Practical Jokes

My Fellow Comedists,

This week's topic is practical jokes. The experience of having been pranked is the key to it all: first, the confusion, then the realization which gives rise to need for evasive action, then the sense of having been had, and finally a sense of perspective and appreciation that that was a good one.

My favorite one was the old bouillon cube in the shower head in college. The amount of time it took to start dissolving was just about the amount of time needed to get a head full of shampoo. Kool-aid powder in the shower head came out too fast and too quickly, but the bouillon cubes worked just right.

Of course, there are always the untended consequences. Like the time in high school when we doused a friend's underwear in women's perfume while he was still in the shower after gym class only to have him have an allergic reaction and have to go home thinking he had the chicken pox.

So, what are the best practical jokes you've ever pulled or know of? Any unintended consequence stories?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Bipartisanship, Direct Democracy, and Neo-Lamarckianism

Thanks everyone for amazing questions this week. You folks are incredible. A couple political and a biological one today. 71 asks,

"What is bipartisanism and is there any real hope for it?"

One is tempted to say that "bipartisan" is like "politically correct," a phrase that has no real meaning, just emotive, rhetorical power. But i think the truth is that it is has several different meanings.

The Joe Lieberman meaning of bipartisan is "Let's get Republicans and centrist Democrats to come together on the one thing we all agree on. We hate liberals. Aren't they annoying? They are like that kid in class who would remind the teacher to assign us the homework she forgot about. Man, I hate those obnoxious goody-goodies, don't you? Do they not realize that corporations have MONEY and that they will give it to US?"

Then there's the David Broder approach to bipartisanism which is a deep underlying affinity for the greedy, self-interested aspect of conservatism, but a distaste for displaying the overt bigotry associated with it. They buy into social justice...as long as they don't have to pay for it or surrender their privileged position. It is a higher level approach that pairs positions on social concerns relating to unfair practices and institutions that resemble those of the Democrats with spending and taxation policy positions that resemble those of the "fiscally conservative" Republicans and when they conflict, tax cuts (at least for people in their tax bracket) and service cuts (for people not in their tax bracket) always get the trump card. Bipartisanship, on this approach, is the "Dockersization of America" "I don't mind black people, as long as they dress up to my level and wear khakis. And I don't mind gay people, as long as they dress down to my level and wear khakis."

Then we have the Obama approach to bipartisanship which is issue-specific. Take the public option as a perfect example. The liberals argued that health care is a matter of care, not contract, that we need a single-payer government run program that puts people ahead of profit. The conservatives say that the free market always improves efficiency, that the decisions of government bureaucrats are always inferior to those of profit-motivated executives, and that consumers always benefit from less government. So, let's try to meld these seemingly conflicting points of view. We'll create a situation where we keep competition in the marketplace, but we'll add a governmental competitor. That way, if the conservatives are right that competition fosters innovation, an extra competitor will supercharge them and if profit-driven corporations always outperform public sector offerings, they have nothing to fear. If the liberals are right, then there will be a government run choice for them and private sector competitors to keep them honest. It was set out to make both sides happy by including their most cherished principles.

But what happened? Conservatives complained that they didn't get absolutely everything they wanted making it equivalent to Hitler exterminating Jews and since it was coming from Obama anyway, forget it, they'll oppose anything short of his immediate resignation, free guns for all, and mandatory detention for anyone who votes Democratic. Liberals were beside themselves with joy because while they weren't getting everything, they might actually be getting SOMETHING (Go ask gramps again about the time they got Social Security passed. I never get tired of that story. It almost seems like science fiction.). And so-called moderates like Joe Lieberman turned violent in opposition to positions he had previously not only supported, but actively put forward because liberals like Anthony Weiner said they liked them and the entire point of politics is to make sure those liberals don't get anything they want, even if the American public has to suffer for it.

So, what are the chances for bipartisanship? If it means changing nothing and giving more money to large companies for obscene bonuses to upper management? I'd say the chances are pretty darn good.

Justin asks,

"Should the mass opinion of the people completely dictate which laws are passed by elected officials?"

