IBM in an over-the-top, self-promoting piece has published the world’s smallest movie. A technically amazing movie involving the world’s smallest characters.

“Capturing, positioning and shaping atoms to create an original motion picture on the atomic-level is a precise science and entirely novel,” said Andreas Heinrich, a scientist at IBM Research.

True. I guess they didn’t use a girl for the graphic difficulties of boobs? It’s to visualize and control individual atoms. I suppose cynics would say this is what research money goes to? It’s important to somehow get science to a public that fears science.

The best part of the article:

“Research means asking questions beyond those required to find good short-term engineering solutions to problems,” Heinrich said.

This is why corporations and politics shouldn’t fund all research. Last March the Senate passed a ridiculous limitation to the NSF to not study political science.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) submitted a series of amendments to the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013, the Senate bill to keep the government running past March 27. One of those amendments would prohibit the NSF from funding political science research unless a project is certified as “promoting national security or the
economic interests of the United States.”

“Studies of presidential executive power and Americans’ attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American’s life from a threatening condition or to advance America’s competitiveness in the world,” Coburn wrote in a letter to NSF director Subra Suresh last week explaining his proposal.

…

“I’m pleased the Senate accepted an amendment that restricts funding to low-priority political science grants,” Coburn said in a statement following the vote. “There is no reason to spend $251,000 studying Americans’ attitudes toward the U.S. Senate when citizens can figure that out for free.”

I would love to see if there is what science or utility there is to the absurd abuse of filibustering. More importantly it is a dangerous precedent when politicians assume they know what science should study. Usurping the NSF’s decision-making process without being a scientist on the team is like a politician telling a car mechanic what to fix, from his house, without seeing the car.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

In 1998 Ap Dijksterhuis published research claiming if you were primed with the word professor you would do better on a test than if you were primed with the stereotype word soccer hooligan.

 Specifically, 4 experiments established that priming the stereotype of professors or the trait intelligent enhanced participants’ performance on a scale measuring general knowledge.

…Results of the experiments revealed (a) that prolonged priming leads to more pronounced behavioral effects and (b) that there is no sign of decay of the effects for at least 15 min.

Another example is if you were related a text with terms of old age you subsequently walked more slowly. A physical context study stated you think a hill is more steep if you are carrying a back pack, are fatigued, or in poor shape. A person primed with an African-American stereotype reacted with greater hostility to a “vexatious request.”

The basic issue is whether people are unconsciously primed to perception by environment.

“Priming” refers to the passive, subtle, and unobtrusive activation of relevant mental representations by external, environmental stimuli, such that people are not and do not become aware of the influence exerted by those stimuli. In harmony with the situationist tradition, this priming research has shown that the mere, passive perception of environmental events directly triggers higher mental processes in the absence of any involvement by conscious, intentional processes…”

More recent research problematizes these results by stating the specific terms are generalized too broadly and the duration is too short–the connection between the word “old” and the act of “walking slowly” is too broad and the effect more short.

A well-established principle in traditional priming research (which commonly involves presenting words as primes to study lexical or semantic processing) is that generalization is often extremely narrow and context-specific [5]. If the priming effects of reading a word such as OLD do not transfer across changes in font or modality, then how likely is it that they transfer to something like speed of walking? The priming effects described above are unusual in this context as they imply effects which generalize very broadly. Another reason these reports are surprising is that decades of research has found that unconscious or subliminal influences on behaviour are exceptionally difficult to demonstrate [6], [7], [8], and even when replicable positive effects are shown, they tend to be over extremely short time intervals (less than a second), far shorter than the intervals involved in the studies described above, where periods of at least a few minutes are involved.

In short, they can’t reproduce the results.

We found it difficult, however, to replicate the basic effect of stereotype priming on accuracy in answering general knowledge questions.

…The current results are also consistent with the view that conscious thoughts are by far the primary driver of behavior [52] and that unconscious influences – if they exist at all – have limited and narrow effects.

What is sad in the context of this is Dijksterhuis is acting like a dogmatic jerk rather than discussing the research or helping establish an experimental protocol.

