The Division Of Labor And Specialization
July 15, 2010
These are some comments I made to a paper Mr. Andre Gaudwin wrote. You can find a link to the original paper here.
Andre,
Your paper talks about the dangers our society faces as we specialize further and further and lose sight of the big picture. Quoting you directly:
“In the late 60s I became convinced, mainly because of the obvious insanity of wars and the apparent saneness of those who believe in it, that “we must have made a mistake somewhere throughout of our evolution.” In the 70s, I also became thoroughly convinced, influenced by many French writers and by Buckminster Fuller, that the extreme specialization of our elites was leading humanity toward a crisis of an unprecedented nature.”
“As for specialization being the ultimate cause of this state of affairs, it is the hypothesis that I have adopted at the time and which I intended to test with my own formation as a generalist after reading Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, in which he observes that : “Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.”
- Andre Gaudwin, Errare Humanum Est
I have a few comments to share. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re really of much use in solving this problem.
I’d like to start by asking us to look at life from the largest possible perspective; how does life begin? Floating in the oceans carbon and other atoms congeal onto themselves into clumps and strands eventually leading to the first cells. Over billions of years these cells die and replicate and clump together forming into larger and more complex units, in time becoming all the different forms of life we see on the Earth today. Humanity is quite a latecomer when you look at things from this far back. We’ve only been around for a few million years, whereas life on this planet goes back billions of years.
So as I stroll through my backyard admiring the breeze as it rustles the tree leaves, or watch the little ant scurry around the leaf litter, or spy on the water spider from above as it skips across the creek water, I find myself immersed in an ecological system of massive and immense complexity. This environment I observe is so old I can’t even comprehend it. Over billions of years everything from the grass, to the bushes, to the flies, to the beetles, and everything else have all formed into an interdependent system of unimaginable complexity.
We as humans evolved in the forests and plains in Africa starting a few millions years ago and are nothing but hairless great apes. One of the distinctive features setting us apart from other species is our skill in memory, analytical abilities, our hands allowing us to use tools effectively, and our ability to learn and pass on our knowledge through mimicry and language.
What has “knowledge” been for the vast majority of human existence? It’s been a hands on lesson from our father on how to use a spear. It’s been remembering the locations of fruit trees and caves. It’s been various learned motor abilities developed and acquired as we hunted and outsmarted the prey and animals we found around us.
All in all, our brains have been used for relatively simple things for the vast majority of our existence. We’ve been a rather sparse species and it’s only very recently that our numbers have increased to anything appreciable. We’ve formed the society and your papers deal with issues we face in that society.
Society… It’s a very novel thing to us humans. Around 30,000 years ago (rough estimate) we begin to domesticate animals and farm our food. We learned that we can somewhat control the environment to secure a guaranteed meal. We start clearing away the forests to make room for farmland and in conjunction with domesticated animals we’re able to build permanent homes. As we get better at doing this, we start to get some free time and rise above bare bones subsistence.
At this point we begin producing extra things and trading these things one with another. This eventually leads to cities and the economy as we know it today.
When you trace out the story you see mankind slowly trying to control nature more and more. At first it’s not very difficult. Not much brain power is required to farm plants. You just stick the seeds in the ground, make sure they get water, and voila. Later you learn they can be fertilized and such, but all in all it’s far from rocket science. Managing domestic animals isn’t much more difficult. But we became more and more ambitious as time progressed.
Really the vast majority of the complications are very recent. They’re rooted in the past few hundred years or so. Back when we started this little journey of ours we had no idea what we were getting into. People found themselves in this reality on planet Earth back before all our modern technology. They were hungry, suffering from diseases and plagues of every sort, constantly being raided by foreigners who would steal everything they’ve worked so hard to build up, and they did what they thought was the best thing to do. They tried to secure meals for themselves and their children, to provide shelter and security, and look out for those precious to them in a very hostile world. We owe everything to these people.
What are the principles we learned that led to our modern technology? Leaving out a lot of details, we first had the Egyptians and Greeks laying out the laws of geometry. The Arabs I believe invented Algebra. A lot of these techniques were birthed because of economic transactions through indirect exchange using money, and also the need to calculate things like property taxes.
The first major breakthrough was Newton as he laid out the laws of motion in his Principia. Later we discovered thermodynamic processes which allowed to us build steam engines. We also started to master electro-magnetism culminating in Maxwell’s laws. In the early twentieth century we had the discovery of general relativity and quantum mechanics, the foundations of our modern scientific technology.
As someone who has studied these subjects to a relatively high degree of mastery, I can tell you that they’re far from simple. Calculus, differential equations, Maxwell’s laws, statistical mechanics, quantum physics, general relativity… these aren’t the most simplistic things on Earth.
But even though these things are so complicated, mankind has striven to reach higher and higher. But today, as you point out, things are getting almost out of hand. The division of labor has led to massive specialization. With all of us working within such a narrow focus we seem to be losing the big picture. I’d like to talk a little about that.
I can see the problem, but I also see no way around it. To control this world, which is very complicated and subtle, we are required to specialize. The human brain is too weak to achieve mastery in every subject. There’s no way around specialization. It’s simply impossible for a normal human being to be a master engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, and several other occupations, all at the same time. The knowledge and skill required are too much.
