Fear, or contempt, of knowledge?

Yesterday, the Cincinnati Bengals beat the Seattle Seahawks by a score of 27-24 on the back of a successful field goal in overtime. Normally, I would care less about this than I would just about anything else on the planet, up-to and including Kim Kardashian's opinions on international politics. However, something interesting did come from this game. You see, the Bengals' kicker bounced the football in off the left upright, by only the thinnest of margins winning the game. And cue Neil deGrasse Tyson:

And here I was, thinking that the Coriolis force only related to flushing toilets!

This was something I had not considered, did not know, and it is a delight, isn't it? It is wonderful to have an astrophysicist be able to communicate directly with a lay population on matters that matter to them. The basic message here is, "Physics is important. I bet you didn't consider this little force that can affect the game you love!" I know I hadn't. And now, I cannot help but think about all those sports plays that occur at the very margins - those passes that bounce just off the fingertips, those line drives that just barely make it into the top webbing of the fielder's glove, the fly balls that bounce off the top of the outfield fence and into the stands for home runs. How many of these plays would have been different if not for the Coriolis effect?

This tickled me.

I saw this story on ESPN.com. It wasn't long before the Internet threw a big bucket of ice water on my reverie. I tell my students to never read the comments. Well, I should heed my own advice.

Out of only three dozen comments, we find:

1) Contempt for Dr. Tyson and for the story in general.




2) Armchair physicists that think they know better than a goddamn astrophysicist. They don't.

3) This guy here that says that math doesn't matter, and what really matters is "heart." Just like when people talk about non-things like the human spirit, free will, and the soul, I have no idea how the hell we're supposed to measure "heart," nor how it could possibly affect the outcome of a football game.

4) And finally, complete disinterest.

I know that many people would read this and think, "Well, what do you expect on an ESPN forum? It's barely a step above YouTube comments. Of course the people there are going to be writing terrible, stupid things."

And that is precisely my point. Of course people are going to be writing terrible, stupid things. The conversation should not immediately go to a place of complete helplessness. Collectively, we shrug our shoulders at this kind of thing, but I think that it truly represents a cultural sickness. The sickness is that so many people find knowledge contemptible, that they spurn it, that they would tell an astrophysicist that he is wrong about physics, and get cocky about it despite being absolutely and obviously wrong in their analysis. 

Anti-intellectualism simultaneously scares and depresses the hell out of me.

Blind spots and misplaced human arrogance

Blind spots - not so fun while driving, and also not so fun while thinking.

In the first case, you know that the blind spot exists and you may work to acquire information about what may be contained within it (e.g., other cars). Or you just dart in and out of lanes haphazardly, denying that any blind spot exists, or at the least denying that you have any reason to check it. Spend a little time on the I-95 corridor in Northern Virginia if you somehow don't know what I mean.

The second case looks much like the first. You can accept that you have intellectual blind spots and work to illuminate the contents therein, thus becoming a more-informed and thoughtful person. Or you just deny that you have any blind spots at all, and dangerously traverse life's highways without ever feeling that you need to improve your view of your surroundings.

The primary differences between these two cases are thus: 1) There are many fewer blind drivers out there than blind thinkers, and 2) The negative consequences of blind driving are much more obvious to people. You might say that for a lot of people, their blind spots are their blind spot.

Credit: www.xkcd.com

Over the last few months, I have been doing a fair bit of reading on the topics of evolution, learning, cognition, consciousness, free will, and the philosophy of science. Some of it has been interesting and fruitful with respect to spurring my own work. However, I am dumbstruck at the amount of poor scholarship out there that is taken very seriously. Here, I largely do not mean original empirical work (though there's much room here to criticize, depending on the field in question), but instead I refer to the shaky logic and faulty premises that underlie scholars' interpretations and philosophies with respect to empirical work. A classic example is Chomsky's (1959) scathing review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. This review is credited as a major step forward in psychology. This review is credited with spurring, in part, the advancement of modern cognitive science and the exposure of behaviorism as a fraud. This review is positively referenced in many introductory psychology textbooks.

This review is also terrible. Not terrible in the sense of a great monster rising from the ocean depths to wreak havoc on Tokyo, but terrible in the sense of someone spreading grape jelly on a tuna fish sandwich. Frankly, it is an embarrassment that anyone has ever taken it seriously. MacCorquadale (1970) provided a thorough and devastating analysis of Chomsky's (1959) review, but fewer people know about it. For my part, it always seemed to me that Chomsky was making the following argument: "I do not see how B.F. Skinner could be right about this. I would like to introduce a better idea: I propose magic!"

Noam Chomsky in his usual Sunday attire.

