Scandinatheists? Maybe not so much

Ah, those blessed Scandinavians. Reputedly cool, calm, collected, rather good race drivers and, it would seem, not really that concerned about gods one way or the other. During my time observing and participating in discussions about religion and its public role over the last few years, Scandinavia has often been held up as a bastion of faithless virtue, a shining beacon of godless goodness, a prime example of what can be accomplished on a transnational scale without referring to scripture but merely concentrating on what works for the populace. Atheist/secularist/humanist commentators often to point to Scandinavian social successes (for example low unemployment, high standards of living, functioning democracies, effective public health care & education) as evidence against the claims of many religious people that if we in the West abandoned our "Judeo-Christian" values or kept our church & state separate, our nations would all fall, unrestricted by fears of celestial surveillance, into a grimy, black crevass of murder, pillage and hedonism (one could argue that the US in the last eight years has fallen into an economic & diplomatic hole of a similar depth, led by a very religious man who was happy to pander to very religious people for his entire reign, but that's a whole other article). According to a recent New York Times article by Peter Steinfel on a study by Californian sociologist Phil Zuckerman (here), it seems that far from there being only two sides to the god coin, the Scandinavians, almost characteristically, have ended up on a third side. And here it is: They don't care.

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Gray Matter at Wolfram Research

As I promised, I have visited the Periodic Table Table on the penultimate floor of the Wolfram Research building. This is a fairly tall building for Champaign, IL and contains some serious brains. We walked in, rode up to the top floor, and asked to see "The Elementary Mr. Gray." The receptionist chuckled, made sure that I claimed to have an appointment, and called down to the co-founder and interface designer for Mathematica Software, Theodore Gray. We were escorted down to his spacious office area, in which samples of every element in the universe are kept. Many on open display. One Corner of the Office Big SamplesI had budgeted 2 hours, and had to tear myself away after 3. There were huge samples of some things like 99.999999% pure silicon and a massive block of magnesium. There were pretty and ingenious samples of others. The pictures he took for PeriodicTable.com are excellent, but seeing them and holding them is an order of magnitude more impressive. I got to hold a nice chunk of depleted Uranium (kept in the safe with the gold and platinum and antique samples). Heavy stuff, and almost as big as my sample of equally heavy tungsten. Maybe I should mention the layers of security and cameras, in case anyone gets acquisitive. PeriodicTableTable and its creator Notice the lead pipe over by Hydrogen? It was last seen on my patio, and now is part of this collection. I hadn't realized that this brain trust is where Hollywood went to get correct math for the TV show Numb3rs. Wolfram staff may not criticize the inaccurate applications, but at least they make sure the formulas written by the actors match what they say they are doing and look cool. I often regret not having gotten a job at a brain trust back when I was young and quick. It was nice to visit such a place and to be made to feel a collegue. So, how shall I spin this as a serious post? Real science is a matter of playing with reality and seeing what makes it tick. To understand matter, one should see what there is of it. To understand the mathematical models on which our standard of living depends, it is good to know some real math. I find comfort in knowning that those who really know the math have fun with it.

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What should we do about all of the new people?

What should we do about all of the new people? What new people? Consider this information from the British Medical Journal:

The world’s population now exceeds 6700 million, and humankind’s consumption of fossil fuels, fresh water, crops, fish, and forests exceeds supply. These facts are connected. The annual increase in population of about 79 million means that every week an extra 1.5 million people need food and somewhere to live. This amounts to a huge new city each week, somewhere, which destroys wildlife habitats and augments world fossil fuel consumption.

What does the BMJ suggest as a solution? Nothing coercive. Rather, start by emphasizing that two children is the largest responsible number of children a family should have. Second, make sure that everyone has access to birth control, given that about 1/2 of the world's births are unplanned; that's right: one-half. This article asks, "isn’t contraception the medical profession’s prime contribution for all countries?" I would think so. It's time to stop being cowed by those who get shrill--even furious--when we merely raise the issue of overpopulation, as though discussing the carrying capacity of the Earth is automatically the precursor to instituting coercive techniques to stop only poor people from having children. It's time to discuss this issue of overpopulation firmly and responsibly, keeping in mind that each birth in a developed Western country uses 160 times the amount of resources as each baby born in the Third World.

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Richard Nisbett: Intelligence mostly varies due to the environment, not genes

The dominant hereditarian view of intelligence holds that intelligence is mostly fixed by the genes. Richard Nisbett has dismantled the evidence on which the hereditarian theory is based. In his new book, Intelligence and How to Get It, Nesbitt argues that the twin studies on which the hereditarian view is based are deeply flawed. The main problem is that the adoptive homes in which those separated twins often find themselves are uniformly enriched learning environments. Nisbett's book was reviewed by Jim Holt of the NYT Book Review:

Nisbett bridles at the hereditarian claim that I.Q. is 75 to 85 percent heritable; the real figure, he thinks, is less than 50 percent. Estimates come from comparing the I.Q.’s of blood relatives — identical twins, fraternal twins, siblings — growing up in different adoptive families. But there is a snare here. As Nisbett observes, “adoptive families, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are all alike.” Not only are they more affluent than average, they also tend to give children lots of cognitive stimulation. Thus data from them yield erroneously high estimates of I.Q. heritability. (Think: if we all grew up in exactly the same environment, I.Q. differences would appear to be 100 percent genetic.) This underscores an important point: there is no fixed value for heritability. The notion makes sense only relative to a population. Heritability of I.Q. is higher for upper-class families than for lower-class families, because lower-class families provide a wider range of cognitive environments, from terrible to pretty good.

What does Nisbett's book have to say about race and intelligence? That the differences among the "races" are not genetic. Evidence in point: The "racial" IQ gap has been shrinking. "Over the last 30 years, the measured I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped from 15 points to 9.5 points."

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