Our system is a representative democracy, rather than a direct one. So, in that sense, we elect people who then vote their mind and conscience. The opinion of the people is expressed only at the time when the office holder runs for re-election. Indeed, this was in part the idea -- to isolate those who make the decisions from the populace because as Founding Father Alexander Hamilton held "The masses are asses." Surely, those who govern will be superior to the rabble and should not be beholden to their ill-informed opinions.

We have the system we have, instead of a parliamentary system, because the Founding Fathers didn't trust parties, thinking that they stepped on innovation and individual insight. They therefore instituted a winner take all system, instead of proportional representation and inadvertently made political parties stronger by forcing there to be only two (more than that in a winner take all system drives weaker third parties out) and having only two parties then means that monied interests can more easily influence the process, moving decision making away from the interests of the people (it should be made clear that the interests of the people and the positions preferred by the people are not identical).

Seeing this, a number of states have made the move halfway back towards direct democracy with ballot initiatives, a second legislative process the ability for the people to by-pass the legislature altogether and enact laws on their own. In this way, you have competing lawmaking processes and the elected officials thereby do have to be more responsive to the desires of their constituents, not only for re-election, but also because they can undo anything that they do. Thus we have a middle ground between complete legislative autonomy and politicians as puppets of the polls. It is an uneasy and imperfect arrangement, but occupies what I think is the proper middle ground. We don't our laws to change along with want the ebb and flow of public opinion. Tragic events, for example, have unexpected and often unfortunate effects on the collective psyche and we want our laws buffered from these intellectual potholes. At the same time, we do not want a group of legislators who are isolated from the people either. So, it is an awkward but necessary tension in our governmental structure.

Scott F asks,

"does Jean Baptiste Lamarck get to give a postmortem,"booyah!" to Darwinists with the growing findings indicating the importance of the epigenome?"

"Vive le gene!" indeed. Lamarck offered an evolutionary theory a generation before Darwin in which it is not random mutations that drive natural and sexual selection, but rather acquired traits. If the parents stretch their necks to reach higher leaves while foraging, their offspring will have necks that will stretch farther. Thus we get giraffes.

Lamarck was rejected by Darwin who postulated random changes as the source without a mechanism that was later supplied by Mendelian genetics. We see how traits are passed on and how random changes do pop up. So, we thought, case closed, Darwin 1, Lamarck 0. Game over.

But, of course, life is much more interesting than that. It turns out that genetic predisposition does mean genetic determinism. You may have the gene for x, but environmental circumstances may keep it from expressing itself in the way that makes x come about. Sure, nothing too weird there, the body responds to its environment and environmental changes might not give it a chance to do its worst. i may be genetically predisposed towards alcoholism, for example, but if I never drink, no harm done.

But it get stranger when we realize that -- ala Lamarck -- the environmental effects may not have been in MY environment, but rather those of previous generations. It turns out, for example, that people whose grandparents experienced periods of sustained hunger are much less likely to be diagnosed with type I diabetes whereas those whose grandparents were wealthy and never missed a meal are more likely to have the disease -- even when we control for genetics. Is this neo-Lamarckianism? In a sense, I think that's fair. We are not necessarily acquiring the trait as directly, but there is something resembling his mechanism at work in the world. Science is like fashion in some ways, things come back around just when you thought they were out of date.

Thanks again everyone for fantastic questions.

Optimism, Brains, Thinking, and Artificial Intelligence

Mind and brain questions today. David Airth asks,

"Why are some people optimistic and others pessimistic? I am an optimist, whereas my father was a pessimist."

Certainly, at least part of the answer lies in the brain. Researchers Tali Sharot, Alison Riccardi, Candace Raio, and Elizabeth Phelps had a much heralded article in Science recently that examined something related to this question (hat tip to Kevin). It is a well documented phenomenon that most people tend to be irrationally optimistic about future events. We project our hopes onto the world and convince ourselves that desired outcomes are more likely than they are and tend to act accordingly. This irrational optimism can be healthy in driving us to improve ourselves and our lot in life, but then it can lead to things like the housing bubble also.

This reflexive optimism, however, is not present in those who are depressed. Sharot, et al, looked to see whether there was activity in particular parts of the brain that could be correlated with this and found that there in deed were, areas in the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex were much more active in those who were more optimistic.

