Rationally Speaking

David Chalmers and the Singularity that will probably not come

Massimo Pigliucci — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:44:47 +0000

David Chalmers is a philosopher of mind, best known for his argument about the difficulty of what he termed the “hard problem” of consciousness, which he typically discusses by way of a thought experiment featuring zombies who act and talk exactly like humans, and yet have no conscious thought (I explained clearly what I think of that sort of thing in my essay on “The Zombification of Philosophy”).

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Chalmers in action live at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He didn’t talk about zombies, telling us instead his thoughts about the so-called Singularity, the alleged moment when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, resulting in either all hell breaking loose or the next glorious stage in human evolution — depending on whether you typically see the glass as half empty or half full. The talk made clear to me what Chalmers’ problem is (other than his really bad hair cut): he reads too much science fiction, and is apparently unable to snap out of the necessary suspension of disbelief when he comes back to the real world. Let me explain.

Chalmers’ (and other advocates of the possibility of a Singularity) argument starts off with the simple observation that machines have gained computing power at an extraordinary rate over the past several years, a trend that one can extrapolate to a near future explosion of intelligence. Too bad that, as any student of statistics 101 ought to know, extrapolation is a really bad way of making predictions, unless one can be reasonably assured of understanding the underlying causal phenomena (which we don’t, in the case of intelligence). (I asked a question along these lines to Chalmers in the Q&A and he denied having used the word extrapolation at all; I checked with several colleagues over wine and cheese, and they all confirmed that he did — several times.)

Be that as it may, Chalmers went on to present his main argument for the Singularity, which goes something like this:

1. There will soon be AI (i.e., Artificial Intelligence)
2. There will then soon be a transition from AI to AI+
3. There will then soon be a transition from AI+ to AI++

Therefore, there will be AI++

All three premises and the conclusion where followed by a parenthetical statement to the effect that each holds only “absent defeaters,” i.e., absent anything that may get in the way of any of the above.

Chalmers was obviously very proud of his argument, but I got the sense that few people were impressed, and I certainly wasn’t. First off, he consistently refused to define what AI++, AI+, or even, for that matter, AI, actually mean. This, in a philosophy talk, is a pretty grave sin, because philosophical analysis doesn’t get off the ground unless we are reasonably clear on what it is that we are talking about. Indeed, much of philosophical analysis aims at clarifying concepts and their relations. You would have been hard pressed (and increasingly frustrated) in finding any philosophical analysis whatsoever in Chalmers’ talk.

Second, Chalmers did not provide a single reason for any of his moves, simply stating each premise and adding that if AI is possible, then there is no reason to believe that AI+ (whatever that is) is not also possible, indeed likely, and so on. But, my friend, if you are making a novel claim, the burden of proof is on you to argue that there are positive reasons to think that what you are suggesting may be true, not on the rest of us to prove that it is not. Shifting the burden of proof is the oldest trick in the rhetorical toolbox, and not one that a self-respecting philosopher should deploy in front of his peers (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Third, note the parenthetical disclaimer that any of the premises, as well as the conclusion, will not actually hold if a “defeater” gets in the way. When asked during the Q&A what he meant by defeaters, Chalmers pretty much said anything that humans or nature could throw at the development of artificial intelligence. But if that is the case, and if we are not provided with a classification and analysis of such defeaters, then the entire argument amounts to “X is true (unless something proves X not to be true).” Not that impressive.

The other elephant in the room, of course, is the very concept of “intelligence,” artificial or human. This is a notoriously difficult concept to unpack, and even more so to measure quantitatively (which would be necessary to tell the difference between AI and AI+ or AI++). Several people noted this problem, including myself in the Q&A, but Chalmers cavalierly brushed it aside saying that his argument does not hinge on human intelligence, or computational power, or intelligence in a broader sense, but only on an unspecified quantity “G” which he quickly associated with an unspecified set of cognitive capacities through an equally unspecified mathematical mapping function (adding that “more work would have to be done” to flesh out such notion — no kidding). Really? But wait a minute, if we started this whole discussion about the Singularity using an argument based on extrapolation of computational power, shouldn’t our discussion be limited to computational power? (Which, needless to say, is not at all the same as intelligence.) And if we are talking about AI, what on earth does the “I” stand for in there, if not intelligence — presumably of a human-like kind?

In fact, the problem with the AI effort in general is that we have little progress to show after decades of attempts, likely for the very good reason that human intelligence is not algorithmic, at least not in the same sense in which computer programs are. I am most certainly not invoking mysticism or dualism here, I think that intelligence (and consciousness) are the result of the activity of a physical brain substrate, but the very fact that we can build machines with a degree of computing power and speed that greatly exceeds those of the human mind, and yet are nowhere near being “intelligent,” should make it pretty clear that the problem is not computing power or speed.

After the deployment of the above mentioned highly questionable “argument,” things just got bizarre in Chalmers’ talk. He rapidly proceeded to tell us that A++ will happen by simulated evolution in a virtual environment — thereby making a blurred and confused mix out of different notions such as natural selection, artificial selection, physical evolution and virtual evolution.

Which naturally raised the question of how do we control the Singularity and stop “them” from pushing us into extinction. Chalmers’ preferred solution is either to prevent the “leaking” of AI++ into our world, or to select for moral values during the (virtual) evolutionary process. Silly me, I thought that the easiest way to stop the threat of AI++ would be to simply unplug the machines running the alleged virtual world and be done with them. (Incidentally, what does it mean for a virtual intelligence to exist? How does it “leak” into our world? Like a Star Trek hologram gone nuts?)

Then the level of unsubstantiated absurdity escalated even faster: perhaps we are in fact one example of virtual intelligence, said Chalmers, and our Creator may be getting ready to turn us off because we may be about to leak out into his/her/its world. But if not, then we might want to think about how to integrate ourselves into AI++, which naturally could be done by “uploading” our neural structure (Chalmers’ recommendation is one neuron at a time) into the virtual intelligence — again, whatever that might mean.