This post is not about Chomsky and his incoherent bumbling about verbal behavior, though. There will be a time and place for all that. This is about blind spots.

Actually, this is about a particular blind spot. Here, I refer to human beings' fervent desire to be something special. People do not simply wish to be a part of the natural world. People want to be more. People want to have choice. They want to have free will. Unlike almost every other known item in the entire universe, they want to be in control of their own destiny. They want to matter in a way that nothing else does. This clouds their judgment, to the point where they cannot possibly accept the alternative: That they are just a piece of the clockwork. And I get it. At least, I think I get it, in the sense that I "get" the appeal of soccer. I do not love soccer, but I think I can appreciate the reasons why some people do. But like the sight of a group of drunk soccer hooligans outside a British pub during the World Cup, I find the collective misunderstanding of our rightful place in the universe to be profoundly alien.

Millions of pages have been written by philosophers and scientists on the nature of free will, of choice, of decision-making, of cognitive control. And I think that those millions of pages have been wasted describing phantoms. I have read no convincing arguments that we have anything approaching anything similar to such freedom. I think that those who would suggest we do need to more carefully examine their premises. Because too often, it smacks of wishful thinking (hat tip to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal).

The impetus for this post comes from a recent experience I had when reading a portion of a highly-regarded textbook on artificial intelligence: Artificial Intelligence (3rd ed.) by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. The former author is a professor at Berkeley, and the latter is a Director of Research at Google. The text seems thorough and a valuable resource, but I cannot help but be irritated by the following point:

“One problem with a purely physical conception of the mind is that it seems to leave little room for free will: if the mind is governed entirely by physical laws, then it has no more free will than a rock “deciding” to fall toward the center of the earth.” (emphasis added)

They do not go on to satisfactorily clarify what exactly the problem is, nor what the "mind" is.

Personally, I do not see the problem. What is the problem with leaving little (or no) room for free will? Physical laws appear to govern everything else in the universe, so why not human behavior? What, other than wishful thinking, allows us to believe that we are somehow fundamentally different from everything else by which we are surrounded? Incidentally, I think they absolutely nail the truth here, even though it was inadvertent. I think it is correct that we have no more free will than a rock falling to the earth.

I would dearly love for someone to demonstrate to me otherwise. But I am rapidly growing convinced that no one has an answer that does not appeal to the supernatural.

Contingencies and appalling behavior

Slate recently ran a piece that reported on some interesting behavior by some drivers in China. It seems that there have been a number of incidents where drivers have struck a pedestrian, stopped, and then reversed their car to strike them again. In some cases, this exercise may have been repeated several times, ensuring the death of the pedestrian.

Your reaction when reading the Slate article.

This strikes us as horrible. As it should. But to be horrible is not to mean senseless - there must be an explanation for this behavior. Even the worst behavior happens for a reason.

First, let us make an assumption. For the purposes of this exercise, let's assume that this behavior is not as common the world over as it is in China. For what it's worth, this story strikes me as rather alien. That is not to say that this kind of behavior doesn't happen in the United States, but let's assume it does not. If new data come about that show this to be as common elsewhere as in China, then we can worry about it later.

We have something to explain. Some commenters merely throw their hands up in the air in utter confusion. One user writes:

"What kind of monster is capable of casually and deliberately using their vehicle to slaughter someone with as  much regard as one would give to stepping on an ant? How do these murderers sleep at night??  What is wrong with this society? "

Others wander off into topics as far-reaching as abortion rights, Usain Bolt, communism, and the 2016 Republican platform - and that's just within the first thirty comments out of more than 1200. Oof. Never, ever, ever read the comments. Ever.

The true explanation for this behavior is found within the contingencies between it and the consequences that follow. It is truly not that difficult to understand, despite the feeling of horror we might have, that making sure that a victim is dead may be the best course of action for a driver. All it takes for that to be true are certain kinds of effects to come after the behavior. Behold.

Most people agree that the hit-to-kill phenomenon stems at least in part from perverse laws on victim compensation. In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small - amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000 - and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical. (emphasis added)

As it happens, this explanation is almost perfect. The only thing I would ask of the author is this: Where is there a decision here? The contingencies explain the behavior adequately. No doubt, if the contingencies were changed, the behavior would change as well. Let's say that the courts started cracking down harder on vehicular manslaughter - this would reduce the "hit-to-kill" phenomenon. Imagine that the Chinese government began offering cash prizes for those who hit and kill pedestrians - this would increase the number of dead pedestrians, assuming, of course, that people would be as likely to walk under such circumstances as they are now (which they wouldn't, of course).

