Science – Dean Cook

An Observation While Learning Spanish Via The Comprehensible Input Method

I have been trying the comprehensible input method espoused by this site to learn Spanish.

The comprehensible input method seems correct to me, although I admittedly haven’t studied the science that they claim backs up the efficacy of the method. It just “rings true” to me based on my own introspection and knowledge of epistemology and language. The method discards learning grammar in favor of using pictures, gestures, and acting while speaking to make it more like the experience of a child first learning to speak. It also completely discounts speaking a language to learn it. Your are supposed to just gather “comprehensible input”, as that is the only way you are going to truly learn, according to the theory. The input is “comprehensible” because you understand the meaning of the speech, thanks to the gestures and drawings of the speaker, even through you do not understand the language yet.
Something I’ve noticed when listening to native or near-native Spanish speakers is they will mix in certain English words that usually reflects some new technology or imported concept, rather than adopt a specific word for it. Although this can also vary. Spaniards call computers “ordinators”, while Mexicans tend to call them “computeradoras”.

In this video, I noted that the speaker, a Spaniard, called the act of snowboarding, “hacer snow” a few times. In Spanish the substance that falls from the sky would be called “nieve”, so, to his ear, the word “snow” is connected with the concept of snowboarding.

Three Different Methods of Presenting Material In An Introductory Biology Textbook

I have been reading portions of the textbook, Campbell Biology, 12^th Edition, Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, Orr, as part of the second semester of a Biology for science majors course I have been taking at the local community college. The textbook has different approaches to presenting different concepts. Three of those approaches are discussed here. (These may not be exhaustive of the methods used to convey ideas in the book -they are just ones that I noticed as I’ve been reading it.)

First Method: Abstract

Some of the material is presented in a very abstract way. For instance, Concept 11.4 “Cellular response: Cell signaling leads to regulation of transcription or cytoplasmic activities” is discussed in the following way:

Note how this section used a lot of complicated jargon. It doesn’t explain how the process it describes could be related to any experiment or physical demonstration to show it working. It just abstractly describes how a cell responds to an extracellular signal that causes a particular gene in the cell’s DNA to start encoding for a particular protein. Your only choice here is basically to memorize the process described, learn the jargon, and then repeat it on a test.

Second Method: Experimental

Some other material in the book is more of a description of the experiments that led to a particular scientific concept. For instance, Figure 15.3, “Inquiry” gives the basic outline of an experiment that was performed to determine that a particular gene for a particular characteristic in fruit flies was located on the X chromosome. (A sex chromosome):

If you follow the explanation presented above, it leads to a very elegant, and easy-to-understand explanation of how they arrived at their conclusion, in my opinion.

Another example of the same approach is seen in a section called “Apoptosis in the Soil Worm Caenohabditis elegans”:

The above discusses an experiment biologists performed on a type of worm to study the phenomena of “apoptosis”, that is, when a cell is programed to self-destruct for the overall benefit of the organism. The above explains that scientists noticed that the “suicide” of cells in this species occurred exactly 131 times during the normal development of this worm. From this, they were able to determine which genes were involved in programing the proteins that cause cell death.

It does not give the specific details of how they determined these were the genes, but it has given a sufficient overall outline, that, for me, the concept was clear: There are certain genes that trigger, after a certain amount of time, and cause the production of proteins that tell particular cells to self-destruct.

Third Method: Historical

The third major method of presenting concepts in the book that I noticed could be described as a “historical” approach. For instance, Chapter 22 “Descent with Modification: A Darwinian View of Life” gives a very historical explanation of Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection.

It starts out by describing the history of biology before Darwin. For instance, it discusses Aristotle’s “scala naturae” by saying:

“Aristotle (384-322 BCE), viewed species as fixed (unchanging). Through his observations of nature, Aristotle recognized certain ‘affinities’ among organisms. He concluded that life-forms could be arranged on a ladder, or scale, of increasing complexity, later called the scala naturae (“scale of nature”). Each form of life, perfect and permanent, had its allotted rung on the ladder.”

It then goes on to describe the classification that Carolous Linneas came up with, which used a binomial, two-part system to name species. It then discusses the ideas of Georges Culvier, one of the first paleontologists. He noted that much of the earth was laid out with strata, or layers of rock. He also noted that more dissimilar life forms were located further down, in the older layers of rock. Then geologists started thinking that the Earth was much older than 2,000 years, which suggested there had been enough time for organisms to change from one form to another gradually over time.

The text then discusses a pre-Darwinian concept of evolution based on the idea that organisms that repeatedly use a particular characteristic make it grow stronger, and then that strengthened character gets passed on to their children. (Lamarckian Evolution) This turned out to be largely incorrect, but it was part of the “idea back drop”, or context, from which Darwin was thinking when he came up with his own ideas.

From there, the text discusses Darwin’s voyages on the Beagle, and how that allowed him to confirm the geological ideas of people like James Hutton and Charles Lyell, as well as Georges Culvier. The book then discusses the finches, with different beaks, that Darwin noticed on the Galapagos Islands, and how these birds were similar to a species of finch found on the mainland. This suggested they had come from the mainland, and had changed over time to adapt to the use of different resources. From all of this, Darwin came up with two general observations:

(1) Members of a population often vary in their inherited traits.