So, we have a correlation, but what about causation? No doubt there are biological factors that may cause different normal brain states in different individuals and this can play out as a general tendency towards optimism or pessimism. Anyone with more than one child has no doubt been blown away with the subtle differences in personality that must at some level be biological.

Other biological factors no doubt play a part too. We know that exposure to sunlight, for example, has effects that change mood. But, of course, there are factors outside the brain, too. Experience changes the brain. What we see and what we think, is shaped by the brain but also shapes the brain. Those who are more pessimistic often have good reason for pessimism, having experienced insurmountable difficulties, terrible trauma, or shattered dreams. Parenting and childhood experiences surely have some effect.

Of course, it is an incredibly complex dance of biological and biographical factors intertwining that make us who we are. But, personally I'm with you. I'm an optimist. Maybe we can start a club.

Aside: a comic I've worked with several times wrote one of my current favorite jokes, "I went to a meeting of the Optimists' club. When I got here the room was half empty, but by the time I left it was half full."

Anonymous asks,

"How does Heidegger's notion of "thinking" differ from the normal way of thinking about "thinking"?"

Those who are better schooled in Heidegger, please correct me on this, but as I understand Heidegger, the key to being an authentic being (when you are truly authentic, you earn capitalization and are referred to as a Being) is acting, doing, creating yourself. We normally think of thinking as the opposite of doing, as passivity. There is the world we act in and then there is the mental world where we escape from our situation, our troubles, ourselves. This sort of thinking is seen by Heidegger as self-deception and takes you away from your humanity.

But this is not true of real thinking. To live a truly human life, you must not only do, but understand why you do what you do. Thinking, he argues, must be done in language and language is made up of concepts which endow the things they are attached to with meaning. By "thinking" what we are doing is connecting the world with language and thereby giving our lives meaning. "Language is the house of Being," he says. Mere contemplation keeps you from being fully human, merely acting will not work, but active thinking which connects your actions and situation in the world with a deeper sense of meaning will do the trick.

Crossing the analytic/continental divide, SteveD asks,

"If someone does not believe in the supernatural, on what basis can he reject the possibility of artificial intelligence? (Or, more pointedly, are folks like Searle who say strong AI is impossible smuggling in some supernatural notions of mind?)"

Let's start with the difference between weak and strong AI. Weak AI is a non-human brain that sure as heck looks like it's thinking. If I'm chatting over IM with two others, one a computer and one a human, and I can't tell the difference between them, that's weak AI since the simulation gives all appearances of thought. Strong AI is when there is actual thinking, internal experiences like we have, it not only reacts as if it is interested or in pain, but really is interested or in pain.

John Searle argues against the possibility of strong AI most famously with his Chinese Room argument wherein we have a person who speaks no Chinese sitting in a small room filled with manuals that have Chinese characters in them. When messages in Chinese are slipped under the door, he takes them, looks up the characters in the manuals and writes down the corresponding characters and slips the new message back under the door. To a Chinese speaker, it seems like he or she is having a conversation with someone. But who? The person in the room does not speak Chinese and has no idea what he is writing, so there is no thought there. It can only be said that the person is conversing with the room, but surely we don't want to attribute a mind to the room even if the person really, really thinks there is an intelligence conversing with him or her. It will be thus with any attempt to move from weak to strong AI. It will be an impostor mind, not a real mind.

Given that humans are intelligent, there must be something we have that the machine doesn't, indeed can't have. If you want to be a dualist and say that we have both a material brain and an immaterial soul, problem solved. But if the extra metaphysical baggage of a soul bothers you (and there is good reason for this), can you maintain Searle's position and still be a materialist, can we have something the computer can't without moving to anything non-material?

Searle himself is a materialist arguing that strong AI itself presumes dualism, that strong AI only makes sense if we presume that there is this difference between us and computational machines. If we den this, then we deny the possibility of strong AI and keep from importing a soul. It is akin to the move that the logical positivists make with God: it's not that I can prove that God doesn't exist, but rather that such metaphysical claims are not meaningful. Searle would say to you that no, you can't argue against strong AI without the supernatural if you accept the strong AI picture of what AI could be, but then it's a game of three card monty that you lose by even playing. Don't try to win the game, reject the game.