Finally, Chalmers — evidently troubled by his own mortality (well, who isn’t?) — expressed the hope that A++ will have the technology (and interest, I assume) to reverse engineer his brain, perhaps out of a collection of scans, books, and videos of him, and bring him back to life. You see, he doesn’t think he will live long enough to actually see the Singularity happen. And that’s the only part of the talk on which we actually agreed.

The reason I went on for so long about Chalmers’ abysmal performance is because this is precisely the sort of thing that gives philosophy a bad name. It is nice to see philosophers taking a serious interest in science and bringing their discipline’s tools and perspectives to the high table of important social debates about the future of technology. But the attempt becomes a not particularly funny joke when a well known philosopher starts out by deploying a really bad argument and ends up sounding more cuckoo than trekkie fans at their annual convention. Now, if you will excuse me I’ll go back to the next episode of Battlestar Galactica, where you can find all the basic ideas discussed by Chalmers presented in an immensely more entertaining manner than his talk.

Cable news: who cares?

Massimo Pigliucci — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:57:24 +0000

The recent news coming out of the perennial war of ratings among cable news channels was shocking, I tell you, just shocking: CNN, which three decades ago invented the whole business of cable news, is now dead last in terms of prime time viewership!

The numbers speak clearly: in October, CNN averaged 211,000 daily viewers aged 25 to 54 (the people who matter, because they have money and the inclination to buy what the advertisers sell), against 221,000 of HLN (formerly known as Head Lines News, ironically, a CNN spinoff!), 250,000 of MSNBC, and a whopping 689,000 for Fox.

Things don’t look any better for good old CNN if we look at the performance of individual anchors: Anderson Cooper’s show was dead last at 211,000, while Keith Olbermann was at 295,000, and Bill O’Reilly beat everyone at 881,000 (this is total viewership, regardless of age bracket — notice that O’Reilly is particularly popular with the old white male cantankerous crowd...). The only consolation for Cooper, but not for CNN, is that Lou Dobbs could interest only 162,000 viewers with his cheap populism and anti-immigration rants.

Now, we could be spending our time decrying the fact that Americans seem to have a strong preference for opinionated editorializing (be it Obermann or O’Reilly) over real solid news. Except of course that CNN hasn’t offered real solid news in a long time. Or we could bemoan the fact that a vitriolic ideologue like O’Really totals almost three times more viewers than the equally ideological but far less vitriolic and infinitely more sane Obermann.

But that would be missing the real story. Let me give you some othernumbers for comparison, so that we can put things in proper context. The total adult population of the United States is 231 million, which means that even O’Reilly is not actually followed by more than 0.4 percent of the population. The daily readership of the much dreaded (by O’Reilly) New York Times is about 1 million, the audienceship of the beleaguered (by Republican-led budget cuts) National Public Radio is a whopping 6.5 million daily. For crying out loud, even Jon Stewart’s Daily Show beats O’Reilly hands down, with an average viewership of over 2 million, and a peak performance of 3.6 million!

So the real question is: why do we give a damn, as a nation, about what O’Reilly, Obermann, Dobbs, and company say? Why do these people have the power to affect national debates about health care, wars, and the environment, while clearly more reasoned voices actually get much more attention, and when the overwhelming majority of Americans are paying no attention at all?

The latter, of course, is the answer. Yes, O’Reilly’s power derives in part from the dollars that advertisers “invest” on his programs, and in part from the fact that we live in a society where those who shout — even when they are a small minority — get to dictate the terms of the “discussion” to the rest of us (witness the inane spectacle of last summer’s “town hall meetings”).

But it is us who let them do it, largely through apathy. Progressives in this country could count on an overwhelming majority of votes if the majority of eligible voters bothered to vote. A few weeks ago, instead, even in New York City — where there are more political activists than in almost the entire rest of the country combined — a tiny fraction of voters turned out for a runoff primary that for all effective purposes decided the election of a crucial political post like that of City Comptroller.

Republicans know this and act accordingly. Years ago the Christian Coalition devised their “12.5% strategy” to control the country. They reckoned that less than 50% of Americans go to vote, and that the fraction is about half that at primaries, which means that a candidate only needs half again of that (i.e., slightly above 12.5% of the total) to win the primary, which often means winning the general election. It worked, until recently, when the Obama machine turned out unprecedented numbers of minorities and poor to vote during the last presidential election.

Americans are so full of themselves that one of their favorite mantras is that they are “the best democracy in the world,” while actual comparative sociological studies show that the US only ranks below the middle of the pack in terms of quantitative measures of democracy (including, of course, voter participation). As the near certain reelection of Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York City next week attests — despite the fact that the guy shamefully overturned a term limits law that would have barred him from running a third time — this is simply, the best democracy that money can buy. And what do we do about it? Instead of getting mad and throwing out the clowns, the ideologues and the rich people who think of politics as their personal pastime, we change the channel and watch reruns of Two and Half Men. We truly deserve, then, the little we get from our political class.

On the scope of skeptical inquiry

Massimo Pigliucci — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:42:35 +0000

There has been much discussion lately on this blog and elsewhere about the relationships among skepticism, atheism, and politics. I have roundly criticized Richard Dawkins for extending scientific skepticism into areas that are more properly the domain of philosophical analysis, as well as Penn and Teller and Michael Shermer for doing the same with politics to support their libertarian views. Of course, even a cursory reader of this blog will easily find my own pieces about religion and politics, which may make it seem like I’m a sinner throwing stones at my fellow skeptics.

In reality, this debate has been going on for decades, and it has at times involved some of the great figures of skepticism. Just think of Paul Kurtz’s struggle to balance his own organizations, the Council for Secular Humanism (which publishes Free Inquiry) and what is now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (which puts out Skeptical Inquirer), organizations that most certainly not always see eye to eye when it comes to mixing skepticism, religion and politics. Michael Shermer, on the other hand, has been criticized on his own multi-author blogfor not making a distinction between scientifically defensible notions and political positions. And of course, Penn and Teller’s absurd denial of global warming, and recent Dawkins award winner Bill Maher’s insane criticism of “western medicine” complete this increasingly messy picture.