(2) All species can produce more offspring than their environment can support, and many of these offspring fail to survive and reproduce.

The book probably could have spent a little bit more time on describing the ideas of Thomas Malthus, which, it is my understanding, is where Darwin got the idea of resources being scarce, and that organisms reproduce past the “carrying capacity” of a particular environment.

The book then went on to say that, based on these observations, Darwin drew two inferences:

(1) Individuals whose inherited characteristics give them a higher probability of surviving and reproducing in a given environment tend to leave more offspring than do other individuals.

(2) This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to the accumulation of favorable traits in the population over generations.

My point here is not to critique particular sections of the textbook. (Although my particular preferences in terms of how I think scientific material should be presented probably comes through here.) My point is simply to give illustrative examples of what I think are three different ways this particular Biology textbook presents material to the average Biology student. I am not a scientist or a teacher, so I will leave it to others to decide which of these methods of writing a Biology or science textbook is the best. Perhaps all have their place, but the differences in method of presentation should at least be recognized and considered.

My Experience With A Sedation-Free Colonoscopy

At some point I’ve meant to blog about my first colonoscopy in April of 2022, but I haven’t gotten around to it. My general practice doctor told me that they now recommend colonoscopies for anyone over 45 every 10 years, so I decided to bite the bullet and do it.

(If you don’t like discussions of body anatomy, I’d skip reading the rest of this.)

I opted to have it done without anesthesia. In the rest of the world, most people do it without anesthesia, but they mostly do it with sedation in the US. I chose no anesthesia because I think there are long term side effects from it. My understanding is that anesthesia can cause dementia in older people. The connection between anesthesia and dementia is still debated by scientists, but if I can safely have a medical procedure without it, I’d rather err on the side of caution.

Finding a doctor in Dallas that would do it without anesthesia was difficult, but I finally found one. Looking back at my medical records, I believe his name was Dr. Ramakrishna V. Behara in Frisco, Texas. (Funny side note: I once went in to see a doctor, and they asked me who I was there to see. I said: “I don’t remember his name, but it’s the Indian one.” The girl at the front desk looked at me and said: “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”) Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the profile of the doctor who did my colonoscopy: https://www.bswhealth.com/physician/ramakrishna-behara He seemed knowledgeable and competent. I asked to meet with him at his office ahead of the procedure, and he agreed to do so. (I just needed to talk to the person who was going to be performing such a delicate procedure ahead of time, and look him in the eye.) I would recommend him if you are in the Dallas area, and are looking to do a sedation-free colonoscopy.

The night before, I had to fast and take a diarrhetic that kept me up all night on the toilet.

I had an early morning schedule at the hospital. I drove there, and they hooked up an IV, although I technically didn’t need one since I wasn’t using anesthetic. (They convinced me to ‘just in case’.)

After that I was wheeled into the room with the doctor and two nurses. I was facing a TV monitor with the camera view on it. I thought I’d watch and enjoy the show.

That changed once they started. I had to close my eyes and focus on my breathing once they stuck the device in. It felt similar to what I think having a vacuum cleaner tube up my rectum would feel like. It wasn’t painful, but it felt like I had to urgently defecate, but could not. The only pain I felt was when the muscles around my anal sphincter started to have cramps. I started saying “Oh god, oh god,” over and over, hoping it would be over soon. (I wasn’t sure how long colonoscopies lasted.) The nurse started patting me on the back, trying to soothe me, saying it was okay. Despite all that, the pain wasn’t bad. Like a session of bad cramps. (I think the nurses were more traumatized by my vocalizing discomfort than I was, lol.)

Afterward, I felt a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. I had overcome my fears. I do not like medical procedures, but as someone committed to the virtue of rationality as described by Ayn Rand, I recognize they are important to my long-term health and life, which is why I just did it, even though I had to somewhat ‘psych myself up’ to it. (I delayed several months getting up the nerve.) http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/rationality.html

I drove myself to work after the procedure, but I stopped off for some pancakes at IHop. I was starving from my 12-hour fast. They were the best damn pancakes I’ve ever had.

The good news is, I don’t have to do it again for 10 years. I also was glad I opted for no anesthesia, and I plan on opting for no anesthesia next time.

I thought I’d write on this because I saw an article about high profile people dying of colon cancer in 2022. If you’re over 45, seriously consider getting this done, regardless of whether you decide to opt for anesthesia or not. The procedure can drastically reduce your chances of dying from colon cancer.

Whoopi Goldberg On Systematic Nazi Mass-Murder

I was rather surprised to see this controversy, since I think Whoopi Goldberg is correct:

“‘Let’s be truthful, the Holocaust isn’t about race, it’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about. These are two groups of white people,’ she said on The View on Monday.” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/feb/02/whoopi-goldberg-suspended-from-the-view-after-saying-holocaust-isnt-about-race

Jews living in Germany at the time of World War II can’t really be called another race, in my opinion.

Mein Kampf asserts that they are another race. If you read it, you’ll see that Hitler saw the perceived racial difference as the reason for regarding Jews as a danger to the German people. But, I don’t see any evidence that would justify treating Jews as a different race.