David Shanks, a cognitive psychologist at University College London, UK, and first author of the paper in PLoS ONE, is among skeptical scientists calling for Dijksterhuis to design a detailed experimental protocol to be carried out indifferent laboratories to pin down the effect. Dijksterhuis has rejected the request, saying that he “stands by the general effect” and blames the failure to replicate on “poor experiments”.

An acrimonious e-mail debate on the subject has been dividing psychologists, who are already jittery about other recent exposures of irreproducible results (seeNature 485, 298–300; 2012). “It’s about more than just replicating results from one paper,” says Shanks, who circulated a draft of his study in October; the failed replications call into question the under­pinnings of ‘unconscious-thought theory’.

The reason why this is important is unconscious priming is a highly touted effect made rich in Motivational Seminars espousing a “smart unconscious” as discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink”.

Daniel Kahneman famous for exploring “anchoring” weighed in on the debate:

Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman has issued a strongly worded call to one group of psychologists to restore the credibility of their field by creating a replication ring to check each others’ results…

This scepticism has been fed by failed attempts to replicate classic priming studies, increasing concerns about replicability in psychology more broadly (see ‘Bad Copy‘), and the exposure of fraudulent social psychologists such as Diederik Stapel, Dirk Smeesters and Lawrence Sanna, who used priming techniques in their work.

“For all these reasons, right or wrong, your field is now the poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research,” Kahneman writes. “I believe that you should collectively do something about this mess.”

Further:

To address this problem, Kahneman recommends that established social psychologists set up a “daisy chain” of replications. Each lab would try to repeat a priming effect demonstrated by its neighbour, supervised by someone from the replicated lab. Both parties would record every detail of the methods, commit beforehand to publish the results, and make all data openly available.

Others maintain that priming is obvious and it’s a few skeptics ruining the debate.

Norbert Schwarz, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who received the e-mail, says that priming studies attract sceptical attention because their results are often surprising, not necessarily because they are scientifically flawed. “There is no empirical evidence that work in this area is more or less replicable than work in other areas,” he says, although the “iconic status” of individual findings has distracted from a larger body of supportive evidence.

Schwarz sounds suspect here. The results are actually intuitively true; it would make sense that we think a hill is more steep when fatigued. However, I am not sure that listening to racist speech makes me more unconsciously racist—but then we do say choose your friends wisely as they influence behavior; we also say being with different people doesn’t necessarily make you that kind of person; integration does work in lowering behavioral racism. All of these examples are over long periods of time. The issue is really a maximum of 15 minutes of priming effect versus 1 second, or less, and “hear red see red versus hear red see apple, blood, or rust”–the latency time and generalization of effect. Kahneman’s input and Dijksterhuis’ defensiveness are obvious issues of replicability.

The lesson to me, as a skeptic interested in science, is how scientists pursue research, verify research, and market research. The insights to me as a philosopher are implications on free will. The warnings to me as a practical psychologist are heuristic biases we need to understand. As an atheist getting god out of mind helps eliminate biases towards revelatory thinking, prophetic thinking, and authoritarian thinking. Finally, I worry about people like Gladwell that insist we are so shallow as to be unable to resist immediate impressions–rather than admitting defeat, welcoming stupidity, and wearing the clothes wouldn’t it be better to become more moral and consciously observant? Isn’t the point of education to consciously inform ourselves and live in the world with greater consciousness?

My largest concern is the temptation to think of the unconscious as having person-like qualities with mind as a Cartesian theater of actors with the result of the pathetic marketing of narrow results as general panaceas in expensive and ubiquitous motivational seminars or therapies of programming the mind with language. The notion that one can think one’s way or unconsciously control another’s way out of material dilemmas by the use of priming avoids the more tangible and real issues of the need to change the environment. Why use words to feel better or change things when what’s needed is to change the situation? It is too easy to avoid real change when one can say just put on rose-colored glasses and wear them socially, politically as the rosy reflection creates change in others. It may be politically astute to reframe discussions but that’s really the same thing as using language properly and defining the use of rhetoric in argumentation. There is also no discussion of how personality relates as if all people worked the same way–what about a contrarian versus a conformist? What of conscious control overriding instinct–racist talk disgusts me and I am getting more disgusted?

