Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics: Any Question

With this coming semester looming or, perhaps, here, it's a good time to do this one again. I have a schtick that I do before every class where I let students ask any question at all, auto mechanics to quantum mechanics. When I started the Playground years ago, some former students asked if I'd bring the exercise on-line, so here it is. If there is a question you've always wanted to ask, here's your chance. We'll discuss as many as possible next week. Fire away.

Meta-Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics

Michael Schmidt asks,

"In the context of your classroom, what is the significance of Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics? What is the intended significance, and have you found there to be unintended consequences?"

It does three things for me in terms of establishing classroom culture. First, it gets students talking immediately. If a precedent is established from the first moments that you do the talking, they won't talk, even if asked or invited. By getting them to talk right off the bat, the participation rate jumps markedly. It shows that we are not slaves to the syllabus, but here to be interesting and that they have to drive not just get pulled.

Second, it creates an atmosphere of play. Students quickly learn that when I say "ANY questions" I mean ANY questions and they get goofy quickly which I make sure to acknowledge with further goofiness, but also to show how there is smart hidden within the goofy. This makes reticent students more relaxed and willing to ask questions they might worry are stupid, assured that if I took the earlier, clearly stupid question and turned it into something smart, then I would do the same with theirs.

Finally, it functions like an inside joke, it makes the class into a community because we have a common ritual. I regularly have former students, even ones who come back a decade later, say how much they wish they had the "auto mechanics to quantum mechanics" as a regular part of their lives. People enjoy it and it becomes something we as a group share. They'll often come to me with disagreements from the dorms the night before where they'll say, "as we were arguing, we decided that we should ask you today." It becomes a part of our collective culture.

And I enjoy it and it's my classroom, so I'll do as I darn well please.

Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechnics: Any Questions?

Been a while since we've last done it, so let's give it a go. I've got a schtick I do every class where I let my students ask any question at all, auto mechanics to quantum mechanics, and we entertain it. When I started the Playground years ago a former student asked if I could do the same thing on-line, so occasionally I open up the blog for anything anyone wants to ask and I try to get to as many as I can during the week.

So, any questions?

Everything Below This Post Is Kaput

My oldest friend Gwydion asks,

"Do you ever get tired of blogging? If so, how do you reinvigorate yourself?"

I've had this Playground up and running now for almost six years with six posts a week. I am closing in my 2,000th post. I do not want to begin to calculate how much time I've spent on this project with no means of monetizing anything at all connected to it. It is a labor of love. I enjoy the fact that I can be a part of smart and playful conversations with friends from all parts of my life and with some familiar strangers who are a blast to hang out with.

That said, of course, there are times when you get tired. What do I do at those times? I ask for topics from you guys with an auto mechanics to quantum mechanics post... Seriously, though, what keeps me posting are two things. First is a sense of obligation. I've created this community and feel a sense of duty to keep it going, to keep it vibrant. It is an odd thing that a voluntary action on my part has created expectations in people I care about which then gives me a sense of obligation to continue acting. As such, I make sure to do something even when tired.

But, and this is the second part, I've also let go of a sense of ownership, that it is my job alone to keep this place hopping. I used to think of blog posts as little journal articles or op/ed pieces where I needed to construct arguments and defend a position as the basis for the conversation here. But I realized that it would be easier on me and coincidentally more fun for everyone else if I treated the blog more as a classroom where I ask a provocative question and let you folks bat it around instead of weighing in decisively and stepping on the conversation. There are interesting questions, both contextual and perennial, that are easily framed to generate conflicting intuitions. It is often fun to see the ways in which these open questions will take folks who generally disagree on things (say you and Kerry), and bring you together against others with whom you often agree. By moving to a question instead of answer based format, it has made my end less onerous. I keep a running list of those "ooh, that would make a good blog post" questions (right now, I've got 15 on the list ready to go during the several weeks).

It also helps to have some tried and true templates -- what's the difference, why do you know that, bullshit or not -- in my back pocket that I can pull out from time to time and have everyone know the game and how to play. It's funny how many e-mails I get from people who are Playground regulars that include off-topic mentions of this -- "I have a good question, should I hold it for the next time you do auto mechanics to quantum mechanics..."

So, there are strategies that help, but most of all I just keep going because this is a virtual community I care about and would feel bad letting it slip. Maybe it calls for therapy, but the blog is cheaper...

Neutrinos and Snow

JB asks,

"What would be some of the real impacts (i.e. to the average human being) if neutrinos are really faster than light?"

Likely, very little. The standard misinterpretation of Bohr's principle of correspondence (which works well) is that each new theory has to have the theory it replaces as an approximation, that is, the new theory has to have results that reduce to the successful parts of the old theory it overthrows. If it turns out that neutrinos really do violate the theory of relativity, the theory of relativity will need to be replaced with something new that mathematically reduces back to the theory of relativity in all of the cases where it worked (that is, everywhere other than these bizarre never seen anywhere else effects). The theory of relativity similarly reduces to Newton's theory in virtually every single case we encounter on a day to day basis. So, practically, the effects would be nothing.

What about technologies? Unlikely. Neutrinos are strange little particles with no charge and virtually no mass. Neutrons in an atoms nucleus are a proton and an electron stuck together. but when you do that, certain properties don't quite work out, so physicists realized there had to be another component, and that's the (anti)neutrino. Just detecting their existence was worth a Nobel Prize. As such, it is unlikely that we'd be able to find ways to exploit this superluminal speed for computing or some other purpose.

That being said, it would likely mean a complete conceptual revolution in physics making LOTS of work for philosophers of physics. So, if you are married to such a person, you'd have to listen to discussions of the debates about this and how the people who disagree with this philosopher do not really understand the theory or what I said about it non-stop. So, for some people it could be a source of constant annoyance.

Kerry asks,

"Does it make scientific sense to say at this time of year, as many of us do, 'Man, if this was snow instead of rain we'd really be in for it!'? That is, is the difference between rainfall and snowfall merely a matter of temperature, or is the constellation of causes that produces rain actually quite different from the one that gives us snow, such that the buckets of rain coming down today wouldn't and couldn't be snow unless other factors besides temperature changed?"