As time goes on, and our collective knowledge of this universe increases, absent some sort of major biological change to our brains, specialization will become a requirement. That definitely is a problem from an administrative sense, as you point out.
I personally don’t think any sort of social reorganization or planning can fix this problem. I don’t think it’s even a problem with our leaders not being educated enough (even though our leaders are far too often idiots). As much as I like the idea of generalists and attempting to master as much as possible, as time progresses a generalist will be impossible. There will be too much to know and you’ll be required to skim over everything at such a superficial level it won’t be of any use.
We’re coming awful close to outgrowing our means of communicating knowledge to one another. Right now we’re still relying on that time old method of mimicry. We watch someone else do things and learn by example. Other methods of learning include audible speech and books (or reading from a computer screen), and school lectures from professors and teachers, which are far too slow. The amount of time we spend in school is getting to be too long. It already requires say a doctor to be in school for over twenty years before he starts treating patients. (K-12 plus university training plus apprenticeship) That’s a huge percentage of our entire life span! As our knowledge increases the time required to teach it all will only increase.
Our next stage of progress will come as we integrate ourselves with our computer technology. It comes down to this: nature is complicated and our brains are frail, slow, and not very powerful. We need to upgrade our brains.
I foresee us transcending speech and books. I don’t think we’ll have to “learn” things in the future. We won’t have to rely on education or read books. Today we’re born with instinctive reflexes which evolution has given us to survive within the environment we’ve lived in for millions of years. Most of those “skills” nowadays are considered evolutionary baggage and make our social life difficult. I think that’s all about to change. We’re entering a new epoch.
Once we learn how to reprogram our brains, and enhance their capabilities with nano-technology, people will be born knowing everything. New information will be wirelessly uploaded to their minds. Every man, woman, and child will be fully equipped to deal with life. You won’t have to worry about whether or not your father taught you how to deal with life emotionally, or read psychologists articles on how to properly console a depressed friend, or go to a trade school to know how to fix an appliance. You’ll just know these and when you need to do it, it will come as naturally to you as a young boy being attracted to a pretty girl. The newly created artificial instincts will be there all ready to go. And just like our computers, we’ll be able to reprogram ourselves to adapt to our ever changing world.
This scares some people. Honestly, I don’t know if I really care. I don’t feel we have all that much to lose. I’ve spent too much time reading books and looking at this place for what it is. Life is fragile and filled with every sort of trouble imaginable. You, just like me, have been born into this hell, and most everything we face is because evolution and this cruel universe pushed it on all of us. I say we go for it.
Yeah, we’ll probably make a lot of mistakes as we go about altering our genetics, reward systems and brains. We may screw up big time. We’ll have to be careful because our mama universe is real bitch and she doesn’t give a damn about us. But we need to go for it. We’ll probably also end up destroying all the other life on this planet in this “civilization” project of ours. Even so, life for our ancestors wasn’t a picnic. It was absolute misery and hell. The whole struggle for survival model, everyone fighting for food is ridiculous. We certainly don’t want to go back. That being the case, there’s only one direction to take — forward.
I think this integration with technology is the only way forward. There is no philosophy which will fix things. There is no religion or belief system which will cure things. There is no economic system which can be designed to fix it. If people tried to love one another, and we had a more decent economic system without all the corruption, sure it’d be better, but still nothing great. There’s only one way for us to achieve a universe where people truly are happy and prosperous. We’ll have to improve our brains and technology which will allow us to be conscious of one another’s situations, have empathy for everyone, not just our immediate family, and gain vastly more control over the forces of nature.
As for right now, we’ve went to control this universe and its required such a degree of specialization that it seems we’ve once again lost sight of our initial goals. I don’t think this is true however. It’s a real battle to tie down this bull. This Earth wants to buck us off like a bad habit. One little screw up and we’re done for. It’ll throw us off and won’t think a thing about it. The fossil record shows that 99% of all other species which have ever lived — extinct.
I feel people like us are here to try to keep the ignorant masses from killing themselves. That seems to be the current stage of history. Our scientists are laboring away to fix these problems as fast as they can and they’re making progress. Problem is, the vast majority of this world is filled with complete idiots. I mean absolute morons. They’re destroying everything around them, killing themselves, and imposing misery on themselves and everyone else. Like a herd of mindless cattle, we have to round them up so they don’t run off the edge. We have to be the few sane people who get on the television and tell people the truth, warning and protecting them.
When I think about our economy, no matter how much economics I study, I see it surrounded by a dark impenetrable fog. All the tinkering our government and politicians do operates at a very high superficial level. They work with these vague statistical aggregates and hope by throwing money around they can fix problems which are beyond anyone’s comprehension.
Take physics for example. Study some quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. Just try to model a gas cloud and a few basic laws of interaction between them. All the atoms follow relatively simple laws, all behaving in exactly the same way, yet it’s hell to statistically model it. You end up pages and pages of equations and need computers to predict what’s going on. Now imagine if every one of those atoms followed its own laws and did its own thing. Then you have the economy.