Cheating and Dumping

A couple good ethical and political questions. Anonymous (if that is your real name) asks,

"Is using cheat codes when playing a video game cheating?"

Clearly, the person is intentionally violating the spirit of the game in order to gain an unearned advantage. but is that cheating? There seems to be two angles here that need considering.

First is whether one can cheat when there is no one who is cheated. Games are subject to social contracts that can be changed at will by the players. When Gwydion and I would play racquetball in grad school, for example, the rules would change by the point. Was it still racquetball or something more akin to Calvinball? A semantic question, but it wasn't cheating as long as we both agreed to the change and played accordingly. Can you, then, cheat at solitaire? You can certainly violate the rules as standard play is understood. But since it is your game and yours alone, you are able to change the rules at will. Maybe the game you won isn't solitaire, but another easier solitaire-like game and you would certainly be guilty of lying if you said you had won without informing your listener of the illegal move/rule change. In the same way, you wouldn't have won the video game or achieved some degree of mastery even though you are in a place in the game that ordinarily requires such mastery. Is that cheating? Probably not, but it would be dishonest to claim that you legitimately reached that level.

The second interesting point is that it is a part of the code, a part of the game itself. Now if you are competing against the game and the game gives you this move, is it wrong to exploit its weakness? If you are playing chess and your opponent goofs and makes a stupid move, you are well within acceptable play to take advantage of it. Trick plays like the flea flicker in football are within the rules and so admissible. Isn't this just a clever use of the rules of the game which are coded into it? In a sense it is. but what it does is undermine the point of playing a game. Games are strange in that we simultaneously set out a goal for ourselves and cut off the easiest routes to that goal. the point of a game is to see if you can meet a challenge. Exploiting a cheat code may not be cheating, but it also isn't playing.

Brock asks,

"Under what circumstances is it morally acceptable to default on a debt? Specifically, they were discussing walking away from underwater mortgages, leaving the bank stuck with the property; but I'd be interested in a more general answer."

I've been thinking about posting on this question for a while, so I'm glad you asked it. An underwater mortgage is one in which the amount owed on the property is greater than the value of the property. With exploding adjustable rate mortgages that many consumers were tlaked into, not fully understanding what was happening, many people are left with the decision to overpay for a house or simply let the bank have it. I've heard a number of those stories on NPR also and it is amazing that those who stay couch it in explicitly moral terms -- I agreed to this mortgage and it would be wrong for me to abandon it. it is morally necessary to pay off your debts, even if it means that you no longer have the wealth needed to flourish in this culture. But is it a moral question? does a debt obligation imply a moral obligation?

One the one hand, it is interesting that this same question isn't asked of the lenders who lured people into these deals, many of whom certainly did not understand the intricate details. These contracts are incredibly complex and anyone without a financial and/or legal background will have a hard time making sense of them. Additionally, they believed -- because they were led to -- that those who sold them these mortgages were their advocates, were looking out for their interests, not that they were adversaries in a marketplace negotiation. Many of these people were manipulated for the profit of the lender or broker. Does this obviate the obligation they incur, if they were led into the deal in a way that violates the good faith they presumed was on the other side? I think a case could be made.

But the more basic question is whether it is a moral question at all. We have an odd obsession in this culture with "quitters being losers," but isn't discretion sometimes truly the better part of valor? When you signed on the bottom line, you entered into a deal, the line goes, and it is akin to lying if you don't follow through. But it was not a personal agreement, it was a contractual one. You set up an ongoing series of potential contracts. If you make all the payments, the bank will give you the house. If you do not make the payments, the bank gets the house and gets to keep your money. Don't you maintain the power to decide every time a payment is due whether you want to continue this business arrangement? If you can't make the payment, then you have no choice, but in a sense isn't it like a lease to own arrangement where you could discontinue the lease at any time for any reason or, if you chose, you could see it through? It seems to me that this line confuses the agreement I make with a friend to keep a secret or pick him up at his house at 8 with a financial agreement with a bank. these seem different in that the personal does come with moral attachments where the latter does not.