The usual conversion factor is 10:1 for inches of rain to inches of snow. Does this calculation mean anything? When someone says, "this would have been four feet of snow had it been cold enough," what they are really saying is ""this would have been four feet of snow had it been cold enough...ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL." The problem as you point out, and the philosopher Nancy Cartwright has written extensively on this point, is that all else is never equal. The weather is the system we use as the prototypical chaotic system in which small changes to variables make large changes in effect. So, of course changing the temperature of the air would change how moist the air is, wind speeds, and any number of other factors that would have effects on how much snow is dropped.

Oil and Gas

Jigamo asks,

"Where does the advice to change oil every 3,000 miles or 3 months come from? It doesn't make sense to me why people would still being changing oil so frequently when there are options out there that are rated for 25,000 miles (or 1 year)."

The number 3,000 is one that has been associated with oil changes for decades and decades, back when you could change your own oil and not have to worry about resetting some computer so it stops giving you a digital message.

Engines are made of metal which must move in a beautifully orchestrated fashion to work efficiently. Metal rubbing against metal causes friction which results in heat. Heat expands metal causing the pieces to not fit quite right and therefore not work quite right. Lubrication in engines -- like so many other parts of life -- is essential to the system remaining functional. Over time, the oil becomes contaminated with impurities it picks up and it breaks down chemically, making it less effective at eliminating friction, so it and its corresponding filter need to be changed. 3,000 miles was the generally accepted number for engines and oil as they were manufactured before modern innovation. Now, we have better lubricants that resist heat better. We have engines that are made tighter and are self-monitoring for some of the issues you were looking to avoid. As such, 3,000 miles is unnecessary.

Why is it still automotive gospel? First, once a belief is widespread, it is accepted and difficult to change even when change is rational. Second, the more often you change the oil, the more oil is sold. I know it is hard to believe that oil companies and car dealerships would be less than honest and open, but...

FBC asks,

"What is an objective assessment of the risk/reward of the fracking process as in North East PA?"

This is a hard fracking question. When we need information that is more technical than we ourselves can determine, we have to rely on authorities. a legitimate argument from authority has to satisfy three criteria: (1) the authority must have actual material existence in this universe (no "I read somewhere that..."), (2) the authority must be a person whom we have good reason to believe knows the answer (the person is an actual authority in the field), and (3) the person must not have a personal interest in getting me to believe one way or the other. The worries in the fracking case is with both (2) and (3).

Consider them in opposite order. There is A LOT of money at stake here and powerful corporate interests that want access to the shale. They know that environmental concerns are real and playing off of the tobacco and industrial chemical industries' experiences, they know how to buy scientists and infiltrate the literature to plant information they can use in court and in public relations efforts to sell the project. They've bought, for example, the geology department at Penn State which is now an arm of their marketing departments. An objective assessment would have to be one that is not paid for by the industry. It would have to be transparent in its assumptions and methodology and have its findings replicated by other independent sources. The problem is that those producing the studies want to keep that information hidden. Case in point,

A New York Post editorial advocated for New Yorkers to "frack, baby, frack!" citing a "new study out of Penn State" claiming ample economic rewards of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. However, the editorial failed to note that the study was sponsored by a lobbying group representing gas companies.

Then we have the problems with (2). Who are the experts here? It is what we call an interdisciplinary problem. There is no one set of experts to turn to and working across intellectual boundaries in a way that allows a unified account is difficult.

But it is even trickier in this case because we are dealing with a process whose real effects are as of yet unknown. There have been an unusual number of earthquakes in regions of Arkansas and Virginia where fracking has been taking place. Are they related? Maybe. We don't know. The unintended unforeseen consequences of something like this cannot be predicted -- that's the unforeseen part -- so a cost/benefit analysis could be way off should there be huge unforeseen costs.

The answer then, is "heck if I know." Issues like this require rational decisions based on our best models of the costs and benefits and these models are always and necessarily based on incomplete information. But in this case, we seem to have some glaringly big question marks and we have to hope the frack that the worst case scenario doesn't come to be.

Income Inequality and Occupy Caesar's Palace

JB asks,

"Can the Occupy movement ever gain traction with the larger (apathetic) portion of the 99% when stories keep coming out with headlines like 'Occupy protesters leave behind 30 tons of garbage in Los Angeles park?'"

I'm not sure what would satisfy the conditions for "gaining traction." We know that the media will be hostile to any movement that questions the status quo, especially if it is one in which it is not particular demands within the structure but the structure itself that is being questioned. We know also that this is part of a larger dynamic in which protesters are labeled "dirty hippies who don't want to get a job" and this ad hominem attack can be used to keep from asking the questions that need to be asked about both the moral fairness and economic sense of our current system.

That being said, the Occupy movement HAS changed the discourse. It is having an effect. It will not change the system. It will not be able to undermine the power that corporate interests have in Washington. But, it can shine some light on it and make it a live issue instead of allowing the country to be bankrupted in back-alley deals that serve only to shift all wealth upwards. It can slow the process and that may create a context in which larger changes become possible. What Occupy has done is to introduce frames into the current way of speaking and thinking about things that are healthier. I think that Occupy has the traction, if the goal is to allow us to start talking about issues we previously couldn't under the Republican frame. And if you doubt that, look at how nervous it is making Frank Luntz.

Philo asks,

"We've all seen the charts for wealth and income inequality, and it seems to be apparent that this has to be fixed by some redistribution mechanism. What is the right thing to do?"

Income is the amount you bring in and wealth is the amount you have. For those of us in the 99%, we spend most of what we make, putting it into the economy where it gets circulated again and again in what John Maynard Keynes called the multiplier effect. In this way, it is the poor, working, and middle class who are the real job creators. The wealthy make their money from investments, not wages -- that is they get more money just for being rich and then use most it to invest in ways that does not have a direct effect on the real economy, the wealth gets horded and does not raise all boats. The solution, therefore, begins by giving preferential treatment to money that was earned by actually working for it. The rate on capital gains -- free money for having money -- should be significantly higher than that for earned income which is taxed according to a fair and progressive set of rates.

