Religious Differences in Our Global Village

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Dave Higgins

When I first learned of the idea of a “global village,” I remember having a mental picture of a New England-style village expanded out to cover the whole world. It sounded kind of warm and cozy, with different people amiably waving to their neighbors as they passed by.

Now that technology has brought us the real version of that global village, my mental image of the place has changed somewhat. With all the conflicts – both verbal and armed – going on between so many different groups, the world seems more like Baghdad circa 2004. So many people seem so angry at those who are different from them.

This seems particularly true where religion is concerned. Many of today’s conflicts are rooted in religious differences. For many, it apparently is not enough to simply believe in their religion; they seem compelled by their beliefs to repel and attack believers in other, different religions.

And the differences aren’t just between the major religions like Islam, Judaism and Christianity. They’re between distinct sects, like Sunnis and Shiites and Catholics and Protestants. The results of these clashes all too often turn bloody. And they raise questions. Is religious strife going to be a permanent part of our global village? If not, how do we get beyond the current conflicts?

In a recent essay in the New York Times, the Dalai Lama addressed this issue. He started by relating his thoughts as a boy, and how they’ve changed over time:

When I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.

He talked about the pressures our global village puts on religions and cultures, as people behave intolerantly towards those different than themselves:

Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.

The rest of his essay addressed finding an alternative to intolerance and conflict:

Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.

He concluded by noting the importance of focusing on what we have in common rather than how we differ:

Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.

Harmony among the major faiths has become an essential ingredient of peaceful coexistence in our world. From this perspective, mutual understanding among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers — it matters for the welfare of humanity as a whole.

This essay reminded me of a point made by Walter Truett Anderson in his book “Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be”:

The postmodern condition is not an artistic movement or a cultural fad or an intellectual theory — although it produces all of those and is in some ways defined by them. It is what inevitably happens as people everywhere begin to see that there are many beliefs, many kinds of belief, many ways of believing. Postmodernism is globalism; it is the half-discovered shape of the one unity that transcends all our differences.

Perhaps, in time, we will learn to peacefully coexist with those of different religious beliefs -much as people do in modern New England villages, where they amiably wave to their neighbors as they pass on their way to their respective places of worship.

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Improving the Norm

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Dave Higgins

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert had a recent column about an effort to reduce violence in Chicago. He points out that a basic problem with violent behavior is that many believe it’s just part of life, noting:

One of the most frightening aspects of the murderous violence plaguing so many urban neighborhoods across the country is the widespread notion among young people that killing somebody who ticks you off is normal. It’s something that is only to be expected, like eating when you’re hungry.

Herbert goes on to describe an initiative in Chicago called CeaseFire, which is

…trying to intervene in potentially violent situations to ward off tragic outcomes. Individuals who are most likely to be involved in violence, either as offenders or victims, are personally engaged, talked with, counseled, cajoled — whatever it takes to prevent bloodshed. Those who intervene know the streets firsthand, and in many cases are former gang members and convicts themselves.

While the immediate goal of CeaseFire is to stop the violence, the long range goal is to “change the violent norms of big-city environments.”

The program appears to be having success. According to a study by Prof. Wesley G. Skogan of Northwest University,

Over-time trends revealed that violence was down by one measure or another in six of the seven areas that were examined statistically. The broadest measure of shootings (which included attempts) declined an additional 17 to 24 percent, due to the program. In four overlapping sites there were distinctive declines in the number of persons actually shot or killed ranging from 16 to 34 percent.

CeaseFire is just one of numerous programs that take a more holistic approach to dealing with aberrant behaviors. For some time now Hobart and William Smith Colleges have been using a social norms approach to reduce binge drinking, and the program has received national attention. As an LA Times article noted in June of 2001,

The practice, called “social norms marketing,” has grown rapidly in the last three years, along with the realization that scolding, scaring, educating and even passing laws can’t stop young people from harming themselves and others. In sharp contrast to generations of adults who argued, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” the new theory encourages the young to conform, since most of their peers aren’t up to much anyway.

“The reality is, we’re herd animals and we behave in accordance with social norms and the expectations of others,” said H. Wesley Perkins, professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., who is known as the father of social norms marketing. “We’re taking conformity behavior and using it in a positive way.”

The traditional approach to aberrant behavior is to view it in individualistic terms: if an individual misbehaves, it’s because there is something intrinsically wrong with them. The solution, according to this view, is to scare or browbeat the person into proper behavior.

However, if we take a cue from the wave/particle duality and recognize that people are inherently both individuals AND members of groups, we will recognize that only treating people as individuals is bound to be an incomplete approach. In addressing the context provided by the groups they belong to, the social norms approach helps create a complete approach to improving individual behaviors.

