At the last BASS meeting, I made a presentation called  “Quantum Mechanics for the skeptic: How to recognize quantum nonsense without being a physicist“.

Quantum Mechanics for the skeptic

Featuring appearances by: Professor Farnsworth, Professor X, the Great A’Tuin, Richard Feynman, and Deepak Chopra.

UCLA Anthropology Professor Joe Manson will speak on how humans are and aren’t unique amongst animals. Prof. Manson’s studies focus on the social behavior of non-human primates and humans.This talk is being held in celebration of Darwin Day!

When: Friday, February 12 from 5:00 to 6:15pm
Where: Royce 156
RSVP on Facebook

]]> http://bruinskeptics.org/2010/02/09/bass-event-are-humans-unique-insights-from-the-social-and-biological-sciences/feed/ 0 http://bruinskeptics.org/2009/11/19/7-record-carl-sagan-a-glorious-dawn-ft-stephen-hawking/ http://bruinskeptics.org/2009/11/19/7-record-carl-sagan-a-glorious-dawn-ft-stephen-hawking/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:11:33 +0000 Roy Natian http://bruinskeptics.org/?p=686 I finally got my 7″ record of “A Glorious Dawn” today in the mail. If you haven’t seen the video, you must watch it now. It’s a wonderful song composed of auto-tuned voice clips of Carl Sagan speaking in Cosmos. It is a moving song I mus say. You can get the 7″ records from Third Man Records for $6 each including shipping if you’re in the US. “A Glorious Dawn” was created by John Boswell for The Symphony of Science a “musical project…designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.”

Here is what the record looks like. Click the image to see the large version.

I am a bit disappointed that the side with the Voyager record etching isn’t made to look like it’s gold, but overall I like this record. I bought 3 more and will give them out as nice science gifts.

Here are the lyrics:

[Sagan]
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has its own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas

[Sagan]
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we’ve waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting

Note: If you don’t know who Ray Comfort is, check out this video with him and a banana…it’ll go far in showing you his mental capacity/ignorance/dishonesty.

Well, they changed their mind. They hit campuses all over the US today. Sneaky Ray, very sneaky. This wasn’t unexpected though. BASS saw the possibility of this misinformation campaign occurring on a date other than the advertised one.  BASS members were prepared to pass out printed materials from the NCSE any time this week. Several BASS members handed out flyers and bookmarks with information about evolution.

Surprisingly both Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron were at UCLA today in person. A few BASS members engaged and debated with them on evolution and at least one BASS member was interviewed on camera. Spencer Fern, BASS’s secretary, even got to take a picture with Ray. It’s interesting how Ray is in the same position in the three pictures.

Ray "the Banan Man" Comfort with Spencer Fern.

Spencer coments:

I got him to agree to the photo and he asked one of his acolytes to take the picture, but then I casually revealed I was an atheist.

He kind of pulled away at that, but I had him in a bit of an armlock and he didn’t want to make a scene.

LOL

UPDATE: PZ Myers on Pharyngula linked to BASS and a post written on Spencer’s website about Ray Comfort being at UCLA today.

UPDATE #2: Joe Creason posted some video of Ray Comfort on Youtube.

Meeting minutes!  The following discussion is from last week’s meeting on February, Friday the 13th.  Please note that this week’s meeting is not in the usual room of Ackerman 2408.  Looking carefully, we instead have the room Kerckhoff 152 reserved.

I’ll let you all in a little secret.  If you stick around after meetings, you’ll find that we often have social activities, like eating out and watching movies.  It is a Friday night after all.

Meeting discussion

We began the meeting with a sample from the manifesto of Jim David Adkisson, the guy known for shooting up a Unitarian Universalist Church. Apparently, the Unitarian Universalists are Ultra-Liberals who hate America. They’re all part of a sinister cult of Secularizm [sic]! Hey, wait, I think he might also be talking about us!

Shifting topics, there has been a lot of recent news about the vaccine/autism controversy. If you were not previously aware of this controversy, the story is that autism usually appears in kids around the same age that they get the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine. The scientific evidence tells us that two events are completely unrelated, but there is still a movement which seeks to promote a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The source of this claim is a 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield which showed a link between the two. The results of the paper have not been replicated by other scientists, and according to recent news, Andrew Wakefield’s research was fraudulent. Also very recently, a US court ruled that there is not sufficient evidence supporting the link between the vaccine and autism.

I would not be surprised, however, if the anti-vaccination movement still survives. This movement even includes the celebrities Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, because as we all know, actors are whom everyone goes to for medical wisdom. That said, the pro-science side also has actress Amanda Peet among their supporters, and I’m told that she even made a commercial. That’s cool. As Ben noted, if less then about 90% of the population take vaccines, it endangers so-called herd immunity, and thus endangers public health.

Our second topic was nominally Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design. Theistic Evolution (TE) is the idea that God created the whole process of evolution, rather than tinkering around with the details. Intelligent Designers (ID) tend to dislike TE because, as Ana said, it’s like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But from a theological standpoint, one could also say that ID is simply insulting to the creator, as if God could not orchestrate such a grand process.