Finally, the decreasing lack of funding for science research, the prevalent use of non-evidence-based psychotherapies, and the increasing need to make a mark as a researcher to gain status and money in a declining education market provide great temptation to skew one’s results and cloister those results. What’s needed is more respect for science versus revelation and more objective funding of research.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Until 1957 most people thought all elements originated in the Big Bang. Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about a 1957 “messy” paper created by multiple people stating heavy elements were created within stars by nuclear fusion, called stellar nucleosynthesis. Tyson calls it astrophysicists most important gift. You can follow the link above for the HP post or you can view the extended “School of Thought” video below.

Where did we come from

Extended interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson

What I like here is Tyson shows how science is often advanced  by tedious and slow progress with multiple authors. It takes a community to understand the world!

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

In “It’s Getting Better All the Time” by Edward Hudgens Eskeptic publishes a review of two contrasting books: “Dr. Edward Hudgins reviews two books: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler and Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, by Robert Zubrin.” Do the merchants of science degrade scientific research by either despair or being Pollyanna? Is there no balance?

First it seems neoenlightenment embraces space settlement as both authors promote space homesteading. One wonders how it is getting better if there is a need to homestead in space or is it all just good fun to live off planet.

Daimandis and Kotler promote technology as creating a bright future. For example:

• A new economical water purifier.
• A low-cost, low-tech X-ray machine for medical diagnosis.
• Accessible, cheap computer-based education.

Hudgens then reveals his Objectivist position and professional alliance to the Atlas Society by gleaning three insights called “Entrepreneurial Drivers”–hmm, gleaning, means the waste left behind from production as in the gleanings left from threshing wheat. It’s what we feed the animals off the back.

First, respect for the power of human reason gives us an almost infinite capacity to change the world for the better. The pre-modern and post-modern ideologies hold that humans are ultimately ignorant and impotent in the face of divine providence or the forces of nature. This erroneous philosophical assumption has no place in the abundance worldview.

An infinite capacity? That’s a pretty big number. That it is unending in our puny vision doesn’t make it almost infinite. Past ideologies have actually been arrogant in considering themselves highly intelligent and sure of themselves–so much so they created an omnipotent, omniscient being and claimed themselves that–kings as gods, people as chosen by god. Postmodernism did reveal holes in anthropocentric Western thinking and did show intrinsic biases that must be dealt with. If past societies felt and were so ignorant then how is it we came to dominate the planet, sheer breeding wasn’t enough.

Second, individuals are the driving force behind human progress. It’s Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Venter, Kamen, Camera, Whitesides, Mitra, Rutan, Musk, Kurzweil, and a long list of others—not impersonal social forces—who make the difference between poverty and abundance.

This isn’t true at all. I too have my heroes but I am also antiheroic; the janitor is essential and could be the exRussian physicist. Often the named hero in history was merely one of many aspiring but we forget the others. Your greatest success will always be working with others and collaboration, sharing of knowledge–that is the heart of science and democracy.  Einstein said:

Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

No one is an island. Privileging the brain over the kidney, the heart, the skin misconstrues the importance of the parts to the whole. Respect for all people creates an ecological of respect where success is most possible. Too often in zealous competition the new status seekers, so called innovators, stand on the shoulders of their ancestors and shit. Humility was never a strength of Objectivists and doesn’t lead to cooperation and equal, yet moral, competition.

Third, the individuals creating the world of abundance love their work. Yes, they say that they work for the good of humanity and a more prosperous world for all is certainly the result of their efforts. But it is their love of meeting impossible challenges, challenges that call on the best within them, that really motivates them and that deserves our emulation.

Posh, people work to pay the bills, feed their families, and often evaluate their success by status. Not everyone can chase the golden apple. The people you refer to are heroes that depend on others: the wife who accommodates her workaholic husband, the son who never sees his dad, the grant that allows them to do research, and a market that isn’t dominated by monopolies that hinder innovative competition. There are so many support structures required it is not accurate or fair to insist the rest are to support the few as oligarchs of innovation, monarchies of value, entrepreneurial kingdoms with serfs. Dr Seuss’s Yurtle the turtle stacking his friends in a miserable tower, was an ass even if he did want to see farthest of them all.