Before continuing, therefore, let me be clear about what it is I am trying to do . I am most definitely not seeking to tell people what to write about and what to stay away from. Not only would that be futile, but it is contrary to the spirit of open inquiry that I hold as one of my highest ideals. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, I can easily be seen as a repeat offender on this very blog, and coherence is another ideal I hold pretty high (despite one of my favorite quotes by Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes”).

What I am attempting is a serious discussion of the differences and commonalities among the three areas pertinent to the topics in question: (scientific, or evidence-based) skepticism, atheism, and political philosophy. This blog is about all three because those are my interests and because I am presumptuous enough to think that I have something relevant to say in those domains. But I am in fact continuously switching among three not automatically interchangeable hats: (former) scientist, (current) philosopher, and politically-minded intellectual. All of that said, let the game begin!

First, let me define what I mean by skeptical inquiry, atheism and political philosophy. Skeptical inquiry, in the classic sense, pertains to the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal. This means not just ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs and the like, but also — for instance — the creationist idea that the world is 6,000 years old. All these claims are, at least in principle, amenable to scientific inquiry because they refer to things that we can observe, measure and perhaps even repeat experimentally. Notice, of course, that (some) religious claims do therefore fall squarely within the domain of scientific skepticism. Also in this area we find pseudohistorical claims, such as Holocaust denial, and pseudoscientific ones like fear of vaccines and denial of global warming. Which means of course that some politically charged issues — like the latter two — can also pertain properly to skeptical inquiry.

Second, let us turn to atheism. Once again: it is a philosophical, not a scientific position. Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry. Consider again the example of a creationist who maintains in the face of evidence that the universe really is 6,000 years old, and that it only looks older because god arranged things in a way to test our faith. There is absolutely no empirical evidence that could contradict that sort of statement, but a philosopher can easily point out why it is unreasonable, and that furthermore it creates very serious theological quandaries.

Lastly, let’s consider political philosophy. Again — just like with atheism above — it would be silly for a political philosopher to reject pertinent empirical claims: we do have some evidence from the social sciences and from history about what happens when certain economic or political systems are seen at work in human societies. But political philosophy is fundamentally a matter of values: one starts with certain “rights” for instance that one thinks ought to be safeguarded, and then builds the best political/economic system that is likely to do the job. Talk of rights is, again, philosophical in nature, not empirical. One can (and should) defend what one means by “rights” and why one considers certain rights to be more fundamental than others. But all such discussions largely transcend empirical evidence (which, again, should not be ignored).
If the distinctions above are so clear, why, then, do we keep running into the mess with which I started this essay? Because the three areas in question do have a common underpinning, as illustrated by the diagram accompanying this article: atheism, skeptical inquiry, and political philosophy are all exercises in critical thinking and rational analysis. The differences among them is in the relative role that philosophical and scientific/empirical considerations play in each case.

That is why, for instance, I can coherently say that Penn and Teller are wrong about their libertarianism and about their position on global warming: in the first case, I am talking about philosophy, in the second about science. There is, of course, much more leeway in the first than in the second case. That’s also why there is no contradiction in me praising Bill Maher for his political views and yet thinking of him as a hopelessly inept commentator when it comes to his opinions on medicine. To consider one more example, this is also how I can agree with Dawkins’ and Coyne’s philosophical positions (and disagree with “accommodationists” like Ken Miller) and yet distance myself from them on the ground that I think they are stretching the tools of science beyond what is reasonable.

All of this may seem confusing and perhaps even an irrelevant exercise in hair-splitting, but it is in fact what makes discussions within the skeptic community — and society at large — so interesting and delicate. By all means, let’s continue to argue about atheism, politics and UFOs. But let us be mindful of the fact that the types of arguments and evidence that are pertinent to one area do not necessarily carry over to another one. Which means that people should refrain from using the venerable mantle of skepticism to engage in silly notions like denying global warming or the efficacy of vaccines. That’s an insult to critical analysis, which is the one thing we all truly cherish.

Penn & Teller: More Bullshit!

Massimo Pigliucci — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:49:27 +0000

All right, I promise to leave Penn & Teller alone for a while after this post, though I’m beginning to think that their show has run out of gas, and that they need a couple years of rest. Catching up with season 6, I just finished watching the episode on “world peace.” It has now become a very predictable pattern: P&T are effective and at the peak of their game when they take on the paranormal and other forms of pseudoscience. But, when they veer into politics, they are full of bullshit.

This is no coincidence: creationism, astrology, ghosts, alternative medicine, ufos, clairvoyance, magnetic therapy and so on areunquestionably reality-challenged beliefs. That’s the proper domain of the skeptic, that intelligent, science-informed, philosophy-savvy member of the human race exemplified by the likes of David Hume and Carl Sagan. And that’s where P&T make us laugh and think at the same time — no minor feat — and it's something for which I will always appreciate them.

But public policies and economics, though surely marked by their own examples of nonsense, are not in the same category at all. When P&T talk about global warming, recycling programs, or, as in the case at hand, world peace, they are out of their league. And they are neither thoughtful nor funny.

Before I started watching the world peace episode I made some empirically testable predictions: a) they will make fun of some dim-witted, though probably well intentioned, peace-nick; b) they will attack the United Nations as the worst idea since the Inquisition; and c) they will ask the enlightened opinion of an anonymous member of some libertarian think tank, most likely the CATO Institute (of which Penn is a proud Fellow, whatever that means). Check, check, and check; that’s exactly what happened. Maybe I should reconsider my skepticism of psychic powers!

Sure enough, P&T went on to interview some silly peace-loving but not exactly bright people of the “Code Pink” organization, who apparently thought that praying with lit candles in Nancy Pelosi’s office really advances the cause of world peace. No, it doesn’t, though the group at least came across as compassionate, unlike that asshole P&T featured as spokeswoman for Move Forward America, a group which maintains that a permanent state of war is necessary for our prosperity. (To their credit, P&T did make merciless fun of her.)

