Monthly Archives: April 2008

Seeking the Designer

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Jerry Pournelle offers not a defense of Intelligent Design, but a response to some of its harsher critics:

1. while many “Intelligent Design Theorists” are in fact fundamentalist creationists, not all of them are, and some like the late Sir Fred Hoyle are not creationists at all.

2. The panspermia hypothesis, which asserts that life originated on a planet other than Earth and was brought here by either natural or intelligently directed actions, is hardly ludicrous, has at least some unexplained evidence in its favor, and holding it as an hypothesis is hardly evidence of buffoonery. The late Robert Bussard was well known to believe in panspermia. Several of my science fiction novels make use of this hypothesis, and I have yet to see any definitive refutation.

3. Many of those in Dawkins’ camp use proof by assertion: they simply say that there are no features that demonstrate “irreducible complexity” and those that seem to are illusions; and while they have not shown the steps that would lead from easily explained conditions to the complex feature, they have great confidence that they will find them, and anyone who doesn’t believe that is an idiot.

4. In my judgment, reason and science are not in conflict to those willing to spend the time and effort in genuine study of the apparent irreconcilable differences. I note that I share that view with His Holiness Benedict XVI, who has asserted this all his life, most notably in his Regensburg Speech (Full Text), which is well worth your attention. Do note that the truth or falsity of this point is not definitive regarding my critique of Dawkins. It does, I presume, qualify me as a buffoon in Professor Dawkins’ estimation.

I personally think it extremely unlikely that the “irreducible complexity” critique of evolution will pan out, at least in terms of proving that God exists. But it is interesting that (according to Pournelle) current computer models of evolution can’t make some of these leaps — simple light receptor to fully functioning eye — without a little tinkering in the background. At the very least, the ID critique may prove useful in helping us to improve our computer models of evolution.

FastForward Radio

Sunday night your hosts Phil Bowermaster, Stephen Gordon, and Michael Darling discussed weird ideas about the future… both past-futures that turned out to be bizarrely wrong and very strange futures that may turn out to be right.

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Click image to see it larger.

Obviously, predicting the future is difficult. Given the uncertainty, do Futurists still have a role to play in preparing us for the future?

Click “Continue Reading” for listening options and the show notes:

None a Day

From KurzweilAI.net:

Vitamins ‘may shorten your life’

BBC News, April 16, 2008

Copenhagen University research has suggested that certain vitamin supplements do not extend life and could even lead to a premature death.

A review of 67 studies with trials involving 233,000 people found “no convincing evidence” that antioxidant supplements cut the risk of dying,” and suggested that vitamins A and E could interfere with the body’s natural defences, and that beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E seem to increase mortality.

The researchers linked vitamin A supplements to a 16% increased risk of dying, beta-carotene to a 7% increased risk and vitamin E to a 4% increased risk.

More details here. This sounds kind of like when they figured out that, with trans fatty acids and all, margarine is worse for your heart than butter.

Sheesh. Be careful out there.

Setting the Bar Kind of High, Aren't They?

Look, I know this is way off topic, and I’m nobody’s Lileks or anything, but I just had to share this message that I found in my inbox…

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See there? It’s a restaurant and they’re serving Restaurant Quality pasta!

Pretty bold move. I hope it doesn’t come back to bite them. Because from the pictures, it looks more to me like Church-Potluck Quality pasta — or possibly even Hospital-Cafeteria Quality pasta.

But what do I know? Way to reach for the stars, Pizza Hut!

UPDATE: Instalanche. I’m so inspired by this entry’s success that I’m going to try to write several blog-quality posts over the next few days. And today at work, my goal is to make one or two middle-management quality decisions. Fingers crossed!

Setting the Bar Kind of High, Aren’t They?

Look, I know this is way off topic, and I’m nobody’s Lileks or anything, but I just had to share this message that I found in my inbox…

restaurant-quality-pasta.jpg

See there? It’s a restaurant and they’re serving Restaurant Quality pasta!

Pretty bold move. I hope it doesn’t come back to bite them. Because from the pictures, it looks more to me like Church-Potluck Quality pasta — or possibly even Hospital-Cafeteria Quality pasta.