In a slightly different world, all the bicyclists would soon be dead.

If people think that they are moral because they possess some wonderful, innate quality that prevent them from doing bad things in the world, they are deluded. Your morality, and the morality of everyone you know, is a direct reflection of the interaction between the environment and the behavior in question. There are no decisions.

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Small edits to the original post were made to correct a grammatical mistake and to use different photographs.

Racism and true causes for behavior

This article was originally published a while back at The Daily Banter, a left-leaning political blog worth checking out. They have some reasonable people over there, and are good writers to boot. 

In the following piece, I highlight a case example of a type of entirely-useless assertion that is made far too often in the wake of tragedy. The broad assertion: A person's beliefs cause them to behave in certain ways. The specific example here is someone who murdered nine innocent black Americans in a South Carolina church in June 2015. Many asserted in the aftermath that the killer's racism motivated him to murder - I think this explanation is insufficient and incorrect.

Why Dylann Roof's Racism Did Not Cause the Massacre in Charleston

Last weekend, neuroscientist and popular author Sam Harris tweeted, “Is there anyone who doubts that the odious Dylann Storm Roof was motivated by his (racist) beliefs?” To which I reply: Yes, I doubt this very much. I do not believe that Roof murdered those people because he is racist. In fact, I consider it actively harmful to posit this as an explanation for the tragedy that took the lives of nine innocent black Americans.

Before I get drowned in a flood of hate mail, let me clarify things a bit. First, I think it is very clear that Roof is a virulent racist. A huge amount of evidence indicates that he holds truly repugnant views on race, especially with respect to black people. His crime was an act of domestic terrorism, and unless something truly unexpected emerges during the legal process, he should be thrown in prison for the rest of his life. However, his racism did not cause him to murder those people. Like his crime, his racism is not a cause, but an effect. At this time, we should be asking about the nature of the shared cause for both, and considering how this analysis may help prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future.

Human behavior can seem extraordinarily complex. However, in a scientific analysis, we can simplify the relevant general processes that govern behavior to less than a handful of items. For our purposes here, let us consider “Behavior and Belief” as the middle link in a three-link chain. The first link is “Environment and Culture,” and the last is “Consequences.”

Now I know my A, B, C's...

Just like with a physical chain, when you move a single link, you also tend to move the others. Reward (or reinforcement) and punishment are examples of consequences that change behavior. Rewards are offered for good behavior as a way to increase the likelihood of similar good behavior happening in the future; punishments are threatened to reduce the chances of unwanted behavior occurring. On the other hand, environments serve to provide a context for the kinds of behavior that will be reinforced or punished. If you have cheered at the top of your lungs while attending a raucous sporting event, but would never dream of doing so at a somber funeral, you recognize the importance of environments in controlling your behavior. When we talk about a culture, we are merely describing a social environment that serves to set the stage for the reinforcement of particular sorts of human behavior. For example, someone invoking “gun culture” in America is really talking about the vast web of human interaction that provides cover and, ultimately, reinforcement for those who would buy, sell, collect, discuss, and shoot guns.

That our behavior is a necessary product of both its consequences and its antecedent environmental conditions is critically important to remember when we want to improve our lot in this world, because it is only by manipulating these links that we can change human behavior.

The consequences for Dylann Roof’s actions could not be more dire for him. By murdering those people, he has probably ensured that he will spend his remaining years in prison, and may even face execution. It is difficult to imagine harsher consequences for one’s actions, and yet the behavior still happened. Roof is not insane – there can be little doubt that he knew that he would probably be caught, and knew that his life was effectively coming to an end with his actions. In fact, that many terrorists (e.g., suicide bombers, mass shooters) kill themselves in their attacks could be seen as an acknowledgment that their lives are effectively over, that only terrible things await them. We probably cannot and definitely should not design punishments that are harsher than death. So, to reduce violent crime and terrorism, what are we to do?

Our only option is to change the environments that give rise to violent crime. Cultures that encourage profligate use of firearms, distrust of education, and hatred of minorities will be much more likely to have a Dylann Roof emerge from them than cultures where any of those pillars is missing. If you remove the antecedent conditions that would give rise to objectionable behavior, you prevent that behavior from ever occurring. Roof’s beliefs did not and do not matter in a causal analysis. At most, his racism is an indicator, a symptom of a sick world from which he emerged. Arguing about beliefs is unproductive. Instead, we should talk about the conditions that caused Roof to behave as he did and believe as he does.

