Science

Four Lessons on Emotions from Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’

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I’m a huge Pixar fan. Have been ever since 1995’s Toy Story. One of the best books I’ve read this year is Pixar founder Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. The studio’s film quality is highly consistent[ref]There are exceptions like Cars.[/ref] and their latest Inside Out is no exception. This film tackles the complicated subject of human emotions (in the form of a little girl named Riley) and does so extremely well.[ref]I was holding back tears the final 20 minutes.[/ref] Their ability to handle the subject of emotions so delicately and accurately was likely aided by their scientific consultants, one of which is director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Because the film presents a healthy understanding of emotions, parents should seriously consider taking their children to see it and use it as a teaching tool. Here are four lessons kids (and adults) can learn from Inside Out:

1. Happiness is not just about joy

[B]y the end of the film, Joy [Amy Poehler]…learns that there is much, much more to being happy than boundless positivity. In fact, in the film’s final chapter, when Joy cedes control to some of her fellow emotions, particularly Sadness, Riley seems to achieve a deeper form of happiness.

This reflects the way that a lot of leading emotion researchers see happiness. Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of the best-selling How of Happiness, defines happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.” (emphasis added) So while positive emotions such as joy are definitely part of the recipe for happiness, they are not the whole shebang.

2. Don’t try to force happiness

Thank goodness emotion researcher June Gruber and her colleagues started looking at the nuances of happiness and its pursuit. Their findings challenge the “happy-all-the-time” imperative that was probably imposed upon many of us.

For example, their research suggests that making happiness an explicit goal in life can actually make us miserable. Gruber’s colleague Iris Mauss has discovered that the more people strive for happiness, the greater the chance that they’ll set very high standards of happiness for themselves and feel disappointed—and less happy—when they’re not able to meet those standards all the time.

…What’s a more effective route to happiness for Riley (and the rest of us)? Recent research points to the importance of “prioritizing positivity”—deliberately carving out ample time in life for experiences that we personally enjoy. For Riley, that’s ice hockey, spending time with friends, and goofing around with her parents.

3. Sadness is vital to our well-being

…Sadness connects deeply with people—a critical component of happiness—and helps Riley do the same…In one the film’s greatest revelations, Joy looks back on one of Riley’s “core memories”—when the girl missed a shot in an important hockey game—and realizes that the sadness Riley felt afterwards elicited compassion from her parents and friends, making her feel closer to them and transforming this potentially awful memory into one imbued with deep meaning and significance for her.

With great sensitivity, Inside Out shows how tough emotions like sadness, fear, and anger, can be extremely uncomfortable for people to experience—which is why many of us go to great lengths to avoid them…But in the film, as in real life, all of these emotions serve an important purpose by providing insight into our inner and outer environments in ways that can help us connect with others, avoid danger, or recover from loss.

4. Mindfully embrace–rather than suppress–tough emotions

At one point, Joy attempts to prevent Sadness from having any influence on Riley’s psyche by drawing a small “circle of Sadness” in chalk and instructing Sadness to stay within it. It’s a funny moment, but psychologists will recognize that Joy is engaging in a risky behavior called “emotional suppression”—an emotion-regulation strategy that has been found to lead to anxiety and depression, especially amongst teenagers whose grasp of their own emotions is still developing. Sure enough, trying to contain Sadness and deny her a role in the action ultimately backfires for Joy, and for Riley…Toward the end of the movie, Joy does what some researchers now consider to be the healthiest method for working with emotions: Instead of avoiding or denying Sadness, Joy accepts Sadness for who she is, realizing that she is an important part of Riley’s emotional life. 

Emotion experts call this “mindfully embracing” an emotion. What does that mean? Rather than getting caught up in the drama of an emotional reaction, a mindful person kindly observes the emotion without judging it as the right or wrong way to feel in a given situation, creating space to choose a healthy response. Indeed, a 2014 study found that depressed adolescents and young adults who took a mindful approach to life showed lower levels of depression, anxiety, and bad attitudes, as well as a greater quality of life.

