Every winter, when the Hudson River freezes up north, the bald eagle population of the upper Hudson Valley migrates to more southerly open water, sometimes as far south as the north end of Manhattan. As Haliaeetus leucocephalus is my totem bird (much like the naked mole rat is my totem rodent, with it's glabrousness), I make at least one winter pilgrimage each year to see the majestic eagles by the mighty Hudson (layin' it on thick here). This year, I made the trip twice- the first time seeing a perching juvenile and an adult in flight (both in Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson). My second eagle watching trip took place, appropriately enough, on Presidents' Day. I started off by driving to Charles Point Park on the Peekskill/Buchanan border- immediately north of the Indian Point nuclear power plant* (the park's Fleischmann's Pier is a major destination for local eagle watchers). I saw a juvenile eagle and an adult eagle sitting on ice floes in the middle of the river- too far to get a photograph. My next planned destination was George's Island Park in Montrose, but some friendly eagle watchers informed me that they had just come from there, and no birds were to be seen. I decided to hit Route 9 (the road starts off as Broadway- yes, that Broadway- and extends to the Canadian border) and head south to Croton Point Park, and spied a magnificent juvenile eagle flying overhead. I didn't see any eagles at Croton Point Park, but I did happen to see some pretty outré things...
Croton Point Park is a "capped" landfill that juts into the Hudson River like a claw. One can occasionally discern its origins by coming across an old brick or cinder block by the strand. Well, on my trips to the park, I came across more than old cinder blocks.
Here's a dead sturgeon, inexplicably perched on an ice floe, how the sturgeron got there, I really don't know (not all of these will rhyme, I can't be arsed poetasting here):
Here we have the wing of a bird, judging from the size of the wing and the colors of the plumage, I would guess that it belonged to a red-tailed hawk:
Finally, we have yet another eldritch shrine or fetish object. This one looks as if it had been constructed by a troop of girl scouts who worship Cthulhu. It is covered in shiny plasic beads, and the white object at the top is the mandible of a canid. The prominent "G", if I am correct, would stand for Great Old Ones:
Now, who's up for an overnight camping trip in Croton Point Park?
Postscript: I never did get any beautiful pictures of majestic, soaring eagles... that's more of a job for a guy like Thunder.
Again, I will be working at a site I typically work at only a handful of times during the course of the year (though I love the staff, and the site is gorgeous). Before heading up to the site, I am planning on doing a little eagle watching (although I saw at least two eagles on site last Tuesday). While I am the sort of person who seeks novelty, there are a couple of yearly pilgrimages I conduct as a matter of routine.
Gotta bundle up- with the wind chill, it's in the single digits (Fahrenheit), and the wind off the Hudson is particularly biting. It's a pity I have to go to work, 'cos a wee nip of brandy would be just the thing to take the edge off the chill.
UPDATE: I saw at least three (2 adults and 1 juvenile), and possibly five eagles (those suckers cover a lot of ground) at the park- seeing two enormous, predacious be-winged beasties cooing to each other like lovey-dovey budgies is an inspiring, somewhat comical sight. I also need to get a decent camera, like that Thunder guy. Yeah, it was my New Year's resolution last year... at least I kept the "100 pushups a day" one. When I got to the work site, I saw one, possibly two, adult eagles. Life is pretty damn sweet.
This week, I took my annual pilgrimage north to do a bit of eagle spotting but, due to time constraints, only went to Charles Point Park, just north of the Indian Point nuclear reactor. This being an uncommonly warm winter, there were no ice floes in the Hudson, and I did not see any eagles in the vicinity. Today is the day of the annual Hudson Eaglefest, at which I could pick up info about good eagle-watching locations this year... if I didn't have to go to Manhattan to teach small children how to fight (to make matters worse, one of my all-time favorite students just had her appendix removed, so she'll be out of the loop for a while). Like I said, I only had time to hit Charles Point Park, and was unable to brave the eldritch horrors of Croton Point Park. I'll probably take a trip there next week to see if I can spot any big boids.