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Failing Institutions

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Dave Higgins

The Pew Research Center recently issued a report saying trust in government is very low, with 22% saying they can trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time, and 19% saying they are “basically content” with the federal government.

This result got a lot of coverage in the news…and a lot of commentary from anti-government conservatives and libertarians. An example is this blog posting: 80% of Americans don’t trust the federal government; time to dissolve the people and elect another? Such a posting raises a variety of questions, including what does it mean to “dissolve the people” and what kind of math gets you from 22% trusting the government all or most of the time to 80% distrusting the government?

But there’s another, bigger question here: how much trust do people today have in other institutions? In a time when Goldman Sachs, Toyota, the Catholic Church, and Tiger Woods (a sports and business institution in his own right) have been messing up big time in the eyes of the public, is distrust in government an anomaly or just part of a trend?

As it turns out, Pew had something to say about that in the same report:

While anti-government sentiment has its own ideological and partisan basis, the public also expresses discontent with many of the country’s other major institutions. Just 25% say the federal government has a positive effect on the way things are going in the country and about as many (24%) say the same about Congress. Yet the ratings are just as low for the impact of large corporations (25% positive) and banks and other financial institutions (22%). And the marks are only slightly more positive for the national news media (31%), labor unions (32%) and the entertainment industry (33%).

Ironically, that part of the report received considerably less mention in the main stream media. But rather than dwelling on why that might be, the more interesting question is why trust in so many institutions is now so low.

As I’ve noted before, many institutions are failing because they haven’t adapted to the ways our world has changed. One thing that’s striking about many of the big institutions finding themselves in hot water these days is that a big part of their problem appears rooted in a mistaken belief that they are able to tightly manage/control the information about problematic issues. Toyota had problems with car defects; it tried to hide them. The Church had problems with perverted priests; it tried to hide them. Goldman Sachs had problems with very risky investments and very shady dealings to get rid of them; it tried to hide them. Tiger Woods had a thing for cocktail waitresses; he tried to hide it.

In an earlier, less connected time, perhaps these things wouldn’t have become such big deals. Probably past experience in hiding problems had led the leaders of these institutions to try a similar approach in these cases.

However, they apparently didn’t realize that in today’s hyper-connected world it’s almost inevitable that bad things will come to light – whether it’s vehicle flaws, priests behaving badly, devious investment strategies, or adulterous affairs. And now when the news DOES come out, the impact is likely to be much greater than it might have been before the Internet and global communications – especially if it’s apparent there was a cover-up involved.

These cases are all examples of how the world has changed but the people in leadership positions – who generally came to power the old fashioned way – were caught unaware of those changes. They may have achieved success by following the old rules, but times have changed and many of the old rules no longer apply.

Interestingly, I discussed this recently with a friend who used to handle corporate communications for a very large company. This friend had observed the same thing in their work:

(When I was there)…our CEO and other execs still believed you could “control the message.”  It was a never ending battle to try to enlighten them to the realities of the wired world.  Bottom line, it’s more convenient for them (and they are a proxy for all big business, the Church, etc) to try to perpetuate the command-and-control, one-way approach to communicating than to face up to the fact that there is no control and that “managing” their constituents effectively requires transparency, engagement and a true alignment between rhetoric and behavior.  All of that is just too much work, and too threatening, for them to accept. It’s a brotherhood of ostriches — and sadly (ironically?), they’re proud of it.

So what does the future hold?

I think this time is like any other in which great change has taken place. Some people and institutions will adapt to change and thrive; others will fail to adapt and fall by the wayside, deserted by their former supporters and clients.

Some may loudly protest the change and uncertainty of today’s world. They may even gain enough influence to hamper some institutions’ ability to adapt to these changes. But they can’t stop the change itself. In attempting to turn back the clock and to resurrect an illusory past they will be much like a bunch of Americans in the Panama Canal Zone back in 1964: all they are likely to accomplish is a quicker demise of the institutions they had hoped to preserve.

I’ve never been a believer in the so-called “Wisdom of the Market” as the term applied to Wall Street. But I do believe in the idea as it applies to transformational times and ideas. When the times are changing, the ones who understand and adapt to those changes will be the ones who thrive in what comes.

In the end we will be left with a combination of old institutions that adapted and new institutions that saw a better way and followed it. Everything else will just be history.

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The Benefits of Traveling Slower

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Dave Higgins

The New York Times had an op-ed piece a couple days ago titled “Escape From The Jet Age.” Reacting to the recent shut down of many flights to Europe due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland, Seth Stevenson extolled the benefits of not traveling by plane:

In the five decades or so since jets became the dominant means of long-haul travel, the world has benefited immeasurably from the speed and convenience of air travel. But as Orson Welles intoned in “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “The faster we’re carried, the less time we have to spare.” Indeed, airplanes’ accelerated pace has infected nearly every corner of our lives. Our truncated vacation days and our crammed work schedules are predicated on the assumption that everyone will fly wherever they’re going, that anyone can go great distances and back in a very short period of time.