Hudgens rightly notes the caveat “all things being equal.” Technology will  not always save us. It is the working arm of ideology. Blind faith is just that, blind. The balance, the hard choices are evaluating technologies, ideologies, and minding the very real human biases that elide long-term success.

Zubrin in “Merchants of Despair” deals with just that balance of humanism versus the world. Does the environment have priority or humans. Much like my friend who hates speed-zones in Florida to save Manatees: the world was made for man not Manatees. Much like the often touted castigation against banning DDT which caused a rise in deaths from Malaria, the original green revolution that fed the world but created monocultural agriculture, or the concern that humans will suffer if we slow global warming. Finally, some despotic attempts to limit population.

And there are those today who grant intrinsic value to nature apart from its value to humans—valuing a forest because we enjoy its beauty or harvest its trees for lumber. This implies nature has “rights” and that we humans must sacrifice our own wellbeing lest we violate them. That is antihumanism. Zubrin challenges readers to examine closely their own beliefs.

The modern arrogance of technocrats is no different than the previous assurance of divine support. Not everything we shit is healthy. God technology  isn’t our safety net. We will happily clear the forests to desert. We have too many heuristic biases to claim total certainty of our import. Allowing nature to have some rights helps us assuage our effects on the world. Effects that create a monoculture that supports more for now but then collapses. Like Egyptians we would build the world’s largest canal system and then be unable to recover from historic floods because they could not rebuild their infrastructure fast enough to prevent starvation. History is littered with growing phases of infrastructure that cannot recover in the face of hardship because there simply wasn’t the capital at the time to match the accumulated capital within the infrastructure, now needing to be replaced. The same happened with Yurtle the turtle. His stack of mates wobbled and collapsed as he had no capital left to build supports when he needed them.

My friend had ALS and his wife wanted to try the new drugs and not be in a double-blind research. It is a hard choice. A nard balance. If we are not careful more cruelty happens. That’s the problem. Blind faith in any innovation, blind faith that the market decides best, blind faith all technologies sort themselves out in time can cause worse damage, more death, and greater human suffering.

The belief that nature has a utility we don’t understand doesn’t privilege nature. It calls caution to consider and test in controlled settings before letting it lose. Humans are neither good nor evil. Just another organism in the universe.

I hate the story of Frankenstein because it is anti technology. I also hate the arrogance that humans know it all. Caution is in order. We must have lifeboats and we must have ideologies that allow us not to overfill them and swamp everyone.

X-rays were originally used to measure feet in shoe stores–not a good idea. Lead paint, asbestos, and chlorohydrocarbons all created more problems than they solved. Since nature is efficient most new technologies are designed to meet a need and time is of the essence. Was the atom bomb worth winning the war, did it really hasten its end? The very scientists involved spoke against it. 60 years ago 155 scientists working on the Manhattan Project posted a petition expressing grave moral concerns about their work. It was ignored.

Science gets a bad reputation when it is reckless marketing of early research and corporate funding bias. It makes science look like a fashion runway. Heart disease: fats are bad, no certain kids of fats, no these other fats, no sugars, well maybe gum bacteria, no inactivity, no genetics, no a byproduct of digesting meats. This hyperactivity to bring a product to market to create wealth creates the fashion. A little care would go a long way and would support better conclusions.

Without due consideration or following the scientific process of collaboration and verification of technology, others devoid of compassion will convert wise use to wise abuse and the consequences will not be heard until greater costs have been created. Let us not continue an era where holes in the ozone from hairspray products causes a president (Reagan) to say it’s just a business opportunity to sell hats and sunscreen.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

I’m a huge fan of Ask A Mortician, a slightly niche youtube series where a professional mortician answers any question you’ve ever had about mortician work, dead bodies, and death in general. And she’s delightful.

So of course, she’s been asked about ghosts. A lot. In her new video, she talks about her views on ghosts and takes a look at some “ghost tourism”. Well, after she’s done talking about a famous cemetery, of course. It ends on a very beautiful, humanist note. She’s always got a good take-away from her videos.

Even though the series isn’t a normal skepticism series, I strongly encourage you to watch the others.  There’s a lot of misinformation about death out there and she occasionally talks about death-related scams.

Her website is Order of the Good Death and she can also be found on Facebook.