Tag Archives: Science

Alien Bad Guy Bias

By Robin Hanson · December 25, 2008 8:30 pm · Comments (27)

The Bad Guy Bias applies to Earth signals to aliens.  From the NYT:

The makers of the new movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” have arranged for it to be beamed into space on … the same day the movie opens here on planet Earth. … Dr. Shostak, who was a consultant for the new movie … [says] there are some people, he acknowledges, who might worry that broadcasting “The Day the Earth Stood Still” could be inimical to our interests. He added, “I think that if these people are truly worried about such things, they might best begin by shutting down the radar at the local airport.”

Shostak is right; compared to intentional signals, unintentional signals are a million times larger:

There are three large-dish instruments in the world that are currently employed for doing radar investigations of planets, asteroids and comets: ART (Arecibo Radar Telescope), GSSR (Goldstone Solar System Radar), and EPR (Evpatoria Planetary Radar). Radiating power and directional diagram of these instruments is so outstanding that it also allows us to emit radio messages to outer space, which are practically detectable everywhere in the Milky Way. This dedicated program is called METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) …

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Test Near, Apply Far

By Robin Hanson · December 3, 2008 6:30 am · Comments (9)

Companies often ask me if prediction markets can forecast distant future topics.  I tell them yes, but that is not the place to test any doubts about prediction markets. To vet or validate prediction markets, you want topics where there will be many similar forecasts over a short time, with other mechanisms making forecasts that can be compared. 

If you came up with an account of the cognitive processes that allowed Newton or Einstein to make their great leaps of insight, you would want to look for where that or related accounts applied to more common insight situations.  An account that only applied to a few extreme "geniuses" would be much harder to explore, since we know so little about those few extreme cases.

If you wanted to explain the vast voids we seem to see in the distant universe, and you came up with a theory of a new kind of matter that could fill that void, you would want to ask where nearby one might find or be able to create that new kind of matter.  Only after confronting this matter theory with local data would you have much confidence in applying it to distant voids.

It is easy, way too easy, to generate new mechanisms, accounts, theories, and abstractions.  To see if such things are useful, we need to vet them, and that is easiest "nearby", where we know a lot.  When we want to deal with or understand things "far", where we know little, we have little choice other than to rely on mechanisms, theories, and concepts that have worked well near.  Far is just the wrong place to try new things.

There are a bazillion possible abstractions we could apply to the world.  For each abstraction, the question is not whether one can divide up the world that way, but whether it "carves nature at its joints", giving useful insight not easily gained via other abstractions.  We should be wary of inventing new abstractions just to make sense of things far; we should insist they first show their value nearby. 

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Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?

By Rebecca Roache · November 18, 2008 9:00 pm · Comments (66)

Following the announcement last week that Oxford University’s controversial Biomedical Sciences building is now complete and will be open for business in mid-2009, the ethical issues surrounding the use of animals for scientific experimentation have been revisited in the media—see, for example, here , here, and here.

The number of animals used per year in scientific experiments worldwide has been estimated at 200 million—well in excess of the population of Brazil and over three times that of the United Kingdom. If we take the importance of an ethical issue to depend in part on how many subjects it affects, then, the ethics of animal experimentation at the very least warrants consideration alongside some of the most important issues in this country today, and arguably exceeds them in importance. So, what is being done to address this issue?

In the media, much effort seems to be devoted to discrediting concerns about animal suffering and reassuring people that animals used in science are well cared for, and relatively little effort is spent engaging with the ethical issues. However, it seems likely that no amount of reassurance about primate play areas and germ-controlled environments in Oxford’s new research lab will allay existing concerns about the acceptability of, for example, inducing heart failure in mice or inducing Parkinson’s disease in monkeys—particularly since scientists are not currently required to report exactly how much suffering their experiments cause to animals. Given the suffering involved, are we really sure that experimenting on animals is ethically justifiable?