Next, of course, came the United Nations. It is admittedly a flawed organization, beginning with the inane idea of having a Security Council, formed by the five nations who won WWII, granted absolute veto power on any and all resolutions. But the UN does a world of good, both by providing the primary forum for peaceful international dialogue, and by its far reaching field humanitarian work. P&T couldn’t find anything better than to attack the latter by focusing exclusively on the occasional scandals that arise in anysufficiently large organization. I mean, if we are talking about bribery and rape, shall we not start at home, with our own government and military respectively? Would that be an argument to abolish the US Government and to get rid of the Army?

And finally we have P&T’s own solution to the problem of world peace, courtesy of the infinite (lack of) wisdom of the CATO Institute and of a questionable personal anecdote. Did you guess? But of course: the only road to world peace is a planetary free market! It would work because nations would be increasingly inter-dependent economically, which would set up a powerful disincentive toward war. Indeed, P&T tell us that their own professional and personal relationship has worked well over so many years for similar reasons: you see, when they disagree and yell at each other, they don’t resort to violence, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a Penn & Teller show, and Penn’s kids couldn’t have “fancy birthday parties.”

Really? I don’t know P&T personally, but I hope (and strongly suspect) that they are better than that. They are probably friends, and the reason they don’t assault each other violently when they disagree has a lot more to do with the fact that they care for each other and that they are decent human beings. The fact that they also work well together and make a nice living from it is just pleasant icing on the cake.

So, is free market capitalism the key to world peace? Interestingly, as you will find out by reading 1919, the remarkable book by Margaret MacMillan on the making of the peace treaty that ended WWI, people thought exactly the same thing at the beginning of the 20th century. They were proven wrong by not just one, but two world wars.

Of course interconnectedness helps, though it better be cultural as well as economic. But one cannot pretend to be a thoughtful analyst of the problem of world peace and ignore the issue that capitalism itself has motivated some recent conflicts, at least in part, in a quest to control ever larger shares of valuable resources (think both Iraq I and II). And of course capitalist nations don’t have a much better track record of non-aggression than non-capitalist ones (think US history, since its inception, not just recently).

No, if there is an answer to the problem — or at least a way to ameliorate things — it is precisely through something like the United Nations. The current incarnation of the organization is really its version 2.0. Version 1.0 was the League of Nations that was set up after WWI, and which failed in great part because the Americans insisted in inviting only democracies to the high table. Version 2.0, which began after WWII, is better, because everyone has a seat, yet still some seats are better than others. Much better, in fact. So what we need (hopefully without having to go through WWWIII to get there!) is a United Nations 3.0, without a Security Council and where each nation gets an equal vote. You know, it’s called democracy, and we’ve made a business of spreading it to the world for the simple reason that it is a great idea. Greater even than capitalism, you can bet your tv show on it.

Michael Moore’s Capitalism, a Love Story

Massimo Pigliucci — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:27:01 +0000

I’m not shy about admitting that I like and even admire Michael Moore. For those of you who made it past that first sentence (this blog has some highly opinionated aficionados who don’t necessarily buy all I write), let me qualify. I do not think for a moment that Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko or, for that matter, the current release, Capitalism: a Love Story are documentaries. They are clearly not. I think of them as op-ed pieces, films that blend factual information, anecdotes and silly (but funny!) stunts to make a point, to force people to think by shaking them out of their complacency. And boy does this country need a bit of shaking and a lot more thinking.

Yes, Moore is largely preaching to the choir. Isn’t everyone? The choir needs preaching, just ask your Sunday morning pastor, or anyone at Fox News. And the difference is that Moore is much smarter and more truthful than either your pastor or Sean Hannity (let alone that buffoon of Glenn Beck).

Capitalism is indeed a love story, because through all the criticism it is obvious that the director aches for a better America, and he does not envision that America as a communist country. Moore graphically shows what everyone knows and yet most people do their best to ignore: that greed ruins people’s lives. Many people’s lives. For every venture capitalist or speculator who gets rich on Wall Street there are millions of people who get poorer by the day, who lose their homes or suddenly see their pensions evaporate. In one of its most poignant moments the movie shows a scared family huddling in their foreclosed house surrounded by a large number of police thugs getting ready to break in and evict them, while at the same time an asshole from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal tells the camera with a straight face that he has a problem with democracy, because it gets in the way of corporate profit.

Of course Moore knows that he is just engaging in antics when he drives around Wall Street to make a citizen arrest on the financiers who got this country and much of the rest of the world close to bankruptcy. The same financiers who then turned around and benefited from a huge government bailout engineered thanks to the fact that the federal regulatory agents are run by former financial officers from Goldman Sachs. Capitalists are all against government intervention, it seems, until it is necessary to save their ass, at which point they find their inner socialist and hold on to it for dear life.

Michael Moore is no communist or socialist (the two are different things, contrary to most American’s perpetual misunderstanding). He is what in Europe is called a social-democrat, someone who wants a form of (seriously) managed and regulated capitalism because he knows that in moderation, capitalism really is a great engine of economic growth and prosperity for everyone. But when left unchecked, capitalism turns into a vicious machine that increases the gap between 99% of the population representing the middle and lower classes, and the obscenely rich remaining 1%.

And there lies the real puzzle. Moore explicitly asks the same question I’ve been pondering now for many years: how is it that the Republicans, the party that defends the interests of the rich, continuously manage to get close to half of the votes in each election, while their policies manifestly hurt the overwhelming majority of the population? Moore’s answer is only part of the truth, but it is truthful nonetheless: capitalist demagogues the world over (not just in the US) have managed to convince everyone else that the common person has just enough of a chance to become rich that it is in everyone’s interest to let the currently rich do what they want. After all, if you raise taxes on them, some day you may join the ranks of the high society and have to pay those same taxes. Call it the lottery fallacy, if you will (any undergraduate student of economics will tell you that playing the lottery is most definitely not a good strategy for your retirement).

As I said, this is only part of the answer. Conservative parties the world over successfully vie for power on the basis of a complex cocktail that includes the endorsement (if not always the practice) of traditional values, religion, and of course the military (including a continuous game of scaring the shit out of people using real or imaginary dangers to maintain perpetual wars that serve the dual purpose of keeping the conservatives in power while obscenely filling their pockets with profits).