It is perverse that so many people would deny or obfuscate the role of culture in causing tragic events like the Charleston massacre. When we see Fox News talking heads blatantly ignore the topic of race relations in America as a determining factor in this tragedy, we are watching people essentially trying to prevent cultural change with respect to race. When pundits claim that crimes like Charleston are acts of the mentally ill, or are “isolated” or “senseless” incidents, they work to prevent clarity on the causes for the crimes. Guns rights advocates often go a step further, suggesting that culture is important, but arguing that an expansion of their culture is needed. Simplistic aphorisms like, “an armed society is a polite society,” and “guns don’t kill people, people do” are intonations of a culture that is working to preserve itself. That platitudes like these are demonstrably untrue is of little consequence to the group’s members, as what really matters is that the words are effective at perpetuating a cultural message beneficial to their aims.

Behold: A necessary product of a particular kind of environment.

If we can blame a man for a crime, if we can fully blame a person’s mental state or mental illness, it absolves a culture from responsibility. It is easy to see why we tend to blame the individual. If a crime is the sole responsibility of a person, we have many ways to deal with the issue – an individual may be fined, shamed, institutionalized, imprisoned, or executed, any of which is usually easy enough to implement. After punishing the criminal, we can heartily congratulate ourselves on effectively addressing the problem. However, if a person’s criminal actions are the necessary product of a larger causal force, the problem we are looking to fix becomes much, much more challenging. Punishing the criminal may help prevent some unlawful actions in the future (see chain link #3), but a maximally effective technique must also address the issue of the complex environment that gave rise to the behavior in the first place. Humans tend to prefer simple answers to complex ones. Some of us have a stronger preference than others.

Saints and monsters do not emerge from nothingness, but instead are built by their environments. By building a better world, we can banish monsters like Dylann Roof from the human experience. To do so, we must not be distracted by those who would muddy the waters. We must not be confused by fervent appeals to a kind of freedom that none of us has. We must not talk of beliefs in causing behavior, but instead talk about how beliefs are built. By understanding and accepting our necessary, intermediate role between culture and consequences, we understand how we might change human behavior for the better.
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P.S. I got some feedback regarding this post when it was first published suggesting that I had, perhaps, a too-narrow view on what constitutes causality in a behavioral analysis. I have thought about it, and I don't think that the criticism is valid. At a later date, I will attempt to explain why Aristotle was wrong about causality and again explain why teleology (i.e., final causes) have no place in a proper understanding of the universe.

The abandonment of humility

Self-help "guru" Wayne Dyer died last week at the age of 75, victim of a heart attack. I had not known of him before now, but apparently he was an important force in the lives of many millions of people. He wrote a number of books, including Your Erroneous Zones*, which sold over 30 million copies. Online, there is an outpouring of affection, grief, and respect for the man. To the extent that his work made people feel more free and spurred positive developments in their lives, I tip my proverbial cap. But only a little.

If you feel personally invested in Dr. Dyer and his work, if he has helped you, if you just want to feel good in this moment, you might as well stop reading this right now.

Dyer may have been a force for good in the world. That said, his central position was and is full-on lunacy. Seriously, it is completely divorced from reality. The following picture was posted to Dyer's Facebook page. It appears to be a position for which he strenuously advocated. 

Oh, is that so? Fascinating.

A cursory examination of his cited work online reveals many similarly moldy chestnuts, every piece thereof an absolutely brazen, easily exposed lie. Doesn't it just make you want to laugh at a homeless person and vote for Ron Paul?

In seriousness, words like the above might have some positive consequences. They might serve to motivate good behavior from individuals that otherwise would not have done so. It is possible that appealing to a person's personal power, their freedom, their absolute independence from the universe... it is possible that doing these things will result in that person having a better, healthier life in some important way. I can, though, point to a clearer effect of writing this trite nonsense: there is good evidence that it sells a ton of books.

Cynicism aside, just because someone spins a pleasant yarn and another person buys into it does not mean anything about its truth. And the truth of the matter is that your domain of personal responsibility is a constantly eroding island in the vast rising sea of the cosmos, growing smaller all the time. The life sciences have conclusively shown the following to be true:

Your parents' identities matter a great deal.

Your past relationships have an enormous effect on your life.

Your job and the broader economy are both important to your health and happiness.

Your age, no matter whether young or old, places restrictions on your behavior.

Aside from those painfully clear truths, the following related point is also probably true (though this idea does not enjoy wide acceptance yet):

"Choice" isn't real. You don't make decisions. The world makes them for you.

This is a controversial position and I cannot hope to do it full justice in the context of this post. I think my view will become fully clear over time. Suffice it to say, the idea that one has any real control over their life in any way is not an a priori truth, nor has it been adequately shown in evidence. I find it absurd to think that a person causes their own behavior in much the same way that it is absurd to believe that a baseball throws itself. Just like the ball's trajectory through space, a person's trajectory can always be traced back to external causes. This is perhaps an uncomfortable position to contemplate, but the degree of discomfort one feels regarding it has nothing to do with whether it is true.