In attempting to answer this question, it is disturbing to note some inconsistencies in popular views of science. Consider, for example, that by far the most common argument in favour of animal experimentation is that it is an essential part of scientific progress. As Oxford’s oft-quoted Professor Alastair Buchan reminds us, ‘You can’t make a head injury in a dish, you can’t create a stroke in a test tube, you can’t create a heart attack on a chip: it just doesn’t work’. Using animals, we are told, is essential if science is to progress. Since many people are apparently convinced by this argument, they must therefore believe that scientific progress is something worthwhile—that, at the very least, its value outweighs the suffering of experimental animals. And yet, at the same time, we are regularly confronted with the conflicting realisation that, far from viewing science as a highly valuable and worthwhile pursuit, the public is often disillusioned and exasperated with science. Recently, for example, people have expressed bafflement that scientists have spent time and money on seemingly trifling projects—such as working out the best way to swat a fly and discovering why knots form—and on telling us things that we already know: that getting rid of credit cards helps us spend less money, and that listening to very loud music can damage hearing. Why, when the public often seems to despair of science, do so many people appear to be convinced that scientific progress is so important that it justifies the suffering of millions of animals? Continue reading "Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?" »

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Behold Our Ancestors

By Robin Hanson · October 13, 2008 10:00 am · Comments (17)

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Audaxviator_2 A community of the bacteria Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator has been discovered 2.8 kilometres beneath the surface of the Earth in fluid-filled cracks of the Mponeng goldmine in South Africa. Its 60C home is completely isolated from the rest of the world, and devoid of light and oxygen. … 

99.9% of the DNA [there] belonged to one bacterium, a new species. The remaining DNA was contamination from the mine and the laboratory. …  A community of a single species is almost unheard of in the microbial world. … Deep-sea vent communities, for instance … use oxygen … produced by photosynthesising plankton at the surface. ….

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Intelligent Design Honesty

By Robin Hanson · September 11, 2008 6:00 am · Comments (77)

The excellent and famous philosopher Thomas Nagel on teaching intelligent design:

When … in response to the finding that the teaching of creationism in public schools was unconstitutional, the producers of creation science tried to argue that young earth creationism was consistent with the geological and paleontological evidence, … their arguments were easily refuted. … That is a good enough reason not to teach it to schoolchildren. ..

I agree with Philip Kitcher that the response of evolutionists to creation science and intelligent design should not be to rule them out as "not science." He argues that the objection should rather be that they are bad science, or dead science: scientific claims that have been decisively refuted by the evidence. … However, the claim that ID is bad science or dead science may depend … on the assumption that divine intervention in the natural order is not a serious possibility. …

So far as I can see, the only way to make no assumptions of a religious nature would be to admit that the empirical evidence may suggest different conclusions depending on what religious belief one starts with, and that the evidence does not by itself settle which of those beliefs is correct, even though there are other religious beliefs, such as the literal truth of Genesis, that are easily refuted by the evidence. I do not see much hope that such an approach could be adopted, but it would combine intellectual responsibility with respect for the Establishment Clause. …

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‘Anyone who thinks the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world is a t**t.’

By Rebecca Roache · September 8, 2008 3:00 pm · Comments (29)


This week is Big Bang Week at the BBC, with various programmes devoted to the switch-on of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Wednesday morning.  Many of these programmes are covered in this week’s issue of the Radio Times—the BBC’s listings magazine—which also features a short interview with Professor Brian Cox, chair of particle physics at the University of Manchester. Asked about concerns that the LHC could destroy the earth, he replies:

‘The nonsense you find on the web about “doomsday scenarios” is conspiracy theory rubbish generated by a small group of nutters, primarily on the other side of the Atlantic.  These people also think that the Theory of Relativity is a Jewish conspiracy and that America didn’t land on the Moon.  Both are more likely, by the way, than the LHC destroying the world.  I’m slightly irritated, because this non-story is symptomatic of a larger mistrust in science, particularly in the US, which includes things like intelligent design. [… A]nyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t**t.’ (Final word censored by Radio Times.) [1]

Who counts as a nutter and a t**t on this reckoning?  It is true that anyone who thinks there is a 100% chance that the LHC will definitely destroy the world is confused—but it’s probably also true that not many people really think this.  On the other hand, if anyone who thinks that it is worth taking seriously the (admittedly very slim) possibility that the LHC will destroy the world is a t**t, then there are many apparently very clever t**ts knocking about in our universities.  Among these are several of my colleagues: Nick Shackel has previously blogged about the risks of turning on the LHC, as has Toby Ord; and Rafaela Hillerbrand, Toby Ord, and Anders Sandberg recently presented on this topic at the recent Future of Humanity Institute-hosted conference on Global Catastrophic Risks. And, despite having chatted to each of these people about the LHC at some point or another, I’ve never heard any of them express sympathy for the view that the Theory or Relativity is a Jewish conspiracy or that nobody landed on the Moon.  So, are they t**ts or not?

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Our Comet Ancestors?