Our success economically depends on all the individual actions done by billions of people. We’re all on this ship together. If people are dumb, corrupt and do stupid things, the Fed’s not going to be able to fix it by lowering the interest rate and throwing some cheap money around. Major economic problems hit everyone out of nowhere. There’s detailed and complicated forces at work which I believe are impossible to predict. Those with some really good foresight can sometimes see an upcoming disaster, but they’re few and far between.
It’s like chaos theory. In chaos theory a butterfly flaps its wings in the rainforest and we end up with tornadoes in Kansas. Economically, we have some guy going in the store buying a candybar and later we end up with an economic meltdown. Unfortunately, unlike the weather which we can predict for at least a few weeks in advance, our economists can’t even see a disaster two feet in front of us.
The only people I’ve found with some decent insight into this are the Austrian economists. They don’t pretend that the economy can be so easily modeled and their view on the business cycle seems to me to work. It’s just my rather amateur opinion. If it isn’t apparent already, I don’t think very highly of economics in general. But from my own research it seems that when the central bank starts lowering the interest rate too low the cheap credit starts flowing, that money starts pumping up some bubbles, and then they pop and we have trouble. There’s ups and downs in the cycle regardless of intervention. It just seems the government can sweep the problems under the rug temporarily by infusing the economy with cheap money, and over time this builds up until you have a major disaster. Their interventions can so easily make things worse. Occasional drug use can bring temporary happiness and mask over your problems for the time being, but it’s addictive and can destroy you quick. Cheap money is the same. I think it’d be better if we faced each small economic downturn as it came instead of letting the bubble build up into a mountain and then it erupts like a volcano destroying everything in its path.
That’s not to say I’m against all regulation. There’s a lot of places for regulation, like the Glass-Steagall regulations for example. I’m just saying we have to keep an eye on these bankers and cheap credit. We need to watch out when they have control over the money supply. They screw us.
I’m sorry to hear about your poor reception with colleagues. It’s a personal flaw of mine, but I don’t think very highly of people in general. I don’t know your life and situation, but in my own trying times nobody has ever given a damn. It’s just how it is. You just slug it out and keep moving.
I’ve written business plans, laboring away for years on things, trying to raise capital and get things moving. I’d submit my plan to these investment companies and not hear anything. Sometimes I’d get one of those auto-responder emails that says, “Thank you for submitting your plan, but … blah blah.” Try to contact them asking, “What’s wrong with my plan? Can you give me some feedback?” … Nothing. Worse yet some of these investment companies charge you like $150 to submit your plan. Then they won’t even so much as speak with you. Talk about assholes. I’d submit my plan to hundreds of places and not hear anything. (Fortunately they don’t all charge money. What would be the purpose of raising capital if it costed you a million dollars just to attempt to raise funds? Who could afford it?)
I don’t know about you, but the sheer and utter frustration of having the biggest thing in your life, what everything your life depends on is based, being completely ignored … oh, makes me angry. Real angry. Sure can make you bitter about life in general. I try to stay positive but I have to say, it can really get to me.
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How To Stay Sane
July 11, 2010
From time to time I just take a stroll around town and just look around me. Other times I just browse the internet at random reading news, or watch people’s videos on YouTube. I find one thing which is almost always lacking – critical thinking. People lack the scientific method. Their opinions are not rooted in empirical evidence and rigorous thought. Instead it’s based on intuition and emotional feelings. People base their views on intuition and it plagues this world with irreconcilable conflicts. The scientific mindset tells us to withhold belief absent empirical evidence. Every belief has to be proven by observational data. We need things like fossil records, data from careful experiments, inferences from proven scientific laws, and so forth. It’s like a court of law where everything has to be proven by the most stringent standards before we’ll believe it.
Take when I open up my email inbox. I receive all kinds of conspiracy related emails, most of which I read for entertainment.
That’s so awesome… lol. Or how about this?
I get all kinds of conspiracy stuff in my email. Some of it comes from David Icke so I was watching a video of his. As I listened I just thought to myself, “David, what is this? You’re drifting further and further from reality.” And that’s what everyone seems to do – drift in their mind somewhere far far from this reality. Very few people are actually knowledgeable about this world or how it operates.
Here’s the video I was watching:
As you listen to him go on and on about “consciousness”, reptilian beings who live under the Earth’s crust, how the moon is actually a space-base similar to the Death Star in Star Wars (George Lucas of course knowing all of this because he’s an ‘insider’), you can’t help but think, “What evidence do you have to prove all these claims?” He repeatedly says, “This is just what I’m feeling.” I think in this video he talks about his experiences with a psychic he visited. I can’t remember.
He feels the human race was created by the reptilians 30,000 or so years ago. They’ve modified our brains so they could transmit their thoughts into us in order to make us slaves of theirs and so that they can harvest some sort of low vibrational energy from our emotional cycles. It’s pretty out there.
I’ll refute all this very quickly. The pressure under the Earth’s surface is so great there’s no way there can be tunnels or a hollow Earth. Such structures would be crushed immediately. But if that’s not convincing enough, we have very sensitive detectors placed all along plate boundaries of our crust and every time an earthquake happens we measure all the waves and how they propagate. We’ve modeled the interior of the Earth, and it’s not hollow.