In contrasting the experience of jet travel to that of slower forms of travel, Stevenson is actually engaging in a meditation on relativity. His argument in favor of slower travel is based on the observation that people traveling at different speeds will experience the world in different ways.

This is also true of other forms of transportation. The way I experience a road on a bicycle is totally different from the way I experience it in a car. I have a much fuller relationship with the road and the countryside around it when I’m on my bike.

Albert Einstein, the father of relativity and a bicyclist, would understand what we’re talking about: he thought up the theory of relativity while riding his bike.

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Money Can’t Buy Me Art

Posted on April 17, 2010 by Dave Higgins

When you see how expensive some works of art are today, it may seem illogical to say that “money can’t buy me art.” After all, a painting by Gustav Klimt sold a few years ago for $135 million.

But according to a recent Paul Solman report on the PBS News Hour, it turns out there’s a big difference between buying a product of art and paying for the artistic process. Apparently, Klimt might have had a harder time creating that painting if he knew he was going to sell it for that much money.

Solman starts out with a puzzle:

The candle, box of tacks, book of matches, an old puzzle with a strangely relevant economic message. Objective? Fix the lit candle to the wall so no wax hits the table.

Economics: The faster you do it, the more money you make. Punchline: Conventional economics is wrong, because the greater the monetary incentive, the longer the solution takes, a solution you will see in a bit.

Relevance? Executive pay and Wall Street bonuses, which might not enhance, but actually retard, high performance, or so says writer Dan Pink, once Al Gore’s chief speechwriter.

Pink explained why this could be the case:

We tend to think that the way you get people to perform at a high level is, you reward what you want and punish what you don’t want, carrot and stick. If you do this, then you get that.

That turns out, the science says, to be an extraordinarily effective way of motivating people for those routine tasks, simple, straightforward, where there’s a right answer. They end up being a terrible form for motivating people to do creative conceptual tasks.

Why? Solman interviewed Maury Weistein, CEO of computer sellers System Source. Weinstein argued that the key reason his company had been successful for three decades – an eternity in the computer business – was that 15 years ago they dropped paying commissions to sales people:

We find that money often disrupts relationships. It disrupts customer efforts. And, sometimes, it makes the customer feel like a piece of meat, where you can’t trust the salesperson’s recommendations. And that’s a very slippery slope at that point.

As in so many other things, the key is where your energy is focused. If your primary motivation is getting a big commission, your concern for the customer’s satisfaction is secondary. And in many cases the customer will sense that.

So if money isn’t your primary motivation, what can be? One possibility is creative fulfillment. As John Yodsnukis, who works with open source software (for which there is no payment), points out:

You know, you need adequate compensation. You have to live. You have to survive, OK? But, if you ask an artist why they became an artist, a lot of them will say, I can’t do anything else. I have to do this.

It’s the same thing here, you know? It’s the fulfillment, the love of doing it is reason enough.

This may all sound a little strange in our current, money-crazed culture. Today’s mass media is overwhelmingly oriented towards selling something, and individuals are commonly defined as consumers. All too often, our focus in this world is on the next purchase; our creativity is channeled into creating the perfect house, having the right car, wearing the right clothes, or just getting the best deal.

This even applies to our personal creative pursuits. As a photographer, I often hear the siren call of a new camera or a new lens that will supposedly enhance my creativity. It can be quite seductive – and expensive!

If we really want to live fulfilling lives – and stay financially solvent – we need to be mindful of where we are focused. Are we focused on the ephemeral – money, possessions, glory and such – or are we focused on that which truly gives us personal fulfillment?

In his book Zen In The Martial Arts, Joe Hyams offers a Zen story that applies here:

A young boy traveled across Japan to the school of a famous martial artist. When he arrived at the dojo he was given an audience by the sensei.
“What do you wish from me?” the master asked.
“I wish to be your student and become the finest karateka in the land,” the boy replied. “How long must I study?”
“Ten years at least,” the master answered.
“Ten years is a long time,” said the boy. “What if I studied twice as hard as all your other students?”
“Twenty years,” replied the master.
“Twenty years! What if I practice day and night with all my effort?”
“Thirty years,” was the master’s reply.
“How is it that each time I say I will work harder, you tell me that it will take longer?” the boy asked.
“The answer is clear. When one eye is focused upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the Way.”

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New Terms for New Times

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Dave Higgins

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
– Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”

It’s tough enough to live in a time like the present, when things are changing in so many ways. What makes it even tougher is that language often fails us. While we may have vague ideas about how things are changing, we have two problems in talking about those changes.