Then, we need to increase the wealth, not just the income of the 99%. This has begun. One effect of the elimination of traditional pensions and the stock market bubble of the 90s is that a larger portion of the population now considers wealth management seriously. Stock and bond ownership is now significantly broader than it has been. Savings is not something we do well in this country and it can be encouraged in a number of ways from early financial education to increasing the limit on tax-deferred or tax-free contributions to IRAs or college savings accounts.

YKW asks,

"The Five-year results for the S&P 500 Index (going from December 6, 2006 thru yesterday) registers a drop of 152 points, or a cumulative loss of about 11 percent. While I know that keeping say, $100,000 in small bills under my mattress would have produced a better return during this period than buying a fund that replicated S&P, would I have also done better by playing casino craps with $20,000 of that money (consistently betting the pass line, double odds, and 2 numbers) over the same five year period?"

In five years, there's approximately 2,000 days. given your $20,000 bankroll, that means you'd play about $10 per day. The odds on a double odds pass bet favor the house by only .61% which means that on a $10 bet, the expectation value is $9.94, that is, you expect on average to lose about six cents a bet. Over the 2,000 days, then, you'd likely be down only $120 and have had a darn good time yelling and screaming with the other nuts at the craps table for the year which means that you would likely be better off. Not that I'm suggesting this as a long-term financial strategy...

Analytic/Continental Divide, Ps and Qs, and Scientific Disproof

C. Ewing asks,

"Is the difference between analytical philosophy and continental philosophy one of history/tradition or methodology? both? neither?"

Both. The divide that defined 20th century philosophy derives from a split in how to proceed after Kant. Very roughly, Kant argued that doing metaphysics leads to contradictions, so you have to choose between logic and metaphysics -- analytics chose logic and Continentals chose metaphysics. The continental tradition traces its roots to Hegel who abandoned the traditional two-valued logic for his dialectic. This meant two things: (1) the traditional logic no longer applied, and (2) we need to look at the objects of philosophy through historical lenses. As Continental thought reacted against Hegel and developed into the 20th century, those notions remained as the signature. The term "deconstructed" which entered our lexicon from the postmodernist school in the Continental tradition means to unpack the effects of social and political power structure in explaining why people believe something. Reality and knowledge become functions of the social.

Analytic philosophy emerges from the advances in math and science (especially the theory of relativity) in the late 19th/early 20th centuries when the scientific worldview was turned completely upside down. In an effort to understand how science provides us with reasonable beliefs that seem (1) at first glance completely unreasonable, and (2) capable of such completely radical conceptual revision, they moved to replace the mushy, slippery ordinary language with something more rigorous, an absolutely clean logical language in which philosophical problems could be stripped down to empirical questions and shipped off to scientists to answer or exposed as pseudo-questions which don't really have an answer and can therefore be forgotten. The goal here is to analyze (not deconstruct) statements to make it completely clear what they mean and what would have to be the case for them to be true.

In this way, they followed distinct historical developments that brought with them different tools and methods. That being said, what one sees now across the divide, is the two starting to trend back towards common insights -- the ways in which the objective is interwoven with the social. I don't thihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnk this will mean a resolution of the philosophical community anytime soon, but relations will likely become less frosty.

While we're on the topic of logic, jigamo asks

"Why do logical proofs often use the letters P and Q? Does this have any relation to 'minding your Ps and Qs?'"

Nope. Independent. The saying is British and p's and q's may or may not have been the letters p and q. The earliest usages are from the writings of playwright Thomas Dekker:

The date of the coinage of 'mind your Ps and Qs' is uncertain. There is a citation from Thomas Dekker's play, The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet, 1602, which appears to be the earliest use of the expression:

Afinius: ...here's your cloak; I think it rains too.
Horace: Hide my shoulders in't.
Afinius: 'Troth, so thou'dst need; for now thou art in thy Pee and Kue: thou hast such a villanous broad back...

'Pee and Kue' in that citation seem to be referring to a form of clothing, but that is somewhat ambiguous. It is also not clear that the 'Pee and Kue' in Dekker's work are the same as those in 'mind one's Ps and Qs'. Dekker later used the term in West-ward Hoe, a joint work with John Webster, 1607:

At her p. and q. neither Marchantes Daughter, Aldermans Wife, young countrey Gentlewoman, nor Courtiers Mistris, can match her.

In that piece it is less apparent that 'p. and q.' refer to a form of clothing.

In logic, we just need letters to represent properties or qualities, so we often select P and Q. Strangely, we often use F and G for relations which means logic teachers find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to discuss the property of p-ness and the f'ing relation and whether it is symmetric and transitive.

Avrohom Kaufman asks,

"We learned in your class (back when you were just the new guy on the block in the late 90's) that science can't prove anything only disprove. This begs the question (though just as a side note) if science can't prove anything to begin with than how can it disprove; what barometer is it using if proof (i.e., truth) is not counted amongst it's starting points?"

The asymmetry between proof and disproof here comes from what is trying to be shown -- that some sentence is a universal law of nature, that is, something that describes the behavior of some complete class of phenomena. If the claim says that it holds for every single instance of X, and there could be an infinite number of X's, then we could never prove it. But if you show me one case where there is an X that doesn't work the way my supposedly universal theory about X's claims, then my universal claim is falsified, proven false.

More tomorrow.

Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics: Any Questions?

We'll put this weekend's post up a day early to get things rolling. I have a schtick I do at the beginning of every class where I take a few minutes and let the students ask me any question from auto mechanics to quantum mechanics. When I started the Playground years ago, some former students asked if I'd bring it here. So, as an occasional series of posts, I throw it open. If there was ever a question you just wanted to ask, here's your chance. We'll discuss as many as I can get to next week.