And yet, it is incredible that so many people do buy into inane ideas like “trickle down economics,” “too big to fail,” “taxes are theft,” “we have the best health care system in the world,” “God bless America” and so on and so forth. Trickle down, Reagan-style, economics has in fact caused a huge leap in the disparity between the rich and everyone else, essentially undermining the foundations of the American middle class. The idea of a bank or corporation that is too big to fail (and therefore needs to be bailed out with taxpayers’ money) is a capitalistic oxymoron if there ever was one. If taxes are theft then by the same “logic” working is slavery (neither is true, obviously). We manifestly and demonstrably do not have the best healthcare in the world. And as far as God is concerned, of course he doesn’t exist, but if he did, why on earth would he prefer one nation over another (and at any rate, didn’t he already say he likes Jews the best?).

So what’s the solution to this mess? Moore does show some glimmer of hope in Capitalism: labor unions (despite their own share of problems) can indeed make a difference for the obvious reason that workers need to be united in order to counter the crushingly powerful interests of the elite. So let’s reorganize and strengthen our unions. Moore visits businesses in the United States that are run as cooperatives, where the members own an equal share of the company, where decisions are made democratically, and the CEO makes as much as any other employee! Guess what? They are highly profitable, so let’s use them as a model to re-engineer our economy from the bottom up. And there are some valiant members of Congress who did stand up to Wall Street when the bailouts were being rammed down their colleagues’ throats. So let’s re-elect them and throw the rest of these bought by corporate interests buffoons out of office at the next democratic opportunity.

The battle for justice and equality is a perennially uphill battle. That’s why the choir needs preachers like Michael Moore to get our juices running again, to get newly pissed off at what some politicians and big corporations are doing to our way of life. Now get out, organize, and vote.

Dear Penn and Teller: Bullshit!

Massimo Pigliucci — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:16:09 +0000

I like Penn & Teller, the magicians and debunkers of pseudoscience and general inanity. I regularly use clips from their show in my critical reasoning class, despite cringing every time Penn indulges in his “fuck this” and “motherfucker that” exercise in free speech (it distracts the students from the real point, not to mention the always lurking possibility of an administrator asking me about the appropriateness of foul language in a philosophy class). Heck, I even recently went to Vegas to see them in person, had a photo taken with Teller, and managed to tell him (to his surprise) about how my students enjoy stimulating discussions triggered by the duo’s antics.

But as we have learned recently from the Atheist Alliance / Dawkins Foundation / Bill Maher fiasco, “skepticism” is sometimes too broad a label, as someone can be properly skeptical in politics but not about pseudoscience (Maher), while someone else may be great at debunking astrology and magnetic therapy, and yet also unable to shed some huge blinders when it comes to politically charged issues. The latter is, unfortunately, P&T’s case, as made excruciatingly clear by the 2008 (season 6) episode “Being Green” of Bullshit! I just watched it last night, and I found myself wanting to call up Penn to let go a few expletives of my own. Fortunately, I don’t have his phone number.

P&T have been very good at showing that just because one is concerned about the environment it doesn’t mean that one can think critically or act rationally. Their demonstration of well meaning environmentalists signing up to ban the “dangerous and ubiquitous” chemical known as dihydrogen monoxide (i.e., water) is priceless. In “Being Green” they pull off some of the same useful cautionary tales by showing how easily people can be duped by “green guilt” into all sorts of nonsense, like walking around with gravel (for which they paid real money) in their pockets in order to feel “connected with the earth.” Even more disturbingly, the episode raises some serious questions about large scale exploitation of pro-environment sentiment by web-based companies selling “carbon offsets” that are calculated in ways which the companies themselves have a hard time explaining.

But you know even our smart debunkers are running out of arguments when they choose to introduce former Vice President and Nobel winner Al Gore as an “asshole.” Again, there may be some legitimate criticism of Gore’s arguments and even tactics, but to give him the same treatment Penn & Teller usually reserve for real assholes, like con artists who sell snake oil to gullible people, just seems the kind of ad hominem attack that reflects badly on the attacker.

And going back to the issue of carbon offsets for a moment. It is one thing to alert people that they need to look into the companies that offer them, how the offsets are calculated, and how they are used. But P&T explicitly compare these offsets to the indulgences to avoid hell that were sold by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages (and which eventually helped bring about Martin Luther’s Reformation and the rise of Protestantism). I admit that it is funny to see P&T in medieval church garments, but really? Do they seriously mean to imply that the two are on the same level? Hell doesn’t exist, and the Vatican is a corrupt operation for making money and inducing misery (as P&T themselves masterfully showed in a more recent episode of their series), but we really are fucking up (to use Penn’s florid language) with the environment, and it is no joke.

Except, of course, that P&T’s libertarian blinders simply do not allow them to accept something that is so obvious to anyone who looks at the data and listens to the actual experts in atmospheric science: yes, Penn, global warming is happening; and yes, Teller, a good part of it is caused by human beings. Instead, the best P&T can do is to resuscitate a televisionweather man from the 1970s to assure us that global warming is a myth. And of course we have the predictable appearance of a guy from a libertarian think tank (the Cascade Policy Institute), who has no credentials that we know of, except being President of said think tank. (Note to self: create own think tank and declare yourself President. Make sure to have web site and business card. No thinking is actually necessary.) Needless to say, no one with a knowledgeable alternative viewpoint is presented during the show.

Instead, our libertarian heros keep telling us to relax, enjoy life, and drive SUVs, despite showing at the beginning of the episode a good number of frightening examples of all too real environmental destruction. Even Penn and Teller, however, have limits. Right at the end of the show, Penn enters a confessional (again with the Catholic Church!) and admits that he isn’t sure that there isn’t global warming, and that he isn’t positive that humans don’t cause it. But he tells us that even if that were true, heck, nobody knows what to do about it, so once again, go out and party all night long, because somehow technology and the god of free markets will solve every problem for us.