The first involves the uncertainty that inevitably revolves around great change. We find ourselves asking “what’s going on?”; “what does it all mean?”; and “how do I deal with it?” If we aren’t sure about what’s happening and what it means, we won’t be able to talk about it with any great assurance.

But beyond that there’s the problem of terminology. The words we use are based on shared past experience. If you tell a friend “my car has a flat tire,” the sentence is understandable because you and your friend both know what a car is, what a tire is, and what getting a flat tire means. If you could somehow go back in time 150 years and tell someone “my car has a flat tire,” they wouldn’t know what you are talking about because they’ve never seen a car or a tire, and have no idea why it would matter if the tire is flat.

An example of this terminology problem is the recent flurry of blog activity about a relatively new term: “liberaltarianism.” The word, coined by Will Wilkinson, apparently points to a new perspective on creating workable policies:

I predict Democrats will become somewhat more receptive to arguments that certain less centralized, more market-oriented policies do a better job of achieving liberal goals than do the more heavily centralized, technocratic policies favored by current Democratic opinion elites.

A problem Wilkinson has here is coming up with a suitable label for such adaptable Democrats. Apparently believing that Democrats are associated with liberalism and market-oriented policies are associated with libertarianism, he uses the conjoined terms to reflect the conjoined concepts.

However, both “liberal” and “libertarianism” carry a heavy load of conceptual baggage: many people have strong beliefs and associations with each word, and the discussion of Wilkinson’s concept seems to often founder on that baggage. Liberals express concern about libertarians taking over the Democratic party; libertarians dismiss any possibility of change among Democrats. In both cases, the argument revolves around the labels.

I believe it is possible to have Democrats who favor “market-oriented policies” rather than the old, centralized approach to problem solving. I think in many cases it’s even essential for Democrats to adopt such approaches. The problem is, what might we call such people?

I have a suggestion.

While he may not be aware of it in so many words, what Wilkinson is really talking about here is a shift from the inflexible, mechanical world view of Newtonian mechanics to the adaptable, organic world view inherent in the modern science of complexity.

John F. Schmit, a military consultant and writer who has been closely associated with Marine Corps doctrine since 1986, gave a lecture at the National Defense University in 1998 titled Command and (Out of) Control: The Military Implications of Complexity Theory. He concluded that military success required a shift from the prevalent mechanical world view:

The physical sciences have dominated our world since the days of Newton. Moreover, the physical sciences have provided the mechanistic paradigm that frames our view of the nature of war. While some systems do behave mechanistically, the latest scientific discoveries tell us that most things in our world do not function this way at all. The mechanistic paradigm no longer adequately describes our world—or our wars. Complex systems—including military organizations, military evolutions, and war—most definitely do not behave mechanistically. Enter complexity.

Complexity encourages us to consider war in different terms which in turn point to a different approach to the command and control of military action. It will be an approach that does not expect or pursue certainty or precise control but is able to function despite uncertainty and disorder. If there is a single unifying thread to this discussion, it is the importance of adaptation, both for success on the battlefield and for institutional survival. In any environment characterized by unpredictability, uncertainty, fluid dynamics, and rapid change, the system that can adapt best and most quickly will be the system that prevails. Complexity suggests that the single most important quality of effective command and control for the coming uncertain future will be adaptability.

For the same reasons, liberal Democrats need to shift away from what Wilkinson describes as “…heavily centralized, technocratic policies favored by current Democratic opinion elites.” Such policies are based in a mechanical world view; they seek out control over problems just as a driver seeks to control a truck. We might describe supporters of such policies as “mechanistic Democrats.” (I thought for a moment of using the term “machine Democrats,” but that has its own history and baggage – especially here in Albany.)

As for Wilkinson’s more adaptable Democrats, I would suggest using a label that reflects their non-mechanical approach. As adaptability is a quality inherent in all living organisms, we might refer to them as “organic Democrats.”

Clarifying this distinction between the old and new ways of evaluating policies will help us understand how they differ, without getting bogged down in discussions of labels. And any terms that help us understand our changing world has got to help us in adapting to it.

As John Schmit observed, adaptability is key.

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Got to Get Back to the Garden

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Dave Higgins

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
–  “Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell

We all have paradigms by which we understand the world around us. The ruling paradigm from the Newtonian age of science has been the world as a machine- the clockwork universe. We reflect this world view when we talk about being a “cog in a machine” or say we’re “running on all cylinders.”

Within the larger context, our personal, cultural and political values lead us to view the world in certain ways.

Some people tend to view the world as a jungle – filled with many scary things like terrorists, socialists and “feminazis.”  Unless it concerns sex, drugs or other people they disagree with, these folks believe nothing is controllable and everything should be left to its own devices. To them, attempting to meddle and fix social, economic or environmental problems is both foolhardy and doomed to failure. They would also strongly argue that it would be an intrusion on individual freedom.

