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If a tree falls in the forest….
August 27, 2008 — xanthippaHaving spent time in such serene surroundings like this:
Canada has magnificent trees.
…is it not surprising that my mind had taken a break from the ‘everyday’ and slipped into a bit of philosophising?
If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is there to hear it, would it make a sound?
In the past, when discussing this with my kids and husband, we have invariably fallen into the pitfalls like, for example, trying to define what does ‘sound’ mean: is it simply the movement of air molecules in a particular way, or does it have to be ‘perceived’ by human ears? (If it is recorded, then the sound we hear is made by the recorder, not the tree…and endless possibilities along these chains of thoughts.)
This year, I began so see it from a different perspective…
Richard Feynman is perhaps my favourite genius of the 20th century – and I am convinced he is an ‘Aspie’ to boot! ( Just reading his most awesome book, ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!’, is an excellent lesson in how an ‘Aspie’ mind organizes thoughts and commits them onto paper – plus it is fun and curiously comforting to read). In his Lectures (available as podcasts, and ideal for relaxing with while ‘away from it all’), specifically, in the ‘Quantum Mechanics’ lecture, he also visits this question about the proverbial tree falling in the forest…
Dr. Feynman gives some very specific qualifications regarding this issue: he would not be a physicist had he not done that. He states that in the real world, even if there is no observer when the tree falls, there are still unmistakable physical signgs that it had, indeed, made a sound. These signs, perhaps as minute as little scratches from vibrating leaves/needles as the sound energy is transferred to them, could then be observed after the event itself and the presence of such sound would be conclusively demonstrated. Thus, he concludes that ‘in a real world, of course, a tree falling in a forest makes a sound‘.
He is, of course, absolutely correct – given the qualifications he does.
Yet, listening to him made me think that perhaps his ‘after the fact observer’ – as our familial discussions from the past – were really missing the whole point of the question!
Whether during the act of the tree falling, or afterwards; directly or through recording devices of some sort (even leaves and needles) – this introduces an observer. And the fact remains that if an observer is present, and the original condition (or, rather, its intent) is breeched.
Yes, I’ll gladly concede that in the real world, it might be impossible to have a ‘no observer’ scenario – but that is not the point. The question asks us about a hypothetical situation, where no observation (during or after the event) occurred (even had it been possible).
Let us imagine an observer who makes a direct observation that 999 trees, as they fell, indeed did make a sound. Then the observer leaves, and our proverbial tree falls. No observation as to the sound of any kind had been made during the event. The scene has since been altered so much that no additional evidence can be gathered. How can we answer the question now? Did our proverbial tree make a sound, or not?
And this, in my never-humble-opinion, is the crux, the core, of this principle: one can only say that one does not know.
It would be reasonable to predict that it is highly likely that the tree had made a sound, based on previous observations. But one would not know !
This is the difference between direct observation and a guess. Perhaps it might be an ‘educated guess’ (based on the previous 999 observations) , but it is still only a guess. And that is the whole point: to get us to stop and think, to learn to recognize that difference between what we know and what we are making educated guesses about (or a semi-educated guess about).
One of my sons thought this simply reduced the question to the ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ scenario, but I think there is a difference. This is not about probability curves and their collapses, this is about learning to recognize the blinders we all wear which let us treat guesses (whether ors or those of others) as equally valid to observed facts.
And it is about time that some of these blinders statred coming off!
After all, guesses, even educated ones, are not facts – and we must not fall into the easy trap of treating them as such. Especially in cases where the guess is not based on 999 direct observations of this very event…or not on even one such event having ever happened!
Which leads me to the next question: If the global temperatures change by 0.6 of a degree, and no well-financed lobby group is there to use it as a pretext to organize a scare-mongering, funds-transfering campaign, would anyone notice?
Perspective - we all need it!
A long tail for your house
August 5, 2008 — xanthippaPlease, consider the options which would open up to you if your house had a really long tail – a fibre optic tail, that is! One belonging to the homeowner, NOT the ISPs! We could take a step away from throttling off net neutrality.