I think the concept of “race” is most likely a real concept, that is based in reality. I’m not an expert, but it is my understanding that forensic anthropologists can determine a skeleton’s likely ancestry with high probability by examining their skull. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26270337/ (Although there is debate, about the accuracy of this type of determination. So my certainty on this issue is not 100%. https://www.science.org/content/article/forensic-anthropologists-can-try-identify-person-s-race-skull-should-they )

I think the outrage here derives from the modern notion that race is “socially constructed” or that it isn’t a real thing. In this view, the white majority is simply imposing something on black people that doesn’t exist for purposes of exploiting them.

I think a lot of that debate turns around how “race” is defined. I’d say I define it as something like: “Where most of your ancestors originate from in the last 10,000 years.” Biological populations can have a lot of variations, but biologists seem to have no problem identifying a plethora of sub-species within other animal groups besides human beings. For instance, there are 9 sub-species of Tiger, and they all look the same to me, as a non-biologist. https://www.livescience.com/29822-tiger-subspecies-images.html So, why is it controversial to recognize that people whose ancestors are mostly from Africa, Asia, or Europe are different sub-species? (Especially when its fairly easy for me to tell the difference just by looking at them, but I see no difference with Tiger sub-species.)

I will also acknowledge that I am not 100% certain on this issue. Much of what we consider “race” may, in fact, have no basis in biological reality. It’s largely a scientific issue to be decided by scientists, but I suspect the issue is not being honestly addressed due to the fear by scientists that they will loose funding or jobs if they come up with answers the political left doesn’t like.

The danger of Mein Kampf doesn’t lie primarily in Jew hatred, but in the fact that it advocates collectivism:

“It took centuries and a brain-stopping chain of falsehoods to bring a whole people to the state of Hitler-worship. Modern German culture, including its Nazi climax, is the result of a complex development in the history of philosophy…

If we view the West’s philosophic development in terms of essentials, three fateful turning points stand out, three major philosophers who, above all others, are responsible for generating the disease of collectivism and transmitting it to the dictators of our century.

The three are: Plato—Kant—Hegel. (The antidote to them is: Aristotle.)” ( The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, Peikoff, Leonard)

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fascism-nazism.html

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the%20ominous%20parallels%20by%20leonard%20peikoff&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-TopNavISS-_-Results&ds=20

So, at worst, Whoopi Goldberg is guilty of saying something that is likely true (Jews are a not a separate race), which is based in a premise (race is something biologically real), that deserves more study. It certainly doesn’t justify suspension from her TV show. (But, these are the times we live in.)

Evidence of Pre-Columbian Violence In The Americas

In college, I got into a debate at the dining hall with another student. I don’t remember what started the debate, and I’m sure it was quite “free-wheeling”, covering many topics. I was already stridently pro-Capitalist and I had been reading Ayn Rand for several years by that point. During the debate, I mentioned the fact that the Aztecs has practiced human sacrifice. My “liberal” debating opponent said he didn’t believe this happened. I was so shocked by his denial of this historical fact that I think I discontinued the debate soon after. This occurred around 1995.

I have recently discovered that there were many in the academic community that did deny that the Aztecs ever engaged in ritual murder. They said such evidence came from accounts by Spanish conquerors. They claimed that the Spaniards had reason to lie, because it justified their settling of Mexico, Central America, and South America.

Leftists and academics operated under the assumption that primitive cultures were largely peaceful and non-violent. This attitude probably has its origins in Rousseau and Karl Marx. (Marx and Engels believed in a prehistoric “golden age” of primitive communism. Warfare for Marx/Engels was a byproduct of “capitalistic exploitation”.)

Unfortunately for them, the archeological facts are increasingly painting a different, violent, picture of pre-Columbian America. Violence seems to have been common throughout North and South America, long before the white man arrived.

Aztec and Mayan Ritual Murder-Cannibalism

“When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521, they described witnessing a grisly ceremony. Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims’ lifeless bodies down the steps of the towering Templo Mayor…

… Reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th-century reports as wildly exaggerated propaganda meant to justify the murder of Aztec emperor Moctezuma, the ruthless destruction of Tenochtitlán and the enslavement of its people. But in 2015 and 2018, archeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site in Mexico City discovered proof of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs—none other than the very skull towers and skull racks that conquistadors had described in their accounts.” https://www.history.com/news/aztec-human-sacrifice-religion

“Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled…. ‘It was considered a good omen if they cried a lot at the time of sacrifice,’ which was probably done by slitting their throats, Roman Berrelleza said.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html

“The Maya, whose culture peaked farther east about 400 years before the Aztecs founded Mexico City in 1325, had a similar taste for sacrifice, Harvard University anthropologist David Stuart wrote in a 2003 article.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html

“The dig turned up other clues to support descriptions of sacrifices in the Magliabecchi codex, a pictorial account painted between 1600 and 1650 that includes human body parts stuffed into cooking dishes, and people sitting around eating, as the god of death looks on.

‘We have found cooking dishes just like that,’ said archeologist Luis Manuel Gamboa.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html

Mass-torture And Murder At Sacred Ridge Colorado Around 800 A.D.