Types of Atheism, Religion in History, and Philosophy Today

J.T. asks,

"Should atheism be defined as an absence of belief in God (or gods)? Or should it be defined as as an explicit affirmation that gods do no exist? Is there a true distinction between these two definitions? And finally, should agnosticism be truly considered distinct from atheism"

From a post a good while back distinguishing between four different types of atheism.

Negative inductive atheism, we can call the first stance, is exactly the sort of inference you describe here. Are the respondents on this blog aliens from another planet? There is no evidence in favor of this hypothesis (well, little evidence) and since there is no good reason to believe it, I don't. In the same way, one could argue as you do that there is someone making a claim of the existence of a being and therefore assumes the burden of proof for it and if they have not met that burden then rationally, one ought not believe in the existence claim.

Positive inductive atheism would be what we could term the position in which one argues that there is evidence to believe in the falsity of the magical, invisible man in the sky hypothesis. Folks with this view often point to the incredible successes of purely naturalistic explanations for phenomena that were thought at earlier times to be entirely unassailable by scientific methods. With all the things that had been thought to be the result of magic, spirits or supernatural causes that we now understand and can control by the use of science, there seems to be reason to be suspicious of claims that any part of the universe is beyond scientific understanding. This is an inductive argument based on the historical relation between science and religion, and judging that the successes that science has had in the past in realms like astronomy, biology, geology, and psychology will thus probably go all the way down to eliminating non-naturalistic elements in all our beliefs.

Deductive atheism would then be the name for those who claim to be able to show that the notion of an all-being is self-contradictory, that the Judeo-Christian God or any supernatural being could not exist. Those who champion arguments like the problem of evil are taking this line. A world which contains terrible suffering by innocent children, the argument goes, could not have been created by a being who is all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful because if He knew about it and could stop it, but didn't, then he would not be all-loving. This is a deductive argument to show that it is impossible for a particular type of god hypothesis to be true.

Linguistic atheism would be a name we could apply to those folks like the Logical Positivists of the first half of the 20th century who were atheists, not because of deductive arguments or the lack of evidence, but because, they contended, God talk -- indeed metaphysical talk of any sort -- was simply meaningless. It isn't, as Saint Anselm argued, that the atheist and the theist both agree on what is meant by God, they just disagree on whether one exists. According to Carnap and company, the whole question is really a pseudo-question. It looks like a question, it sounds like a question, but it really isn't. A question is a request for information, if there is no such information to be had, then the string of words is not a real question even if it is grammatically proper. If you and a friend were to get into a huge screaming battle over what color my sister's car is, you would be debating forever, not because it is a deep mystery of the cosmos, but because I don't have a sister. In the same way, the Logical Positivists argued that questions like the existence or non-existence of god were simply meaningless squabble, linguistic muddles that were the result of taking anything that looks like a question seriously.

Matt asks,

"Has there been a time where there was no religion in the world? If not, where do you think the need for believing into something super natural comes from?"

The word "religion" has a number of meanings and those meanings a number of aspects. We could mean belief in a supernatural deity. We could mean a set of cultural practices and rituals. We could mean organized social institutions of a certain sort. We could mean an approach to living. We could mean a set of myths and explanations about the nature and origin of the universe. I think elements of all of these have always been a part of the life of rational social beings and likely always will. That does not mean that the place of social power they now occupy has always been theirs, nor will it always be. Religion is a reflection of cultural elements -- wealth, threats, power distribution -- and religious beliefs and religious institutions will change as culture changes. As such, I do not think that humans a couple centuries from now will be responding to the same sort of questions or religious structures, but it is not something that will cease to be a part of the human community in some way either. It will just look very different.

Jynx asks,

"What do you perceive to be the most interesting question debated within the purview of philosophy today and what is your position on the question?"

The philosophical world has been split for the last hundred or so years into two camps -- the analytic and the continental -- which differ on the basic methodology of philosophy. I think that in recent decades there have been moves to bridge the gap and I think that reconciliation or synthesis of the approaches -- something of a social epistemology -- provides what I myself find to be the most interesting project around. What would a foundation for philosophy look like that is in some ways a hybrid?

Ethical/Moral, Corporate Personhood, and Same-Sex Muppet Nuptuals

C. Ewing asks,

"Is there a difference between moral and ethical? If so, what is it? Why do we make the distinction? Should we? Is it helpful?"

I've always found it odd when people say that something has "moral AND ethical ramifications" since I always use the two interchangeably. It's like saying that something has both empirical AND observable consequences. I think the reason why folks do believe there is a distinction, though, is important. Our moral notions are umbrella concepts. When we think about justifications for actions in ethically complex situations, we do think about the nature of the act itself as Kant would have us do, but also think about the consequences of the act as Mill or Bentham prescribe. In real-life moral deliberation, a plurality of ethical theories are in play and this makes it seem as if there is more than one thing going on, so we try to artificially create a non-existent distinction between the ethical and the moral.

Philo asks,

"Scalia wrote (in Citizens United, concurring) that corporations "cannot be denied the right to speak on the simplistic ground that it is not 'an individual American'." Romney said (at the Iowa State Fair) "corporations are people." Is either right? In what sense is a corporation is a person?"

The notion of corporate personhood is a major issue in business ethics and has fascinated me for years. What Romney said was that corporations were "people" which is beautifully ambiguous as it could point to either side of the debate. It could mean (a) that corporations are not things-in-themselves, but are the people who comprise them, or it could mean (b) that the corporation is a thing-in-itself, distinct from the humans that are a part of it, and that the thing should be considered a person.

The argument for (a) (which I think was what Romney was trying to say) is that all decisions made by the corporation are made by people. All actions by the corporation are carried out by humans. Profits from the corporation go to humans. Therefore, the corporation reduces to people.