Everyone should go see it.

The Final Countdown Is Over: Pluto Flyby

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Pretty awesome read and video from The Guardian on the Pluto flyby today:

Cheers, whoops and flag waving broke out at Nasa’s New Horizons control centre as scientists celebrated the spacecraft’s dramatic flyby of Pluto, considered the last unexplored world in the solar system. The probe shot past at more than 28,000mph (45,000 km/h) at 12.49pm BST (7.49am ET) on a trajectory that brought the fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth’s orbit within 7,770 miles of Pluto’s surface…Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge cosmologist, joined in congratulating the New Horizons team in a recorded message. “Billions of miles from Earth this little robotic spacecraft will show us that first glimpse of mysterious Pluto, a distant icy world on the edge of our solar system. The revelations of New Horizons may help us to understand better how our solar system was formed. We explore because we are human and we long to know,” he said.

The whole thing is definitely worth reading. But perhaps the best part?:

The moment, played out on Tuesday to the sound of The Final Countdown by the 1980s glam metal band Europe, marked a historic achievement for the US, which can now claim to be the only nation to have visited every planet in the classical solar system.

2015 Richard Johnson Lecture: “The End of Faith: Has Science Made Religion Redundant?”

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Peter Harrison

This past month was the second ever Richard Johnson Lecture put on by the Australia-based Centre for Public Christianity. This year’s speaker was historian Peter Harrison of the University of Queensland and former Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. I’ve followed (and bought)[ref]The books I own by him include The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge University Press, 2001), The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His most recent book The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015) seems to draw on his 2011 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh.[/ref] Harrison’s work ever since I listened to his interviews with CPX years ago and include him among great historians of science and religion like Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg. This lecture is divided into four parts:

  1. Science and Religion as Competing Belief Systems
  2. Modern Science and Patterns of Belief: Sociology
  3. The Rise of Science and the Decline of Religion: History
  4. Origins of the Conflict Thesis

For those interested in the history of science and religion, I strongly recommend giving the lecture and Q&A a listen.

Feeding the World With GMOs

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Image result for gmos

Golden rice was possible only with genetic engineering. The crop was stalled for more than ten years by the working conditions and requirements demanded by regulations…For example, we lost more than two years for the permission to test golden rice in the field and more than four years in collecting data for a regulatory dossier that would satisfy any national biosafety authority. I therefore hold the regulation of genetic engineering responsible for the death and blindness of thousands of children and young mothers.

This comes from Ingo Potrykus’ rather famous article in a July 2010 issue of Nature and is a written slap in the face to anti-GMO activists and the politicians who embrace them. This opposition has been described as partisan, though the anti-science stances of various parties are much closer than we often assume. I was reminded of the above quote after reading an article in Newsweek discussing new biotechnology and its opposition:

In 2012, a new tool was invented that revolutionizes how scientists can examine—and manipulate—plant genetic processes. It’s called CRISPR-Cas9, and unlike its predecessors in the world of genetic modification, it is highly specific, allowing scientists to zero in on a single gene and turn it on or off, remove it or exchange it for a different gene. Early signs suggest this tool will be an F-16 jet fighter compared with the Stone Age spear of grafting, the traditional, painstaking means of breeding a new plant hybrid. Biologists and geneticists are confident it can help them build a second Green Revolution—if we’ll let them.

…The process can easily modify plant DNA without changing the plant’s essence—except to make it tastier, more nutritious, quicker to market, easier to ship, machine-pickable, less needy of water and/or able to flourish in a heat wave. And we can do it for big companies and small, the world at large and isolated communities…In the old days, relying on hit-or-miss natural processes to breed plants took many years. Norman Borlaug, father of the first Green Revolution—a hugely successful effort to improve food-crop productivity in poor countries that began in the 1940s and eventually doubled or even quadrupled what many plants could produce—needed almost two decades to create a better wheat variety. With CRISPR-Cas9, we can compress that development cycle to a few days or weeks.