“The bones that Osterholtz saw showed evidence of broken ankles, used to hobble the victims, beatings of the soles of the feet that were so severe the bone peeled away, and crushing and scraping to the top of the feet.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archeologists-find-evidence-torture-1200-year-old-massacre-180951922/

“More than a massacre, the scene at Sacred Ridge betrayed evidence of at least 33 people, men and women alike, having been not only butchered and burned, but, according to new research — also tortured.” http://westerndigs.org/evidence-of-hobbling-torture-discovered-at-ancient-massacre-site-in-colorado/

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Anasazi Mass Murder, Scalping, and Cannibalism In The 13^th Century

“By 1993, Kuckelman’s crew had concluded that they were excavating the site of a major massacre. Though they dug only 5 percent of the pueblo, they identified the remains of at least 41 individuals, all of whom probably died violently. ‘Evidently,’ Kuckelman told me, ‘the massacre ended the occupation of Castle Rock.’

More recently, the excavators at Castle Rock recognized that some of the dead had been cannibalized. They also found evidence of scalping, decapitation and ‘face removing’—a practice that may have turned the victim’s head into a deboned portable trophy.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

Evidence of wide-spread cannibalism

“Suspicions of Anasazi cannibalism were first raised in the late 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that a handful of physical anthropologists, including Christy Turner of Arizona State University, really pushed the argument. Turner’s 1999 book, Man Corn, documents evidence of 76 different cases of prehistoric cannibalism in the Southwest that he uncovered during more than 30 years of research. Turner developed six criteria for detecting cannibalism from bones: the breaking of long bones to get at marrow, cut marks on bones made by stone knives, the burning of bones, ‘anvil abrasions’ resulting from placing a bone on a rock and pounding it with another rock, the pulverizing of vertebrae, and ‘pot polishing’—a sheen left on bones when they are boiled for a long time in a clay vessel. To strengthen his argument, Turner refuses to attribute the damage on a given set of bones to cannibalism unless all six criteria are met.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

Evidence of Human Remains In Human Feces Increases Probability of Anasazi Cannibalism

“Predictably, Turner’s claims aroused controversy. Many of today’s Pueblo Indians were deeply offended by the allegations, as were a number of Anglo archaeologists and anthropologists who saw the assertions as exaggerated and part of a pattern of condescension toward Native Americans…. Kurt Dongoske, an Anglo archaeologist who works for the Hopi, told me in 1994, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can’t prove cannibalism until you actually find human remains in human coprolite [fossilized excrement].’” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

“A few years later, University of Colorado biochemist Richard Marlar and his team did just that. At an Anasazi site in southwestern Colorado called CowboyWash, excavators found three pit houses—semi-subterranean dwellings—whose floors were littered with the disarticulated skeletons of seven victims. The bones seemed to bear most of Christy Turner’s hallmarks of cannibalism. The team also found coprolite in one of the pit houses. In a study published in Nature in 2000, Marlar and his colleagues reported the presence in the coprolite of a human protein called myoglobin, which occurs only in human muscle tissue. Its presence could have resulted only from the consumption of human flesh.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

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Massacre of Men, Women, and Children In Southeast Utah 2,000 Years Ago

“Nearly a hundred skeletons buried in a cave in southeast Utah offer grisly evidence that ancient Americans waged war on each other as much as 2,000 years ago, according to new research.

Dozens of bodies, dating from the first century CE, bear clear signs of hand-to-hand combat: skulls crushed as if by cudgels; limbs broken at the time of death; and, most damning, weapons still lodged in the back, breast and pelvic bones of some victims — including stone points, bone awls, and knives made of obsidian glass.

Signs of violence were evident in 58 of the approximately 90 bodies found in the cave. Most of the victims were men, but at least 16 women were also found among the dead, as well as nearly 20 children, some as young as three months old.” http://westerndigs.org/skeletons-in-utah-cave-are-victims-of-prehistoric-war-study-says/

Did The Violence Occur Over a Long Period of Time?- Maybe, But Evidence Seems to Say No

“The carnage found in Cave 7 could only be explained, Wetherill concluded, by the ‘sudden and violent destruction of a community by battle or massacre.’

And this interpretation held for more than a century, until 2012, when radiocarbon dating of some of the bones from the cave showed that the burials actually spanned many centuries — from the first century CE to the early 300s — suggesting that the dead represented several, smaller conflicts over time.

Now, a new analysis of the Cave 7 remains finds that, while the dates do cover a range, the victims of violence in particular appear to date from the same period, intimating that they’re evidence of a ‘single-event mass killing.’”

http://westerndigs.org/skeletons-in-utah-cave-are-victims-of-prehistoric-war-study-says/

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Mass-Murder In South-Central South Dakota around 1325 A.D.