By Robin Hanson · August 7, 2008 6:00 am · Comments (16)

A few years ago PCW Davies persuasively argued that Earth life more likely started on Mars.  Last year, Napier and coauthors argued that comets are an even more likely source:

The recognition that life has an information content too vast to be assembled by random processes has led to many discussions of possible evolutionary routes, starting from a simpler self-replicating organic system and ultimately leading to the present-day protein- DNA-based life. … The clay model … uses the repeating lattice structures of clay particles and their catalytic properties of converting simple organic molecules in aqueous solution into complex biopolymers. …

The volume of clay on the Earth is vastly surpassed by that in comets. A single comet of radius 10 km and 30% volume fraction of clay contains as much clay, to within a factor of around 10, as that of the early Earth. However, our Solar System is surrounded by about 10^11 comets forming the Oort cloud …  Whereas the average persistence of shallow clay pools and hydrothermal vent concentrations of clay on the Earth can range from 1 to around 100 years, a cometary interior provides a stable, aqueous, organic-rich environment for around 10^6 years.  … mechanisms for interstellar panspermia have recently been identified, and we may
have to multiply this number by the number of Oort cloud analogues in the Galaxy.

(See also comments.)  The entire paper is very short and qualitative – I’d have preferred quantitative discussion of rates of comet collisions with each other and with early Earth, to help us estimate how fast comet life could spread across comets, and how far it would have needed to spread to give it a decent chance of spreading to Earth. 

But my core reaction is to marvel at how little work like this gets done.  Figuring out the origins of life usually comes near the top of important scientific questions, yet in fact few resources go into this area.  One reason, I suspect, is that for now the best way to approach this subject is qualitative and integrative, while academia mainly rewards impressive displays of ways with words, math, and tech.  Does the topic also just seem silly?

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Touching Vs. Understanding

By Robin Hanson · July 30, 2008 6:00 am · Comments (14)

On the plane home last week I talked to a sharp Yale historian, and realized we devote far more resources to preserving historical sites, and to making history available via museums, than we do to funding professional historians to make sense of it all.  That reminded me of complaints that NASA spends far more on sending instruments into space to collect data than it does on funding scientists to analyze that data.  In both cases we collect far more data than ever gets carefully analyzed.

Now part of the explanation must be that the public can more easily see historical sites, museums, and space instruments than historians and data analysts.  But that doesn’t seem to me a sufficient explanation – I suspect we are also just more interested in touching the past, and in touching space, than in understanding either.  We talk about understanding because that is a modern applause light, but really we just like to touch exotic things.  The more we can touch, the further is our reach, and the more important and powerful we must be.  I wonder how much more this explains.

Added: We have related desires to see art and sport events in person, up close, and to meet and touch celebrities in person. 

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Funding Bias

By Robin Hanson · July 28, 2008 6:00 am · Comments (17)

From a Post article while I was traveling:

Wal-Mart and Toys R Us … will stop selling plastic baby bottles, food containers and other products that contain [BPA]. … One of the eyebrow-raising statistics about the BPA studies is the stark divergence in results, depending on who funded them.  More than 90 percent of the 100-plus government-funded studies performed by independent scientists found health effects from low doses of BPA, while none of the fewer than two dozen chemical-industry-funded studies did.  This striking difference in studies isn’t unique to BPA. When a scientist is hired by a firm with a financial interest in the outcome, the likelihood that the result of that study will be favorable to that firm is dramatically increased. …

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Cloud Seeding Markets

By Robin Hanson · July 9, 2008 6:00 am · Comments (3)

Nature considers cloud-seeding:

Chinese meteorologists will use weather-modification technologies to try to stop rain from spoiling the [Olympic] party. … Official figures … say that the country created 250 billion tonnes of rain between 1999 and 2006. … Critics say that many of these claims are laughable, and that most of the projects under way are based on little more than faith. … Today, countries from Australia to Iran practise some form of cloud-seeding – as do nearly a dozen US states. …

Some Chinese rain-makers have tried to conduct controlled seeding experiments. … In the early 1990s, the researchers found that rainfall rose by 18% as a result of 21 seeding operations – but the sample was too small for the results to be statistically significant.  In an earlier study, conducted between 1975 and 1986, meteorologists in … southeast China, conducted a randomized seeding experiment with two 14,000-square-kilometre regions. Over the course of 244 experimental days, they found that areas that had been seeded had 20% more rainfall than did those that had been left to their own devices.

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