The argument for (b) is that corporations are not just people, they have an internal structure that makes them more than the sum of their parts. Boards make decisions that might be compromises and therefore not identical to the decision of any human being on the board. As such, the corporation decided something that no person did. Corporations have policies and means of acting such that the action cannot be traced back to any human being's own volition. Corporate culture is quite real and people employed by the corporation will behave at work quite differently than they would do otherwise because of it. Indeed, you could remove lots of the people, but because of the corporate culture, replacing them with new human components will usually do little in changing the organization. As such, we cannot reduce the corporation to its people, but is its own thing.

I think (b) is correct, but then there is an additional step to determine whether that sort of thing we take the corporation to be ought to be considered a person. In may ways it is person-like -- it can deliberate, it can act, it has interests and projects, it has assets, and therefore I have argued in academic journals, it also has moral responsibilities. Should it have all of the legal rights of human beings? No. but it does need to be treated, it seems, as some sort of person-like entity.

Philo also asks,

"Should Bert and Ernie get married?"

This could be two different questions.

(1) Given their long-term stable relationship, is it a good idea for Bert and Ernie to tie the knot? This would give Bert half ownership of the drum set which might give rise to more tension in what has always been a fraught relationship, so to be honest it worries me. Yes, they deserve visitation and survivorship rights, but somehow the unlikely pair has been so stable with the current relationship, I'm not sure if messing with it is a good thing.

(2) Should Sesame Street portray a same-sex married couple? While I think it would be good to have a normalized picture of of gay married couple for kids, I think that it would unnecessarily intensify the right-wing attacks on public broadcasting. I think that the risk far outweighs the gain.

Scientific Truths, Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Mechanics to Auto Mechanics

C. Ewings asks,

"Are "scientific truths" actually true?"

By true, I'll take it you mean "can be known with certainty." In that case, it depends upon which scientific truths you are speaking of. There are statements of observable behaviors of parts of the universe, say, water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level. These are testable true or false. Yes, as Pierre Duhem ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnd Willard Van Orman Quine pointed out, they also require certain other propositions to be true and you are testing not just that claim, but an entire web of claims, but even so we can say that there are facts about the universe that can be known.

There are theoretical propositions, parts of theories that are used to explain how the universe works, that are then tested by these observation statements, that is, for which these observation statements are used as evidence. These more interesting claims are never known to be true with absolute certainty, but in light of evidence and the results of novel predictions are inductively supported and thereby given a weaker or stronger degree of rational belief.

That is a quick sketch of the standard view, but if anyone is interested in the details of the contrasting positions on this question...have I got a book for you -- available in both paperback and hardback.

Jynx asks,

"With regards to Quantum Physics, do you see a problem with the position of most scientists that certain particles exist in an intrinsically indefinite state, as opposed to the much more defensible position that certain particles' positions/velocities are simply unknown. Another way to phrase the second question would be: Are most physicists guilty of mistaking the epistemological with the metaphysical as it pertains to the position and velocity of particles?"

Actually, the more defensible position is the other way around, but the way it is usually taught to undergrads is unfortunately backwards.

In quantum mechanics, when particles are unobserved, they are found in what is called "superposed states," that is, for a given observable property, say position, they simultaneously occupy every possible value, that is, are to a degree in every possible place in the universe they could possibly be found. Observable properties come in pairs, we call them "non-commuting observables," such that when you observe one property of the pairs, the particle will acquire a single value for that property. When I look to see where a particle is, it will be in a single place. But the act of measuring that property, of seeing where it is, causes the value of the other member of the pair, in this case velocity (position and velocity are the most famous pair of non-commuting observables) to go into a superposed state, that is to not have a single value, but to be a mathematical combination of every possible value.

Einstein held the view that this superposition is not an actual state, that there was a single value for both position and velocity simultaneously at all times, we just don't know it. It is not that superposition is real, it is just that the theory of relativity is incomplete, it is missing some "hidden variables," and when we figure out what these variables are and figure out how to determine them, we'll be able to fully assign values to all observables in a system. We should take these superposed states not to be a reflection of a strange reality at the micro-level, but rather as an indication that it provides an incomplete description of reality which must be well-behaved even at the very smallest sizes.

Unfortunately, every result indicates that there are no hidden variables, that the theory is, in fact, complete. Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem all but make impossible the idea that the position or velocity is simply unknown when we measure the other. It is metaphysical and not epistemological. (David Z. Albert's book Quantum Mechanics and Experience is an excellent one for anyone interested in working through this material). Oddly, though, when the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is taught, it is usually portrayed as being merely epistemological and not metaphysical, that is undergrads are told that the process of measuring the position alters the velocity in a way that our former measurement of it no longer is correct, implying that it still has a value, we just don't know it. But, in fact, what happens is that the act of measuring the position actually causes the velocity to return to a superposed state where it ceases to have a single value for that observable property. Quantum theory shows us that the world just is that weird.

71 asks,

"When did you start doing AM to QM and where did the idea come from?"

I took my first philosophy class as an undergraduate with Bruce Goldberg in a lecture hall filled with a couple hundred people. He would lecture from a stage and towards the end of the semester was clearly annoyed with the lack of interaction that was possible in the arrangement. So, one day, he did something he had never done. He asked if there were any questions. But he did it at a point in the class when there was really nothing philosophically contentious on the table, a point when there would be no natural questions or objections to be put forward. There was complete silence. He asked again. Again, nothing. He asked a third time saying, "Guteral noises, belch, anything, I'll make something of it." From the back row, someone yelled out, "Who won the 1926 World Series?" It was clearly an attempt by a smart ass to disrupt. Goldberg, without missing a beat, said the Cardinals over the Yankees in seven. He walked to the chalkboard and described how the series ended with Hornsby tagging out Ruth and related it seamlessly back to free will and determinism which had been the topic of the day. I thought to myself, "Man, you're good." After that day, I noticed that there was a different dynamic in the lecture hall and thought that if I ever taught, I'd try to disrupt the distance between teacher and the class in the same way. So, I did and it worked like a charm. Auto mechanics to quantum mechanics has been with me since the beginning.

