Strange Doctrines

Testosterone as Fairness

This is fascinating (emphases mine):

Evidence from animal studies in rodents shows that testosterone causes aggressive behaviour towards conspecifics. Folk wisdom generalizes and adapts these findings to humans, suggesting that testosterone induces antisocial, egoistic, or even aggressive human behaviours. However, many researchers have questioned this folk hypothesis, arguing that testosterone is primarily involved in status-related behaviours in challenging social interactions, but causal evidence that discriminates between these views is sparse. Here we show that the sublingual administration of a single dose of testosterone in women causes a substantial increase in fair bargaining behaviour, thereby reducing bargaining conflicts and increasing the efficiency of social interactions. However, subjects who believed that they received testosterone—regardless of whether they actually received it or not—behaved much more unfairly than those who believed that they were treated with placebo.

The paper is Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour, C. Eisenegger, M. Naef, R. Snozzi, M. Heinrichs & E. Fehr, Nature 463, 356-359 (21 January 2010).

(Via Crooked Timber.)

Boo!

Lawrence Lessig at Huffington Post, on Citizens United:

Whatever else one believes about the Supreme Court's decision striking down limits on corporate speech in the context of political campaigns, there's one thing no credible commentator could assert: That money bought this result.

Jack Balkin's response:

The Supreme Court we have today is the ghost of campaign expenditures past.

The Phatic Wilde

From Prospect Magazine:

(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

Perspectives on Perspectivism

Mike solicits other views on the similarities (if any) between Nietzsche's perspectivism and the "perspectivism" of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. Go lend him your many eyes.

Call Me Ungrateful

Stephen Meyer writes a letter to the editor of the London Times:

Functional RNA catalysts arise only once RNA bases are specifically arranged into information-rich sequences – that is, function arises after, not before, the information problem has been solved. For this reason, invoking prebiotic natural selection in an RNA World does not solve the problem of the origin of genetic information; it merely presupposes a solution in the form of a hypothetical, information-rich RNA molecule capable of copying itself.

Therefore, God did it.

Okay - the last sentence was mine. But the interpolation fairly captures the logic intended.

BTW, Thomas Nagel has a letter on the same page, who describes himself as having recommended Meyer's book "as a grateful reader." Good heavens.

All Work and All Play

Blogging's been slow because when I'm not delivering justice for the Federal Public Defender, I'm learning material for a new country rock project. In the residue of time I try to, you know, eat. So: not much time for blogging.

In lieu of a proper post, then, I'll recap a few of my apothegmatic Facebook stati for the past week, which seems suitably frivolous:

A poor workman can't afford tools.

A journey of a thousand miles ends after about two million steps.

Moderation in a reasonable number of things.

It takes two to tango. Unless it's more of a solo or group tango.

Don't count your chickens before they've actually become chickens.

If it's not one thing, it's either more or less than one thing.

A rose by any other name would still have the same physical characteristics.

Now you go.

When Is the Holy Ghost Not a Ghost?

Apparently, when you tell Pew whether you believe in "ghosts":

 
(Via Charles Blow, via Butterflies and Wheels.)

The Altruistic Acceptance of Market Valuation

Proponents of so-called 'Rational Choice Theory' (first proposed in economics and then enthusiastically adopted by a number of political and legal thinkers) have tried hard to make us accept the peculiar understanding that rational choice consists only in clever promotion of self-interest (which is how, oddly enough, 'rational choice' is defined by the proponents of brand-named 'rational choice theory'). Nevertheless, our heads have not all been colonized by that remarkably alienating belief. There is considerable resistance to the idea that it must be patently irrational--and stupid--to try to do anything for others except to the extent that doing good to others would enhance one's own well-being." (Amartya Sen, via Linda Beale, via Ken Houghton.)

And yet:

For the last thirty years, in much of the English-speaking world (though less so in continental Europe and elsewhere), when asking ourselves whether we support a proposal or initiative, we have not asked, is it good or bad? Instead we inquire: Is it efficient? Is it productive? Would it benefit gross domestic product? Will it contribute to growth? This propensity to avoid moral considerations, to restrict ourselves to issues of profit and loss—economic questions in the narrowest sense—is not an instinctive human condition. It is an acquired taste. (Tony Judt, via ???.)

Thoughts on the Rose Parade

Why? Why?

Happy New Year? Sure, Why Not.