Getting sidetracked into some thought-provoking tangents, we talked about the irreducible complexity argument (favored by ID), which says that there exist complex systems which could not function if they were missing any parts. Spencer talked about the example of blood clotting, which requires a group of proteins. It seems that blood clotting would be nonfunctional if it were missing any of those proteins, but scientists have discovered organisms in water environments which require as little as two proteins.

Matt brought up the question: would we have done all this science if it weren’t for ID? Is ID driving a lot of funding to paleontology to find transitional fossils? Kwame thought that the major benefit was that it drives scientists to be more involved in politics. More science is always good, right? Lest any stone go unturned, Matt started talking about how we need science funding before we get more scientists. Fun times.

Meeting minutes!  This week, we talked about Alcoholics Anonymous, and then What the Bleep!? and Quantum Mechanics.

Remember: February 12 is Darwin Day, which is Darwin’s 200th Birthday!  Expect to see us on Bruin Walk.  Also, February 18 is when Dan Barker, copresident of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, is coming over for a talk.

Meetings are on fridays, 5-7 pm in Ackerman 2408.

Meeting discussion

We talked about Alcoholics Anonymous, a group intended to help people with alcohol addiction. From a secularist’s perspective, the problem with AA is that sometimes people are just giving up one addiction, alcoholism, for an addiction to religion. Sometimes, AA is pretty open to nontheists, but they are also strongly based on having a “higher power”.

Several members had anecdotes (keeping in mind that they are only anecdotes) of family members who had problems with the religiosity of AA. One person’s uncle became a fundamentalist Christian after going to AA. Another person’s father had to leave AA after realizing his sponsor had no qualifications, and simply saw his alcoholism as a result of his lapsed Catholicism.

Some questions that came up: Is alcoholism a disease, or a moral failing? Or can it be considered both (since both therapy and drugs can work to fix it)? Is SOS, secular organizations for sobriety, a good alternative? Do people who are alcoholic have an addictive personality which perhaps predisposes them to getting into religion? It seems that many AA members pick up smoking, even as they quit drinking. Does the accountability implied by a God in fact help a person keep off alcohol? After all, complicated rational reasons are hard to keep in mind when you’re drunk.

Mikael is the skeptic of the week for his winning insect analogy. See, alcoholism is like a butterfly. The alcohol has stripped you of your wings, but then you go into a cocoon (the cocoon is God) and you come out a butterfly! Amazing. We love this guy.

Our second topic was What the Bleep!? and Quantum Mechanics. What the Bleep Do We Know!? is a film which uses misinterpretations of quantum mechanics to promote a rather new age view of the world. The really funny part is that the film is a basically a front from this cult which is run by a woman JZ Knight who channels a 35,000 year old Atlantean warrior spirit named Ramtha.

So we spent a lot of time talking about the Double Slit Experiment, the Copenhagen Interpretation, Schrödinger’s Cat, and other aspects of Quantum Mechanics. I could probably talk about this stuff for hours (being a rather knowledgeable physics student), but I didn’t get enough time. Let’s just say that What the Bleep!? gravely misunderstands the relationship in Quantum Mechanics between macroscopic and microscopic behavior. The rest of the details of our discussion are hard to reproduce, as I spent more time talking than taking notes.  However (self promotion alert!), I will point you all to my review of the What the Bleep!? on my own blog.

Comments are open.

Among other things, we discussed topics and ideas that we’d like to see in the future.  Popular ideas included having more formal debates between two members, having a meditation at the beginning of the meeting, or discussing the film What the Bleep!? (critically, of course).  Look out for these things in the future.  Also, note that Darwin Day, Darwin’s bicentennial, is coming up on February 12.

Global Warming:

Today, we had a presentation prepared by Paul Zimmerle about Global Warming, who had read the IPCC report. For the completely confused, Global Warming is the idea that increased amounts of greenhouse gasses will cause the Earth’s overall average temperature to increase. Greenhouse gasses, which include carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, reduce the amount of heat that leaves the earth. Carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor. The increase in greenhouse gasses is thought to primarily come from human sources.

One of the problems with Global warming is the positive feedback mechanism it may cause. As ocean water warms up, the ice caps begin to melt. Smaller ice caps means that the overall albedo of the Earth decreases (meaning, less sunlight is reflected off the surface, heating the Earth further). Because Antarctica is not merely a floating island, the melting of ice in Antarctica will also cause the sea levels to rise. One of the fears is that if the temperatures continue to rise, this may shut down the so-called North Atlantic Current, which will cause the next ice age cycle to start early.

Global Warming has many effects. In some areas, increased drought was observed. Increased precipitation in other areas should also occur, though it hasn’t yet been directly observed. Bay waters will become saltier. Heat waves (and associated health issues) have become more common. There are more mosquitoes, and the pollen season starts earlier. It may also affect hurricanes, but in absence of further evidence, we are not sure.