“At Crow Creek, a large Initial Coalescent village in South Dakota with a terminal occupation around A.D. 1325,2such extrapolation is unnecessary (Willey,1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993; Zimmerman and Bradley, 1993; Zimmerman et al., 1981). Here, a mass deposit containing the remains of a minimum of 486men, women, and children was discovered in 1978 in a fortification ditch that par-tially surrounded the entrenched village. Most of these bodies had been mutilated, and many showed signs of exposure before interment. At least 89% of 415 identified frontal bones had cut marks indicative of scalping, and 41% of 101 identified skulls had round or ellipsoid depression fractures from round and axe like club-bing implements. Decapitation and possible tongue removal by humans also was evident by anatomical placement of cut marks on occipital bones, cervical verte-brae, and mandibles. Hands and feet may also have been purposefully removed, although carnivore damage also suggests scavenger activity. Isolated bones and body parts in various other contexts (Willey, 1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993),as well as burning of all identified structures (Bamforth, 1994), support the anni-hilative intent of the attack. However, a pronounced bias against 15–24 year old females, as well as the act of burial itself, suggests that some people may have survived through capture or escape (Willey, 1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993).In scale, the Crow Creek massacre is unparalleled anywhere in prehistoric North America, except possibly that at the broadly contemporaneous center at Casas Grandes described above.” (“The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective” by Patricia M. Lambert, Pg. 225; Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2002 )

https://courses.washington.edu/war101/readings/Lambert–archy%20of%20N%20Am%20warfare.pdf

Another Apparent Academic Dissertation About this Event, Which Notes that 60% of This Tribe Was killed:

“The major findings can be summarized as follows: At least 486 Arikara were buried, that number probably constituting roughly 60 percent of the village inhabitants.” https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268790968.pdf

This would probably be considered “genocide” today.

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Evidence of Warfare in California/Western Great Basin

“Injuries from projectile weapons also have a long history of occurrence in this region, first appearing in the fifth millennium B.C. Identified based on the presence of stone or bone spear, dart, and arrow points embedded in bone, bone scars attributed to these projectiles, or projectiles found lodged in body cavities, projectile injuries are more common in males than females overall (3:1) and tend to affect those between the ages of 18 and 40 years. Victims are relatively uncommon in samples antedating A.D. 600, ranging in frequency from about0 to 5% (Lambert, 1994). Projectile injuries are much more frequent in samples dating between A.D. 580 and 1380 (Lambert, 1994, 1997; Lambert and Walker,1991; Walker and Lambert, 1989), affecting 10% (39/402) of the sample from this time period in frequencies ranging from 0 to 22% for individual sites (Lambert,1994). Although clustering within and among graves is present (Lambert, 1994,pp. 141–147), mass graves are rare, suggesting constant but small-scale forms of engagement that nonetheless resulted in a high death toll over time (Lambert, 1994;see also discussions in Milner, 1999; Milneret al., 1991).” (“The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective” by Patricia M. Lambert, Pg. 217-218; Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2002 )

https://courses.washington.edu/war101/readings/Lambert–archy%20of%20N%20Am%20warfare.pdf

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Why do I bring this up? Two reasons:

(1) It puts to rest the Marxist “Multiculturalist” notion that somehow the aboriginal people of the Americas learned violence from Europeans. (Note that, in the case of the massacre in 1300’s South Dakota, scalping did occur prior to arrival of the white man.)

(2) Cultures can and should be changed. These cultures were objectively inferior to Western culture at the time, to say nothing of Western or “Modern” culture today. Individuals have rights to life and liberty. Cultures that ignore those rights can and should be changed or done away with.

[Note: If you found this blog post of value, please consider a gratuity. Give whatever amount you think the post was worth. (Please do not send me money if you know me off the Internet.) http://deancook.net/donate/]

A Crow Possibly Solving a Problem Like a Human Being

Animal behavior interests me a great deal. I essentially see the human mind as “built on” an underlying “chassis” that reflects our species’ evolutionary development. So, there is a portion of the human brain that can be considered unique, and that makes us human, but there is also a lot of our brain structure that is the same as a chimpanzee’s or other other animal’s brain. This means that by learning something about animal behavior and the animal mind, we can learn something about ourselves.

This video on BBC involves a crow appearing to “solve” a complex-reasoning problem. After watching it, however, I question whether the conclusion that is being drawn is necessarily the correct one.

If the crow has done each of these individual things before to get a food reward, then he may just be doing each task randomly with the expectation of getting a food reward that doesn’t pay off?

The first seven tasks that he has associated with food reward result in nothing this time, but operant conditioning causes him to eventually do the eighth task that results in food reward. In other words, there may not be a mental connection in his mind between doing task 1 and doing task 8, like there would be for a human being.

A question I would like to ask whoever devised this experiment: Did the crow immediately know the correct order of tasks to perform? Even if he’s doing it in the right order from the start, that could be random, because he does the task that he can immediately perform simply because it’s physically available to him, not because he’s reasoning it out. (In which case, this is just a Rube Goldberg machine with a crow as one of its components.) It would seem more likely to suggest complex reasoning if the crow had never done any of the individual tasks before and he was able to figure it out.

What is Proof?

I was recently asked what I consider to be “proof”. This question came up specifically with respect to my blog post on why I am an atheist and not an agnostic. So what is “proof”?

I hold that the most essential form of proof is observation -that which you can come into contact with by means of your sensory-perceptual mechanism. In other words, “proof” is generally what you can see, hear or touch. (Taste and smell would also count, but these are pretty weak senses for human beings.) There are other types of proof that are possible, but they are related back to observation. Some things are not directly perceivable, but we know that they do exist because of how they interact with things that we can observe. We can observe the effects on things that we do observe directly, and thereby come to understand something about the imperceptible thing that was the cause.