And yet, the activists continue to protest:

  • “Mexico, where maize was first domesticated, must now import it to meet local demand because activists there will not allow genetically modified organism hybrids. Mexico’s maize growers get yields 38 percent lower than the world average and three times below the U.S., where 90 percent of the maize crop is an insect-resistant GMO hybrid. Mexico’s fields are beset by such crop ravishers as the corn earworm, black cutworm and fall armyworm, which cost the country up to half its crops and incite farmers to spray their land with thousands of tons of chemical insecticides.”
  • “The European Union has approved just one genetically modified crop, a type of maize used for animal feed. The reasons are political and bureaucratic: A majority of member countries must approve a biotech plant, and anti-GMO sentiment runs strong in places where phrases like naturel and natürliche are more about what’s been done for centuries than what it actually means for something to exist in or be caused by nature.”
  • “The notion of GMOs has spooked environmental groups such as Greenpeace, which has resisted GMOs with violent action, including destroying an experimental Golden Rice field last year in the Philippines. This despite the fact that Golden Rice is being offered to the world by a nonprofit, with no commercial stipulations, and is likely to save many lives.”
  • ““No GMO” is now being embraced by consumer brands; the ascendant “fast-casual” chain Chipotle posts just such a sign in its restaurants. It makes sense: If over two-thirds of Americans think GMOs are unhealthy, declaring yourself GMO-free is a lucrative proposition. Local governments are also weighing in. Vermont now demands that all GMO foods sold there be labeled as such. Two rural counties in Oregon have banned GMO crops within their borders.”

The article ends with a quote from Gengyun Zhang, head of life sciences for BGI (China’s giant state-sponsored genetic engineering center): “With today’s technology, I have no doubt that we can feed the world.” Considering that the number of scientists who think GMOs are safe is slightly higher than those who think climate change is mostly due to human activity, perhaps we should give science a chance and activists the cold shoulder.

Malcolm Gladwell and the Engineers’ Grievance

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908 - Hug an Engineer
Hugging engineers is not the actual grievance.

Malcolm Gladwell has a long article in The New Yorker. Superficially, it’s about the man who ran Ford’s recall office during the 1960s and 1970s (at the time of the Pinto debacle). But what it’s really about is something altogether different: how engineers see the world differently.

There is an old joke about an engineer, a priest, and a doctor enjoying a round of golf. Ahead of them is a group playing so slowly and inexpertly that in frustration the three ask the greenkeeper for an explanation. “That’s a group of blind firefighters,” they are told. “They lost their sight saving our clubhouse last year, so we let them play for free.”

The priest says, “I will say a prayer for them tonight.”

The doctor says, “Let me ask my ophthalmologist colleagues if anything can be done for them.”

And the engineer says, “Why can’t they play at night?”

The greenkeeper explains the behavior of the firefighters. The priest empathizes; the doctor offers care. All three address the social context of the situation: the fact that the firefighters’ disability has inadvertently created conflict on the golf course. Only the engineer tries to solve the problem.

Almost all engineering jokes—and there are many—are versions of this belief: that the habits of mind formed by the profession enable engineers to see things differently from the rest of us. “A pessimist sees the glass as half empty. An optimist sees the glass as half full. The engineer sees the glass as twice the size it needs to be.” To the others, the glass is a metaphor. Nonsense, the engineer says. The specifications are off. He doesn’t give free rein to temperament; he assesses the object. These jokes, like many of the jokes people tell about themselves, are grievances. The engineer doesn’t understand why the rest of us can’t make sense of the world the way he does.

Later on, Gladwell talks about the head of the NHTSA (National Highway Transportation Safety Administration) who had just been dragged before Congress (again) to respond to questions about a Honda air-bag crisis (that had essentially zero impact on the safety of drivers on the road) instead of being allowed to continue to focus on the real safety concerns:

We have six hundred [staff at the NHTSA]. To deal with ten thousand people who are dying from drunk driving or ten thousand dying because they didn’t wear a seat belt, or the three thousand dying from distracted driving, or the four thousand dying because they are pedestrians or bicyclists and they are hit by a car.