If you read say a textbook in biological anthropology you can see all the detailed fossil record evidence showing our evolution. And as for the brain structures which the reptilians supposedly implanted into us, neuroscience textbooks, as well as studying comparative neural anatomy of say that of chimps, show no signs for any of that.
But you know, people would say, “Yeah, well that guy’s just nuts.” But how would you classify “nuts?” How would you define insanity? Insane people lose touch with reality. If that’s the case most everyone I know is insane.
Take the fourth of July, when I went to a family picnic with relatives. My family is very religious and at the park where we all gathered many church folks were invited as well. Some of the musicians got out their guitars and started singing worship songs. There they went singing about how they love the Lord, and how they’re clay in His hands, and on and on and on. I just thought, “Who is this ‘Lord’?” … “It’s faith brother. You have to believe.”
I can see people saying David Icke’s crazy talking about reptilian aliens. I mean, what evidence do we have for such creatures? Well, what evidence do we have for the ‘Lord’? If you think about it, it all falls in the same category. I love these people, but I mean, isn’t the stuff in the Bible just as crazy? God is pure love, but creates a rather hellish universe, forces us to endure all kinds of hardships, then comes down and embodies himself in Jesus to undergo a suicide mission, nails himself to the cross in a bloody crucifixion to forgive people of their sins so they’re not given to Satan (a demon with horns) to be thrown into a pit of fire for all eternity… But God is pure love… yet if you do one small little sin, even the smallest sin, you’ll be tortured without end.
The leaders who run our world believe that. Here’s Richard Dawkins talking with Ted Haggard who has been a top advisor to many of the world’s leaders, such George Bush, Tony Blair, and Ariel Sharon.
I don’t even know how you talk to someone like that. He certainly isn’t interested in Potassium-Argon dating methods. How would Haggard explain the fossil record? Dinosaur bones? How these tests date these fossils back millions of years? What about cosmology and the redshift of galaxies receding away from us? What about the cosmic background radiation seen at the outermost edges of the universe – that fog from 400,000 years after the big bang? I mean, you can’t deny irrefutable evidence. How can you just ignore DNA? Does he know that the sun will eventually burn out?
All you have to do is just start asking questions and look around you. But their problem is they don’t look around. They’re disconnected from reality. They’re plugged into a self-referential loop with their imagination. They’re not plugged into the universe around them. Reality is what the television, their political party, or their holy book tells them is reality.
I oftentimes like to tell people that’s it’s easy to devote your life to something and go out preaching your beliefs to people. It’s much harder to know whether your beliefs are worthwhile and true. Pastor Haggard spends so much time giving sermons and running all over the place teaching people all this stuff, when really he’d be better off if he just stopped for a while, locked himself up in a room and read some biology, cosmology, anthropology, astronomy, neuroscience, and other textbooks. I think if he did this he’d quickly realize that what he’s been teaching is not the truth and he’d think, “Oh my gosh. I’ve been teaching people all these mistaken beliefs for so long.” He’d then resign. But as you can see, you can’t even talk to him. But to be fair, Dr. Dawkins isn’t exactly the most tactful individual out there.
But strange thing is, if you try to confront people with reality they say you’re arrogant. They come at you with the strangest arguments. I don’t think there’s anything you can do. It’s like the situation Galileo was in. He tries to tell them, “Just look out of this telescope.” But people won’t look through the telescope. They’re not interested in the world as it is.
Religious beliefs are just as crazy as talk of reptilian aliens. I mean, there is a giant talking snake in Genesis, and people believe that literally.
There’s no limits to the amount of craziness people can dream up. You have to keep your mind sharp and precise, constantly sifting through all the bullshit people come up with, always demanding evidence. It’s the only way to stay sane in this insane world. If you don’t, you’ll quickly drift off to who knows where.
It’s not just religion or conspiracy theories. Just read the news.
Why are we at war in the middle east? Do you know? Does anybody know? Is it about nuclear weapons? They’ve done searched and there wasn’t any. Is it about the Taliban and Al’Qaeda? They’re no longer in Afghanistan… yet we’re still there. Iraq? Who knows. But young men and women in uniform march out there to fight a war. Why? Don’t they ask that simple question? They could die out there, and for what? “Fighting against these crazos who hate our freedom!” *Shakes head*
If insanity is people being disconnected from reality, then I’d say over 99% of people are totally insane. They have no clue about human origins, the origins of the Earth, the formation of our solar system, what causes the seasons and weather, climate change, the consequences of their actions, the galaxy… hell, most of them can’t even identify their country on a map, must less anyone else’s. They’re clueless about any culture other than their own, and most of the things they do they’ve never thought about. They don’t know how their body processes the food they eat, or even why they eat. They don’t understand animals or insects or why they’re there. They don’t understand money nor the economy. They don’t know the history of human civilization or what that even is. They don’t understand science or remotely comprehend how all the technology around them operates.
I sometimes just want to run outside grabbing people saying, “Why is this grass here? Do you know? Why are all these bugs here? Have these bugs always been crawling on the ground? Why is our body made out of mostly water? Why do you go to your job everyday? Have there always been birds? Plants? Trees? Has the sky always been blue? What causes the weather? Why does the wind blow? Why is the sun orange? Why does it hurt your eyes to look at it? What is light?”