And here we come to the crux of the matter. No matter how comfortable or useful an inspirational lie may be, it is still a damnable, dirty lie, and should not be held up as possessing any virtue when the truth can instead be known. I want to know the truth, and I want other people to want the same. Unraveling the fabric of reality is a challenging endeavor, and the history of science reveals many hard-fought and well-earned victories in the face of significant pressure from those that would rather embrace the comfortable lie. We now know the world is not flat. We now know that Ptolemy was wrong in positing a geocentric universe. We now know that demon possession and humours have nothing to do with human health, but germs do. Some wars - climate change, evolution, vaccination - have been over for a long time, but the opposition of the comfortably ignorant continues to struggle, like Japanese soldiers that continued to fight long after World War II had concluded. 

Apologies to the Japanese soldiers for the unflattering comparison.

That probably sounds sanctimonious. It is not intended to be. All I want is to learn about how the world works, generally (but not entirely) through the lens of understanding organismal behavior. I want answers, but they have to be true, and not necessarily comforting. I resent that so many people want to cling to the reassuring lies. And the lie that we are in control does nothing to advance our understanding of human behavior, does nothing to point to real solutions to our environmental problems, and does nothing to suggest a way forward for human culture. All it does is falsely raise the individual to a godlike state, where he can create independently of the world which s/he inhabits.

As Mark Twain wrote, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." 

Guns, human rights, mental health, and behavior, Part II

Let's continue the conversation on why mental illness does not cause gun violence.  B. F. Skinner, perhaps the most prominent and influential (and infamous) psychologist of the past century, mirrors my thoughts more eruditely in his collection of personal notes, Notebooks (1980). The following example recounts Skinner's thoughts in the wake of the 1966 massacre at the University of Texas - Austin, where Charles Whitman killed more than a dozen people before being shot by police. I have emphasized a few important portions that will sound very familiar, despite the example being nearly 50 years old.

Fictions in the News
A student at the University in Austin took a rifle into a tower and fired at people in the streets. He killed 13 and wounded 30. There have been a rash of explanations. The boy's father spoke of tensions and "snapping." The "breaking point" had been reached. The university psychiatrist spoke of frustrated achievements and aspirations. Doctors found a small tumor near the brainstem.

The boy's father unwittingly got closer to real causes. He described himself as a gun addict - always hunting - brought up his boys to shoot. The boy was in the Marines - taught to shoot again. Killing from a tower reminds one of the assassination of President Kennedy, also in Texas.

But the environmental history gets little notice. The mental and the physiological fictions prevail. Whatever effect, if any, the tumor had, it did not cause the behavior of taking an arsenal of guns and ammunition to a tower, barricading the doors, and shooting innocent people. It could not even have interfered with "cortical inhibition normally suppressing such behavior," or if it did, we still have to explain the behavior.

If we want to reduce gun violence, it will do little good to quibble about imaginary causes, about mental states and so-called unstable people. We have to look to our environments, to our culture, and to change them to prevent further needless deaths.

Mental illness does not cause this.

Guns, human rights, mental health, and behavior, Part I

Years ago, yesterdays on-air murder of a television reporter and a photographer would have shocked and horrified me. Today, the only thing that shocks me about it is that anyone is still shocked. And though I am horrified, it is doled out between the act itself and my suspicion that absolutely nothing will change. The latter horror is made worse by my conviction that this protracted national nightmare of gun violence could be ended if appropriate interventions were adopted.  

Another day in America.

Of course, they won't be. The murder of two people doing a puff piece for the local news? Pfft. If the wholesale slaughter of nearly two-dozen children didn't change anything, this surely will not. So, I guess we are relying on magic to save us. Maybe if we all just pray really hard the violence will end. I mean really hard, you guys. Get to work.

This gruesome spectacle offers an "opportunity" to discuss a few important principles of behavior. First, let's tackle the issue of mental health in this country, and whether it is responsible for the murders of innocent people in events like Roanoke, Sandy Hook, Charleston, Columbine, and so many others...

NO, IT IS NOT.

There. That was easy.

OK, I should probably explain. But so many arguments roll in from people that resort to labeling the people who commit these violent acts as crazy, mentally unstable, and the like... and it is such an obviously terrible kind of argument. It does not hold up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny.