And so Gladwell repeats his earlier observation: “Engineers have a grievance. They think we should think more like them.” And he adds: “They are not wrong.”

This resonates with me.[ref]Disclosure: one of my degrees is in engineering, but my full-time job is not in engineering.[/ref] My inclination is to be deeply cynical of anyone who wants to make the world a better place but has only studied in the kinds of disciplines where you never have to take a derivative. As one of my uncles said about his own kids, “They can major in whatever they want at college and math.”

898 - One Does Not Simply Hug An EngineerQuantitative disciplines like math, physics, or computer science are important for a lot of reasons. First, the objective failure you face in quantitative discipline tends more strongly towards teaching humility than the more subjective failure you face in non-quantitative disciplines. Computer scientists know this: their code either compiles or it does not.[ref]Not the only definition of success, obviously, but one necessary condition.[/ref] Mathematicians know this: they either proved the theorem or they did not. Physicists and chemists and engineers know this: their equations work out or they do not. Philosophers do not. They may think they do, but errors in philosophy usually have rounded edges thanks to the vagueness of language and sifting criteria of competing paradigms for evaluating arguments. There are, off the top of my head, at least three major conceptions of truth in philosophy, and that kind of ambiguity makes failure fuzzy.

Second, these disciplines are harder. There’s some wiggle room for individual variation, but overall there’s no question that math or physics or computer science are going to ask more out of you than education or English literature. This doesn’t just apply to academic disciplines, by the way. People whose livelihood depends on being able to do difficult things that have objectively observable results well face a lot of the same pressures as academics in objectively-grounded fields.

What does it all add up to? Be skeptical of anyone who says they  know the solution if that person doesn’t first understand what it’s like to not have the solution and be aware that wishing can’t change it. And be skeptical of someone who came by that solution too easily.

Don’t take this too far, folks. But keep it in mind when you’re thinking about controversial political questions and the sources you read to be better informed about them. Don’t automatically ignore everyone who didn’t major in math, but maybe keep an eye out for the folks who have quantitative backgrounds, who cite data, and who don’t claim to have easy or simplistic solutions to major, long-standing social problems.

Post-Secularism

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Detail from stained glass work "Education"(Chittenden Memorial Window at Yale). Public domain. (Image links to original.)
Detail from stained glass work “Education”(Chittenden Memorial Window at Yale). Public domain. (Image links to original.)

A fundamental assumption of the secularization thesis is that religious and scientific paradigms conflict intrinsically. Religion, comprising superstition and unreason, cannot exist side by side with science, comprising skepticism and reason. This irresoluble conflict requires the advance of science to come at the expense of religion. However, the prediction of the secularization thesis (that as the world modernizes secularism will come to dominate) has not been borne out over the last few decades. This is particularly true in the United States, where religion stubbornly refuses to to go quietly into that good night.

912 - Religiosity vs GDP

A new paper from the American Sociological Review goes deeper than merely noting the surprising longevity of American religion in the face of science, however, and severely undercuts the premise that religious and scientific paradigms are necessarily locked in a zero-sum contest.

The paper’s authors—Timothy L. O’Brien and Shiri Noy—start with data from the General Social Surveys conducted in 2006, 2008, and 2010. They measured respondents’ relationship to science based on two metrics. The first is the degree of favorability with which a person views science and the second is a person’s scientific literacy. They also measured respondents’ relationship to religion using two approaches, including asking questions like “whether the Bible is (1) the actual word of God, (2) inspired by the word of God, or (3) filled with myths and fables” and respondents’ views of their own religiosity.

Next, they used a statistical technique to determine whether the pattern of answers would be most likely to emerge from a population that had 2 cohorts (e.g. a religious cohort and a scientific one) or more than two. The results indicated that there were three cohorts present in the population.[ref]They tried up to 8 different cohorts. The model with three was the best fit for the data.[/ref]

The first two are well known. Traditionals, as they are called, tend to score lower on scientific literacy, trust science less, embrace religion more, and are also relatively marginalized in terms of social class. Traditionals are the largest group, and make up 43% of the sample. Moderns, by contrast, tend to score higher on scientific literacy, trust science more, are dismissive of religion, and are more socio-economically elite. They make up 35% of the sample. The new third group, making up just 21% of the sample, is the most interesting.