In the natural sciences, much of what we would call proof involves observing the effects on things we can perceive by things that we cannot perceive, thereby providing evidence about the existence and nature of those imperceptible things. For instance, bacteria were first observed by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1676, using a single-lens microscope of his own design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#History_of_bacteriology With bacteria, human beings have been able to use a device with known properties to observe what was previously unobservable. The device was something that used specially shaped glass to amplify light. We knew that when glass was shaped in certain ways, it would make something appear bigger. We then extrapolated that if we bent and shaped this glass and combined it with other bent and shaped glass -other lenses- then it would amplify even smaller things. With sufficiently powerful enough lenses, such a device would eventually amplify the appearance of things that were too small to see with the naked eye. This device was named a microscope, and when Leeuwenhoek looked through it, he saw tiny organisms that were not visible with the naked eye, which were subsequently called “bacteria”.

The atom was discovered thanks to a number of observations made by scientists:
“In the early 1800s, John Dalton used the concept of atoms to explain why elements always react in ratios of small whole numbers (the law of multiple proportions). For instance, there are two types of tin oxide: one is 88.1% tin and 11.9% oxygen and the other is 78.7% tin and 21.3% oxygen (tin(II) oxide and tin dioxide respectively). This means that 100g of tin will combine either with 13.5g or 27g of oxygen. 13.5 and 27 form a ratio of 1:2, a ratio of small whole numbers. This common pattern in chemistry suggested to Dalton that elements react in whole number multiples of discrete units—in other words, atoms.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom#First_evidence-based_theory

This knowledge was combined with other knowledge such as the phenomena of “Brownian Motion”:

“In 1827, botanist Robert Brown used a microscope to look at dust grains floating in water and discovered that they moved about erratically, a phenomenon that became known as “Brownian motion”. This was thought to be caused by water molecules knocking the grains about.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom#First_evidence-based_theory

In the case of atoms, it was observed that a certain amount of tin always combined with a certain amount of oxygen in one of two ways, suggesting that whatever the ultimate constituents of tin and oxygen were, they must be discrete units. In other words, they must consist of units that cannot be divided any further -at least if you still wanted to speak of them as “oxygen” and “tin”. This knowledge, combined with other observations, such as Brownian motion, eventually led to the widespread acceptance of the existence of atoms. We inferred the existence of something, the atom, based on things that we could observe with our inborn sensory-perceptual mechanisms (our eyes).

The Theory of Evolution is another example of how we have come to have, at the very least, a theory, that explains our origins. There is no way to directly confirm this theory by direct observation. If it is happening, evolution happens over millions of years, with parents giving rise to slightly different offspring, who then are either more or less successful at survival because of these characteristics. These offspring have more children than those without those characteristics, and this continues on and on, until the resulting organism is so different from the original ancestor that it can no longer even be considered of the same species. This theory is based on things like:
(1) Geological observations that suggest the Earth is billions of years old.
(2) Observing the fact that different members of the same species of organism have different characteristics from each others. (E.G. some people have red hair while others have brown hair.)
(3) Parents are able to pass some of their unique characteristics on to their children. (E.G. blue-eyed parents have blue-eyed children.)
(4) Some of the unique characteristics an organism has can make it more successful at surviving and reproducing than if it didn’t have that characteristic. (E.G. a bacteria might have partial resistance to penicillin, while other members of its species do not, meaning resistant ones will tend to survive and reproduce.)

All of these observations suggest that, given sufficient time, one organism can be the ancestor of organisms that would be considered a completely different species, and that this occurs because of changing environmental conditions.

Proof of things that we didn’t observe by observing other things, and recognizing that there is a relationship, is not limited to the natural sciences. For instance, in a murder trial, all of the evidence that is presented is something that the judge and jurors can observe directly with their eyes and ears. For instance, the prosecution can present finger prints that were lifted from the murder weapon, and explain the chain of custody of the object such that no one had touched the murder weapon since it was discovered at the scene. Or, the prosecution can explain how each gun barrel leaves unique markings on the bullet when it is fired, and that the markings on the bullet found in the victim matches the markings on a bullet fired through the weapon by a ballistics expert.

Witness testimony can also establish other facts for the jury, such as if someone saw the accused walk into the victims house, and then heard a shot ring out. In that case, the jurors are relying on the eye witness’s observations, which are generally going to be believed, unless it can be show that the witness had some bias to lie or some mental problem that makes them unreliable. Even testimony such as someone seeing the victim and the accused in a heated argument a few days prior to the murder can be evidence, based on what we know about human nature. Human beings tend to do things because they have a motive for doing so, and if the accused hated the victim, then that would suggest he might have killed the victim. This recognition of human behavior is also based on observation.

What is the method of relating the things that we observe and then concluding the existence of something that we didn’t observe? The method of logic provides us with guidance in this area. Logic generally takes two forms: the inductive and the deductive. In deductive logic, we mentally place a specific instance into a general category or principle. It is reasoning from the general to the specific. For instance: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. “All men are mortal” is a general category or principle. Socrates is shown to be a specific instance of a man, and therefore everything that is known to be true about all men is true with respect to Socrates, i.e., that Socrates, just like all men, is mortal.

Deduction is a means of coming to have knowledge that doesn’t depend on direct observation of the conclusion, but the conclusion is based on other direct observations. In the case of the Socrates syllogism, you didn’t observe Socrates being born, growing old, and then eventually dying, but you were able to conclude without such direct observation that he is mortal -that Socrates will eventually die. What is the evidence for this? One such fact is that every other man who is known to have lived eventually died. You then assume that since Socrates is in this category of “men”, that he has the same characteristics as other men, and is therefore mortal.