Even after accounting for the relatively large population of the United States, the amount of gun violence here far eclipses the amount of violence in the rest of the developed world. There are a huge number of differences between nation-states and little means by which we can experimentally test how they individually manifest in human behavior, and so determining causality can be tricky. That said, those who would argue that what we face is a mental health crisis also would have to explain why other nations are not facing the same problem. If a gun-rights advocate wants to claim that guns are not the problem, but that mental health is, they may find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to adopt the following position:

America makes more people more crazy than does the rest of the world.

What is the solution, if mental illness is the problem? Certainly, we must increase the care, treatment, and monitoring of psychologically imbalanced individuals, right? Now the gun-rights advocate may find himself having to adopt another uncomfortable position:

America needs to spend more money to properly care for the mentally ill.

For many conservatives, these positions run counter to their stated values. The first suggests that we are far inferior in some meaningful way, the second suggests a fiscally irresponsible (not my words) social program to address the problem. But this all leads to my more important point...

Mental health is not the important issue here. Listen, I am as big an advocate for the improvement of mental health in the world as anyone. I support increased funding for social programs, I respect and admire the work of mental health professionals, and I believe that improved psychological well-being amongst a country's citizens can have vast, important, positive impacts that may be difficult to fully measure and appreciate. My point is not that mental health isn't an important consideration in general, it is that being mentally unhealthy does not cause one to violently attack and murder innocent people with a deadly weapon. It can do that no more than it can cause one to drive a car, make a sandwich, solve a Rubik's Cube, or complete a jigsaw puzzle.

Simply put, being mentally unstable does not really cause any behavior, but instead is a reflection of an individual being impacted and his behavior strengthened by environmental events in a manner that is atypical for human beings. If a person finds that chewing on broken glass is very pleasurable, and that person goes out of their way to chew on broken glass, if that person would give you a dollar for the empty soda bottle you are holding... well, that is reflective of an odd (atypical) kind of reinforcing event. Most humans do not find the act of chewing glass to be a good thing.

However, it's not that the glass chewer is crazy, and that his craziness leads him to chew glass. It's that when he tried chewing on glass, he enjoyed* it, and thus continues to look for the opportunities to chew it. In other words, he wasn't built knowing that he liked this activity, but an interaction with a particular environment allowed him to learn that he did.

The same goes for guns. We find ourselves in a culture that has a permissive attitude towards deadly weapons. We see them throughout our lives on police officers, on friends and family members, in the popular media, and gun ownership is codified as a right* in our country's Constitution. Many grow up with guns, play first-person shooters, learn to shoot at an early age. Couple all that with any number of other potential environmental factors in America (e.g., large wealth gap, reduced social spending, a long and important history of poor race relations), and it may not be terribly surprising that we observe so much so-called "senseless" gun violence.

*Kinda...

Nothing For Any Purpose, Part II

You can read Part I here. Here is a link to the original popular press article. 

Last time, I indicated that it is unhelpful to enthusiastically embrace some species as being somehow inherently "remarkable," because it denies the role of the environmental history of the organism. On top of this, such a judgment also says more about human beings than it does the animal (in this case, the octopus). In this installment, I address the following question, pulled from a statement by the study's lead author:

Do the cephalopods' "large, elaborate brains" permit them "to be active predators with complex behaviors"?

On its surface, this point appears harmless and reasonable enough. However, there is an underlying unwarranted assumption that pervades a large amount of work in the biological and psychological sciences.

The issue is one of teleology, or of explaining phenomena in the natural world in terms of their purpose, rather than in terms of their antecedent causes. Many people, laypersons and scientists alike, agree that humans can have reasons for their actions, and that they purposefully act in an intentional, top-down manner. An esteemed philosopher of science, Daniel Dennett, argues that we can and should adopt what he terms "the intentional stance" when it comes to human behavior. We can ask a person their reasons for acting a particular way, and fully* accept an answer that uses terms of one's conscious striving towards a particular goal.

In biology, however, this kind of reasoning is inappropriate. Prior to Darwin, many of the world's greatest thinkers could only conceive of the orderliness of the natural world as being the product of a supernatural entity, a cosmic designer, a God who behaved with purpose. Darwin's theory of evolution tidily dispenses with such explanations in favor of an entirely bottom-up, undirected natural process that produces stunning amounts of complexity. There are no purposes, and there are no goals. Darwin's theory thus flipped our understanding of Earthly life entirely on its head. The continued vociferous religious opposition to modern evolutionary theory is due to the elimination of purpose from the natural world, the express rejection of teleological explanation.

A bird's wings are not intended for flight; monkeys did not evolve responsive prehensile tails to become more agile arboreal denizens; and octopuses did not develop large brains to enable complex predatory behavior. A complete explanation of complex animal behavior does not require that Nature furnish such purposes.