Fish against curiosity

Massimo Pigliucci — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:12:15 +0000

Readers of this blog may begin to think that I have a personal antipathy for New York Times editorialist Stanley Fish. I don’t, really. Don’t even know the guy. And yet, somehow he manages to get criticized in writing by yours truly more often (and certainly more harshly) than Richard I-don’t-know-what’s-wrong-with-Bill-Maher-but-I’ll-endorse-his-award Dawkins.

What has Fish done now? In his latest inanity for the Times he wrote a column against curiosity. Yes, you read correctly: if unchecked, curiosity, for Fish, is a major scourge of humanity, bringing us the atomic bomb and vivisection, while at the same time turning us away from god. Now, if these were the rants of a fundamentalist preacher from Alabama (or Mississippi, or Georgia, or Tennessee, you pick) then it would hardly be worth bothering about. But this is a professor (“distinguished,” no less) of law at Florida International University in sunny Miami (and formerly at the University of Illinois-Chicago). But of course Fish is also a postmodernist, and herein lies the bullshit.

Fish begins by quoting, and then criticizing, James A. Leach, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Leach’s sin is to have said in a recent speech that “a right to be curious would have been a natural reflection of [Thomas Jefferson's] personality ... [Because] the cornerstone of democracy is access to knowledge, the curious pursuing their curiosity may be mankind’s greatest if not only hope.” Radical stuff, as you can see, which deserves a rebuttal in the New York Times before a pandemic of curiosity hits the country, resulting in the death of innumerable cats.

Fish reminds his readers that curiosity is not a universal value, or an unqualified benefit. Let us parse these two claims. The quintessential example — to which the good professor devotes an entire paragraph of his column — is of course god’s prohibition to Adam from eating of the fruit of knowledge. The idea, apparently, was to test Adam’s faith and ability to self-impose limits. Disobedience was interpreted by god as human arrogance, with the results we all know. I always thought this tale was one of the best reasons not to be a christian: there it is, folks, right at the beginning of your so-called sacred book, god is despotic, narcissistic, engages in arbitrary and cruel punishment, and — of all things — prohibits you from learning. Need anything more be said?

Apparently, yes. Fish goes on quoting Thomas Aquinas as chastising human curiosity as a form of pride, and even the obscure 16th century churchman Lorenzo Scupoli, who contemptuously said “They make an idol of their own understanding,” all the way to the contemporary author Jonathan Robinson, who disapproves of curiosity and labels it a (apparently despicable) pursuit of “every conceivable subject that takes our fancy.” And what, exactly, is wrong with that, esteemed churchmen and assorted religious apologists?

Paul Griffiths, author of Reason and the Reasons of Faith explains: “Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life. ... “In a world where curiosity rules, unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device ... amounts to nothing less than a ... radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction.”

Wow! In other words, curiosity is bad because it distracts us from worshiping and studying god (Fish’s words), and even from our secular obligations because our minds are obsessed by it and find no time for anything else. Perhaps Fish and his buddies are confusing pornography for curiosity, because I’ve never encountered a “secular” person so obsessed with curiosity that he/she became dysfunctional in everyday life. On the other hand, I have encountered plenty of religious bigots whose utter lack of curiosity about the world leads them to incredible fits of mental gymnastics aimed at denying evolution (basic science) or that condoms are crucial in the fight against AIDS (applied science).

But of course Fish has an ace up his sleeve, because you see, it is not curiosity per se that is the problem, but unbound, unchecked, curiosity.That’s the monster that pushes scientists to ignore the pain of animals on which they experiment and, well, good old Stanley immediately runs out of examples there, so he has to deploy fictitious ones: “Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Of course, anything in excess is not a good thing, as Aristotle taught us 24 centuries ago. Even too much water is bad for you, because you can drown in it or die from an imbalance of electrolytes. But to accuse people of worshiping “curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom” is the quintessential example of the twisted post-modernist mind. If this country and the world is suffering from something, it is too little curiosity (about the world and about other people), too little critical thinking (including among the editors of the Times that keep publishing this rubbish), and too much post-modernism. Curiosity may be lethal to a cat, but it is a source of freedom and knowledge for a human being.

Ah, metaphysics!

Massimo Pigliucci — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:50:08 +0000

The other day I went to a talk about the fall and revival of metaphysics, given by Sebastian Kolodziejczyk at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Metaphysics these days has a bad reputation even among philosophers, so I was aware of its “fall,” but I was rather curious about the possibility of a “revival.” I came out of the lecture without much conviction that the 21st century is going to see anything like a resurrection of metaphysics.

Metaphysics, of course, is that classical branch of philosophy that deals with the fundamental nature of the world. Or is it? That was what Kolodziejczyk called “the Aristotelian model,” where philosophers who engage in metaphysics ask questions about the nature of space, time, causality and so on. It is an honorable tradition, of course, but it has ceded most of its terrain to fundamental physics. These days those philosophers who have something to say about such issues are likely to be philosophers of science or mathematics working in fields such as quantum mechanics or string theory. Saying that “water is the principle of all things,” as Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 BC–ca. 546 BC) used to do, just doesn’t cut it anymore.

After Aristotle, for a long time metaphysics was taken over by theological considerations, from the Scholastics to Hegel, and it became increasingly esoteric, self-contained, and at every iteration, inching closer and closer to complete absurdity. The Monadology (1714) by Gottfried Leibniz was one of the last pre-physics attempts to account for fundamental aspects of reality by simply thinking about it, but again to say that monads are a basic unit of perceptual reality is to assert something rather obscure without a shred of evidence, and moreover something that has been superseded by much clearer and more evidence-based accounts provided by modern science. And let us not even get started with all the metaphysical fluff about the existence of god, of course (if someone mention’s the ontological argument I will reach for my metaphorical gun!).

It was within this context that the 20th century saw the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) critique of metaphysics by the logical positivists, whose position was that metaphysical concepts — in philosophical parlance — have no referent. In lay terms, metaphysicians talk literally about nothing, and therefore do not and cannot make any sense. These days it isn’t polite in philosophical circles to show much sympathy for the neopositivists, but I must admit that as far as certain kinds of metaphysics are concerned, it seems to me that they got it largely right.