‘The really long tail’ from ‘ars technica’
With more ISPs discussing ‘bundling’ accessible websites the way cable companies offer ‘bundled channel packages’, this would significantly improve consumer choice.
Observations do not match IPCC’s predictions
July 14, 2008 — xanthippaThis is the beauty of ‘scientific theories’!
In order for something to qualify as a ‘scientific theory’, it must include a set of predictions of ‘actions or reactions’, which will prove or disprove said theory. Though not usually well understood, this is what makes ‘scientific theories’ ‘respectable’.
The IPCC’s report formulated a theory. This theory predicted that due to human activity, there has been (and continues to be) an increase in the Carbon Dioxide levels in our atmosphere, AND that this difference is CAUSING specific, observable changes in world climate. It then makes a set of specific predictions of how the climate will change as a result of this.
OK. So far, so good.
Now, back when it came out, there were a LOT of us criticizing the IPCC’s report. Whether it was: their methodology, their underlying data – whatever the causes, there was much criticism. This was answered by the supporters of the IPCC report in various ways, which were not always satisfactory. Much bickering ensued.
But, all this is slowly and surely becoming irrelevant, thanks to the IPCC’s report itself. WHY? Because of the predictions it made. The very ones which – if observed to occur – will confirm that the IPCC report was accurate and the critics were full of dingo’s kidneys. If, on the other hand, observations are made which are NOT in agreement with the IPCC report’s predictions, it proves the sceptics were correct and that the IPCC report itself is a load of dingo’s kidneys!
Well, over the last little while, much data has indeed been coming in. Like, loads of it. And, as many actua scientists (as opposed to advisors to policymakers) had predicted, the bits which ‘fail to support the IPCC report’s predictions’ are the ones most favourable to that ‘report’. Most of the data coming our actually directly contradicts it….
Here is just the tip of the iceberg:
‘Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered’
Abstract
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:
- Radiative forcing ΔF;
- The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and
- The feedback multiplier ƒ.
Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.
Just in case you like ‘graphic representations’, the article has some nifty graphs. Not as alarmist as Mr. Gore’s graphs were, but they DO show actual temperature measurements: please, follow the link to the article and look at them….using plain linear regression, they demonstrate the temperatures are going down…
According to the IPCC’s graphs, these should be going up. And, before you say ‘this is natural variation and does not prove anything’, let me point out that the IPCC’s predictions say these graphs cover a long enough period to demonstrate warming.
The article then inclused more colourful and pretty charts, diagrams and graphs, a ‘ton’ of actual physics, and comes up with this closing statement:
In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.
Thanks to Jenifer Marohasy for the story! But that site also had another interesting article: ‘Global Warming is a myth: a Note from Jim Peden’. It has a respected physicist, looking not at ‘climate change’ itself, but analyzing the physics of the very mechanism that the ACC crowd claims is responsible for ‘Greenhouse gasses’ causing ‘Global Warming’. This is how it starts:
As a dissenting physicist, I simply can no longer buy the notion that CO2 produces any significant warming of the atmosphere at any rate.
I’ve studied the atomic absorption physics to death, from John Nicol’s extensive development to the much longer winded dissertation by Gerlich & Tscheuschner and everything in between, it simply doesn’t add up.
In case you are not familiar with the claims made by the ACC crowd, they say that the atoms of ‘greenhouse gasses’ absorb energy in the visible and UV spectrum, break it down into smaller bits (heat) which they then release, and which are then ‘trapped’ in our atmosphere. Here, a physicist who specializes in atomic absorption (and is respected and recognized as an expert in this), calls their claims a load of dingo’s kidneys….
Gosh, I hope everyone loves kidney pie!
Please note: the original post contained an unjustified statement by me, where I jumped to conclusions instead of properly checking my sources. This was spotted by ‘tamino’, who commented on it. Many thanks for his help, as getting the correct information is essential. The incorrect claim has been removed.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Viscount Moncton, author of the American Physical Society’s ‘Forum on Physics & Society’ article, which is the 1st of the articles I linked to and quoted from, has some questions for the American Physical Society…. (via SmallDeadAnimals and TheCorner)
Yet another lesson… will it be learned?