Credit: http://www.jesusandmo.net/

The teleological claim that the animal's large brain engenders their predatory behavior is unfounded if one considers the evolutionary history of the organism. The octopus's large and complex brain was shaped over millions of years as a function of its environment, or, if you'd prefer, its ecological niche. So too, simultaneously, was its tendencies to behave in a manner that humans would eventually observe and find clever. Under the wide scope of this analysis, the brain does not strictly cause behavior in the sense that it "enables" predation or problem solving. Instead, both the brain's complexity and the organism's complex behavior are products of a temporally extended, dynamic, and complex environment having acted on the raw material of evolution. A modern cephalopod's complexity, in both brain and behavior, is a direct product and reflection of environmental pressures to which its ancestors were subjected in a mindless and purposeless process. In a very important sense, the most important issue is not how interesting the octopus is, but how interesting its ancestors' homes were.

We should welcome research that continues to illuminate the scope of the natural world. The data in this specific study appear to be exciting and worthwhile, and the researchers should be given their due credit. However, scientists should be very careful in how we convey the results of our investigations to the public so as to avoid misunderstanding. A mistake too-often made is the ascription of teleological explanations for phenomena that need nothing like "purpose."

Darwin kept a large number of personal notebooks over his life, particularly during the era prior to the publication of The Origin of Species. In the pages of these notebooks, you find the great thinker's thoughts on a wide host of philosophical, political, and scientific matters. During the voyage of the Beagle, he had with him a pad now known simply as the Red Notebook. On its back cover, he wrote four words that reflect an enormous step in his personal evolution, and ones that any practitioner and communicator of science should take to heart:

“Nothing for any purpose.”


*Maybe, maybe not. More on this will be saved for a later discussion.

Nothing For Any Purpose, Part I

About a week ago at a very early hour, I was sitting with my laptop, clicking through headlines on my usual circuit of blogs, social media, and news sites. I checked in on the Cubs score. I read tweets from people experiencing the annual Perseid meteor shower and sighed; unfortunately, the skies above me were cloudy that morning. Even if they weren't, there was a good chance I wouldn't have seen much, due to significant light pollution from D.C. I half-heartedly scanned a few political pieces on the presidential primary races. Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump. Oh, great, Scott Walker is spending a few hundred million dollars on a new sports stadium in Milwaukee.

This is a normal pattern. It's usually just a matter of time before something reaches out and grabs my attention with both hands.

And then I came across it: NBC News reporting on a new study published in Nature, about the sequencing of the octopus genome. Apparently, this is the first time that it has been done in any cephalopod. Very cool. 

Unfortunately, there's some added information within the article about the intelligence of octopuses. A biology graduate student on the paper is quoted as saying that the cephalopods are "remarkable creatures." Octopuses "can camouflage themselves with skin that can change its color and texture." The animals also have "large, elaborate brains that allow them to be active predators with complex behaviors." 

There are a couple of enormous problems with this characterization of the octopus. They both revolve around a single broad issue: They suggest a basic misunderstanding of what animals are.

I cannot fault the graduate student for the error. It is an incredibly pervasive one, so much so that many researchers would scarcely have paid it any mind in the first place. The student was being quoted for a popular piece within the mainstream press. This requires a relaxation of the usual scientific jargon, but this can be costly. I do not wish to pick on this student specifically, but rather use her words to highlight faulty practice within science communication that is in desperate need of correction. This post will address the claim that octopuses are remarkable creatures; the next will address the issue of teleology as an explanatory tool.

First: Are octopuses remarkable creatures? 

To the extent that one can and may remark on octopuses, this is doubtlessly true. But to suggest that they are somehow unusual is certainly untrue. The truth is that there is nothing inherently more remarkable about the octopus than about any other kind of animal. People, scientists included, are not impartial observers of the natural world, but are packed with biases that color their judgments. Yes, the octopus has morphology and a behavioral repertoire that are each terribly fascinating. However, this reflects nothing uniquely important about the octopus, but instead tells us something about humans. 

Are there species of animal out there that are not remarkable? I doubt anyone can reasonably explain why squirrels are not remarkable. Or pigeons. Or hermit crabs, or hummingbirds, or earthworms. The members of any extant species are necessarily the product of billions of years of evolution, and in a very important biological sense, are all exactly equally suited to their ecological niche. What we observe are the tiny, existent portions of a theoretical distribution of all possible organisms, which itself is characterized by a nearly infinite distribution of possible genomes. Every species has unique characteristics within its members; indeed, each must in order to be defined as a species in the first place (pay no mind to how squishy the definition of "species" really is). Every animal of every species is characterized by a combination of both morphological and behavioral adaptations that have been shaped by distinct environments across evolutionary time. 