Other people tend to view the world like mechanics – if there is a problem with something, you fix it by tinkering with this, twiddling with that, and somehow or other gaining control over the situation so it can be corrected. To them, every problem is controllable if you have enough information and resources.

As I have previously argued, we need to learn to look at the world as a garden. Unlike a jungle, a garden can be managed, given sufficient expertise by the gardner and sufficient resources like water, nutrients, etc. However, unlike a mechanic, a gardener does not have direct control over the outcomes of his or her efforts. A gardener can’t precisely determine how many seeds will sprout, how many flowers will appear on a shrub or how quickly a tree will grow. In addition, a gardener can’t succeed when his or her efforts conflict with the garden’s environment: it’s not possible to grow bananas in Minnesota or weeping willows in Death Valley.

Instead, a good gardener focuses on creating the optimal conditions for a garden to flourish…then leaves it up to the plants to respond to those conditions.

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Winning With Uncertainty

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Dave Higgins

One of the big surprises in the 2010 Winter Olympics is the success of Bode Miller in alpine ski racing. Bode had been a notable “failure” in the 2006 Winter Olympics, not winning any medals even though he had been dominating the regular ski racing circuit. This recent turn in fortune has lead to much comment, like this and this.

A common point made by pundits is that Bode has changed – become a parent, become more mature, etc. There’s probably an element of truth there, as most of us tend to mature a bit over four years.

But it’s also true that the circumstance of these Olympics is different for Bode than it was four years ago.  Back then, he was a featured member of the US Olympic team – a fact that wore on him:

“I had no intention of blowing it,” Miller said Sunday. Yet that was how his results were labeled, a choke job by a prima donna who didn’t care. He is so talented — he is a two-time winner of the World Cup overall championship, perhaps skiing’s most difficult title — he was the obvious focus of the pre-Games coverage. He did not, he said, enjoy being the vehicle by which the International Olympic Committee promoted its product.

“The Olympics is definitely, in my mind, a two-sided coin,” he said. “It has all the best things of sport. It has amazing energy, enthusiasm, passion, inspiration. It’s what changes lives. In that sense, it’s the pinnacle of what sports and camaraderie and all that stuff is.

“On the flip side of that is the opposite, and that’s the corruption and the abuse and the money. I’m not pointing fingers, but that’s what was bothering me, and being thrust in the middle of that, and being the poster boy for that, when it’s the absolute thing I despise the most in the world was really draining on my inspiration, my level of passion. . . I just had the plug pulled out on my most important fuel source, and it had been happening for a year, and it was just too much.”

This year, things are different: Lindsey Vonn is the face of the US Ski Team, and Bode has been able to do his thing somewhat out of the limelight. That seems fine with him:

He arrived here overshadowed by fellow American Lindsey Vonn, which was just fine. He won two medals, and spoke after each about how the Olympics had reinvigorated him.

Maybe, more than Bode “growing up,” the different context this time has been crucial to Bode’s successes. Perhaps this reflects a human variation of the Uncertainty Principle. This principle states that on the subatomic level, things can’t be definitively pinned down: we can never know exactly both the location and the speed of a particle. The more precisely we know one of those traits, the more uncertain we will be about the other.

Perhaps there is a human kind of Uncertainty Principle, in which people have a tendency to resist efforts by others to impose external definitions of who and what they are – especially if those definitions conflict with deeply held personal beliefs and values. Perhaps, in these situations, they may wind up acting in unexpected ways that may seem out of character for who they really are.

Essentially, it comes down to a question of control: if a person like Bode feels that he is no longer in control of his life – if instead he feels his life is being controlled by those who have deeply different values – then his or her personal energy will feel drained away. In such cases, these individuals will seek a degree of uncertainty, a sense that they are no longer controlled by others.

I’ve written several times about uncertainty – generally as something people wish to avoid. But as with Bode’s depiction of the Olympics, uncertainty is a two-sided coin. On the one side, too much uncertainty can be unsettling. If we feel uncertain about key aspects of our life – our relationships, our job, our beliefs – then we are likely to wish for more certainty.

On the flip side, if we feel we are too much under the control of others – especially in ways that conflict with our deeply held values – then we are likely to wish to be less controlled and more, well, uncertain. After all, uncertainty is very much tied into a sense of freedom. As Richard Feynman once said:

If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain… In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

******** POSTSCRIPT ********

In a way, the story of Bode Miller sounds a lot like like a story I wrote about regarding sled dogs in the Iditarod.