There is a moral consideration, though, and that is to the community. The abandoned houses have a horrible effect on the neighborhood in many ways. How much of an obligation do I have to my neighbors? That's an interesting question and it would be the one place where moral considerations come into play.

Singularities and Scientism

C. Ewing asks,

"how do we reconcile conservation of mass with singularities?"

Short answer, we don't.

Longer answer: Einstein's theory of general relativity accounts for gravitation in terms of a curvature of space with a fraction x/y. Under certain concentrations of mass and energy, the y in that fraction goes to zero. As we all remember from elementary school, you can't divide by zero, it is not defined, it has no meaning.

So, what happens when our equations in physics give us nonsense results? Three possibilities: First is ignore it. When we are figuring out a length and the answer is the square root of four, we may realize that the square root of four is either positive or negative two, but since we cannot have negative lengths, we just ignore the negative possibility because it is "not physical."

Second, is we say that we need an alternative interpretation of the trouble spots, that is, we come up with some story about what happens there that is consistent with the rest of the theory so that we can keep it. Physicists talk of "smoothing out" the singularities, that is, tinkering slightly with the math so that we keep the spirit of the approach, but patch up the problems. The problem is when we have multiple possible patches, how do we decide which one we want to accept?

Third, you point at that spot as a weakness in the theory. You say that theory works well as far as it goes, but the next theory that replaces it will have to improve on this. Science gives us insight, but always opens more questions to be answered and what happens in this sort of situation would just be one of the ones we need a new theory to deal with.

This gives us a nice segue to Gwydion's question,

"What are the critiques of scientism that do not resort to or invoke supernaturalism, and what (if any) merit do you give them? Layman's terms, please."

If we take scientism to be the view that the set of all justified beliefs is equivalent to the set of all legitimate scientific results, we have several problems. The first obvious one is determining what counts as a legitimate scientific result. Is it a matter of consensus among scientists? That then turns it into a sociological matter influenced by all sorts of economic, political, and race, gender, and class-based factors -- certainly not the rock solid basis that was advertised. Is it the set of conclusions that derive with certainty or high probability from that mythical logical beast "the scientific method"? There is no unique logic underlying all scientific practice and inference.

Further, tying one's beliefs to a literal interpretation of scientific theories comes with serious risk since our best theory at any given time is at least provisional. The great philosopher of science, Imre Lakatos, famously said that every theory is born refuted, in other words, scientists know that our best theories, strictly speaking are always wrong. They are useful, but they will be replaced by new theories after a time, new theories that come with different concepts. Newton's theory of mechanics and gravitation stood for 300 years, but when replaced by Einstein's theory of relativity, it required a radical revision of the basic notions of space, time, motion, mass, and energy. If we tie our cart to horses we know will die, we should not attach them in a way that doesn't allow them to be unhitched.

Finally, we come to the question of interpretation itself. The concerns with scientism are not in appeals to supernaturalism, but to metaphysics. If there was a half-way house for abused words, metaphysics is one of the poor lexicographic souls that would have to reside there. When philosophers say metaphysics (or "ontology" if we are trying to impress someone), is not pyramid power, ESP, and chaneling, but rather the study of reality. What really exists?

We want to say things about the world, for example, that there are electrons and gravitational fields, but this goes beyond the theory. Scientific theories are what an old physics prof of mine called "a bunch of squiggles." Some of those squiggles connect to observable quantities like distance or mass, things we can measure, often things we can experience. We seem to have good reason to believe these are real (although here Descartes' worry about bridging the gap between our perceptions and that which caused the perception). Other squiggles are mathematical formalism, mere grammar that is not meant to be world pointing. An equal sign or a negative sign, for example, are part of the language we use to express our equations, but not held to represent part of the system whose behavior is being described. But then there is a third group of squiggles, what we call "theoretical terms," things like potentials, affine connections, field values. these are terms we use to connect the observable terms into something we can use to make predictions about observations to come.