If every species is remarkable, then none are.

Octopuses are charismatic animals only in the sense that they appeal to the human animal, and not for any reason owing to their specific nature. There are many reasons why this might be so, but in the absence of scientific data one can only speculate. It is probably important that they make fairly rare appearances in most humans' lives. Aside from a relative handful of biologists, almost no one has frequent interactions with cephalopods. Additionally, that they appear (to us) to behave in a manner akin to human intelligent behavior almost certainly renders them endearing. Consider them alongside other well-loved, charismatic animal species, like bonobos, dogs, and elephants. 

In summation of this point: It is important that scientists openly embrace that the entirety of Earth's biosphere is necessarily equivalent when it comes to the fundamental machinations of evolution. Speaking as a layperson, it is not a problem to pick favorites. Personally, I am a dog lover, and entertained the idea of owning a colony of rats. I also have a fascination with jumping spiders that borders on the unhealthy. However, speaking as a scientist, it is at best slippery to assert that some animals are more intelligent than others - if you doubt this, try to concretely and objectively define intelligence to a friend. When we humans apply the term to nonhuman animals, we typically are just referencing how like humans they seem to behave. It does nothing to improve the public's understanding to assert that certain species are somehow more "remarkable" than others. If anything, doing this serves to reinforce an Aristotelian-style hierarchy at which Homo sapiens sits at the top. Such a view has been scientifically outdated since Darwin's time, but has persisted in our common language. 

This is very wrong.

What this blog is about

The central organizing principle of this blog is the following premise: That the universe is fundamentally the same no matter the vantage point.

On its face, such a statement seems ridiculous. After all, even within our rather tiny corner here on Earth, that there is a huge amount of complexity appears to be self-evident. There are stark differences between regions on this planet in terms of climate, wildlife, and human ethnic and cultural diversity, to name just a few things. And our planet is a nearly infinitesimal fraction of the broader cosmos, within which there are planets with seas of liquid methane, giant gaseous planets without surfaces, billions of stars ranging up to millions of miles in diameter, pulsars, comets, black holes, and innumerable other phenomena that fascinate human beings.

Nevertheless, the rules that govern the Universe are the same no matter where you go. Such a position is a guiding principle of modern science. The surface appearance of a heterogenous, complex, designed universe may convince us of a fiction. It is misleading on a grand scale.

A few examples of the common structure of the Universe are as follows:

1) Gravity. The force of gravity is entirely predictable from a tiny number of variables. You need only know the masses of the two objects in question (say, the Earth and its moon) and the distance between them. So far as we can tell, these values will tell you the force of gravity between objects everywhere in the Universe. We flew to the moon and back with this information.

2) The chemical elements. The enormous complexity of the broader cosmos, all of its visible mass, is composed of a mere few dozen types of chemical elements. Your mass is almost entirely (i.e., ~99%) made up of only six elements: Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Think about that: You're basically six things. The apparent complexity of the human body arises from arranging these elements (as well as a few other trace elements) in different combinations and in different structures.

3) Life on Earth. Life is staggeringly, awe-inspiringly complex. Millions and millions of species, all colonizing this aqueous, tranquil planet, and all being remarkably adapted to their circumstances. Anyone who has not experienced a sense of wonder in contemplation of the natural world needs to get out more. Flatworms, cockroaches, parakeets, squirrels, walruses, and orcas... and that's just from the animal kingdom. For all the apparent differences between species, Darwin's great idea was that they have a shared history. The species were not created separately from one another, but instead are each products of evolution driven by the simple and undirected process of natural selection. The existence of life without natural selection is difficult to imagine, no matter what life-harboring planet you may be on.

This is just a smattering of examples. There are many more that demonstrate the commonality and simplicity of the cosmos, some of which I may touch on at a later date.

This blog is primarily concerned with the topic of the behavior of organisms, a field typically considered the purview of psychologists. Though humans have been interested in behavior since humans came to be, the scientific examination of the topic has lagged far behind its sister disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology. The science of psychology is very young, and many of its practitioners have made (and continue to make) unfortunate errors in understanding behavior. A common mistake has been the assumption that we are somehow special, that simple and wide-ranging rules somehow do not apply to us. This assumption is damaging, but is often rather subtle, which is a potential reason for its stubborn persistence.

In this blog, I will discuss matters of philosophy, politics, religion, science, and anything else I consider relevant to understanding behavior - which, frankly, is a list without limit. Anything that animals do is relevant in a conversation about the science of behavior, and we are animals.