July 7, 2008 — xanthippaAll right, this clip is not from the boys down under, it is from Pen and Teller – the professional sceptics who put on the show ‘Bullshit’.
In their role as sceptics, they have gone on to challenge much – and not everyone is always pleased with them. Here, they are teaching a lesson in how ‘environmental enthusiasm’ – a very real and honest desire to protect the Earth from harm by us, humans – can be so very easily abused by those who wish to use these honest, trusting and eager activists and subvert them and their voices for something completely different…
In some ways, it kind of is like that ‘Trojan Horse’ idea!
The radicalized ‘Church of Global Warming’
June 23, 2008 — xanthippaIf anyone were not yet convinced that the ‘Global Warming Alarmism’ is anything but a new religion, its missionaries have stepped up to remove any lingering doubts doubts.
Few months ago, Canada’s high priest of the ‘Church of Global Warming’ himself, Dr. David Suzuki, had delivered a series of speeches in which he openly called for the jailing of those who disagree with his views on Global Warming. Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist, and apparently, these credentials qualify him as the leading authority on Climate Change.
Applying this logic, an ornithologist would be qualified to assess building codes for earthquake-prone areas and a meteorologist is qualified to work as an obstetrician. After all, they are all ‘scientists’!!!
Just imagine…
But, I digress…
Is it surprising, then, that one of the founders of the ‘Church of Global Warming’, James Hansen, is doing much the same? Lubos Motl, from The Reference Frame, has analyzed this and makes some very insightful points:
“…when it is already clear that his predictions have been bunk since the very beginning, James Hansen wants trials against oil firm chiefs who help to allow the people to understand that the predictions have been incorrect.”
…
“…when you start to see fringe pseudoscientists who not only want to use their subjective, sensationalist, and mad visions and personal interests to unseat all inconvenient CEOs and Congressmen – another explicitly formulated desire of Mr Hansen – but you also see that they seem to have a clique of misinformed or equally evil collaborators who have been partially successful, I am telling you: This is a damn serious situation that should be solved unless you want to repeat some truly black pages from the history.”
It is not the beliefs or opinions themselves which identify someone as a ‘radical religionist’, it is the fanticism of their belief that it is their duty to remove all obstacles to re-shaping society according to their own visions.
Wikipedia (a great place to start info searches) says, under ‘political radicalism’, that:
‘The 19th century American Cyclopaedia of Political Science asserts that “radicalism is characterized less by its principles than by the manner of their application”.’
And that certainly includes the politico-religious extremists spreading the AGW creed.
More Mind Games
June 4, 2008 — xanthippaYesterday, I had a fun post on how easily our perceptions can play mind games on us – looking at optical illusons. Of course, optical illusions, at least of the ‘fun’ type, are just the tip of the iceberg!
The post showed, I hope, just how easy it is for our eyes to be tricked.
Our brains are wonderful, comples structures. They take the information from our eyes, and process it. It is this processing of information which ‘tricks’ our mind. Why? Because our brains have developed some mightily useful ways of ‘figuring things out’ without telling us. At least, without telling that conscious part of our thoughts we often think of as ‘us’.
Yes, it is a form of subconscious ‘prejudice’ system – but it is precisely through this type of ‘pre-judgements’ that let humans anticipate what is likely to happen next, so as to react in the best, most advantageour (to survival) way. {Aside: it is precisely because so many of our bad prejudices are also rooted this very deeply, among other survival tools, that we have a hard time recognizing our own ones… and why it is healthy for us to see other people’s ‘obvious’ prejudice openly, so we may learn to recognize our own bad/destructive/unreasonable prejucices and guard against acting on them. But, that is for another day…}
When our brain gets some input, it matches this input to ‘past experiences’, compares patterns, looks for similarities. It then interprets this new inputas best as it can – with respect to all the stored past experiences! And it does so quickly, without us even noticing it is doing it…
That is why we find it so hard to ‘wrap our brains’ around something completely new and outside of our experiences: our brain has nothing to match it to, and would be just as happy ‘not noticing it’…
The immortal Douglas Adams was quite fascinated by this phenomenon. And, as was his way, he used humour to get his point across… Please, indulge me (highly paraphrased):
The story went something like this: A guy had a bet with some people about erecting an invisibility field on the mountain that blocked his view… It was no easy thing, and in the end, the nay-sayers had lost, because even though the mountain could no longer be seen, there was now a suspicious new moon in low orbit, just about the size of that mountain… Douglas Adams said that trying to generate an ‘invisibility field’ was silly, that is just so very troublesome. It would have been much easier to simply paint the mountain pink during the nighttime and erect an S.E.P. field on it.