How, then, do we save metaphysics? Well, how about by simply redefining it? One of Kolodziejczyk’s major points was that there are other, radically different, ways of conceiving of what metaphysics is. For instance, for philosophers like Wittgenstein and Derrida (!!) metaphysics is an exploration of concepts, while for people like Heidegger (again, !!) it is about our experience.

There are two problems with this approach: first, it is not at all clear what these new ways of understanding metaphysics have to do with, well, metaphysics! Wouldn’t it then be more honest to say that (classical, Aristotelian) metaphysics has run its course, it has achieved what it could achieve, and has now receded into the background and left the initiative to physics? Secondly, exploring the meaning and structure of concepts smells a lot like philosophy of language, if not like linguistics itself, and investigating phenomenological experience quickly leads to psychology and cognitive science. Where’s the metaphysics?

If philosophers insist in saying things like “persistence is the only unchangeable reality” (quoted in the handout from Kolodziejczyk’s lecture) one is perfectly within their rights to ask what the devil does “persistence” mean in this context, and what exactly is the meaning of saying that it is the only unchangeable reality? This is the sort of fluff that gives all of philosophy a bad name, but that ought to be confined to only a sub-group of misguided philosophers who mistake obscurity for profundity.

We finally come to Kolodziejczyk’s own proposal, which was better — in my opinion — than Heidegger’s (then again, almost anything is), and yet somehow not exactly the harbinger of a new revolution in metaphysics. Kolodziejczyk’s idea is that metaphysics is the “analysis, description, and explanation” of what he calls “basic metaphysical beliefs.” Such as? His examples include “things surrounding us exist,” “things we are talking about are distinct in space and time,” “[things] are similar in many ways,” and so on.

Well, maybe there is some analysis to be done of such simple concepts, though it is hard to imagine that a very thick book will ever be written about these matters. But as for a satisfactory description and explanation of our basic beliefs about the world, it seems to me that they are much more likely to come from, respectively, the cognitive sciences and evolutionary biology than philosophy. Moreover, as someone pointed out in the Q&A following the lecture, we know now (thanks to fundamental physics) that a lot of our folk metaphysics is, in fact, wrong, which is not surprising considering that we have evolved as macroscopic animals needing to be equipped with ways to handle those aspects of the world pertinent to our survival and reproduction — aspects that don’t include an understanding of quantum mechanics or string theory.

What, then, is metaphysics good for? Other than its (invaluable, I think) historical contribution to human thought, there are two things that modern metaphysics can do for us: on the one hand, aspects of it can serve as good models for a fruitful relationship between philosophy and science (think of attempts at understanding the nature of time and space, for instance); on the other hand, it is a constant reminder that even science can get started only on premises that cannot be justified empirically within science itself (think of causality, or reality). But please, no more nonsense about unchangeable persistence.

The logic of skepticism

Massimo Pigliucci — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:56:58 +0000

Being a skeptic is a rather lonely art. People often confuse you for a cynic, and I’m not using either term in the classical philosophical sense, of course. In ancient Greece, the cynics were people who wished to live in harmony with nature, rejecting material goods (the root of the word means “dog-like,” and there are various interpretations as to its origin). The Western equivalent of Buddhist monks, if you will. The skeptics, on the other hand, were philosophers who claimed that since nothing can be known for certain the only rational thing to do is to suspend judgment on everything. That’s not what I’m talking about. A skeptic in the modern sense of the term, let’s say from Hume forward, is someone who thinks that belief in X ought to be proportional to the amount of evidence supporting X. Or, in Carl Sagan’s famous popularization of the same principle, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In that sense, then, what I will call positive skeptics do not automatically reject new claims, they weigh them according to the evidence. And of course we aren’t cynics in the modern sense of the term either, i.e. we don’t follow Groucho Marx when he famously said “Whatever it is, I’m against it!” (Of course, he was joking, though that seems to be the motto of the current Republican party.) Now, you would think that few people would object to the pretty straightforward idea (which can actually be formalized using a Bayesian statistical framework) that one’s beliefs should be adjusted to the available evidence. You would also think it hard to disapprove of the corollary that — since the evidence keeps changing and our assessment of it is perennially imperfect — than one ought not to subscribe to absolute beliefs of any sort (except in logic and mathematics: 2+2=4 regardless of any “evidence”). Boy, would you be wrong! For one thing, the positive skeptic finds herself more often (in fact much more often) than not in a position to (provisionally) reject a given claim rather than (provisionally) accepting it. Why, you might ask? Shouldn’t the expected likelihood of the truth of a claim a priori be something like 50-50, in which case the skeptic should accept and reject beliefs in about equal manner? No, as it happens, things aren’t quite that nicely symmetrical. One way to understand this is to think about a simple concept that everyone learns in statistics 101 (everyone who takes statistics 101, that is): the difference between type I and type II error. A type I error is the one you make if you reject a null hypothesis when it is in fact true. In medicine this is called a false positive: for instance, you are tested for HIV and your doctor, based on the results of the test, rejects the default (null) hypothesis that you are healthy; if you are in fact healthy, the good doctor has committed a type I error. It happens (and you will spend many sleepless nights as a consequence). A type II error is the converse: it takes place when one accepts a null hypothesis which is in fact not true. In our example above, the doctor concludes that you are healthy, but in reality you do have the disease. You can imagine the dire consequences of making a type II error, also known as a false negative, in that sort of situation. (The smart asses among us usually add that there is also a type III error: not remembering which one is type I and which type II...) What’s that got to do with skepticism? Whenever confronted with a new claim, it’s reasonable to think that the null hypothesis is that the claim is not true. That is, the default position is one of skepticism. Now the tricky part is that type I and type II errors are inversely proportional: if you lower your threshold for one, you automatically increase your threshold for the other (there is only one way out of this trade-off, and that’s to do the hard work of collecting more data). So if you decide to be conservative (statistically, not politically), you will raise the bar for evidence, thereby lowering the chances of rejecting the null hypothesis and accepting the new belief when it is not in fact true. Unfortunately, you are also simultaneously increasing your chances of accepting the null and rejecting the new belief when in fact the latter is true. Human beings are thus bound to navigate the treacherous waters between Scylla and Charybdis, between being too skeptical and too gullible. And yet, the two monsters are not of equal strength: if we accept the assumption that there is only one reality out there, then the number of false hypotheses must be inordinately higher than the number of correct ones. In other words, there must be many more ways of being wrong than right. Take the discovery that DNA is a double helix (the true answer, as far as we know). It could have been a single helix (like RNA), or a triple one (as Linus Pauling suggested before Watson and Crick got it right). Or it could have been a much more complicated molecule, with 20 helices, or 50. Or it may have not been a helicoidal structure at all. And so on. So when trying to steer the course between skepticism and gullibility, it makes sense to stay much closer to the Scylla of skepticism than to bring our ship of beliefs within reach of the much larger and more menacing Charybdis of gullibility. The net result of this prudent policy, however, is that even positive skeptics are bound to reject a lot of beliefs, with the side effect that their popularity plunges. As I said, it’s a lonely art, but you can take comfort in the psychological satisfaction of being right much more often than not. This will not get you many girls and drinking buddies, though. (Caveat: I have actually argued in a technical paper that we should abandon the whole idea of null hypotheses and embrace more sophisticated approaches to the comparisons of competing explanations. But that’s another story, and it doesn’t change the basic reasoning of this post.)