My younger brother used to work with a guy who did things like this to his coworkers. He’d grab them and ask, “What are the three branches of our government?” Sadly, hardly anyone could ever answer his simple questions.
Saying people are insane is bit harsh though. Living in a box might be a nicer way to put it.
What people do know is the details of the consumer culture. What most people consider social awareness is really an intricate knowledge of the bubble. They know all about mass consumerism and the bubble reality created for them by the big corporations. They know about movies that are coming out. They know the latest sports statistics. They know all about the celebrities and the big bands and when their new cd will come out. They know the menu at the big chain restaurants they eat at. They know about new TV show lineups.
Maybe that’s what happiness is for a lot of folks. Who am I to infringe on people’s lives? But I feel that people would find it much more fulfilling learning about the amazing, incredibly vast universe we all live in.
But you guys want to know a secret of mine? It’s not known to anyone but my closest friends, but really I have this big thing for the Black Eyed Peas. Yeah. When I hear they’re going to be in concert near where I live I think, “Are you KIDDING ME! I’m SO there.”
Sometimes they open with that one.
Let’s get retarded in here
And the bass keeps running, running
And running, running
And running, running
And running, running
And running, running
And running, running
And running, running
And running, running
And-In this context there’s no disrespect
So when I bust my rhyme you break your necks
We got 5 minutes for us to disconnect
From all intellect and the let rhythm effectTo lose the inhibition, follow your intuition
Free your inner soul and break away from tradition
Cause when we beat out, girl it’s pulling without
You wouldn’t believe how we wil’ shit out!
Burn it til it’s burned out
Turn it til it’s turned out
Actin’ up from north ,west, east, southEverybody! (Yeah?)
Everybody! (Yeah?)
Let’s get into it! (Yeah!)
Get stupid(Come on!)
Get retarded! (Come on!)
Get retarded! (Yeah!)
Get retarded!Let’s get retarded ha!
Let’s get retarded in here!
Let’s get retarded ha!
Let’s get retarded in here!
Let’s get retarded ha!
Let’s get retarded in here!
Let’s get retarded ha!
Let’s get retarded in here!….
Let’s get ill that’s the deal
Out the gate, we will bring a punked Eye thrill (Just)
Lose your mind this is the time
Y’all can’t sit still just to bang your spine (Just)
)))))))))))))Bob your head, like Epilepsy ((((((((((((((((((((((
Up inside your club or in your Bentley
Get messy
Loud and sick
Your mind past normal on another head trip
So, come dumb now do not correct it
Let’s get ignant
Let’s get hectic….
- Black Eyed Peas – Let’s Get Retarded
This is my guilty pleasure. I disconnect from all intellect, follow my intuition, and get retarded in here! I like to punk an eye thrill (wtf?) then bang my spine and bob my head like I have epilepsy up in the club! lmao.
Ok, I wasn’t serious, but you guys probably guessed that. Yeah, and they’re making millions while school teachers struggle to get by. That’s where the truth is people. Intuition and disconnecting from your intellect. Whatever your mind thinks up, go with it. Imagination is reality!
The other day I was with my father and we went to a rural hardware store. Beside the big “Cowgirl Up” and “Welcome To Our Barn” wooden signs there was a shelf of refrigerator magnets. One had a little kitten, all cute and cuddly, and it said “I trust my instincts.” So did George Bush when he sent us into Iraq, after his phone call with Pastor Haggard who probably confirmed that his intuitive feelings were a good idea. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead, thousands of our own men and women in uniform lost, trillions of dollars wasted in a needless quagmire… *brushes hands together* “Job well done guys.”
Let’s get retarded. HAH. Let’s get retarded in here!
Let’s see. Are there any other wise sages out there telling us the follow our intuition? Sarah Palin tells us time and time again about living by faith and following your inner convictions. Or how about Rush Limbaugh? Start watching at time 6:00.
“Also for those of you in the drive by media watching, I have not needed a teleprompter for anything I’ve said. *Pumps fist* And nor do any of us need a teleprompter because our beliefs are not the results of calculations and contrivances. Our beliefs are not the result of a deranged psychology. Our beliefs are our core. *Points to heart* Our beliefs are our hearts. We don’t have to make notes about what we believe. We don’t have to write down, ‘Oh gee’ *scribbles on podium* We can tell people what we believe off the top of our heads, and we can do it with passion, and we can do it with clarity, and we can do it persuasively.”
- Rush Limbaugh, CPAC 2009
There’s no need for notes because there’s no need for things like facts and statistics, or worrying about accuracy. It’s all in your heart! Don’t worry about critical thinking, questioning your beliefs, or consistency. Speak your mind with passion and tell people what you intuitively know is the truth! And notice the certainty that all opposing views are instances of ‘deranged psychology’. The world is black and white. You’re good and they’re bad. You’re perfection, and they’re completely evil, on all counts.