I was going to abjure a "happy" New Year (per my usual), and instead recommend a thoughtful one.

But the coda to Tony Judt's reflection on life with advanced stage amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) has given me, well, second thoughts:

The pleasures of mental agility are much overstated, inevitably—as it now appears to me—by those not exclusively dependent upon them. Much the same can be said of well-meaning encouragements to find nonphysical compensations for physical inadequacy. That way lies futility. Loss is loss, and nothing is gained by calling it by a nicer name. My nights are intriguing; but I could do without them.

(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

The Sound of Salience

Every 9/11, there is ubiquitous, conspicuous public mourning.

Every 12/26, there is nary a whisper.

Must be the timing.

The Parable of God's Retirement

What with the sun's being about to enter its red-giant phase, God realized it was time to get the End Times rolling. (He had always thought that the imminent, literal end of the solar system would be a reasonably clear sign...)

First, then, the tribulation. The Antichrist induced war among all men. Then came pestilence. Famine. Earthquakes. Surviving populations fled to caves to escape the molten fragments of planet and moon and star hurtling toward earth. The wicked were slaughtered, rendering the seas boiling cauldrons of human blood and viscera. In short, just the kind of wholesale ghastliness one would expect from the penultimate stage of any lovingly plotted eschatology.

But then the Messiah returned to earth. And the dead were resurrected. And the the sinners were forever banished from the cosmos. And the rest were invited to join God in Heaven, for all eternity.

And so all of God's work was complete.

And then God pondered: What now?

Best Blog Post First Sentence of the Year

And the award goes to Carl Zimmer:

There comes a time in every science writer’s career when one must write about glass duck vaginas and explosive duck penises.

That time is now.

Okay, two sentences. But still.

The remainder of Carl's post lives up to its initial promise.

(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

You Are Not Qualified to Have an Independent Opinion

I keep meaning to do a long, thoughtful post on scientific pseudoscandals like "Climategate" and the fatal socio-epistemological problems for lay skepticism about consensus theories. But...time and all that, you know.

In the meantime, this post at the Economist captures the spirit of the problem:

[W]hat am I supposed to do the next time I wake up and someone whose name I don't know has produced another plausible-seeming account of bias in the climate-change science? Am I supposed to invest another couple of hours in it? Do I have to waste the time of the readers of this blog with yet another long post on the subject? Why? Why do these people keep bugging us like this? Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong? At what point am I allowed to simply say, look, I've seen these kind of claims before, they always turns out to be wrong, and it's not worth my time to look into it?

Well, here's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.

What's the Connection?

Jonathan Benthall reviews five new books* that "reflect the withering away of the 'secularization thesis' that prevailed in sociology thirty years ago." It's a good review, and it made me think about the common trope that religion is uniquely concerned with achieving a sense of connectedness with something greater or other than oneself.

"Global Warming is Bunk!"

Piltdown Man was a major scientific hoax. A forger cobbled together the jawbone of an orangutan, the teeth of a chimpanzee, and the skull of a human, then passed the contraption off as the fossilized remains of a hominid ancestor of Homo sapiens. The ruse fooled the scientific community for 30 years.

Here are two possible lessons a person might have drawn from the Piltdown Man hoax, probably the most notorious hoax in science history: 

1. This fraud distorts the current picture of the evolution of hominids; all our current evidence will have to be reevaluated, and that picture may have to be significantly revised.
2.  Evolution is bunk!

The first conclusion would be a reasonable assessment. The second is insane.

This observation may be of some topical relevance.

The Philosophical Shallows of "Narrative Depth"

Theologian John Haught in the WaPo notes that "[e]volution makes very good sense scientifically speaking," then queries: "But does it make good sense theologically as well?"

Haught uses the next 693 words inadvertently to show that the answer is "No."

A more advertent showing is available from Jerry Coyne.

(Via Butterflies & Wheels.)

Strange Way to Spell "Salad Mix"

Climategate Debunked

The only thing that's fraud is the fear of fraud itself:

(Via Pharyngula.)

Has a Song with So Much Promise Ever Gone So Wrong?

The first verse of Jimmy Webb's "The Highwayman" is just superb:

I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With a sword and pistol by my side
And many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
And many a soldier shed his life blood on my blade
They finally hung me in the spring of '25
But I am still alive

"But I am still alive." Wow. I'm thinking Sergio Leone, the Man with No Name, like that. And the language and music - very cool.