Today was a glorious day- the temperature was above the freezing point and the sky was a flawless, cloudless blue. Having felt cabin fever for weeks and needing a break from politics and current events, I decided to make my annual winter eagle-watching pilgrimage. I headed straight for Fleischmann's Pier in Buchanan, New York (immediately north of the Indian Point nuclear reactor). Fleischmann's Pier is the best eagle-watching spot that I know, and I was not disappointed today, spotting a half-dozen eagles in the vicinity.
When I arrived at the pier, there was a brisk wind blowing down the Bear Mountain gap, a fresh, cold breeze seemingly coming down from the Adirondack Mountains, up by the Canadian border. Looking north, I could espy the Bear Mountain Bridge, framed by the high walls of the Hudson Highlands, which define the fjord known as the Lower Hudson Valley:
I had the pleasure of seeing two adult eagles conducting an aerial dance, which my phone camera was unable to capture in its glory. I was able to click a bunch of sadly inadequate photos of the birds:
Best of all, a juvenile eagle, it's plumage a patchwork of grey and black feathers, soared about thirty or forty feet overhead, a glorious site that, alas, my phone camera was unable to capture in its sheer grandeur:
It was a wonderful way to spend a few hours on a brisk but beautiful afternoon. It's heartening to know that the eagles of New York are thriving, especially in light of a bacterial infection that is plaguing the South's eagle population. I certainly hope that the eagle-killing bacterium can be combated, it would be tragic to lose these imposing creatures after they've come back from the brink of extinction already.
Today's post is a break from the usual run of bad news about current events, and a detour into an unusual run of bad news... in an annual count of avian migration casualties by the Audobon Society's Project Safe Flight in New York City, a mass death event of birds was reported, and covered by Gizmodo. The end-of-summer migration season is in full swing, and New York City, with its glass towers and nocturnal lights, poses a terrible risk for birds on the move. There are ideas to make migration less fraught, such as turning off lights at night and making windows more visible with etching or decals.
In April of this year, my great and good friends of the Secret Science Club hosted a lecture on bird migration by author Scott Weidensaul. This lecture, and my regular reading on ecological matters, should have warned me of what to expect, but it didn't quite prepare me for the photograph of dead birds accompanying the Gizmodo article.
On the job, I am fortunate enough to be exposed to the natural world and its processes. The sites at which I work are on the route of the Atlantic Flyway. and I have been enchanted by the birds I have been able to observe, primarily osprey, and a couple of weeks ago, a pair of bald eagles which I hope establish a nest onsite. Tropical storm Ida forced us to shut down this site until repairs can be made to the local access road by the municipality, and to a gravel driveway by the organization. One of my coworkers, a acting manager of this site, is an even more avid birder than I am, and I'm sure she'd be upset to read this article, though she knows the perils faced by our avian darlings. Again, seeing the pictures packs an emotional punch that dispassionate knowledge lacks.
The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away.
About 16 miles (25 kilometers) south of Indian Point, the village of Tarrytown is aggressively pursuing a village-wide solar power initiative. Being 93 million miles from a nuclear power plant is preferable to being sixteen miles downstream from a leaking one.
The nuclear power plant has the Orwellian slogan Safe. Secure. Vital. Nothing sounds quite so safe, secure, and vital as an extremely disconcerting leak of radioactive water.
I'll probably end up making that drive north... it's not like I would be spending a lot of time at the site. Does anybody know of a good Geiger counter app?
This morning, at the tail end of my workday, I heard the news of the death of American music legend Pete Seeger at the age of 94. Pete lived a longer, fuller life than just about anyone.
Pete Seeger was right, by which I mean Left, about just about everything- he was a tireless champion of environmentalism, an opponent of McCartyism, a labor organizer, an anti-war activist, and an advocate of equal rights when taking such positions involved considerable personal risk. If there was one thing he was wrong about, it was a naivete about the evils of Stalinism, which (of course) he came to see long before his critics would admit.
Musically, Pete took up the baton passed to him by the legendary Woody Guthrie, with whom he played in The Almanac Singers, among whose songs was the anti-Hitler song Dear Mr President, which also exhorted FDR to improve American society for black and Jewish Americans:
In the late 1940s, Pete was a co-founder of The Weavers (named after a play about the Silesian weavers' uprising). Among the most famous Seeger co-compositions of the Weavers period was If I Had a Hammer:
For a good overview of the Weavers' career, the documentary Wasn't That a Time? is indispensible:
So in effect I was defending myself on the basis of the First Amendment. The Fifth Amendment in effect says you have no right to ask me this question. But the First Amendment in effect says you have no right to ask any American such questions.
Pete was held in contempt of Congress for his defiance and sentenced to a year in jail, but the charge was eventually dismissed, just in time for Pete to participate in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Pete helped to popularize an adaptation of the gospel songs I'll Overcome Someday and If My Jesus Wills, which came to be known as We Shall Overcome:
In his later years, Seeger was a fixture at the Newport and Clearwater folk festivals, both of which were started by his wife Toshi, who died last year. A good friend of mine, a volunteer at my workplace with whom I have spent many a Sunday morning as my graveyard shift ends and his volunteer stint begins, was heavily involved with the Clearwater festival for years, and knew Seeger personally.
In a call-in to WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show this morning, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr related a story about Pete enlisting the aid of future Riverkeeper John Cronin in building a dock, likening Pete to St Francis of Assissi, exhorting Mr Cronin, "Follow me!"
Pete Seeger's music has insinuated itself into the DNA of America... here in a moving performance from last year, he notes that his voice may not be strong, but that the audience's voices are, as he leads them in a rendition of Turn! Turn! Turn!:
Pete Seeger was a national treasure, and particularly a local treasure. I'd mourn his passing, but he'll live on through his body of music and the legacy of his activism. Rest in the peace that you advocated, as Bruce put it, you outlasted the bastards.
I was thinking about putting up an anodyne, apolitical post about 9/11 this year (I am a New Yorker, I had friends killed in the attack, and friends who died of illnesses related to the attack, and friends who are suffering the aftereffect of the attack), but then I saw Dotard's Twitter feed and decided to take the gloves off.
The Republican mayor of New York City, advised to put the emergency command center in downtown Brooklyn's Metrotech, put it in World Trade Center 7 as a favor to a well-connected real estate mogul, putting the nerve center right in the middle of the city's biggest target. There is a reason why Rudy was wandering the streets of downtown Manhattan, gaining an undeserved iconic status- it was his incompetence, not his valor.
After the attacks, the Republican administration decided not to go after the perpetrators of the attacks, but to prosecute a war against the innocent population of Iraq, ending up in the deaths of countless Iraqis, thousands of American servicemembers, and resulting in a destabilized Middle East and a refugee crisis which is now destabilizing Europe. The Republican administration also put into place a surveillance state which still threatens the civil liberties of all Americans.
9/11 was a Republican disaster, the responses to 9/11 were a Republican disaster. 9/11 should have marked the end of the Republican Party, but complicit corporate media persisted in portraying Republicans as 'strong on national security', all evidence to the contrary. 9/11 has degenerated into Right Wing Christmas, with all sorts of crying eagle kitsch (as an aside, those eagles would have gone extinct if environmentalists hadn't pushed for DDT bans). I hereby invite all of the Deplorables, MAGAts, Teabaggers, and the like to shove all of their kitsch, their victimhood, their false piety, their jingoism up their asses. Real people suffered, and are suffering, because of the incompetence of the people you voted and vote for, leave them to their remembrances. This isn't your day, assholes.
Today was a banner day, I got to hang out with Dr Jen W, who is a regular Wonkette commenter. While on a Zoom hangout session, she mentioned that she would be flying in from Portland, OR, and asked, "When are we going to hang out?" My reply was, "With my work schedule, I can take you to my workplace for an afternoon visit, or we could meet at Wo Hop in Chinatown at 2AM for some chow fun." I guess the prospect of hanging out with a bunch of drunks and cops in the wee hours of the morning wasn't so appealing.
We consulted the MTA Metro North schedule, and arranged to meet at the Tarrytown railroad station around 1:15PM, and I drove to one of my worksites, which is open to the public on a limited basis. We were extraordinarily lucky, there being two bald eagles onsite as well as the usual coterie of wild turkeys and osprey. I'm hoping that this is a mated pair looking to establish a nest... that would make me ecstatic. The manager on duty, being even more bird-obsessed than I, brought a pair of binoculars to work, so we were in for quite a treat. The weather was good for outdoor activity, slightly overcast and seasonally cool.
Our visit was a lovely one, of about two hours, then we went back to Tarrytown for a quick meal of mezédhes at the venerable Lefteris Gyro, before I had to go back to my workplace and clock in by 3:30PM.
The one boneheaded maneuver I pulled today was leaving my phone/camera in the car during our visit, so I didn't take any pictures. Everything else went perfectly, the timing, the visit itself, the panoply of flora and fauna... I just don't have photographic evidence of it all. I'd be willing to sign an affidavit to prove that it was a superfun day, though.
Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, for this month's Secret Science Club lecture featuring Dr Jay Van Bavel of NYU's Social Perception and Evaluation Lab. The topic of this month's lecture was "Our Partisan Brains".
Dr Van Bavel opened the lecture by showing the pictures contrasting Trump's inauguration crowd with Obama's inauguration crowd:
A majority of poll respondents indicated that fake news has left them confused about basic facts. There are fact checking organizations such as Politifact. He also noted that scientists are in the fact-checking business. After seeing a report that 15% of Republican voters believed that Trump's inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's even after being shown pictures, Dr Van Bavel wanted to answer a simple question: WTF? He noted that humans have highly partisan brains, and that our partisan brains shape our beliefs.
Democrats and Republicans are more divided than in the past, which is both a cause of and a consequence of the Trump phenomenon. Dr Van Bavel displayed a graphic from the Pew Research Center displaying this polarization:
There is evidence that liberals and conservatives have different brains. Identical twins are likely to share attitudes even if raised apart- there is a huge genetic component to an individual's attitudes. The actor Colin Firth was involved in the publication of a neuroscience paper concerning the brains of liberals and conservatives- the study indicated that liberals have more gray matter in the anterior cingulate cortex and conservatives had more gray matter in the amygdala. As an editorial note, and because Smut insists on accuracy, this is a controversial study.
Studies of political partisans show that there is a similarity between partisanship and sports fandom, with the parties being analogous to teams. Cheerleaders may say that they believe something to be true even if they don't actually believe it. Strip away the conflicts over resources, and there is a history of strictly Us vs Them conflicts, perfectly satirized in this cartoon by Paul Noth:
In one study, participants were assigned to a group, either Rattlers or Eagles, according to a coin toss. They were asked to state their political affiliation as well. When their brains were scanned, there was similar activity when they were shown 'team' affiliated images and political images. The arbitrary in-group affiliation led to activity much like their political affiliation... the subjects divided themselves into tribes at the flip of a coin.
Dr Van Bavel then displayed screenshots from the Wall Street Journal's Red Feed/Blue Feed site, which displays a side-by-side comparison of Conservative and Liberal Facebook feeds. To some extent, the information we receive is curated by social media algorithms. It's profitable for media corporations to show us what we want to see. On the Twitter platform, there is a sharp Red/Blue divide. The posts which are more likely to go viral include moral and emotional words, with 'shares' going up about twenty percent per moral-emotional word. Dr Van Bavel joked that the best way to get a social media post to go viral is to put the word 'disgusting' in it.
"Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information."
This article was the 9th most discussed article in the history of Science. The issue of the dissemination of falsehood goes beyond crowd size- global warming matters, vaccination matters- commonly believed falsehoods adversely effect crucial policy discussions. The lateral prefrontal cortex plays a role in memory, and memory can be messed up by politics- a falsehood can fit into one's memory if it fits into one's preferred narrative. The problem is that it is hard to have a serious discussion about carbon taxes or carbon credit swaps if the science behind anthropogenic climate change is distorted.
The value placed on the validity of knowledge depends on accuracy goals. In science, finance, and prosecutorial matters, accuracy is important. In politics, belonging goals are important in the formation of communities. Epistemic goals, existential goals, status goals, system goals, and moral goals also play roles in political matters. If other goals are more important than accuracy goals, trouble can result- people can believe falsehoods. People's goals effect their calculations about what to read and what to share.
Dr Van Bavel displayed an example of the 'old', obvious fake news- the classic Weekly World News cover story about Bat Boy. He noted that even the fake news could dabble in political satire. It's often hard to tell fake news from real news now- especially if links are coming from trusted friends. In the recent political scene, both Trump and Clinton have been in the public eye for so long that they have had quotes on both sides of many issues, such as the Iraq war and LGBTQ issues. Liberals tend to value equality and environmental conservation, while conservatives tend to value authority and security- each tended to give more credence to quotes which matched their confirmation bias, while being skeptical of quotes which didn't.
There was a study of fake news sites which utilized items from the satirical Empire News website. There were stories about Hillary Clinton wearing an earpiece during a debate, of Florida Democrats voting to impose Sharia law on women, of Donald Trump imposing a 'one child' policy on minorities. When presenting the fake news stories, there was a 'control' condition in order to determine if subjects would believe any bullshit, such as a story about Leonardo DiCaprio flying an eyebrow stylist 7,500 miles to groom him for the Oscars ceremony. Generally, Democrats believe bad fake news about Republicans and vice versa. Democrats have a better ability to sort out complete bullshit than Republicans- Democrats tend to default to skepticism while Republicans tend to default to credulousness, so there is an asymmetry in bullshit detection.
One in four Americans has shared fake news with others. Dr Van Bavel confessed to sharing three fake news stories, but was called out by scientist friends. Democrats are more reluctant to share fake news than Republicans, an important asymmetry. He illustrated the change in attitudes toward truth with two quotes. The first, attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts." The second, by Stephen Colbert, is: " It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty." This shift is really worrisome in its implications. Facebook is concerned with news sources, and is attempting to collate trust scores for different media outlets. The number one fake news story of the 2016 election season was the story of Pope Francis endorsing Trump, which originated with an openly fake news site, WTOE 5. The fake news outstripped the real news. The big problem with having the news crowdsourced through social media is that it is susceptible to hivemind.
The antidote to fake news is increasing accuracy goals. This involves self-reflection. The concept of naïve realism leads us to believe that people who disagree with ourselves are idiots or jerks. We must engage in self-criticism, we must value accuracy. We must also make people publicly accountable for spreading fake news. We should strive to open minds- if belief emerges from identity goals, then challenging the belief threatens identity. The best way to open a mind is to affirm a person's worth while correcting them. For example, pounding antivaxxers with evidence often ends up entrenching their beliefs.
Dr Van Bavel noted that scientists are working on the fake news problem and urged the audience to help them with fix it.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session. The first question concerned gender differences in attitudes towards fake news, but the sample sizes were too small. Comparing Twitter feeds of men and women, it turned out than men tend to be more emotional regarding politics than women. Regarding the density of brain neurons, there are certain interesting changes that can take place in the brain- London cabbies were found to have high neuron density in the area of the hippocampus that processes spatial memory. Regarding political identity, the 'Dems Left/'Pubs Right' dichotomy is of relatively recent origin- there used to be liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, but now the party affiliation is aligned right vs left. Regarding the Nature/Nurture debate, Dr Van Bavel described it as a bad dichotomy. He compared the political system of the US, with its two major parties, with that of his native Canada, with five major parties, nothing that Canadians had a harder time sorting out an Us vs Them narrative. Some bastard in the audience asked about the role of spite in the political arena, noting that one party tends to elect politicians which want to fund retraining for unemployed Kentucky coal workers while the other party tends to elect politicians to make sure that New Jersey commuters are boned by not funding needed infrastructure. Dr Van Bavel characterized this as Negational Affect toward the outgroup, which is characterized by Schadenfreude toward members of that group, joy at their suffering. He described politics as having gotten as bitter as the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry, partisanship so bad that it is damaging. The bastard in the audience then implored him to study the asymmetry of spite. Because the bastard mentioned Trump's refusal to fund a trans-Hudson rail tunnel, a subsequent questioner referred to him as 'the Jersey guy', much to the bastard's consternation. A question about approaches to identity elicited a great line from Dr Van Bavel: Identity is formed on all levels from neurons to nations. Regarding the dichotomy between 'amygdala oriented cons' and 'cortical oriented libs', Dr Van Bavel noted that conservatives attend to threats, while liberals are attuned to curiosity. In threatening environments, sticking together is a good strategy, while curiosity is a good trait in a safe environment (is this why conservatives want more a more dangerous society?). These are different solutions to evolutionary problems- partisan me has to note that one side of the partisan divide tends not to believe in evolution.
Dr Van Bavel gave an entertaining, lively lecture, even if I personally would have preferred him going 'the full driftglass'. At any rate, here is a video of him discussing the partisan brain:
Relax, pour yourself a beverage, and soak in that SCIENCE! Kudos to Dr Van Bavel, Dorian and Margaret, and the staff of the beautiful Bell House for yet another fantastic Secret Science Club lecture.
Dr Dennett opened his lecture by displaying the beautiful Evogeneao Tree of Life diagram. He noted that one major 'explosion' in evolutionary process was the endosymbiotic origin of the eukaryotic cell. After more than one billion years of evolution during which life was restricted to the prokaryotes, bacteria and archaea, the eukaryotic cell arose from symbiotic relationships among prokaryotes and the Cambrian explosion, during which a lot of new forms of life emerged and other forms of live went extinct, occurred. Dr Dennett indicated that a new 'explosion' is occurring in the present- noting that humans are a recent development, having shared a common ancestor with the chimpanzees a mere six million years ago.
Dr Dennett likened evolution to Research and Development, to engineering... evolution exploits information to create, maintain, and improve 'designs'. Research and Development is an expensive process, it requires time and energy. Evolution occurs by two processes: natural selection and human design. These processes differ in fundamental ways- evolution by natural selection is purposeless, foresightless, and extremely costly... there are lot of 'rejects', organisms which die without reproducing, and it is slow. Evolution by human design is purposeful, somewhat foresighted, and constrained by cost considerations. It is many orders of magnitude faster than evolution by natural selection.
Evolution by natural selection is slow and costly, but brilliant- Dr Dennett invoked Orgel's second rule, which can be summed up as “Evolution is cleverer than you are”. Evolution by natural selection is a mindless, purposeless, thoughtless process capable of brilliance and ingenuity. With the development of genetic engineering, 'intelligent design' now exists, and is becoming more common.
Dr Dennett contrasted evolution by natural selection and evolution by human design by comparing a termite mound to Gaudí's Sagrada Familia church. While the structures have a superficial similarity, they are products of hugely different processes. The termites are mindless while Gaudí was a charismatic genius. While the processes of design are polar opposites, the results are similar. In the case of the termites, the design process is bottom-up, while Gaudí's design process was top-down. A large mound-building termite colony consists of approximately seventy-million clueless termites, while a human brain consists of eighty-six billion clueless neurons. How does one get a Gaudí mind from a termite colony brain? Each individual neuron is less savvy than a termite. Dr Dennett noted that one cannot do much carpentry with bare hands, and one cannot do much thinking with a bare brain. The human brain is well-equipped, while the termite brain is unequipped. Dr Dennett then displayed a quote by Freeman Dyson: "Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences." He pooh-poohed the first sentence, then noted that technology is cultural evolution- the brain has 'thinking tools' that impose novel structures on the brain. These virtual machines can be likened to apps that we download into our necktops. These 'apps' are new competences, we don't have 'bare brains'.
Dr Dennett then displayed a quote by Robert Beverly MacKenzie, an early critic of Darwin:
In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill.
Dr Dennett quipped that this 'strange inversion' is just what Darwin demonstrated. He then discussed Alan Turing's 'strange inversion' (here is an article by Dr Dennett on this subject for readers who want to go into this in more depth), which can be summed up as: "In order to be a perfect and beautiful computing machine, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is."
In the case of evolution by natural selection and machine computing, competence can be achieved without comprehension. While rote learning is often looked down upon, comprehension comes after competence. Bacteria and termites are competent without comprehension. Beavers are competent, and while more intelligent than bacteria or termites, lack the comprehension possessed by the engineers who designed the Hoover Dam. Humans are the first intelligent designers in the tree of life, other animals are not intelligent like we are. We are endowed with competences that have a different evolutionary basis than those of other animals.
Dr Dennett then brought up the topic of the MacCready explosion (PDF), articulated by aircraft designer Paul MacCready: ten thousand years ago, at the dawn of human agriculture, humans and their 'pets' would have made up 0.1% of terrestrial vertebrate biomass, today they make up 98%. Dr Dennett likened this to engulfing the planet with a great technology transfer. In the eukaryote revolution, which lead to the Cambrian Explosion, the earth was swamped with eukaryotic life. This second great explosion was enabled by the invasion of the human brain by symbiotic thinking tools, the memes that Richard Dawkins proposed. Dr Dennett quipped that the current usage of the word 'meme' has turned Dawkins' symbiotic thinking tools into ignoble things.
Unlike genes, memes are not inherited. The two sources of human competence are our genes and our memes. We have thousands of memes, each a way of thinking... how to alphabetize a list, how to perform long division. These 'apps' are the source of our power. Until recently, memes were produced by natural selection acting on culture, they were not designed. For instance, a fraction of one-percent of words were 'designed' by a person- e.g. 'meme' was designed by Richard Dawkins. These memes represent an explosive amplification of competence without comprehension which allowed a transition to competence with comprehension.
Dr Dennett noted that organisms do things for reasons- trees, fungi, the entire biotic world is saturated with reasons, from the molecular level on up- these reasons don't originate in any 'mind', there are free-floating rationales behind various adaptations. Dr Dennett reiterated: "Evolution is cleverer than you are." With humans, though, problems are solved culturally.
Dr Dennett then posed the question, how does one get a Bach mind from a termite colony brain? Before answering the question, he digressed to discuss the usefulness of memes. He specified the meme which results in religious belief. Having been asked, "Every human society has developed religion, what is it good for?" He answered, "Every human society has experienced the common cold, what is it good for?" He noted that certain memes are useful, certain memes aren't. Certain viruses are good, certain are bad, certain are indifferent. He noted that humans harbor trillions of viruses- symbiotic visitors which thrive, even if they aren't alive, in the body. He joked that viruses are 'strings of nucleic acid with attitude', not alive but capable of entering cells and using them for reproductive purposes. Dr Dennett then posed the question, how does one get a Bach mind from a termite colony brain? Before answering the question, he digressed to discuss the usefulness of memes. He specified the meme which results in religious belief. Having been asked, "Every human society has developed religion, what is it good for?" He answered, "Every human society has experienced the common cold, what is it good for?" He noted that certain memes are useful, certain memes aren't. He characterized the invasion of the brain by memes as the 'second great endosymbiotic revolution' and quipped that we are 'apes with infected brains'. He further joked that memes are what make a person a francophone guitarist who loves the Iberian peninsula.
Dr Dennett described cultural evolution in comical terms- cultural evolution begins with a lot of doofuses, but some of the doofusry provides benefits. The process of cultural evolution develops to the point where deliberate design takes place. This deliberate design rests on a backstory of unintelligent design, memes selected by natural selection. Dr Dennett displayed a quote from Picasso: "Je ne cherche pas je trouve." "I do not search, I find." Editors note: Despite what you've heard, Pablo Picasso was an asshole. Dr Dennett then described Bach as an ideal of creative intelligence that even Picasso couldn't meet. He noted that Bach was an exemplary intelligent designer- he had a deep comprehension, he was well-versed in trial and error methods, he was well equipped with thinking tools (in this case, music theory), and he possessed a wealth of technocratic know-how.