This would be a good time to que up the Black Eyed Peas song and play it at full volume while listening to Limbaugh’s speech. “Our beliefs are not the results of calculations and contrivances. LET’S GET RETARDED Our beliefs are our core. LET’S GET STUPID Our beliefs are our hearts LET’S GET RETARDED IN HERE!”
The more time that goes by, I really don’t belong in this place. I come across a sane person here and there in this rather difficult life of ours, but they’re few and far between.
I’m sorry everyone. I love you all. If you believe in aliens ruling the world, or are religious, or think the war in Iraq was to defend our freedom, I still love you. Come over here, give me a hug. I don’t hate you. I really do love everyone out there. I really do care. It’s just from my perspective, I’m seeing people waste away in needless wars, wasting their lives serving imaginary deities, and conjuring up conspiracies of aliens and it’s all such a tragedy. I hope I can help share the truth with some people and help them see the world as it is, so we can then get on the same page and start fixing the problems we face. If I can help even just a handful of people realize their folly, and keep them from falling into these traps, that’s good enough for me.
So Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the Black Eyed Peas, Pastor Ted Haggard, the conspiracy theorist telling you about aliens ruling the world, and the good ol’ boys at the country store tell you to follow your instincts and believe what’s in your heart with unwavering faith. What would someone like Albert Einstein say?
“The important thing is not to stop questioning”
“Question everything”
“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
- Various quotes by Albert Einstein
Do you notice the difference? Remember to question everything, be critical of everything, think about everything, and never believe anything without sufficient evidence. That’s how you stay sane and connect with the world around you. And if you feel everyone’s crazy, you’re not alone. Einstein felt the same way:
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
- Albert Einstein
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Meet Your Meat
July 7, 2010
Yesterday I talked about the mega-farms, how they destroy the environment and the cruelty the animals must endure there. After reading my post a second time I see that I didn’t even get into a small fraction of what these animals endure. This sort of thing is best shown through video.
Beef:
Pork and Bacon:
Chicken:
This is why we have to eat organic food, or even better, become vegetarians. If you eat the normal beef, chicken, and pork found in your supermarket, you’re guilty of supporting this cruel and terrible industry. Sad thing is, without these cruel techniques a significant portion of our population would starve. Food prices would go way up and most couldn’t afford them. As David Attenborough said at the end of his Life Of Mammals series, it’s time for us to control our population to save the environment. The more humans we hatch out, the more this sort of thing will go on.
If we continue business as usual, the only species which will survive are our pets and these domesticated farm animals who endure this harsh and terrible treatment. Natural habitats are being ravaged and destroyed all to make room for farms like these and to build us more homes.
I had to turn my head when they jammed that blade into the animals’ necks as they hung there then suffocated on their own blood. I can’t imagine what that feels like. Then that pig fell to the ground squirming around, bleeding to death. At the start of the first film you see that cow being castrated, no pain killers, just whacking off its testicles. It’s trapped in those bars writhing in pain.
It’s so strange that we have animal cruelty laws regarding our pets, such as dogs and cats, but then treatment such as this is completely ignored and brushed away. This is far worse than anything most dogs and cats endure. Thing is, there’s money in beef, pork, and chicken sales. Since that’s the case, this sort of thing is ignored.
Just watch the films. They’re so gruesome I don’t even want to talk about them.
When I study neuroscience, it’s amazing that you find the same sorts of brain structures in animals as we have in humans. In us, our outer 6 mm of neo-cortex is where consciousness resides. It’s where we see, feel, taste, smell, and so on. Read my introduction to the subject here. Those pigs and cattle have the same structures. I’m not sure about chickens as I’ve never examined their brains. I assume they have some of them as well. When you’re jamming that blade in their necks, there’s consciousness residing in those animals. They’re just as alive as us humans. There’s a living being there, suffering and in pain.
Animals are just as alive as we are. It’s only our mistaken beliefs, many originating in our superstitious religious systems, that disconnect us from the true nature of life. We can’t allow this sort of treatment to continue. This is just as important an issue as torture and human rights. These are crimes against life itself.
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Mega-Farms Have To Go
July 6, 2010
Sometimes I feel like a stuck record, raving on and on about how we’re destroying the environment and need to change the way we live. Even so, I’m sorry; I just can’t help it. Only 5% of our farms in this country are “mega-farms”, which may sound like a small number, yet they produce 50% of our animal produce. So what’s a mega-farm look like?
These cows are unable to move freely, stuck in metal cages. Giant hoses spray their little concrete cages to clean out the manure. Disease can be rampant as there’s so many animals unnaturally crammed so close together. These animals have to be pumped with all kinds of antibiotics just to be able to live in these conditions. All the manure is shipped off to waste lagoons which are disease breeding grounds. Millions and millions of flies gather breeding in the nastiness.
These cows produce 23x the waste of a human being. Combined, the amount of waste involved in one mega-farm is equivalent to that of a city with 186,000+ people. Yet, unlike a city where the waste is treated in sewage plants, this waste is just thrown out onto the countryside as fertilizer.
Soil tests around the mega-farms surrounding area show dense concentrations of e. coli, salmonella, listeria, cryptosporidium, and other pathogens, all of which are disease causing pathogens.
