Intelligent baking

The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.

from http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/

I love analogies. Here's a little analogy that expresses something of my frustration with those who suggest that ID is a sensible scientific answer to scientific questions about our origins.

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Me: How was that cake made?

Scientist:The original ingredients - 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of cocoa, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, and 1 cup of cold water - were mixed thoroughly in a bowl, then poured into a cake dish to about 2 centimetres depth. It was then baked in an oven set at 175C (350F) for 30-40 minutes. Afterward, it was iced with a mixture of cocoa, icing sugar, and margarine (mixed to taste).

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Me: How was that cake made?

ID proponent: A professional baker had to have made it.

---

The Darwinist's answer is satisfying, and productive. The ID person's answer answers nothing useful about the question - even if it is right, you still want to know how the baker made the cake.

(For those who are curious, that is an actual recipe, which has produced many delicious chocolate cakes. I do not know the original author, but I got the recipe from my mother-in-law. None of the cakes that I have seen produced from this recipe were made by professional bakers.)

Ubuntu gets saved

I've long been a fan of the Linux operating system. Of the many, many varieties of Linux out there, my favorite so far has been Ubuntu - easy to install, easy to use, lots of community support, and it's pretty.

I was looking at their website the other day, curious about the latest version (currently 7.10, nicknamed Gusty Gibbon), and had a look around the different flavours of Ubuntu.

There's "regular" Ubuntu, which comes with the popular Gnome desktop environment:
Then there's Kubuntu, which has the same software but with KDE instead of Gnome:
Edubuntu comes with educational software, and is designed to be easy for non-techie teachers to set up a classroom network: Part of the virtue of Ubuntu is that it comes with easy-to-install packages for media playing and other tasks that have historically been difficult to do in Linux. Unfortunately, some of the software for these tasks is not technically "free" - they cost nothing to use, but they are not distributed under the GNU General Public License.

So for those with a particular attachment to that license and the ethical stance it promotes, there is Gobuntu:
And finally there is Xubuntu, for those with older systems (slower, less disk space) or those who want to squeeze the most speed and power out of what they have. It uses the bare-bones Xfce desktop environment.
I had come across all of these before. I went with the default Ubuntu flavour, because I like Gnome and it was easy. But the popularity of the Ubuntu family of distributions has led others to take Ubuntu as a base for developing other varieties. I hadn't heard of most of these before. They include distributions tuned to particular requirements such as for security, for compactness, for different languages.

But two jumped off the screen at me (so to speak):

and

That's right. Ubuntu CE (Christian edition), with a Jesus fish incorporated into the basic Ubuntu logo, and Ubuntu ME (Muslim edition), with an Arabic word inside the Ubuntu logo. (Anyone know Arabic? What does it say?) [Edit 12 November: I'm now pretty sure it's "Allah", the Arabic word for "God".]

The main differences between these and the standard Ubuntu varieties seem to be that CE and ME include special software - primarily for browsing the holy text and filtering web content. I gather that some customization of the graphic theme has also been made. The Christian version includes a What Would Jesus Download toolbar for the Firefox web browser. The Muslim edition includes an Islamic calendar and even a reminder application for the five daily prayers.

But more than any of this, I suspect that the main motivation behind each of these variants is to build an online community of like-minded people.

So I thought, what other religious-themed Linux variants are out there?

I came across Mythbuntu, but that's not religious - "Myth" refers to MythTV, a multimedia application.

And then there's Devil Linux (not based on Ubuntu), but again the religious implication is unconnected to the purpose of the distribution. It's a dedicated server distribution, which I know almost nothing about.


So then I wondered if there's a humanist-themed Linux. Shouldn't there be? Maybe I could slap together Ubuntu HE.

Then I remembered something I read back when I first discovered Ubuntu:

Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

So there you have it. Ubuntu, plain old normal Ubuntu, is already a humanist distribution. (I would even say that Linux, and free software in general, reflects humanist values. But that's a theme for another post.)

The days when you had to be a hardcore computer hacker to get anything to work on Linux are behind us. I find Ubuntu as easy to work in as Windows - easier in some ways.