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Blizzards and Butterflys

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Dave Higgins

A flock of robins arrived in my Albany, NY neighborhood today. I used to consider them a harbinger of spring, but these days I’ll see one or two around occasionally during the winter. (Apparently some of them stay in upstate New York over the winter.) Still, seeing a flock of robins in the middle of February seems unusual.

Robins feasting on crabapples - 2/15/10

Strangely enough, they were not my first “harbinger” of spring. That honor would go to some daffodils I have, whose tips first made an appearance around the third weekend in January.

Daffodil shoots - 2/15/10

Last week the talk was about all the snow that was falling on Washington, DC and its vicinity.  All of a sudden, conservatives were proclaiming that a couple snow storms disproved the idea of global warming and political action on climate change became less likely. According to the Washington Times:

Those who value freedom should thank Mother Nature for her sense of humor, undermining the case for global warming one flake at a time. So although we’re quite tired of shoveling, we say, “Bring on the blizzard.”

I don’t see what “valuing freedom” has to do with recognizing scientific facts – unless it has something to do with maybe a freedom from reality. And apparently conservative weather observers tend to be selective in their portents about climate change. They don’t seem interested in things that disagree with their perspective – like the absence of snow at the Vancouver Winter Olympics or the early appearance of robins and daffodil shoots in upstate New York. It sounds to me like they’re engaging in a bit of cargo cult science.

Or maybe, as Stephen Colbert suggests, they’re just “peek-a-boo-ologists.”

I had a conversation (of sorts) with a friend who happens to have strong Republican/conservative views. He gave the usual anti-warming arguments – it’s a natural phenomenon, some climate scientists did funky things with their email, etc. – and concluded with the point that while he thinks global warming is happening, he doesn’t see any way humanity could be responsible for it. He then walked off before I could talk to him more on the subject.

I always find the claim that there’s no way human behavior could affect the weather rather curious. I remember a similar claim being made back in the 1980’s about acid rain. Interestingly, we gained an added perspective on human responsibility for acid rain when the Clean Air Act actually led to a reduction of acid rain.

I’ll leave it to the experts to discuss the hows and whys on the relationship between global warming and local extreme weather events like a snow storm or two on the east coast of the US. I tend to consider this issue by asking a question drawn from chaos science.

Edward Lorenz began the study of what became chaos theory when he discovered what came to be called the butterfly effect.  The term came from the title of a talk he gave on the subject: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The point of the talk was that tiny variations in the makeup of a dynamic system – such as the weather – can have a profound effect on the outcomes of that system.

My question regarding global warming is: if it’s possible for something extremely subtle – like the flap of a butterfly’s wings – to have an effect on our climate and weather systems, how could it be possible for trillions of tons of carbon dioxide released through human activity to not have a profound effect on those same systems?

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Cargo Cult Science

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Dave Higgins

Many conservatives these days appear to view science in ideological terms. When science conflicts with their own beliefs, they feel it’s totally appropriate to disregard the science and stick with their beliefs.

When it comes to science, it appears these people haven’t got a clue.

I started thinking about this recently when I came across an item about relativity in Conservapedia. Apparently, Conservapedia was created under the assumption that Wikipedia had some sort of liberal bias. This isn’t my interpretation; they actually claim it.

Anyway, it appears Conservapedia – “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia” – doesn’t care much for the Theory of Relativity. According to them, “Relativity has been met with much resistance in the scientific world.” One proof of this is that “To date, a Nobel Prize has never been awarded for relativity.” Except, that is, for – “Professors Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse, who …were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physics, which is the only award ever given by the Nobel committee for the Theory of Relativity.”

Apparently, in Conservapedian Math, “never” and “once” are equivalent.

Conservapedia dislikes relativity so much that if you land on their page for Theory of Relativity, you’re redirected to their page Theory of relativity. How dare someone capitalize that R!

They claim that the reason we haven’t heard about this resistance is because of academic bias: “Despite censorship of dissent about relativity, evidence contrary to the theory is discussed outside of liberal universities.”

I looked for some examples of this resistance in various scientific web sites. When I learned New Scientist had a cover story titled “Why Einstein Was Wrong About Relativity,” I thought this might be an example. But this article was basically about how the speed of light is irrelevant to the Theory of Relativity, which continues to be valid:

“Einstein, the ultimate physics revolutionary, probably would have afforded himself a wry smile at the picture that is now emerging. The startling edifice of the new physics he built remains undisturbed, even as its logical foundations are being greatly strengthened.”

With no luck there, I tried the Christian Science Monitor. Given the name, I figured they’d be able to give me the Christian perspective on Science. However, it turns out they recently ran an article about the confirmation of one part of Einstein’s theory that even he thought he’d gotten wrong.