And you want to know how they kill these cows? They herd them up in a line and then lead them into this room with a swinging iron bar, which is sort of like a pendulum. Then they bash the cow’s head against the wall, crushing its skull and splattering its brains all over the wall. It saves them the cost of a bullet.
Cows aren’t the only animals treated this way. Chickens and pigs are subjected to similar treatment.
Families who live near these places complain about the hydrogen sulphide, which is a gas given off by these places. It causes nausea, neurological damage, and unbearable odor. You’ll hear stories about families where the children keep getting sick and they visit the doctor. The doctor then tells them they need to move because the child’s immune system can’t handle living near the mega-farm. When these farms move in, everyone who lives in the area tries to move off as the air becomes unbreatheable, but they’re never able to sell their homes.
But you want to know the bigger problem? There’s too many people on this planet. Where do you think all those Hardees cheeseburgers and McDonald’s chicken nuggets come from? This is where all that cheap meat and chicken comes from. Hardly anyone buys organic food, so where does the non-organic stuff come from? The majority of it comes from mega-farms. We couldn’t even support our population without using these cruel and terrible techniques.
And you know what’s so ironic? I’ve planned never to have children because I feel ethically convicted about the Earth’s over-population. But, I was with family over the fourth of July holiday and I was talking with some family friends and relatives. One guy was talking about a distant nephew of his who has seven children. SEVEN.
Sometimes I just want to throw my hands up in the air and just yell out, “Whatever…” and walk off. Honestly, I feel like I’m living in that movie Idiocracy.
I spent today watching a series of lectures on the physics of the impossible. Some of the lectures were on chaos theory and talked about how difficult it is to predict the future. Even in a deterministic universe, just small degree of imprecision in starting condition measurements can lead to major inaccuracies in distant predictions. Predicting the future becomes impossible because we can never measure our starting conditions with infinite accuracy. You get things like the infamous ‘butterfly effect’, where a butterfly flaps its wings in a jungle somewhere in Brazil, which eventually leads to tornadoes in Texas. Other lectures were on quantum mechanical effects experienced at absolute zero. Another lecture was on statistical mechanics and the extraction of energy from heat engines and reflections on whether it’s possible to beat the efficiency of a Carnot engine.
Then I go out for a walk to exercise and listen to economics lectures and history. Then I come back inside and study some Cosmology. I feel connected and one with the universe, reflecting on it all. The problems of this world become clearer and clearer to me each day, even though I still have a lot to learn.
Then I start to get too tired to study further. I open up Firefox and start reading the news, or looking around YouTube or go out shopping. Everything around me is mindless. When you go to the store, whether it be the books or the magazines or the newspapers… it’s all dumbed down for people with an IQ of 20.
This world is absolutely insane. People are blowing each other up over religious superstition. They’re watching UFC fights on their television for entertainment. They listen to mindless propaganda, hatred and racism from the mainstream media. They go to the movies and it’s all violence and blowing things up.
Our culture is just depraved and empty and no matter how hard I try I can’t escape it. I’ll be in the waiting room someplace for an appointment, or out buying groceries and I hear music like this:
Shawty had them apple bottom jeans (jeans)
Boots with the fur (with the fur)
The whole club was looking at her
She hit the floor (she hit the floor)
Next thing you know
Shawty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low
Them baggy sweat pants
And the Reebok’s with the straps (with the straps)
She turned around and gave that big booty a smack (hey)
She hit the floor (she hit the floor)
Next thing you know
Shawty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, lowI ain’t never seen something that’ll make me go
This crazy all night spending my doe
Had the million dollar vibe and a body to go
Them birthday cakes they stole the show
So sexual
She was flexible professional
Drinking X&O
Hold up, wait a minute, do I see what I think? Whoa….
- FLO Rida feat T-Pain, Low
I feel like a prude, but man, this music belongs in a dumpster somewhere and doesn’t need to be polluting young people’s ears. It certainly doesn’t belong in waiting rooms. Whatever happened to say John Lennon’s Stand By Me, or Fat Domino’s Blueberry Hill. What happened to popular music? It’s degenerated into mindless trash. Just compare that video to popular music not too long ago.
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see
No I won’t be afraid
No I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by meAnd darling, darling stand by me
Oh, now, now, stand by me
Stand by me, stand by me…
John Lennon, Stand By Me
I found my thrill
On Blueberry Hill
On Blueberry Hill
When I found youThe moon stood still
On Blueberry Hill
And lingered until
My dream came trueThe wind in the willow played
Love’s sweet melody
But all of those vows you made
Were never to beThough we’re apart
You’re part of me still
For you were my thrill
On Blueberry Hill- Fats Domino, Blueberry Hill
The last movie I watched, just to try to stay somewhat in touch with society, was Iron Man. It was terrible, especially compared to a much better film like H.G. Wells The Time Machine, the 1960 adaptation. Iron Man is mindless action, no thought, and all special effects. The Time Machine delves deep into the problems mankind faces.
