Online Cortex Thoughts on Science and Technology

Intelligent Design.
That phrase alone should ignite a firestorm of controversy. 

The NOVA special, Judgement Day, on the recent Dover Pennsylvania trial now can be viewed online.

Let us begin with two moral principles: HONESTY and CONSISTENCY.  I know of no one who can disagree with the importance of these ideas.  These ideas are central to religions all over the world.  And as my friend Ariel Caticha points out, they are central to science as well.  If someone is dishonest, that person cannot be trusted.  Likewise, if someone is inconsistent, that person cannot be trusted.  Consistency and Honesty are central to trust.

I am not going to go into a lengthy discussion of Intelligent Design.  However, there are two aspects of this idea that strike me. 

The first is due to the fact that Intelligent Design proponents cannot imagine that the complexity one sees in the universe could happen by accident.  As if the truth was ever constrained by our imaginations.

For some reason, not being able to understand the mind of a Creator is acceptable, but not being able to understand how accidents can lead to complexity is not.  This is an example of INCONSISTENCY.  To be consistent, we must choose one or the other.  I myself will chose to not accept not being able to understand… period!

The second aspect that strikes me is related to the fact that every Intelligent Design discussion eventually comes down to the idea that “I am not an ape!”  Next you’ll be telling me that you are not a civilization of single-celled organisms?  That your mass is not 20% bacteria?  That you are not made of atoms?  I am sorry, but you can be oxidized like any other bag of organic molecules my friend. 
Being an ape is the very least of your worries!

Let’s focus on what seems to be the real issue here.  What is wrong with being an ape?  Do you really need to be created in God’s image to be special?  Really?  If there is a God, is his creation not sufficiently divine such that if you were an ape you would be any less glorious?  For all the shouting about the magnificent complexity of life, Intelligent Design proponents sure seem to think very little of the creation.
God’s strongest proponents often trash his glorious work.

Let’s be HONEST, the issue here is human arrogance.
Human’s do not want to be apes because they are arrogant.  We believe we are better than apes.  We are not allowed to believe we are gods, so we cling to the idea that we are created in the image of god.  If this belief causes you to look down on the rest of creation, then you are arrogant.
Arrogance, there is a fine moral principle!

The NOVA special, Judgement Day, on the recent Dover Pennsylvania trial now can be viewed online.  It does an excellent job of presenting the issues and the evidence.  In addition, it makes clear the difference between: theory, fact, and belief.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Biology, Evolution, Philosophy

I recall back to my first days in physics class where I read the quotation “Nature abhors a vacuum”.  The phrase was accompanied by an image of two teams of horses trying to pull two hollow hemispheres apart after the air was pumped out from inside.

These were called Magdeburg hemispheres and the experiment was performed by Otto von Guericke.  I didn’t realize this, but according to Wikipedia it was Aristotle’s theory Horror Vacui that von Guericke was trying to disprove.  This theory suggested that nature hates a vacuum and that the vacuum will suck material in to fill it.  Von Guericke demonstrated that it is not a sucking force, but a pushing force from the outside air.  However, as I recall from the physics text, the presentation was written as if this experiment was a demonstration of this “principle”.  I imagine that this misconception is why you still see the phrase commonly used today.  This is one of the science myths that keeps floating around.

A more accurate viewpoint is that Nature Abhors a Gradient.  It isn’t that there is a vacuum that is holding the hemispheres together.  Nor is it that there is air surrounding the hemispheres that is holding the hemispheres together.  Rather it is that there is an enormous gradient in the air density outside the hemispheres with respect to the inside.  The result of this gradient is a force.

Gradients in potential energy cause forces.

More generally, gradients in any scalar field result in generalized forces.

The gradient of the electric potential is the electric field.  The gradient of the gravitational potential energy is the gravitational force.  Over and over again these ideas reappear.  In physics, we learn them as separate concepts, and then later in the abstract topic of statistical mechanics we are expected to put it all together.  But each of these gradients resides in its own little box in the student’s cortex, and statistical mechanics is in its own little box.  Rarely do these ideas merge to form a unified concept.

Temperature gradients are responsible for our weather. 
Huge temperature gradients are responsible for hurricanes.  The temperature of the extremely warm air at the sea surface in the Gulf of Mexico drops quickly as one rises higher into the atmosphere.  This enormous gradient powers the heat engine known as a hurricane.  Nature abhors gradients, and will do something about them.  The gradients will result in forces that tend to eradicate the gradient.  Watching this NASA video of satellite imagery during the 2005 hurricane season, one can clearly see that hurricanes are designed to cool the sea surface.