If you haven't tried Linux recently, give it a go. Get Ubuntu (free CD by mail or download) and run it risk-free from the CD to get a feel for it.*

And give me feedback. Do you think (like me) that humanist values lend themselves well to the free software philosophy of Linux (and Ubuntu in particular)? What about other operating systems - how do they (and the companies that produce them) strike you from the standpoint of humanist ethics?

* This post was written and submitted on a computer running Edubuntu from the live CD, with Windows XP installed and untouched underneath.

Language and the framing of popular science

Deena just showed me a very well-written article, "Watch your language", about the framing of science in public health. It looks at the issue of breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding infants, and how the language we use affects the perception of the alternatives in subtle but powerful ways.

The World Health Organization says on breastfeeding that:

Breastfeeding is the ideal way of providing young infants with the nutrients they need for healthy growth and development. Virtually all mothers can breastfeed, provided they have accurate information, and the support of their family and the health care system. Colostrum, the yellowish, sticky breast milk produced at the end of pregnancy, is recommended by WHO as the perfect food for the newborn, and feeding should be initiated within the first hour after birth. Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended up to 6 months of age.

According to a 2005 survey, only 8% of babies (less than 1 in 12) born in the UK are breastfed exclusively for the first six months, despite the fact that 84% of mothers "said they were aware of the health benefits of breastfeeding."

This seems to be typical of developed countries.

Why? Read the article. I suspect that the ideas presented there are transferable to other public science issues.

High-tech philanthropy: how you can be the next Bill Gates!

I have just come across a really cool initiative for educating children in developing countries: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

I know, I know. Just from the name, it sounds like the sort of pie-in-the-sky idealism cooked up by affluent do-gooders in their summer home who have never had to live on what people earn in developing countries.

But check it out. Really. Each unit costs only $200 US (less than £100).

As the founder and president of OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte, says, "It's an education project, not a laptop project." The design and distribution strategy reflect that. They have held to a number of simple design features in creating this laptop, the XO, which should make it ideal for use in the most under-developed areas:

... the laptop could not be big, heavy, fragile, ugly, dangerous, or dull. Another imperative was visual distinction. ... [T]he machine's distinctive appearance is also meant to discourage gray-market traffic. There is no mistaking what it is and for whom it is intended.

XO is about the size of a textbook and lighter than a lunchbox. Thanks to its flexible design and “transformer" hinge, the laptop easily assumes any of several configurations: standard laptop use, e-book reading, and gaming.

... The integrated handle is kid-sized, as is the sealed, rubber-membrane keyboard. The novel, dual-mode, extra-wide touchpad supports pointing, as well as drawing and writing.

... It contains no hazardous materials. ...

In addition, —for use at home and where power is not available—the XO can be hand powered. It will come with at least two of three options: a crank, a pedal, or a pull-cord. ...

Experience shows that laptop components most likely to fail are the hard drive and internal connectors. Therefore, XO has no hard drive to crash and only two internal cables. For added robustness, the machine's plastic walls are 2mm thick, as opposed to the standard 1.3mm. Its mesh network antennas, which far outperform the typical laptop, double as external covers for the USB ports, which are protected internally as well. The display is also cushioned by internal “bumpers.”

The estimated product lifetime is at least five years. To help ensure such durability, the machines are being subjected to factory testing to destruction, as well as in situ field testing by children.

(from the features page)

And, more importantly, they are inexpensive. They are built as simply as possible, and run with only free software (their conditions for software inclusion are analogous but not identical to those found in the excellent GNU General Public License).

You can participate in various ways - by volunteering, by donating to OLPC. But my favorite is the "Give 1 Get 1" campaign. You pay for two of them; one goes to a child in the developing world, and the other comes to you for your child to use. Let's face it - it's a great little device, especially for the price tag.

So from 12 November, for a fraction of the cost of a normal laptop ($399 US, or £191.93 at today's exchange rate) you can buy your child a sturdy, versatile educational tool while contributing to an innovative and promising effort to lift poor children out of poverty through education.

As a long-time fan of laptops, of open-source software (particularly Linux), and of education, I find this plan very exciting. I would love for Kaia's first computer to be an XO. (I kinda think it'd be nice to have one myself, too.)

Of course, I'll also have to keep my eyes on other projects with similar goals (see here, here, and here). They all seem to be interested in the charitable goals of helping kids in developing nations, so I don't think competition and rivalry will become too much of a problem.