This is the group that O’Brien and Noy designated as post-seculars, and they emphasize that it is not merely “a midpoint between modern and traditional, but a distinct way of using science and religion to interpret the world.” In terms of science, post-seculars are roughly as literate as moderns, and much more literate than traditionals. “For example,” notes the article, “47 percent of the traditional class, compared to 92 and 90 percent of the modern and post-secular groups, respectively, correctly answered that radioactivity occurs naturally.” But post-seculars do not fully share in the optimism and confidence expressed by moderns about science. In addition, there are a couple of specific questions where post-moderns diverge dramatically from moderns: human evolution and the big bang. This table—an abbreviated version of Table 2 in the paper—shows just how wide that divide is.

Conditional Mean of Each Category
Question (0 = disagree, 1 = agree) Traditional Modern Post-Secular
The continents have been moving for millions of years and will move in the future? .665 .983 .801
The Universe began with huge explosion? .212 .678 .058
Human beings developed from earlier species of animals? .330 .877 .032

When it comes to a question about continental drift (which is an important question for reasons we’ll come to later), the post-secular group falls between traditionals and moderns: about 80% of post-seculars accept the theory vs 98% of moderns and 67% of traditionals. But when it comes to the big bang and human evolution, post-seculars reject the scientific consensus much more strongly than the traditionals. Post-seculars accept the big bang and human descent from animals at miniscule rates of 6% and 3%, respectively. That’s a truly astonishing degree of uniformity out of a cohort that represents more than 1/5th of the American public.

The trend is similarly fascinating when it comes to religion, with the post-secular group consistently showing the greatest levels of religiosity. They are also much more consistently conservative on political questions that have strong religious components, such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. In both cases, the post-secular cohort is not only more conservative than the moderns, they are more conservative than the traditionals as well. But on issues where there isn’t a direct religious component (like increasing fuel efficiency standards for vehicles or the amount of electricity generated by nuclear power), the post-seculars flip to be at least as pro-science as the moderns.

It is abundantly clear that the standard religion vs. science dichotomy is insufficient to explain what is happening in America, but the real story is harder to ascertain. Further research is required, of course, but here are some preliminary thoughts.

First, I disagree with the authors attempt to keep the secularization thesis on life support. While conceding that post-seculars demonstrate that there is no universal conflict between science and religion, the authors suppose that there are at least a few crucial issues where it really must be either religion or science, but not possibly both. Thus, “rather than the fully compatible worldview we anticipated, the post-secular perspective sees conflict between science and religion as limited to particular issues related to life. In these domains, the post-secular perspective is associated with a tendency to use religion to ground one’s views.” They also raise the possibility that post-seculars simply see questions of human and cosmological origins as unscientific and that therefore “for these individuals… evolution and the big bang are not viewed as legitimate science.”

The fundamental problem at this stage in the analysis is the failure to differentiate between science as philosophy and theory on the one hand, and science as social practice and institution on the other. It may very well be the case that scientific theory and religious belief are fully compatible on a philosophical level, but that scientific and religious authority are incompatible on a practical, social level.

Unfortunately, the issues of human evolution and cosmological evolution have become such controversial symbols in the dispute over authority, that it is impossible to separate philosophical from institutional concerns in simple survey responses. If, for example, a post-secular believes that God created human beings in His image using evolution as a mechanism, how would they respond to a question that asks about evolution without mentioning God? In a purely neutral context, it could go either way. But the contemporary context is very far from neutral. Post-seculars quite reasonably read questions on human evolution that leave out God as loaded questions about the practical, social concerns rather than as neutral ones about the science of genetics and natural selection. This interpretation is suggested by the question about continental drift. 80% of post-seculars agreed that the continents have been drifting for “millions of years,” which means that strict creationist accounts are emphatically ruled out by most post-seculars. The best way to reconcile a rejection of human evolution and a rejection of literalist creation accounts is to understand that the survey is conflating two distinct issues.