After the presentation, we had questions and discussion. Is the controversy about Global Warming real, or is it exaggerated? BASS members compared it to the evolution vs Intelligent Design debate, which primarily lives in the public’s imagination rather than in scientific circles. However, scientists still argue about the degree of Global Warming. What can we do about Global Warming? Paul said that there is not a whole lot we can do at this point, that there are ideas floating around, but no well-accepted solutions. A few people put forth the idea of increasing particulate pollution, thus dimming and cooling the planet. This supposedly occurred in the 1950s due to increased numbers of coal power plants.

Memes

Memes are a concept initially introduced, or at least popularized by Richard Dawkins. A meme is any idea which is passed on between individuals, propagating itself. It is intended as an analogy to genes, in that memes mutate and undergo natural selection.

Putting all my cards on the table, I myself am very critical of the idea of memes. I stated that memes may be a good rhetorical device, but the analogy with genes is not good enough to merit any serious study. In particular, amemogenesis (the creation of a meme without any clear parents) and meme hybridization (the combining of two or more memes together) are too common for the analogy to be accurate. Other members noted that Dawkins himself has disassociated himself from the idea of memes, and that anthropologists dislike the idea because it is not a good description of how ideas are passed on. And if we’re only trying to say that memes propagate themselves, this is a rather trivial and useless fact, unworthy of the analogy.

On the other hand, some people still think memes are a good way to think about and visualize the spreading of ideas. And in fact, the concept is used by some prominent psychologists, such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. And then we got to talking about religion as a meme. Daniel Dennett has compared religion to a meme or a parasite. But some people thought a virus analogy would be more apt (personally, I would go with none of the above).

Robin was declared skeptic of the week for his analogy between Global Warming and a Yugo. It’s probably not safe in the long run. I’m told that car analogies transcend all other kinds.

I should mention that all readers are welcome to continue any discussion here.  Comments are moderated, so don’t expect them to appear immediately.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.  If you are a member of BASS, this is your website to use.  If you want to contribute a story about your experiences tabling, or if you just like to share silly science videos, you can do it here.  Just contact us.

Meeting discussion:

We first talked about the inauguration. Reactions were mixed, but several people were very happy with Obama’s mention of “non-believers” as Americans. However, someone cited a quote by George W Bush which also positively mentioned people with out faith (see some quotes here). We were amused by the fact that after the oath got messed up, Obama later redid it without a Bible. Imagine the reaction on Fox News.

Most were unhappy that Rick Warren gave the invocation. His prayer specifically referred to the Christian god and how we would all eventually answer to him. Why did Obama invite this guy again? While the answer might be “to be more inclusive”, BASS members suggested other possibilities as well. Perhaps it was an attempt to symbolically ally with evangelicals, so that he can get away with actions like lifting the abortion gag rule. Perhaps it was in order to put Rick Warren on the defensive; he had to moderate himself because the public eye was focused him.

We also watched the first two and a half minutes of the Daily Show episode.

Shifting gears a bit, we discussed the evolution of altruism. A lot of it is mindless chatter, but the following points came out of my attempted distillation:

• Once we have reputation, altruism leads to evolutionary fitness.
• Because of game theory, a tit for tat strategy often works best.
• Altruism to offspring and relatives is easily explained because they share genes with you.
• If a population has limited resources, evolution should favor altruism so that they minimize the amount of resources wasted on conflict.
• But what if you are the only liar in an honest society?
• Is there an advantage to having an “outgroup”?
• Perhaps at least part of the explanation is memetic rather than genetic. But this doesn’t explain altruism in other species.

From there, we drifted into the topic of the nature of morality. Someone drew a distinction between genetic morality and philosophical morality. Genetic morality explains our predispositions, but we need philosophical morality in order to become comfortable with those predispositions. Just because an action promotes fitness from an evolutionary stand point is not sufficient to make it morally correct.

Anyways, the game is coming out in September this year, but you can already download a free trial of the Creature Creator. Oh, look, I whipped up a creature that looks like the BASS logo. Dear God is it ugly. (below the fold)

I’m pretty sure that that’s not what Tiktaalik actually looked like…

Anyways, this clearly relates to how evolution is perceived by the public. I’m just saying that if, hypothetically, any club vice-presidents were looking for topics in the fall, this might be a good idea.

Contrary what they say, this is pretty obviously not actually evolution. For one thing, Spore has a clear direction towards complexity, which isn’t really how it works. But more obviously there’s a player controlling how the creatures change! I’m not the first one to say this, but if anything, the simulation more resembles Intelligent Design than evolution. Funny how this only happens in fiction. And, hey, it doesn’t necessarily make bad fiction–this game will probably be extremely successful, or so the hype tells me. We’ll see when it comes out.

Come to think of it, the Intelligent Design folks usually don’t consider the possibility that life was created by an entire internet-like community. Doesn’t it make more sense that way? Mosquitoes were obviously created by divine trolls.

On the issues, Jindal fits the ideal for the Christian conservative – he is against abortion in all cases including rape, is opposed to embryonic stem cell research, and has a 100% lifetime rating from the National Right to Life Committee – so it is very likely that he earnestly believes what he is saying rather than trying to pander. On the other hand, being a convert from Hinduism to Christianity, brown-skinned, and having the legal name “Piyush Jindal” may push away some on the far right. In any case, an interesting dynamic…