One place I did find a discussion about this so-called controversy was The American Catholic. However, the discussion was in an article titled “Are the GOP and/or Conservatives Anti-Science?” The author’s conclusions didn’t sound very supportive of the Conservapedia point of view:

The common thread behind each of the above would seem to be the view that experts aren’t to be trusted combined with the idea that the best way to determine the validity of a scientific theory is by reading a couple of articles about it in conservative magazines. I’m sure you could find examples of scientific literacy or anti-science sentiment among progressives too, but as someone with conservative sympathies I find the right-wing examples more disheartening.

The problem with conservative arguments against so-called “liberal” science is that they don’t reflect an understanding of science. Instead, they engage in what the great physicist Richard P. Feynman called “cargo cult science”:

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas — he’s the controller — and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing. … It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

… In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.   —  Richard P. Feynman, 1974 Caltech commencement address

There are many things in this world that are uncertain. Instead of talking about certainties, it’s wiser to talk about things in terms of probability. For example, while it’s currently winter in upstate New York, it’s not certain that we will have cold weather. (In fact, it got up to 55 degrees today around here.) But we can say it is very likely that we will have wintry weather on any given day in January.

From that perspective, I’d suggest that any “scientific” argument that starts from the premise that science is or can be liberal or conservative is highly likely to be a prime example of cargo cult science.

And anyone who believes in such science should be prepared for the high likelihood that he or she will look as ridiculous as a guy sitting in a hut with two wooden pieces on his head for headphones, expecting a planeload of cargo to miraculously arrive out of the sky.

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“Pants” on the Web

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Dave Higgins

Over the past week a guy no one had ever heard of burst onto the scene, becoming a national – if not international – celebrity. He vowed to change things, and through his sudden fame he may be doing just that.

I’m talking of course about “General” Larry Platt, who appeared a week ago on American Idol and belted out his song “Pants on the Ground.”

As sometimes happens in today’s hyper-linked world, before you could say “Simon Cowell” Larry’s song became a world-wide phenomenon. People as diverse as Malaysian teenagers and Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings were soon singing “Pants on the Ground.”

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly and easily a performance like Larry’s can become such a big deal in so many different places. It reminded me of that guy Matt and his video Dancing 2008, which became a huge sensation a couple years ago.

These things are clearly a phenomenon of today’s world, and can teach us a couple of things:

1 – People from different walks of life and in different places can quickly find a common bond based on something they see and like, and

2 – This kind of thing often doesn’t last all that long. After all, whatever happened to Matt? And how many people regularly go back and look at that music video? (It’s still pretty cool though; I re-watched it while writing this post.)

So when we see some new phenomenon burst on the scene and become the talk of the nation, we need to maintain some perspective. Something that may seem like a big deal today – like, say, the results of a Massachusetts Senate race – may not be such a big deal tomorrow.

It certainly wouldn’t be wise to overreact to it.

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Politics As Sport

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Dave Higgins

A coworker approached me this morning clutching his copy of the NY Post. He was beaming, gloating about Republican Scott Brown beating Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts’ special election for the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy’s death. While he’d never said a word when McCain and the Republicans were trounced in the 2008 elections, he was happy to talk about how the Republican Party was “coming back strong now.”

Interestingly, his manner and way of speaking were identical to office conversations about sports teams. While I’m not a baseball fan, I did enjoy it when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in 2004. Office Yankees fans didn’t have much to say back then, but after that there were times when Yankees successes were followed by similar office trash talk.

I’ve had the feeling for some time now that for at least some people the rivalry between Democrats and Republicans is very much like a sports rivalry – like that between Red Sox fans and Yankees fans. Instead of reasoned debate about important issues, we get mindless comments about teams and opponents. Check out these comments on today’s NY Post web site:

Regarding recent Yankees free agent signings –

HEY SON
01/19/2010 9:31 PM
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA THE BEST TEAM IN BASEBALL GOT BETTER !
THAT HAS GOT TO KILL YOU SON !
28 IN 20-10 !

Regarding the Massachusetts Senate race –

LEGION57
01/20/2010 5:00 PM
Hey osama obama- prex ZERO, YOU LOSE- ahhhhaaaahahahahahahahaaaaa

Yeah, I’m sure that’s the kind of debate the founding fathers envisioned back in 1776.

It’s not surprising that politics has been imbued with the same emotional fervor – and lack of reason – as sports. After all, that is how politics is now presented by the media. But as Jay Rosen said in his piece back in 2004:

I hope other journalists confronting the political puzzles of 2004 will read James, read Adam Nagourney and Jim VandeHei and hear their defiant cry: Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever! And I hope other journalists will ask themselves: must this go on indefinitely?

Let’s hope not. Meanwhile, I think it would help if the Democrats actually developed some new Big Ideas that would guide them in governing and help voters understand their agenda. And it might be useful to view the events in Massachusetts with some perspective and humor. (As usual, Jon Stewart has been great.)