Kindles, Smart Phones, and Mechagodzilla

Let's discuss the tech questions today. PeterLC asks,

"Is Kindle and the like a good thing or a bad thing? Do these computer options promote reading or do these detract from the written word?"

Every new advance brings fevered cries that what was good in the old ways is under threat. Is it true? Like always, yes and no. The VCR did not spell the end of movie theaters, but reinvigorated them, so too I think, the ability to one click buy books from your computer or mobile device will actually lead to a more robust book market. I think more people will buy more books. Does that mean people will read more books? To some degree, I do.

At the same time, what it will also mean is that research will become more and more an on-line affair and people will no longer find themselves lost in the stacks. If you can get right to the book you think you'll need, there will be less of a chance to find what you really need, but didn't realize you did. Being in a physical location surrounded by related books leads to chains of thought that may not occur otherwise and subtle, accidentally discovered links may be less likely to be made. Then again, it also means that authors do not have to spend day after day working on an index, so a mixed bag, indeed.

71 asks,

"Has the ubiquity of smart phones, tablets and laptops in the classroom changed the dynamic of it? I recall that when questions arose that you didn't immediately have some thoughts on (or an answer to), you would jot them down (in your state of the art PDA) and come back the next class with an answer. I imagine that something approximating an answer to (or at least pointing one toward an answer to) many of those stumpers is readily available via Google. Do students get more involved in answering questions with these resources glued to their palms? Do they call you out more often for passing on dubious information (not that you'd ever do that!). This post related to the recent Fish-Boghossian hoopla got me thinking about this: http://www.newappsblog.com/2011/08/pundit-makes-stuff-up-is-refuted.html. As the author of the post puts it: 'The issue I want to raise is: what becomes of “general knowledge”, or rather the social value of having lots of it, now that anyone with a phone or tablet can simulate the possession of a well-furnished mind?'"

Actually, the classroom and the Q&A has changed very little. The instant availability of facts is a good thing, but my job is not to provide facts, but to help the student create a framework in which the facts have some sort of meaning. We now have more paints on the pallet, but we still need to make a picture out of them. Everyone now may have a lot of knowledge since we all possess various forms of external brains, but using that knowledge for wisdom and understanding still requires work. What I love about the Q&A is not just the novel facts, but the way they inevitably lead to a wonderful narrative (or many) that lets you take that fact and use it to generate more questions or a deeper appreciation of the subject.

C. Ewing asks,

"Godzilla or Mechagodzilla? Which one is more frightening? Which one is cooler? And why do bad things always seem to happen to Tokyo?"

Japan, as we all now realize, lives in a very precarious spot on the globe because of the location of the edges of the tectonic plates. Earthquakes and tsunamis can be devastating for them. So, you'd think their fictional monster which embody their existential fears would arise from nature.

But no, both Godzilla and Mechagodzilla are the result of human technology. Godzilla from radioactive fallout -- a fear whose source is easily identifiable -- but the result of unforeseen consequences of the human war machine. Just like the Frankenstein of Hollywood (though, not of Mary Shelly), Godzilla is meant to show us that we can never be sure of the ultimate results of our tinkering with nature. We may think we control the universe, but really we are just playing with forces we cannot completely have a handle on. As a result, we may end up facing something terrifying and huge that we never envisioned.

Mechagodzilla, on the other hand, is a direct created result of human aggression. When we seek only power, we create weapons that are incredibly deadly, but as a result they may move beyond our ability to control them. Our technology may come to control us and the results may not be pretty. Both monsters are the result of hubris and unforeseen consequences, but it is the latter that scares me more.

I know the last question was meant to be funny, but I think there is an interesting conversation to be had there. I think that the Cold War marked a major change in the Japanese psyche and by embracing a pacifist constitution after a war-filled history, the idea of Japan -- even artistically -- destroying someone else's cities was really out of bounds. As a result, it's always Tokyo that gets it.

Sports, College Sports, and College

Some great questions everyone. FBC asks,

"In baseball, is there a difference between a 'hit and run' and a 'run and hit'? If so, how would each fit into a coach's strategy or philosophy of the game? (Just had our family reunion and this topic came up......again. I need a new argument to make)."

The idea is that because getting a hit in baseball is so difficult, if you have a runner on first and fewer than two outs, a double play is always a possibility. If you start the runner from first on the pitcher's movement, it does two things: (a) gives the runner a head start making it less likely he'll be doubled up at second, thereby giving you a runner in scoring position, and (b) on seeing the steal attempt, it pulls one of the middle infielders to second base, creating a hole for the batter to hit into, so what would have otherwise would have been an out or double play ball, becomes a single.

This has been known for over a hundred years as the "hit and run," but inevitably someone who wants to be seen as too smart for his garters will inevitably say, "Why do they call it a 'hit and run' when you run first then hit? It should be the 'run and hit.'" To shut this person up, as often as not, we now call it the "run and hit." But it's the same play. There are some who claim the difference is that in the run and hit, the batter is given the autonomy to take a bad pitch, making it into a straight steal, whereas in the hit and run the batter needs to make contact to foul off bad pitches to shield (usually a slower) runner. But I don't think that usage is primary in the linguistic community.

JB asks,

"College sports: Pay for play or not?"

It's an interesting question, because in a couple of senses we already have pay for play college athletics. Believe it or not, I was a division I scholarship athlete. I was a lacrosse player -- I know, I know, it seems strange because I give the appearance of being able to read. My room and board (or, in some cases, room and bored) were paid for me as an enticement to attend my university and play on their team. Division I scholarships are a form of payment. But then there is also the under the table "gifts" that are given to some athletes -- usually football or basketball players. We have a scandal like clockwork every two years where some major program gets busted. Why not just bring the black market into the light and allow pay for play?

