Ridiculous hypotheticals

Rick Perry is taking a beating even from conservatives for his poor showing in the debates. While conservatives have focused on his fluffing of a chance to attack Mitt Romney, others have pointed to is his incoherent response to what he would do if told at 3:00 am that Pakistani nuclear weapons had fallen into the hands of the Taliban.

Watch the latest video at video.insider.foxnews.com

I have to partly defend Perry on this particular point. Granted, his stringing together of non-sequiturs (what was India doing in that mix?) was Palinesque in its baroque quality. But posing these kinds of ridiculous hypotheticals to people is unfair. Do they expect a candidate to have thought through every possible emergency situation and have a readymade strategy to articulate? If Perry is to be criticized at all, it is for even attempting any specific answer instead of simply saying, whatever the crisis presented, that he would immediately convene a meeting of his national security advisors to devise a response.

Also, why do these questions always have the dreaded phone call coming at 3:00 am? What difference does the time make? Do they think that the president, groggy from being awakened and annoyed at a pleasant dream being disrupted and wanting to go back to sleep would say, “Dammit, just nuke ’em!”

The ontological argument for god

Here’s an attempt to explain Saint Anselm’s original argument that theologians love. Apparently Immanuel Kant pretty much destroyed it in its original formulation. But in this clip, theologians like Alvin Plantinga claim to have resurrected it in a better form that shifts the burden onto some thing that he refers to as a theorem in modal logic.

In this next clip Plantinga tries to explain what this ‘new’ modal argument is.

I must admit, I just don’t get it. As I have said many times, I simply do not see how you can answer an empirical question of the existence of anything using pure reasoning without any supporting data. Just because you can conceive of something or because something is possible to exist cannot lead to any firm empirical conclusions as to its existence.

Another philosopher Colin McGinn tries to explain to Jonathan Miller what the ontological argument is and the problems with it. This part begins at around the 11:30 mark and continues for the first 30 seconds of the second part.

If this is the best argument that theologians can come up with, then god is done for.

Faster-than-light neutrinos?

I came across this BBC report about some observations at CERN that suggested that neutrinos may be traveling faster than the speed of light. If this is true, it would mean that one of the pillars of modern science, the theory of special relativity, would have to undergo serious scrutiny.

I personally was not too excited by the news and was not even planning to comment on it but it seems to be causing a media sensation and several blog readers sent me clippings from various sources and asked for my opinion, so here it is.

I think that this result is unlikely to hold up and so am not too excited. The reason that I am underwhelmed is that I have been around long enough to recall many previous sightings of tachyons (the technical term for faster-than-light particles) that turned out to be false alarms. They are like Elvis sightings in that there is an initial flurry of excitement that then fades under closer scrutiny. The scientists who reported the recent events are aware of this history and are understandably cautious about making any grandiose claims. They can depend on the media to do that. If other research groups study this is some detail and the results hold up, then there will be cause for excitement. This will likely take a couple of years. Until then, I treat this with considerable skepticism.

So my present attitude is captured in this xkcd cartoon that I saw via Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write.

Sorry to be such a downer but if the history of science teaches us anything it is that the great and enduring theories of physics are never overthrown on the basis of a single experiment.

‘Poor, ignorant atheists’

Recent results revealed by the US Census Bureau show that the ranks of the poor have increased to record levels in the US.

This should really come as no surprise to any thoughtful observer, given the relentless drive by the oligarchy to squeeze everyone else in order to enrich itself. But Walter Russell Mead, one of those so-called ‘centrist’ establishment pundits so beloved in the media who can be relied upon to deliver conventional wisdom on any topic, has come up with his own explanation as to the reasons why. He says that the growing inequality in the US is due to the rise in numbers of poor, ignorant atheists. Why? Because when people leave religion, they also leave religious institutions that promote the virtues that could lead them out of poverty.
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Discussion on the scientific basis for justice and altruism

On Friday, September 23, I will be leading a discussion on these ideas, especially the work of Frans de Waal, Paul Bloom, and Peter Singer on the implications of the theory of evolution.

It will take place from 12:30- 2:00 pm in Nord 310B on the CWRU campus.

The event is free and open to all. Drinks will be provided and you are encouraged to bring your own brown bag lunch.

Elizabeth Warren on Morning Joe

I feel sorry for Elizabeth Warren. Now that she is running for the US Senate in Massachusetts, she will have to deal with an endless stream of preening media personalities who delude themselves that they are journalists.

A prime example is Mark Halperin, who asks her what she would do about the military threat from China. My first reaction was, “What the hell? Why are you asking about something that is so far down the list of concerns?” But the smug expression on Halperin’s face answered my question. I recognized immediately the obnoxious student that all teachers have encountered who thinks up a question on an obscure topic because he thinks it will impress his peers if he can stump the teacher. There is, of course, no reason why Warren should have thought deeply about this particular issue since it is clearly not high on her list of priorities and, being a veteran college instructor, she knew exactly how to deal with such smart-alecks.

Similarly another so-called journalist Mike Barnicle framed his question with such a long preamble that one lost interest in it long before he got to the end. What these people want is to get face time on television, not inform and educate the viewer.

Watch Warren answer these questions well enough and with much greater patience than I would have been able to muster.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The scientific basis for justice and altruism-part 4

(An expanded version of a talk given at CWRU’s Share the Vision program, Severance Hall, Friday, August 26, 2011 1:00 pm. This program is to welcome all incoming first year students. My comments centered on the ideas in the common reading book selection Justice: What’s the right thing to do? by Michael Sandel. See part 1, part 2, and part 3.)

In the previous post, I pointed out that experiments with babies suggested that although the theory of evolution supports the idea that the desire for justice and fairness is part of our genetic makeup, it is also limited in that seems to stop with our relatives and immediate community or nation. It is not entirely limited, though. There are many examples in evolution of characteristics that evolved to serve one purpose but then get used for other purposes. Sex is a good example. The pleasure it gives served the purpose of encouraging procreation but now people indulge in it for pleasure alone. Similarly, although the desire for justice my have evolved within the domain of kin and the immediate community to benefit the propagation of genes, it can still drive our relationships with the broader community even when there is no genetic benefit.
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We’re #25!

At least as far as internet speeds go, just behind Romania.

If it seems extraordinary to you that the country that pioneered the internet should lag so far behind now, Tim Karr explains that the prime cause is the lack of competition here, thanks to the ability of the telecommunications giants to pressure regulators.

In the years that followed the signing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, lobbyists working for powerful providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon pressured a compliant FCC to tear down all of the important safeguards established by Congress.
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While the U.S. blindly followed a path of “deregulation,” other nations in Europe and Asia beefed up their pro-competitive policies. The results are evident in our free fall from the top of almost every global measure of Internet services, availability and speed.
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The lack of competition has turned America into a broadband backwater. In the aftermath of the FCC’s decisions, powerful phone and cable companies legislated and lobbied their way to controlling 97 percent of the fixed-line residential broadband market — leaving the vast majority of consumers with two or fewer choices of land-based providers in any given market.
The absence of true consumer choice has driven prices up and services down.