist beings and emotional beings, as well as rational beings. Even though we logically and rationally know that we aren't drinking urine, the visual stimuli too strongly suggest otherwise, at least to many of us. Image by Erich Vieth I have written the above as prelude for describing a gift I recently bought for a good friend. A few months ago, I had described a toilet-shaped mug offered for sale by a well-stocked internet novelty company called PrankPlace. My friend indicated that he would not be deterred from drinking out of such a mug. I decided to put his confidence to a test. Today, I handed him his new toilet-mug and he was delighted. He promptly filled his new mug with coffee, and drank from it. Though he successful drank his coffee, he admitted that it was a bit off-putting to drink from the toilet-shaped mug, even though he absolutely knew that drinking from it would be nothing like drinking from a toilet. I think there are serious lessons here. For instance, when one claims that he is not "racist," there might yet be images and emotions haunting him, things that he acquired as a child, that no amount of logical and rational thought could purge. And maybe we viscerally dislike someone because she reminds us of a teacher that we disliked (even though we are certain that she is not that teacher). We are complex beings that are often not capable of defining and rationalizing our way out of disturbing or disorienting situations.

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Meteorite in the garden

I think it's so utterly cool that this married couple discovered that the big rock decorating their garden was a meteorite that started its journey to Earth half a billion years ago. I write this post full well knowing that meteorites commonly strike our planet: there have been 1,086 meteorite "falls" (witnessed impacts) and 38,660 meteorite "finds" in the history of our planet. I once had the privilege to view the Barringer Crater in Arizona, a crater extending .73 miles in diameter caused by a meteorite impact only 40,000 years ago. I tend to think of the Earth as stable and the meteorites are striking us. The truth is that all of us are streaking through space on a huge rock we call Earth. It's equally amazing that the solar system once did not exist and that it will one day cease to exist. We are privileged to be cognizant of this amazing tour of space, passengers who are lucky to be alive and lucky to be conscious of this experience, all of us touring on the skin of our planet. All of this constitutes the most amazing and true story ever, but I've never yet read any of this in any newspaper headline.

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The next best thing to vegetarianism

Today I had the opportunity to discuss the meaning of life with St. Louis Activist Adam Shriver. Adam mentioned that, a few months ago, he was invited to write an op-ed for the New York Times. The topic he examined was what we can do about the 100 pounds of meat the average American insists on eating every year. This situation raises moral red flags for many of us because it is rather clear that confined animals suffer painful bone and joint diseases. In his article, which he titled "Not Grass-Fed, but at Least Pain-Free," Adam noted that mammals have two parallel pathways relating to pain:

[A] sensory pathway that registers its location, quality (sharp, dull or burning, for example) and intensity, and a so-called affective pathway that senses the pain’s unpleasantness. This second pathway appears to be associated with activation of the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex, because people who have suffered damage to this part of the brain still feel pain but no longer find it unpleasant.
This neurological situation, combined with the ability to genetically design mammals that lack proteins necessary for the perception of the sharpness of pain, presents a potential solution (or, rather, it presents a fascinating thought experiment):

If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

Adam's tongue in cheek solution, then would be to continue to abuse the animals but to relive ourselves of moral queasiness by genetically modifying the animals so that they won't hurt. Adam's article reminded me that I've sometimes wondered what most vegetarians would think if we could grow meat in test tubes, meat that was never connected to any sort of brain. Imagine pounds and pounds of brainless meat coming out of big vats at a factory, the raw materials being mostly grass. Before you answer, consider that I raised this topic a few years ago over lunch. A woman in attendance was adamant that if we could develop veggie burgers that tasted as good as beef burgers, it would still be immoral for a committed vegetarian to enjoy that food. A buddy and I looked on perplexed as she ranted at length. She scowled and said, "If you created a meat substitute that had the shape and texture one would experience if eating a human baby, it would be immoral to eat it!" Now I do think it's creepy to contemplate eating anything resembling the texture and taste of human babies (I insist that I haven't actually tried this delicacy), but in my book, eating something that is not a human baby is not anything like eating a human baby. And consider too all of the people who play violent video games. Is "killing" the image of an innocent person somewhat immoral, even just a bit? And what about a man who fantasizes about having sex with children, or even creates his own drawings of nude children to enhance his fantasies? Assume, further that he has never solicited a real-life child. Is he immoral? And imagine this: imagine that someone at work really pissed you off. Is it immoral, even a little bit, to imagine poisoning that person the next day at work? What if this sort of fantasy actually kept you calmer and actually prevented you from being fiercely tempted from carrying out the murder? Maybe I'm just too much enamored with thick black lines, but I believe that for something to be immoral (or criminal), one must actually do the forbidden act rather than fantasizing about or simulating doing the forbidden act. Now, back to the eating of abused animals who couldn't feel pain. What if I could actually choose to buy such pain-free animal-meat at the grocery story? Wouldn't it be more moral to eat the pain-free animals than the animals who ached with joint pain? It would seem so, even if it not perfectly morally commendable. [Full disclosure: I am a somewhat guilt ridden non-vegetarian. Most of the meat I eat is chicken or turkey, though I do eat a hamburger every few weeks.]

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The things we don’t know about climate science

Perhaps a lot of climate deniers are frustrated by scientists because they think the scientists claim to be know-it-alls. This is far from true. It is true that scientists almost uniformly agree that humans are warming the climate and that they base this conclusion upon "the extreme rate of the 20th century temperature changes and the inability of climate models to simulate such warming without including the role of greenhouse gas pollution." These are things that climate scientists do know, according to Quirin Schiermeier, author of "The Real Holes in Climate Science," published in the January 21, 2010 edition of Nature (available online only to subscribers). What don't we know? Schiermeier presents four major categories. The first is "Regional climate prediction rate." Schiermeier begins the section with this: "The sad truth of climate science is that the most crucial information is the least reliable." He indicates that researchers are struggling to develop tools to more accurately forecast regional changes in climate. People are concerned about overall heating of the planet, of course. What they are more concerned about, though is how climate change is going to affect their particular region. Unfortunately, science does not yet have the tools to make precise conclusions regarding regions or countries. This is especially true when "dealing in regions with complex typography, such as where mountains form a wall between two climatically different plains. Precipitation. Schiermeier indicates that rising global temperatures "are likely to increase evaporation and accelerate the global hydrological cycle--a change that will drive subtropical areas and increased precipitation at higher latitudes." Unfortunately, predicting precipitation is extremely difficult, especially winter precipitation. In fact, today's climate models underestimate how much precipitation has already changed. Scientists are working to improve precipitation prediction by considering additional climate variables, and including high-resolution satellite observations to check their theoretical models. [More . . . ]

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