Our weather here in Albany is due mainly to cyclonic storms that act to relieve the temperature gradient between the Earth’s equator and the poles.  Forces due to this gradient brings parcels of warm air north from the south and exchanges them with parcels of cold air from the north.  The spinning of the Earth results in the Coriolis force which deflects the northbound warm air eastward and the colder southbound air westward.  This creates a counter-clockwise rotating structure that brings warm air north on the eastern front and cold air south on the western front.  The result is that the extremely warm weather we had a few days ago had to be followed by the extremely cold weather as this cyclonic structure moved over us from the west.

However, the weather is not the only system driven by the Earth’s energy gradients.  Life itself is driven by these forces.  The “purpose” of life is to relieve gradients.  This is why forests are cooler, they are working to dissipate thermal gradients induced by incoming light heating the surface.  During the process of relieving these thermal gradients, the plants grow.  This excess organic matter results in residual chemical potential energy, which again creates a gradient.  The herbivores devour the plant matter to further relieve the chemical potential gradients.  This works up to a point, but again there is a residual chemical potential, of which the carnivores take advantage.  The cycles of life are driven by energy gradients.

But it doesn’t stop here.  There are other scalar fields that have gradients.  Wealth gradients result in generalized forces.  In cites where there are enormous gradients between the wealthy and the poor one sees violence.  Across the southern U.S. border there is another enormous gradient in wealth.  This gradient results in forces that drive Mexican immigrants into this country.  Building a wall won’t help because it doesn’t eliminate the gradient.  The gradient will merely increase until new forces become strong enough to eliminate it. 

How does one solve the problem? 
Eliminate the gradient.
Nature abhors a gradient.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Biology, Climate, Energy, Evolution, Philosophy, Physics, Social Justice

I have always been fascinated by the idea that ant colonies may exhibit some kind of collective intelligence.  Whether this is actually the case needs to be proven, however, I am not quite sure how one can prove such a hypothesis.  As far as I am aware, there is no Turing Test for ant colonies.  How could one test a hypothesis like this?  One must first form a predictive hypothesis, such that the hypothesis when applied to a particular situation would allow one to make predictions about what one would expect to observe.  Such hypotheses are testable, and as such can be either falsified or found to be supported by the evidence.  Could it be proven true?  Well, that is another issue altogether, which is best saved for another post.

I would have to defer to biologists who study ants to form predictive hypotheses regarding the collective intelligence of an ant colony.

Tonight, I saw an interesting Discovery Channel special on Killer Ants.  As usual, there is a lot of hype focused on whether ants can hunt and kill humans.  However, I was struck by the collective decisions made by Army Ants in Costa Rica to go on raids, and to enter a nomadic phase and move the hive.  Right now there is a special on Killer Bees, and they just discussed the dance that scout bees perform to communicate the direction and distance to food sources.  The most competent scouts dance the hardest, and the hive eventually reaches a consensus and heads off en masse to explore the food source.

I have always wondered how such collective intelligence could form, function, and whether it was actually possible.  However, during the segment on Army Ants, I learned that the hives are on the order of one million ants.  These ants are differentiated and are specialized for different tasks.  The ants that make up the hive are all female and as far as I understood, are sisters.  Some sisters are soldiers, others workers, doctors, nurses, and so on.  These sisters communicate by complex chemical signals. 

It struck me that a mouse’s brain consists of  about one -to one hundred million neurons.  Again neurons are highly differentiated, each form designed for different tasks.  If a mouse thinks, why not an ant colony? 

The main difference, and this I find intriguing, is that if an ant colony has a collective intelligence, then the “brain” is spatially distributed.  It would be as if our neurons could crawl around and spatial reorganize.

There is an excellent piece in Douglas Hofstadter‘s book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid that deals with an anteater who is friends with an ant colony.  The anteater can communicate with the ant colony by talking to it, and the ant colony communicates back via patterns of moving ants.  The anteater will sit an enjoy eating some ants during its conversations with the colony.  The colony doesn’t mind… just as some of us don’t always worry about losing a few neurons now and again.

How can we measure intelligence, especially when it may be so different from our own?

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Biology, Information, Intelligent Systems

Launch of www.greenerstill.com, which is a site focused on keeping our world healthy.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Biology, Climate, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Green

I recently learned of the project called “Encyclopedia of Life“, which endeavors to create an online encyclopedia featuring every known life form on Earth.  From what I can see, this is going to be done in an open access manner.

Sample pages exist for the following organisms:

Death Cap Mushroom    (Amanita Phalloides)
Rice   (Oryza Sativa)
Yeti Crab   (Kiwa Hirsuta)

and come in three flavors

Polar Bear   (Ursus Maritimus) : Novice Users
Polar Bear   (Ursus Maritimus) : Expert Users
Polar Bear   (Ursus Maritimus) : Biodiversity Heritage Library

I can’t wait!

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Biology, Birds, Climate, Exploration, Green, Internet, Wildlife