The above discussion of deduction leads to the other major form of logic. Where did the “all men are mortal” part of the Socrates syllogism come from? This is a complicated subject, and is not even fully agreed on today, but, in general, such knowledge is gained by observing a sufficient number of concrete examples of a thing and then generalizing that all members of that category possess that characteristic. For instance, it is impossible to actually observe all men and see that they are mortal, but you observe enough examples that you can eventually conclude that “all men are mortal.” The problem is that this can lead to generalizations that are erroneous. An example of this is the generalization: “All swans are white.” You observed numerous examples of white swans, and you conclude that they are all white. But, one day, you discover a bird that is morphologically the same as white swans, but it has black feathers. How do you know when you have a valid generalization versus an invalid one? I would like to know the answer to that one myself. In general terms, I think that if you are clear about the nature of the thing, and your purposes when you generalize, then it is possible to come up with valid generalizations. So, in the case of the invalid statement “all swans are white,” if you were clear about what a swan is and also about why the color of swans matters to you, then you probably wouldn’t make such a generalization in the first place. I cannot even think of a situation where it really matters whether swans are black or white. If you regard swans as a food source, then their color makes no difference. If you simply think swans are beautiful and graceful, then I think that belief applies to both colors. For my purposes here, the minutia of valid induction can be put aside. The point is that you generalize, or induce, by observing a sufficient number of examples to reach the generalization. Induction ultimately depends on your observations -on what you can perceive with your senses.

Someone might claim that they have a means of gaining knowledge other than through observation or logical reasoning, but I am aware of no such means. However, if they can provide me with proof, then I am open to hearing what they have to say. I just don’t know how you provide proof without proof, which seems to be what they are claiming.

“Free Will” and “Determinism”

I was thinking about the “determinism versus free will” debate yesterday, and I had a couple of thoughts that I thought might help in this debate. I am aiming my thoughts at people who are generally secularists and who look for naturalistic explanations for all phenomena.

First, I think it’s useful to think about things that clearly *are* determined. These are all non-living things, some of which are man-made and some of which are not. Examples include: billiard balls on a pool table that bounce when struck by other billiard balls, water reacting to a pebble being thrown in it with waves, the planets moving in orbit around the sun, a mouse trap when it is set and then sprung by a mouse, a basket ball that is dropped from a height and then repeatedly bounces -but less and less until it comes to a stop, and a rube goldberg machine. Both a proponent of determinism and an opponent of determinism will agree that all of these things are completely “determined”. These things possess no “internal will” that causes them to act as they do.

Second, it is also useful to look at the human mind to see if all of our mental actions are the same in terms of “level of choice”. Internal introspection of your own mind is the only way to really do this. There are certain “mental behaviors” or “mental actions” that seem less “chosen” than others. Normally, your emotions typically just react to external stimuli with very little or no ability on your part to avoid feeling those emotions. You feel anger, hatred, sadness, or happiness in reaction to certain perceived events seemingly “automatically”, like a mousetrap going off. At any given moment, your emotions seem closer to the examples of non-living things that are determined. If you are a man interested in women, and you see a woman with a certain body shape, size, and age-range, who behaves in a certain way, you feel a certain amount of romantic desire for her. If you are a woman with a child, you will normally feel fear if you see your child facing some sort of danger -or you will feel hatred or anger for the source of the danger towards your child. If someone tries to rob you with a gun, you will feel fear or anger. If someone you care about dies, you feel sadness. In all cases, you have little choice about the feelings that you feel at that moment. Your actions with respect to those feelings appear to be more under your control, but not the feelings themselves. Over time, your emotional reactions to certain things seem like they change. If you see someone you were romantically involved with several years after you broke up, you may no longer have the same romantic feelings you once had for them, or not to the same degree, but this happens over time. At any given time, one’s emotions are more fixed. (Some psychological schools seem to be based on the assumption that your thoughts can change your emotions over time, so if you change your thinking, which is under your control, then you will eventually change your emotions, but that is beyond the point here.)

But, when it comes to certain tasks, your ability to mentally solve problems seem less “automatic” than your emotions. For instance, if you are a physicist trying to solve a complex math problem, you actually have to sit down and work on the math problems. If you are a doctor trying to diagnose a patient’s illness, you actually have to draw on your store of knowledge and try to come up with a diagnosis. If you are a computer programmer, you actually have to sit down and try to figure out what data structures and if-then-else statements will solve the problem you are trying to solve. If you are a lawyer, you have to think about the facts of the case, and then go research the law and try to determine what legal precedents the facts of your case fit into. If you are a structural engineer, you have to decide what are the requirements of your building, such as: What will it be used for? How many people will use it? etc. Then you actually pick construction materials, work out the load requirements, etc. This applies equally to “blue collar” occupations. If you are a taxi cab driver, and your fare wants to get to the airport from downtown in less than 30 minutes, you have to consider the time of day, the traffic conditions, which roads are under construction, possibly consult maps, and mentally devise a route. In all of these cases, the mental activity involved is not nearly as “automatic” as when you feel an emotion. They all involve thinking to solve the problem of human survival.