But what do I know? Way to reach for the stars, Pizza Hut!

UPDATE: Instalanche. I’m so inspired by this entry’s success that I’m going to try to write several blog-quality posts over the next few days. And today at work, my goal is to make one or two middle-management quality decisions. Fingers crossed!

Home Alone

I’m an E.T. skeptic. The Fermi Paradox is the reason. The Fermi Paradox asks, reasonably, if intelligent life arises easily and often, then where is everybody? As old as the galaxy is, and considering the possibility of self-replicating Von Neumann probes, we shouldn’t be able to swing a cat without hitting a Vulcan – or at least a robotic emissary.

The most likely answer attacks the premise of the paradox. Intelligent life (at least intelligent life that gives rise to interstellar civilizations) doesn’t arise easily or often. We’re alone. At least in this galaxy.

Some who have accepted this explanation of the Fermi Paradox have posited a depressing reason for E.T.’s absence – perhaps civilizations that reach our level of development tend to self-destruct.

But the great filter for interstellar civilizations doesn’t have to be in front of us. There is a good argument that it is behind us.

[According to Professor Watson from the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia] Solar models predict that the brightness of the sun is increasing, while temperature models suggest that because of this the future life span of Earth will be ‘only’ about another billion years, a short time compared to the four billion years since life first appeared on the planet.

“The Earth’s biosphere is now in its old age and this has implications for our understanding of the likelihood of complex life and intelligence arising on any given planet,” said Prof Watson.

“At present, Earth is the only example we have of a planet with life. If we learned the planet would be habitable for a set period and that we had evolved early in this period, then even with a sample of one, we’d suspect that evolution from simple to complex and intelligent life was quite likely to occur. By contrast, we now believe that we evolved late in the habitable period, and this suggests that our evolution is rather unlikely. In fact, the timing of events is consistent with it being very rare indeed.”

We’re probably alone, but self destruction doesn’t have to be our fate. If we can make it through the next century or so, we stand a fair chance of settling the galaxy.

Myths of Innovation

Via Boulder Future Salon, here’s a lecture from Carnegie Mellon University on the subject of innovation.Scott Berkun worked on the development team for Internet Explorer, where he says that innovation was his job. One interesting moment is when he claims that he managed to do some good, innovative work “in spite” of the company he worked for.

He provides some good example of innovators from a lot of different fields, pointing out that they tend to be renegades and rebels. But their most important common characteristic is that they believed in an idea that they thought was interesting or cared about, and pursued it.

Berkun starts out by dispelling what he calls the “myth of epiphany,” the notion that a mgic moment of inspiration touches innovators and moves them to make their contribution. He believes that we use the myth of the epiphany to absolve ourselves from responsibility for innovating. After all, if you don’t have a magic moment, and the “Innovation Muse” passes you by, whose fault is that?.

He uses the familiar stories of Archimedes in the bathtub and Newton and the apple to explain how the “myth of the epiphany” lets us focus on trivia — Archimedes running through the streets naked; Newton getting bonked on the head by the apple — and ignore the hard work and extensive thinking that lay behind the moment of inspiration.

He points out that creativity literature is focused on developing habits for playing with ideas, and lowering inhibitions to new ideas. The “eureka moment” has a lot less to do with the actual moment than it does with the habits of mind the innovator has developed.

He provides some great examples of how following an idea can lead to highly unexpected destinations.
For example, the guys who developed Youtube actually started out trying to develop a video version of Hot or Not. And the folks who developed Flickr were got there by way of trying to start a software company.

He closes with the story of William McKnight and 3M , explaining how a company called “Minnesota Manufacturing and Mining” (3M) came to be in the Post-it Notes business.

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The Meme that Continues to Unite the World

Say, did you hear the one about the clever German kid who gave a hand to the hapless, math-challenged American scientists?