But are they real? The best our scientific theories will give us is that they are useful, or useful in certain contexts of modeling. The hard-core scientistic folks, for example Ernst Mach, held that because they are unobservable, they cannot be given a metaphysical status. They are mere tools, not real things. And thus Mach derided anyone who thought atoms were real. And therein lies the problem with scientism, it gets rid of God, but with him goes metaphysical entities that even the hard core lover of science would want.

The Superbowl, Care Ethics, and Numbers

Tommy Scils asks,

"Saints or Colts?"

It depends on the question: which team do I think will win or which do I want to win? I think the colts will probably take it, but anyone who is not rooting for the Saints is a horrible person. I especially want the Saints because I started cheering for them in 1984 when Robert Irsay took the Colts from us in the middle of the night, like the spineless piece of garbage he was. When I was two years old, I carried Earl Morrall's playbook at training camp back at what used to be called Western Maryland College. My room as a boy was painted white and royal blue and I went to half the home games the last year they were in Memorial Stadium. Watching the colts win a Superbowl is like seeing your ex-wife, the one you loved with all your heart, who left you for the jerk she was cheating on you with, on television winning the lottery.

And that brings us to our second question from C. Ewing,

"Would you mind explaining cared-based ethics?"

Not at all. The idea is that human relations are not just calculations of pain and pleasure as the utilitarians would have it, contractual relations as the social contractarians argue, or based on abstract duties as Kant and the Deontologists (a great name for a band) argue, rather humans engage with each other in deep interpersonal ways, we have relationships. Those relationships come with moral weight. When I know you, I owe you.

If it is a dark rainy night and you are late for a very important meeting and you pass someone broken down on the side of the road without a cell phone and you don't stop, you should feel a bit guilty. But if it is an old friend, you are a complete cad. If it is your mom...what's the matter with you? The idea is that when you have a connection to someone, that connection is based on care, concern for the person's welfare and you need to act in such a way as to help promote that person's well-being.

It is a line that comes from insights of second-wave feminism who saw traditional ethics based upon notions of contract and exchange, ideas of the courtroom and marketplace. But these didn't fit when we looked at basic human roles like parent or spouse. I don't do something for TheWife in expectation that she will pay it back, I do it because I love her. Similarly for the shorties, I want what is best for them because I care and that care means that they occupy a privileged ethical position. Consider the classic utilitarian conundrum in which you have one child drowning at one end of a pool and two at the other. The utilitarian says that you must go to the side with two, but suppose the one was your child. We would think something wrong with the parent who acted according to this cold calculation. By having the child, you accepted a special ethical burden.

This is why when you send those chocolates to your beloved who doesn't care for you, she sends them back. Not that she doesn't like chocolate, after all, who doesn't like chocolate? But by accepting them, she would be completing an act of care and allowing herself to be part of a relationship and that means that she now has a certain standing towards you she does not want. "We can still be friends," delimits the relationship and the degree of care that can be expected.

An act is a good act if it reinforces, deepens the relationship and problematic if it violates the sense of care, alienating those in the relationship. Baltimore loved it Colts, but Irsay left for a new stadium. He took a care-based relationship and severed it for contractual, monetary concerns. And that is why I say "Geaux Saints!"

This also accounts for part of the answer to Claude's question:

"Why do people feel it dehumanizing to be labeled by a number instead of a name? There are hundreds, if not thousands, with my name (first + last), whereas numbers can be unique."

It is true that name or number would be a symbol we use to represent our identity and that the number would be unique, the difference is that the number is randomly assigned whereas the name is something we see as part of our identity. When someone addresses us by name s/he recognizes you for the person you are and thereby a relationship is implied. By using the number, or in many instances a title, it keeps you as an abstract being, as a generic human. But when we call someone by name, especially a first name or a nickname, we assert in our utterance that we are dealing with you as you, not just as anybody.

Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics: Any Questions?

Been a while since we've done this, so let's go.

I have a schtick I do at the beginning of every class where I let my students ask me absolutely any question they have, any question at all, as I say, from auto mechanics to quantum mechanics. When I started up this blog years ago, some former students asked me to revive it on-line, so every once in a while I open it up.

So, if there's a question you've always wanted to ask or something that's just been stumping you, here's your chance. Ask away and I'll try to open up to discussion as many as possible in this week's posts.