If this interpretation is correct, then post-seculars are not a cohort comprised of cafeteria scientists and cafeteria religious followers who pick and choose from the two like a double buffet to create their own idiosyncratic world views. Instead, their positive views of religion and science could very well represent a genuine project of unification and reconciliation on a philosophical level paired with an unflinching loyalty to religious authority on a practical level.

Who’s Better At Science?

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No one. Stop it. No seriously, stop.

The story of this thought starts here. Dan Kahan over at the Cultural Cognition blog found in his studies that, counter to his expectations, “identifying with the Tea Party correlates positively (r = 0.05,p = 0.05) with scores on the science comprehension measure.” Aha, take that Democrats! Except Kahan very clearly states “the relationship is trivially small, and can’t possibly be contributing in any way to the ferocious conflicts over decision-relevant science that we are experiencing.” So what does the Tea Party do? Runs with it anyways like the Democrats have done before.

This is dumb and has to stop. Using statistics with zero understanding of both the particular study and statistics in general is going to show exactly one thing: your preexisting biases. But more importantly, this arguing back and forth about whose group is “better” at science or whose group “accepts” more science is often nothing more than an attempt to be “good” at science by osmosis. If my group is better at science, that must mean that I personally am better at science, right? Or if I accept more scientific conclusions, that must mean I am better at science? No, and no. For example:

…there is zero correlation between saying one “believes” in evolution & understanding the rudiments of modern evolutionary science.

Those who say they do “believe” are no more likely to be able to be able to give a high-school-exam passing account of natural selection, genetic variance, and random mutation — the basic elements of the modern synthesis — than than those who say they “don’t” believe.

In fact, neither is very likely to be able to, which means that those who “believe” in evolution are professing their assent to something they don’t understand.

That’s really nothing to be embarrassed about: if one wants to live a decent life — or just live, really –one has to accept much more as known by science than one can comprehend to any meaningful degree.

What is embarrassing, though, is for those who don’t understand something to claim that their “belief” in it demonstrates that they have a greater comprehension of science than someone who says he or she “doesn’t” believe it.

I agree with Kahan. Accepting at least some of the conclusions of science–and authorities in general–beyond our personal ability to verify is essentially prerequisite to functioning in this world. But let’s not pretend that means we understand science merely because we accept it. And let’s definitely not make science into another piece in the age old war of “who is the better, smarter, and more handsome group.” If you’re worried about the state of science, I can promise you that even a large number of yahoos believing silly things won’t destroy science, but politicizing science most certainly will.

Progressivism, Rogue AI, and the Heat Death of Humanity

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Click the image to see Randall Munroe's explanation of why the robot revolution is unlikely to succeed.
Click the image to see Randall Munroe’s explanation of why the robot revolution is unlikely to succeed.

This is one of those blog posts that, once you’ve read it, makes you wonder how there was ever a possible universe in which you didn’t know the concepts that you just learned: The Heat Death of Humanity: Progressivism as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first major new concept has a humble name: paperclipper. According to the Less Wrong Wiki[ref]I have no idea[/ref], the paperclipper is “the canonical thought experiment showing how an artificial general intelligence, even one designed competently and without malice, could ultimately destroy humanity.” Imagine, as the original 2003 paper did, an AI given the task of maximizing the number of paperclips it has in its collection. Seems harmless enough at first glance. However:

If it has been constructed with a roughly human level of general intelligence, the AGI [artificial general intelligence] might collect paperclips, earn money to buy paperclips, or begin to manufacture paperclips. Most importantly, however, it would undergo an intelligence explosion: It would work to improve its own intelligence, where “intelligence” is understood in the sense of optimization power, the ability to maximize a reward/utility function—in this case, the number of paperclips. The AGI would improve its intelligence, not because it values more intelligence in its own right, but because more intelligence would help it achieve its goal of accumulating paperclips. Having increased its intelligence, it would produce more paperclips, and also use its enhanced abilities to further self-improve. Continuing this process, it would undergo an intelligence explosion and reach far-above-human levels. It would innovate better and better techniques to maximize the number of paperclips. At some point, it might convert most of the matter in the solar system into paperclips.