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Chances are you did. It’s all over the web. I saw it on both GeekPress and InstaPundit this morning (although Glenn did provide some very important follow-up information) and I note that it was the number one story on Digg Science this morning (having moved down to number three as of this writing.) Rest assured that we will hear about this in the late-night monologues this evening, especially if Leno’s staff is tracking the story. And those people, whoever they are, who compose the e-mails that get forwarded to a long line of people which eventually leads to your mother/cousin/former-coworker-who-for-some-reason-keeps-sending-you-stuff, and then finds its way on to you, are working feverishly on several different versions of the story, which you will see many times over the next 15 years or so.

And, hey — why not? It’s a great story. So what if it’s wrong…

Widespread media reports claim that a German schoolboy has recalculated the likelihood of a deadly planet-smasher asteroid hitting the Earth, and found the catastrophe is enormously more likely than NASA thought. The boy’s sums were said to have been checked by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and found to be correct.

There’s only one problem with the story: the kid’s sums are in fact wrong, NASA’s are right, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different. An ESA spokesman in Germany told the Reg this morning: “A small boy did do these calculations, but he made a mistake… NASA’s figures are correct.”

So why does the original story get so much more attention than the retraction? For one thing, as Glenn points out in his follow-up, sometimes a dog really does bit a man. In fact, most of the time that’s the way it happens. And it’s just not that interesting. So NASA’s math is better than this kid’s. Big deal. I think their math was better than mine when I was 13, too.

But I think the difference in interest levels goes beyond the man-bites-dog angle. This story plays into a powerful and cherished meme shared by virtually all the peoples of the world: Americans are stupid*.

Since many of us know (or at least believe) that Americans are, in fact, stupid — and since NASA has been plagued by some pretty significant gaffes in the past — maybe this isn’t a man-bites-dog story at all. Like any powerful meme, “Americans are stupid” seeks regular confirmation. Once it takes hold, its carriers are alert to any incoming information that might be relevant, and particularly that might add credence to the meme.

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Typical Americans, doing their thing

Concentrated Solar Power: Another Great New-Old Idea

Writing for Salon, Joseph Romm says that concentrated solar power (CSP) is the key to solving our energy problems.

One of oldest forms of energy used by humans — sunlight concentrated by mirrors — is poised to make an astonishing comeback. I believe it will be the most important form of carbon-free power in the 21st century. That’s because it’s the only form of clean electricity that can meet all the demanding requirements of this century.

Romm argues that CSP, which uses heat from the sub to move an electricity-generating turbine (as distinct from photovoltaics, which convert sunlight directly into electricity) can produce energy more efficiently coal or oil or even nuclear power. He claims that CSP can provide power at a cost of 10 cents per kilowatt hour or less. Concentrated solar power’s big advantage over conventional solar power has to do with storage:

The key attribute of CSP is that it generates primary energy in the form of heat, which can be stored 20 to 100 times more cheaply than electricity — and with far greater efficiency. Commercial projects have already demonstrated that CSP systems can store energy by heating oil or molten salt, which can retain the heat for hours. Ausra and other companies are working on storing the heat directly with water in the tubes, which would significantly lower cost and avoid the need for heat exchangers.

Romm provides a number of interesting examples of CSP applications throughout history. Before the invention of photovoltaics, CSP was the only real model for generating solar power. He even gives an example of a CSP-powered pumping station that was built and put into operation in Egypt in 1913. It was shut down during WWI, and then never reopened once cheap oil established itself as the dominant energy source.

So it’s interesting to see CSP making such a striking comeback. It reminds me of the recent news about production of automobiles running on compressed air – another idea that was experimented with a century or so ago, then pretty much forgotten, and which has now found new life. New technologies and new market conditions provide the opportunity for abandoned and all-but-forgotten ideas to re-emerge. My favorite example of this has to be the idea of building a Charles Babbage-style difference engine at the nano scale — a model of computing that would have been awkward and clunky to implement using 19th century industrial technology, and which was deserted in favor of 20th century electronics technology, now finds new life with 21st century nanotechnology.

FastForward Radio

Sunday night Phil Bowermaster, Stephen Gordon, and Michael Darling talked about future ethics. How will our views of right and wrong change?

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When, for example, will humans give up killing animals for food?

Click “Continue Reading” for listening options and the show notes: