If you move at roughly constant acceleration and you look through something reflective at a moving background, you will feel like you’re moving opposite to your actual direction of motion.
The Vestibular System is Easily Fooled
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Author Archives: Michael
Publication bias
There has been recent talk about a consistent finding of scientific studies initially overstating effects, which become weaker and weaker with additional scrutiny. This to me is an artifact of both the difficulty of designing a truly unbiased experiment and the publication process. Mind you, there’s no foul play at work here; science is just a little less “free to explore” than most people believe it to be. But the insistence that results always be “good” to be worthwhile ultimately harms its objectivity.
Statistical methods have become very good at reducing variance, and most researchers make a large concern out of achieving adequate sample sizes and creating complex statistical models in an attempt not only to demonstrate an effect, but to demonstrate that it cannot possibly be due to chance (more accurately, we think it’s not more than 5% likely, anyway :))
Unfortunately, while variance is usually fairly easy to detect and deal with, there is another contributor to statistical error: bias. Each experimental setup introduces its own bias. If we assume that the biases of independent experiments are roughly random (i.e. the biases are unbiased :)), then we would expect a possible over or understatement of an effect in the beginning, with a gradual regression to its true prevalence as additional models are “averaged into” the literature.
But the biases which have been observed are positive only. Effects are found to be *stronger* initially rather than weaker.
Here is where publication bias enters the scene: it is acceptable to publish *new* work only if the results of that work are “good”, whatever that may mean in a given field, and experimental parameters and models will be adjusted until such results are achieved (resulting in more than a few cases of statistical overfitting, I’m sure). Negative results are not published; they are either improved or abandoned.
But while this is true for pioneering work, it is NOT true for subsequent “reviews” of said work, which can be published simply on the basis of picking apart an existing effect.
This virtually guarantees that the initial bias will be an overstatement, and the subsequent direction with more study will push it in the negative direction, presumably until – eventually – the true effect is approximated.
The Peak Experience and the Shadow Peak
While self-actualization sits at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as the ideal to be achieved, even within the model it is not the pinnacle of human development: self-actualized individuals are prone to what Maslow refers to as “peak experiences”, which in a very simplified way can be described as feelings of overwhelming possibility and interconnectedness in which new ideas and values form.
A deeply disturbing realization came my way today: the process by which both Hitler and the Unabomber came to their deranged beliefs is strikingly similar to the generally positive peak experience. These “shadow peaks” provoke the same reevaluations of worldview, yet the result is something twisted and inhumane. I believe that the risk of this is accentuated with a highly negative environment, despite the fact that a negative environment can also provoke more stable individuals at a high level of development to positive peaks.
!Intelligence
Humanity’s primary selective advantage is not intelligence, but our social structure and intellectual *variance*. Every individual does not replicate every other individual’s discoveries; rather, one unusually bright person discovers something novel and shares it, enabling everyone else to benefit as well. This is part of our evolutionary heritage.
This explains a huge amount of human behavior which appears irrational under the assumption that intelligence is humanity’s primary selective mechanism. This is both why people tend to have an altruistic streak and why stupidity still exists. It is why tradition still exists, and thus why religion was naturally selected for and culture evolves. It is why war is made on a *group* rather than individuals – it is why genocide is practiced. It is why capitalism works (it provides an individual incentive to further foster this behavior). It is why the masses behave not like sheep, but like dogs, and why a very large number of people can be persuaded by individual demagogues and movements.
Time
Time is the universe seeking balance.
Explanation:
Electricity is a difference in voltage trying to equalize. Diffusion is the same phenomenon in water. Weather, flight, and the wind all stem from the same phenomenon in pressurized air. Even heat flows from hot to cold. Per the laws of thermodynamics, this sets a fixed direction for time. But it is not only a phenomenon of heat; even on a philosophical scale, this is how the universe runs.
Memetics: Culture is to humanity as flight routes are to geese
The first and second factors are of equal importance in the psyche and the same evolutionary tendencies which support survival also support culture (and all of the baggage that comes with it). This is because for a long period in our evolution the two were identical – culture was our memetic means of survival, as things like migratory flight routes were those of geese. What’s more, you can apply the same evolutionary rules and look for the same evolutionary patterns in culture as you can in biology. Some mass movements are actually excellent examples of Fisherian runaway applied to the propagation of ideas rather than genes.
There’s an uncertainty principle that applies to metaphysics
I have in the past said ‘God represents the default morality of the universe’. This is not strong enough – the very existence and characteristics of a God can be *verified* in only one way: by their effect on the observable universe.
Yes, religion is a genetic trait
Lacking science, people had no way to explain the laws of nature or why certain consequences were associated with certain actions – nevertheless, the causes and effects themselves were understood (as I said earlier, science explains cause+effect+mechanism; mysticism explains cause+effect). It was an advantage to codify the actions that allowed people to stay alive and to integrate this deep into the psyche and the theology came along for the ride as a plausible explanation, if not a particularly grounded one. The result: religious people stayed alive, non-religious people died out. This not only created a selective pressure for religion, but convinced the religious that *the unbelievers really were being punished*, strengthening the belief in the religious population as well. (So this is a trait that’s both genetically and memetically reinforced).
Why People Get Away With Taxing the Rich
The reason why additional taxes get shuffled onto the rich has little to do with who “needs” the money most. The real reason: there is an 80/20 distribution of wealth but not of votes. Therefore it is politically much safer to anger the highest-earning 20% than the bottom 80% in our winner-take-all elections.
This inequity can be solved by simply allowing people to choose how their tax dollars are spent. No taxation without representation, right? Well it follows that those who are taxed more should be better represented…
Thoughts on the Anthropocene Extinction
While it is true that humanity is killing off species at an alarming rate, I don’t think this trend will continue indefinitely. The previous mass extinctions were driven (or at least initiated) for the most part by external events to the ecosystem, with reductions in the sustaining energy of the ecosystem and other consequences lasting for millions of years.
The rate at which we destroy ecosystems, on the other hand, is kept in check by our own population. Unless we pass some dire tipping point and cause the destruction to spiral out of our control, we will eventually hit a population limit, beyond which the planet can’t sustain us. It’s possible that we have already passed this limit; in that case, much like the current recession was caused because people borrowed money that didn’t actually exist and corrected by a return to the amount of real money left in the economy, the human population will be forced to decline, either through some sort of saturated-ecology problem (hunger is a big one; war could also be considered a limiting factor when resources become scarce) or simply through lower birth rates. Either way, the current mass extinction will not be as dire as the previous ones because, even at a faster rate of extinction, it will last for a much shorter period of time.
If I’m wrong and Earth becomes an ecumenopolis, it would instead bode well for humanity’s continuous expansion to other planets and we would nevertheless have the room to save what species remained extant.
…Barring a runaway process which takes matters entirely out of our hands. Watch those greenhouse gases!