In The Time Machine, similar to Iron Man, the story focuses around a brilliant inventor. Unlike Iron Man however, where Tony Stark is an egotistical idiot, the main character of The Time Machine is a concerned scientist disgusted with war and the age in which he lives. The government is trying to enlist him to create weapons and he just wants to live in a world where humanity lives in peace and harmony. So he plans to build himself a time machine and warp out of there. He then warps himself 20 years into the future, to 1920. There’s more wars and destruction. He then warps to 1960. He finds atom bombs and wars. So he keeps warping further and further into the future, hoping to escape humanity’s madness. Eventually he ends up in the year 800,000 AD. I won’t ruin the plot. You’ll have to watch it for yourself.
And I can see people now, “Oh Jason, you just don’t know how to have a good time…” No. Humanity is messed up in the head. I’m not the one messed up. I entertain myself peacefully, reflecting on quantum mechanics, thinking about time travel, wormholes, the origins of the universe, and other meaningful things. I hope to help contribute toward research in clean energy and superconductors. I don’t watch violent films and don’t think about violent things. You shouldn’t either. There’s better ways to entertain yourself that don’t require violence.
I did see one film which had a good theme behind it – Avatar. It was pretty good. I just saw it the other day. It actually somewhat reflected on the things modern neuroscience is pointing to. I think nervous systems of animals can be linked together, just like in that film.
I really get depressed thinking on all of this. I’ve had a lot of ambitions in my life, wanting to accomplish this and that, but nowadays my primary concern is advancing science and just helping bring awareness of the dangers we face in the future. These mega-farms just being one of many things we need to change, not to mention a restoration of decency and basic morality.
We must disarm nuclear missiles. We have to stop using these pesticides on our crops. We can’t keep using these antibiotics and other chemicals which we’re pumping into our livestock. CO2 emissions have to cut back dramatically or we’ll be facing massive crop failures with climate change. We have to stop deforestation of the Earth, and stop burning coal, which acidifies the oceans killing the plankton. Well, that’s not the only thing killing the plankton. They also face increased UV exposure with decreased ozone and oil spills. Without the greenery, the trees and the plankton we all suffocate. Keep that in mind guys.
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Is It True We Only Use 10% Of Our Brain?
July 4, 2010
I’ve had people tell me many times that the average person only uses 10% of their brain’s full capacity. Is this true? No, it’s nonsense. Quoting from a Biological Anthropology textbook of mine:
We have all heard the myth that we humans use only 10% of our brains. Indeed, it is apparent that not only have many people heard it but they believe it. Psychologist Barry Beyerstein (1999) has spent many years researching the origins of this mistaken idea. Although he cannot pinpoint its origins with precision, he has shown that it has been around for quite some time. One of the first groups that latched onto and spread the myth was the early self-improvement (“positive thinking”) industry. For example, a 1929 advertisement states that “scientists and psychologists tell us that we use only about TEN PERCENT of our brain power” and that by enrolling in the course being advertised, a person might tap some of that brain that is not being used. The advertisement uses the 10% figure as though it were common knowledge. This indicates that the origins of the myth must date to significantly earlier than 1929. Although Beyerstein has tried to identify the “scientists and psychologists” who may have said something like this, he has so far failed to find any specific reference to it in the literature.
Even if the 10% figure came from a scientist working at the turn of the twentieth century, the state of the art of neuroscience was not particularly advanced at that time. Most people would agree that any sweeping scientific pronouncement, based on little empirical research, is eventually due for some reconsideration. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence from neurology and psychology that the 10% figure is wholly untenable; it is basically neuro-nonsense.
One of the most compelling arguments against the 10% myth comes from the perspective of energy and evolution. The brain uses a lot of energy. In humans, it accounts for about 2% of the body mass but uses about 10-20% of the total energy and oxygen consumed by the body. It is an “expensive tissue” (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995). The brain cannot store significant energy reserves, and is extremely vulnerable if the oxygen supply is cut off.
From an evolutionary standpoint, maintaining such an expensive organ only to use 10% of it does not make any sense. When you consider that there are other costs associated with large brain size (such as birth difficulties; see Chapter 17), if we used only 10% of the brain, there would have been substantial fitness benefits in reducing the brain to a more efficient and less costly size. This did not happen, of course, as brain expansion has characterized evolution in genus Homo.
Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler point out that the brain is not the only expensive tissue in the body. The heart, kidney, liver, and gastrointestinal tract consume at least as much energy as the brain. Human bodies use energy at about the rate that would be expected of a mammal our size. Given that our brains are much larger than would be expected for a mammal our size, how do we maintain the expected energy consumption rate? Aiello and Wheeler argue that a tradeoff with one of the other expensive tissues has occurred. Specifically, at the same time as the brain has increased in size in human evolution, it appears that the stomach and intestines have decreased in size. These size reductions presumably have been accompanied by a reduction in energy use. The smaller gastrointestinal tract also indicates a reliance on higher-quality, easier-to-digest foods (such as meat).
The complex relationship between behavior, brain size, diet, and gut size is one of the most fascinating problems in the study of human evolution. Although it is tempting to see brain size and gut size as engaged in a neat tradeoff, the situation probably was a bit more complex than that. Nonetheless, Aiello and Wheeler make clear that we have to pay for what we have: a large, energy-hungry brain. And a brain that wastes 90% of its volume could never have evolved.
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