College athletics began as an extra-curricular activity for students, something to do in the afternoons as a diversion. the health benefits, camaraderie, and school unity is generates is a good thing. But it has become something completely different. College athletics now play three functions. First, they are cash cows. For major division I programs, they lead to lucrative tv contracts and ticket and merchandise sales. Second, and this is the more important one, they are advertising. High school students selecting a college are perhaps the world's worst consumers. They know nothing about the academics at an institution. A store I've heard of will generally be a better store, so it must also be true that school I've heard of is probably better than one I haven't heard of. But what's the only way most non-academics hear of colleges or universities? Sports. Having a notable sports team will increase out of state applicants significantly -- the ones who pay more in tuition. Finally, college sports are the farm systems for professional sports. They develop the talent pool and given them their training in fundamentals of the game at a high level.

So, given that you now have college athletics playing a significant non-academic role, why maintain the facade that these are scholar-athletes in the mold of the 19th century? Why not just pay them for their services and not have to have them fake their way through special classes designed just to nurse athletes through college? I think there are two reasons.

First, while many of them have no business in a college classroom, for others it is their only chance to get a college education. It would seem unfair to the athletes to take it away from them. The argument is that it would open up seats to those who would have otherwise have been admitted. Of course, these would be students at the lower end who were on the bubble and, let's be honest, these are often those who are not the most academically inclined and do not contribute much to the intellectual climate of a campus.

Second, it would draw even more money away from the true mission of the institutions. It puts them explicitly in the business of producing an entertainment product and as it gets more lucrative, more resources go to it. It splits the institution in a way that would likely damage its educational work even more deeply. Forcing the athletics to remain in a number two position, whether it is real or not, I think is better for the academics.

SteveD asks,

"Do all Americans have the right to a college education? Has the goal of college for everyone played a role in the decline of elementary through high school education?"

To the first, all other things being equal, the answer would be no. It ought to be a right that the community prepare you to be a contributing member and this traditionally did not require a college degree. But the place of college has certainly changed in the last century. I think a combination of the GI bill making college more common for those in the workplace and the shift to a service and technology-based economy has made college into the final four years of high school. No longer is it a place to become an intellectual, but rather it provides necessary training for becoming a part of the middle-class and for making significant advances that help drive our national economy. As such, if we have the right to the education needed to benefit from and benefit the society, it does seem that with the permanent loss of so many blue-collar jobs -- and with the remaining ones becoming more technical -- that some sort of post-secondary education does fall into the right to education.

But this transformation of higher learning into vo-tech training has certainly had negative consequences for education writ large -- in part that many people no longer say things like "writ large." We see primary and secondary ed as preparation for college which is, in turn, nothing but preparation for a job. It is entirely utilitarian and we have replaced the search for wisdom with skill acquisition which impoverishes our students and our society.

But I don't think it is the "college for all" proposition that is operative here. Given the way the world has changed, it seems that more education will be necessary. I think we do need, however, a movement away from the sort of anti-intellectualism that poisons our culture and that this would change how we view education. when "elite" is a dirty word, it means that the educated are actually the uneducated, that those who think carefully and have a historical and philosophical sense should be disregarded. That reason and thoughtfulness are vices, not virtues. Yes, schooling is one place that this is instantiated, but I think that it is as a result of larger social forces and not merely something in our educational system. How do we change that? Oooh. That's another question.

More tomorrow.

Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics: Any Questions?

With this coming semester looming or, perhaps, here, it's a good time to do this one again. I have a schtick that I do before every class where I let students ask any question at all, auto mechanics to quantum mechanics. When I started the Playground years ago, some former students asked if I'd bring the exercise on-line, so here it is. If there is a question you've always wanted to ask, here's your chance. We'll discuss as many as possible next week. Fire away.

Fictional Fights and Rhetorical Questions

Chris V asks,

"who would win in a fiction character fight, Tyler Durden or The Man With No Name?"

I would put my money on the man with no name. Durden is the Heracles character whose rage is his strength, but against one who knows him well will lead him into error.

Peter LC asks,

"who would win this fictional character fight: James Bond or Jason Bourne?"

I would put my money on Bond, unless it's Pierce Brosnan.

YKW asks,

"Are rhetorical questions asked mainly to demonstrate the cleverness of the person posting the question?"

The only thing more rhetorically obvious and self-serving is when an academic cites one of his or her own works in support of a rhetorical question...something I point out only to raise the question as to whether or not you have read the article I published with Hanno in the journal Pragmatics and Cognition a decade ago that clearly explicates the linguistic mechanism at play behind such pseudo-questions.

de Tocqueville and Sophistication

Chris V asks,

"How would Alexis de Tocqueville see democracy in America today?"

The nice thing about putting words in the mouth of a dead person is that he's not there to correct you. On the one hand, the America of today with its corporate oligarchy is not the America of Jacksonian democracy that de Tocqueville observed. In certain ways, it is more like the aristocracies of old Europe with a landed gentry and a permanent underclass dedicated to propping up the oppressive order -- the system that was falling to pieces before de Tocqueville's eyes. On the other hand, there is still the same general character that he described. I think de Tocqueville would be fascinated by the Bush administration and the Tea Party wherein capitalism and Christianity are still seen as inexorably entwined and a sense of antipathy towards that which is caring, kind, and humane is taken as a sign of strength, authenticity, and truth. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Michael Schmidt asks,

"If sophia is wisdom, why are so many stupid things called sophisticated?"

I think the answer comes from Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals wherein he contends that those with political power give meaning to moral vocabulary. When there is a change in power structures, there is a change in meaning of the moral vocabulary. While "sophistication" is not directly an ethical term, it is clearly value-laden. To be sophisticated is to be better than most.

The idea is that with age comes wisdom, but after the industrial revolution this got altered to which money comes wisdom. In the 30s and 40s, when the rest of the nation was reeling from the Depression, movie stars and robber barons became those to whom the rest of us could look for a different way of being. The lifestyles of the rich and famous came not only with comforts and pleasures we could never afford, but also a different set of rules, a new social etiquette that we were shut out from learning. As such, whatever these admired few did, they did with a haughty sense that made it sophisticated by definition. But, some of what they did was stupid and as stupid begets stupid, so the notion of sophisticated became more and more alienated from its etymological roots.