Now, I think that a dedicated determinist is just going to say that all of these examples of thinking are “illusory” examples of choice because at some “lower level”, we are all just made up of some substance(s) that appears wholly determined. For instance, he will say on the molecular level, an atomic level, or a subatomic level, you are actually determined. He says this with the following reasoning: Your brain is made of nothing but molecules (or atoms). Molecules are entirely determined. Therefore, your brain is entirely determined. In other words, your mind is actually just a more complicated example of things like the mousetrap discussed above. My concern with that sort of reasoning is that it basically says: what you perceive as reality is not really reality at all. “Reality” is the molecular level, and the world that you perceive is nothing but an illusion. But, if you cannot count on what you perceive, including your perception of the choice to think, then I am not sure that any sort of knowledge of the molecular level, or any other level, is actually possible. Without knowledge, life would seem to be, as Hobbes said in another context, “nasty brutish and short”.

Randall’s Aristotle, Chapter VII, “The Heavens”

I have been reading Aristotle by John Herman Randall, Jr. (1960 Columbia Press). Chapter VII, “The Heavens” discusses Aristotle’s cosmology. It really hit home for me why the Catholic church took so much offense from Galileo and other 16th/17th Century natural philosophers saying that the Earth was not the center of the universe, that the Earth revolved around the sun along with the planets, etc.
The church had adopted Aristotle’s ideas by that time, and that included the notion that as you traveled out away from the Earth, you would approach divine perfection. Unlike Plato who thought that such divine perfection existed in some other realm, Aristotle said such perfection was the outermost layer of the Universe. As evidence of this perfection, it was pointed out that the stars moved in an apparently unchanging circular pattern through the night sky, and such circular motion was considered “divine” or “perfect”. The stars, unlike the planets, exhibited this circular motion because they were closer to perfection.

As the Church became increasingly Aristotelian, it would have adopted the notion that this outer realm of the universe was where the divine resided, rather than in some “other realm” outside the universe as a more Platonic Christianity would hold. However, the natural philosophers of the 16th/17th century began to show that the rest of the universe operated in accordance with the same natural laws as the ones operative here on Earth, and that the Earth revolved around the sun. This would have started calling into question the whole scheme in which the Earth is at the center, and “imperfect”, while as you moved out away from the Earth, you approached “perfection”, and a different set of natural laws from the ones on Earth. But, if the Church had already rejected the Platonic notion of the divine in another realm, and the divine also didn’t exist in this universe, then that would tend to suggest that it didn’t exist anywhere. It wasn’t just a question of Astronomy for the Church, it literally called into question it’s most fundamental tenants.

Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos”

I am currently watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” on Netflix. I recall seeing bits and pieces of this throughout the 1980’s on PBS, but I was basically too young to follow it in great detail (I am only 38). It is a journey through intellectual history, with an emphasis on Astronomy and Physics, with a little Philosophy thrown in for good measure. I think that it is, overall, a very good series.

Episode 7, “The Backbone of Night” was an especially interesting episode since it seems to present a slightly different interpretation from how I have heard most Objectivists interpret the history of Ancient Greece, which tends to focus on Aristotle. Sagan agrees that the Ancient Greeks, especially the Ionians, were the birthplace of the scientific method of observation and experimentation. But, he goes on to say that there was another strand of thought running through Ancient Greece centered in Pythagoras, which deemphasized experimentation and observation in favor of “deduction”. (I think Sagan even used the word “deduction” to describe the Pythagoreans.) This ultimately led to a mystical world-view (or was based in a mystical world-view), which was expressed in the ideas of Plato. Interestingly, he even says that this Pythagorean worldview took reason out of the hands of the Ionian merchants and artisans –practical men concerned with ideas- and put it into the hands of the elite slaveholders, which was more consonant with the ownership of slaves. This was because the Pythagorean system emphasized the mind over the body, and “the body” was associated with the physical labor of the elite’s slaves. (I assume because the slaves would be viewed as less than fully rational manual laborers who merely used their bodies.)

Sagan then goes on to say that Plato’s ideas were basically adopted into Christianity. (Sagan hasn’t come out and said he’s an atheist, but he all but says so at various points in the series.) Sagan then essentially says that the early flowering of “expermentalism” in Ionia was suppressed by the Pythagoreans and later Plato, and that Aristotle was essentially no better than Plato. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that the “Ionian world view” was rediscovered, or so says Sagan. What I found interesting is how much he deemphasized the philosophy of Aristotle in the episode be implying that it was just a sort of outgrowth of Plato. Possibly this is due to the fact that the Catholic Church adopted Aristotle after the Renaissance, along with the Aristotelian notion that the Earth was the center of the universe, although, in fairness, the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe predates Aristotle. This might lead most to believe that Aristotle is to blame for the troubles of Galileo, Copernicus, and various other natural philosophers near the Enlightenment era.

My understanding is that while Aristotle was a student of Plato, he was much more interested in experimentation and observation given his belief that the essences that form the basis of mental concepts exist in each concrete thing, rather than in some other realm. I am no expert in classical philosophy, but this is my general understanding. At any rate, the “Cosmos” series is extremely interesting, and I recommend that you watch it if you haven’t ever seen it.