What is an S.E.P. field? It simply means ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’ – anything that is ‘unusual’ or appears’ unexpected, and has this S.E.P. field on it – will be less than invisible! People will look straight through it and not see it! Their brain will just process it as ‘somebody else’s problem’ and refuse to acknowledge its existence…
Seems to me that this is one take on the whole ‘mind tricks’ phenomenon I am trying to get at. Can’t relate to it – it’s not there.
But, there are way more sinister uses of this ability we, people have, to interpret what we see according to familiar patterns. This can be seriously abused by people with very particular – and not always honourable – aims.
Just like we can be tricked by a simple optical illusion, we can be tricked into seeing ‘things’ that never happened. And once people ‘see things for themselves’, they accept them as true… and belieave them.
All our actions are based on what we perceive. Not on facts – only on what we think are the acts. Not on truth, because we have no way of separating truth from our very distorted – and sometimes intentionally tricked – perceptions of the truth, on what we think the truth is.
A lie repeated often enough will eventually appear to us as the truth (it’s precisely this ‘previously encountered pattern’ matching thing in our subconsciousness that does this!).
Conversly, a truth never heard of, will never be considered when one makes decisions. After all, we can only decide on our best understanding of the truth…
Perhaps it is time we took a moment and re-evaluated just how easy it is for our brains to become victims of ‘mind games’…
Perceptions and mind games
June 3, 2008 — xanthippaOur mind is always processing ‘stuff’ around us. And it is relatively easy for our mind trick us into perceiving things that are not there, or into not perceiving things that are there. And so on….
This is such a fascinating subject! What is it about our minds that allows this trickery to go on? Many people have been asking this – Scientific American addresses it in ‘The Neuroscience of Illusion’.
Yes, true, this is looking at optical illusions only, but, well, that is the first step! And some of these illusions are pretty neat! (If you want to skip the article, here is a link for the 5 illusions themselves). And here is a whole gallery of them!
And, in my never-humble-way, here, for your enjoyment, is an optical illusion that I think is my own (though, with the mind playing tricks like this, I might have seen it somewhere, and then just been tricked into thinking I thought of it…)
Because it is in a tree, it is ‘obvious’ (hopefully) that this is a picture of a bird. Well, two birds – but not at once. One is a big bird, one is a little bird.
Which one did you see first?
Vaclav Klaus’ Washington CEI speech
May 29, 2008 — xanthippaThis President is one smart cookie!
Yesterday, he delivered a speech in Washington, in which he said:
“It is interesting that you came up with the name Josef Alois Schumpeter (to intentionally use the Czech pronunciation). I don’t expect all of you to know that this great economist was born in 1883 on the territory of my country – the Czech Republic – in the small Moravian town of Třešť, belonging at that time to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. He was part of an important group of Austrian Moravians which includes names such as Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Karl Kautsky, Ernst Mach, Robert Musil, and many others.”
…
“Reading his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which was published in England in the 1940s along with books such as Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, one comes across a slightly different story, which is his evolutionary theory of the demise of capitalism based on its very success. His main argument – as I remember it – was that innovations would become a matter of routine, progress would be mechanized, problems would be “simply solved” by means of reason and science, entrepreneurship would be replaced by mere calculation, individual motivation would subside, collectivistic mentality would prevail and the growing importance of teamwork in modern large corporations would lead to the gradual obsoleteness and at the end disappearance of the crucial player (or perhaps mover) of capitalism – of the entrepreneur. That was his vision of the end of capitalism. He regretted it, but did not see it as the end of history, progress and development.”