More tomorrow...look for the less sophisticated ones then...

Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics

I have a schtick I do at the beginning of each class where I allow the students to ask me any question, auto mechanics to quantum mechanics, I tell them that any question at all will be entertained. I had some former students who come here to play ask me if I could bring it back and so every couple of months, I solicit questions. So, if there was ever anything you always wanted to know, a question that has been nagging at you, or a real stumper you haven't been able to figure out, fire away and I'll answer as many as I can in the posts this coming week. Any questions?

Universalizing Art and Constricting Philosophy

Gwydion asks,

Are there any objective, universal assertions that can be truthfully and correctly made about the nature of creative endeavors (writing, for example, or painting) for all creative practitioners? In other words, is there anything that is universally, demonstrably, or even measurably true about writing for all writers, for example? (In the way that pi is pi for all measurers?)

If we all looking general propositions, then we can start with the trivial, definitional ones, e.g., all painters use paint, all writers write. These are universal and true because they say nothing about the process other than it is what it is.

The question, though, asks for what Kant called synthetic propositions, that is, statements that contain information. Is there any universal proposition that is true of all writers or all painters that says something about writing or painting. In the decades around the turn of the 20th century, we saw almost simultaneously in virtually all creative and intellectual fields, an attempt to ferret out such claims and violate them. Art became about what it is to be a work of art, music rejected tonal centers, geometry surrendered the intuitive axioms of Euclid. All pushed the line that distinguished art from non-art, the meaning of geometry, basic assumptions about architecture, into places we had never previously considered. Conventions were challenged. Standard definitions undermined. This question asks, a century later, despite the best efforts of the intellectual wrecking ball, is there anything left standing, are there any universals left that could not be undermined?

In the case of the creative arts, it seems that while the artist has been freed to affect the viewer in so many new and unexpected ways, the basic relationship between artist and viewer remains. The reader still reads, still approaches words from beginning to end and expects to come away with a transformed view of the world in some way. The viewer still approaches a piece of art and opens oneself up to what it does to the viewer in that moment of experience. Certainly with on-line publishing that allows through the use of links for writing that is not strictly linear and interactive works of art that put the viewer in part of the role of creator of the artistic experience, still there is always a meta-standpoint from which the individualized experience was shaped in the usual way by the artist or writer. I think that this relationship in a certain sense is based on the parent-child or teacher-student relationship, that viewers approach creative work as the apprentice who may or may not ultimately reject the master as not having truly been a master who had anything to teach, but the basic underlying relationship between creator and viewer seems to me to be unaffected by all of the revolutions in the creative world.

In the other direction, Kerry asks,

In your judgment, what big tent philosopher has done more than any other to derail future philosophers from asking good questions or following fruitful lines of investigation? (My money, for example, is on Descartes. But I don't wish to dogmatize. There are probably lots of good candidates.)

I would argue that we are still recovering from the illegitimate strictures at the beginning of the 20th century in philosophy. While every other field was expanding itself, philosophy broke into two and like a nasty divorce, each side completely alienated the insights of the other.

Carnap and the logical positivists in their radical decontextualizing of knowledge kept questions connecting the philosophical and the sociological from being meaningful. The anti-historical approach kept questions about the actual scientific practices of actual scientists from being asked for generations.

Similarly, Heidegger trapped Continental philosophy in a hermeneutic circle-jerk that gave rise to the postmodernism in which the entire world got lost in a haze of social construction. Epistemology wasn't dead, it just wasn't returning their calls because it had no desire to remain in an abusive relationship.

The second half of the 20th century was a slow shaking off of the artificiality and illegitimate constrictions of the analytic/continental split, something I think we are slowly starting to heal, the excesses of each being pared down a step at a time.

Education

A couple of education questions:

Thongor! asks,

What are your thoughts on K-12 math education in the United States?

This is something I think about quite a lot as I not only have children, a deep passion for science and science education, but am working with a colleague who is a science and math education researcher on a project at the moment. All of the measurable markers with respect to K-12 math education in the US indicate a system that is broken. Why is this?

I think there are three reasons. First, while there are some very talented and committed high school math teachers out there (some of my former students of whom I am the most proud of are math and science teachers), in general, education, especially secondary education, fails to attract the most qualified people in our society. We pay our teachers terribly and we give them no social status, so those who can get better paying and more prestigious jobs tend to. Those who major or minor in education often do so as a fall back choice in college. It is often people who think it is a safe choice and love children, but not necessarily those for whom mathematics is something they love and understand well. Elementary school mathematics is taught by those who do not specialize in math education and so we set our children off on the wrong foot.

In many cases, we then set up mathematics learning in large classrooms where students learn at different speeds, but are all given the same instruction on the same time line. We think that testing makes students learn better. We give them far too little in terms of resources.

And then we send them home to parents who are themselves undereducated in mathematics and are either mathphobic or care little about the field. We certainly cannot put the blame solely in the classroom. This is a larger cultural problem.

There is actually very good work going on in the study of mathematical pedagogy. The problem is that to change the system to use these new and more effective techniques, it takes money and political will. More money requires taxes to be spent and we couldn't possibly do that to improve our children and thereby our society more generally. The phrase "new math" has roughly the same meaning as "new Coke." Adjustments to math education have been poisoned in the cultural mind by perceptions of past efforts.

As many, most famously John Allen Paulos, has shown, there is large scale innumeracy in American culture and it has negative consequences. How do we change it? Heck if I know.

bonny asks,

What are the advantages and disadvantages in a liberal arts education?

The advantage of a liberal arts education is that it provides the student with a flexible mind capable of solving problems and making meaning in multiple ways. It helps facilitate the development of an intellect that finds connections. Instead of intellectual vo-tech training, the focus is on development as an intellectual, something that I believe helps round and fill out one's life as a human.

The disadvantage is that it is incredibly resource intensive and therefore inaccessible to most. As a result, those who seek out and secure a liberal arts education tend to be surrounded with like souls. It is something that entrenches certain social divisions, which is unfortunate.