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The Value of a Liberal Arts Degree

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Dave Higgins

The New York Times recently ran a story about a shift in attitudes regarding the purpose of a college education. Quoting a survey by the University of California, Los Angeles, they note:

In 1971, 37 percent responded that it was essential or very important to be “very well-off financially,” while 73 percent said the same about “developing a meaningful philosophy of life.” In 2009, the values were nearly reversed: 78 percent identified wealth as a goal, while 48 percent were after a meaningful philosophy.

I’ll admit that I was one of those in college in 1971, and “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” was my #1 interest at the time. So I have something of a bias in this matter.

I’ve also seen something of the current career orientation in person; a couple years ago I was on an alumni panel that addressed current students at my alma mater regarding what one could do with a political science degree. I was struck at the time by the way many students were focused on their career choice. They seemed to approach it with the sense that this was an extremely important question for which there were right and wrong answers, and making a wrong choice might irreparably harm their future.

This was not the way I’d felt when I was in college, and I was not alone. My class graduated in the mid-1970s, when the economy was in recession and jobs were scarce. After we graduated many of us took whatever jobs we could; my first job after college was as a photographer for Olan Mills for a year and a half. But far from damaging me, that job gave me an education in life in the real world as opposed to that of academia. It also had some lighter moments, much like this.

I’d like to say I shared my worldly experience and wisdom while on that panel, but I had a spirit of the stairs moment and didn’t have an insight until the session was over and I was on my way to my car. If I had it to do over, I would have pointed out to the attendees that in my work I generally work on a PC, design and maintain web sites, design and maintain databases, and communicate with others via email. Pretty much none of those things existed when I graduated from college; if I’d focused on learning whatever it was that preceded that technology, I would have been faced with having to unlearn it and learn the new stuff when it came along.

My college likes to say that a liberal arts degree teaches you how to think and learn. It’s not focused on getting you your first job; it’s focused on enabling you to succeed in life. This is a point that was made by the New York Times:

…Dr. Neuhauser finds the careerism troubling. “I think people change a great deal between 18 and 22,” he says. “The intimate environment small liberal arts colleges provide is a great place to grow up. But there’s no question that smacks of some measure of elitism now.”

There’s evidence, though, that employers also don’t want students specializing too soon. The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently asked employers who hire at least 25 percent of their workforce from two- or four-year colleges what they want institutions to teach. The answers did not suggest a narrow focus. Instead, 89 percent said they wanted more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing,” 81 percent asked for better “critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” and 70 percent were looking for “the ability to innovate and be creative.”

As in so many other parts of life, people get spooked by uncertainty when looking forward to their careers. Many react by seeking out a solid, career-oriented major that will get them their first job. But the problem with such an education is that it doesn’t help you much after you get that job and the world starts changing. Then you realize that uncertainty has never gone away, but you still aren’t equiped to deal with it.

Looking back from the twilight years of my regular career life, I’m very grateful for my liberal arts education. Not only have I found it useful in my job; it has helped me develop interests (like this blog) that I can continue to pursue when I retire.

After the formal Q&A part of our panel discussion about political science and careers, a young woman came up to me with a question. She was intrigued by the Obama for President campaign and was thinking about doing some volunteer work for it. She seemed to be asking me if that would be ok career-wise. I found the question surprising, as well as a bit ironic. The surprise was that the question was asked; back in my day we just volunteered for such work, without thinking about its career ramifications. The irony was that I had volunteered for the Carter-Mondale campaign in 1976 just because I wanted them to win, but that had led to my making contacts that led to my first job with New York State.

My recommendation to her, as well as to any other college students who might come across this post? Follow your passion and what brings the best out in you, and the future will tend to work things out for the best. You may not become rich, but then there are lots of unhappy rich people around. Following what truly interests you is the best way to find personal fulfillment.

******** POSTSCRIPT ********
Steve Jobs made a similar point in his Stanford commencement speech.

******** POSTSCRIPT  2 ********
The New York Times recently ran another article, this one about the value of liberal arts training in business school. They note:

…even before the financial upheaval last year, business executives operating in a fast-changing, global market were beginning to realize the value of managers who could think more nimbly across multiple frameworks, cultures and disciplines. The financial crisis underscored those concerns — at business schools and in the business world itself.

As a result, a number of prominent business schools have re-evaluated and, in some cases, redesigned their M.B.A. programs in the last few years. And while few talk explicitly about taking a liberal arts approach to business, many of the changes are moving business schools into territory more traditionally associated with the liberal arts: multidisciplinary approaches, an understanding of global and historical context and perspectives, a greater focus on leadership and social responsibility and, yes, learning how to think critically.

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