Dr Dennett then displayed a picture of an Acheulean handaxe next to a computer mouse. He noted that the handaxe wasn't really invented by any one individual and that the design was in use for about a million years without change. The computer mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s, and it is almost extinct. Dr Dennett noted that chimpanzees have culture- their nut-cracking and termite-fishing techniques constitute the rudiments of culture. Homo sapiens, though, is the only animal with voluminous, recursive cultural evolution. In the case of language, words started out as synanthropic memes, like bedbugs and rats, words thrived in the human environment, but we didn't own them, they weren't domesticated. The first words were 'picked up like fleas'. Eventually, humans domesticated words, we exerted control over their reproduction. Coined words are like genetically modified organisms, their creation was engineered, but some of them don't fly. Certain words begin as technical terms, some as internet 'memes'. Replication is the future of a word, with internet memes being a reductio ad absurdum... Dr Dennett noted that an 'intelligently designed meme' is a contradiction in terms, like a splitable atom. Regarding the development of memes, Dr Dennett quoted Émile Chartier on the topic of boats:
Every boat is copied from another boat... Let’s reason as follows in the manner of Darwin. It is clear that a very badly made boat will end up at the bottom after one or two voyages, and thus never be copied... One could then say, with complete rigor, that it is the sea herself who fashions the boats, choosing those which function and destroying the others.
Once again, Dr Dennett reiterated, "Evolution is cleverer than you." Cultural evolution can be described with an economic model- good things are reproduced. Cultural evolution is increasingly top-down and self-comprehending, it's increasingly resembling genetic engineering rather than evolution by natural selection. Now, with the advent of deep learning, we see the development of 'thinking' machines that work, but do not know. Noam Chomsky recognized a distinction between mysteries and problems- problems can be solved, but not mysteries. Such issues as free will and consciousness are mysteries. Dr Dennett indicated that artificial intelligence should be likened to a Nautilus machine for the mind- a tool, not a colleague.
Dr Dennett characterized Einstein and Feynman as being 'good at using thinking tools', with Feynman being particularly good at teaching others how to use these 'apps'. If the 'apps' weren't true, then we wouldn't be where we are, they represent an accumulation of good design. Eagle eyes are optimized for the needs of eagles, they are highly developed truth-finding apparatuses. Humans have developed microscopes and telescopes which have generated mountains of truth, not just random crap. Dr Dennett likened evolution to plagiarism- if something works, just copy it.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session. The bastard wasn't able to get a question in, what with the standing room only crowd and all. While micturating, the bastard missed a question, but the tail end of the answer was funny- Dr Dennett stated that he doesn't trust the word 'emergent', traffic jams are emergent but they don't cause 'Zen' moments. To a question about the difference between human and chimpanzee brains, Dr Dennett noted that there is a huge difference between human and chimp 'hardware'- thousands of chimpanzees have lived in close proximity to humans and human language, but they don't pay attention to language. If some factor could be changed in chimp cognition, everything could change. Regarding immortality, Dr Dennett opined that one could be 'immortal' if the information in one's brain could be stored and uploaded into another brain- one's personality wouldn't appreciably change, it would be a case of 'Whoa, here I am back again.'
Dr Dennett delivered an entertaining lecture, a thought-provoking philosophical odyssey leavened with wit and humor. It's no wonder that the man is a celebrity. Personally, I prefer the nuts-and-bolts stuff, but it is important to get a dose of 'big picture' thinking periodically. Kudos to Dr Dennett, Margaret and Dorian, and the staff of the beautiful Bell House. For a taste of the Secret Science Club experience, pop open a tasty beverage and check out this video, which covers a lot of the topics covered last night:
At about the midpoint, Dr Dennett displays some Decker cube diagrams that I omitted because I couldn't find representations of them on the t00bz. Without the pictures, the concepts were a bit wonky to encapsulate verbally.
Today's news coverage was depressing, but there was a ray of hope- an interview with survivors of the mass shooting in Florida instilled a sense of pride in me... these kids were compassionate, grateful, and defiant. Their parents have every right to be proud of them. The victims of the shooting were exactly the sort of people this nation needs, generous kids and valiant adults taken from their friends and loved ones by a nonentity who never should have been able to obtain a firearm.
What the fuck would it take to have sanity prevail when it comes to the acquisition of firearms? Frankly, I'm a supporter of the Second Amendment, particularly the first clause, which tends to be elided by the NRA and their minions. I doubt that asshole shooter boy would have been able to last for a day in a bonafide well-regulated militia.
The Big Bad Bald Bastard is a character played by Monsieur _______ of the City of Y______. The role of the Bastard is a handy one to play on subways, walking the streets, and in dive-bars, when being a nerdy, bookish sort is not to one's advantage.
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