Definitions, definitions

Massimo Pigliucci — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:41:09 +0000

Scientists are often assumed to be obsessed by definitions. After all, if you cannot precisely define a concept, say what a planet is, or what a biological species is, you literally don’t know what you are talking about, and how can you then possibly do science using that very same concept? And yet, the practice of science is very different, and to a surprising extent does not seem to depend on definitions of its objects of study.

Take the recent brouhaha concerning whether Pluto should be considered a planet or a different kind of celestial object (a captured asteroid perhaps, or a “planetoid,” whatever that may be). My colleague Neil deGrasse Tysonis a strong advocate of the Pluto-is-not-a-planet school, for which he has been chastised even by Jon Stewart. That idea won the day, and now the solar system only sports eight planets. But as I’ve argued in a Skeptical Inquirer column, the question is academic in the strictest sense of the word: it does not matter in the least to astronomy or planetology whether one officially designates Pluto as a planet or as a lesser entity. The interesting scientific fact is that Pluto has several distinctive characteristics from the other eight planets (most notably the shape and angle of its orbit around the Sun), characteristics that require an explanation that is different from the one found to be satisfactory in the case of the “other” planets.

The issue is even more complex, and the technical discussions more acrimonious, in the case of biological species. Biologists and philosophers of science have been debating it for decades, and the resultant literature is voluminous, intricate, and largely inconclusive. (A few years ago I suggested that this is because “species” is a particular kind of conceptidentified by philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein, and known usually as “family resemblance” or “cluster” concept: it does not admit of a simple definition in terms of a small set of necessary and sufficient conditions. Rather, it is fuzzy, made of a number of conceptual strands that intersect in a complex fashion.) As in the case of planets, however, this lack of an agreed upon definition has not stopped biologists from studying species, their characteristics, and even their modes of origin (i.e., speciation processes). How is this possible?

It turns out that there are two very different ways of thinking about “definitions,” ways that were beginning to be parsed by Socrates and Plato back in ancient Greece. Many of the early Socratic dialogues (those that more likely represent Socrates’ actual thinking, as opposed to using the figure of Socrates as a mouthpiece for the more mature Platonic philosophy) have at their core a discussion aiming at defining a particular term. So, for instance, Euthyphro is about the definition of piety, Meno is about courage, Protagoras about goodness, and Republic 1 about justice. In all of them, Socrates and his companions pretty soon find themselves engaged in a heated discussion along the lines of “what is X?” which they take to be central to making progress in whatever endeavor they happen to be pursuing.

A naive reading of these dialogues has brought some people to talk about the so-called “Socratic fallacy,” the idea that one cannot say anything about X unless one can precisely define X. This is obviously not true. Not only, as I mentioned before, can biologists happily proceed with studying species even though they don’t agree on a definition of species, but in every day life as well we talk about all sorts of things (skyscrapers, baldness, porn) even though we would be hard pressed to give an exact definition of those same things (what’s the minimum height of a building that qualifies it being a skyscraper? When is it exactly that a man turns from having sparse hair to being bald? And of course there is the famous quip by American Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart that he could not precisely define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it).

Besides, Socrates was too smart to fall into that sort of trap. Indeed, the way he went about examining concepts clearly shows that he did not commit the “Socratic fallacy.” The philosopher was famous for his method of “elenchus,” that is showing that someone’s understanding of an idea was mistaken based on the production of counter-examples that did not fit that person’s original explanation of the idea. For instance, in Euthyphro, the character that gives name to the dialogue at first claims that piety is to do whatever the gods wish. But Socrates quickly forces him to admit that that can’t be right, because in that case piety would simply be an arbitrary construct backed up only by (supernatural) force, not grounded in any inherent goodness. There must be something else to it, which Euthyphro is obviously missing. Socrates could not use the method of elenchus if he really thought that one cannot begin to talk about X unless one has a precise definition of X: in that case, how could one even think of a counterexample? A counterexample to what?

What Socrates is after, then, is not a precise a priori definition of a given concept, but rather a theory of the extent and applicability of that concept. This isn’t something that can be arrived at by simply consulting a dictionary, but it requires thoughtful philosophical investigation. The very same thing is true of modern science: not only is the absence of a precise definition no embarrassment to scientists, it is that very search for a theory of X (planets, species) that defines what science actually is. That search is also where scientists and philosophers talk to each other across the divide between the two cultures: whenever a philosopher identifies a problem with the way a scientist deploys a particular concept, the philosopher has uncovered a legitimate area for further conceptual (i.e., philosophical) and/or empirical (i.e., scientific) inquiry. For the scientist to shrug off the suggestion and dismiss it as “just semantic” is then a naive mistake, one made out of sheer intellectual snobbism, and therefore unbecoming to a true intellectual.