…
“The first problem this theory has is its connection with the reality because the world has not followed Schumpeter’s predictions.”
The complete text is on Mr. Klaus’ blog.
This, to me, is a telling analysis: this economist looks at the theory, evaluates its internal consistencies (or lack thereof) – and then COMPARES THE THEORY TO REAL-LIFE OUTCOMES !!!!
Not only did he do EXACTLY THIS with the IPCC-type AGW/ACC ‘theories’ (and I do use the term ‘theories’ loosely) in his book ‘Blue Planet in Green Shackles – What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?’, he also points out the necessary consequence of actions currently being implemented to ‘mitigate’ AGW/ACC: establishment of world government.
So, why would anyone think there are any dangers in establishing this ‘world government’? Mr. Klaus warns that we just might me passing world government into the hands of arrogant elitists who are convinced that ‘they know better than the rest of us’…. He asserts that some of the same people who are advocating establishing world authorities to regulate carbon emission – with the power of enforcment (that is, world government) – that were also advocating this 30 years ago in the name of world socialism. Just listen to Glenn Beck’s second interview with him:
Kind of makes you pause and think, does it not?
It should!
‘Blue Planet in Green Shackles’ – the ISBN#
May 28, 2008 — xanthippaThis is the mystery of the disappearing planet….as in – where in the world can one purchase a copy of the English-language version of ‘Blue Planet in Green Shackles – What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?’
The English translation of this book by Czech Republic’s President, Vaclav Klaus, was released this week in Washington, D.C. – as I have learned from ‘The Reference Frame’, and wrote about earlier. I must admit, I was rather exited! Finally, I could get my hands on it and read what all this excitement is about.
Yet, I could not find how to get my hands on it! Judging from some of the responses I got, I am not alone…
My Mom always used to say: “If ever you are in doubt, ask a physicist!’ (Well, she said something like that – I think…) So, I did – and Mr. Motl from ‘The Reference Frame’ was kind enough to send me this reply:
Dear Xanthippa, the book is now printed in 17,000 copies only so it will disappear rapidly.
bn.com, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Blue-Planet-in-Green-Shackles/Vaclav-Klaus/e/9781889865096/
has its ISBN codes:
* ISBN: 1889865095
* ISBN-13: 9781889865096
* Format: Paperback, 100pp
* Pub. Date: May 2008
Thank you, Mr. Motl!
Finally, here is a head of state who has actual scientific credentials! O.K., he’s not a physicist like Mr. Motl, but, Vaclav Klaus is pretty close: he may have been a mere economist (though a respected professor thereof), but he did spend most of his life at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Once politics no longer shackled his career (oh, I love how I worked that ‘shackled’ word in…sorry, it does not take much to amuse me…), he worked at Prognostics at the Academy of Science…. meaning, his professional expertise is in looking at scientific theories, understanding their implication, and then evaluating their long-term economic impact.
This means that President Klaus, more than any other world leader today, is eminently qualified to assess the IPCC report, both in what it says and in what the ‘remedial measures’ currently being implemented will have. I, for one, am very curious to read what he has to say. I wish that the World’s leaders would be, too!
Here is a link to Mr. Klaus’ speaking notes for the Washington D.C. release of his book:
“The whole process is already in the hands of those who are not interested in rational ideas and arguments.”
“The real debate should be about costs and benefits of alternative human actions, about how to rationally deal with the unknown future, about what kind and size of solidarity with much wealthier future generations is justified, about the size of externalities and their eventual appropriate “internalization”, about how much to trust the impersonal functioning of the markets in solving any human problem, including global warming and how much to distrust the very visible hand of very human politicians and their bureaucrats. Some of these questions are touched upon in my book. “
I, for one, am very curious to read what he has to say. Excuse me, I have to go talk to my local bookstore now…. in the meantime, here is Glenn Beck’s interview with Mr. Klaus on the topic of Global Warming activism:
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 