Let me know what you think. I am currently in the first flush of excitement over this idea - I haven't turned my critical-thinking fully on this idea. Would you contribute to this project? Would you buy one of these for your own child as well as for a needy child?

Troubling thoughts about superstition

This post is inspired by thoughts from two actual researchers into the psychology of belief: Stuart Vyse, author of the engaging book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, and Bruce Hood, who gave a talk at this year's Edinburgh Science Festival. I think everyone should learn something about the psychology of belief, as an inoculant against falling for common pitfalls in thinking. But that's a topic for another post.

I recently had a disquieting train of thought about the difference between superstitious and rational beliefs.

At their root, superstitions are simply over-eager assignments of cause and effect.

A famous baseball player (says Vyse) once had a great game after eating chicken. Thereafter, he always ate chicken before a game, in case not eating chicken caused him to have a bad game. This behaviour survived (one infers) countless games where he ate chicken but didn't win.

Then there's the pigeon experiments. Put a pigeon in a room, and it'll do its pigeon thing. Then start to introduce rewards (food pellets, for example) at random intervals, not affected by the pigeon's behaviour. They will begin to obsessively repeat a single behaviour (say, turning left) that they happened to be doing when the first pellet appeared. Apparently, they think that doing that causes the reward to appear, even though pellets don't appear all the time they exhibit the behaviour.

It seems that superstitious behaviour - generalizing cause and effect from a single accidental coincidence - is a natural consequence of the mental makeup of widely-different vertebrate species. And at its root is the slightly over-productive instinct that, if A is followed by B, then A caused B. It's a useful heuristic in evolutionary terms, but it's also a classic post-hoc logical fallacy.

On the other hand, in science, we try to distinguish real patterns from coincidences in a reliable way. We run trials. A team of scientists suspects that eating chicken causes winning, so they set out to test it. They run an experiment. In one part, athletes eat chicken before the game 500 times. In the other part, athletes eat something else before the game 500 times. The team can then see whether meals with chicken are, in fact, followed by wins (compared with how often chicken-free meals are followed by wins).

But science is a lot of work, and everyday life is filled with situations where we need to decide causation. We can't always get rigorous evidence about whether chicken is reliably followed by winning.

So at what point does the not-quite-scientific belief turn into a superstitious belief? The pigeon or the athlete infers causation on the basis of a single event: that is superstitious. The researcher infers causation on the basis of a thousand-subject scientific trial: that is not being superstitious. Where exactly is the crossover between science and superstition?

The troubling fact is, of course, that there is no crossover. There is no point at which superstition suddenly becomes science.

I probably have several beliefs about causation which are much closer to superstition than they are to science on the continuum. From beliefs about people (first impressions - this person is shallow, that person is reliable) to ideas about how to get a computer to perform a rare task (like getting the headphones to work on my Linux machine at school).

This is disquieting indeed, since science and scientific thinking form a central part of my ethical outlook on life. Am I actually just as guilty as my superstitious ancestors of basing my beliefs on bad evidence?

Not completely. There is some reassurance to be had. It has to do with certainty, and I get to quote a Scottish philosopher at the end.

Facts that have been studied and established with scientific experiments deserve a high degree of certainty. (Never absolute certainty - that is reserved for instincts and delusions.) Facts that come from extensive experience but haven't been rigorously tested scientifically deserve confidence, but less than scientifically-tested facts. And so on, down to say, me clicking a box in the control panel of my computer and finding that my headphones work again. It's only happened once, and I'm not prepared to undo it to see if it works again, but I will maintain the belief that, should the problem present itself again, the same solution will work again. This is a very tentative belief - it would take very little evidence to persuade me that it is false.

Is it still a belief then, if it's so tenuous? Of course it is. It will guide my actions should my headphones stop working again.

So here is the conclusion to this troubling line of thought: No matter who you are, you almost certainly hold some beliefs that are superstitious, in that they are based on the same sort of evidence as the athlete's chicken=winning belief. This is unavoidable - not just biologically but practically in our busy lives.

But it's not a bad thing, so long as you (in Hume's words) "proportion [your] belief to the evidence."

Those people who suggest that you cannot live entirely on sound, empirical scientific beliefs are right. It would just be too much work.