Or, in the words of Eliezer Yudkowsky, “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.” In this case: paperclips.

Keep that example in mind for a moment, and think about recent critiques of the social justice movement: Chait’s, Ronson’s, or (what the heck), mine. The common thread is that there is no limiting principle to halt the downward spiral of ever increasing levels of outrage over ever smaller indignities. This doesn’t mean that the individual progressive causes are wrong. The problem is that–just as with the paperclipper–a benign (or even good!) goal has been mistaken for the only goal. Justice is the paperclip.

Well, obviously justice is a lot more intrinsically valuable than a paperclip (or any number of paperclips), but the fact remains that it isn’t the only goal. And justice at the expense of truth, or at the expense of mercy and forgiveness, or at the expense of any number of other possible virtues can become just as dangerous as the paperclipper.

There’s more to the story, however. The primary source of energy for the social justice movement is outrage, and the outrage is derived from examples of injustice. The more injustice the movement sees, the more energy it has available. To use a biological metaphor: here you have a bunch of leaf-eating herbivores and along comes an herbivore that can eat entire trees (bark, branches, and even trunks). The new organism is going to out-compete and eventually replace all others. But, in our case, the same feature that makes social justice ideology so perfectly adapted to our memetic ecosystem is also fueling a kind of second law of thermodynamics for social systems.

It seems that perhaps progressivism is the embodiment in human systems of the second law of thermodynamics, which can be roughly stated as “the tendency of natural processes to lead towards spatial homogeneity of matter and energy, and especially of temperature.”

The individual differences that social justice seeks to ameliorate may be, case-by-case, well worth the effort of amelioration. Or even eradication. But without a limiting principle, the risk is that all differences will be eradicated. And that’s bad because”

…If you even care about life existing – let alone the infinite diversity possible therein – then (contra Caplan), boundaries (such as national borders) are an absolute necessity. No differences, no energy flow, no (thermodynamic) work, no life. As in the stars, so on the earth: romance flows from polarity; trade from comparative advantage; thermodynamic work from heat differences;evolution from variation; economic competition from competing alternatives. All progress is driven by differences; so to erase differences is (counter-eponymously) to end progress.

A lot of this is argument-from-metaphor, of course, which is always perilous. But I certainly think there is some validity to this approach.

NYT: Writing Your Way to Happiness

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There was a fascinating article in The New York Times in January that I just came across that discusses the personal power of writing:

The scientific research on the benefits of so-called expressive writing is surprisingly vast. Studies have shown that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person’s health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory.

Now researchers are studying whether the power of writing — and then rewriting — your personal story can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness.

The concept is based on the idea that we all have a personal narrative that shapes our view of the world and ourselves. But sometimes our inner voice doesn’t get it completely right. Some researchers believe that by writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of better health.

It may sound like self-help nonsense, but research suggests the effects are real.

This reminds me of the research on fiction reading. There are a few examples of this kind of writing here at Difficult Run. Perhaps I should engage in this style of writing more for the sake of my health.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks’ Farewell

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The great British-American neurologist Oliver Sacks recently discovered that he has terminal cancer. A rare tumor of the eye that left him blind in one eye metastasized and now occupies a third of his liver. Sacks is the author of several books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, and Awakenings (which inspired the moving, Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro). Perhaps as a kind of farewell, he penned a wonderful article in The New York Times. He writes,

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it “My Own Life.” …I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15 years allotted to me beyond Hume’s three score and five have been equally rich in work and love. In that time, I have published five books and completed an autobiography (rather longer than Hume’s few pages) to be published this spring; I have several other books nearly finished…I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well). I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends…I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

I look forward to his forthcoming work and wish him and his family the best. May his precious few moments be as exciting and joyful as he hopes for above.