Those who suggest that you have to commit yourself wholeheartedly to unsupported claims are wrong. There is nothing wrong with admitting you don't know. It doesn't preclude acting decisively, and it is a good inoculant against unjustified dogmatism and fundamentalism.

[edit 2007 November 1]
Just a day after writing the above, I got to the section in Richard Dawkins' book, Unweaving the Rainbow, where he discusses just this. He also reminded me of the source of the pigeon experiments - they were performed by the great psychologist B. F. Skinner. The boxes in which the pigeons underwent these experiments are called Skinner boxes.

Identity and forgetfulness

A bit of philosophical dissonance to ponder ...

The observation is one of the most replicable in the literature: Whether tested in 1893 or 1999 (West & Bauer, 1999), among adults in Western cultures, the average age of earliest memory is age 3 to 3½ years. (from the APA Online)

Four- and three-year-olds can readily recall events from their second year. Yet, by the age of ten these earliest memories have receded behind what's been dubbed the "reminiscence bump." (from some recent Canadian research)

Add to this the sense that, without my memories, I would cease to be really me, and I find myself in a philosophical predicament. My daughter, Kaia, is unlikely to consciously remember anything that happens in the next two years. By the time she's ten, she'll probably have the adult "reminiscence bump" - no conscious memories before three years old.

What does this mean for her identity? Will ten-year-old Kaia be a literally different person from the Kaia I see today? Or am I wrong that my memories are key to my identity?

Perhaps - probably - there is a sensible compromise that will make sense of both the inescapable certainty that the baby is the same person as the teenager and adult, and of the intuition that our memories are a key to our identity.

But I haven't worked it out yet. For now, let me know what you think. How do you resolve this conundrum?

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme

Here's an interesting experiment from the mind of Pharyngula, exploring the idea of memes. But more importantly, it's a fun little game. Here it is ...

THE RULES

There is a set of questions below, all of the form , “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.

Copy the questions. Before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

> You can leave them exactly as is.

> You can delete any one question.

> You can mutate either the genre, medium or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best timetravel novel in SF/ Fantasy is…” to “The best timetravel novel in Westerns is…” , or ”the best timetravel movie in SF/Fantasy is…, or ”The best Romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”

> You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.

> You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions.

Please do include a link back to the ‘parent’ blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers.

Remember though: your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate, and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

THE LINEAGE

My great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.

My great-grandparent is The Flying Trilobite.

My grandparent is Leslie’s Blog.

Papa is The Meming of Life.

——————————————————————-

THE MUTATING MEME

——————————————————————-

Pharyngula says:

• The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers.
• The best romantic movie in historical fiction is…Cold Mountain.
• The best sexy song in rock is…Gloria, by Patti Smith.

——————————————————————–

The Flying Trilobite says:

• The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is: Hyperion by Dan Simmons.
• The best romantic movie in scientific dystopias is: Gattaca (1997)
• The best sexy song in rock is: #1 Crush by Garbage from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet soundtrack
• The best cult novel in Canadian fiction is: JPod by Douglas Coupland (2006)

——————————————————————–

Leslie’s Blog mutated it to:

• The best timetravel television in SF/Fantasy is: Heroes
• The best romantic movie in scientific dystopia is: THX 1138
• The best sexy song in traditional is: “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social Club

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

THE MEMING OF LIFE’s mutation:

• The best romantic movie in scientific dystopia is: THX 1138
• The best sexy song in traditional is: “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social Club
• The best satirical movie in comedy is: Life of Brian

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And the Friendly Humanist's contribution:

• The best romantic novel in scientific dystopia is: The Dispossesed
• The best sexy attire in traditional is: the codpiece
  
• The best satirical movie in comedy is: Life of Brian

——————————————————————–

Now to propagate it:

I'll see if the Friendly Atheist picks the meme up from me before he gets it from Meming of Life. (What does sexual competition look like in meme-propagation? Will it matter to Hemant that his blog inspired my blog, right down to the title?)

And in the parenting line, perhaps AgnosticMom would like a go.

Another parent, at A Mindful Life - like me, she probably doesn't have time for this sort of thing.

A recently out humanist who has recently grappled with creationism, ThinkTooMuch could probably use the time playing with his fellow freethinkers.

Finally, I'll try to pass on my memes to the top of the critical-thinking food chain: Ben over at Bad Science would probably enjoy this.